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.