later, in a letter to Sir William Cope, admitted to have been
largely feigned—Newman published in bi-monthly parts his
Apologia pro vita sua, a religious autobiography of unsurpassed
interest, the simple confidential tone of which “revolutionized
the popular estimate of its author,” establishing the strength and
sincerity of the convictions which had led him into the Roman
Catholic Church. Kingsley’s accusation indeed, in so far as it
concerned the Roman clergy generally, was not precisely dealt
with; only a passing sentence, in an appendix on lying and
equivocation, maintained that English Catholic priests are as
truthful as English Catholic laymen; but of the author’s own
personal rectitude no room for doubt was left.
In 1870 he put forth his Grammar of Assent, the most closely reasoned of his works, in which the case for religious belief is maintained by arguments differing somewhat from those commonly used by Roman Catholic theologians; and in 1877, in the republication of his Anglican works, he added to the two volumes containing his defence of the via media a long preface and numerous notes in which he criticized and replied to sundry anti-Catholic arguments of his own in the original issues. At the time of the Vatican Council (1869–1870) he was known to be opposed to the definition of Papal infallibility, and in a private letter to his bishop (Ullathorne), surreptitiously published, he denounced the “insolent and aggressive faction” that had pushed the matter forward. But he made no sign of disapproval when the doctrine was defined, and subsequently, in a letter nominally addressed to the duke of Norfolk on the occasion of Mr Gladstone’s accusing the Roman Church of having “equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history,” Newman affirmed that he had always believed the doctrine, and had only feared the deterrent effect of its definition on conversions. on account of acknowledged historical difficulties. In this letter, and especially in the postscript to the second edition of it, Newman finally silenced all cavillers as to his not being really at ease within the Roman Church. In 1878 his old college (Trinity), to his great delight, elected him an honorary fellow, and he revisited Oxford after an interval of thirty-two years. At the same date died Pope Pius IX., who had long mistrusted him; and Leo XIII. was encouraged by the duke of Norfolk and other distinguished Roman Catholic laymen to make Newman a cardinal, the distinction being a marked one, because he was a simple priest and not resident in Rome. The offer was made in February 1879, and the announcement of it was received with universal applause throughout the English-speaking world. The “creation” took place on 12th May, with the title of St George in Velabro, Newman taking occasion while in Rome to insist on the lifelong consistency of his opposition to “liberalism in religion.” After an illness that excited apprehension he returned to England, and thenceforward resided at the Oratory until his death, 11th August 1890, making occasional visits to London, and chiefly to his old friend, R. W. Church, dean of St Paul’s, who as proctor had vetoed the condemnation of Tract 90 in 1841. As cardinal Newman published nothing beyond a preface to a work by A. W. Hutton on the Anglican Ministry (1879) and an article on Biblical criticism in the Nineteenth Century (February 1884).
Newman’s influence as controversialist and preacher (i.e. as reader of his written sermons, for he was never a speaker) was very great. For the Roman Church his conversion secured great prestige and the dissipation of many prejudices. Within it his influence was mainly in the direction of a broader spirit and of a recognition of the important part played by development both in doctrine and in Church government. And although he never called himself a mystic, he showed that in his judgment spiritual truth is apprehended by direct intuition, as an antecedent necessity to the professedly purely rational basis of the Roman Catholic creed. Within the Anglican Church, and even within the more strictly Protestant Churches, his influence was greater, but in a different direction, viz. in showing the necessity of dogma and the indispensableness of the austere, ascetic, chastened and graver side of the Christian religion. If his teaching as to the Church was less widely followed, it was because of doubts as to the thoroughness of his knowledge of history and as to his freedom from bias as a critic. Some hundreds of clergymen, influenced by the movement of which for ten or twelve years he was the acknowledged leader, made their submission to the Church of Rome; but a very much larger number, who also came under its influence, failed to learn from him that belief in the Church involves belief in the pope. The natural tendency of his mind is often (and correctly) spoken of as sceptical. He held that, apart from an interior and unreasoned conviction, there is no cogent proof of the existence of God; and in Tract 85 he dealt with the difficulties of the Creed and of the canon of Scripture, with the apparent implication that they are insurmountable unless overridden by the authority of an infallible Church. In his own case these views did not lead to scepticism, because he had always possessed the necessary interior conviction; and in writing Tract 85 his only doubt would have been where the true Church is to be found. But, so far as the rest of the world is concerned, his teaching amounts to this: that the man who has not this interior conviction has no choice but to remain an agnostic, while the man who has it is bound sooner or later to become a Roman Catholic.
He was a man of magnetic personality, with an intense belief in the significance of his own career; and his character may be described as feminine, both in its strength and in its weakness. As a poet he had inspiration and genuine power. Some of his short and earlier poems, in spite of a characteristic element of fierceness and intolerance in one or two cases, are described by R. H. Hutton as “unequalled for grandeur of outline, purity of taste and radiance of total effect ”; while his latest and longest, “The Dream of Gerontius,” is generally recognized as the happiest effort to represent the unseen world that has been made since the time of Dante. His prose style, especially in his Catholic days, is fresh and vigorous, and is attractive to many who do not sympathize with his conclusions, from the apparent candour with which difficulties are admitted and grappled with, while in his private correspondence there is a charm that places it at the head of that branch of English literature. He was too sensitive and self-conscious to be altogether successful as a leader of men, and too impetuous to take part in public affairs; but he had many of the gifts that go to make a first-rate journalist, for, “with all his love for and his profound study of antiquity, there was something about him that was conspicuously modern.” Nevertheless, with the scientific and critical literature of the years 1850–1890 he was barely acquainted, and he knew no German. There are a few passages in his writings in which he seems to show some sympathy with a broader theology. Thus he admitted that there was “something true and divinely revealed in every religion.” He held that “freedom from symbols and articles is abstractedly the highest state of Christian communion,” but was “the peculiar privilege of the primitive Church.” And even in 1877 he allowed that “in a religion that embraces large and separate classes of adherents there always is of necessity to a certain extent an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine.” These admissions, together with his elucidation of the idea of doctrinal development and. his eloquent assertion of the supremacy of conscience, have led some critics to hold that, in spite of all his protests to the contrary, he was himself somewhat of a Liberal. But it is certain that he explained to his own satisfaction and accepted every item of the Roman Catholic creed, even going beyond it, as in holding the pope to be infallible in canonization; and while expressing his preference for English as compared with Italian devotional forms, he was himself one of the first to introduce such into England, together with the ritual peculiarities of the local Roman Church. The motto that he adopted for use with the arms emblazoned for him as cardinal—Cor ad cor loquitur, and that which he directed to be engraved on his memorial tablet at Edgbaston—Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem—together seem to disclose as much as can be disclosed of the secret of a life which, both to contemporaries and to later students, has been one of almost fascinating interest, at once devout and inquiring, affectionate and yet sternly self-restrained.
