Keble, Old High Church virtues, and Newman's path
We will suppose, on the one side, a great array of facts, authorities, and arguments, which a person does not know how to refute, (though he cannot say but it is very possible some refutation may exist, as yet unknown to him, or that counter statements equally strong might be made): and on the other side, only the simple principle, “quieta mon movere: wherever a man is called, there let him abide with God:” even this alone ought assuredly to go a good way. Mere contentment and resignation to the Divine will, which has cast our lot where it is, in spiritual and intellectual no less than in temporal respects, ought in all reason to make us slow to change. “I am where God has seen fit to place me; surely this one consideration entitles me to throw the burden of proof entirely on those who call on me to alter my profession.” “Be content with such things as ye have”: be minute therefore and scrupulous in examining, (if your duty really call on you to examine,) whatever is said to separate you from your present Communion: look at it with a jealous, unfavourable eye, and shew to the other side proportional favour. For whatever else is right or wrong, this you are quite sure must be right; “in whatsoever state you are, therewith to be content,” until you discern unequivocal manifestations of God's will calling you out of it.
Again; some questions are felt to be of a kind, which it requires a certain daring and hardihood of mind to answer in an intellectual way: and no doubt there are persons, who, when such a subject occurs to them, feel it as a kind of challenge to do their best in grappling with it. They acknowledge it as a call of Providence, a venture which they are summoned to make; but intellects of the average sort instinctively draw back; and are they not right in so doing? Doubtless, the extent and complication of an argument, the number and magnitude of the points involved in it, the quantity of information which may be accumulated on it; these are so many indications of its not being meant to be decided by common persons. They call on us for a wise self-distrust; and self-distrust is a temper so suitable to us and our condition, that whatever course implies most of it has so far a presumption in its favour.
This perhaps illustrates what Keble means when he describes Newman's decision as the exercise of mere private judgement: the Old High Church virtues of order and conformity embodied the wisdom of "Be content with such things as ye have" and "self-distrust". It is these virtues which deliver us from the exaltation of self over tradition and community inherent in that which Newman himself was to condemn in Apologia Pro Vita Sua: "a right of Private Judgement ... the liberty of individuals in reasoning and judging for themselves about the Bible and its contents". Newman is, thus, the liberal, perhaps even the radical, Keble the traditionalist.
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