has he ever made much of ***any doctrines but such as are if otherwise common to*** his new creed and his old? what doctrines was he certain of among the old, and what among the new?"

has he ever paid much attention to any doctrines that are common to his new creed but are contained in his old creed

Does the man who has changed his religion “give importance to those doctrines of the new religion which are different from the doctrines of his old religion”?

In other words, does the convert accept those aspects of the new religion that do not concur with his old religion?


--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 31 mins (2005-05-16 10:56:18 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

I am basing my argument on the usage of the word \"but\". In constructions like \"anything but that\", the things signified by \"that\" are to be excluded. Here \"common doctrines\" follows \"but\" and therefore should be excluded, leaving us with the doctrines that are different in the two religions.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 40 mins (2005-05-16 11:05:36 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

I am basing my argument on the usage of the word \"but\". In constructions like \"anything but that\", the things signified by \"that\" are to be excluded. Here \"common doctrines\" follows \"but\" and therefore should be excluded, leaving us with the doctrines that are different in the two religions.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 48 mins (2005-05-16 11:12:41 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

I found the full text of the essay in the link given below.

http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter7.html

It might help those more well-versed in Christian theology to decide.

The para that follows the quote given illustrates the meaning of this quote, and I am giving it below:

When, then, we are told that a man has changed from one religion to another, the first question which we have to ask, is, have the first and the second religions nothing in common? If they have common doctrines, he has changed only a portion of his creed, not the whole: and the next question is, has he ever made much of any doctrines but such as are if otherwise common to his new creed and his old? what doctrines was he certain of among the old, and what among the new?

Thus, of three Protestants, one becomes a Catholic, a second a Unitarian, and a third an unbeliever: how is this? The first becomes a Catholic, because he assented, as a Protestant, to the doctrine of our Lord\'s divinity, with a real assent and a genuine conviction, and because this certitude, taking possession of his mind, led him on to welcome the Catholic doctrines of the Real Presence and of the Theotocos, till his Protestantism fell off from him, and he submitted himself to the Church. The second became a Unitarian, because, proceeding on the principle that Scripture was the rule of faith and that a man\'s private judgment was its rule of interpretation, {246} and finding that the doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds did not follow by logical necessity from the text of Scripture, he said to himself, \"The word of God has been made of none effect by the traditions of men,\" and therefore nothing was left for him but to profess what he considered primitive Christianity, and to become a Humanitarian. The third gradually subsided into infidelity, because he started with the Protestant dogma, cherished in the depths of his nature, that a priesthood was a corruption of the simplicity of the Gospel. First, then, he would protest against the sacrifice of the Mass; next he gave up baptismal regeneration, and the sacramental principle; then he asked himself whether dogmas were not a restraint on Christian liberty as well as sacraments; then came the question, what after all was the use of teachers of religion? why should any one stand between him and his Maker? After a time it struck him, that this obvious question had to be answered by the Apostles, as well as by the Anglican clergy; so he came to the conclusion that the true and only revelation of God to man is that which is written on the heart. This did for a time, and he remained a Deist. But then it occurred to him, that this inward moral law was there within the breast, whether there was a God or not, and that it was a roundabout way of enforcing that law, to say that it came from God, and simply unnecessary, considering it carried with it its own sacred and sovereign authority, as our feelings instinctively testified; and when he turned to look at the physical world around him, he really did not see what scientific proof there {247} was there of the Being of God at all, and it seemed to him as if all things would go on quite as well as at present, without that hypothesis as with it; so he dropped it, and became a purus, putus Atheist.



--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 54 mins (2005-05-16 11:18:48 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Here he is giving three examples of Protestants converting to Catholicism, one becomes a full convert, the other remains a simple Christian and the third becomes an infidel. And the reason that he gives is (as I understand it)that the overlap between the doctrines believed in by the three was greatest in the case of the first, lesser in the case of the second, and the least in the case of the third. A critical threshold of overlap is needed it seems, failing which a new convert cannot progress to a level where he can understand the full implication of his new religion, and contiunes to exist at a much lower orbit.