agined a golden age of the Church, or several
golden ages, and found them in 'the first three centuries,' in the time
of Alfred the Great or of Edward the Confessor, or in the seventeenth
century. He was only sure that the sixteenth century was made of much
baser metal. This unhistorical idealisation of the past, even of a
barbarous past, was very characteristic of Newman and his friends. They
bequeathed to the Anglican Church the strange legend of an age of pure
doctrine and heroic practice, to which it should be our aim to 'return.'
The real strength of this legend lies in the fact that it has no
historical foundation. The ideal which is presented as a return or a
revival is nothing of the kind, but a creation of our own time,
projected by the imagination into the past, from which it comes back
with a halo of authority. Newman had his full share of these illusions.
In his youth and prime he was more of an Englishman than an Anglican. He
despised foreigners, unless they were Catholic saints, could not bear
the sight of the _tricolor_, and hated all the 'ideas of the
Revolution.' His dictum, 'Luther is dead, but Hildebrand and Loyola are
alive,' throws a flood of light upon the contents of his mind, as does
the truly British prejudice which caused him to be horrified at the
sight of ships coaling at Malta 'on a holy day.' His range of ideas was
so much restricted that Bremond, a sincere admirer, says that his
imagination lived on 'une poignee de souvenirs d'enfant.' How tragic was
the fate which caught this loyal Englishman and more than loyal Oxonian
in the meshes of a cosmopolitan institution in which England counted for
little and Oxford for nothing at all!

The Reform of 1832 seemed to threaten the English Church with
destruction. Arnold in this year wrote 'The Church, as it now stands, no
human power can save.' The bishops were stunned and bewildered by the
unexpected outbreak of popular hostility. Old methods of defence were
plainly useless; some new plan of campaign must be devised against the
double assault of political radicalism and theological liberalism. To
Newman both alike were of the devil; theological liberalism especially
was only specious infidelity. He never had the slightest inkling that a
deep religious earnestness and love of truth underlay the revolt against
orthodox tradition. His fighting instincts were aroused. When Keble
attributed the scheme for suppressing some Irish bishopries to 'national