Liberalism and Newman:
The Anglican Vision and Response
A Doctoral Dissertation by Father John McCloskey
Chapter 4: Acta
No one has ever accused John Henry Newman of indifferentism. As we have seen in the previous chapters, not content with the simple diagnosis of the disease of Liberalism, he also tried to develop the medicine that would cure the society if properly applied as an antidote. This he did through the construction during many years of a well thought out internally consistent exposition of the faith developed in his sermons, letters, books, and essays.
This chapter takes the analogy a bit further to show that Newman was also disposed to surgical intervention when and if necessary. Thus this penultimate chapter will analyze the actions that Newman saw fit to take during his Anglican life in order to combat the growth of religious liberalism. I will continue to use the chronological method in following Newman's growing active involvement in the struggle for Anglo-Catholicity which was cut short in 1841 with the suppression of the Tracts and finally with Newman's own conversion four years later.
Newman spent the greater part of the decade of the 1830's after his election as a fellow of Oriel College in gradually forming his religious opinions, shifting, as we have seen, from a youthful Evangelism to his particular High Anglican stance after a brief flirtation with the Liberalism of his friends, Whately and Hawkins. He began to diligently read the Fathers of the Church in 1828 and encouraged by their example and fully experienced in the pastoral life by 1830, he was ready to begin to make the first public moves of protest towards the liberalizing trends he perceived in the womb of the English Church.
A. Resignation From Bible Society
On June 8, 1836 Newman, in one of the first concrete signs of disenchantment with mainstream Anglicanism resigned his membership in the Bible Society. This was an organization for the promotion of Sacred Scripture whose membership was largely made up of Anglicans of the Broad Church and Evangelical strain, from whose religious viewpoint Newman was heading away. He writes that "It makes Churchmen Liberals - it makes them undermine the guilt of schism - it makes them feel a wish to conciliate Dissenters at the expense of truth." 1
Up to this period the young Newman had been following unconsciously all the proper steps for a young Oxonian clergyman aspiring to higher preferment. He had the right education, training, and friends, not to mention immense talents that would inevitably lead to a high bishopric if a controversy did not arise. But he already felt forced to act against the Liberal intrusions, disapproving their actions through the forthright act of resigning his membership in the Bible Society. One might ask why he did not remain and attempt to change the Society from within. The answer is that he knew that in the struggle that was developing there would be many battles and skirmishes and it is better at times to withdraw and save one's energies for a battle in the future rather than risking a loss in the present. An honorable resignation, in this instance, was his best witness to the truth.
B. The Peel Election
The two years 1829-1830 also saw two other examples of Newman's forthright action on principle. One was his partisanship in the Oxford Parliament Election, chiefly on account of the religious issues involved. Robert Peel, later to be Prime Minister, had been elected as a Tory in the Oxford seat as a firm representative of the Oxonian feeling against Catholic Emancipation... Not long after taking his seat, to the dismay of "high and dry" Oxford, he switched position and openly supported the Emancipation. An election was called for February 1829 and the University split along party lines. For the first time Newman openly opposed his old friends Whately and Hawkins who continued to back there-election of Robert Peel.
Newman writes to his mother upon the defeat of Peel, "We have achieved a glorious victory." 2 Although Newman, by education and upbringing was a Tory, his opposition to Catholic Emancipation was on religious grounds, namely that it tended to destroy the unity of Church and State that he viewed, at that time as essential to the well being of the Church. Although he continued to express his political opinion privately in conversation and correspondence it was very rare that he intervened publicly in political affairs unless they touched on religious principles. Such a case was the Oxford election and in later life the famous reply to Gladstone regarding papal infallibility and the British state. Therefore the election of Sir R. Inglis for parliament was seen as a victory for the traditional element of Oxford and as a personal one for Newman. However out of this victory came the seeds of discontent that were sown with Edward Hawkins, his direct superior, in the matters of the private tutorial.
C. The Tutorial Controversy
In early 1826 Newman had agreed to be a tutor of Oriel, an agreement by which he took individual pupils each year. It was a highly coveted position as it enabled a young scholar to practice his profession as a teacher, gain disciples, and perhaps open opportunities for a prestigious professorship. As time went on Newman had various students, among them future followers such as Henry Wilberforce, Rogers, and Hope-Scott. However as he delved deeper into his studies of the Fathers and developed his theories regarding the proper role of education and the role of the university teacher he gradually changed his conception of his job as a tutor. He believed that the tutor should also have a formative role in shaping the moral life of his students - to develop more than a merely formal professor-student relationship. His fellow tutor Hurrell Froude shared the same opinion and they were determined to follow their own method of tutorial with select students giving them a complete formation.
However, they soon came across the opposition of the aforementioned Edward Hawkins, then provost of Oriel and their immediate superior. Hawkins, on account of several incidents, most notably the Peel election, began to sense the beginning of a new party in Oxford that was little to his liking. He stood fast in his opposition, and by 1830 Newman was resigned to his gradual removal as a tutor by not being given students.
This event, although trying at the time, proved to be providential as Newman commented to his mother, "The Fathers rise up again full before me." 3 Later on in his Autobiographical Writings, "As I leaving the Tuition took up the Arians, so Hurrell Froude took to Thomas a Becket." 4 In a certain sense one can trace the beginnings of the Oxford Movement from Newman's obstinacy on role of the tutor in the university. He denigrated the utilitarian idea of education so vividly described in Dickens's Hard Times as a preparation for work and professional life. Newman believed that the whole man, body and soul, must be educated and formed so that he could reach his full potential, naturally and supernaturally. Thus he was free to pursue the Father and his book The Arians of the Fourth Century was the result. Once this work was finished he was then free to pursue his decisive trip to the Mediterranean.
Newman was gradually being prepared for the great vocation of his Anglican life, the founding of the Oxford Movement. As early as 1830, friends and admirers already sensed that there was something special about Newman that marked him for greatness in action.
But Newman is not a man to be deterred by temporary failures. He is indeed better calculated than any man I know, by his talents, his learning, by his patience and perseverance, by his conciliatory manners, and the friends he can employ in the cause - of whom I hope to be one - to release the Church of England from the present oppressed and curtailed condition. 5
This letter, written by his future brother-in-law, who will not follow Newman into the Catholic Church, expatiates on his virtues that inspire great loyalty. The very fact that Thomas Mozley shows such alacrity in following Newman in a difficult work is sufficient testimony in itself. We will see that although Newman indeed made enemies through his actions he never lost their deep respect.
He began his writing of the Arians in June 1831 stimulated by his continual readings of the Fathers and his newly found leisure time as the result of the tutorial controversy. Newman's increasing activism, if the expression may be used, was in no small part due to his admiration for the activity of the Fathers during the Golden Patristic age in their battles with the Arians. Athanasius, Basil, and the other Cappadocians rose up before his eyes as chivalrous knights fighting not for land, money, or human glory but for a much higher ideal, doctrinal purity.
In this book, he says that "It is obvious, that in every contest, the assailant, as such, has the advantage of the party assailed." 6 He saw this in the case of the Arians versus Athanasius, and in the more immediate case of the liberals attacking the "high and dry" Anglican Church. Perhaps from this he drew the conclusion that some sort of counterattack was essential if dogmatic belief was not to be swept away in the debris of nineteenth century relativism. He realized more and more, as time went on, that "Faith is a principle of action." 7 Faith had to be acted upon for if not, it became precisely that dry wasting Protestantism with which he was so familiar.
Newman however, demanded that these faith-induced actions be tempered and strengthened with Christian love. If these actions were not undertaken with the proper intention in his eyes they were of little value. In one of his later University Sermons, he tells us that "the safeguard of faith is a right state of heart-fides formata charitate." 8 For this reason Newman was such an effective leader in his role as one of the founders of the Oxford Movement and the renaissance of Anglican spirituality. There were many crusaders for all types of causes, theories, and projects during the Victorian era but very few had the personal impact that Newman had speaking heart to heart, as so eloquently appears on his coat of arms as a Cardinal. "Faith is an intellectual act; right faith is an intellectual act done in a certain moral disposition." 9 As Newman grew in virtue he grew in faith until at last he was granted the grace of conversion with which he cooperated fully.
He points out in Discussions and Arguments that "Many a man will live and die upon a dogma, no man will be a martyr for a conclusion." 10 In this short phrase he captures the essence of his life of action. Beliefs in truths revealed by God demand action usque ad mortem. These truths and their consequences are the difference between condemnation in hell or eternal glory in heaven, between pursuing the good in worldly pleasure or in God. Newman's studies of the Fathers and of the Middle Ages showed him that the great heroic virtues and their effects in society only come from a firm grounding in the dogmas of faith.
The historical novels of Walter Scott, of which he was so fond, spoke to him not of utility, economy, reason, and progress but rather of the Christian virtues expressed in the love of God, family, and land that was the pre-Reformation England. Reason may have its proper subordinate role but "Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; life is for action." 11 When we examine Newman's life as a whole, the books published, the public controversies, the founding of the Oratory in England, the starting of a university in Ireland we see that he was quite consistent with the above maxim. At the same time we might remember that Newman, during his Catholic life, was accused of having withdrawn from the world; he himself tells us that he was shy of character. Only a life firmly rooted in a strong faith and a divine love could produce such works.
D. The Sanskrit Affair
Newman continued to participate actively in University affairs even though he no longer held his tutorial position and was working hard on his first book. In early 1832 the question of the election of a new professor of Sanskrit for the University came up and Newman insisted upon the doctrinal qualification being considered as a crucial factor in his proposed election. The name of the professor was Wilson and although clearly the best candidate from an academic viewpoint there were some doubts expressed about his religious orthodoxy. Newman actively opposed his candidacy... In writing to a friend he says that the election "would be the triumph of Liberalism." 12 To another friend shortly afterwards he says "He may be a mere Liberal and consider the Sanskrit theology not far inferior to the Christian." 13 The same principle underlies his opposition to Wilson as urged him on in the tutorial controversy. The University was not simply a place for professional preparation. The moral education had to be on a par with and complement the intellectual formation. Consequently the professors have to serve as an example not only in their erudition but also in their faith and moral rectitude. Notwithstanding, Mr. Wilson was elected.
During the years 1831-32 there was introduced the first great Reform Bill of the Whigs, eulogized by the Benthamites as a big step forward in favor of Liberalism while it was excoriated by the Tories. Oxford, being a national center of Tory sentiment, was naturally against the proposal. Consequently Newman along with others sent an Anti-Reform petition to the University to put themselves on the record. The others who joined with Newman included Froude and John Keble. Needless to say, the Reform Bill passed in 1832 and the wave of reform, in all areas, was now beginning in earnest in England and all her empire.
