The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎650v] (191/239)

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FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.
inquirers as Francis Newman was with himself, and to reply to
the following questions in words as plain and clear as those in
which they are framed : —
(1) Do they, or do they not, hold that there are any propo
sitions, whether (a) historical or (f>) metaphysical, which the
Will ought to compel the Understanding to accept?
(2) If there are such propositions, what are they? On what
grounds ought the promptings of the Understanding (on which,
of course, the conclusions of the Higher Criticism themselves
depend) to be ignored? And what consequences, if any, attach
to the rejection of those propositions by a man who, being zealous
for truth, finds the evidence for them insufficient?
No apology ought to be required for pressing for intelligible and
straightforward answers to these questions. They are questions
which every honest thinker is bound to put to himself. Until he has
answered them, he does not know where he stands; and until
the theologians have answered them we cannot know where they
are standing. Upon the answers elicited a complete revolution
in the official relations of religion and dogma may depend.
At present, as far as one can judge without obtaining specific
answers to the questions above formulated, the view of dogma
entertained by advanced thinkers within the churches appears
to be pretty much this : that there is no warranty for regard
ing failure to accept them as a sin; that it would be
well if most of them were dropped, and the rest re-stated; but
that they have their provisional utility; and that as no one really
believes all of them in the plain sense of the words, any clergyman
may with propriety make his private reservations with regard to
any of them, and allow it to be understood that he believes what
he does not believe while continuing to do his clerical work and
to draw his clerical stipend. Intellectual insincerity, in short, is
justified on the ground that religion is essential, whereas dogma
is only incidental. To which Francis Newman would have
replied, and did reply by implication, that true religion and
intellectual insincerity are incompatible; and that the proper
course is to get rid of the dogmas while retaining the religion.
Is this possible? Are religion and dogma indeed separable?
The answer to these questions assuredly is in the affirmative.
The proof is in the life of Francis Newman himself; for the
chief, if not the whole, force of his attack upon dogma resides in
the fact that he attacked it on religious grounds, and became more
rather than less religious as the dogmas dropped away from him
—so much so that, as we have seen, their elimination from his
creed did not prevent him from composing a volume of Family
Prayers. The proof is also, one would fain suppose, to be found