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ART. VI.-Dr Newman.

Apologia pro Vita sua: being a reply to a Pamphlet entitled, What, then, does Dr Newman mean?" By JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D. Seven Parts and Appendix. London. 1864.

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THIS is a very interesting production. It is an apology for Dr Newman's Life, in the shape of a sketch of it. The interest does not attach to the main point debated between Mr Kingsley and Dr Newman; or does so in only a subordinate degree. That point was, whether Dr Newman had not committed himself to doctrines which sanction deception and insincerity; those doctrines, in short, which we commonly call Jesuitical and further, whether there were not Jesuitical and dishonest doings, chargeable upon him in point of practice, tending to strengthen the presumption that he held and taught the doctrines. The main material for this charge, and in particular for the latter branch of it, was sought in that portion of his life during which he was still a member of the Church of England, though already propagating doctrines which, in effect, led himself and others to Rome. These impeachments, set forth with Mr Kingsley's usual vigour, had to be met. Dr Newman has met them with great animation, and we think on the whole with success. We do not admit, indeed, that Dr Newman is entitled to cry out quite so loudly as he does, of violence and wrong, on the ground of the suspicions regarding him. We may explain presently why we think so. It is enough to say now, that a mind so subtle as his will inevitably get, and did get, into courses which look extremely dishonest; and his procedure not only suggested that idea, but had all the damaging effect on the Church of England of a plot, a mine sprung upon her by those who professed to serve her. Earnest minds of other parties, in that communion, could not fail, therefore, to be in the highest degree irritated and offended. Still it must always be remembered how largely men may themselves be deceived or confused, who seem to be deceiving others; and this consideration is peculiarly applicable when no motive of personal interest can be imputed as the spring of the course adopted. As the case stands now, in the light of the singular unveiling of his mind which Dr Newman has presented, nobody, we imagine, will be disposed to make any further imputations on his personal honesty. There may have been ground, for all that, for very severe blame, and very lively indignation. But it will, probably, be universally conceded that, if his actings, as directed from his position, were of the most singular kind, that may be traced to causes different from any want of

integrity, or any purpose to deceive. We purposely state the matter first in this negative way. We hasten to add, and it is only due to Dr Newman to say it, that his autobiography (as we may call it) conveys to the reader an impression of real candour, and presents the picture, besides, of a very attractive mind. After reading it, one can well understand Blanco White's description of its author, as "the amiable, the intellectual, the refined John Henry Newman." Many who are far enough from liking his opinions or his public conduct, and who will like them none the better for what they find here, will yet retain, we believe, a feeling of kindliness for him who has entrusted them through these pages with this outpouring of his confidence. This we feel and say, although we by no means believe that either pure indignation or pure simplicity lay at the bottom of the outpouring. With visible adroitness, Mr Kingsley's assault is employed as the occasion for utterances and reflections, which are meant to sway men's minds on questions far more important than those which respect the consistency and integrity of either combatant.

Still, on the personal question, as regards personal integrity, Dr Newman is successful And this is a great gain. We must fight in this world; and against Dr Newman and his associates in the Church of Rome the fight must be to the death. But it is a great thing to be relieved from the necessity of throwing dirt. It does sometimes become a duty to propel that unsavoury missile at those to whom it belongs. We are glad that Dr Newman has made good his right to be encountered henceforth with more knightly weapons. We say this for himself. As for the casuists of his church, whose defence he has had to undertake in a general way, we make no such admission. The main charges against the moral teaching of the Jesuit casuists, and of Liguori as their follower, are not to be got over by means of the expedients which do duty once again in Dr Newman's pages.

But, as we have said, the main interest of the publication is not tied to these issues. When Dr Newman began to consider how Mr Kingsley's charges were to be met, he speedily made up his mind, he tells us, that there was only one way of doing it likely to be effective. Mr Kingsley had asked what he meant; and had implied, or seemed to imply, that his meaning had not borne upright proportion to his saying and doing. Dr Newman, therefore, resolved to retrace his whole mental history. He would shew how his opinions had come, had grown, had been modified. He would reveal the reactions occasioned in his mind by all the personal and party events which had moulded his history. And then he would await the public verdict on his integrity; whether he had not at least been

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upright, however strange men might still think the course of his opinions, and the successive positions which he had occupied. The result lies before us. Now, in doing this, Dr Newman has revealed the progress of a remarkable mental history. worth following for its own sake. He has retraced the steps of a very remarkable ecclesiastical movement, as these are remembered and regarded by one who was long its leader and prophet. He has exhibited the great modern questions, religious, or bordering on religion, which occupy the minds of thinking men, as these appeared to himself and his friends, and wrought upon He sometimes makes statements, and throughout his Apologia he implies convictions, as to the way in which these questions must be met, as to the ultimate issues into which they will resolve, and the principles that will prove decisive. These convictions of his, stated or implied, have a special cogency from the mode in which they are presented. They appear not as mere dialectical positions, but in the closest connection with the workings, and driftings, and distresses of a very able and cultivated mind; they appear as verified in a life which they have moulded; they are certified to be forces with which men who will think must reckon, by the experience of one for whom they proved too strong. The result into which they all converge is that stated in p. 322, viz., that a perfectly consistent mind must embrace either Atheism or Catholicism. "I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God." This is the old alternative of the Romish controversialists. But here it reappears with a fresh interest and force. For it is as if he said, "I at least have found that this is the ultimate question. I don't debate it. I simply set before you the track of mental history, pursued for thirty years nearly, along which I found myself led or driven, till I finally surrendered to that alternative."

These are the real sources of the interest attaching to the book. Some, chiefly those who have already received a special preparation, may be influenced by it in the direction of Rome. By others it will be taken-it has already been taken as a reductio ad absurdum of revealed religion. "There is no tenable position, on the hypothesis of positive Christianity, except moving on, however unwillingly, to the infallible church and the infallible see. Do that, which means of course, simply, Shut your eyes and open your mouth. Or, if you will not do that, give up positive Christianity, and be content with as much deism of a Christianised sort as philosophy and history can save for you." While these diverging morals will be drawn from the book by different parties, all will regard it as affording a curious experimental illustration (the experimentum, certainly, not in corpore vili) of the religious pathology and physiology

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of the time. It is a remarkable psychological study, and a remarkable illustration of the way in which modern questions, or rather old questions in their modern forms, have influenced and may yet influence certain minds.

Nothing, surely, can be more striking and strange than the parallel, which every one instantly draws, between the brothers, Francis Newman of the "Phases of Faith," and John Henry Newman of this "Apologia." Both of them able and accomplished men, both of them so earnest and so open to great questions, both of them so set on giving effect to their convictions, both beginning life under the influence,-to all appearance then the deep and genuine influence,-of religion in its evangelical or Calvinistic form, both moving off so decidedly from their original ground, though in directions so different, each reaching a landing-place, apparently final, from which he looks back on the original position of both, as on a quite alien and hostile region, and each publishing to the world his mental history, his sorrows and his aspirations, and in effect saying, "Do not look on this as a mere debate of arguments, bear the burden and share the conflict, follow me into this search for truth, and feel the force of the currents that are running in these regions, enter into these questions as they exercise human beings, as they exercised me; and then say whether any other course, any other landing-place, was possible for me, or is reasonable for you." It is very plain, indeed, to those who read attentively, that each rates the value of the reason that lies, or is supposed to lie, in his experience, a world too high. Still these biographies, and that of Blanco White, form a group that will often be referred to by the future historian of the religious history of the English mind in the first half of the nineteenth century.

John Henry Newman was born in the year 1801. He was religiously brought up, and "taught to take great delight in reading the Bible;" but no decisive convictions were formed till he was fifteen years of age. Then a change came. It was due partly to the conversation and sermons of a clergyman who is not named, but still more to the books which he put into bis hands, which were "of the school of Calvin." One was by Romaine; but the writings which made the deepest impression were those of Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford. "To him," he says, "humanly speaking, I almost owe my soul." The change which then took place was no slight one. Dr Newman still speaks of it with solemnity as "the inward conversion of which I was conscious, and of which I still am more certain than that I have hands or feet." Connecting his experience with the doctrines he had received from those writers, he believed that the change "would last into the next life, and that I was elected

to eternal glory." The doctrines of election and perseverance were afterwards resigned, or faded out of his mind, apparently when he was at the university. There is no evidence, as far as we have observed, of his having received then, or afterwards, any deep impression from the doctrine of the atonement, as usually presented by evangelical writers. But he permanently retained "impressions of dogma," especially the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity, and a profound sense of the reality of the Divine existence, as the existence to which his own stood related; also "the facts of heaven and hell, divine favour and divine wrath, the justified and the unjustified." "The Catholic doctrine of the warfare between the city of God and the powers of darkness," he derived from Law's "Serious Call." These were the main results; and from this time, he tells us, he has given a full inward assent to the doctrine of eternal punishment, as delivered by our Lord himself. From Milner's "Church History," and from "Newton on the Prophecies," he drew two other elements of the religious thinking of those early days. Milner depicts at large the character of those fathers whom he judged to be exemplary Christians, and makes large extracts from their writings, treating them as examples of godliness in the several ages of the church, and Newman acquired a great respect and liking for them. Newton impressed him with a clear conviction that the pope was antichrist, an idea which his imagination, at least, did not get rid of till 1843. Dr Newman regards these two impressions as inconsistent with one another, and as involving the elements of all the mental conflicts of his later years. For how could those fathers be bright examples of Christian holiness, how could even some popes be of the number, and yet the church be ruled by antichrist, in the person of the pope? We do not think the answer so very difficult as Dr Newman seems to think, but we must not stray into matter of this kind.

Romaine, Thomas Scott, Joseph Milner, and Bishop Newton, -these "sound" authors were the guides of his youth; nor does he seem to have varied materially from the path which they recommended, until he was pretty well through his University course. We should be very glad to see a boy of ours take to these authors, nor should we think him very ill provided for with those for his favourites, for that time. But it does strike us as noteworthy that he seems to have found nothing beyond these, in the same line, no deeper or more varied development of the same general views of Scripture teaching. There is, at all events, no evidence that his mind, able and susceptible as it was, met with anything further, in that line, than the Romaine, Scott, Milner, and Newton, that had been his friends at fifteen. This is the impression one