3.  Apart from these incidents—­common wherever a number of men are animated with zeal for an inspiring cause—­there were what to us now seem mistakes made in the conduct itself of the movement.  Considering the difficulties of the work, it is wonderful that there were not more; and none of them were discreditable, none but what arose from the limitation of human powers matched against confused and baffling circumstances.

In the position claimed for the Church of England, confessedly unique and anomalous in the history of Christendom, between Roman authority and infallibility on one side, and Protestant freedom of private judgment on the other, the question would at once arise as to the grounds of belief.  What, if any, are the foundations of conviction and certitude, apart from personal inquiry, and examination of opposing arguments on different sides of the case, and satisfactory logical conclusions?  The old antithesis between Faith and Reason, and the various problems connected with it, could not but come to the front, and require to be dealt with.  It is a question which faces us from a hundred sides, and, subtly and insensibly transforming itself, looks different from them all.  It was among the earliest attempted to be solved by the chief intellectual leader of the movement, and it has occupied his mind to the last.[80] However near the human mind seems to come to a solution, it only, if so be, comes near; it never arrives.  In the early days of the movement it found prevailing the specious but shallow view that everything in the search for truth was to be done by mere producible and explicit argumentation; and yet it was obvious that of this two-thirds of the world are absolutely incapable.  Against this Mr. Newman and his followers pressed, what was as manifestly certain in fact as it accorded with any deep and comprehensive philosophy of the formation and growth of human belief, that not arguments only, but the whole condition of the mind to which they were addressed—­and not the reasonings only which could be stated, but those which went on darkly in the mind, and which “there was not at the moment strength to bring forth,” real and weighty reasons which acted like the obscure rays of the spectrum, with their proper force, yet eluding distinct observation—­had their necessary and inevitable and legitimate place in determining belief.  All this was perfectly true; but it is obvious how easily it might be taken hold of, on very opposite sides, as a ground for saying that Tractarian or Church views did not care about argument, or, indeed, rather preferred weak arguments to strong ones in the practical work of life.  It was ludicrous to say it in a field of controversy, which, on the “Tractarian” side, was absolutely bristling with argument, keen, subtle, deep, living argument, and in which the victory in argument was certainly not always with those who ventured to measure swords with Mr. Newman or Dr. Pusey.  Still, the scoff could be plausibly pointed at the “young