Walter Walsh: The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England 1833-1864 (pp.1-21)

Walter Walsh: The history of the Romeward movement in the Church of England 1833-1864: pp.1-21. These early pages give an overview to John Henry Newman as well as a sense of Evangelical Christianity in the Anglican way...in the late 18th and through the 19th century.

This is a well-researched expose of Tractarianism and Anglo-Romanizing in the Church of England. You won't get this at www.virtueonline.org, AMiA, ACNA, or other toleraters of this anti-Confessional, anti-Reformational, and anti-Protestant movement that effaced authentic Anglicanism.

Freely downloadable at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=skIkAVBbQFQC&pg=PA1&dq=walter+walsh&as_brr=1&output=text#c_top

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THE HISTORY OF THE ROMEWARD MOVEMENT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: 1833-1864

CHAPTER I

The Reformation and Justification by Faith—The Evangelical Party represents the Reformers — Evangelicals and Puritans—The Evangelical Revival—What It did for the Church and Nation—Testimony of Canon Lid don, Mr. Gladstone, Dean Church, Lord Selbome, and Mr. Lecky—The Oxford Movement not a supplement to the Evangelical Revival — The two Movements were antagonistic—The Rule of Faith—The Founder of the Oxford Movement— Its real object—Was Newman ever an Evangelical?—Newman's early life—Blanco White's warning—What Newman thought of the Reformation in 1833.

At the Protestant Reformation there was one truth which, perhaps, more than any other, came before the world with all the freshness and power of a new revelation from God. It had been revealed to man fifteen hundred years before in the New Testament, but there it had remained buried during the Dark Ages, unheard of and unknown to those to whom the Bible was a closed book. Men learnt, in the sixteenth century, with joyful surprise, that it was possible to obtain absolution of their sins, and an entrance to Heaven, without the assistance of any Sacrificing Priest, and without the aid of a Father Confessor. They learnt that it was the blessed privilege of even the vilest and most sinful to go for pardon direct to the Saviour of mankind, to approach direct to the Mercy Seat, without money and without price, and without any priestly intervention or aid. "At the very root of the Reformation changes," said the Bishop of Winchester, in his Visitation Charge, in 1899, "lay the principle of the direct access of the individual soul to God, without human intervention of any kind, a principle which destroys the whole theory upo -. which the Roman Confessional had built its power."l This doctrine was embodied by our Reformers in the Book of Homilies, in which we are taught, as to the application of the merits of Christ to our souls :—" Herein thou needest no other man's help, no other sacrifice or Oblation, no Sacrificing Priest, no Mass, no means established by man's invention." 2

The acceptance of this grand and glorious truth made our Reformers free men. It was the death-knell of priestcraft, and the grave of Sacerdotalism. The cry of " No priest between the sinner and his Saviour," soon led to the further cry of " No Pope between the Englishman and his Sovereign." The rule of the priest was intolerable for men who were no longer spiritual slaves, and submission to Papal Supremacy became an impossibility for free-born Englishmen. Round this great truth, this doctrine of Justification by Faith only, centred the whole battle of the Reformation. Everything else, however important in itself, was of comparatively little moment. Here we have the real heart and soul of the Reformation Movement; this is the centre from which its pulsations vibrate, and from which its life-blood flows. Those who preach it are alone the true descendants of those to whom, under God, we owe the English Reformation of the sixteenth century. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the Evangelical party is new in the Reformed Church of England. The Reformers, with scarcely a solitary exception, held Evangelical doctrines, while their Protestantism was far more extreme than anything heard from Protestant platforms in the present day. A study of their writings, as reprinted by the Parker Society nearly sixty years since, affords ample evidence of their hatred of Sacerdotalism. Evangelical Churchmen do not represent now the Puritan party of the reign of Elizabeth, who were bitterly opposed to the Episcopal form of Church government, while Evangelical Churchmen were its warm friends. The Churchmen who fought against the Elizabethan Puritans held Evangelical views. All other parties within the Church date their birth from long after the Reformation.

Canon Overton, a member of the English Church Union, proves conclusively how great was the difference between Evangelical Churchmen and Puritans.

footnote. " The typical Puritan," he says, " was gloomy and austere; the typical Evangelical was bright and genial. The Puritan would not be kept within the pale of the National Church; the Evangelical would not be kept out of it. The Puritan was dissatisfied with our Liturgy, our ceremonies, our vestments, and our hierarchy; the Evangelical was perfectly contented with them. If Puritanism was the more fruitful in theological literature, Evangelicalism was infinitely more fruitful in works of piety and benevolence; there was hardly a single missionary or philanthropic scheme of the day which was not either originated or warmly taken up by the Evangelical party. The Puritans were frequently in antagonism with ' the powers that be,' the Evangelicals never; no amount of ill-treatment could put them out of love with our constitution in both Church and State."1

The Evangelical Movement of the latter half of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries was a Revival and not a Birth. It did great things for England and England's Church, as even those who have been its keenest critics have admitted. The testimony of Canon Liddon, the intimate friend and biographer of Dr. Pusey is, on this subject, important. He writes :—

" In its earlier days the Evangelical Movement was mainly if not exclusively interested in maintaining a certain body of positive truth. The great doctrines which alone make 'repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ' seriously possible were its constant theme. The world to come, with its boundless issues of life and death, the infinite value of the one Atonement, the regenerating, purifying, guiding action of God the Holy Spirit in respect of

footnote. 1 Overton's English Church in the Eighteenth Century, ch»p. iii.

the Christian soul, were preached to our grandfathers with a force and earnestness which are beyond controversy. The deepest and most fervid religion in England during the first three decades of this century was that of the Evangelicals; and, to the last day of his life, Pusey retained that 'love of the Evangelicals' to which he often adverted, and which was roused by their efforts to make religion a living power in a cold and gloomy age." 1

We thus learn that the Evangelicals were chiefly engaged on the most important subjects affecting the glory of God and the salvation of human souls, and that, under God, to them it is mainly due that true religion was revived as " a living power in a cold and gloomy age." What higher praise could be offered to any Church party than this, which comes from one of the warmest friends of the Oxford Movement ? I may now be permitted to cite the opinion of Mr. Gladstone, who, in his essay on " The Evangelical Movement," which first appeared in the British Quarterly Review for July 1879, pointed out what he conceived to be many serious defects in its system. Yet even he was constrained to admit that, " though Evangelicalism as a system may have been eminently narrow and inconsequent, it was born to do a noble work, and that the men to whom the work was committed, were men worthy of this high election."a Mr. H. O. Wakeman, an active supporter of the Ritualists, admits that, " During the latter part of the eighteenth century the Evangelical party were the salt of the Church of England."8

Two more High Churchmen I will quote before I pass on. The testimony of the first of these proves that the Evangelical Revival was powerful in the interests of philanthropy, and did not forget the interests of the body while engaged chiefly in looking after the eternal welfare of immortal souls. The late Dean Church had many supposed faults to point out in the Evangelical Movement when he wrote his historical sketch of The Oxford Movement; but he acknowledged that

" Evangelical religion had not been unfruitful, especially in

footnote. 1 Liddon's Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. i. p. 255.

footnote. * Gladstone's Gleanings of Past Years, vol. vii. p. 236.

footnote. * Wakeman's History of the Church of England, p. 452, 6th edition.

footnote. LORD SELBORNE ON THE EVANGELICALS 5

public results. It had led Howard and Elizabeth Fry to assail the brutalities of the prisons. It led Clarkson and Wilberforce to overthrow the slave trade, and ultimately slavery itself. It had created great Missionary Societies. It had given motive and impetus to countless philanthropic schemes."1

In this Dean Church was of one mind with the Evangelical Lord Shaftesbury, who with truth declared:— "I am satisfied that most of the great philanthropic movements of the century have sprung from " the Evangelicals.2

The testimony of the late Earl of Selborne, at one time Lord Chancellor of England, a decided High Churchman, though not a Ritualist, is important. He says:—

" Next to the home influence which surrounded me, none contributed more to preserve the balance of my mind than that of the excellent representatives of 'Evangelical' opinion, with whom I had been brought into contact. There were many things in that system, particularly the Calvinistic tenets held by the most powerful of its teachers, with which I never agreed; and it always seemed to me defective, as leaving too much out of sight the organic side of Christianity. But in its spirituality, in its constant presentation of Christ and His work as the foundation of faith and practice, and in its reverence for the Scriptures, I thought it set an example which all might have done well to follow." 8

One of the most bitter writers against the Evangelical party whom I have ever met with is the Rev. W. H. B. Proby, an enthusiastic supporter of the Ritualistic party. Yet even he, writing in 1888, was compelled to acknowledge its services both to the Church of England and to the cause of practical godliness.

"And what, with all this dignity and influence," he asks, "had the Low Church party effected ? They had effected a true conversion to God in Christ in the cases of numberless individuals, and they had effected certain reforms and improvements in the English Church at large, tending to the edification of individuals. Then they had been the means of improving the psalmody, by the singing of hymns, the psalmody having previously been confined almost entirely to the performance of metrical versions of Psalms. They had caused the public service of the Church to be gone through generally in a more becoming manner than had too often been customary; doubtless through practising the same rule which in later times was formulated by Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, ' Do not read the prayers, but pray them.' . . . There was, besides, an improvement of the outward face of society at large. There was less drunkenness in the upper classes, less indecent language, and less profane swearing. Shops were not so frequently opened on Good Friday. And of course there was an improvement in the general efficiency of the clergy; that is to say, owing to the Low Church movement there were more religious clergymen than there had ever been before. There was an increased care about Divine Service: the Prayer Book (so far, that is, as Low Churchmen chose, or had learnt to use it) was used more devoutly; several parts of the system of religion inculcated by the Church of England began to be made of more account than they had been; people learned to come to church in time for the commencement of the prayers; people were induced to join in the Amens and responses aloud."'

footnote. * The Oxford Movement. By Dean Church, p. 13, 1st edition.

footnote. * Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, popular edition, p. 519.

footnote. * Memorials Family and Personal, 1766-1865. By the Earl of Selborne, vol. i. p. 211.

Many of my readers will, I doubt not, be influenced on this subject by the opinion of an historian, who would pay but little attention to the opinion of divines. I may therefore appeal to the testimony of Mr. Lecky, who also criticises the Evangelical party, but is constrained to acknowledge their valuable services to the country.

"Great, however," he remarks, "as was the importance of the Evangelical Revival in stimulating these [philanthropic] efforts, it had other consequences of perhaps a wider and more enduring influence. Before the close of the century in which it appeared, a spirit had begun to circulate in Europe threatening the very foundations of society and belief. The revolt against the supernatural theory of Christianity which had been conducted by Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists . . . had produced in France a revolutionary spirit, which in its intensity and its proselytising fervour was unequalled since the days of the Reformation. . . . Religion, property, civil authority, and domestic life were all assailed, and doctrines incompatible with the very existence of government were embraced by multitudes with the

footnote. 1 Annals of the Law Church Party. By the Rev. W. H. B. Proby, vol . i. PP 350-J52

footnote. MR. LECKY ON THE EVANGELICALS 7

fervour of a religion. England, on the whole, escaped the contagion. Many causes conspired to save her, but among them a prominent place must, I believe, be given to the new and vehement religious enthusiasm which was at that very time passing through the middle and lower classes of the people, which had enlisted in its service a large proportion of the wilder and more impetous reformers, and which recoiled with horror from the anti-Christian tenets that were associated with the Revolution in France."1

To have contributed thus powerfully towards preserving England from Atheism and the horrors of the French Revolution constitutes, I venture to suggest, a strong claim on the gratitude of all patriots to the Evangelical party. Referring to the Evangelical leaders of the latter part of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, Mr. Lecky affirms that:—

"All these possessed, in an eminent degree, the qualities of heart and mind that influence great masses of men; and they and their colleagues gradually changed the whole spirit of the English Church. They infused into it a new fire and passion of devotion, kindled a spirit of fervent philanthropy, raised the standard of clerical duty, and completely altered the whole tone and tendency of the preaching of its ministers. Before the close of the [eighteenth] century the Evangelical Movement had become the almost undisputed centre of religious activity in England, and it continued to be so till the rise of the Tractarian Movement of 1833."

The Tractarian Movement has been to the Evangelical Movement what the Jesuit Order was to the Reformation. It has paralysed the energies of every Evangelical who has yielded to its influence. It has been frequently asserted that the new Sacerdotal Revival in the Church of England is only supplementary to the Evangelical Movement and is not opposed to it. " The High Church Revival," writes Canon Overton, "was not the antagonist but the supplement of the Evangelical Revival which preceded it." ' And Canon Liddon asserts that " the Oxford Movement was a completion of the earlier Revival of religion

footnote.1 Lecky's History of England, vol. iii. pp. 145, 146, edition 1892.

footnote. » Ibid. p. 134.

footnote.* Tht Anglican Revival. By J. H. Overton, D.D., p. 15.

known as Evangelical."1 Mr. H. O. Wakeman asserts that the Oxford Movement " did not so much supersede the Caroline, Latitudinarian, and Evangelical Movements as supplement them."2 To all this, so far at least as it applies to the Evangelicals, I reply by denying that the Oxford Movement was either the " supplement" to or the " completion" of the Evangelical Revival ; and by asserting most emphatically that its attitude was distinctly antagonistic. If in any sense it was a " supplement" it was in the sense that poison is a supplement to wholesome food. The chief characteristics of Evangelical religion can never be reconciled with the Sacerdotal system. The Evangelical theory that Divine grace with pardon of sins is conveyed directly to each individual soul by God Himself, through Jesus Christ, our only Mediator, and not by Sacramental elements or priestly absolution, can never be reconciled with the general teaching of the early Tractarians and their successors of the present day. That well-known champion of Ritualism, the late Rev. Dr. Littledale, perceived and acknowledged this thirty years since. He said: " And first, it ought to be said that they [the ' Catholic and Protestant'] are logically two distinct religions, and not merely differing aspects of the same religion. They are quite as diverse from each other as Judaism is from Islam ; though like these two creeds, they have a common stock of books, sacred names, and ideas." And, again: " But the real fact, that these two systems are rival religions, can easily be discovered by considering what we mean by Religion."8 Another characteristic of Evangelical teaching is the doctrine that the Bible is the sole and only Rule of Faith, and a claim to the right of Private Judgment ; while that of the Tractarians and Ritualists is that Tradition also forms a part of the Christian's Rule of Faith, and that Private Judgment is a thing to be condemned. The ingenuity of man can never reconcile these opposing theories together, or prove

footnote. 1 Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. i. p. 254.

footnote. " Wakeman's History of the Church of England, p. 491. * The Two Religions. By Richard F. Littledale, I.L.D., pp. 2, 3. London : G. J. Palmer. 1870.

footnote. RIVETING THE CHAINS OF PRIESTCRAFT 9

that the one is but the supplement to the other. In this connection it is worthy of note that one of the first blows struck by the leaders of the Oxford Movement was aimed against direct access to God for pardon of sins, and with the object of riveting once more on English Churchmen the intolerable chains of priestcraft. Writing to the Hon. and Rev. A. P. Percival, on August 14, 1833, the Rev. Richard Hurrell Froude announced :—

"Since I have been back to Oxford, Keble has been here, and he, and Palmer, and Newman, have come to an agreement, that the points which ought to be put forward by us are the following:—

" '(1) The doctrine of Apostolic Succession as a rule of practice, i.e. that the participation of the body and blood of Christ is essential to the maintenance of Christian life and hope in each individual.

"' (a) That it is conveyed to individual Christians only by the hands of the successors of the Apostles, and their delegates.'"1

Here it is implied that something which "is essential to the maintenance of Christian life," can "only" be "conveyed to individual Christians," not direct by the Saviour Himself, but by "the successors of the Apostles," a term which, in the estimation of the Tractarians, excluded all ministers who did not possess Episcopal ordination. Here we have the essence of Sacerdotalism, taught by the founders of the Oxford Movement within a month from its birth. In 1835 Newman declared, in his "Advertisement " to the second volume of the Tracts for the Times, that " the essence of Sectarian Doctrine" was found in those who " consider faith, and not the Sacraments, as the instrument of justification " :—

" We have," he exclaimed, " almost embraced the doctrine, that God conveys grace only through the instrumentality of the mental energies, that is, through faith, prayer, active spiritual contemplations, or (what is called) communion with God, in contradiction to the primitive view, according to which the Church and her Sacraments are the ordained and direct visible means of conveying to the soul what is in itself supernatural and unseen." 2

footnote. 1 Percival's Collection of Papers connected with the Theological Movement of l%y\, p. 12. "James Skinner," p. 2. * Tracts for the Times, vol. ii. p. vi.

This doctrine, that " visible " things, viz., priests and Sacramental elements, " convey to the soul " Divine grace, instead of its being conveyed " through faith" and by "communion with God," has been the general teaching of the Tractarians and their successors from 1833 to the present time. In recent years, however, it has been expressed in clearer and more daring language. The so-called " Cowley Fathers " teach that:—

"They (priests) are peacemakers under Him who carry on this work for Him, applying the precious Blood to the souls of men by the Sacraments for the remission of sins."1

The Rev. Edward Stuart, formerly Vicar of St. Mary Magdalene, Munster Square, London, actually had the daring to write :—

" God alone is the Giver of all spiritual life and grace and favour, and yet we are not bid to go direct to God for these gifts (for that right we forfeited at the Fall), but we are to go to the Church which stands between us and God in its appointed sphere." 2

On the subject of the Bible as the only Rule of Faith, and the right and duty of Private Judgment in its interpretation, the teaching of Evangelical Churchmen is, as I have just asserted, irreconcilably opposed to that of Tractarians and Ritualists. As early as the month of September 1833—only two months after the birth of the Oxford Movement—Mr. Newman published his views on these gravely important questions. No amount of sophistry could persuade a Protestant Churchman to accept his teaching:—

"Surely," wrote Mr. Newman, "the Sacred Volume was never intended, and is not adapted, to teach us our creed; however certain it is that we can prove our creed from it, when it has once been taught us, and in spite of individual producible exceptions to the general rule. From the very first, that rule has been, as a matter of fact, that the Church should teach the truth, and then should appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching. And from the first, it has been the error of heretics to neglect the information thus

footnote. 1 The Evangelist Library: Exposition of the Beatitudes, p. 31. 1 The Mediation of the Church, By the Rev. Edward Stuart, p. 9.

provided for them, and to attempt of themselves a work to which they are unequal, the eliciting a systematic doctrine from the scattered notices of the truth which Scripture contains. . . . The insufficiency of the mere private study of Holy Scripture for arriving at the exact and entire truth which Scripture really contains, is shown by the fact, that creeds and teachers have ever been divinely provided."1

When, in 1837, Mr. Newman published his Lectures on Popular Protestantism, he expressed himself more clearly and strongly:—

"Accordingly," he said, "acute men among them [Protestants] see that the very elementary notion which they have adopted, of the Bible without note or comment being the sole authoritative Judge in controversies of faith, is a self-destructive principle."2

" For though we consider Scripture a satisfactory, we do not consider it our sole informant in divine truths. We have another source of information in reserve, as I shall presently show. . . . We rely on Antiquity to strengthen such intimations of doctrine as are but faintly, though really, given in Scripture."

" I would not deny as an abstract proposition that a Christian may gain the whole truth from the Scriptures, but would maintain that the chances are very seriously against a given individual. I would not deny, rather I maintain that a religious, wise, and intellectually gifted man will succeed : but who answers to this description but the collective Church ? " 4

Of the Rev. Richard Hurrell Froude, one of the principal founders of the Tractarian Movement, Cardinal Newman states that:—" He felt scorn of the maxim, 'The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants '; and he gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching."5

A refutation of the assertions in these extracts would take up several chapters of this work, and would be generally considered out of place here. But I am happy to state that they have all been ably and amply discussed and refuted in Dean Goode's Divine Rule of Faith and Practice,1 one of the most valuable works on the subject ever produced by an Evangelical Churchman. It seems a pity that it has never yet been issued in a condensed form in one volume. I need only remark here that once a Christian man gives up the theory that the Bible and the Bible alone contains a perfect Rule of Faith, and at the same time discards the use of Private Judgment, he is open to believe any false doctrine, however preposterous it may be. The ridiculous superstitions now advocated by the Ritualists may be appealed to in proof of this assertion.

footnote. 1 Tke Avians in the Fourth Century. By the Rev. J. H. Newman, p. 50, 7th edition.

footnote. * Newman's Via Media, vol. i. p. 27, edition 1891.

footnote. * Hid. pp. 28, 29. */«
footnote. * Newman's Apologia P10 Vita Sua, 1st edition, p. 85.

Who was the founder of the Oxford Movement ? Cardinal Newman asserts .that "the true and primary author of it" was the Rev. John Keble.2 No doubt Newman was better qualified than any other man to express an opinion on this question, yet no one who has carefully studied the early history of the Movement can fail to see that the principal worker and the most prominent figure was Newman himself. The ostensible cause of its birth was the alleged encroachments of the State on the province of the Church, more especially as manifested in the proposal of the Irish Church Temporalities Bill to suppress a large number of the Bishoprics of the Church of Ireland, and the demands of men like Dr. Arnold to enlarge the borders of the Establishment so as to embrace Dissenters. The real reason was the desire to exalt the clergy into a sacerdotal caste, and to bring the laity under the rule of the priesthood, with a view to the Reunion of Christendom. The way for the movement had been prepared by the publication of Keble's Christian Year in 1827, and many of the chief actors had themselves been prepared by study and conversations with each other, for the part they were about to take in the work before them. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the founders commenced the Oxford Movement while sound Protestants. I know that Newman is said to have been originally an Evangelical.

footnote. 1 The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, and edition. By William Goode, M.A. Three vols. London : J. H. Jackson. 1853. 2 Newman's Apologia, p. 75.

It is true that he was brought up under Evangelical influence, but I do not believe that he ever accepted the system in its entirety. A true Evangelical is one in heart as well as in name, whose soul and life are moved by its Gospel teaching, and not merely his intellect. Much ado is made about his " conversion " in his young days, yet after all it is evident that what he meant by it was something different from what Evangelicals themselves mean by the term "conversion." In his "Autobiographical Memoir," written in 1874, he speaks of himself in the third person. In it he affirms:—

" And, in truth, much as he [Newman] owed to the Evangelical teaching, so it was he never had been a genuine Evangelical. That teaching had been a great blessing for England; . . . but, after all, the Evangelical teaching, considered as a system and in what was peculiar to itself, had from the first failed to find a response in his own religious experience, as afterwards in his parochial. He had indeed been converted by it to a spiritual life, and so far his experience bore witness to its truth; but he had not been converted in that special way which it laid down as imperative, but so plainly against rule, as to make it very doubtful in the eyes of normal Evangelicals whether he had really been converted at all. Indeed, at various times of his life, as, for instance, after the publication of his Apologia, letters, kindly intended, were addressed to him by strangers or anonymous writers, assuring him that he did not yet know what conversion meant, and that the all-important change had still to be wTOughtin him if he was to be saved. . . . He [Newman] was sensible that he had ever been wanting in those special Evangelical experiences which, like the grip of the hand or other prescribed signs of a secret society, are the sure token of a member."1

It is interesting to note the various steps by which Newman at length reached the position he held at the birth of the Oxford Movement. He tells us that when he was not quite ten years old he drew, in a "verse book" in his possession, "the figure of a solid cross upright, and next to it is, what may indeed be meant for a necklace, but what I cannot make out to be anything else than a set of beads suspended, with a little cross attached."1 Newman tells us that when he was fifteen years old he "was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion used constantly to cross myself on going into the dark."2 In 1823 he began to believe in the doctrine of Apostolic Succession.8 His first sermon after his ordination—which event took place on June 13, 1824—implied in its tone a denial of Baptismal Regeneration; but it was not long afterwards when he accepted that doctrine, having been persuaded into believing it from reading Archbishop Sumner's Treatise on Apostolic Preaching. This book, he asserts, " was successful beyond anything else in rooting out Evangelical doctrines" from his creed.4 In 1824 his brother, F. W. Newman, was shocked, while arranging the furniture in some new rooms he was about to occupy, to find a beautiful engraving of the Blessed Virgin Mary fixed up, and that it was a present from his brother, John Henry.8 About a year later Dr. Hawkins taught him to believe in the doctrine of Tradition, and that " the sacred text [of the Bible] was never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that if we would learn doctrine we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church."a In 1832 Newman had gone so far wrong on this gravely important subject as to write to Dr. Pusey: " As to Scripture being practically sufficient for making the Christian, it seems to me a mere dream." 7

footnote. 1 Letters and Correspondence of J. H. Newman, 1st edition, vol. i. pp. 122, "3

As early as his fifteenth year Newman " became most firmly convinced that the Pope was the Antichrist predicted by Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John," and he states that his " imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the year 1843 ; it had been obliterated from my reason and judgment at an earlier date."8 It is, indeed, marvellous how any one who ever held such views as to the Pope could go over to Rome. With this view of Antichrist Newman also believed that Rome was

footnote. 1 Apologia Pro Vita Sua, p. 57. * Hid. p. 56. * Ibid. p. 67.

footnote. 4 Newman's Letters and Correspondence, vol. L p. 120.

footnote. * The Early History of Cardinal Newman. By his Brother, F. W. Newman, p. 18.

footnote. Apologia, p. 66. 7 Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. i. p. 233. ' Apologia, p. 63. 1 Newman's Letters, vol. i. p. 388. * Rev. xviii. 4.

ROME AND BABYLON 15

the Babylon of the Revelation ; but while at Naples, early in 1833, he adopted the view held by many Roman Catholic writers, and in substance sanctioned in the notes to the Rheims New Testament, that Babylon was the city of Rome, but not the Church of Rome. He communicated his views on this question to his friend, the Rev. S. Rickards :—

" A notion has struck me,'' he wrote, " on reading the Revelation again and again, that the Rome there mentioned is Rome considered as a city or a place, without any reference to the question whether it be Christian or Pagan. As a seat of government, it was the first cruel persecutor of the Church, and as such condemned to suffer God's judgments, which had not yet been fully poured out upon it, from the plain fact that it still exists. Babylon is gone. Rome is a city still, and judgments await her therefore."1

By adopting this theory, one of the greatest barriers against reunion with the Church of Rome is removed in the mind of any one who accepts it. The command of God, as to Babylon the Great, is "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."2 If the Church of Rome be identical with Babylon, this divine command, "Come out of her," settles the whole question as to union with her, either on the part of individuals or Churches. And that she is Babylon has been most ably and learnedly proved by the late Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, of Lincoln (an old-fashioned High Churchman), in his little book, entitled Union with Rome, which has never yet been refuted.

Sometime before 1828, when Dr. Copleston resigned the office of Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, Mr. Newman's conduct seems to have alarmed one, at least, of his intimate friends. His brother writes:—

"The Provost of Oriel (Dr., afterwards Bishop, Copleston), admired him [Blanco White], and invited him to join the Fellows' table; but breakfast and tea he shared with us. He and my brother [John Henry Newman], enjoyed the violin together. I gradually heard their theological talk, which was apt to end by Blanco's sharp warning : ' Ah ! Newman ! if you follow that clue it will draw you into Catholic error.' But I believe he meant into self-flagellation, maceration of the body."1

Mr. Blanco White was a converted Roman Catholic priest of great learning, and, no doubt, he could see more clearly than others around him in what direction Newman was at that time moving. On this occasion White was a true prophet. In 1829 Newman sent his mother and sisters two sermons which he had published. In acknowledging their receipt his sister remarked : "We have long since read your two sermons ; they are very High Church."2 By the year 1831 Newman appears to have become dissatisfied with the present Book of Common Prayer, and wished to restore one which had in it a considerable amount of Romanism. "You may assure Rickards from me," he wrote to his sister, on Oct. 16, 1831, " that I am a reformer as much as he can be. I should like (as far as I can understand the matter), to substitute the First Prayer Book of King Edward for the present one." ' His ideas at that time of what a reformer should accomplish were set forth very clearly in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua:—

"I saw," wrote Newman, "that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue her [the Church of England]. As to leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination; still, I ever kept ,, before me that there was something greater than the Established Church, and that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence and organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be dealt with strongly, or she would be lost There was need of a second Reformation." *

Writing from Rome, March 19, 1833, Newman told Dr. Pusey what he even then thought of the Protestant

footnote. 1 Early History of Cardinal Newman, p. 13.

footnote. * Newman's litters, vol. i. p. 215. * Ibid. vol. i. p. 250.

footnote. * Apologia, p. 95.

A SECOND REFORMATION 17

Reformation. " I wish," he wrote, " I could make up my mind whether the 1260 years of Captivity begin with Constantine—it seems a remarkable coincidence that its termination should fall about on the Reformation— (I speak from memory)—which, amid good, has been the source of all the infidelity, the second woe, which is now overspreading the earth." i

At about the same time Newman defined more clearly what he then meant by " a second Reformation." " It would be," he said, " in fact a second Reformation : a better Reformation, for it would be a return, not to the sixteenth century, but to the seventeenth." 2 Unfortunately, as we shall see later on, Newman's " second Reformation" developed into a return, not merely to the seventeenth century, but to a period anterior to the sixteenth century Reformation.

footnote. 1 Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. i . p. 249.
footnote. a Newman's Apologia, p. 113.