An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant
Kant · en
Nevertheless, when with passionate conviction a great man, taking the
reactionary course, thinks the problem through again from his own point
of view, then we have a real phenomenon in the history of contemporary
thought. When such an one wrestles before God to give reason to himself
and to his fellows for the faith that is in him, then the reactionary's
reasoning is as imposing and suggestive as is any other. He leaves in
his work an intellectual deposit which must be considered. He makes a
contribution which must be reckoned with, even more seriously, perhaps,
by those who dissent from it than by those who may agree with it. Such
deposit Newman and the Tractarian movement certainly did make. They
offered a rationale of the reaction. They gave to the Catholic revival a
standing in the world of ideas, not merely in the world of action.
Whether their reasoning has weight to-day, is a question upon which
opinion is divided. Yet Newman and his compeers, by their character and
standing, by their distinctively English qualities and by the road of
reason which they took in the defence of Catholic principles, made
Catholicism English again, in a sense in which it had not been English
for three hundred years. Yet though Newman brought to the Roman Church
in England, on his conversion to it, a prestige and qualities which in
that communion were unequalled, he was never _persona grata_ in that
Church. Outwardly the Roman Catholic revival in England was not in large
measure due to Newman and his arguments. It was due far more to men like
Wiseman and Manning, who were not men of argument but of deeds.
NEWMAN