by Edward Short
If the Communion in which you are placed by God’s Providence has prima facie the most evident notes of the Church, all except visible Communion with other parts of Christendom: if it appear to be linked by due succession with those who were sent out to preach among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem; if it acknowledge the same Scriptures, and interpret them by the same Creeds, as did the whole Church in her days of perfect union; if it seems also to possess the Holy Sacraments unmutilated in all things essential, or at least as completely so as those who invite you away from it: for surely the omission of the Cup in the Eucharist is in itself a greater liberty to take with the institution of Jesus Christ, than any deviation allowed by us from the services of the early Church—if your Church, moreover pray constantly for the actual Communion which it unhappily wants, and have never yet forfeited it, as the Donatists did, by pronouncing other Churches out of the Body of Christ:—then continue in it, and do your best for it, by prayer, by good works, by patience, by self-denial, by humility …122
This was the summons to stasis that Keble would make before and after Newman converted. But here he sought to strengthen his case by making the claim that “the mark of the Cross seems rather to belong to those who struggle on in a decayed and perhaps still decaying Church, bearing their burden as they may, than those who allow their imaginations to dwell on fancied improvements and blessings to be obtained on possible changes of Communion.”123 Moreover, he argued that “Even if it were granted, for argument’s sake, that some other portion of the Church is abstractedly better than our own, has surer marks of life and reality in it: are we quite sure that men’s passing over to it would not involve them in the moral guilt of schism, though wanting perhaps the formal nature of a schismatical act?”124 Another consideration for Keble was that “the evils of our present religious condition be they what they may … were none of our own choosing. We are not therefore, responsible for them, any further than as each in his station may have neglected providential helps to discern and amend them. But the evils of a man’s new profession, should he take on him to choose for himself, will be his by a very peculiar responsibility.”125 No one should be tempted to leave an unreal for a real Church because the latter may be as untenable as the former. “What if the practical corruptions, questionable theoretical claims, and preemptory anathemas of his new Communion, bring him back before long to as sorrowful a feeling as at first, of the decayed and disunited condition of the whole Church; aggravated by the consciousness, that at such a time he has been seeking great things for himself, and has little regarded the consequences to his brethren.”126 Here the reference to Newman’s case could not be more pointed, though Keble must have regretted posing this question: “Is there one single instance, since the heat of the Reformation was over, of any person passing from the English to any other Church … and afterwards becoming at all remarkable for sanctity?”127
These passages from Newman and Keble show that before their crucial correspondence, each was inclined to a fairly consequential position: Newman was rolling up the via media, breaking free of what he would later call “the paralogisms of our ecclesiastical and theological theory” while Keble was digging in.128 Still, Newman knew intimately that there were grounds for Keble to reconsider his entrenched position; he was discovering them himself in the most searing way possible; and he was intent on sharing these grounds with his friend. The drama of their correspondence lies in seeing how Newman used his experience of conversion to try to bring Keble round to an equally decisive understanding of the implications of the crisis of Tractarianism.
Newman/Keble Correspondence 1841–1845
In the midst of the furor over Tract 90, Newman reached out to Keble for advice. “The Heads of Houses having censured the Tract as an evasion and thereby indirectly condemned the views of doctrine contained in it,” Newman wrote to Keble, “the Bishop (even though he put it on the ground of peace etc) would virtually in the eyes of the world be censuring it.” Newman was concerned not so much for himself as for those within the Tractarian fold who shared his Catholic reading of the articles. “I do not think I can acquiesce in such a proceeding by any active co-operation of mine … I am at this moment the representative of the interests of many who more or less think with me.”129 Keble wrote back: “Certainly I do not see how it is consistent silently to suppress the Tract and go on as if the point was given up, even at a Bishop’s command. The least you can do must be to get leave to accompany the suppression with a public declaration that you do so and so for obedience’ sake, not at all giving up the view. If the Bishop allows this, he permits his clergy to hold the view, as consistent with the literal and grammatical sense; which is a great point gained. If he does not allow it, I do not see, unwilling as I am to come to the conclusion, how you can retain St Mary’s.” He also clearly recognized that if Newman resigned St. Mary’s, it would have implications for him. “And if you give it up on such a ground, I do not see how I and others in other dioceses can remain as we are without scandal. We must in some way or other declare our own sense of the Articles; by reprinting No. 90, or writing fresh Tracts, or by direct application to our Bishops. I for one feel I must do something, though I cannot clearly see as yet what that something would be. Otherwise we entangle ourselves in the snare of holding office and receiving church payments on an implied condition which we know in our hearts we are not fulfilling. In short there is no end to the serious results which such a step on the Bishop’s part would have … If all the Bishops join, that is another thing: and will leave, I imagine, no choice, unless by respectful remonstrance we could induce them to mitigate their sentence. It is a sad case, but we ought to be thankful that we have Lay Communion to fall back upon.”130 That Keble was contemplating such a move, with whatever reservations, must have encouraged Newman to hope that his friend was not entirely opposed to conversion.
Newman bore up under the storm set off by Tract 90 with characteristic aplomb. Keble saw his friend at the very height of the storm and reported on how jaunty he found him. “I went out to Littlemore and saw him on Friday and he came in that evening and slept and I saw him yesterday morning. He looked a little wan, but had been very cheerful about it altogether …” Newman admitted that he might have been “rash” and would probably have to explain himself but he was not downhearted. Pusey noticed the same equanimity in their provocative friend: “The pseudo-traditionary and vague ultra-Protestant interpretation of the Articles has received a blow from which it will not recover. People will abuse Tract 90, and adopt its main principles. It has been a harassing time for Newman, but all great good is purchased by suffering; and he is wonderfully calm …”131
“The apparent termination of the affair of Tract 90 left Newman ‘without any harass or anxiety’ on his mind,” as Father Francis Bacchus observed in the Oratory’s edition of Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and others 1839–1845 (1917). “It was natural that he should feel an inward peace after the meekness with which he had borne the contumely … [of] the University, and the arduous act of obedience which he had rendered to his Bishop. Then the doubt which had assailed him in the autumn of 1839 seems to have been almost quiescent. Nevertheless, he felt that retirement and self-effacement became him, and in consequence withdrew more and more to Littlemore, and occupied himself with his translations from St. Athanasius for the Library of the Fathers.” That Newman was translating the works of St. Athanasius at this tumultuous period of his life had a certain appositeness, for the saint whom he considered a “great refuge” had been banished from Alexandria no less than three times for his own intransigent orthodoxy.132 Newman was doubtless grateful for the opportunity to read more closely one of his favorite Fathers. But, as Father Bacchus dryly observed, Newman’s “security did not last long.”133 On 5 October 1841, he wrote to Keble, apropos the Jerusalem Bishopric, “It really does seem to me as if the Bishops were doing their best to uncatholicize us, and whether they will succeed before a rescue comes, who can say?
”134 On October 10th, he wrote to his good friend, S. F. Wood, “There is not a single Anglican at Jerusalem, but we are to place a Bishop … there, to collect a communion of Protestants, Jews, Druses, Monophysites, conforming under the influence of our war steamers, to counterbalance the Russian influence through Greeks, and the French through Latins.”135 On November 24th, Newman wrote to another good friend, James Hope, the barrister who made a fortune representing the railroads and later married the granddaughter of Walter Scott, “Nor do I see that anyone should be surprised at my resolving on such a course. I have been for a long while assuring persons that the English Church was a branch of the Catholic Church. If, then, a measure is in progress which in my judgment tends to cut from under me the very ground on which I have been writing and talking, and to prove all I hold a mere theory and illusion—a paper theology which facts contradict—who will not excuse it if I am deeply pained at such proceedings?”136 Keble took a very much less critical view of the Bishopric.137 Having nothing like the same personal stake in the formation of the via media as Newman had, he could look dispassionately at a scheme that made a mockery of Newman’s “paper theology.” Also, at this time, he had his hands full with the controversy surrounding the successor to Oxford’s Poetry Chair. Isaac Williams was naturally Keble’s preferred choice but he was being pointedly passed over because of his Tractarian sympathies, which Keble was right to see as an indirect attack on his own Tractarian affiliations. Nevertheless, as he wrote to his brother Tom, Keble grasped how the Jerusalem Bishopric was pushing his friend closer and closer to Rome. “It comes to this, that his sympathies are more that way (towards Rome) than any other among existing systems, but he is withheld by conscience from acting upon them. This is not a pleasant position, but is it either a very uncommon one, or, in this case, a peculiarly dangerous one? Is it not a great security that he is so fully aware as he seems to be of his danger?”138
Newman’s awareness of his “danger” was acute enough. Yet his own sense of why he should resign his living at St. Mary’s was straightforward. First, as he wrote to Keble in March 1843, he was not influencing his parishioners but rather “persons who are not given me in charge,” undergraduates mostly, who attended his services and sermons “without, perhaps against, the wish of their proper guardians.” Then, he was concerned that his sermons were not likely to reinforce his auditors in their Anglican faith. “What influence I exert is simply and exactly, be it more or less, in the direction of the Church of Rome—and that whether I will or no. What men learn from me, who learn anything, is to lean towards doctrines and practices which our Church does not sanction. There was a time when I tried to balance this by strong statements against Rome”—in February 1843, Newman had placed a formal retraction of his anti-Catholic statements in the Oxford Conservative Journal and the Oxford University Herald—“which I suppose to a certain extent effected my object. But now, when I feel I can do this no more, how greatly is the embarrassment of my position increased! I am in danger of acting as a traitor to that system, to which I must profess attachment or I should not have the opportunity of acting at all.” The momentousness of what he was about in thus contemplating resigning St. Mary’s was not lost on him: indeed it caused him to doubt whether he even knew what he was saying. “I am so bewildered,” he wrote to Keble, “that I don’t know right from wrong, and have no confidence of being real in any thing I think or say.”139
Keble wrote back on 3 May 1843: “I have turned the subject of your connexion with St. Mary’s every way in my mind as well as I can; and it seems to me that the time is come when there will be nothing wrong in your retiring, if your own feelings prompt you to do so, as of course they must on many accounts.” Still, Keble urged his friend to try to keep hold of Littlemore: “the loss of your sermons from St. Mary’s will be compensated by your labours in giving private advice and hearing confessions.” Then he pointed to the silence that had met Newman’s retraction of his anti-Catholic statements to reassure him that “people are restrained in this instance, themselves know not how, and it gives one good hope that you will be allowed to go on quietly in what you judge, on the whole, your duty.” He followed this with an interesting admission: “I am not sure that I ought not to follow your example, committed as I am to the very same principles; only that I do not think so much of Bishops’ words in their Charges as you do …” This was one of the grounds on which Keble would justify remaining within the Anglican Church: the fact that the Bishops had not formally censured Tract 90. However, whether Keble did in fact share the “very same principles” would be proven in the months ahead. He ended his discussion of the matter with a nice distinction: “without saying that it is your duty to retire, one may very well think that it is perfectly open for you to do so. Whichever way you resolve, I do not see that you can do very wrongly.”140 Such sympathy from Keble must have been doubly welcome at a time when Newman’s loyalties could not have been more agonizingly torn.
In the meantime, the estrangement from old friends that would become Newman’s lot in Protestant England after he converted had already begun. The breakdown of his relations with his good friend Frederic Rogers (1811–1889) was only one instance of many. While still at Eton, Rogers had chosen to go to Oriel expressly because of Newman’s connection with the college. A lawyer, he later went on to become a colonial administrator. In 1831, he spent the long vacation with Newman and his family at Iffley. After taking a double first, he became a Fellow of Oriel from 1833 to 1845. From the first, Rogers was a staunch adherent of the Oxford Movement. He was also one of Newman’s most trusted advisers. In 1860, he became Permanent Under Secretary of State for the Colonies and in 1871 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Blachford—the first civil servant to be so honored and one of the first to join the Privy Council. However, beginning in 1839, when Newman confided in him his doubts about the legitimacy of the Anglican Church, Rogers drew apart from his old friend and in April of 1843 he wrote to inform him that continued relations on their old footing would not now be possible.