In the summer of 1824, John Henry Newman preached his very first sermon shortly after being ordained as a deacon. He would go on to preach myriad sermons of enduring value. Generations of Christians have been and continue to be nourished by both his Parochial and Plain Sermons and University Sermons, as well as sermons from his Roman Catholic period. Two-hundred years later, we gathered together not only to commemorate the beginning of St. Newman’s preaching ministry, but also to explore and reflect on the wider topic of “Newman as Preacher” at the very churches in which he preached. This intimate, on-site conference featured three public keynote lectures along with other spiritually-enriching activities.
Two hundred years ago, on Wednesday 23 June 1824, John Henry Newman preached his first sermon. It was delivered in the evening at Holy Trinity Church, Over Worton, a village seventeen miles north of Oxford, in the parish of Rev. Walter Mayers, who had been Newman’s principal mentor since the religious conversion he underwent in 1816. Four days later, on Sunday 27 June, Newman took up duties as curate in the parish of St. Clement’s, Oxford and preached his second sermon at a morning service presided over by the elderly rector, John Gutch. During his nineteen months as curate at St. Clement’s, Newman prepared and preached 150 different sermons, a most unusual feat for a newly ordained clergyman.
Two hundred years ago, on Sunday 13 June 1824, John Henry Newman was ordained a deacon of the Church of England in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. In preparation for this momentous day, he had been fasting for three months. Two days before taking holy orders, he wrote in his private journal (which acted as a prayer diary), “As the time approaches for my ordination, thank God, I feel more and more happy. Make me Thy instrument … make use of me, when Thou wilt, and dash me to pieces when Thou wilt. Let me […] be Thine.”
Two major pieces of literature on Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–1852), the renowned Gothic Revivalist and Catholic convert who designed Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, six cathedrals, and more, state, in summary fashion, that Pugin illustrated St John Henry Newman’s Live of the English Saints. The late Professor Margaret Belcher, however, provided a great deal of detail on this subject in the second volume of her The Collected Letters of A.W.N. Pugin, published in 2003. This essay republishes, for the first time since 1914, all eleven of Pugin’s illustrations and does so for the first time ever in a single document.
Pusey’s appraisal of Mariology—a polemic containing a mixture of historical, theological and anecdotal evidence—was, on the whole, untrue and mostly a caricature; yet as Newman would be forced to admit in his formal published reply to Pusey in 1866, the <em>Letter to Pusey</em>, there was partial veracity to his claim that at times Mariology, in some of its devotional outpourings, has obscured devotion to God, especially God’s loving mediation brought to humanity through the Incarnation.
The cumulative effect of the theological debates at Oxford, together with his pastoral experience and personal reflections, gradually led Newman to a more high church ecclesiological approach, especially on visibility, invisibility, and apostolicity of the church.
