Chapter 27: The Crisis Over Tract 90
CHAPTER 27
THE CRISIS OVER TRACT 90
THE year 1841 would mark a major turning point in Newman’s religious development. The main event of the year was his publication of Tract 90 and the reaction that it unleashed in Oxford, among the English bishops and throughout England. The crisis over Tract 90 would lead Newman to stand firm in his defense of Catholic principles and to question the authority of Anglican bishops. Toward the end of 1841 another crisis, over the establishment of an Anglican–Lutheran See in Jerusalem, led Newman to begin to doubt that the English Church was a branch of the true Catholic Church.
The Thirty-Nine Articles, drafted in 1571, and approved by the bishops, were an attempt to define the doctrine of the Anglican Church. Together with a set of prescribed Homilies and the Book of Common Prayer they formed a body of the teaching and liturgy of the Anglican Church. The three elements were a compromise between Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrinal beliefs and liturgical practices. English clergymen and students studying at Oxford University were obliged to subscribe to the Articles.
In 1840, Newman noted that his friend Robert Williams and others thought that the Articles opposed Catholic truths taught by the Roman Catholic Council of Trent. Newman set out to show that this was not the case; the Articles opposed only abuses by the Church of Rome. He completed the tract in late January 1841, and as soon as it was published in February, its content provoked a protest at Oxford.
In Tract 90, Newman examined fourteen of the Articles. In a notice to the tract he wrote, “THIS Tract was written under the conviction that the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, of which it treated, were, when taken in their letter, so loosely worded, so incomplete in statement, and so ambiguous in their meaning, as to need an authoritative interpretation …”1 Newman asserted that only the Catholic Church and what it had taught always and everywhere could supply that interpretation. Article XXXV mandated the reading in church of Homilies from the Book of Homilies, which explained Anglican doctrine.
Regarding Articles VI and XX on Holy Scripture and the Authority of the Church, Newman asserted that “not a word is said, on the one hand, in favour of there being no external rule or method to fix the interpretation of Scripture by, or, as it is commonly expressed, of Scripture being the sole rule offaith; nor on the other, of the private judgment of the individual being the ultimate standard of interpretation.”2 In support of this he quoted from Anglican theologians that the Holy Scriptures form together with the Creed a rule of Faith instead of two different rules of Faith.
Newman argued that the Articles stated only broad principles. Concerning Article VI on Justification by faith, for example, Newman pointed out that the words do not deny Baptism’s role in Justification. Furthermore, the Articles left open points of controversy, such as the manner of Christ’s Spiritual Presence in the Holy Eucharist. The authors of the Articles did not define the manner of Christ’s Presence, except to affirm that He is present in a heavenly and spiritual manner. Christ’s presence is not a local presence because the Body of Christ is in Heaven. Article XXVIII held that Transubstantiation (the change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ) is a doctrine contrary to Scripture. By this the framers of the Articles rejected the belief held by some Roman Catholics that following the words of Consecration Christ is present under the form of an ordinary human body. Newman explained:
What is here opposed as “Transubstantiation,” is the shocking doctrine that the body of CHRIST, as the Article goes on to express it, is not given, taken, and eaten, after an heavenly and spiritual manner, but is carnally pressed with the teeth; that It is a body or substance of a certain extension and bulk in space, and a certain figure and due disposition of parts, whereas we hold that the only substance such, is the bread which we see.3
Later, as a Roman Catholic, Newman maintained much of what he had written in the Tract, except for his understanding of Transubstantiation and the section on Article XXXI which rejects the Mass as a sacrifice and the practice of private offering of the Mass by a priest without a congregation. Article XXXI condemned the doctrine that Christ is offered in the Mass for the remission of sins of both the living and the dead. This was the position held by Anglican theologians and the Tractarians.
Newman explained that, when writing Tract 90, he had agreed with the doctrine of seventeenth-century Anglican Divines that Christ is not offered in the Mass. He noted how Pusey had explained in Tract 81 that the early Christians offered their gifts to God and that God in turn gave Himself to them, but Christ Himself was not offered. For the Tractarians the sacrifice consisted in the offering or oblation of bread and wine to God and the communication by God to men of the Lord’s Personal Presence. However, “there was no real offering up of Christ, because there was no Transubstantiation. He was really present, but as our spiritual food, and as the Lamb that had been offered once, but not as then being offered; not as the Lamb of the Mass.”4
At this time, Newman preached a sermon, “The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church,” in which he looked at different Gospel passages that indicated the Risen Christ’s Presence among His disciples. Newman attempted to show that, in a way that cannot be humanly explained, the Body of Christ that was in Heaven was simultaneously present to His disciples. St. Luke narrated Christ’s visible presence to the Disciples of Emmaus, and how it became an invisible or spiritual presence: “He vanished from sight that He might be present in a sacrament; and in order to connect His visible presence with His presence invisible ….”5 After the Ascension, Christ appeared to Saul in a visible yet mysterious manner on the way to Damascus. By means of this analysis of New Testament passages, Newman aimed to underscore Christ’s Spiritual Presence in the Holy Eucharist.
In Tract 90, however, Newman misrepresented Roman Catholic doctrine about the manner of Christ’s Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Charles Russell, an Irish Catholic priest ten years Newman’s junior, was sad to hear that Newman accepted the Protestant misrepresentation of this doctrine. Where Richard Wiseman had failed, Russell, who was a humble and clever priest, managed to get through to Newman. Russell wrote a letter to Newman on Holy Thursday expressing an ardent love for Christ in the Eucharist. Russell told Newman that Roman Catholics believe Christ is present in His glorified body in the Eucharist, not in the manner of ordinary human flesh. Newman thanked him and later acknowledged in the Apologia Pro Vita Sua Russell’s contribution to his conversion to Roman Catholicism. A few years after writing Tract 90, Newman began to believe that in the Transubstantiation, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ offered for mankind.
One of the main contentions of Tract 90 was that the Articles were intended to denounce abuses by a system called Romanism, or popery, in contrast to authentic Catholic doctrine present in the teachings of the ancient Church. Prominent among such abuses were the sale of indulgences and Masses, the multiplication and adoration of relics, the Roman doctrine on Purgatory, and the excessive tribute, tantamount to idolatry, given to saints. With regard to Purgatory, Newman indicated that one of the Articles and the Homily Concerning Prayer opposed the Roman belief of Purgatory as a temporal punishment, or a substitute for Hell and a way of obtaining pardon for those who had died in sin.6
Very soon after the Tract was published, Golightly, once Newman’s curate, initiated and organized opposition against it. He asked Philip Wynter, the university Vice-Chancellor, and the bishops to censure it. The Heads of Houses met to deliberate on the Tract, but since they had not read it they postponed deliberation to another date. Pusey wrote to Philip Wynter in defense of Newman, and asked that Newman receive the same toleration granted to those rejecting baptismal regeneration.7 Newman wrote a public letter addressed to R. Jelf, once a Fellow with him at Oriel, in which he explained unclear parts of Tract 90, and he asked Hawkins to have the Heads delay their second meeting for less than a day, giving him time to publish his explanatory letter.
Hawkins asked the Heads to wait for Newman’s letter, but they did not. On March 15, the Heads called Newman’s interpretation of the Articles an evasion rather an explanation of the Thirty-Nine Articles.8 The same day Newman wrote to Bowden, “If you knew all, or when you know, you will see that I asserted a great principle, and I ought to suffer for it—that the Articles are to be interpreted, not according to the meaning of the writers, but (as far as the wording will admit) according to the sense of the Catholic Church.”9 Newman thought that the compilers of the Articles had intended the words they used to bear several senses in order to keep Catholics in the English Church.10 Newman thought that in judging Tract 90, the Heads had usurped authority that was reserved for the Bishop of Oxford.
Keble, who had read proofs of the Tract, and Pusey supported Newman. The three conferred on how best to proceed since the authorship of the Tract was anonymous. Newman thought that the protest was a storm that would soon pass and he wished not to make any noise. Harriet wrote her brother a beautiful letter of support: “The tug of war must come some day; let it be now, if you are prepared. And that I hope is the case.” She assured him of the good wishes and prayers of all.11 Arthur Perceval, offering to support Newman, commented that the Tract would raise “a cry of war to the knife.” He asserted, “Yet I think it one of the most important papers that had been put out, and calculated, under God’s Blessing, to do much good.”12 William Palmer of Worcester College also wrote Newman, praising Tract 90 as the most valuable one in the series.
Newman’s Letter to R. W. Jelf, Canon of Christ Church, in Explanation of No. 90, in the Series called Tracts for the Times appeared in the Morning Post. Newman defended his Tract, which condemned what he called the “authoritative teaching of the Church of Rome” as manifest in public devotional practices. Referring to the Roman Church he wrote: “I think it goes very far indeed to substitute another Gospel for the true one. Instead of setting before the soul the Holy Trinity, and Heaven and Hell; it does seem to me, as a popular system, to preach the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, and Purgatory.”13 As he had done in the Tract, Newman explained that the Articles had been drawn up before the Council of Trent; therefore, its censures were against Roman abuses rather than decrees of this council.14 In fact, he asserted that Trent had protested against many of the errors that the Articles and Homilies condemn.15 Newman noted that invocation of saints is not idolatry, but tends toward it. He explained that adoration of images and relics is unwarranted and unscriptural, and produces practical idolatry.
Newman defended the use he made of the term “ambiguous formularies” in the Tract by arguing that there are open questions in the Anglican Church, a point that was nothing new.16 The most important and sacred doctrines of the Anglican religion are contained in the Creed, and the Articles do not define these doctrines; they existed before the Articles. Newman maintained that the Anglican Church allows a great diversity in doctrine except for what is taught in the Creed. In support of this assertion, he quoted Anglican Divines.17 Bull and Stillingfleet spoke of the Articles as help for the preservation of peace and tranquility, whereas the Creed contains the articles of Faith. Newman saw in various English Divines “much greater freedom in the private opinion of individuals” subscribing to the Articles than the freedom that he had taken.18
In letters to his friends, Newman explained that he had written Tract 90 to keep men from going over to Rome. Frederick Oakeley, writing to Pusey about Tract 90, confirmed the success of Newman’s intent:
There are persons about me, among the most valuable members of the Church whom I know, and I could mention elsewhere, who have long felt considerable perplexity about certain passages in the 39 Articles and who certainly would not, except upon supposition of a Catholic interpretation of the Articles conscientiously subscribe them.19
On March 17, Bishop Bagot sent Newman a note through Pusey asking that for the peace of the Church, there should be no more mention of the Articles in the Tracts for the Times. The Archbishop of Canterbury suggested to Bagot that the publication of the Tracts be discontinued forever.20 Newman complied with both petitions and he continued to wait, hoping for the storm to pass. He informed Pusey that some bishops wanted him to suppress Tract 90, which he could not in conscience do. “And they use me against myself. They cannot deliver charges of a sudden, but they use me to convey to the world a prompt and popular condemnation of my own principles.”21 Although Newman was ready to suppress the Tract if the bishop ordered him to do so, he planned to resign his living at St. Mary’s at the same time.
The crisis point finally arrived. Under the influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Oxford asked Pusey to communicate to Newman that Tract 90 should be suppressed and not republished and that Newman should tell the world that this was at the request of the bishop. Pusey advised Newman that the bishops would not censure Tract 90, and Newman considered it a tacit compromise between the bishops and himself that if he remained silent, they would not censure the Tract. More and more Newman did not wish to suppress Tract 90, but he informed the bishop that he would comply with his order to cease the Tracts entirely. Newman wrote Maria Giberne, “If the view were silenced, I could not remain in the Church, nor could many others—and therefore since it is not silenced, I shall take care to show that it is not.”22
Newman wrote Bishop Bagot defending himself and his views. Revealing his personal disposition, he wrote that he sought holiness in private life and in the life of the Church. He thought that without this “sanctity of heart and conduct,” political reunion was meaningless. “If we be holy, all will go well with us.”23 He asserted that sanctity is the great “Note” of the Church that he discerned in the Established Church of Scotland, but not in the Roman Church in Ireland.24 Newman claimed that he respected those within the Anglican Church with whom he differed in opinions. He urged people to love one another and to love what is good in the other, for “Argumentative efforts are most useful for this end under this sacred feeling …”25
Newman closed the long and poignant letter to Bishop Bagot, conveying sorrow for having caused him anxiety and professing that he had acted before God for the good of the Church and always with reverent submission to his bishop. Despite Newman’s moving letter and convincing arguments, Bishop Bagot was unable to sufficiently enter into Newman’s concern and arguments, and the year after the publication of Tract 90 he joined other bishops in censuring the Tract.
Newman’s friends, such as Isaac Williams, were greatly pleased with Newman’s letter to the bishop. John F. Christie thought the letter was admirable; it was a practical commentary to all the Tracts worth more than five more volumes, as well as an example of the respect given to the Episcopacy26 At the same time, Keble and Pusey prepared publications concerning the views put forth in Tract 90. At Newman’s petition Keble did not publish his pamphlet. Pusey instead did publish a 217-page commentary on the Tract.
While Newman was forced to defend the Catholic principles of the Anglican Church and to show that the Articles could be read in a Catholic sense, his knowledge about Catholics and his own contact with them increased.
DEALINGS WITH ROMAN CATHOLICS AND
THOUGHTS OF UNION WITH ROME
During 1841, Newman and his circle of friends had more contact with Roman Catholics. Frederic Rogers and James R. Hope visited Rome, and while there, they had many conversations with Catholic clergymen, including a clever Irish Jesuit who debated with them and kept them laughing for two hours and a half.27 Rogers and Hope also visited Milan, where they met with Alessandro Manzoni, the Italian novelist. Hope spoke with Jesuits and went into the mountains to visit monasteries.28 He likened the Benedictines to the Fellows of the Oxford Colleges but with more simplicity of life and discipline. He met an old and shrewd Trappist monk who one night gave him a book on the Blessed Virgin Mary by St. Alphonse Liguori and exacted a promise that if Hope ever became a Roman Catholic, he must write the monastery to tell of his conversion.
Newman himself met with Fr. Spencer, who visited Oxford to promote prayer for Christian unity. Newman also corresponded during 1841 with various Catholic priests and laymen. Although he had not initiated the contacts, he corresponded with Fr. Charles Russell and Ambrose Phillipps. In June, Fr. Russell visited Newman at Oxford. Russell was polite and friendly, and did not speak with Newman about religious questions. He only gave him some Catholic books.
Newman was concerned that visits to St. Mary’s College Oscott, a Roman Catholic seminary, would cause scandal to Anglicans and lead some to go over to Rome. He advised Ward not to visit Oscott, but to no avail.29 Later in the year Francis D. Wackerbath, a clergyman from Lichfield, also visited Oscott. Wackerbath was impressed by the learning and holiness of men that he met there and by the beauty of the liturgy. Despite the effort of dissuasion by Newman and others, Wackerbath joined the Roman Catholic Church shortly afterward.
In February 1841, Bloxam began a lengthy correspondence with Ambrose L. Phillipps, the heir of a wealthy family, who at the age of fifteen had become Roman Catholic.30 Phillipps had the vision of a Catholic England; he wished the reunification of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches and hoped that Newman and other Oxford men would help in this project. Referring to his correspondence with Phillipps, Newman told Bloxam that there was more holiness in the Church of England.31 Roman Catholics would convert England if they went barefooted and preached the Gospel like St. Francis Xavier. Little did Newman know that a small Italian priest, Fr. Dominic Barbieri of the Passionist Order, had then recently landed in England and had begun to do just that: preach barefooted in the manufacturing towns.32 Newman yearned for the likes of other Bernards and other Borromeos. Newman told Bloxam that only if the Anglican Church rushed into heresy and the Roman Church cleansed herself would it be a duty to leave the church; otherwise, it would be a sin.33
Newman did not think that a direct union between the Anglican Church and Rome would take place in his lifetime, but he advised a union of hearts and a focus on improving their own bodies respectively. He expressed the opinion that Tractarians had done a lot to improve the “English Communion.” Mr. Phillipps was a good example of the Roman Catholics, but they should do much more. Newman urged that Roman Catholics live charity better, influence the tone of their publications, give up “uncatholic” things, such as using churches for music recitals, and preach sanctity and moral reformation.34 He argued that reunification was only the prerogative of those in authority, namely the bishops, and that the time was not yet ripe for it.
In the same letter, Newman expressed his commonplace prejudice of Rome as “hollow, insincere, political, ambitious and unscrupulous.”35 Again he asserted that Rome did not have the mark of sanctity. The Roman Catholic Church had many societies and publications, but little of inward religion. Newman especially faulted Irish Roman Catholics for siding politically with English Dissenting bodies. Phillipps also lamented this, but asked Newman that the High Church Party in England break up its political connection with the Orangemen of Ireland.36 For his part, Nicholas Wiseman wrote to Newman telling him that although O’Connell had sincere religious feelings, he was misguided in foreign and domestic politics. Wiseman reminded Newman that he (Wiseman) had protested strongly against Catholics acting in league with Dissenters to advance the cause of religion through political agitation.37
Newman unjustly claimed that Rome had able controversialists but few men with the spiritual depth and real charity of writers like St. Francis de Sales (a bishop), and Pascal, both of whom were Roman Catholics. Newman argued that Pusey, unlike most Catholics, had the spirit of these men.38 He urged Bloxam to tell Phillipps that sending foreign Divines to Oxford would only work against Phillipps’s goals.39 Later on, Newman insisted that Phillipps was going too fast and that proselytism to Rome would only do harm to the cause of union.40 Surprisingly, in September, Newman met with two priests that Phillipps sent to visit Bloxam and see Oxford.41
After Tract 90 Newman and Phillipps began to correspond directly with one another. Phillipps told Newman that he prayed to God that Newman would not be remembered as an “eminent Protestant Divine,” but as the Father of the English Church in its Catholic Restoration.42 Newman acknowledged that the unity of the Catholic Church was near to his heart. “I do not see any prospect of it within our time, and I despair of its being effected without great sacrifices on all hands. Were the Roman Church in Ireland different from what it is, one immense stumbling block would be removed.”43
When Newman objected that for three hundred years there had been hopes of healing this “great schism” but it had not been achieved, Phillipps replied that even after many years they must continue to pray and labor for a healing of the schism. Fr. George Spencer wrote Newman again expressing his hopes for restoration of unity in the Church. This time Newman replied with a different tone than he had done before. Newman acknowledged that Roman Catholics were acting in a more Christian manner toward Anglicans. He wrote Spencer, “Let me express the great satisfaction I have felt at seeing the kind spirit, which many persons of your communion have displayed during the past year toward the English Church.”44
In September, Newman admitted to Phillipps that in addition to the main obstacle to union, a political one, there were two important obstacles to unity: the Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation and devotion to Mary. He maintained that this Eucharistic doctrine and Marian piety were not found in early Christianity. Newman later retracted his position on the antiquity of devotion to Mary. Surprisingly, only a day after this exchange with Phillipps, Newman corresponded with Acland on the prayers for union. Also at about this time, Newman preached a sermon, “Weapons of the Saints,” which referred to the humility expressed in Mary’s Magnificat. And in a letter to Henry Wilberforce, he confided to his friend that he had been repeating the words, “All generations shall call me blessed,” which opens this Marian canticle.45 Newman did not object to following the example of the Mother of Christ, but did object to excesses in external devotion and preaching about her.
Newman wrote a letter to Nicholas Wiseman to explain his position, but he never sent it. He insisted that Catholics should improve their tone, remove abuses and conciliate Anglicans in words and deeds. “Such conduct on both sides must tend eventually to unity, in God’s time, though, it may be, not in our day.”46 Newman continued to argue for corporate reunion and opposed individual conversions. A few weeks later, on October 13, he wrote another letter to Wiseman, which also was never sent. For the first time in correspondence, Newman spelled out four specific points that he suggested Roman Catholics do in their efforts to achieve unity with Anglicans. They must 1) aid the Conservative party, 2) admit what is wrong and defective in their own body, 3) win the hearts of their enemies by acts of mercy, and 4) instead of directing their attention to members of the Church of England, direct their attention first to the religiously ignorant in the cities and to the Dissenting bodies.47 With this in mind, Newman believed that progress must be made prudently and that unity would be achieved by a Church body, not by individuals.
FEAR OF INDIVIDUAL CONVERSIONS
Throughout all of 1841, Newman was very concerned that Anglicans, and in particular Tractarians, would become Roman Catholics. His advice to those considering converting to Roman Catholicism was the same: patience and prayer as well as trust in Divine Providence. For Newman, conversion to Roman Catholicism was an act of private judgment in religious matters. He told his friends that in matters of religion no one should act on private judgment and wrote an essay for the British Critic on this very subject. He argued that the Anglican Church had, despite its isolation from other Christianity at large, notes of true Catholicism.
Newman made it clear to his bishop and to others that his intention with Tract 90 had been to keep people within the Anglican Church. He had had in mind people who would go over to Rome if forced to renounce a Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles. His friends’ letter expressing that they found comfort in this interpretation of the Articles confirmed Newman’s concern.
Newman felt great responsibility not to mislead men who looked up to him, and he felt the constant scrutiny of the public eye. Some junior men at Oxford said, “I will go if N. goes” or “Would you go over if K and N did?”48 Some friends asked him questions about future events, which Newman did not wish to think about yet. At the start of 1841 he wrote his friend Henry Wilberforce, who was contemplating conversion to Roman Catholicism, “How long do you want before you turn R. C.? will two years do? Let me know this important point.”49 Toward the end of 1841, following the condemnation of Tract 90 and other significant events, Newman then told various friends, including Henry Wilberforce, that he did not discard the possibility of one day going over to Rome, but not suddenly.50 Even then Newman was concerned with countering the rumor that he and others were seceding to Rome.51
Miss Holmes wrote Newman about her desire to become Roman Catholic. Newman tried to dissuade her by telling her that one should not act on first inspirations. She should instead think and pray about God’s will, “To any friend who asked me what to do, I should prescribe three years, during which his thoughts and prayers should be directed this one way, to learn God’s will.”52 This is what Newman did in his own case.
Miss Holmes was especially drawn by the Roman Catholic teaching on Transubstantiation. Newman did not accept this doctrine but believed that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Christ. He told Miss Holmes that “The Presence of Christ is still with us” in the Most Holy Sacrament.53 Days earlier, on November 28, he had preached for the first time the “Invisible Presence of Christ” in which he argued that Christ’s Presence was experienced through the service, sermons, the Most Holy Sacrament, the religious seasons and other personal communications.54 When Christ said that the Kingdom of God is within you, He was teaching that God acts inwardly, “touching the secret heart.” In the unsettled situation of the Church, Christ’s interior presence in the Christian is a source of consolation: “Since then, in this our age, He has in judgment obscured the visible and public notes of His Kingdom among us, what a mercy is it to us that He has not deprived us of such as are personal and private!”55
Newman told Miss Holmes that when individuals leave a religion they are acting upon private judgment. He advised her to wait and see if the English Church got better or worse, and then to move with others, but not alone. In the “Invisible Presence of Christ” Newman echoed this sentiment: “When, then, we are overwhelmed, as we well may be, at the confusion of all things around us, as Psalmists and Prophets have been before us, let us turn to the thought of that gift which Psalmists and Prophets had not as we may have, and which is personal and incommunicable and unspeakable, but known to religious men.”56
Newman told Miss Holmes that the Church of England was a true branch of the Church and that she should be content to be placed by God in it. He said of himself: “In her I have been baptized, and the question is, why am I to change? Rather is it not God’s will that I should labour in it, with the hope of amending what is wanting in it?”57 In November Newman insisted once more that Miss Holmes wait because she was risking schism, even if the Church of Rome were right.
To another friend, Samuel Wood, who worried that Newman was about to become Roman Catholic, Newman wrote, “I trust I have been favored with a much more definitive view of the (promised) inward evidence of the Presence of Christ with us in the Sacraments, now that the outward notes of it are being removed.”58 Wood was unsettled about becoming Roman Catholic and Newman advised him to do some penance. Wood replied that he “would leave all external changes to wiser heads” than his and that until Newman and Robert Williams left the Church he would mind his own business.59 As far as penance goes, he told Newman that he had gained good advice from St. Francis de Sales, which was presumably the value of small acts of self-denial. Wood sent Newman a copy of De Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God.
Despite Newman’s efforts, some Anglican clergymen became Roman Catholics. This was the case with Mr. Francis Wackerbath, a clergyman from the Lichfield Cathedral. Richard Waldo Sibthorp was another clergyman who became Roman Catholic after visiting Oscott. When Sibthorp was about to set out for Oscott, Newman had warned him not to go there, but he went anyway.60
Newman wrote to another friend, Richard Westamacott, “I have not thought whatever of going over to Rome, or letting others—but I have a great wish to make our Church more Catholic in its tone, and to introduce into it the good points of Rome—and if the consequence is a more friendly feeling between the Churches, it may tend to the improvement of Rome itself.”61 He admitted that both Churches have their excellences and that both are injured by enmity, but commented that if some individuals went over to Rome it would only do harm.
Newman continued to think that corporate reunion was not possible then, and he argued against individual conversions. He wrote Phillipps: “I must ask your leave to repeat on this occasion most distinctly that I cannot be a party to any agitation, but mean to remain quiet in my own place, and to do all I can to make others take the same course.”62 Despite his intentions it was impossible for Newman to stay still because the matters at hand were too important. He was soon at the center of a heated university contest over the election of a new Professor of Poetry; the contest had a strong religious element.
POETRY PROFESSORSHIP
John Keble, who had been Professor of Poetry, was expected to retire after the maximum of two five-year terms. He wished Isaac Williams, a talented Latinist, to succeed him to the Chair of Poetry. Unexpectedly, James Garbett, a less qualified Evangelical clergyman from Brasenose College, said that he would run against Williams. A heated controversy arose at Oxford over the contest. Williams was identified with the Tractarians and their Church Principles. Williams could withdraw from the contest, but retreat would seem equivalent to defeat of Church Principles. Newman, consumed with the idea of this contest, considered the opposition to Williams as one more affront in a series of disavowals by the University and feared that Williams’s defeat would embolden Convocation to “drive the Tractarians out of the university.”63 Newman complained to his friends that for eight years he and his friends had not only not been encouraged; they had been silenced by the bishops. The Record and its ultra-Evangelical sponsors wrote against Williams. The Standard also agitated against the Tractarians.
The academic contest between Williams and Garbett became a heated one; it was a party battle reminiscent of earlier ones. In 1837 and 1839, the Tractarians had opposed on religious grounds the nomination of F. D. Maurice to the chair of Political Economy and of H. H. Vaughan to a Logic Praelectorship. For the sake of peace at the University and in the Church, William Gladstone had the university draw up a petition inviting both candidates to withdraw their candidacy and asked Bishop Bagot to intervene. In the end, the President of Trinity College compared pledged votes. Garbett had 921 against 623 for Williams. Given this calculation of the outcome, Williams withdrew his candidacy on January 20, 1842, and shortly afterward James Garbett took the Oxford Chair of Poetry.
Williams’s loss was emblematic of the powerful opposition by Oxford men to the Catholic principles in the English Church. Newman had fought for Williams’s election precisely for fear that his loss would further embolden those who opposed the Tractarian ideals. Newman kept his allegiance to the Anglican Church, but during 1841, he encountered other serious objections to its external notes as part of the Catholic Church.
THREE DECISIVE BLOWS CONCERNING THE
ANGLICAN CHURCH
The initial reaction of the university authorities to Tract 90 was a heavy blow to Newman, but from July to November of 1841, Newman experienced three other blows that shook his convictions regarding the Anglican Church.64 As a result of these, he began to doubt seriously that the Anglican Church was a true branch of the Catholic Church and turned his attention more to Rome. During this year he became more familiar with the mentality and devotion of Roman Catholics through his dealing with Roman Catholic priests and through the books that Fr. Russell had given him, in particular the Sermons of St. Alphonse Liguori.
The first blow came with Newman’s study of the Arian Heresy. In 1841, while studying once more St. Athanasius and the Arian Heresy, Newman was gripped again by the thought he first had in 1839. He realized that the Arians were equivalent to the Protestants; the semi-Arians were like the Anglicans, and Rome held the position she had always had. “The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called ‘the extreme party.’”65
The second blow was the censure of Tract 90 by many of the bishops. At the start of the year only a few bishops had voiced their disapproval, but by the end of the year seven had denounced it in their triennial charges, and even more did so in the following year.66 Newman had kept silent about Tract 90 under a tacit “understanding” with Bishop Bagot that the Tract would not be censured or removed. Newman felt betrayed and dejected;67 while he tried to defend the Catholic principles of the Anglican Church, the bishops disowned them. He thought that the bishops were making the Church Protestant. The different Charges repudiated practices of ancient Christianity in favor of the Reformers of the Church of England. They accused Newman of party spirit and fanaticism and claimed that his Catholic interpretation of the Articles was mere sophistry.68
Some of these bishops were intolerant of those who held orthodox beliefs and punished them. One such case was the refusal of the bishop of Winchester, C. R. Sumner, to ordain Peter Young, a deacon who was Keble’s curate at Hursley. The bishop was upset by Young’s denial of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as merely figurative. Keble felt that it was a “deliberate beginning of serious vexation on the part of authority.”69 The Record described the rejection of Young as a defense against encroaching Puseyism, the name given to the position of Pusey’s disciples, and boasted two other victories for the Protestant cause: Jenkyns had removed W. G. Ward from his Tutorship and Dr. Hawkins had likewise removed R. W. Church.
In September, C. R. Sumner came out with a Charge in which he protested against the Oxford Tract writers on six grounds. One was their denial of the doctrine of Justification by faith alone, and another was Tract 90’s method of interpreting the Articles. Keble was worried that his bishop wished him to resign from his living.70 Regarding his curate, James R. Hope advised Keble to ask Bishop Sumner to have Young’s case studied by a diocesan commission and sent to the Court of Arches (of the Province of Canterbury) for a definitive judgment.71 In the end, Keble decided to send a Protest to the Archbishop. With respect to his own standing in the diocese, Keble asked Bishop Sumner if he had permission to remain in the diocese.
After the blows derived from the study of the Arian Heresy, and the censure of Tract 90, came the third and perhaps strongest blow to Newman. It was the plan concocted in 1841 by the government and William Howley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to establish an Anglican bishop in Jerusalem with jurisdiction over a body of Anglicans, Lutherans, and other Christians. It was a political move to increase English political presence in Jerusalem. For Newman, the plan entailed complete disregard for the spiritual and doctrinal nature of the Church.
The king of Germany, Frederick William IV, wished to carry out a reorganization of the Evangelical communion in Germany by establishing ten metropolitan bishops. The king was inspired by ideas from Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity and Baron Christian J. Bunsen, a Protestant clergyman. Bunsen was a German married to an English woman and an admirer of the English Church and the ideas of Dr. Thomas Arnold. Archbishop Howley, Bishop Blomfield, and Lord Anthony Ashley, a social reformer and Oxford graduate, together with the Evangelicals, favored the scheme advanced by Bunsen.
Bishop Blomfield asked William Gladstone to be a trustee of the funds for this project and of plans for the new diocese. At first Gladstone went along with the idea, but soon realized it was fraught with ecclesiastical and theological difficulties. Gladstone sought Hope’s advice who, in turn, wrote to Newman for advice on both the ecclesial implications of such a union and the theological grounds for it. Newman’s reply was summed up in a letter to Jemima: “It is a formal recognition of the Protestants by communicating with them as a Church without reconciliation on their part.”72 If this new diocese were accepted, it would undercut the Branch Theory and therefore the Anglican claim to catholicity.
Gladstone realized that Howley and Blomfield did not wish to consult the body of the bishops, and that their project approximated the English Church to Protestant communions. The plan did not distinguish between Orthodox and heretical Churches of the East. With this realization, Gladstone wrote a long letter to Bishop Blomfield in which he declined the trusteeship.73
Newman thought that the scheme was a totally misguided one. In a letter that he unsuccessfully attempted to publish in The Times, he argued that the Church should not advance political ends, nor should episcopacy be forced on German Protestants who did not hold orthodox Catholic principles. “Surely it is an evil great enough to find Bishop heretics, without going on to make heretics Bishops.”74 Newman told Bowden that if this took place, “I shall not be able to keep a single man from Rome.”75
Newman explained that, except for travelers, some officials, and a few Jewish converts, there were no Anglicans in Jerusalem. He pointed out the absurdity of having Anglicans and Lutherans under the same bishop without regard to doctrinal disparity. Lastly, there was even talk of Turkish Druses and Monophysites uniting under an English bishop. Newman said that this would be the last straw that breaks the horse’s back.76 Dr. Michael Solomon Alexander, a Polish Jew and convert to Christianity, who had taken Anglican Orders and taught Hebrew at King’s College, London, was chosen to be Bishop of Jerusalem. In October, he was consecrated bishop by Archbishop Howley. Newman commented that the Archbishop “is doing all he can do to unchurch us.”77
Newman wrote a formal protest, which he sent to Bishop Bagot. Newman told Hope that Protestants required agreement in doctrine rather than bishops. Anglicans required Confirmation before receiving Holy Communion. The Protestants would have neither and yet wished to be admitted into ecclesiastical communion.78 Newman asked rhetorically, “are we to set up bishops over Methodist, Baptists and Unitarians?”79 He told Woodgate, “I repeat, if we are now to recognize the Protestants as Catholic brethren (a question which was open till this Jerusalem matter) the ground is cut from under me. I shall have taught people that there is a Church,—somewhere—and the Archbishop will teach them it is not to be found at home.”80
Newman finally broke his silence and spoke about the Church’s state from the pulpit of St. Mary’s. On four consecutive Sundays, starting November 28th, Newman preached his Samaritan Sermons on the Notes of the Church. He used Scripture to interpret the situation of the English Church, comparing it to Samaria, the northern kingdom of Israel when it was separated from Judah. In that biblical situation, the Prophet Elijah, who lived in the northern kingdom, had not told the people to go to worship in Jerusalem. The sermons were later published in the volume of Sermons on Subjects of the Day.81 In the sermons, Newman offered arguments to keep people within the English Church, but his faith in the Anglican Church had been shattered.82 Newman spoke of the Invisible Presence of God in the Church. “Since then, in this our age, He has in judgment obscured the visible and public notes of His Kingdom among us, what a mercy is it to us that He has not deprived us of such as are personal and private!” 83
Newman’s arguments were no longer in defense of the Anglican Church, but an invitation to trust in God’s Providence and to remain where one had been placed by God. An important reason for remaining in the Anglican Church was Christ’s Invisible Presence within it. “And we will cling to the Church in which we are, not for its own sake, but because we humbly trust that Christ is in it; and while He is in it, we will abide in it. He shall leave before we do.”84
A private experience may have led Newman to speak thus about God’s sacramental presence in the Church.85 He had hinted to his friends, Samuel Wood and Miss Holmes, of having been favored with an inward evidence of the Presence of Christ in the sacraments. Wilfrid Ward soon told people that Newman had “seen Our Lord” in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Newman naturally tried to put an end to the rumors, but his strong yet restrained feelings in “The Invisible Presence of Christ” suggest that he may have actually had such a unique experience of God’s love. In this sermon he said:
[I]f you have come to Service, and been favoured with the peace or the illumination you needed; or if you can recollect times when you visited holy places, and certainly gained there a manifestation such as the world could not give; or if sermons have come to you with power, and have been blessed to your spiritual good; or if your soul has been, as it were, transfigured within you, when you came to the Most Holy Sacrament … O! pause ere you doubt that we have a Divine Presence among us still, and have not to seek it.86
Newman drew strength from the Holy Eucharist and prayer in general, but as he later wrote in his Apologia, “From the end of 1841, I was on my deathbed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church, though at the time I became aware of it only by degrees.”87 The absurd project of the government and the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish a joint Anglican–Lutheran Episcopal See in Jerusalem had brought Newman “to the beginning of the end”; but he later considered this “one of the greatest mercies” bestowed on him by God.88 Newman realized that he could no longer sustain that the Anglican Church was one of the three branches of the Church.
Newman still felt Anglican, but for him, Anglican meant Catholic. Although he defended himself, he was shunned by many Anglicans, including the bishops in authority. There was little room for Catholic principles in the Established English Church of the mid-nineteenth century. There was no longer room for Newman and some of his Tractarian friends in the Anglican Communion. Understandably, Newman was upset that many people asked him what he would do in the future. He simply wished to do what was right, acting day by day without anticipating the future.
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1Tract 90, notice, 261.
2Tract 90, 276.
3Tract 90, 315, ed. 1883.
4Tract 90, 353, ed. 1883.
5PPS, (Ignatius Edition) Vol. VI, “The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church,” 1262-1271; 1269.
6Tract 90, 298.
7LD, Vol. VIII, E. B. Pusey to Philip Wynter (March 12, 1841), 73-74.
8LD, Vol. VIII, Censure on Tract 90, 77.
9LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. W. Bowden (March 15, 1841), 77.
10LD, Vol. VIII, footnote, 76.
11LD, Vol. VIII, Mrs. T. Mozley to JHN (March 14, 1841), 67.
12LD, Vol. VIII, A. P. Perceval to JHN (March 10, 1841), 68.
13LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to R. W. Jelf, Canon of Christ Church, in Explanation of No. 90, in the Series called Tracts for the Times (March 13, 1841), 79.
14Ibid, 78-88; 80.
15Ibid., 84.
16Ibid. 78-88; 80.
17Ibid., 85.
18Ibid., 87.
19LD, Vol. VIII, Frederick Oakeley to E. B. Pusey (March 15, 1841), 95.
20Pusey, Vol. II, Liddon, 190.
21LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to E. B. Pusey (March 24, 1841), 115-17; 115.
22LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Miss M. R. Giberne (October 17, 1841), 298-99; 298.
23LD, VIII, JHN to Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford (March 29, 1841), 129-44, 142.
24Ibid., 143.
25Ibid.
26LD, Vol. VIII, J. F. Christie to JHN (April 10, 1841), 171.
27LD, VIII, Frederick Rogers to JHN (December 9, 1840), 7-10, 12.
28LD, VIII, F. Rogers to JHN (no date, 1840), 29.
29LD, Vol. III, W. G. Ward to E. B. Pusey (December 6, 1841), 364-366; 366.
30Trevor, Newman, Pillar of the Cloud, 251.
31LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. R. Bloxam (February 23, 1841), 41-43, 42.
32Trevor, Newman, Pillar of the Cloud, 252-253.
33LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. R. Bloxam (February 23, 1841), 41-43, 42-43.
34Ibid., 43.
35LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. R. Bloxam (March 2, 1841), 48-50, 49.
36Ibid., 50.
37LD, Vol. VIII, R. Wiseman to JHN (May, 1841), 195.
38LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. R. Bloxam (March 2, 1841), 48-50; 50.
39LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. R. Bloxam (March 3, 1841), 51.
40LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. R. Bloxam (June 27, 1841), 210-11.
41Ibid. 279.
42LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Ambrose L. Phillipps (April 7, 1841), 165.
43Ibid.
44LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to George Spencer (August 19, 1841), 251.
45LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Henry William Wilberforce (October 27, 1841), 310.
46LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Nicholas Wiseman (October 14, 1841), 297-98; 298. The letter was not sent.
47Ibid.
48LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Henry Wilberforce (November 8, 1841), 320-322; 322.
49LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Henry William Wilberforce (March 1, 1841), 45-46; 46.
50LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Henry Wilberforce (November 8, 1841), 320-22; 321.
51LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Mrs. J. Mozley (November 16, 1841), 334-35; 334.
52LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Miss Holmes (August 8, 1841), 238-39.
53LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Miss Holmes (December 6, 1841), 366-67; 366.
54“Invisible Presence of Christ,” in OS, 308-23.
55Ibid., 318.
56S.D., “Invisible Presence of Christ”, n. 21, 319.
57LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Miss Holmes (August 15, 1841), 247-49; 248.
58LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to S. F. Wood (December 13, 1841), 374-75; 375.
59LD, Vol. VIII, S. F. Wood to JHN (December 28, 1841), 375.
60LD, Vol. XXIX, JHN to John Fowler (April 12, 1881), 363.
61LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Richard Westmacott (April 8, 1841), 166-67, 167.
62LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Ambrose L. Phillipps (June 28 1841), 213-14.
63Ibid., 339.
64Apo., 139-46.
65Apo., 139. Morales,Newman, (1801–1890), 111.
66By 1844, twenty-four bishops had censured Tract 90. Trevor, Newman, Pillar of the Cloud, 257.
67Apo., 139.
68“1841-1842, Bishops Charging,” in Trevor, Newman, Pillar of the Cloud, 249-62, 258-59.
69Ibid., 227.
70LD, Vol. VIII, John Keble to JHN (September 30, 1841), 286.
71LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to John Keble (December 26, 1841), 389-90; 389.
72LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Mrs. J. Mozley (November 21, 1841), 338-41; 340.
73Ibid., W. E. Gladstone to the Bishop of London (Nov. 30, 1841), 249-54.
74LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to the Editor of the Times (November 1, 1841), 314-16; 316.
75LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. W. Bowden (October 10, 1841), 288-89; 289.
76LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to J. W. Bowden (October 12, 1841), 294-96; 295.
77LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to Mrs. T. Mozley and Mrs. J. Mozley (October 12, 1841), 296-97; 297.
78LD, Vol. VIII, J. R. Hope to JHN (November 30, 1841), 346.
79Ibid., 347.
80LD, Vol. VIII, JHN to H. A. Woodgate (November 12, 1841), 326-27; 327.
81SD, sermons nn. 21, 22, 23, and 24.
82Apo., 143.
83SD, n. 21, “Invisible Presence of Christ,” 318.
84Ibid., 322-23.
85Trevor, Newman, Pillar of the Cloud, 261-62.
86SD, n. 21, “Invisible Presence of Christ,” 321-22.
87Apo., 147.
88Apo., 146.