ult, had a need to reflect back on Newman, the child, to see himself more clearly.
Newman was born in 1801 in London. His father was a member of a banking family, and his mother was the descendant of a French Protestant family that had come to England at the end of the seventeenth century. John Henry was baptized in the Anglican Church, the church of his parents. John henry spent his childhood in Old Broad Street, London, except for six years when his family lived at Grey's Court, Ham, near Richmond. The family consisted of three boys and three girls and belonged to the middle class.
Newman's formal education began in 1808 at a private school at Ealing, and there his scholarship and leadership abilities surfaced. He was said to have progressed in his studies at a pace more rapid than others in his class, and he read constantly, keeping notes in a diary faithfully. He also wrote poems, dramas, operas, and for two school papers. He also acted in plays and showed a taste for the Roman dramatist, Terence. The only area of school where he showed little interest was active participation in sports because he was physically delicate and shy. Throughout these years, the boy was intensely preoccupied with religious reading and thinking, and though many of the ideas that he entertained at the time probably reflected immaturity of thought, they still played an important role in his later theological development and writings. His religious training at home accounted for his great familiarity with the Bible. He deemed his knowledge of Catechism to be perfect as he was raised in the Anglican church, but he also admitted that he was not deeply religious in childhood, by which he meant that he did not perceive the true meaning of loving God and had formed no religious convictions until he was fifteen. Indeed, when he was fourteen his readings led him into mild skepticism about revealed religion, and he took pleasure in reading the o...