Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Chapter 3: Towards the Truth
The mission of "relentless war against Liberalism" 93 was still continuing at a feverish pace as Newman entered the year 1839. Although his analysis of Liberal thought remained complete, his own position towards the carrier of the virus, the Anglican Church, was gradually changing from a confident loyalty to the suspicion that perhaps, the Church lacked legitimacy and therefore was not worthy of his loyal adherence. As he himself put it, "It is impossible to stop the growth of the mind." 94 And although Newman was very active he also possessed in the highest degree the virtue of patience. As regards his possible conversion to Catholicism, "he let it work its way and find its place, and shape itself within him, by the slow spontaneous action of the mind." 95
By this time Newman had become the most prominent figure in the English Church. He was slavishly followed and even imitated, to his dismay, by a host of young University students and his opinion was treasured and as J.A. Froude was to comment, "Credo in Newmanuum was a common phrase in Oxford and it is still unconsciously the faith of nine-tenths of English converts to Rome." 96 His views on the relentless invasion of Liberalism as expressed in sermons, letters, and articles are rendered more important as they are awaited and acted upon by an increasingly eager public.
The age of unbelief was well into its first period of growth and Newman although not yet despairing of the battle saw that dogmatic religion was rapidly losing influence in universal education and the newspapers. He would soon have to make the decision whether to go down with the ship or switch to a flagship that was unsinkable. Already, although relatively still a young man, he was looking to the younger generation to take up a battle that he saw rapidly being lost. "The hope of the Church does not lie with the newspaper readers. It lies with thoughtful men and young men - whether lay or clerical. And they will in their sphere and place spread the truth against the newspapers." 97
In 1839 after a seven year interruption he returns to his preaching of the University Sermons. As before he is still taken up with the apologetical aspects of the relationship between faith and reason. However it is a sobered, chastened Newman that returns to take his turn in the St. Mary's pulpit. In his first sermon, preached on the Epiphany in 1839, he traces out clearly the process of the act of faith that he will later develop brilliantly in the Grammar of Assent. "Faith does not demand evidence so strong as is necessary for what is commonly considered a rational conviction, or belief on the ground of Reason, and why, because it is mainly shaped by antecedent considerations." 98 Newman emphasizes here that the act of faith, elicited by grace, is not a pure reasoning by syllogism to a conclusion. He attempts to show that the act of faith is a product of antecedent considerations that have to do with the very moral nature of man himself. The whole man believes, body and soul, reason and imagination. Faith is not a simple conclusion. "Faith is a principle of action". Whereas Reason (as the word is commonly used) rests on the evidence, Faith is influenced by actions." 99
The following Sunday he expatiates on the same theme. Already one can sense he is starting to feel the attraction of an "idolatrous and superstitious" Roman Church in comparison with an Anglican "dry" one.
Yet a Faith which generously apprehends Eternal Truth though at times it degenerates into superstition, is far better than that cold, skeptical, critical tone of mind, which has no inward sense of an over ruling, ever-present Providence, no desire to approach its God, but sits at home waiting for the fearful clearness of His visible coming, whom it might seek and find in the due measure amid the twilight of the present world. 100
Newman had clearly grown in the profundity of his supernatural life during the course of the decade and his sermons, always elevated in tone, take on an even more exalted sound. After six years of intense activity as one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement and so little apparent effect on the world it is as if he seeks with even more desire the comforts of spiritual consolation. "Different ambassadors of God to men show forth different virtues, and if one were to set to choose Newman's, one would answer unhesitatingly - he was supremely in an unbelieving Age, a man of faith." 101
In his final sermon of the year in May 1839, "Love, the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition," Newman strikes perhaps the most telling blow against the general secular unbelief. The Liberals always portrayed themselves as the party of right reason, moderation, fighting against the superstition of the Dark Ages. They were the party of the progressive future. Newman shows that "Unbelief is opposed to Reason also but it criticizes the evidence of Religion, only because it does not like it, and really goes upon presumptions and prejudices as much as Faith does, only presumptions of an opposite nature." 102
During the summer of 1839, Newman read an article by the future Cardinal Wiseman in the Dublin Review on St. Augustine. The effect, so movingly described in the Apologia was to momentarily shake his confidence in the Anglican Church as divinely supported. The phrase of St. Augustine securus judicat orbis terrarum as applied to the Roman Church suggested to Newman that perhaps that divine authority lay in Rome and not in Westminster or Oxford. Soon afterwards he was writing to a friend that "the spirit of Luther is dead, but Hildebrand and Loyola are alive... Would you rather have your sons and daughters members of the Church of England, or of the Church of Rome?." 103 As the year went on Newman perceived that the forces of Liberalism in religion and politics were annihilating the opposition. This indicated even more strongly to him that the truth could not reside in a Church that would not stand up for its apostolic prerogatives and actually cooperated materially if not formally in evil.
In February 1840, he comments that "all these and many more spirits are seen uniting and forming into something shocking" and in a letter to his sister Jemima, "So it seems to me as if there were coming a great encounter between infidelity and Rome and that we should be smacked in between them." 104 He no longer sees the Anglican Church as one of the protagonists in the struggle that was raging in the modern world. His hope as embodied in the above quotation, was that a faithful remnant of true believers could remain in the Anglican Church.
Newman continues with his study of Faith and Reason in a sermon entitled "Implicit and Explicit Reason" preached on St. Peter's Day 1840. He insists on the dogmatic principle as the only effective way to counteract religious Liberalism. At the same time he emphasizes that even the lower classes can remain religious by an assent to the truths revealed based on divine grace and not pure reason. "In these words, I conceive we have, a clear warrant, or rather an injunction, to cast our religion into the form of Creed and Evidences... Faith cannot exist without grounds or without an object; but it does not follow that all who have faith should recognize, and be able to state what they believe, and why." 105
In November 1840, Newman says that "Whether or not Anglicanism leads to Rome, so far is clear as day, that Protestantism leads to infidelity." 106 In 1841, three events take place that help him to see that the Anglican Church clearly lacks validity. The first is a result of his continuing reading of the Fathers of the Church centering on the conflict between doctrinal truth and heresy. Specifically he returns to the battle of St. Athanasius with the Arians. Newman makes an analogy on his own time with the situation in the Church of the Fourth century, and observes that the Protestants can be identified with the Arians, the Anglicans with the Semi-Arians, and the Romans remains the same. Thus he conceives the Anglican Church as lacking the three notes of the Church, in that it is neither One, Catholic, nor Apostolic. At this point he is not yet convinced that it lacks the fourth of Holiness. The second event is the suppression of the Tracts for the Times as a result of the very unfavorable reception given to Tract Ninety by the Anglican hierarchy. In this tract Newman attempted to show that the Thirty-Nine articles could be sworn to in a Catholic sense. The third is the decision by the British State seconded by the Anglican Church to establish an ecumenical bishopric with the Lutherans in Jerusalem. Thus the Anglican Church loses all credibility with Newman by a shocking act of religious indifferentism if not sacrilege. It is precisely at this point that Newman finds himself effectively driven out of the Anglican Church through its newly acquired Liberalism. "It is not love of Rome that unsettles people but fears of heresy at home." 107 He now throws off his theory of the Via Media as woefully inadequate. "The Jerusalem Bishopric was the ultimate condemnation of the old theory of the Via Media." 108
In the same summer Newman touches upon the important subject of private judgment having realized that a proper understanding of this much abused term was a key to the adherence to a dogmatic religion. He foresaw the breakdown of the concept of universal truth that would bind all members of society. He pointed out that very few people actually fully believe in the principle of private judgment. "If a staunch Protestant's daughter turns Roman why does he not exult in the occurrence... all this would leads us to suspect that the doctrine of private judgment is held by very few persons indeed, and the great mass of the population are either stark unbelievers in it, or deplorably dark about it... and hold not the right of private judgment but the private right of judgment, in others words their own private right and no one's else." 109 In this Newman foresees the rise of the modern ideologies each one proclaiming its own truth to which all should be submitted: Socialism, Marxism and Nazism. The human mind craves certitude and if not provided it from above will devise its own system in which to place its faith.
Newman touches upon the subject of the role of development and changes in regard to private judgment. "Considering that change is really the characteristic of error and unalterableness the attribute of truth, of holiness... we consider that when private judgment moves in the direction of innovation it may well be regarded at first with suspicion and treated with severity... private judgment if not a duty, is a sin." 110 This essay is essential for an understanding of Newman's movement to Rome. It is precisely because he sees the Anglican Church changing for no apparent reason that he must leave it. He will write his Development in order to convince himself that the Catholic Church is unaltered although divinely developed through time.
Newman feels the ever-growing need for supernatural assistance. Human reason and judgment are fallible. "These things being considered, we lay it down as truth that Divine aid alone can carry anyone safely and successfully through an inquiry after religious truth." 111 Divine aid can come alone to the individual as an actual grace but Newman realizes the necessity of a Church that provides the source of sanctifying grace in order to preserve uncontaminated the depositum fidei. He pointed out that the real and legitimate use of private judgment in matters of religion is in the question of searching for the true teacher. Newman would spend the next four years assuring himself of the validity of the Catholic Church as the true teacher to which he must submit himself in order to gain true freedom.
While then, the conversions are brought about in a very marked way, through a teacher and not by means of private judgment, so again, if an appeal is made to private judgment, this is done in order to settle who the teacher is, and what are his notes or token, rather than to substantiate this or that religious opinion or practice. And if such instance bear upon our conduct at this day, then the practical question before us is, who is the teacher now, from whose mouth we are to seek the law, and what are his notes. 112
The school of Arnold, Jowett, and Stanley would argue that man must rely on reason and not on what they considered outmoded superstition in order to arrive at the truth. One can trace clearly the development of these English intellectuals during the nineteenth century from theists to atheists. This came as a result of a basic misunderstanding of the right of private judgment and a reliance on the intellect in place of the traditional reliance on divine authority as expressed through the Church. Many centuries earlier St. Thomas Aquinas had written:
In human investigation there is generally a mixture of falsehood on account of the weakness of our intellect in judging and therefore (if the intellect were left by itself) many would remain in doubt, especially when they see that different opinions are maintained by various persons all of whom have a reputation for wisdom. 113
