Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
when it can work so effectually for evil, in one of the most benevolent
of bosoms, and one of the ablest of minds, in the amiable, the
intellectual, the refined John Henry Newman!" (Vol. iii. p. 131.) He
adds that I would have nothing to do with him, a circumstance which I do
not recollect, and very much doubt.
* * * * *
I have spoken of my firm confidence in my position; and now let me state
more definitely what the position was which I took up, and the
propositions about which I was so confident. These were three:--
1. First was the principle of dogma: my battle was with liberalism; by
liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle and its developments. This
was the first point on which I was certain. Here I make a remark:
persistence in a given belief is no sufficient test of its truth: but
departure from it is at least a slur upon the man who has felt so
certain about it. In proportion, then, as I had in 1832 a strong
persuasion of the truth of opinions which I have since given up, so far
a sort of guilt attaches to me, not only for that vain confidence, but
for all the various proceedings which were the consequence of it. But
under this first head I have the satisfaction of feeling that I have
nothing to retract, and nothing to repent of. The main principle of the
movement is as dear to me now, as it ever was. I have changed in many
things: in this I have not. From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the
fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot
enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere
sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial
love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a
Supreme Being. What I held in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864.
Please God, I shall hold it to the end. Even when I was under Dr.
Whately's influence, I had no temptation to be less zealous for the
great dogmas of the faith, and at various times I used to resist such
trains of thought on his part as seemed to me (rightly or wrongly) to
obscure them. Such was the fundamental principle of the Movement of
1833.
2. Secondly, I was confident in the truth of a certain definite
religious teaching, based upon this foundation of dogma; viz. that there
was a visible Church, with sacraments and rites which are the channels
of invisible grace. I thought that this was the doctrine of Scripture,
of the early Church, and of the Anglican Church. Here again, I have not
changed in opinion; I am as certain now on this point as I was in 1833,
and have never ceased to be certain. In 1834 and the following years I
put this ecclesiastical doctrine on a broader basis, after reading Laud,
Bramhall, and Stillingfleet and other Anglican divines on the one hand,
and after prosecuting the study of the Fathers on the other; but the
doctrine of 1833 was strengthened in me, not changed. When I began the
Tracts for the Times I rested the main doctrine, of which I am speaking,
upon Scripture, on the Anglican Prayer Book, and on St. Ignatius's
Epistles. (1) As to the existence of a visible Church, I especially
argued out the point from Scripture, in Tract 11, viz. from the Acts of
the Apostles and the Epistles. (2) As to the Sacraments and Sacramental
rites, I stood on the Prayer Book. I appealed to the Ordination Service,
in which the Bishop says, "Receive the Holy Ghost;" to the Visitation
Service, which teaches confession and absolution; to the Baptismal
Service, in which the Priest speaks of the child after baptism as
regenerate; to the Catechism, in which Sacramental Communion is
receiving "verily and indeed the Body and Blood of Christ;" to the
Commination Service, in which we are told to do "works of penance;" to
the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, to the calendar and rubricks,
portions of the Prayer Book, wherein we find the festivals of the
Apostles, notice of certain other Saints, and days of fasting and
abstinence.
(3.) And further, as to the Episcopal system, I founded it upon the
Epistles of St. Ignatius, which inculcated it in various ways. One
passage especially impressed itself upon me: speaking of cases of
disobedience to ecclesiastical authority, he says, "A man does not
deceive that Bishop whom he sees, but he practises rather with the
Bishop Invisible, and so the question is not with flesh, but with God,
who knows the secret heart." I wished to act on this principle to the
letter, and I may say with confidence that I never consciously
transgressed it. I loved to act as feeling myself in my Bishop's sight,
as if it were the sight of God. It was one of my special supports and
safeguards against myself; I could not go very wrong while I had reason
to believe that I was in no respect displeasing him. It was not a mere
formal obedience to rule that I put before me, but I desired to please
him personally, as I considered him set over me by the Divine Hand. I
was strict in observing my clerical engagements, not only because they
_were_ engagements, but because I considered myself simply as the
servant and instrument of my Bishop. I did not care much for the Bench
of Bishops, except as they might be the voice of my Church: nor should I
have cared much for a Provincial Council; nor for a Diocesan Synod
presided over by my Bishop; all these matters seemed to me to be _jure
ecclesiastico_, but what to me was _jure divino_ was the voice of my
Bishop in his own person. My own Bishop was my Pope; I knew no other;
the successor of the Apostles, the Vicar of Christ. This was but a
practical exhibition of the Anglican theory of Church Government, as I
had already drawn it out myself, after various Anglican Divines. This
continued all through my course; when at length, in 1845, I wrote to
Bishop Wiseman, in whose Vicariate I found myself, to announce my
conversion, I could find nothing better to say to him than that I would
obey the Pope as I had obeyed my own Bishop in the Anglican Church. My
duty to him was my point of honour; his disapprobation was the one thing
which I could not bear. I believe it to have been a generous and honest
feeling; and in consequence I was rewarded by having all my time for
ecclesiastical superior a man, whom, had I had a choice, I should have
preferred, out and out, to any other Bishop on the Bench, and for whose
memory I have a special affection. Dr. Bagot--a man of noble mind, and
as kind-hearted and as considerate as he was noble. He ever sympathized
with me in my trials which followed; it was my own fault, that I was not
brought into more familiar personal relations with him, than it was my
happiness to be. May his name be ever blessed!
And now in concluding my remarks on the second point on which my
confidence rested, I repeat that here again I have no retractation to
announce as to its main outline. While I am now as clear in my
acceptance of the principle of dogma, as I was in 1833 and 1816, so
again I am now as firm in my belief of a visible Church, of the
authority of Bishops, of the grace of the sacraments, of the religious
worth of works of penance, as I was in 1833. I have added Articles to my
Creed; but the old ones, which I then held with a divine faith, remain.
3. But now, as to the third point on which I stood in 1833, and which I
have utterly renounced and trampled upon since,--my then view of the
Church of Rome;--I will speak about it as exactly as I can. When I was
young, as I have said already, and after I was grown up, I thought the
Pope to be Antichrist. At Christmas 1824-5 I preached a sermon to that
effect. But in 1827 I accepted eagerly the stanza in the Christian Year,
which many people thought too charitable, "Speak _gently_ of thy
sister's fall." From the time that I knew Froude I got less and less
bitter on the subject. I spoke (successively, but I cannot tell in what
order or at what dates) of the Roman Church as being bound up with "the
_cause_ of Antichrist," as being _one_ of the "_many_ antichrists"
foretold by St. John, as being influenced by "the _spirit_ of
Antichrist," and as having something "very Anti-christian" or
"unchristian" about her. From my boyhood and in 1824 I considered, after
Protestant authorities, that St. Gregory I. about A.D. 600 was the first
Pope that was Antichrist, though, in spite of this, he was also a great
and holy man; but in 1832-3 I thought the Church of Rome was bound up
with the cause of Antichrist by the Council of Trent. When it was that
in my deliberate judgment I gave up the notion altogether in any shape,
that some special reproach was attached to her name, I cannot tell; but
I had a shrinking from renouncing it, even when my reason so ordered me,
from a sort of conscience or prejudice, I think up to 1843. Moreover, at
least during the Tract Movement, I thought the essence of her offence to
consist in the honours which she paid to the Blessed Virgin and the
Saints; and the more I grew in devotion, both to the Saints and to our
Lady, the more impatient was I at the Roman practices, as if those
glorified creations of God must be gravely shocked, if pain could be
theirs, at the undue veneration of which they were the objects.
On the other hand, Hurrell Froude in his familiar conversations was
always tending to rub the idea out of my mind. In a passage of one of
his letters from abroad, alluding, I suppose, to what I used to say in
opposition to him, he observes; "I think people are injudicious who talk
against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints, and honouring the
Virgin and images, &c. These things may perhaps be idolatrous; I cannot
make up my mind about it; but to my mind it is the Carnival that is real
practical idolatry, as it is written, 'the people sat down to eat and
drink, and rose up to play.'" The Carnival, I observe in passing, is, in
fact, one of those very excesses, to which, for at least three
centuries, religious Catholics have ever opposed themselves, as we see
in the life of St. Philip, to say nothing of the present day; but this
we did not then know. Moreover, from Froude I learned to admire the
great medieval Pontiffs; and, of course, when I had come to consider the
Council of Trent to be the turning-point of the history of Christian
Rome, I found myself as free, as I was rejoiced, to speak in their
praise. Then, when I was abroad, the sight of so many great places,
venerable shrines, and noble churches, much impressed my imagination.
And my heart was touched also. Making an expedition on foot across some
wild country in Sicily, at six in the morning, I came upon a small
church; I heard voices, and I looked in. It was crowded, and the
congregation was singing. Of course it was the mass, though I did not
know it at the time. And, in my weary days at Palermo, I was not
ungrateful for the comfort which I had received in frequenting the
churches; nor did I ever forget it. Then, again, her zealous maintenance
of the doctrine and the rule of celibacy, which I recognized as
Apostolic, and her faithful agreement with Antiquity in so many other
points which were dear to me, was an argument as well as a plea in
favour of the great Church of Rome. Thus I learned to have tender
feelings towards her; but still my reason was not affected at all. My
judgment was against her, when viewed as an institution, as truly as it
ever had been.
This conflict between reason and affection I expressed in one of the
early Tracts, published July, 1834. "Considering the high gifts and the
strong claims of the Church of Rome and its dependencies on our
admiration, reverence, love, and gratitude; how could we withstand it,
as we do, how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness, and
rushing into communion with it, but for the words of Truth itself, which