Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman—A Correspondence

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Correspondence

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{3} To prevent misconception, I think it necessary to observe, that, in my Letters here published, I am far indeed from implying any admission of the truth of Mr. Kingsley's accusations against the Catholic Church, although I have abstained from making any formal protest against them. The object which led to my writing at all, has also led me, in writing, to turn my thoughts in a different direction.
J. H. N.
January 31, 1864.

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A Correspondence, &c.

I. Extract from a Review of Froude's History of England, vols. vii. and viii., in Macmillan's Magazine for January, 1864, signed "C. K."

PAGES 216, 217.

{5} "THE Roman religion had, for some time past, been making men not better men, but worse. We must face, we must conceive honestly for ourselves, the deep demoralization which had been brought on in Europe by the dogma that the Pope of Rome had the power of creating right and wrong; that not only truth and falsehood, but morality and immorality, depended on his setting his seal to a bit of parchment. From the time that indulgences were hawked about in his name, which would insure pardon for any man, 'etsi matrem Dei violavisset,' the world in general began to be of that opinion. But the mischief was older and deeper than those indulgences. It lay in the very notion of the dispensing power. A deed might be a crime, or no crime at all—like Henry the Eighth's marriage of his brother's widow—according to the will of the Pope. If it suited the interest or caprice of the old man of Rome not to say the word, the doer of a certain deed would be burned alive in hell for ever. If it suited him, on the other hand, to say it, the doer of the same deed would go, sacramentis munitus, to endless bliss. What rule of morality, what eternal law of right and wrong, could remain in the {6} hearts of men born and bred under the shadow of so hideous a deception?

"And the shadow did not pass at once, when the Pope's authority was thrown off. Henry VIII. evidently thought that if the Pope could make right and wrong, perhaps he could do so likewise. Elizabeth seems to have fancied, at one weak moment, that the Pope had the power of making her marriage with Leicester right, instead of wrong.

"Moreover, when the moral canon of the Pope's will was gone, there was for a while no canon of morality left. The average morality of Elizabeth's reign was not so much low, as capricious, self-willed, fortuitous; magnificent one day in virtue, terrible the next in vice. It was not till more than one generation had grown up and died with the Bible in their hands, that Englishmen and Germans began to understand (what Frenchmen and Italians did not understand) that they were to be judged by the everlasting laws of a God who was no respecter of persons.

"So, again, of the virtue of truth. Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.

"Ever since Pope Stephen forged an epistle from St. Peter to Pepin, King of the Franks, and sent it with some filings of the saint's holy chains, that he might bribe him to invade Italy, destroy the Lombards, and confirm to him the 'Patrimony of St. Peter;' ever since the first monk forged the first charter of his monastery, or dug the first heathen Anglo-Saxon out of his barrow, to make him a martyr and a worker of miracles, because his own minster did not 'draw' as well as the rival minster ten miles off;—ever since this had the heap of lies been accumulating, spawning, breeding fresh lies, till men began to ask themselves whether truth was a thing worth troubling a practical man's head about, and to suspect that tongues were given to men, as claws to cats and horns to bulls, simply for purposes of offence and defence." {7}

II. DR. NEWMAN to MESSRS. MACMILLAN and CO.

The Oratory, Dec. 30, 1863.
GENTLEMEN,
I do not write to you with any controversial purpose, which would be preposterous; but I address you simply because of your special interest in a Magazine which bears your name.

That highly respected name you have associated with a Magazine, of which the January number has been sent to me by this morning's post, with a pencil mark calling my attention to page 217.

There, apropos of Queen Elizabeth, I read as follows:—
"Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so."

There is no reference at the foot of the page to any words of mine, much less any quotation from my writings, in justification of this statement.

I should not dream of expostulating with the writer of such a passage, nor with the editor who could insert it without appending evidence in proof of its allegations. Nor do I want any reparation from either of them. I neither complain of them for their act, nor should I thank them if they reversed it. Nor do I even write to you with any desire of troubling you to send me an answer. I do but wish to draw the attention of yourselves, as gentlemen, to a grave and gratuitous slander, with which I feel confident you will be sorry to find associated a name so eminent as yours.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) JOHN H. NEWMAN. {8}

III. The REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY to DR. NEWMAN

Eversley Rectory, January 6, 1864.
REVEREND SIR,
I have seen a letter of yours to Mr. Macmillan, in which yon complain of some expressions of mine in an article in the January number of Macmillan's Magazine.

That my words were just, I believed from many passages of your writings; but the document to which I expressly referred was one of your Sermons on "Subjects of the Day," No. XX., in the volume published in 1844, and entitled "Wisdom and Innocence."

It was in consequence of that Sermon, that I finally shook off the strong influence which your writings exerted on me; and for much of which I still owe you a deep debt of gratitude.

I am most happy to hear from you that I mistook (as I understand from your letter) your meaning; and I shall be most happy, on your showing me that I have wronged you, to retract my accusation as publicly as I have made it.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Your faithful Servant,
(Signed) CHARLES KINGSLEY.

IV. DR. NEWMAN to the REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY

The Oratory, Birmingham,
January 7, 1864.
REVEREND SIR,
I have to acknowledge your letter of the 6th, informing me that you are the writer of an article in Macmillan's Magazine, in which I am mentioned, and referring generally to a Protestant sermon of mine of seventeen pages, published by me, as Vicar of St. Mary's, in 1844, and treating of the bearing of the Christian towards the world, and of the character of the reaction of that {9} bearing upon him; and also, referring to my works passim; in justification of your statement, categorical and definite, that "Father Newman informs us that truth for its own sake need not, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Roman clergy."

I have only to remark, in addition to what I have already said with great sincerity to Messrs. Macmillan and Co., in the letter of which you speak, and to which I refer you, that, when I wrote to them, no person whatever, whom I had ever seen or heard of, had occurred to me as the author of the statement in question. When I received your letter, taking upon yourself the authorship, I was amazed.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) JOHN H. NEWMAN.

V. DR. NEWMAN to X. Y., ESQ. [Note 1]

The Oratory, January 8, 1864.
DEAR SIR,
I thank you for the friendly tone of your letter of the 5th just received, and I wish to reply to it with the frankness which it invites. I have heard from Mr. Kingsley, avowing himself, to my extreme astonishment, the author of the passage about which I wrote to Messrs. Macmillan. No one, whose name I had ever heard, crossed my mind as the writer in their Magazine: and, had any one said that it was Mr. Kingsley, I should have laughed in his face. Certainly, I saw the initials at the end; but, you must recollect, I live out of the world; and, I must own, if Messrs. Macmillan will not think the confession rude, that, as far as I remember, I never before saw even the outside of their Magazine. And so of the Editor: when I saw his name on the cover, it conveyed to me absolutely no idea whatever. I am not defending myself, but merely stating what was the fact; and as to the article, I said to {10} myself, "Here is a young scribe, who is making himself a cheap reputation by smart hits at safe objects."

All this will make you see, not only how I live out of the world, but also how wanton I feel it to have been in the parties concerned thus to let fly at me. Were I in active controversy with the Anglican body, or any portion of it, as I have been before now, I should consider untrue assertions about me to be in a certain sense a rule of the game, as times go, though God forbid that I should indulge in them myself in the case of another. I have never been very sensitive of such attacks; rarely taken notice of them. Now, when I have long ceased from controversy, they continue: they have lasted incessantly from the year 1833 to this day. They do not ordinarily come in my way: when they do, I let them pass through indolence. Sometimes friends send me specimens of them; and sometimes they are such as I am bound to answer, if I would not compromise interests which are dearer to me than life. The January number of the Magazine was sent to me, I know not by whom, friend or foe, with the passage to which I have animadverted, emphatically, not to say indignantly, scored against. Nor can there be a better proof that there was a call upon me to notice it, than the astounding fact that you can so calmly (excuse me) "confess plainly" of yourself, as you do, "that you had read the passage, and did not even think that I or any of my communion would think it unjust."

Most wonderful phenomenon! An educated man, breathing English air, and walking in the light of the nineteenth century, thinks that neither I nor any members of my communion feel any difficulty in allowing that "Truth for its own sake need not, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Roman clergy;" nay, that they are not at all surprised to be told that "Father Newman had informed" the world, that such is the standard of morality acknowledged, acquiesced in, by his co-religionists! But, I suppose, in truth, there is nothing at all, however base, up to the high mark of Titus Oates, which a Catholic may not expect to be believed of him by Protestants, however honourable and hard-headed. However, dismissing this natural train of thought, I observe on your {11} avowal as follows; and I think what I shall say will commend itself to your judgment as soon as I say it.

I think you will allow then, that there is a broad difference between a virtue, considered in itself as a principle or rule, and the application or limits of it in human conduct. Catholics and Protestants, in their view of the substance of the moral virtues, agree, but they carry them out variously in detail; and in particular instances, and in the case of particular actors or writers, with but indifferent success. Truth is the same in itself and in substance to Catholic and Protestant; so is purity: both virtues are to be referred to that moral sense which is the natural possession of us all. But when we come to the question in detail, whether this or that act in particular is conformable to the rule of truth, or again to the rule of purity; then sometimes there is a difference of opinion between individuals, sometimes between schools, and sometimes between religious communions. I, on my side, have long thought, even before I was a Catholic, that the Protestant system, as such, leads to a lax observance of the rule of purity; Protestants think that the Catholic system, as such, leads to a lax observance of the rule of truth. I am very sorry that they should think so, but I cannot help it; I lament their mistake, but I bear it as I may. If Mr. Kingsley had said no more than this, I should not have felt it necessary to criticize such an ordinary remark. But, as I should be committing a crime, heaping dirt upon my soul, and storing up for myself remorse and confusion of face at a future day, if I applied my abstract belief of the latent sensuality of Protestantism, on à priori reasoning, to individuals, to living persons, to authors and men of name, and said (not to make disrespectful allusion to the living) that Bishop Van Mildert, or the Rev. Dr. Spry, or Dean Milner, or the Rev. Charles Simeon "informs us that chastity for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Anglican clergy," and then, when challenged for the proof, said, "Vide Van Mildert's Bampton Lectures and Simeon's Skeleton Sermons passim;" and, as I should only make the matter still worse, if I pointed to flagrant instances of paradoxical divines or of bad clergymen among Protestants, as, for instance, to that popular London {12} preacher at the end of last century who advocated polygamy in print; so, in like manner, for a writer, when he is criticizing definite historical facts of the sixteenth century, which stand or fall on their own merits, to go out of his way to have a fling at an unpopular name, living but "down," and boldly to say to those who know no better, who know nothing but what he tells them, who take their tradition of historical facts from him, who do not know me,—to say of me, "Father Newman informs us that Truth for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Roman clergy," and to be thus brilliant and antithetical (save the mark!) in the very cause of Truth, is a proceeding of so special a character as to lead me to exclaim, after the pattern of the celebrated saying, "O Truth, how many lies are told in thy name!"

Such being the state of the case, I think I shall carry you along with me when I say, that, if there is to be any explanation in the Magazine of so grave an inadvertence, it concerns the two gentlemen who are responsible for it, of what complexion that explanation shall be. For me, it is not I who ask for it; I look on mainly as a spectator, and shall praise or blame, according to my best judgment, as I see what they do. Not that, in so acting, I am implying a doubt of all that you tell me of them; but "handsome is, that handsome does." If they set about proving their point, or, should they find that impossible, if they say so, in either case I shall call them men. But,—bear with me for harbouring a suspicion which Mr. Kingsley's letter to me has inspired,—if they propose merely to smooth the matter over by publishing to the world that I have "complained," or that "they yield to my letters, expostulations, representations, explanations," or that "they are quite ready to be convinced of their mistake, if I will convince them," or that "they have profound respect for me, but really they are not the only persons who have gathered from my writings what they have said of me," or that "they are unfeignedly surprised that I should visit in their case what I have passed over in the case of others," or that "they have ever had a true sense of my good points, but cannot be expected to be blind to my faults," if this be the sum total of what they are to say, and they ignore {13} the fact that the onus probandi of a very definite accusation lies upon them, and that they have no right to throw the burden upon others, then, I say with submission, they had better let it all alone, as far as I am concerned, for a half-measure settles nothing.

January 10.—I will add, that any letter addressed to me by Mr. Kingsley, I account public property; not so, should you favour me with any fresh communication yourself.
I am, Dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) JOHN H. NEWMAN.

VI. The REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY to DR. NEWMAN

Eversley Rectory, January 14, 1864.
REVEREND SIR,
I have the honour to acknowledge your answer to my letter.

I have also seen your letter to Mr. X. Y. On neither of them shall I make any comment, save to say, that, if you fancy that I have attacked you because you were, as you please to term it, "down," you do me a great injustice; and also, that the suspicion expressed in the latter part of your letter to Mr. X. Y., is needless.

The course, which you demand of me, is the only course fit for a gentleman; and, as the tone of your letters (even more than their language) make me feel, to my very deep pleasure, that my opinion of the meaning of your words was a mistaken one, I shall send at once to Macmillan's Magazine the few lines which I inclose.

You say, that you will consider my letters as public. You have every right to do so.
I remain, Reverend Sir,
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) C. KINGSLEY. {14}

VII. [This will appear in the next number.]

"TO THE EDITOR OF MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE
"SIR,
"In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of the Rev. Dr. Newman, which were founded on a Sermon of his, entitled 'Wisdom and Innocence,' (the sermon will be fully described, as to [Note 2] ... )

"Dr. Newman has, by letter, expressed in the strongest terms, his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words.

"No man knows the use of words better than Dr. Newman; no man, therefore, has a better right to define what he does, or does not, mean by them.

"It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him; and my hearty pleasure at finding him on the side of Truth, in this, or any other, matter.
(Signed) CHARLES KINGSLEY."

VIII. DR. NEWMAN to the REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY

The Oratory, January 17, 1864.
REVEREND SIR,
Since you do no more than announce to me your intention of inserting in Macmillan's Magazine the letter, a copy of which you are so good as to transcribe for me, perhaps I am taking a liberty in making any remarks to you on upon it. But then, the very fact of your showing it to me seems to invite criticism; and so sincerely do I wish to bring this painful matter to an immediate settlement, that, at the risk of being officious, I avail myself of your courtesy to express the judgment which I have carefully formed upon it. {15}

I believe it to be your wish to do me such justice as is compatible with your duty of upholding the consistency and quasi-infallibility which is necessary for a periodical publication; and I am far from expecting any thing from you which would be unfair to Messrs. Macmillan and Co. Moreover, I am quite aware, that the reading public, to whom your letter is virtually addressed, cares little for the wording of an explanation, provided it be made aware of the fact that an explanation has been given.

Nevertheless, after giving your letter the benefit of both these considerations, I am sorry to say I feel it my duty to withhold from it the approbation which I fain would bestow.

Its main fault is, that, quite contrary to your intention, it will be understood by the general reader to intimate, that I have been confronted with definite extracts from my works, and have laid before you my own interpretations of them. Such a proceeding I have indeed challenged, but have not been so fortunate as to bring about.

But besides, I gravely disapprove of the letter as a whole. The grounds of this dissatisfaction will be best understood by you, if I place in parallel columns its paragraphs, one by one, and what I conceive will be the popular reading of them.

This I proceed to do.
I have the honour to be,
Reverend Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) JOHN H. NEWMAN.

IX. REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY to DR. NEWMAN

Eversley Rectory, January 18, 1864.
REVEREND SIR,
I do not think it probable that the good sense and honesty of the British Public will misinterpret my apology, in the way in which you expect.

Two passages in it, which I put in in good faith and good feeling, may, however, be open to such a bad use, and I have written to Messrs. Macmillan to omit them; viz. the words, "No man knows the use of words better than Dr. Newman;" and those, "My hearty pleasure at finding him in the truth (sic) on this or any other matter."

As to your Art. 2, it seems to me, that, by referring publicly to the Sermon on which my allegations are founded, I have given, not only you, but every one an opportunity {17} of judging of their injustice. Having done this, and having frankly accepted your assertion that I was mistaken, I have done as much as one English gentleman can expect from another.
I have the honour to be,
Reverend Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) CHARLES KINGSLEY.

X. DR. NEWMAN to MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.

The Oratory, January 22, 1864.
GENTLEMEN,
Mr. Kingsley, the writer of the paragraph to which I called your attention on the 30th of last month, has shown his wish to recall words, which I considered a great affront to myself, and a worse insult to the Catholic priesthood. He has sent me the draft of a Letter which he proposes to insert in the February number of your Magazine; and, when I gave him my criticisms upon it, he had the good feeling to withdraw two of its paragraphs.

However, he did not remove that portion of it, to which, as I told him, lay my main objection.

That portion ran as follows:—
"Dr. Newman has by letter expressed in the strongest terms his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words."

My objection to this sentence, which (with the addition of a reference to a Protestant sermon of mine, which he says formed the ground of his assertion, and of an expression of regret at having mistaken me) constitutes, after the withdrawal of the two paragraphs, the whole of his proposed letter, I thus explained to him:—
"Its [the proposed letter's] main fault is, that, quite contrary to your intention, it will be understood by the general reader to intimate, that I have been confronted with definite extracts from my works, and have laid before you my own interpretation of them. Such a proceeding {18} I have indeed challenged, but have not been so fortunate as to bring about."

In answer to this representation, Mr. Kingsley wrote to me as follows:—
"It seems to me, that, by referring publicly to the sermon, on which my allegations are founded, I have given, not only you, but every one, an opportunity of judging of their injustice. Having done this, and having frankly accepted your assertion that I was mistaken, I have done as much as one English gentleman can expect from another."

I received this reply the day before yesterday. It disappointed me, for I had hoped that, with the insertion of a letter from him in your Magazine for February, there would have been an end of the whole matter. However, I have waited forty-eight hours, to give time for his explanation to make its full, and therefore its legitimate impression on my mind. After this interval, I find my judgment of the passage just what it was.

Moreover, since sending to Mr. Kingsley that judgment, I have received a letter from a friend at a distance, whom I had consulted, a man about my own age, who lives out of the world of theological controversy and contemporary literature, and whose intellectual habits especially qualify him for taking a clear and impartial view of the force of words. I put before him the passage in your January number, and the writer's proposed letter in February [Note 3]; and I asked him whether I might consider the letter sufficient for its purpose, without saying a word to show him the leaning of my own mind. He answers:

"In answer to your question, whether Mr. Kingsley's proposed reparation is sufficient, I have no hesitation in saying, Most decidedly not. Without attempting to quote any passage from your writings which justifies in any manner the language which he has used in his review, he leaves it to be inferred that the representation, which he has given of your statements and teaching in the sermon to which he refers, is the fair and natural and primary sense of them, and that it is only by your declaring that you did not mean what you really and in effect said, that he finds that he had made a false charge." {19}

This opinion thus given came to me, I repeat, after I had sent to Mr. Kingsley the letter of objection, of which I have quoted a portion above. You will see that, though the two judgments are independent of each other, they in substance coincide.

It only remains for me then to write to you again; and, in writing to you now, I do no more than I did on the 30th of December. I bring the matter before you, without requiring from you any reply.
I am, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) JOHN H. NEWMAN.

XI. Letter of Explanation from Mr. KINGSLEY, as it stands in Macmillan's Magazine for February, 1864, p. 368.

TO THE EDITOR OF MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.
SIR,
In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which I thought were justified by a Sermon of his, entitled "Wisdom and Innocence" (Sermon 20 of "Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day"). Dr. Newman has by letter expressed, in the strongest terms, his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words. It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed) CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Eversley, January 14, 1864.

XII. Reflections on the above.

I shall attempt a brief analysis of the foregoing correspondence; and I trust that the wording which I shall adopt will not offend against the gravity due both to myself {20} and to the occasion. It is impossible to do justice to the course of thought evolved in it without some familiarity of expression.

Mr. Kingsley begins then by exclaiming,—"O the chicanery, the wholesale fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the conscience-killing tyranny of Rome! We have not far to seek for an evidence of it. There's Father Newman to wit: one living specimen is worth a hundred dead ones. He, a Priest writing of Priests, tells us that lying is never any harm."

I interpose: "You are taking a most extraordinary liberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me when and where."

Mr. Kingsley replies: "You said it, Reverend Sir, in a Sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844; and I could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that Sermon had at the time on my own opinion of you."

I make answer: "Oh ... Not, it seems, as a Priest speaking of Priests;—but let us have the passage."

Mr. Kingsley relaxes: "Do you know, I like your tone. From your tone I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe that you did not mean what you said."

I rejoin: "Mean it! I maintain I never said it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic."

Mr. Kingsley replies: "I waive that point."

I object: "Is it possible! What? waive the main question! I either said it or I didn't. You have made a monstrous charge against me; direct, distinct, public. You are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as publicly;—or to own you can't."

Well," says Mr. Kingsley, "if you are quite sure you did not say it, I'll take your word for it; I really will."

My word! I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it was my word that happened to be on trial. The word of a Professor of lying, that he does not lie!

But Mr. Kingsley re-assures me: "We are both gentlemen," he says: "I have done as much as one English gentleman can expect from another."

I begin to see: He thought me a gentleman at the {21} very time that he said I taught lying on system. After all, it is not I, but it is Mr. Kingsley who did not mean what he said. "Habemus confitentem reum."

So we have confessedly come round to this, preaching without practising; the common theme of satirists from Juvenal to Walter Scott! "I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him," says King James of the reprobate Dalgarno: "O Geordie, jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence."

While I feel then that Mr. Kingsley's February explanation is miserably insufficient in itself for his January enormity, still I feel also that the Correspondence, which lies between these two acts of his, constitutes a real satisfaction to those principles of historical and literary justice to which he has given so rude a shock.

Accordingly, I have put it into print, and make no further criticism on Mr. Kingsley.
J. H. N.

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Notes

1. A gentleman who interposed between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman.
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2. Here follows a word or half-word, which neither I nor any one else to whom I have shown the MS. can decypher. I have at p. 15 filled in for Mr. Kingsley what I understood him to mean by "fully."—J. H. N.
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3. Viz. as it is given above, p. 14.—J. H. N.
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