close, and which began nearly with the sixteenth century. Viewing in
this light the last three hundred years, they regard naturally with
excessive favour the preceding period, with which they are so strongly
contrasted; and not the less because this period has been an object of
scorn to the times which have followed it. They are drawn towards the
enemy of their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points their
enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last decline are too palpable
to be denied, they ascend to its middle and its earlier course, and
finding that its evils are there less flagrant, they abandon themselves
wholly to the contemplation of its good points, and end with making it
an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights than to see men
judging of whole periods of the history of mankind with the blindness of
party-spirit, never naming one century without expressions of contempt
or abhorrence, never mentioning another but with extravagant and
undistinguishing admiration.

But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. Newman and his
friends so disliked, had, in its religious character, been distinguished
by its professions of extreme veneration for the Scriptures; in its
quarrel with the system of the preceding period, it had rested all its
cause on the authority of the Scripture,--it had condemned the older
system because Scripture could give no warrant for it. On the other
hand, the partizans of the older system protested against the exclusive
appeal to Scripture; there was, as they maintained, another authority in
religious matters; if their system was not supported in all its points
by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus
Mr. Newman and his friends found that the times which they disliked had
professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved had
invested the Church with equal authority. It was natural then to connect
the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with this notion of