John Henry Newman's Adoption of Baptismal Regeneration, and the Relative Importance of John Bird Sumner, Richard Mant and William Beveridge to his Development

The commonly accepted opinion of Newman’s adoption of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration and rejection of Calvinism follows his account in the Apologia that it was Hawkins’ gift, in 1824, of the ‘Treatise on Apostolical Preaching,” by Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from which I learned to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the.doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration.This statement in the Apologia is based upon a journal entry of August 1824: Lately I have been thinking much on the subject of grace, regeneration &c. and reading Sumner’s Apostolical Preaching, which Hawkins has given me. Sumner’s book threatens to drive me either into Calvinism, or baptismal regeneration, and I wish to steer clear of both, at least in preaching.Undoubtedly, the Apologia continues to be an invaluable insight into the religious development of its author, but yet we need to be aware of its tendency to pass over the details of what was a very complicated and lengthy development.Newman divides his spiritual journey into four broad phases: Evangelical, Liberal, Apostolical, and lastly Roman Catholic. This has the great advantage that the broad sweep of his brush portrays the dynamic of his pilgrimage towards a definite goal, but this is at the expense of some of the background to significant changes in his life, for neither the Evangelical nor the Liberal stages of his progress were entirely unmixed with other strands of thought. In particular, the Apologia does not do justice to the whole spectrum of influences to which he was subject before he went up to Oxford.