18 - Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman

Delve into the riveting religious autobiography of Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Experience the simple yet profound narrative that drastically shifted public perception of its author and solidified his deep convictions leading him to the Roman Catholic Church. Revered as one of the most widely read autobiographies in the English language, it holds a significant place in the 19th century, akin to Boswells Johnson in the 18th century.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter four, Part five of Apology of pro Vita Sua
by John Henry Cardell Nauman. This libri Ark's recording is
in the public domain recording by Bill mc gilvray. Such
was the object and the origin of the projected series
of the English Saints, And since the publication was connected,

(00:22):
as has been seen with my resignation of Saint Mary's,
I may be allowed to conclude what I have to
say on the subject here, though it may read like
a digression. As soon then as the first of the
series got into print, the whole project broke down. I
have already anticipated that some portions of the series would

(00:43):
be written in a style inconsistent with the profession of
a beneficed clergyman, and therefore I had given up my living.
But men of great weight went further in their misgivings
than I when they saw the life of Saint Stephen
Hardy and decided that it was of a character inconsistent
even with its proceedings from an Anglican publisher. And so

(01:05):
the scheme was given up at once. After the two
first numbers, I retired from the editorship, and those lives
only were published in edition which were then already finished
or in advanced preparation. The following passages from what I
or others wrote at the time will illustrate what I
have been saying. In November eighteen forty four, I wrote

(01:30):
thus to the author of one of them. I am
not editor. I have no direct control over the series.
It is Tea's work. He may admit what he pleases
and exclude what he pleases. I was to have been editor.
I did edit the two first numbers. I was responsible
for them in a way in which an editor is responsible.

(01:52):
Had I continued editor, I should have exercised a control overall.
I laid down in the preface that doctrine subjects were,
if possible, to be excluded. But even then I also
set down that no writer was to be held answerable
for any of the lives but his own. When I
gave up the editorship, I had various engagements with friends

(02:15):
for separate lives remaining on my hands. I should have
liked to have broken up from them all, but there
were some from which I could not break, and I
let them take their course. Some have come to nothing, Others,
like yours, have gone on. I have seen such either
in ms or proof as time goes on, I shall

(02:35):
have less and less to do with the series. I
think the engagement between you and me should come to
an end. I have anyhow abundant responsibility on me, and
too much. I shall write to t that if he
wants the advantage of your assistance, he must write to
you direct. In accordance with this letter, I had already

(02:57):
advertised in January eighteen forty four, ten months before it,
that other lives after Saint Stephen Harding would be published
by their respective authors on their own responsibility. This notice
was repeated in February in the advertisement to the second
number entitled the Family of Saint Richard. Though to this number,

(03:19):
for some reasons which I cannot now recollect, I also
put my initials in the Life of Saint Augustine. The author,
a man nearly my own age, says, in like manner,
no one but himself is responsible for the way in
which these materials have been used. I have in m
s another advertisement to the same effect, but I cannot

(03:43):
tell whether it ever appeared in print. I will add,
since the authors have been considered hot headed, fanatic young
men whom I was in charge of, in whom I
suffered to do in temperate things that while the writer
of Saint Augustine was in a eighteen forty four past
forty the author of the proposed Life of Saint Boniface,

(04:05):
mister Bowden, was forty six, Mister Johnson who was to
write Saint Aldham forty three, and most of the others
were on one side or the other. Of thirty three
I think were under twenty five. Moreover, of these writers,
some became Catholics, some remained Anglicans, and others have professed

(04:26):
what are called free or liberal opinions. Footnote v D
note d Lives of the English Saints into footnote. The
immediate cause of my resignation of my living is stated
in the following letter, which I wrote to my bishop
August twenty ninth, eighteen forty three. It is with much

(04:46):
concern that I inform your Lordship that mister A. B,
who has been for the last year an inmate of
my house here, has just conformed to the Church of Rome.
As I have ever been desirous, not only of faithfully
discharging the trust which is involved in holding a living
in your Lordship's diocese, but of approving myself to your Lordship.

(05:08):
I will for your information state one or two circumstances
connected with this unfortunate event. I received him on condition
of his promising me, which he distinctly did, that he
would remain quietly in our church for three years. A
year has passed since that time, and though I saw

(05:29):
nothing in him which promised that he would eventually be
contented with his present position, yet for the time his
mind became as settled as one could wish, and he
frequently expressed his satisfaction at being under the promise which
I had exacted of him. I felt it impossible to
remain any longer in the service of the Anglican Church,

(05:52):
when such a breach of trust, however little I had
to do with it, would be laid at my door.
I wrote in a few days to a friend September seventh,
eighteen forty three. I this day asked the bishop leave
to resign. Saint Mary's men, whom you little think, or
at least whom I little thought, are in almost a

(06:13):
hopeless way. Really we may expect anything. I am going
to publish a volume of sermons, including those four against moving.
I resigned my living on September the eighteenth. I had
not the means of doing it legally. At Oxford, the
late mister Goldsmid was kind enough to aid me in
resigning it. In London, I found no fault with the Liberals.

(06:36):
They had beaten me in a fair field. As to
the act of the bishop's I thought to borrow a
scriptural image from Walter Scott, that they had seized the
kid in his mother's milk. I said to a friend,
Victrix Casa DIA's playcut, said Victor Catoni. And now I
may be almost said to have brought to an end,

(06:58):
as far as is necess for a sketch such as
this is the history both of my changes of religious
opinion and of the public acts which they involved. I
had one final advance of mine to accomplish, and one
final step to take. That further advance of mine was
to be able honestly to say that I was certain

(07:20):
of the conclusions at which I had already arrived. That
further steps imperative when such certitude was attained was my
submission to the Catholic Church. This submission did not take
place till two full years after the resignation of my
living in September eighteen forty three. Nor could I have
made it at an earlier day without doubt and apprehension,

(07:42):
that is, with any true conviction of mine or certitude.
In the interval of which it remains to speak, namely,
between the autumns of eighteen forty three and eighteen forty five,
I was in Lake communion with the Church of England,
attending its services as usual, in abstaining altogether from intercourse

(08:02):
with Catholics, from their places of worship, and from those
religious rites and usages, such as the invocation of saints,
which are characteristic of their creed. I did all this
on principle, for I never could understand how a man
could be of two religions at once. What I have
to say about myself between these two autumns I shall

(08:24):
almost confine to this one point the difficulty I was
in as to the best mode of revealing the state
of my mind to my friends and others, and how
I managed to reveal it. Up to January eighteen forty two,
I had not disclosed my state of unsettlement to more
than three persons, as has been mentioned above, and as

(08:45):
is repeated in the course of the letters which I
am now about to give to the reader, to two
of them intimate and familiar companions in the autumn of
eighteen thirty nine, to the third and old friend, too,
whom I have also named above. I suppose, when I
was in great distress of mind upon the affair of

(09:05):
the Jerusalem Bishopric in May eighteen forty three, I made
it known as has been seen to the friend by
whose advice I wished, as far as possible, to be
guided to mention it on set purpose to anyone, unless
indeed I was asking advice, I should have felt to
be a crime. If there is anything that was abhorred

(09:28):
to me, it was the scattering doubts in unsettling conscience
without necessity. A strong presentment that my existing opinions would
ultimately give way, and that the grounds of them were unsound,
was not a sufficient warrant for disclosing the state of
my mind. I had no guarantee yet that that presentment

(09:49):
would be realized. Supposing I were crossing ice which came
right in my way, which I had good reasons for
considering sound, in which I saw in numbers before me,
crossing in safety, and supposing a stranger from the bank,
in a voice of authority, in an earnest tone warned
me that it was dangerous, and then was silent. I

(10:12):
think I should be startled and should look about me anxiously.
But I think too that I should go on till
I had better grounds for doubt. And such was my
state I believed till the end of eighteen forty two.
Then again, when my dissatisfaction became greater. It was hard
at first to determine the point of time when it

(10:33):
was too strong to suppress with propriety. Certitude, of course,
is a point, but doubt is a progress. I was
not near certitude. Yet certitude is a reflex action. It
is to know that one knows of that I believe,
I was not possessed to closen my reception to the
Catholic Church. Again, a practical effective doubt is a point, too,

(10:58):
But who can easily ascertain it for himself? Who can
determine when it is that the scales of the balance
of opinion began to turn, and what was the greater
probability in behalf of a belief becomes a positive doubt
against it? In considering this question, in the bearing upon
my conduct in eighteen forty three, my own simple answer

(11:20):
to my great difficulty had been, do what your present
state of opinion requires in the light of duty, and
let that doing tell speak by acts. This I had done.
My first act of the year had been in February,
after three months deliberation, I had published my retraction of
the violent charges which I had made against Rome. I

(11:42):
could not be wrong in doing so much as this,
but I did no more. At the time. I did
not retract my Anglican teaching. My second act had been
in September. In the same year, after much sorrowful lingering
and hesitation, I had resigned my lips. I tried, indeed,
before I did so, to keep little more for myself,

(12:05):
even though it was still to remain an integral part
of Saint Mary's. I had given to it a church
in a sort of parsonage. I had made it a parish,
and I loved it. I thought in eighteen forty three
that perhaps I need not forfeit my existing relations towards it.
I could indeed submit to become the curate it will
of another. But I hoped an arrangement was possible by which,

(12:30):
while I had the curacy, I might have been my
own master in serving it. I had hoped an exception
might have been made in my favor under the circumstances,
but I did not gain my request. Perhaps I was
asking what was impracticable, and it is well for me
that it was so. These had been my two acts

(12:50):
of the year, and I said I cannot be wrong
in making them. Let that follow, which must follow in
the thoughts of the world about me when they see
what I do. As time went on, they fully answered
my purpose. What I felt it a simple duty to do,
did create a general suspicion about me, without such responsibility

(13:10):
as would be involved in my initiating any direct act
for the sake of creating it. Then, when friends wrote
to me on the subject, I either did not deny
or I confessed my state of mind according to the
character in need of the letters. Sometimes in the case
of intimate friends whom I should otherwise have been leaving
in ignorance of what others knew on every side of them,

(13:33):
I invited the question. And here comes in another point
for explanation. While I was fighting in Oxford for the
Anglican Church, then indeed I was very glad to make converts,
And though I never broke away from that rule of
my mind, as I may call it, of which I
have already spoken, of finding deciightfuls rather than seeking them.

(13:55):
Yet I made advances to others in a special way.
I have no doubt this came to an end, however,
as soon as I fell into misgivings as to the
true ground to be taken in the controversy. For then
when I gave up my place in the movement, I
ceased from any such proceedings, And my utmost endeavor was

(14:16):
to tranquilize such persons, especially those who belonged to the
New School, as were unsettled in their religious views, and
as I judged hasty in their conclusions. This went on
until eighteen forty three. But at that date, as soon
as I turned my face romeward, I gave up, as

(14:36):
far as ever was possible, the thought of, in any
respect and in any shape, acting upon others. Then I
myself was simply my own concern. How could I in
any sense direct others who had to be guided in
so momentous a matter myself. How could I be considered
in a position even to say a word to them

(14:57):
one way or the other? How could I presume to
unsettled them as I was unsettled, when I had no
means of bringing them out of such a settlement, And
if they were unsettled already, how could I point to
them a place of refuge when I was not sure
that I should choose it for myself. My only line,
my only duty, was to keep simple to my own case.

(15:21):
I recollected Pascal's words Je murree Suel. I deliberately put
out of my thoughts, all other works and claims, and
said nothing to anyone unless I was obliged. But this
brought upon me a great trouble. In the newspapers. There
were continued reports about my intentions. I did not answer

(15:42):
them presently. Strangers or friends wrote begging to be allowed
to answer them. And if I still kept to my
resolution and said nothing, then I was thought to be mysterious,
and a prejudice was excited against me. But what was
far worse, there were a number of tender, eager hearts,
of whom I knew nothing at all, who were watching me,

(16:05):
wishing to think as I thought, and to do as
I did if they could but find it out, who,
in consequence, were distressed that, in so solemn a manner
they could not see what was coming and who heard
reports about me this way or that on a first
day and on a second, and felt the weariness of
waiting and the sickness of delayed hope, and did not

(16:27):
understand that I was as perplexed as they were, and
being of more sensitive complexion of mind than myself, were
made ill by the suspense. And they, too, of course,
for the time, thought me mysterious and inexplicable. I asked
their pardon, as far as I was really unkind to them,
There was a gifted, deeply earnest lady, who, in a

(16:50):
parabolical account of that time, has described both my conduct
as she felt it and her own feelings upon it,
in a singularly graphic, amusing vision of pilgrims who were
making their way across oblique common in great discomfort, and
who were ever warned against, yet continually nearing the King's

(17:10):
highway on the right. She says, all my fears and
disquires were speedily renewed by seeing the most daring of
our leaders, the same who had first forced his way
through the palisade, and in whose courage and sagacity we
all put implicit trust, suddenly stopped short and declared that
he would go on no further. He did not, however,

(17:34):
take the leap at once, but quietly sat down on
the top of the fence, with his feet hanging towards
the road, as if he meant to take his time
about it and let himself down easily. I do not
wonder at all that I seemed so unkind to a
lady who at that time had never seen me. We
were both in trial in our different ways. I am

(17:56):
far from denying that I was acting selfishly, both in
his case and in that of others. But it was
a religious selfishness. Certainly to myself. My own duty seemed clear.
They that our whole can heal others, but in my
case it was physician heal myself. My own soul was
my first concern, and it seemed an absurdity to my

(18:19):
reason to be converted in partnership. I wished to go
to my Lord by myself, in my own way, or
rather his way. I had neither wished nor I may say,
thought of taking a number with me. Moreover, it is
but the truth to say that it had never been
an annoyance to me to seem to be the head

(18:40):
of a party, and that even from fastidiousness of mind.
I could not bear to find a thing done elsewhere
simply or mainly because I did it myself, and that
from distrust of myself. I shrunk from the thought whenever
it was brought home to me that I was influencing others.
But nothing of this could be known to the world.

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The following three letters are written to a friend who
had every claim upon me to be frank with him,
Archdeacon Manning. It will be seen that I disclose the
real state of my mind in proportion as he presses me.
One October fourteenth, eighteen forty three. I would tell you

(19:22):
in a few words why I have resigned Saint Mary's,
as you seem to wish, were it possible to do so.
But it is most difficult to bring out, in brief,
or even in extent so any just view of my
feelings and reasons. The nearest approach I can give to
a general account of them is to say that it

(19:43):
has been caused by the general repudiation of the view
contained in number ninety on the part of the church.
I could not stand against such a unanimous expression of
opinion from the bishops, supported as it has been by
the concurrence or or at least silence of all classes
of the church lay in clerical. If there ever was

(20:05):
a case in which an individual teacher has been put
aside and virtually put away by the community, mine is one.
No decency has been observed in the attacks upon me
from authority, No process have been offered against them. It
is felt, I am far from denying, justly felt that

(20:26):
I am a foreign material and cannot assimilate with the
Church of England. Even my own bishop has said that
my mode of interpreting the articles makes them mean anything
or nothing. When I heard this delivered, I did not
believe my ears. I denied to others that it was said.
Out came the charge and the word could not be mistaken.

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This astonished me the more because I published that letter
to him, how unwilling you know, on the understanding that
I was to deliver his judgment on Numberedney instead of him.
A year elapses and a second and heavier judgment came forth.
I do not bargain for this, nor did he, but

(21:10):
the tide was too strong for him. I fear that
I must confess that in proportion as I think the
English Church is showing herself intrinsically and radically alien from
Catholic principles. So do I feel the difficulties of defending
her claims to be a branch of the Catholic Church.
It seems a dream to call a communion Catholic when

(21:32):
one can neither appeal to any clear statement of Catholic
doctrine in its formularities, nor interpret ambiguous formularities by the
received and living Catholic sense. Whether past or present men
of Catholic views are too truly but a part of
our church, I cannot deny that many other independent circumstances,

(21:53):
which it is not worth while entering into, have led
me to the same conclusion. I do not say all
is to everybody, as you may suppose, but I do
not like to make a secret of it. To you.
Two October twenty fifth, eighteen forty three, you have engaged
in a dangerous correspondence. I am deeply sorry for the

(22:16):
pain I shall give you. I must tell you then, frankly,
but I combat arguments which to me alas are shadows
that It is not from disappointment, irritation, or impatience that
I have, whether rightly or wrongly, resigned Saint Mary's but
because I think the Church of Rome, the Catholic Church

(22:36):
in ours not part of the Catholic Church, because not
in communion with Rome, and because I feel that I
could not honestly be a teacher in it any longer.
This thought came to me last summer four years I
mentioned it to friends in the autumn. It arose, in
the first instance, from the Monophysite and Donatis controversies, the

(22:58):
former of which I was engaged with in the course
of theological studies to which I had given myself. This
was at a time when no bishop I believe, had
declared against us footnote. I think summer Bishop of Chester
must have done so already end of footnote, and when
all was progress and hope. I do not think I

(23:20):
have ever felt disappointment or impatience, certainly not then, for
I never looked forward to the future, nor do I
realize it now. My first effort was to write that
article on the Catholicity of the English Church. For two
years it quieted me. Since the summer of eighteen thirty
nine I have written a little or nothing on modern controversy.

(23:43):
You know how unwillingly I wrote my letter to the Bishop,
in which I committed myself again as the safest course
under circumstances. The article I speak of quieted me till
the end of eighteen forty one over the affair of
number ninety, when that wretched Jerusalem bishopric no personal matter,

(24:04):
revived all my alarms they have increased up to this moment.
At that time I told my secret to another person.
In addition, you see then that the various ecclesiastical and
quasi ecclesiastical acts which have taken place in the course
of the last two years and a half are not
the cause of my state of opinion, but are keen

(24:26):
stimulants and weighty confirmations of a conviction forced upon me
while engaged in the course of duty, namely, that theological
reading to which I had given myself in this last
mentioned circumstance is the fact which has never, I think,
come before me till now that I write to you.

(24:47):
It is three years since, on account of my state
of opinion, I urge the propost in Vain to let
Saint Mary's be separated from Littlemore, thinking I might, with
a safe conscience, serve the latter, though I could not
comfortably continue in so public a place as a university
this was before number ninety. Finally, I have acted under advice,

(25:10):
and that not of my own choosing, but what came
to me in the way of duty, not the advice
of those only who agree with me, but of near
friends who differ with me. I have nothing to reproach
myself with, as far as I see, in the matter
of impatience, that is, practically or in conduct. And I

(25:32):
trust that he who has kept me in the slow
course of change hitherto will keep me still from hasty
acts or resolves with a doubtful conscience. This I am
sure of. That such interpositions as yours kind, as it is,
only does what you would consider harm. It makes me

(25:52):
realize my own views to myself. It makes me see
their consistency. It assures me of my own deliberateness. It
suggests to me the traces of a providential hand. It
takes away the pain of disclosures. It relieves me of
a heavy secret. You may make what use of my
letter you think right? Three? My correspondent wrote to me

(26:15):
once more, and I replied this October thirty one, eighteen
forty three. Your letter has made my heart ache more
and caused me more in deepest size than any I
have had a long while. Though I assure you there
is much on all sides of me to cause sighing
and heartaches. On all sides. I am quite haunted by

(26:39):
the one dreadful whisper repeated from so many quarters, and
causing the keenest distress to friends. You know, but a
part of my present trial in knowing that I am
unsettled myself. Since the beginning of this year, I have
been obligated to tell the state of my mind to
some others, but never I think, without being in a

(27:02):
way obliged, as from friends writing to me as you did,
or guessing how matters stood. No one in Oxford knows
it or hear little more but one near friend whom
I felt I could not help telling the other day.
But I suppose many more suspected. On receiving those letters,
my corresponded, if I recollect rightly, at once communicated the

(27:26):
matter of them to doctor Pusey, And this will enable
me to describe as nearly as I can, the way
in which he first became aware of my changed state
of opinion. I had from the first a great difficulty
in making doctor Pucy understand such differences of opinion as
existed between myself and him. When there was a proposal

(27:48):
about the end of eighteen thirty eight for a subscription
for a Kramer memorial, he wished us both to subscribe
together to it. I could not, of course, and wished
him to subscribe by himself. That he would not do.
He could not bear the thought of our appearing to
the world in separate positions in a matter of importance,

(28:11):
And as time went on he would not take any
hints which I gave him on the subject of my
growing inclination to Rome. When I found him so determined,
I often had not the heart to go on. And
then I knew that from affection to me he so
often took up and threw himself into what I said,

(28:31):
that I felt the great responsibility I should incur if
I put things before him just as I might view
them myself, and not knowing him so well as I did, afterwards,
I feared least I should unsettle him. And moreover I
recollected well how prostrated he had been with illness in
eighteen thirty two, and I used always to think that

(28:53):
the stat of the movement had given him a fresh
life I fancied that his physical energies even depended on
the presence of a vigorous hope in bright prospects for
his imagination to feed upon, so much so that when
he was so unworthily treated by the authorities of the
place in eighteen forty three, I recollect writing to the

(29:16):
late mister Doddsworthy to state my anxiety, least if his
mind became dejected in consequence, his health should suffer seriously.
Also these were difficulties in my way. And then again
another difficulty was that, as we were not together under
the same roof, we only saw each other at set times. Others, indeed,

(29:39):
who were coming in or out of my rooms freely
and according to the need of the moment, knew all
my thoughts easily, But for him to know them well
formal efforts were necessary. A common friend of ours broke
it all to him in eighteen forty one, as far
as matters has gone at the time, and showed him

(30:00):
clearly the logical conclusions which must lie in propositions to
which I had committed myself. But somehow or other, in
a little while his mind fell back into his former
happy state, and he could not bring himself to believe
that he and I should not go on pleasantly together
in the end, but that affectionate dream needs must have

(30:22):
been broken at last. And two years afterwards, that friend
to whom I wrote the letters which I have just
now inserted, set himself, as I have said, to break it.
Upon that I too begged Doctor Pusey to tell in
private to any one he would that I thought, in
the event I should leave the Church of England. However

(30:45):
he would not do so, and at the end of
eighteen forty four had almost relapsed into the former thoughts
about me. If I may judge from a letter of
his which I have found nay at the commemoration in
eighteen forty five, a few months before I left the
Anglican Church, I think he set about me to a

(31:05):
friend I trust. After all, we shall keep him. End
of Chapter four, Part five.