THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

TWELVE YEARS 1833-1845

R. W. CHURCH, M. A. , D. C. L. 

SOMETIME DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD

ADVERTISEMENT

The revision of these papers was a task to which the late Dean of St. Paul's gave all the work he could during the last months of his life. Atthe time of his death, fourteen of the papers had, so far as can bejudged, received the form in which he wished them to be published; andthese, of course, are printed here exactly as he left them. One more hehad all but prepared for publication; the last four were mainly in thecondition in which, six years ago, he had them privately put into type, for the convenience of his own further work upon them, and for thereading of two or three intimate friends. Those into whose care his workhas now come have tried, with the help of his pencilled notes, to bringthese four papers as nearly as they can into the form which they believehe would have had them take. But it has seemed better to leave unaltereda sentence here and there to which he might have given a more perfectshape, rather than to run the risk of swerving from the thought whichwas in his mind. 

It is possible that the Dean would have made considerable changes inthe preface which is here printed; for only that which seems the firstdraft of it has been found. But even thus it serves to show his wish andpurpose for the work he had in hand; and it has therefore been thoughtbest to publish it. Leave has been obtained to add here some fragmentsfrom a letter which, three years ago, he wrote to Lord Acton about thesepapers:

"If I ever publish them, I must say distinctly what I want to do, whichis, not to pretend to write a history of the movement, or to account forit or adequately to judge it and put it in its due place in relation tothe religious and philosophical history of the time, but simply topreserve a contemporary memorial of what seems to me to have been a trueand noble effort which passed before my eyes, a short scene of religiousearnestness and aspiration, with all that was in it of self-devotion, affectionateness, and high and refined and varied character, displayedunder circumstances which are scarcely intelligible to men of thepresent time; so enormous have been the changes in what was assumed andacted upon, and thought practicable and reasonable, 'fifty years since. 'For their time and opportunities, the men of the movement, with alltheir imperfect equipment and their mistakes, still seem to me the saltof their generation. .. . I wish to leave behind me a record that one wholived with them, and lived long beyond most of them, believed in thereality of their goodness and height of character, and still looks backwith deepest reverence to those forgotten men as the companions to whoseteaching and example he owes an infinite debt, and not he only, butreligious society in England of all kinds. "

_January_ 31st, 1891. 

PREFACE

The following pages relate to that stage in the Church revival of thiscentury which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use itsnickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences andconditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but theimpelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which thesepages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly associatedwith Oxford, from which it received some of its most markedcharacteristics. Oxford men started it and guided it. At Oxford wereraised its first hopes, and Oxford was the scene of its first successes. At Oxford were its deep disappointments, and its apparently fataldefeat. And it won and lost, as a champion of English theology andreligion, a man of genius, whose name is among the illustrious names ofhis age, a name which will always be connected with modern Oxford, andis likely to be long remembered wherever the English language isstudied. 

We are sometimes told that enough has been written about the OxfordMovement, and that the world is rather tired of the subject. A good dealhas certainly been both said and written about it, and more is probablystill to come; and it is true that other interests, more immediate ormore attractive, have thrown into the background what is severed from usby the interval of half a century. Still that movement had a good dealto do with what is going on in everyday life among us now; and feelingsboth of hostility to it, and of sympathy with it, are still lively andkeen among those to whom religion is a serious subject, and even amongsome who are neutral in the questions which it raised, but who find init a study of thought and character. I myself doubt whether the interestof it is so exhausted as is sometimes assumed. If it is, these pageswill soon find their appropriate resting-place. But I venture to presentthem, because, though a good many judgments upon the movement have beenput forth, they have come mostly from those who have been more or lessavowedly opposed to it. [1] The men of most account among those who wereattracted by it and represented it have, with one illustrious exception, passed away. A survivor of the generation which it stirred so deeply maynot have much that is new to tell about it. He may not be able to affectmuch the judgment which will finally be accepted about it. But the factis not unimportant, that a number of able and earnest men, men who bothintellectually and morally would have been counted at the moment as partof the promise of the coming time, were fascinated and absorbed by it. It turned and governed their lives, lifting them out of custom andconvention to efforts after something higher, something worthier of whatthey were. It seemed worth while to exhibit the course of the movementas it looked to these men--as it seemed to them viewed from the inside. My excuse for adding to so much that has been already written is, that Iwas familiar with many of the chief actors in the movement. And I do notlike that the remembrance of friends and associates, men of singularpurity of life and purpose, who raised the tone of living round them, and by their example, if not by their ideas, recalled both Oxford andthe Church to a truer sense of their responsibilities, should, becauseno one would take the trouble to put things on record, "pass away like adream. "

The following pages were, for the most part, written, and put intoprinted shape, in 1884 and 1885. Since they were written, books haveappeared, some of them important ones, going over most of the sameground; while yet more volumes may be expected. We have had ingenioustheories of the genesis of the movement, and the filiation of its ideas. Attempts have been made to alter the proportions of the scene and of theseveral parts played upon it, and to reduce the common estimate of theweight and influence of some of the most prominent personages. Thepoint of view of those who have thus written is not mine, and they telltheir story (with a full right so to do) as I tell mine. But I do notpurpose to compare and adjust our respective accounts--to attack theirs, or to defend my own. I have not gone through their books to findstatements to except to, or to qualify. The task would be a tiresome andunprofitable one. I understand their point of view, though I do notaccept it. I do not doubt their good faith, and I hope that they willallow mine. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is hardly necessary to say that these and the following wordswere written before Dr. Newman's death, and the publication of hisletters. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ITHE CHURCH IN THE REFORM DAYS

CHAPTER IITHE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT--JOHN KEBLE

CHAPTER IIIRICHARD HURRELL FROUDE

CHAPTER IVMR. NEWMAN'S EARLY FRIENDS--ISAAC WILLIAMS

CHAPTER VCHARLES MARRIOTT

CHAPTER VITHE OXFORD TRACTS

CHAPTER VIITHE TRACTARIANS

CHAPTER VIIISUBSCRIPTION AT MATRICULATION AND ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS

CHAPTER IXDR. HAMPDEN

CHAPTER XGROWTH OF THE MOVEMENT, 1835-1840

CHAPTER XITHE ROMAN QUESTION

CHAPTER XIICHANGES

CHAPTER XIIITHE AUTHORITIES AND THE MOVEMENT

CHAPTER XIVNO. 90

CHAPTER XVAFTER NO. 90

CHAPTER XVITHE THREE DEFEATS: ISAAC WILLIAMS, MACMULLEN, PUSEY

CHAPTER XVIIW. G. WARD

CHAPTER XVIIITHE IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH

CHAPTER XIXTHE CATASTROPHE

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

CHAPTER I

THE CHURCH IN THE REFORM DAYS

What is called the Oxford or Tractarian movement began, without doubt, in a vigorous effort for the immediate defence of the Church againstserious dangers, arising from the violent and threatening temper of thedays of the Reform Bill. It was one of several and widely differingefforts. Viewed superficially it had its origin in the accident of anurgent necessity. [2] The Church was really at the moment imperilled amidthe crude revolutionary projects of the Reform epoch;[3] and somethingbolder and more effective than the ordinary apologies for the Churchwas the call of the hour. The official leaders of the Church were almoststunned and bewildered by the fierce outbreak of popular hostility. Theanswers put forth on its behalf to the clamour for extensive and evendestructive change were the work of men surprised in a moment ofsecurity. They scarcely recognised the difference between what wasindefensible and what must be fought for to the death; they mistooksubordinate or unimportant points for the key of their position: intheir compromises or in their resistance they wanted the guidance ofclear and adequate principles, and they were vacillating andineffective. But stronger and far-seeing minds perceived the need of abroad and intelligible basis on which to maintain the cause of theChurch. For the air was full of new ideas; the temper of the time wasbold and enterprising. It was felt by men who looked forward, that tohold their own they must have something more to show than custom oralleged expediency--they must sound the depths of their own convictions, and not be afraid to assert the claims of these convictions on men'sreason and imagination as well as on their associations and feelings. The same dangers and necessities acted differently on different minds;but among those who were awakened by them to the presence of a greatcrisis were the first movers in what came to be known as the Tractarianmovement. The stir around them, the perils which seemed to threaten, were a call to them to examine afresh the meaning of their familiarwords and professions. 

For the Church, as it had been in the quiet days of the eighteenthcentury, was scarcely adapted to the needs of more stirring times. Theidea of clerical life had certainly sunk, both in fact and in thepopular estimate of it. The disproportion between the purposes for whichthe Church with its ministry was founded and the actual tone of feelingamong those responsible for its service had become too great. Men wereafraid of principles; the one thing they most shrank from was thesuspicion of enthusiasm. Bishop Lavington wrote a book to hold up toscorn the enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists; and what would haveseemed reasonable and natural in matters of religion and worship in theage of Cranmer, in the age of Hooker, in the age of Andrewes, or in theage of Ken, seemed extravagant in the age which reflected the spirit ofTillotson and Secker, and even Porteus. The typical clergyman in Englishpictures of the manners of the day, in the _Vicar of Wakefield, _ in MissAusten's novels, in Crabbe's _Parish Register, _ is represented, oftenquite unsuspiciously, as a kindly and respectable person, but certainlynot alive to the greatness of his calling. He was often much, very much, to the society round him. When communication was so difficult andinfrequent, he filled a place in the country life of England which noone else could fill. He was often the patriarch of his parish, itsruler, its doctor, its lawyer, its magistrate, as well as its teacher, before whom vice trembled and rebellion dared not show itself. The ideaof the priest was not quite forgotten; but there was much--much even ofwhat was good and useful--to obscure it. The beauty of the EnglishChurch in this time was its family life of purity and simplicity; itsblot was quiet worldliness. It has sometimes been the fashion in laterdays of strife and disquiet to regret that unpretending estimate ofclerical duty and those easy-going days; as it has sometimes been thefashion to regret the pomp and dignity with which well-born or scholarlybishops, furnished with ample leisure and splendid revenues, presided inunapproachable state over their clergy and held their own among thegreat county families. Most things have a side for which something canbe said; and we may truthfully and thankfully recall that among theclergy of those days there were not a few but many instances, not onlyof gentle manners, and warm benevolence, and cultivated intelligence, but of simple piety and holy life. [4] But the fortunes of the Church arenot safe in the hands of a clergy, of which a great part take theirobligations easily. It was slumbering and sleeping when the visitationof days of change and trouble came upon it. 

Against this state of things the Oxford movement was a determinedrevolt; but, as has been said, it was not the only one, nor the first. Aprofound discontent at the state of religion in England had takenpossession of many powerful and serious minds in the generation whichwas rising into manhood at the close of the first quarter of thecentury; and others besides the leaders of the movement were feelingtheir way to firmer ground. Other writers of very different principles, and with different objects, had become alive, among other things, to theimportance of true ideas about the Church, impatient at the ignoranceand shallowness of the current views of it, and alarmed at the dangerswhich menaced it. Two Oxford teachers who commanded much attention bytheir force and boldness--Dr. Whately and Dr. Arnold--had developedtheir theories about the nature, constitution, and functions of theChurch. They were dissatisfied with the general stagnation of religiousopinion, on this as on other subjects. They agreed in resenting theunintelligent shortsightedness which relegated such a matter to a thirdor fourth rank in the scale of religious teaching. They agreed also inseizing the spiritual aspect of the Church, and in raising the idea ofit above the level of the poor and worldly conceptions on the assumptionof which questions relating to it were popularly discussed. But in theirfundamental principles they were far apart. I assume, on the authorityof Cardinal Newman, what was widely believed in Oxford, and neverapparently denied, that the volume entitled _Letters of anEpiscopalian_, [5] 1826, was, in some sense at least, the work of Dr. Whately. In it is sketched forth the conception of an organised body, introduced into the world by Christ Himself, endowed with definitespiritual powers and with no other, and, whether connected with theState or not, having an independent existence and inalienable claims, with its own objects and laws, with its own moral standard and spiritand character. From this book Cardinal Newman tells us that he learnthis theory of the Church, though it was, after all, but the theoryreceived from the first appearance of Christian history; and he recordsalso the deep impression which it made on others. Dr. Arnold's view wasa much simpler one. He divided the world into Christians andnon-Christians: Christians were all who professed to believe in Christas a Divine Person and to worship Him, [6] and the brotherhood, the"Societas" of Christians, was all that was meant by "the Church" in theNew Testament. It mattered, of course, to the conscience of eachChristian what he had made up his mind to believe, but to no one else. Church organisation was, according to circumstances, partly inevitableor expedient, partly mischievous, but in no case of divine authority. Teaching, ministering the word, was a thing of divine appointment, butnot so the mode of exercising it, either as to persons, forms, ormethods. Sacraments there were, signs and pledges of divine love andhelp, in every action of life, in every sight of nature, and eminentlytwo most touching ones, recommended to Christians by the RedeemerHimself; but except as a matter of mere order, one man might deal withthese as lawfully as another. Church history there was, fruitful ininterest, instruction, and warning; for it was the record of the longstruggle of the true idea of the Church against the false, and of thefatal disappearance of the true before the forces of blindness andwickedness. [7] Dr. Arnold's was a passionate attempt to place the trueidea in the light. Of the difficulties of his theory he made lightaccount. There was the vivid central truth which glowed through his souland quickened all his thoughts. He became its champion and militantapostle. These doctrines, combined with his strong political liberalism, made the Midlands hot for Dr. Arnold. But he liked the fighting, as hethought, against the narrow and frightened orthodoxy round him. And hewas in the thick of this fighting when another set of ideas about theChurch--the ideas on which alone it seemed to a number of earnest andanxious minds that the cause of the Church could be maintained--theideas which were the beginning of the Oxford movement, crossed his path. It was the old orthodox tradition of the Church, with fresh life putinto it, which he flattered himself that he had so triumphantlydemolished. This intrusion of a despised rival to his own teaching aboutthe Church--teaching in which he believed with deep and ferventconviction--profoundly irritated him; all the more that it came from menwho had been among his friends, and who, he thought, should have knownbetter. [8]

But neither Dr. Whately's nor Dr. Arnold's attempts to put the oldsubject of the Church in a new light gained much hold on the publicmind. One was too abstract; the other too unhistorical andrevolutionary. Both in Oxford and in the country were men whose heartsburned within them for something less speculative and vague, somethingmore reverent and less individual, more in sympathy with the inheritedspirit of the Church. It did not need much searching to find in thefacts and history of the Church ample evidence of principles distinctand inspiring, which, however long latent, or overlaid by superficialaccretions, were as well fitted as they ever were to animate itsdefenders in the struggle with the unfriendly opinion of the day. Theycould not open their Prayer-Books, and think of what they read there, without seeing that on the face of it the Church claimed to be somethingvery different from what it was assumed to be in the currentcontroversies of the time, very different from a mere institution of theState, from a vague collection of Christian professions from one formor denomination of religion among many, distinguished by largerprivileges and larger revenues. They could not help seeing that itclaimed an origin not short of the Apostles of Christ, and took forgranted that it was to speak and teach with their authority and that oftheir Master. These were theological commonplaces; but now, the pressureof events and of competing ideas made them to be felt as real andmomentous truths. Amid the confusions and inconsistencies of thesemi-political controversy on Church reform, and on the defects andrights of the Church, which was going on in Parliament, in the press, and in pamphlets, the deeper thoughts of those who were interested inits fortunes were turned to what was intrinsic and characteristic in itsconstitution: and while these thoughts in some instances only issued intheory and argument, in others they led to practical resolves to actupon them and enforce them. 

At the end of the first quarter of the century, say about 1825-30, twocharacteristic forms of Church of England Christianity were popularlyrecognised. One inherited the traditions of a learned and soberAnglicanism, claiming as the authorities for its theology the great lineof English divines from Hooker to Waterland, finding its patterns ofdevotion in Bishop Wilson, Bishop Horne, and the "Whole Duty of Man, "but not forgetful of Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, and Ken, --preaching, without passion or excitement, scholarlike, careful, wise, oftenvigorously reasoned discourses on the capital points of faith andmorals, and exhibiting in its adherents, who were many and important, all the varieties of a great and far-descended school, which claimed foritself rightful possession of the ground which it held. There wasnothing effeminate about it, as there was nothing fanatical; there wasnothing extreme or foolish about it; it was a manly school, distrustfulof high-wrought feelings and professions, cultivating self-command andshy of display, and setting up as its mark, in contrast to what seemedto it sentimental weakness, a reasonable and serious idea of duty. Thedivinity which it propounded, though it rested on learning, was ratherthat of strong common sense than of the schools of erudition. Its bettermembers were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant ofirregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed byan unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forthon occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers andhunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowedfamilies out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode tohounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did worse things. Itsaverage was what naturally in England would be the average, in a stateof things in which great religious institutions have been for a longtime settled and unmolested--kindly, helpful, respectable, sociablepersons of good sense and character, workers rather in a fashion ofroutine which no one thought of breaking, sometimes keeping up theirUniversity learning, and apt to employ it in odd and not very profitableinquiries; apt, too, to value themselves on their cheerfulness and quickwit; but often dull and dogmatic and quarrelsome, often insufferablypompous. The custom of daily service and even of fasting was kept upmore widely than is commonly supposed. The Eucharist, though sparinglyadministered, and though it had been profaned by the operation of theTest Acts, was approached by religious people with deep reverence. Butbesides the better, and the worse, and the average members of this, which called itself the Church party, there stood out a number of men ofactive and original minds, who, starting from the traditions of theparty, were in advance of it in thought and knowledge, or in the desireto carry principles into action. At the Universities learning was stillrepresented by distinguished names. At Oxford, Dr. Routh was stillliving and at work, and Van Mildert was not forgotten. Bishop Lloyd, ifhe had lived, would have played a considerable part; and a young man ofvast industry and great Oriental learning, Mr. Pusey, was coming on thescene. Davison, in an age which had gone mad about the study ofprophecy, had taught a more intelligent and sober way of regarding it;and Mr. John Miller's Bampton Lectures, now probably only remembered bya striking sentence, quoted in a note to the _Christian Year, _[9] hadimpressed his readers with a deeper sense of the uses of Scripture. Cambridge, besides scholars like Bishop Kaye, and accomplished writerslike Mr. Le Bas and Mr. Lyall, could boast of Mr. Hugh James Rose, themost eminent person of his generation as a divine. But the influence ofthis learned theology was at the time not equal to its value. Soundrequires atmosphere; and there was as yet no atmosphere in the publicmind in which the voice of this theology could be heard. The person whofirst gave body and force to Church theology, not to be mistaken orignored, was Dr. Hook. His massive and thorough Churchmanship was theindependent growth of his own thoughts and reading. Resolute, throughgood report and evil report, rough but very generous, stern both againstPopery and Puritanism, he had become a power in the Midlands and theNorth, and first Coventry, then Leeds, were the centres of a newinfluence. He was the apostle of the Church to the great middle class. 

These were the orthodox Churchmen, whom their rivals, and not theirrivals only, [10] denounced as dry, unspiritual, formal, unevangelical, self-righteous; teachers of mere morality at their best, allies andservants of the world at their worst. In the party which at this timehad come to be looked upon popularly as best entitled to be the_religious_ party, whether they were admired as Evangelicals, or abusedas Calvinists, or laughed at as the Saints, were inheritors not ofAnglican traditions, but of those which had grown up among the zealousclergymen and laymen who had sympathised with the great Methodistrevival, and whose theology and life had been profoundly affected by it. It was the second or third generation of those whose religious ideas hadbeen formed and governed by the influence of teachers like Hervey, Romaine, Cecil, Venn, Fletcher, Newton, and Thomas Scott. The fathers ofthe Evangelical school were men of naturally strong and vigorousunderstandings, robust and rugged, and sometimes eccentric, but quiteable to cope with the controversialists, like Bishop Tomline, whoattacked them. These High Church controversialists were too half-heartedand too shallow, and understood their own principles too imperfectly, tobe a match for antagonists who were in deadly earnest, and put them toshame by their zeal and courage. But Newton and Romaine and the Milnerswere too limited and narrow in their compass of ideas to found apowerful theology. They undoubtedly often quickened conscience. Buttheir system was a one-sided and unnatural one, indeed in the hands ofsome of its expounders threatening morality and soundness ofcharacter. [11] It had none of the sweep which carried the justificationdoctrines of Luther, or the systematic predestinarianism of Calvin, orthe "platform of discipline" of John Knox and the Puritans. It had todeal with a society which laid stress on what was "reasonable, " or"polite, " or "ingenious, " or "genteel, " and unconsciously it had come tohave respect to these requirements. The one thing by which its preacherscarried disciples with them was their undoubted and serious piety, andtheir brave, though often fantastic and inconsistent, protest againstthe world. They won consideration and belief by the mild persecutionwhich this protest brought on them--by being proscribed as enthusiastsby comfortable dignitaries, and mocked as "Methodists" and "Saints" bywits and worldlings. But the austere spirit of Newton and Thomas Scotthad, between 1820 and 1830, given way a good deal to the influence ofincreasing popularity. The profession of Evangelical religion had beenmade more than respectable by the adhesion of men of position andweight. Preached in the pulpits of fashionable chapels, this religionproved to be no more exacting than its "High and Dry" rival. It gave agentle stimulus to tempers which required to be excited by novelty. Itrecommended itself by gifts of flowing words or high-pitched rhetoric tothose who expected _some_ demands to be made on them, so that thesedemands were not too strict. Yet Evangelical religion had not beenunfruitful, especially in public results. It had led Howard andElizabeth Fry to assail the brutalities of the prisons. It had ledClarkson and Wilberforce to overthrow the slave trade, and ultimatelyslavery itself. It had created great Missionary Societies. It had givenmotive and impetus to countless philanthropic schemes. What it failed inwas the education and development of character; and this was the resultof the increasing meagreness of its writing and preaching. There werestill Evangelical preachers of force and eloquence--Robert Hall, EdwardIrving, Chalmers, Jay of Bath--but they were not Churchmen. The circleof themes dwelt on by this school in the Church was a contracted one, and no one had found the way of enlarging it. It shrank, in its fear ofmere moralising, in its horror of the idea of merit or of the value ofgood works, from coming into contact with the manifold realities of thespirit of man: it never seemed to get beyond the "first beginnings" ofChristian teaching, the call to repent, the assurance of forgiveness: ithad nothing to say to the long and varied process of building up the newlife of truth and goodness: it was nervously afraid of departing fromthe consecrated phrases of its school, and in the perpetual iteration ofthem it lost hold of the meaning they may once have had. It too oftenfound its guarantee for faithfulness in jealous suspicions, and infierce bigotries, and at length it presented all the characteristics ofan exhausted teaching and a spent enthusiasm. Claiming to be exclusivelyspiritual, fervent, unworldly, the sole announcer of the free grace ofGod amid self-righteousness and sin, it had come, in fact, to be on veryeasy terms with the world. Yet it kept its hold on numbers ofspiritually-minded persons, for in truth there seemed to be nothingbetter for those who saw in the affections the main field of religion. But even of these good men, the monotonous language sounded to all butthemselves inconceivably hollow and wearisome; and in the hands of theaverage teachers of the school, the idea of religion was becoming poorand thin and unreal. 

But besides these two great parties, each of them claiming to representthe authentic and unchanging mind of the Church, there were independentthinkers who took their place with neither and criticised both. Paleyhad still his disciples at Cambridge, or if not disciples, yetrepresentatives of his masculine but not very profound and reverent wayof thinking; and a critical school, represented by names afterwardsfamous, Connop Thirlwall and Julius Hare, strongly influenced by Germanspeculation, both in theology and history, began to attract attention. And at Cambridge was growing, slowly and out of sight, a mind and aninfluence which were to be at once the counterpart and the rival of theOxford movement, its ally for a short moment, and then its earnest andoften bitter enemy. In spite of the dominant teaching identified withthe name of Mr. Simeon, Frederic Maurice, with John Sterling and othermembers of the Apostles' Club, was feeling for something truer andnobler than the conventionalities of the religious world. [12] In Oxford, mostly in a different way, more dry, more dialectical, and, perhaps itmay be said, more sober, definite, and ambitious of clearness, the samespirit was at work. There was a certain drift towards Dissent among thewarmer spirits. Under the leading of Whately, questions were asked aboutwhat was supposed to be beyond dispute with both Churchmen andEvangelicals. Current phrases, the keynotes of many a sermon, werefearlessly taken to pieces. Men were challenged to examine the meaningof their words. They were cautioned or ridiculed as the case might be, on the score of "confusion of thought" and "inaccuracy of mind"; theywere convicted of great logical sins, _ignoratio elenchi, _ or_undistributed middle terms;_ and bold theories began to make theirappearance about religious principles and teaching, which did not easilyaccommodate themselves to popular conceptions. In very different waysand degrees, Davison, Copleston, Whately, Hawkins, Milman, and notleast, a brilliant naturalised Spaniard who sowed the seeds of doubtaround him, Blanco White, had broken through a number of acceptedopinions, and had presented some startling ideas to men who had thoughtthat all religious questions lay between the orthodoxy of Lambeth andthe orthodoxy of Clapham and Islington. And thus the foundation waslaid, at least, at Oxford of what was then called the Liberal School ofTheology. Its theories and paradoxes, then commonly associated with the"_Noetic_" character of one college, Oriel, were thought startling andventuresome when discussed in steady-going common-rooms and countryparsonages; but they were still cautious and old-fashioned comparedwith what was to come after them. The distance is indeed great betweenthose early disturbers of lecture-rooms and University pulpits, andtheir successors. 

While this was going on within the Church, there was a great movement ofthought going on in the country. It was the time when Bentham'sutilitarianism had at length made its way into prominence andimportance. It had gained a hold on a number of powerful minds insociety and political life. It was threatening to become the dominantand popular philosophy. It began, in some ways beneficially, to affectand even control legislation. It made desperate attempts to takepossession of the whole province of morals. It forced those who sawthrough its mischief, who hated and feared it, to seek a reason, and asolid and strong one, for the faith which was in them as to the realityof conscience and the mysterious distinction between right and wrong. And it entered into a close alliance with science, which was beginningto assert its claims, since then risen so high, to a new and undefinedsupremacy, not only in the general concerns of the world, but speciallyin education. It was the day of Holland House. It was the time when aSociety of which Lord Brougham was the soul, and which comprised a greatnumber of important political and important scientific names, wasdefinitely formed for the _Diffusion of Useful Knowledge_. Their laboursare hardly remembered now in the great changes for which they paved theway; but the Society was the means of getting written and of publishingat a cheap rate a number of original and excellent books on science, biography, and history. It was the time of the _Library of UsefulKnowledge, _ and its companion, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge;_of the _Penny Magazine, _ and its Church rival, the _Saturday Magazine, _of the _Penny Cyclopaedia, _ and _Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, _ and_Murray's Family Library_: popular series, which contained much of thework of the ablest men of the day, and which, though for the most partsuperseded now, were full of interest then. Another creation of thisepoch, and an unmistakable indication of its tendencies, was the BritishAssociation for the Advancement of Science, which met for the first timeat Oxford in June 1832, not without a good deal of jealousy andmisgiving, partly unreasonable, partly not unfounded, among men in whosehearts the cause and fortunes of religion were supreme. 

Thus the time was ripe for great collisions of principles and aims; forthe decomposition of elements which had been hitherto united; forsifting them out of their old combinations, and regrouping themaccording to their more natural affinities. It was a time for theformation and development of unexpected novelties in teaching andpractical effort. There was a great historic Church party, imperfectlyconscious of its position and responsibilities;[13] there was an activebut declining pietistic school, resting on a feeble intellectual basisand narrow and meagre interpretations of Scripture, and strong only inits circle of philanthropic work; there was, confronting both, a risingbody of inquisitive and, in some ways, menacing thought. To men deeplyinterested in religion, the ground seemed confused and treacherous. There was room, and there was a call, for new effort; but to find theresources for it, it seemed necessary to cut down deep below the levelof what even good men accepted as the adequate expression ofChristianity, and its fit application to the conditions of thenineteenth century. It came to pass that there were men who had theheart to make this attempt. As was said at starting, the actual movementbegan in the conviction that a great and sudden danger to the Church wasat hand, and that an unusual effort must be made to meet it. But if theoccasion was in a measure accidental, there was nothing haphazard ortentative in the line chosen to encounter the danger. From the first itwas deliberately and distinctly taken. The choice of it was the resultof convictions which had been forming before the occasion came whichcalled on them. The religious ideas which governed the minds of thosewho led the movement had been traced, in outline at least, firmly andwithout faltering. 

The movement had its spring in the consciences and character of itsleaders. To these men religion really meant the most awful and mostseriously personal thing on earth. It had not only a theological basis;it had still more deeply a moral one. What that basis was is shown in avariety of indications of ethical temper and habits, before themovement, in those who afterwards directed it. The _Christian Year_ waspublished in 1827, and tells us distinctly by what kind of standard Mr. Keble moulded his judgment and aims. What Mr. Keble's influence andteaching did, in training an apt pupil to deep and severe views of truthand duty, is to be seen in the records of purpose and self-discipline, often so painful, but always so lofty and sincere, of Mr. HurrellFroude's journal. But these indications are most forcibly given in Mr. Newman's earliest preaching. As tutor at Oriel, Mr. Newman had made whatefforts he could, sometimes disturbing to the authorities, to raise thestandard of conduct and feeling among his pupils. When he became aparish priest, his preaching took a singularly practical andplain-spoken character. The first sermon of the series, a typicalsermon, "Holiness necessary for future Blessedness, " a sermon which hasmade many readers grave when they laid it down, was written in 1826, before he came to St. Mary's; and as he began he continued. No sermons, except those which his great opposite, Dr. Arnold, was preaching atRugby, had appealed to conscience with such directness and force. Apassionate and sustained earnestness after a high moral rule, seriouslyrealised in conduct, is the dominant character of these sermons. Theyshowed the strong reaction against slackness of fibre in the religiouslife; against the poverty, softness; restlessness, worldliness, theblunted and impaired sense of truth, which reigned with little check inthe recognised fashions of professing Christianity; the want of depthboth of thought and feeling; the strange blindness to the realsternness, nay the austerity, of the New Testament. Out of this groundthe movement grew. Even more than a theological reform, it was a protestagainst the loose unreality of ordinary religious morality. In the firststage of the movement, moral earnestness and enthusiasm gave its impulseto theological interest and zeal. 

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The suppression of the Irish bishoprics. Palmer, _Narrative_ (1883), pp. 44, 101. Maurice, _Life_, i. 180. 

[3] "The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save" (Arnold toTyler, June 1832. _Life, _ i. 326). "Nothing, as it seems to me, can savethe Church but an union with the Dissenters; now they are leagued withthe antichristian party, and no merely internal reforms will satisfythem" (Arnold to Whately, January 1833, i. 348). He afterwards thoughtthis exaggerated (_Life, _ i. 336). "The Church has been for one hundredyears without any government, and in such a stormy season it will not goon much longer without a rudder" (Whately to Bp. Copleston, July 1832. _Life_, i, 167). "If such an arrangement of the Executive Government iscompleted, it will be a difficult, but great and glorious feat for yourLordship's ministry to preserve the establishment from utter overthrow"(Whately to Lord Grey, May 1832. _Life_, i. 156). It is remarkable thatDean Stanley should have been satisfied with ascribing to the movementan "origin _entirely political_" and should have seen a proof of this"thoroughly political origin" in Newman's observing the date of Mr. Keble's sermon "National Apostasy" as the birthday of the movement, _Edin. Rev. _ April 1880, pp. 309, 310. 

[4] Readers of Wordsworth will remember the account of Mr. R. Walker(Notes to the "River Duddon"). 

[5] Compare _Life of Whately_ (ed. 1866), i. 52, 68. 

[6] Arnold to W. Smith, _Life_, i. 356-358; ii. 32. 

[7] _Life_, i. 225 _sqq_. 

[8] "I am vexed to find how much hopeless bigotry lingers in minds, οἶςἥκιστα ἕχρη" (Arnold to Whately, Sept. 1832. _Life, _ i. 331; ii. 3-7). 

[9] St. Bartholomew's Day

[10] "The mere barren orthodoxy which, from all that I can hear, ischaracteristic of Oxford. " Maurice in 1829 (_Life, _ i. 103). In 1832 hespeaks of his "high endeavours to rouse Oxford from its lethargy havingso signally failed" (i. 143). 

[11] Abbey and Overton, _English Church in the Eighteenth Century, _ ii. 180, 204. 

[12] _V. _ Maurice, _Life, _ i. 108-111; Trench's _Letters;_ Carlyle's_Sterling_. 

[13] "In what concerns the Established Church, the House of Commonsseems to feel no other principle than that of vulgar policy. The oldHigh Church race is worn out. " Alex. Knox (June 1816), i. 54. 

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT--JOHN KEBLE

Long before the Oxford movement was thought of, or had any definiteshape, a number of its characteristic principles and ideas had takenstrong hold of the mind of a man of great ability and great seriousness, who, after a brilliant career at Oxford as student and tutor, hadexchanged the University for a humble country cure. John Keble, by someyears the senior, but the college friend and intimate of Arnold, was theson of a Gloucestershire country clergyman of strong character andconsiderable scholarship. He taught and educated his two sons at home, and then sent them to Oxford, where both of them made their mark, andthe elder, John, a mere boy when he first appeared at his college, Corpus, carried off almost everything that the University could give inthe way of distinction. He won a double first; he won the Latin andEnglish Essays in the same year; and he won what was the still greaterhonour of an Oriel Fellowship. His honours were borne with meekness andsimplicity; to his attainments he joined a temper of singular sweetnessand modesty, capable at the same time, when necessary, of austerestrength and strictness of principle. He had become one of the mostdistinguished men in Oxford, when about the year 1823 he felt himselfbound to give himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman, andleft Oxford to be his father's curate. There was nothing very unusual inhis way of life, or singular and showy in his work as a clergyman; hewent in and out among the poor, he was not averse to society, hepreached plain, unpretending, earnest sermons; he kept up his literaryinterests. But he was a deeply convinced Churchman, finding his standardand pattern of doctrine and devotion in the sober earnestness anddignity of the Prayer Book, and looking with great and intelligentdislike at the teaching and practical working of the more popular systemwhich, under the name of Evangelical Christianity, was aspiring todominate religious opinion, and which, often combining some of the mostquestionable features of Methodism and Calvinism, denounced with fierceintolerance everything that deviated from its formulas and watchwords. And as his loyalty to the Church of England was profound and intense, all who had shared her fortunes, good or bad, or who professed to serveher, had a place in his affections; and any policy which threatened toinjure or oppress her, and any principles which were hostile to herinfluence and teaching, roused his indignation and resistance. He was astrong Tory, and by conviction and religious temper a thorough HighChurchman. 

But there was nothing in him to foreshadow the leader in a bold andwide-reaching movement. He was absolutely without ambition. He hatedshow and mistrusted excitement. The thought of preferment was steadilyput aside both from temper and definite principle. He had no popularaptitudes, and was very suspicious of them. He had no care for thepossession of influence; he had deliberately chosen the _fallentissemita vitae, _ and to be what his father had been, a faithful andcontented country parson, was all that he desired. But idleness was notin his nature. Born a poet, steeped in all that is noblest and tenderestand most beautiful in Greek and Roman literature, with the keenestsympathy with that new school of poetry which, with Wordsworth as itsrepresentative, was searching out the deeper relations between natureand the human soul, he found in poetical composition a vent and relieffor feelings stirred by the marvels of glory and of awfulness, and bythe sorrows and blessings, amid which human life is passed. But hispoetry was for a long time only for himself and his intimate friends;his indulgence in poetical composition was partly playful, and it wasnot till after much hesitation on his own part and also on theirs, andwith a contemptuous undervaluing of his work, which continued to the endof his life, that the anonymous little book of poems was published whichhas since become familiar wherever English is read, as the _Christianyear_. His serious interests were public ones. Though living in theshade, he followed with anxiety and increasing disquiet the changeswhich went on so rapidly and so formidably, during the end of the firstquarter of this century, in opinion and in the possession of politicalpower. It became more and more plain that great changes were at hand, though not so plain what they would be. It seemed likely that powerwould come into the hands of men and parties hostile to the Church intheir principles, and ready to use to its prejudice the advantages whichits position as an establishment gave them; and the anticipation grew inKeble's mind, that in the struggles which seemed likely, not only forthe legal rights but for the faith of the Church, the Church might haveboth to claim more, and to suffer more, at the hands of Government. Yetthough these thoughts filled his mind, and strong things were said inthe intercourse with friends about what was going on about them, nodefinite course of action had been even contemplated when Keble wentinto the country in 1823. There was nothing to distinguish him fromnumbers of able clergymen all over England, who were looking on withinterest, with anxiety, often with indignation, at what was going on. Mr. Keble had not many friends and was no party chief. He was abrilliant university scholar overlaying the plain, unworldly countryparson; an old-fashioned English Churchman, with great veneration forthe Church and its bishops, and a great dislike of Rome, Dissent, andMethodism, but with a quick heart; with a frank, gay humility of soul, with great contempt of appearances, great enjoyment of nature, greatunselfishness, strict and severe principles of morals and duty. 

What was it that turned him by degrees into so prominent and soinfluential a person? It was the result of the action of his convictionsand ideas, and still more of his character, on the energetic andfearless mind of a pupil and disciple, Richard Hurrell Froude. Froudewas Keble's pupil at Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel for his curacy atthe beginning of the Long Vacation of 1823, he took Froude with him toread for his degree. He took with him ultimately two other pupils, Robert Wilberforce and Isaac Williams of Trinity. One of them, IsaacWilliams, has left some reminiscences of the time, and of the terms onwhich the young men were with their tutor, then one of the most famousmen at Oxford. They were on terms of the utmost freedom. "Master is thegreatest boy of them all, " was the judgment of the rustic who wasgardener, groom, and parish clerk to Mr. Keble. Froude's was a keenlogical mind, not easily satisfied, contemptuous of compromises andevasions, and disposed on occasion to be mischievous and aggressive; andwith Keble, as with anybody else, he was ready to dispute and try everyform of dialectical experiment. But he was open to higher influencesthan those of logic, and in Keble he saw what subdued and won him toboundless veneration and affection. Keble won the love of the wholelittle society; but in Froude he had gained a disciple who was to be themouthpiece and champion of his ideas, and who was to react on himselfand carry him forward to larger enterprises and bolder resolutions thanby himself he would have thought of. Froude took in from Keble all hehad to communicate--principles, convictions, moral rules and standardsof life, hopes, fears, antipathies. And his keenly-tempered intellect, and his determination and high courage, gave a point and an impulse oftheir own to Keble's views and purposes. As things came to look darker, and dangers seemed more serious to the Church, its faith or its rights, the interchange of thought between master and disciple, in talk and inletter, pointed more and more to the coming necessity of action; andFroude at least had no objections to the business of an agitator. Butall this was very gradual; things did not yet go beyond discussion;ideas, views, arguments were examined and compared; and Froude, with allhis dash, felt as Keble felt, that he had much to learn about himself, as well as about books and things. In his respect for antiquity, in hisdislike of the novelties which were invading Church rules andsentiments, as well as its creeds, in his jealousy of the State, as wellas in his seriousness of self-discipline, he accepted Keble's guidanceand influence more and more; and from Keble he had more than one lessonof self-distrust, more than one warning against the temptations ofintellect. "Froude told me many years after, " writes one of his friends, "that Keble once, before parting with him, seemed to have something onhis mind which he wished to say, but shrank from saying, while waiting, I think, for a coach. At last he said, just before parting, 'Froude, youthought Law's _Serious Call_ was a clever book; it seemed to me as ifyou had said the Day of Judgment will be a pretty sight. ' This speech, Froude told me, had a great effect on his after life. "[14]

At Easter 1826 Froude was elected Fellow of Oriel. He came back toOxford, charged with Keble's thoughts and feelings, and from his moreeager and impatient temper, more on the look-out for ways of giving themeffect. The next year he became tutor, and he held the tutorship till1830. But he found at Oriel a colleague, a little his senior in age andstanding, of whom Froude and his friends as yet knew little except thathe was a man of great ability, that he had been a favourite ofWhately's, and that in a loose and rough way he was counted among thefew Liberals and Evangelicals in Oxford. This was Mr. Newman. Keble hadbeen shy of him, and Froude would at first judge him by Keble'sstandard. But Newman was just at this time "moving, " as he expresses it, "out of the shadow of Liberalism. " Living not apart like Keble, but inthe same college, and meeting every day, Froude and Newman could not butbe either strongly and permanently repelled, or strongly attracted. Theywere attracted; attracted with a force which at last united them in thedeepest and most unreserved friendship. Of the steps of this greatchange in the mind and fortunes of each of them we have no record:intimacies of this kind grow in college out of unnoticed andunremembered talks, agreeing or differing, out of unconsciousdisclosures of temper and purpose, out of walks and rides and quietbreakfasts and common-room arguments, out of admirations and dislikes, out of letters and criticisms and questions; and nobody can tellafterwards how they have come about. The change was gradual anddeliberate. Froude's friends in Gloucestershire, the Keble family, hadtheir misgivings about Newman's supposed liberalism; they did not muchwant to have to do with him. His subtle and speculative temper did notalways square with Froude's theology. "N. Is a fellow that I like more, the more I think of him, " Froude wrote in 1828; "only I would give a fewodd pence if he were not a heretic. "[15] But Froude, who saw him everyday, and was soon associated with him in the tutorship, found a spiritmore akin to his own in depth and freedom and daring, than he had yetencountered. And Froude found Newman just in that maturing state ofreligious opinion in which a powerful mind like Froude's would be likelyto act decisively. Each acted on the other. Froude represented Keble'sideas, Keble's enthusiasm. Newman gave shape, foundation, consistency, elevation to the Anglican theology, when he accepted it, which Froudehad learned from Keble. "I knew him first, " we read in the _Apologia_, "in 1826, and was in the closest and most affectionate friendship withhim from about 1829 till his death in 1836. "[16] But this was not all. Through Froude, Newman came to know and to be intimate with Keble; anda sort of _camaraderie_ arose, of very independent and outspoken people, who acknowledged Keble as their master and counsellor. 

"The true and primary author of it" (the Tractarian movement), we readin the _Apologia_, "as is usual with great motive powers, was out ofsight. .. . Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble?" The statement isstrictly true. Froude never would have been the man he was but for hisdaily and hourly intercourse with Keble; and Froude brought to bear uponNewman's mind, at a critical period of its development, Keble's ideasand feelings about religion and the Church, Keble's reality of thoughtand purpose, Keble's transparent and saintly simplicity. And Froude, aswe know from a well-known saying of his, [17] brought Keble and Newman tounderstand one another, when the elder man was shy and suspicious of theyounger, and the younger, though full of veneration for the elder, washardly yet in full sympathy with what was most characteristic and mostcherished in the elder's religious convictions. Keble attracted andmoulded Froude: he impressed Froude with his strong Churchmanship, hisseverity and reality of life, his poetry and high standard of scholarlyexcellence. Froude learned from him to be anti-Erastian, anti-methodistical, anti-sentimental, and as strong in his hatred of theworld, as contemptuous of popular approval, as any Methodist. Yet allthis might merely have made a strong impression, or formed one moremarked school of doctrine, without the fierce energy which received itand which it inspired. But Froude, in accepting Keble's ideas, resolvedto make them active, public, aggressive; and he found in Newman acolleague whose bold originality responded to his own. Together theyworked as tutors; together they worked when their tutorships came to anend; together they worked when thrown into companionship in theirMediterranean voyage in the winter of 1832 and the spring of 1833. Theycame back, full of aspirations and anxieties which spurred them on;their thoughts had broken out in papers sent home from time to time toRose's _British Magazine_--"Home Thoughts Abroad, " and the "LyraApostolica. " Then came the meeting at Hadleigh, and the beginning of theTracts. Keble had given the inspiration, Froude had given the impulse;then Newman took up the work, and the impulse henceforward, and thedirection, were his. 

Doubtless, many thought and felt like them about the perils which besetthe Church and religion. Loyalty to the Church, belief in her divinemission, allegiance to her authority, readiness to do battle for herclaims, were anything but extinct in her ministers and laity. Theelements were all about of sound and devoted Churchmanship. Higher ideasof the Church than the popular and political notion of it, higherconceptions of Christian doctrine than those of the ordinary evangelicaltheology--echoes of the meditations of a remarkable Irishman, Mr. Alexander Knox--had in many quarters attracted attention in the worksand sermons of his disciple. Bishop Jebb, though it was not till themovement had taken shape that their full significance was realised. Others besides Keble and Froude and Newman were seriously consideringwhat could best be done to arrest the current which was running strongagainst the Church, and discussing schemes of resistance and defence. Others were stirring up themselves and their brethren to meet the newemergencies, to respond to the new call. Some of these were incommunication with the Oriel men, and ultimately took part with them inorganising vigorous measures. But it was not till Mr. Newman made up hismind to force on the public mind, in a way which could not be evaded, the great article of the Creed--"I believe one Catholic and ApostolicChurch"--that the movement began. And for the first part of its course, it was concentrated at Oxford. It was the direct result of thesearchings of heart and the communings for seven years, from 1826 to1833, of the three men who have been the subject of this chapter. 

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Isaac Williams's MS. Memoir. 

[15] _Rem. _ i. 232, 233. In 1828, Newman had preferred Hawkins to Keble, for Provost. 

[16] _Apol. _ p. 84. 

[17] _Remains_, i. 438; _Apol. _ p. 77. "Do you know the story of themurderer who had done one good thing in his life? Well, if I was askedwhat good deed I have ever done, I should say I had brought Keble andNewman to understand each other. "

CHAPTER III[18]

RICHARD HURRELL FROUDE

The names of those who took the lead in this movement arefamiliar--Keble, Newman, Pusey, Hugh James Rose, William Palmer. Muchhas been written about them by friends and enemies, and also by one ofthemselves, and any special notice of them is not to the purpose of thepresent narrative. But besides these, there were men who are now almostforgotten, but who at the time interested their contemporaries, becausethey were supposed to represent in a marked way the spirit and characterof the movement, or to have exercised influence upon it. They ought notto be overlooked in an account of it. One of them has been alreadymentioned, Mr. Hurrell Froude. Two others were Mr. Isaac Williams andMr. Charles Marriott. They were all three of them men whom those whoknew them could never forget--could never cease to admire and love. 

Hurrell Froude soon passed away before the brunt of the fighting came. His name is associated with Mr. Newman and Mr. Keble, but it is littlemore than a name to those who now talk of the origin of the movement. Yet all who remember him agree in assigning to him an importance asgreat as that of any, in that little knot of men whose thoughts andwhose courage gave birth to it. 

Richard Hurrell Froude was born in 1803, and was thus two years youngerthan Mr. Newman, who was born in 1801. He went to Eton, and in 1821 toOriel, where he was a pupil of Mr. Keble, and where he was electedFellow, along with Robert Wilberforce, at Easter 1826. He was CollegeTutor from 1827 to 1830, having Mr. Newman and R. Wilberforce forcolleagues. His health failed in 1831 and led to much absence in warmclimates. He went with Mr. Newman to the south of Europe in 1832-33, andwas with him at Rome. The next two winters, with the intervening year, he spent in the West Indies. Early in 1836 he died at Dartington--hisbirthplace. He was at the Hadleigh meeting, in July 1833, when thefoundations of the movement were laid; he went abroad that winter, andwas not much in England afterwards. It was through correspondence thathe kept up his intercourse with his friends. 

Thus he was early cut off from direct and personal action on the coursewhich things took. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that hisinfluence on the line taken and on the minds of others wasinconsiderable. It would be more true to say that with one exception noone was more responsible for the impulse which led to the movement; noone had more to do with shaping its distinct aims and its moral spiritand character in its first stage; no one was more daring and more clear, as far as he saw, in what he was prepared for. There was no one to whomhis friends so much looked up with admiration and enthusiasm. There wasno "wasted shade"[19] in Hurrell Froude's disabled, prematurelyshortened life. 

Like Henry Martyn he was made by strong and even mercilessself-discipline over a strong and for a long time refractory nature. Hewas a man of great gifts, with much that was most attractive and noble;but joined with this them was originally in his character a vein ofperversity and mischief, always in danger of breaking out, and withwhich he kept up a long and painful struggle. His inmost thought andknowledge of himself have been laid bare in the papers which his friendspublished after his death. He was in the habit of probing his motives tothe bottom, and of recording without mercy what he thought hisself-deceits and affectations. The religious world of the day made merryover his methods of self-discipline; but whatever may be said of them, and such things are not easy to judge of, one thing is manifest, thatthey were true and sincere efforts to conquer what he thought evil inhimself, to keep himself in order, to bring his inmost self intosubjection to the law and will of God. The self-chastening, which hisprivate papers show, is no passion or value for asceticism, but a purelymoral effort after self-command and honesty of character; and what makesthe struggle so touching is its perfect reality and truth. He "turnedhis thoughts on that desolate wilderness, his own conscience, and saidwhat he saw there. "[20] A man who has had a good deal to conquer inhimself, and has gone a good way to conquer it, is not apt to beindulgent to self-deceit or indolence, or even weakness. The basis ofFroude's character was a demand which would not be put off for what wasreal and thorough; an implacable scorn and hatred for what he countedshams and pretences. "His highest ambition, " he used to say, "was to bea humdrum. "[21] The intellectual and the moral parts of his characterwere of a piece. The tricks and flimsinesses of a bad argument provokedhim as much as the imposture and "flash" of insincere sentiment and finetalking; he might be conscious of "flash" in himself and his friends, and he would admit it unequivocally; but it was as unbearable to him topretend not to see a fallacy as soon as it was detected, as it wouldhave been to him to arrive at the right answer of a sum or a problem bytampering with the processes. Such a man, with strong affections andkeen perception of all forms of beauty, and with the deepest desire tobe reverent towards all that had a right to reverence, would findhimself in the most irritating state of opposition and impatience withmuch that passed as religion round him. Principles not attempted to beunderstood and carried into practice, smooth self-complacency amongthose who looked down on a blind and unspiritual world, the continualprovocation of worthless reasoning and ignorant platitudes, the dullunconscious stupidity of people who could not see that the times werecritical--that truth had to be defended, and that it was no easy orlight-hearted business to defend it--threw him into an habitual attitudeof defiance, and half-amused, half-earnest contradiction, which made himfeared by loose reasoners and pretentious talkers, and even by quieteasy-going friends, who unexpectedly found themselves led on blindfold, with the utmost gravity, into traps and absurdities by the wiles of hismischievous dialectic. This was the outside look of his relentlessearnestness. People who did not like him, or his views, and who, perhaps, had winced under his irony, naturally put down his stronglanguage, which on occasion could certainly be unceremonious, toflippancy and arrogance. But within the circle of those whom he trusted, or of those who needed at anytime his help, another side discloseditself--a side of the most genuine warmth of affection, an awful realityof devoutness, which it was his great and habitual effort to keephidden, a high simplicity of unworldliness and generosity, and in spiteof his daring mockeries of what was commonplace or showy, the mostsincere and deeply felt humility with himself. Dangerous as he was oftenthought to be in conversation, one of the features of his characterwhich has impressed itself on the memory of one who knew him well, washis "patient, winning considerateness in discussion, which, with otherqualities, endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart. "[22] "Itis impossible, " writes James Mozley in 1833, with a mixture ofamusement, speaking of the views about celibacy which were beginning tobe current, "to talk with Froude without committing one's self on suchsubjects as these, so that by and by I expect the tergiversants will bea considerable party. " His letters, with their affectionately playfuladdresses, δαιμόνιε, αἰνότατε, πέπον, _Carissime, "Sir, my dear friend"_or "Ἀργείων ὄχ' ἄριστε, have you not been a spoon?" are full of the mostdelightful ease and _verve_ and sympathy. 

With a keen sense of English faults he was, as Cardinal Newman has said, "an Englishman to the backbone"; and he was, further, a fastidious, high-tempered English gentleman, in spite of his declaiming about"pampered aristocrats" and the "gentleman heresy. " His friends thoughtof him as of the "young Achilles, " with his high courage, and nobleform, and "eagle eye, " made for such great things, but appointed so soonto die. "Who can refrain from tears at the thought of that bright andbeautiful Froude?" is the expression of one of them shortly before hisdeath, and when it was quite certain that the doom which had so longhung over him was at hand. [23] He had the love of doing, for the meresake of doing, what was difficult or even dangerous to do, which is themainspring of characteristic English sports and games. He loved the sea;he liked to sail his own boat, and enjoyed rough weather, and tookinterest in the niceties of seamanship and shipcraft. He was a boldrider across country. With a powerful grasp on mathematical truths andprinciples, he entered with whole-hearted zest into inviting problems, or into practical details of mechanical or hydrostatic or astronomicalscience. His letters are full of such observations, put in a way whichhe thought would interest his friends, and marked by his strong habit ofgetting into touch with what was real and of the substance of questions. He applied his thoughts to architecture with a power and originalitywhich at the time were not common. No one who only cared for this worldcould be more attracted and interested than he was by the wonder andbeauty of its facts and appearances. With the deepest allegiance to hishome and reverence for its ties and authority, a home of theold-fashioned ecclesiastical sort, sober, manly, religious, orderly, hecarried into his wider life the feelings with which he had been broughtup; bold as he was, his reason and his character craved for authority, but authority which morally and reasonably he could respect. Mr. Keble'sgoodness and purity subdued him, and disposed him to accept withoutreserve his master's teaching: and towards Mr. Keble, along with anoutside show of playful criticism and privileged impertinence, there wasa reverence which governed Froude's whole nature. In the wild and roughheyday of reform, he was a Tory of the Tories. But when authority failedhim, from cowardice or stupidity or self-interest, he could not easilypardon it; and he was ready to startle his friends by proclaiminghimself a Radical, prepared for the sake of the highest and greatestinterests to sacrifice all second-rate and subordinate ones. 

When his friends, after his death, published selections from hisjournals and letters, the world was shocked by what seemed his amazingaudacity both of thought and expression about a number of things andpersons which it was customary to regard as almost beyond the reach ofcriticism. The _Remains_ lent themselves admirably to the controversialprocess of culling choice phrases and sentences and epithetssurprisingly at variance with conventional and popular estimates. Friends were pained and disturbed; foes naturally enough could not holdin their overflowing exultation at such a disclosure of the spirit ofthe movement. Sermons and newspapers drew attention to Froude'sextravagances with horror and disgust. The truth is that if the off-handsayings in conversation or letters of any man of force and wit andstrong convictions about the things and persons that he condemns, weremade known to the world, they would by themselves have much the samelook of flippancy, injustice, impertinence to those who disagreed inopinion with the speaker or writer they are allowed for, or they are notallowed for by others, according to what is known of his generalcharacter. The friends who published Froude's _Remains_ knew what hewas; they knew the place and proportion of the fierce and scornfulpassages; they knew that they really did not go beyond the liberty andthe frank speaking which most people give themselves in the _abandon_and understood exaggeration of intimate correspondence and talk. Butthey miscalculated the effect on those who did not know him, or whoseinterest it was to make the most of the advantage given them. They seemto have expected that the picture which they presented of their friend'stransparent sincerity and singleness of aim, manifested amid so muchpain and self-abasement, would have touched readers more. Theymiscalculated in supposing that the proofs of so much reality ofreligious earnestness would carry off the offence of vehement language, which without these proofs might naturally be thought to show mererandom violence. At any rate the result was much natural and genuineirritation, which they were hardly prepared for. Whether on generalgrounds they were wise in startling and vexing friends, and puttingfresh weapons into the hands of opponents by their frank disclosure ofso unconventional a character, is a question which may have more thanone answer; but one thing is certain, they were not wise, if they onlydesired to forward the immediate interests of their party or cause. Itwas not the act of cunning conspirators; it was the act of men who wereready to show their hands, and take the consequences. Undoubtedly, theywarned off many who had so far gone along with the movement, and who nowdrew back. But if the publication was a mistake, it was the mistake ofmen confident in their own straight-forwardness. 

There is a natural Nemesis to all over-strong and exaggerated language. The weight of Froude's judgments was lessened by the disclosure of hisstrong words, and his dashing fashion of condemnation and dislike gavea precedent for the violence of shallower men. But to those who lookback on them now, though there can be no wonder that at the time theyexcited such an outcry, their outspoken boldness hardly excitessurprise. Much of it might naturally be put down to the force of firstimpressions; much of it is the vehemence of an Englishman who claims theliberty of criticising and finding fault at home; much of it was theinevitable vehemence of a reformer. Much of it seems clear foresight ofwhat has since come to be recognised. His judgments on the Reformers, startling as they were at the time, are not so very different, as to thefacts of the case, from what most people on all sides now agree in; andas to their temper and theology, from what most churchmen would nowagree in. Whatever allowances may be made for the difficulties of theirtime, and these allowances ought to be very great, and however well theymay have done parts of their work, such as the translations andadaptations of the Prayer Book, it is safe to say that the divines ofthe Reformation never can be again, with their confessed Calvinism, withtheir shifting opinions, their extravagant deference to the foreignoracles of Geneva and Zurich, their subservience to bad men in power, the heroes and saints of churchmen. But when all this is said, it stillremains true that Froude was often intemperate and unjust. In the handsof the most self-restrained and considerate of its leaders, the movementmust anyhow have provoked strong opposition, and given great offence. The surprise and the general ignorance were too great; the assault wastoo rude and unexpected. But Froude's strong language gave it aneedless exasperation. 

Froude was a man strong in abstract thought and imagination, who wantedadequate knowledge. His canons of judgment were not enlarged, corrected, and strengthened by any reading or experience commensurate with hisoriginal powers of reasoning or invention. He was quite conscious of it, and did his best to fill up the gap in his intellectual equipment. Heshowed what he might have done under more favouring circumstances in avery interesting volume on Becket's history and letters. Butcircumstances were hopelessly against him; he had not time, he had nothealth and strength, for the learning which he so needed, which he solonged for. But wherever he could, he learned. He was quite ready tosubmit his prepossessions to the test and limitation of facts. Eager andquick-sighted, he was often apt to be hasty in conclusions fromimperfect or insufficient premisses; but even about what he saw mostclearly he was willing to hold himself in suspense, when he found thatthere was something more to know. Cardinal Newman has noted twodeficiencies which, in his opinion, were noticeable in Froude. "He hadno turn for theology as such"; and, further, he goes on: "I should saythat his power of entering into the minds of others was not equal to hisother gifts"--a remark which he illustrates by saying that Froude couldnot believe that "I really held the Roman Church to be antichristian. "The want of this power--in which he stood in such sharp contrast to hisfriend--might be either a strength or a weakness; a strength, if hisbusiness was only to fight; a weakness, if it was to attract andpersuade. But Froude was made for conflict, not to win disciples. Somewild solemn poetry, marked by deep feeling and direct expression, isscattered through his letters, [24] kindled always by things and thoughtsof the highest significance, and breaking forth with force and fire. Butprobably the judgment passed on him by a clever friend, from theexamination of his handwriting, was a true one: "This fellow has a greatdeal of imagination, but not the imagination of a poet. " He felt thateven beyond poetry there are higher things than anything thatimagination can work upon. It was a feeling which made him blind to thegrandeur of Milton's poetry. He saw in it only an intrusion into themost sacred of sanctities. 

It was this fearless and powerful spirit, keen and quick to seeinferences and intolerant of compromises, that the disturbances of RomanCatholic Emancipation and of the Reform time roused from the commonround of pursuits, natural to a serious and thoughtful clergyman ofscholarlike mind and as yet no definite objects, and brought him withall his enthusiasm and thoroughness into a companionship with men whohad devoted their lives, and given up every worldly object, to save theChurch by raising it to its original idea and spirit. Keble had liftedhis pupil's thoughts above mere dry and unintelligent orthodoxy, andFroude had entered with earnest purpose into Church ways of practicalself-discipline and self-correction. Bishop Lloyd's lectures had taughthim and others, to the surprise of many, that the familiar and veneratedPrayer Book was but the reflexion of mediaeval and primitive devotion, still embodied in its Latin forms in the Roman Service books; and soindirectly had planted in their minds the idea of the historicalconnexion, and in a very profound way the spiritual sympathy, of themodern with the pre-Reformation Church. But it is not till 1829 or 1830that we begin in his _Remains_ to see in him the sense of a pressing andanxious crisis in religious matters. In the summer of 1829 he came moreclosely than hitherto across Mr. Newman's path. They had been Fellowstogether since 1826, and Tutors since 1827. Mr. Froude, with his Toryismand old-fashioned churchmanship, would not unnaturally be shy of afriend of Whately's with his reputation for theological liberalism. Froude's first letter to Mr. Newman is in August 1828. It is the letterof a friendly and sympathising colleague in college work, glad to befree from the "images of impudent undergraduates"; he inserts some linesof verse, talks about Dollond and telescopes, and relates how he and afriend got up at half-past two in the morning, and walked half a mileto see Mercury rise; he writes about his mathematical studies andreading for orders, and how a friend had "read half through Prideaux andyet accuses himself of idleness"; but there is no interchange ofintimate thought. Mr. Newman was at this time, as he has told us, drifting away from under the shadow of liberalism; and in Froude hefound a man who, without being a liberal, was as quick-sighted, ascourageous, and as alive to great thoughts and new hopes as himself. Very different in many ways, they were in this alike, that thecommonplace notions of religion and the Church were utterlyunsatisfactory to them, and that each had the capacity for affectionateand whole-hearted friendship. The friendship began and lasted on, growing stronger and deeper to the end. And this was not all. Froude'sfriendship with Mr. Newman overcame Mr. Keble's hesitations about Mr. Newman's supposed liberalism. Mr. Newman has put on record what hethought and felt about Froude; no one, probably, of the many whomCardinal Newman's long life has brought round him, ever occupiedFroude's place in his heart. The correspondence shows in part the way inwhich Froude's spirit rose, under the sense of having such a friend towork with in the cause which day by day grew greater and more sacred inthe eyes of both. Towards Mr. Keble Froude felt like a son to a father;towards Mr. Newman like a soldier to his comrade, and him the mostsplendid and boldest of warriors. Each mind caught fire from the other, till the high enthusiasm of the one was quenched in an early death. 

Shortly after this friendship began, the course of events also beganwhich finally gave birth to the Oxford movement. The break-up of partiescaused by the Roman Catholic emancipation was followed by the French andBelgian revolutions of 1830, and these changes gave a fresh stimulus toall the reforming parties in England--Whigs, Radicals, and liberalreligionists. Froude's letters mark the influence of these changes onhis mind. They stirred in him the fiercest disgust and indignation, andas soon as the necessity of battle became evident to save theChurch--and such a necessity was evident--he threw himself into it withall his heart, and his attitude was henceforth that of a determined anduncompromising combatant. "Froude is growing stronger and stronger inhis sentiments every day, " writes James Mozley, in 1832, "and cuts abouthim on all sides. It is extremely fine to hear him talk. The aristocracyof the country at present are the chief objects of his vituperation, andhe decidedly sets himself against the modern character of the gentleman, and thinks that the Church will eventually depend for its support, as italways did in its most influential times, on the very poorest classes. ""I would not set down anything that Froude says for his deliberateopinion, " writes James Mozley a year later, "for he really hates thepresent state of things so excessively that any change would be a reliefto him. " . .. "Froude is staying up, and I see a great deal of him. " . .. "Froude is most enthusiastic in his plans, and says, 'What fun it isliving in such times as these! how could one now go back to the times ofold Tory humbug?'" From henceforth his position among his friends wasthat of the most impatient and aggressive of reformers, the one who mosturged on his fellows to outspoken language and a bold line of action. They were not men to hang back and be afraid, but they were cautious andconsiderate of popular alarms and prejudices, compared with Froude'sfearlessness. Other minds were indeed moving--minds as strong as his, indeed, it may be, deeper, more complex, more amply furnished, with awider range of vision and a greater command of the field. But while helived, he appears as the one who spurs on and incites, where othershesitate. He is the one by whom are visibly most felt the _gaudiacertaminis, _ and the confidence of victory, and the most profoundcontempt for the men and the ideas of the boastful and short-sightedpresent. 

In this unsparing and absorbing warfare, what did Froude aim at--whatwas the object he sought to bring about, what were the obstacles hesought to overthrow?

He was accused, as was most natural, of Romanising; of wishing to bringback Popery. It is perfectly certain that this was not what he meant, though he did not care for the imputation of it. He was, perhaps, thefirst Englishman who attempted to do justice to Rome, and to usefriendly language of it, without the intention of joining it. But whathe fought for was not Rome, not even a restoration of unity, but aChurch of England such as it was conceived of by the Caroline divinesand the Non-jurors. The great break-up of 1830 had forced on men theanxious question, "What is the Church as spoken of in England? Is it theChurch of Christ?" and the answers were various. Hooker had said it was"the nation"; and in entirely altered circumstances, with somequalifications. Dr. Arnold said the same. It was "the Establishment"according to the lawyers and politicians, both Whig and Tory. It was aninvisible and mystical body, said the Evangelicals. It was the aggregateof separate congregations, said the Nonconformists. It was theparliamentary creation of the Reformation, said the Erastians. The trueChurch was the communion of the Pope, the pretended Church was alegalised schism, said the Roman Catholics. All these ideas werefloating about, loose and vague, among people who talked much about theChurch. Whately, with his clear sense, had laid down that it was adivine religious society, distinct in its origin and existence, distinctin its attributes from any other. But this idea had fallen dead, tillFroude and his friends put new life into it Froude accepted Whately'sidea that the Church of England was the one historic uninterruptedChurch, than which there could be no other, locally in England; but intothis Froude read a great deal that never was and never could be inWhately's thoughts. Whately had gone very far in viewing the Church fromwithout as a great and sacred corporate body. Casting aside the Erastiantheory, he had claimed its right to exist, and if necessary, governitself, separate from the state. He had recognised excommunication asits natural and indefeasible instrument of government. But what theinternal life of the Church was, what should be its teaching and organicsystem, and what was the standard and proof of these, Whately had leftunsaid. And this outline Froude filled up. For this he went the way towhich the Prayer Book, with its Offices, its Liturgy, its Ordinationservices, pointed him. With the divines who had specially valued thePrayer Book, and taught in its spirit, Bishop Wilson, William Law, Hammond, Ken, Laud, Andrewes, he went back to the times and the sourcesfrom which the Prayer Book came to us, the early Church, the reformingChurch for such with all its faults it was--of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, before the hopelessly corrupt and fatal timesof the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which led to the break-up ofthe sixteenth. Thus to the great question, What is the Church? he gavewithout hesitation, and gave to the end, the same answer that Anglicansgave and are giving still. But he added two points which were then verynew to the ears of English Churchmen: (1) that there were great and tomost people unsuspected faults and shortcomings in the English Church, for some of which the Reformation was gravely responsible; (2) that theRoman Church was more right than we had been taught to think in manyparts both of principle and practice, and that our quarrel with it onthese points arose from our own ignorance and prejudices. To people whohad taken for granted all their lives that the Church was thoroughly"Protestant" and thoroughly right in its Protestantism, and that Romewas Antichrist, these confident statements came with a shock. He did notenter much into dogmatic questions. As far as can be judged from his_Remains_, the one point of doctrine on which he laid stress, as beinginadequately recognised and taught in the then condition of the EnglishChurch, was the primitive doctrine of the Eucharist. His othercriticisms pointed to practical and moral matters; the spirit ofErastianism, the low standard of life and purpose and self-discipline inthe clergy, the low tone of the current religious teaching. TheEvangelical teaching seemed to him a system of unreal words. Theopposite school was too self-complacent, too comfortable, too secure inits social and political alliances; and he was bent on shaming peopleinto severer notions. "We will have a _vocabularium apostolicum, _ and Iwill start it with four words: 'pampered aristocrats, ' 'residentgentlemen, ' 'smug parsons, ' and _'pauperes Christi'_. I shall use thefirst on all occasions; it seems to me just to hit the thing. " "I thinkof putting the view forward (about new monasteries), under the title ofa 'Project for Reviving Religion in Great Towns. ' Certainly colleges ofunmarried priests (who might, of course, retire to a living, when theycould and liked) would be the cheapest possible way of providingeffectively for the spiritual wants of a large population. " And hisgreat quarrel with the existing state of things was that the spiritualobjects of the Church were overlaid and lost sight of in the anxiety notto lose its political position. In this direction he was, as heproclaims himself, an out-and-out Radical, and he was prepared at onceto go very far. "If a national Church means a Church without discipline, my argument for discipline is an argument against a national Church; andthe best thing we can do is to unnationalise ours as soon as possible";"let us tell the truth and shame the devil; let us give up a _national_Church and have a _real_ one. " His criticism did not diminish inseverity, or his proposals become less daring, as he felt that his timewas growing short and the hand of death was upon him. But to the end, the elevation and improvement of the English Church remained his greatpurpose. To his friend, as we know, the Roman Church was _either_ theTruth or Antichrist. To Froude it was neither the whole Truth norAntichrist; but like the English Church itself, a great and defectiveChurch, whose defects were the opposite to ours, and which we should dowisely to learn from rather than abuse. But to the last his allegiancenever wavered to the English Church. 

It is very striking to come from Froude's boisterous freedom in hisletters to his sermons and the papers he prepared for publication. Inhis sermons his manner of writing is severe and restrained even todryness. If they startle it is by the force and searching point of anidea, not by any strength of words. The style is chastened, simple, calm, with the most careful avoidance of over-statement or anythingrhetorical. And so in his papers, his mode of argument, forcible andcogent as it is, avoids all appearance of exaggeration or evenillustrative expansion; it is all muscle and sinew; it is modelled onthe argumentative style of Bishop Butler, and still more, of WilliamLaw. No one could suppose from these papers Froude's fiery impetuosity, or the frank daring of his disrespectful vocabulary. Those who can readbetween the lines can trace the grave irony which clung everywhere tohis deep earnestness. 

There was yet another side of Froude's character which was littlethought of by his critics, or recognised by all his friends. With allhis keenness of judgment and all his readiness for conflict, some whoknew him best were impressed by the melancholy which hung over his life, and which, though he ignored it, they could detect. It is rememberedstill by Cardinal Newman. "I thought, " wrote Mr. Isaac Williams, "thatknowing him, I better understood Hamlet, a person most natural, but sooriginal as to be unlike any one else, hiding depth of delicate thoughtin apparent extravagances. _Hamlet_, and the _Georgics_ of Virgil, heused to say, he should have bound together. " "Isaac Williams, " wrote Mr. Copeland, "mentioned to me a remark made on Froude by S. Wilberforce inhis early days: 'They talk of Froude's fun, but somehow I cannot be in aroom with him alone for ten minutes without feeling so intenselymelancholy, that I do not know what to do with myself. At Brightstone, in my Eden days, he was with me, and I was overwhelmed with the deepsense which possessed him of yearning which nothing could satisfy and ofthe unsatisfying nature of all things. '"[25]

Froude often reminds us of Pascal. Both had that peculiarly bright, brilliant, sharp-cutting intellect which passes with ease through thecoverings and disguises which veil realities from men. Both hadmathematical powers of unusual originality and clearness; both had thesame imaginative faculty; both had the same keen interest in practicalproblems of science; both felt and followed the attraction of deeper andmore awful interests. Both had the same love of beauty; both suppressedit. Both had the same want of wide or deep learning; they made skilfuluse of what books came to their hand, and used their reading as fewreaders are able to use it; but their real instrument of work was theirown quick and strong insight, and power of close and vigorous reasoning. Both had the greatest contempt for fashionable and hollow "shadows ofreligion. " Both had the same definite, unflinching judgment. Both usedthe same clear and direct language. Both had a certain grim delight inthe irony with which they pursued their opponents. In both it isprobable that their unmeasured and unsparing criticism recoiled on thecause which they had at heart. But in the case of both of them it wasnot the temper of the satirist, it was no mere love of attacking whatwas vulnerable, and indulgence in the cruel pleasure of stinging andputting to shame, which inspired them. Their souls were moved by thedishonour done to religion, by public evils and public dangers. Both ofthem died young, before their work was done. They placed beforethemselves the loftiest and most unselfish objects, the restoration oftruth and goodness in the Church, and to that they gave their life andall that they had. And what they called on others to be they werethemselves. They were alike in the sternness, the reality, theperseverance, almost unintelligible in its methods to ordinary men, oftheir moral and spiritual self-discipline. 

SUPPLEMENTARY TO CHAPTER III[26]

Hurrell Froude was, when I, as an undergraduate, first knew him in 1828, tall and very thin, with something of a stoop, with a large skull andforehead, but not a large face, delicate features, and penetrating grayeyes, not exactly piercing, but bright with internal conceptions, andready to assume an expression of amusement, careful attention, inquiry, or stern disgust, but with a basis of softness. His manner was cordialand familiar, and assured you, as you knew him well, of his affectionatefeeling, which encouraged you to speak your mind (within certainlimits), subject to the consideration that if you said anything absurdit would not be allowed to fall to the ground. He had more of theundergraduate in him than any "don" whom I ever knew; absolutely unlikeNewman in being always ready to skate, sail, or ride with hisfriends--and, if in a scrape, not pharisaical as to his means of gettingout of it. I remember, _e. G. _, climbing Merton gate with him in myundergraduate days, when we had been out too late boating or skating. And unless authority or substantial decorum was really threatened he wasvery lenient--or rather had an amused sympathy with the irregularitiesthat are mere matters of mischief or high spirits. In lecture it was, _mutatis mutandis_, the same man. Seeing, from his _Remains_, the "highview of his own capacities of which he could not divest himself, " andhis determination not to exhibit or be puffed up by it, and looking backon his tutorial manner (I was in his lectures both in classics andmathematics), it was strange how he disguised, not only his _sense_ ofsuperiority, but the appearance of it, so that his pupils felt him moreas a fellow-student than as the refined scholar or mathematician whichhe was. This was partly owing to his carelessness of those formulae, the familiarity with which gives even second-rate lecturers a positionof superiority which is less visible in those who, like their pupils, are themselves always struggling with principles--and partly to aneffort, perhaps sometimes overdone, not to put himself above the levelof others. In a lecture on the _Supplices_ of Aeschylus, I have heardhim say _tout bonnement, _ "I can't construe that--what do you make ofit, A. B. ?" turning to the supposed best scholar in the lecture; or, whenan objection was started to his mode of getting through a difficulty, "Ah! I had not thought of that--perhaps your way is the best. " And thismode of dealing with himself and the undergraduates whom he liked, madethem like him, but also made them really undervalue his talent, which, as we now see, was what he meant they should do. At the same time, though watchful over his own vanity, he was keen and prompt insnubs--playful and challenging retort--to those he liked, but in thenature of scornful exposure, when he had to do with coarseness orcoxcombry, or shallow display of sentiment. It was a paradoxicalconsequence of his suppression of egotism that he was more solicitous toshow that you were wrong than that he was right. 

He also wanted, like Socrates or Bishop Butler, to make others, ifpossible, think for themselves. 

However, it is not to be inferred that his conversation was made ofcontroversy. To a certain extent it turned that way, because he was fondof paradox. (His brother William used to say that he, William, neverfelt he had really mastered a principle till he had thrown it into aparadox. ) And paradox, of course, invites contradiction, and socontroversy. On subjects upon which he considered himself more or lessan apostle, he liked to stir people's minds by what startled them, waking them up, or giving them "nuts to crack. " An almost solemn gravitywith amusement twinkling behind it--not invisible--and ready to burstforth into a bright low laugh when gravity had been played out, was avery frequent posture with him. 

But he was thoroughly ready to amuse and instruct, or to be amused andinstructed, as an eager and earnest speaker or listener on most mattersof interest. I do not remember that he had any great turn for beauty ofcolour; he had none, I think, or next to none, for music--nor do Iremember in him any great love of humour--but for beauty of physicalform, for mechanics, for mathematics, for poetry which had a root intrue feeling, for wit (including that perception of a quasi-logicalabsurdity of position), for history, for domestic incidents, hissympathy was always lively, and he would throw himself naturally andwarmly into them. From his general demeanour (I need scarcely say) the"odour of sanctity" was wholly absent. I am not sure that his height anddepth of aim and lively versatility of talent did not leave his_compassionate_ sympathies rather undeveloped; certainly to himself, and, I suspect, largely in the case of others, he would view sufferingnot as a thing to be cockered up or made much of, though of course to bealleviated if possible, but to be viewed calmly as a Providentialdiscipline for those who can mitigate, or have to endure it. 

J. H. N. Was once reading me a letter just received from him in which (inanswer to J. H. N. 's account of his work and the possibility of hisbreaking down) he said in substance: "I daresay you have more to do thanyour health will bear, but I would not have you give up anything exceptperhaps the deanery" (of Oriel). And then J. H. N. Paused, with a kind ofinner exultant chuckle, and said, "Ah! there's a Basil for you"; as ifthe friendship which sacrificed its friend, as it would sacrifice itselfto a cause, was the friendship which was really worth having. 

As I came to know him in a more manly way, as a brother Fellow, friend, and collaborateur, the character of "ecclesiastical agitator" was ofcourse added to this. 

In this capacity his great pleasure was taking bulls by their horns. Like the "gueux" of the Low Countries, he would have met half-way anyopprobrious nickname, and I believe coined the epithet "apostolical" forhis party because it was connected with everything in Spain which wasmost obnoxious to the British public. I remember one day his grievouslyshocking Palmer of Worcester, a man of an opposite texture, when acouncil in J. H. N. 's rooms had been called to consider some memorial orother to which Palmer wanted to collect the signatures of many, andparticularly of dignified persons, but in which Froude wished to expressthe determined opinions of a few. Froude stretched out his long lengthon Newman's sofa, and broke in upon one of Palmer's judicious haranguesabout Bishops and Archdeacons and such like, with the ejaculation, "Idon't see why we should disguise from ourselves that our object is todictate to the clergy of this country, and I, for one, do not want anyone else to get on the box. " He thought that true Churchmen must be fewbefore they were many--that the sin of the clergy in all ages was thatthey tried to make out that Christians were many when they were onlyfew, and sacrificed to this object the force derivable from downrightand unmistakable enforcement of truth in speech or action. 

As simplicity in thought, word, and deed formed no small part of hisideal, his tastes in architecture, painting, sculpture, rhetoric, orpoetry were severe. He had no patience with what was artisticallydissolute, luscious, or decorated more than in proportion to itsanimating idea--wishy-washy or sentimental. The ornamental parts of hisown rooms (in which I lived in his absence) were a slab of marble towash upon, a print of Rubens's "Deposition, " and a head (life-size) ofthe Apollo Belvidere. And I remember still the tall scorn, withsomething of surprise, with which, on entering my undergraduate room, helooked down on some Venuses, Cupids, and Hebes, which, freshman-like, Ihad bought from an Italian. 

He was not very easy even under conventional vulgarity, still less underthe vulgarity of egotism; but, being essentially a partisan, he couldput up with both in a man who was really in earnest and on the rightside. Nothing, however, I think, would have induced him to toleratefalse sentiment, and he would, I think, if he had lived, have exertedhimself very trenchantly to prevent his cause being adulterated by it. 

He was, I should say, sometimes misled by a theory that genius cutthrough a subject by logic or intuition, without looking to the right orleft, while common sense was always testing every step by considerationof surroundings (I have not got his terse mode of statement), and thatgenius was right, or at least had only to be corrected here and there bycommon sense. This, I take it, would hardly have answered if histrenchancy had not been in practice corrected by J. H. N. 's widerpolitical circumspection. 

He submitted, I suppose, to J. H. N. 's axiom, that if the movement was todo anything it must become "respectable"; but it was against his nature. 

He would (as we see in the _Remains_) have wished Ken to have the"courage of his convictions" by excommunicating the Jurors in WilliamIII. 's time, and setting up a little Catholic Church, like theJansenists in Holland. He was not (as has been observed) a theologian, but he was as jealous for orthodoxy as if he were. He spoke slightinglyof Heber as having ignorantly or carelessly communicated with (?)Monophysites. But he probably knew no more about that and otherheresies than a man of active and penetrating mind would derive fromtext-books. And I think it likely enough--not that his reverence for theEucharist, but--that his special attention to the details of Eucharisticdoctrine was due to the consideration that it was the foundation ofecclesiastical discipline and authority--matters on which his mindfastened itself with enthusiasm. 

FOOTNOTES:

[18] I ought to say that I was not personally acquainted with Mr. Froude. I have subjoined to this chapter some recollections of him byLord Blachford, who was his pupil and an intimate friend. 

[19] "In this mortal journeying wasted shade Is worse than wastedsunshine. "

HENRY TAYLOR, _Sicilian Summer_, v. 3. 

[20] _Remains_, Second Part, i. 47. 

[21] _Remains_, i. 82. 

[22] _Apologia_, p. 84. 

[23] The following shows the feeling about him in friends apt to besevere critics:--"The contents of the present collection are ratherfragments and sketches than complete compositions. This might beexpected in the works of a man whose days were few and interrupted byillness, if indeed that may be called an interruption, which was everyday sensibly drawing him to his grave. In Mr. Froude's case, however, wecannot set down much of this incompleteness to the score of illness. Thestrength of his religious impressions, the boldness and clearness of hisviews, his long habits of self-denial, and his unconquerable energy ofmind, triumphed over weakness and decay, till men with all their healthand strength about them might gaze upon his attenuated form, struck witha certain awe of wonderment at the brightness of his wit, theintenseness of his mental vision, and the iron strength of hisargument. .. . We will venture a remark as to that ironical turn, whichcertainly does appear in various shapes in the first part of these_Remains_. Unpleasant as irony may sometimes be, there need not go withit, and in this instance there did not go with it, the smallest realasperity of temper. Who that remembers the inexpressible sweetness ofhis smile, and the deep and melancholy pity with which he would speak ofthose whom he felt to be the victims of modern delusions, would not beforward to contradict such a suspicion? Such expressions, we willventure to say, and not harshness, anger, or gloom, animate the featuresof that countenance which will never cease to haunt the memory of thosewho knew him. His irony arose from that peculiar mode in which he viewedall earthly things, himself and all that was dear to him not excepted. It was his poetry. " From an article in the _British Critic_, April 1840, p. 396, by Mr. Thomas Mozley, quoted in _Letters of J. B. Mozley, _ p. 102. 

[24] Such as the "Daniel" in the _Lyra Apostolica, _ the "Dialoguebetween Old Self and New Self, " and the lines in the _Remains_ (i 208, 209). 

[25] A few references to the _Remains_ illustrating this are subjoinedif any one cares to compare them with these recollections, i. 7, 13, 18, 26, 106, 184, 199, 200-204. 

[26] I am indebted for these recollections to the late Lord Blachford. They were written in Oct. 1884. 

CHAPTER IV

MR. NEWMAN'S EARLY FRIENDS--ISAAC WILLIAMS

In the early days of the movement, among Mr. Newman's greatest friends, and much in his confidence, were two Fellows of Trinity--a collegewhich never forgot that Newman had once belonged to it, --Isaac Williamsand William John Copeland. In mind and character very different, theywere close friends, with the affection which was characteristic of thosedays; and for both of them Mr. Newman "had the love which passes that ofcommon relation. "[27] Isaac Williams was born among the mountains ofWales, and had the true poetic gift, though his power of expression wasoften not equal to what he wanted to say. Copeland was a Londoner, bredup in the strict school of Churchmanship represented by Mr. Norris ofHackney, tempered by sympathies with the Non-jurors. At Oxford he lived, along with Isaac Williams, in the very heart of the movement, which wasthe interest of his life; but he lived, self-forgetting orself-effacing, a wonderful mixture of tender and inexhaustible sympathy, and of quick and keen wit, which yet, somehow or other, in that time ofexasperation and bitterness, made him few enemies. He knew more thanmost men of the goings on of the movement, and he ought to have been itschronicler. But he was fastidious and hard to satisfy, and he left histask till it was too late. 

Isaac Williams was born in Wales in 1802, a year after Newman, ten yearsafter John Keble. His early life was spent in London, but his affectionfor Wales and its mountain scenery was great and undiminished to the endof his life. At Harrow, where Henry Drury was his tutor, he made hismark by his mastery of Latin composition and his devotion to Latinlanguage and literature. "I was so used to think in Latin that when Ihad to write an English theme, which was but seldom, I had to translatemy ideas, which ran in Latin, into English";[28] and later in life hecomplained of the Latin current which disturbed him when he had to writeEnglish. He was also a great cricketer; and he describes himself ascoming up to Trinity, where he soon got a scholarship, an ambitious andcareless youth, who had never heard a word about Christianity, and towhom religion, its aims and its restraints, were a mere name. 

This was changed by what, in the language of devotional schools, wouldhave been called his conversion. It came about, as men speak, as theresult of accidents; but the whole course of his thoughts and life wasturned into a channel from which it nevermore diverged. An old Welshclergyman gave the undergraduate an introduction to John Keble, who thenheld a place in Oxford almost unique. But the Trinity undergraduate andthe Oriel don saw little of one another till Isaac Williams won theLatin prize poem, _Ars Geologica_. Keble then called on Isaac Williamsand offered his help in criticising the poem and polishing it forprinting. The two men plainly took to one another at first sight; andthat service was followed by a most unexpected invitation on Keble'spart. He had chanced to come to Williams's room, and on Williams sayingthat he had no plan of reading for the approaching vacation, Keble said, "I am going to leave Oxford for good. Suppose you come and read with me. The Provost has asked me to take Wilberforce, and I declined; but if youwould come, you would be companions. " Keble was going down to Southrop, a little curacy near his father's; there Williams joined him, with twomore--Robert Wilberforce and R. H. Froude; and there the Long Vacation of1823 was spent, and Isaac Williams's character and course determined. "It was this very trivial accident, this short walk of a few yards, anda few words spoken, which was the turning-point of my life. If amerciful God had miraculously interposed to arrest my course, I couldnot have had a stronger assurance of His presence than I always had inlooking back to that day. " It determined Isaac Williams's character, and it determined for good and all his theological position. He hadbefore him all day long in John Keble a spectacle which was absolutelynew to him. Ambitious as a rising and successful scholar at college, hesaw a man, looked up to and wondered at by every one, absolutely withoutpride and without ambition. He saw the most distinguished academic ofhis day, to whom every prospect was open, retiring from Oxford in theheight of his fame to bury himself with a few hundreds ofGloucestershire peasants in a miserable curacy. He saw this man caringfor and respecting the ignorant and poor as much as others respected thegreat and the learned. He saw this man, who had made what the worldwould call so great a sacrifice, apparently unconscious that he had madeany sacrifice at all, gay, unceremonious, bright, full of play as a boy, ready with his pupils for any exercise, mental or muscular--for a hardride, or a crabbed bit of Aeschylus, or a logic fence with disputatiousand paradoxical undergraduates, giving and taking on even ground. Thesepupils saw one, the depth of whose religion none could doubt, "alwaysendeavouring to do them good as it were unknown to themselves and insecret, and ever avoiding that his kindness should be felt andacknowledged"; showing in the whole course of daily life the purity ofChristian love, and taking the utmost pains to make no profession orshow of it. This unostentatious and undemonstrative religion--so frank, so generous in all its ways--was to Isaac Williams "quite a new world. "It turned his mind in upon itself in the deepest reverence, but alsowith something of morbid despair of ever reaching such a standard. Itdrove all dreams of ambition out of his mind. It made humility, self-restraint, self-abasement, objects of unceasing, possibly notalways wise and healthy, effort. But the result was certainly acharacter of great sweetness, tenderness, and lowly unselfishness, pure, free from all worldliness, and deeply resigned to the will of God. He caught from Mr. Keble, like Froude, two characteristic habits ofmind--a strong depreciation of mere intellect compared with the lessshowy excellences of faithfulness to conscience and duty; and a horrorand hatred of everything that seemed like display or the desire ofapplause or of immediate effect. Intellectual depreciators of intellectmay deceive themselves, and do not always escape the snare which theyfear; but in Isaac Williams there was a very genuine carrying out of thePsalmist's words: "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself; I refrainmy soul and keep it low, as a child that is weaned from his mother. "This fear of display in a man of singularly delicate and fastidioustaste came to have something forced and morbid in it. It seemedsometimes as if in preaching or talking he aimed at being dull andclumsy. But in all that he did and wrote he aimed at being true at allcosts and in the very depths of his heart; and though, in his words, wemay wish sometimes for what we should feel to be more natural andhealthy in tone, we never can doubt that we are in the presence of onewho shrank from all conscious unreality like poison. 

From Keble, or, it may be said, from the Kebles, he received histheology. The Kebles were all of them men of the old-fashioned HighChurch orthodoxy, of the Prayer Book and the Catechism--the orthodoxywhich was professed at Oxford, which was represented in London by Norrisof Hackney and Joshua Watson; which valued in religion sobriety, reverence, and deference to authority, and in teaching, sound learningand the wisdom of the great English divines; which vehemently dislikedthe Evangelicals and Methodists for their poor and loose theology, theirlove of excitement and display, their hunting after popularity. ThisChurch of England divinity was the theology of the old Vicar of Coln St. Aldwyn's, a good scholar and a good parish priest, who had brought uphis two sons at home to be scholars; and had impressed his solid andmanly theology on them so strongly that amid all changes they remainedat bottom true to their paternal training. John Keble added to it greatattainments and brilliant gifts of imagination and poetry; but he neverlost the plain, downright, almost awkward ways of conversation andmanner of his simple home--ways which might have seemed abrupt and roughbut for the singular sweetness and charm of his nature. To those wholooked on the outside he was always the homely, rigidly orthodox countryclergyman. On Isaac Williams, with his ethical standard, John Keble alsoimpressed his ideas of religious truth; he made him an old-fashionedHigh Churchman, suspicious of excitement and "effect, " suspicious of theloud-talking religious world, suspicious of its novelties andshallowness, and clinging with his whole soul to ancient ways and soundChurch of England doctrine reflected in the Prayer Book. And from JohnKeble's influence he passed under the influence of Thomas Keble, theVicar of Bisley, a man of sterner type than his brother, with strong anddefinite opinions on all subjects; curt and keen in speech; intolerantof all that seemed to threaten wholesome teaching and the interests ofthe Church; and equally straightforward, equally simple, in manners andlife. Under him Isaac Williams began his career as a clergyman; he spenttwo years of solitary and monotonous life in a small cure, seekingcomfort from solitude in poetical composition ("It was very calm andsubduing, " he writes); and then he was recalled to Oxford as Fellow andTutor of his college, to meet a new and stronger influence, which it waspart of the work and trial of the rest of his life both to assimilateand to resist. 

For, with Newman, with whom he now came into contact, he did both. Thereopened to him from intercourse with Newman a new world of thought; andyet while feeling and answering to its charm, he never was quite at easewith him. But Williams and Froude had always been great friends sincethe reading party of 1823, in spite of Froude's audacities. Froude wasnow residing in Oxford, and had become Newman's most intimate friend, and he brought Newman and Williams together. "Living at that time, " hesays, "so much with Froude, I was now in consequence for the first timebrought into intercourse with Newman. We almost daily walked and oftendined together. " Newman and Froude had ceased to be tutors; theirthoughts were turned to theology and the condition of the Church. Newmanhad definitely broken with the Evangelicals, to whom he had beensupposed to belong, and Whately's influence over him was waning, andwith Froude he looked up to Keble as the pattern of religious wisdom. Hehad accepted the position of a Churchman as it was understood by Kebleand Froude; and thus there was nothing to hinder Williams's fullsympathy with him. But from the first there seems to have been an almostimpalpable bar between them, which is the more remarkable becauseWilliams appears to have seen with equanimity Froude's apparently moreviolent and dangerous outbreaks of paradox and antipathy. Possibly, after the catastrophe, he may, in looking back, have exaggerated hisearly alarms. But from the first he says he saw in Newman what he hadlearned to look upon as the gravest of dangers--the preponderance ofintellect among the elements of character and as the guide of life. "Iwas greatly delighted and charmed with Newman, who was extremely kind tome, but did not altogether trust his opinions; and though Froude was inthe habit of stating things in an extreme and paradoxical manner, yetone always felt conscious of a ground of entire confidence andagreement; but it was not so with Newman, even though one appeared morein unison with his more moderate views. "

But, in spite of all this, Newman offered and Isaac Williams acceptedthe curacy of St. Mary's. "Things at Oxford [1830-32] at that time werevery dull. " "Froude and I seemed entirely alone, with Newman onlysecretly, as it were, beginning to sympathise. I became at once verymuch attached to Newman, won by his kindness and delighted by his goodand wonderful qualities; and he proposed that I should be his curate atSt. Mary's. .. . I can remember a strong feeling of difference I firstfelt on acting together with him from what I had been accustomed to:that he was in the habit of looking for effect, and for what wassensibly effective, which from the Bisley and Fairford School I had beenlong habituated to avoid; but to do one's duty in faith and leave it toGod, and that all the more earnestly, because there were no sympathiesfrom without to answer. There was a felt but unexpressed difference ofthis kind, but perhaps it became afterwards harmonised as we actedtogether. "[29]

Thus early, among those most closely united, there appeared thebeginnings of those different currents which became so divergent as timewent on. Isaac Williams, dear as he was to Newman, and returning to thefull Newman's affection, yet represented from the first the views ofwhat Williams spoke of as the "Bisley and Fairford School, " which, though sympathising and co-operating with the movement, was never quiteeasy about it, and was not sparing of its criticism on the stir andagitation of the Tracts. 

Isaac Williams threw himself heartily into the early stages of themovement; in his poetry into its imaginative and poetical side, and alsointo its practical and self-denying side. But he would have been quitecontent with its silent working, and its apparent want of visiblesuccess. He would have been quite content with preaching simple homelysermons on the obvious but hard duties of daily life, and not seeingmuch come of them; with finding a slow abatement of the self-indulgenthabits of university life, with keeping Fridays, with less wine incommon room. The Bisley maxims bade men to be very stiff anduncompromising in their witness and in their duties, but to make no showand expect no recognition or immediate fruit, and to be silent undermisconstruction. But his was not a mind which realised greatpossibilities of change in the inherited ways of the English Church. Thespirit of change, so keenly discerned by Newman, as being both certainand capable of being turned to good account as well as bad, to him wasunintelligible or bad. More reality, more severity and consistency, deeper habits of self-discipline on the accepted lines of English Churchorthodoxy, would have satisfied him as the aim of the movement, as itundoubtedly was a large part of its aim; though with Froude and Newmanit also aimed at a widening of ideas, of interests and sympathies, beyond what had been common in the English Church. 

In the history of the movement Isaac Williams took a forward part in twoof its events, with one of which his connexion was most natural, withthe other grotesquely and ludicrously incongruous. The one was the planand starting of the series of _Plain Sermons_ in 1839, to which not onlythe Kebles, Williams, and Copeland contributed their volumes, but alsoNewman and Dr. Pusey. Isaac Williams has left the following account ofhis share in the work. 

"It seemed at this time (about 1838-39) as if Oxford, from the strengthof principle shown there (and an almost unanimous and concentratedenergy), was becoming a rallying point for the whole kingdom: but Iwatched from the beginning and saw greater dangers among ourselves thanthose from without; which I endeavoured to obviate by publishing the_Plain Sermons_. [_Plain Sermons_, by contributors to the _Tracts forthe Times_, 1st Series, January 1839. ] I attempted in vain to get theKebles to publish, in order to keep pace with Newman, and so maintain amore practical turn in the movement. I remember C. Cornish (C. L. Cornish, Fellow and Tutor of Exeter) coming to me and saying as wewalked in Trinity Gardens, 'People are a little afraid of being carriedaway by Newman's brilliancy; they want more of the steady sobriety ofthe Kebles infused into the movement to keep us safe; we have so muchsail and want ballast. ' And the effect of the publication of the _PlainSermons_ was at the time very quieting. In first undertaking the _PlainSermons_, I had no encouragement from any one, not even from John Keble;acquiescence was all that I could gain. But I have heard J. K. Mention asaying of Judge Coleridge, long before the _Tracts_ were thought of: 'Ifyou want to propagate your opinions you should lend your sermons; theclergy would then preach them, and adopt your opinions. ' Now this hasbeen the effect of the publication of the _Plain Sermons_. "

Isaac Williams, if any man, represented in the movement the moderate andunobtrusive way of religious teaching. But it was his curious fate to bedragged into the front ranks of the fray, and to be singled out asalmost the most wicked and dangerous of the Tractarians. He had thestrange fortune to produce the first of the Tracts[30] which was byitself held up to popular indignation as embodying all the mischief ofthe series and the secret aims of the movement. The Tract had anothereffect. It made Williams the object of the first great Tractarian battlein the University, the contest for the Poetry Professorship: the firstdecisive and open trial of strength, and the first Tractarian defeat. The contest, even more than the result, distressed him greatly; and thecourse of things in the movement itself aggravated his distress. Hisgeneral distrust of intellectual restlessness had now passed into thespecial and too well grounded fear that the movement, in some of itsmost prominent representatives, was going definitely in the direction ofRome. A new generation was rising into influence, to whom the old Churchwatchwords and maxims, the old Church habits of mind, the old Churchconvictions, had completely lost their force, and were become almostobjects of dislike and scorn; and for this change Newman's approval andcountenance were freely and not very scrupulously quoted. Williams'srelation to him had long been a curious mixture of the most affectionateattachment and intimacy with growing distrust and sense of divergence. Newman was now giving more and more distinct warning that he was likelyto go where Williams could not follow him, and the pain on both sideswas growing. But things moved fast, and at length the strain broke. 

The estrangement was inevitable; but both cherished the warmest feelingsof affection, even though such a friendship had been broken. But Oxfordbecame distasteful to Williams, and he soon afterwards left it forBisley and Stinchcombe, the living of his brother-in-law, Sir G. Prevost. There he married (22d June 1842), and spent the remainder ofhis life devoting himself to the preparation of those devotionalcommentaries, which are still so well known. He suffered for thegreatest part of his life from a distressing and disabling chronicasthma--from the time that he came back to Oxford as Fellow andTutor--and he died in 1865. The old friends met once more shortly beforeIsaac Williams's death; Newman came to see him, and at his departureWilliams accompanied him to the station. 

Isaac Williams wrote a great deal of poetry, first during his solitarycuracy at Windrush, and afterwards at Oxford. It was in a lower andsadder key than the _Christian Year_, which no doubt first inspired it;it wanted the elasticity and freshness and variety of Keble's verse, andit was often careless in structure and wanting in concentration. But itwas the outpouring of a very beautiful mind, deeply impressed with therealities of failure in the Church and religion, as well as in humanlife, full of tenderness and pathetic sweetness, and seeking a vent forits feelings, and relief for its trouble, in calling up before itselfthe images of God's goodness and kingdom of which nature and the worldare full. His poetry is a witness to the depth and earnestness andgenuine delicacy of what seemed hard and narrow in the Bisley School;there are passages in it which are not easily forgotten; but it was notstrong enough to arrest the excitement which soon set in, and with itscontinual obscurity and its want of finish it never had the recognitionreally due to its excellence. Newman thought it too soft. It certainlywanted the fire and boldness and directness which he threw into his ownverse when he wrote; but serious earnestness and severity of tone itcertainly did not want. 

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Mozley, _Reminiscences_, i. 18. 

[28] I. Williams, _MS. Memoir_. 

[29] I. Williams, _MS. Memoir_. 

[30] The history of this famous Tract, No. 80, on _Reserve incommunicating Religious Knowledge_, belongs to a later stage of themovement. 

CHAPTER V

CHARLES MARRIOTT

Charles Marriott was a man who was drawn into the movement, almost inspite of himself, by the attraction of the character of the leaders, the greatness of its object, and the purity and nobleness of the motiveswhich prompted it. He was naturally a man of metaphysical mind, givenalmost from a child to abstract and indeed abstruse thought. [31] He hadbeen a student of S. T. Coleridge, whom the Oriel men disliked as a mistythinker. He used to discuss Coleridge with a man little known then, butwho gained a high reputation on the Continent as a first-rate Greekscholar, and became afterwards Professor of Greek in the University ofSydney, Charles Badham. Marriott also appreciated Hampden as aphilosopher, whom the Oriel men thoroughly distrusted as a theologian. He might easily under different conditions have become a divine of thetype of F. D. Maurice. He was by disposition averse to anything likeparty, and the rough and sharp proceedings which party action sometimesseems to make natural. His temper was eminently sober, cautious andconciliatory in his way of looking at important questions. He was a manwith many friends of different sorts and ways, and of boundless thoughundemonstrative sympathy. His original tendencies would have made him aneclectic, recognising the strength of position in opposing schools ortheories, and welcoming all that was good and high in them. He wasprofoundly and devotedly religious, without show, without extravagance. His father, who died when he was only fourteen, had been a distinguishedman in his time. He was a Christ Church man, and one of two in the firstof the Oxford Honour lists in 1802, with E. Copleston, H. Phillpotts, and S. P. Rigaud for his examiners. He was afterwards tutor to the Earlof Dalkeith, and he became the friend of Walter Scott, who dedicated tohim the Second Canto of _Marmion_; and having ready and gracefulpoetical talent, he contributed several ballads to the _Minstrelsy ofthe Scottish Border, The Feast of Spurs_, and _Archie Armstrong's Aith_. He was a good preacher; his sympathies--of friendship, perhaps, ratherthan of definite opinion--were with men like Mr. John Bowdler and theThorntons. While he lived he taught Charles Marriott himself. After hisdeath, Charles, a studious boy, with ways of his own of learning, andthough successful and sure in his work, very slow in the process ofdoing it, after a short and discouraging experiment at Rugby, went toread with a private tutor till he went to Oxford. He was first atExeter, and then gained a scholarship at Balliol. He gained a ClassicalFirst Class and a Mathematical Second in the Michaelmas Term of 1832, and the following Easter he was elected Fellow at Oriel. 

For a man of his power and attainments he was as a speaker, and inconversation, surprisingly awkward. He had a sturdy, penetrating, tenacious, but embarrassed intellect--embarrassed, at least, by thecrowd and range of jostling thoughts, in its outward processes andmanifestations, for he thoroughly trusted its inner workings, and wasconfident of the accuracy of the results, even when helplessly unable tojustify them at the moment. [32] In matters of business he seemed atfirst sight utterly unpractical. In discussing with keen, rapid, andexperienced men like the Provost, the value of leases, or some questionof the management of College property, Marriott, who always took greatinterest in such inquiries, frequently maintained some position which tothe quicker wits round him seemed a paradox or a mare's nest. Yet itoften happened that after a dispute, carried on with a brisk fire of notalways respectful objections to Marriott's view, and in which his onlyadvantage was the patience with which he clumsily, yet surely, broughtout the real point of the matter, overlooked by others, the debateended in the recognition that he had been right. It was often a strangeand almost distressing sight to see the difficulty under which hesometimes laboured of communicating his thoughts, as a speaker at ameeting, or as a teacher to his hearers, or even in the easiness offamiliar talk. The comfort was that he was not really discouraged. Hewas wrestling with his own refractory faculty of exposition and speech;it may be, he was busy deeper down in the recesses and storehouses ofhis mind; but he was too much taken up with the effort to notice whatpeople thought of it, or even if they smiled; and what he had to say wasso genuine and veracious, as an expression of his meaning, so full ofbenevolence, charity, and generosity, and often so weighty andunexpected, that men felt it a shame to think much of the peculiaritiesof his long look of blank silence, and the odd, clumsy explanationswhich followed it. He was a man, under an uncouth exterior, of thenoblest and most affectionate nature; most patient, indulgent, andhopeful to all in whom he took an interest, even when they sorely triedhis kindness and his faith in them. Where he loved and trusted andadmired, he was apt to rate very highly, sometimes too highly. Hisgratitude was boundless. He was one of those who deliberately gave upthe prospect of domestic life, to which he was naturally drawn, for thesake of his cause. Capable of abstract thought beyond most men of histime, and never unwilling to share his thoughts with those at alldisposed to venture with him into deep waters, he was always ready toconverse or to discuss on much more ordinary ground. As an undergraduateand a young bachelor, he had attained, without seeking it, a position ofalmost unexampled authority in the junior University world that washardly reached by any one for many years at least after him. He washopeless as a speaker in the Union; but with all his halting andbungling speeches, that democratic and sometimes noisy assembly borefrom him with kindly amusement and real respect what they would bearfrom no one else, and he had an influence in its sometimes turbulentdebates which seems unaccountable. He was the _vir pietate gravis_. In aonce popular squib, occasioned by one of the fiercest of these debates, this unique position is noticed and commemorated--

 Οὐδ' ἔλαθεν Μαρίωτα, φιλαίτατον Ὠρειήλων

 * * * * *

 Ἦλθε μέγα γρώνων, Μασιχοῖς καὶ πᾶσ' ἀγαπητός, Καὶ σμείλων, προσέφη πάντας κείνδοις ἐπέεσιν. [33]

His ways and his talk were such as to call forth not unfrequent mirthamong those who most revered him. He would meet you and look you in theface without speaking a word. He was not without humour; but his jokes, carried off by a little laugh of his own, were apt to be recondite intheir meaning and allusions. With his great power of sympathy, he yetdid not easily divine other men's lighter or subtler moods, and odd andsometimes even distressing mistakes were the consequence. His health wasweak, and a chronic tenderness of throat and chest made him takeprecautions which sometimes seemed whimsical; and his well-known figurein a black cloak, with a black veil over his college cap, and a blackcomforter round his neck, which at one time in Oxford acquired his name, sometimes startled little boys and sleepy college porters when he cameon them suddenly at night. 

With more power than most men of standing alone, and of arranging hisobservations on life and the world in ways of his own, he hadpre-eminently above all men round him, in the highest and noblest form, the spirit of a disciple. Like most human things, discipleship has itsgood and its evil, its strong and its poor and dangerous side; but itreally has, what is much forgotten now, a good and a strong side. Bothin philosophy and religion, the μαθητὴς is a distinct character, andCharles Marriott was an example of it at its best. He had its manly andreasonable humility, its generous trustfulness, its self-forgetfulness;he had, too, the enthusiasm of having and recognising a great master andteacher, and doing what he wanted done; and he learned from the love ofhis master to love what he believed truth still more. The character ofthe disciple does not save a man from difficulties, from trouble andperplexity; but it tends to save him from idols of his own making. It issomething, in the trials of life and faith, to have the consciousness ofknowing or having known some one greater and better and wiser thanoneself, of having felt the spell of his guidance and example. Marriott's mind, quick to see what was real and strong, and at oncereverent to it as soon as he saw it, came very much, as an undergraduateat Balliol, under the influence of a very able and brilliant tutor, Moberly, afterwards Headmaster of Winchester and Bishop of Salisbury;and to the last his deference and affection to his old tutor remainedunimpaired. But he came under a still more potent charm when he moved toOriel, and became the friend of Mr. Newman. Master and disciple were asunlike as any two men could be; they were united by their sympathy inthe great crisis round them, by their absorbing devotion to the cause oftrue religion. Marriott brought to the movement, and especially to itschief, a great University character, and an unswerving and touchingfidelity. He placed himself, his life, and all that he could do, at theservice of the great effort to elevate and animate the Church; to thelast he would gladly have done so under him whom he first acknowledgedas his master. This was not to be; and he transferred his allegiance, asunreservedly, with equal loyalty and self-sacrifice, to his successor. But to the end, while his powers lasted, with all his great gifts andattainments, with every temptation to an independent position andself-chosen employment, he continued a disciple. He believed in menwiser than himself; he occupied himself with what they thought best forhim to do. 

This work was, for the most part, in what was done to raise the standardof knowledge of early Christian literature, and to make that knowledgeaccurate and scholarlike. He was, for a time, the Principal of theTheological College at Chichester, under Bishop Otter. He was also for atime Tutor at Oriel, and later, Vicar of St. Mary's. He was long bent onsetting on foot some kind of Hall for poor students; and he took overfrom Mr. Newman the buildings at Littlemore, which he turned into aplace for printing religious works. But though he was connected more orless closely with numberless schemes of Christian work in Oxford and outof it, his special work was that of a theological student. Marriott hadmuch to do with the Library of the Fathers, with correctingtranslations, collating manuscripts, editing texts. [34] Somehow, themost interesting portions hardly came to his share; and what he did inthe way of original writing, little as it was, causes regret that somuch of his time was spent on the drudgery of editing. Some sermons, alittle volume of _Thoughts on Private Devotion_, and another on the_Epistle to the Romans_, are nearly all that he has left of his own. Novelty of manner or thought in them there is none, still less anythingbrilliant or sharp in observation or style; but there is an undefinablesense, in their calm, severe pages, of a deep and serious mind dwellingon deep and very serious things. It is impossible not to wish that aman who could so write and impress people might have had the leisure towrite more. 

But Marriott never had any leisure. It has been said above that heplaced himself at the service of those whom he counted his teachers. Butthe truth is that he was at every one's service who wanted or who askedhis help. He had a large, and what must have been often a burdensome, correspondence. With pupils or friends he was always ready for someextra bit of reading. To strangers he was always ready to show attentionand hospitality, though Marriott's parties were as quaint as himself. His breakfast parties in his own room were things to have seen--a crowdof undergraduates, finding their way with difficulty amid lanes andpiles of books, amid a scarcity of chairs and room, and the host, perfectly unconscious of anything grotesque, sitting silent during thewhole of the meal, but perfectly happy, at the head of the table. Butthere was no claimant on his purse or his interest who was too strangefor his sympathy--raw freshmen, bores of every kind, broken-downtradesmen, old women, distressed foreigners, converted Jews, all the oddand helpless wanderers from beaten ways, were to be heard of atMarriott's rooms; and all, more or less, had a share of his time andthoughts, and perhaps counsel. He was sensible of worry as he grewolder; but he never relaxed his efforts to do what any one asked of him. There must be even now some still living who know what no one elseknows, how much they owe, with no direct claim on him, to CharlesMarriott's inexhaustible patience and charity. The pains which he wouldtake with even the most uncongenial and unpromising men, who somehow hadcome in his way, and seemed thrown on his charge, the patience withwhich he would bear and condone their follies and even worse, were notto be told, for, indeed, few knew what they were. 

"He was always ready to be the friend of any one whose conduct gaveproofs of high principle, however inferior to himself in knowledge oracquirements, and his friendship once gained was not easily lost. Ibelieve there was nothing in his power which he was not ready to do fora friend who wanted his help. It is not easy to state instances of suchkindness without revealing what for many reasons had better be leftuntold. But many such have come to my knowledge, and I believe there aremany more known only to himself and to those who derived benefit fromhis disinterested friendship. "[35]

Marriott's great contribution to the movement was his solid, simplegoodness, his immovable hope, his confidence that things would comeright. With much imaginativeness open to poetical grandeur and charm, and not without some power of giving expression to feeling, he wasdestitute of all that made so many others of his friends interesting asmen. He was nothing, as a person to know and observe, to the genius ofthe two Mozleys, to the brilliant social charm of Frederic Faber, to thekeen, refined intelligence of Mark Pattison, to the originality andclever eccentricity of William Palmer of Magdalen. And he was nothing asa man of practical power for organising and carrying out successfulschemes: such power was not much found at Oxford in those days. But hisfaith in his cause, as the cause of goodness and truth, was proofagainst mockery or suspicion or disaster. When ominous signs disturbedother people he saw none. He had an almost perverse subtlety of mindwhich put a favourable interpretation on what seemed most formidable. Ashis master drew more and more out of sympathy with the English Church, Marriott, resolutely loyal to it and to him, refused to understand hintsand indications which to others were but too plain. He vexed and evenprovoked Newman, in the last agonies of the struggle, by the optimismwith which he clung to useless theories and impossible hopes. For thatunquenchable hoping against hope, and hope unabated still when thecatastrophe had come, the English Church at least owes him deepgratitude. Throughout those anxious years he never despaired of her. 

All through his life he was a beacon and an incitement to those whowished to make a good use of their lives. In him all men could see, whatever their opinions and however little they liked him, thesimplicity and the truth of a self-denying life of suffering--for he wasnever well--of zealous hard work, unstinted, unrecompensed; of unabatedlofty hopes for the great interests of the Church and the University; ofdeep unpretending matter-of-course godliness and goodness--without "formor comeliness" to attract any but those who cared for them, forthemselves alone. It is almost a sacred duty to those who remember onewho cared nothing for his own name or fame to recall what is thetruth--that no one did more to persuade those round him of the solidunderground religious reality of the movement. Mr. Thomas Mozley, amongother generous notices of men whom the world and their contemporarieshave forgotten, has said what is not more than justice. [36] Speaking ofthe enthusiasm of the movement, and the spirit of its members, "Therehad never been seen at Oxford, indeed seldom anywhere, so large andnoble a sacrifice of the most precious gifts and powers to a sacredcause, " he points out what each of the leaders gave to it: "CharlesMarriott threw in his scholarship and something more, for he might havebeen a philosopher, and he had poetry in his veins, being the son of thewell-known author of the 'Devonshire Lane. ' No one sacrificed himself soentirely to the cause, giving to it all that he had and all that he was, as Charles Marriott. He did not gather large congregations; he did notwrite works of genius to spread his name over the land, and to all time;he had few of the pleasures or even of the comforts that spontaneouslyoffer themselves in any field of enterprise. He laboured day and nightin the search and defence of Divine Truth. His admirers were not thethousands, but the scholars who could really appreciate. I confess tohave been a little ashamed of myself when Bishop Burgess asked me aboutCharles Marriott, as one of the most eminent scholars of the day. Through sheer ignorance I had failed in adequate appreciation. " In hislater years he became a member of the new Hebdomadal Council at Oxford, and took considerable part in working the new constitution of theUniversity. In an epidemic of smallpox at Oxford in 1854, he took hisfull share in looking after the sick, and caught the disorder; but herecovered. At length, in the midst of troublesome work and manyanxieties, his life of toil was arrested by a severe paralytic seizure, 29th June 1855. He partially rallied, and survived for some time longer;but his labours were ended. He died at Bradfield, 25th September 1858. He was worn out by variety and pressure of unintermitted labour, whichhe would scarcely allow any change or holiday to relieve. Exhaustionmade illness, when it came, fatal. 

FOOTNOTES:

[31] "He told me, " writes a relative, "that questions about trade usedto occupy him very early in life. He used to ponder how it could beright to sell things for more than they cost you. "

[32] "He had his own way of doing everything, and used most stoutly toprotest that it was quite impossible that he should do it in anyother. "--_MS. Memoir_ by his brother, John Marriott. 

[33] _Uniomachia_, 1833. 

[34] "This became the main task of his life us long as health wascontinued to him. All who knew him well will remember how laboriously heworked at it, and how, in one shape or another, it was always on hand. Either he was translating, or correcting the translation of others; orhe was collating MSS. , or correcting the press. This last work wascarried on at all times and wherever he was--on a journey, afterdinner--even in a boat, he would pull out a sheet and go to write uponit in haste to get it finished for the next post. The number of volumesin the Library of the Fathers which bear the signature C. M. Attest hisdiligence. "--John Marriott's Memoir of him (MS. )

[35] J. M. , _MS. Memoir_. 

[36] _Rem. _ i. 447. 

CHAPTER VI

THE OXFORD TRACTS

"On 14th July 1833, " we read in Cardinal Newman's _Apologia_, "Mr. Keblepreached the assize sermon in the University Pulpit. It was publishedunder the title of _National Apostasy_. I have ever considered and keptthe day as the start of the religious movement of 1833. "[37]

This memorable sermon was a strong expression of the belief common to alarge body of Churchmen amid the triumphs of the Reform Bill, that thenew governors of the country were preparing to invade the rights, and toalter the constitution, and even the public documents, of the Church. The suppression of ten Irish Bishoprics, in defiance of Church opinion, showed how ready the Government was to take liberties in a high-handedway with the old adjustments of the relations of Church and State. Churchmen had hitherto taken for granted that England was "a nationwhich had for centuries acknowledged, as an essential part of itstheory of government, that, _as_ a Christian nation, she is also a partof Christ's Church, and bound, in all her legislation and policy, by thefundamental laws of that Church. " When "a Government and people, soconstituted, threw off the restraint which in many respects such aprinciple would impose upon them, nay, disavowed the principle itself, "this, to those whose ideas Mr. Keble represented, seemed nothing shortof a "direct disavowal of the sovereignty of God. If it be true anywherethat such enactments are forced on the legislature by public opinion, isApostasy too hard a word to describe the temper of such a nation?" Thesermon was a call to face in earnest a changed state of things, full ofimmediate and pressing danger; to consider how it was to be met byChristians and Churchmen, and to watch motives and tempers. "Surely itwill be no unworthy principle if any man is more circumspect in hisbehaviour, more watchful and fearful of himself, more earnest in hispetitions for spiritual aid, from a dread of disparaging the holy nameof the English Church in her hour of peril by his own personal fault andnegligence. As to those who, either by station or temper, feelthemselves more deeply interested, they cannot be too careful inreminding themselves that one chief danger in times of change andexcitement arises from their tendency to engross the whole mind. Publicconcerns, ecclesiastical or civil, will prove indeed ruinous to thosewho permit them to occupy all their care and thought, neglecting orundervaluing ordinary duties, more especially those of a devotionalkind. These cautions being duly observed, I do not see how any personcan devote himself too entirely to the cause of the Apostolic Church inthese realms. There may be, as far as he knows, but a very few tosympathise with him. He may have to wait long, and very likely pass outof this world, before he see any abatement in the triumph of disorderand irreligion. But, _if he be consistent_, he possesses to the utmostthe personal consolations of a good Christian; and as a true Churchman, he has the encouragement which no other cause in the world can impart inthe same degree: he is calmly, soberly, demonstrably _sure_ that, sooneror later, _his will be the winning side_, and that the victory will becomplete, universal, eternal. "

But if Mr. Keble's sermon was the first word of the movement, its firststep was taken in a small meeting of friends, at Mr. Hugh James Rose'sparsonage at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, between the 25th and the 29th of thesame July. At this little gathering, the ideas and anxieties which forsome time past had filled the thoughts of a number of earnest Churchmen, and had brought them into communication with one another, came to ahead, and issued in the determination to move. Mr. Rose, a man of highcharacter and distinction in his day, who had recently started the_British Magazine_, as an organ of Church teaching and opinion, was thenatural person to bring about such a meeting. [38] It was arranged that afew representative men, or as many as were able, should meet towards theend of July at Hadleigh Rectory. They were men in full agreement on themain questions, but with great differences in temperament and habits ofthought. Mr. Rose was the person of most authority, and next to him, Mr. Palmer; and these, with Mr. A. Perceval, formed as it were the rightwing of the little council. Their Oxford allies were the three Orielmen, Mr. Keble, Mr. Froude, and Mr. Newman, now fresh from his escapefrom death in a foreign land, and from the long solitary musings in hisMediterranean orange-boat, full of joyful vigour and ready forenterprise and work. [39] In the result, Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman werenot present, but they were in active correspondence with the others. [40]From this meeting resulted the _Tracts for the Times_, and the agitationconnected with them. 

These friends were all devoted Churchmen, but, as has been said, eachhad his marked character, not only as a man but as a Churchman. The mostimportant among them was as yet the least prominent. Two of them weremen of learning, acquainted with the great world of London, and who, with all their zeal, had some of the caution which comes of suchexperience. At the time, the most conspicuous was Mr. Hugh James Rose. 

Mr. Rose was a man whose name and whose influence, as his friendsthought, have been overshadowed and overlooked in the popular view ofthe Church revival. It owed to him, they held, not only its firstimpulse, but all that was best and most hopeful in it; and when it losthim, it lost its wisest and ablest guide and inspirer. It is certainlytrue that when that revival began he was a much more distinguished andimportant person than any of the other persons interested in it. As faras could be seen at the time, he was the most accomplished divine andteacher in the English Church. He was a really learned man. He had theintellect and energy and literary skill to use his learning. He was aman of singularly elevated and religious character; he had something ofthe eye and temper of a statesman, and he had already a high position. He was profoundly loyal to the Church, and keenly interested in whateveraffected its condition and its fortunes. As early as 1825 he had in somelectures at Cambridge called the attention of English Churchmen to thestate of religious thought and speculation in Germany, and to themischiefs likely to react on English theology from the rationalisingtemper and methods which had supplanted the old Lutheran teaching; andthis had led to a sharp controversy with Mr. Pusey, as he was then, whothought that Mr. Rose[41] had both exaggerated the fact itself and hadnot adequately given the historical account of it. He had the prudence, but not the backwardness, of a man of large knowledge, and considerableexperience of the world. More alive to difficulties and dangers than hisyounger associates, he showed his courage and his unselfish earnestnessin his frank sympathy with them, daring and outspoken as they were, andin his willingness to share with them the risks of an undertaking ofwhich no one knew better than he what were likely to be thedifficulties. He certainly was a person who might be expected to have achief part in directing anything with which he was connected. Hiscountenance and his indirect influence were very important elements, both in the stirring of thought which led to the Hadleigh resolutions, and in giving its form to what was then decided upon. But his action inthe movement was impeded by his failure in health, and cut short by hisearly death, January 1839. How he would have influenced the course ofthings if he had lived, it is not now easy to say. He must have beenreckoned with as one of the chiefs. He would have been opposed toanything that really tended towards Rome. But there is no reason tothink that he would have shrunk from any step only because it was bold. He had sympathy for courage and genius, and he had knowledge andauthority which would have commanded respect for his judgment andopinion. But it is too much to say either that the movement could nothave been without him, or that it was specially his design and plan, orthat he alone could have given the impulse which led to it; though itseemed at one time as if he was to be its leader and chief. Certainly hewas the most valuable and the most loyal of its early auxiliaries. 

Another coadjutor, whose part at the time also seemed rather that of achief, was Mr. William Palmer, of Worcester College. He had beeneducated at Trinity College, Dublin, but he had transferred his home toOxford, both in the University and the city. He was a man of exact andscholastic mind, well equipped at all points in controversial theology, strong in clear theories and precise definitions, familiar withobjections current in the schools and with the answers to them, and wellversed in all the questions, arguments, and authorities belonging to thegreat debate with Rome. He had definite and well-arranged ideas aboutthe nature and office of the Church; and, from his study of the Romancontroversy, he had at command the distinctions necessary todiscriminate between things which popular views confused, and to protectthe doctrines characteristic of the Church from being identified withRomanism. Especially he had given great attention to the publicdevotional language and forms of the Church, and had produced by far thebest book in the English language on the history and significance of theoffices of the English Church--the _Origines Liturgicae_, published atthe University Press in 1832. It was a book to give a man authority withdivines and scholars; and among those with whom at this time he acted noone had so compact and defensible a theory, even if it was somewhatrigid and technical, of the peculiar constitution of the English Churchas Mr. Palmer. With the deepest belief in this theory, he saw greatdangers threatening, partly from general ignorance and looseness ofthought, partly from antagonistic ideas and principles only too distinctand too popular; and he threw all his learning and zeal on the side ofthose who, like himself, were alive to those dangers, and were preparedfor a great effort to counteract them. 

The little company which met at Hadleigh Rectory, from 25th to 29th July1833, met--as other knots of men have often met, to discuss a questionor a policy, or to found an association, or a league, or a newspaper--tolay down the outlines of some practical scheme of work; but with littleforesight of the venture they were making, or of the momentous issueswhich depended on their meeting. Later on, when controversy began, itbecame a favourite rhetorical device to call it by the ugly name of a"conspiracy. " Certainly Froude called it so, and Mr. Palmer; and Mr. Perceval wrote a narrative to answer the charge. It was a "conspiracy, "as any other meeting would be of men with an object which other mendislike. 

Of the Oriel men, only Froude went to Hadleigh. Keble and Newman wereboth absent, but in close correspondence with the others. Their planshad not taken any definite shape; but they were ready for any sacrificeand service, and they were filled with wrath against the insolence ofthose who thought that the Church was given over into their hands, andagainst the apathy and cowardice of those who let her enemies have theirway. Yet with much impatience and many stern determinations in theirhearts, they were all of them men to be swayed by the judgment andexperience of their friends. 

The state of mind under which the four friends met at the Hadleighconference has been very distinctly and deliberately recorded by all ofthem. Churchmen in our days hardly realise what the face of things thenlooked like to men who, if they felt deeply, were no mere fanatics oralarmists, but sober and sagacious observers, not affected by merecries, but seeing dearly beneath the surface of things their certain andpowerful tendencies. "We felt ourselves, " writes Mr. Palmer some yearsafterwards, [42] "assailed by enemies from without and foes within. OurPrelates insulted and threatened by Ministers of State. In Ireland tenbishoprics suppressed. We were advised to feel thankful that a moresweeping measure had not been adopted. What was to come next?. .. Was thesame principle of concession to popular clamour . .. To be exemplified inthe dismemberment of the English Church?. .. We were overwhelmed withpamphlets on Church reform. Lord Henley, brother-in-law of Sir RobertPeel, Dr. Burton, and others of name and influence led the way. Dr. Arnold of Rugby ventured to propose that all sects should be united byAct of Parliament with the Church of England. Reports, apparently wellfounded, were prevalent that some of the Prelates were favourable toalterations in the Liturgy. Pamphlets were in wide circulationrecommending the abolition of the Creeds (at least in public worship), especially urging the expulsion of the Athanasian Creed; the removal ofall mention of the Blessed Trinity; of the doctrine of baptismalregeneration; of the practice of absolution. We knew not to what quarterto look for support. A Prelacy threatened and apparently intimidated; aGovernment making its power subservient to agitators, who avowedlysought the destruction of the Church . .. And, worst of all, _noprinciple in the public mind to which we could appeal_; an utterignorance of all rational grounds of attachment to the Church; anoblivion of its spiritual character, as an institution not of man but ofGod; the grossest Erastianism most widely prevalent, especially amongstall classes of politicians. There was in all this enough to appal thestoutest heart; and those who can recall the feeling of those days willat once remember the deep depression into which the Church had fallen, and the gloomy forebodings universally prevalent. "

"Before the spirit and temper of those who met at the conference iscondemned as extravagant, " writes Mr. Perceval in 1842, [43] "let thereader call to mind what was then actually the condition as well as theprospect of the Church and nation: an agrarian and civic insurrectionagainst the bishops and clergy, and all who desired to adhere to theexisting institutions of the country; the populace goaded on, openly bythe speeches, covertly (as was fully believed at the time) by the paidemissaries of the ministers of the Crown; the chief of those ministersin his place in Parliament bidding the bishops 'set their house inorder'; the mob taking him at his word, and burning to the ground thepalace of the Bishop of Bristol, with the public buildings of the city, while they shouted the Premier's name in triumph on the ruins. " Thepressing imminence of the danger is taken for granted by the calmest andmost cautious of the party, Mr. Rose, in a letter of February 1833. "That something is requisite, is certain. The only thing is, thatwhatever is done ought to be _quickly_ done, for the danger isimmediate, and _I should have little fear if I thought that we couldstand for ten or fifteen years as we are_. "[44] In the _Apologia_Cardinal Newman recalls what was before him in those days. "The Whigshad come into power; Lord Grey had told the bishops to 'set their housein order, ' and some of the prelates had been insulted and threatened inthe streets of London. The vital question was. How were we to keep theChurch from being Liberalised? There was so much apathy on the subjectin some quarters, such imbecile alarm in others; the true principles ofChurchmanship seemed so radically decayed, and there was suchdistraction in the councils of the clergy. The Bishop of London of theday, an active and open-hearted man, had been for years engaged indiluting the high orthodoxy of the Church by the introduction of theEvangelical body into places of influence and trust. He had deeplyoffended men who agreed with myself by an off-hand saying (as it wasreported) to the effect that belief in the apostolical succession hadgone out with the Non-jurors. '_We can count you_, ' he said to some ofthe gravest and most venerated persons of the old school. .. . I feltaffection for my own Church, but not tenderness: I felt dismay at herprospects, anger and scorn at her do-nothing perplexity. I thought thatif Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of victory inthe event. I saw that Reformation principles were powerless to rescueher. As to leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination: stillI ever kept before me that there was something greater than theEstablished Church, and that that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence andorgan. She was nothing unless she was this. She must be dealt withstrongly or she would be lost. There was need of a second Reformation. "

"If _I thought that we could stand ten or fifteen years as we are_, Ishould have little fear, " said Mr. Rose. He felt that, if only he couldsecure a respite, he had the means and the hope of opening the eyes ofChurchmen. They were secure and idle from long prosperity, and now theywere scared and perplexed by the suddenness of an attack for which theywere wholly unprepared. But he had confidence in his own convictions. He had around him ability and zeal, in which he had the best reason totrust. He might hope, if he had time, to turn the tide. But this time tostand to arms was just what he had not. The danger, he felt, was uponhim. He could not wait. So he acquiesced in an agitation which socautious and steady a man would otherwise hardly have chosen. "That_something must be done_ is certain. The only thing is, that whatever isdone ought to be _quickly_ done. " Nothing can show more forcibly theimminence and pressure of the crisis than words like these, not merelyfrom Froude and his friends, but from such a man as Mr. Hugh James Rose. 

"Something must be done, " but what? This was not so easy to say. It wasobvious that men must act in concert, and must write; but beyond thesegeneral points, questions and difficulties arose. The first idea thatsuggested itself at Hadleigh was a form of association, which would havebeen something like the _English Church Union_ or the _Church DefenceAssociation_ of our days. It probably was Mr. Palmer's idea; and forsome time the attempt to carry it into effect was followed up at Oxford. Plans of "Association" were drawn up and rejected. The endeavour broughtout differences of opinion--differences as to the rightness or thepolicy of specific mention of doctrines; differences as to the union ofChurch and State, on the importance of maintaining which, as long aspossible, Mr. Newman sided with Mr. Palmer against Mr. Keble's moreuncompromising view. A "_third_ formulary" was at length adopted. "Events, " it said, "have occurred within the last few years calculatedto inspire the true members and friends of the Church with the deepestuneasiness. " It went on to notice that political changes had thrownpower into the hands of the professed enemies of the Church as anestablishment; but it was not merely as an establishment that it was inmost serious danger. "Every one, " it says, "who has become acquaintedwith the literature of the day, must have observed the sedulous attemptsmade in various quarters to reconcile members of the Church toalterations in its doctrines and discipline. Projects of change, whichinclude the annihilation of our Creeds and the removal of doctrinalstatements incidentally contained in our worship, have been boldly andassiduously put forth. Our services have been subjected to licentiouscriticism, with the view of superseding some of them and of entirelyremodelling others. The very elementary principles of our ritual anddiscipline have been rudely questioned; our apostolical polity has beenridiculed and denied. " The condition of the times made these thingsmore than ordinarily alarming, and the pressing danger was urged as areason for the formation, by members of the Church in various parts ofthe kingdom, of an association on a few broad principles of union forthe defence of the Church. "They feel strongly, " said the authors of thepaper, "that no fear of the appearance of forwardness should dissuadethem from a design, which seems to be demanded of them by theiraffection towards that spiritual community to which they owe their hopesof the world to come; and by a sense of duty to that God and Saviour whois its Founder and Defender. " But the plan of an Association, or ofseparate Associations, which was circulated in the autumn of 1833, cameto nothing. "Jealousy was entertained of it in high quarters. " Froudeobjected to any association less wide than the Church itself. Newman hada horror of committees and meetings and great people in London. Andthus, in spite of Mr. Palmer's efforts, favoured by a certain number ofinfluential and dignified friends, the Association would not work. Butthe stir about it was not without result. Mr. Palmer travelled about thecountry with the view of bringing the state of things before the clergy. In place of the Association, an Address to the Archbishop of Canterburywas resolved upon. It was drawn up by Mr. Palmer, who undertook thebusiness of circulating it. In spite of great difficulties and troubleof the alarm of friends like Mr. Rose, who was afraid that it wouldcause schism in the Church; of the general timidity of the dignifiedclergy; of the distrust and the crotchets of others; of the coldness ofthe bishops and the opposition of some of them--it was presented withthe signatures of some 7000 clergy to the Archbishop in February 1834. It bore the names, among others, of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Masterof Trinity; Dr. Gilbert, of Brasenose College; Dr. Faussett, and Mr. Keble. And this was not all. A Lay Address followed. There weredifficulties about the first form proposed, which was thought to say toomuch about the doctrine and discipline of the Church; and it was laidaside for one with more vague expressions about the "consecration of theState, " and the practical benefits of the Established Church. In thisform it was signed by 230, 000 heads of families, and presented to theArchbishop in the following May. "From these two events, " writes Mr. Perceval in 1842, "we may date the commencement of the turn of the tide, which had threatened to overwhelm our Church and our religion. "[45]There can, at any rate, be little doubt that as regards the externalposition of the Church in the country, this agitation was a success. Itrallied the courage of Churchmen, and showed that they were stronger andmore resolute than their enemies thought. The revolutionary temper ofthe times had thrown all Churchmen on the Conservative side; and theseaddresses were partly helped by political Conservatism, and also reactedin its favour. 

Some of the Hadleigh friends would probably have been content to go onin this course, raising and keeping alive a strong feeling in favour ofthings as they were, creating a general sympathy with the Church, andconfidence in the peculiar excellency of its wise and soberinstitutions, sedulously but cautiously endeavouring to correct popularmistakes about them, and to diffuse a sounder knowledge and a soundertone of religious feeling. This is what Mr. H. J. Rose would have wished, only he felt that he could not insure the "ten or fifteen years" whichhe wanted to work this gradual change. Both he and Mr. Palmer would havemade London, to use a military term, their base of operations. The Orielmen, on the other hand, thought that "Universities are the naturalcentres of intellectual movements"; they were for working morespontaneously in the freedom of independent study; they had little faithin organisation; "living movements, " they said, "do not come ofcommittees. " But at Hadleigh it was settled that there was writing to bedone, in some way or other; and on this, divergence of opinion soonshowed itself, both as to the matter and the tone of what was to bewritten. 

For the writers of real force, the men of genius, were the three Orielmen, with less experience, at that time, with less extensive learning, than Mr. Rose and Mr. Palmer. But they were bolder and keener spirits;they pierced more deeply into the real condition and prospects of thetimes; they were not disposed to smooth over and excuse what theythought hollow and untrue, to put up with decorous compromises andhalf-measures, to be patient towards apathy, negligence, or insolence. They certainly had more in them of the temper of warfare. We know fromtheir own avowals that a great anger possessed them, that they wereindignant at the sacred idea of the Church being lost and smothered byselfishness and stupidity; they were animated by the spirit which makesmen lose patience with abuses and their apologists, and gives them nopeace till they speak out. Mr. Newman felt that, though associations andaddresses might be very well, what the Church and the clergy and thecountry wanted was plain speaking; and that plain speaking could not begot by any papers put forth as joint manifestoes, or with the revisionand sanction of "safe" and "judicious" advisers. It was necessary towrite, and to write as each man felt: and he determined that each manshould write and speak for himself, though working in concert andsympathy with others towards the supreme end--the cause and interests ofthe Church. 

And thus were born the _Tracts for the Times. _[46] For a time Mr. Palmer's line and Mr. Newman's line ran on side by side; but Mr. Palmer's plan had soon done all that it could do, important as that was;it gradually faded out of sight, and the attention of all who cared for, or who feared or who hated the movement, was concentrated on the "OxfordTracts. " They were the watchword and the symbol of an enterprise whichall soon felt to be a remarkable one--remarkable, if in nothing else, inthe form in which it was started. Great changes and movements have beenbegun in various ways; in secret and underground communications, indaring acts of self-devotion or violence, in the organisation of aninstitution, in the persistent display of a particular temper and set ofhabits, especially in the form of a stirring and enthralling eloquence, in popular preaching, in fierce appeals to the passions. But thoughtracts had become in later times familiar instruments of religiousaction, they had, from the fashion of using them, become united in theminds of many with rather disparaging associations. The pertinacity ofgood ladies who pressed them on chance strangers, and who extolled theirefficacy as if it was that of a quack medicine, had lowered the generalrespect for them. The last thing that could have been thought of was agreat religions revolution set in motion by tracts and leaflets, andtaking its character and name from them. 

But the ring of these early Tracts was something very different fromanything of the kind yet known in England. They were clear, brief, sternappeals to conscience and reason, sparing of words, utterly withoutrhetoric, intense in purpose. They were like the short, sharp, rapidutterances of men in pain and danger and pressing emergency. The firstone gave the keynote of the series. Mr. Newman "had out of his own headbegun the Tracts": he wrote the opening one in a mood which he hashimself described. He was in the "exultation of health restored and homeregained": he felt, he says, an "exuberant and joyous energy which henever had before or since"; "his health and strength had come back tohim with such a rebound" that some of his friends did not know him. "Ihad the consciousness that I was employed in that work which I had beendreaming about, and which I felt to be so momentous and inspiring. I hada supreme confidence in our cause; we were upholding that primitiveChristianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers ofthe Church, and which was registered and attested in the Anglicanformularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient religion hadwell-nigh faded out of the land through the political changes of thelast 150 years, and it must be restored. It would be, in fact, a secondReformation--a better Reformation, for it would return, not to thesixteenth century, but to the seventeenth. No time was to be lost, forthe Whigs had come to do their worst, and the rescue might come toolate. Bishoprics were already in course of suppression; Church propertywas in course of confiscation; sees would be soon receiving unsuitableoccupants. We knew enough to begin preaching, and there was no one elseto preach. I felt, " he goes on, [47] with a characteristic recollectionof his own experience when he started on his voyage with Froude in the_Hermes_, "as on a vessel, which first gets under weigh, and then clearsout the deck, and stores away luggage and live stock into their properreceptacles. " The first three Tracts bear the date of 9th September1833. They were the first public utterance of the movement. The openingwords of this famous series deserve to be recalled. They are new to mostof the present generation. 

 TO MY BRETHREN IN THE SACRED MINISTRY, THE PRESBYTERS AND DEACONS OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN ENGLAND, ORDAINED THEREUNTO BY THE HOLY GHOST AND THE IMPOSITION OF HANDS. 

 FELLOW-LABOURERS, --I am but one of yourselves--Presbyter; and therefore I conceal my name, lest I should take too much on myself by speaking in my own person. Yet speak I must; for the times are very evil, yet no one speaks against them. 

 Is not this so? Do not we "look one upon another, " yet perform nothing? Do we not all confess the peril into which the Church is come, yet sit still each in his own retirement, as if mountains and seas cut off brother from brother? Therefore suffer me, while I try to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats, which it has been our blessedness hitherto to enjoy, to contemplate the condition and prospects of our Holy Mother in a practical way; so that one and all may unlearn that idle habit, which has grown upon us, of owning the state of things to be bad, yet doing nothing to remedy it. 

 Consider a moment. Is it fair, is it dutiful, to suffer our bishops to stand the brunt of the battle without doing our part to support them? Upon them comes "the care of all the Churches. " This cannot be helped; indeed it is their glory. Not one of us would wish in the least to deprive them of the duties, the toils, the responsibilities of their high office. And, black event as it would be for the country, yet (as far as they are concerned) we could not wish them a more blessed termination of their course than the spoiling of their goods and martyrdom. 

 To them then we willingly and affectionately relinquish their high privileges and honours; we encroach not upon the rights of the SUCCESSORS OF THE APOSTLES; we touch not their sword and crozier. Yet surely we may be their shield-bearers in the battle without offence; and by our voice and deeds be to them what Luke and Timothy were to St. Paul. 

 Now then let me come at once to the subject which leads me to address you. Should the Government and the Country so far forget their God as to cast off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, _on what_ will you rest the claim of respect and attention which you make upon your flocks? Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must Christ's Ministers depend? Is not this a serious practical question? We know how miserable is the state of religious bodies not supported by the State. Look at the Dissenters on all sides of you, and you will see at once that their Ministers, depending simply upon the people, become the _creatures_ of the people. Are you content that this should be your case? Alas! can a greater evil befall Christians, than for their teachers to be guided by them, instead of guiding? How can we "hold fast the form of sound words, " and "keep that which is committed to our trust, " if our influence is to depend simply on our popularity? Is it not our very office to _oppose_ the world? Can we then allow ourselves to _court_ it? to preach smooth things and prophesy deceits? to make the way of life easy to the rich and indolent, and to bribe the humbler classes by excitements and strong intoxicating doctrine? Surely it must not be so;--and the question recurs, _on what_ are we to rest our authority when the State deserts us?

 Christ has not left His Church without claim of its own upon the attention of men. Surely not. Hard Master He cannot be, to bid us oppose the world, yet give us no credentials for so doing. There are some who rest their divine mission on their own unsupported assertion; others, who rest it upon their popularity; others, on their success; and others, who rest it upon their temporal distinctions. This last case has, perhaps, been too much our own; I fear we have neglected the real ground on which our authority is built--OUR APOSTOLICAL DESCENT. 

 We have been born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave His Spirit to His Apostles; they in turn laid their hands on those who should succeed them; and these again on others; and so the sacred gift has been handed down to our present bishops, who have appointed us as their assistants, and in some sense representatives. 

 Now every one of us believes this. I know that some will at first deny they do; still they do believe it. Only, it is not sufficiently, practically impressed on their minds. 

 They _do_ believe it; for it _is_ the doctrine of the Ordination Service, which they have recognised as truth in the most solemn season of their lives. In order, then, not to prove, but to remind and impress, I entreat your attention to the words used when you were made ministers of Christ's Church. 

 The office of Deacon was thus committed to you: "Take thou authority to execute the office of a Deacon in the Church of God committed unto thee: In the name, etc. "

 And the Priesthood thus:

 "Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a Priest, in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of His Holy Sacraments: In the name, etc. "

 These, I say, were words spoken to us, and received by us, when we were brought nearer to God than at any other time of our lives. I know the grace of ordination is contained in the laying on of hands, not in any form of words;--yet in our own case (as has ever been usual in the Church) words of blessing have accompanied the act. Thus we have confessed before God our belief that the bishop who ordained us gave us the Holy Ghost, gave us the power to bind and to loose, to administer the Sacraments, and to preach. Now _how_ is he able to give these great gifts? _Whence_ is his right? Are these words idle (which would be taking God's name in vain), or do they express merely a wish (which surely is very far below their meaning), or do they not rather indicate that the speaker is conveying a gift? Surely they can mean nothing short of this. But whence, I ask, his right to do so? Has he any right, except as having received the power from those who consecrated him to be a bishop? He could not give what he had never received. It is plain then that he but _transmits_; and that the Christian Ministry is a _succession_. And if we trace back the power of ordination from hand to hand, of course we shall come to the Apostles at last. We know we do, as a plain historical fact; and therefore all we, who have been ordained clergy, in the very form of our ordination acknowledged the doctrine of the APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 

 And for the same reason, we must necessarily consider none to be _really_ ordained who have not _thus_ been ordained. For if ordination is a divine ordinance, it must be necessary; and if it is not a divine ordinance, how dare we use it? Therefore all who use it, all of _us_, must consider it necessary. As well might we pretend the Sacraments are not necessary to salvation, while we make use of the offices in the Liturgy; for when God appoints means of grace, they are _the_ means. 

 I do not see how any one can escape from this plain view of the subject, except (as I have already hinted) by declaring that the words do not mean all that they say. But only reflect what a most unseemly time for random words is that in which ministers are set apart for their office. Do we not adopt a Liturgy _in order to_ hinder inconsiderate idle language, and shall we, in the most sacred of all services, write down, subscribe, and use again and again forms of speech which have not been weighed, and cannot be taken strictly?

 Therefore, my dear brethren, act up to your professions. Let it not be said that you have neglected a gift; for if you have the Spirit of the Apostles on you, surely this _is_ a great gift. "Stir up the gift of God which is in you. " Make much of it. Show your value of it. Keep it before your minds as an honourable badge, far higher than that secular respectability, or cultivation, or polish, or learning, or rank, which gives you a hearing with the many. Tell _them_ of your gift. The times will soon drive you to do this, if you mean to be still anything. But wait not for the times. Do not be compelled, by the world's forsaking you, to recur as if unwillingly to the high source of your authority. Speak out now, before you are forced, both as glorying in your privilege and to insure your rightful honour from your people. A notion has gone abroad that they can take away your power. They think they have given and can take it away. They think it lies in the Church property, and they know that they have politically the power to confiscate that property. They have been deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness, producible results, acceptableness to your flocks, that these and such like are the tests of your divine commission. Enlighten them in this matter. Exalt our Holy Fathers the bishops, as the representatives of the Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches; and magnify your office, as being ordained by them to take part in their Ministry. 

 But, if you will not adopt my view of the subject, which I offer to you, not doubtingly, yet (I hope) respectfully, at all events, CHOOSE YOUR SIDE. To remain neuter much longer will be itself to take a part. _Choose_ your side; since side you shortly must, with one or other party, even though you do nothing. Fear to be of those whose line is decided for them by chance circumstances, and who may perchance find themselves with the enemies of Christ, while they think but to remove themselves from worldly politics. Such abstinence is impossible in troublous times. HE THAT IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME, AND HE THAT GATHERETH NOT WITH ME SCATTERETH ABROAD. 

While Mr. Palmer was working at the Association and the Address, Mr. Newman with his friends was sending forth the Tracts, one after another, in rapid succession, through the autumn and winter of 1833. They wereshort papers, in many cases mere short notes, on the great questionswhich had suddenly sprung into such interest, and were felt to be fullof momentous consequence, --the true and essential nature of theChristian Church, its relation to the primitive ages, its authority andits polity and government, the current objections to its claims inEngland, to its doctrines and its services, the length of the prayers, the Burial Service, the proposed alterations in the Liturgy, the neglectof discipline, the sins and corruptions of each branch of Christendom. The same topics were enforced and illustrated again and again as theseries went on; and then there came extracts from English divines, likeBishop Beveridge, Bishop Wilson, and Bishop Cosin, and under the title"Records of the Church, " translations from the early Fathers, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and others. Mr. Palmer contributed to one of thesepapers, and later on Mr. Perceval wrote two or three; but for the mostpart these early Tracts were written by Mr. Newman, though Mr. Keble andone or two others also helped. Afterwards, other writers joined in theseries. They were at first not only published with a notice that any onemight republish them with any alterations he pleased, but they weredistributed by zealous coadjutors, ready to take any trouble in thecause. Mr. Mozley has described how he rode about Northamptonshire, from parsonage to parsonage, with bundles of the Tracts. The _Apologia_records the same story. "I called upon clergy, " says the writer, "invarious parts of the country, whether I was acquainted with them or not, and I attended at the houses of friends where several of them were fromtime to time assembled. .. . I did not care whether my visits were made toHigh Church or Low Church: I wished to make a strong pull in union withall who were opposed to the principles of Liberalism, whoever they mightbe. " He adds that he does not think that much came of these visits, orof letters written with the same purpose, "except that they advertisedthe fact that a rally in favour of the Church was commencing. "

The early Tracts were intended to startle the world, and they succeededin doing so. Their very form, as short earnest leaflets, was perplexing;for they came, not from the class of religionists who usually deal insuch productions, but from distinguished University scholars, picked menof a picked college; and from men, too, who as a school were therepresentatives of soberness and self-control in religious feeling andlanguage, and whose usual style of writing was specially marked by itssevere avoidance of excitement and novelty; the school from which hadlately come the _Christian Year_, with its memorable motto "_Inquietness and confidence shall be your strength_. " Their matter wasequally unusual. Undoubtedly they "brought strange things to the ears"of their generation. To Churchmen now these "strange things" are suchfamiliar commonplaces, that it is hard to realise how they should havemade so much stir. But they were novelties, partly audacious, partlyunintelligible, then. The strong and peremptory language of the Tracts, their absence of qualifications or explanations, frightened friends likeMr. Palmer, who, so far, had no ground to quarrel with their doctrine, and he wished them to be discontinued. The story went that one of thebishops, on reading one of the Tracts on the Apostolical Succession, could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. Theyfell on a time of profound and inexcusable ignorance on the subjectsthey discussed, and they did not spare it. The cry of Romanism wasinevitable, and was soon raised, though there was absolutely nothing inthem but had the indisputable sanction of the Prayer Book, and of themost authoritative Anglican divines. There was no Romanism in them, noranything that showed a tendency to it. But custom, and the prevalence ofother systems and ways, and the interest of later speculations, and theslackening of professional reading and scholarship in the Church, hadmade their readers forget some of the most obvious facts in Churchhistory, and the most certain Church principles; and men were at sea asto what they knew or believed on the points on which the Tractschallenged them. The scare was not creditable; it was like the Italianscare about cholera with its quarantines and fumigations; but it wasnatural. The theological knowledge and learning were wanting which wouldhave been familiar with the broad line of difference between what isCatholic and what is specially Roman. There were many whose teaching wasimpugned, for it was really Calvinist or Zwinglian, and not Anglican. There were hopeful and ambitious theological Liberals, who recognised inthat appeal to Anglicanism the most effective counter-stroke to theirown schemes and theories. There were many whom the movement forced tothink, who did not want such addition to their responsibilities. Itcannot be thought surprising that the new Tracts were received withsurprise, dismay, ridicule, and indignation. But they also at oncecalled forth a response of eager sympathy from numbers to whom theybrought unhoped-for relief and light in a day of gloom, of rebuke andblasphemy. Mr. Keble, in the preface to his famous assize sermon, hadhazarded the belief that there were "hundreds, nay, thousands ofChristians, and that there soon will be tens of thousands, unaffectedlyanxious to be rightly guided" in regard to subjects that concern theChurch. The belief was soon justified. 

When the first forty-six Tracts were collected into a volume towards theend of 1834, the following "advertisement" explaining their nature andobjects was prefixed to it. It is a contemporary and authoritativeaccount of what was the mind of the leaders of the movement; and it hasa significance beyond the occasion which prompted it. 

 The following-Tracts were published with the object of contributing-something towards the practical revival of doctrines, which, although held by the great divines of our Church, at present have become obsolete with the majority of her members, and are withdrawn from public view even by the more learned and orthodox few who still adhere to them. The Apostolic succession, the Holy Catholic Church, were principles of action in the minds of our predecessors of the seventeenth century; but, in proportion as the maintenance of the Church has been secured by law, her ministers have been under the temptation of leaning on an arm of flesh instead of her own divinely-provided discipline, a temptation increased by political events and arrangements which need not here be more than alluded to. A lamentable increase of sectarianism has followed; being occasioned (in addition to other more obvious causes), first, by the cold aspect which the new Church doctrines have presented to the religious sensibilities of the mind, next to their meagreness in suggesting motives to restrain it from seeking out a more influential discipline. Doubtless obedience to the law of the land, and the careful maintenance of "decency and order" (the topics in usage among us), are plain duties of the Gospel, and a reasonable ground for keeping in communion with the Established Church; yet, if Providence has graciously provided for our weakness more interesting and constraining motives, it is a sin thanklessly to neglect them; just as it would be a mistake to rest the duties of temperance or justice on the mere law of natural religion, when they are mercifully sanctioned in the Gospel by the more winning authority of our Saviour Christ. Experience has shown the inefficacy of the mere injunctions of Church order, however scripturally enforced, in restraining from schism the awakened and anxious sinner; who goes to a dissenting preacher "because" (as he expresses it) "he gets good from him": and though he does not stand excused in God's sight for yielding to the temptation, surely the ministers of the Church are not blameless if, by keeping back the more gracious and consoling truths provided for the little ones of Christ, they indirectly lead him into it. Had he been taught as a child, that the Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources of Divine Grace; that the Apostolical ministry had a virtue in it which went out over the whole Church, when sought by the prayer of faith; that fellowship with it was a gift and privilege, as well as a duty, we could not have had so many wanderers from our fold, nor so many cold hearts within it. 

 This instance may suggest many others of the superior _influence_ of an apostolical over a mere secular method of teaching. The awakened mind knows its wants, but cannot provide for them; and in its hunger will feed upon ashes, if it cannot obtain the pure milk of the word. Methodism and Popery are in different ways the refuge of those whom the Church stints of the gifts of grace; they are the foster-mothers of abandoned children. The neglect of the daily service, the desecration of festivals, the Eucharist scantily administered, insubordination permitted in all ranks of the Church, orders and offices imperfectly developed, the want of societies for particular religious objects, and the like deficiencies, lead the feverish mind, desirous of a vent to its feelings, and a stricter rule of life, to the smaller religious communities, to prayer and Bible meetings, and ill-advised institutions and societies, on the one hand, on the other, to the solemn and captivating services by which Popery gains its proselytes. Moreover, the multitude of men cannot teach or guide themselves; and an injunction given them to depend on their private judgment, cruel in itself, is doubly hurtful, as throwing them on such teachers as speak daringly and promise largely, and not only aid but supersede individual exertion. 

 These remarks may serve as a clue, for those who care to pursue it, to the views which have led to the publication of the following Tracts. The Church of Christ was intended to cope with human nature in all its forms, and surely the gifts vouchsafed it are adequate for that gracious purpose. There are zealous sons and servants of her English branch, who see with sorrow that she is defrauded of her full usefulness by particular theories and principles of the present age, which interfere with the execution of one portion of her commission; and while they consider that the revival of this portion of truth is especially adapted to break up existing parties in the Church, and to form instead a bond of union among all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, they believe that nothing but these neglected doctrines, faithfully preached, will repress that extension of Popery, for which the ever multiplying divisions of the religious world are too clearly preparing the way. 

Another publication ought to be noticed, a result of the Hadleighmeeting, which exhibited the leading ideas of the conference, andespecially of the more "conservative" members of it. This was a littlework in question and answer, called the "Churchman's Manual, " drawn upin part some time before the meeting by Mr. Perceval, and submitted tothe revision of Mr. Rose and Mr. Palmer. It was intended to be asupplement to the "Church Catechism, " as to the nature and claims of theChurch and its Ministers. It is a terse, clear, careful, and, as wasinevitable, rather dry summary of the Anglican theory, and of theposition which the English Church holds to the Roman Church, and to theDissenters. It was further revised at the conference, and "someimportant suggestions were made by Froude"; and then Mr. Perceval, whohad great hopes from the publication, and spared himself no pains tomake it perfect, submitted it for revision and advice to a number ofrepresentative Churchmen. The Scotch Bishops whom he consulted were warmin approval, especially the venerable and saintly Bishop Jolly; as werealso a number of men of weight and authority in England: Judge AllanPark, Joshua Watson, Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough, Mr. Churton of Crayke, Mr. H. H. Norris, Dr. Wordsworth, and Dr. Routh. It was then laid beforethe Archbishop for correction, or, if desirable, suppression; and forhis sanction if approved. The answer was what might have been expected, that there was no objection to it, but that official sanction must bedeclined on general grounds. After all this Mr. Perceval not unnaturallyclaimed for it special importance. It was really, he observed, the"first Tract, " systematically put forth, and its preparation "apparentlygave rise" to the series; and it was the only one which received theapproval of all immediately concerned in the movement. "The carebestowed on it, " he says, "probably exceeds that which any theologicalpublication in the English communion received for a long time;" andfurther, it shows "that the foundation of the movement with which Mr. Rose was connected, was laid with all the care and circumspection thatreason could well suggest. " It appears to have had a circulation, butthere is no reason to think that it had any considerable influence, oneway or other, on opinion in the Church. When it was referred to inafter-years by Mr. Perceval in his own vindication, it was almostforgotten. More interesting, if not more important, Tracts had thrown itinto the shade. 

FOOTNOTES:

[37] _Apol. _ p. 100. 

[38] Palmer, _Narrative_, 1843 (republished 1883), pp. 5, 18. 

[39] Palmer (1883), pp. 40, 43, "June 1833, when he joined us atOxford. "

[40] See Palmer's account (1883), pp. 45-47, and (1843), pp. 6, 7. 

[41] "Mr. Rose . .. Was the one commanding figure and very lovable man, that the frightened and discomfited Church people were now rallyinground. Few people have left so distinct an impression of themselves asthis gentleman. For many years after, when he was no more, and Newmanhad left Rose's standpoint far behind, he could never speak of him orthink of him without renewed tenderness" (Mr. T. Mozley, _Reminiscences_, i. 308). 

In November 1838, shortly before Mr. Rose's death, Mr. Newman haddedicated a volume of sermons to him--"who, when hearts were failing, bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to ourtrue mother" (_Parochial Sermons_, vol. Iv. )

[42] _Narrative of Events connected with the publication of Tracts forthe Times_, by W. Palmer (published 1843, republished 1883), pp. 96-100(abridged). 

[43] _Collection of Papers connected with the Theological Movement of_1833, by A. P. Perceval (1842), p. 25. 

[44] Palmer's _Narrative_ (1833), p. 101

[45] _Collection of Papers_, p. 12. 

[46] "That portentous birth of time, the _Tracts for theTimes. _"--Mozley, _Remin_, i. 311. 

[47] Froude, _Remains_, i. 265. 

CHAPTER VII

THE TRACTARIANS

Thus had been started--hurriedly perhaps, yet not without counting thecost--a great enterprise, which had for its object to rouse the Churchfrom its lethargy, and to strengthen and purify religion, by making itdeeper and more real; and they who had put their hands to the ploughwere not to look back any more. It was not a popular appeal; itaddressed itself not to the many but to the few; it sought to inspireand to teach the teachers. There was no thought as yet of acting on themiddle classes, or on the ignorance and wretchedness of the great towns, though Newman had laid down that the Church must rest on the people, andFroude looked forward to colleges of unmarried priests as the true wayto evangelise the crowds. There was no display about this attempt, noeloquence, nothing attractive in the way of original speculation orsentimental interest. It was suspicious, perhaps too suspicious, of theexcitement and want of soberness, almost inevitable in strong appeals tothe masses of mankind. It brought no new doctrine, but professed to goback to what was obvious and old-fashioned and commonplace. It taughtpeople to think less of preaching than of what in an age of excitementwere invidiously called forms--of the sacraments and services of theChurch. It discouraged, even to the verge of an intended dryness, allthat was showy, all that in thought or expression or manner it condemnedunder the name of "flash. " It laid stress on the exercise of an innerand unseen self-discipline, and the cultivation of the less interestingvirtues of industry, humility, self-distrust, and obedience. If from itswriters proceeded works which had impressed people--a volume like the_Christian Year_, poems original in their force and their tenderness, like some of those in the _Lyra Apostolica_, sermons which arrested thehearers by their keenness and pathetic undertone--the force of all thiswas not the result of literary ambition and effort, but the reflexion, unconscious, unsought, of thought and feeling that could not otherwiseexpress itself, and that was thrown into moulds shaped by habitualrefinement and cultivated taste. It was from the first a movement fromwhich, as much by instinct and temper as by deliberate intention, self-seeking in all its forms was excluded. Those whom it influencedlooked not for great things for themselves, nor thought of making a markin the world. 

The first year after the Hadleigh meeting (1834) passed uneventfully. The various addresses in which Mr. Palmer was interested, the electionand installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor, the enthusiasmand hopes called forth by the occasion, were public and prominentmatters. The Tracts were steadily swelling in number; the busydistribution of them had ceased, and they had begun to excite interestand give rise to questions. Mr. Palmer, who had never liked the Tracts, became more uneasy; yet he did not altogether refuse to contribute tothem. Others gave their help, among them Mr. Perceval, Froude, the twoKebles, and Mr. Newman's friend, a layman, Mr. J. Bowden; some of theyounger scholars furnished translations from the Fathers; but the bulkand most forcible of the Tracts were still the work of Mr. Newman. Butthe Tracts were not the most powerful instruments in drawing sympathy tothe movement. None but those who remember them can adequately estimatethe effect of Mr. Newman's four o'clock sermons at St. Mary's. [48] Theworld knows them, has heard a great deal about them, has passed itsvarious judgments on them. But it hardly realises that without thosesermons the movement might never have gone on, certainly would neverhave been what it was. Even people who heard them continually, and feltthem to be different from any other sermons, hardly estimated their realpower, or knew at the time the influence which the sermons were havingupon them. Plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English that was onlypure and lucid, free from any faults of taste, strong in theirflexibility and perfect command both of language and thought, they werethe expression of a piercing and large insight into character andconscience and motives, of a sympathy at once most tender and most sternwith the tempted and the wavering, of an absolute and burning faith inGod and His counsels, in His love, in His judgments, in the awful gloryof His generosity and His magnificence. They made men think of thethings which the preacher spoke of, and not of the sermon or thepreacher. Since 1828 this preaching had been going on at St. Mary's, growing in purpose and directness as the years went on, though it couldhardly be more intense than in some of its earliest examples. While menwere reading and talking about the Tracts, they were hearing thesermons; and in the sermons they heard the living meaning, and reason, and bearing of the Tracts, their ethical affinities, their moralstandard. The sermons created a moral atmosphere, in which men judgedthe questions in debate. It was no dry theological correctness andcompleteness which were sought for. No love of privilege, no formalhierarchical claims, urged on the writers. What they thought in danger, what they aspired to revive and save, was the very life of religion, thetruth and substance of all that makes it the hope of human society. 

But indeed, by this time, out of the little company of friends which acommon danger and a common loyalty to the Church had brought together, one Mr. Newman, had drawn ahead, and was now in the front. Unsoughtfor, as the _Apologia_ makes so clear--unsought for, as the contemporaryletters of observing friends attest--unsought for, as the whole tenor ofhis life has proved--the position of leader in a great crisis came tohim, because it must come. He was not unconscious that, as he had feltin his sickness in Sicily, he "had a work to do. " But there was shynessand self-distrust in his nature as well as energy; and it was the forceof genius, and a lofty character, and the statesman's eye, taking in andjudging accurately the whole of a complicated scene, which conferred thegifts, and imposed inevitably and without dispute the obligations andresponsibilities of leadership. Dr. Pusey of course was a friend ofgreat account, but he was as yet in the background, a venerated andrather awful person, from his position not mixing in the easyintercourse of common-room life, but to be consulted on emergencies. Round Mr. Newman gathered, with a curious mixture of freedom, devotion, and awe--for, with unlimited power of sympathy, he was exacting and evenaustere in his friendships--the best men of his college, eitherFellows--R. Wilberforce, Thomas Mozley, Frederic Rogers, J. F. Christie;or old pupils--Henry Wilberforce, R. F. Wilson, William Froude, RobertWilliams, S. F. Wood, James Bliss, James Mozley; and in addition someoutsiders--Woodgate of St. John's, Isaac Williams and Copeland, of hisold College, Trinity. These, members of his intimate circle, were boundto him not merely by enthusiastic admiration and confidence, but by atenderness of affection, a mixture of the gratitude and reliance ofdiscipleship with the warm love of friendship, of which one has to goback far for examples, and which has had nothing like it in our days atOxford. And Newman was making his mark as a writer. The _Arians_, thoughan imperfect book, was one which, for originality and subtlety ofthought, was something very unlike the usual theological writing of theday. There was no doubt of his power, and his mind was brimming overwith ideas on the great questions which were rising into view. It wasclear to all who know him that he could speak on them as no one elsecould. 

Towards the end of 1834, and in the course of 1835, an event happenedwhich had a great and decisive influence on the character and fortunesof the movement. This was the accession to it of Dr. Pusey. He hadlooked favourably on it from the first, partly from his friendship withMr. Newman, partly from the workings of his own mind. But he had nothingto do with the starting of it, except that he early contributed anelaborate paper on "Fasting. " The Oxford branch of the movement, asdistinguished from that which Mr. Palmer represented, consisted up to1834 almost exclusively of junior men, personal friends of Mr. Newman, and most of them Oriel men. Mr. Newman's deep convictions, his fieryenthusiasm, had given the Tracts their first stamp and impress, and hadsent them flying over the country among the clergy on his ownresponsibility. They answered their purpose. They led to widespread andsometimes deep searchings of heart; to some they seemed to speak forthwhat had been long dormant within them, what their minds hadunconsciously and vaguely thought and longed for; to some they seemed achallenge pregnant with danger. But still they were but an outburst ofindividual feeling and zeal, which, if nothing more came of itsfragmentary displays, might blaze and come to nothing. There wasnothing yet which spoke outwardly of the consistency and weight of aserious attempt to influence opinion and to produce a practical andlasting effect on the generation which was passing. Cardinal Newman, inthe _Apologia_, has attributed to Dr. Pusey's unreserved adhesion to thecause which the Tracts represented a great change in regard to theweight and completeness of what was written and done. "Dr. Pusey, " hewrites, "gave us at once a position and a name. Without him we shouldhave had no chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making anyserious resistance to the liberal aggression. But Dr. Pusey was aProfessor and Canon of Christ Church; he had a vast influence inconsequence of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of hischarities, his Professorship, his family connexions, and his easyrelations with the University authorities. He was to the movement allthat Mr. Rose might have been, with that indispensable addition, whichwas wanting to Mr. Rose, the intimate friendship and the familiar dailysociety of the persons who had commenced it. And he had that specialclaim on their attachment which lies in the living presence of afaithful and loyal affectionateness. There was henceforth a man whocould be the head and centre of the zealous people in every part of thecountry who were adopting the new opinions; and not only so, but therewas one who furnished the movement with a front to the world, and gainedfor it a recognition from other parties in the University. "[49]

This is not too much to say of the effect of Dr. Pusey's adhesion. Itgave the movement a second head, in close sympathy with its originalleader, but in many ways very different from him. Dr. Pusey became, asit were, its official chief in the eyes of the world. He became also, ina remarkable degree, a guarantee for its stability and steadiness: aguarantee that its chiefs knew what they were about, and meant nothingbut what was for the benefit of the English Church. "He was, " we read inthe _Apologia_, "a man of large designs; he had a hopeful, sanguinemind; he had no fear of others; he was haunted by no intellectualperplexities. .. . If confidence in his position is (as it is) a firstessential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it. " An inflexiblepatience, a serene composure, a meek, resolute self-possession, was thehabit of his mind, and never deserted him in the most trying days. Henever for an instant, as the paragraph witnesses, wavered or doubtedabout the position of the English Church. 

He was eminently, as his friend justly observes, "a man of largedesigns. " It is doubtless true, as the _Apologia_ goes on to say, thatit was due to the place which he now took in the movement that greatchanges were made in the form and character of the Tracts. To Dr. Pusey's mind, accustomed to large and exhaustive theological reading, they wanted fulness, completeness, the importance given by carefularrangement and abundant knowledge. It was not for nothing that he hadpassed an apprenticeship among the divines of Germany, and been thefriend and correspondent of Tholuck, Schleiermacher, Ewald, and Sack. Heknew the meaning of real learning. In controversy it was hissledge-hammer and battle-mace, and he had the strong and sinewy hand touse it with effect. He observed that when attention had been roused tothe ancient doctrines of the Church by the startling and peremptorylanguage of the earlier Tracts, fairness and justice demanded that thesedoctrines should be fully and carefully explained and defended againstmisrepresentation and mistake. Forgetfulness and ignorance had thrownthese doctrines so completely into the shade that, identified as theywere with the best English divinity, they now wore the air of amazingnovelties; and it was only due to honest inquirers to satisfy them withsolid and adequate proof. "Dr. Pusey's influence was felt at once. Hesaw that there ought to be more sobriety, more gravity, more carefulpains, more sense of responsibility in the Tracts and in the wholemovement. " At the end of 1835 Dr. Pusey gave an example of what hemeant. In place of the "short and incomplete papers, " such as theearlier Tracts had been, Nos. 67, 68, and 69 formed the three parts of aclosely-printed pamphlet of more than 300 pages. [50] It was a treatiseon Baptism, perhaps the most elaborate that has yet appeared in theEnglish language. "It is to be regarded, " says the advertisement to thesecond volume of the Tracts, "not as an inquiry into a single orisolated doctrine, but as a delineation and serious examination of amodern system of theology, of extensive popularity and greatspeciousness, in its elementary and characteristic principles. " TheTract on Baptism was like the advance of a battery of heavy artillery ona field where the battle has been hitherto carried on by skirmishing andmusketry. It altered the look of things and the condition of thefighting. After No. 67 the earlier form of the Tracts appeared no more. Except two or three reprints from writers like Bishop Wilson, the Tractsfrom No. 70 to No. 90 were either grave and carefully worked out essayson some question arising out of the discussions of the time, or elsethose ponderous _catenae_ of patristic or Anglican divinity, by whichthe historical continuity and Church authority of various points ofdoctrine were established. 

Dr. Pusey was indeed a man of "large designs. " The vision rose beforehim of a revived and instructed Church, earnest in purpose and strict inlife, and of a great Christian University roused and quickened to asense of its powers and responsibilities. He thought of the enormousadvantages offered by its magnificent foundations for serious study andthe production of works for which time and deep learning and continuouslabour were essential. Such works, in the hands of single-mindedstudents, living lives of simplicity and hard toil, had in the case ofthe Portroyalists, the Oratorians, and above all, the Benedictines ofSt. Maur, splendidly redeemed the Church of France, in otherwise evildays, from the reproach of idleness and self-indulgence. He found underhis hand men who had in them something of the making of students; and hehoped to see college fellowships filled more and more by such men, andthe life of a college fellow more and more recognised as that of a manto whom learning, and especially sacred learning, was his call andsufficient object, as pastoral or educational work might be the call ofothers. Where fellowships were not to be had, he encouraged such men tostay up in Oxford; he took them into his own house; later, he tried akind of hall to receive them. And by way of beginning at once, andgiving them something to do, he planned on a large scale a series oftranslations and also editions of the Fathers. It was announced, with anelaborate prospectus, in 1836, under the title, in conformity with theusage of the time, which had _Libraries of Useful Knowledge, etc. _, of a_Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church anterior to the Divisionof the East and West_, under the editorship of Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman. It was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, andhad a considerable number of Bishops among its subscribers. Down to avery late date, the _Library of the Fathers_, in which Charles Marriottcame to take a leading part, was a matter of much concern to Dr. Pusey. And to bring men together, and to interest them in theological subjects, he had evening meetings at his own house, where papers were read anddiscussed. "Some persons, " writes a gossiping chronicler of thetime, [51] "thought that these meetings were liable to the statute, _Deconventiculis illicitis reprimendis_. " Some important papers were theresult of these meetings; but the meetings themselves were irresistiblysleepy, and in time they were discontinued. But indefatigable andpowerful in all these beginnings Dr. Pusey stirred men to activity andsaw great ground of hope. He was prepared for opposition, but he hadboundless reliance on his friends and his cause. His forecast of thefuture, of great days in store for the Church of England, was, notunreasonably, one of great promise. Ten years might work wonders. Thelast fear that occurred to him was that within ten years a hopelessrift, not of affection but of conviction, would have run through thatcompany of friends, and parted irrevocably their course and work inlife. 

FOOTNOTES:

[48] The subjoined extracts record the impression made by Mr. Newman'spreaching on contemporaries well qualified to judge, and standingrespectively in very different relations to the movement. This is thejudgment of a very close observer, and very independent critic, JamesMozley. In an article in the _Christian Remembrancer_, January 1846 (p. 169), after speaking of the obvious reasons of Mr. Newman'sinfluence, he proceeds:--

 We inquire further, and we find that this influence has been of a peculiarly ethical and inward kind; that it has touched the deepest part of our minds, and that the great work on which it has been founded is a practical, religious one--his Sermons. We speak not from our own fixed impression, however deeply felt, but from what we have heard and observed everywhere, from the natural, incidental, unconscious remarks dropped from persons' mouths, and evidently showing what they thought and felt. For ourselves, we must say, one of Mr. Newman's sermons is to us a marvellous production. It has perfect power, and perfect nature; but the latter it is which makes it so great. A sermon of Mr. Newman's enters into all our feelings, ideas, modes of viewing things. He wonderfully realises a state of mind, enters into a difficulty, a temptation, a disappointment, a grief; he goes into the different turns and incidental, unconscious symptoms of a case, with notions which come into the head and go out again, and are forgotten, till some chance recalls them. .. . To take the first instance that happens to occur to us . .. We have often been struck by the keen way in which he enters into a regular tradesman's vice--avarice, fortune-getting, amassing capital, and so on. This is not a temper to which we can imagine Mr. Newman ever having felt in his own mind even the temptation; but he understands it, and the temptation to it, as perfectly as any merchant could. No man of business could express it more naturally, more pungently, more _ex animo_. .. . So with the view that worldly men take of religion, in a certain sense, he quite enters into it, and the world's point of view: he sees, with a regular worldly man's eye, religion vanishing into nothing, and becoming an unreality, while the visible system of life and facts, politics and society, gets more and more solid and grows upon him. The whole influence of the world on the imagination; the weight of example; the force of repetition; the way in which maxims, rules, sentiments, by being simply sounded in the ear from day to day, seem to prove themselves, and make themselves believed by being often heard, --every part of the easy, natural, passive process by which a man becomes a man of the world is entered into, as if the preacher were going to justify or excuse him, rather than condemn him. Nay, he enters deeply into what even scepticism has to say for itself; he puts himself into the infidel's state of mind, in which the world, as a great fact, seems to give the lie to all religions, converting them into phenomena which counterbalance and negative each other, and he goes down into that lowest abyss and bottom of things, at which the intellect undercuts spiritual truth altogether. He enters into the ordinary common states of mind just in the same way. He is most consoling, most sympathetic. He sets before persons their own feelings with such truth of detail, such natural expressive touches, that they seem not to be ordinary states of mind which everybody has, but very peculiar ones; for he and the reader seem to be the only two persons in the world that have them in common. Here is the point. Persons look into Mr. Newman's sermons and see their own thoughts in them. This is, after all, what as much as anything gives a book hold upon minds. .. . Wonderful pathetic power, that can so intimately, so subtilely and kindly, deal with the soul!--and wonderful soul that can be so dealt with. 

Compare with this the judgment pronounced by one of quite a differentschool, the late Principal Shairp:--

 Both Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble at that time were quite second in importance to Mr. Newman. The centre from which his power went forth was the pulpit of St. Mary's, with those wonderful afternoon sermons. Sunday after Sunday, year by year, they went on, each continuing and deepening the impression produced by the last. As the hour interfered with the dinner-hour of the Colleges, most men preferred a warm dinner without Newman's sermon to a cold one with it; so the audience was not crowded--the large church little more than half filled. The service was very simple, no pomp, no ritualism; for it was characteristic of the leading men of the movement that they left these things to the weaker brethren. Their thoughts, at all events, were set on great questions which touched the heart of unseen things. About the service, the most remarkable thing was the beauty, the silver intonation of Mr. Newman's voice as he read the lessons. .. . When he began to preach, a stranger was not likely to be much struck. Here was no vehemence, no declamation, no show of elaborated argument, so that one who came prepared to hear "a great intellectual effort" was almost sure to go away disappointed. Indeed, we believe that if he had preached one of his St. Mary's sermons before a Scotch town congregation, they would have thought the preacher a "silly body". .. . Those who never heard him might fancy that his sermons would generally be about apostolical succession, or rights of the Church, or against Dissenters. Nothing of the kind. You might hear him preach for weeks without an allusion to these things. What there was of High Church teaching was implied rather than enforced. The local, the temporary, and the modern were ennobled by the presence of the Catholic truth belonging to all ages that pervaded the whole. His power showed itself chiefly in the new and unlooked-for way in which he touched into life old truths, moral or spiritual, which all Christians acknowledge, but most have ceased to feel--when he spoke of "unreal words, " of the "individuality of the soul, " of the "invisible world, " of a "particular Providence, " or again, of the "ventures of faith, " "warfare the condition of victory, " "the Cross of Christ the measure of the world, " "the Church a Home for the lonely. " As he spoke, how the old truth became new; how it came home with a meaning never felt before! He laid his finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some inner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things about himself he had never known till then. Subtlest truths, which it would have taken philosophers pages of circumlocution and big words to state, were dropt out by the way in a sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon. What delicacy of style, yet what strength! how simple, yet how suggestive! how homely, yet how refined! how penetrating, yet how tender-hearted! If now and then there was a forlorn undertone which at the time seemed inexplicable, you might be perplexed at the drift of what he said, but you felt all the more drawn to the speaker. . .. After hearing these sermons you might come away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church system; but you would be harder than most men, if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul. --_John Keble, _ by J. C. Shairp, Professor of Humanity, St. Andrews (1866), pp. 12-17. 

I venture to add the judgment of another contemporary, on the effect ofthis preaching, from the _Reminiscences_ of Sir F. Doyle, p. 145:--

 That great man's extraordinary genius drew all those within his sphere, like a magnet, to attach themselves to him and his doctrines. Nay, before he became a Romanist, what we may call his mesmeric influence acted not only on his Tractarian adherents, but even in some degree on outsiders like myself. Whenever I was at Oxford, I used to go regularly on Sunday afternoons to listen to his sermon at St. Mary's, and I have never heard such preaching since. I do not know whether it is a mere fancy of mine, or whether those who know him better will accept and endorse my belief, that one element of his wonderful power showed itself after this fashion. He always began as if he had determined to set forth his idea of the truth in the plainest and simplest language--language, as men say, "intelligible to the meanest understanding. " But his ardent zeal and fine poetical imagination were not thus to be controlled. As I hung upon his words, it seemed to me as if I could trace behind his will, and pressing, so to speak, against it, a rush of thoughts, of feelings which he kept struggling to hold back, but in the end they were generally too strong for him, and poured themselves out in a torrent of eloquence all the more impetuous from having been so long repressed. The effect of these outbursts was irresistible, and carried his hearers beyond themselves at once. Even when his efforts of self-restraint were more successful, those very efforts gave a life and colour to his style which riveted the attention of all within the reach of his voice. Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his _History of Our Own Times_, says of him: "In all the arts that make a great preacher or orator, Cardinal Newman was deficient. His manner was constrained and ungraceful, and even awkward; his voice was thin and weak, his bearing was not at first impressive in any way--a gaunt emaciated figure, a sharp eagle face, and a cold meditative eye, rather repelled than attracted those who saw him for the first time. " I do not think Mr. McCarthy's phrases very happily chosen to convey his meaning. Surely a gaunt emaciated frame and a sharp eagle face are the very characteristics which we should picture to ourselves as belonging to Peter the Hermit, or Scott's Ephraim Macbriar in _Old Mortality_. However unimpressive the look of an eagle may be in Mr. McCarthy's opinion, I do not agree with him about Dr. Newman. 

 When I knew him at Oxford, these somewhat disparaging remarks would not have been applicable. His manner, it is true, may have been self-repressed, constrained it was not. His bearing was neither awkward nor ungraceful; it was simply quiet and calm, because under strict control; but beneath that calmness, intense feeling, I think, was obvious to those who had any instinct of sympathy with him. But if Mr. McCarthy's acquaintance with him only began when he took office in an Irish Catholic university, I can quite understand that (flexibility not being one of his special gifts) he may have failed now and again to bring himself into perfect harmony with an Irish audience. He was probably too much of a typical Englishman for his place; nevertheless Mr. McCarthy, though he does not seem to have admired him in the pulpit, is fully sensible of his intellectual powers and general eminence. 

 Dr. Pusey, who used every now and then to take Newman's duties at St. Mary's, was to me a much less interesting person. [A learned man, no doubt, but dull and tedious as a preacher. ] Certainly, in spite of the name Puseyism having been given to the Oxford attempt at a new Catholic departure, he was not the Columbus of that voyage of discovery undertaken to find a safer haven for the Church of England. I may, however, be more or less unjust to him, as I owe him a sort of grudge. His discourses were not only less attractive than those of Dr. Newman, but always much longer, and the result of this was that the learned Canon of Christ Church generally made me late for dinner at my College, a calamity never inflicted on his All Souls' hearers by the terser and swifter fellow of Oriel whom he was replacing. 

[49] _Apologia_, p 136. 

[50] It swelled in the second edition to 400 pages [in spite of the factthat in that edition the historical range of the treatise was greatlyreduced]. 

[51] _Recollections of Oxford_, by G. V. Cox, p. 278. 

CHAPTER VIII

SUBSCRIPTION AT MATRICULATION AND ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS

"Depend upon it, " an earnest High Churchman of the Joshua Watson typehad said to one of Mr. Newman's friends, who was a link between the oldChurchmanship and the new--"depend upon it, the day will come when thosegreat doctrines" connected with the Church, "now buried, will be broughtout to the light of the day, and then the effect will be quitefearful. "[52] With the publication of the _Tracts for the Times_, andthe excitement caused by them, the day had come. 

Their unflinching and severe proclamation of Church principles andChurch doctrines coincided with a state of feeling and opinion in thecountry, in which two very different tendencies might be observed. Theyfell on the public mind just when one of these tendencies would helpthem, and the other be fiercely hostile. On the one hand, the issue ofthe political controversy with the Roman Catholics, their triumph allalong the line, and the now scarcely disguised contempt shown by theirpolitical representatives for the pledges and explanations on whichtheir relief was supposed to have been conceded, had left the publicmind sore, angry, and suspicious. Orthodox and Evangelicals were alikealarmed and indignant; and the Evangelicals, always doctrinally jealousof Popery, and of anything "unsound" in that direction, had been rousedto increased irritation by the proceedings of the Reformation Society, which had made it its business to hold meetings and discussions all overthe country, where fervid and sometimes eloquent and able Irishmen, likeMr. E. Tottenham, afterwards of Laura Chapel, Bath, had argued anddeclaimed, with Roman text-books in hand, on such questions as the Rightof Private Judgment, the Rule of Faith, and the articles of theTridentine Creed--not always with the effect which they intended onthose who heard them, with whom their arguments, and those which theyelicited from their opponents, sometimes left behind uncomfortablemisgivings, and questions even more serious than the controversy itself. On the other hand, in quarters quite unconnected with the recognisedreligious schools, interest had been independently and strongly awakenedin the minds of theologians and philosophical thinkers, in regard to theidea, history, and relations to society of the Christian Church. InIreland, a recluse, who was the centre of a small knot of earnestfriends, a man of deep piety and great freedom and originality of mind, Mr. Alexander Knox, had been led, partly, it may be, by his intimacywith John Wesley, to think out for himself the character and trueconstitution of the Church, and the nature of the doctrines which it wascommissioned to teach. In England, another recluse, of splendid geniusand wayward humour, had dealt in his own way, with far-reaching insight, with vast reading, and often with impressive eloquence, with the samesubject; and his profound sympathy and faith had been shared andreflected by a great poet. What Coleridge and Wordsworth had put in theforefront of their speculations and poetry, as the object of theirprofoundest interest, and of their highest hopes for mankind, might, ofcourse, fail to appear in the same light to others; but it could notfail, in those days at least, to attract attention, as a matter of graveand well-founded importance. Coleridge's theories of the Church were hisown, and were very wide of theories recognised by any of those who hadto deal practically with the question, and who were influenced, in oneway or another, by the traditional doctrines of theologians. ButColeridge had lifted the subject to a very high level. He had taken thesimple but all-important step of viewing the Church in its spiritualcharacter as first and foremost and above all things essentially areligious society of divine institution, not dependent on the creationor will of man, or on the privileges and honours which man might thinkfit to assign to it; and he had undoubtedly familiarised the minds ofmany with this way of regarding it, however imperfect, or cloudy, orunpractical they might find the development of his ideas, and hisdeductions from them. And in Oxford the questions which had stirred thefriends at Hadleigh had stirred others also, and had waked up variousresponses. Whately's acute mind had not missed these questions, and hadgiven original if insufficient answers to them. Blanco White knew onlytoo well their bearing and importance, and had laboured, not withoutsuccess, to leave behind him his own impress on the way in which theyshould be dealt with. Dr. Hampden, the man in Oxford best acquaintedwith Aristotle's works and with the scholastic philosophy, had thrownChristian doctrines into a philosophical calculus which seemed to leavethem little better than the inventions of men. On the other hand, abrilliant scholar, whose after-career was strangely full of greatsuccesses and deplorable disasters, William Sewell of Exeter College, had opened, in a way new to Oxford, the wealth and magnificence ofPlato; and his thoughts had been dazzled by seeming to find in thetruths and facts of the Christian Church the counterpart and realisationof the grandest of Plato's imaginations. The subjects treated with suchdogmatic severity and such impetuous earnestness in the Tracts were, inone shape or another, in all men's minds, when these Tracts broke on theUniversity and English society with their peremptory call to men "totake their side. "

There was just a moment of surprise and uncertainty--uncertainty as towhat the Tracts meant; whether they were to be a new weapon against theenemies of the Church, or were simply extravagant and preposterousnovelties--just a certain perplexity and hesitation at their conflictingaspects; on the one hand, the known and high character of the writers, their evident determination and confidence in their cause, theattraction of their religious warmth and unselfishness and nobleness, the dim consciousness that much that they said was undeniable; and onthe other hand, the apparent wildness and recklessness of their words:and then public opinion began steadily to take its "ply, " and to beagreed in condemning them. It soon went farther, and became vehement inreprobating them as scandalous and dangerous publications. They incensedthe Evangelicals by their alleged Romanism, and their unsound viewsabout justification, good works, and the sacraments; they angered the"two-bottle orthodox" by their asceticism--the steady men, by theiraudacity and strong words--the liberals, by their dogmatic severity;their seriously practical bearing was early disclosed in a tract on"Fasting. " But while they repelled strongly, they attracted strongly;they touched many consciences, they won many hearts, they opened newthoughts and hopes to many minds. One of the mischiefs of the Tracts, and of those sermons at St. Mary's which were the commentaries on them, was that so many people seemed to like them and to be struck by them. The gathering storm muttered and growled for some time at a distance, and men seemed to be taking time to make up their minds; but it began tolour from early days, till after various threatenings it broke in afurious article in the _Edinburgh_, by Dr. Arnold, on the "OxfordMalignants"; and the Tract-writers and their friends became, what theylong continued to be, the most unpopular and suspected body of men inthe Church, whom everybody was at liberty to insult, both as dishonestand absurd, of whom nothing was too cruel to say, nothing too ridiculousto believe. It is only equitable to take into account the unpreparedstate of the public mind, the surprise and novelty of even thecommonest things when put in a new light, the prejudices which theTract-writers were thought wantonly to offend and defy, their militantand uncompromising attitude, where principles were at stake. Butconsidering what these men were known to be in character and life, whatwas the emergency and what were the pressing motives which called foraction, and what is thought of them now that their course is run, it isstrange indeed to remember who they were, to whom the courtesies ofcontroversy were denied, not only by the vulgar herd of pamphleteers, but by men of ability and position, some of whom had been their familiarfriends. Of course a nickname was soon found for them: the word"Tractarian" was invented, and Archbishop Whately thought it worthwhile, but not successfully, to improve it into "Tractites. " ArchbishopWhately, always ingenious, appears to have suspected that the real butconcealed object of the movement was to propagate a secret infidelity;they were "Children of the Mist, " or "Veiled Prophets";[53] and heseriously suggested to a friend who was writing against it, --"thisrapidly spreading pestilence, "--to parallel it, in its characteristicsand modes of working, with Indian Thuggee. [54]

But these things were of gradual growth. Towards the end of 1834 aquestion appeared in Oxford interesting to numbers besides Mr. Newmanand his friends, which was to lead to momentous consequences. The old, crude ideas of change in the Church had come to appear, even to theiradvocates, for the present impracticable, and there was no more talk fora long time of schemes which had been in favour two years before. Theground was changed, and a point was now brought forward on the Liberalside, for which a good deal might be plausibly said. This was therequirement of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles from young menat matriculation; and a strong pamphlet advocating its abolition, withthe express purpose of admitting Dissenters, was published by Dr. Hampden, the Bampton Lecturer of two years before. 

Oxford had always been one of the great schools of the Church. Itstraditions, its tone, its customs, its rules, all expressed or presumedthe closest attachment to that way of religion which was speciallyidentified with the Church, in its doctrinal and historical aspect. Oxford was emphatically definite, dogmatic, orthodox, compared even withCambridge, which had largely favoured the Evangelical school, and hadleanings to Liberalism. Oxford, unlike Cambridge, gave notice of itsattitude by requiring every one who matriculated to subscribe theThirty-nine Articles: the theory of its Tutorial system, of its lecturesand examinations, implied what of late years in the better colleges, though certainly not everywhere, had been realised in fact--aconsiderable amount of religious and theological teaching. And whatevermight have been said originally of the lay character of the University, the colleges, which had become coextensive with the University, were forthe most part, in the intention of their founders, meant to educate andsupport theological students on their foundations for the service of theChurch. It became in time the fashion to call them lay institutions:legally they may have been so, but judged by their statutes, they werenearly all of them as ecclesiastical as the Chapter of a Cathedral. AndOxford was the fulcrum from which the theological revival hoped to movethe Church. It was therefore a shock and a challenge of no light kind, when not merely the proposal was made to abolish the matriculationsubscription with the express object of attracting Dissenters, and toget Parliament to force the change on the University if the Universityresisted, but the proposal itself was vindicated and enforced in apamphlet by Dr. Hampden by a definite and precise theory which stoppednot short of the position that all creeds and formularies--everythingwhich represented the authority of the teaching Church--howeverincidentally and temporarily useful, were in their own nature theinventions of a mistaken and corrupt philosophy, and invasions ofChristian liberty. This was cutting deep with a vengeance, though theauthor of the theory seemed alone unable to see it. It went to the rootof the whole mutter; and if Dr. Hampden was right, there was neitherChurch nor doctrine worth contending for, except as men contend aboutthe Newtonian or the undulatory theory of light. 

No one ought now to affect, as some people used to affect at the time, that the question was of secondary importance, and turned mainly on thespecial fitness of the Thirty-nine Articles to be offered for the proofof a young man's belief. It was a much more critical question. It wasreally, however disguised, the question, asked then for the first time, and since finally decided, whether Oxford was to continue to be aschool of the Church of England; and it also involved the widerquestion, what part belief in definite religion should have in highereducation. It is speciously said that you have no right to forestall ayoung man's inquiries and convictions by imposing on him in his earlyyears opinions which to him become prejudices. And if the worldconsisted simply of individuals, entirely insulated and self-sufficing;if men could be taught anything whatever, without presuming what isbelieved by those who teach them; and if the attempt to excludereligious prejudice did not necessarily, by the mere force of theattempt, involve the creation of anti-religious prejudice, thesereasoners, who try in vain to get out of the conditions which hem themin, might have more to say for themselves. To the men who had made suchan effort to restore a living confidence in the Church, the demandimplied giving up all that they had done and all that they hoped for. Itwas not the time for yielding even a clumsy proof of the religiouscharacter of the University. And the beginning of a long and doubtfulwar was inevitable. 

A war of pamphlets ensued. By the one side the distinction was stronglyinsisted on between mere instruction and education, the distinctlyreligious character of the University education was not perhapsoverstated in its theory, but portrayed in stronger colours than waseverywhere the fact; and assertions were made, which sound strange intheir boldness now, of the independent and constitutional right toself-government in the great University corporations. By the other side, the ordinary arguments were used, about the injustice and mischief ofexclusion, and the hurtfulness of tests, especially such tests as theArticles applied to young and ignorant men. Two pamphlets had more thana passing interest: one, by a then unknown writer who signed himself_Rusticus_, and whose name was Mr. F. D. Maurice, defended subscriptionon the ground that the Articles were signed, not as tests andconfessions of faith, but as "conditions of thought, " the expresslystated conditions, such as there must be in all teaching, under whichthe learners are willing to learn and the teacher to teach: and hedeveloped his view at great length, with great wealth of originalthought and illustration and much eloquence, but with that fatal want ofclearness which, as so often afterwards, came from his struggles toembrace in one large view what appeared opposite aspects of a difficultsubject. The other was the pamphlet, already referred to, by Dr. Hampden: and of which the importance arose, not from its conclusions, but from its reasons. Its ground was the distinction which he had arguedout at great length in his Bampton Lectures--the distinction between the"Divine facts" of revelation, and all human interpretations of them andinferences from them. "Divine facts, " he maintained, were of coursebinding on all Christians, and in matter of fact were accepted by allwho called themselves Christians, including Unitarians. Humaninterpretations and inferences--and all Church formularies weresuch--were binding on no one but those who had reason to think themtrue; and therefore least of all on undergraduates who could not haveexamined them. The distinction, when first put forward, seemed to meanmuch; at a later time it was explained to mean very little. But atpresent its value as a ground of argument against the old system of theUniversity was thought much of by its author and his friends. A warningnote was at once given that its significance was perceived andappreciated. Mr. Newman, in acknowledging a presentation copy, addedwords which foreshadowed much that was to follow. "While I respect, " hewrote, "the tone of piety which the pamphlet displays, I dare not trustmyself to put on paper my feelings about the principles contained in it;_tending, as they do, in my opinion, to make ship-wreck of Christianfaith_. I also lament that, by its appearance, the first step has beentaken towards interrupting that peace and mutual good understandingwhich has prevailed so long in this place, and which, if once seriouslydisturbed, will be succeeded by discussions the more intractable, because justified in the minds of those who resist innovation by afeeling of imperative duty. " "Since that time, " he goes on in the_Apologia_, where he quotes this letter, "Phaeton has got into thechariot of the sun. "[55] But they were early days then; and when theHeads of Houses, who the year before had joined with the great body ofthe University in a declaration against the threatened legislation, werepersuaded to propose to the Oxford Convocation the abolition ofsubscription at matriculation in May 1835, this proposal was rejected bya majority of five to one. 

This large majority was a genuine expression of the sense of theUniversity. It was not specially a "Tractarian" success, though most ofthe arguments which contributed to it came from men who more or lesssympathised with the effort to make a vigorous fight for the Church andits teaching; and it showed that they who had made the effort hadtouched springs of thought and feeling, and awakened new hopes andinterest in those around them, in Oxford, and in the country. But graverevents were at hand. Towards the end of the year (1835), Dr. Burton, theRegius Professor of Divinity, suddenly died, still a young man. And LordMelbourne was induced to appoint as his successor, and as the head ofthe theological teaching of the University, the writer who had just asecond time seemed to lay the axe to the root of all theology; who hadjust reasserted that he looked upon creeds, and all the documents whichembodied the traditional doctrine and collective thought of the Church, as invested by ignorance and prejudice with an authority which waswithout foundation, and which was misleading and mischievous. 

FOOTNOTES:

[52] The conversation between Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough and Mr. Copelandis given in full in Dr. Pusey's _Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury_(1842), pp. 32-34. 

[53] "Dr. Wilson was mightily pleased with my calling the traditionalsthe 'Children of the Mist. ' The title of 'Veiled Prophets' he thoughttoo severe" (1838), _Life_, ed. 1875, p. 167. Compare "Hints toTranscendentalists for Working Infidel Designs through Tractarianism, " a_jeu d'esprit_ (1840), _ib. _ p. 188. "As for the suspicion of secretinfidelity, I have said no more than I sincerely feel, " _ib. _ p. 181. 

[54] "It would be a curious thing if you (the Provost of Oriel) were tobring into your Bampton Lectures a mention of the Thugs. .. . Observetheir submissive piety, their faith in long-preserved _tradition_, theirregular succession of ordinations to their offices, their _faith_ in thesacramental virtue of the consecrated governor; in short, compare ourreligion with the _Thuggee, putting out of account all thoseconsiderations which the traditionists deprecate the discussion of, _and where is the difference?" (1840), _ib. _ p. 194. 

[55] _Apologia_, pp. 131, 132. 

CHAPTER IX

DR. HAMPDEN

The stage on which what is called the Oxford movement ran through itscourse had a special character of its own, unlike the circumstances inwhich other religious efforts had done their work. The scene ofJansenism had been a great capital, a brilliant society, the precinctsof a court, the cells of a convent, the studies and libraries of thedoctors of the Sorbonne, the council chambers of the Vatican. The sceneof Methodism had been English villages and country towns, the moors ofCornwall, and the collieries of Bristol, at length London fashionablechapels. The scene of this new movement was as like as it could be inour modern world to a Greek _polis_, or an Italian self-centred city ofthe Middle Ages. Oxford stood by itself in its meadows by the rivers, having its relations with all England, but, like its sister atCambridge, living a life of its own, unlike that of any other spot inEngland, with its privileged powers, and exemptions from the generallaw, with its special mode of government and police, its usages andtastes and traditions, and even costume, which the rest of Englandlooked at from the outside, much interested but much puzzled, or knewonly by transient visits. And Oxford was as proud and jealous of its ownways as Athens or Florence; and like them it had its quaint fashions ofpolity; its democratic Convocation and its oligarchy; its social ranks;its discipline, severe in theory and usually lax in fact; itsself-governed bodies and corporations within itself; its faculties andcolleges, like the guilds and "arts" of Florence; its internal rivalriesand discords; its "sets" and factions. Like these, too, it professed aspecial recognition of the supremacy of religion; it claimed to be ahome of worship and religious training, _Dominus illuminatio mea_, aclaim too often falsified in the habit and tempers of life. It was asmall sphere, but it was a conspicuous one; for there was much strongand energetic character, brought out by the aims and conditions ofUniversity life; and though moving in a separate orbit, the influence ofthe famous place over the outside England, though imperfectlyunderstood, was recognised and great. These conditions affected thecharacter of the movement, and of the conflicts which it caused. Oxfordclaimed to be eminently the guardian of "true religion and soundlearning"; and therefore it was eminently the place where religionshould be recalled to its purity and strength, and also the place wherethere ought to be the most vigilant jealousy against the perversions andcorruptions of religion, Oxford was a place where every one knew hisneighbour, and measured him, and was more or less friendly or repellent;where the customs of life brought men together every day and all day, inconverse or discussion; and where every fresh statement or every newstep taken furnished endless material for speculation or debate, incommon rooms or in the afternoon walk. And for this reason, too, feelings were apt to be more keen and intense and personal than in thelarger scenes of life; the man who was disliked or distrusted was soclose to his neighbours that he was more irritating than if he had beenobscured by a crowd; the man who attracted confidence and kindledenthusiasm, whose voice was continually in men's ears, and whose privateconversation and life was something ever new in its sympathy and charm, created in those about him not mere admiration, but passionatefriendship, or unreserved discipleship. And these feelings passed fromindividuals into parties; the small factions of a limited area. Menstruck blows and loved and hated in those days in Oxford as they hardlydid on the wider stage of London politics or general religiouscontroversy. 

The conflicts which for a time turned Oxford into a kind of image ofwhat Florence was in the days of Savonarola, with its nicknames, Puseyites, and Neomaniacs, and High and Dry, counterparts to the_Piagnoni_ and _Arrabbiati_, of the older strife, began around a studentof retired habits, interested more than was usual at Oxford in abstrusephilosophy, and the last person who might be expected to be the occasionof great dissensions in the University. Dr. Hampden was a man who, withno definite intentions of innovating on the received doctrines of theChurch--indeed, as his sermons showed, with a full acceptance ofthem--had taken a very difficult subject for a course of BamptonLectures, without at all fathoming its depth and reach, and had got intoa serious scrape in consequence. Personally he was a man of serious butcold religion, having little sympathy with others, and consequently notable to attract any. His isolation during the whole of his career isremarkable; he attached no one, as Whately or Arnold attached men. Hismind, which was a speculative one, was not one, in its own order, of thefirst class. He had not the grasp nor the subtlety necessary for histask. He had a certain power of statement, but little of co-ordination;he seems not to have had the power of seeing when his ideas were reallyirreconcilable, and he thought that simply by insisting on hisdistinctly orthodox statements he not only balanced, but neutralised, and did away with his distinctly unorthodox ones. He had read a gooddeal of Aristotle and something of the Schoolmen, which probably no oneelse in Oxford had done except Blanco White; and the temptation ofhaving read what no one else knows anything about sometimes leads men tomake an unprofitable use of their special knowledge, which they considertheir monopoly. 

The creed and dogmas of the Christian Church are at least in theirbroad features, not a speculation, but a fact. That not only theApostles' Creed, but the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds, areassumed as facts by the whole of anything that can be called the Church, is as certain as the reception by the same body, and for the same time, of the Scriptures. Not only the Creed, but, up to the sixteenth century, the hierarchy, and not only Creed and hierarchy and Scriptures, but thesacramental idea as expressed in the liturgies, are equally in the sameclass of facts. Of course it is open to any one to question the genuineorigin of any of these great portions of the constitution of the Church;but the Church is so committed to them that he cannot enter on hisdestructive criticism without having to criticise, not one only, but allthese beliefs, and without soon having to face the question whether thewhole idea of the Church, as a real and divinely ordained society, witha definite doctrine and belief, is not a delusion, and whetherChristianity, whatever it is, is addressed solely to each individual, one by one, to make what he can of it. It need hardly be said thatwithin the limits of what the Church is committed to there is room forvery wide differences of opinion; it is also true that these limitshave, in different times of the Church, been illegitimately andmischievously narrowed by prevailing opinions, and by documents andformularies respecting it. But though we may claim not to be bound bythe Augsburg Confession, or by the Lambeth articles, or the Synod ofDort, or the Bull _Unigenitus_, it does not follow that, if there is aChurch at all, there is no more binding authority in the theology of theNicene and Athanasian Creeds. And it is the province of the divine whobelieves in a Church at all, and in its office to be the teacher andwitness of religious truth, to distinguish between the infinitelyvarying degrees of authority with which professed representations ofportions of this truth are propounded for acceptance. It may bedifficult or impossible to agree on a theory of inspiration; but thatthe Church doctrine of some kind of special inspiration of Scripture ispart of Christianity is, unless Christianity be a dream, certain. No onecan reasonably doubt, with history before him, that the answer of theChristian Church was, the first time the question was asked, and hascontinued to be through ages of controversy, _against_ Arianism, _against_ Socinianism, _against_ Pelagianism, _against_ Zwinglianism. Itdoes not follow that the Church has settled everything, or that thereare not hundreds of questions which it is vain and presumptuous toattempt to settle by any alleged authority. 

Dr. Hampden was in fact unexceptionably, even rigidly orthodox in hisacceptance of Church doctrine and Church creeds. He had published avolume of sermons containing, among other things, an able statement ofthe Scriptural argument for the doctrine of the Trinity, and an equallyable defence of the Athanasian Creed. But he felt that there areformularies which may be only the interpretations of doctrine andinferences from Scripture of a particular time or set of men; and hewas desirous of putting into their proper place the authority of suchformularies. His object was to put an interval between them and theScriptures from which they professed to be derived, and to prevent themfrom claiming the command over faith and conscience which was due onlyto the authentic evidences of God's revelation. He wished to make roomfor a deeper sense of the weight of Scripture. He proposed to himselfthe same thing which was aimed at by the German divines, Arndt, Calixtus, and Spener, when they rose up against the grinding oppressionwhich Lutheran dogmatism had raised on its _Symbolical Books_, [56] andwhich had come to outdo the worst extravagances of scholasticism. Thisseems to have been his object--a fair and legitimate one. But in arguingagainst investing the Thirty-nine Articles with an authority which didnot belong to them, he unquestionably, without seeing what he was doing, went much farther--where he never meant to go. In fact, he so stated hisargument that he took in with the Thirty-nine Articles every expressionof collective belief, every document, however venerable, which theChurch had sanctioned from the first. Strangely enough, withoutobserving it, he took in--what he meant to separate by a wide intervalfrom what he called dogma--the doctrine of the infallible authority andsufficiency of Scripture. In denying the worth of the _consensus_ andimmemorial judgment of the Church, he cut from under him the claim tothat which he accepted as the source and witness of "divine facts. " Hedid not mean to do this, or to do many other things; but from want ofclearness of head, he certainly, in these writings which were complainedof, did it. He was, in temper and habit, too desirous to be "orthodox, "as Whately feared, to accept in its consequences his own theory. Thetheory which he put forward in his Bampton Lectures, and on which hefounded his plan of comprehension in his pamphlet on Dissent, leftnothing standing but the authority of the letter of Scripture. Allelse--right or wrong as it might be--was "speculation, " "humaninference, " "dogma. " With perfect consistency, he did not pretend totake even the Creeds out of this category. But the truth was, he did notconsciously mean all that he said; and when keener and more powerful andmore theological minds pointed out with relentless accuracy what he _hadsaid_ he was profuse and overflowing with explanations, which showed howlittle he had perceived the drift of his words. There is not the leastreason to doubt the sincerity of these explanations; but at the sametime they showed the unfitness of a man who had so to explain away hisown speculations to be the official guide and teacher of the clergy. Thecriticisms on his language, and the objections to it, were made beforethese explanations were given; and though he gave them, he was furiouswith those who called for them, and he never for a moment admitted thatthere was anything seriously wrong or mistaken in what he had said. Tothose who pointed out the meaning and effect of his words and theories, he replied by the assertion of his personal belief. If words meananything, he had said that neither Unitarians nor any one else could getbehind the bare letter, and what he called "facts, " of Scripture, whichall equally accepted in good faith; and that therefore there was noreason for excluding Unitarians as long as they accepted the "facts. "But when it was pointed out that this reasoning reduced all belief inthe realities behind the bare letter to the level of personal andprivate opinion, he answered by saying that he valued supremely theCreeds and Articles, and by giving a statement of the great Christiandoctrines which he held, and which the Church taught. But he neverexplained what their authority could be with any one but himself. Theremight be interpretations and inferences from Scripture, by the hundredor the thousand, but no one certain and authoritative one; none thatwarranted an organised Church, much more a Catholic and ApostolicChurch, founded on the assumption of this interpretation being the onetrue faith, the one truth of the Bible. The point was brought outforcibly in a famous pamphlet written by Mr. Newman, though without hisname, called "Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements. "This pamphlet was a favourite object of attack on the part of Dr. Hampden's supporters as a flagrant instance of unfairness and garbledextracts. No one, they said, ever read the Bampton Lectures, but tooktheir estimate of the work from Mr. Newman's quotations. Extracts areoften open to the charge of unfairness, and always to suspicion. But inthis case there was no need of unfairness. Dr. Hampden's theory lay onthe very surface of his Hampton Lectures and pamphlet; and any unbiassedjudge may be challenged to read these works of his, and say whether theextracts in the "Elucidations" do not adequately represent Dr. Hampden'sstatements and arguments, and whether the comments on them are forced orstrained. They do not represent his explanations, for the explanationshad not been given; and when the explanations came, though they saidmany things which showed that Dr. Hampden did not mean to be unorthodoxand unevangelical, but only anti-scholastic and anti-Roman, they did notunsay a word which he had said. And what this was, what had been Dr. Hampden's professed theological theory up to the time when theUniversity heard the news of his appointment, the "Elucidations"represent as fairly as any adverse statement can represent the subjectof its attack. 

In quieter times such an appointment might have passed with nothing morethan a paper controversy or protest, or more probably without more thanconversational criticism. But these wore not quiet and unsuspicioustimes. There was reason for disquiet. It was fresh in men's minds whatlanguage and speculation like that of the Bampton Lectures had come toin the case of Whately's intimate friend, Blanco White. Theunquestionable hostility of Whately's school to the old ideas of theChurch had roused alarm and a strong spirit of resistance in Churchmen. Each party was on the watch, and there certainly was something at stakefor both parties. Coupled with some recent events, and with the partwhich Dr. Hampden had taken on the subscription question, theappointment naturally seemed significant. Probably it was not sosignificant as it seemed on the part at least of Lord Melbourne, who hadtaken pains to find a fit man. Dr. Hampden was said to have beenrecommended by Bishop Copleston, and not disallowed by ArchbishopHowley. In the University, up to this time, there had been noauthoritative protest against Dr. Hampden's writings. And there were notmany Liberals to choose from. In the appointment there is hardlysufficient ground to blame Lord Melbourne. But the outcry against it atOxford, when it came, was so instantaneous, so strong, and so unusual, that it might have warned Lord Melbourne that he had been led into amistake, out of which it would be wise to seek at least a way of escape. Doubtless it was a strong measure for the University to protest as itdid; but it was also a strong measure, at least in those days, for aMinister of the Crown to force so extremely unacceptable a RegiusProfessor of Divinity on a great University. Dr. Hampden offered toresign; and there would have been plenty of opportunities to compensatehim for his sacrifice of a post which could only be a painful one. Butthe temper of both sides was up. The remonstrances from Oxford weretreated with something like contempt, and the affair was hurried throughtill there was no retreating; and Dr. Hampden became Regius Professor. 

Mr. Palmer has recorded how various efforts were made to neutralise theeffect of the appointment. But the Heads of Houses, though angry, werecautious. They evaded the responsibility of stating Dr. Hampden'sunsound positions; but to mark their distrust, brought in a proposal todeprive him of his vote in the choice of Select Preachers till theUniversity should otherwise determine. It was defeated in Convocation bythe veto of the two Proctors (March 1836), who exercised their rightwith the full approval of Dr. Hampden's friends, and the indignation ofthe large majority of the University. But it was not unfairly used: itcould have only a suspending effect, of which no one had a right tocomplain; and when new Proctors came into office, the proposal wasintroduced again, and carried (May 1836) by 474 to 94. The Liberalminority had increased since the vote on subscription, and Dr. Hampdenwent on with his work as if nothing had happened. The attempt was twicemade to rescind the vote: first, after the outcry about the NinetiethTract and the contest about the Poetry Professorship, by a simplerepeal, which was rejected by 334 to 219 (June 1842); and next, indirectly by a statute enlarging the Professor's powers over Divinitydegrees, which was also rejected by 341 to 21 (May 1844). From first tolast, these things and others were the unfortunate incidents of anunfortunate appointment. 

The "persecution of Dr. Hampden" has been an unfailing subject ofreproach to the party of the Oxford movement, since the days when the_Edinburgh Review_ held them up to public scorn and hatred in an articleof strange violence. They certainly had their full share in theopposition to him, and in the measures by which that opposition wascarried out. But it would be the greatest mistake to suppose that inthis matter they stood alone. All in the University at this time, excepta small minority, were of one mind, Heads of Houses and country parsons, Evangelicals and High Churchmen--all who felt that the grounds of adefinite belief were seriously threatened by Dr. Hampden's speculations. All were angry at the appointment; all were agreed that something oughtto be done to hinder the mischief of it. In this matter Mr. Newman andhis friends were absolutely at one with everybody round them, with thosewho were soon to be their implacable opponents. Whatever deeper viewthey might have of the evil which had been done by the appointment, andhowever much graver and more permanent their objections to it, they wereresponsible only as the whole University was responsible for what wasdone against Dr. Hampden. It was convenient afterwards to single themout, and to throw this responsibility and the odium of it on them alone;and when they came under the popular ban, it was forgotten that Dr. Gilbert, the Principal of Brasenose, Dr. Symons, the Warden of Wadham, Dr. Faussett, afterwards the denouncer of Dr. Pusey, Mr. Vaughan Thomas, and Mr. Hill of St. Edmund Hall, were quite as forward at the time asDr. Pusey and Mr. Newman in protesting against Dr. Hampden, and in thesteps to make their protest effective. Mr. Palmer, in his_Narrative_, [57] anxious to dissociate himself from the movement underMr. Newman's influence, has perhaps underrated the part taken by Mr. Newman and Dr. Pusey; for they, any rate, did most of the argumentativework. But as far as personal action goes, it is true, as he says, thatthe "movement against Dr. Hampden was not guided by the Tract writers. ""The condemnation of Dr. Hampden, then, was not carried by the Tractwriters; it was carried by the _independent_ body of the University. Thefact is that, had those writers taken any leading part, the measurewould have been a failure, for the number of their friends at that timewas a _very small proportion_ to the University at large, and there wasa general feeling of distrust in the soundness of their views. "

We are a long way from those days in time, and still more in habits andsentiment; and a manifold and varied experience has taught most of ussome lessons against impatience and violent measures. But if we putourselves back equitably into the ways of thinking prevalent then, theexcitement about Dr. Hampden will not seem so unreasonable or sounjustifiable as it is sometimes assumed to be. The Universitylegislation, indeed, to which it led was poor and petty, doing small andannoying things, because the University rulers dared not committhemselves to definite charges. But, in the first place, the provocationwas great on the part of the Government in putting into the chieftheological chair an unwelcome man who could only save his orthodoxy bymaking his speculations mean next to nothing--whose _primâ facie_unguarded and startling statements were resolved into truisms put in agrand and obscure form. And in the next place, it was assumed in thosedays to be the most natural and obvious thing in the world to condemnunsound doctrine, and to exclude unsound teachers. The principle wasaccepted as indisputable, however slack might have been in recent timesthe application of it. That it was accepted, not on one side only, buton all, was soon to be shown by the subsequent course of events. No onesuffered more severely and more persistently from its application thanthe Tractarians; no one was more ready to apply it to them than Dr. Hampden with his friends; no one approved and encouraged its vigorousenforcement against them more than Dr. Whately. The idle distinction setup, that they were not merely unsound but dishonest, was a mere insolentpretext to save trouble in argument, and to heighten the charge againstthem; no one could seriously doubt that they wrote in good faith as muchas Dr. Whately or Dr. Faussett. But unless acts like Dr. Pusey'ssuspension, and the long proscription that went on for years after it, were mere instances of vindictive retaliation, the reproach ofpersecution must be shared by all parties then, and by none more than bythe party which in general terms most denounced it. Those who think theHampden agitation unique in its injustice ought to ask themselves whattheir party would have done if at any time between 1836 and 1843 Mr. Newman had been placed in Dr. Hampden's seat. 

People in our days mean by religious persecution what happens when thesame sort of repressive policy is applied to a religious party as isapplied to vaccination recusants, or to the "Peculiar People. " Allreligious persecution, from the days of Socrates, has taken a legalform, and justified itself on legal grounds. It is the action ofauthority, or of strong social judgments backed by authority, against aset of opinions, or the expression of them in word or act--usuallyinnovating opinions, but not by any means necessarily such. Thedisciples of M. Monod, the "Momiers" of Geneva, were persecuted by theLiberals of Geneva, not because they broke away from the creed ofCalvin, but because they adhered to it. The word is not properly appliedto the incidental effects in the way of disadvantage, resulting fromsome broad constitutional settlement--from the government of the Churchbeing Episcopal and not Presbyterian, or its creed Nicene and notArian--any more than it is persecution for a nation to change itsgovernment, or for a legitimist to have to live under a republic, or fora Christian to have to live in an infidel state, though persecution mayfollow from these conditions. But the _privilegium_ passed against Dr. Hampden was an act of persecution, though a mild one compared with whatafterwards fell on his opponents with his full sanction. Persecution isthe natural impulse, in those who think a certain thing right andimportant or worth guarding, to disable those who, thinking it wrong, are trying to discredit and upset it, and to substitute somethingdifferent. It implies a state of war, and the resort to the mostavailable weapons to inflict damage on those who are regarded asrebellious and dangerous. These weapons were formidable enough once:they are not without force still. But in its mildest form--personaldisqualification or proscription--it is a disturbance which only warjustifies. It may, of course, make itself odious by its modes ofproceeding, by meanness and shabbiness and violence, by underhand andignoble methods of misrepresentation and slander, or by cruelty andplain injustice; and then the odium of these things fairly falls uponit. But it is very hard to draw the line between conscientiousrepression, feeling itself bound to do what is possible to preventmischief, and what those who are opposed, if they are the weaker party, of course call persecution. 

If persecution implies a state of war in which one side is stronger, andthe other weaker, it is hardly a paradox to say that (1) no one has aright to complain of persecution as such, apart from odiousaccompaniments, any more than of superior numbers or hard blows inbattle; and (2) that every one has a right to take advantage and makethe most of being persecuted, by appeals to sympathy and the principleof doing as you would be done by. No one likes to be accused ofpersecution, and few people like to give up the claim to use it, ifnecessary. But no one can help observing in the course of events thestrange way in which, in almost all cases, the "wheel comes fullcircle. " Δράσαντι παθεῖν--_Chi la fa, l' aspetti_, [58] are some of theexpressions of Greek awe and Italian shrewdness representing theexperience of the world on this subject; on a large scale and a small. Protestants and Catholics, Churchmen and Nonconformists, have all intheir turn made full proof of what seems like a law of action andreaction. Except in cases beyond debate, cases where no justification ispossible, the note of failure is upon this mode of repression. Providence, by the visible Nemesis which it seems always to bring round, by the regularity with which it has enforced the rule that inflictionand suffering are bound together and in time duly change places, seemscertainly and clearly to have declared against it. It may be that noinnovating party has a right to complain of persecution; but thequestion is not for them. It is for those who have the power, and whoare tempted to think that they have the call, to persecute. It is forthem to consider whether it is right, or wise, or useful for theircause; whether it is agreeable to what seems the leading of Providenceto have recourse to it. 

FOOTNOTES:

[56] See Pusey's _Theology of Germany_ (1828), p. 18 _sqq_. 

[57] _Narrative_ pp. 29, 30, ed. 1841; p 131. Ed. 1883. 

[58] Δράσαντι παθεῖν, Τριγέρων μῦθος τάδε φωνεῖ. Aesch. _Choeph_. 310. Italian proverb, in _Landucci, Diario Fiorentino_, 1513, p. 343. 

CHAPTER X

GROWTH OF THE MOVEMENT

1835-1840

By the end of 1835, the band of friends, whom great fears and greathopes for the Church had united, and others who sympathised with themboth within and outside the University, had grown into what those whodisliked them naturally called a party. The Hampden controversy, thoughbut an episode in the history of the movement, was an important one, andundoubtedly gave a great impulse to it. Dr. Hampden's attitude andlanguage seemed to be its justification--a palpable instance of what theChurch had to expect. And in this controversy, though the feelingagainst Dr. Hampden's views was so widely shared, and though themajority which voted against him was a very mixed one, and containedsome who hoped that the next time they were called to vote it might beagainst the Tractarians, yet the leaders of the movement had undertakenthe responsibility, conspicuously and almost alone, of pointing outdefinitely and argumentatively the objections to Dr. Hampden's teaching. The number of Mr. Newman's friends might be, as Mr. Palmer says, insignificant, but it was they who had taken the trouble to understandand give expression to the true reasons for alarm. [59] Even in thishasty and imperfect way, the discussion revealed to many how much deeperand more various the treatment of the subject was in the hands of Mr. Newman and Dr. Pusey compared with the ordinary criticisms on Dr. Hampden. He had learned in too subtle a school to be much touched by thepopular exceptions to his theories, however loudly expressed. Themischief was much deeper. It was that he had, unconsciously, no doubt, undermined the foundation of definite Christian belief, and had resolvedit into a philosophy, so-called scholastic, which was now exploded. Itwas the sense of the perilous issues to which this diluted form ofBlanco White's speculations, so recklessly patronised by Whately, wasleading theological teaching in the University, which opened the eyes ofmany to the meaning of the movement, and brought some fresh friends toits side. 

There was no attempt to form a party, or to proselytise; there was noorganisation, no distinct and recognised party marks. "I would not haveit called a party, " writes Dr. Newman in the _Apologia_. But a party itcould not help being: quietly and spontaneously it had grown to be whatcommunity of ideas, aims, and sympathies, naturally, and without blame, leads men to become. And it had acquired a number of recognisednicknames, to friends and enemies the sign of growing concentration. Forthe questions started in the Tracts and outside them became ofincreasing interest to the more intelligent men who had finished theirUniversity course and were preparing to enter into life, the Bachelorsand younger Masters of Arts. One by one they passed from various statesof mind--alienation, suspicion, fear, indifference, blankignorance--into a consciousness that something beyond the merecommonplace of religious novelty and eccentricity, of which there hadbeen a good deal recently, was before them; that doctrines andstatements running counter to the received religious language of theday, doctrines about which, in confident prejudice, they had perhapsbandied about off-hand judgments, had more to say for themselves thanwas thought at first; that the questions thus raised drove them in onthemselves, and appealed to their honesty and seriousness; and that, atany rate, in the men who were arresting so much attention, howeverextravagant their teaching might be called, there was a remarkabledegree of sober and reserved force, an earnestness of conviction whichcould not be doubted, an undeniable and subtle power of touching soulsand attracting sympathies. One by one, and in many different ways, theseyoung men went through various stages of curiosity, of surprise, ofperplexity, of doubt, of misgiving, of interest; some were frightened, and wavered, and drew back more or less reluctantly; others, in spite ofthemselves, in spite of opposing influences, were led on step by step, hardly knowing whither, by a spell which they could not resist, ofintellectual, or still more, moral pressure. Some found their old hometeaching completed, explained, lighted up, by that of the new school. Others, shocked at first at hearing the old watchwords and traditions oftheir homes decried and put aside, found themselves, when they leastexpected it, passing from the letter to the spirit, from the technicaland formal theory to the wide and living truth. And thus, though many ofcourse held aloof, and not a few became hostile, a large number, one byone, some rapidly, others slowly, some unreservedly, others with largeand jealous reserves, more and more took in the leading idea of themovement, accepted the influence of its chiefs, and looked to them forinstruction and guidance. As it naturally happens, when a number ofminds are drawn together by a common and strong interest, some men, bycircumstances, or by strength of conviction, or by the mutual affinitiesof tastes and character, came more and more into direct personal andintimate relations with the leaders, took service, as it were, underthem, and prepared to throw themselves into their plans of work. Others, in various moods, but more independent, more critical, more disturbedabout consequences, or unpersuaded on special points, formed a kind offringe of friendly neutrality about the more thoroughgoing portion ofthe party. And outside of these were thoughtful and able men, to whomthe whole movement, with much that was utterly displeasing and utterlyperplexing, had the interest of being a break-up of stagnation and dullindolence in a place which ought to have the highest spiritual andintellectual aims; who, whatever repelled them, could not help feelingthat great ideas, great prospects, a new outburst of bold thought, a neweffort of moral purpose and force, had disturbed the old routine; couldnot help being fascinated, if only as by a spectacle, by the strange andunwonted teaching, which partly made them smile, partly perhapspermanently disgusted them, but which also, they could not deny, spokein a language more fearless, more pathetic, more subtle, and yet morehuman, than they had heard from the religious teachers of the day. Andthus the circle of persons interested in the Tracts, of persons whosympathised with their views, of persons who more and more gave a warmand earnest adherence to them, was gradually extended in theUniversity--and, in time, in the country also. The truth was that themovement, in its many sides, had almost monopolised for the time boththe intelligence and the highest religious earnestness of theUniversity, [60] and either in curiosity or inquiry, in approval or incondemnation, all that was deepest and most vigorous, all that was mostrefined, most serious, most high-toned, and most promising in Oxford wasdrawn to the issues which it raised. It is hardly too much to say thatwherever men spoke seriously of the grounds and prospects of religion, in Oxford, or in Vacation reading-parties, in their walks and socialmeetings, in their studies or in common-room, the "Tractarian"doctrines, whether assented to or laughed at, deplored or fiercelydenounced, were sure to come to the front. All subjects in discussionseemed to lead up to them--art and poetry, Gothic architecture andGerman romance and painting, the philosophy of language, and the novelsof Walter Scott and Miss Austen, Coleridge's transcendentalism andBishop Butler's practical wisdom, Plato's ideas and Aristotle'sanalysis. It was difficult to keep them out of lecture-rooms andexaminations for Fellowships. 

But in addition to the intrinsic interest of the questions anddiscussions which the movement opened, personal influence played a greatand decisive part in it. As it became a party, it had chiefs. It was notmerely as leaders of thought but as teachers with their disciples, asfriends with friends, as witnesses and examples of high self-rule andrefined purity and goodness, that the chiefs whose names were in allmen's mouths won the hearts and trust of so many, in the crowds thatstood about them. Foremost, of course, ever since he had thrown himselfinto it in 1835, was Dr. Pusey. His position, his dignified office, hislearning, his solidity and seriousness of character, his high standardof religious life, the charm of his charity, and the sweetness of histemper naturally gave him the first place in the movement in Oxford andthe world. It came to be especially associated with him. Its enemiesfastened on it a nickname from his name, and this nickname, partly froma greater smoothness of sound, partly from an odd suggestion ofsomething funny in it, came more into use than others; and the terms_Puseismus, Puséisme, Puseista_ found their way into Germanlecture-halls and Paris salons and remote convents and police offices inItaly and Sicily; indeed, in the shape of πουζεισμός it might be lightedon in a Greek newspaper. Dr. Pusey was a person who commanded the utmostinterest and reverence; he was more in communication with the greatworld outside than Oxford people generally, and lived much in retirementfrom Oxford society; but to all interested in the movement he was itsrepresentative and highest authority. He and Mr. Newman had the fullestconfidence in one another, though conscious at times of not perfectagreement; yet each had a line of his own, and each of them was apt todo things out of his own head. Dr. Pusey was accessible to all whowished to see him; but he did not encourage visits which wasted time. And the person who was pre-eminently, not only before their eyes, butwithin their reach in the ordinary intercourse of man with man, was Mr. Newman. Mr. Newman, who lived in College in the ordinary way of aresident Fellow, met other university men, older or younger, on equalterms. As time went on, a certain wonder and awe gathered round him. People were a little afraid of him; but the fear was in themselves, notcreated by any intentional stiffness or coldness on his part. He did nottry to draw men to him, he was no proselytiser; he shrank with fear andrepugnance from the character--it was an invasion of the privileges ofthe heart. [61] But if men came to him, he was accessible; he allowed hisfriends to bring their friends to him, and met them more than half-way. He was impatient of mere idle worldliness, of conceit and impertinence, of men who gave themselves airs; he was very impatient of pompous andsolemn emptiness. But he was very patient with those whom he believed tosympathise with what was nearest his heart; no one, probably, of hispower and penetration and sense of the absurd, was ever so ready tocomply with the two demands which a witty prelate proposed to put intothe examination in the Consecration Service of Bishops: "Wilt thouanswer thy letters?" "Wilt thou suffer fools gladly?" But courteous, affable, easy as he was, he was a keen trier of character; he gauged, and men felt that he gauged, their motives, their reality and soundnessof purpose; he let them see, if they at all came into his intimacy, that if _they_ were not, _he_, at any rate, was in the deepest earnest. And at an early period, in a memorable sermon, [62] the vivid impressionof which at the time still haunts the recollection of some who heard it, he gave warning to his friends and to those whom his influence touched, that no child's play lay before them; that they were making, it might bewithout knowing it, the "Ventures of Faith. " But feeling that he hadmuch to say, and that a university was a place for the circulation anddiscussion of ideas, he let himself be seen and known and felt, bothpublicly and in private. He had his breakfast parties and his eveninggatherings. His conversation ranged widely, marked by its peculiarstamp--entire ease, unstudied perfection of apt and clean-cut words, unexpected glimpses of a sure and piercing judgment. At times, at moreprivate meetings, the violin, which he knew how to touch, came intoplay. 

He had great gifts for leadership. But as a party chief he was alsodeficient in some of the qualities which make a successful one. Hisdoctrine of the Church had the disadvantage of an apparentlyintermediate and ambiguous position, refusing the broad, intelligiblewatchwords and reasonings of popular religionism. It was not withoutclearness and strength; but such a position naturally often leads towhat seem over-subtle modes of argument, seemingly over-subtle becausedeeper and more original than the common ones; and he seemed sometimesto want sobriety in his use of dialectic weapons, which he wielded withsuch force and effect. Over-subtlety in the leader of a party tends toperplex friends and give a handle to opponents. And with all hisconfidence in his cause, and also in his power and his call to use it, he had a curious shyness and self-distrust as to his own way of doingwhat he had to do; he was afraid of "wilfulness, " of too great relianceon intellect. He had long been accustomed to observe and judge himself, and while conscious of his force, he was fully alive to the drawbacks, moral and intellectual, which wait on the highest powers. When attackswere made on him by authorities, as in the case of the Tract No. 90, hismore eager friends thought him too submissive; they would have liked amore combative temper and would not accept his view that confidence inhim was lost, because it might be shaken. [63] But if he bent beforeofficial authority the disapproval of friends was a severer trouble. Most tender in his affections, most trustful in his confidence, cravingfor sympathy, it came like a shock and chill when things did not goright between himself and his friends. He was too sensitive under suchdisapproval for a successful party chief. The true party leader takesthese things as part of that tiresome human stupidity and perversenesswith which he must make his account. Perhaps they sting for the moment, but he brushes them away and goes forward, soon forgetting them. Butwith Mr. Newman, his cause was identified with his friendships and evenhis family affections. And as a leader, he was embarrassed by thekeenness with which he sympathised with the doubts and fears of friends;want of sympathy and signs of distrust darkened the prospect of thefuture; they fell like a blight on his stores of hope, neverover-abundant; they tempted him, not to assert himself, but to throw upthe game as convicted of unfitness, and retire for good and all to hisbooks and silence. "Let them, " he seemed to say, "have their way, asthey will not let me have mine; they have the right to take theirs, onlynot to make me take it. " In spite of his enthusiasm and energy, hisunceasing work, his occasional bursts of severe punishment inflicted onthose who provoked him, there was always present this keensensitiveness, the source of so much joy and so much pain. He would nothave been himself without it. But he would have been a much morepowerful and much more formidable combatant if he had cared less forwhat his friends felt, and followed more unhesitatingly his own line andjudgment. This keen sensitiveness made him more quickly alive than otherpeople to all that lay round him and before; it made him quicker todiscern danger and disaster; it led him to give up hope and to retirefrom the contest long before he had a right to do so. The experience oflater years shows that he had despaired too soon. Such delicatesensitiveness, leading to impatience, was not capable of coping with therough work involved in the task of reform, which he had undertaken. 

All this time the four o'clock sermons at St. Mary's were always goingon. But, besides these, he anticipated a freedom--familiar now, butunknown then--of public lecturing. In Advent and after Easter a company, never very large, used to gather on a week-day afternoon in Adam deBrome's Chapel--the old Chapel of "Our Lady of Littlemore"--to hear himlecture on some theological subject. It is a dark, dreary appendage toSt. Mary's on the north side, in which Adam de Brome, Edward II. 'salmoner, and the founder of Oriel College, is supposed to lie, beneathan unshapely tomb, covered by a huge slab of Purbeck marble, from whichthe brass has been stripped. The place is called a chapel, but is morelike a court or place of business, for which, indeed, it was used in theold days by one of the Faculties of the House of Convocation, which heldits assemblies there. At the end is a high seat and desk for the personpresiding, and an enclosure and a table for officials below him; andround the rest of the dingy walls run benches fixed to the wall, dingyas the walls themselves. But it also had another use. On occasions of auniversity sermon, a few minutes before it began, the Heads of Housesassembled, as they still assemble, in the chapel, ranging themselves onthe benches round the walls. The Vice-Chancellor has his seat on oneside, the preacher, with the two Proctors below him, sits opposite; andthere all sit in their robes, more or less grand, according to the day, till the beadle comes to announce that it is time to form the processioninto church. This desolate place Mr. Newman turned into hislecture-room; in it he delivered the lectures which afterwards becamethe volume on the _Prophetical Character of the Church_, or _Romanismand Popular Protestantism_; the lectures which formed the volume on_Justification_; those on _Antichrist_, and on _Rationalism and theCanon of Scripture_, which afterwards became Nos. 83 and 85 of the_Tracts for the Times_. [64] The force, the boldness, the freedom fromthe trammels of commonplace, the breadth of view and grasp of thesubject which marked those lectures, may be seen in them still. But itis difficult to realise now the interest with which they were heard atthe time by the first listeners to that clear and perfectly modulatedvoice, opening to them fresh and original ways of regarding questionswhich seemed worn out and exhausted. The volumes which grew out of theAdam de Brome lectures were some of the most characteristic portions ofthe theological literature of the early movement. They certainly greatlyinfluenced the course of thought in it, and some of its most seriousissues. 

The movement was not one of mere opinion. It took two distinct thoughconnected lines. It was, on the one hand, theological; on the other, resolutely practical. Theologically, it dealt with great questions ofreligious principle--What is the Church? Is it a reality or a mode ofspeech? On what grounds does it rest? How may it be known? Is it amongus? How is it to be discriminated from its rivals or counterfeits? Whatis its essential constitution? What does it teach? What are itsshortcomings? Does it nerd reform? But, on the other hand, the movementwas marked by its deep earnestness on the practical side of genuineChristian life. Very early in the movement (1833) a series ofsketches of primitive Christian life appeared in the _BritishMagazine_--afterwards collected under the title of the _Church of theFathers_ (1840)--to remind people who were becoming interested inancient and patristic theology that, besides the doctrines to be foundin the vast folios of the Fathers, there were to be sought in them andlaid to heart the temptations and trials, the aspirations and moralpossibilities of actual life, "the tone and modes of thought, the habitsand manners of the early times of the Church. " The note struck in thefirst of Mr. Newman's published sermons--"Holiness necessary for futureblessedness"--was never allowed to be out of mind. The movement was, above all, a moral one; it was nothing, allowed to be nothing, if itwas not this. [65] Seriousness, reverence, the fear of insincere wordsand unsound professions, were essential in the character, which alone itwould tolerate in those who made common cause with it. 

Its ethical tendency was shown in two things, which were characteristicof it. One was the increased care for the Gospels, and study of them, compared with other parts of the Bible. Evangelical theology had dweltupon the work of Christ, and laid comparatively little stress on Hisexample, or the picture left us of His Personality and Life. It regardedthe Epistles of St. Paul as the last word of the Gospel message. Peoplewho can recall the popular teaching, which was spoken of then as "sound"and "faithful, " and "preaching Christ, " can remember how the Epistleswere ransacked for texts to prove the "sufficiency of Scripture" or the"right of private judgment, " or the distinction between justificationand sanctification, while the Gospel narrative was imperfectly studiedand was felt to be much less interesting. The movement made a greatchange. The great Name stood no longer for an abstract symbol ofdoctrine, but for a living Master, who could teach as well as save. Andnot forgetting whither He had gone and what He was, the readers ofScripture now sought Him eagerly in those sacred records, where we canalmost see and hear His going in and out among men. It was a change inthe look and use of Scripture, which some can still look back to as anepoch in their religious history. The other feature was the increasedand practical sense of the necessity of self-discipline, of taking realtrouble with one's self to keep thoughts and wishes in order, to lay thefoundation of habits, to acquire the power of self-control. Deeply fixedin the mind of the teachers, this serious governance of life, thisdirection and purification of its aims, laid strong hold on theconsciences of those who accepted their teaching. This training was notshowy; it was sometimes austere, even extravagantly austere; but it wastrue, and enduring, and it issued often in a steady and unconsciouselevation of the religious character. How this character was fed andnurtured and encouraged--how, too, it was frankly warned of its dangers, may be seen in those _Parochial Sermons_ at St. Mary's, under whoseinspiration it was developed, and which will always be the bestcommentary on the character thus formed. Even among those who ultimatelyparted from the movement, with judgment more or less unfavourable to itstheology and general line, it left, as if uneffaceable, this moralstamp; this value for sincerity and simplicity of feeling and life, thiskeen sense of the awfulness of things unseen. There was something _suigeneris_ in the profoundly serious, profoundly reverent tone, abouteverything that touched religion in all who had ever come strongly underits influence. 

Of course the party soon had the faults of a party, real andimputed. [66] Is it conceivable that there should ever have been areligious movement, which has not provoked smiles from those outside ofit, and which has not lent itself to caricature? There were weakermembers of it, and headstrong ones, and imitative ones; there weregrotesque and absurd ones; some were deeper, some shallower; some likedit for its excitement, and some liked it for its cause; there were thosewho were for pushing on, and those who were for holding back; there weremen of combat, and men of peace; there were those whom it made conceitedand self-important, and those whom it drove into seriousness, anxiety, and retirement. But, whatever faults it had, a pure and high spiritruled in it; there were no disloyal members, and there were none whosought their own in it, or thought of high things for themselves injoining it. It was this whole-heartedness, this supreme reverence formoral goodness, more even than the great ability of the leaders, and inspite of mistakes and failures, which gave its cohesion and its momentumto the movement in its earlier stages. 

The state of feeling and opinion among Churchmen towards the end of1835, two years after the Tracts had begun, is thus sketched by one whowas anxiously observing it, in the preface to the second volume of theTracts (November 1835). 

 In completing the second volume of a publication, to which the circumstances of the day have given rise, it may be right to allude to a change which has taken place in them since the date of its commencement. At that time, in consequence of long security, the attention of members of our Church had been but partially engaged, in ascertaining the grounds of their adherence to it; but the imminent peril to all which is dear to them which has since been confessed, has naturally turned their thoughts that way, and obliged them to defend it on one or other of the principles which are usually put forward in its behalf. Discussions have thus been renewed in various quarters, on points which had long remained undisturbed; and though numbers continue undecided in opinion, or take up a temporary position in some one of the hundred middle points which may be assumed between the two main theories in which the question issues; and others, again, have deliberately entrenched themselves in the modern or ultra-Protestant alternative; yet, on the whole, there has been much hearty and intelligent adoption, and much respectful study, of those more primitive views maintained by our great Divines. As the altered state of public information and opinion has a necessary bearing on the efforts of those who desire to excite attention to the subject (in which number the writers of these Tracts are to be included), it will not be inappropriate briefly to state in this place what it is conceived is the present position of the great body of Churchmen with reference to it. 

 While we have cause to be thankful for the sounder and more accurate language, which is now very generally adopted among well-judging men on ecclesiastical subjects, we must beware of over-estimating what has been done, and so becoming sanguine in our hopes of success, or slackening our exertions to secure it. Many more persons, doubtless, have taken up a profession of the main doctrine in question, that, namely, of the one Catholic and Apostolic Church, than fully enter into it. This was to be expected, it being the peculiarity of all religious teaching, that words are imparted before ideas. A child learns his Creed or Catechism before he understands it; and in beginning any deep subject we are all but children to the end of our lives. The instinctive perception of a rightly instructed mind, _primâ facie_ force of the argument, or the authority of our celebrated writers, have all had their due and extensive influence in furthering the reception of the doctrine, when once it was openly maintained; to which must be added the prospect of the loss of State protection, which made it necessary to look out for other reasons for adherence to the Church besides that of obedience to the civil magistrate. Nothing which has spread quickly has been received thoroughly. Doubtless there are a number of seriously-minded persons who think that they admit the doctrine in question much more fully than they do, and who would be startled at seeing that realised in particulars which they confess in an abstract form. Many there are who do not at all feel that it is capable of a practical application; and while they bring it forward on special occasions, in formal expositions of faith, or in answer to a direct interrogatory, let it slip from their minds almost entirely in their daily conduct or their religious teaching, from the long and inveterate habit of thinking and acting without it. We must not, then, at all be surprised at finding that to modify the principles and motives on which men act is not the work of a day; nor at undergoing disappointments, at witnessing relapses, misconceptions, sudden disgusts, and, on the other hand, abuses and perversions of the true doctrine, in the case of those who have taken it up with more warmth than discernment. 

From the end of 1835, or the beginning of 1836, the world outside ofOxford began to be alive to the force and the rapid growth of this newand, to the world at large, not very intelligible movement. The ideaswhich had laid hold so powerfully on a number of leading minds in theUniversity began to work with a spell, which seemed to manyinexplicable, on others unconnected with them. This rapidity ofexpansion, viewed as a feature of a party, was noticed on all sides, byenemies no less than friends. In an article in the _British Critic_ ofApril 1839, by Mr. Newman, on the State of Religious Parties, the factis illustrated from contemporary notices. 

 There is at the present moment a reaction in the Church, and a growing reaction, towards the views which it has been the endeavours [of the Tract writers] and, as it seemed at the commencement, _almost hopeless endeavours_, to advocate. The fairness of the prospect at present is proved by the attack made on them by the public journals, and is confessed by the more candid and the more violent among their opponents. Thus the amiable Mr. Bickersteth speaks of it as having manifested itself "with the _most rapid_ growth of the hot-bed of these evil days. " The scoffing author of the _Via Media_ says: "At this moment the Via is _crowded_ with young enthusiasts who never presume to argue, except against the propriety of arguing at all. " The candid Mr. Baden-Powell, who sees more of the difficulties of the controversy than the rest of their antagonists pot together, says that it is clear that "these views . .. Have been extensively adopted, and are daily gaining ground among a considerable and influential portion of the members, as well as the ministers of the Established Church. " The author of the _Natural History of Enthusiasm_ says: "The spread of these doctrines is in fact having the effect of rendering all other distinctions obsolete. Soon there will be no middle ground left, and every man, especially every clergyman, will be compelled to make his choice between the two. " . .. The Bishop of Chester speaks of the subject "daily assuming a more serious and alarming aspect": a gossiping writer of the moment describes these doctrines as having insinuated themselves not only into popular churches and fashionable chapels, and the columns of newspapers, but "into the House of Commons. "

And the writer of the article goes on:--

 Now, if there be any truth in these remarks, it is plainly idle and perverse to refer the change of opinions which is now going on to the acts of two or three individuals, as is sometimes done. Of course every event in human affairs has a beginning; and a beginning implies a when, and a where, and a by whom, and how. But except in these necessary circumstance, the phenomenon in question is in a manner quite independent of things visible and historical. It is not here or there; it has no progress, no causes, no fortunes: it is not a movement, it is a spirit, it is a spirit afloat, neither "in the secret chambers" nor "in the desert, " but everywhere. It is within us, rising up in the heart where it was least expected, and working its way, though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably, as hardly to admit of precaution or encounter on any ordinary human rules of opposition. It is an adversary in the air, a something one and entire, a whole wherever it is, unapproachable and incapable of being grasped, as being the result of causes far deeper than political or other visible agencies, the spiritual awakening of spiritual wants. 

 Nothing can show more strikingly the truth of this representation than to refer to what may be called the theological history of the individuals who, whatever be their differences from each other on important or unimportant points, yet are associated together in the advocacy of the doctrines in question. Dr. Hook and Mr. Churton represent the High Church dignitaries of the last generation; Mr. Perceval, the Tory aristocracy; Mr. Keble is of the country clergy, and comes from valleys and woods, far removed both from notoriety and noise; Mr. Palmer and Mr. Todd are of Ireland; Dr. Pusey became what he is from among the Universities of Germany, and after a severe and tedious analysis of Arabic MSS. Mr. Dodsworth is said to have begun in the study of Prophecy; Mr. Newman to have been much indebted to the friendship of Archbishop Whately; Mr. Froude, if any one, gained his views from his own mind. Others have passed over from Calvinism and kindred religions. 

Years afterwards, and in changed circumstances, the same writer has leftthe following record of what came before his experience in thoseyears:--[67]

 From beginnings so small (I said), from elements of thought so fortuitous, with prospects so unpromising, the Anglo-Catholic party suddenly became a power in the National Church, and an object of alarm to her rulers and friends. Its originators would have found it difficult to say what they aimed at of a practical kind: rather, they put forth views and principles, for their own sake, because they were true, as if they were obliged to say them; and, as they might be themselves surprised at their earnestness in uttering them, they had as great cause to be surprised at the success which attended their propagation. And, in fact, they could only say that those doctrines were in the air; that to assert was to prove, and that to explain was to persuade; and that the movement in which they were taking part was the birth of a crisis rather than of a place. In a very few years a school of opinion was formed, fixed in its principles, indefinite and progressive in their range; and it extended itself into every part of the country. If we inquire what the world thought of it, we have still more to raise our wonder; for, not to mention the excitement it caused in England, the movement and its party-names were known to the police of Italy and to the backwoods-men of America. And so it proceeded, getting stronger and stronger every year, till it came into collision with the Nation and that Church of the Nation, which it began by professing especially to serve. 

FOOTNOTES:

[59] "I answered, the person whom we were opposing had committed himselfin writing, and we ought to commit ourselves, too. "--_Apologia_, p. 143. 

[60] "I very much doubt between Oxford and Cambridge for my boy. Oxford, which I should otherwise prefer, on many accounts, has at presenttwo-thirds of the steady-reading men, Rabbinists, _i. E. _ Puseyites. " Butthis was probably an exaggeration. --Whately's _Life_; letter of Oct. 1838, p. 163 (ed. 1875). 

[61] "The sagacious and aspiring man of the world, the scrutiniserof the heart, the conspirator against its privileges andrights. "--_Prophetical Office of the Church_, p. 132. 

[62] _Parochial Sermons_, iv. 20. Feb. 1836. 

[63] _Vide_ J. B. Mozley, _Letters_, pp. 114, 115. "Confidence in me waslost, but I had already lost confidence in myself. " This, to a friendlike J. B. Mozley, seemed exaggeration. "Though admiring the letter [tothe Vice Chancellor] I confess, for my own part, I think a generalconfession of humility was irrelevant to the present occasion, thequestion being simply on a point of theological interpretation. I havealways had a prejudice against general confessions. " Mozley plainlythought Newman's attitude too meek. He would have liked something morespirited and pugnacious. 

[64] _Romanism and Popular Protestantism_, from 1834 to 1836, publishedMarch 1837; _Justification_, after Easter 1837, published March 1838;_Canon of Scripture_, published May 1838; _Antichrist_, published June1838. 

[65] Cf. _Lyra Apostolica_, No. 65:

 _Thou_ to wax fierce In the cause of the Lord!

 * * * * *

 Anger and zeal, And the joy of the brave, Who bade _thee_ to feel, Sin's slave?

[66] This weak side was portrayed with severity in a story published byMr. Newman in 1848, after he left the English Church--_Loss and Gain_. 

[67] _Apologia_, p. 156. 

CHAPTER XI

THE ROMAN QUESTION

The Hampden controversy had contributed to bring to the front aquestion, which from the first starting of the Tracts had made itselffelt, but which now became a pressing one. If the Church of Englandclaimed to be part of the Catholic Church, what was the answer of theChurch of England to the claims and charges of the Church of Rome? Whatwere the true distinctions between the doctrines of the two Churches onthe great points on which they were supposed to be at issue? The vagueoutcry of Popery had of course been raised both against the generaldoctrine of the Church, enforced in the Tracts, and against specialdoctrines and modes of speaking, popularly identified with Romanism; andthe answer had been an appeal to the authority of the most learned andauthoritative of our writers. But, of course, to the general public thislearning was new; and the cry went on with a dreary and stupid monotony. But the charges against Dr. Hampden led his defenders to adopt as theirbest weapon an aggressive policy. To the attack on his orthodoxy, thecounter buffet was the charge against his chief opponents of secret oropen Romanising. In its keenest and most popular form it was put forthin a mocking pamphlet written probably under Whately's inspiration byhis most trusted confidant, Dr. Dickinson, in which, in the form of a"Pastoral Epistle from his Holiness the Pope to some Members of theUniversity of Oxford, " the Tract-writers are made to appear as theemissaries and secret tools of Rome, as in a _jeu d'esprit_ of Whately'sthey are made to appear as the veiled prophets of infidelity. [68] It wasclever, but not clever enough to stand, at least in Oxford, against Dr. Pusey's dignified and gravely earnest _Remonstrance_ against itsinjustice and trifling. But the fire of all Dr. Hampden's friends hadbeen drawn on the leaders of the movement. With them, and almost alonewith them, the opposition to him was made a personal matter. As timewent on, those who had been as hot as they against Dr. Hampden managedto get their part in the business forgotten. Old scores betweenOrthodox, Evangelicals, and Liberals were wiped out, and the Tractarianswere left to bear alone the odium of the "persecution" of Dr. Hampden. It must be said that they showed no signs of caring for it. 

But the Roman controversy was looming in earnest, and it was idle toexpect to keep it long out of sight. The Tracts had set forth withstartling vehemence the forgotten claims of the Church. One reason whythis had been done was the belief, as stated in the first volume ofthem, "that nothing but these neglected doctrines, faithfully preached, will repress the extension of Popery, for which the ever-multiplyingdivisions of the religious world are too clearly preparing the way. "[69]The question, What _is_ the Church? was one which the conditions of thetimes would not permit men any longer to leave alone. It had becomeurgent to meet it clearly and decisively. "We could not move a step incomfort till this was done. "[70] "The controversy with the Romanists, "writes Mr. Newman in No. 71 of the Tracts, about the end of 1835, "hasovertaken us 'like a summer's cloud. ' We find ourselves in various partsof the country preparing for it, yet, when we look back, we cannottrace the steps by which we arrived at our present position. We do notrecollect what our feelings were this time last year on the subject;what was the state of our apprehensions and anticipations. All we knowis, that here we are, from long security ignorant why we are not RomanCatholics, and they on the other side are said to be spreading andstrengthening on all sides of us, vaunting of their success, real orapparent, and taunting us with our inability to argue with them. "

The attitude taken by Mr. Newman at this time, as regards the RomanChurch, both in the Tracts and in his book on _Romanism and PopularProtestantism_, published in the early months of 1836, was a new one. Hehad started, as he tells us, with the common belief that the Pope wasAntichrist, and that the case was so clear against the whole system, doctrinal and practical, of the Church of Rome, that it scarcely neededfurther examination. His feeling against Rome had been increased by thefierce struggle about Emancipation, and by the political conduct of theRoman Catholic party afterwards; and his growing dissatisfaction withthe ordinary Protestantism had no visible effect in softening thisfeeling. Hurrell Froude's daring questions had made his friends feelthat there might be more to be known about the subject than they yetknew; yet what the fellow-travellers saw of things abroad in their visitto the South in 1832 did not impress them favourably. "They are wretchedTridentines everywhere, " was Froude's comment. But attention had beendrawn to the subject, and its deep interest and importance anddifficulty recognised. Men began to read with new eyes. Froude's keenand deep sense of shortcomings at home disposed him to claim equity andcandour in judging of the alleged faults and corruptions of the Churchabroad. It did more, it disposed him--naturally enough, but stillunfairly, and certainly without adequate knowledge--to treat Romanshortcomings with an indulgence which he refused to English. Mr. Newman, knowing more, and more comprehensive in his view of things, andtherefore more cautious and guarded than Froude, was much less ready toallow a favourable interpretation of the obvious allegations againstRome. But thought and reading, and the authority of our own leadingdivines, had brought him to the conviction that whatever was to be saidagainst the modern Roman Church--and the charges against it were veryheavy--it was still, amid serious corruption and error, a teacher to thenations of the Christian creed and hope; it had not forfeited, any morethan the English Church, its title to be a part of that historic bodywhich connects us with the Apostles of our Lord. It had a strong andconsistent theory to oppose to its assailants; it had much more to sayfor itself than the popular traditions supposed. This was no new idea inAnglican divinity, however ill it might sort with the current languageof Protestant controversy. But our old divines, more easily satisfiedthan we with the course of things at home under the protection of theStuart kings, and stung to bitter recrimination by the insults and theunscrupulous political intrigues of Roman Catholic agents, had exhaustedthe language of vituperation against a great aggressive rival, which wasthreatening everything that they held dear. They had damaged their owncharacter for fairness, and overlaid their substantial grounds ofobjection and complaint, by this unbalanced exaggeration. Mr. Newman, inhis study of these matters, early saw both the need and the difficultyof discrimination in the Roman controversy. It had to be waged, not asof old, with penal legislation behind, but against adversaries whocould now make themselves listened to, and before a public sufficientlyrobust in its Protestantism, to look with amused interest on adialectical triumph of the Roman over the Anglican claims. Romanism, hethought, was fatal both to his recent hopes for the English Church, andto the honour and welfare of Christianity at large. But in opposing it, ground loosely taken of old must be carefully examined, and ifuntenable, abandoned. Arguments which proved too much, which availedagainst any Church at all, must be given up. Popular objections, arisingfrom ignorance or misconception, must be reduced to their true limits orlaid aside. The controversy was sure to be a real one, and nothing butwhat was real and would stand scrutiny was worth anything in it. 

Mr. Newman had always been impressed with the greatness of the RomanChurch. Of old it had seemed to him great with the greatness ofAntichrist. Now it seemed great with the strange weird greatness of awonderful mixed system, commanding from its extent of sway and itsimperial authority, complicated and mysterious in its organisation andinfluence, in its devotion and its superstitions, and surpassing everyother form of religion both in its good and its evil. [71] What nowpresented itself to Mr. Newman's thoughts, instead of the old notion ofa pure Church on one side, and a corrupt Church on the other, sharplyopposed to one another, was the more reasonable supposition of two greatportions of the divided Church, each with its realities of history andfact and character, each with its special claims and excellences, eachwith its special sins and corruptions, and neither realising in practiceand fact all it professed to be on paper; each of which further, in theconflicts of past days, had deeply, almost unpardonably, wronged theother. The Church of England was in possession, with its own call andits immense work to do, and striving to do it. Whatever the Church ofRome was abroad, it was here an intruder and a disturber. That to hismind was the fact and the true position of things; and this ought togovern the character and course of controversy. The true line was not todenounce and abuse wholesale, not to attack with any argument, good orbad, not to deny or ignore what was solid in the Roman ground, and goodand elevated in the Roman system, but admitting all that fairly ought tobe admitted, to bring into prominence, not for mere polemicaldenunciation, but for grave and reasonable and judicial condemnation, all that was extravagant and arrogant in Roman assumptions, and all thatwas base, corrupt, and unchristian in the popular religion, which, withall its claims to infallibility and authority, Rome not only permittedbut encouraged. For us to condemn Rome wholesale, as was ordinarily thefashion, even in respectable writers, was as wrong, as unfair, asunprofitable to the cause of truth and Christianity, as the Romancharges against us were felt by us to be ignorant and unjust. Romeprofesses like England to continue the constitution, doctrine, traditions, and spirit of the ancient and undivided Church: and so faras she does so--and she does so in a great degree--we can have noquarrel with her. But in a great degree also, she does this only inprofession and as a theory: she claims the witness and suffrage ofantiquity, but she interprets it at her own convenience and by her ownauthority. We cannot claim exemption from mistakes, from deviations fromour own standard and principles, any more than Rome; but while sheremains as she is, and makes the monstrous claims of infallibility andsupremacy, there is nothing for English Churchmen but to resist her. Union is impossible. Submission is impossible. What we have to beware offor our own sake, as well as for our cause, are false arguments, unrealobjections, ignorant allegations. There is enough on the very surface, in her audacious assertions and high-handed changes, for populararguments against her, without having recourse to exaggeration andfalsehood; she may be a very faulty Church, without being Babylon andAntichrist. And in the higher forms of argument, there is abundance inthose provinces of ancient theology and ecclesiastical history and law, which Protestant controversialists have commonly surrendered and leftopen to their opponents, to supply a more telling weapon than any whichthese controversialists have used. 

This line, though substantially involved in the theory of our mostlearned divines, from Andrewes to Wake, was new in its moderation andreasonable caution; in its abstention from insult and vague abuse, inits recognition of the _primâ facie_ strength of much of the Roman case, in its fearless attempt, in defiance of the deepest prejudices, to facethe facts and conditions of the question. Mr. Newman dared to know andto acknowledge much that our insular self-satisfaction did not know, anddid not care to know, of real Christian life in the Church of Rome. Hedared to admit that much that was popularly held to be Popish wasancient, Catholic, edifying; he dared to warn Churchmen that the looseunsifted imputations, so securely hazarded against Rome, were bothdiscreditable and dangerous. All this, from one whose condemnation ofRome was decisive and severe, was novel. The attempt, both in its spiritand its ability, was not unworthy of being part of the general effort toraise the standard of thought and teaching in the English Church. Itrecalled men from slovenly prejudices to the study of the real facts ofthe living world. It narrowed the front of battle, but it strengthenedit enormously. The volume on _Romanism and Popular Protestantism_ is notan exhaustive survey of the controversy with Rome or of the theory ofthe Church. There are great portions of the subject, both theologicaland historical, which it did not fall within the scope of the book totouch. It was unsystematic and incomplete. But so far as its argumentextended, it almost formed an epoch in this kind of controversialwriting. It showed the command of a man of learning over all thetechnical points and minutiae of a question highly scholastical in itsconceptions and its customary treatment, and it presented this questionin its bearings and consequences on life and practice with the freedomand breadth of the most vigorous popular writing. The indictment againstRome was no vague or general one. It was one of those arguments whichcut the ground from under a great established structure of reasoningsand proofs. And its conclusions, clear and measured, but stern, werethe more impressive, because they came from one who did not disguise hisfeeling that there was much in what was preserved in the Roman system toadmire and to learn from. 

The point which he chose for his assault was indeed the key of the Romanposition--the doctrine of Infallibility. He was naturally led to thisside of the question by the stress which the movement had laid on theidea of the Church as the witness and teacher of revealed truth: and theimmediate challenge given by the critics or opponents of the movementwas, how to distinguish this lofty idea of the Church, with its claim toauthority, if it was at all substantial, from the imposing andconsistent theory of Romanism. He urged against the Roman claim ofInfallibility two leading objections. One was the way in which theassumed infallibility of the present Church was made to override andsupersede, in fact, what in words was so ostentatiously put forward, thehistorical evidence of antiquity to doctrine, expressed by the phrase, the "consent of the Fathers. " The other objection was the inherentcontradiction of the notion of infallibility to the conditions of humanreception of teaching and knowledge, and its practical uselessness as anassurance of truth, its partly delusive, partly mischievous, working. But he felt, as all deep minds must feel, that it is easier to overthrowthe Roman theory of Church authority than to replace it by another, equally complete and commanding, and more unassailable. He was quitealive to the difficulties of the Anglican position; but he was adisciple in the school of Bishop Butler, and had learned as a firstprinciple to recognise the limitations of human knowledge, and theunphilosophical folly of trying to round off into finished andpretentious schemes our fragmentary yet certain notices of our owncondition and of God's dealings with it. He followed his teacher ininsisting on the reality and importance of moral evidence as opposed todemonstrative proof; and he followed the great Anglican divines inasserting that there was a true authority, varying in its degrees, inthe historic Church; that on the most fundamental points of religionthis authority was trustworthy and supreme; that on many other questionsit was clear and weighty, though it could not decide everything. Thisview of the "prophetical office of the Church" had the dialecticaldisadvantage of appearing to be a compromise, to many minds a fataldisadvantage. It got the name of the _Via Media_; a satisfactory one topractical men like Dr. Hook, to whom it recommended itself for use inpopular teaching; but to others, in aftertimes, an ill-sounding phraseof dislike, which summed up the weakness of the Anglican case. Yet itonly answered to the certain fact, that in the early and undividedChurch there was such a thing as authority, and there was no such thingknown as Infallibility. It was an appeal to the facts of history andhuman nature against the logical exigencies of a theory. Men musttranscend the conditions of our experience if they want the certaintywhich the theory of Infallibility speaks of. 

There were especially two weak points in this view of Anglicanism. Mr. Newman felt and admitted them, and of course they were forced on hisattention by controversialists on both sides; by the Ultra Protestantschool, whose modes of dealing with Scripture he had exposed withmerciless logic and by the now eager Roman disputants, of whom Dr. Wiseman was the able and not over-scrupulous chief. The first of thesepoints was that the authority of the undivided Church, which Anglicanisminvoked, though it completely covered the great foundations of Christiandoctrine, our faith as to the nature of God, did not cover with equalcompleteness other important points of controversy, such as thoseraised at the Reformation as to the Sacraments, and the justification ofthe sinner. The Anglican answer was that though the formal and conciliarauthority was not the same in each case, the patristic literature of thetime of the great councils, all that it took for granted and preservedas current belief and practice, all that resulted from the questions anddebates of the time, formed a body of proof, which carried with it moralevidence only short of authoritative definition, and was so regarded inthe Anglican formularies. These formularies implied the authority of theChurch to speak; and what was defined on this authority was based ongood evidence, though there were portions of its teaching which had evenbetter. The other point was more serious. "Your theory, " was theobjection, "is nothing but a paper theory; it never was a reality; itnever can be. There may be an ideal halting-place, there is neither alogical nor an actual one, between Romanism and the ordinary negationsof Protestantism. " The answer to the challenge then was, "Let us see ifit cannot be realised. It has recognised foundations to build upon, andthe impediments and interruptions which have hindered it are well known. Let us see if it will not turn out something more than a paper theory. "That was the answer given at the time, abandoned ten years afterwards. But this at least may be said, that the longer experience of the lastfifty years has shown that the Church of England has been working moreand more on such a theory, and that the Church of England, whatever itsfaults may be, is certainly not a Church only on paper. 

But on the principles laid down in this volume, the Roman controversy, in its varying forms, was carried on--for the time by Mr. Newman, permanently by the other leaders of the movement. In its main outlines, the view has become the accepted Anglican view. Many other mostimportant matters have come into the debate. The publicly alteredattitude of the Papacy has indefinitely widened the breach betweenEngland and Rome. But the fundamental idea of the relations andcharacter of the two Churches remains the same as it was shadowed forthin 1836. 

One very important volume on these questions ought not to be passed bywithout notice. This was the _Treatise on the Church of Christ_, 1838, by Mr. W. Palmer, who had already by his _Origines_ of the EnglishRitual, 1832, done much to keep up that interest of Churchmen in theearly devotional language of the Church, which had first been calledforth by Bishop Lloyd's lectures on the Prayer Book. The _Treatise onthe Church_ was an honour to English theology and learning; in point ofplan and structure we have few books like it. [72] It is comprehensive, methodical, well-compacted, and, from its own point of view, exhaustive. It is written with full knowledge of the state of thequestion at the time, both on the Anglican side and on the Roman. Itsauthor evades no objection, and is aware of most. It is rigorous inform, and has no place for anything but substantial argument. It is abook which, as the _Apologia_ tells us, commanded the respect of such anaccomplished controversialist as Perrone; and, it may be added, of atheologian of an opposite school, Dr. Döllinger. It is also one on whichthe highest value has been set by Mr. Gladstone. It is remarkable thatit did not exercise more influence on religious thought in Oxford at thecritical time when it appeared. But it had defects, and the moment wasagainst it. It was dry and formal--inevitably so, from the scientificplan deliberately adopted for it; it treated as problems of thetheological schools, to be discussed by the rules of severe andpassionless disputation, questions which were once more, after theinterval of more than a century, beginning to touch hearts andconsciences, and were felt to be fraught with the gravest practicalissues. And Mr. Newman, in his mode of dealing with them, unsystematic, incomplete, unsatisfactory in many ways as it was, yet saw in them notabstract and scholastic inquiries, however important, but matters inwhich not only sound argument, but sympathy and quick intelligence ofthe conditions and working of the living minds around him, were neededto win their attention and interest. To persons accustomed to Mr. Newman's habit of mind and way of writing, his ease, his frankness, hiscandour, his impatience of conventionality, his piercing insight intothe very centre of questions, his ever-ready recognition of nature andreality, his range of thought, his bright and clear and fearless styleof argument, his undisplayed but never unfelt consciousness of the trueawfulness of anything connected with religion, any stiff and heavy wayof treating questions which he had treated would have seemedunattractive and unpersuasive. He had spoiled his friends for any meretechnical handling, however skilful, of great and critical subjects. Hehimself pointed out in a review the unique merit and the real value ofMr. Palmer's book, pointing out also, significantly enough, where itfell short, both in substance and in manner. Observing that the"scientific" system of the English Church is not yet "sufficientlycleared and adjusted, " and adding a variety of instances of thisdeficiency, he lets us see what he wanted done, where difficulties mostpressed upon himself, and where Mr. Palmer had missed the real substanceof such difficulties. Looking at it by the light of after-events, we cansee the contradiction and reaction produced by Mr. Palmer's toooptimist statements. Still, Mr. Newman's praise was sincere anddiscriminating. But Mr. Palmer's book, though never forgotten, scarcelybecame, what it at another time might well have become, an Englishtext-book. 

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Whately's _Life_, ed. 1875, pp. 187-190. 

[69] Advertisement to vol. I. 1st Nov. 1834. 

[70] _Apologia_, p. 139. 

[71] Vide _Lyra Apostolica_, Nos. 170, 172:

 How shall I name thee, Light of the wide West, Or heinous error-seat?. .. Oh, that thy creed were sound! For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome, By thy unwearied watch and varied round Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home. 

And comp. No. 171, _The Cruel Church_. 

[72] "The most important theological work which has lately appeared isMr. Palmer's _Treatise on the Church_. .. . Whatever judgment may beformed of the conclusions to which he has come on the variety of pointswhich he had to consider, we cannot contemplate without admiration, and(if it were right) without envy, the thorough treatment which hissubject has received at his hands. It is indeed a work quite incharacter with the religious movement which has commenced in variousparts of the Church, displaying a magnificence of design similar to thatof the Bishop of London's plan of fifty new churches, and Dr. Pusey, ofOxford's, projected translation of the Fathers. "--_Brit. Crit. _. July1838. Short Notices. 

CHAPTER XII

CHANGES

The first seven years of the movement, as it is said in the _Apologia_, had been years of prosperity. There had been mistakes; there had beenopposition; there had been distrust and uneasiness. There was in someplaces a ban on the friends of Mr. Newman; men like Mr. James Mozley andMr. Mark Pattison found their connexion with him a difficulty in the wayof fellowships. But on the whole, things had gone smoothly, without anygreat breakdown, or any open collision with authority. But after 1840another period was to begin of trouble and disaster. The seeds of thishad been partially sown before in the days of quiet, and the time wascome for their development. Differences in the party itself had beengrowing sharper; differences between the more cautious and the morefearless, between the more steady-going and the more subtle thinkers. The contrast between the familiar and customary, and the new--betweenthe unknown or forgotten, and a mass of knowledge only recentlyrealised--became more pronounced. Consequences of a practical kind, realor supposed; began to show themselves, and to press. And above all, asecond generation, without the sobering experience of the first, wasstarting from where the first had reached to, and, in some instances, was rising up against their teachers' caution and patience. The usualdangers of all earnest and aggressive assertions of great principlesappeared: contempt for everything in opinion and practice that was notadvanced, men vying with each other in bold inferences, in the pleasureof "talking strong. " With this grew fear and exasperation on the otherside, misunderstandings, misgivings, strainings of mutual confidence, within. Dr. Hook alternated between violent bursts of irritation anddisgust, and equally strong returns of sympathy, admiration, andgratitude; and he represented a large amount of feeling among Churchmen. It was but too clear that storms were at hand. They came perhaps quickerthan they were anticipated. 

Towards the end of 1838, a proposal was brought forward, for which inits direct aspect much might plausibly be said, but which was inintention and indirectly a test question, meant to put the Tractariansin a difficulty, and to obtain the weight of authority in the Universityagainst them. It was proposed to raise a subscription, and to erect amonument in Oxford, to the martyrs of the Reformation, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. Considering that the current and popular language datedthe Church of England from the Reformation of the sixteenth century, andcited the Reformers as ultimate and paramount authorities on itsdoctrine, there was nothing unreasonable in such a proposal. Dr. Hook, strong Churchman as he was, "called to union on the principles of theEnglish Reformation. " But the criticism which had been set afloat by themovement had discovered and realised, what defenders of the EnglishChurch had hitherto felt it an act of piety to disbelieve, when putbefore them by Romanists like Lingard, and radicals like Cobbett. Thatthe Reformers had been accomplices in many indefensible acts, and hadbeen inconsistent and untrustworthy theologians. Providentially, it wasfelt, the force of old convictions and tradition and the historicalevents of the time had obliged them to respect the essentials ofCatholic truth and polity and usage; we owed to them much that wasbeautiful and devotional in the Prayer Book; and their Articles, clearin all matters decided by the early theology, avoided foreign extremesin dealing with later controversies. But their own individual languagewas often far in advance of the public and official language offormularies, in the direction of the great Protestant authorities ofGeneva and Zurich. There were still, even among the movement party, manywho respected the Reformers for the work which they had attempted, andpartly and imperfectly done, to be more wisely and soberly carried on bytheir successors of the seventeenth century. But the charges againsttheir Calvinistic and even Zwinglian language were hard to parry; evento those who respected them for their connexion with our present orderof things, their learning, their soundness, their authority appeared tobe greatly exaggerated; and the reaction from excessive veneration madeothers dislike and depreciate them. This was the state of feeling whenthe Martyrs' Memorial was started. It was eagerly pressed with ingeniousand persevering arguments by Mr. Golightly, the indefatigable andlong-labouring opponent of all that savoured of Tractarianism. Theappeal seemed so specious that at first many even of the party gave intheir adhesion. Even Dr. Pusey was disposed to subscribe to it. But Mr. Newman, as was natural, held aloof; and his friends for the most partdid the same. It was what was expected and intended. They were either tocommit themselves to the Reformation as understood by the promoters ofthe Memorial; or they were to be marked as showing their disloyalty toit. The subscription was successful. The Memorial was set up, and stood, a derisive though unofficial sign of the judgment of the Universityagainst them. 

But the "Memorial" made little difference to the progress of themovement. It was an indication of hostility in reserve, but this wasall; it formed an ornament to the city, but failed as a religious andeffective protest. Up to the spring of 1839, Anglicanism, placed on anintellectual basin by Mr. Newman, developed practically in differentways by Dr. Pusey and Dr. Hook, sanctioned in theory by divines whorepresented the old divinity of the English Church, like BishopPhillpotts and Mr. H. J. Rose, could speak with confident and hopefulvoice. It might well seem that it was on its way to win over the cominggenerations of the English clergy. It had on its side all that givesinterest and power to a cause, --thought, force of character, unselfishearnestness; it had unity of idea and agreement in purpose, and wascemented by the bonds of warm affection and common sympathies. It hadthe promise of a nobler religion, as energetic and as spiritual asPuritanism and Wesleyanism, while it drew its inspiration, its canons ofdoctrine, its moral standards, from purer and more venerablesources;--from communion, not with individual teachers and partialtraditions, but with the consenting teaching and authoritative documentsof the continuous Catholic Church. 

Anglicanism was agreed, up to this time--the summer of 1839--as to itsgeneral principles. Charges of an inclination to Roman views had beenpromptly and stoutly met; nor was there really anything but theignorance or ill-feeling of the accusers to throw doubt on the sincerityof these disavowals. The deepest and strongest mind in the movement wassatisfied; and his steadiness of conviction could be appealed to if hisfollowers talked wildly and rashly. He had kept one unwavering path; hehad not shrunk from facing with fearless honesty the real living arrayof reasons which the most serious Roman advocates could put forward. With a frankness new in controversy, he had not been afraid to statethem with a force which few of his opponents could have put forth. Withan eye ever open to that supreme Judge of all our controversies, wholistens to them on His throne on high, he had with conscientiousfairness admitted what he saw to be good and just on the side of hisadversaries, conceded what in the confused wrangle of conflicting claimshe judged ought to be conceded. But after all admissions and allconcessions, the comparative strength of his own case appeared all themore undeniable. He had stripped it of its weaknesses, its incumbrances, its falsehoods; and it did not seem the weaker for being presented inits real aspect and on its real grounds. People felt that he had gone tothe bottom of the question as no one had yet dared to do. He was yetstaunch in his convictions; and they could feel secure. 

But a change was at hand. In the course of 1839, the little cloud showeditself in the outlook of the future; the little rift opened, small andhardly perceptible, which was to widen into an impassable gulf. Anglicanism started with undoubted confidence in its own foundations andits own position, as much against Romanism as against the more recentforms of religion. In the consciousness of its strength, it could affordto make admissions and to refrain from tempting but unworthy argumentsin controversy with Rome; indeed the necessity of such controversy hadcome upon it unexpectedly and by surprise. With English frankness, inits impatience of abuses and desire for improvement within, it had dweltstrongly on the faults and shortcomings of the English Church which itdesired to remedy; but while allowing what was undeniably excellent inRome, it had been equally outspoken and emphatic in condemnation of theevils of Rome. What is there to wonder at in such a position? It is theposition of every honest reforming movement, at least in England. ButAnglican self-reliance was unshaken, and Anglican hope waxed stronger asthe years went on, and the impression made by Anglican teaching becamewider and deeper. Outside attacks, outside persecution, could now dolittle harm; the time was past for that. What might have happened hadthings gone on as they began, it is idle to inquire. But at the momentwhen all seemed to promise fair, the one fatal influence, the presenceof internal uncertainty and doubt, showed itself. The body of men whohad so for acted together began to show a double aspect. While oneportion of it continued on the old lines, holding the old ground, defending the old principles, and attempting to apply them for theimprovement of the practical system of the English Church, anotherportion had asked the question, and were pursuing the anxious inquiry, whether the English Church was a true Church at all, a true portion ofthe one uninterrupted Catholic Church of the Redeemer. And the questionhad forced itself with importunate persistence on the leading mind ofthe movement. From this time the fate of Tractarianism, as a party, wasdecided. 

In this overthrow of confidence, two sets of influences may be traced. 

1. One, which came from above, from the highest leading authority in themovement, was the unsettlement of Mr. Newman's mind. He has told thestory, the story as he believed of his enfranchisement and deliverance;and he has told the story, though the story of a deliverance, with sokeen a feeling of its pathetic and tragic character, --as it is indeedthe most tragic story of a conversion to peace and hope on record, --thatit will never cease to be read where the English language is spoken. Upto the summer of 1839, his view of the English position had satisfiedhim--satisfied him, that is, as a tenable one in the anomalies ofexisting Christendom. All seemed clear and hopeful, and the one thing tobe thought of was to raise the English Church to the height of its ownstandard. But in the autumn of that year (1839), as he has told us, achange took place. In the summer of 1839, he had set himself to studythe history of the Monophysite controversy. "I have no reason, " hewrites, "to suppose that the thought of Rome came across my mind atall. .. . It was during this course of reading that for the first time adoubt came across me of the tenableness of Anglicanism. I had seen theshadow of a hand on the wall. He who has seen a ghost cannot be as if hehad never seen it. The heavens had opened and closed again. " To lessimaginative and slower minds this seems an overwrought description of aphenomenon, which must present itself sometime or other to all whosearch the foundations of conviction; and by itself he was for the timeproof against its force. "The thought for the moment had been, TheChurch of Rome will be found right after all; and then it had vanished. My old convictions remained as before. " But another blow came, and thenanother. An article by Dr. Wiseman on the Donatists greatly disturbedhim. The words of St. Augustine about the Donatists, _securus judicatorbis terrarum_, rang continually in his ears, like words out of thesky. He found the threatenings of the Monophysite controversy renewed inthe _Arian_: "the ghost had come a second time. " It was a "mostuncomfortable article, " he writes in his letters; "the first real hitfrom Romanism which has happened to me"; it gave him, as he says, "astomach-ache. " But he still held his ground, and returned his answer tothe attack in an article in the _British Critic_, on the "Catholicity ofthe English Church. " He did not mean to take the attack for more than itwas worth, an able bit of _ex parte_ statement. But it told on him, asnothing had yet told on him. What it did, was to "open a vista which wasclosed before, and of which he could not see the end"; "we are not atthe bottom of things, " was the sting it left behind From this time, thehope and exultation with which, in spite of checks and misgivings, hehad watched the movement, gave way to uneasiness and distress. A newstruggle was beginning, a long struggle with himself, a long strugglebetween rival claims which would not be denied, each equally imperious, and involving fatal consequences if by mistake the wrong one wasadmitted. And it was not only the effect of these thoughts on his ownmind which filled him with grief and trouble. He always thought much forothers; and now there was the misery of perhaps unsettlingothers--others who had trusted him with their very souls--others, towhom it was impossible to explain the conflicts which were passing inhis own mind. It was so bitter to unsettle their hope and confidence. All through this time, more trying than his own difficulties, were theperplexities and sorrows which he foresaw for those whom he loved. Veryillogical and inconsecutive, doubtless; if only he had had the hardheart of a proselytiser, he would have seen that it was his duty toundermine and shatter their old convictions. But he cared more for thetempers and beliefs in which he was at one with his Anglican friends, than for those in which they could not follow him. But the struggle cameon gradually. What he feared at first was not the triumph of Rome, butthe break-up of the English Church; the apparent probability of a greatschism in it. "I fear I see more clearly that we are working up to aschism in the English Church, that is, a split between Peculiars andApostolicals . .. I never can be surprised at individuals going off toRome, but that is not my chief fear, but a schism; that is, those twoparties, which have hitherto got on together as they could, from thetimes of Puritanism downwards, gathering up into clear, tangible, anddirect forces, and colliding. Our Church is not at one with itself, there is no denying it. " That was at first the disaster before him. Histhought for himself began to turn, not to Rome, but to a new lifewithout office and authority, but still within the English Church. "Yousee, if things come to the worst, I should turn brother of charity inLondon. " And he began to prepare for a move from Oxford, from St. Mary's, from his fellowship. He bought land at Littlemore, and began toplant. He asks his brother-in-law for plans for building what he calls aμονή. He looks forward to its becoming a sort of Monastic school, butstill connected with the University. 

In Mr. Newman's view of the debate between England and Rome, he had allalong dwelt on two broad features, _Apostolicity_ and _Catholicity_, likeness to the Apostolic teaching, and likeness to the uninterruptedunity and extent of the undivided Church; and of those two features hefound the first signally wanting in Rome, and the second signallywanting in England. When he began to distrust his own reasonings, stillthe disturbing and repelling element in Rome was the alleged defect ofApostolicity, the contrast between primitive and Roman religion; whilethe attractive one was the apparent widely extended Catholicity in alllands, East and West, continents and isles, of the world-wide spiritualempire of the Pope. It is these two great points which may be traced intheir action on his mind at this crisis. The contrast between early andRoman doctrine and practice, in a variety of ways, some of them mostgrave and important, was long a great difficulty in the way ofattempting to identify the Roman Church, absolutely and exclusively, with the Primitive Church. The study of antiquity indisposed him, indeed, more and more to the existing system of the English Church; itsclaims to model itself on the purity and simplicity of the Early Churchseemed to him, in the light of its documents, and still more of thefacts of history and life, more and more questionable. But modern Romewas just as distant from the Early Church though it preserved manyancient features, lost or unvalued by England. Still, Rome was not thesame thing as the Early Church; and Mr. Newman ultimately sought a wayout of his difficulty--and indeed there was no other--in the famousdoctrine of Development. But when the difficulty about _Apostolicity_was thus provided for, then the force of the great vision of theCatholic Church came upon him, unchecked and irresistible. That was athing present, visible, undeniable as a fact of nature; that was a thingat once old and new; it belonged as truly, as manifestly, to the recentand modern world of democracy and science, as it did to the Middle Agesand the Fathers, to the world of Gregory and Innocent, to the world ofAthanasius and Augustine. The majesty, the vastness of an imperialpolity, outlasting all states and kingdoms, all social changes andpolitical revolutions, answered at once to the promises of theprophecies, and to the antecedent idea of the universal kingdom of God. Before this great idea, embodied in concrete form, and not a paperdoctrine, partial scandals and abuses seemed to sink intoinsignificance. Objections seemed petty and ignoble; the pretence ofrival systems impertinent and absurd. He resented almost with impatienceanything in the way of theory or explanation which seemed to him narrow, technical, dialectical. He would look at nothing but what had on it themark of greatness and largeness which befitted the awful subject, andwas worthy of arresting the eye and attention of an ecclesiasticalstatesman, alive to mighty interests, compared to which even the mostserious human affairs were dwarfed and obscured. But all this wasgradual in coming. His recognition of the claims of the English Church, faulty and imperfect as he thought it, did not give way suddenly and atonce. It survived the rude shock of 1839, From first to almost the lastshe was owned as his "mother"--owned in passionate accents ofdisappointment and despair as a Church which knew not how to use itsgifts; yet still, even though life seemed failing her, and her power ofteaching and ruling seemed paralysed, his mother; and as long as thereseemed to him a prospect of restoration to health, it was his duty tostay by her. [73] This was his first attitude for three or four yearsafter 1839. He could not speak of her with the enthusiasm and triumph ofthe first years of the movement. When he fought her battles, it was withthe sense that her imperfections made his task the harder. Still heclung to the belief that she held a higher standard than she had yetacted up to, and discouraged and perplexed he yet maintained her cause. But now two things happened. The Roman claims, as was natural whenalways before him, seemed to him more and more indisputable. And inEngland his interpretation of Anglican theology seemed to be more andmore contradicted, disavowed, condemned, by all that spoke with anyauthority in the Church. The University was not an ecclesiastical body, yet it had practically much weight in matters of theology; itinformally, but effectually, declared against him. The Bishops, one byone, of course only spoke as individuals; but they were the officialspokesmen of the Church, and their consent, though not the act of aSynod, was weighty--they too had declared against him. And finally thatvague but powerful voice of public opinion, which claims to represent atonce the cool judgment of the unbiassed, and the passion of thezealous--it too declared against him. Could he claim to understand themind of the Church better than its own organs?

Then at length a change came; and it was marked outwardly by a curiousretractation of his severe language about Rome, published in a papercalled the _Conservative Journal_, in January 1843; and more distinctly, by his resignation of St. Mary's in September 1843, a step contemplatedfor some time, and by his announcement that he was preparing to resignhis fellowship. From this time he felt that he could no longer holdoffice, or be a champion of the English Church; from this time, it wasonly a matter of waiting, waiting to make quite certain that he wasright and was under no delusion, when he should leave her for the RomanCommunion. And to his intimate friends, to his sisters, he gave noticethat this was now impending. To the world outside, all that was knownwas that he was much unsettled and distressed by difficulties. 

It may be asked why this change was not at this time communicated, notto a few intimates, but to the world? Why did he not at this time hoisthis quarantine flag and warn every one that he was dangerous to comenear? So keen a mind must, it was said, have by this time foreseen howthings would end; he ought to have given earlier notice. His answer wasthat he was sincerely desirous of avoiding, as far as possible, whatmight prejudice the Church in which he had ministered, even at themoment of leaving her. He saw his own way becoming clearer and clearer;but he saw it for himself alone. He was not one of those who forced theconvictions of others; he was not one of those who think it a greatthing to be followed in a serious change by a crowd of disciples. Whatever might be at the end, it was now an agonising wrench to partfrom the English body, to part from the numbers of friends whose loyaltywas immovable, to part from numbers who had trusted and learned fromhim. Of course, if he was in the right way, he could wish them nothingbetter than that they should follow him. But they were in God's hands;it was not his business to unsettle them; it was not his business toensnare and coerce their faith. And so he tried for this time to steerhis course alone. He wished to avoid observation. He was silent on allthat went on round him, exciting as some of the incidents were. He wouldnot he hurried; he would give himself full time; he would do what hecould to make sure that he was not acting under the influence of adelusion. 

The final result of all this was long in coming; there was, we know, abitter agony of five years, a prolonged and obstinate and cruel strugglebetween the deepest affections and ever-growing convictions. But thisstruggle, as has been said, did not begin with the conviction in whichit ended. It began and long continued with the belief that thoughEngland was wrong, Rome was not right; that though the Roman argumentseemed more and more unanswerable, there were insuperable difficultiesof certain fact which made the Roman conclusion incredible; that therewas so much good and truth in England, with all its defects and faults, which was unaccountable and unintelligible on the Roman hypothesis; thatthe real upshot was that the whole state of things in Christendom wasabnormal; that to English Churchmen the English Church had immediate anddirect claims which nothing but the most irresistible counter-claimscould overcome or neutralise--the claims of a shipwrecked body cut offfrom country and home, yet as a shipwrecked body still organised, andwith much saved from the wreck, and not to be deserted, as long as itheld together, in an uncertain attempt to rejoin its lost unity. Resignation, retirement, silence, lay communion, the hope of ultimate, though perhaps long-deferred reunion--these were his first thoughts. Misgivings could not be helped, would not be denied, but need not beparaded, were to be kept at arm's-length as long as possible. This isthe picture presented in the autobiography of these painful and drearyyears; and there is every evidence that it is a faithful one. It isconceivable, though not very probable, that such a course might go onindefinitely. It is conceivable that under different circumstances hemight, like other perplexed and doubting seekers after truth, haveworked round through doubt and perplexity to his first conviction. Butthe actual result, as it came, was natural enough; and it wasaccelerated by provocation, by opponents without, and by the pressure ofadvanced and impatient followers and disciples in the party itself. 

2. This last was the second of the two influences spoken of above. Itworked from below, as the first worked from above. 

Discussions and agitations, such as accompanied the movement, howevermuch under the control of the moral and intellectual ascendancy of theleaders, could not of course be guaranteed from escaping from thatcontrol. And as the time went on, men joined the movement who had butqualified sympathy with that passionate love and zeal for the actualEnglish Church, that acquaintance with its historical theology, and thattemper of discipline, sobriety, and self-distrust, which marked itsfirst representatives. These younger disciples shared in the growingexcitement of the society round them. They were attracted by visibleheight of character, and brilliant intellectual power. They were aliveto vast and original prospects, opening a new world which should be acontrast to the worn-out interest of the old. Some of these were men ofwide and abstruse learning; quaint and eccentric scholars both in habitand look, students of the ancient type, who even fifty years ago seemedout of date to their generation. Some were men of considerable force ofmind, destined afterwards to leave a mark on their age as thinkers andwriters. To the former class belonged Charles Seager, and John BrandeMorris, of Exeter College, both learned Orientalists, steeped inrecondite knowledge of all kinds; men who had worked their way toknowledge through hardship and grinding labour, and not to be outdone inGermany itself for devouring love of learning and a scholar's plainnessof life. In the other class may be mentioned Frederic Faber, J. D. Dalgairns, and W. G. Ward, men who have all since risen to eminence intheir different spheres. Faber was a man with a high gift ofimagination, remarkable powers of assimilating knowledge, and a greatrichness and novelty and elegance of thought, which with much melody ofvoice made him ultimately a very attractive preacher. If the promise ofhis powers has not been adequately fulfilled, it is partly to be tracedto a want of severity of taste and self-restraint, but his name willlive in some of his hymns, and in some very beautiful portions of hisdevotional writings. Dalgairns's mind was of a different order. "Thatman has an eye for theology, " was the remark of a competent judge onsome early paper of Dalgairns's which came before him. He had somethingof the Frenchman about him. There was in him, in his Oxford days, abright and frank briskness, a mixture of modesty and arch daring, whichgave him an almost boyish appearance; but beneath this boyish appearancethere was a subtle and powerful intellect, alive to the problems ofreligious philosophy, and impatient of any but the most thoroughsolutions of them; while, on the other hand, the religious affectionswere part of his nature, and mind and will and heart yielded anunreserved and absolute obedience to the leading and guidance of faith. In his later days, with his mind at ease, Father Dalgairns threw himselfinto the great battle with unbelief; and few men have commanded morethe respect of opponents not much given to think well of the argumentsfor religion, by the freshness and the solidity of his reasoning. Atthis time, enthusiastic in temper, and acute and exacting as a thinker, he found the Church movement just, as it were, on the turn of the wave. He was attracted to it at first by its reaction against what was unrealand shallow, by its affinities with what was deep in idea and earnest inlife; then, and finally, he was repelled from it, by its want ofcompleteness, by its English acquiescence in compromise, by itshesitations and clinging to insular associations and sympathies, whichhad little interest for him. 

Another person, who was at this time even more prominent in the advancedportion of the movement party, and whose action had more decisiveinfluence on its course, was Mr. W. G. Ward, Fellow of Balliol. Mr. Ward, who was first at Christ Church, had distinguished himself greatly at theOxford Union as a vigorous speaker, at first on the Tory side; he cameafterwards under the influence of Arthur Stanley, then fresh from Rugby, and naturally learned to admire Dr. Arnold; but Dr. Arnold's religiousdoctrines did not satisfy him; the movement, with its boldness andoriginality of idea and ethical character, had laid strong hold on him, and he passed into one of the most thoroughgoing adherents of Mr. Newman. There was something to smile at in his person, and in some ofhis ways--his unbusiness-like habits, his joyousness of manner, his racystories; but few more powerful intellects passed through Oxford in histime, and he has justified his University reputation by his distinctionsince, both as a Roman Catholic theologian and professor, and as aprofound metaphysical thinker, the equal antagonist on their own groundof J. Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. But his intellect at that timewas as remarkable for its defects as for its powers. He used to dividehis friends, and thinking people in general, into those who had factsand did not know what to do with them, and those who had in perfectionthe logical faculties, but wanted the facts to reason upon. He belongedhimself to the latter class. He had, not unnaturally, boundlessconfidence in his argumentative powers; they were subtle, piercing, nimble, never at a loss, and they included a power of exposition which, if it was not always succinct and lively, was always weighty andimpressive. Premises in his hands were not long in bringing forth theirconclusions; and if abstractions always corresponded exactly to theirconcrete embodiments, and ideals were fulfilled in realities, no onecould point out more perspicuously and decisively the practicaljudgments on them which reason must sanction. But that knowledge ofthings and of men which mere power of reasoning will not give was notone of his special endowments. The study of facts, often in theircomplicated and perplexing reality, was not to his taste. He was apt toaccept them on what he considered adequate authority, and hisargumentation, formidable as it always was, recalled, even when mostunanswerable at the moment, the application of pure mathematics withoutallowance for the actual forces, often difficult to ascertain except byexperiment, which would have to be taken account of in practice. 

The tendency of this section of able men was unquestionably Romewards, almost from the beginning of their connexion with the movement. Both thetheory and the actual system of Rome, so far as they understood it, hadattractions for them which nothing else had. But with whateverperplexity and perhaps impatience, Mr. Newman's power held them back. Hekept before their minds continually those difficulties of fact whichstood in the way of their absolute and peremptory conclusions, and ofwhich they were not much inclined to take account. He insisted on thosefeatures, neither few nor unimportant nor hard to see, which proved thecontinuity of the English Church with the Church Universal. Sharingtheir sense of anomaly in the Anglican theory and position, he pointedout with his own force and insight that anomaly was not in England only, but everywhere. There was much to regret, there was much to improve, there were many unwelcome and dangerous truths, _invidiosi veri_, to betold and defended at any cost. But patience, as well as honesty andcourage, was a Christian virtue; and they who had received theirChristianity at the hands of the English Church had duties towards itfrom which neither dissatisfaction nor the idea of something bettercould absolve them. _Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna_ is the motto forevery one whose lot is cast in any portion of Christ's Church. And aslong as he could speak with this conviction, the strongest of them couldnot break away from his restraint. It was when the tremendous questiontook shape, Is the English Church a true Church, a real part of theChurch Catholic?--when the question became to his mind more and moredoubtful, at length desperate--that they, of course, became moredifficult to satisfy, more confident in their own allegations, moreunchecked in their sympathies, and, in consequence, in their dislikes. And in the continued effort--for it did continue--to make them pause andwait and hope, they reacted on him; they asked him questions which hefound it hard to answer; they pressed him with inferences which he mightput by, but of which he felt the sting; they forced on him all theindications, of which every day brought its contribution, that theactual living system of the English Church was against what he hadtaught to be Catholic, that its energetic temper and spirit condemnedand rejected him. What was it that private men were staunch andundismayed? What was it that month by month all over England hearts andminds were attracted to his side, felt the spell of his teaching, gavehim their confidence? Suspicion and disapprobation, which had only toomuch to ground itself upon, had taken possession of the high places ofthe Church. Authority in all its shapes had pronounced as decisively ashis opponents could wish; as decisively as they too could wish, whodesired no longer a barrier between themselves and Rome. 

Thus a great and momentous change had come over the movement, over itsaction and prospects. It had started in a heroic effort to save theEnglish Church. The claims, the blessings, the divinity of the EnglishChurch, as a true branch of Catholic Christendom, had been assumed asthe foundation of all that was felt and said and attempted. The EnglishChurch was the one object to which English Christians were called uponto turn their thoughts. Its spirit animated the _Christian Year_, andthe teaching of those whom the _Christian Year_ represented. Itsinterests were what called forth the zeal and the indignation recordedin Froude's _Remains_. No one seriously thought of Rome, except as ahopelessly corrupt system, though it had some good and Catholic things, which it was Christian and honest to recognise. The movement of 1833started out of the Anti-Roman feelings of the Emancipation time. It wasAnti-Roman as much as it was Anti-Sectarian and Anti-Erastian. It was toavert the danger of people becoming Romanists from ignorance of Churchprinciples. This was all changed in one important section of the party. The fundamental conceptions and assumptions were reversed. It was notthe Roman Church, but the English Church, which was put on its trial; itwas not the Roman Church, but the English, which was to be, if possible, apologised for, perhaps borne with for a time, but which was to beregarded as deeply fallen, holding an untenable position, andincomparably, unpardonably, below both the standard and the practicalsystem of the Roman Church. From this point of view the object of themovement was no longer to elevate and improve an independent EnglishChurch, but to approximate it as far as possible to what was assumed tobe undeniable--the perfect Catholicity of Rome. More almost than ideasand assumptions, the tone of feeling changed. It had been, towards theEnglish Church, affectionate, enthusiastic, reverential, hopeful. Itbecame contemptuous, critical, intolerant, hostile with the hostilitynot merely of alienation but disgust This was not of course the work ofa moment, but it was of very rapid growth. "How I hate these Anglicans!"was the expression of one of the younger men of this section, anintemperate and insolent specimen of it. It did not represent the toneor the language of the leader to whom the advanced section deferred, vexed as he often was with the course of his own thoughts, and irritatedand impatient at the course of things without. But it expressed but tootruly the difference between 1833 and 1840. 

FOOTNOTES:

[73] See Sermons on _Subjects of the Day_, 1843. 

CHAPTER XIII

THE AUTHORITIES AND THE MOVEMENT

While the movement was making itself felt as a moral force, without aparallel in Oxford for more than two centuries, and was impressingdeeply and permanently some of the most promising men in the risinggeneration in the University, what was the attitude of the Universityauthorities? What was the attitude of the Bishops?

At Oxford it was that of contemptuous indifference, passing intohelpless and passionate hostility. There is no sadder passage to befound in the history of Oxford than the behaviour and policy of theheads of this great Christian University towards the religious movementwhich was stirring the interest, the hopes, the fears of Oxford. Themovement was, for its first years at least, a loyal and earnest effortto serve the cause of the Church. Its objects were clear and reasonable;it aimed at creating a sincere and intelligent zeal for the Church, andat making the Church itself worthy of the great position which herfriends claimed for her. Its leaders were men well known in theUniversity, in the first rank in point of ability and character; men oflearning, who knew what they were talking about; men of religious andpure, if also severe lives. They were not men merely of speculation andcriticism, but men ready to forego anything, to devote everything forthe practical work of elevating religious thought and life. All this didnot necessarily make their purposes and attempts wise and good; but itdid entitle them to respectful attention. If they spoke language new tothe popular mind or the "religious world, " it was not new--at least itought not to have been new--to orthodox Churchmen, with opportunities ofstudy and acquainted with our best divinity. If their temper was eagerand enthusiastic, they alleged the presence of a great and perilouscrisis. Their appeal was mainly not to the general public, but to thesober and the learned; to those to whom was entrusted the formation offaith and character in the future clergy of the Church; to those whowere responsible for the discipline and moral tone of the firstUniversity of Christendom, and who held their conspicuous position onthe understanding of that responsibility. It behoved the heads of theUniversity to be cautious, even to be suspicious; movements might behollow or dangerous things. But it behoved them also to becomeacquainted with so striking a phenomenon as this; to judge it by what itappealed to--the learning of English divines, the standard of a high andgenerous moral rule; to recognise its aims at least, with equity andsympathy, if some of its methods and arguments seemed questionable. Themen of the movement were not mere hostile innovators; they were fightingfor what the University and its chiefs held dear and sacred, theprivileges and safety of the Church. It was the natural part of theheads of the University to act as moderators; at any rate, to haveshown, with whatever reserve, that they appreciated what they neededtime to judge of. But while on the one side there was burning anddevouring earnestness, and that power of conviction which doubles thestrength of the strong, there was on the other a serene ignoring of allthat was going on, worthy of a set of dignified French _abbés_ on theeve of the Revolution. This sublime or imbecile security wasoccasionally interrupted by bursts of irritation at some fresh piece ofTractarian oddness or audacity, or at some strange story which made itsway from the gossip of common rooms to the society of the Heads ofHouses. And there was always ready a stick to beat the offenders;everything could be called Popish. But for the most part they looked on, with smiles, with jokes, sometimes with scolding. [74] Thus the men whoby their place ought to have been able to gauge and control themovement, who might have been expected to meet half-way a seriousattempt to brace up the religious and moral tone of the place, soincalculably important in days confessed to be anxious ones, simply settheir faces steadily to discountenance and discredit it. They were goodand respectable men, living comfortably in a certain state and ease. Their lives were mostly simple compared with the standard of the outerworld, though Fellows of Colleges thought them luxurious. But they wereblind and dull as tea-table gossips as to what was the meaning of themovement, as to what might come of it, as to what use might be made ofit by wise and just and generous recognition, and, if need be, by wiseand just criticism and repression. There were points of danger in it;but they could only see what _seemed_ to be dangerous, whether it wasso or not; and they multiplied these points of danger by all that wasgood and hopeful in it. It perplexed and annoyed them; they had notimagination nor moral elevation to take in what it aimed at; they werecontent with the routine which they had inherited; and, so that men readfor honours and took first classes, it did not seem to them strange or aprofanation that a whole mixed crowd of undergraduates should beexpected to go on a certain Sunday in term, willing or unwilling, fit orunlit, to the Sacrament, and be fined if they did not appear. Doubtlesswe are all of us too prone to be content with the customary, and to beprejudiced against the novel, nor is this condition of things withoutadvantage. But we must bear our condemnation if we stick to thecustomary too long, and so miss our signal opportunities. In theirapathy, in their self-satisfied ignorance, in their dulness ofapprehension and forethought, the authorities of the University let passthe great opportunity of their time. As it usually happens, when thisposture of lofty ignoring what is palpable and active, and the object ofeverybody's thought, goes on too long, it is apt to turn into impatientdislike and bitter antipathy. The Heads of Houses drifted insensiblyinto this position. They had not taken the trouble to understand themovement, to discriminate between its aspects, to put themselves franklyinto communication with its leading persons, to judge with the knowledgeand justice of scholars and clergymen of its designs and ways. They letthemselves be diverted from this, their proper though troublesome task, by distrust, by the jealousies of their position, by the impossibilityof conceiving that anything so strange could really be true and sound. And at length they found themselves going along with the outside currentof uninstructed and ignoble prejudice, in a settled and pronounceddislike, which took for granted that all was wrong in the movement, which admitted any ill-natured surmise and foolish misrepresentation, and really allowed itself to acquiesce in the belief that men so wellknown in Oxford, once so admired and honoured, had sunk down todeliberate corrupters of the truth, and palterers with their ownintellects and consciences. It came in a few years to be understood onboth sides, that the authorities were in direct antagonism to themovement; and though their efforts in opposition to it were feeble andpetty, it went on under the dead weight of official Universitydisapproval. It would have been a great thing for the EnglishChurch--though it is hard to see how, things being as they were, itcould have come about--if the movement had gone on, at least with thefriendly interest, if not with the support, of the University rulers. Instead of that, after the first two or three years there was one longand bitter fight in Oxford, with the anger on one side created by thebelief of vague but growing dangers, and a sense of incapacity inresisting them, and with deep resentment at injustice and stupidity onthe other. 

The Bishops were farther from the immediate scene of the movement, andbesides, had other things to think of. Three or four of them might beconsidered theologians--Archbishop Howley, Phillpotts of Exeter, Kaye ofLincoln, Marsh of Peterborough. Two or three belonged to the Evangelicalschool, Ryder of Lichfield, and the two Sumners at Winchester andChester. The most prominent among them, and next to the Bishop of Exeterthe ablest, alive to the real dangers of the Church, anxious to infusevigour into its work, and busy with plans for extending its influence, was Blomfield, Bishop of London. But Blomfield was not at his best as adivine, and, for a man of his unquestionable power, singularly unsure ofhis own mind. He knew, in fact, that when the questions raised by theTracts came before him he was unqualified to deal with them; he was nobetter furnished by thought or knowledge or habits to judge of them thanthe average Bishop of the time, appointed, as was so often the case, forpolitical or personal reasons. At the first start of the movement, theBishops not unnaturally waited to see what would come of it. It wasindeed an effort in favour of the Church, but it was in irresponsiblehands, begun by men whose words were strong and vehement and of unusualsound, and who, while they called on the clergy to rally round theirfathers the Bishops, did not shrink from wishing for the Bishops thefortunes of the early days: "we could not wish them a more blessedtermination of their course than the spoiling of their goods andmartyrdom. "[76] It may reasonably be supposed that such good wishes werenot to the taste of all of them. As the movement developed, besides thatit would seem to them extravagant and violent, they would be perplexedby its doctrine. It took strong ground for the Church; but it did so inthe teeth of religious opinions and prejudices, which were popular andintolerant. For a moment the Bishops were in a difficulty; on the onehand, no one for generations had so exalted the office of a Bishop asthe Tractarians; no one had claimed for it so high and sacred an origin;no one had urged with such practical earnestness the duty of Churchmento recognise and maintain the unique authority of the Episcopate againstits despisers or oppressors. On the other hand, this was just the timewhen the Evangelical party, after long disfavour, was beginning to gainrecognition, for the sake of its past earnestness and good works, withmen in power, and with ecclesiastical authorities of a different andhitherto hostile school; and in the Tractarian movement the Evangelicalparty saw from the first its natural enemy. The Bishops could not haveanything to do with the Tractarians without deeply offending theEvangelicals. The result was that, for the present, the Bishops heldaloof. They let the movement run on by itself. Sharp sarcasms, worldly-wise predictions, kind messages of approval, kind cautions, passed from mouth to mouth, or in private correspondence from highquarters, which showed that the movement was watched. But for some timethe authorities spoke neither good nor bad of it publicly. In his Chargeat the close of 1836, Bishop Phillpotts spoke in clear and unfalteringlanguage--language remarkable for its bold decision--of the necessity ofsetting forth the true idea of the Church and the sacraments; but he wassilent about the call of the same kind which had come from Oxford. Itwould have been well if the other Bishops later on, in their charges, had followed his example. The Bishop of Oxford, in his Charge of 1838, referred to the movement in balanced terms of praise and warning. Thefirst who condemned the movement was the Bishop of Chester, J. BirdSumner; in a later Charge he came to describe it as the work of Satan;in 1838 he only denounced the "undermining of the foundations of ourProtestant Church by men who dwell within her walls, " and the bad faithof those "who sit in the Reformers' seat, and traduce the Reformation. "

These were grave mistakes on the part of those who were responsible forthe government of the University and the Church. They treated as absurd, mischievous, and at length traitorous, an effort, than which nothingcould be more sincere, to serve the Church, to place its claims onadequate grounds, to elevate the standard of duty in its clergy, and inall its members. To have missed the aim of the movement and to have beenoccupied and irritated by obnoxious details and vulgar suspicions was ablunder which gave the measure of those who made it, and led to greatevils. They alienated those who wished for nothing better than to helpthem in their true work. Their "unkindness" was felt to be, in Bacon'sphrase, [77] _injuriae potentiorum_. But on the side of the party of themovement there were mistakes also. 

1. The rapidity with which the movement had grown, showing that somedeep need had long been obscurely felt, which the movement promised tomeet, [78] had been too great to be altogether wholesome. When we comparewhat was commonly received before 1833, in teaching, in habits of life, in the ordinary assumptions of history, in the ideas and modes ofworship, public and private--the almost sacramental conception ofpreaching, the neglect of the common prayer of the Prayer Book, theslight regard to the sacraments--with what the teaching of the Tractsand their writers had impressed for good and all, five years later, onnumbers of earnest people, the change seems astonishing. The change wasa beneficial one and it was a permanent one. The minds which itaffected, it affected profoundly. Still it was but a short time, foryoung minds especially, to have come to a decision on great and debatedquestions. There was the possibility, the danger, of men having beencaptivated and carried away by the excitement and interest of the time;of not having looked all round and thought out the difficulties beforethem; of having embraced opinions without sufficiently knowing theirgrounds or counting the cost or considering the consequences. There wasthe danger of precipitate judgment, of ill-balanced and disproportionateviews of what was true and all-important. There was an inevitablefeverishness in the way in which the movement was begun, in the way inwhich it went on. Those affected by it were themselves surprised at theswiftness of the pace. When a cause so great and so sacred seemed thusto be flourishing, and carrying along with it men's assent andsympathies, it was hardly wonderful that there should often beexaggeration, impatience at resistance, scant consideration for theslowness or the scruples or the alarms of others. Eager and sanguine mentalked as if their work was accomplished, when in truth it was butbeginning. No one gave more serious warnings against this and otherdangers than the leaders; and their warnings were needed. [79]

2. Another mistake, akin to the last, was the frequent forgetfulness ofthe apostolic maxim, "All things are lawful for me, but all things arenot expedient. " In what almost amounted to a revolution in many of thereligious ideas of the time, it was especially important to keepdistinct the great central truths, the restoration of which to theirproper place justified and made it necessary, and the many subordinatepoints allied with them and naturally following from them, which yetwere not necessary to their establishment or acceptance. But it was onthese subordinate points that the interest of a certain number offollowers of the movement was fastened. Conclusions which they had aperfect right to come to, practices innocent and edifying to themselves, but of secondary account, began to be thrust forward into prominence, whether or not these instances of self-will really helped the commoncause, whether or not they gave a handle to ill-nature and ill-will. Suspicion must always have attached to such a movement as this; but agreat deal of it was provoked by indiscreet defiance, which was ratherglad to provoke it. 

3. Apart from these incidents--common wherever a number of men areanimated with zeal for an inspiring cause--there were what to us nowseem mistakes made in the conduct itself of the movement. Consideringthe difficulties of the work, it is wonderful that there were not more;and none of them were discreditable, none but what arose from thelimitation of human powers matched against confused and bafflingcircumstances. 

In the position claimed for the Church of England, confessedly uniqueand anomalous in the history of Christendom, between Roman authority andinfallibility on one side, and Protestant freedom of private judgment onthe other, the question would at once arise as to the grounds of belief. What, if any, are the foundations of conviction and certitude, apartfrom personal inquiry, and examination of opposing arguments ondifferent sides of the case, and satisfactory logical conclusions? Theold antithesis between Faith and Reason, and the various problemsconnected with it, could not but come to the front, and require to bedealt with. It is a question which faces us from a hundred sides, and, subtly and insensibly transforming itself, looks different from themall. It was among the earliest attempted to be solved by the chiefintellectual leader of the movement, and it has occupied his mind to thelast. [80] However near the human mind seems to come to a solution, itonly, if so be, comes near; it never arrives. In the early days of themovement it found prevailing the specious but shallow view thateverything in the search for truth was to be done by mere producible andexplicit argumentation; and yet it was obvious that of this two-thirdsof the world are absolutely incapable. Against this Mr. Newman and hisfollowers pressed, what was as manifestly certain in fact as it accordedwith any deep and comprehensive philosophy of the formation and growthof human belief, that not arguments only, but the whole condition of themind to which they were addressed--and not the reasonings only whichcould be stated, but those which went on darkly in the mind, and which"there was not at the moment strength to bring forth, " real and weightyreasons which acted like the obscure rays of the spectrum, with theirproper force, yet eluding distinct observation--had their necessary andinevitable and legitimate place in determining belief. All this wasperfectly true; but it is obvious how easily it might be taken hold of, on very opposite sides, as a ground for saying that Tractarian or Churchviews did not care about argument, or, indeed, rather preferred weakarguments to strong ones in the practical work of life. It was ludicrousto say it in a field of controversy, which, on the "Tractarian" side, was absolutely bristling with argument, keen, subtle, deep, livingargument, and in which the victory in argument was certainly not alwayswith those who ventured to measure swords with Mr. Newman or Dr. Pusey. Still, the scoff could be plausibly pointed at the "young enthusiastswho crowded the Via Media, and who never presumed to argue, exceptagainst the propriety of arguing at all. " There was a good deal offoolish sneering at reason; there was a good deal of silly bravado aboutnot caring whether the avowed grounds of opinions taken up were strongor feeble. It was not merely the assent of a learner to his teacher, ofa mind without means of instruction to the belief which it hasinherited, or of one new to the ways and conditions of life to theunproved assertions and opinions of one to whom experience had given anopen and sure eye. It was a positive carelessness, almost accountedmeritorious, to inquire and think, when their leaders called them to doso. "The Gospel of Christ is not a matter of mere argument. " It is not, indeed, when it comes in its full reality, in half a hundred differentways, known and unsearchable, felt and unfelt, moral and intellectual, on the awakened and quickened soul. But the wildest fanatic can take thesame words into his mouth. Their true meaning was variously andabundantly illustrated, especially in Mr. Newman's sermons. Still, theadequate, the emphatic warning against their early abuse was hardlypressed on the public opinion and sentiment of the party of the movementwith the force which really was requisite. To the end there were men whotook up their belief avowedly on insufficient and precarious grounds, glorying in the venturesomeness of their faith and courage, andjustifying their temper of mind and their intellectual attitude byalleging misinterpreted language of their wiser and deeper teachers. Arecoil from Whately's hard and barren dialectics, a sympathy with manytender and refined natures which the movement had touched, made theleaders patient with intellectual feebleness when it was joined withreal goodness and Christian temper; but this also sometimes made themless impatient than they might well have been with that curious form ofconceit and affectation which veils itself under an intended andsupposed humility, a supposed distrust of self and its own powers. 

Another difficult matter, not altogether successfully managed--at leastfrom the original point of view of the movement, and of those who saw init a great effort for the good of the English Church--was the treatmentof the Roman controversy. The general line which the leaders proposed totake was the one which was worthy of Christian and truth-lovingteachers. They took a new departure; and it was not less just than itwas brave, when, recognising to the full the overwhelming reasons why"we should not be Romanists, " they refused to take up the popular andeasy method of regarding the Roman Church as apostate and antichristian;and declined to commit themselves to the vulgar and indiscriminate abuseof it which was the discreditable legacy of the old days of controversy. They did what all the world was loudly professing to do, they lookedfacts in the face; they found, as any one would find who looked forhimself into the realities of the Roman Church, that though the bad wasoften as bad as could be, there was still, and there had been allalong, goodness of the highest type, excellence both of system and ofpersonal life which it was monstrous to deny, and which we might welladmire and envy. To ignore all this was to fail in the first duty, notmerely of Christians, but of honest men; and we at home were not soblameless that we could safely take this lofty tone of contemptuoussuperiority. If Rome would only leave us alone, there would beestrangement, lamentable enough among Christians, but there need be nobitterness. But Rome would not leave us alone. The moment that therewere signs of awakening energy in England, that moment was chosen by itsagents, for now it could be done safely, to assail and thwart theEnglish Church. Doubtless they were within their rights, but this madecontroversy inevitable, and for controversy the leaders of the movementprepared themselves. It was an obstacle which they seemed hardly to haveexpected, but which the nature of things placed in their way. But theold style of controversy was impossible; impossible because it was socoarse, impossible because it was so hollow. 

If the argument (says the writer of Tract 71, in words which areapplicable to every controversy) is radically unreal, or (what may becalled) rhetorical or sophistical, it may serve the purpose ofencouraging those who are really convinced, though scarcely withoutdoing mischief to them, but certainly it will offend and alienate themore acute and sensible; while those who are in doubt, and who desiresome real and substantial ground for their faith, will not bear to beput off with such shadows. The arguments (he continues) which we usemust be such as are likely to convince serious and earnest minds, whichare really seeking for the truth, not amusing themselves withintellectual combats, or desiring to support an existing opinion anyhow. However popular these latter methods may be, of however long standing, however easy both to find and to use, they are a scandal; and while theylower our religious standard from the first, they are sure of hurtingour cause in the end. 

And on this principle the line of argument in _The Prophetical Office ofthe Church_ was taken by Mr. Newman. It was certainly no make-believe, or unreal argument. It was a forcible and original way of putting partof the case against Rome. It was part of the case, a very importantpart; but it was not the whole case, and it ought to have been evidentfrom the first that in this controversy we could not afford to dowithout the whole case. The argument from the claim of infallibilitysaid nothing of what are equally real parts of the case--the practicalworking of the Roman Church, its system of government, the part which itand its rulers have played in the history of the world. Rome has notsuch a clean record of history, it has not such a clean account of whatis done and permitted in its dominions under an authority supposed to beirresistible, that it can claim to be the one pure and perfect Church, entitled to judge and correct and govern all other Churches. And if theclaim is made, there is no help for it, we must not shrink from the taskof giving the answer. [81] And, as experience has shown, the more thatrigid good faith is kept to in giving the answer, the more thatstrictness and severity of even understatement are observed, the moreconvincing will be the result that the Roman Church cannot be that whichit is alleged to be in its necessary theory and ideal. 

But this task was never adequately undertaken. It was one of no easyexecution. [82] Other things, apparently more immediately pressing, intervened. There was no question for the present of perfect andunfeigned confidence in the English Church, with whatever regrets forits shortcomings, and desires for its improvement But to the outsideworld it seemed as if there were a reluctance to face seriously thewhole of the Roman controversy; a disposition to be indulgent to Romandefects, and unfairly hard on English faults. How mischievously thistold in the course of opinion outside and inside of the movement; how itwas misinterpreted and misrepresented; how these misinterpretations andmisrepresentations, with the bitterness and injustice which theyengendered, helped to realise themselves, was seen but too clearly at alater stage. 

4. Lastly, looking back on the publications, regarded as characteristicof the party, it is difficult not to feel that some of them gave anunfortunate and unnecessary turn to things. 

The book which made most stir and caused the greatest outcry wasFroude's _Remains_. It was undoubtedly a bold experiment; but it was notmerely boldness. Except that it might be perverted into an excuse by theshallow and thoughtless for merely "strong talk, " it may fairly be saidthat it was right and wise to let the world know the full measure anddepth of conviction which gave birth to the movement; and Froude's_Remains_ did that in an unsuspiciously genuine way that nothing elsecould have done. And, besides, it was worth while for its own sake toexhibit with fearless honesty such a character, so high, so true, sorefined, so heroic. So again, Dr. Pusey's Tract on Baptism was a boldbook, and one which brought heavy imputations and misconstructions onthe party. In the teaching of his long life, Dr. Pusey has abundantlydispelled the charges of harshness and over-severity which were urged, not always very scrupulously, against the doctrine of the Tract onPost-baptismal Sin. But it was written to redress the balance againstthe fatally easy doctrines then in fashion; it was like the Portroyalistprotest against the fashionable Jesuits; it was one-sided, andsometimes, in his earnestness, unguarded; and it wanted as yet thecomplement of encouragement, consolation, and tenderness which hisfuture teaching was to supply so amply. But it was a blow struck, notbefore it was necessary, by a strong hand; and it may safely be saidthat it settled the place of the sacrament of baptism in the livingsystem of the English Church, which the negations and vagueness of theEvangelical party had gravely endangered. But two other essays appearedin the Tracts, most innocent in themselves, which ten or twenty yearslater would have been judged simply on their merits, but which at thetime became potent weapons against Tractarianism. They were theproductions of two poets--of two of the most beautiful and religiousminds of their time; but in that stage of the movement it is hardly toomuch to say that they were out of place. The cause of the movementneeded clear explanations; definite statements of doctrines which werepopularly misunderstood; plain, convincing reasoning on the issues whichwere raised by it; a careful laying out of the ground on which Englishtheology was to be strengthened and enriched. Such were Mr. Newman's_Lectures on Justification_, a work which made its lasting mark onEnglish theological thought; Mr. Keble's masterly exposition of themeaning of Tradition; and not least, the important collections whichwere documentary and historical evidence of the character of Englishtheology, the so-called laborious _Catenas_. These were the real tasksof the hour, and they needed all that labour and industry could give. But the first of these inopportune Tracts was an elaborate essay, by Mr. Keble, on the "Mysticism of the Fathers in the use and interpretation ofScripture. " It was hardly what the practical needs of the time required, and it took away men's thoughts from them; the prospect was hopelessthat in that state of men's minds it should be understood, except by avery few; it merely helped to add another charge, the vague butmischievous charge of mysticism, to the list of accusations against theTracts. The other, to the astonishment of every one, was like theexplosion of a mine. That it should be criticised and objected to wasnatural; but the extraordinary irritation caused by it could hardly havebeen anticipated. Written in the most devout and reverent spirit by oneof the gentlest and most refined of scholars, and full of deepScriptural knowledge, it furnished for some years the material for themost savage attacks and the bitterest sneers to the opponents of themovement. It was called "On Reserve in communicating ReligiousKnowledge"; and it was a protest against the coarseness and shallownesswhich threw the most sacred words about at random in loud anddeclamatory appeals, and which especially dragged in the awful mysteryof the Atonement, under the crudest and most vulgar conception of it, asa ready topic of excitement in otherwise commonplace and helplesspreaching. The word "Reserve" was enough. It meant that theTract-writers avowed the principle of keeping back part of the counselof God. It meant, further, that the real spirit of the party wasdisclosed; its love of secret and crooked methods, its indifference toknowledge, its disingenuous professions, its deliberate concealments, its holding doctrines and its pursuit of aims which it dared not avow, its _disciplina arcani_, its conspiracies, its Jesuitical spirit. Allthis kind of abuse was flung plentifully on the party as the controversybecame warm; and it mainly justified itself by the Tract on "Reserve. "The Tract was in many ways a beautiful and suggestive essay, full ofdeep and original thoughts, though composed in that spirit of therecluse which was characteristic of the writer, and which is in strongcontrast with the energetic temper of to-day. [83] But it could well havebeen spared at the moment, and it certainly offered itself to anunfortunate use. The suspiciousness which so innocently it helped toawaken and confirm was never again allayed. 

FOOTNOTES:

[74] Fifty years ago there was much greater contrast than now betweenold and young. There was more outward respect for the authorities, andamong the younger men, graduates and undergraduates, more inwardamusement at foibles and eccentricities. There still lingered thesurvivals of a more old-fashioned type of University life and character, which, quite apart from the movements of religious opinion, provokedthose νεανιεύματα ἰδιωτῶν εἰς τοὐς ἄρχοντας, [75] _impertinences ofirresponsible juniors towards superiors_, which Wordsworth, speaking ofa yet earlier time, remembered at Cambridge--

 "In serious mood, but oftener, I confess, With playful zest of fancy, did we note (How could we less?) the manners and the ways Of those who lived distinguished by the badge Of good or ill report; or those with whom By frame of Academic discipline We were perforce connected, men whose sway And known authority of office served To set our minds on edge, and did no more. Nor wanted we rich pastime of this kind, Found everywhere, but chiefly in the ring Of the grave Elders, men unsecured, grotesque In character, tricked out like aged trees Which through the lapse of their infirmity Give ready place to any random seed That chooses to be reared upon their trunks. "

 _Prelude_, bk. Iii. 

[75] Plat. _R. P. _ iii. 390. 

[76] _Tracts for the Times_, No. 1, 9th September 1833. 

[77] _An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church ofEngland:_ printed in the _Resuscitatio_, p. 138 (ed. 1671). 

[78] See Mr. Newman's article, "The State of Religious Parties, " in the_British Critic_, April 1839, reprinted in his _Essays Historical andCritical_, 1871, Vol. 1. , essay vi. 

[79] "It would not be at all surprising, though, in spite of theearnestness of the principal advocates of the views in question, forwhich every one seems to give them credit, there should be among theirfollowers much that is enthusiastic, extravagant, or excessive. Allthese aberrations will be and are imputed to the doctrines from whichthey proceed; nor unnaturally, but hardly fairly, for aberrations theremust be, whatever the doctrine is, while the human heart is sensitive, capricious, and wayward. .. . There will ever be a number of personsprofessing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly andstrangely, do odd and fierce things, display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other people; there will ever be those who are too young tobe wise, too generous to be cautious, too warm to be sober, or toointellectual to be humble; of whom human sagacity cannot determine, onlythe event, and perhaps not even that, whether they feel what theysay, or how far; whether they are to be encouraged ordiscountenanced. "--_British Critic_, April 1839, "State of ReligiousParties, " p. 405. 

[80] Cardinal Newman, _Grammar of Assent_. 

[81] The argument from history is sketched fairly, but only sketched in_The Prophetic Office_, Lect. Xiv. 

[82] In the Roman controversy it is sometimes hard to be just withoutappearing to mean more than is said; for the obligation of justicesometimes forces one who wishes to be a fair judge to be apparently anapologist or advocate. Yet the supreme duty in religious controversy isjustice. But for the very reason that these controversialists wished tobe just to Rome, they were bound to be just against her. They meant tobe so; but events passed quickly, and leisure never came for a workwhich involved a serious appeal to history. 

[83] _Vide_ a striking review in the _British Critic_, April 1839, partly correcting and guarding the view given in the Tract. 

CHAPTER XIV

NO. 90

The formation of a strong Romanising section in the Tractarian party wasobviously damaging to the party and dangerous to the Church. It was _protanto_ a verification of the fundamental charge against the party, acharge which on paper they had met successfully, but which acquireddouble force when this paper defence was traversed by facts. And a greatblow was impending over the Church, if the zeal and ability which themovement had called forth and animated were to be sucked away from theChurch, and not only lost to it, but educated into a special instrumentagainst it. But the divergence became clear only gradually, and the hopethat after all it was only temporary and would ultimately disappear waslong kept up by the tenacity with which Mr. Newman, in spite ofmisgivings and disturbing thoughts, still recognised the gifts andclaims of the English Church. And on the other hand, the bulk of theparty, and its other Oxford leaders, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, Mr. IsaacWilliams, Mr. Marriott, were quite unaffected by the disquietingapprehensions which were beginning to beset Mr. Newman. With a humblingconsciousness of the practical shortcomings of the English Church, witha ready disposition to be honest and just towards Rome, and even tominimise our differences with it, they had not admitted for a moment anydoubt of the reality of the English Church. The class of arguments whichspecially laid hold of Mr. Newman's mind did not tell upon them--thepeculiar aspect of early precedents, about which, moreover, a good dealof criticism was possible; or the large and sweeping conception of avast, ever-growing, imperial Church, great enough to make flaws andimperfections of no account, which appealed so strongly to hisstatesmanlike imagination. Their content with the Church in which theyhad been brought up, in which they had been taught religion, and inwhich they had taken service, their deep and affectionate loyalty andpiety to it, in spite of all its faults, remained unimpaired; andunimpaired, also, was their sense of vast masses of practical evil inthe Roman Church, evils from which they shrank both as Englishmen and asChristians, and which seemed as incurable as they were undeniable. Beyond the hope which they vaguely cherished that some day or other, bysome great act of Divine mercy, these evils might disappear, and thewhole Church become once more united, there was nothing to draw themtowards Rome; submission was out of the question, and they could onlysee in its attitude in England the hostility of a jealous andunscrupulous disturber of their Master's work. The movement still wenton, with its original purpose, and on its original lines, in spite ofthe presence in it, and even the co-operation, of men who might one dayhave other views, and serious and fatal differences with their oldfriends. 

The change of religion when it comes on a man gradually, --when it is notwelcomed from the first, but, on the contrary, long resisted, mustalways be a mysterious and perplexing process, hard to realise andfollow by the person most deeply interested, veiled and clouded tolookers-on, because naturally belonging to the deepest depths of thehuman conscience, and inevitably, and without much fault on either side, liable to be misinterpreted and misunderstood. And this process is allthe more tangled when it goes on, not in an individual mind, travellingin its own way on its own path, little affected by others, and littleaffecting them, but in a representative person, with theresponsibilities of a great cause upon him, bound by closest ties ofevery kind to friends, colleagues, and disciples, thinking, feeling, leading, pointing out the way for hundreds who love and depend on him. Views and feelings vary from day to day, according to the events andconditions of the day. How shall he speak, and how shall he be silent?How shall he let doubts and difficulties appear, yet how shall hesuppress them?--doubts which may grow and become hopeless, but which, onthe other hand, may be solved and disappear. How shall he go on as ifnothing had happened, when all the foundations of the world seem to havesunk from under him? Yet how shall he disclose the dreadful secret, whenhe is not yet quite sure whether his mind will not still rally from itsterror and despair? He must in honesty, in kindness, give some warning, yet how much? and how to prevent it being taken for more than it means?There are counter-considerations, to which he cannot shut his eyes. There are friends who will not believe his warnings. There are watchfulenemies who are on the look-out for proofs of disingenuousness and badfaith. He could cut through his difficulties at once by making theplunge in obedience to this or that plausible sign or train ofreasoning, but his conscience and good faith will not let him takethings so easily; and yet he knows that if he hangs on, he will beaccused by and by, perhaps speciously, of having been dishonest anddeceiving. So subtle, so shifting, so impalpable are the steps by whicha faith is disintegrated; so evanescent, and impossible to follow, theshades by which one set of convictions pass into others wholly opposite;for it is not knowledge and intellect alone which come into play, butall the moral tastes and habits of the character, its likings anddislikings, its weakness and its strength, its triumphs and itsvexations, its keenness and its insensibilities, which are in fullaction, while the intellect alone seems to be busy with its problems. Apicture has been given us, belonging to this time, of the process, by agreat master of human nature, and a great sufferer under the process; itis, perhaps, the greatest attempt ever made to describe it; but it isnot wholly successful. It tells us much, for it is written with touchinggood faith, but the complete effect as an intelligible whole is wanting. 

"In the spring of 1839, " we read in the _Apologia_, "my position in theAnglican Church was at its height. I had a supreme confidence in mycontroversial _status_, and I had a great and still growing success inrecommending it to others. "[84] This, then, may be taken as the pointfrom which, in the writer's own estimate, the change is to be traced. Herefers for illustration of his state of mind to the remarkable articleon the "State of Religious Parties, " in the April number of the _BritishCritic_ for 1839, which he has since republished under the title of"Prospects of the Anglican Church. "[85] "I have looked over it now, " hewrites in 1864, "for the first time since it was published; and havebeen struck by it for this reason: it contains _the last words which Iever spoke as an Anglican to Anglicans_. .. . It may now be read as myparting address and valediction, made to my friends. I little knew it atthe time. " He thus describes the position which he took in the articlereferred to:--

 Conscious as I was that my opinions in religious matters were not gained, as the world said, from Roman sources, but were, on the contrary, the birth of my own mind and of the circumstances in which I had been placed, I had a scorn of the imputations which were heaped upon me. It was true that I held a large, bold system of religion, very unlike the Protestantism of the day, but it was the concentration and adjustment of the statements of great Anglican authorities, and I had as much right to do so as the Evangelical party had, and more right than the Liberal, to hold their own respective doctrines. As I spoke on occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, on behalf of the writer, that he might hold in the Anglican Church a comprecation of the Saints with Bramhall; and the Mass, all but Transubstantiation, with Andrewes; or with Hooker that Transubstantiation itself is not a point for Churches to part communion upon; or with Hammond that a General Council, truly such, never did, never shall err in a matter of faith; or with Bull that man lost inward grace by the Fall; or with Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin; or with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no otherwise given than in the Catholic Church. "Two can play at that game" was often in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, and Reformers, in the sense that if they had a right to speak loud I had both the liberty and the means of giving them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church had been tyrannised over by a Party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the _Lyra_: "They shall know the difference now. " I only asked to be allowed to show them the difference. 

 I have said already (he goes on) that though the object of the movement was to withstand the Liberalism of the day, I found and felt that this could not be done by negatives. It was necessary for me to have a positive Church theory erected on a definite basis. This took me to the great Anglican divines; and then, of course, I found at once that it was impossible to form any such theory without cutting across the teaching of the Church of Rome. Thus came in the Roman controversy. When I first turned myself to it I had neither doubt on the subject, nor suspicion that doubt would ever come on me. It was in this state of mind that I began to read up Bellarmine on the one hand, and numberless Anglican writers on the other. [86]

And he quotes from the article the language which he used, to show thenecessity of providing some clear and strong basis for religious thoughtin view of the impending conflict of principles, religious andanti-religious, "Catholic and Rationalist, " which to far-seeing men, even at that comparatively early time, seemed inevitable:--

 Then indeed will be the stern encounter, when two real and living principles, simple, entire, and consistent, one in the Church, the other out of it, at length rush upon each other, contending not for names and words, a half view, but for elementary notions and distinctive moral characters. Men will not keep standing in that very attitude which you call sound Church-of-Englandism or orthodox Protestantism. They will take one view or another, but it will be a consistent one . .. It will be real. .. . Is it sensible, sober, judicious, to be so very angry with the writers of the day who point to the fact, that our divines of the seventeenth century have occupied a ground which is the true and intelligible mean between extremes?. .. Would you rather have your sons and your daughters members of the Church of England or of the Church of Rome?[87]

"The last words that I spoke as an Anglican to Anglicans, "--so hedescribes this statement of his position and its reasons; so it seems tohim, as he looks back. And yet in the intimate and frank disclosureswhich he makes, he has shown us much that indicates both that hisAnglicanism lasted much longer and that his Roman sympathies began tostir much earlier. This only shows the enormous difficulties ofmeasuring accurately the steps of a transition state. The mind, in sucha strain of buffeting, is never in one stay. The old seems impregnable, yet it has been undermined; the new is indignantly and honestlyrepelled, and yet leaves behind it its never-to-be-forgotten andunaccountable spell. The story, as he tells it, goes on, how, in thefull swing and confidence of his Anglicanism, and in the course of hissecure and fearless study of antiquity, appearance after appearancepresented itself, unexpected, threatening, obstinate, in the history ofthe Early Church, by which this confidence was first shaken and thenutterly broken down in the summer of 1839. And he speaks as though allhad been over after two years from that summer: "From the end of 1841 Iwas on my death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church, though at the time I became aware of it only by degrees. " In truth, itwas only the end which showed that it was a "death-bed. " He had not yetdied to allegiance or "to hope, then or for some time afterwards. " Hespeaks in later years of the result, and reads what was then in thelight of what followed. But after all that had happened, and much, ofcourse, disturbing happened in 1841, he was a long way off from whatthen could have been spoken of as "a death-bed. " Deep and painfulmisgivings may assail the sincerest faith; they are not fatal signs tillfaith has finally given way. 

What is true is, that the whole state of religion, and the whole aspectof Christianity in the world, had come to seem to him portentouslystrange and anomalous. No theory would take in and suit all the facts, which the certainties of history and experience presented. Neither inEngland, nor in Rome, and much less anywhere else, did the old, to whichall appealed, agree with the new; it might agree variously in this pointor in that, in others there were contrarieties which it was vain toreconcile. Facts were against the English claim to be a CatholicChurch--how could Catholicity be shut up in one island? How couldEngland assert its continuity of doctrine? Facts were against the Romanclaim to be an infallible, and a perfect, and the whole Church--howcould that be perfect which was marked in the face of day with enormousand undeniable corruptions? How could that be infallible which wasirreconcilable with ancient teaching? How could that be the wholeChurch, which, to say nothing of the break-up in the West, ignored, asif it had no existence, the ancient and uninterrupted Eastern Church?Theory after theory came up, and was tried, and was found wanting. Eachhad much to say for itself, its strong points, its superiority over itsrivals in dealing with the difficulties of the case, its plausibilitiesand its imaginative attractions. But all had their tender spot, andflinched when they were touched in earnest. In the confusions and sinsand divisions of the last fifteen centuries, profound disorganisationhad fastened on the Western Church. Christendom was not, could not bepretended to be, what it had been in the fourth century; and whicheverway men looked the reasons were not hard to see. The first andcharacteristic feeling of the movement, one which Mr. Newman had done somuch to deepen, was that of shame and humiliation at the disorder athome, as well as in every part of the Church. It was not in Rome only, or in England only; it was everywhere. What had been peculiar toAnglicanism among all its rivals, was that it had emphatically andwithout reserve confessed it. 

With this view of the dislocation and the sins of the Church, he couldat once with perfect consistency recognise the shortcomings of theEnglish branch of the Church, and yet believe and maintain that it wasa true and living branch. The English fragment was not what it shouldbe, was indeed much that it should not be; the same could be said of theRoman, though in different respects. This, as he himself reminds us, wasno new thing to his mind when the unsettlement of 1839 began. "At theend of 1835, or the beginning of 1836, I had the whole state of thequestion before me, on which, to my mind, the decision between theChurches depended. " It did not, he says, depend on the claims of thePope, as centre of unity; "it turned on the Faith of the Church"; "therewas a contrariety of _claims_ between the Roman and Anglican religions";and up to 1839, with the full weight of Roman arguments recognised, withthe full consciousness of Anglican disadvantages, he yet spoke clearlyfor Anglicanism. Even when misgivings became serious, the balance stillinclined without question the old way. He hardly spoke stronger in 1834than he did in 1841, after No. 90. 

 And now (he writes in his Letter to the Bishop of Oxford[88]) having said, I trust, as much as your Lordship requires on the subject of Romanism, I will add a few words, to complete my explanation, in acknowledgment of the inestimable privilege I feel in being a member of that Church over which your Lordship, with others, presides. Indeed, did I not feel it to be a privilege which I am able to seek nowhere else on earth, why should I be at this moment writing to your Lordship? What motive have I for an unreserved and joyful submission to your authority, but the feeling that the Church in which your Lordship rules is a divinely-ordained channel of supernatural grace to the souls of her members? Why should I not prefer my own opinion, and my own way of acting, to that of the Bishop's, except that I know full well that in matters indifferent I should be acting lightly towards the Spouse of Christ and the awful Presence which dwells in her, if I hesitated a moment to put your Lordship's will before my own? I know full well that your Lordship's kindness to me personally would be in itself quite enough to win any but the most insensible heart, and, did a clear matter of conscience occur in which I felt bound to act for myself, my feelings towards your Lordship would be a most severe trial to me, independently of the higher considerations to which I have alluded; but I trust I have shown my dutifulness to you prior to the influence of personal motives; and this I have done because I think that to belong to the Catholic Church is the first of all privileges here below, as involving in it heavenly privileges, and because I consider the Church over which your Lordship presides to be the Catholic Church in this country. Surely then I have no need to profess in words, I will not say my attachment, but my deep reverence towards the Mother of Saints, when I am showing it in action; yet that words may not be altogether wanting, I beg to lay before your Lordship the following extract from a defence of the English Church, which I wrote against a Roman controversialist in the course of the last year. 

 "The Church is emphatically a living body, and there can be no greater proof of a particular communion being part of the Church than the appearance in it of a continued and abiding energy, nor a more melancholy proof of its being a corpse than torpidity. We say an energy continued and abiding, for accident will cause the activity of a moment, and an external principle give the semblance of self-motion. On the other hand, even a living body may for a while be asleep. 

 * * * * *

 "It concerns, then, those who deny that we are the true Church because we have not at present this special note, intercommunion with other Christians, to show cause why the Roman Church in the tenth century should be so accounted, with profligates, or rather the profligate mothers of profligate sons for her supreme rulers. And still notwithstanding life _is_ a note of the Church; she alone revives, even if she declines; heretical and schismatical bodies cannot keep life; they gradually became cold, stiff, and insensible. 

 * * * * *

 "Now if there ever were a Church on whom the experiment has been tried, whether it had life in it or not, the English is that one. For three centuries it has endured all vicissitudes of fortune. It has endured in trouble and prosperity, under seduction, and under oppression. It has been practised upon by theorists, browbeaten by sophists, intimidated by princes, betrayed by false sons, laid waste by tyranny, corrupted by wealth, torn by schism, and persecuted by fanaticism. Revolutions have come upon it sharply and suddenly, to and fro, hot and cold, as if to try what it was made of. 

 It has been a sort of battlefield on which opposite principles have been tried. No opinion, however extreme any way, but may be found, as the Romanists are not slow to reproach us, among its Bishops and Divines. Yet what has been its career upon the whole? Which way has it been moving through 300 years? Where does it find itself at the end? Lutherans have tended to Rationalism; Calvinists have become Socinians; but what has it become? As far as its Formularies are concerned, it may be said all along to have grown towards a more perfect Catholicism than that with which it started at the time of its estrangement; every act, every crisis which marks its course, has been upward. 

 * * * * *

 "What a note of the Church is the mere production of a man like Butler, a pregnant fact much to be meditated on! and how strange it is, if it be as it seems to be, that the real influence of his work is only just now beginning! and who can prophesy in what it will end? Thus our Divines grow with centuries, expanding after their death in the minds of their readers into more and more exact Catholicism as years roll on. 

 * * * * *

 "Look across the Atlantic to the daughter Churches of England in the States: 'Shall one that is barren bear a child in her old age?' yet 'the barren hath borne seven. ' Schismatic branches put out their leaves at once, in an expiring effort; our Church has waited three centuries, and then blossoms like Aaron's rod, budding and blooming and yielding fruit, while the rest are dry. And lastly, look at the present position of the Church at home; there, too, we shall find a note of the true City of God, the Holy Jerusalem. She is in warfare with the world, as the Church Militant should be; she is rebuking the world, she is hated, she is pillaged by the world. 

 * * * * *

 "Much might be said on this subject. At all times, since Christianity came into the world, an open contest has been going on between religion and irreligion; and the true Church, of course, has ever been on the religious side. This, then, is a sure test in every age _where_ the Christian should stand. .. . Now, applying this simple criterion to the public Parties of this DAY, it is very plain that the English Church is at present on God's side, and therefore, so far, God's Church; we are sorry to be obliged to add that there is as little doubt on which side English Romanism is. 

 * * * * *

 "As for the English Church, surely she has notes enough, 'the signs of an Apostle in all patience, and signs and wonders and mighty deeds. ' She has the note of possession, the note of freedom from party-titles; the note of life, a tough life and a vigorous; she has ancient descent, unbroken continuance, agreement in doctrine with the ancient Church. Those of Bellarmine's Notes, which she certainly has not, are intercommunion with Christendom, the glory of miracles, and the prophetical light, but the question is, whether she has not enough of Divinity about her to satisfy her sister Churches on their own principles, that she is one body with them. "

 This may be sufficient to show my feelings towards my Church, as far as Statements on paper can show them. 

How earnestly, how sincerely he clung to the English Church, even afterhe describes himself on his "death-bed, " no one can doubt. The charm ofthe _Apologia_ is the perfect candour with which he records fluctuationswhich to many are inconceivable and unintelligible, the different andsometimes opposite and irreconcilable states of mind through which hepassed, with no attempt to make one fit into another. It is clear, fromwhat he tells us, that his words in 1839 were not his _last_ words as anAnglican to Anglicans. With whatever troubles of mind, he strove to be aloyal and faithful Anglican long after that. He spoke as an Anglican. Hefought for Anglicanism. The theory, as he says, may have gone by theboard, in the intellectual storms raised by the histories of theMonophysites and Donatists. "By these great words of the ancientfather--_Securus judicat orbis terrarum_"--the theory of the _Via Media_was "absolutely pulverised. " He was "sore, " as he says in 1840, "aboutthe great Anglican divines, as if they had taken me in, and made me saystrong things against Rome, which facts did not justify. "[89] Yes, hefelt, as other men do not feel, the weak points of even a strongargument, the exaggerations and unfairness of controversialists on hisown side, the consciousness that you cannot have things in fact, or intheory, or in reasoning, smoothly and exactly as it would be convenient, and as you would like to have them. But his conclusion, on the whole, was unshaken. There was enough, and amply enough, in the English Churchto bind him to its allegiance, to satisfy him of its truth and its life, enough in the Roman to warn him away. In the confusions of Christendom, in the strong and obstinate differences of schools and parties in theEnglish Church, he, living in days of inquiry and criticism, claimed totake and recommend a theological position on many controvertedquestions, which many might think a new one, and which might not beexactly that occupied by any existing school or party. [90] "We are all, "he writes to an intimate friend on 22d April 1842, a year after No. 90, "much quieter and more resigned than we were, and are remarkablydesirous of building up a position, and proving that the English theoryis tenable, or rather the English state of things. If the Bishops wouldleave us alone, the fever would subside. "

He wanted, when all other parties were claiming room for theirspeculations, to claim room for his own preference for ancient doctrine. He wished to make out that no branch of the Church had authoritativelycommitted itself to language which was hopelessly and fatallyirreconcilable with Christian truth. But he claimed nothing but what hecould maintain to be fairly within the authorised formularies of theEnglish Church. He courted inquiry, he courted argument. If his claimseemed a new one, if his avowed leaning to ancient and Catholic viewsseemed to make him more tolerant than had been customary, not to Romanabuses, but to Roman authoritative language, it was part of the moreaccurate and the more temperate and charitable thought of our daycompared with past times. It was part of the same change which hasbrought Church opinions from the unmitigated Calvinism of the LambethArticles to what the authorities of those days would have denounced, without a doubt, as Arminianism. Hooker was gravely and seriouslyaccused to the Council for saying that a Papist could be saved, and hadsome difficulty to clear himself; it was as natural then as it isamazing now. [91]

But with this sincere loyalty to the English Church, as he believed itto be, there was, no doubt, in the background the haunting anddisquieting misgiving that the attempt to connect more closely themodern Church with the ancient, and this widened theology in a directionwhich had been hitherto specially and jealously barred, was putting theEnglish Church on its trial. Would it bear it? Would it respond to thecall to rise to a higher and wider type of doctrine, to a higherstandard of life? Would it justify what Mr. Newman had placed in theforefront among the notes of the true Church, the note of Sanctity?Would the _Via Media_ make up for its incompleteness as a theory bydeveloping into reality and fruitfulness of actual results? Would theChurch bear to be told of its defaults? Would it allow to themaintainers of Catholic and Anglican principles the liberty whichothers claimed, and which by large and powerful bodies of opinion wasdenied to Anglicans? Or would it turn out on trial, that the _Via Media_was an idea without substance, a dialectical fiction, a mere theologicalexpedient for getting out of difficulties, unrecognised, and when putforward, disowned? Would it turn out that the line of thought andteaching which connected the modern with the ancient Church was but theprivate and accidental opinion of Hooker and Andrewes and Bull andWilson, unauthorised in the English Church, uncongenial to its spirit, if not contradictory to its formularies? It is only just to Mr. Newmanto say, that even after some of his friends were frightened, he longcontinued to hope for the best; but undoubtedly, more and more, hisbelief in the reality of the English Church was undergoing a verysevere, and as time went on, discouraging testing. 

In this state of things he published the Tract No. 90. It was occasionedby the common allegation, on the side of some of the advanced section ofthe Tractarians, as well as on the side of their opponents, that theThirty-nine Articles were hopelessly irreconcilable with that Catholicteaching which Mr. Newman had defended on the authority of our greatdivines, but which both the parties above mentioned were ready toidentify with the teaching of the Roman Church. The Tract was intended, by a rigorous examination of the language of the Articles, to traversethis allegation. It sought to show that all that was clearly andundoubtedly Catholic, this language left untouched:[92] that it wasdoubtful whether even the formal definitions of the Council of Trentwere directly and intentionally contradicted; and that what were reallyaimed at were the abuses and perversions of a great popular andauthorised system, tyrannical by the force of custom and the obstinaterefusal of any real reformation. 

 It is often urged (says the writer), and sometimes felt and granted, that there are in the Articles propositions or terms inconsistent with the Catholic faith; or, at least, if persons do not go so far as to feel the objection as of force, they are perplexed how best to answer it, or how most simply to explain the passages on which it is made to rest. The following Tract is drawn up with the view of showing how groundless the objection is, and further, of approximating towards the argumentative answer to it, of which most men have an implicit apprehension, though they may have nothing more. That there are real difficulties to a Catholic Christian in the ecclesiastical position of our Church at this day, no one can deny; but the statements of the Articles are not in the number, and it may be right at the present moment to insist upon this. 

When met by the objection that the ideas of the framers of the Articleswere well known, and that it was notorious that they had meant to put aninsuperable barrier between the English Church and everything thatsavoured of Rome, the writer replied that the actual English Churchreceived the Articles not from them but from a much later authority, that we are bound by their words not by their private sentiments eitheras theologians or ecclesiastical politicians, and that in fact they hadintended the Articles to comprehend a great body of their countrymen, who would have been driven away by any extreme and anti-Catholicdeclarations even against Rome. The temper of compromise ischaracteristic of the English as contrasted with the foreignReformation. It is visible, not only in the Articles, but in the polityof the English Church, which clung so obstinately to the continuity andforms of the ancient hierarchical system, it is visible in thesacramental offices of the Prayer Book, which left so much out tosatisfy the Protestants, and left so much in to satisfy the Catholics. 

The Tract went in detail through the Articles which were commonly lookedupon as either anti-Catholic or anti-Roman. It went through them with adry logical way of interpretation, such as a professed theologian mightuse, who was accustomed to all the niceties of language and thedistinctions of the science. It was the way in which they would belikely to be examined and construed by a purely legal court. The effectof it, doubtless, was like that produced on ordinary minds by therefinements of a subtle advocate, or by the judicial interpretation ofan Act of Parliament which the judges do not like; and some of theinterpretations undoubtedly seemed far-fetched and artificial. Yet someof those which were pointed to at the time as flagrant instances ofextravagant misinterpretation have now come to look different. Nothingcould exceed the scorn poured on the interpretation of the Twenty-secondArticle, that it condemns the "_Roman_" doctrine of Purgatory, but not_all_ doctrine of purgatory as a place of gradual purification beyonddeath. But in our days a school very far removed from Mr. Newman's wouldrequire and would claim to make the same distinction. And so with theinterpretation of the "Sacrifices of Masses" in the same article. It wasthe fashion in 1841 to see in this the condemnation of all doctrine of asacrifice in the Eucharist; and when Mr. Newman confined the phrase tothe gross abuses connected with the Mass, this was treated as an affrontto common sense and honesty. Since then we have become better acquaintedwith the language of the ancient liturgies--, and no instructedtheologian could now venture to treat Mr. Newman's distinction as idle. There was in fact nothing new in his distinctions on these two points. They had already been made in two of the preceding Tracts, the reprintof Archbishop Ussher on Prayers for the Dead, and the Catena on theEucharistie Sacrifice; and in both cases the distinctions were supportedby a great mass of Anglican authority. [93]

But the Tract had sufficient novelty about it to account for most ofthe excitement which it caused. Its dryness and negative curtness wereprovoking. It was not a positive argument, it was not an appeal toauthorities; it was a paring down of language, alleged in certainportions of the Articles to be somewhat loose, to its barest meaning;and to those to whom that language had always seemed to speak withfulness and decision, it seemed like sapping and undermining a cherishedbulwark. Then it seemed to ask for more liberty than the writer in hisposition at that time needed; and the object of such an indefiniteclaim, in order to remove, if possible, misunderstandings between twolong-alienated branches of the Western Church, was one to excite in manyminds profound horror and dismay. That it maintained without flinchingand as strongly as ever the position and the claim of the English Churchwas nothing to the purpose; the admission, both that Rome, thoughwrong, might not be as wrong as we thought her, and that the language ofthe Articles, though unquestionably condemnatory of much, was notcondemnatory of as much as people thought, and might possibly be evenharmonised with Roman authoritative language, was looked upon asincompatible with loyalty to the English Church. 

The question which the Tract had opened, what the Articles meant and towhat men were bound by accepting them, was a most legitimate one fordiscussion; and it was most natural also that any one should hesitate toanswer it as the Tract answered it. But it was distinctly a question fordiscussion. It was not so easy for any of the parties in the Church togive a clear and consistent answer, as that the matter ought at once tohave been carried out of the region of discussion. The Articles were theArticles of a Church which had seen as great differences as thosebetween the Church of Edward VI and the Church of the Restoration. Takethem broadly as the condemnation--strong but loose in expression, as, for instance, in the language on the "five, commonly calledSacraments"--of a powerful and well-known antagonist system, and therewas no difficulty about them. But take them as scientific and accurateand precise enunciations of a systematic theology, and difficultiesbegin at once, with every one who does not hold the special andwell-marked doctrines of the age when the German and Swiss authoritiesruled supreme. The course of events from that day to this has shownmore than once, in surprising and even startling examples, how muchthose who at the time least thought that they needed such strictconstruing of the language of the Articles, and were fierce indenouncing the "kind of interpretation" said to be claimed in No. 90, have since found that they require a good deal more elasticity ofreading than even it asked for. The "whirligig of time" was thought tohave brought "its revenges, " when Mr. Newman, who had called for theexercise of authority against Dr. Hampden, found himself, five yearsafterwards, under the ban of the same authority. The difference betweenMr. Newman's case and Dr. Hampden's, both as to the alleged offence andthe position of the men, was considerable. But the "whirligig of time"brought about even stranger "revenges, " when not only Mr. Gorham and Mr. H. B. Wilson in their own defence, but the tribunals which had to decideon their cases, carried the strictness of reading and the latitude ofinterpretation, quite as far, to say the least, as anything in No. 90. 

Unhappily Tract 90 was met at Oxford, not with argument, but with panicand wrath. [94] There is always a sting in every charge, to which otherparts of it seem subordinate. No. 90 was charged of course with falsedoctrine, with false history, and with false reasoning; but the emphaticpart of the charge, the short and easy method which dispensed from thenecessity of theological examination and argument, was that it wasdishonest and immoral. Professors of Divinity, and accomplishedscholars, such as there were in Oxford, might very well have consideredit an occasion to dispute both the general principle of the Tract, if itwas so dangerous, and the illustrations, in the abundance of which thewriter had so frankly thrown open his position to searching criticism. It was a crisis in which much might have been usefully said, if therehad been any one to say it; much too, to make any one feel, if he wascompetent to feel, that he had a good deal to think about in his ownposition, and that it would be well to ascertain what was tenable andwhat untenable in it. But it seemed as if the opportunity must not belost for striking a blow. The Tract was published on 27th February. Onthe 8th of March four Senior Tutors, one of whom was Mr. H. B. Wilson, ofSt. John's, and another Mr. Tait, of Balliol, addressed the Editor ofthe Tract, charging No. 90 with suggesting and opening a way, by whichmen might, at least in the case of Roman views, violate their solemnengagements to their University. On the 15th of March, the Board ofHeads of Houses, refusing to wait for Mr. Newman's defence, which wasknown to be coming, and which bears date 13th March, published theirjudgment They declared that in No. 90 "modes of interpretation weresuggested, and have since been advocated in other publicationspurporting to be written by members of the University, by whichsubscription to the Articles might be reconciled with the adoption ofRoman Catholic error. " And they announced their resolution, "That modesof interpretation, such as are suggested in the said Tract, evadingrather than explaining the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, andreconciling subscription to them with the adoption of errors which theyare designed to counteract, defeat the object, and are inconsistent withthe due observance of the above-mentioned statutes. "[95]

It was an ungenerous and stupid blunder, such as men make, when theythink or are told that "something must be done, " and do not know what. It gave the writer an opportunity, of which he took full advantage, ofshowing his superiority in temper, in courtesy, and in reason, to thosewho had not so much condemned as insulted him. He was immediately readywith his personal expression of apology and regret, and also with hisreassertion in more developed argument of the principle of the Tract;and this was followed up by further explanations in a letter to theBishop. And in spite of the invidious position in which the Board hadtried to place him, not merely as an unsound divine, but as a dishonestman teaching others to palter with their engagements, the crisis drewforth strong support and sympathy where they were not perhaps to beexpected. It rallied to him, at least for the time, some of the friendswho had begun to hold aloof. Mr. Palmer, of Worcester, Mr. Perceval, Dr. Hook, with reserves according to each man's point of view, yet cameforward in his defence. The Board was made to feel that they had beendriven by violent and partisan instigations to commit themselves to avery foolish as well as a very passionate and impotent step; that theyhad by very questionable authority simply thrown an ill-sounding andill-mannered word at an argument on a very difficult question, to whichthey themselves certainly were not prepared with a clear andsatisfactory answer; that they had made the double mistake of declaringwar against a formidable antagonist, and of beginning it by creating theimpression that they had treated him shabbily, and were really afraid tocome to close quarters with him. As the excitement of hasty counselssubsided, the sense of this began to awake in some of them; they triedto represent the off-hand and ambiguous words of the condemnation as notmeaning all that they had been taken to mean. But the seed of bitternesshad been sown. Very little light was thrown, in the strife of pamphletswhich ensued, on the main subject dealt with in No. 90, the authorityand interpretation of such formularies as our Articles. The easier andmore tempting and very fertile topic of debate was the honesty and goodfaith of the various disputants. Of the four Tutors, only one, Mr. H. B. Wilson, published an explanation of their part in the matter; it was aclumsy, ill-written and laboured pamphlet, which hardly gave promise ofthe intellectual vigour subsequently displayed by Mr. Wilson, when heappeared, not as the defender, but the assailant of received opinions. The more distinguished of the combatants were Mr. Ward and Mr. R. Lowe. Mr. Ward, with his usual dialectical skill, not only defended the Tract, but pushed its argument yet further, in claiming tolerance for doctrinesalleged to be Roman. Mr. Lowe, not troubling himself either withtheological history or the relation of other parties in the Church tothe formularies, threw his strength into the popular and plausible topicof dishonesty, and into a bitter and unqualified invective against thebad faith and immorality manifested in the teaching of which No. 90 wasthe outcome. Dr. Faussett, as was to be expected, threw himself into thefray with his accustomed zest and violence, and caused some amusement atOxford, first by exposing himself to the merciless wit of a reviewer inthe _British Critic_, and then by the fright into which he was thrown bya rumour that his reelection to his professorship would be endangered byTractarian votes. [96] But the storm, at Oxford at least, seemed to dieout. The difficulty which at one moment threatened of a strike amongsome of the college Tutors passed; and things went back to theirordinary course. But an epoch and a new point of departure had come intothe movement. Things after No. 90 were never the same as to language andhopes and prospects as they had been before; it was the date from whicha new set of conditions in men's thoughts and attitude had to bereckoned. Each side felt that a certain liberty had been claimed andhad been peremptorily denied. And this was more than confirmed by thepublic language of the greater part of the Bishops. The charges againstthe Tractarian party of Romanising, and of flagrant dishonesty, longurged by irresponsible opponents, were now formally adopted by theUniversity authorities, and specially directed against the foremost manof the party. From that time the fate of the party at Oxford wasdetermined. It must break up. Sooner or later, there must be a secessionmore or less discrediting and disabling those who remained. And so thebreak-up came, and yet, so well grounded and so congenial to the EnglishChurch were the leading principles of the movement, that not even thatdisastrous and apparently hopeless wreck prevented them from againasserting their claim and becoming once more active and powerful. The_Via Media_, whether or not logically consistent, was a thing of genuineEnglish growth, and was at least a working theory. 

FOOTNOTES:

[84] _Apologia_, p. 180. 

[85] _Essays Critical and Historical_, 1871. 

[86] _Apologia_, pp. 181, 182. Comp. _Letter to Jelf_, p. 18. 

[87] _British Critic_, April 1839, pp. 419-426. Condensed in the_Apologia_, pp. 192-194. 

[88] _Letter to the Bishop of Oxford_ (29th March 1841), pp. 33-40. Comp. _Letter to Jelf_, pp. 7, 8. 

[89] _Apologia_, pp. 212, 221. 

[90] _Letter to Jelf_ [especially p. 19]. 

[91] _Walton's Life_, i. 59 (Oxford: 1845). 

[92] No. 90, p. 24. 

[93] The following letter of Mr. James Mozley (8th March 1841) gives thefirst impression of the Tract:--"A new Tract has come out this week, andis beginning to make a sensation. It is on the Articles, and shows thatthey bear a highly Catholic meaning; and that many doctrines, of whichthe Romanist are corruptions, may be held consistently with them. Thisis no more than what we know as a matter of history, for the Articleswere expressly worded to bring in Roman Catholics. But people areastonished and confused at the idea now, as if it were quite new. Andthey have been so accustomed for a long time to look at the Articles ason a par with the Creed, that they think, I suppose, that if theysubscribe to them they are bound to hold whatever doctrines (notpositively stated in them) are merely not condemned. So if they willhave a Tractarian sense, they are thereby all Tractarians. .. . It is, ofcourse, highly complimentary to the whole set of us to be so very muchsurprised that we should think what we held to be consistent with theArticles which we have subscribed. " See also a clever Whateleianpamphlet, "The Controversy between Tract No. 90 and the Oxford Tutors. "(How and Parsons, 1841. )

[94] See J. B. Mozley's _Letters_, 13th March 1841. 

[95] _Scil. _, those cited in the preamble to this resolution. 

[96] J. B. Mozley's _Letters_, 13th July 1841. 

CHAPTER XV

AFTER NO. 90

The proceedings about No. 90 were a declaration of war on the part ofthe Oxford authorities against the Tractarian party. The suspicions, alarms, antipathies, jealousies, which had long been smouldering amongthose in power, had at last taken shape in a definite act. And it was aturning-point in the history of the movement. After this it never wasexactly what it had been hitherto. It had been so far a movement withinthe English Church, for its elevation and reform indeed, but at everystep invoking its authority with deep respect, acknowledging allegianceto its rulers in unqualified and even excessive terms, and aimingloyally to make it in reality all that it was in its devotional languageand its classical literature. But after what passed about No. 90 achange came. The party came under an official ban and stigma. The commonconsequences of harsh treatment on the tendencies and thought of aparty, which considers itself unjustly proscribed, showed themselvesmore and more. Its mind was divided; its temper was exasperated; whilethe attitude of the governing authorities hardened more into determinedhostility. From the time of the censure, and especially after the eventsconnected with it, --the contest for the Poetry Professorship and therenewed Hampden question, --it may be said that the characteristictempers of the Corcyrean sedition were reproduced on a small scale inOxford. [97] The scare of Popery, not without foundation--the reactionagainst it, also not without foundation--had thrown the wisest off theirbalance; and what of those who were not wise? In the heat of those daysthere were few Tractarians who did not think Dr. Wynter, Dr. Faussett, and Dr. Symons heretics in theology and persecutors in temper, despisersof Christian devotion and self-denial. There were few of the party ofthe Heads who did not think every Tractarian a dishonest and perjuredtraitor, equivocating about his most solemn engagements, the ignorantslave of childish superstitions which he was conspiring to bring back. It was the day of the violent on both sides: the courtesies of life wereforgotten; men were afraid of being weak in their censures, theirdislike, and their opposition; old friendships were broken up, and menbelieved the worst of those whom a few years back they had loved andhonoured. 

It is not agreeable to recall these long extinct animosities, but theyare part of the history of that time, and affected the course in whichthings ran. And it is easy to blame, it is hard to do justice to, thevarious persons and parties who contributed to the events of thatstrange and confused time. All was new, and unusual, and withoutprecedent in Oxford; a powerful and enthusiastic school reviving olddoctrines in a way to make them seem novelties, and creating a wildpanic from a quarter where it was the least expected; the terror of thispanic acting on authorities not in the least prepared for such a trialof their sagacity, patience, and skill, driving them to unexampledseverity, and to a desperate effort to expel the disturbinginnovators--among them some of the first men in Oxford in character andability--from their places in the University. [98] In order to do justiceon each side at this distance of time, we are bound to makeallowance--both for the alarm and the mistaken violence of theauthorities, and for the disaffection, the irritation, the strangemethods which grew up in the worried and suspected party--for thedifficulties which beset both sides in the conflict, and thecounter-influences which drew them hither and thither. But the facts areas they are; and even then a calmer temper was possible to those whowilled it; and in the heat of the strife there were men among theauthorities, as well as in the unpopular party, who kept their balance, while others lost it. 

Undoubtedly the publication of No. 90 was the occasion of the aggravatedform which dissension took, and not unnaturally. Yet it was anything butwhat it was taken to mean by the authorities, an intentional move infavour of Rome. It was intended to reconcile a large and growing classof minds, penetrated and disgusted with the ignorance and injustice ofmuch of the current controversial assumptions against Rome, to a largerand more defensible view of the position of the English Church. And thiswas done by calling attention to that which was not now for the firsttime observed--to the loose and unguarded mode of speaking visible inthe later controversial Articles, and to the contrast between them andthe technical and precise theology of the first five Articles. TheArticles need not mean all which they were supposed popularly to meanagainst what was Catholic in Roman doctrine. This was urged in simplegood faith; it was but the necessary assumption of all who held with theCatholic theology, which the Tractarians all along maintained that theyhad a right to teach; it left plenty of ground of difference withunreformed and usurping Rome. And we know that the storm which No. 90raised took the writer by surprise. He did not expect that he shouldgive such deep offence. But if he thought of the effect on one set ofminds, he forgot the probable effect on another; and he forgot, orunder-estimated, the effect not only of the things said, but of the wayin which they were said. [99] No. 90 was a surprise, in the state ofordinary theological knowledge at the time. It was a strong thing to saythat the Articles left a great deal of formal Roman language untouched;but to work this out in dry, bald, technical logic, on the face of it, narrow in scope, often merely ingenious, was even a greaterstumbling-block. It was, undoubtedly, a great miscalculation, such asmen of keen and far-reaching genius sometimes make. They mistake thestrength and set of the tide; they imagine that minds round them aregoing as fast as their own. We can see, looking back, that such aninterpretation of the Articles, with the view then taken of them inOxford as the theological text-book, and in the condition of men'sminds, could not but be a great shock. 

And what seemed to give a sinister significance to No. 90 was that, ashas been said, a strong current was beginning to set in the direction ofRome. It was not yet of the nature, nor of the force, which wasimagined. The authorities suspected it where it was not. They acceptedany contemptible bit of gossip collected by ignorance or ill-nature as aproof of it. The constitutional frankness of Englishmen in finding faultwith what is their own--disgust at pompous glorification--scepticism asto our insular claims against all the rest of Christendom to be exactlyright, to be alone, "pure and apostolic"; real increase and enlargementof knowledge, theological and historical; criticism on portions of ourReformation history; admiration for characters in mediaeval times;eagerness, over-generous it might be, to admit and repair wrong to anopponent unjustly accused; all were set down together with other moreunequivocal signs as "leanings to Rome. " It was clear that there was acurrent setting towards Rome; but it was as clear that there was a muchstronger current in the party as a whole, setting in the oppositedirection. To those who chose to see and to distinguish, the love, thepassionate loyalty of the bulk of the Tractarians to the English Churchwas as evident and unquestionable as any public fact could be. At thistime there was no reason to call in question the strong assurancesgiven by the writer of No. 90 himself of his yet unshaken faith in theEnglish Church. But all these important features of themovement--witnessing, indeed, to deep searchings of heart, but to agenuine desire to serve the English Church--were overlooked in the oneoverwhelming fear which had taken possession of the authorities. Alarming symptoms of a disposition to acknowledge and even exaggeratethe claims and the attractions of the Roman system were indeed apparent. No doubt there were reasons for disquiet and anxiety. But the test ofmanliness and wisdom, in the face of such reasons, is how men measuretheir proportion, and how they meet the danger. 

The Heads saw a real danger before them; but they met it in a wrong andunworthy way. They committed two great errors. In the first place, likethe Jesuits in their quarrel with Portroyal and the Jansenists, theyentirely failed to recognise the moral elevation and religious purposeof the men whom they opposed. There was that before them which it was totheir deep discredit that they did not see. The movement, whatever elseit was, or whatever else it became, was in its first stages a movementfor deeper religion, for a more real and earnest self-discipline, for aloftier morality, for more genuine self-devotion to a serious life, thanhad ever been seen in Oxford. It was an honest attempt to raise Oxfordlife, which by all evidence needed raising, to something more laboriousand something more religious, to something more worthy of the greatChristian foundations of Oxford than the rivalry of colleges and of theschools, the mere literary atmosphere of the tutor's lecture-room, andthe easy and gentlemanly and somewhat idle fellowship of thecommon-rooms. It was the effort of men who had all the love ofscholarship, and the feeling for it of the Oxford of their day, to addto this the habits of Christian students and the pursuit of Christianlearning. If all this was dangerous and uncongenial to Oxford, so muchthe worse for Oxford, with its great opportunities and greatprofessions--_Dominus illuminatio mea_. But certainly this mark of moralpurpose and moral force was so plain in the movement that the rulers ofOxford had no right to mistake it. When the names come back to our mindsof those who led and most represented the Tractarians, it must be amatter of surprise to any man who has not almost parted with the idea ofChristian goodness, that this feature of the movement could escape orfail to impress those who had known well all their lives long what theseleaders were. But amid the clamour and the tell-tale gossip, and, itmust be admitted, the folly round them, they missed it. Perhaps theywere bewildered. But they must have the blame, the heavy blame, whichbelongs to all those who, when good is before them, do not recognise itaccording to its due measure. [100]

In the next place, the authorities attacked and condemned theTractarian teaching at once violently and ignorantly, and in themignorance of the ground on which the battle was fought was hardlypardonable. Doubtless the Tractarian language was in many respects noveland strange. But Oxford was not only a city of libraries, it was thehome of what was especially accounted Church theology; and theTractarian teaching, in its foundation and main outlines, had little butwhat ought to have been perfectly familiar to any one who chose to takethe trouble to study the great Church of England writers. To one who, like Dr. Routh of Magdalen, had gone below the surface, and wasacquainted with the questions debated by those divines, there wasnothing startling in what so alarmed his brethren, whether he agreedwith it or not; and to him the indiscriminate charge of Popery meantnothing. But Dr. Routh stood alone among his brother Heads in hisknowledge of what English theology was. To most of them it was anunexplored and misty region; some of the ablest, under the influence ofDr. Whately's vigorous and scornful discipline, had learned to slightit. But there it was. Whether it was read or not, its great names werepronounced with honour, and quoted on occasion. From Hooker to VanMildert, there was an unbroken thread of common principles givingcontinuity to a line of Church teachers. The Puritan line of doctrine, though it could claim much sanction among the divines of theReformation--the Latitudinarian idea, though it had the countenance offamous names and powerful intellects--never could aspire to the specialtitle of Church theology. And the teaching which had that name, both inpraise, and often in dispraise, as technical, scholastic, unspiritual, transcendental, nay, even Popish, countenanced the Tractarians. Theywere sneered at for their ponderous _Catenae_ of authorities; but on theground on which this debate raged, the appeal was a pertinent and solidone. Yet to High Church Oxford and its rulers, all this was strangedoctrine. Proof and quotation might lie before their eyes, but theirminds still ran in one groove, and they could not realise what they saw. The words meant no harm in the venerable folio; they meant perilousheresy in the modern Tract. When the authorities had to judge of thequestions raised by the movement, they were unprovided with the adequateknowledge; and this was knowledge which they ought to have possessed forits own sake, as doctors of the Theological Faculty of the University. 

And it was not only for their want of learning, manifest all through thecontroversy, that they were to blame. Their most telling charge againstthe Tractarians, which was embodied in the censure of No. 90, was thecharge of dishonesty. The charge is a very handy one against opponents, and it may rest on good grounds; but those who think right to make itought, both as a matter of policy and as a matter of conscience, to bequite assured of their own position. The Articles are a public, commondocument. It is the differing interpretations of a common document whichcreate political and religious parties; and only shallowness andprejudice will impute to an opponent dishonesty without strong and clearreason. Mr. Newman's interpretation in No. 90, --new, not in claiming forthe Articles a Catholic meaning, but in _limiting_, though it does notdeny, their anti-Roman scope, was fairly open to criticism. It might betaken as a challenge, and as a challenge might have to be met. But itwould have been both fair and wise in the Heads, before proceeding tounusual extremities, to have shown that they had fully considered theirown theological doctrines in relation to the Church formularies. Theyall had obvious difficulties, and in some cases formidable ones. Themajority of them were what would have been called in older controversialdays frank Arminians, shutting their eyes by force of custom to the lookof some of the Articles, which, if of Lutheran origin, had been claimedfrom the first by Calvinists. The Evangelicals had long confesseddifficulties, at least, in the Baptismal Service and the VisitationOffice; while the men most loud in denunciation of dishonesty were thedivines of Whately's school, who had been undermining the authority ofall creeds and articles, and had never been tired of proclaiming theirdislike of that solemn Athanasian Creed to which Prayer Book andArticles alike bound them. Men with these difficulties daily before themhad no right to ignore them. Doubtless they all had their explanationswhich they _bona fide_ believed in. But what was there that excluded Mr. Newman from the claim to _bona fides_? He had attacked no foundation ofChristianity; he had denied or doubted no article of the Creed. He gavehis explanations, certainly not more far-fetched than those of some ofhis judges. In a Church divided by many conflicting views, and thereforebound to all possible tolerance, he had adopted one view which certainlywas unpopular and perhaps was dangerous. He might be confuted, he mightbe accused, or, if so be, convicted of error, perhaps of heresy. Butnothing of this kind was attempted. The incompatibility of his view, notmerely with the Articles, but with morality in signing what all, ofwhatever party, had signed, was asserted in a censure, which evaded theresponsibility of specifying the point which it condemned. The alarm oftreachery and conspiracy is one of the most maddening of human impulses. The Heads of Houses, instead of moderating and sobering it, with theauthority of instructed and sagacious rulers, blew it into a flame. Andthey acted in such a hurry that all sense of proportion and dignity waslost. They peremptorily refused to wait even a few days, as the writerrequested, and as was due to his character, for explanation. They darednot risk an appeal to the University at large. They dared not abide theeffect of discussion on the blow which they were urged to strike. Theychose, that they might strike without delay, the inexpressibly childishstep of sticking up at the Schools' gates, and at College butteries, without trial, or conviction, or sentence, a notice declaring thatcertain modes of signing the Articles suggested in a certain Tract weredishonest. It was, they said, to protect undergraduates; as ifundergraduates would be affected by a vague assertion on a difficultsubject, about which nothing was more certain than that those who issuedthe notice were not agreed among themselves. 

The men who acted thus were good and conscientious men, who thoughtthemselves in the presence of a great danger. It is only fair toremember this. But it is also impossible to be fair to the party of themovement without remembering this deplorable failure in consistency, injustice, in temper, in charity, on the part of those in power in theUniversity. The drift towards Rome had not yet become an unmanageablerush; and though there were cases in which nothing could have stoppedits course, there is no reason to doubt that generous and equitabledealing, a more considerate reasonableness, a larger and morecomprehensive judgment of facts, and a more patient waiting for strongfirst impressions to justify and verify themselves, would have avertedmuch mischief. There was much that was to be regretted from this timeforward in the temper and spirit of the movement party. But that whichnourished and strengthened impatience, exaggeration of language andviews, scorn of things as they were, intolerance of everythingmoderate, both in men and in words, was the consciousness with whichevery man got up in the morning and passed the day, of the bitterhostility of those foremost in place in Oxford--of their incompetence tojudge fairly--of their incapacity to apprehend what was high and earnestin those whom they condemned--of the impossibility of getting them toimagine that Tractarians could be anything but fools or traitors--oftheir hopeless blindness to any fact or any teaching to which they werenot accustomed. If the authorities could only have stopped to considerwhether after all they were not dealing with real thought and real wishto do right, they might after all have disliked the movement, but theywould have seen that which would have kept them from violence. Theywould not listen, they would not inquire, they would not consider. Couldsuch ignorance, could such wrong possibly be without mischievousinfluence on those who were the victims of it, much more on friends anddisciples who knew and loved them? The Tractarians had been preachingthat the Church of England, with all its Protestant feeling and all itsProtestant acts and history, was yet, as it professed to be, part andparcel of the great historic Catholic Church, which had framed theCreeds, which had continued the Sacraments, which had preached andtaught out of the Bible, which had given us our immemorial prayers. Theyhad spared no pains to make out this great commonplace from history andtheology: nor had they spared pains, while insisting on this dominantfeature in the English Church, to draw strongly and broadly the lineswhich distinguished it from Rome. Was it wonderful, when all guardingand explanatory limitations were contemptuously tossed aside by"all-daring ignorance, " and all was lumped together in theindiscriminate charge of "Romanising, " that there should have been someto take the authorities at their word? Was it wonderful when men weretold that the Church of England was no place for them, that they werebreaking their vows and violating solemn engagements by acting as itsministers, and that in order to preserve the respect of honest men theyshould leave it--that the question of change, far off as it had onceseemed, came within "measurable distance"? The generation to which theybelonged had been brought up with strong exhortations to be real, and tohate shams; and now the question was forced on them whether it was not asham for the English Church to call itself Catholic; whether a body ofteaching which was denounced by its authorities, however it might lookon paper and be defended by learning, could be more than a plausibleliterary hypothesis in contrast to the great working system of which thehead was Rome. When we consider the singular and anomalous position onany theory, including the Roman, of the English Church; with what greatdifferences its various features and elements have been prominent atdifferent times; how largely its history has been marked bycontradictory facts and appearances; and how hard it is for any one tokeep all, according to their real importance, simultaneously in view;when we remember also what are the temptations of human nature in greatcollisions of religious belief, the excitement and passion of the time, the mixed character of all religious zeal, the natural inevitable angerwhich accompanies it when resisted, the fervour which welcomesself-sacrifice for the truth; and when we think of all this kept aglowby the continuous provocation of unfair and harsh dealing from personswho were scarcely entitled to be severe judges; the wonder is, humannature being what it is, not that so many went, but that so many stayed. 

FOOTNOTES:

[97] Τόλμα ἀλόγιστος ἀνδρία φιλέταιρος ἐνομίσθη . .. τὸ δὲ σῶφρον τοῦἀνάνδρου πρόσχημα, καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἄπαν ξυνετὸν ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀργόν τὸ δὲὲμπλήκτως ὀξὐ ἀνδρὸς μοίρᾳ προσετέθη . .. καὶ ὁ μὲν χαλεπαίνων πιστὸςἀεί, ὁ δὲ ἀντιλέγων αὐτῷ ὕποπτος. --Thuc. Iii. 82. "Reckless daring washeld to be loyal courage; moderation was the disguise of unmanlyweakness; to know everything was to do nothing; frantic energy was thetrue character of a man; the lover of violence was always trusted, andhis opponent suspected. "--Jowett's translation. 

[98] One of the strangest features in the conflict was the entiremisconception shown of what Mr. Newman was--the blindness to his realcharacter and objects--the imputation to him not merely of grave faults, but of small and mean ones. His critics could not rise above the poorestmeasure of his intellect and motives. One of the ablest of them, who hadonce been his friend, in a farewell letter of kindly remonstrance, specifies certain Roman errors, which he hopes that Mr. Newman will notfall into--adoring images and worshipping saints--as if the pleasure andprivilege of worshipping images and saints were to Mr. Newman theinducement to join Rome and break the ties of a lifetime. And so of hismoral qualities. A prominent Evangelical leader, Dr. Close ofCheltenham, afterwards Dean of Carlisle, at a complimentary dinner, inwhich he himself gloried in the "foul, personal abuse to which he hadbeen subjected in his zeal for truth, " proceeded to give his judgment onMr. Newman: "When I first read No. 90, I did not then know the author;but I said then, and I repeat here, _not with any personal reference tothe author_, that I should be sorry to trust the author of that Tractwith my purse, "--Report of Speech in _Cheltenham Examiner_, 1st March1843. 

[99] οὐ γὰρ ἀπόχρη τὸ ἔχειν ἄ δεῖ λέγειν, ἀλλ' ἀνάγκη καὶ ταῦτο ὠς δεῖείπεῖν. --Arist. _Rhet. _ iii. I. 

[100] Dr. Richards, the Rector of Exeter, seems to have stood apart fromhis brother heads. --Cf. _Letters of the Rev. J. B. Mozley_, p. 113. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE THREE DEFEATS:

ISAAC WILLIAMS, MACMULLEN, PUSEY

The year 1841, though it had begun in storm, and though signs were notwanting of further disturbance, was at Oxford, outwardly at least, apeaceable one. A great change had happened; but, when the first burst ofexcitement was over, men settled down to their usual work, theirlectures, or their reading, or their parishes, and by Easter thingsseemed to go on as before. The ordinary habits of University liferesumed their course with a curious quietness. There was, no doubt, muchtrouble brooding underneath. Mr. Ward and others continued a war ofpamphlets; and in June Mr. Ward was dismissed from his MathematicalLectureship at Balliol. But faith in the great leader was still strong. No. 90, if it had shocked or disquieted some, had elicited equallyremarkable expressions of confidence and sympathy from others who mighthave been, at least, silent. The events of the spring had made menconscious of what their leader was, and called forth warm andenthusiastic affection. It was not in vain that, whatever might bethought of the wisdom or the reasonings of No. 90, he had shown theheight of his character and the purity and greatness of his religiouspurpose; and that being what he was, in the eyes of all Oxford, he hadbeen treated with contumely, and had borne it with patience and loyalsubmission. There were keen observers, to whom that patience told offuture dangers; they would have liked him to show more fight. But hegave no signs of defeat, nor, outwardly, of disquiet; he forbore toretaliate at Oxford: and the sermons at St. Mary's continued, penetrating and searching as ever, perhaps with something more patheticand anxious in their undertone than before. 

But if he forbore at Oxford, he did not let things pass outside. SirRobert Peel, in opening a reading-room at Tamworth, had spoken loosely, in the conventional and pompous way then fashionable, of theall-sufficing and exclusive blessings of knowledge. While Mr. Newman wascorrecting the proofs of No. 90, he was also writing to the _Times_ thefamous letters of _Catholicus_; a warning to eminent public men of thedanger of declaiming on popular commonplaces without due examination oftheir worth. But all seemed quiet. "In the summer of 1841, " we read inthe _Apologia_, "I found myself at Littlemore without any harass oranxiety on my mind. I had determined to put aside all controversy, andset myself down to my translation of St. Athanasius. " Outside of Oxfordthere was a gathering of friends in the summer at the consecration ofone of Mr. Keble's district churches, Ampfield--an occasion less commonand more noticeable then than now. Again, what was a new thought then, alittle band of young Oxford men, ten or twelve, taxed themselves tobuild a new church, which was ultimately placed at Bussage, in Mr. Thomas Keble's parish. One of Mr. Keble's curates, Mr. Peter Young, hadbeen refused Priest's orders by the Bishop of Winchester, for allegedunsoundness on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Mr. Selwyn, not withoutmisgivings on the part of the Whig powers, had been appointed Bishop ofNew Zealand. Dr. Arnold had been appointed to the Chair of ModernHistory at Oxford. In the course of the year there passed away one whohad had a very real though unacknowledged influence on much that hadhappened--Mr. Blanco White. And at the end of the year, 29th October, Mr. Keble gave his last lecture on Poetry, and finished a course themost original and memorable ever delivered from his chair. 

Towards the end of the year two incidents, besides some roughly-wordedEpiscopal charges, disturbed this quiet. They were only indirectlyconnected with theological controversy at Oxford; but they had greatultimate influence on it, and they helped to marshal parties andconsolidate animosities. One was the beginning of the contest for thePoetry Professorship which Mr. Keble had vacated. There was no one ofequal eminence to succeed him; but there was in Oxford a man ofundoubted poetical genius, of refined taste and subtle thought, thoughof unequal power, who had devoted his gifts to the same great purposefor which Mr. Keble had written the _Christian Year. _ No one who haslooked into the _Baptistery_, whatever his feeling towards the writer, can doubt whether Mr. Isaac Williams was a poet and knew what poetrymeant. He was an intimate friend of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman, and so hewas styled a Tractarian; but no name offered itself so obviously to theelectors as his, and in due time his friends announced their intentionof bringing him forward. His competitor was Mr. (afterwards Archdeacon)Garbett of Brasenose, the college of Heber and Milman, an accomplishedgentleman of high culture, believed to have an acquaintance, not commonthen in Oxford, with foreign literature, whose qualifications stood highin the opinion of his University friends, but who had given no evidenceto the public of his claims to the office. It was inevitable, it was noone's special fault, that the question of theological opinions shouldintrude itself; but at first it was only in private that objections wereraised or candidatures recommended on theological grounds. But rumourswere abroad that the authorities of Brasenose were canvassing theircollege on these grounds: and in an unlucky moment for Mr. Williams, Dr. Pusey, not without the knowledge, but without the assenting judgment ofMr. Newman, thought it well to send forth a circular in Christ Churchfirst, but soon with wider publicity, asking support for Mr. Williams asa person whose known religious views would ensure his making his officeminister to religious truth. Nothing could be more innocently meant. Itwas the highest purpose to which that office could be devoted. But themistake was seen on all sides as soon as made. The Principal of Mr. Garbett's college. Dr. Gilbert, like a general jumping on his antagonistwhom he has caught in the act of a false move, put forth a dignifiedcounter-appeal, alleging that he had not raised this issue, but addingthat as it had been raised and avowed on the other side, he was quitewilling that it should be taken into account, and the dangers dulyconsidered of that teaching with which Dr. Pusey's letter had identifiedMr. Williams. No one from that moment could prevent the contest frombecoming almost entirely a theological one, which was to try thestrength of the party of the movement. Attempts were made, but in vain, to divest it of this character. The war of pamphlets and leafletsdispersed in the common-rooms, which usually accompanied these contests, began, and the year closed with preparations for a severe struggle whenthe University met in the following January. 

The other matter was the establishment of the Anglo-Prussian bishopricat Jerusalem. It was the object of the ambition of M. Bunsen to pave theway for a recognition, by the English Church, of the new State Churchof Prussia, and ultimately for some closer alliance between the twobodies; and the plan of a Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem, nominatedalternately by England and Prussia, consecrated by English Bishops, andexercising jurisdiction over English and German Protestants inPalestine, was proposed by him to Archbishop Howley and BishopBlomfield, and somewhat hastily and incautiously accepted by them. ToMr. Newman, fighting a hard battle, as he felt it, for the historicaland constitutional catholicity of the English Church, this step on theirpart came as a practical and even ostentatious contradiction of hisarguments. England, it seemed, which was out of communion with the Eastand with Rome, could lightly enter into close communion with Lutheransand Calvinists against them both. He recorded an indignant and evenbitter protest; and though the scheme had its warm apologists, such asDr. Hook and Mr. F. Maurice, it had its keen-sighted critics, and it wasnever received with favour by the Church at large. And, indeed, it wasonly active for mischief. It created irritation, suspicion, discord inEngland, while no German cared a straw about it. Never was an ambitiousscheme so marked by impotence and failure from its first steps to itslast. But it was one, as the _Apologia_ informs us, [101] in the chain ofevents which destroyed Mr. Newman's belief in the English Church. "Itwas one of the blows, " he writes, "which broke me. "

The next year, 1842, opened with war; war between the Universityauthorities and the party of the movement, which was to continue invarious forms and with little intermission till the strange and patheticevents of 1845 suspended the righting and stunned the fighters, and fora time hushed even anger in feelings of amazement, sorrow, and fear. Those events imposed stillness on all who had taken part in the strife, like the blowing up of the _Orient_ at the battle of the Nile. 

As soon as the University met in January 1842, the contest for thePoetry Professorship was settled. There was no meeting of Convocation, but a comparison of votes gave a majority of three to two to Mr. Garbett, [102] and Mr. Williams withdrew. The Tractarians had beendistinctly beaten; it was their first defeat as a party. It seems as ifthis encouraged the Hebdomadal Board to a move, which would be felt as ablow against the Tractarians, and which, as an act of reparation to Dr. Hampden, would give satisfaction to the ablest section of their ownsupporters, the theological Liberals. They proposed to repeal thedisqualification which had been imposed on Dr. Hampden in 1836. But theyhad miscalculated. It was too evidently a move to take advantage of therecent Tractarian discomfiture to whitewash Dr. Hampden's Liberalism. The proposal, and the way in which it was made, roused a strong feelingamong the residents; a request to withdraw it received the signaturesnot only of moderate Anglicans and independent men, like Mr. FrancisFaber of Magdalen, Mr. Sewell, the Greswells, and Mr. W. Palmer ofWorcester, but of Mr. Tait of Balliol, and Mr. Golightly. Dr. Hampden'sown attitude did not help it. There was great want of dignity in hisostentatious profession of orthodoxy and attachment to the Articles, inhis emphatic adoption of Evangelical phraseology, and in his unmeasureddenunciation of his opponents, and especially of those whom he viewed asmost responsible for the censure of 1836--the "Tractarians" or"Romanisers. " And the difficulty with those who had passed and who nowproposed to withdraw the censure, was that Dr. Hampden persistently andloudly declared that he had nothing to retract, and retracted nothing;and if it was right to pass it in 1836, it would not be right towithdraw it in 1842. At the last moment, Mr. Tait and Mr. PiersClaughton of University made an attempt to get something from Dr. Hampden which might pass as a withdrawal of what was supposed to bedangerous in his Bampton Lectures; and there were some even among Mr. Newman's friends, who, disliking from the first the form of the censure, might have found in such a withdrawal a reason for voting for itsrepeal. But Dr. Hampden was obdurate. The measure was pressed, and inJune it was thrown out in Convocation by a majority of three totwo[103]--the same proportion, though in smaller numbers, as in the voteagainst Mr. Williams. The measure was not an honest one on the part ofthe Hebdomadal Board, and deserved to be defeated. Among the pamphletswhich the discussion produced, two by Mr. James Mozley gave earlyevidence, by their force of statement and their trenchant logic, of thepower with which he was to take part in the questions which agitated theUniversity. 

Dr. Hampden took his revenge, and it was not a noble one. The fellows ofcertain colleges were obliged to proceed to the B. D. Degree on pain offorfeiting their fellowships. The exercises for the degree, which, bythe Statutes, took the old-fashioned shape of formal Latin disputationsbetween Opponents and Respondents on given theses in the DivinitySchool, had by an arrangement introduced by Dr. Burton, with noauthority from the Statutes, come to consist of two English essays onsubjects chosen by the candidate and approved by the Divinity Professor. The exercises for the degree had long ceased to be looked upon as veryserious matters, and certainly were never regarded as tests of thesoundness of the candidate's faith. They were usually on well-worncommonplaces, of which the Regius Professor kept a stock, and aboutwhich no one troubled himself but the person who wanted the degree. Itwas not a creditable system, but it was of a piece with the prevalentabsence of any serious examination for the superior degrees. It wouldhave been quite befitting his position, if Dr. Hampden had called theattention of the authorities to the evil of sham exercises for degreesin his own important Faculty. It would have been quite right to make avigorous effort on public grounds to turn these sham trials intorealities; to use them, like the examination for the B. A. Degree, astests of knowledge and competent ability. Such a move on his part wouldhave been in harmony with the legislation which had recently added twotheological Professors to the Faculty, and had sketched out, howeverimperfectly, the outlines of a revived theological school. 

This is what, with good reason, Dr. Hampden might have attempted ongeneral grounds, and had he been successful (though this in thesuspicious state of University feeling was not very likely) he wouldhave gained in a regular and lawful way that power of embarrassing hisopponents which he was resolved to use in defiance of all existingcustom. But such was not the course which he chose. Mr. Macmullen ofCorpus, who, in pursuance of the College Statutes, had to proceed to theB. D. Degree, applied, as the custom was, for theses to the Professor. Mr. Macmullen was known to hold the opinions of the movement school; ofcourse he was called a Tractarian; he had put his name to some of themany papers which expressed the sentiments of his friends on currentevents. Dr. Hampden sent him two propositions, which the candidate wasto support, framed so as to commit him to assertions which Mr. Macmullen, whose high Anglican opinions were well known, could notconsistently make. It was a novel and unexampled act on the part of theProfessor, to turn what had been a mere formal exercise into a sharp andsweeping test of doctrine, which would place all future Divinity degreesin the University at his mercy; and the case was made more serious, whenthe very form of exercise which the Professor used as an instrument ofsuch formidable power was itself without question unstatutable andillegal, and had been simply connived at by the authorities. Tointroduce by his own authority a new feature into a system which he hadno business to use at all, and to do this for the first time with themanifest purpose of annoying an obnoxious individual, was, on Dr. Hampden's part, to do more to discredit his chair and himself, than thecensure of the University could do; and it was as unwise as it wasunworthy. The strength of his own case before the public was that hecould be made to appear as the victim of a personal and partisan attack;yet on the first opportunity he acts in the spirit of an inquisitor, andthat not in fair conflict with some one worthy of his hostility, but towreak an injury, in a matter of private interest, on an individual, inno way known to him or opposed to him, except as holding certainunpopular opinions. 

Mr. Macmullen was not the person to take such treatment quietly. Theright was substantially on his side, and the Professor, and theUniversity authorities who more or less played into the hands of theProfessor in defence of his illegal and ultimately untenable claims, appeared before the University, the one as a persecutor, the others asrulers who were afraid to do justice on behalf of an ill-used manbecause he was a Tractarian. The right course was perfectly clear. Itwas to put an end to these unauthorised exercises, and to recall bothcandidates and Professor to the statutable system which imposeddisputations conducted under the moderatorship of the Professor, butwhich gave him no veto, at the time, on the theological sufficiency ofthe disputations, leaving him to state his objections, if he was notsatisfied, when the candidate's degree was asked for in the House ofCongregation. This course, after some hesitation, was followed, but onlypartially; and without allowing or disallowing the Professor's claim toa veto, the Vice-Chancellor on his own responsibility stopped thedegree. A vexatious dispute lingered on for two or three years, withactions in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, and distinguished lawyers toplead for each side, and appeals to the University Court of Delegates, who reversed the decision of the Vice-Chancellor's assessor. Somehow orother, Mr. Macmullen at last got his degree, but at the cost of a greatdeal of ill-blood in Oxford, for which Dr. Hampden, by his unwarrantedinterference, and the University authorities, by their questionabledevices to save the credit and claims of one of their own body, must beheld mainly responsible. 

Before the matter was ended, they were made to feel, in rather astartling way, how greatly they had lost the confidence of theUniversity. One of the attempts to find a way out of the tangle of thedispute was the introduction, in February 1844, of a Statute whichshould give to the Professor the power which was now contested, andpractically place all the Divinity degrees under the control of a Boardin conjunction with the Vice-Chancellor. [104] The proposed legislationraised such indignation in the University, that the Hebdomadal Boardtook back their scheme for further revision, and introduced it again ina modified shape, which still however gave new powers to the Professorand the Vice-Chancellor. But the University would have none of it. Noone could say that the defeat of the altered Statute by 341 to 21 wasthe work merely of a party. [105] It was the most decisive vote given inthe course of these conflicts. And it was observed that on the same dayMr. Macmullen's degree was vetoed by the Vice-Chancellor at the instanceof Dr. Hampden at 10 o'clock in Congregation, and the Hebdomadal Board, which had supported him, received the vote of want of confidence at noonin Convocation. 

Nothing could show more decisively that the authorities in theHebdomadal Board were out of touch with the feeling of the University, or, at all events, of that part of it which was resident. The residentswere not, as a body, identified with the Tractarians; it would be moretrue to say that the residents, as a body, looked on this marked schoolwith misgiving and apprehension; but they saw what manner of men theseTractarians were; they lived with them in college and common-room; theirbehaviour was before their brethren as a whole, with its strength andits weakness, its moral elevation and its hazardous excitement, itssincerity of purpose and its one-sidedness of judgment and sympathy, itsunfairness to what was English, its over-value for what was foreign. Types of those who looked at things more or less independently were Mr. Hussey of Christ Church, Mr. C. P. Eden of Oriel, Mr. Sewell of Exeter, Mr. Francis Faber of Magdalen, Dr. Greenhill of Trinity, Mr. Wall ofBalliol, Mr. Hobhouse of Merton, with some of the more consistentLiberals, like Mr. Stanley of University, and latterly Mr. Tait. Men ofthis kind, men of high character and weight in Oxford, found much todislike and regret in the Tractarians. But they could also see that theleaders of the Hebdomadal Board laboured under a fatal incapacity torecognise what these unpopular Tractarians were doing for the cause oftrue and deep religion; they could see that the judgment of the Heads ofHouses, living as they did apart, in a kind of superior state, wasnarrow, ill-informed, and harsh, and that the warfare which they wagedwas petty, irritating, and profitless; while they also saw with greatclearness that under cover of suppressing "Puseyism, " the policy of theBoard was, in fact, tending to increase and strengthen the power of anirresponsible and incompetent oligarchy, not only over a troublesomeparty, but over the whole body of residents. To the great honour ofOxford it must be said, that throughout these trying times, on to thevery end, there was in the body of Masters a spirit of fairness, arecognition of the force both of argument and character, a dislike ofhigh-handedness and shabbiness, which was in strong and painful contrastto the short-sighted violence in which the Hebdomadal Board wasunhappily induced to put their trust, and which proved at last the maincause of the overthrow of their power. When changes began to threatenOxford, there was no one to say a word for them. 

But, for the moment, in spite of this defeat in Convocation, they had nomisgivings as to the wisdom of their course or the force of theirauthority. There was, no doubt, much urging from outside, both onpolitical and theological grounds, to make them use their power to staythe plague of Tractarianism; and they were led by three able andresolute men, unfortunately unable to understand the moral or theintellectual character of the movement, and having the highest dislikeand disdain for it in both aspects--Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, thelast remaining disciple of Whately's school, a man of rigidconscientiousness, and very genuine though undemonstrative piety, ofgreat kindliness in private life, of keen and alert intellect, but notof breadth and knowledge proportionate to his intellectual power; Dr. Symons, Warden of Wadham, a courageous witness for Evangelical divinityin the days when Evangelicals were not in fashion in Oxford, a man ofponderous and pedantic learning and considerable practical acuteness;and Dr. Cardwell, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, more a man of the worldthan his colleagues, with considerable knowledge of portions of EnglishChurch history. Under the inspiration of these chiefs, the authoritieshad adopted, as far as they could, the policy of combat; and theVice-Chancellor of the time, Dr. Wynter of St. John's, a kind-heartedman, but quite unfit to moderate among the strong wills and fiercetempers round him, was induced to single out for the severest blow yetstruck, the most distinguished person in the ranks of the movement, Dr. Pusey himself. 

Dr. Pusey was a person with whom it was not wise to meddle, unless hisassailants could make out a case without a flaw. He was without questionthe most venerated person in Oxford. Without an equal, in Oxford atleast, in the depth and range of his learning, he stood out yet moreimpressively among his fellows in the lofty moral elevation andsimplicity of his life, the blamelessness of his youth, and the profounddevotion of his manhood, to which the family sorrows of his later years, and the habits which grew out of them, added a kind of pathetic andsolemn interest. Stern and severe in his teaching at one time, --at leastas he was understood, --beyond even the severity of Puritanism, he wasyet overflowing with affection, tender and sympathetic to all who camenear him, and, in the midst of continual controversy, he endeavoured, with deep conscientiousness, to avoid the bitternesses of controversy. He was the last man to attack; much more the last man to be unfair to. The men who ruled in Oxford contrived, in attacking him, to make almostevery mistake which it was possible to make. 

On the 24th of May 1843 Dr. Pusey, intending to balance and complementthe severer, and, to many, the disquieting aspects of doctrine in hiswork on Baptism, preached on the Holy Eucharist as a comfort to thepenitent. He spoke of it as a disciple of Andrewes and Bramhall wouldspeak of it; it was a high Anglican sermon, full, after the example ofthe Homilies, Jeremy Taylor, and devotional writers like George Herbertand Bishop Ken, of the fervid language of the Fathers; and that was all. Beyond this it did not go; its phraseology was strictly within Anglicanlimits. In the course of the week that followed, the University wassurprised by the announcement that Dr. Faussett, the Margaret Professorof Divinity, had "_delated_" the sermon to the Vice-Chancellor asteaching heresy; and even more surprised at the news that theVice-Chancellor had commenced proceedings. The Statutes provided thatwhen a sermon was complained of, or _delated_ to the Vice-Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor should demand a copy of the sermon, and summoning tohim as his assessors Six Doctors of Divinity, should examine thelanguage complained of, and, if necessary, condemn and punish thepreacher. The Statute is thus drawn up in general terms, and prescribesnothing as to the mode in which the examination into the alleged offenceis to be carried on; that is, it leaves it to the Vice-Chancellor'sdiscretion. What happened was this. The sermon was asked for, but thename of the accuser was not given; the Statute did not enjoin it. Thesermon was sent, with a request from Dr. Pusey that he might have ahearing. The Six Doctors were appointed, five of them being Dr. Hawkins, Dr. Symons, Dr. Jenkyns, Dr. Ogilvie, Dr. Jelf; the Statute said theRegius Professor was, if possible, to be one of the number; as he wasunder the ban of a special Statute, he was spared the task, and hisplace was taken by the next Divinity Professor, Dr. Faussett, the personwho had preferred the charge, and who was thus, from having beenaccuser, promoted to be a judge. To Dr. Pusey's request for a hearing, no answer was returned; the Statute, no doubt, said nothing of ahearing. But after the deliberations of the judges were concluded, andafter the decision to condemn the sermon had been reached, one of them, Dr. Pusey's old friend, Dr. Jelf, was privately charged with certaincommunications from the Vice-Chancellor, on which the seal of absolutesecrecy was imposed, and which, in fact, we believe, have never beendivulged from that _day_ to this. Whatever passed between theVice-Chancellor, Dr. Jelf, and Dr. Pusey, it had no effect in arrestingthe sentence; and it came out, in informal ways, and through Dr. Puseyhimself, that on the 2d of June Dr. Pusey had been accused and condemnedfor having taught doctrine contrary to that of the Church of England, and that by the authority of the Vice-Chancellor he was suspended frompreaching within the University for two years. But no formalnotification of the transaction was ever made to the University. 

The summary suppression of erroneous and dangerous teaching had longbeen a recognised part of the University discipline; and with the ideasthen accepted of the religious character of the University, it wasnatural that some such power as that given in the Statutes should beprovided. The power, even after all the changes in Oxford, exists still, and has been recently appealed to. Dr. Pusey, as a member of theUniversity, had no more right than any other preacher to complain of hisdoctrine being thus solemnly called in question. But it is strange thatit should not have occurred to the authorities that, under theconditions of modern times, and against a man like Dr. Pusey, such powershould be warily used. For it was not only arbitrary power, such as wasexerted in the condemnation of No. 90, but it was arbitrary power actingunder the semblance of a judicial inquiry, with accusers, examination, trial, judges, and a heavy penalty. The act of a court of justice whichsets at defiance the rules of justice is a very different thing from astraightforward act of arbitrary power, because it pretends to be whatit is not. The information against Dr. Pusey, if accepted, involved atrial--that was the fixed condition and point of departure from whichthere was no escaping--and if a trial be held, then, if it be not a fairtrial, the proceeding becomes, according to English notions, a flagrantand cowardly wrong. All this, all the intrinsic injustice, all thescandal and discredit in the eyes of honest men, was forgotten in theobstinate and blind confidence in the letter of a vague Statute. Theaccused was not allowed to defend or explain himself; he was refused theknowledge of the definite charges against him; he was refused, in spiteof his earnest entreaties, a hearing, even an appearance in the presenceof his judges. The Statute, it was said, enjoined none of these things. The name of his accuser was not told him; he was left to learn it byreport To the end of the business all was wrought in secrecy; no oneknows to this day how the examination of the sermon was conducted, orwhat were the opinions of the judges. The Statute, it was said, neitherenjoined nor implied publicity. To this day no one knows what were thedefinite passages, what was the express or necessarily involved heresyor contradiction of the formularies, on which the condemnation wasbased; nor--except on the supposition of gross ignorance of Englishdivinity on the part of the judges--is it easy for a reader to put hisfinger on the probably incriminated passages. To make the proceedingsstill more unlike ordinary public justice, informal and privatecommunications were carried on between the judge and the accused, inwhich the accused was bound to absolute silence, and forbidden toconsult his nearest friends. 

And of the judges what can be said but that they were, with oneexception, the foremost and sternest opponents of all that wasidentified with Dr. Pusey's name; and that one of them was the colleaguewho had volunteered to accuse him? Dr. Faussett's share in the matter isintelligible; hating the movement in all its parts, he struck with thevehemence of a mediaeval zealot. But that men like Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Ogilvie, one of them reputed to be a theologian, the other one of theshrewdest and most cautious of men, and in ordinary matters one of themost conscientious and fairest, should not have seen what justice, or atleast the show of justice, demanded, and what the refusal of that demandwould look like, and that they should have persuaded the Vice-Chancellorto accept the entire responsibility of haughtily refusing it, is, evento those who remember the excitement of those days, a subject of wonder. The plea was actually put forth that such opportunities of defence ofhis language and teaching as Dr. Pusey asked for would have led to the"inconvenience" of an interminable debate, and confronting of texts andauthorities. [106] The fact, with Dr. Pusey as the accused person, islikely enough; but in a criminal charge with a heavy penalty, it wouldhave been better for the reputation of the judges to have submitted tothe inconvenience. 

It was a great injustice and a great blunder--a blunder, because thegratuitous defiance of accepted rules of fairness neutralised whateverthere might seem to be of boldness and strength in the blow. They wereafraid to meet Dr. Pusey face to face. They were afraid to publish thereasons of their condemnation. The effect on the University, both onresident and non-resident members, was not to be misunderstood. TheProtestantism of the Vice-Chancellor and the Six Doctors was, of course, extolled by partisans in the press with reckless ignorance and recklesscontempt at once for common justice and their own consistency. Oneperson of some distinction at Oxford ventured to make himself themouthpiece of those who were bold enough to defend the proceeding--therecently-elected Professor of Poetry, Mr. Garbett. But deep offence wasgiven among the wiser and more reasonable men who had a regard for thecharacter of the University. A request to know the grounds of thesentence from men who were certainly of no party was curtly refused bythe Vice-Chancellor, with a suggestion that it did not concern them. Amore important memorial was sent from London, showing how persons at adistance were shocked by the unaccountable indifference to theappearance of justice in the proceeding. It was signed among others byMr. Gladstone and Mr. Justice Coleridge. The Vice-Chancellor lost histemper. He sent back the memorial to London "by the hands of his bedel, "as if that in some way stamped his official disapprobation more than ifit had been returned through the post. And he proceeded, in languagewonderful even for that moment, as "Resident Governor" of theUniversity, to reprimand statesmen and lawyers of eminence and highcharacter, not merely for presuming to interfere with his own duties, but for forgetting the oaths on the strength of which they had receivedtheir degrees, and for coming very near to that high, almost highest, academical crime, the crime of being _perturbatores pacis_--breaking thepeace of the University. 

Such foolishness, affecting dignity, only made more to talk of. If themen who ruled the University had wished to disgust and alienate theMasters of Arts, and especially the younger ones who were coming forwardinto power and influence, they could not have done better. The chronicjealousy and distrust of the time were deepened. And all this wasaggravated by what went on in private. A system of espionage, whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of themost slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all overOxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculentor more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges andtheir tutors. Candidates for fellowships were closely examined as totheir opinions and their associates. Men applying for testimonials werecross-questioned on No. 90, as to the infallibility of general councils, purgatory, the worship of images, the _Ora pro nobis_ and theintercession of the saints: the real critical questions upon which men'sminds were working being absolutely uncomprehended and ignored. It was amiserable state of misunderstanding and distrust, and none of theUniversity leaders had the temper and the manliness to endeavour withjustice and knowledge to get to the bottom of it. It was enough tosuppose that a Popish Conspiracy was being carried on. 

FOOTNOTES:

[101] Pp. 243, 253. 

[102] Garbett, 921. Williams, 623. 

[103] The numbers were 334 to 219. 

[104] _Christian Remembrancer_, vol. Ix. P. 175. 

[105] Ibid. Pp. 177-179. 

[106] Cf. _British Critic_, No. Xlvii. Pp. 221-223. 

CHAPTER XVII

W. G. WARD

If only the Oxford authorities could have had patience--if only theycould have known more largely and more truly the deep changes that wereat work everywhere, and how things were beginning to look in the eyes ofthe generation that was coming, perhaps many things might have beendifferent. Yes, it was true that there was a strong current settingtowards Rome. It was acting on some of the most vigorous of the youngermen. It was acting powerfully on the foremost mind in Oxford. Whither, if not arrested, it was carrying them was clear, but as yet it was by nomeans clear at what rate; and time, and thought, and being left aloneand dealt with justly, have a great effect on men's minds. Extravagance, disproportion, mischievous, dangerous exaggeration, in much that wassaid and taught--all this might have settled down, as so many things arein the habit of settling down, into reasonable and practical shapes, after a first burst of crudeness and strain--as, in fact, it _did_settle down at last. For Anglicanism itself was not Roman; friends andfoes said it was not, to reproach as well as to defend it. It was notRoman in Dr. Pusey, though he was not afraid to acknowledge what wasgood in Rome. It was not Roman in Mr. Keble and his friends, in Dr. Moberly of Winchester, and the Barters. It was not Roman in Mr. IsaacWilliams, Mr. Copeland, and Mr. Woodgate, each of them a centre ofinfluence in Oxford and the country. It was not Roman in the devotedCharles Marriott, or in Isaac Williams's able and learned pupil, Mr. Arthur Haddan. It was not Roman in Mr. James Mozley, after Mr. Newman, the most forcible and impressive of the Oxford writers. A distinctivelyEnglish party grew up, both in Oxford and away from it, strong ineminent names, in proportion as Roman sympathies showed themselves. These men were, in any fair judgment, as free from Romanising as any oftheir accusers; but they made their appeal for patience and fairjudgment in vain. If only the rulers could have had patience:--butpatience is a difficult virtue in the presence of what seem pressingdangers. Their policy was wrong, stupid, unjust, pernicious. It was adeplorable mistake, and all will wish now that the discredit of it didnot rest on the history of Oxford. And yet it was the mistake of uprightand conscientious men. 

Doubtless there was danger; the danger was that a number of men wouldcertainly not acquiesce much longer in Anglicanism, while the Headscontinued absolutely blind to what was really in these men's thoughts. For the Heads could not conceive the attraction which the Roman Churchhad for a religious man; they talked in the old-fashioned way about theabsurdity of the Roman system. They could not understand how reasonablemen could turn Roman Catholics. They accounted for it by supposing asilly hankering after the pomp or the frippery of Roman Catholicworship, and at best a craving after the romantic and sentimental. Theirthoughts dwelt continually on image worship and the adoration of saints. But what really was astir was something much deeper--something much moreakin to the new and strong forces which were beginning to act in verydifferent directions from this in English society--forces which were notonly leading minds to Rome, but making men Utilitarians, Rationalists, Positivists, and, though the word had not yet been coined, Agnostics. The men who doubted about the English Church saw in Rome a strong, logical, consistent theory of religion, not of yesterday nor to-day--notonly comprehensive and profound, but actually in full work, and fruitfulin great results; and this, in contrast to the alleged and undeniableanomalies and shortcomings of Protestantism and Anglicanism. And next, there was the immense amount which they saw in Rome of self-denial andself-devotion; the surrender of home and family in the clergy; the greatorganised ministry of women in works of mercy; the resolute abandonmentof the world and its attractions in the religious life. If in Englandthere flourished the homely and modest types of goodness, it was in Romethat, at that day at least, men must look for the heroic. They were notindisposed to the idea that a true Church which had lost all this mightyet regain it, and they were willing to wait and see what the EnglishChurch would do to recover what it had lost; but there was obviously along way to make up, and they came to think that there was no chance ofits overtaking its true position. Of course they knew all that was soloudly urged about the abuses and mischiefs growing out of the professedseverity of Rome. They knew that in spite of it foreign society was lax;that the discipline of the confessional was often exercised with a lightrein. But if the good side of it was real, they easily accounted for thebad: the bad did not destroy, it was a tacit witness to the good. Andthey knew the Latin Church mainly from France, where it was more inearnest, and exhibited more moral life and intellectual activity, than, as far as Englishmen knew, in Italy or Spain. There was a strong reboundfrom insular ignorance and unfairness, when English travellers came onthe poorly-paid but often intelligent and hard-working French clergy; onthe great works of mercy in the towns; on the originality and eloquenceof De Maistre, La Mennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert. 

These ideas took possession of a remarkable mind, the index and organ ofa remarkable character. Mr. W. G. Ward had learned the interest ofearnest religion from Dr. Arnold, in part through his close friendArthur Stanley. But if there was ever any tendency in him to combinewith the peculiar elements of the Rugby School, it was interrupted inits _nascent_ state, as chemists speak, by the intervention of a stillmore potent affinity, the personality of Mr. Newman. Mr. Ward haddeveloped in the Oxford Union, and in a wide social circle of the mostrising men of the time--including Tait, Cardwell, Lowe, RoundellPalmer--a very unusual dialectical skill and power of argumentativestatement: qualities which seemed to point to the House of Commons. ButMr. Newman's ideas gave him material, not only for argument but forthought. The lectures and sermons at St. Mary's subdued and led himcaptive. The impression produced on him was expressed in the formulathat primitive Christianity might have been corrupted into Popery, butthat Protestantism never could. [107] For a moment he hung in the wind. He might have been one of the earliest of Broad Churchmen. He might havebeen a Utilitarian and Necessitarian follower of Mr. J. S. Mill. Butmoral influences of a higher kind prevailed. And he became, in the mostthoroughgoing yet independent fashion, a disciple of Mr. Newman. Hebrought to his new side a fresh power of controversial writing; but hischief influence was a social one, from his bright and attractiveconversation, his bold and startling candour, his frank, not to sayreckless, fearlessness of consequences, his unrivalled skill in logicalfence, his unfailing good-humour and love of fun, in which his personalclumsiness set off the vivacity and nimbleness of his joyous moods. "Hewas, " says Mr. Mozley, "a great musical critic, knew all the operas, andwas an admirable buffo singer. "--No one could doubt that, havingstarted, Mr. Ward would go far and probably go fast. 

Mr. Ward was well known in Oxford, and his language might have warnedthe Heads that if there was a drift towards Rome, it came from somethingmuch more serious than a hankering after a sentimental ritual ormediaeval legends. In Mr. Ward's writings in the _British Critic_, as inhis conversation--and he wrote much and at great length--three ideaswere manifestly at the bottom of his attraction to Rome. One was thatRome did, and, he believed, nothing else did, keep up the continuousrecognition of the supernatural element in religion, that consciousnessof an ever-present power not of this world which is so prominent afeature in the New Testament, and which is spoken of there as apermanent and characteristic element in the Gospel dispensation. TheRoman view of the nature and offices of the Church, of man's relationsto the unseen world, of devotion, of the Eucharist and of the Sacramentsin general, assumed and put forward this supernatural aspect; othersystems ignored it or made it mean nothing, unless in secret to theindividual and converted soul. In the next place he revolted--no weakerword can be used--from the popular exhibition in England, more or lessLutheran and Calvinistic, of the doctrine of justification. Theostentatious separation of justification from morality, with all itstheological refinements and fictions, seemed to him profoundlyunscriptural, profoundly unreal and hollow, or else profoundly immoral. In conscience and moral honesty and strict obedience he saw the onlysafe and trustworthy guidance in regard to the choice and formation ofreligious opinions; it was a principle on which all his philosophy wasbuilt, that "careful and individual moral discipline is the onlypossible basis on which Christian faith and practice can be reared. " Inthe third place he was greatly affected, not merely by the paramountplace of sanctity in the Roman theology and the professed Roman system, but by the standard of saintliness which he found there, involvingcomplete and heroic self-sacrifice for great religious ends, completeabandonment of the world, painful and continuous self-discipline, purified and exalted religious affections, beside which English pietyand goodness at its best, in such examples as George Herbert and Ken andBishop Wilson, seemed unambitious and pale and tame, of a differentorder from the Roman, and less closely resembling what we read of in thefirst ages and in the New Testament. Whether such views were right orwrong, exaggerated or unbalanced, accurate or superficial, they werematters fit to interest grave men; but there is no reason to think thatthey made the slightest impression on the authorities of the University. 

On the other hand, Mr. Ward, with the greatest good-humour, wasunreservedly defiant and aggressive. There was something intolerablyprovoking in his mixture of jauntiness and seriousness, his avowal ofutter personal unworthiness and his undoubting certainty of being in theright, his downright charges of heresy and his ungrudging readiness tomake allowance for the heretics and give them credit for special virtuesgreater than those of the orthodox. He was not a person to hide his ownviews or to let others hide theirs. He lived in an atmosphere ofdiscussion with all around him, friends or opponents, fellows and tutorsin common-rooms, undergraduates after lecture or out walking. The mostamusing, the most tolerant man in Oxford, he had round him perpetuallysome of the cleverest and brightest scholars and thinkers of the place;and where he was, there was debate, cross-questioning, pushinginferences, starting alarming problems, beating out ideas, trying thestuff and mettle of mental capacity. Not always with real knowledge, ora real sense of fact, but always rapid and impetuous, taking in thewhole dialectical chess-board at a glance, he gave no quarter, and a manfound himself in a perilous corner before he perceived the drift of thegame; but it was to clear his own thought, not--for he was much toogood-natured--to embarrass another. If the old scholastic disputationshad been still in use at Oxford, his triumphs would have been signal andmemorable. His success, compared with that of other leaders of themovement, in influencing life and judgment, was a pre-eminentlyintellectual success; and it cut two ways. The stress which he laid onthe moral side of questions, his own generosity, his earnestness onbehalf of fair play and good faith, elevated and purified intercourse. But he did not always win assent in proportion to his power of argument. Abstract reasoning, in matters with which human action is concerned, maybe too absolute to be convincing. It may not leave sufficient margin forthe play and interference of actual experience. And Mr. Ward, havingperfect confidence in his conclusions, rather liked to leave them in astartling form, which he innocently declared to be manifest andinevitable. And so stories of Ward's audacity and paradoxes flew allover Oxford, shocking and perplexing grave heads with fear of they knewnot what. Dr. Jenkyns, the Master of Balliol, one of those curiousmixtures of pompous absurdity with genuine shrewdness which used to passacross the University stage, not clever himself but an unfailing judgeof a clever man, as a jockey might be of a horse, liking Ward and proudof him for his cleverness, was aghast at his monstrous andunintelligible language, and driven half wild with it. Mr. Tait, afellow-tutor, though living on terms of hearty friendship with Ward, prevailed on the Master after No. 90 to dismiss Ward from the office ofteaching mathematics. It seemed a petty step thus to mix up theologywith mathematics, though it was not so absurd as it looked, for Wardbrought in theology everywhere, and discussed it when his mathematicswere done. But Ward accepted it frankly and defended it. It was natural, he said, that Tait, thinking his principles mischievous, should wish tosilence him as a teacher; and their friendship remained unbroken. 

Mr. Ward's theological position was really a provisional one, though, atstarting at least, he would not have allowed it. He had no early ortraditional attachment to the English Church, such as that which actedso strongly on the leaders of the movement: but he found himself amember of it, and Mr. Newman had interpreted it to him. He so acceptedit, quite loyally and in earnest, as a point of departure. But heproceeded at once to put "our Church" (as he called it) on its trial, incomparison with its own professions, and with the ideal standard of aChurch which he had thought out for himself; and this rapidly led tograve consequences. He accepted from authority which satisfied him bothintellectually and morally the main scheme of Catholic theology, as thedeepest and truest philosophy of religion, satisfying at once conscienceand intellect. The Catholic theology gave him, among other things, theidea and the notes of the Church; with these, in part at least, theEnglish Church agreed; but in other respects, and these very seriousones, it differed widely; it seemed inconsistent and anomalous. TheEnglish Church was separate and isolated from Christendom. It wassupposed to differ widely from other Churches in doctrine. It admittedvariety of opinion and teaching, even to the point of tolerating allegedheresy. With such data as these, he entered on an investigation whichultimately came to the question whether the English Church could claimto be a part of the Church Catholic. He postulated from the first, whathe afterwards developed in the book in which his Anglican positionculminated, --the famous _Ideal_, --the existence at some time or anotherof a Catholic Church which not only aimed at, but fulfilled all theconditions of a perfect Church in creed, communion, discipline, andlife. Of course the English and, as at starting he held, the RomanChurch, fell far short of this perfection. But at starting, the moralwhich he drew was, not to leave the English Church, but to do his bestto raise it up to what it ought to be. Whether he took in all theconditions of the problem, whether it was not far more complicated anddifficult than he supposed, whether his knowledge of the facts of thecase was accurate and adequate, whether he was always fair in hiscomparisons and judgments, and whether he did not overlook elements ofthe gravest importance in the inquiry; whether, in fact, save forcertain strong and broad lines common to the whole historic Church, thereign of anomaly, inconsistency, difficulty did not extend much fartherover the whole field of debate than he chose to admit: all this isfairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, andwithin which he confined his reasonings, he used his materials withskill and force; and even those who least agreed with him and were mostsensible of the strong and hardly disguised bias which so greatlyaffected the value of his judgments, could not deny the frankness andthe desire to be fair and candid, with which, as far as intention went, he conducted his argument. His first appearance as a writer was in thecontroversy, as has been said before, on the subject of No. 90. Thattract had made the well-worn distinction between what was Catholic andwhat was distinctively Roman, and had urged--what had been urged overand over again by English divines--that the Articles, in theircondemnation of what was Roman, were drawn in such a way as to leaveuntouched what was unquestionably Catholic. They were drawn indeed byProtestants, but by men who also earnestly professed to hold with theold Catholic doctors and disavowed any purpose to depart from theirteaching, and who further had to meet the views and gain the assent ofmen who were much less Protestant than themselves--men who were willingto break with the Pope and condemn the abuses associated with his name, but by no means willing to break with the old theology. The Articleswere the natural result of a compromise between two strong parties--theCatholics agreeing that the abuses should be condemned, so that theCatholic doctrine was not touched; the Protestants insisting that, sothat the Catholic doctrine was not touched, the abuses of it should bedenounced with great severity: that there should be no question aboutthe condemnation of the abuses, and of the system which had maintainedthem. The Articles were undoubtedly anti-Roman; that was obvious fromthe historical position of the English Church, which in a very realsense was anti-Roman; but were they so anti-Roman as to excludedoctrines which English divines had over and over again maintained asCatholic and distinguished from Romanism, but which the popular opinion, at this time or that, identified therewith?[108] With flagrantignorance--ignorance of the history of thought and teaching in theEnglish Church, ignorance far more inexcusable of the state of partiesand their several notorious difficulties in relation to the variousformularies of the Church, it was maintained on the other side that the"Articles construed by themselves" left no doubt that they were not onlyanti-Roman but anti-Catholic, and that nothing but the grossestdishonesty and immorality could allow any doubt on the subject. 

Neither estimate was logical enough to satisfy Mr. Ward. The charge ofinsincerity, he retorted with great effect on those who made it: ifwords meant anything, the Ordination Service, the Visitation Service, and the Baptismal Service were far greater difficulties to Evangelicals, and to Latitudinarians like Whately and Hampden, than the words of anyArticle could be to Catholics; and there was besides the tone of thewhole Prayer Book, intelligible, congenial, on Catholic assumptions, andon no other. But as to the Articles themselves, he was indisposed toaccept the defence made for them. He criticised indeed with acutenessand severity the attempt to make the loose language of many of themintolerant of primitive doctrine; but he frankly accepted the allegationthat apart from this or that explanation, their general look, as regardslater controversies, was visibly against, not only Roman doctrines orRoman abuses, but that whole system of principles and mode of viewingreligion which he called Catholic. They were, he said, _patient_ of aCatholic meaning, but _ambitious_ of a Protestant meaning; whatevertheir logic was, their rhetoric was Protestant. It was just possible, but not more, for a Catholic to subscribe to them. But they were thecreation and the legacy of a bad age, and though they had notextinguished Catholic teaching and Catholic belief in the EnglishChurch, they had been a serious hindrance to it, and a support to itsopponents. 

This was going beyond the position of No. 90. No. 90 had made light ofthe difficulties of the Articles. 

That there are real difficulties to a Catholic Christian in theecclesiastical position of our Church at this day, no one can deny; butthe statements of the Articles are not in the number. Our present scopeis merely to show that, while our Prayer Book is acknowledged on allhands to be of Catholic origin, our Articles also--the offspring of anuncatholic age--are, through God's good providence, to say the least, not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by those who aim at being Catholicin heart and doctrine. 

Mr. Ward not only went beyond this position, but in the teeth of thesestatements; and he gave a new aspect and new issues to the wholecontroversy. The Articles, to him, were a difficulty, which they werenot to the writer of No. 90, or to Dr. Pusey, or to Mr. Keble. To himthey were not only the "offspring of an uncatholic age, " but inthemselves uncatholic; and his answer to the charge of dishonestsubscription was, not that the Articles "in their natural meaning areCatholic, "[109] but that the system of the English Church is acompromise between what is Catholic and what is Protestant, and thatthe Protestant parties in it are involved in even greater difficulties, in relation to subscription and use of its formularies, than theCatholic. He admitted that he _did_ evade the spirit, but accepted the"statements of the Articles, " maintaining that this was the intention oftheir original sanctioners. With characteristic boldness, inventing aphrase which has become famous, he wrote: "Our twelfth Article is asplain as words can make it on the Evangelical side; of course I thinkits natural meaning may be explained away, for I subscribe it myself ina non-natural sense":[110] but he showed that Evangelicals, high churchAnglicans, and Latitudinarians were equally obliged to have recourse toexplanations, which to all but themselves were unsatisfactory. 

But he went a step beyond this. Hitherto the distinction had beenuniformly insisted upon between what was Catholic and what was Roman;between what was witnessed to by the primitive and the undivided Church, and what had been developed beyond that in the Schools, and by thedefinitions and decisions of Rome, and in the enormous mass of itspost-Reformation theology, at once so comprehensive, and so minute inapplication. This distinction was the foundation of what was, characteristically, Anglican theology, from Hooker downwards. Thisdistinction, at least for all important purposes, Mr. Ward graduallygave up. It was to a certain degree recognised in his early controversyabout No. 90; but it gradually grew fainter till at last it avowedlydisappeared. The Anglican writers had drawn their ideas and theirinspiration from the Fathers; the Fathers lived long ago, and theteaching drawn from them, however spiritual and lofty, wanted the modernlook, and seemed to recognise insufficiently modern needs. The Romanapplications of the same principles were definite and practical, and Mr. Ward's mind, essentially one of his own century, and little alive towhat touched more imaginative and sensitive minds, turned at once toRoman sources for the interpretation of what was Catholic. In the_British Critic_, and still more in the remarkable volume in which hisOxford controversies culminated, the substitution of _Roman_ for the oldconception of _Catholic_ appears, and the absolute identification ofRoman with Catholic. Roman authorities become more and more the measureand rule of what is Catholic. They belong to the present in a way inwhich the older fountains of teaching do not; in the recognised teachingof the Latin Church, they have taken their place and superseded them. 

It was characteristic of Mr. Ward that his chief quarrel with theArticles was not about the Sacraments, not about their language onalleged Roman errors, but about the doctrine of grace, the relation ofthe soul of man to the law, the forgiveness, the holiness of God, --thedoctrine, that is, in all its bearings, of justification. Mr. Newman hadexamined this doctrine and the various language held about it with greatcare, very firmly but very temperately, and had attempted to reconcilewith each other all but the extreme Lutheran statements. It was, hesaid, among really religious men, a question of words. He had recognisedthe faulty state of things in the pre-Reformation Church, the faultyideas about forgiveness, merit, grace, and works, from which theProtestant language was a reaction, natural, if often excessive; and inthe English authoritative form of this language, he had found nothingbut what was perfectly capable of a sound and true meaning. From thefirst, Mr. Ward's judgment was far more severe than this. To him, thewhole structure of the Articles on Justification and the doctrinesconnected with it seemed based on the Lutheran theory, and for thistheory, as fundamentally and hopelessly immoral, he could not find wordssufficiently expressive of detestation and loathing. For the basis ofhis own theory of religious knowledge was a moral basis; men came to theknowledge of religious truth primarily not by the intellect, but byabsolute and unfailing loyalty to conscience and moral light; and adoctrine which separated faith from morality and holiness, which mademan's highest good and his acceptance with God independent of what hewas as a moral agent, which relegated the realities of moral disciplineand goodness to a secondary and subordinate place, --as a mere sequel tofollow, almost mechanically and of course, on an act or feeling whichhad nothing moral in it, --which substituted a fictitious and imputedrighteousness for an inherent and infused and real one, seemed to himto confound the eternal foundations of right and wrong, and to be ablasphemy against all that was true and sacred in religion. 

Of the Lutheran doctrine[111] of justification, and the principle ofprivate judgment, I have argued that, in their abstract nature andnecessary tendency, they sink below atheism itself. .. . A religiousperson who shall be sufficiently clear-headed to understand the meaningof words, is warranted in rejecting Lutheranism on the very same groundswhich would induce him to reject atheism, viz. As being thecontradiction of truths which he feels on most certain grounds to befirst principles. [112]

There is nothing which he looks back on with so much satisfaction in hiswritings as on this, that he has "ventured to characterise that hatefuland fearful type of Antichrist in terms not wholly inadequate to itsprodigious demerits. "[113]

Mr. Ward had started with a very definite idea of the Church and of itsnotes and tests. It was obvious that the Anglican Church--and so, it wasthought, the Roman--failed to satisfy these notes in theircompleteness; but it seemed, at least at first, to satisfy some of them, and to do this so remarkably, and in such strong contrast to otherreligious bodies, that in England at all events it seemed the truerepresentative and branch of the Church Catholic; and the duty ofadhering to it and serving it was fully recognised, even by those whomost felt its apparent departure from the more Catholic principles andtemper preserved in many points by the Roman Church. From this point ofview Mr. Ward avowedly began. But the position gradually gave way beforehis relentless and dissolving logic. The whole course of his writing inthe _British Critic_ may be said to have consisted in a prolonged anddisparaging comparison of the English Church, in theory, in doctrine, inmoral and devotional temper, in discipline of character, in education, in its public and authoritative tone in regard to social, political, andmoral questions, and in the type and standard of its clergy, with thoseof the Catholic Church, which to him was represented by the mediaevaland later Roman Church. And in the general result, and in all importantmatters, the comparison became more and more fatally disadvantageous tothe English Church. In the perplexing condition of Christendom, it hadjust enough good and promise to justify those who had been brought up init remaining where they were, as long as they saw any prospect ofimproving it, and till they were driven out. That was aduty--uncomfortable and thankless as it was, and open to any amount ofmisconstruction and misrepresentation--which they owed to theirbrethren, and to the Lord of the Church. But it involved plain speakingand its consequences; and Mr. Ward never shrank from either. 

Most people, looking back, would probably agree, whatever their generaljudgment on these matters, and whatever they may think of Mr. Ward'scase, that he was, at the time at least, the most unpersuasive ofwriters. Considering his great acuteness, and the frequent originalityof his remarks--considering, further, his moral earnestness, and theplace which the moral aspects of things occupy in his thoughts, this isremarkable; but so it is. In the first place, in dealing with theseeventful questions, which came home with such awful force to thousandsof awakened minds and consciences, full of hope and full of fear, therewas an entire and ostentatious want of sympathy with all that wascharacteristically English in matters of religion. This arose partlyfrom his deep dislike to habits, very marked in Englishmen, but notpeculiar to them, of self-satisfaction and national self-glorification;but it drove him into a welcoming of opposite foreign ways, of which hereally knew little, except superficially. Next, his boundless confidencein the accuracy of his logical processes led him to habits of extremeand absolute statement, which to those who did not agree with him, andalso to some who did, bore on their face the character ofover-statement, exaggeration, extravagance, not redeemed by anoccasional and somewhat ostentatious candour, often at the expense ofhis own side and in favour of opponents to whom he could afford to befrank. And further, while to the English Church he was merciless in thesearching severity of his judgment, he seemed to be blind to the wholecondition of things to which she, as well as her rival, had for the lastthree centuries been subjected, and in which she had played a part atleast as important for Christian faith as that sustained by any portionof Christendom; blind to all her special and characteristic excellences, where these did not fit the pattern of the continental types (obviously, in countless instances, matters of national and local character andhabits); blind to the enormous difficulties in which the political gameof her Roman opponents had placed her; blind to the fact that, judgedwith the same adverse bias and prepossessions, the same unsparingrigour, the same refusal to give real weight to what was good, on theground that it was mixed with something lower, the Roman Church wouldshow just as much deflection from the ideal as the English. Indeed, hewould have done a great service--people would have been far moredisposed to attend to his really interesting, and, to English readers, novel, proofs of the moral and devotional character of the Roman populardiscipline, if he had not been so unfair on the English: if he had notignored the plain fact that just such a picture as he gave of theEnglish Church, as failing in required notes, might be found of theRoman before the Reformation, say in the writings of Gerson, and in ourown days in those of Rosmini. Mr. Ward, if any one, appealed to fairjudgment; and to this fair judgment he presented allegations on the faceof them violent and monstrous. The English Church, according to him, wasin the anomalous position of being "gifted with the power of dispensingsacramental grace, "[114] and yet, at the same time, "_wholly destitute_of external notes, and _wholly indefensible_ as to her position, byexternal, historical, ecclesiastical arguments": and he for his partdeclares, correcting Mr. Newman, who speaks of "outward notes as partlygone and partly going, " that he is "_wholly unable_ to discern theoutward notes of which Mr. Newman speaks, during any part of the lastthree hundred years. " He might as well have said at once that she didnot exist, if the outward aspects of a Church--orders, creeds, sacraments, and, in some degree at any rate, preaching and witnessingfor righteousness--are not some of the "outward notes" of a Church. "Should the pure light of the Gospel be ever restored to _thisbenighted land_, "[115] he writes, at the beginning, as the last extractwas written at the end, of his controversial career at Oxford. Is notsuch writing as if he wished to emulate in a reverse sense the folly andfalsehood of those who spoke of English Protestants having a monopolyof the Gospel? He was unpersuasive, he irritated and repelled, in spiteof his wish to be fair and candid, in spite of having so much to teach, in spite of such vigour of statement and argument, because on the faceof all his writings he was so extravagantly one-sided, so incapable ofan equitable view, so much a slave to the unreality of extremes. 

FOOTNOTES:

[107] Cf. T. Mozley, _Reminiscences_, vol. Ii. P. 5. 

[108] In dealing with the Articles either as a test or as a text-book, this question was manifestly both an honest and a reasonable one. As atest, and therefore penal, they must be construed strictly; likejudicial decisions, they only ruled as much as was necessary, and in thewide field of theology confined themselves to the points at issue at themoment. And as a text-book for instruction, it was obvious that while onsome points they were precise and clear, on others they were vague andimperfect. The first five Articles left no room for doubt. When thecompilers came to the controversies of their day, for all their stronglanguage, they left all kinds of questions unanswered. For instance, they actually left unnoticed the primacy, and much more theinfallibility of the Pope. They condemned the "sacrifices ofMasses"--did they condemn the ancient and universal doctrine of aEucharistic sacrifice? They condemned the Romish doctrine of Purgatory, with its popular tenet of material fire--did that exclude every doctrineof purgation after death? They condemned Transubstantiation--did theycondemn the Real Presence? They condemned a great popular system--didthey condemn that of which it was a corruption and travesty? Thesequestions could not be foreclosed, unless on the assumption that therewas no doctrine on such points which could be called Catholic _exceptthe Roman_. The inquiry was not new; and divines so stoutly anti-Romanas Dr. Hook and Mr. W. Palmer of Worcester had answered it substantiallyin the same sense as Mr. Newman in No. 90. 

[109] W. G. Ward, _The Ideal of a Christian Church_, p. 478. 

[110] _The Ideal, etc. _, p. 479. 

[111] It is curious, and characteristic of the unhistorical quality ofMr. Ward's mind, that his whole hostility should have been concentratedon Luther and Lutheranism--on Luther, the enthusiastic, declamatory, unsystematic denouncer of practical abuses, with his strong attachmentsto portions of orthodoxy, rather than on Calvin, with his cold love ofpower, and the iron consistency and strength of his logicalanti-Catholic system, which has really lived and moulded Protestantism, while Lutheranism as a religion has passed into countless differentforms. Luther was to Calvin as Carlyle to J. S. Mill or Herbert Spencer;he defied system. But Luther had burst into outrageous paradoxes, whichfastened on Mr. Ward's imagination. --Yet outrageous language is notalways the most dangerous. Nobody would really find a provocation tosin, or an excuse for it, in Luther's _Pecca fortiter_ any more than inEscobar's ridiculous casuistry. There may be much more mischief in thedelicate unrealities of a fashionable preacher, or in many a smoothsentimental treatise on the religious affections. 

[112] _The Ideal, etc. _, pp. 587, 305. 

[113] Ibid. P. 305. 

[114] _Ideal, _ p 286. 

[115] _British Critic_ October 1841, p. 340. 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH

No. 90, with the explanations of it given by Mr. Newman and the otherleaders of the movement, might have raised an important and not veryeasy question, but one in no way different from the general character ofthe matters in debate in the theological controversy of the time. ButNo. 90, with the comments on it of Mr. Ward, was quite another matter, and finally broke up the party of the movement. It was one thing to showhow much there is in common between England and Rome, and quite anotherto argue that there is no difference. Mr. Ward's refusal to allow areasonable and a Catholic interpretation to the doctrine of the Articleson Justification, though such an understanding of it had not only beenmaintained by Bishop Bull and the later orthodox divines, but wasimpressed on all the popular books of devotion, such as the _Whole Dutyof Man_ and Bishop Wilson's _Sacra Privata_; and along with this, theextreme claim to hold compatible with the Articles the "whole cycle ofRoman doctrine, " introduced entirely new conditions into the wholequestion. _Non hoec in foedera_ was the natural reflection of numbers ofthose who most sympathised with the Tractarian school. The EnglishChurch might have many shortcomings and want many improvements; butafter all she had something to say for herself in her quarrel with Rome;and the witness of experience for fifteen hundred years must be notmerely qualified and corrected, but absolutely wiped out, if theallegation were to be accepted that Rome was blameless in all thatquarrel, and had no part in bringing about the confusions ofChristendom. And this contention was more and more enforced in Mr. Ward's articles in the _British Critic_--enforced, more effectively thanby direct statement, by continual and passing assumption andimplication. They were papers of considerable power and acuteness, andof great earnestness in their constant appeal to the moral criteria oftruth; though Mr. Ward was not then at his best as a writer, and theywere in composition heavy, diffuse, monotonous, and wearisome. But theattitude of deep depreciation, steady, systematic, unrelieved, in regardto that which ought, if acknowledged at all, to deserve the highestreverence among all things on earth, in regard to an institution which, with whatever faults, he himself in words still recognised as the Churchof God, was an indefensible and an unwholesome paradox. The analogy is acommonly accepted one between the Church and the family. How could anyhousehold go on in which there was at work an _animus_ of unceasing andrelentless, though possibly too just criticism, on its characteristicand perhaps serious faults; and of comparisons, also possibly most just, with the better ways of other families? It might be the honest desire ofreform and improvement; but charity, patience, equitableness, arevirtues of men in society, as well as strict justice and the desire ofimprovement. In the case of the family, such action could only lead todaily misery and the wasting and dying out of home affections. In thecase of a Church, it must come to the sundering of ties which ought nolonger to bind. Mr. Ward all along insisted that there was no necessityfor looking forward to such an event. He wished to raise, purify, reformthe Church in which Providence had placed him; utterly dissatisfied ashe was with it, intellectually and morally, convinced more and more thatit was wrong, dismally, fearfully wrong, it was his duty, he thought, toabide in it without looking to consequences; but it was also his duty toshake the faith of any one he could in its present claims and working, and to hold up an incomparably purer model of truth and holiness. Thathis purpose was what he considered real reform, there is no reason todoubt, though he chose to shut his eyes to what must come of it. Theposition was an unnatural one, but he had great faith in his ownwell-fenced logical creations, and defied the objections of a homeliercommon sense. He was not content to wait in silence the slow and sadchanges of old convictions, the painful decay and disappearance oflong-cherished ties. His mind was too active, restless, unreserved. Tothe last he persisted in forcing on the world, professedly to influenceit, really to defy it, the most violent assertions which he couldformulate of the most paradoxical claims on friends and opponents whichhad ever been made. 

Mr. Ward's influence was felt also in another way; though here it is noteasy to measure the degree of its force. He was in the habit ofappealing to Mr. Newman to pronounce on the soundness of his principlesand inferences, with the view of getting Mr. Newman's sanction for themagainst more timid or more dissatisfied friends; and he would come downwith great glee on objectors to some new and startling position, withthe reply, "Newman says so, " Every one knows from the _Apologia_ whatwas Mr. Newman's state of mind after 1841--a state of perplexity, distress, anxiety; he was moving undoubtedly in one direction, butmoving slowly, painfully, reluctantly, intermittently, with viewssometimes clear, sometimes clouded, of that terribly complicatedproblem, the answer to which was full of such consequences to himselfand to others. No one ever felt more keenly that it was no mere affairof dexterous or brilliant logic; if logic could have settled it, thequestion would never have arisen. But in this fevered state, with mind, soul, heart all torn and distracted by the tremendous responsibilitiespressing on him, wishing above everything to be quiet, to be silent, atleast not to speak except at his own times and when he saw theoccasion, he had, besides bearing his own difficulties, to returnoff-hand and at the moment some response to questions which he had notframed, which he did not care for, on which he felt no call topronounce, which he was not perhaps yet ready to face, and to answerwhich he must commit himself irrevocably and publicly to more than hewas prepared for. Every one is familiar with the proverbial distributionof parts in the asking and the answering of questions; but when theasker is no fool, but one of the sharpest-witted of mankind, asking withlittle consideration for the condition or the wishes of the answerer, with great power to force the answer he wants, and with no greattenderness in the use he makes of it, the situation becomes a tryingone. Mr. Ward was continually forcing on Mr. Newman so-calledirresistible inferences; "If you say so and so, surely you must also saysomething more?" Avowedly ignorant of facts and depending for them onothers, he was only concerned with logical consistency. And accordinglyMr. Newman, with whom producible logical consistency was indeed a greatthing, but with whom it was very far from being everything, hadcontinually to accept conclusions which he would rather have kept inabeyance, to make admissions which were used without theirqualifications, to push on and sanction extreme ideas which he himselfshrank from because they were extreme. But it was all over with hiscommand of time, his liberty to make up his mind slowly on the greatdecision. He had to go at Mr. Ward's pace, and not his own. He had totake Mr. Ward's questions, not when he wanted to have them and at hisown time, but at Mr. Ward's. No one can tell how much this state ofthings affected the working of Mr. Newman's mind in that pause ofhesitation before the final step; how far it accelerated the view whichhe ultimately took of his position. No one can tell, for many otherinfluences were mixed up with this one. But there is no doubt that Mr. Newman felt the annoyance and the unfairness of this perpetualquestioning for the benefit of Mr. Ward's theories, and there can belittle doubt that, in effect, it drove him onwards and cut short histime of waiting. Engineers tell us that, in the case of a ship rollingin a sea-way, when the periodic times of the ship's roll coincide withthose of the undulations of the waves, a condition of things ariseshighly dangerous to the ship's stability. So the agitations of Mr. Newman's mind were reinforced by the impulses of Mr. Ward's. [116]

But the great question between England and Rome was not the only matterwhich engaged Mr. Ward's active mind. In the course of his articles inthe _British Critic_ he endeavoured to develop in large outlines aphilosophy of religious belief. Restless on all matters without atheory, he felt the need of a theory of the true method of reaching, verifying, and judging of religious truth; it seemed to him necessaryespecially to a popular religion, such as Christianity claimed to be;and it was not the least of the points on which he congratulated himselfthat he had worked out a view which extended greatly the province andoffice of conscience, and of fidelity to it, and greatly narrowed theprovince and office of the mere intellect in the case of the great massof mankind. The Oxford writers had all along laid stress on theparamount necessity of the single eye and disciplined heart in acceptingor judging religion; moral subjects could be only appreciated by moralexperience; purity, reverence, humility were as essential in suchquestions as zeal, industry, truthfulness, honesty; religious truth is agift as well as a conquest; and they dwelt on the great maxims of theNew Testament: "To him that hath shall be given"; "If any man will dothe will of the Father, he shall know of the doctrine. " But though Mr. Newman especially had thrown out deep and illuminating thoughts on thisdifficult question, it had not been treated systematically; and thistreatment Mr. Ward attempted to give to it. It was a striking andpowerful effort, full of keen insight into human experience and acuteobservations on its real laws and conditions; but on the face of it, itwas laboured and strained; it chose its own ground, and passed unnoticedneighbouring regions under different conditions; it left undealt withthe infinite variety of circumstances, history, capacities, naturaltemperament, and those unexplored depths of will and character, affecting choice and judgment, the realities of which have been broughthome to us by our later ethical literature. Up to a certain point histask was easy. It is easy to say that a bad life, a rebellious temper, aselfish spirit are hopeless disqualifications for judging spiritualthings; that we must take something for granted in learning any truthswhatever; that men must act as moral creatures to attain insight intomoral truths, to realise and grasp them as things, and not abstractionsand words. But then came the questions--What is that moral training, which, in the case of the good heart, will be practically infallible inleading into truth? And what is that type of character, of saintliness, which gives authority which we cannot do wrong in following; where, ifquestion and controversy arise, is the common measure binding on bothsides; and can even the saints, with their immense variations andapparent mixtures and failings, furnish that type? And next, where, inthe investigations which may be endlessly diversified, does intellectproperly come in and give its help? For come in somewhere, of course itmust; and the conspicuous dominance of the intellectual element in Mr. Ward's treatment of the subject is palpable on the face of it. Hisattempt is to make out a theory of the reasonableness of unproducible;because unanalysed, reasons; reasons which, though the individual cannotstate them, may be as real and as legitimately active as the obscurerays of the spectrum. But though the discussion in Mr. Ward's hands wassuggestive of much, though he might expose the superciliousness ofWhately or the shallowness of Mr. Goode, and show himself no unequalantagonist to Mr. J. S. Mill, it left great difficulties unanswered, andit had too much the appearance of being directed to a particular end, that of guarding the Catholic view of a popular religion from formidableobjections. 

The moral side of religion had been from the first a prominent subjectin the teaching of the movement Its protests had been earnest andconstant against intellectual self-sufficiency, and the notion that mereshrewdness and cleverness were competent judges of Christian truth, orthat soundness of judgment in religious matters was compatible witharrogance or an imperfect moral standard; and it revolted against theconventional and inconsistent severity of Puritanism, which was shockedat dancing but indulged freely in good dinners, and was ostentatious inusing the phrases of spiritual life and in marking a separation from theworld, while it surrounded itself with all the luxuries of moderninventiveness. But this moral teaching was confined to the statement ofprinciples, and it was carried out in actual life with the utmostdislike of display and with a shrinking from strong professions. Themotto of Froude's _Remains_, which embodied his characteristic temper, was an expression of the feeling of the school:

 Se sub serenis vultibus Austera virtus occulit: Timet videri, ne suum, Dum prodit, amittat decus, [117]

The heroic strictness and self-denial of the early Church were theobjects of admiration, as what ought to be the standard of Christians;but people did not yet like to talk much about attempts to copy them. Such a book as the _Church of the Fathers_ brought out with great forceand great sympathy the ascetic temper and the value put on celibacy inthe early days, and it made a deep impression; but nothing was yetformulated as characteristic and accepted doctrine. 

It was not unnatural that this should change. The principles exemplifiedin the high Christian lives of antiquity became concrete in definiterules and doctrines, and these rules and doctrines were most readilyfound in the forms in which the Roman schools and teachers had embodiedthem. The distinction between the secular life and the life of"religion, " with all its consequences, became an accepted one. Celibacycame to be regarded as an obvious part of the self-sacrifice of aclergyman's life, and the belief and the profession of it formed a test, understood if not avowed, by which the more advanced or resolute membersof the party were distinguished from the rest. This came home to men onthe threshold of life with a keener and closer touch than questionsabout doctrine. It was the subject of many a bitter, agonising strugglewhich no one knew anything of; it was with many the act of a supremeself-oblation. The idea of the single life may be a utilitarian one aswell as a religious one. It may be chosen with no thought ofrenunciation or self-denial, for the greater convenience and freedom ofthe student or the philosopher, the soldier or the man of affairs. Itmay also be chosen without any special feeling of a sacrifice by theclergyman, as most helpful for his work. But the idea of celibacy, inthose whom it affected at Oxford, was in the highest degree a religiousand romantic one. The hold which it had on the leader of the movementmade itself felt, though little was directly said. To shrink from it wasa mark of want of strength or intelligence, of an unmanly preference forEnglish home life, of insensibility to the generous devotion and purityof the saints. It cannot be doubted that at this period of the movementthe power of this idea over imagination and conscience was one of thestrongest forces in the direction of Rome. 

Of all these ideas Mr. Ward's articles in the _British Critic_ were thevigorous and unintermittent exposition. He spoke out, and withouthesitation. There was a perpetual contrast implied, when it was notforcibly insisted on, between all that had usually been esteemed highestin the moral temper of the English Church, always closely connected withhome life and much variety of character, and the loftier and bolder butnarrower standard of Roman piety. And Mr. Ward was seconded in the_British Critic_ by other writers, all fervid in the same cause, someable and eloquent. The most distinguished of his allies was Mr. Oakeley, Fellow of Balliol and minister of Margaret Chapel in London. Mr. Oakeleywas, perhaps, the first to realise the capacities of the Anglican ritualfor impressive devotional use, and his services, in spite of thedisadvantages of the time, and also of his chapel, are still rememberedby some as having realised for them, in a way never since surpassed, thesecrets and the consolations of the worship of the Church. Mr. Oakeley, without much learning, was master of a facile and elegant pen. He was aman who followed a trusted leader with chivalrous boldness, and was notafraid of strengthening his statements. Without Mr. Ward's force andoriginality, his articles were more attractive reading. His article on"Jewel" was more than anything else a landmark in the progress of Romanideas. [118]

From the time of Mr. Ward's connexion with the _British Critic_, itsanti-Anglican articles had given rise to complaints which did not becomeless loud as time went on. He was a troublesome contributor to hiseditor, Mr. T. Mozley, and he made the hair of many of his readersstand on end with his denunciations of things English and eulogies ofthings Roman. 

 My first troubles (writes Mr. Mozley) were with Oakeley and Ward. I will not say that I hesitated much as to the truth of what they wrote, for in that matter I was inclined to go very far, at least in the way of toleration. Yet it appeared to me quite impossible either that any great number of English Churchmen would ever go so far, or that the persons possessing authority in the Church would fail to protest, not to say more. .. . As to Ward I did but touch a filament or two in one of his monstrous cobwebs, and off he ran instantly to Newman to complain of my gratuitous impertinence. Many years after I was forcibly reminded of him by a pretty group of a little Cupid flying to his mother to show a wasp-sting he had just received. Newman was then in this difficulty. He did not disagree with what Ward had written; but, on the other hand, he had given neither me nor Ward to understand that he was likely to step in between us. In fact, he wished to be entirely clear of the editorship. This, however, was a thing that Ward could not or would not understand. [119]

The discontent of readers of the _British Critic_ was great. It wasexpressed in various ways, and was represented by a pamphlet of Mr. W. Palmer's of Worcester, in which he contrasted, with words of severecondemnation, the later writers in the Review with the teaching of theearlier _Tracts for the Times_, and denounced the "Romanising" tendencyshown in its articles. In the autumn of 1843 the Review came to an end. A field of work was thus cut off from Mr. Ward. Full of the interest ofthe ideas which possessed him, always equipped and cheerfully ready forthe argumentative encounter, and keenly relishing the _certaminisgaudia_, he at once seized the occasion of Mr. Palmer's pamphlet tostate what he considered his position, and to set himself right in theeyes of all fair and intelligent readers. He intended a long pamphlet. It gradually grew under his hands--he was not yet gifted with the powerof compression and arrangement--into a volume of 600 pages: the famous_Ideal of a Christian Church, considered in Comparison with ExistingPractice_, published in the summer of 1844. 

The _Ideal_ is a ponderous and unattractive volume, ill arranged andrambling, which its style and other circumstances have caused to bealmost forgotten. But there are interesting discussions in it which maystill repay perusal for their own sakes. The object of the book wastwofold. Starting with an "ideal" of what the Christian Church may beexpected to be in its various relations to men, it assumes that theRoman Church, and only the Roman Church, satisfies the conditions ofwhat a Church ought to be, and it argues in detail that the EnglishChurch, in spite of its professions, utterly and absolutely fails tofulfil them. It is _plaidoirie_ against everything English, on theground that it cannot be Catholic because it is not Roman. It was notconsistent, for while the writer alleged that "our Church totallyneglected her duties both as guardian of and witness to morality, and aswitness and teacher of orthodoxy, " yet he saw no difficulty inattributing the revival of Catholic truth to "the inherent vitality andpowers of our own Church. "[120] But this was not the sting andprovocation of the book. That lay in the developed claim, put forward byimplication in Mr. Ward's previous writings, and now repeated in thebroadest and most unqualified form, to hold his position in the EnglishChurch, avowing and teaching all Roman doctrine. 

 We find (he exclaims), oh, most joyful, most wonderful, most unexpected sight! we find the whole cycle of Roman doctrine gradually possessing numbers of English Churchmen. .. . Three years have passed since I said plainly that in subscribing the Articles I renounce no Roman doctrine; yet I retain my fellowship which I hold on the tenure of subscription, and have received no ecclesiastical censure in any shape. [121]

There was much to learn from the book; much that might bring home to themost loyal Churchman a sense of shortcomings, a burning desire forimprovement; much that might give every one a great deal to think about, on some of the deepest problems of the intellectual and religious life. But it could not be expected that such a challenge, in such sentences asthese, should remain unnoticed. 

The book came out in the Long Vacation, and it was not till theUniversity met in October that signs of storm began to appear. Butbefore it broke an incident occurred which inflamed men's tempers. Dr. Wynter's reign as Vice-Chancellor had come to a close, and the nextperson, according to the usual custom of succession, was Dr. Symons, Warden of Wadham. Dr. Symons had never concealed his strong hostility tothe movement, and he had been one of Dr. Pusey's judges. The prospect ofa partisan Vice-Chancellor, certainly very determined, and supposed notto be over-scrupulous, was alarming. The consent of Convocation to theChancellor's nomination of his substitute had always been given inwords, though no instance of its having been refused was known, at leastin recent times. But a great jealousy about the rights of Convocationhad been growing up under the late autocratic policy of the Heads, andthere was a disposition to assert, and even to stretch these rights, adisposition not confined to the party of the movement. It was proposedto challenge Dr. Symons's nomination. Great doubts were felt andexpressed about the wisdom of the proposal; but at length opposition wasresolved upon. The step was a warning to the Heads, who had beenprovoking enough; but there was not enough to warrant such a violentdeparture from usage, and it was the act of exasperation rather than ofwisdom. The blame for it must be shared between the few who fiercelyurged it, and the many who disapproved and acquiesced. On the day ofnomination, the scrutiny was allowed, _salvâ auctoritate Cancellarii_;but Dr. Symons's opponents were completely defeated by 883 to 183. Itcounted, not unreasonably, as a "Puseyite defeat. "

The attempt and its result made it certain that in the attack that wassure to come on Mr. Ward's book, he would meet with no mercy. As soon asterm began the Board of Heads of Houses took up the matter; they wereearnestly exhorted to it by a letter of Archbishop Whately's, which wasread at the Board. But they wanted no pressing, nor is it astonishingthat they could not understand the claim to hold the "whole cycle" ofRoman doctrine in the English Church. Mr. Ward's view was that he wasloyally doing the best he could for "our Church, " not only in showing upits heresies and faults, but in urging that the only remedy waswholesale submission to Rome. To the University authorities this wastaking advantage of his position in the Church to assail and if possibledestroy it. And to numbers of much more sober and moderate Churchmen, sympathisers with the general spirit of the movement, it was evidentthat Mr. Ward had long passed the point when tolerance could be fairlyasked, consistently with any respect for the English Church, for suchsweeping and paradoxical contradictions, by her own servants, of herclaims and title. Mr. Ward's manner also, which, while it was seriousenough in his writings, was easy and even jocular in social intercourse, left the impression, in reality a most unfair impression, that he wasplaying and amusing himself with these momentous questions. 

A Committee of the Board examined the book; a number of startlingpropositions were with ease picked out, some preliminary skirmishing asto matters of form took place, and in December 1844 the Board announcedthat they proposed to submit to Convocation without delay threemeasures:--(1) to condemn Mr. Ward's book; (2) to degrade Mr. Ward bydepriving him of all his University degrees; and (3) whereas theexisting Statutes gave the Vice-Chancellor power of calling on anymember of the University at any time to prove his orthodoxy bysubscribing the Articles, to add to this a declaration, to be henceforthmade by the subscriber, that he took them in the sense in which "theywere both first published and were now imposed by the University, " withthe penalty of expulsion against any one, lay or clerical, who thricerefused subscription with this declaration. 

As usual, the Board entirely mistook the temper of the University, andby their violence and want of judgment turned the best chance they everhad, of carrying the University with them, into what their blundersreally made an ignominious defeat. If they had contented themselves withthe condemnation, in almost any terms, of Mr. Ward's book, and even ofits author, the condemnation would have been overwhelming. A certainnumber of men would have still stood by Mr. Ward, either from friendshipor sympathy, or from independence of judgment, or from dislike of thepolicy of the Board; but they would have been greatly outnumbered. Thedegradation--the Board did not venture on the logical consequence, expulsion--was a poor and even ridiculous measure of punishment; toreduce Mr. Ward to an undergraduate _in statu pupillari_, and acommoner's short gown, was a thing to amuse rather than terrify. Thepersonal punishment seemed unworthy when they dared not go farther, while to many the condemnation of the book seemed penalty enough; andthe condemnation of the book by these voters was weakened by theirrefusal to carry it into personal disgrace and disadvantage. Still, ifthese two measures had stood by themselves, they could not have beenresisted, and the triumph of the Board would have been a signal one. Butthey could not rest. They must needs attempt to put upon subscription, just when its difficulties were beginning to be felt, not by one party, but by all, an interpretation which set the University and Church in aflame. The cry, almost the shriek, arose that it was a new test, and atest which took for granted what certainly needed proof, that the sensein which the Articles were first understood and published was exactlythe same as that in which the University now received and imposed them. It was in vain that explanations, assurances, protests, were proffered;no new test, it was said, was thought of--the Board would never think ofsuch a thing; it was only something to ensure good faith and honesty. But it was utterly useless to contend against the storm. A test it was, and a new test no one would have. It was clear that, if the thirdproposal was pushed, it would endanger the votes about Mr. Ward. Aftersome fruitless attempts at justification the Board had, in the courseof a month, to recognise that it had made a great mistake. Thecondemnation of Mr. Ward was to come on, on the 13th of February; and onthe 23d of January the Vice-Chancellor, in giving notice of it, announced that the third proposal was withdrawn. 

It might have been thought that this was lesson enough to leave wellalone. The Heads were sure of votes against Mr. Ward, more or lessnumerous; they were sure of a victory which would be a severe blow, notonly to Mr. Ward and his special followers, but to the Tractarian partywith which he had been so closely connected. But those bitter andintemperate spirits which had so long led them wrong were not to betaught prudence even by their last experience. The mischief makers wereat work, flitting about the official lodgings at Wadham and Oriel. Couldnot something be done, even at this late hour, to make up for the lossof the test? Could not something be done to disgrace a greater name thanMr. Ward's? Could not the opportunity which was coming of rousing thefeeling of the University against the disciple be turned to account todrag forth his supposed master from his retirement and impunity, andbrand the author of No. 90 with the public stigma--no longer this timeof a Hebdomadal censure, but of a University condemnation? Thetemptation was irresistible to a number of disappointedpartisans--kindly, generous, good-natured men in private life, butimplacable in their fierce fanaticism. In their impetuous vehemencethey would not even stop to think what would be said of the conditionsand circumstances under which they pressed their point. On the 23d ofJanuary the Vice-Chancellor had withdrawn the test. On the 25th ofJanuary--those curious in coincidences may observe that it was the dateof No. 90 in 1841--a circular was issued inviting signatures for arequisition to the Board, asking them to propose, in the approachingConvocation of the 13th of February, a formal censure of the principlesof No. 90. The invitation to sign was issued in the names of Dr. Faussett and Dr. Ellerton of Magdalen. It received between four and fivehundred signatures, as far as was known; but it was withheld by theVice-Chancellor from the inspection of those who officially had a rightto have it before them. On the 4th of February its prayer came beforethe Hebdomadal Board. The objection of haste--that not ten daysintervened between this new and momentous proposal and the day ofvoting--was brushed aside. The members of the Board were mad enough notto see, not merely the odiousness of the course, but the aggravatedodiousness of hurry. The proposal was voted by the majority, _sansphrase. _ And they ventured, amid all the excitement and irritation ofthe moment, to offer for the sanction of the University a decree framedin the words of their own censure. 

The interval before the Convocation was short, but it was long enoughfor decisive opinions on the proposal of the Board to be formed andexpressed. Leading men in London, Mr. Gladstone among them, were clearthat it was an occasion for the exercise of the joint veto with whichthe Proctors were invested. The veto was intended, if for anything, tosave the University from inconsiderate and hasty measures; and seldom, except in revolutionary times, had so momentous and so unexpected ameasure been urged on with such unseemly haste. The feeling of theyounger Liberals, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Donkin, Mr. Jowett, Dr. Greenhill, was in the same direction. On the 10th of February the Proctorsannounced to the Board their intention to veto the third proposal. Butof course the thing went forward. The Proctors were friends of Mr. Newman, and the Heads believed that this would counterbalance any effectfrom their act of authority. It is possible that the announcement mayhave been regarded as a mere menace, too audacious to be fulfilled. Onthe 13th of February, amid slush and snow, Convocation met in theTheatre. Mr. Ward asked leave to defend himself in English, and occupiedone of the rostra, usually devoted to the recital of prize poems andessays. He spoke with vigour and ability, dividing his speech, andresting in the interval between the two portions in the rostrum. [122]There was no other address, and the voting began. The first vote, thecondemnation of the book, was carried by 777 to 386. The second, by amore evenly balanced division, 569 to 511. When the Vice-Chancellor putthe third, the Proctors rose, and the senior Proctor, Mr. Guillemard ofTrinity, stopped it in the words, _Nobis procuratoribus non placet_. Such a step, of course, only suspended the vote, and the year of officeof these Proctors was nearly run. But they had expressed the feeling ofthose whom they represented. It was shown not only in a largely-signedaddress of thanks. All attempts to revive the decree at the expirationof their year of office failed. The wiser heads in the Hebdomadal Boardrecognised at last that they had better hold their hand. Mistakes menmay commit, and defeats they may undergo, and yet lose nothing thatconcerns their character for acting as men of a high standard ought toact. But in this case, mistakes and defeat were the least of what theBoard brought on themselves. This was the last act of a long anddeliberately pursued course of conduct; and if it was the last, it wasbecause it was the upshot and climax, and neither the University nor anyone else would endure that it should go on any longer. The proposedattack on Mr. Newman betrayed how helpless they were, and to what paltryacts of worrying it was, in their judgment, right and judicious tocondescend. It gave a measure of their statesmanship, wisdom, and goodfeeling in defending the interests of the Church; and it made a verydeep and lasting impression on all who were interested in the honour andwelfare of Oxford. Men must have blinded themselves to the plainesteffects of their own actions who could have laid themselves open to sucha description of their conduct as is contained in the following extractfrom a paper of the time--a passage of which the indignant and patheticundertone reflected the indignation and the sympathy of hundreds of menof widely differing opinions. 

 The vote is an answer to a cry--that cry is one of dishonesty, and this dishonesty the proposed resolution, as plainly as it dares to say anything, insinuates. On this part of the question, those who have ever been honoured by Mr. Newman's friendship must feel it dangerous to allow themselves thus to speak. And yet they must speak; for no one else can appreciate it as truly as they do. When they see the person whom they have been accustomed to revere as few men are revered, whose labours, whose greatness, whose tenderness, whose singleness and holiness of purpose, they have been permitted to know intimately--not allowed even the poor privilege of satisfying, by silence and retirement--by the relinquishment of preferment, position, and influence--the persevering hostility of persons whom they cannot help comparing with him--not permitted even to submit in peace to those irregular censures, to which he seems to have been even morbidly alive, but dragged forth to suffer an oblique and tardy condemnation; called again to account for matters now long ago accounted for; on which a judgment has been pronounced, which, whatever others may think of it, he at least has accepted as conclusive--when they contrast his merits, his submission, his treatment, which they see and know, with the merits, the bearing, the fortunes of those who are doggedly pursuing him, it does become very difficult to speak without sullying what it is a kind of pleasure to feel is _his_ cause by using hard words, or betraying it by not using them. It is too difficult to speak, as ought to be spoken, of this ungenerous and gratuitous afterthought--too difficult to keep clear of what, at least, will be _thought_ exaggeration; too difficult to do justice to what they feel to be undoubtedly true; and I will not attempt to say more than enough to mark an opinion which ought to be plainly avowed, as to the nature of this procedure. [123]

FOOTNOTES:

[116] A pencilled note indicates that this illustration was suggested byexperiments in naval engineering carried on at one time by Mr. W. Froude. Cf. T. Mozley, _Reminiscences_, vol. Ii. P. 17. 

[117] Hymn in Paris Breviary, _Commune Sanctarum Mulierum_. 

[118] _Reminiscences_, ii. 243, 244. Cf. _British Critic_, July 1841. 

[119] _Reminiscences, _ ii. 223. 

[120] _Ideal_, p. 566. 

[121] _Ibid. _ pp. 565-567. 

[122] It is part of the history of the time, that during those anxiousdays, Mr. Ward was engaged to be married. The engagement came to theknowledge of his friends, to their great astonishment and amusement, very soon after the events in the Theatre. 

[123] From a _Short Appeal to Members of Convocation on the proposedCensure on No. 90_. By Frederic Rogers, Fellow of Oriel. (DatedSaturday, 8th of February 1845. )

CHAPTER XIX

THE CATASTROPHE

The events of February were a great shock. The routine of Oxford hadbeen broken as it had never been broken by the fiercest strifes before. Condemnations had been before passed on opinions, and even on persons. But to see an eminent man, of blameless life, a fellow of one of thefirst among the Colleges, solemnly deprived of his degree and all thatthe degree carried with it, and that on a charge in which bad faith andtreachery were combined with alleged heresy, was a novel experience, where the kindnesses of daily companionship and social intercourse stillasserted themselves as paramount to official ideas of position. Andwhen, besides this, people realised what more had been attempted, and byhow narrow a chance a still heavier blow had been averted from onetowards whom so many hearts warmed, how narrowly a yoke had been escapedwhich would have seemed to subject all religious thought in theUniversity to the caprice or the blind zeal of a partisan official, thesense of relief was mixed with the still present memory of a desperateperil And then came the question as to what was to come next. That theold policy of the Board would be revived and pursued when the end of theProctors' year delivered it from their inconvenient presence, was soonunderstood to be out of the question. The very violence of the measuresattempted had its reaction, which stopped anything further. Theopponents of Tractarianism, Orthodox and Liberal, were for the momentgorged with their success. What men waited to see was the effect on theparty of the movement; how it would influence the advanced portion ofit; how it would influence the little company who had looked on insilence from their retirement at Littlemore. The more serious aspect ofrecent events was succeeded for the moment by a certain comic contrast, created by Mr. Ward's engagement to be married, which was announcedwithin a week of his degradation, and which gave the common-roomssomething to smile at after the strain and excitement of the scene inthe Theatre. But that passed, and the graver outlook of the situationoccupied men's thoughts. 

There was a widespread feeling of insecurity. Friends did not know offriends, how their minds were working, how they might go. Anxiousletters passed, the writers not daring to say too much, or reveal toomuch alarm. And yet there was still some hope that at least with thegreat leader matters were not desperate. To his own friends he gavewarning; he had already done so in a way to leave little to expect butat last to lose him; he spoke of resigning his fellowship in October, though he wished to defer this till the following June; but nothingfinal had been said publicly. Even at the last it was only anticipatedby some that he would retire into lay communion. But that silence wasawful and ominous. He showed no signs of being affected by what hadpassed in Oxford. He privately thanked the Proctors for saving him fromwhat would have distressed him; but he made no comments on the measuresthemselves. Still it could not but be a climax of everything as far asOxford was concerned. And he was a man who saw signs in such events. 

It was inevitable that the events of the end of 1844 and the beginningof 1845 should bring with them a great crisis in the development ofreligious opinion, in the relations of its different forms to oneanother, and further, in the thoughts of many minds as to their personalposition, their duty, and their prospects. There had been such a crisisin 1841 at the publication of No. 90. After the discussions whichfollowed that tract, Anglican theology could never be quite the samethat it had been before. It was made to feel the sense of some gravewants, which, however they might be supplied in the future, could nolonger be unnoticed or uncared for. And individuals, amid the strife oftongues, had felt, some strongly and practically, but a much largernumber dimly and reluctantly, the possibility, unwelcome to most, butnot without interest to others, of having to face the strange and atone time inconceivable task of revising the very foundations of theirreligion. And such a revision had since that time been going on more orless actively in many minds; in some cases with very decisive results. But after the explosion caused by Mr. Ward's book, a crisis of a muchmore grave and wide-reaching sort had arrived. To ordinary lookers-on itnaturally seemed that a shattering and decisive blow had been struck atthe Tractarian party and their cause; struck, indeed, formally andofficially, only at its extravagances, but struck, none the less, virtually, at the premisses which led to these extravagances, and at theparty, which, while disapproving them, shrank, with whatevermotives, --policy, generosity, or secret sympathy, --from joining in thecondemnation of them. It was more than a defeat, it was a rout, in whichthey were driven and chased headlong from the field; a wreck in whichtheir boasts and hopes of the last few years met the fate which wise menhad always anticipated. Oxford repudiated them. Their theories, theircontroversial successes, their learned arguments, their appeals to theimagination, all seemed to go down, and to be swept away like chaff, before the breath of straightforward common sense and honesty. Henceforth there was a badge affixed to them and all who belonged tothem, a badge of suspicion and discredit, and even shame, which bade menbeware of them, an overthrow under which it seemed wonderful that theycould raise their heads or expect a hearing. It is true, that to thosewho looked below the surface, the overthrow might have seemed almost tooshowy and theatrical to be quite all that it was generally thought tobe. There had been too much passion, and too little looking forward tothe next steps, in the proceedings of the victors. There was too muchblindness to weak points of their own position, too much forgetfulnessof the wise generosity of cautious warfare. The victory was easy to win;the next moment it was quite obvious that they did not know what to dowith it, and were at their wits' end to understand what it meant. Andthe defeated party, though defeated signally and conspicuously in thesight of the Church and the country, had in it too large a proportion ofthe serious and able men of the University, with too clear and high apurpose, and too distinct a sense of the strength and reality of theirground, to be in as disadvantageous a condition as from a distance mightbe imagined. A closer view would have discovered how much sympathy therewas for their objects and for their main principles in many who greatlydisapproved of much in the recent course and tendency of the movement. It might have been seen how the unwise measures of the Heads hadawakened convictions among many who were not naturally on their side, that it was necessary both on the ground of justice and policy to arrestall extreme measures, and to give a breathing time to the minority. Confidence in their prospects as a party might have been impaired in theTractarians; but confidence in their principles; confidence that theyhad rightly interpreted the spirit, the claims, and the duties of theEnglish Church, confidence that devotion to its cause was the call ofGod, whatever might happen to their own fortunes, this confidence wasunshaken by the catastrophe of February. 

But that crisis had another important result, not much noticed then, butone which made itself abundantly evident in the times that followed. Thedecisive breach between the old parties in the Church, both Orthodox andEvangelical, and the new party of the movement, with the violent andapparently irretrievable discomfiture of the latter as the rising forcein Oxford, opened the way and cleared the ground for the formation andthe power of a third school of opinion, which was to be the mostformidable rival of the Tractarians, and whose leaders were eventuallyto succeed where the Tractarians had failed, in becoming the masters andthe reformers of the University. Liberalism had hitherto beenrepresented in Oxford in forms which though respectable fromintellectual vigour were unattractive, sometimes even repulsive. Theywere dry, cold, supercilious, critical; they wanted enthusiasm; theywere out of sympathy with religion and the religious temper and aims. They played, without knowing it, on the edge of the most dangerousquestions. The older Oxford Liberals were either intellectuallyaristocratic, dissecting the inaccuracies or showing up the paralogismsof the current orthodoxy, or they were poor in character, Liberals fromthe zest of sneering and mocking at what was received and established, or from the convenience of getting rid of strict and troublesome rulesof life. They patronised Dissenters; they gave Whig votes; they madefree, in a mild way, with the pet conventions and prejudices of Toriesand High Churchmen. There was nothing inspiring in them, however muchmen might respect their correct and sincere lives. But a younger set ofmen brought, mainly from Rugby and Arnold's teaching, a new kind ofLiberalism. It was much bolder and more independent than the olderforms, less inclined to put up with the traditional, more searching andinquisitive in its methods, more suspicious and daring in its criticism;but it was much larger in its views and its sympathies, and, above all, it was imaginative, it was enthusiastic, and, without much of thedevotional temper, it was penetrated by a sense of the reality andseriousness of religion. It saw greater hopes in the present and thefuture than the Tractarians. It disliked their reverence for the pastand the received as inconsistent with what seemed evidence of theprovidential order of great and fruitful change. It could not enter intotheir discipline of character, and shrank from it as antiquated, unnatural, and narrow. But these younger Liberals were interested in theTractarian innovators, and, in a degree, sympathised with them as aparty of movement who had had the courage to risk and sacrifice much foran unworldly end. And they felt that their own opportunity was come whenall the parties which claimed to represent the orthodoxy of the EnglishChurch appeared to have broken for good with one another, and when theirdifferences had thrown so much doubt and disparagement on so importantand revered a symbol of orthodoxy as the Thirty-nine Articles. Theylooked on partly with amusement, partly with serious anxiety, at thedispute; they discriminated with impartiality between the strong and theweak points in the arguments on both sides: and they enforced with thesame impartiality on both of them the reasons, arising out of thedifficulties in which each party was involved, for new and largemeasures, for a policy of forbearance and toleration. They inflicted onthe beaten side, sometimes with more ingenuity than fairness, the lessonthat the "wheel had come round full circle" with them; that they werebut reaping as they themselves had sown:--but now that there seemedlittle more to fear from the Tractarians, the victorious authoritieswere the power which the Liberals had to keep in check. They used theirinfluence, such as it was (and it was not then what it was afterwards), to protect the weaker party. It was a favourite boast of Dean Stanley'sin after-times, that the intervention of the Liberals had saved theTractarians from complete disaster. It is quite true that the youngerLiberals disapproved the continuance of harsh measures, and some of themexerted themselves against such measures. They did so in many ways andfor various reasons; from consistency, from feelings of personalkindness, from a sense of justice, from a sense of interest--some in afrank and generous spirit, others with contemptuous indifference. Butthe debt of the Tractarians to their Liberal friends in 1845 was not sogreat as Dean Stanley, thinking of the Liberal party as what it hadultimately grown to be, supposed to be the case. The Liberals of hisschool were then still a little flock: a very distinguished and a veryearnest set of men, but too young and too few as yet to hold the balancein such a contest. The Tractarians were saved by what they were and whatthey had done, and could do, themselves. But it is also true, that outof these feuds and discords, the Liberal party which was to be dominantin Oxford took its rise, soon to astonish old-fashioned Heads of Houseswith new and deep forms of doubt more audacious than Tractarianism, andultimately to overthrow not only the victorious authorities, but theancient position of the Church, and to recast from top to bottom theinstitutions of the University. The 13th of February was not only thefinal defeat and conclusion of the first stage of the movement. It wasthe birthday of the modern Liberalism of Oxford. 

But it was also a crisis in the history of many lives. From that moment, the decision of a number of good and able men, who had once promised tobe among the most valuable servants of the English Church, becameclear. If it were doubtful before, in many cases, whether they wouldstay with her, the doubt existed no longer. It was now only a questionof time when they would break the tie and renounce their oldallegiance. In the bitter, and in many cases agonising struggle whichthey had gone through as to their duty to God and conscience, a signseemed now to be given them which they could not mistake. They wereinvited, on one side, to come; they were told sternly and scornfully, onthe other, to go. They could no longer be accused of impatience if theybrought their doubts to an end, and made up their minds that their callwas to submit to the claims of Rome, that their place was in itscommunion. 

Yet there was a pause. It was no secret what was coming. But menlingered. It was not till the summer that the first drops of the stormbegan to fall. Then through the autumn and the next year, friends, whosenames and forms were familiar in Oxford, one by one disappeared and werelost to it. Fellowships, livings, curacies, intended careers, were givenup. Mr. Ward went. Mr. Capes, who had long followed Mr. Ward's line, andhad spent his private means to build a church near Bridgewater, wentalso. Mr. Oakeley resigned Margaret Chapel and went. Mr. Ambrose St. John, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Dalgairns, Mr. Faber, Mr. T. Meyrick, Mr. AlbanyChristie, Mr. R. Simpson of Oriel, were received in various places andvarious ways, and in the next year, Mr. J. S. Northcote, Mr. J. B. Morris, Mr. G. Ryder, Mr. David Lewis. On the 3d of October 1845 Mr. Newman requested the Provost of Oriel to remove his name from the booksof the College and University, but without giving any reason. The 6th ofOctober is the date of the "Advertisement" to the work which hadoccupied Mr. Newman through the year--the _Essay on the Development ofChristian Doctrine_. On the 8th he was, as he has told us in the_Apologia_, received by Father Dominic, the Passionist. To the"Advertisement" are subjoined the following words:

 _Postscript_. --Since the above was written the Author has joined the Catholic Church. It was his intention and wish to have carried his volume through the press before deciding finally on this step. But when he got some way in the printing, he recognised in himself a conviction of the truth of the conclusion, to which the discussion leads, so clear as to preclude further deliberation. Shortly afterwards circumstances gave him the opportunity of acting on it, and he felt that he had no warrant for refusing to act on it. 

So the reality of what had been so long and often so lightly talkedabout by those who dared it, provoked it, or hoped for it, had comeindeed; and a considerable portion of English society learned what itwas to be novices in a religious system, hitherto not only alien andunknown, but dreaded, or else to have lost friends and relatives, whowere suddenly transformed into severe and uncompromising opponents, speaking in unfamiliar terms, and sharply estranged in sympathies andrules of life. Some of them, especially those who had caught the spiritof their leader, began life anew, took their position as humble learnersin the Roman Schools, and made the most absolute sacrifice of a wholelifetime that a man can make. To others the change came and was acceptedas an emancipation, not only from the bonds of Anglicanism, but from theobligations of orders and priestly vows and devotion. In some cases, where they were married, there was no help for it. But in almost allcases there was a great surrender of what English life has to offer tothose brought up in it. Of the defeated party, those who remained hadmuch to think about, between grief at the breaking of old ties, and theloss of dear friends, and perplexities about their own position. Theanxiety, the sorrow at differing and parting, seem now almostextravagant and unintelligible. There are those who sneer at the"distress" of that time. There had not been the same suffering, the sameestrangement, when Churchmen turned dissenters, like Bulteel and BaptistNoel. But the movement had raised the whole scale of feeling aboutreligious matters so high, the questions were felt to be so momentous, the stake and the issue so precious, the "Loss and Gain" so immense, that to differ on such subjects was the differing on the greatest thingswhich men could differ about. But in a time of distress, of which fewanalogous situations in our days can give the measure, the leaders stoodfirm. Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, Mr. Marriott accepted, with unshaken faithin the cause of the English Church, the terrible separation. Theysubmitted to the blow--submitted to the reproach of having beenassociates of those who had betrayed hopes and done so much mischief;submitted to the charge of inconsistency, insincerity, cowardice; butthey did not flinch. Their unshrinking attitude was a new point ofdeparture for those who believed in the Catholic foundation of theEnglish Church. 

Among those deeply affected by these changes, there were many who hadbeen absolutely uninfluenced by the strong Roman current. They hadrecognised many good things in the Roman Church; they were fully aliveto many shortcomings in the English Church; but the possibility ofsubmission to the Roman claims had never been a question with them. Atypical example of such minds was Mr. Isaac Williams, a pupil of Mr. Keble, an intimate friend of Mr. Newman, a man of simple and saintlylife, with heart and soul steeped in the ancient theology of undividedChristendom, and for that very reason untempted by the newer principlesand fashions of Rome. There were numbers who thought like him; but therewere others also, who were forced in afresh upon themselves, and who hadto ask themselves why they stayed, when a teacher, to whom they hadlooked up as they had to Mr. Newman, and into whose confidence they hadbeen admitted, thought it his duty to go. With some the ultimate, thoughdelayed, decision was to follow him. With others, the old and fair_proejudicium_ against the claims of Rome, which had always asserteditself even against the stringent logic of Mr. Ward and the deep andsubtle ideas of Mr. Newman, became, when closed with, and tested face toface in the light of fact and history, the settled conviction of life. Some extracts from contemporary papers, real records of the privateperplexities and troubles actually felt at the time, may illustrate whatwas passing in the minds of some whom knowledge and love of Mr. Newmanfailed to make his followers in his ultimate step. The first extractbelongs to some years before, but it is part of the same train ofthinking. [124]

 As to myself, I am getting into a very unsettled state as to aims and prospects. I mean that as things are going on, a man does not know where he is going to; one cannot imagine what state of things to look forward to; in what way, and under what circumstances, one's coming life--if it does come--is to be spent; what is to become of one. I cannot at all imagine myself a convert; but how am I likely, in the probable state of things, to be able to serve as an English clergyman? Shall I ever get Priest's orders? Shall I be able to continue always serving? What is one's line to be; what ought to be one's aims; or can one have any?

 The storm is not yet come: how it may come, and how soon it may blow over, and what it may leave behind, is doubtful; but some sort of crisis, I think, must come before things settle. With the Bishops against us, and Puritanism aggressive, we may see strange things before the end. 

When the "storm" had at length come, though, before its final violence, the same writer continues:

 The present hopeless check and weight to our party--what has for the time absolutely crushed us--is the total loss of confidence arising from the strong tendency, no longer to be dissembled or explained away, among many of us to Rome. I see no chance of our recovery, or getting our heads above water from this, at least in England, for years to come. And it is a check which will one day be far greater than it is now. Under the circumstances--having not the most distant thought of leaving the English Church myself, and yet having no means of escaping the very natural suspicion of Romanising without giving up my best friends and the most saint-like men in England--how am I to view my position? What am I witnessing to? What, if need be, is one to suffer for? A man has no leaning towards Rome, does not feel, as others do, the strength of her exclusive claims to allegiance, the perfection of her system, its right so to overbalance all the good found in ours as to make ours absolutely untrustworthy for a Christian to rest in, notwithstanding all circumstances of habit, position, and national character; has such doubts on the Roman theory of the Church, the Ultramontane, and such instincts not only against many of their popular religious customs and practical ways of going on, but against their principles of belief (_e. G. _ divine faith = relics), as to repel him from any wish to sacrifice his own communion for theirs; yet withal, and without any great right on his part to complain, is set down as a man who may any day, and certainly will some day, go over; and he has no lawful means of removing the suspicion:--why is it _tanti_ to submit to this?

 However little sympathy we Englishmen have with Rome, the Western Churches under Rome are really living and holy branches of the Church Catholic; corruptions they may have, so may we; but putting these aside, they are Catholic Christians, or Catholic Christianity has failed out of the world: we are no more [Catholic] than they. But this, _public opinion_ has not for centuries, and _does not now_, realise or allow. So no one can express in reality and detail a practical belief in their Catholicity, in their equality (setting one thing against another) with us as Christians, without being suspected of what such belief continually leads to--disloyalty to the English Church. Yet such belief is nevertheless well-grounded and right, and there is no great hope for the Church till it gains ground, soberly, powerfully, and apart from all low views of proselytising, or fear of danger. What therefore the disadvantage of those among us who do not really deserve the imputation of Romanising may be meant for, is to break this practical belief to the English Church. We may be silenced, but, without any wish to leave the English Church, we cannot give up the belief, that the Western Church under Rome is a true, living, venerable branch of the Christian Church. There are dangers in such a belief, but they must be provided against, they do not affect the truth of the belief. 

Such searchings of heart were necessarily rendered more severe and acuteby Mr. Newman's act. There was no longer any respite; his dearestfriends must choose between him and the English Church. And the choicewas made, by those who did not follow him, on a principle littlehonoured or believed in at the time on either side, Roman orProtestant; but a principle which in the long-run restored hope andenergy to a cause which was supposed to be lost. It was not the revivalof the old _Via Media_; it was not the assertion of the superiority ofthe English Church; it was not a return to the old-fashioned andungenerous methods of controversy with Rome--one-sided in all cases, ignorant, coarse, unchristian in many. It was not the proposal of a newtheory of the Church--its functions, authority and teaching, acounter-ideal to Mr. Ward's imposing _Ideal_ It was the resolute andserious appeal from brilliant logic, and keen sarcasm, and pathetic andimpressive eloquence, to reality and experience, as well as to history, as to the positive and substantial characteristics of the traditionaland actually existing English Church, shown not on paper but in work, and in spite of contradictory appearances and inconsistent elements; andalong with this, an attempt to put in a fair and just light thecomparative excellences and defects of other parts of Christendom, excellences to be ungrudgingly admitted, but not to be allowed to barthe recognition of defects. The feeling which had often stirred, evenwhen things looked at the worst, that Mr. Newman had dealt unequally andhardly with the English Church, returned with gathered strength. TheEnglish Church was after all as well worth living in and fighting for asany other; it was not only in England that light and dark, in teachingand in life, were largely intermingled, and the mixture had to belargely allowed for. We had our Sparta, a noble, if a rough and anincomplete one; patiently to do our best for it was better than leavingit to its fate, in obedience to signs and reasonings which the heat ofstrife might well make delusive. It was one hopeful token, that boastinghad to be put away from us for a long time to come. In these days ofstress and sorrow were laid the beginnings of a school, whose mainpurpose was to see things as they are; which had learned by experienceto distrust unqualified admiration and unqualified disparagement;determined not to be blinded even by genius to plain certainties; notafraid to honour all that is great and beneficent in Rome, not afraidwith English frankness to criticise freely at home; but not to be wonover, in one case, by the good things, to condone and accept the badthings; and not deterred, in the other, from service, from love, fromself-sacrifice, by the presence of much to regret and to resist. 

All this new sense of independence, arising from the sense of havingbeen left almost desolate by the disappearance of a great stay and lightin men's daily life, led to various and different results. In someminds, after a certain trial, it actually led men back to that Romewardtendency from which they had at first recoiled. In others, the break-upof the movement under such a chief led them on, more or less, and somevery far, into a career of speculative Liberalism like that of Mr. Blanco White, the publication of whose biography coincided with Mr. Newman's change. In many others, especially in London and the towns, itled to new and increasing efforts to popularise in various ways--throughpreaching, organisation, greater attention to the meaning, thesolemnities, and the fitnesses of worship--the ideas of the Churchmovement. Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble were still the recognised chiefs ofthe continued yet remodelled movement. It had its quarterly organ, the_Christian Remembrancer_, which had taken the place of the old _BritishCritic_ in the autumn of 1844. A number of able Cambridge men had throwntheir knowledge and thoroughness of work into the _Ecclesiologist_. There were newspapers--the _English Churchman_, and, starting in 1846from small and difficult beginnings, in the face of long discouragementand at times despair, the _Guardian_. One mind of great and rare power, though only recognised for what he was much later in his life, oneundaunted heart, undismayed, almost undepressed, so that those who knewnot its inner fires thought him cold and stoical, had lifted itselfabove the wreck at Oxford. The shock which had cowed and almost crushedsome of Mr. Newman's friends roused and fired Mr. James Mozley. 

 To take leave of Mr. Newman (he writes on the morrow of the event) is a heavy task. His step was not unforeseen; but when it is come those who knew him feel the fact as a real change within them--feel as if they were entering upon a fresh stage of their own life. May that very change turn to their profit, and discipline them by its hardness! It may do so if they will use it so. Let nobody complain; a time must come, sooner or later, in every one's life, when he has to part with advantages, connexions, supports, consolations, that he has had hitherto, and face a new state of things. Every one knows that he is not always to have all that he has now: he says to himself, "What shall I do when this or that stay, or connexion, is gone?" and the answer is, "That he will do without it. " . .. The time comes when this is taken away; and then the mind is left alone, and is thrown back upon itself, as the expression is. But no religious mind tolerates the notion of being really thrown upon itself; this is only to say in other words, that it is thrown back upon God. .. . Secret mental consolations, whether of innocent self-flattery or reposing confidence, are over; a more real and graver life begins--a firmer, harder disinterestedness, able to go on its course by itself. Let them see in the change a call to greater earnestness, sincerer simplicity, and more solid manliness. What were weaknesses before will be sins now. [125]

"A new stage has begun. Let no one complain":--this, the expression ofindividual feeling, represents pretty accurately the temper into whichthe Church party settled when the first shock was over. They knew thathenceforward they had difficult times before them. They knew that theymust work under suspicion, even under proscription. They knew that theymust expect to see men among themselves perplexed, unsettled, swept awayby the influences which had affected Mr. Newman, and still more by theprecedent of his example. They knew that they must be prepared to losefriends and fellow-helpers, and to lose them sometimes unexpectedly andsuddenly, as the wont was so often at this time. Above all, they knewthat they had a new form of antagonism to reckon with, harder than anythey had yet encountered. It had the peculiar sad bitterness whichbelongs to civil war, when men's foes are they of their ownhouseholds--the bitterness arising out of interrupted intimacy andaffection. Neither side could be held blameless; the charge from the oneof betrayal and desertion was answered by the charge from the other ofinsincerity and faithlessness to conscience, and by natural but notalways very fair attempts to proselytise; and undoubtedly, the EnglishChurch, and those who adhered to it, had, for some years after 1845, tohear from the lips of old friends the most cruel and mercilessinvectives which knowledge of her weak points, wit, argumentative power, eloquence, and the triumphant exultation at once of deliverance andsuperiority could frame. It was such writing and such preaching as hadcertainly never been seen on the Roman side before, at least in England. Whether it was adapted to its professed purpose may perhaps be doubted;but the men who went certainly lost none of their vigour ascontroversialists or their culture as scholars. Not to speak of Mr. Newman, such men as Mr. Oakeley, Mr. Ward, Mr. Faber, and Mr. Dalgairnsmore than fulfilled in the great world of London their reputation atOxford. This was all in prospect before the eyes of those who hadelected to cast in their lot with the English Church. It was not anencouraging position. The old enthusiastic sanguineness had beeneffectually quenched. Their Liberal critics and their Liberal friendshave hardly yet ceased to remind them how sorry a figure they cut in theeyes of men of the world, and in the eyes of men of bold and effectivethinking. [126] The "poor Puseyites" are spoken of in tones half of pityand half of sneer. Their part seemed played out. There seemed nothingmore to make them of importance. They had not succeeded in Catholicisingthe English Church, they had not even shaken it by a wide secession. Henceforth they were only marked men. All that could be said for themwas, that at the worst, they did not lose heart. They had not forgottenthe lessons of their earlier time. 

It is not my purpose to pursue farther the course of the movement. Allthe world knows that it was not, in fact, killed or even much arrestedby the shock of 1845. But after 1845, its field was at least as much outof Oxford as in it. As long as Mr. Newman remained, Oxford wasnecessarily its centre, necessarily, even after he had seemed towithdraw from it. When he left his place vacant, the direction of it wasnot removed from Oxford, but it was largely shared by men in London andthe country. It ceased to be strongly and prominently Academical. Noone in deed held such a position as Dr. Pusey's and Mr. Keble's; butthough Dr. Pusey continued to be a great power at Oxford, he now becameevery day a much greater power outside of it; while Mr. Keble was nowless than ever an Academic, and became more and more closely connectedwith men out of Oxford, his friends in London and his neighbours atHursley and Winchester. The cause which Mr. Newman had given up indespair was found to be deeply interesting in ever new parts of thecountry: and it passed gradually into the hands of new leaders morewidely acquainted with English society. It passed into the hands of theWilberforces, and Archdeacon Manning; of Mr. Bennett, Mr. Dodsworth, Mr. W. Scott, Dr. Irons, Mr. E. Hawkins, and Mr. Upton Richards in London. It had the sympathy and counsels of men of weight, or men who wererising into eminence and importance--some of the Judges, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Roundell Palmer, Mr. Frederic Rogers, Mr. Mountague Bernard, Mr. Hope Scott (as he afterwards was), Mr. Badeley, and a brilliant recruitfrom Cambridge, Mr. Beresford Hope. It attracted the sympathy of anotherboast of Cambridge, the great Bishop of New Zealand, and his friend Mr. Whytehead. Those times were the link between what we are now, so changedin many ways, and the original impulse given at Oxford; but to thosetimes I am as much of an outsider as most of the foremost in them wereoutsiders to Oxford in the earlier days. Those times are almost moreimportant than the history of the movement; for, besides vindicating it, they carried on its work to achievements and successes which, even inthe most sanguine days of "Tractarianism, " had not presented themselvesto men's minds, much less to their hopes. But that story must be told byothers. 

"Show thy servants thy work, and their children thy glory. "

FOOTNOTES:

[124] Compare Mozley's _Reminiscences_, ii. 1-3. 

[125] _Christian Remembrancer_, January 1846, pp. 167, 168. 

[126] _E. G. _ the Warden of Merton's _History of the University ofOxford, _ p. 212. "The first panic was succeeded by a reaction; somedevoted adherents followed him (Mr. Newman) to Rome; others relapsedinto lifeless conformity; and the University soon resumed its wontedtranquillity. " "_Lifeless_ conformity" sounds odd connected with Dr. Pusey or Mr. J. B. Mozley, and the London men who were the founders ofthe so-called Ritualist schools. 

INDEX

Addresses to Archbishop of Canterbury, by clergy and laityAnglicanism, its features in 1830 Newman's views on Newman's interpretation of_Apologia_, quotations fromApostolic Succession Newman's insistence on its foundation on Prayer BookApostolitity of English ChurchArchbishop of Canterbury. _See_ Addresses, and Howley_Arians_, theArnold, Dr. , theories on the Church his proposal to unite all sects by law attack on Tractarians Professorship at Oxford his influence shown in rise of third schoolArticles, the, and Dissenters subscription of. _See_ Dr. Hampden, and Thirty-nine Articles

Baptism, Tract on_Baptistery_, theBennett, Mr. Bentham. _see_ UtilitarianismBernard, Mr. MountagueBishoprics, suppression of ten IrishBishops' attitude to movement the first Tract onBlachford, Lord, reminiscences of FroudeBliss, JamesBlomfield, BishopBritish Association, a sign of the times_British Critic_ on the movement_British Magazine_Brougham, LordBunsen, M. , and the Bishopric of JerusalemBurton, Dr. 

Cambridge, critical school of theologyCapes, Mr. Cardwell, Dr. Catastrophe, theCatholicity of English Church_Catholicus's_ letters to the _Times_Celibacy, observations onCelibate clergy schemeChanges in movement_Christian Remembrancer__Christian Year_Christianity, Church of England, two schools ofChristie, AlbanyChristie, J. F. Church, the, in eighteenth century Dr. Whately's theories on Dr. Arnold's theories Coleridge's theories Apostolic origin of various conceptions of political attacks on public mind indifferent to Dr. Pusey's theories on theological aspect of practical aspect of and the Roman question Catholicity of and the doctrine of Development_Church of the Fathers_"Churchman's Manual" Scotch Bishops onChurton, Mr. (of Crayke)Claughton, Mr. PiersClergy of eighteenth century, character ofClose, Dr. (of Cheltenham)Coffin, Mr. Coleridge, Mr. JusticeColeridge, S. T. , influence on Charles Marriott Church theories_Conservative Journal_, Newman's language towards RomeCopeland, William JohnCornish, C. L. Creeds, the, pamphlets on authority of

Dalgairns, Mr. Defeats, the Three, 312-335. _See also_ Isaac Williams, Macmullen, and PuseyDickinson, Dr. , "Pastoral Epistle from his Holiness the Pope"Diffusion of Useful Knowledge SocietyDissenters and the Articles. _See also_ Thirty-nine ArticlesDodsworth, Mr. Dominic, Father, receives Newman into Church of RomeDonkin, Mr. Doyle, Sir F. , on Newman's sermons

_Ecclesiologist_ foundedEden, C. P. _Edinburgh Review_, article by Dr. Arnold on Tractarians"Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements"_English Churchman_ foundedEvangelicism in 1830, character of

Faber, FrancisFaber, FredericFasting, Tract onFaussett, Dr. Attack on Dr. PuseyFroude, Richard Hurrell pupil of Keble Fellow of Oriel first meeting with Newman early estimate of Newman travels with Newman influence on the movement his severe self-discipline character Mozley's remarks on correspondence his _Remains_ published effect of publication a modern estimate of the _Remains_ events of 1830 theory of the Church sermons and writings Lord Blachford's reminiscences ofFroude, William

Garbett, Mr. , elected Professor of PoetryGilbert, Dr. Gladstone, Mr. Golightly, Mr. Gorham, Mr. _Grammar of Assent_ on Faith and ReasonGreenhill, Dr. _Guardian_ foundedGuillemard, Mr. 

Haddan, A. Hadleigh, Conference of leaders at policy adoptedHampden, Dr. Advocates abolition of subscription of Articles his election as Professor of Divinity outcry against election of Bampton Lectures so-called "persecution" of modern estimate of the "persecution" deprived of vote for Select Preachers his action in the B. D. Degree contestHare, JuliusHawkins, Dr. Hawkins, E. Hill, Mr. Hobhouse, Mr. Holland House"Home Thoughts Abroad"Hook, Dr. Hope, Mr. BeresfordHowley, ArchbishopHussey, Mr. 

_Ideal of a Christian Church_, _See_ W. G. WardInfallibility, views onIrons, Dr. 

Jebb, BishopJelf, Dr. Jenkyns, Dr. Jerusalem, Bishopric ofJerusalem, Bishopric of, Newman's protest againstJolly, BishopJowett, Mr. 

Kaye, BishopKeble, John brilliant Oxford career suspicions of Evangelicism a strong Tory his poetic nature influence on Froude his pupils sermon on _National Apostasy_ tract on "Mysticism of the Fathers" resigns Poetry ProfessorshipKeble, ThomasKnox, Alexander

Law's _Serious Call_, Keble's remark onLe Bas, Mr. _Lectures on Justification_, Newman's, influence of_Letter to the Bishop of Oxford_, Newman'sLetters of an EpiscopalianLewis, D. _Library of the Fathers_Lloyd's, Bishop, Lectures, influence ofLowe, R. Lyall, Mr. _Lyra Apostolica_

Macmullen, Mr. His contest on B. D. DegreeManning, ArchdeaconMarriott, Charles influenced by Coleridge and Dr. Hampden aversion to party action Scholar of Balliol Fellow of Oriel Newman's influence on Moberly's influence on Principal of Chichester Theological College scheme of poor students' hall Tutor of Oriel Vicar of St. Mary's his sermons rooms and parties share in _Library of the Fathers_ Mozley's estimate of deathMarsh, Bishop"Martyrs' Memorial, " connexion with the movementMaurice, F. D. , views ofMelbourne, LordMeyrick, T. Miller, John (of Worcester), Bampton Lectures, influence ofMoberly, Dr. (of Winchester)Monophysite ControversyMorris, John BrandeMozley, James on Newman's sermons on "No. 90"Mozley, Thomas on Charles Marriott on Froude"Mysticism of the Fathers in the use and interpretation of Scripture, " Keble's Tract on

National Apostasy, Keble's sermon onNewman, John Henry-- his early preaching meeting with Froude Froude's early estimate of on Apostolic Succession, _q. V. _ on Infallibility attitude at different times to Rome early friends first Tract, written by his four o'clock sermons chief coadjutors of views on subscription of Articles on Dr. Hampden's theology character Lectures _Lectures on Justification_ Anglicanism, views on resigns St. Mary's not a proselytiser _Letter to Bishop of Oxford_ interpretation of Church formularies on the Articles, _See_ "No. 90" _Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine_ joins Church of RomeNicknames"No. 90" Newman's attitude on object to defend Catholicity of the Articles its reception charge of dishonesty against condemned by Board of Heads pamphlet war on the crisis of the movement events after

Oakeley, Mr. Article on "Jewel"Ogilvie, Dr. Ordination, validity of_Origines Liturgicae_Oxford, Liberal School of Theology Orthodoxy as a Church SchoolOxford Movement-- political conditions of beginnings of Keble the primary author of early writings towards the leaders forced on the originators object of accession of Dr. Pusey and his influence gradual growth of attitude to Romanism changes in tendency to Romanism in origin anti-Roman attitude of University authorities towards attitude of Bishops towards mistakes in conduct ofOxford Movement-- rise of third school secessions to Rome

Palmer, William, share in movement _Origines Liturgicae_ _Narrative_ _Treatise on the Church of Christ_Palmer, Mr. RoundellPark, Judge Allan_Parochial Sermons_Pattison, MarkPeel, Sir RobertPerceval, A. , share in movementPhillpotts, Bishop_Plain Sermons_Poetry Professorship, contest for, made a theological one_Prophetical Office of the Church_"Prospects of the Anglican Church" Newman's after-thoughts onPusey, Dr. Joins the movement effect of his adhesion his _Remonstrance_ tract on Baptism attack on him sermon on the Holy Eucharist "delated" to Vice-Chancellor unfairness of proceedings against memorial to Vice-Chancellor, on his case

"Records of the Church"Reform days, state of ChurchReformers, early, views of_Remonstrance_"Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge, " Isaac Williams's tract onRichards, Mr. UptonRogers, Frederic_Romanism and Popular Protestantism_Romanism misconceptions of Newman's attitude towards tendency in party of movement towardsRose, Hugh James an estimate of lectures on German speculation controversy with Dr. Pusey early deathRouth, Dr. _Rusticus_, pamphlets byRyder, G. 

St. John, Mr. AmbroseScott, Mr. HopeScott, W. Seager, CharlesSelwyn, BishopSewell, WilliamShairp, Principal, on Newman's sermonsSikes, Mr. (of Guilsborough)Simpson, Mr. Stanley, Mr. ArthurSterling, JohnSubscription. _See_ Thirty-nine ArticlesSumner, J. Bird, BishopSymons, Dr. Opposition to, as Vice-Chancellor

Tait, Mr. (of Balliol)Theologians of 1830Third party in Church-- rise of influenceThirlwall, ConnopThirty-nine Articles, subscription of Dr. Hampden and subscription pamphlet war on subscription Newman on subscription their Catholicity _And see_ W. G. Ward "No. 90" onThomas, Vaughan_Times_, letters of _Catholicus_ toTottenham, E. Tractarian doctrines, discussion of Movement. _See_ OxfordTractarians, excitement againstTract, text of the firstTracts, the-- topics of mode of circulating reception of accused of Romanism first volume of later numbers, character of public opinion against "No. 90, " _q. V. _ contributors to on "Reserve, " _q. V. _ on "Mysticism, " _q. V. __Treatise on the Church of Christ_

Utilitarianism, influence on religious belief

_Via Media_

Wall, Mr. Ward, W. G. Dismissed from Balliol Lectureship writings on Romanism his criticisms of English Church _Ideal of a Christian Church_ on "No. 90" on the Articles hostility to Lutheranism his philosophy of religion his book condemned himself "degraded" joins Church of RomeWatson, JoshuaWellington, Duke ofWhately, Dr. -- theories on Church opposed to Tractarians _Letters of an Episcopalian_White, BlancoWhytehead, Mr. Wilberforce, HenryWilberforce, RobertWilliams, IsaacWilliams, Isaac, Keble's influence on Fellow of Trinity connexion with Newman divergences from Newman contributions to _Plain Sermons_ aversion to Rome his poetry defeated for Poetry Professorship Tract on "Reserve"Wilson, H. B. Wilson, R. F. Wiseman, Dr. Article on DonatistsWood, S. F. Woodgate, Mr. Wordsworth, Dr. Wynter, Dr. 

THE END