Biographical Essay
Catholic Encyclopedia (1911)
Newman, John Henry (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, b. in the City of London, 21 Feb.,
1801, the eldest of six children, three boys and three girls; d. at
Edgbaston, Birmingham, 11 Aug., 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 ... His French
pedigree is undoubted. It accounts for the 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 Anne Mozley [sister-in-law
of his sister—Mozley, vol. ii. p. 438] 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 [Note], cannot essentially change our estimate of one who, though
subtile 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 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 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 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 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,
Dec., 1816, and in 1818 won a scholarship of £60 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 honours. 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 reflective
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 1828 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 tender-hearted, 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 (Dec., 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 Dec., 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 m 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 an 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 Achaeans. He took his motto from the
Iliad: "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. "I
understood", he says, "... 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 Lerin's Quod ubique, admitting of no real
developments; its divines urged against Bossuet 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. Döllinger
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 ... 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, "Secures
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. Nicaea, 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 deathbed 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 Oct., 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 others 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 and 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; 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 a 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 Abbé 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 Form 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 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 intrusion 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 mortal efforts
futile, with a piercing eloquence which reminds us of some lament in
Æschylus. 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 re-entrance into the national literature. Instead of arid polemics
and technical arguments, a living soul had revealed in its journey
towards the old faith wherein lay the charm that drew it on. Reality
became more fascinating than 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 "Grammer"
was published. But its appearance, coinciding with the 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) completes 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 Bossuet'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 to the Alone". Death came with little
suffering, on 11 Aug., 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 loquitur
(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
into 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 till 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 Döllinger;
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 fulfilment 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.
The best authorities on Newman are his own writings; Collected
Works (36 vols., popular ed., London, 1895); My Campaign in
Ireland (London, 1896); Meditations and Devotions (London,
1895); Addresses and Replies (London, 1905) (the last three
posthumous, ed. by NEVILLE); Letters and Correspondence (to
1845), ed. ANNE MOZELY (London, 1891). See also monographs by HUTTON
(London, 1891); BARRY (London, 1904); BRÉMOND (Paris, 1907); LILLY in
Dict. of Nat. Biography, s. v.; and consult: WILFRID WARD, W. G.
Ward and the Oxford Movement (London. 1889); IDEM, Life and
Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London, 1897); PURCELL, Life of
Cardinal Manning (London, 1895); DE LISLE AND PURCELL, Life and
Times of Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle (London, 1900); GASQUET, Lord
Acton and his Circle (London, 1906); with caution T. MOZLEY, Reminiscences
of Oriel (London, 1882).
[See also—Life
of Cardinal Newman, Wilfrid Ward, 1912.]
By WILLIAM BARRY, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10
Ed. by C. G. Herbermann, et al.
Robert Appleton Company
New York, 1911
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Note
Since published in 31 volumes by Fr. Charles Stephen Dessain,
archivist at the Birmingham Oratory.
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