state of celibacy, are the one a christian obligation, the other a
christian perfection. Again, being members of a body so exalted, and
receiving our very salvation in a way altogether above reason, we must
be cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience rather
than to the command of the Church, or how we venture to exercise our
reason at all in judging of what the Church teaches; childlike faith and
childlike obedience are the dispositions which God most loves. What,
then, are they who are not of the Church, who do not receive the
Sacraments from those who can alone give them their virtue? Surely they
are aliens from God, they cannot claim his covenanted mercies; and the
goodness which may be apparent in them, may not be real goodness; God
may see that it is false, though to us it appears sincere; but it is
certain that they do not possess the only appointed means of salvation;
and therefore, we must consider their state as dangerous, although, we
may not venture to condemn them.

I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. Newman and his
friends in a single particular; I have not, to my knowledge, expressed
any one of their tenets invidiously. An attentive reader may deduce, I
think, all the Subordinate points in their teaching from some one or
more of the principles which I have given; but I have not wilfully
omitted any doctrine of importance. And, in every point, the opposition
to what I may be allowed to call the protestantism of the nineteenth
century is so manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar
character of the system is to be traced to what I have before
noticed--the extreme antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they
felt to be predominant in their own age and country.

It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and passion are not
the surest guides to truth, and the rule of contraries is not the rule