John Henry Cardinal Newman (February 21, 1801-August 11, 1890) had been a
priest in the Church of England and was a major figure in the Oxford Movement to restore the Anglican Church to
its Catholic roots.
Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church on October 9, 1845 and was ordained a priest in 1846
His Apologia was published in 1864 as a response to the charge (outlined by Newmen in this Preface)
of untruthfulness, brought by Protestant Charles Kingsley in a article in a magazine. The text here presented
is that of Newman's revised edition of 1865.
In 1879 Newman was elevated to Cardinal.
On January 22, 1991 Newman was proclaimed Venerable by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
His beatification was officially proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom.
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Preface
The following History of my Religious Opinions, now that it is detached from
the context in which it originally stood, requires some preliminary explanation;
and that, not only in order to introduce it generally to the reader, but
specially to make him understand, how I came to write a whole book about myself,
and about my most private thoughts and feelings. Did I consult indeed my own
impulses, I should do my best simply to wipe out of my Volume, and consign to
oblivion, every trace of the circumstances to which it is to be ascribed; but
its original title of "Apologia" is too exactly borne out by its matter and
structure, and these again are too suggestive of correlative circumstances, and
those circumstances are of too grave a character, to allow of my indulging so
natural a wish. And therefore, though in this new Edition I have managed to omit
nearly a hundred pages of my original Volume, which I could safely consider to be of merely
ephemeral importance, I am even for that very reason obliged, by way of making
up for their absence, to prefix to my Narrative some account of the provocation
out of which it arose.
It is now more than twenty years that a vague impression to my disadvantage
has rested on the popular mind, as if my conduct towards the Anglican Church,
while I was a member of it, was inconsistent with Christian simplicity and
uprightness. An impression of this kind was almost unavoidable under the
circumstances of the case, when a man, who had written strongly against a cause,
and had collected a party round him by virtue of such writings, gradually
faltered in his opposition to it, unsaid his words, threw his own friends into
perplexity and their proceedings into confusion, and ended by passing over to
the side of those whom he had so vigorously denounced. Sensitive then as I have
ever been of the imputations which have been so freely cast upon me, I have
never felt much impatience under them, as considering them to be a portion of
the penalty which I naturally and justly incurred by my change of religion, even
though they were to continue as long as I lived. I left their removal to a
future day, when personal feelings would have died out, and documents would see
the light, which were as yet buried in closets or scattered through the
country.
This was my state of mind, as it had been for many years, when, in the
beginning of 1864, I unexpectedly found myself publicly put upon my defence, and
furnished with an opportunity of pleading my cause before the world, and, as it
so happened, with a fair prospect of an impartial hearing. Taken indeed by
surprise, as I was, I had much reason to be anxious how I should be able to
acquit myself in so serious a matter; however, I had long had a tacit
understanding with myself, that, in the improbable event of a challenge being
formally made to me, by a person of name, it would be my duty to meet it. That
opportunity had now occurred; it never might occur again; not to avail myself of
it at once would be virtually to give up my cause; accordingly, I took advantage
of it, and, as it has turned out, the circumstance that no time was allowed me
for any studied statements has compensated, in the equitable judgment of the
public, for such imperfections in composition as my want of leisure
involved.
It was in the number for January 1864, of a magazine of wide circulation, and
in an Article upon Queen Elizabeth, that a popular writer took occasion formally
to accuse me by name of thinking so lightly of the virtue of Veracity, as in set
terms to have countenanced and defended that neglect of it which he at the same
time imputed to the Catholic Priesthood. His words were these:
"Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.
Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be;
that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints wherewith to
withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in
marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least
historically so."
These assertions, going far beyond the popular prejudice entertained against
me, had no foundation whatever in fact. I never had said, I never had dreamed of
saying, that truth for its own sake need not, and on the whole ought not to be,
a virtue with the Roman Clergy; or that cunning is the weapon which heaven has
given to the Saints wherewith to withstand the wicked world. To what work of
mine then could the writer be referring? In a correspondence which ensued upon
the subject between him and myself, he rested his charge against me on a Sermon
of mine, preached, before I was a Catholic, in the pulpit of my Church at
Oxford; and he gave me to understand, that, after having done as much as this,
he was not bound, over and above such a general reference to my Sermon, to
specify the passages of it, in which the doctrine, which he imputed to me, was
contained. On my part I considered this not enough; and I demanded of him to
bring out his proof of his accusation in form and in detail, or to confess he was
unable to do so. But he persevered in his refusal to cite any distinct passages
from any writing of mine; and, though he consented to withdraw his charge, he
would not do so on the issue of its truth or falsehood, but simply on the ground
that I assured him that I had had no intention of incurring it. This did not
satisfy my sense of justice. Formally to charge me with committing a fault is
one thing; to allow that I did not intend to commit it, is another; it is no
satisfaction to me, if a man accuses me of this offence, for him to
profess that he does not accuse me of that; but he thought differently.
Not being able then to gain redress in the quarter, where I had a right to ask
it, I appealed to the public. I published the correspondence in the shape of a
Pamphlet, with some remarks of my own at the end, on the course which that
correspondence had taken.
This Pamphlet, which appeared in the first weeks of February, received a
reply from my accuser towards the end of March, in another Pamphlet of 48 pages,
entitled, "What then does Dr. Newman mean?" in which he professed to do that
which I had called upon him to do; that is, he brought together a number of
extracts from various works of mine, Catholic and Anglican, with the object of
showing that, if I was to be acquitted of the crime of teaching and practising
deceit and dishonesty, according to his first supposition, it was at the price
of my being considered no longer responsible for my actions; for, as he
expressed it, "I had a human reason once, no doubt, but I had gambled it away,"
and I had "worked my mind into that morbid state, in which nonsense was the only
food for which it hungered;" and that it could not be called "a hasty or
farfetched or unfounded mistake, when he concluded that I did not care for truth
for its own sake, or teach my disciples to regard it as a virtue;" and, though
"too many prefer the charge of insincerity to that of insipience, Dr. Newman
seemed not to be of that number."
He ended his Pamphlet by returning to his original imputation against me,
which he had professed to abandon. Alluding by anticipation to my probable
answer to what he was then publishing, he professed his heartfelt embarrassment
how he was to believe any thing I might say in my exculpation, in the plain and
literal sense of the words. "I am henceforth," he said, "in doubt and fear, as
much as an honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How
can I tell, that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of
the three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed St. Alfonso da Liguori
and his pupils, even when confirmed with an oath, because 'then we do not
deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself?' ... How can I tell,
that I may not in this Pamphlet have made an accusation, of the truth of which Dr.
Newman is perfectly conscious; but that, as I, a heretic Protestant, have no
business to make it, he has a full right to deny it?"
Even if I could have found it consistent with my duty to my own reputation to
leave such an elaborate impeachment of my moral nature unanswered, my duty to my
Brethren in the Catholic Priesthood, would have forbidden such a course.
They were involved in the charges which this writer, all along, from the
original passage in the Magazine, to the very last paragraph of the Pamphlet,
had so confidently, so pertinaciously made. In exculpating myself, it was plain
I should be pursuing no mere personal quarrel;—I was offering my humble service
to a sacred cause. I was making my protest in behalf of a large body of men of
high character, of honest and religious minds, and of sensitive honour,—who had
their place and their rights in this world, though they were ministers of the
world unseen, and who were insulted by my Accuser, as the above extracts from
him sufficiently show, not only in my person, but directly and pointedly in
their own. Accordingly, I at once set about writing the Apologia pro vitâ
suâ, of which the present Volume is a New Edition; and it was a great reward
to me to find, as the controversy proceeded, such large numbers of my clerical
brethren supporting me by their sympathy in the course which I was pursuing, and, as
occasion offered, bestowing on me the formal and public expression of their
approbation. These testimonials in my behalf, so important and so grateful to
me, are, together with the Letter, sent to me with the same purpose, from my
Bishop, contained in the last pages of this Volume.
This Edition differs from the first form of the Apologia as follows:—The
original work consisted of seven Parts, which were published in series on
consecutive Thursdays, between April 21 and June 2. An Appendix, in answer to
specific allegations urged against me in the Pamphlet of Accusation, appeared on
June 16. Of these Parts 1 and 2, as being for the most part directly
controversial, are omitted in this Edition, excepting certain passages in them,
which are subjoined to this Preface, as being necessary for the due explanation
of the subsequent five Parts. These, (being 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, of the Apologia,) are
here numbered as Chapters 1, 2,
3, 4, 5 respectively.
Of the Appendix, about half has been omitted, for the same reason as has led to the omission of Parts 1
and 2. The rest of it is thrown into the shape of Notes of a discursive
character, with two new ones on Liberalism
and the Lives of the English Saints of 1843-4,
and another, new in part, on Ecclesiastical Miracles.
In the body of the work, the only addition of consequence is the letter
which is found {in Chapter 4} at p. 228,
a copy of which has recently come into my possession.
I should add that, since writing the Apologia last year, I have seen for the
first time Mr. Oakeley's "Notes on the Tractarian Movement." This work
remarkably corroborates the substance of my Narrative, while the kind terms in
which he speaks of me personally, call for my sincere gratitude.
May 2, 1865.
I make these extracts from the first edition of my Apologia, Part 1, pp. 3,
20-25, and Part 2, pp. 29-31 and pp. 41-51, in order to set before the reader
the drift I had in writing my Volume:—
I cannot be sorry to have forced my Accuser to bring out in fulness his
charges against me. It is far better that he should discharge his thoughts upon
me in my lifetime, than after I am dead. Under the circumstances I am happy in
having the opportunity of reading the worst that can be said of me by a writer
who has taken pains with his work and is well satisfied with it. I account it a
gain to be surveyed from without by one who hates the principles which are
nearest to my heart, has no personal knowledge of me to set right his
misconceptions of my doctrine, and who has some motive or other to be as severe
with me as he can possibly be....
But I really feel sad for what I am obliged now to say. I am in warfare with
him, but I wish him no ill;—it is very difficult to get up resentment towards
persons whom one has never seen. It is easy enough to be irritated with friends
or foes vis-ŕ-vis; but, though I am writing with all my heart against
what he has said of me, I am not conscious of personal unkindness towards
himself. I think it necessary to write as I am writing, for my own sake, and for
the sake of the Catholic Priesthood; but I wish to impute nothing worse to him
than that he has been furiously carried away by his feelings. Yet what shall I
say of the upshot of all his talk of my economies and equivocations and the
like? What is the precise work which it is directed to effect? I am at
war with him; but there is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws;
there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done. I
say it with shame and with stern sorrow;—he has attempted a great transgression;
he has attempted (as I may call it) to poison the wells. I will quote him
and explain what I mean.... He says,—
"I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as any honest man can be,
concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I
shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of the three
kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils,
even when confirmed by an oath, because 'then we do not deceive our neighbour,
but allow him to deceive himself?' ... It is admissible, therefore, to use words
and sentences which have a double signification, and leave the hapless hearer to
take which of them he may choose. What proof have I, then, that by 'mean it?
I never said it!' Dr. Newman does not signify, I did not say it, but I did
mean it?"—Pp. 44, 45.
Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper
places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and
double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and
pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from
the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is my
Accuser; what I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his
concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;—to poison by
anticipation the public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse
into the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust of everything that I may say
in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells.
"I am henceforth in doubt and fear," he says, "as much as any
honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write.
How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning
equivocation?" ...
Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect, I am but wasting
my time in saying a word in answer to his calumnies; and this is precisely what
he knows and intends to be its fruit. I can hardly get myself to protest against
a method of controversy so base and cruel, lest in doing so, I should be
violating my self-respect and self-possession; but most base and most cruel it
is. We all know how our imagination runs away with us, how suddenly and at what
a pace;—the saying, "Cćsar's wife should not be suspected," /a/ is an instance of
what I mean. The habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the
turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good sense or a bad. We
interpret it by our antecedent impressions.
The very same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or
our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence.
There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a
Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting
the establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "How naturally he
talks! you would think he was in his senses." Controversies should be decided by
the reason; is it legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public
mind and to its dislikings? Any how, if my accuser is able thus to practise upon
my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my success. If I am natural, he
will tell them "Ars est celare artem;" {it is art to conceal art} if I am convincing, he will suggest that
I am an able logician; if I show warmth, I am acting the indignant innocent; if I am calm,
I am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I clear up difficulties, I am
too plausible and perfect to be true. The more triumphant are my statements, the
more certain will be my defeat.
So will it be if my Accuser succeeds in his manśuvre; but I do not for an
instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my readers may eventually form
of me from these pages, I am confident that they will believe me in what I shall
say in the course of them. I have no misgiving at all, that they will be
ungenerous or harsh towards a man who has been so long before the eyes of the
world; who has so many to speak of him from personal knowledge; whose natural
impulse it has ever been to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than
too little; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise
enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the doctrines and arguments
of his opponents; who has never slurred over facts and reasonings which told
against himself; who has never given his name or authority to proofs which he
thought unsound, or to testimony which he did not think at least plausible; who
has never shrunk from confessing a fault when he felt that he had committed one;
who has ever consulted for others more than for himself; who has given up much
that he loved and prized and could have retained, but that he loved honesty
better than name, and Truth better than dear friends....
What then shall be the special imputation, against which I shall throw myself
in these pages, out of the thousand and one which my Accuser directs upon me? I
mean to confine myself to one, for there is only one about which I much
care,—the charge of Untruthfulness. He may cast upon me as many other
imputations as he pleases, and they may stick on me, as long as they can, in the
course of nature. They will fall to the ground in their season.
And indeed I think the same of the charge of Untruthfulness, and select it
from the rest, not because it is more formidable but because it is more serious.
Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain:
Archbishop Whately /b/ used to say,
"Throw dirt enough, and some will stick;" well, will stick, but not, will stain.
I think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer
than other dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According to the old saying,
Prćvalebit Veritas {truth shall prevail}. There are virtues indeed, which the world
is not fitted to judge of or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and charity: but it
can judge about Truthfulness; it can judge about the natural virtues, and
Truthfulness is one of them. Natural virtues may also become supernatural;
Truthfulness is such; but that does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction of
mankind at large. It may be more difficult in this or that particular case for
men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for the Court of Queen's
Bench at Westminster to try a case fairly which took place in Hindostan: but
that is a question of capacity, not of right. Mankind has the right to judge of
Truthfulness in a Catholic, as in the case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of
a Chinese. I have never doubted, that in my hour, in God's hour, my avenger will
appear, and the world will acquit me of untruthfulness, even though it be not
while I live.
Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my judges
are my own countrymen. I consider, indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and
touchy of mankind; I think them unreasonable, and unjust in their seasons of
excitement; but I had rather be an Englishman, (as in fact I am,) than belong to
any other race under heaven. They are as generous, as they are hasty and burly; and
their repentance for their injustice is greater than their sin.
For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation, of which I am at least
as sensitive, who am the object of it, as they can be, who are only the judges.
I have not set myself to remove it, first, because I never have
had an opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them the disposition to
hear. I have wished to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober /c/.
When shall I pronounce him to be himself again? If I may judge from the tone of the
public press, which represents the public voice, I have great reason to take heart
at this time. I have been treated by contemporary critics in this controversy with great
fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to them for it. However, the decision
of the time and mode of my defence has been taken out of my hands; and I am
thankful that it has been so. I am bound now as a duty to myself, to the
Catholic cause, to the Catholic Priesthood, to give account of myself without
any delay, when I am so rudely and circumstantially charged with Untruthfulness.
I accept the challenge; I shall do my best to meet it, and I shall be content
when I have done so.
It is not my present accuser alone who entertains, and has entertained, so
dishonourable an opinion of me and of my writings. It is the impression of large
classes of men; the impression twenty years ago and the impression now. There
has been a general feeling that I was for years where I had no right to be; that
I was a "Romanist" in Protestant livery and service; that I was doing the work
of a hostile Church in the bosom of the English Establishment, and knew it, or
ought to have known it. There was no need of arguing about particular passages
in my writings, when the fact was so patent, as men thought it to be.
First it was certain, and I could not myself deny it, that I scouted
the name "Protestant." It was certain again, that many of the doctrines which I
professed were popularly and generally known as badges of the Roman Church, as
distinguished from the faith of the Reformation. Next, how could I have come by
them? Evidently, I had certain friends and advisers who did not appear; there
was some underground communication between Stonyhurst or Oscott and my rooms at
Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I was advocating certain doctrines, not by accident, but
on an understanding with ecclesiastics of the old religion. Then men went
further, and said that I had actually been received into that religion, and
withal had leave given me to profess myself a Protestant still. Others went even
further, and gave it out to the world, as a matter of fact, of which they
themselves had the proof in their hands, that I was actually a Jesuit. And when
the opinions which I advocated spread, and younger men went further than I, the
feeling against me waxed stronger and took a wider range.
And now indignation arose at the knavery of a conspiracy such as this:—and it
became of course all the greater in consequence of its being the received belief
of the public at large, that craft and intrigue, such as they fancied they
beheld with their eyes, were the very instruments to which the Catholic Church
has in these last centuries been indebted for her maintenance and extension.
There was another circumstance still, which increased the irritation and
aversion felt by the large classes, of whom I have been speaking, against the
preachers of doctrines, so new to them and so unpalatable; and that was, that
they developed them in so measured a way. If they were inspired by Roman
theologians, (and this was taken for granted,) why did they not speak out at
once? Why did they keep the world in such suspense and anxiety as to what was
coming next, and what was to be the upshot of the whole? Why this reticence, and
half-speaking, and apparent indecision? It was plain that the plan of operations
had been carefully mapped out from the first, and that these men were cautiously
advancing towards its accomplishment, as far as was safe at the moment; that
their aim and their hope was to carry off a large body with them of the young
and the ignorant; that they meant gradually to leaven the minds of the rising
generation, and to open the gates of that city, of which they were the sworn
defenders, to the enemy who lay in ambush outside of it. And when in spite of
the many protestations of the party to the contrary, there was at length an
actual movement among their disciples, and one went over to Rome, and then
another, the worst anticipations and the worst judgments which had been formed
of them received their justification. And, lastly, when men first had said of
me, "You will see, he will go, he is only biding his time, he is waiting
the word of command from Rome," and, when after all, after my arguments and
denunciations of former years, at length I did leave the Anglican Church for the
Roman, then they said to each other, "It is just as we said: we knew it would be so."
This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty years ago, who took no
more than an external and common sense view of what was going on. And partly the
tradition, partly the effect of that feeling, remains to the present time.
Certainly I consider that, in my own case, it is the great obstacle in the way
of my being favourably heard, as at present, when I have to make my defence. Not
only am I now a member of a most un-English communion, whose great aim is
considered to be the extinction of Protestantism and the Protestant Church, and
whose means of attack are popularly supposed to be unscrupulous cunning and
deceit, but how came I originally to have any relations with the Church of Rome
at all? did I, or my opinions, drop from the sky? how came I, in Oxford,
in gremio Universitatis {in the bosom of the University}, to present myself
to the eyes of men in that full blown investiture of Popery? How could I dare, how
could I have the conscience, with warnings, with prophecies, with accusations against
me, to persevere in a path which steadily advanced towards, which ended in, the
religion of Rome? And how am I now to be trusted, when long ago I was trusted,
and was found wanting?
It is this which is the strength of the case of my Accuser against me;—not
the articles of impeachment which he has framed from my writings, and which I
shall easily crumble into dust, but the bias of the court. It is the state of
the atmosphere; it is the vibration all around, which will echo his bold
assertion of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against me, which takes it
for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing it is only ingenious, and that
when my statements are unanswerable, there is always something put out of sight
or hidden in my sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men
are apt to jump, that when much is imputed, much must be true, and that it is
more likely that one should be to blame, than that many should be mistaken in
blaming him;—these are the real foes which I have to fight, and the auxiliaries
to whom my Accuser makes his advances.
Well, I must break through this barrier of prejudice against me if I can; and
I think I shall be able to do so. When first I read the Pamphlet of Accusation,
I almost despaired of meeting effectively such a heap of misrepresentations and
such a vehemence of animosity. What was the good of answering first one point,
and then another, and going through the whole circle of its abuse; when my
answer to the first point would be forgotten, as soon as I got to the second?
What was the use of bringing out half a hundred separate principles or views for
the refutation of the separate counts in the Indictment, when rejoinders of this
sort would but confuse and torment the reader by their number and their
diversity? What hope was there of condensing into a pamphlet of a readable
length, matter which ought freely to expand itself into half a dozen volumes?
What means was there, except the expenditure of interminable pages, to set right
even one of that series of "single passing hints," to use my Assailant's own
language, which, "as with his finger tip he had delivered" against me?
All those separate charges had their force in being illustrations of one and
the same great imputation. He had already a positive idea to illuminate his
whole matter, and to stamp it with a force, and to quicken it with an
interpretation. He called me a liar,—a simple, a broad, an intelligible,
to the English public a plausible arraignment; but for me, to answer in detail
charge one by reason one, and charge two by reason two, and charge three by
reason three, and so on through the whole string both of accusations and
replies, each of which was to be independent of the rest, this would be
certainly labour lost as regards any effective result. What I needed was a
corresponding antagonist unity in my defence, and where was that to be found? We
see, in the case of commentators on the prophecies of Scripture, an
exemplification of the principle on which I am insisting; viz. how much more
powerful even a false interpretation of the sacred text is than none at all;—how
a certain key to the visions of the Apocalypse, for instance, may cling to the
mind (I have found it so in the case of my own), because the view, which it
opens on us, is positive and objective, in spite of the fullest demonstration
that it really has no claim upon our reception. The reader says, "What else can
the prophecy mean?" just as my Accuser asks, "What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?"
... I reflected, and I saw a way out of my perplexity.
Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my meaning; "What
does Dr. Newman mean?" It pointed in the very same direction as that into which
my musings had turned me already. He asks what I mean; not about my
words, not about my arguments, not about my actions, as his ultimate point, but
about that living intelligence, by which I write, and argue, and act. He asks
about my Mind and its Beliefs and its sentiments; and he shall be answered;—not
for his own sake, but for mine, for the sake of the Religion which I profess,
and of the Priesthood in which I am unworthily included, and of my friends and
of my foes, and of that general public which consists of neither one nor the
other, but of well-wishers, lovers of fair play, sceptical cross-questioners,
interested inquirers, curious lookers-on, and simple strangers, unconcerned yet
not careless about the issue,—for the sake of all these he shall be
answered.
My perplexity had not lasted half an hour. I recognized what I had to do,
though I shrank from both the task and the exposure which it would entail. I
must, I said, give the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am, that it
may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which
gibbers instead of me. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a
scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes. False ideas may be refuted indeed
by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled. I will vanquish, not my
Accuser, but my judges. I will indeed answer his charges and
criticisms on me one by one /1/, lest any one should say
that they are unanswerable, but such a work shall not be the scope nor the substance
of my reply. I will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; I will state
the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or accident each opinion had
its rise, how far and how they developed from within, how they grew, were modified,
were combined, were in collision with each other, and were changed; again how I conducted
myself towards them, and how, and how far, and for how long a time, I thought I could
hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements which I had made and with
the position which I held. I must show,—what is the very truth,—that the doctrines
which I held, and have held for so many years, have been taught me (speaking
humanly) partly by the suggestions of Protestant friends, partly by the teaching
of books, and partly by the action of my own mind: and thus I shall account for
that phenomenon which to so many seems so wonderful, that I should have left "my
kindred and my father's house" for a Church from which once I turned away with
dread;—so wonderful to them! as if forsooth a Religion which has flourished
through so many ages, among so many nations, amid such varieties of social life,
in such contrary classes and conditions of men, and after so many revolutions,
political and civil, could not subdue the reason and overcome the heart, without
the aid of fraud in the process and the sophistries of the schools.
What I had proposed to myself in the course of half-an-hour, I determined on
at the end of ten days. However, I have many difficulties in fulfilling my
design. How am I to say all that has to be said in a reasonable compass? And
then as to the materials of my narrative; I have no autobiographical notes to
consult, no written explanations of particular treatises or of tracts which at
the time gave offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions or
conversations, and few contemporary memoranda, I fear, of the feelings or
motives under which, from time to time I acted. I have an abundance of letters from
friends with some copies or drafts of my answers to them, but they are for the
most part unsorted; and, till this process has taken place, they are even too
numerous and various to be available at a moment for my purpose. Then, as to the
volumes which I have published, they would in many ways serve me, were I well up
in them: but though I took great pains in their composition, I have thought
little about them, when they were once out of my hands, and for the most part
the last time I read them has been when I revised their last proof sheets.
Under these circumstances my sketch will of course be incomplete. I now for
the first time contemplate my course as a whole; it is a first essay, but it
will contain, I trust, no serious or substantial mistake, and so far will answer
the purpose for which I write it. I purpose to set nothing down in it as
certain, of which I have not a clear memory, or some written memorial, or the
corroboration of some friend. There are witnesses enough up and down the country
to verify, or correct, or complete it; and letters moreover of my own in
abundance, unless they have been destroyed.
Moreover, I mean to be simply personal and historical: I am not expounding
Catholic doctrine, I am doing no more than explaining myself, and my opinions
and actions. I wish, as far as I am able, simply to state facts, whether they
are ultimately determined to be for me or against me. Of course there will be
room enough for contrariety of judgment among my readers, as to the necessity,
or appositeness, or value, or good taste, or religious prudence, of the details
which I shall introduce. I may be accused of laying stress on little things, of
being beside the mark, of going into impertinent or ridiculous details, of
sounding my own praise, of giving scandal; but this is a case above all others,
in which I am bound to follow my own lights and to speak out my own heart. It is not at
all pleasant for me to be egotistical; nor to be criticized for being so. It is
not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within
me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or
flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I
might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to
be called to my face a liar and a knave; nor should I be doing my duty to my
faith or to my name, if I were to suffer it. I know I have done nothing to
deserve such an insult, and if I prove this, as I hope to do, I must not care
for such incidental annoyances as are involved in the process.
Newman's Notes:
/1/
This was done in the Appendix, of which the more important parts are preserved in the Notes.
Here ends the Preface to Newman's Apologia, the text continues
in Chapter 1.
Trumbull's Notes:
/a/
For the origin of the phrase "Cćsar's wife should not be suspected"
see Plutarch's Life of Ceasar Chapter 10.
/b/
Richard Whately (1787–1863), Anglican Archbishop of Dublin.
/c/
According to Ebenezer Cobham Brewer in Readers Handbook of Allusions, References, Plots and Stories (1880):
"Another tale is told of the Macedonian [king Philip (father of Alexander the Great)].
A woman asked him to do her justice, but the testy monarch refused to bear her.
"I shall appeal," said the woman. "Appeal!" thundered Philip. "And to whom will you appeal, woman?"
"To Philip sober," was her reply, and her cause was heard patiently.
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