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madmen are." He had called it "a lost Church"-" the Papal apostacy."—"If she has apostatized, it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Then indeed it is to be feared the whole Roman communion bound itself, by a perpetual bond and covenant, to the cause of antichrist."-"Their communion is infested with heresy; we are bound to flee it as a pestilence. They have established a lie in the place of God's truth, and by their claim of immutability in doctrine, cannot undo the sin they have committed."-" In the corrupt Papal system we have the very cruelty, the craft and the ambition of the republic; its cruelty, in its unsparing sacrifice of the happiness and virtue of individuals to a phantom of public expediency, in its forced celibacy within, and its persecutions without; its crafts and its falsehoods, its deceitful deeds and lying wonders; and its grasping ambition, in the very structure of its policy, in its assumption of universal dominion: old Rome is still alive."-" She virtually substitutes an external rite for moral obedience, penance for penitence, confession for sorrow, profession for faith, the lips for the heart."-Mr. Newman with great naïveté tells us that "a friend"-whether in the said Church or out of it we cannot tell-writes to him, "One hopes one has heard the end of name-calling, when all at once you relapse into your Protestantism, and deal in what I take leave to call slang.". Of all the passages against the Church of Rome, those quoted above and occurring in any of his writings, he says of himself" Of course he now withdraws the arguments alluded to, as far as they reflect upon the Church of Rome, as well as the language in which they are conveyed."

We are sorry to see his defence of the perversion of honesty and ingenuity displayed in the memorable No. 90 of "The Tracts for the Times." He had stated, "In England the Church co-operates with the State in exacting subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles as a test, and that not only of the clergy, but also of the governing body in our Universities, a test against Romanism." He adds, "Such a statement is quite consistent with a wish, on which he has before now acted, to correct popular misapprehensions both of the Roman Catholic doctrines, and of the meaning of the Thirty-nine Articles"-i. e. the "wish" was father to the thought of attempting to shew that the Thirty-nine Articles were consistent with, and did not condemn, the Roman Catholic doctrines! It has been vulgarly remarked, that if a man declaim vehemently against a lady, he is almost sure to become her suitor. Is it by a reaction of a kindred nature that we are to account for Mr. Newman's change? Or is the English Church in its principles in such a position, that no man in her communion can consistently rest satisfied without going back to the Mother Church from which she has apostatized, certainly under circumstances in their origin truly disgraceful to the daughter who wears her robes, inhabits her dwellings and palaces, and inherits by usurpation her estates? God forbid that we should question the sincerity of Mr. Newman, or meddle with the motives that have led to what he calls his "conversion." If his own language exempt him from the charge of insincerity, of sinister purpose, we condemn him not. Of all he had written against Rome while a Church-of-England-man, he says "If you ask me how an individual could venture, not simply to hold, but to publish, such views of a communion so ancient, so wide-spreading, so fruitful of saints, I

answer, that I said to myself, I am not speaking my own words; I am but following almost a consensus of the divines of my Church. They have ever used the strongest language against Rome, even the most able and learned of them. I wish to throw myself into their system. While I say what they say, I am safe. Such views, too, are necessary for our position. Yet I have reason to fear still, that such language is to be ascribed, in no small measure, to an impetuous temper, a hope of approving myself to persons I respect, and a wish to repel the charge of Romanism." Mr. Newman says, "his first act on his conversion was to offer his work (the essay) for revision to the proper authorities; but the offer was declined on the ground that it was written and partly printed before he was a Catholic, and that it would come before the reader in a more persuasive form, if he read it as the author wrote it.” This was cunning policy; but was there not another ground for declining the sanction of the authority, viz., that it would have sanctioned the exercise of the right of private judgment in determining the propriety of rejecting or submitting to the judgment of the Church?

In the introduction to his work, the author says, "Christianity has been long enough in the world to justify us in dealing with it as a fact in the world's history. It has from the first an objective existence, and has thrown itself upon the great concourse of men. Its home is in the world; and to know what it is, we must seek it in the world, and hear the world's witness of it." But, happily for the seeker, the inspired promulgators of Christianity have left documents recording what Christianity teaches, what are its distinctive characteristics, what the objects it aims to secure. Though in the world, it is not of the world; and if the world say one thing of its doctrines and its practices, and the documents say another, no unanimity, no length of duration in the world's testimony, can outweigh the authority of the documents, by which the decision of the impartial seeker will be guided in determining what Christianity is. Mr. Newman acknowledges the difficulty of appealing to the world's testimony, and quotes the words of Chillingworth, There are Popes against Popes, Councils against Councils, some Fathers against others, the same Fathers against themselves, a consent of Fathers of one age against a consent of Fathers of another age, the Church of one age against the Church of another age." In such a case, the least that can be said is, that none of them are faithful vouchers for the truth, none of them can be implicitly trusted; if we can find no surer guides, the search is hopeless and vain.

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The celebrated rule of Vincentius is proposed as a guide in this perplexity-that Christianity is what has been held always, every where, and by all. Mr. N. acknowledges that "this rule contains a majestic truth, and offers an intelligible principle, and wears a reasonable air. Such is its promise; but its difficulty lies in applying it in particular cases. The rule is more serviceable in determining what is not, than what is Christianity." He is aware how much it will exclude, and is unwilling to estimate the full value of what will remain. Dissenters will thank him, a most competent authority, for saying, that "if there be not a shadow of reason for saying that the fathers held, and that it is a Catholic truth, that St. Peter or his successors were and are universal bishops, that they have the whole of Christendom for one diocese, on the same understanding, the doctrine also of the apostolical

succession in the episcopal order has not the faintest pretension of being a Catholic truth." Mr. N. represents as an evidence to prove the incompetency of the canon of Vincentius to decide what Christianity is, a fact which we should regard as one proof of its suitableness, viz., that neither the ante-nicene fathers taught the doctrine of the Trinity, nor did the great Council held before that at Nicæa admit the word "homoüsion, which at Nicea was adopted as the special symbol of Catholicism against Arius. Bishop Bull allows that nearly all the ancient Catholics who preceded Arius have the appearance of being ignorant of the invisible and incomprehensible nature of the Son of God." Justin Martyr, answering the charge of Atheism brought against the Christians, says, "But Him (God), and the Son who came from him, and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels, which follow him and are like him, and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore." Catholic writers justly quote this passage as sanctioning the cultus of angels. But in this an universal concurrence of the early Church is not found. We may remark that reßuea, translated in the passage we worship," is a word applied in the New Testament only to supreme worship, never to the worship of the Son; so that the Catholics cannot well make their distinction of dulia and latria serve in this quotation from Justin to defend their practice. Of the necessary result of the fair application of the rule of Vincentius for discovering what Christianity is, we shall speak hereafter.

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The essay of Mr. Newman is, as he states, "directed towards a solution of the difficulty-which lies in the way of using the testimony of our most natural informant concerning the doctrine and worship of Christianity, viz. the history of eighteen hundred years." For this purpose he adopts what he calls "the theory of developments." "When some great enunciation, whether true or false, about human nature, or present good, or government, or duty, or religion, is carried forward into the public throng and draws attention, then it is not only passively admitted in this or that form into the minds of men, but it becomes a living principle within them, leading them to an ever new contemplation of itself, an acting upon it, and a propagation of it." "New lights will be brought to bear upon the original idea, aspects will multiply, and judgments will accumulate."- "This process is called the development of an idea, being the germination, the growth and perfection of some living, that is, influential truth or apparent truth, in the minds of men during a sufficient period. And it has this necessary characteristic, that, since its province is the busy scene of human life, it cannot develop at all, except either by destroying, or modifying and incorporating with itself, existing modes of thinking and acting."

Now it is remarkable that this very process of inquiry into development was undertaken in a masterly, though too hasty, manner by Dr. Priestley, in his "History of the Corruptions of Christianity." And such is the inexplicable process of human minds in pursuing such inquiries, that while Mr. Newman discovers in the Roman Catholic Church a true development of Christian doctrine, morals and worship, Dr. Priestley, going over much of the same ground in his research, finds this development a tissue of corruptions, more and more perverting the simple truth from which, misunderstood, the authors of these corruptions first started, or more probably to which they subsequently appealed

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to confirm the notions which former associations had instilled into their minds. Of the analogy of physical growth and material corruption, Mr. Newman avails himself, we think unguardedly and illogically, to represent the development or corruption of ideas as they are contemplated by successive generations of minds. Dr. Priestley dealt little with figures, and confined himself to plain facts, and could never regard the doctrine of the Trinity, like the fledged bird, derived from the doctrine of the Divine unity (so clearly taught in the Bible), as the egg or rudimental form. Mr. Newman says, "The Catholic doctrine of the holy Trinity has ever been accused by heretics of interfering with that of the Divine unity, out of which it grew, and even believers will at first sight consider that it tends to obscure it. But Petavius says, ‘I will affirm, what perhaps will surprise the reader, that this distinction of persons, which in regard to proprietates is in reality most great, is so far from disparaging the unity and simplicity of God, that this very real distinction especially avails to the doctrine that God is one and most simple.' This assertion does surprise us. It was probably in the eye of Dr. P. Smith with approbation when he advanced the sentiment in his work on the Person of Christ, that there may be a sense in which unity is an imperfection in the Deity.

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Notwithstanding the severe tests of a true development which Mr. Newman proposes, his list of true developments comprehends all the doctrines and all the practices of the Catholic Church. The supreme authority of the canon of Scripture he recognizes, but sets up an authority for the interpretation of Scripture in the infallibility of the Church, with its infallible Papal Head or chief Bishop. Profoundly learned in all that appertains to the history of the English Church, he considers. its pretensions to be a Catholic Church unfounded; and if his reasoning accord with his premises, we need no surer proof that those premises are false or inappropriate, to enable us to settle the great question, what Christianity really is. Occasionally he refers to the scriptural authorities by which a doctrine has sprung up from the efforts of some powerful mind, or the circumstances of some Christian converts, but the references are of such an unsatisfactory character as to suggest the idea that the doctrine was formed independent of the Bible, and then the book ransacked for a passage to back the doctrine. The following is a fair sample of the scriptural authority which seems to satisfy Mr. N. "-all the definitions or received instructions of the early and medieval Church rest upon definite, even though sometimes obscure, sentences of Scripture. Thus purgatory may appeal to the 'saving by fire, and 'entering through much tribulation into the kingdom of God', the communication of the merits of the saints, to our 'receiving a prophet's reward' for receiving a prophet in the name of a prophet,' and 'a righteous man's reward' for 'receiving a righteous man in the name of a righteous man:' the real presence, to this is my body:' absolution, to whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted: extreme unction, to ' anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:' voluntary poverty, to sell all that thou hast :' obedience, to 'he was in subjection to his parents:' the honour paid to creatures, animate or inanimate, to laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus,' and 'adorate scabellum pedum ejus:' and so of the rest." With Scripture itself, when it expressly forbids what Papal authority enjoins and sanctions, Mr. N. deals very much as he

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dealt with the Thirty-nine Articles of his former Church; for example, take this passage:-"It is maintained that the veneration paid to images in the Catholic Church directly contradicts the command of Scripture. It may be reasonably questioned, then, whether the commandment which stands second in our Decalogue, on which the prohibition of images is chiefly grounded, was intended for more than temporary observance in the letter. So far it is certain, that none could surpass the Jews in its literal observance, yet this did not save them from the punishments attached to the violation of it. If this be so, the literal observance is not its true and evangelical import." The evangelical import of any precept in the Mosaic economy can but be learnt by the comment made upon it by Christ, if such comment exist; but the remarks of Mr. Newman teach, that forbidding to make images or pictures is no literal prohibition of statues or painting.

While it appears to us that his mind is strangely warped in all matters that appertain to the cause to which his piety and sincerity have induced him to attach himself; and while we think that the most able writer in "the Tracts" had no other honest course but to join that Church which he had in all its peculiar features eulogized; and while we regret that so much ability and sound learning should be devoted to a cause, at the probable success of which calm reason stands aghast, and attachment to civil and religious liberty with horror revolts; yet we are fully aware that in his adopted Church there is much that is venerable, interesting, useful and ornamental that hoary time has gathered and consecrated, conducive to piety and subservient to the advance of the arts, and thus to the elevation and refinement of human tastes, perfectly compatible with the majestic simplicity of Christian worship, and not at variance with the unalterable, eternal nature of Christian truth. That this religion, infinitely benevolent in its tendency, rigid and inflexible in its requisitions, adapted to mix with every form of social and political life, to dwell in and control the rudest and the most polished and enlightened minds, must in such combinations undergo developments, numerous in their forms, various in their intellectual character, and not destructive of its grand design to elevate and regenerate the human race, is in the nature of the case highly probable, as an historical fact is indisputably confirmed. That in this process of ages innumerable errors and extravagances will be broached and have their day of longer or shorter duration, and that in due time "the word of God, quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword," will sweep them, one after another, away, past experience so fully convinces us, that the perpetually-recurring cycle of human follies cannot make us doubt. In the vast laboratory of mind and conscience, in the alembic of the treasured records of primitive revealed truth, and not in the official infallibility of any one of our feeble race, has Divine Providence furnished a guarantee that all which is divine, mercifully imparted to frail mortality, shall survive, and that not one tittle of God's word shall ever pass away.

It is clear from the whole train of Mr. Newman's reasoning, though he repeatedly disclaims the inference, that all developments are the exercise of private judgment; at first, of individual minds, and, according to their mental influence and the social position of the innovator or expositor, leading other minds to a willing concurrence.

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