fever at Leonforte, recovering from it with the conviction that he
had a work to do in England.
In June 1833 he left Palermo for Marseilles in an orange boat, which was becalmed in the Strait of Bonifacio, and here he wrote the verses, “Lead, kindly Light,” which later became popular as a hymn. He was at home again in Oxford on the 9th of July, and on the 14th Keble preached at St Mary’s an assize sermon on “National Apostasy,” which Newman afterwards regarded as the inauguration of the Oxford Movement. In the words of Dean Church, it was “Keble who inspired, Froude who gave the impetus and Newman who took up the work”; but the first organization of it was due to H. J. Rose, editor of the British Magazine, who has been styled “the Cambridge originator of the Oxford Movement.” It was in his rectory house at Hadleigh, Suffolk, that a meeting of High Church clergymen was held, 25th to 29th of July (Newman was not present), at which it was resolved to fight for “the apostolical succession and the integrity of the Prayer-Book.” A few weeks later Newman started, apparently on his own initiative, the Tracts for the Times, from which the movement was subsequently named “Tractarian.” Its aim was to secure for the Church of England a definite basis of doctrine and discipline, in case either of disestablishment or of a determination of High Churchmen to quit the establishment, an eventuality that was thought not impossible in view of the States’ recent high-handed dealings with the sister established Church of Ireland. The teaching of the tracts was supplemented by Newman’s Sunday afternoon sermons at St Mary’s, the influence of which, especially over the junior members of the university, was increasingly marked during a period of eight years. In 1835 Pusey joined the movement, which, so far as concerned ritual observances, was later called “Puseyite”; and in 1836 its supporters secured further coherence by their united opposition to the appointment of Hampden as regius professor of divinity. His Bampton Lectures (in the preparation of which Blanco White had assisted him) were suspected of heresy, and this suspicion was accentuated by a pamphlet put forth by Newman, Elucidations of Dr Hampden’s Theological Statements. At this date Newman became editor of the British Critic, and he also gave courses of lectures in a side-chapel of St Mary’s in defence of the via media of the Anglican Church as between Romanism and popular Protestantism. His influence in Oxford was supreme about the year 1839, when, however, his study of the monophysite heresy first raised in his mind a doubt as to whether the Anglican position was really tenable on those principles of ecclesiastical authority which he had accepted; and this doubt returned when he read, in Wiseman’s article in the Dublin Review on “The Anglican Claim,” the Words of St Augustine against the Donatists, “securus judicat orbis terrarum,” words which suggested a simpler authoritative rule than that of the teaching of antiquity. He continued his work, however, as a High Anglican controversialist until he had published, in 1841, Tract 90, the last of the series, in which he put forth, as a kind of proof charge, to test the tenability of all Catholic doctrine within the Church of England, a detailed examination of the XXXIX. Articles, suggesting that their negations were not directed against the authorized creed of Roman Catholics, but only against popular errors and exaggerations. This theory, 'though not altogether new, aroused much indignation in Oxford, and A. C. Tait, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), with three other senior tutors, denounced it as “suggesting and opening a way by which men might violate their solemn engagements to the university.” The alarm was shared by the heads of houses and by others in authority; and, at the request of the bishop of Oxford, the publication of the Tracts came to an end. At this date Newman also resigned the editorship of the British Critic, and was thenceforth, as he himself later described it, “on his deathbed as regards membership with the Anglican Church.” He now recognized that the position of Anglicans was similar to that of the semi-Arians in the Arian controversy; and the arrangement made at this time that an Anglican bishopric should be established in Jerusalem, the appointment to lie alternately with the British and Prussian governments, was to him further evidence of the non-apostolical character of the Church of England. In 1842 he withdrew to Littlemore, and lived there under monastic conditions with a small band of followers, their life being one of great physical austerity as well as of anxiety and suspense. To his disciples there he assigned the task of writing lives of the English saints, while his own time was largely devoted to the completion of an essay on the development of Christian doctrine, by which principle he sought to reconcile himself to the elaborated creed and the practical system of the Roman Church. In February 1843 he published, as an advertisement in the Oxford Conservative Journal, an anonymous but otherwise formal retractation of all the hard things he had said against Rome; and in September, after the secession of one of the inmates of the house, he preached his last Anglican sermon at Littlemore and resigned the living of St Mary’s. But still an interval of two years elapsed before he was formally received into the Roman Catholic Church (9th October 1845) by Father Dominic, an Italian Passionist. In February 1846 he left Oxford for Oscott, where Bishop Wiseman, then vicar-apostolic of the Midland district, resided; and in October he proceeded to Rome, Where he was ordained priest and was given the degree of D.D. by the pope. At the close of 1847 he returned to England as an Oratorian, and resided first at Maryvale (near Oscott); then at St Wilfrid’s College, Cheadle; then at St Ann’s, Alcester Street, Birmingham; and finally at Edgbaston, where spacious premises were built for the community, and where (except for four years in Ireland) he lived a secluded life for nearly forty years. Before the house at Edgbaston was occupied he had established the London Oratory, with Father Faber as its superior, and there (in King William Street, Strand) he delivered a course of lectures on “The Present Position of Catholics in England,” in the fifth of which he protested against the anti-Catholic utterances of Dr Achilli, an ex-Dominican friar, whom he accused in detail of numerous acts of immorality. Popular Protestant feeling ran very high at the time, partly in consequence of the recent establishment of a Roman Catholic diocesan hierarchy by Pius IX., and criminal proceedings against Newman for libel resulted in an acknowledged gross miscarriage of justice. He was found guilty, and was sentenced to pay a fine of £100, while his expenses as defendant amounted to about £14,000, a sum that was at once raised by public subscription, a surplus being spent on the purchase of Rednall, a small property picturesquely situated on the Lickey Hills, with a chapel and cemetery, where Newman now lies buried. In 1854, at the request of the Irish bishops, Newman went to Dublin as rector of the newly-established Catholic university there. But practical organization was not among his gifts, and the bishops became jealous of his influence, so that after four years he retired, the best outcome of his stay there being a volume of lectures entitled Idea of a University, containing some of his most effective writing. In 1858 he projected a branch house of the Oratory at Oxford; but this was opposed by Manning and others, as likely to induce Catholics to send their sons to that university, and the scheme was abandoned. In 1859 he established, in connexion with the Birmingham Oratory, a school for the education of the sons of gentlemen on lines similar to those of the English public schools, an important work in which he never ceased to take the greatest interest. But all this time (since 1841) Newman had been under a cloud, so far as concerned the great mass of cultivated Englishmen, and he was now awaiting an opportunity to vindicate his career; and in 1862 he began to prepare autobiographical and other memoranda for the purpose. The occasion came when, in January 1864, Charles Kingsley, reviewing Froude’s History of England in Macmillan’s Magazine, incidentally asserted that “Father Newman informs us that truth for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy.” After some preliminary sparring between the two—Newman’s pamphlet, “Mr Kingsley and Dr Newman: a Correspondence on the Question whether Dr Newman teaches that Truth is no Virtue,” published in 1864 and not reprinted, is unsurpassed in the English language for the vigour of its satire: the anger displayed was
