Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

Let the reader hear these words from the very lips of Dr. Newman—“Confidence in me was lost! But I had already lost full confidence in myself!” (p. 132.) Are these words the indications of a brave, innocent man? Or are they not the cry of despair of a cowardly and guilty conscience?

Was it not when Wishart heard that the Pope and his millions of slaves had condemned him to death, that he raised his head as a giant, and showed that he was more above his accusers and his judges than the heavens are above the earth? Had he lost his confidence in himself and in his God when he said: “I am happy to suffer and die in the cause of Truth?” Did Luther lose confidence in himself and in his God, when condemned by the Pope and all his Bishops, and ordered to go before the Emperor to be condemned to death, if he would not retract? No! It is in those hours of trial that he made the world to re-echo the sublime words of David: “God is our refuge and our strength, a present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.” But Luther had a good cause. He knew, he felt, that the God of Heaven was on his side, when Dr. Newman knew well that he was deceiving the world, after having deceived himself. Luther was strong and fearless: for the voice of Jesus had come through the fifteen centuries to tell him: “Fear not, I am with thee.” Dr. Newman was weak, trembling before the storm, for his conscience was reproaching him for his treachery and his unbelief.

Did Latimer falter and lose his confidence in himself and in his God, when condemned by his judges and tied to the stake to be burnt? No! It is then that he uttered those immortal and sublime words: “Master Ridley: Be of good comfort and play the man; we shall, this day, light a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out!”

This is the language of men who are fighting for Christ and His Gospel. Dr. Newman could not use such noble language when he was betraying Christ and His Gospel.

Now, let us hear from himself when, after having lost the confidence of his Church and his country, and having also lost his confidence in himself, he saw a ghost, and found that the Church of Rome was right. At page 157, he says: “My friend, an anxiously religious man, pointed out the palmary words of St. Augustine which were contained in one of the extracts made in the (Dublin) Review, and which had escaped my observation, ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum.’ He repeated these words again and again; and when he was gone, they kept ringing in my ears.... The words of St. Augustine struck me with such a power which I never had felt from any words before. To take a familiar instance, they were like the ‘Turn again, Whittington,’ of the chime; or, to take a more serious one, they are like the ‘tolle lege’ of the child which converted St. Augustine himself. ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum!’ By those great words of the ancient father, the theory of the Via Media was absolutely pulverized. I became excited at the view thus opened upon me.... I had seen the shadow of a hand upon the wall.... He who has seen a ghost cannot be as if he had never seen it. The heaven had opened and closed again. The thought, for the moment, had been: ‘The Church of Rome will be found right, after all.’” (158).

It would be amusing, indeed, if it were not so humiliating, to see the naivete with which Dr. Newman confesses his own aberration, want of judgment and honesty in reference to the pet scheme of his whole theological existence at Oxford. “By these words,” he says, “the Via Media was absolutely pulverized!”

We all know the history of the mountain in travail, which gave birth to a mouse. Dr. Newman tells us frankly that, after ten years of hard and painful travail, he produced something less than a mouse. His Via Media was pulverized; it turned to be only a handful of dust.

Remember the high-sounding of his trumpet about his plan of a new church, that New Jerusalem on earth, the church of the future which was to take the place of his rotten Church of England. Let me repeat to you his very words about that new ark of salvation with which the professor of Oxford was to save the world. (Page 116): “I wanted to bring out, in a substantive form, a living Church of England, in a position proper to herself and founded on distinct principles, as far as paper could do it, and as earnestly preaching it and influencing others towards it could tend to make it a fact: a living church, made of flesh and blood, with voice, complexion, and motion, and action, and a will of its own.”

Now, what was the end of that masterpiece of theological architecture of Dr. Newman? Here is its history, given by the great architect himself: “I read the palmary words of St. Augustine, ‘Securus judicat orbis terrarum!’ By those great words of the ancient father, the theory of the Via Media was pulverized! I became excited at the view thus opened before me. I had seen the shadow of a hand on the wall. He who has seen a ghost can never be as if he had not seen it; the heavens had opened and closed again. The thought, for a moment, was ‘The Church of Rome will be found right, after all.’” (158). Have we ever seen a man destroying himself more completely at the very moment that he tries to defend himself? Here he does ingeniously confess what every one knew before, that his whole work, for the last ten years, was not only a self-deception, but a supreme effort to deceive the world—his Via Media was a perfect string of infidelity, sophism, and folly. The whole fabric had fallen to the ground at the sight of a ghost! To build a grand structure, in the place of his Church which he wanted to demolish, he had thought it was sufficient to throw a great deal of glittering sand, with some blue, white, and red dust, in the air! He tells us that one sad hour came when he heard five Latin words from St. Augustine, saw a ghost—and his great structure fell to the ground!!

What does this all mean? It simply means that God Almighty has dealt with Dr. Newman as He did with the impious Pharaoh in the Red Sea, when he was marching at the head of his army against the church of old, his chosen people, to destroy them.