The Oxford Movement (1833-1845)
The Oxford Movement may be looked upon in two distinct lights.
"The conception which lay at its base," according to the Royal
Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1906, "was that of the
Holy Catholic Church as a visible body upon earth, bound together
by a spiritual but absolute unity, though divided into national
and other sections. This conception drew with it the sense of
ecclesiastical continuity, of the intimate and unbroken connection
between the primitive Church and the Church of England, and of the
importance of the Fathers as guides and teachers. It also tended
to emphasize points of communion between those different branches
of the Church, which recognize the doctrine or fact of Apostolic
Succession" (Report, p. 54). That is the point of view maintained
in the "Tracts for the Times" from 1833 to 1841, which gave its
familiar name to the "Tractarian" Movement. They originated and
ended with John Henry Newman.
But a second, very unlike, account of the matter was put forward
by Newman himself in his "Lectures on Anglican Difficulties" of
1850. There he considers that the drift or tendency of this
remarkable change was not towards a party in the Establishment, or
even towards the first place in it, but away from national
divisions altogether. It was meant ultimately to absorb "the
various English denominations and parties" into the Roman Church,
whence their ancestors had come out at the Reformation. And as
Newman had been leader in the Anglican phase of the movement, so
he opened the way towards Rome, submitted to it in 1845, and made
popular the reasoning on which thousands followed his example.
There seems no other instance adducible from history of a
religious thinker who has moulded on permanent lines the
institution which he quitted, while assigning causes for its
abandonment. But this result was in some measure a consequence of
the "anomalous and singular position", as Dean Church allows, held
by the English Establishment, since it was legally set up under
Elizabeth (Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, 8 May, 1559).
Lord Chatham brought out these anomalies in a famous epigram. "We
have", he remarked, "a Popish Liturgy, Calvinistic articles, and
an Arminian clergy." Such differences were visible from the first.
"It is historically certain," says J.A. Froude, "that Elizabeth
and her ministers intentionally framed the Church formulas so as
to enable every one to use them who would disclaim allegiance to
the Pope." When the Armada was scattered and broken, many
adherents of the old faith appear to have conformed; and their
impetus accounts for the rise of a High Anglican party, whose
chief representative was Launcelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester
(1555-1626). The Anglo-Catholic school was continued by Laud, and
triumphed after the Restoration. In 1662 it expelled from the
Church, Baxter and the Presbyterians. But from the Revolution in
1688 it steadily declined. The non-juring bishops were wholly in
its tradition, which, through obscure by-ways, was handed on from
his father to John Keble and so to Hurrell Froude and Newman.
However, the Laudian or Carolinian divines must not be supposed to
have ever succeeded in driving out their Calvinistic rivals, so
powerful when the Thirty-Nine Articles were drawn up, and known
from Shakespeare's time as Puritans (see Malvolio in "Twelfth
Night"). Andrewes himself, though taking St. Augustine and St.
Thomas for his masters, did not admit the sacerdotal doctrine of
the Eucharist. At every period Baptismal Regeneration, Apostolic
Succession, and the Real Presence were open questions, not decided
one way or another by "the stammering lips of ambiguous
Formularies." If there was a High Church in power, and if what the
Arminians held, as it was wittily said, were all the best livings
in England, yet Calvin's theology, whether a little softened by
Archbishop Whitgift or according to the text of the "Institutes",
never did involve deprivation. It was sheltered by the Articles,
as Catholic tradition was by the Prayer Book; and the balance was
kept between contending schools of opinion by means of the Royal
Supremacy.
Suggested by Thomas Cromwell, asserted in Parliamentary
legislation under Henry VIII (1534), this prime article of
Anglicanism made the king supreme head of the English Church on
earth, and his tribunal the last court of appeal in all cases,
spiritual no less than secular. It has been said of Henry, and is
equally true of Edward VI, that he claimed the whole power of the
keys. Elizabeth, while relinquishing the title of Head and the
administration of holy rites, certainly retained and exercised
full jurisdiction over "all persons and all causes" within the
realm. She extinguished the ancient hierarchy "without any
proceeding in any spiritual court", as Macaulay observes, and she
appointed the new one. She "tuned the pulpit", admonished
archbishops, and even supplied by her own legal authority defects
in the process of episcopal consecration. The Prayer Book itself
is an Act of Parliament. "The supreme tribunal of appeal, in
ecclesiastical causes, from 1559 to 1832," we are told, "was that
created by 25 Hen. VIII, c. 19, which gave an appeal from the
Church Courts to the King in Chancery for lack of justice" (Dodd,
Hist. Canon Law, 232). These powers were exercised by the court of
delegates; in 1832 they were transferred to the judicial committee
of the privy council, whose members may all be laymen; and, if
bishops, they do not sit by virtue of their episcopal office but
as the king's advisers. Contrast will drive the matter home. The
constituent form of the Catholic Church is the pope's universal
jurisdiction (see Florence, Council of; Vatican Council). But the
constituent form of the English Church, as established by
Parliament, is the universal jurisdiction of the Crown. In either
case there is no appeal from the papal or the royal decision. When
Elizabeth broke with the Catholic bishops who would not
acknowledge her spiritual headship, and when William III deprived
Sancroft and his suffragans who refused the oath of allegiance, a
test was applied, dogmatic in 1559, perhaps not less so in 1690,
which proves that no cause of exemption can be pleaded against the
king when he acts as supreme governor of the Church.
Such is the doctrine often called Erastian, from Erastus, a Swiss
theologian (1524-83), who denied to the clergy all power of
excommunication. In England the course of events had run on before
Erastus could publish its philosophy. Politicians like Burghley
and Walsingham acted on no theory, but drew their inspiration from
Henry VIII. The abstract statement of a view which identifies the
Church with the nation and subjects both equally to the king, may
be found in Hooker, "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" (1594-97).
It was vigorously asserted by Selden and the lawyers at all times.
During the critical years of the nineteenth century, Arnold,
Stanley and Kingsley were its best known defenders among
clergymen. Stanley declared that the Church of England "is by the
very conditions of its being neither High nor Low, but Broad"
("Ed. Rev.", July, 1850). In coarser but equally practical terms
men said, "The Church was grafted upon the State, and the State
would remain master." No ruling, in fact, of bishop or convocation
need be regarded by Anglicans, lay or clerical, unless it implies,
at all events tacitly, the consent of the Crown, i.e. of
Parliament.
So long as the State excluded Dissenters and Catholics from its
offices, the system, in spite of the Great Rebellion, nay after
the more truly disastrous Revolution of 1688, worked as well as
could be expected. But in 1828 the Test Act was repealed; next
year Catholic Emancipation was passed into law. In 1830 the French
drove out their Bourbon dynasty; Belgium threw off the yoke of
Holland. In 1832 came the Reform Bill, which Tories construed into
an attack on the church. What would the Royal Supremacy mean if
Parliament was no longer to be exclusively Anglican? Lord Grey
told the bishops to set their house in order; ten Irish bishoprics
were suppressed. Arnold wrote in 1832, "The Church, as it now
stands, no human power can save." Whately thought it difficult to
"preserve the Establishment from utter overthrow." Alexander Knox,
a far-seeing Irish writer, said, "The old High Church race is worn
out." The "Clapham" sect of Evangelicals, who came down from
Calvin, and the "Clapton sect", otherwise called High and Dry, who
had no theology at all, divided "serious" people among them.
Bishops were great persons who amassed wealth for their families,
and who had attained to place and influence by servile offices or
by editing Greek plays. In the presence of threatened revolution
they sat helpless and bewildered. From them neither counsel nor
aid was to be expected by earnest churchmen. Arnold would have
brought in Dissenters by a "comprehension" which sacrificed dogma
to individual judgment. Whateley protested against "that double
usurpation, the interference of the Church in temporals, of the
State in spirituals." A notable preacher and organizer, Dr. Hook,
"first gave body and force to Church theology, not to be mistaken
or ignored." But it was from Oxford, "the home of lost causes",
always Cavalier at heart, still "debating its eternal Church
question as in the days of Henry IV", that salvation came.
Oriel, once illustrated by Raleigh and Butler, was now the most
distinguished college in the university. For some thirty years it
had welcomed original thinkers, and among its fellows were or had
been, Copleston, Whateley, Hawkins, Davison, Keble, Arnold, Pusey,
and Hurrell Froude. "This knot of Oriel men", says Pattison, "was
distinctly the product of the French Revolution." Those among them
who indulged in "free inquiry" were termed "Noetics"; they "called
everything in question; they appealed to first principles, and
disallowed authority in intellectual matters." The university,
which Pattison describes as "a close clerical corporation", where
all alike had sworn to the Prayer Book and Articles, had thus in
its bosom a seed of "Liberalism", and was menaced by changes
analogous to the greater revolution in the State itself. Reaction
came, as was to be expected, in the very college that had
witnessed the provocation. Oxford, of all places, would surely be
the last to accept French and democratic ideas.
John Keble (1792-1865) was the leading fellow of Oriel. As a mere
boy, he had carried off the highest honours of the university. In
1823 he became his father's curate at Fairford, and in 1827 he
published "The Christian Year", a cycle of poems or meditations in
verse, refined, soothing, and akin to George Herbert's "The
Temple", by their spiritual depth and devout attachment to the
English Church. They have gone through innumerable editions.
Keble, though a scholarly mind, had no grasp of metaphysics. An
ingrained conservative, he took over the doctrines, and lived on
the recollection of the Laudian school. Without ambition, he was
inflexible, never open to development, but gentle, shrewd, and
saintly. His convictions needed an Aaron to make them widely
effective; and he found a voice in his pupil, the "bright and
beautiful" Froude, whose short life (1802-36) counts for much in
the Oxford Movement. Froude was the connecting link between Keble
and Newman. His friendship, at the moment when Newman's
Evangelical prejudices were fading and his inclination towards
Liberalism had received a sharp check by "illness and
bereavement", proved to be the one thing needful to a temper which
always leaned on its associates, and which absorbed ideas with the
vivacity of genius. So the fusion came about. Elsewhere (see JOHN
HENRY NEWMAN) is related the story of those earlier years in
which, from various sources, the future Tractarian leader gained
his knowledge of certain Catholic truths, one by one. But their
living unity and paramount authority were borne in upon him by
discussions with Froude, whose teacher was Keble. Froude, says
Newman, "professed openly his admiration for the Church of Rome,
and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of an
hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full
ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, 'the Bible and
the Bible only is the religion of Protestants'; and he gloried in
accepting tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He
has a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of virginity .
. He delighted in thinking of the saints . . . He embraced the
principle of penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to
the Real Presence in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully
drawn to the Medieval Church, but not to the Primitive." ("Apol.",
p. 24)
These, remarkably enough, are characteristics of the later phases
of the Movement, known as Ritualism, rather than of its beginning.
Yet Newman's friendship with Froude goes back to 1826; they became
very intimate after the rejection of Peel by the university in
1829; and the Roman tendencies, of which mention is made above,
cannot but have told powerfully on the leader, when his hopes for
Anglicanism were shattered by the misfortunes of "Tract 90".
Keble, on the other hand, had "a great dislike of Rome", as well
as of "Dissent and Methodism." The first years of the revival were
disfigured by a strong anti-Roman polemic, which Froude, on his
death-bed, condemned as so much "cursing and swearing." But Newman
had been as a youth "most firmly convinced that the Pope was the
Antichrist predicted by Daniel, St. Paul and St. John." His
imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine as late as
the year 1843. In consequence, his language towards the ancient
Church only just fell short of the vituperation lavished on it by
the Puritans themselves. The movement, therefore, started, not on
Roman ground, but in a panic provoked by the alliance of O Connell
with the Whigs, of Dissenters with Benthamites, intent on
destroying all religious establishments. How could they be
resisted? Newman answers in his opening tract, addressed to the
clergy by one of themselves, a fellow-presbyter, "I fear", he
tells them, "we have neglected the real ground on which our
authority is built, our Apostolical descent." And he made his
appeal to the ordination service in other words, to the Prayer
Book and the sacramental system, of which the clergy were the
Divinely appointed ministers.
The first three tracts are dated 9 September, 1833. Newman and
Froude, after their voyage to the Mediterranean in Dec. 1832, had
returned in the midst of an agitation in which they were speedily
caught up. Keble's sermon in itself not very striking on "National
Apostasy", had marked 14 July, 1833, as the birthday of a "second
Reformation." At Hadleigh, H.J. Rose and three other clergymen had
met in conference, 25 29 July, and were endeavoring to start a
society of Church defence, with machinery and safeguards, as
befitted responsible persons. But Newman would not be swamped by
committees. "Luther", he wrote, "was an individual." He proposed
to be an Apostolical Luther. He was not now tutor of Oriel.
Hawkins had turned him out of office a curious acknowledgement of
the vote by which he had made Hawkins provost instead of Keble.
But he was Vicar of St. Mary's a parish dependent on Oriel, and
the university church. His pulpit was one of the most famous in
England. He knew the secret of journalism, and had at his command
a stern eloquence, barbed by convictions, which his reading of the
Fathers and the Anglican folios daily strengthened. He felt
supreme confidence in his position. But he was not well read in
the history of the Anglican origins or of the Royal Supremacy. His
Church was an ideal; never, certainly, since the legislation of
Henry and Elizabeth had the English Establishment enjoyed the
freedom he sought. It had issued articles of faith imposed by
political expediency; it had tolerated among its communicants
Lutherans, Calvinists, Erastians, and in the persons of high
dignitaries like Bishop Hoadley even Socinians. It had never been
self-governing in the past any more than it was now. If the "idea
or first principle" of the movement was "ecclesiastical liberty",
it must be pronounced a failure; for the Royal Supremacy as
understood by lawyers and lamented over by High Church divines is
still intact.
On that side, therefore, not a shadow of victory appears. Anyone
may believe the doctrines peculiar to Tractarian theology, and any
one may reject them, without incurring penalties in the Church
Establishment. They are opinions, not dogmas, not the exclusive
teaching that alone constitutes a creed. Fresh from Aristotle's
"Ethics", where virtue is said to lie in a mean, the Oriel scholar
termed his position the Via Media; it was the golden mean that
avoided papal corruptions and Protestant heresies. But did it
exist anywhere except in books? Was it not "as a doctrine, wanting
in simplicity, hard to master, indeterminate in its provisions,
and without a substantive existence in any age or country?" Newman
did not deny that "it still remains to be tried whether what is
called Anglo-Catholicism, the religion of Andrewes, Laud, Hammond,
Butler, and Wilson, is capable of being professed, acted on, and
maintained . . . or whether it be a mere modification or
transition-state of Romanism or of popular Protestantism." The Via
Media was an experiment. Perhaps the Established Church "never
represented a doctrine at all . . . never had an intellectual
basis"; perhaps it has "been but a name, or a department of State"
(Proph. Office, Introd.). To this second conclusion the author
finally came; but not until during eight years he had made trial
of his "middle way" and had won to it a crowd of disciples. The
Tractarian Movement succeeded after his time in planting among the
varieties of Anglican religious life a Catholic party. It failed
altogether in making of the Establishment a Catholic Church.
Palmer, of Worcester College, and his clerical associates
presented an address in 1834, signed with 10,000 names, to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, defending the imperilled interests.
Joshua Watson, a leading layman, brought up one more emphatic, to
which 230,000 heads of families gave their adhesion. But of these
collective efforts no lasting results came, although they
frightened the Government and damped its revolutionary zeal. Mr.
Rose, a man of high character and distinction, had started the
"British Magazine" as a Church organ; the conference at Hadleigh
was due to him; and he seemed to be marked out as chief over
"nobodies" like Froude and Newman. His friends objected to the
"Tracts" which were the doing of these free lances. Newman,
however, would not give way. His language about the Reformation
offended Mr. Rose, who held it to be a "deliverance"; and while
Froude was eager to dissolve the union of Church and State, which
he considered to be the parent or the tool of "Liberalism" in
doctrine, he called Rose a "conservative." Between minds thus
drawing in opposite directions any real fellowship was not likely
to endure. Rose may be termed an auxiliary in the first stage of
Church defence; he never was a Tractarian; and he died in 1839.
His ally, William Palmer, long survived him. Palmer, an Irish
Protestant, learned and pompous, had printed his "Origines
Liturgicae" in 1832, a volume now obsolete, but the best book for
that period on the Offices of the Church of England. His later
"Treatise on the Church", of 1838, was purely Anglican and
therefore anti-Roman; it so far won the respect of Father Perrone,
S.J., that he replied to it.
Palmer was no Tractarian either, as his "Narrative of Events",
published in 1843, sufficiently proves. The difference may be
sharply stated. Genuine Anglicans identified the Catholic Church
once for all with the local body of which they were members, and
interpreted the phenomena whether of medieval or reformed
Christianity on this principle; they were Englishmen first and
Catholics after. Not so with Newman, who tells us, "I felt
affection for my own Church, but not tenderness . . . if
Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of the
victory in the event. I saw that Reformation principles were
powerless to rescue her. As to leaving her, the thought never
crossed my imagination; still I ever kept before me that there was
something greater than the Established Church, and that was the
Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which
she was but the local presence and the organ." These divergent
views went at last asunder in 1845.
"The new Tracts," says Dean Church, "were received with surprise,
dismay, ridicule, and indignation. But they also at once called
forth a response of eager sympathy from numbers." An active
propaganda was started all over the country. Bishops were
perplexed at so bold a restatement of the Apostolic Succession, in
which they hardly believed. Newman affirmed the principle of
dogma; a visible Church with sacraments and rites as the channels
of invisible grace; a Divinely ordained episcopal system as
inculcated by the Epistles of St. Ignatius. But the Erastian or
Liberal did not set store by dogma; and the Evangelical found no
grace ex opere operato in the sacraments. Episcopacy to both of
them was but a convenient form of Church government, and the
Church itself a voluntary association. Now the English bishops,
who were appointed by Erastians ("an infidel government" is
Keble's expression), dreaded the power of Evangelicals. At no time
could they dare to support the "Tracts." Moreover, to quote
Newman, "All the world was astounded at what Froude and I were
saying; men said that it was sheer Popery." There were searchings
of heart in England, the like of which had not been felt since the
non-jurors went out. Catholics had been emancipated; and "those
that sat in the reformers seats were traducing the Reformation."
To add to the confusion, the Liberalizing attack on the university
had now begun. In 1834 Dr. Hampden wrote and sent to Newman his
pamphlet, in which he recommended the abolition of tests for
Dissenters, or technically, of subscription to the Articles by
undergraduates. On what grounds? Because, he said, religion was
one thing, theological opinion another. The Trinitarian and
Unitarian doctrines were merely opinions, and the spirit of the
English Church was not the spirit of dogma. Hampden did little
more than repeat the well-known arguments of Locke and
Chillingworth; but he was breaking open the gates of Oxford to
unbelief, as Newman foresaw, and the latter answered wrathfully
that Hampden's views made shipwreck of the Christian faith. "Since
that time", says the "Apologia", "Phaethon has got into the
chariot of the sun; we, alas, can only look on, and watch him down
the steep of heaven." In Mark Pattison's phrase, the University
has been secularized. The Noetics of Oriel were followed by the
Broad Churchmen of Balliol, and these by the agnostics of a more
recent period. From Whateley and Arnold, through the stormy days
of "Tract 90" and Ward's "degradation" we come down to the Royal
Commission of 1854, which created modern Oxford. Subscription to
the Articles was done away; fellowships ceased to be what some one
has styled "clerical preserves"; there was an "outbreak of
infidelity", says Pattison with a sneer, and names like Arthur
Clough, Matthew Arnold, J.A. Froude, Jowett, and Max M�ller
triumphantly declare that the Liberals had conquered.
Newman lost the university, but he held it entranced for years by
his visible greatness, by his preaching, and by his friendships.
The sermons, of which eight volumes are extant, afforded a severe
yet most persuasive commentary upon tracts and treatises, in
themselves always of large outlook and of nervous though formal
style. These, annotated after 1870 from the Catholic point of
view, were reprinted in "Via Media", "Historical Sketches",
"Discussions and Arguments", and two volumes of "Essays" (see
popular editions of his Works, 1895). Keble republished Hooker as
if an Anglo-Catholic Aquinas (finished 1836); and from the chair
of poetry were delivered his graceful Latin "Pr�lections", deeply
imbued with the same religious colouring. Hurrell Froude attempted
a sketch of his own hero, St. Thomas a Becket, pattern of all
anti-Erastians. Bowden compiled the life of Pope Gregory VII,
evidently for the like motive. Nor were poetical manifestos
wanting. To the "Lyra Apostolica" we may attribute a strong
influence over many who could not grasp the subtle reasoning which
filled Newman's "Prophetic Office." Concerning the verses from his
pen, A.J. Froude observes that, in spite of their somewhat rude
form, "they had pierced into the heart and mind and there
remained." "Lead, Kindly Light", he adds, "is perhaps the most
popular hymn in the language." Here, indeed, "were thoughts like
no other man's thoughts, and emotions like no other man's
emotions." To the "Lyra", Keble and others also contributed poems.
And High Anglican stories began to appear in print.
But inspiration needed a constant power behind it, if the tracts
were not to be a flash in the pan. It was given in 1834 and 1835
by the accession to the movement of E.B. Pusey, Canon of Christ
Church and Hebrew professor. Pusey had enormous erudition, gained
in part at German universities; he was of high social standing
(always impressive to Englishmen), and revered as a saint for his
devout life, his munificence, his gravity. Though a "dull and
tedious preacher", most confused and unrhetorical, the weight of
his learning was felt. He took the place that Mr. Rose could not
have occupied long. At once the world out of doors looked up to
him as official head of the movement. It came to be known as
"Puseyism" at home and abroad. University wits had jested about
"Newmaniacs" and likened the Vicar of St. Mary's to the conforming
Jew, Neander; but "Puseyite" was a serious term even in rebuke.
The Tractarian leader showed a deference to this "great man" which
was always touching; yet they agreed less than Pusey understood.
Towards Rome itself the latter felt no drawing; Newman's
fierceness betrayed the impatience of a thwarted affection. "O
that thy creed were sound, thou Church of Rome!" he exclaimed in
the bitterness of his heart. Pusey, always mild, has none of that
"hysterical passion." Neither did he regard the judgment of
bishops as decisive, nor was he troubled by them if they ran
counter the Fathers teaching, so intimately known to this
unwearied student.
He was "a man of large designs", confident in his position,
"haunted by no intellectual perplexities." He welcomed
responsibility, a little too much sometimes; and now he gave the
tracts a more important character. His own in 1835 on Holy Baptism
was an elaborate treatise, which led to others on a similar model.
In 1836 he advertised his great project for a translation or
"library" of the Fathers, which was executed mainly in conjunction
with the pious and eccentric Charles Marriot. The republication of
Anglican divines, from Andrewes onwards, likewise owed its
inception to Pusey. The instauratio magna of theology and
devotion, intended to be purely Catholic, thus made a beginning.
It has taken on it since the largest dimensions, and become not
only learned but popular; Anglican experts have treated the
liturgy, church history, books for guidance in the spiritual life,
hymnology, architecture and ritual with a copious knowledge and
remarkable success. Of these enterprises Dr. Pusey was the source
and for many years the standard.
In 1836 Hurrell Froude, returning from Barbadoes in the last stage
of weakness, died at his father's house in Devonshire. His
"Remains", of which we shall speak presently, were published in
1837. Newman's dearest friend was taken from him just as a fresh
scene opened, with alarums and excursions to be repeated during
half a century -- legal "persecutions", acts of reprisals,
fallings away on the right hand and the left. Froude died on 28
February, 1836. In May Dr. Hampden -- who had been appointed,
thanks to Whateley, Regius Professor of Divinity on 7 Feb. -- was
censured by the heads of houses, the governing board of the
university, for the unsound doctrine taught in his "Bampton
Lectures". All the Oxford residents at this time, except a
handful, were incensed by what they considered the perils to faith
which Dr. Hampden's free-thought was provoking. But it was Newman
who, by his "Elucidations", pointed the charge, and gave to less
learned combatants an excuse for condemning what the had not read.
Nemesis lay in wait on his threshold. The Evangelicals who trooped
into Convocation to vote against Hampden "avowed their desire that
the next time they were brought up to Oxford, it might be to put
down the Popery of the Movement."
At this date even Pusey celebrated the Reformers as "the founders
of our Church"; and that largely fabulous account of the past
which Newman calls "the Protestant tradition" was believed on all
sides. Imagine, then, how shocked and alarmed were old-fashioned
parsons of every type when Froude's letters and diaries upset
"with amazing audacity" these "popular and conventional
estimates"; when the Reformation was described as "a limb badly
set", its apologist Jewel flung aside as "an irreverent
Dissenter", its reasoning against the Catholic mysteries denounced
as the fruit of a proud spirit which would make short work of
Christianity itself. Froude, in his graphic correspondence,
appeared to be the enfant terrible who had no reserves and no
respect for "idols" whether of the market-place or the theatre.
Friends were pained, foes exultant; "sermons and newspapers", says
Dean Church, "drew attention to Froude's extravagances with horror
and disgust." The editors, Keble no less than Newman, had
miscalculated the effect, which was widely irritating and which
increased the suspicion their own writings had excited of some
deep-laid plot in favour of Rome (Letter to Faussett, June, 1835).
To be at once imprudent and insidious might seem beyond man's
power; but such was the reputation Tractarians bore from that day.
Froude s outspoken judgments, however, marked the turning of the
tide in ecclesiastical history. "The divines of the Reformation",
continues Dean Church, "never can be again, with their confused
Calvinism, with their shifting opinions, their extravagant
deference to the foreign oracles of Geneva and Zurich, their
subservience to bad men in power, the heroes and saints of
Churchmen." Since Cobbet's indictment of the Reformation no
language had so stirred the rage of "general ignorance", long
content to take its legends on trust. Froude's "Remains" were a
challenge to it in one way, as the "Library of the Fathers" was in
another, and yet again the ponderous "Catenas" of High Church
authorities, to which by and by the "Parker Society" answered with
its sixty-six volumes, mostly unreadable, of the Cranmer,
Bullinger and Zurich pattern. The Reformation theology was doomed.
What the "Anglican regiment" has accomplished, J.A. Froude
proclaims, "is the destruction of the Evangelical party in the
Church of England."
When Samson pulled down the temple of the Philistines, he was
buried in its ruins. Newman did not shrink from that sacrifice; he
was ready to strike and be stricken. Though Hampden's condemnation
would never have been carried by the Tractarians alone, they gave
it a force and an edge in the very spirit of Laud. To put down
false teachers by authority, to visit them with penalties of
censure and deprivation, they held was the duty of the Church and
of the State as God's minister. They would have repealed Catholic
Emancipation. They resisted the grant to the College of Maynooth.
They had saved the Prayer Book from amendments, and frightened
politicians, who would have distributed the spoils of the Church
among more or less "Liberal" schemes. By the year 1838 they had
won their place in Oxford; the "Times" was coming over to their
side; Bampton Lectures were beginning to talk of Catholic
tradition as the practical rule of faith; and Evangelicals,
infuriated if not dismayed, were put on their defence. Whateley
from Dublin, Hawkins, Faussett, Hampden, Golightly, in Oxford,
were calling up a motley array, united on one point only, that
Tractarians must be handled as the emissaries of Rome. Dr. Arnold
in the Edinburgh launched an invective against the "Oxford
Malignants", accusing them of "moral dishonesty." Newman's former
friend, Whateley, shrieked over "this rapidly increasing
pestilence", and transfixed its leaders with epithets; they were
"veiled prophets"; their religion was "Thuggee"; they were working
out "infidel designs." Lord Morpeth in the House of Commons
trampled on "a sect of damnable and detestable heretics lately
sprung up at Oxford", and mentioned Newman by name. From every
quarter of the compass a storm was blowing up; but it moved round
a thunder cloud called "Rome".
"Just at this time, June, 1838", says Newman, "was the zenith of
the Tract Movement." A change of fortune began with his bishop's
charge, animadverting lightly on its Roman tendencies, to which
the answer came at once from Newman, that if it was desired he
would suppress the tracts. It was not asked of him; but he had
written to Bowden the significant words, "I do not see how the
bishop can materially alter his charge or how I can bear any blow
whatever." Some of his friends objected to publishing the tract on
the Roman Breviary; for it was not then realized how much the
Anglican Prayer Book owes to Catholic, i.e. to Latin and papal
sources. Newman impatiently rejoined that they must have
confidence in him. To Keble he disclosed his idea of giving up the
tracts, the "British Critic", and St. Mary's. For while preaching
high Anglican doctrine, he said, "one cannot stop still. Shrewd
minds anticipate conclusions, oblige one to say yes or no." He
collected in January, 1839, "all the strong things" which he and
others had flung out against the Church of Rome, and made of them
"advertisements" to the Puseyite publications. By way of protest
on the Low Church side, bishops, clergy, and laity united in the
Martyrs Memorial to Cranmer and Latimer, set up near the spot
where they suffered, in front of Balliol College. But the tracts
were selling faster than the printers could meet the demand. In
July, Newman, taking up again his always projected and never
issued edition of Dionysius of Alexandria, plunged into the record
of the Monophysites and the Council of Chalcedon. In September he
wrote to F. Rogers, "I have had the first real hit from Romanism";
an allusion to Wiseman's telling article on the Donatist schism in
the "Dublin" for August. Walking with H. Wilberforce in the New
Forest he made to him the "astounding confidence" that doubt was
upon him, thanks to "the position of St. Leo in the Monophysite
controversy, and the principle 'Securis judicat orbit terrarum' in
that of the Donatists." A vista had opened to the end of which he
did not see. His mind was never settled again in Anglicanism. "He
has told the story with so keen a feeling of its tragic and
pathetic character", as Dean Church truly says, "that it will
never cease to be read where the English language is spoken." It
was the story of a deliverance. But still Samson paid for it with
all he held dear.
Parallels from antiquity might affect a student like Newman. To
the many, inside or beyond Oxford, they meant nothing. The live
question always was, how to combat Rome, which appeared at the end
of every vista as the goal of Tractarian reasoning. The "shrewd
minds" which now harried and drove on their leader did not take to
any "middle way"; these men cut into the movement at right angles
and sang loudly Tendimus in Latium, they were pilgrims to St.
Peter's shrine. J.B. Morris, Dalgairns, Oakeley, Macmullen
(converts in the sequel), came round Newman while his older
associates had not advanced. But the captain of the band was W. G.
Ward, lecturer at Balliol, a friend of Stanley's and for a time
attracted by Arnold, then suddenly changed for the good by the
sermons at St. Mary's, with his one sole article of faith, Credo
in Newmannum. Ward, a strange, joyous, provoking figure, pervading
the university with his logic and his jokes,was the enfant
terrible of this critical time as Froude had been previously. They
differed in a hundred ways; but both certainly urged Newman
forward at a pace he would not have chosen. Froude "did not seem
to be afraid of inferences"; Ward revelled in them. It was Froude
who first taught Newman "to look with admiration towards the
Church of Rome." Ward, of all men the least inclined to
compromise, did not care one jot for the Church of England, except
insofar as it could be proved Catholic, by which he understood, as
Protestants and Liberals did before him, the doctrine and
discipline of the papal communion. He had "the intellect of an
archangel", as he said ingenuously; his acuteness and audacity
were a continual challenge to Newman, who partly resented but
still more yielded to them; and so the problem took a formidable
shape: how much on "infused Catholicism" would the Establishment
bear. It was "like proving cannon." The crucial test was applied
in "Tract 90", which came out on 27 February, 1841. Once more, as
in the case of Froude's "Remains", Newman miscalculated. He had
drifted so far that he lost sight of the ever-enduring
Protestantism which, to this day, is the bulwark of the national
feeling against Rome. He thought his peace-offering would not
cause offence. But Ward prophesied, and his instinct proved true,
that it would "be hotly received." A lively epistle from Church
(afterwards Dean of St. Paul s) to F. Rogers at Naples shows the
storm raging early in March. What "Tract 90" affirmed was that the
Thirty-Nine Articles might be signed in a Catholic, though not in
a Roman sense; that they did not condemn the Council of Trent,
which in 1562, the date of their publication, was not ended; and
that a distinction must be drawn between the corruptions of
popular religion and the formal decrees approved by the Holy See.
It is now admitted, in the language of J.A. Froude, that "Newman
was only claiming a position for himself and his friends which had
purposely left open when the constitution of the Anglican Church
was framed." But he appeared to be an innovator and , in that
excited season, a traitor. The Philistines held him bound by his
own cords; Erastians or Evangelicals, they well knew that his
bishop would not shield him from attack. Four leading tutors,
egged on by the fanatical Golightly, and including A.C. Tait,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, demanded the writer's name
and charged him with dangerous tendencies. The hebdomadal board
now retorted on Newman the "persecution" dealt out on Hampden.
They would not wait even twelve hours for his defence. They
resolved on 15 March, that "modes of interpretation such as are
suggested in the said Tract, evading rather than explaining the
sense of the Thirty-nine Article, and reconciling subscription to
them with the adoption of errors, which they were designed to
counteract, defeat the object, and are inconsistent with the due
observance of the above mentioned Statutes."
This anathema was posted up on every buttery hatch, or public
board, of the colleges, as a warning to undergraduates. Newman
acknowledged his authorship in a touching letter, perhaps too
humble; and a war of pamphlets broke out. Keble, Palmer, and Pusey
stood up for the tract, though Pusey could not bring himself to
approve of its method unconditionally. But Ward, with great
effect, hurled back the charge of "insincerity" on those who made
it. How could Whateley and Hampden use the services for baptism,
visitation of the sick, or ordination, all dead against their
acknowledged principles? But neither did Ward follow Newman. Later
on, he described the articles as "patient of a Catholic but
ambitious of a Protestant meaning." Whatever their logic, their
rhetoric was undoubtedly Protestant. For himself, in subscribing
them, he renounced no Roman doctrine. This, like all Ward's
proceedings, was pouring oil on fire. Newman had made the mistake
of handling an explosive matter without precaution, in the dry
legal fashion of an advocate, instead of using his his
incomparable gift of language to persuade and convince. His
refinements were pilloried as "Jesuitism" , and his motive was
declared to be treason. An immense commotion followed. The
"Apologia" describes it, "In every part of the country, and every
class of society, through every organ and opportunity of opinion,
in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at dinner-
tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway-carriages, I was denounced as
a traitor who had laid his train, and was detected in the very act
of firing it against the time-honoured Establishment." His place
in the movement was gone.
He would not withdraw the tract; he reiterated its arguments in a
Letter to Dr. Jeff; but at his bishop's request he brought the
series to an end, addressing him in a strikingly beautiful
pamphlet, which severed his own connection with the party he had
led. He retired to Littlemore; and there, he says, "between July
and November I received three blows that broke me." First, in
translating St. Athanasius, he came on the Via Media once more;
but it was that of the heretical Semi-Arians. Second, the bishops,
contrary to an "understanding" given him, began to charge
violently, as of set purpose, against "Tract 90", which they
accused of Romanizing and dishonesty. Last came the unholy
alliance between England and Prussia by which an Anglican Bishop
was appointed at Jerusalem over a flock comprising, it would
appear, not only Lutherans but Druses and other heretics. The
"Confession of Augsburg" was to be their standard. Now, "if
England could be in Palestine, Rome might be in England." The
Anglican Church might have the Apostolical Succession; so had the
Monophysites; but such acts led Newman to suspect that since the
sixteenth century it had never been a Church at all.
Now then he was a "pure Protestant", held back from Rome simply by
its apparent errors and idolatries. Or were these but
developments, after all of the primitive type and really true to
it? He had converted Ward by saying that "the Church of the
Fathers might be corrupted into Popery, never into Protestantism."
Did not living institutions undergo changes by a law of their
being that realized their nature more perfectly? and was the Roman
Church an instance? At Littlemore the great book was to be
composed "On the Development of Christian Doctrine", which viewed
this problem in the light of history and philosophy. Newman
resigned St. Mary's in September, 1843. He waited two years in lay
communion before submitting to Rome, and fought every step of the
journey. Meanwhile the movement went on. Its "acknowledged leader"
according to Dean Stanley was now W.G. Ward. On pure Anglicans a
strong influence was exerted by J.B. Mozley, Newman's brother-in-
law. Keble, who was at odds with his bishop, vacated the chair of
poetry; and the Tractarian candidate, Isaac Williams, was defeated
in January, 1842. Williams had innocently roused slumbering
animosities by his "Tract 80", on "Reserve in communicating
religious knowledge", a warning, as ever since, Low Church
partisans have maintained, that the Establishment was to be
secretly indoctrinated with "Romish errors." The heads of houses
now proposed to repeal their censure of 1836 on Hampden, though he
withdrew not a line of his Bampton Lectures. It was too much.
Convocation threw out the measure by a majority of three to two.
Hampden, by way of revenge, turned the formal examination of a
Puseyite, Macmullen of Corpus, for the B.D. into a demand for
assent to propositions which, as he well knew, Macmullen could not
sign. The vice-chancellor backed up Hampden; but the Delegates
reversed that iniquitous judgment and gave the candidate his
degree. The spirit of faction was mounting high. Young men's
testimonials for orders were refused by their colleges. A statute
was brought up in February, 1844, to place the granting of all
divinity degrees under a board in conjunction with the vice-
chancellor, which would mean the exclusion from them of
Tractarians. This, indeed, was rejected by 341 votes to 21. But
Newman had said a year earlier, that the authorities were bent on
exerting their "more than military power" to put down Catholicism.
R. W. Church calls them an irresponsible and incompetent
oligarchy. Their chiefs were such as Hawkins, Symons, and
Cardwell, bitterly opposed to the movement all through. As Newman
had retired, they struck at Pusey; and by a scandalous inquisition
of "the six doctors" they suspended him, without hearing a word of
his defence, from preaching for two years, 2 June, 1843. His crime
consisted in a moderate Anglican sermon on the Holy Eucharist.
Espionage, delation, quarrels between heads and tutors, rejection
of Puseyites standing for fellowships, and a heated suspicion as
though a second Popish Plot were in the air, made this time at
Oxford a drama which Dean Church likens to the Greek faction-
fights described by Thucydides. The situation could not last. A
crisis might have been avoided by good sense on the part of the
bishops outside, and the ruling powers within the university. It
was precipitated by W. G. Ward. Ejected from his lectureship at
Balliol, he wrote violent articles between 1841 and 1843 in the
"British Critic", no longer in Newman's hands. His conversation
was a combat; his words of scorn for Anglican doctrines and
dignitaries flew round the colleges. In 1843 Palmer of Worcester
in his dreary "Narrative of Events" objected strongly to Ward's
"Romanizing" tendencies. The "British Critic" just then came to an
end. Ward began a pamphlet in reply; it swelled to 600 pages, and
in the summer of 1844 burst on an irritated public as "The Ideal
of a Christian Church."
Its method was simple. The writer identified all that was Roman
with all that was Catholic; and proceeded to apply this test to
the Church of England, which could ill bear it. Rome satisfied the
conditions of what a Church ought to be; the Establishment
shamefully neglected its duties as a "guardian of morality" and a
"teacher of orthodoxy." It ignored the supernatural; it allowed
ethics to be thrown overboard by its doctrine of justification
without works; it had no real Saints because it neither commended
nor practised the counsels of perfection; it was a schismatic body
which ought humbly to sue for pardon at the feet of the true Bride
of Christ. To evade the spirit of the Articles while subscribing
them, where necessary, in a "non-natural" sense, was the only
alternative Ward could allow to breaking with Anglicanism
altogether. Unlike Newman, who aimed at reconciling differences,
and to whom the Lutheran formula was but "a paradox or a truism",
Ward repudiated the "solifidian" view as an outrage on the Divine
sanctity; it was "a type of Antichrist", and in sound reason no
better than Atheism. So his "relentless and dissolving logic" made
any Via Media between Catholics and Protestants impossible. The
very heart of the Elizabethan compromise he plucked out. His
language was diffuse, his style heavy, his manner to the last
degree provoking. But whereas "Tract 90" did not really state, and
made no attempt to resolve, the question at issue, Ward's "Ideal"
swept away ambiguous terms and hollow reconcilements; it
contrasted, however clumsily, the types of saintliness which were
in dispute; it claimed for the Catholic standard not toleration,
but supremacy; and it put the Church of England on its knees
before Rome.
How could Oxford or the clergy endure such a lesson? So complete a
change of attitude on the part of Englishmen, haughtily erect on
the ruins of the old religion, was not to be dreamt of. This,
then, was what "Tract 90" had in view with its subtleties and
subterfuges a second Cardinal Pole absolving the nation as it lay
in the dust, penitent. The result, says Dean Stanley, was "the
greatest explosion of theological apprehension and animosity"
known to his time. Not even the tract had excited a more immediate
or a more powerful sensation. Ward's challenge must be taken up.
He claimed, as a priest in the Church of England, to hold (though
not as yet to teach) the "whole cycle of Roman doctrine." Newman
had never done so; even in 1844 he was not fully acquiescent on
all the points he had once controverted. He would never have
written the "Ideal"; much of it to him read like a theory. But in
Oxford the authorities, who were acting as if with synodical
powers, submitted to Convocation in Dec. 1844, three measures:
� to condemn Ward's book;
� to degrade the author by taking away his university degrees;
and
� to compel under pain of expulsion, every one who subscribed the
Articles to declare that he held them in the sense in which "they
were both first published and were now imposed by the university."
Had the penalty on Ward, vindictive and childish as it now
appears, stood alone, few would have minded it. Even Newman wrote
in January, 1845, to J.B. Mozley, "Before the Test was sure of
rejection, Ward had no claims on anyone." But over that "Test" a
wild shriek arose. Liberals would be affected by it as surely as
Tractarians. Tait, one of the "Four Tutors", Maurice, the broadest
of Broad Churchmen, Professor Donkin, most intellectual of writers
belonging to the same school, came forward to resist the
imposition and to shield "Tract 90", on the principle of
"Latitude". Stanley and another obtained counsel's opinion from a
future lord chancellor the the Test was illegal. On 23 January,
they published his conclusion, and that very day the proposal was
withdrawn. But on 25 January, the date in 1841 of "Tract 90"
itself, a formal censure on the tract, to be brought up in the
approaching Convocation, was recommended to voters by a circular
emanating from Faussett and Ellerton. This anathema received
between four and five hundred signatures in private, but was kept
behind the scenes until 4 Feb. The hebdomadal board, in a frenzy
of excitement, adopted it amid protests from the Puseyites and
from Liberals of Stanley's type. Stanley's words during the tumult
made a famous hit. In a broadside he exclaimed, "The wheel is come
full circle. The victors of 1836 are the victims of 1845. The
victims of 1845 are the victors of 1836. The assailants are the
assailed. The assailed are the assailants. The condemned are the
condemners. The condemners are the condemned. The wheel is come
full circle. How soon may it come round again?" A comment on this
"fugitive prophecy" was to be afforded in the Gorham case, in that
of "Essays and Reviews," in the dispute over Colenso, and in the
long and vexatious lawsuits arising out of Ritualism. The
endeavour was made to break every school of doctrine in succession
on this wheel, but always at length in vain.
Convocation met in a snowstorm on 13 February, 1845. It was the
last day of the Oxford Movement. Ward asked to defend himself in
English before the vast assembly which crowded into the Sheldonian
Theatre. He spoke with vigour and ability, declaring "twenty times
over" that he held all the articles of the Roman Church. Amid
cries and counter-cries the votes were taken. The first, which
condemned his "Ideal", was carried by 777 to 386. The second,
which deprived him of university standing, by 569 to 511. When the
vice-chancellor put the third, which was to annihilate Newman and
"Tract 90", the proctors rose, and in a voice that rang like a
trumpet Mr. Guillemard of Trinity, the senior, uttered their "Non
placet". This was fatal to the decree, and in the event to that
oligarchy which had long ruled over Oxford. Newman gave no sign.
But his reticence boded nothing good to the Anglican cause. The
University repudiated his followers and they broke into
detachments, the many lingering behind with Keble or Pusey;
others, and among them Mark Pattison, a tragic instance, lapsing
into various forms of modern unbelief; while the genuine Roman
group, Faber, Dalgairns, Oakeley, Northcote, Seager, Morris and a
long stream of successors, became Catholics. They left the Liberal
party to triumph in Oxford and to remould the University. If 13
February, 1845 was the "Dies Irae" of Tractarian hopes, it saw the
final discomfiture of the Evangelicals. Henceforth, all parties in
the National Church were compelled to "revise the very foundations
of their religion." Dogma had taken refuge in Rome.
In April, 1845, the country was excited by Sir R. Peel's proposals
for the larger endowment of Maynooth (see Macaulay's admirable
speech on the occasion). In June, Sir H. Jenner Fust, Dean of
Arches, condemned Oakeley of Margaret Street chapel for holding
the like doctrines with Ward, who was already married and early in
September was received into the Church. Newman resigned his Oriel
fellowship, held since 1822, at the beginning of October. He did
not wait to finish the "Development"; but on the feast of St.
Denys, 9 October, made his profession of the Catholic Faith to
Father Dominic at Littlemore. The Church of England "reeled under
the shock." Deep silence, as of stupor, followed the clamours and
long agonies of the past twelve years. The Via Media swerved
aside, becoming less theoretical and less learned, always wavering
between the old Anglican and the new Roman road, but gradually
drawing nearer to the Roman. Its headquarters were in London,
Leeds and Brighton, no longer in Oxford.
But an "aftermath" of disputes, and of conversions in the year
1851, remains to be noticed. On 15 November, 1847, the Prime
Minister, Lord John Russell, nominated to the See of Hereford, the
"stormy petrel" of those controversies, Dr. Hampden. He did so "to
strengthen the Protestant character of our Church, threatened of
late by many defections to the Church of Rome." The "Times"
expresses amazement; Archbishop Howley and thirteen other bishops
remonstrated; but Dr. Pusey was "the leader and oracle of
Hampden's opponents." At Oxford the Heads of Houses were mostly in
favour of the nominee, though lying under censure since 1836. An
attempt was made to object at Bow Church when the election was to
be confirmed; but the Archbishop had no freedom, and by conge
d'elire and exercise of the Royal Supremacy a notoriously unsound
teacher became Bishop of Hereford, It was the case of Hoadley in a
modern form.
Almost at the same date (2 November, 1847) the Rev. G. C. Gorham,
"an aged Calvinist", was presented to the living of Brampton Speke
in Devonshire. "Henry of Exeter", the bishop, holding High
Anglican views, examined him at length on the subject of baptismal
regeneration, and finding that he did not believe in it, refused
to induct Mr. Gorham. The case went to the Court of Arches a
spiritual court where Sir H. Jenner Fust decided against the
appellant, 2 August, 1849. Mr. Gorham carried a further appeal to
the judicial committee, the lay royal tribunal, which reversed the
decision of the spiritual court below. Dr. Philpotts, the Bishop
of Exeter, refused to institute; and the dean of arches was
compelled to do so instead. The bishop tried every other court in
vain; for a while he broke off communion, so far as he dared, with
Canterbury. As Liberalism had won at Hereford, so Calvinism won at
Brampton Speke.
These decisions of the Crown in Council affected matters of
doctrine most intimately. Newman's lectures on "Anglican
Difficulties" were drawn forth by the Gorham judgment. But Pusey,
Keble, Gladstone, and Anglo-Catholics at large were dumbfounded.
Manning, Archdeacon of Chichester, had neither written tracts nor
joined in Newman's proceedings. He did not scruple to take part
with the general public though in measured terms, against "Tract
90". He had gone so far as to preach an out-and-out Protestant
sermon in St. Mary's on Guy Fawkes day, 1843. In 1845 he "attacked
the Romanizing party so fiercely as to call forth a remonstrance
from Pusey." And then came a change. He read Newman's
"Development," had a serious illness, travelled in Italy, spent a
season in Rome, and lost his Anglican defences. The Gorham
judgment was a demonstration that lawyers could override spiritual
authority, and that the English Church neither held nor condemned
baptismal regeneration. This gave him the finishing stroke. In the
summer of 1850, a solemn declaration, calling in the Church to
repudiate the erroneous doctrine thus implied, was signed by
Manning, Pusey, Keble and other leading High Anglicans; but with
no result, save only that a secession followed on the part of
those who could not imagine Christ's Church as tolerating
heresy.On 6 April, 1851, Manning and J. R. Hope Scott came over.
Allies, a scholar of repute, had submitted in 1849, distinctly on
the question now agitated of the royal headship. Maskell,
Dodsworth, Badeley, the two Wilberforces, did in like manner.
Pusey cried out for freedom from the State; Keble took a non-
juring position, "if the Church of England were to fail, it should
be found in my parish." Gladstone would not sign the declaration;
and he lived to write against the Vatican decrees.
Surveying the movement as a whole we perceive that it was part of
the general Christian uprising which the French Revolution called
forth. It had many features in common with German Romanticism; and
, like the policy of a Free Church eloquently advocated by
Lamennais, it made war on the old servitude to the State and
looked for support to the people. Against free-thought,
speculative and anarchic, it pleaded for Christianity as a sacred
fact, a revelation from on high, and a present supernatural power.
Its especial task was to restore the idea of the Church and the
dignity of the sacraments, above all the Holy Eucharist. In the
Laudian tradition, though fearfully weakened, it sought a fulcrum
and a precedent for these happier changes.
Joseph de Maistre, in the year 1816, had called attention to the
English Church, designating it as a middle term between Catholic
unity and Protestant dissent; with an augury of its future as
perhaps one day serving towards the reunion of Christendom.
Alexander Knox foretold a like destiny, but the Establishment must
be purged by suffering. Bishop Horsley, too, had anticipated such
a time in remarkable words. But the most striking prophecy was
uttered by an aged clergyman, Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough, who
predicted that, whereas "the Holy Catholic Church" had long been a
dropped article of the Creed, it would by and by seem to swallow
up the rest, and there would be an outcry of "Popery" from one end
of the country to another (Newman's "Correspondence", II, 484).
When the tracts began, Phillips de Lisle saw in them an assurance
that England would return to the Holy See. And J.A. Froude sums it
all up in these words, "Newman has been the voice of the
intellectual reaction of Europe", he says, "which was alarmed by
an era of revolutions, and is looking for safety in the forsaken
beliefs of ages which it had been tempted to despise."
Later witnesses, Cardinal Vaughan or W.E. Gladstone, affirm that
the Church of England is transformed. Catholic beliefs, devotions,
rites, and institutions flourish within it. But its law of public
worship is too narrow for its religious life, and the machinery
for discipline has broken down (Royal Commission on Discipline,
concluding words). The condemnation of Anglican Orders by Pope Leo
XIII in the Bull "Apostolicae Curae", 13 September, 1896, shuts
out the hope entertained by some of what was termed "corporate
reunion", even if it had ever been possible, which Newman did not
believe. But he never doubted that the movement of 1833 was a work
of Providence; or that its leaders, long after his own departure
from them, were "leavening the various English denominations and
parties (far beyond their own range) with principles and
sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption into the
Catholic Church."
WILLIAM BARRY
Transcribed by Ann Waterman
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1997 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
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