The Oxford Movement by R.W. Church

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[110] _The Ideal, etc._, p. 479.

[111] It is curious, and characteristic of the unhistorical quality of
Mr. Ward's mind, that his whole hostility should have been concentrated
on Luther and Lutheranism--on Luther, the enthusiastic, declamatory,
unsystematic denouncer of practical abuses, with his strong attachments
to portions of orthodoxy, rather than on Calvin, with his cold love of
power, and the iron consistency and strength of his logical
anti-Catholic system, which has really lived and moulded Protestantism,
while Lutheranism as a religion has passed into countless different
forms. Luther was to Calvin as Carlyle to J.S. Mill or Herbert Spencer;
he defied system. But Luther had burst into outrageous paradoxes, which
fastened on Mr. Ward's imagination.--Yet outrageous language is not
always the most dangerous. Nobody would really find a provocation to
sin, or an excuse for it, in Luther's _Pecca fortiter_ any more than in
Escobar's ridiculous casuistry. There may be much more mischief in the
delicate unrealities of a fashionable preacher, or in many a smooth
sentimental treatise on the religious affections.

[112] _The Ideal, etc._, pp. 587, 305.

[113] Ibid. p. 305.

[114] _Ideal,_ p 286.

[115] _British Critic_ October 1841, p. 340.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH

No. 90, with the explanations of it given by Mr. Newman and the other
leaders of the movement, might have raised an important and not very
easy question, but one in no way different from the general character of
the matters in debate in the theological controversy of the time. But
No. 90, with the comments on it of Mr. Ward, was quite another matter,
and finally broke up the party of the movement. It was one thing to show
how much there is in common between England and Rome, and quite another
to argue that there is no difference. Mr. Ward's refusal to allow a
reasonable and a Catholic interpretation to the doctrine of the Articles
on Justification, though such an understanding of it had not only been
maintained by Bishop Bull and the later orthodox divines, but was
impressed on all the popular books of devotion, such as the _Whole Duty
of Man_ and Bishop Wilson's _Sacra Privata_; and along with this, the
extreme claim to hold compatible with the Articles the "whole cycle of
Roman doctrine," introduced entirely new conditions into the whole
question. _Non hoec in foedera_ was the natural reflection of numbers of
those who most sympathised with the Tractarian school. The English
Church might have many shortcomings and want many improvements; but
after all she had something to say for herself in her quarrel with Rome;
and the witness of experience for fifteen hundred years must be not
merely qualified and corrected, but absolutely wiped out, if the
allegation were to be accepted that Rome was blameless in all that
quarrel, and had no part in bringing about the confusions of
Christendom. And this contention was more and more enforced in Mr.
Ward's articles in the _British Critic_--enforced, more effectively than
by direct statement, by continual and passing assumption and
implication. They were papers of considerable power and acuteness, and
of great earnestness in their constant appeal to the moral criteria of
truth; though Mr. Ward was not then at his best as a writer, and they
were in composition heavy, diffuse, monotonous, and wearisome. But the
attitude of deep depreciation, steady, systematic, unrelieved, in regard
to that which ought, if acknowledged at all, to deserve the highest
reverence among all things on earth, in regard to an institution which,
with whatever faults, he himself in words still recognised as the Church
of God, was an indefensible and an unwholesome paradox. The analogy is a
commonly accepted one between the Church and the family. How could any
household go on in which there was at work an _animus_ of unceasing and
relentless, though possibly too just criticism, on its characteristic
and perhaps serious faults; and of comparisons, also possibly most just,
with the better ways of other families? It might be the honest desire of
reform and improvement; but charity, patience, equitableness, are
virtues of men in society, as well as strict justice and the desire of
improvement. In the case of the family, such action could only lead to
daily misery and the wasting and dying out of home affections. In the
case of a Church, it must come to the sundering of ties which ought no
longer to bind. Mr. Ward all along insisted that there was no necessity
for looking forward to such an event. He wished to raise, purify, reform
the Church in which Providence had placed him; utterly dissatisfied as
he was with it, intellectually and morally, convinced more and more that
it was wrong, dismally, fearfully wrong, it was his duty, he thought, to
abide in it without looking to consequences; but it was also his duty to
shake the faith of any one he could in its present claims and working,
and to hold up an incomparably purer model of truth and holiness. That
his purpose was what he considered real reform, there is no reason to
doubt, though he chose to shut his eyes to what must come of it. The
position was an unnatural one, but he had great faith in his own
well-fenced logical creations, and defied the objections of a homelier
common sense. He was not content to wait in silence the slow and sad
changes of old convictions, the painful decay and disappearance of
long-cherished ties. His mind was too active, restless, unreserved. To
the last he persisted in forcing on the world, professedly to influence
it, really to defy it, the most violent assertions which he could
formulate of the most paradoxical claims on friends and opponents which
had ever been made.

Mr. Ward's influence was felt also in another way; though here it is not
easy to measure the degree of its force. He was in the habit of
appealing to Mr. Newman to pronounce on the soundness of his principles
and inferences, with the view of getting Mr. Newman's sanction for them
against more timid or more dissatisfied friends; and he would come down
with great glee on objectors to some new and startling position, with
the reply, "Newman says so," Every one knows from the _Apologia_ what
was Mr. Newman's state of mind after 1841--a state of perplexity,
distress, anxiety; he was moving undoubtedly in one direction, but
moving slowly, painfully, reluctantly, intermittently, with views
sometimes clear, sometimes clouded, of that terribly complicated
problem, the answer to which was full of such consequences to himself
and to others. No one ever felt more keenly that it was no mere affair
of dexterous or brilliant logic; if logic could have settled it, the
question would never have arisen. But in this fevered state, with mind,
soul, heart all torn and distracted by the tremendous responsibilities
pressing on him, wishing above everything to be quiet, to be silent, at
least not to speak except at his own times and when he saw the
occasion, he had, besides bearing his own difficulties, to return
off-hand and at the moment some response to questions which he had not
framed, which he did not care for, on which he felt no call to
pronounce, which he was not perhaps yet ready to face, and to answer
which he must commit himself irrevocably and publicly to more than he
was prepared for. Every one is familiar with the proverbial distribution
of parts in the asking and the answering of questions; but when the
asker is no fool, but one of the sharpest-witted of mankind, asking with
little consideration for the condition or the wishes of the answerer,
with great power to force the answer he wants, and with no great
tenderness in the use he makes of it, the situation becomes a trying
one. Mr. Ward was continually forcing on Mr. Newman so-called
irresistible inferences; "If you say so and so, surely you must also say
something more?" Avowedly ignorant of facts and depending for them on
others, he was only concerned with logical consistency. And accordingly
Mr. Newman, with whom producible logical consistency was indeed a great
thing, but with whom it was very far from being everything, had
continually to accept conclusions which he would rather have kept in
abeyance, to make admissions which were used without their
qualifications, to push on and sanction extreme ideas which he himself
shrank from because they were extreme. But it was all over with his
command of time, his liberty to make up his mind slowly on the great
decision. He had to go at Mr. Ward's pace, and not his own. He had to
take Mr. Ward's questions, not when he wanted to have them and at his
own time, but at Mr. Ward's. No one can tell how much this state of
things affected the working of Mr. Newman's mind in that pause of
hesitation before the final step; how far it accelerated the view which
he ultimately took of his position. No one can tell, for many other
influences were mixed up with this one. But there is no doubt that Mr.
Newman felt the annoyance and the unfairness of this perpetual
questioning for the benefit of Mr. Ward's theories, and there can be
little doubt that, in effect, it drove him onwards and cut short his
time of waiting. Engineers tell us that, in the case of a ship rolling
in a sea-way, when the periodic times of the ship's roll coincide with
those of the undulations of the waves, a condition of things arises
highly dangerous to the ship's stability. So the agitations of Mr.
Newman's mind were reinforced by the impulses of Mr. Ward's.[116]

But the great question between England and Rome was not the only matter
which engaged Mr. Ward's active mind. In the course of his articles in
the _British Critic_ he endeavoured to develop in large outlines a
philosophy of religious belief. Restless on all matters without a
theory, he felt the need of a theory of the true method of reaching,
verifying, and judging of religious truth; it seemed to him necessary
especially to a popular religion, such as Christianity claimed to be;
and it was not the least of the points on which he congratulated himself
that he had worked out a view which extended greatly the province and
office of conscience, and of fidelity to it, and greatly narrowed the
province and office of the mere intellect in the case of the great mass
of mankind. The Oxford writers had all along laid stress on the
paramount necessity of the single eye and disciplined heart in accepting
or judging religion; moral subjects could be only appreciated by moral
experience; purity, reverence, humility were as essential in such
questions as zeal, industry, truthfulness, honesty; religious truth is a
gift as well as a conquest; and they dwelt on the great maxims of the
New Testament: "To him that hath shall be given"; "If any man will do
the will of the Father, he shall know of the doctrine." But though Mr.
Newman especially had thrown out deep and illuminating thoughts on this
difficult question, it had not been treated systematically; and this
treatment Mr. Ward attempted to give to it. It was a striking and
powerful effort, full of keen insight into human experience and acute
observations on its real laws and conditions; but on the face of it, it
was laboured and strained; it chose its own ground, and passed unnoticed
neighbouring regions under different conditions; it left undealt with
the infinite variety of circumstances, history, capacities, natural
temperament, and those unexplored depths of will and character,
affecting choice and judgment, the realities of which have been brought
home to us by our later ethical literature. Up to a certain point his
task was easy. It is easy to say that a bad life, a rebellious temper, a
selfish spirit are hopeless disqualifications for judging spiritual
things; that we must take something for granted in learning any truths
whatever; that men must act as moral creatures to attain insight into
moral truths, to realise and grasp them as things, and not abstractions
and words. But then came the questions--What is that moral training,
which, in the case of the good heart, will be practically infallible in
leading into truth? And what is that type of character, of saintliness,
which gives authority which we cannot do wrong in following; where, if
question and controversy arise, is the common measure binding on both
sides; and can even the saints, with their immense variations and
apparent mixtures and failings, furnish that type? And next, where, in
the investigations which may be endlessly diversified, does intellect
properly come in and give its help? For come in somewhere, of course it
must; and the conspicuous dominance of the intellectual element in Mr.
Ward's treatment of the subject is palpable on the face of it. His
attempt is to make out a theory of the reasonableness of unproducible;
because unanalysed, reasons; reasons which, though the individual cannot
state them, may be as real and as legitimately active as the obscure
rays of the spectrum. But though the discussion in Mr. Ward's hands was
suggestive of much, though he might expose the superciliousness of
Whately or the shallowness of Mr. Goode, and show himself no unequal
antagonist to Mr. J.S. Mill, it left great difficulties unanswered, and
it had too much the appearance of being directed to a particular end,
that of guarding the Catholic view of a popular religion from formidable
objections.

The moral side of religion had been from the first a prominent subject
in the teaching of the movement Its protests had been earnest and
constant against intellectual self-sufficiency, and the notion that mere
shrewdness and cleverness were competent judges of Christian truth, or
that soundness of judgment in religious matters was compatible with
arrogance or an imperfect moral standard; and it revolted against the
conventional and inconsistent severity of Puritanism, which was shocked
at dancing but indulged freely in good dinners, and was ostentatious in
using the phrases of spiritual life and in marking a separation from the
world, while it surrounded itself with all the luxuries of modern
inventiveness. But this moral teaching was confined to the statement of
principles, and it was carried out in actual life with the utmost
dislike of display and with a shrinking from strong professions. The
motto of Froude's _Remains_, which embodied his characteristic temper,
was an expression of the feeling of the school:

Se sub serenis vultibus
Austera virtus occulit:
Timet videri, ne suum,
Dum prodit, amittat decus,[117]

The heroic strictness and self-denial of the early Church were the
objects of admiration, as what ought to be the standard of Christians;
but people did not yet like to talk much about attempts to copy them.
Such a book as the _Church of the Fathers_ brought out with great force
and great sympathy the ascetic temper and the value put on celibacy in
the early days, and it made a deep impression; but nothing was yet
formulated as characteristic and accepted doctrine.

It was not unnatural that this should change. The principles exemplified
in the high Christian lives of antiquity became concrete in definite
rules and doctrines, and these rules and doctrines were most readily
found in the forms in which the Roman schools and teachers had embodied
them. The distinction between the secular life and the life of
"religion," with all its consequences, became an accepted one. Celibacy
came to be regarded as an obvious part of the self-sacrifice of a
clergyman's life, and the belief and the profession of it formed a test,
understood if not avowed, by which the more advanced or resolute members
of the party were distinguished from the rest. This came home to men on
the threshold of life with a keener and closer touch than questions
about doctrine. It was the subject of many a bitter, agonising struggle
which no one knew anything of; it was with many the act of a supreme
self-oblation. The idea of the single life may be a utilitarian one as
well as a religious one. It may be chosen with no thought of
renunciation or self-denial, for the greater convenience and freedom of
the student or the philosopher, the soldier or the man of affairs. It
may also be chosen without any special feeling of a sacrifice by the
clergyman, as most helpful for his work. But the idea of celibacy, in
those whom it affected at Oxford, was in the highest degree a religious
and romantic one. The hold which it had on the leader of the movement
made itself felt, though little was directly said. To shrink from it was
a mark of want of strength or intelligence, of an unmanly preference for
English home life, of insensibility to the generous devotion and purity
of the saints. It cannot be doubted that at this period of the movement
the power of this idea over imagination and conscience was one of the
strongest forces in the direction of Rome.

Of all these ideas Mr. Ward's articles in the _British Critic_ were the
vigorous and unintermittent exposition. He spoke out, and without
hesitation. There was a perpetual contrast implied, when it was not
forcibly insisted on, between all that had usually been esteemed highest
in the moral temper of the English Church, always closely connected with
home life and much variety of character, and the loftier and bolder but
narrower standard of Roman piety. And Mr. Ward was seconded in the
_British Critic_ by other writers, all fervid in the same cause, some
able and eloquent. The most distinguished of his allies was Mr. Oakeley,
Fellow of Balliol and minister of Margaret Chapel in London. Mr. Oakeley
was, perhaps, the first to realise the capacities of the Anglican ritual
for impressive devotional use, and his services, in spite of the
disadvantages of the time, and also of his chapel, are still remembered
by some as having realised for them, in a way never since surpassed, the
secrets and the consolations of the worship of the Church. Mr. Oakeley,
without much learning, was master of a facile and elegant pen. He was a
man who followed a trusted leader with chivalrous boldness, and was not
afraid of strengthening his statements. Without Mr. Ward's force and
originality, his articles were more attractive reading. His article on
"Jewel" was more than anything else a landmark in the progress of Roman
ideas.[118]

From the time of Mr. Ward's connexion with the _British Critic_, its
anti-Anglican articles had given rise to complaints which did not become
less loud as time went on. He was a troublesome contributor to his
editor, Mr. T. Mozley, and he made the hair of many of his readers stand
on end with his denunciations of things English and eulogies of things
Roman.

My first troubles (writes Mr. Mozley) were with Oakeley and Ward. I
will not say that I hesitated much as to the truth of what they wrote,
for in that matter I was inclined to go very far, at least in the way
of toleration. Yet it appeared to me quite impossible either that any
great number of English Churchmen would ever go so far, or that the
persons possessing authority in the Church would fail to protest, not
to say more.... As to Ward I did but touch a filament or two in one of
his monstrous cobwebs, and off he ran instantly to Newman to complain
of my gratuitous impertinence. Many years after I was forcibly
reminded of him by a pretty group of a little Cupid flying to his
mother to show a wasp-sting he had just received. Newman was then in
this difficulty. He did not disagree with what Ward had written; but,
on the other hand, he had given neither me nor Ward to understand that
he was likely to step in between us. In fact, he wished to be entirely
clear of the editorship. This, however, was a thing that Ward could
not or would not understand.[119]

The discontent of readers of the _British Critic_ was great. It was
expressed in various ways, and was represented by a pamphlet of Mr. W.
Palmer's of Worcester, in which he contrasted, with words of severe
condemnation, the later writers in the Review with the teaching of the
earlier _Tracts for the Times_, and denounced the "Romanising" tendency
shown in its articles. In the autumn of 1843 the Review came to an end.
A field of work was thus cut off from Mr. Ward. Full of the interest of
the ideas which possessed him, always equipped and cheerfully ready for
the argumentative encounter, and keenly relishing the _certaminis
gaudia_, he at once seized the occasion of Mr. Palmer's pamphlet to
state what he considered his position, and to set himself right in the
eyes of all fair and intelligent readers. He intended a long pamphlet.
It gradually grew under his hands--he was not yet gifted with the power
of compression and arrangement--into a volume of 600 pages: the famous
_Ideal of a Christian Church, considered in Comparison with Existing
Practice_, published in the summer of 1844.

The _Ideal_ is a ponderous and unattractive volume, ill arranged and
rambling, which its style and other circumstances have caused to be
almost forgotten. But there are interesting discussions in it which may
still repay perusal for their own sakes. The object of the book was
twofold. Starting with an "ideal" of what the Christian Church may be
expected to be in its various relations to men, it assumes that the
Roman Church, and only the Roman Church, satisfies the conditions of
what a Church ought to be, and it argues in detail that the English
Church, in spite of its professions, utterly and absolutely fails to
fulfil them. It is _plaidoirie_ against everything English, on the
ground that it cannot be Catholic because it is not Roman. It was not
consistent, for while the writer alleged that "our Church totally
neglected her duties both as guardian of and witness to morality, and
as witness and teacher of orthodoxy," yet he saw no difficulty in
attributing the revival of Catholic truth to "the inherent vitality and
powers of our own Church."[120] But this was not the sting and
provocation of the book. That lay in the developed claim, put forward by
implication in Mr. Ward's previous writings, and now repeated in the
broadest and most unqualified form, to hold his position in the English
Church, avowing and teaching all Roman doctrine.

We find (he exclaims), oh, most joyful, most wonderful, most
unexpected sight! we find the whole cycle of Roman doctrine gradually
possessing numbers of English Churchmen.... Three years have passed
since I said plainly that in subscribing the Articles I renounce no
Roman doctrine; yet I retain my fellowship which I hold on the tenure
of subscription, and have received no ecclesiastical censure in any
shape.[121]

There was much to learn from the book; much that might bring home to the
most loyal Churchman a sense of shortcomings, a burning desire for
improvement; much that might give every one a great deal to think about,
on some of the deepest problems of the intellectual and religious life.
But it could not be expected that such a challenge, in such sentences as
these, should remain unnoticed.

The book came out in the Long Vacation, and it was not till the
University met in October that signs of storm began to appear. But
before it broke an incident occurred which inflamed men's tempers. Dr.
Wynter's reign as Vice-Chancellor had come to a close, and the next
person, according to the usual custom of succession, was Dr. Symons,
Warden of Wadham. Dr. Symons had never concealed his strong hostility to
the movement, and he had been one of Dr. Pusey's judges. The prospect of
a partisan Vice-Chancellor, certainly very determined, and supposed not
to be over-scrupulous, was alarming. The consent of Convocation to the
Chancellor's nomination of his substitute had always been given in
words, though no instance of its having been refused was known, at least
in recent times. But a great jealousy about the rights of Convocation
had been growing up under the late autocratic policy of the Heads, and
there was a disposition to assert, and even to stretch these rights, a
disposition not confined to the party of the movement. It was proposed
to challenge Dr. Symons's nomination. Great doubts were felt and
expressed about the wisdom of the proposal; but at length opposition was
resolved upon. The step was a warning to the Heads, who had been
provoking enough; but there was not enough to warrant such a violent
departure from usage, and it was the act of exasperation rather than of
wisdom. The blame for it must be shared between the few who fiercely
urged it, and the many who disapproved and acquiesced. On the day of
nomination, the scrutiny was allowed, _salva auctoritate Cancellarii_;
but Dr. Symons's opponents were completely defeated by 883 to 183. It
counted, not unreasonably, as a "Puseyite defeat."

The attempt and its result made it certain that in the attack that was
sure to come on Mr. Ward's book, he would meet with no mercy. As soon as
term began the Board of Heads of Houses took up the matter; they were
earnestly exhorted to it by a letter of Archbishop Whately's, which was
read at the Board. But they wanted no pressing, nor is it astonishing
that they could not understand the claim to hold the "whole cycle" of
Roman doctrine in the English Church. Mr. Ward's view was that he was
loyally doing the best he could for "our Church," not only in showing up
its heresies and faults, but in urging that the only remedy was
wholesale submission to Rome. To the University authorities this was
taking advantage of his position in the Church to assail and if possible
destroy it. And to numbers of much more sober and moderate Churchmen,
sympathisers with the general spirit of the movement, it was evident
that Mr. Ward had long passed the point when tolerance could be fairly
asked, consistently with any respect for the English Church, for such
sweeping and paradoxical contradictions, by her own servants, of her
claims and title. Mr. Ward's manner also, which, while it was serious
enough in his writings, was easy and even jocular in social intercourse,
left the impression, in reality a most unfair impression, that he was
playing and amusing himself with these momentous questions.

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