[Extract of a Letter of Francis William Newman to Moncure Daniel Conway]

[undated]

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        My brother Dr. Newman set himself with his back to liberal thought in 1823 probably: in that year he adopted Baptismal Regeneration and Apostolic Succession. In 1823 he tried to induce me by the present of a picture of the Virgin to set it up in my room. I was an undergraduate just entering good rooms, but I promptly sent the picture back, and felt much secret indignation. In 1825 I counted him a virtual Catholic, holding Popery minus the Pope. I was an Evangelical, but like plenty of Evangelicals beside, both now and then, was resolved to follow Truth whithersoever it led me; and was always indignant when told, "you must believe this or that," or you will find it "will lead you farther." "If that time comes, I shall go farther," was my uniform reply; and is, I am persuaded, deep in the heart of many an Evangelical whom you call bigoted, as you would have called me then.

        Of Coleridge and Carlyle we were then alike ignorant at Oxford, except of Coleridge's poetry.

        My brother's very acute mind was evidently that of a barrister, not of a philosopher or searcher for truth. But his dash and generosity gave him wonderful power with young men. His scorn of worldliness and meanness, his contempt of the race for promotion in the Church, his claim that each shall lay down his interest on the altar of the Church (especially for beautiful church edifices), were all new to dons of Oxford at that time. But not to see that a sacerdotal system was that of Paganism and Judaism, and the very reverse of what Jesus taught, was in those days to me an inexplicable blindness in a learned and acute young clergyman. I always thought it his calamity, that by the premature death of Lloyd, Bishop of Oxford and Regius Professor of Divinity, my brother gained so very immature an influence in Oxford.