PHASES OF FAITH

- or -

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