The Irish standard., 1900-12-01
Interesting Lecture the Subject at Portland Ore by an
Eloquent Kember of tho Pauist Order.
Condition Of Things Religious England
When "Tracts for the Times We're Issued.
Conversion Of John Henry Newman the
Religious Event Since the Reformation.

the detriment, but not to the destruc.
tion of truth or of charity-viz., the
Greek, the Roman and the Anglican
branches. Each had its faults and
shortcomings. The Greek existed but
vegetated and had been domineered
over by the emperors and secular arm.
Rome was chargeable with not only
ambition but corruption. The Angli-
can branch unhappily had been leaven-
ed by the poison of Professionalism, BY
dependence, nay at times, in subjec-
tion to the state; by allowing Its Cath
olicity and Apostollclty to be obscured,
but there was yet Il branch, and true
living one of the Church Catholic.
Rome presented two things for con-
sideratlon, her formal dogmas and the
actual state of belief and usage In
Catholic countries. | contrasted her
creed on the one hand, with her Or
dinary teaching, her controversial
tone. her political bearing, her popu.
lar beliefs and practices, on the other.
made parallel distinction be-
tween Anglicanisin quiescent and
Anglicanism in action. In her formal
creed, Anglicanism was ut no great
distance from Rome; but far otherwise
when viewed in its insular spirit, the
traditions of its establishment, its his
torical characteristics, its controver-
sial rancor, It's private Judgment
! These disavowed and called Protest
antism, just as called the popular be-
liefs and usages of Rome "Popery'-
thus was l driven to middle way,
the Via Media, between the errors OF
Professionalism, on the one hand. and
the corruptions of Rome, on the other.
I need not say that Newman had no
regard for Evangelical or Bible re-
llgiOn ns such-"it had no intellectual
basis, no principle Of unity, no in
ternal idea, no theology" and, I may
add for Newman and for myself, no
history. Newman went to the great
divlnes of his own church and to tho
early fathcrs-to build up his basis
for he had recognized-that the Via
Medin was not objective and real. 1t
had nowhere anything Of which it
is the rcpresentative-"Prot
and Popery are real dogmas, the Via
Media hns not existence except on pa
per- 1t remains to be tried whether
or not it is capable of being professed.
acted on and maintained on large
spherc-or whether 1t be modification
of either Romansm or popular Prot
estantism."
Newman, speaking Of the results for
himself and his friends. says, Judge
of their dlsmay, when, according to
the Arabian tale, on their striking
anchors into the supposed soil, light
ing their fires on it. and fixing In It
the poles Of their tents; suddenly their
island began to move, to heave, to
splash, to frisk to and fro and at last
to swim away, spouting out inhosplta-
BILE Jets of water upon the credulous
mariners who had made it their home.
They saw distinctly In the rcasonings
of the fathers the qualification OF
what they had been accustomed to
consider the corruption Of Rome. Time
went on; there was no mistalSing or
denying the misfortune that was i'm
pending over them. They had reared
a goodly house, but their foundations
were falling In. The soil and the
masonry were both bad. The fathers
would protect Romanists, the An
glcnn divines would misquote the
fathers and shrink from the very doc
tors to whom they appealed. The
Bishops Of the 18th Gentry were shy
of the Bishops of the fourth"
In the appeal to antiquity against
the living Church and its condemna-
ton of him and all Anglicans as being
in schism-Newman looked in the
glass and saw himself one of the old
condemned heretics-a MonOphysfte
and Donatist. Three things moreover
| llilu udDltuCu III 1CoA AALO "AASe~
showed him the real Professionalism OF
the establishment and how it wanted
none of him and his primitive and re-
stored Catholicity-the condemnation
of his tract-Tract No. 90-the estab-
lishment by Parliament and by the
Archbishop of Canterbury Of Bish-
on in Jerusalem for Anglicans and
Lutherans, Calvanists or what not,
Protestants generally-and the advent
among the promoters of the movement
| of Il new, progressive and radical wing
Ward, Oakley, Faber, Dalgairy,
who pushed principles to their last
consequences-admitte the state Of
schlsm, condemned the Reformers In