iv.]

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When I deny the possibility of Roman Catholics having any success in their search for an infallible Church, I hope you will not think that I hold any Pyrrhonic system of sceptical philosophy, or that I disparage the amount of certainty which the human mind is capable of arriving at. It is, in truth, Roman Catholics who get into difficulties from disparaging that homely kind of certainty which suffices to govern our practical decisions in all the most important affairs of life. This seems to them a poor thing, because logicians will only class this practical certainty as high probability, and because it shades off into probability by gradations impossible to be measured. We are certain, for instance, that there was such a man as Julius Cæsar. We may call ourselves certain about the principal events of his life; but when you go into details, and inquire, for instance, what knowledge he had of Catiline's conspiracy, you soon come to questions to which you can give only probable or doubtful answers. And it is just the same as to the facts of Christianity; for ours is a historical religion, and our knowledge of it has to follow the same laws as our knowledge of other history. About the great facts (including all the knowledge of which we count necessary to salvation) we may fairly call ourselves certain. When we descend to details, questions may be proposed, our answers to which can only be said to be probable, and others which we answer with hesitation, or declare ourselves unable to answer at all. This seems to Roman Catholics an unsatisfactory state of things, and they look about for some tribunal which shall give to any question that may be proposed answers absolutely free from risk of error. But how can we eliminate risk of error from the process of finding this tribunal, or, indeed, of determining whether it exists at all? And if we cannot, what have we gained? Archbishop Whately used to tell a story of a bridge at Bath which was so crazy that an old lady was afraid to walk across; so she got herself carried over in a sedan chair. What she gained by that was just not seeing the danger; but the bridge had to bear her own weight and that of the chair and bearers into the bargain. And so those who,

through fear of making wrong decisions, trust themselves to adopt blindfold the decisions of a supposed infallible authority gain nothing but not seeing the risk of error. But, in real truth, their risk of going wrong in each of the decisions adopted blindfold is fully as great as before, and, in addition, they make one judgment which we may confidently pronounce to be wrong—namely, the judgment that the Church of Rome is infallible.

The certainty to which Roman Catholics aspire is a thing different altogether in kind from what we commonly call practical certainty. Newman claims for his certainty the attribute of indefectibility, and he plainly shows that it is his theory on this point which has kept him a Roman Catholic, notwithstanding several shocks his faith has met with since he joined that communion. Newman's idea is this: if you only think a thing to be true, you may to-morrow find reason to think it not to be true; but if you certainly know a thing to be true, truth cannot change-that will be true to-morrow which is true to-day; so that, if we once certainly apprehend a truth, we must hold it fast, convinced that any other truth we may discover can only contradict it in appearance. Thus, he holds that a man can never lose his certitude, and, if he appears to do so, it only proves that he never had had it. For example, if a man believes himself to have become certain of the infallibility of the Roman Church, and, after joining her, becomes disgusted at the definition of the Immaculate Conception or the Pope's personal infallibility, and says, This is more than I bargained for, and quits her communion, this does not show that he has lost his certainty of the Church's infallibility, but that he never had had it. He might have believed all the doctrines which the Church had propounded at the time he joined her, but he did not understand that faith in her inerrancy required him equally to believe all that she might at any time teach.

By way, I suppose, of making his theory more acceptable to a Bible Protestant, Newman puts the following case:'Suppose,' he says, 'I have a certainty that the Bible is inspired, and that it teaches that Adam was the first man; and

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suppose that all ethnologists, philologists, anatomists, and antiquarians, led by a multitude of independent proofs, agreed in holding that there were different races of men, and that Adam had only made his appearance at a definite point of time, in a comparatively modern world: then, if I had believed with an assent short of certainty, this new evidence might make me lose my faith; but otherwise I should still firmly hold what I believed to come from Heaven. I should not argue or defend myself, but only wait for better times. Philosophers might take their course for me; I should consider that they and I thought in different mediums, and that their certitude could not be in antagonism with mine.' I recollect hearing, when I was young, that there were then still surviving Roman Catholic ecclesiastics who, in reference to the Copernican theory of astronomy, took the course here described. They looked upon it as a scientific craze, which had become so epidemic, that direct struggle with it was time wasted. They must only wait until it would blow over.

Dr. Newman owns that he is making an impossible supposition in putting the case that a philosophic discovery might contradict Revelation. But in such a case I am sure that the course which he recommends is an irrational one. No one can rationally maintain the same thing to be theologically true and philosophically false. Men may resolutely look at a question only from one side. A philosopher may shut his eyes to the facts with which theologians are conversant, or vice versa. In the case supposed, clearly, Newman would simply refuse to examine the evidence tendered him by the philosophers. But if he did examine, and found it convincing, he would be obliged to revise his former opinion; and either own that what he had taken for a revelation was not one, or, more probably, that he had misunderstood it. Dr. Newman's fallacy is simply this-he knows that what is true ✔ must always remain true, and he infers that what men are fully persuaded is true must always remain true. This would be the case if men were infallible, and if their undoubting persuasion always corresponded with the reality of things; but, alas, this is by no means the case. A single example

suffices. For how many ages must all men have believed with undoubting persuasion in the immoveability of the earth we stand on, and yet the opposite doctrine is now taught as part of a child's elementary education?

Indeed, with respect to this word certainty, I may remark, that the more people talk about their certainty the less they really have. If one of you came in and told me, 'I saw the Prince of Wales just now walking down Sackville-street,' I might be a good deal surprised at your news, but there would be nothing in your language to make me think you were saying anything about which you had not full knowledge. But if you said, I am certain I saw the Prince of Wales just now,' I should conclude you were by no means assured yourself of the truth of what you said.

But to return. There cannot be a plainer proof that men's so-called certainty does not always correspond with the reality of things, than the fact that there may be opposing certainties. Dr. Newman, for instance, is certain the Pope is infallible, and I am certain he is not. Dr. Newman would get over this by calling his strong conviction certainty, and giving to mine some weaker name. But what is this but assuming that he is infallible, and I am not? And when he refuses to revise his former judgment that the Church of Rome is infallible, notwithstanding that since he came to it the Pope has made two decisions which, if Newman were free to exercise his own judgment, he would pronounce to be wrong, what is this but assuming that he was infallible at the time of his former judgment?

On the contrary, no wise man holds any conclusion of his to be absolutely irreversible. There are some things which we may firmly believe with a full persuasion that no new evidence will turn up to contradict them. In that persuasion we may legitimately refuse to attend to opposing evidence that is manifestly not of the first class. Thus, I have a firm belief in the universality of the law of gravitation. I do not give myself the trouble to examine into stories of contrary facts alleged to take place in darkened rooms, because I know that while the working of the law of gravity is just the

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same in the dark and in the light, the absence of light is highly convenient when imposture is attempted. In like manner, I would not lightly give heed to stories affecting the character of a person in whom I had full confidence. But if I made it a canon that on no evidence whatever would I believe anything to that person's disadvantage; if, in any case, I maintained that the conclusion I had drawn from my study of one class of facts must never be abandoned, no matter what new facts might come to light, then my belief could no longer be called faith-it would be prejudice.

I have thought that Cardinal Newman's celebrity required me to give full examination to his attempt to make a philosophic basis of Roman belief, founded on a study of the ordinary laws of human assent; but I think I may safely say that that attempt has totally failed, even in the judgment of his own co-religionists. When Newman's book first came out, one could constantly see traces of its influence in Roman Catholic articles in Magazines and Reviews. Now it seems to have dropped very much out of sight, and the highest Roman Catholic authorities lay quite a different basis for their faith. But I will put off speaking of that till the next Lecture.