The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎647v] (185/239)

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FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.
and this with the connivance and even the approval of his bishop.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite believe the Seventeenth Article,’’ a
timid candidate for ordination once said to the late Archbishop
of Canterbury. “Well, what of that? Who does?’’ snorted
Dr. Temple in reply; and the candidate was duly ordained.
Subscription to the XXXIX. Articles, he has since represented,
means no more—or need mean no more—than that the
subscriber has read them, and counted them, and noted their
contents.
That is the modern view—or, at all events, one of the modern
views; and we need not pause to argue for or against it. It
suffices to note that it was a view which Francis Newman’s
piously logical and logically pious mind was quite incapable of
taking. He believed implicitly in the Bible in those days, and
it seemed to him that certain of the Articles were unscriptural.
He could not believe in baptismal regeneration or in the power of
priests to forgive sins. The Church at the present day is full of
clergymen who believe in them as little as he did. Yet the
Articles lay down the one doctrine, and the Liturgy assumes the
other. Does it or need it matter? The modern view is that it
matters very little; but to Newman it mattered very much.
Subscription, it seemed to him, was a “ trap for the conscience,’’
leading men into depraved and deplorable casuistry. He went
about asking evangelical clergymen how they reconciled the
formularies with their consciences, and was shocked by the
answers which he received. “ They did not seek to know what
it was written to mean, nor what sense it must carry to every
simple-minded hearer; but they solely asked how they could
manage to assign to it a sense not wholly unreconcilable with
their own doctrines and preaching. This was too obviously
hollow.’’ So he walked out of the Church—still a Christian-
still believing most of the things which the Deans of Ripon and
Westminster tell us that they disbelieve—but persuaded that, so
long as the Churches retain their formularies, to juggle with them
is no part of the function of an honest man.
The honest mind working in the Pietistic medium was the
“note’’ of Francis Newman throughout his life. It operated
slowly, however, because the medium was thick and sluggish.
For the moment the Pietism was the prevailing characteristic,
and made the Pietist acquainted with strange company. He
was a double first and a Fellow of Balliol—“ a man,’’ Carlyle
wrote, “of fine attainments, of the sharpest cutting, and most
restlessly advancing intellect.’’ But he was logical and literal,
and, taking the Bible for granted as the dictated Word of God,
he drew the only possible conclusions from the premises : that