Part 7

Newman maintains that the ‘light’ of ‘Truth’ emanates through ‘personal influence’, personal relationships. ‘Thus in a dark world Truth still makes way in spite of the darkness, passing from hand to hand. And thus it keeps its station in high places, acknowledged as the creed of nations.’ It is through personal influence, Newman suggests, that the Church ‘makes its way’ in the world – its ‘creed’ coming to be ‘acknowledged as the creed of nations’: the life of the Church involves this ‘passing from hand to hand’ of the ‘Truth’. Yet in an essay on St Ambrose, written for the British Critic in 1833, Newman distinguishes between how truth is manifested ‘from saint to saint’, and how it is manifested by the Church, ‘that peculiar institution which Christ set up as a visible home and memorial of Truth’.

Truth … will always support itself in the world by its native vigour; it will never die while heaven and earth last, but be handed down from saint to saint until the end of all things. But this was the case before our Lord came, and is still the case, as we may humbly trust, in heathen countries. … The Church, that peculiar institution which Christ set up as a visible home and memorial of Truth … as being in this world, must be manifested by means of this world. … Hitherto the English Church has depended on the State.¹

Newman contrasts the conveying of the truth ‘from saint to saint’ with the conveying of the truth by the Church, as an ‘institution’, a ‘visible home and memorial’ of the truth: he contrasts the way ‘truth’ is present in personal relationships with how it is present in the ‘institution’ of the Church. When he considers how the Church is ‘manifested’, however, he looks to the worldly ‘means’ – external to the being of the Church itself – by which it is ‘manifested’. He suggests that until recently in England ‘the State’, the ‘regal and aristocratical power’, has been the ‘instrument’ of the Church, the ‘means’ by which it has been ‘manifested’.² While the Church, in England, has made use of the ‘regal and aristocratical power’, this power is, in itself, merely an ‘instrument’; at the time of St Ambrose, the Church made use of the ‘popular’ power – it was ‘supported by a popular movement’ in its conflict with the ‘State’, but though it was strengthened by ‘a popular movement’, it was not in ‘subserviency’ to that ‘movement’.³ The Church is something other than its ‘instruments’ – something other than the ‘powers’, whether ‘regal’ or ‘popular’, that ‘support’ it. These ‘powers’, however, are connected to the way in which the Church is ‘manifested’, to its presence as a power in the world. What, then, is proper to the Church, as distinct from its ‘instruments’, as a ‘visible’ power, or presence, in the world? If the Church is a ‘visible home and memorial of Truth’, why should it need an ‘instrument’ or ‘means’, other than itself, to be ‘manifested’? Why, if it is of its nature to be ‘visible’, should it need something other than itself to be ‘manifested’? In a sermon on the ‘Outward and Inward Notes of the Church’, preached in 1841, Newman maintains that, in the prophecies of Scripture, it is ‘laid down’ that the Church is to have a ‘manifest royalty’, which is to be the ‘evidence of her mission’.

If there be a distinction of the Gospel plainly laid down in Scripture, it is that it is a social religion, and addresses individuals as parts of a whole. And, being social, it must have all things in common, and its evidences and tokens in the number. And, further, if it is social, it must be a public religion, ‘a city set upon a hill;’ and its evidences will be in a measure public. Nay, further, its great note, as announced by the Prophets, is not only that it is social, that it is public, but that it is both social and public in the very highest sense, because it is Catholic, universal every where; and this note is insisted on as something special in itself, of a nature to dazzle and subdue the mind, like a miracle, or like the sun’s light in the heavens. It was to be the characteristic gift of the Christian Church, that she herself was to be a great public evidence of her mission, that she was to be her own evidence. Her very look, her bearing, her voice, were to be her credentials. As Adam had sovereignty over brute animals on his creation, or as the second Adam, her Lord and Maker, ‘spake as one having authority, and not as the Scribes,’ so she was to win or to awe the souls of men generally; not this one or that, but all, though variously, by the manifest royalty of her very presence. She received this gift from her Lord in the beginning – to claim and command obedience when she spoke, because she spoke; and that not from any thing special in the mind of the hearer, but from the voice and tone of the speaker.⁴

If to encounter a holy person is gradually to ‘become aware that Christ’s presence’ is ‘before’ one, and to be changed ‘into that glorious Image’ which one ‘gazes’ upon, to encounter the Church is to be presented with a ‘manifest royalty’, in the ‘very look [of the Church], her bearing, her voice’, such as ‘to claim and command obedience’. Yet Newman mentions this ‘gift’ of the Church – a presence ‘of a nature to dazzle and subdue the mind, like a miracle, or like the sun’s light in the heavens’ – only to observe that there are ‘ages’ where the ‘outward glory’ of the Church is ‘obscured’: at the present time, ‘the outward notes of the Church are partly gone from us, and partly going’; the ‘Church of God is under eclipse among us. Where is our unity, for which Christ prayed? where our charity, which He enjoined? where the faith once delivered, when each has his own doctrine? where our visibility, which was to be a light to the world? where that awful worship, which struck fear into every soul?’⁵ Had the ‘voice’ of the Church lost the ‘tone’ by which it could ‘claim and command obedience’?

In Tract 73, ‘On the Introduction of Rationalist Principles into Revealed Religion’, written in 1836, Newman contrasted a ‘Catholic’ with a ‘rationalist’ attitude toward revelation: the ‘rationalist’, he maintained, subordinates revelation to the self.

The Rationalist makes himself his own centre, not his Maker; he does not go to God, but he implies that God must come to him. And this, it is to be feared, is the spirit in which multitudes of us act at the present day. Instead of looking out of ourselves, and trying to catch glimpses of God’s workings, from any quarter, – throwing ourselves forward upon Him and waiting on Him, we sit at home bringing everything to ourselves, enthroning ourselves in our own views, and refusing to believe anything that does not force itself upon us as true. Our private judgment is made everything to us, – is contemplated, recognized, and consulted as the arbiter of all questions, and as independent of everything external to us. Nothing is considered to have an existence except so far forth as our minds discern it. The notion of half views and partial knowledge, of guesses, surmises, hopes and fears, of truths faintly apprehended and not understood, of isolated facts in the great scheme of Providence, in a word, the idea of Mystery, is discarded.⁶

To ‘rationalize’ is ‘to make our reason the standard and measure of the doctrines revealed; to stipulate that those doctrines should be such as to carry with them their own justification; to reject them, if they come in collision with our existing opinions or habits of thought’.⁷ The ‘rationalist’ insists that the ‘doctrines’ presented in the revelation should be comprehensible, subjecting them to the intellect; and to make the revelation comprehensible, the ‘rationalist’ construes it as a ‘system or scheme’. Rationalism ‘considers faith to consist rather in the knowledge of a system or scheme, than of an agent’.⁸

It is concerned, not so much with the Divine Being, as with His work … therefore, true Christianity consists, not in ‘submitting in all things to God’s authority,’ His written Word, whether it be obscure or not, but in understanding His acts. I must understand a scheme, if the Gospel is to do me any good; and such a scheme is the scheme of salvation. Such is the object of faith, the history of a series of divine actions, and nothing more; nothing more, for everything else is obscure; but this is clear, simple, compact. To preach this, is to preach the Gospel.⁹

The ‘object of faith’ is not an ‘agent’ – whose ‘Being’ is ultimately incomprehensible – but a ‘history’. The ‘Rationalist makes himself his own centre’, by identifying the revelation with something that can be clearly apprehended, subjected to the understanding – a ‘history’ that is ‘clear, simple, compact’; and he ‘makes himself his own centre’ in another way, by taking the aim or end of the revelation to consist in the ‘experienced effects’, which attend on the apprehension of the ‘history’ presented in that revelation.

The popular theology … is as follows: that the Atonement is the chief doctrine of the Gospel; again, that it is chiefly to be regarded, not as a wonder in heaven, and in its relation to the attributes of God and to the unseen world, but in its experienced effects on our minds, in the change it effects when it is believed.¹⁰

The Gospel is taken to be ordered to certain ‘experienced effects’, attendant on belief in it; the Gospel is, accordingly, identified with that which, when ‘believed’, conduces to those ‘effects’.

To [the doctrine of the Atonement, and its “experienced effects”], as if to the point of sight in a picture, all the portions of the Gospel system are directed and made to converge; as if this doctrine were so fully understood, that it might fearlessly be used to regulate, adjust, correct, complete, everything else. Thus, the doctrine of the Incarnation is viewed as necessary and important to the Gospel, because it gives virtue to the Atonement; of the Trinity, because it includes the revelation, not only of the Redeemer, but also of the Sanctifier, by whose aid and influence the Gospel message is to be blessed to us.¹¹

In a sermon on ‘The Christian Mysteries’, preached in 1829, Newman maintains that the ‘illumination’ imparted in the revelation is ‘not a light accorded to the reason, the gifts of the intellect’, but ‘practical and useful knowledge’ – ‘The grace promised us is given, not that we may know more, but that we may do better.’¹² Would Newman claim, in this, to understand why the revelation ‘is given’, to assign it an aim or end, by which it may be comprehended? He does not, certainly, suggest that the aim consists in its ‘experienced effects’, ‘the change it effects when believed’, but he does suggest that the revelation has an aim or end – namely, ‘that we may do better’. He does not, though, maintain that this is the sole aim or end of the revelation; and he does not suggest that one can determine what is, or is not, a part of the revelation, according to whether it conduces to this end. Newman mentions this aim of revelation – ‘that we may do better’ – precisely to counter those who maintain that Christianity is ‘what they term, a “rational religion” … [and] that no doctrine which was m ysterious, i.e. too deep for human reason, or inconsistent with their self-devised notions, could be contained in Scripture’: that is, he suggests that the aim of revelation consists in something moral or spiritual – ‘that we may do better’ – rather than something intellectual – comprehension, the ‘gifts of the intellect’.¹³ The understanding with which one acts – in ‘doing better’ – might, in certain respects, be ‘deep[er]’ than ‘reason’: ‘mysterious’ notions might be pertinent to acting; they might form a part of the awareness with which one acts. To maintain this, Newman would indicate how the ‘Christian mysteries’ are pertinent to ‘doing better’. He discusses the ‘practical effect’ of certain Christian doctrines: of the doctrine of the Incarnation, he observes ‘we are saved by the death of Christ; but who is Christ? Christ is the Very Son of God, Begotten of God and One with God from everlasting, God incarnate [and this] … is our inexpressible comfort, and a most sanctifying truth if we receive it rightly’; of the doctrine of the Trinity, he observes: ‘If our Redeemer were not God, and our Sanctifier were not God, how great would have been our danger of preferring creatures to the Creator! What a source of light, freedom, and comfort is it, to know we cannot love Them too much, or humble ourselves before Them too reverently, for both Son and Spirit are separately God! Such is the practical effect of the doctrine.’¹⁴ The doctrines sanction worship; they are a ‘source of light, freedom, and comfort’.

Newman maintains, in ‘The Christian Mysteries’, that a ‘doctrine’ that is not fully comprehensible, may nevertheless have a salutary ‘practical effect’. In this, he would counter any attempt to subject the revelation to ‘human reason’. What he does not do, is attempt to determine whether a ‘doctrine’ is or is not a part of the revelation, according to whether it has a certain ‘practical effect’. What is more, he does not identify the ‘practical effect’ of a doctrine with certain ‘experienced effects’, attendant on belief in it; he seems, rather, to consider how certain doctrines have ‘practical’ implications – they are to be acted on. In Tract 73, he maintains that a form of ‘rationalism’, in the ‘popular theology of the day’, would make the ‘experienced effects’ of a belief in certain doctrines the rationale for the ‘publishing’ of those doctrines: the Gospel is to be understood as an instrument for producing those ‘effects’, and whatever does not produce them, is not a part of the Gospel.

It is Rationalism to accept the Revelation, and then to explain it away; to speak of it as the Word of God, and to treat it as the word of man; to refuse to let it speak for itself; to claim to be told the why and the how of God’s dealings with us, as therein described, and to assign to Him a motive and a scope of our own; to stumble at the partial knowledge which He may give us of them; to put aside what is obscure, as if it had not been said at all; to accept one half of what has been told us, and not the other half; to assume that the contents of Revelation are also its proof; to frame some gratuitous hypothesis about them, and then to garble, gloss, and colour them, to trim, clip, pare away, and twist them, in order to bring them into conformity with the idea to which we have subjected them.¹⁵

If the ‘Rationalist’ subordinates the revelation to the self – an attitude which ‘leads’ to a ‘narrow and egoistic temper’ – the ‘Catholic’, by contrast, believes in an ‘Objective Truth’, transcending the self: the ‘Catholic temper’ involves ‘throwing ourselves forward upon Him and waiting on Him’.¹⁶

By Objective Truth is meant the Religious System considered as existing in itself, external to this or that particular mind: by Subjective, is meant that which each mind receives in particular, and considers to be such. To believe in Objective Truth is to throw ourselves forward upon that which we have but partially mastered or made subjective; to embrace, maintain, and use general propositions which are larger than our own capacity, of which we cannot see the bottom, which we cannot follow out into their multiform details; to come before and bow before the import of such propositions, as if we were contemplating what is real and independent of human judgment. Such a belief, implicit, and symbolized as it is in the use of creeds, seems to the Rationalist superstitious and unmeaning, and he consequently confines Faith to the province of Subjective Truth, or to the reception of doctrine, as, and so far as, it is met and apprehended by the mind, which will be differently, as he considers, in different persons, in the shape of orthodoxy in one, heterodoxy in another … Rationalism takes the words of Scripture as signs of Ideas; Faith, of Things or Realities … No revelation can be complete and systematic, from the weakness of the human intellect; so far as it is not such, it is mysterious. When nothing is revealed, nothing is known, and there is nothing to contemplate or marvel at; but when something is revealed, and only something, for all cannot be, there are forthwith difficulties and perplexities. A Revelation is religious doctrine viewed on its illuminated side; a Mystery is the selfsame doctrine viewed on the side unilluminated. Thus Religious Truth is neither light nor darkness, but both together; it is like the dim view of a country seen in the twilight, with forms half extricated from the darkness, with broken lines, and isolated masses. Revelation, in this way of considering it, is not a revealed system, but consists of a number of detached and incomplete truths belonging to a vast system unrevealed, of doctrines and injunctions mysteriously connected together; that is, connected by unknown media, and bearing upon unknown portions of the system.¹⁷

When Newman contrasts the ‘Religious System … as existing in itself, external to this or that particular mind’ with ‘that which each mind receives in particular’, the ‘System’, here, might be taken to be a system of ideas – having its own integrity. Such a system can be distinguished from what ‘this or that particular mind’ takes in, from how it is understood in ‘this or that particular mind’. Such a system is not independent of ‘mind’, per se, but it is something with its own coherence, its own integr ity, and it is, as such, something more than what ‘this or that particular mind’ takes in. Yet Newman then observes that, to recognize ‘Objective Truth’ is to ‘bow before the import of such propositions, as if we were contemplating what is real and independent of human judgement’. The ‘Religious System’, in this regard, would seem to consist of certain realities, which ‘human judgement’ cannot fully comprehend. The ‘general propositions’ of doctrine are such that ‘we cannot see the bottom’ of them. ‘Faith’ takes the ‘words of Scripture’ to be concerned with ‘Things or Realities’, not merely ‘Ideas’. If they were concerned with ‘Ideas’, then they would be such that ‘we [could] see the bottom of them’. Newman suggests that revelation consists of ‘incomplete truths belonging to a vast system unrevealed’. The ‘truths’ are ‘incomplete’, presumably, in that the ‘vast system’ to which they ‘belong’ is not fully ‘revealed’ by them; each ‘truth’ manifests only a part of that ‘system’. Newman suggests that to ‘see the bottom’ of the ‘general propositions’ of doctrine would be to discern the ‘vast system’: to apprehend fully the ‘import’ of the ‘general propositions’ of the revelation would be to apprehend the ‘vast system’, with which those ‘propositions’ are concerned.

Newman distinguishes between the ‘Dispensation’ and the ‘Revelation’. In ‘rationalist’ theology, the ‘Dispensation, in its length, depth, and height, is practically identified with its Revelation, or rather its necessarily superficial Manifestation’.¹⁸ Yet there is more in the ‘Dispensation’ – in the acts of God in, or toward, the world – than is manifest in the ‘Revelation’. According to the doctrine of the ‘Atonement’, in Catholic theology, the death of Christ had a ‘real virtue … as an expiation for sin’, a ‘real connexion’ to ‘God’s forgiveness of our sins’.¹⁹ The nature of that ‘connexion’, however – the ‘system’ within which that ‘connexion’ obtains – is not revealed: the ‘connexion’ is there, in the ‘Dispensation’, but its nature is not made fully manifest, or explained, in the ‘Revelation’. With regard to ‘the Atonement – why it was necessary, how it operates, is a Mystery; that is, the heavenly truth which is revealed, extends on each side of it into an unknown world’.²⁰ For a ‘popular theology’, concerned only with what is ‘manifest’ in the ‘Revelation’ – and only to the extent that what is ‘manifest’ has, in being apprehended, certain ‘effects’ – ‘the reality of the Atonement, in itself, is [not] formally denied, but it is cast in the background, except so far as it can be discovered to be influential, viz., to show God’s hatred of sin, the love of Christ, and the like; and there is an evident tendency to consider it as a mere Manifestation of the love of Christ, to the denial of all real virtue in it as an expiation for sin.’²¹ In the ‘Revelation’, then, ‘the heavenly truth which is revealed, extends on each side … into an unknown world’. The ‘heavenly truth’ that is revealed would be unknown, were it not revealed; and, since the revelation presents something of ‘heavenly truth’, but not all of it, ‘we should be very reverent in dealing with Revealed Truth … . We should avoid all rash theorizing and systematizing as relates to it … [and] we should religiously adhere to the form of words and the ordinances under which it comes to us, through which it is revealed to us, and apart from which the Revelation does not exist, there being nothing else given us by which to ascertain or enter into it.’²² That one cannot discern a ‘system’, need not mean that there is no ‘system’ – it is not true that ‘nothing … [has] existence except so far forth as our minds discern it’. As all realities are unified, in themselves, so it might be that all the true propositions that can be stated about a certain reality can, ultimately, be brought into a unity, a system; but to be presented with true propositions about a reality is not to be presented with the ‘system’ according to which those propositions can be brought into a harmony, or unity.

Newman maintains that ‘Revelation …considered as a Mystery … is a doctrine enunciated by inspiration, in human language, as the only possible medium of it, and suitably, according to the capacity of language; a doctrine lying hid in language, to be received in that language from the first by every mind, whatever be its separate power of understanding it; entered into more or less by this or that mind, as it may be; and admitting of being apprehended more and more perfectly according to the diligence of this mind and that’ such that ‘it is one and the same, independent and real, of depth unfathomable, and illimitable in its extent’.²³ Newman maintains that ‘the most profound human philosophy’ is inclined to regard ‘Revelation as a collection of fragments of a great scheme’.²⁴ He quotes from The Analogy of Religion, where Joseph Butler insists that ‘Christianity is a particular scheme under [the] general plan of Providence, and a part of it, conducive to its completion, with regard to mankind; consisting itself also of various parts and a mysterious economy … [and] this system or scheme of things is but imperfectly comprehended by us’.²⁵ The ‘Religious System’, in this regard, is a part of a ‘scheme of things … but imperfectly comprehended by us’.

When Newman observes that the ‘doctrine’ of ‘Revelation’, considered ‘as a Mystery’, is ‘of depth unfathomable’, the ‘depth unfathomable’ would seem to be the ‘depth’ of the ‘unknown world’, the ‘unilluminated’ aspects of the ‘Dispensation’, which are, so to speak, intimated by the revealed aspects of the ‘Dispensation’. Of this doctrine ‘lying hid in language’, he observes that it is ‘entered into more or less by this or that mind … [and that it admits of] being apprehended more and more perfectly according to the diligence of this mind and that’.²⁶ This would suggest that there is a development in understanding – but can there be a development toward a fuller apprehension of the ‘unilluminated’, ‘unknown world’?

Newman suggests that to recognize ‘Mystery’ in ‘Religious Truth’, is to recognize that the ‘propositions’ that ‘belong’ to the ‘Revelation’ manifest a single reality, something ‘one and the same, independent and real, of depth unfathomable, and illimitable in its extent’. There is ‘Mystery’ because the principle, according to which those various ‘propositions’ are unified, cannot be ‘discerned’ or articulated.

Right reason and faith combine to lead us, instead of measuring a divine revelation by human standards, or systematizing, except so far as it does so itself, to take what is given as we find it, to use it and be content. For instance, Scripture says that Christ died for sinners; that He rose for our justification, that He went that the Spirit might come; so far we may systematize. Such and such-like portions of a scheme are revealed, and we may use them, but no farther. On the other hand, the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity is a mere juxtaposition of separate truths, which to our minds involves inconsistency, when viewed together; nothing more being attempted by theologians, for nothing more is told us. Arrange and contrast them we may and do; systematize (that is, reduce them into an intelligible dependence on each other, or harmony with each other) we may not; unless indeed any such oversight of Revelation, such right of subjecting it to our understandings, is committed to us by Revelation itself.²⁷

To recognize that the ‘separate truths’, set out in the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’, involve ‘inconsistency’, is to recognize that they concern ‘one and the same’ reality; to accept that, despite the ‘inconsistency’, these ‘separate’ propositions are nevertheless ‘truths’, is to recognize that the reality they concern is not fully ‘intelligible’. The awareness that this reality is a ‘Mystery’ affects how one takes the ‘inconsistency’. One will not attempt to ‘systematize’ – giving the ‘separate’ propositions an ‘import’ that would abolish the ‘inconsistency’. More than that, though, could there perhaps be a sense of the reality, the ‘Mystery’, that is ‘lying hid’ in these ‘separate truths’? In taking those ‘separate truths’ to concern ‘one and the same’ thing, does one form a sense of that thing, that reality? One cannot combine the separate truths into a system, but one combines them in another way, by taking them all to refer to a single ‘object of faith’: they might contribute, taken together, to the forming of a sense of that ‘object’. The awareness that there is a ‘Mystery’ makes one refrain from ‘systematizing’: one takes in ‘separate truths’, and, while one is conscious that one cannot combine them in a ‘system’, one is equally conscious that they concern something ‘one and the same’. One does not combine them in a ‘system’, but one combines them, in another way, in taking them to present aspects of something ‘one and the same’; and one forms, perhaps, a sense of this ‘something’, in taking in these various ‘truths’ – a sense of this ‘something’ which cannot be translated into a ‘system’ of notions, a sense of it that is ‘entered into more or less by this or that mind’.

Newman maintains that ‘by Objective Truth is meant the Religious System considered as existing in itself, external to this or that particular mind’ and that ‘to believe in Objective Truth is to throw ourselves forward upon that which we have but partially mastered or made subjective’; ‘such a belief’, he suggests, is ‘implicit, and symbolized … in the use of creeds’. He does not maintain, simply, that ‘Objective Truth’ is presented in the Creed, but that the ‘belief’ in ‘Objective Truth’ is ‘symbolized’ in the ‘use of creeds’: the Creed is ‘external’ to ‘this or that particular mind’ in the way that ‘Objective Truth’ is. What is presented in the Creed is not a full and adequate manifestation of the ‘system’ of the whole Dispensation: a full and adequate knowledge of that ‘system’ is possessed by God alone. In Arians of the Fourth Century (1834), Newman observes that the Scriptures contain certain ‘economies’ – certain representations of the ‘actions’ of God – which are ‘condescensions to the infirmity and peculiarity of our minds, shadowy representations of realities which are incomprehensible to creatures such as ourselves’, representations ‘of greater truths untold, the best practical communication of them which our minds in their present state will admit’; but he insists that ‘whatever is told us from heaven, is true in so full and substantial a sense, that no possible mistake can arise practically from following it’ and that ‘on the other hand, that the greatest risk will result from attempting to be wiser than God has made us, and to outstep in the least degree the circle which is prescribed as the limit of our range’.²⁸ (‘Following it’, here, suggests at once ‘acting in accordance with it’, and ‘following out its implications, thinking with and from it’.)

While the Church does not claim to possess a full knowledge of the ‘Dispensation’, nevertheless it does present, in its ‘creeds’, a truth which purports to be ‘Objective’. In Arians of the Fourth Century, Newman observed that the Church formulated its creeds, and set out its definitions of doctrine, at a time when certain of its doctrines had been misunderstood, or denied. The act of defining certain doctrines – an act of ‘sovereignty’, manifesting the ‘look’, ‘bearing’, ‘voice’ of the Church – involves a claim to some kind of ‘mastery’.

The systematic doctrine of the Trinity may be considered as the shadow, projected for the contemplation of the intellect, of the Object of scripturally-informed piety: a representation, economical; necessarily imperfect, as being exhibited in a foreign medium, and therefore involving apparent inconsistencies or mysteries … brought forward at a time when, reason being disproportionately developed, and aiming at sovereignty in the province of religion, its presence became n ecessary to expel an usurping idol from the house of God.²⁹

To ‘expel’ the ‘idol’ of a false notion of the ‘Object’ of ‘piety’, the Church must claim to be able to distinguish between correct and incorrect intellectual ‘representations’ of that ‘Object’ – even if correct ‘representations’ cannot but be ‘economical’ and ‘necessarily imperfect’.

A year after writing Tract 73, ‘On the Introduction of Rationalist Principles into Revealed Religion’, Newman published his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), in which he accused the ‘church of Rome’ of a kind of ‘systematizing’, and maintained that this systematizing was connected to the ‘Roman’ claim to ‘infallibility’.

According to its theory, the Church [of Rome] professes to know only what the Apostles knew, to have received just what they delivered, neither more nor less. But in fact, she is obliged to profess a complete knowledge of the whole Dispensation, such as the Apostles had not. Unless we know the whole of any subject we must have difficulties somewhere or other; and where they are left, there we cannot possess infallible knowledge. To know some things in any subject infallibly, implies that we know all things. Or, to put the matter more clearly, where there is knowledge of only portions of a system, one of those portions will be more plain and certain to us than another, and can be spoken of more confidently; thus the clearness of our view will vary with those portions, but there are no degrees in Infallibility. Now partial and incomplete knowledge must surely be an inseparable attendant on a theology, which reveals the wonders of heaven. The human mind cannot measure the things of the Spirit. Christianity is a supernatural gift, originating and living in the unseen world and only extending into this. It is a vast scheme running out into width and breadth, encompassing us round about, not embraced by us. No one can see the form of a building but those who are external to it. We are within the Divine Dispensation; we cannot take it in with the eye, ascertain its proportions, pursue its lines, foretell their directions and coincidences, or ascertain their limits. We see enough for practice, but not even as much as this with an equal degree of clearness; but one part more clearly than another. These detached portions of a complicated system necessarily vary in the precision and definiteness with which they come to the mind. That which is set before it in many of its relations is more fully understood and grasped than that which is only just revealed. When the mind knows a certain part of a system, it cannot ascertain the limits of its knowledge; as the eye when fixed on any object cannot determine how much it indirectly sees all around it. Surely the Apostles themselves, though infallibly sure of the greater truths, could not determine the limits of their infallibility. To know the lesser truths as they knew the main ones, had been to open a fresh field of knowledge beyond, in the way of deduction and implication. It would have been like moving the eye to a new object, which brings it into a new range of vision. Thus, I say, to know all that is revealed with equal clearness, implies that there is nothing not revealed. Agreeably with this anticipation, the Church of Rome is in fact led on to profess to know not only infallibly but completely. She begins by claiming the power of infallibly determining throughout the range of the Apostles’ knowledge, of accurate delineation in all such lesser matters as they would not be able to realize to themselves as certain, of rendering equally vivid all those marvellous traces of things invisible, which in the first inspired teachers would gradually melt from distinctness in their outhnes into dim distance or into minute intricacy of detail. And, in consequence, she is led on from the profession of uniform precision to that of universal knowledge.³⁰

In 1877, Newman, who had by then accepted the ‘Roman’ claim to infallibility, added a note to his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, asking, ‘What has infallibility to do with systematizing? Scripture is infallible, but it does not systematize.’³¹ The connection between ‘infallibility’ and ‘systematizing’, for Newman in 1837, would seem to consist in his sense that ‘to know some things in any subject infallibly, implies that we know all things’, for ‘unless we know the whole of any subject we must have difficulties somewhere or other’; and ‘to know all that is revealed with equal clearness, implies that there is nothing not revealed’. Newman, in 1837, equates knowing ‘infallibly’ with knowing fully, comprehending fully, apprehending with utter ‘clearness’.

Roman theology … professes to be a complete theology. It arranges, adjusts, explains, exhausts every part of the Divine Economy. It may be said to leave no region unexplored, no heights unattempted, rounding off its doctrines with a neatness and finish which are destructive of many of the most noble and most salutary exercises of mind in the individual Christian. That feeling of awe which the mysteriousness of the Gospel should excite, fades away under this fictitious illumination which is poured over the entire Dispensation. Criticism, we know, is commonly considered fatal to poetical fervour and imagination; and in like manner this technical religion destroys the delicacy and reverence of the Christian mind. So little has actually been revealed to us in a systematic way, that the genuine science of theology carried to its furthest limits, has no tendency to foster a spirit of rationalism. But Rome would classify and number all things, she would settle every sort of question, as if resolved to detect and compass by human reason what runs out into the next world or is lost in this.³²

Of the claim that ‘Roman theology … professes to be a complete theology’, Newman would remark, in 1877, that ‘here [there is] a confusion between the Church and her Schools. Her infallible voice is seldom exercised, and comparatively few dogmas have been promulgated to be accepted de fide. But the subtle and curious intellect of her theologians has investigated and determined innumerable questions, not with infallible accuracy, but each in his own way, and often in opposition to each other, still with incalculable advantage to religion.’³³ The ‘voice’ of the Church is something other than ‘Roman theology’, the theology of the ‘Schools’. In 1877, Newman observes that the ‘infallible voice’ of the Church has not enunciated anything like a ‘c omplete’ account of the ‘Dispensation’. (What is more, that theologians have attempted to determine ‘innumerable questions’ need not mean that they have claimed to possess a full comprehension of the ‘Dispensation’. One might resolve ‘innumerable questions’, without claiming to resolve all questions.) In 1837, he maintains that, to have an ‘infallible’ authority, one must have a ‘complete’ knowledge, so ‘Rome’ accordingly professes to present a ‘complete theology’, to show that it has such a ‘complete’ knowledge; in 1877 he denies that ‘Rome’ professes to present a ‘complete theology’ – and if ‘Rome’ does not feel impelled, by its claim to infallibility, to profess a ‘complete theology’ (as manifesting a complete knowledge of the ‘Dispensation’) then it would seem ‘Rome’ does not take it that its claim to infallibility is a claim to a complete knowledge of the ‘Dispensation’. Newman insists, in 1877, that it is ‘not axiomatic, just the contrary, that to be infallible in what is revealed implies a profession of knowing what to the Apostles was not revealed’.

Newman presents an analogy between ‘poetical fervour and imagination’ and ‘the reverence of the Christian mind’: ‘criticism’ is to ‘poetical fervour and imagination’ as the ‘technical religion’ of Rome is to the ‘delicacy and reverence of the Christian mind’; and this ‘technical religion’ is quite different from ‘the genuine science of theology’. This ‘genuine science’, presumably, is a matter of reflecting on what ‘has been revealed to us’, and a proper understanding of what has been revealed involves an appreciation that it cannot be fully comprehended in a ‘systematic’ manner: the ‘poetical’ consists in an awareness of that which surpasses comprehension; to construe ‘what has been revealed’ in a ‘poetical’ manner, with proper ‘reverence’, is to register that it is an ‘incomplete’ manifestation of that which cannot be manifested fully, of that which can be represented only in a ‘necessarily imperfect’ manner, ‘as being exhibited in a foreign medium’. To construe the representation as ‘necessarily imperfect’ is to have a sense of what is being represented, the ‘Object of … piety’ as surpassing all representation, and it is ‘the Christian mind’ which has a sense of that ‘Object’, a sense that is akin to ‘poetical … imagination’. When all the representations of the ‘Object’ of faith are taken to be imperfect, and are experienced as having a ‘depth’ that is ‘unfathomable’, then they are construed in a ‘poetical’ manner.

Newman maintains, in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church that the ‘Roman’ doctrine of the infallibility of the Church is ‘made to rest upon the notion, that any degree of doubt about religious truth is incompatible with faith, and that an external infallible assurance is necessary to exclude doubt’.³⁴

‘Proof,’ or certainty of the things believed, is secured upon two conditions; if there be a God, ‘who cannot lie,’ as the source of Revelation, and if the Church be infallible to convey it. Otherwise, it is urged, what is called faith is merely opinion, as being but partial or probable knowledge. To this statement it is sufficient to reply here, that according to English principles, religious faith has all it needs in having only the former of these two secured to it, in knowing that God is our Creator and Preserver, and that He may, if it so happen, have spoken. This indeed is its trial and its praise, so to hang upon the thought of Him and desire Him as not to wait till it knows for certain from infallible informants whether or no He has spoken, but to act in the way which seems on the whole most likely to please Him. If we are asked, how Faith differs from Opinion, we reply, in its considering His being, governance, and will as a matter of personal interest and importance to us, not in the degree of light or darkness under which it perceives the truth concerning them. When we are not personally concerned, even the highest evidence does not move us; when we are concerned, the very slightest is enough. Though we knew for certain that the planet Jupiter were in flames, we should go on as usual; whereas even the confused cry of fire at night rouses us from our beds. Action is the criterion of true faith, as determining accurately whether we connect the thought of God with the thought of ourselves, whether we love Him, or regard Him otherwise than we regard the existence of the solar system. And as well might we say, that the man who acts upon a letter from a friend does not believe his friend, because he is not infallibly sure the letter is not forged, as deny that such men have real faith as hear the Church and obey, though they have no assurance that in reporting God’s words, she cannot err. Nay, doubt in some way or measure may even be said to be implied in a Christian’s faith. Not that infallible certainty would take away all trial of our hearts, and force us to obey, nor again as if nothing were clearly told us by Revelation, for much is; but that the greater the uncertainty, the fuller exercise there is of our earnestness in seeking the truth, and of our moral sagacity in tracing and finding it. As reasonably then might fear, despondency, dulness of mind, or heaviness of spirit be judged inconsistent with faith as doubt. Imperfection of every kind, moral and natural, is a trial or temptation, and is met by striving and acting against it.³⁵

In the copious notes which Newman made on this passage in 1877, he focused on the question of ‘proof’, and belief. Of the remark ‘the greater the uncertainty, the fuller exercise there is of our earnestness in seeking the truth’, he remarked that the ‘uncertainty’ here is an ‘uncertainty of evidence’.³⁶ He distinguishes, in 1877, between ‘uncertainty of evidence’, or incompleteness in ‘evidence’, and ‘uncertainty’ as a state of mind: one might come to be certain of something, even if the evidence one has, in proof of that thing, is, in itself, not irresistible; and one might be entitled to take incomplete evidence as sufficient for belief, in matters where complete evidence is unobtainable. ‘There is always in concrete matters incompleteness in the evidence of a fact, even when there is enough for faith.’³⁷ What matters is the judgment, whereby one determines that the ‘evidence’, though characterized by the ‘incompleteness’ which is inevitable in ‘concrete matters’, is ‘enough’.

What Newman does not remark on, in 1877, is how in 1837 he seems not to distinguish between d oubt about ‘whether’ God ‘has spoken’ and doubt about ‘what’ God has spoken. When he first mentions the ‘infallibility’ of the Church, he suggests that it is a matter of the Church being ‘infallible to convey’ what God – as the ‘source’ of revelation – has ‘spoken’. He then remarks that those with genuine faith need not know ‘for certain from infallible informants whether or no He has spoken’. He initially remarks that, according to ‘Rome’, ‘proof’, in matters relating to the revelation, is ‘secured upon two conditions; if there be a God, “who cannot lie,” as the source of Revelation, and if the Church be infallible to convey it’; he then observes that ‘according to English principles, religious faith has all it needs in having only the former of these two secured to it’; but he then describes ‘the former’ of these ‘conditions’ not as a belief that ‘God … [is] the source of Revelation’, but as a belief that ‘God is our Creator and Preserver, and that He may, if it so happen, have spoken’. He then maintains that there may be ‘real faith’ in those who ‘hear the Church and obey, though they have no assurance that in reporting God’s words, she cannot err’ – though the question, in this case, is not so much whether God ‘may … have spoken’, as whether a certain ‘report’ of ‘God’s words’ is true to what God has ‘spoken’. One may believe that God ‘has spoken’ (and not simply believe that God ‘may’ have spoken) and yet one may be uncertain about whether the Church is ‘reporting God’s words’ accurately: one may believe that there has been a revelation, but may be uncertain that ‘this’ – which one is being presented with by a particular church – is the genuine revelation.

Newman is reflecting on a situation in which one is presented with what purports to be the ‘word’ of God, a situation in which two questions arise together: the question of whether God ‘has spoken’, and the question of whether God has spoken these ‘words’ in particular. The question of whether God ‘has spoken’ arises in relation to particular ‘words’, which, it is claimed, are the words of God. There is a particular situation, in which a particular response, or decision, is required. The reasoning involved in determining on a response, in a particular situation, is ‘practical’. Newman maintains that ‘action is the criterion of true faith’. What makes the difference between ‘Faith’ and ‘Opinion’, Newman maintains, is ‘personal interest’ – ‘When we are not personally concerned, even the highest evidence does not move us; when we are concerned, the very slightest is enough.’ In his sermon, ‘Faith without Sight’, preached in 1834, Newman had contrasted those who ‘make the truth of Christianity a practical concern’, with those who treat Christianity as if ‘a mere matter of philosophical or historical research’.³⁸ It takes a certain ‘practical’ wisdom to recognize that the matters with which ‘Revelation’ is concerned are matters of ‘personal interest’.

In any matter so momentous and practical as the welfare of the soul, a wise man will not wait for the fullest evidence before he acts; and will show his caution, not in remaining uninfluenced by the existing report of a divine message, but by obeying it though it might be more clearly attested … It is safest and wisest to act as if it were certain.³⁹

It takes practical wisdom to recognize that the matters with which ‘Revelation’ is concerned are of ‘personal interest’. It takes practical wisdom to recognize how it is ‘safest and wisest to act’. It, equally, takes practical wisdom to recognize that what is presented in the ‘Revelation’ is a form of practical wisdom – to be acted on. What is more, if one has lived in accordance with true practical wisdom – in accordance with the insights of the ‘conscience’ – then one will have a ‘presentiment of an Invisible Guide’, and one will feel an ‘antecedent desire or persuasion that God may have made a revelation of Himself in the world’: one will, when presented with a purported ‘revelation’, be disposed to believe that the revelation is genuine.

To recognize that it might be ‘safest and wisest’ to act in accordance with revelation, is to believe that God ‘may … have spoken’: it is to take the view that since the revelation might be genuine, to act ‘as if’ it were true is ‘safest’. To recognize that what is presented in the revelation is ‘practical wisdom’ – that it is ‘wisest’ to act in accordance with it – is to recognize a certain wisdom in it and to act accordingly; but to recognize the ‘practical wisdom’ in the revelation for what it is, and to act accordingly, need not be to recognize that wisdom as divine. To recognize that what is presented in the revelation is the consummation of ‘practical wisdom’ – surpassing all other wisdom – and to have the ‘interest’ in ‘the good’ which disposes one to feel an ‘antecedent desire or persuasion that God may have made a revelation of Himself in the world’ – this is to be disposed, in ‘reason’, and in ‘will’, to believe that what purports to be the revelation is genuine. All of these attitudes require, and involve, a certain ‘practical wisdom’, and all of these attitudes are consistent with ‘acting’ in accordance with the ‘wisdom’ of the faith; yet they are, evidently, different, and ‘action’ is not a ‘criterion’ for distinguishing between them.

In his 1877 notes on his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman makes a distinction between acting on ‘real certitude’ and acting on ‘practical certitude’; and he relates this to the difference between acting on a ‘confused cry of fire at night’ – as the ‘safest’ course, however unlikely it may seem that there is a ‘fire’ – and acting on a ‘letter from a friend’.

I don’t believe the cry of fire; I do believe my friend’s letter. Here there is a confusion between dimness in faith and a sense of dimness in the evidence on which it is grounded. Evidence is always incomplete, but sometimes it is sufficient for real certitude (as regards my friend), sometimes only for what is called practical certitude, i.e. for what is prudent in action, (as regards the cry of fire.)⁴⁰

To act ‘as if’ a purported revelation were true, as the ‘safest’ course (for God ‘may … have spoken’) would, then, be to act with ‘practical certitude’. Newman brings out, in these notes, the difference between acting as if a revelation were true – as the ‘safest’ course – and acting on the belief that a revelation is true. Newman, in 1837, seems to take it that the recognition of ‘uncertainty’ or incompleteness in the ‘evidence’ is inconsistent with ‘certitude’ (as a state of mind) with regard to that which the ‘evidence’ shows. He does not characterize faith as involving ‘certitude’: its ‘criterion’ is ‘action’. To ‘hear the Church and obey’ is enough, even if one is in some doubt as to whether that the ‘words’ presented by the Church are ‘God’s words’ (and even if one feels that while God ‘may … have spoken’, there is some doubtfulness as to whether He really has).

In the Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman aims to set out an ‘English’ understanding of the authority, and the function, of the Church. He presents the English Church as taking a via media, between the ‘Protestant sectary’ – who maintains that Scripture, alone, is the sole ‘rule’ of faith, and the sole means of acquiring the faith – and the ‘controversialist of Rome’ – who maintains that Scripture is not an adequate ‘rule’ of faith, but needs to be supplemented by ‘Tradition’. Newman, as an Anglican, acknowledges ‘Tradition’, which has authority as deriving from the Apostles, but he maintains that there are not any doctrines in the ‘Tradition’ which are not, equally, ‘in’ the Scriptures. The Creed can be proved from the Scriptures. As the Creed, however, presents the dogmas of the faith with greater perspicuity than the Scriptures, so it is a ‘key’ to the interpretation of the Scriptures (the ‘Creed confronts Scripture, and seems to say to us, “Search the Scriptures, for they testify of Me”’).⁴¹ To have this ‘key’, to be acquainted with the Creed, is to be able to recognize that the faith articulated in the Creed is the faith animating the Scriptures. One must be taught the faith before one can discern it rightly in the Scriptures: while it might be true, ‘as an abstract proposition that a Christian may gain the whole truth from the Scriptures’, nevertheless ‘the chances are very seriously against a given individual’, for ‘the qualifications for rightly apprehending it [in the Scriptures, without being already acquainted with the Creed] are so rare and high’.⁴² Just as the Creed is an adequate expression of the faith animating the Scriptures, so it is an adequate expression of the faith animating the Tradition derived from the Apostles. To ascertain what this faith was, one must consult the records of ‘Antiquity’. ‘Whatever doctrine the primitive ages unanimously attest, whether by consent of Fathers, or by Councils, or by the events of history, or by controversies, or in whatever way, whatever may fairly and reasonably be considered to be the universal belief of those ages, is to be received as coming from the Apostles.’⁴³ The ‘principle’ invoked here, ‘which we act on daily’ is ‘that what many independent and competent witnesses guarantee, is true’.⁴⁴ Newman maintains that ‘when the controversialist of Rome appeals to Antiquity as our great teacher, we accept his appeal, but we deny that his special doctrines are to be found in Antiquity … any more than they are in the Bible; and we maintain that his professed Tradition is not really such, that it is a Tradition of men, that it is not continuous, that it stops short of the Apostles.’⁴⁵ The records of Antiquity, and the works of the Fathers of the Church, are to be taken as ‘witnesses’ to Tradition; and they can ‘witness’ to Tradition when interpreted according to the ‘Rule’ of St Vincent – the ‘Rule’ that the original Tradition is manifest in what has been taught always, and everywhere, and by all. The original Tradition has its adequate and definitive expression in the Creed; the knowledge of ‘Truth’, acquired from the Creed, is sufficient for resolving all questions pertaining to the faith. For Newman, then, in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, one attains to the Truth by assimilating the Creed, and one assimilates the Creed by participating in the life of the Church to which one belongs. The Creed can be ‘proved’ from Scripture (though it is, equally, a ‘key’ for interpreting Scripture): that various interpretations of Scripture exist does not mean that there is not a correct interpretation; it means that the Scriptures are difficult to interpret (and that they are not infrequently misinterpreted); yet, if one is acquainted with the Creed, one can recognize that the faith articulated in the Creed is the faith animating the Scriptures. The Creed can, equally, be ‘proved’ from Antiquity, in the sense that the records of Antiquity attest to the original Tradition, derived from the Apostles, and show that the faith articulated in the Creed is the faith which animated the original Tradition.

Newman maintains that the controversy between the church of England and the church of Rome is concerned with ‘Antiquity’. The ‘Romanist’ declares certain doctrines to be a part of the saving faith. The Anglican maintains that, if they were a part of the saving faith, they would be attested by the records of Antiquity, as interpreted by the ‘Rule’ of St Vincent: there would be indications, in the records of Antiquity, of those doctrines having been taught always, and everywhere, and by all, as ‘saving’. The Anglican maintains that, as the records of Antiquity do not attest, in this way, to those doctrines, so they are not to be considered a part of the ‘saving’ faith: the ‘Romanist’ adds to, misrepresents – and thereby corrupts – the faith.

In the Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman maintains that the Church is ‘indefectible’ in doctrine. He insists, though, that the ‘Romanist’ is mistaken, in appealing to the ‘voice’ of the ‘existing Church’, to determine what is, and what is not, a part of the ‘saving’ faith .

Newman acknowledges that the ‘Romanists’ have a correct notion of Tradition, but that they use this notion incorrectly, in justifying their ‘perversions’ of doctrine. The ‘Romanists’ take Tradition to consist in ‘the whole system of faith and ordinances which they have received from the generation before them, and that generation again from the generation before itself’.⁴⁶ This is not something that can be ‘reduced to writing’. ‘No one you fall in with on the highway, can tell you all his mind at once; much less could the Apostles, possessed as they were of great and supernatural truths, and busied in the propagation of the Church, digest in one Epistle or Treatise a systematic view of the Revelation made to them’, and, in any case, ‘we may grant, that they did not do so; there being confessedly little of system or completeness in any portion of the New Testament’.⁴⁷

[Tradition] is latent, but it lives. It is silent, like the rapids of a river, before the rocks intercept it. It is the Church’s unconscious habit of opinion and sentiment; which she reflects upon, masters, and expresses, according to the emergency. We see then the mistake of asking for a complete collection of the Roman Traditions; as well might we ask for a full catalogue of a man’s tastes and thoughts on a given subject. Tradition in its fulness is necessarily unwritten; it is the mode in which a society has felt or acted during a certain period, and it cannot be circumscribed any more than a man’s countenance and manner can be conveyed to strangers in any set of propositions.⁴⁸

This ‘Tradition’ may be ‘viewed as latent in the Church’s teaching, or as passing into writing and being fixed in the decrees of the Councils or amid the works of the ancient Fathers’.⁴⁹ Newman maintains, though, that the ‘Roman controversialist’ must ‘show, not merely that there was such a living and operative Tradition, and that it has lasted to this day, but that their own characteristic doctrines are parts of it’. He insists that one cannot, now, in determining the faith, appeal to ‘the existing as well as … the ancient Church … [as] Christendom now differs from itself in all points except those in which it is already known to have agreed of old’.⁵⁰ He suggests, that is, that the genuine Tradition has not ‘lasted to this day’.

Newman maintains that the Church is ‘indefectible’ in ‘doctrine’ – God has promised that the Church will ever impart the saving faith.

Not only is the Church Catholic bound to teach the Truth, but she is ever divinely guided to teach it; her witness of the Christian Faith is a matter of promise as well as of duty; her discernment of it is secured by a heavenly as well as by a human rule. She is indefectible in it, and therefore not only has authority to enforce, but is of authority in declaring it.⁵¹

With regard to this ‘promise’, and the attendant ‘authority’ of the Church, he observes that while the ‘promise’ has been fulfilled, it has not been fulfilled to the extent that it might have been (owing to the ‘misconduct’ of the ‘members’ of the Church, which ‘may have forfeited for [the Church] in a measure her original privileges’).⁵² The ‘promise … is satisfied in what we see fulfilled at this day, viz. in the whole Church in all its branches having ever maintained the faith in its essential outhnes’.⁵³ The doctrines on which the ‘branches’ of the Church – England, Rome, and Greece – agree, constitute ‘that fundamental Faith [the] continuance [of which] is promised to the end of the world’.⁵⁴ That there are ‘branches’ of the Church, that the Church is not wholly unified, is itself why the ‘promise’ is not fulfilled as it might have been, why the Church is not as God ‘intended’ it to be: ‘The Christian Church was intended to come on earth in the power and spirit of Christ Himself, her Lord and Defender … . She was to manifest Him mystically before the eyes and in the souls of men who is on the right hand of God … . Ter glory was to be like that of heaven, though invisible, her reign eternal, and her kingdom universal.’⁵⁵

In the New Testament … the promises made to her actually did depend more or less upon a condition which now for many centuries she has broken. This condition is Unity, which is made by Christ and His Apostles, as it were, the sacramental channel through which all the gifts of the Spirit, and among them purity of doctrine, are secured to the Church … A visible unity, a unity such as the world could recognize, whatever depths it has besides, is made the token, or the condition, as we view it, of that glory in which the Church was to be clad.⁵⁶

As an Anglican, Newman felt it necessary to maintain that the Catholic Church consisted of several ‘branches’ – it was as a ‘branch’ that the English Church could be considered a part, or ‘organ’, of the Catholic Church. There could be a fracturing of the Church into ‘branches’, without this making for a complete destruction of ‘Unity’: the Church is ‘no longer one in the fullest sense’, but ‘since the duty of unity admits of fuller or scantier fulfilment, it does not follow, though it has been broken in its highest sense, that therefore it is altogether lost, and its privileges with it; or again, that it would be lost in the same sense by every kind of infringement, or is actually lost in the same degree in every place’.⁵⁷ The Church, then, still exists, as ‘one’ – so the divine ‘promise’ of ‘indefectibility’ in ‘doctrine’ still obtains – but, as it is ‘no longer one in the fullest sense’, there has not been the ‘fullest’ realization of the divine ‘pro mises’ – a Church with a ‘glory … like that of heaven’.

Newman would attempt to set out the ‘sense’ in which the Church, despite its fracturing into ‘branches’, could still be regarded as ‘one’, in an essay on ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’ for the British Critic in 1841. With regard to the Anglican Church, he asks, ‘the Church being “one body,” how can we, estranged as we are from every part of it except our own dependencies, unrecognized and without intercommunion, maintain our right to be considered part of that body?’⁵⁸ He then maintains that ‘the Anglican view … of the Church has ever been this, that its separate portions need not be united together, for their essential completeness, except by the tie of descent from one original’: the ‘one Church’ is present, in its entirety, in each ‘portion’, each Bishopric, provided that Bishopric has a ‘tie of descent’ to the Apostles – ‘each diocese is a perfect independent Church, sufficient for itself’; if a Bishopric has Apostolical ‘descent’ – if it proceeds from the Apostolical succession – then the ‘one Church’ is realized in it.⁵⁹ ‘Intercommunion is a duty as other duties, but is not the tenure or instrument of the communion between the unseen word and this … not necessary in order to the conveyance of grace.’⁶⁰

Newman maintains, in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, that the ‘promise [of indefectibility] … is satisfied in what we see fulfilled at this day, viz. in the whole Church in all its branches having ever maintained the faith in its essential outhnes’.⁶¹ He then suggests that the ‘essential outhnes’ of the faith, the ‘original deposit’, can be ascertained by consulting ‘what that common faith is, which [the Church] now holds everywhere as the original deposit’. ‘We shall find what is commonly called the Creed, to be that in which all branches of the Church agree; and, therefore, that the fundamental or essential doctrines are those which are contained in the Creed.’⁶² (He does not claim that this is the only way of determining the ‘original deposit’: one can, equally, consult the records of ‘Antiquity’, to ascertain what has been professed always, everywhere, and by all.) He maintains that the Fathers of the Church witness to the view that the Creed, professed on Baptism, was considered ‘the rule of teaching subsequently to admission’.⁶³ (Anything supplemental to the Creed cannot be regarded as a part of the saving faith; but ‘Rome’ teaches doctrines, not in the Creed, which it declares to be a part of the faith.)

With regard to the formulation of the Creed, by the early Church, Newman observes that the Creed was the expression of a ‘Faith’ that was present ‘in the minds and mouths of all Christians’.⁶⁴ The ‘sense’ of the Creed was present – before it was set out in the ‘words’ of the Creed – in the ‘minds’ of ‘Christians’.

The words of the Creed were not inspired; they were only valuable as expressing a certain sense, and if they were found deficient in expressing that sense, there was as little interference with things sacred, as little real change, in correcting or supplying what was needful, as in completing the lines of a chart or map by the original. That original was the one universally received Faith, which was in the minds and mouths of all Christians without variation or ambiguity. When the early Christians used the words ‘Son of God,’ they did not use a dead letter; they knew what they meant by it, and they one and all had the same meaning.⁶⁵

The ‘Faith’, expressed in the Creed, present as a ‘sense’ in the ‘minds’ of ‘Christians’, was there in ‘the Church’s unconscious habit of opinion and sentiment, which she reflects upon, masters, and expresses, according to the emergency’:⁶⁶ the ‘Faith’ was present in the tradition of the Church. That ‘traditionary teaching’ has, however, been ‘impaired’.

An explanation of the original wording [of the Creed] might be made, I conceive, even now, if the whole of Christendom agreed together in the explanation, and in such explanation conveying the uniform sense of the Church Catholic, and in its expediency. At the same time the Church necessarily has less power over the Creed now than anciently; for at first it was but a form of sound words, subservient to a Faith vividly and accurately engraven on the heart of every Christian, and so of secondary value; but now that the living power of truth has declined, it is a witness of the primitive, instead of being a mere summary of an existing Faith. Since traditionary teaching has been impaired, it has become almost sacred from being the chief remains left us of apostolical truth; as the likeness of a friend, however incomplete in itself, is cherished as the best memorial of him, when he has been taken from us.⁶⁷

Newman maintains that ‘traditionary teaching has been impaired’, but such ‘traditionary teaching’ still continues in one form: there is still a ‘habit of opinion and sentiment’ in the Church. Newman makes a distinction, in this regard, between ‘Episcopal’ tradition, and ‘Prophetical’ tradition.

The Creed is a collection of definite articles set apart from the first, passing from hand to hand, rehearsed and confessed at Baptism, committed and received from Bishop to Bishop, forced upon the attention of each Christian, and thus demanding and securing due explanation of its meaning. It is received on what may fitly be called, if it must have a distinctive name, Episcopal Tradition. … A Tradition, thus formally and statedly enunciated and delive red from hand to hand, is of the nature of a written document, and has an evidence of its Apostolical origin the same in kind with that adducible for the Scriptures. … Besides this, there is what may be called Prophetical Tradition. Almighty God placed in His Church first Apostles, or Bishops, secondarily Prophets. Apostles rule and preach, Prophets expound. Prophets or Doctors are the interpreters of the revelation; they unfold and define its mysteries, they illuminate its documents, they harmonize its contents, they apply its promises. Their teaching is a vast system, not to be comprised in a few sentences, not to be embodied in one code or treatise, but consisting of a certain body of Truth, pervading the Church like an atmosphere, irregular in its shape from its very profusion and exuberance; at times separable only in idea from Episcopal Tradition, yet at times melting away into legend and fable; partly written, partly unwritten, partly the interpretation, partly the supplement of Scripture, partly preserved in intellectual expressions, partly latent in the spirit and temper of Christians; poured to and fro in closets and upon the housetops, in liturgies, in controversial works, in obscure fragments, in sermons, in popular prejudices, in local customs. This I call Prophetical Tradition, existing primarily in the bosom of the Church itself, and recorded in such measure as Providence has determined in the writings of eminent men. This is obviously of a very different kind from the Episcopal Tradition, yet in its first origin it is equally Apostolical, and, viewed as a whole, equally claims our zealous maintenance. ‘Keep that which is committed to thy charge,’ is St. Paul’s injunction to Timothy, and for this reason, because from its vastness and indefiniteness it is especially exposed to corruption, if the Church fails in vigilance. This is that body of teaching which is offered to all Christians even at the present day, though in various forms and measures of truth, in different parts of Christendom, partly being a comment, partly an addition upon the articles of the Creed … . For a time the whole Church agreed together in giving one and the same account of this Tradition; but in course of years, love waxing cold and schisms abounding, her various branches developed portions of it for themselves, out of the existing mass, and, according to the accidental influences which prevailed at the time, did the work well or ill, rudely or accurately.⁶⁸

With regard to the form of ‘Prophetical Tradition’ which one is ‘offered’, and into which one is initiated – by participating in the life of the ‘branch’ of the Church to which one belongs – Newman maintains that one ‘must either believe or silently acquiesce in the whole of it’.⁶⁹ Newman associates the ‘Prophetical Tradition’ with the interpretation of the ‘revelation’ – ‘Prophets and Doctors … unfold and define its mysteries, they illuminate its documents.’ ‘Episcopal Tradition’ is manifest in certain ‘definite articles’, which, as ‘forced upon the attention of each Christian’, demand ‘due explanation of its meaning’. Newman would suggest, it seems, that this ‘due explanation’ is involved in ‘Episcopal Tradition’; yet ‘Prophetical Tradition’ is itself an ongoing ‘body of teaching’ which is ‘partly a comment, partly an addition upon the articles of the Creed’: ‘comment’ on the Creed is a feature of ‘Prophetical Tradition’. When is ‘explanation’ or ‘comment’ on the Creed ‘Episcopal’, and when is it ‘Prophetical’? Newman acknowledges that the ‘Prophetical Tradition’ is ‘at times separable only in idea from Episcopal Tradition’.

The ‘body of teaching’, ‘partly latent in the spirit and temper of Christians’ that is the ‘Prophetical Tradition’, would seem to constitute something like the sense of the ‘revelation’ in the ‘minds’ of Christians: it would seem to be a matter of the way in which the Church, at the present time, understands, reflects on, and assimilates the revelation.

While the Church may have formulated ‘definite articles’ of faith – as an expression of ‘Episcopal Tradition’, and the obligation of the ‘Apostles, or Bishops’, to preserve and to transmit the faith – it would seem that the formulation of these ‘articles’ must have engaged the efforts of ‘Prophets and Doctors’, ‘unfold[ing] and defin[ing]’ the ‘mysteries’ of the ‘revelation’: the ‘articles’ were, after all, an expression of ‘a Faith vividly and accurately engraven on the heart of every Christian’. In Arians of the Fourth Century, Newman suggests that the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’ is a ‘representation’, in the ‘foreign medium’ of ‘words’ and ‘ideas’, of a certain awareness of the ‘Object of faith’ – an awareness that is different from its ‘representation’ in ‘words’ and ‘ideas’, an awareness which does not consist in such ‘words’ and ‘ideas’ but which is, rather, a matter of ‘moral feelings’. That is, Newman suggests that the awareness of the ‘Object of faith’ was – before being set out in the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’ – ‘latent in the spirit and temper of Christians’.

Moral feelings do not directly contemplate and realize to themselves the objects which excite them. A heathen in obeying his conscience, implicitly worships Him of whom he has never distinctly heard. Again, a child feels not the less affectionate reverence towards his parents, because he cannot discriminate in words, nay, or in idea, between them and others … . As the mind is cultivated and expanded, it cannot refrain from the attempt to analyze the vision which influences the heart, and the Object in which that vision centres; nor does it stop till it has, in some sort, succeeded in expressing in words, what has all along been a principle both of its affections and of its obedience. But here the parallel ceases; the Object of religious veneration being unseen, and dissimilar from all that is seen, reason can but represent it in the medium of those ideas which the experience of life affords … and unless these ideas, however inadequate, be correctly applied to it, they react upon the affections, and deprave the religious principle … . Thus the systematic doctrine of the Trinity may be considered as the shadow, projected for the contemplation of the intellect, of the Object of scripturally-informed piety: a representation, economical; necessarily imperfect, as being exhibited in a foreign medium, and therefore involving apparent inconsistencies or mysteries; given to the Church by tradition contemporaneously with those apostolic writings, which are addressed more directly to the heart; kept in the background in the infancy of Christianity, when faith and obedience were vigorous, and brought forward at a time when, reason being disproportionately developed, and aiming at sovereignty in the province o f religion, its presence became necessary to expel an usurping idol from the house of God.⁷⁰

Newman characterizes the ‘Object of religious veneration’ as the ‘Object of Scripturally-informed piety’ – and this might suggest the sense of that ‘Object’ present in the early Church was derived from the Scriptures – but he then remarks that the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’ was ‘given to the Church contemporaneously with those apostolic writings’: that is, the ‘doctrine’, and the ‘Scriptures’, emerge from, are ‘given’ by, ‘tradition’; and this would suggest that the awareness of the ‘Object’ is there in the ‘tradition’ itself, that it is itself what animates the tradition – the ‘spirit and temper of Christians’ being informed by an awareness of that ‘Object’.

Newman maintains that the ‘systematic doctrine of the Trinity’ is a ‘representation’ of the ‘Object’ of faith, the ‘Object’ of the ‘vision which influences the heart’, a representation that is ‘necessarily imperfect, as being exhibited in a foreign medium’. There are at least a couple of ways in which the ‘medium’ – of ‘words’, of ‘ideas which the experience of life affords’ – is ‘foreign’ to what is represented: the ‘ideas’, which arise from, and pertain to, the ‘experience of life’, are inadequate to an ‘Object’ which transcends anything presented by the ‘experience of life’ – ideas which designate this-worldly objects cannot but be inadequate to an other-worldly ‘Object’ (so that ‘apparent inconsistencies, or mysteries’ arise, when this-worldly ideas are used to characterize an other-worldly ‘Object’); moreover, those ‘ideas’ and ‘words’ are ‘foreign’ to the ‘vision which influences the heart’, which is present in a form that is distinct from those ‘ideas’ and ‘words’, and does not consist in them.

In a sermon on ‘The Incarnation’, preached in 1834, Newman reflects on the brevity and simplicity with which ‘the favoured Apostle and Evangelist’, St John, ‘announces’ in his Gospel the ‘Sacred Mystery’ of the Incarnation – ‘the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’.

Thus briefly and simply does he speak as if fearing he should fail in fitting reverence. If any there was who might seem to have permission to indulge in words on this subject, it was the beloved disciple, who had heard and seen, and looked upon, and handled the Word of Life; yet, in proportion to the height of his privilege, was his discernment of the infinite distance between him and his Creator. Such too was the temper of the Holy Angels, when the Father ‘brought in the First-begotten into the world:’ [Heb. i. 6.] they straightway worshipped Him. And such was the feeling of awe and love mingled together, which remained for a while in the Church after Angels had announced His coming, and Evangelists had recorded His sojourn here, and His departure … . In the Church there was light and peace, fear, joy, and holy meditation. Lawless doubtings, importunate inquirings, confident reasonings were not.⁷¹

Newman contrasts the attitude of ‘worship’, ‘the feeling of awe and love mingled together’, with the inclination to ‘indulge in words’, in ‘doubtings … inquirings … reasonings’. The apprehension of Christ by ‘the favoured Apostle’, ‘who had heard and seen, and looked upon, and handled the Word of Life’, did not require, or involve, ‘words’: there is an apprehension of the ‘Word of Life’ that is prior to, that informs any ‘statements’ that might be made about it. Newman suggests that the ‘declarations’ of the ‘Creeds’ were needed to counter misconceptions arising from ‘doubtings … inquirings … reasonings’: the apprehension of ‘the Word of Life’, on the part of ‘the first generations of the Church’, did not consist in those ‘declarations’. For later generations of the Church, however, those ‘declarations’ may contribute to the forming of an ‘image’ of Christ.

He who had seen the Lord Jesus with a pure mind, attending Him from the Lake of Gennesareth to Calvary, and from the Sepulchre to Mount Olivet, where He left this scene of His humiliation; he who had been put in charge with His Virgin Mother, and heard from her what she alone could tell of the Mystery to which she had ministered; and they who had heard it from his mouth, and those again whom these had taught, the first generations of the Church, needed no explicit declarations concerning His Sacred Person. Sight and hearing superseded the multitude of words; faith dispensed with the aid of lengthened Creeds and Confessions. There was silence. ‘The Word was made flesh;’ ‘I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;’ sentences such as these conveyed everything, yet were officious in nothing. But when the light of His advent faded, and love waxed cold, then there was an opening for objection and discussion, and a difficulty in answering. Then misconceptions had to be explained, doubts allayed, questions set at rest, innovators silenced. Christians were forced to speak against their will, lest heretics should speak instead of them. Such is the difference between our own state and that of the early Church … . We are obliged to speak more at length in the Creeds and in our teaching, to meet the perverse ingenuity of those who, when the Apostles were removed, could with impunity insult and misinterpret the letter of their writings. … Another reason of these statements is as follows: time having proceeded, and the true traditions of our Lord’s ministry being lost to us, the Object of our faith is but faintly reflected on our minds, compared with the vivid picture which His presence impressed upon the early Christians. True is it the Gospels will do very much by way of realizing for us the incarnation of the Son of God, if studied in faith and love. But the Creeds are an additional help this way. The declarations made in them, the distinctions, cautions, and the like, supported and illuminated by Scripture, draw down, as it were, from heaven, the image of Him who is on God’s right hand, preserve us from an indolent use of words without apprehending them, and rouse in us those mingled feelings of fear and confidence, affection and devotion towards Him, which are implied in the belief of a personal advent of God in our nature, and which were originally derived to the Church from the very sight of Him. … These statements – such, for instance, as occur in the Te Deum and Athanasian Creed – are especially suitable in divine worship, inasmuch as they kindle and elevate the religious affections. They are hymns of praise and thanksgiving; they give glory to God as revealed in the Gospel.⁷²

Newman juxtaposes ‘the belief of a personal advent of God in our nature’ and the ‘very sight’ of Christ. The ‘belief of a personal advent of God in our nature’ would seem to be a matter of ideas, and the ‘very sight’ of Christ, a matter of experiences, encounters with a particular person. Newman suggests that the ‘belief’ and the ‘sight’ evoke the same feelings. He observes that something of the memory of the encounter with Christ, the experience of a particular person, was transmitted to the ‘first generations of the Church’. How did the ‘sentences’, used by the earliest ‘generations of the Church’ – ‘The Word was made flesh’, or ‘I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord’ – relate to the experience of Christ, or the ‘vivid picture which his presence impressed’ on the memory? Did they ‘convey everything’ because they were accompanied with a ‘vivid picture’ of Christ? Did those ‘sentences’ add anything to that ‘vivid picture’ – an understanding of the ‘picture’ not ‘conveyed’ by the ‘picture’ alone? The ‘picture’ was a picture of the life of a person who, undertaking a teaching ministry, made various declarations about his own role and identity; the ‘sentences’ were statements made about the role and identity of that person, by those who had a ‘vivid picture’ of him. The ‘picture’ of Christ formed by those, such as the ‘favoured Apostle and Evangelist’, who had been personally acquainted with Christ, was a ‘picture’ that was formed in, and through, a personal relationship. With regard to Christians at the present time, Newman observes that ‘mingled feelings of fear and confidence, affection and devotion towards Him [who is on God’s right hand] … are implied in the belief of a personal advent of God in our nature’; and this would seem to suggest that the mere idea of a ‘personal advent of God in our nature’ implies, and elicits, certain ‘feelings’. Yet Newman, equally, suggests that the Creed is ‘illuminated by Scripture’: ‘The Gospels will do very much by way of realizing for us the incarnation of the Son of God, if studied in faith and love.’ He associates a proper ‘apprehending’ of the ‘sentences’ of the Creed with the forming of an ‘image’ of Christ – such an ‘apprehending’ can ‘draw down, as it were, from heaven, the image of Him who is on God’s right hand’. The Creed is not encountered and ‘apprehended’ in isolation, but in conjunction with the ‘picture’ of Christ presented in the Scriptures. What is more, Newman suggests that a right ‘apprehending’ of the Creed makes for – is oriented toward – the forming of an ‘image’ of Christ. He would suggest, it seems, that all that is set out in various ‘sentences’ of doctrine, about Christ, and in the Scriptures, is present in the ‘image’, ‘picture’, ‘sight’ of Christ – an image that was ‘impressed upon the early Christians’ by his ‘presence’, by their experience of him. The Creed is an ‘unfold[ing]’ of meanings present in that ‘image’.

In a sermon preached in 1839, on ‘Unreal Words’, Newman maintains that ‘our professions, our creeds, our prayers, our dealings, our conversation, our arguments, our teaching must henceforth be sincere, or, to use an expressive word, must be real … . And yet it need scarcely be said, nothing is so rare as honesty and singleness of mind; so much so, that a person who is really honest, is already perfect.’⁷³ He observes that ‘profession’ may be ‘unreal’, when individuals use certain words without fully apprehending their meaning – without a ‘real apprehension of the matters … discussed’ – going instead by ‘general principles … fancy, or by deduction and argument’, and becoming ‘theoretical and unreal’.⁷⁴ It may, as such, be more a ‘misfortune’ than a ‘sin’ to be ‘unreal’ in this way – ‘It takes a long time really to feel and understand things as they are; we learn to do so only gradually.’⁷⁵ Since ‘words’ can be ‘unreal’, though, an expression which, in one person, may be the ‘spontaneous and exuberant fruit’ of the ‘heart’ is, in another person, ‘hollowness’.

The whole system of the Church, its discipline and ritual, are all in their origin the spontaneous and exuberant fruit of the real principle of spiritual religion in the hearts of its members. The invisible Church has developed itself into the Church visible, and its outward rites and forms are nourished and animated by the living power which dwells within it. Thus every part of it is real, down to the minutest details. But when the seductions of the world and the lusts of the flesh have eaten out this divine inward life, what is the outward Church but a hollowness and a mockery, like the whited sepulchres of which our Lord speaks, a memorial of what was and is not? and though we trust that the Church is nowhere thus utterly deserted by the Spirit of truth, at least according to God’s ordinary providence, yet may we not say that in proportion as it approaches to this state of deadness, the grace of its ordinances, though not forfeited, at least flows in but a scanty or uncertain stream?⁷⁶

A ‘real apprehension’ of things, is something that ‘we learn … only gradually’.

The mere fact of our saying more than we feel is not necessarily sinful. … We ever promise things greater than we master, and we wait on God to enable us to perform them. Our promising involves a prayer for light and strength. And so again we all say the Creed, but who comprehends it fully? All we can hope is, that we are in the way to understand it; that we partly understand it; that we desire, pray, and strive to understand it more and more. Our Creed becomes a sort of prayer … . Be in earnest, and you will speak of religion where, and when, and how you should; aim at things, and your words will be right without aiming. There are ten thousand ways of looking at this world, but only one right way. The man of pleasure has his way, the man of gain his, and the man of intellect his. Poor men and rich men, governors and governed, prosperous and discontented, learned and unlearned, each h as his own way of looking at the things which come before him, and each has a wrong way. There is but one right way; it is the way in which God looks at the world. Aim at looking at it in God’s way. Aim at seeing things as God sees them. Aim at forming judgments about persons, events, ranks, fortunes, changes, objects, such as God forms. Aim at looking at this life as God looks at it. Aim at looking at the life to come, and the world unseen, as God does … . It is not an easy thing to learn that new language which Christ has brought us. He has interpreted all things for us in a new way; He has brought us a religion which sheds a new light on all that happens. Try to learn this language. Do not get it by rote, or speak it as a thing of course. Try to understand what you say. Time is short, eternity is long; God is great, man is weak; he stands between heaven and hell; Christ is his Saviour; Christ has suffered for him. The Holy Ghost sanctifies him; repentance purifies him, faith justifies, works save. These are solemn truths, which need not be actually spoken, except in the way of creed or of teaching; but which must be laid up in the heart. That a thing is true, is no reason that it should be said, but that it should be done; that it should be acted upon; that it should be made our own inwardly.⁷⁷

The contrast Newman presents between that which is got ‘by rote’ and that which is ‘made our own inwardly’, ‘laid up in the heart’, resembles the contrast Aristotle presents between those who apprehend the good, and act accordingly, and those – the ‘incontinent’ – who seem to apprehend the good, but do not act accordingly.

The fact that men use the language that flows from knowledge proves nothing … those who have just begun to learn a science can string together its phrases but do not yet know it; for it has to become part of themselves, and that takes time; so that we must suppose that the use of language by men in an incontinent state means no more than its utterance by actors on the stage.⁷⁸

Aristotle would suggest that, though the ‘incontinent’ seem to have the same knowledge of the good as the virtuous, there is a difference between their ‘knowledge’ – their ‘use [of] the language that flows from knowledge’ – and that of the virtuous: it is not ‘part of themselves’; they do not apprehend the good in the same way as the virtuous; they do not have – to use the phrase Newman uses – a ‘real apprehension’ of it. Aristotle suggests that the ‘language that flows from [the] knowledge’ of the good should ‘become part’ of oneself; Newman suggests that the ‘new language which Christ has brought us’ should be ‘made our own inwardly’. It is ‘made our own’ by being acted on, and when it is ‘made our own’ it is expressed in those actions in which that which is ‘our own’ is manifest – in those actions that express, that realize the self. Newman remarks, ‘That a thing is true, is no reason that it should be said, but that it should be done; that it should be acted upon; that it should be made our own inwardly.’ He presents three parallel clauses ‘that … that … that’, and, as the first two concern ‘acting’ – ‘it should be done’, ‘it should be acted upon’ – and have, broadly, similar meanings, this creates the expectation that the third clause will, equally, have a similar meaning. While the third clause, ‘it should be made our own inwardly’, does not have the same meaning as the others, the parallelism that has been established suggests that it, like the clauses with which it is parallel, is concerned with ‘acting’ – suggesting that to ‘act upon’ a truth is to ‘make it our own’, and vice versa. It need not, though, be taken to be concerned only with ‘acting’: it might be taken to be concerned with contemplation. If truths are ‘made our own’ in acting, they may be equally ‘made our own inwardly’ in contemplation. Newman is concerned, in any case, not with a contrast between ‘acting’ and contemplation, but with a contrast between different uses of ‘words’: there can be a use of the ‘words’ of faith which is ‘unreal’, which does not involve a genuine understanding of the import of those ‘words’; one must, rather, ‘try to understand’; the effort to understand will involve ‘acting’; and if one does ‘understand’ – if one has ‘laid up in the heart’ the ‘solemn truths’ of the faith – one will act accordingly; one will be disposed to do certain things – rather than merely to ‘speak’ about what one understands. This is not to claim, though, that a ‘real apprehension’ of the ‘solemn truths’ of faith cannot be shown in how one might ‘speak of religion’; it is to claim that if one has such a ‘real apprehension’, ‘speak[ing] of religion’ will not be an end in itself – ‘aim at things, and your words will be right without aiming’. Newman contrasts this way of ‘speaking’ with ‘literature’ – which he characterizes as ‘the exhibition of thought disjoined from practice’, thought ‘in abstraction from the actual affairs of life’, such that ‘mere literary men are able to say strong things against the opinions of their age, whether religious or political, without offence; because … they are not expected to go forward to act upon them’.⁷⁹ In ‘literature’, he suggests, ‘speaking’ itself, ‘the exhibition of thought’, is the ‘aim’. Newman is concerned, then, with a contrast between those who ‘aim at things’, and those who aim merely at ‘words’. With regard to the recitation of the Creed, Newman observes that this recitation is a ‘kind of prayer’ for understanding – ‘We desire, pray, and strive to understand it more and more.’⁸⁰ The ‘real apprehension’, toward which one ‘strives’, is an apprehension that is connected to the recognition, not that something is to be ‘said’, but that something is to be ‘done’. The ‘real apprehension’, with which Newman is concerned in his sermon on ‘Unreal Words’, seems to be much the same as the proper ‘apprehending’ of the ‘words’ of the Creed, with which he is concerned in his sermon on ‘The Incarnation’ – an ‘apprehending’ which he associates with ‘draw[ing] down as it were, from heaven, the image of Him who is on God’s right hand’, in a way that ‘rouse[s] in us those mingled feelings of fear and confidence, affection and devotion towards Him … which were originally derived to the Church from the very sight of Him’.

In ‘The Incarnation’, Newman suggests that the effort toward a right ‘apprehending’ of the ‘words’ of the Creed, involving the forming of an ‘image’ of Christ, is an effort toward forming something like the ‘vivid picture’ of Christ which ‘the early Christians’ had: the effort is required, as ‘the Object of our faith is but faintly reflected on our minds, compared with the vivid picture which His presence impressed upon the early Christians’; ‘the true traditions of our Lord’s ministry … [are] lost to us’. In his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman observes that ‘the Church necessarily has less power over the Creed now than anciently; for at first it was but a form of sound words, subservient to a Faith vividly and accurately engraven on the heart of every Christian, and so of secondary value; but now … traditionary teaching has been impaired’.⁸¹ There is, still, ‘traditionary teaching’ in the Church – ‘a certain body of Truth, pervading the Church like an atmosphere, irregular in its shape from its very profusion and exuberance’ – yet this ‘teaching’, ‘Prophetical Tradition’, does not have the authority of the ‘Faith’ that ‘anciently’ was ‘vividly and accurately engraven on the heart of every Christian’. The Prophetical Tradition developed out of the original Tradition of the Church – which was present when ‘the whole Church agreed together in giving one and the same account of this Tradition’ – but the original Tradition took various forms in the different ‘branches’ of the Church, from the time when ‘love waxing cold and schisms abounding, her various branches developed portions of it for themselves, out of the existing mass, and, according to the accidental influences which prevailed at the time, did the work well or ill, rudely or accurately’.⁸² Newman suggests a certain connection between the fracturing of the Church into ‘branches’, and the ‘Object of faith’ becoming more ‘faintly reflected in [the] minds’ of Christians: the fracturing of the Church occurred when ‘love’ became ‘cold’; the ‘vivid picture’ of the ‘Object of faith’ elicits ‘light and peace, fear, joy, and holy meditation’. The ‘voice’ of the Church has full authority, when the Church is animated by a ‘love’ (and hence, a unity) that manifests the presence, in the life of the Church, of a ‘vivid picture’ of the ‘Object of faith’.

How should one respond to the ‘voice’ of the Church at the present time, when ‘love’ is ‘cold’? In his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman maintains that one ‘must either believe or silently acquiesce in the whole’ of the ‘Prophetical Tradition’, which is ‘offered’ to one in the ‘branch’ of the Church to which one belongs. Why, though, should one do so, if ‘traditionary teaching has been impaired’? Newman presents the ‘voice’ of ‘the existing Church’ as one of the ‘means’ by which one can make a ‘choice’ or ‘judgement’ as to what to believe. ‘The internal means of judging are common sense, natural perception of right and wrong, the sympathy of the affections, exercises of the imagination, reason, and the like. The external are such as Scripture, the existing Church, Tradition, Catholicity, Learning, Antiquity, and the National Faith.’⁸³ Newman suggests that these various ‘means’ or ‘informants’ interact, to form the ‘judgement’: that is, they are not simply subject to the ‘judgement’ – they form the ‘judgement’, making it what it is.

Our parents and teachers are our first informants concerning the next world; and they elicit and cherish the innate sense of right and wrong which acts as a guide co-ordinately with them. By degrees they resign their place to the religious communion, or Church, in which we find ourselves, while the inward habits of truth and holiness which the moral sense has begun to form, react upon that inward monitor, enlarge its range, and make its dictates articulate, decisive, and various. Meantime the Scriptures have been added as fresh informants, bearing witness to the Church and to the moral sense, and interpreted by them both. Last of all, where there is time and opportunity for research into times past and present, Christian Antiquity, and Christendom, as it at present exists, become additional informants, giving substance and shape to much that before existed in our minds only in outhne and shadow.⁸⁴

Newman observes that it can be ‘difficult to combine’ these different ‘informants’ – sometimes they seem to contradict one another, as ‘the lights they furnish, coming from various quarters, cast separate shadows, and partially intercept each other’, so one is obliged ‘to choose what is best and safest’.⁸⁵ They form the mind but the mind must, equally, act to ‘combine’ and to harmonize them.

In his account of the ‘means’ by which ‘the judgement’ is formed – with the ‘voice’ of the Church being one of these ‘means’ – Newman is concerned with a process of education. He suggests that if one is to acquire a formed ‘judgement’, if one is to be educated, one must begin by taking certain things on trust: ‘I would … maintain … that, under whatever system a man finds himself, he is bound to accept it as if infallible, and to act upon it in a confiding spirit, till he finds a better, or in course of time has cause to suspect it.’⁸⁶ Over time, ‘as the mind expands’, one will reflect on the ‘system’ in which one ‘finds’ oneself; and one will reflect on this ‘system’ spontaneously, and somewhat unconsciously. ‘Too many men suppose that their investigation ought to be attended with a consciousness of their making it; as if it was scarcely pleasing to God unless they all along reflect upon it, tell the world of it, boast of it as a right, and sanctify it as a principle’;⁸⁷ and it is ‘popularly conceived that to maintain the right of Private Judgment, is to hold that no one has an enlightened faith who has not, as a point of duty, discussed the grounds of it and made up his mind for himself’.⁸⁸ Yet ‘one must begin religion by faith, not by controversy’,⁸⁹ and it is a mistake to think that there is only judgment where ‘investigation [is] … attended with a consciousness’ of itself, where the ‘grounds’ of judgment are explicitly ‘discussed’. To be presented with the ‘system of the Church and of Antiquity’, and to receive it in a ‘confiding spirit’, is to begin a process of education, forming the ‘judgement’. This process of education continues as one investigates the Scriptures, ‘verifying’ the ‘system of the Church and of Antiquity’ by them, and interpreting them by that ‘system’. ‘No harm can come from putting the Scripture into the hands of the laity, allowing them, if they will, to verify by it, as far as it extends, the doctrines they have been taught already.’⁹⁰ As the ‘system of the Church and of Antiquity’ is the proper articulation of the vision animating the Scriptures, so to be initiated into that ‘system’ is to be initiated into the vision by which the Scriptures can be interpreted; and, if one interprets the Scriptures in the right way, one can recognize that the ‘system of the Church and of Antiquity’ is the proper articulation of the vision animating the Scriptures. ‘The Church, speaking out that Truth, as committed to her, would cause a corresponding vibration in Holy Scripture, such as no other notes, however loudly sounded, can draw from it.’⁹¹ To harmonize the various ‘informants’ is to register the ‘vibration’ of the ‘Truth’. If, in England, the ‘Scripture … [in] the hands of the laity’ has been interpreted in various, discordant ways, this is ‘because the Anglican Church has never had the opportunity of supplying her aid which is the divinely provided complement of Scripture reading; because her voice has been feeble, her motions impeded, and the means withheld from her of impressing upon the population her own doctrine; because the Reformation was set up in disunion, and theories more Protestant than hers have, from the first, spoken with her, and blended with, and sometimes drowned her voice’.⁹² Newman suggests, then, that the Church should claim ‘the obedience of its members in the first instance, though laying itself open afterwards to their judgment, according to their respective capabilities for judging, claiming for itself that they make a generous and unsuspicious trial of it before objecting to it’.⁹³

The Scriptures are such that their meaning is not patent – they are ‘deep’, often oblique. ‘[The meaning of Scripture] is not so distinct and prominent, as to force itself upon the minds of the many against their various prejudices.’⁹⁴ ‘Scripture reading’ – in any ‘system’ of Christian belief – is always informed by certain preconceptions: in ‘Scripture reading’ one cannot but start with some view of ‘doctrine’, of the meaning of Scripture, and this view will inform the way in which one interprets Scripture. This does not ‘prove that all prejudice is wrong; but that some particular prejudices are not true; and that, since it is impossible to be without some or other, it is expedient to impress the mind with that which is true; that is, with the faith taught by the Church Catholic, and ascertainable as matter of fact beyond the influence of prejudice’.⁹⁵ Newman maintains that, if one were ‘beyond the influence of prejudice’ then one would be able to discern the meaning of the Scriptures – confirming that the ‘faith taught by the Church Catholic’ corresponds to the ‘one and only sense of Scripture’.⁹⁶ Yet ‘the many’ cannot be ‘beyond the influence of prejudice’.

The qualifications for rightly apprehending it are so rare and high, that a prudent man, to say nothing of piety, will not risk his salvation on the chance of his having them; but will read it with the aid of those subsidiary guides which ever have been supplied as if to meet our need. I would not deny as an abstract proposition that a Christian may gain the whole truth from the Scriptures, but would maintain that the chances are very seriously against a given individual. I would not deny, rather I maintain that a religious, wise, and intellectually gifted man will succeed: but who answers to this description but the collective Church?⁹⁷

Even if one were to acquire the ‘qualifications for rightly apprehending’ the sense of the Scriptures, one would have to undergo some kind of education first – and in this, one would have to start in a ‘confiding spirit’, taking something or other on trust. Newman observes that he would not ‘deny that individuals, whether from height of holiness, clearness of intellectual vision, or the immediate power of the Holy Ghost, have been and are able to penetrate through the sacred text into some portions of the divine system beyond, without external help from tradition, authority of doctors, and theology; though since that help has ever been given, as to the Church, so to the individual, it is difficult to prove that the individual has performed what the Church has never attempted’.⁹⁸ The perfect ‘abstract’ Christian – making sense of the Scriptures ‘without external help’ – has never existed, for ‘help has ever been given’.⁹⁹

Newman envisages the ‘voice’ of the Church as ‘impressing’ on the minds of its members a certain ‘system’, forming their preconceptions. Such preconceptions must be formed, in any process of education; and if the Church does not form the preconceptions of its members, they will, in any event, form preconceptions of some kind or another: if the voice of the Church is ‘feeble’, then other voices will be hearkened to. With regard to the authority of the voice of the ‘existing Church’, the most th at Newman claims for it, in his account of the ‘means’ of ‘judgement’, in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, is that ‘when the present Church speaks contrary to our private notions, and Antiquity is silent, or its decisions unknown to us, it is pious to sacrifice our own opinion to that of the Church’, and ‘if, in spite of our efforts to agree with the Church, we still differ from it, Antiquity being silent, we must avoid causing any disturbance’.¹⁰⁰ (The qualification here – ‘Antiquity being silent’ – would suggest that, when Antiquity is not ‘silent’, then one is entitled to make a ‘disturbance’.)

One accords the ‘voice’ of the Church a certain trust, acquiring certain ‘preconceptions’ which form the ‘judgement’, and which are, to some extent, confirmed as the ‘judgement’ develops. Once one has a formed judgment, once one can judge for oneself in those matters concerning which, initially, one had to trust the ‘voice’ of the Church, then what sort of relation does one have to the ‘voice’ of the Church? Has one formed in oneself the understanding (or the ‘real apprehension’) which the ‘voice’ of the Church expresses, such that one no longer needs to trust in the ‘voice’ of the Church?

In the Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman characterizes the ‘voice’ of the ‘existing Church’ as a ‘means’ of forming the judgment. He acknowledges, though, that while English Church should use its ‘voice’, to form the attitudes of its members, it does not, in fact, do so. ‘One chief cause of sects among us is, that the Church’s voice is not heard clearly and forcibly; she does not exercise her own right of interpreting Scripture; she does not arbitrate, decide, condemn; she does not answer the call which human nature makes upon her.’¹⁰¹ In his essay for the British Critic on ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’, he reflects upon which ‘notes’ (public signs) of being the true Church, the Anglican Church may claim. ‘The English Church … has the note of possession, the note of freedom from party titles; the note of life, a tough life and a vigorous; she has ancient descent, unbroken continuance, agreement in doctrine with the ancient Church. Those [notes] … which she certainly has not, are intercommunion with Christendom, the glory of miracles, and the prophetical light.’¹⁰² Newman observes, in 1840, that the Anglican Church does not have ‘the prophetical light’: it does not have a ‘prophetical’ voice.

In 1837, in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Newman acknowledges that the account he gives of the English Church – as a ‘manifestation’ of the universal Church – might be regarded by some as ‘but a theory; a mere shadowy, baseless, ingenious theory, since the division of the East and West, and still more so since the great schism of the North and South’.¹⁰³

‘You speak’, it may be urged against me, ‘of the Church Catholic, of the Church’s teaching, and of obedience to the Church. What is meant by the Church Catholic at this day? where is she? what are her local instruments and organs? how does she speak? when and where does she teach, forbid, command, censure? how can she be said to utter one and the same doctrine everywhere, when we are at war with all the rest of Christendom, and not at peace at home? In the Primitive Church there was no difficulty, and no mistaking; then all Christians everywhere spoke one and the same doctrine, and if any novelty arose, it was at once denounced and stifled. The case indeed, is the same now with the Roman Church; but for Anglo-Catholics so to speak, is to use words without meaning, to dream of a state of things long past away from this Protestant land. The Church is now but a mere abstract word; it stands for a generalized idea, it is not the name of any one thing really existing; which if it ever was, yet ceased to be, when Christians divided from each other, centuries upon centuries ago. Rome and Greece, at enmity with each other, both refuse communion to England, and anathematize her faith. Again, in the English Church by itself may be found differences as great as those which separate it from Greece or Rome … Where, then, in the English Church is that one eternal voice of Truth, that one witness issuing from the Apostles’ times, and conversant with all doctrine, the expounder of the Creed, the interpreter of Scripture, and the instructor of the people of God?’¹⁰⁴

Newman observes that the ‘difficulty of applying’ the means to discern the will of God, ‘will be a test whether we earnestly desire to do His will or not’. Newman maintains that faith itself cannot but involve difficulties: ‘doubt in some way or measure may even be said to be implied in a Christian’s faith’, such that ‘the greater the uncertainty, the fuller exercise there is of our earnestness in seeking the truth, and of our moral sagacity in tracing and finding it’.¹⁰⁵ One must ‘consult what is most likely to please Him’.¹⁰⁶ As God does not manifest His will with a clearness that dispels all ‘doubt’, so the Church is not manifest with a clearness that dispels all uncertainty. Newman insists, though, in his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church that it is in the ‘Prayer Book’, above all, that the Church is ‘visible’ in England. With regard to the ‘prophetical light’, ‘the Prayer Book is a practical guide into the sense of Scripture for all teachable minds’.

In spite of differences within or without, our own branch may surely be considered as to us the voice of her who has been in the world ever one and the same since Christ came. Surely, she comes up to the theory; she professes to be the Catholic Church, and to transmit that one ancient Catholic Faith, and she does transmit it simply and intelligibly. Not the most unlettered of her members can miss her meaning. She speaks in her formularies and services. The Daily Prayer, the Occasional Offices, the Order of the Sacraments, the Ordination Services, present one and the same strong, plain, edifying languag e to rich and poor, learned and unlearned; and that, not as the invention of this Reformer or that, but as the witness of all Saints from the beginning … . There is no mistaking then in this day in England, where the Church Catholic is, and what her teaching. To follow her is to follow the Prayer-Book, instead of following preachers, who are but individuals. Its words are not the accidental out-pouring of this or that age or country, but the joint and accordant testimony of that innumerable company of Saints, whom we are bound to follow. They are the accents of the Church Catholic and Apostolic as she manifests herself in England. Surely, if we did but proceed on the great principle above described, of acting towards duties which we cannot fulfil exactly, did we take what is given us, and use it not grudgingly, nor of necessity, but with a cheerful obedience, did we receive the Creed as our Gospel, embrace and act upon the doctrine of our Services, and, if anywhere we differed, differ in silence, we should of ourselves without effort revive all those visible tokens of the Church’s sovereignty, the want of which is our present excuse for disobedience. Surely, ‘the kingdom of God is within us;’ we have but to recognize the Church in faith, and it rises before our eyes.¹⁰⁷

If the members of the English Church trusted the Church more – ‘recogniz[ing] the Church in faith’ – its ‘visible tokens of sovereignty’ would ‘revive’. If, though, one must ‘recognize the Church in faith’, then the Church, as a ‘visible’ presence, in itself, is not such as to inspire or move faith; the Church, in England, does not, then, seem to have the ‘gift’ of being ‘herself … a great public evidence of her mission’, such that ‘she [is] … her own evidence’, her ‘very look, her bearing, her voice’ being ‘her credentials’.

Newman maintains that one must act ‘towards duties which we cannot fulfil exactly’. He is concerned, in this, with the ‘duty’ of ‘obedience’ to the Church: those who recognize such a ‘duty’, and who are disposed to act ‘towards’ it, will recognize ‘where’ the Church is, ‘how’ it ‘speak[s]’. Those who ‘are really bent on serving God as well as they can … [consulting] what is most likely to please Him’ and who recognize ‘what kind of obedience God requires of us, viz. such as we can pay, not the alternative of the highest conceivable obedience, or none at all, of the very letter, or not of the spirit’, those who are well disposed in this way, will not cavil at the want of ‘visible tokens’ of ‘sovereignty’ in the English Church; they will not make its want of apparent ‘sovereignty’ an ‘excuse for disobedience’. When, though, Newman suggests that ‘embrac[ing] and act[ing] on’ the ‘doctrine of [the] Services’ is a matter of observing the ‘principle … of acting towards duties which we cannot fulfil exactly’, does this mean that acting on the ‘doctrine of [the] Services’ is an approximation ‘towards’ acting in obedience to the ‘voice’ of the Church (as the expression of a present, living authority)? One of the difficulties involved in acting ‘towards’ a duty, is in determining whether such and such an act would be in accordance with that duty; and if one is truly trying to fulfil that duty, one will do what seems ‘most likely’ to be in accordance with it, what seems to be in the ‘spirit’ of that duty, rather than doing nothing. If there is a ‘duty’ of obeying ‘the Church’, then there is a question about whether that means obeying ‘this’ Church (whether the English Church is the true Church), and there is a question about whether ‘this’ Church requires one to do ‘this’ (whether the English Church uses its ‘voice’ to make clear what one should do, whether it presents one with something to ‘obey’). Newman maintains that the English Church, in its ‘Services’, presents itself as the ‘Church Catholic’, and it presents ‘doctrine’ to ‘embrace and act on’ (although those who accept the ‘doctrine’ presented in the ‘Services’ might legitimately ‘differ’ as to its implications, and as to how it is to be acted on – the ‘letter’ of what is required is not set out precisely): if one wants to register the ‘accents of the Church Catholic and Apostolic’, then one can register them in the ‘Services’ of the English Church; to ‘embrace and act on’ what is presented in these ‘Services’ is to approximate ‘towards’ an obedience to the ‘Church Catholic and Apostolic’. If, though, this is only an approximation toward the ‘highest conceivable obedience’, is this because acting on the ‘doctrine’ of the ‘Services’ is an approximation toward acting on the ‘voice’ of the Church, since the ‘Services’ are the closest approximation in the English Church, faute de mieux, to a ‘voice’ of the Church? Is it because that ‘doctrine’ is not altogether definite enough to present one with something – in the situations of day to day life – to ‘obey’? Newman seems to suggest that if one is trying to register the ‘voice’ of the Church, then one is presented, in the ‘Services’ of the English Church, with an approximation to that ‘voice’, which one can obey: the practical question, for Newman, is whether one is presented with something one can obey ‘as’ the ‘voice’ of the Church. Newman maintains that the ‘obedience’ required is a matter of thinking it ‘likely’ enough that one is being presented with the ‘voice’ of the Church, in the ‘doctrine’ of the ‘Services’, for one to ‘embrace and act on’ that doctrine (to act in a way that seems to be in accord with that doctrine). Acting in a way that seems likely to be in accord with what seems likely to be the ‘voice’ of the Church is not quite the same, however, as simple ‘obedience’ to the ‘voice’ of the Church.

Newman maintains that, if the members of the English Church trusted the Church more, its ‘visible tokens’ would ‘revive’ – it would look more like the Church prophesied in the Scriptures. He maintains, moreover, that the Church is always recognized by ‘faith’, by a faith that ‘assimilates to itself all that is around us’, interpreting what is presented to ‘sight’ so as to discern the marks of the Church.

Without some portion of that Divine Philosophy which bids us consider ‘the kingdom of God’ to be ‘within us,’ and which, by prayer and meditation, by acting on what is told us, and by anticipating sight, developes outwardly its own views and principles, and thus assimilates to itself all that is around us, – not only the Church in this age and country, but the Church Catholic anywhere, or at any time, Primitive, Roman, or Reformed, is but a name, used indeed a s the incentive to action, but without local habitation, or visible tokens, ‘here or there,’ ‘in the secret chambers,’ or ‘in the desert’. After all, the Church is ever invisible in its day, and faith only apprehends it.¹⁰⁸

One must have faith in the Church, interpreting its appearances in faith, before those appearances look like ‘visible tokens’ of the Church. (Of this claim, Newman remarked, in 1877 – ‘After all then the Church of God is, what Protestants have ever considered it, invisible.’)¹⁰⁹

The remarks Newman makes, in 1837, on how ‘faith only apprehends’ the Church, fit with his understanding of how ‘certainty’ relates to ‘evidence’. That is, he suggests, in 1837, that faith – which arises when one is ‘personally concerned’ with a certain matter – will take imperfect, uncertain evidence as sufficient to act on, consulting what is ‘best and safest’ (though this ‘faith’ can coexist with a ‘doubt’ which recognizes the uncertainty of the evidence). Later, he would insist that ‘certainty’ – as an attitude of mind – may be warranted, where the evidence is not such as to impel certainty, and he would insist that such certainty is a matter of ‘reason’, not ‘faith’. In 1837, he regarded ‘faith’ as involved in acting on ‘uncertain’ evidence. Later on, he would maintain that ‘incomplete’ evidence might be sufficient to warrant ‘certainty’: one might have sufficient evidence – albeit not irresistible evidence – to be certain that the Church was the ‘oracle’ of God (recognizing thereby that one ought to have faith in the ‘word’ of the Church). To deem it ‘safest’ to take something – the ‘doctrine’ presented in the ‘Services’ – as the ‘word’ of the Church, and to take that as ‘safest’ to act on – this is not, for the later Newman, ‘faith’ (which he took to be an unreserved assent to the ‘word’ of God, proposed by the Church as the ‘messenger’ of God). When Newman took the view that ‘reason’ might warrant certainty, as to the ‘tokens’ of the Church, he was, of course, concerned with the ‘tokens’, not of England, but of Rome; and he considered Rome to have tokens of being the true Church which England did not have (though he felt that ‘prejudice’ might obscure these tokens for some).¹¹⁰ His later reflections about the ‘tokens’ of the Church did not only involve an understanding of the relationship between ‘evidence’ and certainty which differed from his earlier understanding; those reflections were concerned with different ‘tokens’, and a different Church. Yet he did not consider the ‘evidence’ which those ‘tokens’ comprised to be of a kind that ‘compelled’ recognition; and where, earlier, he had regarded ‘faith’ as overcoming the incompleteness of the evidence (a faith that was, at the least, a matter of acting as if what the evidence almost showed were true), he would later regard a kind of ‘judgement’ as overcoming the incompleteness of the evidence – a judgment which could recognize that the evidence, though incomplete, was sufficient.

In his essay on ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’ for the British Critic, Newman maintained that ‘much as Roman Catholics may denounce us at present as schismatical, they could not resist us, if the Anglican communion had … one Note of the Church upon it … – sanctity’.

In vain would a few controversialists taunt us … . The hearts of their own people would be with us; we should have an argument more intelligible than any which the schools could furnish, could we appeal to this living evidence of truth, in our bishops, our chapters, our clergy, our divines, our laity, causing men to glorify our Father which is in heaven. We should not be unwilling to place the matter on this issue … . Unless our system really has a power in it, making us neglectful of wealth, neglectful of station, neglectful of ease, munificent, austere, reverent, childlike, unless it is able to bring our passions into order, to make us pure, to make us meek, to rule our intellect, to give government of speech, to inspire firmness, to destroy self, we do not deserve to be acknowledged as a Church.¹¹¹

The sanctity of the members of the English Church will be, itself, a public ‘Note’ of the Church – a mark that the Spirit truly animates it. How much, though, could such ‘sanctity’ be a public ‘Note’, if one can discern ‘sanctity’ in others only when one is closely acquainted with them – if, as Newman maintains in ‘Personal Influence, the means of Propagating the Truth’, ‘we could scarcely [be] in any situation be direct instruments of good to any besides those who personally know us, who ever must form a small circle’.¹¹² In ‘The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect’, a sermon preached in 1836, he acknowledges that the ‘sanctity’ of some can become apparent, and widely known, after their death. ‘When envy and anger have died away, and men talk together about them, and compare what each knows, their good and holy deeds are added up; and while they evidence their fruitfulness, also clear up or vindicate their motives, and strike the mind of survivors with astonishment and fear; and the Church honours them.’¹¹³ In honouring the saints, the Church shows what it is for, what it aims at. ‘After death, their excellence perhaps gets abroad; and then they become a witness, a specimen of what the Gospel can do, and a sample and a pledge of all those other high creations of God, His saints in full number, who die and are n ever known.’¹¹⁴ If the English Church were to recognize its saints, then these saints would be a ‘Note’ of its being a true Church, mediating grace, accomplishing what only ‘the Gospel can do’. In ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’, though, Newman seems to be concerned less with a public recognition of certain saints, ‘after their death’ – as a mark or expression of the ‘sanctity’ of the Church in which they lived their lives – than with a ‘living evidence of truth, in our bishops, our chapters, our clergy, our divines, our laity’ – with a sanctity that is apparent in the ‘living’. An impression of the sanctity of ‘bishops … clergy … divines … laity’ is to be formed, from encountering them in the here and now. If the members of the English Church have the faith required to discern its ‘tokens’, and to ‘act on what is told’ them, so they will, in their own ‘sanctity’, makes those ‘tokens’ apparent to others, for that ‘sanctity’ will be itself a ‘token’, a ‘Note’, of the Church.

In a series of sermons preached in Advent 1841, Newman suggested that there might be ‘Inward Notes’ of the Church – ‘Notes’ which the members of the Church might register, by reflecting on their own ‘inward’ experiences. In a sermon on the ‘Invisible Presence of Christ’, he observes that the Church was first established by ‘an inward power’, ‘by an inward and secret presence; by outward instruments, indeed, but with effects far higher than those instruments, and really by God’s own agency’.¹¹⁵ The first Christians were not presented with a Church that had ‘visible tokens’ of ‘sovereignty’. Those who were moved to become Christians, ‘one and all, spoke one language, not learning it one from the other, but taught by Him the Song of the Lamb; or if in one sense by man’s teaching too, yet catching and mastering it supernaturally, almost before the words were spoken’ – so that, ‘upon the first voice of the preacher, upon a hint, upon a mere whisper in the air, a deep response came from many lips’.¹¹⁶ How did this happen?

Man is not sufficient for his own happiness; he is not happy except the Presence of God be with him. When he was created, God breathed into him that supernatural life of the Spirit which is his true happiness: and when he fell, he lost the divine gift, and with it his happiness also. Ever since he has been unhappy; ever since he has a void within him which needs filling, and he knows not how to fill it … and the Gospel supplies it.¹¹⁷

The ‘inward influence’ is ‘really the keen, vivid, constraining glance of Christ’s countenance’.¹¹⁸ The current age ‘is an age in which the outward signs of Christ’s Presence have well nigh deserted us’, yet these are ‘for beginners’, who ‘may thus be led on by such experience of His grace, to discern those holier and better notes’ that are ‘personal and private’.¹¹⁹ (So, for instance, the recognition that the ‘Gospel supplies’ that which ‘fills’ the ‘void within’ would involve a ‘personal and private’ experience – an experience of how the ‘void within’ oneself had been ‘filled’.) With regard to these ‘notes’, Newman suggests that one might discern them in recognizing whether one has ‘gained any good thing, not merely in, but through [the] Church’ – if, for instance, ‘your soul has been, as it were, transfigured within you, when you came to the Most Holy Sacrament’.¹²⁰ In ‘Outward and Inward Notes of the Church’, Newman insists that ‘religion is a personal, private, and individual matter, that it consists in a communion between God and the soul, and that its true evidences belong to the soul that believes, are its property, and not something common to it and the whole world. God vouchsafes to speak to us one by one, to manifest Himself to us one by one, to lead us forward one by one; He gives us something to rely upon which others do not experience, which we cannot convey to others, which we can but use for ourselves.’¹²¹ Yet the Scriptural prophecies declare that the Church was to be ‘both social and public in the very highest sense, because it is Catholic, universal every where’, such that ‘she herself was to be a great public evidence of her mission … she was to be her own evidence’ in ‘her very look, her bearing, her voice’ – ‘and that not from any thing special in the mind of the hearer, but from the voice and tone of the speaker’.¹²² Newman maintains, though, ‘that the public notes of the Church, which are the common property of all men, are rather a sign to unbelievers than to the faithful, and to the world than to Christians; and a sign to members of the Church in proportion as they are without, and till they gain those truer and more precious tokens, to which the external notes lead, and by which they are practically superseded’.¹²³ ‘Before [a man] partakes those Sacraments, he will be attracted to the Church by her public notes; but when he once has tasted the good word, and in proportion as he is partaker of it, that word itself in its inward power, in its power upon himself, will keep him firm in his allegiance to her.’¹²⁴

In ‘Grounds for Steadfastness in our Religious Profession’, Newman attempts to indicate something of what the experience of the ‘inward power’ of the ‘word’ of God is like, and what it involves.

The very fact of a religion taking root within us, is a proof, so far, that it is true. If it were not true, it would not take root. Religious men have, in their own religiousness, an evidence of the truth of their religion. That religion is true which has power, and so far as it has p ower; nothing but what is divine can renew the heart. And this is the secret reason why religious men believe, whether they are adequately conscious of it or no, whether they can put it into words or no; viz. their past experience that the doctrine which they hold is a reality in their minds, not a mere opinion, and has come to them, ‘not in word, but in power’.¹²⁵

An experience of a ‘renewal’ of the ‘heart’ is an evidence of the ‘power’ of religion. Newman suggests that ‘religious men’ experience the ‘doctrine which they hold’ as having a certain ‘power’ to change the ‘heart’, and their experience of this ‘power’ makes them ‘hold’ the doctrine with more assurance. If they take it that ‘nothing but what is divine can renew the heart’, and they experience such a renewal, in accepting certain ‘doctrine’, then they will take it that the doctrine is ‘divine’. (This interpretation of their experience requires a principle, of course, that is itself ‘religious’: the principle that ‘nothing but what is divine can renew the heart’. If this principle were to be considered one of the ‘doctrines’ which ‘religious men … hold’, then it would seem that ‘religious men’ make sense of the effects of their acceptance of certain doctrines – or even attribute certain effects to their acceptance of those doctrines – in accordance with those doctrines, using those doctrines to make sense of their experiences; and, if so, the effects do not constitute a ‘proof’ that is distinct from, or independent of, belief in those doctrines. It is, equally, true that, were there not this ‘renewal’ of ‘heart’, were this renewal not a ‘reality’, then there would be nothing to interpret.)

A man’s real reason for attachment to his own religious communion, why he believes it to be true, why he is eager in its defence, why he feels indignant at being invited to abandon it, is not any series of historical or philosophical arguments, not any thing merely beautiful in its system, or supernatural, but what it has done for him and others; his confidence in it as a means by which men may be brought nearer to God, and may become better and happier.¹²⁶

It is the experience of becoming ‘better and happier’ that ‘attaches’ a ‘religious man’ to ‘his own religious communion’; and, as he is ‘religious’, he attributes his becoming ‘better and happier’ to the influence of God – and, accordingly, he discerns the influence of God in ‘his own religious communion’.

A religious man is conscious that God has been with him, and given him whatever he has of good within him … . He has a conviction, which nothing can shake, that without the aid of his Lord and Saviour, he can do nothing aright … . A religious man would feel it little less than sacrilege, and almost blasphemy, to impute the improvement in his heart and conduct, in his moral being, with which he has been favoured in a certain sufficient period, to outward or merely natural causes. He will be unable to force himself to do so: that is to say, he has a conviction, which it is a point of religion with him not to doubt, which it is a sin to deny, that God has been with him.¹²⁷

As to where one might discern indications of God being ‘with’ one, Newman observes that ‘a religious man may be expected to have experience more or less of wonderful providences, which he cannot speak about to others’, or of ‘answers to prayer’, or of ‘the awful sacredness of our Sacraments and other Ordinances’, or of ‘the manifestation of Christ which often attends on death-beds for the benefit of survivors’, or of ‘evidences of sanctity in the living, which we are from time to time vouchsafed’.¹²⁸ Newman insists that, if one is to look to such ‘notes’, one cannot simply ‘consult the fluctuations of [one’s mind] in the passing hour, for information concerning God’s will’: rather, it is ‘when we look back on the course of our whole lives … [when we] look for … proof of improvement in our heart and life, and not mere comfort or transport … [and when we] look for plain external facts, however private and secret, not for mere emotions’, that this attempt to ‘determine whether or not God is with us’ is rightly conducted.¹²⁹ Newman then observes that to ‘judge of doctrines [by “their fruits”] … is presumptuous, because these are divine revelations, and are commonly mysteries, and are to be received on faith, whatever comes of them’, but ‘it is otherwise with religious bodies; they are to be tested and judged of by their visible effects … and if the outward notes of the Church are thus matter for our judgment, surely its inward power may be religiously inquired into also’.¹³⁰

Of these Advent sermons on the ‘Inward Notes’ of the Church, Newman would later remark, in his lectures on Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (1850), that while it is true that ‘the notes of the Church, as they are called, are chiefly intended, as this writer says, as guides and directions into the truth, for those who are as yet external to it, and that those who are within it have prima facie evidences of another and more personal kind’, the ‘inward notes’ mentioned in the Advent sermons do not suffice to show that the English Church is a ‘branch’ of the Catholic Church.¹³¹ It may be true that ‘you have the clear evidence of the influences of grace in your hearts, by its effects sensible at the moment or permanent in the event’, but ‘grace is given for the merits of Christ all over the earth; there is no corner, even of Paganism, where it is not present, present in each heart of man in real sufficiency for his ultimate salvation’.¹³² With regard to ‘ordinances of religion’, ‘grace is given ex opere operato [from the work worked] when, the proper dispositions being supposed in the recipient, it is given through the ordinance itself; it is giv en ex opere operantis [from the work of the doer] when, whether there be outward sign or no, the inward energetic act of the recipient is the instrument of it’ – and this ‘inward energetic act of the recipient’ of the rites of the English Church, rather than a ‘power’ inhering in those rites themselves, may make them instruments of grace for ‘the recipient’.¹³³ That one might be sensible of ‘influences’ of grace, when participating in certain rites, need not, then, show those rites to be genuine sacraments (with the ‘religious communion’, in which those rites are observed, being thereby shown to be the true Church). In his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) Newman remarked, of the publication of his Advent sermons on the ‘Inward Notes’, that his ‘friends of the moderate Apostolical party’ were ‘surprised and offended at a line of argument … which threw the whole controversy into confusion, stultified my former principles, and substituted, as they would consider, a sort of methodistic self-contemplation, especially abhorrent both to my nature and to my past professions, for the plain and honest tokens, as they were commonly received, of a divine mission in the Anglican Church’.¹³⁴ If one would make certain experiences, attendant on participating in the sacraments, a kind of ‘note’ of the ‘reality’ of those sacraments, then one might make those experiences, rather than the sacraments themselves, the ‘signs’ of grace (and, then, one might set out to cultivate those experiences, one might aim at them, lapsing into mere ‘self contemplation’).

Newman maintained, during the 1830s, that the ‘visible tokens’ of the early Church arose from, and manifested, a faith that was ‘vividly and accurately engraven on the heart of every Christian’, a faith that was the vision of an ‘Object’. He maintained, equally, that this faith – which animated the original ‘Apostolical Tradition’ of the Church – was no longer present in the world in its original form: the breaking apart of the Church (into different ‘branches’) was at once cause and effect of the dwindling of this faith. There were, at the present time, various ‘memorials’ or traces of this original faith: there were articulations of this faith, in the Scriptures, and the Creed, and there was a living tradition, ‘Prophetical Tradition’, which was a continuation of the original Apostolical Tradition – though in a somewhat ‘impaired’ form – and which was an interpretation of the ‘memorials’ of Apostolical Tradition – the Scriptures and the Creed.

Christians at the present time, Newman suggests, are presented with ‘means’ of forming a faith akin to that of the first Christians. By participating in the life of the Church, one may tend toward a ‘real apprehension’ of the ‘Object’ of faith – a ‘real apprehension’ which is something like an approximation to, or reconstruction of, the pristine faith that was ‘engraven on the hearts’ of the first Christians (the ‘vivid picture which [the] presence [of Christ] impressed upon the early Christians’). As one moves toward this ‘real apprehension’, one will live with ‘doubts’, uncertainties, and the like. Newman thinks of this ‘real apprehension’ as something one forms for oneself, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, by trusting the Church to which one belongs – forming certain ‘preconceptions’ – and by living in accordance with the ‘precepts’ of faith (and the conscience), ‘try[ing] to understand’ by acting on, by living out, those ‘precepts’. One who attains to such a ‘real apprehension’ discerns the meaning of the various forms of the Church – the ‘Object’ which they reveal – and makes that meaning apparent to others – not least by living in a way that is informed by it – conveying the ‘spirit’ of that ‘real apprehension’ to others. When the members of the Church live in this way, moved by a ‘real apprehension’ of Christ, the spirit that, at the first, ‘nourished and animated’ the ‘whole system of the Church, its discipline and ritual’, with a ‘spontaneous and exuberant’ vivacity, re-animates that ‘system’, so that its life, its ‘reality’, becomes manifest. Does Newman tend, in this, to make the ‘whole system of the Church’ a ‘means’ to something ‘inward’ (a ‘real apprehension’ which is, in a sense, the realization, or counterpart, of that ‘system’)?

Newman characterizes the Creed as the articulation of a ‘faith’ that was, in the early Church, present in the ‘heart’. No articulation can, however, be adequate to all that is in the ‘heart’ (‘tradition in its fulness is necessarily unwritten; it is the mode in which a society has felt or acted during a certain period, and it cannot be circumscribed’). The original ‘Apostolical’ Tradition was expressed in various articulations of itself; and that original Tradition would have informed how those articulations of itself were received or interpreted: the original Tradition was the ‘Church’s unconscious habit of opinion and sentiment’, which the Church had, in part, ‘reflect[ed] upon, master[ed], and express[ed], according to the emergency’, and in those expressions, the Tradition would have recognized itself, so to speak. If those expressions were ‘necessarily’ incomplete articulations of that which ‘in its fulness is necessarily unwritten’ – parts of a whole, so to speak – then how much would a right construal of their meaning require a sense of the whole, ‘necessarily unwritten’, which animated them, or from which they emanated? How much might one need to have the ‘habit of opinion and sentiment’ animating the Tradition to interpret aright those expressions? Would not the understanding of these ‘expressions’ by the Church, at the present time, be a form of ‘Prophetical Tradition’, and if ‘Prophetical Tradition’ is ‘impaired’, would not the understanding of these ‘expressions’ by the Church, at the present time, be likewise ‘impaired’? In a sermon on ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, which Newman preached in 1843, he maintains that ‘creeds and dogmas live in the one idea which they are designed to express, and which alone is substantive’.

The Christian mind reasons out a series of dogmatic statements, one from another … not from those statements taken in themselves, as logical propositions, but as being itself enlightened and (as if) inhabited by that sacred impression which is prior to them, which acts as a regulating principle, ever present, upon the reasoning, and without which no one has any warrant to reason at all.¹³⁵

If ‘Creeds and dogmas live in the one idea which they are designed to express’, and if that ‘one idea’ is present in a ‘habit of opinion and sentiment’, in a Tradition deriving from an original ‘sacred impression’, then it would seem that one can only have a ‘real apprehension’ of what the ‘Creeds and dogmas’ convey, if one has been initiated into the Tradition. If the ‘true traditions’ are now ‘lost to us’, and if the ‘Creeds and dogmas live’ in the ‘one idea’ animating those traditions, then can those ‘Creeds and dogmas’ be properly understood? Has the ‘warrant’ to interpret those ‘Creeds and dogmas’ been ‘lost’, with the ‘loss’ of the ‘true traditions’ in which those ‘Creeds and dogmas live’? If, by contrast, those ‘true traditions’ are not ‘lost to us’, then there is still, in the world, a faith ‘vividly and accurately engraven on the heart’, in which the ‘one idea’, the ‘sacred impression’, is present: the ‘sacred impression’ from which the ‘Creeds and dogmas’ arose is still present. The Creed is, in relation to the ‘sacred impression’, a ‘form of sound words, subservient to’ the ‘sacred impression’ itself; if the Creed is not an exhaustive expression of all that is in the ‘sacred impression’, then there may be further expressions of that ‘impression’ – expressions not confined to what is expressed in the Creed (or in ‘Antiquity’).

In the sermon on ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, (1843) Newman envisages the doctrines of the Church as expressions of a primordial ‘impression’, or vision. Reflecting on the history of ‘dogma’, he remarks on how ‘in the course of time the whole mind of the world, as I may say, was absorbed into the philosophy of the Cross, as the element in which it lived, and the form upon which it was moulded’, and on how the ‘world has been moved in consequence of it, populations excited, leagues and alliances formed, kingdoms lost and won’, with ‘a large fabric of divinity [being, at length] reared, irregular in its structure, and diverse in its style, as beseemed the slow growth of centuries … but still, on the whole, the development of an idea, and like itself, and unlike anything else, its most widely-separated parts having relations with each other, and betokening a common origin’ – with all this ‘world of thought’ being ‘the expansion of a few words, uttered, as if casually, by the fishermen of Galilee’.¹³⁶ The fecundity of ‘the Gospel’, as stimulating thought, is a mark of its ‘reality’ – its ‘half sentences, its overflowings of language, admit of development; they have a life in them which shows itself in progress; a truth, which has the token of consistency; a reality, which is fruitful in resources; a depth, which extends into mystery: for they are representations of what is actual, and has a definite location and necessary bearings and a meaning in the great system of things’.¹³⁷ How should the relationship between ‘Faith and Dogmatic Confession’ be understood?

Theological dogmas are propositions expressive of the judgments which the mind forms, or the impressions which it receives, of Revealed Truth. Revelation sets before it certain supernatural facts and actions, beings, and principles; these make a certain impression or image upon it; and this impression spontaneously, or even necessarily, becomes the subject of reflection on the part of the mind itself, which proceeds to investigate it, and to draw it forth in successive and distinct sentences.¹³⁸

The ‘impression or image’, which is the ‘inward idea of divine truth’, need not be made ‘explicit’, if it is to be possessed; and, more than that, ‘there is good reason for saying that the impression made upon the mind need not even be recognized by the parties possessing it’ – it ‘is no proof that persons are not possessed, because they are not conscious, of an idea’.¹³⁹

Critical disquisitions are often written about the idea which this or that poet might have in his mind in certain of his compositions and characters; and we call such analysis the philosophy of poetry, not implying thereby of necessity that the author wrote upon a theory in his actual delineation, or knew what he was doing; but that, in matter of fact, he was possessed, ruled, guided by an unconscious idea. Moreover, it is a question whether that strange and painful feeling of unreality, which religious men experience from time to time, when nothing seems true, or good, or right, or profitable, when Faith seems a name, and duty a mockery, and all endeavors to do right, absurd and hopeless, and all things forlorn and dreary, as if religion were wiped out from the world, may not be the direct effect of the temporary obscuration of some master vision, which unconsciously supplies the mind with spiritual life and peace.¹⁴⁰

If there may be an ‘inward knowledge’ without ‘explicit confession’, if an ‘impression’ may be present, without being ‘explicitly’ reflected on, then the ‘absence, or partial absence, or incompleteness of dogmatic statements is no proof of the absence of impressions or implicit judgments, in the mind of the Church. Even centuries might pass without the formal expression of a truth, which had been all along the secret life of millions of faithful souls.’¹⁴¹ The ‘impression’ is present, in the ‘soul’, prior to its ‘formal expression’, which articulates an aspect of what is there in the ‘impression’. If an ‘impression’ or ‘idea’ can be ‘latent’ in this way, it is not ‘wonderful’ that it should be ‘difficult to elicit and define’, and it is, equally, unsurprising that there can be a difficulty in recognizing ‘dogmatic statements … even when attained, as the true representation of our meaning’.¹⁴²This difficulty in eliciting the ‘implicit’ is not confined to theology – ‘principles of philosophy, physics, ethics, politics, taste, admit both of implicit reception and explicit statement; why should not the ideas, which are the secret life of the Christian, be recognized also as fixed and definite in themselves, and as capable of scientific analysis?’¹⁴³ If ‘Almighty God is ever one and the same, and is revealed to us as one and the same, the true inward impression of Him, made on the recipient of the revelation, must be one and the same; and, since human nature proceeds upon fixed laws, the statement of that impression must be one and the same, so that we may as well say that there are two Gods as two Creeds’.¹⁴⁴ When efforts are made to reflect on this ‘impression’, ‘one proposition necessarily leads to another, and a second to a third’, so that there are ‘fresh evolutions from the original idea, which indeed can never be said to be entirely exhausted’, until ‘what was at first an impression on the Imagination has become a system or creed in the Reason’ – this ‘process’ being the ‘development’ of the original ‘impression’ or ‘idea’.¹⁴⁵ It is more ‘surprising that the Creeds are so short’ than that ‘they need a comment’.¹⁴⁶

As God is one, so the impression which He gives us of Himself is one; it is not a thing of parts; it is not a system; nor is it any thing imperfect, and needing a counterpart. It is the vision of an object. When we pray, we pray, not to an assemblage of notions, or to a creed, but to One Individual Being; and when we speak of Him we speak of a Person, not of a Law or a Manifestation. This being the case, all our attempts to delineate our impression of Him go to bring out one idea, not two or three or four; not a philosophy, but an individual idea in its separate aspects … . The ideas which we are granted of Divine Objects under the Gospel, from the nature of the case and because they are ideas, answer to the Originals so far as this, that they are whole, indivisible, substantial, and may be called real, as being images of what is real … . Religious men, according to their measure, have an idea or vision of the Blessed Trinity in Unity, of the Son Incarnate and of His Presence, not as a number of qualities, attributes, and actions, not as the subject of a number of propositions, but as one, and individual, and independent of words, as an impression conveyed through the senses … As definitions are not intended to go beyond their subject, but to be adequate to it, so the dogmatic statements of the Divine Nature used in our confessions, however multiplied, cannot say more than is implied in the original idea, considered in its completeness, without the risk of heresy. Creeds and dogmas live in the one idea which they are designed to express, and which alone is substantive; and are necessary only because the human mind cannot reflect upon it, except piecemeal, cannot use it in its oneness and entireness, nor without resolving it into a series of aspects and relations. And in matter of fact these expressions are never equivalent to it; we are able, indeed, to define the creations of our own minds, for they are what we make them and nothing else; but it were as easy to create what is real as to define it; and thus the Catholic dogmas are, after all, but symbols of a Divine fact, which, far from being compassed by those very propositions, would not be exhausted, nor fathomed, by a thousand … . Though the Christian mind reasons out a series of dogmatic statements, one from another, this it has ever done, and always must do, not from those statements taken in themselves, as logical propositions, but as being itself enlightened and (as if) inhabited by that sacred impression which is prior to them, which acts as a regulating principle, ever present, upon the reasoning, and without which no one has any warrant to reason at all … . This will account both for the mode of arguing from particular texts or single words of Scripture, practised by the early Fathers, and for their fearless decision in practising it ; for the great Object of Faith on which they lived both enabled them to appropriate to itself particular passages of Scripture, and became to them a safeguard against heretical deductions from them. Also, it will account for the charge of weak reasoning, commonly brought against those Fathers; for never do we seem so illogical to others as when we are arguing under the continual influence of impressions to which they are insensible.¹⁴⁷

The ‘impression’ is that by which one understands the ‘dogmatic statements’, setting out the ‘Object of Faith’ – it is that in which they ‘live’, in which they have ‘meaning’. How – since no ‘faculties have been given us, as far as we know, for realizing the Objects of Faith’ – does one acquire the ‘impression’?

[The] means by which we receive the impression of Divine Verities, are, for instance, the habitual and devout perusal of Scripture, which gradually acts upon the mind; again, the gradual influence of intercourse with those who are in themselves in possession of the sacred ideas; again, the study of Dogmatic Theology … ; again, a continual round of devotion; or again, sometimes, in minds both fitly disposed and apprehensive, the almost instantaneous operation of a keen faith … . No one defines a material object by way of conveying to us what we know so much better by the senses, but we form creeds as a chief mode of perpetuating the impression.¹⁴⁸

How, though, could ‘anything of this world convey ideas which are beyond and above this world? How can teaching and intercourse, how can human words, how can earthly images, convey to the mind an idea of the Invisible?’¹⁴⁹ What if, in truth, ‘there is no such inward view of these doctrines, distinct from the dogmatic language used to express them’, so that the ‘metaphors by which they are signified are not mere symbols of ideas which exist independently of them, but their meaning is coincident and identical with the ideas’ and ‘when we draw inferences from those figures, we are not illustrating one existing idea, but drawing mere logical inferences’. ‘These ideas about heavenly things, we learn … from words, yet (it seems) we are to say what we, without words, conceive of them, as if words could convey what they do not contain.’¹⁵⁰

The va rious terms and figures which are used in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity or of the Incarnation, surely may by their combination create ideas which will be altogether new, though they are still of an earthly character … . There may be a certain correspondence between the idea, though earthly, and its heavenly archetype, such, that that idea belongs to the archetype, in a sense in which no other earthly idea belongs to it, as being the nearest approach to it which our present state allows. Indeed Scripture itself intimates the earthly nature of our present ideas of Sacred Objects, when it speaks of our now ‘seeing in a glass darkly … but then face to face’; and it has ever been the doctrine of divines that the Beatific Vision, or true sight of Almighty God, is reserved for the world to come. Meanwhile we are allowed such an approximation to the truth as earthly images and figures may supply to us … . Not even the Catholic reasonings and conclusions, as contained in Confessions, and most thoroughly received by us, are worthy of the Divine Verities which they represent, but are the truth only in as full a measure as our minds can admit it; the truth as far as they go, and under the conditions of thought which human feebleness imposes.¹⁵¹

The ‘terms’ which convey the ‘impression’ or ‘image’, do so by conveying something more than their usual sense, becoming ‘figures’; and a ‘combination’ of ‘figures’ must be used, if that ‘image’ is to be conveyed. The various ‘figures’, taken together, convey a whole. The ‘figures’ are elements, in a sense, belonging to a whole; the whole has a significance which surpasses that of any of its parts, taken by themselves; and it is when the whole is apprehended that the import of the ‘figures’ is registered: the figures ‘live in the one idea which they are designed to express, and which alone is substantive’. That apprehension of the whole is attained, Newman suggests, by participating in the life of the Church – a life which is an expression of the ‘image’ – by ‘habitual and devout perusal of Scripture … intercourse with those who are in themselves in possession of the sacred ideas … a continual round of devotion … [or] the almost instantaneous operation of a keen faith’. The significance, the ‘image’, apprehended in this way is, itself, ‘of an earthly character’; but there ‘may be a certain correspondence between the idea, though earthly, and its heavenly archetype, such that that idea belongs to the archetype, in a sense in which no other earthly idea belongs to it’. To apprehend the ‘earthly’ idea, or image, is not to apprehend the ‘heavenly archetype’. It is not to apprehend, or to comprehend, the order of the ‘Dispensation’, as Newman put it in Tract 73. The contrast Newman presents, between ‘Revelation’ and ‘Mystery’, in Tract 73, concerns how ‘Revelation … consists of a number of detached and incomplete truths belonging to a vast system unrevealed, of doctrines and injunctions … connected by unknown media, and bearing upon unknown portions of the system’, with ‘Mystery’ consisting in the ‘unknown portions’. Revelation, considered as a ‘Mystery’, is ‘a doctrine lying hid in language, to be received in that language from the first by every mind, whatever be its separate power of understanding it … and admitting of being apprehended more and more perfectly according to the diligence of this mind and that’. In his sermon on ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, he suggests that something of what is not presented in the explicit ‘doctrines and injunctions’ may be present in an implicit ‘image’ or ‘impression’: it is in this image that the doctrines are ‘connected’, as aspects of that ‘image’; and it is this that is ‘lying hid in language’. Yet this image is not a ‘system’ – not an explicit, comprehensible system of ‘doctrine’. What is more, this ‘image’ or ‘impression’ does not constitute a full insight into the ‘system’ of reality, into the ‘Dispensation’. It is not the ‘heavenly archetype’, in relation to which the ‘Dispensation’ could be fully comprehended. To have that ‘image’ is not, for instance, to comprehend how, or why, the death of Christ had a ‘real virtue … as an expiation for sin’, a ‘real connexion’ to ‘God’s forgiveness’, but it is to have a sense of that ‘connexion’ as an element within a unitary ‘idea or vision of the Blessed Trinity in Unity, of the Son Incarnate and of His Presence’.

The account of how the various ‘figures’, in ‘combination’, convey a unitary sense – so that they ‘live in the one idea which they are designed to express’ – recalls the account of the ‘poetical mind’, in ‘Poetry with reference to Aristotle’s Poetics’, a ‘mind’ which uses ‘figure’ as its ‘necessary medium of communication’, in conveying a vision of a ‘perfection’ that transcends ‘this world’, and which, creating these ‘figures’, imparts a ‘world of information’ to the ‘imagination’: the ‘imagination’, through ‘figures’, apprehends a vision of ‘perfection’.¹⁵² It recalls the account of ‘the divinely-instructed imagination of the writers’ of the Bible in Arians of the Fourth Century, an imagination which ‘occupied by some vast and awful subject of contemplation’ cannot but ‘give utterance to its feelings in a figurative style’, and which, at work throughout the Bible, makes the Bible ‘a whole, grounded on a few distinct doctrinal principles discernible throughout it’, manifesting that ‘vast and awful subject of contemplation’, in which the ‘likeness of the promised Mediator is conspicuous throughout … as in a picture’.¹⁵³ It recalls the account of the ‘mystic’ or ‘contemplative’ interpretation of the Bible by the Fathers of the Church, in the essay on ‘The State of Religious Parties’ for the British Critic, who ‘recognized a certain truth lying hid under the tenor of the sacred text as a whole … showing itself more or less in this verse or that as it might be’, a form of interpretation involving a ‘character of mind’ akin to that involved in ‘poetry’, animated by a ‘high moral state’.¹⁵⁴

To apprehend the ‘vision’, Newman maintains, is to be in a ‘high moral state’. In his sermon on ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, he observes that to have an ‘impression of this intimate kind’ of the ‘Divine fact’ of which ‘the Catholic dogmas are … but symbols’ is to have what is called, in the Scriptures, ‘knowledge’. ‘Knowledge is the possession of those living ideas of sacred things, from which alone change of heart or conduct can proceed. This awful vision is what Scripture seems to designate by the phrases “Christ in us,” “Christ dwelling in us by faith,” “Christ formed in us,” and “Christ manifesting Himself unto us”.’¹⁵⁵ These ‘living ideas of sacred things’ are, in themselves, a ‘manifesting’ of the supreme good – of that concerning which the conscience has, in its various ‘dictates’, certain intimations: the ‘awful vision’, ‘brings together and concentrates truths concerning the chief good and the laws of our being, which wander idle and forlorn over the surface of the moral world, and often appear to diverge from each other’ (as Newman put it, in his sermon on ‘The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion, Respectively’, in 1830). If one is to apprehend these ‘living ideas of sacred things’, one must have a ‘living’ conscience; and the right apprehension of these ‘living ideas’ is implicated with something like a revivification of the conscience, a ‘change of heart or conduct’.

The ‘informations’ of the ‘conscience’, or the perceptions involved in phronesis, are insights into particular, here and now realities, registering that ‘this’, here and now, is good, or ‘to be done’. These insights register something about the good which surpasses what could be presented in ‘universal statements’ (and it is in this way that these insights can ‘correct’ such ‘universal statements’). To have a right ‘perception’ of the particular, and its goodness, is to apprehend more than can be set out in a ‘universal statement’, pertaining to goodness. In a similar way, to have the ‘impression’ or ‘image’ of the ‘Object of faith’, is to apprehend more than can be set out in the ‘dogmatic statements’ which are ‘but symbols of a Divine fact’ (and which have that ‘sacred impression’ as a ‘regulating principle’). The apprehension of the ‘sacred impression’ is, to the ‘dogmatic statements’, as the perception of the particular good is, to ‘universal statements’ of the good.

The ‘sacred impression’ is an ‘idea’ of an ‘earthly character’. It is a kind of transposition, into an ‘earthly’ idea, or image, of a ‘heavenly archetype’: it has a ‘certain correspondence’ to that archetype, and ‘belongs to the archetype, in a sense in which no other earthly idea belongs to it’: something of the ‘heavenly archetype’ is discerned in the ‘earthly’ idea; something of the meaning in that ‘archetype’, though not the fullness of that meaning, is registered in, or through, the ‘earthly’ idea. The ‘dogmatic statements’ are such that they ‘belong’ to the ‘impression’, and the ‘impression’, in turn, ‘belongs’ to the ‘heavenly archetype’. There is a parallel, here, perhaps, with how particular ‘perceptions’ of the good – in here and now particulars – ‘belong’, in a sense, to an ‘archetype’ of ‘the good in itself’, or the ‘universal’ good in itself. The perceptions of the conscience – perceptions of here and now particulars – involve a ‘reach[ing] towards’ a ‘universal’, which is never fully manifest in, or to, those perceptions. The apprehension of the ‘earthly’ image, the ‘sacred impression’, involves a ‘reach[ing] towards’ a ‘heavenly archetype’, which can never be fully expressed in that image. As the particular perceptions of the conscience involve the fullest manifestation of ‘the good’, so the apprehension of the ‘sacred impression’ involves the fullest manifestation of the ‘heavenly archetype’. In the ‘sacred impression’, a fullness of meaning, exceeding comprehension, is discerned in, or through, an ‘earthly’ form. That fullness of meaning – the ‘archetype’ itself – is not apprehended directly, or comprehended. The ‘sacred impression’ has a meaning that surpasses the ‘dogmatic statements’ that are made about it; and the apprehension of that meaning is an apprehension of some, though not all, of the meaning of the ‘heavenly archetype’ – such that, as the ‘sacred impression’ surpasses the ‘dogmatic statements’, so the ‘heavenly archetype’ surpasses (infinitely) the ‘sacred impression’.

The perceptions of the conscience, perceptions involving partial, inchoate intuitions of ‘the good’ in itself, are ordered toward, or fulfilled in, the perception of the ‘sacred impression’, the ‘image’, which ‘brings together and concentrates’ all of the ‘truths’, all of the insights, that are present in those perceptions. (The conscience, the ‘heart’, ‘lives’ most intensely in the right apprehension of that ‘image’.) The perception that recognizes the good, in the particular, recognizes, in the ‘sacred’ image – in Christ – the fullest realization of the good. There is more in that recognition, in that apprehension of Christ, than can be expressed in ‘dogmatic statements’; and that recognition involves a sense that there is more, in Christ, than can be compassed.

10.

In his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), Newman quotes from his sermon on ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, observing that the process set out in that sermon – whereby ‘an impression on the Imagination … [becomes] a system or creed in the reason’ – is a process of ‘metaphysical’ development – ‘a mere analysis of the idea contemplated … [terminating] and terminate in its exact and complete delineation’. The ‘metaphysical’ development of an ‘idea’ is, Newman suggests, one of several forms of development, some of the others being ‘political’, ‘logical’, ‘historical’, ‘moral’ – and these others might be involved in the development of ‘doctrine’: as an instance of ‘moral’ development, Newman refers to how ‘the doctrine of the beatification of the Saints has been developed, into their Cultus’; as an instance of ‘logical’ development, Newman refers to ‘the adoption of the word theotokos at Ephesus as a test of orthodoxy’; and as an instance of ‘historical’ development, Newman refers to how ‘saints are canonized in the Church, long after they have entered into their rest’. Where, in the sermon, Newman had referred variously to that which animates and informs the process of development as an ‘idea’, or ‘image’, or ‘impression’, in the Essay, he refers to it, almost exclusively, as an ‘idea’; he tends to use ‘impression’ to characterize the ‘aspects’ of the ‘idea’, the different ways in which it presents itself to, or is apprehended by, different minds; he tends to use ‘imagination’ to refer to ‘surmises’ or ‘suppositions’, which may or may not correspond to realities (as when he remarks – of the ‘ideas’ which undergo, and animate, various developments, the ‘ideas’ that are ‘principles of conduct, or … views of life and the world’, ‘habitual judgements’ ‘firmly fixed in the mind’ – that ‘some are real, that is, represent facts existing; and others are mere imaginations, and stand for nothing external to themselves’). The Essay, though, is consistent with the sermon, in envisaging the various ‘doctrines’ of Christianity as, ultimately, expressions of something unitary, a single ‘idea’, which is brought out, and manifested (in its various ‘aspects’) in these doctrines.

In the sermon, Newman suggests that the doctrines of Christianity ‘live in the one idea which they are designed to express’, a ‘sacred impression’ which is the ‘regulating principle, ever present, upon the reasoning [by which the doctrines are articulated] and without which no one has any warrant to reason at all’. This might be taken to mean that those in whom the idea ‘lives’ can recognize the ‘reasoning’ to be an adequate expression of the idea – they can, as it were, compare the expression of the idea, in the ‘reasoning’, to the idea itself. Yet it might, equally, be taken to mean those who carry out the ‘reasoning’, through which the doctrines are articulated, do so as impelled by an ‘idea’, which ‘lives’ in them, but which they cannot contemplate in itself, in its entirely: the idea ‘lives’ in them – which is how they can register various aspects of it – but their awareness is taken up with those aspects. The ‘reasoning’ proceeds from, and is informed by, a perception of an aspect of the ‘sacred impression’, in which something of its meaning is registered. The ‘sacred impression’ is present in those who perceive aspects of it; their perception of aspects of it is an expression of the ‘life’ of the idea, as it manifests itself in them and to them; but to perceive aspects of it, is not to perceive the whole, in its entirety. Newman does not claim, in the Essay, to be able to distinguish between ‘true’ and ‘false’ developments, by apprehending the ‘idea’ of which they are developments: he does not claim to have the vision of the ‘whole’, such that he can discern what proceeds from, or belongs to, that whole, and what does not. He maintains, rather, that ‘doctrines’ that are ‘developments’ have certain characteristics, and that, to the extent that a doctrine seems to have those characteristics, so it might be regarded as a true development, rather than a ‘corruption’. The ‘tests’ that he proposes, for distinguishing true from false developments, are ‘tests’ that might be applied ‘from without’, so to speak: one need not ascertain how a particular doctrine fits, within the total vision that is the ‘idea’, if one is to identify, in that doctrine, certain of the characteristics which the ‘tests’ concern. He proposes seven ‘tests’: ‘preservation of the idea’, or preservation of ‘type’;¹⁵⁶ ‘continuity of principles’; ‘power of assimilation’; ‘early anticipation’; ‘logical sequence’; ‘preservative addition’; ‘chronic continuance’. (One might, then, recognize that a particular doctrine has a ‘logical’ coherence with others, or one might observe that a particular doctrine has had a certain ‘continuance’ through time, or one might notice that later, authoritative, statements of that doctrine, on the part of the Church, were anticipated by earlier, more indistinct statements of it, in the writings of Christians, and so on, without claiming to apprehend, in its fullness, the ‘idea’ from which all of the doctrines proceed.) If, though, all of the various doctrines are expressions of a unitary ‘idea’, then to accept these doctrines, is to assimilate something of that ‘idea’, and the more one assimilates of that ‘idea’, the more one will apprehend those various doctrines in a manner that is animated by, that ‘lives’ in, that idea. One might, to the extent that one assimilates more of the ‘idea’, acquire an instinctive sense of which doctrines accord with it, or express it, and which do not. (In his essay ‘On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’, he would suggest that the ‘people of God’, without having any particular theological expertise, might have a ‘sort of instinct, or phronema’ for what is, and what is not, a proper expression of the faith.) Newman suggests that, as the ‘idea’ animating Christianity develops, as it has various expressions over time, and as corruptions of that idea emerge alongside authentic developments, so it becomes necessary to distinguish between true developments, and corruptions. ‘Considering that Christians, from the nature of the case, live under the bias of the doctrines, and in the very midst of the facts, and during the process of the controversies, which are to be the subject of criticism, since they are exposed to the prejudices of birth, education, locality, personal attachment, and party, it can hardly be maintained that in matter of fact a true development carries with it always its own certainty even to the learned, or that history, past or present, is secure from the possibility of a variety of interpretations.’¹⁵⁷ Newman suggests that the authority of the Church, and of the magisterium, is a (divinely ordained) mean s of distinguishing true developments from corruptions – an ‘authority is necessary to impart decision to what is vague and confidence to what is empirical, to ratify the successive steps of so elaborate a process, and to secure the validity of inferences which are to be made the premisses of more remote investigations’.¹⁵⁸ The emergence of the authority of the magisterium is itself a development – or, at least, the recognition, and exercise, of that authority is a development. Newman, equally, characterizes that magisterium as ‘external’ to the developments which it ratifies (though precisely how it is ‘external’ to them, he does not make altogether clear). ‘While, then, on the one hand, it is probable that some means will be granted for ascertaining the legitimate and true developments of Revelation, it appears, on the other, that these means must of necessity be external to the developments themselves.’¹⁵⁹ Newman likens the ‘voice’ of this authority to the ‘voice’ of conscience.

The supremacy of conscience is the essence of natural religion; the supremacy of Apostle, or Pope, or Church, or Bishop, is the essence of revealed; and when such external authority is taken away, the mind falls back again upon that inward guide which it possessed even before Revelation was vouchsafed. Thus, what conscience is in the system of nature, such is the voice of Scripture, or of the Church, or of the Holy See, as we may determine it, in the system of Revelation.¹⁶⁰

If one takes it that the authoritative ‘voice’ in the ‘system of Revelation’ – however ‘we may determine it’ – is ‘external’ to the ‘process of the controversies’, in which developments occur, then one takes that ‘voice’ to be, in effect, the ‘voice’ of the ‘sacred impression’: the exercise of ‘infallibility’ would not, then, involve a claim to a ‘complete’ knowledge of the ‘Dispensation’, or the ‘heavenly archetype’; it would involve a claim to a certain competence in expressing, or manifesting, the ‘sacred impression’ animating the Church. In claiming infallibility, the Church ‘merely acts out what she says she is’, as Newman observes in Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (1850).

Her precision and peremptoriness, all that is laid to her charge as intolerance and exclusiveness, her claim entirely to understand and to be able to deal with her own deposit and her own functions; her claim to reveal the unknown and to communicate the invisible, is, in the eye of reason (so far from being an objection to her coming from above), the very tenure of her high mission – just what would be sure to characterise her if she had received such a mission. She cannot be conceived without her message and her gifts. She is the organ and oracle, and nothing else, of a supernatural doctrine, which is independent of individuals, given to her once for all, coming down from the first ages, and so deeply and intimately embosomed in her, that it cannot be clean torn out of her, even if you should try; which gradually and majestically comes forth into dogmatic shape, as time goes on and need requires, still by no private judgment, but at the will of its Giver, and by the infallible elaboration of the whole body; – and which is simply necessary for the salvation of every one of us. It is not a philosophy, or literature, cognisable and attainable at once by those who cast their eyes that way; but it is a sacred deposit and tradition, a mystery or secret, as Scripture calls it, sufficient to arrest and occupy the whole intellect, and unlike anything else.¹⁶¹

By the mid-1840s, Newman felt he could discern, in the ‘precision and peremptoriness’ of the Roman Catholic Church, a resemblance to the Church, promised in the Scriptures, whose ‘look … bearing … voice, were to be her credentials’, and he took ‘the manifest royalty of her very presence’ to be a kind of image of the ‘sacred impression’ within her, an impression ‘so deeply and intimately embosomed in her, that it cannot be clean torn out of her, even if you should try’.

Notes

1 ‘Primitive Christianity’, in Historical Sketches i [hereafter HS i] (1872; London: Longmans Green & Co., 1908), 339–40.

2 ‘Primitive Christianity’, in HS i, 340.

3 Ibid., 348, 349.

4 ‘Outward and Inward Notes of the Day’, in Sermons on Subjects of the Day [hereafter SSD] (1843; 1869; London: Longmans Green & Co., 1902), 325–6.

5 ‘Outward and Inward Notes of the Day’, in SSD, 335.

6 ‘On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Revealed Religion’, in Essays, Critical and Historical i [hereafter ECH i] (1871; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), 33–4.

7 ‘On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Revealed Religion’, in ECH i, 31.

8 Ibid., 39.

9 Ibid., 40.

10 Ibid., 47.

11 Ibid.

12 ‘The Christian Mysteries’, in Parochial and Plain Sermons i [hereafter PPS i] (1834; 1868; London: Longmans Green & Co., 1907), 203, 208.

13 ‘The Christian Mysteries’, in PPS i, 203, 205.

14 Ibid., 209, 210.

15 Ibid., 32.

16 Ibid., 34.

17 Ibid., 34–5, 41–2.

18 Ibid., 48.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 45.

21 Ibid, 48.

22 Ibid., 47.

23 Ibid., 41.

24 Ibid., 51.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 41.

27 Ibid., 52–3.

28 John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century [hereafter Arians] (1833; 1871; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908), 75, 76.

29 Arians, 145.

30 ‘Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church’, in VM i, 89–91.

31 VM i, 98n.

32 Ibid., 91–2.

33 Ibid., 90n.

34 Ibid., 85–6.

35 Ibid., 86–7.

36 Ibid., 87n.

37 Ibid., 88n.

38 ‘Faith without Sight’, in Parochial and Plain Sermons ii [hereafter PPS ii], (1835; London: Longmans Green & Co., 1908), 21.

39 ‘Faith without Sight’, in PPS ii, 21.

40 VM i, 87n.

41 Ibid., 166.

42 Ibid., 158.

43 Ibid., 50.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 37.

46 Ibid., 30.

47 Ibid., 31, 32.

48 Ibid., 32.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., 50.

51 Ibid., 190.

52 Ibid., 198.

53 Ibid., 197.

54 Ibid., 202.

55 Ibid., 197.

56 Ibid., 199.

57 Ibid., 202.

58 ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’, in Essays, Critical and Historical ii [hereafter ECH ii] (1871; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), 16.

59 ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’, in ECH ii, 18, 20.

60 Ibid., 24.

61 VM i, 197.

62 Ibid., 217.

63 Ibid., 222.

64 Ibid., 226.

65 Ibid., 225–6.

66 Ibid., 32.

67 Ibid., 232.

68 Ibid., 249–52.

69 Ibid., 254.

70 Arians, 143–5.

71 ‘The Incarnation’, in PPS ii, 26–7.

72 Ibid., 27–9.

73 John Henry Newman, ‘Unreal Words’, in Parochial and Plain Sermons v [hereafter PPS v] (1840; 1869; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), 30–1.

74 ‘Unreal Words’, in PPS v, 35.

75 Ibid., 43.

76 Ibid., 41–2.

77 Ibid., 43–5.

78 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by David Ross (1980; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 123.

79 ‘Unreal Words’, in PPS v, 42.

80 Ibid., 43.

81 VM i, 232.

82 Ibid., 251–2.

83 Ibid., 132.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid., 133.

86 Ibid., 138.

87 Ibid., 137.

88 Ibid., 135.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., 139.

91 Ibid., 142.

92 Ibid., 140.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid., 151.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid., 149.

97 Ibid., 158.

98 Ibid., 158–9.

99 Ibid., 158.

100 Ibid., 135.

101 Ibid., 141.

102 ‘The Catholicity of the Anglican Church’, in ECH ii, 58–9.

103 VM i, 260–1.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid., 87.

106 Ibid., 86.

107 Ibid., 262–3.

108 Ibid., 331–2.

109 Ibid., 332n.

110 Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851) is, among other things, concerned with the question of why the notes of the Catholic Church are not widely recognized; and it answers that question by presenting a satirical diagnosis of the prejudices which obscure those notes, an account of a ‘Protestant tradition’, originating in the sixteenth century, which presents distorted images of the Catholic Church.

111 ‘Catholicity of the Anglican Church’, in ECH ii, 70.

112 John Henry Newman, ‘Personal Influence the means of Propagating the Truth’, in Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford [hereafter OUS] (1843; 1871; London: Longmans Green & Co., 1909), 97–8.

113 ‘The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect’, in Parochial and Plain Sermons iv [hereafter PPS iv] (1838; 1869; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), 158.

114 ‘The Visible Church for the Sake of the Elect’, in PPS iv, 157.

115 ‘Invisible Presence of Christ’, in SSD, 310.

116 Ibid., 310–1.

117 Ibid., 312.

118 Ibid., 313.

119 Ibid., 318.

120 Ibid., 322.

121 ‘Outward and Inward Notes of the Church’, in SSD, 325.

122 Ibid., 326.

123 Ibid., 328.

124 Ibid., 334–5.

125 ‘Grounds for Steadfastness in our Religious Profession’, in SSD, 345–6.

126 Ibid., 347.

127 Ibid., 348–50.

128 Ibid., 351, 352, 353, 355.

129 Ibid., 355, 357.

130 Ibid., 359–60.

131 Diff i, 79.

132 Diff i, 80, 83.

133 Ibid., 85.

134 John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (1865; London: Oxford University Press, 1913), 254.

135 ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, in OUS, 331, 334.

136 Ibid., 315, 316, 317.

137 Ibid., 318.

138 Ibid., 320.

139 Ibid., 321.

140 Ibid., 321–2.

141 Ibid., 323.

142 Ibid., 323 , 325.

143 Ibid., 327–8.

144 Ibid., 328.

145 Ibid., 329.

146 Ibid., 327.

147 Ibid., 330–2, 334–5.

148 Ibid., 333.

149 Ibid., 338.

150 Ibid., 338, 339.

151 Ibid., 339–40, 350.

152 ‘Poetry, with reference to Aristotle’s Poetics’, in ECH i, 9–10.

153 Arians, 59.

154 ‘Prospects of the Anglican Church’, in ECH i, 286–7, 291.

155 ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, in OUS, 332.

156 He acknowledges that this test ‘implies an insight into the essential idea in which a system of thought is set up, which often cannot be possessed, and, if attempted, will lead to mere theorizing’, and in applying this ‘test’ to Christianity, he considers the testimony of the ‘world’ – in different periods – about Christianity, the general impression and ‘figure’ presented by Christianity to the world – considering Christianity as it appeared ‘from without’.

157 Essay on Development, (London: James Toovey, 1845), 115.

158 Ibid., 117.

159 Ibid.

160 Ibid., 124.

161 Diff i, 217–18.

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