- or - Francis William Newman, 1874 This is perhaps an egotistical book; egotistical certainly in its form, yet not in its purport and essence. Personal reasons the writer cannot wholly disown, for desiring to explain himself to more than a few, who on religious grounds are unjustly alienated from him. If by any motive of curiosity or lingering remembrances they may be led to read his straightforward account, he trusts to be able to show them that he has had no choice but to adopt the intellectu

I had long thought that the elaborate reply made for me in the "Prospective Review" (1854) to Mr. Henry Rogers's Defence of the "Eclipse of Faith," superseded anything more from my pen. But in the course of six years a review is forgotten and buried away, while Mr. Rogers is circulating the ninth edition of his misrepresentations. As my publisher announces to me the opportunity, I at length consent to reply myself to the Defence, cancelling what was previously my last chapter, written against th

I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer. But it was not until I was fourteen that I gained any definite idea of a "scheme of doctrine," or could have been called a "converted person" by one of the Evangelical School. My religion then certainly exerted a great general influence over my conduct; for I soon underwent various persecution from my schoolfellows on account of it: th

My second period is characterized, partly by the great ascendancy exercised over me by one powerful mind and still more powerful will, partly by the vehement effort which throughout its duration urged me to long after the establishment of Christian Fellowship in a purely Biblical Church as the first great want of Christendom and of the world. I was already uneasy in the sense that I could not enter the ministry of the Church of England, and knew not what course of life to choose. I longed to bec

After the excitement was past, I learned many things from the events which have been named. First, I had found that the class of Christians with whom I had been joined had exploded the old Creeds in favour of another of their own, which was never given me upon authority, and yet was constantly slipping out, in the words, Jesus is Jehovah . It appeared to me certain that this would have been denounced as the Sabellian heresy by Athanasias and his contemporaries. I did not wish to run down Sabelli

It has been stated that I had already begun to discern that it was impossible with perfect honesty to defend every tittle contained in the Bible. Most of the points which give moral offence in the book of Genesis I had been used to explain away by the doctrine of Progress; yet every now and then it became hard to deny that God is represented as giving an actual sanction to that which we now call sinful. Indeed, up and down the Scriptures very numerous texts are scattered, which are notorious dif

I reckon my fifth period to begin from the time when I had totally abandoned the claim of "the Canon" of Scripture, however curtailed, to be received as the object of faith, as free from error, or as something raised above moral criticism; and looked out for some deeper foundation for my creed than any sacred Letter. But an entirely new inquiry had begun to engage me at intervals, viz., the essential logic of these investigations. Ought we in any case to receive moral truth in obedience to an ap

After renouncing any "Canon of Scripture" or Sacred Letter at the end of my fourth period, I had been forced to abandon all "Second-hand Faith" by the end of my fifth. If asked why I believed this or that, I could no longer say, " Because Peter, or Paul, or John believed, and I may thoroughly trust that they cannot mistake." The question now pressed hard, whether this was equivalent to renouncing Christianity. Undoubtedly, my positive belief in its miracles had evaporated; but I had not arrived

Let no reader peruse this chapter, who is not willing to enter into a discussion, as free and unshrinking, concerning the personal excellencies and conduct of Jesus, as that of Mr. Grote concerning Socrates. I have hitherto met with most absurd rebuffs for my scrupulosity. One critic names me as a principal leader in a school which extols and glorifies the character of Jesus; after which he proceeds to reproach me with inconsistency, and to insinuate dishonesty. Another expresses himself as deep

If any Christian reader has been patient enough to follow me thus far, I now claim that he will judge my argument and me, as before the bar of God, and not by the conventional standards of the Christian churches. Morality and Truth are principles in human nature both older and more widespread than Christianity or the Bible: and neither Jesus nor James nor John nor Paul could have addressed or did address men in any other tone, than that of claiming to be themselves judged by some pre-existing st

This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of the religious periodicals, and among them in the "Prospective Review," by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked in a book called the "Eclipse of Faith," written (chiefly against my treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my religion, and doi

It is an error not at all peculiar to the author of the "Eclipse of Faith," but is shared with him by many others, and by one who has treated me in a very different spirit, that Christians are able to use atheistic arguments against me without wounding Christianity. As I have written a rather ample book, called "Theism," expressly designed to establish against Atheists and Pantheists that moral Theism which Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans have in common, and which underlies every attempt of an

I here reproduce (merely that it may not be pretended that I silently withdraw it) the substance of an illustration which I offered in my 2nd edition, p. 184. When I deny that History can be Religion or a part of Religion, I mean it exactly in the same sense, in which we say that history is not mathematics, though mathematics has a history. Religion undoubtedly comes to us by historical transmission: it has had a slow growth; but so is it with mathematics, so is it with all other sciences. (I re