Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
advance from Anglicanism to Rome, but would at once leave Anglicanism
and me for the Liberal camp. It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to
wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level. I had done so in good
measure, in the case both of young men and of laymen, the Anglican _Via
Media_ being the representative of dogma. The dogmatic and the Anglican
principle were one, as I had taught them; but I was breaking the _Via
Media_ to pieces, and would not dogmatic faith altogether be broken up,
in the minds of a great number, by the demolition of the _Via Media_?
Oh! how unhappy this made me! I heard once from an eye-witness the
account of a poor sailor whose legs were shattered by a ball, in the
action off Algiers in 1816, and who was taken below for an operation.
The surgeon and the chaplain persuaded him to have a leg off; it was
done and the tourniquet applied to the wound. Then, they broke it to him
that he must have the other off too. The poor fellow said, "You should
have told me that, gentlemen," and deliberately unscrewed the instrument
and bled to death. Would not that be the case with many friends of my
own? How could I ever hope to make them believe in a second theology,
when I had cheated them in the first? With what face could I publish a
new edition of a dogmatic creed, and ask them to receive it as gospel?
Would it not be plain to them that no certainty was to be found any
where? Well, in my defence I could but make a lame apology; however, it
was the true one, viz. that I had not read the Fathers cautiously
enough; that in such nice points, as those which determine the angle of
divergence between the two Churches, I had made considerable
miscalculations. But how came this about? why, the fact was, unpleasant
as it was to avow, that I had leaned too much upon the assertions of
Ussher, Jeremy Taylor, or Barrow, and had been deceived by them. Valeat
quantum,--it was all that _could_ be said. This then was a chief reason
of that wording of the Retractation, which has given so much offence,
because the bitterness, with which it was written, was not
understood;--and the following letter will illustrate it:--
"April 3, 1844. I wish to remark on William's chief distress, that my
changing my opinion seemed to unsettle one's confidence in truth and
falsehood as external things, and led one to be suspicious of the new
opinion as one became distrustful of the old. Now in what I shall say, I
am not going to speak in favour of my second thoughts in comparison of
my first, but against such scepticism and unsettlement about truth and
falsehood generally, the idea of which is very painful.
"The case with me, then, was this, and not surely an unnatural one:--as
a matter of feeling and of duty I threw myself into the system which I
found myself in. I saw that the English Church had a theological idea or
theory as such, and I took it up. I read Laud on Tradition, and thought
it (as I still think it) very masterly. The Anglican Theory was very
distinctive. I admired it and took it on faith. It did not (I think)
occur to me to doubt it; I saw that it was able, and supported by
learning, and I felt it was a duty to maintain it. Further, on looking
into Antiquity and reading the Fathers, I saw such portions of it as I
examined, fully confirmed (e.g. the supremacy of Scripture). There was
only one question about which I had a doubt, viz. whether it would
_work_, for it has never been more than a paper system....
"So far from my change of opinion having any fair tendency to unsettle
persons as to truth and falsehood viewed as objective realities, it
should be considered whether such change is not _necessary_, if truth be
a real objective thing, and be made to confront a person who has been
brought up in a system _short of_ truth. Surely the _continuance_ of a
person, who wishes to go right, in a wrong system, and not his _giving
it up_, would be that which militated against the objectiveness of
Truth, leading, as it would, to the suspicion, that one thing and
another were equally pleasing to our Maker, where men were sincere.
"Nor surely is it a thing I need be sorry for, that I defended the
system in which I found myself, and thus have had to unsay my words. For
is it not one's duty, instead of beginning with criticism, to throw
oneself generously into that form of religion which is providentially
put before one? Is it right, or is it wrong, to begin with private
judgment? May we not, on the other hand, look for a blessing _through_
obedience even to an erroneous system, and a guidance even by means of
it out of it? Were those who were strict and conscientious in their
Judaism, or those who were lukewarm and sceptical, more likely to be led
into Christianity, when Christ came? Yet in proportion to their previous
zeal, would be their appearance of inconsistency. Certainly, I have
always contended that obedience even to an erring conscience was the way
to gain light, and that it mattered not where a man began, so that he
began on what came to hand, and in faith; and that any thing might
become a divine method of Truth; that to the pure all things are pure,
and have a self-correcting virtue and a power of germinating. And though
I have no right at all to assume that this mercy is granted to me, yet
the fact, that a person in my situation _may_ have it granted to him,
seems to me to remove the perplexity which my change of opinion may
occasion.
"It may be said,--I have said it to myself,--'Why, however, did you
_publish_? had you waited quietly, you would have changed your opinion
without any of the misery, which now is involved in the change, of
disappointing and distressing people.' I answer, that things are so
bound up together, as to form a whole, and one cannot tell what is or is
not a condition of what. I do not see how possibly I could have
published the Tracts, or other works professing to defend our Church,
without accompanying them with a strong protest or argument against
Rome. The one obvious objection against the whole Anglican line is, that
it is Roman; so that I really think there was no alternative between
silence altogether, and forming a theory and attacking the Roman
system."
2. And now, in the next place, as to my Resignation of St. Mary's, which
was the second of the steps which I took in 1843. The ostensible,
direct, and sufficient reason for my doing so was the persevering attack
of the Bishops on Tract 90. I alluded to it in the letter which I have
inserted above, addressed to one of the most influential among them. A
series of their _ex cathedrâ_ judgments, lasting through three years,
and including a notice of no little severity in a Charge of my own
Bishop, came as near to a condemnation of my Tract, and, so far, to a
repudiation of the ancient Catholic doctrine, which was the scope of the
Tract, as was possible in the Church of England. It was in order to
shield the Tract from such a condemnation, that I had at the time of its
publication in 1841 so simply put myself at the disposal of the higher
powers in London. At that time, all that was distinctly contemplated in
the way of censure, was contained in the message which my Bishop sent
me, that the Tract was "objectionable." That I thought was the end of
the matter. I had refused to suppress it, and they had yielded that
point. Since I published the former portions of this Narrative, I have
found what I wrote to Dr. Pusey on March 24, while the matter was in
progress. "The more I think of it," I said, "the more reluctant I am to
suppress Tract 90, though _of course_ I will do it if the Bishop wishes
it; I cannot, however, deny that I shall feel it a severe act."
According to the notes which I took of the letters or messages which I
sent to him on that and the following days, I wrote successively, "My
first feeling was to obey without a word; I will obey still; but my
judgment has steadily risen against it ever since." Then in the
Postscript, "If I have done any good to the Church, I do ask the Bishop
this favour, as my reward for it, that he would not insist on a measure,
from which I think good will not come. However, I will submit to him."
Afterwards, I got stronger still and wrote: "I have almost come to the
resolution, if the Bishop publicly intimates that I must suppress the
Tract, or speaks strongly in his charge against it, to suppress it
indeed, but to resign my living also. I could not in conscience act
otherwise. You may show this in any quarter you please."
All my then hopes, all my satisfaction at the apparent fulfilment of
those hopes was at an end in 1843. It is not wonderful then, that in May
of that year, when two out of the three years were gone, I wrote on the
subject of my retiring from St. Mary's to the same friend, whom I had
consulted upon it in 1840. But I did more now; I told him my great
unsettlement of mind on the question of the Churches. I will insert
portions of two of my letters:--
"May 4, 1843.... At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own
convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of
the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's
mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His
dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than
that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments,
arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of
Faith.
"You will now understand what gives edge to the Bishops' Charges,
without any undue sensitiveness on my part. They distress me in two
ways:--first, as being in some sense protests and witnesses to my
conscience against my own unfaithfulness to the English Church, and
next, as being samples of her teaching, and tokens how very far she is
from even aspiring to Catholicity.
"Of course my being unfaithful to a trust is my great subject of
dread,--as it has long been, as you know."
When he wrote to make natural objections to my purpose, such as the
apprehension that the removal of clerical obligations might have the
indirect effect of propelling me towards Rome, I answered:--
"May 18, 1843.... My office or charge at St. Mary's is not a mere
_state_, but a continual _energy_. People assume and assert certain
things of me in consequence. With what sort of sincerity can I obey the
Bishop? how am I to act in the frequent cases, in which one way or
another the Church of Rome comes into consideration? I have to the
utmost of my power tried to keep persons from Rome, and with some
success; but even a year and a half since, my arguments, though more
efficacious with the persons I aimed at than any others could be, were
of a nature to infuse great suspicion of me into the minds of
lookers-on.
"By retaining St. Mary's, I am an offence and a stumbling-block. Persons
are keen-sighted enough to make out what I think on certain points, and
then they infer that such opinions are compatible with holding
situations of trust in our Church. A number of younger men take the
validity of their interpretation of the Articles, &c. from me on
_faith_. Is not my present position a cruelty, as well as a treachery
towards the Church?
"I do not see how I can either preach or publish again, while I hold St.
Mary's;--but consider again the following difficulty in such a
resolution, which I must state at some length.
"Last Long Vacation the idea suggested itself to me of publishing the
Lives of the English Saints; and I had a conversation with [a publisher]
upon it. I thought it would be useful, as employing the minds of men who
were in danger of running wild, bringing them from doctrine to history,
and from speculation to fact;--again, as giving them an interest in the
English soil, and the English Church, and keeping them from seeking