Apologia Pro Vita Sua | Page 2

in the number for January 1864, of a magazine of wide
circulation, and in an Article upon Queen Elizabeth, that a popular
writer took occasion formally to accuse me by name of thinking so
lightly of the virtue of Veracity, as in set terms to have countenanced
and defended that neglect of it which he at the same time imputed to
the Catholic Priesthood. His words were these:--
"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."
These assertions, going far beyond the popular prejudice entertained
against me, had no foundation whatever in fact. I never had said, I
never had dreamed of saying, that truth for its own sake need not, and
on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Roman Clergy; or that
cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints wherewith
to withstand the wicked world. To what work of mine then could the
writer be referring? In a correspondence which ensued upon the subject
between him and myself, he rested his charge against me on a Sermon
of mine, preached, before I was a Catholic, in the pulpit of my Church
at Oxford; and he gave me to understand, that, after having done as
much as this, he was not bound, over and above such a general
reference to my Sermon, to specify the passages of it, in which the
doctrine, which he imputed to me, was contained. On my part I
considered this not enough; and I demanded of him to bring out his
proof of his accusation in form and in detail, or to confess he was
unable to do so. But he persevered in his refusal to cite any distinct

passages from any writing of mine; and, though he consented to
withdraw his charge, he would not do so on the issue of its truth or
falsehood, but simply on the ground that I assured him that I had had
no intention of incurring it. This did not satisfy my sense of justice.
Formally to charge me with committing a fault is one thing; to allow
that I did not intend to commit it, is another; it is no satisfaction to me,
if a man accuses me of this offence, for him to profess that he does not
accuse me of that; but he thought differently. Not being able then to
gain redress in the quarter, where I had a right to ask it, I appealed to
the public. I published the correspondence in the shape of a Pamphlet,
with some remarks of my own at the end, on the course which that
correspondence had taken.
This Pamphlet, which appeared in the first weeks of February, received
a reply from my accuser towards the end of March, in another Pamphlet
of 48 pages, entitled, "What then does Dr. Newman mean?" in which
he professed to do that which I had called upon him to do; that is, he
brought together a number of extracts from various works of mine,
Catholic and Anglican, with the object of showing that, if I was to be
acquitted of the crime of teaching and practising deceit and dishonesty,
according to his first supposition, it was at the price of my being
considered no longer responsible for my actions; for, as he expressed it,
"I had a human reason once, no doubt, but I had gambled it away," and
I had "worked my mind into that morbid state, in which nonsense was
the only food for which it hungered;" and that it could not be called "a
hasty or farfetched or unfounded mistake, when he concluded that I did
not care for truth for its own sake, or teach my disciples to regard it as a
virtue;" and, though "too many prefer the charge of insincerity to that
of insipience, Dr. Newman seemed not to be of that number."
He ended his Pamphlet by returning to his original imputation against
me, which he had professed to abandon. Alluding by anticipation to my
probable answer to what he was then publishing, he professed his
heartfelt embarrassment how he was to believe any thing I might say in
my exculpation, in the plain and literal sense of the words. "I am
henceforth," he said, "in doubt and fear, as much as an honest man can
be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell, that

I shall not