i8 74 ] NEWMAN S THEORY OF PROPHECY 273 



dominion of the Church was so far from universal that in 

 some parts of the earth it was continually falling back 

 before the infidel powers. All these features are utterly 

 inconsistent with the hopes of the prophets. Say what 

 you will of the poetic colouring of their oracles, it is yet 

 absurd to say that the continuance of a visible body 

 politic of God s people, and of literal priests, was the real 

 substance of their prophecies, but that the universality 

 and final irrevocable victory of the theocracy were mere 

 accidents. Surely it is fair to say that the real essence 

 of the prophetic hopes lay not in the features which they 

 simply transplanted from their own times to the latter 

 days, but in the points in which the latter days were to 

 be superior in the more visible presence of God to His 

 people in the renewed hearts of the people themselves 

 in the overcoming in a regenerate earth of the blight of 

 the fall in the complete and willing subjection of the 

 whole earth to the Messianic Kingdom. In short, the 

 mere continuance of a visible God- Kingdom holding its 

 own with varying success amidst or even over the kingdoms 

 of the earth is no fulfilment of the prophets hopes. That 

 was a state of things actually present to them not the 

 object of their hopes, but the basis from which their hopes 

 rose. Only in so far as the theocracy was spiritualised, 

 strengthened, widened, so far as God came nearer to man, 

 and man became liker God, and then the whole earth 

 bore testimony to this reconciliation of the creature and 

 the creator, could they acknowledge a literal or any true 

 fulfilment of their hopes. 



And surely, tried by this test, the Church has at no 

 time approved itself such a theocracy as has already 

 entered into visible possession of the latter-day glory to 

 which the prophets looked. 



How then could Newman think that he saw in the 

 Church a literal fulfilment of Prophecy ? Simply because 

 from his High Church standpoint the greatest glory of 

 the Church is to be a theocracy because what with the 



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