It was all the more remarkable when I discovered a collection of “Newman detractors” on the premises, a collection indicating the conflict between Newman, the champion of Roman Catholicism in England, and mainly evangelical Free Church academics around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the scholarly literature, John Locke (1632–1704) features as a formative influence on Newman’s philosophical thought. What usually gets highlighted, for example in the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, are Newman’s criticism of Locke’s notion of degreed assent and his call for a broader and more nuanced account of the rationality of religious belief. However, some have argued that the Grammar largely focuses on the psychological conditions of religious belief.
Despite their differences, and although Newman and Browning never met, they shared similar life experiences, and literary techniques, and both were concerned with the justification of Christianity, as well as the struggle between faith and doubt.
Newman’s influence is not relegated to the English-speaking world only; rather, it can be seen in the Spanish-speaking world as well.
Lingard remarked upon Newman’s career several times in his correspondence, usually with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.
As an archivist, I was incredibly excited by the platform and conceptualization of access that NINS was creating, showing a forward-thinking vision that was almost unheard of at the time.
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