Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/161

 to have presented to us so clear a summary of the main points which led Newman to seek the true Church in Rome alone, and not, as heretofore, in the ideal Middle Way which he and his school were to make dominant in the Anglican Church.

The seven marks of true development were to be found in the Roman Church, and in the Roman Church alone, and therefore Newman joined that communion. The remarkable thing about all this is the intensely theological tone of the whole procedure—theological as opposed to religious. Mr. Hutton has a whole chapter devoted to a defence of Newman from the charge of being secretly infidel or sceptical. But to any one who reads a page of his writings it is abundantly clear that Newman never came within the region where doubt or infidelity exists. His whole attitude towards faith is a proof of this. He never needed a foundation for his faith, for the faith itself was a presumption in favour of the facts or feelings that were to prove the faith. This is perhaps not altogether a fair way of stating the case; but Newman is consistent throughout in declaring that faith itself is the most effectual way of removing the difficulties that attend faith, nowadays most of all, but that have attended it at all times in the world's history.

Indeed, this utter absence of any scepticism