FATHER 'NEWMAN AND THE ROMISH MYSTIFICATIONS.

Sin—As an old subscriber, I beg insertion .for a few remarks upon some of those wholesale assertions extracted from Mr. J. I. Newman's Lectures, re- viewed in your number of the 26th July. They shall be written in the spirit of your own resolution, "not to enter upon the theological dispute at all." The points I would notice are Mr. Newman's representation of the "im- perious force with which the " tradition of Protestantism" had overruled the Catholic sympathies of several commanding intellects, which he enu- merates, through successive generations. He speaks of Alexander Pope as concealing his Catholicism in his poems; of Samuel Johnson as "yearning for the Catholie Church" ; of Walter Scott as "ashamed of his Catholic tendencies" ; of Wordsworth as "obliged to qualify Catholic sonnets by Anti-Catholic complements to them" ; of Burke as allowing his opinions, in some unspecified eases, to be moulded by "political necessity" ; of each and all as "feeling tenderly" towards &minima, "the religion of their fathers and neighbours round them," but as "overawed by the rush and vehemence of Protestant tradition, growing fuller and more impetuous with every successive quarter of a cen- tury." The whole series of these assertions bear that same character of " plausible priestly assurance" which you elsewhere attribute to his contro- versial statements.

The unfair use to which Mr. Newman turns the unstudied candour

of the great and free minds he has named, is calculated to teach caution, if not complete reserve, in making concessions which a thoroughpaced advocate has no scruple in turning to any account that suite his purpose. I have little doubt of the surprise with which Johnson, or Scott, or Burke, would thus find themselves pressed into the array of the Fathers of the Oratory in their aggression on the principles of Protestant England. Be-

fore I observe on each of these cases in detail, permit me to say a few words in general on Mr. Newman's mistake, (if it be not a- dishonesty,) in claiming these great intellects as inclined to Romanism in a measure they dared not avow.

Of the instinctive unexamining hostility which protests against Roman-

ism as a whole, without any diserimination of its elements, it is not my purpose to speak, It can neither be altogether approved nor must we ven- ture to pronounce it without itar use to the 'common weal. Looking at the national. -countermovement against the late move in advance of the Papacy in these realms, no doubt, the critic, the historian, the scholar, the divine, would find much illogical and incoagruons, in what Mr. Carlyle would call the " indistinct mutterings" of a community, exclaiming, " in its great , clumsy way," against an evil rathertelt than understood, "No smoke with- out fire,A is a preverb as trivial as true ; and though it may suit a party: arrested ,in the first overt act of a yet undeveloped policy, to put on an air of innocent surprise, and ask, " What's all the row about?" yet when the immediate excitement subsides, and the whole matter eomes under the calm review of history, I have little doubt the decision will be, that never yet was the mind of a whole nation so deeply moved without adequate cause.

Again, there may be, and doubtless there are, matiy powerful minds go

deeply and sternly possessed with a kentie'of the 'evils and seductions of the Romist system, that they sednionsly And of Set plirpOse close their' eyes agaitiet the recognition of anything good or beautiful therein. There may be safety, anorfot aught I know wisdom, in this stern adhesion to fixed prin- cite: and such minds I do not presume tn,judge either. But there are of eit, among whom the writer ventures Inimbly to claim a place, who, deeply and intensely convinced of the truth of Protestantism in to far as it is antagonistic to and resistent against Roinatrisin, yet cannot think it either unfaithful or unwise to recognize candidly whatever• of the beautiful, the : grand, or the tree, may be discovered mind that preponderating maim of error. I feel that we wrong ourselves, toya -plate additional 'sturriblingblecks in the way of Romarrista, When we confound the trtdhs they possess with the errors they have invented : the more clearly we discern the true " bleased-' ness" of the Virgin Mary, the better 'able are see to protest' against Ma-

riolatry. ,

For a controversial purpose, it may serve Mr. Newman's end to turn this candour to unfair account, and to claim as &mistily inclined, men who viewing the subject from a great mental and moral elevation, never dreamed of a day when their free thoughts would be premed into arguments by the zeal or audacity of a thoroughgoing Oratoriat preacher : but we may imagine how the " obstinate rationality " of Johnson would rise indignant to rebuke the smooth subtilty of a Newman, if he ventured in his presence to lay hold of one of those " fitful defences" of some parts of &Monism, which, as was his Wont, he occasional) y put forward as paradoxes, finally to controvert and annihilate ; how he would belabour (Garagantua-like) the sophist endeavour- ing to make his conversational speculations pass for his definite eoriclueione; and Most of all, how would this mighty and independent mind repudiate the imputation that its free thoughts were trammelled by the " inirions com- pulsion" of Protestant tradition. Mr. Newman's selection of .Telmsen is an unlucky. one : he could not have fixed on a man of his own or any other day leis likely to pin his faith upon the ciorneentionalities of established modes of thinking; 'nay, the traffittonal " iniluences-of hie ;mobilises were rather; in'favoer of tines againit Ilomanisrn ; and when Mr. Ifeinnen alludes to his " fitful defences" of the iyeteni, he provokes Us to plum in contra)* with them such slighting conclusioes as the following : "A good man; in great doubt of his aeceptanee With-God, and prong credulous, maybe glad to be of cheirelt where theft are so warty help to get to .heavers : I would be a Pa-

plat if I eoteld—I have fear Ottoivh ; an obstinate rationality prevents'

me." . Surely such a sentence ei this pats an end to the fiction that Johnson was kept from Popery by any ." pressure from without." : all his hindrances arose from the free workings of the great intellect withal upon such views of Christian truth as he had attained to.

Before I conclude this letter, allow me to state a very remarkable effect

produced on soy own mind by a close observation of the working of the &- mil system, during a visit to Rome, from which I am but just returned. It may not be without its use • to others, to know the result of an experiment made by one wishing to consider the phsenomena of Romanism with candour, bat without Surrendering mitered convictions. I went to Rome, possessed with the idea that I should be able to discriminate between the unquestioned historic monuments and certaintiesit possesses, and those fictions and lying wonders which from age to age have been added on to original tenths; and I wished as far as possible to surrender myself to so muoh of the religio loci as I should find by universal consent placed beyond all controversy. In a very short time, however, I began to feel a kind of ham growing over my mind, and producing an inability tq distinguish the line between truth and falsehood : not that I became more disposed to adopt fable, but less com- petent to discern fable from fact, when both were presented tome in the some authoritative form. To illustrate what I mean by some examples. Rome cer- tainly possesses some unquestionable monuments, places, events, attesting the certainty and reality of some great Christian facts ; but, with a most wretched pertinacity, has tacked to each certain truth seine self-evident lie or mon- strous fable, and calls on you to believe and receive the whole as of equal authority : and the result is, that if your own faculty of faith is not im- paired, you at least begin to understand the process by which superstition begets infidelity. 'Thus—to pass over the vexata qumstio, whether St. Peter ever was at Rome, we shall assume that he was there : they show you his prison. Pre-- bably it was his prison, and as such, would allind a visitor within its narrow bounds room for much interesting reflection; but before your mind eau go out into exercise on the idea that you are standing where the Lord's Apostle stood, or slept, or prayed, your sleeve is pulled, and your attention claimed for a miraculous well, which, never filling or failing, sprang up as a baptis- mal font for the Apostle's use, to baptize his gaoler and fellow prisoners : this being evidently an invention for the honour of the Prince of the Apo-, ties, as a pendant for the conversion of the gaoler of Phillippi by St. Peal. Then the torch is held to show you theApostle's profile impressed on a stone, where a rude soldier knocked his head against the wall, and left his port, air im rinted in clear defined lines !

gain—a small wayside chapel marks a spot where the Apostles St. Peter and. St. Paul met on their respective roads to martyrdom : and, as before, to-- pass by all question of fact—assuming them to have so met, such a spot would be hallowed by interesting recollections; but all such associations are destroyed when you read on the chapel-wall an invented dialogue, supposed to pass between them, in which St. Paul is made to salute him—'1 to whom he gave place no not for one hour," and whom he " withstood to the fare" when necessary—as "head of the Church and prince of the Apostles"; a recognition which St. Peter is made to repay with some eorresponidang com- pliment to St. Paul's abilities as a preacher. The effect of all this on the- mind is exceedingly painful. When certainties and inventions are thus pressed on us as of equal authority, the value of evidence becomes impaired altogether; and though I trust I have returned from the experience of taese things " knowing both what and in whom I have believed " not lees firmly than before, yet I have learned at least to understand how it is-that wally minds come out from the same ordeal with their faith in history and testi- mony refined into a polite incredulity, and ever ready with a question like that of jesting Pilate—" Who can distinguish what is truth, and what false- hood, in these things ? " There is not a work of art executed under the influence of the Romer,- Church to which these observations do net in some measure apply. You pan scarce admire a single specimen of the wonders of painting with which the galleries or churches of Italy abound, without having your taste and reason placed at variance, by the introduction of something lying or legendary into what is beautiful and true; and though I am far, perhaps as far as Mr. Iteve- man himself, from calling "scepticism or infidelity venial errors," yet I ern free to say, in explanation though not in apology for them, that they ore evils flowing forth upon the world as direct results of the ocer-strain which Romanism is ever putting upon the believing power of the mind.

A. It. rt.