Chapter 20. The Writing of the 'Apologia' (1864){1} AT Christmas 1863 there appeared in Macmillan's Magazine a review by Charles Kingsley of J. A. Froude's 'History of England.' In it occurred the following passage: 'Truth for its own sake had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not be, and on the whole ought not to be;—that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the Saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is, at least, historically so.' Newman wrote to the publishers, not, he said, to ask for reparation, but 'to draw their attention as gentlemen to a grave and gratuitous slander.' Kingsley at once wrote to him as follows, acknowledging the authorship of the review: 'Reverend Sir,—I have seen a letter of yours to Mr. Macmillan in which you complain of some expressions of mine in an article in the January number of Macmillan's Magazine. 'That my words were just, I believed from many passages of your writings; but the document to which I expressly referred was one of your sermons on "Subjects of the Day," No. XX in the volume published in 1844, and entitled "Wisdom and Innocence." {2} 'It was in consequence of that sermon that I finally shook off the strong influence which your writings exerted on me, and for much of which I still owe you a deep debt of gratitude. 'I am most happy to hear from you that I mistook (as I understand
from your letter) your meaning; and I shall be most happy, on your
showing me that I have wronged you, to retract my accusation as publicly
as I have made it. The retort was obvious—Newman was not yet a Catholic priest in 1844 when he wrote his sermon. Moreover, he wrote to Kingsley pointing out that there were no words in the sermon expressing any such opinion as Kingsley had ascribed to him. To this simple statement of fact Kingsley never replied. In the course of their correspondence, however, he said: 'the tone of your letters makes me feel to my very deep pleasure that my opinion of the meaning of your words is a mistaken one.' But Kingsley's animus was naively shown in the amende which he offered to publish. The proposed apology ran as follows: 'Dr. Newman has, by letter, expressed in the strongest terms, his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words. No man knows the use of words better than Dr. Newman; no man, therefore, has a better right to define what he does, or does not, mean by them. It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him, and my hearty pleasure at finding him on the side of truth, in this, or any other matter.' Newman naturally objected to the passages stating that 'no man knows the meaning of words better than Dr. Newman,' and that Mr. Kingsley was glad to find him 'on the side of truth, in this, or any other matter.' Kingsley withdrew them. But he would not change the gist of the letter, which implied that Newman had explained away his own words; whereas (as Newman pointed out again) Kingsley had not confronted him with any words at all. Newman quoted the opinion of a friend, to whom he showed Kingsley's amended apology, that it was insufficient, but it {3} appeared without further change in Macmillan's Magazine for February, and ran as follows: 'Dr. Newman has expressed, in the strongest terms, his denial of the meaning I have put on his words. It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him.' To the more or less apathetic onlooker this amende might have appeared sufficient. An apology had been made, and had been called by the man who made it, a 'hearty' one. But Newman judged otherwise. The apology was merely conventional. It accepted politely Newman's disclaimer of having meant what he seemed to mean. But the real accusation Kingsley had to meet was that he had ascribed to Newman views which he had never expressed at all, or could be fairly charged with seeming to mean. Newman saw his opportunity and pressed his argument. Kingsley declined to do more by way of apology, and said he had done as much as one English gentleman could expect from another. Newman published the correspondence between them, with the following witty caricature of Kingsley's argument: 'Mr. Kingsley begins then by exclaiming: "Oh, the chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the conscience-killing tyranny of Rome! We have not far to seek for an evidence of it! There's Father Newman to wit;—one living specimen is worth a hundred dead ones. He a priest, writing of priests, tells us that lying is never any harm." I interpose: "You are taking a most extraordinary liberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me when and where." Mr. Kingsley replies: "You said it, reverend Sir, in a sermon which you preached when a Protestant, as vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844, and I could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that sermon had at the time on my own opinion of you." I make answer: "Oh ... not, it seems, as a priest speaking of priests; but let us have the passage." Mr. Kingsley relaxes: "Do you know, I like your tone. From your tone I rejoice,—greatly rejoice,—to be able to believe that you did not mean what you said." I rejoin: "Mean it! I maintain I never said it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic!" Mr. Kingsley replies: "I waive that point." I object: "Is it possible? What? Waive the main question? I either said it or I didn't. You have made a monstrous charge against me— {4} direct, distinct, public; you are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as publicly, or to own you can't!" "Well," says Mr. Kingsley, "if you are quite sure you did not say it, I'll take your word for it,—I really will." "My word! " I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it was my word that happened to be on trial. The word of a professor of lying that he does not lie! But Mr. Kingsley reassures me. "We are both gentlemen," he says, "I have done as much as one English gentleman can expect from another." I begin to see: he thought me a gentleman at the very time that he said I taught lying on system. After all it is not I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not mean what he said. Habemus confitentem reum. So we have confessedly come round to this, preaching without practising; the common theme of satirists from Juvenal to Walter Scott. "I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him," says King James of the reprobate Dalgarno; "Oh Geordie, jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence."' In spite of the extreme brilliancy of this sally it is likely enough that the British public, with its anti-Catholic prejudices, would have charged Newman with hyper-sensitiveness and ill-temper, and considered that the popular writer against whom the sally was directed had really made ample amends by his apology. But at this juncture there intervened a man who was already becoming a power, by force of intellect and character, in the world of letters. Richard Holt Hutton, editor of the Spectator, was a Liberal in politics, until lately a Unitarian in religion, a known admirer of Kingsley, a sympathiser with the Liberal theology of Frederick Denison Maurice. It was to his intervention that an able critic—the late Mr. G. L. Craik, who well remembered the controversy, and whose theological sympathies were with Kingsley—used confidently to ascribe the direction which public opinion, in many instances trembling in the balance, took at this moment, and ultimately took with overwhelming force. All Hutton's antecedents seemed to be against any unfair partiality on Newman's behalf. But he had been for years keenly alive to spiritual genius wherever it showed itself—in Martineau, in Maurice, as well as in Newman. He had followed Newman's writings and career with deep interest and had been present {5} (as we have seen) at the King William Street lectures in 1849. Endowed with a justice of mind which only a few men in each generation can boast, and which makes them judges in Israel, he had an ingrained suspiciousness of the unfairness of the English public where 'Popery' was concerned, and felt the need to guide it aright. He saw fully the injustice of Kingsley's method. On February 20 he published in the Spectator an estimate of the controversy, raised on that judicial platform of thought from which the most unfailingly effective argument proceeds. He allowed for the popular feeling that Newman's retort was too severe, and even admitted it. But in his fine psychological study of the two men he pointed out a looseness of thought, a prejudice, a want of candour in Kingsley, which were at the root both of his original offence and of his insufficient apology, and summed up very strongly in Newman's favour. He wrote as follows: 'Mr. Kingsley has just afforded, at his own expense, a genuine literary pleasure to all who can find intellectual pleasure in the play of great powers of sarcasm, by bringing Father Newman from his retirement and showing, not only one of the greatest of English writers, but perhaps the very greatest master of delicate and polished sarcasm in the English language, still in full possession of all the powers which contributed to his wonderful mastery of that subtle and dangerous weapon. Mr. Kingsley is a choice though perhaps too helpless victim for the full exercise of Father Newman's powers. But he has high feeling and generous courage enough to make us feel that the sacrifice is no ordinary one; yet the title of one of his books,—"Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers"—represents too closely the character of his rough but manly intellect, so that a more opportune Protestant ram for Father Newman's sacrificial knife could scarcely have been found; and, finally, the thicket in which he caught himself was, as it were, of his own choosing, he having rushed headlong into it quite without malice, but also quite without proper consideration of the force and significance of his own words. Mr. Kingsley is really without any case at all in the little personal controversy we are about to notice; and we think he drew down upon himself fairly the last keen blow of the sacrificial knife by what we must consider a very inadequate apology for his rash statement. 'Mr: Kingsley, in the ordinary steeplechase fashion in {6} which he chooses not so much to think as to splash up thought—dregs and all—(often very healthy and sometimes very noble, but always very loose thought), in one's face, had made a random charge against Father Newman in Macmillan's Magazine ... The sermon in question, which we have carefully read, certainly contains no proposition of the kind to which Mr. Kingsley alludes, and no language even so like it as the text taken from Our Lord's own words, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves." ' ... We must say that the whole justice of the matter seems to us on Dr. Newman's side, that Mr. Kingsley ought to have said, what is obviously true, that, on examining the sermon no passage will bear any colourable meaning at all like that he had put upon it. And yet it is impossible not to feel that Dr. Newman has inflicted almost more than an adequate literary retribution on his opponent; more than adequate, not only for the original fault, but for the yet more faulty want of due candour in the apology. You feel somehow that Mr. Kingsley's little weaknesses, his inaccuracy of thought, his reluctance to admit that he had been guilty of making rather an important accusation on the strength of a very loose general impression, are all gauged, probed, and condemned by a mind perfectly imperturbable in its basis of intellect though vividly sensitive to the little superficial ripples of motive and emotion it scorns.' Newman had burnt his ships, and had probably been prepared for a strong verdict against him and in favour of so popular a writer as Kingsley, on the part of that very anti-Popish person, the John Bull of 1864. Hutton's was a most seasonable and valuable intervention. By admitting and allowing for the most obvious ground of public criticism on Newman—the excessiveness of the castigation he had administered—the Spectator was all the more effective in its strong justification of Newman's main position in the controversy. The article gave him keen pleasure and he wrote his thanks to the Spectator, which brought a generous private letter from Hutton himself. Newman replied to it as follows: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: February 26th, 1864. 'I ought to tell you that when I wrote my letter to the editor of the Spectator the other day, I had only seen the first part of your article as it was extracted in the Birmingham paper ... 'I thanked you for your article when I saw only part of it, on the ground of its being so much more generous than the ordinary feeling of the day allows reviewers commonly to behave towards me. I thank you still more for it as I now read it with its complement,—first because it is evidently written, not at random, but critically, and secondly because it is evidently the expression of real, earnest, and personal feeling. How far what you say about me is correct can perhaps be determined neither by you nor by me, but by the Searcher of hearts alone; but, even where I cannot follow you in your criticism, I am sure I get a lesson from it for my serious consideration. 'But I have said enough, and subscribe myself with sincere goodwill
to you, my dear Sir, Kingsley, who was doubtless persuaded that his apology to Newman was a very handsome one, and unconscious how his own judgment was warped by his antipathy to everything that Newman represented in his eyes, now changed his tone, and, in a pamphlet called 'What then does Dr. Newman mean?' fully justified the estimate Newman had formed of his true attitude of mind—an attitude which had prevented Newman, at the outset, from accepting an apology which he felt to be grudging and not in the fullest sense sincere. How deep and habitual Kingsley's feeling of animosity was, we see from some words written while his pamphlet was in preparation, to a correspondent who had called his attention to a passage in W. G. Ward's 'Ideal of a Christian Church' which appeared to justify Kingsley's charge against Newman and his friends. 'Candour,' Mr. Ward had written, 'is an intellectual rather than a moral virtue, and by no means either universally or distinctively characteristic of the saintly mind.' If 'candour' meant 'truthfulness,' such an admission was surely significant. {8} Kingsley replied that he was using the passage from Ward's book in his forthcoming pamphlet, and added: 'I am answering Newman now, and though of course I give up the charge of conscious dishonesty, I trust to make him and his admirers sorry that they did not leave me alone. I have a score of more than twenty years to pay, and this is an instalment of it.' [Note 1] It is necessary for the reader to have before him specimens of the tone and temper of Kingsley's pamphlet that he may appreciate the effect it produced, and the provocation under which Newman considered himself justified in writing as he subsequently did. The general line of argument in the pamphlet may perhaps be put thus: 'Newman's words looked like the view which I imputed to him. I have accepted his statement that he did not so mean them. But if he did not, what does he mean?' The reader looks in vain, however, for a passage in which Kingsley quotes any words of Newman's which justify his original statement. The nearest approach to any such attempt at justification is in his analysis of the sermon on 'Wisdom and Innocence,' where he points out how Newman admits that Christians have been charged with cunning, though he maintains that such appearances are due only to the arts of the defenceless. 'If,' he writes, 'Dr. Newman told the world, as he virtually does in this sermon, "I know that my conduct looks like cunning, but it is only the arts of the defenceless," what wonder if the world answer "No, it is what it seems"?' But Mr. Kingsley was thoroughly roused. If the sermon did not supply what he wanted, he could go further afield for evidence. And he could make fresh charges. He continued in a style which bears curious witness to the profound and undiscriminating aversion to Newman's whole attitude which lay at the root of his original attack. Passing by the 'tortuous' Tract 90, and claiming the recognition of his generosity in so doing, he speaks of the Puseyite 'Lives of the Saints,' edited by Newman in 1843, as witnessing to his flagrant untruthfulness. Entirely falling to understand Newman's {9} philosophy of miracle, he speaks of those 'Lives' as simply deliberate perversions of historical truth. Newman's view, it need hardly be said, was that there are certain antecedent probabilities recognised by one who is already a Catholic, which make the marvels handed down by tradition credible to him as 'pious beliefs,' although they may not be historically proved. He admitted as much as Kingsley that they could not be established by canons of evidence accepted by those who did not grant the antecedent probabilities. Such a view as this, whether right or wrong, is never even glanced at by Mr. Kingsley, who treats the 'Lives' as simply a tissue of infantile folly and untruthfulness combined. Kingsley recalls Newman's statement in the 'Present Position of Catholics,' that he thinks the 'holy coat of Treves' may be what it professes to be, and that he firmly believes that portions of the True Cross are in Rome and elsewhere; that he believes in the presence of the Crib of Bethlehem in Rome; that he cannot withstand the evidence for the liquefaction of Januarius' blood at Naples and the motion of the eyes of the images of the Madonna in Italy. No one knew better than Newman himself that, to the ordinary common-sense Protestant Englishman, such beliefs must seem ludicrous and childish superstitions. But Newman had very cogently pointed out that, judged by the canons of reason apart from the antecedent presumptions of religious minds, miracles in Holy Writ which the Protestant Englishman never questions, and accepts from custom and education, are also incredible. That Jonah spent three days in the interior of a whale is a belief not easier to justify by reason than the wonders referred to above, and Mr. Kingsley, it was to be presumed, accepted this miraculous narrative himself. But the whole philosophical ground for Newman's readiness to believe is passed by without notice by Kingsley. He throws before his readers as beyond the reach or necessity of argument the above avowals of folly and superstition. And he changes his earlier charge of untruthfulness and insincerity for one of arrant and avowed fatuity. 'How art thou fallen from Heaven,' he writes, 'O Lucifer, son of the Morning! {10} 'But when I read these outrages upon common sense, what wonder if I said to myself: "This man cannot believe what he is saying"? 'I believe I was wrong. I have tried, as far as I can, to imagine to myself Dr. Newman's state of mind; and I see now the possibility of a man's working himself into that pitch of confusion that he can persuade himself, by what seems to him logic, of anything whatsoever which he wishes to believe; and of his carrying self-deception to such perfection that it becomes a sort of frantic honesty in which he is utterly unconscious, not only that he is deceiving others, but that he is deceiving himself. 'But I must say: If this be "historic truth," what is historic falsehood? If this be honesty, what is dishonesty? If this be wisdom, what is folly? 'I may be told: But this is Roman Catholic doctrine. You have no right to be angry with Dr. Newman for believing it. I answer: This is not Roman Catholic doctrine, any more than belief in miraculous appearances of the Blessed Virgin, or the miracle of the Stigmata (on which two matters I shall say something hereafter). No Roman Catholic, as far as I am aware, is bound to believe these things. Dr. Newman has believed them of his own free will. He is anxious, it would seem, to show his own credulity. He has worked his mind, it would seem, into that morbid state in which nonsense is the only food for which it hungers. Like the sophists of old, he has used reason to destroy reason. I had thought that, like them, he had preserved his own reason in order to be able to destroy that of others. But I was unjust to him, as he says. While he tried to destroy others' reason, he was, at least, fair enough to destroy his own. That is all that I can say. Too many prefer the charge of insincerity to that of insipience,—Dr. Newman seems not to be of that number ... If I, like hundreds more, have mistaken his meaning and intent, he must blame not me, but himself. If he will indulge in subtle paradoxes, in rhetorical exaggerations; if, whenever he touches on the question of truth and honesty, he will take a perverse pleasure in saying something shocking to plain English notions, he must take the consequences of his own eccentricities. 'What does Dr. Newman mean? He assures us so earnestly and indignantly that he is an honest man, believing what he says, that we in return are bound, in honour and humanity, to believe him; but still,—what does he mean?' {11} It would be tedious to follow Mr. Kingsley through his many instances. They all show that Newman's views are a sealed book to him. These views doubtless admit of expert criticism when once they are understood. But Mr. Kingsley does not attempt to master them. His impatience prevents all discrimination. Thus Newman's very candid admissions in his Lecture on the 'Religious State of Catholic Countries' are taken as showing that Newman almost admires the crimes of the Neapolitan thief. Newman argued that a Catholic might steal as another may steal; this does not make stealing in him less evil; still, he may have faith which the other had not. Faith is one thing, good works another. They are separable qualities. Mr. Kingsley holds up his hands. Further argument is indeed, he holds, useless and unnecessary with a man who says such things as this. 'And so I leave Dr. Newman,' he concludes, 'only expressing my fear that, if he continues to "economize" and "divide" the words of his adversaries as he has done mine, he will run great danger of forfeiting once more his reputation for honesty.' Every line of this pamphlet speaks of an indignant man who is convinced that he has much the best case in the dispute, and who cannot bring himself to conceal his contemptuous dislike for his opponent. Mr. Hutton, who vigilantly took note of each move in the game, formed a very different estimate from Kingsley's of the pamphlet, and of the situation. On its appearance he again took the field, and in the course of an article of five columns gave the following estimate of its drift and quality: 'Mr. Kingsley replies in an angry pamphlet, which we do not hesitate to say aggravates the original injustice a hundredfold. Instead of quoting language of Dr. Newman's fairly justifying his statement, he quotes everything of almost any sort, whether having reference to casuistry, or to the monastic system, or the theory of Christian evidences, that will irritate,—often rightly irritate,—English taste against the Romish system of faith, and every apology or plea of any kind put in by Dr. Newman in favour of that faith. He raises, in fact, as large a cloud of dust as he can round his opponent, appeals to every Protestant prepossession against {12} him, reiterates that "truth is not honoured among these men for its own sake," giving a very shrewd hint that he includes Dr. Newman as chief amongst the number, and retires without vindicating his assertion in the least, except so far as to prove that there was quite enough that he disliked or even abhorred in Dr. Newman's teaching to suggest such an assertion to his mind,—his latent assumption evidently being that whatever Mr. Kingsley could say in good faith it could not have been unjustifiable for him to say. Mr. Kingsley evidently holds it quite innocent and even praiseworthy to blurt out raw general impressions, however inadequately supported, which are injurious and painful to other men, on condition only that they are his own sincere impressions. He has no mercy for the man who will define his thought and choose his language so subtly that the mass of his hearers may fail to perceive his distinctions, and be misled into a dangerous error,—because he cannot endure making a fine art of speech. Yet he permits himself a perfect licence of insinuation so long as these insinuations are suggested by the vague sort of animal scent by which he chooses to judge of other men's drift and meaning ... Mr. Kingsley has done himself pure harm by this rejoinder.' The phrase 'animal scent' was an expressive one, and told with great effect. It characterised mercilessly the sheer prejudice which led to Mr. Kingsley's insinuations. Newman felt the value of Hutton's renewed support at this critical moment, and wrote to him again: The Oratory, Birmingham: Easter Day, 1864. March 27th. 'Let me on this day, after the manner of Catholics, wish you the
truest Paschale gaudium, and assure you that I am 'P.S.—On reading this over I have some fear lest I should incur some criticism from you in your mind on what you seemed to think in a former instance, mock humility,—but, if you knew me personally, I don't think you would say so.' But it soon proved that the goodwill towards Newman was general in the English press. Though no other journal showed the close knowledge of his work which Mr. Hutton possessed, and though others fell short of the Spectator in understanding and sympathy, respect and consideration were general. The issue may have been doubtful so long as Kingsley's attack had been but a brief paragraph for which he apologised, but by his virulent pamphlet he overreached himself. Newman saw at once that he would now have a hearing such as had never yet been open to him for a vindication of his whole life-work. For a moment he thought of answering Kingsley in a course of lectures. But a little more thought led to the plan of publishing in weekly parts an account and explanation of his life-story. The reason for his determination to publish rather than to lecture lay in the nature of such an account, and is expressed in the following letter to Mr. Hope-Scott: 'Confidential.
The Oratory, Birmingham April 12th, 1864. 'Men who know me, the tip-top education of London and far gone Liberals, will not accuse me of lying or dishonesty—but e.g. the Brummagems, and the Evangelic party, &c., &c., do really believe me to be a clever knave. Moreover I have never defended myself about various acts of {14} mine, e.g. No. 90, so I am actually publishing a history of my opinions. Now it would have been impossible to read this out. 'I am so busy with composing that I have no time for more. My answer
will come out in numbers on successive Thursdays, beginning with the
21st. Every day made clearer to Newman the existence of such a state of public feeling in his regard as promised not only attention, but even sympathy. He knew too well, however, that a defender of the Catholic priesthood from the charge of unstraightforwardness before such a jury as the British public was at a very heavy disadvantage, and not the least remarkable feature in his defence was the skill with which, in his opening pages (now long out of print), he set himself to counteract this adverse influence. His unfailing insight into human motive told him that success depended on the initial attitude of mind in his judges, and it was exclusively to securing a favourable attitude that he devoted the first fifty pages of the original 'Apologia.' [Note 2] It is the skill he shows in persuading a mixed public and ensuring its favour which is most memorable in these pages. He had to present to the reader a convincing picture of himself as gratuitously slandered and assailed, as pleading in the face of the bitterest prejudice, as throwing himself on the generosity of the British public, and relying on their justice for fair play in a contest dishonourably provoked. He had with equally convincing pen to depict the crude, rough, blundering, impulsive, deeply prejudiced mind of Kingsley, to bring into view his inferiority of intellectual fibre, and thus to win credence for his own retort. Kingsley had chosen as the motto for his pamphlet Newman's assertion in one of the University Sermons that in some cases a lie is the nearest approach to truth. Newman notes in these introductory pages the appositeness of the {15} motto, for 'Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet is emphatically one of such cases ... I really believe that his view of me is about as near an approach to the truth about my writings and doings as he is capable of taking. He has done his worst towards me, but he has also done his best.' Newman depicts him as in this attack simply narrow-minded. His failure to comprehend a mind unlike his own is an illustration of a wide law: 'children do not apprehend the thoughts of grown-up people, nor savages the instincts of civilisation.' Against the blind contempt of Kingsley, who hesitated between 'knavery' and 'silliness' as the true charge against his antagonist, Newman levels the piercing scorn of the wider and more penetrating mind. It is the scorn of the civilised man, who sees and analyses the defects of barbarism, pitted against the scorn of barbarism, that hates, fears, and despises the civilisation which it cannot understand. Kingsley had taken up the position of the manly Englishman, of the advocate of chivalrous generosity, against the shifty Papist, the 'serpentine' dealer in 'cunning and sleight-of-hand logic.' Newman not only drives his opponent from the vantage ground, but occupies it himself, transferring to Kingsley the reproach of a disingenuousness which sought to poison the minds of the public and divert their gaze from the actual issue. Mr. Kingsley had rather grandly announced that he was precluded '"en hault courage" and in strict honour' from proving his original charge from others of Newman's writings except the Sermon on 'Wisdom and Innocence.' 'If I thereby give him a fresh advantage in this argument,' he added, 'he is most welcome to it. He needs, it seems to me, as many advantages as possible.' Newman quotes these words with the comment: 'What a princely mind! How loyal to his rash promise; how delicate towards the subject of it; how conscientious in his interpretation of it!' But what was the actual exhibition of noble straight-forwardness which the advocate of 'hault courage' provided? A whole mass of insinuation without any substantiation of the original charge of untruthfulness; and a re-hash of such conventional imputations against the Papist as might stir up popular bigotry to his detriment. {16} 'When challenged,' Newman continues, 'he cannot bring a fragment of evidence in proof of his assertion, and he is convicted of false witness by the voice of the world. Well, I should have thought that he had now nothing whatever more to do. Vain man! he seems to make answer, what simplicity in you to think so! If you have not broken one commandment, let us see whether we cannot convict you of the breach of another. If you are not a swindler or forger, you are guilty of arson or burglary. By hook or by crook you shall not escape. Are you to suffer or I? What does it matter to you who are going off the stage to receive a slight additional daub upon a character so deeply stained already? But think of me,—the immaculate lover of truth,—so observant (as I have told you, p. 8) of "hault courage" and "strict honour," and (aside)—and not as this publican—do you think I can let you go scot free instead of myself? No; "noblesse oblige." Go to the shades, old man, and boast that Achilles sent you thither.' This method of wholesale insinuation and imputation was not, Newman contended, fair play as Englishmen understand it. And, worse still, was the attempt to discount beforehand every detailed reply by repeating in aggravated form the charge of shiftiness and untruthfulness, and coupling Newman's method with that of Roman casuists whom John Bull abominated. 'He is down upon me,' the 'Apologia' continues, 'with the odious names of "St. Alfonso da Liguori," and "Scavini" and "Neyraguet" and "the Romish moralists," and their "compeers and pupils," and I am at once merged and whirled away in the gulf of notorious quibblers and hypocrites and rogues.' And the writer proceeds to cite from Mr. Kingsley's pamphlet such sentences as the following: 'I am henceforth in doubt and fear,' Mr. Kingsley writes, 'as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall not be 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 {17} 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"?' [Note 3] It is this throwing doubt beforehand on every word which the accused might say in self-defence which Newman called 'poisoning the wells.' '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.' 'It is this,' he writes later on, 'which is the strength of the case of my accuser against me; not his arguments in themselves 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 more or less echo his 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 so apt to jump, that when much is imputed something 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 court. '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 misrepresentation and such a vehemence of animosity ...' [Note 4] Yet the defence, Newman maintains, must be made. The charge of untruthfulness is preeminently one in which a man must and can put himself right with his fellow-men. 'Mankind has the right,' he continues, 'to judge of truthfulness in the case of a Catholic, as in the case of {18} a Protestant, or 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 think, 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.' [Note 5] As to the form of the reply, Newman explains that a very brief reflection told him that a mere detailed meeting of Kingsley's random charges would be inadequate. The man Newman was suspected; a false picture of a sly and untruthful casuist had been presented to the public. For this man to reply was waste of breath and ink. A true picture must be substituted,—a true account of life, motive, career. Another Newman must be placed before the English nation—a Newman whom it would trust. 'My perplexity did not last half an hour. I recognised 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.' [Note 6] The first and second parts of the 'Apologia,' from which the above extracts are made, appeared on April 21 and 28. Sir Frederick Rogers—the friend whose advice generally represented sound worldly judgment in Newman's eyes—wrote on reading the first part with some misgiving as to its effect on the public, and the probable effect of what was to follow, if it were in the same strain, as indicative of over-great personal sensitiveness. In particular he deprecated the {19} element of sarcasm and the personal strictures on Kingsley which characterised the first part. Newman's reply is as follows: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: April 22nd, 1864. 'However, I am now in for it; and, if I am wrong, have set myself to the most trying work which I ever had to do for nothing. During the writing and reading of my Part 3, I could not get on from beginning to end for crying ... 'However, I am in for it and I am writing against time. I have no
intention of saying another hard word against Mr. Kingsley. That is all
I can do now if I have been too severe. I am in for it,—and must go
through it. Old Oxford friends had to be consulted in order to ensure accuracy in the narration of the events of the Movement. Copeland—who edited the later editions of the Parochial Sermons—had, as we have seen, been one of the first to resume friendly relations with Newman after the breach of 1845. And now by his advice Newman wrote to an older and dearer friend—R. W. Church, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's—for help which was willingly accorded. 'Private. The Oratory, Birmingham: April 23rd, 1864. 'It has always been on my mind that perhaps some day I should be called on to defend my honesty while in the Church of England. Of course there have been endless hits against me in newspapers, reviews and pamphlets,—but, even though the names of the writers have come out and have belonged to great men, they have been anonymous publications,—or else a sentence or two on some particular point has been the whole. But I have considered that, if anyone with his name made an elaborate charge on me, I {20} was bound to speak. When Maurice in the Times a year ago attacked me, I answered him at once. 'But I have thought it very unlikely that anyone would do so,—and then, I am so indolent that, unless there is an actual necessity, I do nothing. In consequence now, when the call comes on me, I am quite unprepared to meet it. I know well that Kingsley is a furious foolish fellow,—but he has a name,—nor is it anything at all to me that men think I got the victory in the Correspondence several months ago,—that was a contest of ability,—but now he comes out with a pamphlet bringing together a hodge podge of charges against me all about dishonesty. Now friends who know me say: "Let him alone,—no one credits him," but it is not so. This very town of Birmingham, of course, knows nothing of me, and his pamphlet on its appearance produced an effect. The evangelical party has always spoken ill of me, and the pamphlet seems to justify them. The Roman Catholic party does not know me;—the fathers of our school boys, the priests, &c., &c., whom I cannot afford to let think badly of me. Therefore, thus publicly challenged, I must speak, and, unless I speak strongly, men won't believe me in earnest. 'But now I have little more to trust to than my memory. There are matters in which no one can help me, viz. those which have gone on in my own mind, but there is also a great abundance of public facts, or again, facts witnessed by persons close to me, which I may have forgotten. I fear of making mistakes in dates, though I have a good memory for them, and still more of making bold generalizations without suspicion that they are not to the letter tenable. 'Now you were so much with me from 1840 to 1843 or even 1845, that it has struck me that you could, (if you saw in proof what I shall write about those years), correct any fault of fact which you found in my statement. Also, you might have letters of mine to throw light on my state of mind, and this by means of contemporaneous authority. And these are the two matters I request of you as regards the years in question. 'The worst is, I am so hampered for time. Longman thought I ought not to delay, so I began, and, therefore, of necessity in numbers. What I have to send you is not yet written. It won't be much in point of length. 'I need hardly say that I shall keep secret anything you do for me,
and the fact of my having applied to you. Church welcomed warmly the letter of his old friend, and Newman wrote again: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: April 26th, 1864. 'As you say, it is almost an advantage in me not to take more time. But I am not writing a History of the Movement, nor arguing out statements. 'Longman agreed with me that, if I did anything, I must do it at once. Also that a large book would not be read. For these two reasons I have done it as it is. I heartily wish I had begun a week later. But Longman particularly insisted that, when once I had begun, I should not intermit a week. 'When you see it as a whole you will not wonder at my saying that, had I delayed a month, I should not have done it at all. It has been a great misery to me. 'I only want to state things as they happened, and I doubt not that your general impressions will be enough. 'The chief part I wanted you for is the dullest part of the whole,—the sort of views with which I wrote No. 90. I am not directly defending it; I am explaining my view of it. 'Then again, I fear you do not know my secret feelings when my unsettlement first began. But I shall state external generalized acts of mine, as I believe them to be, and you can criticize them. 'I have no idea whatever of giving any point to what I am writing, but that I did not act dishonestly. And I want to state the stages in my change and the impediments which kept me from going faster. Argument, I think, as such, will not come in,—though I must state the general grounds of my change. 'Your notion of coming to me is particularly kind. But I could not
wish it now, even if you could. I am at my work from morning to night. I
thank God my health has not suffered. What I shall produce will be
little, but parts I write so many times over. Proofs were despatched on April 29 with a brief note concluding thus: 'Excuse my penmanship. My fingers have been walking nearly twenty miles a day.' {22} John Keble was also consulted—though not at the outset [Note 7]: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: April 27/64. 'Don't be disappointed that there is so little in what I send you by this post about Hurrell. I have attempted (presumptuously) to draw him in an earlier Part; it has been seen by William Froude and Rogers. You will not see it till it is published. It is too late. 'I am writing from morning to night, hardly having time for my meals. I write this during dinner time. This will go on for at least 3 weeks more. 'I am glad you and Mrs. Keble have found the winter so mild, for it has been very trying with us. 'I dare say, when it comes to the point, you will find nothing you
have to say as to what I send you—but I am unwilling not to have eyes
upon it of those who recollect the history. You will be startled at my
mode of writing. Each part of the 'Apologia' was received with acclaim as it appeared in weekly numbers. Father Ryder, already a priest and inmate of the Oratory in 1864, told me that he remembered on several occasions seeing Newman while in course of writing. The plan of the book was first sketched. The principal heads of narrative and argument and the general plan of the work were written up in their order in large letters on the wall opposite to the desk at which he was doing his work. {23} 'The "Apologia,"' writes Father Ryder, 'was a great crisis in Father Newman's life. It won him the heart of the country which he has never lost since, and bespoke for him an enthusiastic reception for all he might write afterwards. Compare the niggard praise of the Times in its reviews of the volumes on University subjects with the accord given to post-"Apologia" writings! The effort of writing the weekly parts was overpowering. On such occasions he wrote through the night, and he has been found with his head in his hands crying like a child over the, to him, well-nigh impossibly painful task of public confession:
'People could not resist one who, after having utterly discomfited his accuser, took them so simply and quietly into his confidence.' Newman's letters while he was writing the several parts show at once his scrupulous accuracy and refusal to scamp his work and the overwhelming pressure which the appearance of weekly parts involved. For facts he relied mainly on the testimony of Church and Rogers—both Anglicans, who would be the last to give them a Romeward colour. His loyalty and his chivalrous scruples in thus using their testimony appear in the course of the following letters, which help us to form the picture of these weeks of constant strain: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: May 1st, 1864. 'I sincerely wish only to state facts, and may truly say that it, and nothing else, has been my object. So far as my character is connected with the fact of my conversion I have wished to do a service to Catholicism,—but in no other way. I say this because my friends here think that the upshot of the whole tells against Anglicanism; but I am clear that I have no such intention, and cannot at all divine what people generally will say about me. I say all this in fairness,—it is what has made me delicate in applying to Anglican friends. 'Thanks for your offer of my letters, but I have not time for them. 'The Oratory, Birmingham: May 2nd, 1864. 'Your letters will be of great use to me judging by the first I opened. I wished to write my sketch drawn up from my own memory first, and then I shall compare it with your letters. I have not begun Part 5 yet, which is from 1839 to 1845 (except the No. 90 matter). If possible I shall wish to trouble you with the slips on what happened upon No. 90,—I mean, in order that you may say whether you have anything to say against it. 'I am in some anxiety lest I should be too tired to go on; but I trust to be carried through. I think I shall send you a slip of Part 4 tonight, but it is no great matter. It is in like manner,—I want your general impressions. 'I shall not dream of keeping for good the letters which you have sent me. I want you to have them that you may not forget me. 'Don't suppose I shall say one word unkind to the Church of England,
at least in my intentions. My friends tell me that, as a whole, what I
have written is unfavourable to Anglicanism,—that may be, according to
their notions,—for I simply wrote to state facts, and I can truly say,
and never will conceal, that I have no wish at all to do anything
against the Establishment while it is a body preaching dogmatic truth,
as I think it does at present. A letter of sympathetic interest from Hope-Scott after the appearance of the Second Part was as balm to a wounded spirit, and a sedative to racked nerves. It brought grateful thanks: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: May 2nd, 1864. 'I never have been in such stress of brain and such pain of heart,—and I have both trials together. Say some good prayers for me. I have been writing without interruption of Sundays since Easter Monday—five weeks—and I have a least three weeks more of the same work to come. I have been constantly in tears, and constantly crying out with distress. I am sure I never could say what I am saying in cold blood, or if I waited a month; and then the third great trial and anxiety, lest I should not say well what it is so important to say. Longman said I must go on without break if it was to succeed,—but, as I have said, I could not have done it if I had delayed. 'I am writing this during dinner-time,—I feel your kindness
exceedingly. Newman's diary tells us that while working at Part 3 he wrote one day for sixteen hours at a stretch. The record is reached in Part 5, and given in this entry: 'At my "Apologia" for 22 hours running.' June 2 saw the end of the narrative and the publication of the Seventh Part. The Appendix remained, for which he was allowed a fortnight by the publishers. He was not at first confident of financial success. 'As to my gaining from my book,' he wrote to Miss Holmes, 'that's to be seen. The printing expenses will be enormous. I should not wonder if they were £200. I dreamed last night that they were £700 and £200 besides. But you must not suppose the matter is on my mind, for it isn't.' The book was, as I have said, very carefully planned to do its work of persuasion. The first part was a pamphlet of only 27 pages. It was entitled, 'Mr. Kingsley's Method of Disputation.' As the reader will have seen from the extracts given above, it sustained the note of brilliant banter and repartee which had been so effective in the previous pamphlet. It was an immensely amusing squib which all {26} the world could and did enjoy and could read in half an hour or less. The second part also, on the 'True Method of Meeting Mr. Kingsley,' was of similar length and almost as light in manner and quality. Then the reader, whom these two parts had won by their candour and brilliancy, and who might be assumed to be in the best of humours, was treated to fifty pages of autobiography written with all the simplicity and beauty of style which the writer had at his command. The quantity then grew as the writer felt sure of his public. Part 4 ran to seventy pages, parts 5 and 6 each to eighty pages. All that was written—except the first two parts, from which I have already given several extracts, and the Appendix—is contained in the current edition of the 'Apologia,' which is probably known to all readers of the present book. But a word must be added respecting the Appendix, in which he replies in detail to Kingsley's pamphlet and enumerates the famous 'blots' in his arguments, which he humorously brings up to the exact number of the Thirty-nine Articles. Its place in the dramatic scheme of the work must be understood. Parts 1 and 2 were, as we have seen, devoted to wining the confidence of the reader and his sympathetic attention for the narrative as a whole. Parts 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 gave the narrative of Newman's life. At the end of this it could safely be assumed that the reader to whom Newman had given his whole confidence, and presented the picture of a life which so keen a critic of his conclusions as J. A. Froude declared to be absolutely devoted to finding and following the truth, would have little patience with Kingsley's crudely-offensive charges and misrepresentations. These are accordingly enumerated and answered in the Appendix one by one,—often curtly, with peremptoriness, indignantly, almost tartly. Newman could do this with confidence of success at the end of his work. To have confined himself to such a method or to have taken this tone earlier would have been to run a risk. 'Here are two reverend gentlemen in a passion—there is little to choose between them,' might have been the retort from the public. It is noteworthy that, although this Appendix contains some brilliant writing, Newman considered that the justification for its sarcastic {27} tone ceased after the occasion was past: and he omitted it in later editions of the 'Apologia.' The following is the text of the first seven 'blots': 'My Sermon on "The Apostolical Christian,"
being the 'This writer says: "What Dr. Newman means by Christians ... he has not left in doubt"; and then, quoting a passage from this Sermon which speaks of the "humble monk and holy nun" being "Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture," he observes, "This is his definition of Christians"—p. 9. 'This is not the case. I have neither given a definition nor implied one nor intended one; nor could I, either now or in 1843-4, or at any time, allow of the particular definition he ascribes to me. As if all Christians must be monks or nuns! 'What I have said is that monks and nuns are patterns of Christian perfection; and that Scripture itself supplies us with this pattern. Who can deny this? Who is bold enough to say that St. John Baptist, who, I suppose, is a Scripture character, is not a pattern-monk? and that Mary who "sat at Our Lord's Feet," was not a pattern-nun? And Anna, too, "who served God with fastings and prayer night and day"? Again, what is meant but this by St. Paul's saying: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman"? and, when speaking of the father or guardian of a young girl: "He that giveth her in marriage doth well, but he that giveth her not in marriage doth better"? And what does St. John mean but to praise virginity when he says of the hundred and forty-four thousand on Mount Sion: "These are they which were not defiled with women for they are virgins"? And what else did Our Lord mean when He said: "There be eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it"? 'He ought to know his logic better. I have said that "monks and nuns find their pattern in Scripture"; he adds: therefore I hold all Christians are monks and nuns. 'This is Blot one. 'Now then for Blot two. '"Monks and nuns are the only perfect Christians ... what more?"—p. 9. 'A second fault in logic. I said no more than that monks and nuns were perfect Christians; he adds, therefore {28} "monks and nuns are the only perfect Christians." Monks and nuns are not the only perfect Christians; I never thought so or said so now or at any other time. 'P. 42. "In the Sermon ... monks and nuns are spoken of as the only true Bible Christians." This again is not the case. What I said is that "monks and nuns are Bible Christians: it does not follow, nor did I mean, that "all Bible Christians are monks and nuns." Bad logic again. Blot three. 'My Sermon on "Wisdom & Innocence,"
being the 'This writer says (p. 8) about my Sermon 20: "By the world appears to be signified especially the Protestant public of these realms." 'He also asks (p. 14), "Why was it preached? ... to insinuate that the admiring young gentlemen who listened to him stood to their fellow-countrymen in the relation of the early Christians to the heathen Romans? or that Queen Victoria's Government was to the Church of England what Nero's or Diocletian's was to the Church of Rome? It may have been so." 'May, or may not; it wasn't. He insinuates what, not even with his little finger does he attempt to prove. Blot four. 'He asserts (p. 9) that I said in the Sermon in question that "Sacramental Confession and the Celibacy of the Clergy are notes of the Church." And, just before, he puts the word "notes" in inverted commas as if it was mine. That is, he garbles. It is not mine. Blot five. 'He says that I "define what I mean by the Church in two 'notes' of her character." I do not define or dream of defining. 'He says that I teach that the Celibacy of the Clergy enters into the definition of the Church. I do no such thing; that is the blunt truth. Define the Church by the celibacy of the clergy! why, let him read 1 Tim. iii.: there he will find that bishops and deacons are spoken of as married. How, then, could I be the dolt to say or imply that the celibacy of the clergy was a part of the definition of the Church? Blot six. 'And again (p. 42), "In the Sermon, a celibate clergy is made a note of the Church." Thus the untruth is repeated. Blot seven. The Appendix was published on June 25, and at last the long labour was completed. 'I never had such a time,' he {29} wrote to Keble from Rednal, 'both for hard work and for distress of mind. But it is thank God now over, and I am come here (where we have our burying ground) for a little quiet.' Then came real calm, rest, peace—the sense of triumph so long denied; the acclaim for the defender of the priesthood, and sympathy from his fellow-Catholics so long withheld; praise, too, most welcome of all, from ecclesiastical authority, prayers and thanksgivings from the Sisters of the Dominican Order at Stone—the 'Sisters of Penance' as they were called—and along with it all the artist's keen satisfaction, almost physical pleasure, in good work done and the response to it in support and recognition. The following letters to the Dominican Sisters and to Henry Wilberforce were written after the Appendix was published and the work completed: TO MOTHER
IMELDA POOLE, PRIORESS
OF 'Rednal: June 25th, 1864. 'We all said Mass for the Sisters of Penance on St. Catherine's day, but I was far too busy to write and tell you so. I never had such a time, and once or twice thought I was breaking down. I kept saying: "I am in for it." So I was,—I could not get out of it except by getting through it,—and again, I simply stood fast and could not get on and was almost in despair. I knew what I had written would not do, and, though every hour was valuable to me, I sat thinking and could not get on. At other times the feeling was, as I expressed it to those around me, as if I were ploughing in very stiff clay. It was moving on at the rate of a mile an hour, when I had to write and print and correct a hundred miles by the next day's post. It has been nothing but the good prayers of my friends which has brought me through, and now I am quite tired out; but, that I should have written the longest book I ever wrote in ten weeks, without any sort of preparation or anticipation, and not only written, but printed and corrected it, is so great a marvel that I do not know how to be thankful enough. {30} 'And now thanking you for your letter and all your good prayers for
me and mine, TO MOTHER
MARGARET HALLAHAN, PROVINCIAL
OF 'Rednal: June 25th, 1864. 'I so much wished to write to you on St. Catherine's day;—we all said Mass for you and yours according to our engagement. 'I cannot be thankful enough for the great mercies which have been shown me, and I trust they are a pledge that God will be good to me still. 'Of course you have seen the great recompense I have had for so many
anxieties, in the Bishop's letter to me. 'I never had such a time of it,' he adds to another of the Dominican sisters. 'When I was at Oxford I have twice written a pamphlet in a night, and once in a day, but now I had writing and printing upon me at once, and I have done a book of 562 pages all at a heat; but with so much {31} suffering, such profuse crying, such long spells of work—sometimes sixteen hours, once twenty-two hours at once,— that it is a prodigious, awful marvel that I have got through it and that I am not simply knocked up by it.' It is difficult to recover at this distance of time evidence which will give the reader a thoroughly adequate idea of the change in Newman's position before the English world effected by the 'Apologia.' There is the recollection of many of us, fortified by incontestable tradition. There are Newman's own letters and diaries, which bear witness to the effect of this change on his own spirits and hopes for the future. So much of the evidence, however, as consisted in the Newman-Kingsley controversy being the topic of the hour in clubs and drawing-rooms, and in the revival at this time of the almost lost tradition of Newman's greatness, can only live adequately in the recollection of the dwindling number who remember those days. But litera scripta manet; and enough proof of the general fact, if not adequate evidence of its extent, remains in the organs of public opinion. Newman had for years abstained from any writing that could be called 'popular.' His extraordinary power of rousing public interest by literary brilliancy was habitually held in check by the stern repressive conscience which forbade display and urged him to do simply the work of the day which came in his way. Once, thirteen years earlier, conscience had bidden him let loose his powers of wit and sarcasm—in the lectures on the 'Present Position of Catholics.' In these lectures he served the good cause by giving full play to his more popular and telling literary gifts. And now again, when Kingsley had attacked the Catholic priesthood as untruthful and as slaves of a repressive authority, his conscience allowed—nay, bade—him to do his best, not only in argument, but in that enterprise of arresting public attention which so immensely enhanced the effect of his reply. And when once his scrupulous conscience permitted it, few people could sway the English mind with more success. The brilliant dialogue with Kingsley which he invented, and which has already been quoted, was the first step—admirably judged and planned. Its wit and its brevity secured its reproduction throughout the {32} Press of the kingdom. It fixed all eyes on the combatants. What mattered it that at first it was welcomed only as a brilliant sally with no serious outcome? It gained attention, and, in the circumstances, that was everything. That attention made the 'Apologia' which followed not a work to be read only by the serious few with admiration and profit—like the 'Lectures on Anglican Difficulties,' the 'Idea of a University,' the 'Historical Sketches'—but a public event for all England. Directly Newman published, in February, his witty summary of the correspondence, all the newspapers which were most read in those days took it up. The Spectator of course applauded it; the Saturday Review (February 27) declared that 'Since the days of Bentley and Boyle there has not appeared so lively a controversy.' Other papers followed suit. 'Famous sport,' wrote a critic in the Athenæum. 'Of all the diversions of our dining and dancing season, that of a personal conflict is ever the most eagerly enjoyed. How we flock to hear a "painful discussion"! How we send to the library for a volume that is too personal to have been published! And how briskly we gather round a brace of reverend gentlemen when the prize for which they contend is which of the two shall be considered as the father of lies!' A ring, ever increasing in number, was formed round the reverend combatants, and, having come to stare and cheer, the spectators had perforce to listen to the words of deep moment and intense pathos which Newman ultimately addressed to them. While everyone, then, was enjoying the sport, and on the qui vive looking out for Newman's next thrust in the duel, the 'Apologia' made its appearance in weekly parts—this mode of publication immensely helping its popularity and influence. For the weekly pamphlet was devoured by many who would have regarded the book as too serious an undertaking if it had been presented to them all at once. It awoke from the dead the great memory of John Henry Newman whom the English world at large appeared to have forgotten. Those from whom the spell of his presence and {33} words, felt in their youth at Oxford, had never passed away, now spoke out to a generation which knew him not. At that time cultivated public opinion was perhaps better represented by the Saturday Review than by any other journal. And the note struck by the Saturday on this subject when it reviewed the book as a whole, was echoed almost universally. 'A loose and off-hand, and, we may venture to add, an unjustifiable imputation, cast on Dr. Newman by a popular writer, more remarkable for vigorous writing than vigorous thought,' wrote the Saturday reviewer, 'has produced one of the most interesting works of the present literary age. Dr. Newman is one of the finest masters of language, his logical powers are almost unequalled, and, in one way or other, he has influenced the course of English thought more perhaps than any of his contemporaries. If we add to this the peculiar circumstances of his reappearance in print, the sort of mystery in which, if he has not enveloped himself, he has been shrouded of late years, the natural curiosity which has been felt as to the results on such a mind of the recent progress of controversy and speculation and the lower interest which always attaches to autobiographies and confessions and personal reminiscences, we find an aggregate of unusual sources of interest in such a publication.' The Times—then under Delane's management and an immense power—which had for many years paid little heed to Newman's writings, if it did not rise quite to the enthusiasm of the Saturday or the Spectator, did not fall far behind them. The Times, the Saturday, and the Spectator were the leaders, and the bulk of the Press followed the tone they had set. There was immense quantity of notice as well as high quality. A writer in the Church Review spoke of 'the almost unparalleled interest that has been excited by the "Apologia"' It was, of course, hotly attacked, but one very significant fact was that some of the most vehement attacks—such as those of Dr. Irons and Mr. Meyrick—recognised to the full both the injustice of Kingsley's personal assault and the greatness of the man whom he assailed. The loss of influence which had so deeply depressed Newman, the sense that he was speaking to deaf or inattentive ears, passed for {34} ever. In his brochure addressed to Newman himself, and entitled, 'Isn't Kingsley right after all?' Mr. Meyrick's opening words bore testimony to the wave of popular applause which the appearance of the 'Apologia' had brought with it. 'All England has been laughing with you,' he wrote, 'and those who knew you of old have rejoiced to see you once more come forth like a lion from his lair, with undiminished strength of muscle, and they have smiled as they watched you carry off the remains of Mr. Charles Kingsley (no mean prey), lashing your sides with your tail, and growling and muttering as you retreat into your den.' 'As a specimen of mental analysis, extended over a whole lifetime,' wrote Dr. Irons, 'the "Apologia" is probably without a rival. St. Augustine's Confessions are a purely religious retrospect; Rousseau's are philosophical; Dr. Newman's psychological. One might almost attribute to him a double personality. The mental power, the strange self-anatomy, the almost cold, patient review of past affections, anxieties, and hopes, are alike astonishing. The examination is not a post-mortem, for there appear colour, light, and consciousness in the subject; it is not a vivisection, for there is no quivering, even of a nerve.' Not only the literary and theological world devoured the weekly parts of the 'Apologia,' but the men of science read it with great and wondering interest. The passages dealing with probable evidence as the basis of certitude—a subject on which his views were set forth more precisely in the 'Grammar of Assent'—especially exercised them. 'I travelled with Sir C. Lyell the other day to London, on his return from the British Association meeting at Bath,' writes William Froude to Newman, 'and without my leading the conversation in that direction, the subject came naturally to the surface, and he expressed the feeling which I have mentioned,—not indeed as having a misgiving that you would be able to turn the stream back, but as knowing that what you would have to say would deserve very serious consideration.' But there was another side of its success which probably gave Newman far greater pleasure, confidence, and courage. He had come forth as the champion of the Catholic priesthood. {35} He had won a great triumph. And his fellow-priests and his own Bishop, whom he loved, were deeply grateful. After all, his lot was thrown in with the Catholic body in England. Suspicion on their part was his greatest trial. And now their acclaim of gratitude and confidence warmed him and drove away the sad and even morbid thoughts which had haunted him and gone far towards poisoning the more superficial joy of his life, though they had not touched the deepest springs of his happiness. It was the welcome marks of approval from these brethren in the Faith which he himself preserved for posterity, placing them in the Appendix of his republished 'Apologia.' The first of these addresses of congratulation was that of the Birmingham clergy. The Provincial Synod took place at Oscott on June 2, and the occasion was used for presenting a formal address to Dr. Newman. The scene is thus described in a contemporary letter from one of the Oscott priests: 'After the Synod we all gathered round the throne and the Provost read the address. 'Dr. Newman, who stood at the Bishop's right, stood out and we gathered closer in round him and the steps of the throne to catch every syllable. He must have been tired for he has worked hard at his "Apology"—they say once for 20 hours without a break. He had come down from London not long before, and sat out the whole of the Synod. 'As he stepped forward a few paces and began to speak he looked more vigorous and healthy than I have thought him any of the three times I have seen him within 10 years. But he soon got overpowered when he began to say what he felt to be the real feelings suggesting the address, and tried to do them justice. He was gasping for words, and yet he never used an awkward or useless one, altho' he was speaking perfectly extempore as he said, and was recognising such deep feelings in us and doing justice to them, and expressing deeper and warmer and heartier feelings in a way quite adequate to the affection and sympathy of a Priest to his brother and neighbour Priests, ranged (as he said) round the feet of their common Father and Bishop. I can't draw the man, or the tone of voice, or give you its thrilling words and expression. 'I never before heard a man's whole heart so plainly coming out in his words, and stamping every look and tone with reality and complete sincere sympathy with all around {36} him. His tears were visible, and most of us confessed to crying when we came out. 'Last of all he gave us a complete answer to the request that he would write some work to meet the errors of the present day. He had got off the personal matter and struck out with a force and convincing power that carried every one to his side ... It was full and complete, bristling with thought and deep principle. You shall have shreds of it when we meet next.' Bishop Ullathorne seized the occasion to give expression in a letter to a wide appreciation among Catholics of Newman's work in recent years, which, as we have seen, had remained almost unrecognised by Newman himself amid the difficulties created by the circumstances of the time. He reviewed the great Oratorian's career since 1845, and spoke of it in terms excessively grateful to him. Newman has preserved in the 'Apologia' the text alike of the Bishop's letter and of the various congratulatory addresses—one of them from 110 of the Westminster clergy, including all the canons and vicars-general and many secular and regular priests; another from the Academia of the Catholic religion; as well as those from the clergy of his own and other dioceses, and from the German Catholics assembled in September 1864 at the Congress of Würzburg. The 'Apologia' as the story of Newman's life down to 1845 is familiar to every one. Not so universally known is the chapter entitled 'General Answer to Mr. Kingsley'—a chapter of high significance in the history I am narrating, and of permanent value. It was republished in the revised 'Apologia,' but its title was changed. It is called in the current edition, 'Position of my Mind since 1845.' We have seen that Newman's efforts at stating the position of an educated Catholic in relation to the intellectual attitude of the age, and repudiating untenable exaggerations, were misunderstood by many of his co-religionists. His object was not grasped. He defended an analysis of the Church's claims falling short of what W. G. Ward or Manning or the school of the Univers upheld, because he felt that these more extreme writers overlooked historical facts and theological distinctions. But he was credited— {37} by those who did not appreciate his true motive—with a want of hearty loyalty, with a deficiency in the believing spirit. He was opposing zealous champions of the Pope, and (so such hostile critics urged) was thereby showing his own want of zeal. He was supposed to be making common cause with writers, like Sir John Acton, who might fairly be urged to be wanting in devotion to the Holy See, and deficient in respect for the great theologians of the Church. For him in these circumstances to criticise directly the imprudent champions of the Papacy was a delicate and invidious task. But when, on the other hand, an assailant of the Church and of the Catholic priesthood travestied the claims of authority and spoke of Catholic priests as dupes, and as intellectual slaves, a fresh and generally intelligible motive was supplied which enabled him to say the very things which in the absence of such provocation would be offensive. Distinctions and reservations so necessary to a really satisfactory treatment might safely be urged as supplying the true answer to Kingsley's travesty, though when used against Veuillot's exaggerations they had been regarded as showing a lack of sympathy with the loyal devotion which inspired the French writer. The interests of critical and inquiring minds were not perhaps adequately realised among English Catholics; and admissions most necessary for those interests were viewed as concessions to worldliness or signs of a too cautious faith. Newman therefore seized the occasion which Kingsley had supplied to him for giving a sketch of the rationale, nature, and limitations of the Church's infallibility and an analysis of the normal action of her authority. And what he wrote has great and lasting importance. Its autobiographical interest is equal to its argumentative value. It is the only account he has left of the state of his mind—acutely critical and absolutely frank in its recognition of historical facts and probabilities—as a member of the Catholic Church, at a time when intellectual interests were to a great extent crowded out by external trials and troubles. From his letters it is evident that the chapter of which I speak had expert theological revision, with the advantage that he could give to his censors his own justification and explanation of any passages which (38} might be attacked by hostile critics. The result fully verified the view he ever maintained—that, where the interests of theology were dealt with by really able theologians, unhampered by the pressure of other than theological interests, the principles recognised in the schools were adequate to the intellectual necessities of the time. He indicates in this chapter the functions of authority in the formation of Catholic theology, and also the part played by individual thinkers, which he held that Veuillot, and even W. G. .Ward, had most mischievously overlooked. W. G. Ward and Veuillot appeared to their critics to appeal to the Infallible Authority for guidance almost as though it superseded the exercise of the theological intellect. W. G. Ward had uniformly written of late years as though the normal method of advance in inquiry and thought within the Church was that Papal instructions and Encyclicals should take the lead, and the sole business of the individual Catholic thinker was simply to follow that lead. In opposition to so inadequate an account of the normal formation of the Catholic intellect—in which great thinkers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas had had so large a share—Newman sets himself carefully to trace the actual facts of the case. First, however, to preclude all possibility of misunderstanding, he gives an analysis of the Infallibility granted to the Church on faith and morals, and defines its scope in such terms as would amply satisfy all the requirements of theology. In general he regards the Church's infallibility 'as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator to preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought, which of course in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses.' [Note 9] But having stated his full acceptance of the Infallibility of the Church, he formulates the objection which Kingsley had made by implication, that such acceptance is incompatible with real and manly reasoning in a Catholic—a charge which the writings of English and French Catholic extremists made only too plausible. Having stated it, he proceeds to reply to it by an appeal to the palpable facts {39} of history. History shows that reason and private judgment have been most active among Catholic thinkers—that great doctors of the Church have played a most important röle in the gradual formation of Catholic thought and theology. Infallibility is not meant (he points out) to supersede or destroy reason, but to curb its excesses. To regard the Infallible Authority as the power which normally takes the initiative or gives the lead to the Catholic mind is entirely to misconceive its function and to state what is contrary to historical fact. The intellect of Christian Europe was, in point of fact, fashioned, not by Popes, but by the reason of individual Christian thinkers exercised on revelation—first of all by the great Fathers of the Church. But, moreover, even heterodox thinkers—as Origen and Tertullian—have also had their indirect share in the formation of Catholic theology. The primary function of Rome is not to initiate, not to form the Catholic intellect, but to act as guardian of the original deposit and as a check on excesses and on over-rapid and incautious development—a negative rather than a positive contribution to thought. 'It is individuals, and not the Holy See,' he writes, 'that have taken the initiative and given the lead to the Catholic mind in theological inquiry. Indeed, it is one of the reproaches urged against the Roman Church that it has originated nothing, and has only served as a sort of remora or break in the development of doctrine. And it is an objection which I embrace as a truth; for such I conceive to be the main purpose of its extraordinary gift ... The great luminary of the Western World is, as we know, St. Augustine; he, no infallible teacher, has formed the intellect of Christian Europe; indeed to the African Church generally we must look for the best early exposition of Latin ideas. Moreover, of the African divines, the first in order of time, and not the least influential, is the strong-minded and heterodox Tertullian. Nor is the Eastern intellect, as such, without its share in the formation of the Latin teaching. The free thought of Origen is visible in the writings of the Western Doctors, Hilary and Ambrose; and the independent mind of Jerome has enriched his own vigorous commentaries on Scripture, from the stores of the scarcely orthodox Eusebius. Heretical questionings have been transmuted by the living power of {40} the Church into salutary truths. The case is the same as regards the Ecumenical Councils. Authority in its most imposing exhibition, grave bishops, laden with the traditions and rivalries of particular nations or places, have been guided in their decisions by the commanding genius of individuals, sometimes young and of inferior rank. Not that uninspired intellect overruled the superhuman gift which was committed to the Council, which would be a self-contradictory assertion, but that in that process of inquiry and deliberation, which ended in an infallible enunciation, individual reason was paramount.' [Note 10] Again, while a certain narrowness of outlook in the average theological mind (from which, as we have seen, he himself had suffered) had to be admitted, it was, nevertheless, in the palmy days of the theological schools—the Middle Ages—that the strongest instances were to be found of the functions of free discussion and active exercise of the individual intellect in the formation of Catholic theology. Once again—as he had already done in Dublin—he appeals to this precedent as indicating the normal state of things, and as giving a scope to original thinkers which excessive centralisation and over-rigid censorship might deny. In this passage he repeats the metaphor of fighting 'under the lash' which we have read in the letter to Miss Bowles cited above. He holds any such interference on the part of authority as would stifle the ventilation of real thought to be, not, as Kingsley supposes, general, but, on the contrary, abnormal, and due only to temporary circumstances or needs. The more ordinary course has been slowness on the part of Rome to interfere, and in the end interference so limited that the matter can be threshed out by discussion from various points of view, and authority often only enforces the decision which reason has already reached. [Note 11] He points out in this connection the value of the international character of Catholicism in averting narrowness of thought. And he deplores the loss of the influence, once so great, of the English and German elements owing to the apostasy of the sixteenth century. [Note 12] But perhaps more important than any of the other passages is the one in which he gives what may be called {41} the philosophy of the interference of Ecclesiastical Authority with the secular sciences by decisions which do not claim to be infallible. He states frankly the primâ facie difficulty such interference presents to a thinking mind, and in his reply maintains that, on the whole, although the Supreme Authority may be supported by a 'violent ultra party which exalts opinion into dogmas,' [Note 13] history shows in the long run that official interferences themselves have been mainly wise, and the opponents of authority mainly wrong. The lesson of this impressive passage is one of great patience in a time of transition and of trial. But these passages of controversy in the 'Apologia,' though so supremely necessary, were painful. The writer seems to break off with a sense of relief, and ends his book with the loving tribute to his friends at the Oratory which stands among those passages in which he speaks to all and makes all love him—with 'Lead, kindly light,' with the Epilogue to the 'Development,' with the close of the sermon on the 'Parting of Friends': 'I have closed this history of myself with St. Philip's name upon St. Philip's feast-day; and, having done so, to whom can I more suitably offer it, as a memorial of affection and gratitude, than to St. Philip's sons, my dearest brothers of this House, the Priests of the Birmingham Oratory, AMBROSE ST. JOHN, HENRY AUSTIN MILLS, HENRY BITTLESTON, EDWARD CASWALL, WILLIAM PAINE NEVILLE and HENRY IGNATIUS DUDLEY RYDER? who have been so faithful to me; who have been so sensitive of my needs; who have been so indulgent to my failings; who have carried me through so many trials; who have grudged no sacrifice, if I asked for it; who have been so cheerful under discouragements of my causing; who have done so many good works, and let me have the credit of them;—with whom I have lived so long, with whom I hope to die. 'And to you especially, dear AMBROSE ST. JOHN; whom God gave me, when He took every one else away; who are the link between my old life and my new; who have now for twenty-one years been so devoted to me, so patient, so zealous, so tender; who have let me lean so hard upon you; who have watched me so narrowly; who have never thought of yourself, if I was in question. 'And in you I gather up and bear in memory those familiar affectionate companions and counsellors, who in Oxford were {42} given to me, one after another, to be my daily solace and relief; and all those others, of great name and high example, who were my thorough friends, and showed me true attachment in times long past; and also those many young men, whether I knew them or not, who have never been disloyal to me by word or by deed; and of all these, thus various in their relations to me, those more especially who have since joined the Catholic Church. 'And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with a hope against
hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our
union, may even now be brought at length, by the Power of the Divine
Will, into One Fold and under One Shepherd. The acclaim of the Press, as we have seen, testified to a public opinion completely conquered. Addresses of congratulation from representative Catholic critics long continued to come. It was a victory. Yet the book did not pass wholly unchallenged. The lucid exposition, in the last part of the 'Apologia,' of the Church as viewed historically, provoked censure from some unhistorical minds among the theological critics. Such criticisms led Newman, as he intimated in a letter to Dr. Russell, to go into the passages criticised with expert theologians, with whom he was successful in justifying his meaning. 'April 19, 1865. One criticism Newman did think it important to answer—namely, the objection taken by scholastic critics to his language on 'probable' evidence as the basis of certainty, the very point on which W. Froude's scientific friends had also fastened. Newman wrote to Canon Walker the following thoroughly popular explanation of the consistency of his views with the recognised teaching: 'July 6, 1864 ... The best illustration of what I hold is that of a cable, which is made up of a number of separate threads, each feeble, yet together as sufficient as an iron rod. 'An iron rod represents mathematical or strict demonstration; a cable represents moral demonstration, which is an assemblage of probabilities, separately insufficient for certainty, but, when put together, irrefragable. A man who said, "I cannot trust a cable, I must have an iron bar," would in certain given cases, be irrational and unreasonable:—so too is a man who says I must have a rigid demonstration, not moral demonstration, of religious truth.' The criticisms of captious theologians were a real trial to Newman, for they made him feel the difficulty of writing further, as his friends wished, and taking advantage of having won the ear of the English public. 'As to my writing more,' he complains to Mr. Hope-Scott in a letter of July 6th, 'speaking in confidence, I do not know how to do it. One cannot speak ten words without ten objections being made to each. I am not certain that I shall not have some remarks made on what I have just finished. The theology of the Dublin is, to my mind, monstrous—but I am safe there, from the kindness which Ward feels for me. Now I cannot lose my time and strength, and tease my mind, with controversy. It would matter little, if I might be quiet under criticisms—but I never can be sure that great lies may not be told about me at Rome, and so I may be put on my defence. A writer in a Review of this month says (he knows personally) that persons in Rome within this three years spoke publicly of the probability of my leaving the Church. And Mgr. Talbot put about that I had subscribed to Garibaldi, and took credit for having concealed my delinquencies from the Pope. I take all this, and can only take it, as the will of God. I mean, I have done nothing whatever to call for it.' Still the net result of the book was a triumph, and the criticisms were soon forgotten. But in this very fact of the {44} balance ultimately turning in favour of success, Newman found a reason against running the risk involved in setting up a fresh target for criticism without real necessity. And when Canon Walker called eagerly for another book he thus replied: 'August 5, 1864. 'Then again I never can write well without a definite call. You were rating me for several years, because I did not write; but if I had attempted, it would be a failure, like a boy's theme. But when the real occasion came, I succeeded. I almost think it is part of the English character, though in this day there seems a change certainly. Grote, Thirlwall, Milman, Cornewall Lewis, Mill, have written great works for their own sake. So did Gibbon last century, but he was half a Frenchman. Our great writers have generally written on occasion—controversially as Burke, or Milton; officially, as Blackstone—for money as Dryden, Johnson, Scott, &c., or in Sibyl's leaves as Addison and the Essayists.' One passage in his book which provoked criticism was its testimony to the value of the Church of England—an institution which some Catholics, more zealous in feeling than educated in mind, considered should be spoken of with contempt and derision by any thoroughly orthodox son of the Church. The tone of Newman's letter to Henry Wilberforce in reference to this criticism represents, I think, the feeling he came eventually to have as to all the criticisms—that they were inevitable in the circumstances of the time, and would not ultimately much signify: 'The Oratory, Birmingham: St. Bartholomew's Day, Aug. 24th, 1864. One, and only one, adverse criticism did remain permanently in the public mind,—that Newman had been unduly sensitive and personally bitter towards Kingsley. With this impression he dealt in a highly interesting letter to William Cope written at the time of Kingsley's death,—a letter which completes the story of the writing of the 'Apologia.' 'The Oratory: Feb. 13th, 1875. 'As to Mr. Kingsley, much less could I feel any resentment against
him when he was accidentally the instrument, in the good Providence of
God, by whom I had an opportunity given me, which otherwise I should not
have had, of vindicating my character and conduct in my
"Apologia." I heard, too, a few years back from a friend that
she chanced to go into Chester Cathedral and found Mr. K. preaching
about me, kindly though, of course, with criticisms on me. And it has
rejoiced me to observe lately that he was defending the Athanasian
Creed, and, as it seemed to me, in his views generally nearing the
Catholic view of things. I have always hoped that by good luck I might
meet him, feeling sure that there would be no embarrassment on my part,
and I said Mass for his soul as soon as I heard of his death. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Notes1. These words are quoted by Father Ryder in his Recollections;
vide infra, p. 351. 2. These pages were Parts I. and II. of the
successive numbers. They were republished only in the first edition of
the Apologia, which is now very rare. From them and from the
Appendix (also out of print) I give long extracts because they are
singularly characteristic of the writer, and are, I believe, generally
unknown. 3. Apologia (original edition), pp. 22-23. 4. Ibid. p. 44. 5. Apologia, p. 30. 6. Ibid. p. 48. 7. 'What I shall ask Keble (as well as
you) to look at,' he writes to Copeland on April 19, 'is my sketch from
(say) 1833 to 1840—but, mind, you will be disappointed—it is not
a history of the Movement, but of me. It is an egotistical matter from
beginning to end. It is to prove that I did not act dishonestly.
I have doubts whether any one could supply instead what I have to say—but,
when you see it, you will see what a trial it is. In writing I kept
bursting into tears—and, as I read it to St. John, I could not get on
from beginning to end. I am talking of part 3.' 8. See Manzoni's poem, In Morte di Napoleone. 9. Apologia, p. 245. 10. Apologia, pp. 265-6. 11. Ibid. p. 267. 12. Ibid. p. 268. 13. Apologia, p. 260. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |