YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 1844

From the drawing by IT". Richmond in the
National Por/rait Gallery

OXFORD EDITION
NEWMAN'S
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
THE TWO VERSIONS OF 1864 & 1865
PRECEDED BY
NEWMAN'S AND KINGSLEY'S PAMPHLETS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WILFRID WARD

HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW
NEW YORK, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, BOMBAY
1913

INTRODUCTION.
The public rightly regards the Apologia as the most
typical and important of the writings of its author. In
the first place, it is, in some ways, his most characteristic
work. It is instinct with his personality. It is the best
exhibition in Newman's published writings of his curious
absorption in the drama of his own life. It illustrates the
gifts which his greatest enemies have not denied him — his
" regal " English style, and his mastery of the methods of
effective controversy. It has also special importance in the
story of his career, for it marks the critical turning point
of his fortunes in later life. When the Kingsley controversy
began, Newman's reputation and prospects were at their
lowest ebb. He had, since joining the Catholic Church in
1845, been entirely hidden from the public eye, and it is
hardly too much to say that the bulk of his fellow country
men had almost forgotten his existence. He had devoted
himself entirely to the duties of his position in his new
communion. Yet his work for the Catholic Church had
been inadequately appreciated by his co-religionists. The
three most considerable enterprises he had undertaken — the
Irish University, the translation of the Bible, and his editor
ship of the Rambler on lines which should enable English
Catholics to take an effective share in the thought of the
day — had all failed. By an influential group of extremists
his orthodoxy was suspected, and they had done their best,
not wholly without success, to make .Rome itself share
their suspicions. He was forgotten by the world at large ;
he was little esteemed by Catholics themselves.
Kingsley's attack gave him the opportunity for setting

vi INTRODUCTION.
himself right alike with the larger public and with the
smaller. The opportunity presented difficulties, but it
offered a great prize. His chance lay in a battle against
heavy odds. Kingsley was a widely popular writer. In
accusing the Catholic priesthood of being equivocators and
indifferent to truth, he had on his side the widespread
prejudice of the English public of 1864. When he added
to his original indictment a list of " superstitious " beliefs
which Newman himself could not repudiate, he could count
on still wider sympathy. But the encounter, though it
presented great difficulties, offered, as I have said, a great
opportunity. Kingsley's popularity and notoriety would
advertise a combat with him, and make it notorious ; thus'
it meant an excellent chance of gaining the attention of
the world at large. Moreover Newman, if he defended the
Catholic priesthood with conspicuous success, was sure to
win, as their champion, quite a new position among his
co-religionists. One of the most noteworthy features in the campaign
was Newman's keen appreciation of the situation, and of
the conditions on which victory depended. He had first to
rivet general attention on the contest, and to write without
being tedious to the average reader ; — to make such a reader
ready to follow the dispute further. This he succeeded
in doing in the witty pamphlet, published in this volume, in
which he summarized his correspondence with Kingsley, —
a brief and amusing jeu d'esprit which all could enjoy. That
this pamphlet made Kingsley so angry as to forget himself
and strike random blows in his retort entitled " What,
then, does Dr. Newman mean ? " was, probably, a result
foreseen by its author : and it was all in Newnjan's favour.
Then Newman had to keep the ball rolling, to avoid any
such delay or dullness as might lose for him the general
attention he had won. For this purpose it was desirable

IINXJKUUUOXION. vii
that the Apologia should be published in weekly parts,
and the fhftt parts had to sustain the note of humorous
banter which his pamphlet had struck. This meant
work at the very highest pressure. Easy reading means
hard writing in such a case. Again, he had to find suc
cessfully the tone which could make the advocate of an
unpopular cause win general sympathy. It was necessary
to bring vividly home to every one the fact that he was
deeply wronged, that a serious charge had been brought,
that when challenged its bringer had wholly failed to
justify it, and had also failed to make any adequate apology
for his slander. When once Newman had completely won
public sympathy he could say things that could only be told
to sympathetic ears. He could then relate the whole story
of his life, and could make plain its utter sincerity. The
first two parts of the Apologia were brief, brilliant, and full
of indignant passion. Then came the bulk of the narrative,
so touching to those who had become really interested in
the man. Lastly, as an Appendix, came the thirty -nine
" blots ", as he called them, — with a humorous suggestion
in their number of the Anglican articles — in which the
worst of Kingsley's random charges were swept away in
such a tone of contempt as could only be securely adopted
after the reader's sympathy was entirely won.
The occasion was great ; the work was exacting ; but
Newman rose to it and emerged triumphant. The Apologia
carried the country by storm. It became a classic of
the language, and it had to be re-edited that its form,
as well as its substance, might befit its permanent
character. Its form had to be no longer that appropriate
to a controversy of the hour in which rapier thrusts and
colloquialisms were suitable weapons, but that of an
earnest autobiography which could stand side by side
with those of St. Augustine and Rousseau. Its very title

viii INTRODUCTION
was changed to " History of my Religious Opinions ". But
his admirers had grown fond of the old title' of a book
which had been a chief landmark in his life. Apologia
pro vita sua eventually reappeared on the title page. The
other changes were permanent.
The present volume gives to the public for the first time
both forms of the work. We here have the Apologia m the
dramatic form of its original composition, and we have the
work in its final shape as permanent literature. In each
form it bears evidence of Newman's keen sense of the
fitness of things. What was justified only as a retort made
in heat and on the spur of the moment, to words blurted
out by Kingsley himself in a moment of anger, was with
drawn. The last chapter was no longer called " General
answer to Mr. Kingsley " ; it became, " The Position of my
mind since 1845." Such omissions and alterations indicate
the general principle on which the book was re-edited. Of
some specific changes in the text I will speak shortly.
The original version will be read with all the greater
interest if we call to mind some details of its composition.
Newman first sketched the plan of the book. The principal
heads of narrative and argument were written up in large
letters and pasted on the wall opposite to the desk at which
he wrote. Determined not to fail the publishers in their
weekly number, his work was done at extraordinary
pressure, lasting sometimes right through the night. He
was found more than once with his head in his hands,
crying like a child over the sadness of the memories which
his task recalled.
" I have now been for five weeks at it," he writes to an
intimate friend on May 1st, 1864, " from morning to night,
and I shall have three weeks more. ... I have to write over
and over again from the necessity of digesting and com
pressing."

JLJNXKOJJOCTION. ix
The following brief entries in his diary give the dates :
" April 10. Beginning of my hard work for the Apologia.
April 21st. First part of my Apologia out. April 28th.
Second part. May 5th. Third part. May 12th. Fourth
part. Sometimes at my work for 16 hours running.
May 19th. Fifth part. May 20th. At my Apologia for
22 hours running. May 26th. Sixth part out. June 9th.
No part published."
The delay meant that the narrative was finished, and
that a fortnight was allowed by the publishers for the
Appendix. " June 12th. Sent back my last proof to the printer."
The press, led by Mr. Hutton in the Spectator, gave the
work an enthusiastic reception. The Saturday Review, which
was notoriously free from the favourable bias which Hutton's
known admiration for Newman might make people suspect,
and which was then at the zenith of its reputation, received
it in a tone which fairly represents that of the bulk of the
press notices.
" A loose and off-hand, and, we may venture to add, an
unjustifiable imputation, cast on Dr. Newman by a popular
writer, more remarkable for vigorous writing than vigorous
thought, has produced one of the most interesting books
of the present literary age."
Such are the words with which the review in the Saturday
opens, and it continues in the same strain, paying tributes
to Dr. Newman's " almost unrivalled logical powers " and
to his gifts as " one of the finest masters of language "
among contemporary writers. The review contains a close
and critical examination of Newman's position, from which
the writer, naturally enough, dissents most strongly. But
it treats his success in the controversy and the great gifts
apparent in his writing as beyond question. That a book
which frankly defended its author's acceptance of the
A3

x INTRODUCTION.
doctrine of ecclesiastical infallibility, and of specific modern
miracles which the public of 1864 for the most part regarded
as credible only to narrow, superstitious, and childish
minds, should meet with such a reception ; and that a man
of Kingsley's popularity not only should fail of victory but
should be driven out of the field in his endeavour to
make capital against his opponent out of such beliefs,
is a remarkable testimony to Newman's conduct of the
controversy. The rough handling of Kingsley by his opponent was
a marked feature in the original Apologia. Frederick
Rogers (afterwards Lord Blachford) wrote to Newman in
great anxiety lest it might turn public opinion against him.
Newman himself felt he was playing a dangerous game, yet
that if his angry tone succeeded it would succeed more
completely than any other. And it did succeed. It suc
ceeded so completely and issued in such an acknowledged
and crushing defeat for Kingsley that Newman's warmest
friends found themselves feeling sorry for the man whose
attack they had in the first instance deeply resented.
A fine literary critic among Newman's Oratorian entourage
— Father Ignatius Dudley Ryder — wrote at the time, as
quite a young man, the following note of his own impres
sions on reading Newman's scathing denunciation of his
assailant, and on passing afterwards to the touching and
beautiful record of past days, for which this polemical
annihilation of the invader had cleared the ground.
" In reading his tremendous handling of his opponent
in the introduction and conclusion of the Apologia, it is
impossible, I think, whatever may be one's sympathies, to
avoid a sense of honest pity for the victim as for one
condemned though by his own rashness to fight with gods
or with the elements. It is not merely with him as with
one hurled from his chariot in an Homeric onset with the

INTRODUCTION. xi
gaping wound inflicted by a single spear, but his form is
crushed and dislocated ; and a hostile stream — Simois or
peradventure Scamander — hurries him away rejoicing in
its strength with the rush of many waters, yet not so far
away but that for long, and still beneath the sun of noon
or the moon at night, beneath tempestuous gleams or the
keen serenity of the stars, we get glimpses of the helpless
burden as it is tossed hither and thither in the eddying
stream until the darkness swallows it. And so the recent
field of death gives birth to a new revelation of life, and
we gaze with wonder upon heavy-fruited trees and golden
harvest, and our thought dwells almost tenderly upon the
first occasion of all this as on one long since dead who was
useful in his generation and no one's enemy but his own.'
One very interesting feature of Newman's own mentality
in this connexion remains to be spoken of. When editmg
the Apologia as a work of permanent literature, he omitted,
as I have said, his more angry retorts to the attacks of
Mr. Kingsley. Words used in a moment of anger ought not
(he felt) to be repeated in cold blood. With most
readers these retorts had beyond question contributed
largely to his success at the time. They had brought
home to the public the fact that a man of religious life
who had made great sacrifices for conscience' sake
had been accused of indifference to truth, and had
deeply resented the accusation. For a moment perhaps
the general vertiict trembled in the balance. There was just
a chance that people might say : " This is too strong.
Kingsley has not deserved all this. He may have gone too
far, but he has made his apology. With this Newman
ought to be contented." In insisting that the apology had
been inadequate and merely conventional, Newman was
hazarding much on his success in bringing a rather fine
distinction home to a rough-and-ready public. In this
however he was successful. The anger apparent in his
reply aroused a generous sympathy among Englishmen.

xii INTRODUCTION.
There were comparatively few who held that his resent
ment had gone to an indefensible extreme. All parties
agreed that he had been carried away by passionate and
indignant resentment which was almost irresistible ; one
party — by far the larger — sympathized with the anger of
a man who had been wronged, the other held with Hort that
his treatment of Kingsley was " horribly unchristian ".
Both sides probably remembered that this was not the
first time that Newman had used strong language where
a charge stung him deeply. In 1862 a rumour was
circulated in the Globe newspaper that he was about to
leave the Oratory and rejoin the Church of England.
Newman's public denial of the report was no calm
lawyer-like disclaimer, but was instinct with indignant
passion and ended with the following paragraph :
" I do hereby profess ex animo, with an absolute internal
assent and consent, that Protestantism is the dreariest of
possible religions ; that the thought of the Anglican service
makes me shiver, and the thought of the Thirty-nine
Articles makes me shudder. Return to the Church of
England ! No ! ' The net is broken, and we are delivered.'
I should be a consummate fool (to use a mild term), if in
my old age I left ' the land flowing with milk and honey '
for the city of confusion and the house of bondage."
A similar instance occurred some years after the publica
tion of the Apologia, and made people recall the strength
of his language in replying to Kingsley. In 1872 Mr. Capes
published in the Guardian a letter which virtually accused
Newman of accepting the Vatican definition outwardly while
inwardly rejecting it. Newman's published reply was again
marked by all the signs of an anger which had carried him
away. " I thank Mr. Capes for having put into print what
doubtless has often been said behind my back ; I do not
thank him for the odious words which he has made the

INTRODUCTION. xiii
vehicle of it. I will not dirty my ink by repeating them ;
but the substance, mildly stated, is this, — that I have all
along considered the doctrine of the Pope's Infallibility to
be contradicted by the facts of Church history, and that,
though convinced of this, I have, in consequence of the
Vatican Council, forced myself to do a thing that I never,
never fancied would befall me when I became a Catholic —
viz., forced myself by some unintelligible quibbles to fancy
myself believing what really after all in my heart I could
not and did not believe. And that this operation and its
result had given me a considerable amount of pain.
" I could say much and quote much from what I have
written, in comment upon this nasty view of me."
After citations from his own earlier writings in which he
had clearly avowed his belief in Papal Infalhbility, Newman
thus summed up the case :
" I underwent, then, no change of mind as regards the
truth of the doctrine of the Pope's Irjalhbility in con
sequence of the Council. It is true I was deeply, though
not personally, pained both by the fact and by the circum
stances of the definition ; and, when it was in contemplation
I wrote a most confidential letter, which was surreptitiously
gained and published, but of which I have not a word to
retract. The feelings of surprise and concern expressed in
that letter have nothing to do with a screwing one's con
science to profess what one does not believe, which is Mr.
Capes's pleasant account of me. He ought to know better.'
The supposition which all readers of the angry passages in
the Apologia and of these letters, friends of Newman and
foes alike, took for granted — that they were ebullitions of
temper — was shown eventually to be a mistake. When
Newman's private correspondence was published in his
Biography, it became quite clear that the language in the
letter to the Globe was not, as it seemed at the time, the
effect of an ungovernable feeling which carried him away,
but had been carefully calculated.
" No common denial would have put down the far spread

xiv INTRODUCTION.
impression," he writes to a friend. " I took a course which
would destroy it, and, as I think, which alone would be
able to destroy it. It is little or nothing to me that people
should think me angry, rude, insulting, &c, &c. No
common language would have done the work ; I had to use
language that was unmistakeably my own and could not
have been dictated to me ... I have done the work now
as I flatter myself, at least for some years to come, and
I may not be alive by the time that a new denial might
have been necessary.'
The true rationale of Newman's strong language was
vividly brought before his readers on the publication,
shortly after the death of Mr. Kingsley, of a letter td
Sir William Cope. Newman expressly declared in that
letter that he had had no angry feeling whatever towards
Mr. Kingsley, but had used the language of anger as the
only method of carrying conviction to the public :
" As I said in the first pages of my Apologia, it is very
difficult to be angry with a man one has never seen. A
casual reader would think my language denoted anger, but
it did not. I have ever felt from experience that no one
would believe me in earnest if I spoke calmly. When again
and again I denied the repeated report that I was on the
point of coming back to the Church of England, I have
uniformly found that if I simply denied it, this only made
newspapers repeat the report more confidently ; but if
I said something sharp, they abused me for scurrility
against the Church I had left, but they believed me. Rightly
or wrongly, this was the reason why I felt it would not do
to be tame and not to show indignation at Mr. Kingsley's
charges. Within the last few years I have been obliged to
adopt a similar course towards those who said I could not
receive the Vatican Decrees. I sent a sharp letter to the
Guardian, and of course the Guardian called me names,
but it believed me, and did not allow the offence of its
correspondent to be repeated."
Newman's use of strong language was then due to that
close knowledge of the effect produced by words on the

INTRODUCTION. xv
public mind which was so marked a feature in his conduct
of the whole controversy. The overmastering passion
which carried his readers away was not real but simulated.
Doubtless there will be some who will resent this method as
histrionic. They will say that Newman was acting a part,
that the charm of sincerity is absent from words so carefully
calculated. But this appears to me a false estimate. It
was no case of using language which he did not consider to
be, in itself, justified, with the object of producing a certain
controversial effect. On the contrary, he evidently thought
an indignant denial and angry language the appropriate
retort richly deserved by Kingsley's accusation, and repre
senting truly his own view though not any lively personal
feeling. He was using the words appropriate to the situa
tion, as an old man, past all lively feeling, may express in
answer to some exceptional public testimonial overpowering
emotions of gratitude, of which he is physically incapable,
and which are yet the feelings appropriate to the situation.
And the case was similar in the other instances to which
I have referred.
The anonymous assailant in the Globe was unknown to
him. He may have been, for all Newman knew, a mere
crank, or an Exeter Hall fanatic like the late Mr. Kensit,
with whom no one feels angry. Nevertheless the words as
they stood in the newspaper fully deserved the vehemence
and indignation conveyed by his letter. As to the letter of
1872 to the Guardian, it is likely enough that his sympathy
with Mr. Capes's religious trials precluded any angry feeling
at the time of writing. Yet people knew that Capes had
been a more or less intimate friend ; and probably anything
short of an angry denial on Newman's part would have been
open to the interpretation that, though he felt in duty
bound formally to disclaim the accusation that he did not
accept the Vatican decrees in his heart, his real feeling was

xvi INTRODUCTION.
much what Mr. Capes had represented it to be. It is
noteworthy that in the sweeping current of his angry
disclaimer, Newman slips in a clause to the effect that he
has not a word to retract of his strong letter to Bishop
Ullathorne in which he deplored the prospect of the
definition. Thus the letter to the Guardian, while couched
in rhetorical terms which satisfied the indignation of loyal
Catholics, cannot possibly be charged with misrepresenting
Newman's own attitude in the smallest degree.
The Kingsley case was one which called for the language
of anger yet more obviously than the other two. A very
popular writer was attacking Newman and bringing
charges against the Catholic priesthood, which widespread
prejudice made Englishmen very ready to credit. Newman
had, therefore, to fight against great odds. He had to win
over public opinion by bringing home to it the injustice of
Kingsley's method. If he did not feel carried away by
anger against a man whom he did not know personally,
and whose reputation made any such attack on the Catholic
Church from his pen almost the mechanical exhibition of an
idee fixe, this was surely no reason for refraining from
bringing home to the public by the only means in his power,
the indignation such charges objectively merited. Theft
may be due in an individual to kleptomania, yet theft must
be reprobated by all the force of public opinion ; we must
endorse that opinion on occasions even though we cannot
feel any moral animus against the kleptomaniac. English
men in general would not be saying, " Kingsley so hates
the Church of Rome that he cannot help making unfair
charges." On the contrary, they would take Kingsley's
words as a damaging expression of the conviction of an
honest man ; and it was in this, their objective aspect, that
they had to be answered.
One or two further changes in the text which have no

INTRODUCTION. xvii
relation to Mr. Kingsley may here be noted. One of them
relates to my own father. Mr. Hutton, Abbe Bremond,
and other students of Newman, have commented in some
surprise on the fact that my father's name is never men
tioned in the Apologia. When I was quite a boy I was
reading the first edition of the Apologia when it was not many
years old, and my father said to me : " Page 277 1 and the
following pages are mainly a description of me. When I
read them I realized for the first time how much I had irri
tated Newman at Oxford. He does not mention my name,
and that is partly because of his present displeasure with
me. But also it has a more friendly reason, for he did not
wish to pass criticisms on me by name. He mentions
Oakeley who was identified with my views at Oxford, and
then excepts him personally from his criticisms." The
passage he specially pointed to as evidencing Newman's
irritation in Oxford days, was that in which he inti
mates that the representatives of the avowedly Roman
section of the Movement worried him by incessant argu
ment and publicly claimed his assent — which they had
forcibly extorted — to their own conclusions. My father
said that he himself was the typical logician referred to
in the passage. " To come to me with methods of logic,"
Newman writes, " had in it the nature of a provocation."
And again :
" It might so happen that I got simply confused by the
very clearness of the logic which was administered to me
and thus gave my sanction to conclusions which really
were not mine : and when the report of those conclusions
came round to me through others I had to unsay them.
And then again perhaps I did not like to see men scared
or scandalized by unfeeling logical influences which would
not have touched them to the day of their death had
they not been made to eat them. And then I felt altogether
1 This corresponds with p. 259 of the present edition.

xviii INTRODUCTION.
the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose : Non in dialectics,
complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum." x
An old letter to Pusey, quoted two pages later, in which
the attempt of an unnamed A.B. to " force " him beyond
what he " can fairly accept " is stigmatized as a " nuisance ",
obviously referred to the same trial.
In the later editions the name " Ward " was inserted in
place of A.B., so that it could no longer be said that my
father was unmentioned. At the same time the text was
changed, in one case by getting rid of a colloquialism which
savoured of irritation ; — " forced to recognize them " was
substituted for " made to eat them ". The other change —
" strength of the logic " in place of " clearness of the logic "
— does not seem to me an improvement, though its cause
was obvious. It was doubtless designed to get rid of the
apparent paradox that the " clearness " of my father's
logic could have the effect of " confusing " Newman.
" Strength " of logic, on the other hand, might, like strong
wine, have a confusing effect. Yet to confuse by its clearness
was in fact, I think, at times just the effect of my father's
reasoning. His arguments were clear as those of Euclid, and
they were most confusing when one felt that they apparently
demonstrated a conclusion which was obviously false. One
could not at once see the point at which he had left out
relevant facts which should have modified his conclusion ;
yet these facts were present subconsciously in one's mind.
The combination of the clearest demonstration from
premisses of which one was conscious, with latent knowledge
of other premisses inconsistent with the conclusion, was
most confusing.
In later years Newman went yet further in avowing the
truth of my father's inferences from the text of the Apologia.
In a letter to myself of January 1885, he writes :
1 Vide infra, p. 204.

INTRODUCTION. xix
" Your father was never a High Churchman, never
a Tractarian, never a Puseyite, never a Newmanite. What
his line was is described in the Apologia, pp. 163 seq."
pages exactly corresponding in the then current edition
of the Apologia to those pointed out to me by my father
himself in the original edition.
Yet further light was thrown on Newman's annoyance
at the pressure of W. G. Ward's logic, by a passage in
Dean Church's Oxford Movement, published in 1890, which
runs as follows :
" Mr. Ward was in the habit of appealing to Mr. Newman
to pronounce on the soundness of his principles and
inferences with the view of getting Mr. Newman's sanction
for them against more timid or more dissatisfied friends ;
and he would come down with great glee on objectors to
some new and startling position, with the reply ' Newman
says so.' . . . Mr. Ward was continually forcing on Mr. New
man so-called irresistible inferences : ' If you say so and so,
surely you must also say something more ? ' Avowedly
ignorant of facts, and depending for them on others, he
was only concerned with logical consistency. And accord
ingly Mr. Newman, with whom producible logical con
sistency was indeed a great thing, but with whom it was
very far from being everything, had continually to accept
conclusions which he would rather have kept in abeyance,
to make admissions which were used without their quali
fications, to push on and sanction extreme ideas which he
himself shrank from because they were extreme. But it
was all over with his command of time, his liberty to make
up his mind slowly on the great decision. He had to go
at Mr. Ward's pace and not his own. He had to take
Mr. Ward's questions, not when he wanted to have them
and at his own time, but at Mr. Ward's. No one can tell
how much this state of things affected the working of
Mr. Newman's mind in that pause of hesitation before the
final step ; how far it accelerated the view which he
ultimately took of his position. No one can tell, for many

xx INTRODUCTION.
other influences were mixed up with this one. But there is
no doubt that Mr. Newman felt the annoyance and the
unfairness of this perpetual questioning for the benefit of
Mr. Ward's theories, and there can be little doubt that,
in effect, it drove him onwards and cut short his time of
waiting. « Engineers tell us that, in the case of a ship rolling
in a sea-way, when the periodic times of the ship's roll
coincide with those of the undulations of the waves, a
condition of things arises highly dangerous to the ship's
stability. So the agitations of Mr. Newman's mind were
reinforced by the impulses of Mr. Ward's."
Another change in the text has some relation to my
father, though a less direct one. Newman had used the
opportunity given him by Kingsley's attack to point out
that there was a " violent ultra party " among Catholics,
" which exalts opinions into dogmas, and has it principally at
heart to destroy every school of thought but its own." And
his correspondence shows that in this part of his treatment
he was aiming at what he held to be my father's exaggera
tions as to the import of Papal Infallibility and other cog
nate matters.1 His words applied, I think, in reality more
closely to passages in the writings of M. Louis Veuillot of the
Univers than to anything my father published. Newman
pointed out that the Holy See has no magical power of
teaching new truth infallibly, but represents the con
servative element which preserves the original deposit of
faith. He held that, properly understood, the claim to
infallibility made by the Catholic Church was even a per
suasive claim in view of the tendency of free discussion on
the fundamental truths of religion to issue simply in
unbelief. Yet to exaggerate the Church's claim beyond
a certain point was to make it incredible. The appeal
presented to reason and imagination alike by the Catholic
Church as the " concrete representative of things invi-
1 Life of Newman, vol. ii, p. 92.

INTRODUCTION. xxi
sible " bearing witness to the unseen world amid the
confused voices and uncertain results of speculation was
cogent. The exponents of an exaggerated Ultramontanism
were turning what was winning and persuasive into some
thing impossible and grotesque. In their intellectual analysis
of religion they were claiming a completeness of truth for the
orthodox, a completeness of error for the unorthodox, which
patent facts obviously disproved.
In the wave of success which had come after the
Apologia had appeared, he could emphasize more clearly
than he had thought wise while he was writing it, some of
his contentions against writers who were, he considered,
ignoring patent facts of history and making rational
apologetic in some departments difficult or impossible.
One new passage, on the value and partial truth of the
writings of men who may, nevertheless, have fallen into
heresy, is a noteworthy one. Newman's thesis is that " indi
viduals, and not the Holy See, have taken the initiative, and
given the lead to the Catholic mind, in theological inquiry ",
and that the function of Rome is mainly conservative —
not to originate Catholic thought, but rather to check pre
mature or false developments. He signalizes St. Augustine
and the African Church as the best early exponents of
the Latin ideas, and adds the following passage in later
editions :
" Moreover, of the African divines, the first in order of
time, and not the least influential, is the strong-minded and
heterodox TertuHian. Nor is the Eastern intellect, as such,
without its share in the formation of the Latin teaching.
The free thought of Origen is visible in the writings of the
Western Doctors, Hilary and Ambrose ; and the inde
pendent mind of Jerome has enriched his own vigorous
commentaries on Scripture, from the stores of the scarcely
orthodox Eusebius. Heretical questionings have been
transmuted by the living power of the Church into salutary
truths."

xxii INTRODUCTION.
The further variations between the different editions
witness mainly to Newman's extreme care in revising all
that he wrote. They are well worth studying in detail,
but call for no further remarks here.
The interest in the Apologia was not confined to English
men. Newman's University Sermons and his Essay on the
Development of Christian Doctrine had long existed in
a French form. And his French admirers wished to have
the Apologia in their own language. A translation appeared
in 1866 and had to be reprinted in 1868. Newman showed
the same interest in meeting the requirements of his new
public and adapting the work to their needs as he had done
in re-editing it for English readers. He wrote two Appen
dixes for the French edition, which are so interesting that
I here append them, as completing the picture which this
volume aims at presenting of the history of the Apologia in
its various phases.
The first is on the constitution and history of the Church
of England :
" There is, perhaps, no other institution in which the
English have shown their love of compromise in political
and social affairs so strikingly as in the estabUshed national
Church. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, all enemies of Rome,
were equally the enemies of one another. Of other Protes
tant sects the Erastians, Puritans and Arminians are also
different and hostile. But it is no exaggeration to say
that the Anglican ecclesiastical Establishment is an amal
gamation of all these varieties of Protestantism, to which
a considerable amount of Catholicism is superadded.
The Establishment is the outcome of the action which
Henry VIII, the ministers of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth,
the Cavaliers, the Puritans, the Latitudinarians of 1688,
and the Methodists of the Eighteenth Century successively
brought to bear on religion. It has a hierarchy dating
from the Middle Ages, richly endowed, exalted by its civil
position, formidable by its political influence. The Estab
lished Church has preserved the rites, the prayers and the

INTRODUCTION. xxiii
symbols of the ancient Church. She draws her articles of
faith from Lutheran and Zwinglian sources ; her transla
tion of the Bible savours of Calvinism. She can boast of
having had in her bosom, especially in the seventeenth
century, a succession of theologians of great learning and
proud to make terms with the doctrines and practices of
the primitive Church. The great Bossuet, contemplating
her doctors, said that it was impossible that the EngHsh
should not one day come back to the faith of their fathers ;
and De Maistre hailed the Anglican communion as being
destined to play a great part in the reconcihation and
reunion of Christendom.
This remarkable Church has always been in the closest
dependence on the civil power and has always gloried in
this. It has ever regarded the Papal power with fear, with
resentment and with aversion, and it has never won the
heart of the people. In this it has shown itself consistent
throughout the course of its existence ; in other concerns
it has either had no opinions or has constantly changed
them. In the sixteenth century it was Calvinist ; in the
first half of the seventeenth it was Arminian and quasi-
Catholic ; towards the close of that century and at the
beginning of the next it was latitudinarian. In the middle
of the eighteenth century it was described by Lord Chatham
as having ' a papistical ritual and prayer-book, Calvinist
articles of faith and an Arminian clergy '.
In our days it contains three powerful parties in which
are embodied the three principles of religion which appear
constantly and from the beginning of its history in one
form or another ; the Catholic principle, the Protestant
principle, and the scegticaJ^prmciple. Each of these, it is
hardly necessary to say, is violently opposed to the other
two. Firstly : the apostolic or Tractarian party, which is
now moving in the direction of Catholicism further than
at any other time, or in any previous manifestation; to
such an extent, that, in studying this party among its most
advanced adherents, one may say that it differs in nothing
from Catholicism except in the doctrine of Papal supremacy.
The party arose in the seventeenth century, at the courts
of James I and Charles I ; it was almost extinguished by

xxiv INTRODUCTION.
the doctrines of Locke and by the ascent to the throne of
William III and the House of Hanover. But in the course
of the eighteenth century its principles were taught and
silently transmitted by the ' non- jurors ', a sect of learned
and zealous men who, preserving the episcopal succession,
separated themselves from the Church of England when
summoned to take the oath of fidelity to William III. In
our day it has been seen to revive and form a numerous and
increasing party in the Church of England, by means of the
movement started by the writings entitled : Tracts for the
Times, (and thence called Tractarian,) of which there is
such constant mention in this book.
Secondly : the F^angeUcal.-party which maintains all
the biblical societies and most of the associations for
protestant missions throughout the world. The origin of
this party may be traced back to the puritans, who began
to show themselves in the last years of Queen Elizabeth's
reign. It was almost entirely thrown out of the Church of
England at the time of the restoration of Charles II in 1660.
It took refuge among the dissenters from that Church and
was expiring little by little when its doctrines were revived
with great vigour by the celebrated preachers Whitfield and
Wesley, both pastors of the Anglican Church and founders
of the powerful sect of the Methodists. These doctrines,
while creating a sect outside the established Church,
exercised at the same time an important influence in the
bosom of that Church itself, and developed there little by
little until it formed the evangelical party, which is to-day
by far the most important of the three schools which we are
trying to describe.
Thirdly : the liberal party, known in previous centuries
by the less honourable name "of Latitudinarian. It broke
off from the quasi-Catholic party, or Court party, in the
reign of Charles I, and was fed and extended by the intro
duction into England of the principles of Grotius and of the
Arminians of Holland. We have already referred to the
philosophy of Locke as having had an influence in the same
direction. This party took the side of the revolution of
1688, and supported the Whigs, William III, and the House
of Hanover. The spirit of its principles is opposed to
extension andproselytism ; and, although it has numbered

INTRODUCTION. xxv
in its ranks remarkable writers among the Anglican theo
logians, it had had but few votaries until ten years ago,
when, irritated by the success of the Tractarians, taking
advantage of the conversion of some of their principal
leaders to the Roman Church, and aided by the importation
of German literature into England, this party suddenly
came before the public view and was propagated among
the best educated classes with a rapidity so astonishing
that it is almost justifiable to believe that in the coming
generation the religious world will be divided between the
Deists and the Catholics. The principles and arguments
of the Liberals do not even stop at deism.
If the Anglican communion were composed solely of
these three parties it could not exist. It would be broken
up by its internal dissensions. But there is in its bosom
a party more numerous by far than these three theological
ones — a party which, created by the legal position of the
Church, profiting by its riches and by the institutions of
its creed, is the counter weight and the chain which secures
the whole. It is the party of order, the party of jQonserva-
tives^or _T/oxies as they have hitherto been called. It is
rioTa religious party, not that it has not a great number of
religious men in its ranks, but because its principles and its
mots d'ordre are political or at least ecclesiastical rather
than theological. Its members are neither Tractarians, nor
Evangelicals, nor Liberals ; or, if they are, it is in a very
mild and very unaggressive form ; because, in the eyes of
the world their chief characteristic consists in their being
advocates of an Establishment and of the Establishment, and
they are more zealous for the preservation of a national
Church than solicitous for the beliefs which that national
Church professes. We said above that the great principle
of the Anglican Church was its confidence in the protection
of the civil power and its docility in serving it, which its
enemies call its Erastianism. Now if on the one hand this re
spect for the civil power be its great principle, the principle of
Erastianism is, on the other hand, embodied in so numerous
a party whether among the clergy or the laity, that the
word ' party ' is scarcely adequate. It constitutes the mass
of the Church. The clergy in particular — Bishops, Deans,
Chapters, Rectors — are always distinguished by their

xxvi INTRODUCTION.
Toryism on all English questions. In the seventeenth
century they professed the divine right of kings ; they have
ever since gloried in the doctrine : ' The King is the head
of the Church ; ' and their after-dinner toast : ' The
Church and the King ' has been their formula of protesta
tion for maintaining in the kingdom of England the theo
retical predominance of the spiritual over the temporal.
They have always testified an extreme aversion for what
they term the power usurped by the Pope. Their chief
theological dogma is that the Bible contains all necessary
truths, and that every Christian is individually capable of
discovering them there for his own use. They preach Christ
as the only mediator, redemption by His death, the renewal
of man by His Spirit, the necessity for good works. This
great assembly of men, true representatives of that English
common sense which is so famous for its good as for its evil
consequences, mostly regard every kind of theology, every
theological school, and in particular the three schools which
we have tried to portray, with mistrust. In the seventeenth
century they combated the Puritans ; at the close of that
century they combated the Latitudinarians ; in the middle
of the eighteenth century they combated the Methodists
and the members of the Evangelical party ; and in our own
times they have made an energetic stand at first against
the Tractarians and to-day against the Liberals.
This party of order in the Established Church has neces
sarily many subdivisions. The country! clergy, rejoicing
in great ease, in intimate relations with the county
gentlemen of their neighbourhood and always benevo
lent and charitable, are much respected and beloved by
the lower classes on account of their position, but not
for the influence of their doctrine. But amongst ecclesi
astics who enjoy great revenues and have not much to do
(such as the members of the Cathedral chapters), many
have long since deteriorated in the pursuit of their personal
advantage. Those who held high positions in great towns
have been led to adopt the habits of a great position and
of external display, and have boasted a formal orthodoxy
which was cold and almost entirely devoid of interior life.
These self-indulgent pastors have for a long time been
nick-named ' two-bottle orthodox ', as though their greatest

INTRODUCTION. xxvii
religious zeal manifested itself in the drinking of port wine
to the health of ' the Church and King '. The pompous
dignitaries of great town parishes have also been surnamed
the ' high and dry ' school or Church.
It still remains for us to explain three words which are
in opposition to each other and. which will find their place
in this book : High Church ; Low Church ; Broad Church.
The last of these denominations offers no difficulty : the
word 'broad' answers to that of 'latitudinarian', and by
Broad Church is understood the Liberal party. But the
denominations of High and Low Church cannot be under
stood without explanation.
The doctrinal appellation of ' High Church ' signifies
the teaching which aims at asserting the prerogatives and
authority of the Church ; but not so much its invisible
powers as its privileges and gifts as a visible body ; and,
since in the Anglican religion these temporal privileges have
always depended on the civil power, it happens accidentally
that a partisan of the High Church is almost an Erastian ;
that is to say, a man who denies the spiritual power per
taining to the Church and maintains that the Church is
one of the branches of the civil government. Thus, a
Calvinist may be a partisan of the High Church, as was
Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Elizabeth,
and as was also Hooker, the Master of the Temple,1 at any
rate during his youth.
The Low Church is obviously the opposite to the High
Church. If then the High Church party is the party which
upholds the Church and the King, the Low Church party
is the one which anathematises that Erastian doctrine and
considers it anti-Christian to give the State any power
whatsoever over the Church of God ; it was thus that
formerly the Puritans and the Independents preferred
Cromwell to King Charles. To-day, however, since the
Puritans have ceased to exist in England, the denomination
of Low Church has ceased to represent an ecclesiastical idea,
and designates a theological party, becoming synonymous
with the Evangelical party. In consequence, an analogous
1 This title was given to » preacher directed to preach on certain
days in a very curious little church which formerly belonged to the
Templars. — Note by John Henry Newman.

xxviii INTRODUCTION.
change has taken place in the meaning of the name ' High
Church '. Instead of denoting solely the partisans of the
' Church and the King ', or the Erastians, it has come to
have a theological signification and to denote the semi-
Catholic party. Thus it often happens in our own days
that even the Tractarians are called partisans of the High
Church, although they began by denouncing Erastianism,
and although, in their early days, they were violently
opposed at Oxford by the High Church party or Established
Church." With the above should be read a shorter note, designed
for the same readers, on the University of Oxford :
" The University of Oxford has been the intellectual
centre of England ever since the Middle Ages. Six centuries
ago Paris alone surpassed it as an ecclesiastical school and
it was the mother of the great theologians, Scotus, Alexander
of Hales, and Occam. Even in those times it was a kind
of representative of the pohtical parties of the nation. An
old rhymed couplet gives evidence of that :
Chronica si penses, cum pugnant Oxonienses
Post paucos menses volat ira per Angligenenses.
In the centuries following the Reformation, Oxford has
always been the head quarters of the Tory or Conservative
party, which has been described above as the most con
siderable in the Established Church. It was there that the
Protestant reformers, Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, were
burnt alive in the time of Queen Mary ; it was there that
King Charles I found his most steadfast support against
his Parliament. It was there that the non-jurors and other
supporters of the Stuarts sought a refuge for their opinions
when the House of Hanover had taken possession of the
kingdom ; and, while remaining eminently conservative in
its religious and pohtical teaching, it has nevertheless so
completely sustained the intellectual vigour of its first
ages, that, even in the course of the last century, it has given
birth to each of the three theological parties that exist
to-day in the Established Church, and to which the con
servative spirit which so specially characterises it, is
naturally so opposed. The Evangehcal party of to-day owes

INTRODUCTION. xxix
its origin to Whitfield and Wesley, who, towards the middle
of the last century, began their religious life as Oxford
students. Oxford was again, as this volume proves, the
sole mother and nurse of Tractarianism ; and the Liberalism
which to-day inundates the English intelligent classes
sprang rather from Oxford than from any other source.
Let us proceed to its academic constitution. There, too,
Oxford has preserved this character of the Middle Ages
which nearly all the continental universities have lost.
It comprehends a certain number of separate societies which
bear the distinctive names of colleges and halls, and each
of which has its separate and independent rights and
privileges. Its position cannot be better described than by
comparing it to the pohtical constitution of the United
States of America. Just as the different States are, or have
hitherto been, independent within their proper limitations
and are nevertheless included in the dominion of the
republic, so each of the Oxford colleges is a separate
corporation legally and actually independent of all the
others, although they are all constituent parts of the same
university. These colleges were in the beginning inns or
hostels intended for the reception of students who had
come from afar. Little by little they took the form of
separate societies, and, obtaining the patronage of impor
tant people, whether ecclesiastics or nobles, they acquired
a legal existence (status) and were richly endowed. Other
colleges have their origin in the monasteries with which
the university was abundantly provided. To-day there
exist about twenty colleges and five halls. The difference
between a college and a hall is that the college is a corpora
tion possessing endowments and having its own complete
administration, and that the hall is not a corporation.
Mention is made in this work of Oriel College, founded in
1326 by King Edward II ; of Trinity College, founded in
the sixteenth century on the site of a Benedictine house ; of
Pembroke College, whose origin is more modern ; and of
Alban Hall, the antiquity of which goes back further than
that of the two first. The corporate rights of a college rest
with a head and with Fellows, whose position answers to
that of the Dean and Canons of a cathedral. And this head
is designated by different titles, such as Provost of Oriel,

xxx INTRODUCTION.
President of Triftity, Master of Pembroke, and Principal
of Alban Hall. The head of the university itself is the
Chancellor, who is generally a great nobleman, or a con
siderable statesman, elected to the position by the members
of the university. The three most recent Chancellors have
been Lord Grenville, so celebrated in the beginning of the
history of this century, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord
Derby, now the head of the Conservative party. The acting
governor of the university is the Vice-Chancellor who is
chosen, according to custom, from among the heads of the
colleges in turn and holds his office for four years."
It is interesting to note that when classifying, in another
Appendix to the French edition, the Anglican writers named
in the Apologia, Newman gives Rose, Hook, and Perceval, —
all of them among the founders of the Oxford Movement, —
as members, not of the Anglo -Catholic party, but of " the
party of the High Church or of the Established Church
considered separately from the three theological parties ".
Palmer, on the other hand, like Pusey and Keble, is classed
with the Anglo-Catholics.
The above notes are, of course, nearly half a century old.
It would be instructive if some student of the fortunes of the
Church of England, as accurate as Newman, were to trace
the causes which have made one of Newman's statements
so completely inapplicable to the present day, — the state
ment that the clergy, and especially the high dignitaries,
are " always distinguished for their Toryism on all English
questions ". The alliance of Bishops of the Established
Church with the democracy is, as we are reminded by this
statement, a modern development, and the important part
played by the episcopal bench in passing the Parliament
Bill would probably have suggested some interesting
reflections to Newman could he have foreseen it.
Wilfrid Ward,

The differences between the text of the Apologia pro Vita sua of
1864 and the History of my Religious Opinions of 1865, so far as the
two books overlap, are shown in pp. 87-477 of this edition, in the
following way :
Words or passages of the 1864 book which were cancelled in 1865
are enclosed in square brackets [ ].
Words or passages first inserted in the 1865 book are enclosed in
angular brackets ().
Words or passages of the 1864 book, not simply deleted, but
replaced by other words in 1865, are left untouched in the text,
but the alteration is shown in a footnote, preceded by the number
of the line where the difference occurs, the 1864 version being
given first, followed by the 1865, thus (on p. 264) :
24 made to eat] forced to recognize
The 1864 text can therefore be constructed by omitting all words
enclosed in ( ), by including all words in [ ], and by ignoring the
footnotes. The 1865 text can be constructed by omitting all words enclosed
in [ ], by including all words in ( ), and by reference to the footnotes.
A few differences between two copies of the 1864 book (one
probably, though not ascertainably, representing the original
pamphlets, and the other the pamphlets revised for reissue in
book-form) are also shown in the footnotes ; and by the courtesy
of the Newman Trustees, and of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.,
some other interesting variations, subsequent to 1870, are given.

[Reduced Facsimile of the original Title-page.)
MR. KINGSLEY and DR. NEWMAN:

CORRESPONDENCE
WHETHER DR. NEWMAN TEACHES THAT
TRUTH IS NO VIRTUE?

LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, AND GREEN.
1864.
Price One SJiillhut.

ADVERTISEMENT
To prevent misconception, I think it necessary to observe,
that, in my Letters here published, I am far indeed from
implying any admission of the truth of Mr. Kingsley's
accusations against the Cathohc Church, although I have
abstained from making any formal protest against them.
The object which led to my writing at all, has also led me,
in writing, to turn my thoughts in a different direction.
J. H. N.
January 31, 1SC4.

A
CORRESPONDENCE, die. I.
Extract from a Review of Froude's History of England,
vols. vii. and viii., in Macmillan's Magazine for January,
1864, signed " C. K." Pages 216, 217.
" The Roman religion had, for some time past, been making
men not better men, but worse. We must face, we must
conceive honestly for ourselves, the deep demoralization
which had been brought on in Europe by the dogma that
the Pope of Rome had the power of creating right and
wrong ; that not only truth and falsehood, but morahty
and immorality, depended on his setting his seal to a Tbit
of parchment. From the time that indulgences were
hawked about in his name, which would insure pardon
for any man, ' etsi matrem Dei violavisset,' the world in
general began to be of that opinion. But the mischief was
older and deeper than those indulgences. It lay in the very
notion of the dispensing power. A deed might be a crime,
or no crime at all — like Henry the Eighth's marriage of
his brother's widow — according to the will of the Pope.
If it suited the interest or caprice of the old man of Rome
not to say the word, the doer of a certain deed would be
burned ahve in hell for ever. If it suited him, on the other
hand, to say it, the doer of the same deed would go, sacra-
mentis munitus, to endless bliss. What rule of morality,
what eternal law of right and wrong, could remain in the

6 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
hearts of men born and bred under the shadow of so
hideous a deception ?
" And the shadow did not pass at once, when the Pope's
authority was thrown off. Henry VIII. evidently thought
that if the Pope could make right and wrong, perhaps he
could do so likewise. Elizabeth seems to have fancied, at
one weak moment, that the Pope had the power of making
her marriage with Leicester right, instead of wrong.
" Moreover, when the moral canon of the Pope's will was
gone, there was for a while no canon of morahty left. The
average morality of Elizabeth's reign was not so much low,
as capricious, self-willed, fortuitous ; magnificent one day
in virtue, terrible the next in vice. It was not till more
than one generation had grown up and died with the Bible
in their hands, that Englishmen and Germans began to
understand (what Frenchmen and Italians did not under
stand) that they were to be judged by the everlasting laws
of a God who was no respecter of persons.
" So, again, of the virtue of truth. Truth, for its own
sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.
Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the
whole ought not to be ; that cunning is the weapon which
Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the
brute male force of the wicked world which marries and
is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally
correct or not, it is at least historically so.
" Ever since Pope Stephen forged an epistle from
St. Peter to Pepin, King of the Franks, and sent it with
some filings of the saint's holy chains, that he might bribe
him to invade Italy, destroy the Lombards, and confirm
to him the ' Patrimony of St. Peter ; ' ever since the first
monk forged the first charter of his monastery, or dug the
first heathen Anglo-Saxon out of his barrow, to make him
a martyr and a worker of miracles, because his own minster
did not ' draw ' as well as the rival minster ten miles off ; —
ever since this had the heap of lies been accumulating,
spawning, breeding fresh hes, till men began to ask them
selves whether truth was a thing worth troubling a practical
man's head about, and to suspect that tongues were given
to men, as claws to cats and horns to bulls, simply for
purposes of offenco and defence."

A CORRESPONDENCE 7
II.
Dr. Newman to Messrs. Macmillan and Co.
The Oratory, Bee. 30, 1863.
Gentlemen,
I do not write to you with any controversial
purpose, which would be preposterous ; but I address you
simply because of your special interest in a Magazine which
bears your name.
That highly respected name you have associated with
a Magazine, of which the January number has been sent
to me by this morning's post, with a pencil mark calling
my attention to page 217.
There, apropos of Queen Elizabeth, I read as follows : —
" Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with
the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
need not, and on the whole ought not to be ; that cunning
is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints where
with to withstand the brute male force of the wicked
world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether
his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least
historically so."
There is no reference at the foot of the page to any
words of mine, much less any quotation from my writings,
in justification of this statement.
I should not dream of expostulating with the writer of
such a passage, nor with the editor who could insert it
without appending evidence in proof of its allegations.
Nor do I want any reparation from either of them. I neither
complain of them for their act, nor should I thank them if
they reversed it. Nor do I even write to you with any desire
of troubling you to send me an answer. I do but wish to
draw the attention of yourselves, as gentlemen, to a grave
and gratuitous slander, with which I feel confident you
will be sorry to find associated a name so eminent as yours.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) John H. Newman.

8 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
III.
The Rev. Charles Kingsley to Dr. Newman.
Eversley Rectory, January 6, 1864.
Reverend Sir,
I have seen a letter of yours to Mr. Macmillan,
in which you complain of some expressions of mine in an
article in the January number of Macmillan's Magazine.
That my words were just, I believed from many passages
of your writings ; but the document to which I expressly
referred was one of your Sermons on " Subjects of the
Day," No. XX., in the volume published in 1844, and
entitled " Wisdom and Innocence."
It was in consequence of that Sermon, that I finally
shook off the strong influence which your writings exerted
on me ; and for much of which I still owe you a deep debt
of gratitude.
I am most happy to hear from you that I mistook (as
I understand from your letter) your meaning ; and I shall
be most happy, on your showing me that I have wronged
you, to retract my accusation as pubhcly as I have made it.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Your faithful Servant,
(Signed) Charles Kingsley.
IV.
Dr. Newman to the Rev. Charles Kingsley.
The Oratory, Birmingham,
^ _ January 7, 1864.
Reverend Sir, I have to acknowledge your letter of the 6tb,
informing me that you are the writer of an article in
Macmillan's Magazine, in which I am mentioned, and
referring generally to a Protestant sermon of mine of
seventeen pages, published by me, as Vicar of St. Mary's
in 1844, and treating of the bearing of the Christian towards
the world, and of the character of the reaction of that

A CORRESPONDENCE 9
bearing upon him ; and also, referring to my works passim ;
in justification of your statement, categorical and definite,
that " Father Newman informs us that truth for its own
sake need not, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue
with the Roman clergy.'
I have only to remark, in addition to what I have already
said with great sincerity to Messrs. Macmillan and Co., in
the letter of which you speak, and to which I refer you,
that, when I wrote to them, no person whatever, whom
I had ever seen or heard of, had occurred to me as the
author of the statement in question. When I received your
letter, taking upon yourself the authorship, I was amazed.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) John H. Newman.

V.
Dr. Newman to X. Y., Esq.1
The Oratory, January 8, 1864,
Dear Sir, I thank you for the friendly tone of your letter
of the 5th just received, and I wish to reply to it with the
frankness which it invites. I have heard from Mr. Kingsley,
avowing himself, to my extreme astonishment, the author
of the passage about which I wrote to Messrs. Macmillan.
No one, whose name I had ever heard, crossed my mind
as the writer in their Magazine : and, had any one said
that it was Mr. Kingsley, I should have laughed in his
face. Certainly, I saw the initials at the end ; but, you
must recollect, I five out of the world ; and, I must own,
if Messrs. Macmillan will not think the confession rude,
that, as far as I remember, I never before saw even the out
side of their Magazine. And so of the Editor : when I saw
his name on the cover, it conveyed to me absolutely no
idea whatever. I am not defending myself, but merely
stating what was the fact ; and as to the article, I said to
1 A gentleman who interposed between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman.
B3

10 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
myself, " Here is a young scribe, who is making himself
a cheap reputation by smart hits at safe objects."
All this will make you see, not only how I live out of
the world, but also how wanton I feel it to have been in the
parties concerned thus to let fly at me. Were I in active
controversy with the Anglican body, or any portion of it,
as I have been before now, I should consider untrue asser
tions about me to be in a certain sense a rule of the game,
as times go, though God forbid that I should indulge in
them myself in the case of another. I have never been very
sensitive of such attacks ; rarely taken notice of them.
Now, when I have long ceased from controversy, they
continue : they have lasted incessantly from the year 1833
to this day. They do not ordinarily come in my way :
when they do, I let them pass through indolence. Some
times friends send me specimens of them ; and sometimes
they are such as I am bound to answer, if I would not
compromise interests which are dearer to me than life.
The January number of the Magazine was sent to me,
I know not by whom, friend or foe, with the passage on
which I have animadverted, emphatically, not to say
indignantly, scored against. Nor can there be a better
proof that there was a call upon me to notice it, than the
astounding fact that you can so calmly (excuse me) " con
fess plainly " of yourself, as you do, " that you had read
the passage, and did not even think that I or any of my
communion would think it unjust."
Most wonderful phenomenon ! An educated man,
breathing Enghsh air, and walking in the light of the
nineteenth century, thinks that neither I nor any members
of my communion feel any difficulty in allowing that
" Truth for its own sake need not, and on the whole ought
not to be, a virtue with the Roman clergy ; " nay, that they
are not at all surprised to be told that " Father Newman
had informed " the world, that such is the standard of
morality acknowledged, acquiesced in, by his co-religionists !
But, I suppose, in truth, there is nothing at all, however
base, up to the high mark of Titus Oates, which a Cathohc
may not expect to be beheved of him by Protestants,
however honourable and hard-headed. However, dis
missing this natural train of thought, I observe on your

A CORRESPONDENCE 11
avowal as follows ; and I think what I shall say will
commend itself to your judgment as soon as I say it.
I think you will allow then, that there is a broad difference
between a virtue, considered in itself as a principle or rule,
and the application or limits of it in human conduct.
Catholics and Protestants, in their view of the substance
of the moral virtues, agree, but they carry them out
variously in detail ; and in particular instances, and in the
case of particular actors or writers, with but indifferent
success. Truth is the same in itself and in substance to
Cathohc and Protestant ; so is purity : both virtues are to
be referred to that moral sense which is the natural posses
sion of us all. But when we come to the question in detail,
whether this or that act in particular is conformable to
the rule of truth, or again to the rule of purity ; then
sometimes there is a difference of opinion between indivi
duals, sometimes between schools, and sometimes between
religious communions. I, on my side, have long thought,
even before I was a Cathohc, that the Protestant system, as
such, leads to a lax observance of the rule of purity ;
Protestants think that the Cathohc system, as such, leads
to a lax observance of the rule of truth. I am very sorry
that they should think so, but I cannot help it ; I lament
their mistake, but I bear it as I may. If Mr. Kingsley had
said no more than this, I should not have felt it necessary
to criticize such an ordinary remark. But, as I should be
committing a crime, heaping dirt upon my soul, and storing
up for myself remorse and confusion of face at a future
day, if I applied my abstract belief of the latent sensuality
of Protestantism, on a priori reasoning, to individuals, to
living persons, to authors and men of name, and said (not
to make disrespectful allusion to the living) that Bishop
Van Mildert, or the Rev. Dr. Spry, or Dean Milner, or the
Rev. Charles Simeon " informs us that chastity for its own
sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue
with the Anglican clergy," and then, when challenged for
the proof, said, " Vide Van Mildert's Bampton Lectures
and Simeon's Skeleton Sermons passim ; " and, as I should
only make the matter still worse, if I pointed to flagrant
instances of paradoxical divines or of bad clergymen among
Protestants, as, for instance, to that popular London

12 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
preacher at the end of last century who advocated polygamy
in print ; so, in like manner, for a writer, when he is
criticizing definite historical facts of the sixteenth century,
which stand or fall on their own merits, to go out of his way
to have a fling at an unpopular name, living but " down,"
and boldly to say to those who know no better, who know
nothing but what he tells them, who take their tradition
of historical facts from him, who do not know me, — to say
of me, " Father Newman informs us that Truth for its own
sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue
with the Roman clergy," and to be thus brilliant and
antithetical (save the mark !) in the very cause of Truth,
is a proceeding of so special a character as to lead me to
exclaim, after the pattern of the celebrated saying, " 0
Truth, how many hes are told in thy name ! "
Such being the state of the case, I think I shall carry
you along with me when I say, that, if there is to be any
explanation in the Magazine of so grave an inadvertence,
it concerns the two gentlemen who are responsible for it,
of what complexion that explanation shaU be. For me,
it is not I who ask for it ; I look on mainly as a spectator,
and shall praise or blame, according to my best judgment,
as I see what they do. Not that, in so acting, I am implying
a doubt of all that you tell me of them ; but " handsome is,
that handsome does." If they set about proving their
point, or, should they find that impossible, if they say so,
in either case I shall call them men. But, — bear with me
for harbouring a suspicion which Mr. Kingsley's letter to
me has inspired, — if they propose merely to smooth the
matter over by publishing to the world that I have " com
plained," or that " they yield to my letters, expostulations,
representations, explanations," or that " they are quite
ready to be convinced of their mistake, if I will convince
them," or that " they have profound respect for me, but
really they are not the only persons who have gathered
from my writings what they have said of me," or that
" they are unfeignedly surprised that I should visit in
their case what I have passed over in the case of others,"
or that " they have ever had a true sense of my good points,
but cannot be expected to be blind to my faults," if this
be the sum total of what they are to say, and they ignore

A CORRESPONDENCE 13
the fact that the onus probandi of a very definite accusation
hes upon them, and that they have no right to throw the
burden upon others, then, I say with submission, they had
better let it all alone, as far as I am concerned, for a half-
measure settles nothing.
January 10.— I will add, that any letter addressed to
me by Mr. Kingsley, I account public property ; not so,
should you favour me with any fresh communication
yourself. I am, Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) John H. Newman.

VI.
The Rev. Charles Kingsley to Dr. Newman.
Eversley Rectory, January 14, 1864.
Reverend Sir,
I have the honour to acknowledge your answer to
my letter.
I have also seen your letter to Mr. X. Y. On neither of
them shall I make any comment, save to say, that, if you
fancy that I have attacked you because you were, as you
please to term it, " down," you do me a great injustice ;
and also, that the suspicion expressed in the latter part of
your letter to Mr. X. Y., is needless.
The course, which you demand of me, is the only course
fit for a gentleman ; and, as the tone of your letters (even
more than their language) make me feel, to my very deep
pleasure, that my opinion of the meaning of your words
was a mistaken one, I shall send at once to Macmillan's
Magazine the few lines which I inclose.
You say, that you will consider my letters as public.
You have every right to do so.
I remain, Reverend Sir,
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) C. Kingsley.

14 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
VII.
[This will appear in the next number.]
" To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine.
"Sir, " In your last number I made certain allega
tions against the teaching of the Rev. Dr. Newman, which
were founded on a Sermon of his, entitled ' Wisdom and
Innocence,' (the sermon will be fully described, as to 1 . . .)
" Dr. Newman has, by letter, expressed in the strongest
terms, his denial of the meaning which I have put upon
his words.
" No man knows the use of words better than Dr. New
man ; no man, therefore, has a better right to define what
he does, or does not, mean by them.
" It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty
regret at having so seriously mistaken him ; and my
hearty pleasure at finding him on the side of Truth, in this,
or any other, matter. (Signed) Charles Kingsley."
VIII.
Dr. Newman to the Rev. Charles Kingsley.
The Oratory, January 17, 1864.
Reverend Sir,
Since you do no more than announce to me your
intention of inserting in Macmillan's Magazine the letter,
a copy of which you are so good as to transcribe for me,
perhaps I am taking a liberty in making any remarks to
you upon it. But then, the very fact of your showing it to
me seems to invite criticism ; and so sincerely do I wish to
bring this painful matter to an immediate settlement, that,
at the risk of being officious, I avail myself of your courtesy
to express the judgment which I have carefully formed
upon it.
1 Here follows a word or half-word, which neither I nor any one else
to whom I have shown the MS. can decypher. I have at p. 15 filled in
for Mr. Kingsley what I understood him to mean by " fully."  J, H N

A CORRESPONDENCE 15
I believe it to be your wish to do me such justice as is
compatible with your duty of upholding the consistency
and quasi-infalhbihty which is necessary for a periodical
publication ; and I am far from expecting any thing from
you which would be unfair to Messrs. Macmillan and Co.
Moreover, I am quite aware, that the reading public, to
whom your letter is virtually addressed, cares little for
the wording of an explanation, provided it be made aware
of the fact that an explanation has been given.
Nevertheless, after giving your letter the benefit of both
these considerations, I am sorry to say I feel it my duty
to withhold from it the approbation which I fain would
bestow. Its main fault is, that, quite contrary to your intention,
it will be understood by the general reader to intimate,
that I have been confronted with definite extracts from my
works, and have laid before you my own interpretations
of them. Such a proceeding I have indeed challenged, but
have not been so fortunate as to bring about.
But besides, I gravely disapprove of the letter as a whole.
The grounds of this dissatisfaction will be best understood
by you, if I place in parallel columns its paragraphs, one
by one, and what I conceive will be the popular reading
of them.
This I proceed to do.
I have the honour to be,
Reverend Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) John H. Newman.

Mr. Kingsley's Letter. Unjust, but too probable, popu
lar rendering of it.
1. Sir, — In your last num
ber I made certain allegations
against the teaching of the
Rev. Dr. Newman, which were
founded on a Sermon of his,
entitled " Wisdom and Inno
cence," preached by him as Vicar
of St. Mary's, and published
in 1844.

16

MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN

2. Dr. Newman has, by letter,
expressed in the strongest terms
his denial of the meaning which
I have put upon his words.

3. No man knows the use of
words better than Dr. Newman ;
no man, therefore, has a better
right to define what he does, or
does not, mean by them.

4. It only remains, therefore,
for me to express my hearty
regret at having so seriously
mistaken him, and my hearty
pleasure at finding him on the
side of truth, in this or any other
matter.

2. I have set before Dr. New
man, as he challenged me to do,
extracts from his writings, and
he has affixed to them what he
conceives to be their legitimate
sense, to the denial of that in
which I understood them.
3. He has done this with the
skill of a great master of verbal
fence, who knows, as well as any
man living, how to insinuate
a doctrine without committing
himself to it.
4. However, while I heartily
regret that I have so seriously
mistaken the sense which he
assures me his words were meant
to bear, I cannot but feel a hearty
pleasure also, at having brought
him, for once in a way, to confess
that after all truth is a Christian
virtue.

IX.

Rev. Charles Kingsley to Dr. Newman.
Eversley Rectory, January 18, 1864.
Reverend Sir,
I do not think it probable that the good sense
and honesty of the British Public will misinterpret my
apology, in the way in which you expect.
Two passages in it, which I put in in good faith and
good feeling, may, however, be open to such a bad use, and
I have written to Messrs. Macmillan to omit them ; viz. the
words, " No man knows the use of words better than
Dr. Newman ; " and those, " My hearty pleasure at finding
him in the truth (sic) on this or any other matter."
As to your Art. 2, it seems to me, that, by referring
publicly to the Sermon on which my allegations are founded,
I have given, not only you, but every one an opportunity

A CORRESPONDENCE 17
of judging of their injustice. Having done this, and having
frankly accepted your assertion that I was mistaken, I have
done as much as one English gentleman can expect from
another. I have the honour to be,
Reverend Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) Charles Kingsley.

X.
Dr. Newman to Messrs. Macmillan & Co.
The Oratory, January 22, 1864.
Gentlemen,
Mr. Kingsley, the writer of the paragraph to
which I called your attention on the 30th of last month,
has shown his wish to recall words, which I considered
a great affront to myself, and a worse insult to the Cathohc
priesthood. He has sent me the draft of a Letter which
he proposes to insert in the February number of your
Magazine ; and, when I gave him my criticisms upon it,
he had the good feeling to withdraw two of its paragraphs.
However, he did not remove that portion of it, to which,
as I told him, lay my main objection.
That portion ran as follows : —
" Dr. Newman has by letter expressed in the strongest
terms his denial of the meaning which I have put upon
his words."
My objection to this sentence, which (with the addition
of a reference to a Protestant sermon of mine, which he
says formed the ground of his assertion, and of an expression
of regret at having mistaken me) constitutes, after the
withdrawal of the two paragraphs, the whole of his proposed
letter, I thus explained to him : —
" Its [the proposed letter's] main fault is, that, quite,
contrary to your intention, it will be understood by the
general reader to intimate, that I have been confronted
with definite extracts from my works, and have laid before
you my own interpretation of them. Such a proceeding

18 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
I have indeed challenged, but have not been so fortunate
as to bring about."
In answer to this representation, Mr. Kingsley wrote to
me as follows : —
"It seems to me, that, by referring publicly to the
sermon, on which my aUegations are founded, I have
given, not only you, but every one, an opportunity of judg
ing of their injustice. Having done this, and having frankly
accepted your assertion that I was mistaken, I have done
as much as one English gentleman can expect from another.'
I received this reply the day before yesterday. It disap
pointed me, for I had hoped that, with the insertion of
a letter from him in your Magazine for February, there
would have been an end of the whole matter. However,
I have waited forty-eight hours, to give time for his explana
tion to make its full, and therefore its legitimate impression
on my mind. After this interval, I find my judgment of
the passage just what it was.
Moreover, since sending to Mr. Kingsley that judgment,
I have received a letter from a friend at a distance, whom
I had consulted, a man about my own age, who hves out
of the world of theological controversy and contemporary
hterature, and whose intellectual habits especially qualify
him for taking a clear and impartial view of the force of
words. I put before him the passage in your January
number, and the writer's proposed letter in February x ;
and I asked him whether I might consider the letter
sufficient for its purpose, without saying a word to show
him the leaning of my own mind. He answers :
" In answer to your question, whether Mr. Kingsley's
proposed reparation is sufficient, I have no hesitation hi
saying, Most decidedly not. Without attempting to quote
any passage from your writings which justifies in any
manner the language which he has used in his review, he
leaves it to be inferred that the representation, which he has
given of your statements and teaching in the sermon to
which he refers, is the fair and natural and primary sense
of them, and that it is only by your declaring that you did
not mean what you really and in effect said, that he finds
that he had made a false charge."
1 Viz. as it is given above, p. 14. — J. H. N.

A CORRESPONDENCE 19
This opinion thus given came to me, I repeat, after
I had sent to Mr. Kingsley the letter of objection, of which
I have quoted a portion above. You will see that, though
the two judgments are independent of each other, they in
substance coincide.
It only remains for me then to write to you again ; and,
in writing to you now, 1 do no more than I did on the
30th of December. I bring the matter before you, without
requiring from you any reply.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) John H. Newman.
XL
Letter of Explanation from Mr. Kingsley, as it stands in
Macmillan's Magazine for February, 1864, p. 368.
to the editor oe macmillan's magazine.
Sir, In your last number I made certain allegations
against the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which
I thought were justified by a Sermon of his, entitled
" Wisdom and Innocence " (Sermon 20 of " Sermons
bearing on Subjects of the Day "). Dr. Newman has by
letter expressed, in the strongest terms, his denial of the ,
meaning which I have put upon his words. It only remains, *
therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having
so seriously mistaken him. Yours faithfully,
(Signed) Charles Kingsley.
Eversley, January 14, 1864. XII.
Reflections on the above.
I shall attempt a brief analysis of the foregoing corre
spondence ; and I trust that the wording which I shall
adopt will not offend against the gravity due both to myself

20 %MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN
anil to the occasion. It is impossible to do justice to the
course of thought evolved in it without some familiarity
of expression.
Mr. Kingsley begins then by exclaiming, — " 0 the
chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the
conscience-killing tyranny of Rome ! We have not far
to seek for an evidence of it. There's Father Newman to
wit : one living specimen is worth a hundred dead ones.
He, a Priest writing of Priests, tells us that lying is never
any harm."
I interpose : " You are taking a most extraordinary
hberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me when
and where."
Mr. Kingsley rephes : " You said it, Reverend Sir, in
a Sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, as Vicar
of St. Mary's, and pubhshed in 1844 ; and I could read
you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that Sermon
had at the time on my own opinion of you."
I make answer : " Oh . . . Not, it seems, as a Priest
speaking of Priests ; — but let us have the passage."
Mr. Kingsley relaxes : " Do you know, I hke your tone.
From your tone I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe
that you did not mean what you said."
I rejoin : " Mean it ! I maintain I never said it, whether
as a Protestant or as a Cathohc."
Mr. Kingsley rephes : " I waive that point."
I object : " Is it possible ! What ? waive the main
question 1 I either said it or I didn't. You have made
a monstrous charge against me ; direct, distinct, public.
You are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as
pubhcly ; — or to own you can't."
" Well," says Mr. Kingsley, " if you are quite sure you
did not say it, I'll take your word for it ; I really will."
My word! I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it
was my word that happened to be on trial. The ivord of
a Professor of lying, that he does not he !
But Mr. Kingsley re-assures me : " We are both gentle
men," he says : " I have done as much as one English
gentleman can expect from another."
I begin to see : he thought me a gentleman at the

A CORRESPONDENCE 21
very time that he said I taught lying on system. After all,
it is not I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not mean what
he said. " Habemus confitentem reum."
So we have confessedly come round to this, preaching
without practising ; the common theme of satirists from
Juvenal to Walter Scott ! " I left Baby Charles and
Steenie laying his, duty before him," says King James of
the reprobate Dalgarno : " 0 Geordie, jingling Geordie, it
was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of
dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of
incontinence." While I feel then that Mr. Kingsley's February explana
tion is miserably insufficient in itself for his January
enormity, still I feel also that the Correspondence, which
hes between these two acts of his, constitutes a real satis
faction to those principles of historical and hterary justice
to which he has given so rude a shock.
Accordingly, I have put it into print, and make no
further criticism on Mr. Kingsley.
J. H. N.

[Seduced Facsimile of the original Title-page.]
WHAT, THEN, DOES DE. NEWMAN MEAN 1 "
A REPLY TO
A PAMPHLET LATELY PUBLISHED
BY DR. NEWMAN.

BY THE
REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY.

" It is not more than a hyperbole to say, that, in certain cases, a lie is the
nearest approach to truth." — Newman, Sermons on the Theory of Religious Belief,
page 343.

THIRD EDITION.

MACMILLAN AND CO.
1864.

"WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN
MEAN ? "
Dr. Newman has made a great mistake. He has pub
lished a correspondence between himself and me, with
certain " Reflexions " and a title-page, which cannot be
aUowed to pass without a rejoinder.
Before commenting on either, I must give a plain account
of the circumstances of the controversy, which seem to
have been misunderstood in several quarters. In the
January number of Macmillan's Magazine, I dehberately
and advisedly made use of these words : —
" Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with
" the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
" need not, and, on the whole, ought not to be ; that
" cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the
" saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of
" the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage."
This accusation I based upon a considerable number of
passages in Dr. Newman's writings, and especiaUy on a
sermon entitled " Wisdom and Innocence," and preached
by Dr. Newman as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published as
No. XX. of his " Sermons on Subjects of the Day."
Dr. Newman wrote, in strong but courteous terms, to
Messrs. Macmillan and Co. complaining of this language as
a slander. I at once took the responsibility on myself, and
wrote to Dr. Newman.
I had been informed (by a Protestant) that he was in
weak health, that he wished for peace and quiet, and was
averse to controversy ; I therefore felt some regret at
having disturbed him : and this regret was increased by
the moderate and courteous tone of his letters, though
they contained, of course, much from which I differed.
I addressed to him the following letter, of which, as I trust

26 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
every English gentleman will feel, I have no reason to be
ashamed :—
Reverend Sir,
I have seen a letter of yours to Mr. Macmillan, m
which you complain of some expressions of mine in an
article in the January number of Macmillan's Magazine.
That my words were just, I believed from many passages
of your writings ; but the document to which I expressly
referred was one of your sermons on " Subjects of the Day,"
No. XX. in the volume pubhshed in 1844, and entitled
" Wisdom and Innocence."
It was in consequence of that sermon that I finally shook
off the strong influence which your writings exerted on me,
and for much of which I still owe you a deep debt of
gratitude. I am most happy to hear from you that I mistook (as
I understand from your letter) your meaning ; and I shall
be most happy, on your showing me that I have wronged
you, to retract my accusation as pubhcly as I have made it.
I am, Rev. Sir,
Your faithful servant,
Charles Kingsley.
I received a very moderate answer from Dr. Newman, and
a short correspondence ensued, which ended in my insert
ing in the February number of Macmillan's Magazine the
following apology : —
To the Editor of " Macmillan's Magazine."
Sir, In your last number I made certain allegations
against the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which
I thought were justified by a sermon of his, entitled
" Wisdom and Innocence " (Sermon XX. of " Sermons
bearing on Subjects of the Day "). Dr. Newman has, by
letter, expressed in the strongest terms his denial of the
meaning which I have put upon his words. It only remains,
therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having
so seriously mistaken him. Yours faithfully,
Charles Kingsley.

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 27
My object had been throughout to avoid war, because
I thought Dr. Newman wished for peace. I therefore
dropped the question of the meaning of " many passages
of his writings," and confined myself to the sermon entitled
" Wisdom and Innocence," simply to give him an oppor
tunity of settling the dispute on that one ground.
But whether Dr. Newman lost his temper, or whether
he thought that he had gained an advantage over me, or
whether he wanted a more complete apology than I chose
to give, whatever, I say, may have been his reasons, he
suddenly changed his tone of courtesy and dignity for one
of which I shall only say that it shows sadly how the
atmosphere of the Romish priesthood has degraded his
notions of what is due to himself ; and when he pubhshed
(as I am much obliged to him for doing) the whole corre
spondence, he appended to it certain reflexions, in which
he attempted to convict me of not having believed the
accusation which I had made.
There remains for me, then, nothing but to justify my
mistake, as far as I can.
I am, of course, precluded from using the sermon entitled
" Wisdom and Innocence " to prove my words. I have
accepted Dr. Newman's denial that it means what I thought
it did ; and Heaven forbid that I should withdraw my word
once given, at whatever disadvantage to myself. But more.
I am informed by those from whose judgment on such
points there is no appeal, that, " en hault courage " and
strict honour, I am also precluded, by the terms of my
explanation, from using any other of Dr. Newman's past
writings to prove my assertion. I have declared Dr. New
man to have been an honest man up to the 1st of February,
1864. It was, as I shall show, only Dr. Newman's fault
that I ever thought him to be anything else. It depends
entirely on Dr. Newman whether he shall sustain the
reputation which he has so recently acquired. If I give
him thereby a fresh advantage in this argument, he is
most welcome to it. He needs, it seems to me, as many
advantages as possible. But I have a right, in self -justifica
tion, to put before the pubhc so much of that sermon, and
of the rest of Dr. Newman's writings, as will show why
I formed so harsh an opinion of them and him, and

28 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
why I still consider that sermon (whatever may be its
meaning) as most dangerous and misleading. And I have
a full right to do the same by those " many passages of
Dr. Newman's writings " which I left alone at first, simply
because I thought that Dr. Newman wished for peace.
First, as to the sermon entitled " Wisdom and Innocence."
It must be remembered always that it is not a Protestant,
but a Romish sermon. It is occupied entirely with the
attitude of " the world " to " Christians " and " the
Church." By the world appears to be signified, especiaUy,
the Protestant public of these realms. What Dr. Newman
means by Christians, and the Church, he has not left in
doubt ; for in the preceding sermon (XIX. p. 328) he says :
" But, if the truth must be spoken, what are the humble
" monk, and the holy nun, and other regulars, as they are
" called, but Christians after the very pattern given us in
" Scripture ? What have they done but this — continue
" in the world the Christianity of the Bible ? Did our
" Saviour come on earth suddenly, as He will one day visit,
" in whom would He see the features of the Christians He
" and His apostles left behind them, but in them ? Who
" but these give up home and friends, wealth and ease,
" good name and liberty of will, for the kingdom of heaven ?
" Where shall we find the image of St. Paul, or St. Peter,
" or St. John, or of Mary the mother of Mark, or of Philip's
" daughters, but in those who, whether they remain in
" seclusion, or are sent over the earth, have calm faces, and
" sweet plaintive voices, and spare frames, and gentle
" manners, and hearts weaned from the world, and wills
" subdued ; and for their meekness meet with insult, and
" for their purity with slander, and for their gravity with
" suspicion, and for their courage with cruelty . . ." This
is his definition of Christians. And in the sermon itseli he
sufficiently defines what he means by " the Church " in
two " notes " of her character, which he shall give in his
own words (Sermon XX. p. 346) : — " What, for instance,
" though we grant that sacramental confession and the
" celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate the body
" politic in the relation of rulers and subjects, or, in other
" words, to aggrandize the priesthood ? for how can the
" Church be one body without such relation ? " . . .

A KEPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 29
Monks and nuns the only perfect Christians ; sacramental
confession and the cehbacy of the clergy notes of the
Church ; the laity in relation to the clergy of subjects to
rulers. What more 1 If I, like others, on the strength of
Dr. Newman's own definitions, gave to his advice to
Christians concerning " wisdom," " prudence," " silence,"
the meaning which they would have in the mouth of a
Romish teacher — St. Alfonso da Liguori, for instance —
whom can Dr. Newman blame for the mistake, save
himself ?
But to the sermon itself ; the text of which is from
Matthew x. 16. It begins by stating that the Church has
been always helpless and persecuted, in proportion to its
purity. Dr. Newman then asks, how Christians are to
defend themselves if they might not fight ? and answers,
" They were allowed the arms, that is, the arts, of the
defenceless." He shows how the weaker animals are
enabled to defend themselves by various means, among
which he enumerates " natural cunning, which enables
them to elude or even to destroy their enemies." He goes
on to show how the same holds good in our own species,
in the case of " a captive, effeminate race " ; of " slaves " ;
of " ill-used and oppressed children " ; of the " subjects
of a despot." " They exercise the inalienable right of self-
" defence in such methods as they best may ; only, since
" human nature is unscrupulous, guilt or innocence is all
" the same to them, if it works their purpose."
He goes on to point out the analogy between these facts
and the conduct fit for Christians. " The servants of Christ
" are forbidden to defend themselves by violence ; but they
" are not forbidden other means : direct means are not
" allowed, but others are even commanded. For instance,
" foresight, ' beware of men ' : avoidance, ' when they per-
" secute you in one city, flee into another ' : prudence and
" skill, as in the text, ' Be ye wise as serpents.' '
The mention of the serpent reminds him of the serpent in
Paradise ; and he says, " Considering that the serpent was
" chosen by the enemy of mankind as the instrument of
" his temptations in Paradise, it is very remarkable that
" Christ should choose it as the pattern of wisdom for His
" followers. It is as if He appealed to the whole world of

30 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
" sin, and to the bad arts by which the feeble gain advan-
" tages over the strong. It is as if He set before us the
" craft and treachery, the perfidy of the slave, and bade
" us extract a lesson even from so great an evil. It is as
" if the more we are forbidden violence, the more we are
" exhorted to prudence ; as if it were our bounden duty
" to rival the wicked in endowments of mind, and to excel
" them in their exercise."
/ Dr. Newman then goes on to assert, that " if there be one
reproach more than another which has been cast upon " the
Church, " it is that of fraud and cunning." He quotes the
imputations of craftiness and deceitfulness thrown upon
St. Paul, and even of " deceit " upon our Lord himself. He
then says that " Priestcraft has ever been considered the
badge, and its imputation is a kind of note, of the Church."
He asserts that the accusation has been, save in a few
exceptions, unfounded ; and that " the words ' craft ' and
" ' hypocrisy ' are but the version of ' wisdom ' and ' harm-
" ' lessness ' in the language of the world." " It is remark •
" able, however, that not only is harmlessness the corrective
" of wisdom, securing it against the corruption of craft
" and deceit, as stated in the text : but innocence, sim-
" phcity, implicit obedience to God, tranquillity of mi ad,
" contentment, these and the like virtues are in themselves
" a sort of wisdom ; I mean, they produce the same results
" as wisdom, because God works for those who do not
" work for themselves ; and thus they especially incur the
" charge of craft at the hands of the world, because they
" pretend to so little, yet effect so much. This circumstance
" admits dwelling on."
He then goes on to mention seven heads : —
" First, sobriety, self-restraint, control of word and
" feeling, which religious men exercise, have about them an
" appearance of being artificial, because they are not
" natural ; and of being artful, because artificial " ; and
adds shortly after, that " those who would be holy
" and blameless, the sons of God, find so much in the world
v to unsettle and defile them, that they are necessarily
" forced upon a strict self-restraint, lest they should receive
" injury from such intercourse with it as is unavoidable ;
" and this self-restraint is the first thing which makes holy

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 31
" persons seem wanting in openness and manliness." Next
he points out that " rehgious men are a mystery to the
" world ; and being a mystery, they will in mere self-
" defence be called by the world mysterious, dark, subtle,
"designing." Next, that "it is very difficult to make
" the world understand the difference between an outward
" obediencees-and an inward assent." He then instances
the relations between the early Christians and the heathen
magistrates ; and adds, that " when rehgious men out-
" wardly conform, on the score of duty, to the powers that
" be, the world is easily led into the mistake that they have
" renounced their opinions, as well as submitted their
" actions ; and it feels or affects surprise, to find that their
" opinions remain ; and it considers, or calls this, an incon-
" sistency, or aduphcity " : with more to the same purpose.
Next, the silent resignation of Christians is set forth as
a cause of the world's suspicion ; and "so is their con-
" fidence, in spite of their apparent weakness, their cause
" will triumph."
Another cause of the world's suspicion is, the unexpected
success of rehgious men.
Another, that the truth has in itself the power of spread
ing, without instruments, " making the world impute " to
secret management that uniformity, which is nothing but
the echo of the One Living and True Word.
Another, that when Christians prosper, contrary to their
own expectations, " it looks like deceit to show surprise, and
to disclaim the work themselves."
And lastly, because God works for Christians, and they
are successful, when they only mean to be dutiful. " But
" what duplicity does the world think it, to speak of
" conscience, or honour, or propriety, or dehcacy, or to give
" other tokens of personal motives, when the event seems
" to show that a calculation of results has been the actuating
" principle at bottom. It is God who designs, but His
" servants seem designing. . . ."
Dr. Newman then goes on to point out how " Jacob
" is thought worldly wise in his dealings with Laban,
" whereas he was a ' plain man,' simply obedient to the
" angel." . . . "Moses is sometimes called sagacious and
" shrewd in his measures or his law, as if wise acts might

32 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
" not come from the source of wisdom." ..." Bishops have
" been called hypocritical in submitting and yet opposing
" themselves to the civil power, in a matter of plain duty,
" if a popular movement was the consequence ; and then
" hypocritical again, if they did their best to repress it.
" And, in like manner, theological doctrines or ecclesiastical
" usages are styled politic if they are but sahitary ; as if
" the Lord of the Church, who has willed her sovereignty,
" might not effect it by secondary causes. What, for
" instance, though we grant that sacramental confession
" and the celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate the
" body pohtic in the relation of rulers and subjects, or,
" in other words, to aggrandise the priesthood ? For how
" can the Church be one body without such relation ; and
" why should not He, who has decreed that there should
" be unity, take measures to secure it ? "
The reason of these suspicions on the part of the world is
then stated to be, that " men do not like to hear of the inter-
" position of Providence in the affairs of the world ; and
" they invidiously ascribe ability and skill to His agents, to
" escape the thought of an Infinite Wisdom and an Almighty
" Power  "
The sermon then closes with a few lines of great beauty,
in that style which has won deservedly for Dr. Newman
the honour of being the most perfect orator of this genera
tion ; but they have no reference to the question in hand,
save the words, " We will glory in what they disown." '
I have tried conscientiously to give a fair and complete
digest of this, to me, very objectionable and dangerous
sermon. I have omitted no passage in which Dr. Newman
guards himself against the conclusions which I drew from
it ; and none, I verily believe, which is required for the full
understanding of its general drift. I have abstained from
all comment as I went on, in order not to prejudice the
minds of my readers. But I must now turn round and
ask, whether the mistake into which Dr. Newman asserts
me to have fallen was not a very reasonable one ; and
whether the average of educated Englishmen, in reading
that sermon, would not be too likely to fall into the same ?
I put on it, as I thought, the plain and straightforward
signification. I find I am wrong ; and nothing is left for

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 33
me but to ask, with some astonishment, What, then, did
the sermon mean ? Why was it preached ? To insinuate
that a Church which had sacramental confession and a
cehbate clergy was the only true Church ? Or to insinuate
that the admiring young gentlemen who listened to him
stood to their fellow-countrymen in the relation of the early
Christians to the heathen Romans ? Or that Queen
Victoria's Government was to the Church of England what
Nero's or Diocletian's was to the Church of Rome ? It
may have been so. I know that men used to suspect
Dr. Newman — I have been inclined to do so myself — of
writing a whole sermon, not for the sake of the text or
of the matter, but for the sake of one single passing hint —
one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow which, as
he swept magnificently past on the stream of his calm
eloquence, seemingly unconscious of all presences, save
those unseen, he delivered unheeded, as with his finger-tip,
to the very heart of an initiated hearer, never to be with
drawn again. I do not blame him for that. It is one or
the highest triumphs of oratorio power, and may be
employed honestly and fairly, by any person who has the
skill to do it honestly and fairly. But then — Why did he
entitle his sermon " Wisdom and Innocence " ?
What, then, could I think that Dr. Newman meant ?
I found a preacher bidding Christians imitate, to some
undefined point, the " arts " of the basest of animals and
of men, and even of the Devil himself. I found him, by
a strange perversion of Scripture, insinuating that St. Paul's
conduct and manner were such as naturally to bring down
on him the reputation of being a crafty deceiver. I found
him — horrible to have to say it — even hinting the same of
One greater than St. Paul. I found him denying or explain
ing away the existence of that priestcraft which is a
notorious fact to every honest student of history ; and
justifying (as far as I can understand him) that double-
dealing by which prelates, in the middle age, too often
played off alternately the sovereign against the people and
the people against the sovereign, careless which was in the
right, as long as their own power gained by the move.
I found him actually using of such (and, as I* thought, of
himself and his party likewise) the words, " They yield
APOLOGIA C

34 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
" outwardly ; to assent inwardly were to betray the faith.
" Yet they are called deceitful and double-dealing, because
" they do as much as they can, and not more than they
"may." I found him telling Christians that they will
always seem " artificial," and " wanting in openness and
manliness ; " that they will always be " a mystery " to
the world,and that the world will always think them rogues ;
and bidding them glory in what the world (i.e. the rest of
their fellow-countrymen) disown, and say with Mawworm,
" I hke to be despised."
Now how was I to know that the preacher, who had the
reputation of being the most acute man of his generation,
and of having a specially intimate acquaintance with the
weaknesses of the human heart, was utterly blind to the
broad meaning and the plain practical result of a sermon
like this, dehvered before fanatic and hot-headed young
men, who hung over his every word ? That he did not
foresee that they would think that they obeyed him, by
becoming affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for conceal
ments and equivocations ? That he did not foresee that
they, hearing his words concerning priestcraft and double-
dealing, and being engaged in the study of the Mediaeval
Church, would consider the same chicanery allowed to them
which they found practised but too often by the Mediaeval
Church ? or even go to the Romish casuists, to discover
what amount of cunning did or did not come under Dr.
Newman's one passing warning against craft and deceit ?
In a word, that he did not foresee that the natural result
of the sermon on the minds of his disciples would be, to make
them suspect that truth was not a virtue for its own sake,
but only for the sake of the spread of " cathohc opinions,"
and the " salvation of their own souls ; " and that cunning
i was the weapon which Heaven had allowed to them to defend
' themselves against the persecuting Protestant pubhc ?
All England stood round in those days, and saw that this
would be the outcome of Dr. Newman's teaching. How was
I to know that he did not see it himself ?
And as a fact, his teaching had this outcome. Whatever
else it did, it did this. In proportion as young men absorbed
it into themselves, it injured their straightforwardness and
truthfulness. The fact is notorious to all England. It

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 35
spread misery and shame into many an English home. The
net practical result of Dr. Newman's teachings on truthful
ness cannot be better summed up than by one of his own
disciples, Mr. Ward, who, in his " Ideal of a Christian
Church," page 382, says thus : —
" Candour is rather an intellectual than a moral virtue,
" and by no means either universally or distinctively
" characteristic of the saintly mind."
Dr. Newman ought to have told his disciple, when he
wrote those words, that he was on the highroad to the father
of lies ; and he ought to have told the world, too, that such
was his opinion ; unless he wished it to faU into the mistake
into which I fell — namely, that he had wisdom enough to
know the practical result of his words, and therefore meant
what they seemed to say.
Dr. Newman has nothing to blame for that mistake, save
his own method. If he would (while a member of the Church
of England) persist (as in this sermon) in dealing with
matters dark, offensive, doubtful, sometimes actually
forbidden, at least according to the notions of the great
majority of Enghsh Churchmen ; if he would always do
so in a tentative, paltering way, seldom or never letting
the world know how much he beheved, how far he intended_
to go ; if , in a word, his method of teaching was a suspicious
one, what wonder if the minds of men were filled with
suspicions of him ? What wonder if they said of him (as-
he so naively, in one of his letters, expresses his fear that
they will say again), " Dr. Newman has the skill of a great
" master of verbal fence, who knows, as well as any man
" living, how to insinuate a doctrine without committing
" himself to it ? " If he told the world, as he virtually
does in this sermon, " I know that my conduct looks hke
" cunning ; but it is only the ' arts ' of the defenceless : " .
what wonder if the world answered, " No. It is what it
" seems. That is just what we call cunning ; a habit
" of mind which, once indulged, is certain to go on from
" bad to worse, till the man becomes — hke too many of
" the mediaeval clergy who indulged in it — utterly untrust-
" worthy." Dr. Newman, I say, has no one to blame but
himself. The world is not so blind but that it will soon
find out an honest man if he will take the trouble of talking

36 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
and acting hke one. No one would have suspected him to
be a honest man, if he had not perversely chosen to assume
a style which (as he himself confesses) the world always
associates with dishonesty..
When, therefore, Dr. Newman says (p. 10 of his pamphlet)
that " he supposes, in truth, there is nothing at all, however
" base, up to the high mark of Titus Oates, which a Cathohc
" may not expect to be believed of him by Protestants,
" however honourable and hard-headed," he is stating
a mere phantom of his own brain. It is not so. I do not
believe it ever was so. In the days when Jesuits were
inciting fanatics to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, and again
in the days of the Gunpowder Plot, there was deservedly
a very strong feeling against Romish priests, and against
a few laymen who were their dupes ; and it was the recol
lection of that which caused the " Titus Oates " tragedy,
which Dr. Newman so ghbly flings in our teeth, omitting
(or forgetting) that Oates' villany would have been im
possible without the preceding villanies of Popish fanatics,
and that he was unmasked, condemned, and punished by
the strong and great arm of British law. But there was
never, I beheve, even in the worst times, any general behef
that Cathohcs, simply as such, must be villains.
There is none now. The Cathohc laity of these realms are
just as much respected and trusted as the Protestants, when
their conduct justifies that respect and trust, as it does
in the case of all save a few wild Irish; and so are the
Romish priests, as long as they show themselves good and
honest men, who confine themselves to the care of their
flock. If there is (as there is) a strong distrust of certain
Cathohcs, it is restricted to the proselytizing priests among
them ; and especially to those who, like Dr. Newman,
have turned round upon their mother-Church (I had almost .
said their mother-country) with contumely and slander.
And I confess, also, that this pubhc dislike is very rapidly
increasing, for reasons which I shall leave Dr. Newman and
his advisers to find out for themselves.
I go on now to other works of Dr. Newman, from which
(as I told him in my first letter) I had conceived an opinion
unfavourable to his honesty.
I shall be expected to adduce, first and foremost, the

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 37
too-notorious No. 90 of " Tracts for the Times." I shall not
do so. On reading that tract over again, I have been con
firmed in the opinion which I formed of it at first, that,
questionable as it was, it was not meant to be consciously
dishonest ; that some few sayings in it were just and true ;
that many of its extravagances were pardonable, as the
natural fruit of a revulsion against the popular cry of those
days, which called on clergymen to interpret the Articles
only in their Calvinistic sense, instead of including under
them (as their wise framers intended) not only the- Calvin
istic, but the Anglican form of thought. There were pages
in it which shocked me, and which shock me still. I will
instance the commentaries on the 5th, on the 7th, on the
9th, and on the 12th Articles ; because in them Dr. Newman
seemed to me trying to make the Articles say the very
thing which (I beheve) the Articles were meant not to say.
But I attributed to him no intentional dishonesty. The
fullest licence of interpretation should be given to every
man who is bound by the letter of a document. The animus
imponentium should be heard of as httle as possible, because
it is almost certain to become merely the animus interpretan-
tium. And more : Every excuse was to be made for a man
struggling desperately to keep himself in what was, in fact,
his right place, to remain a member of the Church of
England, where Providence had placed him, while he felt
himself irresistibly attracted towards Rome. But I saw in
that tract a fearful danger for the writer. It was but too
probable, that if he continued to demand of that subtle
brain of his, such tours de force as he had all but succeeded
in performing, when he tried to show that the Article
against " the sacrifice of masses " " did not speak against
the mass itself," he would surely end in one or other of two
misfortunes. He would either destroy his own sense of
honesty — i.e. conscious truthfulness — and become a dis
honest person ; or he would destroy his common sense —
i.e. unconscious truthfulness, and become the slave and
puppet seemingly of his own logic, really of his own fancy,
ready to believe anything, however preposterous, into which
he could, for the moment, argue himself. I thought, for
years past, that he had become the former ; I now see
that he has become the latter.

38 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN t "
I beg pardon for saying so much about myself. But this
is a personal matter between Dr. Newman and me, and I say
what I say simply to show, not Dr. Newman, but my fellow-
Protestants, that my opinion of him was not an " impul
sive " or " hastily-formed one." I know his writings of old,
and now. But I was so far just to him, that No. 90, which
made all the rest of England beheve him a dishonest man,
had not the same effect on me.
But again —
I found Dr. Newman, while yet (as far as could be now
discovered) a member of the Church of England, aiding and
abetting the publication of certain " Lives of the English
Saints," of which I must say, that no such public outrage
on historic truth, and on plain common sense, has been
perpetrated in this generation. I do not intend to impute
to any of the gentlemen who wrote these hves — and more
than one of whom, I believe, I knew personaUy — the least
dehberate intention to deceive. They said what they
believed ; at least, what they had been taught to beheve
that they ought to beheve. And who had taught them ?
Dr. Newman can best answer that question. He had, at
least, that power over them, and in those days over hundreds
more, which genius can always command. He might have
used it well. He might have made those " Lives of Saints,"
what they ought to have been, books to turn the hearts
of the children to the Fathers, and to make the present
generation acknowledge and respect the true sanctity
which there was, in spite of all mistakes, in those great
men of old — a sanctity founded on true virtue and true
piety, which required no tawdry super-structure of lying
and ridiculous wonders. He might have said to the author
of the_ " Life of St. Augustine," when he found him, in the
heat and haste of youthful fanaticism, outraging historic
truth and the law of evidence : " This must not be. Truth
" for its own sake is a more precious thing than any purpose,
" however pious and useful, which we may have in hand."
But when I found him allowing the world to accept, as
notoriously sanctioned by him, such statements as are
found in that life, was my mistake a hasty, or far-fetched,
or unfounded one, when I concluded that he did not care
for truth for its own sake, or teach his disciples to regard

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 39
it as a virtue ? I found that " Life of St. Augustine "
saying, that though the pretended visit of St. Peter to
England wanted historic evidence, " yet it has undoubtedly
" been received as a pious opinion by the Church at large, as
' we learn from some often-quoted words of St. Innocent I.
' (who wrote a.d. 416), that St. Peter was instrumental in
' the conversion of the West generaUy. And this sort of
' argument, though it ought to be kept quite distinct from
' documentary and historic proof, and will form no substi-
' tute for such proof with those who stipulate for something
' like legal accuracy in inquiries of this nature, will not be
' without its effect upon devout minds, accustomed to rest
' in the thought of God's watchful guardianship over His
' Church." . . . And much more in the same tone, which is
worthily, and consistently summed up by the question :
' On what evidence do we put faith in the existence of
' St. George, the patron of England ? Upon such, assuredly,
' as an acute critic or skilful pleader might easily scatter
' to the winds ; the behef of prejudiced or credulous
' witnesses ; the unwritten record of empty pageants and
' bauble decorations. On the side of scepticism might
' be exhibited a powerful array of suspicious legends and
' exploded acts. Yet, after aU, what Cathohc is there but
' would count it a profaneness to question the existence
' of St. George 1 "
When I found Dr. Newman allowing his disciples —
members, even then, of the Protestant Church of England —
in page after page, in Life after Life, to talk nonsense of
this kind, which is not only sheer Popery, but saps the very
foundation of historic truth, was it so wonderful that I con
ceived him to have taught and thought hke them ?
But more. I found, that although the responsibility of
these Saints' Lives was carefully divided and guarded by
anonymousness, and by Dr. Newman's advertisement in
No. 1, that the different hves would be " pubhshed by their
respective authors on their own responsibility," yet that
Dr. Newman had, in what I must now consider merely
a moment of amiable weakness, connected himself formally
with one of the most offensive of these Lives, and with its
most ridiculous statements. I speak of the " Life of
St. Walburga." There is, in all the Lives, the same tendency

40 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
to repeat childish miracles, to waive the common laws of
evidence, to say to the reader, " You must believe all or
nothing." But some of them, the writers, for instance,
of Vol. IV., which contains, among others, a charming hfe
of St. Neot — treat the stories openly as legends and myths,
and tell them as they stand, without asking the reader, or
themselves, to believe them altogether. The method is
harmless enough, if the legends had stood alone ; but
dangerous enough, when they stand side by side with
stories told in earnest, like that of St. Walburga. In that,
not only has the writer expatiated upon some of the most
nauseous superstitions of the middle age, but Dr. Newman
has, in a preface signed with his initials, solemnly set his
seal to the same.
The writer — an Oxford scholar, and, as far as I know,
then a professed member of the Church of England — dares
to teU us of such miracles as these : —
How a little girl, playing with a ball near the monastery,
was punished for her over-fondness for play, by finding the
ball stick to her hand, and, running to St. Walburga's
shrine to pray, had the ball immediately taken off.
How a woman who would spin on festival-days in
like manner found her distaff cling to her hand, and
had to beg of St. Walburga's bone, before she could
get rid of it.
How a man who came into the church to pray, " irrever
ently kept his rough gauntlets, or gloves, on his hands,
as he joined them in the posture of prayer." How they
were miraculously torn off, and then, when he repented,
'' restored by a miracle." " All these," says the writer,
' have the character of a gentle mother correcting the
' idleness and faults of careless and thoughtless children
' with tenderness."
" But the most remarkable and lasting miracle, attesting
' the holy Walburga's sanctity, is that which reckons her
' among the saints who are called ' Elaeophori,' or ' un-
' guentiferous,' becoming, almost in a literal sense, olive-
' trees in the courts of God. These are they from whose
' bones a holy oil distils. That oil of charity and gentle
' mercy which graced them while alive, and fed in them
' the flame of universal love at then death, still permeates

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 41
' their bodily remains." After quoting the names of male
saints who have possessed this property, the author goes
on to detail how this holy oil fell, in drops, sometimes
the size of a hazel-nut, sometimes of a pea, into the silver
bowl beneath the stone slab. How, when the state of
Aichstadt was laid under an interdict, the holy oil ceased,
" until the Church regained its rights," and so forth, and
so forth ; and then, returning to his original image,
metaphor, illustration, proof, or whatever else it may be
called by reasoners such as he and Dr. Newman, he says
that the same flow of oil or dew is related of this female
saint and that — women whose souls, hke that of Walburga,
were touched " with true compassion ; whose bosom, hke
" hers, melted by divine love, was filled with the milk of
" human kindness," &c. I can quote no more. I reaUy
must recollect that my readers and I are living in the
nineteenth century.
And to all this stuff and nonsense, more materiahst than
the dreams of any bone-worshipping Buddhist, Dr. Newman
puts a preface, in which he says of the question whether
the "miracles recorded in these narratives" (i.e. in the
whole series, this being only No. II.), especially those
contained in the life of St. Walburga, " are to be received
as matter of fact ; " that " in this day, and under our
" present circumstances, we can only reply, that there is
" no reason why they should not be. They are the kind
" of facts proper to ecclesiastical history, just as instances
" of sagacity or daring, personal prowess, or crime, are the
" facts proper to secular history." Verily, his idea of
"secular history" is almost as degraded as his idea of
" ecclesiastical." He continues : " There is nothing, then, prima facie, in
" the miraculous accounts in question to repel a properly -
" taught or religiously-disposed mind : " only, it has the
right of rejecting or accepting them according to the
evidence. No doubt ; for (as he himself confesses) MabiUon,
like many sensible Romanists, has found some of these
miracles too strong for his " acute nostril," and has, there
fore, been reproved by Basnage for " not fearing for himself,
and warning the reader."
But what evidence Dr. Newman requires, he makes
C3

42 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
evident at once. He, at least, wiU " fear for himself," and
swallow the whole as it comes.
" As to the miracles ascribed to St. Walburga, it must
" be remembered that she is one of the principal samts of
" her age and country ; " and then he goes on to quote the
authorities for these miracles. They begin nearly 100 years
after her death, with one Wolfhard, a monk. Then follows,
more than 400 years after, Philip, Bishop of Aichstadt, the
disinterested witness who tells the story of the holy oil
ceasing during the interdict, who tells the world how,
" From her virgin hmbs, maxime pectoralibus, flows this
" sacred oil, which, by the grace of God and the inter -
" cession of the blessed Virgin Walburga, illuminates the
" blind, makes the deaf hear," &c, and of which he says
that he himself once drank a whole cup, and was cured
forthwith. Then come the nuns of this same place, equally
disinterested witnesses, after the invention of printing ;
then one Rader, in 1615 ; and one Gretser, in 1620. But
what has become of the holy oil for the last 240 years,
Dr. Newman does not say.
In his " Lectures on the present position of Cathohcs in
England, addressed to the brothers of the Oratory," in
1851, he has again used the same line of sophism. Argu
ment I cannot call it, while such a sentence as this is to be
found : — (p. 295) " Is the tower of London shut against
" sight-seers, because the coats of mail or pikes there may
" have half legendary tales connected with them ? Why,
" then, may not the country people come up in joyous
" companies, singing and piping, to see the, holy coat at
" Treves 1 " To see, forsooth ! To worship, Dr. Newman
would have said, had he known (as I take for granted he
does not) the facts of that imposture. He himself, mean
while, seems hardly sure of the authenticity of the holy
coat. He (p. 298) " does not see why it may not have been
what it professes to be." It may " have been " so, no
doubt, but it certainly is not so now ; for the very texture
and material of the thing prove it to be spurious. However,
Dr. Newman " firmly beheves that portions of the true
" Cross are at Rome and elsewhere, that the crib of Bethle-
" hem is at Rome," &c. And more than all ; he thinks it
" impossible to withstand the evidence which is brought

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 43
" for the hquef action of the blood of St. Januarius, at
" Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures
" of the Madonna in the Roman States."
How art thou faUen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the
Morning !
But when I read these outrages upon common sense, what
wonder if I said to myself, " This man cannot beheve what
he is saying ? "
I beheve I was wrong. I have tried, as far as I can, to
imagine to myself Dr. Newman's state of mind ; and I see
now the possibility of a man's working himself into that
pitch of confusion, that he can persuade himself, by what
seems to him logic, of anything whatsoever which he wishes
to beheve ; and of his carrying self-deception to such
perfection that it becomes a sort of frantic honesty, in
which he is utterly unconscious, not only that he is deceiving
others, but that he is deceiving himself.
But I must say, If this be " historic truth," what is
historic falsehood ? If this be honesty, what is dishonesty ?
If this be wisdom, what is folly ?
I may be told, But this is Roman Cathohc doctrine. You
have no right to be angry with Dr. Newman for beheving
it. I answer, this is not Roman Cathohc doctrine, any more
than behef in miraculous appearances of the Blessed Virgin,
or the miracle of the stigmata, on which two matters I shall
say something hereafter. No Roman Cathohc, as far as
I am aware, is bound to beheve these things. Dr. Newman
has believed them of his own free will. He is anxious, it
would seem, to show his own creduhty. He has worked his
mind, it would seem, into that morbid state, in which
nonsense is the only food for which it hungers. Like the
sophists of old, he has used reason to destroy reason. I had
thought that, hke them, he had preserved his own reason,
in order to be able to destroy that of others. But I was
unjust to him, as he says. While he tried to destroy others'
reason, he was at least fair enough to destroy his own.
That is all that I can say. Too many prefer the charge
of insincerity to that of insipience — Dr. Newman seems not
to be of that number.
But more. In connexion with this said life of St. Wal
burga, Dr. Newman has done a deed, over which I might

44 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
make merry, if that were my wish. But I am not a wit,
hke Dr. Newman.
In page 77, we find the following wonderful passage :
" Illuminated men ... to them the evil influence of Satanic
" power is horribly discernible . . . and the only way to
" express their keen perception of it is to say, that they see
" upon the countenances of the slaves of sin, the marks, and
" lineaments, and stamp of the evil one ; and they smell
" with their nostrils the horrible fumes which arise from
' ' their vices and uncleansed hearts, driving good angels from
" them in dismay, and attracting and delighting devils.
" It is said of the holy Sturme, a disciple and companion of
" Winfred, that in passing a horde of unconverted Germans,
" as they were bathing and gambolling in a stream, he was
" so overpowered by the intolerable scent which arose from
" them, that he nearly fainted away. And no doubt such
" preternatural discernments are sometimes given to
" saints " — and a rehgious reason is given for it which
I shall not quote. I should be ashamed to use the
sacred name in the same page with such materialist
nonsense. Now this " no doubt " seemed as convincing to Dr.
Newman as to the author. The fly which his disciple had
heedlessly cast over the turbid waters of his brain was too
fine to be resisted ; and he rose at it, heavily but surely;
and has hooked himself past remedy. For into his lectures,
given before the Cathohc University of Ireland, published
in 1859, he has inserted, at page 96, on the authority of
" an Oxford writer," the whole passage which relates to
St. Sturme, word for word.
I thought, when I was in my former mind as to
Dr. Newman, that he had gone out of his way to tell
this fable, in order to intimate to the young gentlemen
who had the blessing of his instructions, that they need
care nothing for " truth for its own sake," in the investiga
tion of a miracle, but take it on any anonymous authority,
provided only it made for the Cathohc faith. And when
I saw that I was wrong, I was sorely puzzled as to why
my old -friend St. Sturme (against whom I do not say a
word) had thus been dragged unceremoniously into a pas
sage on National Literature, which had nothing whatsoever

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 45
to do with him. But I am not bound to find motives for
Dr. Newman's eccentricities.
But now comes the worst part of the matter. Dr. Newman
has been taken in. There is no miracle. There never was
any in the original document. There is none in Mabillon
who quotes it. It is a sheer invention of the ardent Oxford
writer. The story appears first in the Life of St. Sturme, by his
contemporary and friend St. Eigils. It may be found in
Pertz's " Monumenta Critica ; " and a most charming
sketch of mediaeval missionary hfe it is ; all the more so
because one can comfortably beheve every word of it, from
its complete freedom (as far as I recoUect) from signs and
wonders. The original passage sets forth how St. Sturme rides on
his donkey, and wishin'g for a place where to found Fulda
Abbey, came to a ford where the Sclavonians (not Germans,
as the Oxford writer calls them) were bathing, on the way
to the fair at Mentz, " whose naked bodies the animal on
" which he rode fearing, began to tremble, and the man of
" God himself shuddered (exhorruit) at their evil smell." They
mocked him, and went about to hurt him ; but Divine
providence kept them back, and he went on in safety.
That is all. There is not a hint of a miracle. A horde of
dirty savages, who had not, probably, washed for a twelve
month, smelt very strong, and St. Sturme had a nose. As
for his " nearly fainting away," that is a " devout imag
ination." Really, if Dr. Newman or the " Oxford writer " had been
monks of more than one Roman Cathohc nation, one might
have excused their seeing something quite miraculous in
any man's being shocked at his fellow-creatures' evil smell ;
but in Oxford gentlemen, accustomed to the use of soap
and water, it is too bad.
Besides, to impute a miracle in this case, is clearly to put
the saint, in virtue, below his own donkey ; for while the
saint was only shocked at the odour, the donkey did what
the saint should have done (in imitation of many other
saints before and since), and expressed his horror at the
impropriety of the deshabille of the " miscreants." Unless
we are to understand a miracle— and why not 1— in the

46 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
donkey's case likewise ; not indeed expressed, but under
stood as a matter of course by " properly -taught and
religiously-disposed minds ; " and piously hold that the
virtue of the saint (which seems, from monkish writings,
to be some kind of gas or oil) diffused itself through the
saddle into the inmost recesses of the donkey's frame, and
imbued him for the moment, through the merits of
St. Sturme, with a preternatural and angehc modesty ?
Which if we shall beheve, we shall believe something
not a whit more ridiculous than many a story told in these
hapless volumes.
What can I say, again, of Dr. Newman's " Lectures on
Anglican Difficulties," pubhshed in 1850, save what I have
said already ? That if I, like hundreds more, have mistaken
his meaning and intent, he must blame not me, but himself.
If he will indulge in subtle paradoxes, in rhetorical exag
gerations ; if, whenever he touches on the question of
truth and honesty, he will take a perverse pleasure in
saying something shocking to plain English notions, he
must take the consequences of his own eccentricities.
He tells us, for instance, in Lecture VIII. that the
Catholic Church " holds it better for sun and moon to drop
" from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for aU the many
" milhons on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as
" far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will
" not say should be lost, but should commit one single
" venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal
" one poor farthing without excuse." And this in the face
of those permissions to deception, which may be seen
formahzed and detailed in the works of the Romish casuists,
and especially in those of the great Liguori, whose books
have received the pubhc and solemn sanction of the Romish
see. In one only way can Dr. Newman reconcile this pas
sage with the teaching of his Church ; namely, by saying
that the hcence given to equivocation, even on oath, is so
complete, that to tell a downright he is the most superfluous
and therefore most wanton of all sins.
But how will he reconcile it with the statement with
which we meet a few pages on, that the Church " considers
" consent, though quick as thought, to a single unchaste
" wish as indefinitely more heinous than any he that can

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 47
<< ?+°Subly *f fancied ; that is whe* viewed, of course, in
itself, and apart from its causes, motives, and conse
quences ? Heaven forbid that any man should say
that such consent is anything save a great and mortal
sin : but how can we reconcile this statement with the
former one, save by the paradox, that it is a greater
crime to sin hke an animal, than like the Devil the
Father of Lies ?
Indeed, the whole teaching of this lecture and the one
following it concerning such matters is, I confess, so utterly
beyond my comprehension, that I must ask, in blank
astonishment, What does Dr. Newman mean ? He assures
us so earnestly and indignantly that he is an honest man,
believing what he says, that we in return are bound, in
honour and humanity, to beheve him ; but still— What does
he mean ?
( He says : " Take a mere beggar woman, lazy, ragged, and
([ filthy, and not over-scrupulous of truth— (I do not say she
" has arrived at perfection)— but if she is chaste, sober, and
" cheerful, and goes to her rehgious duties (and I am not
" supposing at all an impossible case), she will, in the eyes of
" the Church, have a prospect of heaven, quite closed and
" refused to the State's pattern -man, the just, the upright,
(" the generous, the honourable, the conscientious, if he be
" all this, not from a supernatural power (I do not deter-
'^ mine whether this is hkely to be the fact, but I anv
" contrasting views and principles) — not from a super -
" natural power, but from mere natural virtue."
(Lecture viii. p. 207.)
I must ask again, What does Dr. Newman mean by this
astounding passage ? What I thought that he meant, when
I first read it, some twelve years ago, may be guessed easily
enough. I said, This man has no real care for truth. Truth
for its own sake is no virtue in his eyes, and he teaches that
it need not be. I do not say that now : but this I say, that
Dr. Newman, for the sake of exalting the magical powers of
his Church, has committed himself unconsciously to a state
ment which strikes at the root of aU morality. If he answer,
that such is the doctrine of his Church concerning " natural
virtues," as distinguished from " good works performed by
God's grace," I can only answer, So much the worse for his

48 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
Church. The sooner it is civilized off the face of the earth,
if this be its teaching, the better for mankind. For as for
his theory that it may be a " natural virtue," I value it as
little as I trust every honest Enghshman will do. I hold it
to be utterly antiscriptural ; to border very closely (in
theological language) on the Pelagian heresy. Every good
gift and every perfect gift conies down from God above.
Without Him no man does a right deed, or thinks a right
thought ; and when Dr. Newman says otherwise, he is
doing his best (as in this passage) to make the " State's
pattern-man " an atheist, as well as to keep the beggar-
woman a lying barbarian. What Dr. Newman may have
meant to teach by these words, I cannot say ; but what
he has taught practically is patent. He has taught the
whole Celtic Irish population, that as long as they are
chaste (which they cannot well help being, being married
almost before they are men and women) and sober (which
they cannot well help being, being too poor to get enough
whisky to make them drunk), and "go to their rehgious
duties " — an expression on which I make no comment —
they may look down upon the Protestant gentry who send
over millions to feed them in famine ; who found hospitals
and charities to which they are admitted freely ; who try
to introduce among them capital, industry, civilization, and,
above all, that habit of speaking the truth, for want of
which they are what they are, and are likely to remain such,
as long as they have Dr. Newman for their teacher — that
they may look down, I say, on the Protestant gentry as
cut off from God, and without hope of heaven, because
they do their duty by mere " natural virtue."
And Dr. Newman has taught them, too, in the very same
page,1 that they may confess " to the priest thefts which
" would sentence the penitent to transportation if brought
" into a court of justice ; but which the priest knows too "
(and it is to be remembered that the priest is bound to
conceal his knowledge of the crime), " in the judgment of
" the Church, might be pardoned on the man's private
" contrition, without any confession at all."
If I said that Dr. Newman has, in this page, justified,

P. 207.

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 49
formally and dehberately, some of the strongest accusations
brought by the Exeter Hall party against the Irish priests,
I should be answered (and possibly with temporary success)
by some of those ingenious special pleadings with which, in
spite of plain fact and universal pubhc opinion, black is
made to appear, if not white, yet stiU grey enough to do
instead. But this I will say, that if the Roman Cathohc
hierarchy in these realms had had any sense of their own
interests (as far as standing well with the British nation is
concerned), they would, instead of sending the man who
wrote those words to teach in an Irish Cathohc university,
have sent him to their furthest mission among the savages
of the South Seas.
The next lecture, the ninth, contains matter more hable
still to be mistaken ; and equally certain, mistaken or not,
to shock common sense. It is called, " The Rehgious
" Character of Cathohc Countries no Prejudice to the
" Sanctity of the Church." By the rehgious character, we
find, is meant what we should call the irreligious character —
the tendency to profanity, blasphemy, imposture, stealing,
lying. These are not my accusations, but Dr. Newman's.
He details them all with charming naivete, and gives (as
we shall see) most picturesque and apposite instances.
But this, he holds " is no prejudice to the sanctity of the
Church," because the Church considers that " faith and
works are separable," and that all these poor wretches,
though they have not works, have at least faith, " caused
directly by a supernatural influence from above," and are,
therefore, unless I have lost utterly the clue to the intent
of Dr. Newman's sophistries, ipso facto infinitely better off
than Protestants. What he means by the separableness
of faith and works is clear enough. A man, he says, " may
" be gifted with a simple, undoubting, cloudless, belief that
" Christ is in the Blessed Sacrament, and yet commit the
" sacrilege of breaking open the tabernacle, and carrying
" off the consecrated particles for the sake of the precious
" vessel containing them."
At which most of my readers will be inclined to cry :
" Let Dr. Newman alone, after that. What use in arguing
" with a man who has argued himself into believing that ?
" He had a human reason once, no doubt : but he has

50 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
" gambled it away, and left no common ground on which
" he and you, or we either, can meet him."
True : so true, that I never would have written these
pages, save because it was my duty to show the world, if
not Dr. Newman, how the mistake of his not caring for
truth arose ; and specially how this very lecture fostered
that mistake. For in it, after using the blasphemy and
profanity which he confesses to be so common in Catholic
countries, as an argument for, and not against, the
" Catholic Faith," he takes a seeming pleasure in detailing
instances of dishonesty on the part of Catholics, as if that
were the very form of antinomianism which was most
strongly and perpetually present to his mind, and which
needed most to be palliated and excused. " The feeble old
" woman, who first genuflects before the Blessed Sacra-
" ment, and then steals her neighbour's handkerchief or
" prayer-book, who is intent on his devotions " — she is
very wrong, no doubt : but " she worships, and she sins :
" she kneels because she believes ; she steals because she
" does not love. She may be out of God's grace ; she is
" not altogether out of His sight."
Heaven forbid that we should deny those words. That,
at least, is a doctrine common to Romanist and to Protes
tant : but while Dr. Newman, with a kind of desperate
audacity, will dig forth such scandals as notes of the
" Cathohc Church," he must not wonder at his motive for
so doing being mistaken.
His next instance is even more wanton and offensive,
and so curious that I must quote it at length : —
" You come out again and mix in the idle and dissipated
" throng, and you fall in with a man in a palmer's dress,
" selling false rehcs, and a credulous circle of customers
" buying them as greedily, as though they were the supposed
" French laces and India silks of a pedlar's basket. One
" simple soul has bought of him a cure for the rheumatism or
" ague, which might form a case of conscience. It is said to
" be a relic of St. Cuthbert, but only has virtue at sunrise,
" and when applied with three crosses to the head, arms,
" and feet. You pass on to encounter a rude son of the
" Church, more like a showman than a religious, recounting
" to the gaping multitude some tale of a vision of the

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 51
" invisible world, seen by Brother Augustine of the Friar
" Minors, or by a holy Jesuit preacher who died in the
" odour of sanctity, and sending round his bag to collect
" pence for the souls in purgatory ; and of some appearance
" of Our Lady (the hke of which has really been before and
" since), but on no authority except popular report, and in
" no shape but that which popular caprice has given it.
" You go forward, and you find preparations proceeding
" for a great pageant or mystery ; it is a high festival, and
" the incorporated trades have each undertaken their
" special rehgious celebration. The plumbers and glaziers
" are to play the Creation ; the barbers the call of Abraham ;
" and at night is to be the grandest performance of all, the
" Resurrection and Last Judgment, played by the car-
" penters, masons, and blacksmiths. Heaven and hell are
" represented, — saints, devils, and living men ; and the
" chef d'ceuvre of the exhibition is the display of fireworks to
" be let off as the finale. 'How unutterably profane!' again
" you cry. Yes, profane to you, my dear brother — profane
" to a population which only half believes ; jiot^profane to
" those. j£hq beheve wholly,, who one and all have a vision
" within which corresponds with what they see, which
" resolves itself into, or rather takes up into itself, the
" external pageant, whatever be the moral condition of
" each individual composing the mass. They gaze, and in
" drinking in the exhibition with their eyes they are making
" one continuous and intense act of faith," (Lecture IX.,
236,237). .--^ ''•- "<¦' fA ,,J" ' ' '¦ ' *' '"
The sum of which is, that for the sake of the " one con
tinuous and intense act of faith " which the crowd is
performing, " the rude son of the Church, more hke a show
man than a religious " — in plain English, the brutal and
lying monk, is allowed to continue his impostures without
interruption ; and the moral which Dr. Newman draws is, j
that though his miraculous appearance of our Lady may>
be a lie, yet " the like thereof has been before and
since." After which follows a passage — of which I shall boldly
say, that I trust that it will arouse in every English husband,
father, and brother, who may read these words, the same
feelings which it roused in me ; and express my opinion,

52 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
that it is a better compliment to Dr. Newman to think that
he did not believe what he said, than to think that he did
beheve it : —
" You turn to go home, and in your way you pass through
" a retired quarter of the city. Look up at those sacred
" windows ; they belong to the Convent of the Perpetual
" Adoration, or to the poor Clares, or to the Carmelites of
" the Reform of St. Theresa, or to the Nuns of the Visita-
" tion. Seclusion, silence, watching, adoration, is their life
" day and night. The Immaculate Lamb of God is ever
" before the eyes of the worshippers ; or, at least, the
" invisible mysteries of faith ever stand out, as if in bodily
" shape, before their mental gaze. Where will you find such
" a realized heaven upon earth ? Yet that very sight has
" acted otherwise on the mind of a weak sister ; and the
" very keenness of her faith and wild desire of approaching
" the object of it has led her to fancy or to feign that she
" has received that singular favour vouchsafed only to
" a few elect souls ; and she points to God's wounds, as
" imprinted on her hand, and feet, and side, though she
" herself has been instrumental in their formation "
(Lecture IX. 237, 238)
There are occasions on which courtesy or reticence is a
crime, and this one of them. A poor girl, cajoled, flattered,
imprisoned, starved, maddened, by such as Dr. Newman and
his peers, into that degrading and demoralising disease,
hysteria, imitates on her own body, from that strange vanity
and deceit which too often accompany the complaint, the
wounds of our Lord ; and all that Dr. Newman has to say
about the matter is, to inform us that the gross and useless
portent is " a singular favour vouchsafed only to a few elect
souls." And this is the man who, when accused of coun
tenancing falsehood, puts on first a tone of plaintive and
startled innocence, and then one of smug self-satisfaction —
as who should ask, " What have I said ? What have I
done ? Why am I upon my trial ? " On his trial ? If he
be on his trial for nothing else, he is on his trial for those
words ; and he will remain upon his trial as long as English
men know how to guard the women whom God has com
mitted to their charge. If the British public shall ever need
informing that Dr. Newman wrote that passage, I trust

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET.. 53
there will be always one man left in England to inform them
of the fact, for the sake of the ladies of this land.
Perhaps the most astounding specimens of Dr. Newman's
teaching are to be found, after all, in the two sermons which
end his " Discourses addressed to Mixed Congregations,"
pubhshed in 1849 ; " The Glories of Mary for the sake of
her Son ; " and " On the fitness of the Glories of Mary."
Of the mis-quotations of Scripture, of the sophisms piled on
sophisms, of these two sermons, I have no room wherein to
give specimens. All I ask is, that they should be read ;
read by every man who thinks it any credit to himself to be
a rational being. But two culminating wonders of these
two sermons I must point out. The first is the assertion
that the Blessed Virgin " had been inspired, the first of
womankind, to dedicate her virginity to God." As if there
had not been Buddhist nuns (if not others) centuries before
Christianity. As if (allowing the argument that they
dedicated their virginity to a false God) there were the
slightest historic proof that theBlessed Virgin dedicated hers
before the Incarnation. The second is in a sermon which
professes to prove logically the " fitness " of the Immaculate
Conception, and is filled (instead of logic) with traditions
which are utterly baseless. I allude to the assertion that
"the world" — i.e. all who do not belong to the Romish
Church — " blasphemes " Mary. I make no comment.
All I ask, again, of my readers is, to read these two
sermons. But what, after all, does Dr. Newman teach concerning
truth ? What he taught in 1843, and what he (as far as
I can see) teaches still, may be seen in his last sermon in
a volume entitled " Chiefly on the Theory of Rehgious
Belief," called a sermon " On the Theory of Developments
in Religious Doctrine." I beg all who are interested in this
question to read that sermon (which I had overlooked till
lately) ; and to judge for themselves whether I exaggerate
when I say that it tries to undermine the grounds of all
rational behef for the purpose of substituting bhnd super
stition. As examples : — speaking of " certain narratives of
martyrdoms," and " alleged miracles," he says (p. 345) :
"If the alleged facts did not occur, they ought to have
"occurred, if I may so speak." Historic truth is. thus

54 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
sapped ; and physical truth fares no better. " Scripture
" says (p. 350) that the sun moves, and that the earth is
" stationary ; and science that the earth moves, and the
" sun is comparatively at rest. How can we determine
" which of these statements is the very truth, till we know
" what motion is ? If our idea of motion be but an accident
" of our present senses neither proposition is true, and both
" are true ; neither true philosophically, both true for
" certain purposes in the system in which they are respec-
" tively found ; and physical science will have no better
" meaning when it says that the earth moves, than plain
" astronomy when it says that the earth is still."
Quorsum haec ? What is the intent of this seemingly
sceptic method, pursued through page after page ? To tell
us that we can know nothing certainly, and therefore must
take blindly what ' The Church ' shall choose to teach us.
For the Church, it would seem, is not bound to tell us,
indeed cannot tell us, the whole truth. We are to be
treated hke children, to whom (at least to those with whom
Dr. Newman has come in contact) it is necessary to (p. 343)
" dispense and ' divide ' the word of truth, if we would not
" have it changed, as far as they are concerned, into a word
" of falsehood." " And so, again, as regards savages, or
" the ignorant, or weak, or narrow-minded, our repre-
" sentations must take a certain form, if we are to gain
" admission into their minds at all, and to reach them."
This method of teaching by half-truths Dr. Newman calls
" economy ; " and justifies it (if I understand his drift), by
the instances of " mythical representations," legends, and
so forth, " which, if they did not occur, ought to have
occurred." " Many a theory or view of things," — he goes
on — (p. 345) " on which an institution is founded, or a party
" held together, is of the same kind. Many an argument,
" used by zealous and earnest men, has this economical
" character, being not the very ground on which they act
" (for they continue in the same course, though it be
" refuted), yet, in a certain sense, a representation of it,
" a proximate description of their feelings in the shape of
" argument, on which they can rest, to which they can
" recur when perplexed, and appeal when they are ques-
" tioned." After which startling words, Dr. Newman says

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 55
— and it is really high time — " In this reference to accom-
" modation or economy in human affairs, I do not meddle
" with the question of casuistry, viz. which of such artifices,
" as it may be caUed, are innocent, or where the ' line is to
" ' be draWh.' "
A hasty reader might say, that herein is an open justifi
cation of equivocation and dishonest reticence. But he
would be mistaken. The whole sermon is written in so
tentative a style, that it would be rash and wrong to say
that Dr. Newman intends to convey any lesson by it, save
that the discovery of truth is an impossibihty. Only once,
and in a note, he speaks out. P. 342.
" Hence it is not more than an hyperbole to say that, in
" certain cases, a he is the nearest approach to truth. This
" seems the meaning, for instance, of St. Clement, when he
" says ' He (the Christian) both thinks and speaks the truth,
" ' unless when, at any time, in the way of treatment, as
" ' a physician toward his patients, so for the welfare of the
" ' sick he will be false, or will tell a falsehood, as the
" ' sophists speak.' "
If St. Clement said that, so much the worse for him. He
was a great and good man. But he might have learned
from his Bible that no he was of the truth, and that it is ill
stealing the devil's tools to do God's work withal.
Be that as it may. What Dr. Newman teaches is clear
at last, and I see now how deeply I have wronged him. So
far from thinking truth for its own sake to be no virtue, he
considers it a virtue so lofty, as to be unattainable by man,
who must therefore, in certain cases, take up with what-it-is-
no-more-than-a-hyperbole-to-call lies ; and who, if he
should be so lucky as to get any truth into his possession,
will be wise in " economizing " the same, and " dividing it,"
so giving away a bit here and a bit there, lest he should
waste so precious a possession.
That this is Dr. Newman's opinion at present, there can
be no manner of doubt. What he has persuaded himself
to beheve about St. Walburga's oil, St. Sturme's nose,
St. Januarius' blood, and the winking Madonna's eyes,
proves sufficiently that he still finds, in certain cases, what-
it-is-no-more-than-a-hyperbole-to-call hes, the nearest ap
proach which he can make to truth ; while, as to the right

66 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
of economizing and dividing truth, I shall shortly bring
forward two instances of his having done so to such an
extent, that very httle of poor truth remains after the
dismemberment .
And yet I do not call this conscious dishonesty. The
man who wrote that sermon was already past the possibility
of such a sin. It is simple credulity, the child of scepticism.
Credulity, frightened at itself, trying to hide its absurdity
alike from itself and from the world by quibbles and
reticences which it thinks prudent and clever ; and, like
the hunted ostrich, fancying that because it thrusts its head
into the sand, its whole body is invisible.
And now, I have tried to lead my readers along a path
to which some of them, I fear, have objected.
They have f aUen, perhaps, into the prevailing superstition
that cleverness is synonymous with wisdom. They cannot
beheve that (as is too certain) great literary, and even
barristerial ability, may co-exist with almost boundless
silliness : but I can find no other explanation of the phe
nomena than that which I have just given. That Dr. New
man thinks that there is no harm in " economy," and
" dividing the truth," is evident ; for he has employed it
again in his comments on the correspondence. He has
employed twice, as the most natural and innocent thing
possible, those " arts of the defenceless " which require so
much dehcacy in the handling, lest " hberal shepherds give
a grosser name," and call them cunning, or even worse.
I am, of course, free to make my own comments on them,
as on aU other words of Dr. Newman's printed since the
1st of February, 1864, on which day my apology was pub
hshed. I shall certainly take the sense of the British pubhc
on the matter. Though Dr. Newman may be " a mystery "
to them, as he says " rehgious men " always are to the world,
yet they possess quite common sense enough to see what his
words are, even though his intention be, as it is wont to be,
obscure. They recollect the definitions of the " Church " and
" Christians," on the ground of which I called Sermon XX.
a Romish sermon ?
Dr. Newman does not apply to it that epithet. He
called it, in his letter to me of the 7th of January (pubhshed

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 57
by him), a " Protestant " one. I remarked that, but
considered it a mere shp of the pen. Besides, I have now
nothing to say to that letter. It is to his " Reflexions " in
page 20 which are open ground to me, that I refer. In them
he dehberately repeats the epithet " Protestant : " only he,
in an utterly imaginary conversation, puts it into my
mouth, " which you preached when a Protestant." I call
the man who preached that sermon a Protestant ? I should
have sooner called him a Buddhist. At that very time he
was teaching his disciples to scorn and repudiate that name
of Protestant, under which, for some reason or other, he
now finds it convenient to take shelter. If he forgets, the
world does not, the famous article in the British Critic (the
then organ of his party), of three years before — July, 1841 —
which, after denouncing the name of Protestant, declared
the object of the party to be none other than the " Unpro-
testantising " the English Church.
But Dr. Newman convicts himself. In the sermon before,
as I have shown, monks and nuns are spoken of as the only
true Bible Christians, and in the sermon itself a celibate
clergy is made a note of the Church. And yet Dr. Newman
goes on to say that he was not then " a priest, speaking of
priests." Whether he were a priest himself matters little
to the question ; but if he were not speaking of priests, and
those Romish ones, when he spoke of a celibate clergy, of
whom was he speaking ? But there is no use in wasting
words on this " economical " statement of Dr. Newman's.
I shall only say that there are people in the world whom it
is very difficult to help. As soon as they are got out of one
scrape, they walk straight into another.
But Dr. Newman has made, in my opinion, another and
a still greater mistake. He has committed, on the very
title-page of his pamphlet, an " economy " which some men
will consider a very serious offence. He has there stated
that the question is, "Whether Dr. Newman teaches that
truth is no virtue." He has repeated this misrepresentation
in a still stronger form at page 20, where he has ventured to
represent me as saying " Dr. Newman tells us that lying is
never any harm." He has economised the very four words
of my accusation, which make it at least a reasonable one ;
namely — " For its own sake."

58 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
I never said what he makes me say, or anything like it.
I never was inclined to say it. Had I ever been, I should
be still more inclined to say it now.
But Dr. Newman has shown " wisdom " enough of that
serpentine type which is his professed ideal in what he has
done, and has been so economic of truth, and " divided "
the truth so thoroughly, that really there is very httle of it
left. For while no one knew better than he the importance of
the omission, none knew better that the pubhc would not do
so ; that they would never observe it ; that, if I called
their attention to it, they would smile, and accuse me of
word-splitting and raising metaphysical subtleties. Yes,
Dr. Newman is a very economical person. So, when I had
accused him and the Romish clergy of teaching that " truth
is no virtue, for its own sake," he simply economised the
last four words, and said that I accused him and them of
teaching that " truth is no virtue."
This, in Dr. Newman, the subtle dialectician, is, indeed, an
"enormity," as he chooses'_to~ call my accusation of him.
No one better knows the value of such limitations. No
one has, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, made more
use of them. No man, therefore, ought to have been more
careful of doing what he has done.
Dr. Newman tries, by cjmnin^3leight^fjiLaiid_ logic, to
prove that I did not beheve the accusation when I made it.
Therein he is mistaken. I did beheve it, and I beheved, also,
his indignant denial. But when he goes on to ask, with
sneers, Why I should beheve his denial, if I did not consider
him trustworthy in the first instance ? — I can only answer,
I really do not know. There is a great deal to be said for
that view, now that Dr. Newman has become (one must
needs suppose) suddenly, and since the 1st of February,
1864, a convert to the economic views of St. Alfonso da
Liguori and his compeers. I am henceforth in doubt and
fear, as much as an honest man can be, concerning every
word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall
not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of
the three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed
St. Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils even when confirmed
with an oath, because " then we do not deceive our neigh-

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 59
bour, but allow him to deceive himself " ? x — The whole
being justified by the example of Christ, " who answered,
'I go not up to this feast,' subintelligendo, 'openly.' "
' For," say the casuists, "if there were no such restrictions
' (on the telling of truth), there would be no means of con-
' cealing secrets, which one could not open without loss or
' inconvenience ; but this would be no less pernicious to
' human society than a he itself." It is admissible, there
fore, to use words and sentences which have a double
signification, and leave the hapless hearer to take which of
them he may choose. What proof have I, then, that by
" mean it ! I never said it " ! Dr. Newman does not
signify, " I did not say it : but I did mean it " ?
Or again, how can I tell that I may not in this pamphlet
have made an accusation, of the truth of which Dr. Newman
is perfectly conscious ; but that as I, a heretic Protestant,
have no business to make it, he has a full right to deny it ?
For what says Neyraguet, after the blessed St. Alfonso da
Liguori ? That " a criminal or witness, being interrogated
" by a judge contrary to law, may swear that he knows not
" of the crime ; meaning, that he knows not of a crime
" of which he may be lawfully questioned."
These are hard words. If Dr. Newman shall complain of
them, I can only remind him of the fate which befel the
stork caught among the cranes, even though the stork had
not done aU he could to make himself hke a crane, as
Dr. Newman has, by " economising " on the very title-page
of his pamphlet.
I know perfectly well that truth — " veracity, as they call
it " — is a virtue with the Romish moralists ; that it is one
of the cardinal virtues, the daughters of justice, hke benevo
lence, courtesy, gratitude, and so forth ; and is proved to
be such because there is a naturalis honestas in it, and also
that without it society could not go on. Lying, on the other
hand, though not one of the seven " capital " sins, which
are pride, avarice, luxury (unchastity), gluttony, anger,
envy, and acedia (lukewarmness), is yet held to be always
1 1 quote from Scavini, torn. ii. page 232, of the Paris edition, and from
Neyraguet, p. 141, two compendiums of Liguori which are (or were lately)
used, so I have every reason to believe — one at Osoott, the other at
Maynooth.

60 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN ? "
a sin, when direct. It is proved to be such from Scripture,
from the fathers, and from natural reason, because " truth
is an essential perfection of the Divine nature." So far
weU. But a lie is a venial sin, if it "neither hurts our
neighbour or God gravely, or causes a grave scandal " ; as
no lie told in behalf of the Catholic faith can weU do,
though one wise Pope laid it down that it was a sin to tell
a he, even for the sake of saving a soul. But though it were
a sin, the fact of its being a venial one seems to have gained
for it, as yet, a very shght penance. Meanwhile, as a
thousand venial sins can never make one mortal one, a man
may be a habitual har all his life long, without falling into
mortal sin. Moreover, though " formal simulation," when
" one signifies by outward act something different to what
he has in his mind," is illicit, as a he, yet " material simula
tion," or stratagem, is not so. " For when one does some-
" thing, not intending the deception of another, but some
" end of his own, then it is allowable on cause ; although,
" from other circumstances, men might conjecture that the
" act was done for another end. So Joshua fled lawfully,
" not meaning fear, but that he might draw the enemy
" further from the city of Hai." From which one can
gather, that Romish casuists allow the same^stratagems to
man against his neighbours, in peaceable society, which
Protestant public opinion allows (and that with a growing
compunction) only to officers in war, against the enemies
of their country. Considering this fact, and the permission
of equivocation, even on oath, it is somewhat difficult to
expect that the Romish moralists, at least, hold truth to be
a virtue for its own sake, or to deny that they teach cunning
to be the weapons of the weak against the strong.
Yes — I am afraid that I must say it once more — Truth is
not honoured among these men for its own sake. There are,
doubtless, pure and noble souls among them, superior,
through the grace of God, to the official morahty of their
class : but in their official writings, and in too much of
their official conduct, the great majority seem never, for
centuries past, to have perceived that truth is the capital
virtue, the virtue of all virtues, without which aU others
arc hollow and rotten ; and with which there is hope for
a man's repentance and conversion, hi spite of every vice,

A REPLY TO A PAMPHLET. 61
if only he remains honest. They have not seen that facts
are the property not of man, to be " economized " as man
thinks fit, but of God, who ordereth all things in heaven
and earth ; and that therefore not only every he, but every
equivocation, every attempt at deception, is a sin, not
against man, but against God ; they have not seen that no
lie is of the truth, and that God requires truth, not merely
in outward words, but in the inward parts ; and that
therefore the first and most absolute duty of every human
being is to speak and act the exact truth ; or if he wish
to be silent, to be silent, courageously and simply, and
take the risk, trusting in God to protect him, as long as he
remains on God's side in the universe, by scorning to sully
his soul by stratagem or equivocation. Had they seen this ;
had they not regarded truth as a mere arbitrary command
of God, which was not binding in doubtful cases, they
would never have dared to bargain with God as to how little
truth He required of men ; and to examine and define (to
the injury ahke of their own sense of honour, and that of
their hearers) how much deception He may be reasonably
supposed to allow.
Is this last Dr. Newman's view of truth ? I hope not.
I hope that he, educated as an Enghsh gentleman and Oxford
scholar, is at variance with the notions formally allowed by
the most popular and influential modern Doctor of his
Church. But that there is some shght difference between
his notions of truth and ours he has confessed — in a letter to
" X. V. Esqie," x which he has printed in his " Correspon
dence." For there he says (p. 11) : " I think that you will
" allow that there is a broad difference between a virtue, \
" considered as a principle or rule, and the apphcations and
" hmits of it in human conduct. Cathohcs and Protestants, |
" in their view of the substance of the moral virtues, agree ;|
" but they carry them out variously in detail." He then[
gives us to understand, that this is the case as to truth ;
that Cathohcs differ from Protestants as to " whether this or
that act in particular is conformable to the rule of truth."
I beg to say, that in these words Dr. Newman has made
another great mistake. He has calumniated, as far as my
1 ['X. V.' for 'X. Y.', so in first and third editions of Kingsley's
pamphlet.]

62 " WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN V "
experience goes, the Catholic gentry of these realms. I am
proud to say, as far as I have had the honour and pleasure
of their acquaintance, that there is no difference whatso
ever, of detail or other, between their truthfulness and
honour, and the truthfulness and honour of the Protes
tant gentry among whom they hve, respected and beloved,
in spite of all religious differences, simply because they are
honest gentlemen and noble ladies. But if Dr. Newman will
limit his statement to the majority of the Romish priest
hood, and to those hapless Irish Celts over whom they rule,
then we will willingly accept it as perfectly correct. There
is a very wide difference in practical details between their
notions of truth and ours ; and what that difference is,
I have already pointed out. It is notorious enough in facts
and practice. It may be seen at large by any one who
chooses to read the Romish Moral Theologians. And if
Dr. Newman, as a Cathohc priest, includes himself in his
own statement, that is his act, not mine.
And so I leave Dr. Newman, only expressing my fear, that
if he continues to " economize " and " divide " the words of
his adversaries as he has done mine, he will run great
danger of forfeiting once more his reputation for honesty.
CHARLES KINGSLEY.

[Reduced Facsimile of the original Title-page.]
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA:

% $q$j to a | amp&Itt

"WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN?"

" Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in Him, and He will do it.
And He will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judg
ment as the noon-day."

BY JOHN PIENRY NEWMAN, D.D.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, AND GREEN.
1864,

CONTENTS
OF 'APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA', 1864.
PART I. PAGE
Mr. Kingsley's Method of Disputation  67
PART II.
True Mode of meeting Mr. Kingsley  85
PART III.
History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833 . . . 103
PART IV.
History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839 . . 137
PART V.
History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841 . . 189
PART VI.
History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845 . . 243
PART VII.
General Answer to Mr. Kingsley ...... 329
APPENDIX.
Answer in Detail to Mr. Kingsley's Accusations . . . 373

PART I
MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION.
[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, April 21, 1864.]

PAKT I.
MK. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION.
[Not reprinted in 1865.1
I cannot be sorry to have forced Mr. Kingsley to bring
out in fulness his charges against me. It is far better that
he should discharge his thoughts upon me in my lifetime,
than after I am dead. Under the circumstances I am
happy in having the opportunity of reading the worst that
can be said of me by a writer who has taken pains with
his work and is well satisfied with it. I account it a gain
to be surveyed from without by one who hates the principles
which are nearest to my heart, has no personal knowledge
10 of me to set right his misconceptions of my doctrine, and
who has some motive or other to be as severe with me as
he can possibly be.
And first of all, I beg to compliment him on the motto
in his Title-page ; it is felicitous. A motto should contain,
as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift,
or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. The
words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to
be almost prophetical. There cannot be a better illustration
than he thereby affords of the aphorism which I intended
20 them to convey. I said that it is not more than an hyper
bolical expression to say that in certain cases a lie is the
nearest approach to truth. Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet is
emphatically one of such cases as are contemplated in that
proposition. I really beheve, that his view of me is about
as near an approach to the truth about my writings and
doings, as he is capable of taking. He has done his worst
towards me ; but he has also done his best. So far well ;
but, while I impute to him no malice, I unfeignedly think,
on the other hand, that, in his invective against me, he as
30 faithfully fulfils the other half of the proposition also.
This is not a mere sharp retort upon Mr. Kingsley, as

70 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
will be seen, when I come to consider directly the subject,
to which the words of his motto relate. I have enlarged
on that subject in various passages of my publications :
I have said that minds in different states and circumstances
cannot understand one another, and that in all cases they
must be instructed according to their capacity, and, if
not taught step by step, they learn only so much the less ;
that children do not apprehend the thoughts of grown
people, nor savages the instincts of civilization, nor blind
men the perceptions of sight, nor pagans the doctrines of 10
Christianity, nor men the experiences of Angels. In the
same way, there are people of matter-of-fact, prosaic minds,
who cannot take in the fancies of poets ; and others of
shallow, inaccurate minds, who cannot take in the ideas
of philosophical inquirers. In a Lecture of mine I have
illustrated this phenomenon by the supposed instance of
a foreigner, who, after reading a commentary on the
principles of English Law, does not get nearer to a real
apprehension of them than to be led to accuse Englishmen
of considering that the Queen is impeccable and infallible. 20
and that the Parliament is omnipotent. Mr. Kingsley has
read me from beginning to end in the fashion in which the
hypothetical Russian read Blackstone ; not, I repeat, from
malice, but because of his intellectual build. He appears
to be so constituted as to have no notion of what goes on in
minds very different from his own, and moreover to be
stone-bhnd to his ignorance. A modest man or a philosopher
would have scrupled to treat with scorn and scoffing, as
Mr. Kingsley does in my own instance, principles and
convictions, even if he did not acquiesce in them himself, 30
which had been held so widely and for so long, — the beliefs
and devotions and customs which have been the rehgious
life of millions upon millions of Christians for nearly
twenty centuries, — for this in fact is the task on which he
is spending his pains. Had he been a man of large or
cautious mind, he would not have taken it for granted
that cultivation must lead every one to see things precisely
as he sees them himself. But the narrow-minded are the
more prejudiced by very reason of their narrowness. The
Apostle bids us "in malice be children, but in under- m
standing be men." I am glad to recognize in Mr. Kingsley

MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OE DISPUTATION. 71
an illustration of the first half of this precept ; but I should
not be honest, if I ascribed to him any sort of fulfilment
of the second.
I wish I could speak as favourably either of his drift
or of his method of arguing, as I can of his convictions.
As to his drift, I think its ultimate point is an attack upon
the Catholic Religion. It is I indeed, whom he is immedi
ately insulting, — still, he views me only as a representative,
and on the whole a fair one, of a class or caste of men, to
10 whom, conscious as I am of my own integrity, I ascribe
an excellence superior to mine . He desires to impress upon
the public mind the conviction that I am a crafty, scheming
man, simply untrustworthy ; that, in becoming a Catholic,
I have just found my right place ; that I do but justify
and am properly interpreted by the common Enghsh notion
of Roman casuists and confessors ; that I was secretly
a Catholic when I was openly professing to be a clergyman
of the Established Church ; that so far from bringing, by
means of my conversion, when at length it openly took
20 place, any strength to the Catholic cause, I am really
a burden to it, — an additional evidence of the fact, that
to be a pure, german, genuine Catholic, a man must be
either a knave or a fool.
These last words bring me to Mr. Kingsley's method of
disputation, which I must criticize with much severity ; —
in his drift he does but follow the ordinary beat of con
troversy, but in his mode of arguing he is actually dishonest.
He says that I am either a knave or a fool, and (as we
shall see by and by) he is not quite sure which, probably both.
30 He tells his readers that on one occasion he said that he
had fears I should " end in one or other of two misfortunes."
" He would either," he continues, " destroy his own sense
of honesty, i. e. conscious truthfulness — and become a dis
honest person ; or he would destroy his common sense,
i.e. unconscious truthfulness, and become the slave and
puppet seemingly of his own logic, really of his own
fancy. ... I thought for years past that he had become the
former ; I now see that he has become the latter." p. 37.
Again, " When I read these outrages upon common sense,
io what wonder if I said to myself, ' This man cannot believe

72 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
'what he is saying ? ' " p. 43. Such has been Mr. Kingsley's
state of mind till lately, but now he considers that I am
possessed with a spirit of " almost boundless silliness," of
" simple credulity, the child of scepticism," of " absurdity "
(p. 56), of a " self-deception which has become a sort of
frantic honesty" (p. 43). And as to his fundamental
reason for this change, he tells us, he really does not know
what it is (p. 58). However, let the reason be what it will,
its upshot is intelligible enough. He is enabled at once, by
this professed change of judgment about me, to put forward 10
one of these alternatives, yet to keep the other in reserve ; —
and this he actually does. He need not commit himself
to a definite accusation against me, such as requires definite
proof and admits of definite refutation ; for he has two
strings to his bow ; — when he is thrown off his balance on
the one leg, he can recover himself by the use of the other.
If I demonstrate that I am not a knave, he may exclaim,
" Oh, but you are a fool ! " and when I demonstrate that
I am not a fool, he may turn round and retort, " Well,
then, you are a knave." I have no objection to reply to 20
his arguments in behalf of either alternative, but I should
have been better pleased to have been allowed to take them
one at a time.
But I have not yet done full justice to the method of
disputation, which Mr. Kingsley thinks it right to adopt.
Observe this first : — He means by a man who is " silly "
not a man who is to be pitied, but a man who is to be
abhorred. He means a man who is not simply weak and
incapable, but a moral leper ; a man who, if not a knave, has
every thing bad about him except knavery ; nay, rather, so
has together with every other worst vice, a spice of knavery
to boot. His simpleton is one who has become such, in
judgment for his having once been a knave. His simpleton
is not a born fool, but a self-made idiot, one who has drugged
and abused himself into a shameless depravity ; one, who,
without any misgiving or remorse, is guilty of drivelling
superstition, of reckless violation of sacred things, of
fanatical excesses, of passionate inanities, of unmanly
audacious tyranny over the weak, meriting the wrath of
fathers and brothers. This is that milder judgment, which 40
he seems to pride himself upon as so much charity ; and,

MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OE DISPUTATION. 73
as he expresses it, he "does not know" why. This is'
what he really meant in his letter to me of January 14,
when he withdrew his charge of my being dishonest. He
said, " The tone of your letters, even more than their
language, makes me feel, to my very deep pleasure," — what ?
that you have gambled away your reason, that you are
an intellectual sot, that you are a fool in a frenzy. And
in his Pamphlet, he gives us this explanation why he did not
say this to my face, viz. that he had been told that I was
10 "in weak health," and was " averse to controversy," pp. 25
and 28. He " felt some regret for having disturbed me."
But I pass on from these multiform imputations, and
confine myself to this one consideration, viz. that he has
made any fresh imputation upon me at all. He gave up
the charge of knavery ; well and good : but where was the
logical necessity of his bringing another ? I am sitting at
home without a thought of Mr. Kingsley ; he wantonly
breaks in upon me with the charge that I had " informed "
the world " that Truth for its own sake need not and on
20 the whole ought not to be a, virtue with the Roman clergy."
When challenged on the point he cannot bring a fragment
of evidence in proof of his assertion, and he is convicted
of false witness by the voice of the world. Well, I should
have thought that he had now nothing whatever more
to do. " Vain man ! " he seems to make answer, " what
simphcity in you to think so ! If you have not broken
one commandment, let us see whether we camiot convict
you of the breach of another. If you are not a swindler or
forger, you are guilty of arson or burglary. By hook or
30 by crook you shall not escape. Are you to suffer or / ?
What does it matter to you who are going off the stage,
to receive a shght additional daub upon a character so
deeply stained already ? But think of me, the immaculate
lover of Truth, so observant (as I have told you p. 27) of
' hault courage .and strict honour,' — and (aside) — ' and not
as this publican ' — do you think I can let you go scot free
instead of myself ? No ; noblesse oblige. Go to the shades,
old man, and boast that Achilles sent you thither."
But I have not even yet done with Mr. Kingsley's method
40 of disputation. Observe secondly : — when a man is said
to be a knave or a fool, it is commonly meant that he is
D 3

74 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
> either the one or the other ; and that, — either in the sense
that the hypothesis of his being a fool is too absurd to be
( entertained ; or, again, as a sort of contemptuous acquittal
| of one, who after all has not wit enough to be wicked. But
this is not at all what Mr. Kingsley proposes to himself
in the antithesis which he suggests to his readers. Though
he speaks of me as an utter dotard and fanatic, yet all
along, from the beginning of his Pamphlet to the end,
he insinuates, he proves from my writings, and at length
in his last pages he openly pronounces, that after all he was 10
right at first, in thinking me a conscious liar and deceiver.
Now I wish to dwell on this point. It cannot be doubted,
I say, that, in spite of his professing to consider me as a
dotard and driveller, on the ground of his having given
up the notion of my being a knave, yet it is the very staple
of his Pamphlet that a knave after all I must be. By
insinuation, or by implication, or by question, or by irony,
or by sneer, or by parable, he enforces again and again
a conclusion which he does not categorically enunciate.
For instance (1) P. 33. " I know that men used to 2o
suspect Dr. Newman, I have been inclined to do so myself,
of writing a whole sermon  for the sake of one single
passing hint, one phrase, one epithet, one httle barbed
arrow which  he dehvered unheeded, as with his
finger tip, to the very heart of an initiated hearer, never to be
withdrawn again."
(2) P. 34. " How was I to know that the preacher, who
had the reputation of being the most acute man of his
generation, and of having a specially intimate acquaintance
with the weaknesses of the human heart, was utterly blind so
to the broad meaning and the plain practical result of
a sermon like this, dehvered before fanatic and hot-headed
young men, who hung upon his every word ? That he did
not foresee that they would think that they obeyed him,
by becoming affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for con
cealments and equivocations ? "
(3) P. 36. " No one would have suspected him to be a dis
honest man, if he had not perversely chosen to assume
a style which (as he himself confesses) the world always
associates with dishonesty." 40
(4) P. 46. " If he will indulge in subtle paradoxes,

MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OE DISPUTATION. 75
in rhetorical exaggerations s if, whenever he touches on the
question of truth and honesty, he will take a perverse pleasure
in saying something shocking to plain Enghsh notions, he
must take the consequences of his own eccentricities."
(5) Pp. 49, 50. " At which most of my readers will be
inclined to cry : ' Let Dr. Newman alone, after that 
He had a human reason once, no doubt : but he has gambled
it away.'  True : so true, &c."
(6) P. 50. He continues : " I should never have written
10 these pages, save because it was my duty to show the
world, if not Dr. Newman, how the mistake (!) of his not
caring for truth arose."
(7) P. 52. " And this is the man, who when accused of
countenancing falsehood, puts on first a tone of plaintive (!)
and startled innocence, and then one of smug self-satis
faction — as who should ask, ' What have I said ? What
have I done ? Why am I on my trial ? ' "
(8) P. 55. " What Dr. Newman teaches is clear at last,
and / see now how deeply I have wronged him. So far from
20 thinking truth for its own sake to be no virtue, he considers
it a virtue so lofty as to be unattainable by man."
(9) P. 57. " There is no use in wasting words on this
' economical ' statement of Dr. Newman's. I shall only
say that there are people in the world whom it is very
difficult to help. As soon as they are got out of one scrape,
they walk straight into another."
(10) P. 58. " Dr. Newman has shown ' wisdom ' enough
of that serpentine type which is his professed ideal 
Yes, Dr. Newman is a very economical person."
30 (11) P. 58. " Dr. Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-
hand logic, to prove that I did not believe the accusation
when I made it."
(12) P. 59. " These are hard words. If Dr. Newman
shall complain of them, I can only remind him of the fate
which befel the stork caught among the cranes, even though
the stork had not done all he could to make himself hke
a crane, as Dr. Newman has, by ' economising ' on the very
title-page of his pamphlet."
These last words bring us to another and far worse
40 instance of these slanderous assaults upon me, but its
place is in a subsequent page.

76 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
Now it may be asked of me, " Well, why should not
Mr. Kingsley take a course such as this ? It was his
original assertion that Dr. Newman was a professed liar,
and a patron of lies ; he spoke somewhat at random ;
granted ; but now he has got up his references and he is
proving, not perhaps the very thing which he said at first,
but something very hke it, and to say the least quite as
bad. He is now only aiming to justify morally his original
assertion ; why is he not at liberty to do so ? "
Why should he not now insinuate that I am a har and 10
a knave ! he had of course a perfect right to make such
a charge, if he chose ; he might have said, " I was virtually
right, and here is the proof of it," but this he has not done,
but on the contrary has professed that he no longer draws
from my works, as he did before, the inference of my dis
honesty. He says distinctly, p. 43, " When I read these
outrages upon common sense, what wonder if I said to
myself, ' This man cannot beheve what he is saying ? '
I believe I was wrong." And in p. 47, " I said, This man
has no real care for truth. Truth for its own sake is no 20
virtue in his eyes, and he teaches that it need not be.
I do not say that now." And in p. 56, " I do not caU this
conscious dishonesty ; the man who wrote that sermon ivas
already past the possibility of such a sin."
Why should he not ! because it is on the ground of my
not being a knave that he calls me a fool ; adding to the
words just quoted, " [My readers] have faUen perhaps into
the prevailing superstition that cleverness is synonymous
with wisdom. They cannot beheve that (as is too certain)
great hterary and even barristerial ability may co-exist 30
with almost boundless silliness."
Why should he not ! because he has taken credit to
himself for that high feeling of honour which refuses to
withdraw a concession which once has been made ; though,
(wonderful to say !) at the very time that he is recording
this magnanimous resolution, he lets it out of the bag that
his relinquishment of it is only a profession and a pretence ;
for he says, p. 27 : "I have accepted Dr. Newman's denial
that [the Sermon] means what I thought it did ; and
heaven forbid" (oh!) "that I should withdraw my word«
once given, at whatever disadvantage to myself." Disad-

ivlk. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 77
vantage ! but nothing can be advantageous to him which
is untrue ; therefore in proclaiming that the concession of
my honesty is a disadvantage to him, he thereby implies
unequivocally that there is some probability still, that I am
dishonest. He goes on, " I am informed by those from
whose judgment on such points there is no appeal, that
' en' hault courage,' and strict honour, I am also precluded,
by the terms of my explanation, from using any other of
Dr. Newman's past writings to prove my assertion." And
10 then, " I have declared Dr. Newman to have been an honest
man up to the 1st of February, 1864 ; it was, as I shall show,
only Dr. Newman's fault that I ever thought him to be
any thing else. It depends entirely on Dr. Newman
whether he shall sustain the reputation which he has so
recently acquired," (by diploma of course from Mr. Kings-
ley.) " If I give him thereby a fresh advantage in this
argument, he is most welcome to it. He needs, it seems to
me, as many advantages as possible."
What a princely mind ! How loyal to his rash promise,
20 how delicate towards the subject of it, how conscientious
in his interpretation of it ! I have no thought of irreverence
towards a Scripture Saint, who was actuated by a very
different spirit from Mr. Kingsley's, but somehow since I read
his Pamphlet words have been running in my head, which
I find in the Douay version thus ; " Thou hast also with
thee Semei the son of Gera, who cursed me with a grievous
curse when I went to the camp, but I swore to him, saying,
I will not kill thee with the sword. Do not thou hold him
guiltless. But thou art a wise man and knowest what to
30 do with him, and thou shalt bring down his grey hairs with
blood to hell."
Now I ask, Why could not Mr. Kingsley be open ? If he
intended still to arraign me on the charge of lying, why
could he not say so as a man ? Why must he insinuate,
question, imply, and use sneering and irony, as if longing
to touch a forbidden fruit, which still he was afraid would
burn his fingers, if he did so ? Why must he " palter
in a double sense," and blow hot and cold in one breath ?
He first said he considered me a patron of lying ; well,
40 he changed his opinion ; and as to the logical ground of
this change, he said that, if any one asked him what it was,

78 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
he could only answer that he really did not know. Why
could not he change back again, and say he did not know
why ? He had quite a right to do so ; and then his conduct
would have be_:i so far straightforward and unexception
able. But no ; — in the very act of professing to believe
in my sincerity, he takes care to show the world that it is
a profession and nothing more. That very proceeding which
at p. 33 he lays to my charge, (whereas I detest it,) of
avowing one thing and thinking another, that proceeding
he here exemphfies himself ; and yet, while indulging in 10
practices as offensive as this, he ventures to speak of his
sensitive admiration of " hault courage and strict honour ! "
" I forgive you, Sir Knight," says the heroine in the
Romance, " I forgive you as a Christian." " That means,"
said Wamba, " that she does not forgive him at all."
Mr. Kingsley's word of honour is about as valuable as in
the jester's opinion was the Christian charity of Rowena.
But here we are brought to a further specimen of Mr. Kings-
'ley's method of disputation, and having duly exhibited it,
I shaU have done with him. 20
It is his last, and he has intentionally reserved it for his
last. Let it be recollected that he professed to absolve
me from his original charge of dishonesty up to February 1.
And further, he implies that, at the time when he was writing,
I had not yet involved myself in any fresh acts suggestive
of that sin. He says that I have had a great escape of
conviction, that he hopes I shall take warning, and act
more cautiously. " It depends entirely," he says, " on
Dr. Newman, whether he shall sustain the reputation which
he has so recently acquired " (p.27). Thus, in Mr. Kingsley's 30
judgment, I was then, when he wrote these words, still
innocent of dishonesty, for a man cannot sustain what he
actually has not got ; only he could not be sure of my future.
Could not be sure ! Why at this very time he had already
noted down valid proofs, as he thought them, that I had
already forfeited the character which he contemptuously
accorded to me. He had cautiously said " up to Febru
ary 1st," in order to reserve the Title-page and last three
pages of my Pamphlet, which were not pubhshed till
February 12th, and out of these fom- pages, which he had 10
not whitewashed, he had already forged charges against me

MK. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 79
of dishonesty at the very time that he implied that as
yet there was nothing against me. When he gave me that
plenary condonation, as it seemed to be, he had already
done his best that I should never enjoy it. He knew well
at p. 27, what he meant to say at pp. 58 and 59. At best
indeed I was only out upon ticket of leave ; but that ticket
was a pretence ; he had made it forfeit when he gave it.
But he did not say so at once, first, because between
p. 27 and p. 58 he meant to talk a great deal about my
10 idiotcy and my frenzy, which would have been simply out
of place, had he proved me too soon to be a knave again ;
and next, because he meant to exhaust all those insinuations
about my knavery in the past, which " strict honour " did
not permit him to countenance, in order thereby to give
colour and force to his direct charges of knavery in the
present, which " strict honour " did permit him to
handsel. So in the fifth act he gave a start, and found
to his horror that, in my miserable four pages, I had
committed the " enormity " of an " economy," which hi
20 matter of fact he had got by heart before he began
the play. Nay, he suddenly found two, three, and (for
what he knew) as many as four profligate economies in
that Title-page and those Reflections, and he uses the
language of distress and perplexity at this appalling
discovery. Now why this coup de theatre ? The reason soon breaks
on us. Up to February 1, he could not categorically arraign
me for lying, and therefore could not involve me, (as was
so necessary for his case,) in the popular abhorrence which
30 is felt for the casuists of Rome : but, as soon as ever he
could openly and directly pronounce (saving his " hault
courage and strict honour ") that I am guilty of three or
four new economies, then at once I am made to bear, not
only my own sins, but the sins of other people also, and,
though I have been condoned the knavery of my antece
dents, I am guilty of the knavery of a whole priesthood
instead. So the hour of doom for Semei is come, and the
wise man knows what to do with him ; — he is down upon
me with the odious names of " St. Alfonso da Liguori,"
40 and " Scavini " and " Neyraguet," and " the Romish
moralists," and their " compeers and pupils," and I am

80 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
at once merged and whirled away in the gulph of notorious
quibblers, and hypocrites, and rogues.
But we have not even yet got at the real object of the
stroke, thus reserved for his finale. I really feel sad for
what I am obhged now to say. I am in warfare with him,
but I wish him no ill ; — it is very difficult to get up resent
ment towards persons whom one has never seen. It is
easy enough to be irritated with friends or foes, vis-a-vis ;
but, though I am writing with all my heart against what
he has said of me, I am not conscious of personal unkindness 10
towards himself. I think it necessary to write as I am
writing, for my own sake, and for the sake of the Cathohc
Priesthood ; but I wish to impute nothing worse to
Mr. Kingsley than that he has been furiously carried away
by his feelings. But what shall I say of the upshot of all
this talk of my economies and equivocations and the like ?
What is the precise work which it is directed to effect ?
I am at war with him ; but there is such a thing as legiti
mate warfare : war has its laws ; there are things which may
fairly be done, and things which may not be done. I say 20
it with shame and with stern sorrow ; — he has attempted
a great transgression ; he has attempted (as I may caU it)
to poison the wells. I will quote him and explain what
I mean. " Dr. Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic,
to prove that I did not believe the accusation when I made
it. Therein he is mistaken. I did beheve it, and I beheved
also his indignant denial. But when he goes on to ask
with sneers, why I should beheve his denial, if I did not
consider him trustworthy in the first instance ? I can only 30
answer, I really do not know. There is a great deal to be
said for that view, now that Dr. Newman has become (one
must needs suppose) suddenly and since the 1st of February,
1864, a convert to the economic views of St. Alfonso da
Liguori and his compeers. I am henceforth in doubt and
fear, as much as any honest man can be, concerning every
word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall
not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of the
three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed Alfonso
da Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed by an oath, 40
because ' then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow

MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 81
him to deceive himself ? '  It is admissible, there
fore, to use words and sentences which have a double
signification, and leave the hapless hearer to take which
of them he may choose. What proof have I, then, that by
' mean it ? I never said it ! ' Dr. Newman does not signify,,
I did not say it, but I did mean it ? " — Pp. 58, 59.
Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered
in their proper places ; here I will but say that I scorn
and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued
10 practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and
cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate
them ; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them.
But all this is just now by the bye ; my present subject
is Mr. Kingsley ; what I insist upon here, now that I am
bringing this portion of my discussion to a close, is this
unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the
ground from under my feet ; — to poison by anticipation
the public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to
infuse into the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and
20 mistrust of every thing that I may say in reply to him.
This I call poisoning the wells.
" I am henceforth in doubt and fear," he says, " as much
as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman
may write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of
some cunning equivocation ? . . . . What proof have I, that by
' mean it ? I never said it ! ' Dr. Newman does not signify,
' I did not say it, but I did mean it ' ? "
Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect,
I am but wasting my time in saying a word in answer
30 to his foul calumnies ; and this is precisely what he knows
and intends to be its fruit. I can hardly get myself to
protest against a method of controversy so base and cruel,
lest in doing so, I should be violating my self-respect and
self-possession ; but most base and most cruel it is. We
all know how our imagination runs away with us, how
suddenly and at what a pace ;' — the saying, " Caesar's wife
should not be suspected," is an instance of what I mean.
The habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the
turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good
40 sense or a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent im
pressions. The very same sentiments, according as our

82 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated,
are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There
is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the
wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded his
cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only
remark he elicited in answer was, " How naturally he talks !
you would think he was in his senses." Controversies
should be decided by the reason ; is it legitimate warfare
to appeal to the misgivings of the pubhc mind and to its
dislikings ? Any how, if Mr. Kingsley is able thus to 10
practise upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will
oe my success. If I am natural, he will tell them, " Ars est
celare artem ; " if I am convincing, he will suggest that
I am an able logician ; if I show warmth, I am acting the
indignant innocent ; if I am calm, I am thereby detected
as a smooth hypocrite ; if I clear up difficulties, I am too
plausible and perfect to be true. The more triumphant
are my statements, the more certain will be my
defeat. So will it be if Mr. Kingsley succeeds in his manoeuvre ; 20
but I do not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever
judgment my readers may eventually form of me from these
pages, I am confident that they will beheve me in what
I shall say in the course of them. I have no misgiving
at all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh with a man
who has been so long before the eyes of the world ; who has
so many to speak of him from personal knowledge ; whose
natural impulse it has ever been to speak out ; who has
ever spoken too much rather than too httle ; who would
have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise so
enough to hold his tongue ; who has ever been fair to the
doctrines and arguments of his opponents ; who has never
slurred over facts and reasonings which told against him
self ; who has never given his name or authority to proofs
which he thought unsound, or to testimony which he did
not think at least plausible ; who has never shrunk from
confessing a fault when he felt that he had committed one ;
who has ever consulted for others more than for himself ;
who has given up much that he loved and prized and could
have retained, but that he loved honesty better than40
name, and Truth better than dear friends.

MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 83
And now I am in a train of thought higher and more
serene than any which slanders can disturb. Away with
you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into space. Your name shall
occur again as little as I can help, in the course of these
pages. I shall henceforth occupy myself not with you, but
with your charge?,

PART II.
TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY.
[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, April 28, 1864.]

[PART II.
TRUE MODE OF MEETING MB. KINGSLEY.]
(The preface continued, in 1865 edition : see p. 487)
(I make this extract from my Apologia, Part 2, pp.29 — 31
and pp. 41 — 51, in order to set before the reader the drift
I had in writing my Volume : — )
What shall be the special imputation, against which I shall
throw myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one
which my accuser directs upon me ? I mean to confine
myself to one, for there is only one about which I much
care, — the charge of Untruthfulness. He may cast upon
me as many other imputations as he pleases, and they
may stick on me, as long as they can, in the course of
nature. They will fall to the ground in their season.
And indeed I think the same of the charge of Untruth-
10 fulness, and [I] select it from the rest, not because
it is more formidable[,] but because it is more serious.
Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will
not stain : Archbishop Whately used to say, " Throw
dirt enough, and some will stick ; " well, will stick, but
not (, will) stain. I think he used to mean " stain," and
I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than
other dirt ; but no dirt is immortal. According to the/
old saying, Praevalebit Veritas. There are virtues indeed,
(about) which the world is not fitted to judge [about] or'
20 to uphold, such as faith, hope, and charity : but it can
judge about Truthfulness ; it can judge about the natural
virtues, and Truthfulness is one of them. Natural virtues-
may also become supernatural ; Truthfulness is such ; but
that does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction of mankind
at large. It may be more difficult in this or that particular
case for men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult

88 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
for the Court of Queen's Bench at Westminster to try a case
fairly[,] which took place in Hindoostan ; but that is
a question of capacity, not of right. Mankind has the right
to judge of Truthfulness in [the case of] a Cathohc, as in the
case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a Chinese. I have
never doubted, that in my hour, in God's hour, my avenger
will appear, and the world will acquit me of untruthfulness,
even though it be not while I five.
Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal,
seeing that my judges are my own countrymen. I think, 10
indeed, Enghshmen the most suspicious and touchy of
mankind ; I think them unreasonable^) and unjust in
their seasons of excitement ; but I had rather be an
Enghshman, (as in fact I am,) than belong to any other
race under heaven. They are as generous, as they are
hasty and burly ; and their repentance for their injustice
is greater than their sin.
For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation,
of which I am at least as sensitive, who am the object of it,
as they can be, who are only the judges. I have not set 20
myself to remove it, first, because I never have had an
opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them
the disposition to hear. I have wished to appeal from
Philip drunk to Philip sober. When shall I pronounce him
to be himself again ? If I may judge from the tone of the
public press, which represents the public voice, I have
great reason to take heart at this time. I have been treated
by contemporary critics in this controversy with great
fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to them for it.
However, the decision of the time and mode of my defence so
has been taken out of my hands ; and I am thankful that
it has been so. I am bound now as a duty to myself, to the
Catholic cause, to the Cathohc Priesthood, to give account
of myself without any delay, when I am so rudely and cir
cumstantially charged with Untruthfulness. I accept the
challenge ; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall be
content when I have done so.
[I confine myself then, in these pages, to the charge of
Untruthfulness ; and I hereby cart away, as so much
2 Hindoostan] Hindostan 10 think] consider
38 The matter between [ ], pp. 88-95, was not reprinted in 18S5.

TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 89
rubbish, the impertinences, with which the Pamphlet of
Accusation swarms. I shall not think it necessary here to
examine, whether I am " worked into a pitch of confusion,"
or have " carried self-deception to perfection," or am
" anxious to show my credulity," or am " in a morbid
state of mind," or " hunger for nonsense as my food,"
or " indulge in subtle paradoxes " and " rhetorical exag
gerations," or have " eccentricities " or teach in a style
" utterly beyond " my Accuser's " comprehension," or
10 create in him " blank astonishment," or " exalt the magical
powers of my Church," or have " unconsciously committed
myself to a statement which strikes at the root of all
morality," or " look down on the Protestant gentry as
without hope of heaven," or " had better be sent to the
furthest " Catholic " mission among the savages of the
South seas," than "to teach in an Irish Catholic University,"
or have " gambled away my reason," or adopt " sophis
tries," or have published " sophisms piled upon sophisms,"
or have in my sermons " culminating wonders," or have
20 a " seemingly sceptical method," or have " barristerial
ability " and " almost boundless silliness," or " make great
mistakes," or am " a subtle dialectician," or perhaps have
" lost my temper," or " misquote Scripture," or am
" antiscriptural," or " border very closely on the Pelagian
heresy."— Pp. 25. 27. 43. 45-50. 53. 54. 56. 57. 58. 61.
These all are impertinences ; and the list is so long that
I am almost sorry to have given them room which might
be better used. However, there they are, or at least
a portion of them ; and having noticed them thus much,
30 I shall notice them no more.
Coming then to the subject, which is to furnish the staple
of my publication, the question of my Truthfulness, I first
direct attention to the passage which the Act of Accusation
contains at p. 28 and p. 56. I shall give my reason presently,
why I begin with it.
My accuser is speaking of my Sermon on Wisdom and
Innocence, and he says, " It must be remembered always
that it is not a Protestant, but a Romish sermon." — P. 28.
Then at p. 56 he continues, " Dr. Newman does not apply
40 to it that epithet. He called it in his letter to me of the

90 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
7th of January, (pubhshed by him,) a ' Protestant ' one.
I remarked that, but considered it a mere shp of the pen.
Besides, I have now nothing to say to that letter. It is
to his ' Reflections,' in p. 20, which are open ground to me,
that I refer. In them he deliberately repeats the epithet
' Protestant : ' only he, in an utterly imaginary conversa
tion, puts it into my mouth, ' which you preached when
a Protestant.' I call the man who preached that Sermon
a Protestant ? I should have sooner called him a Buddhist.
At that very time he was teaching his disciples to scorn and 10
repudiate that name of Protestant, under which, for some
reason or other, he now finds it convenient to take shelter.
If he forgets, the world does not, the famous article in the
British Critic, (the then organ of his party,) of three years
before, July 1841, which, after denouncing the name of
Protestant, declared the object of the party to be none other
than the ' unprotestantising ' the English Church."
In this passage my accuser asserts or implies, 1. that
the Sermon, on which he originally grounded his slander
against me in the January No. of the Magazine, was really 20
and in matter of fact a " Romish " Sermon ; 2. that I ought
in my Pamphlet to have acknowledged this fact ; 3. that
I didn't. 4. That I actually called it instead a Protestant
Sermon. 5. That at the time when I pubhshed it, twenty
years ago, I should have denied that it was a Protestant
Sermon. 6. By consequence, I should in that denial have
avowed that it was a " Romish " Sermon ; 7. and therefore,
not only, when I was in the Estabhshed Church, was I guilty
of the dishonesty of preaching what at the time I knew to
be a " Romish " Sermon, but now too, in 1864, I have 30
committed the additional dishonesty of calling it a Protes
tant Sermon. If my accuser does not mean this, I submit
to such reparation as I owe him for my mistake, but I
cannot make out that he means any thing else.
Here are two main points to be considered ; 1. I in
1864 have called it a Protestant Sermon. 2. He in 1844
and now has styled it a Popish Sermon. Let me take these
two points separately.
1. Certainly, when I was in the Enghsh Church, I did
disown the word " Protestant," and that, even at an earlier 40
date than my Accuser names ; but just let us see whether

TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 91
this fact is any thing at all to the purpose of his accusation.
Last January 7th I spoke to this effect : " How can you
prove that Father Newman informs us of a certain thing
about the Roman Clergy," by referring to a Protestant
Sermon of the Vicar of St. Mary's ? My Accuser answers
me thus : " There's a quibble ! why, Protestant is not the
word which you would have used when at St. Mary's, and yet
you use it now ! " Very true ; I do ; but what on earth
does this matter to my argument ? how does this word
10 " Protestant," which I used, tend in any degree to make
my argument a quibble ? What word should I have used
twenty years ago instead of " Protestant ? " " Roman " or
" Romish ? " by no manner of means.
My accuser indeed says that " it must always be remem
bered that it is not a Protestant but a Romish Sermon."
He implies, and, I suppose, he thinks, that not to be a
Protestant is to be a Roman ; he may say so, if he pleases,
but so did not say that large body who have been called
by the name of Tractarians, as all the world knows. The
20 movement proceeded on the very basis of denying that
position which my Accuser takes for granted that I allowed.
It ever said, and it says now, that there is something between
Protestant and Romish ; that there is a " Via Media "
which is neither the one nor the other. Had I been asked
twenty years ago, what the doctrine of the Established
Church was, I should have answered, " Neither Romish
nor Protestant, but ' Anglican ' or ' Anglo-catholic' '
I should never have granted that the Sermon was Romish ;
I should have denied, and that with an internal denial,
30 quite as much as I do now, that it was a Roman or Romish
Sermon. WeU then, substitute the word " Anglican " or
" Anglo-catholic " for " Protestant " in my question, and
see if the argument is a bit the worse for it, — thus : " How
can you prove that Father Newman informs us a certain
thing about the Roman Clergy, by referring to an Anglican
or Anglo-catholic Sermon of the Vicar of St. Mary's 1 " The
cogency of the argument remains just where it was. What
have I gained in the argument, what has he lost, by my
having said, not " an Anglican Sermon," but " a Protestant
40 Sermon ? " What dust then is he throwing into our eyes !
For instance : in 1844 I lived at Littlemore ; two or

92. APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
three miles distant from Oxford ; and Littlemore hes in
three, perhaps in four, distinct parishes, so that of particular
houses it is difficult to say, whether they are in St. Mary's,
Oxford, or in Cowley, or in Iffley, or in Sandford, the line
of demarcation running even through them. Now, suppos
ing I were to say in 1864, that " twenty years ago I did not
live in Oxford, because I lived out at Littlemore, in the
parish of Cowley ; " and if upon this there were letters of
mine produced dated Littlemore, 1844, in one of which
I said that " I lived, not in Cowley, but at Littlemore, in 10
St. Mary's parish," how would that prove that I contra
dicted myself, and that therefore after aU I must be
supposed to have been living in Oxford in 1844 ? The
utmost that would be proved by the discrepancy, such as
it was, would be, that there was some confusion either in
me, or in the state of the fact as to the hmits of the parishes.
There would be no confusion about the place or spot of
my residence. I should be saying in 1864, " I did not hve
in Oxford twenty years ago, because I lived at Littlemore
in the Parish of Cowley." I should have been saying in 20
1844, " I do not live in Oxford, because I hve in St. Mary's,
Littlemore." In either case I should be saying that my
habitat in 1844 was not Oxford, but Littlemore ; and I
should be giving the same reason for it. I should be proving
an alibi. I should be naming the same place for the
alibi ; but twenty years ago I should have spoken of it
as St. Mary's, Littlemore, and to-day I should have spoken
of it as Littlemore in the Parish of Cowley.
And so as to my Sermon ; in January, 1864, I called
it a Protestant Sermon, and not a Roman ; but hi 1844 30
I should, if asked, have called it an Anglican Sermon, and
not a Roman. In both cases I should have denied that
it was Roman, and that on the ground of its being some
thing else ; though I should have called that something
else, then by one name, now by another. The doctrine
of the Via Media is a fact, whatever name we give to it ;
I, as a Roman Priest, find it more natural and usual to
call it Protestant : I, as an Oxford Vicar, thought it more
exact to call it Anglican ; but, whatever I then called it,
and whatever I now call it, I mean one and the same40
object by my name, and therefore not another object,—

TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 93
viz. not the Roman Church. The argument, I repeat, is
sound, whether the Via Media and the Vicar of St. Mary's
be called Anglican or Protestant.
This is a specimen of what my Accuser means by my
" Economies ; " nay, it is actuaUy one of those special two,
three, or four, committed after February 1, which he thinks
sufficient to connect me with the shifty casuists and the
double-deahng moralists, as he considers them, of the
Cathohc Church. What a " Much ado about nothing ! "
10 2. But, whether or no he can prove that I in 1864 have
committed any logical fault in calling my Sermon on
Wisdom and Innocence a Protestant Sermon, he is and has -
been all along, most firm in the behef himself that a Romish
Sermon it is ; and this is the point on which I wish specially
to insist. It is for this cause that I made the above extract
from his Pamphlet, not merely in order to answer him,
though, when I had made it, I could not pass by the attack
on me which it contains. I shall notice his charges one
by one by and by ; but I have made this extract here in
20 order to insist and to dwell on this phenomenon — viz. that
he does consider it an undeniable fact, that the Sermon
is " Romish," — meaning by " Romish " not " savouring
of Romish doctrine " merely, but " the work of a real
Romanist, of a conscious Romanist." This behef it is
which leads him to be so severe on me, for now calling it
" Protestant." He thinks that, whether I have committed
any logical self-contradiction or not, I am very well aware
that, when I wrote it, I ought to have been elsewhere,
that I was a conscious Romanist, teaching Romanism ; —
= so or if he does not beheve this himself, he wishes others
to think so, which comes to the same thing ; certainly
I prefer to consider that he thinks so himself, but, if he
likes the other hypothesis better, he is welcome to it.
He beheves then so firmly that the Sermon was a
" Romish Sermon," that he pointedly takes it for granted,
before he has adduced a syllable of proof of the matter of
fact. He starts by saying that it is a fact to be " remem
bered." " It must be remembered always," he says, " that
it is not a Protestant, but a Romish Sermon," p. 28. Its
ao Romish parentage is a great truth for the memory, not
a thesis for inquiry. Merely to refer his readers to the

94 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
Sermon is, he considers, to secure them on his side. Hence
it is that, in his letter of January 18, he said to me, " It
seems to me, that, by referring pubhcly to the Sermon on
which my aUegations are founded, I have given every one
an opportunity of judging of their injustice," that is, an
opportunity of seeing that they are transparently just.
The notion of there being a Via Media, held aU along by
a large party in the Anglican Church, and now at least
not less than at any former time, is too subtle for his
intellect. Accordingly, he thinks it was an aUowable 10
figure of speech, — not more, I suppose, than an " hyper
bole," — when referring to a Sermon of the Vicar of St. Mary's
in the Magazine, to say that it was the writing of a Roman
Priest ; and as to serious arguments to prove the point,
why, they may indeed be necessary, as a matter of form,
in an Act of Accusation, such as his Pamphlet, but they are
superfluous to the good sense of any one who will only just
look into the matter himself.
Now, with respect to the so-caUed arguments which he
ventures to put forward in proof that the Sermon is Romish, 20
I shaU answer them, together with aU-his other arguments,
in the latter portion of this Reply ; here I do but draw
the attention of the reader, as I have said already, to the
phenomenon itself, which he exhibits, of an unclouded
confidence that the Sermon is the writing of a virtual
member of the Roman communion, and I do so because
it has made a great impression on my own mind, and has
suggested to me the course that I shaU pursue in my
answer to him.
I say, he takes it for granted that the Sermon is the so .
writing of a virtual or actual, of a conscious Roman
Catholic ; and is impatient at the very notion of having
to provo it. Father Newman and the Vicar of St. Mary's
are one and the same : there has been no change of mind
in him ; what he beheved then he believes now, and what
he believes now he beheved then. To dispute this is
frivolous ; to distinguish between his past self and his
present is subtlety, and to ask for proof of their identity
is seeking opportunity to be sophistical. This writer reaUy
thinks that he acts a straightforward honest part, when he 40
says " A Cathohc Priest informs us in his Sermon on

TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 95
Wisdom and Innocence preached at St. Mary's," and he
thinks that I am the shuffler and quibbler when I forbid
him to do so. So singular a phenomenon in a man of un
doubted ability has struck me forcibly, and I shaU pursue
the train of thought which it opens.]
. It is not he alone who erftertains, and has entertained,
such an opinion of me and (of) my writings. It is the im
pression of large classes of men ; the impression twenty
years ago and the impression now. There has been a general
10 feeling that I was for years where I had no right to be ;
that I was a " Romanist " in Protestant hvery and service ;
that I was doing the work of a hostile Church in the bosom
of the Enghsh Estabhshment, and knew it, or ought to
have known it. There was no need of arguing about
particular passages in my writings, when the fact was so
patent, as men thought it to be.
First it was certain, and I could not myseh deny it, that
I scouted the name " Protestant." It was certain again,
that many of the doctrines which I professed were popularly
20 and generaUy known as badges of the Roman Church, as
distinguished from the faith of the Reformation. Next, how
could I have come by them ? Evidently, I had certain
friends and advisers who did not appear ; there was some
underground communication between Stonyhurst or Oscott
and my rooms at Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I was advocating
certain doctrines, not by accident, but on an understanding
with ecclesiastics of the old rehgion. Then men went
further, and said that I had actuaUy been received into
that religion, and withal had leave given me to profess
30 myself a Protestant stiU. Others went even further, and
gave it out to the world, as a matter of fact, of which they
themselves had the proof in their hands, that I was actually
a Jesuit. And when the opinions which I advocated spread,
and younger men went further than I, the feeling against
me waxed stronger and took a wider range.
And now indignation arose at the knavery of a conspiracy
such as this : — and it became of course aU the greater[,]
in consequence of its being the received behef of the public
at large, that craft and intrigue, such as they fancied they
5 The matter between [ ], pp. 88-95, was not reprinted in 1865.
6 he] my present accuser 7 such] so dishonourable

96 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
beheld with their [own] eyes, were the very instruments
to which the Catholic Church has in these last centuries
been indebted for her maintenance and extension.
There was another circumstance still, which increased
the irritation and aversion felt by the large classes, of whom
I have been speaking, as regar&s the preachers of doctrines,
so new to them and so unpalatable ; and that was, that they
developed them in so measured a way. If they were in
spired by Roman theologians, (and this was taken for
granted,) why did they not speak out at once ? Why did 10
they keep the world in such suspense and anxiety as to
what was coming next, and what was to be the upshot
of the whole ? Why this reticence, and half-speaking, and
apparent indecision ? It was plain that the plan of opera
tions had been carefuUy mapped out from the first, and that
these men were cautiously advancing towards its accom
plishment, as far as was safe at the moment ; that their aim
and their hope was to carry off a large body with them of the
young and the ignorant ; that they meant graduaUy to leaven
the minds of the rising generation, and to open the gate 20
of that city, of which they were the sworn defenders, to
the enemy who lay in ambush outside of it. And when in
spite of the many protestations of the party to the contrary,
there was at length an actual movement among their
disciples, and one went over to Rome, and then another,
the worst anticipations and the worst judgments which had
been formed of them received their justification. And,
lastly, when men first had said of me, " You wiU see, he
will go, he is only biding his time, he is waiting the word
of command from Rome," and, when after aU, after my 30
arguments and denunciations of former years, at length
I did leave the Anglican Church for the Roman, then they
said to each other, " It is just as we said : I told you so."
This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty
years ago, who took no more than an external and common-
sense view of what was going on. And partly the tradition,
partly the effect of that feeling, remains to the present time.
Certainly I consider that, in my own case, it is the great
obstacle in the way of my being favourably heard, as at
6 as regards] against 20 gate] gates
33 I told you] we knew it would be

TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 97
present, when I have to make my defence. Not only am
I now a member of a most un-English communion, whose
great aim is considered to be the extinction of Protestantism
and the Protestant Church, and whose means of attack
are popularly supposed to be unscrupulous cunning and
deceit, but [besides,] how came I originally to have any
relations with the Church of Rome at aU ? did I, or my
opinions, drop from the sky ? how came I, in Oxford, in
gremio Universitatis, to present myself to the eyes of men
10 in that full-blown investiture of Popery ? How could
I dare, how could I have the conscience, with warnings,
with prophecies, with accusations against me, to presevere
in a path which steadily advanced towards, which ended in,
the religion of Rome ? And how am I now to be trusted,
when long ago I was trusted, and was found wanting ?
It is this which is the strength of the case of my Accuser
against me ; — not his arguments in themselves, which
I shall easily crumble into dust, but the bias of the court.
It is the state of the atmosphere ; it is the vibration aU
20 around(,) which will [more or less] echo his (bold) assertion
of my dishonesty ; it is that prepossession against me,
which takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is
convincing it is only ingenious, and that when my state
ments are unanswerable, there is always something put out
of sight or hidden in my sleeve ; it is that plausible, but
cruel conclusion to which men are [so] apt to jump, that
when much is imputed, something must be true, and that
it is more likely that one should be to blame, than that
many should be mistaken in blaming him ; — these are the
30 real foes which I have to fight,- and the auxiharies to whom
my Accuser makes his court.
WeU, I must break through this barrier of prejudice
against me[,] if I can ; and I think I shall be able to do so.
When first I read the Pamphlet of Accusation, I almost
despaired of meeting effectively such a heap of misrepresen
tation and such a vehemence of animosity. What was the
good of answering first one point, and then another, and
17 his arguments in themselves,] the articles of impeachment which he
has framed from my writings, and
24 something] much 31 court] advances
35 misrepresentation] misrepresentations
apologia E

98 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
going through the whole circle of its abuse ; when my
answer to the first point would be forgotten, as soon as
I got to the second ? What was the use of bringing out
hah a hundred separate principles or views for the refutation
of the separate counts in the Indictment, when rejoinders
of this sort would but confuse and torment the reader
by their number and their diversity ? What hope was there
of condensing into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter
which ought freely to expand itseff into half a dozen
volumes ? What means was there, except the expenditure 10
of interminable pages, to set right even one of that series
of " single passing hints," to use my AssaUant's own
language, which, " as with his finger tip[,] he had dehvered "
against me ?
All those separate charges [of his] had their force in
being iUustrations of one and the same great imputation.
He had (already) a positive idea to iUuminate his whole
matter, and to stamp it with a form, and to quicken it
with an interpretation. He caUed me a liar, — a simple,
a broad, an inteUigible, to the Enghsh pubhc a plausible 20
arraignment ; but for me, to answer in detaU charge one
by reason one, and charge two by reason two, and charge
three by reason three, and so to proceed through the
whole string both of accusations and rephes, each of which
was to be independent of the rest, this would be certainly
labour lost as regards any effective result. What I needed
was a corresponding antagonist unity in my defence, and
where was that to be found ? We see,' in the case of
commentators on the prophecies of Scripture, an exemplifi
cation of the principle on which I am insisting ; viz. how 30
much more powerful even a false interpretation of the sacred
text is than none at aU ; — how a certain key to the visions
of the Apocalypse, for instance, may cling to the mind [ — ]
(I have found it so in my own case), [ — mainly] because
they are positive and objective, in spite of the fuUest
demonstration that they reaUy have no claim upon our
belief. The reader says, " What else can the prophecy
18 form] force 23 to proceed] on
34 my own case] the case of my own
35 they are] the view, which it opens on us, is
36 they really have] it really has 37 belief] reception

TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 99
mean ? " just as my Accuser asks, " What, then, does
Dr. Newman mean ? "  I reflected, and I saw a way
out of my perplexity.
Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my
meaning ; " What does Dr. Newman mean ? " It pointed
in the very same direction as that into which my musings
had turned me already. He asks what I mean ; not about
my words, not about my arguments, not about my actions,
10 as his ultimate point, but about that living inteUigence,
by which I write, and argue, and act. He asks about my
Mind and its Behef s and its Sentiments ; and he shaU be
answered ; — not for his own sake, but for mine, for the sake
of the Religion which I profess, and of the Priesthood in
which I am unworthily included, and of my friends and of my
foes, and of that general public which consists of neither one
nor the other, but of weU-wishers, lovers of fair play, sceptical
cross-questioners, interested inquirers, curious lookers-on,
and simple strangers, unconcerned yet not careless about
20 the issue (, — for the sake of aU these he shaU be answered).
My perplexity did not last haff an hour. I recognized
what I had to do, though I shrank from both the task and
the exposure which it would entail. I must, I said, give
the true key to my whole hfe ; I must show what I am (,)
that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom
may be extinguished which gibbers instead of me. I wish
to be known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which
is dressed up in my clothes. False ideas may be refuted
indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they ex-
30 peUed. I wiU vanquish, not my Accuser, but my judges.
I wiU indeed answer his charges and criticisms on me one
by one (x), lest any one should say that they are unanswer
able, but such a work shaU not be the scope nor the sub
stance of my reply. I wiU draw out, as far as may be, the
history of my mind ; I wiU state the pohit at which I
began, in what external suggestion or accident each opinion
had its rise, how far and how they [were] developed from
within, how they grew, were modified, were combined,
5 pointed] points 11 Sentiments] sentiments
20 did not last] had not lasted
Footnote in 1866. <* This was done in the Appendix, of which the more
important parts are preserved in the Notes. )

100 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.
were in collision with each other, and were changed ; again
how I conducted myself towards them, and how, and how
far, and for how long a time, I thought I could hold them
consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements which
I had made and with the position which I fiUed. I must
show, — what is the very truth, — that the doctrines which
I held, and have held for so many years, have been taught
me (speaking humanly) partly by the suggestions of Protes
tant friends, partly by the teaching of books, and partly
by the action of my own mind : and thus I shaU account 10
for that phenomenon which to so many seems so wonderful,
that I should have left " my kindred and my father's
house " f or a Church from which once I turned away with
dread ; — so wonderful to them ! as if forsooth a Religion
which has flourished through so many ages, among so many
nations, amid such varieties of social life, in such contrary
classes and conditions of men, and after so many revolu
tions, pohtical and civil, could not subdue the reason and
overcome the heart, without the aid of fraud (in the
process) and the sophistries of the schools. 20
What I had proposed to myseU in the course of haU
an hour, I determined on at the end of ten days. However,
I have many difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am
I to say all that has to be said in a reasonable compass ?
And then as to the materials of my narrative ; I have no
autobiographical notes to consult, no written explanations
of particular treatises or of tracts which at the time gave
offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions or
conversations, and few contemporary memoranda, I fear,
of the feelings or motives under which from time to time 30
I acted. I have an abundance of letters from friends with
some copies or drafts of my answers to them, but they
are for the most part unsorted, and, tiU this process has
taken place, they are even too numerous and various to be
available at a moment for my purpose. Then, as to the
volumes which I have pubhshed, they would in many
ways serve me, were I well up hi them ; but though
I took great pains in their composition, I have thought
little about them, when they were at length out of my hands,
5 filled] held 39 at length] once

TKUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. 101
and, for the most part, the last time I read them has been
when I revised their (last) proof sheets.
Under these circumstances my sketch will of course be
incomplete. I now for the first time contemplate my course
as a whole ; it is a first essay, but it will contain, I trust,
no serious or substantial mistake, and so far will answer
the purpose for which I write it. I purpose to set nothing
down in it as certain, for which I have not a clear memory,
or some written memorial, or the corroboration of some friend.
10 There are witnesses enough up and down the country to
verify, or correct, or complete it ; and letters moreover
of my own in abundance, unless they have been destroyed.
Moreover, I mean to be simply personal and historical :
I am not expounding Cathohc doctrine, I am doing no
more than explaining myseff, and my opinions and actions.
I wish, as far as I am able, simply to state facts, whether
they are ultimately determined to be for me or against me.
Of course there will be room enough for contrariety of
judgment among my readers, as to the necessity, or
20 appositeness, or value, or good taste, or rehgious prudence(,)
of the details which I shall introduce. I may be accused
of laying stress on httle things, of being beside the mark,
of going into impertinent or ridiculous details, of sounding
my own praise, of giving scandal ; but this is a case above
aU others, in which I am bound to follow my own lights
and to speak out my own heart. It is not at all pleasant
for me to be egotistical ; nor to be criticized for being so.
It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old,
what has gone on within me from my early years. It is
30 not pleasant to be giving to every shaUow or flippant
disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most
private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between
myself and my Maker. But I do not hke to be called
to my face a har and a knave : nor should I be doing my
duty to my faitb>or to my name, if I were to suffer it.
I know I have done nothing to deserve such an insult ;
and if I prove this, as I hope to do, I must not care for
such incidental annoyances as are involved in the process.
(H ere ends Part II of the 1864 and the Preface of the
1865 edition.)

PART III.
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, May 5, 1864]

PART III.

HISTORY OF MY REUGIOUS OPINIONS (TO THE YEAR 1833).
It may easily be conceived how great a trial it is to me to
write the foUowing history of myself ; but I must not
shrink from the task. The words, " Secretum meum mihi,"
keep ringing in my ears ; but as men draw towards their
end, they care less for disclosures. Nor is it the least part
of my trial, to anticipate that [my friends may], upon first
reading what I have written, (my friends may) consider
much in it irrelevant to my purpose ; yet I cannot help
thinking that, viewed as a whole, it will effect what I wish
10 it to do.
I was brought up from a child to take great dehght in
reading the Bible ; but I had no formed rehgious convic
tions tiU I was fifteen. Of course I had (a) perfect knowledge
of my Catechism.
After I was grown up, I put on paper such recoUections
[as I had] of my thoughts and feelings on rehgious subjects,
(which I had) at the time that I was a child and a boy(, —
such as had remained on my mind with sufficient promi
nence to make me then consider them worth recording).
20 Out of these (, written in the Long Vacation of 1820, and
transcribed with additions in 1823,) I select two, which are
at once the most definite among them, and also have
a bearing on my later convictions.
[In the paper to which I have referred, written either
in the Long Vacation of 1820, or in October, 1823, the
following notices of my school days were sufficiently
prominent in my memory for me to consider them worth
recording: — ] (1.) "I used to wish the Arabian Tales
Part III] Chapter I
10 wish it to do] propose to myself in giving it to the public
15 such] my 16 my] the
28 1. " I used to wish This commenced a new paragraph in 1865.
E 3

106 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
were true : my imagination ran on unknown influences, on
magical powers, and tahsmans  I thought hfe might be
a dream, or I an Angel, and all this world a deception, my
feUow-angels by a playful device concealing themselves
from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material
world." Again, " Reading in the Spring of 1816 a sentence from
[Dr. Watts's] ' Remnants of Time,' entitled ' the Saints
unknown to the world,' to the effect, that ' there is nothing
in their figure or countenance to distinguish them,' &c. &c, 10
I supposed he spoke of Angels who hved in the world, as
it were disguised."
(2.) The other remark is this : "I was very superstitious,
and for some time previous to my conversion " [when
I was fifteen] " used constantly to cross myself on going
into the dark."
Of course I must have got this practice from some
external source or other ; but I can make no sort of
conjecture whence ; and certainly no one had ever spoken
to me on the subject of the Cathohc rehgion, which I only 20
knew by name. The French master was an emigre Priest,
but he was simply made a butt, as French masters too
commonly were in that day, and spoke Enghsh very
imperfectly. There was a Cathohc family in the viUage,
old maiden ladies we used to think ; but I knew nothing
but their name. I have of late years heard that there were
one or two Catholic boys in the school ; but either we were
carefuUy kept from knowing this, or the knowledge of it
made simply no impression on our minds. My brother
wiU bear witness how free the school was from Cathohc 30
ideas. I had once been into Warwick Street Chapel, with my
father, who, I beheve, wanted to hear some piece of music ;
aU that I bore away from it was the recoUection of a pulpit
and a preacher(,) and a boy swinging a censer.
When I was at Littlemore, I was looking over old copy
books of my school days, and I found among them my first
Latin verse-book ; and in the first page of it[,] there was
a device which almost took my breath away with surprise.
,8,14,15 These are the Author' s[ ] 27 but their name] about them

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 107
I have the book before me now, and have just been showing
it to others. I have written in the first -page, in my school
boy hand, "John H. Newman, February 11th, 1811,
Verse Book ; " then follow my first Verses. Between
" Verse " and " Book " I have drawn the figure of a sohd
cross upright, and next to it is, what may indeed be meant
for a necklace, but what I cannot make out to be any thing
else than a set of beads suspended, with a little cross
attached. At this time I was not quite ten years old.
10 I suppose I got the idea from some romance, Mrs. Radcliffe's
or Miss Porter's ; or from some rehgious picture ; but the
strange thing is, how, among the thousand objects which
meet a boy's eyes, these in particular should so have fixed
themselves in my mind, that I made them thus practically
my own. I am certain there was nothing in the churches
I attended, or the prayer books I read, to suggest them.
It must be recoUected that (Anglican) churches and prayer
books were not decorated in those days as I beheve they
are now.
20 When I was fourteen, I read Paine' s Tracts against the
Old Testament, and found pleasure in thinking of the
objections which were contained in them. Also, I read
some of Hume's Essays ; and perhaps that on Miracles.
So at least I gave my father to understand ; but perhaps
it was a brag. Also, I recollect copying out some French
verses, perhaps Voltaire's, against the immortahty of the
soul, and saying to myself something like " How dreadful,
but how plausible ! "
When I was fifteen, (in the autumn of 1816,) a great
30 change of thought took place in me. I feU under the influ
ences of a definite Creed, and received into my intellect
impressions of dogma, which, through God's mercy, have
never been effaced or obscured. Above and beyond the
conversations and sermons of the exceUent man, long dead,
(the Rev. Walter Mayers, of Pembroke College, Oxford,)
who was the human means of this beginning of divine
faith in me, was the effect of the books which he put into
my hands, all of the school of Calvin. One of the first
books I read[,] was a work of Romaine's ; I neither recoUect
10 the idea] these ideas 26 against] in denial of

108 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
the title nor the contents, except one doctrine, which of
course^ I do not include among those which I believe to
have come from a divine source, viz. the doctrine of final
perseverance. I received it at once, and beheved that the
inward conversion of which I was conscious, (and of which
I stiU am more certain than that I have hands and feet,)
would last into the next life, and that I was elected to
eternal glory. I have no consciousness that this behef
had any tendency whatever to lead me to be careless about
pleasing God. I retained it till the age of twenty-one, 10
when it graduaUy faded away ; but I beUeve that it had
some influence on my opinions, in the direction of those
childish imaginations which I have already mentioned,
viz. in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me,
in confirming me in my mistrust of the reahty of material
phenomena, and making me rest in the thought of two
and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings,
myself and my Creator ; — for while I considered myself
predestined to salvation, I thought others simply passed
over, not predestined to eternal death. I only thought of 20
the mercy to myseff.
The detestable doctrine last mentioned is simply denied
and abjured, unless my memory strangely deceives me,
by the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind
than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost
owe my soul, — Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford. I so
admired and delighted in his writings, that, when I was an
undergraduate, I thought of making a visit to his Parsonage,
in order to see a man whom I so deeply revered. I hardly
think I could have given up the idea of this expedition, 30
even after I had taken my degree ; for the news of his
death in 1821 came upon me as a disappointment as weU
as a sorrow. I hung upon the lips of Daniel Wilson, after
wards Bishop of Calcutta, as in two sermons at St. John's
Chapel he gave the history of Scott's life and death. I had
been possessed of his (" Force of Truth " and) Essays from
a boy ; his Commentary I bought when I was an under
graduate. What, I suppose, wdl strike any reader of Scott's history
17 supreme] absolute 19 I thought others] my mind did not
dwell upon others, as fancying them

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 109
and writings, is his bold unworldliness and vigorous
independence of mind. He followed truth wherever it
led him, beginning with Unitarianism, and ending in a
zealous faith in the Holy Trinity. It was he who first
planted deep in my mind that fundamental Truth of
rehgion. With the assistance of Scott's Essays, and the
admirable work of Jones of Nayland, I made a coUection
of Scripture texts in proof of the doctrine, with remarks
(I think) of my own upon them, before I was sixteen ;
10 and a few months later I drew up a series of texts in support
of each verse of the Athanasian Creed. These papers
I have stUl.
Besides his unworldliness, what I also admired in Scott
was his resolute opposition to Antinomianism, and the
minutely practical character of his writings. They show
him to be a true Englishman, and I deeply felt his influence ;
and for years I used almost as proverbs what I considered
to be the scope and issue of his doctrine, " Holiness before
peace," and " Growth [is] the only evidence of life."
20 Calvinists make a sharp separation between the elect
and the world ; there is much in this that is parallel or
cognate to the Cathohc doctrine ; but they go on to say,
as I understand them, very differently from Cathohcism, —
that the converted and the unconverted can be discrimin
ated by man, that the justified are conscious of their state
of justification, and that the regenerate cannot fall away.
Cathohcs on the other hand shade and soften the awful
antagonism between good and evil, which is one of their
dogmas, by holding that there are different degrees of
30 justification, that there is a great difference in point of
gravity between sin and sin, that there is the possibility
and the danger of falling away, and that there is no certain
knowledge given to any one that he is simply in a state of
grace, and much less that he is to persevere to the end : —
of the Calvinistic tenets the only one which took root in
my mind was the fact of heaven and hell, divine favour
and divine wrath, of the justified and the unjustified. The
notion that the regenerate and the justified were one and
the same, and that the regenerate, as such, had the gift
5 Truth] truth 1 8 before] rather than
21-22 parallel or cognate] cognate or parallel

110 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
of perseverance, remained with me not many years, as I
have said already.
This main Catholic doctrine of the warfare between the
city of God and the powers of darkness was also deeply
impressed upon my mind by a work of a very opposite
character (to Calvinism), Law's " Serious Call."
From this time I have given a fuU inward assent and
belief [to] the doctrine of eternal punishment, as delivered
by our Lord Himseff, in as true a sense as I hold that of
eternal happiness ; though I have tried in various ways 10
to make that truth less terrible to the reason.
Now I come to two other works, which produced a deep
impression on me in the same autumn of 1816, when I was
fifteen years old, each contrary to each, and planting in
me the seeds of an intellectual inconsistency which disabled
me for a long course of years. I read Joseph Milner's
Church History, and was nothing short of enamoured of
the long extracts from St. Augustine (, St. Ambrose,) and
the other Fathers which I found there. I read them as
being the religion of the primitive Christians : but simul- 20
taneously with Milner I read Newton on the Prophecies,
and in consequence became most firmly convinced that
the Pope was the Antichrist predicted by Daniel, St. Paul,
and St. John. My imagination was stained by the effects
of this doctrine up to the year 1843 ; it had been obliterated
from my reason and judgment at an earlier date ; but the
thought remained upon me as a sort of false conscience.
Hence came that conflict of mind, which so many have felt
besides myself ; — leading some men to make a compromise
between two ideas, so inconsistent with each other, — 30
driving others to beat out the one idea or the other from
their minds, — and ending in my own case, after many years
of intellectual unrest, in the gradual decay and extinction
of one of them, — I do not say in its violent death, for why
should I not have murdered it sooner, if I murdered it
at all ?
I am obliged to mention, though I do it with great
reluctance, another deep imagination, which at this time,
the autumn of 1816, took possession of me, — there can be
5 very opposite character] character very opposite
7 given] held with 11 reason] intellect

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) Ill
no mistake about the fact ;[ — ] viz. that it was the will of
God that I should lead a single life. This anticipation,
which has held its ground almost continuously ever since, —
with the break of a month now and a month then, up to
1829, and, after that date, without any break at all, —
was more or less connected[,] in my mind[,] with the
notion(,) that my calling in life would require such a sacrifice
as celibacy involved ; as, for instance, missionary work
among the heathen, to which I had a great drawing for
10 some years. It also strengthened my feeling of separation
from the visible world, of which I have spoken above.
In 1822 1 came under very different influences from those
to which I had hitherto been subjected. At that time,
Mr. Whately, as he was then, afterwards Archbishop of
Dublin, for the few months he remained in Oxford, which
he was leaving for good, showed great kindness to me. He
renewed it in 1825, when he became Principal of Alban
Hall, making me his Vice-Principal and Tutor. Of Dr.
Whately I will speak presently, for from 1822 to 1825 I saw
20 most of the present Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, at that
time Vicar of St. Mary's ; and, when I took orders in 1824
and had a curacy at Oxford, then, during the Long Vaca
tions, I was especially thrown into his company. I can say
with a full heart that I love him, and have never ceased
to love him ; and I thus preface what otherwise might
sound rude, that in the course of the many years in which
we were together afterwards, he provoked me very much
from time to time, though I am perfectly certain that I have
provoked him a great deal more. Moreover, in me such
30 provocation was unbecoming, both because he was the
Head of my College, and because(,) in the first years that
I knew him, he had been in many ways of great service
to my mind.
He was the first who taught me to weigh my words, and
to be cautious in my statements. He led me to that mode
of limiting and clearing my sense in discussion and in
controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate ideas,
and of obviating mistakes by anticipation, which to my
1 was] would be 22 at] in

112 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
surprise has been since considered, even in quarters friendly
to me, to savour of the polemics of Rome. He is a man
of most exact mind himseH, and he used to snub me •
severely, on reading, as he was kind enough to do, the first
Sermons that I wrote, and other compositions which I was
engaged upon.
Then as to doctrine, he was the means of great additions
to my belief. As I have noticed elsewhere, he gave me the
" Treatise on Apostolical Preaching," by Sumner, after
wards Archbishop of Canterbury, from which I learned to 10
give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the
doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. In many other ways
too he was of use to me, on subjects semi-religious and
semi-scholastic. It was Dr. Hawkins too who taught me to anticipate
that, before many years were over .there would be an attack
made upon the books and the canon of Scripture. I was
brought to the same behef by the conversation of Mr. Blanco
White, who also led me to have freer views on the subject
of inspiration than were usual in the Church of England at 20
the time.
There is one other principle, which I gained from
Dr. Hawkins, more directly bearing upon Cathohcism, than
any that I have mentioned ; and that is the doctrine of
Tradition. When I was an Undergraduate, I heard him
preach in the University Pulpit his celebrated sermon on
the subject, and recollect how long it appeared to me,
though he was at that time a very striking preacher ; but,
when I read it and studied it as his gift, it made a most
serious impression upon me. He does not go one step, 30
I think, beyond the high Anglican doctrine, nay he does
not reach it ; but he does his work thoroughly, and his
view was (in him) original [with him], and his subject was
a novel one at the time. He lays down a proposition, self-
evident as soon as stated, to those who have at aU examined
the structure of Scripture, viz. that the sacred text was
never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it,
and that, if we would learn doctrine, we must have recourse
to the formularies of the Church ; for instance to the
10 learned] was led

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 113
Catechism, and to the Creeds. He considers, that, after
learning from them the doctrines of Christianity, the
inquirer must verify them by Scripture. This view, most
true in its outline, most fruitful in its consequences, opened
upon me a large field of thought. Dr. Whately held it too.
One of its effects was to strike at the root of the principle
on which the Bible Society was set up. I belonged to its
Oxford Association ; it became a matter of time when
I should withdraw my name from its subscription-list,
10 though I did not do so at once.
It is with pleasure that I pay here a tribute to the
memory of the Rev. Wilham James, then Fellow of Oriel ;
who, about the year 1823, taught me the doctrine of
Apostohcal Succession, in the course of a walk, I think,
round Christ Church meadow : I recollect being somewhat
impatient on the subject at the time.
It was at about this date, I suppose, that I read Bishop
Butler's Analogy ; the study of which has been to so
many, as it was to me, an era in their rehgious opinions. Its
20 inculcation of a visible Church, the oracle of truth and
a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and
of the historical character of Revelation, are charac
teristics of this great work which strike the reader at once ;
for myself, if I may attempt to determine what I most
gained from it, it lay in two points, which I shaU have
an opportunity of dwelling on in the sequel ; they are the
underlying principles of a great portion of my teaching.
First, the very idea of an analogy between the separate
works of God leads to the conclusion that the system which
30 is of less importance is economically or sacramentally con
nected with the more momentous system (*), and of this
conclusion the theory, to which I was inclined as a boy,
viz. the unreality of material phenomena, is an ultimate
resolution. At this time I did not make the distinction
between matter itseff and its phenomena, which is so
necessary and so obvious in discussing the subject. Secondly, ,
Butler's doctrine that Probabihty_js the guide of life, led(
me, at least under the teaching to which a few years later
I was introduced, to the question of the logical cogency of
16 on] of Footnote in 186P. <* It is significant that
Butler begins his work with a quotation from Origen. )

114 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Faith, on which I have written so much. Thus to Butler
I trace those two principles of my teaching, which have
led to a charge against me both of fancifulness and of
scepticism. And now as to Dr. Whately. I owe him a great deal.
He was a man of generous and warm heart. He was
particularly loyal to his friends, and to use the common
phrase, " aU his geese were swans." While I was stiU
awkward and timid in 1822, he took me by the hand, and
acted (towards me) the part [to me] of a gentle and encour- 10
aging instructor. He, emphaticaUy, opened my mind, and
taught me to think and to use my reason. After being
first noticed by him in 1822, I became very intimate with
him in 1825, when I was his Vice-Principal at Alban HaU.
I gave up that office in 1826, when I became Tutor of my
College, and his hold upon me graduaUy relaxed. He had
done his work towards me or nearly so, when he had taught
me to see with my own eyes and to walk with my own feet.
Not that I had not a good deal to learn from others stiU,
but I influenced them as weU as they me, and co-operated 20
rather than merely concurred with them. As to Dr.
Whately, his mind was too different from mine for us to
remain long on one line. I recoUect how dissatisfied he
was with an Article of mine in the London Review, which
Blanco White, good-humouredly, only called Platonic.
When I was diverging from him (in opinion) (which he did
not like), I thought of dedicating my first book to him, in
words to the effect that he had not only taught me to
think, but to think for myself. He left Oxford in 1831 ;
after that, as far as I can recollect, I never saw him but 30
twice, — when he visited the University ; once in the street
(in 1834), once in a room (in 1838). From the time that
he left, I have always felt a real affection for what I must
call his memory ; for thenceforward he made himseU dead
to me. (He had practically indeed given me up from the
time that he became Archbishop in 1831 ; but in 1834
a correspondence took place between us, which, though
conducted in the most friendly language on both sides,
was the expression of differences of opinion which acted as
34 thenceforward] ,at least from the year 1834,

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 115
a final close to our intercourse.) My reason told me that
it was impossible [that] we could have got on together
longer (, had he stayed in Oxford) ; yet I loved him too
much to bid him farewell without pain. After a few years
had passed, I began to beheve that his influence on me in
a higher respect than inteUectual advance, (I will not say
through his fault,) had not been satisfactory. I beheve
that he has inserted sharp things in his later works about
me. They have never come in my way, and I have not
10 thought it necessary to seek out what would pain me so
much in the reading.
What he did for me in point of religious opinion, was (,)
first (,) to teach me the existence of the Church, as a sub
stantive body or corporation ; next to fix in me those anti-
Erastian views of Church pohty, which were one of the
most prominent features of the Tractarian movement. On
this point, and, as far as I know, on this point alone, he
and HurreU Froude intimately sympathized, though
Froude's development of opinion here was of a later
20 date. In the year 1826, in the course of a walk (,) he said
much to me about a work then just pubhshed, caUed
" Letters on the Church by an Episcopalian." He said
that it would make my blood boil. It was certainly a most
powerful composition. One of our common friends told
me, that, after reading it, he could not keep still, but went
on walking up and down his room. It was ascribed at
once to Whately ; I gave eager expression to the contrary
opinion ; but I found the behef of Oxford in the affirmative
to be too strong for me ; rightly or wrongly I yielded to
30 the general voice ; and I have never heard, then or since,
of any disclaimer of authorship on the part of Dr. Whately.
The main positions of this able essay are these ; first
that Church and State should be independent of each other :
— he speaks of the duty of protesting " against the pro
fanation of Christ's kingdom, by that double usurpation,
the interference of the Church in temporals, of the State in
spirituals," p. 191 ; and, secondly, that the Church may
justly and by right retain its property, though separated
from the State. " The clergy," he says p. 133, " though
40 they ought not to be the hired servants of the Civil Magis
trate, may justly retain their revenues ; and the State,

116 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
though it has no right of interference in spiritual concerns,
not only is justly entitled to support from the ministers of
religion, and from aU other Christians, but would, under
the system I am recommending, obtain it much more
effectually." The author of this work, whoever he may be,
argues out both these points with great force and ingenuity,
and with a thorough-going vehemence, which perhaps we
may refer to the circumstance, that he wrote, not in
propria persona, (and as thereby answerable for every
sentiment that he advanced,) but in the professed character 10
of a Scotch Episcopalian. His work had a gradual, but
a deep effect on my mind.
I am not aware of any other religious opinion which
I owe to Dr. Whately. For his special theological tenets
I had no sympathy. In the next year, 1827, he told me
he considered that I was Arianizing. The case was this :
though at that time I had not read Bishop Bull's Defensio
nor the Fathers, I was just then very strong for that
ante-Nicene view of the Trinitarian doctrine, which some
writers, both Catholic and non-Cathohc, have accused of 20
wearing a sort of Arian exterior. This is the meaning of
a passage in Froude's Remains, in which he seems to accuse
me of speaking against the Athanasian Creed. I had con
trasted the two aspects of the Trinitarian doctrine, which
are respectively presented by the Athanasian Creed and
the Nicene. My criticisms were to the effect that some of
the verses of the former Creed were unnecessarily scientific.
This is a specimen of a certain disdain for antiquity which
had been growing on me now for several years. It showed
itself in some flippant language against the Fathers in the 30
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, about whom I knew httle
at the time, except what I had learnt as a boy from Joseph
Milner. In writing on the Scripture Miracles in 1825-6,
I had read Middleton on the Miracles of the early Church,
and had imbibed a portion of his spirit.
The truth is, I was beginning to prefer inteUectual excel
lence to moral; I was drifting in the direction of (the)
liberalism (of the day 1). I was rudely awakened from my
28 antiquity] Antiquity
Footnote in 1865. ( 1 Vide Note A, Liberalism, at the end of the volume. )

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 117
dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows — illness and
bereavement. In the beginning of 1829, came the formal break between
Dr. Whately and me ; (the affair of) Mr. Peel's [attempted]
re-election was the occasion of it. I think in 1828 or 1827
I had voted in the minority, when the Petition to Parlia
ment against the Catholic Claims was brought into Convoca
tion. I did so mainly on the views suggested to me by the
theory of the Letters of an Episcopalian. Also I disliked
io the bigoted " two bottle orthodox," as they were invidiously
called. (Accordingly) I took part against Mr. Peel, on
a simple academical, not at aU an ecclesiastical or a political
ground ; and this I professed at the time. I considered
that Mr. Peel had taken the University by surprise, that
he had no right to caU upon us to turn round on a sudden,
and to expose ourselves to the imputation of time-serving, \
and that a great University ought not to be bulUed even
by a great Duke of WeUington. Also by this time I was
under the influence of Keble and Froude ; who, in addition
20 to the reasons I have given, disliked the Duke's change
of policy as dictated by liberahsm.
Whately was considerably annoyed at me, and he took
a humourous revenge, of which he had given me due notice
beforehand. As head of a house, he had duties of hos
pitality to men of all parties ; he asked a set of the least
inteUectual men in Oxford to dinner, and men most fond
of port ; he made me one of the party ; placed me between
Provost This and Principal That, and then asked me if
I was proud of my friends. However, he had a serious
30 meaning in his act ; he saw, more clearly than I could do,
that I was separating from his own friends for good and all.
Dr. Whately attributed my leaving his clientela to a wish
on my part to be the head of a party myself. I do not
think that it was deserved. My habitual feeling then and
since has been, that it was not I who sought friends, but
friends who sought me. Never man had kinder or more
indulgent friends than I have had, but I expressed my own
feeling as to the mode in which I gained them, in this very
year 1829, in the course of a copy of verses. Speaking of
15 he] his friends 27 the] this 34 it] this charge

118 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
my blessings, I said, " Blessings of friends, which to my
door, unasked, unhoped, have come." They have come,
they have gone ; they came to my great joy, they went to
my great grief. He who gave, took away. Dr. Whately's
impression about me, however, admits of this explanation: —
During the first years of my residence at Oriel, though
proud of my College, I was not (quite) at home there.
I was very much alone, and I used often to take my daily
walk by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr. Copleston,
then Provost, with one of the FeUows. He turned round, 10
and with the kind courteousness which sat so weU on him,
made me a bow and said, " Nunquam minus solus, quam
cum solus." At that time indeed (from 1823) I had the
intimacy of my dear and true friend Dr. Pusey, and could
not fail to admire and revere a soul so devoted to the
cause of religion, so full of good works, so faithful in his
affections ; but he left residence when I was getting to
know him well. As to Dr. Whately himself, he was too
much my superior to allow of my being at my ease with
him ; and to no one in Oxford at this time did I open my 20
heart fully and familiarly. But things changed in 1826.
At that time I became one of the Tutors of my CoUege,
and this gave me position ; besides, I had written one or
two Essays which had been well received. I began to be
known. I preached my first University Sermon. Next
year I was one of the Public Examiners for the B.A. degree.
(In 1828 I became Vicar of St. Mary's.) It was to me hke
the feeling of spring weather after whiter ; and, if I may so
speak, I came out of my shell ; I remained out of it tiU 1841 .
The two persons who knew me best at that time are stiU 30
alive, beneficed clergymen, no longer my friends. They
could tell better than any one else what I was in those years.
From this time my tongue was, as it were, loosened, and
I spoke spontaneously and without effort. (One of the
two,) A shrewd man, [who knew me at this time,] said (of
me, I have been told), "Here is a man who, when he is
silent, will never begin to speak ; and when he once begins
to speak, will never stop." It was at this time that I began
35 A shrewd man 1864, 1865] Mr. Rickards edition subsequent to 1875
36 a man who] a fellow who

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 119
to have influence, which steadily increased for a course of
years. I gained upon my pupils, and was in particular
intimate and affectionate with two of our probationer
Fellows, Robert I(saac) Wilberforce (afterwards Arch
deacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. Whately then, an
acute man, perhaps saw around me the signs of an incipient
party(,) of which I was not conscious myself. And thus
we discern the first elements of that movement afterwards
called Tractarian.
10 The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual
with great motive-powers, was out of sight. Having
carried off as a mere boy the highest honours of the Uni
versity, he had turned from the admiration which haunted
his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in
pastoral work in the country. Need I say that I am speak
ing of John Keble ? The first time that I was in a room
with him was on occasion of my election to a fellowship at
Oriel, when I was sent for into the Tower, to shake hands
with the Provost and Fellows. How is that hour fixed in
20 my memory after the changes of forty-two years, forty-
two this very day on which I write ! I have lately had
a letter in my hands, which I sent at the time to my great
friend, John (WiUiam) Bowden, with whom I passed
almost exclusively my Undergraduate years. " I had to
hasten to the Tower," I say to him, " to receive the con
gratulations of all the Fellows. I bore it till Keble took
my hand, and then felt so abashed and unworthy of the
honour done me, that I seemed desirous of quite sinking
into the ground." His had been the first name which
30 I had heard spoken of, with reverence rather than admira
tion, when I came up to Oxford. When one day I was
walking in High Street with my dear earliest friend just
mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out, " There's
Keble ! " and with what awe did I look at him ! Then at
another time I heard a Master of Arts of my college give
an account how he had just then had occasion to introduce
himself on some business to Keble, and how gentle, cour
teous, and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost to put
him out of countenance. Then too it was reported, truly
or falsely, how a rising man of brilliant reputation, the
present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman, admired and loved

120 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
him, adding, that somehow he was (strangely) unlike any
one else. However, at the time when I was elected FeUow
of Oriel he was not in residence, and he was shy of me for
years in consequence of the marks which I bore upon
me of the evangelical and liberal schools. At least so I
have ever thought. HurreU Froude brought us together
about 1828 : it is one of the sayings preserved in his
" Remains," — " Do you know the story of the murderer
who had done one good thing in his life ? WeU ; if I
was ever asked what good deed I had ever done, I should 10
say that I had brought Keble and Newman to understand
each other."
The Christian Year made its appearance in 1827. It is
not necessary, and scarcely becoming, to praise a book
which has already become one of the classics of the language.
When the general tone of rehgious hterature was so nerve
less and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble struck an
original note and woke up in the hearts of thousands a new
music, the music of a school, long unknown in England.
Nor can I pretend to analyze, in my own instance, the 20
effect of rehgious teaching so deep, so pure, so beautiful.
I have never tiU now tried to do so ; yet I think I am not
wrong in saying, that the two main inteUectual truths
which it brought home to me, were the same two, which
I had learned from Butler, though recast in the creative
mind of my new master. The first of these was what may
be caUed, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental
system ; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena
are both the types and the instruments of real things
unseen, — a doctrine, which embraces (in its fulness), not 30
only what Anglicans, as weU as Cathohcs, beheve about
Sacraments properly so caUed ; but also the article of
" the Communion of Saints " [in its fulness] ; and
likewise the Mysteries of the faith. The connexion of
this phUosophy of rehgion with what is sometimes caUed
" Berkeleyism " has been mentioned above ; I knew httle of
Berkeley at this time except by name ; nor have I ever
studied him.
On the second inteUectual principle which I gained from
Mr. Keble, I could say a great deal ; if this were the place 40
for it. It runs through very much that I have written,

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 121
and has gained for me many hard names. Butler teaches
us that probabihty is the guide of hfe. The danger of this
doctrine, in the case of many minds, is, its tendency to
destroy in them absolute certainty, leading them to con
sider every conclusion as doubtful, and resolving truth
into an opinion, which it is safe (indeed) to obey or to
profess, but not possible to embrace with full internal
assent. If this were to be allowed, then the celebrated
saying, " 0 God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have
io a soul ! " would be the highest measure of devotion : — but
who can really pray to a Being, about whose existence he
is seriously in doubt ?
I considered that Mr. Keble met this difficulty by ascrib
ing the firmness of assent which we give to religious doc
trine, not to the probabilities which introduced it, but to
the living power of faith and love which accepted it. In
matters of rehgion, he seemed to say, it is not merely
probability which makes us intellectually certain, but
probabihty as it is put to account by faith and love. It
20 is faith and love which give to probabihty a force which it
has not in itseU. Faith and love are directed towards an
Object ; in the vision of that Object they live ; it is that
Object, received in faith and love, which renders it reason
able to take probabihty as sufficient for internal con
viction. Thus the argument about Probability, in the
matter of rehgion, became an argument from Personality,
which in fact is one form of the argument from Authority.
In illustration, Mr. Keble used to quote the words of the
Psalm : "I wiU guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not like
30 to horse and mule, which have no understanding ; whose
mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they fall
upon thee." This is the very difference, he used to say,
between slaves, and friends or children. Friends do not
ask for hteral commands ; but, from their knowledge of
the speaker, they understand his half-words, and from love
of him they anticipate his wishes. Hence it is, that in his
Poem for St. Bartholomew's Day, he speaks of the " Eye
of God's word ; " and in the note quotes Mr. MiUer, of
Worcester College, who remarks, in his Bampton Lectures,
25 about] from

122 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
on the special power of Scripture, as having " this Eye,
hke that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon us, turn where
we will." The view thus suggested by Mr. Keble, is brought
forward in one of the earhest of the " Tracts for the Times."
In No. 8 1 say, " The Gospel is a Law of Liberty. We are
treated as sons, not as servants ; not subjected to a code
of formal commandments, but addressed as those who love
God, and wish to please Him."
I did not at aU dispute this view of the matter, for I made
use of it myseh ; but I was dissatisfied, because it did not 10
go to the root of the difficulty. It was beautiful and
religious, but it did not even profess to be logical ; and
accordingly I tried to complete it by considerations of my
own, which are imphed in my University Sermons, Essay
on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of
Doctrine. My argument is in outline as foUows : that that
absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether
as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of
a revelation, was the result of an assemblage of concurring
and converging probabilities, and that, both according to 20
the constitution of the human mind and the wiU of its
Maker ; that certitude was a habit of mind, that certainty
was a quahty of propositions ; that probabilities which
did not reach to logical certainty, might create a mental
certitude ; that the certitude thus created might equal in
measure and strength the certitude which was created by
the strictest scientific demonstration ; and that to have
such certitude might in given cases and to given individuals
be a plain duty, though not to others in other circum
stances : — 30
Moreover, that as there were probabilities which sufficed
to create certitude, so there were other probabilities which
were legitimately adapted to create opinion ; that it might
be quite as much a matter of duty in given cases and to
given persons to have about a fact an opinion of a definite
strength and consistency, as in the case of greater or of
more numerous probabilities it was a duty to have a cer
titude ; that accordingly we were bound to be more or less
24 create] suffice for 25 created] brought about
27 have] possess 32 to create] for

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 123
sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated scale of assent,
viz. according as the probabilities attaching to a professed
fact were brought home to us, and, as the case might be,
to entertain about it a pious behef, or a pious opinion, or
a rehgious conjecture, or at least, a tolerance of such belief,
or opinion, or conjecture in others ; that on the other hand,
as it was a duty to have a behef, of more or less strong
texture, in given cases, so in other cases it was a duty not
to beUeve, not to opine, not to conjecture, not even to
10 tolerate the notion that a professed fact was true, inasmuch
as it would be creduhty or superstition, or some other
moral fault, to do so. This was the region of Private Judg
ment in rehgion ; that is, of a Pri£aJia„_Judgment, not
formed arbitrarily and according to one's fancy or liking,
but conscientiously, and under a sense of duty.
Considerations such as these throw a new light on the
subject of Miracles, and they seem to have ledr me to
re-consider the view which I took of them in my Essay in
1825-6. I do not know what was the date of this change
20 in me, nor of the train of ideas on which it was founded.
That there had been already great miracles, as those of
Scripture, as the Resurrection, was a fact estabUshing the
principle that the laws of nature had sometimes been
suspended by their Divine Author ; and since what had
happened once might happen again, a certain probabihty,
at least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea,
taken in itself, of miraculous intervention in later times,
and miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connexion
with the verisimihtude, scope, instrument, character,
30 testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented
themselves to us ; and, according to the final result of
those various considerations, it was our duty to be sure, or
to beheve, or to opine, or to surmise, or to tolerate, or to re
ject, or to denounce. The main difference between my Essay
on Miracles in 1826 and my Essay in 1842 is this : that in
1826 I considered that miracles were sharply divided into
two classes, those which were to be received, and those
which were to be rejected ; whereas in 1842 I saw that
they were to be regarded according to their greater or less
18 took] had taken

124 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
probability, which was in some cases sufficient to create
certitude about them, in other cases only behef or
opinion. Moreover, the argument from Analogy, on which this
view of the question was founded, suggested to me some
thing besides, in recommendation of the Ecclesiastical
Miracles. It fastened itseff upon the theory of Church
History which I had learned as a boy from Joseph Milner.
It is Milner's doctrine, that upon the visible Church come
down from above, from time to time, large and temporary 10
Effusions of divine grace. This is the leading idea of his
work. He begins by speaking of the Day of Pentecost, as
marking " the first of those Effusions of the Spirit of God,
which from age to age have visited the earth since the
coming of Christ." Vol. i. p. 3. In a note he adds that
" in the term ' Effusion ' there is not here included the
idea of the miraculous or extraordinary operations of the
Spirit of God ; " but still it was natural for me, admitting
Milner's general theory, and applying to it the principle of
analogy, not to stop short at his abrupt ipse dixit, but 20
boldly to pass forward to the conclusion, on other grounds
plausible, that, as miracles accompanied the first effusion
of grace, so they might accompany the later. It is surely
a natural and on the whole, a true anticipation (though of
course there are exceptions in particular cases), that gifts
and graces go together ; now, according to the ancient
Catholic doctrine, the gift of miracles was viewed as the
attendant and shadow of transcendent sanctity : and
moreover, as such sanctity was not of every day's occur
rence, nay further, as one period of Church history differed 30
widely from another, and, as Joseph Milner would say,
there have been generations or centuries of degeneracy or
disorder, and times of revival, and as one region might be
in the mid-day of rehgious fervour, and another in twilight
or gloom, there was no force in the popular argument, that,
because we did not see miracles with our own eyes, miracles
had not happened in former times, or were not now at this
very time taking place in distant places : — but I must not
10 from time to time] at certain intervals 16 not] not
29, 30, 33 as] since

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 125
dwell longer on a subject, to which in a few words it is
impossible to do justice (1).
HurreU Froude was a pupil of Keble's, formed by him,
and in turn reacting upon him. I knew him first in 1826,
and was in the closest and most affectionate friendship
with him from about 1829 tUl his death in 1836. He was
a man of the highest gifts, — so truly many-sided, that it
would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him,
except under those aspects[,] in which he came before me.
10 Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness
of nature, the playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful
versatility of mind, and the patient winning considerate-
ness in discussion, which endeared him to those to whom
he opened his heart ; for I am all along engaged upon
matters of belief and opinion, and am introducing others
into my narrative, not for their own sake, or because I love
and have loved them, so much as because, and so far as,
they have influenced my theological views. In this respect
then, I speak of HurreU Froude, — in his inteUectual aspect,
20 — as a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing with
ideas and views, in him original, which were too many and
strong even for his bodily strength, and which crowded
and jostled against each other in their effort after distinct
shape and expression. And he had an intellect as critical
and logical as it was speculative and bold. Dying pre
maturely, as he did, and in the conflict and transition-
state of opinion, his rehgious views never reached their
ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude
and their depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me,
30 even when they did not gain my assent. He professeaT
openly his admiration of the Church of Rome, and his
hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of
an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power and of full
ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, " The
Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants ; "
and he gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument
of rehgious teaching. He had a high severe idea of the
intrinsic excellence of Virginity ; and he considered the
Footnote in 1865. (* Vide note B, Ecclesiastical Miracles, at the end
of the volume.)

126 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He dehghted in thinking
of the Saints ; he had a keen appreciation of the idea of
sanctity, its possibihty and its heights ; and he was more
than inclined to beheve a large amount of miraculous inter
ference as occurring in the early and middle ages. He
embraced the principle of penance and mortification. He
had a deep devotion to the Real Presence, in which he had
a firm faith. He was powerfuUy drawn to the Medieval
Church, but not to the Primitive.
He had a keen insight into abstract truth ; but he was 10
an Enghshman to the backbone in his severe adherence to
the real and the concrete. He had a most classical taste,
and a genius for philosophy and art ; and he was fond of
historical inquiry, and the pohtics of rehgion. He had no
turn for theology as such. He had no appreciation of the
writings of the Fathers, of the detaU or development of
doctrine, of the definite traditions of the Church viewed in
their matter, of the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils,
or of the controversies out of which they arose. He took
an eager, courageous view of things on the whole. I should 20
say that his power of entering into the minds of others did
not equal his other gifts ; he could not beheve, for instance,
that I reaUy held the Roman Church to be Antichristian.
On many points he would not beheve but that I agreed
with him, when I did not. He seemed not to understand
my -difficulties. His were of a different kind, the con
trariety between theory and fact. He was a high Tory of
the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism
of the opponents of the Reform BiU. He was smitten with
the love of the Theocratic Church ; he went abroad and 30
was shocked by the degeneracy which he thought he saw
in the Catholics of Italy.
It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my
theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom
I owe so much. He made me look with admiration towards
the Church of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike the
2 keen] vivid
15 had no appreciation of] set no sufficient value on
16 Fathers, of] Fathers, on 17 doctrine, of] doctrine, on
18 matter, of] matter, on 19 or of] or on
35 made me] taught me to

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 127
Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me graduaUy to beheve
in the Real Presence.
There is one remaining source of my opinions to be
mentioned, and that far from the least important. In pro
portion as I moved out of the shadow of (that) liberalism
which had hung over my course, my early devotion towards
the Fathers returned ; and in the Long Vacation of 1828
I set about to read them chronologically, beginning with
10 St. Ignatius and St. Justin. About 1830 a proposal was
made to me by Mr. Hugh Rose, who with Mr. LyaU (after
wards Dean of Canterbury) was providing writers for
a Theological Library, to furnish them with a History of
the Principal Councils. I accepted it, and at once set to
work on the Council of Nicsea. It was launching myseff
on an ocean with currents innumerable ; and I was drifted
back first to the ante-Nicene history, and then to the
Church of Alexandria. The work at last appeared under
the title of " The Arians of the Fourth Century ; " and
20 of its 422 pages, the first 117 consisted of introductory
matter, and the Council of Nicaea did not appear till the
254th, and then occupied at most twenty pages.
I do not know when I first learnt to consider that Anti
quity was the true exponent of the doctrines of Christianity
and the basis of the Church of England ; but I take it -for
granted that Bishop BuU, whose works at this time I
read, was my chief introduction to this principle. The
course of reading which I pursued in the composition
of my work was directly adapted to develope it in my
30 mind. What principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene
period was the great Church of Alexandria, the histori
cal centre of teaching in those times. Of Rome for some
centuries comparatively little is known. The battle of
Arianism was first fought in Alexandria ; Athanasius,
the champion of the truth, was Bishop of Alexandria ; and
in his writings he refers to the great religious names of an
earher date, to Origen, Dionysius, and others who were
the glory of its see, or of its school. The broad philosophy
15 launching] to launch 26 Bishop Bull, whose works] the works
of Bishop Bull, which 27 was] were 29 work] volume

128 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
of Clement and Origen carried me away ; the philosophy,
not the theological doctrine ; and I have drawn out some
features of it in my volume, with the zeal and freshness,
but with the partiality(,) of a neophyte. Some portions of
their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music
to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with
little external to encourage them, I had cherished so long.
These were based on the mystical or sacramental principle,
and spoke of the various Economies or Dispensations of
the Eternal. I understood them to mean that the exterior 10
world, physical and historical, was but the [outward]
manifestation (to our senses) of reahties greater than
itseff. Nature was a parable f1] : Scripture was an aUe-
gory : pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology,
properly understood, were but a preparation for the
Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were in a certain
sense prophets ; for " thoughts beyond their thought to
those high bards were given." There had been a (directly)
divine dispensation granted to the Jews ; (but) there had
been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favour of 20
the Gentiles. He who had taken the seed of Jacob for His
elect people, had not therefore cast the rest of mankind
out of His sight. In the fulness of time both Judaism and
Paganism had come to nought ; the outward framework,
which concealed yet suggested the Living Truth, had never
been intended to last, and it was dissolving under the
beams of the Sun of Justice (which shone) behind it and
through it. The process of change had been slow ; it had
been done not rashly, but by rule and measure, " at sundry
times and in divers manners," first one disclosure and then 30
another, till the whole (evangelical doctrine) was brought
into full manifestation. And thus room was made for the
anticipation of further and deeper disclosures, of truths
still under the veil of the letter, and hi their season to be
revealed. The visible world still remains without its
divine interpretation ; Holy Church hi her sacraments and
her hierarchical appointments, wiU remain(,) even to the
end of the world, only a symbol of those heavenly facts
10 them] these passages
Footnote omitted in 1865. [x Vid. Mr. Morris's beautiful poem with
this title.] 38 only] after all but

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 129
which fill eternity. Her mysteries are but the expressions
in human language of truths to which the human mind
is unequal. It is evident how much there was in all this
in correspondence with the thoughts which had attracted
me when I was young, and with the doctrine which I have
already connected with the Analogy and the Christian
Year. I suppose it was to the Alexandrian school and to the
early Church that I owe in particular what I definitely held
10 about the Angels. I viewed them, not only as the ministers
employed by the Creator in the Jewish and Christian dis
pensations, as we find on the face of Scripture, but as
carrying on, as Scripture also- implies, the Economy of the
Visible World. I considered them as the real causes of
motion, hght, and life, and of those elementary principles
of the physical universe, which, when offered in their
developments to our senses, suggest to us the notion of
cause and effect, and of what are caUed the laws of nature.
(This doctrine) I have drawn out [this doctrine] in my
20 Sermon for Michaelmas day, written not later than 1834.
I say of the Angels, " Every breath of air and ray of light
and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts
of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose
faces see God." Again, I ask what would be the thoughts
of a man who, " when examining a flower, or a herb, or
a pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as something so.
beneath him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered
that he was in the presence of some powerful being who
was hidden behind the visible things he was inspecting,( — )
30 who, though concealing his wise hand, was giving them
their beauty, grace, and perfection, as being God's instru
ment for the purpose,( — )nay, whose robe and ornaments
those objects were, which he was so eager to analyze ? "
and I therefore remark that " we may say with grateful
and simple hearts with the Three Holy Children, ' 0 all
ye works of the Lord, &c, &c, bless ye the Lord, praise
Him, and magnify Him for ever.' "
Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there
was a middle race, Baifwvia, neither in heaven, nor in
6 connected] associated 8 I suppose it was] It was, I. suppose,
20 not later than 1834] in 1831
APOLOGIA ]J

130 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
hell ; partially fallen, capricious, wayward ; noble or
crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be. They
gave a sort of inspiration or inteUigence to races, nations,
and classes of men. Hence the action of bodies politic and
associations, which is so different often from that of the
individuals who compose them. Hence the character and
the instinct of states and governments, of rehgious com
munities and communions. I thought they were inhabited
by unseen intelligences. My preference of the Personal to
the Abstract would naturaUy lead me to this view. 1 10
thought it countenanced by the mention of " the Prince
of Persia " in the Prophet Daniel ; and I think I con
sidered that it was of such intermediate beings that the
Apocalypse spoke, when it introduced " the Angels of the
Seven Churches."
In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine.
I said to my great friend, Samuel Francis Wood, in a letter
which came into my hands on his death, " I have an idea.
The mass of the Fathers, (Justin, Athenagoras, Irenseus,
Clement, TertuUian, Origen, Lactantius, Sulpicius, Ambrose, 20
Nazianzen,) hold that, though Satan feU from the beginning,
the Angels fell before the deluge, falling in love with the
daughters of men. This has lately come across me as
a remarkable solution of a notion which I cannot help hold
ing. Daniel speaks as if each nation had its guardian
Angel. I cannot but think that there are beings with
a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who
are the animating principles of certain institutions, &c,
&c  Take England, with many high virtues, and
yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John BuU is 30
a spirit neither of heaven nor hell . . . Has not the Christian
Church, in its parts, surrendered itseff to one or other of
these simulations of the truth ? . . . . How are we to avoid
Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the very image
of Christ ? " &c, &c.
2 They] These beings
5 so different often] often so different.
8-9 they were inhabited by unseen intelligences] these assemblages
had their life in certain unseen Powers
14 when it introduced] in its notice of
1 7 my great] an intimate and dear

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 131
I am aware that what I have been saying will, with
many men, be doing credit to my imagination at the
expense of my judgment — " Hippoclides doesn't care ; "
I am not setting myself up as a pattern of good sense or
of any thing else : I am but [vindicating myself from the
charge of dishonesty. — There is indeed another view of the
Economy brought out, in the course of the same disserta
tion on the subject, in my History of the Arians, which
has afforded matter for the latter imputation ; but I re-
10 serve it for the concluding portion of my Reply.]
WhUe I was engaged in writing my work upon the
Arians, great events were happening at home and abroad,
which brought out into form and passionate expression the
various behefs which had so gradually been winning their
way into my mind. Shortly, before, there had been a
Revolution in France ; the Bourbons had been dismissed :
and I beUeved that it was unchristian for nations to cast
off their governors, and, much more, sovereigns who had
the divine right of inheritance. Again, the great Reform
20 Agitation was going on around me as I wrote. The Whigs
had come into power ; Lord Grey had told the Bishops to
set their house in order, and some of the Prelates had been
insulted and threatened in the streets of London. The
vital question was(,) how were we to keep the Church from
being liberahzed ? there was such apathy on the subject
in some quarters, such imbecile alarm in others ; the true
principles of Churchmanship seemed so radically decayed,
and there was such distraction in the Councils of the Clergy.
(Blomfield,) The Bishop of London of the day, an active
30 and open-hearted man, had been for years engaged in
diluting the high orthodoxy of the Church by the intro-
5-10 for the passage in square brackets the following was substituted
in 1865 : giving a history of my opinions, and that, with the view of
showing that I have come by them through intelligible processes of
thought and honest external means. The doctrine indeed of the Economy
has in some quarters been itself condemned as intrinsically pernicious, —
as if leading to lying and equivocation, when applied, as I have applied
it in my remarks upon it in my History of the Arians, to matters of
conduct. My answer to this imputation I postpone to the concluding
pages of my Volume.
17 believed] held 28 Councils] councils

132 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
duction of (members of) the Evangelical body into places
of influence and trust. He had deeply offended men who
agreed (in opinion) with myself, by an off-hand saying (as
it was reported) to the effect that belief in the Apostolical
succession had gone out with the Non-jurors. " We can
count you," he said to some of the gravest and most
venerated persons of the old school. And the Evangelical
party itself [seemed] , with their late successes, (seemed) to
have lost that simplicity and unworldliness which I admired
so much in Milner and Scott. It was not that I did not 10
venerate such men as (Ryder,) the then Bishop of Lichfield,
and others of similar sentiments, who were not yet pro
moted out of the ranks of the Clergy, but I thought little
of them as a class. I thought they played into the hands
of the Liberals. With the Establishment thus divided and
threatened, thus ignorant of its true strength, I compared
that fresh vigorous power of which I was reading in the
first centuries. In her triumphant zeal on behaU of that
Primeval Mystery, to which I had had so great a devotion
from my youth, I recognized the movement of my Spiritual 20
Mother. " Incessu patuit Dea." The self-conquest of her
Ascetics, the patience of her Martyrs, the irresistible
determination of her Bishops, the joyous swing of her
advance, both exalted and abashed me. I said to myseU,
" Look on this picture and on that ; " I felt affection for
my own Church, but not tenderness ; I felt dismay at her
prospects, anger and scorn at her do-nothing perplexity.
I thought that if Liberalism once got a footing within her,
it was sure of the victory in the event. I saw that Refor
mation principles were powerless to rescue her. As to 30
leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination ;
still I ever kept before me that there was something
greater than the Established Church, and that that was
the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the begin
ning, of which she was but the local presence and (the)
organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be
dealt with strongly, or she would be lost. There was need
of a second Reformation.
At this time I was disengaged from College duties, and
14 them] the Evangelicals 17 power] Power
38 Reformation] reformation

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 133
my health had suffered from the labour involved in the
composition of my Volume. It was ready for the Press in
July, 1832, though not published till the end of 1833.
I was easily persuaded to join HurreU Froude and his
Father, who were going to the south of Europe for the
health of the former.
We set out in December, 1832. It was during this
expedition that my Verses which are in the Lyra Apostolica
were written ; — a few indeed before it, but not more than
10 one or two of them after it. Exchanging, as I was, definite
Tutorial labours, and the literary quiet and pleasant friend
ships of the last six years, for foreign countries and an
unknown future, I naturally was led to think that some
inward changes, as well as some larger course of action,
was coming upon me. At Whitchurch, while waiting for
the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote the verses about my
Guardian Angel, which begin with these words : " Are
these the tracks of some unearthly Friend 1 " and (which)
go on to speak of " the vision" which haunted me :— that
20 vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of
these compositions.
I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean, parted
with my friends at Rome ; went down for the second time
to Sicily (without companion), at the end of April, and got
back to England by Palermo in the early part of July.
The strangeness of foreign life threw me back into myself ;
I found pleasure in historical sites and beautiful scenes,
not in men and manners. We kept clear of Cathohcs
throughout our tour. I had a conversation with the Dean
30 of Malta, a most pleasant man, lately dead ; but it was
about the Fathers, and the Library of the great church.
I knew the Abbate Santini, at Rome, who did no more
than copy for me the Gregorian tones. Froude and I made
two calls upon Monsignore (now Cardinal) Wiseman at the
Collegio Inglese, shortly before we left Rome. (Once we
heard him preach at a church in the Corso.) I do not
recollect being in a room with any other ecclesiastics,
except a Priest at Castro-Giovanni in Sicily, who called
on me when I was ill, and with whom I wished to hold
11 labours] work 15 was] were

134 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
a controversy. As to Church Services, we attended the
Tenebrse, at the Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere ; and
that was all. My general feeling was, " AU, save the spirit
of man, is divine." I saw nothing but what was external ;
of the hidden life of Catholics I knew nothing. I was still
more driven back into myseU, and felt my isolation.
England was in my thoughts solely, and the news from
England came rarely and imperfectly. The Bill for the
Suppression of the Irish Sees was in progress, and fiUed
my mind. I had fierce thoughts against the Liberals. 10
It was the success of the Liberal cause which fretted me
inwardly. I became fierce against its instruments and its
manifestations. A French vessel was at Algiers ; I would
not even look at the tricolour. On my return, though
forced to stop a day at Paris, I kept indoors the whole
time, and all that I saw of that beautiful city, was what
I saw from the Diligence. The Bishop of London had
already sounded me as to my filling one of the WhitehaU
preacherships, which he had just then put on a new foot
ing ; but I was indignant at the Une which he was taking, 20
and from my Steamer I had sent home a letter declining
the appointment by -anticipation, should it be offered to
me. At this time I was specially annoyed with Dr. Arnold,
though it did not last into later years. Some one, I think,
asked(,) in conversation at Rome, whether a certain inter
pretation of Scripture was Christian ? it was answered
that Dr. Arnold took it ; I interposed, " But is he a Chris
tian ? " The subject went out of my head at once ; when
afterwards I was taxed with it I could say no more in
explanation, than ((what I believe was the fact)) that 30
I thought I must have been aUuding to some free views of
Dr. Arnold about the Old Testament : — I thought I must
have meant, " (Arnold answers for the interpretation,)
But who is to answer for Arnold ? " It was at Rome too
that we began the Lyra Apostolica which appeared monthly
in the British Magazine. The motto shows the feeling of
both Froude and myseU at the time : we borrowed from
M. Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose the words in which
15 a day] twenty- four hours
31 thought I must have been alluding to] must have had in mind

(TO THE YEAR 1833.) 135
Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, " You shall know
the difference, now that I am back again."
EspeciaUy when I was left by myself, the thought came
upon me that deliverance is wrought, not by the many
but by the few, not by bodies but by persons. Now it
was, I think, that I repeated to myself the words, which
had ever been dear to me from my school days, " Exoriare
aliquis ! " — now too, that Southey's beautiful poem of
Thalaba, for which I had an immense liking, came forcibly
10 to my mind. I began to think that I had a mission. There
are sentences of my letters to my friends to this effect, if
they are not destroyed. When we took leave of Monsignore
Wiseman, he had courteously expressed a wish that we
might make a second visit to Rome ; I said with great
gravity, " We have a work to do in England." I went
down at once to Sicily, and the presentiment grew stronger.
I struck into the middle of the island, and fell ill of a fever
at Leonforte. My servant thought that I was dying, and
begged for my last directions. I gave them, as he wished ;
20 but I said, " I shall not die." I repeated, " I shall not die,
for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned
against light." I never have been able to make out at all
•what I meant.
I got to Castro-Giovanni, and was laid up there for
nearly three weeks. Towards the end of May I set off for
Palermo, taking three days for the journey. Before start
ing from my inn in the morning of May 26th or 27th, I sat
down on my bed, and began to sob bitterly. My servant,
who had acted as my nurse, asked what ailed me. I could
30 only answer (him), " I have a work to do in England."
I was aching to get home ; yet for want of a vessel
I was kept at Palermo for three weeks. I began to visit
the Churches, and they calmed my impatience, though
I did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the
Presence of the Blessed Sacrament there. At last I got
off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. We were
becalmed a whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio. Then
it was that I wrote the lines, " Lead, kindly light," which
have since become well known. I was writing verses the
25 set off] left

136 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
whole time of my passage. At length I got to Marseilles,
and set off for England. The fatigue of traveUing was too
much for me, and I was laid up for several days at Lyons.
At last I got off again, and did not stop night or day(,
(excepting the compulsory delay at Paris,)) tiU I reached
England, and my mother's house. My brother had arrived
from Persia only a few hours before. This was on the
Tuesday. The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble
preached the Assize Sermon in the University Pulpit. It
was published under the title of " National Apostasy." 10
I have ever considered and kept the day, as the start of
the religious movement of 1833.

PAKT IV.
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, May 12, 1864.]

ff 3

PART IV.
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS (FROM 1833 TO 1839).
In spite of the foregoing pages, I have no romantic story
to tell ; but I wrote them, because it is my duty to tell
things as they took place. I have not exaggerated the feel
ings with which I returned to England, and I have no
desire to dress up the events which followed, so as to make
them in keeping with the narrative which has gone before.
I soon relapsed into the every-day life which I had hitherto
led ; in aU things the same, except that a new object was
given me. I had employed myseU in my own rooms in
10 reading and writing, and in the care of a Church, before I left
England, and I returned to the same occupations when
I was back again. And yet perhaps those first vehement
feelings which carried me on were necessary for the begin
ning of the Movement ; and afterwards, when it was once
begun, the special need of me was over.
When I got home from abroad, I found that already
a movement had commenced in opposition to the specific
danger which at that time was threatening the reUgion of
the nation and its Church. Several zealous and able men
20 had united their counsels, and were in correspondence with
each other. The principal of these were Mr. Keble, HurreU
Froude, who had reached home long before me, Mr.
William Palmer of Dublin and Worcester College (not
Mr. W(Uham) Palmer of Magdalen, who is now a Catholic),
Mr. Arthur Perceval, and Mr. Hugh Rose.
To mention Mr. Hugh Rose's name is to kindle in the
minds of those who knew him, a host of pleasant and
affectionate remembrances. He was the man above aU
others fitted by his cast of mind and literary powers to
30 make a stand, if a stand could be made, against the calamity
Part IV] Chapter II 2 wrote] have written

140 HISTORY OP MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
of the times. He was gifted with a high and large mind,
and a true sensibility of what was great and beautiful ; he
wrote with warmth and energy ; and he had a cool head
and cautious judgment. He spent his strength and
shortened his hfe, Pro Ecclesia Dei, as he understood that
sovereign idea. Some years earlier he had been the first
to give warning, I think from the University Pulpit at
Cambridge, of the perils to England which lay in the
biblical and theological speculations of Germany. The
Reform agitation foUowed, and the Whig Government 10
came into power ; and he anticipated in their distribution
of Church patronage the authoritative introduction of
liberal opinions into the country [: — by " Uberal " I mean
fiber ahsm in religion, for questions of poUtics, as such, do
not come into this narrative at aUJ. He feared that by
the Whig party a door would be opened in England to the
most grievous of heresies, which never could be closed
again. In order under such grave circumstances to unite
Churchmen together, and to make a front against the
coming danger, he had in 1832 commenced the British 20
Magazine, and in the same year he came to Oxford in the
summer term, in order to beat up for writers for his publica
tion ; on that occasion I became known to him through
Mr. Palmer. His reputation and position came in aid of
his obvious fitness, in point of character and inteUect, to
become the centre of an ecclesiastical movement, if such
a movement were to depend on the action of a party. His
delicate health, his premature death, would have frustrated
the expectation, even though the new school of opinion had
been more exactly thrown into the shape of a party, than 30
in fact was the case. But he zealously backed up the first
efforts of those who were principals in it ; and, when he
went abroad to die, in 1838, he aUowed me the solace of
expressing my feelings of attachment and gratitude to him
by addressing him, in the dedication of a volume of my
Sermons, as the man, " who, when hearts were failing,
bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves
to our true Mother."
But there were other reasons, besides Mr. Rose's state
of health, which hindered those who so much admired him 40
from availing themselves of his close co-operation in the

(PROM 1833 TO 1839.) 141
coming fight. United as both he and they were in the
general scope of the Movement, they were in discordance
with each other from the first in their estimate of the means
to be adopted for attaining it. Mr. Rose had a position in
the Church, a name, and serious responsibilities ; he had
direct ecclesiastical superiors ; he had intimate relations
with his own University, and a large clerical connexion
through the country. Froude and I were nobodies ; with
no characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us.
10 Rose could not go a-head across country, as Froude had
no scruples in doing. Froude was a bold rider, as on horse
back, so also in his speculations. After a long conversa
tion with him on the logical bearing of his principles,
Mr. Rose said of him with quiet humour, that " he did not
seem to be afraid of inferences." It was simply the truth ;
Froude had that strong hold of first principles, and that
keen perception of their value, that he was comparatively
indifferent to the revolutionary action which would attend
on their application to a given state of things ; whereas
20 in the thoughts of Rose, as a practical man, existing facts
had the precedence of every other idea, and the chief test
of the soundness of a line of pohcy lay in the considera
tion whether it would work. This was one of the first
questions, which, as it seemed to me, ever occurred to his
mind. With Froude, Erastianism, — that is, the union (so
he viewed it) of Church and State, — was the parent, or if
not the parent, the serviceable and sufficient tool, of
Uberalism. Till that union was snapped, Christian doctrine
never could be safe ; and, while he well knew how high
30 and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose, yet he used to
apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his own mouth ; —
Rose was a " conservative." By bad luck, I brought out
this word to Mr. Rose in a letter of my own, which I wrote
to him in criticism of something he had inserted into the
Magazine : I got a vehement rebuke for my pains, for
though Rose pursued a conservative line, he had as high
a disdain, as Froude could have, of a worldly ambition,
and an extreme sensitiveness of such an imputation.
But there was another reason still, and a more elementary
24 ever] on every occasion 34 into the] in his

142 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
one, which severed Mr. Rose from the Oxford Movement.
Living movements do not come of committees, nor are
great ideas worked out through the post, even though it
had been the penny post. This principle deeply penetrated
both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended
to us the course which things soon took spontaneously, and
without set purpose of our own. Universities are the
natural centres of intellectual movements. How could
men act together, whatever was their zeal, unless they
were united in a sort of individuality ? Now, first, we had 10
no unity of place. Mr. Rose was in Suffolk, Mr. Perceval
in Surrey, Mr. Keble in Gloucestershire ; HurreU Froude
had to go for his health to Barbados. Mr. Palmer indeed
was in Oxford ; this was an important advantage, and told
well in the first months of the Movement ; — but another
condition, besides that of place, was required.
A far more essential unity was that of antecedents, —
a common history, common memories, an intercourse of
mind with mind in the past, and a progress and increase
of that intercourse in the present. Mr. Perceval, to be 20
sure, was a pupil of Mr. Keble's ; but Keble, Rose, and
Palmer, represented distinct parties, or at least tempers,
in the Establishment. Mr. Palmer had many conditions
of authority and influence. He was the only reaUy learned
man among us. He understood theology as a science ; he
was practised in the scholastic mode of controversial writ
ing ; and I believe, was as well acquainted, as he was
dissatisfied, with the Catholic schools. He was as decided
in his religious views, as he was cautious and even subtle
in their expression, and gentle in their enforcement. But30
he was deficient in depth ; and besides, coming from
a distance, he never had really grown into an Oxford
man, nor was he generally received as such ; nor had he
any insight into the force of personal influence and con
geniality of thought in carrying out a religious theory, —
a condition which Froude and I considered essential to
any true success in the stand which had to be made against
Liberalism. Mr. Palmer had a certain connexion, as it
may be called, in the Establishment, consisting of high
13-14 Barbados. . . . indeed was] Barbadoes. . . was indeed
20 of] in

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 14;i
Church dignitaries, Archdeacons, London Rectors, and the
like, who belonged to what was commonly called the high-
and-dry school. They were far more opposed than even
he was to the irresponsible action of individuals. Of course
their beau ideal in ecclesiastical action was a board of safe,
sound, sensible men. Mr. Palmer was their organ and
representative ; and he wished for a Committee, an Associa
tion, with rules and meetings, to protect the interests of
the Church in its existing peril. He was in some measure
10 supported by Mr. Perceval.
I, on the other hand, had out of my own head begun the
Tracts ; and these, as representing the antagonist principle
of personality, were looked upon by Mr. Palmer's friends
with considerable alarm. The great point at the time
with these good men in London, — some of them men of
the highest principle, and far from influenced by what we
used to call Erastianism, — was to put down the Tracts.
I, as their editor, and mainly their author, was not un
naturally willing to give way. Keble and Froude advo-
20 cated their continuance strongly, and were angry with me
for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the
anxiety of his own friends ; and, kind as were his thoughts
of us, he stUl not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own,
some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel
friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking,
took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing
with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and
scandalized him considerably. As for me, there was matter
enough in the early Tracts to give him equal disgust ; and
30 doubtless I much tasked his generosity, when he had to
defend me, whether against the London dignitaries, or the
country clergy. Oriel, from the time of Dr. Copleston to
Dr. Hampden, had had a name far and wide for liberality
of thought ; it had received a formal recognition from the
Edinburgh Review, if my memory serves me truly, as the
schoolof speculative philosophy in England ; and on one
occasion, in 1833, when I presented myself, with some of
the first papers of the Movement, to a country clergyman
in Northamptonshire, he paused awhile, and then, eyeing
18-19 not unnaturally] of course

144 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
me with significance, asked, " Whether Whately was at
the bottom of them ? "
Mr. Perceval wrote to me in support of the judgment of
Mr. Palmer and the dignitaries. I replied in a letter, which
he afterwards published. "As to the Tracts," I said to
him (I quote my own words from his Pamphlet), " every
one has his own taste. You object to some things, another
to others. If we altered to please every one, the effect
would be spoiled. They were not intended as symbols
e cathedrd, but as the expression of individual minds ; and 10
individuals, feeling strongly, while on the one hand, they are
incidentaUy faulty in mode or language, are stiU peculiarly
effective. No great work was done by a system ; whereas
systems rise out of individual exertions. Luther was an
individual. The very faults of an individual excite atten
tion ; he loses, but his cause (if good and he powerful-
minded) gains. This is the way of things : we promote
truth by a seff-sacrifice."
The visit which I made to the Northamptonshire Rector
was only one of a series of similar expedients, which 20
I adopted during the year 1833. I caUed upon clergy in
various parts of the country, whether I was acquainted
with them or not, and I attended at the houses of friends
where several of them were from time to time assembled.
I do not think that much came of such attempts, nor were
they quite in my way. Also I wrote various letters to
clergymen, which fared not much better, except that they
advertised the fact, that a raUy in favour of the Church
was commencing. I did not care whether my visits were
made to high Church or low Church ; I wished to make 30
a strong pull in union with all who were opposed to the
principles of liberalism, whoever they might be. Giving
my name to the Editor, I commenced a series of letters in
the Record Newspaper : they ran to a considerable length ;
and were borne by him with great courtesy and patience.
They were headed as being on " Church Reform." The
first was on the Revival of Church Discipline ; the second,
on its Scripture proof ; the third, on the appUcation of the
doctrine ; the fourth, was an answer to objections ; the
36 They wcro headed as being on] The heading given to them was,

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 145
fifth, was on the benefits of discipline. And then the series
was abruptly brought to a termination. I had said what
I reaUy felt, and what was also in keeping with the strong
teaching of the Tracts, but I suppose the Editor discovered
in me some divergence from his own line of thought ; for
at length he sent a very civil letter, apologizing for the
non-appearance of my sixth communication, on the ground
that it contained an attack upon " Temperance Societies,"
about which he did not wish a controversy in his columns.
io He added, however, his serious regret at the character of
the Tracts. I had subscribed a small sum in 1828 towards
the first start of the Record.
Acts of the officious character, which I have been describ
ing, were uncongenial to my natural temper, to the genius
of the Movement, and to the historical mode of its success :
— they were the fruit of that exuberant and joyous energy
with which I had returned from abroad, and which I never
had before or since. I had the exultation of health restored,
and home regained. While I was at Palermo and thought
20 of the breadth of the Mediterranean, and the wearisome
journey across France, I could not imagine how I was ever
to get to England ; but now I was amid familiar scenes
and faces once more. And my health and strength came
back to me with such a rebound, that some friends at
Oxford, on seeing me, did not well know that it was I, and
hesitated before they spoke to me. And I had the con
sciousness that I was employed in that work which I had
been dreaming about, and which I felt to be so momentous
and inspiring. I had a supreme confidence in our cause ;
30 we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was
delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church,
and which was registered and attested in the Anglican
formularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient
religion had well nigh faded away out of the land, through
the political changes of the last 150 years, and it must be
restored. It would be in fact a second Reformation : —
a better reformation, for it would be a return not to the
sixteenth century, but to jthe. seventeenth. No time was
to be lost, for the WEgs"had come to do their worst, and
40 the rescue might come too late. Bishopricks were already
in course of suppression ; Church property was in course of

146 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
confiscation ; Sees would soon be receiving unsuitable
occupants. We knew enough to begin preaching upon, and
there was no one else to preach. I felt as on (board)
a vessel, which first gets under weigh, and then [clears out]
the deck (is cleared out), and [stores away] luggage and live
stock (stowed away) into their proper receptacles.
Nor was it only that I had confidence in our cause, both
in itself, and in its controversial force, but besides, I despised
every rival system of doctrine and its arguments (too).
As to the high Church and the low Church, I thought that 10
the one had not much more of a logical basis than the
other ; while I had a thorough contempt for the evangelical.
I had a real respect for the character of many of the advo
cates of each party, but that did not give cogency to their
arguments ; and I thought on the other hand that the Apos
tolical form of doctrine was essential and imperative, and its
grounds of evidence impregnable. Owing to this (supreme)
confidence, it came to pass at that time, that there was a
double aspect in my bearing towards others, which it is neces
sary for me to enlarge upon. My behaviour had a mixture in 20
it both of fierceness and of sport ; and on this account, I dare
say, it gave offence to many ; nor am I here defending it.
I wished men to agree with me, and I walked with them
step by step, as far as they would go ; this I did sincerely ;
but if they would stop, I did not much care about it, but
walked on, with some satisfaction that I had brought them
so far. I liked to make them preach the truth without
knowing it, and encouraged them to do so. It was a satis
faction to me that the Record had aUowed me to say so
much in its columns, without remonstrance. I was amused 30
to hear of one of the Bishops, who, on reading an early
Tract on the Apostolical Succession, could not make up
his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. I was not
distressed at the wonder or anger of dull and self -conceited
men, at propositions which they did not understand.
When a correspondent, in good faith, wrote to a news-
4, 5 clears out the deck, and stores away luggage and live stock
1864] the deck is cleared out, and the luggage and live stock stored
away 1864 (another copy). 8 controversial . . . besides] polemical
. . . also, on the other hand 12 evangelical] controversial position
of the latter 15 other hand] contrary

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 147
paper, to say that the " Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist,"
spoken of in the Tract, was a false print for " Sacrament,"
I thought the mistake too pleasant to be corrected before
I was asked about it. I was not unwilling to draw an
opponent on step by step (, by virtue of his own opinions,)
to the brink of some intellectual absurdity, and to leave
him to get back as he could. I was not unwilling to play
witha man, who asked me impertinent questions. I think
I had in my mouth the words of the Wise man, " Answer
10 a fool according to his folly," especially if he was prying or
spiteful. I was reckless of the gossip which was circulated
about me ; and, when I might easily have set it right, did
not deign to do so. Also I used irony in conversation,
when matter-of-fact men would not see what I meant.
This kind of behaviour was a sort of habit with me. If
I have ever trifled with my subject, it was a more serious
fault. I never used arguments which I saw clearly to be
unsound. The nearest approach which I remember to
such conduct, but which I consider was clear of it never -
20 theless, was in the case of Tract 15. The matter of this
Tract was supplied to me by a friend, to whom I had
applied for assistance, but who did not wish to be mixed up
with the publication. He gave it me, that I might throw it
into shape, and I took his arguments as they stood. In
the chief portion of the Tract I fully agreed ; for instance,
as to what it says about the Council of Trent ; but there
were arguments, or some argument, in it which I did not
follow ; I do not recoUect what it was. Froude, I think,
was disgusted with the whole Tract, and accused me of
so economy in pubUshing it. It is principally through Mr.
Froude's Remains that this word has got into our language.
I think, I defended myseU with arguments such as these : —
that, as every one knew, the Tracts were written by various
persons who agreed together in their doctrine, but not
always in the arguments by which it was to be proved ;
that we must be tolerant of difference of opinion among
ourselves ; that the author of the Tract had a right to his
own opinion, and that the argument in question was
ordinarily received ; that I did not give my own name or
21 supplied] furnished

148 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
authority, nor was asked for my personal belief, but only
acted instrumentally, as one might translate a friend's
book into a foreign language. I account these to be good
arguments ; nevertheless I feel also that such practices
admit of easy abuse and are consequently dangerous ; but
then again, I feel also this, — that if all such mistakes were
to be severely visited, not many men in public life would
be left with a character for honour and honesty.
This absolute confidence in my cause, which led me to
the imprudence or wantonness which I have been instanc- 10
ing, also laid me open, not unfairly, to the opposite charge
of fierceness in certain steps which I took, or words which
I published. In the Lyra Apostolica, I have said that,
before learning to love, we must " learn to hate ; " though
I had explained my words by adding " hatred of sin." In
one of my first Sermons I said, "I do not shrink from
uttering my firm conviction that it would be a gain to the
country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted,
more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present
it shows itself to be." I added, of course, that it would be 20
an absurdity to suppose such tempers of mind desirable in
themselves. The corrector of the press bore these strong
epithets till he got to " more fierce," and then he put in the
margin a query. In the very first page of the first Tract,
I said of the Bishops, that, " black event though it would
be for the country, yet we could not wish them a more
blessed termination of their course, than the spoUing of
their goods and martyrdom." In consequence of a passage
in my work upon the Arian History, a Northern dignitary
wrote to accuse me of wishing to re-estabUsh the blood and 30
torture of the Inquisition. Contrasting heretics and
heresiarchs, I had said, " The latter should meet with no
mercy ; he assumes the office of the Tempter, and, so far
forth as his error goes, must be dealt with by the com
petent authority, as if he were embodied evil. To spare
him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the
souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself."
I cannot deny that this is a very fierce passage ; but Arms
was banished, not burned ; and it is only fair to myself to
10 imprudence] negligence

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 149
say that neither at this, nor any other time of my life, not
even when I was fiercest, could I have even cut off a
Puritan's ears, and I think the sight of a Spanish auto-
da-fe would have been the death of me. Again, when one
of my friends, of liberal and evangehcal opinions, wrote to
expostulate with me on the course I was taking, I said
that we would ride over him and his, as Othniel prevaUed
over Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. Again,
I would have no dealings with my brother, and I put my
conduct upon a syUogism. I said, " St. Paul bids us avoid
io those who cause divisions ; you cause divisions : therefore
I must avoid you." I dissuaded a lady from attending the
marriage of a sister who had seceded from the Anglican
Church. No wonder that Blanco White, who had known
me under such different circumstances, now hearing the
general course that I was taking, was amazed at the change
which he recognized in me. He speaks bitterly and unfairly
of me in his letters contemporaneously with the first years
of the Movement ; but in 1839, when looking back, he
uses terms of me, which it would be hardly modest in me
20 to quote, were it not that what he says of me in praise is
but part of a whole account of me. He says : "In this
party [the anti-Peel, in 1829] I found, to my great surprise,
my dear friend, Mr. Newman of Oriel. As he had been
one of the annual Petitioners to Parliament for Catholic
Emancipation, his sudden union with the most violent
bigots was inexplicable to me. That change was the first
manifestation of the mental revolution, which has suddenly
made him one of the leading persecutors of Dr. Hampden,
and the most active and influential member of that associa-
30 tion, caUed the Puseyite party, from which we have those
very strange productions, entitled, Tracts for the Times.
While stating these pubhc facts, my heart feels a pang at
the recoUection of the affectionate and mutual friendship
between that exceUent man and myself ; a friendship,
which his principles of orthodoxy could not aUow him to
continue in regard to one, whom he now regards as inevit
ably doomed to eternal perdition. Such is the venomous
character of orthodoxy. What mischief must it create in
19 when] on 21 is but part of a whole account of me] occurs in
the midst of blame 23 These are the Author's []

150 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
a bad heart and narrow mind, when it can work so effec
tually for evil, in one of the most benevolent of bosoms,
and one of the ablest of minds, in the amiable, the intel
lectual, the refined John Henry Newman ! " (Vol. hi.
p. 131.) He adds that I would have nothing to do with
him, a circumstance which I do not recoUect, and very
much doubt.
I have spoken of my firm confidence in my position ;
and now let me state more definitely what the position
was which I took up, and the propositions about which 10
I was so confident. These were three : —
1. First was the principle of dogma : my battle was with
liberalism ; by liberalism I meant the anti-dogmatic prin
ciple and its developments. This was the first point on
which I was certain. Here I make a remark : persistence
in a given belief is no sufficient test of its truth ; but
departure from it is at least a slur upon the man who has
felt so certain about it. In proportion then as I had in
1832 a strong persuasion in beliefs which I have since
given up, so far a sort of guilt attaches to me, not only for -m
that vain confidence, but for my multiform conduct in
consequence of it. But here I have the satisfaction of
feeling that I have nothing to retract, and nothing to
repent of. The main principle of the Movement is as dear
to me now, as it ever was. I have changed in many things :
in this I have not. From the age of fifteen, dogma has
been the fundamental principle of my rehgion : I know
no other religion ; I cannot enter into the idea of any other
sort of rehgion ; rehgion, as a mere sentiment, is to me
a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love 30
without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact
of a Supreme Being. What I held in 1816, I held in 1833,
and I hold in 1864. Please God, I shaU hold it to the end.
Even when I was under Dr. Whately's influence, I had no
temptation to be less zealous for the great dogmas of the
faith, and at various times I used to resist such trains of
19 in beliefs] of the truth of opinions
21 my multiform conduct in] all the various proceedings which were
the 22 here] under this first head 24 Movement] movement

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 151
thought on his part, as seemed to me (rightly or wrongly)
to obscure them. Such was the fundamental principle of
the Movement of 1833.
2. Secondly, I was confident in the truth of a certain
definite rehgious teaching, based upon this foundation of
dogma ; viz. that there was a visible Church (,) with sacra
ments and rites which are the channels of invisible grace.
I thought that this was the doctrine of Scripture, of the
early Church, and of the Anglican Church. Here again,
10 I have not changed in opinion ; I am as certain now on
this point as I was in 1833, and have never ceased to be
certain. In 1834 and the following years I put this eccle
siastical doctrine on a broader basis, after reading Laud,
Bramhall, and Stillingfleet and other Anglican divines on
the one hand, and after prosecuting the study of the
Fathers on the other ; but the doctrine of 1833 was
strengthened in me, not changed. When I began the Tracts
for the Times I rested the main doctrine, of which I am
speaking, upon Scripture, (on the Anglican Prayer Book,
20 and) on St. Ignatius's Epistles[, and on the Anglican
Prayer Book]. (1) As to the existence of a visible Church,
I especially argued out the point from Scripture, in Tract 11,
viz. from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. (2) As
to the Sacraments and Sacramental rites, I stood on the
Prayer Book. I appealed to the Ordination Service, in
which the Bishop says, " Receive the Holy Ghost ; " to
the Visitation Service, which teaches confession and
absolution ; to the Baptismal Service, in which the Priest
speaks of the child after baptism as regenerate ; to the
30 Catechism, in which Sacramental Communion is receiving
" verily (and indeed) the Body and Blood of Christ ; " to
the Commination Service, in which we are told to do
" works of penance ; " to the CoUects, Epistles, and
Gospels, to the calendar and rubricks, (portions of the
Prayer Book,) wherein we find the festivals of the Apostles,
notice of certain other Saints, and days of fasting and
abstinence. (3.) And further, as to the Episcopal system, I founded
it upon the Epistles of St. Ignatius, which inculcated it in
40 various ways. One passage especially impressed itself upon
me : speaking of cases of disobedience to ecclesiastical

152 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
authority, he says, "A man does not deceive that Bishop
whom he sees, but he practises rather upon the Bishop In
visible, and so the question is not with flesh, but with God,
who knows the secret heart." I wished to act on this principle
to the letter, and I may say with confidence that I never
consciously transgressed it. I loved to act in the sight of
my Bishop, as if [I was, as] it were[, in] the sight of God.
It was one of my special (supports and) safeguards against
myself [and of my supports] ; I could not go very wrong
while I had reason to believe that I was in no respect dis- 10
pleasing him. It was not a mere formal obedience to rule
that I put before me, but I desired to please him personaUy,
as I considered him set over me by the Divine Hand.
I was strict in observing my clerical engagements, not only
because they were engagements, but because I considered
myseff simply as the servant and instrument of my Bishop.
I did not care much for the Bench of Bishops, except as
they might be the voice of my Church : nor should I have
cared much for a Provincial Council ; nor for a Diocesan
Synod presided over by my Bishop ; aU these matters 20
seemed to me to be jure ecclesiastico, but what to me was
jure divino was the voice of my Bishop in his own person.
My own Bishop was my Pope ; I knew no other ; the
successor of the Apostles, the Vicar of Christ. This was
but a practical exhibition of the Anglican theory of Church
Government, as I had already drawn it out myself (, after
various Anglican Divines). This continued aU through my
course ; when at length in 1845 I wrote to Bishop Wiseman,
in whose Vicariate I found myseff, to announce my con
version, I could find nothing better to say to him, than that 30
I would obey the Pope as I had obeyed my own Bishop in
the Anglican Church. My duty to him was my point of
honour ; his disapprobation was the one thing which
I could not bear. I believe it to have been a generous
and honest feeling ; and in consequence I was rewarded
by having aU my time for ecclesiastical superior a man,
whom had I had a choice, I should have preferred, out
and out, to any other Bishop on the Bench, and for whose
memory I have a special affection, Dr. Bagot — a man of
2 upon 1S64] with 1864 (another copy). 1865.
6 in the sight of my Bishop] as feeling myself in my Bishop's sight

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 153
noble mind, and as kind-hearted and as considerate as he
was noble. He ever sympathized with me in my trials
which foUowed ; it was my own fault, that I was not
brought into more familiar personal relations with him
than it was my happiness to be. May his name be ever
blessed !
And now in concluding my remarks on the second point
on which my confidence rested, I observe that here again
I have no retractation to announce as to its main outline.
10 While I am now as clear in my acceptance of the principle
of dogma, as I was in 1833 and 1816, so again I am now as
firm in my belief of a visible Church, of the authority of
Bishops, of the grace of the sacraments, of the religious
worth of works of penance, as I was in 1833. I have added
Articles to my Creed ; but the old ones, which I then held
with a divine faith, remain.
3. But now, as to the third point on which I stood in
1833, and which I have utterly renounced and trampled
upon since, — my then view of the Church of Rome ; — I will
20 speak about it as exactly as I can. When I was young, as
I have said already, and after I was grown up, I thought
the Pope to be Antichrist. At Christmas 1824-5 I preached
a Sermon to that effect. (But) In 1827 I accepted eagerly
the stanza in the Christian Year, which many people
thought too charitable, " Speak gently of thy sister's fall."
From the time that I knew Froude I got less and less bitter
on the subject. I spoke (successively, but I cannot teU in
what order or at what dates) of the Roman Church as being
bound up with " the cause of Antichrist," as being one of
so the " many antichrists " foretold by St. John, as being
influenced by " the spirit of Antichrist," and as having
something " very Antichristian " or " unchristian " about
her. From my boyhood and in 1824 I considered, after
Protestant authorities, that St. Gregory I. about a.d. 600
was the first Pope that was Antichrist, and again that he
was also a great and holy man ; (but) in 1832-3 I thought
the Church of Rome was bound up with the cause of Anti
christ by the Council of Trent. When it was that in my
deliberate judgment I gave up the notion altogether in
S observe] repeat 35 and again that] though, in spite of this,

154 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
any shape, that some special reproach was attached to her
name, I cannot tell ; but I had a shrinking from renouncing
it, even when my reason so ordered me, from a sort of con
science or prejudice, I think up to 1843. Moreover, at
least during the Tract Movement, I thought the essence
of her offence to consist in the honours which she paid to
the Blessed Virgin and the Saints ; and the more I grew
in devotion, both to the Saints and to Our Lady, the more
impatient was I at the Roman practices, as if those glorified
creations of God must be gravely shocked, if pain could be 10
theirs, at the undue veneration of which they were the
objects. On the other hand, HurreU Froude in his familiar con
versations was always tending to rub the idea out of my
mind. In a passage of one of his letters from abroad,
alluding, I suppose, to what I used to say in opposition to
him, he observes : " I think people are injudicious who
talk against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints,
and honouring the Virgin and images, &c. These things
may perhaps be idolatrous ; I cannot make up my mind 20
about it ; but to my mind it is the Carnival that is real
practical idolatry, as it is written, ' the people sat down
to eat and drink, and rose up to play.' " The Carnival,
I observe in passing, is, in fact, one of those very excesses,
to which, for at least three centuries, rehgious Cathohcs
have ever opposed themselves, as we see in the life of
St. Philip, to say nothing of the present day ; but this he
did not know. Moreover, from Froude I learned to admire
the great medieval Pontiffs ; and, of course, when I had
come to consider the Council of Trent to be the turning- 30
point of the history of Christian Rome, I found myself
as free, as I was rejoiced, to speak in their praise. Then,
when I was abroad, the sight of so many great places,
venerable shrines, and noble churches, much impressed
my imagination. And my heart was touched also. Making
an expedition on foot across some wUd country in SicUy,
at six in the morning I came upon a small church ; I heard
voices, and I looked in. It was crowded, and the congrega
tion was singing. Of course it was the Mass, though I did
27 he did not] we did not then

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 155
not know it at the time. And, in my weary days at Palermo,
I was not ungrateful for the comfort which I had received
in frequenting the Churches, nor did I ever forget it.
Then, again, her zealous maintenance of the doctrine and
the rule of celibacy, which I recognized as Apostolic, and
her faithful agreement with Antiquity in so many (other)
points [besides,] which were dear to me, was an argument
as well as a plea in favour of the great Church of Rome.
Thus I learned to have tender feelings towards her ; but
io stUl my reason was not affected at all. My judgment was
against her, when viewed as an institution, as truly as it
ever had been.
This conflict between reason and affection I expressed
in one of the early Tracts, pubhshed July, 1834. " Con
sidering the high gifts and the strong claims of the Church
of Rome and its dependencies on our admiration, reverence,
love, and gratitude ; how could we withstand it, as we do,
how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness,
and rushing into communion with it, but for the words of
20 Truth itself, which bid us prefer It to the whole world ?
' He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not
worthy of me.' How could ' we learn to be severe, and
execute judgment,' but for the warning of Moses against
even a divinely-gifted teacher, who should preach new
gods ; and the anathema of St. Paul even against Angels
and Apostles, who should bring in a new doctrine ? " —
Records, No. 24. My feeling was something like that of
a man, who is obliged in a court of justice to bear witness
against a friend ; or like my own now, when I have said,
so and shall say, so many things on which I had rather be
silent. As a matter, then, of simple conscience, though it went
against my feelings, I felt it to be a duty to protest against
the Church of Rome. But besides this, it was a duty,
because the prescription of such a protest was a living
principle of my own Church, as expressed in not simply
a catena, but (by) a consensus of her divines, and (by) the
voice of her people. Moreover, such a protest was neces
sary as an integral portion of her controversial basis ; for
36 in not simply] not simply in

156 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
I adopted the argument of Bernard Gilpin, that Pro
testants " were not able to give any firm and solid reason
of the separation besides this, to wit, that the Pope is
Antichrist." But while I thus thought such a protest to
be based upon truth, and to be a rehgious duty, and a rule
of Anglicanism, and a necessity of the case, I did not at aU
hke the work. HurreU Froude attacked me for doing it ;
and, besides, I felt that my language had a vulgar and
rhetorical look about it. I believed, and reaUy measured,
my words, when I used them ; but I knew that I had 10
a temptation, on the other hand, to say against Rome as
much as ever I could, in order to protect myself against
the charge of Popery.
And now I come to the very point, for which I have
introduced the subject of my feelings about Rome. I felt
such confidence in the substantial justice of the charges
which I advanced against her, that I considered them to
be a safeguard and an assurance that no harm could ever
arise from the freest exposition of what I used to call
Anglican principles. AU the world was astounded at what 20
Froude and I were saying : men said that it was sheer
Popery. I answered, " True, we seem to be making straight
for it ; but go on awhile, and you wiU come to a deep
chasm across the path, which makes real approximation
impossible." And I urged in addition, that many Anglican
divines had been accused of Popery, yet had died in their
Angficanism ; — now, the ecclesiastical principles which
I professed, they had professed also ; and the judgment
against Rome which they had formed, I had formed also.
Whatever faults then (had to be supplied in) the (existing) 30
Anglican system [might have], and however boldly I might
point them out, any how that system was not vulnerable
on the side of Rome, and might be mended in spite of her.
In that very agreement of the two forms of faith, close as
it might seem, would really be found, on examination, the
elements and principles of an essential discordance.
It was with this supreme persuasion on my mind that
I fancied that there could be no rashness in giving to the
30 faults] deficiencies
32 was not vulnerable on the side] would not in the process be brought
nearer to the special creed 37 supreme] absolute

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 157
world in fullest measure the teaching and the writings of
the Fathers. I thought that the Church of England was
substantially founded upon them. I did not know all that
the Fathers had said, but I felt that, even when their
tenets happened to differ from the Anglican, no harm
could come of reporting them. I said out what I was
clear they had said ; I spoke vaguely and imperfectly, of
what I thought they said, or what some of them had said .
Any how, no harm could come of bending the crooked stick
io the other way, in the process of straightening it ; it was
impossible to break it. If there was any thing in the
Fathers of a startling character, it would be only for
a time ; it would admit of explanation (, or it might suggest
something profitable to Anglicans) ; it could not lead to
Rome. I express this view of the matter in a passage of
the Preface to the first volume, which I edited, of the
Library of the Fathers. Speaking of the strangeness at
first sight, presented to the Anglican mind, of some of
their principles and opinions, I bid the reader go forward
20 hopefully, and not indulge his criticism till he knows
more about them, than he will learn at the outset. " Since
the evil," I say, " is in the nature of the case itself, we can
do no more than have patience, and recommend patience
to others, and, with the racer in the Tragedy, look for
ward steadily and hopefully to the event, ™ rikei irioriv
4>ipwv, when, as we trust, all that is inharmonious and
anomalous in the details, will at length be practically
smoothed." Such was the position, such the defences, such the
30 tactics, by which I thought that it was both incumbent
on us, and possible to us, to meet that onset of Liberal
principles, of which we were all in immediate anticipation,
whether in the Church or in the University. And during
the first year of the Tract's, the attack upon the University
began. In November 1834 was sent to me by the author
the second Edition of a Pamphlet entitled, " Observations
on Religious Dissent, with particular reference to the use of
religious tests in the University." In this Pamphlet it was
12 character, it] character, this
18 presented to the Anglican mind] in the judgment of the present day
31 to us] for us 35 the author 1864, 1865] Dr. Hampden 1873

158 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
maintained, that " Religion is distinct from Theological
Opinion," pp. 1, 28, 30, &c. ; that it is but a common
prejudice to identify theological propositions methodicaUy
deduced and stated, with the simple religion of Christ, p. 1 ;
that under Theological Opinion were to be placed the
Trinitarian doctrine, p. 27, and the Unitarian, p. 19 ; that
a dogma was a theological opinion (formally) insisted on,
pp. 20, 21 ; that speculation always left an opening for
improvement, p. 22 ; that the Church of England was not
dogmatic in its spirit, though the wording of its formu- io
laries may Often carry the sound of dogmatism, p. 23.
I acknowledged the receipt of this work in the foUowing
letter : —
" The kindness which has led to your presenting me
with your late pamphlet, encourages me to hope that you
will forgive me, if I take the opportunity it affords of
expressing to you my very sincere and deep regret that it
has been published. Such an opportunity I could not let
slip without being unfaithful to my own serious thoughts
on the subject. 20
" While I respect the tone of piety which the Pamphlet
displays, I dare not trust myseff to put on paper my feel
ings about the principles contained in it ; tending, as they
do, in my opinion, altogether to make shipwreck of Chris
tian faith. I also lament, that, by its appearance, the first
step has been taken towards interrupting that peace and
mutual good understanding which has prevaUed so long
in this place, and which, if once seriously disturbed, wiU
be succeeded by dissensions the more intractable, because
justified in the minds of those who resist innovation by so
a feeling of imperative duty."
Since that time Phaeton has got into the chariot of the
sun ; we, alas ! can only look on, and watch him down
the steep of heaven. Meanwhile, the lands, which he is
passing over, suffer from his driving.
Such was the commencement of the assault of Liberalism
upon the old orthodoxy of Oxford and England ; and it
could not have been broken, as it was, for so long a time,
11 may] might

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 159
had not a great change taken place in the circumstances of
that counter -movement which had already started with the
view of resisting it. For myself, I was not the person to
take the lead of a party ; I never was, from first to last,
more than a leading author of a school ; nor did I ever
wish to be any thing else. This is my own account of the
matter, and I say it, neither as intending to disown the
responsibility of what was done, nor as if ungrateful to
those who at that time made more of me than I deserved,
io and did more for my sake and at my bidding than I realized
myself. I am giving my history from my own point of
sight, and it is as foUows : — I had lived for ten years
among my personal friends ; the greater part of the time,
I had been influenced, not influencing ; and at no time
have I acted on others, without their acting upon me. As
is the custom of a University, I had lived with my private,
nay, with some of my public, pupils, and with the junior
fellows of my CoUege, without form or distance, on a foot
ing of equality. Thus it was through friends, younger, for
20 the most part, than myself, that my principles were
spreading. They heard what I said in conversation, and
told it to others. Undergraduates in due time took their
degree, and became private tutors themselves. In this
new status, in turn, they preached the opinions which
they had already learned themselves. Others went
down to the country, and became curates of parishes.
Then they had down from London parcels of the Tracts,
and other publications. They placed them in the shops of
local booksellers, got them into newspapers, introduced
30 them to clerical meetings, and converted more or less their
Rectors and their brother curates. Thus the Movement,- f
viewed with relation to myself, was but a floating opinion ;
it was not a power. It never would have been a power, if
it had remained in my hands. Years after, a friend, writing
to me in remonstrance at the excesses, as he thought
them, of my disciples, applied to me my own verse about
St. Gregory Nazianzen, " Thou couldst a people raise, but
couldst not rule." At the time that he wrote to me, I had
special impediments in the way of such an exercise of
8 nor] or 23 this ... in turn, they] their . . . they in turn
24-25 which . . . learned themselves] with] which . . . become acquainted

160 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
power ; but at no time could I exercise over others that
authority, which under the circumstances was imperatively
required. My great principle ever was, Live and let live.
I never had the staidness or dignity necessary for a leader.
To the last I never recognized the hold I had over young
men. Of late years I have read and heard that they even
imitated me in various ways. I was quite unconscious of
it, and I think my immediate friends knew too weU how
disgusted I should be at the news, to have the heart to tell
me. I felt great impatience at our being caUed a party, 10
and would not allow that we were (such). I had a lounging,
free-and-easy way of carrying things on. I exercised no
sufficient censorship upon the Tracts. I did not confine
them to the writings of such persons as agreed in all things
with myself ; and, as to my own Tracts, I printed on them
a notice to the effect, that any one who pleased, might
make what use he would of them, and reprint them with
alterations if he chose, under the conviction that their
main scope could not be damaged by such a process. It
was the same (with me) afterwards, as regards other 20
publications. For two years I furnished a certain number
of sheets for the British Critic from myseff and my friends,
while a gentleman was~~editor, a man of splendid talent,
who, however, was scarcely an acquaintance of mine, and
had no sympathy with the Tracts. When I was Editor
myself, from.. !_838 to 1841, in my very first number, I
suffered to appear a critique unfavourable to my work on
Justification, which had been pubhshed a few months before,
from a feeling of propriety, because I had put the book
into the hands of the writer who so handled it. Afterwards 30
I suffered an article against the Jesuits to appear in it, of
which I did not like the tone. When I had to provide
a curate for my new Church at Littlemore, I engaged
a friend, by no fault of his, who, before he (had) entered
into his charge, preached a sermon, either in depreciation
of baptismal regeneration, or of Dr. Pusey's view of it.
I showed a similar easiness as to the Editors who helped
me in the separate volumes of Fleury's Church History ;
they were able, learned, and excellent men, but their after
9 the news] such proceedings

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 161
history has shown, how little my choice of them was
influenced by any notion I could have had of any intimate
agreement of opinion between them and myself. I shall
have to make the same remark in its place concerning the
Lives of the EngUsh Saints, which subsequently appeared.
AU this may seem inconsistent with what I have said of
my fierceness. I am not bound to account for it ; but there
have been men before me, fierce in act, yet tolerant and
moderate in their reasonings ; at least, so I read history.
io However, such was the case, and such its effect upon the
Tracts. These at first starting were short, hasty, and some
of them ineffective ; and at the end of the year, when
coUected into a volume, they had a slovenly appearance.
It was under these circumstances, that Dr. Pusey joined
us. I had known him weU since 1827-8, and had felt for
him an enthusiastic admiration. I used to call him 6 peyas.
His great learning, his immense diligence, his scholarlike
mind, his simple devotion to the cause of rehgion, over
came me ; and great of course was my joy, when in the
20 last days of 1833 he showed a disposition to make common
cause with us. His Tract on Fasting appeared as one of
the series with the date of December 21. He was not,
however, I think fuUy associated in the Movement tUl 1835
and 1836, when he published his Tract on Baptism, and
started the Library of the Fathers. He at once gave to /
us a position and a name. Without him we should have
had no chance, especiaUy at the early date of 1834, of
making any serious resistance to the Liberal aggression.
But Dr. Pusey was a Professor and Canon of Christ Church ;
30 he had a vast influence in consequence of his deep religious
seriousness, the munificence of his charities, his Professor
ship, his famUy connexions, and his easy relations with
University authorities. He was to the Movement all that
Mr. Rose might have been, with that indispensable addition,
which was wanting to Mr. Rose, the intimate friendship
and the familiar daily society of the persons who had com
menced it. And he had that special claim on their attach
ment, which lies in the living presence of a faithful and
loyal affectionateness. There was henceforth a man who
27 no] little
APOLOGIA Q

162 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
could be the head and centre of the zealous people in every
part of the country, who were adopting the new opinions ;
and not only so, but there was one who furnished the
Movement with a front to the world, and gained for it a
recognition from other parties in the University. In 1829
Mr. Froude, or Mr. R(obert) Wilberforce, or Mr. Newman
were but individuals ; and, when they ranged themselves
in the contest of. that year on the side of Sir Robert
Inglis, men on either side only asked with surprise how
they got there, and attached no significancy to theio
fact ; but Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression,
a host in himself ; he was able to give a name, a form,
and a personality to what was without him a sort of mob ;
and when various parties had to meet together in order
to resist the liberal acts of the Government, we of the
Movement took our place by right among them.
Such was the benefit which he conferred on the Move
ment externally ; nor was the internal advantage at all
inferior to it. He was a man of large designs ; he had
a hopeful, sanguine mind ; he had no fear of others ; he 20
was haunted by no intellectual perplexities. People are
apt to say that he was once nearer to the Cathohc Church
than he is now ; I pray God that he may be one day far
nearer to the Catholic Church than he was then ; for
I believe that, in his reason and judgment, aU the time
that I knew him, he never was near to it at aU. When
I became a Catholic, I was often asked, " What of
Dr. Pusey ? " when I said that I did not see symptoms of
his doing as I had done, I was sometimes thought uncharit
able. If confidence in his position is, (as it is,) a first 30
essential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it. The most
remarkable instance of this, was his statement, in one of
his subsequent defences of the Movement, when too it had
advanced a considerable way in the direction of Rome, that
among its hopeful peculiarities was its " stationariness."
He made it in good faith ; it was his subjective view of it.
Dr. Pusey's influence was felt at once. He saw that there
ought to be more sobriety, more gravity, more careful
18 was . . . advantage] were . . . advantages 31 Dr. Pusey had it]
this Dr. Pusey possessed pre-eminently 33 too] moreover 35 its
hopeful 1864] its most hopeful 1864 (another copy), its more hopeful 1865

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 163
pains, more sense of responsibility in the Tracts and in the
whole Movement. It was through him that the character
of the Tracts was changed. When he gave to us his Tract
on Fasting, he put his initials to it. In 1835 he pubhshed
his elaborate Treatise on Baptism, which was followed by
other Tracts from different authors, if not of equal learning,
yet of equal power and appositeness. The Catenas of
Anglican divines(, projected by me,) which occur in the
Series, [though projected, I think, by me,] were executed
io with a like aim at greater accuracy and method. In 1836
he advertised his great project for a Translation of the
Fathers : — but I must return to myself. I am not writing
the history either of Dr. Pusey or of the Movement ; but
it is a pleasure to me to have been able to introduce here
reminiscences of the place which he held in it, which have
so direct a bearing on myself, that they are no digression
from my narrative.
I suspect it was Dr. Pusey's influence and example which
set me, and made me set others, on the larger and more
20 careful works in defence of the principles of the Movement
which followed in a course of years, — some of them demand
ing and receiving from their authors, such elaborate treat
ment that they did not make their appearance till both
its temper and its fortunes had changed. I set about
a work at once ; one in which was brought out with pre
cision the relation in which we stood to the Church of
Rome. We could not move a step in comfort, till this was
done. It was of absolute necessity and a plain duty (from
the first), to provide as soon as possible a large statement,
30 which would encourage and re-assure our friends, and repel
the attacks of our opponents. A cry was heard on all sides
of us, that the Tracts and the writings of the Fathers
would lead us to become Catholics, before we were aware
of it. This was loudly expressed by members of the
Evangelical party, who in 1836 had joined us in making
a protest in Convocation against a memorable appoint
ment of the Prime Minister. These clergymen even then
avowed their desire, that the next time they were brought
up to Oxford to give a vote, it might be in order to put
40 down the Popery of the Movement. There was another

164 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
reason still, and quite as important. Monsignore Wiseman,
with the acuteness and zeal which might be expected from
that great Prelate, had anticipated what was coming, had
returned to England in 1836, had dehvered Lectures in
London on the doctrines of Catholicism, and created an
impression through the country, shared in by ourselves,
that we had for our opponents in controversy, not only
our brethren, but our hereditary foes. These were the
circumstances, which led to my publication of " The Pro
phetical office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism 10
and Popular Protestantism."
This work employed me for three years, from the begin
ning of 1834 to the end of 1836(, and was pubhshed in
1837). It was composed, after a careful consideration and
comparison of the principal Anghcan divines of the 17th
century. It was first written in the shape of controversial
correspondence with a learned French Priest ; then it was
re-cast, and delivered in Lectures at St. Mary's : lastly,
with considerable retrenchments and additions, it was
re-written for publication. 20
It attempts to trace out the rudimental lines on which
Christian faith and teaching proceed, and to use them as
means of determining the relation of the Roman and
Anglican systems to each other. In this way it shows that
to confuse the two together is impossible, and that the
Anghcan can be as httle said to tend to the Roman, as the
Roman to the Anghcan. The spirit of the Volume is not
so gentle to the Church of Rome, as Tract 71 pubhshed
the year before ; on the contrary, it is very fierce ; and
this I attribute to the circumstance that the Volume is 30
theological and didactic, whereas the Tract, being con
troversial, assumes as httle and grants as much as possible
on the points in dispute, and insists on points of agreement'
as well as of difference. A further and more direct reason
is, that in my Volume I deal with " Romanism " (as I call
it), not so much in its formal decrees and in the substance
of its creed, as in its traditional action and its authorized
teaching as represented by its prominent writers ; — whereas
the Tract is written as if discussing the differences of the
4 in 1836] by 1836

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 165
Churches with a view to a reconcihation between them.
There is a further reason too, which I will state presently.
But this Volume had a larger scope than that of opposing
the Roman system. It was an attempt at commencing
a system of theology on the Anglican idea, and based upon
Anglican authorities. Mr. Palmer, about the same time,
was projecting a work of a simUar nature in his own way.
It was published, I think, under the title, " A Treatise on
the Christian Church." As was to be expected from the
io author, it was a most learned, most careful composition ;
and in its form, I should say, polemical. So happily at
least did he foUow the logical method of the Roman Schools,
that Father Perrone in his Treatise on dogmatic theology,
recognized in him a combatant of the true cast, and saluted
him as a foe worthy of being vanquished. Other soldiers
in that field he seems to have thought little better than the
lanzknechts of the middle ages, and, I dare say, with very
good reason. When I knew that excellent and kind-
hearted man aURome at a later time, he aUowed me to
20 put him to ample penance for those light thoughts of me,
which he had once had, by encroaching on his valuable
time with my theological questions. As to Mr. Palmer's
book, it was one which no Anghcan could write but him
self, — in no sense, if I recollect aright, a tentative work.
The ground of controversy was cut into squares, and then
every objection had its answer. This is the proper method
to adopt in teaching authoritatively young men ; and the
work in fact was intended for students in theology. My
own book, on the other hand, was of a directly tentative
30 and empirical character. I wished to build up an Anghcan
theology out of the stores which already lay cut and hewn
upon the ground, the past toil of great divines. To do this
could not be the work of one man ; much less, could it be
at once received into Anghcan theology, however weU it
was done. (This) I fully (recognized ; and, while J) trusted
that my statements of doctrine would turn out (to be) true
and important ; yet I wrote, to use the common phrase,
" under correction."
There was another motive for my publishing, of a personal
37 important ; yet] important, still

166 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
nature, which I think I should mention. I felt then, and
all along felt, that there was an intellectual cowardice
in not having a basis in reason for my belief, and a moral
cowardice in not avowing that basis. I should have felt
myself less than a man, if I did not bring it out, whatever it
was. This is one principal reason why I wrote and pub
lished the " Prophetical Office." It was on the same feeling,
that in the spring of 1836, at a meeting of residents on the
subject of the struggle then proceeding (against a Whig
appointment), (when) some one wanted us all merely to 10
act on college and conservative grounds (as I understood
him), with as few published statements as possible : I
answered, that the person whom we were resisting had com
mitted himself in writing, and that we ought to commit
ourselves too. This again was a main reason for the publica
tion of Tract 90. Alas ! it was my portion for whole
years to remain without any satisfactory basis for my
religious profession, in a state of moral sickness, neither
able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able»to go to Rome.
But I bore it, till in course of time my way was made clear 20
to me. If here it be objected to me, that as time went on,
I often in my writings hinted at things which I did not
fully bring out, I submit for consideration whether this
occurred except when I was in great difficulties, how to
speak, or how to be silent, with due regard for the position
of mind or the feehngs of others. However, I may have
an opportunity to say more on this subject. But to return
to the " Prophetical Office."
I thus speak in the Introduction to my Volume : —
"It is proposed," I say, "to offer helps towards the 30
formation of a recognized Anglican theology in one of its
departments. The present state of our divinity is as
follows : the most vigorous, the clearest, the most fertile
minds, have through God's mercy been employed in the
service of our Church : minds too as reverential and holy,
and as fully imbued with Ancient Truth, and as well
versed in the writings of the Fathers, as they were intel
lectually gifted. This is God's great mercy indeed, for
which we must ever be thankful. Primitive doctrine has
3 having] finding 7 on] from 12 possible :] possible,

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 167
been explored for us in every direction, and the original
principles of the Gospel and the Church patiently brought
to light. But one thing is still wanting : our champions
and teachers have lived in stormy times : political and
other influences have acted upon them variously in their
day, and have since obstructed a careful consolidation of
their judgments. We have a vast inheritance, but no
inventory of our treasures. All is given us in profusion ;
it remains for us to catalogue, sort, distribute, select,
io harmonize, and complete. We have more than we know
how to use ; stores of learning, but little that is precise
and serviceable ; Catholic truth and individual opinion,
first principles and the guesses of genius, all mingled in the
same works, and requiring to be discriminated. We meet
with truths overstated or misdirected, matters of detail
variously taken, facts incompletely proved or applied, and
rules inconsistently urged or discordantly interpreted.
Such indeed is the state of every deep philosophy in its
first stages, and therefore of theological knowledge. What
20 we need at present for our Church's well-being, is not
invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning
in our divines, at least in the first place, though all gifts of
God are in a measure needed, and never can be unseason
able when used rehgiously, but we need peculiarly a sound
judgment, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehen
sive mind, an abstinence from all private fancies and
caprices and personal tastes, — in a word, Divine Wisdom."
The subject of the Volume is the doctrine of the Via
Media, a name which had already been applied to the
30 Anglican system by writers of name. It is an expressive
title, but not altogether satisfactory, because it is at first
sight negative. This had been the reason of my dislike
to the word " Protestant ; " [in the idea which it con
veyed,] it was not the profession of any (particular) religion
at all, and was compatible with infidelity. A Via Media
was but a receding from extremes/ — )therefore I had to
draw it out into a (definite) shapef,] and [a] character ;
before it had claims on our respect, it must first be shown
34 it was not] viz. it did not denote
36 I had to draw it] it needed to be drawn
38 had] could have

168 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
to be one, intelligible, and consistent. This was the first
condition of any reasonable treatise on the Via Media.
The second condition, and necessary too, was not in my
power. I could only hope that it would one day be fulfilled.
Even if the Via Media were ever so positive a rehgious
system, it was not as yet objective and real ; it had no
original any where of which it was the representative. It
was at present a paper religion. This I confess in my
Introduction ; I say, " Protestantism and Popery are real
religions . . . but the Via Media, viewed as an integral 10
system, has scarcely had existence except on paper."
I grant the objection and proceed to lessen it. [There
I say,] " It still remains to be tried, whether what is
caUed Anglo-Catholicism, the religion of Andrewes, Laud,
Hammond, Butler, and WUson, is capable of being pro
fessed, acted on, and maintained on a large sphere of action,
or whether it be a mere modification or transition-state
of either Romanism or popular Protestantism." I trusted
that some day it would prove to be a substantive rehgion.
Lest I should be misunderstood, let me observe that this 20
hesitation about the validity of the theory of the Via Media
implied no doubt of the three fundamental points on which
it was based, as I have described (them) above, dogma, the
sacramental system, and opposition to the Church of Rome.
Other investigations which (had to be) foUowed (up),
gave a still more tentative character [to what I wrote or
got written]. The basis of the Via Media, consisting of
the three elementary points, which I have just mentioned,
was clear enough ; but, not only had the house (itself) to
be built upon them, but it had also to be furnished, and it 30
is not wonderful if(, after building it,) both I and others
erred in detail in determining what that furniture should
be, what was consistent with the style of building, and
what was in itself desirable. I will explain what I mean.
I had brought out in the " Prophetical Office " in what
the Roman and the Anglican systems differed from each
other, but less distinctly in what they agreed. I had indeed
12 and proceed] , though I endeavour
12 lessen it.] lessen it : —
23 opposition to the Church of Rome] anti-Romanism
26 gave] were of 32 that] its

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 169
enumerated the Fundamentals, common to both, in the
following passage : — " In both systems the same Creeds
are acknowledged. Besides other points in common we
both hold, that certain doctrines are necessary to be
believed for salvation ; we both believe in the doctrines
of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement; in original
sin ; in the necessity of regeneration ; in the supernatural
grace of the Sacraments ; in the Apostolical succession ; ,
in the obligation of faith and obedience, and in the eternity I
io of future punishment." — Pp. 55, 56. So much I had said, ;
but I had not said enough. This enumeration implied
a great many more points of agreement than were found
in those very Articles which were fundamental. If the
two Churches were thus the same in fundamentals, they
were also one and the same in such plain consequences as
are contained in those fundamentals or as outwardly repre
sented them. It was an Anglican principle that " the
abuse of a thing doth not take away the lawful use of it ; "
and an Anglican Canon in 1603 had declared that the
20 Enghsh Church had no purpose to forsake all that was
held in the Churches of Italy, France, and Spain, and
reverenced those ceremonies and particular points which
were Apostolic. Excepting then such exceptional matters,
as are implied in this avowal, whether they were many or
few, aU these Churches were evidently to be considered as
one with the Anghcan. The Catholic Church in all lands
had been one from the first for many centuries ; then,
various portions had followed their own way to the injury,
but not to the destruction, whether of truth or of charity.
30 These portions or branches were mainly three : — the
Greek, Latin, and Anglican. Each of these inherited the
early undivided Church in solido as its own possession.
Each branch was identical with that early undivided
Church, and in the unity of that Church it had unity with
the other branches. The three branches agreed together
in all but their later accidental errors. Some branches had
retained in detail portions of Apostolical truth and usage,
which the others had not ; and these portions might be
and should be appropriated again by the others which had
16 are] were 16 or] and in such natural observances
G3

170 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
let them slip. Thus, the middle age belonged to the
Anglican Church, and much more did the middle age of
England. The Church of the 12th century was the Church
of the 19th. Dr. Howley sat in the seat of St. Thomas
the Martyr ; Oxford was a medieval University. Saying
our engagements to Prayer Book and Articles, we might
breathe and live and act and speak, (as) in the atmosphere
and climate of Henry IIL's day, or the Confessor's, or of
AUred's. And we ought to be indulgent of aU that Rome
taught now, as of what Rome taught then, saving our io
protest. We might boldly welcome, even what we did not
ourselves think right to adopt. And, when we were obliged
on the contrary boldly to denounce, we should do so with
pain, not with exultation. By very reason of our protest,
which we had made, and made ex animo, we could agree
to differ. What the members of the Bible Society did on
the basis of Scripture, we could do on the basis of the
Church ; Trinitarian and Unitarian were further apart
than Roman and Anglican. Thus we had a real wish to
co-operate with Rome in aU lawful things, if she would let 20
us, and (if) the rules of our own Church let us ; and we
thought there was no better way towards the restoration
of doctrinal purity and unity. And we thought that Rome
was not committed by her formal decrees to aU that she
actually taught ; and again, if her disputants had been
unfair to us, or her rulers tyrannical, (we bore in mind)
that on our side too there had been rancour and slander
in our controversy with her, and violence in our pohtical
measures. As to ourselves being (direct) instruments in
improving the belief or practice [of Rome directly], I used so
to say, " Look at home ; let us first, or at least let us the
while, supply our own short-comings, before we attempt to
be physicians to any one else." This is very much the
spirit of Tract 71, to which I referred just now. I am weU
aware that there is a paragraph contrary to it in the
Prospectus to the Library of the Fathers ; but I never
concurred in it. Indeed, I have no intention whatever of
11, 12 of] to 28 controversy with] controversial attacks upon
30 the] her 31-32 or at . . . while,] (or at . . . while,)
35 contrary to] inconsistent with
36 never concurred in] do not consider myself responsible for

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 171
implying that Dr. Pusey concurred in the ecclesiastical
theory, which I have been (now) drawing out ; nor that
I took it up myself except by degrees in the course of ten
years. It was necessarily the growth of time. In fact,
hardly any two persons, who took part in the Movement,
agreed in their view of the limit to which our general
principles might reUgiously be carried.
And now I have said enough on what I consider to have
been the general objects of the various works which I wrote,
io edited, or prompted in the years which I am reviewing ;
I wanted to bring out in a substantive form, a Uving Church
of England in a position proper to herself, and founded on
distinct principles ; as far as paper could do it, and as
earnestly preaching it and influencing others towards it,
could tend to make it a fact ; — a Uving Church, made of
flesh and blood, with voice, complexion, and motion and
action, and a wiU of its own. I beheve I had no private
motive, and no personal aim. Nor did I ask for more than
" a fair stage and no favour," nor expect the work would
20 be done in my days ; but I thought that enough would be
secured to continue it in the future under, perhaps, more
hopeful circumstances and prospects than the present.
I wfil mention in illustration some of the principal works,
doctrinal and historical, which originated in the object
which I have stated.
I wrote my Essay on Justification in 1837 ; it was aimed
at the Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only
was the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. I considered
that this doctrine was either a paradox or a truism, —
30 a paradox in Luther's mouth, a truism in Melanchthon.
I thought that the Anghcan Church foUowed Melanchthon,
and that in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism,
between high Church and low Church, there was no real
inteUectual difference on the point. I wished to fill up
a ditch, the work of man. In this Volume again, I express
my desire to build up a system of theology out of the
Anghcan divines, and imply that my dissertation was
a tentative Inquiry. I speak in the Preface of " offering
suggestions towards a work, which must be uppermost in
13 and] as far 20 done] accomplished
30 Melanchton] Melanchthon's

172 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
the mind of every true son of the Enghsh Church at this
day, — the consolidation of a theological system, which,
built upon those formularies, to which all clergymen are
bound, may tend to inform, persuade, and absorb into
itself religious minds, which hitherto have fancied, that,
on the peculiar Protestant questions, they were seriously
opposed to each other." — P. vii.
In my University Sermons there is a series of discussions
upon the subject of Faith and Reason ; these again were
the tentative commencement of a grave and necessary 10
work ; it was an inquiry into the ultimate basis of rehgious
faith, prior to the distinction into Creeds.
In like manner in a Pamphlet which I pubhshed in the
summer of 1838 is an attempt at placing the doctrine of
the Real Presence on an inteUectual basis. The funda
mental idea is consonant to that to which I had been so
long attached ; it is the denial of the existence of space
except as a subjective idea of our minds.
The Church of the Fathers is one of the earhest pro
ductions of the Movement, and appeared in numbers in 20
the British Magazine, and was written with the aim of
introducing the rehgious sentiments, views, and customs
of the first ages into the modern Church of England.
The Translation of Fleury's Church History was com
menced under these circumstances : — I was fond of Fleury
for a reason which I express in the Advertisement ; because
it presented a sort of photograph of ecclesiastical history
without any comment upon it. In the event, that simple
representation of the early centuries had a good deal to
do with unsettUng me (in my Anghcanism) ; but how 30
little I could anticipate this, wiU be seen in the fact
that the publication (of Fleury) was a favourite scheme of
Mr. Rose's. He proposed it to me twice, between the years
1834 and 1837 ; and I mention it as one out of many
particulars curiously illustrating how truly my change of
opinion arose, not from foreign influences, but from the
working of my own mind, and the accidents around me.
The date at which the portion actuaUy translated began
11 work; it was] work, viz. 21 and was] being
32 of Mr. Rose's] with Mr. Rose 38 at] ,from

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 173
was determined by the Publisher on reasons with which
we were not concerned.
Another historical work, but drawn from original sources,
was given to the world by my old friend Mr. Bowden, being
a Life of Pope Gregory VII. I need scarcely recall to those
who have read it, the power and the liveliness of the narra
tive. This composition was the author's relaxation on
evenings and in his summer vacations, from his ordinary
engagements in London. It had been suggested to him
io originally by me, at the instance of HurreU Froude.
The Series of the Lives of the English Saints was pro
jected at a later period, under circumstances which I shall
have in the sequel to describe. Those beautiful com
positions have nothing in them, as far as I recollect, simply
inconsistent with the general objects which I have been
assigning to my labours in these years, though the immediate
occasion of them and their tone (in which they were written,)
could not in the exercise of the largest indulgence be said
to have an Anglican direction.
20 At a comparatively early date I drew up the Tract on
the Roman Breviary. It frightened my own friends on
its first appearance, and, several years afterwards, when
younger men began to translate for publication the four
volumes in extenso, they were dissuaded from doing so by
advice to which from a sense of duty they listened. It was
an apparent accident which introduced me to the know
ledge of that most wonderful and most attractive monu
ment of the devotion of saints. On HurreU Froude 's
death, in 1836, I was asked to select one of his books as
33 a keepsake. I selected Butler's Analogy ; finding that it
had been already chosen, I looked with some perplexity
along the shelves as they stood before me, when an intimate
friend at my elbow said, " Take that." It was the Breviary
which HurreU had had with him at Barbados. Accord
ingly I took it, studied it, wrote my Tract from it, and
have it on my table in constant use till this day.
That dear and familiar companion, who thus put the
17 of them and their] which led to them, and the
18 could not in the exercise of the largest indulgence be said to have
an Anglican direction] had little that was congenial with Anglicanism
34 Barbados] Barbadoes

174 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
Breviary into my hands, is still in the Anghcan Church.
So too is that early venerated long-loved friend, together
with whom I edited a work which, more perhaps than any
other, caused disturbance and annoyance in the Anghcan
world,( — )Froude's Remains ; yet, however judgments)
might run as to the prudence of publishing it, I never
heard any one impute to Mr. Keble the very shadow of
dishonesty or treachery towards his Church in so acting.
The annotated Translation of the Treatise(s) of St.
Athanasius was of course in no sense a tentative work ; it 10
belongs to another order of thought. This historico-
dogmatic work employed me for years. I had made
preparations for foUowing it up with a doctrinal history
of the heresies which succeeded to the Arian.
I should make mention also of the British Critic. I was
Editor of it for three years, from July 1838 to July 1841.
My writers belonged to various schools, some to none at
all. The subjects are various, — classical, academical,
political, critical, and artistic, as well as theological, and
upon the Movement none are to be found which do not 20
keep quite clear of advocating the cause of Rome.
So I went on for years, up to 1841. It was, in a human
point of view, the happiest time of my life. I was truly
at home. I had in one of my volumes appropriated to
myself the words of BramhaU, " Bees, by the instinct of
nature, do love their hives, and birds their nests." I did
not suppose that such sunshine would last, though I knew
not what would be its termination. It was the time of
plenty, and, during its seven years, I tried to lay up as
much as I could for the dearth which was to foUow it. 30
We prospered and spread. I have spoken of the doings
of these years, since I was a CathoUc, in a passage, part of
which I will (here) quote[, though there is a sentence in it
that requires some limitation] :
" From beginnings so small," I said, " from elements of
thought so fortuitous, with prospects so unpromising, the
Anglo-Catholic party suddenly became a power in the
National Church, and an object of alarm to her rulers and
1 1 a tentative work] of a tentative character

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 175
friends. Its originators would have found it difficult to
say what they aimed at of a practical kind : rather, they
put forth views and principles, for their own sake, because
they were true, as if they were obliged to say them ; and,
as they might be themselves surprised at their earnestness
in uttering them, they had as great cause to be surprised
at the success which attended their propagation. And, in
fact, they could only say that those doctrines were in the
air ; that to assert was to prove, and that to explain was
io to persuade ; and that the Movement in which they were
taking part was the birth of a crisis rather than of a place.
In a very few years a school of opinion was formed, fixed
in its principles, indefinite and progressive in their range ;
and it extended itself into every part of the country. If
we inquire what the world thought of it, we have still
more to raise our wonder ; for, not to mention the excite
ment it caused in England, the Movement and its party-
names were known to the poUce of Italy and to the back-
woodmen of America. And so it proceeded, getting stronger
20 and stronger every year, till it came into collision with the
Nation, and that Church of the Nation, which it began by
professing especially to serve."
The greater its success, the nearer was that collision at
hand. The first threatenings of the crisis were heard in
1838. At that time, my Bishop in a Charge made some
light animadversions, but they were animadversions, on
the Tracts for the Times. At once I offered to stop them.
What took place on the occasion I prefer to state in the
words, in which I related it in a Pamphlet addressed to
30 him in a later year, when the blow actually came down
upon me.
" In your Lordship's Charge for 1838," I said, " an
allusion was made to the Tracts for the Times. Some
opponents of the Tracts said that you treated them with
undue indulgence, ... I wrote to the Archdeacon on the
subject, submitting the Tracts entirely to your Lordship's
disposal. What I thought about your Charge will appear
from the words I then used to him. I said, ' A Bishop's
lightest word ex cathedrd is heavy. His judgment on
24 the crisis] what was coming

176 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
a book cannot be light. It is a rare occurrence.' And
I offered to withdraw any of the Tracts over which I had
control, if I were informed which were those to which your
Lordship had objections. I afterwards wrote to your
Lordship to this effect, that ' I trusted I might say sincerely,
that I should feel a more lively pleasure in knowing that
I was submitting myself to your Lordship's expressed
judgment in a matter of that kind, than I could have even
in the widest circulation of the volumes in question.'
Your Lordship did, not think it necessary to proceed to 10
such a measure, but I felt, and always have felt, that, if
ever you determined on it, I was bound to obey."
That day at length came, and I conclude this portion of
my narrative, with relating the circumstances of it.
From the time that I had entered 'upon the duties of
Public Tutor at my College, when my doctrinal views were
very different from what they were in 1841, 1 had meditated
a comment upon the Articles. Then, when the Movement
was in its swing, friends had said to me, " What wiU you
make of the Articles ? " but I did not share the apprehen- 20
sion which their question implied. Whether, as time went
on, I should have been forced, by the necessities of the
original theory of the Movement, to put on paper the
speculations which I had about them, I am not able to
conjecture. The actual cause of my doing so, in the
beginning of 1841, was the restlessness, actual and pro
spective, of those who neither liked the Via Media, nor
my strong judgment against Rome. I had been enjoined,
I think by my Bishop, to keep these men straight, and
I wished so to do : but their tangible difficulty was sub- 30
scription to the Articles ; and thus the question of the
Articles came before me. It was thrown in our teeth ;
" How can you manage to sign the Articles ? they are
directly against Rome." " Against Rome ? " I made
answer, " What do you mean by ' Rome ? ' " and then
I proceeded to make distinctions, of which I shall now give
an account.
By " Roman doctrine " might be meant one of three
things : 1, the Catholic teaching of the early centuries ;
or 2, the formal dogmas of Rome as contained in the later 40

(PROM 1833 TO 1839.) 177
Councils, especially the Council of Trent, and as condensed
in the Creed of Pope Pius IV. ; 3, the actual popular beliefs
and usages sanctioned by Rome in the countries in com
munion with it, over and above the dogmas ; and these
I called " dominant errors." Now Protestants commonly
thought that in all three senses, ' Roman doctrine " was
condemned in the Articles : I thought that the Catholic
teaching was not condemned ; that the dominant errors
were ; and as to the formal dogmas, that some were, some
io were not, and that the line had to be drawn between them.
Thus, 1, the use of Prayers for the dead was a Catholic
doctrine, — not condemned (in the Articles) ; 2, the prison
of Purgatory was a Roman dogma, — which was con
demned (in them) ; but the infallibility of Ecumenical
Councils was a Roman dogma, — not condemned ; and 3,
the fire of Purgatory was an authorized and popular error,
not a dogma, — which was condemned.
Further, I considered that the difficulties, felt by the
persons whom I have mentioned, mainly lay in their
20 mistaking, 1, Catholic teaching, which was not condemned
in the Articles, for Roman dogma which was condemned ;
and 2, Roman dogma, which was not condemned in the
Articles, for dominant error which was. If they went
further than this, I had nothing more to say to them.
A further motive which I had for my attempt, was the
desire to ascertain the ultimate points of contrariety
between the Roman and Anglican creeds, and to make
them as few as possible. I thought that each creed was
obscured and misrepresented by a dominant circumambient
30 " Popery " and " Protestantism."
The main thesis then of my Essay was this : — the
Articles do not oppose Catholic teaching ; they but partially
oppose Roman dogma ; they for the most part oppose the
dominant errors of Rome. And the problem was(, as
I have said,) to draw the line as to what they allowed and
what they condemned.
Such being the object which I had in view, what were
my prospects of widening and (of) defining their meaning ?
The prospect was encouraging ; there was no doubt at all
11 l,the] l.The and so with 2 and 3 in lines 12 and 15

178 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
of the elasticity of the Articles : to take a palmary instance,
the seventeenth was assumed by one party to be Lutheran,
by another Calvinistic, though the two interpretations were
contradictory to each other ; why then should not other
Articles be drawn up with a vagueness of an equally
intense character ? I wanted to ascertain what was the
limit of that elasticity in the direction of Roman dogma.
But next, I had a way of inquiry of my own, which I state
without defending. I instanced it afterwards in my Essay
on Doctrinal Development. That work, I believe, I have 10
not read since I pubhshed it, and I doubt not at all
[that] I have made many mistakes in it ; — partly, from
my ignorance of the detaUs of doctrine, as the Church
of Rome holds them, but partly from my impatience to
clear as large a range for the principle of doctrinal Develop
ment (waiving the question of historical fact) as was con
sistent with the strict ApostoUcity and identity of the
Catholic Creed. In like manner, as regards the 39 Articles,
my method of inquiry was to leap in medias res. I wished
to institute an inquiry how far, in critical fairness, the text 20
could be opened ; I was aiming far more at ascertaining
what a man who subscribed it might hold than what he
must, so that my conclusions were negative rather than
positive. It was but a first essay. And I made it with the
full recognition and consciousness, which I had already
expressed in my Prophetical Office, as regards the Via
Media, that I was making only " a first approximation to
a required solution ; " — " a series of illustrations supplying
hints in the removal " of a difficulty, and with full acknow
ledgment " that in minor points, whether in question of so
fact or of judgment, there was room for difference or error
of opinion," and that I " should not be ashamed to own
a mistake, if it were proved against me, nor reluctant to
bear the just blame of it." — (Proph. Off.) P. 31.
In addition, I was embarrassed in consequence of my
wish to go as far as was possible, in interpreting the Articles
in the direction of Roman dogma, without disclosing what
I was doing to the parties whose doubts I was meeting,
who(, if they understood at once the full extent of the
4 to] of 11 doubt not] do not doubt 28 a required] the required
29 in] for 35 In addition] I will add

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 179
licence which the Articles admitted,) might be thereby
encouraged to go stUl further than at present they found
in themselves any caU to do.
1. But in the way of such an attempt comes the prompt
objection that the Articles were actually drawn up against
" Popery," and therefore it was transcendently absurd and
dishonest to suppose that Popery, in any shape, — patristic
belief, Tridentine dogma, or popular corruption authori
tatively sanctioned, — would be able to take refuge under
io their text. This premiss I denied. Not any religious
doctrine at all, but a political principle, was the primary
Enghsh idea [at that time] of " Popery " (at the date of
the Reformation). And what was that political principle,
and how could it best be kept out of England ? What was
the great question in the days of Henry and Elizabeth ?
The Supremacy ; — now, was I saying one single word in
favour of the Supremacy of the Holy See, (in favour) of
the foreign jurisdiction ? No ; I did not believe in it
myself. Did Henry VIII. rehgiously hold Justification by
20 faith only ? did he disbeheve Purgatory ? Was Elizabeth
zealous for the marriage of the Clergy ? or had she a con
science against the Mass ? The Supremacy of the Pope
was the essence of the " Popery " to which, at the time oi
the (composition of the) Articles, the Supreme Head oi
Governor of the Enghsh Church was so violently hostile.
2. But again I said this ; — let " Popery " mean what it
would in the mouths of the compUers of the Articles, let
it even, for argument's sake, include the doctrines of that
Tridentine Council, which was not yet over when the
30 Articles were drawn up, and against which they could not
be simply directed, yet, consider, what was the [religious]
object of the Government in their imposition ? merely to
disown " Popery " ? No ; it had the further object of
gaining the " Papists." What then was the best way to
induce reluctant or wavering minds, and these, I supposed,
were the majority, to give in their adhesion to the new
symbol ? how had the Arians drawn up their Creeds ? was
it not on the principle of using vague ambiguous language,
which to the subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic
2 go] proceed 3 do] go 14 kept out of] suppressed in
33 disown] get rid of

180 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
sense, but which, when worked out in the long run, would
prove to be heterodox ? Accordingly, there was great
antecedent probability, that, fierce as the Articles might
look at first sight, their bark would prove worse than their
bite. I say antecedent probability, for to what extent that
surmise might be true, could only be ascertained by
investigation. 3. But a consideration came up at once, which threw
light on this surmise : — what if it should turn out that the
very men who drew up the Articles, in the very act of 10
doing so, had avowed, or rather in one of those very
Articles themselves had imposed on subscribers, a number
of those very " Papistical " doctrines, which they were
now thought to deny, as part and parcel of that very
Protestantism, which they were now thought to consider
divine ? and this was the fact, and I showed it in my
Essay. Let the reader observe : — the 35th Article says : " The
second Book of Homilies doth contain a godly and whole
some doctrine, and necessary for these times, as doth the 20
former Book of Homilies." Here the doctrine of the
Homilies is recognized as godly and wholesome, and sub
scription to that proposition is imposed on all subscribers
of the Articles. Let us then turn to the Homilies, and see
what this godly doctrine is : I quoted from them to the
following effect :
1. They declare that the so-caUed " apocryphal " book
of Tobit is the teaching of the Holy Ghost, and is Scripture.
2. That the so-called " apocryphal" book of Wisdom is
Scripture, and the infallible and undeceivable word of God. 30
3. That the Primitive Church, next to the Apostles'
time, and, as they imply, for almost 700 years, is no doubt
most pure.
4. That the Primitive Church is specially to be foUowed.
5. That the Four first General Councils belong to the
Primitive Church.
6. That there are Six Councils which are allowed and
received by all men.
1 in] on
22 subscription to that proposition] concurrence in that recognition

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 181
7. Again, they speak of a certain truth which they
are enforcing, as declared by God's word, the sentences
of the ancient doctors, and judgment of the Primitive
Church. 8. Of the learned and holy Bishops and doctors (of the
Church) of the first eight centuries being of good authority
and credit with the people.
9. Of the declaration of Christ and His Apostles and all
the rest of the Holy Fathers.
io 10. Of the authority of both Scripture and also of
Augustine. 11. Of Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and
about thirty other Fathers, to some of whom they give
the title of " Saint," to others of (" )ancient Catholic
Fathers and doctors(, &c").
12. They declare that, not only the holy Apostles and
disciples of Christ, but the godly Fathers also before and
since Christ were endued without doubt with the Holy
Ghost.
20 13. That the ancient Cathohc Fathers say that the
" Lord's Supper " is the salve of immortality, the sovereign
preservative against death, the food of immortahty, the
healthful grace.
14. That the Lord's Blessed Body and Blood are received
under the form of bread and wine.
15. That the meat in the Sacrament is an invisible meat
and a ghostly substance.
16. That the holy Body and Blood (of thy God) ought
to be touched with the mind.
so 17. That Ordination is a Sacrament.
18. That Matrimony is a Sacrament.
19. That there are other Sacraments besides " Baptism
and the Lord's Supper "(, though not " such as " they).
20. That the souls of the Saints are reigning in joy and
in heaven with God.
21. That alms-deeds purge the soul from the infection
and filthy spots of sin, and are a precious medicine, an
inestimable jewel.
22. That mercifulness wipes out and washes away
6 good] great 10 of both] both of

182 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
infirmity and weakness as salves and remedies to heal
sores and grievous diseases.
23. That the duty of fasting is a truth more manifest
than it should need to be proved.
24. That fasting, used with prayer, is of great efficacy
and weigheth much with God ; so the Angel Raphael told
Tobias. 25. That the puissant and mighty Emperor Theodosius
was, in the Primitive Church which was most holy and
godly, excommunicated by St. Ambrose. io
26. That Constantine, Bishop of Rome, did condemn
Phihppicus, the Emperor, not without a cause indeed, but
most justly.
Putting altogether aside the question how far these
separate theses came under the matter to which subscrip
tion was to be made, it was quite plain, that (in the minds
of) the men who wrote the Homilies, and who thus
incorporated them into the Anghcan system of doctrine,
could not have possessed that exact discrimination between
the CathoUc and (the) Protestant faith, or have made that 20
clear recognition of formal Protestant principles and tenets,
or have accepted that definition of " Roman doctrine,"
which is received at this day : — hence great probabihty
accrued to my presentiment, that the Articles were tolerant,
not only of what I caUed " Cathohc teaching," but of
'much that was " Roman."
4. And here was another reason against the notion that
the Articles directly attacked the Roman dogmas as
declared at Trent and as promulgated by Pius the Fourth :
— the Council of Trent was not over, nor its Decrees pro- 30
mulgated at the date when the Articles were drawn up(s),
Footnote first inserted in 1865. (3 The Pope's Confirmation of the
Council, by which its Canons became defide, and his Bull super confirma-
tione by which they were promulgated to the world, are dated January 26,
1564. The Articles are dated 1562.)
1 infirmity and weakness] sins,
12 the] then 13 most] very
19 could not have possessed that exact] there was no such nice
20 or have made that] no such
22 or have accepted that] no suoh accurate
23 which . . . this] as . . . the present 30 Decrees] Canons

(J'KOM 1833 TO 1839.) 183
so that those Articles must be aiming at something else.
What was that something else ? The Homilies tell us :
the Homilies are the best comment upon the Articles. Let
us turn to the Homilies, and we shall find from first to
last that, not only is not the Cathohc teaching of the first
centuries, but neither again are the dogmas of Rome, the
objects of the protest of the compilers of the Articles, but
the dominant errors, the popular corruptions, authorized
or suffered by the high name of Rome. (The eloquent
io declamation of the Homilies finds its matter almost ex
clusively in the dominant errors.) As to Cathohc teaching,
nay as to Roman dogma, (of such theology) those Homilies,
as I have shown, contained no small portion [of it] them
selves. 5. So much for the writers of the Articles and Homilies ;
— they were witnesses, not authorities, and I used them as
such ; but in the next place, who were the actual authori
ties imposing them ? I (reasonably) considered the
(authority) imponens to be the Convocation of 1571 ; but
20 here again, it would be found that the very Convocation,
which received and confirmed the 39 Articles, also enjoined
by Canon that " preachers should be careful, that they
should never teach aught in a sermon, to be rehgiously
held and beheved by the people, except that which is
agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament,
and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have
collected from that very doctrine." Here, let it be observed,
an appeal is made by the Convocation imponens to the
very same ancient authorities, as had been mentioned with
30 such profound veneration by the writers of the Homilies
and [of] the Articles, and thus, if the Homilies contained
views of doctrine which now would be caUed Roman, there
seemed to me to be an extreme probabihty that the Con
vocation of 1571 also countenanced and received, or at
least did not reject, those doctrines.
6. And further, when at length I came actuaUy to look
into the text of the Articles, I saw in many cases a patent
fulfilment of aU that I had surmised as to their vagueness
and indecisiveness, and that, not only on questions which
1 else.] else ? 38 fulfilment] justification

184 HISTORY OP MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
lay between Lutherans, Calvinists, and Zuinglians, but on
Cathohc questions also ; and I have noticed them in my
Tract. In the conclusion of my Tract I observe : They
are " evidently framed on the principle of leaving open
large questions on which the controversy hinges. They
state broadly extreme truths, and are silent about their
adjustment. For instance, they say that all necessary
faith must be proved from Scripture ; but do not say who
is to prove it. They say, that the Church has authority
in controversies ; they do not say what authority. They 10
say that it may enforce nothing beyond Scripture, but do
not say where the remedy lies when it does. They say
that works before grace and justification are worthless and
worse, and that works after grace and justification are
acceptable, but they do not speak at aU of works with
God's aid before justification. They say that men are
lawfully caUed and sent to minister and preach, who are
chosen and caUed by men who have pubhc authority given
them in the Congregation ; but they do not add by whom
the authority is to be given. They say that Councils caUed 20
by princes may err ; they do not determine whether Councils
called in the name of Christ may err."
Such were the considerations which weighed with me in
my inquiry how far the Articles were tolerant of a Cathohc,
or even a Roman interpretation ; and such was the defence
which I made in my Tract for having attempted it. From
what I have already said, it will appear that I have no
need or intention at this day to maintain every particular
interpretation which I suggested in the course of my Tract,
nor indeed had I then. Whether it was prudent or not, 30
whether it was sensible or not, any how I attempted only
a first essay of a necessary work, an essay which, as I was
quite prepared to find, would require revision and modifica
tion by means of the lights which I should gain from the
criticism of others. I should have gladly withdrawn any
statement, which could be proved to me to be erroneous ;
I considered my work to be faulty and objectionable in the
same sense in which I now consider my Anglican inter
pretations of Scripture to be erroneous, but in no other
3 They] The Articles 37 objeotionable] open to objection

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 185
sense. I am surprised that men do not apply to the inter
preters of Scripture generaUy the hard names which they
apply to the author of Tract 90. He held a large system of
theology, and appUed it to the Articles : Episcopalians, or
Lutherans, or Presbyterians, or Unitarians, hold a large
system of theology and apply it to Scripture. Every
theology has its difficulties ; Protestants hold justification
by faith only, though there is no text in St. Paul which
enunciates" it, and though St. James expressly denies it ;
io do we therefore caU Protestants dishonest % they deny
that the Church has a divine mission, though St. Paul says
that it is " the PiUar and ground of Truth ; " they keep
the Sabbath, though St. Paul says, " Let no man judge
you in meat or drink or in respect of . . . the sabbath
days." Every creed has texts in its favour, and again
texts which run counter to it : and this is generaUy con
fessed. And this is wh.it I felt keenly : — how had I done
worse in Tract 90 than" Anglicans, Wesleyans, and Calvinists
did daily in their Sermons and their publications ? how
20 had I done worse, than the Evangehcal party in their
ex animo reception of the Services for Baptism and Visita
tion of the Sick 1 ? Why was I to be dishonest and they
immaculate ? There was an occasion on which our Lord
gave an answer, which seemed to be appropriate to my
own case, when the tumult broke out against my Tract : —
1 (4) For instance, let candid men consider the form of Absolution
contained in that Prayer Book, of which all clergymen, Evangelical
and Liberal as well as high Church, and (I think) all persons in University
office declare that " it containeth nothing contrary to the Word of Ood."
I challenge, in the sight of all England, Evangelical clergymen
generally, to put on paper an interpretation of this form of words,
consistent with their sentiments, which shall be less forced than the most
objectionable of the interpretations which Tract 90 puts upon any
passage in the Articles.
" Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to His Church to absolve
all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy
forgive thee thine offences ; and by His authority committed to me,
I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
I subjoin the Roman form, as used in England and elsewhere
" Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat ; et ego auctoritate ipsius
te absolvo, ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti, in quantum
possum et tu indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

186 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
" He that is without sin among you, let him first cast
a stone at him." I could have fancied that a sense of their
own difficulties of interpretation would have persuaded the
great party I have mentioned to some prudence, or at
least moderation, in opposing a teacher of an opposite
school. But I suppose their alarm and their anger over
came their sense of justice.
In the universal storm of indignation with which the
Tract was received (throughout the country) on its appear
ance, I recognize much of real rehgious feehng, much of 10
honest and true principle, much of straightforward ignorant
common sense. In Oxford there was genuine feeling too ;
but there had been a smouldering stern energetic animosity,
not at all unnatural, partly rational, against its author.
A false step had been made ; now was the time for action.
I am told that, even before the publication of the Tract,
rumours of its contents had got into the hostile camp in
an exaggerated form ; and not a moment was lost in pro
ceeding to action, when I was actually (faUen) in(to) the
hands of the Philistines. I was quite unprepared for the 20
outbreak, and was startled at its violence. I do not think
I had any fear. Nay, I will add I am not sure that it was
not in one point of view a relief to me.
I saw indeed clearly that my place in the Movement
was lost ; public confidence was at an end ; my occupation
was gone. It was simply an impossibility that I could
say any thing henceforth to good effect, when I had been
posted up by the marshal on the buttery hatch of every
College of my University, after the manner of discommoned
pastry-cooks, and when in every part of the country 30
and every class of society, through every organ and occa
sion of opinion, in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings,
in pulpits, at dinner-tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway
carriages, I was denounced as a traitor who had laid his
train and was detected in the very act of firing it against
the time-honoured Establishment. There were indeed
men, besides my own (immediate) friends, men of name
and position, who gaUantly took my part, as Dr. Hook,
Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Perceval : it must have been a grievous
8 universal] sudden 31 occasion] opportunity

(FROM 1833 TO 1839.) 187
trial for themselves ; yet what after all could they do for
me ? Confidence in me was lost ; — but I had already lost
full confidence in myself. Thoughts had passed over me
a year and a half before (in respect to the Anglican claims),
which for the time had profoundly troubled me. They had
gone : I had not less confidence in the power and the
prospects of the ApostoUcal movement than before ; not
less confidence than before in the grievousness of what
I called the " dominant errors " of Rome : but how was
io I any more to have absolute confidence in myself ? how
was I to have confidence in my present confidence ? how
was I to be sure that I should always think as I thought
now ? I felt that by this event a kind Providence had
saved me from an impossible position in the future.
First, if I remember right, they wished me to withdraw
the Tract. This I refused to do : I would not do so for
the sake of those who were unsettled or in danger of un-
settlement. I would not do so for my own sake ; for how
could I acquiesce in a mere Protestant interpretation of the
20 Articles ? how could I range myself among the professors
of a theology, of which it put my teeth on edge, even to
hear the sound ?
Next they said, " Keep silence ; do not defend the
Tract ; " I answered, " Yes, if you will not condemn it, —
if you will aUow it to continue on sale." They pressed on
me whenever I gave way ; they fell back when they saw
me obstinate. Their line of action was to get out of me as
much as they could ; but upon the point of their tolerating
the Tract I was obstinate. So they let me continue it on
30 sale ; and they said they would not condemn it. But they
said that this was on condition that I did not defend it,
that I stopped the series, and that I myself published my
own condemnation in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford.
I impute nothing whatever to him, he was ever most kind
to me. Also, they said they could not answer for what
(some) individual Bishops might perhaps say about the
Tract in their own charges. I agreed to their conditions.
My one point was to save the Tract.
Not a scrap of writing was given me, as a pledge of the
39 scrap of] line in

188 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
performance of (the main article on) their side of the
engagement. Parts of letters from them were read to me,
without being put into my hands. It was an " under
standing." A clever man had warned me against " under
standings " some six years before : I have hated them
ever since.
In the last words of my letter to the Bishop of Oxford
I thus resigned my place in the Movement : —
"I have nothing to be sorry for," I say to him, "except
having made your Lordship anxious, and others whom 10
I am bound to revere. I have nothing to be sorry for, but
every thing to rejoice in and be thankful for. I have never
taken pleasure in seeming to be able to move a party, and
whatever influence I have had, has been found, not sought
after. I have acted because others did not act, and have
sacrificed a quiet which I prized. May God be with me in
time to come, as He has been hitherto ! and He wUl be,
if I can but keep my hand clean and my heart pure. I think
I can bear, or at least will try to bear, any personal humilia
tion, so that I am preserved from betraying sacred interests, 20
which the Lord of grace and power has given into my
charge." 1 performance] observance

PART V
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, May 19, 1864.]

PART V.

HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS (FROM 1839 TO 1841).
And now that I am about to trace, as far as I can, the
course of that great revolution of mind, which led me to
leave my own home, to which I was bound by so many
strong and tender ties, I feel overcome with the difficulty
of satisfying myself in my account of it, and have recoiled
from doing so, till the near approach of the day, on which
these fines must be given to the world, forces me to set
about the task. For who can know himself, and the multi
tude of subtle influences which act upon him ? and who
10 can recollect, at the distance of twenty-five years, all that
he once knew about his thoughts and his deeds, and that,
during a portion of his hfe, when even at the time his
observation, whether of himself or of the external world,
was less than before or after, by very reason of the per
plexity and dismay which weighed upon him, — when,
though it would be most unthankful to seem to imply that
he had not all-sufficient light amid his darkness, yet a dark
ness it emphatically was ? And who can (suddenly) gird
himself [suddenly] to a new and anxious undertaking,
20 which he might be able indeed to perform well, had he full
and calm leisure (allowed him) to look through every thing
that he has written, whether in published works or private
letters ? but, on the other hand, as to that calm con
templation of the past, in itself so desirable, who can
afford to be leisurely and deliberate, while he practises on
himself a cruel operation, the ripping up of old griefs, and
the venturing again upon the " infandum dolorem " of
years, in which the stars of this lower heaven were one by
Part V] Chapter III 6 doing so] the attempt
16 though it would be most unthankful to seem to imply that he had
not all-sufficient light] in spite of the light given to him according to
his need
20 had he] were 22 has] had

192 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
one going out ? I could not in cool blood, nor except upon
the imperious call of duty, attempt what I have set myself
to do. It is both to head and heart an extreme trial, thus
to analyze what has so long gone by, and to bring out the
results of that examination. I have done various bold
things in my life : this is the boldest : and, were I not
sure I should after aU succeed in my object, it would be
madness to set about it.
In the spring of 1839 my position in the Anglican Church
was at its height. I had supreme confidence in my con- 10
troversial status, and I had a great and stiU growing success,
in recommending it to others. I had in the foregoing
autumn been somewhat sore at the Bishop's Charge, but
I have a letter which shows that aU annoyance had passed
from my mind. In January, if I recoUect aright, in order
to meet the popular clamour against myself and others,
and to satisfy the Bishop, I had coUected into one aU the
strong things which they, and especiaUy I, had said against
the Church of Rome, in order to their insertion among the
advertisements appended to our pubhcations. Conscious 20
as I was that my opinions in religion were not gained, as
the world said, from Roman sources, but were, on the con
trary, the birth of my own mind and of the circumstances
in which I had been placed, I had a scorn of the imputa
tions which were heaped upon me. It was true that I held
a large bold system of rehgion, very unlike the Protestant
ism of the day, but it was the concentration and adjust
ment of the statements of great Anghcan authorities, and
I had as much right to do so, as the Evangehcal [party
had], and more right than the Liberal (party could show), 30
to hold their own respective doctrines. As I spoke on
occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, in behalf of who would
(in the Anglican Church), that he might hold in the Anghcan
Church a comprecation with the Saints [with BramhaU],
and the Mass aU but Transubstantiation with Andrewes, or
with Hooker that Transubstantiation itself is not a point
29 do so] hold it 31 to hold] for asserting
31 spoke] declared
33 that he might hold in the Anglican Church] the right of holding
with Bramhall

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 193
for Churches to part communion upon, or with Hammond
that a General Council, truly such, never did, never shall
err in a matter of faith, or with Bull that man (had in
paradise and) lost inward grace by the fall, or with Thorn-
dike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin,
or with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no
otherwise given than in the Catholic Church. " Two can
play at that," was often in my mouth, when men of Pro
testant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, or
io Reformers ; in the sense that, if they had a right to speak
loud, I had [both] the liberty (to speak out as well as
they,) and (had) the means(, by the same or parallel
appeals,) of giving them tit for tat. I thought that the
Anghcan Church had been tyrannized over by a (mere)
party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise con
tained in the motto to the Lyra, " They shall know the
difference now." I only asked to be allowed to show them
the difference.
What will best describe my state of mind at the early
20 part of 1839, is an Article in the British Critic for that
April. I have looked over it now, for the first time since
it was published ; and have been struck by it for this
reason : — it contains the last words which I ever spoke as
an Anghcan to Anglicans. It may now be read as my
parting address and valediction, made to my friends.
I little knew it at the time. It reviews the actual state of
things, and it ends by looking towards the future. It is
not altogether mine ; for my memory goes to this, — that
I had asked a friend to do the work ; that then, the thought
30 came on me, that I would do it myself : and that he was
good enough to put into my hands what he had with great
appositeness written, and (that) I embodied it infto] my
Article. Every one, I think, will recognize the greater part
of it as mine. It was published two years before the affair
of Tract 90, and was entitled " The State of Religious
Parties." In this Article, I begin by bringing together testimonies
from our enemies to the remarkable success of our exer
tions. One writer said : " Opinions and views of a theology
4 inward grace by the fall] on the fall, a supernatural habit of grace
14 had been] was
apologia U

194 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
of a very marked and peculiar kind have been extensively
adopted and strenuously upheld, and are daily gaining
ground among a considerable and influential portion of
the members, as well as ministers of the Established
Church." Another : The Movement has manifested itself
" with the most rapid growth of the hot-bed of these evil
days." Another : " The Via Media is crowded with
young enthusiasts, who never presume to argue, except
against the propriety of arguing at all." Another : " Were
I to give you a full Ust of the works, which they have pro- 10
duced within the short space of five years, I should sur
prise you. You would see what a task it would be to make
yourself complete master of their system, even in its
present probably immature state. The writers have
adopted the motto, ' In quietness and confidence shaU be
your strength.' With regard to confidence, they have
justified their adopting it ; but as to quietness, it is not
very quiet to pour forth such a succession of controversial
publications." Another : " The spread of these doctrines
is in fact now having the effect of rendering aU other dis- 20
tinctions obsolete, and of severing the rehgious community
into two portions, fundamentally and vehemently opposed
one to the other. Soon there will be no middle ground left ;
and every man, and especially every clergyman, wiU be
compelled to make his choice between the two." Another :
" The time has gone by, when those unfortunate and deeply
regretted publications can be passed over without notice,
and the hope that their influence would fail is now dead."
Another : " These doctrines had already made fearful pro
gress. One of the largest churches in Brighton is crowded 30
to hear them ; so is the church at Leeds. There are few
towns of note, to which they have not extended. They
are preached in small towns in Scotland. They obtain in
Elginshire, 600 miles north of London. I found them
myself in the heart of the highlands of Scotland. They are
advocated in the newspaper and periodical press. They
have even insinuated themselves into the House of Com
mons." And, lastly, a bishop in a Charge : — It " is daily
assuming a more serious and alarming aspect. Under the
specious pretence of deference to Antiquity and respect 40
for primitive models, the foundations of the Protestant

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 195
Church are undermined by men, who dwell within her walls,
and those who sit in the Reformers' seat are traducing the
Reformation." After thus stating the phenomenon of the time, as it
presented itself to those who did not sympathize in it, the
Article proceeds to account for it ; and this it does by
considering it as a re-action from the dry and superficial
character of the religious teaching and the literature of
the last generation, or century, and as a result of the need
io which was felt both by the hearts and the intellects of the
nation for a deeper philosophy, and as the evidence and
as the partial fulfilment of that need, to which even the
chief authors of the then generation had borne witness.
First, I mentioned the literary influence of Walter Scott,
who turned men's minds to the direction of the middle
ages. " The general need," I said, " of something deeper
and more attractive, than what had offered itself else
where, may be considered to have led to his popularity ;
and by means of his popularity he re-acted on his readers,
20 stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, setting
before them visions, which, when once seen, are not easily
forgotten, and silently indoctrinating . them with nobler
ideas, which might afterwards be appealed to as first
principles." Then I spoke of Coleridge, thus : " While history in
prose and verse was thus made the instrument of Church
feelings and opinions, a philosophical basis for the same
was laid in England by a very original thinker, who, while
he indulged a liberty of speculation, which no Christian
30 can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which were often
heathen rather than Christian, yet after all instilled a higher
philosophy into inquiring minds, than they had hitherto
been accustomed to accept. In this way he made trial of
his age, and succeeded in interesting its genius in the cause
of Catholic truth."
Then come Southey and Wordsworth, " two living poets,
one of whom in the department- of fantastic fiction, the
other in that of philosophical meditation, have addressed
themselves to the same high principles and feelings, and
40 carried forward their readers in the same direction."
15 to] in

196 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Then comes the prediction of this re-action hazarded by
" a sagacious observer withdrawn from the world, and
surveying its movements from a distance," Mr. Alexander
Knox. He had said twenty years before the date of my
writing : "No Church on earth has more intrinsic excel
lence than the Enghsh Church, yet no Church probably
has less practical influence. . . . The rich provision, made
by the grace and providence of God, for habits of a noble
kind, is evidence that men shaU arise, fitted both by nature
and abihty, to discover for themselves, and to display to 10
others, whatever yet remains undiscovered, whether in the
words or works of God." Also I referred to " a much
venerated clergyman of the last generation," who said
shortly before his death, " Depend on it, the day wfil
come, when those great doctrines, now buried, wiU be
brought out to the hght of day, and then the effect wiU be
fearful." I remarked upon this, that they who " now
blame the impetuosity of the current, should rather turn
their animadversions upon those who have dammed up
a majestic river, till it had become a flood." 20
These being the circumstances under which the Move
ment began and progressed, it was absurd to refer it to the
act of two or three individuals. It was not so much a move
ment as a " spirit afloat ; " it was within us, " rising up
in hearts where it was least suspected, and working itself,
though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably, as
hardly to admit of precaution or encounter on any ordinary
human rules of opposition. It is," I continued, " an adver
sary in the air, a something one and entire, a whole wherever
it is, unapproachable and incapable of being grasped, as 30
being the result of causes far deeper than pohtical or other
visible agencies, the spiritual awakening of spiritual wants."
To make this clear,! proceed to refer to the chief preachers
of the revived doctrines at that moment, and to draw
attention to the variety of their respective antecedents.
Dr. Hook and Mr. Churton represented the high Church
dignitaries of the last century ; Mr. Perceval, the tory
aristocracy ; Mr. Keble came from a country parsonage ;
Mr. Palmer from Ireland ; Dr. Pusey from the Universities
5 writing] Article 20 had] has 37 tory] Tory

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 197
of Germany, and the study of Arabic MSS. ; Mr. Dods-
worth from the study of Prophecy ; Mr. Oakeley had
gained his views, as he himself expressed it, " partly by
study, partly by reflection, partly by conversation with
one or two friends, inquirers like himself : " while I speak
of myself as being " much indebted to the friendship of
Archbishop Whately." And thus I am led on to ask,
" What head of a sect is there 1 What march of opinions
can be traced from mind to mind among preachers such as
io these 1 They are one and all in their degree the organs of
one Sentiment, which has risen up simultaneously in many
places very mysteriously."
My train of thought next led me to speak of the disciples
of the Movement, and I freely acknowledged and lamented
that they needed to be kept in order. It is very much to
the purpose to draw attention to this point now, when such
extravagances as then occurred, whatever they were, are
simply laid to my door, or to the charge of the doctrines
which I advocated. A man cannot do more than freely
20 confess what is wrong, say that it need not be,, that it
ought not to be, and that he is very sorry that it should
be. Now I said in the Article, which I am reviewing, that
the great truths themselves, which we were preaching,
must not be condemned on account of such abuse of them.
" Aberrations there must ever be, whatever the doctrine
is, while the human heart is sensitive, capricious, and way
ward. A mixed multitude went out of Egypt with the
Israelites." " There will ever be a number of persons,"
I continued, " professing the opinions of a movement party,
30 who talk loudly and strangely, do odd or fierce things,
display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other people ;
persons, too young to be wise, too generous to be cautious,
too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be humble.
Such persons will be very apt to attach themselves to
particular persons, to use particular names, to say things
merely because others do, and to act in a party-spirited
way." While I thus repubUsh what I then said about such
extravagances as occurred in these years, at the same time
40 1 have a very strong conviction that they furnished quite
40 they] those extravagances

198 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
as much the welcome excuse for those who were jealous
or shy of us, as the stumbling-blocks of those who were
well inclined to our doctrines. This too we felt at the time ;
but it was our duty to see that our good should not be
evil-spoken of ; and accordingly, two or three of the
writers of the Tracts for the Times had commenced a Series
of what they called " Plain Sermons " with the avowed
purpose of discouraging and correcting whatever was uppish
or extreme in our followers : to this Series I contributed
a volume myself. 10
Its conductors say in their Preface : " If therefore as
time goes on, there shall be found persons, who admiring
the innate beauty and majesty of the fuller system of
Primitive Christianity, and seeing the transcendent strength
of its principles, shall become loud and voluble advocates in
their behalf, speaking the more freely, because they do not
feel them deeply as founded in divine and eternal truth, of
such persons it is our duty to declare plainly, that, as we
should contemplate their condition with serious misgiving,
so would they be the last persons from whom we should seek 20
support. " But if, on the other hand, there shall be any, who, in
the silent humility of their lives, and in their unaffected
reverence for holy things, show that they in truth accept
these principles as real and substantial, and by habitual
purity of heart and serenity of temper, give proof of their
deep veneration for sacraments and sacramental ordinances,
those persons, whether our professed adherents or not, best
exemplify the kind of character which the writers of the
Tracts for the Times have wished to form." 30
These clergymen had the best of claims to use these
beautiful words, for they were themselves, aU of them,
important writers in the Tracts, the two Mr. Kebles, and
Mr. Isaac Williams. And this passage, with which they
ushered their Series into the world, I quoted in the Article,
of which I am giving an account, and I added, " What
more can be required of the preachers of neglected truth,
than that they should admit that some, who do not assent
to their preaching, are holier and better men than some
who do ? " They were not answerable for the intemperance 40
of those who dishonoured a true doctrine, provided they

(.BTiOM 1839 TO 1841.) 199
protested, as they did, against such intemperance. " They
were not answerable for the dust and din which attends
any great moral movement. The truer doctrines are, the
more liable they are to be perverted."
The notice of these incidental faults of opinion or temper
in adherents of the Movement, led on to a discussion of
the secondary causes, by means of which a system of
doctrine may be embraced, modified, or developed, of the
variety of schools which may all be in the One Church, and
io of the succession of one phase of doctrine to another, while
it is ever one and the same. Thus I was brought on to the
subject of Antiquity, which was the basis of the doctrine
of the Via Media, and by which was not implied a servile
imitation of the past, but such a reproduction of it as is
reaUy young, while it is old. " We have good hope,"
I say, " that a system will be rising up, superior to the age,
yet harmonizing with, and carrying out its higher points,
which wiU attract to itself those who are willing to make
a venture and to face difficulties, for the sake of something
20 higher in prospect. On this, as on other subjects, the pro
verb wiU apply, ' Fortes fortuna adjuvat.' "
Lastly, I proceeded to the question of that future of the
Anghcan Church, which was to be a new birth of the
Ancient Religion. And I did not venture to pronounce
upon it. " About the future, we have no prospect before
our minds whatever, good or bad. Ever since that great
luminary, Augustine, proved to be the last bishop of Hippo,
Christians have had a lesson against attempting to foretell,
how Providence will prosper and " [or ?] " bring to an end,
30 what it begins." Perhaps the lately-revived principles
would prevail in the Anglican Church ; perhaps they would
be lost in " some miserable schism, or some more miserable
compromise ; but there was nothing rash in venturing to
predict that " neither Puritanism nor Liberalism had any
permanent inheritance within her." [I suppose I meant
to say that in the present age, without the aid of Apostolical
principles, the Anglican Church would, in the event, cease
to exist.]
(Then I went on :) " As to Liberalism, we think the
11 it] that doctrine 13 implied] to be understood 15 young] new
29 These are the Author's [ ]

200 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
formularies of the Church will ever, with the aid of a good
Providence, keep it from making any serious inroads upon
the Clergy. Besides, it is too cold a principle to prevail with
the multitude." But as regarded what was caUed Evangehcal
Rehgion or Puritanism, there was more to cause alarm.
I observed upon its organization ; but on the other hand
it had no intellectual basis ; no internal idea, no principle
of unity, no theology. " Its adherents," I said, " are
already separating from each other ; they wiU melt away
like a snow-drift. It has no straightforward view on any 10
one point, on which it professes to teach, and to hide its
poverty, it has. dressed itself out in a maze of words. We
have no dread of it at all ; we only fear what it may lead
to. It does not stand on intrenched ground, or make any
pretence to a position ; it does but occupy the space
between contending powers, Catholic Truth and Rational
ism. Then indeed wiU be the stern encounter, when two
real and living principles, simple, entire, and consistent,
one in the Church, the other out of it, at length rush upon
each other, contending not for names and words , or half - views , 20
but for elementary notions and distinctive moral characters."
Whether the ideas of the coming age upon rehgion were
true or false, (at least) they would be real. " In the present
day," I said, " mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A man
who can set down half-a-dozen general propositions, which
escape from destroying one another only by being diluted
into truisms, who can hold the balance between opposites
so skilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam, who never
enunciates a truth without guarding himself against being
supposed to exclude the contradictory, — who holds that 30
Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church is to
be deferred to, that faith only justifies, yet that it does
not justify without works, that grace does not depend on
the sacraments, yet is not given without them, that bishops
are a divine ordinance, yet those who have them not are
in the same religious condition as those who have, — this is
your safe man and the hope of the Church ; this is what
the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible,
temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through
the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charyb- 40
dis of Aye and No."

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 201
This state of things, however, I said, could not last, if
men were to read and think. They " will not keep [stand
ing] in that very attitude which you call sound Church-of-
Englandism or orthodox Protestantism. They cannot go
on for ever standing on one leg, or sitting without a chair,
or walking with their feet tied, or [grazing] like Tityrus's
stags (grazing) in the air. They will take one view or
another, but it will be a consistent view. It may be
Liberalism, or Erastianism, or Popery, or Catholicity ;
io but it will be real."
I concluded the Article by saying, that all who did not
wish to be " democratic, or pantheistic, or popish," must
" look out for some Via Media which will preserve us from
what threatens, though it cannot restore the dead. The
spirit of Luther is dead ; but Hildebrand and Loyola are
alive. Is it sensible, sober, judicious, to be so very angry
with those writers of the day, who point to the fact, that our
divines of the seventeenth century have occupied a ground
which is the true and inteUigible mean between extremes ?
20 Is it wise to quarrel with this ground, because it is not
exactly what we should choose, had- we the power of
choice ? Is it true moderation, instead of trying to fortify
a middle doctrine, to fling stones at those who do ? . . .
Would you rather have your sons and daughters members
of the Church of England or of the Church of Rome ? "
And thus I left the matter. But,; while I was thus
speaking of the future of the Movement, I was in truth
winding up my accounts with it, little dreaming that it
was so to be ; — while I was still, in some way or other,
30 feeling about for an available Via Media, I was soon to
receive a shock which was to cast out of my imagination
aU middle courses and compromises for ever. As I have
said, this Article appeared in the April number of the
British Critic ; in the July number, I cannot tell why, there
is no Article of mine ; before the number for October, the
event had happened to which I have alluded.
But before I proceed to describe what happened to me
in the' summer of 1839, 1 must detain the reader for a while,
in order to describe the issue of the controversy between
40 Rome and the Anghcan Church, as I -viewed it. This wiU
involve some dry discussion ; but it is as necessary for my
H3

202 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
narrative, as plans of buildings and homesteads are often
found to be in the proceedings of our law courts.
I have said already that, though the object of the Move
ment was to withstand the Liberalism of the day, I found
and felt this could not be done by mere negatives. It was
necessary for us to have a positive Church theory erected
on a definite basis. This took me to the great Anglican
divines ; and then of course I found at once that it was
impossible to form any such theory, without cutting
across the teaching of the Church of Rome. Thus came in 10
the Roman controversy.
When I first turned myself to it, I had neither doubt on
the subject, nor suspicion that doubt would ever come
upon me. It was in this state of mind that I began to
read up BeUarmine on the one hand, and numberless
Anglican writers on the other. But I soon found, as others
had found before me, that it was a tangled and manifold
controversy, difficult to master, more difficult to put out
of hand with neatness and precision. It was easy to make
points, not easy to sum up and settle. It was not easy to 20
find a clear issue for the dispute, and stUl less by a logical
process to decide it in favour of AngUcanism. This difficulty,
however, had no tendency whatever to harass or perplex
me : it was a matter, not of convictions, but of proofs.
First I saw, as all see who study the subject, that a broad
distinction had to be drawn between the actual state of
behef and of usage in the countries which were in com
munion with the Roman Church, and her formal dogmas ;
the latter did not cover the former. Sensible pain, for
instance, is not imphed in the Tridentine decree upon30
Purgatory ; but it was the tradition of the Latin Church,
and I had seen the pictures of souls in flames in the streets
of Naples. Bishop Lloyd had brought this distinction out
strongly in an Article in the British Critic in 1825 ; indeed,
it was one of the most common objections made to the
Church of Rome, that she dared not commit herself by
formal decree, to what nevertheless she sanctioned and
24 matter, not of convictions, but of proofs] matter which bore, not
on convictions, but on proofs

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 203
aUowed. Accordingly, in my Prophetical Office, I view as
simply separate ideas, Rome quiescent, and Rome in action.
I contrasted her creed on the one hand, with her ordinary
teaching, her controversial tone, her pohtical and social
bearing, and her popular behefs and practices on the
other. While I made this distinction between the decrees and
the traditions of Rome, I drew a parallel distinction between
AngUcanism quiescent, and Anghcanism in action. In its
io formal creed Anghcanism was not at a great distance from
Rome : far otherwise, when viewed in its insular spirit,
the traditions of its establishment, its historical charac
teristics, its controversial rancour, and its private judg
ment. I disavowed and condemned those excesses, and
called them " Protestantism " or " Ultra-Protestantism : "
I wished to find a paraUel disclaimer, on the part of Roman
controversiahsts, of that popular system of beliefs and
usages in their own Church, which I caUed " Popery."
When that hope was a dream, I saw that the controversy
20 lay between the book-theology of AngUcanism on the one
side, and the Uving system of what I caUed Roman cor
ruption on the other. I could not get further than this ;
with this result I was forced to content myself.
These then were the parties in the controversy : — the
Anghcan Via Media and the popular rehgion of Rome.
And next, as to the issue, to which the controversy between
them was to be brought, it was this : — the Anghcan dis
putant took his stand upon Antiquity or Apostolicity, the
Roman upon Catholicity. The Anglican said to the
30 Roman : " There is but One Faith, the Ancient, and you
have not kept to it ; " the Roman retorted : " There is
but One Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it." The
Anghcan urged : " Your special beliefs, practices, modes
of action, are nowhere in Antiquity ; " the Roman objected :
" You do* not communicate with any one Church besides
your own and its offshoots, and you have discarded prin
ciples, doctrines, sacraments, and usages, which are and
ever have been received in the East and the West." The
true Church, as defined in the Creeds, was both Catholic
40 and Apostoho ; now, as I viewed the controversy in which
I was engaged, England and Rome had divided these notes

204 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
or prerogatives between them : the cause lay thus, Aposto
licity versus Catholicity.
However, in thus stating the matter, of course I do not
wish it supposed, that I considered the note of Cathohcity
really to belong to Rome, to the disparagement of the
Anglican Church ; but (I considered) that the special point
or plea of Rome in the controversy was Cathohcity, as the
Anglican plea was Antiquity. Of course I contended that
the Roman idea of Cathohcity was not ancient and apostohc.
It was in my judgment at the utmost only natural, becom- 10
ing, expedient, that the whole of Christendom should be
united in one visible body ; while such a unity might be,
on the other hand, (nothing more than) a mere heartless
and political combination. For myself, I held with the
Anghcan divines, that, in the Primitive Church, there was
a very real mutual independence between its separate parts,
though, from a dictate of charity, there was in fact a close
union between them. I considered that each See and
Diocese might be compared to a crystal, and that each was
similar to the rest, and that the sum total of them aU was 20
only a collection of crystals. The unity of the Church lay,
not in its being a polity, but in its being a famUy, a race,
coming down by apostohcal descent from its first founders
and bishops. And I considered this truth brought out,
beyond the possibihty of dispute, in the Epistles of St.
Ignatius, in which the Bishop is represented as the one
supreme authority in the Church, that is, in his own place,
with no one above him, except as, for the sake of ecclesias
tical order and expedience, arrangements had been made
by which one was put over or under another. So much so
for our own claim to Catholicity, which was so perversely
appropriated by our opponents to themselves : — on the
other hand, as to our special strong point, Antiquity,
while of course, by means of it, we were able to condemn
most emphatically the novel claim of Rome to domineer
over other Churches, which were in truth her equals, further
than that, we thereby especially convicted her of the in
tolerable offence of having added to the Faith. This was
the critical head of accusation urged against her by the
4 considered] allowed
12-13 he, on the other hand,] ,on the other hand, he

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 205
Anghcan disputant, and, as he referred to St. Ignatius
in proof that he himself was a true Catholic, in spite of
being separated from Rome, so he triumphantly referred
to the Treatise of Vincentius of Lerins upon the " Quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," in proof that the
controversialists of Rome(, in spite of their possession of
the Cathohc name,) were separated in their creed from the
Apostolical and primitive faith.
Of course those controversiaUsts had their own answer
io to him, with which I am not concerned in this place ; here
I am only concerned with the issue itself, between the one
party and the other — Antiquity versus Catholicity.
Now I will proceed to illustrate what I have been saying
of the status of the controversy, as it presented itself to my
mind, by extracts from my writings of the dates of 1836,
1840, and 1841. And I introduce them with a remark,
which especially appUes to the paper, from which I shall
quote first, of the date of 1836. That paper appeared in
the March and April numbers of the British Magazine of
20 that year, and was entitled "Home Thoughts Abroad."
Now it will be found, that, in the discussion which it
contains, as in various other writings of mine, when I was
in the Anglican Church, the argument in behalf of Rome is
stated with considerable perspicuity and force. And at
the time my friends and supporters cried out " How
imprudent ! " and both at the time, and especially at
a later date, my enemies have cried out, " How insidious ! "
Friends and foes virtually agreed in their criticism ; I had
set out the cause which I was combating to the best advan-
30 tage : this was an offence ; it might be from imprudence,
it might be with a traitorous design. It was from neither
the one nor the other ; but for the following reasons. First,
I had a great impatience, whatever was the subject, of not
bringing out the whole of it, as clearly as I could ; next
I wished to be as fair to my adversaries as possible ; and
thirdly I thought that there was -a great deal of shallowness
among our own friends, and that they undervalued the
strength of the argument in behalf of Rome, and that they
ought to be roused to a more exact apprehension of the
9 answer to] mode of answering

206 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
position of the controversy. At a later date, (1841,) when
I really felt the force of the Roman side of the question
myself, as a difficulty which had to be met, I had a fourth
reason for such frankness in argument, and that was,
because a number of persons were unsettled far more than
I was, as to the Catholicity of the Anghcan Church. It
was quite plain, that, unless I was perfectly candid in
stating what could be said against it, there was no chance
that any representations, which I felt to be in its favour,
or at least to be adverse to Rome, would have had their 10
real weight duly acknowledged. At aU times I had a deep
conviction, to put the matter on the lowest ground, that
" honesty was the best policy." Accordingly, in (July)
1841, I expressed myself thus on the AngUcan difficulty :
" This is an objection which we must honestly say is deeply
felt by many people, and not inconsiderable ones ; and the
more it is openly avowed to be a difficulty, the better ; for
there is then the chance of its being acknowledged, and in
the course of time obviated, as far as may be, by those who
have the power. Flagrant evils cure themselves by being 20
flagrant ; and we are sanguine that the time is come when
so great an evil as this is, cannot stand its ground against
the good feeling and common sense of rehgious persons.
It is the very strength of Romanism against us ; and,
unless the proper persons take it into their serious con
sideration, they may look for certain to undergo the loss,
as time goes on, of some whom they would least hke to be
lost to our Church." The measure which I had especiaUy
in view in this passage, was the project of a Jerusalem
Bishopric, which the then Archbishop of Canterbury was 30
at that time concocting with M. Bunsen, and of which
I shall speak more in the sequel. And now to return to
the Home Thoughts- Abroad of the spring of 1836 : —
The discussion contained in this composition runs in the
form of a dialogue. One of the disputants says: "You
say to me that the Church of Rome is corrupt. What then ?
to cut off a limb is a strange way of saving it from the
influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may
cause cramp in the extremities ; yet we spare our poor feet
10 their real weight duly acknowledged] any success with the persons
in question

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 207
notwithstanding. Surely there is such a rehgious fact as
the existence of a great Catholic body, union with which
is a Christian privilege and duty. Now, we English are
separate from it."
The other answers : " The present is an unsatisfactory,
miserable state of things, yet I can grant no more. The
Church is founded on a doctrine, — on the gospel of Truth ;
it is a means to an end; Perish the Church, (though,
blessed be the promise ! this cannot be,) yet let it perish
io rather than the Truth should fail. Purity of faith is more
precious to the Christian than unity itself. If Rome has
erred grievously in doctrine, then it is a duty to separate
even from Rome."
His friend, who takes the Roman side of the argument,
refers to the image of the Vine and its branches, which is
found, I think, in St. Cyprian, as if a branch cut from the
Cathohc Vine must necessarily die. Also he quotes a pas
sage from St. Augustine in controversy with the Donatists
to the same effect ; viz. that, as being separated from the
20 body of the Church, they were ipso facto cut off from the
heritage of Christ. And he quotes St. Cyril's argument
drawn from the very title Catholic, which no body or com
munion of men has ever dared or been able to appropriate,
besides one. He adds, " Now, I am only contending for
the fact, that the communion of Rome constitutes the main
body of the Church Catholic, and that we are split off from
it, and in the condition of the Donatists."
The other replies, by denying the fact that the present
Roman communion is like St. Augustine's Catholic Church,
30 inasmuch as there are to be taken into account the large
Anghcan and Greek communions. Presently he takes the
offensive, naming distinctly the points, in which Rome has
departed from Primitive Christianity, viz. " the practical
idolatry, the virtual worship of the Virgin and Saints,
which are the offence of the Latin Church, and the degrada
tion of moral truth and duty, which follows from these."
And again : " We cannot join a Church, did we wish it ever
so much, which does not acknowledge our orders, refuses
us the Cup, demands our acquiescence in image-worship,
30 are to] must

208 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
and excommunicates us, if we do not receive it and aU"
other decisions of the Tridentine Council."
His opponent answers these objections by referring to
the doctrine of " developments of gospel truth." Besides,
" The Anghcan system itself is not found complete in those
early centuries ; so that the [Anglican] principle [of
Antiquity] is self -destructive." " When a man takes up
this Via Media, he is a mere doctrinaire ; " he is like those,
" who, in some matter of business, start up to suggest their
own little crotchet, and are ever measuring mountains with 10
a pocket ruler, or improving the planetary courses." " The
Via Media has slept in libraries ; it is a substitute of
infancy for manhood."
It is plain, then, that at the end of 1835 or beginning of
1836, I had the whole state of the question before me, on
which, to my mind, the decision between the Churches
depended. It is observable that the question of the position
of the Pope, whether as the centre of unity, or as the source
of jurisdiction, did not come into my thoughts at all ; nor
did it, I think I may say, to the end. I doubt whether 20
I ever distinctly held any of his powers to be de jure divino,
while I was in the Anglican Church ; — not that I saw any
difficulty in the doctrine ; not that, together with the
history of St. Leo, of which I shaU speak by and by, the
idea of his infallibility did not cross my mind, for it did, —
but after all, in my view the controversy did not turn upon
it ; it turned upon the Faith and the Church. This was
my issue of the controversylronTthe beginning to the end.
There was a contrariety of claims between the Roman
and Anglican religions, and the history of my conversion 30
is simply the process of working it out to a solution. In
1838 I illustrated it by the contrast presented to us between
the Madonna and Child, and a Calvary. [I said that] the
peculiarity of the Anglican theology was this, — that it
" supposed the Truth to be entirely objective and detached,
not " (as the Roman) " lying hid in the bosom of the
Church as if one with her, clinging to and (as it were) lost
in her embrace, but as being sole and unapproachable, as
6, 7 These are the Author's [ ] 23 together] in connexion
36 the Roman] in the theology of Rome

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 209
on the Cross or at the Resurrection, with the Church close
by, but in the background."
As I viewed the controversy in 1836 and 1838, sol viewed
it in 1840 and 1841. In the British Critic of January 1840,
after gradually investigating how the matter lies between
the Churches by means of a dialogue, I end thus : " It
would seem, that, in the above discussion, each disputant
has a strong point : our strong point is the argument from
Primitiveness, that of Romanists from Universality. It is
io a fact, however it is to be accounted for, that Rome has
added to the Creed ; and it is a fact, however we justify
ourselves, that we are estranged from the great body of
Christians over the world. And each of these two facts is
at first sight a grave difficulty in the respective systems to
which they belong." Again, " While Rome, though not
deferring to the Fathers, recognizes them, and England,
not deferring to the large body of the Church, recognizes
it, both Rome and England have a point to clear up."
And still more strongly(,) in July, 1841 :
20 "If the Note of schism, on the one hand, lies against
England, an antagonist disgrace lies upon Rome, the Note
of idolatry. Let us not be mistaken here ; we are neither
accusing Rome of idolatry, nor ourselves of schism ; we
think neither charge tenable ; but still the Roman Church
practises what is so like idolatry, and the Enghsh Church
makes much of what is so very like schism, that without
deciding what is the duty of a Roman Catholic towards the
Church of England in her present state, we do seriously
think that members of the EngUsh Church have a pro-
30 vidential direction given them, how to comport themselves
towards the Church of Rome, while she is what she is."
One remark more about Antiquity and the Via Media.
As time went on, without doubting the strength of the
Anghcan argument from Antiquity, I felt also that it was
not merely our special plea, but our only one. Also I felt
that the Via Media, which was to represent it, was to be
a sort of remodeUed and adapted Antiquity. This I observe
both in Home Thoughts Abroad, and in the Article of the
British Critic which I have analyzed above. But this
37 observe] advanced

210 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
circumstance, that after all we must use private judgment
upon Antiquity, created a sort of distrust of my theory
altogether, which in the conclusion of my Volume on the
Prophetical Office ((1836-7)) I express thus : " Now that
our discussions draw to a close, the thought, with which
we entered on the subject, is apt to recur, when the excite
ment of the inquiry has subsided, and weariness has
succeeded, that what has been said is but a dream, the
wanton exercise, rather than the practical conclusions of
the inteUect." And I conclude the paragraph by anticipat- 10
ing a line of thought into which I was, in the event, almost
obliged to take refuge : " After all," I say, " the Church
is ever invisible in its day, and faith only apprehends it."
What was this, but to give up the Notes of a visible Church
altogether, whether the Cathohc Note or the Apostohc ?
The Long Vacation of 1839 began early. There had been
a great many visitors to Oxford from Easter to Com
memoration ; and Dr. Pusey and myself had attracted
attention, more, I think, than (in) any former year. I had
put away from me the controversy with Rome for more 20
than two years. In my Parochial Sermons the subject had
never been introduced : there had been nothing for two
years, either in my Tracts or in the British Critic, of
a polemical character. I was returning, for the Vacation,
to the course of reading which I had many years before
chosen as especiaUy my own. I have no reason to suppose
that the thoughts of Rome came across my mind at aU.
About the middle of June I began to study and master the
history of the Monophysites. I was absorbed in the doc
trinal question. This was from about June 13th to August 30
30th. It was during this course of reading that for the
first time a doubt came upon me of the tenableness of
Anglicanism. I recoUect on the 30th of July mentioning to a
friend, whom I had accidentally met, howremarkable the his
tory was ; but by the end of August I was seriously alarmed.
I have described in a former work, how the history
affected me. My stronghold was Antiquity ; now here, in
the middle of the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to me,
18 Dr. Pusey and myself] Dr. Pusey's party 22 never] at no time

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 211
Christendom of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries
reflected. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Mono-
physite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position
of the Oriental communion, Rome was, where she now is ;
and the Protestants were the Eutyehians. Of all passages
of history, since history has been, who would have thought
of going to the sayings and doings of old Eutyches, that
delirus senex, as (I think) Petavius caUs him, and to the
enormities of the unprincipled Dioscorus, in order to be
io converted to Rome !
Now let it be simply understood that I am not writing
controversiaUy, but with the one object of relating things
as they happened to me in the course of my conversion.
With this view I wiU quote a passage from the account,
which I gave in 1850, of my reasonings and feelings in 1839 :
" It was difficult to make out how the Eutyehians or
Monophysites were heretics, unless Protestants and
AngUcans were heretics also ; difficult to find arguments
against the Tridentine Fathers, which did not tell against
20 the Fathers of Chalcedon ; difficult to condemn the Popes
of the sixteenth century, without condemning the Popes
of the fifth. The drama of rehgion, and the combat of
truth and error, were ever one and the same. The principles
and proceedings of the Church now, were those of the
Church then ; the principles and proceedings of heretics
then, were those of Protestants now. I found it so, — almost
fearfully ; there was an awful simihtude, more awful,
because so sUent and unimpassioned, between the dead
records of the past and the feverish chronicle of the present.
30 The shadow of the fifth century was on the sixteenth. It
was hke a spirit rising from the troubled waters of the old
world, with the shape and lineaments of the new. The
Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and
stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless ; and heretics
were shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever
courting civil power, and never agreeing together, except
by its aid ; and the civil power was ever aiming at com
prehensions, trying to put the invisible out of view, and
substituting expediency for faith. What was the use of
40 continuing the controversy, or defending my position, if,
after all, I was forging arguments for Arius or Eutyches,

212 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
and turning devil's advocate against the much-enduring
Athanasius and the majestic Leo ? Be my soul with the
Saints ! and shall I lift up my hand against them ? Sooner
may my right hand forget her cunning, and wither outright,
as his who once stretched it out against a prophet of God !
anathema to a whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Larimers,
and Jewels ! perish the names of BramhaU, Ussher, Taylor,
Stillingfleet, and Barrow from the face of the earth, ere
I should do aught but fall at their feet in love and in
worship, whose image was continuaUy before my eyes, and 10
whose musical words were ever in my ears and on my
tongue ! "
Hardly had I brought my course of reading to a close,
when the Dublin Review of that same August was put
into my hands, by friends who were more favourable to
the cause of Rome than I was myself. There was an
Article in it on the " Anghcan Claim " by Bishop Wiseman.
This was about the middle of September. It was on the
Donatists, with an application to Anghcanism. I read it,
and did not see much in it. The Donatist controversy 20
was known to me for some years, as I have instanced
above. The case was not paraUel to that of the Anghcan
Church. St. Augustine in Africa wrote against the Donatists
in Africa. They were a furious party who made a schism
within the African Church, and not beyond its limits. It
was a case of Altar against Altar, of two occupants of the
same See, as that between the Non-jurors in England and
the Established Church ; not the case of one Church
against another, as Rome against the Oriental Mono-
physites. But my friend, an anxiously reUgious man, now, 30
as then, very dear to me, a Protestant still, pointed out
the palmary words of St. Augustine, which were contained
in one of the extracts made in the Review, and which had
escaped my observation. " Securus judicat orbis terra-
rum." He repeated these words again and again, and,
when he was gone, they kept ringing in my ears. " Securus
judicat orbis terrarum ; " they were words which went
beyond the occasion of the Donatists : they appUed to that
of the Monophysites. They gave a cogency to the Article,
17 Bishop] Dr. 21 I have instanced above] has appeared already

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 213
which had escaped me at first. They decided ecclesiastical
questions on a simpler rule than that of Antiquity ; nay,
St. Augustine was one of the prime oracles of Antiquity ;
here then Antiquity was deciding against itself. What
a light was hereby thrown upon every controversy in the
Church ! not that, for the moment, the multitude may not
falter in their judgment, — not that, in the Arian hurricane,
Sees more than can be numbered did not bend before its
fury, and fall off from St. Athanasius, — not that the crowd
io of Oriental Bishops did not need to be sustained during
the contest by the voice and the eye of St. Leo ; but that
the dehberate judgment, in which the whole Church at
length rests and acquiesces, is an infallible prescription
and a final sentence against such portions of it as protest
and secede. Who can account for the impressions which
are made on him ? For a mere sentence, the words of
St. Augustine, struck me with a power which I never had
felt from any words before. To take a familiar instance,
they were hke the " Turn again Whittington " of the
20 chime ; or, to take a more serious one, they were like the
" ToUe, lege, — ToUe, lege," of the child, which converted
St. Augustine himself. " Securus judicat orbis terrarum ! "
By those great words of the ancient Father, (interpreting
and summing up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical
history,) the theory of the Via Media was absolutely
pulverized. I became excited at the view thus opened upon me.
I was just starting on a round of visits ; and I mentioned
my state of mind to two most intimate friends : I think
30 to no others. After a while, I got calm, and at length the
vivid impression upon my imagination faded away. What
I thought about it on reflection, I will attempt to describe
presently. I had to determine its logical value, and its
bearing upon my duty. Meanwhile, so far as this was
certain, — I had seen the shadow of a hand upon the waU.
It was clear that I had a good deal to learn on the question
of the Churches, and that perhaps some new fight was
coming upon me. He who has seen a ghost, cannot be as
if he had never seen it. The heavens had opened and
4o closed again. The thought for the moment had been,
" The Church of Rome wiU be found right after all ; "

214 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
and then it had vanished. My old convictions remained
as before.
At this time, I wrote my Sermon on Divine CaUs, which
I published in my volume of Plain Sermons. It ends
thus : —
" 0 that we could take that simple view of things, as to
feel that the one thing which Ues before us is to please
God ! What gain is it to please the world, to please the
great, nay even to please those whom we love, compared
with this ? What gain is it to be applauded, admired, 10
courted, foUowed, — compared with this one aim, of ' not
being disobedient to a heavenly vision ' ? What can this
world offer comparable with that insight into spiritual
things, that keen faith, that heavenly peace, that high
sanctity, that everlasting righteousness, that hope of glory,
which they have, who in sincerity love and foUow our Lord
Jesus Christ ? Let us beg and pray Him day by day to
reveal Himself to our souls more fully, to quicken our
senses, to give us sight and hearing, taste and touch of
the world to come ; so to work within us, that we may 20
sincerely say, ' Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and
after that receive me with glory. Whom have I in heaven
but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire in
comparison of Thee. My flesh and my heart faUeth, but
God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.' "
Now to trace the succession of thoughts, and the con
clusions, and the consequent innovations on my previous
belief, and the general conduct, to which I was led, upon
this sudden visitation. And first, I wiU say, whatever
comes of saying it, for I leave inferences to others, that for 30
years I must have had something of an habitual notion,
though it was latent, and had never led me to distrust my
own convictions, that my mind had not found its ultimate
rest, and that in some sense or other I was on journey.
During the same passage across the Mediterranean in which
I wrote " Lead kindly light," I also wrote the verses, which
are found in the Lyra under the head of " Providences,"
beginning, " When I look back." This was in 1833 ; and,
since I have begun this narrative, I have found a memoran
dum under the date of September 7, 1829, in which I speak 40

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 215
of myself, as " now in my rooms in Oriel CoUege, slowly
advancing &c. and led on by God's hand blindly, not know
ing whither He is taking me." But, whatever this pre
sentiment be worth, it was no protection against the dismay
and disgust, which I felt, in consequence of the dreadful
misgiving, of which I have been relating the history. The
one question was, what was I to do ? I had to make up
my mind for myself, and others could not help me. I deter
mined to be guided, not by my imagination, but by my
io reason. And this I said over and over again in the years
which foUowed, both in conversation and in private letters.
Had it not been for this severe resolve, I should have been
" a Cathohc sooner than I was. Moreover, I felt on considera
tion a positive doubt, on the other hand, whether the
suggestion did not come from below. Then I said to
.. myself, Time alone can solve that question. It was my
business to go on as usual, to obey those convictions to
which I had so long surrendered myself, which stiU had
possession of me, and on which my new thoughts had no
20 direct bearing. That new conception of things should only
so far influence me, as it had a logical claim to do so. If
it came from above, it would come again ; — so I trusted, —
and with more definite outhnes (and greater cogency and
consistency of proof). I thought of Samuel, before " he
knew the word of the Lord ; " and therefore I went, and
lay down to sleep again. This was my broad view of the
matter, and my prima facie conclusion.
However, my new historical fact had (already) to a certain
point a logical force. Down had come the Via Media as
30 a definite theory or scheme, under the blows of St. Leo.
My " Prophetical Office " had come to pieces ; not indeed
as an argument against " Roman errors," nor as against
Protestantism, but as in behalf of England. I had no more
a distinctive plea for Anglicanism, unless I would be
a Monophysite. I had, most painfuUy, to faU back upon
my three original points of belief, which I have spoken so
much of in a former passage, — the principle of dogma, the
sacramental system, and anti-Romanism. Of these three,
the first two were better secured in Rome than in the
33 more] longer

216 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Anglican Church. The Apostolical Succession, the two
prominent sacraments, and the primitive Creeds, belonged,
indeed, to the latter, but there had been and was far less
strictness on matters of dogma and ritual in the Anghcan
system than in the Roman : in consequence, my main
argument for the Anglican claims lay in the positive and
special charges, which I could bring against Rome. I had
no positive Anghcan theory. I was very nearly a pure
Protestant. Lutherans had a sort of theology, so had
Calvinists ; I had none. 10
However, this pure Protestantism, to which I was
graduaUy left, was really a practical principle. It was
a strong, though it was only a negative ground, and it still*
had great hold on me. As a boy of fifteen, I had so fully
imbibed it, that I had actuaUy erased in my Gradus ad
Parnassum, such titles, under the word " Papa," as " Christi
Vicarius," " sacer interpres," and " sceptra gerens," and
substituted epithets so vile that I cannot bring myself to
write them down here. The effect of this early persuasion
remained as, what I have aheady caUed it, a " stain upon 20
my imagination." As regards my reason, I began in 1833
to form theories on the subject, which tended to obliterate
[it. In the first part of Home Thoughts Abroad, written
in that year, after speaking of Rome as " undeniably the
most exalted Church in the whole world," and manifesting,
" in all the truth and beauty of the Spirit, that side of
high mental excellence, which Pagan Rome attempted but
could not realize, — high-mindedness, majesty, and the cahn
23 For the matter between [ ], pp. 216-219, the following was substituted
in 1865: it; yet by 1838 I had got no further than to consider
Antichrist, as not the Church of Rome, but the spirit of the old pagan
city, the fourth monster of Daniel, which was still alive, and which
had corrupted the Church which was planted there. Soon after this
indeed, and before my attention was directed to the Monophysite con
troversy, I underwent a great change of opinion. I saw that, from
the nature of the case, the true Vicar of Christ must ever to the world
seem like Antichrist, and be stigmatized as such, because a resemblance
must ever exist between an original and a forgery ; and thus the fact of
such a calumny was almost one of the notes of the Church. But we
cannot unmake ourselves or change our habits in a moment. Though
my reason was convinced, I did not throw off, for some time after, —
(Then, in 1865, followed the matter after the square bracket on p. 219,
line 2, " I could not have thrown off, — " etc.)

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 217
consciousness of power," — I proceed to say, " Alas ! . . .
the old spirit has revived, and the monster of Daniel's
vision, untamed by its former judgments, has seized upon
Christianity as the new instrument of its impieties, and
awaits a second and final woe from God's hand. Surely
the doctrine of the Genius Loci is not without foundation,
and explains to us how the blessing or the curse attaches
to cities and countries, not to generations. Michael is
represented [in the book of Daniel] as opposed to the
io Prince of the kingdom of Persia. Old Rome is still aUve.
The Sorceress upon the Seven Hills, in the book of Revela
tion, is not the Church of Rome, but Rome itself, the bad
spirit, which, in its former shape, was the animating spirit
of the Fourth Monarchy." Then I refer to St. Malachi's
Prophecy which " makes a hke distinction between the
City and the Church of Rome. ' In the last persecution,'
it says, ' of the Holy Roman Church, Peter of Rome shall
be on the throne, who shall feed his flock in many tribula
tions. When these are past, the City upon the Seven Hills
20 shah be destroyed, and the awful Judge shaU judge the
people.' " Then I append my moral. " I deny that the
distinction is unmeaning ; Is it nothing to be able to look
on our Mother, to whom we owe the blessing of Christianity,
with affection instead of hatred ? with pity indeed, aye,
and fear, but not with horror ? Is it nothing to rescue her
from the hard names, which interpreters of prophecy have
put upon her, as an idolatress and an enemy of God, when
she is deceived rather than a deceiver ? Nothing to be
able to account her priests as ordained of God, and anointed
30 for their spiritual functions by the Holy Spirit, instead of
considering her communion the bond of Satan ? " This\
was my first advance in rescuing, on an intelligible, intellec- I
tual basis, the Roman Church from the designation of Anti- j
christ ; it was not the Church, but the old dethroned Pagan ;
monster, still Uving in the ruined city, that was Antichrist.j
In a Tract in 1838, I profess to give the opinions of the
Fathers on the subject, and the conclusions to which
I come, are still less violent against the Roman Church,
though on the same basis as before. I say that the local
9 These are the Author's [ ]

218 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Christian Church of Rome has been the means of shielding
the pagan city from the fulness of those judgments, which
are due to it ; and that, in consequence of this, though
Babylon has been utterly swept from the earth, Rome
remains to this day. The reason seemed to be simply this,
that, when the barbarians came down, God had a people
in that city. Babylon was a mere prison of the Church ;
Rome had received her as a guest. " That vengeance has
never faUen : it is stiU suspended ; nor can reason be given
why Rome has not fallen under the rule of God's general 10
dealings with His rebellious creatures, except that a Chris
tian Church is still in that city, sanctifying it, interceding
for it, saving it." I add in a note, " No opinion, one way
or the other, is here expressed as to the question, how far,
as the local Church has saved Rome, so Rome has cor
rupted the local Church ; or whether the local Church in
consequence, or again whether other Churches elsewhere,
may or may not be types of Antichrist." I quote aU this
in order to show how Bishop Newton was stiU upon my
mind even in 1838 ; and how I was feeling after some other 20
interpretation of prophecy instead of his, and not without
a good deal of hesitation.
However, I have found notes written in Mai-ch, 1839,
which anticipate my Article in the British Critic of October,
1840, in which I contended that the Churches §f Rome and
England were both one, and also the one true Church, for
the very reason that they had both been stigmatized by
the name of Antichrist, proving my point from the text,
" If they have called the Master of the House Beelzebub,
how much more them of His household," and quoting so
largely from Puritans and Independents to show that, in
their mouths, the Anghcan Church is Antichrist and Anti-
christian as well as the Roman. I urged in that article
that the calumny of being Antichrist is almost " one of
the notes of the true Church ; " and that " there is no
medium between a Vice-Christ and Anti-Christ ; " for " it
is not the acts that make the difference between them, but
the authority for those acts." This of course was a new
mode of viewing the question ; but we cannot unmake
ourselves or change our habits in a moment. It is quite 40
clear, that, if I dared not commit myself in 1838, to the

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 219
belief that the Church of Rome was not a type of Anti
christ,] I could not have thrown off(, — ) the unreasoning
prejudice and suspicion, which I cherished about her[, for
some time after,] at least by fits and starts, in spite of the
conviction of my reason. I cannot prove this, but I believe
it to have been the case from what I recollect of myself.
Nor was there any thing in the history of St. Leo and the
Monophysites to undo the firm belief I had in the existence
of what I called the practical abuses and excesses of Rome.
io To the inconsistencies then, to the ambition and intrigue,
to the sophistries [of Rome] (as I considered them to be)
I (now) had recourse in my opposition to her, both public
and personal. I did so by way of a relief. I had a great
and growing dislike, after the summer of 1839, to speak
against the Roman Church herself or her formal doctrines.
I was very averse to speak(ing) against doctrines, which
might possibly turn out to be true, though at the time
I had no reason for thinking they were, or against the
Church, which had preserved them. I began to have
20 misgivings, that, strong as my own feelings had been
against her, yet in some things which I had said, I had
taken the statements of AngUcan divines for granted
without weighing them for myseff. I said to a friend in
1840, in a letter, which I shall use presently, " I am troubled
by doubts whether as it is, I have not, in what I have
pubhshed, spoken too strongly against Rome, though
I think I did it in a kind of faith, being determined to put
myself into the English system, and say all that our divines
said, whether I had fuUy weighed it or not." I was sore
30 about the great AngUcan divines, as if they had taken
me in, and made me say strong things, which facts did not
justify. Yet I did still hold in substance all that I had
said against the Church of Rome in my Prophetical Office.
I felt the force of the usual Protestant objections against
her ; I believed that we had the Apostolical succession in
the Anglican Church, and the grace of the sacraments ;
I was not sure that the difficulty of its isolation might not
be overcome, though I was far from sure that it could.
I did not see any clear proof that it had committed itself
4 the] this 10 (twice), 11 the] her three times

220 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
to any heresy, or had taken part against the truth ; and
I was not sure that it would not revive into full Apostoho
purity and strength, and grow into union with Rome her
self (Rome explaining her doctrines and guarding against
their abuse), that is, if we were but patient and hopeful.
I wished for union between the Anghcan Church and
Rome, if, and when, it was possible ; and I did what
I could to gain weekly prayers for that object. The ground
which I felt (to be) good against her was the moral ground :
I felt I could not be wrong in striking at her pohtical and 10
social Une of action. The alliance of a dogmatic reUgion
with hberals, high or low, seemed to me a providential
direction against moving towards it, and a better " Pre
servative against Popery," than the three volumes of folio,
in which, I think, that prophylactic is to be found. How
ever, on occasions which demanded it, I felt it a duty to
give out plainly aU that I thought, though I did not like
to do so. One such instance occurred, when I had to
pubhsh a letter about Tract 90. In that letter, I said,
" Instead of setting before the soul the Holy Trinity, and 20
heaven and hell, the Church of Rome does seem to me, as
a popular system, to preach the Blessed Virgin and the
Saints, and purgatory." On this occasion I recoUect
expressing to a friend the distress it gave me thus to speak ;
but, I said, " How can I help saying it, if I think it ? and
I do think it ; my Bishop caUs on me to say out what I
think ; and that is the long and the short of it." But
I recoUected HurreU Froude's words to me, almost his
dying words, " I must enter another protest against your
cursing and swearing. What good can it do ? and I caU it 30
uncharitable to an excess. How mistaken we may ourselves
be, on many points that are only graduaUy opening on us ! "
Instead then of speaking of errors in doctrine, I was
driven, by my state of mind, to insist upon the pohtical
conduct, the controversial bearing, and the social methods
and manifestations of Rome. And here I found a matter
close at hand, which affected me most sensibly too, because
6 wished] began to wish 13 it] Rome 14 of folio] in folio
19 twice letter] Letter 37 olose at] ready to my
37 most sensibly too, because it was before my eyes] the more
sensibly for the reason that it lay at our very doors

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 221
it was before my eyes. I can hardly describe too strongly
my feehng upon it. I had an unspeakable aversion to the
policy and acts of Mr. O'ConneU, because, as I thought,
he associated himself with men of all rehgions and no
religion against the Anghcan Church, and advanced
CathoUcism by violence and intrigue. When then I found
him taken up by the English Catholics, and, as I supposed,
at Rome, I considered I had a fulfilment before my eyes
how the Court of Rome played fast and loose, and fulfilled
io the bad points which I had seen put down in books against
it. Here we saw what Rome was in action, whatever she
might be when quiescent. Her conduct was simply secular
and pohtical.
This feeUng led me into the excess of being very rude
to that zealous and most charitable man, Mr. Spencer,
when he came to Oxford in January, 1840, to get Anglicans
to set about praying for Unity. I myself then, or soon
after, drew up such prayers ; it was one of the first thoughts
which came upon me after my shock, but I was too much
20 annoyed with the political action of the members of the
Roman Church in England to wish to have any thing to do
with them personaUy. So glad in my heart was I to see
him when he came to my rooms, whither Mr. Palmer of
Magdalen [brought him], that I could have laughed for
joy ; I think I did (laugh) ; but I was very rude to him,
I would not meet him at dinner, and that, (though I did
not say so,) because I considered him " in loco apostatse "
from the Anghcan Church, and I hereby beg bis pardon
for it. I wrote afterwards with a view to apologize, but
so I dare say he must have thought that I made the matter
worse, for these were my words to him : —
" The news that you are praying for us is most touching,
and raises a variety of indescribable emotions. (. . .) May
their prayers return abundantly into their own bosoms !
Why then do I not meet you in a manner conformable with
these first feelings ? For this single reason, if I may say
9 fulfilled the bad points] justified the serious charges
17 then], at that time 18 it] their desirableness
20 members of the Roman Church in England] Catholic body in these
islands 23 rooms, whither] rooms with 34 bosoms !] bosoms ....

222 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
it, that your acts are contrary to your words. You invite
us to a union of hearts, at the same time that you are
doing all you can, not to restore, not to reform, not to
re-unite, but to destroy our Church. You go further than
your principles require. You are leagued with our enemies.
' The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands
of Esau.' This is what especially distresses us ; this is
what we cannot understand, how Christians, hke yourselves,
with the clear view you have that a warfare is ever waging
in the world between good and evil, should, in the present 10
state of England, ally yourselves with the side of evil
against the side of good. ... Of parties now in the country,
you cannot but allow, that next to yourselves we are
nearest to revealed truth. We maintain great and holy
principles ; we profess Cathohc doctrines. ... So near are
we as a body to yourselves in modes of thinking, as even
to have been taunted with the nicknames which belong to
you ; and, on the other hand, if there are professed infidels,
scoffers, sceptics, unprincipled men, rebels, they are found
among our opponents. And yet you take part with them 20
against us. . . . You consent to act hand in hand [with these
and others] for our overthrow. Alas ! aU this it is that im
presses us irresistibly with the notion that you are a pohtical,
not a religious party ; that, in order to gain an end on
which you set your hearts, — an open stage for yourselves
in England, — you ally yourselves with those who hold
nothing against those who hold something. This is what
distresses my own mind so greatly, to speak of myself, that,
with limitations which need not now be mentioned, I cannot
meet familiarly any leading persons of the Roman Com- 30
munion, and least of all when they come on a religious
errand. Break off, I would say, with Mr. O'ConneU in
Ireland and the liberal party in England, or come not to us
with overtures for mutual prayer and religious sympathy."
And here came in another feehng, of a personal nature,
which had little to do with the argument against Rome,
except that, in my prejudice, I connected it with my own
ideas of the usual conduct of her advocates and instru-
21, 22 These are the Author's [ ]
37 connected it with] viewed what happened to myself in the light of
38 usual] traditionary

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 223
ments. I was very stern upon any interference in our
Oxford matters on the part of charitable Catholics, and on
any attempt to do me good personally. There was nothing,
indeed, at the time more likely to throw me back. " Why
do you meddle ? why cannot you let me alone 1 You can
do me no good ; you know nothing on earth about me ;
you may actually do me harm ; I am in better hands than
yours. I know my own sincerity of purpose ; and I am
determined upon taking my time." Since I have been
io a Catholic, people have sometimes accused me of back
wardness in making converts ; and Protestants have argued
from it that I have no great eagerness to do so. It would
be against my nature to act otherwise than I do ; but
besides, it would be to forget the lessons which I gained in
the experience of my own history in the past.
This is the account which I have to give of some savage
and ungrateful words in the British Critic of 1840 against
the controversialists of Rome : " By their fruits ye shall
know them. . . . We see it attempting to gain converts
20 among us by unreal representations of its doctrines,
plausible statements, bold assertions, appeals to the weak
nesses of human nature, to our fancies, our eccentricities,
our fears, our frivolities, our false philosophies. We see
its agents, smiling and nodding and ducking to attract
attention, as gipseys make up to truant boys, holding out
tales for the nursery, and pretty pictures, and gilt ginger
bread, and physic concealed in jam, and sugar-plums for
good children. Who can but feel shame when the religion
of Ximenes, Borromeo, and Pascal, is so overlaid ? Who
30 can but feel sorrow, when its devout and earnest defenders
so mistake its genius and its capabilities ? We Englishmen
like manliness, openness, consistency, truth. Rome will
never gain on us, till she learns these virtues, and uses
them ; and then she may gain us, but it will be by ceasing
to be what we now mean by Rome, by having a right,
not to ' have dominion over our faith,' but to gain and
possess our affections in the bonds of the gospel. Till she
ceases to be what she practically is, a union is impossible
between her and England ; but, if she does reform, (and
1 upon] in the case of 2-3 on any] of any
25 gipseys] gipsies 34 may] may

224 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
who can presume to say that so large a part of Christendom
never can ?) then it will be our Church's duty at once to
join in communion with the continental Churches, what
ever politicians at home may say to it, and whatever steps
the civil power may take in consequence. And though we
may not live to see that day, at least we are bound to pray
for it ; we are bound to pray for our brethren that they
and we may be led together into the pure Ught of the
gospel, and be one as we once were one. It was most
touching news to be told, as we were lately, that Christians 10
on the Continent were praying together for the spiritual
well-being of England. May they gain light, while they
aim at unity, and grow in faith while they manifest their
love ! We too have our duties to them ; not of reviling,
not of slandering, not of hating, though poUtical interests
require it ; but the duty of loving brethren still more
abundantly in spirit, whose faces, for our sins and their
sins, we are not aUowed to see in the flesh."
No one ought to indulge in insinuations ; it certainly
diminishes my right to complain of slanders uttered against 20
myself, when, as in this passage, I had aheady spoken in
condemnation of that class of controversialists (of that
religious body), to which I myself now belong.
I have thus put together, as well as I could, what has
to be said about my general state of mind from the autumn
of 1839 to the summer of 1841 ; and, having done so, I go
on to narrate how my new misgivings affected my conduct,
and my relations towards the Anglican Church.
When I got back to Oxford in October, 1839, after the
visits which I had been paying, it so happened, there had 30
been, in my absence, occurrences of an awkward character,
bringing me into collision both with my Bishop and also
with the (authorities of the) University [authorities] ; and
this drew my attention at once to the state of [what would
be considered] the Movement party there, and made me
very anxious for the future. In the spring of the year, as
has been seen in the Article analyzed above, I had spoken
of the excesses which were to be found among persons
22 condemnation of that class of] disparagement of the
24 could] can 32 bringing me into collision] compromising me

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 225
commonly included in it ; at that time I thought little of
such an evU, but the new thoughts, which had come on me
during the Long Vacation, on the one hand made me
comprehend it, and on the other took away my power of
effectuaUy meeting it. A firm and powerful control was
necessary to keep men straight ; I never had a strong wrist,
but at the very time, when it was most needed, the reins
had broken in my hands. With an anxious presentiment
on my mind of the upshot of the whole inquiry, which it
io was almost impossible for me to conceal from men who
saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation,
who came perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me,
and having a categorical yes or no to their questions, —
how could I expect to say any thing about my actual,
positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or con
soling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts
of their own 1 Nay, how could I, with satisfaction to
myself, analyze my own mind, and say what I held and
what I did not (hold) ? or (how could I) say with what
20 limitations, shades of difference, or degrees of belief, I (still)
held that body of (Anghcan) opinions which I had openly
professed and taught ? how could I deny or assert this
point or that, without injustice to the new view, in which
the whole evidence for those old opinions presented itself
to my mind ?
However, I had to do what I could, and what was best,
under the circumstances ; I found a general talk on the
subject of the Article in the Dublin Review ; and, if it had
affected me, it was not wonderful, that it affected others
30 also. As to myself, I felt no kind of. certainty that the
argument in it was conclusive. Taking it at the worst,
granting that the Anglican Church had not the Note of
Cathohcity ; yet there were many Notes of the Church.
Some belonged to one age or place, some to another.
BeUarmine had reckoned Temporal Prosperity among the
Notes of the Church ; but the Roman Church had not any
great popularity, wealth, glory, power, or prospects, in the
nineteenth century. It was not at all certain (as) yet, even
that we had not the Note of Cathohcity ; but, if not (this),
2 thoughts] views 23 view] light
APOLOGIA T

226 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
we had others. My first business then, was to examine this
question carefully, and see, if a great deal could not be said
after all for the Anglican Church, in spite of its acknowledged
short-comings. This I did in an Article " on the Cathohcity
of the English Church," which appeared in the British
Critic of January, 1840. As to my personal distress on the
point, I think it had gone by February 21st in that year,
for I wrote then to Mr. Bowden about the important
Article in the Dublin, thus : "It made a great impression
here [Oxford] ; and, I say what of course I would only io
say to such as yourself, it made me for a while very uncom
fortable in my own mind. The great speciousness of his
argument is one of the things which have made me despond
so much," that is, as to its effect upon others.
But, secondly, the great stumbling-block lay in the
39 Articles. It was urged that here was a positive Note
against Anglicanism : — Anghcanism claimed to hold that
the Church of England was nothing else than a continua
tion in this country, (as the Church of Rome might be in
France or Spain,) of that one Church of which in old times 20
Athanasius and Augustine were members. But, if so, the
doctrine must be the same ; the doctrine of the Old Church
must live and speak in Anglican formularies, in the 39
Articles. Did it ? Yes, it did ; that is what I maintained ;
it did in substance, in a true sense. Man had done his
worst to disfigure, to mutilate, the old Cathohc Truth, but
there it was, in spite of them, in the Articles still. It was
there,( — ) but this must be shown. It was a matter of life
and death to us to show it. And I believed that it could
be shown ;• I considered that those grounds of justification, 30
which I gave above, when I was speaking of Tract 90, were
sufficient for the purpose ; and therefore I set about show
ing it at once. This was in March, 1840, when I went up
to Littlemore. And, as it was a matter of life and death
with us, all risks must be run to show it. When the attempt
was actually made, I had got reconciled to the prospect of
it, and had no apprehensions as to the experiment ; but in
1840, while my purpose was honest, and my grounds of
reason satisfactory, I did nevertheless recognize that I was
2 if] whether 10 These are the Author's [ ]
14 to] anticipating

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 227
engaged in an experimentum crucis. I have no doubt that
then I acknowledged to myseff that it would be a trial of
the AngUcan Church, which it had never undergone before,
— not that the Catholic sense of the Articles had not been
held or at least suffered by their framers and promulgators,
and was not implied in the teaching of Andrewes or
Beveridge, but that it had never been publicly recognized,
while the interpretation of the day was Protestant and
exclusive. I observe also, that, though my Tract was an
io experiment, it was, as I said at the time, " no feeler," the
event showed it ; for, when my principle was not granted,
I did not draw back, but gave up. I would not hold office
in a Church which would not aUow my sense of the Articles.
My tone was, " This is necessary for us, and have it we
must and will, and, if it tends to bring men to look less
bitterly on the Church of Rome, so much the better."
This then was the second work to which I set myself ;
though when I got to Littlemore, other things came in the
way of accomplishing it at the moment. I had in mind to
20 remove all such obstacles as were in the way of holding
the Apostolic and Cathohc character of the Anglican teach
ing ; to assert the right of all who chose(,) to say in the face
of day, " Our Church teaches the Primitive Ancient faith."
I did not conceal this : in Tract 90, it is put forward as the
first principle of all, " It is a duty which we owe both to
the Catholic Church, and to our own, to take our reformed
confessions in the most Catholic sense they will admit : we
have no duties towards their framers." And still more
pointedly in my Letter, explanatory of the Tract, addressed
30 to Dr. Jeff, I say : " The only peculiarity of the view
I advocate, if I must so call it, is this — that whereas it is
usual at this day to make the particular belief of their
writers their true interpretation, I would make the belief
of the Catholic Church such. That is, as it is often said that
infants are regenerated in Baptism, not on the faith of
their parents, but of the Church, so in like manner I would
say that the Articles are received, not in the sense of their
framers, but (as far as the wording will admit or any
ambiguity requires it) in the one Catholic sense."
6 and was not] not that it was not 1 1 it] this
1 8 came in the way of] interfered to prevent my 20 were] lay

228 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
A third measure which I distinctly contemplated, was
the resignation of St. Mary's, whatever became of the
question of the (39) Articles ; and as a first step I meditated
a retirement to Littlemore. (Littlemore was an integral
part of St. Mary's Parish, and between two and three miles
distant from Oxford.) I had built a Church there several
years before ; and I went there to pass the Lent of 1840,
and gave myself up to teaching in the Poor Schools, and
practising the choir. At the same time, I contemplated
a monastic house there. I bought ten acres of ground and io
began planting ; but this great design was never carried out.
I mention it, because it shows how little I had reaUy the
idea then of ever leaving the Anghcan Church. That I [also]
contemplated even the further step of giving up St. Mary's
itself as early as 1839, appears from a letter which I wrote
in October, 1840, to the friend whom it was most natural
for me to consult on such a point. It ran as foUows : —
" For a year past a feeling has been growing on me that
I ought to give up St. Mary's, but I am no fit judge in the
matter. I cannot ascertain accurately my own impressions 20
and convictions, which are the basis of the difficulty, and
though you cannot of course do this for me, yet you may
help me generaUy, and perhaps supersede the necessity of
my going by them at all.
" First, it is certain that I do not know my Oxford
parishioners ; I am not conscious of influencing them, and
certainly I have no insight into their spiritual state. I have
no personal, no pastoral acquaintance with them. To very
few have I any opportunity of saying a religious word.
Whatever influence I exert on them is precisely that which 30
I may be exerting on persons out of my parish. In my
excuse I am accustomed to say to myself that I am not
adapted to get on with them, while others are. On the
other hand, I am conscious that by means of my position
at St. Mary's I do exert a considerable influence on the
University, whether on Undergraduates or Graduates. It
seems, then, on the whole that I am using St. Mary's, to
the neglect of its direct duties, for objects not belonging
8 Poor Schools] Parish School
9 contemplated] had in view 13 then] at that time
16 the friend 1864. 1S65] Mr. Keble, the friend 1873

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 229
to it ; I am converting a parochial charge into a sort of
University office.
" I think I may say truly that I have begun scarcely
any plan but for the sake of my parish, but every one has
turned, independently of me, into the direction of the
University. I began Saints'-days Services, daily Services,
and Lectures in Adam de Brome's Chapel, for my parish
ioners ; but they have not come to them. In consequence
I dropped the last mentioned, having, while it lasted, been
io naturally led to direct it to the instruction of those who
did come, instead of those who did not. The Weekly
Communion, I believe, I did begin for the sake of the
University. " Added to this the authorities of the University, the
appointed guardians of those who form great part of the
attendants on my Sermons, have shown a dislike of my
preaching. One dissuades men from coming ; — the late
Vice-Chancellor threatens to take his own children away
from the Church ; and the present, having an opportunity
20 last spring of preaching in my parish pulpit, gets up and
preaches against doctrine with which I am in good measure
identified. No plainer proof can be given of the feeling in
these quarters, than the absurd myth, now a second time
put forward, (')that [']Vice-Chancellors cannot be got to
take the office on account of Puseyism.'
" But further than this, I cannot disguise from myself
that my preaching is not calculated to defend that system
of religion which has been received for 300 years, and of
which the Heads of Houses are the legitimate maintainers
30 in this place. They exclude me, as far as may be, from the
University Pulpit ; and, though I never have preached
strong doctrine in it, they do so rightly, so far as this, that
they understand that my sermons are calculated to under
mine things established. I cannot disguise from myseff
that they are. No one will deny that most of my sermons
are on moral subjects, not doctrinal ; still I am leading my
hearers to the Primitive Church, if you will, but not to the
Church of England. Now, ought one to be disgusting
the minds of young men with the received religion, in the
40 exercise of a sacred office, yet without a commission, (and)
against the wish of their guides and governors ?

230 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
" But this is not all. I fear I must allow that, whether
I will or no, I am disposing them towards Rome. First,
because Rome is the only representative of the Primitive
Church besides ourselves ; in proportion then as they are
loosened from the one, they will go to the other. Next,
because many doctrines which I have held, have far greater,
or their only scope, in the Roman system. And, moreover,
if, as is not unlikely, we have in process of time heretical
Bishops or teachers among us, an evil which ipso facto
infects the whole community to which they belong, and if, 10
again (what there are at this moment symptoms of), there
be a movement in the English Roman Cathohcs to break
the alliance of O'Connell and of Exeter HaU, strong tempta
tions will be placed in the way of individuals, aheady
imbued with a tone of thought congenial to Rome, to join
her Communion.
" People tell me, on the other hand, that I am, whether
by sermons or otherwise, exerting at St. Mary's a beneficial
influence on our prospective clergy ; but what if I take to
myself the credit of seeing further than they, and of having 20
in the course of the last year discovered that what they
approve so much is very likely to end in Romanism ?
" The arguments which I have published against Roman
ism seem to myseff as cogent as ever, but men go by their
sympathies, not by argument ; and if I feel the force of
this influence myself, who bow to the arguments, why may
not others still more who never have in the same degree
admitted the arguments ?
" Nor can I counteract the danger by preaching or
writing against Rome. I seem to myself almost to have 30
shot my last arrow in the Article on English Catholicity.
It must be added, that the very circumstance that I have
committed myself against Rome has the effect of setting
to sleep people suspicious about me, which is painful now
that I begin to have suspicions about myself. I men
tioned my general difficulty to A. B. a year since, than
whom I know no one of a more fine and accurate conscience,
and it was his spontaneous idea that I should give up
St. Mary's, if my feelings continued. I mentioned it again
36 A. B.] Rogers

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 231
to him lately, and he did not reverse his opinion, only
expressed great reluctance to believe it must be so."
My friend's judgment was in favour of my retaining my
living ; at least for the present ; what weighed with me
most was his saying, " You must consider, whether your
retiring either from the Pastoral Care only, or from writing
and printing and editing in the cause, would not be a sort of
scandalous thing, unless it were done very warily. It would
be said, ' You see he can go on no longer with the Church
io of England, except in mere Lay Communion ; ' or people
might say you repented of the cause altogether. Till you
see [your way to mitigate, if not remove this evil] I cer
tainly should advise you to stay." I answered as follows : —
" Since you think I may go on, it seems to follow that,
under the circumstances, I ought to do so. There are plenty
of reasons for it, directly it is allowed to be lawful. The
following considerations have much reconciled my feelings
to your conclusion.
" 1. I do not think that we have yet made fair trial
20 how much the English Church will bear. I know it is
a hazardous experiment, — like proving cannon. Yet we
must not take it for granted, that the metal will burst in
the operation. It has borne at various times, not to say
at this time, a great infusion of Catholic truth without
damage. As to the result, viz. whether this process will
not approximate the whole English Church, as a body(,) to
Rome, that is nothing to us. For what we know, it may
be the providential means of uniting the whole Church in
one, without fresh schismatizing or use of private judg-
30 ment." Here I observe, that, what was contemplated was the
bursting of the Catholicity of the Anglican Church, that is,
my subjective idea of that Church. Its bursting would
not hurt her with the world, but would be a discovery
that she was purely and essentially Protestant, and would
be really the " hoisting of the engineer with his own petar."
And this was the result. I continue : —
" 2. Say, that I move sympathies for Rome : in the
same sense does Hooker, Taylor, Bull, &c. Their argu-
3 My friend's 1864, 1865] Mr. Keble's 1873
12 These are the Author's [ ]

232 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
ments may be against Rome, but the sympathies they raise
must be towards Rome, so far as Rome maintains truths
which our Church does not teach or enforce. Thus it is
a question of degree between our divines and me. I may,
if so be, go further ; I may raise sympathies more ; but
I am but urging minds in the same direction as they do.
I am doing just the very thing which all our doctors have
ever been doing. In short, would not Hooker, if Vicar of
St. Mary's, be in my difficulty ? " — Here it may be said,
that Hooker could preach against Rome, and I could not ; 10
but I doubt whether he could have preached effectively
against Transubstantiation better than I, though neither
he nor I held it.
"3. Rationalism is the great evil of the day. May not
I consider my post at St. Mary's as a place of protest
against it ? I am more certain that the Protestant [spirit],
which I oppose, leads to infidelity, than that which I recom
mend, leads to Rome. Who knows what the state of the
University may be, as regards Divinity Professors in a few
years hence ? Any how, a great battle may be coming on, 20
of which C. D.'s book is a sort of earnest. The whole of
our day may be a battle with this spirit. May we not leave
to another age its own evil, — to settle the question of
Romanism ? "
I may add that from this time I had a Curate at St.
Mary's, who gradually took more and more of my work.
Also, this same year, 1840, I made arrangements for
giving up the British Critic, in the following July, which
were carried into effect at that date.
Such was about my state of mind, on the publication of 30
Tract 90 in February, 1841. (I was indeed in prudence
taking steps towards eventuaUy withdrawing from St.
Mary's, and I was not confident about my permanent
adhesion to the Anglican creed ; but I was in no actual
perplexity or trouble of mind. Nor did) The immense
commotion consequent upon the publication of the Tract
[did not] unsettle me again ; for I (fancied I) had weathered
the storm (, as far as the Bishops were concerned) : the
9 said] objected 13 it] that doctrine
16 These are the Autltor's [] 21 C. D.'s] Milman's

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 233
Tract had not been condemned : that was the great point ;
I made much of it.
To illustrate my feelings during this trial, I will make
extracts from my letters to a friend, which have come
into my possession. [The dates are respectively March 25,
April 1, and May 9.]
(1. March 15. — " The Heads, I believe, have just done
a violent act : they have said that my interpretation of the
Articles is an evasion. Do not think that this will pain
io me. You see, no doctrine is censured, and my shoulders
shall manage to bear the charge. If you knew all, or were
here, you would see that I have asserted a great principle,
and I ought to suffer for it : — that the Articles are to be
interpreted, not according to the meaning of the writers,
but (as far as the wording will admit) according to the
sense of the Catholic Church.")
1. (March 25.—) " I do trust I shall make no false step,
and hope my friends will pray for me to this effect. If, as
you say, a destiny hangs over us, a single false step may
20 ruin all. I am very well and comfortable ; but we are not
yet out of the wood."
2. (April 1. — ) " The Bishop sent me word on Sunday to
write a letter to him ' instanter.' So I wrote it on Monday :
on Tuesday it passed through the press : on Wednesday it
was out : and to-day [Thursday] it is in London.
" I trust that things are smoothing now ; and that we
have made a great step is certain. It is not right to boast,
till I am clear out of the wood, i.e. till I know how the letter
is received in London. You know, I suppose, that I am
30 to stop the Tracts ; but you will see in the Letter, though
I speak quite what I feel, yet I have managed to take out
on my side my snubbing's worth. And this makes me
anxious how it will be received in London.
" I have not had a misgiving for five minutes from
the first : but I do not like' to boast, lest some harm come."
(4. April 4. — " Your letter of this morning was an
exceedingly great gratification to me ; and it is confirmed,
I am thankful to say, by the opinion of others. The Bishop
1 point ; I] point, and I
4 to a] addressed severally to Mr. Bowden and another 17 1.] 2.
22 2.] 3. 23, 28 letter] Letter 25 These are the Author's [ ]
13

234 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
sent me a message that my Letter had his unqualified
approbation ; and since that, he has sent me a note to the
same effect, only going more into detail. It is most pleasant
too to my feelings, to have such a testimony to the sub
stantial truth and importance of No. 90, as I have had
from so many of my friends, from those who, from their
cautious turn of mind, I was least sanguine about. I have
not had one misgiving myseff about it throughout ; and
I do trust that what has happened will be overruled to
subserve the great cause we aU have at heart.") 10
3. (May 9. — )" The Bishops are very desirous of hush
ing the matter up : and I certainly have done my utmost
to co-operate with them, on the understanding that the
Tract is not to be withdrawn or condemned."
[And to my friend, Mr. Bowden, under date of March 15,
" The Heads, I believe, have just done a violent act : they
have said that my interpretation of the Articles is an
evasion. Do not think that this will pain me. You see, no
doctrine is censured, and my shoulders shaU manage to
bear the charge. If you knew aU, or were here, you would 20
see that I have asserted a great principle, and I ought to
suffer for it : — that the Articles are to be interpreted, not
according to the meaning of the writers, but (as far as the
wording will admit) according to the sense of the Cathohc
Church."] Upon (this) occasion [of Tract 90] several Cathohcs
wrote to me ; I answered one of my correspondents
thus : —
" April 8. — You have no cause to be surprised at the
discontinuance of the Tracts. We feel no misgivings about 30
it whatever, as if the cause of what we hold to be Cathohc
truth would suffer thereby. My letter to my Bishop has,
I trust, had the effect of bringing the preponderating
authority of the Church on our side. No stopping of the
Tracts can, humanly speaking, stop the spread of the
opinions which they have inculcated.
" The Tracts are not suppressed. No doctrine or prin
ciple has been conceded by us, or condemned by authority.
The Bishop has but said that a certain Tract is ' objection-
11 3.] 5. 28 thus] in the same tone

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 235
»
able,' no reason being stated. I have no intention whatever
of yielding any one point which I hold on conviction ; and
that the authorities of the Church know full well."
In the summer of 1841, I found myself at Littlemore
without any harass or anxiety on my mind. I had deter
mined to put aside all controversy, and I set myself down
to my translation of St. Athanasius ; but, between July
and November, I received three blows which broke me.
1. I had got but a little way in my work, when my
io trouble returned on me. The ghost had come a second
time. In the Arian History I found the very same pheno
menon, in a far bolder shape, which I had found in the
Monophysite. I had not observed it in 1832. Wonderful
that this should come upon me ! I had not sought it out ;
I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far
from the controversies of the day, on what is called a
" metaphysical " subject ; but I saw clearly, that in the
history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants,
the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now
20 was what it was (then). The truth lay, not with the Via
Media, but in what was called " the extreme party." As
I am not writing a work of controversy, I need not enlarge
upon the argument ; I have said something on the subject,
in a Volume which I published fourteen years ago.
2. I was in the misery of this new unsettlement, when
a second blow came upon me. The Bishops one after
another began to charge against me. It was a formal,
determinate movement. This was the real " understand
ing ; " that, on which I had acted on occasion of Tract 90,
30 had come to nought. I think the words, which had then
been used to me, were, that " perhaps two or three (of
them) might think it necessary to say something in their
charges ; " but by this time they had tided over the
difficulty of the Tract, and there was no one to enforce the
" understanding." They went on in this way, directing
charges at me, for three whole years. I recognized it as
21 in] with
24 which I published fourteen years ago], from which I have already
quoted 29 occasion] the first appearance

236 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
a condemnation ; it was the only one that was in their
power. At first I intended to protest ; but I gave up the
thought in despair.
On October 17th, I wrote thus to a friend : " I suppose
it will be necessary in some shape or other to re-assert
Tract 90 ; else, it will seem, after these Bishops' Charges,
as if it were silenced, which it has not been, nor do I intend
it should be. I wish to keep quiet ; but if Bishops speak,
I will speak too. If the view were silenced, I could not
remain in the Church, nor could many others ; and there- io
fore, since it is not silenced, I shall take care to show that
it isn't."
A day or two after, Oct. 22, a stranger wrote to me to
say, that the Tracts for the Times had made a young friend
of his a Catholic, and to ask, " would I be so good as to
convert him back ; " I made answer :
" If conversions to Rome take place in consequence of
the Tracts for the Times, I do not impute blame to them,
but to those who, instead of acknowledging such Anghcan
principles of theology and ecclesiastical pohty as they 20
contain, set themselves to oppose them. Whatever be the
influence of the Tracts, great or smaU, they may become
just as powerful for Rome, if our Church refuses them, as
they would be for our Church if she accepted them. If our
rulers speak either against the Tracts, or not at aU, if any
number of them, not only do not favour, but even do not
suffer the principles contained in them, it is plain that our
members may easily be persuaded either to give up those
principles, or to give up the Church. If this state of things
goes on, I mournfully prophesy, not one or two, but many 30
secessions to the Church of Rome."
Two years afterwards, looking back on what had passed,
I said, " There were no converts to Rome, till after the
condemnation of No. 90."
3. As if all this were not enough, there came the affair
of the Jerusalem Bishopric ; and, with a brief mention of
it, I shall conclude.
I think I am right in saying that it had been long a desire
with the Prussian Court to introduce Episcopacy into the
(new) Evangehcal Religion, which was intended in that 40
country to embrace both the Lutheran and Calvinistic

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 237
bodies. I almost think I heard of the project, when I was
at Rome in 1833, at the Hotel of the Prussian Minister,
M. Bunsen, who was most hospitable and kind, as to other
English visitors, so also to my friends and myself. [I sup
pose that] the idea of Episcopacy, as the Prussian king
understood it, was (, I suppose,) very different from that
taught in the Tractarian School ; but still, I suppose also,
that the chief authors of that school would have gladly
seen such a measure carried out in Prussia, had it been
io done without compromising those principles which were
necessary to the being of a Church. About the time of the
publication of Tract 90, M. Bunsen and the then Archbishop
of Canterbury were taking steps for its execution, by
appointing and consecrating a Bishop for Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, it would seem, was considered a safe place for
the experiment ; it was too far from Prussia to awaken
the susceptibilities of any party at home ; if the project
failed, it failed without harm to any one ; and, if it suc
ceeded, it gave Protestantism a status in the East, which,
20 in association with the Monophysite or Jacobite and the
Nestorian bodies, formed a political instrument for Eng
land, parallel to that which Russia had in the Greek Church,
and France in the Latin.
Accordingly, in July 1841, full of the Anghcan difficulty
on the question of Catholicity, I thus spoke of the Jerusalem
scheme in an Article in the British Critic : " When our
thoughts turn to the East, instead of recollecting that there
are Christian Churches there, we leave it to the Russians
to take care of the Greeks, and the French to take care
30 of the Romans, and we content ourselves with erecting
a Protestant Church at Jerusalem, or with helping the
Jews to rebuild their Temple there, or with becoming the
august protectors of Nestorians, Monophysites, and all
the heretics we can hear of, or with forming a league with
the Mussulman against Greeks and Romans together."
I do not pretend so long after the time to give a full or
exact account of this measure in detail. I will but say that
in the Act of Parliament, under date of October 5, 1841,
(if the copy, from which I quote, contains the measure as it
40 passed the Houses,) provision is made for the consecration
of " British subjects, or the subjects or citizens of any

238 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
foreign state, to be Bishops in any foreign country, whether
such foreign subjects or citizens be or be not subjects or
citizens of the country in which they are to act, and ....
without requiring such of them as may be subjects or
citizens of any foreign kingdom or state to take the oaths
of allegiance and supremacy, and the oath of due obedience
to the Archbishop for the time being "... also " that
such Bishop or Bishops, so consecrated, may exercise,
within such Umits, as may from time to time be assigned
for that purpose in such foreign countries by her Majesty, 10
spiritual jurisdiction over the ministers of British con
gregations of the United Church of England and Ireland,
and over such other Protestant Congregations, as may be
desirous of placing themselves under his or their authority."
Now here, at the very time that the Anghcan Bishops
were directing their censure upon me for avowing an
approach to the Catholic Church not closer than I beheved
the Anglican formularies would aUow, they were on the
other hand fraternizing, by their act or by their sufferance,
with Protestant bodies, and aUowing them to put them- 20
selves under an Anghcan Bishop, without any renunciation
of their errors or regard to the due reception of baptism
and confirmation ; while there was great reason to suppose
that the said Bishop was intended to make converts from
the orthodox Greeks, and the schismatical Oriental bodies,
by means of the influence of England. This was the third
blow, which finally shattered my faith in the Anghcan
Church. That Church was not only forbidding any sym
pathy or concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it
actually was courting an intercommunion with Protestant 30
Prussia and the heresy of the Orientals. The Anghcan
Church might have the ApostoUcal succession, as had the
Monophysites ; but such acts as were in progress led me
to the gravest suspicion, not that it would soon cease to
be a Church, but that (, since the 16th century,) it had
never been a Church all along.
On October 12th I thus wrote to a friend : — " We have
not a single Anglican in Jerusalem, so we are sending
a Bishop to make a communion, not to govern our own
22 the due] their due 37«a friend] Mr. Bowden

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.) 239
people. Next, the excuse is, that there are converted
Anghcan Jews there who require a Bishop ; I am told
there are not half-a-dozen. But for them the Bishop is
sent out, and for them he is a Bishop of the circumcision "
(I think he was a converted Jew, who boasted of his Jewish
descent), " against the Epistle to the Galatians pretty
nearly. Thirdly, for the sake of Prussia, he is to take
under him all the foreign Protestants who will come ; and
the political advantages will be so great, from the influence
io of England, that there is no doubt they will come. They
are to sign the Confession of Augsburg, and there is nothing
to show that they hold the doctrine of Baptismal Regenera
tion. " As to myself, I shall do nothing whatever publicly,
unless indeed it were to give my signature to a Protest ;
but I think it would be out of place in me to agitate, having
been in a way silenced ; but the Archbishop is really doing
most grave work, of which we cannot see the end."
I did make a solemn Protest, and sent it to the Archbishop
20 of Canterbury, and also sent it to my own Bishop, with
the following letter : —
" It seems as if I were never to write to your Lordship,
without giving you pain, and I know that my present
subject does not specially concern your Lordship ; yet,
after a great deal of anxious thought, I lay before you the
enclosed Protest.
" Your Lordship will observe that I am not asking for any
notice of it, unless you think that I ought to receive one.
I do this very serious act, in obedience to my sense of duty.
jo " If the English Church is to enter on a new course, and
assume a new aspect, it will be more pleasant to me here
after to think, that I did not suffer so grievous an event to
happen, without bearing witness against it.
" May I be allowed to say, that I augur nothing but evil,
if we in any respect prejudice our title to be a branch of
the Apostolic Church ? That Article of the Creed, I need
hardly observe to your Lordship, is of such constraining
power, that, if we will not claim it, and use it for ourselves,
others will use it in their own behalf against us. Men who
io learn, whether by means of documents or measures, whether
from the statements or the acts of persons in authority,

240 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
that our communion is not a branch of the one Church,
I foresee with much grief, will be tempted to look out for
that Church elsewhere.
"It is to me a subject of great dismay, that, as far as
the Church has lately spoken out, on the subject of the
opinions which I and others hold, those opinions are, not
merely not sanctioned (for that I do not ask), but not even
suffered. " I earnestly hope that your Lordship will excuse my
freedom in thus speaking to you of some member&jof your 10
Most Rev^md Right Rev. Body. With ever^Teefing of
reverent attachment to your Lordship, " I am, &c."

PROTEST.
" Whereas the Church of England has a claim on the
allegiance of Cathohc believers only on the ground of her
own claim to be considered a branch of the Cathohc Church :
" And whereas the recognition of heresy, indirect as
well as direct, goes far to destroy such claim in the case of
any religious body [advancing it] : 20
" And whereas to admit maintainers of heresy to com
munion, without formal renunciation of their errors, goes
fa* towards recognizing the same :
' And whereas Lutheranism and Calvinism are heresies,
repugnant to Scripture, springing up three centuries since,
and anathematized by East as well as West :
" And whereas it is reported that the Most Reverend
Primate and other Right Reverend Riders of our Church
have consecrated a Bishop with a view to exercising
spiritual jurisdiction over Protestant, that is, Lutheran 30
and Calvinist congregations in the East (under the pro
visions of an Act made in the last session of Parhament
to amend an Act made in the 26th year of the reign of
his Majesty King George the Third, intituled, ' An Act to
empower the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Archbishop
of York for the time being, to consecrate to the office of
Bishop persons being subjects or citizens of countries out
1 one] One

(FROM 1839 TO 1841.)

241

of his Majesty's dominions '), dispensing at the same time,
not in particular cases and accidentally, but as if on prin
ciple and universally, with any abjuration of error on the
part of such^fckgregations, and with any reconciliation to.
-the Church on the part of the presiding Bishop ; thereby
giving som^ort of formal recognition to the doctrines
which 'sjah^Mgregations maintain :
'eas the dioceses in England are connectec
lose an intercommunion, that what is done
e, immediately affects the rest
d_s, I in my place, being a priest of th^
*"~icar of St. Mary the Virg»isi4^ord
conscience, do hereby soler
ure aforesaid, and disown it,
her present ground and tending

¦ toget
io by au
"On
Enghsh by way of r^
protest againstw^
removing ouf ChuSI
to her disorganization.

John Henry Newm

'November 11, 1841."

Looking back two years afterwards on the above-
20 mentioned and other acts, on the part of Anglican Eccle
siastical authorities, I observe(d) : " Many a man might
have held an abstract theory about the Cathohc Church,
to which it was difficult to adjust the Anglican, — might
have admitted a suspicion, or even painful doubts ab%ib
the latter, — yet never have been impelled onwards, had our
Rulers preserved the quiescence of former years ; but it
is the corroboration of a present, living, and energetic
heterodoxy, which realizes and makes them practical ; it
has been the recent speeches and acts of authorities, who
30 had so long been tolerant of Protestant error, which have
given to inquiry and to theory its force and its edge."
As to the project of a Jerusalem Bishopric, I never heard
of any good or harm it has ever done, except what it has
done for me ; which many think a great misfortune, and
I one of the greatest of mercies. It brought me on to the
beginning of the end.

PART VI.
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, May 26, 1864.]

PART VI.
HISTORY OP MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS (FROM 1841 TO 1845).
<§!¦>
From the end of 1841, I was on my death-bed, as regards
my membership with the Anghcan Church, though at the
time I became aware of it only by degrees. I introduce
what I have to say with this remark, by way of accounting
for the character of this remaining portion of my narrative.
A death-bed has scarcely a history ; it is a tedious decline,
with seasons of raUying and seasons of faUing back ; and
since the end is foreseen, or what is called a matter of time,
it has little interest for the reader, especiaUy if he has
10 a kind heart. Moreover, it is a season when doors are
closed and curtains drawn, and when the sick man neither
cares nor is able to record the stages of his malady. I was
in these circumstances, except so far as I was not allowed
to die in peace, — except so far as friends, who had still
a full right to come in upon me, and the public world which
had not, have given a sort of history to those last four
years. But in consequence, my narrative must be in great
measure documentary (, as I cannot rely on my memory,
except for definite particulars, positive or negative). Letters
20 of mine to friends (since dead) have come to me [since their
deaths] ; others have been kindly lent me for the occasion ;
and I have some drafts of letters, and (some) notes of my
own, though I have no strictly personal or continuous
memoranda to consult, and have unluckily mislaid some
valuable papers.
And first as to my position in the view of duty ; it was
this : — 1. I had given up my place in the Movement in
Part VI] Chapter IV 20 to me] into my hands
22 letters] others 22 of my own] which I made
25 No space was left after this line in 1865.

246 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
my letter to the Bishop of Oxford in the spring of 1841 ;
but 2. 1 could not give up my duties towards the many and
various minds who had more or less been brought into it
by me ; 3. I expected or intended graduaUy to faU back
into Lay Communion ; 4. I never contemplated leaving
the Church of England ; 5. I could not hold office in her,
if I were not allowed to hold the Cathohc sense of the
Articles ; 6. I could not go to Rome, while she suffered
honours to be paid to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints
which I thought (in my conscience to be) incompatible io
with the Supreme, Incommunicable Glory of the One
Infinite and Eternal ; 7. I desired a union with Rome
under conditions, Church with Church ; 8. I caUed Little
more my Torres Vedras, and thought that some day we
might advance again within the Anghcan Church, as we
had been forced to retire ; 9. I kept back aU persons who
were disposed to go to Rome with aU my might.
And I kept them back for three or four reasons ; 1,
because what I could not in conscience do myself, I could
not suffer them to do ; 2, because I thought that in various 20
cases they were acting under excitement ; 3, [while I held
St. Mary's,] because I had duties to my Bishop and to the
Anghcan Church ; and 4, in some cases, because I had
received from their Anglican parents or superiors direct
charge of them.
This was my view of my duty from the end of 1841, to
my resignation of St. Mary's in the autumn of 1843. And
now I shaU relate my view, during that time, of the state
of the controversy between the Churches.
As soon as I saw the hitch in the Anghcan argument, 30
during my course of reading in the summer of 1839, 1 began
to look about, as I have said, for some ground which might
supply a controversial basis for my need. The difficulty in
question had affected my view both of Antiquity and
Cathohcity ; for, while the history of St. Leo showed me
that the dehberate and eventual consent of the great body
of the Church ratified a doctrinal decision (as a part of
revealed truth), it also showed that the rule of Antiquity
was not infringed, though a doctrine had not been publicly
G her] its service 29 A space was left after this line in 1865.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 247
recognized as a portion of the dogmatic foundation of the
Church, till centuries after the time of the Apostles. Thus,
whereas the Creeds tell us that the Church is One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostoho, I could not prove that the Anglican
communion was an integral part of the One Church, on the
ground of its (teaching) being Apostolic or Catholic, without
reasoning in favour of what are commonly called the
Roman corruptions ; and I could not defend our separa
tion from Rome (and her faith) without using arguments
io prejudicial to those great doctrines concerning our Lord,
which are the very foundation of the Christian rehgion.
The Via Media was an impossible idea ; it was what I had
called " standing on one leg ; " and it was necessary, if
my old issue of the controversy was to be retained, to go
further either one way or the other.
Accordingly, I abandoned that old ground and took
another. I deliberately quitted the old Anghcan ground
as untenable ; but I did not do so all at once, but as
I became more and more convinced of the state of the case.
20 The Jerusalem Bishopric was the ultimate condemnation
of the old theory of the Via Media ;( — if its establishment
did nothing else, at least it demolished the sacredness of
diocesan rights. If England could be in Palestine, Rome
might be in England. But its bearing upon the contro
versy, as I have shown in the foregoing chapter, was much
more serious than this technical ground.) from that time
the Anglican Church was, in my mind, either not a normal
portion of that One Church to which the promises were
made, or at least in an abnormal state, and from that time
30 1 said boldly, as I did in my Protest, and as indeed I had
even intimated in my Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, that
the Church in which I found myself had no claim on me,
except on condition of its being a portion of the One
Catholic Communion, and that that condition must ever
be borne in mind as a practical matter, and had to be
distinctly proved. All this was not inconsistent with my
saying (above) that, at this time, I had no thought of
1 a portion of the dogmatic foundation of the Church] so revealed
18 but] though
21-6 Via Media ; from] Via Media : — if its . . . ground. From
30-1 , as I did . . . Oxford] (as I did . . . Oxford) 36 was] is

248 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
leaving that Church (of England) ; because I felt some of
my old objections against Rome as strongly as ever. I had
no right, I had no leave, to act against my conscience.
That was a higher rule than any argument about the Notes
of the Church.
Under these circumstances I turned for protection to
the Note of Sanctity, with a view of showing that we had
at least one of the necessary Notes, as fully as the Church
of Rome ; or, at least, without entering into comparisons,
that we had it in such a sufficient sense as to reconcile us 10
to our position, and to supply fuU evidence, and a clear
direction, on the point of practical duty. We had the Note
of Life, — not any sort of life, not such only as can come of
nature, but a supernatural Christian life, which could only
come directly from above. (Thus,) In my Article in the
British Critic, to which I have so often referred, in January,
1840 (before the time of Tract 90), I said of the Anglican
Church that " she has the note of possession, the note of
freedom from party titles, the note of life, — a tough life
and a vigorous ; she has ancient descent, unbroken con- 20
tinuance, agreement in doctrine with the Ancient Church."
Presently I go on to speak of sanctity : " Much as Roman
Catholics may denounce us at present as schismatical, they
could not resist us if the Anglican communion had but that
one note of the Church upon it, — sanctity. The Church of
the day [4th century] could not resist Meletius ; his
enemies were fairly overcome by him, by his meekness and
holiness, which melted the most jealous of them." And
I continue, " We are almost content to say to Romanists,
account us not yet as a branch of the Cathohc Church, 30
though we be a branch, till we are hke a branch, provided
that when we do become like a branch, then you consent
to acknowledge us," &c. And so I was led on in the Article
to that sharp attack on English Catholics for their short
comings as regards this Note, a good portion of which
I have already quoted in another place. It is there that
I speak of the great scandal which I took at their political,
social, and controversial bearing ; and this was a second
reason why I fell back upon the Note of Sanctity, because
l that] the 26 These are the Author's [ ]

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 249
it took me away from the necessity of making any attack
upon the doctrines of the Roman Church, nay, from the
consideration of her popular beliefs, and brought me upon
a ground on which I felt I could not make a mistake ; for
what is a higher guide for us in speculation and in prac
tice, than that conscience of right and wrong, of truth and
falsehood, those sentiments of what is decorous, consistent,
and noble, which our Creator has made a part of our
original nature 1 Therefore I felt I could not be wrong in
io attacking what I fancied was a fact, — the unscrupulous-
ness, the deceit, and the intriguing spirit of the agents and
representatives of Rome.
This reference to Holiness as the true test of a Church
was steadUy kept in view in what I wrote in connexion
with Tract 90. I say in its Introduction, " The writer can
never be party to forcing the opinions or projects of one
school upon another ; reUgious changes should be the act
of the whole body. No good can come of a change which
is not a development of feelings springing up freely and
20 calmly within the bosom of the whole body itself ; every
change in religion " must be " attended by deep repent
ance ; changes " must be " nurtured in mutual love ; we
cannot agree without a supernatural influence ; " we must
come " together to God to do for us what we cannot do for
ourselves." In my Letter to the Bishop I said, " I have set
myself against suggestions for considering the differences
between ourselves and the foreign Churches with a view
to their adjustment." (I meant in the way of negotiation,
conference, agitation, or the like.) " Our business is with
30 ourselves, — to make ourselves more holy, more self-deny
ing, more primitive, more worthy of our high calling. To
be anxious for a composition of differences is to begin at
the end. Pohtical reconcihations are but outward and
hoUow, and fallacious. And till Roman Catholics renounce
pohtical efforts, and manifest in their public measures the
light of holiness and truth, perpetual war is our only
prospect." According to this theory, a religious body is part of the
One Catholic and Apostolic Church, if it has the succession
40 and the creed of the Apostles, with the note of holiness of
life ; and there is much in such a view to approve itself to

250 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
the direct common sense and practical habits of an English
man. However, with (the) events consequent upon Tract 90,
I sunk my theory to a lower level. (For) What could be
said in apology, when the Bishops and the people of my
Church, not only did not suffer, but actuaUy rejected
primitive Catholic doctrine, and tried to eject from their
communion all who held it ? after the Bishops' charges ?
after the Jerusalem " abomination (*) ? " WeU, this could
be said ; still we were not nothing : we could not be as if
we never had been a Church ; we were " Samaria." This 10
then was that lower level on which I placed myself, and aU
who felt with me, at the end of 1841.
To bring out this view was the purpose of Four Sermons
preached at St. Mary's in December of that year. Hitherto
I had not introduced the exciting topics of the day into
the Pulpit (2) ; on this occasion I did. I did so, for the
moment was urgent ; there was great unsettlement of mind
among us, in consequence of those same events which had
unsettled me. One special anxiety, very obviou3, which
was coming on me now, was, that what was " one man's 20
meat was another man's poison." I had said even of
Tract 90, " It was addressed to one set of persons, and has
been used and commented on by another ; " stiU more
was it true now, that whatever I wrote for the service of
those whom I knew to be in trouble of mind, would become
on the one hand matter of suspicion and slander in the
mouths of my opponents, and of distress and surprise to
those on the other hand, who had no difficulties of faith
at all. Accordingly, when I pubhshed these Four Sermons
at the end of 1843, I introduced them with a recommenda- 30
tion that none should read them who did not need them.
But in truth the virtual condemnation of Tract 90, after
that the whole difficulty seemed to have been weathered,
was an enormous disappointment and trial. My Protest
also against the Jerusalem Bishopric was an unavoidable
cause of excitement in the case of many ; but it calmed
them too, for the very fact of a Protest was a relief to their
impatience. And so, in like manner, as regards the Four
Sermons, of which I speak, though they acknowledged
Footnotes in 1865. (' Matt. xxiv. 15. 2 Vide Note C. Sermon on
Wisdom and Innocence.)

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 251
freely the great scandal which was involved in the recent
episcopal doings, yet at the same time they might be said
to bestow upon the multiplied disorders and shortcomings
of the Anglican Church a sort of place in the Revealed
Dispensation, and an intellectual position in the con
troversy, and the dignity of a great principle, for unsettled
minds to take and use,( — a principle) which might teach
them to recognize their own consistency, and to be recon
ciled to themselves, and which might absorb [into itself]
io and dry up a multitude of their grudgings, discontents,
misgivings, and questionings, and lead the way to humble,
thankful, and tranquil thoughts ; — and this was the effect
which certainly it produced on myself.
The point of these Sermons is, that, in spite of the rigid
character of the Jewish law, the formal and literal force
of its precepts, and the manifest schism, and worse than
schism, of the Ten Tribes, yet in fact they were stiU recog
nized as a people by the Divine Mercy ; that the great
prophets Elias and Eliseus were sent to them, and not
20 only so, but (were) sent to preach to them and reclaim
them, without any intimation that they must be reconciled
to the line of David and the Aaronic priesthood, or go up
to Jerusalem to worship. They were not in the Church,
yet they had the means of grace and the hope of acceptance
with their Maker. The application of all this to the Anglican
Church was immediate ; — whether(, under the circum
stances,) a man could assume or exercise ministerial func
tions [under the circumstances], or not, might not clearly
appear, though it must be remembered that England had
30 the Apostolic Priesthood, whereas Israel had no priesthood
at all ; but so far was clear, that there was no call at all
for an Anghcan to leave his Church for Rome, though he
did not believe his own to be part of the One Church : —
and for this reason, because it was a fact that the kingdom
of Israel was cut off from the Temple ; and yet its subjects,
neither in a mass, nor as individuals, neither the multitudes
on Mount Carmel, nor the Shunammite and her house
hold, had any command given them, though miracles were
29-31 appear, though . . . priesthood at all ;] appear (though . . .
at all),

252 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
displayed before them, to break off from their own people,
and to submit themselves to Judah 1.
It is plain, that a theory such as this,( — )whether the
marks of a divine presence and life in the Anghcan Church
were sufficient to prove that she was actually within the.
covenant, or only sufficient to prove that she was at least
enjoying extraordinary and uncovenanted mercies, ( — )not
only lowered her level in a religious point of view, but
weakened her controversial basis. Its very novelty made
it suspicious ; and there was no guarantee that the process 10
of subsidence might not continue, and that it might not
end in a submersion. Indeed, to many minds, to say that
England was wrong was even to say that Rome was right ;
and no ethical (or casuistic) reasoning whatever could
overcome in their case the argument from prescription and
authority. To this objection(, as made to my new teach
ing,) I could only answer that I did not make my circum
stances. I fuUy acknowledged the force and effectiveness
of the genuine Anglican theory, and that it was aU but
proof against the disputants of Rome ; but stiU like 20
Achilles, it had a vulnerable point, and that St. Leo had
found it out for me, and that I could not help it ; — that,
were it not for matter of fact, the theory would be great
indeed, it would be irresistible, if it were only true. When
I became a Catholic, the Editor of a Magazine who had in
former days accused me, to my indignation, of tending
towards Rome, wrote to me to ask, which of the two was
now right, he or I ? I answered him in a letter, part of
which I here insert, as it wiU serve as a sort of leave-
taking of the great theory, which is so specious to look 30
upon, so difficult to prove, and so hopeless to work.
" Nov. 8, 1845. I do not think, at aU more than I did,
that the Anglican principles which I advocated at the date
1 As I am not writing controversially, I will only here remark upon
this argument, that there is a great difference between a command,
which implies physical(, material, and political) conditions, and one
which is moral. To go to Jerusalem was a matter of the body, not of
the soul.

2 (and footnote) '] 3
25 a Magazine] the Christian Observer, Mr. Wilkes,
note, line 3 implies] presupposes

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 253
you mention, lead men to the Church of Rome. If I must
specify what I mean by ' Anghcan principles,' I should
say, e. g. taking Antiquity, not the existing Church, as the
oracle of truth ; and holding that the Apostolical Succes
sion is a sufficient guarantee of Sacramental Grace, without
union with the Christian Church throughout the world.
I think these still the firmest, strongest ground against
Rome — that is, if they can be held ([as truths or facts]).
They have been held by many, and are far more difficult
io to refute in the Roman controversy, than those of any other
religious body.
" For myself, I found / could not hold them. I left
them. From the time I began to suspect their unsound
ness, .1 ceased to put them forward. When I was fairly
sure of their unsoundness, I gave up my Living. When
I was fully confident that the Church of Rome was the
only true Church, I joined her.
" I have felt aU along that Bp. BuU's theology was the
only theology on which the English Church could stand.
20 1 have felt, that opposition to the Church of Rome was
part of that theology ; and that he who could not protest
against the Church of Rome was no true divine in the
Enghsh Church. I have never said, nor attempted to say,
that any one in office in the English Church, whether Bishop
or incumbent, could be otherwise than in hostility to the
Church of Rome."
The Via Media then disappeared for ever, and a [new]
Theory, made expressly for the occasion, took its place.
I was pleased with my new view. I wrote to an intimate
so friend, (Samuel F. Wood,) Dec. 13, 1841, "I think you
wiU give me the credit, Carissime, of not undervaluing the
strength of the feelings which draw one [to Rome], and
yet I am (I trust) quite clear about my duty to remain
where I am ; indeed, much clearer than I was some time
since. If it is not presumptuous to say, I have ... a much
more definite view of the promised inward Presence of
Christ with us in the Sacraments now that the outward
notes of it are being removed. And I am content to be
with Moses in the desert, or with Elijah excommunicated
5 without] without 8, 32 These are the Author's [ ]
26 A space was left after this line in 1865.

254 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
from the Temple. I say this, putting things at the
strongest." However, my friends of the moderate Apostolical party,
who were my friends for the very reason of my having
been so moderate and Anglican myseff in general tone in
times past, who had stood up for Tract 90 partly from
faith in me, and certainly from generous and kind feeling,
and had thereby shared an obloquy which was none of
theirs, were naturally surprised and offended at a line of
argument, novel, and, as it appeared to them, wanton, 10
which threw the whole controversy into confusion, stultified
my former principles, and substituted, as they would con
sider, a sort of methodistic self-contemplation, especiaUy
abhorrent both to my nature and to my past professions,
for the plain and honest tokens, as they were commonly
received, of a divine mission in the Anghcan "Church. They
could not tell whither I was going ; and were still further
annoyed, when I would view the reception of Tract 90 by
the public and the Bishops as so grave a matter, and (when
I) threw about what they considered mysterious hints of 20
" eventualities," and would not simply say, " An Anghcan
I was born, and an Anghcan I wiU die." One of my familiar
friends, (Mr. Church,) who was in the country at Christmas,
1841-2, reported to me the feeling that prevaUed about
me ; and how I felt towards it wiU appear in the f oUowing
letter of mine, written in answer : —
" Oriel, Dec. 24, 1841. Carissime, you cannot teU how
sad your account of Moberly has made me. His view of
the sinfulness of the decrees of Trent is as much against
union of Churches as against individual conversions. To 30
tell the truth, I never have examined those decrees with
this object, and have no view ; but that is very different
from having a deliberate view against them. Could not he
say which they are 1 I suppose Transubstantiation is one.
A. B., though of course he would not like to have it
repeated (*), does not scruple at that. I have not my mind
clear. Moberly must recollect that Palmer ([of Worcester])
18 would view] persisted in viewing 35 A. B.] Charles Marriott
Footnote in 2866. <4 As things stand now, I do not think he would
have objected to his opinion being generally known.)
37 These are the Author's [ ]

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 255
thinks they aU bear a Cathohc interpretation. For myself,
this only I see, that there is indefinitely more in the Fathers
against our own state of alienation from Christendom than
against the Tridentine Decrees.
" The only thing I can think of [that I can have said (of
a startling character,)] is this, that there were persons who,
if our Church committed herself to heresy, sooner than think
that there was no Church any where, would beheve the
Roman to be the Church ; and therefore would on faith
io accept what they could not otherwise acquiesce in. I sup
pose, it would be no rehef to him to insist upon the circum
stance that there is no immediate danger. Individuals can
never be answered for of course ; but I should think lightly
of that man, who, for some act of the Bishops, should all
at once leave the Church. Now, considering how the Clergy
really are improving, considering that this row is even
making them read the Tracts, is it not possible we may all
be in a better state of mind seven years hence to consider
these matters 1 and may we not leave them meanwhile
20 to the wiU of Providence ? I cannot believe this work has
been of man ; God has a right to His own work, to do what
He will with it. May we not try to leave it in His hands,
and be content ?
" If you learn any thing about Barter, which leads you
to think that I can relieve him by a letter, let me know.
The truth is this, — our good friends do not read the Fathers ;
they assent to us from the common sense of the case : then,
when the Fathers, and we, say more than their common
sense, they are dreadfully shocked.
30 "The Bishop of London has rejected a man, 1. For
holding any Sacrifice in the Eucharist. 2. The Real
Presence. 3. That there is a grace in Ordination 2.
" Are we quite sure that the Bishops will not be drawing
up some stringent declarations of faith ? is this what
Moberly fears \ Would the Bishop of Oxford accept
them 1 If so, I should be driven into the Refuge for the
2 I cannot prove this at this distance of time ; but I do not think it
wrong to introduce here the passage containing it, as I am imputing to
the Bishop nothing which the world would think disgraceful, but, on
the contrary, what a large religious body would approve.
5, 6 These are the Author's [ ] 32 and footnote 2] 6

256 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Destitute [Littlemore]. But I promise Moberly, I would
do my utmost to catch all dangerous persons and clap
them into confinement there."
Christmas Day, 1841. "I have been dreaming of
Moberly all night. Should not he and the like see, that
it is unwise, unfair, and impatient to ask others, What will
you do under circumstances, which have not, which may
never come \ Why bring fear, suspicion, and disunion
into the camp about things which are merely in posse ?
Natural, and exceedingly kind as Barter's and another 10
friend's letters were, I think they have done great harm.
I speak most sincerely when I say, that there are things
which I neither contemplate, nor wish to contemplate ;
but, when I am asked about them ten times, at length
I begin to contemplate them.
" He surely does not mean to say, that nothing could
separate a man from the Enghsh Church, e. g. its avowing
Socinianism ; its holding the Holy Eucharist in a Socinian
sense. Yet, he would say, it was not right to contemplate
such things. 20
" Again, our case is [diverging] from that of Ken's. To
say nothing of the last miserable century, which has given
us to start from a much lower level and with much less to
spare than a Churchman in the 17th century, questions of
doctrine are now coming in ; with him, it was a question
of discipline.
" If such dreadful events were reahzed, I cannot help
thinking we should aU be vastly more agreed than we
think now. Indeed, is it possible (humanly speaking) that
those, who have so much the same heart, should widely 30
differ ? But let this be considered, as to alternatives.
What communion could we join ? Could the Scotch or
American sanction the presence of its Bishops and con
gregations in England, without incurring the imputation
of schism, unless indeed (and is that Ukely ?) they denounced
the English as heretical ?
" Is not this a time of strange providences ? is it not
our safest course, without looking to consequences, to do
simply what we think right day by day ? shall we not be
1, 21 These are the Author's [ ]

(FROM 1841 TO" 1845.) 257
sure to go wrong, if we attempt to trace by anticipation
the course of divine Providence ?
" Has not all our misery, as a Church, arisen from people
being afraid to look difficulties in the face ? They have
paUiated acts, when they should have denounced them.
There is that good fellow, Worcester Palmer, can white
wash the Ecclesiastical Commission and the Jerusalem
Bishopric. And what is the consequence ? that our Church
has, through centuries, ever been sinking lower and lower,
io till good part of its pretensions and professions is a mere
sham, though it be a duty to make the best of what we
have received. Yet, though bound to make the best of
other men's shams, let us not incur any of our own. The
truest friends of our Church are they, who say boldly
when her rulers are going wrong, and the consequences ;
and (to speak catachrestically) they are most likely to die
in the Church, who are, under these black circumstances,
most prepared to leave it.
" And I will add, that, considering the traces of God's
20 grace which surround us, I am very sanguine, or rather
confident, (if it is right so to speak,) that our prayers and
our alms wiU come up as a memorial before God, and that
all this miserable confusion tends to good.
" Let us not then be anxious, and anticipate differences
in prospect, when we agree in the present.
" P.S. I think, when friends [i. e. the extreme party]
get over their first unsettlement of mind and consequent
vague apprehensions, which the new attitude of the Bishops,
and our feelings upon it, have brought about, they will get
30 contented and satisfied. They will see that they exag
gerated things. . . Of course it would have been wrong to
anticipate what one's feelings would be under such a painful
contingency as the Bishops' charging as they have done, —
so it seems to me nobody's fault. Nor is it wonderful that
others" [moderate men] "are startled" [i.e. at my Pro
test, &c. &c] ; " yet they should recoUect that the more
impficit the reverence one pays to a Bishop, the more keen
will be one's perception of heresy in him. The cord is
binding and compelling, till it snaps.
26, 35, 36 These are the Author's [ ]
APOLOGIA j£

258 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
" Men of reflection would have seen this, if they had
looked that way. Last spring, a very high churchman
talked to me of resisting my Bishop, of asking him for the
Canons under which he acted, and so forth ; but those,
who have cultivated a loyal feeling towards their superiors,
are the most loving servants, or the most zealous protestors.
If others became so too, if the clergy of Chester denounced
the heresy of their diocesan, they would be doing their
duty, and reheving themselves of the share which they
otherwise have in any possible defection of their brethren. 10
" St. Stephen's [(Day) December 26]. How I fidget !
I now fear that the note I wrote yesterday only makes
matters worse by disclosing too much. This is always my
great difficulty.
" In the present state of excitement on both sides,
I think of leaving out altogether my reassertion of No. 90
in my Preface to Volume 6 ([of Parochial Sermons]), and
merely saying, ' As many false reports are at this time in
circulation about him, he hopes his well-wishers wiU take
this Volume as an indication of his real thoughts and feel- 20
ings : those who are not, he leaves in God's hand to bring
them to a better mind in His own time.' What do you
say to the logic, sentiment, and propriety of this ? "
There was one very old friend, at a distance from Oxford,
(Archdeacon Robert I. Wilberforce,) [afterwards a Catholic,
now dead some years, who] must have said something to
me (at this time), I do not know what, which chaUenged
a frank reply ; for I disclosed to him, I do not know in
what words, my frightful suspicion, hitherto only known
to two persons, (viz. his brother Henry, and Mr. (now Sir 30
Frederick) Rogers,) that, as regards my Anghcanism, per
haps I might break down in the event,( — )that perhaps we
were both out of the Church. (I think I recoUect expressing
my difficulty, as derived from the Arian and Monophysite
history, in a form in which it would be most inteUigible to
him, as being in fact an admission of Bishop BuU's ; viz.
that in the controversies of the early centuries the Roman
Church was ever on the right side, which was of course
a primd facie argument in favour of Rome and against
11, 17 These are the Author's [ ] 24 There was one very] An

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 259
Anglicanism now.) He answered me thus, under date of
Jan. 29, 1842 : " I don't think that I ever was so shocked
by any communication, which was ever made to me, as by
your letter of this morning. It has quite unnerved me. . .
I cannot but write to you, though I am at a loss where to
begin. . . I know of no act by which we have dissevered
ourselves from the communion of the Church Universal. . .
The more I study Scripture, the more am I impressed with
the resemblance between the Romish principle in the Church
io and the Babylon of St. John. . . I am ready to grieve that
I ever directed my thoughts to theology, if it is indeed so
uncertain, as your doubts seem to indicate."
While my old and true friends were thus in trouble
about me, I suppose they felt not only anxiety but pain,
to see that I was gradually surrendering myself to the
influence of others, who had not their own claims upon me,
younger men, and of a cast of mind (in no small degree)
uncongenial to my own. A new school of thought was
rising, as is usual in such movements, and was sweeping
20 the original party of the movement aside, and was taking
its place. The most prominent person in it, was a man of
elegant genius, of classical mind, of rare talent in literary
composition : — Mr. Oakeley. He was not far from my own
age ; I had long known him, though of late years he had
not been in residence at Oxford ; and quite lately, he has
been taking several signal occasions of renewing that kind
ness, which he ever showed towards me when we were both
in the Anglican Church. His tone of mind was not unlike
that which gave a character to the early movement ; he
30 was almost a typical Oxford man, and, as far as I recollect,
both in political and ecclesiastical views, would have been
of one spirit with the Oriel party of 1826 — 1833. But he
had entered late into the Movement ; he did not know
its first years ; and, beginning with a new start, he was
naturally thrown together with that body of eager, acute,
resolute minds who had begun their Catholic life about
the same time as he, who knew nothing about the Via
Media, but had heard much about Rome. This new party
12 A space was left after this line in 1865.
19 such movements] doctrinal inquiries
23 : — Mr. Oakeley The name was not given in the original pamphlet.

260 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
rapidly formed and increased, in and out of Oxford, and,
as it so happened, contemporaneously with that very
summer, when I received so serious a blow to my ecclesias
tical views from the study of the Monophysite controversy.
These men cut into the original Movement at an angle, feU
across its fine of thought, and then set about turning that
line in its own direction. They were most of them keenly
religious men, with a true concern for their souls as the
first matter of aU, with a great zeal for me, but giving httle
certainty at the time as to which way they would ultimately 10
turn. Some in the event have remained firm to Angli
canism, some have become Cathohcs, and some have found
a refuge in Liber ahsm. Nothing was clearer concerning
them, than that they needed to be kept in order ; and on
me who had had so much to do with the making of them,
that duty was as clearly incumbent ; and it is equaUy clear,
from what I have aheady said, that I was just the person,
above all others, who could not undertake it. There are
no friends like old friends ; but of those old friends, few
could help me, few could understand me, many were 20
annoyed with me, some were angry, because I was break
ing up a compact party, and some, as a matter of conscience,
could not listen to me. (When I looked round for those
whom I might consult in my difficulties, I found the very
hypothesis of those difficulties acting as a bar to their
giving me their advice. Then) I said, bitterly, " You are
throwing me on others, whether I will or no." Yet still
I had good and true friends around me of the old sort, in
and out of Oxford too(, who were a great help to me).
But on the other hand, though I neither was so fond ((with so
a few exceptions)) of the persons, nor of the methods of
thought, which belonged to this new school, [excepting
two or three men,] as of the old set, though I could not
trust in their firmness of purpose, for, like a swarm of flies,
they might come and go, and at length be divided and.
dissipated, yet I had an intense sympathy in their object
and in the direction of their path, in spite of my old
friends, in spite of my old hfe-long prejudices. In spite of
my ingrained fears of Rome, and the decision of my reason
37 of their path] in which their path lay

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 261
and conscience against her usages, in spite of my affection
for Oxford and Oriel, yet I had a secret longing love of
Rome the author of Enghsh Christianity, and I had a true
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, in whose College I lived,
whose Altar I served, and whose Immaculate Purity I had
in one of my earliest printed Sermons made much of.
And it was the consciousness of this bias in myself, if it
is so to be caUed, which made me preach so earnestly
against the danger of being swayed (in religious inquiry)
io by our sympathy rather than (by) our reason [in religious
inquiry]. And moreover, the members of this new school
looked up to me, as I have said, and did me true kind
nesses, and really loved me, and stood by me in trouble,
when others went away, and for all this I was grateful ;
nay, many of them were in trouble themselves, and in the
same boat with me, and that was a further cause of sym
pathy between us ; and hence it was, when the new school
came on in force, and into collision with the old, I had not
the heart, any more than the power, to repel them ; I was
20 in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood ; I took
their part : and, when I wanted to be in peace and silence,
I had to speak out, and I incurred the charge of weakness
from some men, and of mysteriousness, shuffling, and under
hand deahng from the majority.
Now I will say here frankly, that this sort of charge is
a matter which I cannot properly meet, because I cannot
duly reahze it. I have never had any suspicion of my own
honesty ; and, when men say that I was dishonest, I cannot
grasp the accusation as a distinct conception, such as it is
30 possible to encounter. If a man said to me, " On such
a day and before such persons you said a thing was white,
when it was black," I understand what is meant well
enough, and I can set myseff to prove an alibi or to explain
the mistake ; or if a man said to me, " You tried to gain
me over to your party, intending to take me with you to
Rome, but you did not succeed," I can give him the lie, and
lay down an assertion of my own as firm and as exact as
his, that not from the time that I was first unsettled, did
I ever attempt to gain any one over to myself or to my
3 author 1864] mother 1864 (another copy), Mother 1865.
24 A space was left after this line in 1865.

262 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
Romanizing opinions, and that it is only his own cox
combical fancy which has bred such a thought in him : but
my imagination is at a loss in presence of those vague
charges, which have commonly been brought against me,
charges, which are made up of impressions, and understand
ings, and inferences, and hearsay, and surmises. Accord
ingly, I shall not make the attempt, for, in doing so,
I should be dealing blows in the air ; what I shall attempt
is to state what I know of myself and what I recollect, and
leave its application to others. 10
While I had confidence in the Via Media, and thought
that nothing could overset it, I did not mind laying down
large principles, which I saw would go further than was
commonly perceived. I considered that to make the Via
Media concrete and substantive, it must be much more
than it was in outline ; that the Anglican Church must
have a ceremonial, a ritual, and a fulness of doctrine and
devotion, which it had not at present, if it were to compete
with the Roman Church with any prospect of success.
Such additions would not remove it from its proper basis, 20
but would merely strengthen and beautify it : such, for
instance, would be confraternities, particular devotions,
reverence for the Blessed Virgin, prayers for the dead,
beautiful churches, rich offerings to them and in them,
monastic houses, and many other observances and institu
tions, which I used to say belonged to us as much as to
Rome, though Rome had appropriated them, and boasted
of them, by reason of our having let them shp from us.
The principle, on which all this turned, is brought out in
one of the Letters I pubhshed on occasion of Tract 90. so
" The age is moving," I said, " towards something ; and
most unhappily the one reUgious communion among us,
which has of late years been practicaUy in possession of
this something, is the Church of Rome. She alone, amid
all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given
free scope to the feehngs of awe, mystery, tenderness,
reverence, devotedness, and other feeUngs which may be
especially called Catholic. The question then is, whether
we shall give them up to the Roman Church or claim them
10 its application to others] to others its application
24 rich] munificent

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 263
for ourselves. . . But if we do. give them up, we must give
up the men who cherish them. We must consent either
to give up the men, or to admit their principles." With
these feelings I frankly admit, that, while I was working
simply for the sake of the Anglican Church, I did not at
all mind, though I found myself laying down principles in
its defence, which went beyond that particular (kind of)
defence which high-and-dry men thought perfection, and
(even) though I ended in framing a sort of defence, which
io they might call a revolution, while I thought it a restora
tion. Thus, for illustration, I might discourse upon the
" Communion of Saints " in such a manner, (though I do
not recoUect doing so,) as might lead the way towards
devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the saints on the one
hand, and towards prayers for the dead on the other. In
a memorandum of the year 1844 or 1845, I thus speak on
this subject : "If the Church be not defended on establish
ment grounds, it must be upon principles, which go far
beyond their immediate object. Sometimes I saw these
20 further results, sometimes not. Though I saw them,
I sometimes did not say that I saw them ; so long as
I thought they were inconsistent, not with our Church, but
only with the existing opinions, I was not unwilling to
insinuate truths into our Church, which I thought had
a right to be there."
To so much I confess ; but I do not confess, I simply
deny that I ever said any thing which secretly bore against
the Church of England, knowing it myself, in order that
others might unwarily accept it. It was indeed one of
30 my great difficulties and causes of reserve, as time went
on, that I at length recognized in principles which I had
honestly preached as if Anghcan, conclusions favourable
to the Roman Church. Of course I did not like to confess
this ; and, when interrogated, was in consequence in per
plexity. The prime instance of this was the appeal to
Antiquity ; St. Leo had overset, in my own judgment, its
force in the special argument for Anglicanism ; yet I was
committed to Antiquity, together with the whole Anglican
school ; what then was I to say, when acute minds urged
9 sort] kind 14 saints] Saints
33 Roman Church] cause of Rome 37 force in] force as

264 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
this or that application of it against the Via Media ? it
was impossible that, in such circumstances, any answer
could be given which was not unsatisfactory, or any
behaviour adopted which was not mysterious. Again, some
times in what I wrote I went just as far as I saw, and could
as little say more, as I could see what is below the horizon ;
and therefore, when asked as to the consequences of what,
I had said, (I) had no answer to give. Again, sometimes
when I was asked, whether certain conclusions did not
follow from a certain principle, I might not be able to teUio
at the moment, especially if the matter were complicated ;
and for this reason, if for no other, because there is great
difference between a conclusion in the abstract and a con
clusion in the concrete, and because a conclusion may be
modified in fact by a conclusion from some opposite prin
ciple. Or it might so happen that I got simply confused,
by the very clearness of the logic which was administered
to me, and thus (I) gave my sanction to conclusions which
really were not mine ; and when the report of those con
clusions came round to me through others, I had to unsay 20
them. And then again, perhaps I did not hke to see men
scared or scandalized by unfeeling logical inferences, which
would not have touched them to the day of their death,
had they not been made to eat them. And then I felt
altogether the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose, " Non
in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populuni^
suum ; " — I had a great dislike of paper logic. For myseff,
it was not logic that carried me on ; as weU might one
say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the
weather. It is the concrete being that reasons ; pass 30
a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place ;
how ? the whole man moves ; paper logic is but the record
of it. All the logic in the world would not have made me_,
move faster towards Rome than I did ; as weU might you
say that I have arrived at the end of my journey, because
I see the village church before me, as venture to assert
that the miles, over which my soul had to pass before it
got to Rome, could be annihilated/even though I had had -
16 I] my head 17 clearness] strength
23 touched] troubled 24 made to eat] forced to recognize
38 had had] had been in possession of

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 265
some far clearer view than I then had, that Rome was my
ultimate destination. Great acts take time. At least this
is what I felt in my own case ; and therefore to come to
me with methods of logic, had in it the nature of a pro
vocation, and, though I do not think I ever showed it,
made me somewhat indifferent how I met them, and
perhaps led me, as a means of relieving my impatience, to
be mysterious or irrelevant, or to give in because I could
not reply. And a greater trouble still than these logical
io mazes, was the introduction of logic into every subject
whatever, so far, that is, as it was done. Before I was at
Oriel, I recoUect an acquaintance saying to me that " the
Oriel Common Room stank of Logic." One is not at all
pleased when poetry, or eloquence, or devotion, is con
sidered as if chiefly intended to feed syUogisms. Now, in
saying all this, I am saying nothing against the deep piety
and earnestness which were characteristics of this second
phase of the Movement, in which I have taken so promi
nent a part. What I have been observing is, that this
20 phase had a tendency to bewilder and to upset me, and,
that instead of saying so, as I ought to have done, in a sort
of easiness [, for what I know] I gave answers at random,
which have led to my appearing close or inconsistent.
I have turned up two letters of this period, which in a mea
sure illustrate what I have been saying. The first is what
I said to the Bishop of Oxford on occasion of Tract 90 :
" March 20, 1841. No one can enter into my situation
but myself. I see a great many minds working in various
directions and a variety of principles with multiplied bear-
30 ings ; I act for the best. I sincerely think that matters
would not have gone better for the Church, had I never
written. And if I write I have a choice of difficulties. It
is easy for those who do not enter into those difficulties to
say, ' He ought to say this and not say that,' but things
are wonderfully linked together, and I cannot, or rather
I would not be dishonest. When persons too interrogate
me, I am obhged in many cases to give an opinion, or
I seem to be underhand. Keeping silence looks like artifice.
9 reply] meet them to my satisfaction 18 have taken 1864]
had taken 1864 (another copy), 1865. 21 in] perhaps from
22 easiness] laziness 25, 26 is what I said] was written
K3

266 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
And I do not Uke people to consult or respect me, from
thinking differently of my opinions from what I know them
to be. And (again to use the proverb) what is one man's
food is another man's poison. AU these things make my
situation very difficult. But that coUision must at some
time ensue between members of the Church of opposite
sentiments, I have long been aware. The time and mode
has been in the hand of Providence ; I do not mean to
exclude my own great imperfections in bringing it about ;
yet I stiU feel obhged to think the Tract necessary. (") 10
[" Dr. Pusey has shown me your Lordship's letters to
him. I am most desirous of saying in print any thing
which I can honestly say to remove false impressions
created by the Tract."]
The second is part of the notes of a letter (which I) sent
to Dr. Pusey in the next year :
" October 16, 1842. As to my being entirely with
A. B., I do not know the Umits of my own opinions. If
A. B. says that this or that is a development from what
I have said, I cannot say Yes or No. It is plausible, it 20
may be true. Of course the fact that the Roman Church
has so developed and maintained, adds great weight to
the antecedent plausibihty. I cannot assert that it is not
true ; but I cannot, with that keen perception which some
people have, appropriate it. It is a nuisance to me to be
forced beyond what I can fairly accept."
There was another source of the perplexity with which
at this time I was encompassed, and of the reserve and
mysteriousness, of which it gave me the credit. After
Tract 90 the Protestant world would not let me alone ; 30
they pursued me in the pubhc journals to Littlemore.
Reports of aU kinds were circulated about me. " Imprimis,
why did I go up to Littlemore at all ? For no good purpose
certainly ; I dared not teU why." Why, to be sure, it
was hard that I should be obUged to say to the Editors of
newspapers that I went up there to say my prayers ; it
was hard to have to tell the world in confidence, that I had
a certain doubt about the Anglican system, and could not
at that moment resolve it, or say what would come of it ;
15 part of] taken from 18, 19 A. B. 1864] A. 2S65, Ward 1873 26 A space
was left after this line in 1865. 29 it gave] that perplexity gained for

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 267
it was hard to have to confess that I had thought of giving
up my Living a year or two before, and that this was a first
step to it. It was hard to have to plead, that, for what
I knew, my doubts would vanish, if the newspapers would
be so good as to give me time and let me alone. Who
would ever dream of making the world his confidant ? yet
I was considered insidious, sly, dishonest, if I would not
open my heart to the tender mercies of the world. But
they persisted : " What was I doing at Littlemore ? "
io Doing there ? have I not retreated from you ? have I not
given up my position and my place ? am I alone, of
Enghshmen, not to have the privilege to go where I will,
no questions asked ? am I alone to be followed about by
jealous prying eyes, who note down whether I go in at
a back door or at the front, and who the men are who
happen to call on me in the afternoon ? Cowards ! if
I advanced one step, you would run away ; it is not you
that I fear : " Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis." It is
because the Bishops still go on charging against me, though
20 I have quite given up : it is that secret misgiving of heart
which tells me that they do well, for I have neither lot nor
part with them : this it is which weighs me down. I cannot
walk into or out of my house, but curious eyes are upon me.
Why will you not let me die in peace ? Wounded brutes
creep into some hole to die in, and no one grudges it them.
Let me alone, I shall not trouble you long. This was the
keen [heavy] feehng which pierced me, and, I think, these
are the very words that I used to myself. I asked, in the
words of a great motto, " Ubi lapsus ? quid feci ? " One
30 day when I entered my house, I found a flight of Under
graduates inside. Heads of Houses, as mounted patrols,
walked their horses round those poor cottages. Doctors of
Divinity dived into the hidden recesses of that private
tenement uninvited, and drew domestic conclusions from
what they saw there. I had thought that an Enghshman's
house was his castle ; but the newspapers thought other
wise, and at last the matter came before my good Bishop.
I insert his letter, and a portion of my reply to him : —
" April 12, 1842. So many of the charges against your-
10 there ?] there ! 28 that I used] in which I expressed it

268 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
self and your friends which I have seen in the pubhc
journals have been, within my own knowledge, false and
calumnious, that I am not apt to pay much attention to
what is asserted with respect to you in the newspapers.
" In a " [newspaper] " however, of April 9, there appears
a paragraph in which it is asserted, as a matter of notoriety,
that a ' so-called Anglo-Cathohc Monastery is in process
of erection at Littlemore, and that the ceUs of dormitories,
the chapel, the refectory, the cloisters aU may be seen
advancing to perfection, under the eye of a Parish Priest of 10
the Diocese of Oxford.'
" Now, as I have understood that you reaUy are possessed
of some tenements at Littlemore, — as it is generaUy beUeved
that they are destined for the purposes of study and
devotion, — and as much suspicion and jealousy are felt
about the matter, I am anxious to afford you an oppor
tunity of making me an explanation on the subject.
" I know you too well not to be aware that you are the
last man Uving to attempt in my Diocese a revival of the
Monastic orders (in any thing approaching to the Romanist 20
sense of the term) without previous communication with
me, — or indeed that you should take upon yourself to
originate any measure of importance without authority
from the heads of the Church, — and therefore I at once
exonerate you from the accusation brought against you by
the newspaper I have quoted, but I feel it nevertheless
a duty to my Diocese and myseff, as weU as to you, to ask
you to put it in my power to contradict what, if uncon
tradicted, would appear to imply a glaring invasion of aU
ecclesiastical discipline on your part, or of inexcusable 30
neglect and indifference to my duties on mine."
(I wrote in answer as foUows : — )
" April 14, 1842. I am very much obhged by your
Lordship's kindness in allowing me to write to you on the
subject of my house at Littlemore ; at the same time I feel
it hard both on your Lordship and myself that the restless
ness of the pubhc mind should obhge you to require an
explanation of me.
5 These are the Author's [ ]. In 1865 the a before newspaper was
placed within the [ ].
31 A space was left after this line in 1864, filled up in 1S65 by the
short line 32 here given between ( ).

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 269
"It is now a whole year that I have been the subject
of incessant misrepresentation. A year since I submitted
entirely to your Lordship's authority ; and with the inten
tion of foUowing out the particular act enjoined upon me,
I not only stopped the series of Tracts, on which I was
engaged, but withdrew from aU public discussion of Church
matters of the day, or what may be called ecclesiastical
pohtics. I turned myself at once to the preparation for
the Press of the translations of St. Athanasius to which
io I had long wished to devote myseff, and I intended and
intend to employ myself in the like theological studies,
and in the concerns of my own parish and in practical
works. " With the same view of personal improvement I was
led more seriously to a design which had been long on my
mind. For many years, at least thirteen, I have wished
to give myself to a life of greater religious regularity than
I have hitherto led ; but it is very unpleasant to confess
such a wish even to my Bishop, because it seems arrogant,
20 and because it is committing me to a profession which
may come to nothing. For what have I done that I am to
be caUed to account by the world for my private actions,
in a way in which no one else is called ? Why may I not
have that liberty which all others are allowed ? I am
often accused of being underhand and uncandid in respect ,
to the intentions to which I have been alluding : but no
one Ukes bis own good resolutions noised about, both from
mere common delicacy and from fear lest he should not be
able to fulfil them. I feel it very cruel, though the parties in
30 fault do not know what they are doing, that very sacred
matters between me and my conscience are made a matter
of public talk. May I take a case parallel though different ?
suppose a person in prospect of marriage ; would he like
the subject discussed in newspapers, and parties, circum
stances, &c, &c, pubhcly demanded of him, at the penalty
of being accused of craft and duplicity ?
" The resolution I speak of has been taken with refer
ence to myself alone, and has been contemplated quite
independent of the co-operation of any other human being,
40 and without reference to success or failure other than
personal, and without regard to the blame or approbation

270 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
of man. And being a resolution of years, and one to which
I feel God has called me, and in which I am violating no
rule of the Church any more than if I married, I should
have to answer for it, if I did not pursue it, as a good
Providence made openings for it. In pursuing it then I am
thinking of myself alone, not aiming at any ecclesiastical or
external effects. At the same time of course it would be
a great comfort to me to know that God had put it into
the hearts of others to pursue their personal edification in
the same way, and unnatural not to wish to have the 10
benefit of their presence and encouragement, or not to
think it a great infringement on the rights of conscience
if such personal and private resolutions were interfered
with. Your Lordship will allow me to add my firm con
viction that such rehgious resolutions are most necessary
for keeping a certain class of minds firm in their aUegiance
to our Church ; but still I can as truly say that my own
reason for any thing I have done has been a personal one,
without which I should not have entered upon it, and
which I hope to pursue whether with or without the sym- 20
pathies of others pursuing a similar course. ["] ....
"As to my intentions, I purpose to live there myself
a good deal, as I have a resident curate in Oxford. In
doing this, I believe I am consulting for the good of my
parish, as my population at Littlemore is at least equal to
that of St. Mary's in Oxford, and the whole of Littlemore
is double of it. It has been very much neglected ; and in
providing a parsonage-house at Littlemore, as this will be,
and will be called, I conceive I am doing a very great
benefit to my people. At the same time it has appeared to 30
me that a partial or temporary retirement from St. Mary's
Church might be expedient under the prevailing excite
ment. " As to the quotation from the [newspaper] which I have
not seen, your Lordship will perceive from what I have
said, that no ' monastery is in process of erection ; ' there
is no ' chapel ; ' no ' refectory,' hardly a dining-room or
parlour. The ' cloisters ' are my shed connecting the
cottages. I do not understand what ' ceUs of dormitories '
34 These are the Aidhor's [ ]

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 271
means. Of course I can repeat your Lordship's words that
' I am not attempting a revival of the Monastic Orders, in
any thing approaching to the Romanist sense of the term,'
or ' taking on myself to originate any measure of import
ance without authority from the Heads of the Church.'
I am attempting nothing ecclesiastical, but something
personal and private, and which can only be made public,
not private, by newspapers and letter-writers, in which
sense the most sacred and conscientious resolves and acts
io may certainly be made the objects of an unmannerly and
unfeeling curiosity."
One calumny there was which the Bishop did not
beheve, and of which of course he had no idea of speaking.
It was that I was actuaUy in the service of the enemy.
I had (forsooth) been already received into the Cathohc
Church, and was rearing at Littlemore a nest of Papists,
who, hke me, were to take the Anghcan oaths which they
did not beheve, and for which they got dispensation from
Rome, and thus in due time were to bring over to that
20 unprincipled Church great numbers of the Anghcan Clergy
and Laity. Bishops gave their countenance to this impu
tation against me. The case was simply this : — as I made
Littlemore a place of retirement for myself, so did I offer
it to others. There were young men in Oxford, whose
testimonials for Orders had been refused by their Colleges ;
there were young clergymen, who had found themselves
unable from conscience to go on with their duties, and had
thrown up their parochial engagements. Such men were
aheady going straight to Rome, and I interposed ; I inter-
30 posed for the reasons I have given in the beginning of this
portion of my narrative. I interposed from fidelity to my
clerical engagements, and from duty to my Bishop ; and
from the interest which I was bound to take in them, and
from behef that they were premature or excited. Their
friends besought me to quiet them, if I could. Some of
them came to hve with me at Littlemore. They were
laymen, or in the place of laymen. I kept some of them
back for several years from being received into the Catholic
Church. Even when I had given up my living, I was still
11 A space was left after this line in 1865.
1 8 did not believe, and for which they got] disbelieved, by virtue of a

272 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
bound by my duty to their parents or friends, and I did not
forget stiU to do what I could for them. The immediate
occasion of my resigning St. Mary's, was the unexpected
conversion of one of them. After that, I felt it was im
possible to keep my post there, for I had been unable to
keep my word with my Bishop.
The following letters refer, more or less, to these men,
whether they were (actually) with me at Littlemore or not : —
(1. "March 6, 1842. Church doctrines are a powerful
weapon ; they were not sent into the world for nothing, io
God's word does not return unto Him void : If I have
said, as I have, that the doctrines of the Tracts for the
Times would build up our Church and destroy parties,
I meant, if they were used, not if they were denounced.
Else, they wiU be as powerful against us, as they might
be powerful for us.
(" If people who have a liking for another, hear him
called a Roman CathoUc, they wUl say, ' Then after aU
Romanism is no such bad thing.' AU these persons, who
are making the cry, are fulfilling their own prophecy. 20
If aU the world agree in teUing a man, he has no business
in our Church, he will at length begin to think he has
none. How easy is it to persuade a man of any thing,
when numbers affirm it ! so great is the force of imagina
tion. Did every one who met you in the streets look hard
at you, you would think you were somehow in fault. I do
not know any thing so irritating, so unsettling, especiaUy
in the case of young persons, as, when they are going on
calmly and unconsciously, obeying their Church and follow
ing its divines, (I am speaking from facts,) as suddenly to 30
their surprise to be conjured not to make a leap, of which
they have not a dream and from which they are far
removed.") 1. 1843 or 1844. " I did not explain to you sufficiently
the state of mind of those who were in danger. I only
spoke of those who were convinced that our Church was
external to the Church Catholic, though they felt it unsafe
to trust their own private convictions ; but there are two
other states of mind ; 1 . that of those who are unconsciously
near Rome, and whose despair about our Church would at 40
34 ].] 2.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 273
once develope into a state of conscious approximation,
or a quasi-vesolution to go over ; 2. those who feel they
can with a safe conscience remain with us while they
are aUowed to testify in behalf of Catholicism, i.e. as if
by such acts they were putting our Church, or at least that
portion of it in which they were included, in the position of
catechumens." (3. " June 20, 1843. I return the very pleasing letter
you have permitted me to read. What a sad thing it is,
io that it should be a plain duty to restrain one's sympathies,
and to keep them from boiling over ; but I suppose it is
a matter of common prudence.
(" Things are very serious here ; but I should not hke
you to say so, as it might do no good. The Authorities
find, that, by the Statutes, they have more than military
power ; and the general impression seems to be, that they
intend to exert it, and put down Catholicism at any risk.
I believe that by the Statutes, they can pretty nearly sus
pend a Preacher, as seditiosus or causing dissension, without
20 assigning their grounds in the particular case, nay, banish
him, or imprison him. If so, aU holders of preferment in
the University should make as quiet an exit as they can.
There is more exasperation on both sides at this moment,
as I am told, than ever there was.")
2. " July 16, 1843. I assure you that I feel, with only
too much sympathy, what you say. You need not be told
that the whole subject of our position is a subject of
anxiety to others beside yourself. It is no good attempting
to offer advice, when perhaps I might raise difficulties
30 instead of removing them. It seems to me quite a case,
in which you should, as far as may be, make up your mind
for yourself. Come to Littlemore by aU means. We shall
all rejoice in your company ; and, if quiet and retirement
are able, as they very hkely wiU be, to reconcUe you to
things as they are, you shall have your fiU of them. How
distressed poor Henry Wilberforce must be ! Knowing
how he values you, I feel for him ; but, alas ! he has his
own position, and every one else has his own, and the
misery is that no two of us have exactly the same.
" It is very kind of you to be so frank and open with me,
25 2.] 4.

274 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
as you are ; but this is a time which throws together persons
who feel ahke. May I without taking a liberty sign myself,
yours affectionately, &c."
{In 1865 the paragraph on p. 275 numbered 5 was inserted
here, the numeral of course remaining unaltered!)
3. " (June 17,) 1845. I am concerned to find you speak
of me in a tone of distrust. If you knew me ever so little,
instead of hearing of me from persons who do not know
me at all, you would think differently of me, whatever you
thought of my opinions. Two years since, I got your son io
to tell you my intention of resigning St. Mary's, before
I made it pubUc, thinking you ought to know it. When
you expressed some painful feeling upon it, I told him
I could not consent to his remaining here, painful as it
would be to me to part with him, without your written
sanction. And this you did me the favour to give.
" I believe you wiU find that it has been merely a dehcacy
on your son's part, which has delayed his speaking to you
about me for two months past ; a dehcacy, lest he should
say either too much or too httle about me. I have urged 20
him several times to speak to you.
" Nothing can be done after your letter, but to recom
mend him to go to A. B. (his home) at once. I am very
sorry to part with him."
4. The following letter is addressed to a Cathohc Prelate,
who accused me of coldness in my conduct towards him : —
" April 16, 1845. I was at that time in charge of
a ministerial office in the Enghsh Church, with persons
entrusted to me, and a Bishop to obey ; how could I possibly
write otherwise than I did without violating sacred obhga- so
tions and betraying momentous interests which were upon
me ? I felt that my immediate, undeniable duty, clear
if any thing was clear, was to fulfil that trust. It might
be right indeed to give it up, that was another thing ; but
it never could be right to hold it, and to act as if I did not
hold it  If you knew me, you would acquit me,
I think, of having ever felt towards your Lordship (in)
an unfriendly spirit, or ever having had a shadow on my
mind (as far as I dare witness about myself) of what might
6 3.] 6. 25 4.] 7.
25 a Catholic Prelate] Cardinal Wiseman, then Vicar Apostolic

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 275
be called controversial rivalry or desire of getting the
better, or fear lest the world should think I had got the
worst, or irritation of any kind. You are too kind indeed
to imply this, and yet your words lead me to say it. And
now in like manner, pray believe, though I cannot explain
it to you, that I am encompassed with responsibilities, so
great and so various, as utterly to overcome me, unless
I have mercy from Him, who all through my life has sus
tained and guided me, and to whom I can now submit
io myself, though men of all parties are thinking evil of me."
5. " August 30, 1843. A. B. has suddenly conformed
to the Church of Rome. He was away for three weeks.
I suppose I must say in my defence, that he promised me
distinctly to remain in our Church three years, before
I received him here."
Such fidelity, however, was taken in malam partem by
the high Anghcan authorities ; they thought it insidious.
I happen stiU to have a correspondence (which took place
in 1843), in which the chief place is fiUed by one of the most
20 eminent Bishops of the day, a theologian and reader of
the Fathers, a moderate man, who at one time was talked
of as hkely to have the reversion of the Primacy. A young
clergyman in his diocese became a Cathohc ; the papers
at once reported on authority from " a very high quarter,"
that, after his reception, " the Oxford men had been recom
mending him to retain his living." I had reasons for
thinking that the aUusion was (made) to me, and I author
ized the Editor of a Paper, who had inquired of me on the
point, to " give it, as far as I was concerned, an unqualified
30 contradiction ; " — when from a motive of dehcacy he
hesitated, I added " my direct and indignant contradic
tion." " Whoever is the author of it,(" I continued to
the Editor, ")no correspondence or intercourse of any
kind, direct or indirect, has passed[," I continued to the
Editor, "]between Mr. S. and myself, since his conforming
to the Church of Rome, except my formally and merely
acknowledging the receipt of his letter, in which he informed
3 worst] worse
10 A space was left after this line in 1865, the paragraph numbered 5
being transferred to precede what was paragraph 3 in 1864 (6 in 1865).
22 to have the reversion of] on a vacancy to succeed to

276 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
me of the fact, without, as far as I recoUect, my expressing
any opinion upon it. You may state this as broadly as
I have set it down." My denial was told to the Bishop ;
what took place upon it is given in a letter from which
I copy. " My father showed the letter to the Bishop, who,
as he laid it down, said, ' Ah, those Oxford men are not
ingenuous.' ' How do you mean 1 ' asked my father.
' Why,' said the Bishop, ' they advised Mr. B. S. to retain
his hving after he turned Cathohc. I know that to be a
fact, because A. B. told me so.' ' " The Bishop," continues 10
the letter, " who is perhaps the most influential man in
reality on the bench, evidently beheves it to be the truth."
(Upon this) Dr. Pusey [too] wrote for me to the Bishop ;
and the Bishop instantly beat a retreat. " I have the
honour," he says in the autograph which I transcribe,
" to acknowledge the receipt of your note, and to say in
reply that it has not been stated by me, (though such
a statement has, I beheve, appeared in some of the Pubhc
Prints,) that Mr. Newman had advised Mr. B. S. to retain
his hving, after he had forsaken our Church. But it has 20
been stated to me, that Mr. Newman was in close correspon
dence with Mr. B. S., and, being fuUy aware of his state
of opinions and feehngs, yet advised him to continue in our
communion. AUow me to add," he says to Dr. Pusey,
" that neither your name, nor that of Mr. Keble, was
mentioned to me in connexion with that of Mr. B. S."
I was not going to let the Bishop off on this evasion,
so I wrote to him myself. After quoting his Letter to
Dr. Pusey, I continued, " I beg to trouble your Lordship
with my own account of the two aUegations " [close 30
correspondence and fully aware, &c] "which are contained
in your statement, and which have led to your speaking
of me in terms which I hope never to deserve. 1. Since
Mr. B. S. has been in your Lordship's diocese, I have seen
him in common rooms or private parties in Oxford two or
three times, when I never (as far (as) I can recoUect) had
any conversation with him. During the same time I have,
to the best of my memory, written to him three letters.
One was lately, in acknowledgment of his informing me of
13 for me] in my behalf 30, 31 These are the Author's [ ]
35 common] Common

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 277
his change of rehgion. Another was last summer, when
I asked him (to no purpose) to come and stay with me in
this place. The earliest of the three letters was written
just a year since, as far as I recoUect, and it certainly was
on the subject of his joining the Church of Rome. I wrote
this letter at-the earnest wish of a friend of his. I cannot
be sure that, on his replying, I did not send him a brief
note in explanation of points in my letter which he had
misapprehended. I cannot recollect any other correspon-
io dence between us.
" 2. As to my knowledge of his opinions and feelings,
as far as I remember, the only point of perplexity which
I knew, the only point which to this hour I know, as pressing
upon him, was that of the Pope's supremacy. He professed
to be searching Antiquity whether the see of Rome had
formaUy that relation to the whole Church which Roman
Cathohcs now assign to it. My letter was directed to the
point, that it was his duty not to perplex himself with
arguments on [such] a question, . . . and to put it altogether
20 aside. ... It is hard that I am put upon my memory,
without knowing the detaUs of the statement made against
me, considering the various correspondence in which I am
from time to time unavoidably engaged. ... Be assured,
my Lord, that there are very definite limits, beyond which
persons hke me would never urge another to retain prefer
ment in the Enghsh Church, nor would retain it themselves ;
and that the censure which has been directed against them
by so many of its Rulers has a very grave bearing upon
those limits." The Bishop rephed in a civil letter, and
30 sent my own letter to his original informant, who wrote to
me the letter of a gentleman. It seems that an anxious
lady had said something or other which had been misinter
preted, against her real meaning, into the calumny which
was circulated, and so the report vanished into thin air.
I closed the correspondence with the foUowing Letter to
the Bishop : —
" I hope your Lordship wiU beUeve me when I say, that
statements about me, equally incorrect with that which
has come to your Lordship's ears, are from time to time
16 formally] formerly 19 These are the Author's [ ]

278 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
reported to me as credited and repeated by the highest
authorities in our Church, though it is very seldom that
I have the opportunity of denying them. I am obhged by
your Lordship's letter to Dr. Pusey as giving me such
an opportunity." Then I added, with a purpose, " Your
Lordship will observe that in my Letter I had no occasion
to proceed to the question, whether a person holding
Roman Cathohc opinions can in honesty remain in our
Church. Lest then any misconception should arise from
my silence, I here take the hberty of adding, that I see 10
nothing wrong in such a person's continuing in communion
with us, provided he holds no preferment or office, abstains
from the management of ecclesiastical matters, and is
bound by no subscription or oath to our doctrines."
This was written on March 7, 1843, and was in anticipa
tion of my own retirement into lay communion. This
again leads me to a remark ; for two years I was in lay
communion, not indeed being a Cathohc in my convictions,
but in a state of serious doubt, and with the probable
prospect of becoming some day, what as yet I was not. 20
Under these circumstances I thought the best thing
I could do was to give up duty and to throw myself into
lay communion, remaining an Anghcan. I could not go to
Rome, while I thought what I did of the devotions she
sanctioned to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. I did not
give up my fellowship, for I could not be sure that my
doubts would not be reduced or overcome, however unlikely
I thought such an event. But I gave up my hving ; and,
for two years before my conversion, I took no clerical duty.
My last Sermon was in September, 1843 ; then I remained 30
at Littlemore in quiet for two years. But it was made
a subject of reproach to me at the time, and is at this day,
that I did not leave the Anglican Church sooner. To me
this seems a wonderful charge ; why, even had I been
quite sure that Rome was the true Church, the Anghcan
Bishops would have had no just subject of complaint
against me, provided I took no Anghcan oath, no clerical
duty, no ecclesiastical administration. Do they force aU
men who go to their Churches to believe in the 39 Articles,
15 March 7] March 8 28 thought] might consider

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 279
or to join in the Athanasian Creed ? However, I was to
have other measure dealt to me ; great authorities ruled
it so ; and a learned controversiahst in the North thought
it a shame that I did not leave the Church of England as
much as ten years sooner than I did. (He said this in
print between the years 1847 and 1849.) His nephew, an
Anglican clergyman, kindly wished to undeceive him on this
point. So, in 1850, after some correspondence, I wrote
the foUowing letter, which wiU be of service to this narra-
10 tive, from its chronological character : —
" Dec. 6, 1849. Your uncle says, ' If he (Mr. N.) will
declare, sans phrase, as the French say, that I have
laboured under an entire mistake, and that he was not
a concealed Romanist during the ten years in question,'
(I suppose, the last ten years of my membership with the
Anghcan Church,) ' or during any part of the time, my
controversial antipathy wiU be at an end, and I wiU readily
express to him that I am truly sorry that I have made
such a mistake.'
20 "So candid an avowal is what I should have expected
from a mind hke your uncle's. I am extremely glad he has
brought it to this issue.
" By a ' concealed Romanist ' I understand him to mean
one, who, professing to belong to the Church of England,
in his heart and wiU intends to benefit the Church of Rome,
at the expense of the Church of England. He cannot mean
by the expression merely a person who in fact is benefiting
the Church of Rome, while he is intending to benefit the
Church of England, for that is no discredit to him morally,
30 and he (your uncle) evidently means to impute blame.
" In the sense in which I have explained the words, I can
simply and honestly say that I was not a concealed
Romanist during the whole, or any part of, the years in
question. " For the first four years of the ten, (up to Michaelmas,
1839,) I honestly wished to benefit the Church of England,
at the expense of the Church of Rome :
"For the second four years I wished to benefit the Church
of England without prejudice to the Church of Rome :
3 in the North], Mr. Stanley Faber Edition subsequent to 1S75
8 1850] the latter year 10 character] notes

280 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
" At the beginning of the ninth year (Michaelmas, 1843)
I began to despair of the Church of England, and gave up
aU clerical duty ; and then, what I wrote and did was
influenced by a mere wish not to injure it, and not by the
wish to benefit it :
" At the beginning of the tenth year I distinctly con
templated leaving it, but I also distinctly told my friends
that it was in my contemplation.
" Lastly, during the last half of that tenth year I was
engaged in writing a book (Essay on Development) inio
favour of the Roman Church, and indirectly against the
English ; but even then, tUl it was finished, I had not
absolutely intended to pubhsh it, wishing to reserve to
myself the chance of changing my mind when the argu
mentative views which were actuating me had been
distinctly brought out before me in writing.
" I wish this statement, which I make from memory,
and without consulting any document, severely tested by
my writings and doings, as I am confident it wiU, on the
whole, be borne out, whatever real or apparent exceptions 20
(I suspect none) have to be aUowed by me in detaU.
" Your uncle is at Uberty to make what use he pleases
of this explanation."
I have now reached an important date in my narrative,
the year 1843, but before proceeding to the matters which
it contains, I wiU insert portions of my letters from 1841
to 1843, addressed to Cathohc acquaintances.
1. " April 8, 1841. ... The unity of the Church Cathohc
is very near my heart, only I do not see any prospect of
it in our time ; and I despair of its being effected without 30
great sacrifices on aU hands. As to resisting the Bishop's
will, I observe that no point of doctrine or principle was
in dispute, but a course of action, the pubhcation of
certain works. I do not think you sufficiently understood
our position. I suppose you would obey the Holy See
in such a case ; now, when we were separated from the
Pope, his authority reverted to our Diocesans. Our Bishop
is our Pope. It is our theory, that each diocese is an
integral Church, intercommunion being a duty, (and the
23 A space was left after this line in 1865.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 281
breach of it a sin,) but not essential to Cathohcity. To
have resisted my Bishop, would have been to place myself
in an utterly false position, which I never could have
recovered. Depend upon it, the strength of any party hes
in its being true to its theory. Consistency is the hfe of
a movement. " I have no misgivings whatever that the hne I have
taken can be other than a prosperous one : that is, in itself,
for of course Providence may refuse to us its legitimate
io issues for our sins.
" I am afraid, that in one respect you may be disap
pointed. It is my trust, though I must not be too sanguine,
that we shall not have individual members of our com
munion going over to yours. What one's duty would be
under other circumstances, what our duty ten or twenty
years ago, I cannot say ; but I do think that there is less
of private judgment in going with one's Church, than in
leaving it. I can earnestly desire a union between my
Church and yours. I cannot Usten to the thought of your
20 being joined by individuals among us."
2. " AprU 26, 1841. My only anxiety is lest your branch
of the Church should not meet us by those reforms which
surely are necessary. It never could be, that so large a
portion of Christendom should have split off from the
communion of Rome, and kept up a protest for 300 years
for nothing. I think I never shaU beheve that so much
piety and earnestness would be found among Protestants,
if there were not some very grave errors on the side of Rome.
To suppose the contrary is most unreal, and violates all
30 one's notions of moral probabiUties. AU aberrations are
founded on, and have their life in, some truth or other —
and Protestantism, so widely spread and so long enduring,
must have in it, and must be witness for, a great truth
or much truth. That I am an advocate for Protestantism,
you cannot suppose — but I am forced into a Via Media,
short of Rome, as it is at present."
3. " May 5, 1841. WhUe I most sincerely hold that there
is in the Roman Church a traditionary system which is not
necessarily connected with her essential formularies, yet,
40 were I ever so much to change my mind on this point, this
would not tend to bring me from my present position,

282 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
providentiaUy appointed in the Enghsh Church. That
your communion was unassailable, would not prove that
mine was indefensible. Nor would it at aU affect the sense
in which I receive our Articles ; they would stUl speak
against certain definite errors, though you had reformed
them. " I say this lest any lurking suspicion should be left
in the mind of your friends that persons who think with
me are hkely, by the growth of their present views, to find
it imperative on them to pass over to your communion. 10
Allow me to state strongly, that if you have any such
thoughts, and proceed to act upon them, your friends wiU
be committing a fatal mistake. We have (I trust) the
principle and temper of obedience too intimately wrought
into us to aUow of our separating ourselves from our
ecclesiastical superiors because in many points we may
sympathize with others. We have too great a horror of
the principle of private judgment to trust it in so immense
a matter as that of changing from one communion to
another. We may be cast out of our communion, or it 20
may decree heresy to be truth, — you shall say whether
such contingencies are likely ; but I do not see other
conceivable causes of our leaving the Church in which we
were baptized.
" For myself, persons must be weU acquainted with
what I have written before they venture to say whether
I have much changed my main opinions and cardinal views
in the course of the last eight years. That my sympathies
have grown towards the rehgion of Rome I do not deny ;
that my reasons for shunning her communion have lessened 30
or altered it would be difficult perhaps to prove. And
I wish to go by reason, not by feeling."
4. " June 18, 1841. You urge persons whose views agree
with mine to commence a movement in behalf of a union
between the Churches. Now in the letters I have written,
I have uniformly said that I did not expect that union in
our time, and have discouraged the notion of all sudden
proceedings with a view to it. I must ask your leave to
repeat on this occasion most distinctly, that I cannot be
party to any agitation, but mean to remain quiet in my40
own place, and to do all I can to make others take the same

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 283
course. This I conceive to be my simple duty ; but, over
and above this, I will not set my teeth on edge with sour
grapes. I know it is quite within the range of possibihties
that one or another of our people should go over to your
communion ; however, it would be a greater misfortune
to you than grief to us. If your friends wish to put a
gulf between themselves and us, let them make converts,
but not else. Some months ago, I ventured to say that
I felt it a painful duty to keep aloof from all Roman
io Catholics who came with the intention of opening negotia
tions for the union of the Churches : when you now urge
us to petition our Bishops for a union, this, I conceive, is
very like an act of negotiation."
5. I have the first sketch or draft of a letter, which
I wrote to a zealous Catholic layman : it runs as foUows,
as (far as) I have preserved it (, but I think there were
various changes and additions) :— (") September 12, 1841.
["] It would rejoice all Catholic minds among us, more
than words can say, if you could persuade members of the
20 Church of Rome to take the line in politics which you so
earnestly advocate. Suspicion and distrust are the main
causes at present of the separation between us, and the
nearest approaches in doctrine will but increase the hos
tility, which, alas, our people feel towards yours, while
these causes continue. Depend upon it, you must not rely
upon our Catholic tendencies till they are removed. I am
not speaking of myself, or of any friends of mine ; but of
our Church generaUy. Whatever our personal feehngs may
be, we shall but tend to raise and spread a rival Church
30 to yours in the four quarters of the world, unless you
do what none but you can do. Sympathies, which would
flow over to the Church of Rome, as a matter of course,
did she admit them, will but be developed in the con
solidation of our own system, if she continues to be the
object of our suspicions and fears. I wish, of course I do,
that our own Church may be built up and extended, but
stiff, not at the cost of the Church of Rome, not in opposi
tion to it. I am sure, that, while you suffer, we suffer
too from the separation ; but we cannot remove the obstacles ;
40 it is with you to do so. You do not fear us ; we fear you.
Till we cease to fear you, we cannot love you.

284 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
" While you are in your present position, the friends of
Catholic unity in our Church are but fulfilling the predic
tion of those of your body who are averse to them, viz.
that they will be merely strengthening a rival communion
to yours. Many of you say that we are your greatest
enemies ; we have said so ourselves : so we are, so we shaU
be, as things stand at present. We are keeping people
from you, by supplying their wants in our own Church.
We are keeping persons from you : do you wish us to keep
them from you for a time or for ever ? It rests with you 10
to determine. I do not fear that you wiU succeed among
us ; you will not supplant our Church in the affections of the
English nation ; only through the Enghsh Church can you
act upon the English nation. I wish of course our Church
should be consohdated, with and through and in your
communion, for its sake, and your sake, and for the sake
of unity.
" Are you aware that the more serious thinkers among
us are used, as far as they dare form an opinion, to regard
the spirit of Liberahsm as the characteristic of the destined 20
Antichrist ? In vain does any one clear the Church of
Rome from the badges of Antichrist, in which Protestants
would invest her, if she dehberately takes up her position
in the very quarter, whither we have cast them, when we
took them off from her. Antichrist is described as the
avo/tos, as exalting himself above the yoke of religion and
law. The spirit of lawlessness came in with the Reforma
tion, and Liberahsm is its offspring.
" And now I fear I am going to pain you by telling you,
that you consider the approaches in doctrine on our part 30
towards you, closer than they reaUy are. I cannot help
repeating what I have many times said in print, that your
services and devotions to St. Mary in matter of fact do
most deeply pain me. I am only stating it as a fact.
" Again, I have nowhere said that I can accept the
decrees of Trent throughout, nor imphed it. The doctrine
of Transubstantiation is a great difficulty with me, as
being, as I think, not primitive. Nor have I said that our
Articles in all respects admit of a Roman interpretation ;
the very word ' Transubstantiation ' is disowned in them. 40
" Thus, you see, it is not merely on grounds of expedience

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 285
that we do not join you. There are positive difficulties
in the way of it. And, even if there were not, we shall have
no divine warrant for doing so, while we think that the
Church of England is a branch of the true Church, and that
intercommunion with the rest of Christendom is necessary,
not for the life of a particular Church, but for its health
only. I have never disguised that there are actual circum
stances in the Church of Rome, which pain me much ;
of the removal of these I see no chance, while we join you
io one by one ; but if our Church were prepared for a union,
she might make her terms ; she might gain the Cup ; she
might protest against the extreme honours paid to St. Mary ;
she might make some explanation of the doctrine of
Transubstantiation. I am not prepared to say that a
reform in other branches of the Roman Church would be
necessary for our uniting with them, however desirable in
itself, so that we were allowed to make a reform in our own
country. We do not look towards Rome as believing that
its communion is infallible, but that union is a duty."
20 (6.) The following letter was occasioned by the present
(made to me) of a book, from the friend to whom it is
written ; more will be said on the subject of it presently : —
" Nov. 22, 1842. I only wish that your Church were
more known among us by such writings. You will not
interest us in her, till we see her, not in politics, but in
her true functions of exhorting, teaching, and guiding.
I wish there were a chance of making the leading men
among you understand, what I beheve is no novel thought
to yourself. It is not by learned discussions, or acute argu-
30 ments, or reports of miracles, that the heart of England can
be gained. It is by men ' approving themselves,' like the
Apostle, ' ministers of Christ.'
" As to your question, whether the Volume you have
sent is not calculated to remove my apprehensions that
another gospel is substituted for the true one in your
practical instructions, before I can answer it in any way,
I ought to know how far the Sermons which it comprises
are selected from a number, or whether they are the whole,
or such as the whole, which have been published of the
21 from] by

286 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
author's. I assure you, or at least I trust, that, if it is
ever clearly brought home to me that I have been wrong
in what I have said on this subject, my pubhc avowal
of that conviction will only be a question of time with me.
" If, however, you saw our Church as we see it, you
would easily understand that such a change of feeling, did
it take place, would have no necessary tendency, which
you seem to expect, to draw a person from the Church of
England to that of Rome. There is a divine life among
us, clearly manifested, in spite of aU our disorders, which 10
is as great a note of the Church, as any can be. Why
should we seek our Lord's presence elsewhere, when He
vouchsafes it to us where we are ? What call have we to
change our communion ?
" Roman Cathohcs will find this to be the state of things
in time to come, whatever promise they may fancy there
is of a large secession to their Church. This man or that
may leave us, but there will be no general movement.
There is, indeed, an incipient movement of our Church
towards yours, and this your leading men are doing all they 20
can to frustrate by their unwearied efforts at aU risks to
carry off individuals. When wiU they know their position,
and embrace a larger and wiser policy ? "
23 A space was left, as here, in 1864 ; the next paragraph commencing
low down on the next page. In 1865 § 2 followed on the same page.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 287

(§2.)
The last letter, which I have inserted, is addressed
to my dear friend, Dr. Russell, the present President of
Maynooth. He had, perhaps, more to do with my con
version than any one else. He called upon me, in passing
through Oxford in the summer of 1841, and I think I took
him over some of the buildings of the University. He
called again another summer, on his way from Dublin to
London. I do not recollect that he said a word on the
subject of religion on either occasion. He sent me at
io different times several letters ; he was always gentle, mild,
unobtrusive, uncontroversial. He let me alone. He also
gave me one or two books. Veron's Rule of Faith and
some Treatises of the Wallenburghs was one ; a volume of
St. Alfonso Liguori's Sermons was another ; and (it is)
to (those Sermons) that the letter which I have last inserted
relates. Now it must be observed that the writings of St. Alfonso,
as I knew them by the extracts commonly made from
them, prejudiced me as much against the Roman Church
20 as any thing else, on account of what was called their
" Mariolatry ; " but there was nothing of the kind in this
book. I wrote to ask Dr. Russell whether any thing had
been left out in the translation ; he answered that there
certainly was an omission of one passage about the Blessed
Virgin. This omission, in the case of a book intended for
CathoUcs, at least showed that such passages as are found
in the works of Italian Authors were not acceptable to every
part of the Catholic world. Such devotional manifestations
in honour of our Lady had been my great crux as regards
30 Catholicism ; I say frankly, I do not fully enter into them
1 The last letter, which I have inserted] The letter which I have last
inserted 15 the letter which I have last inserted] my letter to Dr. Russell
24 was an omission of one passage] were omissions in one Sermon

288 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
now ; I trust I do not love her the less, because I cannot enter
into them. They may be fuUy explained and defended ;
but sentiment and taste do not run with logic : they are
suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.
But, over and above England, my own case was special ;
from a boy I had been led to consider that my Maker and
I, His creature, were the two beings, certainly such, in
rerum naturd. I will not here speculate, however, about
my own feelings. Only this I know full weU now, and did
not know then, that the Catholic Church aUows no image 10
of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol,
no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed
Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator.
It is face to face, " solus cum solo," in aU matters between
man and his God. He alone creates ; He alone has re
deemed ; before His awful eyes we go in death ; in the
vision of Him is our eternal beatitude. (1.) "Solus cum
solo : " — I recoUect but indistinctly the effect produced
upon me by this Volume (of which I have been speaking),
but it must have been (something) considerable. At all 20
events I had got a key to a difficulty ; in these sermons,
(or rather heads of sermons, as they seem to be, taken
down by a hearer,) there is much of what would be caUed
legendary illustration ; but the substance of them is plain,
practical, awful preaching upon the great truths of salva
tion. What I can speak of with greater confidence is the
effect upon me a little later of the Exercises of St. Ignatius.
(For) Here again, in a [pure] matter of the (purest and)
most direct (acts of) religion,( — )in the intercourse between
God and the soul, during a season of recoUection, of repent- 30
ance, of good resolution, of inquiry into vocation,( — )the
soul was " sola cum solo ; " there was no cloud interposed
between the creature and the Object of bis faith and love.
The command practicaUy enforced was, " My son, give
Me thy heart." The devotions then to angels and saints
7 certainly] luminously
17 1. Solus cum solo : This commenced a new paragraph in 1S65.
18-19 the effect produced upon me by this] what I gained from the
20-21 all events] least 27 upon] produced on
27 later of] later by studying 28 matter of] matter consisting in
35 angels and saints] Angels and Saints

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 289
as Uttle interfered with the incommunicable glory of the
Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations,
our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that
supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen, which reaUy
does but sanctify and exalt(, not jealously destroy,) what
is of earth. At a later date Dr. RusseU sent me a large
bundle of penny or half-penny books of devotion, of aU
sorts, as they are found in the DookseUers' shops at Rome ;
and, on looking them over, I was quite astonished to find
io how different they were from what I had fancied, how
httle there was in them to which I could really object.
I have given an account of them in my Essay on the
Development of Doctrine. Dr. Russell sent me St. Alfonso's
book at the end of 1842 ; however, it was stiU a long time
before I got over my difficulty, on the score of the devo
tions paid to the Saints ; perhaps, as I judge, from a letter
I have turned up, it was some way into 1844, before I could
be said (fuUy) to have got over it.
(2.) I am not sure that (I did not also at this time feel
20 the force of) another consideration [did not also weigh
with me then]. The idea of the Blessed Virgin was as it
were magnified in the Church of Rome, as time went on, —
but so were aU the Christian ideas ; as that of the Blessed
Eucharist. The whole scene of pale, faint, distant Apostolic
Christianity is seen in Rome, as through a telescope or
magnifier. The harmony of the whole, however, is of course
what it was. It is unfair then to take one Roman idea, that
of the Blessed Virgin, out of what may be called its context.
(3.) Thus I am brought to the principle of development
30 of doctrine in the Christian Church, to which I gave my
mind at the end of 1842. I had spoken of it in the passage,
which I quoted many pages back ((vide p. 218)), in Home
Thoughts Abroad, pubhshed in 1836 ; (and even at an
earlier date I had introduced it into my History of the
Arians in 1832 ;) but it had been a favourite subject with
me aU along. And it is certainly recognized in that cele
brated Treatise of Vincent of Lerins, which has so often
31 spoken] made mention
35-6 but it had been a favourite subject with me all along] nor had
I ever lost sight of it in my speculations
36-7 that celebrated] the
APOLOGIA jj

290 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
been taken as the basis of the Anghcan theory. In 1843
I began to consider it steadily ; (I made it the subject of
my last University Sermon on February 2 ;) and the
general view to which I came is stated thus in a letter to
a friend of the date of July 14, 1844 ; ( — )it will be observed
that, now as before, my issue is still Faith versus Church : —
" The kind of considerations which weigh(s) with me are
such as the following : — 1. I am far more certain (accord
ing to the Fathers) that we are in a state of culpable separa
tion, than that developments do not exist under the Gospel, io
and that the Roman developments are not the true ones.
2. I am far more certain, that our (modern) doctrines are
wrong, than that the Roman (modern) doctrines are wrong.
3. Granting that the Roman (special) doctrines are not
found drawn out in the early Church, yet I think there is
sufficient trace of them in it, to recommend and prove
them, on the hypothesis of the Church having a divine
guidance, though not sufficient to prove them by itself.
So that the question simply turns on the nature of the
promise of the Spirit, made to the Church. 4. The proof 20
of the Roman (modern) doctrine is as strong (or stronger)
in Antiquity, as that of certain doctrines which both we and
Romans hold : e. g. there is more of evidence in Antiquity
for the necessity of Unity, than for the Apostohcal Succes
sion ; for the Supremacy of the See of Rome, than for the
Presence in the Eucharist ; for the practice of Invocation,
than for certain books in the present Canon of Scripture,
&c. &c. 5. The analogy of the Old Testament, and also
of the New, leads to the acknowledgment of doctrinal
developments." 30
(4.) And thus I was led on to a further consideration.
I saw that the principle of development not only accounted
for certain facts, but was in itself a remarkable philo
sophical phenomenon, giving a character to the whole
course of Christian thought. It was discernible from the
first years of the Catholic teaching up to the present day,
and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It
served as a sort of test, which the Anglican could not
exhibit, that modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch,
1 the Anglican theory] Anglicanism 2 steadily] attentively
0 Faith] Creed 7 The kind . . . are So in all editions.

;FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 291
Alexandria, and Constantinople, just as a mathematical
curve has its own law and expression.
(5.) ^ And thus again I was led on to examine more
attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long
before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the
mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea ; and
I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in
true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and
that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances
io in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the
one or the other. And I hold this still : I am a Catholic
by virtue of my believing in a God ; and if I am asked
why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe
in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own
existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believ
ing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal,
All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience. Now,
I dare say, I have not expressed myself with philosophical
correctness, because I have not given myself to the study
20 of what others have said on the subject ; but I think
I have a strong true meaning in what I say which will
stand examination.
(6.) Moreover, I came to the conclusion which I have
been stating, on reasoning of the same nature, as that
which I had adopted on the subject of development of
doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to last of
that principle of development (in the truths of Revelation,)
is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and
Primitive Christianity ; but as there is a law which acts
30 upon the subject-matter of dogmatic theology, so is there
a law in the matter of rehgious faith. In the third part of
this narrative I spoke of certitude as the consequence,
divinely intended and enjoined upon us, of the accumula
tive force of certain given reasons which, taken one by one,
were only probabilities. Let it be recollected that I am
historically relating my state of mind, at the period of my
life which I am surveying. I am not speaking theologically,
20 others] metaphysicians
23-4 came to the conclusion .... same nature, as] found a corro
boration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism
in a consideration parallel to 31 third part] first chapter

292 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
nor have I any intention of going into controversy, or of
defending myseff ; but speaking historically of what I held
in 1843-4, I say, that I beheved in a God on a ground of
probability, that I believed in Christianity on a probabihty,
and that I believed in Catholicism on a probability, and
that all three (grounds of probabihty, distinct from each
other of course in subject matter,) were about the same
kind of probabihty, a cumulative, a transcendent prob
ability, but stiU probabiUty ; inasmuch as He who made
us, has so willed that in mathematics indeed we (should) 10
arrive at certitude by rigid demonstration, but in rehgious
inquiry we (should) arrive at certitude by accumulated
probabilities, — [inasmuch as] He [who] has wiUed(, I say,)
that we should so act, (and, as willing it, He) co-operates
with us in our acting, and thereby (enables us to do that
which He wihs us to do, and) bestows on us (if our wiU does
but co-operate with His,) a certitude which rises higher
than the logical force of our conclusions. And thus I came
to see clearly, and to have a satisfaction in seeing, that,
in being led on into the Church of Rome, I was proceeding, 20
not by any secondary (or isolated) grounds of ^reason, or
by controversial points in detail, but was protected and
justified, even in the use of those secondary (or particular)
arguments, by a great and broad principle. But, let it be
observed, that I am stating a matter of fact, not defending
it ; and if any Cathohc says in consequence that I have
been converted in a wrong way, I cannot help that now.
[And now I have carried on the history of my opinions
to their last point, before I became a Cathohc. I find
great difficulty in fixing dates precisely ; but it must have 30
been some way into 1844, before I thought not only that the
Anglican Church was certainly wrong, but that Rome was
right. Then I had nothing more to learn on the subject.
6 all] these
7-8 about the same kind of probability] still all of them one and the
same in nature of proof, as being probabilities — probabilities of a special
land 16-17 bestows on us a certitude] carries us on, ... to a certitude
20-1 proceeding, not by] not proceeding on
28_f. For this passage the following was substituted in 1865 : I have
nothing more to say on the subject of the change in my religious opinions.
On the one hand I came gradually to see that the Anglican Church was

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 293
How " Samaria " faded away from my imagination I cannot
tell, but it was gone. Now to go back to the time when
this last stage of my inquiry was in its commencement,
which, if I dare assign dates, was towards the end of
1842.] In 1843, I took two very [important and] significant
steps : — 1. In February, I made a formal Retractation of
all the hard things which I had said against the Church
of Rome. 2. In September, I resigned the Living of
io St. Mary's, Littlemore inclusive : — I will speak of these
two acts separately. I
1. The words, in which I made my Retractation, have
given rise to much criticism. After quoting a number of
passages from my writings against the Church of Rome,
which I withdrew, I ended thus : — " If you ask me how an
individual could venture, not simply to hold, but to publish
such views of a communion so ancient, so wide-spreading,
so fruitful in Saints, I answer that I said to myself, ' I am
not speaking my own words, I am but foUowing almost
20 a consensus of the divines of my own Church. They have
ever used the strongest language against Rome, even the
most able and learned of them. I wish to throw myself
into their system. WhUe I say what they say, I am safe.
Such views, too, are necessary for our position.' Yet
I have reason to fear still, that such language is to be
ascribed, in no smaU measure, to an impetuous temper,
a hope of approving myseff to persons I respect, and a wish
to repel the charge of Romanism."
These words have been, and are, [cited] again and again
30 (cited) against me, as if a confession that, when in the
AngUcan Church, I said things against Rome which I did
not reaUy believe.
formally in the wrong, on the other that the Church of Rome was
formally in the right ; then, that no valid reasons could be assigned
for continuing in the Anglican, and again that no valid objections
could be taken to joining the Roman. Then, I had nothing more to
learn ; what still remained for my conversion, was, not further change
of opinion, but to change opinion itself into the clearness and firmness
of intellectual conviction.
Now I proceed to detail the acts, to which I committed myself during
this last stage of my inquiry. 10 inclusive] included

294 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
For myself, I cannot understand how any impartial
man can so take them ; and I have explained them in
print several times. I trust that by this time they have
been sufficiently explained by what I have said in former
portions of this narrative ; still I have a word or two to
say about them, which I have not said before. (In the
passage in question) I apologizefd in the lines in question]
for saying out (in controversy) charges against the Church
of Rome which (withal I affirm that) I fully beheved to be
true. What is wonderful in such an apology ? 10
There are (surely) many things a man may hold, which
at the same time he may feel that he has no right to say
publicly(, and which it may annoy him that he has said
publicly). The law recognizes this principle. In our own
time, men have been imprisoned and fined for saying true
things of a bad king. The maxim has been held, that,
" The greater the truth, the greater is the libel." And so
as to the judgment of society, a just indignation would be
felt against a writer who brought forward wantonly the
weaknesses of a great man, though the whole world knew 20
that they existed. No one is at hberty to speak ill of
another without a justifiable reason, even though he knows
he is speaking truth, and the public knows it too. There
fore^ though I believed what I said against the Roman
Church, nevertheless) I could not (religiously) speak ill
against the Church of Rome, though I believed what I said,
without a good reason. I did believe what I said (on what
I thought to be good reasons) ; but had I (also) a good
reason for saying it ? I thought I had(, and it was this) ;
viz. I said what I believed was simply necessary in the 30
3-4 they have been sufficiently explained] their plain meaning has
been satisfactorily brought out
6 about them, which I have not said before] in addition to my
former remarks upon them
6 In the passage commenced a new paragraph in 1865.
8 saying out] saying out
9-10 beheved to be true] believed at the time when I made them
11 No new paragraph here in 1865.
25-7 speak ill against  without a good reason] speak it out, unless
I was really justified, not only in believing ill, but in speaking ill
28-9 good reason for saying it] just cause for saying out what
I believed 30 I said] that to say out

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 295
controversy, in order to defend ourselves ; I considered
that the Anglican position could not be defended, without
bringing charges against the Church of Rome. (In this, as
in most cases of conflict, one was right or the other, not
both ; and the best defence was to attack.) Is not this
almost a truism (in the Roman controversy) ? is it not
what every one says, who speaks on the subject at all ?
does any serious man abuse the Church of Rome, for the
sake of abusing her, or because it justifies his own religious
io position ? What is the meaning of the very word " Pro
testantism," but that there is a caU to speak out ? This
then is what I said ; "I know I spoke strongly against the
Church of Rome ; but it was no mere abuse, for I had
a serious reason for doing so."
But, not only did I think such language necessary for
my Church's rehgious position, but (I recoUected that) all
the great AngUcan divines had thought so before me. They
had thought so, and they had acted accordingly. And
therefore I said (in the passage in question), with much
20 propriety, that I had not done it simply out of my own head,
but that (in doing so) I was following the track, or rather
reproducing the teaching, of those who had preceded me.
I was pleading guilty (to using violent language) ; but
(I was) pleading also that there were extenuating circum
stances in the case. We all know the story of the convict,
who on the scaffold bit off his mother's ear. By doing so
he did not deny the fact of his own crime, for which he
was to hang ; but he said that his mother's indulgence,
when he was a boy, had a good deal to do with it. In like
30 manner I had made a charge, and I had made it ex animo ;
but I accused others of having(, by their own example,)
led me into believing it and publishing it.
But there was more than this meant in the words which
I used : — first, I wifi freely confess, indeed I said it some
1-2 , in order to defend ourselves ; I considered that] for self-defence.
It was impossible to let it alone :
2 defended] satisfactorily maintained
3 bringing charges against the Church of Rome] assailing the Roman
9 it] that abuse
19 said] observe 20 done it] used strong language
33^ But there was . . used : — first,] I was in a humour, certainly,
to bite off their ears.

296 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
fages back, that I was angry with the Anghcan divines.
thought they had taken me in ; I had read the Fathers
with their eyes ; I had sometimes trusted their quotations
or their reasonings ; and from reliance on them, I had
used words or made statements, which properly I ought
rigidly to have examined myseff. (I had thought myself
safe, while I had their warrant for what I said.) I had
exercised more faith than criticism in the matter. This
did not imply any broad misstatements on my part, arising
from reliance on their authority, but it imphed carelessness 10
in matters of detail. And this of course was a fault.
But there was a far deeper reason for my saying what
I said in this matter, on which I have not hitherto touched ;
and it was this : — The most oppressive thought, in the
whole process of my change of opinion, was the clear
anticipation, verified by the event, that it would issue in
the triumph of Liberahsm. Against the Anti-dogmatic
principle I had thrown my whole mind ; yet now I was
doing more than any one else could do, to promote it.
I was one of those who had kept it at bay in Oxford for 20
so many years ; and thus my very retirement was its
triumph. The men who had driven me from Oxford were
distinctly the Liberals ; it was they who had opened the
attack upon Tract 90, and it was they who would gain
a second benefit, if I went on to retire from the Anglican
Church. But this was not aU. As I have already said,
there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the
way to Atheism : Anghcanism is the halfway house on
the one side, and Liberahsm is the halfway house on the
other. How many men were there, as I knew fuU weU, 30
who would not follow me now in my advance from Angh
canism to Rome, but would at once leave Anghcanism
and me for the Liberal camp. It is not at aU easy (humanly
speaking) to wind up an Enghshman to a dogmatic level.
I had done so in [a] good measure, in the case both of
young men and of laymen, the Anghcan Via Media being
the representative of dogma. The dogmatic and the
Anglican principle were one, as I had taught them ; but
I was breaking the Via Media to pieces, and would not
dogmatic faith altogether be broken up, in the minds of
5 properly] by right 25 retire from] abandon

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 297
a great number, by the demolition of the Via Media ?„
Oh ! how unhappy this made me ! I heard once from an
eye-witness the account of a poor sailor whose legs were
shattered by a baU, in the action off Algiers in 1816, and
who was taken below for an operation. The surgeon and
the chaplain persuaded him to have a leg off ; it was done
and the tourniquet applied to the wound. Then, they broke
it to him that he must have the other off too. The poor
fellow said, " You should have told me that, gentlemen,"
io and dehberately unscrewed the instrument and bled to
death. Would not that be the case with many friends of
my own ? How could I ever hope to make them beheve
in a second theology, when I had cheated them in the
first ? with what face could I publish a new edition of
a dogmatic creed, and ask them to receive it as gospel %
Would it not be plain to them that no certainty was to be
found any where ? Well, in my defence I could but make
a lame apology ; however, it was the true one, viz. that
I had not read the Fathers criticaUy enough ; that in such"
20 nice points, as those which determine the angle of diver
gence between the two Churches, I had made considerable
miscalculations ; and how came this about 1 Why(,) the
fact was, unpleasant as it was to avow, that I had leaned
too much upon the assertions of Ussher, Jeremy Taylor,
or Barrow, and had been deceived by them. Valeat quan
tum, — it was all that could be said. This then was a chief
reason of that wording of the Retractation, which has given
so much offence, (because the bitterness, with which it
was written, was not understood : — ) and the f oUowing letter
30 wfil iUustrate it : —
" April 3, 1844. I wish to remark on W(illiam)'s chief
distress, that my changing my opinion seemed to unsettle
one's confidence in truth and falsehood as external things,
and led one to be suspicious of the new opinion as one
became distrustful of the old. Now in what I shall say,
I am not going to speak in favour of my second thoughts in
comparison of my first, but against such scepticism and
unsettlement about truth and falsehood generally, the idea
of which is very painful.
19 critically] cautiously
22 miscalculations ; and] miscalculations. But
L.3

298 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
" The case with me, then, was this, and not surely an
unnatural one : — as a matter of feehng and of duty I threw
myseff into the system which I found myseff in. I saw
that the English Church had a theological idea or theory
as such, and I took it up. I read Laud on Tradition, and
thought it (as I stiU think it) very masterly. The Anghcan
Theory was very distinctive. I admired it and took it on
faith. It did not (I think) occur to me to doubt it ; I saw
that it was able, and supported by learning, and I felt it
was a duty to maintain it. Further, on looking intoio
Antiquity and reading the Fathers, I saw such portions
of it as I examined, fully confirmed (e.g. the supremacy of
Scripture). There was only one question about which
I had a doubt, viz. whether it would work, for it has never
been more than a paper system. . . .
" So far from my change of opinion having any fair
tendency to unsettle persons as to truth and falsehood
viewed as objective realities, it should be considered
whether such change is not necessary, if truth be a real
objective thing, and be made to confront a person who has 20
been brought up in a system short of truth. Surely the
continuance of a person(,) who wishes to go right(,) in
a wrong system, and not his giving it up, would be that
which militated against the objectiveness of Truth, lead
ing, as it would, to the suspicion, that one thing and
another were equaUy pleasing to our Maker, where men
were sincere.
" Nor surely is it a thing I need be sorry for, that I
defended the system in which I found myself, and thus
have had to unsay my words. For is it not one's duty, 30
instead of beginning with criticism, to throw oneself
generously into that form of reUgion which is providentiaUy
put before one ? Is it right, or is it wrong, to begin with
private judgment ? May we not, on the other hand, look
for a blessing through obedience even to an erroneous
system, and a guidance even by means of it out of it ?
Were those who were strict and conscientious in their
Judaism, or those who were lukewarm and sceptical, more
likely to be led into Christianity, when Christ came ?
Yet in proportion to their previous zeal, would be their 40
appearance of inconsistency. Certainly, I have always

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 299
contended that obedience even to an erring conscience
was the way to gain light, and that it mattered not where
a man began, so that he began on what came to hand,
and in faith ; and that any thing might become a divine
method of Truth ; that to the pure aU things are pure,
and have a self -correcting virtue and a power of germinat
ing. And though I have no right at aU to assume that
this mercy is granted to me, yet the fact, that a person
in my situation may have it granted to him, seems to me
io to remove the perplexity which my change of opinion may
occasion. " It may be said, — I have said it to myself, — ' Why, how
ever, did you publish ? had you waited quietly, you would
have changed your opinion without any of the misery,
which now is involved in the change, of disappointing and
distressing people.' I answer, that things are so bound up
together, as to form a whole, and one cannot teU what is
or is not a condition of what. I do not see how possibly
I could have pubhshed the Tracts, or other works pro-
20 fessing to defend our Church, without accompanying them
with a strong protest or argument against Rome. The one
obvious objection against the whole Anghcan line is, that
it is Roman ; so that I reaUy think there was no alter
native between silence altogether, and forming a theory
and attacking the Roman system."
2. And now, secondly, as to my Resignation of St. Mary's,
which was the second of the steps which I took in 1843.
The ostensible, direct, and sufficient cause of my doing
so was the persevering attack of the Bishops on Tract 90.
30 1 aUuded to it in the letter which I have inserted above,
addressed to one of the most influential among them.
A series of their ex cathedrd judgments, lasting through
three years, and including a notice of no httle severity in
a Charge of my own Bishop, came as near to a condemna
tion of my Tract, and, so far, to a repudiation of the ancient
Cathohc doctrine, which was the scope of the Tract, as
was possible in the Church of England. It was in order
to shield the Tract from such a condemnation, that I had
at the time of its publication (in 1841) so simply put myself
26 secondly] in the next place 28 cause of] reason for

300 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
at the disposal of the higher powers in London. At that
time, aU that was distinctly contemplated in the way of
censure, was (contained in) the message which my Bishop
sent me, that it was " objectionable." That I thought was
the end of the matter. I had refused to suppress it, and
they had yielded that point. Since I wrote the former
portions of this narrative, I have found what I wrote to
Dr. Pusey on March 24, whole the matter was in progress.
" The more I think of it," I said, " the more reluctant I am
to suppress Tract 90, though of course I wiU do it if the io
Bishop wishes it ; I cannot, however, deny that I shaU feel
it a severe act." According to the notes which I took of
the letters or messages which I sent to him in the course
of that day, ' I went on to say, " My first feeling was to
obey without a word ; I wiU obey still ; but my judgment
has steadily risen against it ever since." Then in the
Postscript, " If I have done any good to the Church, I do
ask the Bishop this favour, as my reward for it, that he
would not insist on a measure, from which I think good
will not come. However, I wUl submit to him." After- 20
wards, I get stronger still (and wrote) : "I have almost
come to the resolution, if the Bishop publicly intimates
that I must suppress the Tract, or speaks strongly in his
charge against it, to suppress it indeed, but to resign my
living also. I could not in conscience act otherwise. You
may show this in any quarter you please."
All my then hopes, all my satisfaction at the apparent
fulfilment of those hopes, were at an end in 1843. It is not
wonderful then, that in May of that year(, when two out
of the three years were gone,) I addressed a letter on the3o
subject of (my retiring from) St. Mary's to the same friend,
whom I had consulted about retiring from it in 1840. But
I did more now ; I told him my great unsettlement of
mind on the question of the Churches. I wiU insert por
tions of two of my letters : —
" May 4, 1843  At present I fear, as far as I can
analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Cathohc
6 wrote] published
14 went on to say] presently wrote to him 21 get] got
28 , were] was 30 addressed a letter] wrote
32 about retiring from] upon

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 301
Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that
what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is
not httle) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of
His dispensation. I am very far more sure that England
is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive
Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and
vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.
" You wiU now understand what gives edge to the
Bishops' Charges, without any undue sensitiveness on my
io part. They distress me in two ways : — first, as being in
some sense protests and witnesses to my conscience against
my own unfaithfulness to the English Church, and next,
as being samples of her teaching, and tokens how very far
she is from even aspiring to Catholicity.
" Of course my being unfaithful to a trust is my great
subject of dread, — as it has long been, as you know."
When he wrote to make natural objections to my pur
pose, such as the apprehension that the removal of clerical
obligations might have the indirect effect of propelling
20 me towards Rome, I answered : —
" May 18, 1843. ... My office or charge at St. Mary's
is not a mere state, but a continual energy. People assume
and assert certain things of me in consequence. With what
sort of sincerity can I obey the Bishop ? how am I to act
in the frequent cases, in which one way or another the
Church of Rome comes into consideration ? I have to the
utmost of my power tried to keep persons from Rome, and
with some success ; but even a year and a half since, my
arguments, though more efficacious with the persons
30 I aimed at than any others could be, were of a nature to
infuse great suspicion of me into the minds of lookers-on.
" By retaining St. Mary's, I am an offence and a
stumbling-block. Persons are keen-sighted enough to
make out what I think on certain points, and then they
infer that such opinions are compatible with holding situa
tions of trust in our Church. A number of younger men
take the vahdity of their interpretation of the Articles,
&c, from me on faith. Is not my present position a cruelty,
as weU as a treachery towards the Church ?
40 " I do not see how I can either preach or publish again,
while I hold St. Mary's ; — but consider again the following

302 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
difficulty in such a resolution, which I must state at some
length. " Last Long Vacation the idea suggested itself to me
of publishing the Lives of the Enghsh Saints ; and I had
a conversation with [a pubhsher] upon it. I thought it
would be useful, as employing the minds of men who were
in danger of running wild, bringing them from doctrine to
history, and from speculation to fact ; — again, as giving
them an interest in the Enghsh soU, and the Enghsh
Church, and keeping them from seeking sympathy inio
Rome, as she is ; and further, as seeking to promote the
spread, of right views.
" But, within the last month, it has come upon me, that,
if the scheme goes on, it wiU be a practical carrying out
of No. 90 ; from the character of the usages and opinions of
ante-reformation times.
" It is easy to say, ' Why will you do any thing ? why
won't you keep quiet ? what business had you to think
of any such plan at aU ? ' But I cannot leave a number of
poor feUows in the lurch. I am bound to do my best for 20
a^great number of people both in Oxford and elsewhere.
If / did not act, others would find means to do so.
" WeU, the plan has been taken up with great eagerness
and interest. Many men are setting to work. I set down
the names of men, most of them engaged, the rest half
engaged and probable, some actuaUy writing." About
thirty names foUow, some of them at that time of the school
of Dr. Arnold, others of Dr. Pusey's, some my personal
friends and of my own standing, others whom I hardly
knew, whUe of course the majority were of the party of the 30
new Movement. I continue : —
" The plan has gone so far, that it would create surprise
and talk, were it now suddenly given over. Yet how
is it compatible with my holding St. Mary's, being what
I am ? "
Such was the object and the origin of the projected
Series of the English Saints ; and, as the pubhcation was
connected, as has been seen, with my resignation of
5 These are the Author's [] 11 seeking] tending
35 A space was left after this line in 1865. 37 as the] since the

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 303
• St. Mary's, I may be aUowed to conclude what I have to
say on the subject here, though it wiU read like a digression.
As soon then as the first of the Series got into print, the
whole project broke down. I had aheady anticipated that
some portions of the Series would be written in a style
inconsistent with the professions of a beneficed clergyman,
and therefore I had given up my Living ; but men of great
weight went further (in their misgivings than I), when they
saw the Life of St. Stephen Harding, and decided that it
io was of [such] a character [as to be] inconsistent even with
its being given to the world by an Anghcan publisher :
and so the scheme was given up at once. After the two first
parts, I retired from the Editorship, and those Lives only
were pubhshed in addition, which were then already
finished, or in advanced preparation. The following
passages from what I or others wrote at the time will
illustrate what I have been saying : —
In November, 1844, I wrote thus to one of the
authors of them : "I am not Editor, I have no direct
20 control over the Series. It is T.'s work ; he may admit
what he pleases ; and exclude what he pleases. I was
to have been Editor. I did edit the two first numbers. I was
responsible for them, in the way in which an Editor is
responsible. Had I continued Editor, I should have
exercised a control over aU. I laid down in the Preface that
doctrinal subjects were, if possible, to be excluded. But,
even then, I also set down that no writer was to be held
answerable for any of the Lives but his own. When
I gave up the Editorship, I had various engagements with
30 friends for separate Lives remaining on my hands. I should
have hked to have broken from them aU, but there were
some from which I could not break, and I let them take
their course. Some have come to nothing ; others hke
yours have gone on. I have seen such, either in MS. or
Proof. As time goes on, I shaU have less and less to do
with the Series. I think the engagement between you and
me should come to an end. I have any how abundant
responsibiUty on me, and too much. I shaU write to T.
2 will] may 11 being given to the world by] proceeding from
13 parts] numbers 18-19 one of the authors of ]the author of one of

304 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
that if he wants the advantage of your assistance, he must
write to you direct."
In accordance with this letter, I had already advertised
in January 1844, ten months before it, that " other
Lives," after St. Stephen Harding, " wUl be published
by their respective authors on their own responsibility."
This notice is repeated in February, in the advertisement
to the second volume entitled " The Fanfily of St. Richard,"
though to this volume [also], for some reason (which I
cannot now recollect), I also put my initials. In the Life 10
of St. Augustine, the author, a man of nearly my own age,
says in like manner, "No one but himself is responsible
for the way in which these materials have been used." I
have in MS. another advertisement to the same effect, but
I cannot teU whether it was ever put into print.
I will add, since the authors have been considered hot
headed boys, whom I was in charge of and whom I suffered
to do intemperate things, that, while the writer of St. Augus
tine was of the mature age which I have stated, (the
author of the proposed Life of St. Boniface, Mr. Bowden, 20
was forty-six ; Mr. Johnson, who was to write St. Aldhelm,
forty-three ; and) most of the others were on one side or
other of thirty. Three(, I think,) were under twenty-five.
Moreover, of these writers some became Catholics, some
remained Anglicans, and others have professed what are
called free or hberal opinions (1).
The immediate cause of the resignation of my Living is
stated in the following letter, which I wrote to my Bishop : —
" August 29, 1843. It is with much concern that I
inform your Lordship, that Mr. A. B., who has been for30
the last year an inmate of my house here, has just conformed
to the Church of Rome. As I have ever been desirous, not
only of faithfully discharging the trust, which is involved
in holding a living in your Lordship's diocese, but of
approving myseff to your Lordship, I wiU for your informa-
5 " will be] would " be 7 is] was
8, 9 volume] number 15 was ever put into] ever appeared in
16-17 hot-headed boys] " hot-headed fanatic young men "
19 of the mature age which I have stated] in 1844 past forty
26 Footnote in 1865. <l Vide Note D, Lives of the English Saints.)
26 A space was left after this line in 1865.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) '305
tion state one or two' circumstances connected with this
unfortunate event  I received him on condition of
his promismg me, which he distinctly did, that he would
remain quietly in our Church for three years. A year has
passed since that time, and, though I saw nothing in him
which promised that he would eventually be contented
with his present position, yet for the time his mind became
as settled as one could wish, and he frequently expressed
his satisfaction at being under the promise which I had
io exacted of him."
I felt it impossible to remain any longer in the service of
the Anglican Church, when such a breach of trust, however
httle I had to do with it, would be laid at my door. I wrote
in a few days to a friend :
" September 7, 1843. I this day ask the Bishop leave
to resign St. Mary's. Men whom you little think, or at
least whom I little thought, are in almost a hopeless way.
ReaUy we may expect any thing. I am going to pubhsh
a Volume of Sermons, including those Four against
20 moving." I resigned my living on September (the) 18th. I had
not the means of doing it legaUy at Oxford. ^The late
Mr. Goldsmid aided me in resigning it in London. I found
no fault with the Liberals ; they had beaten me in a fair
field. As to the act of the Bishops, I thought, as Walter
Scott has apphed the text, that they had " seethed the kid
in his mother's milk."
I said to a friend : —
" Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni."
30 And now I (may be almost said to) have brought [almost]
to an end, as far as this sketch has to treat of them, the
history both of my (changes of religious) opinionfs,] and
of the pubhc acts which they involved. I had [only] one
23 aided] was kind enough to aid
25-6 as Walter Scott has applied the text] to borrow a Scriptural
image from Walter Scott
31 this sketch has to treat of them] is necessary for a sketch such as
this is
33 I had one commenced a new paragraph in 1865.

306 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
more advance of mind to make ; and (one final step to
take.) that (further advance of mind) was, to be (able
honestly to say that I was) certain of what I had hitherto
anticipated, concluded, and beheved ; and this was close
upon my submission to the Catholic Church. [And I had
only one more act to perform, and that was the act of
submission itself.] But two years yet intervened before
the date of these final events ; during which I was in
lay communion in the Church of England, attending its
services as usual, and abstaining altogether from inter- 10
course with Cathohcs, from their places of worship, and
from those religious rites and usages, such as the Invocation
of Saints, which are characteristics of their creed. I did
aU this on principle ; for I never could understand how
a man could be of two religions at once.
[What then I now have to add is of a private nature,
being my preparation for the great event, for which I was
waiting, in the interval between the autumns of 1843 and
1845. And I shaU almost confine] what I have to say (about 20
myself between these two autumns I shaU almost confine)
to this one point,( — )the difficulty I was in as to the best
mode of revealing the state of my mind to my friends and
others, and how I managed to do it.
Up to January, 1842, I had not disclosed my state
of unsettlement to more than three persons, as has been
mentioned above, and (as) is repeated in the (course of
the) letters which I am now about to give to the reader.
1 more] final 1 make ;] accomplish, 2 that] That
3-5 what I had . . . close upon my submission] the conclusions at
which I had already arrived. That further step, imperative when such
certitude was attained, was my submission
7-8 But two years . . . events ; during which] new paragraph : This
submission did not take place till two full years after the resignation
of my living in September 1843 ; nor could I have made it at an
earlier day, without doubt and apprehension, that is, with any true
conviction of mind or certitude.
In the interval, of which it remains to speak, viz. between the autumns
of 1843 and 1845,
9 oommunion in] communion with
24 do] reveal
24 After this line a space was left in 1865.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 307
To two of them, intimate and familiar companions, in the
Autumn of 1839 : to the third, an old friend too, (whom
I have named above,) when, I suppose, I was in great
distress of mind upon the affair of the Jerusalem Bishopric.
In May, 1843, I mentioned it(, as has been seen,) to the
friend, by whose advice I wished, as far as possible, to be
guided. To mention it on set purpose to any one, unless
indeed I was asking advice, I should have felt to be a
crime. If there is any thing that was [and is] abhorrent
io to me, it is the scattering doubts, and unsettling consciences
without necessity. A strong presentiment that my existing
opinions would ultimately give way, and that the grounds
of them were unsound, was not a sufficient warrant for
disclosing the state of my mind. I had no guarantee yet,
that that presentiment would be realized. Supposing I were
crossing ice, which came right in my way, which I had good
reasons for considering sound, and which I saw numbers
before me crossing in safety, and supposing a stranger
from the bank, in a voice of authority, and in an earnest
20 tone, warned me that it was dangerous, and then was
sUent, I think I should be startled, and should look about
me anxiously, but (I think too that) I [also] should go on,
tiU I had better grounds for doubt ; and such was my
state, I beheve, tiU the end of 1842. Then again, when my
dissatisfaction became greater, it was hard at first to
determine the point of time, when it was too strong to
suppress with propriety. Certitude of course is a point,
but doubt is a progress ; I was not near certitude yet.
Certitude is a reflex action ; it is to know that one
so knows. I beheve I had not that, tiU close upon my
reception into the Catholic Church. Again, a practical,
effective doubt is a point too, but who can easily ascertain
it for himself ? Who can determine when it is, that the
scales in the balance of opinion begin to turn, and what
was a greater probability in behalf of a behef becomes
a positive doubt against it ?
In considering this question in its bearing upon my
conduct in 1843, my own simple answer to my great
5 mentioned it] made it known 10 it is] it was
30 I believe I had not that] Of that I believe I was not possessed

308 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
difficulty was, Do what your present state of opinion requires
(in the light of duty), and let that doing tell : speak by acts.
This I did ; my first act of the year was in February[, 1843].
After three months' dehberation I (had) pubhshed my
retractation of the violent charges which I had made against
Rome : I could not be wrong in doing so much as this ;
but I did no more (at the time) : I did not retract my
Anghcan teaching. My second act was in September (in
the same year) ; after much sorrowful lingering and hesita
tion, I (had) resigned my Living. I tried indeed(, before 10
I did so,) to keep Littlemore for myself, even though it
was still to remain an integral part of St. Mary's. (I had
given to it a Church and a sort of Parsonage ;) I had made
it a Parish, and I loved it ; but I did not succeed in my
attempt. I could indeed bear to become the curate at will
of another, but I hoped [still that] (an arrangement was
possible, by which, while I had the curacy,) I might have
been my own master there. I had hoped an exception
might have been made in my favour, under the circum
stances ; but I did not gain my request. Indeed, I was 20
asking what was impracticable, and it is weU for me that
it was so.
These were my two acts of the year, and I said, " I cannot
be wrong in making them ; let that foUow which must follow
in the thoughts of the world about me, when they see what
I do." (And, as time went on,) They fuUy answered my
purpose. What I felt as a simple duty to do, did create
a general suspicion about me, without such responsibility
as would be involved in my taking the initiative in
creating it. Then, when friends wrote me on the subject, 30
I either did not deny or I confessed it, according to the
character and need of their letters. Sometimes, in
the case of intimate friends, whom I seemed to leave
1, 3, 8 was] had been 3 did] had done
14-15 but I did not succeed in my attempt] I thought in 1843 that
perhaps I need not forfeit my existing relations towards it
15 bear] submit 18 there] in serving it
20 Indeed,] Perhaps 23 were] had been 27 felt as] felt it
29 taking the initiative in] initiating any direct act for the sake of
31 it] my state of mind
33 seemed to leave] should otherwise have been leaving

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 309
in ignorance of what others knew about me, I invited the
question. And here comes in another point for explanation. While
I was fighting (in Oxford) for the Anghcan Church [in
Oxford], then indeed I was very glad to make converts,
and, though I never broke away from that rule of my
mind, (as I may caU it,) of which I have aheady spoken,
of finding disciples rather than seeking them, yet, that
I made advances to others in a special way, I have no doubt ;
io this came to an end, however, as soon as I fell into mis
givings as to the true ground to be taken in the controversy.
(For) Then, when I gave up my place in the Movement,
I ceased from any such proceeding(s) : and my utmost
endeavour was to tranquillize such persons, especially
those who belonged to the new school, as were unsettled
in their rehgious views, and, as I judged, hasty in their
conclusions. This went on till 1843 ; but, at that date, as
soon as I turned my face Romeward, I gave up [altogether
and in any shape], as far as ever was possible, the thought
20 of (in any respect and in any shape) acting upon others.
Then I myseff was simply my own concern. How could
I in any sense direct others, who had to be guided in so
momentous a matter myself ? How could I be considered
in a position, even to say a word to them one way or the
other ? How could I presume to unsettle them, as I was
unsettled, when I had no means of bringing them out of
such unsettlement ? And, if they were unsettled aheady,
how could I point to them a place of refuge, which I was
not sure that I should choose for myself ? My only
30 line, my only duty, was to keep simply to my own case.
I recollected Pascal's words, " Je mourrai seul." I deliber
ately put out of my thoughts aU other works and claims,
and said nothing to any one, unless I was obhged.
But this brought upon me a great trouble. In the
newspapers there were continual reports about my inten
tions ; I did not answer them ; presently strangers or
friends wrote, begging to be aUowed to answer them ; and,
if I stiU kept to my resolution and said nothing, then I was
thought to be mysterious, and a prejudice was excited
1 about me] on every side of them
28-9 which . . . choose] when . . . choose it

310 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
against me But, what was far worse, there were a number
of tender, eager hearts, of whom I knew nothing at aU,
who were watching me, wishing to think as I thought,
and to do as I did, if they could but find it out ; who in
consequence were distressed, that, in so solemn a matter,
they could not see what was coming, and who heard
reports about me this way or that, on a first day and on
a second ; and felt the weariness of waiting, and the
sickness of delayed hope, and did not understand that I was
as perplexed as themselves, and, being of more sensitive 10
complexion of mind than myself, were made iU by the
suspense. And they too of course for the time thought me
mysterious and inexplicable. I ask their pardon as far as
I was reaUy unkind to them. There was a gifted and
deeply earnest lady, who in a parabohcal account of that
time, has described both my conduct as she felt it, and
that of such as herself. In a singularly graphic, amusing
vision of pUgrims, who were making their way across
a bleak common in great discomfort, and who were ever
warned against, yet continuaUy nearing, " the king's high- 20
way" on the right, she says, " AU my fears and disquiets
were speedily renewed by seeing the most daring of our
leaders, (the same who had first forced his way through the
palisade, and in whose courage and sagacity we aU put
impUcit trust,) suddenly stop short, and declare that he
would go on no further. He did not, however, take the
leap at once, but quietly sat down on the top of the fence
with his feet hanging towards the road, as if he meant to
take his time about it, and let himself down easily."
I do not wonder at aU that I thus seemed so unkind to 30
a lady, who at that time had never seen me. We were both
in trial in our different ways. I am far from denying that
I was acting selfishly both towards them and towards others ;
but it was a religious selfishness. Certainly to myself my
own duty seemed clear. They that are whole can heal
others ; but in my case it was, " Physician, heal thyself."
My own soul was my first concern, and it seemed an
absurdity to my reason to be converted in partnership.
I wished to go to my Lord by myself, and in my own way,
10 themselves] they were
33 towards them and towards others] in her case and in that of others

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 311
or rather His way. I had neither wish, nor, I may say,
thought of taking a number with me. (Moreover, it is
but the truth to say, that it had ever been an annoyance
to me to seem to be the head of a party ; and that even
from fastidiousness of mind, I could not bear to find
a thing done elsewhere, simply or mainly because I did it
myself, and that, from distrust of myself, I shrank from
the thought, whenever it was brought home to me, that
I was influencing others.) But nothing of this could be
io known to others.
The foUowing three letters are written to a friend, who
had every claim upon me to be frank with him : — it wiU
be seen that I disclose the real state of (my) mind [to him,]
in proportion as he presses me.
1. " October 14, 1843. I would teU you in a few words
why I have resigned St. Mary's, as you seem to wish, were
it possible to do so. But it is most difficult to bring out
in brief, or even in extenso, any just view of my feelings
and reasons.
20 " The nearest approach I can give to a general account
of them is to say, that it has been caused by the general
repudiation of the view, contained in No. 90, on the part
of the Church. I could not stand against such an unanimous
expression of opinion from the Bishops, supported, as it
has been, by the concurrence, or at least silence, of all
classes in the Church, lay and clerical. If there ever was
a case, in which an individual teacher has been put aside
and virtuaUy put away by a community, mine is one.
No decency has been observed in the attacks upon me from
30 authority ; no protests have been offered against them.
It is felt, — I am far from denying, justly felt, — that I am
a foreign material, and cannot assimilate with the Church
of England.
" Even my own Bishop has said that my mode of inter:
preting the Articles makes them mean any thing or nothing.
When I heard this dehvered, I did not beheve my ears.
I denied to others that it was said. . . . Out came the charge,
and the words could not be mistaken. This astonished me
the more, because I pubhshed that Letter to him, (how
10 others] the world 12 him 1864, 1865] him, Archdeacon Manning 1873

312 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
unwillingly you know,) on the understanding that / was
to dehver his judgment on No. 90 instead of him. A year
elapses, and a second and heavier judgment came forth.
I did not bargain for this, — nor did he, but the tide was too
strong for him.
" I fear that I must confess, that, in proportion as I think
the Enghsh Church is showing herself intrinsicaUy and
radically alien from Cathohc principles, so do I feel the
difficulties of defending her claims to be a branch of the
Cathohc Church. It seems a dream to caU a communion 10
Catholic, when one can neither appeal to any clear state
ment of Cathohc doctrine in its formularies, nor interpret
ambiguous formularies by the received and hving Cathohc
sense, whether past or present. Men of Catholic views are
too truly but a party in our Church. I cannot deny
that many other independent circumstances, which it is
not worth while entering into, have led me to the same con
clusion. " I do not say aU this to every body, as you may suppose ;
but I do not like to make a secret of it to you." 20
2. " Oct. 25, 1843. You have engaged in a dangerous
correspondence ; I am deeply sorry for the pain I shaU
give you.
" I must teU you then frankly, (but I combat arguments
which to me, alas, are shadows,) that it is not from disap
pointment, irritation, or impatience, that I have, whether
rightly or wrongly, resigned St. Mary's ; but because
I think the Church of Rome the Catholic Church, and
ours not part of the Cathohc Church, because not in com
munion with Rome ; and because I feel that I could not 30
honestly be a teacher in it any longer."
" This thought came to me last summer four years. . .
I mentioned it to two friends in the autumn. . . It arose in
the first instance from the Monophysite and Donatist
controversies, the former of which I was engaged with in
the course of theological study to which I had given myself.
This was at a time when no Bishop, I beheve, had declared
against us, (2) and when aU was progress and hope. I do
not think I have ever felt disappointment or impatience,
Footnote in 1865. (2 I think Sumner, Bishop of Chester, must have
done so already.)

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 313
certainly not then ; for I never looked forward to the future,
nor do I realize it now.
" My first effort was to write that article on the Catho
hcity of the Enghsh Church ; for two years it quieted me.
Since the summer of 1839 I have written httle or nothing
on modern controversy. . . You know how unwillingly
I wrote my letter to the Bishop in which I committed
myself again, as the safest course under circumstances.
The article I speak of quieted me tiU the end of 1841, over
io the affair of No. 90, when that wretched Jerusalem Bishopric
(no personal matter) revived aU my alarms. They have
increased up to this moment. At that time I told my secret
to another person in addition.
" You see then that the various ecclesiastical and quasi-
ecclesiastical acts, which have taken place in the course
of the last two years and a half, are not the cause of my
state of opinion, but are keen stimulants and weighty
confirmations of a conviction forced upon me, while
engaged in the course of duty, viz. that theological reading
20 to which I had given myseff. And this last -mentioned
circumstance is a fact, which has never, I think, come before
me tiU now that I write to you.
"It is three years since, on account of my state of
opinion, I urged the Provost in vain to let St. Mary's
be separated from Littlemore ; thinking I might with
a safe conscience serve the latter, though I could not com
fortably continue in so public a place as a University.
This was before No. 90.
" FinaUy, I have acted under advice, and that, not of
30 my own choosing, but what came to me in the way of duty,
nor the advice of those only who agree with me, but of near
friends who differ from me.
" I have nothing to reproach myseff with, as far as I see,
in the matter of impatience ; i.e. practicaUy or in conduct.
And I trust that He, who has kept me in the slow course of
change hitherto, wiU keep me stiU from hasty acts(,) or
resolves with a doubtful conscience.
" This I am sure of, that such interposition as yours,
kind as it is, only does what you would consider harm.
40 It makes me realize my own views to myseff ; it makes
me see their consistency ; it assures me of my own dehberate-

314 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
ness ; it suggests to me the traces of a Providential Hand ;
it takes away the pain of disclosures ; it relieves me of
a heavy secret.
" You may make what use of my letters you think right."
(3.) My correspondent wrote to me once more, and
I rephed thus : " October 31, 1843. Your letter has made
my heart ache more, and caused me more and deeper sighs
than any I have had a long while, though I assure you
there is much on aU sides of me to cause sighing and
heart-ache. On all sides(: — ) I am quite haunted by the io
one dreadful whisper repeated from so many quarters,
and causing the keenest distress to friends. You know but
a part of my present trial, in knowing that I am unsettled
myself. " Since the beginning of this year I have been obhged
to tell the state of my mind to some others ; but never,
I think, without being in a way obhged, as from friends
writing to me as you did, or guessing how matters stood.
No one in Oxford knows it or here " [Littlemore], " but
one (near) friend whom I felt I could not help telling the 20
other day. But, I suppose, [very] many (more) suspect it."
On receiving these letters, my correspondent, if I recol
lect rightly, at once communicated the matter of them to
Dr. Pusey, and this wiU enable me to state, as nearly as
I can(,) the way in which (he first became aware of) my
changed state of opinion [was made known to him].
I had from the first a great difficulty in making Dr. Pusey
understand such differences of opinion as existed between
himself and me. When there was a proposal about the
end of 1838 for a subscription for a Cranmer Memorial, 30
he wished us both to subscribe together to it. I could not,
of course, and wished him to subscribe by himself. That
he would not do ; he could not bear the thought of our
appearing to the world in separate positions, in a matter
of importance. And, as time went on, he would not take
any hints, which I gave him, on the subject of my growing
inclination to Rome. When I found him so determined,
I often had not the heart to go on. And then I knew, that,
from affection to me, he so often took up and threw him-
19 These are the Autlwr's [ ] 24 state] describe.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 315
self into what I said, that I felt the great responsibility
I should incur, if I put things before him just as I might
view them (myself). And, not knowing him so weU as I did
afterwards, "I feared lest I should unsettle him. And more
over, I recoUected well, how prostrated he had been with
illness in 1832, and I used always to think that the start
of the Movement had given him a fresh life. I fancied
that his physical energies even depended on the presence
of a vigorous hope and bright prospects for his imagination
io to feed upon ; so much so, that when he was so unworthily
treated by the authorities of the place in 1843, I recollect
writing to the late Mr. Dodsworth to state my anxiety,
lest, if his mind became dejected in consequence, his health
would suffer seriously also. These were difficulties in my
way ; and then again, another difficulty was, that, as we
were not together under the same roof, we only saw each
other at set times ; others indeed, who were coming in or
out of my rooms freely, and as there might be need at the
moment, knew aU my thoughts easily ; but for him to
20 know them well, formal efforts were necessary. A common
friend of ours broke it all to him in 1841, as far as matters
had gone at that time, and showed him clearly the logical
conclusions which must lie in propositions to which I had
committed myself ; but somehow or other in a httle while,
his mind feU back into its former happy state, and he could
not bring himself to believe that he and I should not go
on pleasantly together to the end. But that affectionate
dream needs must have been broken at last ; and two
years afterwards, that friend to whom I wrote the letters
30 which I have just now inserted, set himself, as I have
said, to break it. Upon that, I too begged Dr. Pusey to
teU in private to any one he would, that I thought in the
event I should leave the Church of England. However, he
would not do so ; and at the end of 1844 had almost
relapsed into his former thoughts about me, if I may judge
from a letter of his which I have found. Nay, at the
Commemoration of 1845, a few months before I left the
Anglican Church, I think he said about me to a friend,
" I trust after aU we shall keep him."
14 would] should
18 as there might be need at] according to the need of

316 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
In that autumn of 1843, at the time that I spoke to
Dr. Pusey, I asked another friend also to communicate
[to others] in confidence(, to whom he would,) the prospect
which lay before me.
To another friend(, Mr. James Hope, now Mr. Hope
Scott,) I gave the opportunity of knowing it, if he would,
in the foUowing Postscript to a letter : — ¦
" WhUe I write, I wiU add a word about myself. You
may come near a person or two who, owing to circum
stances, know more exactly my state of feeling than you 10
do, though they would not teU you. Now I do not like
tfiat you should not be aware of this, though I see no
reason why you should know what they happen to know.
Your wishing it [otherwise] would be a reason."
I had a dear and old friend, near his death ; I never told
him my state of mind. Why should I unsettle that sweet
calm tranquiUity, when I had nothing to offer him instead ?
I could not say, " Go to Rome ; " else I should have shown
him the way. Yet I offered myself for his examination.
One day he led the way to my speaking out ; but, rightly 20
or wrongly, I could not respond. My reason was, " I have
no certainty on the matter myseff. To say ' I think ' is
to tease and to distress, not to persuade."
I wrote to him on Michaelmas Day, 1843 : "As you
may suppose, I have nothing to write to you about,
pleasant. I could teU you some very painful things ; but
it is best not to anticipate trouble, which after aU can but
happen, and, for what one knows, may be averted. You
are always so kind, that sometimes, when I part with you,
I am nearly moved to tears, and it would be a relief to be 30
so, at your kindness and at my hardness. I think no one
ever had such kind friends as I have."
The next year, January 22, 1 wrote to him : " Pusey has
quite enough on him, and generously takes on himseff more
than enough, for me to add burdens when I am not obhged ;
particularly too, when I am very conscious, that there are
burdens, which I am or shall be obhged to lay upon him
some time or other, whether I wiU or no."
And on February 21 : " Half-past ten. I am just up,
having a bad cold ; the like has not happened to me 40
(except twice in January) in my memory. You may think

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 317
you have been in my thoughts, long before my rising. Of
course you are so continuaUy, as you well know. I could
not come to see you ; I am not worthy of friends. With my
opinions, to the fuU of which I dare not confess, I feel Uke
a guilty person with others, though I trust I am not so.
People kindly think that I have much to bear externaUy,
disappointment, slander, &c: No, I have nothing to bear,
but the anxiety which I feel for my friends' anxiety for
me, and their perplexity. This [letter] is a better Ash-
10 Wednesday than birthday present ; " [his birthday was
the same day as mine ; it was Ash-Wednesday that
year] ; " but I cannot help writing about what is upper
most. And now(, my dear A.,) aU kindest and best wishes
to you, my oldest friend, whom I must not speak more
about, and with reference to myself, lest you should be
angry." It was not in his nature to have doubts : he used
to look at me with anxiety, and wonder what had come
over me.
On Easter Monday : " AU that is good and gracious
20 descend upon you and yours from the influences of this
Blessed Season ; and it will be so, (so be it !) for what
is the life of you aU, as day passes after day, but a simple
endeavour to serve Him, from whom aU blessing comes ?
Though we are separated in place, yet this we have in
common, that you are living a calm and cheerful time,
and I am enjoying the thought of you. It is your blessing
to have a clear heaven, and peace around, according to the
blessing pronounced on Benjamin(3). So it is, (my dear A.,)
and so may it ever be."
30 He was in simple good faith. He died in September that
year. I had expected that his last illness would have
brought light to my mind, as to what I ought to do. It
brought none. I made a note, which runs thus : "I
sobbed bitterly over bis coffin, to think that he left me
still dark as to what the way of truth was, and what I ought
to do in order to please God and fulfil His will." I think
I wrote to Charles Marriott to say, that at that moment,
9 10, 12 These are the Author's [ ]
[letter] in line 9 was omitted in 1865.
28 Footnote in 1865. (3 Deut. xxxiii. 12.)
30 that] of the same '

318 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
with the thought of my friend before me, my strong view
in favour of Rome remained just what it was. On the
other hand, my firm belief that grace was to be found
(with)in the Anglican Church remained too 1. I wrote to
a friend upon his death : — -
" Sept. 16, 1844. I am full'of wrong and miserable feel
ings, which it is useless to detail, so grudging and sullen,
when I should be thankful. Of course, when one sees so
blessed an end, and that, the termination of so blameless
a life, of one who really fed on our ordinances and gotio
strength from them, and see the same continued in a whole
family, the little children finding quite a solace of their
pain in the Daily Prayer, it is impossible not to feel more
at ease in our Church, as at least a sort of Zoar, a place of
refuge and temporary rest, because of the steepness of the
way. Only, may we be kept from unlawful security; lest
we have Moab and Ammon for our progeny, the enemies
of Israel."
I could not continue in this state, either in the fight of
duty or of reason. My difficulty was this : I had been 20
deceived greatly once ; how could I be sure that I was not
deceived a second time ? I [then] thought myseff right
(then) ; how was I to be certain that I was right now ?
How many years had I thought myseff sure of what I now
rejected ? how could I ever again have confidence in
myself ? As in 1840 I listened to the rising doubt in favour
of Rome, now I listened to the waning doubt in favour of
the English Church. To be certain is to know that one
knows ; what (inward) test had I, that I should not change
again, after that I had become a Cathohc ? I had still 30
apprehension of this, though I thought a time would come,
when it would depart. However, some limit ought to be
put to these vague misgivings ; I must do my best and then
leave it to a higher power to prosper it. So, (at the end
of 1844,) I determined to write an Essay on Doctrinal
<4) On this subject, vid. my Third Lecture on " Anglican Diffi
culties "(, also Note E, Anglican Church). (This footnote did not appear
in the original pamphlet. )
5 a friend upon his death] another friend thus
28 English] Anglican 34 power] Power
35 determined to write] came to the resolution of writing

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 319
Development ; and then, if, at the end of it, my con
victions in favour of the Roman Church were not weaker,
to make up my mind to seek admission into her fold.
[I acted upon this resolution in the beginning of 1845,
and worked at my Essay steadily into the autumn.]
[I told my resolution to various friends at the beginning
of the year ; indeed, it was at that time known generaUy.]
(By this time the state of my mind was generally known,
and I made no great secret of it. I wUl illustrate it by
lo letters of mine which have been put into my hands.
(" November 16, 1844. I am going through what must
be gone through ; and my trust only is that every day of
pain is so much taken from the necessary draught which
must be exhausted. There is no fear (humanly speaking)
of my moving for a long time yet. This has got out with
out my intending it ; but it is all well. As far as I know
myseff, my one great distress is the perplexity, unsettle-
ment, alarm, scepticism, which I am causing to so many ;
and the loss of kind feeling and good opinion on the part
20 of so many, known and unknown, who have wished well
to me. And of these two sources of pain it is the former
that is the constant, urgent, unmitigated one. I had for
days a hteral ache aU about my heart ; and from time to
time aU the complaints of the Psalmist seemed to belong
to me.
(" And as far as I know myseff, my one paramount
reason for contemplating a change is my deep, unvarying
conviction that our Church is in schism, and that my
salvation depends on my joining the Church of Rome.
30 I may use argumenta ad hominem to this person or that 6 ;
but I am not conscious of resentment, or disgust, at any
thing that has happened to me. I have no visions whatever
of hope, no schemes of action, in any other sphere more
suited to me. I have no existing sympathies with Roman
Cathohcs ; I hardly ever, even abroad, was at one of their
services ; I know none of them, I do not like what I hear
of them.
(" And then, how much I am giving up in so many ways !
3 to make up my mind to seek] of taking the necessary steps for
30 Footnote in 1865. <s Vide supr. p. 311, &c. Letter of Oct. 14, 1843,
compared with that of Oct. 25.)

320 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
and to me sacrifices irreparable, not only from my age,
when people hate changing, but from my especial love of
old associations and the pleasures of memory. Nor am
I conscious of any feeling, enthusiastic or heroic, of pleasure
in the sacrifice ; I have nothing to support me here.
(" What keeps me yet is what has kept me long ; a fear
that I am under a delusion ; but the conviction remains
firm under aU circumstances, in aU frames of mind. And
this most serious feeUng is growing on me ; viz. that the
reasons for which I beheve as much as our system teaches, 10
must lead me to beheve more, and that not to beheve more
is to faU back into scepticism.
(" A thousand thanks for your most kind and consoling
letter ; though I have not yet spoken of it, it was a great
gift." (Shortly after) I wrote to a friend thus : —
" My intention is, if nothing comes upon me, which
I cannot foresee, to remain quietly in statu quo for a con
siderable time, trusting that my friends wUl kindly re
member me and my trial in their prayers. And I should 20
give up my fellowship some time before any thing further
took place."
[One very dear friend, now no more, Charles Marriott,
sent me a letter at the beginning of the next year, from
which, from love of him, I quote some sentences : —
[" January 15, 1845. You know me weU enough to be
aware, that I never see through any thing at first. Your
letter to B. casts a gloom over the future, which you can
understand, if you have understood me, as I believe you
have. But I may speak out at once, of what I see and feel 30
at once, and doubt not that I shaU ever feel : that your
whole conduct towards the Church of England and towards
us, who have striven and are stiU striving to seek after
God for ourselves, and to revive true religion among others,
under her authority and guidance, has been generous and
considerate, and, were that word appropriate, dutiful, to
a degree that I could scarcely have conceived possible,
more unsparing of self than I should have thought nature
16 a friend] the same friend
17 " My intention These words did not commence a new paragraph in
1865.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 321
could sustain. I have felt with pain every link that you
have severed, and I have asked no questions, because I felt
that you ought to measure the disclosure of your thoughts
according to the occasion, and the capacity of those to
whom you spoke. I write in haste, in the midst of engage
ments engrossing in themselves, but partly made tasteless,
partly embittered by what I have heard ; but I am willing
to trust even you, whom I love best on earth, in God's
Hand, in the earnest prayer that you may be so employed
io as is best for the Holy Catholic Church."]
There was a lady, who was very anxious on the subject,
and I wrote to her the following letters : —
[1. " October, 1844. What can I say more to your
purpose ? If you wiU ask me any specific questions, I will
answer them, as far as I am able."]
2. " November 7, 1844. I am still where I was ; I am
not moving. Two things, however, seem plain, that every
one is prepared for such an event, next, that every one
expects it of me. Few indeed, who do not think it suit-
20 able, fewer stUl, who do not think it likely. However, I do
not think it either suitable or hkely. I have very little
reason to doubt about the issue of things, but the when
and the how are known to Him, from whom, I trust, both
the course of things and the issue come. The expression
of opinion, and the latent and habitual feehng about me,
which is on every side and among aU parties, has great
force. I insist upon it, because I have a great dread of
going by my own feelings, lest they should mislead me.
By one's sense of duty one must go ; but external facts
30 support one in doing so."
3. " January 8, 1845. (What am I to say in answer to
your letter ? I know perfectly weU, I ought to let you
know more of my feehngs and state of mind than you do
know. But how is that possible in a few words ? Any
thing I say must be abrupt ; nothing can I say which will
not leave a bewildering feeling, as needing so much to
explain it, and being isolated, and (as it were) unlocated,
and not having any thing with it to show its bearings upon
other parts of the subject.)
16 2.] l. 31 3.] 2.
APOLOGIA M

322 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
(" At present,) My full belief is, in accordance with your
letter, that, if there is a move in our Church, very few
persons indeed will be partners to it. I doubt whether
one or two at the most among residents at Oxford. And
I don't know whether I can wish it. The state of the
Roman Catholics is at present so unsatisfactory. This
I am sure of, that nothing but a simple, direct call of duty
is a warrant for any one leaving our Church ; no preference
of another Church, no delight in its services, no hope of
greater religious advancement in it, no indignation, no m
disgust, at the persons and things, among which we may
find ourselves in the Church of England. The simple ques
tion is, Can / (it is personal, not whether another, but
can /) be saved in the English Church ? am I in safety,
were I to die to-night ? Is it a mortal sin in me, not joining
another communion ? P.S. I hardly see my way to concur
in attendance, though occasional, in the Roman Cathohc
chapel, unless a man has made up his mind pretty weU to
join it eventually. Invocations are not required, in the
Church of Rome ; somehow, I do not hke using them 20
except under the sanction of the Church, and this makes
me unwilling to admit them in members of our Church."
4. " March 30. Now I wiU tell you more than any one
knows except two friends. My own convictions are as
strong, as I suppose they can become : only it is so difficult
to know whether it is a caU of reason or of conscience.
I cannot make out, if I am impelled by what seems clear,
or by a sense of duty. You can understand how painful
this doubt is ; so I have waited, hoping for fight, and
using the words of the Psalmist, ' Show some token upon 30
me.' But I suppose I have no right to wait for ever for
this. Then I am waiting, because friends are most con
siderately bearing me in mind, and asking guidance for
me ; and, I trust, I should attend to any new feelings
which came upon me, should that be the effect of their
kindness. And then this waiting subserves the purpose of
preparing men's minds. I dread shocking, unsettling
people. Any how, I can't avoid giving incalculable pain.
So, if I had my will, I should like to wait till the summer
16 P.S. This commenced a new paragraph in 1S65. 23 4.] 3.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 323
of 1846, which would be a full seven years from the time
that my convictions first began to fall on me. But I don't
think I shall last so long.
" My present intention is to give up my Fellowship in
October, and to publish some work or treatise between
that and Christmas. I wish people to know why I am
acting, as well as what I am doing ; it takes off that vague
and distressing surprise, ' What can have made him ? ' "
5. " June 1. What you tell me of yourself makes it
io plain that it is your duty to remain quietly and patiently,
till you see more clearly where you are ; else you are
leaping in the dark."
In the early part of this year, if not before, there was an
idea afloat that my retirement from the Anghcan Church
was owing to the feeling that I had so been thrust aside,
without any one's taking my part. Various measures were,
I believe, talked of in consequence of this surmise. Coin-
cidently with it was an exceedingly kind article about me
in a Quarterly, in its April number. The writer praised
20 me in feehng and beautiful language far above my deserts.
In the course of his remarks, he said, speaking of me as
Vicar of St. Mary's : " He had the future race of clergy
hearing him. Did he value and feel tender about, and
cling to his position ? . . . Not at all. . . . No sacrifice to
him perhaps, he did not care about such things."
(There was a censure implied, however covertly, in these
words ; and) This was the occasion of my writing [to
a very intimate friend] the following letter(, addressed
to a very intimate friend) : —
30 " April 3, 1845  Accept this apology, my dear C(hurch),
and forgive me. As I say so, tears come into my eyes, —
that arises from the accident of this time, when I am giving
up so much I love. Just now I have been overset by
A. B.'s article in the C. D. ; yet really, my dear C(hurch),
I have never for an instant had even the temptation of
repenting my leaving Oxford. The feeling of repentance
has not even come into my mind. How could it ? How
could I remain at St. Mary's a hypocrite ? how could I be
9 5.] 4. 18 was] appeared 27 This was the occasion of
my writing] it is alluded to in 34 A. B. 1864] A. 2865, James Mozley
Edition subsequent to 1875. 34 C. D.] Christian Remembrancer

324 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
answerable for souls, (and life so uncertain,) with the con
victions, or at least persuasions, which I had upon me ?
It is indeed a responsibility to act as I am doing ; and
I feel His hand heavy on me without intermission, who is
all Wisdom and Love, so that my heart and mind are
tired out, just as the limbs might be from a load on one's
back. That sort of dull aching pain is mine ; but my
responsibility really is nothing to what it would be, to be
answerable for souls, for confiding loving souls, in the
English Church, with my convictions . My love to Marriott, 10
and save me the pain of sending him a fine."
In July a Bishop thought it worth while to give out to
the world that " the adherents of Mr. Newman are few in
number. A short time wiU now probably suffice to prove
this fact. It is well known that he is preparing for seces
sion ; and, when that event takes place, it wiU be seen
how few will go with him."
(I am now close upon the date of my reception into the
Catholic Church ; and have reserved for this place some
sentences from a letter addressed to me at the beginning 20
of the year by a very dear friend, now no more, Charles
Marriott. I quote them for the love which I bear him,
and the value that I set on his good word.
(" January 15, 1845. You know me weU enough to be
aware, that I never see through any thing at first. Your
letter to Badeley casts a gloom over the future, which you
can understand, if you have understood me, as I beheve
you have. But I may speak out at once, of what I see
and feel at once, and doubt not that I shall ever feel : that
your whole conduct towards the Church of England and 30
towards us, who have striven and are stiU striving to seek
after God for ourselves, and to revive true rehgion among
others, under her authority and guidance, has been generous
and considerate, and, were that word appropriate, dutiful,
to a degree that I could scarcely have conceived possible,
more unsparing of self than I should have thought nature
could sustain. I have felt with pain every link that you
have severed, and I have asked no questions, because
I felt that you ought to measure the disclosure of your
thoughts according to the occasion, and the capacity of 40
those to whom you spoke. I write in haste, in the midst

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 325
of engagements engrossing in themselves, but partly made
tasteless, partly embittered by what I have heard ; but
I am willing to trust even you, whom I love best on earth,
in God's Hand, in the earnest prayer that you may be so
employed as is best for the Holy Catholic Church.")
All this time I was hard at my Essay on Doctrinal
Development (in the first months of 1845, and I was hard
at it all through the year till October). As I advanced,
my view so cleared that instead of speaking any more of
io " the Roman Cathohcs," I boldly called them Catholics.
Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received,
and the book remains in the state in which it was then,
unfinished. (One of my friends at Littlemore had been received into
the Church on Michaelmas Day, at the Passionist House
at Aston, near Stone, by Father Dominic, the Superior.
At the beginning of October the latter was passing through
London to Belgium ; and, as I was in some perplexity
what steps to take for being received myseff, I assented to
20 the proposition made to me that the good priest should
take Littlemore in his way, with a view to his doing for
me the same charitable service as he had done to my
friend.) On October (the) 8th I wrote to a number of friends the
foUowing letter : —
" Littlemore, October 8(th), 1845. I am this night expect
ing Father Dominic, the Passionist, who, from his youth,
has been led to have distinct and direct thoughts, first of
the countries of the North, then of England. After thirty
30 years' (almost) waiting, he was without his own act sent
here. But he has had little to do with conversions. I saw
him here for a few minutes on St. John Baptist's day last
year. (He is a simple, holy man ; and withal gifted with
remarkable powers.) He does not know of my intention ;
but I mean to ask of him admission into the one Fold of
Christ. . . .
" 1 have so many letters to write, that this must do for
6 All this time I was hard at] I had begun
6-7 Doctrinal Development] the Development of Doctrine
33 He is a These words commenced a new paragraph in 1865.
35 one] One

326 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
all who choose to ask about me. With my best love to
dear Charles Marriott, who is over your head, &c, &c.
" P.S. This wiU not go till aU is over. Of course it
requires no answer."

For a while after my reception, I proposed to betake
myself to some secular calling. I wrote thus in answer to
a very gracious letter of congratulation (sent me by Cardinal
Acton) : —
" Nov. 25, 1845. I hope you wiU have anticipated,
before I express it, the great gratification which I received io
from your Eminence's letter. That gratification, however,
was tempered by the apprehension, that kind and anxious
weU-wishers at a distance attach more importance to my
step than reaUy belongs to it. To me indeed personaUy it
is of course an inestimable gain ; but persons and things
look great at a distance, which are not so when seen close ;
and, did your Eminence know me, you would see that
I was one, about whom there has been far more talk for
good and bad than he deserves, and about whose move
ments far more expectation has been raised than the event 20
will justify.
" As I never, I do trust, aimed at any thing else than
obedience to my own sense of right, and have been magnified
into the leader of a party without my wishing it or acting
as such, so now, much as I may wish to the contrary, and
earnestly as I may labour (as is my duty) to minister in
a humble way to the Catholic Church, yet my powers will,
I fear, disappoint the expectations of both my own friends,
and of those who pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
" If I might ask of your Eminence a favour, it is that 30
you would kindly moderate those anticipations. Would it
were in my power to do, what I do not aspire to do ! At
present certainly I cannot look forward to the future, and,
though it would be a good work if I could persuade others
to do as I have done, yet it seems as if I had quite enough
to do in thinking of myself."
Soon, Dr. Wiseman, in whose Vicariate Oxford lay, caUed
me to Oscott ; and I went there with others ; afterwards
he sent me to Rome, and finally placed me in Birmingham.

(FROM 1841 TO 1845.) 327
I wrote to a friend : —
" January 20, 1846. You may think how lonely I am.
' Obliviscere populum tuum et do mum patris tui,' has been
in my ears for the last twelve hours. I realize more that
we are leaving Littlemore, and it is hke going on the
open sea."
I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23, 1846.
On the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my House
at Littlemore simply by myself, as I had been for the first
io day or two when I had originally taken possession of it.
I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, Mr. Johnson's,
at the Observatory. Various friends came to see the last
of me ; Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison,
and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey too came up to take leave of
me ; and I called on Dr. Ogle, one of my very oldest
friends, for he was my private Tutor, when I was an
Undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first CoUege,
Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its
foundation so many who have been kind to me both when
20 I was a boy, and all through my Oxford Ufe. Trinity had
never been unkind to me. There used to be much snap
dragon growing on the waUs opposite my freshman's
rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem
of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my
University. On the morning of the 23rd I left the Observatory.
I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as
they are seen from the railway.1 19 have] had

f1 At length Dr. Newman visited Oxford on Feb. 26, 1878, after he
had been made Honorary Pellow of Trinity.]

PART YII.
GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
[Published as a Pamphlet, Thursday, June 2, 1864]

M 3

PART VII.

GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have
no further history of my rehgious opinions to narrate. In
saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been
idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological sub
jects ; but that I have had no changes to record, and have
had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect
peace and contentment. I never have had one doubt.
I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any
difference of thought or of temper from what I had before.
10 1 was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental
truths of revelation, or of more self-command ; I had not
more fervour ; but it was like coming into port after
a rough sea ; and my happiness on that score remains to
this day without interruption.
Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional
articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some
of them I believed aheady, but not any one of them was
a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my
reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease
20 in beUeving them now. I am far of course from denying
that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held
by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with inteUectual
difficulties ; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot
answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive
of the difficulties of religion ; I am as sensitive (of them)
as any one ; but I have never been able to see a connexion
Part VH. General Answer to Mr. Kingsley] Chapter V. Position of
my Mind since 1845.
5 changes] variations
8 to myself These words are omitted in another copy of 1864.
8 any 1864, 1865] any inward 1864 (another copy)
9 difference . . . before] change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my
mind 11 revelation] Revelation 25 religion] Religion

332 GENERAL ANSWER (T0 MR. KINGSLEY.
between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly,
and multiplying them to any extent, and (on the other
hand) doubting the doctrines to which they are attached.
Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as
I understand the subject ; difficulty and doubt are incom
mensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the
evidence ; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the
doctrines (themselves), or to their compatibility with each
other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out
a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is notio
given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer,
or that a (certain) particular answer is the true one. Of
^aU points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own appre
hension, encompassed with most difficulty, and (yet) borne
in upon our minds with most power.
People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is
difficult to beheve ; I did not beheve the doctrine tiU I was
a Cathohc. I had no difficulty in believing it(,) as soon as
I believed that the Cathohc Roman Church was the oracle
of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part 20
of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible(,) to
imagine, I grant(;) — but how is it difficult to believe ?
Yet Macaulay thought it so difficult to believe, that he had
need of a believer in it of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas
More, before he could bring himself to conceive that the
Catholics of an enlightened age could resist " the over
whelming force of the argument against it." " Sir Thomas
More," he says, " is one of the choice specimens of wisdom
and virtue ; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is
a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that test, 30
will stand any test." But for myseff, I cannot indeed
prove it, I cannot teU how it is ; but I say, " Why should
not it be ? What's to hinder it ? What do I know of
substance or matter ? just as much as the greatest philo-
sophers, and that is nothing at aU ; " — so much is this the
case, that there is a rising school of phUosophy now, which
considers phenomena to constitute the whole of our know
ledge in physics. The CathoUc doctrine leaves phenomena
alone. It does not say that the phenomena go ; on the
8 compatibility] relations 33 not it] it not

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 333
contrary, it says that they remain : nor does it say that
the same phenomena are in several places at once. It deals
with what no one on earth knows any thing about, the
material substances themselves. And, in like manner, of
that majestic Article of the Anglican as weU as of the
Catholic Creed, — the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity.
What do I know of the Essence of the Divine Being ?
I know that my abstract idea of three is simply incom
patible with my idea of one ; but when I come to the
10 question of concrete fact, I have no means of proving that
there is not a sense in which one and three can equally be
predicated of the Incommunicable God.
But I am going to take upon myself the responsibihty
of more than the mere Creed of the Church ; as the parties
accusing me are determined I shall do. They say, that
now, in that I am a CathoUc, though I may not have
offences of my own against honesty to answer for, yet, at
least, I am answerable for the offences of others, of my
co-religionists, of my brother priests, of the Church herself.
20 1 am quite wUling to accept the responsibility ; and, as
I have been able, as I trust, by means of a few words, to
dissipate, in the minds of all those who do not begin with
disbelieving me, the suspicion with which so many Pro
testants start, in forming their judgment of Catholics, viz.
that our Creed is actually set up in inevitable superstition
and hypocrisy, as the original sin of Catholicism ; so now
I will go on, as before, identifying myself with the Church
and vindicating it, — not of course denying the enormous
mass of sin and ignorance which exists of necessity in that
30 world-wide multiform Communion, — but going to the proof
of this one point, that its system is in no sense dishonest,
and that therefore the upholders and teachers of that
system, as such, have a claim to be acquitted in their own
persons of that odious imputation.
Starting then with the being of a God, (which, as I have
said, is as certain to me as the certainty of my own exist-'
ence, though when I try to put the grounds of that certainty
into logical shape I find a difficulty in doing so in mood
and figure to my satisfaction,) I look out of myseff into
27 go on] proceed 29 ignorance] error

334 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
the world of men, and there I see a sight which fiUs me
with unspeakable distress. The world seems simply to
give the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being
is so fuU ; and the effect upon me is, in consequence, as
a matter of necessity, as confusing as if it denied that I am
in existence myseff. If I looked into a mirror, and did not
see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actuaUy
comes upon me, when I look into this Uving busy world,
and see no reflexion of its Creator. This is, to me, one
of the great difficulties of this absolute primary truth, to 10
which I referred just now. Were it not for this voice,
speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should
be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist when I looked
into the world. I am speaking for myseff only ; and I am
far from denying the real force of the arguments in proof
of a God, drawn from the general facts of human society
(and the course of history), but these do not warm me or
enlighten me ; they do not take away the winter of my
desolation, or make the buds unfold and the leaves grow
within me, and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the 20
world is nothing else than the prophet's scroU, fuU of
" lamentations, and mourning, and woe."
To consider the world in its length and breadth, its
various history, the many races of man, their starts, their
fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and then
their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship ; their
enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achieve
ments and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long
standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken[,] of a
superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn 30
out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as
if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the
greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his
short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the
disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of
evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and
intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions,
the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole
race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's
words, " having no hope and without God in the world," io
10 the] those

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 335
— aU this is a vision to dizzy and appal ; and inflicts upon
the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is abso
lutely beyond human solution.
What shaU be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewilder
ing fact ? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator,
or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded
from His presence. Did I see a boy of good make and
mind, with the tokens on him of a refined nature, cast upon
the world without provision, unable to say whence he
10 came, his birth-place or bis family connexions, I should
conclude that there was some mystery connected with his
history, and that he was one, of whom, from one cause or
other, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should I be
able to account for the contrast between the promise and
(the) condition of his being. And so I argue about the
world ; — if there be a God, since there is a God, the human
race is imphcated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It
is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is
a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence ; and thus
20 the doctrine of what is theologicaUy called original sin
becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists,
and as the existence of God.
And now, supposing it were the blessed and loving wiU
of the Creator to interfere in this anarchical condition of
things, what are we to suppose would be the methods which
might be necessarily or naturaUy involved in His object of
mercy ? Since the world is in so abnormal a state, surely
it would be no surprise to me, if the interposition were of
necessity equaUy extraordinary — or what is caUed miracu-
30 lous. But that subject does not directly come into the
scope of my present remarks. Miracles as evidence, involve
(a process of reason, or) an argument ; and of course I am
thinking of some means which does not immediately run
into argument. I am rather asking what must be the
face-to-face antagonist, by which to withstand and baffle
the fierce energy of passion and the aU-corroding, all-
dissolving scepticism of the inteUect in religious inquiries ?
I have no intention at all to deny, that truth is the real
26 object] purpose 33 means] mode of Interference
38 to deny] of denying

336 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
object of our reason, and that, if it does not attain to
truth, either the premiss or the process is in fault; but
I am not speaking (here) of right reason, but of reason as
it acts in fact and concretely in faUen man. I know that
; even the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads
to a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in
a future retribution ; but I am considering it actually and
historic aUy ; and in this point of view, I do not think
I am wrong in saying that its tendency is towards a simple
unbelief in matters of religion. No truth, however sacred, 10
can stand against it, in the long run ; and hence it is that
in the pagan world, when our Lord came, the last traces
of the rehgious knowledge of former times were aU but
disappearing from those portions of the world in which the
inteUect had been active and had had a career.
And in these latter days, in like manner, outside the
Catholic Church things are tending,( — )with far greater
rapidity than in that old time from the circumstance of
the age,( — )to atheism in one shape or other. What a scene,
what a prospect, does the whole of Europe present at this 20
day ! and not only Europe, but every government and
every civilization through the world, which is under the
influence of the European mind ! EspeciaUy, for it most
concerns us, how sorrowful, in the view of rehgion, even
taken in its most elementary, most attenuated form, is
the spectacle presented to us by the educated inteUect of
England, France, and Germany ! Lovers of their country
and of their race, rehgious men, external to the Cathohc
Church, have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce
wilful human nature in its onward course, and to bring it 30
into subjection. The necessity of some form of rehgion
for the interests of humanity, has been generaUy acknow
ledged : but where was the concrete representative of
things invisible, which would have the force and the
toughness necessary to be a breakwater against the deluge ?
Three centuries ago the establishment of rehgion, material,
legal, and social, was generaUy adopted as the best ex
pedient for the purpose, in those countries which separated
from the Catholic Church ; and for a long time it was
7 it] the faculty of reason

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 337
successful ; but now the crevices of those establishments
are admitting the enemy. Thirty years ago, education was
relied upon : ten years ago there was a hope that wars
would cease for ever, under the influence of commercial
enterprise and the reign of the useful and fine arts ; but
wiU any one venture to say that there is any thing any
where on this earth, which wiU afford a fulcrum for us,
whereby to keep the earth from moving onwards ?
The judgment, which experience passes (whether) on
10 establishments or (on) education, as a means of maintain
ing religious truth in this anarchical world, must be
extended even to Scripture, though Scripture be divine.
Experience proves surely that the Bible does not answer
a purpose[,] for which it was never intended. It may be
accidentaUy the means of the conversion of individuals ;
but a book, after all, cannot make a stand against the wild:
living intellect of man, and in this day it begins to testify,
as regards its own structure and contents, to the power of
that universal solvent, which is so successfully acting upon
20 reUgious establishments.
Supposing then it to be the WiU of the Creator to inter
fere in human affairs, and to make provisions for retaining
in the world a knowledge of Himself, so definite and dis
tinct as to be proof against the energy of human scepticism,
in such a case, — I am far from saying that there was no
other way, — but there is nothing to surprise the mind, if
He should think fit to introduce a power into the world,
invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious
matters. Such a provision would be a direct, immediate,
30 active, and prompt means of withstanding the difficulty ;
it would be an instrument suited to the need ; and, when
I find that this is the very claim of the Catholic Church,
not only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea, but
there is a fitness in it, which recommends it to my mind.
And thus I am brought to speak of the Church's infalli
bility, as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator,
to preserve rehgion in the world, and to restrain that
freedom of thought, which of course in itself is one of the
greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own
40 suicidal excesses. And let it be observed that, neither here
nor in what foUows, shall I have occasion to speak directly

338 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
of the revealed body of truths, but (in reference to the
sanction which it gives to truths which may be known
independently of it, — ) only as they bear upon the defence
of natural religion. I say, that a power, possessed of
infaUibility in reUgious teaching, is happUy adapted to
be a working instrument, in the course of human affairs,
for smiting hard and throwing back the immense energy
• of the aggressive(, capricious, untrustworthy) inteUect : —
and in saying this, as in the other things that I have to
say, it must stiU be recollected that I am aU along bearing 10
in mind my main purpose, which is a defence of myseff.
I am defending myseff here from a plausible charge
brought against Catholics, as wUl be seen better as I pro
ceed. The charge is this : — that I, as a Cathohc, not only
make profession to hold doctrines which I cannot possibly
believe in my heart, but that I also beheve in the existence
of a power on earth, which at its own wiU imposes upon
men any new set of credenda, when it pleases, by a claim
to infaUibility ; in consequence, that my own thoughts are
not my own property ; that I cannot teU that to-morrow 20
I may not have to give up what I hold to-day, and that
the necessary effect of such a condition of mind must be
a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebeUion reUeving
itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the
whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of meehani-
caUy saying every thing that the Church says, and leaving
to others the defence of it. As then I have above spoken of
the relation of my mind towards the Catholic Creed, so now
I shaU speak of the attitude which it takes up in the view
of the Church's infallibility. 30
And first, the initial doctrine of the infallible teacher
must be an emphatic protest against the existing state of
mankind. Man had rebeUed against his Maker. It was
this that caused the divine interposition : and (to proclaim
it must be) the first act of the divinely accredited messenger
[must be to proclaim it]. The Church must denounce
rebellion as of aU possible evils the greatest. She must
have no terms with it ; if she would be true to her Master,
1 the revealed body of truths] Revelation in its subject-matter
3 only as they bear] as it bears
35 divinely accredited] divinely-accredited

(POSITION OF MY MEND SINCE 1845.) 339
she must ban and anathematize it. This is the meaning
of a statement (of mine), which has furnished matter for
one of those special accusations to which I am at present
replying : I have, however, no fault at all to confess in
regard to it ; I have nothing to withdraw, and in con
sequence I here deliberately repeat it. I said, " The
Cathohc Church holds it better for the sun and moon to
drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for aU the
many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony,
10 as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I wiU
not say, should be lost, but should commit one single
venial sin, should teU one wilful untruth, or should steal
one poor farthing without excuse." I think the principle
here enunciated to be the mere preamble in the formal
credentials of the Cathohc Church, as an Act of Parlia
ment might begin with a " Whereas." It is because of the
intensity of the evU which has possession of mankind, that
a suitable antagonist has been provided against it ; and
the initial act of that divinely-commissioned power is of
20 course to deliver her chaUenge and to defy the enemy. Such
a preamble then gives a meaning to her position in the
world, and an interpretation to her whole course of teaching
and action.
In hke manner she has ever put forth, with most energetic
distinctness, those other great elementary truths, which
either are an explanation of her mission or give a character
to her work. She does not teach that human nature is
irreclaimable, else wherefore should she be sent ? not(,)
that it is to be shattered and reversed, but to be extricated,
30 purified, and restored ; not(,) that it is a mere mass of
(hopeless) evil, but that it has the promise (upon it) of
great things, and even now(, in its present state of disorder
and excess,) has a virtue and a praise proper to itself.
But in the next place she knows and she preaches that
such a restoration, as she aims at effecting in it, must
be brought about, not simply through any outward pro
visions) of preaching and teaching, even though it be her
own, but from a certain inward spiritual power or grace
imparted directly from above, and which is in her keeping. l
36 any] certain 37 it] they 38 a certain] an
39 which is in her keeping] of which she is the channel

340 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
She has it in charge to rescue human nature from its
misery, but not simply by raising it [up]on its own
level, but by lifting it up to a higher level than its
own. She recognizes in it real moral exceUence though
degraded, but she cannot set it free from earth except
by exalting it towards heaven. It was for this end that
a renovating grace was put into her hands, and therefore
from the nature of the gift, as weU as from the reasonable
ness of the case, she goes on, as a further point, to insist,
that all true conversion must begin with the first springs 10
of thought, and to teach that each individual man must
be in his own person one whole and perfect temple of God,
while he is also one of the living stones which buUd up
a visible religious community. And thus the distinctions
between nature and grace, and between outward and inward
religion, become two further articles in what I have caUed
the preamble of her divine commission.
Such truths as these she vigorously reiterates, and
pertinaciously inflicts upon mankind ; as to such she
observes no half -measures, no economical reserve, no 20
delicacy or prudence. " Ye must be born again," is the
simple, direct form of words which she uses after her
Divine Master ; " your whole nature must be re-born,
your passions, and your affections, and your aims, and
your conscience, and your wiU, must all be bathed in
a new element, and reconsecrated to your Maker,( — )and,
the last not the least, your inteUect." It was for repeating
these points of her teaching in my own way, that certain
passages of one of my Volumes have been brought into
the general accusation which has been made against my 30
religious opinions. The writer has said that I was demented
if I believed, and unprincipled if I did not beheve, in my
(own) statement that a lazy, ragged, filthy, story-teUing
beggar-woman, if chaste, sober, cheerful, and rehgious,
had a prospect of heaven, which was absolutely closed to
an accomplished statesman, or lawyer, or noble, be he ever
so just, upright, generous, honourable, and conscientious,
unless he had also some portion of the divine Christian
grace(s) ;( — )yet I should have thought myseff defended
2 raising] restoring 35 which] such as

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 341
from criticism by the words which our Lord used to the
chief priests, " The publicans and harlots go into the
kingdom of God before you." And I was subjected again
to the same alternative of imputations, for having ventured
to say that consent to an unchaste wish was indefinitely^
more heinous than any he viewed apart from its causes, >
its motives, and its consequences : though a lie, viewed r
under the limitation of these conditions, is a random utter
ance, an almost outward act, not directly from the heart,
10 however disgraceful (and despicable) it may be, (however ,,
prejudicial to the social contract, however deserving of
pubhc reprobation ;) whereas we have the express words
of our Lord to the doctrine that " whoso looketh on a
woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with
her already in his heart." On the strength of these texts(,)
I have surely as much right to believe in these doctrines
(which have caused so much surprise,) as to believe in [the
doctrine of] original sin, or that there is a supernatural
revelation, or that a Divine Person suffered, or that punish-
2oment is eternal.
Passing now from what I have caUed the preamble of that
grant of power, with which the Church is invested, to that
power itself, InfaUibiUty, I make two brief remarks :( — 1.)
on the one hand, I am not here determining any thing about
the essential seat of that power, because that is a question
doctrinal, not historical and practical ; (2.) nor, on the
other hand, am I extending the direct subject-matter, over
which that power (of InfaUibUity) has jurisdiction, beyond
religious opinion : — and now as to the power itself.
30 This power, viewed in its fulness, is as tremendous as
the giant evil which has caUed for it. It claims, when
brought into exercise (but) in the legitimate manner, for
otherwise of course it is but dormant, to have for itself
a sure guidance into the very meaning of every portion
of the Divine Message in detail, which was committed by
our Lord to His Apostles. It claims to know its own
limits, and to decide what it can determine absolutely and
22 with which the Church is invested] which is made to the Church
23 make] premise
33-4 dormant, to have for itself a sure guidance into] quiescent, to
know for certain 35 the Divine] that Divine

342 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
what it cannot. It claims, moreover, to have a hold upon
statements not directly rehgious, so far as this,( — )to
determine whether they indirectly relate to rehgion, and,
according to its own definitive judgment, to pronounce
whether or not, in a particular case, they are (simply)
consistent with revealed truth. It claims to decide magis-
teriaUy, whether infaUibly or not, that such and such
statements are or are not prejudicial to the [Apostolic]
depositum of faith, in their spirit or in their consequences,
and to allow them, or condemn and forbid them, accord- 10
ingly. It claims to impose sUence at wiU on any matters,
or controversies, of doctrine, which on its own ipse dixit,
it pronounces to be dangerous, or inexpedient, or inoppor
tune. It claims that(,) whatever may be the judgment of
Catholics upon such acts, these acts should be received by
them with those outward marks of reverence, submission,
and loyalty, which Englishmen, for instance, pay to the
presence of their sovereign, without public criticism on
them, as being in their matter (they are) inexpedient, or
in their manner violent or harsh. And lastly, it claims to 20
have the right of inflicting spiritual punishment, of cutting
off from the ordinary channels of the divine life, and of
simply excommunicating, those who refuse to submit
themselves to its formal declarations. Such is the infaUi-
bUity lodged in the Cathohc Church, viewed in the con
crete, as clothed and surrounded by the appendages of
its high sovereignty : it is, to repeat what I said above,
a supereminent prodigious power sent upon earth to
encounter and master a giant evil.
And now, having thus described it, I profess my own 30
absolute submission to its claim. I believe the whole
revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as committed
by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the
Church to me. I receive it, as it is infaUibly interpreted
by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and (im
plicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted
by that same authority till the end of time. I submit,
moreover, to the universaUy received traditions of the
Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic
7 infallibly] as within its own province 9 depositum] Depositum
18 public] expressing any 19 , as being] on the ground that

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 343
definitions which are from time to time made, and which
in aU times are the clothing and the illustration of the
Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myseff
to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not,
through the organs which it has itself appointed, which,
waiving the question of their infalhbUity, on the lowest
ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed.
Also, I consider that, gradually and in the course of ages,
CathoUc inquiry has taken certain definite shapes, and has
10 thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method
and a phraseology of its own, under the inteUectual hand-
ling of great minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine,
and St. Thomas ; and I feel no temptation at all to break
in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed to us
for these latter days.
All this being considered as the profession (which
I make) ex animo, as on my own part, so also on the part
of the Cathohc body, as far as I know it, it wUl at first
sight be said that the restless inteUect of our common
20 humanity is utterly weighed down(,) to the repression of all
" independent effort and action whatever, so that, if this is
to be the mode of bringing it into order, it is brought into
order only to be destroyed. But this is far from the result,
far from what I conceive to be the intention of that high
Providence who has provided a great remedy for a great
evil, — far from borne out by the history of the conflict
between Infallibility and Reason in the past, and the pro
spect of it in the future. The energy of the human intellect
" does from opposition grow ; " it thrives and is joyous,
so with a tough elastic strength, under the terrible blows of
the divinely-fashioned weapon, and is never so much
itself as when it has lately been overthrown. It is the
custom with Protestant writers to consider that, whereas
there are two great principles in action in the history of
religion, Authority and Private Judgment, they have all
the Private Judgment to themselves, and we have the full
inheritance and the superincumbent oppression of Authority.
But this is not so ; it is the vast Catholic body itself, and it
only, which affords an arena for both combatants in that
16 as the 2864, 2S65] to be a 1864 (another copy)
17 on my own part] for myself

344 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
awful, never-dying duel. It is necessary for the very life
of religion, viewed in its large operations and its history,
that the warfare should be incessantly carried on. Every
exercise of Inf allibility is brought out into act by an intense
and varied operation of the Reason, from within and
without, and provokes again(, when it has done its work,)
a re-action of Reason against it ; and, as in a civU pohty
the State exists and endures by means of the rivalry and
collision, the encroachments and defeats of its constituent
parts, so in hke manner Catholic Christendom is no simple 10
exhibition of rehgious absolutism, but [it] presents a con
tinuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alter
nately-advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the
tide ; — it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful
intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by
the beauty and the majesty of a Superhuman Power — into
what may be caUed a large reformatory or training-school,
(not as if into a hospital or into a prison,) not (in order) to
be sent to bed, not to be buried aUve, but ((if I may change
my metaphor) brought together as if into some morale
factory,) for the melting, refining, and moulding, [as in
some moral factory,] by an incessant noisy process, [(if
I may proceed to another 'metaphor,)] of the raw material
of human nature, so exceUent, so dangerous, so capable of
divine purposes.
St. Paul says in one place that his ApostoUcal power is
given him to edification, and not to destruction. There
can be no better account of the InfaUibihty of the Church.
It is a supply for a need, and it does not go beyond that
need. Its object is, and its effect also, not to enfeeble the 30
[freedom or vigour of human thought in reUgious specula
tion, but to resist and control its extravagance. What
have been its great works ? AU of them in the distinct
province of theology : — to put down Arianism, Euty-
chianism, Pelagianism, Manicha3ism, Lutheranism, Jan
senism. Such is the broad result of its action in the
past ; — and now as to the securities which are given us
that so it ever will act in time to come.
5-6 from within and without] both as its ally and as its opponent
16 majesty] Majesty
23 of the raw 1864, 2S65] the raw 1864 (another copy)

(POSITION .OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 345
First, InfaUibility cannot act outside of a definite circle
of thought, and it must in aU its decisions, or definitions,
as they are caUed, profess to be keeping within it. The
great truths of the moral law, of natural rehgion, and of
Apostolical faith, are both its boundary and its foundation.
It must not go beyond them, and it must ever appeal to
them. Both its subject-matter, and its articles in that
subject-matter, are fixed. [Thus, in illustration, it does
not extend to statements, however sound and evident,
10 which are mere logical conclusions from the Articles of the
Apostolic Depositum ; again, it can pronounce nothing
about the persons of heretics, whose works fall within its
legitimate province.] (And) It must ever profess to be
guided by Scripture and by tradition. It must refer to the
particular ApostoUc truth which it is enforcing, or (what
is caUed) defining. Nothing, then, can be presented to me,
in time to come, as part of the faith, but what I ought
already to have received, and (hitherto) have not actually
received, (if not) merely because it has not been told me.
20 Nothing can be imposed upon me different in kind from
what I hold already, — much less contrary to it. The new
truth which is promulgated, if it is to be caUed new, must
be at least homogeneous, cognate, impUcit, viewed relatively
to the old truth. It must be what I may even have guessed,
or wished, to be included in the ApostoUc revelation ; and
at least it will be of such a character, that my thoughts
readily concur in it or coalesce with it, as soon as I hear it.
Perhaps I and others actuaUy have always believed it,
and the only question which is now decided in my behalf,
30 is that I am henceforth to believe(,) that I have only been
holding (aU along) what the Apostles held before me.
Let me take the doctrine which Protestants consider our
greatest difficulty, that of the Immaculate Conception.
Here I entreat the reader to recollect my main drift, which
is this. I have no difficulty in receiving it : (and that,
because it so intimately harmonizes with that circle of
recognized dogmatic truths, into which it has been recently
18-19 not actually received, (if not)] been kept from receiving, (if so,)
19 received, (if not) 1864] received ; if not, 1864 (another copy).
19 told] brought home to 30 am henceforth] have henceforth
the satisfaction of having 35 it :] the doctrine ;

346 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
received ; — but) if I have no difficulty, why may not
another have no difficulty also ? why may not a hundred ?
a thousand ? Now I am sure that Cathohcs in general
have not any inteUectual difficulty at aU on the subject
of the Immaculate Conception ; and that there is no
reason why they should. Priests have no difficulty.
You tell me that they ought to have a difficulty; —
but they have not. Be large-minded enough to beheve,
that men may reason and feel very differently from your
selves ; how is it that men [faU], when left to themselves, 10
(fall) into such various forms of rehgion, except that there
are various types of mind among them, very distinct from
each other ? From my testimony then about myself, if
you beheve it, judge of others also who are Cathohcs : we
do not find the difficulties which you do in the doctrines
which we hold ; we have no inteUectual difficulty in that
(doctrine) in particular, which you call a novelty of this
day. We priests need not be hypocrites, though we be
called upon to beUeve in the Immaculate Conception. To
that large class of minds, who beUeve in Christianity, after 20
our manner, — in the .particular temper, spirit, and hght,
(whatever word is used,) in which CathoUcs beheve it,- —
there is no burden at all in holding that the Blessed Virgin
was conceived without original sin ; indeed, it is a simple fact
to say, that Cathohcs have not come to beheve it because it
is defined, but (that) it was defined because they beheved it.
So far from the definition in 1854 being a tyrannical
infliction on the Catholic world, it was received every
where on its promulgation with the greatest enthusiasm.
It was in consequence of the unanimous petition, pre- 30
sented from aU parts (of the Church) to the Holy See, in
behalf of a (ex cathedrd) declaration that the doctrine
was Apostoho, that it was declared so to be. I never heard
of one Catholic having difficulties in receiving it, whose
faith on other grounds was not already suspicious. Of
course there were grave and good men, who were made
anxious by the doubt whether it could be (formaUy)
proved (to be) Apostolical either by Scripture or tradition,
and who accordingly, though beUeving it themselves, did
32 a] an 34 receiving it] receiving the doctrine
35 already 1864, 1S65] really 1864 (another copy).

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 347
not see how it could be denned by authority (and imposed
upon aU CathoUcs as a matter of faith) ; but this is another
matter. The point in question is, whether the doctrine is
a burden. I beUeve it to be none. So far from it being
so, I sincerely think that St. Bernard and St. Thomas,
who scrupled at it in their day, had they Uved into this,
would have rejoiced to accept it for its own sake. Their
difficulty, as I view it, consisted in matters of words, ideas,
and arguments. They thought the doctrine inconsistent
10 with other doctrines ; and those who defended it in that
age had not that precision in their view of it, which has
been given to it by means of the long controversy of the
centuries which foUowed. And hence the difference of
opinion, and the controversy.
Now the instance which I have been taking suggests
another remark ; the number of those (so caUed) new
doctrines will not oppress us, if it takes eight centuries to
promulgate even one of them. Such is about the length of
time through which the preparation has been carried on
20 for the definition of the Immaculate Conception. This of
course is an extraordinary case ; but it is difficult to say
what is ordinary, considering how few are the formal
occasions on which the voice of InfaUibility has been
solemnly lifted up. It is to the Pope in Ecumenical Council
that we look, as to the normal seat of Inf aUibihty : now
there have been only eighteen such Councils since Chris
tianity was, — an average of one to a century, — and of
these CouncUs some passed no doctrinal decree at aU,
others were employed on only one, and many of them
30 were concerned with only elementary points of the Creed.
The Council of Trent embraced a large field of doctrine
certainly ; but I should apply to its Canons a remark con
tained in that University Sermon of mine, which has been
so ignorantly criticized in the Pamphlet which has led to
my writing ; — I there have said that the various verses of
the Athanasian Creed are only repetitions in various shapes
of one and the same idea ; and in hke manner, the Triden
tine Decrees are not isolated from each other, but are
12 given to it] attained 12 controversy] disputes
13 hence] in this want of precision lay
34-5 led to my writing] been the occasion of this Volume

348 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
occupied in bringing out in detaU, by a number of separate
declarations, as if into bodily form, a few necessary truths.
I should make the same remark on the various Theses
condemned by Popes, and on their dogmatic decisions
generaUy. I acknowledge that at first sight they seem
from their number to be a greater burden to the faith of
individuals than are the Canons of Councils ; stiU I do not
believe (that) in matter of fact [that] they are so at aU,
and I give this reason for it : — it is not that a Catholic,
layman or priest, is indifferent to the subject, or, fromio
a sort of recklessness, will accept any thing that is placed
before him, or is willing, like a lawyer, to speak according
to his brief, but that in such condemnations the Holy See
is engaged, for the most part, in repudiating one or two
great fines of error, such as Lutheranism or Jansenism,
principally ethical not doctrinal, which are foreign to the
Catholic mind, and that it is (but) expressing what any
good Catholic, of fair abilities, though unlearned, would
say himself, from common and sound sense, if the matter
could be put before him. 20
Now I will go on in fairness to say what I think is the
great trial to the Reason, when confronted with that
august prerogative of the Cathohc Church, of which I have
been speaking. I enlarged just now upon the concrete
shape and circumstances, under which pure infallible
authority presents itself to the Cathohc. That authority
has the prerogative of an indirect jurisdiction on subject-
matters which lie beyond its own proper limits, and it
most reasonably has such a jurisdiction. It could not act
in its own province, unless it had a right to act out of it. 30
It could not properly defend rehgious truth, without claim
ing for it what may be caUed its pomceria ; or, to take
another illustration, without acting as we act, as a nation,
in claiming as our own, not only the land on which we live,
but what are caUed British waters. The CathoUc Church
claims, not only to judge infallibly on religious questions,
but to animadvert on opinions in secular matters which
3-4 Theses condemned by Popes] theological censures, promulgated
by Popes, which the Church has received
5 acknowledge] own 5 they] those decisions
6 to the] on the 16 foreign to] divergent from 32 it] that truth

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 349
bear upon reUgion, on matters of philosophy, of science, of
literature, of history, and it demands our submission to
her claim. It claims to censure books, to sfience authors,
and to forbid discussions. In [all] this (province, taken as
a whole,) it does not so much speak doctrinally, as enforce
measures of discipUne. It must of course be obeyed without
a word, and perhaps in process of time it will tacitly recede
from its own injunctions. In such cases the question of
faith does not come in (at all) ; for what is matter of faith
10 is true for all times, and. never can be unsaid. Nor does it
at all follow, because there is a gift of infalhbiUty in the
Cathohc Church, that therefore the power in possession of
it is in aU its proceedings infallible. " 0, it is exceUent,"
says the poet, " to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous,
to use it like a giant." I think history supphes us with
instances in the Church, where legitimate power has been
harshly used. To make such admission is no more than
saying that the divine treasure, in the words of the Apostle,
is "in earthen vessels ; " nor does it foUow that the sub-
20 stance of the acts of the ruling power is not right and
expedient, because its manner may have been faulty.
Such high authorities act by means of instruments ; we
know how such instruments claim for themselves the name
of their principals, who thus get the credit of faults which
really are not theirs. But granting all this to an extent
greater than can with any show of reason be imputed to
the ruling power in the Church, what (difficulty) is there in
(the fact of) this want of prudence or moderation more
than can be urged, with far greater justice, against Pro-
30 testant communities and institutions ? What is there in
it to make us hypocrites, if it has not that effect upon
Protestants ? We are caUed upon, not to profess any
thing, but to submit and be silent(, as Protestant Church
men have before now obeyed the royal command to abstain
from certain theological questions). Such injunctions[,] as
I have supposed, are laid merely upon our actions, not
upon our thoughts. How, for instance, does it tend to
make a man a hypocrite, to be forbidden to publish a
libel ? his thoughts are as free as before : authoritative
12-13 power . . . is . . . its] parties who are . . . are . . . their
36 supposed] been contemplating

350 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
prohibitions may tease and irritate, but they have no
bearing whatever upon the exercise of reason.
So much at first sight ; but I will go on to say further,
that, in spite of all that the most hostile critic may say
upon the encroachments or severities of high ecclesiastics.
in times past, in the use of their power, I think that the
event has shown after all, that they were mainly in the
right, and that those whom they were hard upon (jwere)
mainly in the wrong. I love, for instance, the name of
Origen : I wUl not listen to the notion that so great a soul i0
was lost ; but I am quite sure that, in the contest between
his doctrine and [his] followers and (the) ecclesiastical
power, his opponents were right, and he was wrong. Yet
who can speak with "patience of his enemy and the enemy
of St. John Chrysostom, that Theophilus, bishop of
Alexandria ? who can admire or revere Pope Vigihus ?
And here another consideration presents itself to my
thoughts. In reading ecclesiastical history, when I was
an Anglican, it used to be forcibly brought home to me,
how the initial error of what afterwards became heresy 20
was the urging forward some truth against the prohibition
of authority at an unseasonable time. There is a time for
every thing, and many a man desires a reformation of an
abuse, or the fuller development of a doctrine, or the
adoption of a particular poUcy, but forgets to ask himself
whether the right time for it is come ; and, knowing that
there is no one who will do any thing towards it(s accom
plishment) in his own lifetime unless he does it himself,
he will not listen to the voice of authority, and (he) spoils
a good work in his own century, (in order) that another 30
man, as yet unborn, may not (have the opportunity of)
bringing) it happily to perfection in the next. He may
seem to the world to be nothing else than a bold champion
for the truth and a martyr to free opinion, when he is just
one of those persons whom the competent authority ought
to silence, and, though the case may not fall within that
subject-matter in which it is infallible, or the formal con
ditions of the exercise of that gift may be wanting, it is
clearly the duty of authority to act vigorously in the case.
4-5 say upon] urge about 27 do] be doing
37 which it] whioh that authority

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 351
Yet that act wUl go down to posterity as an instance of
a tyrannical interference with private judgment, and of
the silencing of a reformer, and of a base love of corrup
tion or error ; and it will show stiU less to advantage, if
the ruling power happens in its proceedings to act with
any defect of prudence or consideration. And all those
who take the part of that ruling authority will be con
sidered as time-servers, or indifferent to the cause of
uprightness and truth ; while, on the other hand, the said
w authority may be (accidentally) supported by a violent
ultra party, which exalts opinions into dogmas, and has it
principaUy at heart to destroy every school of thought but
its own.
Such a state of things may be provoking and discourag
ing at the time, in the case of two classes of persons ; of
moderate men who wish to make differences in religious
opinion as little as they fairly can be made ; and of such
as keenly perceive, and are honestly eager to remedy,
existing evils, — evils, of which divines in this or that
20 foreign country know nothing at all, and which even at
home(, where they exist,) it is not every one who has the
means of estimating. This is a state of things both of past
time and of the present. We live in a wonderful age ; the
enlargement of the circle of secular knowledge just now is
simply a bewUderment, and the more so, because it has
the promise of continuing, and that with greater rapidity,
and more signal results. Now these discoveries, certain
or probable, have in matter of fact an indirect bearing
upon religious opinions, and the question arises how are
3o the respective claims of revelation and of natural science
to be adjusted. Few minds in earnest can remain at ease
without some sort of rational grounds for their reUgious
belief ; to reconcile theory and fact is almost an instinct
of the mind. When then a flood of facts, ascertained or
suspected, comes pouring in upon us, with a multitude of
others in prospect, all beUevers in revelation, be they
Catholic or not, are roused to consider their bearing upon
themselves, both for the honour of God, and from tender
ness for those many souls who, in consequence of the con-
1 that] its 5 act with] evince 36 revelation] Revelation

352 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
fident tone of the schools of secular knowledge, are in
danger of being led away into a bottomless liberalism of
thought. I am not going to criticize here that vast body of men,
in the mass, who at this time would profess to be liberals
in religion ; and who look towards the discoveries of the
age, certain or in progress, as their informants, direct or
indirect, as to what they shall think about the unseen and
the future. The Liberalism which gives a colour to society
now, is very different from that character of thought which 10
bore the name thirty or forty years ago. (Now) It is scarcely
[now] a party ; it is the educated lay world. When I was
young, I knew the word first as giving name to a periodical,
set up by Lord Byron and others. Now, as then, I have
no sympathy with the phUosophy of Byron. Afterwards,
LiberaUsm was the badge of a theological school, of a dry
and repulsive character, not very dangerous in itself, though
dangerous as opening the door to evUs which it did not
itself either anticipate or comprehend. Now it is nothing
else than that deep, plausible scepticism, of which I spoke 20
above, as being the development of human reason, as
practically exercised by the natural man.
The Liberal religionists of this day are a very mixed
body, and therefore I am not intending to speak against
them. There may be, and doubtless is, in the hearts of
some or many of them a real antipathy or anger against
revealed truth, which it is distressing to think of. Again ;
in many men of science or hterature there may be an
animosity arising from almost a personal feeling ; it being
a matter of party, a point of honour, the excitement of 30
a game, or a consequence of soreness or annoyance occa
sioned by the acrimony or narrowness of apologists for
religion, to prove that Christianity or that Scripture is
untrustworthy. Many scientific and literary men, on the
other hand, go on, I am confident, in a straightforward
impartial way, in their own province and on their own line
of thought, without any disturbance from religious opinion
in themselves, or any wish at aU to give pain to others
by the result of their investigations. It would ill become
19 Now] At present 31 consequence of] satisfaction to the
37 opinion] difficulties

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 353
me, as if I were afraid of truth of any kind, to blame those
who pursue secular facts, by means of the reason which
God has given them, to their logical conclusions : or to
be angry with science(,) because religion is bound (in duty)
to take cognizance of its teaching. But putting these
particular classes of men aside, as having no special call
on the sympathy of the Catholic, of course he does most
deeply enter into the feelings of a fourth and large class
of men, in the educated portions of society, of religious and
10 sincere minds, who are simply perplexed, — frightened or
rendered desperate, as the case may be, — by the utter
confusion into which late discoveries or speculations have
thrown their most elementary ideas of religion. Who does
not feel for such men ? who can have one unkind thought
of them ? I take up (in their behalf) St. Augustine's
beautiful words, " Ilfi in vos sseviant," &c. Let them be
fierce with you who have no experience of the difficulty
with which error is discriminated from truth, and the way
of life is found amid the iUusions of the world. How many
20 Catholics have in their thoughts f oUowed such men, many
of them so good, so true, so noble ! how often has the wish
risen in their hearts that some one from among themselves
should come forward as the champion of revealed truth
against its opponents ! Various persons, Catholic and
Protestant, have asked me to do so myseff ; but I had
several strong difficulties in the way. One of the greatest
is this, that at the moment it is so difficult to say precisely
what it is that is to be encountered and overthrown. I am
far from denying that scientific knowledge is really growing,
30 but it is by fits and starts ; hypotheses rise and fall ; it
is difficult to anticipate which (of them) will keep their
ground, and what the state of knowledge in relation to
them will be from year to year. In this condition of things,
it has seemed to me to be very undignified for a Catholic
to commit himself to the work of chasing what might
turn out to be phantoms, and in behalf of some special
objections, to be ingenious in devising a theory, which,
20 Catholics have in their] a Catholic has in his
22 their hearts] his heart
22 from among 1864, 1865] among 1864 (another copy).
22 themselves] his own people
APOLOGIA N

354 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
before it was completed, might have to give place to some
theory newer still, from the fact that those former objec
tions had aheady come to nought under the uprising of
others. It seemed to be (speciaUy) a time [of all others],
in which Christians had a caU to be patient, in which
they had no other way of helping those who were alarmed,
than that of exhorting them to have a httle faith and
fortitude, and to " beware," as the poet says, " of dangerous
steps." This seemed so clear to me, the more I thought
(of the matter), as to make me surmise, that, if I attempted 10
what had so little promise in it, I should find that the
highest Catholic authority was against the attempt, and that
I should have spent my time and my thought, in doing
what either it would be imprudent to bring before the
public at aU, or what, did I do so, would only complicate
matters further which were aheady comphcated(, without
my interference,) more than enough. And I interpret
recent acts of that authority as fulfilling my expectation ;
I interpret them as tying the hands of a controversialist,
such as I should be, and teaching us that true wisdom, 20
which Moses inculcated on his people, when the Egyptians
were pursuing them, " Fear ye not, stand still ; the Lord
shall fight for you, and ye shaU hold your peace." And so
far from finding a difficulty in obeying in this case, I have
cause to be thankful and to rejoice to have so clear a direc
tion in a matter of difficulty.
But if we would ascertain with correctness the real
course of a principle, we must look at it at a certain dis
tance, and as history represents it to us. Nothing carried
on by human instruments, but has its irregularities, and 30
affords ground for criticism, when minutely scrutinized in
matters of detail. I have been speaking of that aspect of
the action of an infallible authority, which is most open
to invidious criticism from those who view it from without ;
I have tried to be fair, in estimating what can be said to
its disadvantage, as witnessed (at a particular time) in the
CathoUc Church, and now I wish its adversaries to be
equally fair in their judgment upon its historical character.
9 the more I thought 1864, 1865] as I thought more 1S64 (another copy)
12 authority] Authority
16 further 1864, 1865] more 1S64 (another copy).

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 355
Can, then, the infallible authority, with any show of reason,
be said in fact to have destroyed the energy of the (Cathohc)
inteUect [in the Cathohc Church] ? Let it be observed,
I have not (here) to speak of any conflict which ecclesiastical
authority has had with science, for (this simple reason, that
conflict) there has been none [such], (and that,) because
the secular sciences, as they now exist, are a novelty in
the world, and there has been no time yet for a history
of relations between theology and these new methods of
10 knowledge, and indeed the Church may be said to have
kept clear of them, as is proved by the constantly cited
case of Galileo. Here " exceptio probat regulam : " for
it is the one stock argument. Again, I have not to speak
of any relations of the Church to the new sciences, because
my simple question (all along) is whether the assumption
of infallibility by the proper authority is adapted to make
me a hypocrite, and tiU that authority passes decrees on
pure physical subjects and calls on me to subscribe them,
(which it never wiU do, because it has not the power,) it
20 has no tendency [by its acts] to interfere (by any of its
acts) with my private judgment on tfiose points. The
simple question is whether authority has so acted upon
the reason of individuals, that they can have no opinion of
their own, and have but an alternative of slavish super
stition or secret rebellion of heart ; and I think the whole
history of theology puts an absolute negative upon such
a supposition. It is hardly necessary to argue out so
plain a point. It is individuals, and not the Holy See,
who have taken the initiative, and given the lead to (the)
30 Catholic mind[s], in theological inquiry. Indeed, it is one
of the reproaches urged against the Church of Rome, that
it has originated nothing, and has only served as a sort
of remora or break in the development of doctrine. And
it is an objection[,] which I (reaUy) embrace as a truth ;
for such I conceive to be the main purpose of its extra
ordinary gift. It is said, and truly, that the Church of
Rome possessed no great mind in the whole period of
15 is whether] has been whether
27 It is hardly commenced a new paragraph in 1865.
29 who have 1864] which ha3 1864 (another copy), that have 1865,
31 Church of Rome] Roman Church

356 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
persecution. Afterwards for a long while, it has not a
single doctor to show ; St. Leo, its first, is the teacher of
one point of doctrine ; St. Gregory, who stands at the very
extremity of the first age of the Church, has no place in
dogma or philosophy. The great luminary of the western
world is, as we know, St. Augustine ; he, no infallible
teacher, has formed the intellect of (Christian) Europe ;
indeed to the African Church generaUy we must look
for the best early exposition of Latin ideas. (Moreover,
of the African divines, the first in order of time, and not 10
the least influential, is the strong-minded and heterodox
TertuUian. Nor is the Eastern inteUect, as such, without
its share in the formation of the Latin teaching. The free
thought of Origen is visible in the writings of the Western
Doctors, Hilary and Ambrose ; and the independent mind
of Jerome has enriched his own vigorous commentaries on
Scripture, from the stores of the scarcely orthodox Eusebius.
Heretical questionings have been transmuted by the living
power of the Church into salutary truths.) The case is
the same as regards the Ecumenical Councils. Authority 20
in its most imposing exhibition, grave bishops, laden with
the traditions and rivalries of particular nations or places,
have been guided in their decisions by the commanding
genius of individuals, sometimes young and of inferior
rank. Not that uninspired inteUect overruled the super
human gift which was committed to the Council, which
would be a self-contradictory assertion, but that in that
process of inquiry and deUberation, which ended in an
infaUible enunciation, individual reason was paramount.
Thus (Malchion, a mere presbyter, was the instrument of 30
the great Council of Antioch in the third century in meet
ing and refuting, for the assembled Fathers, the heretical
Patriarch of that see. Parallel . . . against the Greeks.)
(At Trent,) the writings of St. Bonaventura, and, what is
more to the point, the address of a Priest and theologian,
Salmeron, [at Trent,] had a critical effect on some of the
definitions of dogma[s]. Parallel to this (instance) is the
influence, so well known, of a young deacon, St. Athanasius,
33 (Parallel . . . against the Greeks.) In 1S64 this passage had been
placed later in the paragraph, to follow the remark on St. Bonaventura
and Salmeron.

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 357
with the 318 Fathers at Nicsea. In like manner we hear of
[the influence of] St. Anselm at Bari, (as the champion of
the Council there held, against the Greeks) [and St. Thomas
at Lyons]. In the latter cases the influence might be
partly moral, but in the former it was that of a discursive
knowledge of ecclesiastical writers, a scientific acquaintance
with theology, and a force of thought in the treatment of
doctrine. There are of course intellectual habits which theology
io does not tend to form, as for instance the experimental,
and again the philosophical ; but that is because it is
theology, not because of the gift of infallibility. But, as
far as this goes, I think it could be shown that physical
science on the other hand, or (again) mathematical, affords
but an imperfect training for the intellect. I do not see
then how any objection about the narrowness of theology
comes into our question, which simply is, whether the
belief in an InfaUible authority destroys the independence
of the mind ; and I consider that the whole history of
20 the Church, and especially the history of the theological
schools, gives a negative to the accusation. There never
was a time when the intellect of the educated class was
more active, or rather more restless, than in the middle
ages. And then again all through Church history from
the first, how slow is authority in interfering ! Perhaps
a local teacher, or a doctor in some local school, hazards
a proposition, and a controversy ensues. It smoulders or
burns in one place, no one interposing ; Rome simply lets
it alone. Then it comes before a Bishop ; or some priest,
30 or some professor in some other seat of learning takes it up ;
and then there is a second stage of it. Then it comes before
a University, and it may be condemned by the theological
faculty. So the controversy proceeds year after year, and
Rome is still silent. An appeal perhaps is next made to
a seat of authority inferior to Rome ; and then at last
after a long while it comes before the supreme power.
Meanwhile, the question has been ventilated and turned
over and over again, and viewed on every side of it, and
1 like manner we hear] mediaeval times we read
4 the latter] some of these 5 the former] others
18 Infallible] infallible

358 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
authority is called upon to pronounce a decision, which has
already been arrived at by reason. But even then, perhaps
the supreme authority hesitates to do so, and nothing is
determined on the point for years ; or so generaUy and
vaguely, that the whole controversy has to be gone through
again, before it is ultimately determined. It is manifest
how a mode of proceeding, such as this, tends not only to
the hberty, but to the courage, of the individual theologian
or controversialist. Many a man has ideas, which he hopes
are true, and useful for his day, but he (is not confidents
about them, and) wishes to have them discussed. He is
willing or rather would be thankful to give them up, if
they can be proved to be erroneous or dangerous, and by
means of controversy he obtains his end. He is answered,
and he yields ; or (on the contrary) he finds that he is
considered safe. He would not dare to do this, if he knew
an authority, which was supreme and final, was watching
every word he said, and made signs of assent or dissent
to each sentence, as he uttered it. Then indeed he would
be fighting, as the Persian soldiers, under the lash, and the 20
freedom of his intellect might truly be said to be beaten
out of him. But this has not been so : — I do not mean
to say that, when controversies run high, in schools or even
in small portions of the Church, an interposition may not
rightly take place ; and again, questions may be of that
urgent nature, that an appeal must, as a matter of duty,
be made at once to the highest authority in the Church ;
but, if we look into the history of controversy, we shaU
find, I think, the general run of things to be such as I have
represented it. Zosimus treated Pelagius and Ccelestiusso
with extreme forbearance ; St. Gregory VII. was equaUy
indulgent with Berengarius ;( — )by reason of the very
power of the Popes they have commonly been slow and
moderate in their use of it.
And here again is a further shelter for (the legitimate
exercise of) the [individual] reason : — the multitude of
nations who are in the fold of the Church wUl be found
to have acted for its protection, against any narrowness,
if so, in the various authorities at Rome, with whom hes
25 rightly] advisably 37 who are in] which are within
39 if so] on the supposition of narrowness

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 359
the practical decision of controverted questions. How
have the Greek traditions been respected and provided for
in the later Ecumenical Councils, in spite of the countries
that held them being in a state of schism ! There are
important points of doctrine which have been (humanly
speaking) exempted from the infallible sentence, by the
tenderness with which its instruments, in framing it, have
treated the opinions of particular places. Then, again,
such national influences have a providential effect in
10 moderating the bias which the local influences of Italy
may exert upon the See of St. Peter. It stands to reason
that, as the GaUican Church has in it an element of France,
so Rome must have (in it) an element of Italy ; and it
is no prejudice to the zeal and devotion with which we
submit ourselves to the Holy See to admit this plainly.
It seems to me, as I have been saying, that Catholicity is
not only one of the notes of the Church, but, according
to the divine purposes, one of its securities. I think it
would be a very serious evil, which Divine Mercy avert !
20 that the Church should be contracted in Europe within
the range of particular nationaUties. It is a great idea to
introduce Latin civUization into America, and to improve
the Cathohcs there by the energy of French Rehgion ;
but I trust that all European races will have ever
a place in the Church, and assuredly I think that the loss
of the Enghsh, not to say the German element, in its
composition has been a most serious evil. And certainly,
if there is one consideration more than another which
should make us EngUsh grateful to Pius the Ninth, it is
30 that, by giving us a Church of our own, he has prepared
the way for our own habits of mind, our own manner of
reasoning, our own tastes, and our own virtues, finding
a place and thereby a sanctification, in the Catholic Church.
There is only one other subject, which I think it neces
sary to introduce here, as bearing upon the vague suspicions
which are attached in this country to the Catholic Priest
hood. It is one of which my accuser says much,( — )the
12 an element of France] a French element
23 Religion] devotedness 24 have ever] ever have
27 evil] misfortune
37 my accuser says] my accusers have before now said

360 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
charge of reserve and economy. He founds it in no slight
degree on what I have said on the subject in my History
of the Arians, and in a note upon one of my Sermons in
which I refer to it. The principle of Reserve is also advo
cated by an admirable writer in two numbers of the Tracts
for the Times(, and of these I was the Editor).
Now, as to the Economy itseff(3), [I leave the greater
part of what I have to say to an Appendix. Here I wiU
but say that] it is founded upon the words of our Lord,
" Cast not your pearls before swine ; " and it was observed 10
by the early Christians more or less in their intercourse
with the heathen populations among whom they lived. In
the midst of the abominable idolatries and impurities of
that fearful time, they could not do otherwise. But the
rule [of the Economy], at least as I have explained and
recommended it, (in anything that I have written,) did
not go beyond (1) the concealing the truth when we could
do so without deceit, (2) stating it only partiaUy, and
(3) representing it under the nearest form possible to
a learner or inquirer, when he could not possibly under- 20
stand it exactly. I conceive that to draw angels with
wings is an instance of the third of these economical modes ;
and to avoid the question, " Do Christians beUeve in a
Trinity ? " by answering, " They beUeve in only one God,"
would be an instance of the second. As to the first, it is
hardly an Economy, but comes under what is caUed the
" Disciplina Arcani." The second and third economical
modes Clement calls lying ; meaning that a partial truth
is in some sense a lie, and so also is a representative truth.
And this, I think, is about the long and the short of the so
ground of the accusation which has been so violently urged
against me, as being a patron of the Economy.
Of late years I have come to think, as I beUeve most
writers do, that Clement meant more than I have said.
I used to think he used the word " he " as an hyperbole,
but I now believe that he, as other early Fathers," thought
1 He founds] They found
7 Footnote in 1865. (3 Vide Note F, The Economy.)
14 they could not do otherwise] the Rule of the Economy was an
imperative duty 14-15 the rule] that rule
21 angels] Angels 29 and so also is] as is also

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 361
that, under certain circumstances, it was lawful to tell
a he. This doctrine I never maintained, though I used
to think, as I do now, that the theory of the subject is
surrounded with considerable difficulty ; and it is not
strange that I should say so, considering that great English
writers [simply] declare (without hesitation) that in certain
extreme cases, as to save life, honour, or even property,
a lie is aUowable. And thus I am brought to the direct
question of truth, and (of) the truthfulness of Catholic
10 priests generally in their dealings with the world, as bearing
on the general question of their honesty, and (of) their
internal belief in their religious professions.
It would answer no purpose, and it would be departing
from the line of writing which I have been observing aU
along, if I entered into any formal discussion on the
subject ; what I shaU do here, as I have done in the fore
going pages, is to give my own testimony on the matter
in question, and there to leave it. Now first I will say,
that, when I became a Cathohc, nothing struck me more
20 at once than the EngUsh out-spoken manner of the Priests.
It was the same at Oscott, at Old HaU Green, at Ushaw ;
there was nothing of that smoothness, or mannerism, which
is commonly imputed to them, and they were more natural
and unaffected than many an Anghcan clergyman. The
many years, which have passed since, have only confirmed
my first impression. I have ever found it in the priests
of this Diocese ; did I wish to point out a straightforward
Englishman, I should instance the Bishop, who has, to
our great benefit, for so many years presided over it.
so And next, I was struck, when I had more opportunity
of judging of the Priests, by the simple faith in the Catholic
Creed and system of which they always gave evidence, and
which they never seemed to feel, in any sense at all, to be
a burden. And now that I have been in the Church nine
teen years, I cannot recollect hearing of a single instance
in England of an infidel priest. Of course there are men
from time to time, who leave the Catholic Church for
another religion, but I am speaking of cases, when a man
15-16 the subject] this question
N 3

362 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
keeps a fair outside to the world and is a hollow hypocrite
in his heart.
I wonder that the self-devotion of our priests does not
strike Protestants in this point of view. What dp they
gain by professing a Creed, in which, if my assailant is to
be believed, they really do not beUeve ? What is their
reward for committing themselves to a life of self-restraint
and toil, and after all to a premature and miserable death ?
The Irish fever cut off between Liverpool and Leeds thirty
priests and more, young men in the flower of their days, 10
old men who seemed entitled to some quiet time after
their long toil. There was a bishop cut off in the North ;
but what had a man of his ecclesiastical rank to do with the
drudgery and danger of sick caUs, except that Christian
faith and charity constrained him ? Priests volunteered
for the dangerous service. It was the same (with them)
on the first coming of the cholera, that mysterious awe-
inspiring infliction. If priests did not heartily beheve in
the Creed of the Church, then I wiU say that the remark
of the Apostle had its fullest Ulustration : — ' If in this hfe 20
only we have hope in Christ, we are of aU men most
miserable." What could support a set of hypocrites in
the presence of a deadly disorder, one of them foUowing
another in long order up the forlorn hope, and one after
another perishing ? And such, I may say, in its substance,
is every Mission-Priest's life. He is ever ready to sacrifice
himself for his people. Night and day, sick or well him
self, in all weathers, off he is, on the news of a sick caU.
The fact of a parishioner dying without the Sacraments
through his fault is terrible to him ; why terrible, if he 30
has not a deep absolute faith, which he acts upon with
a free service ? Protestants admire this, when they see
it ; but they do not seem to see as clearly, that it excludes
the very notion of hypocrisy.
Sometimes, when they reflect upon it, it leads them to
remark on the wonderful discipline of the Cathohc priest
hood ; they say that no Church has so well ordered a clergy,
and that in that respect it surpasses their own ; they wish
they could have such exact discipline among themselves.
5-6 my assailant is . . . believed] their enemies are . . . credited
8 after all] perhaps 18 priests] they

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 363
But is it an exceUence which can be purchased ? is it
a phenomenon Avhich depends on nothing else than itself ,
or is it an effect which has a cause ? You cannot buy
devotion at a price. " It hath never been heard of in the
land of Chanaan, neither hath it been seen in Theman.
The children of Agar," the merchants of Meran, none of
these have known its way." What then is that wonderful
charm, which makes a thousand men act all in one way,
and infuses a prompt obedience to rule, as if they were
10 under some stern military compulsion 1 How difficult to
find an answer, unless you wiU aUow the obvious one, that
they believe intensely what they profess !'
I cannot think what it can be, in a day hke this, which
keeps up the prejudice of this Protestant country against
us, unless it be the vague charges which are drawn from
our books of Moral Theology ; and with a (short) notice
of the work in particular which my accuser especially
throws in(to) our teeth, I shall [in a very few words] bring
these observations to a close.
20 St. Alfonso Liguori, (then,) it cannot be denied, lays
down that an equivocation, that is, a play upon words,.
in which one sense is taken by the speaker, and another
sense intended by him for the hearer, is allowable, if there
is a just cause, that is, in a special case, and may even be
confirmed by an oath. I shaU give my opinion on this
point as plainly as any Protestant can wish ; and therefore
I avow at once that in this department of morality, much
as I admire the high points of the Italian character, I Uke
the English character better ; but, in saying so, I am not,
30 as wiU (shortly) be seen, saying any thing disrespectful to
St. Alfonso, who was a lover of truth, and whose inter
cession I trust I shall not lose, though, on the matter
under consideration, I foUow other guidance in preference
to his.
Now I make this remark first :— great English authors,
17-18 my accuser . . . throws] by our accusers is . . . thrown
21-3 that is . . . hearer,] (that is . . . hearer,)
24 a special 1864] an extreme 1864 (another copy), an extraordinary 1865
29 English character] English rule of conduct

364 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Paley, Johnson, men of very dis
tinct schools of thought, distinctly say, that under certain
special circumstances it is aUowable to teU a lie. Taylor
says : "To teU a Ue for charity, to save a man's life, the
life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince, of a useful and
a pubhc person, hath not only been done at aU times, but
commended by great and wise and good men. Who would
not save his father's life, at the charge of a harmless
lie, from persecutors or tyrants ? " Again, MUton says :
" What man in his senses would deny, that there are those 10
whom we have the best grounds for considering that we
ought to deceive, — as boys, madmen, the sick, the intoxi
cated, enemies, men in error, thieves ? I would ask, by
which of the commandments is a fie forbidden ? You wiU
say, by the ninth. If then my lie does not injure my
neighbour, certainly it is not forbidden by this command
ment." Paley says : " There are falsehoods, which are
not lies, that is, which are not criminal." Johnson : " The
general rule is, that truth should never be violated ; there
must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, 20
a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone."
Now, I am not using these instances as an argumentum
ad hominem ; but [this is] the use to which I put them
(is this) : —
1. First, I have set down the distinct statements of
Taylor, Milton, Paley, and Johnson ; now, would any one
give ever so little weight to these statements, in forming
a real estimate of the veracity of the writers, if they now
were alive ? Were a man, who is so fierce with. St. Alfonso,
to meet Paley or Johnson to-morrow in society, would he 30
look upon him as a liar, a knave, as dishonest and untrust
worthy ? I am sure he would not. Why then does he
not deal out the same measure to Catholic priests ? If
a copy of Scavini, which speaks of equivocation as being
in a just cause allowable, be found in a student's room
at Oscott, not Scavini himseff, but (even) the unhappy
student, who has what a Protestant calls a bad book in
his possession, is judged (to be) for life unworthy of credit.
1-2 distinct] different
3 special 1864] extreme 1864 (anotlier copy), extraordinary 1865.
23 use] purpose

(POSITION OF MY MIND [SINCE 1845.) 365
Are aU Protestant text-books(, which are used) at the
University(,) immaculate ? Is it necessary to take for
gospel every word of Aristotle's Ethics, or every assertion
of Hey or Burnett on the Articles ? Are text-books the
ultimate authority, or (rather) are they (not) manuals in
the hands of a lecturer, and the groundwork of his remarks ?
But, again, let us suppose, not the case of a student, or
of a professor, but of Scavini himseff, or of St. Alfonso ;
now here again I ask, if you would not scruple in holding
10 Paley for an honest man, in spite of his defence of lying,
why do you scruple at (holding) St. Alfonso (honest) ?
I am perfectly sure that you would not scruple at Paley
personaUy ; you might not agree with him, but you would
(not go further than to) caU him a bold thinker : then why
should St. Alfonso's person be odious to you, as well as
his doctrine %
Now I wish to tell you why you are not afraid of Paley ;
because, you would say, when he advocated lying, he was
taking special cases. You would have no fear of a man
20 who you knew had shot a burglar dead in his own house,
because you know you are not a burglar : so you would
not think that Paley had a habit of telling lies in society,
because in the case of a cruel alternative he thought it
the lesser evil to tell a lie. Then why do you show such
suspicion of a Catholic theologian, who speaks of certain
special cases in which an equivocation in a penitent cannot
be visited by his confessor as if it were a sin ? for this is
the exact point of the question.
But again, why does Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor,
30 when no practical matter is (actuaUy) before him, lay
down a maxim about the lawfulness of lying, which will
startle most readers ? The reason is plain. He is forming
a theory of morals, and he must treat every question in
turn as it comes. And this is just what St. Alfonso or
Scavini is doing. You only try your hand yourself at
a treatise on the rales of morahty, and you will see how
difficult the work is. What is the definition of a lie ? Can
you give a better than that it is a sin against justice, as
9 if] since
19 special 1864] extreme 1864 (another copy), extreme or special 1865.
26 special 1864] extreme 1864 (another copy), extraordinary 2865.

366 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
Taylor and Paley consider it ? but, if so, how can it be
a sin at all, if your neighbour is not injured 2 If you do
not like this definition, take another ; and then, by means
of that, perhaps you will be defending St. Alfonso's equi
vocation. However, this is what I insist upon ; that
St. Alfonso, as Paley, is considering the different portions
of a large subject, and he must, on the subject of lying,
give his judgment, though on that subject it is difficult
to form any judgment which is satisfactory.
But further still : you must not suppose that a phUo- 10
sopher or- moralist uses in his own case the licence which
his theory itself would allow him. A man in his own
person is guided by his own conscience ; but in drawing
out a system of rules he is obhged to go by logic, and foUow
the exact deduction of conclusion from conclusion, and
(must) be sure that the whole system is coherent and one.
You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written
by men of decent character ; there is a late writer who
says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at aU the
picture of the man. A priest may write a treatise which 20
would be called really lax on the subject of lying, which
might come under the condemnation of the Holy See,
as some treatises on that score have (already) been con
demned, and yet in his own person be a rigorist. And, in
fact, it is notorious from St. Alfonso's Life, that he, who
has the repute of being so lax a moralist, had one of the
most scrupulous and anxious of consciences himself. Nay,
further than this, he was originally in the Law, and on
one occasion he was betrayed into the commission of what
seemed like a deceit, though it was an accident ; and that 30
was the very occasion of his leaving the profession and
embracing the religious life.
The account of this remarkable occurrence is told us in
his Life : —
" Notwithstanding he had carefully examined over and
over the details of the process, he was completely mistaken
regarding the sense of one document, which constituted
the right of the adverse party. The advocate of the Grand
Duke perceived the mistake, but he allowed Alfonso to
20 may] might 21 would be called] was

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 367
continue his eloquent address to the end without inter
ruption ; as soon, however, as he had finished, he rose,
and said with cutting coolness, ' Sir, the case is not exactly
what you suppose it to be ; if you will review the pro
cess, and examine this paper attentively, you wiU find
there precisely the contrary of all you have advanced.'
' Willingly,' replied Affonso, without hesitating ; ' the
decision depends on this question — whether the fief were
granted under the law of Lombardy, or under the French
10 Law.' The paper being examined, it was found that the
Grand Duke's advocate was in the right. ' Yes,' said
Alfonso, holding the paper in his hand, ' I am wrong,
I have been mistaken.' A discovery so unexpected, and
the fear of being accused of unfair dealing, filled him with
consternation, and covered him with confusion, so much
so, that every one saw his emotion. It was in vain that
the President Caravita, who loved him, and knew his
integrity, tried to console him, by telling him that such
mistakes were not uncommon, even among the first men
20 at the bar. Alfonso would listen to nothing, but, over
whelmed with confusion, his head sunk on his breast, he
said to himseff, ' World, I know you now ; courts of law,
never shall you see me again ! ' And turning his back on
the assembly, he withdrew to his own house, incessantly
repeating to himself, ' World, I know you now.' What
annoyed him most was, that having studied and re-studied
the process during a whole month, without having dis
covered this important flaw, he could not understand how
it had escaped his observation."
30 And this is the man(, so easily scared at the very shadow
of trickery,) who is so flippantly pronounced to be a patron
of lying.
But, in truth, a Catholic theologian has objects in view
which men in general little compass ; he is not thinking
of himself, but of a multitude of souls, sick souls, sinful
souls, carried away by sin, full of evil, and he is trying
with all his might to rescue them from their miserable
state ; and, in order to save them from more heinous sins,
he tries, to the full extent that his conscience will allow
40 hiin to go, to shut his eyes to such sins, as are, though
sins, yet lighter in character or degree. He knows perfectly

368 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
well that, if he is as strict as he would wish to be, he shall
be able to do nothing at aU with the run of men ; so he
is as indulgent with them as ever he can be. Let it not
be for an instant supposed, that I aUow of the maxim of
doing evU that good may come ; but, keeping clear of this,
there is a way of winning men from greater sins by winking
for the time at the less, or at mere improprieties or faults ;
and this is the key to the difficulty which Catholic books
of moral theology so often cause to the Protestant. They
are intended for the Confessor, and Protestants view them 10
as intended for the Preacher.
2. And I observe upon Taylor, MUton, and Paley thus :
What would a Protestant clergyman say to me, if I accused
him of teaching that a he was aUowable ; and if, when
he asked for my proof, I said in reply that (such was the
doctrine of) Taylor and Milton [so taught] ? Why, he
would sharply retort, " I am not bound by Taylor or
Milton ; " and if I went on urging that " Taylor was one
of his authorities," he would answer that Taylor was
a great writer, but great writers were not therefore infal- 20
lible. This is pretty much the answer which I make, when
I am considered in this matter a disciple of St. Affonso.
I plainly and positively state, and without any reserve,
that I do not at aU foUow this holy and charitable man in
this portion of his teaching. There are various schools of
opinion allowed in the Church : and on this point I f oUow
others. I follow Cardinal Gerdil, and Natalis Alexander,
nay, St. Augustine. I wiU quote one passage from Natalis
Alexander : — " They certainly he, who utter the words
of an oath, without the wiU to swear or bind them-30
selves : or who make use of mental reservations and equi
vocations in swearing, since they signify by words what
they have not in mind, contrary to the end for which
language was instituted, viz. as signs of ideas. Or they
mean something else than the words signify in themselves
and the common custom of speech." And, to take an
instance : I do not beheve any priest in England would
dream of saying, " My friend is not here ; " meaning, " He
is not in my pocket or under my shoe." Nor should any
consideration make me say so myself. I do not think 10
St. Alfonso would in his own case have said so ; and he

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 369
would have been as much shocked at Taylor and Paley,
as Protestants are at him(2).
And now, if Protestants wish to know what our real
teaching is, as on other subjects, so on that of lying,
let them look, not at our books of casuistry, but at our
catechisms. Works on pathology do not give the best in
sight into the form and the harmony of the human frame ;
and, as it is with the body, so is it with the mind.
Tfie Catechism of the Council of Trent was drawn up for
10 the express purpose of providing preachers with subjects
for their sermons ; and, as my whole work has been
a defence of myself, I may here say that I rarely preach
a Sermon, but I go to this beautiful and complete Catechism
to get both my matter and my doctrine. There we find
the foUowing notices about the duty of veracity : —
" ' Thou shalt not bear false witness,' &c. : let attention
be drawn to two laws contained in this commandment : —
the one, forbidding .false witness ; the other bidding, that
removing aU pretence and deceits, we should measure our
20 words and deeds by simple truth, as the Apostle admonished
the Ephesians of that duty in these words : ' Doing truth
in charity, let us grow in Him through all things.'
" To deceive by a lie in joke or for the sake of compli
ment, though to no one there accrues loss or gain in
consequence, nevertheless is altogether unworthy : for
thus the Apostle admonishes, ' Putting aside lying, speak
ye truth.' For therein is great danger of lapsing into
frequent and more serious lying, and from lies in joke men
gain the habit of lying, whence they gain the character
30 of not being truthful. And thence again, in order to gain
credit to their words, they find it necessary to make
a practice of swearing.
"Nothing is more necessary ([for us]) than truth of
testimony, in those things, which we neither know our
selves, nor can aUowably be ignorant of, on which point
there is extant that maxim of St. Augustine's ; Whoso
2 Footnote in 1865. (2 Vide Note G, Lying and Equivocation.)
11 sermons] Sermons 15 veracity] Veracity
31 credit] credence 33 These [ ] are in the 1865 edition.

370 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
conceals the truth, and whoso puts forth a he, each is
guilty ; the one because he is not wUling to do a service,
the other because he has a wish to do a mischief.
"It is lawful at times to be sUent about the truth, but
out of a court of law ; for in court, when a witness is
interrogated by the judge according to law, the truth is
wholly to be brought out.
" Witnesses, however, must beware, lest, from over-
confidence in their memory, they affirm for certain, what
they have not verified. 10
" In order that the faithful may with more good will
avoid the sin of lying, the Parish Priest shaU set before
them the extreme misery and turpitude of this wickedness.
For, in holy writ, the devil is caUed the father of a lie ;
for, in that he did not remain in Truth, he is a liar, and
the father of a lie. He will add, with the view of ridding
men of so great a crime, the evils which follow upon lying ;
and, whereas they are innumerable, he wUl point out [at
least] the sources and the general heads of these mischiefs
and calamities, viz. 1. How great is God's displeasure and 20
how great His hatred of a man who is insincere and a har.
2. What (little) security there is that a man who is speciaUy
hated by God may not be visited by the heaviest punish
ments. 3. What more unclean and foul, as St. James says,
than .... that a fountain by the same jet should send
out sweet water and bitter 1 4. For that tongue, which
just now praised God, next, as far as in it lies, dishonours
Him by lying. 5. In consequence, hars are shut out from
the possession of heavenly beatitude. 6. That too is the
worst evil of lying, that that disease of the mind is generally 30
incurable. " Moreover, there is this harm too, and one of vast
extent, and touching men generally, that by insincerity
and lying faith and truth are lost, which are the firmest
bonds of human society, and, when they are lost, supreme
confusion follows in life, so that men seem in nothing to
differ from devils.
" Lastly, the Parish Priest will set those right who
excuse their insincerity and allege the example of wise
18, 19 These [ ] are in the 1S64 and 1865 editions.

(POSITION OF MY MIND SINCE 1845.) 371
men, who, they say, are used to lie for an occasion. He
will teU them, what is most true, that the wisdom of the
flesh is death. He will exhort his hearers to trust in God,
when they are in difficulties and straits, nor to have
recourse to the expedient of a lie.
" They who throw the blame of their own lie on those
who have aheady by a lie deceived them, are to be taught
that men must not revenge themselves, nor make up for
one evil by another." ....
10 There is much more in the Catechism to the same effect,
and it is of universal obligation ; whereas the decision of
a particular author in morals need not be accepted by
any one.
To one other authority I appeal on this subject, which
commands from me attention of a special kind, for they
are the words of a Father. They will serve to bring my
work to a conclusion.
" St. Philip," says the Roman Oratorian who wrote his
Life, " had a particular dislike of affectation both in him-
20 self and others, in speaking, in dressing, or in any thing
else. " He avoided all ceremony which savoured of worldly
compliment, and always showed himself a great stickler
for Christian simplicity in every thing ; so that, when he
had to deal with men of worldly prudence, he did not very
readily accommodate himseff to them.
" And he avoided, as much as possible, having any
thing to do with two-faced persons, who did not go simply
and straightforwardly to work in their transactions.
30 "As for liars, he could not endure them, and he was
continually reminding his spiritual children, to avoid them
as they would a pestilence."
These are the principles on which I have acted before
I was a CathoUc ; these are the principles which,, I trust,
will be my stay and guidance to the end.
I have closed this history of myself with St. Philip's
name upon St. Philip's feast-day ; and, having done so,
to whom can I more suitably offer it, as a memorial of
15-16 they are the words . . . They] it is the teaching ... It

372 GENERAL ANSWER TO MR. KINGSLEY.
affection and gratitude, than to St. Philip's sons, my
dearest brothers of this House, the Priests of the Birming
ham Oratory, Ambrose St. John, Henry Austin Mills,
Henry Bittleston, Edward Caswall, William Paine
Neville, and Henry Ignatius Dudley Ryder ? who
have been so faithful to me ; who have been so sensitive
of my needs ; who have been so indulgent to my failings ;
who have carried me through so many trials ; who have
grudged no sacrifice, if I asked for it ; who have been so
cheerful under discouragements of my causing ; who have 10
done so many good works, and let me have the credit of
them ; — with whom I have lived so long, with whom I hope
to die.
And to you especiaUy, dear Ambrose St. John ; whom
God gave me, when He took every one else away ; who
are the link between my old life and my new ; who have
now for twenty-one years been so devoted to me, so patient,
so zealous, so tender ; who have let me lean so hard upon
you ; who have watched me so narrowly ; who have never
thought of yourself, if I was in question. 20
And in you I gather up and bear in memory those
familiar affectionate companions and counseUors, who in
Oxford were given to me, one after another, to be my
daily solace and relief ; and all those others, of great name
and high example, who were my thorough friends, and
showed me true attachment in times long past ; and also
those many younger men, whether I knew them or not,
who have never been disloyal to me by word or [by] deed ;
and of all these, thus various in their relations to me,
those more especially who have since joined the Catholic 30
Church. And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with
a hope against hope, that aU of us, who once were so
united, and so happy in our union, may even now be
brought at length, by the Power of the Divine WiU, into
One Fold and under One Shepherd.
May 26, 1864.
In Festo Corp. Christ.
27 younger 1864, 1865] young 1864 (another copy).

APPENDIX. (1864.)
ANSWER IN DETAIL TO MR. KINGSLEY'S
ACCUSATIONS.

APPENDIX.
[answer in detail to mr. kingsley's accusations.
In proceeding now, according to the engagement with
which I entered upon my undertaking, to examine in
detail the Pamphlet which has been written against me,
I am very sorry to be obliged to say, that it is as slovenly
and random and futile in its definite charges, as it is
iniquitous in its method of disputation. And now I pro
ceed to show this without any delay ; and shall consider in
order, 1. My Sermon on the Apostolical Christian.
2. My Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence.
3. The AngUcan Church.
4. The Lives of the English Saints.
5. Ecclesiastical Miracles.
6. Popular Religion.
7. The Economy.
8. Lying and Equivocation.

Appendix. 1864] Notes. 1865
The matter between [ ], pp. 375-7, was not reprinted in 1865.

376 APPENDIX.

1.
(Not reprinted in 1865.)
My Sermon on " The Apostolical Christian," being the \§th
of " Sermons on Subjects of the Day."
This writer says, " What Dr. Newman means by Chris
tians ... he has not left in doubt ; " and then, quoting
a passage from this Sermon which speaks of " the humble
monk and the holy nun " being " Christians after the
very pattern given us in Scripture," he observes, " This
is his definition of Christians." — p. 28.
This is not the case. I have neither given a definition,
nor implied one, nor intended one ; nor could I, either
now or in 1843-4, or at any time, aUow of the particular
definition he ascribes to me. As if aU Christians must be io
monks or nuns !
What I have said is, that monks and nuns are patterns
of Christian perfection ; and that Scripture itself supplies
us with this pattern. Who can deny this ? Who is bold
enough to say that St. John Baptist, who, I suppose, is
a Scripture Character, is not a pattern-monk ; and that
Mary, who " sat at our Lord's feet," was not a pattern-
nun ? and " Anna too, who served God with fastings and
prayers night and day ? " Again, what is meant but this
by St. Paul's saying, " It is good for a man not to touch 20
a woman ? " and, when speaking of the father or guardian
of a young girl, " He that giveth her in marriage doeth
well ; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better ? '
And what does St. John mean but to praise virginity, when
he says of the hundred forty and four thousand on Mount
Sion, " These are they which were not defiled with women,
for they are virgins ? " And what else did our Lord
mean, when He said, " There be eunuchs who have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.
He that is able to receive it, let him receive it ? " 30
He ought to know his logic better : I have said that

APPENDIX. 377
" monks and nuns find their pattern in Scripture : " he
adds, Therefore I hold all Christians are monks and nuns.
This is Blot one.
Now then for Blot two.
" Monks and nuns the only perfect Christians . . . what
more ? "—p. 29.
A second fault in logic. I said no more than that monks
and nuns were perfect Christians : he adds, Therefore
" monks and nuns are the only perfect Christians." Monks
10 and nuns are not the only perfect Christians ; I never
thought so or said so, now or at any other time.
P. 57. "In the Sermon . . . monks and nuns are spoken
of as the only true Bible Christians." This, again, is not
the case. What I said is, that " monks and nuns are Bible
Christians : " it does not foUow, nor did I mean, that " all
Bible Christians are monks and nuns." Bad logic again.
Blot three. ,]

378 APPENDIX

[MY] SERMON ON " WISDOM AND INNOCENCE "[, BEING THE
20TH OF " SERMONS ON SUBJECTS OF THE DAY "].
(The professed basis of the charge of lying and equivoca
tion made against me, and, in my person, against the
Catholic clergy, was, as I have already noticed in the
Preface, a certain Sermon of mine on " Wisdom and Inno
cence," being the 20th in a series of " Sermons on Subjects
of the Day," written, preached, and published whUe I was
an Anglican. Of this Sermon my accuser spoke thus in
his Pamphlet : —
(" It is occupied entirely with the attitude of ' the world ' to
' Christians ' and ' the Church.') [This writer says, p. 28, about 10
my Sermon 20,] By the world appears to be signified, especially,
the Protestant pubhc of these realms( ; what Dr. Newman means
by Christians, and the Church, he has not left in doubt; for in the
preceding Sermon he says : ' But if the truth must be spoken, what
are the'humble monk and the holy nun, and other regulars, as they
are called, but Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture,
&c.' .... This is his definition of Christians. And in the Sermon
itself, he sufficiently defines what he means by ' the Church,' in
two "notes of her character, which he shall give in his own words :
' What, for instance, though we grant that sacramental confession 20
and the celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate the body politic
in the relation of rulers and subjects, or, in other words, to aggrandize
the priesthood 1 for how can the Church be one body without such
relation ? ' "—P. 28.
(He then proceeded to analyze and comment on it at
great length, and to criticize severely the method and tone
of my Sermons generally. Among other things, he said : —
(" What, then, did the Sermon mean ?) [He also asks, p. 33] Why
was it preached ?[...] (To insinuate that a Church which had sacra
mental confession and a celibate clergy was the only true Church ? 30
Or) to insinuate, that the admiring young gentlemen, who listened to
him, stood to 'their fellow-countrymen in the relation of the early
2. (in heading)] Note C. On page 250.

APPENDIX. 379
Christians to the heathen Romans ? . Or that Queen Victoria's
Government was to the Church of England, what Nero's or Dio-
clesian's was to the Church of Rome ? It may have been so.["]
[May or may not, it wasn't. He insinuates, what not even
with his little finger does he attempt to prove. Blot four.
He asserts, p. 29, that I said in the Sermon in question,
that " Sacramental Confession and the celibacy of the
clergy are ' notes ' of the Church." And, just before, he
puts the word " notes " in inverted commas, as if it was
10 mine. That is, he garbles. It is not mine. Blot five.
He says that I " define what I mean by the Church in
two ' notes ' of her character." I do not define, or dream
of defining.
1. He says that I teach that the celibacy of the clergy
enters into the definition of the Church. I do no such
thing ; that is the blunt truth. Define the Church by the
celibacy of the clergy ! why, let him read 1 Tim. iii. ;
there he wUl find that bishops and deacons are spoken of
as married. How, then, could I be the dolt to say or
20 imply that the celibacy of the clergy was a part of the
definition of the Church ? Blot six.
And again in p. 57, " In the Sermon a celibate clergy is
made a note of the Church." Thus the untruth is repeated.
Blot seven.
2. And now for Blot eight. Neither did I say that
" Sacramental confession " was " a note of the Church."
Nor is it. Nor could I with any cogency have brought
this as an argument against the Church of England, for
the Church of England has retained Confession, nay,
30 Sacramental Confession. No fair man can read the form
of Absolution in the Anglican Prayer in the Visitation of
the Sick, without seeing that that Church does sanction
and provide for Confession and Absolution. If that form
does not contain the profession of a grave Sacramental
act, words have no meaning. The form is almost in the
words of the Roman form ; and, by the time that this
Clergyman has succeeded in explaining it away, he will
4 The matter between [], pages 379 to 380 line 12, was not reprinted in 1866.

380 APPENDIX.
have also got skill enough to explain away the Roman
form ; and if he did but handle my words with that latitude
with which he interprets his own formularies, he would
prove that, instead of my being superstitious and frantic,
I was the most Protestant of preachers and the most
latitudinarian of thinkers. It would be charity in him,
in his reading of my words, to use some of that power of
evasion, of which he shows himself such a master in his
dealing with his own Prayer Book. Yet he has the assur
ance at p. 33 to ask, " Why was the Sermon preached ? 10
to insinuate that a Church which had sacramental con
fession and a celibate clergy was the only true Church ? "]
(I know that men used to suspect Dr. Newman, — I have been
inclined to do so myself, — of writing a whole Sermon, not for the
sake of the text or of the matter, but for the sake of one single
passing hint — one phrase, one epithet, one Httle barbed arrow,
which, as he swept magnificently past on the stream of his calm
eloquence, seemingly unconscious of all presences, save those unseen,
he dehvered unheeded, as with his finger-tip, to the very heart of an
initiated hearer, never to be withdrawn again. I do not blame him 20
for that. It is one of the highest triumphs of oratorio power, and
may be employed honestly and fairly by any person who has the
skill to do it honestly and fairly ; but then, Why did he entitle his
Sermon ' Wisdom and Innocence ' ?
("What, then, could I think that Dr. Newman meant? I found
a preacher bidding Christians imitate, to some undefined point, the
' arts ' of the basest of animals, and of men, and of the devil himself.
I found him, by a strange perversion of Scripture, insinuating that
St. Paul's conduct and manner were such as naturally to bring
down on him the reputation of being a crafty deceiver. I found 30
him — horrible to say it — even hinting the same of one greater than
St. Paul. I found him denying or explaining away the existence of
that Priestcraft, which is a notorious fact to every honest student
of history, and justifying (as far as I can understand him) that
double-dealing by which prelates, in the middle age, too often played
off alternately the sovereign against the people, and the people
against the sovereign, careless which was in the right, so long as
their own power gained by the move. I found him actually using
of such (and, as I thought, of himself and his party likewise) the
words ' They yield outwardly ; to assent inwardly were to betray 40
the faith. Yet they are called deceitful and double-dealing, because
they do as much as they can, and not more than they may.' I found
12 The matter between [ ], pp. 379, line 4 to 380, was not reprinted in 1865.
13 I know that men In 1S65 this followed wltat is here page 379 line 3.

APPENDIX. 381
him telling Christians that they will always seem ' artificial,' and
' wanting in openness and manliness ; ' that they will always be
' a mystery ' to the world, and that the world will always think
them rogues ; and bidding them glory in what the world (i. e. the
rest of their countrymen), disown, and say with Mawworm, ' I hke
to be despised.'
(" Now, how was I to know that the preacher, who had the
reputation of being the most acute man of his generation, and of
having a specially intimate acquaintance with the weaknesses of the
10 human heart, was utterly blind to the broad meaning and the plain
practical result of a Sermon like this, dehvered before fanatic and
hot-headed young men, who hung upon his every word ? that he
did not foresee that they would think that they obeyed him by
becoming affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments
and equivocations ? " &c. &c. — Pp. 33, 34.
(My accuser asked in this passage what did the Sermon
mean, and why was it preached. I will here answer this
question;) [" Why? " I will tell the reader, why;] and
with this view will speak, first of the contents of the
20 Sermon, then of its subject, then of its circumstances.
1. It was one of the last six Sermons which I wrote
when I was an Anglican. It was one of the five Sermons
I preached in St. Mary's between Christmas and Easter,
1843, the year when I gave up my Living. The MS. of
the Sermon is destroyed ; but I believe, and my memory
too bears me out, as far as it goes, that the sentence in
question about Celibacy and Confession(, of which this
writer would make so much,) was not preached at all. The
Volume, in which this Sermon is found, was published after
30 that I had given up St. Mary's, when I had no call on me
to restrain the expression of any thing which I might hold :
and I state(d) an important fact about it in the Advertise
ment^ which this truth-loving writer suppresses. Blot
nine. My words, which stared him in the face, are as follows]
(in these words) : — " In preparing [these Sermons] for
publication, a few words and sentences have in several
places been added, which will be found to express more
of private or personal opinion, than it was expedient to
19 contents] matter
20 subject . . . circumstances] subject . . . circumstances
36 [These Sermons] The [ ] are the Author's.

382 APPENDIX.
introduce into the instruction dehvered in Church to
a parochial Congregation. Such introduction, however,
seems unobjectionable in the case of compositions, which
are detached from the sacred place and service to which
they once belonged, and submitted to the reason and judg
ment of the general reader."
This Volume of Sermons then cannot be criticized at aU
as preachments ; they are essays ; essays of a man who,
at the time of publishing them, was not a preacher. Such
passages, as that in question, are just the very ones which 10
I added upon my pubhshing them, (and, as) I always was
on my guard in the pulpit of saying any thing which looked
towards Rome ; and therefore aU his rhetoric about my
" disciples," " admiring young gentlemen who listened to
me," " fanatic and hot-headed young men, who hung upon
my every word," becomes simple rubbish.
(At the same time I cannot conceive why the mention of
Sacramental Confession, or of Clerical Celibacy, had I made
it, was inconsistent with the position of an Anghcan Clergy
man. For Sacramental Confession and Absolution actually 20
form a portion of the Anghcan Visitation of the Sick ; and
though the 32nd Article says that " Bishops, priests, and
deacons, are not commanded by God's law either to vow
the state of single lffe or to abstain from marriage," and
" therefore it is lawful for them to marry," this proposition
I did not dream of denying, nor is it inconsistent with
St. Paul's doctriife, which I held, that it is " good to abide
even as he," i. e. in ceUbacy.)
(But) I have more to say on this point. This writer
says, [p. 33,] " I know that men used to suspect Dr. New- 30
man,— I have been incUned to do so myself, — of writing
a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter,
but for the sake of one simple passing hint, — one phrase,
one epithet." (Now observe ;) Can there be a plainer
testimony borne to the practical character of my Sermons
at St. Mary's than this gratuitous insinuation ? Many
a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused of not
11 them.] them; 12 of] against
13-16 Rome; . . . rubbish] Rome, I shall believe that I did not
preach the obnoxious sentence till some one is found to testify that he
heard it

(NOTE C.) 383
letting his parishioners alone, and of teasing them with
his private theological notions. [You would gather from
the general tone of this Writer that that was my way.
Every one who was in the habit of hearing me, knows that
it wasn't. This Writer either knows nothing about it, and
then he ought to be silent ; or he does know, and then he
ought to speak the truth. Others spread] the same report
(was spread about me) twenty years ago as he does now,
and the world beheved that my Sermons at St. Mary's were
10 full of red-hot Tractarianism. Then strangers came to hear
me preach, and were astonished at their own disappoint
ment. I recoUect the wife of a great prelate from a distance
coming to hear me, and then expressing her surprise to find
that I preached nothing but a plain humdrum Sermon.
I recollect how, when on the Sunday before Commemora
tion one year, a number of strangers came to hear me, and
I preached in my usual way, residents in Oxford, of high
position, were loud in their satisfaction that on a great
occasion, I had made a simple fafiure, for after all there
20 was nothing in the Sermon to hear. Well, but they were
not going to let me off, for all my common-sense view of
duty. Accordingly, they got up the charitable theory
which this Writer revives. They said that there was
a double purpose in those plain addresses of mine, and
that my Sermons were never so artful as when they seemed
common-place ; that there were sentences which redeemed
their apparent simplicity and quietness. So they watched
during the delivery of a Sermon, which to them was too
practical to be useful, for the concealed point of it, which
30 they could at least imagine, if they could not discover.
" Men used to suspect Dr. Newman," he says, " of writing
a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the
matter, but for the sake of (one single passing hint,) . . .
one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow, which, as
he swept magnificently past on the stream of his calm
eloquence, seemingly unconscious of aU presences, save
those unseen, he delivered unheeded," &c. [p. 33.] To all
appearance, he says, I was " unconscious of aU presences "[;
so this kind Writer suppUes the true interpretation of this
8 he does] this writer spreads

384 APPENDIX.
unconsciousness.] He is not able to deny that " the whole
Sermon " had the appearance of being "for the sake of the
text and matter ; " therefore he suggests that perhaps it
wasn't. [And then he emptily talks of the " magnificent
sweep of my eloquence," and my " oratorio power." Did
he forget that the Sermon of which he thus speaks can be
read by others as well as him ? Now, the sentences are as
short as Aristotle's, and as grave as Bishop Butler's. It
is written almost in the condensed style of Tract 90.
Eloquence there is none. I put this down as Blot ten.] 10
2. And now as to the subject of the Sermon. The
series of which the Volume consists are such [Sermons]
as are, more or less, exceptions to the rule which I ordin
arily observed, as to the subjects which I introduced into
the pulpit of St. Mary's. They are not purely ethical or
doctrinal. They were for the most part caused by circum
stances of the day or of the time, and they belong to various
years. One was written in 1832, two in 1836, two in 1838,
five in 1840, five in 1841, four in 1842, seven in 1843.
Many of them are engaged on one subject, viz. in viewing 20
the Church in its relation to the world. By the world was
meant, not simply those multitudes which were not in the
Church, but the existing body of human society, whether
in the Church or not, whether Cathohcs, Protestants,
Greeks, or Mahometans, theists or idolaters, as being ruled
by principles, maxims, and instincts of their own, that is,
of an unregenerate nature, whatever their supernatural
privileges might be, greater or less, according to their form
of religion. This view of the relation of the Church to the
world as taken apart from questions of ecclesiastical politics, 30
as they may be called, is often brought out in my Sermons.
Two occur to me at once ; No. 3 of my Plain Sermons,
which was written in 1829, and No. 15 of my Third Volume
(of Parochial), written in 1835. [Then,] on the other hand,
by Church I meant, — in common with all writers con
nected with the Tract Movement, whatever their shades
of opinion, and with the whole body of English divines,
except those of the Puritan or Evangelical School, — the
12 series] Sermons 17 time] moment

(NOTE C.) 385
whole of Christendom, from the Apostles' time till now,
whatever their later divisions into Latin, Greek, and
Anglican. I have explained this view of the subject above
at pp. 168 — 171 of this Volume. When then I speak, in
the particular Sermon before us, of the members, or the
rulers, or the action of " the Church," I mean neither the
Latin, nor the Greek, nor the Enghsh, taken by itself, but
of the whole Church as one body : of Italy as one with
England, of the Saxon or Norman as one with the Caroline
io Church. This was specially the one Church, and the
points in which one branch or one period differed from
another were not and could not be Notes of the Church,
because Notes necessarily belong[ed] to the whole of the
Church every where and always.
This being my doctrine as to the relation of the Church
to the world, I laid down in the Sermon three principles
concerning it, and there left the matter. The first is, that
Divine Wisdom had framed for its action, laws which man,
if left to himseff, would have antecedently pronounced to
20 be the worst possible for its success, and which in all ages
have been caUed by the world, as they were in the Apostles'
days, " fooUshness ; " that man ever rehes on physical
and material force, and on carnal inducements, — as
Mahomet with his sword and his houris, or indeed almost
as that theory of religion, called, since the Sermon was
written, " muscular Christianity ; " but that our Lord,
on the contrary, has substituted meekness for haughtiness,
passiveness for violence, and innocence for craft : and that
the event has shown the high wisdom of such an economy,
30 for it has brought to light a set of natural laws, unknown
before, by which the seeming paradox that weakness should
be stronger than might, and simplicity than worldly policy,
is readily explained.
Secondly, I said that men of the world, judging by the
event, and not recognizing the secret causes of the success,
viz. a higher order of natural laws, — natural, though their
source and action were supernatural, (for " the meek inherit
the earth," by means of a meekness which comes from
above,) — these men, I say, concluded, that the success
40 which they witnessed must arise from some evil secret
which the world had not mastered, — by means of magic,
AP0IA3QIA O

386 APPENDIX.
as they said in the first ages, by cunning as they say now.
And accordingly they thought that the humility and
inoffensiveness of Christians, or of Churchmen, was a mere
pretence and blind to cover the real causes of that success,
which Christians could explain and would not ; and that
they were simply hypocrites.
Thirdly, I suggested that shrewd ecclesiastics, who knew
very well that there was neither magic nor craft in the
matter, and, from their intimate acquaintance with what
actually went on within the Church, discerned what were 10
the real causes of its success, were of course under the
temptation of substituting reason for conscience, and,
instead of simply obeying the command, were led to do
good that good might come, that is, to act in order to their
success, and not from a motive of faith. Some, I said, did
yield to the temptation more or less, and their motives
became mixed ; and in this way the world in a more
subtle shape has got into the Church ; and hence it has
come to pass, that, looking at its history from first to last,
we cannot possibly draw the line between good and evil 20
there, and say either that every thing is to be defended,
or some things to be condemned. I expressed the difficulty,
which I supposed to be inherent in the Church, in the foUow-
ing words. I said, " Priestcraft has ever been considered,
the badge, and its imputation is a kind of Note of the
Church ; and in part indeed truly, because the presence of
powerful enemies, and the sense of their own weakness,
has sometimes tempted Christians to the abuse, instead of the
use of Christian wisdom, to be wise without being harmless ;
but partly, nay, for the most part, not truly, but slan-30
derously, and merely because the world caUed their wisdom
craft, when it was found to be a match for its own numbers
and power." [This passage he has partly garbled, partly
omitted. Blot eleven.]
Such is the substance of the Sermon : and as to the
main drift of it, it was this ; that I was, there and else
where, scrutinizing the course of the Clrurch as a whole.
as if philosophically, as an historical phenomenon, and
observing the laws on which it was conducted. Hence the
14 their] secure 18 has (tuice)] had 20 cannot] could not
21 is] was 22 some] oertain

(NOTE C.) 387
Sermon, or Essay as it more truly is, is written in a dry
and unimpassioned way : it shows as little of human
warmth of feelingf, I repeat,] as a Sermon of Bishop
Butler's. Yet, under that calm exterior there was a deep
and keen sensitiveness, as I shall now proceed to show.
3. If I mistake not, it was written with a secret thought
about myseff. Every one preaches according to his frame
of mind, at the time of preaching. One heaviness especially
oppressed me at that season, which this Writer, twenty
10 years afterwards, has set himself with a good will to
renew : it arose from the sense of the base calumnies which
were thrown upon me on all sides. (It is worth observing
that this Sermon is exactly contemporaneous with the
report spread by a Bishop (vid. supr. p. 275), that I had
advised a clergyman converted to Catholicism to retain
his Living. This report was in circulation in February
1843, and my Sermon was preached on the 19th.) In this
trouble of mind (into which I was thrown by such calum
nies as this,) I gained, while I reviewed the history of the
20 Church, at once an argument and a consolation. My
argument was this : if I, who knew my own innocence,
was so blackened by party prejudice, perhaps those high
rulers and those servants of the Church, in the many ages
which intervened between the early Nicene times and the
present, who were laden with such grievous accusations,
were innocent also ; and this reflection served to make me
tender towards those great names of the past, to whom
weaknesses or crimes were imputed, and reconciled me to
difficulties in ecclesiastical proceedings, which there were
30 no means now of properly explaining. And the sympathy
thus excited for them, re-acted on myseff, and I found
comfort in being able to put myseff under the shadow of
those who had suffered as I was suffering, and who seemed
to promise me their recompense, since I had a feUowship
in their trial. In a letter to my Bishop at the time of
Tract 90, part of which I have quoted, I said that I had
ever tried to " keep innocency ; " and now two years had
passed since then, and men were louder and louder in
12 thrown] heaped 17 this] the

388 APPENDIX.
heaping on me the very charges, which this Writer repeats
out of my Sermon, of " fraud and cunning," " craftiness
and deceitfulness," " double-dealing," " priestcraft," of
being " mysterious, dark, subtle, designing," when I was
all the time conscious to myseff, in my degree, and after
my measure, of " sobriety, self-restraint, and control of
word and feeling." I had had experience how my past
success had been imputed to " secret management ; " and
how, when I had shown surprise at that success, that
surprise again was imputed to " deceit ; " and how myio
honest heartfelt submission to authority had been caUed,
as it was called in a colonial Bishop's charge, " mystic
humility ; " and how my silence was called an " hypocrisy ; "
and my faithfulness to my clerical engagements a secret
correspondence with the enemy. And I found a way
of destroying my sensitiveness about these things which
jarred upon my sense of justice, and otherwise would
have been too much for me, by the contemplation of a
large law of the Divine Dispensation, and found myself
more and more able to bear in my own person a present 20
trial, of which in my past writings I had expressed an
anticipation. For thus feeling and thus speaking this Writer has the
charitableness and the decency to caU me " Mawworm."
" I found him telling Christians," he says, " that they will
always seem ' artificial,' and ' wanting in opemiess and
manliness ; ' that they will always be ' a mystery ' to the
world ; and that the world wiU always think them rogues ;
and bidding them glory in what the world (that is, the rest
of their fellow-countrymen) disown, and say with Maw- 30
worm, ' I like to be despised.' [. . .] (Now) How was
I to know that the preacher . . . was utterly blind to the
broad meaning and the plain practical result of a Sermon
like this delivered before fanatic and hot-headed young
men, who hung upon his every word ? " — [p. 34. Hot
headed young men ! why, man, you are writing a Romance.
You think the scene is Alexandria or the Spanish main,
where you may let your imagination play revel to the
extent of inveracity. It is good luck for me that the
12 colonial] foreign 19 found] felt 23-24 has the
charitableness and the decency to call me] compares me to

(NOTE C.) 389
scene of my labours was not at Moscow or Damascus.
Then I might be one of your ecclesiastical Saints, of which
I sometimes hear in conversation, but with whom, I am
glad to say, I have no personal acquaintance. Then you
might ascribe to me a more deadly craft than mere quibbling
and lying ; in Spain I should have been an Inquisitor,
with my rack in the background ; I should have had a con
cealed dagger in Sicily ; at Venice I should have brewed
poison ; in Turkey I should have been the Sheik-el-Islam
10 with my bowstring ; in Khorassan I should have been
a veUed Prophet. "Fanatic young men ! " Why he is
writing out the list of a Dramatis Persona? ; " guards, con
spirators, populace," and the like. He thinks I was ever
moving about with a train of Capulets at my heels.]
["] Hot-headed fanatics, who hung on my every word ! ["]
If he had (undertaken to write a history, and not a play,
he would have easily found out, as I have said (above), that
from 1841 1 had severed myseff from the younger generation
of Oxford, that Dr. Pusey and I had then closed our theo-
20 logical meetings at his house, that I had brought my own
weekly evening parties to an end, that I preached only by
fits and starts at St. Mary's, so that the attendance of
young men was broken up, that in those very weeks from
Christmas tUl over Easter, during which this Sermon was
preached, I was but five times in the pulpit there. He
would have known, that it was written at a time when
I was shunned rather than sought, when I had great sacri
fices in anticipation, when I was thinking much of myself ;
that I was ruthlessly tearing myself away from my own
30 followers, and that, in the musings of that Sermon, I was
at the very utmost only delivering a testimony in my
behalf for time to come, not sowing my rhetoric broad
cast for the chance of present sympathy. [Blot twelve.]
I proceed : he says [at p. 33], " I found him actually
using of such [prelates], (and, as I thought, of himself
and his party likewise,) the words ' They yield outwardly ;
to assent inwardly were to betray the faith. Yet they are
called deceitful and double-dealing, because they do as
15 Hot-headed fanatics] Fanatic and hot-headed young men
16 play] romance 26 known] found
34 I proceed :] Again, 35 [prelates] These are Dr. Newman's [ J

390 APPENDIX.
much as they can, not more than they may.' " This too
is a proof of my duplicity ! Let this writer [go] (, in his
dealings) with some one else, (go) just a little further than
he has gone with me ; and let him get into a court of law
for libel ; and let him be convicted ; and let him still
fancy that his libel, though a libel, was true, and let us
then see whether he wiU not in such a case " yield out
wardly," without assenting internaUy ; and then again
whether we should please him, if we called him " deceitful
and double-dealing," because " he did as much as he 10
could, not more than he ought to do." But Tract 90 will
supply a real illustration of what I meant. I yielded to
the Bishops in outward act, viz. in not defending the Tract,
and in closing the Series ; but, not only did I not assent
inwardly to any condemnation of it, but I opposed myself
to the proposition of a condemnation on the part of
authority. Yet I was then by the public caUed " deceitful
and double-dealing," as this Writer calls me now, " because
I did as much as I felt I could do, and not more than I felt
I could honestly do." Many were the pubUcations of the 20
day and the private letters which accused me of shuffling,
because I closed the Series of Tracts, yet kept the Tracts
on sale, as if I ought to comply not only with what my
Bishop asked, but with what he did not ask, and perhaps
did not wish. However, such teaching, according to this
Writer, was likely to make young men (") suspect, that
truth was not a virtue for its own sake, but only for the
sake of ["]the spread of Cathohc opinions," and the
" salvation of their own souls ; " and that ["] cunning was
the weapon which heaven had aUowed to them to defend 30
themselves against the persecuting Protestant public." —
p. 34. [Blot thirteen.]
And now I draw attention to another point. He says
[at p. 34], " How was I to know that the preacher . . .
did not foresee, that [fanatic and hot-headed young men]
would think that they obeyed him, by becoming affected,
artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments and equivoca
tions ? " " How should he know ! " What ! I suppose
28 Catholic opinions "] ' Catholic opinions ' 29 " Salvation . . .
souls "] ' salvation . . . souls ' 33 another] a further 35 [fanatic
. . men] These are Dr. Newman's [ ]

(NOTE C.) 391
that we are to think every man a knave till he is proved
not to be such. Know ! had he no friend to tell him
whether I was " affected " or " artificial " myself ? Could
he not have done better than impute equivocations to me,
at a time when I was in no sense answerable for the amphi-
bologia of the Roman casuists ? Has he a single fact
which belongs to me personally or by profession to couple
my name with equivocation in 1843 ? " How should he
know " that I was not sly, smooth, artificial, non-natural !
10 he should know by that common manly frankness, [if he
had it,] by which we put confidence in others, till they are
proved to have forfeited it ; he should know it by my own
words in that very Sermon, in which I say it is best to be
natural, and that reserve is at best but an unpleasant
necessity. (For) I say (there expressly), " I do not deny
that there is something very engaging in a frank and
unpretending manner ; some persons have it more than
others ; in some persons it is a great grace. But it must
be recoUected that I am speaking of times of persecution
20 and oppression to Christians, such as the text foretells ;
and then surely frankness will become nothing else than
indignation at the oppressor, and vehement speech, if it
is permitted. Accordingly, as persons have deep feelings, so
they wUl find the necessity of self-control, lest they should
say what they ought not." [He omits these words. I call,
then, this base insinuation that I taught equivocation,
Blot the fourteenth.]
[Lastly,] he sums up thus :(—)" If [Dr. Newman] would
. . . persist (as in this Sermon) in dealing with matters
30 dark, offensive, doubtful, sometimes actually forbidden, at
least according to the notions of the great majority of
Enghsh Churchmen ; if he would always do so in a tentative,
paltering way, seldom or never letting the world know
how much he believed, how far he intended to go ; if, in
a word, his method of teaching was a suspicious one, what
6 Has] Had 15 " I do not deny These words commenced a new
paragraph in 1865. 23 feelings] feelings 28 He sums up
These words commenced a new paragraph in 1865. 28 [Dr. Newman]
These are Dr. Newman's [ ]

392 APPENDIX.
wonder if the minds of men were filled with suspicions of
him ? "—p. 35.
Now [first] (, in the course of my Narrative, I have frankly
admitted that I was tentative in such of my works as fairly
allowed of the introduction into them of religious inquiry ;
but) he is speaking of my Sermons ; where, then, is his
proof that in my Sermons I dealt in matters dark, offen
sive, doubtful, actually forbidden ? [he has said nothing
in proof that I have not been able flatly to deny.
[" Forbidden according to the notions of the great 10
majority of English Churchmen." I should hke to know
what opinions, beyond those which relate to the Creed, are
held by the " majority of Enghsh Churchmen : " — are his
own ? is it not perfectly weU known, that " the great
majority " think of him and his views with a feeling which
I will not describe, because it is not necessary for my
argument ? So far is certain, that he has not the majority
with him.
[" In a tentative, paltering way." The word " palter
ing " I reject, as vague; as to "tentative,"] he must 20
show that I was tentative in my Sermons ; and he has (the
range of) eight volumes to look through. As to the ninth,
my University Sermons, of course I was ["] tentative ["]
(in them); but not because " I would seldom or never let
the world know how much I believed, or how far I intended
to go ; " but because (University Sermons are commonly,
and allowably, of the nature of disquisitions, as preached
before a learned body; and because) in deep subjects,
which had not been fully investigated, I said as much as
I believed, and about as far as I saw I could go ; and 30
a man cannot do more ; and I account no man to be a
philosopher who attempts to do more. [How long am I to
have the office of merely negativing assertions which are
but supported by former assertions, in which John is ever
helping Tom, and the elephant stands upon the tortoise ?
This is Blot fifteen.]
20 he must] He must 22 look through] gather evidence in

(NOTE E.) 393
3.
The Anglican Church.
[This Writer says : — ¦" If there is, as there is, a strong
distrust of certain Catholics, it is restricted to the pro
selytizing priests among them ; and especially to those,
who, like Dr. Newman, have turned round upon their
mother Church, (I had almost said their mother country,)
with contumely and slander." — p. 36.
[No one has a right to make a charge, without at least
an attempt to prove what he says ; but this Writer is con
sistent with himseff. From the time that he first spoke
io of me in the Magazine, when has he ever even professed to
give evidence of any sort for any one of his charges, from
his own sense of propriety, and without being challenged on
the point ? After the sentence which I have been quoting,
and another Uke it, he coolly passes on to Tract 90 ! Blot
sixteen ; but I shall dwell on it awhile, for its own sake.]
[Now] I have been bringing out my mind in this Volume
on every subject which has come before me ; and there
fore I am bound to state plainly what I feel and have felt,
since I was a Catholic, about the Anglican Church. I said,
20 in a former page, that, on my conversion, I was not con
scious of any change in me of thought or feehng, as regards
matters of doctrine ; this, however, was not the case as
regards some matters of fact, and, unwilling as I am to
give offence to reUgious Anglicans, I am bound to confess
that I felt a great change in my view of the Church of
England. I cannot tell how soon there came on me, — but
very soon, — an extreme astonishment that I had ever
imagined it to be a portion of the Cathohc Church. For
the first time, I looked at it from without, and (as I should
30 myself say) saw it as it was. Forthwith I could not get
myseff to see in it any thing else, than what I had so long
3. (in heading)] Note E. On page 318.
O 3

394 APPENDIX
fearfully suspected, from as far back as 1836, — a mere
national institution. As if my eyes were suddenly opened,
so I saw it — spontaneously, apart from any definite act of
reason or any argument ; and so I have seen it ever since.
I suppose, the main cause of this lay in the contrast which
was presented to me by the Catholic Church. Then
I recognized at once a reality which was quite a new thing
with me. Then I was sensible that I was not making for
myself a Church by an effort of thought ; I needed not to
make an act of faith in her ; I had not painfuUy to force 10
myself into a position, but my mind feU back upon itself
in relaxation and in peace, and I gazed at her almost
passively as a great objective fact. I looked at her ; — at
her rites, her ceremonial, and her precepts ; and I said,
" This is a religion ; " and then, when I looked back upon
the poor Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so
hard, and upon all that appertained to it, and thought of
our various attempts to dress it up doctrinaUy and estheti-
cally, it seemed to me to be the veriest of nonentities.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! How can I make a 20
record of what passed within me, without seeming to be
satirical ? But I speak plain, serious words. As people
call me credulous for acknowledging Cathohc claims, so
they call me satirical for disowning Anghcan pretensions ;
to them it is credulity, to them it is satire ; but it is not
so in me. What they think exaggeration, I think truth.
I am not speaking of the Anglican Church in any disdain,
though to them I seem contemptuous. To them of course
it is " Aut Csesar aut nullus," but not to me. It may be
a great creation, though it be not divine, and this is how 30
I judge of it. Men, who abjure the divine right of kings,
would be very indignant, if on that account they were
considered disloyal. And so I recognize in the Anghcan
Church a time-honoured institution, of noble historical
memories, a monument of ancient wisdom, a momentous
arm of political strength, a great national organ, a source
of vast popular advantage, and, to a certain point, a witness
and teacher of religious truth. I do not think that, if
what I have written about it since I have been a Catholic,
20 Vanity This commenced a tiew paragraph in 1S65.
27 in] with

(NOTE E.) 395
be equitably considered as a whole, I shall be found to
have taken any other view than this ; but that it is some
thing sacred, that it is an oracle of revealed doctrine, that it
can claim a share in St. Ignatius or St. Cyprian, that it
can take the rank, contest the teaching, and stop the path
of the Church of St. Peter, that it can call itself " the
Bride of the Lamb," this is the view of it which simply
disappeared from my mind on my conversion, and which
it would be almost a miracle to reproduce. " I went by,
10 and lo ! it was gone ; I sought it, but its place could no
where be found ; " and nothing can bring it back to me.
And, as to its possession of an episcopal succession from
the time of the Apostles, well, it may have it, and, if the
Holy See ever so decide[d], I will beUeve it, as being the
decision of a higher judgment than my own ; but, for
myseff, I must have St. Philip's gift, who saw the sacer
dotal character on the forehead of a gaily-attired youngster,
before I can by my own wit acquiesce in it, for antiquarian
arguments are altogether unequal to the urgency of visible
20 facts. Why is it that I must pain dear friends by saying
so, and kindle a sort of resentment against me in the
kindest of hearts ? but I must, though to do it be not only
a grief to me, but most impolitic at the moment. Any how,
this is my mind ; and, if to have it, if to have betrayed it,
before now, involuntarily by my words or my deeds, if on
a fitting occasion, as now, to have avowed it, if aU this
be a proof of the justice of the charge brought against
me (by my accuser) of having "turned round upon my
Mother-Church with contumely and slander," in this sense,
30 but in no other sense, do I plead guilty to it without
a word in extenuation.
In no other sense surely ; the Church of England has
been the instrument of Providence in conferring great
benefits on me ;( — )had I been born in Dissent, perhaps
I should never have been baptized ; had I been born an
English Presbyterian, perhaps I should never have known
our Lord's divinity ; had I not come to Oxford, perhaps
I never should have heard of the visible Church, or of
Tradition, or other Catholic doctrines. And as I have
w received so much good from the Anglican Establishment
itself, can I have the heart, or rather the want of charity,

396 APPENDIX.
considering that it does for so many others, what it has
done for me, to wish to see it overthrown ? I have no
such wish while it is what it is, and while we are so smaU
a body. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of the many
congregations to which it ministers, I wih do nothing
against it. WhUe Catholics are so weak in England, it is
doing our work ; and, though it does us harm in a measure,
at present the balance is in our favour. What our duty
would be at another time and in other circumstances, sup
posing, for instance, the Estabhshment lost its dogmatic 10
faith, or at least did not preach it, is another matter
altogether. In secular history we read of hostUe nations
having long truces, and renewing them from time to time,
and that seems to be the position (which) the Cathohc
Church may fairly take up at present in relation to the
Anglican Establishment.
Doubtless the National Church has hitherto been a
serviceable breakwater against doctrinal errors, more
fundamental than its own. How long this wiU last in the
years now before us, it is impossible to say, for the Nation 20
drags down its Church to its own level ; but still the
National Church has the same sort of influence over the
Nation that a periodical has upon the party which it
represents, and my own idea of a Catholic's fitting attitude
towards the National Church in this its supreme hour, is
that of assisting and sustaining it, if it be in our power, in
the interest of dogmatic truth. I should wish to avoid
every thing, except (indeed) under the direct caU of duty,
(and this is a material exception,)) which went to weaken
its hold upon the public mind, or to unsettle its establish- 30
ment, or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of those
great Christian and Cathohc principles and doctrines which
it has up to this time successfully preached.
[I say, " except under the caU of duty ; " and this
exception, I am obliged to admit, is not a slight one ; it
is one which necessarily places a bar to any closer relation
between it and ourselves, than that of an armed truce.
For, in the first place, it stands to reason that even a
28 , except]'(except
34 The matter between [], pp. 396-400 ,was not reprinted in 1865.

APPENDIX. 397
volume, such as this has been, exerts an influence adverse
to the Estabhshment, — at least in the case of many minds ;
and this I cannot avoid, though I have sincerely attempted
to keep as wide of controversy in the course of it, as ever
I could. And next I cannot deny, what must be ever
a very sore point with Anglicans, that, if any Anglican
comes to me after careful thought and prayer, and with
deliberate purpose, and says, " I believe in the Holy
Catholic Church, and that your Church and yours alone is
10 it, and I demand admittance into it," it would be the
greatest of sins in me to reject such a man, as being a dis
tinct contravention of our Lord's maxim, " Freely ye have
received, freely give."
I have written three volumes which may be considered
controversial ; Loss and Gain in 1847 ; Lectures on
Difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting to the Catholic
Church in 1850 ; and Lectures on the present Position of
Catholics in England in 1851. And though I have neither
time nor need to go into the matter minutely, a few words
20 will suffice for some general account of what has been my
object and my tone in these works severally.
Of these three, the Lectures on the " Position of Catholics"
have nothing to do with the Church of England, as such ;
they are directed against the Protestant or Ultra-Pro
testant Tradition on the subject of Catholicism since the
time of Queen Elizabeth, in which parties indeed in the
Church of England have largely participated, but which
cannot be confused with Anglican teaching itself. Much
less can that Tradition be confused with the doctrine of
30 the Laudian or of the Tractarian School. I owe nothing
to Protestantism ; and I spoke against it even when I was
an Anglican, as well as in these Catholic Lectures. If
I spoke in them against the Church Established, it was
because, and so far as, at the time when they were delivered,
the Establishment took a violent part against the Catholic
Church, on the basis of the Protestant Tradition. More
over, I had never as an Anghcan been a lover of the actual
Establishment ; HurreU Froude 's Remains, in which it is
called an " incubus " and " Upas Tree," will stand in
4n evidence, as for him, so for me ; for I was one of the

398 APPENDIX.
Editors. What I said even as an Anghcan, it is not strange
that I said when I was not. Indeed I have been milder in
my thoughts of the Establishment ever since I have been
a Catholic than before, and for an obvious reason ; —
when I was an AngUcan, I viewed it as repressing a higher
doctrine than its own ; and now I view it as keeping out
a lower and more dangerous.
Then as to my Lectures on Anghcan Difficulties. Neither
were these formally directed against the National Church.
They were addressed to the " Children of the Movement 10
of 1833," to impress upon them, that, whatever was the
case with others, their duty at least was to become Cathohcs,
since Catholicism was the real scope and issue of that
Movement. "There is but one thing," I say, "that
forces me to speak. ... It wiU be a miserable thing for
you and for me, if I have been instrumental in bringing
you but half-way, if I have co-operated in removing your
invincible ignorance, but am able to do no more." — p. 5.
Such being the drift of the Volume, the reasoning directed
against the Church of England goes no further than this, 20
that it had no claims whatever on such of its members as
were proceeding onwards with the Movement into the
Catholic Church.
Lastly, as to Loss and Gain : it is the story, simply
ideal, of the conversion of an Oxford man. Its drift is to
show how little there is in Anglicanism to satisfy and
retain a young and earnest heart. In this Tale, aU the best
characters are sober Church-of -England people. No Trac
tarians proper are introduced : and this is noted in the
Advertisement : " No proper representative is intended in 30
this Tale, of the rehgious opinions, which had lately so
much influence in the University of Oxford." There could
not be such in the Tale, without the introduction of friends,
which was impossible in its very notion. But, since the
scene was to be laid during the very years, and at the
head-quarters, of Tractarianism, some expedient was neces
sary in order to meet what was a great difficulty. My
expedient was the introduction of what may be caUed
Tractarians improper ; and I took them the more readily,
because, though I knew that such there were, I knew 40
none of them personally. I mean such men as I used to

APPENDIX. 399
consider of " the gilt-gingerbread school," from whom
I expected little good, persons whose rehgion lay in
ritualism or architecture, and who "played at Popery"
or at Anglicanism. I repeat I knew no such men, because
it is one thing to desire fine churches and ceremonies, (which
of course I did myself,) and quite another thing to desire
these and nothing else ; but at that day there was in some
quarters, though not in those where I had influence,
a strong movement in the esthetic direction. Doubtless
10 1 went too far in my apprehension of such a movement :
for one of the best, and most devoted and hard-working
Priests I ever knew was the late Father Hutchison, of the
London Oratory, and I believe it was architecture that
directed his thoughts towards the Catholic Church. How
ever, I had in my mind an external religion which was
inordinate ; and, as the men who were considered instances
of it, were personally unknown to me, even by name,
I introduced them, under imaginary representatives, in
Loss and Gain, and that, in order to get clear of Trac-
20 tarians proper ; and of the three men, whom I have
introduced, the Anghcan is the best. In like manner I
introduced two " gilt-gingerbread " young ladies, who were
ideal, absolutely, utterly, without a shred of concrete
existence about them ; and I introduced them with the
remark that they were "really kind charitable persons,"
and "by no means put forth as a type of a class," that
" among such persons were to be found the gentlest spirits
and the tenderest hearts," and that " these sisters had
open hands, if they had not wise heads," but that " they
30 did not know much of matters ecclesiastical, and they
knew less of themselves."
It has been said, indeed, I know not to what extent,
that I introduced my friends or partisans into the Tale ;
this is utterly untrue. Only two cases of this misconcep
tion have come to my knowledge, and I at once denied
each of them outright ; and I take this opportunity of
denying generally the truth of all other similar charges.
No friend of mine, no one connected in any way with the
Movement, entered into the composition of any one of
40 the characters. Indeed, putting aside the two instances
which have been distinctly brought before me, I have not

400 APPENDIX.
even any sort of suspicion who the persons are, whom
I am thus accused of introducing.
Next, this writer goes on to speak of Tract 90 ; a sub
ject of which I have treated at great length in a former
passage of this narrative, and, in consequence, need not
take up again now.]

APPENDIX. 401

Series of Lives of the English Saints.
[I have given the history of this publication above at
pp. 302 — 304. It was to have consisted of almost 300
Lives, and I was to have been the Editor. It was brought
to an end, before it was well begun, by the act of friends
who were frightened at the first Life printed, the Life of
St. Stephen Harding. Thus I was not responsible except
for the first two numbers ; and the Advertisements dis
tinctly declared this. I had just the same responsibility
about the other Lives, that my assailant had, and not
io a bit more. However, it answers his purpose to consider
me responsible.
Next, I observe, that his delusion about " hot-headed
fanatic young men " continues : here again I figure with
my strolling company. " They said," he observes, " what
they beheved ; at least, what they had been taught to
believe that they ought to beheve. And who had taught
them ? Dr. Newman can best answer that question,"
p. 38. Well, I will do what I can to solve the mystery.
Now as to the juvenile writers in the proposed series.
20 One was my friend Mr. Bowden, who in 1843 was a man
of 46 years old ; he was to have written St. Boniface.
Another was Mr. Johnson, a man of 42 ; he was to have
written St. Aldelm. Another was the author of St. Augus
tine : let us hear something about him from this writer : —
" Dr. Newman," he says, " might have said to the
Author of the Life of St. Augustine, when he found him,
in the heat and haste of youthful fanaticism, outraging
historic truth and the law of evidence, ' This must not
be.' "—p. 38.
30 Good. This juvenile was past 40, — well, say 39. Blot
seventeen. " This must not be." This is what I ought to
have said, it seems ! And then, you see, I have not the
talent, and never had, of some people, for lecturing my
equals, much less men twenty years older than myself.
The matter between [ ], pp. 401-6, was not reprinted in 1865.
23 Aldelm cf. Aldhelm pp. 304, 506, 511.

402 APPENDIX.
But again, the author of St. Augustine's Life distinctly
says in his Advertisement, " No one but himself is respon
sible for the way in which these materials have been used."
Blot eighteen.
Thirty-three Lives were actually published. Out of the
whole number this writer notices three. Of these one is
" charming ; " therefore I am not to have the benefit of
it. Another " outrages historic truth and the law of
evidence ; " therefore " it was notoriously sanctioned by
Dr. Newman." And the third was " one of the most 10
offensive," and Dr. Newman must have formaUy connected
himself with it in "a moment of amiable weakness." —
p. 39. What even-handed justice is here ! Blot nineteen.
But to return to the juvenile author of St. Augustine : —
" I found," says this writer, " the Life of St. Augustine
saying, that, though the pretended visit of St. Peter to
England wanted historic evidence, ' yet it has undoubtedly
been received as a pious opinion by the Church at large,
as we learn from the often-quoted words of St. Innocent I.
(who wrote a.d. 416) that St. Peter was instrumental in 20
the conversion of the West generaUy.' " — p. 39. He
brings this passage against me (with which, however,
I have nothing more to do than he has) as a great mis
demeanour ; but let us see what his criticism is worth.
" And this sort of argument," continues the passage,
" though it ought to be kept quite distinct from docu
mentary and historic proof, will not be without its effect
on devout minds," &c. I should have thought this a very
sober doctrine, viz. that we must not confuse together two
things quite distinct from each other, criticism and devotion, 30
proof and opinion, — that a devout mind will hold opinions
which it cannot demonstrate by " historic proof." What,
I ask, is the harm of saying this ? Is this my Assafiant's
definition of opinion, " a thing which can be proved ? "
I cannot answer for him, but I can answer for men in
general. Let him read Sir David Brewster's " More Worlds
than One ; " — this principle, which is so shocking to my
assailant, is precisely the argument of Sir David's book ;
he tells us that the plurality of worlds cannot be proved,
but will be received by religious men. He asks, p. 229, 40

APPENDIX. 403
" If the stars are not suns, for what conceivable purpose
were they created ? " and then he lays down dogmatically,
p. 254, " There is no opinion, out of the region of pure
demonstration, more universally cherished than the doctrine
of the Plurality of worlds." And in his Title-page he styles
this " opinion " " the creed of the philosopher and the
hope of the Christian." If Brewster may bring devotion
into Astronomy, why may not my friend bring it into
History ? and that the more, when he actuaUy declares
10 that it ought to be kept quite distinct from history, and by
no means assumes that he is an historian because he is
a hagiographer ; whereas, somehow or other, Sir David
does seem to me to show a zeal greater than becomes
a savant, and to assume that he himself is a theologian
because he is an astronomer. This writer owes Sir David
as well as me an apology. Blot twenty.
He ought to wish his original charge against me in the
Magazine dead and buried ; but he has the good sense
and good taste to revive it again and again. This is one
20 of the places which he has chosen for it. Let him then,
just for a change, substitute Sir David Brewster for me in
his sentence ; Sir David has quite as much right to the
compliment as I have, as far as this Life of St. Augustine
is concerned. Then he will be saying, that, because Sir
David teaches that the belief in more worlds than one is
a pious opinion, and not a demonstrated fact, he " does
not care for truth for its own sake, or teach men to regard
it as a virtue," p. 38-9. Blot twenty -one.
However, he goes on to give in this same page one
30 other evidence of my disregard of truth. The author of
St. Augustine's Life also asks the following question :
" On what evidence do we put faith in the existence of
St. George, the patron of England ? Upon such, assuredly,
as an acute critic or skilful pleader might easily scatter to
the winds ; the belief of prejudiced or credulous witnesses,
the unwritten record of empty pageants and bauble decora
tions. On the side of scepticism might be exhibited
a powerful array of suspicious legends and exploded acts.
Yet, after all, what Catholic is there but would count it

404 APPENDIX.
a profaneness to question the existence of St. George ? "
On which my assailant observes, " When I found Dr.
Newman allowing his disciples ... in page after page, in
Life after Life, to talk nonsense of this kind which is not
only sheer Popery, but saps the very foundation of historic
truth, was it so wonderful that I conceived him to have
taught and thought like them % " p. 39, that is, to have
taught lying.
Well and good ; here again take a paraUel ; not St.
George, but Lycurgus. 10
Mr. Grote says : " Plutarch begins his biography of
Lycurgus with the foUowing ominous words : ' Concern
ing the lawgiver Lycurgus, we can assert absolutely nothing,
which is not controverted. There are different stories in
respect to his birth, his travels, his death, and also his
mode of proceeding, political as weU as legislative : least
of all is the time in which he hved agreed on.' And this
exordium is but too well borne out by the unsatisfactory
nature of the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch
himseff, but in those other authors, out of whom we are 20
obliged to make up our idea of the memorable Lycurgian
system." — Greece, vol. ii. p. 455. But Bishop Thirlwall
says, " Experience proves that scarcely any amount of
variation, as to the time or circumstances of a fact, in the
authors who record it, can be a sufficient ground for doubting
its reality." — Greece, vol. i. p. 332.
Accordingly, my assailant is virtuaUy saying of the
latter of these two historians, " When I found the Bishop
of St. David's talking nonsense of this kind, which saps
the very foundation of historic truth," was it "hasty or 30
far-fetched " to conclude " that he did not care for truth
for its own sake, or teach his disciples to regard it as
a virtue ? " p. 38-9. Nay, further, the Author of St. Augus
tine is no more a disciple of mine, than the Bishop of
St. David's is of my AssaUant's, and therefore the paraUel
will be more exact if I accuse this Professor of History of
teaching Dr. Thirlwall not to care for truth, as a virtue, for
its own sake. Blot twenty-two.
It is hard on me to have this dull, profitless work, but
I have pledged myself ; — so now for St. Walburga. 40

APPENDIX. 405
Now will it be believed that this Writer suppresses the
fact that the miracles of St. Walburga are treated by the
author of her Life as mythical ? yet that is the tone of
the whole composition. This Writer can notice it in the
Life 6i St. Neot, the first of the three Lives which he criti
cizes ; these are his words : " Some of them, the writers,
for instance, of Volume 4, which contains, among others,
a charming life of St. Neot, treat the stories openly as
legends and myths, and tell them as they stand, without
10 asking the reader, or themselves, to beUeve them altogether.
The method is harmless enough, if the legends had stood
alone ; but dangerous enough, when they stand side by
side with stories told in earnest, Uke that of St. Walburga."
— p.40.
Now, first, that the miraculous stories are treated, in
the Life of St. Walburga, as legends and myths. Through
out, the miracles and extraordinary occurrences are spoken
of as " said " or " reported ; " and the suggestion is made
that, even though they occurred, they might have been
20 after all natural. Thus, in one of the very passages which
my AssaUant quotes, the author says, " Illuminated men
feel the privileges of Christianity, and to them the evil
influence of Satanic power is horribly discernible, Uke the
Egyptian darkness which could be felt ; and the only way
to express their keen perception of it is to say, that they
see upon the countenances of the slaves of sin, the marks,
and lineaments, and stamp of the evil one ; and [that]
they smell with their nostrils the horrible fumes that arise
from their vices and uncleansed heart," &c, p. 78. This
30 introduces St. Sturme and the gamboUing Germans ; what
does it mean but that " the intolerable scent " was nothing
physical, or strictly miraculous, but the horror, paraUel
to physical distress, with which the Saint was affected,
from his knowledge of the state of their souls ? My assailant
is a lucky man, if mental pain has never come upon him
with a substance and a volume, as forcible as if it were
bodily. And so in like manner, the Author of the Life says, as
this writer actuaUy has quoted him, " a story was told and
27 These [ J are in 1864.

406 APPENDIX.
believed," p. 94. " One evening, says her history," p. 87.
" Another incident is thus related," p. 88. " Immediately,
says Wuffhard," p. 91. " A vast number of other cases
are recorded," p. 92. And there is a distinct intimation that
they may be myths, in a passage which this AssaUant
himself quotes, " All these have the character of a gentle
mother correcting the idleness and faults of careless and
thoughtless children with tenderness." — p. 95. I think the
criticism which he makes upon this Life is one of the most
wanton passages in his Pamphlet. The Life is beautffuUyio
written, full of poetry, and, as I have said, bears on its
very surface the profession of a legendary and mythical
character. Blot twenty-three.
""' In saying all this, I have no intention whatever of
implying that miracles did not iUustrate the Life of
St. Walburga ; but neither the Author nor I have bound
ourselves to the behef of certain instances in particular.
My AssaUant, in the passage which I just now quoted from
him, made some distinction, which was apparently intended
to save St. Neot, while it condemned St. Walburga. He 20
said that legends are " dangerous enough, when they stand
side by side with stories told in earnest Uke St. Walburga."
He will find he has here Dr. Milman against him, as he
has aheady had Sir David Brewster, and the Bishop of
St. David's. He accuses me of having " outraged historic
truth and the law of evidence," because friends of mine
have considered that, though opinions need not be con
victions, nevertheless that legends may be connected with
history : now, on the contrary, let us hear the Dean of
St. Paul's :— so
" History, to be true, must condescend to speak the
language of legend ; the belief of the times is part of the
record of the times ; and, though there may occur what
may baffle its more calm and searching philosophy, it must
not disdain that which was the primal, almost universal,
motive of human life." — Latin. Christ., vol. i. p. 388.
Dr. Milman's decision justifies me in putting this down as
Blot twenty-four.]
38 The matter between [ J, pp. 401-6, was not reprinted in 1865.

(ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.) 407
(So much for general principles ;) [However, there is one
miraculous account for which this writer makes me directly
answerable, and with reason ; and with it I shall conclude
my reply to his criticisms on the " Lives of the Enghsh
Saints."] (as to St. Walburga, though I have no intention
at all of denying that numerous miracles have been wrought
by her intercession, still, neither the Author of her Life,
nor I, the Editor, felt that we had grounds for binding our
selves to the behef of certain alleged miracles in particular.
10 1 made, however, one exception ;) It is the medicinal oil
which flows from the relics of St. Walburga,
[Now, as I shaU have occasion to remark under my next
Head, these two questions among others occur, in judging
of a miraculous story ; viz. whether the matter of it is
extravagant, and whether it is a fact.] (Now as to the
verisimilitude, the miraculousness, and the fact, of this
medicinal oil.) And first, it is plain there is nothing
extravagant in this report of the relics having a super
natural virtue ; and for this reason, because there are such
20 instances in Scripture, and Scripture cannot be extrava
gant. For instance, a man was restored to life by touching
the relics of the Prophet Eliseus. The sacred text runs
thus :— •" And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the
bands of .the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in
of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying
a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men ; and they
cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha. And, when the
man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he
revived, and stood upon his feet." Again, in the case of
30 an inanimate substance, which had touched a living Saint :
" And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul ;
so that from his body were brought unto the sick handker
chiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them."
And again in the case of a pool : " An Angel went down
at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water ;
whosoever then first, after the troubling of the water,
stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."
10 is] was 11 the relics of St. Walburga] her relics
17 And first, it] l.lhe verisimilitude. It Commencing anew paragraph.
18 the relics] her relics

408 APPENDIX.
2 Kings [4 Kings] xiii. 20, 21. Acts xix. 11, 12. John v. 4.
Therefore there is nothing extravagant in the character of
the miracle.
[The main question then (I do not say the only remain
ing question, but the main question) is] (2. Next,) the
matter of fact : — is there an oil flowing from St. Walburga's
tomb, which is medicinal ? To this question I confined
myself in the Preface [to the Volume]. Of the accounts of
medieval miracles, I said that there was no extravagance
in their general character, but I could not affirm that there io
was always evidence for them. I could not simply accept
them as facts, but I could not reject them in their nature ;
( — )they might be true, for they were not impossible : but
they were not proved to be true, because there was not
trustworthy testimony. However, as to St. Walburga,
I made one exception, the fact of the medicinal oU, since
for that miracle there was distinct and successive testi
mony. And then I went on to give a chain of witnesses.
It was my duty to state what those witnesses said in their
very words ; [and I did so ; they were in Latin, and I gave 20
them in Latin. One of them speaks of the " sacrum
oleum " flowing " de membris ejus virgineis, maxime
tamen pectoralibus ; " and I so printed it ; — if I had left
it out, this sweet-tempered Writer would have accused me
of an " economy."] (so) I gave the testimonies in fuU,
tracing them from the Saint's death. I said, " She is one
of the principal Saints of her age and country." Then
I quoted Basnage, a Protestant, who says, " Six writers
are extant, who have employed themselves in relating the
deeds or miracles of Walburga." Then I said that her 30
" renown was not the mere natural growth of ages, but
begins with the very century of the Saint's death." Then
I observed that only two miracles seem to have been
" distinctly reported of her as occurring in her lifetime ;
and they were handed down apparently by tradition."
Also, that they are said to have commenced about a.d. 777.
Then I spoke of the medicinal oU as having testimony to it
in 893, in 1306, after 1450, in 1615, and in 1620. Also,
I said that MabiUon seems not to have believed some of
1 These are the Author's [ ] 8 the Preface] my Preface
36 that they] that such miracles

(ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.) 409
her miracles ; and that the earliest witness had got into
trouble with his Bishop. And so I left it, as a question to
be decided by evidence, not deciding any thing myself.
What was the harm of all this ? but my Critic [has]
muddled it together in a most extraordinary manner, and
I am far from sure that he knows himseff the definite
categorical charge which he intends it to convey against
me. One of his remarks is, " What has become of the
holy oil for the last 240 years, Dr. Newman does not say,"
10 p. 42. Of course I did not, because I did not know ; I gave
the evidence as I found it ; he assumes that I had a point
to prove, and then asks why I did not make the evidence
larger than it was. [I put this down as Blot twenty-five.]
I can tell him more about it now ; the oil still flows ;
I have had some of it in my possession ; it is medicinal
(still) [; some think it is so by a natural quality, others
by a divine gift. Perhaps it is on the confines of both.]
(This leads to the third head.)
(3. Its miraculousness. On this point, since I have been
20 in the Catholic Church, I have found there is a difference
of opinion. Some persons consider that the oil is the
natural produce of the rock, and has ever flowed from
it ; others, that by a divine gift it flows from the relics ;
and others, allowing that it now -comes naturally from
the rock, are disposed to hold that it was in its origin
miraculous, as was the virtue of the pool of Bethsaida.
This point must be settled of course before the virtue of
the oil can be ascribed to the sanctity of St. Walburga ;
for myself, I neither have", nor ever have had, the means
30 of going into the question ; but I will take the opportunity
of its having come before me, to make one or two remarks,
supplemental of what I have said on other occasions.
1. I frankly confess that the present advance of science
tends to make it probable that various facts take place,
and have taken place, in the order of nature, which hitherto
have been considered by Catholics as simply supernatural.
2. Though I readily make this admission, it must not
2 it] the matter 6 knows] knew 7 intends] intended
19 The matter from here to p. 415 first appeared in the 1865 edition.

410 (NOTE B.
be supposed in consequence that I am disposed to grant
at once, that every event was natural in point of fact,
which might have taken place by the laws of nature ; for
it is obvious, no Cathohc can bind the Almighty to act
only in one and the same way, or to the observance always
of His own laws. An event which is possible in the way
of nature, is certainly possible too to Divine Power without
the sequence of natural cause and effect at aU. A con
flagration, to take a parallel, may be the work of an incen
diary, or the result of a flash of hghtning ; nor would 10
a jury think it safe to find a man guilty of arson, if a
dangerous thunderstorm was raging at the very time when
the fire broke out. In like manner, upon the hypothesis
that a miraculous dispensation is in operation, a recovery
from diseases to which medical science is equal, may
nevertheless in matter of fact have taken place, not by
natural means, but by a supernatural interposition. That
the Lawgiver always acts through His own laws, is an
assumption, of which I never saw proof. In a given case,
then, the possibihty of assigning a human cause for an 20
event does not ipso facto prove that it is not miraculous.
3. So far, however, is plain, that, till some experimentum
crucis can be found, such as to be decisive against the
natural cause or the supernatural, an occurrence of this
kind will as little convince an unbeliever that there has
been a divine interference in the case, as it will drive
the Catholic to admit that there has been no interference
at all.
4. Still there is this gain accruing to the CathoUc cause
from the larger views we now possess of the operation of 30
natural causes, viz. that our opponents will not in future
be so ready as hitherto, to impute fraud and falsehood to
our priests and their witnesses, on the ground of their
pretending or reporting things that are incredible. Our
opponents have again and agam accused us of false witness,
on account of statements which they now allow are either
true, or may have been true. They account indeed for
the strange facts very differently from us ; but still they
allow that facts they were. It is a great thing to have our
characters cleared ; and we may reasonably hope that, 40
the next time our word is vouched for occurrences which

ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.) 411
appear to be miraculous, our facts will be investigated,
not our testimony impugned.
5. Even granting that certain occurrences, which we
have hitherto accounted miraculous, have not absolutely
a claim to be so considered, nevertheless they constitute
an argument still in behalf of Revelation and the Church.
Providences, or what are called grazie, though they do not
rise to the order of miracles, yet, if they occur again and
again in connexion with the same persons, institutions, or
10 doctrines, may supply a cumulative evidence of the fact
of a supernatural presence in the quarter in which they
are found. I have aheady alluded to this point in my
Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and I have a particular
reason, as wiU presently be seen, for referring here to
what I said in the course of it.
In that Essay, after bringing its main argument to an
end, I append to it a review of " the evidence for par
ticular alleged miracles." ' It does not strictly fall within
the scope of the Essay," I observe, "to pronounce upon
20 the truth or falsehood of this or that miraculous narrative,
as it occurs in ecclesiastical history ; but only to furnish
such general considerations, as may be useful in forming
a decision in particular cases," p. cv. However, I thought
it right to go farther and " to set down the evidence for
and against certain miracles as we meet with them," ibid.
In discussing these miracles separately, I make the follow
ing remarks, to which I have just been referring.
After discussing the alleged miracle of the Thundering
Legion, I observe : — " Nor does it concern us much to
30 answer the objection, that there is nothing strictly miracu-
1 ous in such an occurrence, because sudden thunder
clouds after drought are not unfrequent ; for, I would
answer, Grant me such miracles ordinarily in the early
Church, and I will ask no other ; grant that, upon prayer,
benefits are vouchsafed, deliverances are effected, unhoped
for results obtained, sicknesses cured, tempests laid, pesti
lences put to flight, famines remedied, judgments inflicted,
and there wiU be no need of analyzing the causes, whether
supernatural or natural, to which they are to be referred.
40 They may, or they may not, in this or that case, follow or

412 (NOTE B.
surpass the laws of nature, and they may do so plainly or
doubtfully, but the common sense of mankind will call
them miraculous ; for by a miracle is popularly meant,
whatever be its formal definition, an event which impresses
upon the mind the immediate presence of the Moral
Governor of the world. He may sometimes act through
nature, sometimes beyond or against it ; but those who
admit the fact of such interferences, wUl have little diffi
culty in admitting also their strictly miraculous character,
if the circumstances of the case require it, and those who 10
deny miracles to the early Church will be equally strenuous
against allowing her the grace of such intimate influence
(if we may so speak) upon the course of divine Providence,
as is here in question, even though it be not miraculous." —
p. cxxi.
And again, speaking of the death of Arius : " But after
all, was it a miracle ? for, if not, we are labouring at
a proof of which nothing comes. The more immediate
answer to this question has already been suggested several
times. When a Bishop with his flock prays night and day 20
against a heretic, and at length begs of God to take him
away, and when he is suddenly taken away, almost at
the moment of his triumph, and that by a death awfully
significant, from its likeness to one recorded in Scripture,
is it not trifling to ask whether such an occurrence comes
up to the definition of a miracle ? The question is not
whether it is formally a miracle, but whether it is an
event, the like of which persons, who deny that miracles
continue, will consent that the Church should be con
sidered still able to perform. If they are wUling to aUowso
to the Church such extraordinary protection, it is for them
to draw the line to the satisfaction of people in general,
between these and strictly miraculous events ; if, on the
other hand, they deny their occurrence in the times of the
Church, then there is sufficient reason for our appealing
here to the history of Arius in proof of the affirmative."
— p. clxxii.
These remarks, thus made upon the Thundering Legion
and the death of Arius, must be applied, in consequence
of investigations made since the date of my Essay, to the 40
apparent miracle wrought in favour of the African con-

ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.) 413
fessors in the Vandal persecution. Their tongues were cut
out by the Arian tyrant, and yet they spoke as before.
In my Essay I insisted on this fact as being strictly miracu
lous. Among other remarks (referring to the instances
adduced by Middleton and others in disparagement of the
miracle, viz. of " a girl born without a tongue, who yet
talked as distinctly and easily, as if she had enjoyed the
full benefit of that organ," and of a boy who lost his
tongue at the age of eight or nine, yet retained his speech,
10 whether perfectly or not,) I said, " Does Middleton. mean
to say, that, if certain of men lost their tongues at the
command of a tyrant for the sake of their religion, and then
spoke as plainly as before, nay if only one person was so
mutilated and so gifted, it would not be a miracle ? " —
p. ccx. And I enlarged upon the minute details of the
fact as reported to us by eye-witnesses and contemporaries.
' Out of the seven writers adduced, six are contemporaries ;
three, if not four, are eye-witnesses of the miracle. One
reports from an eye-witness, and one testifies to a fervent
20 record at the burial-place of the subjects of it. All seven
were living, or had been staying, at one or other of the
two places which are mentioned as their abode. One is
a Pope, a second a Catholic Bishop, a third a Bishop
of a schismatical party, a fourth an emperor, a fifth a
soldier, a politician, and a suspected infidel, a sixth a states
man and courtier, a seventh a rhetorician and philosopher.
' He cut out the tongues by the roots,' says Victor, Bishop
of Vito ; ' I perceived the tongues entirely gone by the
roots,' says iEneas ; ' as low down as the throat,' says
30 Procopius ; ' at the roots,' say Justinian and St. Gregory ;
' he spoke like an educated man, without impediment,'

says Victor of Vito
' better than before

' with articulateness,' says iEneas ;
' they talked without any impedi
ment,' says Procopius ; *' speaking with perfect voice,'
says Marcellinus ; ' they spoke perfectly, even to the end,'
says the second Victor ; ' the words were formed, full,
and perfect,' says St. Gregory." — p. ccviii.
However, a few years ago an Article appeared in " Notes
and Queries " (No. for May 22, 1858), in which various
40 evidence was adduced to show that the tongue is not
necessary for articulate speech.

414 (NOTE B.
1. Col. Churchill, in his " Lebanon," speaking of the
cruelties of Djezzar Pacha, in extracting to the root the
tongues of some Emirs, adds, " It is a curious fact, how
ever, that the tongues grow again sufficiently for the
purposes of speech."
2. Sir John Malcolm, in his " Sketches of Persia,"
speaks of Zab, Khan of Khisht, who was condemned to lose
his tongue. " This mandate," he says, " was imperfectly
executed, and the loss of half this member deprived him
of speech. Being afterwards persuaded that its being cut io
close to the root would enable him to speak so as to be
understood, he submitted to the operation ; and the effect
has been, that his voice, though indistinct and thick, is
yet inteUigible to persons accustomed to converse with
him. ... I am not an anatomist, and I cannot therefore
give a reason, why a man, who could not articulate with
half a tongue, should speak when he had none at aU ; but
the facts are as stated."
3. And Sir John McNeill says, " In answer to your
inquiries about the. powers of speech retained by persons 20
who have had their tongues cut out, I can state from
personal observation, that several persons whom I knew
in Persia, who had been subjected to that punishment,
spoke so intelligibly as to be able to transact important
business. . . . The conviction in Persia is universal, that
the power of speech is destroyed by merely cutting off the
tip of the tongue ; and is to a useful extent restored by
cutting off another portion as far back as a perpendicular
section can be made of the portion that is free from attach
ment at the lower surface. ... I never had to meet with 30
a person who had suffered this punishment, who could
not speak so as to be quite inteUigible to his familiar
associates." I should not be honest, if I professed to be simply con
verted, by these testimonies, to the belief that there was
nothing miraculous in the case of the African confessors.
It is quite as fair to be sceptical on one side of the question
as on the other ; and if Gibbon is considered worthy of
praise for his stubborn incredulity in receiving the evidence
for this miracle, I do not see why I am to be blamed, if 40

ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.) 415
I wish to be quite sure of the full appositeness of the recent
evidence which is brought to its disadvantage. Questions
of fact cannot be disproved by analogies or presumptions ;
the inquiry must be made into the particular case in all
its parts, as it comes before us. Meanwhile, I fully allow
that the points of evidence brought in disparagement of
the miracle are prima facie of such cogency, that, till they
are proved to be irrelevant, Catholics are prevented from
appealing to it for controversial purposes.)

416 APPENDIX. 5.
Ecclesiastical Miracles.
[What is the use of going on with this Writer's criticisms
upon me, when I am confined to the dull monotony of
exposing and oversetting him again and again, with a per
sistence, which many will think mercUess, and few will
have the interest to read ? Yet I am obhged to do so, lest
I should seem to be evading difficulties.
Now as to Miracles.] Cathohcs believe that they happen
in any age of the Church, though not for the same pur
poses, in the same number, or with the same evidence, as
in Apostoho times. The Apostles wrought them in evidence 10
of their divine mission ; and with this object they have
been sometimes wrought by Evangelists of countries since,
as even Protestants allow. Hence we hear of them in the
history of St. Gregory in Pontus, and St. Martin in Gaul ;
and in their case, as in that of the Apostles, they were
both numerous and clear. As they are granted to Evan
gelists, so are they granted, though in less measure and
evidence, to other holy men ; and as holy men are not
found equally at all times and in all places, therefore
miracles are in some places and times more than in others. 20
And since, generaUy, they are granted to faith and prayer,
therefore in a country in which faith and prayer abound,
they will be more likely to occur, than where and when
faith and prayer are not ; so that their occurrence is
irregular. And further, as faith and prayer obtain miracles,
so still more commonly do they gain from above the
ordinary interventions of Providence ; and, as it is often
very difficult to distinguish between a providence and
a miracle, and there will be more providences than miracles,
hence it will happen that many occurrences will be caUed 30
5. (in heading)] Note B. On page 125.
1-7 For the passage in [ ] the following paragraph was substituted in
1865 . The writer, who gave occasion for the foregoing Narrative, was
very severe with me for what I had said about Miracles in the Preface
to the Life of St. Walburga. I observe therefore as follows : —
7 they] miracles

(NOTE B.) 417
miraculous, which, strictly speaking, are not such, and not
more than providential mercies, or what are sometimes
called " graces " or " favours."
Persons, who believe all this, in accordance with Cathohc
teaching, as I did and do, they, on the report of a miracle,
wiU of necessity, the necessity of good logic, be led to say,
first, " It may be," and secondly, " But I must have good
evidence in order to believe it." (1.) It may be, because
miracles take place in all ages ; it must be clearly proved,
10 because perhaps after all it may be only a providential
mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture.
WeU, this is precisely what I have said, which this Writer
considers so irrational. I have said, as he quotes me,
[p. 41,] " In this day, and under our present circumstances,
we can only reply, that there is no reason why they should
not be." Surely this is good logic, provided that miracles
do occur in all ages ; and so again is it logical to say,
" There is nothing, prima facie, in the miraculous accounts
in question, to repel a properly taught or religiously dis-
20 posed mind." What is the matter with this statement ?
My assaUant does not pretend to" say what the matter is,
and he cannot ; but he expresses a rude, unmeaning
astonishment. [Next, I stated what evidence there is for
the miracles of which I was speaking ; what is the harm
of that ? He observes, " What evidence Dr. Newman
requires, he makes evident at once. He at least will fear
for himseff, and swallow the whole as it comes." — pp. 41-2.
What random abuse is this, or, to use his own words of me
just before, what " stuff and nonsense ! " What is it I am
30 " swaUowing " ? " the whole " what ? the evidence ? or
the miracles ? I have swallowed neither, nor imphed any
such thing. Blot twenty-six.]
But to return : I have just said that a Catholic's state
of mind, of logical necessity, will be, " It may be a miracle,
1 and] that is, 3 " graces "] _" grazie "
8 1. It may be, This commenced a new paragraph in 1865.
12, 13 have (twice)] had
12-13 this Writer considers] the writer, who has given occasion to this
Volume, considered 17 is it logical to say] I am logical in saying
33-34 But to return : . . may be a miracle, but] 2. But, though a
miracle be conceivable,
apologia p

418 APPENDIX.
but it has to be proved ["]. What has to be proved ?
1. That the event occurred as stated, and is not a false
report or an exaggeration. 2. That it is clearly miraculous,
and not a mere providence or answer to prayer within the
order of nature. What is the fault of saying this ? The
inquiry is parallel to that which is made about some
extraordinary fact in secular history. Supposing I hear
that King Charles II. died a Cathohc, I should say, [1.] It
may be[. 2.] (but) What is your proof? Accordingly, in
the passage which this writer quotes, I observe, " Miracles io
are the kind of facts proper to ecclesiastical history, just
as instances of sagacity- or daring, personal prowess, or
crime, are the facts proper to secular history." What is
the harm of this ? [But this writer says, " Verily his
[Dr. Newman's] idea of secular history is almost as degraded
as his idea of ecclesiastical," p. 41, and he ends with this
muddle of an Ipse dixit ! Blot twenty-seven.
[In like manner, about the Holy Coat at Treves, he says
of me, "Dr. Newman . . . seems hardly sure of the authen
ticity of the Holy Coat." Why need I be, more than I am 20
sure that Richard III. 'murdered the little princes ? If
I have not means of making up my mind one way or the
other, surely my most logical course is " not to be sure."
He continues, " Dr. Newman ' does not see why it may
not have been what it professes to be.' " WeU, is not that
just what this Writer would say of a great number of
the facts recorded in secular history ? is it not what he
would be obliged to say of much that is told us about the
armour and other antiquities in the Tower of London ?
To this I alluded in the passage from which he quotes ; so
but he has garbled that passage, and I must show it. He
quotes me to this effect : "Is the Tower of London shut
against sight-seers because the coats of maU or pikes there
may have half -legendary tales connected with them ?
why then may not the country people come up in joyous
8 should] am led to
9-14 Accordingly, . . . harm of this ? In 1865 these lines were trans
posed to follow the words rude, unmeaning astonishment (p. 417, I. 23).
10 this writer] he
14 The passage in [ ], pp. 418-25 was not reprinted in 1865.
15 [Dr. Newman's] These are Dr. Newman's [ ].

APPENDIX. 419
companies, singing and piping, to see the holy coat at
Treves ? " On this he remarks, " To see, forsooth ! to
worship, Dr. Newman would have said, had he known (as
I take for granted he does not) the facts of that imposture."
Here, if I understand him, he imphes that the people
came up, not only to see, but to worship, and that I have
slurred over the fact that their coming was an act of
reUgious homage, that is, what he would call " worship."
Now, will it be believed that, so far from conceahng this,
10 I had carefully stated it in the sentence immediately pre
ceding, and he suppresses it ? I say, " The world pays
civil honour to it [a jewel said to be Alfred's] on the prob
ability ; we pay religious honour to relics, if so be, on the
probabiUty. Is the Tower of London," I proceed, " shut,"
&c. Blot twenty-eight.
These words of mine, however, are but one sentence in
a long argument, conveying the Catholic view on the subject
of ecclesiastical miracles ; and, as it is carefully worked
out, and very much to the present point, and will save me
20 doing over again what I could not do better or more f uUy
now, if I set about it, I shall make a very long extract
from the Lecture in which it occurs, and so bring this
Head to an end.
The argument, I should first observe, which is worked
out, is this, that Cathohcs set out with a definite religious
tenet as a first principle, and Protestants with a contrary
one, and that on this account it comes to pass that miracles
are credible to Catholics and incredible to Protestants.
" We affirm that the Supreme Being has wrought
30 miracles on earth ever since the time of the Apostles ;
Protestants deny it. Why do we affirm, why do they
deny ? We affirm it on a first principle, they deny it on
a first principle ; and on either side the first principle is
made to be decisive of the question. . . . Both they and we
start with the miracles of the Apostles ; and then their
first principle or presumption against our miracles is this,
' What God did once, He is not likely to do again ; ' while
12 These are the Author's [ ].

420 APPENDIX.
our first principle or presumption for our miracles is this ;
' What God did once, He is likely to do again.' They say,
It cannot be supposed He wiU work many miracles ; we,
It cannot be supposed He wUl work few.
" The Protestant, I say, laughs at the very idea of
miracles or supernatural powers as occurring at this day ;
his first principle is rooted in him ; he repels from him the
idea of miracles ; he laughs at the notion of evidence ; one
is just as likely as another ; they are aU false. Why ?
because of his first principle, There are no miracles since io
the Apostles. Here, indeed, is a short and easy way of
getting rid of the whole subject, not by reason, but by
a first principle which he caUs reason. Yes, it is reason,
granting his first principle is true ; it is not reason, sup
posing his first principle is false.
" There is in the Church a vast tradition and testimony
about miracles ; how is it to be accounted for ? If miracles
can take place, then the fact of the miracle wiU be a natural
explanation of the report, just as the fact of a man dying
accounts satisfactorily for the news that he is dead ; but 20
the Protestant cannot so explain it, because he thinks
miracles cannot take place ; so he is necessarily driven,
by way of accounting for the report of them, to impute
that report to fraud. He cannot help himseff. I repeat it ;
the whole mass of accusations which Protestants bring
against us under this head, Cathohc credulity, imposture,
pious frauds, hypocrisy, priestcraft, this vast and varied
superstructure of imputation, you see, aU rests on an
assumption, on an opinion of theirs, for which they offer
no kind of proof. What then, in fact, do they say more 30
than this, If Protestantism he true, you Cathohcs are
a most awful set of knaves ? Here, at least, is a most
sensible and undeniable position.
" Now, on the other hand, let me take our own side of
the question, and consider how we ourselves stand relatively
to the charge made against us. Catholics, then, hold the
mystery of the Incarnation ; and the Incarnation is the
most stupendous event which ever can take place on
earth ; and after it and henceforth, I do not see how we
can scruple at any miracle on the mere ground of its being 40
unlikely to happen. . . . When we start with assuming that

APPENDIX. 421
miracles are not unlikely, we are putting forth a position
which lies embedded, as it were, and involved in the great
revealed fact of the Incarnation. So much is plain on
starting ; but more is plain too. Miracles are not only not
unlikely, but they are positively likely ; and for this
simple reason, because for the most part, when God begins,
He goes on. We conceive, that when He first did a miracle,
He began a series ; what He commenced, He continued :
what has been, will be. Surely this is good and clear reason
10 ing. To my own mind, certainly, it is incomparably more
difficult to believe that the Divine Being should do one
miracle and no more, than that He should do a thousand ;
that He should do one great miracle only, than that He
should do a multitude of lesser besides. ... If the Divine
Being does a thing once, He is, judging by human reason,
Ukely to do it again. This surely is common sense. If
a beggar gets food at a gentleman's house once, does he
not send others thither after him ? If you are attacked
by thieves once, do you forthwith leave your windows
20 open at night ? . . . . Nay, suppose you yourselves were
once to see a miracle, would you not feel the occurrence to
be like passing a line ? would you, in consequence of it,
declare, ' I never will believe another if I hear of one ? '
would it not, on the contrary, predispose you to listen to
a new report ? . . . .
" When I hear the report of a miracle, my first feeling
would be of the same kind as if it were a report of any
natural exploit or event. Supposing, for instance, I heard
a report of the death of some public man ; it would not
30 startle me, even if I did not at once credit it, for all men
must die. Did I read of any great feat of valour, I should
beheve it, if imputed to Alexander or Cceur de Lion. Did
I hear of any act of baseness, I should disbelieve it, if
imputed to a friend whom I knew and loved. And so in
like manner were a miracle reported to me as wrought by
a Member of Parliament, or a Bishop of the Establishment,
or a Wesleyan preacher, I should repudiate the notion :
were it referred to a saint, or the relic of a saint, or the
intercession of a saint, I should not be startled at it, though
40 I might not at once believe it. And I certainly should be
right in this conduct, supposing my First Principle be true.

422 APPENDIX.
Miracles to the Catholic are historical facts, and nothing
short of this ; and they are to be regarded and dealt with
as other facts ; and as natural facts, under circumstances,
do not startle Protestants, so supernatural, under circum
stances, do not startle the Catholic. They may or may
not have taken place in particular cases ; he may be
unable to determine which, he may have no distinct evi
dence; he may suspend his judgment, but he will say ' It
is very possible ; ' he never will say ' I cannot believe it.'
" Take the history of Alfred ; you know his wise, mUd, 10
beneficent, yet daring character, and his romantic vicissi
tudes of fortune. This great king has a number of stories,
or, as you may call them, legends told of him. Do you
believe them all ? no. Do you, on the other hand, think
them incredible 1 no. Do you call a man a dupe or a block
head for believing them ? no. Do you call an author
a knave or a cheat who records them ? no. You go into
neither extreme, whether of implicit faith or of violent
reprobation. You are not so extravagant ; you see that
they suit his character, they may have happened : yet this 20
is so romantic, that has so little evidence, a third is so con
fused in dates or in geography, that you are in matter of
fact indisposed towards them. Others are probably true,
others certainly. Nor do you force every one to take
your view of particular stories ; you and your neighbour
think differently about this or that in detaU, and agree to
differ. There is in the museum at Oxford, a jewel or
trinket said to be Alfred's ; it is shown to all comers ;
I never heard the keeper of the museum accused of hypo
crisy or fraud for showing, with Affred's name appended, 30
what he might or might not himseff believe to have belonged
to that great king ; nor did I ever see any party of strangers
who were looking at it with awe, regarded by any self-
complacent bystander with scornful compassion. Yet the
curiosity is not to a certainty Affred's. The world pays
civil honour to it on the probability ; we pay religious
honour to relics, if so be, on the probabihty. Is the Tower
of London shut against sight-seers, because the coats of
mail and pikes there may have half-legendary tales con
nected with them ? why then may not the country people 40
come up in joyous companies, singing and piping, to see

APPENDIX. 423
the Holy Coat at Treves ? There is our Queen again,
who is so truly and justly popular ; she roves about in
the midst of tradition and romance ; she scatters myths
and legends from her as she goes along ; she is a being of
poetry, and you might fairly be sceptical whether she had
any personal existence. She is always at some beautiful,
noble, bounteous work or other, if you trust the papers.
She is doing alms-deeds in the Highlands ; she meets
beggars in her rides at Windsor ; she writes verses in
10 albums, "or draws sketches, or is mistaken for the house
keeper by some blind old woman, or she runs up a hill as
if she were a child. Who finds fault with these things ?
he would be a cynic, he would be white-livered, and would
have gall for blood, who was not struck with this graceful,
touching evidence of the love her subjects bear her. Who
could have the head, even if he had the heart, who could
be so cross and peevish, who could be so solemn and per
verse, as to say that some of these stories may be simple
lies, and all of them might have stronger evidence than
20 they carry with them ? Do you think she is displeased at
them ? Why then should He, the Great Father, who once
walked the earth, look sternly on the unavoidable mistakes
of His own subjects and children in their devotion to Him
and His ? Even granting they mistake some cases in
particular, from the infirmity of human nature and the
contingencies of evidence, and fancy there is or has been
a miracle here and there when there is not, though a tradi
tion, attached to a picture, or to a shrine, or a well, be
very doubtful, though one relic be sometimes mistaken
30 for another, and St. Theodore stands for St. Eugenius or
St. Agathocles, still, pnce take into account our First
Principle, that He is likely to continue miracles among us,
which is as good as the Protestant's, and I do not see why
He should feel much displeasure with us on account of this,
or should cease to work wonders in our behalf. In the
Protestant's view, indeed, who assumes that miracles
never are, our thaumatology is one great falsehood ; but
that is his First Principle, as I have said so often, which
he does not prove but assume. If he, indeed, upheld our
40 system, or we held his principle, in either case he or we
should be impostors ; but though we should be partners

424 APPENDIX.
to a fraud if we thought like Protestants, we surely are
not if we think like Catholics.
" Such then is the answer I make to those who would
urge against us the multitude of miracles recorded in our
Saints' Lives and devotional works, for many of which
there is little evidence, and for some next to none. We
think them true in the same sense in which Protestants
think the history of England true. When they say that,
they do not mean to say that there are no mistakes, but
no mistakes of consequence, none which alter the general 10
course of history. Nor do they mean they are equally
sure of every part ; for evidence is fuller and better for
some things than for others. They do not stake their
credit on the truth of Froissart or Sully, they do not pledge
themselves for the accuracy of Doddington or Walpole,
they do not embrace as an Evangelist Hume, Sharon
Turner, or Macaulay. And yet they do not think it neces
sary, on the other hand, to commence a religious war
against all our historical catechisms, and abstracts, and
dictionaries, and tales, and biographies, through the 20
country ; they have no call on them to amend and expur
gate books of archaeology, antiquities, heraldry, architec
ture, geography, and statistics, to re-write our inscriptions,
and to establish a censorship on aU new pubUcations for
the time to come. And so as regards the miracles of the
Catholic Church ; if, indeed, miracles never can occur,
then, indeed, impute the narratives to fraud ; but tUl you
prove they are not likely, we shall consider the histories
which have come down to us true on the whole, though in
particular cases they may be exaggerated or unfounded. 30
Where, indeed, they can certainly be proved to be false,
there we shall be bound to do our best to get rid of them ;
"but till that is clear, we shall be liberal enough to aUow
others to use their private judgment in their favour, as
we use ours in their disparagement. For myseff, lest
I appear in any way to be shrinking from a determinate
judgment on the claims of some of those miracles and
relics, which Protestants are so startled at, and to be
hiding particular questions in what is vague and general,
I will avow distinctly, that, putting out of the question the 40
hypothesis of unknown laws of nature (which is an evasion

APPENDIX. 425
from the force of any proof), I think it impossible to with
stand the evidence which is brought for the liquefaction of
the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, and for the motion of
the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in the Roman
States. I see no reason to doubt the material of the Lombard
crown at Monza ; and I do not see why the Holy Coat at
Treves may not have been what it professes to be. I firmly
believe that portions of the True Cross are at Rome and
elsewhere, that the Crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the
10 bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also  Many men when
they hear an educated man so speak, will at once impute
the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncrasy, or to imbe
cility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanaticism,
or to hypocrisy. They have a right to say so, if they will ;
and we have a right to ask them why they do not say it
of those who bow down before the Mystery of mysteries, the
Divine Incarnation ? "]
In my Essay on Miracles of the year 1826, I proposed
three questions about a professed miraculous occurrence,
20 1. is it antecedently probable ? 2. is it in its nature certainly
miraculous ? 3. has it sufficient evidence ? These are
the three heads (in my Essay of 1842 ; and) under which
I still wish to conduct the inquiry into the miracles of
Ecclesiastical History.
17 The passage in [ ], pp. 418, I. 14, to 425, was not reprinted in 1865,
21-22 These are the three heads] To these three heads I had regard
22 which] them
24 Here followed, in 1865, the remainder of Note B. On Ecclesiastical
Miracles, pp. 407-15 of this book.

P3

426 APPENDIX. [6.
Popular Religion.
This Writer uses much rhetoric against a Lecture of
mine, in which I bring out, as honestly as I can, the state
of countries which have long received the Cathohc Faith,
and hold it by the force of tradition, universal custom, and
legal estabhshment ; a Lecture in which I give pictures,
drawn principally from the middle ages, of what, consider
ing the corruption of the human race generaUy, that state
is sure to be, — pictures of its special sins and offences, sui
generis, which are the result of that Faith when it is sepa
rated from Love or Charity, or of what Scripture calls 10
a " dead faith," of the Light shining in darkness, and the
truth held in unrighteousness. The nearest approach which
this Writer is able to make towards stating what I have
said in this Lecture, is to state the very reverse. Observe :
we have aheady had some instances of the haziness of his
ideas concerning the " Notes of the Church." These Notes
are, as any one knows who has looked into the subject,
certain great and simple characteristics, which He who
founded the Church has stamped upon her in order to
draw both the reason and the imagination of men to her, 20
as being really a divine work, and a religion distinct from
all other religious communities ; the principal of these
Notes being that she is Holy, One, Cathohc, and Apostohc,
as the Creed says. Now, to use his own word, he has the
incredible " audacity " to say, that I have declared, not
the divine characteristics of the Church, but the sins and
scandals in her, to be her Notes, — as if I made God the
Author of evil. He says distinctly, " Dr. Newman, with
a kind of desperate audacity, will dig forth such scandals
as Notes of the Catholic Church." This is what I get at his 30
hands for my honesty. Blot twenty-nine.
Again, he says, " [Dr. Newman uses] the blasphemy
and profanity which he confesses to be so common in
6. Popular Religion. This section was not reprinted in 1865.
32 These are Dr. Newman's [ ].

APPENDIX. 427
Cathohc countries, as an argument for, and not against
the ' CathoUc Faith.' " — p. 50. That is, because I admit
that profaneness exists in the Church, therefore I consider
it a token of the Church. Yes, certainly, just as our
national form of cursing is an evidence of the being of
a God, and as a gallows is the glorious sign of a civilized
country, — but in no other way. Blot thirty.
What is it that I really say ? I say as follows : Pro
testants object that the communion of Rome does not
10 fulfil satisfactorily the expectation which we may justly
form concerning the True Church, as it is delineated in the
four Notes, enumerated in the Creed ; and among others,
e.g. in the Note of sanctity ; and they point, in proof of
what they assert, to the state of Catholic countries. Now,
in answer to this objection, it is plain what I might have
done, if I had not had a conscience. I might have denied
the fact. I might have said, for instance, that the middle
ages were as virtuous, as they were believing. I might
have denied that there was any violence, any superstition,
20 any immorality, any blasphemy during them. And so as
to the state of countries which have long had the light
of Catholic truth, and have degenerated. I might have
admitted nothing against them, and explained away every
thing which plausibly told to their disadvantage. I did
nothing of the kind ; and what effect has this had upon
this estimable critic ? " Dr. Newman takes a seeming
pleasure," he says, " in detailing instances of dishonesty
on the part of Catholics." — p. 50. Blot thirty-one. Any
one who knows me well, would testify that my " seeming
30 pleasure," as he calls it, at such things, is just the impatient
sensitiveness, which reheves itself by means of a definite
delineation of what is so hateful to it.
However, to pass on. All the miserable scandals of
Catholic countries, taken at the worst, are, as I view the
matter, no argument against the Church itself ; and the
reason which I give in the Lecture is, that, according to
the proverb, Corruptio optimi est pessima. The Jews
could sin in a way no other contemporary race could sin,
for theirs was a sin against light ; and Catholics can sin
40 with a depth and intensity with which Protestants cannot

428 APPENDIX.
sin. There will be more blasphemy, more hatred of God,
more of diabolical rebellion, more of awful sacrilege, more
of vile hypocrisy in a Catholic country than any where else,
because there is in it more of sin against light. Surely, this
is just what Scripture says, " Woe unto thee, Chorazin !
woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! " And, again, surely what is
told us by religious men, say by Father Bresciani, about
the present unbelieving party in Italy, fuUy bears out the
divine text : "If, after they have escaped the poUutions
of the world . . . they are again entangled therein andio
overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the
beginning. For it had been better for them not to have
known the way of righteousness, than, after they have
known it, to turn from the holy commandments deUvered
unto them."
And what is true of those who thus openly oppose
themselves to the truth, as it was true of the Evil One
in the beginning, will in an analogous way be true in the
case of aU sin, be it of a heavier or Ughter character, which •
is found in a Catholic country : — sin will be strangely 20
tinged or dyed by reUgious associations or beUefs, and will
exhibit the tragical inconsistencies of the excess of knowledge
over love, or of much faith with little obedience. The
mysterious battle between good and evil will assume in
a Catholic country its most frightful shape, when it is not
the collision of two distinct and far-separated hosts, but
when it is carried on in hearts and souls, taken one by one,
and when the eternal foes are so intermingled and inter
fused that to human eyes they seem to coalesce into a
multitude of individualities. This is in course of years, the 30
real, the hidden condition of a nation, which has been
bathed in Christian ideas, whether it be a young vigorous
race, or an old and degenerate ; and it will manifest itself
socially and historically in those characteristics, sometimes
grotesque, sometimes hideous, sometimes despicable, of
which we have so many instances, medieval and modern,
both in this hemisphere and in the western. It is, I say,
the necessary result of the intercommunion of divine faith
and human corruption.
But it has a light side as well as a dark. First, much 40
which seems profane, is not in itself profane, but in the

APPENDIX. 429
subjective view of the Protestant beholder. Scenic repre
sentations of our Lord's Passion are not profane to a
Catholic population ; in like manner, there are usages,
customs, institutions, actions, often of an indifferent nature,
which will be necessarily mixed up with religion in a Catholic
country, because all things whatever are so mixed up.
Protestants have been sometimes shocked, most absurdly
as a CathoUc rightly decides, at hearing that Mass is
sometimes said for a good haul of fish. There is no sin
10 here, but only a difference from Protestant customs
Other phenomena of a Catholic nation are at most mere
extravagances. And then as to what is really sinful, if
there be in it fearful instances of blasphemy or super
stition, there are also special and singular fruits and
exhibitions of sanctity ; and, if the many do not seem to
lead better lives for all their religious knowledge, at least
they learn, as they can learn nowhere else, how to repent
thoroughly and to die well.
The visible state of a country, which professes Catholi-
20 cism, need not be the measure of the spiritual result of that
Cathohcism, at the Eternal Judgment Seat ; but no one
could say that that visible state was a Note that Catholicism
was divine.
All this I attempted to bring out in the Lecture of which
I am speaking ; and that I had some success, I am glad
to infer from the message of congratulation upon it, which
I received at the time, from a foreign Catholic layman, of
high English reputation, with whom I had not the honour
of a personal acquaintance. And having given the key
30 to the Lecture, which the Writer so wonderfully misrepre
sents, I pass on to another head.]

430 APPENDIX.

The Economy.
For the [subject of the] Economy, (considered as a rule
of practice,) I shall refer to my discussion upon it in
(1830-32, in) my History of the Arians[, after one word
about this Writer. He puts into his Title-page these words
from a Sermon of mine : " It is not more than an hyperbole
to say, that, in certain cases, a Ue is the nearest approach
to truth." This Sermon he attacks ; but I do not think it
necessary to defend it here, because any one who reads it,
will see that he is simply incapable of forming a notion of
what it is about. It treats of subjects which are entirely 10
out of his depth ; and, as I have aheady shown in other
instances, and observed in the beginning of this Volume,
he illustrates in his own person the very thing that shocks
him, viz. that the nearest approach to truth, in given cases,
is a lie. He does his best to make something of it, I beheve ;
but he gets simply perplexed. He finds that it annihilates
space, robs him of locomotion, almost scoffs at the existence
of the earth, and he is simply frightened and cowed. He
can but say " the man who wrote that sermon was already
past the possibility of conscious dishonesty," p. 56. Perhaps 20
it is hardly fair, after such a confession on his part of
being fairly beat, to mark down a blot ; however, let it be
Blot thirty -two.
Then again, he quotes from me thus : " Many a theory
or view of things, on which an institution is founded, or
a party held together, is of the same kind (economical).
Many an argument, used by zealous and earnest men, has
this economical character, being not the very ground on
which they act, (for they continue in the same course,
though it be refuted,) yet in a certain sense, a representation so
of it, a proximate description of their feehngs, in the shape
of argument, on which they can rest, to which they can
recur when perplexed, and appeal when they are questioned."
7. (in heading)] Note F. On page 360.
2 my discussion] what I wrote
3 The matter between [ ] , pp. 430 to 432, 1. 6, was not reprinted in 1865.

APPENDIX. 431
He caUs these " startling words," p. 54. Yet here again
he illustrates their truth ; for in his own case, he has acted
on them in this very controversy with the most happy
exactness. Surely he referred to my Sermon on Wisdom
and Innocence, when called on to prove me a liar, as " a
proximate description of his feelings about me, in the shape
of argument," and he has " continued in the same course,
though it has been refuted." Blot thirty-three.
Then, as to " a party being held together by a mythical
10 representation," or economy. Surely " Church and King,"
" Reform," " Non-intervention," are such symbols ; or
let this Writer answer Mr. Kinglake's question in his
" Crimean War," "Is it true that .... great armies were
gathering, and that for the sake of the Key and the Star
the peace of the nations was brought into danger 1 " Blot
thirty-four. In the beginning of this work, pp. 89 — 95, I refuted his
gratuitous accusation against me at p. 57, founded on my
caUing one of my Anglican Sermons a Protestant one :
20 so I have nothing to do but to register it here as Blot
thirty -five.
Then he says that I committed an economy in placing
in my original title-page, that the question between him
and me, was whether " Dr. Newman teaches that Truth
is no virtue." It was a " wisdom of the serpentine type,"
since I did not add, "for its own sake." Now observe :
First, as to the matter of fact, in the course of my Letters,
which bore that Title-page, I printed the words " for its
own sake," five times over. Next, pray, what kind of a
30 virtue is that, which is not done for its own sake ? So this,
after all, is this Writer's idea of virtue ! a something that
is done for the sake of something else ; a sort of expedience !
He is honest, it seems, simply because honesty is " the best
policy," and on that score it is that he thinks himself
virtuous. Why, " for its own sake " enters into the very
idea or definition of a virtue. Defend me from such
virtuous men, as this Writer would inflict upon us ! Blot
thirty-six

432 APPENDIX.
These Blots are enough just now ; so I proceed to
a brief sketch of what I held in 1833 upon the Economy,
as a rule of practice. I wrote this two months ago ; perhaps
the composition is not quite in keeping with the run of this
Appendix ; and it is short ; but I think it wiU be sufficient
for my purpose : — ]
The doctrine of the Economia, had, as I have shown
(above), pp. 128 — 131, (in the early Church) a large signi
fication when applied to the divine ordinances ; it also
had a definite application to the duties of Christians, whether io
clergy or laity, in preaching, in instructing or catechizing, or
in ordinary intercourse with the world around them ( ; and
in this aspect I have here to consider it).
As Almighty God did not all at once introduce the Gospel
to the world, and thereby gradually prepared men for its
profitable reception, so, according to the doctrine of the
early Church, it was a duty, for the sake of the heathen
among whom they lived, to observe a great reserve and
caution in communicating to them the knowledge of " the
whole counsel of God." This cautious dispensation of the 20
truth, after the manner of a discreet and vigilant steward,
is denoted by the word " economy." It is a mode of acting
which comes under the head of Prudence, one of the four
Cardinal Virtues.
The principle of the Economy is this ; that out of various
courses, in religious conduct or statement, all and each
allowable antecedently and in themselves, that ought to be
taken which is most expedient and most suitable at the
time for the object in hand.
Instances of its application and exercise in Scripture 30
are such as the following : — 1. Divine Providence did but
gradually impart to the world in general, and to the Jews
in particular, the knowledge- of His will : — He is said to
have ' ' winked at the times of ignorance among the heathen ; ' '
and He suffered in the Jews divorce " because of the hard
ness of their hearts." 2. He has aUowed Himself to be
represented as having eyes, ears, and hands, as having
wrath, jealousy, grief, and repentance. 3. In like manner,
our Lord spoke harshly to the Syro-Phoenician woman,
whose daughter He was about to heal, and made as if He 40
7-8 The doctrine ... pp. 128-131] I have shown above, pp. 128-131,
that the doctrine in question had

(NOTE F.) 433
would go further, when the two disciples had come to their
journey's end. 4. Thus too Joseph " made himself strange
to his brethren," and Elisha kept silence on request of
Naaman to bow in the house of Rimmon. 5. Thus St. Paul
circumcised Timothy, while he cried out " Circumcision
availeth not."
It may be said that this principle, true in itself, yet is
dangerous, because it admits of an easy abuse, and carries
men away into what becomes insincerity and cunning.
io This is undeniable ; to do evil that good may come, to
consider that the means, whatever they are, justify the
end, to sacrifice truth to expedience, unscrupulousness,
recklessness, are grave offences. These are abuses of the
Economy. But to call them economical is to give a fine
name to what occurs every day, independent of any know
ledge of the doctrine of the Economy. It is the abuse of
a rule which nature suggests to every one. Every one
looks out for the " mollia tempora fandi," and (for) " molUa
verba " top.
20 Having thus explained what is meant by the Economy
as a rule of social intercourse between men of different
religious, or, again, political, or social views, next I (will)
go on to state what I said in the Arians.
I say in that Volume first, that our Lord has given us
the principle in His own words, — " Cast not your pearls
before swine ; " and that He exemplified it in His teaching
by parables ; that St. Paul expressly distinguishes between
the milk which is necessary to one set of men, and the strong
meat which is aUowed to others, and that, in two Epistles.
30 1 say, that the Apostles in the Acts observe the same rule
in their speeches, for it is a fact, that they do not preach the
high doctrines of Christianity, but only " Jesus and the
resurrection " or " repentance and faith." I also say, that
this is the very reason that the Fathers assign for the
silence of various writers in the first centuries on the subject
of our Lord's divinity. I also speak of the catechetical
system practised in the early Church, and the disciplina
arcani as regards the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, to which
Bingham bears witness ; also of the defence of this rule by
io Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and Theodoret.
33 resurrection] Resurrection

434 APPENDIX.
And next the question may be asked, whether I have
said any thing in my Volume to guard the doctrine, thus laid
down, from the abuse to which it is obviously exposed :
and my answer is easy. Of course, had I had any idea that
I should have been exposed to such hostile misrepresenta
tions, as it has been my lot to undergo on the subject, I
should have made more direct avowals than I have done of
my sense of the gravity and the danger of that abuse. Since
I could not foresee when I wrote, that I should have been
wantonly slandered, I only wonder that I have anticipated 10
the charge as fully as will be seen in the foUowing extracts,
For instance, speaking of the DiscipUna Arcani, I say : —
(1) " The elementary information given to the heathen.
or catechumen was in no sense undone by the subsequent
secret teaching, which was in fact but the filling up of
a bare but correct outline," p. 58, and I contrast this with the
conduct of the Manichseans " who represented the initiatory
discipline as founded on a fiction or hypothesis, which
was to be forgotten by the learner as he made progress in
the real doctrine of the Gospel." (2) As to aUegorizing, 1 20
say that the Alexandrians erred, whenever and as far as
they proceeded " to obscure the primary meaning of
Scripture, and to weaken the force of historical facts and
express declarations," p. 69. (3) And that they were " more
open to censure," when, on being " urged by objections to
various passages in the history of the Old Testament, as
derogatory to the divine perfections or to the Jewish
Saints, they had recourse to an allegorical explanation by
way of answer," p. 71. (4) I add, " It is impossible to defend
such a procedure, which seems to imply a want of faith in 30
those who had recourse to it ; " for " God has given us
rules of right and wrong," ibid. (5) Again, I say, — " The
abuse of the Economy in the hands of unscrupulous reasoners,
is obvious. Even the honest controversiahst or teacher
will find it very difficult to represent, without misrepre
senting, what it is yet his duty to present to his hearers
with caution or reserve. Here the obvious rule to guide our
practice is, to be careful ever to maintain substantial truth
in our use of the economical method," pp. 79, 80. (6) And
so far from concurring at all hazards with Justin, Gregory, 40
1 And] But

(NOTE F.) 435
or Athanasius, I say, " It is plain [they] were justified or
not in their Economy, according as they did or did not
practically mislead their opponents" p. 80. (7) I proceed,
" It is so difficult to hit the mark in these perplexing cases,
that it is not wonderful, should these or other Fathers
have failed at times, and said more or less than was proper,"

The Principle of the Economy is f amiliarly acted on
among us every day. When we would persuade others, we
io do not begin by treading on their toes. Men would be
thought rude who introduced their own rehgious notions
into mixed society, and were devotional in a drawing-room.
Have we never thought lawyers tiresome who (did not
observe this polite rule, who) came down for the assizes
and talked law aU through dinner ? Does the same argument
tell in the House of Commons, on the hustings, and at
Exeter Hall ? Is an educated gentleman never worsted
at an election by the tone and arguments of some clever
fellow, who, whatever his shortcomings in other respects,
20 understands the common people ?
As to the Catholic Religion in England at the present
day, this only will I observe, — that the truest expedience is
to answer right out, when you are asked ; that the wisest
economy is to have no management ; that the best prudence
is not to be a coward ; that the most damaging folly is to
be found out shuffling ; and that the first of virtues is
to " tell truth, and shame the devil."
1 These are the Author's [ ]

436 APPENDIX.

Lying and Equivocation.
[This writer says, " Though [a he] be a sin, the fact of its
being a venial one seems to have gained for it as yet a very
slight penance." — p. 60. Yet he says also that Dr. Newman
takes " a perverse pleasure in eccentricities," because I say
that "it is better for sun and moon to drop from heaven
than that one soul should tell one wilful untruth." — p. 46.
That is, he first accuses us without foundation of making
light of a lie ; and, when he finds that we don't, then he
calls us inconsistent. I have noticed these words of mine,
and two passages besides, which he quotes, above at pp. io
339-41. Here I will but observe on the subject of venial
sin generally, that he altogether forgets our doctrine of
Purgatory. This punishment may last till the day of
judgment ; so much for duration ; then as to intensity,
let the image of fire, by which we denote it, show what we
think of it. Here is the expiation of venial sins. Yet
Protestants, after the manner of this Writer, are too apt
to play fast and loose ; to blame us because we hold that
sin may be venial, and to blame us again when we tell them
what we think will be its punishment. Blot thirty-seven. 20
At the end of his Pamphlet he makes a distinction
between the Catholic clergy and gentry in England, which
I know the latter consider to be very impertinent ; and he
makes it apropos of a passage in one of my original letters
in January. He quotes me as saying that " Cathohcs differ
from Protestants, as to whether this or that act in particular
is conformable to the rule of truth," p. 61 ;• and then he
goes on to observe, that I have " calumniated the Cathohc
gentry," because " there is no difference whatever, of
detail or other, between their truthfulness and honour, 30
and the truthfulness and honour of the Protestant gentry
8. (in heading)] Note G. On page 369.
1 The passages in [ ], pp. 436-8, were not reprinted in 1865.
1 [a lie] These are Dr. Newman s [ ].

APPENDIX. 437
among whom they live." But again he has garbled my
words ; they run thus :
" Truth is the same in itself and in substance, to Catholic
and Protestant ; so is purity ; both virtues are to be re
ferred to that moral sense which is the natural possession
of us all. But, when we come to the question in detail,
whether this or that act in particular is conformable to the
rule of truth, or again to the rule of purity, then sometimes
there is a difference of opinion between individuals, some-
10 times between schools, and sometimes between religious com
munions." I knew indeed perfectly well, and I confessed
that " Protestants think that the Catholic system, as such,
leads to a lax observance of the rule of truth ; " but I
added, " I am very sorry that they should think so," and
I never meant myseff to grant that all Protestants were on
the strict side, and all Catholics on the lax. Far from it ;
there is a stricter party as well as a laxer party among
Catholics, there is a laxer party as well as a stricter party
among Protestants. I have already spoken of Protestant
20 writers who in certain cases allow of lying, I have also
spoken of Catholic writers who do not allow of equivoca
tion ; when I wrote " a difference of opinion between
individuals," and " between schools," I meant between
Protestant and Protestant, and particular instances were
in my mind. I did not say then, or dream of saying, that
Catholics, priests and laity, were lax on the point of lying,
and that Protestants were strict, any more than I meant
to say that all Catholics were pure, and all Protestants
impure ; but I meant to say that, whereas the rule of
30 Truth is one and the same both to Catholic and Protestant,
nevertheless some Catholics were lax, some strict, and
again some Protestants were strict, some lax ; and I have
already had opportunities of recording my own judgment
on which side this Writer is himself, and therefore he may
keep his forward vindication of " honest gentlemen and
noble ladies," who, in spite of their priests, are still so
truthful, till such time as he can find a worse assailant of
them than I am, and they no better champion of them than
himself. And as to the Priests of England, those who
40 know them, as he does not, will pronounce them no
whit inferior in this great virtue to the gentry, whom

438 APPENDIX.
he says that he does ; and I cannot say more. Blot
thirty-eight. Lastly, this Writer uses the following words, which
I have more than once quoted, and with a reference to
them I shall end my remarks upon him. " I am hence
forth," he says, " in doubt and fear, as much as an honest
man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may
write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some
cunning equivocation, of one of the three kinds, laid down
as permissible by the blessed St. Alfonso da Liguori and 10
his pupils, even when confirmed with an oath . . . ? "
I will teU him why he need not fear ; because he has
left out one very important condition in the statement of
St. Affonso, — and very applicable to my own case, even if
I followed St. Alfonso's view of the subject. St. Affonso
says " ex justd causd ; " but our " honest man," as he
styles himseff, has omitted these words ; which are a key
to the whole question. Blot thirty -nine. Here endeth our
" honest man." Now for the subject of Lying.]
Almost all authors, Cathohc and Protestant, admit, 20
that when a just cause is present, there is some kind or
other of verbal misleading, which is not sin. Even sUence
is in certain cases virtually such a misleading, according
to the Proverb, " Silence gives consent." Again, sUence
is absolutely forbidden to a Cathohc, as a mortal sin,
under certain circumstances, e. g. to keep sUence, instead
of making a profession of faith.
Another mode of verbal misleading, and the most direct,
is actually saying the thing that is not ; and it is defended
on the principle that such words are not a he, when there 30
is a " justa causa," as killing is not murder in the case of an
executioner. Another ground of certain authors for saying that an
untruth is not a lie where there is a just cause, is, that
veracity is a kind of justiee, and therefore, when we have
no duty of justice to teU truth to another, it is no sin not to
do so. Hence we may say the thing that is not, to children,
26-27 instead of making] when it is a duty to make

(NOTE G.) 439
to madmen, to men who ask impertinent questions, to those
whom we hope to benefit by misleading.
Another ground, taken in defending certain untruths, ex
justd causd, as if not lies, is that veracity is for the sake of
society, and (that), if in no case (whatever) we might
lawfully mislead others, we should actually be doing
society great harm.
Another mode of verbal misleading is equivocation or
a play upon words ; and it is defended on the view that to
10 he is to use words in a sense which they will not bear. But
an equivocator uses them in a received sense, though there
is another received sense, and therefore, according to this
definition, he does not lie.
Others say that all equivocations are, after all, a kind
of lying, (¦ — ) faint lies or awkward lies, but still lies ; and
some of these disputants infer, that therefore we must not
equivocate, and others that equivocation is but a half-
measure, and that it is better to say at once that in certain
cases untruths are not lies.
20 Others will try to distinguish between evasions and
equivocations ; but [they wiU be answered, that,] though
there are evasions which are clearly not equivocations, yet
[that] it is (very) difficult scientifically to draw the line
between them.
To these must be added the unscientific way of dealing
with lies, ( — ) viz. that on a great or cruel occasion a man
cannot help telling a he, and he would not be a man, did
he not teU it, but stUl it is (very) wrong and he ought not
to do it, and he must trust that the sin will be forgiven
30 him, though he goes about to commit it (ever so deliberately,
and is sure to commit it again under similar circumstances).
It is a (necessary) frailty, and had better not be anticipated,
and not thought of again, after it is once over. This view
cannot for a moment be defended, but, I suppose, it is
very common.
[And now] I think the historical course of thought upon
the matter has been this : the Greek Fathers thought
9 view] theory 24 them] the one and the other
32 anticipated] thought about before it is incurred
33 once] well

440 APPENDIX.
that, when there was a justa causa, an untruth need not
be a lie. St. Augustine took another view; though with
great misgiving ; and, whether he is rightly interpreted
or not, is the doctor of the great and common view that all
untruths are lies, and that there can be no just cause of
untruth. In these later times, this doctrine has been found
difficult to work, and it has been largely taught that,
though all untruths are lies, yet that certain equivocations,
when there is a just cause, are not untruths.
Further, there have been and aU along through these 10
later ages, other schools, running paraUel with the above
mentioned, one of which says that equivocations, &c. after
all are lies, and another which says that there are untruths
which are not lies.
And now as to the " just cause," which is the condition,
sine qud non. The Greek Fathers make them such as these,
self-defence, charity, zeal for God's honour, and the hke.
St. Augustine seems to deal with the same " just causes "
as the Greek Fathers, even though he does not aUow of their
availableness as depriving untruths, spoken with such 20
objects, of their sinfulness. He mentions defence of hfe
and of honour, and the safe custody of a secret. Also the
AngUcan writers, who have followed the Greek Fathers, in
defending untruths when there is the " just cause," consider
that (") just cause (") to be such as the preservation of life
and property, defence of law, the good of others. More
over, their moral rights, e. g. defence against the inquisi
tive, &c.
St. Alfonso, I consider, would take the same view of 30
the " justa causa " as the Anglican divines ; he speaks of
it as " quicunque finis honestus, ad servanda bona spiritui
vel corpori utilia ; " which is very much the view which
they take of it, judging by the instances which they give.
In all cases, however, and as contemplated by aU authors,
Clement of Alexandria, or Milton, or St. Alfonso, such
a causa is, in fact, extreme, rare, great, or at least special.
Thus the writer in the Melanges Theologiques (Liege, 1852-3,
p. 453) quotes Lessius : "Si absque justa causa fiat, est
abusio orationis contra virtutem veritatis, et eivilem 40
16 them] it 20-21 with such objects] on such occasions

(NOTE G.) 441
consuetudinem, etsi proprie non sit mendacium." That
is, the virtue of truth, and the civil custom, are the measure
of the just cause. And so Voit, " If a man has used a
reservation (restrictione non pure mentali) without a grave
cause, he has sinned gravely." And so the author himself,
from whom I quote, and who defends the Patristic and
Anghcan doctrine that there are untruths which are not
lies, says, "Under the name of mental reservation theologians
authorize many lies, when there is for them a grave reason
10 and proportionate " i. e. to their character. — p. 459. And
so St. Alfonso, in another Treatise, quotes St. Thomas to
the effect, that, if from one cause two immediate effects
follow, and, if the good effect of that cause is equal in
value to the bad effect (bonus cequivalet malo), then nothing
hinders that the good may be intended and the evil per
mitted. From which it will follow that, since the evil to
society from lying is very great, the just cause which is to
make it aUowable, must be very great also. And so Kenrick :
" It is confessed by aU Catholics that, in the common inter-
20 course of hfe, all ambiguity of language is to be avoided ; but
it is debated whether such ambiguity is ever lawful. Most
theologians answer in the affirmative, supposing a grave cause
urges, and the [true] mind of the speaker can be coUected
from the adjuncts, though in fact it be not collected."
However, there are cases, I have already said, of another
kind, in which Anghcan authors would think a he aUowable ;
such as when a question is impertinent. [Accordingly, I
think the best word for embracing all the cases which
would come under the " justa causa," is, not " extreme,"
30 but " special," and I say the same as regards St. Affonso ;
and therefore, above in pp. 363-5, whether I speak
of St. Alfonso or Paley, I should have used the word
" special," or " extraordinary," not " extreme."]
What I have been saying shows what different schools
of opinion there are in the Church in the treatment of this
15-16 that the good may be intended and the evil permitted] the
speaker's intending the good and only permitting the evil
21 ever] ever ' 23 These [ ] are in 1864 and 1865.
27-33 For the passage in [ ] the following is substituted in 1865 : Of
such a case Walter Seott, if I mistake not, supplied a very distinct
example, in his denying so long the authorship of his novels.

442 APPENDIX.
difficult doctrine ; and, by consequence, that a given
individual, such as I am, cannot agree with all (of them), and
has a full right to follow which (of them) he will. The
freedom of the Schools, indeed, is one of those rights of
reason, which the Church is too wise really to interfere
with. And this applies not to moral questions only, but
to dogmatic also.
It is supposed by Protestants that, because St. Alfonso's
writings have had such high commendation bestowed upon
them by authority, therefore they have been invested with 10
a quasi-infallibility. This has arisen in good measure from
Protestants not knowing the force of theological terms.
The words to which they refer are the authoritative decision
that ' ' nothing in his works has been found worthy of censure, ' '
" censura dignum ; " but this does not lead to the conclu
sions which have been drawn from it. Those words occur
in a legal document, and cannot be interpreted except
in a legal sense. In the first place, the sentence is negative ;
nothing in St. Alfonso's writings is positively approved ;
and secondly it is not said that there are no faults in what 20
he has written, but nothing which comes under the eccle
siastical censura, which is something very definite. To
take and interpret them, in the way commonly adopted in
England, is the same mistake, as if one were to take the
word " Apologia " in the Enghsh sense of apology, or
" Infant " in law to mean a little child.
1. Now first as to the meaning of the (above) form of
words viewed as a proposition. When they were brought
before the fitting authorities at Rome by the Archbishop
of Besancon, the answer returned to him contained the 30
condition that those words were to be interpreted, " with
t due regard to the mind of the Holy See concerning the
approbation of writings of the servants of God, ad effectum
Canonizationis." This is intended to prevent any Cathohc
taking the words about St. Alfonso's works in too large a
sense. Before a Saint is canonized, his works are examined
and a judgment pronounced upon them. Pope Benedict
XIV. says, " The end or scope of this judgment is, that it
28-29 they were brought before] a question on the subject was asked of
30-31 the condition] this condition, viz.

(NOTE G.) 443
may appear, whether the doctrine of the servant of God,
which he has brought out in his writings, is free from any
soever theological censure." And he remarks in addition,
" It never can be said that the doctrine of a servant of
God is approved by the Holy See, but at most it can [only]
be said that it is not disapproved (non reprobatam) in case
that the Revisers had reported that there is nothing found
by them in his works, which is adverse to the decrees of
Urban VIII., and that the judgment of the Revisers has
10 been approved by the sacred Congregation, and confirmed
by the Supreme Pontiff." The Decree of Urban VIII.
here referred to is, " Let works be examined, whether
they contain errors against faith or good morals (bonos
mores), or any new doctrine, or a doctrine foreign and alien
to the common sense and custom of the Church." The
author from whom I quote this (M. Vandenbroeck, of the
diocese of Mahnes) observes, " It is therefore clear, that the
approbation of the works of the Holy Bishop touches not
the truth of every proposition, adds nothing to them, nor
20 even gives them by consequence a degree of intrinsic
probability." He adds that it gives St. Alfonso's theology
an extrinsic probability, from the fact that, in the judgment
of the Holy See, no proposition deserves to receive a
censure ; but that " that probability will cease nevertheless
in a particular case, for any one who should be convinced,
whether by evident arguments, or by a decree of the Holy
See, or otherwise, that the doctrine of the Saint deviates
from the truth." He adds, " From the fact that the appro
bation of the works of St. Affonso does not decide the truth
30 of each proposition, it follows, as Benedict XIV. has
remarked, that we may combat the doctrine which they
contain ; only, since a canonized saint is in question, who
is honoured by a solemn culte in the Church, we ought not
to speak except with respect, nor to attack his opinions
except with temper and modesty."
2. Then, as to the meaning of the word censura : Bene
dict XIV. enumerates a number of " Notes " which come
under that name ; he says, " Out of propositions which are
to be noted with theological censure, some are heretical,
some erroneous, some close upon error, some savouring of
5 The[] are in both 1864 and 1865.

444 APPENDIX.
heresy," and so on ; and each of these terms has its own
definite meaning. Thus by " erroneous " is meant, according
to Viva, a proposition which is not immediately opposed
to a revealed proposition, but only to a theological con
clusion drawn from premisses which are defide ; " savouring
of heresy (is) " [when] a proposition^ which) is opposed
to a theological conclusion not evidently drawn from
premisses which are defide, but most probably and according
to the common mode of theologizing, ( — ) and so with the
rest. Therefore when it was said by the Revisers of 10
St. Alfonso's works that they were not " worthy of censure,"
it was only meant that they did not faU under these
particular Notes.
But the answer from Rome to the Archbishop of Besancon
went further than this ; it actuaUy took pains to declare
that any one who pleased might foUow other theologians
instead of St. Alfonso. After saying that no Priest was to
be interfered with who f oUowed St. Affonso in the Con
fessional, it added, " This is said, however, without on that
account judging that they are reprehended who foUow 20
opinions handed down by other approved authors."
And this too, I will observe, ( — ) that St. Alfonso made
many changes of opinion himself in the course of his
writings ; and it could not for an instant be supposed
that we were bound to every one of his opinions, when he
did not feel himself bound to them in his own person. And,
what is more to the purpose stiU, there are opinions, or
some opinion, of his which actuaUy has been proscribed by
the Church since, and cannot now be put forward or used.
I do not pretend to be a weU-read theologian myseff, but 30
I say this on the authority of a theological professor of
Breda, quoted in the Melanges Theol. for 1850-1. He
says : " It may happen, that, in the course of time,
errors may be found in the works of St. Affonso and be
proscribed by the Church, a thing which in fact has already
occurred." In not ranging myself then with those who consider that
it is justifiable to use words in a double sense, that is, to
equivocate, I put myself [, first,] under the protection of (such 40
28 has] have

APPENDIX. 445
authors as) Cardinal Gerdil, [who, in a work lately pub
hshed at Rome, has the foUowing passage, which I owe to
the kindness of a friend : Gerdil.
" In an oath one ought to have respect to the intention
of the party swearing, and the intention of the party to
whom the oath is taken. Whoso swears binds himself in
virtue of the words, not according to the sense he retains
in his own mind, but in the sense according to which he
perceives that they are understood by him to whom the oath is
10 made. When the mind of the one is discordant with the
mind of the other, if this happens by deceit or cheat of the
party swearing, he is bound to observe the oath according
to the right sense (sana mente) of the party receiving it ;
but, when the discrepancy in the sense comes of misunder
standing, without deceit of the party swearing, in that case
he is not bound, except to that to which he had in mind to
wish to be bound. It foUows hence, that whoso uses mental
reservation or equivocation in the oath, in order to deceive
the party to whom he offers it, sins most grievously, and
20 is always bound to observe the oath in the sense in which
he knew that his words were taken by the other party,
according to the decision of St. Augustine, ' They are
perjured, who, having kept the words, have deceived the
expectations of those to whom the oath was taken.' He
who swears externaUy, without the inward intention of
swearing, commits a most grave sin, and remains all the
same under the obligation to fulfil it. . . . In a word, all that
is contrary to good faith, is iniquitous, and by introducing
the name of God the iniquity is aggravated by the guilt of
30 sacrilege." Natalis Alexander.
" They certainly he, who utter the words of an oath, and
without the wiU to swear or bind themselves ; or who make
use of mental reservations and equivocations in swearing,
since they signify by words what they have not in mind,
1 The passage in [ ], pp. 445-8, was omitted in 1865, where, after
Gerdil, the following was added, Natalis Alexander, Contenson, Concina,
and others.

446 APPENDIX.
contrary to the end for which language was instituted,
viz. as signs of ideas. Or they mean something else than
the words signify in themselves, and the common custom
of speech, and the circumstances of persons and business-
matters ; and thus they abuse words which were instituted
for the cherishing of society." Contenson.
" Hence is apparent how worthy of condemnation is the
temerity of those half -taught men, who give a colour to
hes and equivocations by the words and instances of Christ.
Than whose doctrine, which is an art of deceiving, nothing 10
can be more pestilent. And that, both because what you
do not wish done to yourself, you should not do to another ;
now the patrons of equivocations and mental reservations
would not like to be themselves deceived by others, &c. . . .
and also because St. Augustine, &c. ... In truth, as there
is no pleasant hving with those whose language we do not
understand, and, as St. Augustine teaches, a man would
more readily live with his dog than with a foreigner, less
pleasant certainly is our converse with those who make use
of frauds artificially covered, overreach, their hearers by 20
deceits, address them insidiously, observe the right moment,
and catch at words to their purpose, by which truth is
hidden under a covering ; and so on the other hand
nothing is sweeter than the society of those, who both love
and speak the naked truth, . . . without their mouth
professing one thing and their mind hiding another, or
spreading before it the cover of double words. Nor does it
matter that they colour their lies with the name of equivoca
tions or mental reservations. For Hilary says, ' The sense,
not the speech, makes the crime.' " 30
Concina allows of what I shall presently call evasions, but
nothing beyond, if I understand him ; but he is most
vehement against mental reservation of every kind, so I
quote him. Concina.
" That mode of speech, which some theologians call
pure mental reservation, others call reservation not simply

APPENDIX. 447
mental ; that language which to me is lying, to the greater
part of recent authors is only amphibological. ... I have dis
covered that nothing is adduced by more recent theologians
for the lawful use of amphibologies which has not been made
use of already by the ancients, whether philosophers or
some Fathers, in defence of lies. Nor does there seem to
me other difference when I consider their respective
grounds, except that the ancients frankly caUed those
modes of speech lies, and the more recent writers, not a
10 few of them, call them amphibological, equivocal, and
material." In another place he quotes Caramuel, so I suppose I may
do so too, for the very reason that his theological reputa
tion does not place him on the side of strictness. Concina
says, " Caramuel himseff, who bore away the palm from
aU others in relaxing the evangelical and natural law,
says, Caramuel.
" I have an innate aversion to mental reservations. If
they are contained within the bounds of piety and sincerity,
20 then they are not necessary ; . . . but if [otherwise] they
are the destruction of human society and sincerity, and
are to be condemned as pestilent. Once admitted, they
open the way to aU lying, all perjury. And the whole
difference in the matter is, that what yesterday was caUed
a Ue, changing, not its nature and malice, but its name, is
to-day entitled ' mental reservation ; ' and this is to
sweeten poison with sugar, and to colour guilt with the
appearance of virtue." St. Thomas.
" When the sense of the party swearing, and of the
30 party to whom he swears, is not the same, if this proceeds
from the deceit of the former, the oath ought to be kept
according to the right sense of the party to whom it is
made. But if the party swearing does not make use of
deceit, then he is bound according to his own sense."
20 These [ ] are in 1864.

448 APPENDIX.
St. Isidore.
" With whatever artifice of words a man swears, never
theless God who is the witness of his conscience, so takes
the oath as he understands it, to whom it is sworn. And
he becomes twice guilty, who both takes the name of God
in vain, and deceives his neighbour."
St. Augustine.
" I do not question that this is most justly laid down,
that the promise of an oath must be fulfilled, not accord
ing to the words of the party taking it, but according to
the expectation of the party to whom it is taken, of which
he who takes it is aware."] 10
[And now,] under the protection of these authorities,
I say as foUows : —
Casuistry is a noble science, but it is one to which I am
led, neither by my abihties nor my turn of mind. Inde
pendently, then, of the difficulties of the subject, and the
necessity, before forming an opinion, of knowing more of
the arguments of theologians upon it than I do, I am very
unwilling to say a word here on the subject of Lying and
Equivocation. But I consider myself bound to speak ;
and therefore, in this strait, I can do nothing better, even 20
for my own rehef, than submit myseff and what I shaU
say to the judgment of the Church, and to the consent,
so far as in this matter there be a consent, of the Schola
Theologorum. Now, in the case of one of those special and rare exigencies
or emergencies, which constitute the justa causa of dis
sembling or misleading, whether it be extreme as the
defence of life, or a duty as the custody of a secret, or of
a personal nature as to repel an impertinent inquirer, or a
matter too trivial to provoke question, as in dealing with 30
children or madmen, there seem to be four courses : —
1. To say the thing that is not. Here I draw the reader's
attention to the words material and formal. " Thou shalt
not kill ; " murder is the formal transgression of this com-
10 The matter in [ ], pp. 445-8, was not reprinted in 1S65.

(NOTE G.) 449
mandment, but accidental homicide is the material trans
gression. The matter of the act is the same in both cases ;
but in the homicide, there is nothing more than the act,
whereas in murder there must be the intention, &c. which
constitutes the formal sin. So, again, an executioner
commits the ~ material act, but not that formal killing
which is a breach of the commandment. So a man, who,
simply to save himself from starving, takes a loaf which is
not his own, commits only the material, not the formal
10 act of stealing, that is, he does not commit a sin. And so
a baptized Christian, external to the Church, who is in
invincible ignorance, is a material heretic, and not a formal.
And in like manner, if to say the thing which is not be in
special cases lawful, it may be caUed a material lie.
The first mode then which has been suggested of meeting
those special cases, in which to mislead by words has
a sufficient object, or has a just cause, is by a material lie.
The second mode is by an cequivocatio, which is not
equivalent to the English word " equivocation," but means
20 sometimes a play upon words, sometimes an evasion{: we
must take these two modes of misleading separately.)
2. A play upon words. St. Alfonso certainly says that
a play upon words is allowable ; and, speaking under
correction, I should say that he does so on the ground that
lying is not a sin against justice, that is, against our neigh
bour, but a sin against God ; because words are the signs
of ideas, and therefore if a word denotes two ideas, we are
at liberty to use it in either of its senses : but I think
' I must be incorrect [here] in some respect (in supposing
30 that the Saint does not recognize a lie as an injustice),
because the Catechism of the Council, as I have quoted it
at p. 370, says, " Vanitate et mendacio fides ac Veritas
toUuntur, arctissima vincula societatis humanoe ; quibus
sublatis, sequitur summa vitse confusio, ut homines nihil
a damonibus differre videantur."
3. Evasion ; — when, for instance, the speaker diverts
T;he attention of the hearer to another subject ; suggests
an irrelevant fact or makes a remark, which confuses him
17 object] occasion
26 God ; because words are] God. God has made words
APOLOGIA Q

450 APPENDIX.
and gives him something to think about ; throws dust
into his eyes ; states some truth, from which he is quite
sure his hearer wiU draw an iUogical and untrue conclusion,
and the like. [Bishop Butler seems distinctly to sanction
such a proceeding, in a passage which I shaU extract
below.] The greatest school of evasion, I speak seriously, is the
House of Commons ; and necessarily so, from the nature
of the case. And the hustings is another.
An instance is supphed in the history of St. Athanasius : 10
he was in a boat on the NUe, flying persecution ; and he
found himself pursued. On this he ordered his men to
turn his boat round, and ran right to meet the satellites
of Juhan. They asked him, Have you seen Athanasius ?
and he told his foUowers to answer, " Yes, he is close to
you." They went on their course (as if they were sure to
come up to him), and he ran (back) into Alexandria, and
there lay hid tiU the end of the persecution.
I gave another instance above, in reference to a doctrine
of rehgion. The early Christians did their best to conceal 20
their Creed on account of the misconceptions of the heathen
about it. Were the question asked of them, " Do you
worship a Trinity ? " and did they answer, " We worship
one God, and none else ; " the inquirer might, or would,
infer that they did not acknowledge the Trinity of Divine
Persons. It is very difficult to draw the line between these evasions,
and what are commonly caUed in English equivocations ;
and of this difficulty, again, I think, the scenes in the House
of Commons supply us with illustrations. 30
4. The fourth method is silence. For instance, not
giving the whole truth in a court of law. If St. Alban,
after dressing himseff in the Priest's clothes, and being
taken before the persecutor, had been able to pass off for
his friend, and so gone to martyrdom without being dis
covered ; and had he in the course of examination answered
all questions truly, but not given the whole truth, the
most important truth, that he was the wrong person, he
would have come very near to telling a lie, for a half-
17 and] while

(NOTE G.) 451
truth is often a falsehood. And his defence must have
been the justa causa, viz. either that he might in charity
or for religion's sake save a priest, or again that the judge
had no right to interrogate him on the subject.
Now, of these four modes of misleading others by the
tongue, when there is a justa causa (supposing there can
be such), — (l)a material he, that is an untruth which is not
a he, (2) an equivocation, (3) an evasion, and (4) silence, —
First, I have no difficulty whatever in recognizing as aUow-
10 able the method of silence.
Secondly, But, if I aUow of silence, why not of the
method of material lying, since half of a truth is often
a he ? And, again, if all lolling be not murder, nor all
taking from another stealing, why must aU untruths be
lies ? Now I wiU say freely tHat I think it difficult to
answer this question, whether it be urged by St. Clement
or by MUton ; at the same time, I never have acted, and
I think, when it came to the point, I never should act upon
such a theory myself, except in one case, stated below.
20 This I say for the benefit of those who speak hardly of
Cathohc theologians, on the ground that they admit text
books which aUow of equivocation. They are asked, how
can we trust you, when such are your views ? but such
views, as I already have said, need not have any thing to
do with their own practice, merely from the circumstance
that they are contained in their text-books. A theologian
draws out a system ; he does it partly as a scientific
speculation : but much more for the sake of others. He
is lax for the sake of others, not of himself. His own
30 standard of action is much higher than that which he
imposes upon men in general. One special reason why
rehgious men, after drawing out a theory, are unwilling
to act upon it themselves, is this : that they practically
acknowledge a broad distinction between their reason and
their conscience ; and that they feel the latter to be the
safer guide, though the former may be the clearer, nay even
though it be the truer. They would rather be wrong with
- (the sanction of) their conscience, than (be) right with (the
mere judgment of) their reason. And again here is this
40 more tangible difficulty in the case of exceptions to the
37 wrong] in error

452 APPENDIX.
rule of Veracity, that so very little external help is given
us in drawing the line, as to when untruths are aUowable
and when not ; whereas that sort of killing which is not
murder, is most definitely marked off by legal enactments,
so that it cannot possibly be mistaken for such killing as is
murder. On the other hand the cases of exemption from
the rule of Veracity are left to the private judgment of the
individual, and he may easily be led on from acts which are
allowable to acts which are not. Now this remark does
not apply to such acts as are related in Scripture, as being 10
done by a particular inspiration, for in such cases there is
a command. If I had my own way, I would obhge society,
that is, its great men, its lawyers, its divines, its literature,
publicly to acknowledge, as such, those instances of
untruth which are not hes, as for instance, untruths in
war ; and then there could be no danger [in them] to the
individual Cathohc, for he would be acting under a rule.
Thirdly, as to playing upon words, or equivocation,
I suppose it is from the Enghsh habit, but, without mean
ing any disrespect to a great Saint, or wishing to set myself 20
up, or taking my conscience for more than it is worth, I can
only say as a fact, that I admit it as little as the rest of
my countrymen : and, without any reference to the right
and the wrong of the matter, of this I am sure, that, if
there is one thing more than another which prejudices
Englishmen against the Cathohc Church, it is the doctrine
of great authorities on the subject of equivocation. For
myseff, I can fancy myseff thinking it was aUowable in
extreme cases for me to he, but never to equivocate.
Luther said, " Pecca fortiter." I anathematize the formal 80
sentiment, but there is a truth in it, when spoken of material
acts. Fourthly, I think evasion, as I have described it, to be
perfectly allowable ; indeed, I do not know, who does not
use it, under circumstances ; but that a good deal of moral
danger is attached to its use ; and that, the cleverer a man
is, the more likely he is to pass the line of Christian
duty. 16 danger] perplexity
17 be acting under a rule] not be taking the law into his own hands
30 the] his

(NOTE G.) 453
But it may be said, that such decisions do not meet the
particular difficulties for which provision is required ; let
us then take some instances.
1. I do not think it right to tell hes to children, even
on this account, that they are sharper than we think
them, and will soon find out what we are doing ; and our
example will be a very bad training for them. And so of
equivocation : it is easy of imitation, and we ourselves
shaU be sure to get the worst of it in the end.
10 2. If an early Father defends the patriarch Jacob in his
mode of gaming his father's blessing, on the ground that
the blessing was divinely pledged to him aheady, that it
was his, and that his father and brother were acting at
once against his own rights and the divine will, it does not
foUow from this that such conduct is a pattern to us, who
have no supernatural means of determining when an
untruth becomes a material, and not a formal lie. It
seems to me very dangerous, be it (ever) allowable or not,
to Ue or equivocate in order to preserve some great temporal
20 or spiritual benefit, nor does St. Affonso here say any thing
to the contrary, for he is not discussing the question of
danger or expedience.
3. As to Johnson's case of a murderer asking you which
way a man had gone, I should have anticipated that, had
such a difficulty happened to him, his first act would have
been to knock the man down, and to call out for the pohce ;
and next, if he was worsted in the conflict, he would not
have given the ruffian the information he asked, at what
ever risk to himseff. I think he would have let himseff
30 be killed first. I do not think that he would have told
a he.
4. A secret is a more difficult case. Supposing some
thing has been confided to me in the strictest secrecy,
which could not be revealed without great disadvantage to
another, what am I to do ? If I am a lawyer, I am pro
tected by my profession. I have a right to treat with
extreme indignation any question which trenches on the
inviolability of my position ; but, supposing I was driven
up into a corner, I think I should have a right to say an
io untruth, or that, under such circumstances, a lie would
be material, but it is almost an impossible case, for the

454 APPENDIX.
law would defend me. In like manner, as a priest, I should
think it lawful to speak as if I knew nothing of what
passed in confession. And I think in these cases, I do in
fact possess that guarantee, that I am not going by private
judgment, which just now I demanded ; for society would
bear me out, whether as a lawyer or as a priest, (in hold
ing) that I had a duty to my client or penitent, such, that
an untruth in the matter was not a lie. A common type
of this permissible denial, be it material lie or evasion, is
at the moment supphed to me :( — )an artist asked a Prime 10
Minister, who was sitting to him, " What news, my Lord,
from France ? " He answered, " I do not know ; I have
not read the Papers."
5. A more difficult question is, when to accept con
fidence has not been a duty. Supposing a man wishes to
keep the secret that he is the author of a book, and he is
plainly asked on the subject. Here " I should ask the
previous question, whether any one has a right to pubhsh
what he dare not avow. It requires to have traced the
bearings and results of such a principle, before being sure 20
of it ; but certainly, for myself, I am no friend of strictly
anonymous writing. Next, supposing another has con
fided to you the secret of his authorship :( — )there are
persons who would have no scruple at all in giving a denial
to impertinent questions asked them on the subject.
I have heard a great man in his day at Oxford, warmly
contend, as if he could not enter into any other view of
the matter, that, if he had been trusted by a friend with
the secret of his being author of a certain book, and he
were asked by a third person, if his friend was not (as he 30
really was) the author of it, he ought without any scruple
and distinctly to answer that he did not know. He had
an existing duty towards the author ; he had none towards
his inquirer. The author had a claim on him ; an imper
tinent questioner had none at aU. But here again I de
siderate some leave, recognized by society, as in the case
of the formulas " Not at home," and " Not guilty," in
order to give me the right of saying what is a material
untruth. And moreover, I should here also ask the previous
question, Have I any right to accept such a confidence ? 40
have I any right to make such a promise ? and, if it be

(NOTE G.) 455
an unlawful promise, is it binding at the expense of a lie ?
I am not attempting to solve these 'difficult questions, but
they have to be carefuUy examined. (And now I have
said more than I had intended on a question of casuistry.)
[As I put into print some weeks ago various extracts
from authors relating to the subject which I have been
considering, I conclude by inserting them here, though they
wiU not have a very methodical appearance.
For instance, St. Dorotheus : " Sometimes the necessity
10 of some matter urges (incumbit), which, unless you some
what conceal and dissemble it, will turn into a greater
trouble." And he goes on to mention the case of saving
a man who has committed homicide from his pursuers :
and he adds that it is not a thing that can be done often,
but once in a long time.
St. Clement in like manner speaks of it only as a neces
sity, and as a necessary medicine.
Origen, after saying that God's commandment makes it
a plain duty to speak the truth, adds, that a man, " when
20 necessity urges," may avail himself of a he, as medicine,
that is, to the extent of Judith's conduct towards Holo-
fernes ; and he adds that that necessity may be the obtain
ing of a great good, as Jacob hindered his father from
giving the blessing to Esau against the will of God.
Cassian says, that the use of a lie, in order to be allow
able, must be Uke the use of heUebore, which is itself
poison, unless a man has a fatal disease on him. He adds,
" Without the condition of an extreme necessity, it is
a present ruin."
so St. John Chrysostom defends Jacob on the ground that
his deceiving his father was not done for the sake of tem
poral gain, but in order to fulfil the providential purpose
of God ; and he says, that, as Abraham was not a murderer,
though he was minded to kill his son, so an untruth need
not be a he. And he adds, that often such a deceit is the
greatest possible benefit to the man who is deceived, and
therefore aUowable. Also St. Hilary, St. John Climacus,
&c, in Thomassin, Concina, the Melanges, &c.
1 at the expense of] when it cannot be kept without
5 The matter from here to page 470 was not reprinted in 1865.

4B6 APPENDIX.
Various modern CathoUc divines hold this doctrine of
the " material lie " also. I will quote three passages in
point. Cataneo : " Be it then well understood, that the obliga
tion to veracity, that is, of conforming our words to the
sentiments of our mind, is founded principally upon the
necessity of human intercourse, for which reason they
(i.e. words) ought not and cannot be lawfully opposed to
this end, so just, so necessary, and so important, without
which, the world would become a Babylon of confusion. 10
And this would in a great measure be really the result,
as often as a man should be unable to defend secrets of
high importance, and other evils would foUow, even worse
than confusion, in their nature destructive of this very
intercourse between man and man for which speech was
instituted. Every body must see the advantage a hired
assassin would have, if supposing he did not know by sight
the person he was commissioned to kiU, I being asked by
the rascal at the moment he was standing in doubt with
his gun cocked, were obliged to approve of his deed by 20
keeping silence, or to hesitate, or lastly to answer ' Yes,
that is the man.' [Then follow other similar cases.] In
such and similar cases, in which your sincerity is unjustly
assailed, when no other way more prompt or more efficacious
presents itself, and when it is not enough to say, ' I do
not know,' let such persons be met openly with a downright
resolute ' No ' without thinking upon any thing else. For
such a ' No ' is conformable to the universal opinion of
men, who are the judges of words, and who certainly have
not placed upon them obhgations to the injury of the 30
Human Republic, nor ever entered into a compact to use
them in behalf of rascals, spies, incendiaries, and thieves.
I repeat that such a ' No ' is conformable to the universal
mind of man, and with this mind your own mind ought to
be in union and alliance. Who does not see the manifest
advantage which highway robbers would derive, were
travellers when asked if they had gold, jewels, &c, obhged
either to invent tergiversations or to answer ' Yes, we
have ? ' Accordingly in such circumstances that ' No '
22 These [ ] arc in 1$64,

APPENDIX. 457
which you utter [see Card. Pallav. lib. hi. c. xi. n. 23,
de Fide, Spe, &c] remains deprived of its proper meaning,
and is Uke a piece of coin, from which by the command
of the government the current value has been withdrawn,
so that by using it you become in no sense guilty of lying."
Bolgeni says, " We have therefore proved satisfactorily,
and with more than moral certainty, that an exception
occurs to the general law of not speaking untruly, viz.
when it is impossible to observe a certain other precept,
10 more important, without telhng a lie. Some persons
indeed say, that in the cases of impossibiUty which are
above drawn out, what is said is not a lie. But a man who
thus speaks confuses ideas and denies the essential characters
of things. What is a he ? It is ' locutio contra mentem ; '
this is its common definition. But in the cases of impossi
bUity, a man speaks contra mentem ; that is clear and
evident. Therefore he tells a Ue. Let us distinguish
between the Ue and the sin. In the above cases, the man
really tells a lie, but this lie is not a sin, by reason of the
20 existing impossibUity. To say that in those cases no one
has a right to ask, that the words have a meaning
according to the common consent of men, and the hke,
as is said by certain authors in order in those cases
to exempt the he from sin, this is to commit oneself to
frivolous excuses, and to subject oneself to a number
of retorts, when there is the plain reason of the above-
mentioned fact of impossibility t"
And the Author in the Melanges Theologiques : " We
have then gained this truth, and it is a conclusion of which
30 we have not the smaUest doubt, that if the intention of
deceiving our neighbour is essential to a he, it is aUowable
in certain cases to say what we know to be false, as, e. g.
to escape from a great danger. . . .
" But, let no one be alarmed, it is never aUowable to
he ; in this we are in perfect agreement with the whole
body of theologians. The only point in which we differ
from them is in what we mean by a lie. They call that
a lie which is not such in our view, or rather, if you wiU,
what in our view is only a material Ue they account to be
40 both formal and material." 1, 2 These [ ] are in 1864.
Q3

458 APPENDIX.
Now to come to Anghcan authorities.
Taylor : " Whether it can in any case be lawful to tell
a lie ? To this I answer, that the Holy Scriptures of
the Old and New Testament do indefinitely and severely
forbid lying. Prov. xiii. 5 ; xxx. 8. Ps. v. 6. John viii. 44.
Col. iii. 9. Rev. xxi. 8. 27. Beyond these things, nothing
can be said in condemnation of lying.
" But then lying is to be understood to be something said
or written to the hurt of our neighbour, which cannot be
understood otherwise than to differ from the mind of him io
that speaks. ' A lie is petulantly or from a desire of hurting,
to say one thing, or to signify it by gesture, and to think
another thing 1 : ' so Melancthon, ' To he is to deceive our
neighbour to his hurt.' For in this sense a fie is naturaUy
or intrinsically evil ; that is, to speak a Ue to our neighbour
is naturally evil .... not because it is different from an
eternal truth. ... A Ue is an injury to our neighbour. . . .
There is in mankind a universal contract imphed in aU their
intercourses. . . In justice we are bound to speak, so as
that our neighbour do not lose his right, which by our 20
speaking we give him to the truth, that is, in our heart.
And of a lie, thus defined, which is injurious to our neighbour,
so long as his right to truth remains, it is that St. Austin
affirms it to be simply unlawful, and that it can in no
case be permitted, nisi forte regulas quasdam daturus es.
... If a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful ; but,
if it can be separate from injustice, then it may be innocent.
Here then I consider
" This right, though it be regularly and commonly be
longing to all men, yet it may be taken away by a superior so
right intervening ; or it may be lost, or it may be hindered,
or it may cease, upon a greater reason.
" Therefore upon this account it was lawful for the
children of Israel to borrow jewels of the Egyptians, which
supposes a promise of restitution, though they intended not
to pry them back again. God gave commandment so to
spoil them, and the Egyptians were divested of their
rights, and were to be used like enemies.
1 "Mendacium est petulanter, aut cupiditate nocendi, aliud loqui,
sou gestu significare, et aliud sentire."

APPENDIX. 459
" It is lawful to tell a lie to children or to madmen ; because
they, having no powers of judging, have no right to truth ;
but then, the lie must be charitable and useful. . . . If a lie
be told, it must be such as is for their good . . . and so do
physicians to their patients. . . . This and the Uke were so
usual, so permitted to physicians, that it grew to a proverb,
' You lie Uke a doctor 2 ; ' which yet was always to be
understood in the way of charity, and with honour to the
profession. ... To tell a Ue for charity, to save a man's
10 life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince, of a useful
and a pubhc person, hath not only been done at aU times,
but commended by great and wise and good men. . . . Who
would not save his father's life ... at the charge of a
harmless lie, from the rage of persecutors or tyrants ? . . .
When the telhng of a truth will certainly be the cause of
evil to a man, though he have right to truth, yet it must
not be given to him to his harm. . . . Every truth is no
more justice, than every restitution of a straw to the right
owner is a duty. ' Be not over-righteous,' says Solomon.
20 • • ¦ If it be objected, that we must not tell a Ue for God,
therefore much less for our brother, I answer, that it does
not foUow ; for God needs not a Ue, but our brother does. . . .
Deceiving the enemy by the stratagem of actions or words,
is not properly lying ; for this supposes a conversation, of
law or peace, trust or promise expUcit or implicit. A Ue
is a deceiving of a trust or confidence." — Taylor, vol. xiii.
pp. 351—371, ed. Heber.
It is clear that Taylor thought that veracity was one
branch of justice ; a social virtue ; under the second
30 table of the law, not under the first ; only binding, when
those to whom we speak have a claim of justice upon us,
which ordinarily aU men have. Accordingly, in cases where
a neighbour has no claim of justice upon us, there is no
opportunity of exercising veracity, as, for instance, when
he is mad, or is deceived by us for his own advantage. And
hence, in such cases, a lie is not really a he, as he says in
one place, " Deceiving the enemy is not properly lying."
Here he seems to make that distinction common to
Catholics ; viz. between what they call a material act and
2 Mentiris ut medicus.

460 APPENDIX.
a formal act. Thus Taylor would maintain, that to say
the thing that is not to a madman, has the matter of a he,
but the man who says it as httle tells a formal he, as the
judge, sheriff, or executioner murders the man whom he
certainly kills by forms of law.
Other Enghsh authors take precisely the same view, viz.
that veracity is a kind of justice, — that our neighbour
generaUy has a right to have the truth told him ; but that
he may forfeit that right, or lose it for the time, and then
to say the thing that is not to him is no sin against veracity, 10
that is, no lie. Thus Milton says 3, " Veracity is a virtue,
by which we speak true things to him to whom it is equitable,
and concerning what things it is suitable for the good of
our neighbour. . . . AU dissimulation is not wrong, for it
is not necessary for us always openly to bring out the
truth ; that only is blamed which is malicious. ... I do
not see why that cannot be said of lying which can be said
of homicide and other matters, which are not weighed so
much by the deed as by the object and end of acting. What
man in his senses will deny that there are those whom we 20
have the best of grounds for considering that we ought
to deceive,— as boys, madmen, the sick, the intoxicated,
enemies, men in error, thieves ? ... Is it a point of conscience
not to deceive them ? . . . I would ask, by which of the
commandments is a he forbidden ? You wiU say, by the
ninth. Come, read it out, and you wiU agree with me.
For whatever is here forbidden comes under the head of
injuring one's neighbour. If then any Ue does not injure
one's neighbour, certainly it is not forbidden by this com
mandment. It is on this ground that, by the judgment of 30
theologians, we shaU acquit so many holy men of lying.
Abraham, who said to his servants that he would return
with his son ; . . the wise man understood that it did not
matter to his servants to know [that his son would not
return], and that it was at the moment expedient for himself
that they should not know. . . Joseph would be a man of
many hes if the common definition of lying held ; [also]
Moses, Rahab, Ehud, Jael, Jonathan." Here again
" The Latin original is given at the end of the Appendix
34, 35, 37 These [ ] are in 1864.

APPENDIX. 461
veracity is due only on the score oi justice towards the person
whom we speak with ; and, if he has no claim upon us to
speak the truth, we need not speak the truth to him.
And so, again, Paley : " A lie is a breach of promise ;
for whoever seriously addresses his discourse to another
tacitly promises to speak the truth, because he knows that
the truth is expected. Or the obligation of veracity may
be made out from the direct ill consequences of lying to
social happiness. . . There are falsehoods which are not lies ;
10 that is, which are not criminal." (Here, let it be observed,
is the same distinction as in Taylor between material
and formal untruths.) "1. When no one is deceived. . .
2. When the person to whom you speak has no right to
know the truth, or, more properly, when little or no
inconveniency results from the want of confidence in such
cases, as where you tell a falsehood to a madman for his own
advantage ; to a robber, to conceal your property ; to an
assassin, to defeat or divert him from his purpose. . . It is
upon this principle that, by the laws of war, it is allowable
20 to deceive an enemy by feints, false colours, spies, false
inteUigence. . . Many people indulge, in serious discourse,
a habit of fiction or exaggeration. . . So long as . . their
narratives, though false, are inoffensive, it may seem a
superstitious regard to truth to censure them merely for
truth's sake." Then he goes on to mention reasons against
such a practice, adding, " I have seldom known any one
who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters
of importance." — Works, vol. iv. p. 123.
Dr. Johnson, who, if any one, has the reputation of being
so a sturdy moralist, thus speaks : —
" We talked," says Boswell, " of the casuistical question, —
whether it was allowable at any time to depart from truth."
Johnson. " The general rule is, that truth should never
be violated ; because it is of the utmost importance to
the comfort of life, that we should have a full security by
mutual faith ; and occasional inconveniences should be
willingly suffered, that we may preserve it. There must,
however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer
should ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him
¦to what is not true, because you are under a previous obligation
not to betray a man to a murderer." BosweU. " Sup-

462 APPENDIX.
posing the person who wrote Junius were asked whether
he was the author, might he deny it ? " Johnson. " I
don't know what to say to this. If you were sure that he
wrote Junius, would you, if he denied it, think as well of
him afterwards ? Yet it may be urged, that what a man
has no right to ask, you may refuse to communicate ; and
there is no other effectual mode of preserving a secret, and
an important secret, the discovery of which may be very
hurtful to you, but a flat denial ; for if you are silent, or
hesitate, or evade, it will be held equivalent to a confession. 10
But stay, sir; here is another case. Supposing the author
had told me confidentially that he had written Junius,
and I were asked if he had, I should hold myseff at hberty
to deny it, as being under a previous promise, express or
implied, to conceal it. Now what I ought to do for the
author, may I not do for myseff ? But I deny the lawful
ness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him.
You have no business with consequences ; you are to tell
the truth. Besides, you are not sure what effect your telling
him that he is in danger may have ; it may bring his dis- 20
temper to a crisis, and that may cure him. Of all lying
I have the greatest abhorrence of this, because I believe
it has been frequently practised on myself." — BoswelFs
Life, vol. iv. p. 277.
There are English authors who aUow of mental reserva
tion and equivocation ; such is Jeremy Taylor.
He says, " In the same cases in which it is lawful to tell
a lie, in the same cases it is lawful to use a mental reserva
tion."— Ibid, p. 374.
He says, too, " When the things are true in several 30
senses, the not explicating in wJiat sense I mean the words
is not a criminal reservation. . . But 1. this hberty is not
to be used by inferiors, but by superiors only ; 2. not by
those that are interrogated, but by them which speak
voluntarily ; 3. not by those which speak of duty, but
which speak of grace and kindness." — Ibid. p. 378.
Bishop Butler, the first of Anglican authorities, writing
in his grave and abstract way, seems to assert a similar
doctrine in the following passage : —
" Though veracity, as well as justice, is to be our rule of 40

APPENDIX. 463
life, it must be added, otherwise a snare will be laid in the
way of some plain men, that the use of common forms of
speech generally understood, cannot be falsehood ; and, in
general, that there can be no designed falsehood without
designing to deceive. It must likewise be observed, that,
in numberless cases, a man may be under the strictest obliga
tions to what he foresees will deceive, without his intending it.
For it is impossible not to foresee, that the words and actions
of men in different ranks and employments, and of different
10 educations, will perpetually be mistaken by each other ; and
it cannot but be so, whilst they will judge with the utmost
carelessness, as they daily do, of what they are not perhaps
enough informed to be competent judges of, even though they
considered it with great attention." — Nature of Virtue, fin.
These last words seem in a measure to anwser to the words
in Scavini, that an equivocation is permissible, because
" then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow him to
deceive himself." In thus speaking, I have not the slightest
intention of saying any thing disrespectful to Bishop
20 Butler ; and still less of course to St. Affonso.
And a third author, for whom I have a great respect,
as different from the above two as they are from each
other, bears testimony to the same effect in his " Comment
on Scripture," Thomas Scott. He maintains indeed that
Ehud and Jael were divinely directed in what they did ;
but they could have no divine direction for what was in
itself wrong.
Thus on Judges iii. 15 — 21 :
" ' And Ehud said, I have a secret errand unto thee,
30 0 king ; I have a message from God unto thee, and
Ehud thrust the dagger into his belly.' Ehud, indeed,"
says Scott, " had a secret errand, a message from God unto
him ; but it was of afar different nature than Eglon expected."
And again on Judges iv. 18 — 21 :
" ' And Jael said, Turn in, my lord, fear not. And he
said to her, When any man doth inquire, Is there any
man here ? thou shalt say, No. Then Jael took a nail,
and smote the nail into his temple.' Jael," says Scott, " is
not said to have promised Sisera that she would deny his
40 being there ; she would give him shelter and refreshment,
but not utter a falsehood to oblige him."

NOTES
(Not reprinted in 1865.)
The following are the originals of some of the passages
translated under this last Head : —
Gerdil.
"Nel giuramento si dee riguardare l'intenzione di chi giura,
e l'intenzione di quello a cui si presta il giuramento. Chicunque
giura si obbliga in virtu delle parole non secondo il senso ch' egli
si ritiene in mente, ma nel senso secondo cui egli cognosce che
sono intese da quello a cui si fa il giuramento. Allorche la mente
dell' uno e discordante dalla mente dell' altro, se cio awiene per
dolo e inganno del giurante, questi e obbligato ad osservare il giura
mento secondo la sana mente di chi la ha ricevuto ; ma quando la
discrepanza nel senso proviene da mala intelligenza senza flolo di
chi giura, in quel caso egh non e obbligato se non a cio che avea in
mente di volersi obbligare. Da cio segue che chiunque usa restrizione
mentale o equivocazione nel giuramento per ingannare la parte cui
egh lo presta, pecca gravissimamente, ed e sempre obbligato ad
osservare il giuramento nel senso in cui egli sapea che le sue parole
erano prese dalT altro, secondo la decisione di S. Augostino (epist.
224) ' Perjuri sunt qui servatis verbis, expectationem eorum quibus
juratum est deceperunt.' Chi giura esternamente senza interna
intenzione di giurare, commette gravissimo peccato, e rimane con
tutto cio nell' obbligo di adimperlo  In somma tutto che e
contrario alia buona fede, e iniquo, e facendovi intervenire il
nome di Dio si aggrava l'iniquita colla reita del sacrilegio." — Opusc
Theolog. Rom. 1851, p. 28. Natalis Alexander.
" Perjurium est mendacium juramento firmatum. Illos vero
mentiri compertum est, qui juramenti verba proferunt, et jurare
vel obligare se nolunt, aut qui restrictiones mentales et aequivo-
cationes jurando adhibent, siquidem verbis significant quod in
mente non habent, contra finem propter quern institutes sunt
voces, ut videlicet sint signa conceptuum. Vel aliud volunt quam
verba significent secundum se et secundum communem loquendi
morem, et personarum ac negotiorum circumstantias ; atque ita
verbis ad societatem fovendam institutis abutuntur." — Theol. Lib.
iv. u. iv. Art. 3. Reg. 11.

NOTES. 465
Contenson.
" Atque ex his apparet quam damnanda sit eorum semidoctorum
temeritas, qui mendacia et aequivocationes verbis et exemplis
Christi prsecolorant. Quorum doctrina, quae ars fallendi est, nihil
pestilentius esse potest. Turn quia quod tibi non vis fieri, alteri ne
feceris ; sed asqtuvocationum, ac restrictionum men talium patroni
aequo animo non paterentur se ab aliis Hindi : ergo illud cecumeni-
cum naturae principium nulli ignotum, omnibus quamlibet barbaris
implantatum violant. Tum quia urget argumentum Augustinus,
etc. . . . Sane sicut aegre cum iUis convivimus, quorum linguam non
intelligimiis ; et authore Augustino, lib. 19, de Civit. ' Libentius
vivit homo cum cane suo, quam cum homine alieno : ' aegrius certe
cum illis conversamur qui fraudes artificio tectas adhibent, audientes
circumveniunt dolis, insidiis eos petunt, tempus observant, verbaque
idonea aucupantur, quibus Veritas veluti quodam involucro obtegitur:
sicut e contra nihil eorum convictu suavius, qui ab omni simulandi
studio longe absentes, sincero animo, candido ingenio, aperta
voluntate praediti sunt, oderunt artes, nudam veritatem tarn amant,
quam loquuntur : quorum denique manus linguae, lingua cordi, cor
rationi, ratio Deo oongruit, et tota vita unius faciei est, unius et
coloris : nee aliud os prae se fert, aliud animus celat, et verborum
duplicium velo obtendit. Certe tolerabilior erat Babylonica con-
fusio, in qua invicem loquentes se minime intelligebant, eorum
convictu, qui non se intelhgunt, nisi ut sese mutuo decipiant.
" Nee obest quod nomine aequivocationum, vel restrictionum
mentalium mendacia fucent. Nam ut ait Hilarius hb. 2. de Trinit.,
' Sensus, non sermo, fit crimen. O ubi simplicitas Christiana, quae
regula ilia Legislatoris sui Christi contenta est : Sit sermo vester,
Est est, Non non ! ' O ubi est mulier ilia virilis totam Probabili-
starum asquivocationibus veniam dantium nationem confusura ! quae
referente Hieronymo epist. 49, nee ad gravissimos torturarum et
dirae mortis cruciatus vitandos aeqiiivocationum usum septies icta
advocavit." — Theol. vii. p. 30. Concina.
" Cardo disputationis Augustinianae, in duobus recensitis libris,
potissimum in eo vertitur, ut rationes praebeantur pro veritatis
occultatione in negotiis summi momenti . . . Augustinus nulla
reperire remedia potuit praeter haec : Primum est silentium . . .
Alteram est aperta et invicta significatio. . . . Nullam aham viam
occultandi veritatem agnovit, — non restrictiones internas, non
materiales locutiones, non verborum amphibolias, non aha juniorum
inventa.— Theol. T. hi. p. 278. Lib. v. in Decal. Diss. 3. c. 5. prop. 2d.
"... Haec autem omnium scopulorum, et difficultatum origo :
quia cum non possit rectaa disputationi locus esse, nisi id pateat
de quo est disputandum ; certas et claras notiones aequivocationum,

466 NOTES.
amphibologiarum, et mentalium restrictionum praefinire minime
possumus, attentis recentiorum distinctiunculis, effugiis, et thecnis,
quae rem hanc maxime imphcatam efflciunt. Has ambages ut
evitarem, cursum inceptum abrumpere, telamque redordiri, atque
retexere decrevi : idque consilii cepi, ut primum omnium de mendacio
sermonem instituam. IUud namque commodi mihi peracta contro-
versiae tractatio attuht, ut deprehenderim, nihil a recentioribus
Theologis pro licito amphibologiarum usu efferri quod prius ab
antiquis tum Philosophis, tum Patribus ahquibus usurpatum non
fuerit in mendaciorum patrocinium. Nee aliud discrimen mihi
utrorumque fundamenta perpendenti occurrit, nisi quod antiqui
eas locutiones quas recentiorum Theologorum non pauci amphi-
bologicas, sequivocas, et materiales vocant, ingenua sinceritate
mendacia appellaverint." — Diss. iii. De Juram. Dol. etc.
Caramuel.
" . . . . Est mihi," inquit, " innata aversio contra restrictiones
mentales. Si enim continentur inter terminos pietatis, et sinceritatis,
necessarise non sunt. Nam omnia quae ipsae praestare possunt,
prasstabunt consignificantes circumstantiae. Quod si tales dicantur,
ut etiam ibi admittendae sint, ubi desunt circumstantiae significantes
(ignoscant mihi earumdem auctores, et propugnatores) tollunt
humanam societatem, et securitatem, et tamquam pestifera
damnandae sunt. Quoniam semel admissae aperiunt omni mendacio,
omni perjurio viam. Et tota differentia in eo erit ut quod heri
vocabatur mendacium, naturam, et malitiam non mutet, sed
nomen, ita ut hodie jubeatur Restrictio mentalis nominari ; quod
est virus condire saccharo, et scelus specie virtutis colorare. — Apud
Concinam Theol. Diss. iii. De Juram. Dol. etc.
S. Thomas.
" Quando non est eadem jurantis intentio, et ejus cui jurat, si
hoc proveniat ex dolo jurantis, debet juramentum servari secundum
sanum intellectum ejus, cui juramentum prasstatur. Si autem
jurans dolum non adhibeat, obligatur secundum intentionem
jurantis." — Apud Nat. Alex. S. Isidorus.
" Quacunque arte verborum quisquis juret, Deus tamen qui
conscientiae testis est, ita hoc accipit, sicut ille, cui juratur, intelligit.
Dupliciter autem reus fit, qui et Dei nomen in vanum assumit, et
proximum dolo capit." — Apud Nat. Alex.
S. Augustinus.
" IHud sane rectissime dici non ambigo. non secundum verba
jurantis, sed secundum expectationem illras cui juratur, quam
novit ille qui jurat, fidem jurationis impleri. Nam verba difficillime

NOTES. 467
comprehendunt, maxime breviter, sententiam cujus a jurante fides
exigitur. Unde perjuri sunt, qui servatis verbis, expectationem
eorum, quibus juratum est, deceperunt : et perjuri non sunt, qui
etiam verbis non servatis, illud quod ab eis cum jurarent expectatum
est, impleverunt." — Apud Natal. Alex.
Cattaneo.
" Sappiasi dunque, che 1' obligo della veracita, cioe, di conformare
le parole ai sentimenti dell' animo nostro, egh e principalmente
fondato nella necessita del commercio umano ; onde elle non
devono giammai ne possono lecitamente opporsi a questo fine, si
giusto, si necessario, e si importante ; tolto il quale, diverebbe il mondo
una Babilonia di confusione. E cio accaderebbe in gran parte, ogni
qual volta non si potessero custodire, ne dif endere i segreti d' alta
importanza, e ne seguissero altri mah anche peggiori, distruttivi di
lor natura di questo stesso commercio, per cui e stato istituito il
parlare. Ognun vede, quanto tornerebbe in acconcio ad un manda-
tario, se non conoscendo la persona, che deve uccidere, io da lui in
terrogate, mentre il traditore sta dubbioso coll' archibugio gia
alzato, dovessi, o approvar col silenzio, o titubare, o rispondergli,
' Si egh e il tale.'  In somiglianti casi, ne quali viene ingiusta-
mente assalita la vostra sincerita, quando non sovvenga altro mezzo
phi pronto, e piu efficace, e quando non basti dire ' no'l so ; ' piantisi
pure in f accia a costoro un ' No ' franco e risoluto, senza pensar ad altro.
Imperooche un tal ' no ' egh e conf orme alia mente universale degli
uomini, i quali sono arbitri delle parole, e certamente non le hanno
obligate a danno della Republica umana, ne hanno gia mai pattuito
di usarle in pro di furbi, di spie, d' incendarii, di masnadieri, e di
ladri. Torno a dire, che quel No egh e conf orme alia mente universale
degli uomini, e a questa mente deve esser unita e collegata anche la
vostra. Chi non vede 1' utile manifesto, che ne trarrebbero gli
assassini di strada, se i passeggieri interrogati se abbian seco oro,
o gemme dovissero, o tergiversare, o rispondere, ' si che 1' abbiamo ; '
adunque, in tali congiunture, quel ' No,' che voi proferite (Card.
Pallav. lib. iii. c. xi. n. 23 de fide, spe, &c.) resta privo del suo
significato e resta appunto agguisa di una moneta, a cui per volere
del Principio, sia stato tolto il valore, con cui prima correva ; onde
in niun modo voi siete reo di menzogna." Lezione xliv. Prima
Parte. Bolgeni.
" Abbiamo dunque bene, e con certezza piu che morale, provata
una eccezione da porsi alia legge generale di non mentire, cioe,
quando non si possa osservare qualche altro precetto piu importante
se non col dir bugia. Dicono alcuni che nei casi della impossibilita
sopra esposta non e bugia, quello che si dice. Ma chi dice cosi,
confonde le idee, e nega 1'essenza delle cose. Che cosa e la bugia ?
Est locutio contra mentem : cosi la definiscono tutti. Atqui nei casi

468 NOTES.
della impossibilita sovra esposta si parla contra mentem : cio e
chiaro ed evidente. Dunque si dice bugia. Distinguiamo la bugia
dal peccato. Nei casi detti si dice realmente bugia ; ma questa
bugia non e peccato per ragione della impossibilita. II dire che in
quei casi niuno ha diritto d'interrogare ; che le parole significano
secondo la convenzione comune fra gh uomini ; e cose simili, che
da alcuni Autori si dicono per esimere da peccato la bugia in quei
casi : questo e un attaccarsi a ragioni frivole, e soggette a molte
rephche quando si ha la ragione evidente della citata impossibilita."
— II Possesso, c. 48.
Author in the Melanges Theologiques.
" II reste done acquis, et nous n'avons pas le moindre doute
sur la verite de cette conclusion, que si Pintention de tromper
le prochain, est essentielle au mensonge, il sera permis de dire ce
qu'on sait etre faux, en certain cas, comme pour eviter un grand
danger  Au reste, que personne ne s'efrraie, il ne sera jamais
permis de mentir, et en cela nous sommes d'accord avec tous les
th6ologiens : nous nous eloignons d'eux en ce seul point qu'ils
appellent mensonge, ce qui ne Test pas pour nous, ou si Ton veut, ils
regardent comme mensonge formel et materiel ce qui pour nous
est seulement un mensonge materiel." — Melanges Theologiques, vime
Serie, p. 442. Milton.
" Veracitas est Virtus qua ei cui aequum est, et quibus de rebus
convenit ad bonum proximi, vera dicimus. Psal. xv. 2. Prov. xii.
21, 17 ; xx. 6. Zech. viii. 16. Eph. iv. 25.
" Huic opponitur dissimulatio vitiosa. Nam omnia non impro-
batur : non enim semper vera palam expromere necesse habemus :
ea tantum reprehenditur quae malitiosa est.
" Secundo opponitur mendacium. Psal. v. 7. xii. 2, 3. Prov.
xiii. 5 ; xix. 5. Joan viii. 44. Apoc. xxii. 15. Mendacio itaque
ne Dei quidem causa est utendum. Job xiii. 7.
" Mendacium vulgo definitur, quo falsum animo fallendi verbis
factisve significatur. Sed quoniam saepe usu venit, ut non solum
vera dissimulare aut reticere, sed etiam fallendi animo falsa dicere,
utile ac salutare proximo sit, danda opera est, ut mendacium quid
sit melius definiamus. eque enim video cur non idem de mendacio,
quod de homicidio aliisque rebus, de quibus infra dicetur, nunc dici
possit, quae non tarn facto, quam objecto et fine agendi ponderanda
sunt. Esse enim quos jure optimo fallendos putemus, quis sanus
negaverit ? quid enim pueros, quid furentes, quid aegrotos, quid
ebrios, quid hostes, quid fallentes, quid latrones ? (certe juxta
illud tritum, Cui nullum est jus, ei nulla fit injuria :) an illos ne
fallamus religio erit ? per hano tamen definitionem ne illos quidem
dictis aut factis fallere licebit. Certe si gladium, aliamve rem
quam apud me sanus deposuerit, eidem furenti non reddiderim,

NOTES. 469
cur veritatem non depositam, ei ad quern Veritas minime pertineat,
male usuro expromam ? Enimvero si quidquid cuicunque in-
terroganti respondetur fallendi animo, mendacium est censendum,
prof ecto Sanctis viris et prophetis nihil f amiliarius erat quam mentiri.
" Quid si igitur mendacium hoc modo definiamus ? Mendacium
est cum quis dolo malo aut veritatem depravat, aut falsum dicit ei,
quicunque is sit, cui dicere veritatem ex officio debuerat. Sic diabolus
serpens primus erat mendax, Gen. iii. 4. et Cain, cap. iv. 9. et Sara,
cap. xviii. 15. angelis'enim merito offensis non satisfecit ingenua
confessione : et Abrahamus, cap. xii. 13. et cap. xx. illud enim de
Sara tanquam sorore figmentum, ut ipse didicisse poterat in j35gypto,
quamvis incolumitatem vitae sibi proposuerat solam, homines tamen
inscientes in errorem et aheni cupiditatem induxit : et Davides
fugiens, 1 Sam. xxi. 3. debebat enim non celasse Abimelecum quo
loco res suae apud regem essent, neque tantum periculum hospiti
creare : sic Ananias et Sapphira, Act. v., mentiti sunt.
" Ex hac definitione, lmo, haud secus atque ex altera, patet,
parabolas, hyperbolas, apologos, ironias mendacia non esse : haec
enim omnia non fallendi sed erudiendi studio adhibentur. 1 Regum
xviii. 27. et xxii. 15. 2d0, si faUendi vocem significatione debita
sumamus, neminem quidem fallere poterimus, quin eum eadem
opera laedamus. Quern igitur nullo modo laedimus, sed vel juvamus,
vel ab injuria aut inferenda aut patienda prohibemus, eum certe
ne f also quidem millies dicto revera f aUimus, sed vero potius beneficio
necopinantem afficimus. 3Mo, dolos et strategemata in bello, modo
absit perfidia aut perjurium, non esse mendacia omnes concedunt :
quae concessio alteram definitionem plane destruit. Vix enim
ullae insidiae aut doli in bello strui possunt, quin palam idque summo
fallendi studio dieantur multa quae f alsissima sunt : unde per illam
definitionem mendacio absoDi nequeunt. Hanc igitur potius ob
causam licere strategemata dicendum erit, etiam cum mendacio
conjuncta, eo quod, si quis est cui verum dicere officii nostri non sit,
nihil certe interest an illi, quoties expedit, etiam falsum dicamus :
nee video cur hoc in bello magis quam in pace liceat, praesertim
quoties injuriam aut periculum a nobismetipsis aut a proximo
salutari et probo quodam mendacio depellere hcet.
" Quae igitur testimonia scripturae contra mendacium proferuntur,
de eo intefiigenda sunt mendacio, quod aut Dei gloriam aut nostrum
proximive bonum irnminuere videatur. Hujusmodi sunt, praeter ea
quaB supra citavimus, Lev. six. Ps. ci. 7. Prov. vi. 16, 17. Jer.
ix. 5. His atque ahis hujusmodi locis veritatem dicere jubemur : at
cui ? non hosti, non furioso, non violento, non sicario ; sed proximo,
quieum sciheet pax et justa societas nobis intercedit. Jam vero
si veritatem soli proximo dicere jubemur, profecto iis qui nomen
proximi non merentur, ne falsum quidem, quoties opus est, dicere
vetamur. Qui ahter sentit, ex eo hbens quaererem, quonam decalogi
praecepto prohibeatur mendacium ? respondebit certissime, nono.

470 NOTES.
Age, recitet modo, et mecum sentiet : quidquid enim hie prohibetur,
id proximum laedere ostenditur ; siquod igitur mendacium non
laedit proximum, sub hoc certe mandato nequaquam prohibetur.
" Hinc tot sanctissimos viros theologorum fere judicio mendacii
reos merito absolvemus : Abrahamum, Gen. xxii. 5. cum dixit
servis suis se reversurum cum fiho ; fallendi tamen animo, nequid
illi suspicarentur ; cum ipse persuasus esset mactatum ibi fihum
se relicturum; nam nisi ita sibi persuasisset, quid hoc magnopere
tentationis erat ? sed inteUexit vir sapiens nihil interesse servorum
hoc ut scirent, sibi expedire in praesentia ne scirent. Rebeccam
et Jacobum, Gen. xxvii., prudenti enim astutia et cautione aditum
sibi muniebant ad jus illud hasreditatis quod alter vih vendiderat ;
ad jus, inquam, et oraculo et redemptione jam suum. At patri
imposuit : immo potius errori patris, qui amore prsepostero in
Esauum ferebatur, tempestive occurrit. Josephum, Gen. xiii. 7, etc.
multorum sane mendaciorum hominem, si vulgari ilia definitione
stetur : quam multa enim dixit non vera, eo animo ut fratres
faUeret ? dolo tamen fratribus non malo, sed utilissimo. Obstetrices
Hebraeas, Exod. i. 19, etc., comprobante etiam Deo ; fefellerant
enim Pharaonem, non laeserant tamen, sed beneficio potius affecerant,
dum male faciendi facultatem ademeruut. Mosen, Exod. iii., etiam
a Deo jussum iter tridui a Pharaone petere, quasi ad rem divinam
faciendam in deserto ; eo hcet consilio petentem ut Pharaoni verba
daret ; non causam enim pro causa, vel fictam saltern pro vera
profectionis afferebat. Universum populum Israehticum, Exod.
xi. et xii., ab eodem Deo jussum aurum, vasa, vestemque pretiosam
ab iEgyptiis mutuam petere ; et pollicitum sine dubio reddere :
fallendi tamen animo ; quidni enim et Dei hostes et hospitii violatores
et spohatores jamdiu suos ? Raabbam, Jos. ii. 4, 5. splendide
mentitam, nee sine fide ; f allebat enim quos Deus falli voluit,
populares hcet suos, et magistratus : quos voluit ille salvos con-
servabat ; civile officium religioni recte posthabuit. Ehudem, qui
duplici mendacio Eglonem fefelht, Judic. hi. 19, 20. nee injuria
tamen, quippe hostem ; idque Dei non injussu. Jaeleni, quae
confugientem ad se Siseram blanditiis perdicht, Judic. iv. 18, 19.
hostem hcet Dei magis quam suum : quamquam id non mendacio,
sed pia fraude factum vult Junius, quasi quidquam interesset.
Jonathanem, dum rogatus ab amico Davide causam ejus absentise
fictam refert patri, 1 Sam. xx. 6, 28. malebat enim innocentis saluti
quam patris crudelitati officiosum se esse ; et majoris erat momenti
ad charitatem ut innocentis amici consuleretur vitae, interposito hcet
mendacio, quam ut patri ad maleficium exequeudum veritatis
inutili confessione mos gereretur. Hos atque alios tot viros sanctissi
mos vulgari ilia definitione mendacii condemnatos, vetuli ex limbo
quodam patrum disquisitio haec veritatis accuratior eduoit."]
The matter between [ ], pp. 455-470, was not reprinted in 1865.

(SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.) 471

(II.
LIST OF THE AUTHOR'S PUBLICATIONS.)
The request has been made to me from various quarters
for a hst of my writings. This I now give, [omitting several
pamphlets and articles in Reviews &c. of minor impor
tance.] (as foUows : — )
1. Life and Writings of Cicero  Griffin.
2. Life of Apollonius Tyanseus and Essay on Scrip
ture Miracles  Griffin.
[3. Article in London Review, on Greek Tragedy . Out of print.]
(3. Articles in the Christian Observer (excluding
the footnotes) 1821, p. 293, Mathematics,
and 1822, p. 623, Rehgious Students ;
in British Review, May 1824, Duncan's
Travels ; in Theological Review, June 1825,
Cooper's Crisis and Robinson's Acts ; and
in London Review, 1828, Greek Tragedy . Out of print.)
4. History of the Arians  Lumley.
5 — 10. Parochial Sermons .... (Vols. 1 and 4) Out of print.
11. Plain Sermons (vol. 5th)  Rivingtons.
12. (In the British Magazine, 1833-1836,) Home
Thoughts Abroad [in the British Magazine
1832 — 1826] (, and 1834, On Convocation) . Out of print.
13. Tracts for the Times (smaller Tracts), Nos. 1,
2. 6, 7, 8. 10, 11. 19, 20, 21. 34. 38. 41.
45. 47  Rivingtons.
Tracts for the Times (larger Tracts), Nos. 71.
73. 75. 79. 82, 83. 85. 88. 90  Rivingtons.
14. Pamphlets(, 1830—1841. 1. Suggestions in be
half of the Church Missionary Society).
1(2). Suffragan Bishops. 2(3). Letter to
Faussett. 3(4). Letters by Catholicus.
4(5). Letter to Jelf. 5(6). Letter to Bishop
of Oxford  Out of print.
(Except Suffragan Bishops Rivingtons.)

472 LIST OP WRITINGS.
15. Articles in British Critic, 1836—1842. 1.
Apostolical Tradition. 2. Dr. Wiseman's
Lectures. 3. De la Memiais. 4. Geraldine.
5. Memorials of Oxford. 6. Exeter Hall.
7. Palmer on the Church of Christ. 8. St.
Ignatius of Antioch. 9. State of Rehgious
Parties. 10. American Church. 11. Ca
thohcity of the English Church. 12. Coun
tess of Huntingdon. 13. Antichrist. 14.
Milman's Christianity. 15. Bowden's Hil-
debrand. 16. Private Judgment. 17. Da
vison  Out of print.
16. Church of the Fathers  Duffy.
17. Prophetical Office of the Church  Out of print.
18. Doctrine of Justification  Rivingtons.
19. University Sermons  Rivingtons.
20. Sermons on Subjects of the Day . [Out of print.] (Rivingtons.)
21. Annotated Translation of St. Athanasius . Parker, Oxford.
22. Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles  Rivingtons.
23. Essay on Development of Doctrine .... Toovey.
24. Dissertatiunculae Critico-Theologic* .... Out of print.
25. Loss and Gain  Burns and Lambert.
26. Sermons to Mixed Congregations  Duffy.
27. Anghcan Difficulties  Duffy.
28. Catholicism in England  Duffy.
29. Lectures on the Turks  Duffy.
30. University Education  . Longman.
31. Office and Work of Universities ... . Longman.
32. Lectures on University Subjects  Longman.
33. Verses on Rehgious Subjects  Out of print.
(Vide also 8 in Lyra Apostohca.)
34. Callista  Burns and Lambert.
35. Occasional Sermons  Burns and Lambert.
36. (In the) Rambler, 1859—1860. Ancient Saints,
1—5  Burns and Lambert.
37. (In the) Atlantis, 1. Benedictine Order. 2. Bene
dictine Centuries. 3. St. Cyril's Formula Longman.
38. Apologia pro Vita sua  . Longman.

(SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.) 473
[POSTSCRIPTUM. June 4, 1864.
While I was engaged with these concluding pages, I
received another of those special encouragements, which
from several quarters have been bestowed upon me, since
my controversy began. It was the extraordinary honour
done me of an Address from the Clergy of this large Diocese,
who had been assembled for the Synod.
It was foUowed two days afterwards by a most gracious
testimonial from my Bishop, Dr. Ullathorne, in the shape
of a Letter which he wrote to me, and also inserted in the
Birmingham Papers. With his leave I transfer it to my
own Volume, as a very precious document, completing
and recompensing, in a way most grateful to my feelings,
the anxious work which has occupied me so fully for nearly
ten weeks.] (III.
LETTER OF APPROBATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THE
BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF BIRMINGHAM, DR. ULLA
THORNE.) " Bishop's House, June 2, 1864.
" My dear Dr. Newman, —
" It was with warm gratification that, after the
close of the Synod yesterday, I hstened to the Address
presented to you by the clergy of the diocese, and to your
impressive reply. But I should have been little satisfied
with the part of the silent listener, except on the under
standing with myself that I also might afterwards express
to you my own sentiments in my own way.
" We have now been personally acquainted, and much
more than acquainted, for nineteen years, during more
than sixteen of which we have stood in special relation of
duty towards each other. This has been one of the singular

474 POSTSCRIPTUM.
blessings which God has given me amongst the cares of the
Episcopal office. What my feelings of respect, of confi
dence, and of affection have been towards you, you know
weU, nor should I think of expressing them in words. But
there is one thing that has struck me in this day of explana
tions, which you could not, and would not, be disposed to
do, and which no one could do so properly or so authen-
ticaUy as I could, and which it seems to me is not altogether
uncalled for, if every kind of erroneous impression that
some persons have entertained with no better evidence
than conjecture is to be removed.
"It is difficult to comprehend how, in the face of facts,
the notion should ever have arisen that, during your
Catholic life, you have been more occupied with your own
thoughts than with the service of rehgion and the work of
the Church. If we take no other work into consideration
beyond the written productions which your Catholic pen
has given to the world, they are enough for the life's labour
of another. There are the Lectures on Anghcan Difficulties,
the Lectures on Cathohcism in England, the great work on
the Scope and End of University Education, that on the
Office and Work of Universities, the Lectures and Essays
on University Subjects, and the two Volumes of Sermons ;
not to speak of your contributions to the Atlantis, which
you founded, and to other periodicals ; then there are those
beautiful offerings to Cathohc hterature, the Lectures on
the Turks, Loss and Gain, and CaUista, and though last,
not least, the Apologia, which is destined to put many idle
rumours to rest, and many unprofitable surmises ; and
yet aU these productions represent but a portion of your
labour, and that in the second haff of your period of
pubhc hfe.
" These works have been written in the midst of labour
and cares of another kind, and of which the world knows
very httle. I wiU specify four of these undertakings, each
of a distinct character, and any one of which would have
made a reputation for untiring energy in the practical
order. " The first of these undertakings was the estabhshment
of the congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri — that
great ornament and accession to the force of English

(SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.) 475
Catholicity. Both . the London and the Birmingham
Oratory must look to you as their founder and as the
originator of their characteristic exceUences ; whilst that
of Birmingham has never known any other presidency.
" No sooner was this work fairly on foot than you were
caUed by the highest authority to commence another, and
one of yet greater magnitude and difficulty, the founding
of a University in Ireland. After the Universities had been
lost to the Cathohcs of these kingdoms for three centuries,
every thing had to be begun from the beginning : the idea
of such an institution to be inculcated, the plan to be
formed that would work, the resources to be gathered,
and the staff of superiors and professors to be brought
together. Your name was then the chief point of attraction
which brought these elements together. You alone know
what difficulties you had to conciliate and what to sur
mount, before the work reached that state of consistency
and promise, which enabled you to return to those responsi
bilities in England which you had never laid aside or
suspended. And here, excuse me if I give expression to
a fancy which passed through my mind.
" I was lately reading a poem, not long published, from
the MSS. De Rerum Natura, by Neckham, the foster-
brother of Richard the Lion-hearted. He quotes an old
prophecy, attributed to Merlin, and with a sort of wonder.
as if recoUecting that England owed so much of its literary
learning to that country ; and the prophecy says that
after long years Oxford will pass into Ireland — ' Vada
bourn suo tempore transibunt in Hiberniam.' When
I read this, I could not but indulge the pleasant fancy
that in the days when the Dublin University shaU arise
in material splendour, an aUusion to this prophecy might
form a poetic element in the inscription on the pedestal
of the statue which commemorates its first Rector.
" The original plan of an oratory did not contemplate
any parochial work, but you could not contemplate so
many souls in want of pastors without being prompt and
ready at the beck of authority to strain aU your efforts in
coming to their help. And this brings me to the third and
the most continuous of those labours to which I have
alluded. The mission in Alcester Street, its church and

476 POSTSCRIPTUM.
schools, were the first work of the Birmingham Oratory.
After several years of close and hard work, and a con
siderable caU upon the private resources of the Fathers
who had established this congregation, it was dehvered
over to other hands, and the Fathers removed to the
district of Edgbaston, where up to that time nothing
Catholic had appeared. Then arose under your direction
the large convent of the Oratory, the church expanded by
degrees into its present capaciousness, a numerous con
gregation has gathered and grown in it ; poor schools and
other pious institutions have grown up in connexion with
it, and, moreover, equaUy at your expense and that of your
brethren, and, as I have reason to know, at much incon
venience, the Oratory has reheved the other clergy of
Birmingham all this while by constantly doing the duty in
the poor-house and gaol of Birmingham.
" More recently stiU, the mission and the poor school at
Smethwick owe their existence to the Oratory. And aU
this while the founder and father of these rehgious works
has added to his other sohcitudes the toil of frequent
preaching, of attendance in the confessional, and other
parochial duties.
" I have read on this day of its publication the seventh
part of the Apologia, and the touching aUusion in it to the
devotedness of the Cathohc clergy to the poor in seasons
of pestilence reminds me that when the cholera raged so
dreadfully at Bilston, and the two priests of the town were
no longer equal to the number of cases to which they were
hurried day and night, I asked you to lend me two fathers
to supply the place of other priests whom I wished to send
as a further aid. But you and Father St. John preferred
to take the place of danger which I had destined for others,
and remained at Bilston tiU the worst was over.
" The fourth work which I would notice is one more
widely known. I refer to the school for the education of
the higher classes, which at the solicitation of many friends
you have founded and attached to the Oratory. Surely
after reading this bare enumeration of work done, no man
will venture to say that Dr. Newman is leading a com
paratively inactive life in the service of the Church.
" To spare, my dear Dr. Newman, any further pressure

(SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.) 477
on those feehngs with which I have aheady taken so large
a liberty, I wiU only add one word more for my own satis
faction. During our long intercourse there is only one
subject on which, after the first experience, I have measured
my words with some caution, and that has been where
questions bearing on ecclesiastical duty have arisen.
I found some little caution necessary, because you were
always so prompt and ready to go even beyond the slightest
intimation of my wish or desires.
" That God may bless you with health, life, and all the
spiritual good which you desire, you and your brethren of
the Oratory, is the earnest prayer now and often of,
" My dear Dr. Newman,
" Your affectionate friend and faithful servant
in Christ,
"+ W. B. ULLATHORNE."

[THE END.]

APPENDIX II.
(1913.)
MATTER PECULIAR TO THE 1865 EDITION.

[Seduced Facsimile of the original Title-page.]
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS
OPINIONS.

" Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in Him, and He will do it.
And He will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judg
ment as the noon-day."

BY
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
OF THE ORATORY OF ST. PHILIP HERI.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, AND GREEN.
1865.

APOLOGIA R

PREFACE TO THE 1865 EDITION
The foUowing History of my Rehgious Opinions, now
that it is detached from the context in which it originally
stood, requires some prehminary explanation ; and that,
not only in order to introduce it generaUy to the reader,
but speciaUy to make him understand, how I came to write
a whole book about myself, and about my most private
thoughts and feelings. Did I consult indeed my own
impulses, I should do my best simply to wipe out of my
Volume, and consign to oblivion, every trace of the circum
stances to which it is to be ascribed ; but its original title of
" Apologia " is too exactly borne out by its matter and
structure, and these again are too suggestive of correlative
circumstances, and those circumstances are of too grave
a character, to aUow of my indulging so natural a wish.
And therefore, though in this new Edition I have managed
to omit nearly a hundred pages of my original Volume,
which I could safely consider to be of merely ephemeral
importance, I am even for that very reason obhged, by way
of making up for their absence, to prefix to my Narrative
some account of the provocation out of which it arose.
It is now more than twenty years that a vague impression
to my disadvantage has rested on the popular mind, as if
my conduct towards the Anghcan Church, while I was
a member of it, was inconsistent with Christian simphcity
and uprightness. An impression of this kind was almost
unavoidable under the circumstances of the case, when
a man, who had written strongly against a cause, and had
coUected a party round him by virtue of such writings,
graduaUy faltered in his opposition to it, unsaid his words,
threw his own friends into perplexity and their proceedings
into confusion, and ended by passing over to the side of
those whom he had so vigorously denounced. Sensitive
then as I have ever been of the imputations which have
been so freely cast upon me, I have never felt much

484 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
impatience under them, as considering them to be a portion
of the penalty which I naturaUy and justly incurred by my
change of religion, even though they were to continue as
long as I hved. I left their removal to a future day, when
personal feelings would have died out, and document^
would see the hght, which were as yet buried in closets or
scattered through the country.
This was my state of mind, as it had been for many
years, when, in the beginning of 1864, I unexpectedly
found myself pubhcly put upon my defence, and furnished
with an opportunity of pleading my cause before the world,
and, as it so happened, with a fair prospect of an impartial
hearing. Taken indeed by surprise, as I was, I had inuch
reason to be anxious how I should be able to acquit myseff
in so serious a matter ; however, I had long had a tacit
understanding with myseff, that, in the improbable event
of a chaUenge being formally made to me, by a person of
name, it would be my duty to meet it. That opportunity
had now occurred ; it never might occur again ; not to
avail myself of it at once would be virtuaUy to give up my
cause ; accordingly, I took advantage of it, and, as it has
turned out, the circumstance that no time was aUowed
me for any studied statements has compensated, in the
equitable judgment of the pubhc, for such imperfections in
composition as my want of leisure involved.
It was in the number for January 1864, of a magazine of
wide circulation, and in an Article upon Queen Elizabeth,
that a popular writer took occasion formaUy to accuse me
by name of thinking so lightly of the virtue of Veracity,
as in set terms to have countenanced and defended that
neglect of it which he at the same time imputed to the
Cathohc Priesthood. His words were these : —
" Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with
the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
need not, and on the whole ought not to be ; that cunning
is the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints where
with to withstand the brute male force of the wicked
world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether
his notion be doctrinaUy correct or not, it is at least his-
toricaUy so."

PREFACE TO THE 1865 EDITION. 485
These assertions, going far beyond the popular prejudice
entertained against me, had no foundation whatever in fact.
I never had said, I never had dreamed of saying, that truth
for its own sake, need not, and on the whole ought not to
be, a virtue with the Roman Clergy ; or that cunning is
the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints wherewith
to withstand the wicked world. To what work of mine
then could the writer be referring ? In a correspondence
which ensued upon the subject between him and myself, he
rested his charge against me on a Sermon of mine, preached,
before I was a Cathohc, in the pulpit of my Church at
Oxford ; and he gave me to understand, that, after having
done as much as this, he was not bound, over and above
such a general reference to my Sermon, to specify the
passages of it, in which the doctrine, which he imputed
to me, was contained. On my part I considered this not
enough ; and I demanded of him to bring out his proof of
his accusation in form and in detaU, or to confess he was
unable to do so. But he persevered in his refusal to cite
any distinct passages from any writing of mine ; and,
though he consented to withdraw his charge, he would not
do so on the issue of its truth or falsehood, but simply on
the ground that I assured him that I had had no intention
of incurring it. This did not satisfy my sense of justice.
FormaUy to charge me with committing a fault is one
thing ; to aUow that I did not intend to commit it, is
another ; it is no satisfaction to me, if a man accuses me of
this offence, for him to profess that he does not accuse me
of that ; but he thought differently. Not being able then
to gain redress in the quarter, where I had a right to ask it,
I appealed to the public. I pubhshed the correspondence
in the shape of a Pamphlet, with some remarks of my own
at the end, on the course which that correspondence had
taken. This Pamphlet, which appeared in the first weeks of
February, received a reply from my accuser towards the
end of March, in another Pamphlet of 48 pages, entitled,
" What then does Dr. Newman mean ? " in which he
professed to do that which I had caUed upon him to do ;
that is, he brought together a number of extracts from
various works of mine, Cathohc and Anglican, with the

486 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
object of showing that, if I was to be acquitted of the crime
of teaching and practising deceit and dishonesty, according
to his first supposition, it was at the price of my being
considered no longer responsible for my actions ; for, as he
expressed it, "I had a human reason once, no doubt, but
I had gambled it away," and I had " worked my mind into
that morbid state, in which nonsense was the only food
for which it hungered ; " and that it could not be caUed
" a hasty or farfetched or unfounded mistake, when he
concluded that I did not care for truth for its own sake, or
teach my disciples to regard it as a virtue ; " and, though
" too many prefer the charge of insincerity to that of
insipience, Dr. Newman seemed not to be of that number."
He ended his Pamphlet by" returning to his original
imputation against me, which he had professed to abandon.
AUuding by anticipation to my probable answer to what he
was then publishing, he professed his heartfelt embarrass
ment how he was to believe any thing I might say in my
exculpation, in the plain and literal sense of the words.
" I am henceforth," he said, " in doubt and fear, as much
as an honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. New
man may write. How can I teU, that I shaU not be the
dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of the thro-
kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed St. Alfonso
da Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed with an
oath, because ' then we do not deceive our neighbour, but
aUow him to deceive himseff ? ' . . . How can I teU, that
I may not in this Pamphlet have made an accusation, of
the truth of which Dr. Newman is perfectly conscious ; but
that, as I, a heretic Protestant, have no business to make
it, he has a full right to deny it ? "
Even if I could have found it consistent with my duty
to my own reputation to leave such an elaborate impeach
ment of my moral nature unanswered, my duty to my
Brethren in the Catholic Priesthood, would have forbidden
such a course. They were involved hi the charges which
this writer, aU along, from the origmal passage hi the
Magazine, to the very last paragraph of the Pamphlet, had
so confidently, so pertinaciously made. In exculpating
myself, it was plain I should be pursuing no more personal
quarrel ; — I was offering my humble service to a sacred

PREFACE TO THE 1865 EDITION. 487
cause. I was making my protest in behalf of a large body
of men of high character, of honest and religious minds,
and of sensitive honour,— who had their place and their
rights in this world, though they were ministers of the
world unseen, and who were insulted by my Accuser, as
the above extracts from him sufficiently show, not only in
my person, but directly and pointedly in their own. Accord
ingly, I at once set about writing the Apologia pro vita sua,
of which the present Volume is the Second Edition ; and
it was a great reward to me to find, as the controversy
proceeded, such large numbers of my clerical brethren
supporting me by their sympathy in the course which I was
pursuing, and, as occasion offered, bestowing on me the
formal and public expression of their approbation. These
testimonials in my behalf, so important and so grateful to
me, are, together with the Letter, sent to me with the same
purpose, from my Bishop, contained in the last pages of
this Volume.
This Edition differs from the Apologia in the following
particulars : — The original work consisted of seven Parts,
which were published in series on consecutive Thursdays,
between April 21 and June 2. An Appendix, in answer to
specific allegations urged against me in the Pamphlet of
Accusation, appeared on June 16. Of these Parts 1 and 2,
as being for the most part directly controversial, are
omitted in this Edition, excepting the latter pages of
Part 2, which are subjoined to this Preface1, as being
necessary for the due explanation of the subsequent five
farts. These, (being 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, of the Apologia,) are here
numbered as Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 respectively. Of the
Appendix, about half has been omitted, for the same
reason as has led to the omission of Parts 1 and 2. The
rest of it is thrown into the shape of Notes of a discursive
character, with two new ones on Liberalism and the Lives
of the English Saints of 1843-4, and another, new in part, on
Ecclesiastical Miracles. In the body of the work, the only
addition of consequence is the letter which is found at p. 319,
a copy of which has recently come into my possession.
f1 They appear in this book as pp. 87-8, 95-101, in their place as part of
the 1864 volume.]

488 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.
I should add that, since writing the Apologia last year,
I have seen for the first time Mr. Oakeley's " Notes on the
Tractarian Movement." This work remarkably corro
borates the substance of my Narrative, whUe the kind terms
in which he speaks of me personaUy, caU for my sincere
gratitude. May 2, 1865.

CONTENTS
OF 'HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS', 1865
CHAPTER I. PAGE
History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833 . . .105
CHAPTER II.
History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839 . . 139
CHAPTER III.
History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841 . . 191
CHAPTER IV.
History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845 . . 245
CHAPTER V.
Position of my Mind since 1845  331
NOTES.
Note A. On page 116. Liberalism  491
B. On page 125. Ecclesiastical Miracles . 416,425,407
C. On page 250. Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence . 378
D. On page 304. Series of Saints' Lives of 1843-4 . 603
E. On page 318. Anglican Church . . . .393
F. On page 360. The Economy  430
G. On page 369. Lying and Equivocation . . . 438
SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.
1. Chronological List of Letters and Papers quoted in this
Narrative ........ 519
2. List of the Author's Works  471
3. Letter to him from his Diocesan ..... 473
4. Addresses from bodies of Clergy and Laity . . . 523
R3

NOTES.

NOTE A. ON PAGE 116.
LIBERALISM.
I have been asked to explain more fuUy what it is I mean
by " Liberalism," because merely to caU it the Anti-
dogmatic Principle is to teU very httle about it. An
explanation is the more necessary, because such good
Cathohcs and distinguished writers as Count Montalembert
and Father Lacordaire use the word in a favorable sense,
and claim to be Liberals themselves. " The only singu
larity," says the former of the two in describing his friend,
" was his Liberahsm. By a phenomenon, at that time
unheard of, this convert, this seminarist, this confessor
of nuns, was just as stubborn a liberal, as in the days when
he was a student and a barrister." — Life (transl.), p, 19.
I do not beheve that it is possible for me to differ in
any important matter from two men whom I so highly
admire. In their general line of thought and conduct
I enthusiasticaUy concur, and consider them to be before
their age. And it would be strange indeed if I did not
read with a special interest, in M. de Montalembert's
beautiful volume, of the unselfish aims, the thwarted pro
jects, the unrequited toils, the grand and tender resignation
of Lacordaire. If I hesitate to adopt their language
about Liberahsm, I impute the necessity of such hesitation
to some differences between us in the use of words or
in the circumstances of country ; and thus I reconcile
•myself to remaining faithful to my own conception of it,
though I cannot have their voices to give force to mine.
Speaking then in my own way, I proceed to explain what
I meant as a Protestant by Liberalism, and to do so in

492 NOTE A.
connexion with the circumstances under which that system
of opinion came before me at Oxford.
If I might presume to contrast Lacordaire and myself,
I should say, that we had been both of us inconsistent ; —
he, a Cathohc, in calling himself a Liberal ; I, a Protestant,
in being an Anti-liberal ; and moreover, that the cause
of this inconsistency had been in both cases one and the
same. That is, we were both of us such good conservatives,
as to take up with what we happened to find established
in our respective countries, at the time when we came into
active life. Toryism was the creed of Oxford ; he inherited,
and made the best of, the French Revolution.
When, in the beginning of the present century, not
very long before my own time, after many years of moral
and inteUectual declension, the University of Oxford woke
up to a sense of its duties, and began to reform itself, the
first instruments of this change, to whose zeal and courage
we aU owe so much, were naturaUy thrown together for
mutual support, against the numerous obstacles which lay
in their path, and soon stood out in rehef from the body
of residents, who, though many of them men of talent
themselves, cared httle for the object which the others
had at heart. These Reformers, as they may be caUed,
were for some years members of scarcely more than three
or four CoUeges ; and their own CoUeges, as being under
their direct influence, of course had the benefit of those
stricter views of discipline and teaching, which they them
selves were urging on the University. They had, in no
long time, enough of real progress in their several spheres
of exertion, and enough of reputation out of doors, to war
rant them in considering themselves the elite of the place ;
and it is not wonderful if they were in consequence led to
look down upon the majority of CoUeges, which had not
kept pace with the reform, or which had been hostUe to it.
And, when those rivalries of one man with another arose,
whether personal or coUegiate, which befall hterary and
scientific societies, such disturbances did but tend to
raise in their eyes the value which they had already set
upon academical distinction, and increase their zeal in
pursuing it. Thus was formed an inteUectual circle or
class in the University, — men, who felt they had a career

LIBERALISM. 493
before them, as soon as the pupils, whom they were form
ing, came into public life ; men, whom non-residents,
whether country parsons or preachers of the Low Church,
on coming up from time to time to the old place, would
look at, partly with admiration, partly with suspicion, as
being an honour indeed to Oxford, but withal exposed to
the temptation of ambitious views, and to the spiritual
evils signified in what is caUed the " pride of reason."
Nor was this imputation altogether unjust ;¦ for, as they
were foUowing out the proper idea of a University, of
course they suffered more or less from the moral malady
incident to such a pursuit. The very object of such great
institutions hes in the cultivation of the mind and the
spread of knowledge : if this object, as aU human objects,
has its dangers at all times, much more would these exist
in the case of men, who were engaged in a work of reforma
tion, and had the opportunity of measuring themselves, not
only with those who were their equals in inteUect, but with
the many, who were below them. In this select circle or
class of men, in various CoUeges, the direct instruments
and the choice fruit of real University Reform, we see the
rudiments of the Liberal party.
Whenever men are able to act at aU, there is the chance
of extreme and intemperate action ; and therefore, when
there is exercise of mind, there is the chance of wayward
or mistaken exercise. Liberty of thought is in itself a good ;
but it gives an opening to false hberty. Now by Liberahsm
I mean false hberty of thought, or the exercise of thought
upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human
mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue,
and therefore is out of place. Among such matters are first
principles of whatever kind ; and of these the most sacred
and momentous are especially to be reckoned the truths of
Revelation. Liberahsm then is the mistake of subjecting
to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in
their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming
to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of
propositions which rest for their reception simply on the
external authority of the Divine Word.
Now certainly the party of whom I have been speaking,
taken as a whoie, were of a character of mind out of which

494 NOTE A.
Liberalism might easily grow up, as in fact it did ; certainly
they breathed around an influence which made men of
religious seriousness shrink into themselves. But, while
I say as much as this, I have no intention whatever of
implying that the talent of the University, in the years
before and after 1820, was liberal in its theology, in the
sense in which the bulk of the educated classes through
the country are hberal now. I would not for the world be
supposed to detract from the Christian earnestness, and
the activity in rehgious works, above the average of men,
of many of the persons in question. They would have
protested against their being supposed to place reason
before faith, or knowledge before devotion ; yet I do con
sider that they unconsciously encouraged and successfully
introduced into Oxford a Ucence of opinion which went far
beyond them. In their day they did little more than take
credit to themselves for enhghtened views, largeness of
mind, hberahty of sentiment, without drawing the "line
between what was just and what was inadmissible in
speculation, and without seeing the tendency of their own
principles ; and engrossing, as they did, the mental energy
of the University, they met for a time with no effectual
hindrance to the spread of their influence, except (what
indeed at the moment was most effectual, but not of an
intellectual character) the thorough-going Toryism and
traditionary Church-of -England-ism of the great body of
the CoUeges and Convocation.
Now and then a man of note appeared in the Pulpit
or Lecture Rooms of the University, who was a worthy
representative of the more rehgious and devout Anglicans.
These belonged chiefly to the High-Church party ; for the
party caUed Evangelical never has been able to breathe
freely in the atmosphere of Oxford, and at no time has
been conspicuous, as a party, for talent or learning. But
of the old High Churchmen several exerted some sort of
Anti-hberal influence in the place, at least from time to
time, and that influence of an inteUectual nature. Among
these especiaUy may be mentioned Mr. John Miller, of
Worcester CoUege, who preached the Bampton Lecture
in the year 1817. But, as far as I know, he who turned
the tide, and brought the talent of the University round

LIBERALISM. 495
to the side of the old theology, and against what was
familiarly caUed " march-of-mind," was Mr. Keble. In
and from Keble the mental activity of Oxford took that
contrary direction which issued in what was caUed Trac
tarianism. Keble was young in years, when he became a University
celebrity, and younger in mind. He had the purity and
simplicity of a child. He had few sympathies with the in
teUectual party, who sincerely welcomed him as a brilliant
specimen of young Oxford. He instinctively shut up before
hterary display, and pomp and donnishness of manner,
faults which always wiU beset academical notabihties.
He did not respond to their advances. His coUision with
them (if it may be so caUed) was thus described by HurreU
Froude in his own way. " Poor Keble ! " he used gravely
to say, " he was asked to join the aristocracy of talent, but
he soon found his level." He went into the country, but
his instance serves to prove that men need not, in the
event, lose that influence which is rightly theirs, because
they happen to be thwarted in the use of the channels
natural and proper to its exercise. He did not lose his
place in the minds of men because he was out of their sight.
Keble was a man who guided himseff and formed his
judgments, not by processes of reason, by inquiry or by
argument, but, to use the word in a broad sense, by
authority. Conscience is an authority ; the Bible is an
authority ; such is the Church ; such is Antiquity ; such
are the words of the wise ; such are hereditary lessons ;
such are ethical truths ; such are historical memories, such
are legal saws and state maxims ; such are proverbs ; such
are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions. It seemed to
me as if he ever felt happier, when he could speak or act
under some such primary or external sanction ; and could
use argument mainly as a means of recommending or
explaining what had claims on his reception prior to proof.
He even felt a tenderness, I think, in spite of Bacon, for
the Idols of the Tribe and the Den, of the Market and
the Theatre. What he hated instinctively was heresy, in
subordination, resistance to things established, claims of
independence, disloyalty, innovation, a critical, censorious
spirit. And such was the main principle of the school

496 NOTE A.
which in the course of years was formed around him ; nor
is it easy to set limits to its influence in its day ; for multi
tudes of men, who did not profess its teaching, or accept
its peculiar doctrines, were willing nevertheless, or found
it to their purpose, to act in company with it.
Indeed for a time it was practicaUy the champion and
advocate of the political doctrines of the great clerical
interest through the country, who found in Mr. Keble and
his friends an inteUectual, as well as moral support to their
cause, which they looked for in vain elsewhere. His weak
point, in their eyes, was his consistency ; for he carried
his love of authority and old times so far, as to be more
than gentle towards the Cathohc Rehgion, with which
the Toryism of Oxford and of the Church of England had
no sympathy. Accordingly, if my memory be correct, he
never could get himseff to throw his heart into the opposi
tion made to Cathohc Emancipation, strongly as he revolted
from the politics and the instruments by means of which
that Emancipation was won. I fancy he would have had
no difficulty in accepting Dr. Johnson's saying about " the
first Whig ; " and it grieved and offended him that the
" Via prima salutis " should be opened to the Cathohc body
from the Whig quarter. In spite of his reverence for the
Old Rehgion, I conceive that on the whole he would rather
have kept its professors beyond the pale of the Constitution
with the Tories, than admit them on the principles of the
Whigs. Moreover, if the Revolution of 1688 was too
lax in principle for him and his friends, much less, as is
very plain, could they endure to subscribe to the revolu
tionary doctrines of 1776 and 1789, which they felt to be
absolutely and entirely out of keeping with theological
truth. The Old Tory or Conservative party in Oxford had in it
no principle or power of development, and that from its
very nature and constitution : it was otherwise with the
Liberals. They represented a new idea, which was but
graduaUy learning to recognize itself, to ascertain its
characteristics and external relations, and to exert an
influence upon the University. The party grew, aU the
time that I was in Oxford, even in numbers, certainly in
breadth and definiteness of doctrine, and in power. And,

LIBERALISM. 497
what was a far higher consideration, by the accession of
Dr. Arnold's pupils, it was invested with an elevation of
character which claimed the respect even of its opponents.
On the other hand, in proportion as it became more earn
est and less self -applauding, it became more free-spoken ;
and members of it might be found who, from the mere
circumstance of remaining firm to their original professions,
would in the judgment of the world, as to their public
acts, seem to have left it for the Conservative camp.
Thus, neither in its component parts nor in its policy, was
it the same in 1832, 1836, and 1841, as it was in 1845.
These last remarks wiU serve to throw fight upon
a matter personal to myself, which I have introduced
into my Narrative, and to which my attention has been
pointedly caUed, now that my Volume is coming to a
second edition.
It has been strongly urged upon me to re-consider the
foUowing passages which occur in it : " The men who had
driven me from Oxford were distinctly the Liberals, it was
they who had opened the attack upon Tract 90," p. 296,
and " I found no fault with the Liberals ; they had beaten
me in a fair field," p. 305.
I am very unwilling to seem ungracious, or to cause pain
in any quarter ; stiU I am sorry to say I cannot modify
these statements. It is surely a matter of historical fact
that I left Oxford upon the University proceedings of 1841 ;
and in those proceedings, whether we look to the Heads of
Houses or the resident Masters, the leaders, if inteUect
and influence make men such, were members of the Liberal
party. Those who did not lead, concurred or acquiesced
in them, — I may say, felt a satisfaction. I do not recoUect
any Liberal who was on my side on that occasion. Ex
cepting the Liberal, no other party, as a party, acted
against me. I am not complaining of them ; I deserved
nothing else at their hands. They could not undo in 1845,
even had they wished it, (and there is no proof they did,)
what they had done in 1841. In 1845, when I had already
given up the contest for four years, and my part in it had
passed into the hands of others, then some of those who .
were prominent against me in 1841, feeling (what they
had not felt in 1841) the danger of driving a number of my

498 NOTE A.
followers to Rome, and joined by younger friends who
had come into University importance since 1841 and felt
kindly towards me, adopted a course more consistent with
their principles, and proceeded to shield from the zeal
of the Hebdomadal Board, not me, but, professedly, aU
parties through the country, — Tractarians, Evangelicals,
Liberals in general, — who had to subscribe to the Anghcan
formularies, on the ground that those formularies, rigidly
taken, were, on some point or other, a difficulty to all
parties alike.
However, besides the historical fact, I can bear witness
to my own feehng at the time, and my feeling was this : —
that those who in 1841 had considered it to be a duty to
act against me, had then done their worst. What was it
to me what they were doing in the matter of the New
Test proposed by the Hebdomadal Board ? I owed them
no thanks for their trouble. I took no interest at aU, in
February, 1845, in the proceedings of the Heads of Houses
and of the Convocation. I felt myself dead as regarded
my relations to the Anghcan Church. My leaving it was
all but a matter of time. I beUeve I did not even thank
my real friends, the two Proctors, who in Convocation
stopped by their Veto the condemnation of Tract 90 ;
nor did I make any acknowledgment to Mr. Rogers, nor
to Mr. James Mozley, nor, as I think, to Mr. Hussey, for
their pamphlets in my behalf. My frame of mind is best
described by the sentiment of the passage in Horace, which
at the time I was fond of quoting, as expressing my view
of the relation that existed between the Vice-ChanceUor
and myseff. "Pentheu,
Rector Thebarum, quid me perferre patique
Indignuna cogas ? " " Adimam bona." " Nempe pecus, rem,
Lectos, argentum ; tollas licet." " In manicis et
Compedibus, ssevo te sub custode tenebo." (viz. the 39 Articles.)
" Ipse Ileus, simul atque volam, me solvet." Opinor,
Hoc sentit : Moriar. Mors ultima linea rerum est.
I conclude this notice of Liberahsm in Oxford, and the
party which was antagonistic to it, with some propositions
in detail, which, as a member of the latter, and together
with the High Church, I earnestly denounced and abjured.

LIBERALISM. 499
l.^No religious tenet is important, unless reason shows it
to be so. Therefore, e. g. the doctrine of the Athanasian Creed is not
to be insisted on, unless it tends to convert the soul ; and
the doctrine of the Atonement is to be insisted on, if it does
convert the soul.
2. No one can believe what he does not understand.
Therefore, e. g. there are no mysteries in true religion.
3. No theological doctrine is any thing more than an
opinion which happens to be held by bodies of men.
Therefore, e. g. no creed, as such, is necessary for salvation.
4. It is dishonest in a man to make an act of faith in
what he has not had brought home to him by actual proof.
Therefore, e. g. the mass of men ought not absolutely to
believe in the divine authority of the Bible.
5. It is immoral in a man to beheve more than he can
spontaneously receive as being congenial to his moral and
mental nature. Therefore, e. g. a given individual is not bound to believe
in eternal punishment.
6. No revealed doctrines or precepts may reasonably
stand in the way of scientific conclusions.
Therefore, e. g. Political Economy may reverse our Lord's
declarations about poverty and riches, or a system of Ethics
may teach that the highest condition of body is ordinarily
essential to the highest state of mind.
7. Christianity is necessarily modified by the growth of
civilization, and the exigencies of times.
Therefore, e. g. the Catholic priesthood, though necessary
in the Middle Ages, may be superseded now.
8. There is a system of religion more simply true than
Christianity as it has ever been received.
Therefore, e. g. we may advance that Christianity is the
" corn of wheat " which has been dead for 1800 years, but
at length will bear fruit ; and that Mahometanism is the
manly religion, and existing Christianity the womanish.

500 NOTE A.
9. There is a right of Private Judgment : that is, there
is no existing authority on earth competent to interfere
with the liberty of individuals in reasoning and judging
for themselves about the Bible and its contents, as they
severally please.
Therefore, e. g. religious establishments requiring sub
scription are Anti- christian.
10. There are rights of conscience such, that every one
may lawfully advance a claim to profess and teach what is
false and wrong in matters, religious, social, and moral,
provided that to his private conscience it seems absolutely
true and right.
Therefore, e. g. individuals have a right to preach and
practise fornication and polygamy.
11. There is no such thing as a national or state con
science. Therefore, e. g. no judgments can fall upon a sinful or
infidel nation.
12. The civil power has no positive duty, in a normal
state of things, to maintain rehgious truth.
Therefore, e. g. blasphemy and sabbath-breaking are not
rightly punishable by law.
13. Utility and expedience are the measure of pohtical
duty. Therefore, e. g. no punishment may be enacted, on the
ground that God commands it : e. g. on the text, " Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
14. The Civil Power may dispose of Church property
without sacrilege.
Therefore, e. g. Henry VIII. committed no sin in his
spoliations.
15. The Civil Power has the right of ecclesiastical juris
diction and administration.
Therefore, e. g. Parliament may impose artioles of faith
on the Church or suppress Dioceses.

LIBERALISM 501
16. It is lawful to rise in arms against legitimate princes.
Therefore, e. g. the Puritans in the 17th century, and the
Frenoh in the 18th, were justifiable in their Rebellion and
Revolution respectively.
17. The people are the legitimate source of power.
Therefore, e. g. Universal Suffrage is among the natural
rights of man.
18. Virtue is the child of knowledge, and vice of ignor
ance. Therefore, e. g. education, periodical literature, raikoad
travelling, ventilation, drainage, and the arts of Ufe, when
fully carried out, serve to make a population moral and
happy.
All of these propositions, and many others too, were
famUiar to me thirty years ago, as in the number of the
tenets of Liberalism, and, while I gave into none of them
except No. 12, and perhaps No. 11, and partly No. 1,
before I began to publish, so afterwards I wrote against
most of them in some part or other of my Anghcan works.
If it is necessary to refer to a work, not simply my own,
but of the Tractarian school, which contains a similar
protest, I should name the Lyra Apostolica. This volume,
which by accident has been left unnoticed, except inci-
dentaUy, in my Narrative, was coUected together from the
pages of the " British Magazine," in which its contents
originaUy appeared, and pubhshed in a separate form,
immediately after HurreU Froude's death in 1836. Its
signatures, a, /3, y, 8, e, £, denote respectively the author
ship of Mr. Bowden, Mr. HurreU Froude, Mr. Keble,
myself, Mr. Robert Wilberforce, and Mr. Isaac Williams.
- There is one poem on " Liberahsm," beginning " Ye
cannot halve the Gospel of God's grace ; " which bears
out the account of Liberahsm as above given. Another
upon " the Age to come," defining from its own point of
view the position and prospects of Liberalism, shall be
quoted in extenso.
When I would search the truths that in me burn,
And mould them into rule and argument,
A hundred reasoners cried, — " Hast thou to learn
Those dreams are scattered now, those fires are spent ? "

502 NOTE A.
And, did I mount to simpler thoughts, and try
Some theme of peace, 'twas still the same reply.
Perplexed, I hoped my heart was pure of guile,
But judged me weak in wit, to disagree ;
But now I see, that men are mad awhile,
And joy the Age to come will think of me ;
'Tis the old history : — Truth without a home.
Despised and slain ; then, rising from the tomb.

(The several paragraphs o/Note B (1865) will be found in this book on
pp. 416-18, 425, 407-15.
Note C (1865) will be found in this book on p. 378, in its place as part
of the 1864 volume.)

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4. 503

NOTE D. ON PAGE 304.
SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4.

I have here an opportunity of preserving, what other
wise would be lost, the Catalogue of English'Saints which
I formed, as preparatory to the Series of their Lives which
was begun in the above years. It is but a first Essay, and
has many obvious imperfections ; but it may be useful
to others as a step towards a complete hagiography for
England. For instance St. Osberga is omitted ; I suppose
because it was not easy to learn any thing about her.
Boniface of Canterbury is inserted, though passed over by
the BoUandists on the ground of the absence of proof of
a cultus having been paid to him. The Saints of CornwaU
were too numerous to be attempted. Among the men of
note, not Saints, King Edward II. is included from piety
towards the founder of Oriel CoUege. With these admis
sions I present my Paper to the reader.
Preparing for Publication, in Periodical Numbers, in small 8vo,
The Lives of the English Saints, Edited by the Rev. John Henry
Newman, B.D., Fellow of Oriel College.
It is the compensation of the disorders and perplexities of these
latter times of the Church that we have the history of the foregoing.
We indeed of this day have been reserved to witness a disorganization
of the City of God, which it never entered into the minds of the
early believers to imagine : but we are witnesses also of its triumphs
and of its luminaries through those many ages which have brought
about the misfortunes which at present overshadow it. If they
were blessed who lived in primitive times, and saw the fresh traces
of their Lord, and heard the echoes of Apostolic voices, blessed too
are we whose special portion it is to see that same Lord revealed in
His Saints. The wonders of His grace in the soul of man, its creative
power, its inexhaustible resources, its manifold operation, all this

504 NOTE D.
we know, as they knew it not. They never heard the names of
St. Gregory, St. Bernard, St. Francis, and St. Louis. In fixing our
thoughts then, as in an undertaking like the present, on the History
of the Saints, we are but availing ourselves of that solace and
recompense of our peculiar trials which has been provided for our
need by our Gracious Master.
And there are special reasons at this time for recurring to the
Saints of our own dear and glorious, most favoured, yet most erring
and most unfortunate England. Such a recurrence may serve to
make us love our country better, and on truer grounds, than hereto
fore ; to teach us to invest her territory, her cities and villages, her
hills and springs, with sacred associations ; to give us an insight
into her present historical position in the course of the Divine
Dispensation ; to instruct us in the capabilities of the English
character ; and to open upon us the duties and the hopes to
which that Church is heir, which was in former times the Mother of
St. Boniface and St. Ethelreda.
Even a selection or specimens of the Hagiology of our country
may suffice for some of these high purposes ; and in so wide and rich
a field of research it is almost presumptuous in one undertaking
to aim at more than such a partial exhibition. The list that follows,
though by no means so large as might have been drawn up, exceeds
the limits which the Editor proposes to his hopes, if not to his
wishes ; but, whether it is allowed him to accomplish a larger or
smaller portion of it, it will be bis aim to complete such subjects
or periods as he begins before bringing it to a close. It is hardly
necessary to observe that any list that is producible in this stage of
the undertaking can but approximate to correctness and complete
ness in matters of detail, and even in the names which are selected
to compose it.
He has considered himself at liberty to include in the Series such
saints as have been born in England, though they have lived and
laboured out of it ; and such, again, as have been in any sufficient
way connected with our country, though born out of it ; for instance,
Missionaries or Preachers in it, or spiritual or temporal rulers, or
founders of religious institutions or houses.
He has also included in the Series a few errunent or holy persons,
who, though not in the Sacred Catalogue, are recommended to our
religious memory by their fame, learning, or the benefits they have
conferred on posterity. These have been distinguished from the
Saints by printing their names in italics.
It is proposed to page all the longer Lives separately ; the shorter
will be thrown together in one. They will be published in monthly
issues of not more than 128 pages each ; and no regularity, whether
of date or of subject, will be observed in the order of publication.
But they will be so numbered as to admit ultimately of a general
chronological arrangement.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4.

505

The separate writers are distinguished by letters subjoined to each
Life : and it should be added, to prevent misapprehension, that,
since under the present circumstances of our Church, they are
necessarily of various, though not divergent, doctrinal opinions, no
one is answerable for any composition but his own. At the same
time, the work professing an historical and ethical character,
questions of theology will be, as far as possible, thrown into the
back ground.
J. H. N.
Littlemore, Sept. 9, 1843.

CALENDAR OF ENGLISH SAINTS.

JANUARY.

FEBRUARY.

1 Elvan, B. and Medwyne, C.

1

2 Martyrs of Lichfield.

2 Laurence, Archb.

3 Melorus, M.

3 Wereburga, V.

4

4 Gilbert, A. Liephard, B.M.

5 Edward, K.C.

5

6 Peter, A.

6 Ina, K. Mo.

7 Cedd, B.

7 Augulus, B.M. Richard, K.

8 Pega, V. Wulsin, B.

8 Elfleda, A. Cuthman, C.

9 Adrian, A. Bertwald, Archb.

9 Theliau, B.

10 Sethrida, V.

10 Trumwin, B.

11 Egwin, B.

11

12 Benedict Biscop, A. Aelred, A.

12 Ethelwold, B. of Lindisfarne.

13 Kentigern, B.

Cedmon, Mo.

14 Beuno, A.

13 Ermemlda, Q.A.

15 Ceolulph, K. Mo.

14

16 Henry, Hermit. Fursey, A.

15 Sigefride, B.

17 Mildwida, V.

16 Pinan, B.

18 Utfrid or Wolfrid, M.

17

19 Wulstan, B. Henry, B.

18

20

19

21

20 Ulric, H.

22 Brithwold, B.

21

23 Boisil, A.

22

24 Cadoc, A.

23 Milburga, V.

25

24 Luidhard, B. Ethelbert of

26 Theoritgida, V.

Kent, K.

27 Bathildis, Queen.

25 Walburga, V.A.

28

26

29 Gildas, A.

27 Alnoth, H.M.

30

28 Oswald, B.

31 Adamnan, Mo. Serapion. M.

29

506

NOTE D.

10111213 14
1516
171819
2021 22
23 2425 26
27 2829
30 31

MARCH.
David, Archb. Swibert, B.
Chad,B. Willeik,C. Joavan,B.
Winwaloe, A.
Owin, Mo.
Kineburga, &c ,and Tibba,VV.
Balther, C. and Bilfrid, H.
Easterwin, A. William, Friar.
Felix, B.
Bosa, B.

Paul de Leon,

Elphege, B.
B.C.
Robert, H.
Eadgith, A.

Withburga, V.
Edward, K.M.
Alcmund, M.
Cuthbert, B. Herbert, B.

^Edelwald, H.
Hildelitha, A.
Alfwold of Sherborne, B. and
William, M.

Gundleus, H.
Merwenna, A.

APRIL.
1
23 Richard, B.
4 5678
9 Frithstan, B.
10 11 Guthlake, H.
1213 Caradoc, H.

Richard of Bury, B.
Paternus, B.

Elphege, Archb.
Adelhare, M. Cedwalla, K.
Ansetm, Archb. Doctor.

141516
17 Stephen, A
1819
20
21
22 2324

25
26 27
28 29
30

George, M.
Mellitus, Archb. Wilfrid,
Archb. Egbert, C.

23
4 5678
9
10111213 14
15 16171819
2021222324252627

Wilfrid II. Archb.
Erconwald, B. Suibert, B.
Maud, Q. MAY.
Asaph, B. TJltan, A. Brioc,
B.C.
Germanus, M.

Ethelred, K. Mo.
Eadbert, A.
John, Archb. of Beverley.

Fremund, M.

Simon Stock, H.
Elgiva, Q.
Dunstan, Archb. B. Alcuin, A .
Ethelbert, K.M.
Godric, H.
Winewald, A. Berethun, A.
Henry, K.
Ethelburga, Q.
Aldhelm, B.
Augustine, Archb.
Bede, D. Mo.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4.

507

28 Lanfranc, Archbt
29
30 Walston, C.
31 Jurmin, C.

1
234
5 6789
101112 13
14151617181920
21
22 23
2425 2627
282930

JUNE.
Wist'an, K.M.
Petroc, A.
Boniface, Archb. M.
Gudwall, B.
Robert, A.
William, Archb.
Ivo, B. and Ithamar, B.
Eskill, B.M.
Elerius, A.
Edburga, V.
Botulph, A. John, Fr.

Idaberga, V.
Egelmund, A.
Alban, and Amphibolus, MM.
Ethelreda, V.A.
Bartholomew, H.
Adelbert, C.
John, C. of Moutier.
Margaret, Countess of Rich
mond.

JULY.

Rumold,

1 Julius, Aaron, MM.
B. Leonorus, B.
2 Oudoceus, B. Swithun, B.
3 Gunthiern, A.
4 Odo, Archb.
5 Modwenna, V.A.
6 Sexburga, A.
7 Edelburga, V.A. Hedda,
Willibald, B. Ercongota, V.
8 Grimbald, and Edgar, K.
9 Stephen Langton, Archb.

B.

Mildreda, V.A.
Marchelm, C. Boniface, Archb.
Deusdedit, Archb. Plechelm,
B. David, A. and Editha of
Tamworth, Q.V.
Helier, H.M.
Kenelm, K.M.
Edburga and Edgitha of Ayles
bury, VV. Frederic, B.M.

Wulfud and Ruffin, MM. Lew-
«nna, V.M.

Hugh, M.
Sampson, B.
Lupus, B.
Tatwin, Archb. and Ermeni-
githa, V.
Germanus, B. and Neot, H.

AUGUST.
Ethelwold, B. of Winton.
Etheldritha, V.
Walthen, A.
Oswald, K.M. Thomas, Mo. M.
of Dover.

8 Colman, B.
9
10
11121314
15 16 1718
19

William of Waynfleet, B.
Wigbert, A. Walter, A.
Werenfrid, C.

Helen, Empress.

508

NOTE D.

20 Oswin, K.M.
21 Richard, B. of Andria.
22 Sigfrid, A.
23 Ebba, V.A.
2425 Ebba, V.A.M.
26 Bregwin, Archb. Bradwardine,
Archb.
27 Sturmius, A.
28 29 Sebbus, K.
30 31 Eanswida, V.A. Aidan, A.B.
Cuthburga, Q.V.

SEPTEMBER.
William, B. of Roschid.
liam, Fr.

Wil-

10
11 121314 15
1617
18 19
20 21
22 2324252627 2829
30

Bega, A.
Alcmund, A. Tilhbert, A.
Bertelin, H. Wulfhilda or Vul-
fridis, A.
Otger, C.
Robert Kilwardby, Archb.

Richard Fox, B.
Ninian, B. Edith, daughter of
Edgar, V.
Socrates and Stephen, MM.
Theodore, Archb.
Hereswide, Q. Edward II. K.

Ceolfrid ,A.
William of Wykeham, B.
Lioba, V.A.
B. Richard of Hampole, H.
Honorius, Archb.

OCTOBER.
1 Roger, B.
2 Thomas of Hereford, B.
3 Ewalds (two) MM.
4
5 Walter Stapleton, B.
6 Ywy, C.
7 Ositha, Q.V.M.
8 Ceneu, V.
9 Lina, V. and Robert Grostete, B.
10 Paulinus, Archb. John, C. of
Bridlington.
11 Edilburga, V.A.
12 Edwin, K.
13
14 Burchard, B.
15 Tecla, V.A.
16 Lullus, Archb.
17 Ethelred, Ethelbright, MM.
18 Walter de Merton, B.
19 Frideswide, V. and Ethbin, A.
2021 Ursula, V.M.
22 Mello, B.C.
2324 Magloire, B.
25 John of Salisbury, B.
26 Eata, B.
27 Witta, B.
28 B. Alfred.
29 Sigebert, K.
3031 Foilkn, B.M.

Elfreda, A.

1
2
345 6789
10
11 1213 14

NOVEMBER.

Wenefred, V.M. Rumwald, G.
Brinstan, B. Clarus, M.
Cungar, H.
Iltut, A. and Winoc, A.
Willebrord, B.
Willehad, B. Tyssilio, B.
Justus, Arohb.
Lebwin, C.
Eadburga of Menstrey, A.
Dubrioius, B.C.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4.

509

151617 1819
20 21
2223 242526 27
28 29 30

Malo, B.
Edmund, B.
Hilda, A. Hugh, B.
Ermenburga, Q.
Edmund, K.M. Humbert, B.M.
Acca, B.
Paulinus, A.
Daniel, B.C.

Edwold, M.

DECEMBER.

Weede, V.
Birinus, B.
Sola, H.
Osmund, B.
Christina, V.

Lucius, K. and

8 John Peckham, Archb.

9
1011
1213
1415
1617
1819
2021
222324
25262728 293031

Elfleda, A.
Corentin, B.C.
Ethelburga, Q. wife of Edwin.

Winebald, A.
Eadburga, V.A.

Tathai, C.
Gerald, A.B.
Thomas, Archb. M.

N.B. St. William, Austin-Friar, Ingulphus, and Peter of Blois have not
been mtroduced into the above Calendar, their days of death or festival
not being as yet ascertained.

CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT.

182

Dec. 3.

Jan. 1.

300

Oct. 22.

303

Ap. 23.
June 22.

304

July 1.
Jan. 2.

—

Feb. 7.

328388411

Aug. 18.
Sept. 17
Jan. 3.

SECOND CENTURY.
Lucius, K. of the British.
Elvan, B. and Medwyne, C. envoys from St. Lucius
to Rome.
FOURTH CENTURY.
Mello, B. C. of Rouen.
George, M. under Dioclesian. Patron of England.
Alban and Amphibalus, MM.
Julius and Aaron, MM. of Caerleon.
Martyrs of Lichfield.
Augulus, B.M. of London.
Helen, Empress, mother of Constantine.
Socrates and Stephen, MM. perhaps in Wales.
Melorus, M. in Cornwall.

510

NOTE D.

FIFTH CENTURY.
432 Sept. 16. Ninian, B. Apostle of the Southern Picts*
429 July 31. Germanus, B. C. of Auxerre.
July 29. Lupus, B. C. of Troyes.
502 May 1. Brioc, B. C, disciple of St. Germanus.
490 Oct. 8. Ceneu, or Keyna, V., sister-in-law of Gundleus.
492 Mar. 29. Gundleus, Hermit, in Wales.
July 3. Gunthiern, A., in Brittany.
453 Oct. 21. Ursula, V.M. near Cologne.
bef. 500 Dec. 12. Corentin, B.C. of Quimper.

FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES.

444-522 Nov. 14.
520 Nov. 22.
445-544 Mar. 1.
abt. 500 Dec. 26.
480 Jan. 24.
abt. 513 Not. 6.
545 Nov. 23.
aft. 559 Apr. 18.
573 Mar. 12.
Mar. 2.
599 July 28.

565575583
604560

500-580 516-601

Nov. 15.
Oct. 24.
Jan. 29.
July 1.
Feb. 9.
July 2.
Oct. 19.
Jan. 13.

Welsh Schools.
Dubricius, B.C., first Bishop of LlandafE.
Paulinus, A. of Whitland, tutor of St. David and
St. Theliau.
David, Archb. of Menevia, afterwards called from
him.
Tathai, C, master of St. Cadoc.
Cadoc, A., son of St. Gundleus, and nephew of St.
Keyna.
Iltut, A., converted by St. Cadoc.
Daniel, B.C., first Bishop of Bangor.
Paternus, B.A., pupil of St. Iltut.
Paul, B.C. of Leon, pupil of St. Iltut.
Ioavan, B., pupil of St. Paul.
Sampson, B., pupil of St. Htut, cousin of St. Paul
de Leon.
Malo, B., cousin of St. Sampson.
Magloire, B., cousin of St. Malo.
Gildas, A., pupil of St. Htut.
Leonorus, B., pupil of St. Htut.
Theliau, B. of Llandaff, pupil of St. Dubricius.
Oudoceus, B., nephew to St. Theliau.
Ethbin, A., pupil of St. Sampson.
Kentigern, B. of Glasgow, founder of Monastery of
Elwv.

529

Mar. 3.

564

June 4.

July 16.

June 27.

590

May 1.

abt.

600 June 6.

Nov. 8.

SIXTH CENTURY.
Winwaloe, A., in Brittany.
Petroc, A., in Cornwall.
Helier, Hermit, M., in Jersey.
John, C. of Moutier, in Tours.
Asaph, B. of Elwy, afterwards called after him.
Gudwall, B. of Aleth in Brittany.
Tyssilio, B. of St. Asaph.

600

June 10.

596

Feb. 24.

616

Feb. 24.

608

May 26.

624

Apr. 24.

619

Feb. 2.

608

Jan. 6.

627

Nov. 10.

653

Sept. 30.

662

July 15.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4. 511
SEVENTH CENTURY.
Part I.
Ivo, or Ivia, B. from Persia.
Luidhard, B. of Senlis, in France.
Ethelbert, K. of Kent.
Augustine, Archb. of Canterbury, Apostle of
England.
Mellitus, Archb. of Canterbury,
Laurence, Archb. of Canterbury,
Peter, A. at Canterbury,
Justus, Archb. of Canterbury,
Honorius, Archb. of Canterbury,
Deus-dedit, Archb. of Canterbury.

642

Oct. 29.

646

Mar. 8.

650

Jan. 16.

680

May 1.

655

Oct. 31.

680

June 17.

671

June 10.

650

Dee. 3.

705

July 7.

717

Jan. 11.

Companions of
St. Augustine.

SEVENTH CENTURY.
Part II.
Sigebert, K. of the East Angles.
Felix, B. of Dunwich, Apostle of the East Angles.
Fursey, A., preacher among the East Angles.
Ultan, A., brother of St. Fursey.
Foillan, B.M., brother of St. Fursey, preacher in the
Netherlands.
Botulph, A., in Lincolnshire or Sussex.
Ithamar, B. of Rochester.
Birinus, B. of Dorchester.
Hedda, B. of Dorchester.
Egwin, B. of Worcester.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
Past III.
690 Sept. 19. Theodore, Archb. of Canterbury.
709 Jan. 9. Adrian, A. in Canterbury.
709 May 25. Aldhelm, B. of Sherborne, pupil of St. Adrian.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
Part IV.
630 Nov. 3. Winefred, V.M. in Wales.
642 Feb. 4. Liephard, M.B., slain near Cambray.
660 Jan. 14. Beuno, A., kinsman of St. Cadocus and St. Kenti-
gern.
673 Oct. 7. Osgitha, Q.V.M., in East Anglia during a Danish
inroad.
630 June 14. Elerius, A. in Wales.
680 Jan. 27. Bathildis, Q., wife of Clovis II., king of France.
687 July 24. Lewinna, V.M., put to death by the Saxons.
700 July 18. Edberga and Edgitha, W. of Aylesbury.

633

Oct. 12.

Dec. 13.

642

Aug. 5.

651

Aug. 20.

683

Aug. 23.

689

Jan. 31.

512 NOTE D.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
Part V.
644 Oct. 10. Paulinus, Archb. of York, companion of St.
Augustine.
Edwin, K. of Northumberland.
Ethelburga, Q., wife to St. Edwin.
Oswald, K.M., St. Edwin's nephew.
Oswin, KM., cousin to St. Oswald.
Ebba, V.A. of Coldingham, half-sister to St. Oswin.
Adamnan, Mo. of Coldingham.
SEVENTH CENTURY.
Part VI. — Whitby.
650 Sept. 6. Bega, V.A., foundress of St. Bee's, called after her.
681 Nov. 17. Hilda, A. of Whitby, daughter of St. Edwin's
nephew.
716 Dec. 11. Elfleda, A. of Whitby, daughter of St. Oswin.
680 Feb. 12. Cedmon, Mo. of Whitby.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.
Part I.
Sept. 21. Hereswida, Q., sister of Hilda, wife of Annas, who
succeeded Egric, Sigebert's cousin.
654 Jan. 10. Sethrida, V.A. of Faremoutier, St. Hereswida's
daughter by a former marriage.
093 Apr. 30. Erconwald, A.B., son of Annas and St. Hereswida,
Bishop of London, Abbot of Chertsey, founder of
Barking.
677 Aug. 29. Sebbus, K., converted by St. Erconwald.
May 31. Jurmin, C, son of Annas and St. Hereswida.
650 July 7. Edelburga, V.A. of Faremoutier, natural daughter
of Annas.
679 June 23. Ethelreda, Etheldreda, Etheltrudis, or Awdry,
V.A., daughter of Annas and St. Hereswida.
Mar. 17. Withburga, V, daughter of Annas and St. Heres
wida.
699 July 6. Sexburga,A.,daughterof Annas and St. Hereswida.
660 July 7. Ercongota, or Ertongata, V.A. of Faremoutier,
daughter of St. Sexburga.
699 Feb. 13. Ermenilda, Q.A., daughter of St. Sexburga, wife of
Wulfere.
aft. 675 Feb. 3. Wereburga, V, daughter of St. Ermenilda and
Wulfere. patron of Chester.
abt. 680 Feb. 27. Alnoth, H.M., baihff to St. Wereburga.
640 Aug. 31. Eanswida, VA., sister-in-law of St. Sexburga,
grand-daughter to St. Ethelbert.
668 Oct. 17. Ethelred and Ethelbright, MM., nephews of St.
Eanswida.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4. 513
July 30. Ermenigitha, V, niece of St. Eanswida.
676 Oct. 11. Edilberga, V.A. of Barking, daughter of Annas and
St. Hereswida.
678 Jan. 26. Theoritgida, V, nun of Barking.
aft. 713 Aug. 31. Cuthberga, Q.V., of Barking, sister of St. Ina.
700 Mar. 24. Hildelitha, A. of Barking.
728 Feb. 6. Ina, K. Mo. of the West Saxons.
740 May 24. Ethelburga, Q., wife of St. Ina, nun at Barking.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.
Part II.
Idaburga, V.
Kineburga, Q.A.
Kinneswitha, V.
Chidestre, V.
Weeda, V.A.
Tibba, V., their kinswoman.
Rumwald, C, grandson of Penda.
Ermenburga, Q., mother to the three following.
Milburga, V.A. of Wenlock, ¦> fi , daughters of
MiMmrla. V. A. nf MRnatnw. I wana-aaugnters OI

652

June 20.

696

Mar. 6.

701

692

Dec. 2.

696

Mar. 6.

Nov. 3.

680

Nov. 19.

Feb. 23.
July 13.
676
Jan. 17
750
Nov. 13.
• Daughters of King Penda.
imiDurga, v.a. oi wemocK, ¦> a A A
Mildreda, V.A. of Menstrey, M^na'aa
Milwida, or Milgitha, V. > trenaa-
Eadburga, A. of Menstrey.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.
Part III.
670 July 24. Wulfad and Ruffin, MM., sons of Wulfere, Penda's
son, and of St. Erminilda.
Chad, B. of Lichfield.
Cedd, B. of London.
Owin, Mo. of Lichfield.
Cedwalla, K. of West Saxons.
Cungar, H. in Somersetshire.
Trumwin, B. of the Picts.
Bosa, Arehb. of York.
Wilfrid, Arehb. of York.
John of Beverley, Archb. of York.
Wilfrid IL, Archb. of York.
Berethun, A. of Deirwood, disciple of St. John of
Beverley.
751 May 22. Winewald, A. of Deirwood.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.
Part IV.— Missions.
729 Apr. 24. Egbert, C, master to Willebrord.
693 Oct. 3. Ewalds (two), MM. in Westphalia.
690-736 Nov. 7. Wfflebrord, B. of Utrecht, Apostle of Friesland.
717 Mar. 1. Swibert, B., Apostle of Westphalia.
APOLOGIA S
672
Mar. 2.
664
Jan. 7.
688
Mar. 4
689
Apr. 20.
690-725 Nov. 5.
700
Feb. 10.
705
Mar. 9.
709
Apr. 24.
721
May 7.
743
Apr. 29.
733
May 22.
514

NOTE D.

727705

Mar. 2.
June 25.

705720730732
750760760

Aug. 14.
June 21.
Sept. 10.
July 15.
May 2.
Nov. 12.
July 14.
697-755 June 5.
712 Feb. 7.
704-790 July 7.
730-760 Dec. 18.
779 Feb. 25.
aft. 755 Sept. 28.
750 Oct. 15.
788 Oct. 16.
abt. 747 Aug. 13.
755 Apr. 20.
780 Aug. 27.
786 Oct. 27.
791 Nov. 8.
791 Oct. 14.
790 Dec. 3.
775 Julyl.
807 Apr. 30.

Willeik, C, successor to St. Swibert.
Adelbert, C., grandson of St. Oswald, preacher in
Holland.
Werenfrid, C, preacher in Friesland.
Engelmund, A., preacher in Holland.
Otger, C. in Low Countries.
Plechelm, B., preacher in Guelderland.
Germanus, B.M. in the Netherlands.
Lebwin, C. in Overyssel, in Holland.
Marchelm, C, companion of St. Lebwin, in Holland.
Boniface, Archb., M. of Mentz, Apostle of Germany.
Richard, K. of the West Saxons.
Willibald, B. of Aich- \
stadt, in Franconia,
Winebald, A. of Hei- I Children
denheim, in Suabia, I ™- "*•
Walburga,, V.A. of I Richard.
Heidenheim, /
Lioba, V.A. of Bischorsheim,
Tecla, V.A. of Kitzingen, in Fran
conia,
Lullus, Archb. of Mentz,
Wigbert, A. of Fritzlar and Ort-
dorf . in Germany,
Adelhare, B.M. of Erford, in Fran
conia,
Sturmius, A. of Fulda,
Witta, or Albuinus, B. of Bura-
berg, in Germany,
Willehad, B. of Bremen, and
Apostle of Saxony,
Burchard, B. of Wurtzburg, in
Franconia,
Sola, H., near Aichstadt, in Fran
conia,
Rumold, B., Patron of Mechlin.
Suibert, B. of Verden in Westphalia.

Companions
• of St.
Boniface.

670

Jan. 23.

651

Aug. 31.

664

Feb. 16.

676

Aug. 8.

685

Oct. 26.

687

Mar. 20.

Oct. 6.

690

Mar. 20.

C98

May 6.

SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.
Part V. — Lindisfarne and Hexham.
Boisil, A. of Melros, in Scotland.
Aidan, A.B. of Lindisfarne.
Finan, B. of Lindisfarne.
Colman, B. of Lindisfarne.
Eata, B. of Hexham.
Cuthbert, B. of Lindisfarne.
Ywy, C. disciple of St. Cuthbert.
Herbert, H. disciple of St. Cuthbert.
Eadbert, B. of Lindisfarne.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4. 515
700 Mar. 23. ^delwald, H. successor of St. Cuthbert, in his
hermitage. *
740 Feb. 12. Ethelwold, B. of Lindisfarne.
740 Nov. 20. Acca'B. of Hexham.
764 Jan. 15. Ceolulph, K. Mo. of Lindisfarne.
756 Mar. 6. Balther, H. at Lindisfarne.
„„, >> Bilfrid, H. Goldsmith at Lindisfarne.
781 Sept. 7. Alchmund, B. of Hexham.
789 Sept. 7. Tilhbert, B. of Hexham.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH CENTURIES.
Part VI. — Wearmotjth and Yarrow.
703 Jan. 12. Benedict Biscop, A. of Wearmouth.
685 Mar. 7. Easterwin, A. of Wearmouth.
689 Aug. 22. Sigfrid, A. of Wearmouth.
716 Sept. 25. Ceofrid, A. of Yarrow.
734 May 27. Bede, Doctor, Mo. of Yarrow.
804 May 19. B. Alcuin, A. in France.
EIGHTH CENTURY.
710 May 5. Ethelred, K. Mo. King of Mercia, Monk of Bardney.
719 Jan. 8. Pega, V, sister of St. Guthlake.
714 Apr. 11. Guthlake, H. of Croyland.
717 Not. 6. Winoc, A. in Brittany.
730 Jan. 9. Bertwald, Archb. of Canterbury.
732 Dec. 27. Gerald, A.B. in Mayo.
734 July 30. Tatwin, Archb. of Canterbury.
750 Oct. 19. Frideswide, V. patron of Oxford.
762 Aug. 26. Bregwin, Archb. of Canterbury.
700-800 Feb. 8. Cuthman, C. of Stening in Sussex.
bef. 800 Sept. 9. Bertelin, H. patron of Stafford.
EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES.
793 May 20. Ethelbert, K.M. of the East Angles.
834 Aug. 2. Etheldritha, or Alfreda,V., daughter of Offa, king of
Mercia, nun at Croyland.
819 July 17. Kenelm, K.M. of Mercia.
849 June 1. Wistan, K.M. of Mercia.
838 July 18. Frederic, Archb. M. of Utrecht.
894 Not. 4. Clarus, M.'in Normandy.
NINTH CENTURY.
Part I. — Daxish Slaughters, &o.
819 Mar. 19. Alcmund, M., son of Eldred, king of Northumbria,
Patron of Derby.
870 Not. 20. Edmund, K.M. of the East Angles.
862 May 11. Fremund, H. M. nobleman of East Anglia.
870 Nov. 20. Humbert, B.M. of Elmon in East Anglia.
867 Aug. 25. Ebba, V.A.M. of Coldingham.

516 NOTE D.
NINTH CENTURY.
Part II.
862 July 2. Swithun, B. of Winton.
870 July 5. Modwenna, V.A. of Pollesworth in Warwickshire.
Oct. 9. Lina, V. nun at Pollesworth.
871 Mar. 15. Eadgith, V.A. of Pollesworth, sister of King
Ethelwolf.
900 Dec. 21. Eadburga, V.A. of Winton, daughter of King
Ethelwolf.
880 Nov. 28. Edwold, H., brother of St. Edmund.

NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES.
883 July 31. Neot, H. in Cornwall.
903 July 8. Grimbald, A. at Winton.
900 Oct. 28. B. Alfred, K.
929 Apr. 9. Frithstan, B. of Winton.
934 Nov. 4. Brinstan, B. of Winton.

TENTH CENTURY.
Part I.
960 June 15. Edburga, V., nun at Winton, granddaughter of
Alfred.
Editha, Q.V., nun of Tamworth, sister to Edburga.
Algyfa, or Elgiva, Q., mother of Edgar.
Edgar, K.
Edward, K.M. at Corfe Castle.
Edith, V, daughter of St. Edgar and St. Wulfhilda.
Wulfhilda, or Vulfrida, A. of Wilton.
Merwenna, V.A. of Romsey.
Elfreda, A. of Romsey.
Christina of Romsey, V., sister of St. Margaret of
Scotland.

TENTH CENTURY.
Part II.
961 July 4. Odo, Archb. of Canterbury, Benedictine Monk.
960-992 Feb. 28. Oswald, Archb. of York, B. of Worcester, nephew
to St. Odo.
951-1012 Mar. 12. Elphege the Bald, B. of Winton.
988 May 19. Dunstan, Archb. of Canterburv.
973 Jan. 8. Wulsin, B. of Sherbourne.
984 Aug. 1. Ethelwold, B. of Winton.
1015 Jan. 22. Brithwold, B. of Winton.

926

July 15.

921

May 18.

975

July 8.

978

Mar. 18.

984

Sept. 16.

990

Sept. 9.

980

Mar. 30.

990

Oct. 29.

1016

Dec. 5.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4 517
TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.
Missions.
950 Feb. 15. Sigfride, B., apostle of Sweden.
1016 June 12. Eskill, B.M. in Sweden, kinsman of St. Sigfride.
1028 Jan. 18. Wolfred, M. in Sweden.
1050 July 15. David, A., Cluniac in Sweden.
ELEVENTH CENTURY.
1012 Apr. 19. Elphege, M. Archb. of Canterbury.
1016 May. 30. Walston, C. near Norwich.
1053 Mar. 25. Alfwold, B. of Sherborne,
1067 Sept. 2. William, B. of Roschid in Denmark.
1066 Jan. 5. Edward, K.C.
1099 Dec. 4. Osmund, B. of Salisbury.
ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES.
1095 Jan. 19. Wulstan, B. of Worcester.
1089 May 28. Lanfranc, Archb. of Canterbury.
1109 Apr. 21. Anselm, Doctor, Archb. of Canterbury.
1170 Dec. 29. Thomas, Archb. M. of Canterbury.
1200 Nov. 17. Hugh, B. of Lincoln, Carthusian Monk.
TWELFTH CENTURY.
Part I.
1109 Ingulphus, A. of Croyland.
1117 Apr. 30. B. Maud, Q. Wife of Henry I.
1124 Apr. 13. Caradoc, H. in South Wales.
1127 Jan. 16. Henry, H. in Northumberland.
1144 Mar. 25. William, M. of Norwich.
1151 Jan. 19. Henry, M.B. of Upsal.
1150 Aug. 13. Walter, A. of Fontenelle, in France.
1154 June 8. William, Archb. of York.
1170 May 21. Godric, H. in Durham.
1180 Oct. 25. John of Salisbury, B. of Ghartres.
1182 June 24. Bartholomew, C, monk at Durham.
1189 Feb. 4. Gilbert, A. of Sempringham.
1190 Aug. 21. Richard, B. of Andria.
1200 Peter de Blois, Archd. of Bath.
TWELFTH CENTURY.
Part II. — Cistertian Order.
1134 Apr. 17. Stephen, A. of Citeaux.
1139 June 7. Robert, A. of Newminster in Northumberland.
1154 Feb. 20. Ulric, H. in Dorsetshire.
1160 Aug. 3. Walthen, A. of Melrose.
1166 Jan. 12. Aelred, A. of Rieval.

1228

Julv 9.

1242

Nov. 16.

1253

Apr. 3.

1282

Oct. 2.

1294

Dec. 3.

518 NOTE D.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
Part I.
Stephen Langton, Archb. of Canterbury.
Edmund, Archb. of Canterbury.
Richard, B. of Chichester.
Thomas, B. of Hereford.
John Peckham, Archb. of Canterbury.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
Part II. — Orders of Friars.
1217 June 17. John, Fr., Trinitarian.
1232 Mar. 7. William, Fr., Franciscan.
1240 Jan. 31. Serapion, Fr., M., Redemptionist.
1265 May 16. Simon Stock, H., General of the Carmelites.
1279 Sept. 11. Robert Kilwardby, Archb. of Canterbury Fr. Domi-

THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
Part III.
Robert H. at Knaresboro'.
Roger, B. of London.
Hugh, M. of Lincoln.
Thomas, Mo., M. of Dover.
Robert Grossteste, B. of Lincoln.
Boniface, Archb. of Canterbury.
Walter de Merkm, B. of Rochester.
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Stapleton, B. of Exeter.
Edward K.
B. Richard, H. of Hampole.
Richard of Bury, B. of Lincoln.
Bradwardine, Archb. of Canterbury, tlie Doctor Pro
fundus.
William, Fr., Servite.
John, C. of Bridlington.
William of Wykeham, B. of Winton.
William, Fr. Austin.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Henry, K. of England.
William of Wanefieet, B. of Winton .
Margaret, Countess of Richmond.
Richard Fox, B. of Winton.
(Notes E, F and G (1865) will be found in this book on pp. 393, 430,
and 438 respectively, in their places as part of the 1S64 volume.)

1239

Mar. 14.

1241

Oct. 1.

1255
1295

July 27.
Aug. 5.

1254

Oct. 9.

12701278

July 14.
Oct. 18.

1326

Oct. 5.

1327134913451349

Sept. 21.
Sept. 29.
Apr. 14.
Aug. 26.

13581379

Sept. 2.
Oct. 10.

1324-1404 Sept, 27
1400

14711486

May 22.
Aug. 11.

1509

June 29.

1528

Sept. 14.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.
I.
LETTERS AND PAPERS OF THE AUTHOR USED IN THE COURSE
OF THIS WORK.

PAGE

PAGE

February 11, 1811

. . 107

December 13, 1841 .

. 253

October 26, 1823

105

24, „ .

. 254

September 7, 1829 .

. . 214

25, „ .

. 256

July 20, 1834

144

26, „ .

. 258

November 28, „

. 158

March 6, 1842 . .

. 272

August 18, 1837

. . 130

April 14, „ .

. 268

February 11, 1840 .

. . 221

October 16, „ .

. 266

a "*-r )3

. . 226

November 22, „

. 285

October 29 (?)„

228

Feb. 25, & 28, 1843 .

. 275

November „

. . 231

March 3, „ .

. 276

March 15, 1841

. . 233

J, O, J3

. 278

20, „

. . 265

May 4, „ .

. 300

24, „

. 300

18, „ .

. 301

,, ^o, ,,

. . 233

June 20, „ .

. 273

April 1, ,,

. . 233

July 16, ,, .

. 273

4, „

. . 233

August 29, „ .

. 304

,j o, ,,

. 234

30, „ .

. 275

JS ®J ?J

. . 280

September 7, „ .

. 305

26, „

. 281

29, „ .

. 316

May 5, ,,
9

. 281
. 234

October 14, „ .
25, „ .

. 311
. . 312

June 18, ,,

. 282

31, „ .

314

September 12, „

. . 283

November 13, ,, .

. . 236

October 12, „

. 238

1843 or 1844

. 272

. 236

January 22, 1844 .

. 316

,, — ^? >>

. . 236

February 21, „ .

. . 316

November 11, „

. . .240

April 3, „ .

. 297

14, „

. . .239

„ 8, „ .

. 317

520 LETTERS AND PAPERS OF THE AUTHOR, &o.

PAGE

PAGE

July 14,1844.

290

April

3, 1845 .

. 323

September 16, „

318

,»

16, „ .

. . 274

November 7, „

. 321

June

1, „

. . 323

. 303
„
17, „ .
. 274
16, ',", '.
319
October
8, „ •
. . 325
24, „ .
320
November
8, „ •
. . 252
1844 (?)
316
,>
25, „
. . 326
1844 or 1845
. . 263
January
20, 1846 .
. 327
January 8, 1845 .
321
December
6, 1849 .
. 279
March 30, „ .
. 322
(Sections II and III of the Supplemental Matter (1865) appear in this
book as pp. 471-7, in their place as part of the 1864 volume.)
SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER. 521

IV.

LETTERS OF APPROBATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT FROM
CLERGY AND LAITY.
It requires some words of explanation why I allow myself
to sound my own praises so loudly, as I am doing by
adding to my Volume the following Letters, written to me
last year by large bodies of my Cathohc brethren, Priests,
and Laymen, in the course or on the conclusion of the
publication of my Apologia. I have two reasons for
doing so.
1. It seems hardly respectful to them, and hardly fair
to myself, to practise self-denial in a matter, which after
all belongs to others as well as to me. Bodies of men
become authorities by the fact of being bodies, over and
above the personal claims of the individuals who constitute
them. To have received such unusual Testimonials in my
favour, as I have to produce, and then to have suffered the
honours conferred on me, and the generous feelings which
dictated them, to be wasted, and to come to nought, would
have been a rudeness of which I could not bear to be
guilty. Far be it from me to show such ingratitude to
those who were especially " friends in need." I am too
proud of their approbation not to publish it to the world.
2. But I have a further reason. The behef obtains
extensively in the country at large, that Cathohcs, and
especially the Priesthood, disavow the mode and form, in
which I am accustomed to teach the Cathohc faith, as if
they were not generally recognized, but something special
and peculiar to myself ; as if, whether for the purposes
of controversy, or from the traditions of an earlier period
of my Ufe, I did not exhibit CathoUcism pure and simple,

522 SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.
as the bulk of its professors manifest it. Such testimonials,
then, as now follow, from as many as 558 priests, that is,
not far from half of the clergy of England, secular and
reUgious, from the Bishop and clergy of a diocese at the
Antipodes, and from so great and authoritative a body as
the German Congress assembled last year at Wurzburg,
scatters to the winds a suspicion, which is not less painful,
I am persuaded, to numbers of those Protestants who
entertain it, than it is injurious to me who have to bear it.

I. THE DIOCESE OF WESTMINSTER.
The following Address was signed by 110 of the West
minster clergy, including aU the Canons, the Vicars-General,
a great number of secular priests, and five Doctors in
theology ; Fathers of the Society of Jesus, Fathers of the
Order of St. Dominic, of St. Francis, of the Oratory, of the
Passion, of Charity, Oblates of St. Charles, and Marists.
" London, March 15, 1864.
" Very Reverend and Dear Sir,
" We, the undersigned Priests of the Diocese of
Westminster^tender to you our respectful thanks for the service
you have done to religion, as well as to the interests of literary
morality, by your Reply to the calumnies of [a popular writer of
the day.]
" We cannot but regard it as a matter of congratulation that your
assailant should have associated the cause of the Cathohc Priesthood
with the name of one so well fitted to represent its dignity, and to
defend its honour, as yourself.'
" We recognize in this latest effort of your literary power one
further claim, besides the many you have already established, to
the gratitude and veneration of Catholics, and trust that the
reception which it has met with on all sides may be the omen of
new successes which you are destined to achieve in the vindication
of the teaching and principles of the Church.
" We are,
" Very Reverend and Dear Sir,
" Your faithful and affectionate Servants in Christ.'
(The Subscriptions follow.)
" To the Very Rev.
" John Henry Newman, D.D."

LETTERS OF APPROBATION, &c. 523
II. — THE ACADEMIA OF CATHOLIC RELIGION.
" London, April 19, 1864.
" Very Rev. and Dear Sir,
" The Academia of Catholic Religion, at their
meeting held to-day, under the Presidency of the Cardinal Arch
bishop, have instructed us to write to you in their behalf.
" As they have learned, with great satisfaction, that it is your
intention to publish a defence of Cathohc Veracity, which has been
assailed in your person, they are precluded from asking you that
that defence might be made by word of mouth, and in London, as
they would otherwise have done.
" Composed, as the Academia is, mainly of Laymen, they feel
that it is not out of their province to express their indignation that
your opponent should have chosen, while praising the Cathohc
Laity, to do so at the expense of the Clergy, between whom and
themselves, in this as in all other matters, there exists a perfect
identity of principle and practice.
"It is because, in such a matter, your cause is the cause of all
Cathohcs, that we congratulate ourselves on the rashness of the
opponent that has thrown the defence of that cause into your hands.
" We remain,
" Very Reverend and Dear Sir,
" Your very faithful Servants,
" JAMES LAIRD PATTERSON, ) Secretaries
" EDW. LUCAS, 1 »ecretanes-
" To the Very Rev. John Henry Newman, D.D.,
" Provost of the Birmingham Oratory."
The above was moved at the meeting by Lord Petre,
and seconded by the Hon. Charles Langdale.

HI. — THE DIOCESE OF BIRMINGHAM.
In this Diocese there were in 1864, according to the
Directory of the year, 136 Priests. " June 1, 1864.
" Very Reverend and Dear Sir,
"In availing ourselves of your presence at the

Diocesan Synod to offer you our hearty thanks for your recent
vindication of the honour of the Cathohc Priesthood, We, the Provost
and Chapter of the Cathedral, and the Clergy, Secular and Regular,
of the Diocese of Birmingham, cannot forego the assertion of a
special right, as your neighbours and colleagues, to express our
veneration and affection for one whose fidelity to the dictates of

524 SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.
conscience, in the use of the highest intellectual gifts, has won even
from opponents unbounded admiration and respect.
" To most of us you are personally known. Of some, indeed, you
were, in years long past, the trusted guide, to whom they owe more
than can be expressed in words ; and all are conscious that the
ingenuous fulness of your answer to a false and unprovoked accusa
tion, has intensified their interest in the labours and trials of your
hfe. While, then, we resent the indignity to which you have been
exposed, and lament the pain and annoyance which the manifestation
of yourself must have cost you, we cannot but rejoice that, in the
fulfilment of a duty, you have allowed neither the unworthiness of
your assailant to shield him from rebuke, nor the sacredness of your
inmost motives to deprive that rebuke of the only form which could
at once complete his discomfiture, free your own name from the
obloquy which prejudice had cast upon it, and afford invaluable aid
to honest seekers after Truth.
' ' Great as is the work which you have already done, Very Reverend
Sir, per.nit us to express a hope that a greater yet remains for you
to accomplish. In an age and in a country in which the very
foundations of rehgious faith are exposed to assault, we rejoice in
numbering among our brethren one so well qualified by learning and
experience to defend that priceless deposit of Truth, in obtaining
which you have counted as gain the loss of all things most dear
and precious. And we esteem ourselves happy in being able to
offer you that support and encouragement which the assurance of
our unfeigned admiration and regard may be able to give you under
your present trials and future labours.
" That you may long have strength to labour for the Church of
God and the glory of His Holy Name is, Very Reverend and Dear
Sir, our heartfelt and united prayer.' (The Subscriptions follow.)
" To the Very Rev. John Henry Newman, D.D."

IV. — THE DIOCESE OF BEVERLEY.
The foUowing Address, as is stated in the first paragraph,
comes from more than 70 Priests : — "Hull, May 9, 1864.
" Very Rev. and Dear Dr. Newman,
"At a recent meeting of the clergy of the
Diocese of Beverley, held in York, at which upwards of seventy
priests were present, special attention was called to your corre
spondence with [a popular writer] ; and such was the enthusiasm
with which your name was received — such was the admiration
expressed of the dignity with which you had asserted the claims
of the Catholic Priesthood in England to be treated with becoming

LETTERS OF APPROBATION, &c. 525
courtesy and respect — and such was the strong and all-pervading
sense of the invaluable service which you had thus rendered, not
only to faith and morals, but to good manners so far as regarded
rehgious controversy in this country, that I was requested, as Chair
man, to become the voice of the meeting, and to express to you as
strongly and as earnestly as I could, how heartily the whole of the
clergy of this diocese desire to thank you for services to rehgion
as well-timed as they are in themselves above and beyond all
commendation, services which the Cathohcs of England wall never
cease to hold in most grateful remembrance. God, in His infinite
wisdom and great mercy, has raised you up to stand prominently
forth in the glorious work of re-establishing in this country the holy
faith which in good old times shed such lustre upon it. We all
lament that, in the order of nature, you have so few years before you
in which to fight against false teaching that good fight in which
you have been so victoriously engaged of late. But our prayers are
that you may long be spared, and may possess to the last all your
vigour, and all that zeal for the advancement of our holy faith,
which imparts such a charm to the productions of your pen.
I esteem it a great honour and a great privilege to have been
deputed, as the representative of the clergy of the Diocese of
Beverley, to tender you the fullest expression of our most grateful
thanks, and the assurance of our prayers for your health and eternal
happiness. " I am,
" Very Rev. and Dear Sir,
" With sentiments of profound respect,
" Yours most faithfully in Christ,
" M. TRAPPES.
" The Very Rev. Dr. Newman."

V. AND VI.  THE DIOCESES OF LIVERPOOL AND SALFORD.
The Secular Clergy of Liverpool amounted in 1864 to
103, and of Salford to 76. " Preston, July 27, 1864.
" Very Rev. and Dear Sir,
"It may seem, perhaps, that the Clergy of Lancashire
have been slow to address you ; but it would be incorrect to suppose
that they have been indifferent spectators of the conflict in which
you have been recently engaged. This is the first opportunity that
has presented itself, and they gladly avail themselves of their annual
meeting in Preston to tender to you the united expression of their
heartfelt sympathy and gratitude.
"The atrocious imputation, out of which the late controversy
arose, was felt as a personal affront by them, one and all, conscious

526 SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.
as they were, that it was mainly owing to your position as a dis
tinguished Cathohc ecclesiastic, that the charge was connected with
your name.
" While they regret the pain you must needs have suffered, they
cannot help rejoicing that it has afforded you an opportunity of
rendering a new and most important service to their holy rehgion.
Writers, who are not overscrupulous about the truth themselves,
have long used the charge of untruthfulness as an ever ready
weapon against the Cathohc Clergy. Partly from the frequent
repetition of this charge, partly from a consciousness that, instead
of undervaluing the truth, they have ever prized it above every
earthly treasure, partly, too, from the difficulty of obtaining a hearing
in their own defence, they have generally passed it by in silence.
They thank you for coming forward as their champion : your own
character required no vindication. It was their battle more than
your own that you fought. They know and feel how much pain
it has caused you to bring so prominently forward your own hfe
and motives, but they now congratulate you on the completeness
of your triumph, as admitted alike by friend and enemy.
" In addition to answering the original accusation, you have
placed them under a new obligation, by giving to all, who read the
Enghsh language, a work which, for hterary abihty and the lucid
exposition of many difficult and abstruse points, forms an invaluable
contribution to our hterature.
" They fervently pray that God may give you health and length
of days, and, if it please Him, some other cause in which to use for
His glory the great powers bestowed upon you.
" Signed on behalf of the Meeting,
" THOS. PROVOST COOKSON.
" The Very Rev. J. H. Newman."

VII. — THE DIOCESE OF HEXHAM.
The Secular Priests on Mission in 1864 in this Diocese
were 64. " Durham, Sept. 22, 1864.
" My Dear Dr. Newman,
" At the annual meeting of the Clergy of the Diocese of
Hexham and Newcastle, held a few days ago at Newcastle-upon-
Tyne, I was commissioned by them to express to you their sincere
sympathy, on account of the slanderous accusations, to which you
have been so unjustly exposed. We are fully aware that these foul
calumnies were intended to injure the character of the whole body
of the Cathohc Clergy, and that your distinguished name was
singled out, in order that they might be more effectually propagated.
It is well that these poisonous shafts were thus aimed, as no one

LETTERS OF APPROBATION, &c. 527
could more triumphantly repel them. The ' Apologia pro Vita sua '
will, if possible, render still more illustrious the name of its gifted
author, and be a lasting monument of the victory of truth, and the
signal overthrow of an arrogant and reckless assailant.
" It may appear late for us now to ask to join in your triumph,
but as the Annual Meeting of the Northern Clergy does not take place
till this time, it is the first occasion offered us to present our united
congratulations, and to declare to you, that by none of your brethren
are you more esteemed and venerated, than by the Clergy of the
Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.
" Wishing that Almighty God may prolong your life many more
years for the defence of our holy rehgion and the honour of your
brethren, " I am, dear Dr. Newman,
" Yours sincerely in Jesus Christ,
" RALPH PROVOST PLATT, V. G.
" The Very Rev. J. H. Newman."

VIII. — THE CONGRESS OF WURZBURG. " September 15, 1864.
" Sir, " The undersigned, President of the Catholic Congress of
Germany assembled in Wiirzburg, has been commissioned to express
to you, Very Rev. and Dear Sir, its deep-felt gratitude for your late
able defence of the Cathohc Clergy, not only of England, but of
the whole world, against the attacks of its enemies.
" The Catholics of Germany unite with the Cathohcs of England
in testifying to you their profound admiration and sympathy, and
pray that the Almighty may long preserve your valuable hfe.
" The above Resolution was voted by the Congress with acclama
tion. .
" Accept, very Rev. and Dear Sir, the expression ot the high
consideration with which I am
" Your most obedient servant,
"(Signed) ERNEST BARON MOIJ DE SONS.
" The Very Rev. J. H. Newman."
IX. — THE DIOCESE OF HOBART TOWN.
" Hobart Town, Tasmania, November 22, 1864.
" Very Rev. and Dear Sir,
" By the last month's post we at length received
your admirable book, entitled, ' Apologia pro Vita sua,' and the
pamphlet, ' What then does Dr. Newman mean 1

528 SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.
" By this month's mail, we wish to express our heartfelt gratifica
tion and delight for being possessed of a work so triumphant in
maintaining truth, and so overwhelming in confounding arrogance
and error, as the ' Apologia.'
" No doubt, your adversary, resting on the deep-seated prejudice
of our fellow-countrymen in the United Kingdom, calculated upon
establishing his own fame as a keen-sighted polemic, as a shrewd
and truth-loving man, upon the fallen reputation of one, who, as he
would demonstrate, — yes, that he would, — set httle or no value
on truth, and who, therefore, would deservedly sink into obscurity,
henceforward rejected and despised !
" Aman of old erected a gibbet at the gate of the city, on which
an unsuspecting and an unoffending man, one marked as a victim,
was to be exposed to the gaze and derision of the people, in order
that his own dignity and fame might be exalted ; but a divine
Providenco ordained otherwise. The history of the judgment that
fell upon Aman, has been recorded in Holy Writ, it is to be presumed,
as a warning to vain and unscrupulous men, even in our days.
There can be no doubt, a moral gibbet, full ' fifty cubits high,' had
been prepared some time, on which you were to be exposed, for
the pity at least, if not for the scorn and derision of so many, who
had loved and venerated you through life !
" But the effort made in the forty-eight pages of the redoubtable
pamphlet, ' What then does Dr. Newman Mean ? ' — the production
of a bold, unscrupulous man, with a coarse mind, and regardless
of inflicting pain on the feelings of another, has failed, — marvellously
failed, — and he himself is now exhibited not only in our fatherland,
but even at the Antipodes, in fact wherever the English language
is spoken or read, as a shallow pretender, one quite incompetent
to treat of matters of such undying interest as those he presumed
to interfere with.
" We fervently pray the Almighty, that you may be spared to His
Church for many years to come, — that to Him alone the glory of
this noble work may be given, — and to you the reward in eternal
bhss !
" And from this distant land we beg to convey to you, Very Rev.
and Dear Sir, the sentiments of our affectionate respect, and deep
veneration." (The Subscriptions follow, of the Bishop, Vicar -
General and eighteen Clergy.)
" The Very Rev. Dr. Newman,
&c. &c. &c." THE END.