Appendix{433} THE remarkable prediction that follows would have been placed in what seemed a suitable position at the 'Start of the Movement,' but there were reasons against this. Circumstances, however, having changed, and it having appeared in a newspaper of the day, the prophetic words may find a place here. Mr. Sikes was rector of Guilsborough, a venerated leader of the old High Church party, and died in the year 1834. The Rev. W. J. Copeland thus records his prediction, and the occasion on which it was given:— 'I well remember good Mr. Sikes taking me one day into the dining-room at the Rectory at Hackney, and telling me his views about the state and prospects of the Church. I wish I could remember distinctly his words; but so far as I could I went over them again and again in my mind, and I do not remember any conversation in my whole life which made more impression upon me at the time, or which I have had so often occasion to remember since. So far as I recollect, it must have been about the year 1833 that the following prediction was made: '"I seem to think I can tell you something which you who are young may probably live to see, but which I, who shall soon be called away off the stage, shall not. Wherever I go, all about the country, I see amongst the clergy a number of very amiable and estimable men, many of them much in earnest and wishing to do good. But I have observed the universal want in their teaching, the uniform suppression of one great truth. There is no account given anywhere, so far as I see, of the one Holy Catholic Church. I think that the causes of this suppression have been mainly two. The Church has been kept out of sight, partly in consequence of the civil establishment of the branch of it which is in this country, and partly out of false charity to Dissent. Now this great truth is an Article in the Creed; and, if so, to teach the rest of the Creed to its exclusion must be to destroy the analogy or proportion of the Faith, [ten analogian tes pisteos]. This cannot be done without the most serious consequences. The doctrine is of the last importance, and the principles it involves of immense power, and some day, not far distant, it will judicially have its reprisals. And whereas the {434} other Articles of the Creed seem now to have thrown it into the shade, it will seem when it is brought forward to swallow up the rest. We now hear not a breath about the Church; by-and-bye, those who live to see it will hear of nothing else, and just in proportion, perhaps, to its present suppression will be its future development. Our present confusion is chiefly owing to the want of it, and there will be yet more confusion attending its revival. The effects of it I even dread to contemplate, especially if it comes suddenly, and woe betide those, whoever they are, who shall in the course of Providence have to bring it forward! It ought especially of all others to be matter of catechetical teaching and training. The doctrine of the Church Catholic, and the privileges of Church membership, cannot be explained from pulpits, and those who will have to explain it will hardly know where they are or which way to turn themselves. They will be endlessly misunderstood and misinterpreted. There will be one great outcry of Popery from one end of the country to the other. It will be thrust upon minds unprepared and on an uncatechised Church. Some will take it up as a beautiful theory unrealised; others will be frightened and scandalised, and reject it; and all will want a guidance which one hardly knows where they shall find. How the doctrine may be first thrown forward we know not, but the powers of the world may any day turn their backs upon us, and this probably will lead to those effects I have described."' ——————— Vol. II. P. 78. For the benefit of some readers we may give the following definition of 'Præmunire,' taken from 'Hook's Dictionary': 'Præmunire in law is either taken for a form of writ, or for the offence whereon the writ of Præmunire is granted. The writ in question is named from its initial words, Præmunire facias, and it is chiefly known in ecclesiastical matters from a persecuting use to which it is applied by the statute of 25 Hen. VIII. c. 20, which enacts, that if the dean and chapter refuse to elect the person nominated by the king to the vacant bishopric, or if any archbishop or bishop refuse to confirm or consecrate him, they shall incur the penalties of the statutes of the Præmunire. These penalties are no less than the following:—From the moment of conviction the defendant is out of the king's protection, his body remains in prison during the king's pleasure, and all his goods, real or personal, are forfeited to the Crown. He can bring no action, nor recover damages for the most atrocious injuries, and no man can safely give him comfort, aid, or relief.' {435} ——————— Some extracts may be given from Mr. Newman's Pamphlet on Suffragan Bishops, printed in 1885, and reprinted in 'Via Media,' vol. ii.: 'I will venture to say every thinking man will admit the over-populousness of the existing Dioceses. Such vast charges must be distressing even to the most vigorous minds; oppressing them with a sense of responsibility, if not rather engrossing, dissipating and exhausting their minds with the mere formal routine of business. If they are able to sustain such duties, they are greater than the inspired lawgiver of Israel, who said: "I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me." Nothing is more necessary to the rulers of the Church than that they should have seasons of leisure. A whirl of business is always unfavourable to depth and accuracy of religious views. It is one chief end of the institution of the ministerial order itself that there should be men in the world who have time to think apart from it, and live above it, in order to influence those whose duties call them more directly into the bustle of it. So much was this felt in early times, that places of retreat were sometimes assigned to the Bishops at a distance from their city, whither they were expected to betake themselves, during certain seasons of the year, for the purpose of collecting their minds. Doubtless such leisure may be abused, as everything else; but so far is clear, that while leisure may become an evil, an incessant hurry of successive engagements must be an evil, a serious evil to the whole Church, hurtful to anyone, and more than personally hurtful, dangerous to the common cause, in the case of those who are by office guides of conduct, arbiters in moral questions, patterns of holiness and wisdom, and not the mere executive of a system which is ordered by prescribed rules and can go on without them ... ' ——————— Vol. II. P. 102.—MR. NEWMAN'S ADDRESS On
occasion of laying the first stone of the Church at Littlemore, TO MY PARISHIONERS My Brethren,—I do not like this occasion to pass without sharing with you one or two thoughts upon it. Surely to build a house to God's honour and service is a good work. It has been our purpose to do this, as you know, for some months; it is our prayer and hope that our hands may be strengthened to fulfil it, and we have this day begun it. Let us humbly say, 'Prosper Thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper Thou our handy-work! And God's holy word gives us assurance, to our great comfort, that He will prosper it. When Jacob was on his journey to Padan-aram, he saw angels {436} ascending and descending. You will find the account of it in Genesis xxviii. When he awoke, he took the stone he had used as a pillow and 'set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon it. And he called the name of that place Bethel'; i.e. the House of God. And he 'vowed a vow, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, then shall the Lord be my God; and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house; and of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.' He was at length prospered so as to be able to fulfil this good purpose of his, as you will read in the thirty-fifth chapter of the same book. Again, we have the example of holy David, who brought together the materials for building the Temple, 'gold and silver, brass and iron, wood, precious stones, and marble stones in abundance,' and drew a 'pattern of the porch and of the houses thereof, and of the courts, and the chambers'; and God blessed his good design, and fulfilled it to him in the days of his son Solomon, by whom it was all built. You may read the account of it in 1 Chron. xxviii., xxix., and 2 Chron. ii.-vii. We are indeed beginning a very humble work, not to be compared to the building of the Temple; but Christ praised the widow who cast in two mites into the treasury (Mark xii. 41-44), and we trust He will not reject our offering, though it be a small one. Again, we read in the book of Ezra ii., iii., how, when the Temple had been destroyed by God's enemies, some hundreds of years after Solomon's time, 'some of the chief of the fathers' 'offered freely for the House of God to set it up in his place. They gave after their ability unto the treasure of the work three score and one thousand drachms of gold and five thousand pounds of silver, and one hundred priests' garments.' 'And when the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, king of Israel. And they sang together by course, in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, because He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel.' And here again God was gracious; as they began, so they finished under His protection; and that Temple, so raised, was honoured in the course of time with the presence of our Saviour Christ, when He came on earth, as He had promised by the mouth of His prophet Haggai at the time of its building: 'The Desire of all Nations (i.e. Christ) shall come,' said the prophet, 'and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former.' These are grounds of encouragement from Scripture that God will bless our present undertaking. The simplicity of this address was adapted to the rustic population of Littlemore. As far as the Editor can remember there was scarcely a house beyond the rank of cottage in the village. Mr. {437} Newman and his curates seem to have been the first gentry in the place, and Mrs. and the Miss Newmans were certainly the first ladies with whom the people had had any intercourse. And the welcome given to these ladies was of the warmest nature, but the admiration and respect excited had to be expressed in their own vernacular, as when the village schoolmistress, after some outbreak of the children, addressed them: 'That if everybody was as good as the Miss Newmans, there would not be so much robbing of orchards or stealing of coppers.' In a letter to Miss M. A. D., dated St. Giles, Oxford, June 1849, A. M. writes: 'I had some little commissions and calls to do for Jemima, which I was very glad to execute, and to hear their lamentations over the changes, and their counting up all they have lost. "All the gentlemen they used to know that never come near them now." I was hardly prepared for the strong hold Mr. Newman seems to have gained over their affections—that is, I imagined his power lay in a different class, though of course all must value his care and kindness; but his peculiar influence told in the same way among these people, only expressed in different language. "We don't seem so comfortable now as we used to do, I thinks," one nice old woman said to me so often. They don't like the changes that have taken place since, and evidently resent the enlargement and alterations m the church as an injury to their remembrance of Mr. Newman. It is undoing what he did. The old women of Littlemore talk of recent innovations very much in the tone that elsewhere they resent "Puseyite" restoration to primitive practice; how keen these associations were I can hardly describe. Nor shall I ever forget the truth and feeling with which one woman described his last parting with her and her husband the day before he finally left Littlemore. Every thing he did is remembered as if it were but yesterday ... ' Not that these were really old times, as is shown by the records of a much later visit, when the writer went from Christ Church to make calls at Littlemore, at the request of Dr. Newman on the one hand, and his sister, Mrs. Mozley, on the other. A. M. TO MRS. JOHN MOZLEY Christ Church: May 8, 1875. But my most interesting call was on Martha K. So full of enthusiasm for you all, so intelligent and so vivid in her recollections, and better able to express her feelings. It was evidently the golden time of her life. Dr. Newman examined her for confirmation, and she and another were the head candidates. Also she was of your mother's class, has most devoted recollections of her kindness to people, knows still her taste in needlework, and how particular she was. She still sees you and Harriett in green silk cloaks, in which you looked so nice. You were her ideals of goodness and taste. When I told her of the walk across the fields that you had spoken of, she insisted on showing it me, and a most beautiful view of Oxford we came upon. She talked eagerly on the way. I recognized Rose Hill when I saw it [where Mrs. Newman lived before Rose Bank], though she says it is altered in some parts. She talked of the Cassels, and looked back on the honour of having often helped in the kitchen. We parted at the gate of Rose Bank. When your brother was at Littlemore in 1868, about which I will tell you more when we meet, she was sent for in a great hurry to go down to the Crawleys to see him, and described his sitting with them in the garden, and how when he shook hands with her she felt as if she could not let his hand go. He sent her his photograph after this, which is immensely valued, and was brought down for me to see. She is an invalid, and the family were in great trouble from an accident her son-in-law had just met with; but all was forgotten for the time. ——————— Vol. II. P. 168. In a very interesting obituary of the Rev. B. F. Wilson in the 'Guardian' of October 10, 1888, which will surely have its place in the history of the worthies of that day, there occurs this sentence: {439} 'The almost boyish eagerness of the vicar was occasionally in rather amusing contrast with the sober—sometimes almost alarmed—hesitation of the curate. And he had sometimes to chew the cud of half-humorous perplexity over the hard sayings which were tossed in his way as axiomatic. But the spirit of bright love which penetrated all Keble's doings could not but fascinate one in continual contact with him; and so his associates soon came to put up with his hard sayings, then to understand them, and then to like him better for them.' ——————— Vol. II. P. 301. In avowing himself the author of No. 90, Mr. Newman addressed the following letter to the Vice-Chancellor: Oriel College: March 16, 1841. ——————— Vol. II. P. 405. A pamphlet of the day gives the feelings of intimate friends on the renewed attack on No. 90. A few extracts from 'A Short Appeal,' signed Frederic Rogers, a name familiar to the reader of these volumes, are given here: 'To condemn a whole, undivided work is plainly to condemn, not tenets, but a writer. And I do not say that this mere personal censure is, under all circumstances, unjustifiable. It is an unassailable method—the most safe, though the least useful or generous; and for that reason it is often recommended to persons who find themselves unequal to their position. But it should be looked in the face, it should be fully understood, especially as it is the course uniformly pursued by those in authority at Oxford ... The proposed {440} vote is personal, in fair construction; and it may justly be added that the formal act of Convocation, if not legally interpreted by, yet does practically receive its colour from, the popular clamour. The vote is to be an answer to a cry; that cry is one of dishonesty, and this dishonesty the proposed resolution, as plainly as it dares to say anything, insinuates. 'On this part of the question those who have been ever honoured by Mr. Newman's friendship must feel it dangerous to allow themselves to speak. And yet they must speak, for no one else can appreciate it as truly as they do. When they see the person whom they have been accustomed to revere as few men are revered, whose labours, whose greatness, whose tenderness, whose singleness and holiness of purpose they have been permitted to know intimately, not allowed even the poor privilege of silence and retirement ... but dragged forth to suffer an oblique and tardy condemnation ... it does become very difficult to speak without sullying what it is a kind of pleasure to feel is his cause by using hard words, or betraying it by not using them.' ——————— Vol. II. P. 415. The period of Mr. Newman's change lives in many memories as a sad and heavy time; but one letter that has come back to the Editor gives an example of what tenderness and kindness can do towards softening the heaviest blow. A. M. TO MISS M. A. D. … Poor Mrs. E. Newman, the second time I was alone with her, introduced the subject of her nephew. His change has certainly altered and depressed her spirits sadly, but she spoke of it with tenderness and almost indulgence. It is the greatest grief that could have fallen on her, I think (except any ill betiding Jemima), but it has not lessened her love for him. Indeed, it is all too bewildering for censure, even if she had the heart for it. She said she had had a few 'sweet words' from him, written probably the day when he took the final step, and it was a great satisfaction to me to think he had done this, and that in such a crisis he should have remembered the claims upon him with which the public had nothing to do, and have realised the pain he was causing. Not that I had ever doubted his doing what was right, but still I was glad to know this. She sought through two or three letter-cases to find the note, and at length found it close at hand, in her work-box. It was written with a trembling hand, and with great intensity of feeling. He pleaded for the step he was taking that only so could he hope to acquit himself at God's judgment seat. 'He alone knows how much you are in my heart, or how it pierces my heart so to distress you.' {441} It may be added here that when, in 1847, Mr. Newman passed through Derby and spent a few hours with his sister, he called on his aunt to take leave, and found her reading the Psalms for the day with her little nephew in alternate verses. He seemed to have felt in a moment what was best to do, and, instead of interrupting, proposed to join them, taking his turn in the reading. It was an act of worship in which all could join, and would certainly soothe her in memory. ——————— Vol. II. P. 349. The following are the opening paragraphs of the Protest made by Mr. Keble to the Archbishop: To the Most Reverend Father in God, William, by Divine Providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Metropolitan. WHEREAS the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Winchester did, on the seventh day of December, 1841, refuse to admit to examination for the Holy Order of Priesthood Peter Young, clerk, M.A., Curate of Hursley, avowedly and solely on the ground of his declining positively to deny all mysterious Presence of our Blessed Lord's Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, excepting to the faithful receiver, he, the said Peter Young, desiring to leave the same an open question—that is, neither to affirm nor deny such Presence. And whereas it has ever been held lawful and right, and no breach of canonical obedience, for the priests of the Catholic Church to remonstrate against what appear to them grave doctrinal errors, even in their own superiors, provided all be done in dutiful and respectful manner, and in submission to higher authority,—Now I, John Keble, a priest of the Church of England, and Vicar of Hursley aforesaid, do hereby solemnly and seriously, as in the presence of Almighty God, protest and appeal, so far as the laws of this Church allow, against the aforementioned decision of his Lordship, humbly submitting my appeal to the judgment of Your Grace as Metropolitan. I protest and appeal,— 2. Because in this case the candidate had distinctly denied what our Church denies, and affirmed what she affirms: neither was any particular reason alleged for suspecting him of heresy on this or any {442} other subject: nor was he justly so chargeable in his Lordship's opinion, as is proved by the fact of his Lordship's expressly permitting him still to exercise the office of deacon in his diocese. 3. Because when Mr. Young did unwillingly proceed, by command of the Bishop, to express his sentiments in his own words, not even then did his Lordship allege against him any definite error, but only that his statement was vague and indistinct in his Lordship's apprehension, and that he declined assenting to a certain negative proposition which his Lordship laid before him. 4. Because the proposition to which his Lordship required such formal assent is not contained, either literally or in substance, in any of the formularies of the Church of England, and therefore to enforce subscription to it as a condition of ordination is not abiding by the discipline of Christ as this Church and realm hath received the same, &c., &c. ——————— Mr. J. A. Froude, writing in 'Good Words,' gives his early recollections of Mr. Newman: 'When I entered at Oxford John Henry Newman was beginning to be famous. The responsible authorities were watching him with anxiety; clever men were looking with interest and curiosity on the apparition among them of one of those persons of indisputable genius who was likely to make a mark upon his time. His appearance was striking. He was above the middle height, slight and spare. His head was large, his face remarkably like that of Julius Cæsar. The forehead, the shape of the ears and nose, were almost the same. The lines of the mouth were very peculiar, and I should say exactly the same. I have often thought of the resemblance, and believed that it extended to the temperament. In both there was an original force of character which refused to be moulded by circumstances, which was to make its own way, and become a power in the world; a clearness of intellectual perception, a disdain for conventionalities, a temper imperious and wilful, but along with it a most attaching gentleness, sweetness, singleness of heart and purpose. Both were formed by nature to command others; both had the faculty of attracting to themselves the passionate devotion of their friends and followers ... Greatly as his poetry had struck me, he was himself all that the poetry was, and something far beyond. I had then never seen so impressive a person. I met him now and then in private; I attended his church and heard him preach Sunday after Sunday; he is supposed to have been insidious, to have led his disciples on to conclusions to which he designed to bring them, while his purpose was carefully veiled. He was, on the contrary, the most transparent of men. He told us what he believed to be true. He did not know where it would carry him'—Vol. for 1881, p. 162. {443} ——————— FROM
'STUDIES IN
POETRY AND
PHILOSOPHY,' ' … This movement, moreover, when at its height extended its influence far beyond the circle of those who directly adopted its views. There was not, in Oxford at least, a reading man who was not more or less indirectly influenced by it. Only the very idle or the very frivolous were wholly proof against it. On all others it impressed a sobriety of conduct and a seriousness not usually found among large bodies of young men. It raised the tone of average morality in Oxford to a level which perhaps it had never before reached. You may call it over-wrought and too highly strung. Perhaps it was. It was better, however, for young men to be so than to be doubters or cynics. 'If such was the general aspect of Oxford society at that time, where was the centre and soul from which so mighty a power emanated? It lay, and had for some years lain, mainly in one man—a man in many ways the most remarkable that England has seen during this century, perhaps the most remarkable whom the English Church has produced in any century—JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.' ——————— In the same tone the Very Rev. W. C. Lake, Dean of Durham, has written: 'This I may say, that I cannot imagine a higher tribute to Cardinal Newman than the high tone of moral feeling which, as far as I can judge (and I had large means of judging), prevailed in the Oxford society of young men during the period of his influence. 'No doubt it was rather a peculiar time, with something of "the torrent's smoothness ere it dashed below" ... but, allowing for all this, I cannot but think that the high and unworldly tone of University life in Newman's day was a remarkable phenomenon, and was chiefly due to him.' ——————— The following high and just estimate of Mr. Newman's Sermons opens a notice of the edition of 'Parochial Sermons' published in 1868: 'Dr. Newman's Sermons stand by themselves in modern English literature; it might be said, in English literature generally. There have been equally great masterpieces of English writing in this form of composition, and there have been preachers whose theological depth, acquaintance with the heart, earnestness, tenderness, and power have not been inferior to his. But the great writers do not touch, pierce, and get hold of minds as he does, and those who are famous for the power and results of their preaching do not write as he does. His sermons have done more perhaps than any {444} one thing to mould and quicken and brace the religious temper of our time; they have acted with equal force on those who were nearest and on those who were furthest from him in theological opinion. They have altered the whole manner of feeling towards religious subjects. We know now that they were the beginning, the signal and first heave, of a vast change that was to come over the subject; of a demand from religion of a thoroughgoing reality of meaning and fulfilment, which is familiar to us, but was new when it was first made. And, being this, these sermons are also among the very finest examples of what the English language of our day has done in the hands of a master. Sermons of such intense conviction and directness of purpose, combined with such originality and perfection on their purely literary side, are rare everywhere. Remarkable instances, of course, will occur to everyone of the occasional exhibition of this combination, but not in so sustained and varied and unfailing a way. Between Dr. Newman and the great French school there is this difference—that they are orators, and he is as far as anything can be in a great preacher from an orator ... No one ever brought out so impressively the sense of the impenetrable and tremendous vastness of that amid which man plays his part. In such sermons as those on the 'Intermediate State,' the 'Invisible World,' the 'Greatness and Littleness of Human Life,' the 'Individuality of the Soul,' the 'Mysteriousness of our Present Being,' we may see exemplified the enormous irruption into the world of modern thought of the unknown and the unknowable, as much as in the writers who, with far different objects, set against it the clearness and certainty of what we do know.'—Saturday Review, June 5, 1869. Top | Contents | Biographies | Home Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |