The Oxford Movement by R.W. Church

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While Mr. Palmer was working at the Association and the Address, Mr.
Newman with his friends was sending forth the Tracts, one after another,
in rapid succession, through the autumn and winter of 1833. They were
short papers, in many cases mere short notes, on the great questions
which had suddenly sprung into such interest, and were felt to be full
of momentous consequence,--the true and essential nature of the
Christian Church, its relation to the primitive ages, its authority and
its polity and government, the current objections to its claims in
England, to its doctrines and its services, the length of the prayers,
the Burial Service, the proposed alterations in the Liturgy, the neglect
of discipline, the sins and corruptions of each branch of Christendom.
The same topics were enforced and illustrated again and again as the
series went on; and then there came extracts from English divines, like
Bishop Beveridge, Bishop Wilson, and Bishop Cosin, and under the title
"Records of the Church," translations from the early Fathers, Ignatius,
Justin, Irenaeus, and others. Mr. Palmer contributed to one of these
papers, and later on Mr. Perceval wrote two or three; but for the most
part these early Tracts were written by Mr. Newman, though Mr. Keble and
one or two others also helped. Afterwards, other writers joined in the
series. They were at first not only published with a notice that any one
might republish them with any alterations he pleased, but they were
distributed by zealous coadjutors, ready to take any trouble in the
cause. Mr. Mozley has described how he rode about Northamptonshire, from
parsonage to parsonage, with bundles of the Tracts. The _Apologia_
records the same story. "I called upon clergy," says the writer, "in
various parts of the country, whether I was acquainted with them or not,
and I attended at the houses of friends where several of them were from
time to time assembled.... I did not care whether my visits were made to
High Church or Low Church: I wished to make a strong pull in union with
all who were opposed to the principles of Liberalism, whoever they might
be." He adds that he does not think that much came of these visits, or
of letters written with the same purpose, "except that they advertised
the fact that a rally in favour of the Church was commencing."

The early Tracts were intended to startle the world, and they succeeded
in doing so. Their very form, as short earnest leaflets, was perplexing;
for they came, not from the class of religionists who usually deal in
such productions, but from distinguished University scholars, picked men
of a picked college; and from men, too, who as a school were the
representatives of soberness and self-control in religious feeling and
language, and whose usual style of writing was specially marked by its
severe avoidance of excitement and novelty; the school from which had
lately come the _Christian Year_, with its memorable motto "_In
quietness and confidence shall be your strength_." Their matter was
equally unusual. Undoubtedly they "brought strange things to the ears"
of their generation. To Churchmen now these "strange things" are such
familiar commonplaces, that it is hard to realise how they should have
made so much stir. But they were novelties, partly audacious, partly
unintelligible, then. The strong and peremptory language of the Tracts,
their absence of qualifications or explanations, frightened friends like
Mr. Palmer, who, so far, had no ground to quarrel with their doctrine,
and he wished them to be discontinued. The story went that one of the
bishops, on reading one of the Tracts on the Apostolical Succession,
could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. They
fell on a time of profound and inexcusable ignorance on the subjects
they discussed, and they did not spare it. The cry of Romanism was
inevitable, and was soon raised, though there was absolutely nothing in
them but had the indisputable sanction of the Prayer Book, and of the
most authoritative Anglican divines. There was no Romanism in them, nor
anything that showed a tendency to it. But custom, and the prevalence of
other systems and ways, and the interest of later speculations, and the
slackening of professional reading and scholarship in the Church, had
made their readers forget some of the most obvious facts in Church
history, and the most certain Church principles; and men were at sea as
to what they knew or believed on the points on which the Tracts
challenged them. The scare was not creditable; it was like the Italian
scare about cholera with its quarantines and fumigations; but it was
natural. The theological knowledge and learning were wanting which
would have been familiar with the broad line of difference between what
is Catholic and what is specially Roman. There were many whose teaching
was impugned, for it was really Calvinist or Zwinglian, and not
Anglican. There were hopeful and ambitious theological Liberals, who
recognised in that appeal to Anglicanism the most effective
counter-stroke to their own schemes and theories. There were many whom
the movement forced to think, who did not want such addition to their
responsibilities. It cannot be thought surprising that the new Tracts
were received with surprise, dismay, ridicule, and indignation. But they
also at once called forth a response of eager sympathy from numbers to
whom they brought unhoped-for relief and light in a day of gloom, of
rebuke and blasphemy. Mr. Keble, in the preface to his famous assize
sermon, had hazarded the belief that there were "hundreds, nay,
thousands of Christians, and that there soon will be tens of thousands,
unaffectedly anxious to be rightly guided" in regard to subjects that
concern the Church. The belief was soon justified.

When the first forty-six Tracts were collected into a volume towards the
end of 1834, the following "advertisement" explaining their nature and
objects was prefixed to it. It is a contemporary and authoritative
account of what was the mind of the leaders of the movement; and it has
a significance beyond the occasion which prompted it.

The following-Tracts were published with the object of
contributing-something towards the practical revival of doctrines,
which, although held by the great divines of our Church, at present
have become obsolete with the majority of her members, and are
withdrawn from public view even by the more learned and orthodox few
who still adhere to them. The Apostolic succession, the Holy Catholic
Church, were principles of action in the minds of our predecessors of
the seventeenth century; but, in proportion as the maintenance of the
Church has been secured by law, her ministers have been under the
temptation of leaning on an arm of flesh instead of her own
divinely-provided discipline, a temptation increased by political
events and arrangements which need not here be more than alluded to. A
lamentable increase of sectarianism has followed; being occasioned (in
addition to other more obvious causes), first, by the cold aspect
which the new Church doctrines have presented to the religious
sensibilities of the mind, next to their meagreness in suggesting
motives to restrain it from seeking out a more influential discipline.
Doubtless obedience to the law of the land, and the careful
maintenance of "decency and order" (the topics in usage among us),
are plain duties of the Gospel, and a reasonable ground for keeping in
communion with the Established Church; yet, if Providence has
graciously provided for our weakness more interesting and constraining
motives, it is a sin thanklessly to neglect them; just as it would be
a mistake to rest the duties of temperance or justice on the mere law
of natural religion, when they are mercifully sanctioned in the Gospel
by the more winning authority of our Saviour Christ. Experience has
shown the inefficacy of the mere injunctions of Church order, however
scripturally enforced, in restraining from schism the awakened and
anxious sinner; who goes to a dissenting preacher "because" (as he
expresses it) "he gets good from him": and though he does not stand
excused in God's sight for yielding to the temptation, surely the
ministers of the Church are not blameless if, by keeping back the more
gracious and consoling truths provided for the little ones of Christ,
they indirectly lead him into it. Had he been taught as a child, that
the Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources of Divine Grace; that
the Apostolical ministry had a virtue in it which went out over the
whole Church, when sought by the prayer of faith; that fellowship with
it was a gift and privilege, as well as a duty, we could not have had
so many wanderers from our fold, nor so many cold hearts within it.

This instance may suggest many others of the superior _influence_ of
an apostolical over a mere secular method of teaching. The awakened
mind knows its wants, but cannot provide for them; and in its hunger
will feed upon ashes, if it cannot obtain the pure milk of the word.
Methodism and Popery are in different ways the refuge of those whom
the Church stints of the gifts of grace; they are the foster-mothers
of abandoned children. The neglect of the daily service, the
desecration of festivals, the Eucharist scantily administered,
insubordination permitted in all ranks of the Church, orders and
offices imperfectly developed, the want of societies for particular
religious objects, and the like deficiencies, lead the feverish mind,
desirous of a vent to its feelings, and a stricter rule of life, to
the smaller religious communities, to prayer and Bible meetings, and
ill-advised institutions and societies, on the one hand, on the other,
to the solemn and captivating services by which Popery gains its
proselytes. Moreover, the multitude of men cannot teach or guide
themselves; and an injunction given them to depend on their private
judgment, cruel in itself, is doubly hurtful, as throwing them on such
teachers as speak daringly and promise largely, and not only aid but
supersede individual exertion.

These remarks may serve as a clue, for those who care to pursue it, to
the views which have led to the publication of the following Tracts.
The Church of Christ was intended to cope with human nature in all its
forms, and surely the gifts vouchsafed it are adequate for that
gracious purpose. There are zealous sons and servants of her English
branch, who see with sorrow that she is defrauded of her full
usefulness by particular theories and principles of the present age,
which interfere with the execution of one portion of her commission;
and while they consider that the revival of this portion of truth is
especially adapted to break up existing parties in the Church, and to
form instead a bond of union among all who love the Lord Jesus Christ
in sincerity, they believe that nothing but these neglected doctrines,
faithfully preached, will repress that extension of Popery, for which
the ever multiplying divisions of the religious world are too clearly
preparing the way.

Another publication ought to be noticed, a result of the Hadleigh
meeting, which exhibited the leading ideas of the conference, and
especially of the more "conservative" members of it. This was a little
work in question and answer, called the "Churchman's Manual," drawn up
in part some time before the meeting by Mr. Perceval, and submitted to
the revision of Mr. Rose and Mr. Palmer. It was intended to be a
supplement to the "Church Catechism," as to the nature and claims of the
Church and its Ministers. It is a terse, clear, careful, and, as was
inevitable, rather dry summary of the Anglican theory, and of the
position which the English Church holds to the Roman Church, and to the
Dissenters. It was further revised at the conference, and "some
important suggestions were made by Froude"; and then Mr. Perceval, who
had great hopes from the publication, and spared himself no pains to
make it perfect, submitted it for revision and advice to a number of
representative Churchmen. The Scotch Bishops whom he consulted were warm
in approval, especially the venerable and saintly Bishop Jolly; as were
also a number of men of weight and authority in England: Judge Allan
Park, Joshua Watson, Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough, Mr. Churton of Crayke,
Mr. H.H. Norris, Dr. Wordsworth, and Dr. Routh. It was then laid before
the Archbishop for correction, or, if desirable, suppression; and for
his sanction if approved. The answer was what might have been expected,
that there was no objection to it, but that official sanction must be
declined on general grounds. After all this Mr. Perceval not unnaturally
claimed for it special importance. It was really, he observed, the
"first Tract," systematically put forth, and its preparation "apparently
gave rise" to the series; and it was the only one which received the
approval of all immediately concerned in the movement. "The care
bestowed on it," he says, "probably exceeds that which any theological
publication in the English communion received for a long time;" and
further, it shows "that the foundation of the movement with which Mr.
Rose was connected, was laid with all the care and circumspection that
reason could well suggest." It appears to have had a circulation, but
there is no reason to think that it had any considerable influence, one
way or other, on opinion in the Church. When it was referred to in
after-years by Mr. Perceval in his own vindication, it was almost
forgotten. More interesting, if not more important, Tracts had thrown it
into the shade.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] _Apol._ p. 100.

[38] Palmer, _Narrative_, 1843 (republished 1883), pp. 5, 18.

[39] Palmer (1883), pp. 40, 43, "June 1833, when he joined us at
Oxford."

[40] See Palmer's account (1883), pp. 45-47, and (1843), pp. 6,7.

[41] "Mr. Rose ... was the one commanding figure and very lovable man,
that the frightened and discomfited Church people were now rallying
round. Few people have left so distinct an impression of themselves as
this gentleman. For many years after, when he was no more, and Newman
had left Rose's standpoint far behind, he could never speak of him or
think of him without renewed tenderness" (Mr. T. Mozley,
_Reminiscences_, i. 308).

In November 1838, shortly before Mr. Rose's death, Mr. Newman had
dedicated a volume of sermons to him--"who, when hearts were failing,
bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our
true mother" (_Parochial Sermons_, vol. iv.)

[42] _Narrative of Events connected with the publication of Tracts for
the Times_, by W. Palmer (published 1843, republished 1883), pp. 96-100
(abridged).

[43] _Collection of Papers connected with the Theological Movement of_
1833, by A.P. Perceval (1842), p. 25.

[44] Palmer's _Narrative_ (1833), p. 101

[45] _Collection of Papers_, p. 12.

[46] "That portentous birth of time, the _Tracts for the
Times._"--Mozley, _Remin_, i. 311.

[47] Froude, _Remains_, i. 265.

CHAPTER VII

THE TRACTARIANS

Thus had been started--hurriedly perhaps, yet not without counting the
cost--a great enterprise, which had for its object to rouse the Church
from its lethargy, and to strengthen and purify religion, by making it
deeper and more real; and they who had put their hands to the plough
were not to look back any more. It was not a popular appeal; it
addressed itself not to the many but to the few; it sought to inspire
and to teach the teachers. There was no thought as yet of acting on the
middle classes, or on the ignorance and wretchedness of the great towns,
though Newman had laid down that the Church must rest on the people, and
Froude looked forward to colleges of unmarried priests as the true way
to evangelise the crowds. There was no display about this attempt, no
eloquence, nothing attractive in the way of original speculation or
sentimental interest. It was suspicious, perhaps too suspicious, of the
excitement and want of soberness, almost inevitable in strong appeals to
the masses of mankind. It brought no new doctrine, but professed to go
back to what was obvious and old-fashioned and commonplace. It taught
people to think less of preaching than of what in an age of excitement
were invidiously called forms--of the sacraments and services of the
Church. It discouraged, even to the verge of an intended dryness, all
that was showy, all that in thought or expression or manner it condemned
under the name of "flash." It laid stress on the exercise of an inner
and unseen self-discipline, and the cultivation of the less interesting
virtues of industry, humility, self-distrust, and obedience. If from its
writers proceeded works which had impressed people--a volume like the
_Christian Year_, poems original in their force and their tenderness,
like some of those in the _Lyra Apostolica_, sermons which arrested the
hearers by their keenness and pathetic undertone--the force of all this
was not the result of literary ambition and effort, but the reflexion,
unconscious, unsought, of thought and feeling that could not otherwise
express itself, and that was thrown into moulds shaped by habitual
refinement and cultivated taste. It was from the first a movement from
which, as much by instinct and temper as by deliberate intention,
self-seeking in all its forms was excluded. Those whom it influenced
looked not for great things for themselves, nor thought of making a mark
in the world.

The first year after the Hadleigh meeting (1834) passed uneventfully.
The various addresses in which Mr. Palmer was interested, the election
and installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor, the enthusiasm
and hopes called forth by the occasion, were public and prominent
matters. The Tracts were steadily swelling in number; the busy
distribution of them had ceased, and they had begun to excite interest
and give rise to questions. Mr. Palmer, who had never liked the Tracts,
became more uneasy; yet he did not altogether refuse to contribute to
them. Others gave their help, among them Mr. Perceval, Froude, the two
Kebles, and Mr. Newman's friend, a layman, Mr. J. Bowden; some of the
younger scholars furnished translations from the Fathers; but the bulk
and most forcible of the Tracts were still the work of Mr. Newman. But
the Tracts were not the most powerful instruments in drawing sympathy to
the movement. None but those who remember them can adequately estimate
the effect of Mr. Newman's four o'clock sermons at St. Mary's.[48] The
world knows them, has heard a great deal about them, has passed its
various judgments on them. But it hardly realises that without those
sermons the movement might never have gone on, certainly would never
have been what it was. Even people who heard them continually, and felt
them to be different from any other sermons, hardly estimated their real
power, or knew at the time the influence which the sermons were having
upon them. Plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English that was only
pure and lucid, free from any faults of taste, strong in their
flexibility and perfect command both of language and thought, they were
the expression of a piercing and large insight into character and
conscience and motives, of a sympathy at once most tender and most stern
with the tempted and the wavering, of an absolute and burning faith in
God and His counsels, in His love, in His judgments, in the awful glory
of His generosity and His magnificence. They made men think of the
things which the preacher spoke of, and not of the sermon or the
preacher. Since 1828 this preaching had been going on at St. Mary's,
growing in purpose and directness as the years went on, though it could
hardly be more intense than in some of its earliest examples. While men
were reading and talking about the Tracts, they were hearing the
sermons; and in the sermons they heard the living meaning, and reason,
and bearing of the Tracts, their ethical affinities, their moral
standard. The sermons created a moral atmosphere, in which men judged
the questions in debate. It was no dry theological correctness and
completeness which were sought for. No love of privilege, no formal
hierarchical claims, urged on the writers. What they thought in danger,
what they aspired to revive and save, was the very life of religion, the
truth and substance of all that makes it the hope of human society.

But indeed, by this time, out of the little company of friends which a
common danger and a common loyalty to the Church had brought together,
one Mr. Newman, had drawn ahead, and was now in the front. Unsought
for, as the _Apologia_ makes so clear--unsought for, as the contemporary
letters of observing friends attest--unsought for, as the whole tenor of
his life has proved--the position of leader in a great crisis came to
him, because it must come. He was not unconscious that, as he had felt
in his sickness in Sicily, he "had a work to do." But there was shyness
and self-distrust in his nature as well as energy; and it was the force
of genius, and a lofty character, and the statesman's eye, taking in and
judging accurately the whole of a complicated scene, which conferred the
gifts, and imposed inevitably and without dispute the obligations and
responsibilities of leadership. Dr. Pusey of course was a friend of
great account, but he was as yet in the background, a venerated and
rather awful person, from his position not mixing in the easy
intercourse of common-room life, but to be consulted on emergencies.
Round Mr. Newman gathered, with a curious mixture of freedom, devotion,
and awe--for, with unlimited power of sympathy, he was exacting and even
austere in his friendships--the best men of his college, either
Fellows--R. Wilberforce, Thomas Mozley, Frederic Rogers, J.F. Christie;
or old pupils--Henry Wilberforce, R.F. Wilson, William Froude, Robert
Williams, S.F. Wood, James Bliss, James Mozley; and in addition some
outsiders--Woodgate of St. John's, Isaac Williams and Copeland, of his
old College, Trinity. These, members of his intimate circle, were bound
to him not merely by enthusiastic admiration and confidence, but by a
tenderness of affection, a mixture of the gratitude and reliance of
discipleship with the warm love of friendship, of which one has to go
back far for examples, and which has had nothing like it in our days at
Oxford. And Newman was making his mark as a writer. The _Arians_, though
an imperfect book, was one which, for originality and subtlety of
thought, was something very unlike the usual theological writing of the
day. There was no doubt of his power, and his mind was brimming over
with ideas on the great questions which were rising into view. It was
clear to all who know him that he could speak on them as no one else
could.

Towards the end of 1834, and in the course of 1835, an event happened
which had a great and decisive influence on the character and fortunes
of the movement. This was the accession to it of Dr. Pusey. He had
looked favourably on it from the first, partly from his friendship with
Mr. Newman, partly from the workings of his own mind. But he had nothing
to do with the starting of it, except that he early contributed an
elaborate paper on "Fasting." The Oxford branch of the movement, as
distinguished from that which Mr. Palmer represented, consisted up to
1834 almost exclusively of junior men, personal friends of Mr. Newman,
and most of them Oriel men. Mr. Newman's deep convictions, his fiery
enthusiasm, had given the Tracts their first stamp and impress, and had
sent them flying over the country among the clergy on his own
responsibility. They answered their purpose. They led to widespread and
sometimes deep searchings of heart; to some they seemed to speak forth
what had been long dormant within them, what their minds had
unconsciously and vaguely thought and longed for; to some they seemed a
challenge pregnant with danger. But still they were but an outburst of
individual feeling and zeal, which, if nothing more came of its
fragmentary displays, might blaze and come to nothing. There was nothing
yet which spoke outwardly of the consistency and weight of a serious
attempt to influence opinion and to produce a practical and lasting
effect on the generation which was passing. Cardinal Newman, in the
_Apologia_, has attributed to Dr. Pusey's unreserved adhesion to the
cause which the Tracts represented a great change in regard to the
weight and completeness of what was written and done. "Dr. Pusey," he
writes, "gave us at once a position and a name. Without him we should
have had no chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making any
serious resistance to the liberal aggression. But Dr. Pusey was a
Professor and Canon of Christ Church; he had a vast influence in
consequence of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his
charities, his Professorship, his family connexions, and his easy
relations with the University authorities. He was to the movement all
that Mr. Rose might have been, with that indispensable addition, which
was wanting to Mr. Rose, the intimate friendship and the familiar daily
society of the persons who had commenced it. And he had that special
claim on their attachment which lies in the living presence of a
faithful and loyal affectionateness. There was henceforth a man who
could be the head and centre of the zealous people in every part of the
country who were adopting the new opinions; and not only so, but there
was one who furnished the movement with a front to the world, and gained
for it a recognition from other parties in the University."[49]

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