holics, and they must not stand in
the place of those who have a real title to such an office.

And he appeals from them, as authorities, to a list of much more sober
and modest writers, though, it may be, the names of all of them are not
familiar to the public. He enumerates as the "chief authors of the
passing generation," "Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard,
Mr. Tierney, Dr. Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, Mr.
Flanagan." If these well-practised and circumspect veterans in the
ancient controversy are not original and brilliant, at least they are
safe; and Dr. Newman will not allow the flighty intellectualism which
takes more hold of modern readers to usurp their place, and for himself
he sturdily and bluffly declines to give up his old standing-ground for
any one:--

I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the
doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, on the two subjects I
have mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed
of Catholics; or to assume, as you do, that because they are
thoroughgoing and relentless in their statements, therefore they
are the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for
Antiquity will be thought little else than a mistake. For myself,
hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my
stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of
their time is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain
the value and authority of the "Schola," as one of the _loci
theologici_; still I sympathise with Petavius in preferring to its
"contentious and subtle theology" that "more elegant and fruitful
teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite antiquity."
The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down
the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder
quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it was twenty years
ago. Though I hold, as you remark, a process of development in
Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not
supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them.

Is he right in saying that he is not responsible as a Roman Catholic
for the extravagances that Dr. Pusey dwells upon? He is, it seems to
us, and he is not. No doubt the Roman Catholic system is in practice a
wide one, and he has a right, which we are glad to see that he is
disposed to exercise,