A perfectly consistent mind must,as Newman declared,accept Catholicism or Atheism.Anglicanism is 'the half-way house to Rome,and Liberalism is the half-way house'to Atheism.(226)Protestantism,again,as involving the right of private judgment,must lead,as Ward agreed,to Comte.Taken simply,such sayings amount to pure scepticism.To admit the consistency of Atheism is to admit that you have no grounds of confuting the Atheist.Upon the assumptions common to both,the sceptic would get the better of the Protestant.The rationalised theology of Paley had really given away the key of the position.It could not permanently hold out against the legitimate development of the eighteenth century infidelity.'As a sufficient basis for theism,'says Ward,the argument from final causes is 'absolutely and completely worthless'.(227)and he declares that Paley's argument is quite unable to prove God's love,or goodness,or justice,or personality.(228)But Paley and his contemporaries had explicitly given up any other argument.A Protestant,then,was logically bound to Atheism.Newman agrees.'I have ever viewed this argument with the greatest suspicion,'he says,and for good reasons.It may prove the power and,in lower degrees,the wisdom and the goodness of God;but it does not prove his attributes as judge and moral legislator.(229)So again,Newman declared(230)that it was 'a great question whether atheism is not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the physical world,taken by themselves,as the doctrine of a creative and governing power.'Paley's proof of Christianity is naturally as unsatisfactory as his proof of theology.In one of the Tracts for the Times,(231)Newman applied what he called a 'kill-or-cure'remedy.He argued,that is,that if his antagonists rejected his doctrines for want of Scripture proof,they would have to abandon their own for the same reason.After recalling and enforcing a number of the objections made by sceptics to the historical evidence,he concludes that the evidence is by itself insufficient.Shall we for that reason refuse to believe?No,we must begin by believing.If we refuse 'to go by evidence in which there are (so to say)three chances for revelation and only two against it,we cannot be Christians.'(232)Hume,then,or Mill or Comte,can at least hold his own upon empirical ground.Unaided reason,as Newman says in the Apologia,(233)can indeed discover sound arguments for theology,but historically and in practice it will tend towards simple unbelief.The 'liberals'endeavoured to meet the enemy by appealing to some philosophical or quasi-mystical doctrine;but in so doing they either dropped dogmatic and historical creeds altogether,or saved them by non-natural interpretations.
Religion sublimated into philosophy becomes a mere sentiment,or a system of subtle metaphysics.It cannot effectively discipline the ordinary mind or inspire a church to meet the world.Yet some philosophical principle is necessary.To the Oxford men philosophy meant chiefly some modification of Aristotle.They held,of course,that the necessity of a first cause was demonstrable,and that a theology could be constructed by the pure reason.
This,however,leads to the old difficulty,the perplexity which runs through Christian theology in general.It is forced to combine heterogeneous elements.Philosophy must be combined with mythology;and the first cause identified with the anthropomorphic deity.Your metaphysic proves the existence of God in one sense,and your concrete creed assumes the existence to be proved in a sense quite inconsistent.By calling inconsistency mystery,you verbally force contradictions into a formula,and speak of a God-man;but the difficulty of getting from the metaphysical to the historical theology is thus only masked.How is it to be overcome?
Ward,laying the greatest stress upon the metaphysical argument,came into conflict with Mill.Ward and Mill always spoke of each other with marked respect.They communicated their writings to each other before publication.Ward reviewed Mill's Logic in the British Critic in the most complimentary terms.Mill wrote to Comte in hopeful terms of the services to be rendered to speculation by the new school of divines.Ward thought Mill by far the most eminent representative of the 'antitheistic school,'and spoke with generous warmth of his high moral qualities.(234)The point,however,upon which Mill specially valued himself was just the point upon which Ward took him to be utterly in the wrong.Mill denied the existence of 'necessary truths.'Ward believed in the existence of a great body of 'necessary truth.'
Ward argues forcibly for the 'necessity'of mathematical truths,and denies the power of association.Ward,in short,is Mill's typical 'intuitionist.'Intuitions,he says,are truths which,'though not parts of present consciousness,are immediately and "primarily"known with certitude.'(235)He adopts from Lewes the word 'metempirical,'as expressive of what lies beyond the sphere of phenomena.(236)and holds that all 'intuitions'give us 'metempirical'knowledge.Lewes invented the phrase to express the difference between the legitimate 'intuitions'implied in experience and the illegitimate,which are 'metempirical'as professing to transcend experience.Ward holds that 'metempirical'truths are valid and essential to reason.
