Chapter 30: Newman’s Resignation from St. Mary’s University Church
CHAPTER 30
NEWMAN’S RESIGNATION FROM
ST. MARY’S UNIVERSITY CHURCH
AFTER more than two years of voluntary withdrawal to Littlemore, Newman’s situation in the Anglican Church failed to improve. Although Newman dedicated a great deal of time to a new writing project, he inevitably felt more and more out of communion with the Anglican Church. He debated whether he could retain his post as Vicar of St. Mary’s; he had considered resigning from St. Mary’s for over two years. He had consulted with Keble, who had urged him to remain. In January, he wrote to a friend: “I have such a dreadful impression of our corruptions and heresies and unrealities, viewing us a body, that holiness of individuals, and the good that is doing in external and on its surface, are insufficient to overcome this deep despondency …”1 Newman believed that the English Church “had been so radically Protestantized.”2
Newman’s growing dissatisfaction with the English Church contributed to his retraction of anti-Catholic statements. The retraction appeared at the end of January in the Oxford Conservative Journal under the headline “Oxford and Rome.” Other local papers and the English Churchman reprinted the retraction. The Churchman agreed with Newman in censuring his own hard words and insults against Catholics, and called for “well-weighed and temperate statements of ‘Anglican doctrine,’ and a recurrence to Anglican practices and discipline in all their details.”3 Soon afterward the Roman Catholic Dublin Review also reprinted Newman’s words.
Oddly, the retraction was anonymous, but people immediately recognized it as Newman’s. The wealthy Catholic, Ambrose Phillipps, wrote Newman, congratulating him for what he termed God’s goodness shown in this act of humility on the part of Newman.4 With the letter he sent a copy of a “Prayer for England” composed some years earlier by Fr. Dominic Barbieri. However, Golightly and others were quick to criticize Newman. He was censured by the bishops and ostracized in the Anglican Church. He felt unsettled and more and more a Roman at heart. This made him feel guilty, for people still thought him to be an Anglican. He told his friend William Henry Wilberforce, “Yet what can I do? how is it possible to give men the right impression of what I would say, when every word is sure to be misunderstood, every admission to be exaggerated, every avowal to be but a hint of what is unsaid?”5 Newman no longer had confidence in his Anglican beliefs and was worried by the thought of unsetthng others, who still had confidence in him. He told William, “It is so very difficult to steer between being hypocritical, and revolutionary.”6
Pusey assured Newman that he was loved and respected by many.7 Newman thanked his friend for the kind words, but confessed that for some years he had lacked confidence in himself and consequently wished for others to have less in him.8 Pusey tried to calm Newman’s worries that he might be misleading people. He wrote Newman: “Any how, young men ought to trust you, and cannot help it; it is plainly part of God’s appointments; He draws people around you, in the first instance against your will, in a way they are drawn around no other; and since such is His will, it will be yours to accept it.”9 He acknowledged that for Newman this entailed suffering, but that he should accept the cross that God wished him to carry.
Newman’s state of mind was one of uncertainty, and not surprisingly he acted with prudence and advised others to do the same. In a candid letter to Miss Holmes, he admitted his own condition and counseled her not to visit the Roman Catholic, Dr. Wiseman: “Do consider that you are about to be submitted to temptation; that is, the temptation of acting, not on judgment but on feeling. Your feelings are in favor of Rome, so are mine—your judgment is against joining it—so is mine. Yet I would not trust myself among R[oman] Catholics without recollecting how apt feeling is to get the better of judgment—and I warn you of the same.”10
THOUGHTS OF RESIGNATION FROM ST. MARY’S
Aware of his feelings and conscious of his responsibility as a pastor at St. Mary’s, Newman once again thought of resignation. He had first considered this in 1840, and had spoken to Keble about it. Now he did so again. Newman told Keble that the undergraduates attended his services and sermons against the wishes of their Tutors. Newman realized that the influence that he exerted was in the direction of the Church of Rome. At one time he had tried to balance this by making strong statements against Rome, but now he could no longer do that. What worried Newman most was that almost all the English bishops had censured Tract 90, and in conscience he could only hold his position at St. Mary’s based on his commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles in which he asserted their compatibility with Roman doctrines.11 With the almost unanimous rejection of his Tract by the bishops, he thought he had nothing to fall back upon. Newman wished to retain his pastoral work at Littlemore by separating Littlemore from St. Mary’s. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel, had declined this petition in 1840. Newman would not be allowed to keep Littlemore.12 Charles Eden, a Tutor six years Newman’s junior, was ready to take St. Mary’s and Littlemore.
In May, Newman told Keble that as a beneficed clergyman he wished to quietly withdraw instead of being asked to take the Oath of Supremacy, and in conscience having to refuse.13 Newman considered that he could no longer teach at St. Mary’s without misleading younger men who had faith in him. While entertaining these thoughts, Newman worked hard at finding writers for a series titled The Lives of English Saints. Newman had conceived this project as a way of directing the attention of persons who were in danger of leaving the Church of England to go from doctrine to history, and from speculation to fact. He wished for them to find “interest in English soil and to keep them from seeking sympathy in Rome and her views.”14 It was also Newman’s way of staying away from controversial subjects and arousing suspicion and criticism. He instructed contributors to stay away from doctrinal subjects. He wanted to give the public an account of the holy lives of native saints, in many cases somewhat obscure, and he hoped that this scheme would actually support the ideas of Tract 90 by presenting the beliefs and practices of Ante-Reformation times.
PUSEY CENSURED
Newman was not the only Tractarian attacked by the Liberals at Oxford. Newman’s enemies turned on Pusey on the occasion of a sermon on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which he delivered on the Fourth Sunday of Easter at the Oxford Cathedral, May 14, 1843. Dr. Faussett, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, lodged a formal complaint with the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Wynter. Pusey was accused of holding the Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation. Wynter convened six doctors, including Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, and Faussett himself, and summarily censured Pusey, and suspended him as university preacher for two years. A bewildered Pusey sought Newman’s advice. In his characteristic manner, Newman worked behind the scenes and consulted with his friends, Badeley, James Scott, and Roundel Palmer, all experts in ecclesiastical law. After various consultations, it was decided not to pursue a legal suit against the Vice-Chancellor.
People quickly compared Pusey’s censure to that of the Regius Professor of Divinity, Renn Dickson Hampden, but it was altogether a different case. Hampden’s opinions were in 1836 specifically detailed in extracts from his writings, and he, unlike Pusey, knew the specific accusations lodged against him.15 The action by the university authorities was an abuse of power and justice, but despite appeals, the Vice-Chancellor and his “Star Chamber” remained adamant that they were complying with university statutes.
The censure of Pusey, a respected Hebrew scholar, as well as an exceptional family man and generous almsgiver, was part of a much larger attack on anything that hinted at Catholic principles and practices traditionally accepted by the Anglican Church. The previous year, Keble’s curate had not been admitted to Orders for holding traditional views. Within the same week as Pusey’s sermon, another clergyman, Thomas Edward Morris, preaching also at Christ Church Cathedral, was accused to the Chancellor for referring to William Laud as “the martyred Archbishop, who let us trust, still intercedes for the Church.”16 Richard Church, wrote years later about the atmosphere at this time, saying a “climate of jealousy, mistrust, miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the most slanderous and sometimes of the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over Oxford.” The Heads of Colleges and their Tutors were at odds; candidates for Fellowships were closely examined on their opinions, as were candidates for Holy Orders. They were cross-examined over the infallibility of General councils, Purgatory, the worship of images, the Ora pro nobis, and the intercession of saints.
Pusey published his sermon and protested to the Vice-Chancellor for his unjust treatment, yet humbly endured the censure. In July, a striking juxtaposition occurred. While Pusey was censured for holding orthodox Anglican teaching on the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, an American who had once been a Unitarian minister was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford. The students were outraged by this and were so vocal interrupting the University Commemoration that the University gathering was dissolved before the awards ceremony. That same month Faussett was unanimously reelected as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity.
Although The Lives of the English Saints and Pusey’s censure took up much of Newman’s attention, Newman spent much energy and time, as in the immediately preceding years, trying to dissuade Anglican friends from becoming Roman Catholic.
ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE CONVERTS
One of these friends was Charles B. Bridges, a graduate from Oriel who had been living at Littlemore since October of the previous year. Edward Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel, wrote Newman to tell him that Bridges was in danger of joining the communion of Rome. Hawkins asked Newman to counsel him. In correspondence with the Provost it became clear that Newman only knew in general about Bridges’s unsettled religious ideas. Newman had accepted him at Littlemore, hoping that Bridges would resolve his difficulties, but Newman did not ask Bridges any particulars, because he refrained from asking people for their religious beliefs. He did not ask people for their beliefs unless they wished to speak about them.
The case with Miss Holmes was quite different. She told Newman about her changing emotional state of mind and asked him many questions. As was expected, Newman counseled self-control. He wrote to her, “All your powers of mind and capacities of usefulness will go for nothing, till you use them. They will war against each other, like a country in insurrection. You are in one frame of mind one day, another the next. You depend on what people say of you.”17 He counseled her to seek peace in prayer, and recommended that she read The Spiritual Combat, a book on the spiritual life by Laurence Scupoli, a Catholic priest. Earlier, Newman had also suggested that she read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis and not put aside the reading of Sacred Scripture.18 Besides seeking advice from Newman, she sought advice from Oakeley. In doing so, she wore Newman’s patience thin. He wrote to her, “You cannot tell half to Mr. O. and half to me—tell him all, or me all. If you tell me all, I can advise you, if you tell him, he can advise you.”19
Still Newman continued to advise Miss Holmes. She wanted to become Roman Catholic, and to enter a convent as a nun. Newman, who knew her better than she knew herself, did not think she was fit for conventual life. And even more, he told her that she was not ready to become Roman Catholic, running the risk of leaving that communion after a short while. That same year, Richard Sibthorp, a Fellow from Magdalen College, who had become Roman Catholic in 1841, had reverted to the Anglican Communion. Thus, Newman advised Miss Holmes, “I cannot conceive a more painful situation, [than] that for a person to find himself joined, committed irreversibly, to the Church of Rome—and then to find he wanted something more or less, which he could not get.”20
Ambrose St. John was a young clergyman and Fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford, whom Henry Wilberforce introduced to Newman in June of 1843. Ambrose agreed to write the life of St. Simon Stock for the series of Lives. In July, while assisting the vicar of a country parish, Ambrose wrote to Newman confiding in him worries about taking the oath for the Thirty-Nine Articles. In particular, Ambrose believed that he could not profess what the Articles state about Transubstantiation and Invocation of Saints. Ambrose thought that the notion of Transubstantiation in the Catechism of the Council of Trent was correct, and that when the Anglican Church condemned the word “Transubstantiation” it meant something quite different from what the Church of Rome meant. He also believed that it was the will of God for men to ask the saints for their prayers, and especially the Virgin Mary.21
In a reply letter, Newman sympathized with Ambrose and offered him a place to stay at Littlemore. Newman, however, wished Ambrose to have a place to pray and think for himself rather than give him answers to his doubts. He told the young man, “It is no good my attempting to offer advice, when perhaps I might raise difficulties instead of removing them. It seems to me quite a case in which you should, as far as may be, make up your mind for yourself.”22 Acting this way was not false humility on Newman’s part; on the one hand, he was unsure of himself, but more importantly he felt a sacred obligation to teach the Anglican faith without leading others to Rome.
In August, Ambrose moved in with the community at Littlemore. Dalgairns and Bridges were living with Newman. Frederick Bowles, who since December of the previous year was Newman’s curate at Littlemore, was temporarily kept away from Littlemore by his mother, whose daughter Emily had been received that year into the Roman Catholic Church. A few years later both Frederick and his mother also became Roman Catholic.
Another case was that of Charles Seager, a married man and a scholar at Worcester College, who was Pusey’s assistant in Hebrew. At the start of 1842, Pusey asked Newman to help keep Seager from falling into Roman errors, but Newman’s attempts were in vain. Seager’s conversion was a source of pain and embarrassment for Pusey, and his enemies seized the occasion to belittle him. Concerns with possible converts had become a common part of daily life for Newman, but he managed to carry on with his work on the Lives, and normal life at Littlemore. During this time he considered when would be the best moment to resign.
RESIGNATION FROM ST. MARY’S
Newman’s resignation, however, was precipitated by unexpected events. On August 25, William Lockhart wrote to Newman to inform him that he was about to begin a retreat under Fr. Gentili after which he would most likely become Roman Catholic. He asked Newman and those at Littlemore to pray for him to know God’s will. At the end of the retreat, Lockhart became a Roman Catholic, and Newman reported this to Bishop Bagot. Lockhart’s mother corresponded with Newman, and she thanked him for all he had done to try to keep her son an Anglican. A few years later, however, Mrs. Lockhart, like Mrs. Bowles, became Roman Catholic.
Newman wrote to his sister Jemima, “As to Lockhart’s matter, I own that, were there no other reason, it would be sufficient to have made me resign (if left to myself). It is a very great scandal under the circumstances—and I could not hold up my head again as Vicar of St Mary’s.”23 Newman felt he could no longer keep his position as Vicar of St. Mary’s, and in September he submitted his letter of resignation to the bishop. He wished to remain in “lay communion,” that is, a layman in the Church of England.
Newman had contemplated this step for over two years, and in March of 1843, he had written once more a long letter to Keble laying out the reasons that were prompting him to resign from St. Mary’s. Keble replied that he thought the time had come for Newman to retire from St. Mary’s, but “I am not sure that I should say this, if it involved your retiring from the exercise of the Ministry.” He agreed with Newman that by managing to keep Littlemore he would be able to give advice to people’s consciences and avoid the appearance that he was recklessly throwing away what Providence had given to him. Newman, however, was not allowed to keep St. Mary’s at Littlemore.
On Sunday, September 25, 1843, Newman presided at his last service at Littlemore, and delivered his farewell sermon, “The Parting of Friends.” In this homily Newman spoke of God’s plans and blessings. King David was not allowed by God to build a temple, but he had rejoiced in God’s presence. Although Newman had built a temple, with a certain sadness he compared himself to David: “We too, at this season, year by year, have been allowed in our measure, according to our work and our faith, to rejoice in God’s presence, for this sacred building which He has given us to worship Him in.”24 With gratefulness but heavy heart, after seven years, a symbol of perfection, Newman spoke of his exodus as that of the Israelites from Egypt.25 Alluding to the Anglican Church, he lamented that his Mother had abandoned the one who would have died for her.26
Newman closed the sermon with a touching description of his solicitude for those who had been under his care, and he asked for their prayers, “remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and pray for him, that in all things he may know God’s will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfill it.”27 After the sermon Newman received communion, and then stopped officiating the service. Pusey continued, although overcome with emotions. Many years later Newman’s friend, Edward Bellasis, wrote:
[T]he sermon I can never forget, the faltering voice, the long pauses, the perceptible and hardly successful efforts at restraining himself, together with the deep interest of the subject, were almost overpowering; Newman’s voice was low, but distinct and clear, and his subject was a half-veiled complaint and remonstrance at the treatment which drove him away.28
Bellasis concluded his reminiscence: “And thus the services of the greatest man of our times, the acutest and most laborious, and most energetic of the sons of the English Church is lost to us, he retires into lay communion.”29
While drafting his resignation letter, Newman heard the unexpected news that his brother-in-law, Tom Mozley, was going to resign from the British Critic and was about to become Roman Catholic. Newman was alarmed. Tom had been in Normandy, accompanying Harriet, who was recuperating from fatigue brought about by insomnia. There, Tom had become friends with two good Catholic priests (brothers) and their sister, and Tom had embraced the desire of becoming Roman Catholic. As he received the news, Newman wrote to Tom and asked him not to act in haste. Newman told him, “If you ask me, I must plainly tell you that you are under excitement, and in no fit state to act for yourself.”30
Matters were worsened because Harriet thought Newman was an accomplice to her husband’s sudden plans. Newman was particularly concerned with the abruptness of Tom’s decision made without adequate warning to his wife, considering the harm this would cause. In the end, on September 4, he traveled to Cholderton, just north of Salisbury, where Tom lived, and persuaded him to wait for at least two years before taking his proposed step and advised him to finish the restoration of his parish church. Tom desisted from his plans to become Roman Catholic, but he resigned from the editorship of the British Critic. Tom’s last article, titled “Six Doctors,” appeared in the July 1834 issue of the British Critic, the last issue under the hands of the Tractarians. The article was a severe criticism of Pusey’s secret trial and unjust censure.
The reactions to Newman’s resignation were to be expected. His friends were sympathetic while his enemies were happy to see him go. Bishop Bagot did not try to stop Newman or lament his loss. He only asked him to submit a notarized letter of resignation. Newman had not given the bishop his reasons for resigning, but there was almost no need to do so. For any keen observer, it was evident that the hierarchy of the Anglican Church was responsible in great measure for Newman’s step. Newman told his sister Harriet: “I do so despair of the Church of England, I am so evidently cast off by her, and, on the other hand I am so drawn to the Church of Rome, that I think it safer, as a matter of honesty, not to keep my living.”31 By contrast to his treatment by the Anglican bishops, the Episcopal Bishops of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and North Carolina expressed their satisfaction at a proposed American edition of Newman’s Parochial Sermons.32
During this sad and trying time for Newman, Jemima was an affectionate support to her brother. In addition to Keble and Pusey, others such as Manning were also kind to Newman. During 1843, Manning corresponded often with Newman, and upon hearing of Newman’s resignation, Manning expressed his sorrow to him. In subsequent correspondence, Manning asked Newman to consider that it would take more than a few years to change the opinions and prejudices of a whole life in the English Church, and he praised him for all that he had done for the Church. Then with reference to the Church of England, Manning asked rhetorically: “For years, who has been more loved and revered?”33 Finally Manning, who shared Newman’s letters with Gladstone, urged Newman to be more patient.
Newman replied to his friend’s kind note, recounting in a chronological manner the events which had led him to resign.34 He told Manning that he had not acted out of irritation or impatience, but because he thought the Church of Rome to be the Catholic Church, and the Anglican Church no longer in communion with the Catholic Church. Newman held that he could no longer honestly teach in the Anglican Church.
It is hard to imagine the effect and significance of Newman’s resignation. He was no longer acting as a clergyman in the Church of England. For the first time since his appointment as curate at St. Clement’s in 1824, he did not have a Sunday Service, nor did he preach any more. He no longer had the care of parishioners and visits to the sick. This change was the first step in Newman’s formal separation from the Anglican Church. Newman needed some rest, and in October he went away to London. On two Sundays he attended the services at St. Margaret Chapel where Oakeley was the vicar; Newman appreciated the beautiful Gregorian Chant sung in the services. From there, he went to Derby to visit John and Jemima Mozley. Besides speaking with his brother-in-law and sister, he spent time playing with his sister’s children and playing the violin.
Newman was beginning a new and final stage in his life as Anglican. He was figuratively reduced to lay communion in the Anglican Church. After the short visit to family and friends, he continued his extended retreat at Littlemore. Although his position and condition were quite different from what it had been as Vicar of St. Mary’s, Newman had mentally prepared for this inevitable step. There, in the quiet of Littlemore, he followed a demanding plan of spiritual exercises; he continued his study and writing. Visits and correspondence with friends also kept him occupied.
For some time, Newman’s energies remained focused on the publication of The Lives of English Saints. Dalgairns, who was living with Newman at Littlemore, wrote the life of St. Stephen Harding, the first one of the series to be published. It was followed by The Family of St. Richard the Saxon by Thomas Meyrick, an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, and St. Augustine by Frederick Oakeley. Frederick W. Faber was then writing on St. Wilfrid, a seventh-century Archbishop of York. Many others wrote for the series, but both Dalgairns and Faber contributed the most.
Dalgairns acted almost like a son to Newman, and while away visiting his mother, he wrote to Newman, lamenting the extension of his family vacation, and being absent from Littlemore. He humorously remarked that being thrown back upon childhood acquaintances for six weeks, he was not much of a monk any longer.35 Newman addressed him in letters with the affectionate Latin superlative “carissime.”36 Ambrose, Lockhart, and other young men also looked up to Newman with love and admiration.
Despite the intimate following that Newman had, the Tractarian Movement had changed because its leaders had changed, and a few had come to an early death. In April 1843, Samuel Francis Wood died at the relatively young age of thirty-four. Newman noted that Froude and Wood, two of their Littlemore brothers, had died within seven years. Keble and Pusey were loyal friends and faithful Anglicans, but they did not have Newman’s leadership capacity or desire to go further than they already had in their conclusions about the Anglican Church. And now Palmer was criticizing that legacy of the British Critic and disowning the Tractarians. With the latter in mind, Newman told Maria Giberne that “the Tractarian party is in process of being broken up.”37 There was more to the breakup; the Oxford Movement had evolved, and was no longer so much a force of reform in the Anglican Church as a statement on the doctrinal and juridical nature of the English Church. The natural consequence was that some of the newer generation wished to become Roman Catholic. Newman’s heart was now with Rome, but he urged friends, including Tom Mozley, not to take this step without more prayer.
In May, Newman had confided to Keble, his friend and spiritual guide, “I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of faith.”38 Protestants held that the Roman Catholic Church had corrupted the Gospel teaching by its additions. Over a number of years Newman had come to realize that in doctrinal matters this was not the case. He could now affirm that the Anglican Church was in schism with the true Church founded on the Apostles. He jotted down notes for study concerning his theses on development. Newman thought that the Roman Catholic Church had correctly developed doctrines that it had received from Christ’s Apostles. The entries continued until May 1844, and they indicate how he matured the ideas for his book, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, completed in October 1845. In March 1843, he wrote: “Supposing the Catholic Religion to be true, qu. [sic] whether some great judgment is not likely to have come upon us English for our dreadful suppression of it through three centuries by national acts—If so, are not the misconceptions we form of it, only to be expected conformably with the state of the case?”39 The next day an entry was on the Roman invocation of saints. He asked how one could believe that God is the God of St. Paul without believing that the saints live and are present to us.40
Earlier, in February of 1843, Newman published fourteen University Sermons under the title Sermons, chiefly on the Theory of Religious Beliefs, preached before the University of Oxford, commonly known as his Oxford University Sermons. The volume contained sermons from the period of 1826 to 1843, which dealt with the relationship between faith and reason. As the years advanced, Newman was more precise in his definitions and analysis. For example, he described three improper senses of the word reason: explicit reason, evidential reason, and secular reason. By the latter, he referred to the error of applying secular maxims to religion and disregarding the first principles proper to religion. Newman argued that faith is an assent of the mind that is based on antecedent reasons, and starts with religious principles. He wrote, “Faith is an exercise of presumptive reasoning, or of reason proceeding on antecedent grounds.”41 In another sermon, “Implicit and Explicit Reason,” Newman argued against the notion that accuracy in stating doctrines is indispensable for correct reasoning. Specifically he dismissed the idea that to believe a revelation one has to have good evidence.
Newman explained that reason can be implicit, as in mental reasoning, and explicit, as in arguing a point. “The process of reasoning is complete in itself and independent. The analysis is but an account of it; it does not make the conclusion correct; it does not make the inference rational.”42 He indicated that the process of reasoning is mysterious and that it is complete and independent of analysis or argument. Newman continued, “Faith, then, though in all cases a reasonable process, is not necessarily founded on investigation, argument, or proof; these processes being but the explicit form which the reasoning takes in the case of particular minds.”43
Newman asked what safeguards faith from credulity and superstition? And he replied that it was not reason, because faith is not founded on logical reasoning:
And thus I would answer the question how it may be secured from excess, without the necessity of employing what is popularly called Reason for its protection,—I mean processes of investigation, discrimination, discussion, argument, and inference. It is itself an intellectual act, and it takes its character from the moral state of the agent. It is perfected, not by intellectual cultivation, but by obedience.44
Newman would develop the arguments of these sermons in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, published in 1870. In a third edition to the volume of Oxford University Sermons, Newman added the important sermon, “The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine,” which was preached in February shortly after the volume was published.
In November of 1843, Newman published another series of sermons, titled Sermons on Subjects of the Day; these had been preached over a number of years, and had some bearing on particular occasions. As customary, Newman did so after having consulted Keble. The latter included his “Four Sermons” on the notes of the true Church and on the English Church, which he had preached in 1842. With regard to these sermons Newman wrote to Keble, “The feeling comes on men [sic] ‘Light has been given to me—I have had the suggestion, which others have not, that our Church wants the notes of a true Church.”45 He worried, “If I were to die, I should be in a state which others are not in.”46 Nonetheless, in the sermons Newman had urged patience and staying where one had been placed by God.
One of the sermons in the volume was “The Apostolical Christian,” delivered in February of 1843. In this sermon, Newman quoted many texts from Scripture to support the thesis that the first Christians were men and women detached from the world with their minds and hearts in Heaven, which could only be achieved through habitual prayer, as was evidenced in the early Christians. Next he explained how some Christians were called to a stricter life, yet they were often scorned by fellow Christians. Newman concluded,
But, if the truth must be spoken, what are the humble monk, and the holy nun, and other regulars, as they are called, but Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture? What have they done but this—perpetuate in the world the Christianity of the Bible? Did our Saviour come on earth suddenly, as He will one day visit it, in whom would He see the features of the Christians whom He and His Apostles left behind them, but in them?47
Newman urged his fellowmen to study what a Bible Christian was, to pray about it, and wished for each one to apply it to his own life, depending on his own particular calling. In reading this sermon it is clear that Newman discerned that he was called to a stricter rule of life, and he had embraced it with his small group of friends at Littlemore. Like those following Christ, he felt mocked at times and his private life scrutinized by the curiosity of others. In the end, no longer supported by his own bishop and censured by most of the bishops, Newman did not feel authorized to teach in the Church of England. The volume of Sermons on Subjects of the Day closed with “The Parting of Friends,” Newman’s sad and personal farewell address to his congregation and friends.
With Newman’s resignation from St. Mary’s in 1843, the Oxford Movement lost its primary leader. The Movement, which sought the doctrinal, spiritual, and liturgical reform of the Anglican Church, could not count on Newman because he was finally convinced that this Church was no longer part of the Catholic Church; it was a body that had separated itself from the Church. Concerning the Anglican Church, Newman confided in a letter to his friend, H. A. Woodgate, “we are all coming to pieces.”48 He explained that the Anglican Church could barely keep men such as Tom Mozley and Frederick Faber within its fold. Newman ended the letter with a premonition, “The fact is our system is rotten and won’t hold together.”49 These candid words written to a longtime friend expressed Newman’s sad conclusions.
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1LD, Vol. IX, JHN to C.H.J. Anderson (Jan. 21, 1843), 210-211; 210.
2Ibid., 211.
3“Severe Language against Rome,” English Churchmen, LD, Vol. IX, 217.
4LD, Vol. IX, Ambrose Lisle Phillipps to JHN (Feb. 10, 1834), 327-28.
5LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Henry Wilberforce (Feb. 3, 1843), 223-24; 223.
6Ibid., 224.
7LD, Vol. IX, E. B. Pusey to JHN (Feb. 4, 1843), 227.
8LD, Vol. IX, E. B. Pusey to JHN (Feb. 4, 1843), 227-28; 227.
9LD, Vol. IX, E. B. Pusey to JHN (Feb. 6, 1843), 228.
10LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Miss Holmes (Feb. 8, 1843), 231.
11Ibid., 280.
12LD, Vol. IX, JHN to John Keble (May 4, 1834), 327-28.
13LD, Vol. IX, JHN to John Keble (May 18, 1843), 346-50; 348.
14Ibid., 349.
15LD, Vol. IX, JHN to the Reverend Wynter from Francis Atkinson Faber (June 5, 1843), 372-73.
16LD, Vol. IX, Quote from Sermon by Rev. Thomas Edward Morris, XXIX.
17LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Miss Holmes (April 29, 1843), 319-20; 319.
18LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Miss Holmes (March 8, 1843), 272-75; 275.
19LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Miss Holmes (May 14, 1843), 340.
20LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Miss Holmes (August 16, 1843), 461.
21LD, Vol. IX, Ambrose St. John to JHN (July 13, 1843), 427-28; 427.
22LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Ambrose St. John (July 16, 1843), 429.
23LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Mrs. John Mozley (September 5, 1843), 504-5; 504.
24LD, Vol. IX, “The Parting of Friends,” Appendix 7, 733-40; 735.
25Ibid.
26Ibid., 739.
27Ibid., 740.
28Edward Bellasis, Memorials of Mr. Serjeant Bellasis. 1800-1873, London, Burns and Oates, Ltd, 1893, 53.
29Ibid, 54.
30LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Thomas Mozley (September 21, 1843), 530-31; 530.
31LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Mrs. Thomas Mozley (September 29, 1843), 537-38; 537.
32LD, Vol. IX, “To the Editor of the Oxford Herald” (March 25, 1843), 292-94.
33LD, Vol. IX, H.E. Manning to JHN (October 23, 1843), 584-85; 584.
34LD, Vol. IX, JHN to H. E. Manning (October 25, 1843), 585-86.
35LD, Vol. IX, J. D. Dalgairns to JHN (October 19, 1843), 580-81; 581.
36LD, Vol. IX, JHN to J. D. Dalgairns (April 26, 1843, October 14, 1843), 313-14; 565-67.
37LD, Vol. IX, JHN to Miss M. R. Giberne (October, 27, 1843), 589-90; 589.
38LD, Vol. IX, JHN to John Keble (May 4, 1843), 327-29; 328.
39LD, Vol. IX, Diary entry (March 18, 1843), 283.
40LD, Vol. IX, Diary entry (March 19, 1843), 286.
41“Love, the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition” in US, 231.
42“Implicit and Explicit Reason” in US, 259, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org.
43Ibid., 262.
44Ibid., 249-50.
45LD, Vol. IX, JHN to John Keble (September 6, 1843), 509-10; 509.
46Ibid.
47“The Apostolical Christian,” SD, 290-91.
48LD, Vol. IX, JHN to H. A. Woodgate (October 2, 1843), 548-49; 549.
49Ibid.