From ‘Essays on Various Subjects,’ by Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman. London: Dolman, 1853, 3 vols.[363]

[By kind permission of the Executors of His Eminence Cardinal Vaughan.]

‘It is not often that the leaders of opinions let the public into a view of their secret counsels and feelings; but when they do, we think it does credit to the uprightness and sincerity of their intentions…. Nay, the more unreservedly the human weaknesses of the individuals are revealed, and the more the feeling is expressed that with their exposure, or in spite of it, their cause will succeed, the more highly we shall estimate their confidence in the correctness of their views, and the disinterestedness of their zeal in propagating them. These reflections have been suggested to us by the perusal of Mr. Froude’s Remains. He was, while living, one of the most enthusiastic members of the theological school from which the Tracts for the Times have emanated. He died in 1836, having attained only the age of thirty-three;[364] and was thus prevented from arriving at that full maturity of religious ideas which was evidently preparing in his mind, and bearing him onwards towards the perception of Catholic truths.

‘A preface of twenty-two pages betrays the Editors’ anxiety to repel a twofold charge: one against themselves, the other against their deceased friend…. When one whose noble and public proofs of great virtue far outweigh the errors of youth, or whose public reputation makes his example, when evil, a warning; and when repentant, a reparation and an encouragement,—when one, in short, like St. Augustine, boldly but humbly reveals to the eyes of the Church the wretchedness of his early sinful life, we admire, in awe, the strange manifestation of a sublime spirit of Christian virtue, and we bless the Divine Wisdom that hath caused it to be vouchsafed to us. But the struggles of one who has not compensated his weaknesses by any noble results, who withdraws from our sight a combatant, and not a victor; who only presents us the spectacle of a frail nature, such as we all may have, wrestling with daily and anxious trials, and not overcoming them; (these, too, not spontaneously exhibited, but transferred from the closet to the public arena)—have neither the grandeur nor the instruction of the other lesson. Still, there may be reasons unknown to us who are not in the secrets of the party, to justify, certainly in their own eyes, this sacrifice of private feeling to a sense of public utility…. [The Editors] would have materially strengthened their reasoning by the following passage in [Mr. Froude’s] Letters to Friends: “There was a passage in a letter I have just received from my father, which made me feel so infinitely dismal that I must write to you about it. He says you have written to him to learn something about me, and to ask what to do with my money. It really made me feel as if I was dead, and you were sweeping up my remains: and by the by, if I were dead, why should I be cut off from the privilege of helping on the Good Cause? I don’t know what money I have left,—little enough, I suspect; but whatever it was, I am superstitious enough to think that any good it could do in honorem Dei et sacrosanctæ matris ecclesiæ, would have done something, too, in salutem animæ meæ.” From these words, it appears that the author did contemplate his power of doing good to the cause wherein he was so ardently engaged, even after his death.

‘The censure of their friend which the Editors foresee, is that which forms their bugbear in all their theological researches: that of approaching too near the Catholic, or, as they call it, Romanist doctrines. But we must express our conviction that the Editors have not done much credit to their friend by the manner in which they have thought it right to shield his memory from the charge. It consists in a careful collection of some of the most hasty, unhandsome, and decidedly unreasonable judgements and opinions of the author, respecting chiefly what he saw in his travels…. We think we are justified in saying that proof of Mr. Froude’s disinclination to Catholicity must have been very scarce, to have led the Editors to bring together these superficial observations made during a brief residence in a Catholic city[365] not generally reputed the most edifying in its conduct! These, however, will not bear comparison with the growing and expanding tendency of his mind towards everything Catholic….

‘… The extracts from [his] Journal present us a picture at once pleasing and distressing, of a mind yearning after interior perfection, yet at a loss about the means of attaining it; embarked on an ocean of good desires, but without stars or compass by which to steer its course. The minute scrutiny into the motives of his actions, the distress occasioned by discovering his relapses into faults which most would overlook, show a sensitiveness of conscience in the youthful writer, far more honourable to him, and far more interesting to us, than abilities of a much higher order than what he really possessed could ever have appeared…. How far it may be advisable to commit to paper, even for personal benefit, these investigations of our most secret tribunal, we have considerable doubt; and instructive as is their record in the case before us, in nothing is it more so than in the proof it gives us of the necessity of guidance for the conscience and heart such as the institutions of the Catholic Church alone provide. In the account which he gives of his own infirmities, of his almost fruitless attempts to subdue them, and of the pain and anxiety produced by his solitary struggles, he presents a picture familiar to the experienced eye of any spiritual director in our Church, and a state fully described and prescribed for by the numerous writers whom we possess upon the inward life and the direction of consciences. Many are they who are tossed in the same billows of secret tribulation, many are they who are bewildered in the same mazes of mental perplexity; but they have not at least the additional horrors of darkness and night. Ere they can sink, a hand is stretched out, if they will only grasp it. The troubles and trials which haunt minds constituted as Mr. Froude’s, many a skilful guide would have shown him to be mere illusive phantoms that only serve to turn the attention away from serious dangers, or from solid good: snares cast by a restlessness of spirit upon the path, to entangle the feet that tread it…. The consequence of all his irregular and undirected austerity, into which, with youthful eagerness, he rushed, was, that instead of deriving thence vigour of thought, and closer intimacy with some spiritual feelings, his spirit, on the contrary, flagged and at length grew weary, and so fell into that despondency which failure will produce in sensitive minds. This discouragement is visible in many parts of his Journal…. In fact, Mr. Froude discovered that most important principle, that obedience to the ordinances of authority gives the great merit to the first degrees of penitential works, those which belong to ordinary Christians: such, that is, as have not reached the perfection of ascetic life…. While he seems so taken up, through his Journals, with examination of his fasts and austerities, we miss from his pages those cheerful views of religion which result from confidence and love, from the consciousness of a strong will to do [God] service, and an humble reliance on His mercy which will measure that, rather than our success. What snatches there are of prayer, bear more the character of one sinking under the fatigue of foiled attempts, and troubled with anxiety from hopelessness of success, than of a young and trusting mind that presses forward to a work it deems glorious: the work of God and His religion….

‘We certainly think that his ardent way, more perhaps of expressing himself than of feeling, leads him often to a harsh and reckless manner of speaking of others, that must give an unfavourable impression regarding his character, which we have every reason to believe was amiable and gentle. Still, there are so many fine points about him: so much distrust of himself, blended with no inconsiderable powers of genius; so much independence of thought, coupled with deference to the sentiments of others, those he esteemed more learned or more virtuous than himself; so much lightness of spirit, united to such seriousness of mind upon religious truths;—in fine, so earnest and sincere a desire to improve and perfect himself, that our feelings lead us to pass lightly over his faults, and dwell with pleasure upon his finer qualities. If we have dilated somewhat upon the former, it has been that we considered them the result of the system to which he was by education attached, and which is alone accountable for them.

‘As, however, he increased in years, his mind began to open to the defects and wants of that system, and boldly to conceive the necessity of correcting them. In this he ran manifestly before his fellows, and seems only to have been prevented by his premature death from reaching the goal of Catholic Unity…. First, as to the Blessed Eucharist, we find him early desirous of going beyond the timid phraseology of his party, and attributing to the priesthood such power as the Catholic Church alone claims…. In 1835, he condemns what he calls the Protestant doctrine of the Eucharist in strong terms. These are his words: “I am more and more indignant at the Protestant doctrine on the subject of the Eucharist, and think that the principle on which it is founded is as proud, irreverent, and foolish as that of any heresy, even Socinianism.”[366] Still more, writing to the author of The Christian Year, he blames him for denying that Christ is in the hands of the priest or the receiver, as well as in his heart.[367] These passages show how far prepared he was to outstrip his friends in approximation to Catholic doctrines and Catholic expressions…. The state of celibacy, and with it the monastic life, seems also to have been an object of his admiration…. The last fragment published of his attests how anxiously, how candidly, and how powerfully his mind was at work with the great subject [of Church authority], the hinge on which the differences between us and these new divines may be justly said to turn. This piece[368] is a letter dated Jan. 27, 1836, a month before his death; and as his last illness was of some weeks’ duration, this document may be considered as his theological will and testament, the last declaration of his yet unbroken mind…. After this, what more can we desire in proof of what we asserted at the beginning of this article, that these Remains prove Mr. Froude’s mind to have been gradually discovering more extensive and more accurate views of religious truths and the principles of Faith, with such steady and constant growth as gives us every reason to believe that longer life alone was wanting, to see him take the salutary resolve to embrace the conclusions of his theories to their fullest legitimate extent? While the writings of the new divines seem to represent their theories as perfectly formed, and their views quite fixed, the extracts we have just made show them to be but the shifting and unsettled opinions of men who are yet discovering errors in what they have formerly believed, and seeking further evidence of what they shall henceforth hold. Our concluding extract shall give fuller evidence of this fact: it is a letter to Mr. Newman, dated All Saints’ Day, 1835. “Before I finish this, I must enter another protest against your cursing and swearing at the end of the [Via Media] as you do. What good can it do? And I call it uncharitable to an excess. How mistaken we may ourselves be, on many points that are only gradually opening on us! Surely, you should reserve ‘blasphemous,’ ‘impious,’ etc., for denial of the articles of Faith.”[369]

‘With this passage we close Mr. Froude’s Remains. Peace be to him! is our parting salutation. The hope which an Ambrose expressed for a Valentinian,[370] who died yet a Catechumen, we willingly will hold of him. His ardent desires were with the Truth; his heart was not a stranger to its love. He was one, we firmly believe, whom no sordid views, or fear of men’s tongues, would have deterred from avowing his full convictions, and embracing their consequences, had time and opportunity been vouchsafed him for a longer and closer search. He is another instance of the same mysterious Providence which guided a Grotius and a Leibnitz to the threshold of Truth, but allowed them not the time to step within it, into the hallowed precincts of God’s Visible Church.’[371]