Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
faith of the Reformation. Next, how could I have come by them?
Evidently, I had certain friends and advisers who did not
appear; there was some underground communication between
Stonyhurst or Oscott and my rooms at Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I
was advocating certain doctrines, not by accident, but on an
understanding with ecclesiastics of the old religion. Then men
went further, and said that I had actually been received into
that religion, and withal had leave given me to profess myself a
Protestant still. Others went even further, and gave it out to
the world, as a matter of fact, of which they themselves had the
proof in their hands, that I was actually a Jesuit. And when the
opinions which I advocated spread, and younger men went further
than I, the feeling against me waxed stronger and took a wider
range.
And now indignation arose at the knavery of a conspiracy such as
this:--and it became of course all the greater in consequence of
its being the received belief of the public at large, that craft
and intrigue, such as they fancied they beheld with their eyes,
were the very instruments to which the Catholic Church has in
these last centuries been indebted for her maintenance and
extension.
There was another circumstance still, which increased the
irritation and aversion felt by the large classes, of whom I
have been speaking, against the preachers of doctrines, so new
to them and so unpalatable; and that was, that they developed
them in so measured a way. If they were inspired by Roman
theologians, (and this was taken for granted,) why did they not
speak out at once? Why did they keep the world in such suspense
and anxiety as to what was coming next, and what was to be the
upshot of the whole? Why this reticence, and half-speaking, and
apparent indecision? It was plain that the plan of operations
had been carefully mapped out from the first, and that these men
were cautiously advancing towards its accomplishment, as far as
was safe at the moment; that their aim and their hope was to
carry off a large body with them of the young and the ignorant;
that they meant gradually to leaven the minds of the rising
generation, and to open the gates of that city, of which they
were the sworn defenders, to the enemy who lay in ambush outside
of it. And when in spite of the many protestations of the party
to the contrary, there was at length an actual movement among
their disciples, and one went over to Rome, and then another,
the worst anticipations and the worst judgments which had been
formed of them received their justification. And, lastly, when
men first had said of me, "You will see, _he_ will go, he is
only biding his time, he is waiting the word of command from
Rome," and, when after all, after my arguments and denunciations
of former years, at length I did leave the Anglican Church for
the Roman, then they said to each other, "It is just as we said:
we knew it would be so."
This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty years ago,
who took no more than an external and common sense view of what
was going on. And partly the tradition, partly the effect of
that feeling, remains to the present time. Certainly I consider
that, in my own case, it is the great obstacle in the way of my
being favourably heard, as at present, when I have to make my
defence. Not only am I now a member of a most un-English
communion, whose great aim is considered to be the extinction of
Protestantism and the Protestant Church, and whose means of
attack are popularly supposed to be unscrupulous cunning and
deceit, but how came I originally to have any relations with the
Church of Rome at all? did I, or my opinions, drop from the sky?
how came I, in Oxford, _in gremio Universitatis_, to present
myself to the eyes of men in that full blown investiture of
Popery? How could I dare, how could I have the conscience, with
warnings, with prophecies, with accusations against me, to
persevere in a path which steadily advanced towards, which ended
in, the religion of Rome? And how am I now to be trusted, when
long ago I was trusted, and was found wanting?
It is this which is the strength of the case of my Accuser
against me;--not the articles of impeachment which he has framed
from my writings, and which I shall easily crumble into dust,
but the bias of the court. It is the state of the atmosphere; it
is the vibration all around, which will echo his bold assertion
of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against me, which
takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing it is
only ingenious, and that when my statements are unanswerable,
there is always something put out of sight or hidden in my
sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men
are apt to jump, that when much is imputed, much must be true,
and that it is more likely that one should be to blame, than
that many should be mistaken in blaming him;--these are the real
foes which I have to fight, and the auxiliaries to whom my
Accuser makes his advances.
Well, I must break through this barrier of prejudice against me
if I can; and I think I shall be able to do so. When first I
read the Pamphlet of Accusation, I almost despaired of meeting
effectively such a heap of misrepresentations and such a
vehemence of animosity. What was the good of answering first one
point, and then another, and going through the whole circle of
its abuse; when my answer to the first point would be forgotten,
as soon as I got to the second? What was the use of bringing out
half a hundred separate principles or views for the refutation
of the separate counts in the Indictment, when rejoinders of
this sort would but confuse and torment the reader by their
number and their diversity? What hope was there of condensing
into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter which ought freely
to expand itself into half a dozen volumes? What means was
there, except the expenditure of interminable pages, to set
right even one of that series of "single passing hints," to use
my Assailant's own language, which, "as with his finger tip he
had delivered" against me?
All those separate charges had their force in being
illustrations of one and the same great imputation. He had
already a positive idea to illuminate his whole matter, and to
stamp it with a force, and to quicken it with an interpretation.
He called me a _liar_,--a simple, a broad, an intelligible, to
the English public a plausible arraignment; but for me, to
answer in detail charge one by reason one, and charge two by
reason two, and charge three by reason three, and so on through
the whole string both of accusations and replies, each of which
was to be independent of the rest, this would be certainly
labour lost as regards any effective result. What I needed was a
corresponding antagonist unity in my defence, and where was that
to be found? We see, in the case of commentators on the
prophecies of Scripture, an exemplification of the principle on
which I am insisting; viz. how much more powerful even a false
interpretation of the sacred text is than none at all;--how a
certain key to the visions of the Apocalypse, for instance, may
cling to the mind (I have found it so in the case of my own),
because the view, which it opens on us, is positive and
objective, in spite of the fullest demonstration that it really
has no claim upon our reception. The reader says, "What else can
the prophecy mean?" just as my Accuser asks, "What, then, does
Dr. Newman mean?" ... I reflected, and I saw a way out of my
perplexity.
Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my _meaning_;
"What does Dr. Newman mean?" It pointed in the very same
direction as that into which my musings had turned me already.
He asks what I _mean_; not about my words, not about my
arguments, not about my actions, as his ultimate point, but
about that living intelligence, by which I write, and argue, and
act. He asks about my Mind and its Beliefs and its sentiments;
and he shall be answered;--not for his own sake, but for mine,
for the sake of the Religion which I profess, and of the
Priesthood in which I am unworthily included, and of my friends
and of my foes, and of that general public which consists of
neither one nor the other, but of well-wishers, lovers of fair
play, sceptical cross-questioners, interested inquirers, curious
lookers-on, and simple strangers, unconcerned yet not careless
about the issue,--for the sake of all these he shall be
answered.
My perplexity had not lasted half an hour. I recognized what I
had to do, though I shrank from both the task and the exposure
which it would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my
whole life; I must show what I am, that it may be seen what I am
not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which gibbers
instead of me. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a
scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes. False ideas may be
refuted indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they
expelled. I will vanquish, not my Accuser, but my judges. I will
indeed answer his charges and criticisms on me one by one[1],
lest any one should say that they are unanswerable, but such a
work shall not be the scope nor the substance of my reply. I
will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; I will
state the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or
accident each opinion had its rise, how far and how they
developed from within, how they grew, were modified, were
combined, were in collision with each other, and were changed;
again how I conducted myself towards them, and how, and how far,
and for how long a time, I thought I could hold them
consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements which I had
made and with the position which I held. I must show,--what is
the very truth,--that the doctrines which I held, and have held
for so many years, have been taught me (speaking humanly) partly
by the suggestions of Protestant friends, partly by the teaching
of books, and partly by the action of my own mind: and thus I
shall account for that phenomenon which to so many seems so
wonderful, that I should have left "my kindred and my father's
house" for a Church from which once I turned away with
dread;--so wonderful to them! as if forsooth a Religion which
has flourished through so many ages, among so many nations, amid
such varieties of social life, in such contrary classes and
conditions of men, and after so many revolutions, political and
civil, could not subdue the reason and overcome the heart,
without the aid of fraud in the process and the sophistries of
the schools.
[1] This was done in the Appendix, of which the more important
parts are preserved in the Notes.
* * * * *
What I had proposed to myself in the course of half-an-hour, I
determined on at the end of ten days. However, I have many
difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am I to say all that
has to be said in a reasonable compass? And then as to the
materials of my narrative; I have no autobiographical notes to