University of Virginia Library

Chapter XLI.

PERVERSION OF DR. NEWMAN TO THE CHURCH OF ROME IN
THE LIGHT OF HIS OWN EXPLANATIONS, COMMON SENSE
AND THE WORD OF GOD.

THE year 1843 will be long remembered in the Church of
Rome for the submission of Dr. Newman to her authority.
This was considered by many Roman Catholics as one of the
greatest triumphs ever gained by their church against Protestantism.
But some of us, more acquainted with the daily contradictions
and tergiversations of the Oxford divine, could not associate
ourselves in the public rejoicing of our church.

From almost the very beginning of his public life, Dr. Newman,
as well as Dr. Pusey, appeared to many of us as cowards
and traitors in the Protestant camp, whose object was to betray
the church which was feeding them, and which they were sworn
to defend. They both seemed to us to be skillful but dishonest
conspirators.

Dr. Newman, caught in the very act of that conspiracy, has
boldly denied it. Brought before the tribunal of public opinion
as a traitor who, though enrolled under the banners of the
Church of England, was giving help and comfort to its foe, the
Church of Rome, he has published a remarkable book under
the title of "Apologia pro vita sua," to exculpate himself. I
hold in my hands the New York edition of 1865. Few men
will read that book from beginning to end; and still fewer will
understand it at its first reading. The art of throwing dust in
the eyes of the public is brought to perfection in that work. I
have read many books in my long life, but I have never met
with anything like the Jesuit ability shown by Dr. Newman in
giving a color of truth to the most palpable errors and falsehoods.
I have had to read it at least four times, with the utmost

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

p. 405

attention, before being sure of having unlocked all its dark
corners and sophistries.

That we may be perfectly fair towards Dr. Newman, let us
forget what his adversaries have written against him, and let us
hear only what he says in his own defence. Here it is. I dare
say that his most bitter enemies could never have been able to
write a book so damaging against him as this one which he has
given us for his apology.

Let me tell the reader at once that I, with many other priests
of Rome, felt at first an unspeakable joy at the reading of many
of the "Tracts for the Times." It is true that we keenly felt
the blows Dr. Newman was giving us now and then; but we
were soon consoled by the more deadly blows which he was
striking at his own Church—the Church of England. Besides
that, it soon became evident that the more he was advancing in
his controversial work, the nearer he was coming to us. We
were not long without saying to each other: "Dr. Newman is
evidently, though secretly, for us; he is a Roman Catholic at
heart, and will soon join us. It is only from want of moral
courage and honesty that he remains a Protestant."

But from the very beginning there was a cloud in my mind,
and in the minds of many other of my co-priests, about him.
His contradictions were so numerous, his sudden transitions
from one side to the other extreme, when speaking of Romanism
and Anglicanism; his eulogiums of our Church to-day, and his
abuses of it the very next day; his expressions of love and respect
for his own Church in one tract, so suddenly followed by the
condemnation of her dearest doctrines and practices in the next,
caused many others as well as myself to suspect that he had no
settled principles, or faith in any religion.

What was my surprise, when reading this strange book, I
found that my suspicions were too well founded; that Dr.
Newman was nothing else than one of those free-thinkers who
had no real faith in any of the sacred dogmas he was preaching,
and on which he was writing so eloquently! What was my
astonishment when, in 1865, I read in his own book, the confession
made by that unfortunate man that he was nothing else but

a giant weathercock, when the whole people of England were
looking upon him as one of the most sincere and learned
ministers of the Gospel! Here is his own confession, pages 111,
112. Speaking of the years he had spent in the Episcopal
Church as a minister, he says: "Alas! It was my portion, for
whole years, to remain without any satisfactory basis for my
religious profession; in a state of moral sickness, neither able to
acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able to go to Rome!" This is
Cardinal Newman, painted by himself! He tells us how miserable
he was when an Episcopalian minister, by feeling that his
religion had no basis, no foundation!

What is a preacher of religion who feels that he has no
basis, no foundation, no reason to believe in that religion? Is
he not that blind man of whom Christ speaks, "who leads
other blind men into the ditch?"

Note it is not Rev. Charles Kingsley; it is not any of the
able Protestant controversialists: it is not even the old Chiniquy,
who says that Dr. Newman was nothing else but an unbeliever,
when the Protestant people were looking upon him as one of
their most pious and sincere Christian theologians. It is Dr.
Newman himself who, without suspecting it, is forced by the
marvellous Providence of God, to reveal that deplorable fact in
his "Apologia pro vita sua."

Now what was the opinion entertained by him of the high
and low sections of his church? Here are his very words,
page 91: "As to the High Church and the Low Church, I
thought that the one had not much more of a logical basis than
the other; while I had a thorough contempt for the Evangelical!"
But please observe that when this minister of the Church
of England had found, with the help of Dr. Pusey, that this
church had no logical basis, and that he had a "thorough contempt
for the Evangelical," he kept a firm and continuous hold
upon the living which he was enjoying from day to day. Nay,
it is when paid by his church to preach her doctrines and fight
her battles that he set at work to raise another chnrch! Of
course the new church was to have a firm basis on logic, history
and the Gospel; the new church was to be worthy of the

British people, it was to be the modern ark to save the perishing
world!

The reader will perhaps think I am joking, and that I am
caricaturing Dr. Newman. No! the hour in which we live is
too solemn to be spent in jokes—it is rather with tears and sobs
that we must approach the subject. Here are the very words of
Dr. Newman about the new church he wished to build after demolishing
the Church of England as established by law. He
says (page 116): "I have said enough on what I consider to
have been the general objects of the various works which I
wrote, edited, or prompted in the years which I am reviewing. I
wanted to bring out in a substantive form a living Church of
England, in a position proper to herself, and founded on distinct
principles; as far as paper could do it, and as earnestly
preaching it and influencing others toward it, could tend to make
it in fact;—a living church, made of flesh and blood, with voice,
complexion, motion and action, and a will of its own." (The
italics are mine.) If I had not said that these words were written
by Dr. Newman, would the reader have suspected it?

What is to be the name of the new church? Dr. Newman
himself has called it "Via Media." As the phrase indicates,
it was to stand between the rival Churches of England and
Rome, and it was to be built with the materials taken, as much
as possible, from the ruins of both.

The first thing to be done, then, was to demolish that huge,
illogical, unscriptural, unchristian church, restored by the English
reformers. Dr. Newman bravely set to work, under the eye
and direction of Dr. Pusey. His merciless hammer was heard
almost day and night from 1833 to 1834, striking alternately,
with hard blows, now against the church of the Pope, whom he
called Antichrist, and then against his own church, which he
was, very soon, to find still more corrupted and defiled than its
anti-Christian rival. For, as he was proceeding in his work of
demolition, he tells us that he found more clearly, every day,
that the materials and the foundations of the Church of Rome
were exceedingly better than those of his own. He then determined
to give a coup de grace to the Church of England,

and strike such a blow that her walls would be forever pulverized.
His perfidious tract XC. aims at this object.

Nothing can surpass the ability and the pious cunning with
which Dr. Newman tries to conceal his shameful conspiracy in
his "Apologia."

Hear the un-British and unmanly excuses which he gives
for having deceived his readers, when he was looked upon as
the most reliable theologian of the day, in defence of the doctrince
of the Church of England. In pages 236-37 he says:
"How could I ever hope to make them believe in a second
theology, when I had cheated them in the first? With what
face could I publish a new edition of a dogmatic creed, and ask
them to receive it as gospel? Would it not be plain to them
that no certainty was to be found anywhere? Well, in my defence,
I could make but a lame apology; however, it was the
true one—viz: that I had not read the Fathers critically enough;
that in such nice points as those which determine the angle of
divergence between the two churches, I had made considerable
miscalculations; and how came this about? Why, the fact was,
unpleasant as it was to avow, that I had leaned too much upon
the assertions of Usher, Jeremy Taylor, or Barrow, and had
been deceived by them."

Here is a specimen of the learning and honesty of the great
Oxford divine! Dr. Newman confesses that when he was
telling his people "St. Augustine says this, St. Jerome says
that"—when he assured them that St. Gregory supported this
doctrine, and Origen that, it was all false. Those holy fathers
had never taught such doctrines. It was Usher, Taylor and
Barrow who were citing them, and they had deceived him!

Is it not a strange thing that such a shrewd man as Dr. Newman
should have so completely destroyed his own good name in
the very book he wrote, with so much care and ingenuity, to defend
himself? One remains confounded—he can hardly believe
his own eyes at such want of honesty in such a man. It is
evident that his mind was troubled at the souvenir of such a
course of procedure. But he wanted to excuse himself by saying
it was the fault of Usher, Taylor and Barrow!

Are we not forcibly brought to the solemn and terrible
drama in the Garden of Eden? Adam hoped to be excused by
saying, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave
me the fruit of the tree, and I did eat." The woman said,
"The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." But what was the
result of those excuses? We read: "Therefore the Lord God
sent him forth from the Garden of Eden." Dr. Newman has
lost the precious inheritance God has given him. He has lost
the lamp he had received to guide his steps, and he is now in the
dark dungeon of Popery, worshipping as a poor slave, the wafer
god of Rome.

But what has become of that new church or religion, the
Via Media, which has just come out from the sickly brain of
the Oxford professor? Let us hear its sad and premature end
from Dr. Newman himself. Let me, however, premise, that
when Dr. Newman began his attacks against his church, he at
first so skillfully mixed the most eloquent eulogiums with his
criticisms, that, though many sincere Christians were grieved,
few dared to complain. The names of Pusey and Newman commanded
such respect that few raised their voices against the conspiracy.
This emboldened them. Month after month they
became unguarded in their denunciations of the Church of England,
and more explicit in their support of Romanism. In the
meantime, the Church of Rome was reaping a rich harvest of
perverts; for many Protestants were unsettled in their faith, and
were going the whole length of the road to Rome, so cunningly
indicated by the conspirators. At last, the 90th tract appeared in
1843. It fell as a thunderbolt on the church. A loud cry of
indignation was raised all over England against those who had
so mercilessly struck at the heart of that church which they had
sworn to defend. The bishops almost unanimously denounced
Dr. Newman and his Romish tendencies, and showed the absurity
of his Via Media.

Now, let us hear him telling himself this episode of his life.
For I want to be perfectly fair to Dr. Newman. It is only
from his own words and public acts that I want the reader to
judge him.

Here is what he says of himself, after being publicly condemed:
"I saw indeed clearly that my place in the movement
was lost. Public confidence was at an end. My occupation
was gone. It was simply an impossibility that I could say
anything henceforth to good effect, when I had been posted up
by the Marshal on the buttery hatch of every college of my
University after the manner of discommoned pastry-cooks, and
when, in every part of the country, and every class of society,
through every organ and occasion of opinion, in newspapers, in
periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at dinner-tables in coffee-rooms,
in railway carriages, I was denounced as a traitor who
had laid his train, and was detected in the very act of firing it
against the time-honored establishment." . . . . . "Confidence
in me was lost. But I had already lost full confidence
in myself." (p. 132.)

Let the reader hear these words from the very lips of Dr.
Newman—"Confidence in me was lost! But I had already
lost full confidence in myself!" (p. 132.) Are these words the
indications of a brave, innocent man? Or are they not the cry
of despair of a cowardly and guilty conscience?

Was it not when Wishart heard that the Pope and his millions
of slaves had condemned him to death, that he raised his
head as a giant, and showed that he was more above his accusers
and his judges than the heavens are above the earth? Had he
lost his confidence in himself and in his God when he said:
"I am happy to suffer and die in the cause of Truth?" Did
Luther lose confidence in himself and in his God, when condemned
by the Pope and all his Bishops, and ordered to go
before the Emperor to be condemned to death, if he would not
retract? No! It is in those hours of trial that he made the
world to re-echo the sublime words of David: "God is our
refuge and our strength, a present help in trouble. Therefore,
we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and
though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the
mountains shake with the swelling thereof." But Luther had a
good cause. He knew, he felt, that the God of Heaven was on

his side, when Dr. Newman knew well that he was deceiving
the world, after having deceived himself. Luther was strong
and fearless: for the voice of Jesus had come through the fifteen
centuries to tell him: "Fear not, I am with thee." Dr. Newman
was weak, trembling before the storm, for his conscience
was reproaching him for his treachery and his unbelief.

Did Latimer falter and lose his confidence in himself and in
his God, when condemned by his judges and tied to the stake to
be burnt? No! It is then that he uttered those immortal and
sublime words: "Master Ridley: Be of good comfort and play
the man; we shall, this day, light a candle, by God's grace, in
England, as I trust shall never be put out!"

This is the language of men who are fighting for Christ and
His Gospel. Dr. Newman could not use such noble language
when he was betraying Christ and His Gospel.

Now, let us hear from himself when, after having lost the
confidence of his Church and his country, and having also lost his
confidence in himself, he saw a ghost, and found that the
Church of Rome was right. At page 157, he says: "My
friend, an anxiously religious man, pointed out the palmary
words of St. Augustine which were contained in one of the extracts
made in the (Dublin) Review, and which had escaped my
observation, `Securus judicat orbis terrarum.' He repeated these
words again and again; and when he was gone, they kept ringing
in my ears. . . . The words of St. Augustine struck me
with such a power which I never had felt from any words before.
To take a familiar instance, they were like the `Turn
again, Whittington,' of the chime; or, to take a more serious one,
they are like the `tolle lege' of the child which converted St.
Augustine himself. `Securus judicat orbis terrarum!' By those
great words of the ancient father, the theory of the Via Media
was absolutely pulverized. I became excited at the view thus
opened upon me. . . . I had seen the shadow of a hand
upon the wall. . . . He who has seen a ghost cannot be as
if he had never seen it. The heaven had opened and closed
again. The thought, for the moment, had been: `The Church
of Rome will be found right, after all.' " (158).

It would be amusing, indeed, if it were not so humiliating, to
see the naivete with which Dr. Newman confesses his own aberration,
want of judgment and honesty in reference to the pet
scheme of his whole theological existence at Oxford. "By
these words," he says, "the Via Media was absolutely pulverized!"

We all know the history of the mountain in travail, which
gave birth to a mouse. Dr. Newman tells us frankly that, after
ten years of hard and painful travail, he produced something less
than a mouse. His Via Media was pulverized; it turned to be
only a handful of dust.

Remember the high-sounding of his trumpet about his plan
of a new church, that New Jerusalem on earth, the church of
the future which was to take the place of his rotten Church of
England. Let me repeat to you his very words about that new
ark of salvation with which the professor of Oxford was to save
the world. (Page 116): "I wanted to bring out, in a substantive
form, a living Church of England, in a position proper to
herself and founded on distinct principles, as far as paper could
do it, and as earnestly preaching it and influencing others towards
it could tend to make it a fact: a living church, made of flesh
and blood, with voice, complexion, and motion, and action, and a
will of its own."

Now, what was the end of that masterpiece of theological
architecture of Dr. Newman? Here is its history, given by the
great architect himself: "I read the palmary words of St. Augustine,
`Securus judicat orbis terrarum!' By those great
words of the ancient father, the theory of the Via Media was
pulverized! I became excited at the view thus opened before
me. I had seen the shadow of a hand on the wall. He who
has seen a ghost can never be as if he had not seen it; the heavens
had opened and closed again. The thought, for a moment,
was `The Church of Rome will be found right, after all.' "
(158). Have we ever seen a man destoying himself more completely
at the very moment that he tries to defend himself?
Here he does ingeniously confess what every one knew before,
that his whole work, for the last ten years, was not only a self-deception,

but a supreme effort to deceive the world—his Via
Media was a perfect string of infidelity, sophism, and folly. The
whole fabric had fallen to the ground at the sight of a ghost!
To build a grand structure, in the place of his Church which he
wanted to demolish, he had thought it was sufficient to throw a
great deal of glittering sand, with some blue, white, and red dust,
in the air! He tells us that one sad hour came when he heard
five Latin words from St. Augustine, saw a ghost—and his great
structure fell to the ground!!

What does this all mean? It simply means that God Almighty
has dealt with Dr. Newman as He did with the impious
Pharaoh in the Red Sea, when he was marching at the head of
his army against the church of old, his chosen people, to destroy
them.

Dr. Newman was not only marching with Dr. Pusey at the
head of an army of theologians to destroy the Church of God,
but he was employing all the resources of his intellect, all his
false and delusive science, to raise an idolatrous church in its
place; and when Pharaoh and Dr. Newman thought themselves
sure of success, the God of Heaven confounded them both. The
first went down with his army to the bottom of the sea as a
piece of lead. The second lost, not his life, but something infinitely
more precious—he lost his reputation for intelligence,
science and integrity; he lost the light of the Gospel, and became
pefectly blind, after having lost his place in the kingdom
of Christ!

I have never judged a man by the hearsay of anyone, and I
would prefer to have my tongue cut out than to repeat a word
of what the adversaries of Dr. Newman have said against him.
But we have the right, and I think it is our duty, to hear and
consider what he says of himself, and to judge him on his own
confession.

At page 174 we read these words from his own pen to a
friend: "I cannot disguise from myself that my preaching is
not calculated to defend that system of religion which has been
received for three hundred years, and of which the Heads of
Houses are the legitimate maintainers in this place. . . . .

I fear I must allow that, whether I will or no, I am disposing
them (the young men) towards Rome." Here Dr. Newman
declares, in plain English, that he was disposing his hearers and
students at Oxford to join the Church of Rome! I ask it: what
can we think of a man who is paid and sworn to do a thing, who
not only does it not, but who does the very contrary? Who
would hesitate to call such a man dishonest? Who would hesitate
to say that such a one has no respect for those who employ
him, and no respect for himself?

Dr. Newman writes this whole book to refute the public accusation
that he was a traitor, that he was preparing the
people to leave the Church of England and to submit to the
Pope. But, strange to say, it is in that very book we find the irrefutable
proof of his shameful and ignominious treachery! In
a letter to Dr. Russell, President of the Roman Catholic College
of Maynooth, he wrote, page 227: "Roman Catholics will
find this to be the state of things in time to come, whatever
promise they may fancy there is of a large secession to their
church. This man or that may leave us, but there will be no
general movement. There is, indeed, an incipient movement of
our church towards yours, and this your leading men are doing
all they can to frustrate by their unwearied efforts, at all risks to
carry off individuals. When will they know their position, and
embrace a larger and wiser policy?" Is it not evident here that
God was blinding Dr. Newman, and that He was making him
confess his treachery in the very moment that he was trying to
conceal it? Do we not see clearly that he was complaining of
the unwise policy of the leaders of the Church of Rome who
were retarding that incipient movement of his church towards
Romanism, for which he was working day and night with Dr.
Pusey?

But had not Dr. Newman confessed his own treachery, we
have, to-day, its undeniable proof in the letter of Dr. Pusey to
the English Church Union, written in 1879. Speaking of Dr.
Newman and the other Tractarians, he says: "An acute man,
Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, said of the `Tracts,' on their
first appearance, `I know they have a forced circulation.' We

put the leaven into the meal, and waited to see what would come
of it. Our object was to Catholicise England."

And this confession of Dr. Pusey, that he wanted to Catholicise
England, is fully confirmed by Dr. Newman (page 108, 109)
where he says: "I suspect it was Dr. Pusey's influence and example
which set me and made me set others on the larger and
more careful works in defense of the principles of the movement
which followed" (towards Rome) "in a course of years."

Nothing is more curious than to hear from Dr. Newman
himself with what skill he was trying to conceal his perfidious
efforts in preparing that movement towards Rome. He says on
that subject, page 124: "I was embarrassed in consequence of
my wish to go as far as possible in interpreting the articles in
the direction of Roman dogma, without disclosing what I was
doing to the parties whose doubts I was meeting, who might be,
thereby, encouraged to go still farther than, at present, they
found in themselves any call to do."

A straw fallen on the water indicates the way the tide goes.
Here we have the straw, taken by Dr. Newman himself, and
thrown by him on the water. A thousand volumes written by the
ex-Professor of Oxford to deny that he was a conspirator at work
to lead his people to Rome, when in the service of the Church
of England, could not destroy the evident proof of his guilt given
by himself in this strange book.

If we want to have a proof of the supreme contempt Dr.
Newman had for his readers, and his daily habit of deceiving
them by sophistries and incorrect assertions, we have it in the
remarkable lines which I find at page 123 of the Apologia.
Speaking of his "doctrinal development," he says: "I wanted
to ascertain what was the limit of that elasticity in the direction
of Roman dogma. But, next, I had a way of inquiry of my own
which I state without defending. I instanced it afterward in my
essay on `Doctrinal Development.' That work, I believe, I have
not read since I published it, and I doubt not at all that I have
made many mistakes in it, partly from my ignorance of the details
of doctrine as the Church of Rome holds them, but partly
from my impatience to clear as large a range for the Principles

of doctrinal development (waiving the question of historical
fact) as was consistent with the strict apostolicity and identity of
the Catholic creed. In like manner, as regards the Thirty-nine
Articles, my method of inquiry was to leap `in medias res' "
(123-124).

Dr. Newman is the author of two new systems of theology;
and, from his own confession, the two systems are a compendium
of error, absurdities, and folly. His Via Media was "pulverized"
by the vision of a ghost, when he heard the four words
of St. Augustine: "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." The
second, known under the name of "Doctrinal Development," is,
from his own confession, full of errors on account of his ignorance
of the subject on which he was writing, and his own impatience
to support his sophisms.

Dr. Newman is really unfortunate in his paternity. He is the
father of two children. The first-born was called Via Media.
But it had neither head nor feet, it was suffocated on the day of
its birth by a "ghost." The second, called "Doctrinal Development,"
was not viable. The father is so shocked with the
sight of the monster, that he publicly confessed its deformities
and cries out, "Mistake! mistake! mistake!" (pages 123-124
Apologia pro vita sua).

The troubled conscience of Dr. Newman has forced him to
confess (page 111) that he was miserable, from his want of faith,
when a minister of the Church of England and a Professor of
Theology of Oxford: "Alas! it was my portion for whole
years to remain without any satisfactory basis for my religious
profession!" At page 174 and 175 he tells us how miserable
and anxious he was when the voice of his conscience reproached
him in the position he held in the Church of England, while
leading her people to Rome. At page 158 he confesses his unspeakable
confusion when he saw his supreme folly in building
up the Via Media, and heard it crash at the appearance of a
ghost. At page 123 he acknowledges how he deceived his readers,
and deceived himself, in his "Doctrinal Development." At
page 132 he tells us how he had not only completely lost the
confidence of his country, but lost confidence in himself. And

it is after this humiliating and shameful course of life that he
finds out "that the Church of Rome is right!"

Must we not thank God for having forced Dr. Newman to
tell us through what dark and tortuous ways a Protestant, a disciple
of the Gospel, a minister of Christ, a Professor of Oxford,
fell into that sea of Sodom called Romanism or Papism! A great
lesson is given us here. We see the fulfillment of Christ's word
about those who have received great talents and have not used
them for the "Good Master's honor and glory."

Dr. Newman, without suspecting it, tells us that it was his
course of action towards that branch of the Church of Christ of
which he was a minister, that caused him to lose the confidence
of his country, and troubled him so much that it caused him to
lose that self-confidence which is founded on our faith and our
union with Christ, who is our rock, our only strength in the
hour of trial. Having lost her sails, her anchor, and her helm,
the poor ship was evidently doomed to become a wreck. Nothing
could prevent her from drifting into the engulfing abyss of
Popery.

Dr. Newman confesses that it is only when his guilty conscience
was uniting its thundering voice with that of his whole
country to condemn him, that he said, "After all, the Church of
Rome is right!"

These are the arguments, the motives, the light which have
led Dr. Newman to Rome! And it is from himself that we
have it! It is a just, and avenging God who forces his adversary
to glorify Him and say the truth in spite of himself in this
"Apologia pro vita sua."

No one can read that book, written with almost a superhuman
skill, ability, and fineness, without a feeling of unspeakable
sadness at the sight of such bright talents, such eloquence, such
extensive studies, employed by the author to deceive himself and
deceive his readers; for it is evident, on every page, that Dr.
Newman has deceived himself before deceiving his readers. But
no one can read that book without feeling a sense of terror also.
For he will hear, at every page, the thundering voice of the
God of the Gospel, "Because they received not the love of the

Truth that they might be saved, God shall send them strong delusions,
that they should believe a lie." (2 Thess. ii: 10-11).

What, at first, most painfully puzzles the mind of the Christian
reader of this book is the horror which Dr. Newman has
for the Holy Scriptures. The unfortunate man who is perishing
from hydrophobia does not keep himself more at a distance
from water than he does from the word of God. It seems incredible,
but it is a fact, that from the first page of the history of
his "Religious Opinions" to page 261, where he joins the Church
of Rome, we have not a single line to tell us that he has gone
to the Word of God for light and comfort in his search after
truth. We see Dr. Newman at the feet of Daniel Wilson, Scott,
Milner, Whately, Hawkins, Blanco White, William James, Butler,
Keble, Froude, Pusey, &c., asking them what to believe,
what to do to be saved: but you do not see him a single minute,
no! not a single minute, at the feet of the Saviour, asking him,
"Master, what must I do to have `Eternal Life?' " The sublime
words of Peter to Christ, which are filling all the echoes of
heaven and earth, these eighteen hundred years, "Lord! To
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life!" have
never reached his ears! In the long and gloomy hours, when
his soul was chilled and trembling in the dark night of infidelity;
when his uncertain feet were tired by vainly going here and
there, to find the true way, he has never heard Christ telling
him: "Come unto Me. I am the Way; I am the Door; I am
the Life!" In those terrible hours of distress of which he
speaks so eloquently, when he cries (page 111) "Alas! I was
without any basis for my religious profession, in a state of moral
sickness: neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able to go
to Rome:" when his lips were parched with thirst after truth,
he never, no never, went to the fountain from which flow the
waters of eternal life!

One day, he goes to the Holy Fathers. But what will he
find there? Will he see how St. Cyprien sternly rebuked the
impudence of Stephen, Bishop of Rome, who pretended to have
some jurisdiction over the See of Carthage? Will he find how
Gregory positively says that the Bishop who will pretend to be

the "Universal Bishop" is the forerunner of Anti-Christ? Will
he hear St. Augustine declaring that when Christ said to Peter,
"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,"
He was speaking of Himself as the rock upon which the Church
would stand? No. The only thing which Dr. Newman brings
us from the Holy Fathers is so ridiculous and so unbecoming
that I am ashamed to have to repeat it. He tells us (page 78),
"I have an idea. The mass of the Fathers (Justin, Anthenagoras,
Irenæus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Ambrose), hold
that, though Satan fell from the beginning, the angels fell before
the deluge, falling in love with the daughters of men. This has
lately come across me as a remarkable solution of a notion I
cannot help holding."

Allow me here to remind the reader that, though the Fathers
have written many beautiful evangelical pages, some of them
have written the greatest nonsense and the most absurd things
which human folly can imagine. Many of them were born and
educated as pagans. They had learned and believed the history
and immortality of their demi-gods; they had brought those
notions with them into the Church; and they had attributed to
the angels of God, the passions and love for women which was
one of the most conspicuous characters of Jupiter, Mars, Cupid,
Bacchus, etc. And Dr. Newman, whose want of accuracy and
judgment is so often revealed and confessed by him in this book,
has not been able to see that those sayings of the Fathers were
nothing but human aberrations. He has accepted that as Gospel
truth, and he has been silly enough to boast of it.

The bees go to the flowers to make their precious honey.
They wisely choose what is more perfect, pure and wholesome
in the flowers to feed themselves. Dr. Newman does the very
contrary: he goes to those flowers of past ages, the Holy Fathers,
and takes from them what is impure for his food. After this,
is it a wonder that he has so easily put his lips to the cup of the
great enchantress who is poisoning the world with the wine of
her prostitution?

When the reader has followed with attention the history of
the religious opinions of Dr. Newman in his "Apologia pro

vita sua," and he sees him approaching, day after day, the bottomless
abyss of folly, corruption, slavery and idolatry of Rome,
into which he suddenly falls (page 261), he is forcibly reminded
of the strange spectacle recorded in the eloquent pages of Chateaubriand,
about the Niagara Falls.

More than once, travelers standing at the foot of that marvel
of the marvels of the works of God, looking up toward heaven,
have been struck by the sight of a small, dark spot, moving in
large circles, at a great distance above the fall. Gazing at that
strange object, they soon remarked that in its circular march in
the sky, the small, dark spot was rapidly growing larger, as it
was coming down towards the thundering fall. They soon
discovered the majestic form of one of the giant eagles of
America! And the eagle, balancing himself in the air, seemed
to look down on the marvellous fall, as if absolutely taken with
admiration at its grandeur and magnificence! For some time,
the giant of the air remained above the majestic cataract, describing
his large circles. But when coming down nearer and
nearer the terrific abyss, he was suddenly dragged by an irreristible
power into the bottomless abyss, to disappear. Some time
later the body, bruised and lifeless, is seen floating on the rapid
and dark waters, to be forever lost in the bitter waters of the
sea, a long distance below.

Rome is a fall. It is the name which God himself has given
her: "There come a falling away" (2 Thess. ii., 3). As the
giant eagle of America, when imprudently coming too near the
mighty Fall of Niagara, is often caught in the irresistible vortex
which attracts it from a long distance, so that eagle of Oxford,
Dr. Newman, whom God had created for better things, has
imprudently come too near the terrific papal fall. He has been
enchanted by its beauty, its thousand bright rainbows; he has
taken for real suns the fantastic jets of light which encircles its
misty head, and conceals its dark and bottomless abyss. Bewildered
by the bewitching voice of the enchantress, he has been
unable to save himself from her perfidious and almost irresistible
attractions. The eagle of Oxford has been caught in the whirlpool
of the engulphing powers of Rome, and you see him

to-day, bruised, lifeless, dragged on the dark waters of Popery
towards the shore of a still darker eternity.

Dr. Newman could not make his submission to Rome without
perjuring himself. He swore that he would never interpret the
Holy Scriptures except according to the unanimous consent of
the Holy Fathers. Well, I challenge him here, to meet me and
show me that the Holy Fathers are unanimous on the supremacy
of the power of the Pope over the other Bishops; that he is
infallible; that the Priest has the power to make his God with a
wafer; that the Virgin Mary is the only hope for sinners. I
challenge him to show us that auricular confession is an ordinance
of Christ. Dr. Newman knows well that those things
are impostures. He has never believed, he never will believe
them.

The fact is that Dr. Newman confesses that he never had
any faith when he was a minister of the Church of England;
and it is clear that he is the same since he became a Roman
Catholic. In page 282 we read this strange exposition of his
faith: "We are called upon not to profess anything, but to submit
and be silent," which is just the faith of the mute animal
which obeys the motion of the bridle, without any resistance or
thought of its own. This is—I cannot deny it—the true, the only
faith in the Church of Rome; it is the faith which leads directly
to Atheism or idiotism. But Christ gave us a very different
idea of the faith he asks from his disciples when he said: "The
time has come when the worshippers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth." (John vi., 23.)

That degraded and brutal religion of Dr. Newman, surely
was not the religion of Paul, when he wrote, "I speak as to wise
men; judge ye what I say." (1 Cor. x., 15.) Dr. Newman honestly
tells us (page 228,) when speaking of the worship of the
Virgin Mary: "Such devotional manifestations in honor of
our Lady had been my great Crux as regards Catholicism. I
say, frankly that I do not fully enter into them now . . . they
are suitable for Italy, but are not suitable for England." He
has only changed his appearance—his heart is what it was
formerly, when a minister of the Church of England. He

wanted then another creed, another Church for England. So
now, he finds that this and that practice of Rome may do for the
Italians, but not for the English people!

Was he pleased with the promulgation of Papal infallibility?
No. It is a public fact that one of his most solemn actions, a
few years since his connection with the Church of Rome, was
to protest against the promulgation of that dogma. More than
that, he expressed his doubts about the wisdom and the right of
the Council to proclaim it.

Let us read his interesting letter to Bishop Ullathorne—
"Rome ought to be a name to lighten the heart at all times;
and a council's proper office is, when some great heresy or other
evil impends, to inspire hope and confidence in the faithful.
But now we have the greatest meeting which ever has been,
and that at Rome, infusing into us by the accredited organs of
Rome and of its partisans (such as the Civilta, the Armonia,
the Univers and the Tablet) little else than fear and dismay!
When we are all at rest and have no doubts, and—at least practically,
not to say doctrinally—hold the Holy Father to be infallible,
suddenly there is thunder in the clear sky, and we are told
to prepare for something, we know not what, to try our faith,
we know not how—no impending danger is to be averted, but
a great difficulty is to be created. Is this the proper work of an
Œcumenical Council? As to myself, personally, please God, I
do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with
the many souls who are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the
prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult
to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain
logically in the face of historical facts.

"What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were
treated before? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of
devotion, and not a stern, painful necessity? Why should an
aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to `make the heart of the
just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful?' Why cannot
we be let alone, when we have pursued peace, and thought
no evil!

"I assure you, my Lord, some of the truest minds are driven

one way and another, and do not know where to rest their feet
—one day determining `to give up all theology as a bad job,'
and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable;
at another, tempted to `believe all the worst that a
book like Janus says;' others doubting about `the capacity
possessed by Bishops drawn from corners of the earth, to judge
what is fitting for European society;' and then, again, angry
with the Holy See for listening to `the flattery of a clique of
Jesuits, redemptorists, and converts.'

"Then, again, think of the store of Pontifical scandals in the
history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured
forth, and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon
us in one way, M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another.
And then, again, the blight which is falling upon the multitude
of Anglican Ritualists, etc., who, themselves, perhaps—at least
their leaders—may never become Catholics, but who are leavening
the various English denominations and parties (far beyond
their own range), with principles and sentiments towards their
ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.

"With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually
asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public?
But all I do is to pray those early doctors of the Church, whose
intercession would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose and
Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom and Basil), to avert this great
calamity.

"If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility be defined,
then it is God's will to throw back `the times and movements'
of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I
shall feel I have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable
providence.

"You have not touched upon the subject yourself, but I think
you will allow me to express to you feeling which, for the most
part, I keep to myself."[3]

These eloquent complaints of the new convert exceedingly
irritated Pius IX. and the Jesuits at Rome; they entirely destroyed

their confidence in him. They were too shrewd to ignore
that he had never been anything else but a kind of free-thinker,
whose Christian faith was without any basis, as he himself
confessed. They had received him, of course, with pleasure, for
he was the very best man in England to unsettle the minds of
the young ministers of the Church, but they had left him alone
in his oratory of Birmingham, where they seemed to ignore
him.

However, when the protest of the new so-called convert
showed that his submission was but a sham, and that he was
more Protestant than ever, they lashed him without mercy.
But before we hear the stern answers of the Roman Catholics
to their new recruit, let us remember the fact that when that
letter appeared, Dr. Newman had lost the memory of it; he
boldly denied its paternity at first; it was only when the proofs
were publicly given that he had written it, that he acknowledged
it, saying for his excuse that he had forgotten his writing it!!

Now let us hear the answer of the Civilta, the organ of the
Pope, to Dr. Newman. "Do you not see that it is only temptation
that makes you see everything black? If the Holy Doctors
whom you invoke, Ambrose, Jerome, etc., do not decide the controversy
in your way, it is not as the Protestant Pall Mall
Gazette fancies, because they will not or cannot interpose, but
because they agree with St. Peter, and with the petition of the
majority. Would you have us make a procession in sackcloth
and ashes to avert this scourge of the definition of a verity?"
Ibid, p. 281.

The clergy of France, through their organ, L'Univers (Vol.
11, p. 31-34), was still more severe and sarcastic. They had
just collected £4,000 to help Dr. Newman to pay the enormous
expenses of the suit for his slanders against Father Achille,
which he had lost.

Dr. Newman, as it appears by the article from the pen of the
celebrated editor of the Univers, had not even had the courtesy
to acknowledge the gift, nor the exertions of those who had
collected that large sum of money. Now let us see what they
thought and said in France about the ex-Professor of Oxford

whom they called the "Respectable Convict." Speaking of the
£4,000 sent from France, Veuillot says: "The respectable convict
received it, and was pleased; but he gave no thanks and
showed no mercy. Father Newman ought to be more careful
in what he says; everything that is comely demands it of him.
But, at any rate, if his Liberal passion carries him away, till he
forgets what he owes to us and to himself, what answer must one
give him, but that he had better go on as he set out, silently ungrateful?"—L'Univers,
Vol. 11. p. 32-34. Ibid, p. 272.

These public rebukes, addressed from Paris and Rome by
the two most popular organs of the Church of Rome, tell us
the old story; the services of traitors may be accepted, but they
are never trusted. Father Newman had not the confidence of
the Roman Catholics.

But some one will say: Has not the dignity of Cardinal, to
which he has lately been raised, proved that the present Pope
has the greatest confidence in Dr. Newman?

Had I not been 25 years a priest of Rome, I would say
"Yes!" But I know too much of their tactics for that. The
dignity of Cardinal has been given to Drs. Manning and Newman
as the baits which the fisherman of Prince Edward Island
throw into the sea to attract the mackerels. The Pope, with
those long scarlet robes thrown over the shoulders of the two
renegades from the Church of England, hopes to catch more
English mackerels.

Besides that, we all know the remarkable words of St. Paul:
"And those members of the body which we think to be less
honourable, upon them we bestow more abundant honours, and
our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness." (1 Cor.
xii., 23.)

It is on that principle that the Pope has acted. He knew well
that Dr. Newman had played the act of a traitor at Oxford; that
he had been caught in the very act of conspiracy by his Bishops;
that he had entirely lost the confidence of the English people.
These public facts paralyzed the usefulness of the new convert.
He was really a member of the Church of Rome, but he was
one of the most uncomely ones; so much so, that the last Pope,

Pius IX., had left him alone, in a dark corner, for nearly eighteen
years. Leo XIII. was more shrewd. He felt that Newman
might become one of the most powerful agents of Romanism in
England, if he were only covering his uncomeliness with the
rich red Cardinal robe.

But will the scarlet colors which now clothe Dr. Newman
make us forget that, to-day, he belongs to the most absurd, immoral,
abject and degrading form of idolatry, the world has ever
seen? Will we forget that Romanism, these last six centuries,
is nothing else than old paganism in its most degrading forms,
coming back under a Christian name? What is the divinity
which is adored in those splendid temples of modern Rome? Is
it anything else but the old Jupiter Tonans? Yes, the Pope has
stolen the old gods of paganism, and he has sacrilegiously
written the adorable name of Jesus in their faces, that the more
deluded modern nations may have less objection to accept the
worship of their pagan ancestors. They adore a Christ in the
Church of Rome; they sing beautiful hymns to His honor; they
build him magnificent temples; they are exceedingly devoted to
Him—they make daily enormous sacrifices to extend His power
and glory all over the world. But what is that Christ? It is
simply an idol of bread, baked every day by the servant girl of
the priest, or the neighboring nuns.

I have been 25 years one of the most sincere and zealous
priests of that Christ. I have made Him with mine own hands,
and the help of my servants for a quarter of a century; I have a
right to say that I know Him perfectly well. It is that I may
tell what I know of that Christ that the God of the Gospel has
taken me by the hand, and granted me to give my testimony
before the world. Hundreds of times, I have said to my servant
girl what Dr. Newman and all the priests of Rome say,
every day, to their own servants or their nuns: "Please make
me some wafers, that I may say mass, and give the communion
to those who want to receive it." And the dutiful girl took
some wheat flour, mixed it with water, and put the dough
between these two well-polished and engraven irons, which she
had well heated before. In less time than I can write it, the

dough was baked into wafers. Handing them to me, I brought
them to the altar, and performed a ceremony which is called
"the mass." In the very midst of that mass, I pronounced on the
wafer five magic words, "Hoc est enim corpus meum," and had
to believe, what Dr. Newman and all the priests of Rome profess
to believe, that there were no more wafers, no more bread
before me, but that what were wafers, had been turned into the
great Eternal God who had created the world. I had to prostrate
myself, and ask my people to prostrate themselves before
the God I had just made with five words from my lips; and the
people, on their knees, bowing their heads, and bringing their
faces to the dust, adored God whom I had just made, with the
help of these heated irons and my servant girl.

Now, is this not a form of idolatry more degrading, more insulting
to the infinite Majesty of God than the worship of the
golden calf? Where is the difference between the idolatry of
Aaron and the Israelites adoring the golden calf in the wilderness
and the idolatry of Dr. Newman adoring the wafer in his temple?
The only difference is, that Aaron worshipped a god infinitely
more respectable and powerful, in melted gold, than Dr. Newman
worshipping his baked dough.

The idolatry of Dr. Newman is more degrading than the
idolatry of the worshippers of the sun.

When the Persians adore the sun, they give their homage to
the greatest, the most glorious being which is before us. That
magnificent fiery orb, millions of miles in circumference, which
rises as a giant, every morning, from behind the horizon, to
march over the world and pour everywhere its floods of heat,
light and life, cannot be contemplated without feelings of respect,
admiration and awe. Man must raise his eyes up to see that
glorious sun—he must take the eagle's wings to follow his giant
strides throughout the myriads of worlds which are there, to
speak to us of the wisdom, the power, and love of our God. It
is easy to understand that poor, fallen, blind men may take that
great being for their god. Would not every one perish and die,
if the sun would forget to come every day, that we may bathe
and swim in his ocean of light and life?

Then, when I see the Persian priests of the sun, in their magnificent
temple, with censers in their hands, waiting for the appearance
of its first rays, to intone their melodious hymns and
sing their sublime canticles, I know their error and I understand
it; I was about to say, I almost excuse it. I feel an immense
compassion for these deluded idolaters. However, I feel they
are raised above the dust of the earth: their intelligence, their
souls cannot but receive some sparks of light and life from the
contemplation of that inexhaustible focus of light and life. But
is not Dr. Newman with his Roman Catholic people a thousand
times more worthy of our compassion and our tears, when they
are abjectly prostrated before this ignoble wafer—to adore it as
their Saviour, their Creator, their God? Is it possible to imagine
a spectacle more humiliating, blasphemous and sacrilegious, than
a multitude of men and women prostrating their faces to the
dust to adore a god whom the rats and mice have, thousands of
times, dragged and eaten in their dark holes? Where are the
rays of light and life coming from that wafer? Instead of being
enlarged and elevated at the approach of this ridiculous modern
divinity, is not the human inteligence contracted, diminished
paralyzed, chilled and struck with idiocy and death at its feet?

Can we be surprised that the Roman Catholic nations are so
fast falling into the abyss of infidelity and atheism, when they
hear their priests telling them that more than 200,000 times,
every day, this contemptible wafer is changed by them into the
great God who has created heaven and earth at the beginning,
and who has saved this perishing world by sacrificing the body
and the blood which He has taken as His tabernacle to show us
His eternal love!

Come with me and see those multitudes of people with their
faces prostrated in the dust, adoring their white elephant of
Siam.

Oh! what ignorance and superstition! what blindness and
folly! you will exclaim. To adore a white elephant as God!

But there is a spectacle more humiliating and more deplorable:
There is a superstition, an idolatry below that of the Siamese.
It is the idolrtry practiced by Dr. Newman and his millions

of co-religionists to-day. Yes! The elephant-god of the
Asiatic people, is infinitely more respectable than the wafer-god
of Dr. Newman. That elephant may be taken as the symbol of
strength, magnanimity, patience, etc. There is life, motion in
that noble animal—he sees with his eyes, he walks with his feet.
Let some one attack him, he will protect himself—with his
mighty trunk he will throw his enemy high in the air—he will
crush him under his feet.

But look at this modern divinity of Rome. It has eyes, but
does not see; feet, but does not move; a mouth, but does not
speak. There is neither life nor strength in the wafer god of
Rome.

But if the fall of Dr. Newman into the bottomless abyss of
the idolatry of Rome is a deplorable fact, there is another fact
still more deplorable.

How many fervent Christians, how many venerable ministers
of Christ everywhere, are, just now, prostrated at the dear Saviour's
feet, telling Him with tears: "Didst thou not sow the
good Gospel seed all over our dear country, through the hands
of our heroic and martyred fathers? From whence, then, hath it
these Popish and idolatrous tares?" And the "Good Master"
answers, to-day, what he answered eighteen hundred years ago:
"While men slept, the enemy came during the night; he has
sowed those tares among the wheat, and he went away."—(Matthew
xiii: 25.)

And if you want to know the name of the enemy who has
sowed tares, in the night, amongst the wheat, and went away,
you have only to read this "Apologia pro vita sua." You will
find this confession of Dr. Newman at page 174:—

"I cannot disguise from myself that my preaching is not calculated
to defend that system of religion which has been received
for three hundred years, and of which the Heads of Houses
are the legitimate maintainers in this place . . . I must
allow that I was disposing the minds of young men towards
Rome!"

Now, having obtained from the very enemy's lips how he has
sowed tares during the night (secretly), read page 262, and you

will see how he went away and prostrated himself at the feet of
the most implacable enemy of all the rights and liberties of men,
to call him "Most Holy Father." Read how he fell at the knees
of the very power which prepared and blessed the Armada destined
to cover his native land, England, with desolation, ruins,
tears and blood, and enchain those of her people who would not
have been slaughtered on the battle-field! See how the enemy,
after having sown the tares, went away to the feet of a Sergius
III., the public lover of Maroria—and to the feet of his bastard,
John XI., who was still more debauched than his father—and to
the feet of Leo VI., killed by an outraged citizen of Rome, in
the act of such an infamous crime that I cannot name it here—
to the feet of an Alexander, who seduced his own daughter, and
surpassed in cruelty and debauchery Nero and Caligula. Let us
see Dr. Newman falling at the feet of all those monsters of depravity,
to call them, "Most Holy Fathers," "Most Holy Heads
of the Church," "Most Holy and Infallible Vicars of Jesus
Christ!"

At the sight of such a fall, what can we do, but say with
Isaiah:

"The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, and the scepter
of the ruler . . . How art thou fallen, O Lucifer, Son
of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground?" Is. xiv.