Note (return) — Chapter II

Cardinal Newman, in an illuminating passage of his Apologia, explains how he made for himself images of personified nations, and hints that behind his belief in the real existence of such images was his sense of the convenience of creating them. He says that he identified the 'character and instinct' of 'states' and of those 'governments of religious communities,' from which he suffered so much, with spirits 'partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might he.... My preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of the "Prince of Persia" in the prophet Daniel: and I think I considered that it was of such intermediate beings that the Apocalypse spoke, when it introduced "the angels of the seven churches."[13] In 1837 ... I said ... 'Take England with many high virtues and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of Heaven nor Hell.'