THE CATASTROPHE
The events of February were a great shock. The routine of Oxford had
been 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 the
first among the Colleges, solemnly deprived of his degree and all that
the degree carried with it, and that on a charge in which bad faith and
treachery were combined with alleged heresy, was a novel experience,
where the kindnesses of daily companionship and social intercourse still
asserted themselves as paramount to official ideas of position. And
when, besides this, people realised what more had been attempted, and by
how narrow a chance a still heavier blow had been averted from one
towards whom so many hearts warmed, how narrowly a yoke had been escaped
which would have seemed to subject all religious thought in the
University to the caprice or the blind zeal of a partisan official, the
sense of relief was mixed with the still present memory of a desperate
peril And then came the question as to what was to come next. That the
old policy of the Board would be revived and pursued when the end of the
Proctors' year delivered it from their inconvenient presence, was soon
understood to be out of the question. The very violence of the measures
attempted had its reaction, which stopped anything further. The
opponents of Tractarianism, Orthodox and Liberal, were for the moment
gorged with their success. What men waited to see was the effect on the
party of the movement; how it would influence the advanced portion of
it; how it would influence the little company who had looked on in
silence from their retirement at Littlemore. The more serious aspect of
recent events was succeeded for the moment by a certain comic contrast,
created by Mr. Ward's engagement to be married, which was announced
within a week of his degradation, and which gave the common-rooms
something to smile at after the strain and excitement of the scene in
the Theatre. But that passed, and the graver outlook of the situation
occupied men's thoughts.
There was a widespread feeling of insecurity. Friends did not know of
friends, how their minds were working, how they might go. Anxious
letters passed, the writers not daring to say too much, or reveal too
much alarm. And yet there was still some hope that at least with the
great leader matters were not desperate. To his own friends he gave
warning; he had already done so in a way to leave little to expect but
at last to lose him; he spoke of resigning his fellowship in October,
though he wished to defer this till the following June; but nothing
final had been said publicly. Even at the last it was only anticipated
by some that he would retire into lay communion. But that silence was
awful and ominous. He showed no signs of being affected by what had
passed in Oxford. He privately thanked the Proctors for saving him from
what would have distressed him; but he made no comments on the measures
themselves. Still it could not but be a climax of everything as far as
Oxford 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 beginning
of 1845 should bring with them a great crisis in the development of
religious opinion, in the relations of its different forms to one
another, and further, in the thoughts of many minds as to their personal
position, their duty, and their prospects. There had been such a crisis
in 1841 at the publication of No. 90. After the discussions which
followed that tract, Anglican theology could never be quite the same
that it had been before. It was made to feel the sense of some grave
wants, which, however they might be supplied in the future, could no
longer be unnoticed or uncared for. And individuals, amid the strife of
tongues, had felt, some strongly and practically, but a much larger
number dimly and reluctantly, the possibility, unwelcome to most, but
not without interest to others, of having to face the strange and at
one time inconceivable task of revising the very foundations of their
religion. And such a revision had since that time been going on more or
less 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 much
more grave and wide-reaching sort had arrived. To ordinary lookers-on it
naturally seemed that a shattering and decisive blow had been struck at
the Tractarian party and their cause; struck, indeed, formally and
officially, only at its extravagances, but struck, none the less,
virtually, at the premisses which led to these extravagances, and at the
party, which, while disapproving them, shrank, with whatever
motives,--policy, generosity, or secret sympathy,--from joining in the
condemnation of them. It was more than a defeat, it was a rout, in which
they were driven and chased headlong from the field; a wreck in which
their boasts and hopes of the last few years met the fate which wise men
had always anticipated. Oxford repudiated them. Their theories, their
controversial successes, their learned arguments, their appeals to the
imagination, 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 to
them, a badge of suspicion and discredit, and even shame, which bade men
beware of them, an overthrow under which it seemed wonderful that they
could raise their heads or expect a hearing. It is true, that to those
who looked below the surface, the overthrow might have seemed almost too
showy and theatrical to be quite all that it was generally thought to
be. There had been too much passion, and too little looking forward to
the next steps, in the proceedings of the victors. There was too much
blindness to weak points of their own position, too much forgetfulness
of 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 do
with it, and were at their wits' end to understand what it meant. And
the defeated party, though defeated signally and conspicuously in the
sight of the Church and the country, had in it too large a proportion of
the serious and able men of the University, with too clear and high a
purpose, and too distinct a sense of the strength and reality of their
ground, to be in as disadvantageous a condition as from a distance might
be imagined. A closer view would have discovered how much sympathy there
was for their objects and for their main principles in many who greatly
disapproved of much in the recent course and tendency of the movement.
It might have been seen how the unwise measures of the Heads had
awakened convictions among many who were not naturally on their side,
that it was necessary both on the ground of justice and policy to arrest
all extreme measures, and to give a breathing time to the minority.
Confidence in their prospects as a party might have been impaired in the
Tractarians; but confidence in their principles; confidence that they
had rightly interpreted the spirit, the claims, and the duties of the
English Church, confidence that devotion to its cause was the call of
God, whatever might happen to their own fortunes, this confidence was
unshaken by the catastrophe of February.
But that crisis had another important result, not much noticed then, but
one which made itself abundantly evident in the times that followed. The
decisive breach between the old parties in the Church, both Orthodox and
Evangelical, and the new party of the movement, with the violent and
apparently irretrievable discomfiture of the latter as the rising force
in Oxford, opened the way and cleared the ground for the formation and
the power of a third school of opinion, which was to be the most
formidable rival of the Tractarians, and whose leaders were eventually
to succeed where the Tractarians had failed, in becoming the masters and
the reformers of the University. Liberalism had hitherto been
represented in Oxford in forms which though respectable from
intellectual vigour were unattractive, sometimes even repulsive. They
were dry, cold, supercilious, critical; they wanted enthusiasm; they
were out of sympathy with religion and the religious temper and aims.
They played, without knowing it, on the edge of the most dangerous
questions. The older Oxford Liberals were either intellectually
aristocratic, dissecting the inaccuracies or showing up the paralogisms
of the current orthodoxy, or they were poor in character, Liberals from
the zest of sneering and mocking at what was received and established,
or from the convenience of getting rid of strict and troublesome rules
of life. They patronised Dissenters; they gave Whig votes; they made
free, in a mild way, with the pet conventions and prejudices of Tories
and High Churchmen. There was nothing inspiring in them, however much
men might respect their correct and sincere lives. But a younger set of
men brought, mainly from Rugby and Arnold's teaching, a new kind of
Liberalism. It was much bolder and more independent than the older
forms, less inclined to put up with the traditional, more searching and
inquisitive 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 the
devotional temper, it was penetrated by a sense of the reality and
seriousness of religion. It saw greater hopes in the present and the
future than the Tractarians. It disliked their reverence for the past
and the received as inconsistent with what seemed evidence of the
providential order of great and fruitful change. It could not enter into
their discipline of character, and shrank from it as antiquated,
unnatural, and narrow. But these younger Liberals were interested in the
Tractarian innovators, and, in a degree, sympathised with them as a
party of movement who had had the courage to risk and sacrifice much for
an unworldly end. And they felt that their own opportunity was come when
all the parties which claimed to represent the orthodoxy of the English
Church appeared to have broken for good with one another, and when their
differences had thrown so much doubt and disparagement on so important
and revered a symbol of orthodoxy as the Thirty-nine Articles. They
looked on partly with amusement, partly with serious anxiety, at the
dispute; they discriminated with impartiality between the strong and the
weak points in the arguments on both sides: and they enforced with the
same impartiality on both of them the reasons, arising out of the
difficulties in which each party was involved, for new and large
measures, for a policy of forbearance and toleration. They inflicted on
the beaten side, sometimes with more ingenuity than fairness, the lesson
that the "wheel had come round full circle" with them; that they were
but reaping as they themselves had sown:--but now that there seemed
little more to fear from the Tractarians, the victorious authorities
were the power which the Liberals had to keep in check. They used their
influence, 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's
in after-times, that the intervention of the Liberals had saved the
Tractarians from complete disaster. It is quite true that the younger
Liberals disapproved the continuance of harsh measures, and some of them
exerted themselves against such measures. They did so in many ways and
for various reasons; from consistency, from feelings of personal
kindness, from a sense of justice, from a sense of interest--some in a
frank and generous spirit, others with contemptuous indifference. But
the debt of the Tractarians to their Liberal friends in 1845 was not so
great as Dean Stanley, thinking of the Liberal party as what it had
ultimately grown to be, supposed to be the case. The Liberals of his
school were then still a little flock: a very distinguished and a very
earnest set of men, but too young and too few as yet to hold the balance
in such a contest. The Tractarians were saved by what they were and what
they had done, and could do, themselves. But it is also true, that out
of these feuds and discords, the Liberal party which was to be dominant
in Oxford took its rise, soon to astonish old-fashioned Heads of Houses
with new and deep forms of doubt more audacious than Tractarianism, and
ultimately to overthrow not only the victorious authorities, but the
ancient position of the Church, and to recast from top to bottom the
institutions of the University. The 13th of February was not only the
final defeat and conclusion of the first stage of the movement. It was
the 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 to
be among the most valuable servants of the English Church, became
clear. If it were doubtful before, in many cases, whether they would
stay with her, the doubt existed no longer. It was now only a question
of time when they would break the tie and renounce their old
allegiance. In the bitter, and in many cases agonising struggle which
they had gone through as to their duty to God and conscience, a sign
seemed now to be given them which they could not mistake. They were
invited, on one side, to come; they were told sternly and scornfully, on
the other, to go. They could no longer be accused of impatience if they
brought their doubts to an end, and made up their minds that their call
was to submit to the claims of Rome, that their place was in its
communion.
Yet there was a pause. It was no secret what was coming. But men
lingered. It was not till the summer that the first drops of the storm
began to fall. Then through the autumn and the next year, friends, whose
names and forms were familiar in Oxford, one by one disappeared and were
lost to it. Fellowships, livings, curacies, intended careers, were given
up. Mr. Ward went. Mr. Capes, who had long followed Mr. Ward's line, and
had spent his private means to build a church near Bridgewater, went
also. Mr. Oakeley resigned Margaret Chapel and went. Mr. Ambrose St.
John, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Dalgairns, Mr. Faber, Mr. T. Meyrick, Mr. Albany
Christie, Mr. R. Simpson of Oriel, were received in various places and
various 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 books
of the College and University, but without giving any reason. The 6th of
October is the date of the "Advertisement" to the work which had
occupied Mr. Newman through the year--the _Essay on the Development of
Christian 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 talked
about by those who dared it, provoked it, or hoped for it, had come
indeed; and a considerable portion of English society learned what it
was to be novices in a religious system, hitherto not only alien and
unknown, but dreaded, or else to have lost friends and relatives, who
were suddenly transformed into severe and uncompromising opponents,
speaking in unfamiliar terms, and sharply estranged in sympathies and
rules of life. Some of them, especially those who had caught the spirit
of their leader, began life anew, took their position as humble learners
in the Roman Schools, and made the most absolute sacrifice of a whole
lifetime that a man can make. To others the change came and was accepted
as an emancipation, not only from the bonds of Anglicanism, but from the
obligations of orders and priestly vows and devotion. In some cases,
where they were married, there was no help for it. But in almost all
cases there was a great surrender of what English life has to offer to
those brought up in it. Of the defeated party, those who remained had
much to think about, between grief at the breaking of old ties, and the
loss of dear friends, and perplexities about their own position. The
anxiety, the sorrow at differing and parting, seem now almost
extravagant and unintelligible. There are those who sneer at the
"distress" of that time. There had not been the same suffering, the same
estrangement, when Churchmen turned dissenters, like Bulteel and Baptist
Noel. But the movement had raised the whole scale of feeling about
religious 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 things
which men could differ about. But in a time of distress, of which few
analogous situations in our days can give the measure, the leaders stood
firm. Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, Mr. Marriott accepted, with unshaken faith
in the cause of the English Church, the terrible separation. They
submitted to the blow--submitted to the reproach of having been
associates of those who had betrayed hopes and done so much mischief;
submitted to the charge of inconsistency, insincerity, cowardice; but
they did not flinch. Their unshrinking attitude was a new point of
departure for those who believed in the Catholic foundation of the
English Church.
Among those deeply affected by these changes, there were many who had
been absolutely uninfluenced by the strong Roman current. They had
recognised many good things in the Roman Church; they were fully alive
to many shortcomings in the English Church; but the possibility of
submission to the Roman claims had never been a question with them. A
typical example of such minds was Mr. Isaac Williams, a pupil of Mr.
Keble, an intimate friend of Mr. Newman, a man of simple and saintly
life, with heart and soul steeped in the ancient theology of undivided
Christendom, and for that very reason untempted by the newer principles
and fashions of Rome. There were numbers who thought like him; but there
were others also, who were forced in afresh upon themselves, and who had
to ask themselves why they stayed, when a teacher, to whom they had
looked up as they had to Mr. Newman, and into whose confidence they had
been admitted, thought it his duty to go. With some the ultimate, though
delayed, decision was to follow him. With others, the old and fair
_proejudicium_ against the claims of Rome, which had always asserted
itself even against the stringent logic of Mr. Ward and the deep and
subtle ideas of Mr. Newman, became, when closed with, and tested face to
face in the light of fact and history, the settled conviction of life.
Some extracts from contemporary papers, real records of the private
perplexities and troubles actually felt at the time, may illustrate what
was passing in the minds of some whom knowledge and love of Mr. Newman
failed to make his followers in his ultimate step. The first extract
belongs to some years before, but it is part of the same train of
thinking.[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 acute
by Mr. Newman's act. There was no longer any respite; his dearest
friends must choose between him and the English Church. And the choice
was made, by those who did not follow him, on a principle little
honoured or believed in at the time on either side, Roman or
Protestant; but a principle which in the long-run restored hope and
energy to a cause which was supposed to be lost. It was not the revival
of the old _Via Media_; it was not the assertion of the superiority of
the English Church; it was not a return to the old-fashioned and
ungenerous methods of controversy with Rome--one-sided in all cases,
ignorant, coarse, unchristian in many. It was not the proposal of a new
theory of the Church--its functions, authority and teaching, a
counter-ideal to Mr. Ward's imposing _Ideal_ It was the resolute and
serious appeal from brilliant logic, and keen sarcasm, and pathetic and
impressive eloquence, to reality and experience, as well as to history,
as to the positive and substantial characteristics of the traditional
and actually existing English Church, shown not on paper but in work,
and in spite of contradictory appearances and inconsistent elements; and
along with this, an attempt to put in a fair and just light the
comparative excellences and defects of other parts of Christendom,
excellences to be ungrudgingly admitted, but not to be allowed to bar
the recognition of defects. The feeling which had often stirred, even
when things looked at the worst, that Mr. Newman had dealt unequally and
hardly with the English Church, returned with gathered strength. The
English Church was after all as well worth living in and fighting for as
any other; it was not only in England that light and dark, in teaching
and in life, were largely intermingled, and the mixture had to be
largely allowed for. We had our Sparta, a noble, if a rough and an
incomplete one; patiently to do our best for it was better than leaving
it to its fate, in obedience to signs and reasonings which the heat of
strife might well make delusive. It was one hopeful token, that boasting
had to be put away from us for a long time to come. In these days of
stress and sorrow were laid the beginnings of a school, whose main
purpose was to see things as they are; which had learned by experience
to distrust unqualified admiration and unqualified disparagement;
determined not to be blinded even by genius to plain certainties; not
afraid to honour all that is great and beneficent in Rome, not afraid
with English frankness to criticise freely at home; but not to be won
over, in one case, by the good things, to condone and accept the bad
things; and not deterred, in the other, from service, from love, from
self-sacrifice, by the presence of much to regret and to resist.
All this new sense of independence, arising from the sense of having
been left almost desolate by the disappearance of a great stay and light
in men's daily life, led to various and different results. In some
minds, after a certain trial, it actually led men back to that Romeward
tendency from which they had at first recoiled. In others, the break-up
of the movement under such a chief led them on, more or less, and some
very 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, it
led to new and increasing efforts to popularise in various ways--through
preaching, organisation, greater attention to the meaning, the
solemnities, and the fitnesses of worship--the ideas of the Church
movement. Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble were still the recognised chiefs of
the continued yet remodelled movement. It had its quarterly organ, the
_Christian Remembrancer_, which had taken the place of the old _British
Critic_ in the autumn of 1844. A number of able Cambridge men had thrown
their knowledge and thoroughness of work into the _Ecclesiologist_.
There were newspapers--the _English Churchman_, and, starting in 1846
from small and difficult beginnings, in the face of long discouragement
and at times despair, the _Guardian_. One mind of great and rare power,
though only recognised for what he was much later in his life, one
undaunted heart, undismayed, almost undepressed, so that those who knew
not its inner fires thought him cold and stoical, had lifted itself
above the wreck at Oxford. The shock which had cowed and almost crushed
some 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 of
individual feeling, represents pretty accurately the temper into which
the Church party settled when the first shock was over. They knew that
henceforward they had difficult times before them. They knew that they
must work under suspicion, even under proscription. They knew that they
must expect to see men among themselves perplexed, unsettled, swept away
by the influences which had affected Mr. Newman, and still more by the
precedent of his example. They knew that they must be prepared to lose
friends and fellow-helpers, and to lose them sometimes unexpectedly and
suddenly, as the wont was so often at this time. Above all, they knew
that they had a new form of antagonism to reckon with, harder than any
they had yet encountered. It had the peculiar sad bitterness which
belongs to civil war, when men's foes are they of their own
households--the bitterness arising out of interrupted intimacy and
affection. Neither side could be held blameless; the charge from the one
of betrayal and desertion was answered by the charge from the other of
insincerity and faithlessness to conscience, and by natural but not
always very fair attempts to proselytise; and undoubtedly, the English
Church, and those who adhered to it, had, for some years after 1845, to
hear from the lips of old friends the most cruel and merciless
invectives which knowledge of her weak points, wit, argumentative power,
eloquence, and the triumphant exultation at once of deliverance and
superiority could frame. It was such writing and such preaching as had
certainly 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 as
controversialists or their culture as scholars. Not to speak of Mr.
Newman, such men as Mr. Oakeley, Mr. Ward, Mr. Faber, and Mr. Dalgairns
more than fulfilled in the great world of London their reputation at
Oxford. This was all in prospect before the eyes of those who had
elected to cast in their lot with the English Church. It was not an
encouraging position. The old enthusiastic sanguineness had been
effectually quenched. Their Liberal critics and their Liberal friends
have hardly yet ceased to remind them how sorry a figure they cut in the
eyes of men of the world, and in the eyes of men of bold and effective
thinking.[126] The "poor Puseyites" are spoken of in tones half of pity
and half of sneer. Their part seemed played out. There seemed nothing
more to make them of importance. They had not succeeded in Catholicising
the English Church, they had not even shaken it by a wide secession.
Henceforth they were only marked men. All that could be said for them
was, that at the worst, they did not lose heart. They had not forgotten
the lessons of their earlier time.
It is not my purpose to pursue farther the course of the movement. All
the world knows that it was not, in fact, killed or even much arrested
by the shock of 1845. But after 1845, its field was at least as much out
of Oxford as in it. As long as Mr. Newman remained, Oxford was
necessarily its centre, necessarily, even after he had seemed to
withdraw from it. When he left his place vacant, the direction of it was
not removed from Oxford, but it was largely shared by men in London and
the country. It ceased to be strongly and prominently Academical. No
one in deed held such a position as Dr. Pusey's and Mr. Keble's; but
though Dr. Pusey continued to be a great power at Oxford, he now became
every day a much greater power outside of it; while Mr. Keble was now
less than ever an Academic, and became more and more closely connected
with men out of Oxford, his friends in London and his neighbours at
Hursley and Winchester. The cause which Mr. Newman had given up in
despair was found to be deeply interesting in ever new parts of the
country: and it passed gradually into the hands of new leaders more
widely acquainted with English society. It passed into the hands of the
Wilberforces, 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 were
rising 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 recruit
from Cambridge, Mr. Beresford Hope. It attracted the sympathy of another
boast of Cambridge, the great Bishop of New Zealand, and his friend Mr.
Whytehead. Those times were the link between what we are now, so changed
in many ways, and the original impulse given at Oxford; but to those
times I am as much of an outsider as most of the foremost in them were
outsiders to Oxford in the earlier days. Those times are almost more
important than the history of the movement; for, besides vindicating it,
they carried on its work to achievements and successes which, even in
the most sanguine days of "Tractarianism," had not presented themselves
to men's minds, much less to their hopes. But that story must be told by
others.
"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 of
Oxford,_ p. 212. "The first panic was succeeded by a reaction; some
devoted adherents followed him (Mr. Newman) to Rome; others relapsed
into lifeless conformity; and the University soon resumed its wonted
tranquillity." "_Lifeless_ conformity" sounds odd connected with Dr.
Pusey or Mr. J.B. Mozley, and the London men who were the founders of
the so-called Ritualist schools.
INDEX
Addresses to Archbishop of Canterbury, by clergy and laity
Anglicanism, its features in 1830
Newman's views on
Newman's interpretation of
_Apologia_, quotations from
Apostolic Succession
Newman's insistence on
its foundation on Prayer Book
Apostolitity of English Church
Archbishop of Canterbury. _See_ Addresses, and Howley
_Arians_, the
Arnold, 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 school
Articles, the, and Dissenters
subscription of. _See_ Dr. Hampden, and Thirty-nine Articles
Baptism, Tract on
_Baptistery_, the
Bennett, Mr.
Bentham. _see_ Utilitarianism
Bernard, Mr. Mountague
Bishoprics, suppression of ten Irish
Bishops' attitude to movement
the first Tract on
Blachford, Lord, reminiscences of Froude
Bliss, James
Blomfield, Bishop
British Association, a sign of the times
_British Critic_ on the movement
_British Magazine_
Brougham, Lord
Bunsen, M., and the Bishopric of Jerusalem
Burton, Dr.
Cambridge, critical school of theology
Capes, Mr.
Cardwell, Dr.
Catastrophe, the
Catholicity of English Church
_Catholicus's_ letters to the _Times_
Celibacy, observations on
Celibate clergy scheme
Changes in movement
_Christian Remembrancer_
_Christian Year_
Christianity, Church of England, two schools of
Christie, Albany
Christie, 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 on
Churton, Mr. (of Crayke)
Claughton, Mr. Piers
Clergy of eighteenth century, character of
Close, Dr. (of Cheltenham)
Coffin, Mr.
Coleridge, Mr. Justice
Coleridge, S.T., influence on Charles Marriott
Church theories
_Conservative Journal_, Newman's language towards Rome
Copeland, William John
Cornish, C.L.
Creeds, the, pamphlets on
authority of
Dalgairns, Mr.
Defeats, the Three, 312-335. _See also_ Isaac Williams,
Macmullen, and Pusey
Dickinson, Dr., "Pastoral Epistle from his Holiness the Pope"
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Society
Dissenters and the Articles. _See also_ Thirty-nine Articles
Dodsworth, Mr.
Dominic, Father, receives Newman into Church of Rome
Donkin, Mr.
Doyle, Sir F., on Newman's sermons
_Ecclesiologist_ founded
Eden, C.P.
_Edinburgh Review_, article by Dr. Arnold on Tractarians
"Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements"
_English Churchman_ founded
Evangelicism in 1830, character of
Faber, Francis
Faber, Frederic
Fasting, Tract on
Faussett, Dr.
attack on Dr. Pusey
Froude, 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 of
Froude, William
Garbett, Mr., elected Professor of Poetry
Gilbert, Dr.
Gladstone, Mr.
Golightly, Mr.
Gorham, Mr.
_Grammar of Assent_ on Faith and Reason
Greenhill, Dr.
_Guardian_ founded
Guillemard, Mr.
Haddan, A.
Hadleigh, Conference of leaders at
policy adopted
Hampden, 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 contest
Hare, Julius
Hawkins, Dr.
Hawkins, E.
Hill, Mr.
Hobhouse, Mr.
Holland House
"Home Thoughts Abroad"
Hook, Dr.
Hope, Mr. Beresford
Howley, Archbishop
Hussey, Mr.
_Ideal of a Christian Church_, _See_ W.G. Ward
Infallibility, views on
Irons, Dr.
Jebb, Bishop
Jelf, Dr.
Jenkyns, Dr.
Jerusalem, Bishopric of
Jerusalem, Bishopric of, Newman's protest against
Jolly, Bishop
Jowett, Mr.
Kaye, Bishop
Keble, 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 Professorship
Keble, Thomas
Knox, Alexander
Law's _Serious Call_, Keble's remark on
Le Bas, Mr.
_Lectures on Justification_, Newman's, influence of
_Letter to the Bishop of Oxford_, Newman's
Letters of an Episcopalian
Lewis, D.
_Library of the Fathers_
Lloyd's, Bishop, Lectures, influence of
Lowe, R.
Lyall, Mr.
_Lyra Apostolica_
Macmullen, Mr.
his contest on B.D. degree
Manning, Archdeacon
Marriott, 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
death
Marsh, Bishop
"Martyrs' Memorial," connexion with the movement
Maurice, F.D., views of
Melbourne, Lord
Meyrick, T.
Miller, John (of Worcester), Bampton Lectures, influence of
Moberly, Dr. (of Winchester)
Monophysite Controversy
Morris, John Brande
Mozley, 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 on
Newman, 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 Rome
Nicknames
"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 School
Oxford 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 of
Oxford Movement--
rise of third school
secessions to Rome
Palmer, William, share in movement
_Origines Liturgicae_
_Narrative_
_Treatise on the Church of Christ_
Palmer, Mr. Roundell
Park, Judge Allan
_Parochial Sermons_
Pattison, Mark
Peel, Sir Robert
Perceval, A., share in movement
Phillpotts, 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 on
Pusey, 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 Church
Reformers, early, views of
_Remonstrance_
"Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge," Isaac
Williams's tract on
Richards, Mr. Upton
Rogers, Frederic
_Romanism and Popular Protestantism_
Romanism
misconceptions of
Newman's attitude towards
tendency in party of movement towards
Rose, Hugh James
an estimate of
lectures on German speculation
controversy with Dr. Pusey
early death
Routh, Dr.
_Rusticus_, pamphlets by
Ryder, G.
St. John, Mr. Ambrose
Scott, Mr. Hope
Scott, W.
Seager, Charles
Selwyn, Bishop
Sewell, William
Shairp, Principal, on Newman's sermons
Sikes, Mr. (of Guilsborough)
Simpson, Mr.
Stanley, Mr. Arthur
Sterling, John
Subscription. _See_ Thirty-nine Articles
Sumner, J. Bird, Bishop
Symons, Dr.
opposition to, as Vice-Chancellor
Tait, Mr. (of Balliol)
Theologians of 1830
Third party in Church--
rise of
influence
Thirlwall, Connop
Thirty-nine Articles, subscription of
Dr. Hampden and subscription
pamphlet war on subscription
Newman on subscription
their Catholicity
_And see_ W.G. Ward "No. 90" on
Thomas, Vaughan
_Times_, letters of _Catholicus_ to
Tottenham, E.
Tractarian doctrines, discussion of
Movement. _See_ Oxford
Tractarians, excitement against
Tract, text of the first
Tracts, 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 Rome
Watson, Joshua
Wellington, Duke of
Whately, Dr.--
theories on Church
opposed to Tractarians
_Letters of an Episcopalian_
White, Blanco
Whytehead, Mr.
Wilberforce, Henry
Wilberforce, Robert
Williams, Isaac
Williams, 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 Donatists
Wood, S.F.
Woodgate, Mr.
Wordsworth, Dr.
Wynter, Dr.
THE END