Project Canterbury
Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey
by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D.
London: Longmans, 1894
volume two
Transcribed by The Revd R D Hacking
AD 2002
CHAPTER XXVI.
CONSEQUENCES OF TRACT 90--WARD AND OAKELEY--DIVERGENT VIEWS OF THE REFORMATION -- TREATMENT OF MR. KEBLE'S CURATE -- PUSEY'S VISIT TO THE ARCHBISHOP--EPISCOPAL CHARGES.
1841.
THE hopes that the controversy might die away, which so often find expression in letters of this period, were not to be realized. They were frustrated partly by the reiterated outcries of ultra-Protestant controversialists, and partly, it must be added, by the exaggerated or paradoxical ad–vocacy which was sometimes employed in defence of the tract. Pusey and Keble could not monopolize the defence of Tract 90. The men for whom it was mainly written would have something to say about it, and they would not be disposed to minimize the expressions in it which had provoked Low Church or Latitudinarian criticism. Indeed one effect of the tract was to make a section of the Oxford school, which had lately come into notice, keenly conscious of its separate temper and aims, which were not those of Pusey and the older men. As Newman afterwards said, this section was 'sweeping the original party of the Move–ment aside and was taking its place.' It was, as compared with the older party, less careful about authority, whether Primitive or Anglican; more disposed to a priori reasoning, to the elaboration and advocacy of symmetrical systems, to the imperious exigencies of bare logic, to bold and striking generalizations, to a philosophical treatment of pure theo–logy. Such a mental disposition might, and indeed did eventually, lead in more directions than one; but what its direction would be was as yet uncertain; the only thing that was clear about it to Newman was that 'it needed keeping in order.' Of this section the two prominent men were Oakeley and Ward. They came to be what they now were out of very different antecedents, and they were very unlike each other. But they were at this moment united by a disposition to urge the Movement forwards in a manner calculated to imperil its original scope and purpose, its present coherence, and the eventual loyalty, at least of some of its members, to the English Church.
Certainly not the least remarkable products of the con–troversy about Tract 90 were given to the world when Mr. W. G. Ward published two pamphlets and an ap–pendix on the question of the day. These pamphlets contained several propositions which went beyond the ground actually occupied by Newman; and Pusey was distressed not only by their general tone, but also by the disparaging language contained in them about the Re–formers. Certainly this language got its author into trouble, which, it must be added, he took very quietly. He felt bound to resign his two lectureships at Balliol, and he was inhibited from preaching in Margaret Chapel, of which the Rev. F. Oakeley was, at the time, minister. Oakeley felt warmly about the treatment of his friend, and Pusey found it difficult to say what he really thought about Ward's unbalanced logic without appearing to sympathize with the severe treatment that was dealt out to him. The difficulty was increased by the correspondence which fol–lowed between Oakeley and Pusey. Oakeley sent a message from Ward to Pusey on June 22nd to the following effect:--
'Ward knew of no theological subject on which he should venture to have an opinion different from Newman.... At the same time, Ward would certainly not pledge himself not to join Rome under any circum–stances, nor from what he has heard N. say, does he think he would.'
Then the July number of the British Critic, which had now passed into the hands of Mr. T. Mozley, contained an article by Oakeley on Bishop Jewel. It is a clever, but one-sided essay, containing much truth, and some exaggera–tions, about Jewel and the Reformers, and no adequate statement of the causes which made some reformation necessary. But the real interest of the article lay not in its worth as a piece of historical criticism, but in its bearing upon the actual circumstances of the movement.
'We cannot stand,' the writer observes, 'where we are. We must go backwards or forwards, and it will surely be the latter.'
Pusey was on a visit to Ireland when he received this article. It was best to go at once to head-quarters: so he wrote to Newman.
E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.
Kingstown, July 20, 1841.
Oakeley has sent me his article in the last British Critic (my own copy has not reached me). I am grieved that he and Ward think it necessary to act as 'public prosecutors' against the Reformers. It is surely not leaving it 'an open question'if the British Critic, which is supposed to express all our opinions, engages in such a crusade against them. I do not see how, according to any etiquette, the British Critic could, in another number, apologize for the Reformers, and if not, then it is committed to a view of a certain section. I am very anxious, too, about the movement tone which it implies. He speaks (last page but one) as if all which had been hitherto gained since the Tracts com–menced were nothing, not sufficient to justify 'the breach of peace and charity' which has taken place; as though it were nothing to have recovered the true doctrine of the two Sacraments, of Justification, the Church, Judgment to come, Repentance, Apostolic Succession, Charity, Fasting, Submission to the authority of the Church, the quod ubique, &c., unless we take a certain view of the Reformation and 'go forwards,' he does not say whither. I should think this indefiniteness in itself very injurious: it is one thing for ourselves privately to feel or to say that (if so be) we have not cleared our views as to the Power of the Keys, or to confess that we have or may have much yet .to learn, another to set persons adrift, tell them that they are to go forwards somewhither, urge them on, and give them (in the case of younger men) neither chart nor compass. And why may not such as I, if we can, think the English Reformers meant to be Catholic? There are confessedly two elements in them--submission to the authority of the early Church, and perplexed views on subjects which the foreign Reformers had perplexed. Why should not one think them (if one can) implicitly Catholic while their language is perhaps Zwinglian? Or why should their appeal to Zurich be thought fatal to their Catholi–cism, when persons confessedly Catholic, as Cosins and Andrewes and Laud (who had not seen the development of the foreign Reformation) maintain that the foreign Reformers meant the same as we, i. e. were equally Catholic? Why should the tables be turned and it be argued that they meant that we were the same as they really are, i.e. Un-catholic?
I should not regret so much the breaking-up which these views imply (although one does feel any parting); we might do all the better for evidently not being a party; but I fear it will give the Romanists occasion to triumph the more over our disunion, and perplex still more those who are inclined to leave, when they see nothing to lean on--one giving them one solution of the act by which our Church was continued to us, one another. Thus I could not [but] fear much -perplexity in a case in which I am engaged: one tells her that the act of consecrating Archbishop Parker was a sin; another, as mysel~ justifies it. It must be a great additional temptation to secede from our Church when even the one section of it, whom such people would be inclined to trust, is at variance within itself, and yet attaching so much importance to the point at issue as the last number of the British Critic does. But I am yet more concerned for the 'movement party itself.' The British Critic throws out this view as the only rope to a drowning man, and yet implies a doubt in italics 'whether it will hold.' It makes one heavy-hearted and think that one's office is done.
Oakeley's article was not Pusey's only grievance. The same number of the British Critic contained also a review of a lecture which Dr. Faussett, in his capacity of Margaret Professor of Divinity, had delivered on Tract 90 in the Divinity School. The lecturer defended the popular interpretation of the Articles, and denounced the tract as evasive and fallacious. The reviewer, who was no other than the new Editor of the British Critic himself, had no difficulty in pointing out the weakness and inconsistencies of the lecture; but, being a man of great humour he was tempted to illustrate it by an apologue, which soon became more famous than either the lecture or the review. Everybody in and out of Oxford knew who were meant by the two dogs 'Growler and Fido'; and the sombre controversy of the hour was lighted up by a flash of inevitable and well-nigh universal merriment .
Pusey was by no means without a sense of humour, but he distrusted humour as a weapon of religious controversy; its employment blinded men to the greatness of the issues at stake and to the requirements of charity. Accordingly he continues his letter to Newman as follows:--
[July 20, 1841.]
'I enclose a letter from Jelf, written, as you see, hastily, and not as meant to be seen, but which shows the effect of these articles on such men. I could not but regret myself (and so did Dr. Todd) the tone of the article against Dr. F[aussett]: it seems like the work of a follower who wished to avenge his leader (you) and thought it did not matter how hard blows he dealt, since he was not 'avenging himself,' but forgot that, as it is scarcely known that you have ceased to be editor, and it is still naturally under your influence, he was committing you. If anything could create sympathy for Dr. F., or spoil our cause, it would be such an article. We write mildly with our names, but our supposed organ is as vehement as the Record or the Observer.
'I have poured out my sorrows to you, and you will excuse it.'
Keble wrote to Newman on July 4th in the same sense about the 'Growler and Fido' article:--
'Has not our friend,' he asked, 'gone beyond the just limits of Christian, and if it may be said in the same breath, of gentlemanly severity in several parts--I fear, to be honest, I must say--in the general conception and execution of that paper? To persons who do not know M.--how far he is from everything that is spiteful, the very consciousness of which, I imagine, makes him freer in his rebukes--it will seem, I fear, as if something like personal malice and revenge had to do with it. . . . Would it not be well to put a drag on T. M.'s too Aristophanic wheels, else he will get us all into a scrape? You will guess I was startled when I tell you that I was rather looking for an apology for the sentence of which I com–plained to you in the last number, about 'How happy should I be with either,'&c., and instead of it I find him running riot in a whole long paper.'
Keble added that he 'particularly liked' Oakeley's article on Jewel.
Newman replied sympathetically. He did not wish to look indulgently at such articles as that on Dr. Faussett. Indeed, he was much annoyed at it, and he would exert himself to set things on a better footing. But how could this be done? Could certain subjects be excluded from the British Critic? Would it be wise or prudent to give this periodical up, and allow it possibly to pass into other hands? Newman himself, when editor, had declined to be answerable for Oakeley's article on Jewel. But he urged upon Pusey--with more generosity perhaps than true foresight--that 'such effusions are the relief to many minds'-- safety-valves which could not be stopped without risking an explosion. He himself had just suppressed R. Williams' translation of the Breviary, and had prevented two intend–ing seceders from going over to Rome.
Pusey was not satisfied:--
E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.
Sandy Cove, Kingstown, July 27, 1841.
I am sorry to harass you with fresh anxieties, when you are already beset with so many; but Oakeley's writings are very painful to me. As you say, 'one man's meat is another man's poison': they would be to me the very strongest temptation to go over to the Church of Rome, did I, being a layman, embrace them, and they will, I fear, much aggravate our difficulty in retaining many who are so tempted: strong minds may be kept, or others by an instinctive feeling; but I should think in many there would be such a strong repugnance at thinking that anything which had so unblessed an origin could be from God, as to outweigh everything besides. I should doubt Oakeley's having historical knowledge enough for such a view; I should think he was theorizing on others' facts, and going beyond them: in his pamphlet he does exhibit the Reformers in such a degraded light; puppets, set in motion not by any needs of their own, but by Henry's lusts: going as little a way as they could, but moving because they must: helpless and casting about for help, whenever it might be to be had, because they had no views of their own: it is certainly unutter–ably degrading to our poor Church, if not such a mark upon her, that people would think it a duty to leave her. (I do not see how he reconciles such a view with Cranmer's refusing to sign the Six Articles.) But it is not a practical question for you as yet. I hardly see how the British Critic can express both this view and the opposite, and if these be its principles, how Manning e. g. can continue to write in it. However, if he does not feel the difficulty, there is no occasion to suggest it; and I am no writer. So I am only venting my own uneasiness. There is, however, the practical difficulty, whether the British Critic is to express all our views, or only those of a section: it is one thing to leave (as Oakeley once said) the Catholicity of the Reformation an open question, another thing to brand it as he is now doing. I do not see how the B. C. can take both sides without destroying the impression produced by unity; so there seems no alternative, but either saying nothing about the Reformation or that the B. C. should be the organ and representative of Oakeley's section. I am truly sorry to pain you with all this...
I was in hope that Is. [R.] Williams was at work at the Paris Breviary in a form Consistent with our Formularies (Edward the Sixth's first Book) since the Reformation.
Things are so altered, and so much beyond me, that I feel to have neither opinion nor judgment: so do not be influenced by anything which I have ever expressed.
Every good wish.
Your very affectionate and grateful,
E. B. Pusey.
Newman's answer was marked by the consideration which is his characteristic; but it was not at all calculated to reassure Pusey.
REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO E. B. P.
Oriel College, July 30, 1841.
I am very sorry you are so much out of heart. As to Oakeley, I suppose in my heart I dislike the Reformers as much as any one, but I do not see the need of saying so, except so far as the purpose of self-justification goes, and the duty of honesty. If a person asks me, I must tell him; if he says, 'either you are evasive or the Reformers,' I am driven to say something in self-defence. But certainly I wish with all my heart the subject to be dropped on both sides. Yet on the other side I suppose men will not be silent. I think decidedly there has been too much of it in the British Critic.
As to the said B. C., I suppose every Review must depend on men who will write for it. It is a great difficulty to get men to write. Oakeley and some others are ready writers, and have more time on their hands than we have, and this has thrown it upon them. Certainly I made a great effort to make it literary and scientific, but it failed. Keble and Rogers wrote some articles on Poetry. I wished to stimulate others to write on. Astronomy, &c., &c. R. Palmer has written on Grammar. But I fear I must say that, if it is to be theological, it will to a certainty take a (so-called) ultra tone, if clever men are to write for it. Clever men will not content themselves with defending theories which they feel in their hearts to be indefensible, e.g. Palmer's views.
I assure you I shall try all I can to turn it into the literary channel, and if my will has its way, I will put a stop to all attacks on the Reformers. But then comes the point--if the Editor cannot get literary, &c. articles. I certainly will represent the matter strongly to Oakeley and Ward, but they have but one thought in their mind. Their mind is possessed with one subject..
My 'mone' at Littlemore is getting on, but I am very faint-hearted about anything coming of it.
Newman was now in fact between rival influences. On one side were Ward and Oakeley, with a train of younger followers, Rev. M. Pattison, Rev. J. B. Morris, and others, urging the wheels of an unbalanced logic in the direction of Rome, although without as yet any definite idea of going thither. On the other was Pusey, and--in his own way--Keble, unalterably devoted to the English Church, and firmly convinced that the Catholic truths and principles to which the Movement had appealed were best obeyed by steadfast adherence to her. Newman was still, in sympathy and judgment, working with Pusey but Ward was at his side, ready at any moment to become the Phaethon of the Movement and to drive its chariot down the steep. If a catastrophe was to be averted Newman must exert a stronger control than heretofore over the ardent spirits around him; but he has told us, in pathetic language, how at the very time when a strong wrist was most needed, the reins broke in his hands.
REV. J. H NEWMAN TO E. B. P.
Oriel, August 3, 1841.
Ward has just made his appearance, and tells me that some letters have passed between you and him, partly about myself. I am very glad indeed that he should speak openly with you about himself, but you must not (I see from what he says) take him as a fair reporter about me. Every one colours what be hears by his own mind from one instance Ward has told me, I see he has done so too. I have no doubt that on many points he knows more what I think than you do, because he has asked me more questions, but I am as sure that he has often not taken in my exact meaning and often mistaken a conjecture or an opinion for a formal assertion. I do not know what he has written to you about, except generally that the Reformers come in; and I say so little about them, I don't think he can have got from me more than I have already directly or indirectly said in print. But, however, it matters not. I am sure that it is right that you should have heard his opinions, but I do trust be will keep them to himself as much as possible. If you think it worth while, I will make remarks on his letter to you, if you send it me. Of course I can be no judge whether it is worth while, not having seen it--and really not wishing to see it.
P. S. I have given up the notion of a monastic body at present, lest a talk should be made. I have got a room where I can put my books, and myself. Also I have a number of spare cottages. If any one chooses to come there from London, Oxford, or elsewhere, for any time be may have a retreat, but without anything of a coenobitium. It is only, in fact, furnishing him with lodgings.
Newman's letters had made it clear to Pusey that he and Ward were defending Tract 90 on incompatible principles. If the Reformers were disingenuous, he had himself made a mistake; while if they were honest, though in no sense infallible, Ward was certainly mistaken.
E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.
Sandy Cove, Kingstown, August 9, 1841.
You will think it strange that I did not know your opinion of the Reformers, but the preface to 'Remains,' Part II, not having fallen in my way, I never happened to read it, as I can and do read very little. I saw from Tract 90 that you thought the Reformers took the Articles in a less Catholic sense than we do, but I had no thought that you held them to be 'disingenuous.' My own impression has been that they wished to be Catholic, and that their appeals to antiquity were sincere (and so I thought Jewel), but that they were entangled more or less with the Zwinglian notions afloat and held by the foreign Reformers with whom they were unhappily intimate. One might evidently interpret their declarations of submission to antiquity by their Zwinglianism, or their Zwinglianism by their declarations. I have done the latter, looking upon them as implicitly Catholic and sympathizing with their difficulties, I mean the real practical difficulty of separating what was Catholic in the existing system from what was modern and un-Catholic. Ward and Oakeley urge their fraternizing with Calvin, &c., as proof of their anti-Catholicism; but when such persons as Laud, Cosin (not to say Hooker), and, I believe, all our writers till ourselves, have interpreted Calvin, &c. in a sound sense as to the Sacraments, I do not think this fair: I suppose that until one saw the development of Calvinism and Lutheranism into Rationalism, people would not venture to see them in their true light. The event has been the comment on tendencies which persons perhaps ought not to have pronounced on beforehand. Our Reformation has had, amid whatever reverses, a steady tendency to develop itself into Catholi–cism, and to throw out the impure elements which came into the Church; the foreign Reformation has developed the contrary way into Rationalism and Pantheism; and therefore I think we have a right to infer that there was a difference in their original 'ethos'--ours intrinsically Catholic, though with something un-Catholic cleaving to the agents in it, theirs intrinsically un-Catholic, though with some semblance of Catholicism....
It is a great relief to me that you mean to urge Oakeley and Ward to quiet; it is surely a diseased state of mind to be so taken up with one subject, and that a sort of persecution of the memory of those whose dross, we trust, God has cleansed away. I should think that negative position, of taking a line against persons, a very dangerous one, and very unhealthy to humility in a young man. ...
Ever your very affectionate friend,
E. B. PUSEY.
Pusey was mistaken in thinking that Newman had written the Preface to 'Froude's 'Remains,' to which Oakeley had appealed in his article on Bishop Jewel. Keble was the real author, but if the whole passage be read it will be seen that Keble's motive is to defend by a Scrip–tural analogy the work of the Reformation at the expense of the Reformers, and not to interpret the character of the work by that of the men.
REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO E. B. P.
Oriel, August 13, 1841.
The Preface to the 'Remains' is Keble's, not mine, though of course I agree with it.
I fully thought that you professed, and wished, in your late pamphlet to give your views, not mine. Indeed, I fancied you had said so in the pamphlet. I thought you were not unwilling to show that the same interpretation might be given of the Articles, without the opinions which I connected with it, both as regards ourselves and Rome. I fancied you thought I had clogged my view with matter which gave offence, and which you were wishing to remove. Of course I did not think so myself, but was very glad that others should think so, if by throwing my opinions aside they embraced my interpretation.
You noticed to me these additions of mine, as far as the Council of Trent went, and you asked me to cut off the last sentences of the tract, which related to the Reformers, which made me suppose that you felt my opinion about them.
I really do think, and always have said, that' it was wisest to shew that we did not agree in certain points of this kind. If we did not agree, we might be sure others would not; and I think it best to provide food for all minds, and not quarrel with one liking herbs and the other flesh.
This is the only reason why I should be tempted to wish the Reformers exposed at once, except indeed the 'nemesis' which is natural to one. But I have felt in no hurry on this ground, as being sure that it is only a question of time when they would be seen in their true colours. And I think there is something of impatience in those who are now eager to write against them.
I fear I must express a persuasion that it requires no deep reading to dislike the Reformation. 'A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.' If one wants a monument, circumspice--whence all this schism and heresy, humanly speaking, but from it? And I fear I must say that the historical characteristics of its agents are such that one need not go into their doctrines or their motives.
But I need hardly say that it is an unpleasant thing to me to speak of persons I am so far from looking up to. As to yourself, I have not pressed my thoughts upon you, as for this and many other reasons, so especially for the following, that, since every one is in some way or other influenced by every one else, I did not like to be the means of making you, 'toioutos on', think of any act or person otherwise than you would have done without me.
I do not think that Oakeley and Ward are eager on running down the Reformers for the sake of doing so, but as feeling that our Church cannot be right till they are exposed, till their leaven is cast out, and till the Church repents of them. I think they ~would do better if they left all this to time. Truth will work.
It is not easy to answer such a question as whether the Articles are disingenuously framed or no, for the question is who are the framers, which is in a measure unknown....
I have nowhere committed myself to the assertion that the whole of the decrees of Trent can be interpreted catholically. I have not attempted to draw the line how far they are Catholic.
I hope you will get some useful information about 'movai' by what you see in Dublin.
P.S. I am just now, as you wish, stopping a book against the Re–formers in quite a different quarter.... I have written concisely and drily, for my hand aches so with writing that it annoys me to write many words.
Pusey had some few more words of explanation to add
E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.
[Sandy Cove, Kingstown. No date, but end of August, 1841.]
Thank you again for your full explanation. I certainly meant (as I said) to vindicate your interpretation of the Articles as honest, without suspecting the Reformers to be dishonest....
Every one must feel that there was a great deal of sin about the Reformation in all the sacrilege and oppression to the monks, &c. which took place, but I have not been accustomed to consider it as being in the Reformation, as a religious act, as far as our Church was concerned, or in the part which our Bishops took. I have been accus–tomed to lay the sin upon the State and greedy ambitious laymen, on the Sovereign, upon the indirect not the direct instruments of the Reformation; so that as for Charles' murder, the guilt rests upon [us] as a nation, not as a Church....
Thank you for consulting my wishes about the History of the Refor–mation. If this were undertaken without strong bias, I should not mind any result, though I think it would shake people less, and tempt them less to go to Rome (supposing the result unfavourable) later than now. What I dread is, this habit of writing down the Reformers in the off-hand way of short articles and pamphlets. I should be sorry indeed that a person should undertake a History with a settled bias (as the German Arnold, who wrote a History of the Church, with a view to apologise for all heretics, and consequently censuring the Church), else there is more hope that a person who is bound down to facts will make them less subservient to theory than one who, as Oakeley and Ward, are pleading a cause under strong excitement, with only reference to facts here and there. More of this, however, when we meet. I shrink from the responsibility of anything great being with–held on such judgment as mine.
The Romanists here certainly think that you have stated the whole of the Council of Trent to be Catholic, and so think that the reunion of the two communions depends only on the extension of your views; that 'what has been so long a problem is now solved,' how the Church could be reunited without sacrificing the Council of Trent. They think they have nothing to do but to await our time for rejoining them. I fear this will act unfavourably upon them: for though I believe the Council of Trent mostly to have meant to oppose error, I do not think the caballing spirit, which their own historians speak of, one likely to be consistent with the Presence of that Spirit, Who should secure them from error, or that they were so secured in things which they declared to be of faith.
The difference between Pusey and Newman which is observable in the foregoing correspondence may be illus–trated by an extract from a letter of the Rev. T. E. Morris, Student and Tutor of Christ Church. Mr. Morris had told Pusey of his agreement with Tract 9O, and had consulted him as to the duty of mentioning this to Dean Gaisford. He afterwards resigned his Tutorship in 1846: he died only a few years since as Vicar of Carleton, Yorkshire.
REV. T. E. MORRIS TO E. B. P.
MY DEAR SIR, Ch. Ch., Sept. 6, 1841.
You do not know, I only wish you could know, of what service you have been to me.... Had it not been for you I think I should never have been disposed to look into such writings as Newman's, or have had such friends as could have brought me into contact with him.
I hope you will not imagine that I am thinking my opinion of any more weight now than heretofore; I only suppose that under present circumstances I shall best meet your wishes by expressing it. It was some time before I perceived any difference between your teaching and Newman's, but for the last two or three years (I think it is as long as this) I have been unable to help thinking that there was a difference so great that it must appear sooner or later. You seem to me to be agreed as to what is Christian truth (and the strange circumstances of the Church have made this to be a marked agreement) but to differ widely as to the relation in which different parties of men stand towards it, and the manner in which it may best be applied to the present state of the world. I have thought also that, while Newman did not at all commit himself to any of your statements on these points, you continued to speak as if you were entirely agreed with him, and this I could not account for. I for some time supposed that all this difficulty must be owing to my misapprehension, and have more than once found myself at a loss when asked how your teaching was to be reconciled with his, till one day I ventured to say to Ward, 'I cannot help thinking that posterity will look upon Pusey and Newman as belonging to perfectly different schools; they seem to be agreed on those points on which all Churchmen ought to be agreed as matter of course, but no further'; to which he replied, 'I am very glad to hear you say so; I have always wondered how any one could think otherwise, but we must remember that that agreement is one for which one should be very thankful in these times.' Some further conversation passed which led me to look back to Newman's letter to the Christian Observer, my impression being that he had there committed himself to entire agreement with your writings up to that time, but I could not find this to be the case. When I speak of agreeing with Ward I only mean that, so far as I can understand, his is Newman's view of things, and that I have as yet seen nothing advanced to invalidate it. I have always heard Newman speak as if he entirely agreed with Froude and Keble in their view of the English Reformation, and though I cannot pretend to anything approaching to such knowledge of the history as would justify my saying that such is my own view, yet I must say that I have seen no case made good against it, and that whenever I have been led to look into any point of the history I have found it confirmed; though from the great variety of reading which, owing to past neglect, the duty of a tutor throws upon my hands, I hardly manage to read any subject with such method as shall enable me to refer to particular instances, and cannot substantiate the above assertion, which however is strongly on my mind as a general impression....
Believe me, dear Sir, yours very respectfully,
THOS. E. MORRIS.
Of the divergence between Newman and Pusey hinted at in the foregoing letter, the Oxford world generally had become aware. Mr. W. G. Ward, it appears, had told a friend of Golightly's that 'a certain party in this place might now be considered to be divided into disciples of Mr. Newman and disciples of Dr. Pusey--the latter opposed, the former no longer opposed, to Rome.' Through Mr. Golightly this admission soon became public property. But Pusey was most unwilling to recognize any such difference of view; he would not recognize it as long as he could avoid doing so; and he took every opportunity of endeavouring to engage Newman in efforts which im–plied that their line of thought and action was still the same. Thus when some little time later Pusey's Assistant-Lecturer in Hebrew, Mr. Seager, had caused much anxiety by conversation which implied a disposition to join the Church of Rome, Pusey wrote to beg Newman that he would influence him in an opposite direction.
E. B. P. TO THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN.
116 Marine Parade, Brighton, Jan. 3, [1842].
I very much wish you could quiet him. He has a theory that Rome must be in the right because she is a Church (and on the same ground we are also), and that it is necessary to talk down Anti–-Romanism, and defend Romanism, in order to make way for Catholi–cism. . .. I have entreated him again and again to be quiet, because, whether he will or no, he is committing me, and using any influence he may have from his connexion with me, against myself: I have told him also that his conversation seemed to me very unsettling, and that if any one went over to Romanism, who heard much of his con–versation, I should think him in part responsible ; but this he thinks no evil.... But I hear again and again of the way in which he offends people, and the suspicion in which I am in consequence held. I think he would mind you....
Ever yours most affectionately and thankfully,
E. B. PUSEY.
Nor were these efforts unresponded to.
'S. is out of Oxford,' Newman replied on Jan. 13, 'but I have written to him and am to see him on Saturday.' 'I had some talk with S. yesterday,' he writes on Sunday, the 16th, 'and from what he said, I hope he is in a better mind than he was.'
Bishop Bagot, when writing to authorize Pusey's 'Prayers for Unity,' added an expression of his regret at some of the articles in the recent number of the British Critic.
E. B. P. TO THE BISHOP OF OXFORD.
Christ Church, Sept. 8, [1841].
I thank your Lordship for your kind note. Your Lordship was rightly informed that Mr. Newman is no longer editor of the British Critic; but he is very anxious that it should be conducted in a right spirit. He was much annoyed by the article on Dr. Faussett; it is most strange, but most unfortunate, that the writer had never seen Dr. F., and knew not how exactly he was describing him. Mr. N. is very anxious that there should be nothing of this sort. I also was much pained by the article on Jewel; I believe we may anticipate that this sort of article will not be continued. Altogether, it is Mr. Newman's earnest wish that the Review should be free from anything objectionable; he was alive to people's feelings about it, and will do what in him lies to meet them.
I thought it best to read to him what your Lordship said about it, and this will make him more desirous that it should be what your Lordship wishes.
I have the honour to be, with much respect,
Your Lordship's faithful and obliged servant,
E. B. PUSEY.
The Oxford writers may have hoped that Bishop Bagot's moderate and judicial attitude would be also that of his Episcopal brethren. If they did, they were soon to be rudely undeceived, A first indication of what was coming was furnished by a refusal of Dr. Sumner, Bishop of Win–chester, to admit the Rev. Peter Young, then curate of Hursley, to Priests' Orders. The particulars of this unhappy proceeding on the part of the Bishop are given in a letter from Keble to Pusey. Mr. P. Young was going to Ireland, where Pusey was staying in July, 1841, and Keble was anxious that Pusey should advise him how to act:--
REV. J. KEBLE TO E. B. P.
Hursley, July 17, 1841.
Just now he [Mr. P. Young] wants all the sympathy and support he can get: for he has been placed in the condition of something like a confessor by a severe act of our Diocesan. (I must write to you of it, though I am not sure whether it is generally known yet: yet I can hardly understand how it can be kept a secret.) The fact is that he presented himself for Priests' Orders last week at Farnham Castle, was examined on Thursday and Friday morning, and sent back unordained. A clergyman at Winchester, Mr. Crowdy, had previously refused to sign his testi–monials, on the ground of his connection with me, and because in some sermon which he had heard Young had spoken as I should of wilful sin after Baptism. This was no doubt known to the Bishop, and he did make some technical difficulty about receiving Young's testimonials, but without saying anything of any doctrinal scruple: so that when on my intercession he did at last allow him to present himself, we were not in the least prepared for what occurred. He was immediately set to answer a long string of questions all tending one way: the first being, in substance, How do you govern yourself in the construction of the Thirty-nine Articles? And the last, Explain Consubstantiation, Transubstantiation, and the doctrine of our Church as differing from both. He answered, setting forth the doctrine of a real though spiritual Presence, as distinct from corporeal on the one hand and merely figurative on the other. The Bishop himself, backed by both his Chaplains (James and Jacob), summoned him to explain his answer; refusing to accept a statement (which he made unreservedly) in the words of the Catechism and Articles, and saying he wanted his own words: objecting also, as I understood, to his denying that the Presence was figurative, and urging the passage from Hooker, in which he seems to say that the Real Presence is not to be sought in the Sacrament but in the worthy receiver. The end of it was that he recommended Young to go away and get clearer views on the subject: intimating also that there were other points in his answer on which he should have demurred (one which he specified was, his stating that the doctrine of the Sufficiency of Scripture was not distinctly set down in Scripture, but rather to be gathered from Catholic Antiquity): but that he had no occasion to enter into them now. On the whole it looks more like a deliberate beginning of serious vexation on the part of authority than anything I have met with yet'. Certainly it is a most unhappy one as to the person most concerned; for if one man is more blameless and devoted than another, I should say from what I see of him that Peter Young is that man: and he is a person too of remarkably good information.
Keble himself wrote to Bishop Sumner, in his own words, 'to express grief and wonder, to say that he was sure there must have been some misunderstanding, and earnestly begging the Bishop to consider whether he could be of any use in clearing up matters, and offering to wait on him, if he wished it.' The Bishop replied, 'discouraging any notion of conferring on the matter with' Keble, 'and directed Young to read the 67th chapter of Hooker's Fifth Book, and also some portions of Hey's Lectures, after which, he says, he shall be ready at a fitting time to confer with him.' 'At present,' wrote Keble to Newman on July 19, 'the matter wears an alarming appearance. It was plain from the moment that 'Young went into the house that a dead set was to be made at him. Questions were put to him which were not put to others, the first being, What is your mode of interpreting the Thirty-nine Articles?'
Pusey of course sympathized warmly:--
E. B. P. TO REV. J. KEBLE.
MY DEAR KEBLE, Kingstown, July 21, [1841].
I thank you very much for liking to pour out your troubles to me. I hope the Bishop's act is the result of immediate excitement, but it is sad: it is altogether strange: for the doctrine was one of the first put forward in the Tracts: the very term 'Real Presence' has been vindicated by the Bishop of Exeter; and it is strange that one Bishop should refuse to ordain, for holding what another Bishop shows to have been stated by our very Reformers, and himself vindicated. I thought too James had been a person of sound views. Altogether I cannot but hope that it is the result of ex–citement, 'arising out of misconception of Tract 90, and that it will subside: the first question which you mention, 'How do you govern yourself in the construction of the Thirty-nine Articles?' seems to be a key to the rest.
I hope, as you say, good may come of it, and that the Bishop may be persuaded that he has acted severely: meanwhile, one cannot but think that there is misconception, and so you may, I trust, remain more at your ease under your Bishop. One must be very cautious about driving any of them to commit themselves to apparent opposition to Catholic truth: rather, I suppose one must take it for granted that they mean what our Church means, and so must ascribe any apparent condemnation of truth to misconception. So long as one is satisfied that one does hold what our Church holds, I do not think that any of us need concern himself with the personal views of his Bishop. Should e.g. any Bishop unhappily not hold the full doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, yet as our Church is clear on the point, it seems clear that no clergyman need be uncomfortable at holding a cure in his Diocese, because he himself teaches us what is the plain doctrine of the Church. And so as to the other Sacrament. I write this because I fear, from your 'Letter' to Mr. J. C[oleridge], that you might feel yourself uncomfortably placed, if your Bishop were to declare against any–thing which you feel bound to teach: but one sees every day and everywhere, that people are in reality objecting not to what they seem to object to, but to something else in their minds, something which they have confused with it, and which they cannot distinguish from it.
On Mr. Peter Young's arrival in Ireland he at once betook himself to Pusey. He had now received copies of his examination papers; the originals were retained by the Bishop's chaplain. After reading them, Pusey wrote both to Keble and Newman, to the effect that Mr. Young had in his first answer defined the mode of the Presence; that if he had left it undefined as a mystery (as Bishop An–drewes) it might have been accepted; and that there was no 'ground to fear that the doctrine of the Real Presence, external to the soul of the receiver, had been rejected by one of our Bishops.' But Newman, to Keble's great satisfaction, approved of Mr. Young's answers; and cer–tainly the Bishop of Winchester did not say or do anything which could make it easier for Keble to accept Pusey's construction of the Bishop's act in rejecting Mr. Young.
'The Bishop,' wrote Keble to Newman on Sept. 11, 'has replied to Young, simply saying that the matter cannot be settled without a personal interview; and when he comes to visit, which is on the 23rd, he will fix a time for Young to see him. If it was the merest formality in the world, instead of a grave point of doctrine, and a young clergyman's character at stake, it could hardly be treated more lightly.'
Meanwhile the clouds were gathering, and were soon to burst upon the devoted head of the author of Tract 90, and those who sympathized with or defended him. The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol attacked the 'ingenuity' and 'sophistry' of the tract.
'The Bishop of Gloucester,' wrote Keble to Newman, 'though he abused the Tracts professedly without having read them, distinctly said he had no fault to find with either the doctrine or practice of his own clergy, who were said to approve them. I told Prevost I would willingly take this in exchange for what I expect on the 23rd.'
On the 23rd the Bishop of Winchester justified this apprehension only too completely. The theological matter of his Charge was such as might be expected from a Bishop of the Evangelical School; but it contained passages which, falling on the sensitive conscience of the author of 'The Christian Year,' led him seriously to contemplate the resignation of his living. To Pusey Keble wrote on St.. Michael's Day :--
'The Charge sounded very severe, but I am told the Bishop did not really intend it to be so. We cannot judge till we see it in print; which will be, I imagine, in a week or ten days, and I will then submit to you whatever steps I think of taking. I fear it will be neces–sary to write to the Bishop; but you may depend on my not resigning, unless he actually tells me he wishes me to do so. And I will be as careful as I can to drive him up to no such point.'
To Newman he sketched out the matter of his proposed letter to the Bishop. He felt himself in a doubtful and distressing position, the Bishop having seemed publicly to censure certain views which he was known to entertain.
While these letters were passing, Pusey was at Addington. The Archbishop had sent for him in order to ascertain the state of things in Oxford. The interview was very reassuring, and Pusey's report of what passed, although evidently written with a view to reassure and encourage Newman, contains a welcome picture of the most learned as well as of the most equitable of the Primates in the present century.
E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.
Gros[venor] Sq[uare], Oct. 1, [1841].
The whole of the Archbishop's manner and all he has said has been very kind; he had nothing definite to propose, but wished to impress on us the importance of quiet, in order to regain the confidence which had been shaken. He spoke with the greatest value and respect for you as well as Keble, and for the services which had been done to the Church; he spoke very kindly of what he did not go along with as expressions in the 'Remains'; wished to put a favourable interpretation upon things, to read them in their best sense; hoped that all would be well with quiet, and that confidence would be restored. In a word, he wished us to let what had been done work, abstain from controversy as far as might be, and turn ourselves to such works as might be, as far as possible, of acknowledged utility, as practical works or, in my case, something on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, i.e. not pro–fessedly polemical But he did not even say thus much until I asked him whether he wished to advise anything. It was only the language of general caution. He said what had most disquieted people since Tract 90 was the British Critic (and indeed the tone of those three articles does seem to have given deep offence, and some have ceased to take it in). He spoke very moderately about this, as he thought Jewel's opinions a fair subject of criticism, but thought that the writer had 'a spite against him'; the tone of the article on Dr. Faussett he regretted, and on that of Sir R. P. he said, that as far as people were to look to human means, the Conservatives were the persons to whom we must look, and so he thought it ill-timed.
His way of speaking was so confidential that I hardly know what to put on paper, but his real object is to befriend us; he acquits us of any wrong doctrine, really values the services which have been rendered, wants to be able to defend us to others, and for this end, recommends us 'In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.'
I expect to be in Oxford late to-morrow, but am not certain.
His visit to Addington had strengthened Pusey's old feeling of respect for and confidence in the Primate, and on his return he determined to make an effort to relieve Keble from the position in which he was placed by the action of the Bishop of Winchester towards Mr. Peter Young. A letter in which he begged the Primate to appeal to the Bishop of Winchester, produced the subjoined kind but disappointing reply.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY TO E. B. P.
MY DEAR SIR, Addington, Oct. 11, 1841.
My absence from home must plead my apology for having so long postponed my acknowledgment of your letter of October 3rd, for though you obligingly say that you do not wish for an answer, I should feel very uncomfortable if it could be supposed that I consider any communication from you as not entitled to notice.
On the subject, however, to which your letter relates, I am afraid that interference on my part could do no good. Mr. Keble, as Vicar of Hursley, is amenable for his teaching and practice to his Diocesan, and here I have no right to interfere. He will, of course, endeavour to satisfy his Bishop in all things, will defer to authority as far as his sense of duty will permit, and will not think of retiring from his post without extreme necessity. I should indeed be sorry if any feeling should lead him to take a step which must tend much to his personal discomfort, and which might be the prelude of dissensions most in–jurious to the character of the Church, and the interests of our holy religion.
In another respect Mr. Keble is to be considered as a divine holding certain opinions which are viewed with suspicion by many members of our Church, whose judgment derives importance as well from their station as from their learning and piety, but which Mr. Keble is per–suaded are consistent with truth. Now if in regard to these points the Bishop conceives Mr. K. to be in error, and Mr. K. cannot renounce them with a safe conscience, I do not see how my interposition could produce a satisfactory result. Expression of personal respect, or recog–nition of services, accompanied with disapprobation of what by the
- Bishop might be deemed reprehensible, would not answer the purposes which you have in view; and this is the utmost which I could reason–ably ask, or could hope to obtain, either from the Bishop of Winchester, or from any other Bishop.
I remain, my dear Sir,
With sincere esteem and regard,
Your faithful and obedient servant,
Rev. Dr. Pusey. W. CANTUAR.
Harrison saw the Archbishop after the interview with Pusey, and wrote to Pusey suggesting that he should write a letter to the Archbishop, with a view to placing before the Episcopal Bench the grounds on which a more favour–able judgment of the Oxford Tracts might be formed.
'Oct. 2, 1841.
'A good opening is just now afforded by the publication of their Episcopal charges, for a respectful and temperate 'apologia', in which, without entering into minute discussion, or refined distinctions, you might show cause why you should not be deprived of that degree of liberty which, within the pale of our formularies, has always been allowed.'
This advice did bear fruit, at a later period, in Pusey's 'Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.' But, for the present, Pusey hesitated to take it, except at the express injunction of the Archbishop.
Harrison again pressed his point, but with no immediate result. If Pusey would not take his advice, the Bishops would go on warning their clergy and people against the Tractarians. But had Pusey taken it he would have been too late. The Bishops were rapidly taking their line. Before the end of 1841, Sumner of Chester, Bowstead of Lichfield, and Maltby of Durham--Pusey's old tutor--followed the lead of the Bishop of Winchester. Longley of Ripon recognized the services which the Tractarians had rendered in recovering true belief about the Church and the Sacraments; but he, too, had a word of condemnation for Tract 90. During the following year not only Copleston of Llandaff, Pepys of Worcester, Musgrave of Hereford, Thirlwall of St. David's, but also Blomfield of London, Denison of Salisbury, and even Bishop Bagot of Oxford, joined, with very varying degrees of decision, in the chorus of condemnation, which had so much more than anything else to do with precipitating the catastrophe of 1845. Re–ferring to these events in a conversation nearly forty years later, Pusey said:--
'What might not the movement have been if the Bishops would have understood us! I remember Newman saying to me at Little–more, 'Oh, Pusey! we have leant on the Bishops, and they have broken down under us!'It was too late then to say anything: he was already leaving us. But I thought to myself, 'At least I never leant on the Bishops: I leant on the Church of England.ä'
This expression is a key to a feature of Pusey's mind which partly explains the divergence of his later career from that of his illustrious fellow-worker. They were agreed as to the necessity of obedience; but in Newman's mind a single and present authority took the place which Pusey assigned to a more remote and complex, but at the same time more really authoritative guide. Pusey was not indifferent to the language of living Bishops; but he could not think such language the only and final means of ascertaining the sense and mind of the Church. Had he been a Roman Catholic he would have leant on Councils rather than on Popes; in the Church of England he leant on her collective voice in her formularies rather than on particular and contradictory interpretations of them by some of her rulers. When Keble, in his distress at the letters and Charge of the Bishop of Winchester, was thinking of resigning his pastoral cure at Hursley, Pusey stated this principle with great explicitness.
E. B. P. TO REV. J. KEBLE.
MY DEAR KEBLE, Oxford, Feb. 14, 1842.
You must not think me to be giving you an opinion, though I was startled by your expression: I have never been really under a Bishop, for although the Bishop has a throne in the cathedral, he is never there, except at an Ordination, dines with the Chapter as a guest, never visits, does not regard himself any how as our head. So that it has rather been fancying myself under a Bishop, than being under one. And so one is unfitted to give an opinion to one who is. My feeling is that I should be uncomfortable under such a Charge, but more for the Bishop's sake than my own. Such being my present feelings, I cannot feel how they would be changed by his being my Bishop, except that I should be more pained about it: we know that we are right, he wrong; and therefore I fancy I should be rather bent on seeing how to excuse him, than feel myself implicated. A Presbyter would not have had to resign under an Arian Bishop or Hoadley. In whatever degree he is really speaking against you, he is speaking against the truth, and therefore I should not think that I had any responsibility. It is every one's duty to maintain Catholic truth, even if unhappily opposed by a Bishop....
Your very affectionate,
E. B. P.
But the Movement was undoubtedly, among other things, a reassertion of Episcopal authority. The early Tracts had insisted on the deference claimed for Bishops in the Ignatian Epistles; and the moral passion for an unreserved obedience to a living ruler went hand in hand with the kindred enthusiasms for a definite creed and a life of genuine self-sacrifice. To balance one principle by another is not given to men of all temperaments; and it is rarely possible in days of youth and inexperience. The Bishops may or may not have been alive to the higher value which was assigned to their words now that Divine authority had been more fully asserted on behalf of their office; but their language was unhappily calculated to aggravate the difficulties of the situation by encouraging Latitudinarian or Puritan attacks on the Oxford writers, and by producing in the minds of younger men widespread distrust of the Church which the Bishops represented. No one had better opportunities than Pusey of observing these disastrous results, and he describes them in his published Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1842, as follows:--
'The Bishops' Charges have been made the occasion of attacks, too often, alas! from the pulpit, and that in language little fitted for the sanctuary of God, where our Lord is 'in the midst'of us. Persons who hate the principles of the Church for their strictness, or for subjecting the individual will, who, with the condemnation of what they hate, mix up ribaldry and profaneness, have still been glad to carry on their unholy warfare under the banner of our Bishops. Those severed from the Church and wishing her destruction, still plead the authority of our Bishops. Thoughtful sermons on sacred things have been noted down and blasphemously commented upon and ridiculed. It is inconceivable what a flood of profaneness has been, in the last few months, poured out upon our unhappy land under the plea of speaking against what such persons have ventured to call 'heresy.'And all this, through (one must say) blasphemous writing in the worst part of the periodical press, has reached every corner of our land; they who cannot read, hear; they who understand not what they read, still partake of the general agitation; the repose of our once peaceful villages is broken in upon; the most stable part of our population unsettled; the less thoughtful seem to look forwards to some evil which is to come upon them unawares; 'we are all,' it seems, (to use their own language,) 'to become Papistsä; and so they are prepared to desert our Church when occasion offers; others are taught to mistrust the ministers who have been labouring faithfully among them for years: if former negligences are anywhere repaired, the negligent have the popular cry ready for their plea; the serious and earnest-minded stand aghast, looking in sorrowful perplexity, what all this can mean. Until of late, men of more thoughtful minds were the more stirred to enter into Holy Orders, because our gracious Master Himself seemed to be 'hiring labourers into His Vineyard,' and 'giving each his work'; now, some such even shrink back, doubting, and in dismay what our Bishops may do. What wonder, if some are faint-hearted whether our Lord be in the vessel, which is not only so tempest-tost, but whose very shipmen and pilots are so disunited, how or whither to guide her, 'neither sun nor stars appearingä?'
The effects of these Charges soon became apparent.
'At Bristol,' wrote Pusey to Harrison on November 9, 'shortly after I had preached there for the S. P. G., a clergyman preached against the 'hell-born heresy of Puseyismä: the same person omits in the week-day parts of the lessons, yet we are the only persons censured.'
On November 17th Pusey writes again to Harrison:-
'Mr. Close the other day thanked God in his pulpit that the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol had condemned us as preaching another Gospel; and though he (the Bishop) did not mean it, his words bear it out.'
'In another great city the people were instructed to look upon the teaching of a portion of the ministers of their Church as the teaching of Satan. Would that this were an insulated case.'
Pusey saw only too clearly whither all this might lead, and, read in the light of much that has followed, the language of his Letter to the Archbishop has an almost prophetic character:--
'If this goes on, my Lord, where is it to end? If our own Bishops and others encouraged by them say to us--sore as it is to repeat, they are their own words--'Get thee hence, Satan,ä--while those of the Roman Communion pray for us, and invite us, is it not sorely adding to the temptations, I say not of ourselves, but of younger men? The young are guided by their sympathies more than by their convictions; our position is altogether an unnatural one; it was never meant, nor did he who first originated the idea of our Tracts, contemplate, that. we should stand thus; we never wished to be leaders; he who has been forced into that unenviable eminence loved retirement and obscurity; we wished, as I said, to rouse, at a critical moment, the sense of our Church to the value of a part of her deposit which she was neglecting; our first Tracts were the short abrupt addresses of persons who, when the enemy was upon them, seize the first weapon which comes to hand and discharge it; our more elaborate ones grew under our hands and became such almost without our own will; we formed no system; we did nothing to gather people round ourselves; we besought others (though in vain) to preach in this place on the same doctrines, that those doctrines might not be identified with us; we wished to guide people away from ourselves, and pointed them on, and have been essaying to lead them, to the Ancient Church, in connexion with our own; our publications of the Fathers which had the sanction of your Grace and other of your Brethren, had this as its main object, to present the fullness of the Ancient system, in faith and life, apart from modem statements and modern controversies; we forewent much which any of us might have desired to do, in order that the Church might be listened to, not ourselves; in whatever degree we have been made a party, it has been the act of others, not our own; we are held together not by party ties but by our common faith, and our common object of restoring our Church.
* * * * * *
'We wish to be merged in our Church, to be nothing but what is of all the highest, ministers and servants of our God in her, 'repairers of the breach, restorers of paths to dwell in.'But if we are thus singled out from the rest of our Lord's flock, as diseased and tainted sheep, who must be kept separate from the rest, lest we corrupt them; if a mark is thus set upon us and we are disowned, things cannot abide thus. For us, who are elder, it might be easy to retire from the weary strife, if it should be ever necessary, into lay communion, or seek some other branch of our Church, which would receive us; but, for the young, whose feelings are not bound up with their Church by the habits and mercies of many years, and to whom labouring in her service is not become a second nature, an element in our existence, their sympathies will have vent, and, if they find themselves regarded as outcasts from their Church-- to a Church they must belong, and they will seek Rome.
* * * * * *
'Among those, in whose minds serious misgivings have been raised, are not merely what would be ordinarily called 'young menä; these are, one may say, some of the flower of the English Church; persons whose sense of dutifulness binds them to her, who would, to use the language of one of them, 'feel it to be of course their duty to abide in her as long as they could. What we fear is not generally a momentary ebullition, but rather lest the thought of seceding from our Church should gradually become familiar to people's minds, and a series of shocks loosen their hold until at last they drop off, almost of themselves, from some cause which in itself seems wholly inadequate, because their grasp had gradually been relaxed before. What we fear is lest a deep despondency about ourselves and our Church come over people's minds, and they abandon her, as thinking her case hopeless or lest individuals who are removed from the sobering influence of this ancient home of the Church, should become fretted and impatient at these unsympathizing condemnations, and the continued harassing of the unseemly strife now carried on under the shelter of your Lordships' names, and losing patience should lose also the guidance vouchsafed--to the patient.'
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