Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement of the present moment as being directed towards "something better and deeper than satisfied the last century," this description, although in some sense true, is yet in practice delusive; and the delusion which lurks in it is at the root of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his friends. They regard the tendencies of the last century as wholly evil; and they appear to extend this feeling to the whole period of which the last century was the 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 the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less natural to associate the blessings of their imagined golden age with its avowed reverence for the Church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed the language of men whom they abhorred; if they exalted the Church and Christian antiquity, they sympathised with a period which they were resolved to love. Their theological writings from the very beginning have too plainly shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies and their antipathies.