laudable Practice

... that the rule of Divine government is one of benevolence, and nothing but benevolence ... sentiments of this character are evidently the animating principle of the false cheerfulness, and the ill-founded hope, and the blind charitableness, which I have already assigned to the man of the world. So said John Henry Newman in his 1832 sermon ' On Justice, as a Principle of Divine Governance '. It may, of course, be due to my rather engrained prejudice against Newman and his tiresome, perpetual angst, particularly in the 1830s, but one does get the impression that benevolence and cheerfulness were not exactly welcome guests in Newman's mind. The phrase "false cheerfulness" is directed by Newman against William Paley's Natural Theology  (1802). My initial reaction, however, is to - admittedly rather unfashionably - instinctively warm to and be grateful for the vision of benevolence and cheerfulness in Paley's great work. In his 2024 paper ' Revisiting Pa...

In Tract 71  (published in 1836), John Henry Newman addressed "the Mode of Conducting the Controversy with Rome", articulating what he described as "intelligent opposition" to "Romanism". Amongst the "practical grievances" raised by Newman was the requirement of auricular confession: By the Council of Trent, every member of the Church must confess himself to a priest once a year at least. This confession extends to all mortal sins, that is, to all sins which are done deliberately and are of any magnitude. Without this confession, (which of course must be accompanied by hearty sorrow for the things confessed), no one can be partaker of the Holy Communion.  Newman highlighted as particularly objectionable that such auricular confession was required to be understood as "a point of faith": That there is no such impediment sanctioned in Scripture, is plain, yet to believe in it is a point of faith with the Roman Catholic. The practice is gri...

In the fourth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier provides an example of how Newman's thinking in the late 1830s and early 1840s was a complete rupture with the previously dominant Old High tradition. In particular, the seeking after authoritative certainty which became evident in Newman and other Tractarian quarters, culminating in the desire for an infallible authority, ran entirely counter to the Old High recognition of the historical complexities, contradictions, and confusions which inevitably accompanied ecclesial life. As Le Mesurier states: The same question would apply to the claims of infallibility. But, indeed, we might first desire our adversaries to define with whom this infallibility resides, with popes or with councils? separate or united? For, upon this point, there is, and has been, an endless diversity of opinions. We might ask them further, how such a supposition is reconcileable with their many and notorious schisms, the...

In his wonderful survey The building of the eighteenth-century church (1963), Basil F.L. Clarke refers to John Henry Newman's 1848 novel Loss and Gain . While the novel is, of course, a defence of Newman's conversion to Rome, it also provides - as Clarke notes - an apt summary of the Anglicanism of the 'long' 18th century. Newman intended it to be a fictional expression of the condemnation of the Georgian Church seen in the ridiculous polemic  Deformation and Reformation . Much like the latter, however, Newman's portrayal of Georgian Anglicanism is actually rather attractive. Clarke quoted Mrs. Bolton to illustrate the commitments of "eighteenth-century Churchmen": give me good old George the Third and the Protestant religion. Those were the times! Everything went on quietly then. As a brief summary of the Old High tradition, it has - despite Newman's intentions - much to commend it. George III's commitment to episcopacy, Prayer Book, and Articles...