I will tell
you, he says, what it is not-- not "physical evidences" for God, not
"natural religion," for these are but vague subjective
interpretations:--

[291] Discourse II. Section 7.

"If," he continues, "the Supreme Being is powerful or skillful, just so
far as the telescope shows power, or the microscope shows skill, if his
moral law is to be ascertained simply by the physical processes of the
animal frame, or his will gathered from the immediate issues of human
affairs, if his Essence is just as high and deep and broad as the
universe and no more if this be the fact, then will I confess that
there is no specific science about God, that theology is but a name,
and a protest in its behalf an hypocrisy. Then, pious as it is to
think of Him while the pageant of experiment or abstract reasoning
passes by, still such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought,
or an ornament of language, a certain view taken of Nature which one
man has and another has not, which gifted minds strike out, which
others see to be admirable and ingenious, and which all would be the
better for adopting. It is but the theology of Nature, just as we talk
of the PHILOSOPHY or the ROMANCE of history, or the POETRY of
childhood, or the picturesque or the sentimental or the humorous, or
any other abstract quality which the genius or the caprice of the
individual, or the fashion of the day, or the consent of the world,
recognizes in any set of objects which are subjected to its
contemplation. I do not see much difference between avowing that there
is no God, and implying that nothing definite can be known for certain
about Him."

What I mean by Theology, continues Newman, is none of these things: "I
simply mean the SCIENCE OF GOD, or the truths we know about God, put
into a system, just as we have a science of the stars and call it
astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it geology."

In both these extracts we have the issue clearly set before us: Feeling
valid only for the individual is pitted against reason valid
universally. The test is a perfectly plain one of fact. Theology
based on pure reason must in point of fact convince men universally.
If it did not, wherein would its superiority consist? If it only
formed sects and schools, even as sentiment and mysticism form them,
how would it fulfill its programme of freeing us from personal caprice
and waywardness? This perfectly definite practical test of the
pretens