system which would have been felt to be irreligious if the
authorities of the place had known what religion really was. Most
Fellows lost their Fellowships in a very short time unless they took
orders, and Froude's Fellowship was in that sense a clerical one.
They were ordained as a matter of course, the Bishop requiring no
other title. They were not expected, unless they wished it, to take
any parochial duty, and the notion that they had a "serious call" to
keep their Fellowships can only be described as absurd. Froude had
no other profession in view, and he persuaded himself that a Church
established by law must allow a wider range of opinion than a
voluntary communion could afford to tolerate. As we have seen, he
had defended Tract Ninety, and he claimed for himself the latitude
which he conceded to Newman. It was in his case a mistake, as he
very soon discovered. But the system which encouraged it must bear a
large part of the blame. Meanwhile he had been employed by Newman on
an uncongenial task. After the discontinuance of Tracts for the
Times, Newman projected another series, called Lives of the Saints.
The idea was of course taken from the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum. But
Newman had a definite polemical purpose. Just as he felt the force
of Hume's argument against the probability of miracles, so he
realised the difficulty of answering Gibbon's inquiry when miracles
ceased. Had they ever ceased at all? Many Roman Catholics, if not
the most enlightened and instructed, thought not. Newman conceived
that the lives of English and Irish saints held much matter for
edification, including marvels and portents of various kinds. He
desired that these things should be believed, as he doubtless
believed them. They proved, he thought, if they could be proved
themselves, that supernatural power resided in the Church, and when
the Church was concerned he laid his reason aside.