The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎651r] (192/239)

FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.
161
in the hearts of the advanced theological thinkers themselves; for
they would surely be far from admitting that the genuineness has
varied with the bulk of their beliefs. Dogma, one is bound to con
clude, is not the differentia, or even the property, of religion, but
has only been temporarily and accidentally bound up with it.
But a Church without dogma? Is that also possible? One
would perhaps hesitate to say so if the cry for it had not arisen
within the ranks of a Church once one of the most rigidly dog
matic. That, however, was what happened when the Synod of
the Evangelical Church of the Canton of Vaud met last autumn
to discuss the revision of its formularies in the light of modern
thought. The proposal was then seriously made, and substanti
ally suppoited, that candidates for holy orders should be excused
submission to any dogmatic tests—that their adhesion should be
to religion in general, and not to any particularised creed. The
majority rejected the proposal. The time did not seem to be ripe
for it. But it was nevertheless a sign of times that are ripening,
and might ripen very quickly, if all theologians would face the
questions which Francis Newman posed in Francis Newman’s
spirit—with the same conviction that, if they refused absolutely
to juggle with words or formularies, and resolved at all hazards
to be unswervingly honest in thought and profession, all the rest
would be added unto them.
l ( or that is faith—the faith in which Francis Newman so far
surpassed that timorous brother of his who dared not try to
cross a river unless in a boat with a particular name painted on
the stern.
Francis Gribble.
vol. lxxviii. n.s
M