4.7. “Acceptance of Religious Privileges Compulsory”
4
Anglican Deacon and Priest
4.1. MEMORIZING SCRIPTURE
After deciding to become a clergyman, Newman began memorizing various books of the Bible, a practice he recommended to his sister Harriet in a letter dated October 13, 1823:
If you have leisure time on Sunday, learn portions of Scripture by heart. The benefit seems to me incalculable. It imbues the mind with good and holy thoughts. It is a resource in solitude, on a journey, and in a sleepless night; and let me press most earnestly upon you and my other dear sisters, as well as on myself, the frequent exhortations in Scripture to prayer.
4.2. PARISH VISITATION
Although his father considered the practice of parish visitation an intrusion on the privacy of parishioners, Newman felt that the practice was beneficial; as he wrote to his mother on July 28, 1824:
About ten days ago I began my visitation of the whole parish, going from house to house, asking the names, numbers, trades, where they went to church, &c. I have got through, as yet, about a third (and the most respectable third) of the population. In general they have been very civil; often expressed gratification that a clergyman should visit them; hoped to see me again, &c. &c. If in the habit of attending the dissenting meeting, they generally excused themselves on the plea of the rector being old, and they could not hear him or the church too small, &c.; but expressed no unwillingness to come back. I rather dread the two-thirds of the parish which are to come; but trust (and do not doubt) I shall be carried through it well, and as I could wish. It will be a great thing done; I shall know my parishioners, and be known by them.
—“Autobiographical Memoir,” 75–76
4.3. CHANGING THEOLOGICAL VIEWS
Newman's “first conversion” was imbued with Evangelicalism, even though both in doctrinal content and in its extended timing, it differed from the typical Evangelical conversions of his day; indeed, some Evangelicals maintained that he really had not had a conversion. In any case, although Newman remained grateful to Evangelicalism, both for its personal benefit and for its benefit to Christianity, his pastoral experience, along with his theological discussions as a young fellow of Oriel, led him to the conviction that Evangelicalism did not work in fact:
Up to this time the latter [Newman] took for granted, if not intelligently held, the opinions called Evangelical; and of an Evangelical cast were his early sermons, though mildly such. His first sermon, on “Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening,” implied in its tone a denial of baptismal regeneration; and Mr. Hawkins, to whom he showed it, came down upon it at once on this score. The sermon divided the Christian world into two classes, the one all darkness, the other all light; whereas, said Mr. Hawkins, it is impossible for us, in fact, to draw such a line of demarcation across any body of men, large or small, because difference in religion and moral excellence is one of degree. Men are not either saints or sinners; but they are not as good as they should be, and better than they might be—more or less converted to God, as it may happen. Preachers should follow the example of St. Paul; he did not divide his brethren into two, the converted and unconverted, but he addressed them all, as “in Christ,” “sanctified in Him,” as having had “the Holy Ghost in their hearts,” and this while he was rebuking them for the irregularities and scandals that had occurred among them. Criticism such as this, which of course he did not deliver once for all, but as occasions offered, and which, when Newman dissented, he maintained and enforced, had a great, though a gradual, effect upon the latter, when carefully studied in the work from which it was derived, and which Hawkins gave him; this was Sumner's “Apostolical Preaching.” This book was successful in the event beyond anything else in rooting out Evangelical doctrines from Mr. Newman's creed….
Though the force of logic and the influence of others had so much to do with Mr. Newman's change of religious opinion, it must not be supposed that the teaching of facts had no part in it. On the contrary, he notes down in memoranda made at the time, his conviction, gained by personal experience, that the religion which he had received from John Newton and Thomas Scott would not work in a parish; that it was unreal; that this he had actually found as a fact, as Mr. Hawkins had told him beforehand; that Calvinism was not a key to the phenomena of human nature, as they occur in the world. And, in truth, much as he owed to the Evangelical teaching, so it was he never had been a genuine Evangelical. That teaching had been a great blessing for England; it had brought home to the hearts of thousands the cardinal and vital truths of Revelation, and to himself among others. The Divine truths about our Lord and His person and offices, His grace, the regeneration of our nature in Him; the supreme duty of living, not only morally, but in his faith, fear, and love; together with the study of Scripture, in which these truths lay, had sheltered and protected him in his most dangerous years, had been his comfort and stay when he was forlorn, and had brought him on in habits of devotion, till the time came when he was to dedicate himself to the Christian ministry. And he ever felt grateful to the good clergyman who introduced them to him, and to the books, such as Scott's “Force of Truth,” Beveridge's “Private Thoughts,” and Doddridge's “Rise and Progress,” which insist upon them; but, after all, the Evangelical teaching, considered as a system and in what was peculiar to itself, had from the first failed to find a response in his own religious experience, as afterwards in his parochial. He had, indeed, been converted by it to a spiritual life, and so far his experience bore witness to its truth; but he had not been converted in that special way which it laid down as imperative, but so plainly against rule, as to make it very doubtful in the eyes of normal Evangelicals whether he had really been converted at all. Indeed, at various times of his life, as, for instance, after the publication of his “Apologia,” letters, kindly intended, were addressed to him by strangers or anonymous writers, assuring him that he did not yet know what conversion meant, and that the all-important change had still to be wrought in him if he was to be saved.
4.4. NEWMAN's FATHER's DEATH
The sudden and unexpected last illness of his father made a deep impression on Newman. Fortunately, there was time for father and son to converse, as well as for the son to minister to his father during the final days of his life; as Newman later reflected:
That dread event has happened. Is it possible? O my Father! I got to town on Sunday morning. He knew me; tried to put out his hand, and said “God bless you!” Towards the evening of Monday he said his last words. He seemed in great peace of mind. He could, however, only articulate “God bless you; thank my God, thank my God!” and, lastly, “My dear.” Dr. C. came on Wednesday and pronounced him dying. Towards evening we joined in prayer, commending his soul to God…. Of late he had thought his end approaching. One day on the river he told my Mother, “I shall never see another summer.” On Thursday he looked beautiful. Such calmness, sweetness, composure, and majesty were in his countenance. Can a man be a materialist who sees a dead body? I had never seen one before. His last words to me, or all but his last, were to bid me read to him the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
—“Autobiographical Memoir,” 79
4.5. REFLECTIONS ON PREACHING
As was the Anglican custom at the time, Newman wrote out his sermons in longhand and then read them to his congregation. He also sent copies of his written sermons to his mother, who dutifully critiqued them; Newman felt constrained to reply:
The sermons I send you were not intended for compositions: you will find them full of inaccuracies. I am aware they contain truths which are unpalatable to the generality of mankind; but the doctrine of Christ crucified is the only spring of real virtue and piety, and the only foundation of peace and comfort. I know I must do good. I may and shall meet with disappointments, much to distress me, much (I hope) to humble me; but as God is true, He will go with the doctrine: magna est Veritas et prœvalebit
—“Autobiographical Memoir,” 76
The Latin quotation—“the truth is great and will prevail”—
which is from 1 Esdras 4:41, is also the title of a poem by
Coventry Patmore [1823-1896]
4.6. VISITING THE SICK
Along with visiting the homes of his parishioners, Newman made it a point to visit the sick. In his private notes, Newman recorded one of these visits—which indicates “something of the matter and manner of his pastoral visiting”:
—John C…, perhaps thirty-five: had been a coachman, and all his life in the society of coachmen…. For some months past, hearing he was in a declining way, I have called from time to time, and particularly left Doddridge's “Rise and Progress.” At length, the day before yesterday, I was sent for. He seemed very near his end, and was very desirous of seeing me. He talked of sin being a heavy burden, of which he wished to be released. “God was most merciful in having spared him; and he ought to be most thankful” (and he said it with energy) “that he was favoured with a clergyman to attend him.” Such is the substance of the conversation I had with him yesterday and the day before. Today I found that he had suddenly declared the weight of sin was taken off him, and tears burst from him, and he said he was so rejoiced. He seems very humble and earnest, and willingly listened to what I said about the danger of deception. I was indeed much perplexed, fearing to speak against the mysterious working of God (if it was His working), yet equally fearing to make him satisfied with a partial repentance and with emotions, and should do harm to his wife, &c. I spoke very strongly on our being sinful and corrupt till death; on the necessity of sin being found a burden always, on the fear of self-deception and of falling away even after the most vivid feelings; and on the awful state of those who, having left religion for their death-bed, could give no evidence of their sincerity. All this he seemed to admit, and thanked me very fervently. I am thinking of the cause of this. His mother, I see, is a religious woman. She cannot be indiscreet? Doddridge could mislead him—or is it the work of the Holy Spirit even in its suddenness?
Autobiographical Memoir—“Autobiographical Memoir,” 80–81
Doddridge's The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul
is available at http://www.ccel.org/d/doddridge/rise/rise.htm.
4.7. “ACCEPTANCE OF RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES COMPULSORY”
A decade after his ordination to the Anglican priesthood, Newman on March 22, 1835—during the initial years of the Oxford Movement—preached a sermon, “Acceptance of Religious Privileges Compulsory,” which emphasized that the call to the “sacred office” of priesthood was a “fearful undertaking” yet a responsibility which priests could accept with the assurance that an “abundance of heavenly aid would be given them.”
Another remarkable instance of the force which was put upon men by the early Church, will be found in the then existing usage of bringing such as had the necessary gifts to ordination, without asking their consent. The primitive Christians looked upon Ordination very differently (alas for ourselves!) very differently from this age. Now the ministerial office is often regarded as a profession of this world,—a provision, a livelihood; it is associated in men's minds with a comparatively easy, or at least not a troubled life,—with respectability and comfort, a competency, a position in society. Alas for us! we feel none of those terrors about it, which made the early Christians flee from it! But in their eyes (putting aside the risk of undertaking it in times of persecution) it was so solemn a function, that the holier a man was, the less inclined he felt to undertake it. They felt that it was in some sort to incur the responsibility of other men, and to be put in trust with their salvation; they felt it was scarcely possible to engage in it, without the risk of being besprinkled with the blood of ruined souls. They understood somewhat of St. Paul's language when he said that necessity was laid upon him, and woe to him unless he preached the Gospel. In consequence they shrank from the work, as though (to use a weak similitude) they had been bid dive down for pearls at the bottom of the sea, or scale some precipitous and dizzy cliff. True, they knew that abundance of heavenly aid would be given them, according to their need; but they knew also, that even if any part of the work was to be their own, though they were only called on to cooperate with God, that was in such a case fearful undertaking enough. So they literally fled away in many instances, when they were called to the sacred office; and the Church as literally took them by force, and (after the precedent of St. Paul's own conversion) laid necessity upon them.