BY NEWPORT J. D. WHITE, D.D. Archbishop King's Professor in the University of Dublin LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING NEW YORK AND TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. 1925 ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS Editors S. L. OLLARD, M.A., and Bishop Butler. By ALBERT E. BAKER, M.A. 4s. 6d. net. Richard Hooker. By L. S. THORNTON. 4s. net. Robert Sanderson: Chaplain to King Charles the First. By GEORGE LEWIS, M.A. 6s. net. The Lady Julian. By R. H. THOULESS, M.A., PH.D. 4s. 6d. net. EDITORS' PREFACE THE object of this series is to make clear, in relation to present knowledge, the work of some well-known English theologians. Often their works remain unread because they are thought to be out of date and useless for the solution of modern problems. Certainly the rise and growth of the science of Biblical Criticism, to name no other development, has made some of their work obsolete; but, allowing for that, there remains much which is of the very highest value. It remains, however, often unknown because the reader is unaware of it. It is hoped that this series may act as a guide. When this series was projected in 1918 it attracted the keen interest of the Ven. William Cunningham, Archdeacon of Ely, Fellow of Trinity College, and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; and he undertook to act as joint editor. Dr. Cunningham did much for it by suggesting subjects and securing contributors, and it was hoped that he would have written for it a book on Frederick Denison Maurice. His lamented death in June, 1919, prevented this, but it is due to the series that his connexion with it should be recorded. The editors are not responsible for the particular opinions expressed by the several writers in this series. Their part has been to secure that each book, in its method of treatment, conforms broadly to the idea of the series, viz., that the works of the writer (or group of writers) are sufficiently illustrated and their value estimated in the light of our present knowledge. S. L. OLLARD. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN INTRODUCTION IN the case of many authors, especially theologians, it is easy to comply with the maxim of Thomas à Kempis, Enquire not, who said this; but attend to what is said. '1 That is to say, the profit or enjoyment derivable from a book may be quite unaffected by anything that we can learn about the words and deeds of the man who wrote it. Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Butler's Analogy, do not gain or lose by any knowledge we may acquire of the happenings in the lives of Shakespeare, Milton, or Bishop Butler. But John Henry Newman's history and personality-what he was in himself and what he did-are more significant than anything that he wrote. The one work of his that will be read long after the titles only of his other books are known to a few, owes its vitality to the fact that it is a portrait of the man's self, a self-revelation thrown off by a tremendous effort of his whole personality worked up into intense and glowing creativeness. There were two Newmans. place, Newman the Catholic leader and writer, the man There was, in the first who took the most prominent part in the movement through which the Church of England recovered her Catholic consciousness, the man who did more than any one else to revitalize for the Church of England the article of the Creed, the holy Catholic Church. And there was 1 Imit. i. 5. |