Going through Tom Lawler’s files (see below), I found a great brochure from the 1950s advertising subscriptions to the fledgling Ancient Christian Writers series. The back panel featured these quotes from Newman:
“The vision of the Fathers was always, to my imagination, I may say, a paradise of delight” (Difficulties of Anglicans, Lect. XII).
“I follow the ancient Fathers … They are witnesses of the fact of … doctrines having been received, not here or there, but everywhere … We take them as honest informants” (The Patristic Idea of Antichrist).
“I … take my stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not yet an old almanac to me … The Fathers made me a Catholic” (Letter to Pusey).
Reading Tom’s correspondence with Father Johannes Quasten is itself a paradise of delight. More to come, surely.
I love the quote from the Letter to Pusey. Reading about the Oxford Movement and Newman was a key factor in my conversion to the Catholic Church. It was Newman who pointed me to the Fathers!