The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029434960 Cornell University Library BX4705.N55 A3 1865a 3 1924 029 434 960 olin APOLOGIA PRO YITA SUA: % $eplg ta » f amp^W "WHAT, THEN, DOES DE. 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 judgment as the noon-day." BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 1865. <5 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN: CORRESPONDENCE ' ON THE QUESTION WHETHER DR. NEWMAN TEACHES THAT TRUTH IS NO VIRTUE? ADVERTISEMENT. To prevent misconception, I think it necessary to observe, that, in my Letters here published, I am far indeed from implying any ad- mission of the truth of Mr. Kingsley's accusations against the Catho- lic 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 81, 1864* L Extract from a Beview of Fronde's History of England, vols. vii. and viii., in Macmillan's Magazine for January, 1864, signed " C. K." vPa&es 216, 21T. " The Eoman 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 4 C0EEE8P0NDENCE. falsehood, but morality and immorality, depended on his setting his seal to a bit of parchment. From the time that indulgences were hawked about in his name, which would insure pardon for any man, ' estimatrem 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 Eome not to say the word, the doer of a certain deed would be burned alive in hell for ever. If it suited him, on the other hand, to say it, the doer of the same deed would go, sacramentis munitus, to endless bliss. What rule of morality, what eternal law of right and wrong, could remain in the 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 au- thority was thrown off. Henry Vni. 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 morality 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 understand) 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 where- with to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrin- ally 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 CORRESPONDENCE. 5 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 mirfister did not ' draw ' as well as the rival minister ten miles off; — ever since this had the heap of lies been accumulating, spawning, breed- ing fresh lies, till men began to ask themselves whether truth was a thing worth troubling a practical man's head about, and to sus- pect that tongues were given to men, as claws to cats and horns to bulls, simply for purposes of offence and defence." II. Dk. Newman to Messes. Macmiixan and Co, The Oratory, December 80, 1868. 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 Maga- zine, 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 n_ot 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 mar- riage. 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 6 CORBESPONDENCE. 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. III. The Ebv. Charles Ktngslet to Dr. Newman. Eversley Eeetoiy, January 6, 1S64. Reverend Sib : I have seen a letter of yours to Mr. Macmillan, in which you complain of some expressions of mine in an article in the Jan- uary 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 under- stand from your letter) your meaning ; and I shall be most happy, on your showing me that I have wronged you, to retract my accu- sation as publicly as I have made it. I am, Eeverend Sir, Tour faithful servant, (Signed) Chaelbb Kekgslet. IV. De. Newman to the Rev. Charles Ejngsley. The Oratory, Birmingham, January T, 1864. Reveeend Sik: I have to acknowledge your letter of the 6th, informing me that you are the writer of an article in Macmillan's Magazine, CORRESPONDENCE. « 7 in whioh 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 bearing npon 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 & 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, Tour obedient servant, (Signed) Johk H. Newman. v.. Dr. Newman to X. Y., Esq.* The Oratory; January 8, 1864. Dbab Sie : 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 recol- lect, I live 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 outside of their Magazine. And so of the editor : when I saw his name on the cover, it conveyed to me * A gentleman who interposed between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman. 8 « COBBESPONDENCE. absolutely no idea whatever: I am not defending myself, but merely stating what was the fact ; and as to the article, I said to 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 An- glican body, or any portion of it, as I have been before now, I should consider untrue assertions 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. Sometimes 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 animad- verted, 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) " confess 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 English 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 Eoman 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 Catholic may not expect to be believed of him by Protestants, however honourable and hard- headed. However, dismissing this natural train of thought, I ob- serve on your avowal as follows ; and I think what I shall say will commend itself to your judgment as soon as I say it. CORRESPONDENCE. y I think you will allow, then, that there is a broad difference be- tween a virtue, considered in itself as a principle or rule, and the application or limits of it in human conduct. Catholics and Prot- estants, in their view of the substance of the moral virtues, agree, but they carry them out variously in detail ; and in particular in- stances, and in the case of particular actors or writers, with but in- different success. 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 be- tween individuals, sometimes between schools, and sometimes be- tween religious communions. I, on my side, have long thought! even before I was a Catholic, that the Protestant system, as suchl leads to a lax observance of the rule of purity ; Protestants think} that the Catholic 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. KingBley 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 ap- plied my abstract belief of the latent sensuality of Protestantism, on d 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 Bev. Dr. Spry, or Dean Milner, or the Bev. Charles Simeon " informs us that chastity for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be a vir- tue 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 mat- ter still worse, if I pointed to flagrant instances of paradoxical di- vines or of bad clergymen among Protestants, as, for instance, to that popular London preacher at the end of last century who advo- cated 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 1* 10 COBBESfONDElTOE. 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 he thus hrilliant and antithetical (save the mark ! ) in the very cause of Truth, is a pro- ceeding of so special a character as to lead me to exclaim, after the pattern of the celehrated saying, " Truth, how many lies are told in thy name ! " Such heing 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 gentle- men who are responsible for it, of what complexion that explana- tion shall 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 im- plying 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 suspi- cion which Mr. Kingsley's letter to me has inspired, — if they pro- pose merely to smooth the matter over by publishing to the world that I have "complained," or that "they yield to my letters, ex- postulations, 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 the fact that the onusprobandi of a very definite accusation lies 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. CORRESPONDENCE. 11 VI. TJie Ret. Charles Kingslet to Dr. Newman. Eversley Rectory, January 14, 1864. Revekend Sie : 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. T., 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) makes me feel, to my very deep pleasure, that my opin- ion 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. Tou say that you will consider my letters as public. You have every right to do so. I remain, Reverend Sir, Yours faithfully, (Signed) 0. Kingslet. VII. [This will appear m the next number.'] " To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine. "Sib: "In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of the Rev. Dr. Newman, which were founded on a ser- mon of his, entitled 'Wisdom and Innocence,' (the sermon will be fully described, as to* . . .) " 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. Newman ; no * Here follows a word or half-word, which neither I nor any one else to whom I have shown the MS. can decipher. I have at p. 13 filled in for Mr. Bftngsley what I understood him to mean by "fully."— J. H. N. 12 COBBESPONDENCE. 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) Chables Ejngslet. vm. Db. Newman to the Rev. Chables Kingslet. The Oratory, Jannary 17, 1864. Eeveebnd Sib : 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. I believe it to be your wish to do me such justice as is compati- ble with your duty of upholding the consistency and quasi-infalli- bility 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 Go. 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 readers to intimate, that I have been confronted with definite extracts from my works, and have laid be- fore 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 COKKESFONDENCE. 13 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, Tour obedient Servant, (Signed) John H. Newman. Mr. Kingdajs Letter. 1. Sir: — In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of the Eev. Dr. Newman, which were founded on a Sermon of his, entitled "Wisdom and Inno- cence," preached by him as Vicar of St. Mary, and published in 1844. !, but too probable popular ren- dering of it. 2. Dr. Newman has, by letter, ex- pressed in the strongest terms his de- nial of the meaning which I have put upon his words. 2. I have set before Dr. Newman, 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. 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. 3. He has done this with the skill of a great master of verbal fence, who knows, as well as any man liv- ing, how to insinuate a doctrine with- out committing himself to it. 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, ic this or any other matter. 4. However, while I heartily re- gret that I have so seriously mista- ken the sense which he assures me his words were meant to bear, I can- not 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. 14 CORRESPONDENCE. IX. Eev. Charles Kingslet to Db. Newman. Eversley Rectory, January 18, 1864. Bevekend 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 yon expect. Two passages in it, which I put in in good faith and good feel- ing, 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 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 hare the honour to be, Eeverend Sir, Your obedient Servant, (Signed) Charles Rlngsley. 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 80th of last month, has shown his wish to recall words, which I considered a great affront to myself, and a worse insult to the Catholic 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 : — CORRESPONDENCE. 15 " 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 hav- ing 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 inti- mate, that I have been confronted with definite extracts from my works, and have laid before you my own interpretation of them. Such a proceeding 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 allegations are founded, I have given, not only you, but every one, an opportunity 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 ex- pect from another." I received this reply the day before yesterday. It disappointed 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 explanation 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 lives out of the world of theological controversy and contemporary literature, 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 Janu- ary number, and the writer's proposed letter in February ; * and I asked him whether I might consider the letter sufficient for its pur- pose, without saying a word to show him the leaning of my own mind. He answers : — * Viz. as it is given above, p. 11. — J. H. N. 16 CORRESPONDENCE. " In answer to your question, whether Mr. Kingsley's proposed reparation is sufficient, I have no hesitation in saying, Most de- cidedly 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 representa- tion 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 erfect said, that he finds that he had made a false charge." 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. Ton 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, I do no more than I did on the 30th of -Decem- ber. I bring the matter before you, without requiring from you any reply. I am, Gentlemen, Tour obedient Servant, (Signed) John H. Newman. XI. Letter of Explanation from Mk. Kjngslet, as it stands in Macmillan's Magazine for February, 1864, p. 368. TO THE EDITOR OP MACMILLAN'S MAGAZIKE. Sie : In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which I thought were justi- fied by a sermon of his, entitled "Wisdom and Innocence," (Ser- mon 20 of " Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day.") Dr. New- man 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) Ohables Kingsley. Eycrsley, January 14, 1864. CORRESPONDENCE. 17 XII. Beflections on the above. I shall attempt a brief analysis of the foregoing correspondence ; and I trust that the wording which I shall adopt will not offend against the gravity due both to myself and 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, — " O the chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the conscience-killing tyranny of Eome ! 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, tell us that lying is never any harm." I interpose : " You are taking a most extraordinary liberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me when and where." Mr. Kingsley replies : " Ton said it, Reverend Sir, in a Sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844 ; and I could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that Sermon had at the time on my 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 like your tone. Prom your tone I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe that you did not mean what you said." I rejoin : " Mean it I I maintain I never said it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic." Mr. Kingsley replies : " I waive that point." I object : " Is it possible ! What ? waive the main question I 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 publicly ; — 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 word of a Professor of lying, that he does not lie ! 18 OOEBESPONDENCE. But Mr. Kingsley reassures me : " "We are both gentlemen," 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 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 con- fitentem 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 Sing James of the reprobate Dalgarno : " 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 explanation is miserably insufficient in itself for his January enormity, still I feel also that the correspondence, which lies between these two acts of his, constitutes a real satisfaction to those principles of historical and literary justice to which he has given so rude a shock. Accordingly, I have put it into print, and make no further crit- icism on Mr. Kingsley. J. H. K CONTENTS / VAQB PAET^l.— tMb. Kingsley Method of Disputation, . . 21 \3^— Tbue Mode of meeting Me. Kingsley, ' . . 37 _III. — Histoey of my Eeligious Opinions up to 1833, . 63 TV". — Histoby of my Eeligious Opinions feom 1833 to 1839, / 84-- V. — Histoey of my Eeligious Opinions feom 1839 to 1841, 135; VI. — Histoey of my Eeligious Opinions feom 1841 to 1845, . 187' VII. — GrENEEAL AnSWEB TO Me. KlNGSLEY, . . .264 APPENDIX. — Answee in Detail to Me. Kingsley's Accu- sations, 305 NOTES, . 385' PART I. MR. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. I cannot be sorry to have forced Mr. Kingsley to bring out in fulness Tiis charges againsj; me. It is far better that he | ~ sBbuHTSscharge _hj§„ thoughts upon me in my lifetime, than after I_ am _dead. Under the circumstances I am happy in having.the opportunity of reading t he worst t hat can bejsaicL Qf me by a writer who has taken pains jrith.Ms.'Brork and is well flatisfigd 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 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 them to con- vey. I said that it is not more than an hyperbolical expres- sion 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 believe, that his view of me is about as near an approach to 22 me. kingslet's method of disputation. the truth about my writtings 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 in- vective against me, he as faithfully fulfils the other half of the proposition also. This is not a mere sharp retort upon Mr. Kingsley, as 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 under- stand 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 appre- hend the thoughts of grown people, nor savages the instincts of civilization, nor blind men the perceptions of sight, nor pa- gans the doctrines of 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 for- eigner, 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, and that the Parlia- ment is omnipotent. Mr. Kingsley has read me from begin- ning to end in the fashion in which the hypothetical Russian read Blackstone ; not, I repeat, from malice, but because of his intellectual build. T Ta appears to be so constituted as to have no notion of what goes on in minds very different fro m - hia own, and moreov er to be stone -blind to his ignoranc e. A modest man or a philosopher would have scrupled to treat with scorn and scoffing, as Mr. Kingsley does in my own in- stance, principles and convictions, even if he did not acquiesce in them himself, which had been held so widely and for so ME. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPtJTATION. 23 long, — the beliefs and devotions and customs which have been the religious 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 jj. man_of_large or cau tious mind, he would, .not, hflYe. taken it forj*ranted that cultivation must lead every one to see things precisely as he sees .them iimsfilL But the narrow-minded are the more~ prejudiced by very reason of their narrowness. The Apostle bids us " in malice be children, but in understanding be men." I am glad to recognize in Mr. Kingsley 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 ReUgjog, It is I indeed, whom he is immediately insulting, — still, he views me only as a representative, and on the whole a fair one, of a class or caste of men, to whom, con- scious 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 English notion of Eoman 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 conver- sion, when at length it openly took 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, germane, genuine Catho- lic, 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 24 me. kingslet's method of disputation. _hja_drifL_he does Jbut follow the ordinary beat of co ntrovers y, butjnjbig.jnfidfi^of aj'gaing heliTactu ally dislKmesl. \$r He says that I am either a knave~br a ~£ooZr«a& (as we shall see by and by) he is not quite sure which, probably both. 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 dishonest person ; or he would destroy his common sense, i. e., uncon- scious 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. 20. Again, " When I read these outrages upon common sense, what wonder if I said to myself, ' This man cannot believe what he is saying ?'" p. 26. 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 scepti- cism," of " absurdity " (p. 41) , of a " self-deception which has become a sort of frantic honesty" (p. 26). And as to his fundamental reason for this change, he tells us, he really does not know what it is (p. 44). 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 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 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. ME. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 25 But I have not yet done full justice to the method of dis- putation which Mr. Kihgsley thinks it right to adopt. Ob- serve- this first : — He me ans by a _manjghp_ia " "illy " ""* a concession which once has been made ; though (wonderful I to say ! ) at the very time that he is recording this magnani- I mous resolution, he lets it out of the bag that his relinquish- J ment of it is only a profession and a pretence ; for he says, p./ 8 : " 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 disadvan- tage to myself." Disadvantage ! but nothing can be advan- tageous 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 30 ME. EH5TGSLEY S METHOD OF DISPUTATION'. 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 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 diplo- ma of course from Mr. Kingsley). " 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 mincM, How loyal to his rash promise, how delicate towards the subject of it, how conscientious in his interpretation of it ! I hare no thought of irreverence towards a Scripture Saint, who was actuated by a very differ- ent 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 Sursed 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 do with him, and thou shalt bring down his gray 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 for- bidden 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 sa)d he considered me a patron of lying ; well, he changed his opinion ; and as to the logical ground of this change, he said that, if any one asked him what it was, he could only answer that he really did not know. Why could not he change back again, and say he did ME. KOTGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 31 not know why ? He had quite a right to do so ; and then his conduct would have been so far straightforward and unexcep tionable. But no ; — in the very act of professing to believe in my sincerity, he takes care to show the world that it is a pro- fession and nothing more. That very proceeding which at p>y 15 he lays to my charge (whereas I detest it), of avowing one I thing and thinking another, that proceeding he here exemplifies himself; and yet, while indulging in practices as offensive as J 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 Chris- tian." " That means," said Wamba, " that she does not for- give him at all." Mr. Kingsley's word of honour is about as I valuable as in the jester's opinion was the Christian charity of Eowena. But here we are brought to a further specimen pf Mr. Kingsley's method of disputation, and having duly exhibit- ed it, I shall have done with him. 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 convic- tion, that he hopes I shall take warning, and act more cau- tiously. " It depends entirely," he says, " on Dr. Newman, whether he shall sustain the reputation which he has so re- cently acquired" (p. 8). Thus, in Mr. Kingsleyjjjndgment., I was then, when he wrote these words, still innocent of dishon- esty, for a man cannot sustain what he actually has not got ; only he could not he 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 February 1st," in order to reserve the Title-page and last three pages of my Pamphlet, which were not published till February 12th, and out of these four pages, 32 me. kestgsley's method of disputation. which he had not whitewashed, he had already forged charges against me 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. 8, what he meant to say at pp. 44 and 45. 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. 8 and p. 44 he meant to talk a great deal about my 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 commit- ted the " enormity " of an " economy," which in matter of fact he had got by heart before he began the play. Nay, he sud- denly found two, three, and (for what he knew) as many as four profligate economies in that Title-page and those Reflec- tions, and he uses the language of distress and perplexity at this appalling discovery. Now why this cowp 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 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 econo- mies, 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 con- doned the knavery of my antecedents, I am guilty of the knav- ery of a whole priesthood instead. So the hour of doom for Semei is come, and the wise man knows what to do with him ; — ME. KINGSLEt's METHOD OE DISPUTATKMST. 33 he is down upon me with the odious names of " St. Alfonso da Liguori," and "Scavini" and " Neyraguet," and "the Romish moralists,'' and their " compeers and pupils," and I am at once merged and whirled away in the gulph of notorious quihblers, 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 foi what I am obliged now to say. I am in warfare with ; him, but I wish him no ill ; — it is very difficult to get up resentment 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 w iflbu all my heart ^igainst,jfhak he has said of me J j^amj3jyyy> Tlsc io i ]s o£perso nal un kindnessjowards himself. T, .think, it neceHsary^to write as I am writing, for my own sake, and for the sake of the Catholic Priesthood ; * but I wish_tojnipjita_EQthing w_or.ge taJJlE* Kingsley than that lie has been furiously carried away byJua. Jeelings. 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 legitimate warfare : war has its laws ; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done. I say it with shame and with stern sorrow ; — he has attempted a great transgression yhe has attempted (as I may call 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 believe it, and I believed also his indignant denial. But when he goes on to ask with sneers, why I should believe 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. 2* 34 I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. Sou can I tell that I shall not he the dupe pf some cunning equivoca- tion, of one of the three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed Alfonso da Liguorj and his pupils, even when con- firmed by an oath, because ' then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself ? ' It is admissible, therefore, to use words and sentences which have a double signification, and leave the hapless hearer to take which of them he may choose. Wliat proof have I, then, that by ' mean iif I never said it I ' Dr. Newman does not signify, ' I did not say it, but I did mean it? ' " — Pp. 44, 45. Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper places ; here I will but say that I scorn and de- test lying, and, quibbling, and double-tongued 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 New- man, and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers, suspi- cion and mistrust of every thing that I may say in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells, y " I am henceforth in doubt and fear," he says " as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. Sow can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation f . . . "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 to his foul calumnies ; and this is precisely what he knows and in- tends to be its fruit. I can hardly get myself to protest against ME. KINGSLEY'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. 35 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 imag ination runs away with us, how suddenly and it what a pace : the saying, " Caesar's wife should not be suspected," is an in- stance 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 sense or a bad. "We interpret it by our an- tecedent impressions. The very same sentiments, according as our 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-JDy-tLe^reason ; is it legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to its dislikings ? Any how, if Mr. Kingsley is able thus to practice upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my success. If I am nat- ural, he will tell them, " Ars est celare artem ; " if I am con- vincing, 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 dif- ficulties, 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 ; 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 believe 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 36, ME. KINGSLEX'S METHOD OF DISPUTATION. rather than too little ; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise enough to hold his tongue ; who has ever been fair to the doctrines and arguments of his oppo- nents ; who has never slurred over facts and reasoningswhich told against himself; who has never given his name or author- ity 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 I retained, but that he loved honesty better than name, and Truth better than dear friends. 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. Tour 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 charges. PAKT II. TRUE MODE OF MEETING MR. KINGSLEY. What shall be the s pecial imputatio n, against which I shall throw myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one which myjaccuser ^directsjupon me? I mean to confine > mjs^fJBJine r £ic.thereJs.Qnly_one_ about which I mu ch e are — the charge of Untruthfulness. H e 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 Untruthful- ness, and I select it from the rest, n ot be cause it is more for- midable, but, because it is more serio us. 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 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. Ac- cording to the old saying, Eraevalebit Veritas. There are vir- tues indeed which the world is not fitted to judge about or 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 38 TETJE MODE OF MEETING ME. KTNGSLEY. may be more difficult in this or that particular case for men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult 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 Catholic, 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 live. Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my judges are my own countrymen. I think, indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and touchy of mankind ; I think them unreasonable and unjust in their seasons of excite- ment ; but I had rather be an Englishman (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 my- self to remove it, first, because I never have had an opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them the dispo- sition 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 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 Catholic Priesthood, to give account of myself without any delay, when I am so rudely and circumstantially charged with Untruthful- ness. I accept the challenge ; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall be content when I have done so. TRUE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLEY. 39 I confine myself then, in these pages, to the charge of Un truthfulness ; and I hereby cart away, as so much 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 exaggerations," or have " eccentricities" or teach in a style " utterly beyon d" my Ac- cuser's " comprehension," or create in him " blank astonish- ment," 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 i' sophistries," or have published " sophisms piled upon sophisms," or have in my sermons " culminating wonders," or have 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. 5, 7, 26, 29-34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 48. 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, 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 di- rect attention to the passage which the Act of Accusation con- tains at p. 8 and p. 42. I shall give my reason presently, why I begin with it. 40 TEUE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLET. My Accuser is speaking of my Sermon on Wisdom and In- nocence, and he says,"" It must be remembered always that it is not a Protestant, but a Romish sermon." — P. 8. Then at p. 42 he continues, " Dr. Newman does not ap- ply to it that epithet. He called- it in his letter to me of the 7th of January (published by him),, a ' Protestant' one. I remarked that, but considered it a mere slip of the pen. Besides, I have now nothing to say to that letter. It is to his ' Reflections, 5 in p. 32, which are open ground to me, that I refer. In them he deliberately repeats the epithet ' Prot- estant : " 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, jit 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 de- nouncing 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 and in matter of fact a "Romish" Sermon ;(2jthat 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 published itj twenty years ago, I should have denied that it was a Protestant Sermon. f>. 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 Established Church, was I guilty of the dishonesty of preaching what at the time I knew to be a " Romish" Ser- mon, but now, too, in 1864, I have committed the additional dishonesty of calling it a Protestant Sermon. If my aecuser TEUE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLEY. 41 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 a re two main points to_becc3sidj3^xJ^Iml864 havecgalle d it a Protest ant Sermon. (2^/He in 1844 and" now has styjed ita Popish~Sermon. Let me~t£Cke~the?rtwb points separately. ' ~~~~ ~~~ ™" ~ " Tl A Certainly, when I was in the English Church, I did disown the word " Protestant," and that, even at an earlier date than my Accuser names ; but just let us see whether 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 " 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?" " Ro- man " 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 movement pro- ceeded 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 an- swered, " Neither Romish nor Protestant, but ' Anglican' or ' Anglo-catholic' " I should never have granted that the Ser- 42 TETTE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLEY. mon was Romish ; I should have denied, and that with an in- ternal denial, quite as much as I do now, that it was a Roman or Romish Sermon. "Well then, substitute the word " Angli- can" or "Anglo-catholic" for "Protestant" in my question, and see if the argument is a bit the worse for it,— thus : " How can you proye that Father Newman informs us a cer- tain thing about the Roman Clergy, by referring to an Anglican, or Anglo-catholic Sermon of the Vicar of St. Mary's?" 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 Ser- mon?" "What dust then is he throwing into our eyes ! Fo r ipsta,nce_: in 1844 I lived at Littlemore, two or three miles distant from Oxford ; and Littlemore lies ia three, per- haps 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 Sanford, the line of demarcation running even through them. Now, supposing I were to say in 1864, that " twenty years ago I did not live in Oxford, be- cause I lived out at Littlemore, in the parish of Cowley ; " and if upon this there were letters of mine produced dated Little- more, 1844, in one of which I said that " I lived, not in Cow- ley, but at Littlemore, in St. Mary's parish," how would that prove that I contradicted myself, and that therefore after all 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 limits 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 live in Ox- ford twenty years ago, because I lived at Littlemore, in the Parish of Cowley." I should have been saying in 1844, " I do not live in Oxford, because I live in St. Mary's, Little- more." 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 TRUE MODE OP MEETING ME. KOTGSLEY. 43 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, 1 called it a Protestant Sermon, and not a Roman ; but in 1844 I should, if asked, have called it an Anglican Sermon, and not a Ro- man. In both cases I should have denied that it was Roman, and that on the ground of its being something else ; though I should have called that something else, then by one name, now by another. The ■dQetein«"of- j fee-Xt'ff Mfjiia. ia^a-^aet^Mhaic ever name we give to it ; I, as a Roman Priest, find it more natural and usual tocall 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 same object by my name, and therefore not another object, — 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 actually 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- dealing moralists, as he considers them, of the Catholic Church. What a " Much ado about nothing ! " 2. But, whether or no he can pr,ove 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 belief 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 order to insist and to dwell on this phenomenon — viz., that he does consider it an ' 44 TEUE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLET. undeniable fact, that the Sermon is " Eomish," — meaning by " Romish " not " savouring of Romish doctrine " merely, but " the work of a real Romanist, of a conscious Romanist." This belief it is which leads him to be so severe on me for now call- ' ing it " Protestant." He thinks that, whether I have commit- ted 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 ; — or if he does not believe 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 believes 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 " remembered." "It must be re- membered always," he says, " that it is not a Protestant, but a Romish Sermon," p. 8. Its Romish parentage is a great truth for the memory, not a thesis for inquiry. Merely to refer his readers to the 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 publicly to the Sermon on which my allegations are founded, I have given every one an opportunity of judging of their injustice," that is, an op- portunity of seeing that they are transparently just. The no- tion of there being a Via Media, held all along by a large par- ty 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 allowable figure of speech, — not more, I suppose, than an " hyperbole," — 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 Pam- phlet, but they are superfluous to the good sense of any one who will only just look into the matter himself. TKIIE MODE OF MEETING ME. KUTOSLEY. 45 Now, with respect to the so-called arguments which he ventures to put forward in proof that the Sermon is Romish, I shall answer them, together with all his other arguments, in the latter portion of this Reply ; here I do but draw the atten- tion 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 com- munion, and I do so because it has made a great impression on my mind, and has suggested to me the course that I shall pursue in my answer to him. I say, he takes it for granted that the Sermon is the writing j of a virtual or actual, of a conscious Roman Catholic ; and is im- / patient at the very notion of having to prove it. Father New-/ man and the Vicar of St. Mary's are one and the same : there has been no change of mind in him ; what he believed then he believes now, and what he believes now he believed then. To dispute this is frivolous ; to distinguish between his past self and his present is subtlety, and to ask for proof of their iden- tity is seeking opportunity to be sophistical. - This writer really thinks that he acts a straightforward honest part, when he says " A Catholic Priest informs us in his Sermon on Wis- dom 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 undoubted ability has struck me forcibly, and I shall pursue the train of thought which it opens. It is not he alone who entertains, and has entertained, such ^ an opinion of me and my writings. It is the impression of , large classes of men ; the impression twenty years ago and the impression now. There has been a general feeling that I was i for years where I had no right to be ; that I was a " Roman- ist " in Protestant livery and service ; that I was doing the work of a hostile Church in the bosom of the English Estab- lishment, and knew it, or ought to have known it. There was no need of arguing about particular passages in mj^ writings, when the fact was so patent, as men thought it to be. 46 TRUE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLEY. First it was certain, and I could not myself deny it, that I scouted the name " Protestant." It was certain again, that many of the doctrines which I professed were popularly and generally known as badges of the Roman Church, as distin- guished from the faith of the Eeformation. 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 religion. Then men went further, and said that I had actually been received into that religion, and withal had leave given me to profess myself a Protestant still. 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 advo- cated 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 all the greater, in con- sequence of its being the received belief of the public at large, that craft and intrigue, such as they fancied they beheld with their own eyes, were the very instruments to which the Cath- olic 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 regards the preachers of doctrines, so new to them and so unpalatable ; and that was, that they de- veloped them in so measured a way. If they were inspired by Roman theologians (and this was taken for granted), why did they not speak out at once ? "Why did 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 reti- cence, and half-speaking, and apparent indecision? It~was plain that the plan of operations had. been carefully mapped TETJE MODE OF MEETING ME. KTNGSLEY. 47 out from the first, and that these men were cautiously advanc- ing towards its accomplishment, as far as was safe at the mo- ment ; that their aim and their hope was to carry off a large body with them of the young and the ignorant ; that they meant gradually to leaven the minds of the rising generation, and to open the gate 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 contra- ry, there was at length an actual movement among their disciples, and one went over to Home, and then another, the worst anti- cipations and the worst judgments which had been formed of them received their justification. And, lastly, when men first had said of me, " You will see, he will go, he is only biding his time, he is waiting the word of command from Rome," and, when after all, after my 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 Cf 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. Cer- tainly I consider that, in my own case, it is the great obstacle in the way of my being favourably heard, as at 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 consid- ered 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 all? did I, or my opinions, drop from the sky? how came I, in Oxford, in grermo Univeraitatis, to present myself to the eyes of men 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 persevere in a path which steadily advanced towards, which ended in, the 48 TBUE MODE OF MEETING MB. KINGSLET. religion of Kome ? 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 all around which will more or less echo his 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 statements are unanswerable, there is always some- thing put out of sight or hidden in my sleeve ; it is that plausi- ble, 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 real foes i which I have to fight, and the auxiliaries to whom my Ac- cuser makes his court. Well, 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 euch a heap of misrepresentation and such a vehemence of animosity. What was the good of answering first one point, and then another, and 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 half 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, mat- ter which ought freely to expand itself into half a dozen volumes ? What means were there, except the expenditure of interminable pages, to set right even one of that series of " single passing hints," to use my Assailant's own language, which, " as with his finger tip, he had delivered" against me? % All those separate charges of his had their force in being TKTJE MODE OF MEETING ME. KTNGSLET. 49 illustrations of one and the same great imputation. He had a positive idea to illuminate his whole matter, and to stamp it with a form, and to quicken it with an interpretation. He called me a liar, — a eimple, a hroad, an intelligible, to the English public a plausible arraignment ; but for me, to answer in detail 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 replies, each of which was to be independent of the rest, this would be cer- tainly labour lost as regards_._airy„effectrcfi.. result. "What I needed was a corresponding antagonist unity in my defence, and where was {hat to be found? We see, in the case of com- mentators on the prophecies of Scripture, an exemplification of the principle on which I am insisting ; viz., how much more powerful even a false interpretation of the sacred text is than none at all ; — how a certain key to the visions of the Apo- calypse, 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 fullest demonstration that they really have no claim upon our belief. The reader says, " What else can the prophecy 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 t o myself, his very question is about my mean- i ing ; "What does Dr. .Newman mean ?" It pointed in the! very same direction as that into which my musings had turned I me already. He asks what I mean ; not about my words, notl I about my arguments, not about my actions, as his ultimate! point, but about that living intelligence, by which I write, and! argue, and act. He asks about my Mind and its Beliefs and its Sentiments ; and he shall be answered ; — not for his own sake, but for mine, for the sake of the Religion which I pro- fess, 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 well- wishers, lovers of fair play, sceptical cross-questioners, in- 3 50 TKTJE MODE OE MEETING ME. K1NGSLET. terested inquirers, curious lookers-on, and simple strangers, unconcerned yet not careless about the issue. My perplexity did not last half an hour. I recognized what I had to do, though I shrank frop- both the task and the exposure which it would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my whole life ; I must show what I am that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom maybe 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 expelled. I will vanquish^ not my Ac- cuser, but my judges. I will indeed answer'his charges and criticisms on me one by One, lest any one should say that they / are unanswerable, but such a work shall not be the scope nor the substance of my reply;i I will draw out, as far as maybe, the history of my mind ; I will state the point at which I be- gan, in what external suggestion or accident each opinioifhad its' rise, how far and how they were developed from within, how they grew, were modified, were combined, were in colli- sion with each other, and were changed ; again how I con- ducted myself towards them, and how, and how far, and for how long a time,T thought I could hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements which I had made and with the position which I filled. I must show, — what is the very truth, — that the doctrines ^fhich I held, and have held for so many years, have been taught me (speaking humanly) partly by the suggestions of Protestant friends, partly by the teaching of books, and partly by the action of my own mind : and thus I shall account for that phenomenon which to so many seems so wonderful, that I should have left " my kindred and my father's house " for 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 revolutions, po- litical and civil, could not subdue the reason and overcome TBTJE MODE OF MEETING ME. KOTGBLEY. 51 the heart, without the aid of fraud and the sophistries of the schools. \ * What I had pronosed to myself in the course of half an hour, I determinecB^at the end of ten days. However, I have many difficulliM^n 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 autobiographi- cal 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 converSjations, and few con- temporary memoranda, I fear, of the feelings or motives under which from time to time 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, till 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 published, they would in many ways serve me, were I well up in 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, and, for the most part, the last time I read them has been when I revised their proof sheets. Under these circumstances my sketch will of course be in-N complete. I now for the first time contemplate my course as , a whole ; it_ig_a- firot caB ay^but it will contain, I trust, no / serious or substantial mistake, and so far will answer the pur- pose 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 writ-l ten memorial, or the corroboration of some friend. There are witnesses enough up and down the country to verify, or cor- . rect, or complete it ; and letters moreover of my own in abun- ' dance, unless they have been destroyed. Moreover, I mean to b e sim ply pers onal and historical : 1 am not expounding Catholic doctrine, I "am doing rio~more than explaining myself, and my opinions and actions. I wish, as 52 TRUE MODE OF MEETING ME. KINGSLEY far a s I am ab le, simply to sta te facts, whether tl iey-are nlti- mately 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 apnositeness, or value, or good taste, or religious prudence of tll^Wtails which I shall introduce. I may be accused of layin dain_for_ji»ti : quii3!^luah^ me now for ^seve ral ypafs. , , , It showed itself in some flippant language against the Fathers in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, about whom I knew little at the time, except what I had learnt as a boy from Joseph Milner. In writing on the Scripture Mira- cles in 1825-'6, 1 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 intellectual excel- lence to moral ; I was drifting in the direction of liberalism. I was rudely awakened from my dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows — illness and bereavement. HISTORY OF MY KELIGIOU9 OPINIONS. 65 In the be ginning of 1829, came the formal bre ak betwe en Dr. AV]^ atelfn^CT^rneT"Mr7T'eers attempted reelection was the occasion of it. ~Tthink in 1828 or 1827 I had voted in the miMflfe when the Petition to Parliament against the gM^^^^plaims was brought into Convocation. I did so mainly on the views suggested to me by the theory of the Letters of an Episcopalian. Also I disliked the bigoted " two bottle orthodox," as they were invidiously called. I took part against Mr. Peel, on a simple academical, not at all an ecclesi- astical or a political ground ; and this I professed at the time. I considered that Mr. Peel had taken the University by sur- prise, that he had no right to call upon us to turn round on a sudden, and to expose ourselves to the imputation of time-serv- ing, and that a great University ought not to be bullied even by a great Duke of "Wellington. Also by this time I was under the influence of Keble and Froude, who, in addition to the reasons I have given, disliked the Duke's change of policy as dictated by liberalism. Whately was considerably annoyed at me, and he took a hu- mourous revenge, of which he had given me due notice be- forehand. As head of a house, he had duties of hospitality to men of all parties ; he asked a set of the least intellectual 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 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 clientele/, 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 my blessings, I 66 HISTORY OF MY KELIGIOUS OPINIONS. said, " Blessings of friends, which to my door, unasked, un- hoped, 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, how- ever, admits of this explanation : — ■*«» During the first years of my residence at Oriel, though proud of my College, I was not at home there. I was very much alone, and I used often take my daily walk by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr. Copleston, then Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned round, and with the kind courte- ousness which sat so well on him, made me a bow and said, " NuB fluam minus solus, quam cilm solus." At that time in- deed (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 heart fully and familiarly. But things changed in 1826. At that time I became one of the Tutors of my Col- lege, 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. It was to me like the feeling of spring weather after winter ; and, if I may so speak, I came out of my shell ; I remained out of it till 1841. The two persons who knew me best at that time are still 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. A shrewd man, who knew me at this time, said, " 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 to have in- BISTOBY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 67 fluence, 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. Wilberforce (afterwards Archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. "Whately then, an acute man , perhaps saw ar ound me ti^e_signs of an incipient jpajty__oLwJiicliLljTOS not_con-_ sc ious myself. And thu s we discern tjiejkst. elements of that movement afterwards called Tractarian. V The trulTWd^nmarjniutlior of it, however^as is usual wtth"gTearmon^j^wCTs7wasr JouFoT sight. Having carried oil as a mere boy the highest honours of the University, he had turned from the admiration which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in pastoral work in the country. Nee d IjayjffiaLLam. speaking of John K eb le ? 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 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 Bowden, with whom I passed almost exclusively my Undergraduate years. " I had to hasten to the Tower," I say to him, " to receive the congratulations 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 I had heard spoken of, with rever- ence rather than admiration, when I came up to Oxford. When one day I was walking in High Street with my deari earliest friend just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry, out, " There's Keble ! " and with what awe did I look at him l' 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, courteous, *■ and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost to put him out ' of countenance. Then, too, it was reported, truly or falsely, > 68 HISTOBT OF MY BELIGIOUS OPINIONS. how a rising man of brilliant reputation, the present De~an of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman, admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was unlike any one else. However, at the time when I was elected Fellow 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. Hurrell 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 ? "Well ; if I was ever • asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I had brought Keble and Newman to understand each other." The Christian Year made its a ppfiaxaafie. 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 religious literature was so nerveless and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble struck an original note and woke up in the hearts of thou sands_a,newjQusic, the music ~ot a school lon g^unknown in E nglajid^.J^orxaaJLpxfftqnrl to analyse, in my own instance, the effect of religious teaching so "Tleeppso pure, so beauti fuL__ I have*never till now tried to do ~S5"fyet I think I am notwrong in saying, that the two' main in- tellectual truths w hich it brought _ home to me, were" the same two winch 1 had learned from Butler, though recast in the creative mind of my new master. The first of these was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental s ystem ; that is . the doctrine that m aterial phenomena ar e both the ty pes andJLhe_jnflt.niments-jofIieaTIffiijagS- unseen, — a, doc- trine, which embraces, not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe about Sacraments properly so called ; but also the article of " the Communion of Saints" in its fulness ; and likewise the Mysteries of the faith. The connexion of this philosophy of religion with what is sometimes called ' ' Berke- •k^fim^' has been mentioned above ; I knew little of Berkeley at this time except by name ; nor have I ever studied him. On the second intellectual principle which I gained from HISTORY OF MY EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 69 Mr. Keblo, I could say a great deal ; if this were the place for it. It runs through very much that I have written, and has gained for me many hard names. Butler teaches us that prob-j ability is the guide o f life,. The danger of this doctrine, in the case of many minds, is, its tendency to destroy in them abso4 lute certainty, leading them to consider every conclusion as 1 , doubtful, and resolving truth into an opinion, which it is safei to obey or to profess, but not possible to embrace with full in- \ ternal assent. If this were to be allowed, then the celebrated ' saying, " O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a v soul ! " would be the highest measure of devotion : — but who / can really pray to a Being, about whose existence he is seri- V ously in doubt ? "■* I considered that Mr. Keb le met this difficulty by ascribing the firmn ess of assent which we give to relifnons doct rine, not ! to the probabilities which introduced it, but to the, living power of faith and love which accepted it. In matters of religion, he seemed to say, it is not merely probability which makes us in- i tellectually certain, but probability as it is put to account by ! faith and love. It is faith and love which give to probabilityj a force whi ch it "ha s not in itself. 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 rea- sonable to take probability as sufficient for internal conviction. Thus the argument about Probability, in the matter of religion, became - an argument from PersonaffiyJ which" in" fact is one form of the argmoenrSolSrAuthoHty." - " ■ In illustraSon7 Mr. !Kebte"used"*to quote the words of the Psalm : "I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not like 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 literal 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 10 HISTOBY OF ITT EELIGIOUS OPINIONS. speaks of the "Eye of God's word ;.'.' and in the note quotes Mr. Miller, of "Worcester College, who remarks, in his Bampton Lectures, on the special power of Scripture, as having* " this Eye, like 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 earliest of the " Tracts for the Times." In No. 8 I 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." L^-" I did not at all dispute this view of the matter, for I made , use of it myself; but I was dissatisfied, because it did not. go ' to the root of the difficulty. It was beautiful and religiou s, but it di d not ev en profesfl..t^*^JomcaIXIa^ag^"^'liTigly_T trte3~t6 complete it by considerations of my. own, which, are 'implied In my University yermons^Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My argu- /ment is in outline as follows : 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 the constitution of the human mind and the will of its Maker ; that certitude was a habit of mind, that certainty was a quality of propositions; that probabilities which did not reach to logical certainty, might create a mental certitude ; that the certitude thus created might equal in. meas- ure and strength the certitude which was created by the strict- est 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 circumstances : — 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 HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 11 probabilities it was a duty to have a certitude ; that accord- ingly we were bound to be more or less sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated scale of assent, viz., according as the prob- abilities attaching to a professed fact were brought home to us, and, as the case might be, to entertain about it a pious belief, or a pious opinion, or a religious 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 belief, of more or less strong texture, in given cases, so in other cases it was a duty not to believe, not to opine, not to conjecture, not even to tolerate the notion that a professed fact was true, inas- much as it would be credulity or superstition, or some other moral fault to do so. This was the region of Private Judg- ment in religion ; that is, of a Private Judgment, not formed I arbitrarily and according to one's fancy or liking, but consci- ( entiously, and under a sense of duty. ' )t 0t^' Consid erations such as these' throw a new light on the sub- iec^g£JM£ga«l-e% and-i&eyseem^d^have led* ine "to"reconild§r k .the^saeiwti-whieh-I-toofc'Of them- in my Essay. in .1,825-6. I do _£2L!p!OT "what was ih^A^dS&Jhm change in me, nor of the train,, of ideas on whieh~it was fovmdedv; That there had been " already great miracles, as those of Scripture, as the Resurrec- tion, was a fact establishing 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 cer- tain probability, 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 con- nexion with the veri-similitude, scope, instrument^ character, testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented them- selves to us ; and, according to the final result of those various considerations, it was our duty to be sure, or to believe, or to opinej or to surmise, or to tolerate^ or to reject, 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 72 HISTORY OT MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. were to be received, and those which were to be -rejected ; whereas in 1842 I saw that they were to be regarded accord- ing to their greater or less probability, which was in some cases sufficient to create certitude about them, in other cases only belief or opinion. / Moreover, the argument from Analogy, on which this view ( Jof the question was founded, suggested to me something be- ikides, in recommendation of the Ecclesiastical Miracles. It 'fastened itself 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 Effusions of divine grace. This j 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 I that " in the term ' Effusion ' there is not here included the i 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 analo- gy, not to stop short at his abrupt ipse dixit, but 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, ac- cording to the ancient Catholic doctrine, the gift of miracles was viewed as the attendant and shadow of transcendent sanc- tity : and moreover, as such sanctity was not of every day's oc- currence, nay further, as one period of Church history differed 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 religious 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 hap- HISTORY OF MY EELIGIOtTS OPINIONS. ?3 pened in, former times, or were not now at this very time tak- ing, place in distant places : — but I must not dwell longer on a subject, to which in few words it is impossible to do justice. Hurrell Froude w a^apn^jLsllgeblg^s, formed b y him , j,nd in t urn reacting u ponjiim. I knew him first in 1826, and was in the closest and most affectionate frlen3sh^p"wiflr him from about l«29 SinSs^eatK in f836. He was a man of the high- est gifts — s o truly m anv.rflidsd.i- that it would be., presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him, except under those aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness^ of nature, the playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility of mmd7*and the patient winning considerateness in. discussion, which endeared himlaFthose to whom Ke opened his heart ; for I am all along^ engaged upon matters of belief and opinion, and am introduc- ing others into my narrative, not for their own sake, or be- cause 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 Hurrell Froude---in his intellectual as- pect — as a manuofHgh geSraS^rimiul and overflowing with ideas and views, in hfm original, which were too_ many and strong even" forjris bodAjMsffingTH^'and which crowded and josfled against each other in their effort after distinct shape and expression. And he had anJuieJleisLas. critical and logi- cal as it was speculative and bold. Dying prematurely, as he did, and in the conflict, and transition-state of opinion, his re- ligious views never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their depth, Vw His ^opinions arrested and influenced me. even when they^didAiot_ gain my" j^ssent. He professed openly his admiration of" the Church of Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in tbe 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 re- 74 HISTOBY OF MY BELIGIOUS OPINIONS. ligious teaching. He had a high severe idea of the intrinsic " excellence of virginity ; and he considered the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted in thinking of the Sajnts ; he had a keen appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its possibil- ity and its heights ; and he was more than inclined to be- lieve a large amount of miraculous interference 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— imnhich he had a firm faith. He was power- fhUy drawn to the Medieval Church, but not to the Primitive. He had a keen insight into abstr act truth ; but he was an Englishman to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the c oncrete. He had a most classical taste, and a geniu s for ph ilosophy gT1 d art; nT, d he"~"was~"|gnd of "historica l inquiry, and the poli tics of re ligion. He had no turn for'the- otogyas such. He had no appreciation of the writings of the Fathers, of the detail 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 ea ger, courageous view of things on the whole. I should say that his power of entering info~~tne "mmd of others did not equal his other gifts ; he could not believe, for instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be Antichristian. On many points he would not believe but that I agreed with him, when I did not. He seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a different kind, the contrariety 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 Bill. He was smitten with ,the love of the Theocratic Church ; he went abroad and 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 the- ological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with admiration towards the Church of Borne, and in the same degree to dislike the Befor- HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 75 mation. He fixed deep in me__the idea of devotion., to the BlessedVirgin, and hejgd me gradually. to believe in the Real Presence. There is one remaining source of my opinions to be men- tioned, and that far from the least important. In proportion as I moved out of the shadow of liberalism •which had hung over my coarse, my e arly devotion towards the Fathers re- turned ; and in the Long Vacation ofT828T set about to read them chronologically, beginning with St. Ignatius and St. Jus- tin. About 1830 a proposal was made to me by Mr. Hugh Eose, who with Mr. Lyall (afterwards 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 Nicaea. It was launching myself 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 of its 422 pages, the first 117 consisted of introductory matter, and the Council of Nicsea did not appear till the 25*3:th, and then occupied at most twenty pages. ty was the true exponent of_^ed£ctiinM_jpXX