What, then, does Dr. Newman mean? : a reply to a pamphlet lately published by Dr. Newman

WHAT, THEN, DOES DR. NEWMAN MEAN?"

A REPLY

TO

A PAMPHLET LATELY PUBLISHED

BY DR. NEWMAN.

BT THE

REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY.

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

SECOND EDITION.

MAOMILLAN AND CO.

1864.

LONDON I

t'HINTKf) BY R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET II II. I..

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

DR. NEWMAN has made a great mistake. He has published
a correspondence between himself and me, with certain
" Eeflexions " and a title-page, which cannot be allowed to
pass without a rejoinder.

Before commenting on either, I must give a plain account
of the circumstances of the controversy, which seem to have
been misunderstood in several quarters. In the January
number of Macmillans Magazine, I deliberately and ad-
visedly made use of these words : —

" Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the
" Eoman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need
" not, and, 011 the whole, ought not to be ; that cunning is the
" weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to
" withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which
" marries and is given in marriage." This accusation I based
upon a considerable number of passages in Dr. Newman's
writings, and especially on a sermon entitled " Wisdom and
Innocence," and preached by Dr. Newman as Vicar of St.
Mary's, and published as No. XX. of his " Sermons on
Subjects of the Day."

Dr. Newman wrote, in strong but courteous terms, to
Messrs. Macmillan and Co. complaining of this language as
a slander. I at once took the responsibility on myself, and
wrote to Dr. Newman.

T had been informed (by a Protestant) that he was in weak
health, that he wished for peace and quiet, and was averse
to controversy ; I therefore felt some regret at having dis-
turbed him : and this regret was increased by the moderate
and courteous tone of his letters, though they contained, of
course, much from which I differed. I addressed to him the
following letter, of which, as I trust every English gentleman
will feel, I have no reason to be ashamed : —

REVEREND SIR,

I have seen a letter of yours to Mr. Macmillan, in
which you complain of some expressions of mine in an
article in the January number of Macmillan' s Magazine.

That my words were just, I believed from many passages
of your writings ; but the document to which I expressly
referred was one of your sermons on " Subjects of the Day,"
No. XX. in the volume published in 1844, and entitled
" Wisdom and Innocence."

It was in consequence of that sermon that I finally shook
off the strong influence which your writings exerted on me,
and for much of which I still owe you a deep debt of
gratitude.

I am most happy to hear from you that I mistook (as I
understand from your letter) your meaning ; and I shall be
most happy, on your showing me that I have wronged you,
to retract my accusation as publicly as I have made it.
I am, Eev. Sir,

Your faithful servant,

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

I received a very moderate answer from Dr. Newman, and
a short correspondence ensued, which ended in my inserting
in the February number of Macmillan s Magazine the fol-
lowing apology : —

To the Editor of " MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE."
SIR,

In your last number I made certain allegations against
the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which I thought
were justified by a sermon of his, entitled " Wisdom and
Innocence" (Sermon XX. of " Sermons bearing on Subjects of
the Day "). Di\ Newman has, by letter, expressed in the
strongest terms his denial of the meaning which I have put
upon his words. It only remains, therefore, for me to express
my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him.

Yours faithfully,

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

My object had been throughout to avoid war, because
I thought Dr. Newman wished for peace. I therefore dropped
the question of the meaning of "many passages of his
waitings," and confined myself to the sermon entitled "Wis-
dom and Innocence," simply to give him an opportunity of
settling the dispute on that one ground.

But whether Dr. Newman lost his temper, or whether
he thought that he had gained an advantage over me, or
whether he wanted a more complete apology than I chose to
give, whatever, I say, may have been his reasons, he suddenly
changed his tone of courtesy and dignity for one of which
I shall only say that it shows sadly how the atmosphere of
the Romish priesthood has degraded his notions of what is
due to himself; and when he published (as I am much
obliged to him for doing) the whole correspondence, he
appended to it certain reflexions, in which he attempted to
convict me of not having believed the accusation which I had
made.

There remains for me, then, nothing but to justify my
mistake, as far as I can.

I am, of course, precluded from using the sermon entitled

"Wisdom and Innocence" to prove my words. I have
accepted Dr. Newman's denial that it means what I thought
it did; and Heaven forbid that I should withdraw my word
once given, at whatever disadvantage to myself. But more.
I am informed by those from whose judgment on such
points there is no appeal, that, " en liault courage " and
strict honour, I am also precluded, by the terms of my expla-
nation, from using any other of Dr. Newman's past writings
to prove my assertion. I have declared Dr. Newman to
have been an honest man up to the 1st of February, 1864.
It was, as I shall show, only Dr. Newman's fault that I ever
thought him to be anything else. It depends entirely on
Dr. Newman whether he shall sustain the reputation which
he has so recently acquired. If I give him thereby a fresh
advantage in this argument, he is most welcome to it. He
needs, it seems to me, as many advantages as possible. But
I have a right, in self-justification, to put before the public
so much of that sermon, and of the rest of Dr. Newman's
writings, as will show why I formed so harsh an opinion of
them and him, and why I still consider that sermon (whatever
may be its meaning) as most dangerous and misleading. And
I have a full right to do the same by those " many passages of
Dr. Newman's writings " which I left alone at first, simply
because I thought that Dr. Newman wished for peace.

First, as to the sermon entitled " Wisdom and Innocence."
It must be remembered always that it is not a Protestant, but
a Romish sermon. It is occupied entirely with the attitude
of "the world" to "Christians" and "the Church." By the
world appears to be signified, especially, the Protestant public
of these realms. What Dr. Newman means by Christians,
and the Church, he has not left in doubt ; for in the pre-
ceding sermon (XIX. p. 328) he says : " But, if the truth must
" be spoken, what are the humble monk, and the holy nun,
" arid other regulars, as they are called, but Christians after

9

" the very pattern given us in Scripture ? What have they
" done but this — continue in the world the Christianity of
" the Bible ? Did our Saviour come on earth suddenly, as He
" will one day visit, in whom would He see the features of the
" Christians He and His apostles left behind them, but in
" them ? Who but these give up home and friends, wealth
" and ease, good name and liberty of will, for the kingdom of
" heaven ? Where shall we find the image of St. Paul, or
" St. Peter, or St. John, or of Mary the mother of Mark, or of
" Philip's daughters, but in those who, whether they remain
" in seclusion, or are sent over the earth, have calm faces, and
" sweet plaintive voices, and spare frames, and gentle man-
" ners, and hearts weaned from the world, and wills subdued ;
" and for their meekness meet with insult, and for their purity
" with slander, and for their gravity with suspicion, and for
" their courage with cruelty . . ." This is his definition of Chris-
tians. And in the sermon itself he sufficiently defines what
he means by "the Church" in two "notes" of her character,
which he shall give in his OAVII words (Sermon XX. p. 346 : —
" What, for instance, though we grant that sacramental con-
" fession and the celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate
" the body politic in the relation of rulers and subjects, or, in
" other words, to aggrandize the priesthood ? for how can the
" Church be one body without such relation?" . . .

Monks and nuns the only perfect Christians ; sacramental
confession and the celibacy of the clergy notes of the Church ;
the laity in relation to the clergy of subjects to rulers.
What more? If I, like others, on the strength of Dr.
Newman's own definitions, gave to his advice to Christians
concerning " wisdom," " prudence," " silence," the meaning
which they would have in the mouth of a Eomish teacher
—St. Alfonso da Liguori, for instance — whom can Dr. New-
man blame for the mistake, save himself ?

But to the sermon itself; the text of which is from

10

Matthew x. 16. It begins by stating that the Church has
been always helpless and persecuted, in proportion to its
purity. Dr. Newman then asks, how Christians are to
defend themselves if they might not fight? and answers,
" They were allowed the arms, that is, the arts, of the defence-
less." He shows how the weaker animals are enabled to
defend themselves by various means, among which he
enumerates " natural cunning, which enables them to elude
or even to destroy their enemies." He goes on to show
how the same holds good in our own species, in the case
of " a captive, effeminate race " ; of " slaves " ; of " ill-used
and oppressed children " ; of the " subjects of a despot."
" They exercise the inalienable right of self-defence in such
" methods as they best may ; only, since human nature is
" unscrupulous, guilt or innocence is all the same to them, if
" it works their purpose."

He goes on to point out the analogy between these facts
and the conduct fit for Christians. "The servants of Christ
" are forbidden to defend themselves by violence ; but they
" are not forbidden other means : direct means are not
" allowed, but others are even commanded. For instance,
" foresight, ' beware of men ' : avoidance, ' when they per-
" secute you in one city, flee into another ' : prudence and
" skill, as in the text, ' Be ye wise as serpents.' "

The mention of the serpent reminds him of the serpent in
Paradise ; and he says, " Considering that the serpent wras
" chosen by the enemy of mankind as the instrument of
" his temptations in Paradise, it is very remarkable that
" Christ should choose it as the pattern of wisdom for His
" followers. It is as if He appealed to the wThole world of
" sin, and to the bad arts by which the feeble gain advantages
" over the strong. It is as if He set before us the craft and
" treachery, the perfidy of the slave, and bade us extract a
" lesson even from so great an evil. It is as if the more we are

11

" forbidden violence, the more we are exhorted to prudence ;
" as if it were our bounden duty to rival the wicked in
" endowments of mind, and to excel them in their exercise."

Dr. Newman then goes on to assert, that " if there be one
reproach more than another which has been cast upon " the
Church, "it is that of fraud and cunning." He quotes the
imputations of craftiness and deceitfulness thrown upon St.
Paul, and even of " deceit " upon our Lord himself. He then
says that " Priestcraft has ever been considered the badge,
and its imputation is a kind of note, of the Church." He
asserts that the accusation has been, save in a few exceptions,
unfounded ; and that " the words ' craft ' and ' hypocrisy ' are
"but the version of 'wisdom' and ' harmlessness ' in the
" language of the world." " It is remarkable, however, that
" not only is harmlessness the corrective of wisdom, securing
" it against the corruption of craft and deceit, as stated in
" the text : but innocence, simplicity, implicit obedience to
" God, tranquillity of mind, contentment, these and the
" like virtues are in themselves a sort of wisdom ; I mean,
" they produce the same results as wisdom, because God
" works for those who do not work for themselves ; and thus
" they especially incur the charge of craft at the hands of the
" world, because they pretend to so little, yet effect so much.
" This circumstance admits dwelling on."
He then goes on to mention seven heads : —
" First, sobriety, self-restraint, control of word and feeling,
" which religious men exercise, have about them an appearance
" of being artificial, because they are not natural ; and of being
" artful, because artificial * ; and adds shortly after, that " those
" who would be holy and blameless, the sons of God, find so
" much in the world to unsettle and defile them, that they are
" necessarily forced upon a strict self-restraint, lest they should
" receive injury from such intercourse with it as is unavoid-
" able ; and this self-restraint is the first thing which makes

If

" holy persons seem wanting in openness and manliness."
Next he points out that " religious men are a mystery to the
" world ; and being a mystery, they will in mere self-defence
" be called by the world mysterious, dark, subtle, designing."
Next, that " it is very difficult to make the world understand
" the difference between an outward obedience and an inward
" assent." He then instances the relations between the early
Christians and the heathen magistrates ; and adds, that " when
" religious men outwardly conform, on the score of duty, to the
" powers that be, the world is easily led into the mistake that
" they have renounced their opinions, as well as submitted their
" actions ; and it feels or affects surprise, to find that their
" opinions remain ; and it considers, or calls this, an inconsis-
" tency, or a duplicity " : with more to the same purpose.

Next, the silent resignation of Christians is set forth as a
cause of the world's suspicion ; and " so is their confidence, in
" spite of their apparent weakness, their cause will triumph."

Another cause of the world's suspicion is, the unexpected
success of religious men.

Another, that the truth has in itself the power of spreading,
without instruments, " making the world impute " to secret
management that uniformity, which is nothing but the echo
of the One Living and True Word.

Another, that when Christians prosper, contrary to their
own expectations, " it looks like deceit to show surprise, and
to disclaim the work themselves."

And lastly, because God works for Christians, and they
are successful, when they only mean to be dutiful. " But
" what duplicity does the world think it, to speak of conscience,
" or honour, or propriety, or delicacy, or to give other tokens
" of personal motives, when the event seems to show that
" a calculation of results has been the actuating principle at
" bottom. It is God who designs, but His servants seem
" designing. ..."

13

Dr. Newman then goes on to point out how " Jacob is
" thought worldly wise in his dealings with Laban, whereas
" he was a 'plain man,' simply obedient to the angel." . . .
" Moses is sometimes called sagacious and shrewd in his
" measures or his law, as if wise acts might not come from
" the source of wisdom." . . . " Bishops have been called
" hypocritical in submitting and yet opposing themselves to
" the civil power, in a matter of plain duty, if a popular
" movement was the consequence ; and then hypocritical again,
" if they did their best to repress it. And, in like manner,
" theological doctrines or ecclesiastical usages are styled politic
" if they are but salutary ; as if the Lord of the Church, who
" has willed her sovereignty, might not effect it by secondary
" causes. What, for instance, though we grant that sacramental
" confession and the celibacy of the clergy do tend to con-
" solidate the body politic in the relation of rulers and subjects,
" or, in other words, to aggrandise the priesthood ? For how
" can the Church be one body without such relation ; and
" why should not He, who has decreed that there should be
" unity, take measures to secure it ?"

The reason of these suspicions on the part of the world is
then stated to be, that " men do not like to hear of the inter-
" position of Providence in the affairs of the world ; and
" they invidiously ascribe ability and skill to His agents, to
" escape the thought of an Infinite Wisdom and an Almighty
" Power. . . ."

The sermon then closes with a few lines of great
beauty, in that style which has won deservedly for Dr.
Newman the honour of being the most perfect orator of
this generation ; but they have no reference to the ques-
tion in hand, save the words, " We will glory in what they
disown."

I have tried conscientiously to give a fair and complete
digest of this, to me, very objectionable and dangerous

14

sermon. I have omitted no passage in which Dr. Newman
guards himself against the conclusions which I drew from
it ; and none, I verily believe, which is required for the full
understanding of its general drift. I have abstained from all
comment as I went on, in order not to prejudice the minds of
my readers. But I must now turn round and ask, whether
the mistake into which Dr. Newman asserts me to have
fallen was not a very reasonable one ; and whether the
average of educated Englishmen, in reading that sermon,
would not be too likely to fall into the same ? I put on it,
as I thought, the plain and straightforward signification. I
find I am wrong; and nothing is left for me but to ask,
with some astonishment, What, then, did the sermon mean ?
Why was it preached ? To insinuate that a Church which
had sacramental confession and a celibate clergy was the only
true Church ? Or to insinuate that the admiring young
gentlemen who listened to him stood to their fellow-country-
men in the relation of the early Christians to the heathen
Eomans ? Or that Queen Victoria's Government was to the
Church of England what Nero's or Diocletian's was to the
Church of Eome ? It may have been so. I know that men
used to suspect Dr. Newman — I have been inclined to do so
myself — of writing a whole sermon, not for the sake of the
text or of the matter, but for the sake of one single passing
hint — one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow
which, as he swept magnificently past on the stream of his
calm eloquence, seemingly unconscious of all presences, save
those unseen, he delivered unheeded, as, with his finger-tip, to
the very heart of an initiated hearer, never to be withdrawn
again. I do not blame him for that. It is one of the
highest triumphs of oratoric power, and may be employed
honestly and fairly, by any person who has the skill to do
it honestly and fairly. But then — Why did he entitle his
sermon " Wisdom and Innocence " ?

15

What, then, could I think that Dr. Newman meant? I
found a preacher bidding Christians imitate, to some un-
defined point, the " arts " of the basest of animals and of
men, and even of the Devil himself. I found him, by a
strange perversion of Scripture, insinuating that St. Paul's
conduct and manner were such as naturally to bring down on
him the reputation of being a crafty deceiver. I found him
— horrible to have to say it — even hinting the same of One
greater than St. Paul. I found him denying or explaining
away the existence of that priestcraft which is a notorious
fact to every honest student of history ; and justifying (as far
as I can understand him) that double-dealing by which
prelates, in the middle age, too often played off alternately
the sovereign against the people and the people against the
sovereign, careless which was in the right, as long as their
own power gained by the move. I found him actually using
of such (and, as I thought, of himself and his party likewise)
the words, " They yield outwardly ; to assent inwardly were;
" to betray the faith. Yet they are called deceitful and
" double-dealing, because they do as much as they can, and
" not more than they may." I found him telling Christians
that they will always seem " artificial," and " wanting in
openness and manliness ; " that they will always be " a
mystery" to the world, and that the world will always
think them rogues ; and bidding them glory in what the
world (i.e. the rest of their fellow-countrymen) disown, and
say with Mawworm, " I like to be despised."

Now how was I to know that the preacher, who had the
reputation of being the niost acute man of his generation, and
of having a specially intimate acquaintance with the weak-
nesses of the human heart, 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
upon his every word ? That he did not foresee that

10

they would think that they obeyed him, by becoming affected,
artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments and equivoca-
tions ? That he did not foresee that they, hearing his words
concerning priestcraft and double-dealing, and being engaged
in the study of the Mediaeval Church, would consider the
same chicanery allowed to them which they found practised
but too often by the Mediaeval Church? or even go to the
Komish casuists, to discover what amount of cunning did or
did not come under Dr. Newman's one passing warning
against craft and deceit ? In a word, that he did not foresee
that the natural result of the sermon on the minds of his
disciples would be, to make them suspect that truth was not
a virtue for its own sake, but only for the sake of the spread
of " 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 Pro-
testant public ?

All England stood round in those days, and saw that this
would be the outcome of Dr. Newman's teaching. How was
I to know that he did not see it himself ?

And as a fact, his teaching had this outcome. Whatever
else it did, it did this. In proportion as young men absorbed
it into themselves, it injured their straightforwardness and
truthfulness. The fact is notorious to all England. It spread
misery and shame into many an English home. The net
practical result of Dr. Newman's teachings on truthfulness
cannot be better summed up than by one of his own disciples,
Mr. Ward, who, in his "Ideal of a Christian Church," page
382, says thus : —

" Candour is rather an intellectual than a moral virtue, and
" by no means either universally or distinctively characteristic
" of the saintly mind."

Dr. Newman ought to have told his disciple, when he wrote
those words, that lie was on the highroad to the father of

17

lies ; and he ought to have told the world, too, that such
was his opinion ; unless he wished it to fall into the mistake
into which I fell— namely, that he had wisdom enough to
know the practical result of his words, and therefore meant
what they seemed to say.

Dr. Newman has nothing to blame for that mistake, save
his own method. If he would (while a member of the Church
of England) persist (as in this sermon) in dealing with matters
dark, offensive, doubtful, sometimes actually forbidden, at
least according to the notions of the great majority of English
Churchmen ; if he would always do so in a tentative, palter-
ing 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 ? What
wonder if they said of him (as he so naively, in one of his
letters, expresses his fear that they will say again), "Dr.
" Newman has the skill of a great master of verbal fence, who
" knows, as well as any man living, how to insinuate a doctrine
" without committing himself to it? " If he- told the world, as
he virtually does in this sermon, " I know that my conduct
" looks like cunning ; but it is only the ' arts ' of the defence-
" less : " what wonder if the world answered, " No. It is
" what it seems. That is just what we call cunning ; a habit
" of mind which, once indulged, is certain to go on from bad to
" worse, till the man becomes — like too many of the mediaeval
" clergy who indulged in it — utterly untrustworthy." Dr.
Newman, I say, has no one to blame but himself. The world
is not so blind but that it will soon find out an honest man if
he will take the trouble of talking and acting like one. No
one would have suspected him to be a dishonest man, if he
had not perversely chosen to assume a style which (as he
himself confesses) the world always associates with dis-
honesty.

18

When, therefore, Dr. Newman says (p. 16 of his pamphlet)
that " he supposes, in truth, there is nothing at all, however
" base, up to the high mark of Titus Gates, which a Catholic
" may not expect to be believed of him by Protestants, how-
"ever honourable and hard-headed," he is stating a mere
phantom of his own brain. It is not so. I do not believe it
ever was so. In the days when Jesuits were inciting fanatics
to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, and again in the days of the
Gunpowder Plot, there was deservedly a very strong feeling
against Eomish priests, and against a few laymen who were
their dupes ; and it was the recollection of that which caused
the " Titus Gates " tragedy, which Dr. Newman so glibly
flings in our teeth, omitting (or forgetting) that Gates' villany
would have been impossible without the preceding villanies
of Popish fanatics, and that he was unmasked, condemned,
and punished by the strong and great arm of British law.
But there was never, I believe, even in the worst times,
any general belief that Catholics, simply as such, must be
villains.

There is none now. The Catholic laity of these realms are
just as much respected and trusted as the Protestants, when
their conduct justifies that respect and trust, as it does in the
case of all save a few wild Irish ; and so are the Eomish
priests, as long as they show themselves good and honest
men, who confine themselves to the care of their flock. If
there is (as there is) a strong distrust of certain 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. And I confess, also,
that this public dislike is very rapidly increasing, for reasons
which I shall leave Dr. Newman and his advisers to find out
for themselves.

19

I go uii now to other works of Dr. Newman, from which
(as I told him in my first letter) I had conceived an opinion
unfavourable to his honesty.

I shall be expected to adduce, first and foremost, the too-
notorious No. 90 of " Tracts for the Times." I shall not do so.
On reading that tract over again, I have been confirmed in the
opinion which I formed of it at first, that, questionable as it
was, it was not meant to be consciously dishonest ; that some
few sayings in it were just and true ; that many of its extra-
vagances were pardonable, as the natural fruit of a revulsion
against the popular cry of those days, which called on clergy-
men to interpret the Articles only in their Calvinistic sense,
instead of including under them (as their wise framers intended)
not only the Calvinistic, but the Anglican form of thought.
There were pages in it which shocked me, and which shock
me still. I will instance the commentaries on the oth, on
the 7th, on the 9th, and on the 12th Articles ; because in
them Dr. Newman seemed to me trying to make the Articles
say the very thing which (I believe) the Articles were meant
not to say. But I attributed to him no intentional dishonesty.
The fullest licence of interpretation should be given to every
man who is bound by the letter of a document. The «/?///> >/*
imponentium should be heard of as little as possible, because
it is almost certain to become merely the aninmz interpretanr
t i>> in. And more : Every excuse was to be made for a man
struggling desperately to keep himself in what was, in fact,
his right place, to remain a member of the Church of England,
where Providence had placed him, while he felt himself
irresistibly attracted towards Rome. But I saw in that tract
a fearful danger for the writer. It was but too probable, that
if he continued to demand of that subtle brain of his, such
tours dc force as he had all but succeeded in performing,
when he tried to show that the Article against " the sacri-
fice of masses " " did not speak against the mass itself," he

B 2

20

would surely end in one or other of two misfortunes. He
would either destroy his own sense of honesty — i. e. conscious
truthfulness — and become a dishonest person; or he would
destroy his common sense — i. e. unconscious truthfulness, and
become the slave and puppet seemingly of his own logic, really
of his own fancy, ready to believe anything, however prepos-
terous, into which he could, for the moment, argue himself. I
thought, for years past, that he had become the former ; I
now see that he has become the latter.

I beg pardon for saying so much about myself. But this
is a personal matter between Dr. Newman and me, and I
say what I say simply to show, not Dr. Newman, but my
fellow-Protestants, that my opinion of him was not an
" impulsive " or " hastily-formed one." I know his writings
of old, and now. But I was so far just to him, that No. 90,
which made all the rest of England believe him a dishonest
man, had not the same effect on me.

But again —

I found Dr. Newman, while yet (as far as could be now
discovered) a member of the Church of England, aiding and
abetting the publication of certain "Lives of the English
Saints," of which I must say, that no such public outrage
on historic truth, and on plain common sense, has been per-
petrated in this generation. I do not intend to impute to
any of the gentlemen who wrote these lives — and more than
one of whom, I believe, I knew personally — the least deli-
berate intention to deceive. They said 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. He had, at least, that power
over them, and in those days over hundreds more, which
genius can always command. He might have used it well.
He might have made those "Lives of Saints," what they
ought to have been, books to turn the hearts of the children to

21

the Fathers, and to make the present generation acknowledge
and respect the true sanctity which there was, in spite of all
mistakes, in those great men of old — a sanctity founded on
true virtue and true piety, which required no tawdry super-
structure of lying and ridiculous wonders. He might have
said to the author of the " Life of St. Augustine," when he
found him, in the heat and haste of youthful fanaticism, out-
raging historic truth and the law of evidence : " This must
" not be. Truth for its own sake is a more precious thing
" than any purpose, however pious and useful, which we
" may have in hand." But when I found him allowing the
world to accept, as notoriously sanctioned by him, such state-
ments as are found in that life, was my mistake a hasty, or
far-fetched, or unfounded one, when I concluded that he did
not care for truth for its own sake, or teach his disciples to
regard it as a virtue ? I found that " Life of St. Augustine "
saying, that though the pretended visit of St. Peter to
England wanted historic evidence, "yet it has undoubtedly
" been received as a pious opinion by the Church at large, as
" we learn from some often-quoted words of St. Innocent I.
" (who wrote A.D. 416), that St. Peter was instrumental in
" the conversion of the West generally. And this sort of
" argument, though it ought to be kept quite distinct from
" documentary and historic proof, and will form no substitute
" for such proof with those who stipulate for something like
" legal accuracy in inquiries of this nature, will not be with-
" out its effect upon devout minds, accustomed to rest in the
" thought of God's watchful guardianship over His Church."
. . . And much more in the same tone, which is worthily,
and consistently summed up by the question : " On what
" evidence do we put faith in the existence of St. George, the
" patron of England ? Upon such, assuredly, as an acute
" critic or skilful pleader might easily scatter to the winds ;
" the belief of prejudiced or credulous witnesses ; the un-

22

" written 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?"

When I found Dr. Newman allowing his disciples —
members, even then, of the Protestant Church of England —
in page after page, in Life after Life, to talk nonsense of
this kind, which is not only sheer Popery, but saps the very
foundation of historic truth, was it so wonderful that I con-
ceived him to have taught and thought like them ?

But more. I found, that although the responsibility of these
Saints' Lives was carefully divided and guarded by anony-
mousness, and by Dr. Newman's advertisement in No. 1, that
the different lives "would be " published by their respective
authors on their own responsibility," yet that Dr. Newman
had, in what I must now consider merely a moment of amiable
weakness, connected himself formally with one of the most
offensive of these Lives, and with its most ridiculous state-
ments. I speak of the " Life of St. Walburga." There is, in
all the Lives, the same tendency to repeat childish miracles,
to waive the common laws of evidence, to say to the reader,
" You must believe all or nothing." But some of them, the
writers, for instance, of Vol. IV., which contains, among others,
a charming 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 dan-
gerous enough, when they stand side by side with stories told
in earnest, like that of St. Walburga. In that, not only has
the writer expatiated upon some of the most nauseous super-
stitions of the middle age, but Dr. Newman has, in a preface
signed with his initials, solemnly set his seal to the same,

The writer— an Oxford scholar, and, as far as I know, then

23

a professed member of the Church of England — dares to tell
us of such miracles as these : —

How a little girl, playing with a ball near the monastery,
was punished for her over-fondness for play, by finding the
ball stick to her hand, and, running to St. Walburga's shrine
to pray, had the ball immediately taken off.

How a woman who would spin on festival-days in like
manner found her distaff cling to her hand, and had to beg of
St Walburga's bone, before she could get rid of it.

How a man who came into the church to pray, "irre-
" verently kept his rough gauntlets, or gloves, on his hands,
" as he joined them in the posture of prayer." How they
were miraculously torn off, and then, when he repented,
" restored by a miracle." " All these," says the writer, " have
" the character of a gentle mother correcting the idleness and
" faults of careless and thoughtless children with tenderness."

" But the most remarkable and lasting miracle, attesting the
" holy Walburga's sanctity, is that which reckons her among
" the saints who are called ' Elaeophori,' or ' unguentiferous,'
" becoming, almost in a literal sense, olive-trees in the courts
" of God. These are they from whose bones a holy oil distils.
" That oil of charity and gentle mercy which graced them
" while alive, and feel in them the flame of universal love at
" their death, still permeates their bodily remains." After
quoting the names of male saints who have possessed this
property, the author goes on to detail how this holy oil fell, in
drops, sometimes the size of a hazel-nut, sometimes of a pea,
into the silver bowl beneath the stone slab. How, when the
state of Aichstadt was laid under an interdict, the holy oil
ceased, " until the Church regained its rights/'' and so forth, and
so forth ; and then, returning to his original image, metaphor,
illustration, proof, or whatever else it may be called by
reasoners such as he and Dr. Newman, he says that the same
flow of oil or dew is related of this female saint and that —

24

" women whose souls, like that of Walburga, were touched
" with true compassion ; whose bosom, like hers, melted by
" divine love, was filled with the milk of human kindness," &c.
I can quote no more. I really must recollect that my readers
and I are living in the nineteenth century.

And to all this stuff and nonsense, more materialist
than the dreams of any bone-worshipping Buddhist, Dr.
Newman puts a preface, in which he says of the question
whether the " miracles recorded in these narratives " (i. e. in
the whole series, this being only No. II.), especially those
contained in the life of St. Walburga, " are to be received as
matter of fact ; " that " in this day, and under our present
" circumstances, we can only reply, that there is no reason
" why they should not be. They are the kind of facts proper
"to ecclesiastical history, just as instances of sagacity or
" daring, personal prowess, or crime, are the facts proper to
" secular history." Verily, his idea of " secular history " is
almost as degraded as his idea of " ecclesiastical."

He continues : " There is nothing, then, primd facie, in
" the miraculous accounts in question to repel a properly -
" taught or religiously-disposed mind : " only, it has the
right of rejecting or accepting them according to the evidence.
No doubt ; for (as he himself confesses) Mabillon, like many
sensible Romanists, has found some of these miracles too
strong for his " acute nostril," and has, therefore, been re-
proved by Basnage for " not fearing for himself, and warning
the reader."

But what evidence Dr. Newman requires, he makes evident
at once. He, at least, will " fear for himself," and swallow
the whole as it comes.

" As to the miracles ascribed to St. Walburga, it must be
" remembered that she is one of the principal saints of her age
" and country ; " and then he goes on to quote the authorities
lor these miracles. They begin nearly 100 years after her

25

death, with one Wolfhard, a monk. Then follows, more than
400 years after, Philip, Bishop of Aichstadt, the disinterested
witness who tells the story of the holy oil ceasing during the
interdict, who tells the world how, " From her virgin limbs,
" maxime pectoralibus, flows this sacred oil, which, by the
" grace of God and the intercession of the blessed Virgin
" Walburga, illuminates the blind, makes the deaf hear/' &c.,
and of which he says that he himself once drank a whole
cup, and was cured forthwith. Then come the nuns of this
same place, equally disinterested witnesses, after the invention
of printing ; then one Eader, in 1615 ; and one Gretser, in
1620. But what has become of the holy oil for the last 240
years, Dr. Newman does not say.

In his "Lectures on the present position of Catholics in
England, addressed to the brothers of the Oratory," in 1851, he
has again used the same line of sophism. Argument I cannot
call it, while such a sentence as this is to be found : — (p. 295)
" Is the tower of London shut against sight-seers, because the
" coats of mail or pikes there may have half legendary tales
" connected with them? Why, then, may not the country
" people come up in joyous companies, singing and piping,
" to see the holy coat at Treves ? " To see, forsooth ! To
worship, Dr. Newman would have said, had he known (as I
take for granted he does not) the facts of that imposture. He
himself, meanwhile, seems hardly sure of the authenticity of
the holy coat. He (p. 298) " does not see why it may not have
been what it professes to be." It may " have been " so, no
doubt, but it certainly is not so now ; for the very texture
and material of the thing prove it to be spurious. However,
Dr. Newman " firmly believes that portions of the true Cross
" are at Eome and elsewhere, that the 'crib of Bethlehem is at
4< Eome," &c. And more than all ; he thinks it " impossible
" to withstand the evidence which is brought for the lique-
" faction of the blood of St. Januarius, at Naples, and for the

26

" motion of the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in the
" Eoman States."

How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the
Morning !

But when I read these outrages upon common sense, what
wonder if I said to myself, " This man cannot believe what
he is saying ? "

I believe I was wrong. I have tried, as far as I can, to
imagine to myself Dr. Newman's state of mind ; and I see
now the possibility of a man's working himself into that pitch
of confusion, that he can persuade himself, by what seems to
him logic, of anything whatsoever which he wishes to believe ;
and of his carrying self-deception to such perfection that it
becomes a sort of frantic honesty, in which he is utterly
unconscious, not only that he is deceiving others, but that he
is deceiving himself.

But I must say, If this be " historic truth," what is historic
falsehood? If this be honesty, what is dishonesty? If this
be wisdom, what is folly ?

I may be told, But this is Eoman Catholic doctrine. You
have no right to be angry with Dr. Newman for believing
it. I answer, this is not Eoman Catholic doctrine, any more
than belief in miraculous appearances of the Blessed Virgin,
or the miracle of the stigmata, on which two matters I shall
say something hereafter. No Eoman Catholic, as far as I
am aware, is bound to believe these things. Dr. Newman
has believed them of his own free will. He is anxious, it
would seem, to show his own credulity. - He has worked his
mind, it would seem, into that morbid state, in which non-
sense is the only food for which it hungers. Like the
sophists of old, he has used reason to destroy reason. I had
thought that, like them, he had preserved his own reason, in
order to be able to destroy that of others. But I was unjust
to him, as he says. While he tried to destroy others' reason,

27

he was at least fair enough to destroy his own. That is all
that I can say. Too many prefer the charge of insincerity to
that of insipience — Dr. Newman seems not to be of that
number.

But more. In connexion with this said life of St. Walburga,
Dr. Newman has done a deed, over which I might make
merry, if that were my wish. But I am not a wit. like
Dr. Newman.

In page 77, we find the following wonderful passage :
" Illuminated men ... to them the evil influence of Satanic
" power is horribly discernible . . . and the only way to
" express their keen perception of it is to say, that they see
" upon the countenances of the slaves of sin, the marks, and
" lineaments, and stamp of the evil one ; and they smell with
" their nostrils the horrible fumes which arise from their
" vices and uncleansed hearts, driving good angels from them
" in dismay, and attracting and delighting devils. It is -aid
" of the holy Sturme, a disciple and companion of Winfred,
" that in passing a horde of unconverted Germans, as they
" were bathing and gambolling in a stream, he was so over-
" powered by the intolerable scent which arose from them,
" that he nearly fainted away. And no doubt such preter-
" natural discernments are sometimes given to saints"- — and
a religious reason is given for it which I shall not quote.
1 should be ashamed to use the sacred name in the same
page with such materialist nonsense.

Now this " no doubt " seemed as convincing to Dr. Newman
as to the author. The fly which his disciple had heedlessly
cast over the turbid waters of his brain was too fine to be
resisted ; and he rose at it, heavily but surely, and has hooked
himself past remedy. For into his lectures, given before the
Catholic University of Ireland, published in 1859, he has
inserted, at page 96, on the authority of " an Oxford writer,"
the whole passage which relates to St. Sturme, word for word.

28

I thought, when I was in my former mind as to Dr.
Newman, that he had gone out of his way to tell this fable,
in order to intimate to the young gentlemen who had the
blessing of his instructions, that they need care nothing for
" truth for its own sake," in the investigation of a miracle,
but take it on any anonymous authority, provided only it
made for the Catholic faith. And when I saw that I was
wrong, 1 was sorely puzzled as to why my old friend
St. Sturme (against whom I do not say a word) had thus
been dragged unceremoniously into a passage on National
Literature, which had nothing whatsoever to do with him.
But I am not bound to find motives for Dr. Newman's
eccentricities.

But now comes the worst part of the matter. Dr. Newman
has been taken in. There is no miracle. There never was
any in the original document. There is none in Mabillon
who quotes it. It is a sheer invention of the ardent Oxford
writer.

The story appears first in the Life of St. Sturme, by his
contemporary and friend St. Eigils. It may be found in
Pertz's "Monumenta Critica;" and a most charming sketch of
mediaeval missionary life it is ; all the more so because one
can comfortably believe every word of it, from its complete
freedom (as far as I recollect) from signs and wonders.

The original passage sets forth how St. Sturme rides on his
donkey, and wishing for a place where to found Fulda Abbey,
came to a ford where the Sclavonians (not Germans, as the
Oxford writer calls them) were bathing, on the way to the
fair at Mentz, "whose naked bodies the animal on which he
" rode fearing, began to trenible, and the man of God himself
" shuddered (exhorruit) at their evil smell!' They mocked
him, and went about to hurt him ; but Divine providence
kept them back, and he went on in safety.

That is all. There is not a hint of a miracle. A horde of

29

dirty savages, who had not, probably, washed for a twelve-
month, smelt very strong, and St. Sturme had a nose. As
for his " nearly fainting away," that is a " devout imagi-
nation."

Really, if Dr. Newman or the " Oxford writer " had been
monks of more than one Eoman Catholic nation, one might
have excused their seeing something quite miraculous in any
man's being shocked at his fellow-creatures' evil smell ; but in
Oxford gentlemen, accustomed to the use of soap and water,
it is too bad.

Besides, to impute a miracle in this case, is clearly to put
the saint, in virtue, below his own donkey ; for while the
saint was only shocked at the odour, the donkey did what the
saint should have done (in imitation of many other saints
before and since), and expressed his horror at the impro-
priety of the deshabille of the " miscreants." Unless we are
to understand a miracle — and why not ? — in the donkey's
case likewise ; not indeed expressed, but understood as a
matter of course by " properly-taught and religiously-dis-
posed minds ; " and piously hold that the virtue of the saint
(which seems, from monkish writings, to be some kind of
gas or oil) diffused itself through the saddle into the inmost
recesses of the donkey's frame, and imbued him for the
moment, through the merits of St. Sturme, with a preter-
natural and angelic modesty ?

Which if we shall believe, we shall believe something not
a whit more ridiculous than many a story told in these
hapless volumes.

What can I say, again, of Dr. Newman's " Lectures on
Anglican Difficulties," published in 1850, save what I have
said already ? That if I, like hundreds more, have mistaken
his meaning and intent, he must blame not me, but himself.
If he will indulge in subtle paradoxes, in rhetorical ex-
aggerations ; if, whenever he touches on the question of

30

truth and honesty, he will take a perverse pleasure in
saying something shocking to plain English notions, he must
take the consequences of his own eccentricities.

He tells us, for instance, in Lecture VIII. that the Catholic
Church " holds it better for sun and moon to drop from
" heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions
" on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as
" temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say
" should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin,
" should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor
" farthing without excuse." And this in the face of those
permissions to deception, which may be seen formalized
and detailed in the works of the Eomish casuists, and espe-
cially in those of the great Liguori, whose books have
received the public and solemn sanction of the Eomish see.
In one only way can Dr. Xewman reconcile this passage
with the teaching of his Church ; namely, by saying that the
licence given to equivocation, even on oath, is so complete,
that to tell a downright lie is the most superfluous and
therefore most wanton of all sins.

But how will he reconcile it with the statement with
which we meet a few pages on, that the Church " considers .
" consent, though quick as thought, to a single unchaste wish
" as indefinitely more heinous than any lie that can possibly
" be fancied ; that is when viewed, of course, in itself, and
" apart from its causes, motives, and consequences ? " Heaven
forbid that any man should say that such consent is anything
save a great and mortal sin : but how can we reconcile this
statement with the former one, save by the paradox, that it
is a greater crime to sin like an animal, than like the Devil
the Father of Lies ?

Indeed, the whole teaching of this lecture and the
one following it concerning such matters is, I confess, so
utterly beyond my comprehension, that I must ask, in blank

31

astonishment, What does Dr. Newman mean? He assures
us so earnestly and indignantly that he is an honest man,
believing what he says, that we in return are bound, in
honour and humanity, to believe him ; but still — What does
he mean ?

He says : " Take a mere beggar woman, lazy, ragged, and
" filthy, and not over-scrupulous of truth — (I do not say she
" has arrived at perfection) — but if she is chaste, sober, and
" cheerful, and goes to her religious duties (and I am not
" supposing at all an impossible case), she will, in the eyes of
" the Church, have a prospect of heaven, quite closed and
" refused to the State's pattern-man, the just, the upright,
" the generous, the honourable, the conscientious, if he be nil
" this, not from a supernatural power (I do not determine
" whether this is likely to be the fact, but I am contrasting
" views and principles) — not from a supernatural power, but
" from mere natural virtue/' (Lecture viii. p. 207.)

I must ask again, What does Dr. Xewnmn mean by this
astounding passage? What I thought that he meant, when
I first read it, some twelve years ago, may be guessed easily
enough. I said, This man has no real care for truth. Truth
for its own sake is no virtue in his eyes, and he teaches that
it need not be. I do not say that now : but this I say, that
Dr. Newman, for the sake of exalting the magical powers of
his Church, has committed himself unconsciously to a state-
ment which strikes at the root of all morality. If he ans\ver,
that such is the doctrine of his Church concerning " natural
virtues," as distinguished from "good works performed by
God's grace," I can only' answer, So much the" worse for his
Church. The sooner it is civilized off the face of the earth,
if this be its teaching, the better for mankind. For as for
his theory that it may be a " natural virtue," I value it as
little as I trust every honest Englishman will do. I hold it
to be utterly antiscriptural ; to border very closely (in theo-

32

logical language) on the Pelagian heresy. Every good gift
and every perfect gift comes down from God above. With-
out Him no man does a right deed, or thinks a right thought ;
and when Dr. Newman says otherwise, he is doing his best
(as in this passage) to make the " State's pattern-man " an
atheist, as well as to keep the beggar-woman a lying bar-
barian. What Dr. Newman may have meant to teach by these
words, I cannot say; but what he has taught practically is
patent. He has taught the whole Celtic Irish population, that
as long as they are chaste (which they cannot well help being,
being married almost before they are men and women) and
sober (which they cannot well help being, being too poor to
get enough whisky to make them drunk), and "go to their
religious duties " — an expression on which I make no com-
ment— they may look down upon the Protestant gentry who
send over millions to feed them in famine ; who found hospi-
tals and charities to which they are admitted freely ; who try
to introduce among them capital, industry, civilization, and,
above all, that habit of speaking the truth, for want of which
they are what they are, and are likely to remain such, as
long as they have Dr. Newman for their teacher — that they
may look down, I say, on the Protestant gentry as cut off
from God, and without hope of heaven, because they do their
duty by mere " natural virtue/'

And Dr. Newman has taught them, too, in the very same
page,* that they may confess " to the priest thefts which
" would sentence the penitent to transportation if brought
" into a court of justice; but which the priest knows too"
(and it is to be remembered that the priest is bound to
conceal his knowledge of the crime), " in the judgment of the
" Church, might be pardoned on the man's private contri-
" tion, without any confession at all."

If I said that Dr. Newman has, in this page, justified,
* P. 207.

33

formally and deliberately, some of the strongest accusations
brought by the Exeter Hall party against the Irish priests,
I should be answered (and possibly with temporary success)
by some of those ingenious special pleadings with which, in
spite of plain fact and universal public opinion, black is
made to appear, if not white, yet still grey enough to do
instead. But this I will say, that if the Koman Catholic
hierarchy in these realms had had any sense of their own
interests (as far as standing well with the British nation is
concerned), they would, instead of sending the man who wrote
those words to teach in an Irish Catholic university, have
sent him to their furthest mission among the savages of the
South Seas.

The next lecture, the ninth, contains matter more liable
still to be mistaken ; and equally certain, mistaken or not, to
shock common sense. It is called, " The Eeligious Character
" of Catholic Countries no Prejudice to the Sanctity of the
" Church." By the religious character, we find, is meant
what we should call the irreligious character — the tendency
to profanity, blasphemy, imposture, stealing, lying. These
are not my accusations, but Dr. Newman's. He details them
all with charming naivete, and gives (as we shall see) most
picturesque and apposite instances. But this, he holds " is
no prejudice to the sanctity of the Church," because the
Church considers that " faith and works are separable," and
that all these poor wretches, though they have not works,
have at least faith, "caused directly by a supernatural in-
•fluence from above," and are, therefore, unless I have lost
utterly the clue to the intent of Dr. Newman's sophistries,
ipso facto infinitely better off than Protestants. What he
means by the separableness of faith and works is clear
enough. A man, he says, " may be gifted with a simple,

undoubting, cloudless, belief that Christ is in the Blessed
" Sacrament, and yet commit the sacrilege of breaking open

c

34

" the tabernacle, and carrying off the consecrated particles for
" the sake of the precious vessel containing them."

At which most of my readers will be inclined to cry :
" Let Dr. Newman alone, after that. What use in arguing
" with a man who has argued himself into believing that ?
" He had a human reason once, no doubt : but he has gambled
" it away, and left no common ground on which he and you,
" or we either, can meet him."

True : so true, that I never would have written these
pages, save because it was my duty to show the world, if
not Dr. Newman, how the mistake of his not caring for
truth arose ; and specially how this very lecture fostered that
mistake. For in it, after using the blasphemy and profanity
which he confesses to be so common in Catholic countries, as
an argument for, and not against, the "Catholic Faith," he takes
a seeming pleasure in detailing instances of dishonesty on the
part of Catholics, as if that were the very form of antino-
mianism which was most strongly and perpetually present to
his mind, and which needed most to be palliated and excused.
" The feeble old woman, who first genuflects before the Blessed
" Sacrament, and then steals her neighbour s handkerchief or
" prayer-book, who is intent on his devotions" — she is very
wrong, no doubt : but " she worships, and she sins : she
" kneels because she believes ; she steals because she does not
" love. She may be out of God's grace ; she is not altogether
" out of His sight."

Heaven forbid that we should deny those words. That, at
least, is a doctrine common to Eomanist and to Protestant :
but while Dr. Newman, with a kind of desperate audacity,
will dig forth such scandals as notes of the "Catholic
Church," he must not wonder at his motive for so doing
being mistaken.

His next instance is even more wanton and offensive, and
so curious that I must quote it at length : —

35

" You come out again and mix in the idle and dissipated
" throng, and you fall in with a man in a palmer's dress,
" selling false relics, and a credulous circle of customers
" buying them as greedily, as though they were the supposed
"French laces and India silks of a pedlar's basket. One
" simple soul has bought of him a cure for the rheumatism or
" ague, which might form a case of conscience. It is said to
" be a relic of St. Cuthbert, but only has virtue at sunrise,
" and when applied with th'ree crosses to the head, arms, and
" feet. You pass on to encounter a rude son of the Church,
" more like a showman than a religious, recounting to the
"gaping multitude some tale of a vision of the invisible
" world, seen by Brother Augustine of the Friar Minors, or
" by a holy Jesuit preacher who died in the odour of sanctity,
" and sending round his bag to collect pence for the souls in
" purgatory ; and of some appearance of Our Lady (the like of
" which has really been before and since), but on no authority
" except popular report, and in no shape but that which
" popular caprice has given it. You go forward, and you find
" preparations proceeding for a great pageant or mystery ; it
" is a high festival, and the incorporated trades have each
" undertaken their special religious celebration. The plumbers
" and glaziers are to play the Creation ; the barbers the call
" of Abraham ; and at night is to be the grandest performance
" of all, the Resurrection and Last Judgment, played by the
" carpenters, masons, and blacksmiths. Heaven and hell are
"represented, — saints, devils, and living men; and the chef
" d'ceuvre of the exhibition is the display of fireworks to be
" let off as the finale. ' How unutterably profane ! ' again you
" cry. Yes, profane to you, my dear brother — profane to a
" population which only half believes ; not profane to those
" who believe wholly, who one and all have a vision within
" which corresponds with what they see, which resolves
" itself into, or rather takes up into itself, the external

c 2

36

" pageant, whatever be the moral condition of each individual
" composing the mass. They gaze, and in drinking in the
" exhibition with their eyes they are making one continuous
"and intense act of faith" (Lecture IX. 236, 237).

The sum of which is, that for the sake of the " one con-
tinuous and intense act of faith" which the crowd is per-
forming, " the rude son of the Church, more like a showman
than a religious" — in plain English, the brutal and lying
monk, is allowed to continue his impostures without inter-
ruption ; and the moral which Dr. Newman draws is, that
though his miraculous appearance of our Lady may be a lie,
yet " the like thereof has been before and since."

After which follows a passage — of which I shall boldly
say, that I trust that it will arouse in every English husband,
father, and brother, who may read these words, the same
feelings which it roused in me ; and express my opinion,
that it is a better compliment to Dr. Newman to think that
he did not believe what he said, than to think that he did
believe it : —

" You turn to go home, and in your way you pass through
" a retired quarter of the city. Look up at those sacred
" windows ; they belong to the Convent of the Perpetual
" Adoration, or to the poor Clares, or to the Carmelites of the
" Eeform of St. Theresa, or to the Nuns of the Visitation.
" Seclusion, silence, watching, adoration, is their life day and
" night. The Immaculate Lamb of God is ever before the
" eyes of the worshippers ; or, at least, the invisible mysteries
" of faith ever stand out, as if in bodily shape, before their
" mental gaze. "Where will you find such a realized heaven
" upon earth ? Yet that very sight has acted otherwise on
" the mind of a weak sister ; and the very keenness of her
" faith and wild desire of approaching the object of it has
" led her to fancy or to feign that she has received that
" singular favour vouchsafed only to a few elect souls ; and

37

" she points to God's wounds, as imprinted on her hand, and
" feet, and side, though she herself has been instrumental in
" their formation" (Lecture IX. 237, 238).

There are occasions on which courtesy or reticence is a
crime, and this one of them. A poor girl, cajoled, flattered,
imprisoned, starved, maddened, by such as Dr. Newman and
his peers, into that degrading and demoralising disease,
hysteria, imitates on her own body, from that strange vanity
and deceit which too often accompany the complaint, the
wounds of our Lord; and all that Dr. Newman has to say
arbout the matter is, to inform us that the gross and useless
portent is " a singular favour vouchsafed only to a few elect
souls." And this is the man who, when accused of counte-
nancing falsehood, puts on first a tone of plaintive and startled
innocence, and then one of smug self-satisfaction — as who
should ask, " What have I said ? What have I done ? Why
am I upon my trial ? " On his trial ? If he be on his trial for
nothing else, he is on his trial for those words ; and he will
remain upon his trial as long as Englishmen know how to
guard the women whom God has committed to their charge.
If the British public shall ever need informing that Dr. New-
man wrote that passage, I trust there will be always one man
left in England to inform them of the fact, for the sake of
the ladies of this land.

Perhaps the most astounding specimens of Dr. Newman's
teaching are to be found, after all, in the two sermons which
end his " Discourses addressed to Mixed Congregations,"
published in 1849 ; " The Glories of Mary for the sake of
her Son; " and " On the fitness of the Glories of Mary." Of
the mis-quotations of Scripture, of the sophisms piled on
sophisms, of these two sermons, I have no room wherein to
give specimens. All I ask is, that they should be read ; read
by every man who thinks it any credit to himself to be a
rational being. But two culminating wonders of these two

38

sermons I must point out. The first is the assertion 'that the
Blessed Virgin " had been inspired, the first of womankind,
to dedicate her virginity to God." As if there had not been
Buddhist nuns (if not others) centuries before Christianity.
As if (allowing the argument that they dedicated their
virginity to a false God) there were the slightest historic
proof that the Blessed Virgin dedicated hers before the In-
carnation. The second is in a sermon which professes to prove
logically the " fitness " of the Immaculate Conception, and is
filled (instead of logic) with traditions which are utterly
baseless. I allude to the assertion that " the world " — i. e. all
who do not belong to the Eomish Church — "blasphemes"
Mary. I make no comment. All I ask, again, of my readers
is, to read these two sermons.

But what, after all, does Dr. Newman teach concerning
truth? What he taught in 1843, and what he (as far as I
can see) teaches still, may be seen in his last sermon in a
volume entitled, " Chiefly on the Theory of Eeligious Belief,"
called a sermon " On the Theory of Developments in
Eeligious Doctrine." I beg all who are interested in this
question to read that sermon (which I had overlooked till
lately)]; and to judge for themselves whether I exaggerate
when I say that it tries to undermine the grounds of all
rational belief for the purpose of substituting blind super-
stition. As examples : — speaking of " certain narratives of
martyrdoms," and "alleged miracles," he says (p. 345) : " If the
" alleged facts did not occur, they ought to have occurred, if
" I may so speak." Historic truth is thus sapped ; and phy-
sical truth fares no better. "Scripture says (p. 350) that the sun
" moves, and that the earth is stationary ; and science that
" the earth moves, and the sun is comparatively at rest. How
(< can we determine which of these statements is the very
" truth, till we know what motion is ? If our idea of motion
" be but an accident of our present senses neither proposition

39

" is true, and both are true ; neither true philosophically,
" both true for certain purposes in the system in which they
" are respectively found ; and physical science will have no
" better meaning when it says that the earth moves, than
" plain astronomy when it says that the earth is still."

Quorsum ha3C ? What is the intent of this seemingly sceptic
method, pursued through page after page ? To tell us that
we can know nothing certainly, and therefore must take
blindly what 'The Church' shall choose to teach us. For
the Church, it would seem, is not bound to tell us, indeed
cannot tell us, the whole truth. We are to be treated like
children, to whom (at least to those with whom Dr. Newman
has come in contact) it is necessary to (p. 343) " dispense and
" ' divide' the word of truth, if we would not have it changed,
" as far as they are concerned, into a word of falsehood."
" And so, again, as regards savages, or the ignorant, or weak,
" or narrow-minded, our representations must take a certain
" form, if we are to gain admission into their minds at all,
" and to reach them."

This method of teaching by half-truths Dr. Newman calls
" economy ; " and justifies it (if I understand his drift), by
the instances of " mythical representations," legends, and so
forth, " which, if they did not occur, ought to have occurred."
"Many a theory or view of things," — he goes on — (p. 345)
" on which an institution is founded, or a party held together,
" is of the same kind. Many an argument, used by zealous
" and earnest men, has this economical character, being not
" the very ground on which they act (for they continue in the
" same course, though it be refuted), yet, in a certain sense, a
" representation of it, a proximate description of their feelings
" in the shape of argument, on which they can rest, to which
" they can recur when perplexed, and appeal when they are
" questioned." After which startling words, Dr. Newman
says — and it is really high time — " In this reference to

40

" accommodation or economy in human affairs, I do not
" meddle with the question of casuistry, viz. which of such
" artifices, as it may be called, are innocent, or where the
" * line is to be drawn.' "

A hasty reader might say, that herein is an open justifi-
cation of equivocation and dishonest reticence. But he
would be mistaken. The whole sermon is written in so
tentative a style, that it would be rash and wrong to say
that Dr. Newman intends to convey any lesson by it, save
that the discovery of truth is an impossibility. Only once,
and in a note, he speaks out. P. 342.

" Hence it is not more than an hyperbole to say that, in
" certain cases, a lie is the nearest approach to truth. This
" seems the meaning, for instance, of St. Clement, when he
" says ' He (the Christian) both thinks and speaks the truth,
" ' unless when, at any time, in the way of treatment, 'as a
" ' physician toward his patients, so for the welfare of the
" ' sick he will be false, or will tell a falsehood, as the sophists
" ' speak.' "

If St. Clement said that, so much the worse for him. He
was a great and good man. But he might have learned from
his Bible that no lie was of the truth, and that it is ill
stealing the devil's tools to do God's work withal.

Be that as it may. What Dr. Newman teaches is clear
at last, and I see now how deeply I have wronged him. So
far from thinking truth for its own sake to be no virtue, he
considers it a virtue so lofty, as to be unattainable by man,
who must therefore, in certain cases, take up with what-it-is-
no-more-than-a-hyperbole-to-call lies ; and who, if he should
be so lucky as to get any truth into his possession, will be
wise in " economizing " the same, and " dividing it," so giving
away a bit here and a bit there, lest he should waste so
precious a possession.

That this is Dr. Newman's opinion at present, there can

41

be no manner of doubt. What lie has persuaded himself
to believe about St. Walburga's oil, St. Sturme's nose, St.
Januarius' blood, and the winking Madonna's eyes, proves
sufficiently that he still finds, in certain cases, what-it-is-no-
more-than-a-hyperbole-to-call lies, the nearest approach which
he can make to truth ; while, as to the right of economizing
and dividing truth, I shall shortly bring forward two instances
of his having done so to such an extent, that very little of
poor truth remains after the dismemberment.

And yet I do not call this conscious dishonesty. The man
who wrote that sermon was already past the possibility of
such a sin. It is simple credulity, the child of scepticism.
Credulity, frightened at itself, trying to hide its absurdity
alike from itself and from the world by quibbles and reticences
which it thinks prudent and clever; and, like the hunted
ostrich, fancying that because it thrusts its head into the
sand, its whole body is invisible.

And now, I have tried to lead my readers along a path
to which some of them, I fear, have objected.

They have fallen, perhaps, into the prevailing superstition
that cleverness is synonymous with wisdom. They cannot
believe that (as is too certain) great literary, and even barris-
terial ability, may co-exist with almost boundk ss silliness : but
I can find no other explanation of the phenomena than that
which I have just given. That Dr. Newman thinks that there
is no harm in "economy," and "dividing the truth," is evident;
for he has employed it again in his comments on the
correspondence. He has employed twice, as the most natural
and innocent thing possible, those " arts of the defenceless '
which require so much delicacy in the handling, lest " liberal
shepherds give a grosser name," and call them cunning, or
even worse.

I am, of course, free to make my own comments on them^
as on all other words of Dr. Newman's printed since the

42

1st of February, 1864, on which day my apology was pub-
lished. I shall certainly take the sense of the British public
on the matter. Though Dr. Newman may be " a mystery "
to them, as he says " religious men " always are to the world,
yet they possess quite common sense enough to see what his
words are, even though his intention be, as it is wont to be,
obscure.

They recollect the definitions of the " Church " and
" Christians," on the ground of which I called Sermon XX.
a Eomish sermon ?

Dr. Newman does not apply to it that epithet. He called
it, in his letter to me of the 7th of January (published by
him), a " Protestant " one. I remarked that, but considered
it a mere slip of the pen. Besides, I have now nothing to
say to that letter. It is to his "Keflexions" in page 32
which are open ground to me, that I refer. In them he
deliberately repeats the epithet " Protestant : " only he, in an
utterly imaginary conversation, puts it into my mouth, "which
you preached when a Protestant." I call the man who
preached that sermon a Protestant? I should have sooner
called him a Buddhist. At that very time he was teaching
his disciples to scorn and repudiate that name of Protestant,
under which, for some reason or other, he now finds it con-
venient to take shelter. If he forgets, the world does not, the
famous article in the British Critic (the then organ of his
party), of three years before — July, 1841 — which, after de-
nouncing the name of Protestant, declared the object of the
party to be none other than the " Unprotestantising " the
English Church.

But Dr. Newman convicts himself. In the sermon before,
as I have shown, monks and nuns are spoken of as the only
true Bible Christians, and in the sermon itself a celibate
clergy is made a note of the Church. And yet Dr. Newman
goes on to say that he was not then " a priest, speaking of

43

priests." Whether he were a priest himself matters little
to the question; but if he were not speaking of priests,
and those Komish ones, when he spoke of a celibate clergy,
of whom was he speaking ? But there is no use in wasting
words on this "economical" statement of Dr. Newman's. I
shall only say that there are people in the world whom it
is very difficult to help. As soon as they are got out of one
scrape, they walk straight into another.

But Dr. Newman has made, in my opinion, another and a
still greater mistake. He has committed, on the very title-
page of his pamphlet, an " economy " which some men will
consider a very serious offence. He has there stated that
the question is, "Whether Dr. Newman teaches that truth
is no virtue." He has repeated this misrepresentation in a
still stronger form at page 32, where he has ventured to
represent me as saying "Dr. Newman tells us that lying is
never any harm." He has economised the very four words
of my accusation, which make it at least a reasonable one ;
namely — " For its own sake"

I never said what he makes me say, or anything like it.
I never was inclined to say it. Had I ever been, I should
be still more inclined to say it now.

But Dr. Newman has shown "wisdom" enough of that
serpentine type which is his professed ideal in what he has
done, and has been so economic of truth, and " divided " the
truth so thoroughly, that really there is very little of it left.

For while no one knew better than he the importance of
the omission, none knew better that the public would not do
so ; that they would never observe it ; that, if I called
their attention to it, they would smile, and accuse me of
word-splitting and raising metaphysical subtleties. Yes, Dr.
Newman is a very economical person. So, when I had accused
him and the Komish clergy of teaching that "truth is no
virtue, for its own sake," he simply economised the last four

44

words, and said that I accused him and them of teaching
that " truth is no virtue."

This, in Dr. Newman, the subtle dialectician, is, indeed, an
" enormity," as he chooses to call my accusation of him. No
one better knows the value of such limitations. No one has,
sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, made more use of them.
No man, therefore, ought to have been more careful of doing
what he has done.

Dr. Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic, to
prove that I did not believe the accusation when I made it.
Therein he is mistaken. I did believe it, and I believed, also,
his indignant denial. But when he goes on to ask, with sneers,
Why I should believe his denial, if I did not consider him
trustworthy in the first instance ? — I can only answer, I really
do not know. There is a great deal to be said for that view,
now that Dr. Newman has become (one must needs suppose)
suddenly, and since the 1st of February, 1864, a convert to
the economic views of St. Alfonso da Liguori and his compeers.
I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as an honest
man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write.
How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning
equivocation, of one of the three kinds laid down as per-
missible by the blessed St. Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils
even when confirmed with an oath, because " then we do not
deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself " ? * —
The whole being justified by the example of Christ, " who an-
swered, ' I go not up to this feast,' sulintelligendo, ' openly/ "
" For," say the casuists, " if there were no such restrictions
" (on the telling of truth), there would be no means of con-
" cealing secrets, which one could not open without loss or
" inconvenience ; but this would be no less pernicious to

* I quote from Scavini, torn. ii. page 232, of the Paris edition, and from
Neyraguet, p. 141, two compendiums of Liguori which are (or were lately)
used, so I have every reason to believe —one at Oscott, the other at Maynooth.

45

human society than a lie itself." It is admissible, therefore, to
use words and sentences which have a double signification,
and leave the hapless hearer to take which of them he may
choose. What proof have I, then, that by " mean it ! I never
said it " ! Dr. Newman does not signify, " I did not say it : but
I did mean it?"

Or again, how can I tell that I may not in this pamphlet
have made an accusation, of the truth of which Dr. Newman
is perfectly conscious ; but that as I, a heretic Protestant,
have no business to make it, he has a full right to deny it ?
For what says Neyraguet, after the blessed St. Alfonso da
Liguori ? That " a criminal or witness, being interrogated by a
" judge contrary to law, may swear that he knows not of the
" crime ; meaning, that he knows not of a crime of which he
" may be lawfully questioned."

These are hard words. If Dr. Newman shall complain of
them, I can only remind him of the fate which befel the
stork caught among the cranes, even though the stork had
not done all he could to make himself like a crane, as Dr.
Newman has, by " economising " on the very title-page of his
pamphlet.

I know perfectly well that truth — " veracity, as they call
it " — is a virtue with the Eomish moralists ; that it is one of
the cardinal virtues, the daughters of justice, like benevolence, ,
courtesy, gratitude, and so forth ; and is proved to be such
because there is a naturalis honestas in it, and also that
without it society could not go on. Lying, on the other hand,
though not one of the seven " capital " sins, which are pride,
avarice, luxury (unchastity), gluttony, anger, envy, and acedia
(lukewarmness), is yet held to be always a sin, when direct.
It is proved to be such from Scripture, from the fathers, and
from natural reason, because " truth is an essential perfection
of the Divine nature." So far well. But a lie is a venial sin,
if it " neither hurts our neighbour or God gravely, or causes

46

a grave scandal " ; as no lie told in behalf of the Catholic
faith can well do, though one wise Pope laid it down that it
was a sin to tell a lie, even for the sake of saving a soul. But
though it were a sin, the fact of its being a venial one seems
to have gained for it, as yet, a very slight penance. Mean-
while, as a thousand venial sins can never make one
mortal one, a man may be a habitual liar all his life long,
without falling into mortal sin. Moreover, though "formal
simulation," when " one signifies by outward act some-
thing different to what he has in his mind," is illicit, as
a lie, yet " material simulation," or stratagem, is not so. " For
" when one does something, not intending the deception of
" another, but some end of his own, then it is allowable on
"cause ; although, from other circumstances, men might con-
jecture that the act was done for another end. So Joshua fled
" lawfully, not meaning fear, but that he might draw the enemy
" further from the city of Hai." From which one can gather,
that Romish casuists allow the same stratagems to man
against his neighbours, in peaceable society, which Protestant
public opinion allows (and that writh a growing compunction)
only to officers in war, against the enemies of their country.
Considering this fact, and the permission of equivocation, even
on oath, it is somewhat difficult to expect that the Eomish
moralists, at least, hold truth to be a virtue for its own sake,
or to deny that they teach cunning to be the weapons of the
weak against the strong.

Yes — I am afraid that I must say it once more — Truth is
not honoured among these men for its own sake. There are,
doubtless, pure and noble souls among them, superior, through
the grace of God, to the official morality of their class : but in
their official writings, and in too much of their official con-
duct, the great majority seem never, for centuries past, to
have perceived that truth is the capital virtue, the virtue of
all virtues, without which all others are hollow and rotten ;

47

and with which there is hope for a man's repentance arid
conversion, in spite of every vice, if only he remains honest.
They have not seen that facts are the property not of man,
to be "economized" as man thinks fit, but of God, who
ordereth all things in heaven and earth ; and that therefore
not only every lie, but every equivocation, every attempt at
deception, is a sin, not against man, but against God ; they
have not seen that no lie is of the truth, and that God requires
truth, not merely in outward words, but in the inward parts ;
and that therefore the first and most absolute duty of every
human being is to speak and act the exact truth ; or if he
wish to be silent, to be silent, courageously and simply, and
take the risk, trusting in God to protect him, as long as he
remains on God's side in the universe, by scorning to sully
his soul by stratagem or equivocation. Had they seen this ;
had they not regarded truth as a mere arbitrary command
of God, which was not binding in doubtful cases, they
would never have dared to bargain with God as to how little
truth He required of men ; and to examine and define (to
the injury alike of their own sense of honour, and that of
their hearers) how much deception He may be reasonably
supposed to allow.

Is this last Dr. Newman's view of truth? I hope not.
I hope that he, educated as an English gentleman and Oxford
scholar, is at variance with the notions formally allowed by
the most popular and influential modern Doctor of his
Church. But that there is some slight difference between
his notions of truth and ours he has confessed — in a letter to
" X. V. Esqre," which he has printed in his " Correspondence."
For there he says (p. 16) : "I think that you will allow that
" there is a broad difference between a virtue, considered as a
" principle or rule, and the applications and limits of it in
" human conduct. Catholics and Protestants, in their view of
" the substance of the moral virtues, agree ; but they carry

48

" them out variously in detail." He then gives us to under-
stand, that this is the case as to truth ; that Catholics differ
from Protestants as to " whether this or that act in particular
is conformable to the rule of truth."

I beg to say, that in these words Dr. Newman has made
another great mistake. He has calumniated, as far as my
experience goes, the Catholic gentry of these realms. I am
proud to say, as far as I have had the honour and pleasure of
their acquaintance, that there is no difference whatsoever, of
detail or other, between their truthfulness and honour, and
the truthfulness and honour of the Protestant gentry among
whom they live, respected and beloved, in spite of all religious
differences, simply because they are honest gentlemen and
noble ladies. But if Dr. Newman will limit his statement to
the majority of the Koniish priesthood, and to those hapless Irish
Celts over whom they rule, then we will willingly accept it
as perfectly correct. There is a very wide difference in prac-
tical details between their notions of truth and ours ; and
what that difference is, I have already pointed out. It is
notorious enough in facts and practice. It maybe seen at
large by any one who chooses to read the Romish Moral Theo-
logians. And if Dr. Newman, as a Catholic priest, includes
himself in his own statement, that is his act, not mine.

And so I leave Dr. Newman, only expressing my fear, that
if he continues to " economize " and " divide " the words of
his adversaries as he has done mine, he will run great danger
of forfeiting once more his reputation for honesty.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOK, PRINTERS, LONDON.