Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/162

 as to the fundamental principles of revealed religion is implied in such a treatment of theology as was adopted in Newman's writings both while he was within and after he had left the Anglican Church. It is to him the scientia scientiarum, a kind of deductive science analogous to geometry, starting, like it, with definitions, and assuming, like it, a number of axioms. This conception at once leads on to sacerdotalism, as it is obvious that the knowledge of such a technical science and its application to practice can only be safely intrusted to experts. Hence the opposition of the Tractarians to Protestantism, which from this point of view represents the claim of the common man to understand and apply a highly technical science.

When we combine with this confidence in the capacity of a dogmatic theology to solve the difficulties of life an intense feeling of the historic continuity of the race we have the idées mères of Newman's position throughout his career. The conception of the unity of history is implied in all Newman's work, and is the foundation of his conception of religious development that led him ultimately to Rome. Simultaneously almost with Hegel's philosophy of history Newman applied the conception of evolution to man's spiritual nature, before Spencer, Darwin, and Wallace