"The search for truth is not simply the satisfaction of a curiosity; this knowledge has nothing of the
excitement of a discovery; the soul is always below the truth and not above it, and it is held not by
reasoning about it, but by respecting it."from LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
"God intends me to be lonely; He has so framed my mind that I am in a great measure beyond the
sympathies of other people and thrown upon Himself... God, I trust, will support me in following
whither he leads."from PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS
"God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon
what is gone and over."from JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS
"All my habits for years, my tendencies are towards celibacy. I could not take that interest in this world
which marriage requires. I am too disgusted with this world -- And, above all, call it what one will, I have
a repugnance to clergymen's marrying. I do not say it is not lawful -- I cannot deny the right --
but, whether a prejudice or not, it shocks me. And therefore I willingly give up the possession of that
sympathy, which I feel is not, cannot be, granted to me."
"I am nobody, I have no friend at Rome, I have laboured... to be misrepresented, backbitten, and scorned.
I have laboured in Ireland, with a door ever shut in my face. I seem to have had many failures and what
I did well was not understood."
"... Among the ordinary mass of men, no one has sinned so much, no one has been so mercifully treated,
as I have; no one has such cause for humiliation, such cause for thanksgiving."from APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
"When I was fifteen, (in the autumn of 1816,) a great change of thought took place in me. I fell under the
influences of a definite Creed... the Rev. Walter Mayers, of Pembroke College, Oxford, was the human means
of this beginning of divine faith in me, [which] was the effect of the books which he put into my hands, all
of the school of Calvin... One of the first books I read was a work of Romaine's; I neither
recollect the title or its contents, except one doctrine... the doctrine of final perseverance.
I received it at once... I retained it until the age of twenty-one, when it gradually faded away."Chapter 1: History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833
"During the first years of my residence at Oriel, though proud of my College, I was not quite at
home there. I was very much alone, and I used often to take my daily walk by myself. I recollect
once meeting Dr. Copleston, then Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned round, and with the kind
courteousness which sat so well with him, made me a bow and said, 'Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus'
(Never less alone than when alone)... In 1828 I became Vicar of St. Mary's. It was to me like the feeling
of spring weather after winter; and, if I may so speak, I came out of my shell; I remained out of it
until 1841."Chapter 1: History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833
"I felt affection for my own Church, but not tenderness; I felt dismay at her prospects, anger and scorn
at her do-nothing perplexity. I thought that if Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure
of the victory in the event. I saw that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue her. As to leaving
her, the thought never crossed my imagination; still I ever kept before me that there was something greater
than the Established Church, and that that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning,
of which she was but the local presence and the organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be dealt
with strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a second reformation."Chapter 1: History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833
"My battle was with liberalism; by liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle and its developments...
From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion;
I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion: religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream
and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact
of a Supreme Being. What I held in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864. Please God, I shall hold it to
the end... Secondly, I was confident in the truth of a certain religious teaching, based upon this foundation
of dogma; viz. that there was a visible Church, with sacraments and rites which are the channels of invisible
grace. I thought that this was the doctrine of Scripture, of the early Church, and of the Anglican Church...
and further, as to the Episcopal system, I founded it upon the Epistles of St. Ignatius."Chapter 2: History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
"When I was young, as I have said already, and after I was grown up, I thought the Pope to be the Antichrist...
I considered, after Protestant authorities, that St. Gregory I about A.D. 600 was the first Pope that was the
Antichrist, though, in spite of this, he was also a great and holy man; but in 1832-3 I thought the Church of
Rome was bound up with the cause of Antichrist by the Council of Trent... I thought the essence of her offence
to consist in the honours which she paid to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints... Then again, her zealous
maintenance of the doctrine and the rule of celibacy, which I recognized as Apostolic, and her faithful agreement
with Antiquity in so many other points were dear to me, was an argument as well as a plea in favour of the great
Church of Rome. Thus I learned to have tender feelings towards her; but still my reason was not affected at all."Chapter 2: History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
"Alas! It was my portion for whole years to remain without any satisfactory basis for my religious profession,
in a state of moral sickness, neither able to acquiesce to Anglicanism, nor able to go to Rome."Chapter 2: History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
"I wrote my Essay on Justification in 1837; it was aimed at the Lutheran dictum that justification by
faith only was the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. I considered that this doctrine was either a paradox
or a truism, -- a paradox in Luther's mouth, a truism in Melanchthon's. I thought that the Anglican Church
followed Melanchthon, and that in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism, between high Church and low Church,
there was no real intellectual difference on the point."Chapter 2: History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
"Every theology has its difficulties; Protestants hold justification by faith only, though there is no text in
St. Paul which enunciates it, and though St. James expressly denies it; do we therefore call Protestants dishonest?
They deny that the Church has a divine mission, though St. Paul says that it is 'the Pillar and ground of the
Truth; they keep the Sabbath, though St. Paul says, 'Let no man judge you in meat or drink or in respect of...
the sabbath days. Every creed has texts in its flavour, and again texts which run counter to it: and this is
generally confessed."Chapter 2: History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839
"I contrasted [Rome's] creed on the one hand, with her ordinary teaching, her controversial tone, her political
and social bearing, and her popular beliefs and practices, on the other.... I drew a parallel distinction between
Anglicanism quiescent, and Anglicanism in action. In its formal creed Anglicanism was not at a great distance
from Rome... I saw that the controversy lay between the book-theology of Anglicanism on the one side, and the
living system of what I called Roman corruption on the other."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"The Anglican said to the Roman: 'There is but One Faith, the Ancient, and you have not kept to it;' the Roman
retorted: 'There is but One Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it'... The true Church, as defined in the
Creeds, was both Catholic and Apostolic; now, as I viewed the controversy in which I was engaged, England and
Rome had divided these notes or prerogatives between them: the cause lay thus, Apostolicity versus Catholicity."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"About the middle of June [1839] I began to study and master the history of the Monophysites. I was absorbed in the
doctrinal question. This was from about June 13th to August 30th. It was during this course of reading that for the
first time a doubt came upon me of the tenableness of Anglicanism. I recollect on the 30th of July mentioning to a
friend, whom I had accidentally met, how remarkable the history was; but by the end of August I was seriously
alarmed... My stronghold was Antiquity; now here, in the middle of the fifth century, I found, as it seemed to
me, Christendom of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was
a Monophysite. Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians... It was difficult to make out
how the Eutychians or Monophysites were heretics, unless Protestants and Anglicans were heretics also... What was
the point of continuing the controversy, or defending my position, if, after all, I was forging arguments for
Arius or Eutyches, and turning devil's advocate against the much enduring Athanasius and the majestic Leo? Be my
soul with the Saints!"Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"St. Augustine in Africa wrote against the Donatists of Africa. They were a furious party who made a schism within
the African Church, and not beyond its limits... My friend [Dr. Wiseman], an anxiously religious man, now, as then,
very dear to me, a Protestant still, pointed out the palmary words of St. Augustine... which escaped my observation.
'Securus judicat orbis terrarum' [untroubled by the judgment of the world??]... they kept ringing in my ears.
'Securus judicat orbis terrarum;' they were words
which went beyond the occasion of the Donatists; they applied to the Monophysites... They decided ecclesiastical
questions on a simpler rule than that of Antiquity; nay, St. Augustine was one of the prime oracles of Antiquity; here
then Antiquity was deciding against itself. What a light was hereby thrown upon every controversy in the Church!...
the deliberate judgment, in which the whole Church at length rests and acquiesces, is an infallible prescription and
a final sentence against such portions of it as protest and secede."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"I became excited at the view thus opened upon me... I had to make up my mind for myself, and other could not help
me. I determined to be guided, not by my imagination, but by my reason. And this I said over and over again in the
years which followed, both in conversation and in private letters. Had it not been for this severe resolve, I
should have been a Catholic sooner than I was."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"Rationalism is the great evil of the day."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"The ghost had come a second time [in 1841]. In the Arian History I found the very same phenomenon, in a far
bolder shape, which I had found in the Monophysite. I had not observed it in 1832. Wonderful that this should come
upon me!... I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians
were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"It had been long a desire with the Prussian Court to introduce Episcopacy into the new Evangelical Religion,
which was intended in that country to embrace both the Lutheran and Calvinistic bodies.
About the time fo the publication of Tract 90, M. Bunson and the then Archbishop of Canterbury [William Howley]were
taking steps for its execution by appointing and consecrating a Bishop for Jerusalem...
The Anglican Bishops were... fraternizing, by their act or by their sufferance, with Protestant bodies and allowing
them to be put under an Anglican Bishop, without any renunciation of their errors or regard to their due reception
of baptism and confirmation... This was the third blow, which finally shattered my faith in the Anglican Church.
That Church was not only forbidding any sympathy or concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it was actually courting
an intercommunion with Protestant Prussia... such acts as were in progress led me
to the gravest suspicion, not that it would soon cease to be a Church, but that, since the 16th century, it had never
been a Church all along."Chapter 3: History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
"I could not go to Rome, while she suffered honours to be paid to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints which I thought
in my conscience to be incompatible with the Supreme, Incommunicable Glory of the One Infinite and Eternal."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"She alone [the Church of Rome], amid all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given free scope to
the feelings of awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings which may be especially called
Catholic."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"It could never be, that so large a portion of Christendom should have split off from the communion of Rome, and kept
up a protest for 300 years for nothing. I think I never shall believe that so much piety and earnestness would be
found among Protestants, if there were not some very grave errors on the side of Rome."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"The spirit of lawlessness came in with the Reformation, and Liberalism is its offspring."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"This I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material
or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come
between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, 'solus cum solo,' in all matters between man and God."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"He who made us has so willed, that in mathematics indeed we should arrive at certitude by rigid demonstration,
but in religious inquiry we should arrive at certitude by accumulated probabilities."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"As I have already said, there are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism: Anglicanism is the
halfway house on the one side, and Liberalism is the halfway house on the other."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"So, at the end of 1844, I came to the resolutions of writing an Essay on Doctrinal Development; and then,
if, at the end of it, my convictions in favour of the Roman Church were not weaker, of taking the necessary steps
for admission into her fold."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"I had begun my Essay on the Development of Doctrine in the beginning of 1845, and I was hard at it all through
the year till October. As I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of 'the Roman Catholics,'
and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received."Chapter 4: History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845
"From the time that I became a Catholic... I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt."Position of my Mind Since 1845
"Outside the Catholic Church things are tending, -- with far greater rapidity than in that old time from the
circumstance of the age, -- to atheism in one shape or another. What a scene, what a prospect, does the whole of Europe
present at this day!"Position of my Mind Since 1845
"Experience proves surely that the Bible does not answer a purpose for which it was never intended. It may be
accidentally the means of the conversion of individuals: but a book, after all, cannot make a stand against the
wild living intellect of man, and in this day it begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents,
to the power of that universal solvent, which is so successfully acting upon religious establishments."Position of my Mind Since 1845
"I am brought to speak of the Church's infallibility, as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to preserve
religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought, which of course in itself is one of the greatest of
our natural gifts, and to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses."Position of my Mind Since 1845
"It is the custom with Protestant writers to consider that, whereas there are two great principles in action in the
history of religion, Authority and Private Judgment, they have all the Private Judgment to themselves, and we have the
full inheritance and the superincumbent oppression of Authority. But this is not so; it is the vast Catholic body
itself, and it only, which affords an arena for both combatants in that awful, never-dying duel... Every
exercise of Infallibility is brought out into act by an intense and varied operation of the Reason... Catholic Christendom
is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment
alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide."Position of my Mind Since 1845
"St Paul says in one place [2 Cor 10:8] that his Apostolic power is given him to edification, and not to destruction.
There can be no better account of the Infallibility of the Church. It is a supply for a need, and it does not go beyond
that need. Its object is, and its effect also, not to enfeeble the freedom or vigour of human thought in religious
speculation, but to resist and control its extravagance. What have been its great works? All of them in the distinct
province of theology: -- to put down Arianism, Eutychianism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism, Lutheranism, Jansensism.
Such is the broad result of its action in the past; -- and now as to the securities which are given us that so it ever
will act in time to come."Position of my Mind Since 1845
"Our question... simply is, whether the belief in an infallible authority destroys the independence of the mind;
and I consider that the whole history of the Church, and especially the history of the theological schools, gives
a negative accusation. There never was a time when the intellect of the educated class was more active, or rather
more restless, than in the middle ages. And then again all through Church history from the first, how slow is
authority in interfering!"Position of my Mind Since 1845
"I have no difficulty in receiving the doctrine [of the Immaculate Conception]; and that, because it so intimately
harmonizes with that circle of recognized dogmatic truths, into which it has recently been received."Position of my Mind Since 1845