should follow him; a wish in which there is not the
slightest reason to think that he will be gratified.
But differently as we must feel as to the result,
we cannot help sharing the evident amusement with
which Dr. Newman recalls a few of the compliments which
were lavished on him by some of his present co-religionists
when he was trying to do them justice, and was even
on the way to join them. He reprints with sly
and mischievous exactness a string of those glib phrases
of controversial dislike and suspicion which are common
to all parties, and which were applied to him by “priests,
good men, whose zeal outstripped their knowledge,
and who in consequence spoke confidently, when they
would have been wiser had they suspended their adverse
judgment of those whom they were soon to welcome as
brothers in communion.” It is a trifle,
but it strikes us as characteristic. Dr. Newman
is one of the very few who have carried into his present
communion, to a certain degree at least, an English
habit of not letting off the blunders and follies
of his own side, and of daring to think that a cause
is better served by outspoken independence of judgment
than by fulsome, unmitigated puffing. It might
be well if even in him there were a little more of
this habit. But, so far as it goes, it is the
difference between him and most of those who are leaders
on his side. Indirectly he warns eager controversialists
that they are not always the wisest and the most judicious
and far-seeing of men; and we cannot quarrel with
him, however little we may like the occasion, for
the entertainment which he feels in inflicting on his
present brethren what they once judged and said of
him, and in reminding them that their proficiency
in polemical rhetoric did not save them from betraying
the shallowness of their estimate and the shortness
of their foresight.
When he comes to discuss the Eirenicon, Dr.
Newman begins with a complaint which seems to us altogether
unreasonable. He seems to think it hard that
Dr. Pusey should talk of peace and reunion, and yet
speak so strongly of what he considers the great corruptions
of the Roman Church. In ordinary controversy,
says Dr. Newman, we know what we are about and what
to expect; “’Caedimur, et totidem plagis
consumimus hostem.’ We give you a sharp
cut and you return it.... But we at least have
not professed to be composing an Eirenicon,
when we treated you as foes.” Like Archbishop
Manning, Dr. Newman is reminded “of the sword
wreathed in myrtle;” but Dr. Pusey, he says,
has improved on the ancient device,—“Excuse
me, you discharge your olive-branch as if from a catapult.”