pared for the pulpit, neither was I for the bed- ten times more arrogant, unreasonable, and side. (Vol. i., p. 278.) bitter than the clerical, and the female popes a hundred times worse than either-laid down the law, and demanded instant obedience. This scantiness of natural power and of acquired learning becomes not inconvenient in dealing with the many high matters which he confesses to be much too hard for him. He understands the first invocation in the Litany of the English Prayer-Book; the rest are not to him intelligible. When I pronounce them, I feel in a momentary maze, as if a dizziness had come on me, or as if I had slipped and were twisted round. I have had to execute a performance, and I have always done it ill.... To confess the honest truth, when I say the words of our invocations with the least attempt to understand them, I feel balancing myself upon the finest edges between Tritheism on the one side, and Sabellianism, if I know what that is, on the other. I may confidently say I feel no such straitness and peril in using the Latin forms. (Vol. ii., p. 349.) Nor is it only here that he speaks of himself as feebly groping his way where others walked with enviable confidence. Sixty years ago the interpretation of Scripture was one vast mass of conventionalisms, very galling, very oppressive, yet not to be touched as you would value your peace and character. Should any one have the temerity to express a doubt whether the words, "In the place where the tree falleth, there shall it lie,” | were point blank against purgatory, or whether the "works" contrasted by St. Paul with "faith" included Christian obedience in the same category as Jewish ordinances, he must be an atheist, or, still worse, a Papist in disguise. Hence possibly my questionings were less reverent and more impatient than they might have been. I had to seek, and I did seek, for a clue through this sea of doubtful interpretations; but I was not much of a Biblical scholar, and still less read in the Fathers or even in our own divines. The latter are a wordy race, and one has to be a long time getting at the pith of their meaning. Some of them seem to have no other art than that of disguising the weakness of their own convictions. (Vol. ii., p. 378.) ... In like manner he is willing to admit that when, after a sojourn in Normandy, he made up his mind to join the Church of Rome, he was actuated chiefly by a desire to rid himself of a sense of tormenting and overpowering difficulties. I believe I was seeking rest. I was distracted and wearied with discussions above my measure, my faculties, and my attainments. I disliked the tone of disputants, all the more because I easily fell into it myself. The Church of England was one vast arena of controversy. Ten thousand popes—the lay popes (Vol. ii., p. 392.) This is all very amusing, although it fails to carry to our minds a due sense of the author's incapacity for dealing with the points in question. It is not without a slight temptation to incredulity that we listen to Mr. Mozley when he tells us that he has attempted no account of Newman's works, having always been a "bad reader" and having now "less power than ever of mastering any work requiring close attention and continued thought; and we are tempted to put our own interpretation on his confession that the work before us is but a superficial one, "for I am not much of a logician, or of a metaphysician, or of a philosopher; least of all am I a theologian." The truth is simply this, that Mr. Mozley is before all things a journalist. Although he has not thought proper in these confessions to do more than hint obscurely at the principal occupation of his own life, it is notorious that he has been for many years one of the chief contributors to a leading newspaper, and he has no reason to be ashamed of his performances in that capacity. He also acted for some time as editor of the British Critic, as the successor of Newman himself. These facts suggest the singular reflection that a man so whimsi cal in his habits, so inaccurate in his statements, and so unsettled in his opinions, should have exercised a considerable influence over the political and theological views of his contemporaries. If we were to judge of his writing by the style of the volumes now before us, we should say it is slipshod and careless, though humorous. He probably wrote better at other times and in other places. But both as a writer and a thinker he must be ranked far below his brother, Dr. James B. Mozley, the late Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. His lifelong experience as a journalist accounts for some shortcomings as well as for some of his merits as a writer. It has put him so effectually on his guard against dulness as to tempt him to undue efforts to be always bright and sparkling. Matters even of importance are rather touched lightly than Mr. Mozley is more anxious for dramatic handled with adequate seriousness; and grouping than for the clear sequence of his narratives. The same cause has led him into not a few useless digressions and exaggerations. It has exposed him 3 to charges of inaccuracy in speaking of man, born of a Huguenot family, was I possess a great mass of letters, journals, and other documents that might have helped to make these volumes a little more interesting and more authentic. But I have now only a small remainder of my eyesight - one eye gone and not much left of the other-while my prospects of life and strength are also a small and doubtful remainder. I should soon have lost myself had I attempted to penetrate into all this buried material. (Vol. i., p. 9.) Calvinism, even in a modified form, is not so pleasant a creed as to leave room for dissatisfaction if any one can be shown not to be imbued with it; and in the Assembly's Catechism it still exhibits feat ures so shocking that we can well understand the indignation which the imputation of it would rouse in minds for whom it has no attraction. The Catechism states, in the broadest and baldest way, the sev erance of mankind into the small body of the elect who must be saved in spite of themselves, and the larger body of the reprobate whose ruin even divine power is unable to avert. We welcome, therefore, the assurance of Mr. Francis Newman that Mrs. Newman was free of all leanings to Calvinism in any shape; nor are we sorry to learn that she never introduced, either to him, or, as he believes, to any of her children, any one of the books named by Mr. Mozley. Not only is it, he declares, untrue that she taught him or them the Assembly's Catechism, but he is not aware that he has ever seen it, while he is quite sure that in his father's house he never heard of its name or its existence. On this subject we have in the "Apologia" only the following sentence: I was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the Bible; but I had no Of course I had perfect knowledge of my cate formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. chism. We regret that he should have had this fear, or that, having it, he should not have shrunk from entering into details with regard to the cardinal's early life, unless he had something like a certitude of the exactness of his picture. To the outward world it is of comparatively little moment whether Dr. Newman's mother belonged to one school of religious thought or to another; but our knowledge of the influences which moulded or may have moulded his childhood must affect our judgment of his career as a whole. For a long time he showed a marked leaning to the party which was known as the Evangelical. Later on, he was for a long time the champion of the theories of churchmanship specially insisted on by the great Caroline divines. It is therefore a matter of importance to ascertain, if we can, the channel by which he passed from one stage of his religious life to an- We can scarcely doubt that the words other. On this point we learn something "my catechism" must denote the catefrom his " "Apologia; we gather some-chism which he would regard as his own thing more from the reminiscences of Mr. so long as he remained a member of the Mozley, who regrets that in his "biogra- Church of England; and this catechism, phy" "Newman has not done justice to it is quite certain, could not be that of his early adventures and sallies into the the Assembly of Westminster. But it is domains of thought, politics, fancy, and not so easy to understand precisely what taste." To this it is a sufficient answer may be meant by the absence or lack of that the "Apologia” was not meant to be formed religious opinions in his early a biography, and that an enumeration of youth. If we follow Mr. Mozley, we his accomplishments in music and poetry shall suppose that Dr. Newman refers to would have been out of place in it. But the sudden passage from death to life, if the "Apologia" does not in terms con- from deliberate rebellion to absolute subtradict, it gives no direct countenance to mission, from love of iniquity to love of Mr. Mozley's statement that Mrs. New-goodness, which, according to certain schools, is the immediate result of the instantaneous conversion wrought in the elect and in these alone. "He expected," Mr. Mozley tells us, "to be converted;' in due time he was 'converted; ' and the day and hour of his conversion he has ever remembered, and no doubt observed." This description scarcely tallies with the account in the "Apologia," which speaks only of a "great change of thought." I fell under the influences of a definite creed, and received into my intellect impressions of dogma which, through God's mercy, have never been effaced or obscured. sons so removed had done, he supposed, all the good they could do or were likely to do, and they were suddenly withdrawn because they would do no more or could do no more, although the prolonged life of many who had altogether survived their work was a fact calling not less urgently for an explanation. There is, in truth, no difficulty in framing theories which account for certain sets of phesuch theories may exhibit no little humor. nomena only; and the illustrations of Such an illustration, we are told, Dr. Newman gave, when Mr. Mozley's servant drove him in a pony trap from Cholderton to Salisbury, eleven miles. The poor man, who was gardener, and always had a good deal to say about the country and things in general, talked the whole way. The next letter from Newman ended with, "Pony went well; so did Meacher's tongue. Shoot them both. They will never be better than they are now!" (Vol. i., p. 209.) But far from adding that the exact moment of the change has been commemorated continuously to the present time, Dr. Newman goes on to say that the feel ing itself, in its Calvinistic aspect, soon passed away. The reason for its thus vanishing is obvious. He had never embraced the negative side of the Calvinistic theory of conversion. He looked upon himself as predestined to salvation; he thought of others as "simply passed over, An inconsistency still more marked is not predestined to eternal death," adding exhibited in the case of one of the most that, like his beloved teacher, Thomas conspicuous figures in the early days of Scott, of Aston Sandford, he rejected the the Oxford movement. Richard Hurrell latter proposition as a detestable doctrine. Froude has left behind him a reputation The passage is significant as showing such as the most rigid of sacerdotalists the pertinacity with which Dr. Newman might rejoice to attain; but it is quite has always clung to the idea of dogma as possible for a Hildebrand or Becket to the declaration of an external visible au- unite the most extravagant ecclesiastical thority, not as the statement of truth pretensions with extreme hatred of other which remains unaffected whether it be religious bodies which put forth like declared by such an authority or not. claims, and in such instances there is in We can therefore take these sentences truth no difference of opinion, except as along with Mr. Mozley's declaration, else- to the geographical centre of power. where made, that "Newman was always Froude, therefore, might insist on these for a thorough religious conversion, with pretensions, and yet remain an Anglican a real sense of it; a deep sense of the of the Anglicans. The only question is necessity of doctrinal truths, and an ab- whether he did so or did not. Mr. Mozsolute devotion to its claims." But Mr. ley speaks of him as always somewhat in Mozley had spoken of conversion at the advance of Newman, but still as returning outset as an instantaneous passage from from his cruise in the Mediterranean in one type of character to another; and 1833 "more utterly set against Roman this we fail to reconcile with a later pas- Catholics than he had been before. His sage in which he speaks of Newman as conclusion was that they held the truth in maintaining such a change to be impossi- unrighteousness; that they were wretched ble, and as claiming for himself "to have Tridentines everywhere and, of course, been substantially the same from first to ever since the Reformation; that the conlast, only in progress and development; duct and behavior of the clergy was such under heaven-sent guidances, impulse, that it was impossible they could believe and assistance." It is quite possible that what they professed; that they were idolthe charge of inconsistency may apply aters in the sense of substituting easy both to Mr. Mozley and to Dr. Newman. and good-natured divinities for the God The latter, it seems, was disposed not of Truth and Holiness." (Vol. i., p. 304.) merely to approve the notion of a York-In his "Remains" Froude was allowed shire schoolmaster that men never change, to speak unreservedly for himself. No but to formulate a theory accounting_for attempt was made by his editors to soften deaths chronologically premature. Per- or modify any of his utterances; and T upon the whole, Mr. Mozley remarks, they | seems to think. Such conduct may be With this we need only contrast the had an intellect as critical and logical as it was It seems, indeed, strange that the por mate. derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with admiration towards the being changed, it may assume a fairer hue. Speaking of some French priests whom he met at Caen in 1843, Mr. Mozley tells us that "they took it for granted that Newman would join their communion, and that he was only lingering in order to bring more with him in the end." This [he adds] they seemed to think a natural and proper proceeding; and I should doubt whether there exists a Frenchman capable of thinking otherwise. It may seem unwarrantable to attribute to a great and gallant nation a moral code which few Englishmen will be found to tolerate; but France is a military nation, and has also ever been divided into parties practically at war, and observing the old maxim that all is fair in love and in war. Englishmen hardly know what a great blessing we enjoy in being able, upon the whole, to observe the code of honor, even while we disagree. (Vol. ii., p. 291.) We This is one of the taunts against France and Frenchmen which Mr. Mozley throws out from time to time with discreditable rashness. Yet it appears from his grotesque account of his visit to Normandy that he was profoundly ignorant of the language and the manners of the French people, and he seems never before to have been inside a Roman Catholic Church. It seems to us the height of fatuous impertinence to assume that "we Englishmen " have a sense of honor to which the French cannot attain because they are "a military nation :" and certainly that high sense of honor was not universal amongst Mr. Mozley's priestly friends and asso ciates. For at this very time Mr. Spencer, afterwards known more widely as Father Ignatius, was urging on his party preIt is difficult [he says] to enumerate the precisely the conduct which commended cise additions to my theological creed which I itself to the priests at Caen. "Let us remain quietly for some years till, by God's blessing, the ears of Englishmen are become accustomed to hear the name of Rome pronounced with reverence." At the end of this term you will soon see the fruits of our patience. In truth, wherever there is compromise, we must expect to see the terms on which it rests strained from time to time at either end. That there are elements of compromise both in the articles and in the formularies of the English Church, is a fact beyond question; and the large extent to which the compromise may be lawfully, though not honorably, carried in the direction of Roman teaching, has been authoritatively laid down in the Bennett judgment. It is little better than a quibble to pretend that minds in such a state are not in substantial harmony with the dogmatic system of the Roman Church. The hon. esty of men who with such convictions retain their position in the English Church is another question, which cannot be settled quite so easily perhaps as Mr. Mozley Apologia, p. 85. † Apologia, p. 87. Whether the amount of liberty exercised | statements of Mr. Francis Newman in his by the vicar of Frome would have per"Phases of Faith." It seems, in truth, to manently satisfied Mr. Spencer, we may be far removed from fact. The precocity well doubt; but that there are honest was exhibited not by the younger brother, English gentlemen who cannot see why but by the elder, who soon found himself the terms of compromise may not be in- in circumstances which forced him into terpreted as indulgently on the side of a premature leadership. The brothers Laud as on that of Baxter, we cannot started from a common ground, where a doubt at all; and the admiration for general agreement left no room for anyRome on the one side balances the ad- thing like angry debate or painful argumiration of nonconformity on the other. ment, until the mind of the elder began to show that the impression of the Augus tinian City of God was already deeply engraven upon it. The difference began when the elder formulated his ideas of an external infallible authority in matters of faith; but even when this was met by the counter assertion that the choice between Rome and Canterbury as such an authority was a mere geographical accident, there was nothing of that prolonged disputing on which Mr. Mozley lays stress. The banquet to which Mr. Mozley invites his readers is both rich and varied; but we cannot say that the entertainment places us altogether at our ease. If all the personages of whom he speaks were wholly unknown to us, we might resign ourselves to the comfortable supposition that his judgments of them are to all intents and purposes just and right. But each fresh mistake abates our confidence, while it makes us feel that Mr. Mozley's reliance on his power of recollection is vastly too great. He remembers the en It is unfortunate that the value of the reminiscences which form the bulk of these volumes must be tested in details affecting personal interests and feelings, and sometimes trenching on painful topics. But the necessity exists; and only by seeing how matters stand in two or three instances can we reasonably convince ourselves that careful examination may produce the same results in others. The world has already dealt somewhat freely with the relations, or the supposed relations, between Cardinal Newman and his brother Mr. Francis Newman. Such relations need, of course, the most delicate handling; and here assuredly Mr. Mozley would have done well to try his own memory by the impressions left on those of whom he was speaking. The matter is not one of intrinsic importance. The public is not greatly concerned in determining the degrees of cleverness or other qualities in a family. But when two brothers have won for themselves a name, when in different directions they have ex-thusiastic praises bestowed on Arnold by ercised a large influence on the thought Rugby boys during their Oxford resi of the age, it becomes doubly imprudent dence, and the wealth of oracular sayings to commit to paper recollections which for which they professed themselves inmay not be trustworthy. Mr. Mozley is debted to him. "Had I memory," he anxious to make good what he regards as adds, "or had I kept a journal, I should serious omissions in Dr. Newman's now be able to reproduce hundreds of "Apologia," forgetting that that work them." But the lack of memory and the contains professedly a history not of his absence of a journal are serious hinlife, but only of his religious opinions; drances for an historian, and such admisand for this reason he speaks of the sions do not allay our fears. With some school at Ealing, in which Newman rose feelings of wonder we read of Rugby as almost at a bound to the head, "where, giving itself up, after Dr. Wooll's time, before long, he was followed by his no to "historical and philosophical speculaless remarkable and even more precocious tions," and it is not without amusement brother, Frank Newman. From boyhood that we come across some remarks on the the two brothers had taken the opposite relation of a public schoolboy to his head sides on every possible question, and per- master. Mr. Mozley had been unsuccesshaps the fact that one of the born dispu- ful in his application to Arnold for the tants was more than four years younger admission of his brother James, the future than the other accounts somewhat for divinity professor, to Rugby. The boy their respective lines of divergence. If was a few months too old; and Mr. Mozthey argued at all on an equality, the ley was reconciled to the decision, which younger must be the cleverer, the elder at first keenly disappointed him, by the more mature." On this point Dr. New- fact that his brother had a hesitation in man, in his "Apologia," says nothing; his speech, and, moreover, that there nor is this description warranted by any were some points of fatal resemblance" 66 |