17 - Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman

Delve into the riveting religious autobiography of Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Experience the simple yet profound narrative that drastically shifted public perception of its author and solidified his deep convictions leading him to the Roman Catholic Church. Revered as one of the most widely read autobiographies in the English language, it holds a significant place in the 19th century, akin to Boswells Johnson in the 18th century.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter four, Part four of Apology of pro Vita Sua
by John Henry card'nouman. This libor of arks recording is
in the public domain recording by Bill mc gillivray, Chapter four,
Section two. The letter which I have last inserted is
addressed to my dear friend, doctor Russell, the present President

(00:23):
of Maynooth. He had perhaps more to do with my
conversion than any one else. He called upon me in
passing through Oxford in the summer of eighteen forty one,
and I think I took him over some of the
buildings of the university. He called again another summer, on
his way from Dublin to London. I do not recollect

(00:45):
that he said a word on the subject of religion
on either occasion. He sent me, at different times several letters.
He was always gentle, mild, unobtrusive, uncontroversial. He let me alone.
He also gave me one of two books. Veron's Rule
of Faith and Some Treaties of the Wollenboroughs was one.

(01:07):
A volume of Saint Alfonso Legore Sermons was another. And
it is those sermons that my letter to doctor Russell relates.
Now it must be observed that the writings of Saint Alfonso,
as I knew them by the extracts commonly made from them,
prejudiced me as much against the Roman Church as anything else,

(01:28):
on account of what was called their mariolatry. But there
was nothing of the kind in this book. I wrote
to Doctor Russell whether anything had been left out of
the translation. He answered that there certainly were omissions in
one sermon about the Blessed Virgin. This omission, in the
case of a book intended for Catholics, at least showed

(01:49):
that such passages as are found in the works of
Italian authors were not acceptable to every part of the
Catholic world. Such devotional manifestations in honor of our lady
had been my great crux as regards Catholicism. I say frankly,
I do not fully enter into them. Now I trust
I do not love her the less because I cannot

(02:12):
enter into them. They may be fully explained and defended,
but sentiments and taste do not run with logic. They
are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.
But over and above England, my own case was special.
From a boy I had been led to consider that
my maker and I his creature were the two beings

(02:35):
luminescently such in rerem not sura. I will not here speculate, however,
about my own feelings. Only this I know full well now,
and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allowed
no image of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbols,

(02:55):
no right, no sacrament, no saint, not even the blessed
Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its creator.
It is face to face, solus cum solo, in all
matters between man and his God. He alone creates, he
alone has redeemed before his awful eyes. We go in death,

(03:17):
and the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude. One
solus cum solo. I recollect but indistinctly what I gain
from the volume of which I have been speaking. But
it must have been something considerable. At least I had
got a key to a difficulty. In these sermons parentheses,
or rather heads of sermons, as they seem to be

(03:39):
taken down by a hearer clothes parentsses. There is much
of what would be called legendary illustration, but the substance
of them is plain, practical, awful preaching upon the great
truth of salvation. What I can speak of with greater
confidence is the effect produced on me a little later
by studying the exercises of Saint Ignatius. For here again,

(04:04):
in a matter consistent with the purest and most direct
acts of religion, in the intercourse between God and the soul,
during the season of recollection, of repentance, of good, resolution
of inquiry into vocation, the soul was sola cum solo.
There was no cloud interposed between the creature and the

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object of his face and love. The command practically enforced
was my son, give me thy heart. The devotion then
to angels and saints, as little interfered with my intercommunicable
glory of the eternal, as the love which we bear
our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent

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with that supreme homage of the heart to the unseen,
which really does but sanctify and exalt, not jealously destroy,
what is of earth. At a later date, Doctor Russ
sent me a large bundle of penny or halfpenny books
of devotion of all sorts, as they are found in
the bookseller's shops at Rome, And on looking them over,

(05:10):
I was quite astonished to find how different they were
from what I had fancied, how little there was in
them to which I could really object. I have given
an account of them in my essay on the Development
of Doctrine. Doctor Russell sent me Saint Alfonso's book at
the end of eighteen forty two. However, it was still

(05:31):
a long time before I got over my difficulty on
the score of devotions paid to the saints. Perhaps, as
I judged from a letter I have turned up, it
was some way into eighteen forty four before I could
be said fully to have got over it. Two I
am not sure that I did not also at this
time feel the force of another consideration. The idea of

(05:55):
the Blessed Virgin was, as it was, magnified in the
Church of Rome as time went on. But so were
all the Christian ideas, as that of the blessed Eucharist.
The whole scene of pale, faint, distant Apostolic Christianity is
seen in Rome as though a telescope or magnifier. The

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harmony of the whole, however, is of course what it was.
It is unfear, then, to take one Roman idea, that
of the Blessed Virgin, out of what may be called
its context three. Thus I am brought to the principle
of development of doctrine in the Christian Church, to which
I gave my mind at the end of eighteen forty two.

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I had made mention of it in the passage which
I quoted many pages back in Home Thoughts Abroad, published
in eighteen thirty six, and even at an earlier date
I had introduced it into my History of the Arians
in eighteen thirty two. Now have I ever lost sight
of it in my speculations, and it is certainly recognized

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in the tree of Vincent av Larens, which has so
often been taken as a basis of Anglicanism. In eighteen
forty three I began to consider it attentively. I made
it the subject of my last university sermon on February two,
and the general view to which I came is stated
thus in a letter to a friend of the date

(07:20):
of July fourteenth, eighteen forty four. It will be observed that, now,
as before, my issue is still Creed versus Church. The
kind of considerations which weigh with me are such as
the following one. I am far more certain, according to
the Fathers, that we are in a state of culpable
separation than that developments do not exist under the Gospel,

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and that the Roman developments are not the true ones. Two.
I am far more certain that our modern doctrines are
wrong than that the Roman modern doctrines are wrong. Three.
Granting that the Roman special doctrines are not found drawn
out in the early Church, yet I think there is
sufficient trace of them in it to recommend and prove

(08:05):
them on the hypothesis of the Church having a divine guidance,
though not sufficient to prove them by itself, so that
the question simply turns on the nature of the promise
of the Spirit made to the Church. Four. The proof
of the Roman modern doctrine is as strong or stronger
in antiquity as that of certain doctrines which both we

(08:28):
and Romans hold. For example, there is more of evidence
in antiquity for the necessity of unity than for the
apostolical succession, for the supremacy of the See of Rome,
than for the presence in the Eucharist, for the practice
of invocation, than for certain books in the present canon
of Scripture, et cetera. Five. The analogy of the Old

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Testament and also of the New leads to the acknowledgment
of doctrinal developments. Four, and thus I was led on
to a further consideration. I saw that the principle of
development not only accounted for certain facts, but was in
itself a remarkable philosophical phenomenon, giving a character to the

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whole course of Christian thought. It was discernible from the
first year of the Catholic teachings up to the present day,
and gave to that teaching a unity and individuality. It
serves as a sort of test which the Anglicans could
not exhibit, that modern Rome was in truth ancient Antioch,

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Alexandra and Constantinople. Just as a mathematical curve has its
own law and expression. Five. And thus again I was
led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not
was in my thoughts long before, namely the concatenation of
argument by which the mind ascends from its first to

(09:57):
its final religious idea. And I came to this conclusion
that there was no medium in true philosophy between atheism
and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those
circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace
either the one or the other. And I hold this still.

(10:19):
I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in
a God. And if I am asked why I believe
in a God, I answer that it is because I
believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe
in my own existence. And of that fact I am
quite sure without believing also in the existence of Him
who believes as a personal all seeing, all judging, being

(10:42):
in my conscience. Now I dare say I have not
expressed myself with philosophical correctness, because I am not given
myself to the study of what metaphysicians have said on
the subject. But I think I have a strong, true
meaning in what I say, which will stand examination. Six Moreover,
I found a cooperation of the fact of the logical

(11:04):
connection of Theism with Catholicism, in a consideration parallel to
that which I had adopted on the subject of development
of doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to
last of the principle of development of the truth of
revelation is an argument in favor of the identity of
Roman and primitive Christianity. But as there is a law

(11:27):
which acts upon the subject matter of dogmatic theology, so
is there a law in the matter of religious faith.
In the first chapter of this narrative, I spoke of
certitude as the consequence divinely intended and enjoined upon us
of the accumulative force of certain given reasons, which, taken

(11:47):
one by one, were only probabilities. Let it be recollected
that I am historically relating my state of mind at
the period of my life which I am surveying. I
am not speaking theologically, nor have I any intention of
going into the controversy or of defending myself, but speaking
historically of what I held in eighteen forty three eighteen

(12:10):
forty four, I say that I believe in a God
on the ground of probability. That I believe in Christianity
on a probability, and that I believe in Catholicism on
a probability. And that these three grounds of probability, distinct
from each other, of course in subject matter, were still
all of them one and the same in nature of proof,

(12:34):
as being probabilities, probabilities of a special kind, a cumulative,
a transcendent probability, but still probability, inasmuch as He who
made us has so willed that in mathematics, indeed we
should arrive at certitude by rigid demonstration, But in religious
inquiry we should arrive at certitude by accumulated probabilities. Has

(13:00):
willed I say that we should so act, And as
willing it, he cooperates with us in our acting, and
thereby enables us to do that which he wills us
to do, and carries us on if our will does
not cooperate with his, to a certitude which rises higher
than the logical forces of our conclusions. And thus I

(13:22):
came to see clearly and to have a satisfaction in
seeing that in being led on into the Church of Rome,
I was not proceeding on any secondary or isolated grounds
of reason, or by controversial points in detail, but was
protected and justified even in the use of those secondary
or particular arguments, by a great and broad principle. But

(13:46):
let it be observed that I am stating a matter
of fact, not defending it. And if any Catholic says
in consequence that I have been converted in the wrong way,
I cannot help that. Now I have nothing more to
say say on the subject of the change of my
religious opinions. On the one hand, I came gradually to
see that the Anglican Church was formerly in the wrong,

(14:09):
on the other hand, that the Church of Rome was
formerly in the right. Then that no valid reason could
be assigned for continuing in the Anglican and again that
no valid objection could be taken to joining the Roman.
Then I had nothing more to learn. What still remained
for my conversion was not further change of opinion, but

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to change opinion itself into the clearness and firmness of
intellectual conviction. Now I proceed to detail the acts to
which I committed myself during the last stage of my inquiry.
In eighteen forty three, I took two very significant steps. One,
in February I made a formal retraction of all the

(14:50):
hard things which I had said against the Church of Rome. Two,
in September I resigned the living of Saint Mary's. Littlemore included.
I will speak of these two acts separately. One, the
words in which I made my retraction had given rise
to much criticism. After quoting a number of passages from

(15:10):
my writings against the Church of Rome, which I withdrew,
I ended, Thus, if you ask me how an individual
could venture not simply to whole but to publish such
views of a communion so ancient, so wide spreading, so
fruitful in saints. I answer that I said to myself,
I am not speaking my own words. I am but

(15:33):
following almost a consensus of the divines of my own church.
They have ever used the strongest language against Rome, even
the most able and learned of them. I wish to
throw myself into their system. While I say what they say,
I am safe. Such views too are necessary for our position.
Yet I have reason to fear still that such language

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is to be ascribed in no small measure to an
impetuous temper, a hope of approving myself to persons I respect,
and a wish to repel the charge of Romanism. These
words have been in our again and again cited against me,
as if a confession that when in the Anglican Church
I said things against Rome which I do not really

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believe for myself, I cannot understand how any impartial man
can so take them, And I have explained them in
print several times. I trust that by this time their
plain meaning has been satisfactorily brought out by what I
have said in former portions of this narrative. Still I
have a word or two to say, in addition to

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my former remarks upon them. In the passage in question,
I apologize for saying out in controversy charges against the
Church of Rome, which withal I affirm that I fully
believed at the time when I made them. What is
wonderful in such an apology. There are surely many things
a man may hold, which which at the same time

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he may feel that he has no right to say publicly,
and which may annoy him that he has said publicly.
The law recognizes this principle. In our own time, men
have been in prison and fine for saying true things
of a bad king. The maxim has been held that
the greater the truth, the greater is the libel. And

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so as to the judgment of society, a just indignation
would be felt against a writer who brought forward wantonly
the weakness of a great man, though the whole world
knew that they existed. No one is at liberty to
speak ill of another without a justifiable reason, even though
he knows he is speaking truth, and the public knows

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it too. Therefore, though I believe what I have said
against the Roman Church, nevertheless I could not religiously speak
it out unless it was really justified, not only in
believing ill but in speaking it. I did believe what
I said on what I thought to be good reason.
But had I also a just cause for saying out

(18:07):
what I believed I thought I had And it was this, namely,
that to say out what I believed was simply necessary
in the controversy for self defense. It was impossible to
let it alone. The Anglican position could not be satisfactorily
maintained without assailing the Roman. In this, as in most

(18:28):
cases of conflict, one party was right or the other,
not both, and the best defense was to attack. Is
not this almost a truism in the Roman controversy? Is
it not what everyone says who speaks on the subject
at all? Does any serious man abuse the Church of
Rome for the sake of abusing her, or because that

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abuse justifies his own religious position? What is the meaning
of the very word Protestantism but that there is a
call to speak out? This, then, is what I said.
I know I spoke strongly against the Church of Rome,
but it was no mere abuse, for I had a
serious reason for doing so. But not only did I

(19:09):
think such language necessary for my church's religious position. But
I recollected that all the great Anglican divines had thought
so before me. They had thought so, and they had
acted accordingly. And therefore I observed in the passage in question,
with much propriety, that I had not used strong language

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simply out of my own head, but that in doing
so I was following the track, or rather reproducing the
teaching of those who had preceded me. I was pleading
guilty to using violent language, but with pleading also that
there were extenuating circumstances in the case. We all know
the story of the convict who, on the scaffold bit

(19:51):
off his mother's ear. By doing so, he did not
deny the fact of his own crime, for which he
was to hang, but he said that his mother's in
dea indulgence when he was a boy, had a good
deal to do with it. In like manner, I had
made a charge, and I had made it ex animo.
But I accused others of having, by their own example,

(20:12):
led me into believing it and publishing it. I was
in a humor, certainly to bite off there is I
will freely confess. Indeed, I said it some pages back
that I was angry with the Anglican divines. I thought
they had taken me in. I had read the Fathers
with their eyes. I had sometimes trusted their quotations or

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their reasoning, and from reliance on them I had used
words or made statements which, by right I ought rigidly
to have examined myself. I had thought myself safe while
I had their warrant for what I said, I had
exercised more faith than criticism in the matter. This did
not imply any broad misstatements on my part, arising from

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alliance on their authority, but it implied carelessness in matters
of details, and this, of course was a fault. But
there was a far deeper reason for my saying what
I said in this matter on which I have not
hitherto touched, And it was this. The most oppressive thought
in the whole process of my change of opinion was

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the clear anticipation, verified by the event, that it would
issue in the triumph of liberalism against the antidgmatic principles.
I had thrown my whole mind. Yet now I was
doing more than any one else could do to promote it.
I was one of those who had kept it at
bay in Oxford for so many years, and thus my

(21:37):
very retirement was its triumph. The men who had driven
me from Oxford were distinctly the liberals. It was they
who had opened the attack upon Tract ninety, and it
was they who would gain a second benefit if I
went on to abandon the Anglican Church. But this was
not all. As I have already said, there are but

(21:58):
two alternatives, way to Rome and the way to atheism.
Anglicanism is the half way house on the one side,
and Liberalism is the half way house on the other.
How many men were there, as I knew full well,
who would not follow me now in my advance from
Anglicanism to Rome, but would at one sleeve Anglicanism and

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me for the liberal camp. It is not at all easy,
humanly speaking, to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level.
I had done so in good measure in the case
both of young men and of laymen, the Anglican viomedia
being the representative of dogma. The dogmatic in the Anglican
principles were one, as I had taught them. But I

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was breaking the vomedia to pieces, and would not dogmatic
faith altogether be broken up in the minds of a
great number by the demolition of the Vamedia. Oh how
unhappy this made me. I heard once from an eye
witness the account of a poor sailor who his legs
were shattered by a ball in the action off Algiers

(23:03):
in eighteen sixteen, in who was taken below for an operation.
The surgeon and the chaplain persuaded him to have a
leg off. It was done, and the tourniquet applied to
the wound. Then they broke it to him that he
must have the other off. Two. The poor fellow said,
you should have told me that gentleman, and deliberately unscrewed

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the instrument and bled to death. Would not that be
the case with many friends of my own? 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 asked them to receive it as gospel?
Would it not be plain to them that no certainty

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was to be found anywhere? While in my defense I
could not but make a lame apology. However, it was
the true one, namely that I had not read the
Fathers cautiously enough that in such nice points, those which
determined the angle of divergence between the two churches, I
had made considerable miscalculations. But how came this about? Why

(24:10):
the fact was unpleasant? As it was to avow that
I had leaned too much upon assertions of user Jeremy
Taylor or Barrow, and had been deceived by them valet quantum.
It was all that could be said. This, then, was
the chief reason of the wording of the retraction, which

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has given so much offense, because the bitterness with which
it was written was not understood, and the following letter
will illustrate it. April third, eighteen forty four, I wished
to remark on William's chief distress that my changing my
opinion seemed to unsettle one's confidence in truth and falsehood

(24:50):
as external things, and led one to be suspicious of
the new opinion as one became distrustful of the old. Now,
in what I shall say, I'm going to speak in
favor of my second thoughts in comparison to my first,
but against such skepticism and unsettlement about truth and falsehood generally,

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the idea of which is very painful. The case with me,
then was this and not surely an unnatural one. As
a matter of feeling and of duty, I threw myself
into the system which I found myself in. I saw
that the English Church had a theological idea or theory
as such, and I took it up. I read laud

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on tradition and thought it as I still think it
very masterly. The Anglican theory was very distinctive. I admired
it and took it on faith. It did not, I think,
occur to me to doubt it. I saw that it
was able and supported my learning, and I felt it
was a duty to maintain it. Further, on, looking into

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antiquity and reading the Fathers, I saw such portion of
it as I examined, fully confirmed, for example, the supremacy
of scripture. There was only one question about which I
had a doubt, namely whether it would work, for it
has never been more than a paper system, so far
from my change of opinion, having any fair tendency to

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unsettle persons. As to truth and falsehood viewed as objective realities,
it should be considered whether such change is not necessary,
if truth be a real objective thing, and be made
to confront a person who has been brought up in
a system short of truth. Surely the continuance of a
person who wishes to go right in a wrong system,

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and not his giving it up, would be that which
militated against the objectiveness of truth, leading, as it would,
to the suspicion that one thing and another were equally
pleasing to our maker where men were sincere. Nor, surely
is it a thing I need be sorry for that
I defended the system in which I found myself, and

(27:03):
thus have had to unsay my words. For is it
not one's duty, instead of beginning with criticism, to throw
one's self generously into the form of religion which is
providentially put before one. Is it right or is it
wrong to begin with private judgment? May we not, on
the other hand, look for a blessing through obedience, even

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to an erroneous system, and a guidance even by means
of it out of it. With those who were strict
and conscientious in their judaism, or those who were lukewarm
and skeptical more likely to be led into Christianity when
Christ came. Yet in proportion to their previous zeal would
be their appearance of inconsistency certainly. I have always contended

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that obedience, even to an erring conscience, was the way
to gain light, and that it mattered not where a
man began, so that he began on what came to
hand and in faith, and that anything might become a
divine method of truth. That to the pure, all things
are pure, and have a self correcting virtue and a
power of germinating. And though I have no right at

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all to assume that this mercy is granted to me,
yet the fact that a person in my situation may
have it granted to him seems to me to remove
the perplexity which my change of opinion may occasion. It
may be said, I have said it to myself, Why
however did you publish? Had you waited quietly, you would

(28:35):
have changed your opinion without any of the misery which
now is involved in the change of disappointing and distressing people.
I answer that things are so bound up together as
to form a whole, and one cannot tell what is
or is not a condition of what. I do not
see how possibly I could have published the tracts or

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other works professing to defend our church without accompanying them
with a strong protest Or argument against Rome. The one
obvious objection against the whole Anglican line is that it
is Roman, so that I really think there was no
alternative between silence altogether in forming a theory and attacking

(29:16):
the Roman system. Two and now in the next place.
As to my resignation of Saint Mary's, which was the
second of the steps which I took in eighteen forty three,
the ostensible, direct and sufficient reason for my doing so
was the persevering attack of the bishops on Tract ninety.
I alluded to it in the letter which I have

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inserted above, addressed to one of the most influential among them.
A series of their ex cathedral judgments, lasting through three years,
and including a notice of no little severity in a
charge of my own bishop, came as near to the
condemnation of my tract, and so far to a repudiation

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of the ancient Catholic doctrine which was the scope of
the tract, as was possible in the Church of England.
It was in order to shield the tract from such
a condemnation that I had at the time of its
publication in eighteen forty one, so simply put myself at
the disposal of the higher powers in London at that time.

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All that was distinctly contemplated in the way of censure
was contained in the message which my bishop sent me
that the tract was objectionable. That I thought was the
end of the matter. I had refused to suppress it,
and they had yielded that point. Since I published the
former portion of this narrative, I have found what I

(30:41):
wrote to Doctor Pusey on March twenty fourth, while the
matter was in progress. The more I think of it,
I said, the more reluctant I am to suppress Tract ninety.
Though of course I will do it if the bishops
wish it. I cannot, however, deny, that I shall feel
it a severe act. According to the notes which I
took of the letters or messages which I sent to

(31:04):
him on that in the following days I wrote successively,
my first feeling was to obey without a word. I
will obey still, but my judgment has steadily risen against
it ever since then. In the PostScript, if I have
done any good to the church, I do ask the
bishop's disfavor as my reward for it, that he would

(31:26):
not insist on a measure from which I think good
will not come. However, I will submit to him. Afterwards,
I got stronger still and wrote, I have almost come
to the resolution. If the Bishop publicly intimates that I
must suppress the tract or speak strongly in his charge
against it, to suppress it, indeed, but to resign my living. Also,

(31:49):
I could not in conscience act otherwise. You may show
this in any quarter you please. All my then hopes,
all my satisfaction at the parent fulfillment of those hopes,
was at an end in eighteen forty three. It is
not wonderful, then that in May of that year, when
two out of three years were gone, I wrote on

(32:11):
the subject of my retiring from Saint Mary's to the
same friend whom I had consulted upon it in eighteen forty.
But I did more now. I told him my great
unsettlement of mind on the question of the churches. I
will insert portions of two of my letters May fourth,
eighteen forty three. At present, I fear, as far as

(32:33):
I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman
Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and
that what grace is among us, which through God's mercy
is not little, is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of
His dispensation, I am very far more sure that England
is in schism than that the Roman additions to the

(32:55):
primitive creed may not be developments arising out of a
keen and vs. Vivid realizing of the divine depositum of faith.
You will now understand what gives edge to the bishop's charges.
Without any undue sensitiveness on my part. They distress me
in two ways, first as being in some sense protests
and witnesses to my conscience against my own unfaithfulness to

(33:19):
the English Church, and next as being samples of her
teaching and tokens how very far she is from ever
aspiring to Catholicity. Of course, my being unfaithful to a
trust is my great subject of dread, as it has
long been. As you know, when he wrote to make
natural objections to my purpose, such as the apprehension that

(33:40):
the removal of clerical obligations might have the indirect effect
of propelling me towards Rome, I answered May eighteenth, eighteen
forty three. My officer charge at Saint Mary's is not
a mere state, but a continual energy people assume and
assert certain things of me in consequence with what sort

(34:02):
of sincerity can I obey the Bishop? How am I
to act in the frequent cases in which one way
or another of the Church of Rome comes into consideration.
I have to the utmost of my power trying to
keep persons from Rome, and with some success, but even
a year and a half since my arguments, though more
efficacious with the persons I aimed at than any others

(34:25):
could be, were of a nature to infuse great suspicion
of me into the minds of lookers. On by retaining
Saint Mary's, I am an offense and a stumbling block.
Persons are keen sighted enough to make out what I
think on certain points, and then they infer that such
opinions are compatible with holding situations of trust in our church.

(34:48):
A number of younger men take the validity of their
interpretations of the articles et cetera from me. On faith
is not my present position of cruelty as well as
a treachery towards the church. I do not see how
I can either preach or publish again while I hold
Saint Mary's. But consider again the following difficulty in such

(35:09):
a resolution, which I must state at some length last
long vacation, the idea suggested itself to me of publishing
the lives of the English Saints, and I had a
conversation with a publisher upon it. I thought it would
be useful as employing the minds of men who were
in danger of running wild, bringing them from doctrine to

(35:30):
history and from speculation to fact again, as giving them
an interest in the English soil and the English church,
and keeping them from seeking sympathy in Rome as she is,
and further as tending to promote the spread of right views.
But within the last month it has come upon me
that if the scheme goes on, it will be a

(35:52):
practical carrying out of number ninety from the character of
the usages and opinions of anti Reformation times. It is
easy to say, why will you do anything? Why won't
you keep quiet? What business had you to think of
any such plan at all? But I cannot leave a
number of poor fellows in the lurch. I am bound

(36:13):
to do my best for a great number of people,
both in Oxford and elsewhere. If I did not act,
others would find means to do so well. The plan
has been taken up with great eagerness and interest. Many
men are setting to work. I set down the names
of men, most of them engaged, the rest half engaged
in probably some actually writing. About thirty names follow, some

(36:38):
of them at the time of the school of Doctor Arnold,
others of doctor Pusey's, some my personal friends, and of
my own standing, others whom I hardly knew, while of
course the majority were of the party of the New Movement.
I continue, the plan has gone so far that it
will create surprise and talk. Were it now suddenly given over? Yet?

(36:59):
How how is it compatible with my holding Saint Mary's
being what I am? End of Chapter four, Part four