John Henry Newman

(1801-1890), Cardinal-Deacon of St. George in Velabro, divine,
philosopher, man of letters, leader of the Tractarian Movement,
and the most illustrious of English converts to the Church. Born
in the City of London, 21 February, 1801, the eldest of six
children, three boys and three girls; died at Edgbaston,
Birmingham, 11 August, 1890. Over his descent there has been some
discussion as regards the paternal side. His father was John
Newman, a banker, his mother Jemima Fourdrinier, of a Huguenot
family settled in London as engravers and paper-makers. It is
stated that the name was at one time spelt Newmann; it is certain
that many Jews, English or foreign, have borne it; and the
suggestion has been thrown out that he was of Jewish descent. But
no documentary evidence has been found to confirm the suggestion.
His French pedigree is undoubted. It accounts for his religious
training, a modified Calvinism, which he received at his mother's
knees; and perhaps it helped towards the "lucid concision" of his
phrase when dealing with abstruse subjects. His brother Francis
William, also a writer, but wanting in literary charm, turned from
the English Church to Deism; Charles Robert, the second son, was
very erratic, and professed Atheism. One sister, Mary, died young;
Jemima has a place in the cardinal's biography during the crisis
of his Anglican career; and to a daughter of Harriet, Anne Mozley,
we are indebted for his "Letters and Correspondence" down to 1845,
which contains a sequel from his own hand to the "Apologia."

A classic from the day it was completed, the "Apologia" will ever
be the chief authority for Newman's early thoughts, and for his
judgment on the great religious revival known as the Oxford
Movement, of which he was the guide, the philosopher, and the
martyr. His immense correspondence, the larger portion of which
still awaits publication, cannot essentially change our estimate
of one who, though subtle to a degree bordering on refinement, was
also impulsive and open with his friends, as well as bold in his
confidences to the public. From all that is thus known of him we
may infer that Newman's greatness consisted in the union of
originality, amounting to genius of the first rank, with a deep
spiritual temper, the whole manifesting itself in language of
perfect poise and rhythm, in energy such as often has created
sects or Churches, and in a personality no less winning than
sensitive. Among the literary stars of his time Newman is
distinguished by the pure Christian radiance that shines in his
life and writings. He is the one Englishman of that era who upheld
the ancient creed with a knowledge that only theologians possess,
a Shakespearean force of style, and a fervour worthy of the
saints. It is this unique combination that raises him above lay
preachers de vanitate mundi like Thackeray, and which gives him a
place apart from Tennyson and Browning. In comparison with him
Keble is a light of the sixth magnitude, Pusey but a devout
professor, Liddon a less eloquent Lacordaire. Newman occupies in
the nineteenth century a position recalling that of Bishop Butler
in the eighteenth. As Butler was the Christian champion against
Deism, so Newman is the Catholic apologist in an epoch of
Agnosticism, and amid the theories of evolution. He is, moreover,
a poet, and his "Dream of Gerontius" far excels the meditative
verse of modern singers by its happy shadowing forth in symbol and
dramatic scenes of the world behind the veil.

He was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading
the Bible; but he had no formed religious convictions until he was
fifteen. He used to wish the Arabian tales were true; his mind ran
on unknown influences; he thought life possibly a dream, himself
an angel, and that his fellow-angels might be deceiving him with
the semblance of a material world. He was "very superstitious" and
would cross himself on going into the dark. At fifteen he
underwent "conversion", though not quite as Evangelicals practise
it; from works of the school of Calvin he gained definite dogmatic
ideas; and as he rested "in the thought of two and two only
absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my
Creator." In other words, personality became the primal truth in
his philosophy; not matter, law, reason, or the experience of the
senses. Henceforth, Newman was a Christian mystic, and such he
remained. From the writings of Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford, "to
whom, humanly speaking", he says, "I almost owe my soul", he
learned the doctrine of the Trinity, supporting each verse of the
Athanasian Creed with texts from Scripture. Scott's aphorisms were
constantly on his lips for years, "Holiness rather than peace",
and "Growth is the only evidence of life." Law's "Serious Call"
had on the youth a Catholic or ascetic influence; he was born to
be a missionary; thought it was God's will that he should lead a
single life; was enamoured of quotations from the Fathers given in
Milner's "Church History", and, reading Newton on the Prophecies,
felt convinced that the pope was Antichrist. He had been at school
at Ealing near London from the age of seven. Always thoughtful,
shy, and affectionate, he took no part in boys' games, began to
exercise his pen early, read the Waverley Novels, imitated Gibbon
and Johnson, matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, December,
1816, and in 1818 won a scholarship of 60 pounds tenable for nine
years. In 1819 his father's bank suspended payment, but soon
discharged its liabilities in full. Working too hard for his
degree, Newman broke down, and gained in 1821 only third-class
honors. But his powers could not be hidden. Oriel was then first
in reputation and intellect among the Oxford Colleges, and of
Oriel he was elected a fellow, 12 April, 1822. He ever felt this
to be "the turning point in his life, and of all days most
memorable."

In 1821 he had given up the intention of studying for the Bar, and
resolved to take orders. As tutor of Oriel, he considered that he
had a cure of souls; he was ordained on 13 June, 1824; and at
Pusey's suggestion became curate of St. Clement's, Oxford, where
he spent two years in parochial activity. And here the views in
which he had been brought up disappointed him; Calvinism was not a
key to the phenomena of human nature as they occur in the world.
It would not work. He wrote articles on Cicero, etc., and his
first "Essay on Miracles", which takes a strictly Protestant
attitude, to the prejudice of those alleged outside Scripture. But
he also fell under the influence of Whateley, afterwards Anglican
Archbishop of Dublin, who, in 1825, made him his vice-principal at
St. Mary's Hall. Whateley stimulated him by discussion, taught him
the notion of Christianity as a social and sovereign organism
distinct from the State, but led him in the direction of "liberal"
ideas and nominalistic logic. To Whateley's once famous book on
that subject Newman contributed. From Hawkins, whom his casting
vote made Provost of Oriel, he gained the Catholic doctrines of
tradition and baptismal regeneration, as well as a certain
precision of terms which, long afterwards, gave rise to Kingsley's
misunderstanding of Newman's methods in writing. By another Oxford
clergyman he was taught to believe in the Apostolic succession.
And Butler's "Analogy", read in 1823, made an era in his religious
opinions. It is probably not too much to say that this deep and
searching book became Newman's guide in life, and gave rise not
only to the "Essay on Development" but to the "Grammar of Assent."
In particular it offered a rejective account of ethics and
conscience which confirmed his earliest beliefs in a lawgiver and
judge intimately present to the soul. On another line it suggested
the sacramental system, or the "Economy", of which the
Alexandrians Clement and St. Athanasius are exponents. To sum up,
at this formative period the sources whence Newman derived his
principles as well as his doctrines were Anglican and Greek, not
Roman or German. His Calvinism dropped away; in time he withdrew
from the Bible Society. He was growing fiercely anti-Erastian; and
Whateley saw the elements of a fresh party in the Church gathering
round one whom Oriel had chosen for his intellectual promise, but
whom Oxford was to know as a critic and antagonist of the "March
of Mind."

His college in 1928 made him Vicar of St. Mary's (which was also
the university church), and in its pulpit he delivered the
"Parochial Sermons", without eloquence or gesture, for he had no
popular gifts, but with a thrilling earnestness and a knowledge of
human nature seldom equalled. When published, it was said of them
that they "beat all other sermons out of the market as Scott's
tales beat all other stories." They were not controversial; and
there is little in them to which Catholic theology would object.
Their chastened style, fertility of illustration , and short sharp
energy, have lost nothing by age. In tone they are severe and
often melancholy, as if the utterance of an isolated spirit.
Though gracious and even tenderhearted, Newman's peculiar temper
included deep reserve. He had not in his composition, as he says,
a grain of conviviality. He was always the Oxford scholar, no
democrat, suspicious of popular movements; but keenly interested
in political studies as bearing on the fortunes of the Church.
This disposition was intensified by his friendship with Keble,
whose "Christian Year" came out in 1827, and with R. Hurrell
Froude, a man of impetuous thought and self-denying practice. In
1832 he quarrelled with Dr. Hawkins, who would not endure the
pastoral idea which Newman cherished of his college work. He
resigned his tutorship, went on a long voyage round the
Mediterranean with Froude, and came back to Oxford, where on 14
July, 1833, Keble preached the Assize sermon on "National
Apostasy." That day, the anniversary of the French Revolution,
gave birth to the Oxford Movement.

Newman's voyage to the coasts of North Africa, Italy, Western
Greece, and Sicily (December, 1832-July, 1833) was a romantic
episode, of which his diaries have preserved the incidents and the
colour. In Rome he saw Wiseman at the English College; the city,
as mother of religion to his native land, laid a spell on him
never more to be undone. He felt called to some high mission; and
when fever took him at Leonforte in Sicily (where he was wandering
alone) he cried out, "I shall not die, I have not sinned against
the light." Off Cape Ortegal, 11 December, 1832, he had composed
the first of a series of poems, condensed, passionate, and
original which prophesied that the Church would yet reign as in
her youth. Becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio, he sought
guidance through the tender verses, "Lead, Kindly Light",
deservedly treasured by all the English-speaking races. They have
been called the marching song of the Tractarian host. But during
the earlier stages of that journey it was not clear, even to the
leader himself, in what direction they were moving -- away from
the Revolution, certainly. Reform was in the air; ten Irish
bishoprics had been suppressed; disestablishment might not be far
off. There was need of resistance to the enemies without, and of a
second, but a Catholic, reformation within. The primitive Church
must somehow be restored in England. Others met in committee and
sent up and address to Canterbury; Newman began the "Tracts for
the Times", as he tells us with a smile, "out of his own head." To
him Achilles always seemed more than the host of the Ach ans. He
took his motto from the Illiad: "They shall know the difference
now." Achilles went down into battle, fought for eight years, won
victory upon victory, but was defeated by his own weapons when
"Tract 90" appeared, and retired to his tent at Littlemore, a
broken champion. Nevertheless, he had done a lasting work, greater
than Laud's and likely to overthrow Cranmer's in the end. He had
resuscitated the Fathers, brought into relief the sacramental
system, paved the way for an astonishing revival of long-forgotten
ritual, and given the clergy a hold upon thousands at the moment
when Erastian principles were on the eve of triumph. "It was soon
after 1830", says Pattison grimly, "that the Tracts desolated
Oxford life." Newman's position was designated the Via Media. The
English Church, he maintained, lay at an equal distance from Rome
and Geneva. It was Catholic in origin and doctrine; it
anathematized as heresies the peculiar tenets whether of Calvin or
Luther; it could not but protest against "Roman corruptions",
which were excrescences on primitive truth. Hence England stood by
the Fathers, whose teaching the Prayer Book handed down; it
appealed to antiquity, and its norm was the undivided Church.
"Charles", said Newman, "is the king, Laud the prelate, Oxford the
sacred city, of this principle." Patristic study became the order
of the day. Newman's first volume, "The Arians of the Fourth
Century", is an undigested, but valuable and characteristic,
treatise, wholly Alexandrian in tone, dealing with creeds and
sects on the lines of the "Economy." As a history it fails; the
manner is confused, the style a contrast to his later intensity
and directness of expression. But as a thinker Newman never
travelled much beyond the "Arians" (published 1833). It implies a
mystic philosophy controlled by Christian dogma, as the Church
expounds it. In the "Apologia" we find this key to his mental
development dropped by Newman, not undesignedly. He says,

I understood . . . that the exterior world, physical and
historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities
greater than itself. Nature was a parable, Scripture was an
allegory; pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology, properly
understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel. The Greek poets
and sages were in a sense prophets.

There had been a "dispensation" of the Gentiles as well as of the
Jews. Both had outwardly come to nought; from and through each had
the evangelical doctrine been made manifest. Thus room was granted
for the anticipation of deeper disclosures, of truths still under
the veil of the letter. Holy Church "will remain after all but a
symbol of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries
are but the expression in human language of truths to which the
human mind is unequal" ("Apol." ed. 1895, p. 27). Such was the
teaching that "came like music" to his inward ear, from Athens and
Alexandria. Newman's life was devoted, first, to applying this
magnificent scheme to the Church of England; and then, when it
would not suit those insular dimensions, to the Church of the
centre, to Rome. But its wide implications even this far-glancing
vision did not take in. However, it substituted a dynamic and
progressive principle in Christianity for one merely static. But
the Anglican position was supposed to rely on Vincent of Lerins's
Quod ubique, admitting of no real developments; its divines urged
against Boussuet the "variations" of Catholicism. From 1833 to
1839 the Tractarian leader held this line of defence without a
misgiving. Suddenly it gave way, and the Via Media disappeared.

Meanwhile, Oxford was shaken like Medicean Florence by a new
Savonarola, who made disciples on every hand; who stirred up
sleepy Conservatives when Hampden, a commonplace don, subjected
Christian verities to the dissolving influence of Nominalism; and
who multiplied books and lectures dealing with all religious
parties at once. "The Prophetic Office" was a formal apology of
the Laudian type; the obscure, but often beautiful "Treatise on
Justification" made an effort "to show that there is little
difference but what is verbal in the various views, found whether
among Catholic or Protestant divines" on this subject. D�llinger
called it "the greatest masterpiece in theology that England had
produced in a hundred years", and it contains the true answer to
Puritanism. The "University Sermons", profound as their theme,
aimed at determining the powers and limits of reason, the methods
of revelation, the possibilities of a real theology. Newman wrote
so much that his hand almost failed him. Among a crowd of admirers
only one perhaps, Hurrell Froude, could meet him in thought on
fairly equal terms, and Froude passed away at Dartington in 1836.
The pioneer went his road alone. He made a bad party-leader, being
liable to sudden gusts and personal resolutions which ended in
catastrophe. But from 1839, when he reigned at Oxford without a
rival, he was already faltering. In his own language, he had seen
a ghost -- the shadow of Rome overclouding his Anglican
compromise.

Two names are associated with a change so momentous -- Wiseman and
Ward. The "Apologia" does full justice to Wiseman; it scarcely
mentions Ward (see OXFORD MOVEMENT). Those who were looking on
might have predicted a collision between the Tractarians and
Protestant England, which had forgotten the Caroline divines. This
came about on occasion of "Tract 90" -- in itself the least
interesting of all Newman's publications. The tract was intended
to keep stragglers from Rome by distinguishing the corruptions
against which the Thirty-Nine Articles were directed, from the
doctrines of Trent which they did not assail. A furious and
universal agitation broke out in consequence (Feb., 1841). Newman
was denounced as a traitor, a Guy Fawkes at Oxford; the University
intervened with academic maladroitness and called the tract "an
evasion." Dr. Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, mildly censured it, but
required that the tracts should cease. For three years
condemnations from the bench of bishops were scattered broadcast.
To a mind constituted like Newman's, imbued with Ignatian ideas of
episcopacy, and unwilling to perceive that they did not avail in
the English Establishment, this was an ex cathedra judgment
against him. He stopped the tracts, resigned his editorship of
"The British Critic", by and by gave up St. Mary's, and retired at
Littlemore into lay communion. Nothing is clearer than that, if he
had held on quietly, he would have won the day. "Tract 90" does
not go so far as many Anglican attempts at reconciliation have
gone since. The bishops did not dream of coercing him into
submission. But he had lost faith in himself. Reading church
history he saw that the Via Media was no new thing. It had been
the refuge of the Semiarians, without whom Arianism could never
have flourished. It made the fortune of the Monophysites, thanks
to whom the Church of Alexandria had sunk into heresy and fallen a
prey to Mohammed's legions. The analogy which Newman had observed
with dismay was enforced from another side by Wiseman, writing on
the Donatists in "The Dublin Review." Wiseman quoted St.
Augustine, "Securus judicat orbis terrarum", which may be
interpreted "Catholic consent is the judge of controversy." Not
antiquity studied in books, not the bare succession of bishops,
but the living Church now broke upon him as alone peremptory and
infallible. It ever had been so; it must be so still. Nic a,
Ephesus, and Chalcedon thus bore witness to Rome. Add to this the
grotesque affair of the Jerusalem bishopric, the fruit of an
alliance with Lutheran Prussia, and the Anglican theory was
disproved by facts.

From 1841 Newman was on his death-bed as regarded the Anglican
Church. He and some friends lived together at Littlemore in
monastic seclusion, under a hard rule which did not improve his
delicate health. In February, 1843, he retracted in a local
newspaper his severe language towards Rome; in September he
resigned his living. With immense labour he composed the "Essay on
the Development of Christian Doctrine", in which the apparent
variations of dogma, formerly objected by him against the Catholic
Church, were explained on a theory of evolution, curiously
anticipating on certain points the great work of Darwin. It has
many most original passages, but remains a fragment. On 9 October,
1845, during a period of excited action at Oxford, Newman was
received into the Church by Father Dominic, an Italian Passionist,
three days after Renan had broken with Saint-Sulpice and
Catholicism. The event, although long in prospect, irritated and
distressed his countrymen, who did not forgive it until many years
had gone by. Its importance was felt; its causes were not known.
Hence an estrangement which only the exquisite candour of Newman's
self-delineation in the "Apologia" could entirely heal.

His conversion divides a life of almost ninety years into equal
parts the first more dramatic and its perspective ascertained; the
second as yet imperfectly told, but spent for a quarter of a
century sub luce maligna, under suspicion from one side or
another, his plans thwarted, his motives misconstrued. Called by
Wiseman to Oscott, near Birmingham, in 1846, he proceeded in
October to Rome, and was there ordained by Cardinal Fransoni. The
pope approved of his scheme for establishing in England the
Oratory of St. Philip Neri; in 1847 he came back, and, besides
setting up the London house, took mission work in Birmingham.
Thence he moved out to Edgbaston, where the community still
resides. A large school was added in 1859. The spacious
Renaissance church, consecrated in 1909, is a memorial of the
forty years during which Newman made his home in that place. After
his "Sermons to Mixed Congregations", which exceed in vigour and
irony all other published by him, the Oratorian recluse did not
strive to gain a footing in the capital of the Midlands. He always
felt "paucorum hominum sum"; his charm was not for the multitude.
As a Catholic he began enthusiastically. His "Lectures on Anglican
Difficulties" were heard in London by large audiences; "Loss and
Gain", though not much of a story, abounds in happy strokes and
personal touches; "Callista" recalls his voyage in the
Mediterranean by many delightful pages; the sermon at the Synod of
Oscott entitled "The Second Spring" has a rare an delicate beauty.
It is said that Macaulay knew it by heart. "When Newman made up
his mind to join the Church of Rome", observes R. H. Hutton, "his
genius bloomed out with a force and freedom such as it never
displayed in the Anglican communion." And again, "In irony, in
humour, in eloquence, in imaginative force, the writings of the
later and, as we may call it, emancipated portion of his career
far surpass the writings of his theological apprenticeship." But
English Catholic literature also gained a persuasive voice and a
classic dignity of which hitherto there had been no example.

His own secession, preceded by that of Ward (amid conflicts of the
angriest kind at Oxford), and followed by many others, had alarmed
Englishmen. In 1850 came the "Papal Aggression", by which the
country was divided into Catholic sees, and a Roman cardinal
announced from the Flaminian Gate his commission to "govern"
Westminster. The nation went mad with excitement. Newman delivered
in the Corn Exchange, Birmingham, his Lectures on the Position of
Catholics (he was seldom felicitous in titles of books), and, to
George Eliot's amazement, they revealed him as a master of
humorous, almost too lively sketches, witty and scornful of the
great Protestant tradition. An apostate Italian priest, Achilli,
was haranguing against the Church. Prompted by Wiseman, the
Oratorian gave particulars of this man's infamous career, and
Achilli brought a charge of libel. Newman, at enormous expense,
collected evidence which fully justified the accusations he had
made. But a no-popery jury convicted him. He was fined 100 pounds;
on appeal, the verdict was quashed; and "The Times" admitted that
a miscarriage of justice had taken place when Newman was declared
guilty. Catholics all the world over came to his relief. His
thanks are on record in the dedication of his Dublin "Lectures."
But he always remembered that to Wiseman's haste and carelessness
he owed this trial.

There was much more trouble awaiting him. The years from 1851 to
1870 brought disaster to a series of noble projects in which he
aimed at serving religion and culture. In Ireland the bishops had
been compelled, after rejecting the "Godless" colleges in 1847, to
undertake a university of their own. Neither men nor ideas were
forthcoming; the State would not sanction degrees conferred by a
private body; nevertheless, an attempt could be made; and Newman
was appointed rector, November, 1851. Three years passed as in a
dream; in 1854 he took the oaths. But he had, in 1852, addressed
Ireland on the "Idea of a University" with such a largeness and
liberality of view as Oxford, if we may believe Pattison, had
never taught him. The "Lectures" end abruptly; they gave him less
satisfaction than any other of his works; yet, in conjunction with
his brilliant short papers in the "University Magazine", and
academic dissertations to the various "Schools", they exhibit a
range of thought, an urbanity of style, and a pregnant wit, such
as no living professor could have rivalled. They are the best
defence of Catholic educational theories in any language; a critic
perhaps would describe them as the Via Media between an
obscurantism which tramples on the rights of knowledge and Free-
Thought which will not hear of the rights of revelation.
Incidentally, they defended the teaching of the classics against a
French Puritan clique led by the Abbe Gaume. This was pretty much
all that Newman achieved during the seven years of his "Campaign
in Ireland." Only a few native or English students attended the
house in St. Stephen's Green. The bishops were divided, and
Archbishop MacHale opposed a severe non possumus to the rector's
plans. In administration difficulties sprang up; and though Newman
won the friendship of Archbishop Cullen and Bishop Moriarty, he
was not always treated with due regard. The status of titular
bishop had been promised him; for reasons which he never learnt,
the promise fell through. His feeling towards Ireland was warm and
generous; but in Nov., 1858, he retired from the rectorship. Its
labours and anxieties had told upon him. Another large enterprise,
to which Cardinal Wiseman invited him only to balk his efforts,
was likewise a failure -- the revision of the English Catholic
Bible. Newman had selected a company of revisors and had begun to
accumulate materials, but some small publishers interests were
pleaded on the other side, and Wiseman, whose intentions were
good, but evanescent, allowed them to wreck this unique
opportunity.

During the interval between 1854 and 1860 Newman had passed from
the convert's golden fervours into a state which resembled
criticism of prevailing methods in church government and
education. His friends included some of a type known to history as
"Liberal Catholics." Of Montalembert and Lacordaire he wrote in
1864: "In their general line of thought and conduct I
enthusiastically concur and consider them to be before their age."
He speaks of "the unselfish aims, the thwarted projects, the
unrequited toils, the grand and tender resignation of Lacordaire."
That moving description might be applied to Newman himself. He was
intent on the problems of the time and not alarmed at Darwin's
"Origin of Species." He had been made aware by German scholars,
like Acton, of the views entertained at Munich; and he was keenly
sensitive to the difference between North and South in debatable
questions of policy or discipline. He looked beyond the immediate
future; in a lecture at Dublin on "A From of Infidelity of the
Day" he seems to have anticipated what is now termed "Modernism",
condemning it as the ruin of dogma. It is distressing to imagine
what Newman's horror would have been, had his intuition availed to
tell him that, in little more than half a century, a "form of
infidelity" so much like what he had predicted would claim him as
its originator; on the other hand, he would surely have taken
comfort, could he also have foreseen that the soundness of his
faith was to be so vindicated as it has been by Bishop O'Dwyer, of
Limerick, and above all, the vindication so approved and confirmed
as it is in Pius X's letter of 10 March, 1908, to that bishop. In
another lecture, on "Christianity and Scientific Investigation",
he provides for a concordat which would spare the world a second
case of Galileo. He held that Christian theology was a deductive
science, but physics and the like were inductive; therefore
collision between them need not, and in fact did not really occur.
He resisted in principle the notion that historical evidence could
do away with the necessity of faith as regarded creeds and
definitions. He deprecated the intrusions of amateurs into
divinity; but he was anxious that laymen should take their part in
the movement of intellect. This led him to encourage J. M. Capes
in founding the "Rambler", and H. Wilberforce in editing the
"Weekly Register." But likewise it brought him face to face with a
strong reaction from the earlier liberal policy of Pius IX. This
new movement, powerful especially in France, was eagerly taken up
by Ward and Manning, who now influenced Wiseman as he sank under a
fatal disease. Their quarrel with J. H. N. (as he was familiarly
called) did not break out in open war; but much embittered
correspondence is left which proves that, while no point of faith
divided the parties, their dissensions threw back English Catholic
education for thirty years.

These misunderstandings turned on three topics:

�  the "scientific" history which was cultivated by the "Rambler",
with Newman's partial concurrence;

�  the proposed oratory at Oxford; and

�  the temporal power, then at the crisis of its fate.

Newman's editorship of the "Rambler", accepted, on request of
Wiseman, by way of compromise, lasted only two months (May-July,
1859). His article, "On Consulting the Laity in Matters of
Doctrine", was denounced at Rome by Bishop Brown of Newport and
Menevia. Leave was given for an Oratorian house at Oxford,
provided Newman did not go thither himself, which defeated the
whole plan. A sharp review of Manning's "Lectures on the Temporal
Power" was attributed to Newman, who neither wrote nor inspired
it; and these two illustrious Catholics were never friends again.
Newman foresaw the total loss of the temporal power; his fears
were justified; but prevision and the politics of the day could
not well be united. Of all Christians then living this great
genius had the deepest insight into the future; but to his own
generation he became as Jeremiah announcing the fall of Jerusalem.
Despondency was his prevailing mood when, in January, 1864, from
an unexpected quarter, the chance of his life was given him.

Charles Kingsley, a bold, picturesque, but fiercely anti-Catholic
writer, dealing, in "Macmillan's Magazine", with J. A. Froude's
"History of England," let fall the remark that

Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman
clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the
whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which heaven has
given to the Saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of
the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether
his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least
historically so.

These assertions had no foundation whatever in fact. Newman
demanded proof; a correspondence ensued in which Kingsley referred
to one of the Oxford Anglican sermons generally; he withdrew his
charge in terms that left its injustice unreproved; and thus he
brought on himself, in the pamphlet which his adversary published,
one of the most cutting replies, ironical and pitiless, known to
literature. He returned to the assault. "What then does Dr. Newman
mean?" was his question. The answer came in the shape of an
"Apologia pro Vita sua", which, while pulverizing enemies of the
Kingsley stamp, lifted Newman to a height above all his
detractors, and added a unique specimen of religious autobiography
to our language. Issued in seven parts between 21 April and 2
June, 1864, the original work was a marvel of swift and cogent
writing. Materials in expectation of some such opportunity had
been collecting since 1862. But the duel which led up to an
account of Newman's most intimate feelings exhibited sword-play
the like of which can be scarcely found outside Pascal's
"Provincial Letters" and Lessing's "Anti-Goeze." It annihilated
the opponent and his charge. Not that Newman cherished a personal
animosity against Kingsley, whom he had never met. His tone was
determined by a sense of what he owed to his own honour and the
Catholic priesthood. "Away with you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into
space", were his parting words to a man whose real gifts did not
serve him in this wild encounter. Then the old Tractarian hero
told the story of his life. He looked upon it with the eye of an
artist, with self-knowledge like that of Hamlet, with candour, and
pathos, and awe; for he felt a guiding power throughout which had
brought him home. The handling was unaffected, the portraits of
Oxford celebrities true and yet kind; the drama which ended in his
renunciation of place and power at St. Mary's moved on with a
tragic interest. His brief prologues are among the jewels of
English prose. A word from St. Augustine converted him, and its
poignant effects could not be surpassed in the "Confessions" of
the saint himself. The soliloquy, as we may term it, which
describes Newman's attitude since 1845, presents in a lofty view
his apology, which is not a surrender, to those Catholics who
mistrusted him. Though he never would discuss the primary problems
of Theism ex professo, he has dwelt on the apparent chaos of
history, goodness defeated and moral efforts futile, with a
piercing eloquence which reminds us of some lament in "schylus."
He met Kingsley's accusations of double-dealing proudly and in
detail. But by the time he reached them, Englishmen -- who had
read the successive chapters with breathless admiration -- were
completely brought round. No finer triumph of talent in the
service of conscience has been put on record. From that day the
Catholic religion may date its reentrance into the national
literature. Instead of arid polemics and technical arguments, a
living soul had revealed its journey towards the old faith wherein
lay the charm that drew it on. Reality became more fascinating
that romance; the problem which staggered Protestants and modern
minds -- how to reconcile individual genius with tradition,
private judgment with authority -- was resolved in Newman's great
example.

Amid acclamations from Catholics, echoing the "aves vehement" of
the world outside, he turned to the philosophy which would justify
his action. He began the "Grammar of Assent." Still, Manning, now
archbishop, Talbot, chamberlain of Pius IX, Ward, editor of the
"Dublin Review", were not to be pacified. Manning thought he was
transplanting the "Oxford tone into the Church"; Talbot described
him as "the most dangerous man in England"; Ward used even harder
terms. In 1867 an attack by a Roman correspondent on Newman led to
a counter-move, when two hundred distinguished laymen told him,
"Every blow that touches you inflicts a wound upon the Catholic
Church in this country." His discriminating answer on the cultus
of Our Lady to Pusey's "Eirenicon" had been taken ill in some
quarters. One of his Oratorians, H. I. D. Ryder, was bold enough
to cross swords with the editor of the "Dublin", who inflicted on
friend and foe views concerning the extent of papal infallibility
which the Roman authorities did not sanction; and Newman rejoiced
in the assault. In 1870 the "Grammar" was published. But its
appearance, coinciding with the First Vatican Council, roused less
attention than the author's suspected dislike for the aims and
conduct of the majority at Rome. Years before he had proclaimed
his belief in the infallible pope. His "Cathedra Sempiterna"
rivals in fervour and excels in genuine rhetoric the passage with
which de Maistre concluded his "Du Pape", which became a text for
"ultramontane" apologetics. Yet he shrank from the perils which
hung over men less stable than himself, should the definition be
carried. He would have healed the breach between Rome and Munich.
Under these impressions he sent to his bishop, W. B. Ullathorne, a
confidential letter in which he branded, not the Fathers of the
Council, but the journalists and other partisans outside who were
abounding in violent language, as "an insolent and aggressive
faction." The letter was surreptitiously made public; a heated
controversy ensued; but Newman took no further part in the
conciliar proceedings. Of course he accepted the dogmatic
definitions; and in 1874 he defended the Church against
Gladstone's charge that "Vaticanism" was equivalent to the latest
fashions in religion (see his "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk").

Newman's demeanour towards authority was ever one of submission;
but, as he wrote to Phillips de Lisle in 1848, "it is no new thing
with me to feel little sympathy with parties, or extreme opinions
of any kind." In recommending the Creed he would employ "a wise
and gentle minimism", not extenuating what was true but setting
down nought in malice. The "Grammar of Assent" illustrates and
defends this method, in which human nature is not left out of
account. It is curiously Baconian, for it eschews abstractions and
metaphysics, being directed to the problem of concrete
affirmation, its motives in fact, and its relation to the
personality of the individual. This hitherto unexplored province
of apologetics lay dark, while the objective reasons for assent
had engrossed attention; we might term it the casuistry of belief.
Newman brought to the solution a profound acquaintance with the
human heart, which was his own; a resolve to stand by experience;
and a subtilty of expression corresponding to his fine analysis.
He believed in "implicit" logic, varied and converging proofs,
indirect demonstration (ex impossibili or ex absurdo); assent, in
short, in not a mechanical echo of the syllogism but a vital act,
distinct and determined. The will, sacrificed in many schools to
formal intellect, recovers its power; genius and common sense are
justified. Not that pure logic loses its rights, or truth is
merely "that which each man troweth"; but the moral being
furnishes an indispensable premise to arguments bearing on life,
and all that is meant by a "pious disposition" towards faith is
marvellously drawn out. As a sequel and crown to the "Development"
this often touching volume (which reminds us of Pascal) completed
the author's philosophy. Some portions of it he is said to have
written ten times, the last chapter many times more. Yet that
chapter is already in part antiquated. The general
description,however, of concrete assent appears likely to survive
all objections. How far it bears on Kant's "Practical Reason" or
the philosophy of the will as developed by Schopenhauer, has yet
to be considered. But we must not torture it into the "pragmatism"
of a later day. As Newman held by dogma in revelation, so he would
never have denied that the mind enjoys a vision of truth founded
on reality. He was a mystic, not a sceptic. To him the reason by
which men guided themselves was "implicit" rather than "explicit",
but reason nevertheless. Abstractions do not exist; but the world
is a fact; our own personality cannot be called in question; the
will is a true cause; and God reveals Himself in conscience.
Apologetics, to be persuasive, should address the individual; for
real assents, however multiplied, are each single and sui generis.
Even a universal creed becomes in this way a private acquisition.
As the "Development" affords a counterpart to Boussuet's
"Variations", so the "Grammar" may be said to have reduced the
"personal equation" in controversy to a working hypothesis,
whereas in Protestant hands it had served the purposes of anarchy.

For twenty years Newman lay under imputations at Rome, which
misconstrued his teaching and his character. This, which has been
called the ostracism of a saintly genius, undoubtedly was due to
his former friends, Ward and Manning. In February, 1878, Pius IX
died; and, by a strange conjuncture, in that same month Newman
returned to Oxford as Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, "dear to
him from undergraduate days." The event provoked Catholics to
emulation. Moreover, the new pope, Leo XIII, had also lived in
exile from the Curia since 1846, and the Virgilian sentiment,
"Haud ignara mali", would come home to him. The Duke of Norfolk
and other English peers approached Cardinal Manning, who submitted
their strong representation to the Holy See. Pope Leo, it is
alleged, was already considering how he might distinguish the aged
Oratorian. He intimated, accordingly, in February, 1879, his
intention of bestowing on Newman the cardinal's hat. The message
affected him to tears, and he exclaimed that the cloud was lifted
from him forever. By singular ill-fortune, Manning understood
certain delicate phrases in Newman's reply as declining the
purple; he allowed that statement to appear in "The Times", much
to everyone's confusion. However, the end was come. After a
hazardous journey, and in broken health, Newman arrived in Rome.
He was created Cardinal-Deacon of the Title of St. George, on 12
May, 1879. His biglietto speech, equal to the occasion in grace
and wisdom, declared that he had been the life-long enemy of
Liberalism, or "the doctrine that there is no truth in religion,
but that one creed is as good as another", and that Christianity
is "but a sentiment and a taste, not an objective fact, not
miraculous."

Hitherto, in modern times, no simple priest, without duties in the
Roman Curia, had been raised to the Sacred College. Newman's
elevation, hailed by the English nation and by Catholics
everywhere with unexampled enthusiasm, was rightly compared to
that of Bessarion after the Council of Florence. It broke down the
wall of partition between Rome and England. To the many addresses
which poured in upon him the cardinal replied with such point and
felicity as often made his words gems of literature. He had
revised all his writings, the last of which dealt somewhat
tentatively with Scripture problems. Now his hand would serve him
no more, but his mind kept its clearness always. In "The Dream of
Gerontius" (1865), which had been nearly a lost masterpiece, he
anticipated his dying hours, threw into concentrated, almost
Dantean, verse and imagery his own beliefs as suggested by the
Offices of Requiem, and looked forward to his final pilgrimage,
"alone the the Alone." Death came with little suffering, on 11
August, 1890. His funeral was a great public event. He lies in the
same grave with Ambrose St. John, whom he called his "life under
God for thirty-two years." His device as cardinal, taken from St.
Francis de Sales, was Cor ad cor loquitor (Heart speaketh to
heart); it reveals the secret of his eloquence, unaffected,
graceful, tender, and penetrating. On his epitaph we read: Ex
umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (From shadows and symbols goes
the truth); it is the doctrine of the Economy, which goes back to
Plato's "Republic" (bk. VII) and which passed thence by way of
Christian Alexandria into the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,
the poetry of the Florentine, and the schools of Oxford. John
Henry Newman thus continues in modern literature the Catholic
tradition of East and West, sealing it with a martyr's faith and
suffering, steadfast in loyalty to the truth, while discerning
with a prophet's vision the task of the future.

As a writer of English prose Newman stands for the perfect
embodiment of Oxford, deriving from Cicero the lucid and leisurely
art of exposition, from the Greek tragedians a thoughtful
refinement, from the Fathers a preference for personal above
scientific teaching, from Shakespeare, Hooker, and that older
school the use of idiom at its best. He refused to acquire German;
he was unacquainted with Goethe as with Hegel; he took some
principles from Coleridge, perhaps indirectly; and, on the whole,
he never went beyond Aristotle in his general views of education.
From the Puritan narrowness of his first twenty years he was
delivered when he came to know the Church as essential to
Christianity. Then he enlarged that conception until it became
Catholic and Roman, an historical idea realized. He made no
attempt, however, to widen the Oxford basis of learning, dated
1830, which remained his position, despite continual reading and
study. The Scholastic theology, except on its Alexandrian side, he
left untouched; there is none of it in his "Lectures", none in the
"Grammar of Assent." He wrote forcibly against the shallow
enlightenment of Brougham; he printed no word concerning Darwin,
or Huxley, or even Colenso. He lamented the fall of D�llinger; but
he could not acquiesce in the German idea by which, as it was in
fact applied, the private judgment of historians overruled the
Church's dogmas. Conscience to him was the inward revelation of
God, Catholicism the outward and objective. This twofold force he
opposed to the agnostic, the rationalist, the mere worldling. But
he seems to have thought men premature who undertook a positive
reconciliation between faith and science, or who attempted by a
vaster synthesis to heal the modern conflicts with Rome. He left
that duty to a later generation; and, though by the principle of
development and the philosophy of concrete assent providing room
for it, he did not contribute towards its fulfillment in detail.
He will perhaps be known hereafter as the Catholic Bishop Butler,
who extended the "Analogy" drawn from experience to the historical
Church, proving it thus to be in agreement with the nature of
things, however greatly transcending the visible scheme by its
message, institutions and purpose, which are alike supernatural.

WILLIAM BARRY
Transcribed by Ann Waterman

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this  worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For  more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.

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