f the
Catholic Church. If we push back the enquiry one step further, and ask
on what grounds he chooses to prefer the authority of the Catholic
Church to other authorities, such as natural science or philosophy, we
are driven again to lay great stress on the almost political necessity
which he felt that such a Divine society should exist. In accepting the
authority of the Church, he accepted the authority of all that the
Church teaches, in complete independence of human reason. But the Roman
Church never professes to be independent of human reason. The official
scholastic philosophy claims to be a demonstrative proof of theism.

Newman, then, was only half a Catholic. He accepted with all the fervour
of a neophyte the principle of submission to Holy Church. But in place
of the official intellectualist apologetic, which an Englishman may
study to great advantage in the remarkably able series of manuals issued
by the Jesuits of Stonyhurst, he substituted a philosophy of experience
which is certainly not Catholic. The authority claimed by the Roman
Church rests on one side upon revelation, on the other upon an elaborate
structure of demonstrative reasoning, which the simple folk are allowed
to 'take as read,' only because they cannot be expected to understand
it, but which is declared to be of irresistible cogency to any properly
instructed mind. To deny the validity of reasoning upon Divine things is
to withdraw one of the supports on which Catholicism rests.
Subjectivism, based on vital experience, mixes no better with this
system than oil with water. Scholasticism prides itself on clear-cut
definitions, on irrefragable logic, on using words always in the same
sense. For Newman, as for his disciples the Modernists, theological
terms are only symbols for varying values, and he holds that the moment
they are treated as having any fixed connotation, error begins. It is no
wonder if learned Catholics thought that Newman did not play the game.
Father Perrone, in spite of his friendship for the object of his
criticism, declared that 'Newman miscet et confundit omnia.'

The accusation of scepticism, which was not unnaturally brought against
him, was hotly resented by Newman, and with some justice. Of the
intensity of his personal conviction there can be no doubt whatever.
Indeed, it was just because his faith was in no danger that he cared so
little for any intellectual defence of it. He might have made his own
the lines of Wo