Newman comes under the influence of John Keble (1792-1866) one of the leaders of the
Oxford Movement.
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In the beginning of 1829, came the formal break between Dr. Whately and me;
the affair of Mr. Peel's re-election was the occasion of it. I think in 1828 or
1827 I had voted in the minority, when the Petition to Parliament against the
Catholic Claims was brought into Convocation. I did so mainly on the views
suggested to me in the Letters of an Episcopalian. Also I shrank from the
bigoted "two-bottle-orthodox," as they were invidiously called. When then I took
part against Mr. Peel, it was on an academical, not at all an ecclesiastical or
a political ground; and this I professed at the time. I considered that Mr. Peel
had taken the University by surprise; that his friends had no right to call upon
us to turn round on a sudden, and to expose ourselves to the imputation of
time-serving; and that a great University ought not to be bullied even by a great Duke
of Wellington. Also by this time I was under the influence of Keble and Froude;
who, in addition to the reasons I have given, disliked the Duke's change of
policy as dictated by liberalism.
Whately was considerably annoyed at me, and he took a humourous revenge, of
which he had given me due notice beforehand. As head of a house he had duties of
hospitality to men of all parties; he asked a set of the least intellectual men
in Oxford to dinner, and men most fond of port; he made me one of this party;
placed me between Provost This and Principal That, and then asked me if I was
proud of my friends. However, he had a serious meaning in his act; he saw, more
clearly than I could do, that I was separating from his own friends for good and
all.
Dr. Whately attributed my leaving his clientela to a wish on my part
to be the head of a party myself. I do not think that this charge was deserved.
My habitual feeling then and since has been, that it was not I who sought
friends, but friends who sought me. Never man had kinder or more indulgent
friends than I have had; but I expressed my own feeling as to the mode in which
I gained them, in this very year 1829, in the course of a copy of verses.
Speaking of my blessings, I said, "Blessings of friends, which to my door
unasked, unhoped, have come." They have come, they have gone; they came
to my great joy, they went to my great grief. He who gave took away. Dr.
Whately's impression about me, however, admits of this explanation:—
During the first years of my residence at Oriel, though proud of my College,
I was not quite at home there. I was very much alone, and I used often to take
my daily walk by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr. Copleston, then Provost,
with one of the Fellows. He turned round, and with the kind courteousness which
sat so well on him, made me a bow and said, "Nunquam minus solus, quàm cùm solus"
{never less alone than when alone}. At that time indeed (from 1823) I had the intimacy of my dear
and true friend Dr. Pusey, and could not fail to admire and revere a soul so devoted
to the cause of religion, so full of good works, so faithful in his affections;
but he left residence when I was getting to know him well. As to Dr. Whately
himself, he was too much my superior to allow of my being at my ease with him;
and to no one in Oxford at this time did I open my heart fully and familiarly.
But things changed in 1826. At that time I became one of the Tutors of my College,
and this gave me position; besides, I had written one or two Essays which had been
well received. I began to be known. I preached my first University Sermon.
Next year I was one of the Public Examiners for the B.A. degree. In 1828
I became Vicar of St. Mary's. It was to me like the feeling of spring weather
after winter; and, if I may so speak, I came out of my shell; I remained out
of it till 1841.
The two persons who knew me best at that time are still alive, beneficed
clergymen, no longer my friends. They could tell better than any one else what I
was in those years. From this time my tongue was, as it were, loosened, and I
spoke spontaneously and without effort. One of the two, Mr. Rickards, said of
me, I have been told, "Here is a fellow who, when he is silent, will never begin
to speak; and when he once begins to speak, will never stop." It was at this
time that I began to have influence, which steadily increased for a course of
years. I gained upon my pupils, and was in particular intimate and affectionate
with two of our probationer Fellows, Robert Isaac Wilberforce (afterwards
Archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw
around me the signs of an incipient party, of which I was not conscious myself.
And thus we discern the first elements of that movement afterwards called
Tractarian.
The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual with great
motive-powers, was out of sight. Having carried off as a mere boy the highest
honours of the University, he had turned from the admiration which haunted his
steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in pastoral work in the
country. Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble? The first time that I was
in a room with him was on occasion of my election to a fellowship at Oriel, when
I was sent for into the Tower, to shake hands with the Provost and Fellows. How
is that hour fixed in my memory after the changes of forty-two years, forty-two
this very day on which I write! I have lately had a letter in my hands, which I
sent at the time to my great friend, John William Bowden, with whom I passed
almost exclusively my Under-graduate years. "I had to hasten to the Tower," I
say to him, "to receive the congratulations of all the Fellows. I bore it till
Keble took my hand, and then felt so abashed and unworthy of the honour done me,
that I seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground." His had been the first
name which I had heard spoken of, with reverence rather than admiration, when I
came up to Oxford. When one day I was walking in High Street with my dear
earliest friend just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out, "There's
Keble!" and with what awe did I look at him! Then at another time I heard a
Master of Arts of my College give an account how he had just then had occasion
to introduce himself on some business to Keble, and how gentle, courteous, and
unaffected Keble had been, so as almost to put him out of countenance. Then too
it was reported, truly or falsely, how a rising man of brilliant reputation, the
present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman, admired and loved him, adding, that
somehow he was strangely unlike any one else. However, at the time when I was
elected Fellow of Oriel he was not in residence, and he was shy of me for years in
consequence of the marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal
schools. At least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us together
about 1828: it is one of the sayings preserved in his "Remains,"—"Do you know
the story of the murderer who had done one good thing in his life? Well; if I
was ever asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I had brought
Keble and Newman to understand each other."
The Christian Year made its appearance in 1827. It is not necessary, and
scarcely becoming, to praise a book which has already become one of the classics
of the language. When the general tone of religious literature was so nerveless
and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble struck an original note and woke up
in the hearts of thousands a new music, the music of a school, long unknown in
England. Nor can I pretend to analyze, in my own instance, the effect of
religious teaching so deep, so pure, so beautiful. I have never till now tried
to do so; yet I think I am not wrong in saying, that the two main intellectual
truths which it brought home to me, were the same two, which I had learned from
Butler, though recast in the creative mind of my new master. The first of those
was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental system;
that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and the
instruments of real things unseen,—a doctrine, which embraces in its fulness,
not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe about Sacraments properly
so called; but also the article of "the Communion of Saints;" and likewise the
Mysteries of the faith. The connexion of this philosophy of religion with what
is sometimes called "Berkeleyism" has been mentioned above; I knew little of
Berkeley at this time except by name; nor have I ever studied him.
On the second intellectual principle which I gained from Mr. Keble, I could
say a great deal; if this were the place for it. It runs through very much that
I have written, and has gained for me many hard names. Butler teaches us that
probability is the guide of life. The danger of this doctrine, in the case of
many minds, is, its tendency to destroy in them absolute certainty, leading them
to consider every conclusion as doubtful, and resolving truth into an opinion,
which it is safe indeed to obey or to profess, but not possible to embrace with
full internal assent. If this were to be allowed, then the celebrated saying, "O
God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!" would be the highest
measure of devotion:—but who can really pray to a Being, about whose existence
he is seriously in doubt?
I considered that Mr. Keble met this difficulty by ascribing the firmness of
assent which we give to religious doctrine, not to the probabilities which
introduced it, but to the living power of faith and love which accepted it. In
matters of religion, he seemed to say, it is not merely probability which makes
us intellectually certain, but probability as it is put to account by faith and
love. It is faith and love which give to probability a force which it has not in
itself. Faith and love are directed towards an Object; in the vision of that
Object they live; it is that Object, received in faith and love, which renders
it reasonable to take probability as sufficient for internal conviction. Thus
the argument from Probability, in the matter of religion, became an argument
from Personality, which in fact is one form of the argument from Authority.
In illustration, Mr. Keble used to quote the words of the Psalm: "I will
guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not like to horse and mule, which have no
understanding; whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they fall
upon thee." {Psalm 32:8-9 in the Coverdale translation in the Book of Common Prayer
of the Church of England.} This is the very difference, he used to
say, between slaves, and friends or
children. Friends do not ask for literal commands; but, from their knowledge of
the speaker, they understand his half-words, and from love of him they
anticipate his wishes. Hence it is, that in his Poem for St. Bartholomew's Day,
he speaks of the "Eye of God's word;" and in the note quotes Mr. Miller, of
Worcester College, who remarks in his Bampton Lectures, on the special power of
Scripture, as having "this Eye, like that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon
us, turn where we will." The view thus suggested by Mr. Keble, is brought
forward in one of the earliest of the "Tracts for the Times." In No. 8 I say,
"The Gospel is a Law of Liberty. We are treated as sons, not as servants; not
subjected to a code of formal commandments, but addressed as those who love God,
and wish to please Him."
I did not at all dispute this view of the matter, for I made use of it
myself; but I was dissatisfied, because it did not go to the root of the
difficulty. It was beautiful and religious, but it did not even profess to be
logical; and accordingly I tried to complete it by considerations of my own,
which are to be found in my University Sermons, Essay on Ecclesiastical
Miracles, and Essay on Development of Doctrine. My argument is in outline as
follows: that that absolute certitude which we were able to possess, whether as
to the truths of natural theology, or as to the fact of a revelation, was the
result of an assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities, and
that, both according to the constitution of the human mind and the will of its
Maker; that certitude was a habit of mind, that certainty was a quality of
propositions; that probabilities which did not reach to logical certainty, might
suffice for a mental certitude; that the certitude thus brought about might
equal in measure and strength the certitude which was created by the strictest
scientific demonstration; and that to possess such certitude might in given
cases and to given individuals be a plain duty, though not to others in other
circumstances:—
Moreover, that as there were probabilities which sufficed for certitude, so
there were other probabilities which were legitimately adapted to create
opinion; that it might be quite as much a matter of duty in given cases and to
given persons to have about a fact an opinion of a definite strength and
consistency, as in the case of greater or of more numerous probabilities it was
a duty to have a certitude; that accordingly we were bound to be more or less
sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated scale of assent, viz. according as the
probabilities attaching to a professed fact were brought home to us, and as the
case might be, to entertain about it a pious belief, or a pious opinion, or a
religious conjecture, or at least, a tolerance of such belief, or opinion or
conjecture in others; that on the other hand, as it was a duty to have a belief,
of more or less strong texture, in given cases, so in other cases it was a duty
not to believe, not to opine, not to conjecture, not even to tolerate the notion
that a professed fact was true, inasmuch as it would be credulity or
superstition, or some other moral fault, to do so. This was the region of
Private Judgment in religion; that is, of a Private Judgment, not formed
arbitrarily and according to one's fancy or liking, but conscientiously, and
under a sense of duty.
Considerations such as these throw a new light on the subject of Miracles,
and they seem to have led me to reconsider the view which I had taken of them in
my Essay in 1825-6. I do not know what was the date of this change in me, nor of
the train of ideas on which it was founded. That there had been already great
miracles, as those of Scripture, as the Resurrection, was a fact establishing
the principle that the laws of nature had sometimes been suspended by their
Divine Author, and since what had happened once might happen again, a certain
probability, at least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea taken in itself, of
miraculous intervention in later times, and miraculous accounts were to be
regarded in connexion with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character,
testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented themselves to us; and,
according to the final result of those various considerations, it was our duty
to be sure, or to believe, or to opine, or to surmise, or to tolerate, or to
reject, or to denounce. The main difference between my Essay on Miracles in 1826
and my Essay in 1842 is this: that in 1826 I considered that miracles were
sharply divided into two classes, those which were to be received, and those
which were to be rejected; whereas in 1842 I saw that they were to be regarded
according to their greater or less probability, which was in some cases
sufficient to create certitude about them, in other cases only belief or
opinion.
Moreover, the argument from Analogy, on which this view of the question was
founded, suggested to me something besides, in recommendation of the
Ecclesiastical Miracles. It fastened itself upon the theory of Church History
which I had learned as a boy from Joseph Milner. It is Milner's doctrine, that
upon the visible Church come down from above, at certain intervals, large and
temporary Effusions of divine grace. This is the leading idea of his
work. He begins by speaking of the Day of Pentecost, as marking "the first of
those Effusions of the Spirit of God, which from age to age have visited
the earth since the coming of Christ." Vol. i. p. 3. In a note he adds that "in
the term 'Effusion' there is not here included the idea of the miraculous
or extraordinary operations of the Spirit of God;" but still it was natural for
me, admitting Milner's general theory, and applying to it the principle of
analogy, not to stop short at his abrupt ipse dixit, but boldly to pass
forward to the conclusion, on other grounds plausible, that as miracles
accompanied the first effusion of grace, so they might accompany the later.
It is surely a natural and on the whole, a true anticipation
(though of course there are exceptions in particular cases), that gifts and
graces go together; now, according to the ancient Catholic doctrine, the gift
of miracles was viewed as the attendant and shadow of transcendent sanctity: and
moreover, since such sanctity was not of every day's occurrence, nay further, since
one period of Church history differed widely from another, and, as Joseph Milner
would say, there have been generations or centuries of degeneracy or disorder, and
times of revival, and since one region might be in the mid-day of religious fervour,
and another in twilight or gloom, there was no force in the popular argument, that,
because we did not see miracles with our own eyes, miracles had not happened in
former times, or were not now at this very time taking place in distant
places:—but I must not dwell longer on a subject, to which in a few words it is
impossible to do justice /4/.
Hurrell Froude was a pupil of Keble's, formed by him, and in turn reacting
upon him. I knew him first in 1826, and was in the closest and most affectionate
friendship with him from about 1829 till his death in 1836. He was a man of the
highest gifts,—so truly many-sided, that it would be presumptuous in me to
attempt to describe him, except under those aspects in which he came before me.
Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the
playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, and the
patient winning considerateness in discussion, which endeared him to those to
whom he opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon matters of belief and
opinion, and am introducing others into my narrative, not for their own sake, or
because I love and have loved them, so much as because, and so far as, they have influenced my
theological views. In this respect then, I speak of Hurrell Froude,—in his
intellectual aspect,—as a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing with ideas
and views, in him original, which were too many and strong even for his bodily
strength, and which crowded and jostled against each other in their effort after
distinct shape and expression. And he had an intellect as critical and logical
as it was speculative and bold. Dying prematurely, as he did, and in the
conflict and transition-state of opinion, his religious views never reached
their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their
depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me, even when they did not gain my
assent. He professed openly his admiration of the Church of Rome, and his hatred
of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, of
sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the
maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants;" and he
gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He
had a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity; and he
considered the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted in thinking of the
Saints; he had a vivid appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its possibility and
its heights; and he was more than inclined to believe a large amount of
miraculous interference as occurring in the early and middle ages. He embraced
the principle of penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to the Real
Presence, in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully drawn to the Medieval
Church, but not to the Primitive.
He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman to the
backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete. He had a most
classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art; and he was fond
of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion.
He had no turn for theology as such. He set no
sufficient value on the writings of the Fathers, on the detail or development of
doctrine, on the definite traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, on
the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, or on the controversies out of which
they arose. He took an eager courageous view of things on the whole. I should
say that his power of entering into the minds of others did not equal his other
gifts; he could not believe, for instance, that I really held the Roman Church
to be Anti-christian. On many points he would not believe but that I agreed with
him, when I did not. He seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a
different kind, the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a high Tory of
the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism of the opponents of the
Reform Bill. He was smitten with the love of the Theocratic Church; he went
abroad and was shocked by the degeneracy which he thought he saw in the
Catholics of Italy.
It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed
which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught me to look with
admiration towards the Church of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike the
Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and
he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence.
There is one remaining source of my opinions to be mentioned, and that far
from the least important. In proportion as I moved out of the shadow of that
liberalism which had hung over my course, my early devotion towards the Fathers
returned; and in the Long Vacation of 1828 I set about to read them
chronologically, beginning with St. Ignatius and St. Justin. About 1830 a
proposal was made to me by Mr. Hugh Rose, who with Mr. Lyall (afterwards Dean of
Canterbury) was providing writers for a Theological Library, to furnish them
with a History of the Principal Councils. I accepted it, and at once set to work
on the Council of Nicæa. It was to launch myself on an ocean with currents
innumerable; and I was drifted back first to the ante-Nicene history, and then
to the Church of Alexandria. The work at last appeared under the title of "The
Arians of the Fourth Century;" and of its 422 pages, the first 117 consisted of
introductory matter, and the Council of Nicæa did not appear till the 254th, and
then occupied at most twenty pages.
I do not know when I first learnt to consider that Antiquity was the true
exponent of the doctrines of Christianity and the basis of the Church of
England; but I take it for granted that the works of Bishop Bull, which at this
time I read, were my chief introduction to this principle. The course of
reading, which I pursued in the composition of my volume, was directly adapted
to develope it in my mind. What principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene
period was the great Church of Alexandria, the historical centre of teaching in
those times. Of Rome for some centuries comparatively little is known. The
battle of Arianism was first fought in Alexandria; Athanasius, the champion of
the truth, was Bishop of Alexandria; and in his writings he refers to the great
religious names of an earlier date, to Origen, Dionysius, and others, who were
the glory of its see, or of its school. The broad philosophy of Clement and
Origen carried me away; the philosophy, not the theological doctrine; and I have
drawn out some features of it in my volume, with the zeal and freshness, but
with the partiality, of a neophyte. Some portions of their teaching, magnificent
in themselves, came like music to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas,
which, with little external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These
were based on the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies or
Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages to mean that the
exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses
of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable: Scripture was an
allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology, properly understood, were
but a preparation for the Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were in a certain
sense prophets; for "thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were
given." /d/ There had been a directly divine dispensation granted to the Jews; but
there had been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favour of the
Gentiles. He who had taken the seed of Jacob for His elect people had not
therefore cast the rest of mankind out of His sight. In the fulness of time both
Judaism and Paganism had come to nought; the outward framework, which concealed
yet suggested the Living Truth, had never been intended to last, and it was
dissolving under the beams of the Sun of Justice which shone behind it and
through it. The process of change had been slow; it had been done not rashly,
but by rule and measure, "at sundry times and in divers manners," {Hebrews 1:1
in both the Authorized and the Douay-Rhiems versions.} first one
disclosure and then another, till the whole evangelical doctrine was brought
into full manifestation. And thus room was made for the anticipation of further
and deeper disclosures, of truths still under the veil of the letter, and in
their season to be revealed. The visible world still remains without its divine
interpretation; Holy Church in her sacraments and her hierarchical appointments,
will remain, even to the end of the world, after all but a symbol of those
heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries are but the expressions in
human language of truths to which the human mind is unequal. It is evident how
much there was in all this in correspondence with the thoughts which had
attracted me when I was young, and with the doctrine which I have already
associated with the Analogy and the Christian Year.
It was, I suppose, to the Alexandrian school and to the early Church, that I
owe in particular what I definitely held about the Angels. I viewed them, not
only as the ministers employed by the Creator in the Jewish and Christian
dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture, but as carrying on, as
Scripture also implies, the Economy of the Visible World. I considered them as
the real causes of motion, light, and life, and of those elementary principles
of the physical universe, which, when offered in their developments to our
senses, suggest to us the notion of cause and effect, and of what are called the
laws of nature. This doctrine I have drawn out in my Sermon for Michaelmas day,
written in 1831. I say of the Angels, "Every breath of air and ray of light and
heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments,
the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God." Again, I ask what would
be the thoughts of a man who, "when examining a flower, or a herb, or a pebble,
or a ray of light, which he treats as something so beneath him in the scale of
existence, suddenly discovered that he was in the presence of some powerful
being who was hidden behind the visible things he was inspecting,—who, though
concealing his wise hand, was giving them their beauty, grace, and perfection,
as being God's instrument for the purpose,—nay, whose robe and ornaments those
objects were, which he was so eager to analyze?" and I therefore remark that "we
may say with grateful and simple hearts with the Three Holy Children, 'O all ye
works of the Lord, &c., &c., bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify
Him for ever.'" {The Prayer of Azariah, or, Song of the Three Children
in the Authorized Version and part of Chapter 3 of Daniel in the Douay-Rhiems.}
Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a middle
race, δαιμονια, neither in heaven, nor in hell; partially fallen, capricious,
wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be. These
beings gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to races, nations, and classes
of men. Hence the action of bodies politic and associations, which is often so
different from that of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and
the instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and communions.
I thought these assemblages had their life in certain unseen Powers. My
preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally lead me to this view.
I thought it countenanced by the mention of "the Prince of Persia" in the
Prophet Daniel; and I think I considered that it was of such intermediate beings
that the Apocalypse spoke, in its notice of "the Angels of the Seven
Churches."
In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine. I said to an intimate
and dear friend, Samuel Francis Wood, in a letter which came into my hands on
his death. "I have an idea. The mass of the Fathers (Justin, Athenagoras,
Irenæus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, Sulpicius, Ambrose,
Nazianzen,) hold that, though Satan fell from the beginning, the Angels fell
before the deluge, falling in love with the daughters of men. This has lately
come across me as a remarkable solution of a notion which I cannot help holding.
Daniel speaks as if each nation had its guardian Angel. I cannot but think that
there are beings with a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who
are the animating principles of certain institutions, &c., &c.... Take
England with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that
John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell.... Has not the Christian
Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of
the truth?... How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the
very image of Christ?" &c., &c.
I am aware that what I have been saying will, with many men, be doing credit
to my imagination at the expense of my judgment—"Hippoclides doesn't care;" /e/
I am not setting myself up as a pattern of good sense or of any thing else: I am but
giving a history of my opinions, and that, with the view of showing that I have
come by them through intelligible processes of thought and honest external
means. The doctrine indeed of the Economy has in some quarters been itself
condemned as intrinsically pernicious,—as if leading to lying and equivocation,
when applied, as I have applied it in my remarks upon it in my History of the
Arians, to matters of conduct. My answer to this imputation I postpone to the
concluding pages of my Volume.
While I was engaged in writing my work upon the Arians, great events were
happening at home and abroad, which brought out into form and passionate
expression the various beliefs which had so gradually been winning their way
into my mind. Shortly before, there had been a Revolution in France; the
Bourbons had been dismissed: and I held that it was unchristian for nations to
cast off their governors, and, much more, sovereigns who had the divine right of
inheritance. Again, the great Reform Agitation was going on around me as I
wrote. The Whigs had come into power; Lord Grey had told the Bishops to set
their house in order, and some of the Prelates had been insulted and threatened
in the streets of London. The vital question was, how were we to keep the Church
from being liberalized? there was such apathy on the subject in some quarters,
such imbecile alarm in others; the true principles of Churchmanship seemed so
radically decayed, and there was such distraction in the councils of the Clergy.
Blomfield, the Bishop of London of the day, an active and open-hearted man, had
been for years engaged in diluting the high orthodoxy of the Church by the
introduction of members of the Evangelical body into places of influence and
trust. He had deeply offended men who agreed in opinion with myself, by an
off-hand saying (as it was reported) to the effect that belief in the
Apostolical succession had gone out with the Non-jurors. "We can count you," he
said to some of the gravest and most venerated persons of the old school. And
the Evangelical party itself, with their late successes, seemed to have lost
that simplicity and unworldliness which I admired so much in Milner and Scott.
It was not that I did not venerate such men as Ryder, the then Bishop of
Lichfield, and others of similar sentiments, who were not yet promoted out of
the ranks of the Clergy, but I thought little of the Evangelicals as a class. I
thought they played into the hands of the Liberals. With the Establishment thus
divided and threatened, thus ignorant of its true strength, I compared that
fresh vigorous Power of which I was reading in the first centuries. In her
triumphant zeal on behalf of that Primeval Mystery, to which I had had so great
a devotion from my youth, I recognized the movement of my Spiritual Mother.
"Incessu patuit Dea" {by her gait the goddess was revealed (Virgil)}.
The self-conquest of her Ascetics, the patience of her
Martyrs, the irresistible determination of her Bishops, the joyous swing of her
advance, both exalted and abashed me. I said to myself, "Look on this picture
and on that;" I felt affection for my own Church, but not tenderness; I felt
dismay at her prospects, anger and scorn at her do-nothing perplexity. I thought
that if Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of the victory in
the event. I saw that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue her. As to
leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination; still I ever kept before
me that there was something greater than the Established Church, and that that
was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which she was but the
local presence and the organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be
dealt with strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a second
reformation.
At this time I was disengaged from College duties, and my health had suffered
from the labour involved in the composition of my Volume. It was ready for the
Press in July, 1832, though not published till the end of 1833. I was easily
persuaded to join Hurrell Froude and his Father, who were going to the south of
Europe for the health of the former.
We set out in December, 1832. It was during this expedition that my Verses
which are in the Lyra Apostolica were written;—a few indeed before it, but not
more than one or two of them after it. Exchanging, as I was, definite Tutorial
work, and the literary quiet and pleasant friendships of the last six years, for
foreign countries and an unknown future, I naturally was led to think that some
inward changes, as well as some larger course of action, were coming upon me. At
Whitchurch, while waiting for the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote the verses
about my Guardian Angel, which begin with these words: "Are these the tracks of
some unearthly Friend?" and which go on to speak of "the vision" which haunted
me:—that vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of these
compositions.
I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean; parted with my friends at
Rome; went down for the second time to Sicily without companion, at the end of
April; and got back to England by Palermo in the early part of July. The
strangeness of foreign life threw me back into myself; I found pleasure in
historical sites and beautiful scenes, not in men and manners. We kept clear of
Catholics throughout our tour. I had a conversation with the Dean of Malta, a
most pleasant man, lately dead; but it was about the Fathers, and the Library of the great
church. I knew the Abbate Santini, at Rome, who did no more than copy for me the
Gregorian tones. Froude and I made two calls upon Monsignore (now Cardinal)
Wiseman at the Collegio Inglese, shortly before we left Rome. Once we heard him
preach at a church in the Corso. I do not recollect being in a room with any
other ecclesiastics, except a Priest at Castro-Giovanni in Sicily, who called on
me when I was ill, and with whom I wished to hold a controversy. As to Church
Services, we attended the Tenebræ, at the Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere;
and that was all. My general feeling was, "All, save the spirit of man, is
divine." I saw nothing but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I
knew nothing. I was still more driven back into myself, and felt my isolation.
England was in my thoughts solely, and the news from England came rarely and
imperfectly. The Bill for the Suppression of the Irish Sees was in progress, and
filled my mind. I had fierce thoughts against the Liberals.
It was the success of the Liberal cause which fretted me inwardly. I became
fierce against its instruments and its manifestations. A French vessel was at
Algiers; I would not even look at the tricolour. On my return, though forced to
stop twenty-four hours at Paris, I kept indoors the whole time, and all that I
saw of that beautiful city was what I saw from the Diligence. The Bishop of
London had already sounded me as to my filling one of the Whitehall
preacherships, which he had just then put on a new footing; but I was indignant
at the line which he was taking, and from my Steamer I had sent home a letter
declining the appointment by anticipation, should it be offered to me. At this
time I was specially annoyed with Dr. Arnold, though it did not last into later
years. Some one, I think, asked, in conversation at Rome, whether a certain
interpretation of Scripture was Christian? it was answered that Dr. Arnold took
it; I interposed, "But is he a Christian?" The subject went out of my
head at once; when afterwards I was taxed with it, I could say no more in
explanation, than (what I believe was the fact) that I must have had in mind
some free views of Dr. Arnold about the Old Testament:—I thought I must have
meant, "Arnold answers for the interpretation, but who is to answer for Arnold?"
It was at Rome, too, that we began the Lyra Apostolica which appeared monthly in
the British Magazine. The motto shows the feeling of both Froude and myself at
the time: we borrowed from M. Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose the words in
which Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, "You shall know the
difference, now that I am back again."
Especially when I was left by myself, the thought came upon me that
deliverance is wrought, not by the many but by the few, not by bodies but by
persons. Now it was, I think, that I repeated to myself the words, which had
ever been dear to me from my school days, "Exoriare aliquis!"
{Arise, some avenger! (Virgil)} —now too, that Southey's beautiful poem of Thalaba,
for which I had an immense liking, came forcibly to my mind. I began to think that
I had a mission. There are sentences of my letters to my friends to this effect,
if they are not destroyed. When we took leave of Monsignore Wiseman,
he had courteously expressed a wish that we might make a second visit to Rome;
I said with great gravity, "We have a work to do in England."
I went down at once to Sicily, and the presentiment grew stronger.
I struck into the middle of the island, and fell ill of a fever at
Leonforte. My servant thought that I was dying, and begged for my last
directions. I gave them, as he wished; but I said, "I shall not die." I
repeated, "I shall not die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against
light." I never have been able quite to make out what I meant.
I got to Castro-Giovanni, and was laid up there for nearly three weeks.
Towards the end of May I left for Palermo, taking three days for the journey.
Before starting from my inn in the morning of May 26th or 27th, I sat down on my
bed, and began to sob violently. My servant, who had acted as my nurse, asked
what ailed me. I could only answer him, "I have a work to do in England."
I was aching to get home; yet for want of a vessel I was kept at Palermo for
three weeks. I began to visit the Churches, and they calmed my impatience,
though I did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the Presence of the
Blessed Sacrament there. At last I got off in an orange boat, bound for
Marseilles. Then it was that I wrote the lines, "Lead, kindly light,"
/f/ which have since become well known. We were becalmed
a whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio. I was writing verses the whole time
of my passage. At length I got to Marseilles, and set off for England.
The fatigue of travelling was too much for me, and I was laid up for
several days at Lyons. At last I got off again, and did not stop night or day,
(except a compulsory delay at Paris,) till I reached England, and my mother's
house. My brother had arrived from Persia only a few hours before. This was on
the Tuesday. The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the Assize Sermon
in the University Pulpit. It was published under the title of "National Apostasy."
I have ever considered and kept the day, as the start of the religious movement of 1833.
Newman's Notes:
/2/
It is significant that Butler begins his work with a quotation from Origen.
/3/
Vide Note A, Liberalism, at the end of the volume.
/4/
Vide Note B, Ecclesiastical Miracles, at the end of the volume.
Here ends Chapter 1 of Newman's Apologia, the text continues
in Chapter 2.
Trumbull's Notes:
/d/ "Third Sunday in Advent" from The Christian Year by John Keble:
What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? . . . But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. St. Matthew xi. 7, 9.
What went ye out to see
O'er the rude sandy lea,
Where stately Jordan flows by many a palm,
Or where Gennesaret's wave
Delights the flowers to lave,
That o'er her western slope breathe airs of balm.
All through the summer night,
Those blossoms red and bright
Spread their soft breasts, unheeding, to the breeze,
Like hermits watching still
Around the sacred hill,
Where erst our Saviour watched upon His knees.
The Paschal moon above
Seems like a saint to rove,
Left shining in the world with Christ alone;
Below, the lake's still face
Sleeps sweetly in th' embrace
Of mountains terrac'd high with mossy stone.
Here may we sit, and dream
Over the heavenly theme,
Till to our soul the former days return;
Till on the grassy bed,
Where thousands once He fed,
The world's incarnate Maker we discern.
O cross no more the main,
Wandering so will and vain,
To count the reeds that tremble in the wind,
On listless dalliance bound,
Like children gazing round,
Who on God's works no seal of Godhead find.
Bask not in courtly bower,
Or sun-bright hall of power,
Pass Babel quick, and seek the holy land -
From robes of Tyrian dye
Turn with undazzled eye
To Bethlehem's glade, or Carmel's haunted strand.
Or choose thee out a cell
In Kedron's storied dell,
Beside the springs of Love, that never die;
Among the olives kneel
The chill night-blast to feel,
And watch the Moon that saw thy Master's agony.
Then rise at dawn of day,
And wind thy thoughtful way,
Where rested once the Temple's stately shade,
With due feet tracing round
The city's northern bound,
To th' other holy garden, where the Lord was laid.
Who thus alternate see
His death and victory,
Rising and falling as on angel wings,
They, while they seem to roam,
Draw daily nearer home,
Their heart untravell'd still adores the King of kings.
Or, if at home they stay,
Yet are they, day by day,
In spirit journeying through the glorious land,
Not for light Fancy's reed,
Nor Honour's purple meed,
Nor gifted Prophet's lore, nor Science' wondrous wand.
But more than Prophet, more
Than Angels can adore
With face unveiled, is He they go to seek:
Blessed be God, Whose grace
Shows Him in every place
To homeliest hearts of pilgrims pure and meek.
/e/
According to Herodotus Histories, (Book VI, 129-130), Hippoclides became intoxicated during a dinner party with Cleisthenes,
and began to act like a fool; at one point he stood on his head and kicked his legs in the air, keeping time with the flute music.
When Hippoclides was informed by Cleisthenes "Oh son of Teisander, you have just danced away your marriage," his response was
OU FRONTIS IPPOKLEIDH
("Hippoclides cares not"). The phrase, according to Herodotus, became a common expression in the Greek world.
/f/Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light:"
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now,
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
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