umns, the Greek text, as correctly as I could give it; the Latin Vulgate; and the English authorized version corrected, noticing every correction by printing it in a smaller type, and marking with obeli such words or expressions in our translation as I think require amendment, but which I cannot amend to my satisfaction. The Dissertations would embrace naturally every point on which the Oxford Judaizers have set up their heresy;-the priesthood, sacraments, apostolical succession, tradition, the church, - and above all would contain the positive opposite to all their idolatries, the doctrine of the Person of Christ; not His Church, not His sacraments, not His teaching, not even the truths about Him, nor the virtues which He most enforces, but Himself; that only object which bars fanaticism and idolatry on the one hand, and gives life and power to all morality on the other. And this is what St. Paul constantly opposes to the several idolatries of the Judaizers, see Colossians ii. and 1 Timothy iv., connecting with it the last verse of chapter iii., which has been so strangely severed from its context.

I never yet in my life made any application for preferment, nor have I desired it. But I confess, if Hampden is to be made a Bishop, I wish that they would put me in his place at Oxford. I should be a very great loser in point of income by the change, and till lately, I have never fancied that I could be more useful anywhere else than at Rugby. But I think under present circumstances that I could do more good at Oxford. I could not supply your place, but I could supply it better than it is supplied now. I should have a large body of very promising young men disposed to listen to me for old affection's sake, and my fondness for young men's society would soon bring others about me whom I might influence. I should be of weight from my classical knowledge, and I am old enough now to set down many of the men who are foremost in spreading their mischief, and to give some sanction of authority to those who think as I do, but who at present want a man to lean upon. And, though the Judaizers hate me, I believe, worse than they hate Hampden, yet they could not get up the same clamor against me, for the bugbear of Apostolical succession would not do, and it would puzzle even

to get up a charge of Socinianism against me out of my Sermons. Furthermore, my spirit of pugnaciousness would rejoice in fighting out the battle with the Judaizers, as it were in a saw-pit; and, as my skin is tough, my wife's tougher, and

the children's toughest of all, I am satisfied that we should live in Oxford amidst any quantity of abuse unhurt in health or spirits, and I should expatiate as heretofore in Bagley Wood and on Shotover. Do not understand this as implying

any weariness with Rugby; far from it;- I have got a

very effective position here, which I would only quit for one which seems even more effective; but I keep one great place of education sound and free, and unavoidably gain an influence with many young men, and endeavor to make them see that they ought to think on and understand a subject, before they take up a party view about it. I hunger sometimes for more time for writing; but I do not indulge the feeling; and on the other hand, I think my love of tuition rather grows upon me.

*

CXXX. TO A. P. STANLEY, ESQ.

Rugby, May 24, 1836.

Now with regard to the Newmanites. I do not call them bad men, nor would I deny their many good qualities; . . I judge of them as I do commonly of mixed characters, where the noble and the base, the good and the bad, are strangely mixed up together. There is an ascending scale from the grossest personal selfishness, such as that of Cæsar or Napoleon, to party selfishness, such as that of Sylla, or fanatical selfishness, that is, the idolatry of an idea or a principle, such as that of Robespierre* and Dominic, and some of the Covenanters. In all these, except perhaps the first, we feel a sympathy more or less, because there is something of personal self-devotion and sincerity; but fanaticism is idolatry, and it has the moral evil of idolatry in it; that is, a fanatic worships something which is the creature of his own devices, and thus even his self-devotion in support of it is only an apparent self-sacrifice, for it is in fact making the parts of

*Robespierre he used to distinguish from Danton, and others of the revolutionary leaders, as being a sincere fanatic in the cause of Republicanism. "The life and character of Robespierre has to me a most important lesson," he said once to a former pupil, with the emphasis of one who had studied it for his own profit; "it shows the frightful consequences of making everything give way to a favorite notion. The man was a just man, and humane naturally, but he would narrow everything to meet his own views, and nothing could check him at last. It is a most solemn warning to us of what fanaticism may lead to in God's world." To Dominic, in allusion to his supposed share in the Albigensian crusade, and the foundation of the Inqui sition, he used to apply St. Paul's words, 1 Cor. iii. 15.

his nature or his mind, which he least values, offer sacrifice to that which he most values. The moral fault, as it appears to me, is in the idolatry, the setting up some idea which is most kindred to our own minds, and then putting it in the place of Christ, who alone cannot be made an idol, and cannot inspire fanaticism, because He combines all ideas of perfection, and exhibits them in their just harmony and combination. Now to my own mind, by its natural tendency, — that is, taking my mind at its best,-truth and justice would be the idols that I should follow; and they would be idols, for they would not supply all the food that the mind wants, and whilst worshipping them, reverence and humility and tenderness might very likely be forgotten. But Christ Himself includes at once truth and justice, and all these other qualities too. In other men I cannot trace exactly the origin of the idolatry, except by accident in some particular cases. But it is clear to me that Newman and his party are idolaters; they put Christ's Church and Christ's Sacraments, and Christ's ministers, in the place of Christ Himself; and these being only imperfect ideas, the unreserved worship of them unavoidably tends to the neglect of other ideas no less important; and thence some passion or other loses its proper and intended check, and the moral evil follows. Thus it is that narrowmindedness tends to wickedness, because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral nature, for then it would not be narrow-mindedness; and this neglect fosters the growth of evil in the parts that are so neglected. Thus a man may "give all his goods to feed the poor, and yet be nothing; where I do not understand it of giving out of mere ostentation, or with a view to gain influence, but that a man may have one or more virtues, such as are according to his favorite ideas, in very great perfection, and still be nothing; because these ideas are his idols, and worshipping them with all his heart, there is a portion of his heart, more or less considerable, left without its proper object, guide, and nourishment, and so this portion is left to the dominion of evil. Other men, and

these the mass of mankind, go wrong either from having no favorite ideas at all, and living wholly at random, or πрòs dovηv, -or else from having ideas but indistinctly, and paying them but little worship, so that here too the common world about them gives the impression to their minds, and thus they are evil. But the best men, I think, are those who, worshipping Christ and no idol, and thus having got hold of the true idea,

yet from want of faith cannot always realize it, and so have parts of their lives more or less out of that influence which should keep them right,—and thus they also fall into evil; but they are the best, because they have set before them Christ and no idol, and thus having nothing to cast away, but need only to impress themselves with their ideas more constantly; "they need not save to wash the feet, and are then clean every whit." I have been looking through the Tracts,* which are to me a memorable proof of their idolatry; some of the idols are better than others, some being indeed as very a "Truncus ficulnus" as ever the most degraded superstition worshipped; but as to Christianity, there is more of it in any one of Mrs. Sherwood's or Mrs. Cameron's or indeed of any of the Tract Society's than in all the two Oxford octaVOS. And these men would exclude John Bunyan, and Mrs. Fry, and John Howard, from Christ's Church, while they exalt the Non-jurors into confessors, and Laud into a martyr!

CXXXI. TO THE EARL HOWE.

(In reply to a letter, requesting, as one of the Trustees of Rugby School, that Dr. Arnold would declare if he was the author of the article on Dr. Hampden in the Edinburgh Review attributed to him, and stating that his conduct would be guided by Dr. Arnold's answer.) †

MY LORD,

Rugby, June 22, 1836.

The answer which your lordship has asked for, I have given several times to many of my friends; and I am well known to be very little apt to disavow or conceal my authorship of anything, that I may at any time have written.

Still, as I conceive your lordship's question to be one which none but a personal friend has the slightest right to put to me or to any man, I feel it due to myself to decline giving any answer to it.

*From a letter to Dr. Hawkins. "I have been reading the Pusey and Newman Tracts, with no small astonishment; they surpass all my expectations in point of extravagance, and in their complete opposition to the Christianity of the New Testament. But there are some beautiful things in Pusey's Tracts on Baptism, much that is holy and pure, and truly Christian; till, like Don Quixote's good sense in ordinary matters, it all gets upset by some outbreak of his particular superstition."

†This correspondence ended in a resolution of censure moved at the Board of Trustees, which would probably have occasioned Dr. Arnold's res ignation, had it not been lost. See Letter cxxxv.

CXXXII. TO THE SAME.

(In reply to a second letter, urging compliance with his request, on the grounds that he might feel constrained by official duty to take some step in the matter in case the report were true.)

MY LORD,

June 27, 1836.

I am extremely sorry that you should have considered my letter as uncourteous; it was certainly not intended to be so; but I did not feel that I could answer your lordship's letter at greater length without going into greater details by way of explanation than its own shortness appeared to me to warrant. Your lordship addressed me in a tone purely formal and official, and at the same time asked a question which the common usage of society regards as one of delicacy,—justified, I do not say, only by personal friendship, but at least by some familiarity of acquaintance. It was because no such ground could exist in the present case, and because I cannot and do not acknowledge your right officially, as a trustee of Rugby School, to question me on the subject of my real or supposed writings on matters wholly unconnected with the school, that I felt it my duty to decline answering your lordship's question.

It is very painful to be placed in a situation where I must either appear to seek concealment wholly foreign to my wishes, or else must acknowledge a right which I owe it, not only to myself, but to the master of every endowed school in England, absolutely to deny. But in the present case, I think I can hardly be suspected of seeking concealment. I have spoken on the subject of the article in the Edinburgh Review freely in the hearing of many, with no request for secrecy on their part expressed or implied. Officially, however, I cannot return an answer, not from the slightest feeling of disrespect to your lordship, but because my answering would allow a principle which I can on no account admit to be just or reasonable.

CXXXIII. TO THE SAME.

(In reply to a letter of thanks for the last.)

MY LORD,

June 30, 1836

I trust that you will not think me intrusive, if I trouble you once again with these few lines, to express to you my

VOL. II.

D