Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
compelled to ask himself whether the Church could make good its claim,
and whether, if it could not, he had any longer a place within its
walls. The change does not appear to have come so rapidly to fulfilment
with him as with John Henry Newman. Dr. Manning seems to me to have a
less aggressive temperament than his distinguished predecessor in
secession. There is more about him of the quietist, of the ecstatic, so
far as religious thought is concerned, while it is possible that he may
be a more practical and influential guide in the mere policy of the
church to which he belongs. There is an amount of scorn in Newman's
nature which sometimes reminds one of Pascal, and which I have not
observed in Dr. Manning or in his writings. I cannot imagine Dr.
Manning, for example, pelting Charles Kingsley with sarcasms and
overwhelming him with contempt, as Dr. Newman evidently delighted to do
in the famous controversy which was provoked by the apostle of Muscular
Christianity. I suppose therefore that Dr. Manning clung for a long time
to the faith in which he was bred. But his whole nature is evidently
cast in the mould which makes Roman Catholic devotees. He is a man of
the type which perhaps found in Fénelon its most illustrious example. I
think it is not too much to say that to him that light of private
judgment which some of us regard as man's grandest and most peculiarly
divine attribute, must always have presented itself as something
abhorrent to his nature. I am judging, of course, as an outsider and as
one little acquainted with theological subjects; but my impression of
the two men would be that Dr. Newman joined the Roman Catholic Church in
obedience to some compulsion of reason, acting in what must seem to most
of us an inscrutable manner, and that Dr. Manning never would have been
a Protestant at all if he had not believed that the Protestant Church
was truly all which its rival claims to be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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