E. B. P. TO THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN. I feel much perplexed about mentioning the subject of Prayer for the Dead: First, there is not the same occasion for bringing it forward as forgotten points of doctrine of our Church, i.e. no necessity laid upon us, as ministers of the Church. (2) It might hinder other important views being received. (3) It, perhaps, more than any other, would bring down the outcry, not only of the Ultra-Protestants, but of most Anti-Catholics; the Tyler party and all who having been brought up in Protestantism have not gone back to the Fathers, or been led back by feeling, would think it sin. You only can answer to yourself the question, whether this outcry might not do yourself harm as the object of it; at least, it has a tendency to produce excitement, &c., not salutary (in myself). (4) In the present day, there might be much abuse of the doctrine, on account of persons' lax notions of sin, repentance, the terms of acceptance. If I inserted the passage I should accompany it with a protest against the laxity of the present day, which seems to think it scarcely possible that any can miss of Heaven. I am unfit to decide: my first bias was against it; my second an unwillingness to hinder it, on the ground of my first note, and also because, if introduced hereafter, when persons might be riper, it might look like an afterthought. My abiding feeling doubts as to its expediency, but I have a conviction of my own inability to decide, knowing and seeing so little of people's sentiments. Thanks for this morning's call. I am still free from cough, and hope to be kept so. When, however, the tract had been written, and Pusey had had time to go through it, he saw reason to change his mind. E. B. P. TO THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN. Christ Church, Nov. 29, [1835]. I have read this through again with great satisfaction: if I part with any it is with reluctance, and I should part with as little as possible, thinking the restoration of the whole of the old views a gain, and that it is hard to go on teaching men to go counter to their natural feelings and impulses, and that they should not pray to God when they fain would, i. e. when He suggests to them so to do. I do not like recommending that it should be struck out: it is written: I was at first inclined to think it to be parted with as giving a handle; but since there are so many ripe for it, and to whom it would be a blessing, I should be unwilling to keep it back: only you might distinguish more Tract on Purgatory. 7 fully between the Romish abuse and the primitive use. I gradually lean more and more towards retaining it. When then Dr. Dickinson, in his notorious Pope's Pastoral Epistle,' attacked the Oxford writers with advocating prayers for the dead, Pusey himself took up the defence. The few pages1 in which he accounts for the omissions of such prayers from the English Liturgy, while insisting, not merely that they are lawful, but a duty which charity owes to the departed, are among the most careful that he has written. The reason which may have determined the Edwardian reformers to abandon their public use is no longer valid; and if antiquity is to count for anything as an interpreter of the mind of Scripture, they cannot be set aside as of no account in a practical Christian life. They have the sanction of some of the highest names in Anglican divinity; and they satisfy some of the best and finest aspirations of the human heart. Not long after Pusey had occasion to insist on the negative side of his position in this matter. Newman had sent him the MS. of his tract on Purgatory 2, which was suggested by the earlier tract on Prayers for the Dead from Archbishop Ussher. The tract did not meet with Pusey's approval, and he wrote his mind with a plainness unusual in him when writing to one whom he loved and trusted so greatly. E. B. P. TO THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN. Thursday night. I have marked such passages as I think would most startle people; and made some notes which might soften the effect. But, somehow, your way of writing against the Romanists is so different from what people are accustomed to, that it will take much pains not to shock them; you seem to take lower ground in the first instance than you do at the end, and so people are pre-disposed against you; and what comes at last, though decisive, hardly seems to come 1 'Earnest Remonstrance, &c.,' pp. 18-28. heartily, because it has not come before, but comes laggardly. As if you were reluctant to say that the Romanists are in the wrong, although at the end truth compels you to do so! . . . . In such an apology, as it were, for the theory of Purgatory, something stronger against the practice is the more needed. . . A few sentences would suffice; for they might give a colouring to the whole, which it now wants. . . I think it might be done without trouble if you would write some few lines, as you have elsewhere, on the practical effects of Purgatory. ... This is the first indication of a divergence between Pusey and Newman. It was suspected at the time by neither of them. Newman may well have written the introduction to Tract No. 79 in consequence of this letter. It is in the main what Pusey wanted, namely, 'a few lines on the practical effects of Purgatory.' The following passage describes accurately enough the balance of Newman's mind at that time. 'Since,' he writes, 'we are in no danger of becoming Romanists, and may bear to be dispassionate, and, I may say, philosophical, in our treatment of their errors, some passages in the following account of Purgatory are more calmly written than would satisfy those who were engaged with a victorious enemy at their doors. Yet, whoever be our opponent, Papist or Latitudinarian, it does not seem to be wrong to be as candid and conceding as justice and charity allow us'.' No precautions, however, on Pusey's part could silence the charge of Romanizing which was being brought against the writers of the Tracts by Puritans as well as by Latitudinarians. Pusey always had a much warmer feeling for the former than for the latter class of opponents. As he wrote in 1865 'Ever since I knew them (which was not in my earliest years) I have loved those who are called "Evangelicals." I loved them because they loved our Lord. I loved them for their zeal for souls. I often thought them narrow, yet I was often drawn to individuals among them more than to others who held truths in common with myself, which the Evangelicals did not hold, at least explicitly 2.' Accordingly when in September 1836 he received some 1 Tracts for the Times,' No. 79, p. 3. Newspaper Attacks. 9 very violent letters from a worthy clergyman of this description, he answered them at great length, but without producing any effect. The clergyman told him that it was the Record which had guided him to form so unfavourable an opinion of Pusey and his friends. Could not something be done, if Pusey were only to appeal to the wisdom and justice of the Record? 'I send you,' Pusey writes to Newman, 'a letter to the Record. If they put it in, it will obtain us a hearing among the readers of the Record: if not, I shall send it to the British Magazine.' 'I almost question,' answered Newman, 'the pro dignitate of your corresponding with the Record? Newman the letter of his specimen of the times and Pusey then forwarded to clerical correspondent as a of the effects of the Record. 'I have,' he added, 'written a rather long answer.' Newman replied: Sept. 7, 1836. 'I am not pleased at your corresponding with the Record. Your paper is so good and valuable that some use must be made of it: but I altogether protest against the Record. Again, I am not for answering all misrepresentations. Things come right in a little while, if we let them take their course. Opportunities arise. The more I think of it, the more I am against your writing to the Record. You do the editor, &c. harm, by making him a tribunal, and you make it seem as if you were hurt and touchy. At present it strikes me I would alter it into the third person, whatever I did with it. Sometimes I may go into extremes; but I like leaving events to justify one.' Newman himself had written to the British Magazine about the Lyra Apostolica,' when the Record had interpreted it as reflecting upon Dr. Chalmers, and those who looked up to him might be hurt. A similar motive had led him to write to the papers when he declined to marry a parishioner who had not been baptized. But he would not write simply to defend himself or his writings. Sept. 7, 1836. 'I agree,' replied Pusey, 'altogether with your criticisms: I was surprised to find the paper so apologetic; I have struck out every word of apology, and everything, as I thought, which could look like ་ an appeal to the Record (even to the words "writer in your paper "), so that now, if they were to insert it, it is at most an “appeal to the clerical readers of the Record." I need not give you the trouble of looking through all this interlining, the first sentence will show you the character of its new dress. 'It seemed to me an object to get at the readers of the Record, if one could, most of whom, I suppose, one cannot get at but through the Record. Manning says they are doing mischief: my letter from confirms it; perhaps, writing with my name, I might come into contact privately with some of them. At all events, it will make some people see what right principles are, who have perhaps never seen them except through the distorting lens of the Record! REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO E. B. P. Sept. 8, 1836. 'Take care,' rejoined Newman, 'you are not knocked up. I am so afraid these various letters will overset you. You must not mind a letter like Mr.'s; I have some idea I have heard of him as a ranting, self-confident man. His letter shows him to have no mean opinion of himself. Depend upon it, whatever you said in explanation, a certain number of persons will misunderstand you, and not those whom you would feel distressed about. They, though perplexed for a time, will in time understand you, and the Truth. "The wise shall understand." By going through evil report we attain good report. I do not see why you should not answer Mr. -'s immodest letter, as far as the thing itself goes. But I see many reasons, as far as your health goes.... You will suffer for it afterwards.' But, after all, the Record might not insert what it had cost Pusey much to write. A party newspaper inserts or rejects communications without much regard to the justice of the case, but as the prejudices of its readers or the theory it upholds for truth may seem to require. 'From what I have since heard, the Record,' wrote Newman, 'will not put anything in. I doubt if you sent it yourself it would do more than say in the notices to correspondents, "We have received Dr. Pusey's letter, but it does not alter our opinion: however, we shall keep it by us, &c. "; or "We respectfully inform Dr. Pusey that our paper is not intended as an arena, &c." I would still wait, were I you, and see what comes of it.' But if Newman thought that Pusey had better not defend himself in the columns of the Record, he was very willing to defend Pusey. The Christian Observer |