FAITH AND PRIVATE JUDGEMENT

                          by John Henry Newman

        When we consider the beauty, the majesty, the completeness, the
resources, the consolations, of the Catholic Religion, it may strike
us with wonder, my brethren, that it does not convert the multitude of
those who come its way. Perhaps you have felt this surprise
yourselves; especially those of you who have been recently converted,
and can compare it, from experience, with those religions which the
millions of this country choose instead of it. You know from
experience how barren, unmeaning, and baseless those religions are;
what poor attractions they have to say for themselves. Multitudes,
indeed, are of no religion at all; and you may not be surprised that
those who cannot even bear the thought of God, should not feel drawn
to His Church; numbers too, hear very little about Catholicism, or a
great deal of abuse and calumny against it, and you may not be
surprised that they do not all at once become Catholics; but what may
fairly surprise those who enjoy the fulness of Catholic blessings is,
that those who see the Church ever so distantly, who see even gleams
or the faint lustre of her majesty, nevertheless should not be so far
attracted by what they see as to seek no more,--should not at least
put themselves in the way to be led on to the Truth, which of course
is not ordinarily recognized in its Divine authority except by
degrees. Moses, he saw the burning bush, turned aside to see "that
great sight"; Nathaniel, though he thought no good could come out of
Nazareth, at least followed Philip to Christ, when Philip said to him,
"Come and see"; but the multitudes about us see and hear, in some
measure, surely,--many in ample measure,--and yet are not persuaded
thereby to see and hear more, are not moved to act upon their
knowledge. Seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not; they are
contented to remain as they are; they are not drawn to inquire, or at
least not drawn on to embrace.

        Many explanations may be given of this difficulty; I will
proceed to suggest to you one, which will sound like a truism, but yet
has a meaning in it. Men do not become Catholics, because they have
not faith. Now you may ask me, how this is saying more than men do not
believe the Catholic Church =because= they do not believe it; which is
saying nothing at all. Our Lord, for instance, says, "He who cometh to
Me shall not hunger, and he who believeth in Me shall never
thirst";--to believe then and to come are the same thing. If they had
faith, of course they would join the Church, for the very meaning, the
very exercise of faith, is joining the Church. But I mean something
more than this: faith is a state of mind, it is a particular mode of
thinking and acting, which is exercised, always indeed toward God, but
in very various ways. Now I mean to say, that the multitude of men in
this country have not this habit or character of mind. We could
conceive, for instance, their believing in their own religions, even
if they did not believe in the Church; this would be faith, though a
faith improperly directed; but they do not believe even their own
religions; they do not believe in anything at all. It is a definite
defect in their minds: as we might say that a person had not the
virtue of meekness, or of liberality, or of prudence, quite
independently of this or that exercise of the virtue, so there is such
a religious virtue of faith, and there is such a defect as the absence
of it. Now I mean to say that the great mass of men in this country
have not this particular virtue called faith, have not had this virtue
at all. As a man might be without eyes or without hands, so they are
without faith; it is a distinct want or fault in their soul; and what
I say is, that since they have not this faculty of religious belief,
no wonder they do not embrace that, which cannot really be embraced
without it. They do not believe any teaching at all in any true sense;
and therefore they do not believe the Church in particular.

        Now, in the first place, what is faith? it is assenting to a
doctrine as true, which we do not see, which we cannot prove, because
God says it is true, who cannot lie. And further than this, since God
says it is true, not with His own voice, but by the voice of His
messengers, it is assenting to what man says, not simply viewed as a
man, but to what he is commissioned to declare, as a messenger,
prophet, or ambassador from God. In the ordinary course of this world
we account things true either because we see them, or because we can
perceive that they follow and are deducible from what we do see; that
is, we gain truth by sight or by reason, not by faith. You will say
indeed, that we accept a number of things which we cannot prove or
see, on the word of others; certainly, but then we accept what they
say only as the word of man; and we have not commonly that absolute
and reserved confidence in them, which nothing can shake. We know that
man is open to mistake, and we are always glad to find some
confirmation of what he says, from other quarters, in any important
matter; or we receive his information with negligence and unconcern,
as something of little consequence, as a matter of opinion; or, if we
act upon it, it is as a matter of prudence, thinking it best and
safest to do so. We take his word for what it is worth, and we use it
either according to our necessity, or its probability. We keep the
decision in our own hands, and reserve to ourselves the right of
re-opening the question whenever we please. This is very different
from Divine faith; he who believes that God is true, and that this is
His word, which he has committed to man, has no doubt at all. He is as
certain that the doctrine taught is true, as that God is true; and he
is certain, =because= God is true, =because= God has spoken, not
because he sees its truth or can prove its truth. That is, faith has
two peculiarities;--it is most certain, decided, positive, immovable
in its assent, and it gives this assent not because it sees with the
eye, or sees with the reason, but because it receives the tidings from
one who comes from God.

        This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles, as no one
can deny; and what it was then, it must be now, else it ceases to be
the same thing. I say, it certainly was this in the Apostles' time,
for you know they preached to the world that Christ was the Son of
God, that He preached to the world that Christ was the Son of God,
that He was born of a Virgin, that He had ascended on high, that he
would come again to judge all, the living and the dead. Could the
world see all this? could it prove it? how then were men to receive
it? why did so many embrace it? on the word of the Apostles, who were,
as their powers showed, messengers from God. Men were told to submit
their reason to a living authority. Moreover, whatever an Apostle
said, his converts were bound to believe; when they entered the
Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their
teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose,
but to accept whatever was put before them. No one doubts, no one can
doubt this, of those primitive times. A Christian was bound to take
without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the
Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it
would not be enough to keep silence, it would not be enough not to
oppose it: it was not allowable to credit in a measure; it was not
allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of
what was said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret
opposition to the teaching, if he waited for further proof before he
believed it, this would be a proof that he did not think the Apostles
were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he did
not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission
of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the
necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is
now called private judgement. No one could say: "I will choose my
religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I
will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I
please, and no longer; what I believe to-day I will reject tomorrow,
if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I
will not believe what they shall say in time to come." No; either the
Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were, everything
that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were
not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a
little, to believe more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the
very notion of believing: if one part was to be believed; it was an
absurdity to believe one thing and not another; for the word of the
Apostles, which made the one true, made the other true too; they were
nothing in themselves, they were all things, they were an infallible
authority, as coming from God. The world had either to become
Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for private tastes
and fancies, no room for private judgement.

        Now surely this is quite clear from the nature of the case;
but is also clear from the words of Scripture. "We give thanks to
God,' says St. Paul, 'without ceasing, because when ye had received
from us the word of hearing, which is of God, ye received it, not as
the word of men, but(as it is indeed) the Word of God.' Here you see
St. Paul expresses what I have said above; that the Word comes from
God, that it is  spoken by men, that it must be received, not as man's
word, but as God's word. So in another place he says: 'He who
despiseth these things, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also
given in us His Holy Spirit'. Our Savior had made a declaration
already: 'He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you,
despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me.'
Accordingly, St. Peter on the day of Pentecost said, 'Men of Israel,
HEAR these words, God hath raised up this Jesus, whereof WE are
WITNESSES. Let all the house of Israel, KNOW MOST CERTAINLY that God
hath made this Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ.'
At another time he said: 'We ought to obey God rather than man; we are
WITNESSES of these things, and so IS THE HOLY GHOST, whom God has
given to all who obey Him'. And again: 'He commanded us to preach to
the people, and to testify that it is He(Jesus) who hath been
appointed by God to be the Judge of the living and of the dead'. And
you know that the persistent declaration of the first preachers was:
'Believe and thou shalt be saved': they do not say, 'prove our
doctrine by our reason,' nor 'wait till you see before you believe':
but, 'believe without seeing and without proving, because our word is
not our own, but God's word'. Men might indeed use their reason in
inquiring into the pretensions of the Apostles; they might inquire
whether or not they did miracles; they might inquire whether or not
they did miracles; they might inquire whether they were predicted in
the Old Testament as coming from God; but when they had ascertained
this fairly in whatever way, they were to take all the Apostles said
for granted without proof; they were to exercise their faith, they
were to be saved by hearing. Hence, as you perhaps observed, St. Paul
significantly calls the revealed doctrine 'the word of hearing,' in
the passage I quoted; men came to hear, to accept, to obey, not to
criticise what was said; and in accordance with this he asks
elsewhere: 'How shall they believe Him, whom they have not heard? and
how shall they hear without a preacher? Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of Christ.'

        Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or
acts of mind quite distinct from each other;--to believe simply what a
living authority tells you, and to take a book such as Scripture, and
to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself the
master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you
choose to see in it, and nothing more? Are not these two procedures
distinct in this, that in the former you submit, in the latter you
judge? At this moment I am not asking you which is the better, I am
not asking whether this or that is practicable now, but are they not
two ways of taking up a doctrine, and not one? is not submission quite
contrary to judging? Now, is it not certain that faith in the time of
the Apostles consisted in submitting? and is it not certain that it
did not consist in judging for one's self. It is in vain to say that
the man who judges from the Apostle's writings, does submit to those
writings in the first instance, and therefore has faith in them; else
why should he refer to them at all? There is, I repeat, an essential
difference between the act of submitting to a living oracle, and to
his written words; in the former case there is no appeal from the
speaker, in the latter the final decision remains with the reader.
Consider how different is the confidence with which you report
another's words in his presence and in his absence. If he be absent,
you boldly say that he holds so and so, or said so and so; but let him
come into the room in the midst of the conversation, and your tone is
immediately changed. It is then, 'I THINK I have heard you say
something LIKE this, or what I TOOK to be this'; or you modify
considerably the statement or the fact to which you originally pledged
him, dropping one half of it for safety sake, or retrenching the most
startling portions of it; and then after all you wait with some
anxiety to see whether he will accept any portion of it at all. The
same sort of process takes place in the case of the written document
of a person now dead. I can fancy a man magisterially expounding St.
Paul's Epistle to the Galatians or to the Ephesians, who would be
better content with the writer's absence than his sudden re-appearance
among us; lest the Apostle should take his own meaning out of his
commentator's hands and explain it for himself. In a word, though he
says he has faith in St. Paul's writings, he confessedly has no faith
in St. Paul; and though he may speak much about truth as found in
Scripture, he has no wish at all to be like one of these Christians
whose names and deeds occur in it.

        I think I may assume that this virtue, which was exercised by
the first Christians, is not known at all among Protestants now; or at
least if there are instances of it, it is exercised towards those, I
mean their own teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim that they
are fit objects of it, and who exhort their people to judge
themselves. Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the
primitive meaning of that word; this is clear from what I have been
saying and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they
did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change. No
one can doubt whether a word spoken by God is to be believed; of
course it is; whereas any one, who is modest and humble, may easily be
brought to doubt of his own inferences and deductions. Since men
now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher, you
may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their
own deductions more strongly at one time than at another, they will
change their minds about them, or perhaps deny them altogether;
whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is, belief that
what a preacher says to him comes from God. This is what St. Paul
especially insists on, telling us that Apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are given us that 'we may all
attain to unity of faith,' and, on the contrary, in order 'that we be
NOT as children tossed to and fro, and carried about by every gale of
doctrine'. Now, in matter of fact, do not men in this day change about
in their religious opinions without any limit? Is not this, then,
proof that they have not that faith which the Apostles demanded of
their converts? If they had faith, they would not change. Once believe
that God has spoken, and you are sure He cannot unsay what He has
already said; He cannot deceive; He cannot change; you have received
it once for all; you will believe it ever.

        Such is the only rational, consistent account of faith; but so
far are Protestants from professing it, that they laugh at the very
notion of it. They laugh at the very notion itself of men pinning
their faith(as they express themselves) upon Pope or Council; they
think it simply superstitious and narrow-minded, to profess to believe
just what the Church believes, and to assent to whatever she will say
in time to come on matters of doctrine. That is, they laugh at the
bare notion of doing what Christians undeniably did in the time of the
Apostles. Observe, they do not merely ask whether the Catholic Church
has a claim to teach, has authority, has the gifts;--this is a
reasonable question;--no, they think that the very state of mind which
such a claim involves in those who admit it, namely, the disposition
to accept without reserve or question, that THIS is slavish. They call
it priestcraft to insist on this surrender of the reason, and
superstition to make it. That is, they quarrel with the very state of
mind which all Christians had in the age of the Apostles; nor is there
any doubt(who will deny it?) that those who thus boast of not being
led blindfold, of judging for themselves, of believing just as much
and just as little as they please, of hating dictation, and so forth,
would have found it an extreme difficultly to hang on the lips of the
Apostles, had they lived at their date, or rather would have simply
resisted the sacrifice of their own liberty of thought, would have
thought life eternal too dearly purchased at such a price, and would
of died in their unbelief. And they would have defended themselves on
the plea that it was absurd and childish to ask them to believe
without proof, to bid them to give up their education, and their
intelligence, and their science, and in spite of all those
difficulties which reason and sense find in the Christian doctrine, in
spite of all those difficulties which reason and sense find in the
Christian doctrine, in spite of its mysteriousness, its obscurity, its
strangeness, its unacceptableness, its severity, to require surrender
themselves to the teaching of a few unlettered Galilaeans, or a
learned indeed but fanatical Pharisee. This is what they would have
said then; and if so, is it wonderful they do not become Catholics
now? The simple account of their remaining as they are, is, that they
lack one thing,--they have not faith; it is a state of mind, it is a
virtue, which they do not recognise to be praiseworthy, which they do
not aim at possessing.

        What they feel now, my brethren, is just what both Jew and
Greek felt before them in the time of the Apostles, and what natural
man has felt ever since. The great and wise men of the day looked down
upon faith, then as now, as if it were unworthy the dignity of human
nature: 'See your vocation, brethren that there are not,' among you,
'many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not may noble; but
the foolish things of the world hath God chosen to confound the
strong, and the mean things of the world, and the things that are
contemptible, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that He might
destroy the things that are, that no flesh might glory in His sight'.
Hence the same Apostle speaks of 'the foolishness of preaching'.
Similar to this what our Lord had said in His prayer to the Father: 'I
thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
the little ones'. Now, is it not plain that the men of this day have
just inherited the feelings and traditions of these falsely wise and
fatally prudent persons in our Lord's day? They have the same
obstruction in their hearts to entering the Catholic Church, which
Pharisees and Sophists had before them; it goes against them to
believe her doctrine, not so much for want of evidence that she is
from God, as because, if so, they shall have not their own cultivation
or depth of intellect, and because they must receive a number of
doctrines, whether they will or no, which are strange to their
imagination and difficult to their reason. The very characteristic of
the Catholic teaching and of the Catholic teacher is to them a
preliminary objection to their becoming Catholics, so great, as to
throw into the shade any argument however strong, which is producible
in behalf of the mission of those teachers and the origin of that
teaching. In short, they have not faith.

        They have not in them the principle of faith; and I repeat, it
is nothing to the purpose to urge that at least they firmly believe
Scripture to be the Word of God. In truth, it is much to be feared
that their acceptance of Scripture itself is nothing better than a
prejudice or inveterate feeling impressed on them when they were
children. A proof of it is this; that, while they profess to be so
shocked at Catholic miracles, and are not slow to call them 'lying
wonders,' they have no difficulty at all about Scripture narratives,
which are quite as difficult to the reason as any miracles recorded in
the history of the Saints.  I have heard on the contrary of Catholics
who have been startled at first reading in Scripture the narratives of
the ark in the deluge, of the tower of Babel, of Balaam and Balac, of
the Israelites' flight from Egypt and entrance into the promise land,
and of Esau's and Saul's rejection; which the bulk of Protestants
receive without any effort of mind. How, them, do these Catholics
accept them? by faith. They say, "God is true, and every man a liar".
How come Protestants so easily to receive them? by faith? Nay, I
conceive that in most cases there is no submission of the reason at
all; simply they are so familiar with the passages in question, that
the narrative presents no difficulties to their imagination; they have
nothing to overcome. If, however, they ARE led to contemplate these
passages in themselves, and to try them in the balance of probability,
and to begin to question about them, as will happen when their
intellect is cultivated, then there is nothing to bring them back to
their former habitual or mechanical belief; they know nothing of
submitting to authority, that is, they know nothing of faith; for they
have no authority to submit to. They either remain in the state of
doubt without any great trouble of mind, or they go on to ripen into
utter disbelief on the subjects in question, though they may say
nothing about it. Neither before they doubt, nor when they doubt, is
there any token of the presence in them of a power subjecting reason
to the Word of God. No; what looks like faith, is a mere hereditary
persuasion, not a personal principle; it is a habit which they have
learned in the nursery, which has never changed into anything higher,
and which is scattered and disappears, like a mist, before the light,
such as it is, of reason. If, however, there are Protestants, who are
not in one or other of these two states, either of credulity or of
doubt, but who firmly believe in spite of all difficulties, they
certainly have some claim to be considered under the influence of
faith; but there is nothing to show that such persons, where they are
found, are not in the way to become Catholics, and perhaps they are
already called so by their friends, showing in their own examples the
logical, indisputable connection which exists between possessing faith
and joining the Church.

        If, then, faith be now the same faculty of mind, the same sort
of habit or act, which it was in the days of the Apostles, I have made
good what I set about showing. But it must be the same; it cannot mean
two things; the Word cannot have changed its meaning. Either say that
faith is not necessary now at all, or take it to be what the Apostles
meant by it, but do not say that you have it, and then show me
something quite different, which you have put in the place of it. In
the Apostles' days the peculiarity of faith was submission to a living
authority; that is what made it so distinctive; this is what made it
an act of submission at all; this is what destroyed private judgement
in matters of religion. If you will not look out for a living
authority, and will bargain for private judgement, then say at once
that you have not the Apostolic faith. And in fact you have it not;
the bulk of this nation has it not; confess you have it not; and then
confess that this is the reason why you are not Catholics. You are not
Catholics because you have not faith. Why do not blind men see the
sun? because they have no eyes; in like manner it is vain to discourse
upon the beauty, the sanctity, the sublimity of the Catholic doctrine
and worship, where men have no faith to accept it as Divine. They may
confess its beauty, sublimity, and sanctity, without believing it;
they may accept knowledge that the Catholic religion is noble and
majestic; they may be struck with its wisdom, they may admire its
adaptation to human nature, they may be penetrated by its tender and
winning bearing, they may be awed by its consistency. But to commit
themselves to it, that is another matter; to choose it for their
portion, to say with the favoured Moabitess. "Whithersoever thou shalt
go, I will go! and where thou shalt dwell, I will dwell; thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God," this is the language of
faith. A man may revere, a man may extol, who has no tendency whatever
to obey, no notion whatever of professing. And this often happens in
fact: men are respectful to the Catholic religion; they acknowledge
its services to mankind, they encourage it and its professors; they
like to know them, they are interested in hearing of their movements,
but they are not, and never will be Catholics. They will die as they
have lived, out of the Church, because they have not possessed
themselves of that faculty by which the Church is to be approached.
Catholics who have not studied them or human nature, will wonder they
remain where they are; nay, they themselves, alas for them! will
sometimes lament they cannot become Catholics. They will feel so
intimately the blessedness of being a Catholic, that they will cry
out, "Oh, what I would give to be a Catholic! Oh, that I could believe
what would I admire! but I do not, and I can no more believe merely
because I wish to do so, that I can leap over a mountain. I should be
much happier were I a Catholic; but I am not; it is no use deceiving
myself; I am what I am; I revere, I cannot accept."

        Oh, deplorable state! deplorable because it is utterly and
absolutely their own fault, and because such great stress is laid in
Scripture, as they know, on the necessity of faith for salvation.
Faith is there made the foundation and commencement of all acceptable
obedience. It is described as the "argument" or "proof of things not
seen"; by faith men have understood that God is, that He made the
world, that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, that the flood was
coming, that their Saviour was to be born. "Without faith it is
impossible to please God"; "by faith we overcome the world". When our
Lord gave to the Apostles their commission to preach all over the
world, He continued, "He that believeth and is baptised, shall be
saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned". And He declared
to Nicoddemus, "He that believeth in the Son, is not judged; but he
that doth not believe is already judged, because he believeth not in
the Name of the Only-begotten Son of God". He said to the Pharisees,
"If you believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins". To the
Jews, "Ye believe not, because you are not one of My sheep".  And you
may recollect that before His miracle, He commonly demands faith of
the supplicant: "All things are possible," He says, "to him that
believeth"; and we find in one place, "He could not do any miracle,"
on account of the unbelief of the inhabitants.

        Has faith changed its meaning, or is it less necessary now? Is
it not still what is was in the Apostles' day, the very characteristic
of Christianity, the special instrument of renovation, the first
disposition for justification, one out of the three theological
virtues? God might have renewed us by other means, by sight, by
reason, by love, but He has chosen to "purify our hearts by faith"; it
has been His will to select an instrument which the world despises,
but which is of immense power. He preferred it, in His infinite
wisdom, to every other; and if men have it not, they have not the very
element and rudiment, out of which are formed, on which are built, the
Saints and Servants of God. And they have it not; they are living,
they are dying, without the hopes, without the aids of the Gospel,
because, in spite of so much that is good in them, in spite of their
sense of duty, their tenderness of conscience on may points, their
benevolence, their uprightness, their generosity, they are under the
dominion(I must say it) of a proud fiend; they have this stout spirit
within them, they determine to be their own masters in matters of
thought, about which they know so little; they consider their own
reason better than any one's else; they will not admit that any one
comes from God who contradicts their own view of truth. What! is none
their equal in wisdom anywhere? is there none other whose word is to
be taken on religion? is there none other whose word is to be taken on
religion? is there none to wrest from them their ultimate appeal to
themselves? Have they in no possible way the occasion or opportunity
of faith? Is it a virtue,which, in consequence of their transcendent
sagacity, their perogative of omniscience, they must give up hope of
exercising? If the prestensions of the Catholic Church do not satisfy
them, let them go somewhere else, if they can. If they are so
fastidious that they cannot trust her as the oracle of God, let them
find another more certainly from Him than the House of His own
institution, which has ever been called by His name, has ever
maintained the same claims, has ever taught one substance of doctrine,
and has triumphed over those who preached any other. Since Apostolic
faith was in the beginning reliance on man's word, as being God's
word, since what faith was then such it is now, since faith is
necessary for salvation, let them attempt to exercise it towards one
another, if they will not accept the Bride of the Lamb. Let them, if
they can, put faith in some of those religions which have lasted a
whole two or three centuries in a corner of the earth. Let them stake
their eternal prospects on kings and nobles and parliaments and
soldiery, let them take some mere fiction of the law, or abortion of
the schools, or idol of a populace, or upstart of a crisis, oracle of
lecture-rooms,as the prophet of God. Alas! they are hardly bestead if
they must possess a virtue, which they have no means of
exercising,--if they must make an act of faith, they know not on whom,
and know not why!

        What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God my dear
brethren, that He has made us what we are! It is a matter of grace.
There are, to be sure, many cogent arguments to lead one to join the
Catholic Church, but they do not force the will. We may know them, and
not be moved by them to act upon them. We may be convinced without
being persuaded. The two things are quite distinct from each other,
seeing you ought to believe, and believing; reason, if left to itself,
will bring you to the conclusion that you have sufficient grounds for
believing, but belief is the gift of grace. You are then what you are,
not from any excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of God
who has chosen you to believe. You might have been as the barbarians
of Africa, or the freethinker of Europe, with grace sufficient to
condemn you, because it had not furthered your salvation. You might
have had strong inspirations of grace and have resisted them, and then
additional grace might not have been given to overcome your
resistance. God gives not the same measure of grace to all. Has He
not visited you with over-abundant grace? and was it not necessary for
your hard hearts to receive more than other people? Praise and bless
Him continually for the benefit; do not forget,as time goes on, that
it is of grace; do not pride yourselves upon it; pray ever not to lose
it; and do your best to make others partakers of it.

        And you brethren, also, if such be present, who are not as yet
Catholics, but who by your coming hither seem to show your interest in
our teaching, and you wish to know more about it, you too remember,
that though you may not yet have faith in the Church, still God has
brought you into the way of obtaining it. You are under the influence
of His grace; He has brought you a step on your journey; He wishes to
bring you further. He wishes to bestow on you the fulness of His
blessings, and to make you Catholics. You are still in your sins;
probably you are laden with the guilt of many years, the accumulated
guilt of many a deep, mortal offence, which no contrition has washed
away, and to which no Sacrament has been applied. You at present are
troubled with an uneasy conscience, a dissatisfied reason, an unclean
heart, and a divided will; you need to be converted. Yet now the first
suggestions of grace are working in your souls, and are issue in
pardon for the past and sanctity for the future. God is moving you to
acts of faith, hope, love, hatred of sin, repentance; do not
disappoint Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey Him. You look
up, and you see, as it were, a great mountain to be scaled; you say,
"How can I possibly find a path over these giant obstacles, which I
find in the way of my becoming Catholic? I do not comprehend this
doctrine, and I am pained at that; a third seems impossible; I never
can be familiar with one practice, I am afraid of another; it is one
maze and discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in despair." Say
not so, my dear brethren, look up in hope, trust in Him who calls you
forward. "Who art thou, O great mountain, before Zorobabel? but a
plain." He will lead you forward step by step, as He has led forward
many a one before you. He will make the crooked straight and the rough
plain. He will turn the streams, and dry up the rivers, which lie in
your path. "He shall strengthen your feet like harts' feet, and set
you up in high places. He shall widen your steps under you, and your
tread shall not be weakened." "There is no God like the God of the
righteous; He that mounts the heaven is thy Helper; by His mighty
working the clouds disperse His dwelling is above, and underneath are
the everlasting arms; He shall cast out the enemy from before thee,
and shall say, Crumble away." "The young shall faint, and youths shall
fall; but they that hope in the Lord shall be new-fledged in strength,
they shall take feathers like eagles, they shall run and not labour,
they shall walk and not faith."

  John Henry Newman, 'Faith and Private Judgement' from
                     'Discourses addressed to Mixed Congregations'
                     1849

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