Chapter XVII: Part VII: General answer to Mr. Kingsley (3)

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.