Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
attention has been pointedly called, now that my Volume is coming to a
second edition.
It has been strongly urged upon me to re-consider the following passages
which occur in it: "The men who had driven me from Oxford were
distinctly the Liberals, it was they who had opened the attack upon
Tract 90," p. 203, and "I found no fault with the Liberals; they had
beaten me in a fair field," p. 214.
I am very unwilling to seem ungracious, or to cause pain in any quarter;
still I am sorry to say I cannot modify these statements. It is surely a
matter of historical fact that I left Oxford upon the University
proceedings of 1841; and in those proceedings, whether we look to the
Heads of Houses or the resident Masters, the leaders, if intellect and
influence make men such, were members of the Liberal party. Those who
did not lead, concurred or acquiesced in them,--I may say, felt a
satisfaction. I do not recollect any Liberal who was on my side on that
occasion. Excepting the Liberal, no other party, as a party, acted
against me. I am not complaining of them; I deserved nothing else at
their hands. They could not undo in 1845, even had they wished it, (and
there is no proof they did,) what they had done in 1841. In 1845, when I
had already given up the contest for four years, and my part in it had
passed into the hands of others, then some of those who were prominent
against me in 1841, feeling (what they had not felt in 1841) the danger
of driving a number of my followers to Rome, and joined by younger
friends who had come into University importance since 1841 and felt
kindly towards me, adopted a course more consistent with their
principles, and proceeded to shield from the zeal of the Hebdomadal
Board, not me, but, professedly, all parties through the
country,--Tractarians, Evangelicals, Liberals in general,--who had to
subscribe to the Anglican formularies, on the ground that those
formularies, rigidly taken, were, on some point or other, a difficulty
to all parties alike.
However, besides the historical fact, I can bear witness to my own
feeling at the time, and my feeling was this:--that those who in 1841
had considered it to be a duty to act against me, had then done their
worst. What was it to me what they were now doing in opposition to the
New Test proposed by the Hebdomadal Board? I owed them no thanks for
their trouble. I took no interest at all, in February, 1845, in the
proceedings of the Heads of Houses and of the Convocation. I felt myself
_dead_ as regarded my relations to the Anglican Church. My leaving it
was all but a matter of time. I believe I did not even thank my real
friends, the two Proctors, who in Convocation stopped by their Veto the
condemnation of Tract 90; nor did I make any acknowledgment to Mr.
Rogers, nor to Mr. James Mozley, nor, as I think, to Mr. Hussey, for
their pamphlets in my behalf. My frame of mind is best described by the
sentiment of the passage in Horace, which at the time I was fond of
quoting, as expressing my view of the relation that existed between the
Vice-Chancellor and myself.
"Pentheu,
Rector Thebarum, quid me perferre patique
Indignum cogas?" "Adimam bona." "Nempe pecus, rem,
Lectos, argentum; tollas licet." "In manicis et
Compedibus, sævo te sub custode tenebo." (_viz. the 39 Articles._)
"_Ipse Deus, simul atque volam, me solvet._" Opinor,
Hoc sentit: _Moriar. Mors ultima linea rerum est._
I conclude this notice of Liberalism in Oxford, and the party which was
antagonistic to it, with some propositions in detail, which, as a member
of the latter, and together with the High Church, I earnestly denounced
and abjured.
1. No religious tenet is important, unless reason shows it to be so.
Therefore, e.g. the doctrine of the Athanasian Creed is not to
be insisted on, unless it tends to convert the soul; and the
doctrine of the Atonement is to be insisted on, if it does
convert the soul.
2. No one can believe what he does not understand.
Therefore, e.g. there are no mysteries in true religion.
3. No theological doctrine is any thing more than an opinion which
happens to be held by bodies of men.
Therefore, e.g. no creed, as such, is necessary for salvation.
4. It is dishonest in a man to make an act of faith in what he has not
had brought home to him by actual proof.
Therefore, e.g. the mass of men ought not absolutely to believe
in the divine authority of the Bible.
5. It is immoral in a man to believe more than he can spontaneously
receive as being congenial to his moral and mental nature.
Therefore, e.g. a given individual is not bound to believe in
eternal punishment.
6. No revealed doctrines or precepts may reasonably stand in the way of
scientific conclusions.
Therefore, e.g. Political Economy may reverse our Lord's
declarations about poverty and riches, or a system of Ethics may
teach that the highest condition of body is ordinarily essential
to the highest state of mind.
7. Christianity is necessarily modified by the growth of civilization,
and the exigencies of times.
Therefore, e.g. the Catholic priesthood, though necessary in the
Middle Ages, may be superseded now.
8. There is a system of religion more simply true than Christianity as
it has ever been received.
Therefore, e.g. we may advance that Christianity is the "corn of
wheat" which has been dead for 1800 years, but at length will
bear fruit; and that Mahometanism is the manly religion, and
existing Christianity the womanish.
9. There is a right of Private Judgment: that is, there is no existing
authority on earth competent to interfere with the liberty of
individuals in reasoning and judging for themselves about the Bible and
its contents, as they severally please.
Therefore, e.g. religious establishments requiring subscription
are Anti-christian.
10. There are rights of conscience such, that every one may lawfully
advance a claim to profess and teach what is false and wrong in matters,
religious, social, and moral, provided that to his private conscience it
seems absolutely true and right.
Therefore, e.g. individuals have a right to preach and practise
fornication and polygamy.
11. There is no such thing as a national or state conscience.
Therefore, e.g. no judgments can fall upon a sinful or infidel
nation.
12. The civil power has no positive duty, in a normal state of things,
to maintain religious truth.
Therefore, e.g. blasphemy and sabbath-breaking are not rightly
punishable by law.
13. Utility and expedience are the measure of political duty.
Therefore, e.g. no punishment may be enacted, on the ground that
God commands it: e.g. on the text, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood,
by man shall his blood be shed."
14. The Civil Power may dispose of Church property without sacrilege.
Therefore, e.g. Henry VIII. committed no sin in his spoliations.
15. The Civil Power has the right of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and
administration.
Therefore, e.g. Parliament may impose articles of faith on the
Church or suppress Dioceses.
16. It is lawful to rise in arms against legitimate princes.
Therefore, e.g. the Puritans in the 17th century, and the French
in the 18th, were justifiable in their Rebellion and Revolution
respectively.
17. The people are the legitimate source of power.
Therefore, e.g. Universal Suffrage is among the natural rights
of man.
18. Virtue is the child of knowledge, and vice of ignorance.
Therefore, e.g. education, periodical literature, railroad
travelling, ventilation, drainage, and the arts of life, when
fully carried out, serve to make a population moral and happy.
All of these propositions, and many others too, were familiar to me
thirty years ago, as in the number of the tenets of Liberalism, and,
while I gave into none of them except No. 12, and perhaps No. 11, and
partly No. 1, before I began to publish, so afterwards I wrote against
most of them in some part or other of my Anglican works.
If it is necessary to refer to a work, not simply my own, but of the
Tractarian school, which contains a similar protest, I should name the
_Lyra Apostolica_. This volume, which by accident has been left
unnoticed, except incidentally, in my Narrative, was collected together
from the pages of the "British Magazine," in which its contents
originally appeared, and published in a separate form, immediately after
Hurrell Froude's death in 1836. Its signatures, [Greek: a, b, g, d, e,
z], denote respectively as authors, Mr. Bowden, Mr. Hurrell Froude, Mr.
Keble, Mr. Newman, Mr. Robert Wilberforce, and Mr. Isaac Williams.
There is one poem on "Liberalism," beginning "Ye cannot halve the Gospel
of God's grace;" which bears out the account of Liberalism as above
given; and another upon "the Age to come," defining from its own point
of view the position and prospects of Liberalism.
* * * * *
I need hardly say that the above Note is mainly historical. How far the
Liberal party of 1830-40 really held the above eighteen Theses, which I
attributed to them, and how far and in what sense I should oppose those
Theses now, could scarcely be explained without a separate Dissertation.
NOTE B. ON PAGE 23.
ECCLESIASTICAL MIRACLES.
The writer, who gave occasion for the foregoing Narrative, was very
severe with me for what I had said about Miracles in the Preface to the
Life of St. Walburga. I observe therefore as follows:--
Catholics believe that miracles happen in any age of the Church, though
not for the same purposes, in the same number, or with the same
evidence, as in Apostolic times. The Apostles wrought them in evidence
of their divine mission; and with this object they have been sometimes
wrought by Evangelists of countries since, as even Protestants allow.
Hence we hear of them in the history of St. Gregory in Pontus, and St.
Martin in Gaul; and in their case, as in that of the Apostles, they were
both numerous and clear. As they are granted to Evangelists, so are they
granted, though in less measure and evidence, to other holy men; and as
holy men are not found equally at all times and in all places, therefore
miracles are in some places and times more than in others. And since,
generally, they are granted to faith and prayer, therefore in a country
in which faith and prayer abound, they will be more likely to occur,
than where and when faith and prayer are not; so that their occurrence
is irregular. And further, as faith and prayer obtain miracles, so still
more commonly do they gain from above the ordinary interventions of
Providence; and, as it is often very difficult to distinguish between a
providence and a miracle, and there will be more providences than
miracles, hence it will happen that many occurrences will be called
miraculous, which, strictly speaking, are not such, that is, not more
than providential mercies, or what are sometimes called "_grazie_" or
"favours."
Persons, who believe all this, in accordance with Catholic teaching, as
I did and do, they, on the report of a miracle, will of necessity, the
necessity of good logic, be led to say, first, "It _may_ be," and
secondly, "But I must have _good evidence_ in order to believe it."
1. It _may_ be, because miracles take place in all ages; it must be
clearly _proved_, because perhaps after all it may be only a
providential mercy, or an exaggeration, or a mistake, or an imposture.
Well, this is precisely what I had said, which the writer, who has given
occasion to this Volume, considered so irrational. I had said, as he