Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
3, 20-25, and Part 2, pp. 29-31 and pp. 41-51, in order to set before
the reader the drift I had in writing my Volume:--
I cannot be sorry to have forced my Accuser to bring out in
fulness his charges against me. It is far better that he should
discharge his thoughts upon me in my lifetime, than after I am
dead. Under the circumstances I am happy in having the
opportunity of reading the worst that can be said of me by a
writer who has taken pains with his work and is well satisfied
with it. I account it a gain to be surveyed from without by one
who hates the principles which are nearest to my heart, has no
personal knowledge of me to set right his misconceptions of my
doctrine, and who has some motive or other to be as severe with
me as he can possibly be....
But I really feel sad for what I am obliged now to say. I am in
warfare with him, but I wish him no ill;--it is very difficult
to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen. It
is easy enough to be irritated with friends or foes _vis-à-vis_;
but, though I am writing with all my heart against what he has
said of me, I am not conscious of personal unkindness towards
himself. I think it necessary to write as I am writing, for my
own sake, and for the sake of the Catholic Priesthood; but I
wish to impute nothing worse to him than that he has been
furiously carried away by his feelings. Yet what shall I say of
the upshot of all his talk of my economies and equivocations and
the like? What is the precise _work_ which it is directed to
effect? I am at war with him; but there is such a thing as
legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may
fairly be done, and things which may not be done. I say it with
shame and with stern sorrow;--he has attempted a great
transgression; he has attempted (as I may call it) to _poison
the wells_. I will quote him and explain what I mean.... He
says,--
"I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as any 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 permissible by the
blessed Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed
by an oath, because 'then we do not deceive our neighbour, but
allow him to deceive himself?' ... It is admissible, therefore,
to use words and sentences which have a double signification,
and leave the hapless hearer to take which of them he may
choose. _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?"--Pp. 44, 45.
Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their
proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest
lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness,
and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as
much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from
the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my
present subject is my Accuser; what I insist upon here is this
unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the
ground from under my feet;--to poison by anticipation the public
mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into the
imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust of everything
that I may say in reply to him. This I call _poisoning the
wells_.
"I am henceforth in _doubt and fear_," he says, "as much as any
_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?_" ...
Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect, I am
but wasting my time in saying a word in answer to his calumnies;
and this is precisely what he knows and intends to be its fruit.
I can hardly get myself to protest against a method of
controversy so base and cruel, lest in doing so, I should be
violating my self-respect and self-possession; but most base and
most cruel it is. We all know how our imagination runs away with
us, how suddenly and at what a pace;--the saying, "Cæsar's wife
should not be suspected," is an instance of what I mean. The
habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the
turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good sense
or a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions.
The very same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not
awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of
dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person
being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and
that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the
establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "How
naturally he talks! you would think he was in his senses."
Controversies should be decided by the reason; is it legitimate
warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to
its dislikings? Any how, if my accuser is able thus to practise
upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my
success. If I am natural, he will tell them "Ars est celare
artem;" if I am convincing, he will suggest that I am an able
logician; if I show warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent;
if I am calm, I am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I
clear up difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to be
true. The more triumphant are my statements, the more certain
will be my defeat.
So will it be if my Accuser succeeds in his man[oe]uvre; but I
do not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my
readers may eventually form of me from these pages, I am
confident that they will believe me in what I shall say in the
course of them. I have no misgiving at all, that they will be
ungenerous or harsh towards a man who has been so long before
the eyes of the world; who has so many to speak of him from
personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been to
speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little;
who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise
enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the
doctrines and arguments of his opponents; who has never slurred
over facts and reasonings which told against himself; who has
never given his name or authority to proofs which he thought
unsound, or to testimony which he did not think at least
plausible; who has never shrunk from confessing a fault when he
felt that he had committed one; who has ever consulted for
others more than for himself; who has given up much that he
loved and prized and could have retained, but that he loved
honesty better than name, and Truth better than dear friends....
* * * * *
What then shall be the special imputation, against which I shall
throw myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one which
my Accuser directs upon me? I mean to confine myself to one, for
there is only one about which I much care,--the charge of
Untruthfulness. He may cast upon me as many other imputations as
he pleases, and they may stick on me, as long as they can, in
the course of nature. They will fall to the ground in their
season.
And indeed I think the same of the charge of Untruthfulness, and
select it from the rest, not because it is more formidable but
because it is more serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me
for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop Whately used to
say, "Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick,
but not, will stain. I think he used to mean "stain," and I do
not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than other dirt; but
no dirt is immortal. According to the old saying, Prævalebit
Veritas. There are virtues indeed, which the world is not fitted
to judge of or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and charity: but
it can judge about Truthfulness; it can judge about the natural
virtues, and Truthfulness is one of them. Natural virtues may
also become supernatural; Truthfulness is such; but that does
not withdraw it from the jurisdiction of mankind at large. It
may be more difficult in this or that particular case for men to
take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for the Court of
Queen's Bench at Westminster to try a case fairly which took
place in Hindostan: but that is a question of capacity, not of
right. Mankind has the right to judge of Truthfulness in a
Catholic, as in the case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a
Chinese. I have never doubted, that in my hour, in God's hour,
my avenger will appear, and the world will acquit me of
untruthfulness, even though it be not while I live.
Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing
that my judges are my own countrymen. I consider, indeed,
Englishmen the most suspicious and touchy of mankind; I think
them unreasonable, and unjust in their seasons of excitement;
but I had rather be an Englishman, (as in fact I am,) than
belong to any other race under heaven. They are as generous, as
they are hasty and burly; and their repentance for their
injustice is greater than their sin.
For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation, of which I
am at least as sensitive, who am the object of it, as they can
be, who are only the judges. I have not set myself to remove it,
first, because I never have had an opening to speak, and, next,
because I never saw in them the disposition to hear. I have
wished to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. When shall I
pronounce him to be himself again? If I may judge from the tone
of the public press, which represents the public voice, I have
great reason to take heart at this time. I have been treated by
contemporary critics in this controversy with great fairness and
gentleness, and I am grateful to them for it. However, the
decision of the time and mode of my defence has been taken out
of my hands; and I am thankful that it has been so. I am bound
now as a duty to myself, to the Catholic cause, to the Catholic
Priesthood, to give account of myself without any delay, when I
am so rudely and circumstantially charged with Untruthfulness. I
accept the challenge; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall
be content when I have done so.
* * * * *
It is not my present accuser alone who entertains, and has
entertained, so dishonourable an opinion of me and of my
writings. It is the impression of large classes of men; the
impression twenty years ago and the impression now. There has
been a general feeling that I was for years where I had no right
to be; that I was a "Romanist" in Protestant livery and service;
that I was doing the work of a hostile Church in the bosom of
the English Establishment, and knew it, or ought to have known
it. There was no need of arguing about particular passages in my
writings, when the fact was so patent, as men thought it to be.
First it was certain, and I could not myself deny it, that I
scouted the name "Protestant." It was certain again, that many
of the doctrines which I professed were popularly and generally
known as badges of the Roman Church, as distinguished from the