The Church of the Fathers

by John Henry Newman, Francis McGrath

John Henry Newman's controversial The Church of the Fathers is published here for the first time in more than a century. It contains some of his earliest writings on fourth-century Christianity and is contemporary with the first Tracts of the Oxford Movement and The Arians of the Fourth Century. It was aimed at the general reader and is filled with extracts from the writings of the Church Fathers.
In 1833 the controversial Irish Church Temporalities Bill had been enacted by the British Parliament, a Bill that proposed to abolish ten of the twenty-two sees of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. Newman accused the State of violating the ancient doctrine of Apostolic Succession, and in this book draws parallels between the situation facing the church in the fourth century and the Anglican church in his day.
The material was first written as a series of articles for the British Magazine; these were then revised and published in book form in 1840. Although unpopular with many of the British Establishment, it was popular with fellow Tractarians, who 'found in it for the first time the inspiration of the lives of the Saints, as real and human as if they were still alive, as indeed they were to Newman' (Meriol Trevor). A second edition was published in 1842.

679 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s.
Originally an evangelical Oxford University academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman then became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism. He became known as a leader of, and an able polemicist for, the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In this the movement had some success. However, in 1845 Newman, joined by some but not all of his followers, left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and was received into the Catholic Church. He was quickly ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the cause of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland, which evolved into University College Dublin, today the largest university in Ireland.

Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom. He was then canonised by Pope Francis on 13 October 2019.

Newman was also a literary figure of note: his major writings including the Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865–66), the Grammar of Assent (1870), and the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865),[6] which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" (taken from Gerontius).