he could feel and show the true Catholic
ferocity, the cruellest spirit on earth. 'A heresiarch,' he had written
even in his Anglican days, 'should meet with no mercy. He must be dealt
with by the competent authority as if he were embodied evil. To spare
him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of
thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself'! This was the temper,
soured by defeat and not mellowed by age, which Charles Kingsley in an
evil moment for himself chose wantonly to provoke. At Christmas 1863
there appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ a review of Froude's 'History
of England,' in which Kingsley wrote 'Truth for its own sake has never
been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
need not be, and on the whole ought not to be--that cunning is the
weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the
brute male force of the wicked world.' This charge was in fact based on
a careless reading, or an imperfect recollection, of the twentieth
discourse in 'Sermons on Subjects of the Day.' The discourse in question
is a somewhat nauseous glorification of the servile temper, but it only
says that the meekness of the saints is (by Divine providence) so
successful that it is always mistaken for craft. The _imputation_ of
cunning is therefore a note of sanctity in its victim. Kingsley ought to
have read the sermon again, and withdrawn unreservedly from an untenable
position. But he thought that something less than a complete apology
would serve; and so gave Newman the opportunity of his life. When the
withdrawal which he offered was rejected, Kingsley made matters ten
times worse for himself by an ill-considered pamphlet called 'What then
does Dr. Newman mean?' In this effusion he vents all his scorn and
hatred for Catholicism--for its tortuous tactics, its monstrous
credulity and appetite for miracles, which must proceed, according to
him, either from infantile folly or from deliberate imposture.
Forgetting altogether that he has to defend himself against a specific
charge of slander, he offers his great opponent the choice between
writing himself down a knave or a fool--a knave if he pretends to
believe in the Holy Coat and the blood of St. Januarius, a fool if he
does believe in them.

The coarseness of this attack upon an elderly man of saintly character
and acknowledged intellectual eminence, who had to all appearance
blighted a great career by honestly o