Transcriber's Notes:
Greek words that may not display correctly in all browsers aretransliterated in the text like this:βιβλος.Position your mouse over the line to see the transliteration.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in theoriginal. Words with and without accents appear as in the original.In this text, semi-colons and colons are used indiscriminately. Theyappear as in the original. Ellipses match the original.
A few typographical errors have been corrected. A complete listfollows the text.
BY
SIXTH EDITION
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
TO THE
Rev. SAMUEL WILLIAM WAYTE, B.D.
PRESIDENT OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.
My dear President,
Not from any special interest which I anticipate you will take in thisVolume, or any sympathy you will feel in its argument, or intrinsicfitness of any kind in my associating you and your Fellows with it,—
But, because I have nothing besides it to offer you, in token of mysense of the gracious compliment which you and they have paid me inmaking me once more a Member of a College dear to me from Undergraduatememories;—
Also, because of the happy coincidence, that whereas its firstpublication was contemporaneous with my leaving Oxford, its secondbecomes, by virtue of your act, contemporaneous with a recovery of myposition there:—
[Pg vi]Therefore it is that, without your leave or your responsibility, I takethe bold step of placing your name in the first pages of what, at myage, I must consider the last print or reprint on which I shall ever beengaged.
I am, my dear President,
Most sincerely yours,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
February 23, 1878.
The following pages were not in the first instance written to prove thedivinity of the Catholic Religion, though ultimately they furnish apositive argument in its behalf, but to explain certain difficulties inits history, felt before now by the author himself, and commonlyinsisted on by Protestants in controversy, as serving to blunt the forceof its primâ facie and general claims on our recognition.
However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history,we are told, is its best refutation; the inconsistencies, found ageafter age in its teaching, being as patent as the simultaneouscontrarieties of religious opinion manifest in the High, Low, and Broadbranches of the Church of England.
In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essaythat, granting that some large variations of teaching in its long courseof 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be foundto arise from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with[Pg viii]a harmony and a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripturerevelations, which, instead of telling to their disadvantage, actuallyconstitute an argument in their favour, as witnessing to asuperintending Providence and a great Design in the