What I have said is, that monks and nuns are patterns of Christian

perfection; and that Scripture itself supplies us with this pattern.

Who can deny this? Who is bold enough to say that St. John Baptist,

who, I suppose, is a Scripture character, is not a pattern-monk; and

that Mary, who "sat at our Lord's feet," was not a pattern-nun? and

"Anna too, who served God with fastings and prayers night and day?"

Again, what is meant but this by St. Paul's saying, "It is good for a

man not to touch a woman?" and, when speaking of the father or

guardian of a young girl, "He that giveth her in marriage doeth well;

but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better?" And what does

St. John mean but to praise virginity, when he says of the hundred

forty and four thousand on Mount Sion, "These are they which were not

defiled with women, for they are virgins?" And what else did our Lord

mean, when He said, "There be eunuchs who have made themselves

eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive

it, let him receive it?"

He ought to know his logic better: I have said that "monks and nuns

find their pattern in Scripture:" he adds, _Therefore_ I hold all

Christians are monks and nuns.

This is Blot _one_.

Now then for Blot _two_.

"Monks and nuns the _only_ perfect Christians ... what more?"--p. 9.

A second fault in logic. I said no more than that monks and nuns were

perfect Christians: he adds, _Therefore_ "monks and nuns are the

_only_ perfect Christians." Monks and nuns are _not_ the only perfect

Christians; I never thought so or said so, now or at any other time.

P. 42. "In the Sermon ... monks and nuns are spoken of as the _only

true_ Bible Christians." This, again, is not the case. What I said

is, that "monks and nuns are Bible Christians:" it does not follow,

nor did I mean, that "all Bible Christians are monks and nuns." Bad

logic again. Blot _three_.

2. My Sermon on "Wisdom and Innocence", Being the 20th of

"Sermons on Subjects of the Day"

This writer says, p. 8, about my Sermon 20, "By the world appears to

be signified, especially, the Protestant public of these realms."

He also asks, p. 14, "Why was it preached? ... to insinuate, that the

admiring young gentlemen, who listened to him, stood to their

fellow-countrymen in the relation of the early Christians to the

heathen Romans? Or that Queen Victoria's Government was to the Church

of England, what Nero's or Dioclesian's was to the Church of Rome? it

may have been so."

May or may not, it wasn't. He insinuates what not even with his

little finger does he attempt to prove. Blot _four_.

He asserts, p. 9, that I said in the sermon in question, that

"Sacramental Confession and the celibacy of the clergy are 'notes' of

the Church." And, just before, he puts the word "notes" in inverted

commas, as if it was mine. That is, he garbles. It is _not_ mine.

Blot _five_.

He says that I "_define_ what I mean by the Church in two 'notes' of

her character." I do not define, or dream of defining.

1. He says that I teach that the celibacy of the clergy enters into

the _definition_ of the Church. I do no such thing; that is the blunt

truth. Define the Church by the celibacy of the clergy! why, let him

read 1 Tim. iii.; there he will find that bishops and deacons are

spoken of as married. How, then, could I be the dolt to say or imply

that the celibacy of the clergy was a part of the definition of the

Church? Blot _six_.

And again in p. 42, "In the Sermon a celibate clergy is made a note

of the Church." Thus the untruth is repeated. Blot _seven_.

2. And now for Blot _eight_. Neither did I say that "Sacramental

confession" was "a note of the Church." Nor is it. Nor could I with

any cogency have brought this as an argument against the Church of

England, for the Church of England has retained Confession, nay,

Sacramental Confession. No fair man can read the form of Absolution

in the Anglican Prayer in the Visitation of the Sick, without seeing

that that Church _does_ sanction and provide for Confession and

Absolution. If that form does not contain the profession of a grave

sacramental act, words have no meaning. The form is almost in the

words of the Roman form; and, by the time that this clergyman has

succeeded in explaining it away, he will have also got skill enough

to explain away the Roman form; and if he did but handle my words

with that latitude with which he interprets his own formularies, he

would prove that, instead of my being superstitious and frantic, I

was the most Protestant of preachers and the most latitudinarian of

thinkers. It would be charity in him, in his reading of my words, to

use some of that power of evasion, of which he shows himself such a

master in his dealing with his own Prayer Book. Yet he has the

assurance at p. 14 to ask, "Why was the Sermon preached? to insinuate

that a Church which had sacramental confession and a celibate clergy

was the only true Church?"

"Why?" I will tell the reader, _why_; and with this view will speak,

first of the contents of the Sermon, then of its subject, then of its

circumstances.

1. It was one of the last six sermons which I wrote when I was an

Anglican. It was one of the five sermons I preached in St. Mary's

between Christmas and Easter, 1843, the year when I gave up my

living. The MS. of the sermon is destroyed; but I believe, and my

memory too bears me out, as far as it goes, that the sentence in

question about celibacy and confession _was not preached at all_. The

volume, in which this sermon is found, was published _after_ that I

had given up St. Mary's, when I had no call on me to restrain the

expression of anything which I might hold: and I state an important

fact about it in the advertisement, which this truth-loving writer

_suppresses_. Blot _nine_.

My words, which stared him in the face, are as follows:--"In

preparing [these Sermons] for publication, _a few words and

sentences_ have in several places been _added_, which will be found

to express more _of private or personal opinion_, than it was

expedient to introduce into the _instruction_ delivered in Church to

a parochial Congregation. Such introduction, however, seems

unobjectionable in the case of compositions, which are _detached_

from the sacred place and service to which they once belonged, and

_submitted to the reason_ and judgment of the general reader."

This volume of sermons then cannot be criticised at all as

_preachments_; they are _essays_; essays of a man who, at the time of

publishing them, was _not_ a preacher. Such passages, as that in

question, are just the very ones which I added _upon_ my publishing

them. I always was on my guard in the pulpit of saying anything which

looked towards Rome; and therefore all his rhetoric about my

"disciples," "admiring young gentlemen who listened to me," "fanatic

and hot-headed young men, who hung upon my every word," becomes

simple rubbish.

I have more to say on this point. This writer says, p. 14, "I know

that men used to suspect Dr. Newman--I have been inclined to do so

myself--of _writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or

of the matter_, but for the sake of one simple passing hint--one

phrase, one epithet." Can there be a plainer testimony borne to the

practical character of my sermons at St. Mary's than this gratuitous

insinuation? Many a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused

of not letting his parishioners alone, and of teasing them with his

private theological notions. You would gather from the general tone

of this writer that that was my way. Every one who was in the habit

of hearing me, knows that it wasn't. This writer either knows nothing

about it, and then he ought to be silent; or he does know, and then

he ought to speak the truth. Others spread the same report twenty

years ago as he does now, and the world believed that my sermons at

St. Mary's were full of red-hot Tractarianism. Then strangers came to

hear me preach, and were astonished at their own disappointment. I

recollect the wife of a great prelate from a distance coming to hear

me, and then expressing her surprise to find that I preached nothing

but a plain humdrum sermon. I recollect how, when on the Sunday

before Commemoration one year, a number of strangers came to hear

me, and I preached in my usual way, residents in Oxford, of high

position, were loud in their satisfaction that on a great occasion, I

had made a simple failure, for after all there was nothing in the

sermon to hear. Well, but they were not going to let me off, for all

my common-sense view of duty. Accordingly, they got up the charitable

theory which this writer revives. They said that there was a double

purpose in those plain addresses of mine, and that my sermons were

never so artful as when they seemed common-place; that there were

sentences which redeemed their apparent simplicity and quietness. So

they watched during the delivery of a sermon, which to them was too

practical to be useful, for the concealed point of it, which they

could at least imagine, if they could not discover. "Men used to

suspect Dr. Newman," he says, "of writing a _whole_ Sermon, _not_ for

the sake of _the text or of the matter_, but for the sake of ...

_one_ phrase, _one_ epithet, _one_ little barbed arrow, which, as he

_swept magnificently_ past on the stream of his calm eloquence,

_seemingly_ unconscious of all presences, save those unseen, he

delivered unheeded," etc. p. 14. To all appearance, he says, I was

"unconscious of all presences;" so this kind writer supplies the true

interpretation of this unconsciousness. He is not able to deny that

"the _whole_ Sermon" had the _appearance_ of being "_for the sake_ of

the text and matter;" therefore he suggests that perhaps it wasn't.

And then he emptily talks of the "magnificent sweep of my eloquence,"

and my "oratoric power." Did he forget that the sermon of which he

thus speaks can be read by others as well as him? Now, the sentences

are as short as Aristotle's, and as grave as Bishop Butler's. It is

written almost in the condensed style of Tract 90. Eloquence there is

none. I put this down as Blot _ten_.

2. And now as to the subject of the sermon. The series of which the

volume consists are such sermons as are, more or less, exceptions to

the rule which I ordinarily observed, as to the subjects which I

introduced into the pulpit of St. Mary's. They are not purely ethical

or doctrinal. They were for the most part caused by circumstances of

the day or of the time, and they belong to various years. One was

written in 1832, two in 1836, two in 1838, five in 1840, five in

1841, four in 1842, seven in 1843. Many of them are engaged on one

subject, viz. in viewing the Church in its relation to the world. By

the world was meant, not simply those multitudes which were not in

the Church, but the existing body of human society, whether in the

Church or not, whether Catholics, Protestants, Greeks, or Mahometans,

theists or idolaters, as being ruled by principles, maxims, and

instincts of their own, that is, of an unregenerate nature, whatever

their supernatural privileges might be, greater or less, according to

their form of religion. This view of the relation of the Church to

the world as taken apart from questions of ecclesiastical politics,

as they may be called, is often brought out in my sermons. Two occur

to me at once; No. 3 of my Plain Sermons, which was written in 1829,

and No. 15 of my third volume, written in 1835. Then, on the other

hand, by Church I meant--in common with all writers connected with

the Tract Movement, whatever their shades of opinion, and with

the whole body of English divines, except those of the Puritan or

Evangelical School--the whole of Christendom, from the apostles' time

till now, whatever their later divisions into Latin, Greek, and

Anglican. I have explained this view of the subject above at pp.

83-85 of this Volume. When then I speak, in the particular sermon

before us, of the members, or the rulers, or the action of "the

Church," I mean neither the Latin, nor the Greek, nor the English,

taken by itself, but of the whole Church as one body: of Italy as one

with England, of the Saxon or Norman as one with the Caroline Church.

_This_ was specially the one Church, and the points in which one

branch or one period differed from another were not and could not be

notes of the Church, because notes necessarily belonged to the whole

of the Church everywhere and always.

This being my doctrine as to the relation of the Church to the world,

I laid down in the sermon three principles concerning it, and there

left the matter. The first is, that Divine Wisdom had framed for its

action, laws which man, if left to himself, would have antecedently

pronounced to be the worst possible for its success, and which in all

ages have been called by the world, as they were in the apostles'

days, "foolishness;" that man ever relies on physical and material

force, and on carnal inducements--as Mahomet with his sword and his

houris, or indeed almost as that theory of religion, called, since

the sermon was written, "muscular Christianity;" but that our

Lord, on the contrary, has substituted meekness for haughtiness,

passiveness for violence, and innocence for craft: and that the event

has shown the high wisdom of such an economy, for it has brought to

light a set of natural laws, unknown before, by which the seeming

paradox that weakness should be stronger than might, and simplicity

than worldly policy, is readily explained.

Secondly, I said that men of the world, judging by the event, and not

recognizing the secret causes of the success, viz. a higher order of

natural laws--natural, though their source and action were

supernatural, (for "the meek inherit the earth," by means of a

meekness which comes from above)--these men, I say, concluded, that

the success which they witnessed must arise from some evil secret

which the world had not mastered--by means of magic, as they said in

the first ages, by cunning as they say now. And accordingly they

thought that the humility and inoffensiveness of Christians, or of

Churchmen, was a mere pretence and blind to cover the real causes of

that success, which Christians could explain and would not; and that

they were simply hypocrites.

Thirdly, I suggested that shrewd ecclesiastics, who knew very well

that there was neither magic nor craft in the matter, and, from their

intimate acquaintance with what actually went on within the Church,

discerned what were the real causes of its success, were of course

under the temptation of substituting reason for conscience, and,

instead of simply obeying the command, were led to do good that good

might come, that is, to act _in order_ to their success, and not from

a motive of faith. Some, I said, did yield to the temptation more or

less, and their motives became mixed; and in this way the world in a

more subtle shape has got into the Church; and hence it has come to

pass, that, looking at its history from first to last, we cannot

possibly draw the line between good and evil there, and say either

that everything is to be defended, or some things to be condemned. I

expressed the difficulty, which I supposed to be inherent in the

Church, in the following words. I said, "_Priestcraft has ever been

considered the badge_, and its imputation is a kind of Note of the

Church; and _in part indeed truly_, because the presence of powerful

enemies, and the sense of their own weakness, _has sometimes tempted

Christians to the abuse, instead of the use of Christian wisdom, to

be wise without being harmless_; but partly, nay, for the most part,

not truly, but slanderously, and merely because the world called

their wisdom craft, when it was found to be a match for its own

numbers and power." This passage he has partly garbled, partly

omitted. Blot _eleven_.

Such is the substance of the sermon: and as to the main drift of it,

it was this; that I was, there and elsewhere, scrutinising the course

of the Church as a whole, as if philosophically, as an historical

phenomenon, and observing the laws on which it was conducted. Hence

the sermon, or essay as it more truly is, is written in a dry and

unimpassioned way: it shows as little of human warmth of feeling, I

repeat, as a sermon of Bishop Butler's. Yet, under that calm exterior

there was a deep and keen sensitiveness, as I shall now proceed to

show.

3. If I mistake not, it was written with a secret thought about

myself. Every one preaches according to his frame of mind, at the

time of preaching. One heaviness especially oppressed me at that

season, which this writer, twenty years afterwards, has set himself

with a good will to renew: it arose from the sense of the base

calumnies which were thrown upon me on all sides. In this trouble of

mind I gained, while I reviewed the history of the Church, at once an

argument and a consolation. My argument was this: if I, who knew my

own innocence, was so blackened by party prejudice, perhaps those

high rulers and those servants of the Church, in the many ages which

intervened between the early Nicene times and the present, who were

laden with such grievous accusations, were innocent also; and this

reflection served to make me tender towards those great names of the

past, to whom weaknesses or crimes were imputed, and reconciled me to

difficulties in ecclesiastical proceedings, which there were no means

now of properly explaining. And the sympathy thus excited for them,

reacted on myself, and I found comfort in being able to put myself

under the shadow of those who had suffered as I was suffering, and

who seemed to promise me their recompense, since I had a fellowship

in their trial. In a letter to my bishop at the time of Tract 90,

part of which I have quoted, I said that I had ever tried to "keep

innocency;" and now two years had passed since then, and men were

louder and louder in heaping on me the very charges, which this

writer repeats out of my sermon, of "fraud and cunning," "craftiness

and deceitfulness," "double-dealing," "priestcraft," of being

"mysterious, dark, subtle, designing," when I was all the time

conscious to myself, in my degree, and after my measure, of

"sobriety, self-restraint, and control of word and feeling." I had

had experience how my past success had been imputed to "secret

management;" and how, when I had shown surprise at that success, that

surprise again was imputed to "deceit;" and how my honest heartfelt

submission to authority had been called, as it was called in a

colonial bishop's charge, "mystic humility;" and how my silence was

called an "hypocrisy;" and my faithfulness to my clerical engagements

a secret correspondence with the enemy. And I found a way of

destroying my sensitiveness about these things which jarred upon my

sense of justice, and otherwise would have been too much for me, by

the contemplation of a large law of the Divine Dispensation, and

found myself more and more able to bear in my own person a present

trial, of which in my past writings I had expressed an anticipation.

For thus feeling and thus speaking this writer has the charitableness

and the decency to call me "Mawworm." "I found him telling

Christians," he says, "that they will always seem 'artificial,' and

'wanting in openness and manliness;' that they will always be 'a

mystery' to the world; and that the world will always think them

rogues; and bidding them glory in what the world (that is, the rest

of their fellow-countrymen) disown, and say with Mawworm, 'I like to

be despised.' ... How was I to know that the preacher ... was utterly

blind to the broad meaning and the plain practical result of a sermon

like this delivered before fanatic and hot-headed young men, who hung

upon his every word?"--p. 17. Hot-headed young men! why, man, you are

writing a romance. You think the scene is Alexandria or the Spanish

main, where you may let your imagination play revel to the extent of

inveracity. It is good luck for me that the scene of my labours was

not at Moscow or Damascus. Then I might be one of your ecclesiastical

saints, of which I sometimes hear in conversation, but with whom, I

am glad to say, I have no personal acquaintance. Then you might

ascribe to me a more deadly craft than mere quibbling and lying; in

Spain I should have been an Inquisitor, with my rack in the

background; I should have had a concealed dagger in Sicily; at Venice

I should have brewed poison; in Turkey I should have been the

Sheik-el-Islam with my bowstring; in Khorassan I should have been a

veiled prophet. "Fanatic young men!" Why he is writing out the list

of a _dramatis Personae_; "guards, conspirators, populace," and the

like. He thinks I was ever moving about with a train of Capulets at

my heels. "Hot-headed fanatics, who hung on my every word!" If he had

taken to write a history, and not a play, he would have easily found

out, as I have said, that from 1841 I had severed myself from the

younger generation of Oxford, that Dr. Pusey and I had then closed

our theological meetings at his house, that I had brought my own

weekly evening parties to an end, that I preached only by fits and

starts at St. Mary's, so that the attendance of young men was broken

up, that in those very weeks from Christmas till over Easter, during

which this sermon was preached, I was but five times in the pulpit

there. He would have known that it was written at a time when I was

shunned rather than sought, when I had great sacrifices in

anticipation, when I was thinking much of myself; that I was

ruthlessly tearing myself away from my own followers, and that, in

the musings of that sermon, I was at the very utmost only delivering

a testimony in my behalf for time to come, not sowing my rhetoric

broadcast for the chance of present sympathy. Blot _twelve_.

I proceed: he says at p. 15, "I found him actually using of such

[prelates], (and, as I thought, of himself and his party likewise),

the words 'They yield outwardly; to assent inwardly were to betray

the faith. Yet they are called deceitful and double-dealing, because

they do as much as they can, not more than they may.'" This too is a

proof of my duplicity! Let this writer go with some one else, just a

little further than he has gone with me; and let him get into a court

of law for libel; and let him be convicted; and let him still fancy

that his libel, though a libel, was true, and let us then see whether

he will not in such a case "yield outwardly," without assenting

internally; and then again whether we should please him, if we called

him "deceitful and double-dealing," because "he did as much as he

could, not more than he ought to do." But Tract 90 will supply a real

illustration of what I meant. I yielded to the bishops in outward

act, viz. in not defending the Tract, and in closing the series; but,

not only did I not assent inwardly to any condemnation of it, but I

opposed myself to the proposition of a condemnation on the part of

authority. Yet I was then by the public called "deceitful and

double-dealing," as this writer calls me now, "because I did as much

as I felt I could do, and not more than I felt I could honestly do."

Many were the publications of the day and the private letters which

accused me of shuffling, because I closed the series of tracts, yet

kept the tracts on sale, as if I ought to comply not only with what

my bishop asked, but with what he did not ask, and perhaps did not

wish. However, such teaching, according to this writer, was likely to

make young men suspect that truth was not a virtue for its own sake,

but only for the sake of "the spread of Catholic opinions," and the

"salvation of their own souls;" and that "cunning was the weapon

which heaven had allowed to them to defend themselves against the

persecuting Protestant public."--p. 16. Blot _thirteen_.

And now I draw attention to another point. He says at p. 15, "How was

I to know that the preacher ... did not foresee, that [fanatic and

hot-headed young men] would think that they obeyed him, by becoming

affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments and

_equivocations?_" "How should he know!" What! I suppose that we are

to think every man a knave till he is proved not to be such. Know!

had he no friend to tell him whether I was "affected" or "artificial"

myself? Could he not have done better than impute _equivocation_ to

me, at a time when I was in no sense answerable for the

_amphibologia_ of the Roman casuists? Has he a single fact which

belongs to me personally or by profession to couple my name with

equivocation in 1843? "How should he know" that I was not sly,

smooth, artificial, non-natural! he should know by that common manly

frankness, if he had it, by which we put confidence in others, till

they are proved to have forfeited it; he should know it by my own

words in that very sermon, in which I say it is best to be natural,

and that reserve is at best but an unpleasant necessity. I say, "I do

not deny that there is something very engaging in a frank and

unpretending manner; some persons have it more than others; in _some

persons it is a great grace_. But it must be recollected that I am

speaking of _times of persecution and oppression_ to Christians, such

as the text foretells; and then surely frankness will become nothing

else than indignation at the oppressor, and vehement speech, if it is

permitted. Accordingly, as persons have deep _feelings_, so they will

find the necessity of self-control, lest they should say what they

ought not." He omits these words. I call, then, this base insinuation

that I taught equivocation, Blot the _fourteenth_.

Lastly, he sums up thus: "If [Dr. Newman] would ... persist (as in

this Sermon) in dealing with matters dark, offensive, doubtful,

sometimes actually forbidden, at least according to the notions of

the great majority of English Churchmen; if he would always do so in

a tentative, paltering way, seldom or never letting the world know

how much he believed, how far he intended to go; if, in a word, his

method of teaching was a suspicious one, what wonder if the minds of

men were filled with suspicions of him?"--p. 17.

Now first he is speaking of my sermons; where, then, is his proof

that in my sermons I dealt in matters dark, offensive, doubtful,

actually forbidden? he has said nothing in proof that I have not been

able flatly to deny.

"Forbidden according to the notions of the great majority of English

Churchmen." I should like to know what opinions, beyond those which

relate to the Creed, _are_ held by the "majority of English

Churchmen:"--are his own? is it not perfectly well known, that "the

great majority" think of him and his views with a feeling which I

will not describe, because it is not necessary for my argument? So

far is certain, that he has not the majority with him.

"In a tentative, paltering way." The word "paltering" I reject, as

vague; as to "tentative," he must show that I was tentative in my

sermons; and he has eight volumes to look through. As to the ninth,

my University sermons, of course I was "tentative;" but not because

"I would seldom or never let the world know how much I believed, or

how far I intended to go;" but because in deep subjects, which had

not been fully investigated, I said as much as I believed, and about

as far as I saw I could go; and a man cannot do more; and I account

no man to be a philosopher who attempts to do more. How long am I to

have the office of merely negativing assertions which are but

supported by former assertions, in which John is ever helping Tom,

and the elephant stands upon the tortoise? This is Blot

_fifteen_.

3. The Anglican Church

This writer says:--"If there is, as there is, a strong distrust of

certain Catholics, it is restricted to the proselytizing priests

among them; and especially to those, who, like Dr. Newman, have

turned round upon their mother Church (I had almost said their mother

country), with contumely and slander."--p. 18.

No one has a right to make a charge, without at least an attempt to

prove what he says; but this writer is consistent with himself. From

the time that he first spoke of me in the magazine, _when_ has he

ever even professed to give evidence of any sort for any one of his

charges, from his own sense of propriety, and without being

challenged on the point? After the sentence which I have been

quoting, and another like it, he coolly passes on to Tract 90! Blot

_sixteen_; but I shall dwell on it awhile, for its own sake.

Now I have been bringing out my mind in this volume on every subject

which has come before me; and therefore I am bound to state plainly

what I feel and have felt, since I was a Catholic, about the Anglican

Church. I said, in a former page, that, on my conversion, I was not

conscious of any change in me of thought or feeling, as regards

matters of doctrine; this, however, was not the case as regards some

matters of fact, and, unwilling as I am to give offence to religious

Anglicans, I am bound to confess that I felt a great change in my

view of the Church of England. I cannot tell how soon there came on

me--but very soon--an extreme astonishment that I had ever imagined

it to be a portion of the Catholic Church. For the first time, I

looked at it from without, and (as I should myself say) saw it as it

was. Forthwith I could not get myself to see in it anything else,

than what I had so long fearfully suspected, from as far back as

1836--a mere national institution. As if my eyes were suddenly

opened, so I saw it--spontaneously, apart from any definite act of

reason or any argument; and so I have seen it ever since. I suppose,

the main cause of this lay in the contrast which was presented to me

by the Catholic Church. Then I recognised at once a reality which was

quite a new thing with me. Then I was sensible that I was not making

for myself a Church by an effort of thought; I needed not to make

an act of faith in her; I had not painfully to force myself into a

position, but my mind fell back upon itself in relaxation and in

peace, and I gazed at her almost passively as a great objective fact.

I looked at her;--at her rites, her ceremonial, and her precepts; and

I said, "This _is_ a religion;" and then, when I looked back upon the

poor Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so hard, and upon all

that appertained to it, and thought of our various attempts to dress

it up doctrinally and esthetically, it seemed to me to be the veriest

of nonentities. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! How can I make a

record of what passed within me, without seeming to be satirical? But

I speak plain, serious words. As people call me credulous for

acknowledging Catholic claims, so they call me satirical for

disowning Anglican pretensions; to them it _is_ credulity, to them it

_is_ satire; but it is not so in me. What they think exaggeration, I

think truth. I am not speaking of the Anglican Church in any disdain,

though to them I seem contemptuous. To them of course it is "Aut

Caesar aut nullus," but not to me. It may be a great creation, though

it be not divine, and this is how I judge of it. Men, who abjure the

divine right of kings, would be very indignant, if on that account

they were considered disloyal. And so I recognise in the Anglican

Church a time-honoured institution, of noble historical memories, a

monument of ancient wisdom, a momentous arm of political strength, a

great national organ, a source of vast popular advantage, and, to a

certain point, a witness and teacher of religious truth. I do not

think that, if what I have written about it since I have been a

Catholic, be equitably considered as a whole, I shall be found to

have taken any other view than this; but that it is something sacred,

that it is an oracle of revealed doctrine, that it can claim a share

in St. Ignatius or St. Cyprian, that it can take the rank, contest

the teaching, and stop the path of the Church of St. Peter, that it

can call itself "the Bride of the Lamb," this is the view of it which

simply disappeared from my mind on my conversion, and which it would

be almost a miracle to reproduce. "I went by, and lo! it was gone; I

sought it, but its place could no where be found;" and nothing can

bring it back to me. And, as to its possession of an episcopal

succession from the time of the apostles, well, it may have it, and,

if the holy see ever so decided, I will believe it, as being the

decision of a higher judgment than my own; but, for myself, I must

have St. Philip's gift, who saw the sacerdotal character on the

forehead of a gaily-attired youngster, before I can by my own wit

acquiesce in it, for antiquarian arguments are altogether unequal to

the urgency of visible facts. Why is it that I must pain dear friends

by saying so, and kindle a sort of resentment against me in the

kindest of hearts? but I must, though to do it be not only a grief to

me, but most impolitic at the moment. Anyhow, this is my mind; and,

if to have it, if to have betrayed it, before now, involuntarily by

my words or my deeds, if on a fitting occasion, as now, to have

avowed it, if all this be a proof of the justice of the charge

brought against me of having "turned round upon my Mother-Church with

contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no other sense, do I

plead guilty to it without a word in extenuation.

In no other sense surely; the Church of England has been the

instrument of Providence in conferring great benefits on me; had I

been born in Dissent, perhaps I should never have been baptised; had

I been born an English Presbyterian, perhaps I should never have

known our Lord's divinity; had I not come to Oxford, perhaps I never

should have heard of the visible Church, or of Tradition, or other

Catholic doctrines. And as I have received so much good from the

Anglican Establishment itself, can I have the heart, or rather the

want of charity, considering that it does for so many others, what it

has done for me, to wish to see it overthrown? I have no such wish

while it is what it is, and while we are so small a body. Not for its

own sake, but for the sake of the many congregations to which it

ministers, I will do nothing against it. While Catholics are so weak

in England, it is doing our work; and, though it does us harm in a

measure, at present the balance is in our favour. What our duty would

be at another time and in other circumstances, supposing, for

instance, the Establishment lost its dogmatic faith, or at least did

not preach it, is another matter altogether. In secular history we

read of hostile nations having long truces, and renewing them from

time to time, and that seems to be the position the Catholic Church

may fairly take up at present in relation to the Anglican

Establishment.

Doubtless the National Church has hitherto been a serviceable

breakwater against doctrinal errors, more fundamental than its own.

How long this will last in the years now before us, it is impossible

to say, for the nation drags down its Church to its own level; but

still the National Church has the same sort of influence over the

nation that a periodical has upon the party which it represents, and

my own idea of a Catholic's fitting attitude towards the National

Church in this its supreme hour, is that of assisting and sustaining

it, if it be in our power, in the interest of dogmatic truth. I

should wish to avoid everything, except under the direct call of

duty, which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to

unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its

maintenance of those great Christian and Catholic principles and

doctrines which it has up to this time successfully preached.

I say, "except under the call of duty;" and this exception, I am

obliged to admit, is not a slight one; it is one which necessarily

places a bar to any closer relation between it and ourselves, than

that of an armed truce. For, in the first place, it stands to reason

that even a volume, such as this has been, exerts an influence

adverse to the Establishment--at least in the case of many minds; and

this I cannot avoid, though I have sincerely attempted to keep as

wide of controversy in the course of it, as ever I could. And next I

cannot deny, what must be ever a very sore point with Anglicans,

that, if any Anglican comes to me after careful thought and prayer,

and with deliberate purpose, and says, "I believe in the Holy

Catholic Church, and that your Church and yours alone is it, and I

demand admittance into it," it would be the greatest of sins in me to

reject such a man, as being a distinct contravention of our Lord's

maxim, "Freely ye have received, freely give."

I have written three volumes which may be considered controversial;

Loss and Gain in 1847; Lectures on Difficulties felt by Anglicans in

submitting to the Catholic Church in 1850; and Lectures on the

present Position of Catholics in England in 1851. And though I have

neither time nor need to go into the matter minutely, a few words

will suffice for some general account of what has been my object and

my tone in these works severally.

Of these three, the Lectures on the "Position of Catholics" have

nothing to do with the Church of England, as such; they are directed

against the Protestant or Ultra-Protestant tradition on the subject

of Catholicism since the time of Queen Elizabeth, in which parties

indeed in the Church of England have largely participated, but which

cannot be confused with Anglican teaching itself. Much less can that

tradition be confused with the doctrine of the Laudian or of the

Tractarian School. I owe nothing to Protestantism; and I spoke

against it even when I was an Anglican, as well as in these Catholic

lectures. If I spoke in them against the Church Established, it was

because, and so far as, at the time when they were delivered the

Establishment took a violent part against the Catholic Church, on the

basis of the Protestant tradition. Moreover, I had never as an

Anglican been a lover of the actual Establishment; Hurrell Froude's

Remains, in which it is called an "incubus" and "Upas Tree," will

stand in evidence, as for him, so for me; for I was one of the

editors. What I said even as an Anglican, it is not strange that I

said when I was not. Indeed I have been milder in my thoughts of the

Establishment ever since I have been a Catholic than before, and for

an obvious reason:--when I was an Anglican, I viewed it as repressing

a higher doctrine than its own; and now I view it as keeping out a

lower and more dangerous.

Then as to my Lectures on Anglican Difficulties. Neither were these

formally directed against the National Church. They were addressed to

the "Children of the Movement of 1833," to impress upon them, that,

whatever was the case with others, their duty at least was to become

Catholics, since Catholicism was the real scope and issue of that

Movement. "There is but one thing," I say, "that forces me to

speak.... It will be a miserable thing for you and for me, if I have

been instrumental in bringing you but half-way, if I have co-operated

in removing your invincible ignorance, but am able to do no

more."--p. 5. Such being the drift of the volume, the reasoning

directed against the Church of England goes no further than this,

that it had no claims whatever on such of its members as were

proceeding onwards with the Movement into the Catholic Church.

Lastly, as to Loss and Gain: it is the story, simply ideal, of the

conversion of an Oxford man. Its drift is to show how little there is

in Anglicanism to satisfy and retain a young and earnest heart. In

this tale, all the best characters are sober Church-of-England

people. No Tractarians proper are introduced: and this is noted in

the advertisement: "No _proper_ representative is intended in this

tale, of the religious opinions, which had lately so much influence

in the University of Oxford." There _could_ not be such in the tale,

without the introduction of friends, which was impossible in its very

notion. But, since the scene was to be laid during the very years,

and at the head-quarters, of Tractarianism, some expedient was

necessary in order to meet what was a great difficulty. My expedient

was the introduction of what may be called Tractarians _improper_;

and I took them the more readily, because, though I knew that such

there were, I knew none of them personally. I mean such men as I used

to consider of "the gilt-gingerbread school," from whom I expected

little good, persons whose religion lay in ritualism or architecture,

and who "played at Popery" or at Anglicanism. I repeat I knew no such

men, because it is one thing to desire fine churches and ceremonies

(which of course I did myself), and quite another thing to desire

these and nothing else; but at that day there was in some quarters,

though not in those where I had influence, a strong movement in the

esthetic direction. Doubtless I went too far in my apprehension of

such a movement: for one of the best, and most devoted and

hard-working priests I ever knew was the late Father Hutchison, of

the London Oratory, and I believe it was architecture that directed

his thoughts towards the Catholic Church. However, I had in my mind

an external religion which was inordinate; and, as the men who were

considered instances of it, were personally unknown to me, even by

name, I introduced them, under imaginary representatives, in Loss and

Gain, and that, in order to get clear of Tractarians proper; and of

the three men, whom I have introduced, the Anglican is the best. In

like manner I introduced two "gilt-gingerbread" young ladies, who

were ideal, absolutely, utterly, without a shred of concrete

existence about them; and I introduced them with the remark that they

were "really kind charitable persons," and "_by no means_ put forth

as _a type_ of a class," that "among such persons were to be found

the gentlest spirits and the tenderest hearts," and that "these

sisters had open hands, if they had not wise heads," but that "they

did not know much of matters ecclesiastical, and they knew less of

themselves."

It has been said, indeed, I know not to what extent, that I

introduced my friends or partisans into the tale; this is utterly

untrue. Only two cases of this misconception have come to my

knowledge, and I at once denied each of them outright; and I take

this opportunity of denying generally the truth of all other similar

charges. No friend of mine, no one connected in any way with the

Movement, entered into the composition of any one of the characters.

Indeed, putting aside the two instances which have been distinctly

brought before me, I have not even any sort of suspicion who the

persons are, whom I am thus accused of introducing.

Next, this writer goes on to speak of Tract 90; a subject of which I

have treated at great length in a former passage of this narrative,

and, in consequence, need not take up again now.

4. Series of Lives of the English Saints

I have given the history of this publication above at pp. 195-196. It

was to have consisted of almost 300 Lives, and I was to have been the

editor. It was brought to an end, before it was well begun, by the

act of friends who were frightened at the first Life printed, the

Life of St. Stephen Harding. Thus I was not responsible except for

the first two numbers; and the advertisements distinctly declared

this. I had just the same responsibility about the other Lives, that

my assailant had, and not a bit more. However, it answers his purpose

to consider me responsible.

Next, I observe, that his delusion about "hot-headed fanatic young

men" continues: here again I figure with my strolling company. "They

said," he observes, "what they believed; at least, what they had been

taught to believe that they ought to believe. And who had taught

them? Dr. Newman can best answer that question," p. 20. Well, I will

do what I can to solve the mystery.

Now as to the juvenile writers in the proposed series. One was my

friend Mr. Bowden, who in 1843 was a man of 46 years old; he was to

have written St. Boniface. Another was Mr. Johnson, a man of 42; he

was to have written St. Aldelm. Another was the author of St.

Augustine: let us hear something about him from this writer:--

"Dr. Newman," he says, "might have said to the Author of the Life of

St. Augustine, when he found him, in _the heat and haste of youthful

fanaticism_, outraging historic truth and the law of evidence, 'This

must not be.'"--p. 20.

Good. This juvenile was past 40--well, say 39. Blot _seventeen_.

"This must not be." This is what I ought to have said, it seems! And

then, you see, I have not the talent, and never had, of some people,

for lecturing my equals, much less men twenty years older than

myself.

But again, the author of St. Augustine's Life distinctly says in his

advertisement, "_No one but himself_ is responsible for the way in

which these materials have been used." Blot _eighteen_.

Thirty-three Lives were actually published. Out of the whole number

this writer notices _three_. Of these one is "charming;" therefore I

am not to have the benefit of it. Another "outrages historic truth

and the law of evidence;" therefore "it was notoriously sanctioned by

Dr. Newman." And the third was "one of the most offensive," and Dr.

Newman must have formally connected himself with it in "a moment of

amiable weakness."--p. 22. What even-handed justice is here! Blot

_nineteen_.

But to return to the juvenile author of St. Augustine:--"I found,"

says this writer, "the Life of St. Augustine saying, that, though the

pretended visit of St. Peter to England wanted _historic evidence_,

'yet it has undoubtedly been received as a _pious opinion_ by the

Church at large, as we learn from the often-quoted words of St.

Innocent I. (who wrote A.D. 416) that St. Peter was instrumental in

the conversion of the West generally.'"--p. 21. He brings this

passage against me (with which, however, I have nothing more to do

than he has) as a great misdemeanour; but let us see what his

criticism is worth. "And this sort of argument," continues the

passage, "though it ought to be kept _quite distinct from_

documentary and historic proof, will _not be without its effect_ on

devout minds," etc. I should have thought this a very sober doctrine,

viz. that we must not confuse together two things quite distinct from

each other, criticism and devotion, so proof and opinion--that a

_devout_ mind will hold _opinions_ which it cannot demonstrate by

"historic _proof_." What, I ask, is the harm of saying this? Is

_this_ my assailant's definition of opinion, "a thing which _can_ be

proved?" I cannot answer for him, but I can answer for men in

general. Let him read Sir David Brewster's "More Worlds than

One;"--this principle, which is so shocking to my assailant, is

precisely the argument of Sir David's book; he tells us that the

plurality of worlds _cannot_ be _proved_, but _will_ be _received_ by

religious men. He asks, p. 229, "_If_ the stars are _not_ suns, for

what conceivable _purpose_ were they created?" and then he lays down

dogmatically, p. 254, "There is no _opinion_, _out of_ the region of

_pure demonstration_, more universally _cherished_ than the doctrine

of the Plurality of worlds." And in his title-page he styles this

"opinion" "the _creed_ of the philosopher and the _hope_ of the

Christian." If Brewster may bring devotion into astronomy, why may

not my friend bring it into history? and that the more, when he

actually declares that it ought to be kept _quite distinct_ from

history, and by no means assumes that he is an historian because he

is a hagiographer; whereas, somehow or other, Sir David does seem to

me to show a zeal greater than becomes a _savant_, and to assume that

he himself is a theologian because he is an astronomer. This writer

owes Sir David as well as me an apology. Blot _twenty_.

He ought to wish his original charge against me in the magazine dead

and buried; but he has the good sense and good taste to revive it

again and again. This is one of the places which he has chosen for

it. Let him then, just for a change, substitute Sir David Brewster

for me in his sentence; Sir David has quite as much right to the

compliment as I have, as far as this Life of St. Augustine is

concerned. Then he will be saying, that, because Sir David teaches

that the belief in more worlds than one is a pious opinion, and not a

demonstrated fact, he "does not care for truth for its own sake, or

teach men to regard it as a virtue," p. 21. Blot _twenty-one_.

However, he goes on to give in this same page one other evidence of

my disregard of truth. The author of St. Augustine's Life also asks

the following question: "_On what evidence_ do we put faith in the

existence of St. George, the patron of England? Upon such, assuredly,

as an acute _critic or skillful pleader_ might easily scatter to the

winds; the belief of prejudiced or credulous witnesses, the unwritten

record of empty pageants and bauble decorations. On the side of

scepticism might be exhibited a powerful array of suspicious legends

and exploded acts. Yet, _after all, what Catholic is there but would

count it a profaneness to question the existence of St. George?_" On

which my assailant observes, "When I found Dr. Newman allowing his

disciples ... in page after page, in Life after Life, to talk

nonsense of this kind which is not only sheer Popery, _but saps the

very foundation of historic truth_, was it so wonderful that I

conceived him to have taught and thought like them?" p. 22, that is,

to have taught lying.

Well and good; here again take a parallel; not St. George, but

Lycurgus.

Mr. Grote says: "Plutarch begins his biography of Lycurgus with the

following ominous words: 'Concerning the lawgiver Lycurgus, we can

assert _absolutely nothing_, which is not controverted. There are

different stories in respect to his birth, his travels, his death,

and also his mode of proceeding, political as well as legislative:

least of all is the time in which he lived agreed on.' And this

exordium _is but too well borne out_ by the unsatisfactory nature of

the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch himself, but in

those other authors, out of whom we are obliged to make up our idea

of the memorable Lycurgian system."--Greece, vol. ii. p 455. But

Bishop Thirlwall says, "Experience proves that _scarcely any amount

of variation_, as to the time or circumstances of a fact, in the

authors who record it, _can be a sufficient ground_ for doubting its

reality."--Greece, vol. i. p. 332.

Accordingly, my assailant is virtually saying of the latter of these

two historians, "When I found the Bishop of St. David's talking

nonsense of this kind, which saps the very foundation of historic

truth," was it "hasty or far-fetched" to conclude "that he did not

care for truth for its own sake, or teach his disciples to regard it

as a virtue?" p. 21. Nay, further, the Author of St. Augustine is no

more a disciple of mine, than the Bishop of St. David's is of my

assailant's, and therefore the parallel will be more exact if I

accuse this professor of history of _teaching_ Dr. Thirlwall not to

care for truth, as a virtue, for its own sake. Blot _twenty-two_.

It is hard on me to have this dull, profitless work. But I have

pledged myself;--so now for St. Walburga.

Now will it be believed that this writer suppresses the fact that the

miracles of St. Walburga are treated by the author of her Life as

mythical? yet that is the tone of the whole composition. This writer

can notice it in the Life of St. Neot, the first of the three Lives

which he criticises; these are his words: "Some of them, the writers,

for instance, of Volume 4, which contains, among others, a charming

life of St. Neot, treat the stories openly as legends and myths, and

tell them as they stand, without asking the reader, or themselves, to

believe them altogether. The method is harmless enough, if the

legends had stood alone; but dangerous enough, when they stand side

by side with stories told in earnest, like that of St. Walburga."--p.

22.

Now, first, that the miraculous stories _are_ treated, in the Life of

St. Walburga, as legends and myths. Throughout, the miracles and

extraordinary occurrences are spoken of as "said" or "reported;" and

the suggestion is made that, even though they occurred, they might

have been after all natural. Thus, in one of the very passages which

my assailant quotes, the author says, "Illuminated men feel the

privileges of Christianity, and to them the evil influence of Satanic

power is horribly discernible, like the Egyptian darkness which could

be felt; and _the only way to express_ their keen perception of it is

_to say_, that they _see_ upon the countenances of the slaves of sin,

the marks, and lineaments, and stamp of the evil one; and [that] they

_smell_ with their nostrils the horrible fumes that arise from their

_vices_ and uncleansed _heart_," etc. p.78. This introduces St.

Sturme and the gambolling Germans; what does it mean but that "the

intolerable scent" was nothing physical, or strictly miraculous, but

the horror, parallel to physical distress, with which the saint was

affected, from his knowledge of the state of their souls? My

assailant is a lucky man, if mental pain has never come upon him with

a substance and a volume, as forcible as if it were bodily.

And so in like manner, the author of the Life says, as this writer

actually has quoted him, "a story _was told and believed_," p. 94.

"One evening, _says her history_," p. 87. "Another incident _is thus

related_," p. 88. "Immediately, _says_ Wuelfhard," p. 91. "A vast

number of other cases are _recorded_," p. 92. And there is a distinct

intimation that they may be myths, in a passage which this assailant

himself quotes, "All these have the _character_ of a gentle mother

correcting the idleness and faults of careless and thoughtless

children with tenderness."--p. 95. I think the criticism which he

makes upon this Life is one of the most wanton passages in his

pamphlet. The Life is beautifully written, full of poetry, and, as I

have said, bears on its very surface the profession of a legendary

and mythical character. Blot _twenty-three_.

In saying all this, I have no intention whatever of implying that

miracles did not illustrate the Life of St. Walburga; but neither the

author nor I have bound ourselves to the belief of certain instances

in particular. My assailant, in the passage which I just now quoted

from him, made some distinction, which was apparently intended to

save St. Neot, while it condemned St. Walburga. He said that legends

are "dangerous enough, when they stand side by side with stories told

in earnest like St. Walburga." He will find he has here Dr. Milman

against him, as he has already had Sir David Brewster, and the Bishop

of St. David's. He accuses me of having "outraged historic truth and

the law of evidence," because friends of mine have considered that,

though opinions need not be convictions, nevertheless that legends

may be connected with history: now, on the contrary, let us hear the

Dean of St. Paul's:--

"_History_, to be _true_, must condescend to speak the language of

_legend_; the _belief_ of the times is _part_ of the _record_ of the

times; and, though there may occur what may baffle its more calm and

searching philosophy, it _must not disdain_ that which was the

primal, almost universal, motive of human life."--Latin. Christ.,

vol. i. p. 388. Dr. Milman's decision justifies me in putting this

down as Blot _twenty-four_.

However, there is one miraculous account for which this writer makes

me directly answerable, and with reason; and with it I shall conclude

my reply to his criticisms on the "Lives of the English Saints." It

is the medicinal oil which flows from the relics of St. Walburga.

Now, as I shall have occasion to remark under my next head, these two

questions among others occur, in judging of a miraculous story; viz.

whether the matter of it is extravagant, and whether it is a fact.

And first, it is plain there is nothing extravagant in this report of

the relics having a supernatural virtue; and for this reason, because

there are such instances in Scripture, and Scripture cannot be

extravagant. For instance, a man was restored to life by touching the

relics of the prophet Eliseus. The sacred text runs thus:--"And

Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites

invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass,

as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men;

and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha. And, when the man

was let down, _and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived_, and

stood upon his feet." Again, in the case of an inanimate substance,

which had touched a living saint: "And God wrought _special miracles_

by the hands of Paul; so that _from his body_ were brought unto the

sick _handkerchiefs or aprons_, and _the diseases departed from

them_." And again in the case of a pool: "An _angel went down_ at a

certain season into the pool, and troubled the water; whosoever then

first, after the troubling of the water, stepped in, _was made whole

of whatsoever disease_ he had." 2 Kings [4 Kings] xiii. 20, 21. Acts

xix. 11, 12. John v. 4. Therefore there is nothing _extravagant_ in

the _character_ of the miracle.

The main question then (I do not say the only remaining question, but

the main question) is the _matter of fact_:--_is_ there an oil

flowing from St. Walburga's tomb, which is medicinal? To this

question I confined myself in the Preface to the volume. Of the

accounts of medieval miracles, I said that there was no

_extravagance_ in their _general character_, but I could not affirm

that there was always _evidence_ for them. I could not simply accept

them as _facts_, but I could not reject them in their _nature_; they

_might_ be true, for they were not impossible: but they were _not

proved_ to be true, because there was not trustworthy testimony.

However, as to St. Walburga, I made _one_ exception, the fact of the

medicinal oil, since for that miracle there was distinct and

successive testimony. And then I went on to give a chain of

witnesses. It was my duty to state what those witnesses said in their

very words; and I did so; they were in Latin, and I gave them in

Latin. One of them speaks of the "sacrum oleum" flowing "de membris

ejus virgineis, maxime tamen pectoralibus;" and I so printed it;--if

I had left it out, this sweet-tempered writer would have accused me

of an "economy." I gave the testimonies in full, tracing them from

the saint's death. I said, "She is one of the principal Saints of her

age and country." Then I quoted Basnage, a Protestant, who says, "Six

writers are extant, who have employed themselves in relating the

deeds or miracles of Walburga." Then I said that her "renown was not

the mere natural _growth_ of ages, but begins with the very century

of the Saint's death." Then I observed that only two miracles seem to

have been "distinctly reported of her as occurring in her lifetime;

and they were handed down apparently by tradition." Also, that they

are said to have commenced about A.D. 777. Then I spoke of the

medicinal oil as having testimony to it in 893, in 1306, after 1450,

in 1615, and in 1620. Also, I said that Mabillon seems not to have

believed some of her miracles; and that the earliest witness had got

into trouble with his bishop. And so I left it, as a question to be

decided by evidence, not deciding anything myself.

What was the harm of all this? but my critic has muddled it together

in a most extraordinary manner, and I am far from sure that he knows

himself the definite categorical charge which he intends it to convey

against me. One of his remarks is, "What has become of the holy oil

for the last 240 years, Dr. Newman does not say," p. 25. Of course I

did not, because I did not know; I gave the evidence as I found it;

he assumes that I had a point to prove, and then asks why I did not

make the evidence larger than it was. I put this down as Blot

_twenty-five_.

I can tell him more about it now; the oil still flows; I have had

some of it in my possession; it is medicinal; some think it is so by

a natural quality, others by a divine gift. Perhaps it is on the

confines of both.

5. Ecclesiastical Miracles

What is the use of going on with this writer's criticisms upon me,

when I am confined to the dull monotony of exposing and oversetting

him again and again, with a persistence, which many will think

merciless, and few will have the interest to read? Yet I am obliged

to do so, lest I should seem to be evading difficulties.

Now as to Miracles. Catholics believe that they happen in any age of

the Church, though not for the same purposes, in the same number, or

with the same evidence, as in apostolic times. The apostles wrought

them in evidence of their divine mission; and with this object they

have been sometimes wrought by evangelists of countries since, as

even Protestants allow. Hence we hear of them in the history of St.

Gregory in Pontus, and St. Martin in Gaul; and in their case, as in

that of the apostles, they were both numerous and clear. As they are

granted to evangelists, so are they granted, though in less measure

and evidence, to other holy men; and as holy men are not found

equally at all times and in all places, therefore miracles are in

some places and times more than in others. And since, generally, they

are granted to faith and prayer, therefore in a country in which

faith and prayer abound, they will be more likely to occur, than

where and when faith and prayer are not; so that their occurrence is

irregular. And further, as faith and prayer obtain miracles, so still

more commonly do they gain from above the ordinary interventions of

Providence; and, as it is often very difficult to distinguish between

a providence and a miracle, and there will be more providences than

miracles, hence it will happen that many occurrences will be called

miraculous, which, strictly speaking, are not such, and not more than

providential mercies, or what are sometimes called "graces" or

"favours."

Persons who believe all this, in accordance with Catholic teaching,

as I did and do, they, on the report of a miracle, will of necessity,

the necessity of good logic, be led to say, first, "It _may_ be," and

secondly, "But I must have _good evidence_ in order to believe it."

It _may_ be, because miracles take place in all ages; it must be

clearly _proved_, because perhaps after all it may be only a

providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an

imposture. Well, this is precisely what I have said, which this

writer considers so irrational. I have said, as he quotes me, p. 24,

"In this day, and under our present circumstances, we can only reply,

that there is no reason why they should not be." Surely this is good

logic, _provided_ that miracles _do_ occur in all ages; and so again

is it logical to say, "There is nothing, _prima facie_, in the

miraculous accounts in question, to repel a _properly taught_ or

religiously disposed mind." What is the matter with this statement?

My assailant does not pretend to say _what_ the matter is, and he

cannot; but he expresses a rude, unmeaning astonishment. Next, I

stated _what_ evidence there is for the miracles of which I was

speaking; what is the harm of that? He observes, "What evidence Dr.

Newman requires, he makes evident at once. He at least will fear for

himself, and swallow the whole as it comes."--p. 24. What random

abuse is this, or, to use _his own words_ of me just before, what

"stuff and nonsense!" What is it I am "swallowing"? "the whole" what?

the evidence? or the miracles? I have swallowed neither, nor implied

any such thing. Blot _twenty-six_.

But to return: I have just said that a Catholic's state of mind, of

logical necessity, will be, "It _may_ be a miracle, but it has to be

_proved_." _What_ has to be proved? 1. That the event occurred as

stated, and is not a false report or an exaggeration. 2. That it is

clearly miraculous, and not a mere providence or answer to prayer

within the order of nature. What is the fault of saying this? The

inquiry is parallel to that which is made about some extraordinary

fact in secular history. Supposing I hear that King Charles II. died

a Catholic, I should say, 1. It _may_ be. 2. What is your _proof_?

Accordingly, in the passage which this writer quotes, I observe,

"Miracles are the kind of facts proper to ecclesiastical history,

just as instances of sagacity or daring, personal prowess, or crime,

are the facts proper to secular history." What is the harm of this?

But this writer says, "Verily his [Dr. Newman's] idea of secular

history is almost as degraded as his idea of ecclesiastical," p. 24,

and he ends with this muddle of an _Ipse dixit_! Blot _twenty-seven_.

In like manner, about the Holy Coat at Treves, he says of me, "Dr.

Newman ... seems _hardly sure_ of the authenticity of the Holy Coat."

Why _need_ I be, more than I am sure that Richard III. murdered the

little princes? If I have not _means_ of making up my mind one way or

the other, surely my most logical course is "_not_ to be sure." He

continues, "Dr. Newman 'does not see _why it may not have been_ what

it professes to be.'" Well, is not that just what this writer would

say of a great number of the facts recorded in secular history? is it

not what he would be obliged to say of much that is told us about the

armour and other antiquities in the Tower of London? To this I

alluded in the passage from which he quotes; but he has _garbled_

that passage, and I must show it. He quotes me to this effect: "Is

the Tower of London shut against sight-seers because the coats of

mail or pikes there may have half-legendary tales connected with

them? why then may not the country people come up in joyous

companies, singing and piping, to _see_ the holy coat at Treves?" On

this he remarks, "To _see_, forsooth! to _worship_, Dr. Newman would

have said, had he known (as I take for granted he does not) the facts

of that imposture." Here, if I understand him, he implies that the

people came up, not only to see, but to worship, and that I have

slurred over the fact that their coming was an act of religious

homage, that is, what _he_ would call "worship." Now, will it be

believed that, so far from concealing this, I had carefully stated it

in the sentence immediately preceding, and _he suppresses it_? I say,

"The world pays civil honour to it [a jewel said to be Alfred's] on

the probability; we pay _religious honour_ to relics, if so be, on

the probability. Is the Tower of London," I proceed, "shut," etc.

Blot _twenty-eight_.

These words of mine, however, are but one sentence in a long

argument, conveying the Catholic view on the subject of

ecclesiastical miracles; and, as it is carefully worked out, and very

much to the present point, and will save me doing over again what I

could not do better or more fully now, if I set about it, I shall

make a very long extract from the Lecture in which it occurs, and so

bring this Head to an end.

The argument, I should first observe, which is worked out, is this,

that Catholics set out with a definite religious tenet as a first

principle, and Protestants with a contrary one, and that on this

account it comes to pass that miracles are credible to Catholics and

incredible to Protestants.

"We affirm that the Supreme Being has wrought miracles on earth ever

since the time of the Apostles; Protestants deny it. Why do we

affirm, why do they deny? We affirm it on a first principle, they

deny it on a first principle; and on either side the first principle

is made to be decisive of the question ... Both they and we start

with the miracles of the Apostles; and then their first principle or

presumption against our miracles is this, 'What God did once, He is

_not_ likely to do again;' while our first principle or presumption

for our miracles is this; 'What God did once, He _is_ likely to do

again.' They say, It cannot be supposed He will work _many_ miracles;

we, It cannot be supposed He will work _few_.

"The Protestant, I say, laughs at the very idea of miracles or

supernatural powers as occurring at this day; his first principle is

rooted in him; he repels from him the idea of miracles; he laughs at

the notion of evidence; one is just as likely as another; they are

all false. Why? because of his first principle, There are no miracles

since the Apostles. Here, indeed, is a short and easy way of getting

rid of the whole subject, not by reason, but by a first principle

which he calls reason. Yes, it _is_ reason, granting his first

principle is true; it is not reason, supposing his first principle is

false.

"There is in the Church a vast tradition and testimony about

miracles; how is it to be accounted for? If miracles _can_ take

place, then the _fact_ of the miracle will be a natural explanation

of the _report_, just as the fact of a man dying accounts

satisfactorily for the news that he is dead; but the Protestant

cannot so explain it, because he thinks miracles cannot take place;

so he is necessarily driven, by way of accounting for the report of

them, to impute that report to fraud. He cannot help himself. I

repeat it; the whole mass of accusations which Protestants bring

against us under this head, Catholic credulity, imposture, pious

frauds, hypocrisy, priestcraft, this vast and varied superstructure

of imputation, you see, all rests on an assumption, on an opinion of

theirs, for which they offer no kind of proof. What then, in fact, do

they say more than this, _If_ Protestantism be true, you Catholics

are a most awful set of knaves? Here, at least, is a most sensible

and undeniable position.

"Now, on the other hand, let me take our own side of the question,

and consider how we ourselves stand relatively to the charge made

against us. Catholics, then, hold the mystery of the Incarnation;

and the Incarnation is the most stupendous event which ever can take

place on earth; and after it and henceforth, I do not see how we

can scruple at any miracle on the mere ground of its being unlikely

to happen.... When we start with assuming that miracles are not

unlikely, we are putting forth a position which lies embedded, as it

were, and involved in the great revealed fact of the Incarnation. So

much is plain on starting; but more is plain too. Miracles are not

only not unlikely, but they are positively likely; and for this

simple reason, because for the most part, when God begins, He goes

on. We conceive, that when He first did a miracle, He began a series;

what He commenced, He continued: what has been, will be. Surely this

is good and clear reasoning. To my own mind, certainly, it is

incomparably more difficult to believe that the Divine Being should

do one miracle and no more, than that He should do a thousand; that

He should do one great miracle only, than that He should do a

multitude of lesser besides.... If the Divine Being does a thing

once, He is, judging by human reason, likely to do it again. This

surely is common sense. If a beggar gets food at a gentleman's house

once, does he not send others thither after him? If you are attacked

by thieves once, do you forthwith leave your windows open at night?

... Nay, suppose you yourselves were once to see a miracle, would you

not feel the occurrence to be like passing a line? would you, in

consequence of it, declare, 'I never will believe another if I hear

of one?' would it not, on the contrary, predispose you to listen to a

new report? ...

"When I hear the report of a miracle, my first feeling would be of

the same kind as if it were a report of any natural exploit or event.

Supposing, for instance, I heard a report of the death of some public

man; it would not startle me, even if I did not at once credit it,

for all men must die. Did I read of any great feat of valour, I

should believe it, if imputed to Alexander or Coeur de Lion. Did

I hear of any act of baseness, I should disbelieve it, if imputed to

a friend whom I knew and loved. And so in like manner were a miracle

reported to me as wrought by a Member of Parliament, or a Bishop of

the Establishment, or a Wesleyan preacher, I should repudiate the

notion: were it referred to a saint, or the relic of a saint, or the

intercession of a saint, I should not be startled at it, though I

might not at once believe it. And I certainly should be right in

this conduct, supposing my First Principle be true. Miracles to

the Catholic are historical facts, and nothing short of this; and

they are to be regarded and dealt with as other facts; and as

natural facts, under circumstances, do not startle Protestants, so

supernatural, under circumstances, do not startle the Catholic. They

may or may not have taken place in particular cases; he may be unable

to determine which, he may have no distinct evidence; he may suspend

his judgment, but he will say 'It is very possible;' he never will

say 'I cannot believe it.'

"Take the history of Alfred; you know his wise, mild, beneficent, yet

daring character, and his romantic vicissitudes of fortune. This

great king has a number of stories, or, as you may call them, legends

told of him. Do you believe them all? no. Do you, on the other hand,

think them incredible? no. Do you call a man a dupe or a block-head

for believing them? no. Do you call an author a knave or a cheat who

records them? no. You go into neither extreme, whether of implicit

faith or of violent reprobation. You are not so extravagant; you see

that they suit his character, they may have happened: yet this is

so romantic, that has so little evidence, a third is so confused in

dates or in geography, that you are in matter of fact indisposed

towards them. Others are probably true, others certainly. Nor do you

force every one to take your view of particular stories; you and your

neighbour think differently about this or that in detail, and agree

to differ. There is in the museum at Oxford, a jewel or trinket said

to be Alfred's; it is shown to all comers; I never heard the keeper

of the museum accused of hypocrisy or fraud for showing, with

Alfred's name appended, what he might or might not himself believe to

have belonged to that great king; nor did I ever see any party of

strangers who were looking at it with awe, regarded by any

self-complacent bystander with scornful compassion. Yet the curiosity

is not to a certainty Alfred's. The world pays civil honour to it on

the probability; we pay religious honour to relics, if so be, on the

probability. Is the Tower of London shut against sight-seers, because

the coats of mail and pikes there may have half-legendary tales

connected with them? why then may not the country people come up in

joyous companies, singing and piping, to see the Holy Coat at Treves?

There is our Queen again, who is so truly and justly popular; she

roves about in the midst of tradition and romance; she scatters myths

and legends from her as she goes along; she is a being of poetry, and

you might fairly be sceptical whether she had any personal existence.

She is always at some beautiful, noble, bounteous work or other, if

you trust the papers. She is doing alms-deeds in the Highlands; she

meets beggars in her rides at Windsor; she writes verses in albums,

or draws sketches, or is mistaken for the house-keeper by some

blind old woman, or she runs up a hill as if she were a child. Who

finds fault with these things? he would be a cynic, he would be

white-livered, and would have gall for blood, who was not struck with

this graceful, touching evidence of the love her subjects bear her.

Who could have the head, even if he had the heart, who could be so

cross and peevish, who could be so solemn and perverse, as to say

that some of these stories _may_ be simple lies, and all of them

might have stronger evidence than they carry with them? Do you think

she is displeased at them? Why then should He, the Great Father, who

once walked the earth, look sternly on the unavoidable mistakes of

His own subjects and children in their devotion to Him and His? Even

granting they mistake some cases in particular, from the infirmity of

human nature and the contingencies of evidence, and fancy there is or

has been a miracle here and there when there is not, though a

tradition, attached to a picture, or to a shrine, or a well, be very

doubtful, though one relic be sometimes mistaken for another, and St.

Theodore stands for St. Eugenius or St. Agathocles, still, once take

into account our First Principle, that He is likely to continue

miracles among us, which is as good as the Protestant's, and I do not

see why He should feel much displeasure with us on account of this,

or should cease to work wonders in our behalf. In the Protestant's

view, indeed, who assumes that miracles never are, our thaumatology

is one great falsehood; but that is _his_ First Principle, as I have

said so often, which he does not prove but assume. If _he_, indeed,

upheld _our_ system, or _we_ held _his_ principle, in either case he

or we should be impostors; but though we should be partners to a

fraud if we thought like Protestants, we surely are not if we think

like Catholics.

"Such then is the answer I make to those who would urge against us

the multitude of miracles recorded in our Saints' Lives and

devotional works, for many of which there is little evidence, and

for some next to none. We think them true in the same sense in which

Protestants think the history of England true. When they say _that_,

they do not mean to say that there are no mistakes, but no mistakes

of consequence, none which alter the general course of history. Nor

do they mean they are equally sure of every part; for evidence is

fuller and better for some things than for others. They do not stake

their credit on the truth of Froissart or Sully, they do not pledge

themselves for the accuracy of Doddington or Walpole, they do not

embrace as an Evangelist Hume, Sharon Turner, or Macaulay. And yet

they do not think it necessary, on the other hand, to commence a

religious war against all our historical catechisms, and abstracts,

and dictionaries, and tales, and biographies, through the country;

they have no call on them to amend and expurgate books of archaeology,

antiquities, heraldry, architecture, geography, and statistics, to

re-write our inscriptions, and to establish a censorship on all new

publications for the time to come. And so as regards the miracles of

the Catholic Church; if, indeed, miracles never can occur, then,

indeed, impute the narratives to fraud; but till you prove they are

not likely, we shall consider the histories which have come down

to us true on the whole, though in particular cases they may be

exaggerated or unfounded. Where, indeed, they can certainly be proved

to be false, there we shall be bound to do our best to get rid of

them; but till that is clear, we shall be liberal enough to allow

others to use their private judgment in their favour, as we use ours

in their disparagement. For myself, lest I appear in any way to be

shrinking from a determinate judgment on the claims of some of those

miracles and relics, which Protestants are so startled at, and to be

hiding particular questions in what is vague and general, I will avow

distinctly, that, _putting out of the question_ the _hypothesis of

unknown laws of nature_ (which is an evasion from the force of any

proof), I think it impossible to _withstand the evidence_ which is

brought for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples,

and for the motion of the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in the

Roman States. I _see no reason to doubt_ the material of the Lombard

crown at Monza; and I _do not see why_ the Holy Coat at Treves may

not have been what it professes to be. I _firmly believe_ that

portions of the True Cross are at Rome and elsewhere, that the Crib

of Bethlehem is at Rome, and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul

also.... Many men when they hear an educated man so speak, will at

once impute the avowal to insanity, or to an idiosyncrasy, or to

imbecility of mind, or to decrepitude of powers, or to fanaticism, or

to hypocrisy. They have a right to say so, if they will; and we have

a right to ask them why they do not say it of those who bow down

before the Mystery of mysteries, the Divine Incarnation?"

In my Essay on Miracles of the year 1826, I proposed three questions

about a professed miraculous occurrence, 1. is it antecedently

_probable_? 2. is it in its _nature_ certainly miraculous? 3. has it

sufficient _evidence_? These are the three heads under which I still

wish to conduct the inquiry into the miracles of ecclesiastical

history.

6. Popular Religion

This writer uses much rhetoric against a lecture of mine, in which I

bring out, as honestly as I can, the state of countries which have

long received the Catholic Faith, and hold it by the force of

tradition, universal custom, and legal establishment; a lecture in

which I give pictures, drawn principally from the middle ages, of

what, considering the corruption of the human race generally, that

state is sure to be--pictures of its special sins and offences, _sui

generis_, which are the result of that faith when it is separated

from love or charity, or of what Scripture calls a "dead faith," of

the light shining in darkness, and the truth held in unrighteousness.

The nearest approach which this writer is able to make towards

stating what I have said in this lecture, is to state the very

reverse. Observe: we have already had some instances of the haziness

of his ideas concerning the "Notes of the Church." These notes are,

as any one knows who has looked into the subject, certain great and

simple characteristics, which He who founded the Church has stamped

upon her in order to draw both the reason and the imagination of men

to her, as being really a divine work, and a religion distinct from

all other religious communities; the principal of these notes being

that she is Holy, One, Catholic, and Apostolic, as the Creed says.

Now, to use his own word, he has the incredible "audacity" to say,

that I have declared, not the divine characteristics of the Church,

but the sins and scandals in her, to be her Notes--as if I made God

the author of evil. He says distinctly, "Dr. Newman, with a kind of

desperate audacity, _will_ dig forth such _scandals_ as _Notes_ of

the Catholic Church." This is what I get at his hands for my honesty.

Blot _twenty-nine_.

Again, he says, "[Dr. Newman uses] the blasphemy and profanity which

he confesses to be so common in Catholic countries, as an argument

_for_, and not _against_ the 'Catholic Faith.'"--p. 34. That is,

because I admit that profaneness exists in the Church, therefore I

consider it a token of the Church. Yes, certainly, just as our

national form of cursing is an evidence of the being of a God, and as

a gallows is the glorious sign of a civilised country,--but in no

other way. Blot _thirty_.

What is it that I really say? I say as follows: Protestants object

that the communion of Rome does not fulfil satisfactorily the

expectation which we may justly form concerning the true Church, as

it is delineated in the four notes, enumerated in the Creed; and

among others, _e.g._ in the note of sanctity; and they point, in

proof of what they assert, to the state of Catholic countries. Now,

in answer to this objection, it is plain what I might have done, if I

had not had a conscience. I might have denied the fact. I might have

said, for instance, that the middle ages were as virtuous, as they

were believing. I might have denied that there was any violence, any

superstition, any immorality, any blasphemy during them. And so as to

the state of countries which have long had the light of Catholic

truth, and have degenerated. I might have admitted nothing against

them, and explained away everything which plausibly told to their

disadvantage. I did nothing of the kind; and what effect has this had

upon this estimable critic? "Dr. Newman takes a seeming pleasure," he

says, "in detailing instances of dishonesty on the part of

Catholics."--p. 34. Blot _thirty-one_. Any one who knows me well,

would testify that my "seeming pleasure," as he calls it, at such

things, is just the impatient sensitiveness, which relieves itself by

means of a definite delineation of what is so hateful to it.

However, to pass on. All the miserable scandals of Catholic

countries, taken at the worst, are, as I view the matter, no argument

against the Church itself; and the reason which I give in the lecture

is, that, according to the proverb, Corruptio optimi est pessima. The

Jews could sin in a way no other contemporary race could sin, for

theirs was a sin against light; and Catholics can sin with a depth

and intensity with which Protestants cannot sin. There will be more

blasphemy, more hatred of God, more of diabolical rebellion, more of

awful sacrilege, more of vile hypocrisy in a Catholic country than

anywhere else, because there is in it more of sin against light.

Surely, this is just what Scripture says, "Woe unto thee, Chorazin!

woe unto thee, Bethsaida!" And, again, surely what is told us by

religious men, say by Father Bresciani, about the present unbelieving

party in Italy, fully bears out the divine text: "If, after they have

escaped the pollutions of the world ... they are again entangled

therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the

beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way

of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the

holy commandments delivered unto them."

And what is true of those who thus openly oppose themselves to the

truth, as it was true of the Evil One in the beginning, will in an

analogous way be true in the case of all sin, be it of a heavier or

lighter character, which is found in a Catholic country:--sin will be

strangely tinged or dyed by religious associations or beliefs, and

will exhibit the tragical inconsistencies of the excess of knowledge

over love, or of much faith with little obedience. The mysterious

battle between good and evil will assume in a Catholic country its

most frightful shape, when it is not the collision of two distinct

and far-separated hosts, but when it is carried on in hearts

and souls, taken one by one, and when the eternal foes are so

intermingled and interfused that to human eyes they seem to coalesce

into a multitude of individualities. This is in course of years, the

real, the hidden condition of a nation, which has been bathed in

Christian ideas, whether it be a young vigorous race, or an old and

degenerate; and it will manifest itself socially and historically

in those characteristics, sometimes grotesque, sometimes hideous,

sometimes despicable, of which we have so many instances, medieval

and modern, both in this hemisphere and in the western. It is, I say,

the necessary result of the intercommunion of divine faith and human

corruption.