Book Description

This new study of Newman's religious development, from his childhood to his conversion to Roman Catholicism, explores Newman's growth in holiness and truth, i.e. religious truth, and the mutual influence of one upon the other. The former, the author states, 'is the more difficult to explore, since it involves not only a study of words and actions but of his inner life and motivation, which are often hidden.' This exploration is undertaken here with the aid of materials not hitherto fully exploited: verses, sermons, prayers and letters both by and to Newman. The detailed treatment of Newman's inner life as revealed in his private journals - not intended for publication - shows the continuity and change involved in his growth in holiness in their proper perspective, and how his early rigorous self-examination, meditation and assiduous study of the whole of the Scriptures produced the flowering of 'realizations of the Christian mysteries, full of psychological insights and abounding in quotations from Scripture', of the Parochial and Plain Sermons.