Chapter 25: 1839: First Anglican Difficulties
CHAPTER 25
1839: FIRST ANGLICAN
DIFFICULTIES
THROUGHOUT the year 1839, Newman’s attention was consumed in great measure by his editorship of the British Critic and translations into English of works by the Church Fathers. The death of friends, the illness of others, various difficulties, and also many writing projects occupied his time and efforts. Perhaps the most significant development in Newman’s life, however, came about as a result of his study on the early Church Fathers: both in the middle and at the end of the year, he was faced with the first real intellectual difficulties in adhering to the Anglican Church.
In January, Newman published an article in the British Critic on the theology of the first Church Father, St. Ignatius of Antioch. In the article, he argued in favor of the authenticity of St. Ignatius’s Epistles. One of the arguments adduced in favor of their genuineness was that the epistles are missing the doctrine of the Trinity and baptismal regeneration that was enunciated centuries later. Newman pointed out that Ignatius transmits in his epistles the truths taught by Jesus’ Apostles to the second generation of Christians. These truths were a religion, or Catholic system with a “definitive, complete and dogmatic form.”1 This system included most of the doctrines that comprise Catholic teaching today. With this article Newman was beginning to articulate the theory of dogmatic development that he would present in The Development of Christian Doctrine in 1845. Newman’s arguments for the authenticity of Ignatius’s Epistles and their record of Apostolic beliefs in the early years of the Church led him to conclude: “Give us, then, but St. Ignatius, and we want nothing more to prove the substantial truth of the Catholic system; the proof of the genuineness and authenticity of the Bible is not stronger; he who rejects the one, ought in consistency to reject the other.”2 Newman reasoned that the New Testament should be interpreted in accordance with the Church system described by Ignatius only a few decades after the death of the Apostles. This ancient Church system, in other words, contained the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church of his day.
While Newman was thinking about the dogmatic foundations of Catholicism, he felt obliged to defend the Anglican faith, which he believed to be Catholic. In an article, The State of Religious Parties, for the April issue of the British Critic, he explained how the Oxford Movement upheld doctrines that were part of the Anglican tradition. He excused the excesses of some of its members as the legitimate exercise of private judgment. Furthermore, he urged the clergy and individuals to refrain from suppressing Catholic impulses, because the Anglican Church was acutely suffering from the absence of concrete and precise doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary boundaries, as were other Christian bodies that had separated themselves from the See of Rome.
Also in January, Newman learned of the unexpected death in Florence, Italy, of Hugh James Rose, who had first asked Newman to write on the Church Councils and had later helped to begin the Oxford Movement. Newman wrote Mrs. Rose: “I will only say that in [sic] sorrowing particularly for one who was always a kind, condescending friend to me. In fact it was he who brought me into notice; he was the first to introduce me to write on theological subjects, and then to praise me when I had written.”3
Newman, desiring to revise his book on Arianism, wrote to Williams: “I am this long vacation returning to my own line of reading—the early controversies of the Church, which I have suspended since 1835; not suspended of my own wish, but it was pressing that subjects should be treated more connected with what was going on in the Church.”4 He hoped that the study of the Incarnation in the Church Fathers would allow him to finish an edition of Dionysius and a translation of Theodoret, a theologian from Antioch who was born at the end of the fourth century. During the course of translating the Church Fathers and in the reading necessary for editing others’ translations, Newman experienced his first major difficulties in adherence to the Anglican Church.
In June, when Newman began studying the fifth-century Monophysite heresy condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, he began losing confidence in Anglicanism. The Monophysites believed that Christ has only one nature: a divine nature. The writings and authority of Pope Leo the Great led to a definition of faith at the Council of Chalcedon, affirming that Christ has a divine and a human nature, which are perfectly united. Newman was struck by the moral authority of the Pope that decided the outcome of the controversy. Newman would later write, “I saw my face in the mirror, and I was a Monophysite.”5 Newman told a friend that he was alarmed by discovering that Protestants and Anglicans were heretics like the Monophysites and that he too was a heretic. Until the fifth century, the criterion for choosing the authentic Church established by Christ was Antiquity, but now that foundation was challenged. The test for a true Church was its communion with the other churches and its communion with the See of Rome.
Just when Newman was concluding his study of the Monophysite heresy, the history of the fifth-century Donatist schism in the African Church convinced him that the judgments of the Roman See were definitive in deciding matters of the whole Church. In August, Nicholas Wiseman published an article, “Tracts for the Times: Anglican Claim of Apostolical Succession,” in the Dublin Review. In the article, Wiseman argued that the Anglican Church was schismatic and thus could not claim Apostolic Succession. He based his argument on those adduced by St. Augustine, St. Optatus, and St. Jerome against the Donatists, but he applied them to the Anglican Church and the Tractarians’ defense of the Branch Theory.
In mid-September on a walk to Littlemore, Robert Williams pointed out to Newman some key words in the article taken from St. Augustine that had escaped Newman’s observation: “Securus iudicat orbis terrarum.” The full sentence asserted: “Wherefore the entire world judges with security that they are not good who separate themselves from the entire world, in whatever part of the entire world.”6 Newman thought that these words went beyond the Donatists and applied to the controversy with the Monophysites. “They decided ecclesiastical questions on a simpler rule than that of Antiquity; nay, St. Augustine was one of the prime oracles of Antiquity; here then Antiquity was deciding against itself.”7
These words and Wiseman’s entire article were a strong blow not only to the Monophysites, but to Anglicanism and to the Tractarians who defended the Branch Theory of the Church. Newman wrote to Rogers: “Since I wrote to you, I have had the first real hit from Romanism which has happened to me. R. W., who has been passing through, directed my attention to Dr. Wiseman’s article in the new Dublin. I confess it has given me a stomach-ache.”8 At the end of his article, Wiseman explained that some High Church Donatists had come up with the untenable idea that the Donatists were a part of the Church in communion with Rome. The arguments of the Church Fathers against such ideas were conclusive. Years later, Newman wrote that St. Augustine’s words interpreted and summed up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical history. He acknowledged that with these arguments “the theory of the Via Media was absolutely pulverized.”9
As Newman struggled with this new position, he believed that God would lead him. At about that time, he wrote a sermon on Divine Calls in which he praised being obedient to heavenly visions. Nevertheless, he “determined to be guided, not by imagination, but by reason.”10 Historical facts had a logical force that he could not ignore. He believed that the principle of dogma and Apostolic Succession, along with the sacramental system, were better safeguarded by Rome than by the Anglican Church. He felt that the argument for Anglican claims only lay in charges against Rome, but since 1833, he no longer considered the Church of Rome to be the Antichrist. He remarked: “I had no positive Anglican theory. I was very nearly a pure Protestant. Lutherans had a sort of theology, so had Calvinists; I had none.”11
That Newman was heading toward Rome was evident. Earlier in the year, Newman had advised Manning on how to dissuade an Anglican who was thinking of becoming Roman Catholic. When Newman gave his advice, he surprisingly expressed the thought that it was only a question of time before some people would leave the Anglican Church due to its Protestant principles. Newman thought that men needed more of the external elements of worship which are part of the Roman Catholic Church; he blamed the Anglican bishops for their negligence in respecting this need and the Church’s Tradition. He wrote to Manning:
I think that, whenever the time comes that secessions to Rome take place, for which we must not be unprepared, we must boldly say to the Protestant section of our Church—“You are the cause of this. You must concede—you must conciliate —you must meet the age. You must make the Church more efficient—more suitable to the needs of the heart, more equal to the external pressures. Give us more services—more vestments and decorations in our worship—give us monasteries—give us the ‘signs of an Apostle’—the pledge that the Spouse of Christ is among us. Till then you will have continual defections to Rome.12
To Manning’s correspondent, Newman urged patience and reminded her of the duty to remain where God calls and to help one’s fellow Christians “steeped and stifled in Protestantism” rather than “indulging” one’s own feelings in the Communion of Rome.13 He offered the same advice to others and soon applied it to himself.
While sincerely trying to remain an Anglican, Newman was embarrassed by two younger clergymen: Morris and Bloxam (who was his curate at Littlemore). One Sunday Morris preached on fasting to the congregation gathered at St. Mary’s on St. Michael’s Day. The following Sunday he preached to the congregation on the Roman doctrine regarding the Mass and condemning those who would not believe this doctrine. The Vice-Chancellor who had been present on both Sundays was very offended: Morris was admonished and reported to the bishop.
Bloxam, on the other hand, had been seen at the Roman Catholic chapel of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Alton Towers during the offering of the Mass. Bloxam defended himself, stating that he was praying in the chapel when he was surprised by Mass. Newman thought that it had been very imprudent of his curate but told the bishop that Bloxam was “a most active and valuable curate.”14 Bloxam, saddened by people’s accusations, decided to leave the curacy at Littlemore. This, and the suffering of other friends, caused Newman pain.
Early in the year, Bowden was diagnosed with tuberculosis affecting his lungs. Newman was told that there was little likelihood of Bowden’s recovery, and he wrote other friends asking for prayers for Bowden. He also wrote to Bowden inquiring about his health. After a small improvement, Bowden replied with the following expression of friendship: “At length, through God’s mercy, I am enabled again to take up the pen myself, and it were strange if the first use which I made of this recovered faculty were not to employ it in addressing you, the kindest, truest, of my friends.15
Edward Pusey also received consolation from Newman. Pusey’s wife, who had been sick since 1837, died on Trinity Sunday in May of 1839. Newman preached for the first time “Peace in Believing,” based on the text of Christ imparting the Holy Spirit to the Apostles the day after his Resurrection. As if speaking about Mrs. Pusey, he said:
After the fever of life; after wearinesses and sicknesses; fightings and despondings; languor and fretfulness; struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of this troubled unhealthy state, at length comes death, at length the White Throne of God, at length the Beatific Vision. After restlessness comes rest, peace, joy;—our eternal portion, if we be worthy …16
Pusey and his wife had carried out many works of charity, including contributing funds for building churches. For a long time after the death of Mrs. Pusey, he was the only one that Pusey would see. He and Newman would go for daily walks. Pusey wrote to Newman that he had been like an angel sent to him by God, and he prayed “that He may make you what, as you say, there are so few of, a great saint.”17 Pusey signed another letter to his friend “ever yr very affect. and grateful friend E B Pusey.”18 Pusey’s suffering continued; next was the crippling illness of his son, and only five years later the premature death of Lucy, one of his daughters. Already an exemplary father, the widower now dedicated himself entirely to the care of his children and only gradually took up again his scholarly work.
The attention that Newman paid to his friends was all the more meritorious given the amount of work he had. The editorship of the British Critic consumed much of his time and energy, and Newman relied heavily on his brother-in-law Thomas Mozley and his friend Henry Wilberforce for articles for the British Critic. One month, two writers disappointed Newman, who was obliged to produce four sheets himself, extempore. On this and other occasions he complained of aching of his hands, due to excessive writing.
One of Newman’s contributions to the British Critic was a pointed review of Henry Caswall’s “America and the American Church” (1838), a narrative of the establishment of the Anglican Church in America. Caswall had optimistically remarked that the American Church was conducted on a “popular principle” because the American people were accustomed to republican procedures.19 Without proper theological training and ordination to the clerical state, the laity stood on equal footing with the clergy in the church synods and committees.
Newman argued that although the American bishops believed in Apostolic Succession, they did not carry out a proper development of this truth: the bishops did not exercise the spiritual and ecclesiastical authority that derives from the Apostolic origin of their office. Newman put his finger on one of the main sources for this problem, namely, the democracy of religion. “The Americans boast that their Church is not, like ours, enslaved to the civil power; true, not to the civil power by name and in form, but to the laity, and in a democracy what is that but the civil power in another shape?”20
Although the British Critic was a voice for doctrinal views, it had a wide selection of articles, including some on church architecture. Earlier in the year the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture was constituted at Oxford; its members included Bloxam, Isaac Williams, J. B. Mozley, C. Marriott, and W. Palmer. The society planned to collect architectural prints, drawings, and models, and house them in a museum. The members of the Oxford Movement were not only writing about the beauty of religious architecture, they were building or remodeling churches and contributing to the building of churches by others. In September, at the anniversary of the consecration of St. Mary’s Littlemore, Newman made a collection that he sent to his friend, Simeon L. Pope, who was then building a new church. At about this time as well, Newman had three windows with seven figures installed at St. Mary’s Littlemore.
On the publishing front, the Tracts continued to sell very well; the previous year approximately 60,000 Tracts had been sold. John Inglis, Bishop of Nova Scotia, sent Newman a letter praising the Tracts. Newman thought of the good effect this could have in the neighboring dioceses of America, in particular, that of Vermont.21 In January, Volume IV of the Parochial and Plain Sermons had been published in an edition of 1000 copies, and half a year later, a second edition was being prepared. One of the sermons in that volume was “The State of Grace,” which Newman wrote with his Aunt Elizabeth in mind. Newman’s sermons were often naturally motivated by events in the life of family and friends, as well as his own. This one, an insightful sermon on fasting, was a case in point. Newman wrote that fasting brings Christians into the realm of the supernatural, but that fasting could also open them to temptations from the Evil One. During Lent of 1839, Newman had been fasting much, often until 5 pm. Even with his increased prayer and his practice of fasting, his sentiments toward Roman Catholics only slowly improved.
On a trip to Europe, Rogers, his friend and former pupil, had met and spoken with a French priest. The priest had tried to convince Rogers of the errors of Anglicanism. Newman was amused by the account and admitted to Rogers that it is of little surprise that Roman Catholics did not have feelings of friendship toward Anglicans. Until the Catholic Relief Act of 1791, Catholic priests who celebrated Mass committed a felony. By contrast with some Roman Catholics’ sentiments toward England, Newman’s sentiments for Rome grew. Having just read Manzoni’s Promesi Sposi he was captivated by the figure of the Capuchin, who had converted from his previous life to one of works of charity. Newman voiced a romantic dream that if matters got worse in the Church of England he would become a “Brother of Charity in London.”22
All of these sentiments, however, would not impede Newman from reacting angrily to the allegiance by Catholics to Irish politicians. In January of the following year, Fr. George Spencer, a Roman Catholic priest, visited Oxford, asking Newman and others to join him in prayer for the unity of Christians. Newman declined dining with him in public. Manning and Pusey wrote Newman that Anglicans already prayed in their daily service for those in the “Catholic Church,” whereas Roman Catholics prayed only once a year (on Good Friday) for the Anglicans, together with other heretics. To this Newman retorted that many Anglicans did not actually pray for Roman Catholics and instead reviled them. He added that if Roman Catholics practiced duplicity, they needed Anglicans’ prayers all the more.
Only a month later, however, Newman wrote Fr. Spencer a letter with an angry tone in which he criticized an alleged alliance between the Roman Catholic Church and O’ Connell as well as the Liberal Party in England.23 Newman chastised Spencer: “[Y]our acts are contrary to your words; you invite us to union of hearts, at the same time you are doing all you can, not to restore, not to reform, not to re-unite, but to destroy our Church. You go further than your principles require. You are leagued with our enemies.”24 He also decried the lack of recognition of the English Church in the speeches and letters of foreign ecclesiastics.25
Newman, who was normally a witty writer, filling letters with humorous incidents as well as clever remarks, could be, on the one hand, overly sensitive, and on the other, caustic in his remarks. Although Newman’s fault could be partly justified by the almost desperate situation in which he felt the Anglican Church to be, his response to Fr. Spencer’s initiative was also due to Newman’s sharp and sometimes inconsiderate reactions.
During this important year of Newman’s first Anglican difficulties, Newman’s life at Oxford was anything but secluded. His sermons and scholarly work and publishing were done in the midst of demanding pastoral work.26 He had daily Morning Service at St. Mary’s and weekly Communion Service. He walked back and forth to Littlemore for marriages, baptisms, and burials. Newman visited the sick and dying; for instance, on July 9 he noted that H. Loder, a youth of his parish, had died. Newman prepared children for Confirmation and held examinations for them at the Adam de Brome Chapel. He was also a Rural Dean, which meant he was the head of a deanery or geographic grouping of clergymen, but had to resign due to lack of time.
In addition to his close ties with Bowden, Pusey, and Rogers, and work with Keble, William Wilberforce, Thomas Mozley, and Christie, 1839 was the year Newman’s friendship with James Hope grew, as noted by an increase in correspondence between the two. These and other friends manifested their admiration for Newman. When Woodgate published his Bampton Lectures, he dedicated them to his friend: “In token of a long and intimate friendship, / and as a tribute of respect / to the highest intellectual endowments, consecrated, throughout a life of consistent purity and holiness, to the cause of Christ’s Church …”27
That year began another lifelong friendship for Newman. Edward Bellasis, a distinguished parliamentary lawyer and friend of Hope, had read the Tracts and Newman’s sermons. In 1838, he went to Oxford to hear Newman preach and in 1839 went to Oriel to meet Newman. He would later become a Roman Catholic and remain a devoted friend of Newman, who would dedicate his book Grammar of Assent to him. Two of Bellasis’s sons would later join the Birmingham Oratory with Newman.
As the year 1839 came to an end, Newman confided to a friend his interior disposition to seek and follow religious truth wherever it might lead him, referring to the Roman Catholic Church:
I really believe I say truly that, did I see cause to suspect that the Roman Church was in the right, I would try not to be unfaithful to the light given me. And if at any future time, I have any view opened to me, I will try not to turn from it, but will pursue it, wherever it may lead. I am not aware of having any hindrance, whether from fear of clamour, or regard of consistency, or even love of friends, which could keep me from joining the Church of Rome, were I persuaded I ought to do so.28
In midyear he had been struck by the role of authority by the Roman See in deciding fifth-century heresies. He applied this to the position of the Anglican Church and felt for the first time a major blow to his Anglican membership. Newman, however, thought the Oxford Movement could still revive the Catholicism inherent in the Anglican Church. In November of 1839, he sent Keble a draft of an article: “Catholicity of the English Church,” later published in the January edition of the British Critic of 1840. It was a feeble and failed attempt to defend the Anglican claims of Apostolic Succession.
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1John Henry Newman, Essays Critical and Historical I, 258, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/essays/volume1/index.html. After this it will be cited Ess I.
2Ibid., 261.
3LD, Vol. VII, JHN to Mrs. Rose (January 29, 1839), 21.
4LD, Vol. VII, JHN to Isaac Williams (July 18, 1839), 110-111; 110.
5Apo., 114.
6St. Augustine, Cont. Epist. Parmen. Lib. iii, cap 3. Quote by Wiseman, Nicholas, “The Anglican Claim of Apostolical Succession” in the Dublin Review, 1839, quoted from Publications of the Catholic Truth Society, Vol. XXIV, 1895, 23.
7Apo., 117.
8LD, Vol. VII, JHN to Frederic Rogers (September 22, 1839), 154-55; 154.
9Apo., 117.
10Apo., 119.
11Apo., 120.
12LD, Vol. VII, JHN to H. E. Manning (September 1, 1839), 133-34; 133.
13Ibid.
14LD, Vol. VII, JHN to Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford (December 9, 1839), 189.
15LD, Vol. VII, J. W. Bowden to JHN (June 3, 1839), 96.
16PPS, Vol. VI, “Peace in Believing,” 369-70.
17LD, VII, E. B. Pusey to JHN (July 16, 1839), 83.
18LD, Vol. VII, E. B. Pusey to JHN (September 1, 1839), 142-43; 142.
19Henry Caswall, America and the American Church (London: John and Charles Mozley, 1851), 293.
20“The Anglo-American Church,” in Ess. I, 356.
21LD, Vol. VII, JHN to Isaac Williams (August 20, 1839), 123-24; 123.
22Ibid.
23See LD, Vol. VII, JHN to George Spencer (February 9, 1840), 233-35; 234.
24Ibid, 233-35; 233.
25Ibid., 234.
26Trevor, Newman, Pillar of the Cloud, 222.
27LD, Vol. VII, Dedication of Bampton Lectures by H. A. Woodgate, 77.
28LD, Vol. VII, JHN to Robert Williams (November 10, 1839), 180-81; 180.