Apologia pro vita sua by John Henry Newman

Author:John Henry Newman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography, Religion, Classics, Catholicism, Christianity
Published: 2011-05-27T00:49:17+00:00

“April 12, 1842. So many of the charges against yourself and your friends which I have seen in the public journals have been, within my own knowledge, false and calumnious, that I am not apt to pay much attention to what is asserted with respect to you in the newspapers.

“In a” [newspaper], “however, of April 9, there appears a paragraph in which it is asserted, as a matter of notoriety, that a ‘so-called Anglo-Catholic Monastery is in process of erection at Littlemore, and that the cells of dormitories, the chapel, the refectory, the cloisters all may be seen advancing to perfection, under the eye of a Parish Priest of the Diocese of Oxford.’

“Now, as I have understood that you really are possessed of some tenements at Littlemore—as it is generally believed that they are destined for the purposes of study and devotion—and as much suspicion and jealousy are felt about the matter, I am anxious to afford you an opportunity of making me an explanation on the subject.

“I know you too well not to be aware that you are the last man living to attempt in my Diocese a revival of the Monastic orders (in anything approaching to the Romanist sense of the term) without previous communication with me—or indeed that you should take upon yourself to originate any measure of importance without authority from the heads of the Church—and therefore I at once exonerate you from the accusation brought against you by the newspaper I have quoted, but I feel it nevertheless a duty to my Diocese and myself, as well as to you, to ask you to put it in my power to contradict what, if uncontradicted, would appear to imply a glaring invasion of all ecclesiastical discipline on your part, or of inexcusable neglect and indifference to my duties on mine.”

“April 14, 1842. I am very much obliged by your Lordship’s kindness in allowing me to write to you on the subject of my house at Littlemore; at the same time I feel it hard both on your Lordship and myself that the restlessness of the public mind should oblige you to require an explanation of me.

“It is now a whole year that I have been the subject of incessant misrepresentation. A year since I submitted entirely to your Lordship’s authority; and with the intention of following out the particular act enjoined upon me, I not only stopped the series of Tracts, on which I was engaged, but withdrew from all public discussion of Church matters of the day, or what may be called ecclesiastical politics. I turned myself at once to the preparation for the Press of the translations of St. Athanasius to which I had long wished to devote myself, and I intended and intend to employ myself in the like theological studies, and in the concerns of my own parish and in practical works.

“With the same view of personal improvement I was led more seriously to a design which had been long on my mind.

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