musing themselves with
intellectual combats, or desiring to support an existing opinion anyhow.
However popular these latter methods may be, of however long standing,
however easy both to find and to use, they are a scandal; and while they
lower our religious standard from the first, they are sure of hurting
our cause in the end.

And on this principle the line of argument in _The Prophetical Office of
the Church_ was taken by Mr. Newman. It was certainly no make-believe,
or unreal argument. It was a forcible and original way of putting part
of the case against Rome. It was part of the case, a very important
part; but it was not the whole case, and it ought to have been evident
from the first that in this controversy we could not afford to do
without the whole case. The argument from the claim of infallibility
said nothing of what are equally real parts of the case--the practical
working of the Roman Church, its system of government, the part which it
and its rulers have played in the history of the world. Rome has not
such a clean record of history, it has not such a clean account of what
is done and permitted in its dominions under an authority supposed to be
irresistible, that it can claim to be the one pure and perfect Church,
entitled to judge and correct and govern all other Churches. And if the
claim is made, there is no help for it, we must not shrink from the task
of giving the answer.[81] And, as experience has shown, the more that
rigid good faith is kept to in giving the answer, the more that
strictness and severity of even understatement are observed, the more
convincing will be the result that the Roman Church cannot be that which
it is alleged to be in its necessary theory and ideal.

But this task was never adequately undertaken. It was one of no easy
execution.[82] Other things, apparently more immediately pressing,
intervened. There was no question for the present of perfect and
unfeigned confidence in the English Church, with whatever regrets for
its shortcomings, and desires for its improvement But to the outside
world it seemed as if there were a reluctance to face seriously the
whole of the Roman controversy; a disposition to be indulgent to Roman
defects, and unfairly hard on English faults. How mischievously this
told in the course of opinion outside and inside of the movement; how it
was misinterpreted and misrepresented; how these misinterpretations and
misrepresentations, with the bitterness