Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Description

These remarkable sermons by John Henry Newman (1801-1890) were first published at Oxford in 1843, two years before he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Published here in its entirety is the third edition of 1872 for which Newman added an additional sermon, bracketed notes, and, importantly, a comprehensive, condensed Preface. In her introduction, noted Newman scholar Mary Katherine Tillman considers the volume as an integral whole, showing how all of the sermons systematically relate to the central theme of the faith-reason relationship.

Sujets

• Sermons
• Preaching
• Christian Ministry
• Philosophie et théologie
• Minister (Christianity)
• Catholic Church
• Christianity
• Religion
• Christian
• History
• John Henry Newman
• Oxford

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 27 janvier 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780268087678
• Langue: English

Extrait

NOTRE DAME SERIES IN THE GREAT BOOKS
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1982)
St. Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Happiness (1983)
William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course (1985)
John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1989)
FIFTEEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD BETWEEN A . D . 1826 AND 1843
IN THE DEFINITIVE THIRD EDITION OF 1872
B Y JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
INTRODUCTION BY
MARY KATHERINE TILLMAN
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 1997 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu -->
All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Reprinted in 1999, 2003 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newman, John Henry, 1801–1890. [Sermons. Selections] Fifteen sermons preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843/John Henry Newman; introduction by Mary Katherine Tillman. p. cm.—(Notre Dame series in the great books) ISBN 0–268–00996–1 (alk. paper) 1. Church of England—Sermons. 2. Angelican Communion—Sermons. 3. Sermons, English. I. Title. II. Series. BX5133.N4F5 1997 252′.03—dc20 96–26441 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper . -->
E-ISBN 978-0-268-08767-8
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
CONTENTS
The Definitive Third Edition of 1872: An Introduction
Mary Katherine Tillman
F IFTEEN S ERMONS P REACHED BEFORE THE U NIVERSITY OF O XFORD BETWEEN A.D. 1826 AND 1843
Preface to the Third Edition
SERMON 1. The Philosophical Temper, First Enjoined by the Gospel
SERMON 2. The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion Respectively
SERMON 3. Evangelical Sanctity the Perfection of Natural Virtue
SERMON 4. The Usurpations of Reason
SERMON 5. Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth
SERMON 6. On Justice, as a Principle of Divine Governance
SERMON 7. Contest between Faith and Sight
SERMON 8. Human Responsibility, as Independent of Circumstances
SERMON 9. Wilfulness, the Sin of Saul
SERMON 10. Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind
SERMON 11. The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason
SERMON 12. Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition
SERMON 13. Implicit and Explicit Reason
SERMON 14. Wisdom, as Contrasted with Faith and with Bigotry
SERMON 15. The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine
THE DEFINITIVE THIRD EDITION OF 1872
An Introduction
MARY KATHERINE TILLMAN
T HIS series of Anglican sermons on faith and reason was preached by John Henry Newman (1801–1890) in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford. Occasionally alluded to by Newman as “Discourses,” being more like lectures than anything today called sermons , the volume is now commonly referred to as the Oxford University Sermons (OUS) , or as, simply, the University Sermons (US) . The first of the series was written in Newman’s evangelical youth (Sermon I, 1826), but most are from the intellectually formative, more rationalist period when he was Tutor of Oriel College (Sermons II–IX, 1830–1833). The last six were preached during his later Anglo-Catholic years (Sermons X–XV, 1839–43).
The volume’s first edition of 1843, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, Preached before the University of Oxford , sold out immediately and, in “little more than a fortnight,” was followed by a second edition “with not above a page difference between them”—this in striking contrast to Newman’s previous volumes of sermons, which had taken a year to exhaust their first editions. 1 By 1843 there was heightened interest in this already controversial leader of the Oxford (Tractarian) Movement, who had just resigned his position as vicar of St. Mary’s, and who, it was now broadly (and correctly) rumored, was on the verge of becoming a Roman Catholic, thereby occasioning the same move by countless others. 2 The hundreds who flocked to the university church to hear Newman preach were attracted mainly, however, by the depth of his spiritual insight, his arresting psychological discernment, the originality and freshness of his ideas, and his stirring, plain-spoken eloquence.
From the high pulpit of the fifteenth-century university church a formal University Sermon was given ten times a year by a clergyman especially chosen for the occasion, “the select preacher.” Although the vice-chancellor had honored Newman with the exceptional invitation to preach before the university when he was but twenty-three and still a deacon, it was not until two years later, on July 2nd, 1826, that he delivered his first University Sermon.
My emphasis in this introduction will be on the essential unity of the series of fifteen sermons taken “as a whole.” As Newman wrote to his sister just before the volume came out, he had “been working out a theory” during the twelve years between the second sermon, preached in April of 1830, and his publication of the entire series of fifteen in early 1843. 3 The best recommendation for the volume, he continued in the same letter, was that “it is consistent,” for he had “kept to the same views and arguments for twelve years.” Though, at the time, Newman worried that the University Sermons would be thought “sad, dull affairs,” and that some of them would be “very hard,” Jemima Newman Mozley responded a month or so later: “I do not know any volume I have ever read that was so attractive and satisfying to the mind except Butler’s ‘Analogy.’ It makes deep things so very simple.” 4 Newman replied gratefully: “I certainly thought it, though incomplete and imperfect, yet my best volume.” 5 Newman and his sister were not alone in their high estimate of the work. Early biographer Wilfrid Ward notes: “By the more speculative minds in Oxford, as W. G. Ward and the students of [S. T.] Coleridge, [the University Sermons] were regarded, as by Newman himself, as containing his best and most valuable thoughts.” 6
Often unwittingly assumed to be but one more among Newman’s many collections of sermons, sometimes hidden in the shadow of his widely celebrated Parochial and Plain Sermons of the same period, the volume of Oxford University Sermons is, in its own right, an integral, cohering and unique work. It contains, in what might be called “serial” arrangement, the most ingenious and philosophically fertile of all Newman’s sermons, perhaps even of all his writings. More intellectually investigative in content than his doctrinal, ethical, and devotional sermons, this early volume is accessible (more so than his challenging late work, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent ) to students of philosophy, theology and religion, and to anyone interested in a truly “contemporary,” attractive, and helpful understanding of faith’s relation to ordinary everyday thinking. The sermons “are not theological or ecclesiastical,” Newman said, “though they bear immediately upon the most intimate and practical religious questions.” 7
Shortly after his 1870 publication of the Grammar of Assent , Newman returned to the 1843 volume of University Sermons and expanded it by inserting, in proper chronological sequence, an additional unaltered sermon (now the third) from the same early years. He added bracketed notes of clarification from his now Catholic perspective, a dedication to Dean R. W. Church, an Advertisement dated late 1871, and a new title, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843 . Most importantly, he inserted a comprehensive, condensed preface of nine pages. This third edition, published early in 1872, is here returned to print in its entirety.
A preface for the University Sermons had originally been conceived of in 1847, when Newman was studying theology in Rome shortly after his 1845 reception into the Catholic Church. At this time his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine , rumored in America to be “half Catholicism, half infidelity,” was already being translated into French. Because of the ecclesiastical circumstances of the day, Newman feared the worst from the Roman censors, who, he knew, would be more able and inclined to read the French than the English. Though in the end he need not have worried, he drew up in Latin twelve Theses de Fide clarifying his position on the relation of faith and reason in order to secure the imprimatur of Jesuit theologian Giovanni Perrone. 8 As Newman wrote to J. D. Dalgairns, his Oxford associate (and, soon, fellow Oratorian) who was overseeing the French translations of both the Essay on Development and a selection of the University Sermons: “I shall put before [Perrone] as clearly as I can my opinions about Faith and Reason. If he approves, of which I don’t despair, I might put what I draw up as a Preface to the Sermons . . . . .” 9 He meant a Latin preface, which Dalgairns would then translate into French.
Although Newman thought the earlier sermons were “much better written . . . than the last,” 10 he understood the later ones to be “more precise, as well as more accurate, in their doctrine.” 11 And the crucial point at this particular moment, “as the essay on Devt lags in translation,” was to make haste in publishing a supportive “set” of the University Sermons in French, namely, the last six sermons (X–XV), precisely

as bearing upon my Essay viz The question of Probability, evidence etc etc. . . . What I wish to say is, “I am not maintaining what I say is all true, but I wish to assist in investigating and bringing to light great principles necessary for the day—and the only way to bring them out is freely to investigate, with the inward habitual intention (which I trust I have) always to be submitting what I say to the judgment of the Church.” C OULD NOT THIS FEELING BE EXPRESSED IN THE PREFACE ? I will put down here, as I read thro’ the Sermons , any thoughts which str