The Oxford Movement by R.W. Church

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Nothing could show more decisively that the authorities in the
Hebdomadal Board were out of touch with the feeling of the University,
or, at all events, of that part of it which was resident. The residents
were not, as a body, identified with the Tractarians; it would be more
true to say that the residents, as a body, looked on this marked school
with misgiving and apprehension; but they saw what manner of men these
Tractarians were; they lived with them in college and common-room; their
behaviour was before their brethren as a whole, with its strength and
its weakness, its moral elevation and its hazardous excitement, its
sincerity of purpose and its one-sidedness of judgment and sympathy, its
unfairness to what was English, its over-value for what was foreign.
Types of those who looked at things more or less independently were Mr.
Hussey of Christ Church, Mr. C.P. Eden of Oriel, Mr. Sewell of Exeter,
Mr. Francis Faber of Magdalen, Dr. Greenhill of Trinity, Mr. Wall of
Balliol, Mr. Hobhouse of Merton, with some of the more consistent
Liberals, like Mr. Stanley of University, and latterly Mr. Tait. Men of
this kind, men of high character and weight in Oxford, found much to
dislike and regret in the Tractarians. But they could also see that the
leaders of the Hebdomadal Board laboured under a fatal incapacity to
recognise what these unpopular Tractarians were doing for the cause of
true and deep religion; they could see that the judgment of the Heads of
Houses, living as they did apart, in a kind of superior state, was
narrow, ill-informed, and harsh, and that the warfare which they waged
was petty, irritating, and profitless; while they also saw with great
clearness that under cover of suppressing "Puseyism," the policy of the
Board was, in fact, tending to increase and strengthen the power of an
irresponsible and incompetent oligarchy, not only over a troublesome
party, but over the whole body of residents. To the great honour of
Oxford it must be said, that throughout these trying times, on to the
very end, there was in the body of Masters a spirit of fairness, a
recognition of the force both of argument and character, a dislike of
high-handedness and shabbiness, which was in strong and painful contrast
to the short-sighted violence in which the Hebdomadal Board was
unhappily induced to put their trust, and which proved at last the main
cause of the overthrow of their power. When changes began to threaten
Oxford, there was no one to say a word for them.

But, for the moment, in spite of this defeat in Convocation, they had no
misgivings as to the wisdom of their course or the force of their
authority. There was, no doubt, much urging from outside, both on
political and theological grounds, to make them use their power to stay
the plague of Tractarianism; and they were led by three able and
resolute men, unfortunately unable to understand the moral or the
intellectual character of the movement, and having the highest dislike
and disdain for it in both aspects--Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, the
last remaining disciple of Whately's school, a man of rigid
conscientiousness, and very genuine though undemonstrative piety, of
great kindliness in private life, of keen and alert intellect, but not
of breadth and knowledge proportionate to his intellectual power; Dr.
Symons, Warden of Wadham, a courageous witness for Evangelical divinity
in the days when Evangelicals were not in fashion in Oxford, a man of
ponderous and pedantic learning and considerable practical acuteness;
and Dr. Cardwell, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, more a man of the world
than his colleagues, with considerable knowledge of portions of English
Church history. Under the inspiration of these chiefs, the authorities
had adopted, as far as they could, the policy of combat; and the
Vice-Chancellor of the time, Dr. Wynter of St. John's, a kind-hearted
man, but quite unfit to moderate among the strong wills and fierce
tempers round him, was induced to single out for the severest blow yet
struck, the most distinguished person in the ranks of the movement, Dr.
Pusey himself.

Dr. Pusey was a person with whom it was not wise to meddle, unless his
assailants could make out a case without a flaw. He was without question
the most venerated person in Oxford. Without an equal, in Oxford at
least, in the depth and range of his learning, he stood out yet more
impressively among his fellows in the lofty moral elevation and
simplicity of his life, the blamelessness of his youth, and the profound
devotion of his manhood, to which the family sorrows of his later years,
and the habits which grew out of them, added a kind of pathetic and
solemn interest. Stern and severe in his teaching at one time,--at least
as he was understood,--beyond even the severity of Puritanism, he was
yet overflowing with affection, tender and sympathetic to all who came
near him, and, in the midst of continual controversy, he endeavoured,
with deep conscientiousness, to avoid the bitternesses of controversy.
He was the last man to attack; much more the last man to be unfair to.
The men who ruled in Oxford contrived, in attacking him, to make almost
every mistake which it was possible to make.

On the 24th of May 1843 Dr. Pusey, intending to balance and complement
the severer, and, to many, the disquieting aspects of doctrine in his
work on Baptism, preached on the Holy Eucharist as a comfort to the
penitent. He spoke of it as a disciple of Andrewes and Bramhall would
speak of it; it was a high Anglican sermon, full, after the example of
the Homilies, Jeremy Taylor, and devotional writers like George Herbert
and Bishop Ken, of the fervid language of the Fathers; and that was all.
Beyond this it did not go; its phraseology was strictly within Anglican
limits. In the course of the week that followed, the University was
surprised by the announcement that Dr. Faussett, the Margaret Professor
of Divinity, had "_delated_" the sermon to the Vice-Chancellor as
teaching heresy; and even more surprised at the news that the
Vice-Chancellor had commenced proceedings. The Statutes provided that
when a sermon was complained of, or _delated_ to the Vice-Chancellor,
the Vice-Chancellor should demand a copy of the sermon, and summoning to
him as his assessors Six Doctors of Divinity, should examine the
language complained of, and, if necessary, condemn and punish the
preacher. The Statute is thus drawn up in general terms, and prescribes
nothing as to the mode in which the examination into the alleged offence
is to be carried on; that is, it leaves it to the Vice-Chancellor's
discretion. What happened was this. The sermon was asked for, but the
name of the accuser was not given; the Statute did not enjoin it. The
sermon was sent, with a request from Dr. Pusey that he might have a
hearing. The Six Doctors were appointed, five of them being Dr. Hawkins,
Dr. Symons, Dr. Jenkyns, Dr. Ogilvie, Dr. Jelf; the Statute said the
Regius Professor was, if possible, to be one of the number; as he was
under the ban of a special Statute, he was spared the task, and his
place was taken by the next Divinity Professor, Dr. Faussett, the person
who had preferred the charge, and who was thus, from having been
accuser, promoted to be a judge. To Dr. Pusey's request for a hearing,
no answer was returned; the Statute, no doubt, said nothing of a
hearing. But after the deliberations of the judges were concluded, and
after the decision to condemn the sermon had been reached, one of them,
Dr. Pusey's old friend, Dr. Jelf, was privately charged with certain
communications from the Vice-Chancellor, on which the seal of absolute
secrecy was imposed, and which, in fact, we believe, have never been
divulged from that _day_ to this. Whatever passed between the
Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Jelf, and Dr. Pusey, it had no effect in arresting
the sentence; and it came out, in informal ways, and through Dr. Pusey
himself, that on the 2d of June Dr. Pusey had been accused and condemned
for having taught doctrine contrary to that of the Church of England,
and that by the authority of the Vice-Chancellor he was suspended from
preaching within the University for two years. But no formal
notification of the transaction was ever made to the University.

The summary suppression of erroneous and dangerous teaching had long
been a recognised part of the University discipline; and with the ideas
then accepted of the religious character of the University, it was
natural that some such power as that given in the Statutes should be
provided. The power, even after all the changes in Oxford, exists still,
and has been recently appealed to. Dr. Pusey, as a member of the
University, had no more right than any other preacher to complain of his
doctrine being thus solemnly called in question. But it is strange that
it should not have occurred to the authorities that, under the
conditions of modern times, and against a man like Dr. Pusey, such power
should be warily used. For it was not only arbitrary power, such as was
exerted in the condemnation of No. 90, but it was arbitrary power acting
under the semblance of a judicial inquiry, with accusers, examination,
trial, judges, and a heavy penalty. The act of a court of justice which
sets at defiance the rules of justice is a very different thing from a
straightforward act of arbitrary power, because it pretends to be what
it is not. The information against Dr. Pusey, if accepted, involved a
trial--that was the fixed condition and point of departure from which
there was no escaping--and if a trial be held, then, if it be not a fair
trial, the proceeding becomes, according to English notions, a flagrant
and cowardly wrong. All this, all the intrinsic injustice, all the
scandal and discredit in the eyes of honest men, was forgotten in the
obstinate and blind confidence in the letter of a vague Statute. The
accused was not allowed to defend or explain himself; he was refused the
knowledge of the definite charges against him; he was refused, in spite
of his earnest entreaties, a hearing, even an appearance in the presence
of his judges. The Statute, it was said, enjoined none of these things.
The name of his accuser was not told him; he was left to learn it by
report To the end of the business all was wrought in secrecy; no one
knows to this day how the examination of the sermon was conducted, or
what were the opinions of the judges. The Statute, it was said, neither
enjoined nor implied publicity. To this day no one knows what were the
definite passages, what was the express or necessarily involved heresy
or contradiction of the formularies, on which the condemnation was
based; nor--except on the supposition of gross ignorance of English
divinity on the part of the judges--is it easy for a reader to put his
finger on the probably incriminated passages. To make the proceedings
still more unlike ordinary public justice, informal and private
communications were carried on between the judge and the accused, in
which the accused was bound to absolute silence, and forbidden to
consult his nearest friends.

And of the judges what can be said but that they were, with one
exception, the foremost and sternest opponents of all that was
identified with Dr. Pusey's name; and that one of them was the colleague
who had volunteered to accuse him? Dr. Faussett's share in the matter is
intelligible; hating the movement in all its parts, he struck with the
vehemence of a mediaeval zealot. But that men like Dr. Hawkins and Dr.
Ogilvie, one of them reputed to be a theologian, the other one of the
shrewdest and most cautious of men, and in ordinary matters one of the
most conscientious and fairest, should not have seen what justice, or at
least the show of justice, demanded, and what the refusal of that demand
would look like, and that they should have persuaded the Vice-Chancellor
to accept the entire responsibility of haughtily refusing it, is, even
to those who remember the excitement of those days, a subject of wonder.
The plea was actually put forth that such opportunities of defence of
his language and teaching as Dr. Pusey asked for would have led to the
"inconvenience" of an interminable debate, and confronting of texts and
authorities.[106] The fact, with Dr. Pusey as the accused person, is
likely enough; but in a criminal charge with a heavy penalty, it would
have been better for the reputation of the judges to have submitted to
the inconvenience.

It was a great injustice and a great blunder--a blunder, because the
gratuitous defiance of accepted rules of fairness neutralised whatever
there might seem to be of boldness and strength in the blow. They were
afraid to meet Dr. Pusey face to face. They were afraid to publish the
reasons of their condemnation. The effect on the University, both on
resident and non-resident members, was not to be misunderstood. The
Protestantism of the Vice-Chancellor and the Six Doctors was, of course,
extolled by partisans in the press with reckless ignorance and reckless
contempt at once for common justice and their own consistency. One
person of some distinction at Oxford ventured to make himself the
mouthpiece of those who were bold enough to defend the proceeding--the
recently-elected Professor of Poetry, Mr. Garbett. But deep offence was
given among the wiser and more reasonable men who had a regard for the
character of the University. A request to know the grounds of the
sentence from men who were certainly of no party was curtly refused by
the Vice-Chancellor, with a suggestion that it did not concern them. A
more important memorial was sent from London, showing how persons at a
distance were shocked by the unaccountable indifference to the
appearance of justice in the proceeding. It was signed among others by
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Justice Coleridge. The Vice-Chancellor lost his
temper. He sent back the memorial to London "by the hands of his bedel,"
as if that in some way stamped his official disapprobation more than if
it had been returned through the post. And he proceeded, in language
wonderful even for that moment, as "Resident Governor" of the
University, to reprimand statesmen and lawyers of eminence and high
character, not merely for presuming to interfere with his own duties,
but for forgetting the oaths on the strength of which they had received
their degrees, and for coming very near to that high, almost highest,
academical crime, the crime of being _perturbatores pacis_--breaking the
peace of the University.

Such foolishness, affecting dignity, only made more to talk of. If the
men who ruled the University had wished to disgust and alienate the
Masters of Arts, and especially the younger ones who were coming forward
into power and influence, they could not have done better. The chronic
jealousy and distrust of the time were deepened. And all this was
aggravated by what went on in private. A system of espionage,
whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the
most slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over
Oxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculent
or more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges and
their tutors. Candidates for fellowships were closely examined as to
their opinions and their associates. Men applying for testimonials were
cross-questioned on No. 90, as to the infallibility of general councils,
purgatory, the worship of images, the _Ora pro nobis_ and the
intercession of the saints: the real critical questions upon which men's
minds were working being absolutely uncomprehended and ignored. It was a
miserable state of misunderstanding and distrust, and none of the
University leaders had the temper and the manliness to endeavour with
justice and knowledge to get to the bottom of it. It was enough to
suppose that a Popish Conspiracy was being carried on.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] Pp. 243, 253.

[102] Garbett, 921. Williams, 623.

[103] The numbers were 334 to 219.

[104] _Christian Remembrancer_, vol. ix. p. 175.

[105] Ibid. pp. 177-179.

[106] Cf. _British Critic_, No. xlvii. pp. 221-223.

CHAPTER XVII

W.G. WARD

If only the Oxford authorities could have had patience--if only they
could have known more largely and more truly the deep changes that were
at work everywhere, and how things were beginning to look in the eyes of
the generation that was coming, perhaps many things might have been
different. Yes, it was true that there was a strong current setting
towards Rome. It was acting on some of the most vigorous of the younger
men. It was acting powerfully on the foremost mind in Oxford. Whither,
if not arrested, it was carrying them was clear, but as yet it was by no
means clear at what rate; and time, and thought, and being left alone
and dealt with justly, have a great effect on men's minds. Extravagance,
disproportion, mischievous, dangerous exaggeration, in much that was
said and taught--all this might have settled down, as so many things are
in the habit of settling down, into reasonable and practical shapes,
after a first burst of crudeness and strain--as, in fact, it _did_
settle down at last. For Anglicanism itself was not Roman; friends and
foes said it was not, to reproach as well as to defend it. It was not
Roman in Dr. Pusey, though he was not afraid to acknowledge what was
good in Rome. It was not Roman in Mr. Keble and his friends, in Dr.
Moberly of Winchester, and the Barters. It was not Roman in Mr. Isaac
Williams, Mr. Copeland, and Mr. Woodgate, each of them a centre of
influence in Oxford and the country. It was not Roman in the devoted
Charles Marriott, or in Isaac Williams's able and learned pupil, Mr.
Arthur Haddan. It was not Roman in Mr. James Mozley, after Mr. Newman,
the most forcible and impressive of the Oxford writers. A distinctively
English party grew up, both in Oxford and away from it, strong in
eminent names, in proportion as Roman sympathies showed themselves.
These men were, in any fair judgment, as free from Romanising as any of
their accusers; but they made their appeal for patience and fair
judgment in vain. If only the rulers could have had patience:--but
patience is a difficult virtue in the presence of what seem pressing
dangers. Their policy was wrong, stupid, unjust, pernicious. It was a
deplorable mistake, and all will wish now that the discredit of it did
not rest on the history of Oxford. And yet it was the mistake of upright
and conscientious men.

Doubtless there was danger; the danger was that a number of men would
certainly not acquiesce much longer in Anglicanism, while the Heads
continued absolutely blind to what was really in these men's thoughts.
For the Heads could not conceive the attraction which the Roman Church
had for a religious man; they talked in the old-fashioned way about the
absurdity of the Roman system. They could not understand how reasonable
men could turn Roman Catholics. They accounted for it by supposing a
silly hankering after the pomp or the frippery of Roman Catholic
worship, and at best a craving after the romantic and sentimental. Their
thoughts dwelt continually on image worship and the adoration of saints.
But what really was astir was something much deeper--something much more
akin to the new and strong forces which were beginning to act in very
different directions from this in English society--forces which were not
only leading minds to Rome, but making men Utilitarians, Rationalists,
Positivists, and, though the word had not yet been coined, Agnostics.
The men who doubted about the English Church saw in Rome a strong,
logical, consistent theory of religion, not of yesterday nor to-day--not
only comprehensive and profound, but actually in full work, and fruitful
in great results; and this, in contrast to the alleged and undeniable
anomalies and shortcomings of Protestantism and Anglicanism. And next,
there was the immense amount which they saw in Rome of self-denial and
self-devotion; the surrender of home and family in the clergy; the great
organised ministry of women in works of mercy; the resolute abandonment
of the world and its attractions in the religious life. If in England
there flourished the homely and modest types of goodness, it was in Rome
that, at that day at least, men must look for the heroic. They were not
indisposed to the idea that a true Church which had lost all this might
yet regain it, and they were willing to wait and see what the English
Church would do to recover what it had lost; but there was obviously a
long way to make up, and they came to think that there was no chance of
its overtaking its true position. Of course they knew all that was so
loudly urged about the abuses and mischiefs growing out of the professed
severity of Rome. They knew that in spite of it foreign society was lax;
that the discipline of the confessional was often exercised with a light
rein. But if the good side of it was real, they easily accounted for the
bad: the bad did not destroy, it was a tacit witness to the good. And
they knew the Latin Church mainly from France, where it was more in
earnest, and exhibited more moral life and intellectual activity, than,
as far as Englishmen knew, in Italy or Spain. There was a strong rebound
from insular ignorance and unfairness, when English travellers came on
the poorly-paid but often intelligent and hard-working French clergy; on
the great works of mercy in the towns; on the originality and eloquence
of De Maistre, La Mennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert.

These ideas took possession of a remarkable mind, the index and organ of
a remarkable character. Mr. W.G. Ward had learned the interest of
earnest religion from Dr. Arnold, in part through his close friend
Arthur Stanley. But if there was ever any tendency in him to combine
with the peculiar elements of the Rugby School, it was interrupted in
its _nascent_ state, as chemists speak, by the intervention of a still
more potent affinity, the personality of Mr. Newman. Mr. Ward had
developed in the Oxford Union, and in a wide social circle of the most
rising men of the time--including Tait, Cardwell, Lowe, Roundell
Palmer--a very unusual dialectical skill and power of argumentative
statement: qualities which seemed to point to the House of Commons. But
Mr. Newman's ideas gave him material, not only for argument but for
thought. The lectures and sermons at St. Mary's subdued and led him
captive. The impression produced on him was expressed in the formula
that primitive Christianity might have been corrupted into Popery, but
that Protestantism never could.[107] For a moment he hung in the wind.
He might have been one of the earliest of Broad Churchmen. He might have
been a Utilitarian and Necessitarian follower of Mr. J.S. Mill. But
moral influences of a higher kind prevailed. And he became, in the most
thoroughgoing yet independent fashion, a disciple of Mr. Newman. He
brought to his new side a fresh power of controversial writing; but his
chief influence was a social one, from his bright and attractive
conversation, his bold and startling candour, his frank, not to say
reckless, fearlessness of consequences, his unrivalled skill in logical
fence, his unfailing good-humour and love of fun, in which his personal
clumsiness set off the vivacity and nimbleness of his joyous moods. "He
was," says Mr. Mozley, "a great musical critic, knew all the operas, and
was an admirable buffo singer."--No one could doubt that, having
started, Mr. Ward would go far and probably go fast.

Mr. Ward was well known in Oxford, and his language might have warned
the Heads that if there was a drift towards Rome, it came from something
much more serious than a hankering after a sentimental ritual or
mediaeval legends. In Mr. Ward's writings in the _British Critic_, as in
his conversation--and he wrote much and at great length--three ideas
were manifestly at the bottom of his attraction to Rome. One was that
Rome did, and, he believed, nothing else did, keep up the continuous
recognition of the supernatural element in religion, that consciousness
of an ever-present power not of this world which is so prominent a
feature in the New Testament, and which is spoken of there as a
permanent and characteristic element in the Gospel dispensation. The
Roman view of the nature and offices of the Church, of man's relations
to the unseen world, of devotion, of the Eucharist and of the Sacraments
in general, assumed and put forward this supernatural aspect; other
systems ignored it or made it mean nothing, unless in secret to the
individual and converted soul. In the next place he revolted--no weaker
word can be used--from the popular exhibition in England, more or less
Lutheran and Calvinistic, of the doctrine of justification. The
ostentatious separation of justification from morality, with all its
theological refinements and fictions, seemed to him profoundly
unscriptural, profoundly unreal and hollow, or else profoundly immoral.
In conscience and moral honesty and strict obedience he saw the only
safe and trustworthy guidance in regard to the choice and formation of
religious opinions; it was a principle on which all his philosophy was
built, that "careful and individual moral discipline is the only
possible basis on which Christian faith and practice can be reared." In
the third place he was greatly affected, not merely by the paramount
place of sanctity in the Roman theology and the professed Roman system,
but by the standard of saintliness which he found there, involving
complete and heroic self-sacrifice for great religious ends, complete
abandonment of the world, painful and continuous self-discipline,
purified and exalted religious affections, beside which English piety
and goodness at its best, in such examples as George Herbert and Ken and
Bishop Wilson, seemed unambitious and pale and tame, of a different
order from the Roman, and less closely resembling what we read of in the
first ages and in the New Testament. Whether such views were right or
wrong, exaggerated or unbalanced, accurate or superficial, they were
matters fit to interest grave men; but there is no reason to think that
they made the slightest impression on the authorities of the University.

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