During the year 1845 his attention was greatly occupied with the converts that were coming daily into the Church through the Oxford movement. As Father Spencer was not a mover in it, and as its history has been written over and over by different members of it, it would be superfluous to give anything like a sketch of it in such a work as this. Father Spencer seemed to have great interest in Dr. Newman, as also Dr. Ward, Canon Oakeley, and Father Faber. Many of them go to Oscott, some to be received, and some to make their studies for the Church; and in the beginning of the year 1846 he writes that he had twelve who were Anglican clergymen assisting at his mass one day in Oscott, and that there were three more who might have been, but were unable to come.
He takes advantage of the Feast of St. Pius V. to preach his famous sermon on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones. In a few days he assists at the ordination of the present Bishop of Northampton, the Right Rev. Dr. Amherst. A number of converts received orders at the same time, and Father Spencer had the pleasure of assisting at the ceremony. He resumes his Journal in May, 1846, and we find these two entries in it:
"Tuesday, June 9.— We had news to-day of the death of Pope Gregory XVI. on the 1st of June, after fifteen years and four months' pontificate. God grant a holy successor, full of fortitude and love, especially for England."
"June 22. News of Cardinal Feretti being Pope (Pius IX.). The brave Bishop of Imola, who stopped the progress of the insurgents in 1831. I am perfectly satisfied."
He went into retreat at Hodder under the direction of Father Clarke, S.J., and the result of that retreat was that he became a Passionist. We shall give a letter he wrote to Mr. Phillipps at the time, in which he gives a full account of how this was brought about.
"St. Benedict's Priory, Feast of St. John Cantius,
"Oct. 22, 1846.
"My Dear Ambrose,—Yesterday, for the first time this long time, I heard where you were, and that you were within reach again of a Queen's head. This was from Mrs. Henry Whitgrave, next to whom I sat at dinner yesterday, at the Clifford Arms, Great Heywood, after the opening high mass of the new chapel there, which she and her husband came from Rugeley to attend. I determined not to lose another day in writing to you, lest you should hear from others, which I should not be pleased with, the news I have to give about myself. Perhaps you have already heard of it; but it is not my fault that you have not had the news from me. The news in question is that I am going to become a Passionist. You have frequently told me your persuasion, that what would be for my happiness would be to join a religious institute, and therefore I am confident you will rejoice with me at my prejudices being overcome, my fond schemes of other plans of my own set aside, and this good step at length determined on; though I can imagine that you will perhaps regret that the body which I join is not that with which you are most connected yourself, the Institute of Charity. Surprised I dare say you will not be much. Many others have received the declaration of this intention without any surprise, and only told me that they had been used to wonder how I did not long ago take such a step. You will only be surprised and wonder how I have come to this mind, after such decided purposes, as I have always expressed the contrary way. I can only say, Glory be to God, to our Blessed Lady, and St. Ignatius. It was entirely owing to the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, which I have gone through twice, and only twice, in private and alone in the effective way. Once was at Louvain, where you parted from me two years ago to go to Königswinter, and the other time was this summer, when I went for a retreat at Hodder Place, under your friend Father Thomas Clarke, who is Master of Novices there. For two or three days in the course of the former of these retreats, I was brought (for the first time) to doubt whether I ought not to give up my own ideas, and take to the regular established course of entering religion; and the old Jesuit who directed me in that retreat, when I expressed these new ideas, seemed at first to think they would lead to this conclusion. But I suppose I was not ripe for it, or God's time was not come. It ended by his telling me to put aside all those thoughts, and go on as I was. So I did, and was without any idea of the kind till the middle of this second retreat, which I entered with no view but to get on better where I was for another year. The same meditations raised up again the same battle within me as at Louvain, and I saw no way but to go into the matter, and make my election according to the rules given by St. Ignatius; which, if they were applied more often to questions of importance which people have to settle, ah! we should have many resolutions come to different to what are come to in the world. I soon came to determine for a change of state; then came the question which body to choose, and for a whole day nearly this was working my thoughts up and down. I could see no prospect of deciding between the two which came before me at first and for which I found my feelings and my judgment alternately inclining me—these were the Jesuits and the Institute of Charity. I saw no prospect of making up my mind that day, though Father Clarke told me now was the time for such a choice, and not when I had gone out again into the world, and I knew that God whom I had sought in solitude would give me light. At last, when I had just finished my last meditation of that portion of the retreat, and still could not settle, I thought I must have recourse after the retreat was over to Father Dominic, as a neutral judge, to help me to choose between the other two; when, in a minute, as in the fable of the two men who found the oyster and called in the third to judge between them, I saw that Father Dominic himself was to have me, such as I was, and all my doubts vanished. Father Clarke came soon afterwards to pay me his daily visit, and confirmed my choice with a manner and tone as unhesitating as the choice itself had been, and would not let me afterwards give way to the fear of any difficulties, saying, once for all, when I was questioning how I could get over some of them, 'Well, if you do not get over them, God has been deceiving you.' How I extol now and praise the practice of spiritual exercises, and St. Ignatius, the great founder of the system of them, and the Jesuits in their conduct of them, as exemplified in Father Clarke, whose way with me so completely gave the lie to what people are disposed to think, that the Jesuits must bring everything and everybody to themselves when they get them into their hands. I intend to express my sense of obligation to them and St. Ignatius, by taking his name as my future designation, after I am admitted to the religious habit. So I hope in time I may come to be known no more by my own name, but by that of Ignatius of St. Paul. And as God gives me this nomen novum may he add the manna absconditum, and make me in spirit as different from what I have been as in name. It is a great satisfaction that all this was settled without Father Dominic or any Passionist having a hint of it, till I went up to London three days after the retreat, to tell him of the determination I had made. The next day I came back to Oscott, and told Dr. Wiseman. He was, of course, surprised at the news, and at first seemed to think I could not be really in earnest, but ever since has acted in the most considerate and kind manner towards me. My move, I am sorry to think, must entail on him and dear Bishop Walsh serious inconveniences, not so much for the loss of my services where they had placed me, for I hope if I live I may serve them better as I shall be circumstanced hereafter, as I was doing little at Oscott, but from the withdrawal of my funds, which I fear may take place perhaps even to their entire amount, but certainly in great part. Not that any part goes to the congregation (of the Passion); thank God, I am received there in formá pauperis and all which remains to me would be left to the Bishop; but my dear brother seems quite determined to make my vow of poverty as much one in earnest as it can be; and so, bitter as that part of the trial is, God bless him for it! I think I must have told you how my income came to me. My father left me a certain capital quite independently, which went long ago to building churches, and £300 a year to be paid to me as long as I did not put it out of my own power, in which case it was to be in the power of my brother, now living, and other trustees, to be employed to my advantage. My late brother gave me as much more of his own free will, and this brother has hitherto continued this, but now says that he cannot give it to support Catholicity; and as he will not use it himself, it is to go for my lifetime to religious and charitable purposes such as he thinks fit. So half of my money is clean gone, and the other half depends upon what interpretation the law puts on the terms of my father's will. Bishop Wiseman takes this so beautifully and disinterestedly, that I trust the loss he thus bears for God's sake will be more than amply compensated to him. My sister, Lady Lyttelton, takes my change beautifully."
The pecuniary losses his ecclesiastical superiors would sustain prevented them giving him the opposition they otherwise would. It would not look well to try to keep him out of religion, under the circumstances; and besides, Cardinal Wiseman was not the person to prevent his priests becoming religious, if he were only convinced they had a vocation.
When Father Spencer was on his way to London to consult with Father Dominic about his reception, a musket went off by accident in the carriage he was in, and the ball passed through the skylight. This gave him rather a start, and made him think a little about the shortness of life. He appears to have found Father Dominic giving a retreat to the nuns of the Sacré Coeur, who are now at Roehampton. The saintly Passionist was delighted with the news, and Father Ignatius used to say that he seemed to be more delighted still at the fact that he was not bringing a penny to the order. On his return to Oscott, the first thing we heard was that a Quaker had been converted by a sermon he preached in Birkenhead, which sermon he thought himself was about the worst he ever delivered. He meets a little opposition, however; they wish him to stay until his thoughts get settled into their original state after the retreat. He fears this to be a stratagem of the enemy, and, lest it might make him lose his vocation, he makes a vow of entering religion at or before Christmas. When this became known, nobody could in conscience oppose him, for only the Pope could dispense him from entering now.
At length everything is settled. His £300 income remains to the Bishop and his brother promises to provide for his pensioners. All things being thus arranged, he visits all the poor people about Oscott and West Bromwich, to give them a parting advice and blessing, spiritual and temporal. He writes to all his friends, packs up his books and other smaller movables, receives two converts—Laing and Walker—gets Dr. Wiseman's blessing, and has his carriage to the train, takes third class to Stafford, and on his birthday, 21st December, 1846, at 8 o'clock in the evening, arrives at Aston Hall, to enter the Passionists' noviciate.