On this date in 1890 Cardinal John Henry Newman (born 1801) died.

Frye in The Secular Scripture:

As with Plato, the Christian has to pass through this doctrinal system before he can understand the myths of the Bible.  In the nineteenth century Cardinal Newman remarked that the function of scripture was not to teach doctrine but to prove it: this axiom shows how completely the structure of the Bible had been translated into a conceptual system which both replaced and enclosed it.  Even the fact that the original data were for the most part stories, as far as their structure is concerned, often came to be resented or even denied.  Whatever resisted the translating operation had to be bracketed as a mystery of faith, into which it was as well not to look too closely.  (20)