e in all
its parts, as it comes before us. Meanwhile, I fully allow that the
points of evidence brought in disparagement of the miracle are _prima
facie_ of such cogency, that, till they are proved to be irrelevant,
Catholics are prevented from appealing to it for controversial purposes.

NOTE C. ON PAGE 153.

SERMON ON WISDOM AND INNOCENCE.

The professed basis of the charge of lying and equivocation made against
me, and, in my person, against the Catholic clergy, was, as I have
already noticed in the Preface, a certain Sermon of mine on "Wisdom and
Innocence," being the 20th in a series of "Sermons on Subjects of the
Day," written, preached, and published while I was an Anglican. Of this
Sermon my accuser spoke thus in his Pamphlet:--

"It is occupied entirely with the attitude of 'the world' to
'Christians' and 'the Church.' By the world appears to be
signified, especially, the Protestant public of these realms;
what Dr. Newman means by Christians, and the Church, he has not
left in doubt; for in the preceding Sermon he says: 'But if the
truth must be spoken, what are the humble monk and the holy nun,
and other regulars, as they are called, but Christians after the
very pattern given us in Scripture, &c.'.... This is his
definition of Christians. And in the Sermon itself, he
sufficiently defines what he means by 'the Church,' in two notes
of her character, which he shall give in his own words: 'What,
for instance, though we grant that sacramental confession and
the celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate the body
politic in the relation of rulers and subjects, or, in other
words, to aggrandize the priesthood? for how can the Church be
one body without such relation?'"--Pp. 8, 9.

He then proceeded to analyze and comment on it at great length, and to
criticize severely the method and tone of my Sermons generally. Among
other things, he said:--

"What, then, did the Sermon _mean_? Why was it preached? To
insinuate that a Church which had sacramental confession and a
celibate clergy was the only true Church? Or to insinuate that
the admiring young gentlemen who listened to him stood to their
fellow-countrymen in the relation of the early Christians to the
heathen Romans? Or that Queen Victoria's Government was to the
Church of England what Nero's or Dioclesian's was to the Church
of Rome? It may have bee