The Development of Religious Error
[The Contemporary Review, October 1885]
{457} IT would be easy to expose the errors
about me, both in fact and in logic, for which Principal Fairbairn has
made himself responsible in his May article in THE
CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, but
that would not answer the purpose which leads me to write. Such an
outlay of time and trouble is not what those who take an interest in
me would thank me for. They would rather wish me to say what I myself
think upon the subject he has opened, and whether there are any points
for explanation lying about in the vehement rhetoric he has directed
against me. Certainly they will not think there is any call for my
assuring them that I am not a hidden sceptic; and I can meet them with
the thankful recognition that for a long seventy years, amid mental
trials sharp and heavy, I can, in my place and in my measure, adopt
the words of St. Polycarp before his martyrdom: "For fourscore
years and six I have served my Lord, and He never did me harm, but
much good; and can I leave Him now?" But this immunity neither
has, nor ought to have, hindered me from entering with sympathy into
the anxieties of those who are in this respect less happy than myself;
and be it a crime or not, I confess to have tried to aid them
according to my ability. Not that I can pretend to be well read in
mental science, but I have used such arguments and views as are
congenial to my own mind, and I have not been unsuccessful in my use
of them.
As I have said in print, "A man's experiences are enough for
himself, but he cannot speak for others … He brings together his
reasons and relies on them, because they are his own, and this is his
primary evidence; and he has a second ground of evidence in the
testimony of those who agree with him. But his best evidence is the
former, which is derived from his own thoughts … {458} He states
what are personally his own grounds in natural and revealed religion,
holding them to be so sufficient that he thinks that others also do
hold them implicitly or in substance, or would hold them, if they
inquired fairly, or will hold if they listen to him, or do not hold
from impediments, invincible or not as it may be, into which he has no
call to inquire." ("Gram. of Assent," pp. 385-6.)
II.
Enough of introduction. I begin with what is of prime importance in
Dr. Fairbairn's charges against me—the sense in which I use the word
"Reason," against which Reason I have made so many and such
strong protests. It is a misleading word, as having various meanings.
It is sometimes used to signify the gift which distinguishes man from
brute: I have not so used it. In this sense it is mainly a popular
word, not a scientific. When so taken it is not a faculty of the mind,
rather it is the mind itself; or it is a generalization, or it stands
for the seat of all the mental powers together. For myself, I have
taken it to mean the faculty of Reasoning in a large sense, nor do I
know what other English word, to express that faculty, can be used
instead of it. Besides, "Reason" is of a family of words all
expressive of Reasoning. I may add that it is the meaning which Dr.
Johnson puts upon the word, and the meaning which he traces through
all its derivative senses, corroborating his account of it by passages
from English authors. "Reason," he says, is "the power
by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from
premisses to consequences; the rational faculty; discursive
power." Also it is the sense, I suppose, which Principal
Fairbairn himself gives to the word, for he speaks of "the region
of reason and reasoning" (p. 667).
III.
This being the recognised sense of the word, it is quite as
important for my present purpose to show it to be the sense in which I
have myself used "Reason" in what I have written at various
times; though Dr. Fairbairn, as having "studied all in
books" (p. 663), must be well aware of it already. For instance:
First, I discard the vague popular sense of it as the
distinguishing gift of man in contrast to the brute creation.
"Sometimes," I say, "it stands for all in which man
differs from the brutes; and so it includes in its signification the
faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong and the directing
principle of conduct. In this sense certainly I do not here use
it." ("Univ. Serm." p. 58.)
This is but a negative account of it, but in another sermon I speak
more distinctly: "By the exercise of reason is properly meant any
process or act of the mind, by which, from knowing one thing it
advances on to know another." (Ibid. p. 223.) {459}
Again: "It is obvious that even our senses convey us but a
little way out of ourselves, and introduce us to the external world
only under circumstances, under conditions of time and place, and of
certain media through which they act. We must be near things to touch
them; we must be interrupted by no simultaneous sounds in order to
hear them; we must have light to see them; we can neither see, hear,
nor touch things past or future. Now, Reason is that faculty of the
mind by which this deficiency is supplied; by which knowledge of
things external to us—of beings, facts, and events—is attained
beyond the range of sense; ... it brings us knowledge—whether clear
or uncertain, still knowledge, in whatever degree of perfection, from
every side; but, at the same time, with this characteristic, that it
obtains it indirectly, not directly, … on the hypothesis of
something else being assumed to be true." (Ibid. p. 206.)
And again: "Reason, according to the simplest view of it, is
the faculty of gaining knowledge without direct perception, or of
ascertaining one thing by means of another. In this way it is able,
from small beginnings, to create to itself a world of ideas, which do
or do not correspond to the things themselves for which they stand, or
are true or not, according as it is exercised soundly or
otherwise." (Ibid. p. 256.)
IV.
These passages are on subjects of their own; but they will serve
the purpose of making clear the account which in times past, as now, I
give of the reasoning faculty; and, in doing so, I have implied how
great a faculty it is. In its versatility, its illimitable range, its
subtlety, its power of concentrating many ideas on one point, it is
for the acquisition of knowledge all-important or rather necessary,
with this drawback, however, in its ordinary use, that in every
exercise of it, it depends for success upon the assumption of prior
acts similar to that which it has itself involved, and therefore is
reliable only conditionally. Its process is a passing from an
antecedent to a consequent, and according as the start so is the
issue. In the province of religion, if it be under the happy guidance
of the moral sense [Note 1], and
with teachings which are not only assumptions in form, but
certainties, it will arrive at indisputable truth, and then the house
is at peace; but if it be in the hands of enemies, who are under the
delusion that their arbitrary assumptions are self-evident axioms, the
reasoning will start from false premisses, and the mind will be in a
state of melancholy disorder. But in no case need the reasoning
faculty itself be to blame or responsible, except if viewed {460} as
identical with the assumptions of which it is the instrument. I
repeat, it is but an instrument; as such I have viewed it, and no one
but Dr. Fairbairn would say as he does—that the bad employment of a
faculty was a "division," a "contradiction," and
"a radical antagonism of nature," and "the death of the
natural proof" of a God. The eyes, and the hands, and the tongue,
are instruments in their very nature. We may speak of a wanton eye,
and a murderous hand, and a blaspheming tongue, without denying that
they can be used for good purposes as well as for bad.
V.
It must not be supposed then that I think a natural faculty of man
to have been revolutionized because an enemy of truth has availed
itself of it for evil purposes. This is what Dr. Fairbairn imputes to
me, for I hold, it seems, that "in spite of the conscience there
is" not a little "latent atheism in the nature, and
especially in the reason, of man" (p. 665). Here he has been
misled by the epithets which I attached in the "Apologia" to
the Reason, as viewed in its continuous strenuous action against
religious truth, both in and outside the Catholic body. I will explain
why I did so. I had been referring to the fall of man, and our
Catechisms tell us that the Fall opened upon him three great spiritual
enemies, which need to be resisted by means natural and supernatural.
I was led by my general subject to select one of the three for my
remarks, and to ask how did it act, and by what instruments? The
instruments of the Evil One are best known to himself; the Flesh needs
no instruments; the reasoning Faculty is the instrument of the World.
The World is that vast community impregnated by religious error which
mocks and rivals the Church by claiming to be its own witness, and to
be infallible. Such is the World, the false Prophet (as I called it
fifty years ago), and Reasoning is its voice. I had in my mind such
Apostolic sayings as "Love not the world, neither the things of
the world," and "A friend of the world is the enemy of
God;" but I was very loth, as indeed I am on the present
occasion, to preach. Instead then of saying "the World's
Reason," I said "Reason actually and historically,"
"Reason in fact and concretely in fallen man," "Reason
in the educated intellect of England, France, and Germany,"
Reason in "every Government and every civilization through the
world which is under the influence of the European mind," Reason
in the "wild living intellect of man," which needs its
"stiff neck bent," that ultra "freedom of thought which
is in itself one of the greatest of our natural gifts,"
"that deep plausible scepticism" which is "the
development of human reason as practically exercised by the natural
man." That is, Reason as wielded by the living World against the
teaching of the Infallible Church. {461}
And I was sanctioned in thus speaking by St. Paul's parallel use of
the word "Wisdom," which is one of the highest gifts given
to man, and which, nevertheless, he condemns considered as the World's
Wisdom, pronouncing that "the World by Wisdom knew not God."
VI.
In thus shifting the blame of hostility to religion from man
reasoning to man collective, I may seem to be imputing to a divine
ordinance (for such human society is) what I have disclaimed to be
imputing to man's gift of reason; but this is to mistake my meaning.
The World is a collection of individual men, and any one of them may
hold and take on himself to profess unchristian doctrine, and do his
best to propagate it; but few have the power for such a work, or the
opportunity. It is by their union into one body, by the intercourse of
man with man, and the consequent sympathy thence arising, that error
spreads and becomes an authority. Its separate units which make up the
body rely upon each other, and upon the whole, for the truth of their
assertions; and thus assumptions and false reasonings are received
without question as certain truths, on the credit of alternate appeals
and mutual cheers and imprimaturs.
I should like, if I could, to give a specimen of these assumptions,
and the reasonings founded on them, which in my "Apologia" I
considered to be "corrosive" of all religion; but before
doing so, I must guard against misconstruction of what I am proposing.
First, I am not proposing to carry on an argument against Dr.
Fairbairn, whose own opinions, to tell the truth, I have not a dream
of; but I would gladly explain, or rather complete on particular
points, the statements I have before now made in several works about
Faith and Reason. Next, I can truly say that, neither in those former
writings nor now, have I particular authors in mind who are, or are
said to be, prominent teachers in what I should call the school of the
world. Such an undertaking would require a volume, instead of half a
dozen pages such as these, and the study too of many hard questions;
and I repeat here, I am attempting little more than to fill up a few
of the lacunę to be found in a chapter of the
"Apologia," which, like the rest of the book, had to be
written extempore; certainly I have no intention here of
entering into controversy. And further, I wish to call attention to a
passage in one of my St. Mary's Sermons, headed, "The World our
Enemy," which is not directly on the subject of religious error,
but still is applicable when I would fain clear myself in what I am
saying of falling unintentionally into any harsh and extreme
judgments. A few sentences will be enough to show the drift with which
I quote it. {462}
"There is a question," I say, "which it will be well
to consider—viz., how far the world is a separate body from the
Church of God. The two are certainly contrasted in Scripture, but the
Church, so far from being literally and in fact separate from the
world, is within it. The Church is a body, gathered together indeed in
the world, and in a process of separation from it. The world's power
is over the Church, because the Church has gone forth into the world
to save the world. All Christians are in the world, and of the world,
so far as Evil still has dominion over them, and not even the best of
us is clean every whit from sin. Though then, in our idea of the one
and the other, and in their principles and in their future prospects,
the Church is one thing and the world is another, yet in present
matter of fact the Church is of the world, not separate from it; for
the grace of God has but partial possession even of religious men, and
the best that can be said of us is, that we have two sides, a light
side and a dark, and that the dark happens to be the outermost. Thus
we form part of the world to each other, though we be not of the
world. Even supposing there were a society of men influenced
individually by Christian motives, still, this society, viewed as a
whole, would be a worldly one; I mean a society holding and
maintaining many errors, and countenancing many bad practices. Evil
ever floats on the top." ("Sermons," vol. vii. pp.
35-6.)
In accordance with these cautions I will here avow that good men
may imbibe to their great disadvantage the spirit of the world; and,
on the contrary, inferior men may keep themselves comparatively clear
of it.
VII.
These explanations being made, I take up the serious protest which
I began in the "Apologia." I say then, that if, as I
believe, the world, which the Apostles speak of so severely as a False
Prophet [Note 2], is identical
with what we call human society now, then there never was a time since
Christianity was, when, together with the superabundant temporal
advantages which by it have come to us, it had the opportunity of
being a worse enemy to religion and religious truth than it is likely
to be in the years now opening upon us. I say so, because in its width
and breadth it is so much better educated and informed than it ever
was before, and, because of its extent, so multiform and almost
ubiquitous. Its conquests in the field of physical science, and its
intercommunion of place with place, are a source to it both of pride
and of enthusiasm. It has triumphed over time and space; knowledge it
has proved to be emphatically power; no problems of the universe—material,
moral, or religious—are too great for its ambitious essay and its
high will to master. There is one obstacle in its path: I mean the
province of religion. But can religion hope to be successful? It is
thought to be already giving way before the presence of what the world
considers a new era in the history of man. {463}
VIII.
With these thoughts in my mind, I understand how it has come to
pass, what has struck me as remarkable, that the partisans and
spokesmen of Society, when they come to the question of religion, seem
to care so little about proving what they maintain, and, on the
warrant of their philosophy, are content silently and serenely to take
by implication their first principles for granted, as if, like the
teachers of Christianity, they were inspired and infallible. To the
World, indeed, its own principles are infallible, and need no proof.
Now, if its representatives would but be candid, and say that their
assumptions, as ours, are infallible, we should know where they stand;
there would be an end to controversy. As I have said before now,
"Half the controversies in the world, could they be brought to a
plain issue, would be brought to a prompt termination. Parties engaged
in them would then perceive ... that in substance ... their difference
was of first principles ... When men understand what each other means,
they see for the most part that controversy is either superfluous or
hopeless." ("Univ. Serm." p. 200-1.) The World, then,
has its first principles of religion, and so have we. If this were
understood, I should not have my present cause of protest against its
Reason as corrosive of our faith. I do not grudge the World its gods,
its principles, and its worship; but I protest against its sending
them into Christian lecture-rooms, libraries, societies, and
companies, as if they were Christian—criticizing, modelling,
measuring, altering, improving, as it thinks, our doctrines,
principles, and methods of thought, which we refer to divine
informants. One of my "University Sermons," in 1831, is on
this subject; it is called "The Usurpations of Reason," and
I have nothing to change in it. I was very jealous of the
"British Association" at its commencement; not as if science
were not a divine gift, but because its first members seemed to begin
with a profession of Theism, when I said their business was to keep to
their own range of subjects. I argued that if they began with Theism,
they would end with Atheism. At the end of half a century I have still
more reason to be suspicious of the upshot of secular schools. Not, of
course, that I suppose that the flood of unbelief will pour over us in
its fulness at once. A large inundation requires a sufficient time,
and there are always in the worst times witnesses for the Truth to
stay the plague [Note 3]. Above
all things, there is the Infallible Church, of which I spoke so much
in the "Apologia." With this remark I proceed. {464}
IX.
I will take an illustration of the prospect before us in the
instance of a doctrine which is more than most the subject of dispute
just now. Lest I should be mistaken, I avow myself to hold it, not
because of the disintegrating consequences of letting it go, but on
the simple word of the Divine Informant; yet I want to show the
prospective development of error. A century ago the God of
Christianity was called a God of mere benevolence. That could not long
be maintained, first, because He was the God of the Old Testament as
well as of the New, and next and specially because the New Testament
opened upon us the Woe thrice uttered by the Judge himself, the Woe
unquenchable denounced upon transgressors. But the instinct of modern
civilization denies the very idea of such a doom in the face of a
progressive future. Yet consider—is there not now, as an undeniable
fact, a vast aggregate of intense weary pain, bodily and mental, which
has existed through an untold length of centuries, all round the
earth. Consider only the long pain and anguish which are the ordinary
accompaniments of death. Supposing mankind has lasted many thousand
years, the suffering has lasted just as long; there has been no
interval of rest. But you will say it has an end, and is comparatively
brief, to each mortal; then you mean to say that your objection to
future suffering would cease were it only for a thousand years and not
for ever? Considering what is told us of the punishment of Dives,
would that alleviation really content you? I do not believe it; you
would not be satisfied with the curtailment of such punishment even to
a hundred years; nay, not to twenty, not to a dozen. In spite of the
word of Scripture, your imagination would carry you away; you would
shrink from the idea of a course of suffering altogether; death indeed
you could not deny, but "after death the judgment" and a
trial before it, would cease to be a reality to you. It is a subject
beyond you; it is not duration which you revolt from, but rather the
pain. Indeed, are we sure that long duration intensifies pain? We have
no positive notion of suffering in relation to duration. Punishment is
not therefore infinite, because it has no end. What alone we know
about eternity is negatively, that there is no future when it will be
otherwise. All that is necessary for us to be told is that the state
of good and evil is irreversible.
X.
But again, what do we know of the obstacles to a reconciliation
between God and man? Suppose the punishment is self-inflicted; suppose
it is the will, the proud determination of the lost to breathe
defiance to his Maker, or the utter loathing of His Presence or His
Court, which makes a reconciliation with Him impossible. To change
such a one may be to change his identity. Moreover, what do we {465}
know of the rules necessary for the moral government of the universe?
What acts of judgment are or are not compatible or accordant with the
bearing of a Just Judge? and by what self-evident process do we
ascertain this? What of His knowledge who is able to "search the
heart?" We are told He is one who "overcomes when He is
judged;" ought we not to have the whole case spread out for us,
as it will be at the Last Day, before we venture to pronounce upon its
details? They are parts of a whole. Go to what is the root of the
mystery, and tell us what is the Origin of Evil. Solve this, and you
may see your way to other difficulties. Does not this greatest of
mysteries, the "Origin of Evil," fall as heavily upon
Natural Religion as future punishment upon Revelation? After all, the
Theist needs Faith as well as the Christian. All religion has its
mysteries, and all mysteries are correlative with faith; and, where
Faith is absent, the action of "corrosive reason," under the
assumptions of educated society, passes on (as I have given offence by
asserting) from Catholicity to Theism, and from Theism to a
materialistic cause of all things. Dr. Fairbairn calls it sceptical to
preach Faith, and to practise it.
XI.
I have confined myself to the Divine Judgment; but this is only one
of the doctrines which the abolition of the Woe to come is made to
compromise. Here again modern philosophy acts to the injury of
revelation. Those solemn warnings of Scripture against disobedience to
the law of right and wrong are but the fellow of the upbraidings and
menaces of the human Conscience. The belief in future punishment will
not pass away without grave prejudice to that high Monitor. Are you,
in losing its warning voice, to lose an ever-present reminder of an
Unseen God? It is a bad time to lose this voice when efforts so
serious have so long been making to resolve it into some intellectual
theory or secular motive. But there is another doctrine, too, that
suffers when future punishment is tampered with—namely, what is
commonly called the "Atonement." The Divine Victim took the
place of man: how will this doctrine stand if the final doom of the
wicked is denied? Every one who escapes the penalty of pain, escapes
it by virtue of the Atonement made for it; but so great a price as was
paid for the remission supposes an unimaginable debt. If the need was
not immense, would such a Sacrifice have been called for? Does not
that Sacrifice throw a fearful light upon the need? And if the need be
denied, will not the Sacrifice be unintelligible? The early martyrs
give us their sense of it; they considered their torments as a
deliverance from their full deserts, and felt that, had they recanted,
it would have been at the risk of their eternal welfare. The Great
Apostle is in his writings full of gratitude to the Power who has
"delivered us {466} from the wrath to come." It is a
foundation of the whole spiritual fabric on which his life is built.
What remains of his Christianity if he is no longer to be penetrated
by the thought of that "so great death" from which he had
been now "delivered?" Can the religion with which Society at
present threatens us be the same as the Apostle's, if this solemn
doctrine is in this Religion and not in that?
XII.
Shall I be answered that it is only dogma which is left out in
modern Christianity? I understand; dogma is unnecessary for faith,
because faith is but a sentiment; vicarious suffering is an injustice;
spiritual benefits cannot be wrought by material instruments; sin is
but a weakness or an ignorance; this life has nearer claims on us than
the next; the nature of man is sufficient for itself; the rule of law
admits no miracles; and so on. There is any number of these
assumptions ready for the nonce, and there is Micio's axiom in the
play, soon perhaps to come upon us, "Non est flagitium, mihi
crede, adolescentulum scortari."
When Reason starts from assumptions such as these, its corrosive
quality ought to be sufficient to satisfy Dr. Fairbairn.
P.S.—This is all I think it necessary to set down in explanation of
passages in my "Apologia." As to my other writings, I can
safely leave them to take care of themselves. Any one that looks into
them will see how strangely Principal Fairbairn has misrepresented
them. But perhaps, for the sake of those who do not know them, it is
my duty to denounce in a few words the monstrous words which he has
used about me.
His organon of criticism is the old "Fallacy of the
Leading Idea," viz., that of imagining to himself an hypothesis,
by which he may proceed to interpret such phenomena of intellect as it
pleases him to ascribe to me, and thereby to save himself the task of
quotations, or any pains to which a conscientious critic would feel
himself bound. In fact, though he professes to have read, or rather to
have "studied," all my "works, tracts, essays,
lectures, histories, and treatises," after all he has selected
for adverse notice (over and above the "Apologia ") only
some clauses in an Oratorian and two sentences in an Oxford Sermon.
As to what he considers my "Leading Idea," it is in truth
an imputation as offensive to the feelings of a Catholic as it is
preposterous in itself; it is that I have been and am thinking,
living, professing, acting upon a wide-stretching, all-reaching
platform of religious scepticism. This scepticism is the real key to
my thoughts, my arguments, and my conclusions, to what I have said in
the pulpit and {467} what I have written in my study. I may not
realize it, but I am "a poet," and "it is the
unconscious and undesigned" revelations of self "that
testify more truly of a man" (p. 663). This, he tells us, is his
deliberate view, gained with pains and care, and on my part admits of
no escape.
"It will be necessary," he says, when starting on his
search for it, "to discover, if possible, Dr. Newman's ultimate
ideas, or the regulative principles of his thought"
(p. 663). Next, "It is difficult, almost a cruel thing,"
still a necessity, "to attempt to reach the ultimate
principles that govern his thought" (p. 664). "Unless
his governing ideas are reached, neither his mind nor his
method can be understood" (ibid.). Once more: only by
holding certain points distinct "can we get at those ultimate
principles or ideas we are here in search of" (p.
665).
At last he has found the object of his careful searching: he quotes
some half-sentences from my "Apologia," which he does not
understand, accuses me of denouncing the faculty of Reason (supr.,
p. 460), asks how I come to do so, and then announces his discovery:
"The reason must be sought in Dr. Newman's underlying
philosophy," which is "empirical and sceptical" (p.
667). From "leading ideas" and "fundamental
principles" I have all through my life shrunk as sophistical and
misleading, but I do not wonder that Dr. Fairbairn should like them,
for they are to him, as I have intimated, of the greatest service. His
"underlying philosophy," gained so carefully, enables him to
dispense in his criticisms on me with quotations, references,
evidences, altogether.
To this use he puts his "Leading Idea" in the very next
sentence after he has discovered it; and by the sole virtue of it he
at once utters a sweeping condemnation of my "Grammar of
Assent," without any one quotation or reference to support him.
Thus he writes: "The real problem of the 'Grammar of Assent' is,
How, without the Consent and warrant of the reason, to justify the
being of religion, and faith in that infallible church which alone
realizes it. The whole book is pervaded by the intensest philosophical
scepticism: this supplies its motif, determines its problem,
necessitates its distinctions, rules over the succession and gradation
of its arguments. His doctrine of assent, his distinction into
notional and real, which itself involves a philosophy of the most
empirical individualism, his criticism of Locke, his theories of
inference, certitude, and the illative sense, all mean the same
thing" (p. 667). Not a shred of quotation is given to support
this charge—not a single reference; but at the end of it, instead of
such necessary proof, a sentence is tacked on to it, which after some
search I found, not in the Essay on Assent, but, in one of my Sermons,
written above thirty years before, taken out of its context, and cut
off from the note upon it which I {468} had added in its Catholic
edition. Such is the outcome of Dr. Fairbairn's scrupulous care, that
"lectures and treatises should be chronologically arranged"
(p. 663). Such, above all, is the gain of a "Leading Idea,"
and it is irresistible in the hands of Dr. Fairbairn; it ignores or
overrides facts, however luminous. The instance I have given is a
strong one, but I will set down some others.
For instance: 1. When I have with warmth and strength of words
denied that the alternative of atheism is my only argument for
believing in the Catholic Church, and given evidence in contradiction
of the charge, he answers that it is "certainly true,"
on the contrary, that "I believe it is the only real
alternative" (p. 664).
2. When I express my recognition of the "formal proofs on
which the being of God rests," and "the irrefragable
demonstration thence resulting," he says that my
"recognition must be criticized in the light of my own fundamental
principle; it is to me entirely illegitimate" (p. 668).
3. He cannot help being obliged to quote me as saying that the
"unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in
God;" still he boldly says of me that "in my intellect, as I
know it, in my reason, as I interpret it, I find no religion, no
evidence for the being of a God" (p. 669).
4. When I say that I am a Catholic because I believe in God, and
that Theism is attainable even under paganism ("Univ. Serm.,"
p. 21), "No," he answers, "you really mean that you are
a Catholic in order that you may continue Theist" (p. 665).
5. And when I say that the Church's infallibility is "far from
being" the only way of withstanding "the energy of human
scepticism" ("Apol." p. 245), he answers that my "position
will not allow me to hold, that Theism existed without and
independently of Catholicism" (p. 665).
6. "Reason," I have said in my "University
Sermons," "when its exercise is conducted rightly, leads to
knowledge; when wrongly, to error. It is able from small beginnings to
create to itself a world of ideas. It is unlimited in its range. It
supplies the deficiency of the senses. It reaches to the ends of the
universe, and to the throne of God beyond them. Also, it has a power
of analysis and criticism in all opinion and conduct; nothing is true
or right but what may be justified, and, in a certain sense, proved by
it; and unless the doctrines received by faith are approvable by
Reason, they have no claim to be regarded as true" (pp. 182, 206,
207, 256).
How carefully he has "studied" my writings! The account
he gives of their teaching about Reason is this: "There is
another and still deeper difference—the conception of the Reason
… Dr. Newman's language seems to me often almost impious"
(p. 673).
Such are the convenient uses to which he puts his fundamental {469}
principle. No wonder he gratefully recognizes and records the service
which his fundamental principle has done him in dispensing with any
more of that anxious searching which he found necessary in attaining
it.
"Detailed criticism," he says, "of Dr. Newman's
position, with its various assumptions and complex confusion of
thought, is of course here impossible" (p. 669). Of course;
impossible, and therefore let alone.
Marvellous is the power of a Fundamental View. There is said to
have been a man who wrote English History, and could not be persuaded
that the Heptarchy was over or Queen Anne dead, I forget which; and
who, when pressed with a succession of facts to the contrary, did but
reply, as each came before him, "O but, excuse me, that
was an exception!" Dr. Fairbairn reminds me of that man.
JOHN HENRY CARDINAL
NEWMAN.
Top | Contents | Works | Home
Notes
1. I believe that some philosophers, as Kant, speak of the Moral
Sense as a Divine Reason. Of course, I have no difficulty in accepting
"Reason" in this sense; but I have not so used it myself.
Return to text
2. Vide
University Sermons, "Contrast between Faith and Sight."
Return to text
3. Vide one
of my University Sermons, "Personal Influence the Means of
Propagating the Truth."
Return to text
Top | Contents | Works | Home
Newman Reader Works of John Henry Newman
Copyright © 2007 by The National Institute for Newman Studies. All rights reserved.
|