Phases of Faith; Or, Passages from the History of My Creed

by Francis William Newman

CHAPTER IX.

REPLY TO THE DEFENCE OF THE "ECLIPSE OF FAITH."

This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of the religious periodicals, and among them in the "Prospective Review," by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked in a book called the "Eclipse of Faith," written (chiefly against my treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my religion, and doing so by ways of which some specimen will be given.

I made an indignant protest in a new edition of this book, and added also various matter in reply to Mr. Martineau, which will still be found here. He in consequence in a second article[1] of the "Prospective" reviewed me afresh; but, in the opening, he first pronounced his sentence in words of deep disapproval against the "Eclipse of Faith."

"The method of the work," says he, "its plan of appealing from what seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world, simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere…. The whole force of the writer's thought,—his power of exposition, of argument, of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious scale…. If the work be really written[2] in good faith, and be not rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the temple of the author's worship stands on the same foundation with the officina of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street."

The author of the "Eclipse," buoyed up by a large sale of his work to a credulous public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to rebut my replies to him—(nay, I fear I must say my attack on him; for I have confessed, almost with compunction, that it was I who first stirred the controversy)—was very favourably situated for maintaining a calmly judicial impartiality. He thought us both wrong, and he administered to us each the medicine which seemed to him needed. He passed his strictures on what he judged to be my errors, and he rebuked my assailant for profane recklessness.

I had complained, not of this merely, but of monstrous indefensible garbling and misrepresentation, pervading the whole work. The dialogue is so managed, as often to suggest what is false concerning me, yet without asserting it; so as to enable him to disown the slander, while producing its full effect against me. Of the directly false statements and garblings I gave several striking exhibitions. His reply to all this in the first edition of his "Defence" was reviewed in a third article of the "Prospective Review," Its ability and reach of thought are attested by the fact that it has been mistaken for the writing of Mr. Martineau; but (as clearly as reviews ever speak on such subjects) it is intimated in the opening that this new article is from a new hand, "at the risk of revealing division of persons and opinions within the limits of the mystic critical We." Who is the author, I do not know; nor can I make a likely guess at any one who was in more than distant intercourse with me.

This third reviewer did not bestow one page, as Mr. Martineau had done, on the "Eclipse;" did not summarily pronounce a broad sentence without details, but dedicated thirty-four pages to the examination and proof. He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of the "Eclipse" has instituted between his use of ridicule and that of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal's two rules, first, to speak with truth against one's opponents and not with calumny; secondly, not to wound them needlessly. "Neglect of the first rule (says he) has given to these books [the "Eclipse" and its "Defence">[ their apparent controversial success; disregard of the second their literary point." He adds, "We shall show that their author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations, interpolating words which give the passage he cites reference to subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply, while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while in appearance citing verbatim;… and that he habitually employs a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned. May he not himself have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the fallacies which have been so successful with others? It would be as reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must have deluded Zeuxis who painted them."

So grave an accusation against my assailant's truthfulness, coming not from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew well what he was saying and why,—could not be passed over unnoticed, although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued to buy the "Eclipse" and its "Defence" greedily, and not one in a thousand of them was likely to see the "Prospective Review," In the second edition of the "Defence" the writer undertakes to defend himself against my advocate, in on Appendix of 19 closely printed pages, the "Defence" itself being 218. The "Eclipse," in its 9th edition of small print, is 393 pages. And how does he set about his reply? By trying to identify the third writer with the second (who was notoriously Mr. Martineau), and to impute to him ill temper, chagrin, irritation, and wounded self-love, as the explanation of this third article: He says (p. 221):—

"The third writer—if, as I have said, he be not the second—sets out on a new voyage of discovery … and still humbly following in the wake of Mr. Newman's great critical discoveries,[3] repeats that gentleman's charges of falsifying passages, garbling and misrepresentation. In doing so, he employs language, and manifests a temper, which I should have thought that respect for himself, if not for his opponent, would have induced him to suppress. It is enough to say, that he quite rivals Mr. Newman in sagacity, and if possible, has more successfully denuded himself of charity…. If he be the same as the second writer, I am afraid that the little Section XV." [i.e. the reply to Mr. Martineau in 1st edition of the "Defence">[ "must have offended the amour propre more deeply than it ought to have done, considering the wanton and outrageous assault to which it was a very lenient reply, and that the critic affords another illustration of the old maxim, that there are none so implacable as those who have done a wrong.