The Oxford Movement by R.W. Church

R >> R.W. Church >> The Oxford Movement

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25

In quieter times such an appointment might have passed with nothing more
than a paper controversy or protest, or more probably without more than
conversational criticism. But these wore not quiet and unsuspicious
times. There was reason for disquiet. It was fresh in men's minds what
language and speculation like that of the Bampton Lectures had come to
in the case of Whately's intimate friend, Blanco White. The
unquestionable hostility of Whately's school to the old ideas of the
Church had roused alarm and a strong spirit of resistance in Churchmen.
Each party was on the watch, and there certainly was something at stake
for both parties. Coupled with some recent events, and with the part
which Dr. Hampden had taken on the subscription question, the
appointment naturally seemed significant. Probably it was not so
significant as it seemed on the part at least of Lord Melbourne, who had
taken pains to find a fit man. Dr. Hampden was said to have been
recommended by Bishop Copleston, and not disallowed by Archbishop
Howley. In the University, up to this time, there had been no
authoritative protest against Dr. Hampden's writings. And there were not
many Liberals to choose from. In the appointment there is hardly
sufficient ground to blame Lord Melbourne. But the outcry against it at
Oxford, when it came, was so instantaneous, so strong, and so unusual,
that it might have warned Lord Melbourne that he had been led into a
mistake, out of which it would be wise to seek at least a way of escape.
Doubtless it was a strong measure for the University to protest as it
did; but it was also a strong measure, at least in those days, for a
Minister of the Crown to force so extremely unacceptable a Regius
Professor of Divinity on a great University. Dr. Hampden offered to
resign; and there would have been plenty of opportunities to compensate
him for his sacrifice of a post which could only be a painful one. But
the temper of both sides was up. The remonstrances from Oxford were
treated with something like contempt, and the affair was hurried through
till there was no retreating; and Dr. Hampden became Regius Professor.

Mr. Palmer has recorded how various efforts were made to neutralise the
effect of the appointment. But the Heads of Houses, though angry, were
cautious. They evaded the responsibility of stating Dr. Hampden's
unsound positions; but to mark their distrust, brought in a proposal to
deprive him of his vote in the choice of Select Preachers till the
University should otherwise determine. It was defeated in Convocation by
the veto of the two Proctors (March 1836), who exercised their right
with the full approval of Dr. Hampden's friends, and the indignation of
the large majority of the University. But it was not unfairly used: it
could have only a suspending effect, of which no one had a right to
complain; and when new Proctors came into office, the proposal was
introduced again, and carried (May 1836) by 474 to 94. The Liberal
minority had increased since the vote on subscription, and Dr. Hampden
went on with his work as if nothing had happened. The attempt was twice
made to rescind the vote: first, after the outcry about the Ninetieth
Tract and the contest about the Poetry Professorship, by a simple
repeal, which was rejected by 334 to 219 (June 1842); and next,
indirectly by a statute enlarging the Professor's powers over Divinity
degrees, which was also rejected by 341 to 21 (May 1844). From first to
last, these things and others were the unfortunate incidents of an
unfortunate appointment.

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

We are a long way from those days in time, and still more in habits and
sentiment; and a manifold and varied experience has taught most of us
some lessons against impatience and violent measures. But if we put
ourselves back equitably into the ways of thinking prevalent then, the
excitement about Dr. Hampden will not seem so unreasonable or so
unjustifiable as it is sometimes assumed to be. The University
legislation, indeed, to which it led was poor and petty, doing small and
annoying things, because the University rulers dared not commit
themselves to definite charges. But, in the first place, the provocation
was great on the part of the Government in putting into the chief
theological chair an unwelcome man who could only save his orthodoxy by
making his speculations mean next to nothing--whose _prima facie_
unguarded and startling statements were resolved into truisms put in a
grand and obscure form. And in the next place, it was assumed in those
days to be the most natural and obvious thing in the world to condemn
unsound doctrine, and to exclude unsound teachers. The principle was
accepted as indisputable, however slack might have been in recent times
the application of it. That it was accepted, not on one side only, but
on all, was soon to be shown by the subsequent course of events. No one
suffered more severely and more persistently from its application than
the Tractarians; no one was more ready to apply it to them than Dr.
Hampden with his friends; no one approved and encouraged its vigorous
enforcement against them more than Dr. Whately. The idle distinction set
up, that they were not merely unsound but dishonest, was a mere insolent
pretext to save trouble in argument, and to heighten the charge against
them; no one could seriously doubt that they wrote in good faith as much
as Dr. Whately or Dr. Faussett. But unless acts like Dr. Pusey's
suspension, and the long proscription that went on for years after it,
were mere instances of vindictive retaliation, the reproach of
persecution must be shared by all parties then, and by none more than by
the party which in general terms most denounced it. Those who think the
Hampden agitation unique in its injustice ought to ask themselves what
their party would have done if at any time between 1836 and 1843 Mr.
Newman had been placed in Dr. Hampden's seat.

People in our days mean by religious persecution what happens when the
same sort of repressive policy is applied to a religious party as is
applied to vaccination recusants, or to the "Peculiar People." All
religious persecution, from the days of Socrates, has taken a legal
form, and justified itself on legal grounds. It is the action of
authority, or of strong social judgments backed by authority, against a
set of opinions, or the expression of them in word or act--usually
innovating opinions, but not by any means necessarily such. The
disciples of M. Monod, the "Momiers" of Geneva, were persecuted by the
Liberals of Geneva, not because they broke away from the creed of
Calvin, but because they adhered to it. The word is not properly applied
to the incidental effects in the way of disadvantage, resulting from
some broad constitutional settlement--from the government of the Church
being Episcopal and not Presbyterian, or its creed Nicene and not
Arian--any more than it is persecution for a nation to change its
government, or for a legitimist to have to live under a republic, or for
a Christian to have to live in an infidel state, though persecution may
follow from these conditions. But the _privilegium_ passed against Dr.
Hampden was an act of persecution, though a mild one compared with what
afterwards fell on his opponents with his full sanction. Persecution is
the natural impulse, in those who think a certain thing right and
important or worth guarding, to disable those who, thinking it wrong,
are trying to discredit and upset it, and to substitute something
different. It implies a state of war, and the resort to the most
available weapons to inflict damage on those who are regarded as
rebellious and dangerous. These weapons were formidable enough once:
they are not without force still. But in its mildest form--personal
disqualification or proscription--it is a disturbance which only war
justifies. It may, of course, make itself odious by its modes of
proceeding, by meanness and shabbiness and violence, by underhand and
ignoble methods of misrepresentation and slander, or by cruelty and
plain injustice; and then the odium of these things fairly falls upon
it. But it is very hard to draw the line between conscientious
repression, feeling itself bound to do what is possible to prevent
mischief, and what those who are opposed, if they are the weaker party,
of course call persecution.

If persecution implies a state of war in which one side is stronger, and
the other weaker, it is hardly a paradox to say that (1) no one has a
right to complain of persecution as such, apart from odious
accompaniments, any more than of superior numbers or hard blows in
battle; and (2) that every one has a right to take advantage and make
the most of being persecuted, by appeals to sympathy and the principle
of doing as you would be done by. No one likes to be accused of
persecution, and few people like to give up the claim to use it, if
necessary. But no one can help observing in the course of events the
strange way in which, in almost all cases, the "wheel comes full
circle." [Greek: Drasanti pathein]--_Chi la fa, l' aspetti_,[58] are
some of the expressions of Greek awe and Italian shrewdness representing
the experience of the world on this subject; on a large scale and a
small. Protestants and Catholics, Churchmen and Nonconformists, have all
in their turn made full proof of what seems like a law of action and
reaction. Except in cases beyond debate, cases where no justification is
possible, the note of failure is upon this mode of repression.
Providence, by the visible Nemesis which it seems always to bring round,
by the regularity with which it has enforced the rule that infliction
and suffering are bound together and in time duly change places, seems
certainly and clearly to have declared against it. It may be that no
innovating party has a right to complain of persecution; but the
question is not for them. It is for those who have the power, and who
are tempted to think that they have the call, to persecute. It is for
them to consider whether it is right, or wise, or useful for their
cause; whether it is agreeable to what seems the leading of Providence
to have recourse to it.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[58] [Greek: Drasanti pathein, Trigeron mythos tade phonei.] Aesch.
_Choeph_. 310. Italian proverb, in _Landucci, Diario Fiorentino_, 1513,
p. 343.

CHAPTER X

GROWTH OF THE MOVEMENT

1835-1840

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

There was no attempt to form a party, or to proselytise; there was no
organisation, no distinct and recognised party marks. "I would not have
it called a party," writes Dr. Newman in the _Apologia_. But a party it
could not help being: quietly and spontaneously it had grown to be what
community of ideas, aims, and sympathies, naturally, and without blame,
leads men to become. And it had acquired a number of recognised
nicknames, to friends and enemies the sign of growing concentration. For
the questions started in the Tracts and outside them became of
increasing interest to the more intelligent men who had finished their
University course and were preparing to enter into life, the Bachelors
and younger Masters of Arts. One by one they passed from various states
of mind--alienation, suspicion, fear, indifference, blank
ignorance--into a consciousness that something beyond the mere
commonplace of religious novelty and eccentricity, of which there had
been a good deal recently, was before them; that doctrines and
statements running counter to the received religious language of the
day, doctrines about which, in confident prejudice, they had perhaps
bandied about off-hand judgments, had more to say for themselves than
was thought at first; that the questions thus raised drove them in on
themselves, and appealed to their honesty and seriousness; and that, at
any rate, in the men who were arresting so much attention, however
extravagant their teaching might be called, there was a remarkable
degree of sober and reserved force, an earnestness of conviction which
could not be doubted, an undeniable and subtle power of touching souls
and attracting sympathies. One by one, and in many different ways, these
young men went through various stages of curiosity, of surprise, of
perplexity, of doubt, of misgiving, of interest; some were frightened,
and wavered, and drew back more or less reluctantly; others, in spite of
themselves, in spite of opposing influences, were led on step by step,
hardly knowing whither, by a spell which they could not resist, of
intellectual, or still more, moral pressure. Some found their old home
teaching completed, explained, lighted up, by that of the new school.
Others, shocked at first at hearing the old watchwords and traditions of
their homes decried and put aside, found themselves, when they least
expected it, passing from the letter to the spirit, from the technical
and formal theory to the wide and living truth. And thus, though many of
course held aloof, and not a few became hostile, a large number, one by
one, some rapidly, others slowly, some unreservedly, others with large
and jealous reserves, more and more took in the leading idea of the
movement, accepted the influence of its chiefs, and looked to them for
instruction and guidance. As it naturally happens, when a number of
minds are drawn together by a common and strong interest, some men, by
circumstances, or by strength of conviction, or by the mutual affinities
of tastes and character, came more and more into direct personal and
intimate relations with the leaders, took service, as it were, under
them, and prepared to throw themselves into their plans of work. Others,
in various moods, but more independent, more critical, more disturbed
about consequences, or unpersuaded on special points, formed a kind of
fringe of friendly neutrality about the more thoroughgoing portion of
the party. And outside of these were thoughtful and able men, to whom
the whole movement, with much that was utterly displeasing and utterly
perplexing, had the interest of being a break-up of stagnation and dull
indolence in a place which ought to have the highest spiritual and
intellectual aims; who, whatever repelled them, could not help feeling
that great ideas, great prospects, a new outburst of bold thought, a new
effort of moral purpose and force, had disturbed the old routine; could
not help being fascinated, if only as by a spectacle, by the strange and
unwonted teaching, which partly made them smile, partly perhaps
permanently disgusted them, but which also, they could not deny, spoke
in a language more fearless, more pathetic, more subtle, and yet more
human, than they had heard from the religious teachers of the day. And
thus the circle of persons interested in the Tracts, of persons who
sympathised with their views, of persons who more and more gave a warm
and earnest adherence to them, was gradually extended in the
University--and, in time, in the country also. The truth was that the
movement, in its many sides, had almost monopolised for the time both
the intelligence and the highest religious earnestness of the
University,[60] and either in curiosity or inquiry, in approval or in
condemnation, all that was deepest and most vigorous, all that was most
refined, most serious, most high-toned, and most promising in Oxford was
drawn to the issues which it raised. It is hardly too much to say that
wherever men spoke seriously of the grounds and prospects of religion,
in Oxford, or in Vacation reading-parties, in their walks and social
meetings, in their studies or in common-room, the "Tractarian"
doctrines, whether assented to or laughed at, deplored or fiercely
denounced, were sure to come to the front. All subjects in discussion
seemed to lead up to them--art and poetry, Gothic architecture and
German romance and painting, the philosophy of language, and the novels
of Walter Scott and Miss Austen, Coleridge's transcendentalism and
Bishop Butler's practical wisdom, Plato's ideas and Aristotle's
analysis. It was difficult to keep them out of lecture-rooms and
examinations for Fellowships.

But in addition to the intrinsic interest of the questions and
discussions which the movement opened, personal influence played a great
and decisive part in it. As it became a party, it had chiefs. It was not
merely as leaders of thought but as teachers with their disciples, as
friends with friends, as witnesses and examples of high self-rule and
refined purity and goodness, that the chiefs whose names were in all
men's mouths won the hearts and trust of so many, in the crowds that
stood about them. Foremost, of course, ever since he had thrown himself
into it in 1835, was Dr. Pusey. His position, his dignified office, his
learning, his solidity and seriousness of character, his high standard
of religious life, the charm of his charity, and the sweetness of his
temper naturally gave him the first place in the movement in Oxford and
the world. It came to be especially associated with him. Its enemies
fastened on it a nickname from his name, and this nickname, partly from
a greater smoothness of sound, partly from an odd suggestion of
something funny in it, came more into use than others; and the terms
_Puseismus, Puseisme, Puseista_ found their way into German
lecture-halls and Paris salons and remote convents and police offices in
Italy and Sicily; indeed, in the shape of [Greek: pouzeismos] it might
be lighted on in a Greek newspaper. Dr. Pusey was a person who commanded
the utmost interest and reverence; he was more in communication with the
great world outside than Oxford people generally, and lived much in
retirement from Oxford society; but to all interested in the movement he
was its representative and highest authority. He and Mr. Newman had the
fullest confidence in one another, though conscious at times of not
perfect agreement; yet each had a line of his own, and each of them was
apt to do things out of his own head. Dr. Pusey was accessible to all
who wished to see him; but he did not encourage visits which wasted
time. And the person who was pre-eminently, not only before their eyes,
but within their reach in the ordinary intercourse of man with man, was
Mr. Newman. Mr. Newman, who lived in College in the ordinary way of a
resident Fellow, met other university men, older or younger, on equal
terms. As time went on, a certain wonder and awe gathered round him.
People were a little afraid of him; but the fear was in themselves, not
created by any intentional stiffness or coldness on his part. He did not
try to draw men to him, he was no proselytiser; he shrank with fear and
repugnance from the character--it was an invasion of the privileges of
the heart.[61] But if men came to him, he was accessible; he allowed his
friends to bring their friends to him, and met them more than half-way.
He was impatient of mere idle worldliness, of conceit and impertinence,
of men who gave themselves airs; he was very impatient of pompous and
solemn emptiness. But he was very patient with those whom he believed to
sympathise with what was nearest his heart; no one, probably, of his
power and penetration and sense of the absurd, was ever so ready to
comply with the two demands which a witty prelate proposed to put into
the examination in the Consecration Service of Bishops: "Wilt thou
answer thy letters?" "Wilt thou suffer fools gladly?" But courteous,
affable, easy as he was, he was a keen trier of character; he gauged,
and men felt that he gauged, their motives, their reality and soundness
of purpose; he let them see, if they at all came into his intimacy,
that if _they_ were not, _he_, at any rate, was in the deepest earnest.
And at an early period, in a memorable sermon,[62] the vivid impression
of which at the time still haunts the recollection of some who heard it,
he gave warning to his friends and to those whom his influence touched,
that no child's play lay before them; that they were making, it might be
without knowing it, the "Ventures of Faith." But feeling that he had
much to say, and that a university was a place for the circulation and
discussion of ideas, he let himself be seen and known and felt, both
publicly and in private. He had his breakfast parties and his evening
gatherings. His conversation ranged widely, marked by its peculiar
stamp--entire ease, unstudied perfection of apt and clean-cut words,
unexpected glimpses of a sure and piercing judgment. At times, at more
private meetings, the violin, which he knew how to touch, came into
play.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25