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these, therefore, a more faithful Christian than he who believes a narrower creed, that which he derives from the Scripture alone, with as intense fervour? We are constantly urged to look back with despairing envy to what have been called the 'ages of faith.' Now we venture to assert that the principle of faith was as strong in Luther (we take him merely as an example) as in any Pope that ever sat in the Vatican. His creed may have been true or false, perfect or imperfect, but in its defence he was as vehement, passionate, and even fanatical as Dominic or Loyola. Luther was as contemptuous of human reason as the most imperious dogmatist, or the most impassioned mystic. Mr. Carlyle shall be heard in favour of the depth and reality of Cromwell's faith. What test will the enthusiasm, the fiery zeal, the undaunted and unwearied energy of one of these believers endure, which will not be borne by the other? I will fight for my faith,' so said the Crusaderand so said the soldier of Gustavus Adolphus. 'I will suffer for my faith,' so said the Franciscan missionary in the desert, and so said the Primitive Quaker in the stocks, and the Cameronian on the hills. I will die for my faith,' so said Campian on the rack, and Ridley and Latimer at the stake. Nay, 'I will persecute for the faith,' said the Grand Inquisitor on his tribunal, and Laud in the Star Chamber. I will burn the heretic,' so said the Inquisitor of Thoulouse as he heaped hundreds into one furnace; and so, if he be but an Arian, must I, said the more timid Cranmer; and who will not, if he dare to deny the Lord's divinity?' spake Calvin, and looked in stern satisfaction on the pile of Servetus.

Let us turn from the crimes to the follies of faith. Is there no line between faith and credulity? Is the faith which embraces the Golden Legend as well as the Gospel, therefore, superior to simple faith in the Gospel? Look at that strange, eloquent, learned, rhapsodical book, the Christliche Mystik' of Görres, where the most subtle Rationalism is wedded by the imagination to the most inconceivable credulity; where we defy the reader to tell us where physical causes end, and where

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supernatural ones begin; where Mesmerism (or something undistinguishable from Mesmerism) or Miracle is the agent in all the ecstatic visions, wonderful cures, and passionate devotions of the Middle Ages. Mr. Newman himself has limits to his faith; he does not (as yet) believe in the false Decretals, or in the works of the pseudo-Dionysius. Mr. Newman is a traitor to the Supremacy of Faith'-a mere Rationalist in comparison with the Abbé Darboy, Professor of Theology in the Seminary of Langres, who has published a translation of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, with a grave and learned preface, actually maintaining the authenticity of these books as the genuine remains of St. Paul's Athenian convert. Verily the Abbé Darboy puts this degenerate nineteenth century, Catholic as well as Protestant, to shame. May we venture one further inquiry? Will Mr. Newman vouchsafe his presence at the next exhibition of the seamless coat of Treves, if, indeed, Bishop Arnoldi has courage to venture a second exhibition?

In sober earnestness, the great question-this solemn arbitrement between Faith and Reason-requires to be examined with a more dispassionate judgement and larger philosophy than Mr. Newman has brought to bear upon it. The important distinction in the sounder German philosophy between Vernunft (the perfect Reason-we have no corresponding term) and Verstand, may be called in, as Dr. Arnold suggests, with some advantage. We have not forgotten Mr. Newman's University Sermons, which if in our judgement far from exhaustive, satisfactory, or conclusive, are suggestive of much deep and important thought, of much true if not complete philosophy. If we remember, he comes at last to the one test of faith, its working by love.' It is the Christian disposition which embraces, warrants, purifies, and at the same time tries the faith. Would that on these terms Christendom could come to a truce! Let us all endeavour to become good Christians, Christians in love as in faith, and we shall approximate to truth far more nearly than by years of controversy. Though even here we fear that we

shall hardly agree in our first principle. Mr. Newman's will be an ascetic, gloomy, self-torturing, monastic, though deeply devout Christianity; ours an active, cheerful, intelligent, domestic, English, and therefore more practical, though it may be less imaginative or ceremonial faith.

But, after all, this controversy, as it is really brought to issue in the present day, rests far below these abstruse inquiries into the legitimate province of Faith and of Reason. Mr. Newman writes of Reason, as of a slow and regular intellectual process; a working out of truth by profound meditation, which few have the ability, still fewer the leisure, in this busy age, to pursue. But there is an intuitive reason, which we presume to think a competent judge in great part of the debate; at least, we are sure that most men will be guided by its verdict. There is a homely quality, called common sense, especially strong in our practical Anglo-Saxon race. The vast mass of men endowed with this gift will persist in taking their Christianity from the New Testament rather than from the long range of Ecclesiastical History: they know that the New Testament is not merely the most authoritative, but likewise the oldest record of their faith; and they will find it difficult to understand how doctrines, of which our Lord vouchsafes not the least hint, and of which the Apostles betrayed in all their writings not the slightest knowledge, can be essential to their salvation. They will be utterly perplexed with the notion that the Son of God made a revelation to mankind, a revelation of mercy and truth, and yet left that revelation to be completed (for every addition must either be an improvement, an elucidation, or an unwarranted excrescence) by man at the close of fourteen or fifteen centuries. If a new object of worship, seemingly altogether excluded not merely by the silence of the Scripture, but by an apparently jealous reservation of divine honours to the Persons of the Holy Trinity, should have arisen five centuries after the death of Christ, and claim, if theoretically subordinate, practically equal or superior honours; if this common-sense Christian, when he reads of One Mediator

between God and man, should discover an infinite multitude of intermediate Intercessors, at least, coming between him and the throne of grace, he will have almost an invincible repugnance to submit to an authority, in itself of very uncertain and questionable date.

None of the points at issue between English Protestantism and Rome seem to demand any painful or sustained effort of thought, any profound instruction in the science of logic, any laborious study of history, as far as the single question, whether they are Scriptural or not. On those, in whose hereditary creed they find no place, they can only be enforced by a very slow and very subtle process. How long has Mr. Newman, with all his tendencies and with all his powers, if Mr. Newman has honestly recorded the progress of his own opinions, been occupied in reasoning himself into new forms of belief? By what painful and laborious process has he come at length to these convictions? It has been by a total surrender of the Supremacy of Faith, by reasonings which, no doubt, they have thought unanswerable, but still, by close, deep, logical reasonings (unless they will honestly admit that they have been influenced entirely by passion or temperament), that so many men, most of them young men, have given up their faith in Christianity as it came from the lips of our Lord and his Apostles, as it was taught them by their parents and instructors, for the developed Christianity of later centuries.

III. The third test is the Power of Assimilation; we quote at once one of the definitions, and one of the illustrations of

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The idea never was that throve and lasted, yet, like mathematical truth, incorporated nothing from external sources. So far from the fact of such incorporation implying corruption, as is sometimes supposed, development implies incorporation. Mahometanism may be in external developments scarcely more than a compound of other theologies, yet no one would deny that there has been a living idea somewhere in that religion, which has been so strong, so wide, so lasting a bond of union in the history of the world. Why it has not continued to develope after its first preaching, if this be the case, as it seems to be,

cannot be determined without a greater knowledge of that religion, and how far it is merely political, how far theological, than we commonly possess.-P. 75.

Here again a wider knowledge of history would have furnished Mr. Newman with a strong analogical refutation of his own doctrines. Mahometanism has passed through almost the same stages of 'development' as Christianity; it has admitted mysticism, monasticism, cultivated Grecian, and anticipated scholastic philosophy.

But who shall say that Haroun Alraschid, or Akbar, or the gorgeous and peaceful Caliphs of Cordova, are the legitimate representatives of the old warrior Ismaelite? The idea of Mahometanism-there is one God and Mahomet is his Prophet -has lived through all these changes; but read the Koran, and then examine all that is known in Europe of Arabian letters and Arabian theology, and who will deny that the Wahabies are more true to the original faith of Mahomet? We think that we could work out an instructive parallel between the developments of Christianity and of Mahometanism -but the reviewer

Estuat infelix angusto in limite.

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As into Christianity, so Orientalism worked its way at an early period into Mahometanism. Mahomet hated monkery. There is an old traditional proverb (quoted by Tholuck, 'Sufismus,' p. 47), Be there no monasticism in Mahometanism.' Yet, not long after the Prophet's death, Mahometanism developed into Monkery; and, ever since, the Islamite Anchorite of the Desert, the Dervise, and even the Coenobite affect the wildest asceticism, forswear the privilege, or renounce the duty, of the married state; live as contemplative hermits, or as begging friars. So too the stern and austere Monotheism developed into a mystic Pantheism. Among the burners of the Alexandrian Library, a vast theology grew up. The

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Compare a small volume, which throws more light on the history of Arabian philosophy than any European work with which we are acquainted, Essai sur les

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