the catholic elements and hide out of sight all the calvinistic, was
not driven to any hardier exploits of verbal legerdemain, than the
theologian who strove against all reason and clear thinking to devise
common formulae that should embrace both catholic and calvinistic
explanations together, or indeed anything else that anybody might choose
to bring to the transfusing alchemy of his rather smoky crucible. Nor
was the third, and at that moment the strongest, of the church parties
at Oxford and in the country, well able to fling stones at the other
two. What better right, it was asked, had low churchmen to shut their
eyes to the language of rubrics, creeds, and offices, than the high
churchmen had to twist the language of the articles?

The confusion was grave and it was unfathomable. Newman fought a skilful
and persistent fight against liberalism, as being nothing else than the
egregious doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, and that
one creed is as good as another. Dr. Arnold, on the other hand,
denounced Newmanism as idolatry; declared that if you let in the little
finger of tradition, you would soon have in the whole monster, horns and
tail and all; and even complained of the English divines in general,
with the noble exceptions of Butler and Hooker, that he found in them a
want of believing or disbelieving anything because it was true or false,
as if that were a question that never occurred to them.[92] The plain
man, who was but a poor master either of theology or of the history of
the church of England, but who loved the prayer-book and hated
confession, convents, priest-craft, and mariolatry, was wrought to
madness by a clergyman who should describe himself, as did R. H. Froude,
as a catholic without the popery, and a church of England man without
the protestantism. The plain man knew that he was not himself clever
enough to form any distinct idea of what such talk meant. But then his
helplessness only deepened his conviction that the more distinct his
idea might become, the more intense would his aversion be, both to the
thing meant and to the surpliced conjurer who, as he bitterly supposed,
was by sophistic tricks trying hard to take him in.

Other portents were at the same time beginning to disturb the world. The
finds and the theories of geologists made men uncomfortable, and brought
down sharp anathemas. Wider speculations on cosmic and creative law came
soon after, and found their way into