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

by Francis William Newman

I shall here reprint the pith of my argument, somewhat shortened:—

"No heaven-sent Bible can guarantee the veracity of God to a man who doubts that veracity. Unless we have independent means of knowing that God is truthful and good, his word (if we be over so certain that it is really his word) has no authority to us: hence no book revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, deny the validity of our a priori conviction that God has the virtues of goodness and veracity, and requires like virtues in us. And in fact, all Christian apostles and missionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always confuted Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines, and have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as competent to decide in the controversy. Christianity itself has thus practically confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a training of those senses, but affords no foundation for certitude."

This passage deserved the enmity of my critic. He quoted bits of it, very sparingly, never setting before his readers my continuous thought, but giving his own free versions and deductions. His fullest quotation stood thus, given only in an after-chapter:—"What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses." "Christianity itself has practically confessed what is theoretically clear, (you must take Mr. Newman's word for both,)[7] that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man." "No book-revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, &c. &c."

These three sentences are what Mr. Rogers calls the three cracked bells, and thinks by raising a laugh, to hide his fraud I have carefully looked through the whole of his dialogue concerning Book Revelation in his 9th edition of the "Eclipse" (pp. 63-83 of close print). He still excludes from it every part of my argument, only stating in the opening (p. 63) as my conclusions, that a book-revelation is impossible, and that God reveals himself from within, not from without In his Defence (which circulates far less than the "Eclipse," to judge by the number of editions) he displays his bravery by at length printing my argument; but in the "Eclipse" he continues to suppress it, at least as far as I can discover by turning to the places where it ought to be found.

In p. 77 (9th ed.) of the "Eclipse." he implies, without absolutely asserting, that I hold the Bible to be an impertinence. He repeats this in p. 85 of the "Defence." Such is his mode. I wrote: "Without a priori belief, the Bible is an impertinence," but I say, man has this a priori belief, on which account the Bible is not an impertinence. My last sentence in the very passage before us, expressly asserts the value of (good) external teaching. This my critic laboriously disguises.

He carefully avoids allowing his readers to see that I am contending fundamentally for that which the ablest Christian divines have conceded and maintained; that which the common sense of every missionary knows, and every one who is not profoundly ignorant of the Bible and of history ought to know. Mr. Rogers is quite aware, that no apostle ever carried a Bible in his hand and said to the heathen, "Believe that there is a good and just God, because it is written in this book;" but they appealed to the hearts and consciences of the hearers as competent witnesses. He does not even give his reader enough of my paragraph to make intelligible what I meant by saying "Christianity has practically confessed;" and yet insists that I am both unreasonable and uncharitable in my complaints of him.

I here reprint the summary of my belief concerning our knowledge of morality as fundamental, and not to be tampered with under pretence of religion. "If an angel from heaven bade me to lie, and to steal, and to commit adultery, and to murder, and to scoff at good men, and usurp dominion over my equals, and do unto others everything that I wish not to have done to me; I ought to reply, BE THOU ANATHEMA! This, I believe, was Paul's doctrine; this is mine."

It may be worth while to add how in the "Defence" Mr. Rogers pounces on my phrase "a priori view of the Divine character," as an excuse for burying his readers in metaphysics, in which he thinks he has a natural right to dogmatize against and over me. He must certainly be aware of the current logical (not metaphysical) use of the phrase a priori: as when we say, that Le Verrier and Adams demonstrated a priori that a planet must exist exterior to Uranus, before any astronomer communicated information that it does exist. Or again: the French Commissioners proved by actual measurement that the earth is an oblate spheroid, of which Newton had convinced himself a priori.

I always avoid a needless argument of metaphysics. Writing to the general public I cannot presume that they are good judges of anything but a practical and moral argument. The a priori views of God, of which I here speak, involve no subtle questions; they are simply those views which are attained independently of the alleged authoritative information, and, of course, are founded upon considerations earlier than it.

But it would take too much of space and time, and be far too tedious to my readers, if I were to go in detail through Mr. Rogers's objections and misrepresentations. I have the sad task of attacking his good faith, to which I further proceed.