Chapter 23: Defending Anglo-Catholic Theology
CHAPTER 23
DEFENDING ANGLO-
CATHOLIC THEOLOGY
DURING 1837 and 1838, Newman tried to build upon the Anglican theology of well-known and respected Anglican Divines. A primary concern of Newman during these two years of study and writing was the publication of The Prophetical Office and the preparation of the Essay on Justification. In the same period he devoted a great deal of time and effort to preparing the edition of the papers of his friend Richard Hurrell Froude.
Newman began a weekly Monday evening tea party held in the Oriel Common Room. He called these parties soirées, and eight or nine men attended the first one. The conversation included a wide variety of subjects; an undergraduate reported that Newman talked about everything except Tractarianism. In addition to the soirées, he organized a Theological Society that met on Fridays. In November 1836, Newman read a paper at the Theological Society entitled, “Ignatius a witness for Catholic doctrine,” and in February of 1837, he read another under the heading “Ignatius.” Later he incorporated this material into an article for the British Critic. In July an article of his on Augustus Herman Franke appeared in the British Critic, and in October his review of Lamennais’s work entitled “Affairs of Rome” appeared in the same journal.
That same month, Rivington’s asked permission to print a second edition of the Lyra Apostolica. The poems comprising the Lyra Apostolica had been written by several men in response to the loss of faith and doctrine in the Anglican Church and the accompanying lack of ecclesiastical discipline. The Lyra Apostolica became an important milestone in the Oxford Movement. The response to these publications by Newman and his friends was varied. Newman told Manning that the writing of both Keble and Pusey was being criticized and he expected his turn would come. He commented that Evangelicals, pejoratively labeled Peculiars, were “attacked on so many sides at once that they are quite out of breath with having run about to defend their walls—Tradition, Baptism, Apostolical Succession, Faith and works, etc. etc. No sooner do they recover their breath after one blow, but they receive another in their stomach.”1
Newman candidly admitted his satisfaction to Maria Giberne at the confusion the Tractarians were creating among the Evangelicals: “They have been sailing along with all things their own way, and I wish to take them in the flank. It is remarkable how plans for altering the Liturgy have died away ever since our movement began. We have given them other things to think about.”2 The Tractarians’ emphasis on the place of beauty in the liturgy was based on their own rediscovery of this important aspect of worship befitting the Church, which is a divine institution, deserving of the most beautiful of everything that man has to offer. At the same time, Newman continued his attempts to justify the divisions within the Church, with the Anglican Church as one branch.
Newman’s Lectures on the Prophetical Office were sent to the press at the beginning of 1837. In these lectures, Newman wished to show that there was one visible Church, a claim denied by Protestants and (he thought at the time) perverted by Catholics. For Newman, this truth was found in Sacred Scripture and corroborated by Antiquity and the Church Fathers. Six years would pass before he understood it insufficient to accept the Fathers of the Church alone as witnesses of Antiquity. The testimony of the Church divinely instituted and its teaching authority were also necessary.
Newman had reason to concern himself with the nature of the visible Church, for during his time Anglicans held the Branch Theory, according to which the Church had three branches: Roman, Greek, and Anglican. The English Church, considered the middle road or Via Media, had resulted from the schism by Henry VIII. The Protestants, with their emphasis on private judgment, rejected the idea of authority. The Roman Catholics justified their beliefs and practices by appeal to the Church’s teaching authority. The Anglican Church fell in the middle. In his lectures, Newman wrote that the Anglican Church considered Antiquity and catholicity the real guides and the Church their organ. Newman found a major objection to this explanation of the Anglican Church: there was no counterpart to the Via Media in earlier times. It was this objection that Newman and his friends struggled to remove.
In March, The Prophetic Office of the Church was published, and the following month Newman reported to Jemima that he was satisfied because the book was selling well. He thought that this book would show the absurdity of the notion that he was a papist. Despite his disavowal of affection for Roman Catholicism, he admitted in the same letter: “However, I frankly own that in some important points our Anglican ετηοσ [ethos] differs from Popery, in others it is like it—and on the whole far more like it than like Protestantism.”3 Newman asked Dr. Martin Joseph Routh, President of Magdalen College, if he could dedicate the book to him. Dr. Routh, who seldom accepted this type of request, agreed to Newman’s request.
Newman hoped this latest book would not only dispel concerns about his alleged leanings toward popery, but also serve as a critique of Protestantism. However, to the people of London, the Lyra, the Tracts, and the editorials from the Christian Observer all combined to cast the shadow of popery on Newman and his friends. One London voice denouncing High Church Principles as heretical was Daniel Wilson, a leading London Evangelical. Writing to Bowden, Newman reported this and boasted: “Earthen jars should not swing with iron ones, or the crockery will suffer. The Fathers are a match for many Daniel Wilsons.”4 Similar accusations continued, and in June 1837, Peter Maurice, Chaplain of New College and All Souls, came out with the book, “The Popery of Oxford confronted, disavowed, and repudiated.”5 The result of these accusations was to prompt Newman’s subsequent defense of the Anglican theology on Justification.
The controversies continued unabated. In December of 1836, the Evangelical Christian Observer denounced the Tracts as being contrary to the Thirty-Nine Articles and official Anglican Homilies and claimed that the Tracts were based upon the authority of the darkest ages of popery. The newspaper challenged any Tractarian to show his belief in the Articles and Homilies. Newman replied to the editor with two letters which were published in the Christian Observer. Roger and Wood, who were worried about alienating the moderate Evangelicals, discouraged Newman from continuing the correspondence. As a result, Newman decided instead to publish the letters as Tract 82 and to prepare lectures on the subject of Baptism and the Protestant doctrine of Justification by faith alone. He delivered the lectures twice a week, between April 13 and June 1, at the Adam de Brome Chapel. Years later he wrote, “As my Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church rose out of my correspondence with the Abbé Jager, so those on Justification rose out of controversy with the Christian Observer.”6 Although time-consuming, the lectures did not interfere with either his attendance to the theological meetings or his pastoral duties.
In the first lecture, Newman outhned the Lutheran view of Justification, and in the second, he outhned the Anglican and Roman Catholic view. Newman explained that for Lutherans, Justification is God’s declaration or imputation of righteousness to a sinner; the instrument of this is faith. For Anglicans and Catholics, Newman explained that Justification is the spiritual renewal of the soul brought about by the Holy Spirit. This spiritual renewal capacitates the soul for acts of love and obedience. Newman quoted the Epistle to the Romans: “By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous,” the One referring to Christ. He then explained that to be made righteous is more than being accounted righteous. Being made righteous means taking on a whole new nature from Christ who is Righteousness.7 For Newman, God’s infinite perfections and holiness are His righteousness, and man’s righteousness is man’s participation in God’s holiness. This participation is synonymous with man doing what is acceptable to God. Newman asserted that to be justified is both a declaration by God’s word and the action resulting from that declaration. He wrote that “justification is an announcement or fiat of Almighty God, which breaks into the gloom of our natural state as the Creative Word upon Chaos; that it declares the soul righteous, and in that declaration, on the one hand, conveys pardon for its past sins, and on the other makes it actually righteous.”8
At the end of the second lecture, Newman wrote a long list of characteristics describing the views of Luther and St. Augustine on the matter:
Luther says that a man is made a Christian not by working but by hearing; Augustine excludes those works only which are done before grace is given;—Luther, that our best deeds are sins; Augustine, that they are pleasing to God. Luther says, that faith is taken instead of righteousness; Augustine, in earnest of righteousness;—Luther, that faith is essential, because it is a substitute for holiness; Augustine, because it is the commencement of holiness;—Luther says, that faith, as such renews the heart; Augustine says, a loving faith …9
Newman summarizes the disparity between the two views by stating, “Augustine contemplates the whole of Scripture and harmonizes it into one consistent doctrine while Protestants entrench themselves in a few texts.”
Throughout the lectures Newman contended with Luther’s dictum of Justification by faith alone, referring to texts by the German reformer as well as Melanchthon, Luther’s coreligionist. Newman showed that doctrinal misunderstandings arise when one or a few passages of Sacred Scripture are privileged and taken out of the whole context of God’s Revelation. He criticized Luther’s notion that faith exists by itself, or at least separate from charity. Newman countered with the belief that faith, as with the other virtues, is informed by charity; in other words, all virtues are enlivened and perfected by charity.
Newman’s writing on this important concept of Justification anticipates by nearly a century some of the joint Lutheran–Roman Catholic agreement on the role of faith in man’s Justification. He dispelled the purported contradiction between St. Paul’s teaching on “Justification by faith” and St. James’s teaching on “Justification by good works.” Newman stressed that St. Paul does not exclude the importance of good works; instead, he emphasizes that these corporal works are not the cause of man’s Justification. On the contrary, man is justified by God’s grace through faith which is manifested in good works. As an illustration, Newman noted that St. James and St. Paul both refer to Abraham and Rahab. St. Paul refers to Abraham’s faith while St. James refers to Abraham’s works, which justified him. St. Paul speaks of Rahab’s faith while St. James of her good works, which justified her. These parallels show that faith is practically identical with the works of faith, “and that when it justifies, it is as existing in works.” Newman advanced the idea that St. James was “alluding to St. Paul’s words, and fixing their sense by an inspired comment [on them].”10
In the same lectures, Newman quoted the Anglican Articles and Homilies. He pointed out that the eleventh Article states, “we are justified by Faith only” and the Homily on the Passion asserts that faith is the “one mean and instrument” of Justification.11 Newman explained that one can speak of faith as the sole instrument of Justification and Baptism also as the sole instrument whereby faith is an inward instrument and Baptism is an outward instrument. Baptism, however, is the primary instrument of Justification; it confers a faith enlivened by hope and charity. Since the Anglican Homilies were addressed to those already baptized, they spoke of faith as the sole instrument of Justification.12 Newman stressed that it is from Baptism that faith derives its authority and virtue. Since the Homily on Salvation states that Baptism effects the first Justification, Newman concluded that faith should be considered an instrument, secondary to the sacraments. Later, as a Roman Catholic, he annotated his lectures and included a passage from the Council of Trent affirming that not only faith, but faith, hope, and charity are the cause of Justification.13
In the ninth lecture, Newman articulated the role of the Holy Spirit in man’s Justification. Earlier, Pusey had been attacked by Evangelicals for asserting in his Tracts on Baptism that the grace of the Old Testament differed from that of the New Testament. Newman indicated that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit had been promised in the Old Testament as the distinguishing grace of the Gospel. Newman wrote that the Apostles insisted on Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension as the necessary condition for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the source of Justification.14 Newman wrote that Christ “atones by the offering of Himself on the Cross; and as certainly (which is the point before us) He justifies by the mission of the Holy Spirit … The Holy Spirit realizes and completes the redemption which Christ has wrought in essence and virtue.”15
Throughout the lectures, while still an Anglican, Newman referenced the Council of Trent. For example, in one passage, the Council of Trent is his source for the teaching on the continuous nature of Justification. It is “not the mere remission of sins, but the sanctification and the renovation of the inner man by the voluntary acceptance of grace and gifts.”16 He noted that according to St. Thomas Aquinas the soul is changed from one state to another. Newman also studied the seventeenth-century Catholic theologian St. Robert Bellarmine. After much work, the lectures were published at the end of March 1838.
The Lectures on Justification drew criticism, including from those who wrote that the book was unintelligible. However, Johann J. Döllinger, a contemporary German historian, praised the lectures by declaring them to be the greatest masterpiece in theology produced in England in a hundred years. Two decades later, Newman confided in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua that the absence of a sound theological understanding of Justification in harmony with the Anglican formularies was one of the greatest deficiencies of the English Church.
While attempting to develop a theological system for his Via Media, he was, in fact, studying and beginning to understand Roman Catholic theology and magisterial teaching, and thus his bias against Roman theology was lessening. At the same time he was learning about the Roman practices of piety.
Within months of the 1836 death of his close friend, Newman began to adopt some practices, which in fact seemed natural to him since he held the Anglican Church to be Catholic. A diary entry dated January 9, 1837, records his intention to “use the breviary daily.”17 The Breviary, an integral part of the daily devotional life of Roman Catholic priests in Newman’s time, as well as now, is a systematic arrangement of the Catholic Church’s prayer, consisting of the Psalms, short prayers, biblical readings, and lessons that have their origin in the Jewish prayer adopted by the Apostles. Since Apostolic times Christians have recited these prayers and readings at set times of the day called hours, hence the alternate name, “Liturgy of the Hours.” Most of the hours of the day correspond to times that Scriptures tell us that Jesus and the Apostles prayed.
Studying Froude’s copy of the Roman Breviary inspired Newman to write Tract 75 on the subject of the Breviary. He wished to “re-appropriate” what Roman Catholics had supposedly appropriated as their own and to “illustrate and explain our own prayer-book.” The tract, which sold well, included an explanation of the history of the Breviary. Newman criticized the thirteenth- and fifteenth-century changes that had not only decreased the amount of Scripture reading, but also had included legends of saints and hymns plus invocations to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He considered the latter innovations, ratified by the Council of Trent and Pope Pius V, to be grievous.
Despite his censure of innovations in the Roman Breviary, he chose to use the Roman Breviary for daily prayer instead of the Parisian or Ambrosian editions. He would jot down his recitation of the different hours that he prayed. For example, when he prayed Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer he would write down in his diary, “MP” and “EP” respectively. In March, he responded to questions about the Breviary that a woman had sent to Henry Wilberforce. He wrote, “The Psalms should be the basis of all devotion …”18 In a praising tone, different from that of the tract, he noted that the short prayers (responses and collects) of the Breviary required less effort of the mind in comparison with the “long prayers” composed after the Reformation. He felt that the Latin devotions were majestic and austere. Newman also noted the embellishments added on festive days and how shorter biblical readings helped to keep one’s attention. He remarked that the answer “Deo gratias” was more religious than the English “Here endeth etc.”19
Another Roman Catholic discipline adopted by Newman was fasting. Beginning in January, he made diary entries that recorded his fasting at meals, using initials such as f.d. for fast day, f.b. for fast breakfast or ½ f.b. for half breakfast, and so forth for other meals. Undoubtedly, he had in mind Froude’s example, and just as his friend had done, Newman refrained from speaking about this personal practice. The entries probably served as a record for personal spiritual accountability.
Another practice most likely inspired by Froude was the weekly Communion Service. On April 9, 1837, the second Sunday of Easter, Newman initiated an early-morning Eucharist at St. Mary’s. The Eucharist was a Communion Service on Sundays, and according to usage, he referred to it as the “Sacrament.” The custom at the university was to have the Sacrament for the university on the first day of each term. Each service included a collection of money, which Newman gave to various charities, especially to assist curates in financial need. Pusey and other friends assisted him at the Communion Service, although on occasion, he had no assistance.
During the course of the year a few Roman Catholic priests passed by Oxford. One was an Irish priest, Fr. Maguire, who, according to Newman, “came and bullied me last year.”20 Another priest, whose name he did not record, evidently won the admiration of all at Trinity College. These contacts and the correspondence with Abbé Jager were the entirety of his dealings with Catholics because he did not have any Roman Catholic friends.
Rather than to Roman Catholicism, Newman turned to Anglican Divines who had tried to maintain the rubrics and dignity of liturgical worship. In 1837, Newman and his friends published a selection of William Beveridge’s sermons, and the following year an edition of the private devotions by Bishop John Cosin. Newman esteemed the sermons and prayers of these early Anglicans.
Newman’s rapprochement to Catholics and Roman Catholicism should be attributed to those whom he correctly called the Catholic Fathers, the eminent writers of the first nine centuries of Christendom, renowned for their holiness. In January of 1837, Newman and his close friends finally began working in earnest on a desired project of translating into English the writings of the Church Fathers, a project Newman had begun in March of 1836. This was an important task because the Church Fathers’ writings were only available in their original languages, mainly Greek and Latin, except for a translation into German.
This translation project was an ambitious and unique literary and theological endeavor. The plans for this project occupied the mind of the Tractarians, but especially that of Newman and Pusey, who were to be the editors. Newman in particular embarked on the time-consuming enterprise of looking for good translators and of choosing the works for translation. Soon the project was underway. The publication of the first translations, however, was delayed until the following year. Keble’s posthumously published translation of St. Irenaeus’s Adversus haereses did not appear until 1872.
Even though Newman dedicated much time and effort to the Library of the Church Fathers, he allotted more attention to the posthumous publication of Froude’s writings. The month after the February 1836 death of Richard Hurrell Froude, Newman received a collection of his papers to be published as he and Keble saw fit. Newman had some initial fears about their publication, but Keble, Rogers, Pusey, Copeland, and Wood advised immediate publication. With this impetus, Newman decided to publish Froude’s papers without delay. Newman ascertained that Froude’s “Private Thoughts” were the best introduction to Froude and kept clear of his political essays. Newman explained that Froude’s “Private Thoughts” illustrated how his friend has countered the temptation to rationalism.21
For Newman, the diaries revealed Froude’s sincere recognition of his own faults and his struggle to improve; they indicated how Froude combined metaphysical speculation with the concerns of a practical man. Newman thought that Froude’s diaries exemplified how a man between the ages of 18 and 30 formed his views. It was Newman’s hope that Froude’s thoughts would kindle enthusiasm in the reader. Newman was careful in the use of names and omitted them in Froude’s letters in an effort to avoid upsetting the people to whom Froude referred. Newman wrote Bowden, “What a marvel it is! But I really do think that a fresh instrument of influence is being opened to us in these Papers. They do certainly portray a saint.”22 In December he wrote again to Bowden on the same subject, but this time with concern that Froude’s Remains “will scandalize and I fear throw back some persons by their uncompromising Anti-protestantism—and they do tend to make people disloyal toward the Establishment—I hope not, to make them Romanists. He is very severe on the Romanists.”23
The first two volumes were published in February 1838, following intense editorial work; the exact title was Remains of the Late Rev. Hurrell Richard Froude. In these volumes Froude’s views on the Church were expressed; he lamented that the Church’s synodal powers and the power of excommunication were suspended, and she was thus in bondage to the State. Although in the Preface, Newman indicated that Froude criticized Roman Catholics as idolaters, publication of Froude’s writing caused a scandal to both Anglicans and Protestants—who were outraged, accusing the Tractarians of popery. The risk taken by the Tractarians in publishing The Remains brought mixed results as exemplified by the public response of Lord Morpeth in Parliament, who used the Catholic tone of The Remains to oppose allocation of funds for the education of Irish Catholic clergy.
Even while working on Froude’s papers, Newman followed his practice of frequent correspondence with friends. The letters reveal Newman’s character and personality: he was witty and good-humored, frank, and precise. The letters are full of details. He mentions, for example, his habit of going to bed when the clock struck ten. At other times, he apologized for the scrap of paper he used, or for scribbling because his hand was tired from writing. He made humorous comments such as the following one to Maria Giberne: “I fear you have thought either your letter lost, or my memory—though both have been safe with me—and I have hoped every day for some leisure time to write.”24 It had taken Newman a little over a month to reply. He usually replied to correspondents within a day after receiving their letters.
During 1837, Newman corresponded often with William Wilberforce, Bowden, and Keble. Pusey, Rogers, Woodgate, Manning, and Jemima received a good share of letters. During this year and the following, Newman wrote his friend Thomas Dyke Acland, who was an M.P. for West Somerset, a number of letters with advice for his work in Parliament. Along with his wit and good humor, Newman’s letters reveal his sensitivity to a friend’s sorrow. Newman consoled Bowden upon his mother’s death, and he showed the same finesse with Henry Edward Manning upon the death of his wife, Caroline, younger sister to Samuel Wilberforce’s wife.25 Newman reminded Manning that the happiness which is higher than any other consists in the awareness of God’s closeness to man in his suffering. Newman comforted him with the reassurance that the loss of a loved one produces a calm detachment from the world.26 Newman’s effectiveness came from his own experience of the loss of family members.
Henry Edward Manning, a graduate from Balliol College and a Fellow at Merton College, became rector of a parish after leaving Oxford in 1833, and later Archdeacon of Chichester. Beginning in 1837, Manning had taken up Tractarian opinions and consulted Newman about parliamentary debates concerning the Ecclesiastical Commission, a body established to determine the distribution of the revenues of the Church of England.
Another correspondent, Lord James H. Lifford, wrote to Newman complaining about Newman’s criticism of Evangelicals in “Self-Contemplation,” one of the Parochial Sermons. In that sermon Newman had faulted the self-confidence and spiritual pride resulting from the contemplation of self rather than of God. Newman suggested that Evangelicals “[D]estroy all positive doctrine, all ordinances, all good works; they foster pride, invite hypocrisy, discourage the weak, and deceive most fatally, while they profess to be the antidotes to self-deception.”27
Newman replied to Lifford that he was not referring to individuals but to a system. Newman criticized the practice of the “direct contemplation of our feelings as the means, the evidence of justification.”28 He referred to “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” the third tale in Annals of the Poor, which has a deathbed scene in which a clergyman questions a dying person. This novel, which had wide distribution, made a “certain conscious state of feeling evidence of Justification.”29 Newman contrasted this scene with the deathbed examination of the sick prescribed in the Visitation of the Sick. In this service the dying person is asked to profess the articles of faith, examine his past deeds, repent of sins and receive absolution by a priest. This venerable and more ancient system considers the objects and fruits of faith as the direct and necessary evidence of Justification, not the inward, more subjective state of feelings.30
Newman indicted Evangelical literature in general, and specifically the widely published authors Hannah More, Thomas Erskine, and Jacob Abbot. These authors, he argued, jettisoned formal Catholic doctrines for the sake of including spiritually minded people in their society. He asked Lifford to look at Tract 73, “On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion.”31 Finally he noted that the Hampden affair would awaken people to the danger of Socinianism among Evangelical party members. (Socinians denied the distinction of Persons in the Trinity and also the Incarnation.) The theme of the correspondence to Lifford: Newman’s wariness of basing judgment on inconstant and subjective emotional feeling, was further developed in his writing on Baptism and Confirmation.
In a June letter to Jemima, Newman was particularly clear in his exposition of the dangers of the Protestants’ and Evangelical Anglicans’ reliance on feeling over doctrine and sacraments. Jemima had requested a doctrinal explanation on Confirmation. In the reply, Newman used as an example the long exhortations by Protestants at a “baptismal service,” and compared this to Anglicans who focused on the “objects” or actions, as the laying on of hands in the ordination of priests or consecration of bishops. A similar action is found in the Confirmation service where the bishop imposes his hands on the one to be confirmed: “The action speaks.”32 It is a special blessing, he explained, tantamount to a prayer and does not require a long exhortation.
In this same letter, Newman patiently instructed Jemima in the doctrine of the Ancient Church: the Holy Spirit, who is the animating principle and Lord of the Church, communicates Himself in the sacraments: first in Baptism, which brings about forgiveness; then in Justification and the beginning of other gifts; and finally in Confirmation, which is the fullness of the sanctifying gifts given as a seed at Baptism. For the early Church, Confirmation was a part of the baptismal rite. Newman, however, did not consider Confirmation a separate sacrament; furthermore, he understood it to be a nonessential part of the baptismal rite. At that time, the Church of Rome administered Confirmation at the age of seven, which, Newman wrote, would be a good practice for Anglicans to follow since the specific grace of Confirmation is to perfect the Christian.
Newman acknowledged his lack of experience in the rite of Penance (Confession) since Anglicans marginalized this rite. Even so, on Saturday, March 17, 1838, Newman heard his first confession. He was vested with a surplice and seated against the rails at the altar at the north end of St. Mary’s. Newman’s first experience as a Confessor was in response to a young person who had come to Newman on the fifteenth and asked if he would hear his confession. The young man was preparing to receive the Holy Eucharist. Newman confided to the young man his feeling of awkwardness and told him of the sense of responsibility he felt in hearing someone’s confession, but he agreed to hear the confession of his sins and grant him absolution.
The rite of Penance and the administration of absolution was not the only sacrament which raised questions in Newman’s mind. He had questions about Baptism and the other sacraments. Besides the nature of the sacrament of Baptism, Newman had to contend with the form of administering this sacrament. For Catholics, a Baptism is valid when the one who baptizes invokes the name of each Person of the Trinity, while the person to be baptized has water poured on the head or is submerged in water three times. An irregularity in the form used (the words and actions) is cause for an invalid Baptism. When asked about the validity of Baptism by clergymen who were Dissenters, Newman told Jemima that he advised “re-baptism” with the conditional form.33 This was the case with Mrs. Pusey. On the eve of Easter 1838, he baptized a few persons; among them was Mrs. Pusey, whom he baptized conditionally. She had been baptized by a Dissenting clergyman and had doubts with regard to the validity of her Baptism. In light of her doubts, she had stopped receiving Communion for some months. Newman obtained the bishop’s permission to give her conditional Baptism.
The consultations made by friends and joint work provided the occasion for a deepening in friendship. Two former pupils with whom Newman spent much time during the year 1837 were John Frederic Christie and Henry Arthur Woodgate. Christie, who had entered Oriel in 1824 and was elected Fellow in 1829, was actively involved in the Movement after becoming friends with Newman. Woodgate had been present with Isaac Williams at the dinner in 1828, when Mary Newman was taken ill. Newman later became godfather to Woodgate’s eldest daughter, and Woodgate dedicated his 1838 Bampton Lectures to Newman. Woodgate and Rickards were the two friends about whom Newman wrote in the Apologia, who knew him best, but who in 1864 were no longer his friends. Later, however, Newman and Woodgate saw each other frequently at Edgbaston and Rednal. In 1872, Newman dedicated Discussions and Arguments to Woodgate.34
Cultivating friendship was important to Newman. He made it a priority to visit his friends when time allowed. His time became more flexible after his mother’s death in 1836. That year Newman visited Thomas Keble’s parish at Bisley, J. F. Christie’s parish at Badgeworth, and then spent two weeks at Thomas Mozley’s parish in Cholderton. Robert Jeffries Spranger, a Fellow at Exeter College and Lecturer in Hebrew, served Newman as curate at Littlemore during this absence and on other occasions.
Some of Newman’s letters are beautiful examples of prose. One, a letter to his friend Rogers, deals with the illness of Rogers’s sister. Newman spoke to Rogers of how God calls to Himself those who are ready and that it is a privilege to be taken by Him: “Surely God would not separate from us such, except it were both for them and for us, and that those who are taken away are such as are most acceptable to Him seems proved by what we see …”35 Newman commented on the relation of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come,” and the privilege that it is to leave this world. Emily Rogers died in September of that year. It is in these letters that we glimpse Newman’s deep spirituality and great humanity.
Newman’s letters were also prompted by various pressing issues. For example, a new amendment to the Marriage Act of 1836, which provided that a superintendent’s registrar certificate should be used instead of the publication of banns prescribed by the rubrics, caused a letter from Newman to Perceval. Newman wrote that since the rubrics had not been altered he would continue to use the banns. Newman worried that the clause in the Act would be the first of many innovations to follow. He confided in Pusey that he was not advocating resistance, but that he was disposed to decline to perform marriages on the license of a registrar, shying away from this novelty. These letters show Newman’s respect for the Church’s practices and norms and concern for their application.
Other letters record details of Newman’s daily life. For example, in September, on the first anniversary of the dedication of the chapel at Littlemore, an anonymous woman gave a splendid chalice for St. Mary’s altar. Bloxam’s brother gave candlesticks and an offertory bowl. John R. Bloxam, whom Newman met in 1837, became Newman’s curate at Littlemore without remuneration. Besides these gifts from his brother, Bloxam contributed stained glass windows for the church. Other gifts recorded include a collection of £18 that was made for building a schoolhouse; the following year on June 27, the first stone was laid. Some people from Oxford asked for an evening service, and it was held.
In other letters to friends, he wrote about the spread of Church Principles, a term describing the Movement. By way of proof, he mentioned the good sales of the Tracts and told an anecdote of a youth at a wine merchant who had bought one of Pusey’s Tracts and was later heard “defending the cause very skillfully.”36 Clergymen in Cheltenham and Brighton were preaching Church Principles and the Bishop of Lincoln had praised the Tracts.
In September, Rev. George Townsend, Prebendary of Durham, began a series of accusations of alleged alterations of the liturgy introduced by Newman. Townsend found criticism with the use of a cross on the surplice, extra bowing, and the use of a table near the altar on which to place the bread and the wine. Pusey wrote to Bishop Bagot, refuting these accusations. Newman had attempted to revive some older liturgical practices such as using a lectern with an eagle instead of a simple reading desk and kneeling toward the east for prayer during services, facing ad orientem, the same way as the congregation. Newman knew this was an ancient Christian tradition, recommended by the Anglican Anthony Sparrow in his “Rationale of the Common Prayer.” Newman would turn to the congregation in the parts addressed to them. Pusey told the bishop that Newman interpreted the rubrics with the primitive usage in the Church and with the practice of rites at some of the cathedrals. By October, Townsend admitted being misled by exaggerations; he retracted all that he had said and wrote an apology to Newman, who acknowledged the apology.
Older liturgical practices and Roman Catholic sacramental theology had a lasting effect on Newman, whereas his effort to construct a Via Media only gave him a transitory peace of mind. He could not find in the reality of ecclesiastical life of the Anglican Church what he was trying to formulate in theory. Preparation for the Lectures on Justification allowed him the opportunity to find in the Council of Trent’s decrees an exposition of doctrine that accorded with the truths of Scripture and the Church Fathers. He argued that the Anglican Articles of Faith and Homilies were in keeping with the latter. Although he was attempting to show deficiencies in Roman Catholicism and to solidify Anglo-Catholic theology, he had embarked on a spiritual and ascetical path that was leading him slowly toward Roman Catholicism. Newman prayed with the Roman Breviary, practiced some fasting, and began to have a weekly Communion Service.
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1LD, Vol. VI, JHN to H. E. Manning (February 24, 1837), 34.
2LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Maria R. Giberne (July 24, 1837), 103-04; 104.
3LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (April 25, 1837), 61.
4LD, Vol. VI, JHN to John William Bowden (January 13, 1837), 11-12; 12.
5LD, Vol. VI, footnote, 82.
6LD, Vol. VI, footnote inserted by Newman to a copy of a letter to J. W. Bowden (April 12, 1837), 52-54; 53.
7John Henry Newman, “Faith Considered as the Instrumental Cause of Justification,” in Lectures on Justification, John Henry Newman, 26, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/justification/index.html. After this it will be cited Jfc.
8“Primary Sense of the Term Justification,” in Jfc, 83.
9“Love Considered as the Formal Cause of Justification,” in Jfc, 59.
10“Faith Viewed Relatively to Rites and Works,” in Jfc, 274-303; 297.
11“The Office of Justifying Faith,” in Jfc, 223-51; 223.
12Ibid., 227-28.
13“The Office of Justifying Faith,” in Jfc, 223-51; 226, footnote n. 1.
14“The Righteousness the Fruit of Our Lord’s Resurrection,” in Jfc, 202-22.
15Ibid., 203-04.
16LD, Quote from Council of Trent, in Jfc, 3rd ed., 1874, 96.
17LD, Vol. VI, Diary entry (Monday, January 9, 1837), 10.
18LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Henry Wilberforce (March 25, 1837), 46-49; 47.
19Ibid., 48.
20LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (October 6, 1837), 148-49; 149.
21LD, Vol. VI, JHN to John Keble (June 30, 1837), 86-88; 87.
22LD, Vol. VI, JHN to J. W. Bowden (October 6, 1837), 145-46; 145.
23LD, Vol. VI, JHN to J. W. Bowden (December 12, 1837), 178-77; 176.
24LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Maria R. Giberne (May 3, 1837), 63-65; 63.
25LD, Vol. VI, JHN to H. E. Manning (July 23, 1837), 102-3.
26Ibid., 102.
27“Self-Contemplation,” in PPS, Vol. II, 173.
28Ibid., 130.
29Ibid., 131.
30Ibid., 132.
31LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Lord Lifford (September 12, 1837), 128-33; 133.
32LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (June 4, 1837), 78-81; 79.
33LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (October 6, 1837), 148-50; 149. Catholics believe that Baptism imparts a spiritual seal on the soul, so it is only given once to a person. When there is doubt about someone having been baptized, the priest baptizes using the words, “If you are not baptized, N., I baptize you in the name …”
34LD, Vol. VI, Index of Persons and Places, 417.
35LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Frederic Rogers (June 1, 1837), 75-76.
36LD, Vol. VI, JHN to Robert I. Wilberforce (October 6, 1837), 150-51; 150.