"Weston-super-Mare.
"March 22, 1893.
"Dear Mr. George Jacob Holyoake,—I had no idea of writing to Mr. Gladstone, yet am glad to hear that you gave him my 'Secret Hymns.' Probably my contrast to my brother, the late Cardinal, always puzzled him. That we were in painful opposition ever since 1820 had never entered his mind, much less that this opposition made it impossible to me to endure living in Oxford, which also would have been my obvious course.
"I did send my 'Paul of Tarsus' to Mr. Gladstone, which partially opened his eyes. For my brother's first pretentious religious book was against the Arians, which I think I read at latest in 1832. Mr. Gladstone has written that my brother's secession to Rome was the greatest loss that the English Church ever suffered. Of what kind was the loss my little book on 'Paul' indirectly states, in pointing out that, as our English New Testament shows, Paul in his own episode plainly originated the doctrine, three centuries later called Arianism, and held by all the Western Church until young Athanasius introduced his new and therefore 'false' doctrine.
My brother, with Paul's epistle open before him, condemned the doctrine of Arian, and did not know that it was the invention of Paul, and thereby prevailed in the whole Western Church. Moreover, I read what I cannot imagine met Mr. Gladstone's eyes, that 'It is not safe to quote any Pre-Athanasian doctrines concerning the Trinity, since the Church had not yet taught them how to express themselves.' After this, could Mr. Gladstone, as a decent scholar, mourn over my brother's loss to the Church? I hope Mr. Gladstone can now afford time to read something of the really early Christianity. He will find the Jerusalem Christianity perishing after the Roman revolt, and supplanted by Pauline fancies (not Christian at all) and by Pauline morality, often better than Christian. To me our modern problem is to eschew Pauline fancies and further to improve on Pauline wisdom.
"But since I have reached the point of being unable to take Human Immortality as a Church axiom, I cannot believe that the problem is above fully stated, or that Christianity deserves to become coetaneous with man's body.
"Perhaps I ought to thank you more, yet I may have said too much.—Yours truly,
"F. W. Newman."
One day as Mr. Newman was leaving my room in Woburn Buildings, he looked round and said: "I did not think there were rooms so large in this place"; and then descending the stairs, as though the familiarity of the remark was more than an impulse, he said: "Do you think you could join with me in teaching the great truth of Theism?" Alas! I had to express my regret that my belief did not lie that way. Highly as I should think, and much as I should value public association with Mr. Newman, I had to decline the opportunity. If the will could create conviction, I should also have accepted Mazzini's invitation—elsewhere referred to—for Theism never seemed so enchanting in my eyes as it appeared in the lives of those two distinguished thinkers who were inspired by it.