Cardinal Newman has been charged in one of Bishop Wilber-
force's letters with having said in 1863 that the Catholics can do nothing to arrest the decay of faith in England,—that it all rests with the Established Church. Of course, he did not, and could not, have said anything of the kind ; and in a recently published letter he intimates as much,—though he did say, as he has often said, that the sweeping away of the Established Church would, in his opinion, be the destruction of a very powerful breakwater against the spread of unbelief. But he may very likely have said, what is surely true, that in a Protestant country a great deal more must depend on the vitality of the Protestant Church, than can possibly depend on the vitality of the Roman Catholic Church. We ourselves attach a great deal of importance to many Roman Catholic writings on the subject of Theism and Christianity,—to Dr. Newman's "Grammar of Assent," for instance, and to the late Dr. Ward's " Philosophy of Theism ;" but it would be childish to suppose that Protestants in general will read either book without misgivings ; while Protestants in general will read such books as Prebendary Row's Fowerful Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidence, and Canon Liddon's striking book on the Incarnation, without misgiving, and with the greatest possible advantage to themselves.
Previous page
