Essays in Rationalism

by Charles Robert Newman

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Of Charles Robert Newman, until the death of his brother, the Cardinal, almost nothing was known. Some reminiscences of him by Mr. Thomas Purnell and Precentor Edmund Venables appeared in the Athenæum at the time of his death in 1884, and these remain the chief sources of information concerning him. Mr. G. J. Holyoake also, in his paper The Present Day, wrote: “If the public come to know more of Charles R. Newman, it will be seen that all the brothers, John Henry, Francis William, and Charles R. Newman, were men of unusual distinction of character, and that while each held diverse views, all had the family qualities of perspicacity, candor and conscience.” But these notes attracted little attention. Most people were under the impression there were only two brothers, who had long figured in the public eye as types of the opposite courses of modern thought towards Romanism and Rationalism. Yet the real type of antagonism to Rome was to be found in Charles Robert, who is dismissed by the Rev. Thomas Mozley with the words: “There was also another brother, not without his share in the heritage of natural gifts.”

In a notable passage on change of religion, in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, chap. vii., Cardinal Newman seems to allude to the career of himself and his brothers. He says: “Thus of three Protestants, one becomes a Catholic, a second a Unitarian, and a third an unbeliever: how is this? The first becomes a Catholic, because he assented, as a Protestant, to the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity, with a real assent and a genuine conviction, and because this certitude, taking possession of his mind, led him on to welcome the Catholic doctrines of the Real Presence and of the Theotocos, till his Protestantism fell off from him, and he submitted himself to the Church. The second became a Unitarian, because, proceeding on the principle that Scripture was the rule of faith, and that a man’s private judgment was its rule of interpretation, and finding that the doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds did not follow by logical necessity from the text of Scripture, he said to himself, ‘The word of God has been made of none effect by the traditions of men,’ and therefore nothing was left for him but to profess what he considered primitive Christianity and to become a Humanitarian. The third gradually subsided into infidelity, because he started with the Protestant dogma, cherished in the depths of his nature, that a priesthood was a corruption of the simplicity of the Gospel. First, then, he would protest against the sacrifice of the Mass; next he gave up baptismal regeneration and the sacramental principle; then he asked himself whether dogmas were not a restraint on Christian liberty as well as Sacraments; then came the question, What after all was the use of teachers of religion? Why should any one stand between him and his Maker? After a time it struck him that this obvious question had to be answered by the Apostles, as well as by the Anglican clergy; so he came to the conclusion that the true and only revelation of God to man is that which is written on the heart. This did for a time, and he remained a Deist. But then it occurred to him, that this inward moral law was there within the breast, whether there was a God or not, and that it was a roundabout way of enforcing that law, to say that it came from God and simply unnecessary, considering it carried with it its own sacred and sovereign authority, as our feelings instinctively testified, and when he turned to look at the physical world around him, he really did not see what scientific proof there was of the Being of God at all, and it seemed to him as if all things would go quite as well as at present without that hypothesis as with it; so he dropped it, and became a purus putus Atheist.”

I have transcribed this lengthy, but remarkable passage, not because I think it correctly describes the process of thought in his two brothers, but rather as an illustration that his own imaginative synthesis of their position derives its life and force from the fact that he had before him concrete instances in the person of his own nearest relatives.

Charles Robert Newman, younger brother of the Cardinal and elder brother of the Professor, was born on June 16, 1802, being one year and four months the junior of the former, and three years the senior of the latter.[1] Their father, a London man, and friend of Capel the eminent stockbroker, from having been clerk in a bank, became a partner, though he afterwards failed at a time of great commercial depression, both in this business and as a brewer. He was a Freemason, a musician, and had schemes of social improvement by reclaiming waste land and planting with trees. In religion his views appear to have been of a broad cast approximating to those of Benjamin Franklin. The mother, whose maiden name was Jemima Fourdrinier, was of Hugenot family, and of religious cast of mind. There were six children, equally divided as to sex. Harriet, the eldest girl, married the Rev. Thomas Mozley; Jemima, the second, married Mr. John Mozley; while Mary, the youngest, died unmarried.

Charles Robert was educated at the same school as his two brothers, John Henry and Francis William, that of Dr. George Nicholas at Ealing, Middlesex.

Of the influences which moulded his mind we can only speak from what is known of his brothers. John Henry has told how, in youth, he read Paine’s tracts against the Old Testament—we presume he means the Age of Reason—and also boasted of reading Hume, though, as he says, this was possibly but by way of brag.

Evidently, though the family was brought up in the habit of Bible reading, there was considerable freedom allowed as to the direction of their studies. While the father lived family prayer was unknown, nor was there any inculcation of dogma. “We read,” says Francis William, “the Psalms appointed by the church every day, and went to the parish church on Sunday.”

Francis William Newman, in his “Contributions, Chiefly to the Early History of Cardinal Newman,” says: “In opening life, my brother C. R. N. became a convert to Robert Owen, the philanthropic Socialist, who was then an Atheist.[2] But soon breaking loose from him, Charles tried to originate a ‘New Moral World’ of his own, which seemed to others absurd and immoral, as well as very unamiable. He disowned us all, on my father’s death, as ‘too religious for him.’ To keep a friend, or to act under a superior, seemed alike impossible to him. His brother (the late Cardinal) humbled himself to beg a clerkship for him in the Bank of England; but Charles thought it ‘his duty’ to write to the Directors letters of advice, so they could not keep him. Nor could he keep any place long. He said he ought to take a literary degree at Bonn: his two brothers managed it for him, but he came away without seeking the degree. His brother-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Mozley, then took him up very liberally; but after my sister Harriet’s death, J. H. N. and I bore his expenses to his dying day. His meanness seemed to me like that of an old cynic; yet his moderation was exemplary, and at last he undoubtedly won the respect of the mother and daughter who waited on him.”

In this, which is nearly all he has to say of this elder brother, it appears to me Professor Newman has either said too little or too much. The title of his work did not necessitate any reference to Charles Robert; but having said so much he should at least have explained further. For instance, in reference to the visit to Bonn, it was exceedingly natural in the second brother seeking to take a degree, since both his senior and junior had a college education. That he did not share in this advantage may have well tended to sour his life. Mr. Meynell explains why he returned without seeking the degree. He says: “But he came away without even offering himself for examination, a step he explained by saying that the judges would not grant him a degree because he had given offence by his treatment of faith and morals [it is a Catholic who writes] in an essay which they call teterrima.” Charles may have acted with extreme imprudence, both in regard to the bank directors and the Bonn examiners; but we should need to know the cases before we can determine whether he was actuated by wilful waywardness or by adherence to a higher than common standard of conduct. Each of the brothers had evidently exquisite sensitiveness of conscience, though, as proved by the Professor’s last book—that unique criticism of a brother who died at ninety by another aged eighty-five—they could not always enter into sympathy with each other.