Apologia Pro Vita Sua Part 20

3. And Sir John McNeill says, "In answer to your inquiries about the powers of speech retained by persons who have had their tongues cut out, I can state from personal observation, that several persons whom I knew in Persia, who had been subjected to that punishment, spoke so intelligibly as to be able to transact important business.... The conviction in Persia is universal, that the power of speech is destroyed by merely cutting off the tip of the tongue; and is to a useful extent restored by cutting off another portion as far back as a perpendicular section can be made of the portion that is free from attachment at the lower surface.... I never had to meet with a person who had suffered this punishment, who could not speak so as to be quite intelligible to his familiar a.s.sociates."

I should not be honest, if I professed to be simply converted, by these testimonies, to the belief that there was nothing miraculous in the case of the African confessors. It is quite as fair to be sceptical on one side of the question as on the other; and if Gibbon is considered worthy of praise for his stubborn incredulity in receiving the evidence for this miracle, I do not see why I am to be blamed, if I wish to be quite sure of the full appositeness of the recent evidence which is brought to its disadvantage. Questions of fact cannot be disproved by a.n.a.logies or presumptions; the inquiry must be made into the particular case in all its parts, as it comes before us. Meanwhile, I fully allow that the points of evidence brought in disparagement of the miracle are _prima facie_ of such cogency, that, till they are proved to be irrelevant, Catholics are prevented from appealing to it for controversial purposes.

NOTE C. ON PAGE 153.

SERMON ON WISDOM AND INNOCENCE.

The professed basis of the charge of lying and equivocation made against me, and, in my person, against the Catholic clergy, was, as I have already noticed in the Preface, a certain Sermon of mine on "Wisdom and Innocence," being the 20th in a series of "Sermons on Subjects of the Day," written, preached, and published while I was an Anglican. Of this Sermon my accuser spoke thus in his Pamphlet:--

"It is occupied entirely with the att.i.tude of 'the world' to 'Christians' and 'the Church.' By the world appears to be signified, especially, the Protestant public of these realms; what Dr. Newman means by Christians, and the Church, he has not left in doubt; for in the preceding Sermon he says: 'But if the truth must be spoken, what are the humble monk and the holy nun, and other regulars, as they are called, but Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture, &c.'.... This is his definition of Christians. And in the Sermon itself, he sufficiently defines what he means by 'the Church,' in two notes of her character, which he shall give in his own words: 'What, for instance, though we grant that sacramental confession and the celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate the body politic in the relation of rulers and subjects, or, in other words, to aggrandize the priesthood? for how can the Church be one body without such relation?'"--Pp. 8, 9.

He then proceeded to a.n.a.lyze and comment on it at great length, and to criticize severely the method and tone of my Sermons generally. Among other things, he said:--

"What, then, did the Sermon _mean_? Why was it preached? To insinuate that a Church which had sacramental confession and a celibate clergy was the only true Church? Or to insinuate that the admiring young gentlemen who listened to him stood to their fellow-countrymen in the relation of the early Christians to the heathen Romans? Or that Queen Victoria's Government was to the Church of England what Nero's or Dioclesian's was to the Church of Rome? It may have been so. I know that men used to suspect Dr. Newman,--I have been inclined to do so myself,--of writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter, but for the sake of one single pa.s.sing hint--one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow, which, as he swept magnificently past on the stream of his calm eloquence, seemingly unconscious of all presences, save those unseen, he delivered unheeded, as with his finger-tip, to the very heart of an initiated hearer, never to be withdrawn again. I do not blame him for that. It is one of the highest triumphs of oratoric power, and may be employed honestly and fairly by any person who has the skill to do it honestly and fairly; but then, Why did he ent.i.tle his Sermon 'Wisdom and Innocence?'

"What, then, could I think that Dr. Newman _meant_? I found a preacher bidding Christians imitate, to some undefined point, the 'arts' of the basest of animals, and of men, and of the devil himself. I found him, by a strange perversion of Scripture, insinuating that St. Paul's conduct and manner were such as naturally to bring down on him the reputation of being a crafty deceiver. I found him--horrible to say it--even hinting the same of one greater than St. Paul. I found him denying or explaining away the existence of that Priestcraft, which is a notorious fact to every honest student of history, and justifying (as far as I can understand him) that double dealing by which prelates, in the middle age, too often played off alternately the sovereign against the people, and the people against the sovereign, careless which was in the right, so long as their own power gained by the move. I found him actually using of such (and, as I thought, of himself and his party likewise) the words 'They yield outwardly; to a.s.sent inwardly were to betray the faith. Yet they are called deceitful and double-dealing, because they do as much as they can, and not more than they may.' I found him telling Christians that they will always seem 'artificial,' and 'wanting in openness and manliness;' that they will always be 'a mystery' to the world, and that the world will always think them rogues; and bidding them glory in what the world (i.e. the rest of their countrymen) disown, and say with Mawworm, 'I like to be despised.'

"Now, how was I to know that the preacher, who had the reputation of being the most acute man of his generation, and of having a specially intimate acquaintance with the weaknesses of the human heart, was utterly blind to the broad meaning and the plain practical result of a Sermon like this, delivered before fanatic and hot-headed young men, who hung upon his every word?

that he did not foresee that they would think that they obeyed him by becoming affected, artificial, sly, s.h.i.+fty, ready for concealments and equivocations?" &c. &c.--Pp. 14-16.

My accuser asked in this pa.s.sage what did the Sermon _mean_, and why was it preached. I will here answer this question; and with this view will speak, first of the _matter_ of the Sermon, then of its _subject_, then of its _circ.u.mstances_.

1. It was one of the last six Sermons which I wrote when I was an Anglican. It was one of the five Sermons I preached in St. Mary's between Christmas and Easter, 1843, the year when I gave up my Living.

The MS. of the Sermon is destroyed; but I believe, and my memory too bears me out, as far as it goes, that the sentence in question about Celibacy and Confession, of which this writer would make so much, _was not preached at all_. The Volume, in which this Sermon is found, was published _after_ that I had given up St. Mary's, when I had no call on me to restrain the expression of any thing which I might hold: and I stated an important fact about it in the Advertis.e.m.e.nt, in these words:--

"In preparing [these Sermons] for publication, _a few words and sentences_ have in several places been _added_, which will be found to express more _of private or personal opinion_, than it was expedient to introduce into the _instruction_ delivered in Church to a parochial Congregation. Such introduction, however, seems un.o.bjectionable in the case of compositions, which are _detached_ from the sacred place and service to which they once belonged, and _submitted to the reason_ and judgment of the general reader."

This Volume of Sermons then cannot be criticized at all as _preachments_; they are _essays_; essays of a man who, at the time of publis.h.i.+ng them, was _not_ a preacher. Such pa.s.sages, as that in question, are just the very ones which I added _upon_ my publis.h.i.+ng them; and, as I always was on my guard in the pulpit against saying any thing which looked towards Rome, I shall believe that I did not preach the obnoxious sentence till some one is found to testify that he heard it.

At the same time I cannot conceive why the mention of Sacramental Confession, or of Clerical Celibacy, had I made it, was inconsistent with the position of an Anglican Clergyman. For Sacramental Confession and Absolution actually form a portion of the Anglican Visitation of the Sick; and though the 32nd Article says that "Bishops, priests, and deacons, are not _commanded_ by G.o.d's law either to vow the state of single life or to abstain from marriage," and "therefore it is _lawful_ for them to marry," this proposition I did not dream of denying, nor is it inconsistent with St. Paul's doctrine, which I held, that it is "_good_ to abide even as he," i.e. in celibacy.

But I have more to say on this point. This writer says, "I know that men used to suspect Dr. Newman,--I have been inclined to do so myself,--of _writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter_, but for the sake of one simple pa.s.sing hint,--one phrase, one epithet."

Now observe; can there be a plainer testimony borne to the practical character of my Sermons at St. Mary's than this gratuitous insinuation?

Many a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused of not letting his paris.h.i.+oners alone, and of teasing them with his private theological notions. The same report was spread about me twenty years ago as this writer spreads now, and the world believed that my Sermons at St. Mary's were full of red-hot Tractarianism. Then strangers came to hear me preach, and were astonished at their own disappointment. I recollect the wife of a great prelate from a distance coming to hear me, and then expressing her surprise to find that I preached nothing but a plain humdrum Sermon. I recollect how, when on the Sunday before Commemoration one year, a number of strangers came to hear me, and I preached in my usual way, residents in Oxford, of high position, were loud in their satisfaction that on a great occasion, I had made a simple failure, for after all there was nothing in the Sermon to hear. Well, but they were not going to let me off, for all my common-sense view of duty.

Accordingly they got up the charitable theory which this Writer revives.

They said that there was a double purpose in those plain addresses of mine, and that my Sermons were never so artful as when they seemed common-place; that there were sentences which redeemed their apparent simplicity and quietness. So they watched during the delivery of a Sermon, which to them was too practical to be useful, for the concealed point of it, which they could at least imagine, if they could not discover. "Men used to suspect Dr. Newman," he says, "of writing a _whole_ Sermon, _not_ for the sake of _the text or of the matter_, but for the sake of one single pa.s.sing hint, ... _one_ phrase, _one_ epithet, _one_ little barbed arrow, which, as he _swept magnificently_ past on the stream of his calm eloquence, _seemingly_ unconscious of all presences, save those unseen, he delivered unheeded," &c. To all appearance, he says, I was "unconscious of all presences." He is not able to deny that the "_whole_ Sermon" had the _appearance_ of being "_for the sake_ of the text and matter;" therefore he suggests that perhaps it wasn't.

2. And now as to the subject of the Sermon. The Sermons of which the Volume consists are such as are, more or less, exceptions to the rule which I ordinarily observed, as to the subjects which I introduced into the pulpit of St. Mary's. They are not purely ethical or doctrinal. They were for the most part caused by circ.u.mstances of the day or of the moment, and they belong to various years. One was written in 1832, two in 1836, two in 1838, five in 1840, five in 1841, four in 1842, seven in 1843. Many of them are engaged on one subject, viz. in viewing the Church in its relation to the world. By the world was meant, not simply those mult.i.tudes which were not in the Church, but the existing body of human society, whether in the Church or not, whether Catholics, Protestants, Greeks, or Mahometans, theists or idolaters, as being ruled by principles, maxims, and instincts of their own, that is, of an unregenerate nature, whatever their supernatural privileges might be, greater or less, according to their form of religion. This view of the relation of the Church to the world as taken apart from questions of ecclesiastical politics, as they may be called, is often brought out in my Sermons. Two occur to me at once; No. 3 of my Plain Sermons, which was written in 1829, and No. 15 of my Third Volume of Parochial, written in 1835. On the other hand, by Church I meant,--in common with all writers connected with the Tract Movement, whatever their shades of opinion, and with the whole body of English divines, except those of the Puritan or Evangelical School,--the whole of Christendom, from the Apostles' time till now, whatever their later divisions into Latin, Greek, and Anglican. I have explained this view of the subject above at pp. 69-71 of this Volume. When then I speak, in the particular Sermon before us, of the members, or the rulers, or the action of "the Church,"

I mean neither the Latin, nor the Greek, nor the English, taken by itself, but of the whole Church as one body: of Italy as one with England, of the Saxon or Norman as one with the Caroline Church. _This_ was specially the one Church, and the points in which one branch or one period differed from another were not and could not be Notes of the Church, because Notes necessarily belong to the whole of the Church every where and always.

This being my doctrine as to the relation of the Church to the world, I laid down in the Sermon three principles concerning it, and there left the matter. The first is, that Divine Wisdom had framed for its action laws, which man, if left to himself, would have antecedently p.r.o.nounced to be the worst possible for its success, and which in all ages have been called by the world, as they were in the Apostles' days, "foolishness;" that man ever relies on physical and material force, and on carnal inducements as Mahomet with his sword and his houris, or indeed almost as that theory of religion, called, since the Sermon was written, "muscular Christianity;" but that our Lord, on the contrary, has subst.i.tuted meekness for haughtiness, pa.s.siveness for violence, and innocence for craft: and that the event has shown the high wisdom of such an economy, for it has brought to light a set of natural laws, unknown before, by which the seeming paradox that weakness should be stronger than might, and simplicity than worldly policy, is readily explained.

Secondly, I said that men of the world, judging by the event, and not recognizing the secret causes of the success, viz. a higher order of natural laws,--natural, though their source and action were supernatural, (for "the meek inherit the earth," by means of a meekness which comes from above,)--these men, I say, concluded, that the success which they witnessed must arise from some evil secret which the world had not mastered,--by means of magic, as they said in the first ages, by cunning as they say now. And accordingly they thought that the humility and inoffensiveness of Christians, or of Churchmen, was a mere pretence and blind to cover the real causes of that success, which Christians could explain and would not; and that they were simply hypocrites.

Thirdly, I suggested that shrewd ecclesiastics, who knew very well that there was neither magic nor craft in the matter, and, from their intimate acquaintance with what actually went on within the Church, discerned what were the real causes of its success, were of course under the temptation of subst.i.tuting reason for conscience, and, instead of simply obeying the command, were led to do good that good might come, that is, to act _in order_ to secure success, and not from a motive of faith. Some, I said, did yield to the temptation more or less, and their motives became mixed; and in this way the world in a more subtle shape had got into the Church; and hence it had come to pa.s.s, that, looking at its history from first to last, we could not possibly draw the line between good and evil there, and say either that every thing was to be defended, or certain things to be condemned. I expressed the difficulty, which I supposed to be inherent in the Church, in the following words. I said, "_Priestcraft has ever been considered the badge_, and its imputation is a kind of Note of the Church: and _in part indeed truly_, because the presence of powerful enemies, and the sense of their own weakness, _has sometimes tempted Christians to the abuse, instead of the use of Christian wisdom, to be wise without being harmless_; but partly, nay, for the most part, not truly, but slanderously, and merely because the world called their wisdom craft, when it was found to be a match for its own numbers and power."

Such is the substance of the Sermon: and as to the main drift of it, it was this; that I was, there and elsewhere, scrutinizing the course of the Church as a whole, as if philosophically, as an historical phenomenon, and observing the laws on which it was conducted. Hence the Sermon, or Essay as it more truly is, is written in a dry and unimpa.s.sioned way: it shows as little of human warmth of feeling as a Sermon of Bishop Butler's. Yet, under that calm exterior there was a deep and keen sensitiveness, as I shall now proceed to show.

3. If I mistake not, it was written with a secret thought about myself.

Every one preaches according to his frame of mind, at the time of preaching. One heaviness especially oppressed me at that season, which this Writer, twenty years afterwards, has set himself with a good will to renew: it arose from the sense of the base calumnies which were heaped upon me on all sides. It is worth observing that this Sermon is exactly contemporaneous with the report spread by a Bishop (_vid. supr._ p. 181), that I had advised a clergyman converted to Catholicism to retain his Living. This report was in circulation in February 1843, and my Sermon was preached on the 19th. In the trouble of mind into which I was thrown by such calumnies as this, I gained, while I reviewed the history of the Church, at once an argument and a consolation. My argument was this: if I, who knew my own innocence, was so blackened by party prejudice, perhaps those high rulers and those servants of the Church, in the many ages which intervened between the early Nicene times and the present, who were laden with such grievous accusations, were innocent also; and this reflection served to make me tender towards those great names of the past, to whom weaknesses or crimes were imputed, and reconciled me to difficulties in ecclesiastical proceedings, which there were no means now of properly explaining. And the sympathy thus excited for them, re-acted on myself, and I found comfort in being able to put myself under the shadow of those who had suffered as I was suffering, and who seemed to promise me their recompense, since I had a fellows.h.i.+p in their trial. In a letter to my Bishop at the time of Tract 90, part of which I have quoted, I said that I had ever tried to "keep innocency;" and now two years had pa.s.sed since then, and men were louder and louder in heaping on me the very charges, which this Writer repeats out of my Sermon, of "fraud and cunning,"

"craftiness and deceitfulness," "double-dealing," "priestcraft," of being "mysterious, dark, subtle, designing," when I was all the time conscious to myself, in my degree, and after my measure, of "sobriety, self-restraint, and control of word and feeling." I had had experience how my past success had been imputed to "secret management;" and how, when I had shown surprise at that success, that surprise again was imputed to "deceit;" and how my honest heartfelt submission to authority had been called, as it was called in a Bishop's charge abroad, "mystic humility;" and how my silence was called an "hypocrisy;" and my faithfulness to my clerical engagements a secret correspondence with the enemy. And I found a way of destroying my sensitiveness about these things which jarred upon my sense of justice, and otherwise would have been too much for me, by the contemplation of a large law of the Divine Dispensation, and felt myself more and more able to bear in my own person a present trial, of which in my past writings I had expressed an antic.i.p.ation.

For this feeling and thus speaking this Writer compares me to "Mawworm."

"I found him telling Christians," he says, "that they will always seem 'artificial,' and 'wanting in openness and manliness;' that they will always be 'a mystery' to the world; and that the world will always think them rogues; and bidding them glory in what the world (that is, the rest of their fellow-countrymen) disown, and say with Mawworm, 'I like to be despised.' Now how was I to know that the preacher ... was utterly blind to the broad meaning and the plain practical result of a Sermon like this delivered before fanatic and hot-headed young men, who hung upon his every word?"--Fanatic and hot-headed young men, who hung on my every word! If he had undertaken to write a history, and not a romance, he would have easily found out, as I have said above, that from 1841 I had severed myself from the younger generation of Oxford, that Dr. Pusey and I had then closed our theological meetings at his house, that I had brought my own weekly evening parties to an end, that I preached only by fits and starts at St. Mary's, so that the attendance of young men was broken up, that in those very weeks from Christmas till over Easter, during which this Sermon was preached, I was but five times in the pulpit there. He would have found, that it was written at a time when I was shunned rather than sought, when I had great sacrifices in antic.i.p.ation, when I was thinking much of myself; that I was ruthlessly tearing myself away from my own followers, and that, in the musings of that Sermon, I was at the very utmost only delivering a testimony in my behalf for time to come, not sowing my rhetoric broadcast for the chance of present sympathy.

Again, he says: "I found him actually using of such [prelates], (and, as I thought, of himself and his party likewise,) the words 'They yield outwardly; to a.s.sent inwardly were to betray the faith. Yet they are called deceitful and double-dealing, because they do as much as they can, not more than they may.'" This too is a proof of my duplicity! Let this writer, in his dealings with some one else, go just a little further than he has gone with me; and let him get into a court of law for libel; and let him be convicted; and let him still fancy that his libel, though a libel, was true, and let us then see whether he will not in such a case "yield outwardly," without a.s.senting internally; and then again whether we should please him, if we called him "deceitful and double-dealing," because "he did as much as he could, not more than he ought to do." But Tract 90 will supply a real ill.u.s.tration of what I meant. I yielded to the Bishops in outward act, viz. in not defending the Tract, and in closing the Series; but, not only did I not a.s.sent inwardly to any condemnation of it, but I opposed myself to the proposition of a condemnation on the part of authority. Yet I was then by the public called "deceitful and double-dealing," as this Writer calls me now, "because I did as much as I felt I could do, and not more than I felt I could honestly do." Many were the publications of the day and the private letters, which accused me of shuffling, because I closed the Series of Tracts, yet kept the Tracts on sale, as if I ought to comply not only with what my Bishop asked, but with what he did not ask, and perhaps did not wish. However, such teaching, according to this Writer, was likely to make young men "suspect, that truth was not a virtue for its own sake, but only for the sake of the spread of 'Catholic opinions,' and the 'salvation of their own souls;' and that cunning was the weapon which heaven had allowed to them to defend themselves against the persecuting Protestant public."--p. 16.

And now I draw attention to a further point. He says, "How was I to know that the preacher ... did not foresee, that [fanatic and hot-headed young men] would think that they obeyed him, by becoming affected, artificial, sly, s.h.i.+fty, ready for concealments and _equivocations_?"

"How should he know!" What! I suppose that we are to think every man a knave till he is proved not to be such. Know! had he no friend to tell him whether I was "affected" or "artificial" myself? Could he not have done better than impute _equivocations_ to me, at a time when I was in no sense answerable for the _amphibologia_ of the Roman casuists? Had he a single fact which belongs to me personally or by profession to couple my name with equivocation in 1843? "How should he know" that I was not sly, smooth, artificial, non-natural! he should know by that common manly frankness, by which we put confidence in others, till they are proved to have forfeited it; he should know it by my own words in that very Sermon, in which I say it is best to be natural, and that reserve is at best but an unpleasant necessity. For I say there expressly:--

"I do not deny that there is something very engaging in a frank and unpretending manner; some persons have it more than others; in _some persons it is a great grace_. But it must be recollected that I am speaking of _times of persecution and oppression_ to Christians, such as the text foretells; and then surely frankness will become nothing else than indignation at the oppressor, and vehement speech, if it is permitted.

Accordingly, as persons have deep feelings, so they will find the necessity of self-control, lest they should say what they ought not."

He sums up thus:

"If [Dr. Newman] would ... persist (as in this Sermon) in dealing with matters dark, offensive, doubtful, sometimes actually forbidden, at least according to the notions of the great majority of English Churchmen; if he would always do so in a tentative, paltering way, seldom or never letting the world know how much he believed, how far he intended to go; if, in a word, his method of teaching was a suspicious one, what wonder if the minds of men were filled with suspicions of him?"--p. 17.

Now, in the course of my Narrative, I have frankly admitted that I was tentative in such of my works as fairly allowed of the introduction into them of religious inquiry; but he is speaking of my Sermons; where, then, is his proof that in my Sermons I dealt in matters dark, offensive, doubtful, actually forbidden? He must show that I was tentative in my Sermons; and he has the range of eight volumes to gather evidence in. As to the ninth, my University Sermons, of course I was tentative in them; but not because "I would seldom or never let the world know how much I believed, or how far I intended to go;" but because University Sermons are commonly, and allowably, of the nature of disquisitions, as preached before a learned body; and because in deep subjects, which had not been fully investigated, I said as much as I believed, and about as far as I saw I could go; and a man cannot do more; and I account no man to be a philosopher who attempts to do more.

NOTE D. ON PAGE 213.

SERIES OF SAINTS' LIVES OF 1843-4.

I have here an opportunity of preserving, what otherwise would be lost, the Catalogue of English Saints which I formed, as preparatory to the Series of their Lives which was begun in the above years. It is but a first Essay, and has many obvious imperfections; but it may be useful to others as a step towards a complete hagiography for England. For instance St. Osberga is omitted; I suppose because it was not easy to learn any thing about her. Boniface of Canterbury is inserted, though pa.s.sed over by the Bollandists on the ground of the absence of proof of a _cultus_ having been paid to him. The Saints of Cornwall were too numerous to be attempted. Among the men of note, not Saints, King Edward II. is included from piety towards the founder of Oriel College. With these admissions I present my Paper to the reader.

_Preparing for Publication, in Periodical Numbers, in small 8vo, The Lives of the English Saints, Edited by the Rev. John Henry Newman, B.D., Fellow of Oriel College._

It is the compensation of the disorders and perplexities of these latter times of the Church that we have the history of the foregoing. We indeed of this day have been reserved to witness a disorganization of the City of G.o.d, which it never entered into the minds of the early believers to imagine: but we are witnesses also of its triumphs and of its luminaries through those many ages which have brought about the misfortunes which at present overshadow it. If they were blessed who lived in primitive times, and saw the fresh traces of their Lord, and heard the echoes of Apostolic voices, blessed too are we whose special portion it is to see that same Lord revealed in His Saints. The wonders of His grace in the soul of man, its creative power, its inexhaustible resources, its manifold operation, all this we know, as they knew it not. They never heard the names of St. Gregory, St. Bernard, St. Francis, and St. Louis. In fixing our thoughts then, as in an undertaking like the present, on the History of the Saints, we are but availing ourselves of that solace and recompense of our peculiar trials which has been provided for our need by our Gracious Master.

And there are special reasons at this time for recurring to the Saints of our own dear and glorious, most favoured, yet most erring and most unfortunate England. Such a recurrence may serve to make us love our country better, and on truer grounds, than heretofore; to teach us to invest her territory, her cities and villages, her hills and springs, with sacred a.s.sociations; to give us an insight into her present historical position in the course of the Divine Dispensation; to instruct us in the capabilities of the English character; and to open upon us the duties and the hopes to which that Church is heir, which was in former times the Mother of St. Boniface and St. Ethelreda.

Even a selection or specimens of the Hagiology of our country may suffice for some of these high purposes; and in so wide and rich a field of research it is almost presumptuous in one undertaking to aim at more than such a partial exhibition. The list that follows, though by no means so large as might have been drawn up, exceeds the limits which the Editor proposes to his hopes, if not to his wishes; but, whether it is allowed him to accomplish a larger or smaller portion of it, it will be his aim to complete such subjects or periods as he begins before bringing it to a close. It is hardly necessary to observe that any list that is producible in this stage of the undertaking can but approximate to correctness and completeness in matters of detail, and even in the names which are selected to compose it.

He has considered himself at liberty to include in the Series such saints as have been born in England, though they have lived and laboured out of it; and such, again, as have been in any sufficient way connected with our country, though born out of it; for instance, Missionaries or Preachers in it, or spiritual or temporal rulers, or founders of religious inst.i.tutions or houses.