Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Chapter 2: A Vision Formed (continued)
On December 8, 1832, Newman sailed in company with Hurrell Froude and his father for the Mediterranean. Soon afterwards a steady stream of letters, poems, and gifts began to stream back to England. Much of the written material deals precisely with the great religious questions of the day, interspersed with the description of scenery and every day events typical of a continental Grand Tour. On Christmas day he writes to his sister Harriet: "Surely there is something very wrong in the actual state of the Church in England we are neither one thing or the other, neither strong enough to command obedience or loose enough to protest in our separate person." 67 The idea of the Movement is already clearly germinating. He writes to his sister from Malta. Soon, afterwards he writes: "I mention all this at length because it exemplifies the admirable system of Papacy as an instrument of power." 68 It is the first time that Newman has come in close contact with the Roman Church and naturally admires that which is so lacking in the Anglican Church, an authority that imposes discipline.
Naturally his own visit to the Eternal City itself occupies a good deal of space in many of his letters. His rather ambivalent attitude still continues. He finds it difficult to overcome inbred prejudices: "How shall I call thee, Light of the Wide West, or heinous error seat?." 69 He concludes that "as to Rome, union with her on our part is impossible and ever will be." 70 At this point he little dreamed how true his prophecy would turn out although not in the way he foresaw: the only union possible would be individual submission to the Roman Church.
The political and ecclesiastical events at home of which he received news through periodicals and letters, served to heighten his ire and frustration at his own impotency. The Reform Bill had been passed after much controversy in late 1832 and Newman, ever the rigid Tory, could not forgive the former Oxford M.P. Robert Peel who had voted the Bill and whom he considered a traitor. To his good friend Thomas Mozley he wrote on March 9, 1833, "I cannot boast of any greater philosophical coolness than before and on reading the papers of the beginning and middle of February, I hate the Whigs (of course, as Rowena says, in a Christian way) more bitterly than ever." 71
Thomas Arnold's broad views were becoming ever more influential in the Church and Newman sensed that the battle might be fought and lost without his even being able to participate. "If we hear right accounts of Arnold's pamphlets, he is opening the door to alterations in doctrine some day to come... (the time is coming when we must choose sides)." 72 Newman has already chosen his side but he foresees the need to make that view available in an organized fashion to the Anglican clergy and faithful.
The long periods of time spent alone in conversation with Hurrell Froude help him to further refine his examination of Liberalism. However during the voyage he lacked his normal outlet of preaching and pastoral work in order to release his frustrations and pent-up energies.
The Bill for the suppression of the Irish Sees was in progress and filled my mind. I had fierce thought 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. 73
Due to the influence of Froude, one of Newman's most fixed opinions was in the process of change i.e. the necessity of union between Church and State. Froude who had studied deeply the history of the Middle Ages, was struck, by the frequent tyranny of the State over the Church as evidenced in the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury. This change on the part of Newman was important because, consciously or not, he was admitting that the Anglican Church was not capable of standing up to the British State which would eventually either abolish or secularize it. "With Froude, Erastianism that is, the union as he viewed it of Church and State was if not the parent, the serviceable and sufficient tool of Liberalism." 74
There was no longer a real question of the significance of Liberalism for Newman. The much urgent question was what was to be done to stave off the flood of unbelief? "The vital question was how were we to keep the Church from being liberalized? I thought that if Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of the victory in the event... There was a need of a Second Reformation." 75 Newman's predictive ability again is shown for Liberalism did in fact gain the victory, and as a result Anglicanism lost perhaps its greatest and one of its last champions in Newman himself.
In the middle part of his journey on April 16, 1833, Newman writes to his friend W.J. Trower and comments "I am up in arms against the Shelleyism of the day, which resolves religion into feeling, and makes it possible for bad men to have holy thoughts. Good thoughts are only as good as far as they are taken as means to an exact obedience or at least this is the chief part of their goodness." 76 It is important to realize that Newman here already foresees one of the main tenets of the Modernism to come, the replacement of belief with sentiment. Nonetheless Newman cannot be characterized as a staid reactionary. He did not oppose progress on principle. In his later Catholic years he would be attacked by the more extreme of the ultramontanes precisely because he favored a coming to terms with the modern world saying that the Church had nothing to fear because its foundation and continual presence were divine. He was much more opposed to the spirit of Liberalism than to any physical that could have been attributed to its spirit whether it be the steam engine or the discovery of electricity. It is the disobedience to divinely constituted authority in Church or State that bothered him.
After experiencing an almost fatal illness at the end of his trip in Sicily, Newman finally appears to have seen his mission clearly. In a letter to his close friend F. Rogers on June 5, he writes of his illness, "I gave my servant directions how to convey news of my death (should it be so) to England, at the same time expressing to him a clear and confident conviction that I should not die. The reason I gave was that I thought that God had work for me. I do not think that there was anything wrong in this, on consideration." 77
A few days afterwards he composes another in a collection of poems that he was writing along with Hurrell Froude to be published on their return. The title of the collection was Lyra Apostolica and the name of the poem "Liberalism."
Ye cannot halve the gospel of God's grace... And so yet halve the truth, for ye at heart
At best are doubters whether it be true.
The theme discarding, as unmeet for you Yet seeming Christian O new composed art of The Ancient foe!
But what, if it extends o'er our camp and guides our patron friend. 78
Liberalism, for Newman, was an attack on the goodness of God. The Liberal more often rejects doctrine as a result of some incompatibility with his personal life rather than any strong intellectual conviction regarding its falseness. Newman saw the secularism of the days as one more instrument of that "Ancient Foe" Satan and worried lest it influence his own close friends and associates.
This fear of the surrender of many former pillars of the Anglican Church to Liberalism provokes another poem from Newman.
O shame that Christian joins with infidel. in learned search and curious-seeming art! Burn we our books, so Christ's we be in heart. Sooner than heaven shall court the praise of hell. Self-flattering age!
To whom shall I not seem. Pained with hot thoughts, the preacher of a Dream. 79
Newman's adhesion to the truth brooks no compromise. He has no interest in pleasing a self-flattering age, only in pleasing God.
