An edition, with introduction and comprehensive notes, of one of Newman's best-known works. The sermons, which explore the relation of faith and reason, are a key document of the Oxford Movement.

Newman himself called the Oxford University Sermons, first published in 1843, `the best, not the most perfect, book I have done'. He added, `I mean there is more to develop in it'. Indeed, the book is a precursor of all his major later works, including especially the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine and the Grammar of Assent. Dealing with the relationship of faith and reason, the fifteen sermons represent Newman's resolution of the conflict between heart and head that so troubled believers, non-believers, and agnostics of the nineteenth century, Their controversial nature also makes them one of the primary documents of the Oxford Movement. This new edition provides an introduction to the sermons, a definitive text with textual variants, extensive annotation, and appendices containing previously unpublished material.

The latest installment in Brill’s A New History of the Sermon series offers innovative studies of sacred rhetoric in the nineteenth century. The three sections—Theory and Theology, Sermon and Society in the British Empire, and Sermon and Society in America—contain a total of sixteen essays on such topics as biblical criticism, Charles Darwin, the Oxford Movement, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), English Catholicism, sermon-novels, and the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic. Multiple traditions are represented, including the Anglican and Presbyterian churches, English nonconformity, Judaism, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making this a compilation that will appeal to a wide range of preachers, historians, literary scholars, and students of the rhetorical tradition. Contributors are Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Thomas J. Carmody, Dawn Coleman, Robert H. Ellison, Joseph Evans, Keith A. Francis, Brian Jackson, Dorothy Lander, Thomas H. Olbricht, Carol Poster, Mirela Saim, Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen, Bob Tennant, David M. Timmerman, Tamara S. Wagner, and John Wolffe.