ibly pointed at the "young enthusiasts
who crowded the Via Media, and who never presumed to argue, except
against the propriety of arguing at all." There was a good deal of
foolish sneering at reason; there was a good deal of silly bravado about
not caring whether the avowed grounds of opinions taken up were strong
or feeble. It was not merely the assent of a learner to his teacher, of
a mind without means of instruction to the belief which it has
inherited, or of one new to the ways and conditions of life to the
unproved assertions and opinions of one to whom experience had given an
open and sure eye. It was a positive carelessness, almost accounted
meritorious, to inquire and think, when their leaders called them to do
so. "The Gospel of Christ is not a matter of mere argument." It is not,
indeed, when it comes in its full reality, in half a hundred different
ways, known and unsearchable, felt and unfelt, moral and intellectual,
on the awakened and quickened soul. But the wildest fanatic can take the
same words into his mouth. Their true meaning was variously and
abundantly illustrated, especially in Mr. Newman's sermons. Still, the
adequate, the emphatic warning against their early abuse was hardly
pressed on the public opinion and sentiment of the party of the movement
with the force which really was requisite. To the end there were men who
took up their belief avowedly on insufficient and precarious grounds,
glorying in the venturesomeness of their faith and courage, and
justifying their temper of mind and their intellectual attitude by
alleging misinterpreted language of their wiser and deeper teachers. A
recoil from Whately's hard and barren dialectics, a sympathy with many
tender and refined natures which the movement had touched, made the
leaders patient with intellectual feebleness when it was joined with
real goodness and Christian temper; but this also sometimes made them
less impatient than they might well have been with that curious form of
conceit and affectation which veils itself under an intended and
supposed humility, a supposed distrust of self and its own powers.

Another difficult matter, not altogether successfully managed--at least
from the original point of view of the movement, and of those who saw in
it a great effort for the good of the English Church--was the treatment
of the Roman controversy. The general line which the leaders proposed to
take was the one which was worthy of Christian and t