In 1833 Newman traveled to the Mediterranean. He fell ill in Sicily, and there experienced a special vocation, which he expressed in the words "I have a work to do in England."
In September 1833, with publication of the first Tract for the Times, Newman launched the Oxford Movement, a high church movement within Anglicanism that emphasized Catholic elements in the Church of England and continuity with the early church. Editor of the series, he contributed twenty-nine tracts. During this period, he also wrote two important works: Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism (1837), which argued for the via media, or foundational position, of the Church of England as true representative of the unbroken tradition of the Fathers; and a theological masterpiece, Lectures on Justification (1838). In 1841 his Tract 90, in which he tried to give a Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, touched off national alarm and was censured by the university and condemned by twenty-four Anglican bishops.
Research in patristics, together with his philosophy of development, at last led Newman to conclude that his via media existed only on paper and that the Anglican church was in fact schismatic.
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