"
In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more
hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led
into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence
of truth or any real foundation for it? Simply to save an outworn
system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to
be born.
The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the
_Dublin Review_, as is understood, by one of Newman's associates.
This argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the
charge of deception against the Almighty himself. It is as follows:
"But it may well be doubted whether the Church did retard the
progress of scientific truth. What retarded it was the circumstance
that God has thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in
words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion.
But it is God who did this, not the Church; and, moreover, since he
saw fit so to act as to retard the progress of scientific truth, it
would be little to her discredit, even if it were true, that she
had followed his example.
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