A WILD BEAST CAUGHT BY DR. WISEMAN: THE RHETORICAL PROBLEM OF CARDINAL WISEMAN IN CARDINAL NEWMAN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

5) The obvious exception to this assertion is the work of Cardinal Manning. Manning operates under the same postulates as Wiseman, but applies them less generously to Newman. Since, for Manning, all Catholics must submit to the same hierarchy and possess exactly the same beliefs in all particulars, Newman is not really a Catholic, but, rather, is a relativist, or at best a Protestant in Catholic guise (cf. Manning 38-39, 136, 146-47, where these charges are made against those who hold Newman's positions and distinctive ideas - such as the economy - without ever naming Newman directly).

6) Cf. Wiseman's insistence that classical Greek and Roman thought, for all its brilliance, never arrived at the fullness of religious truth because of the near-impossibility of determining what methods to use in such an inquiry and what postulates to assume ("On The Character of Faith" 285-86).

7) Wiseman's opinion was a common one among Ultramontanes. see, for example, John Ciani's summary of the thought of Cardinal Mazzella who held that because God is one, unity is perfection: "Truth, as an attribute of the One God, is one, and error 'mulitplex"'(109).

8) On June 23, 1853, Newman recommended in a letter that Catherine Anne Bathurst read "the Cardinal's article in the Dublin in 1841 on the Donatists, which, I suppose, is reprinted in his 'Essays.'" (388). The comment shows Newman to have been aware of and interested in the work's publication, but is ambiguous as to whether Newman had - or would - read it himself.

9) Newman is even more explicit about the logical grounds for his lack of a right to teach in the "Advertisement" to Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. He writes of himself that "it seemed to him incongruous that one, who had so freely taught and published error in a Protestant communion, should put himself forward as a dogmatic teacher in the Catholic Church" (Newman "Advertisement" v).

10) In direct contrast to my argument, Frank Turner claims in John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion that Newman retrospectively endeavored "to highlight the influence of Wiseman's Dublin Review essay" on his conversion (336). Other than the Apologia itself, Turner's primary textual evidence for this claim is "Newman's initial public mention of the essay in Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans" (336). However, Newman's brief discussion of Wiseman's essay in his Anglican Difficulties follows the same basic pattern that I have observed in the Apologia. Newman relates in the body of the text that "a paper [he] fell in with upon the schism of the Donatists" weakened his faith in the Anglican position; Wiseman's authorship of the essay is mentioned only in a footnote (373). Since Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans was originally delivered as a series of lectures, not only is Wiseman's status minimized here - in the text's original oral version Wiseman would not have been mentioned by name at all.

11) See Fothergill 222-23, in which a letter of Robert Browning's is quoted to this effect.