The burial service of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer speaks of the “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” John Henry Newman was, of course, deeply familiar with this language. Perhaps it prompted him to write his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. It’s there that he defines certitude as “the perception of a truth with the perception that is a truth.” Such certitude is not a rarity; it is an everyday experience. For Newman, moreover, certitude comes with an intellectual intolerance of what opposes it. Thus, gentle reader, you enjoy the certitude that, for example, you are now reading this blogpost! (And rest assured that you are not an AI bot.)

Nonetheless, though the truth stands fast, we ourselves might lose sight of it, especially when self-interest comes into play. Newman writes that if perhaps someone “attempted to reconcile me to fraudulent acts by what he called philosophical views, I should say to him, ‘Retro Satana,’ and that, not from any suspicion of his ability to reverse immutable principles, but from a consciousness of my own moral changeability.” Indeed, even one’s own intellectual certitude can come with a measure of anxiety that Newman compares to “that trembling of limbs of even the bravest men, before a battle.”

Two figures, strikingly different, help illustrate Newman’s analysis. What are we to make, first, of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)? We learn in Boswell’s Life of Johnson that he did not doubt the Resurrection but did question his own salvation. Aware of his many broken resolutions, Johnson remarked that “Hell is paved with good intentions.” When asked why Hell must be eternal, he replied, “We do not know that even the angels are quite in a state of security,” and so “to preserve both men and angels” it might be necessary that “they should have continually before them the punishment” of the damned. On one occasion, when urged not to fear death, Johnson insisted that “No rational man can die without uneasy apprehension.” On another occasion he said, “I cannot be sure that I have fulfilled the conditions on which salvation is granted; I am afraid I may be one of those who shall be damned.” Even so, Johnson insisted, “I do not despair.” In reporting these remarks, Boswell frames them in the context of Johnson’s melancholy temperament and tells us that he died peacefully.

Consider, secondly, and contrast with Dr. Johnson’s fears, St. Therese of Lisieux’s battle with scrupulosity. The following is adapted from Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway:

Therese prayed to her four little brothers and sisters who had died to free her from scruples. But she continued to have anxieties of conscience. In May 1888, she experienced consolation in confession. Father Almire Pichon came to Carmel to preside at the Profession of her oldest sister, Marie. Therese made her first general confession, and Father Pichon assured her that she had never committed a mortal sin, “the most consoling words I ever heard in my life,” she said. “Gratitude flooded my soul.”

With regard to the sure and certain hope that confession can bring, we might well recall that in his “Prayer for a Happy Death” Cardinal Newman, expressing hope, first asks that the Savior “support me in that hour in the strong arms of Your sacraments.” The Little Flower’s rich sacramental life was, sadly, not part of Johnson’s experience.

We need, in any case, to be clear about the hope with respect to which we would be sure and certain. Here Thomas Aquinas is, not surprisingly, helpful. As a passion, “the object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible to obtain” (ST II-II, q. 17, art. 1). As a theological virtue, the object of hope is “the enjoyment of God,” and this we can attain only “by leaning on His help” (ST II-II, q. 17, art. 2).

The differing reflections of Dr. Johnson and St. Therese are at once poignant and instructive. Hope rules out both the abject fear of despair and the bravado of presumption. Johnson himself notes that “St. Paul, though he expresses strong hope, also expresses fear, lest having preached to others, he himself should be cast-away.” Paul’s own words capture the hope of one “leaning” on his Savior: “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4:4).