NEWMAN 



465 



after he had ceased to accept it as a truth that 

 Koine is Antichrist. In the autumn of 1816 a 

 belief took possession of him, as he tells us in his 

 Apologia, that he was to lead a life of celibacy ; 

 ami tiiis belief held its ground, with certain lirief 

 intervals of 'a month now and a month then,' up 

 to the age of twenty-eight, after which it remained 

 absolutely fixed. Newman went to a private 

 school at Baling. The stoppage of his father's 

 bank compelled him to take his degree at Oxford 

 as early as possible without taking full time to read 

 for honours, and he actually took it ( from Trinity 

 College) in 1820, when he was only nineteen, but 

 overwork resulted in a partial failure. In 1821 he 

 wrote jointly with a friend two cantos of a poem 

 on St Bartholomew's Eve, but the fragment has 

 never been republished. It should ! added that 

 Newman was always passionately fond of music, 

 and showed delicacy and skill as a violinist. 



In 1822 Newman was elected to a fellowship in 

 Oriel College, then the most distinguished in the 

 university ; and it was here that, after a period of 

 some loneliness, he formed his close intimacy with 

 Dr Pusey, and subsequently with Hurrell Fronde, 

 whose dash and genius exerted a great influence 

 over Newman, and who had a great share in 

 starting the Tractarian movement of 1833. In 

 ISL'.'!, too. Newman first read -Butler's Aiutlogy, 

 from which he tells us that he learned to interpret 

 the less certain aspects of natural religion in the 

 SCUM! nf icvcalnl religion, and especially to in- 

 terpret natural phenomena in the sense of the 

 sacramental system i.e. as conveying mystical 

 spiritual influences of which there is no external 

 sign. Keble's Christian Year ( 1827) fell in exactly 

 with this impression of the mystery at the heart of 

 apparently purely physical influences. From Bishop 

 Butler N'-wman .also derived the principle that 

 'probability is the guide of life, ' which, however, 

 he more or less modified when he l>ecamea Koman 

 Catholic, holding thenceforward that in all matters 

 of tirst-rate religious importance certitude can l>e 

 attained and not merely probability. At Oriel 

 Newman formed cordial relations with Dr Haw 

 kins, afterwards the provost of the college, and 

 Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. Both 

 of them exercised great influence over him by 

 teaching him to ilcl'me his thoughts clearly; and 

 he afterwards t>xpiv~.i'd surprise that the casuistry 

 of the Roman Church should have been credited 

 with those lialiits of subtle discrimination which he 

 hail really gained from his Oxford colleagues. 



Newman's lirst book, completed in 1832, but 

 not published till 1833, was that on The Arid/in 

 of the Fourth Century. It was a very careful and 

 scholarly production, intended to show that the 

 Arian heresy was not, as had been supposed, of 

 Alexandrian origin, but was one of the Judaising 

 heresies which sprang up in Antioch. The book is 

 a |M>werful vindication of the Athanasian doctrine 

 of the divine nature of Jesus Christ from the im- 

 putation of Ix-ing arbitrary, or in any way an un- 

 authorised ecclesiastical addition to the essence of 

 the Pauline and Johannine theology. Newman 

 insists on the dogmatic definition of the Son as 

 Ix-in;; 'of one sulwtance ' with the Father, and not 

 merely 'of like sulistance,' as the only escape from 

 either creature -worship on the one hand or the 

 impossible assertion of the voluntary self-sacrifice 

 of an eternal creator on man's account C'l the 

 other. 



In the late autumn of 1832 Newman accom- 

 panied Hurrell Froude and his father in a Mediter- 

 ranean tour undertaken in the ho|ie of restoring 

 the health of the former. It was on this tour 

 that the fire gradually kindled which was to bear 

 fruit in the Anglican movement of 1833. Most of 

 Newman's smaller poems were written on this 

 342 



voyage, and were soon afterwards published witli 

 the signature d in the Lyra Apostolica, a volume 

 of verse the object of which was to reassert for 

 the Church of England her spiritual authority 

 and mission with something of the ease and 

 buoyancy of poetic license. It was on this tour 

 that Newman tirst saw Monsignore (afterwards 

 Cardinal ) Wiseman in Rome, and told him gravely 

 in reply to the expression of a courteous wish 

 that Hurrell Fronde and he might revisit Rome, 

 'We have a work to do in England.' At Rome 

 Newman left his friends to go alone to Sicily, 

 where he fell ill of malarial fever. His mind was 

 deeply possessed during this illness by the idea 

 of the work he had to do in Englantl, and the 

 delay in finding passage to England was very 

 trying to him. He spent much of his time in the 

 Roman Catholic churches, which he had up to 

 this period refrained from 'visiting, and speaks 

 with great feeling in one of his |x>ems of the good 

 offices of that church, though a 'foe,' in minister- 

 ing to his sickness, like the good Samaritan to 

 the wounded Jew. At last he got passage on 

 an orange lx>at to Marseilles. Becalmed in the 

 Straits of Bonifacio, he wrote the best known 

 of all his poems, 'Lead, kindly Light.' From 

 Marseilles he travelled straight to England, reach- 

 ing home in time to be present at Keble's Oxford 

 assize sermon on National Apostasy, which he 

 always regarded as the date at which the Trac- 

 tarian movement began. It was preached on July 

 14, 1833. 



Into the series of Tracts for the Times which 

 now commenced Newman threw himself with great 

 energy ; indeed he himself composed a considerable 

 numl>er of them. In the very lirst page of the first 

 tract, which was his own, he told tlie bishops that 

 ' black event though it would be for the country, 

 yet we could not wish them' a more blessed ter- 

 mination of their career than the spoiling of their 

 goods and martyrdom.' The tracts which now 

 Iwgan to pour forth were all intended to assert 

 the authority of the Anglican Church, to claim 

 apostolical descent for the Anglican episcopate, 

 to advocate the restoration of a stricter discipline 

 and the maintenance of a stricter orthodoxy, to 

 insist on the primary importance of the sacra- 

 ments, and the duty of loyalty to the church 

 Newman persuaded a friend to stay away from 

 the marriage of a sister who had seceded from 

 the Anglican Church and in general to preserve 

 the dogmatic purity of the church as well as to 

 guard her divine ritual. But while he was full 

 of confidence in these principles, which he held 

 in common with Rome, what puzzled him was to 

 justify adequately the strong anti-Romanist lan- 

 guage of the greater Anglican divines ; and a great 

 part of his time was given during the Tractarian 

 movement to laying down clearly the doctrine of 

 the via media or midway course Itetween popular 

 Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, which he 

 claimed that the Anglican divines of the 17th 

 century had taken up. Up to nearly the end of 

 his Anglican period he disapproved strongly the 

 cultus of the Virgin Mary and the saints as in- 

 terfering with the true worship of God. In 1837 

 he made an attempt to distinguish the Anglican 

 via media from the doctrine of the Church of 

 Rome in a course of lectures on 'The Prophetical 

 Office of the Church viewed relatively to Roman- 

 ism and Popular Protestantism.' In these lectures 

 he contrasted the attitude of the Anglican and 

 Roman churches in reference to the use and abu-,e 

 of private judgment, their attitude towards the 

 principle of infallibility, their very different use 

 of Scripture, and their view of the fortunes of 

 the church. But while defending and defining 

 as far as possible the via media of Anglicanism, 



