The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1850-06-18 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

TEACHING.—A correspondent of the Church and State Gazette gives the following as a specimen of what " Father" Newman is now teaching, as a priest of Rome. ",It will be a source of exceeding regret to the present writer should he unconsciously exaggerate Mr. Newman's doctrine upon this subject ; but his full conviction before the Searcher of Hearts is this—that never has there been ranted forth, in any conventicle here or abroad, more rabid and ruthless antinomianism than Father Newman enunciated in the Oratory on Thursday, the 7th of June last. The writer may safely appeal to all truthful witnesses there present whether or no this accusation is justified. Not only did Father Newman picture " a filthy. old woman, careless of truth," and, as far as human judgment could decide, utterly degraded as a member of society ; and then at once exalt her into hypothetical saintship by virtue of contrition before the priest," in contrast with other women of faultless reputation and fair conduct. This would be injurious in its tendency and tone; but the lecturer transcended all this. In order to vindicate his Church's apathy towards us (totidem verbis), although a man " had lived in continuous adultery, committed murder," and as it were wallowed in all conceivable impurity and crime, yet by one faint movement of his will toward God, in confession and before the priest, by virtue of absolution, THAT MAN was as moral, " clean," and spiritually white before Heaven's throne as if he had never sinned or fallen !—nay more, the antinomian enthusiasm of the lecturer did not pause even here; he concluded in a climax of moralanalysis, which seemed to say, a priestabsolved adulterer and murderer is a much nobler specimen of man than one whose life had been unstained by fearful crime, apart from the justifying machinery of a Romish confessional ! But, perhaps the reader may an ticipate 'Father Newman was at last content with such a rhetorical apology for crime and criminals. By no metals !—he actually took his audience in pictorial 'idea to a disgusting -public execution-scene; described in glowing pathos the intense eagerness of all Italian crowds to hear whether or no the criminal had repented and confessed ; and, when the attendant priest at last announced the sudden conversion of the criminal in his cell, just before his being brought forth for execution, he informed us—such is the piety of a Romish crowd, as contrasted with an English mob—a shout of spiritual triumph was heard to ascend from the assembled multitude. Had this, too, been all, something might be said, perchance, to mitigate the antinomian effect of the entire narrative; but (as before) Mr. Newman was determined to canonise the criminal at once ; and so he dared to tell the audience that, as with baptised infants, so with executed criminals, it was almost a subject of spiritual gratitude to think " they were taken from the evil to come." ! ! I protest, before heaven, such lectures as these are not simply heretical in doctrine, but positive violations of common morals, as to their tone and influence."