FAITH AND PRIVATE JUDGEMENT
by John Henry Newman
When we consider the beauty, the majesty, the completeness, the resources, the
consolations, of the Catholic Religion, it may strike us with wonder, my brethren, that it
does not convert the multitude of those who come its way. Perhaps you have felt this
surprise yourselves; especially those of you who have been recently converted, and can
compare it, from experience, with those religions which the millions of this country
choose instead of it. You know from experience how barren, unmeaning, and baseless those
religions are; what poor attractions they have to say for themselves. Multitudes, indeed,
are of no religion at all; and you may not be surprised that those who cannot even bear
the thought of God, should not feel drawn to His Church; numbers too, hear very little
about Catholicism, or a great deal of abuse and calumny against it, and you may not be
surprised that they do not all at once become Catholics; but what may fairly surprise
those who enjoy the fulness of Catholic blessings is, that those who see the Church ever
so distantly, who see even gleams or the faint lustre of her majesty, nevertheless should
not be so far attracted by what they see as to seek no more,--should not at least put
themselves in the way to be led on to the Truth, which of course is not ordinarily
recognized in its Divine authority except by degrees. Moses, he saw the burning bush,
turned aside to see "that great sight"; Nathaniel, though he thought no good
could come out of Nazareth, at least followed Philip to Christ, when Philip said to him,
"Come and see"; but the multitudes about us see and hear, in some measure,
surely,--many in ample measure,--and yet are not persuaded thereby to see and hear more,
are not moved to act upon their knowledge. Seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not;
they are contented to remain as they are; they are not drawn to inquire, or at least not
drawn on to embrace.
Many explanations may be given of this difficulty; I will proceed to suggest to you
one, which will sound like a truism, but yet has a meaning in it. Men do not become
Catholics, because they have not faith. Now you may ask me, how this is saying more than
men do not believe the Catholic Church =because= they do not believe it; which is saying
nothing at all. Our Lord, for instance, says, "He who cometh to Me shall not hunger,
and he who believeth in Me shall never thirst";--to believe then and to come are the
same thing. If they had faith, of course they would join the Church, for the very meaning,
the very exercise of faith, is joining the Church. But I mean something more than this:
faith is a state of mind, it is a particular mode of thinking and acting, which is
exercised, always indeed toward God, but in very various ways. Now I mean to say, that the
multitude of men in this country have not this habit or character of mind. We could
conceive, for instance, their believing in their own religions, even if they did not
believe in the Church; this would be faith, though a faith improperly directed; but they
do not believe even their own religions; they do not believe in anything at all. It is a
definite defect in their minds: as we might say that a person had not the virtue of
meekness, or of liberality, or of prudence, quite independently of this or that exercise
of the virtue, so there is such a religious virtue of faith, and there is such a defect as
the absence of it. Now I mean to say that the great mass of men in this country have not
this particular virtue called faith, have not had this virtue at all. As a man might be
without eyes or without hands, so they are without faith; it is a distinct want or fault
in their soul; and what I say is, that since they have not this faculty of religious
belief, no wonder they do not embrace that, which cannot really be embraced without it.
They do not believe any teaching at all in any true sense; and therefore they do not
believe the Church in particular.
Now, in the first place, what is faith? it is assenting to a doctrine as true, which we
do not see, which we cannot prove, because God says it is true, who cannot lie. And
further than this, since God says it is true, not with His own voice, but by the voice of
His messengers, it is assenting to what man says, not simply viewed as a man, but to what
he is commissioned to declare, as a messenger, prophet, or ambassador from God. In the
ordinary course of this world we account things true either because we see them, or
because we can perceive that they follow and are deducible from what we do see; that is,
we gain truth by sight or by reason, not by faith. You will say indeed, that we accept a
number of things which we cannot prove or see, on the word of others; certainly, but then
we accept what they say only as the word of man; and we have not commonly that absolute
and reserved confidence in them, which nothing can shake. We know that man is open to
mistake, and we are always glad to find some confirmation of what he says, from other
quarters, in any important matter; or we receive his information with negligence and
unconcern, as something of little consequence, as a matter of opinion; or, if we act upon
it, it is as a matter of prudence, thinking it best and safest to do so. We take his word
for what it is worth, and we use it either according to our necessity, or its probability.
We keep the decision in our own hands, and reserve to ourselves the right of re-opening
the question whenever we please. This is very different from Divine faith; he who believes
that God is true, and that this is His word, which he has committed to man, has no doubt
at all. He is as certain that the doctrine taught is true, as that God is true; and he is
certain, =because= God is true, =because= God has spoken, not because he sees its truth or
can prove its truth. That is, faith has two peculiarities;--it is most certain, decided,
positive, immovable in its assent, and it gives this assent not because it sees with the
eye, or sees with the reason, but because it receives the tidings from one who comes from
God.
This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles, as no one can deny; and what it was
then, it must be now, else it ceases to be the same thing. I say, it certainly was this in
the Apostles' time, for you know they preached to the world that Christ was the Son of
God, that He preached to the world that Christ was the Son of God, that He was born of a
Virgin, that He had ascended on high, that he would come again to judge all, the living
and the dead. Could the world see all this? could it prove it? how then were men to
receive it? why did so many embrace it? on the word of the Apostles, who were, as their
powers showed, messengers from God. Men were told to submit their reason to a living
authority. Moreover, whatever an Apostle said, his converts were bound to believe; when
they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher;
they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put
before them. No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primitive times. A Christian
was bound to take without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the
Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it would not be enough to
keep silence, it would not be enough not to oppose it: it was not allowable to credit in a
measure; it was not allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of
what was said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret opposition to the
teaching, if he waited for further proof before he believed it, this would be a proof that
he did not think the Apostles were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof
that he did not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission of the
mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then
there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgement. No one could say:
"I will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that;
I will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I please, and no longer;
what I believe to-day I will reject tomorrow, if I choose. I will believe what the
Apostles have as yet said, but I will not believe what they shall say in time to
come." No; either the Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were,
everything that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were not, there
was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a little, to believe more or less,
was impossible; it contradicted the very notion of believing: if one part was to be
believed; it was an absurdity to believe one thing and not another; for the word of the
Apostles, which made the one true, made the other true too; they were nothing in
themselves, they were all things, they were an infallible authority, as coming from God.
The world had either to become Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for
private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgement.
Now surely this is quite clear from the nature of the case; but is also clear from the
words of Scripture. "We give thanks to God,' says St. Paul, 'without ceasing, because
when ye had received from us the word of hearing, which is of God, ye received it, not as
the word of men, but(as it is indeed) the Word of God.' Here you see St. Paul expresses
what I have said above; that the Word comes from God, that it is spoken by men, that it
must be received, not as man's word, but as God's word. So in another place he says: 'He
who despiseth these things, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given in us His Holy
Spirit'. Our Savior had made a declaration already: 'He that heareth you, heareth Me; and
he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent
Me.' Accordingly, St. Peter on the day of Pentecost said, 'Men of Israel, HEAR these
words, God hath raised up this Jesus, whereof WE are WITNESSES. Let all the house of
Israel, KNOW MOST CERTAINLY that God hath made this Jesus, whom you have crucified, both
Lord and Christ.' At another time he said: 'We ought to obey God rather than man; we are
WITNESSES of these things, and so IS THE HOLY GHOST, whom God has given to all who obey
Him'. And again: 'He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is
He(Jesus) who hath been appointed by God to be the Judge of the living and of the dead'.
And you know that the persistent declaration of the first preachers was: 'Believe and thou
shalt be saved': they do not say, 'prove our doctrine by our reason,' nor 'wait till you
see before you believe': but, 'believe without seeing and without proving, because our
word is not our own, but God's word'. Men might indeed use their reason in inquiring into
the pretensions of the Apostles; they might inquire whether or not they did miracles; they
might inquire whether or not they did miracles; they might inquire whether they were
predicted in the Old Testament as coming from God; but when they had ascertained this
fairly in whatever way, they were to take all the Apostles said for granted without proof;
they were to exercise their faith, they were to be saved by hearing. Hence, as you perhaps
observed, St. Paul significantly calls the revealed doctrine 'the word of hearing,' in the
passage I quoted; men came to hear, to accept, to obey, not to criticise what was said;
and in accordance with this he asks elsewhere: 'How shall they believe Him, whom they have
not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of Christ.'
Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or acts of mind quite
distinct from each other;--to believe simply what a living authority tells you, and to
take a book such as Scripture, and to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make
yourself the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you choose
to see in it, and nothing more? Are not these two procedures distinct in this, that in the
former you submit, in the latter you judge? At this moment I am not asking you which is
the better, I am not asking whether this or that is practicable now, but are they not two
ways of taking up a doctrine, and not one? is not submission quite contrary to judging?
Now, is it not certain that faith in the time of the Apostles consisted in submitting? and
is it not certain that it did not consist in judging for one's self. It is in vain to say
that the man who judges from the Apostle's writings, does submit to those writings in the
first instance, and therefore has faith in them; else why should he refer to them at all?
There is, I repeat, an essential difference between the act of submitting to a living
oracle, and to his written words; in the former case there is no appeal from the speaker,
in the latter the final decision remains with the reader. Consider how different is the
confidence with which you report another's words in his presence and in his absence. If he
be absent, you boldly say that he holds so and so, or said so and so; but let him come
into the room in the midst of the conversation, and your tone is immediately changed. It
is then, 'I THINK I have heard you say something LIKE this, or what I TOOK to be this'; or
you modify considerably the statement or the fact to which you originally pledged him,
dropping one half of it for safety sake, or retrenching the most startling portions of it;
and then after all you wait with some anxiety to see whether he will accept any portion of
it at all. The same sort of process takes place in the case of the written document of a
person now dead. I can fancy a man magisterially expounding St. Paul's Epistle to the
Galatians or to the Ephesians, who would be better content with the writer's absence than
his sudden re-appearance among us; lest the Apostle should take his own meaning out of his
commentator's hands and explain it for himself. In a word, though he says he has faith in
St. Paul's writings, he confessedly has no faith in St. Paul; and though he may speak much
about truth as found in Scripture, he has no wish at all to be like one of these
Christians whose names and deeds occur in it.
I think I may assume that this virtue, which was exercised by the first Christians, is
not known at all among Protestants now; or at least if there are instances of it, it is
exercised towards those, I mean their own teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim
that they are fit objects of it, and who exhort their people to judge themselves.
Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word;
this is clear from what I have been saying and here is a confirmation of it. If men
believed now as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change. No
one can doubt whether a word spoken by God is to be believed; of course it is; whereas any
one, who is modest and humble, may easily be brought to doubt of his own inferences and
deductions. Since men now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher,
you may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their own deductions
more strongly at one time than at another, they will change their minds about them, or
perhaps deny them altogether; whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is,
belief that what a preacher says to him comes from God. This is what St. Paul especially
insists on, telling us that Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are
given us that 'we may all attain to unity of faith,' and, on the contrary, in order 'that
we be NOT as children tossed to and fro, and carried about by every gale of doctrine'.
Now, in matter of fact, do not men in this day change about in their religious opinions
without any limit? Is not this, then, proof that they have not that faith which the
Apostles demanded of their converts? If they had faith, they would not change. Once
believe that God has spoken, and you are sure He cannot unsay what He has already said; He
cannot deceive; He cannot change; you have received it once for all; you will believe it
ever.
Such is the only rational, consistent account of faith; but so far are Protestants from
professing it, that they laugh at the very notion of it. They laugh at the very notion
itself of men pinning their faith(as they express themselves) upon Pope or Council; they
think it simply superstitious and narrow-minded, to profess to believe just what the
Church believes, and to assent to whatever she will say in time to come on matters of
doctrine. That is, they laugh at the bare notion of doing what Christians undeniably did
in the time of the Apostles. Observe, they do not merely ask whether the Catholic Church
has a claim to teach, has authority, has the gifts;--this is a reasonable question;--no,
they think that the very state of mind which such a claim involves in those who admit it,
namely, the disposition to accept without reserve or question, that THIS is slavish. They
call it priestcraft to insist on this surrender of the reason, and superstition to make
it. That is, they quarrel with the very state of mind which all Christians had in the age
of the Apostles; nor is there any doubt(who will deny it?) that those who thus boast of
not being led blindfold, of judging for themselves, of believing just as much and just as
little as they please, of hating dictation, and so forth, would have found it an extreme
difficultly to hang on the lips of the Apostles, had they lived at their date, or rather
would have simply resisted the sacrifice of their own liberty of thought, would have
thought life eternal too dearly purchased at such a price, and would of died in their
unbelief. And they would have defended themselves on the plea that it was absurd and
childish to ask them to believe without proof, to bid them to give up their education, and
their intelligence, and their science, and in spite of all those difficulties which reason
and sense find in the Christian doctrine, in spite of all those difficulties which reason
and sense find in the Christian doctrine, in spite of its mysteriousness, its obscurity,
its strangeness, its unacceptableness, its severity, to require surrender themselves to
the teaching of a few unlettered Galilaeans, or a learned indeed but fanatical Pharisee.
This is what they would have said then; and if so, is it wonderful they do not become
Catholics now? The simple account of their remaining as they are, is, that they lack one
thing,--they have not faith; it is a state of mind, it is a virtue, which they do not
recognise to be praiseworthy, which they do not aim at possessing.
What they feel now, my brethren, is just what both Jew and Greek felt before them in
the time of the Apostles, and what natural man has felt ever since. The great and wise men
of the day looked down upon faith, then as now, as if it were unworthy the dignity of
human nature: 'See your vocation, brethren that there are not,' among you, 'many wise
according to the flesh, not many mighty, not may noble; but the foolish things of the
world hath God chosen to confound the strong, and the mean things of the world, and the
things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that He might
destroy the things that are, that no flesh might glory in His sight'. Hence the same
Apostle speaks of 'the foolishness of preaching'. Similar to this what our Lord had said
in His prayer to the Father: 'I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto the little
ones'. Now, is it not plain that the men of this day have just inherited the feelings and
traditions of these falsely wise and fatally prudent persons in our Lord's day? They have
the same obstruction in their hearts to entering the Catholic Church, which Pharisees and
Sophists had before them; it goes against them to believe her doctrine, not so much for
want of evidence that she is from God, as because, if so, they shall have not their own
cultivation or depth of intellect, and because they must receive a number of doctrines,
whether they will or no, which are strange to their imagination and difficult to their
reason. The very characteristic of the Catholic teaching and of the Catholic teacher is to
them a preliminary objection to their becoming Catholics, so great, as to throw into the
shade any argument however strong, which is producible in behalf of the mission of those
teachers and the origin of that teaching. In short, they have not faith.
They have not in them the principle of faith; and I repeat, it is nothing to the
purpose to urge that at least they firmly believe Scripture to be the Word of God. In
truth, it is much to be feared that their acceptance of Scripture itself is nothing better
than a prejudice or inveterate feeling impressed on them when they were children. A proof
of it is this; that, while they profess to be so shocked at Catholic miracles, and are not
slow to call them 'lying wonders,' they have no difficulty at all about Scripture
narratives, which are quite as difficult to the reason as any miracles recorded in the
history of the Saints. I have heard on the contrary of Catholics who have been startled at
first reading in Scripture the narratives of the ark in the deluge, of the tower of Babel,
of Balaam and Balac, of the Israelites' flight from Egypt and entrance into the promise
land, and of Esau's and Saul's rejection; which the bulk of Protestants receive without
any effort of mind. How, them, do these Catholics accept them? by faith. They say,
"God is true, and every man a liar". How come Protestants so easily to receive
them? by faith? Nay, I conceive that in most cases there is no submission of the reason at
all; simply they are so familiar with the passages in question, that the narrative
presents no difficulties to their imagination; they have nothing to overcome. If, however,
they ARE led to contemplate these passages in themselves, and to try them in the balance
of probability, and to begin to question about them, as will happen when their intellect
is cultivated, then there is nothing to bring them back to their former habitual or
mechanical belief; they know nothing of submitting to authority, that is, they know
nothing of faith; for they have no authority to submit to. They either remain in the state
of doubt without any great trouble of mind, or they go on to ripen into utter disbelief on
the subjects in question, though they may say nothing about it. Neither before they doubt,
nor when they doubt, is there any token of the presence in them of a power subjecting
reason to the Word of God. No; what looks like faith, is a mere hereditary persuasion, not
a personal principle; it is a habit which they have learned in the nursery, which has
never changed into anything higher, and which is scattered and disappears, like a mist,
before the light, such as it is, of reason. If, however, there are Protestants, who are
not in one or other of these two states, either of credulity or of doubt, but who firmly
believe in spite of all difficulties, they certainly have some claim to be considered
under the influence of faith; but there is nothing to show that such persons, where they
are found, are not in the way to become Catholics, and perhaps they are already called so
by their friends, showing in their own examples the logical, indisputable connection which
exists between possessing faith and joining the Church.
If, then, faith be now the same faculty of mind, the same sort of habit or act, which
it was in the days of the Apostles, I have made good what I set about showing. But it must
be the same; it cannot mean two things; the Word cannot have changed its meaning. Either
say that faith is not necessary now at all, or take it to be what the Apostles meant by
it, but do not say that you have it, and then show me something quite different, which you
have put in the place of it. In the Apostles' days the peculiarity of faith was submission
to a living authority; that is what made it so distinctive; this is what made it an act of
submission at all; this is what destroyed private judgement in matters of religion. If you
will not look out for a living authority, and will bargain for private judgement, then say
at once that you have not the Apostolic faith. And in fact you have it not; the bulk of
this nation has it not; confess you have it not; and then confess that this is the reason
why you are not Catholics. You are not Catholics because you have not faith. Why do not
blind men see the sun? because they have no eyes; in like manner it is vain to discourse
upon the beauty, the sanctity, the sublimity of the Catholic doctrine and worship, where
men have no faith to accept it as Divine. They may confess its beauty, sublimity, and
sanctity, without believing it; they may accept knowledge that the Catholic religion is
noble and majestic; they may be struck with its wisdom, they may admire its adaptation to
human nature, they may be penetrated by its tender and winning bearing, they may be awed
by its consistency. But to commit themselves to it, that is another matter; to choose it
for their portion, to say with the favoured Moabitess. "Whithersoever thou shalt go,
I will go! and where thou shalt dwell, I will dwell; thy people shall be my people, and
thy God my God," this is the language of faith. A man may revere, a man may extol,
who has no tendency whatever to obey, no notion whatever of professing. And this often
happens in fact: men are respectful to the Catholic religion; they acknowledge its
services to mankind, they encourage it and its professors; they like to know them, they
are interested in hearing of their movements, but they are not, and never will be
Catholics. They will die as they have lived, out of the Church, because they have not
possessed themselves of that faculty by which the Church is to be approached. Catholics
who have not studied them or human nature, will wonder they remain where they are; nay,
they themselves, alas for them! will sometimes lament they cannot become Catholics. They
will feel so intimately the blessedness of being a Catholic, that they will cry out,
"Oh, what I would give to be a Catholic! Oh, that I could believe what would I
admire! but I do not, and I can no more believe merely because I wish to do so, that I can
leap over a mountain. I should be much happier were I a Catholic; but I am not; it is no
use deceiving myself; I am what I am; I revere, I cannot accept."
Oh, deplorable state! deplorable because it is utterly and absolutely their own fault,
and because such great stress is laid in Scripture, as they know, on the necessity of
faith for salvation. Faith is there made the foundation and commencement of all acceptable
obedience. It is described as the "argument" or "proof of things not
seen"; by faith men have understood that God is, that He made the world, that He is a
rewarder of those who seek Him, that the flood was coming, that their Saviour was to be
born. "Without faith it is impossible to please God"; "by faith we overcome
the world". When our Lord gave to the Apostles their commission to preach all over
the world, He continued, "He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; but he
that believeth not, shall be condemned". And He declared to Nicoddemus, "He that
believeth in the Son, is not judged; but he that doth not believe is already judged,
because he believeth not in the Name of the Only-begotten Son of God". He said to the
Pharisees, "If you believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins". To the
Jews, "Ye believe not, because you are not one of My sheep". And you may
recollect that before His miracle, He commonly demands faith of the supplicant: "All
things are possible," He says, "to him that believeth"; and we find in one
place, "He could not do any miracle," on account of the unbelief of the
inhabitants.
Has faith changed its meaning, or is it less necessary now? Is it not still what is was
in the Apostles' day, the very characteristic of Christianity, the special instrument of
renovation, the first disposition for justification, one out of the three theological
virtues? God might have renewed us by other means, by sight, by reason, by love, but He
has chosen to "purify our hearts by faith"; it has been His will to select an
instrument which the world despises, but which is of immense power. He preferred it, in
His infinite wisdom, to every other; and if men have it not, they have not the very
element and rudiment, out of which are formed, on which are built, the Saints and Servants
of God. And they have it not; they are living, they are dying, without the hopes, without
the aids of the Gospel, because, in spite of so much that is good in them, in spite of
their sense of duty, their tenderness of conscience on may points, their benevolence,
their uprightness, their generosity, they are under the dominion(I must say it) of a proud
fiend; they have this stout spirit within them, they determine to be their own masters in
matters of thought, about which they know so little; they consider their own reason better
than any one's else; they will not admit that any one comes from God who contradicts their
own view of truth. What! is none their equal in wisdom anywhere? is there none other whose
word is to be taken on religion? is there none other whose word is to be taken on
religion? is there none to wrest from them their ultimate appeal to themselves? Have they
in no possible way the occasion or opportunity of faith? Is it a virtue,which, in
consequence of their transcendent sagacity, their perogative of omniscience, they must
give up hope of exercising? If the prestensions of the Catholic Church do not satisfy
them, let them go somewhere else, if they can. If they are so fastidious that they cannot
trust her as the oracle of God, let them find another more certainly from Him than the
House of His own institution, which has ever been called by His name, has ever maintained
the same claims, has ever taught one substance of doctrine, and has triumphed over those
who preached any other. Since Apostolic faith was in the beginning reliance on man's word,
as being God's word, since what faith was then such it is now, since faith is necessary
for salvation, let them attempt to exercise it towards one another, if they will not
accept the Bride of the Lamb. Let them, if they can, put faith in some of those religions
which have lasted a whole two or three centuries in a corner of the earth. Let them stake
their eternal prospects on kings and nobles and parliaments and soldiery, let them take
some mere fiction of the law, or abortion of the schools, or idol of a populace, or
upstart of a crisis, oracle of lecture-rooms,as the prophet of God. Alas! they are hardly
bestead if they must possess a virtue, which they have no means of exercising,--if they
must make an act of faith, they know not on whom, and know not why!
What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God my dear brethren, that He has made us
what we are! It is a matter of grace. There are, to be sure, many cogent arguments to lead
one to join the Catholic Church, but they do not force the will. We may know them, and not
be moved by them to act upon them. We may be convinced without being persuaded. The two
things are quite distinct from each other, seeing you ought to believe, and believing;
reason, if left to itself, will bring you to the conclusion that you have sufficient
grounds for believing, but belief is the gift of grace. You are then what you are, not
from any excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of God who has chosen you to
believe. You might have been as the barbarians of Africa, or the freethinker of Europe,
with grace sufficient to condemn you, because it had not furthered your salvation. You
might have had strong inspirations of grace and have resisted them, and then additional
grace might not have been given to overcome your resistance. God gives not the same
measure of grace to all. Has He not visited you with over-abundant grace? and was it not
necessary for your hard hearts to receive more than other people? Praise and bless Him
continually for the benefit; do not forget,as time goes on, that it is of grace; do not
pride yourselves upon it; pray ever not to lose it; and do your best to make others
partakers of it.
And you brethren, also, if such be present, who are not as yet Catholics, but who by
your coming hither seem to show your interest in our teaching, and you wish to know more
about it, you too remember, that though you may not yet have faith in the Church, still
God has brought you into the way of obtaining it. You are under the influence of His
grace; He has brought you a step on your journey; He wishes to bring you further. He
wishes to bestow on you the fulness of His blessings, and to make you Catholics. You are
still in your sins; probably you are laden with the guilt of many years, the accumulated
guilt of many a deep, mortal offence, which no contrition has washed away, and to which no
Sacrament has been applied. You at present are troubled with an uneasy conscience, a
dissatisfied reason, an unclean heart, and a divided will; you need to be converted. Yet
now the first suggestions of grace are working in your souls, and are issue in pardon for
the past and sanctity for the future. God is moving you to acts of faith, hope, love,
hatred of sin, repentance; do not disappoint Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey
Him. You look up, and you see, as it were, a great mountain to be scaled; you say,
"How can I possibly find a path over these giant obstacles, which I find in the way
of my becoming Catholic? I do not comprehend this doctrine, and I am pained at that; a
third seems impossible; I never can be familiar with one practice, I am afraid of another;
it is one maze and discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in despair." Say not
so, my dear brethren, look up in hope, trust in Him who calls you forward. "Who art
thou, O great mountain, before Zorobabel? but a plain." He will lead you forward step
by step, as He has led forward many a one before you. He will make the crooked straight
and the rough plain. He will turn the streams, and dry up the rivers, which lie in your
path. "He shall strengthen your feet like harts' feet, and set you up in high places.
He shall widen your steps under you, and your tread shall not be weakened."
"There is no God like the God of the righteous; He that mounts the heaven is thy
Helper; by His mighty working the clouds disperse His dwelling is above, and underneath
are the everlasting arms; He shall cast out the enemy from before thee, and shall say,
Crumble away." "The young shall faint, and youths shall fall; but they that hope
in the Lord shall be new-fledged in strength, they shall take feathers like eagles, they
shall run and not labour, they shall walk and not faith."
Source:
John Henry Newman: Faith and Private Judgement' from Discourses addressed to Mixed
Congregations 1849
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