[Letters and Correspondence—1845]REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. B. MOZLEY Littlemore:
January 5, 1845. Is it impossible to persuade men who come up against the Test also to vote for Ward? I throw this out to relieve my mind. Before the Test was sure of rejection Ward had no claims on anyone. At this time a proposal was laid before Convocation for a censure on No. 90, and the following sentences are given from a notice issued by Mr. Charles Marriott on the subject: {406} Allow me to lay before you the plain circumstances under which the proposed censure of Mr. Newman has come out. The measure has issued from the Hebdomadal Board with a haste and suddenness absolutely unprecedented in University proceedings, and such as has left no time to mature any regular appeal to Convocation against it. Only a week has elapsed since the first mention of the design at all ... Nothing has been done by Mr. Newman to call for such an act from the University at this time. It is now four years since the tract in question came out. Mr. Newman has in this interval left residence in the University, has given up the vicarage of St. Mary's, and withdrawn from the whole controversy on the subject of the tract. If the tract was to be condemned by the University, ought it not to have been condemned in 1841; and should not the act of Convocation have accompanied the notice of the Hebdomadal Board on the subject? The Hebdomadal Board, instead of proposing the adoption of that notice to Convocation at the time they issued it, propose it now, four years afterwards, and thus call for a fresh and gratuitous infliction of pain when no one single fresh act on the author's part has occurred to warrant such a repetition ... It is impossible not to observe that the idea of censuring Mr. Newman was not mentioned until the defeat of the recently proposed New Test, and its abandonment by the Board. It was then put forward with all the appearance of being an expedient for balancing that defeat, and as a measure of party retaliation. Signed, on
behalf of several members of Convocation, This will tell the reader what the bane was of which Mr. Mozley's affectionate words were the antidote. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. B. MOZLEY Littlemore:
Ash Wednesday, Feb. 5, 1845. On the same subject Mrs. J. Mozley writes to her brother: February
9, 1845. REV. J. KEBLE TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN Hursley:
Feb. 10, 1845. This move of the Heads has carried me to review the argument of my letter to Coleridge, and I think I see clearly that the case I there contemplated will not really have occurred let the voting on Thursday be what it may. For that argument went entirely on the hypothesis that the University is the imposer of academical subscription, the contrary of which seems now to be ruled. I suppose it, therefore, to be the special duty of each person whom they censure to show by retaining his place among them that he considers their censure null and void. I have written a short letter to this effect, and sent it to R. Palmer, to be sent to the next 'English Churchman' if P. thinks proper, because the 'E. C.' has been quoting that opinion of mine. God be with
you in storm and in sunshine, and make me fitter to be your very
affectionate friend, REV. J. KEBLE TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN Hursley:
Feb. 20, 1845. So believe
me always, in all times, your very affectionate and wishing to be
worthier friend, I will not have you trouble yourself to answer effusions like this. The 'communication' which is the subject of the following letter probably was Mr. Newman's intention to resign his Fellowship in October, with a view to a subsequent step. MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN Derby:
March 13, 1845. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
March 15, 1845. If I went by what I wished, I should complete my seven years of waiting. Surely more than this, or as much, cannot {411} be expected of me—cannot be right in me to give at my age. How life is going! I see men dying who were boys, almost children, when I was born. Pass a very few years, and I am an old man. What means of judging can I have more than I have? What maturity of mind am I to expect? If I am right to move at all, surely it is high time not to delay about it longer. Let me give my strength to the work, not my weakness—years in which I can profit the cause which calls me, not the dregs of life. Is it not like a death-bed repentance to put off what one feels one ought to do? As to my convictions, I can but say what I have told you already, that I cannot at all make out why I should determine on moving, except as thinking I should offend God by not doing so. I cannot make out what I am at except on this supposition. At my time of life men love ease. I love ease myself. I am giving up a maintenance involving no duties, and adequate to all my wants. What in the world am I doing this for (I ask myself this), except that I think I am called to do so? I am making a large income by my sermons, I am, to say the very least, risking this; the chance is that my sermons will have no further sale at all. I have a good name with many; I am deliberately sacrificing it. I have a bad name with more. I am fulfilling all their worst wishes, and giving them their most coveted triumph. I am distressing all I love, unsettling all I have instructed or aided. I am going to those whom I do not know, and of whom I expect very little. I am making myself an outcast, and that at my age. Oh, what can it be but a stern necessity which causes this? Pity me, my dear Jemima. What have I done thus to be deserted, thus to be left to take a wrong course, if it is wrong? I began by defending my own Church with all my might when others would not defend her. I went through obloquy in defending her. I in a fair measure succeed. At the very time of this success, before any reverse, in the course of my reading it breaks upon me that I am in a schismatical Church. I oppose myself to the notion; I write against it—year after year I write against it, and I do my utmost to keep others in the Church. From the time my doubts come upon me I begin to live more strictly; and really from that time to this I have done more towards my inward improvement, as far as I can judge, than in any time of my life. Of course I have all through had many imperfections, and might {412} have done every single thing I have done much better than I have done it. Make all deductions on this score, still, after all, may I not humbly trust that I have not so acted as to forfeit God's gracious guidance? And how is it that I have improved in other points if in respect of this momentous matter I am so fearfully blinded? … Why should I distress your kind heart with all my miseries? Yet you must know them, to avoid the greater misery of looking at me externally, and wondering and grieving over what seems incomprehensible. Shall I add that, distressing as is my state, it has not once come upon me to say, O that I had never begun to read theology! O that I had never meddled in ecclesiastical matters! O that I had never written the Tracts, &c.! I lay no stress on this, but state it ... Of course the human heart is mysterious. I may have some deep evil in me which I cannot fathom; I may have done some irreparable thing which demands punishment; but may not one humbly trust that the earnest prayers of many good people will be heard for me? May not one resign oneself to the event, whatever it turns out to be? May one not hope and believe, though one does not see it, that God's hand is in the deed, if a deed there is to be; that He has a purpose, and will bring it to good, and will show us that it is good, in His own time? Let us not doubt, may we never have cause to doubt, that He is with us. Continually do I pray that He would discover to me if I am under a delusion; what can I do more? What hope have I but in Him? To whom should I go? Who can do me any good? Who can speak a word of comfort but He? Who is there but looks on me with a sorrowful face?—but He can lift up the light of His countenance upon me. All is against me—may He not add Himself as an adversary? May He tell me, may I listen to Him if His will is other than I think it to be! Palm Sunday.— ... So, my dear Jemima, if you can suggest any warnings to me which I am not considering, well, and thank you; else do take comfort, and think that perhaps you have a right to have faith in me, perhaps you have a right to believe that He who has led me hitherto will not suffer me to go wrong. I am somehow in better spirits this morning, and I say what it occurs to me to say at the time. Have I not a right to ask you not to say, as you have said in your letter, that I shall do wrong? What right have you to judge me? Have the multitude who will judge me any right {413} to judge me? Who of my equals, who of the many who will talk flippantly about me, has a right? Who has a right to judge me but my Judge? Who has taken such, pains to know my duty (poor as they have been) as myself? Who is more likely than I to know what I ought to do? I may be wrong, but He that judgeth me is the Lord, and 'Judge nothing before the time.' His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts. He may have purposes as merciful as they are beyond us. Let us do our best, and leave the event to Him? He will give us strength to bear. Surely I have to bear most; and if I do not shrink from bearing it others must not shrink. May I do my best; am I not trying to do my best?—may we not trust it will turn to the best? To this most moving letter his sister at once replies: Derby:
Good Friday, March 21. Then, dear John, you attack me, and wish me to ask myself whether after all you may not be right. But, indeed, I do often put it to myself in that light. I know how ignorant I am, how little I ought to assume I am right in any one thing. Yet there are some things one dare not doubt, and some things it is one's highest happiness to believe and try to realise. So, however unworthy I am, I feel we must in some measure go by our own faith and our own light, though that light be little better than darkness. I daresay on the point in question I may be prejudiced, it is most likely—we have one-sided views from birth and education; but I really do not think I am aware of any strong or hostile feelings against Rome which some would not scruple to entertain. I have been unlearning such the last dozen years, and have thought them criminal since I ceased to believe Rome to be Antichrist—that is, since I read your sermons. Not that I ever could quite accept the Protestant notion; I always hoped there might be some other way of getting over the difficulty. I assure you I am not conscious of a bitter feeling towards Rome; we seem to have enough to do with sorrow and humiliation at home without quarrelling with other Churches. Indeed, I may say more, I feel deeply the debt of gratitude we owe to Rome as our Spiritual Mother, and it pains me much on this account to hear Rome slightly regarded. But yet I have no bias toward Rome, nor see any compensation in Rome to make up for the defects of our Church. I am afraid of paining you by saying she does not approve herself to me as at all fulfilling what she pretends to—far from it. She appears to me to contain un-Christian elements, which as long as she cherishes them seem an absolute barrier to her converting the world. I am afraid you will feel this a painful letter … These are solemn days to have one's thoughts ruffled by controversy when one would desire they should be turned towards higher subjects of contemplation; but, indeed, I am not conscious of having my feelings uncomfortably excited, or I should not have {415} chosen Good Friday to write to you. Far from it; indeed, I cannot fancy it in writing to you ... On reading
over this letter I am quite ashamed of it, yet do not think I shall mend
it by writing it over again, so must only beg you to forgive me if I
have said anything unbecoming. I trust, dear John, you will attain that
peace of mind without which life is a burden (a struggle it needs must
be). Who should have it if you fail, who have been the means of
comforting so many. P.S.—As to aunt, I think on consideration she is in a way prepared—that is, she is alarmed, and she betrays it by every now and then professing the greatest security about you. This pains me a good deal, as she sometimes chooses to talk of you to strangers. This has not been often, but she often expresses the greatest anxiety about you to me, and wonder and curiosity as to what you think, &c. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. B. MOZLEY Littlemore:
April 2, 1845. Alas! I do not forget how changeable all things are, and how difficult it is for minds to keep pace with each other which walk apart. You may fancy how all this oppresses me. All that is dear to me is being taken from me. My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered like grass. I say to myself, if I am under a delusion, what have I done, what grave sin have I committed, to bring such a judgment on me? O that it may be revealed to me, and the {416} delusion broken! But I go on month after month, year after year, without change of feeling except in one direction; not floating up and down, but driving one way. I know well, my dear James, that you do not forget to think of me at solemn times, but I really think that now the time is short. I cannot promise myself to remain as I am after Christmas, perhaps not so long, though I suppose in the event I shall linger on some little while longer. By November I expect to have resigned my Fellowship, and perhaps may publish something. I don't mind your telling this in confidence to anyone you please, but of course you will keep this letter safely. What
complicated distress! I suppose it will be less when the worst is over. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. R. W. CHURCH [Note 4] Littlemore:
April 3, 1845. Just now I have been overset by James Mozley's article in the 'C. R.' Yet really, my dear Church, I have never for an instant had even the temptation of repenting my leaving Oxford. The feeling of repentance has not come even into my mind. How could it? How could I remain at St. Mary's, {417} a hypocrite? How could I be answerable for souls (and life so uncertain) with the conviction or at least persuasion which I had upon me? It is, indeed, a dreadful responsibility to act as I am doing; and I feel His hand heavy on me without intermission who is all wisdom and love, so that my mind and heart are tired out, just as the limbs might be from a load on one's back; that sort of dull aching pain is mine. But my responsibility really is nothing to what it would be to be answerable for souls, for confiding, loving souls, in the English Church, with my convictions. I don't like you to go out of office without my thanks for your kindness to me last February 13. My love to
Marriott, and save me the pain of sending him a line. In a note without date, addressed R. Church, Esq., there occurs this sentence, 'I suspect you do not like to have the credit of all my translations. We will take care in the preface to set you right with the public.' An N.B. in pencil, after marking this sentence, says, 'This illustrates the letter of April 3, 1845.—J. H. N.' REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
April 10, 1845. I write a line in a hurry. How glad I should be if you could see this place and our house this year. One knows so little what is before us. The visit here suggested was paid in the following July. The idea of a last sight of Littlemore had occurred also to his sister. From the following letter it may be gathered that Mr. Copeland, who had been in charge since Mr. Newman's resignation of St. Mary's, had given up his rooms in Littlemore and returned to Oxford in order to provide a lodging for Mrs. Mozley during her stay. The following letter, written from Mrs. Barnes's, gives her first impressions. {418} MRS. J. MOZLEY TO A. M. [Note 5] July
17, 1845. … He (J. H. N.) looks just the same as when I saw him last, and seems tolerably well. He has been with us an hour this morning, and will dine here. We are going to church in ten minutes; the times here are 11 and 3. After church I am to pay calls in the village with J. H. N. … Everything shows that Mr. Newman attended service at Littlemore until the final step was taken [Note 6]. The following letter from Mrs. J. Mozley to A. M. announces what might now be considered imminent. October
6, 1845. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
October 8, 1845. This night Father Dominic, the Passionist, sleeps here. He does not know of my intention, but I shall ask him to receive me into what I believe to be the One Fold of the Redeemer. This will
not go till all is over. When once it was known that Mr. Newman was on the point of taking the long-contemplated step, the question of his remaining at Littlemore became an important one. Those whom he was leaving felt his continuance close to Oxford a difficulty, as a most unsettling state of things to certain minds. Others said that to stay was to follow the leading of Providence, that waiting to act till called upon was right. That the question had been evidently touched upon by Mrs. J. Mozley in writing to her brother may be gathered from the following letter. REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO MRS. J. MOZLEY Littlemore:
5.30 A.M., October
9, 1845. It is very natural that persons should have the feeling you express about my leaving Littlemore, but in having it they do not put themselves in my position, but view me from their own. Few people can put themselves into another person's position ... All this is quite consistent with believing, as I firmly do, that individuals in the English Church are invisibly knit into that True Body of which they are not outwardly members; and consistent, too, with thinking it highly injudicious, indiscreet, wanton, to interfere with them in particular cases—only it is a matter of judgment in the particular case. It might be indiscreet in me to remain here; it might not. Persons have quite a right to blame my judgment if they will, though even here they should recollect that I may be in the position to be the better judge. But it must be put on the ground of discretion. If I said I ought in duty to go away, I should be confessing I ought not to join the Church of Rome at all. {420} I think I have found that those who fear me and wish me away think I ought to go, and those who really wish me to stay have no such thoughts. All depends on their own views of the general question. As to 'sacrifice,' which do you think would be pleasantest to me, to leave this place or to stay? … I enclose a
note to aunt. I will say nothing about my feelings all along to one so
good and sweet as you are. There is one who knows how much it has laid
upon my heart to pain you. But I am not going to make apology, or to
seem to try to recommend myself to you. To this letter his sister replies: MRS. J. MOZLEY TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN Derby:
October 11, 1845. Of course I
cannot judge of the motives of the persons to whom you allude, but I
assure you, dear John, it was from no motive of fear that I offered my
opinion. I did not go so far as to think of the consequences. I was
thinking of what seemed to me right, or rather, I would repeat, best,
and I sincerely believe this was the feeling of those who expressed the
same opinion ... For myself, I feel the future such a mystery that in me
it would be foolish indeed to shape my conduct with regard to
consequences. One seems so little to apprehend what may be the effect of
any one action. But if I do say what I think of the future, I do not
fear for our Church from this movement, though it may be a searching
trial to her (I am {421} speaking now not of your residence at
Littlemore or elsewhere for that surely cannot make essential
difference). Dear John, when you spoke in the name of our Church your
exhortations were all powerful, your voice seemed the voice of an angel,
you touched a chord in all our hearts—you seemed to know our very
hearts. Since your new views have gained the ascendancy how great the
change! ... Now I do not mean to say your influence will not be very
great. Your talents, experience, and depth of mind must make your words
powerful; but you will not influence the same class of minds that you
have in times past. Believe me, it is very painful to me to contemplate
all this, much more write it down. But I love my Church dearly, and
place confidence in her as a chosen vessel, whom the Lord will not
forsake though He bring her to an extremity, and what you said of
consequences has brought me to set things more formally before my mind
than I might have done. I am afraid my letter must give you pain; how
can it be otherwise? This is the misery of difference in the most
important of all subjects, the one thing needful for us all. Some extracts from Mr. Newman's reply to his sister are given. Littlemore:
October 1845. Nothing you say about my loss of influence has any tendency to hurt me, as you kindly fear it should. I never have thought about any influence I had had. I never have mastered what it was. It is simply no effort whatever to give it up. The pain, indeed, which I knew I was giving to individuals has affected me much; but as to influence, the whole world is one great vanity, and I trust I am not set on anything in it—I trust not. Nor have I thrown influence away if I have acted at the call of duty ... I have no distinct view about remaining at Littlemore; but to move would be to decide one way. While I am undecided, {422} I remain ... I feel it very doubtful what is best to be done, and what is God's will ... And now,
God bless you, my very dear sister, and believe me, Mr. Newman, who has himself written such moving words on the parting of friends, has given evidence how much the parting words of Mr. Keble had touched him by depositing them among the records of Keble College. The editor has been kindly allowed to place them here. REV. J. KEBLE TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN Hursley:
October 3, 1845. October
11, Midnight. Wilson has told me how kindly you have been remembering us in our troubles; it was very kind, when you must have so much upon your own mind. Who knows how much good your prayers and those of other absent friends may have done us, both here and at Bisley?—for there, too, as I daresay you know, has been a favourable change, and a more decided one, I imagine, than here; at least their doctor has told them they may make themselves comfortable, which is far beyond anything that has yet been said to us. But his recovery is very, very slow. There, too, as well as here, everything has fallen out so as to foster the delusion, if delusion it be, that we are not quite aliens, not living among unrealities. Yet you have no doubt the other way. It is very mysterious, very bewildering indeed; but, being so, one's duty seems clearly pointed out: to abide where one is, till some new call come upon one. If this were merely my own reason or feeling, I should mistrust it altogether, knowing, alas! that I am far indeed from the person to whom guidance is promised; but when I see the faith of others, such as I know them to be, and so very near to me as God has set them, I am sure that it would be a kind of impiety but to dream of separating from them. Besides the deep grief of losing you for a guide and helper, and scarce knowing which way to look, ... you may guess what uncomfortable feelings haunt me, as if I, more than anyone else, was answerable for whatever of distress and scandal may occur. I keep on thinking, 'If I had been different, perhaps Newman would have been guided to see things differently, and we might have been spared so many broken hearts and bewildered spirits.' To be sure, that cold, hard way of going on, which I have mentioned to you before, stands my friend at such times, and hinders me, I suppose, from being really distressed; but this is how I feel that I ought to feel, and I tell you ... And now I wish you to help me. That way of help, at any rate, is not forbidden you in respect of any of us. My dearest
Newman, you have been a kind and helpful {424} friend to me in a way in
which scarce anyone else could have been, and you are so mixed up in my
mind with old and dear and sacred thoughts that I cannot well bear to
part with you, most unworthy as I know myself to be. And yet I cannot go
along with you. I must cling to the belief that we are not really
parted: you have taught me so, and I scarce think you can unteach me.
And having relieved my mind with this little word, I will only say, God
bless you, and reward you a thousandfold for all your help in every way
to me unworthy, and to many others! May you have peace where you are
gone, and help us in some way to get peace; but somehow I scarce think
it will be in the way of controversy. And so, with somewhat of a feeling
as if the spring had been taken out of my year, The Editor's task is already carried beyond the date anticipated; but one passage from a letter of the year 1847, though dated from Rome, will not be felt out of place among the records of the Movement. For some years the three great movers might seem to hold little communication with each other, as they had ceased to act together; but that the mutual respect and high moral estimate of each for the other continued to the end the correspondence of the time abundantly shows. An extract from a letter of Dr. Newman's to his sister, Jan. 26, 1847, may be given in evidence that the strong act of separation had not disturbed his estimate of Mr. Keble's character. The letter was written before Dr. Newman's own destination was fixed on, but amongst other founders of Orders he is led to speak of St. Philip Neri, the founder of the Oratorians, and after some historical details he goes on: This great saint reminds me in so many ways of Keble, that I can fancy what Keble would have been if God's will had been that he should have been born in another place and age; he was formed on the same type of extreme hatred of humbug, playfulness, nay, oddity, tender love for others, and severity, which are lineaments of Keble [Note 7]. {425} The foregoing passage was written in 1847. There is a record of a conversation which took place all but thirty years later, on a visit paid by Dr. Newman to his sister in 1876—notes of which were taken at the earliest opportunity, with as much accuracy as the present writer was capable of—and the following words show that no length of time or altered circumstances had changed his estimate of his other great associate in the Movement: that Pusey, as well as Keble, had lost nothing of his love and veneration: He spoke of Dr. Pusey with deep affection and admiration, 'so full of the love of God'—as if it had been a very great trial his not having gone over to Rome. Could not finish his sentence. 'Nothing had had greater weight than his Tract on Baptism.' The tone and action with which the words 'so full of the love of God' were spoken, live in memory to this day. And here the Editor's task ends. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Notes1. An
alteration proposed by the Hebdomadal Board in the University Statutes,
to be appended to the condemnation of Mr. Ward's book; it was
subsequently withdrawn. 2.
See reflections on this attack on No. 90, in Apologia, p. 293;
and also extracts from a pamphlet, in the Appendix. 3.
'Recent Proceedings at Oxford,' Christian Remembrancer, April
1845. 4.
Extracts from this letter are given in the Apologia, p. 232. 5.
The Editor. 6.
A letter written some years later, after visiting Littlemore, says: 7.
In the preface to Occasional Papers and Reviews of John Keble,
published in 1817, the reader will find a very interesting letter from
Dr. Newman to the Editor of the work, giving his recollections and
impressions of Mr. Keble's character, recalling 'the sweet gravity with
which he spoke,' and going on to ask, 'How can I profess to paint a man
who will not sit for his picture, &c.?' Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |