n system
to admire and to learn from.

The point which he chose for his assault was indeed the key of the Roman
position--the doctrine of Infallibility. He was naturally led to this
side of the question by the stress which the movement had laid on the
idea of the Church as the witness and teacher of revealed truth: and the
immediate challenge given by the critics or opponents of the movement
was, how to distinguish this lofty idea of the Church, with its claim to
authority, if it was at all substantial, from the imposing and
consistent theory of Romanism. He urged against the Roman claim of
Infallibility two leading objections. One was the way in which the
assumed infallibility of the present Church was made to override and
supersede, in fact, what in words was so ostentatiously put forward, the
historical evidence of antiquity to doctrine, expressed by the phrase,
the "consent of the Fathers." The other objection was the inherent
contradiction of the notion of infallibility to the conditions of human
reception of teaching and knowledge, and its practical uselessness as an
assurance of truth, its partly delusive, partly mischievous, working.
But he felt, as all deep minds must feel, that it is easier to overthrow
the Roman theory of Church authority than to replace it by another,
equally complete and commanding, and more unassailable. He was quite
alive to the difficulties of the Anglican position; but he was a
disciple in the school of Bishop Butler, and had learned as a first
principle to recognise the limitations of human knowledge, and the
unphilosophical folly of trying to round off into finished and
pretentious schemes our fragmentary yet certain notices of our own
condition and of God's dealings with it. He followed his teacher in
insisting on the reality and importance of moral evidence as opposed to
demonstrative proof; and he followed the great Anglican divines in
asserting that there was a true authority, varying in its degrees, in
the historic Church; that on the most fundamental points of religion
this authority was trustworthy and supreme; that on many other questions
it was clear and weighty, though it could not decide everything. This
view of the "prophetical office of the Church" had the dialectical
disadvantage of appearing to be a compromise, to many minds a fatal
disadvantage. It got the name of the _Via Media_; a satisfactory one to
practical men like Dr. Hook, to whom it recommended itself for use