"I am obliged to mention, though I do it with great reluctance, another deep imagination, which at this time, the autumn of 1816 [fifteen years old], took possession of me, --there can be no mistake about the fact; viz. that it would be the will of God that I should lead a single life. This anticipation, which has held its ground almost continuously ever since, --with the break of a month now and a month then, up to 1829, and, after that date, without any break at all, --was more or less connected in my mind with the notion, that my calling in life would require such a sacrifice as celibacy involved; as, for instance, missionary work among the heathen, to which I had a great drawing for some years. It also strengthened my feeling of separation from the visible world, of which I have spoken above."1
"Nothing less positive and vital could have carried [John Henry Newman] through the storms to come, when he became the representative figure of the religious celibate in a society which hated and feared and despised nothing so bitterly."2
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1. Newman, Apologia, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1956, 28.
2. Trevor, Newman: The Pillar of the Cloud, New York: Doubleday, 1962, 96.
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