merit, not as Christians generally, but as a party, (I use the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their efforts have done, and are doing great good.  But they have themselves declared that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them with “preaching themselves;” it was of this I spoke, when I said that there was a very great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not of God.

Again, the system which they hold up as “better and deeper than satisfied the last century” is a remedy which has been tried once already:  and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure.  Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption alike of Christ’s religion and Christ’s Church.  So far were they from tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ’s body up to the measure of the stature of Christ’s own fulness, that Christ’s Church declined during their ascendancy more and more;—­she fell alike from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it.  For, in whatever points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority.  I am greatly understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so:  I will not say that Mr. Newman’s favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent its corruption,—­that when they were most exalted Christian truth and Christian goodness were most depressed.

After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be successful on a second trial:  it is within possibility, perhaps, that a doctrine, although destitute of all internal evidence showing it to come from God, may be divine notwithstanding;—­revealed for some purposes which we cannot fathom, or simply as an exercise of our obedience.  All this may be so; and if it can be shown to be so, there remains no other course than to believe God’s word, and obey his commandments; only the strength of the external evidence must be in proportion to the weakness of the internal.  A good man would ask for no sign from heaven to assure him that God commands judgment, mercy, and truth; whatsoever things are pure, and lovely, and of good report, bear in themselves the seal of their origin; a seal which to doubt were blasphemy.  But the cloud and the lightnings and thunders, and all the signs and wonders wrought in Egypt and in the Red Sea, were justly required to give divine authority