The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phases of Faith, by Francis William Newman

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Title: Phases of Faith
Passages from the History of My Creed

Author: Francis William Newman

Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12056]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PHASES OF FAITH

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PASSAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF MY CREED.

Francis William Newman, 1874

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

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 intellectual conclusions which offend them;--that
the difference between them and him turns on questions of Learning,
History, Criticism and Abstract Thought;--and that to make _their_
results (if indeed they have ever deeply and honestly investigated
the matter) the tests of _his_ spiritual state, is to employ unjust
weights and a false balance, which are an abomination to the Lord. To
defraud one's neighbour of any tithe of mint and cummin, would seem
to them a sin: is it less to withhold affection, trust and free
intercourse, and build up unpassable barriers of coldness and alarm,
against one whose sole offence is to differ from them intellectually?

But the argument before the writer is something immensely greater
than a personal one. So it happens, that to vindicate himself is to
establish a mighty truth; a truth which can in no other way so well
enter the heart, as when it comes embodied in an individual case.
If he can show, that to have shrunk from his successive convictions
_would_ have been "infidelity" to God and Truth and Righteousness; but
that he has been "faithful" to the highest and most urgent duty;--it
will be made clear that Belief is one thing and Faith another;