Page:Eminent Victorians.djvu/45

 Rh British Critic, Newman's Magazine. He published a sermon on Faith, with notes and appendices, which was condemned by an evangelical bishop, and fiercely attacked by no less a person than the celebrated Mr. Bowdler. "The sermon," said Mr. Bowdler, in a book which he devoted to the subject, "was bad enough, but the appendix was abominable." At the same time he was busy asserting the independence of the Church of England, opposing secular education, and bringing out pamphlets against the Ecclesiastical Commission, which had been appointed by Parliament to report on Church Property. Then we find him in the rôle of a spiritual director of souls. Ladies met him by stealth in his church, and made their confessions. Over one case—that of a lady, who found herself drifting towards Rome—he consulted Newman. Newman advised him to "enlarge upon the doctrine of 1 Cor. vii.";—"also I think you must press on her the prospect of benefiting the poor Church, through which she has her baptism, by stopping in it. Does she not care for the souls of all around her, steeped and stifled in Protestantism? How will she best care for them: by indulging her own feelings in the communion of Rome, or in denying herself, and staying in sackcloth and ashes to do them good?" Whether these arguments were successful does not appear.

For several years after his wife's death Manning was occupied with these new activities, while his relations with Newman developed into what was apparently a warm friendship. "And now vive valeque, my dear Manning," we find Newman writing in a letter dated "in festo S. Car. 1838," "as wishes and prays yours affectionately John H. Newman." But, as time went on, the situation became more complicated. Tractarianism began to arouse the hostility, not only of the evangelical, but of the moderate churchmen, who could not help perceiving, in the ever-deepening "Catholicism" of the Oxford party, the dread approaches of Rome. The Record newspaper—an influential Evangelical journal—took up the matter,