SUBSCRIPTION AT MATRICULATION AND ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS
"Depend upon it," an earnest High Churchman of the Joshua Watson type
had said to one of Mr. Newman's friends, who was a link between the old
Churchmanship and the new--"depend upon it, the day will come when those
great doctrines" connected with the Church, "now buried, will be brought
out to the light of the day, and then the effect will be quite
fearful."[52] With the publication of the _Tracts for the Times_, and
the excitement caused by them, the day had come.
Their unflinching and severe proclamation of Church principles and
Church doctrines coincided with a state of feeling and opinion in the
country, in which two very different tendencies might be observed. They
fell on the public mind just when one of these tendencies would help
them, and the other be fiercely hostile. On the one hand, the issue of
the political controversy with the Roman Catholics, their triumph all
along the line, and the now scarcely disguised contempt shown by their
political representatives for the pledges and explanations on which
their relief was supposed to have been conceded, had left the public
mind sore, angry, and suspicious. Orthodox and Evangelicals were alike
alarmed and indignant; and the Evangelicals, always doctrinally jealous
of Popery, and of anything "unsound" in that direction, had been roused
to increased irritation by the proceedings of the Reformation Society,
which had made it its business to hold meetings and discussions all over
the country, where fervid and sometimes eloquent and able Irishmen, like
Mr. E. Tottenham, afterwards of Laura Chapel, Bath, had argued and
declaimed, with Roman text-books in hand, on such questions as the Right
of Private Judgment, the Rule of Faith, and the articles of the
Tridentine Creed--not always with the effect which they intended on
those who heard them, with whom their arguments, and those which they
elicited from their opponents, sometimes left behind uncomfortable
misgivings, and questions even more serious than the controversy itself.
On the other hand, in quarters quite unconnected with the recognised
religious schools, interest had been independently and strongly awakened
in the minds of theologians and philosophical thinkers, in regard to the
idea, history, and relations to society of the Christian Church. In
Ireland, a recluse, who was the centre of a small knot of earnest
friends, a man of deep piety and great freedom and originality of mind,
Mr. Alexander Knox, had been led, partly, it may be, by his intimacy
with John Wesley, to think out for himself the character and true
constitution of the Church, and the nature of the doctrines which it was
commissioned to teach. In England, another recluse, of splendid genius
and wayward humour, had dealt in his own way, with far-reaching insight,
with vast reading, and often with impressive eloquence, with the same
subject; and his profound sympathy and faith had been shared and
reflected by a great poet. What Coleridge and Wordsworth had put in the
forefront of their speculations and poetry, as the object of their
profoundest interest, and of their highest hopes for mankind, might, of
course, fail to appear in the same light to others; but it could not
fail, in those days at least, to attract attention, as a matter of grave
and well-founded importance. Coleridge's theories of the Church were his
own, and were very wide of theories recognised by any of those who had
to deal practically with the question, and who were influenced, in one
way or another, by the traditional doctrines of theologians. But
Coleridge had lifted the subject to a very high level. He had taken the
simple but all-important step of viewing the Church in its spiritual
character as first and foremost and above all things essentially a
religious society of divine institution, not dependent on the creation
or will of man, or on the privileges and honours which man might think
fit to assign to it; and he had undoubtedly familiarised the minds of
many with this way of regarding it, however imperfect, or cloudy, or
unpractical they might find the development of his ideas, and his
deductions from them. And in Oxford the questions which had stirred the
friends at Hadleigh had stirred others also, and had waked up various
responses. Whately's acute mind had not missed these questions, and had
given original if insufficient answers to them. Blanco White knew only
too well their bearing and importance, and had laboured, not without
success, to leave behind him his own impress on the way in which they
should be dealt with. Dr. Hampden, the man in Oxford best acquainted
with Aristotle's works and with the scholastic philosophy, had thrown
Christian doctrines into a philosophical calculus which seemed to leave
them little better than the inventions of men. On the other hand, a
brilliant scholar, whose after-career was strangely full of great
successes and deplorable disasters, William Sewell of Exeter College,
had opened, in a way new to Oxford, the wealth and magnificence of
Plato; and his thoughts had been dazzled by seeming to find in the
truths and facts of the Christian Church the counterpart and realisation
of the grandest of Plato's imaginations. The subjects treated with such
dogmatic severity and such impetuous earnestness in the Tracts were, in
one shape or another, in all men's minds, when these Tracts broke on the
University and English society with their peremptory call to men "to
take their side."
There was just a moment of surprise and uncertainty--uncertainty as to
what the Tracts meant; whether they were to be a new weapon against the
enemies of the Church, or were simply extravagant and preposterous
novelties--just a certain perplexity and hesitation at their conflicting
aspects; on the one hand, the known and high character of the writers,
their evident determination and confidence in their cause, the
attraction of their religious warmth and unselfishness and nobleness,
the dim consciousness that much that they said was undeniable; and on
the other hand, the apparent wildness and recklessness of their words:
and then public opinion began steadily to take its "ply," and to be
agreed in condemning them. It soon went farther, and became vehement in
reprobating them as scandalous and dangerous publications. They incensed
the Evangelicals by their alleged Romanism, and their unsound views
about justification, good works, and the sacraments; they angered the
"two-bottle orthodox" by their asceticism--the steady men, by their
audacity 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 new
thoughts 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 to
lour from early days, till after various threatenings it broke in a
furious article in the _Edinburgh_, by Dr. Arnold, on the "Oxford
Malignants"; and the Tract-writers and their friends became, what they
long continued to be, the most unpopular and suspected body of men in
the Church, whom everybody was at liberty to insult, both as dishonest
and absurd, of whom nothing was too cruel to say, nothing too ridiculous
to believe. It is only equitable to take into account the unprepared
state of the public mind, the surprise and novelty of even the
commonest things when put in a new light, the prejudices which the
Tract-writers were thought wantonly to offend and defy, their militant
and uncompromising attitude, where principles were at stake. But
considering what these men were known to be in character and life, what
was the emergency and what were the pressing motives which called for
action, and what is thought of them now that their course is run, it is
strange indeed to remember who they were, to whom the courtesies of
controversy were denied, not only by the vulgar herd of pamphleteers,
but by men of ability and position, some of whom had been their familiar
friends. Of course a nickname was soon found for them: the word
"Tractarian" was invented, and Archbishop Whately thought it worth
while, but not successfully, to improve it into "Tractites." Archbishop
Whately, always ingenious, appears to have suspected that the real but
concealed object of the movement was to propagate a secret infidelity;
they were "Children of the Mist," or "Veiled Prophets";[53] and he
seriously suggested to a friend who was writing against it,--"this
rapidly spreading pestilence,"--to parallel it, in its characteristics
and modes of working, with Indian Thuggee.[54]
But these things were of gradual growth. Towards the end of 1834 a
question appeared in Oxford interesting to numbers besides Mr. Newman
and his friends, which was to lead to momentous consequences. The old,
crude ideas of change in the Church had come to appear, even to their
advocates, for the present impracticable, and there was no more talk for
a long time of schemes which had been in favour two years before. The
ground was changed, and a point was now brought forward on the Liberal
side, for which a good deal might be plausibly said. This was the
requirement of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles from young men
at matriculation; and a strong pamphlet advocating its abolition, with
the 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. Its
traditions, its tone, its customs, its rules, all expressed or presumed
the closest attachment to that way of religion which was specially
identified with the Church, in its doctrinal and historical aspect.
Oxford was emphatically definite, dogmatic, orthodox, compared even with
Cambridge, which had largely favoured the Evangelical school, and had
leanings to Liberalism. Oxford, unlike Cambridge, gave notice of its
attitude by requiring every one who matriculated to subscribe the
Thirty-nine Articles: the theory of its Tutorial system, of its lectures
and examinations, implied what of late years in the better colleges,
though certainly not everywhere, had been realised in fact--a
considerable amount of religious and theological teaching. And whatever
might have been said originally of the lay character of the University,
the colleges, which had become coextensive with the University, were for
the most part, in the intention of their founders, meant to educate and
support theological students on their foundations for the service of the
Church. It became in time the fashion to call them lay institutions:
legally they may have been so, but judged by their statutes, they were
nearly all of them as ecclesiastical as the Chapter of a Cathedral. And
Oxford was the fulcrum from which the theological revival hoped to move
the Church. It was therefore a shock and a challenge of no light kind,
when not merely the proposal was made to abolish the matriculation
subscription with the express object of attracting Dissenters, and to
get Parliament to force the change on the University if the University
resisted, but the proposal itself was vindicated and enforced in a
pamphlet by Dr. Hampden by a definite and precise theory which stopped
not short of the position that all creeds and formularies--everything
which represented the authority of the teaching Church--however
incidentally and temporarily useful, were in their own nature the
inventions of a mistaken and corrupt philosophy, and invasions of
Christian liberty. This was cutting deep with a vengeance, though the
author of the theory seemed alone unable to see it. It went to the root
of the whole mutter; and if Dr. Hampden was right, there was neither
Church nor doctrine worth contending for, except as men contend about
the 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 the
special fitness of the Thirty-nine Articles to be offered for the proof
of a young man's belief. It was a much more critical question. It was
really, however disguised, the question, asked then for the first time,
and since finally decided, whether Oxford was to continue to be a
school of the Church of England; and it also involved the wider
question, what part belief in definite religion should have in higher
education. It is speciously said that you have no right to forestall a
young man's inquiries and convictions by imposing on him in his early
years opinions which to him become prejudices. And if the world
consisted simply of individuals, entirely insulated and self-sufficing;
if men could be taught anything whatever, without presuming what is
believed by those who teach them; and if the attempt to exclude
religious prejudice did not necessarily, by the mere force of the
attempt, involve the creation of anti-religious prejudice, these
reasoners, who try in vain to get out of the conditions which hem them
in, might have more to say for themselves. To the men who had made such
an effort to restore a living confidence in the Church, the demand
implied giving up all that they had done and all that they hoped for. It
was not the time for yielding even a clumsy proof of the religious
character of the University. And the beginning of a long and doubtful
war was inevitable.
A war of pamphlets ensued. By the one side the distinction was strongly
insisted on between mere instruction and education, the distinctly
religious character of the University education was not perhaps
overstated in its theory, but portrayed in stronger colours than was
everywhere the fact; and assertions were made, which sound strange in
their boldness now, of the independent and constitutional right to
self-government in the great University corporations. By the other side,
the ordinary arguments were used, about the injustice and mischief of
exclusion, and the hurtfulness of tests, especially such tests as the
Articles applied to young and ignorant men. Two pamphlets had more than
a passing interest: one, by a then unknown writer who signed himself
_Rusticus_, and whose name was Mr. F.D. Maurice, defended subscription
on the ground that the Articles were signed, not as tests and
confessions of faith, but as "conditions of thought," the expressly
stated conditions, such as there must be in all teaching, under which
the learners are willing to learn and the teacher to teach: and he
developed his view at great length, with great wealth of original
thought and illustration and much eloquence, but with that fatal want of
clearness which, as so often afterwards, came from his struggles to
embrace in one large view what appeared opposite aspects of a difficult
subject. 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 argued
out at great length in his Bampton Lectures--the distinction between the
"Divine facts" of revelation, and all human interpretations of them and
inferences from them. "Divine facts," he maintained, were of course
binding on all Christians, and in matter of fact were accepted by all
who called themselves Christians, including Unitarians. Human
interpretations and inferences--and all Church formularies were
such--were binding on no one but those who had reason to think them
true; and therefore least of all on undergraduates who could not have
examined them. The distinction, when first put forward, seemed to mean
much; at a later time it was explained to mean very little. But at
present its value as a ground of argument against the old system of the
University was thought much of by its author and his friends. A warning
note was at once given that its significance was perceived and
appreciated. Mr. Newman, in acknowledging a presentation copy, added
words which foreshadowed much that was to follow. "While I respect," he
wrote, "the tone of piety which the pamphlet displays, I dare not trust
myself to put on paper my feelings about the principles contained in it;
_tending, as they do, in my opinion, to make ship-wreck of Christian
faith_. I also lament that, by its appearance, the first step has been
taken towards interrupting that peace and mutual good understanding
which has prevailed so long in this place, and which, if once seriously
disturbed, will be succeeded by discussions the more intractable,
because justified in the minds of those who resist innovation by a
feeling of imperative duty." "Since that time," he goes on in the
_Apologia_, where he quotes this letter, "Phaeton has got into the
chariot of the sun."[55] But they were early days then; and when the
Heads of Houses, who the year before had joined with the great body of
the University in a declaration against the threatened legislation, were
persuaded to propose to the Oxford Convocation the abolition of
subscription at matriculation in May 1835, this proposal was rejected by
a majority of five to one.
This large majority was a genuine expression of the sense of the
University. It was not specially a "Tractarian" success, though most of
the arguments which contributed to it came from men who more or less
sympathised with the effort to make a vigorous fight for the Church and
its teaching; and it showed that they who had made the effort had
touched springs of thought and feeling, and awakened new hopes and
interest in those around them, in Oxford, and in the country. But graver
events were at hand. Towards the end of the year (1835), Dr. Burton, the
Regius Professor of Divinity, suddenly died, still a young man. And Lord
Melbourne was induced to appoint as his successor, and as the head of
the theological teaching of the University, the writer who had just a
second time seemed to lay the axe to the root of all theology; who had
just reasserted that he looked upon creeds, and all the documents which
embodied the traditional doctrine and collective thought of the Church,
as invested by ignorance and prejudice with an authority which was
without foundation, and which was misleading and mischievous.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] The conversation between Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough and Mr. Copeland
is 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 traditionals
the 'Children of the Mist.' The title of 'Veiled Prophets' he thought
too severe" (1838), _Life_, ed. 1875, p. 167. Compare "Hints to
Transcendentalists for Working Infidel Designs through Tractarianism," a
_jeu d'esprit_ (1840), _ib._ p. 188. "As for the suspicion of secret
infidelity, 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 to
bring into your Bampton Lectures a mention of the Thugs.... Observe
their submissive piety, their faith in long-preserved _tradition_, their
regular succession of ordinations to their offices, their _faith_ in the
sacramental virtue of the consecrated governor; in short, compare our
religion with the _Thuggee, putting out of account all those
considerations which the traditionists deprecate the discussion of,_
and where is the difference?" (1840), _ib._ p. 194.
[55] _Apologia_, pp. 131, 132.