FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 
THE 
 
 TBACTAEIAN MOVEMENT. 
 
tci <)' epya riov Trpay$£vT(t)v ok e\ -ou 
 
 TcaparvyJjVTog irvv^farofxEvoQ ffeliooa ypct^etr, oik' ioq ef.iol 
 eDokei, aXX' o'iq re avroc 7r((pi]u kul wapa twi> aXXwv, 
 oaov dvvarov, uKpifittq. irepX EKarrrov e.7re^e\^iov. 
 
 TnucYD. lib. 1, c. 22. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 PRINTED BY 8POTTI9WOODE \ \ D >'<■ 
 
 NEW-STREET BQ1 aim 
 
^tftf OF PRiyft 
 HISTOEIOAI NOTES p APR 2 3 1932 
 
 ON 
 
 
 THE TRAOTAEIAN MOVEMENT 
 
 (A.D. 1833 — 1845). 
 
 FREDERICK OAKELEY, M.A. Oxon. 
 
 PRTEST AND CANOK OP THE DIOCESE OF WESTMINSTER : 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE 
 
 AND MDnBTER OP MARGARET CHAPEL. 
 
 • No history of the Church of England in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century . . . can pretend to any completeness, which does not give an 
 account of the origin, rise, and progress of what is commonly called the 
 " Tractarian" Moven 
 
 Kev. A. Blomfteld's Life of Bishop Iilomfiehl. 
 
 LONDON: 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/histooOOoake 
 
TO 
 
 THE VERY REVEREND 
 
 JOHN HENEY NEWMAN, D.D. 
 
 PRIEST AND SUPERIOR OF THE ORATORY OF ST. PHILIP NERI 
 
 THIS VOLU1ME IS INSCRIBED 
 
 IN TOKEN OF 
 
 DEEP AND GRATEFUL REVERENCE. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following series of Historical Papers is reprinted 
 from the Dublin Review, in which it had the advan- 
 tage of appearing between July 1863 and July 1864. 
 The three former parts were published and the fourth 
 was in type before the literary want, in a sense of which 
 the undertaking originated, was supplied by the only 
 man in England who is capable of doing perfect 
 justice to the subject. Had the Apologia appeared 
 a year earlier, or could it have been even anticipated 
 before these Papers were begun, the idea of writing 
 them would never have entered my mind, or, at any 
 rate, would have found its expression in some other 
 form. 
 
 The same unwillingness to encroach upon a province 
 to which the author of the Apologia may be said to have 
 an almost sacred right would equally have discouraged 
 the reproduction of the present series but for two con- 
 siderations, which I have adopted in deference to the 
 
viii Advertisement. 
 
 judgment of a friend. It has been suggested to me, 
 and I think with some reason, that so far as these 
 Papers travel over the same ground with the Apologia, 
 they may have a certain interest in the eyes of the 
 public in the way of undesigned coincidence and inde- 
 pendent testimony ; and that, so far as they relate to a 
 department of the Tractarian Movement which did not 
 happen to fall under Dr. Newman's personal observation, 
 they may be taken as furnishing a supplement, however 
 unworthy, to his great work. With reference to the 
 former point, it is important to add that I have had no 
 communication whatever with Dr. Newman on the 
 subject of these Papers, and that Dr. Newman had not 
 even read them when the Apologia was written. But, 
 on the other hand, where Dr. Newman's narrative is 
 found to differ from mine, I wish to make an un- 
 qualified resignation of my testimony in his favour. 
 
 It only remains for me to apologise to the several 
 eminent persons yet living with whose names the very 
 nature of my undertaking has compelled me to take 
 what they may feel to be liberties. All I can say in my 
 defence is, that if an historical sketch of the Tractarian 
 Movement be a desirable contribution to our literature, 
 as seems to be generally admitted, the free use of those 
 names is to be excused on the ground of necessity ; 
 and, if so, the circumstance of their owners being alive 
 
Advertisement. ix 
 
 seems to me to lessen, and not to increase, the disad- 
 vantage incident to that necessity. To myself, again, it 
 is no small relief to feel, on a review of my little work, 
 that although I was writing not a panegyric but a 
 history, I have found it impossible, in the interests of 
 truth, to say anything of anyone among the persons 
 in question which does not tell to his honour. 
 
 F. 0. 
 
 St. John's, Islington : October 9th } 1864. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PART I. 
 
 PAGE 
 FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT TO THE PUBLI- 
 CATION OF TRACT NINETY (EXCLUSIVE) .... 1 
 
 PART II. 
 
 TRACT NINETY: ITS ANTECEDENTS, MOTIVES, OBJECT, AND 
 
 IMMEDIATE RESULTS 34 
 
 PART III. 
 
 ACCESSORIES AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS OF TILE MOVE- 
 MENT 
 
 TART IV. 
 
 CLOSING SCENES OF THE MOVEMENT: ITS CHARACTER AND 
 
 EFFECTS 83 
 
HISTORICAL NOTES 
 
 ox 
 
 THE TIUCTARIAX MOVEMENT. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT TO THE 
 PUBLICATION OF TRACT 90 (EXCLUSIVE ). 
 
 With the view of helping to keep alive the memory of 
 an important crisis in the ecclesiastical annals of this 
 country the contemporary witnesses to which will soon 
 have passed away, I propose, not to write a history, but 
 to set down certain notes or memoranda of the great 
 religious movement which took its rise in the University 
 of Oxford about thirty years ago. My record shall be 
 founded upon reminiscences of my own, aided by those 
 of others, and by published writings of the period. 
 Though my own connection with the movement was far 
 less intimate than that of many who are still living, and 
 though my own name will never pass with theirs to 
 future generations as that of one of its leaders or of its 
 luminaries ; yet for these very reasons I am, in one 
 point of view perhaps, and in one only, better qualified 
 to bear testimony to it than those who took a more 
 
 B 
 
The Movement not Sectarian. 
 
 active and prominent part in it, inasmuch as my posi- 
 tion in reference to it was more external ; as I am not 
 embarrassed by the restraints which personal reserve or 
 the obligations of mutual confidence might impose upon 
 them; and as the public may reasonably consider such 
 a witness to make up in independence what he wants in 
 higher claims upon its regard. 
 
 It is no small evidence in favour of the great religious 
 movement in question that we should find so much diffi- 
 culty in assigning to it a name which is not either unjust 
 towards its real character or inadequate to its extent 
 and importance. We have no such difficulty about the 
 nomenclature of a heresy or a party agitation : we call 
 the one by the name of the heresiarch, the other by 
 that of the demagogue or popular idol ; and such terms, 
 with due allowance for the imperfection of all general 
 appellatives, are sufficient to cover the grouud of the 
 idea they represent without going beyond it. But who 
 shall include within the limits of a brief definition, still 
 less express by the force of a simple term, a religious 
 manifestation which was the result of a simultaneous 
 yet mutually independent stirring of hearts in various 
 places about the same time, rather than of any preme- 
 ditated design and concerted action ; whose elements of 
 vitality seemed to float in the air rather than to be con- 
 fined within the range of a single spot ; which its ene- 
 mies delighted to characterise as an ' epidemic' — a phrase 
 which its friends were not unwilling to accept, in so far 
 as it implied that their work was not so much propa- 
 gated by contact as due to unseen agencies which human 
 analysis was unable to investigate, and subject to laws 
 
Difficulty of Defining it 
 
 which human power was too weak to oppose? Shall we 
 call it by a name which degrades it to the level of a 
 sect, and identifies it in some exclusive or especial way 
 with an amiable and esteemed divine who, after all, was 
 neither its author nor the most prominent of its leaders ? 
 No ; for that were to commit an historical error, as w T ell 
 as a controversial discourtesy. Or shall we call it by 
 the name of the university which, if not its home, was 
 at least its head- quarters? That were indeed far truer 
 to facts and free from the vice of personality. Yet, 
 should we call it the Oxford Kevival, what would Cam- 
 bridge say which had its share in the work, or London 
 which helped it on, or Oscott which smiled upon it? 
 Xay, what would Oxford herself say — that famous uni- 
 versity, which, so far from claiming its authors as her 
 own, regarded them as a knot of pestilential agitators ; 
 scowled upon them, denounced them, degraded them, 
 and at length drove them from her bosom ! Or, lastly, 
 shall we call it the Catholic movement of the Anglican 
 Establishment ? But that were to encumber our defi- 
 nition itself with a new controversy, or at least to in- 
 volve it in a petit io principii. On the whole, I am 
 disposed to rest in the modest term Tractarian ; not as 
 being free from material objections, but as being, at any 
 rate, unpretending, uninvidious, and sufficient for the 
 purpose. For the ' Tracts for the Times ' certainly con- 
 tained, one with another, the principles of which the 
 movement, in its ultimate state, was the legitimate 
 development, although some of those who were their 
 authors withdrew from it as it advanced, and even 
 ranged themselves on the side of its enemies, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 The Principal Authors of the Movement. 
 
 The theory of party combination by which the oppo- 
 nents of the Tractarian school always endeavoured to 
 weaken its importance was, from the first, strenuously 
 resisted by its friends, as will be evident to anyone 
 who reads, even cursorily, the publications to which it 
 gave rise. That theoiy was, in fact, the world's usual 
 apology for its own ignorance — an attempt to explain 
 facts which were strange to it upon principles with 
 which it is conversant. But a sufficient answer to the 
 charge of astute complicity is to be found not merely 
 in the singlemindedness of the principal movers, but in 
 the remarkable differences of character and personal 
 antecedents which distinguished them one from another ; 
 differences which they sought neither to conceal by 
 diplomacy, nor to reconcile by compromise. Mr. New- 
 man was unlike both Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble, who 
 were, in their turn, unlike one another ; and Mr. Froude, 
 whom Dr. Newman somewhere calls the real author of 
 the movement, had nothing originally in common 
 either with him or with Dr. Pusey, except the great 
 abilities which he shared with the former, and the 
 loyalty to the Anglican communion which was common 
 to all. 
 
 Between Mr. Newman and Mr. Keble there had once 
 existed a state of feeling which was far from being one 
 of religious sympathy; and Mr. Froude speaks of it as 
 a bright feature in his life that he had been instru- 
 mental in bringing these two remarkable men together. 
 The two of these leaders who most resembled one 
 another in personal characteristics were Mr. Keble 
 and Mr. Froude. Both of them sons of Higdi Church 
 
Their Personal Characteristics. 5 
 
 clergymen, and, so far, differing at once from Mr. New- 
 man and Dr. Pusey, they had imbibed from their earliest 
 years an affectionate attachment to their Church's sys- 
 tem, which became a powerful bond of union when 
 they were brought together as members of the same 
 college at Oxford, although their respective educations 
 had been different, and Mr. Keble was considerably Mr. 
 Froude's senior. The only one of these remarkable men 
 who has passed into the region of history is he who, 
 though the youngest of the whole number in }^ears, de- 
 serves to be commemorated as the first who took a 
 comprehensive view of the character and bearings of 
 the movement. Mr. Froude was a college contem- 
 porary of my own, and I enjoyed at one time the privi- 
 lege of constant intercourse and familiar acquaintance 
 with him. Those who have formed their impression of 
 him from bis published 'Kemains' will scarcely, per- 
 haps, be prepared to hear how little there appeared in 
 his external deportment, while he was at Oxford, of that 
 remarkable austerity of life which he is now known to 
 have habitually practised even then. To a form of sin- 
 gular elegance, and a countenance of that peculiar and 
 highest kind of beauty which flows from purity of heart 
 and mind, he added manners the most refined and en- 
 gaging. That air of sunny cheerfulness which is best 
 expressed by the French word riant never forsook him 
 at tlie time when I knew him best, and diffused itself, 
 as is its wont, over every circle in which he moved. I 
 have seen him in spheres so different as the common- 
 rooms of Oxford and the after-dinner company of the 
 high aristocratic society of the West of England ; and I 
 
Hurrell Froude. 
 
 well remember how he mingled even with the last in a 
 way so easy yet so dignified as at once to conciliate its 
 sympathies and direct its tone. He was one of those 
 who seemed to have extracted real good out of an 
 English public-school education, while uninfected by 
 its manifold vices. Popular among his companions 
 from his skill in all athletic exercises, as well as for his 
 humility, forbearance, and indomitable good temper, he 
 had the rare gift of changing the course of dangerous 
 conversation without uncouth abruptness or unbecoming- 
 dictation, and almost seemed, as is recorded of St. Ber- 
 nardine of Sienna, to check by his mere presence the 
 profane gibe or unseemly equivoque. To his great in- 
 tellectual powers his published ( Kemains ' bear abundant 
 witness ; nor do we, in fact, need any other proof of 
 them than the deference yielded to his opinions by such 
 men as those who have acknowledged him for their ex- 
 ample and their guide. Let it not be supposed that 
 this high panegyric is prompted by the partiality of 
 friendship. Although I enjoyed constant opportunities 
 of intercourse with Mr. Froude, and made his character 
 a study, yet I have no claim whatever to be considered 
 as his intimate friend. We were not, indeed, at that 
 time in anything like complete religious accord ; and I 
 remember his once saying to me, in words which sub- 
 sequent events make me regard as prophetic, ' My dear 
 0., I believe you will come right some day, but you are 
 a long time about it.' Poor Hurrell Froude ! may it be 
 allowed to one who was your competitor in more than 
 one academical contest, and your inferior in every tiling 
 save in his happy possession of those religious privileges 
 
Hurrell Froude. 
 
 which you were cut off too early to allow of your attain- 
 ing, to pay you, after many years, this feeble tribute of 
 gratitude and admiration ! Never again will Anglicanism 
 produce such a disciple ; never, till she is Catholic, will 
 Oxford boast of such a son : — 
 
 Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra 
 
 Esse sinent. Nimium vobis Romana propago 
 
 Visa pot ens, Superi, propria hsec si dona fuissent. . . . 
 
 Nee puer Iliaca quisquam de gente Latinos 
 
 In tantum spe toilet avos ; nee Romula quondam 
 
 Ullo se tantum tellus jactabit alumno. 
 
 As I have begun this quotation, I may as well go on 
 with it : — 
 
 Heu pietas ! lieu prisca fides ! invictaque bello 
 Dextera ! non illi quisquam se impune tulisset 
 
 Obvius armato 
 
 Manibus date lilia plenis ; 
 
 Purpureos spargam flores, animamque [sodalis] 
 His saltern accumulem donis, et fungar inani 
 Munere.* 
 
 To adjust such a character with Catholic facts and 
 Catholic principles is no part of my present object. 
 The reader who takes an interest in this question will 
 find it discussed in Dr. Newman's ' Lectures on Angli- 
 can Difficulties.' f For me it will be sufficient to take 
 leave of this gifted person in the well-known words, 
 ' Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses! ' 
 
 The characteristic differences which undoubtedly 
 existed among the chief members of the Tractarian 
 School, although they had no effect — at least for a long 
 
 * Virg. Mn. lib. \'\. ad fin. 
 f Lecture XL 
 
8 Varieties of Character in the Authors 
 
 time — in marring that front of external unity which the 
 movement itself presented to the public, were not un- 
 known to those who were near the scene of action, and 
 did not wholly escape the notice of keen observers, even 
 at a distance. It soon came to be felt that both Mr. 
 Newman and Mr. Keble, but especially the former, were 
 considerably in advance of Dr. Pusey in their opinions, 
 as well as materially different from him in rjdos; and 
 that the principal ground of these differences related, 
 more or less directly, to the proper mode of conducting 
 the controversy with Eome. It was not that Mr. New- 
 man had spoken less strongly than Dr. Pusey upon the 
 alleged corruptions of the Church ; for, in fact, he had 
 spoken even more strongly against those supposed cor- 
 ruptions. Still, notwithstanding some painful passages 
 in one of his works, there was throughout Mr. Newman's 
 writings an undercurrent of sympathy with many parts 
 of the Catholic system, which led to the apprehension 
 that these apparent antipathies were in him rather than 
 of him — views incidental to his position, which, as a 
 humble disciple of Anglicanism, he felt himself bound 
 to adopt in uninquiring faith, rather than those at 
 which he mio-ht have arrived had he allowed himself 
 to be tempted into trains of less guarded speculation. 
 No careful student of the works of the two men could 
 doubt that the bias of Dr. Pusey's mind and that of 
 Mr. Newman's were in divergent if not even opposite 
 directions. But a tangible point of difference between 
 them soon appeared in scarcely disguised form before 
 the observant public. This difference, though it might 
 be represented as relating merely to a point of history, 
 
favourable to the Success of the Movement. 9 
 
 touched, as a matter of fact, very closely upon the 
 essential character of the controversy. It concerned 
 the peculiar opinions and objects of the Anglican 
 Keformers, and therein, by consequence, the theological 
 aspect of the Anglican Keformation. Dr. Pusey had 
 publicly come forward in defence of the orthodoxy of 
 Eidley and Jewell. 
 
 . The estimate taken, on the contrary, of these men 
 and of their work by Mr. Froude, Mr. Keble, and Mr. 
 Newman, became sufficiently manifest on the publica- 
 tion of Mr. Froude's ' Eemains,' with the remarks pre- 
 fixed to them by the friends just mentioned. Mr. 
 Froude had described the English Keformers in general 
 as a ( set with whom he wished to have less and less to 
 do.' He declared his opinion that Bishop Jewell was 
 no better than an ' irreverent dissenter,' and expressed 
 himself as sceptical whether Latimer (of whom, as a 
 ' martyr,' he did not wish to speak disrespectfully) were 
 not ' something in the Bulteel line.' * Dr. Pusey was too 
 humble and forbearing to enter any kind of public protest 
 against statements and views so different from his own. 
 But he was generally believed not to go along with the 
 tenour of these expressions, nor to approve any other- 
 wise than by passive acquiescence of the publication of 
 those parts of the work in which they were contained. 
 
 Such personal differences as existed among the fore- 
 most of the Tractarian writers were anything rather than 
 unfavourable to the progress of the movement. In the 
 
 * See Froude's "Remains," vol. i. pp. 251, 379. Mr. Bulteel was a 
 clergyman of the Low Church School, who eventuallv, I believe, joined 
 the Dissenters. 
 
io Attraction to Different Minds. 
 
 eyes of friendly critics they furnished an attestation of 
 its sincerity, but they likewise tended to disarm opposi- 
 tion where they did not altogether succeed in conciliating 
 attachment. They formed links of connection between 
 the several authors and various classes of men through- 
 out the university and the country. Those who did 
 not like one of these authors could fall back upon 
 another. With able and thoughtful persons, of whatever 
 party, Mr. Newman's name was a sufficient guarantee 
 for the intellectual depth of the opinions ; sober and 
 quiet-going churchmen, who did not altogether relish 
 Mr. Newman's and Dr. Pusey's religious antecedents, 
 were diverted from their opposition by the well-known 
 and consistent orthodoxy of Mr. Keble. Even the 
 Evangelicals (at least the more religious portion of 
 them), who detested this new manifestation of a 
 theology so essentially opposed to their own, were almost 
 won to forbearance, if not to some kind of sympathy, by 
 the fervid piety of Dr. Pusey ; while Mr. Froude's 
 frankness and attractive personal qualities gained from 
 the rising generation of Oxford a favourable hearing for 
 the (to them) original views which he so ably and dash- 
 ingly inculcated. 
 
 I am here, throughout, considering the movement 
 in its earlier stages. The minds which it drew towards 
 itself at a later period had been formed on a type very 
 different from that of those with which we have been 
 hitherto engaged ; and the argument for its depth and 
 reality was thus proportionately strengthened. A more 
 motley group of adherents than it exhibited some years 
 later it is difficult for imagination even to conceive. 
 
Forerunners of the Movement 1 1 
 
 But it is fair to add that these adhesions were followed 
 by the defection of many among its earliest supporters, 
 and, as time went on, had the effect of completely 
 splitting it in two. 
 
 So much, then, for the evidence of depth and solidity 
 which the Tractarian movement derives from its having 
 commended itself to more than one character of mind. 
 I will now say a few words upon a point which is con- 
 stantly insisted on by its great writers throughout their 
 published works — I mean the fact that it was not new, 
 but had been, in a measure, anticipated by men who 
 had preceded it, and foreshown by many significant 
 prognostics. One quotation to this effect may suffice, 
 and it shall be taken from Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. 
 Jelf in vindication of the 90th Tract : — 
 
 "I have always contended," he says, "and will contend, 
 that it (the religious revival) is not satisfactorily accounted 
 for by any particular movements of individuals on a particular 
 spot. The poets and philosophers of the age have borne 
 witness to it many years. Those great names in our litera- 
 ture, Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge, 
 though in different ways, and with essential differences one 
 from another, and perhaps from any Church system, still all 
 bear witness to it. The system of Mr. Irving is another 
 witness to it. The age is moving towards something, and, 
 most unhappily, the one religious communion which has of 
 late years been practically in possession of this something is 
 the Church of Rome." * 
 
 I pass over the latter words of this quotation, which 
 constitute one of those tokens, to which I have already 
 
 * Xewman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, pp. 25, 26. 
 
12 Proximate Causes. 
 
 , 
 
 adverted, of the illustrious author's irrepressible sym- 
 pathies with the Catholic Church. For I am here 
 speaking of its general subject. I do not know that I 
 altogether agree with the illustrious writer as to the in- 
 dividuals whom he has selected for the exemplification 
 of his remarks ; but this very probably arises from my 
 own imperfect acquaintance with their writings. At 
 any rate, with the large qualification by which he guards 
 his statement, I should be disposed to add some other 
 names to those which he has specified. In the wide 
 sense of desiring to rise above the thoroughly worldly 
 character of the poetry, philosophy, and divinity of the 
 last century, I should be inclined to record the name 
 of Cowper among poets, of Johnson among men of 
 literature, and, in an eminent degree, to couple William 
 Wilberforce with those religious laymen who, with what- 
 ever excusable deficiencies of doctrine, were almost the 
 first, as a class, to treat sin and grace, and heaven and 
 hell, as practical and urgent realities. 
 
 But to come now to more proximate causes of the 
 Tractarian movement. I am disposed to give a very 
 prominent place among these causes to the teaching of 
 Dr. Charles Lloyd, Eegius Professor of Divinity, and 
 afterwards Bishop of Oxford, who died in 1829, about 
 four years before the publication of the ' Tracts for the 
 Times.' Bishop Lloyd was, I believe, the first to intro- 
 duce the admirable practice, since adopted by all his 
 successors in the Divinity chair at Oxford, of giving 
 private instruction to candidates for the Anglican minis- 
 try, as well as the public lectures which have always 
 been customary. The class of pupils whom Dr. Lloyd 
 
Dr. Charles Lloyd's Lectures. 13 
 
 assembled between the years 1826 and 1828 compre- 
 hended all the forementioned leading members of the 
 great Tractarian movement, with the exception of Mr. 
 Keble, who had then left the University. I was myself 
 one of that class, though somewhat junior in standing to 
 Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman ; and this, therefore, is one 
 of the subjects of these essays in which my testimony is 
 drawn from personal experience. Among other matters 
 which Dr. Lloyd read and discussed with his class was 
 the history of the Council of Trent and that of the 
 Anglican Prayer-book. There were, of course, two ways 
 of treating both of these subjects ; but Dr. Lloyd chose 
 the more correct and Catholic one. And I have no 
 doubt whatever that his teaching had a most important 
 influence upon the movement, and — a point to which I 
 wish to draw particular attention — upon that movement 
 in its ultimate and, as I may call it, Eoman stage. 
 Upon the subjects of Church Authority, Episcopacy, 
 the Apostolical Succession, and others, with which the 
 earlier Tracts were almost exclusively occupied, I do not 
 remember to have derived any very definite ideas from 
 Dr. Lloyd's teaching ; but I do remember to have 
 received from him an entirely new notion of Catholics 
 and of Catholic doctrine. The fact was that Dr. Lloyd, 
 besides being a man of independent thought consider- 
 ably in advance of the High Churchmen of his time, 
 had enjoyed in his youth many opportunities of inter- 
 course with the French emigrant clergy, to whom he 
 was indebted, as he told us, for truer views of the Catho- 
 lic religion than were generally current in this country. 
 But his contributions to our future conclusion did not 
 
14 Dr. Charles Lloyd. 
 
 end here. In his lectures on the Anglican Prayer-book 
 he made us first acquainted with the Missal and Breviary 
 as the sources from which all that is best and noblest in 
 that compilation is derived ; and I have at this time, or 
 lately had, an interleaved Book of Common Prayer with 
 the references to the original sources side by side with 
 the translated passages. It may be easily imagined 
 what an outcry these lectures would have created a few 
 years later ; but in the peace and security which then 
 reigned controversy was never thought of on any side, 
 and a favourable opportunity was thus given for casting 
 on the wide waters that bread which was to reappear 
 after many days. Dr. Lloyd's own course was soon run, 
 and came to an abrupt and somewhat melancholy end. 
 Upon the adoption of the great measure of Catholic 
 Emancipation by the Government of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington and Sir Robert Peel in 1829, Dr. Lloyd, who 
 owed his bishopric to the friendly intervention of the 
 latter statesman (who had been his pupil), was found in 
 the ranks of its episcopal supporters. Those who, like 
 ourselves, knew the bias of his mind, could understand 
 how this fact was sufficiently explained by his general 
 spirit of fairness and forbearance towards Catholics ; 
 but the world at large, who had known him only as a 
 High Churchman of Tory principles, attributed his 
 change of opinion to the most unworthy motives ; and, 
 being a man of strong feelings, he was unable to bear 
 up against the imputation. Knowing that his vote with 
 ministers would require an apology, he supported it by 
 an eloquent speech, which, in the then prejudiced state 
 
His Loss of Popularity am] Death. 15 
 
 of the public mind, only made matters worse. I bad 
 the privilege of hearing that speech ; it was, in the 
 main, a vindication of Catholic doctrines against Pro- 
 testant misrepresentation. It led to a bitter altercation 
 with Lord Chancellor Eldon. The Bishop charged the 
 Chancellor with being a mere tyro in logic, and the 
 Chancellor replied, not unnaturally, that such language 
 was fitter for the class-room at Oxford than for their 
 Lordships' House. Dr. Lloyd, who was always very 
 kind to me, sent for me the next morning to his 
 lodonno-s, and I found him literally flushed with his 
 oratorical triumph. In fact, he plainly manifested the 
 symptoms of an incipient fever, which in six weeks 
 resulted in his death. The sad interval was full of 
 events calculated to aggravate the malady. The week 
 after his parliamentary display he appeared at the levee, 
 where the King (George IV.), who regarded the sup- 
 port of Catholic Emancipation as a personal insult, 
 treated him with pointed rudeness. What he regarded 
 as a far greater mortification than the rebuff he had 
 experienced from a capricious monarch, was that at his 
 visitation, which followed soon after, the great body of 
 his own clergy refused his invitation to dinner. Vexed 
 and bitterly disappointed, he took to his bed, and a 
 few days later expired — an impressive example of the 
 worthlessness of human success, but a victim, as we 
 ma} 7 hope, of his zeal in the cause of charity and 
 justice. 
 
 Among the facts which heralded in the Tractarian 
 movement, and helped, as I must think, towards its real 
 
Mr. KebUs Christian Year. 
 
 success, was the publication of Mr. Keble's 'Christian 
 Year,' and its almost unexampled popularity. I am 
 afraid to say how many large editions this work went 
 through in a comparatively short time. It was in 
 everyone's hands — admired by literary men for its 
 poetical beauty, and loved by religious minds for its 
 calm and deep spirit of devotion. Appearing at a time 
 when controversy was not suspected, it was the occasion 
 of circulating — and that, too, in the form of all others 
 the most attractive and the most valuable — sentiments 
 which, if ever they had a place in the High Church 
 schools of divinity, had, at all events, been long in 
 abeyance. Not only was it free, to an extent at that 
 time remarkable, from anti-Catholic phraseology, but it 
 dared to plead, in terms than which even a Catholic 
 could use no stronger, for the love of which our Blessed 
 Lady should be the object.* The natural and affec- 
 tionate use of the Holy Name, with the pervading tone 
 of tender love towards our Divine Lord, was another of 
 its characteristics, which, strange to say, placed it in 
 contrast to the High Church publications of the time, 
 and won for it an access to many an Evangelical hearth 
 from which the well-known religious opinions of its 
 author might otherwise have banished it. The work 
 was thus, in all probability, the means of insinuating 
 principles and infusing a spirit which prepared the way 
 for a more favourable reception of the Tractarian 
 
 * Ave Maria, thou whose name 
 All but adoring love may claim. 
 
 Christian Year: Feastofth Annunciation. 
 
Aristotle's Ethics. 17 
 
 theology than that theology might have received if not 
 pre-announced by so popular a forerunner. 
 
 I cannot help thinking, although I am not sure if the 
 opinion be shared by others, that the great religious 
 movement in question was favoured to a considerable 
 extent by the peculiar character of the education, both 
 philosophical and classical, by which the Oxford of those 
 days was distinguished. The basis of the former was 
 the great moral treatise of Aristotle, the Ethics, which 
 contains, as I need not say, the skeleton of our own 
 system of Moral Theology, The Aristotelian ethics, 
 with the Christian philosophy of Bishop Butler as their 
 commentary and supplement, entered into the acade- 
 mical education of all the more cultivated minds of 
 Oxford, and contributed, in a pre-eminent degree, to 
 form their character and regulate their tone. In the 
 absence of an}i:hing like a powerful and consistent 
 teaching on the part of the Established Church, this 
 positive philosophy was a real boon. Those, of course, 
 who had no higher object in their academical life than to 
 gain the honours of the Schools, studied it, like every- 
 thing else, with an eye merely to that secondary end. 
 But more thoughtful minds found in it a deeper mean- 
 ing and a more practical use. No one can read Mr. 
 Fronde's c Remains,' for instance, without seeing that 
 with him, and with those with whom he corresponded, 
 the ethical system of Oxford had exercised no small 
 influence in the formation of mental habits. Those 
 who, like myself, were personally acquainted with Mr. 
 Fronde, will remember how constantly he used to 
 appeal to this great moral teacher of antiquity (' Old 
 
 c 
 
1 8 Classical Studies of Oxford. 
 
 'Stotle,' as he used playfully to call him), against the 
 shallow principles of the day.* There is a sense, I 
 am convinced, in which the literature of heathenism is 
 often more religious than that of Protestantism. Thus, 
 then, it was that the philosophical studies of Oxford 
 tended to form certain great minds on a semi-Catholic 
 type. 
 
 I wish I had space to do more than indicate a similar 
 impression with regard to the (then) classical education 
 of Oxford, which made critical scholarship less an end 
 in itself, than the means towards a certain habit of 
 mind. It was an education which fed the chivalrous 
 and romantic spirit of youth, and which formed those 
 capacities for the perception of the beautiful, of which 
 the Catholic religion is the sole adequate correlative. 
 Hence those accomplished scholars of the olden time, 
 who have not become Catholics, such as Mr. Keble and 
 Mr. Isaac Williams, have been apt to invest their own 
 religion with an ideal beauty, which has been to them, 
 unhappily, a kind of substitute for the reality. Mean- 
 while, where is it but in the Catholic Church, her 
 storied annals, her world-wide exploits, her awful sanc- 
 tity, her varied devotions, her versatile institutions, her 
 graceful and loving ceremonial, that romance finds its 
 noblest field of investigation, and the love of the 
 beautiful its most congenial sphere of exercise ? The 
 natural reverence of iEschylus, the all but inspired 
 flights of Pindar, the philosophic vein of the reflective 
 
 * Mr. Froude's 'Letters to Friends' furnish abundant evidence of a 
 mind funned upon the best Oxford model. (See 'Remains,' vol. i. 
 pp. 170, 249, 329, 363, 367-8, 375-6, &c.) 
 
Origin of the Tracts. 
 
 Sophocles, the fascinating elegance of Virgil, and even 
 the pathetic moralism of the voluptuous Horace, — 
 where do they find the light which illustrates their 
 instinctive guesses, the substance which corresponds 
 with their dim foreshadowings, the agent which pre- 
 cipitates their dross and brings out their gold ? In the 
 theory, the history, and the actual manifestations of 
 Holy Church.* 
 
 It was about the year 1833 that the Tractarian 
 movement actually took its rise, in the publication of 
 the first of the 'Tracts for the Times.' The more 
 immediate occasion of this attempt to reanimate the 
 Established Church with the spirit of ancient times is 
 said by Mr. William Palmer, of Worcester College, in 
 his ( Narrative of Events ' connected with the publica- 
 tion of the Tracts, to have been the exhibition on the 
 part of the Government of an increasing desire to 
 subject the National Church to the influence of the 
 State ; and the destruction of the ancient landmarks 
 which had separated the Establishment, on the one 
 hand from the Eoman Catholics, and on the other from 
 the Dissenters, by the then recent repeal of the Test 
 and Corporation Acts, the emancipation of Catholics 
 from civil disabilities, and other measures of a similar 
 character. Those who desire to acquaint themselves 
 with the circumstances under which the Tracts arose, 
 and the differences of opinion which were the cause of 
 division among their authors almost from the first, and 
 ultimately of a complete separation of the more back- 
 
 * For an illustration, I might point to the ' Promessi Sposi,' or to 
 ; Fabiola.' 
 
 c2 
 
20 The Earlier Tracts. 
 
 ward from the more advanced disciples of the school, 
 will do well to consult Mr. Palmer's e Narrative,' which 
 will be found to bear out some of the remarks contained 
 in the present essay. 
 
 The objects with which the Tracts were originally 
 started will sufficiently account for the tenour of those 
 which came earliest in the series. The earlier numbers 
 will be found to turn principally upon the points in 
 which the Established Church is supposed to mediate 
 between the two extremes of ' Romanism ' and Lati- 
 tudinarianism, as well as upon the claims of that body 
 to a share in those hereditary privileges of an Apostolic 
 society which Catholics consider to have been fatally 
 impaired by the great schism of the sixteenth century. 
 This portion of the subject has so little interest for 
 Catholics, whom I am here principally addressing, that 
 I gladly follow the dictate of my own inclination b} r 
 passing it over. In truth it is a phase of the move- 
 ment which never presented any features of attraction 
 either to my own mind or to that of others whom the 
 movement eventually absorbed into itself. I can confi- 
 dently assert that the hardest trial to which my faith 
 was ever exposed was that of being asked to see in the 
 Anglican bishops the successors of the Apostles. I 
 have a sincere respect for several of the present members 
 of the Episcopal Bench, and for more than one of them 
 a great personal regard and affection ;* but to look 
 
 * No difference of opinion or change of position can ever weaken my 
 personal attachment to my former esteemed and much-loved tutor, the 
 present Bishop of Winchester, under whose roof I passed the three hap- 
 piest years of my Protestant life ; and I can truly sa}- that the separa- 
 tion from him, which I feel to be more consistent with a true affection 
 
Apostolic Succession. i\ 
 
 upon them, in their collective character, as the lineal 
 descendants of St. Peter and St. Paul was another 
 matter altogether. It was not the seat in the Lords, 
 for that might be an accident ; nor the conge iVelire, 
 for that might be an usurpation. Neither was it 
 altogether the handsome equipage and the numerous 
 retinue, the palace with its imposing exterior," or the 
 castle with its princely domain, for these might, without 
 much difficult} 7 , be located in the Catholic system : they 
 had their counterparts in Catholic countries, and some 
 of them were even the heritage of Catholic times. But 
 it was those characteristics of the institution which 
 appeal rather to the imagination than to the reason 
 which made havoc of the theory, and seemed to 
 indicate some fatal flaw in the Apostolic pedigree, and 
 some bar of illegitimacy athwart the royal escutcheon. 
 Nor did it appear any injustice to the dignitaries in 
 question to hesitate in attributing to them prerogatives 
 
 towards him than the only sort of intercourse which would be possible 
 under the circumstances, is among the foremost of those painful sacri- 
 fices which an act of imperative duty has imposed upon me. I will also 
 take this opportunity of publicly expressing to another distinguished 
 prelate of the Establishment with whom I was once connected in an 
 opposite relation, the present Bishop of London, the grateful sense which 
 I entertain of his affectionate kindness towards me, unbroken as it has 
 been by the event which has indicated such grave differences of religious 
 opinion between us. and winch has, of course, thrown me entirely out of 
 the immediate sphere of his Lordship's interests and associations. I 
 have also a pleasant and grateful remembrance of Archbishop Longley 
 and Bishop Short, who were both tutors at Christ Church when I was 
 there as an Undergraduate and Bachelor of Arts. I will also take this 
 opportunity of paying a long-standing debt of gratitude to Bishop 
 Lonsdale, for his kindness to me when I felt myself bound in duty to 
 resign my prebendal stall at Lichfield after the sentence of the Court of 
 Arches in 1845. 
 
Oral Teaching. 
 
 which, for a long time at least, they appeared to be 
 themselves as anxious to disclaim as others to force 
 upon them. 
 
 Had the influence of the Tractarian movement been 
 confined within the range of mere literature, it might 
 have been very many years in spreading itself; and, in 
 all probability, would never have succeeded in gaining 
 that hold on the public mind which, as a fact, it asserted 
 with almost miraculous rapidity. Literature proper has 
 but a slender influence on human action unless it 
 be powerfully aided by collateral supports or by the 
 predisposition of the public. Neither of these auxiliaries 
 was actually wanting in the case of the Tracts. They 
 evidently responded to some craving which was not felt 
 to exist till its satisfaction was supplied. But the 
 teaching of the Tracts also required for its due effect 
 some vast machinery of oral instruction to explain, to 
 amplify, and to qualify it. For it consisted, as truly 
 understood, not in certain doctrines only, but in a 
 great ethical system, by which the whole character was 
 to be leavened, and not merely the reason convinced. 
 The place in which the movement arose was, of all 
 others, the most favourable for this purpose. The 
 University of Oxford is both a centre which draws to 
 itself all that is powerful in this country, and a source 
 from which those elements return to their several 
 spheres of influence with an immense accession of 
 strength, whether for good or for evil. Moreover, 
 Oxford possesses, so far as a Protestant University can 
 possess it, a most valuable apparatus of oral teaching. 
 Its lecture-rooms in the several colleges furnish, to 
 
Oxford Lecture-Rooms. 23 
 
 those who preside in them, abundant means of moulding 
 the ductile mind of youth in one or another form ; 
 while its pulpits, parochial as well as academical, where 
 filled by able and earnest preachers, may easily be 
 made, as they have been made, materially instrumental 
 to the same end. The former of these means of influence 
 — the lecture-room — was all but completely barred, 
 by the exercise of authority, against the approaches of 
 Tractarianism. Tutors of colleges who were known to 
 share the new opinions, were speedily disposed of by 
 some one among those hundred methods of regulating 
 his society according to his own views which the head 
 of a college possesses ; while younger men who might 
 be aspirants after the same position were still more 
 easily prevented from ever arriving at it. Many methods 
 would occur to the anti-Tractarian president or principal 
 for the attainment of his object. He might crush the 
 spirit of the unhappy juvenile by snubbing him at 
 6 collections,' by quarrelling with his exercises, by cold 
 looks and cutting words at other times ; and, as a last 
 resource, by sending him upon some plea of health or 
 college necessity into the country. These methods of 
 petty persecution, which were extensively resorted to 
 in the hope of checking the progress of Tractarianism 
 among the junior members of the University, have 
 been so admirably described by Dr. Newman in his 
 inimitable tale of ( Loss and Grain,' that no more need 
 be said of them in this place. Even the higher tribunals 
 of the University were sometimes perverted to the 
 same party uses. Thus the School of Divinity was 
 turned into a court of inquiry ; and on a celebrated 
 
24 The Pulpit. 
 
 occasion the Regius Professor of that faculty endea- 
 voured to convert a zealous admirer of Tractarian 
 principles by refusing him his degree, unless he would 
 consent to accept a thesis so worded by the Professor as 
 to admit but of one mode of treatment, and to treat 
 it according to the views of doctrine which he (the 
 Professor) espoused.* 
 
 But the other instrument of moral power to which 
 allusion has been made — the pulpit — was not quite so 
 manageable a weapon. The University pulpit, indeed, 
 had a two-sided effect upon the movement; for the 
 conditions of that institution entail a constant variety 
 of preachers ; and, as the Tractarians were of course 
 in the minority, their sermons bore a very small pro- 
 portion to those of their opponents. And almost every 
 hot-headed orator who came from the country to 
 preach before the University in his turn, came w 7 ith a 
 determination to crush the iniquitous system hj some 
 palmary argument. But all this while a course of 
 pulpit-teaching was going on in the same church, wbich, 
 unlike that we have just spoken of, was continuous and 
 uniform. No sooner had St. Mary's been cleared of 
 its dignified audience, than a new congregation was 
 gathered together within its walls, ostensibly consisting 
 of parishioners, but really comprehending a large 
 number of the members, especially the junior members, 
 of the University. This service, like its companion in 
 the forenoon, was conducted entirely by Mr. Now man, 
 
 * Copies of the Correspondence in the case of the Regius Professor of 
 Divinity and Mr. Maemullen. Oxford: 1814. 
 
The Ministry of St. Mary's. 25 
 
 who had succeeded, in his turn, as Fellow of Oriel, to 
 the incumbency of the parish. Mr. Newman was, in 
 fact, everything in this office— alike without rival and 
 without coadjutor; he was reader, preacher, and cele- 
 brant ; nay, music and ceremonial also ; for, if these 
 various departments were ever actually filled by others, 
 they have faded from the memory, which has settled 
 down on him alone. It was from that pulpit that 
 Sunday after Sunday were delivered those marvellous 
 discourses which have been since collected into several 
 volumes, and of which it may be said that there is 
 hardly a sentence which does not form a study for the 
 philosopher. Nor was it in the pulpit alone that Mr. 
 Newman had the gift of throwing a character essentially 
 his own over the work in which he was engaged. He 
 succeeded in imparting to the Anglican service, and 
 especially to that portion of it which from the lips of 
 most clergymen was either an unimpressive recital 
 or a pompous effort — the reading of the lessons — an 
 indescribable charm of touching beaut}^, and a wonderful 
 power of instructive efficacy. His delivery of Scripture 
 w r as a sermon in which you forgot the human preacher ; 
 a drama in w T hich the vividness of the representation 
 was marred by no effort and degraded by no art. He 
 stood before the sacred volume as if penetrating its 
 contents to their very centre, so that his manner alone, 
 his pathetic changes of voice, or his thrilling pauses, 
 seemed to convey the commentary in the simple enun- 
 ciation of the text. He brought out meanings where 
 none had been even suspected, and invested passages 
 which in the hands of the profane are often the subject 
 
iG The Ministry of St. Marys. 
 
 of unbecoming levity, with a solemnity which forced 
 irreverence to retire abashed into its hiding-places. In 
 fact, for a non-Catholic ministration, nothing could be 
 more perfect. It is the Church alone which completely 
 merges the individual in the office, and which can 
 afford, therefore, to dispense with every form of 
 rhetorical embellishment, however legitimate, in the 
 utterance of prayer or the recital of the Written Word. 
 But I have often regarded Mr. Newman's mode of 
 reading the lessons, with the inimitable power of 
 representation which he threw into them, as a kind 
 of foreshadowing, or, as I may say, apologetic counter- 
 part, of that sublime idea which the Church has 
 embodied in the quasi-dramatic recital of the Passion 
 in Holy Week. 
 
 The charm of the ministration to which I have just 
 referred had scarcely less effect in securing the presence, 
 and rivetting the attention, of a devout and highly 
 educated congregation than the masterly discourses 
 which followed it. There were particular chapters of 
 the Old Testament (for, as it was evening service of 
 which I am speaking, the narrative portion of the New 
 did not enter into the lessons), to the recurrence of 
 which people used almost to look forward as master 
 specimens of the peculiar power in question. The 
 sacrifice of Isaac by his father, the history of Joseph 
 and his brethren, the passage of the Red Sea, and the 
 history of Balaam, are portions of the Old Testament 
 which gave especial opportunity for its exercise. Ah ! 
 it might almost make one weep to think of the change 
 which has come over that University ; of the blight of 
 
Last Days of Mr. Fronde. 27 
 
 scepticism and infidelity which has penetrated, to all 
 appearance, to its core, and poisoned the very well- 
 springs of faith and love. Unhappy Oxford ! — 
 
 Not poppy nor mandragora, 
 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
 Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou owedst yesterday. 
 
 The spirit of confidence has fled ; the demon of mistrust 
 has entered in ; and there is no charmer now to lure it 
 away by the music of his song ; no exorcist to bid it 
 avaunt by the power of his word.* One panacea alone 
 remains — the authority of an infallible Church, and 
 the gift of a childlike faith. 
 
 The second act of the drama which I am engaged in 
 evolving opens with the publication of the celebrated 
 90th Tract, upon which the curtain shall rise in a future 
 paper. 
 
 Before concluding, however, I must briefly advert to 
 an event which belongs to the period we have just 
 traversed, and not to that upon which we have still to 
 enter. Mr. Froude had now passed away from the 
 scene of his earthly labours. Towards the close of his 
 mortal career, his opinions appear to have undergone 
 some change, which was perceptible to many of his 
 friends even in his outward demeanour. He associated 
 less than formerly with the old High Church party of 
 the Establishment, as he became convinced that the 
 ills of the Church must be cured by sterner and more 
 unworldly methods of discipline than that party was 
 
 * Since these words were written a prospect of brighter days has been 
 granted to us. 
 
2 8 Mr. Fronde's Anti-Catholic Phraseology 
 
 prepared to accept. An air of gravity and a tone of 
 severity, even in general society (so far as he mixed 
 with it), had replaced that bright and sunny cheerful- 
 ness which was characteristic of his earlier days ; and 
 this change of exterior was greater than could be ex- 
 plained by his declining health, against which he bore 
 up with exemplary fortitude. Together with a more 
 anxious view of the state and prospects of the Establish- 
 ment, he had apparently taken up a less favourable 
 opinion of the Catholic Church, at least, in its actual 
 manifestation. A visit to the Continent had operated, 
 from whatever cause, unfavourably upon his judgment 
 of Catholics, whom he now first stigmatised as ' Triden- 
 tines,' — a strange commentary, certainly, on the view 
 put forth later by Mr. Xewman, to the effect that the 
 prevalent Catholic system was erroneous, in that it had 
 deviated from the Tridentine rule — not in that it repre- 
 sented that rule. This and similar dicta (some of a 
 still more painful import) have led such of Mr. Froude's 
 friends as have clung to the Established Church to 
 believe that, had he lived, he would have remained on 
 their side. Such a question will naturally be determined, 
 to a great extent, according to the personal views and 
 wishes of those who speculate upon it. Certain, at any 
 rate, it is that, had he come to us, the Church would 
 have secured the humble obedience and faithful service 
 of a rarely gifted intellect ; while, had he stayed behind, 
 he would have added one more to the number of those 
 whose absence is the theme of our lamentation, and 
 w T hose conversion the object of our prayers. 
 
 It is part, however, of the historian's office to investi- 
 
not decisive of his Views. 29 
 
 gate such questions according to the evidence at his 
 disposal ; and, in the instance before us, that evidence 
 is far more accessible and far more satisfactory than is 
 usually the case in posthumous inquiries. Mr. Froude's 
 6 Letters to Friends,' published in his c Remains,' give 
 an insight into his character and feelings, with all their 
 various developments and vicissitudes, such as is com- 
 monly the privilege of intimate personal acquaintance, 
 and of that alone. His bosom friends could hardly 
 have known him better than the careful student of these 
 letters may know him, if he desire it ; indeed, it is to 
 such friends that he discloses himself in those letters 
 with almost the plain-spokenness of the confessional. 
 
 Now, it must be admitted that these letters leave the 
 question as to the probability of his conversion very 
 much in that evenly-balanced state in which, as I have 
 just said, the wishes of friends or partisans come in to 
 determine it on either side. His letters contain, on the 
 one hand, many passages from which, if they stood 
 alone, it might be concluded that he was, at certain 
 times, almost ripe for conversion. They also contain 
 others apparently of an opposite tenour. In the former 
 class must be reckoned those indications of antipathy, 
 continually deriving fresh fuel from new researches, to 
 the English Reformation and Reformers.* Mr. Froude's 
 theological sentiments had long passed the mark of the 
 Laudian era, and settled at the point of the Xon-jurors.f 
 He thinks ( one might take ' for an example c Francis 
 de Sales,' whom, by the way, he classes with ( Jansenist 
 
 * Froude's Remains, vol. i. pp. 389, 393, 394, &c. 
 t Ibid. p. 363. 
 
30 The Question of his lyrobable Conversion. 
 
 saints.' * Again, he was most deeply sensitive to the 
 shortcomings and anomalies of his communion; he calls 
 it an ' incubus ' on the country, and ascribes to it the 
 blighting properties of the ' upas tree.' f It is evident 
 that he was in advance both of Mr. Keble and of Mr. 
 Newman : he twits the former, in friendly expostulation, 
 with the Protestantism of his phraseology in parts of 
 the ( Christian Year,' and laments the backwardness of 
 the latter on some questions of the day.J On the other 
 hand, and in the same direction of thought, he expresses 
 admiration of Cardinal Pole; § he scruples about speak- 
 ing against the Catholic system — even its ' seemvngly 
 indifferent practices ;' || he can understand, on the 
 principle of reverence, the communion under one 
 specieslf — perhaps the greatest of all practical difficulties 
 to many Anglican minds. Moreover, when at Pome, 
 he evidently opened the subject of reconciliation to a 
 distinguished prelate whom he met there.** 
 
 Per contra, we have painful sayings against supposed 
 practical abuses in the Church. He ' really thought,' 
 as he tells us, ' that certain practices ' which he wit- 
 nessed abroad are ' idolatrous ; ' he charges priests with 
 irreverence, ecclesiastical authorities with laxity, &c.ft 
 
 * Froude's Remains, vol. i. p. 395. 
 
 t Ibid. pp. 403, 405, &c. 
 
 \ Ibid. pp. 326, 394, 395, 403, 417, &c. 
 
 § Ibid. p. 254. 
 
 || Ibid. pp. 336, 395. 
 
 «[ Ibid. p. 410. See the passage, ' If 1 were a Roman Catholic Trieste 
 &c. 
 
 ** Ibid. p. 306. 
 
 ft These passages are collected in the Editor's Preface to the ' Re- 
 mains,' p. 11, et seq. 
 
Evidence* for and against it 31 
 
 Yet even these opinions he partially qualifies, and is 
 disposed to attribute to defective information.* He 
 shrinks from speaking against Rome ' as a Church"* 
 (p. 395 ). 
 
 Unwilling as I am to hazard conjectures on the sub- 
 ject, especially against the judgment of any among his 
 more intimate friends, I do not think it unreasonable 
 to conclude, from a comparison of these passages, that 
 Mr. Froude's objections were chiefly directed against 
 imaginary abuses, or possible relaxations of discipline, 
 which time and reflection w r ould have shown him to be 
 entirely independent of the real merits of the con- 
 troversy. I find it also difficult to believe that, as the 
 principles of the English Reformation received those 
 illustrations in the Established Church w T hich w^e have 
 lived long enough to see, — as her constituted tribunals 
 were found to give up in succession the grace of the 
 Sacraments, the authority of the Church, and even the 
 inspiration of Holy Scripture itself, as necessary truths, 
 — his clear and honest mind would not have accepted 
 some or all of these tokens of apostasy as a summons to 
 enter the True Fold. Assuredly, too, we have known 
 no instance of a mind equally candid, intelligent, and 
 instructed, whose advances in the direction of the Truth 
 (especially where assisted by extraordinary acuteness of 
 conscience and purity of life) have stopped short, as 
 time has gone on, of the logical conclusion, except in 
 cases where the progress of such a mind has been 
 arrested by conflicting tendencies of deeply ingrained 
 
 * See Preface, p. 14, et alibi. 
 
32 Character of Mr. Froude' s personal Relig 
 
 nm 
 
 Protestant or national prepossession — such as in his 
 instance were singularly absent. 
 
 There is, however, one phase of Mr. Fronde's mind 
 with which it is far more difficult to reconcile the belief 
 of his probable conversion than any other. This phase, 
 indeed, seems to have been a characteristic of himself, 
 as compared with nearly all of those who took a leading 
 part in the movement, including even Mr. Keble, who, 
 on the whole, was the nearest to Mr. Froude in general 
 character. The peculiarity to which I refer is that of 
 an extraordinary leaning to the side of religious dread, 
 and a corresponding suppression of the sentiments of 
 love and joy. Mr. Fronde's religion, as far as it can be 
 gathered from his published journal, seems to have been 
 (if the expression be not too strong) more like that of 
 a humble and pious Jew under the Old Dispensation, 
 than of a Christian living in the full sunshine of Gospel 
 privileges. The apology for this feature in his religious 
 character, and for any portion of it which appears in 
 those of other excellent men of the same period, is to 
 be found in the ungraceful and often irreverent form in 
 which the warmer side of the Christian temper was 
 exhibited in the party called Evangelical, whose lan- 
 guage, based as it often was upon grievous errors of 
 doctrine, had a tendency to react in religious minds on 
 the side of severity and reserve. Such a form of 
 religious spirit, however, where exhibited in the some- 
 what unusual proportions which it assumes in Mr. 
 Froude, must undergo almost a complete revolution 
 before it can be naturally susceptible of the impressions 
 which Catholic devotion has a tendency to produce, or 
 
Conclusion. 23 
 
 even tolerant of the language which pervades our 
 approved manuals. It is certainly difficult to find in 
 the Mr. Froude of the ' Kemains,' a compartment for 
 devotion to our Blessed Lady, for instance, or even to 
 the Sacred Humanity of our Lord, in all its attractive 
 and endearing fulness. Yet, taking the phenomena of 
 his case as a whole, and duly estimating the respective 
 powers of the two conflicting forces, I cannot help 
 thinking that the Church would more easily have 
 conquered his prejudices than the Establishment have 
 retained his allegiance. 
 
34 The Roman Communion in England. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 TRACT 90 : ITS ANTECEDENTS, MOTIVES, OBJECT, AND IM- 
 MEDIATE RESULTS. 
 
 I intend to devote this Paper to the subject of Tract 
 90 : and it will not be otherwise than consistent with 
 such intention if I speak, in the first instance, some- 
 what in detail of a circumstance which is known to have 
 produced a powerful impression upon Mr. Newman's 
 mind, and to have affected, more or less, every work 
 which he took in hand subsequently to its date. This 
 circumstance belongs properly to the period of history 
 comprehended in my last paper; and as we have thus 
 overshot our mark, it will be necessary to take our 
 train back some little way, in order the better to bring 
 it up to the point of destination. 
 
 It must be very difficult for those who are sons of 
 the Church, not by adoption but by inheritance, to 
 realise, even by a strong effort of imagination, the 
 depth and extent of the ignorance which prevailed 
 among members of the Anglican Establishment at the 
 beginning of the Tractarian Movement with regard to 
 the state and feelings of the Catholic community in 
 and. It is no exaggeration to say that many of 
 us knew far more about the manners and customs of 
 
Protestant Ideas of it. 35 
 
 the ancient Egyptians, or Scythian tribes, than of the 
 characters and doings of this portion of our fellow- 
 countrymen. I have no reason to think that I was 
 myself at all behind the general run of my contem- 
 poraries in the advantages of education, or in know- 
 ledge of the world, so that my own ideas in early 
 youth of the subject in question ma) 7 be received as a 
 fair sample of the average opinions of young people at 
 the time. I thought that the ( Eoman Catholics' of 
 England did not, at the most, number more than about 
 80 or 100 souls, who were distributed in certain great 
 families over the midland and northern counties. I 
 thought that each of these families lived in a large 
 haunted house, embosomed in yew-trees, and surrounded 
 by high brick walls. About the interior of these man- 
 sions I had also my ideas. I thought that they were 
 made up of vast dreary apartments, walled with tapestry ; 
 with state bedrooms, in which were enormous beds with 
 ebony bedsteads surmounted by plumes, and which only 
 required horses to be put to them in order to become 
 funeral cars. I fancied, of course, that there reigned 
 around and within these abodes a preternatural silence, 
 broken only by the flapping of bats and the screeching 
 of owls. Of Catholic priests I had a far less distinct 
 idea, and consequently an ampler field of conjecture. 
 I knew only that they had their little suburban chapels, 
 in which they perpetrated ineffable rites. The only 
 token of humanity about them was rather of a pleasing 
 character. It was the little modesl presbytery by the 
 side of the chapel, with its wicket by the road and its 
 narrow gravel-walk, edged with neatly-trimmed box, 
 
 D 2 
 
36 My Boyish Notion of a Priest. 
 
 leading up to the entrance, and its little garden by the 
 side, in which the combination of the utile and the 
 dulce was so happily expressed by the union of pinks 
 and sweet-peas with plants of a more homely and 
 esculent character. But who and what were the inmates 
 of these dwellings? That they must be mortal was 
 evident ; but how did they employ themselves ? They 
 were never to be seen in public places, and if they ever 
 went abroad it must be in company with the aforesaid 
 owls and bats and other such shy and lucifugous crea- 
 tures. Surely that could not be one of them whom we 
 saw the other day working in his garden like a common 
 labourer, or coming out of that poor little cottage, so 
 meanly clad, with his hand on his breast and his eyes 
 on the ground ? Of course not ; for priests are always 
 represented, in pictures and on the stage, as big men, 
 with haughty looks and shaven crowns. Such, or not 
 very different, were my boyish notions of English 
 Catholics; and the strange thing is that, although I 
 have no reason to think that the subject was interdicted 
 at home, somehow I never liked talking about it, or 
 trying to clear up my notions by comparison with those 
 of others. The subject never seemed to come up 
 naturally, or to lie in anyone's way.* 
 
 This may serve to explain, what otherwise must seem 
 so strange, the way in which during the earlier years of 
 
 * My experience of priests was derived from Lichfield, where, on 
 St. John's Day, 1847, I had the happiness of celebrating Mass in the 
 little ' suburban chapel,' and the privilege of becoming personally 
 acquainted, for the first time, with the venerable Dr. Kirk, who had 
 been priest of Lichfield during the whole period of my boyhood and 
 youth, and for many years before. 
 
The Movement is watched cit Oscott. 37 
 
 the Tracts the very existence of English Catholics 
 appeared to be ignored in the controversial literature of 
 the period. The silence about them did not, I really 
 believe, arise from any feeling of indifference or con- 
 tempt ; except only in the case of one of the Tract 
 writers,* who never hesitated to avow those sentiments. 
 It was much rather that they came in no one's path. 
 As a proof that the ignorance to which I myself have 
 confessed continued even through a considerable part 
 of my Oxford career, I may mention that I did not 
 know the Eev. Mr. Newsham, the priest of Oxford, even 
 by sight, till, in the year 1845, he received me into the 
 Church. The only one among those who took part in 
 the Tractarian Movement to whom that worthy priest 
 was personally known was Mr. Newman, who, on being 
 appointed to the parish of St. Clements, in which the 
 Catholic chapel of Oxford was situated, laid claim (I 
 have heard) to him as one of his parishioners. If this 
 story be true the tables ought to have been reversed, 
 and were so some twenty years later. 
 
 Had this state of things been reciprocal, it is impos- 
 sible to say how long the Tractarian Movement might 
 have been in fulfilling its providential destiny. But it 
 was not so. Towards the year 1838 the Tractarian 
 leaders, at least their chief, became aware that an eye 
 was upon them, tracking their steps, noting their errors 
 and inconsistencies, and guiding them, when they least 
 thought of it, to a higher truth. The second volume 
 of the ' Essays on Various Subjects,' f which were 
 
 * The Eev. W. Palmer, of "Worcester College, 
 f Dolman: 1853. 
 
38 Articles in the 'Dublin Review? 
 
 republished some years ago from the ' Dublin Keview,' 
 contains a series of papers, bearing on the Oxford 
 Movement, by his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman, and 
 among the rest the essay on the Catholic and Anglican 
 Churches to which Dr. Newman, since he became a 
 Catholic, has attributed, in great measure, the change 
 of opinion which just six years afterwards issued in his 
 conversion.* It would occupy me too long to undertake 
 anything like a eomplete analysis of the argument of 
 that celebrated essay ; and to give a mere abridgment 
 of it w T ould be to do it an injustice. No one, I think, 
 who reads it, as I have lately done for a second or third 
 time, can feel any surprise at the impression which it 
 is now known to have produced upon one of the greatest 
 intellects of our own or any other age. 
 
 I have felt it a duty, with a view to my present task. 
 to read over also the article on the ' Catholicity of the 
 English Churclvf which Mr. Newman put forth shortly 
 after the publication of that on the ' Catholic anil 
 Anglican Churches,' and in reply to it. It is impos- 
 sible, I think, to read that article, with the light which 
 Dr. Newman's subsequent confession has thrown upon 
 it, without discerning evident traces of the shock which 
 his views had recently received. It may, of course, 
 easily be represented by his enemies as a disingenuous 
 attempt to palm upon his co-religionists a theory which 
 he disbelieved. To myself it conve} 7 s no such impres- 
 sion. It is the work of one shaken but not vet east 
 down, who, with an affectionate clinging to his position 
 
 * Dedication of ' Discourses to Mixed Congregations.' 
 t British Critic, Jan. 1840. 
 
The ' British Critic' replies. 39 
 
 too strong to satisfy the wishes of those who longed to 
 win him, combines an amount of fairness towards his 
 antagonists equally or yet more unsatisfactory to those 
 who longed with no less eagerness to retain him. It is, 
 in fact, a balanced argument of that kind which pleases 
 zealous adherents on neither side of a controvers}^ but 
 which, for that very reason, is all the more genuine as 
 the expression of a mind which i dotes yet doubts, 
 suspects yet strongly loves.' 
 
 To me there is something most beautiful in the way 
 in which the author seems to oscillate between the 
 evident bias of his intellectual tendencies and the no 
 less evident attractions of his early faith. He seems to 
 be thinking aloud ; and his essay reads more like a 
 confession than a didactic treatise. Throughout he is 
 fearful of saying either too little or too much. Every 
 strong statemeDt he follows up with a qualification, or 
 guards by a proviso. The whole result is that the 
 essay appears both weak in argument and undecided in 
 tone. But its weakness and indecision are the fault, 
 not of the author, but of his cause, — an honour to his 
 heart, no discredit to his intellect. The reply to the 
 special paper which helped to demolish his theory is 
 contained in half a page, and reads almost like irony. 
 No wonder this attempt failed to satisfy the devoted 
 partisans of Anglicanism, and probably excited in the 
 minds of many who, far from acknowledging the fact 
 to others, scarcely liked to trust their own impressions 
 of it, a suspicion that their champion had shifted his 
 ground, and entered upon a path of which no one could 
 foresee the termination. Those who looked narrowly into 
 
40 Public Reception of the ' Tracts.' 
 
 the article could scarcely fail to observe that, in the 
 imaginary dialogue between an Anglican and a Catholic, 
 into which the author throws his controversy, he leaves 
 the Catholic in possession of the field. This might not, 
 of course, be the writer's intention ; but straws show 
 the direction of the wind. Mr. Newman, meanwhile, 
 went about his work as before. It was only his most 
 intimate friends who knew that any change had come 
 over him. But, as time went on, the fact became more 
 perceptible. A thoroughly honest and sincere man 
 cannot long keep such a secret, however much he may 
 desire it. It oozes out in every natural expression of 
 his character. In Mr. Newman it was soon betrayed by 
 the tone of his sermons and his other writings. 
 
 The 'Tracts for the Times' had now proceeded, in 
 periodical issues, from their first to their eighty-ninth 
 number. Many of them had passed without much 
 observation, but some few had given great offence to 
 one or more parties in the Establishment, and been the 
 occasion of much earnest controversy. In this number 
 was Dr. Pusey's Tract on Baptism, which defended, 
 with his usual learning, the doctrine of sacramental 
 grace against the Low-Church and Latitudinarian par- 
 ties. Things had also been said upon the other of the 
 two sacraments which the Church of England professed 
 to retain, of a nature to excite fears in the same 
 quarters. But the two Tracts which created the greatest 
 stir, and the objections to which were shared by many 
 High Churchmen, were those of Mr. Isaac Williams on 
 the ' Theory of Eeserve in communicating Religious 
 Knowledge,' and of Mr. Newman on the Breviary. 
 
The Tract on the Breviary Offices. 41 
 
 The former of these essays was in the highest degree 
 unpalatable to the Evangelicals, because it contained a 
 scarcely-concealed attack upon their practice of preach- 
 ing the doctrine of the Atonement indiscriminately 
 before all hearers. The same Tract was ill received 
 not merely by the Evangelical School, but by other 
 parties also, because it propounded a theory of which 
 none of them could foresee the results. ' If religious 
 knowledge,' people said, ( is to be dispensed by gradual 
 instalments, and as its disciples are able to bear it, who 
 can tell what may be in " reserve " for any of us as 
 time goes on ? Better, then, break off at once from 
 these teachers than allow them to lead us blindfold over 
 marsh and quagmire.' The Tract on the Breviary went 
 far to confirm these impressions. It seems to have 
 drawn down the remonstrances of Dr. Bagot, the Bishop 
 of Oxford, who was, in the main, very fair and generous 
 in his dealings with the Tractarians ; for among the 
 Tracts which Mr. Newman defends, in his published 
 letter to that prelate after the appearance of Tract 90, 
 I find an important place given to this on the Breviary. 
 It is to be lamented that in it even Mr. Newman was 
 tempted to depart from that spirit of justice towards 
 the Church which was on the whole characteristic of 
 him. In the course of the Tract in question he strangely 
 says that the principal attitude of Rome towards the 
 ancient Liturgy of the Church was that of having 
 corrupted it ; to which the writer in the ' Dublin 
 Review' very natural'y replies by asking whether it 
 were nothing to have prized and preserved it. 
 
 In the earlier part of 1841, eight years after the 
 
42 Motives of Tract 90. 
 
 beginning of the movement, appeared the famous Tract 
 90. We are left at no loss to conjecture the motives 
 which led Mr. Newman to take this critical and eventful 
 step. He has fully explained them in his e Letter to 
 Dr. Jelf': 
 
 6 The Tract is grounded on the belief that the Thirty- 
 nine Articles need not be so closed as the received 
 method of teaching closes them, and ought not to be, 
 for the sake of many persons. If we will close them, 
 we run the risk of subjecting persons whom we should 
 least like to lose, or distress, to the temptation of joining 
 
 the Church of Eome and as to myself, I was 
 
 led especially to exert myself with reference to this 
 difficulty, from having had it earnestly urged upon me, 
 by persons whom I revere, to do all I could to keep 
 members of our own Church from straggling in the 
 direction of Rome.'* 
 
 The fall of a thunderbolt could hardly excite a 
 greater sensation in its neighbourhood than did these 
 latter words in many quarters of the imiversity and the 
 country. It was like the e Ah, my lord, beware of 
 jealousy!' — the first clothing in words of a dreaded, 
 half-suspected, half-realised phantasy. Till this time 
 no one, except the very few who were in the secret, had 
 even contemplated the possibility of such defections. 
 ' Tendencies to Rome ' had indeed been freely imputed 
 to the Tracts. But many persons hardly knew their 
 own meaning in such phrases; while those who did 
 attach to them a meaning had probably no more 
 definite idea than that, some day or other, the pro- 
 
 * Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27. 
 
Its Subject. 43 
 
 posals of Archbishop Wake might be revived ; or, at all 
 events, thought only of some great Romanising demon- 
 stration within the Established Church. Individual 
 conversions to Rome were at that time so uncommon, 
 involved so serious a step, entailed such costly sacrifices, 
 that ample securities against them were supposed to 
 exist on every side. What, then, was the general 
 amazement on finding that the leader of the movement 
 himself, who must be supposed to know its secrets 
 better than anyone else, actually spoke, in a pub- 
 lished document — in an apology too, where he would 
 naturally use peculiar circumspection, — of ( straggling 
 towards Rome ' as not merely a possible but a pressing 
 contingency ! Some indeed said, ( They will be a good 
 riddance.' But most men were wiser ; and even those 
 who thus spoke did not bring home to themselves the 
 import of their words. At all events, ' secession to 
 Rome ' became, from that moment, a practical fear and 
 a popular cry. 
 
 Tract 90 is a commentary not upon all the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, but upon such of them only as appear, 
 directly or by implication, to contradict certain Catholic 
 doctrines. Their wording is in many places so extremely 
 loose as to allow of their receiving the benefit of the 
 doubt in favour of an orthodox interpretation. By 
 dint of fixing upon their words meanings which were 
 just admissible though not on the surface, or of 
 clearing up doubts from the language of other Articles 
 which was either explanatory or contradictory, and 
 which it was more respectful to suppose the first rather 
 than the second, the Tract vindicated for the Articles 
 
44 Wording of the Thirty-nine Articles. 
 
 a sense not absolutely fatal to the authority of the 
 Church and the grace of certain sacraments. In the 
 case of those which undertake to deal with what 
 they call ' Romish doctrine ' (in the original ' doctrina 
 Romanensium '), the writer considers that the framers 
 meant to condemn not formal definitions of the Church 
 (the Council of Trent had not then spoken), but certain 
 popular yet ( authorised' interpretations of those defi- 
 nitions to which the Church, in the abstract, viewed as a 
 dogmatic teacher, was not formally committed. He thus 
 seemed able to claim, on behalf of the Established Church, 
 a certain doctrine on Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, &c, 
 which was at any rate, he maintained, the doctrine of 
 Antiquity, and might even be that of the Tridentine 
 Decrees, apart from the aforesaid popular or traditionary 
 interpretation of those Decrees; or, in other words, 
 provided only that such doctrine were not what the 
 Articles meant by ( doctrina Romanensium,' it might be 
 held consistently with an honest subscription to them. 
 
 Whether or not the framers of the Articles intended, 
 consciously or implicitly, to admit such a distinction 
 between abstract definitions and popular teaching it is 
 impossible, at this distance of time, to determine ; 
 though it is historically certain that they could not 
 have had the Council of Trent, at all events, in their 
 eye. The supposition was, at any rate, discreditable 
 either to their theological acumen or to their ingenu- 
 ousness. Mr. Newman chose the former alternative — 
 Mr. Ward seemed to prefer the latter. The view which 
 Mr. Ward apparently adopted was that the English 
 Reformers had two strings to their bow : the one to 
 
Probable Intention of the Framers. 45 
 
 satisfy their friends abroad — the other to avoid offend- 
 ing, more than was necessary, the Catholic party in 
 England. This general object they sought to attain by 
 giving the Articles as Protestant an aspect as consisted 
 with leaving certain loopholes through which Catholics, 
 or at least the more Catholic-minded of the clergy, 
 might creep in. Another person wrote a pamphlet to 
 prove, historically, that some such compromise was 
 highly probable in fact. Mr. Newman appeared to 
 take a middle course, and to avoid all imputations 
 upon the honesty of the English Eeformers. He sup- 
 posed them to have been rather diplomatic than dis- 
 honest. He spoke of the Articles as the same sort 
 of compromise as would result from two very dif- 
 ferent parties having to draw up a petition to Par- 
 liament, or other such public document, in which each 
 side would have to secure a certain recognition of its 
 own views by insisting largely upon the use of an 
 ambiguous phraseology. 
 
 It is a fact, though almost an incredible one, that Mr. 
 Newman was totally unprepared for the reception which 
 this most remarkable essay encountered both in the 
 university and throughout the country. This fact, 
 which I state with unhesitating confidence, is a sufficient 
 proof, if any can be necessary, of the perfect simplicity 
 and honesty with which he undertook and executed his 
 task. He most conscientiously believed that the inter- 
 pretation of the Articles which he proposed, however 
 new and however little consistent, in some parts at least, 
 with their prima facie aspect, was yet fairly attributable 
 to them ; and he expressed the greatest surprise when 
 
46 Alarm at Oxford. 
 
 a friend, to whom he showed his Tract previously to 
 publication, gave it as his opinion (entirely borne out 
 by the result) that it would completely electrify the 
 university and the Church. With characteristic pru- 
 dence, Mr. Newman so far acted upon this opinion as to 
 take the advice of another friend upon the question of 
 publishing the Tract ; and as that friend did not appear 
 to share the expectations of the other, or, at all events, 
 considered that the object justified the risk, the author 
 committed his manuscript to the press. 
 
 Tract 90 had not been out many days before the 
 University of Oxford was in a fever of excitement. It 
 was bought with such avidity that the very presses were 
 taxed almost beyond their powers to meet the exi- 
 gencies of the demand. Edition followed edition by 
 days rather than by weeks; and it was not veiy long 
 before Mr. Newman, as I have heard, realised money 
 enough, by the sale of this shilling pamphlet, to purchase 
 a valuable library. If, during the month which fol- 
 lowed its appearance, you had happened to enter am 
 common-room in Oxford between the hours of six and 
 nine in the evening, you would have been safe to hear 
 some ten or twenty voices eloquent on the subject of 
 Tract 90. If you had happened to pass two heads of 
 houses, or tutors of colleges, strolling down High Street 
 in the afternoon, or returning from their walk over 
 Magdalen Bridge, a thousand to one but you w< 
 have caught the words ( Newman,' and ' Tract 90.' 
 was it many days before action was taken upon 1 le 
 question. Four gentlemen, tutors of their respective 
 colleges, came forward, as the representatives of the 
 
Manifesto of the Four Tutors. 47 
 
 great body of their order, with a manifesto, in the course 
 of which they stated that they were c at a loss to see 
 what security would remain were the principles of the 
 Tract generally recognised ; that the most plainly er- 
 roneous doctrines and practices of the Church of Kome 
 might now be inculcated in the lecture-rooms of the 
 university and from the pulpits of our churches.' It is 
 worthy of record that of these four gentlemen one was 
 the present Bishop of London, and another the Rev. 
 Henry Bristow Wilson, one of the writers in the volume 
 of 'Essays and Eeviews,' who has himself within the 
 last two or three years been a defendant in the Ecclesi- 
 astical Court. This document was not put forth many 
 hours before Mr. Newman was again in the field 
 with a reply to it in the form of the ' Letter to Dr. 
 Jelf ' previously noticed in this paper. The sharpness 
 of the contest is indicated by the extraordinary rapidity 
 and vigour of the various movements. Tract 90, though 
 dated on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, was not 
 actually published till an early day in March. Yet on 
 the 13th of that month, as appears by the date, Mr. 
 Newman sent his letter to Dr. Jelf to the printer, and 
 by that time the manifesto of the Four Tutors had been 
 not only published but acted upon ; for at the end of 
 Mr. Newman's reply to it, there appears the following- 
 foot-note : — ' Since the above was in type, it has been 
 told me that the Hebdomadal Board has recorded its 
 opinion about the Tract.' The Hebdomadal Board, it 
 may be necessary to say, consisted at that time of the 
 body of heads of colleges and halls, who possessed initial 
 power in the legislation of the universitj', but whose 
 
48 Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. J elf, 
 
 acts had no weight excepting as declarations of indi- 
 vidual opinion, till they had been promulgated, and 
 ratified by the vote of the academical convocation. This 
 will account for the very mild way in which Mr. New- 
 man notices the strictures which that board had thus 
 early passed upon his work. The effect of the whole 
 transaction was that Mr. Newman's Tract was never 
 condemned by the university, nor he himself formally 
 precluded from the exercise of any office, whether 
 academical or clerical. He withdrew, of his own accord, 
 certain expressions in the Tract which were nowise 
 essential to its subject, but never made, as he distinctly 
 states in his letter to Dr. Jelf, any retractation of it. It 
 is remarkable that he should have escaped public con- 
 demnation and penalty, especially when we consider 
 that, merely for a sermon in which the interpretation 
 of the Tract was adopted, and not without qualification, 
 upon a single point of doctrine, Dr. Pusey was afterwards 
 condemned by a committee of six doctors, and inhibited 
 from preaching before the university for two years. 
 But Oxford did not forget the Tract ; and four years 
 afterwards collected the slumbering embers of its indig- 
 nation, too fierce to be any longer repressed, in its 
 onslaught on Mr. Ward. 
 
 Dr. Pusey's moderation did much valuable service to 
 the movement. He was, as Mr. Newman was not, a 
 high dignitary of the Established Church — he was also 
 a person of aristocratic birth and connections ; and 
 although one of the last men in the world to set store 
 by such accidental advantages, yet, in an Established 
 Church closely allied to the world, and affected, however 
 
Moderation of Dr. Pusey. 49 
 
 unconsciously, by its spirit, such considerations could 
 not fail to have their influence. Moreover, as I said in 
 my last Paper, Dr. Pusey was the only member of the 
 Tractarian School to whom the Evangelical party had 
 any kind of attraction. His piety was not only most 
 real, but it was of a popular and impressive character. 
 He had also a way peculiarly his own, and entirely 
 consistent with sincerity and simplicity, of rounding off 
 the sharp edges of the strong and offensive statements 
 of others, and thus presenting them under a far less 
 odious aspect to those who disliked them. Hence Dr. 
 Pusey had a definite and most important place in the 
 movement. While it was Mr. Newman's office to stimu- 
 late, and his misfortune to startle, to Dr. Pusey, on 
 the other hand, belonged the work of soothing and the 
 ministry of conciliation. He was the St. Barnabas of 
 the movement. Yet the effect of his character and of 
 his conciliatory spirit was less perceptible in the univer- 
 sity than elsewhere. A writer in the British Critic* 
 throws some light upon that prejudice, so far, at least, 
 as the action of the ' Six Doctors ' is an instance of it. 
 On the whole, however, there can be no doubt of the 
 service rendered to Tractarianism by the learning, piety, 
 moderation, high character, and elevated position of 
 this remarkable and estimable man. Indeed, it deserves 
 to be recorded how much of the success of the work was 
 due to the spirit of generosity, forbearance, and mutual 
 confidence which prevailed among all its great origi- 
 nators. It is certain that Dr. Pusey did not fully 
 
 * July 1843, p. 197. 
 E 
 
50 Mr. Newman's Forbearance. 
 
 sympathise with every view of Mr. Newman, or, at all 
 events, with the mode in which he occasionally expressed 
 himself; it is scarcely less certain that Mr. Newman 
 could not always go along with the arguments by which 
 Dr. Pusey defended him. Had there been less of loy- 
 alty on the one side, or of affection on both, these differ- 
 ences might easily have been exaggerated into causes of 
 disunion, in which case the whole success of the work 
 would, humanly speaking, have been at an end. It is, 
 of course, possible to attribute these results to the spirit 
 of compromise or the arrangements of diplomacy ; all 
 I can do is to express my own belief that the view I 
 have taken of them, as it is the more charitable, is also 
 the truer. It was one of the characteristic differences 
 between these two eminent men that Dr. Pusey was far 
 more dogmatical in the direction of consciences than 
 Mr. Newman. He always seemed much surer of his 
 ground ; and as positive teaching and authoritative 
 direction were just what thoughtful Anglicans wanted, 
 he was in great request as a spiritual guide. He even 
 undertook, it was commonly said, people's conscientious 
 burdens, and made himself responsible for the conse- 
 quences. Mr. Newman, on the other hand, in the midst 
 of his great influence, was diffident of himself and un- 
 willing to give strong opinions. Yet it is remarkable that 
 in actual hold upon others there was no comparison be- 
 tween the two. Dr. Pusey's power over consciences was 
 limited by the degree of his disciples' obedience ; Mr. 
 Newman's penetrated and swayed them in spite both of 
 themselves and of himself. He ruled them without aim- 
 ing at rule, and they acted under his influence while 
 
His Unparalleled Influence. 51 
 
 scarcely conscious of it. His casual words were treasured 
 up as oracles, bis hints were improved into laws ; his 
 very looks and gestures watched, as a mirror of his 
 thoughts ; his latent feelings tenderly consulted, his 
 wishes reverently anticipated, even his very peculiar' 
 unconsciously copied. His personal influence in the 
 Church of England was something to which experience 
 suggests hardly a parallel. Yet, according to the para- 
 doxical law upon which moral power seems to depend, 
 the ratio of its extent appeared to be inverse with the 
 degree in which it was sought. In ' Loss and Gain' he 
 has illustrated the case, and, with characteristic humi- 
 lity, to his own disadvantage. 
 
 'Dr. Pusey,' said Charles, 'is said always to be 
 decisive. He says, " This is Apostolic ; " " that is in the 
 Fathers : " " St. Cyprian says this ; " " St. Augustine 
 decrees that : " "This is safe;" "that is wrong."' . . . . 
 ' But the Puseyites are not always so distinct,' said 
 Sheffield ; ' there's Smith ; he never speaks decidedly 
 on difficult questions.' .... 'Then he won't have 
 many followers,' said Charles, 'that's all.' 'But he has 
 more than Dr. Pusey,' answered Sheffield. 'Well, I 
 can't understand it,' said Charles : ' he ought not ; 
 perhaps they won't stay.' ' The truth is,' said Sheffield, 
 ' I suspect he is more of a sceptic at bottom.' * 
 
 Among the effects of Tract 90 it must be mentioned 
 that Dr. Bagot, who was Mr. Newman's ecclesiastical 
 superior, sent a message to him stating that, in his 
 opinion, the ' Tracts for the Times ' were doing mischief, 
 and ought to be given up. Mr. Newman unhesitatingly 
 
 * 'Loss and Gain,' c. adv. 
 e 2 
 
52 Abandonment of the ' Tracts.'' 
 
 acted upon this suggestion, and the ( Tracts for the 
 Times ' accordingly expired with their 90th number. 
 Mr. Newman announced his intention of withdrawing 
 them in a published letter to Dr. Bagot, in which, 
 without undertaking to defend, he feels it quite con- 
 sistent with his duty to explain, such of the Tracts as 
 had given the greatest umbrage to that prelate. 
 
 It deserves to be recorded that Mr. Ward, whose 
 name now begins to occupy a prominent place in the 
 history of that time, wrote two pamphlets in defence of 
 Tract 90, distinguished by great moderation of tone, 
 under the titles of e A Few Words,' and ' A Few More 
 Words.' An important point was gained in these pub- 
 lications by showing that the Homilies, which form the 
 best extant commentary upon the Articles, evidently 
 point at certain views of ( Eomish doctrine ' which never 
 were, and never could have been, sanctioned by the 
 authority of the Church. Such, for instance, is that 
 which attributes to the Saints and the Blessed Virgin 
 (whom the Tractarians persisted in calling e St. Mary ') 
 the honour due to God alone. Such also is some 
 imaginary view of Purgatory which supersedes the 
 doctrine of Eternal Punishment. We, who speak from 
 within the Church, know full well how absolutely 
 monstrous are such suppositions. But Mr. Newman, 
 at the time he wrote the Tract, was under the im- 
 pression that these and suchlike frightful corruptions, 
 or rather contradictions, of Divine Truth were exten- 
 sively countenanced by what he calls the i authoritative 
 teaching ' of the Church both in the sixteenth century 
 and afterwards ; meaning by that phrase the teaching 
 
Projects of Union with Borne. 53 
 
 of living authorities beside and beyond her express 
 definitions.* 
 
 As I am anxious to place on record so much of the 
 history of Tractarianism as may be necessary for the 
 explanation of facts and phenomena which must enter 
 into the future ecclesiastical annals of this country, I 
 have been obliged to go into details which I fear must 
 be very uninteresting to many readers. Hence it is 
 that, for my own relief as well as theirs, I am prepared 
 to seize upon the lighter and more ludicrous features of 
 the movement. Accordingly I shall not hesitate to 
 wind up my present Paper, by presenting an aspect of 
 Tractarianism which is historically certain, though it is 
 absolutely impossible to describe it in its true colours 
 without the appearance of burlesque. I allude to the 
 prospects which about this time many sanguine persons 
 beo-an to entertain of a coi'Dorate union between the 
 Catholic Church and the Anglican Establishment. A 
 very few words will show how naturally these hopes 
 would arise as a consequence of the Tract which has 
 formed the subject of this Paper. 
 
 Persons who, before the appearance of Tract 90, had 
 been inclined to suspect that the Church was right, and 
 the Establishment wrong, had conceived but of one 
 mode whereby their conscientious difficulties might be 
 surmounted, should those difficulties persevere and 
 become inveterate — that of submitting to the Church 
 one by one. The Thirty -nine Articles, so far from 
 
 * It may be noticed as a striking fact that in the Established Church, 
 which rejects Purgatory, the doctrine of the Eternity of Future Punish- 
 ments is now extensively denied. 
 
54 Imaginary Basis of Union. 
 
 offering to facilitate any other course, were looked upon 
 as the most serious obstacle to union. They constituted 
 the very charter of the ( Church of England/ to give 
 up which would be like surrendering its existence. 
 Now, however, a rope was thrown out from the very 
 quarter whence it was least expected. Had persons 
 looked narrowly into the Tract upon which they founded 
 their new hopes, they would have seen that it did not 
 really furnish any basis of reconciliation between the 
 two bodies. ' Here,' says Mr. Newman, in his ' Letter 
 to Dr. Jelf,' 6 is one Eoman doctrine which the Articles 
 do not warrant, — Infallibility.' There was also another 
 which lay at the root of the whole question — the Supre- 
 macy of St. Peter's See. The doctrine of the Blessed 
 Eucharist was, in Mr. Newman's opinion, another in- 
 superable difficulty ; though Mr. Ward undertook, and 
 with great apparent reason, to show that the Catholic 
 dogma on that subject was as admissible upon the 
 principle of interpretation set forth in the Tract as any 
 other. But as the Tract was caught at in its general 
 drift, rather than thoughtfully investigated, visions of 
 unity began to flit before many a simple and zealous 
 soul. c Perhaps, after all,' they said, ( the Church of 
 England might not object to give up the Articles ; and 
 even if she retained them, they would still serve as a 
 valuable protest against those traditionary corruptions 
 and practical errors against which no Formulary of 
 Faith can speak more strongly than the Decrees of 
 Trent themselves. Trent and the Articles would stand 
 side by side as two kindred witnesses against error ; 
 meanwhile Trent would proclaim to the world those 
 
Imaginary Basis of Union. ^ 
 
 truths which the Articles do not explicitly condemn 
 (forbid the thought !), and therefore, of course, im- 
 plicitly recognise. It is only, after all, one Faith under 
 two aspects. Trent is the stronger in its witness to the 
 Truth, England in its disclaimers of corruption : but 
 the Truth which Trent proclaims England does not 
 disavow, and the errors against which England so 
 loudly protests Trent does not shrink from admitting to 
 be such — nay, does not hesitate to denounce.' 
 
 That such dreams should have a tendency to fascinate 
 and to delude can be matter of surprise to no one who 
 reflects how the process of a corporate union would 
 have tended to obviate all the most appalling difficulties 
 which hampered the course of individual conversion. 
 With men like many of those who took part in the 
 movement, the very- least of these difficulties was the 
 sacrifice of income and social position. But there was, 
 in fact, no temporal obstacle which would not have 
 vanished before the brilliant project which not merely 
 haunted our imaginations, but was actually the subject 
 of serious or, at any rate, earnest deliberation. 
 
 There was one obstacle to the success of the plan, 
 which certainly did not receive the consideration it 
 deserved. We had, as the phrase runs, ' our own 
 consent ' to the transaction, but forgot that to every 
 contract two parties are necessary. Never was there 
 a more delightful prospect nor a more magnificent 
 scheme — in the eyes of its projectors. The First 
 Napoleon mapping out England on the eve of his 
 proposed iuvasion, and assigning Belvoir Castle to one 
 of his generals, Arundel to another, and Lulworth to 
 
$6 Solution of the Problem. 
 
 a third, was as nothing compared with the distribution 
 of other men's property, the overriding of other men's 
 rights, and the arrangement of other men's temporal 
 and spiritual affairs in which these amiable enthusiasts 
 found it easy to indulge. Such bishops and deans as 
 had the good fortune to be celibate would be ready to 
 drop into the ancient sees, or to take the headships of 
 the restored abbeys. The married clergy would be a 
 greater difficulty. But bishops and regulars might be 
 expected to separate from their wives, and those wives 
 to pass naturally into the religious state. The secular 
 clergy need not be molested for the present. In the 
 normal state of things they, too, must be celibate, but 
 ' vested interests ' might be respected for the moment, 
 and the existing generation of wives suffered to die 
 out. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to say that Mr. Newman 
 himself never entered into these views otherwise than 
 by laughing at them. But, in his ' Letter to Dr. Jelf,' 
 he distinctly refers to them, and in ' Loss and Gain * 
 has exposed them in that vein of brilliant and kindly 
 wit which is peculiar to himself. They served to amuse 
 many excellent persons for a considerable space of time, 
 and had this undoubted advantage, that they dispelled, 
 once for all, the prospect of a union which could only 
 at last have verified the poet's image : — 
 
 Mortua quinetiam jungebant corpora vivis. 
 
 The mists of theory melted away, and left in its stern 
 reality the only alternative of duty —individual sub- 
 mission. 
 
Conclusion. 
 
 57 
 
 In my next Paper I must shift the scene to London 
 for the purpose of introducing an episode or byplot. 
 Bat I intend returning to Oxford and its neighbour- 
 hood before I conclude, in order that we may wind up 
 our story at the point from which we started. 
 
58 A Movement in London. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 ACCESSORIES AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE 
 MOVEMENT. 
 
 The sources upon which I have drawn for the materials 
 of the two preceding Papers have included only in a 
 very limited degree the results of my own experience, 
 and this remark applies far more to the last than to the 
 former of them. I left Oxford in 1839, nearly two 
 years before the publication of Tract 90, and only 
 made brief and occasional visits to it after that time, 
 though I was always kept au courant with the move- 
 ment by correspondence and occasional intercourse with 
 its leading characters. In the last of my Papers, there- 
 fore, I have depended much more upon the testimony 
 of credible witnesses on the spot than upon my own 
 direct knowledge. 
 
 In my present Paper, on the other hand, I come to a 
 part of the subject upon which I am to give almost 
 exclusively the result of my own personal impressions 
 and actual observation. And here, again, I must ask 
 the reader to bear in mind that I am writing not a 
 philosophical dissertation but an historical sketch ; and 
 the only mode of narration which comes naturally to 
 me is that which transfers, as I may say, to canvas. 
 
Margaret CI Lapel. 59 
 
 with all its lights and shadows, the picture which is 
 before my mind's eye. There are certain phases of the 
 movement in which, owing to the anomalous character 
 of our position, that which was at the core sound and 
 genuine had a tendency to wear the appearance of 
 absurdity, or to degenerate into caricature. With these 
 few words of preface I proceed at once to introduce the 
 subject of Margaret Chapel. 
 
 I am not insensible to the temptation of attaching 
 too much historical importance to that part of the 
 Tractarian Movement which has naturally a peculiar 
 interest in my own e} r es, yet, on the whole, I do not 
 think that I can properly give it a less prominent place 
 in my narrative ; for Margaret Chapel has undoubtedly 
 exercised a very powerful influence upon the conversions 
 to the Catholic Church, which after all are the real tests 
 of the importance of the movement as well as the true 
 index to its character. The ministerial staff of that 
 establishment alone, at one or another period of its 
 history, has yielded six or seven zealous converts, most 
 of whom have since become priests; while certainly 
 not fewer than a hundred of those who have been at 
 different times attached to its congregation have since 
 passed into the ranks of the Church. The truly mag- 
 nificent edifice which now occupies its site is the direct 
 historical result of its existence, and if not precisely 
 its successor in principle, is, at any rate to a considerable 
 extent, its sequel in effect. 
 
 Time was when Margaret Street was as devoid of 
 romantic interest and ecclesiastical prestige as any other 
 member of that peculiarly dull family of public high- 
 
6o Antecedents of Margaret Chapel. 
 
 ways, redolent of Queen Anne and the first Georges, 
 which occupies the neighbourhood of Cavendish Square. 
 Like them it consisted of two parallel lines of moderate- 
 sized dwelling-houses, most uninterestingly uniform and 
 almost depressingly dismal. Towards its eastern and 
 more unfashionable end, however, it subsided into a 
 collection of buildings of a more motley character — 
 lodging-houses, houses of public entertainment, shops, 
 and carriage manufactories. Buried among these was 
 a humble structure which the boldest of prophets and 
 the most sanguine of speculators would hardly have 
 ventured to select as the scene of a religious movement 
 and the site of the future Tractarian cathedral. Old 
 Margaret Chapel had passed through a series of remark- 
 able vicissitudes, and its history was a kind of type of 
 the variations of Protestantism, ranging as it did 
 between a form of that system which was only just 
 removed from atheism, and one which was only just 
 short of Catholicity. About the time of the great 
 French Eevolution, Margaret Chapel was a temple of 
 deism; and between that period and the year 1835 it 
 had proceeded upwards through the various gradations 
 of Dissent and Low-Churchism till it settled, at least 
 for a time, in some of the milder forms of the religious 
 s}^stem which is connected with the name of Mr. Irving. 
 About this period it was administered by the late excel- 
 lent Mr. Dodsworth, who by the weight of his amiable 
 character, and by a mode of preaching far more solid 
 and earnest than that which prevailed in London at the 
 time, succeeded in attracting, and attaching, a large 
 and highly respectable congregation, through whose 
 
Its Unpromising Aspect. 61 
 
 exertions and influence a church was built for him in 
 Albany Street, to which he removed about the year 
 1838, and where he continued to minister till near the 
 time of his conversion. Upon Mr. Dodsworth's re- 
 moval Margaret Chapel fell to the charge of Mr. 
 Thornton, a very estimable young clergyman, of weak 
 health, who soon broke down under its weight. In 
 the summer of 1839 it again became vacant by his 
 resignation, and was thereupon offered to a fellow of 
 one of the colleges at Oxford who had no spiritual 
 charge at the time, and who was known to desire an 
 opportunity of trying the effect of Tractarian piinciples 
 upon a practical scale. 
 
 A more unpromising sphere for carrying out such a 
 project than Margaret Chapel presented when first he 
 visited it would be difficult for the imagination to 
 conceive ; and in looking back on the period he finds 
 it hard to master the state of mind under which he 
 accepted the offer. In the first place, of all the rela- 
 tions which can exist between a clergyman and his 
 congregation, that of the minister of a proprietary 
 6 chapel-of-ease ' would seem to be the most hopeless 
 as regards any chance of valuable influence. Again, as 
 a part of the object was to elevate the popular idea of 
 Divine worship above its thoroughly low level, it might 
 have been thought, beforehand, that a building of some 
 pretensions to an ecclesiastical character would be a 
 sine qua non in the arrangement. That, in spite of 
 the singular disadvantages under which this attempt 
 laboured, it should have succeeded even to the extent 
 it did, is a proof of nothing else than of the natural 
 
62 Its Structure and Arrangement*. 
 
 attractiveness of Catholic principles and Catholic prac- 
 tices, even in the miserably imperfect and purely inchoate 
 and tentative form in which they were there exhibited. 
 The chapel itself was a complete paragon of ugliness; 
 and all that can be said in its favour is, that its archi- 
 tect had adapted it with masterly skill to the uses 
 which it had previously subserved. To the religious 
 and ecclesiastical type it presented a perfect antithesis. 
 It was low, dark, and stuffy; it bore no other resem- 
 blance to the Christian fold than that of being choked 
 with sheep-pens under the name of pews ; and its only 
 evidence of being c surrounded with varieties ' was that 
 it was begirt by a hideous gallery, filled on Sundays 
 with uneasy school- children. But the triumph of its 
 monstrosities was just where, upon the principle ' cor- 
 rupt] o optimi pessima,' we might have expected, — in 
 the chancel. From the floor almost to the roof there 
 arose a tripartite structure, beginning with the clerk's 
 desk and terminating in the pulpit, the minister's 
 ' reading-pew ' occupying the interval. Thus the 
 preacher was elevated on a kind of throne, as if in 
 parody of that which surmounts a Catholic altar ; and 
 there he stood, claiming, as it were, the adoration of 
 the people. Where was the communion-table ? I will 
 answer the question. It filled the space behind the read- 
 ing-desk and under the pulpit. The first act of the new 
 minister was to demolish this three-headed monster. 
 All attempts at improvement in the general arrange- 
 ments of the chapel were hopeless, and were at once 
 abandoned. The congregation, which had been some- 
 what acclimatised to their new position 1a the efforts of 
 
Subversion of a Dynasty. 63 
 
 the two preceding ministers, bore the change with more 
 equanimity than might have been expected, and some 
 of them (including my respected friend Mr. Serjeant 
 Bellasis — already a distinguished barrister) came for- 
 ward zealously and generously to aid in the work. 
 One person, however, all but openly rebelled against 
 the proposed changes, — the clerk. He had been there, 
 man and boy, nearly fifty years, and declared that of all 
 the transformations he had witnessed this was the most 
 insufferable. To have dismissed this poor old servant 
 would have been an act of cruelty of which, let us hope, 
 the minister was incapable ; all that could be done, 
 therefore, was to trust that argument might reconcile 
 him to his disappointment, or time wear it away. 
 Finally dethroned from his ancient pre-eminence, he 
 looked about for some mode of regaining at least a 
 portion of his privilege. He was accordingly caught, a 
 few days afterwards, ( building himself up a solitude ' 
 in a remote part of the chapel ; and when frustrated in 
 this design also, he had no alternative but to subside 
 into the general body of the congregation, and there 
 assert his ancient right in the only way which was left 
 to him, by reciting the responses with vociferous obtru- 
 siveness. 
 
 This clerk was a great trial. He occupied rooms 
 adjoining the chapel and communicating, by a doorway, 
 with its gallery. In these apartments he always seemed 
 to keep a family of cats, which had a habit of diffusing 
 itself over the chapel. To the incumbent for the time 
 being there was something singularly, and perhaps 
 unduly, repulsive in the notion of cats in a church. 
 
64 A Plague of Cats. 
 
 Could it be that the clerk kept these creatures as 
 ministers of his wrath and avengers of his insulted 
 dignity— a sort of auxiliary legion or train of obse- 
 quious furies to be let loose at pleasure? We will 
 hope not. At any rate the effect was the same. 
 Sometimes, during the First Lesson for instance, one 
 of these animals would utter its peculiar cry from some 
 obscure corner or indefinite abyss ; and the only con- 
 solation was that the evil was irremediable, or that the 
 remedy would have been worse than itself. They did 
 not, however, always maintain the incognito. On 
 a memorable occasion one of them, more venturous 
 than its companions, advanced to the balustrade of the 
 gallery and there perched herself, like a fiend. In that 
 instance the clerk did come to the aid of offended 
 discipline, and proceeded from his place, by stealthy 
 steps, to arrest the culprit. What was the inevitable 
 consequence ? The cat, hearing a measured tread be- 
 hind her, chose, with a ready instinct, the only prac- 
 ticable alternative ; and accordingly, by a strong leap, 
 descended headlong into the sanctuary, only just clearing 
 the head of an eminent divine, who happened on that 
 day to be assisting, as it were pontifically, at the morn- 
 ing service. The animal, on gaining the ground and 
 finding herself in so unusual a situation, was seized 
 with a fit of despair, and, by another strong leap clearing 
 the altar-rails, she rushed in terror through the building 
 and made her exit at the door. Such details, however 
 much they may fall below the dignity of history, convey 
 a better idea of the spirit of the scenes I am portray- 
 ing than more lofty and elaborate descriptions. 
 
Church Service at Margaret Chapel. 65 
 
 Margaret Chapel soon gathered to itself a con- 
 siderable congregation, in which were many members 
 of the aristocracy, and more than one personage in high 
 official position. They seemed to find in its quiet, 
 orderly, and reverent services, on Sundays and week- 
 days, a relief from the turmoil of the world, and a 
 contrast to the usual tone of popular chapels ; they 
 relished its music, which was of a more ecclesiastical 
 and varied character than was then usual even in cathe- 
 drals, and, perhaps, also recognised in its preaching a 
 somewhat more earnest and consistent view of religious 
 truths than in the ordinary Protestantism of the day. 
 At any rate, this mixed congregation very soon yielded 
 many zealous and devoted disciples, who were thus 
 brought into more immediate spiritual relations with 
 the clergy than were customary in chapels-of-ease, and 
 even in district and parochial churches. It was a great 
 though very common mistake to suppose that the prin- 
 cipal object in this chapel was to obtrude upon people 
 new and strange ceremonies, or to elevate the merely 
 formal side of religion, to the exclusion or depression 
 of the practical and devotional. Whatever was done 
 towards promoting the beauty of Divine worship, so 
 miserably degraded and falsified by the mere Pro- 
 testant exhibition of it, was done upon a definite 
 principle and with a religious aim ; nor was the 
 object what it was commonly, and perhaps not un- 
 naturally, supposed to be, to dissatisfy Anglicans with 
 the system in which they found themselves, but rather 
 to give that system all the advantages of which it 
 seemed capable, and leave Divine Providence to work 
 
 F 
 
66 Popular Misconceptions. 
 
 out the conclusion. I do not, of course, deny that 
 there may have been many instances in which these 
 principles were not steadily kept in view, as there were 
 certainly many more in which they failed of their effect 
 through the errors and inconsistencies of those by whom 
 they were represented. Still less do I deny that their 
 practical exemplifications were marred by some childish 
 absurdities, which, by the help of those exaggerations 
 which true stories never fail to receive in their trans- 
 mission, tended to bring needless odium upon the prin- 
 ciples themselves. In many of the stories which were 
 current there was truth enough to give them an impetus, 
 abundance of fiction to dress them out, and contrariety 
 enough to the usual modes of thinking to secure them 
 a ready acceptance with the enemies of the movement. 
 Yet, after a large allowance for prejudice and embellish- 
 ment, I am afraid we must say with the poet, 
 
 Pudet ha?c opprobria nobis 
 Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli. 
 
 We were extensively charged with a kind of ecclesiastical 
 smuggling — with introducing contraband goods upon 
 the most frivolous pretexts and by the most undignified 
 methods : with importing candlelight, for instance, upon 
 the back of a friendly fog, or insinuating incense in the 
 train of some imaginary effluvia. The first imputation 
 was not without foundation, the second was entirely 
 untrue. But the first gave as incorrect a view as the 
 second of the whole spirit by which the ministry of 
 Margaret Chapel was animated. 
 
 The anomaly of our position, and the consequent 
 
Misunderstandings with Authority. 6~ 
 
 mistakes and even faults which it superinduced, might 
 have been obviated in one of two ways, or in both of 
 them — either by a largeness of spirit on the part of the 
 bishops, or by a clearer view of the duty of obedience 
 on the part of the clergy. Which was the more in error 
 — they for their exclusiveness, or we for our want of 
 simple obedience — I cannot pretend to say, but I am 
 inclined to suspect that the fault was far more in the 
 system than in either of us. The excuse of the autho- 
 rities was a very good one. It was their duty, they 
 said, to put down practices which were novel, offensive, 
 and savoured of Popery. The excuse on the other side 
 was founded on unrepealed though obsolete rubrics ; 
 on the reasonable construction of those which were 
 acknowledged ; on the practice of the Universal Church, 
 by which the language of one of its professing 
 •' 1 (ranches' was to be interpreted in doubtful cases. 
 On these and similar grounds it was considered, or 
 pretended, that a bare obedience to the literal com- 
 mands of the superior was all which could in duty be 
 required on the part of subjects who regarded the epis- 
 copal authority as, at any rate, only co-ordinate with 
 that of the Church ; and all, on the other hand, which 
 could be fairly claimed by authorities who had them- 
 selves abstained from vigorous exercises of their power 
 in the case even of the most flagrant violations of 
 ecclesiastical duty. 
 
 There was one mode of conciliating opposition and 
 averting the blow of authoritative interference which I 
 am truly glad to think was never for a moment even 
 contemplated at Margaret Chapel. When one of the 
 
 F 2 
 
Uncontroversial Preaching. 
 
 scales had been depressed by an undue infusion of the 
 ceremonial element, it would always have been possible 
 to restore the equilibrium by loading the other with 
 anti-Catholic teaching. Could we have defended our- 
 selves against attack by pointing to some strong Pro- 
 testant demonstration in the pulpit, we might have 
 lived on, as far as popular opinion was concerned, to 
 the present day. But this would, of course, have been 
 to transform a real and consistent movement into a 
 sham of the first water, and it never therefore occurred 
 to us even in the way of a temptation. It was thoroughly 
 understood that special Catholic doctrines and practices 
 were never to be publicly impugned ; and, on the other 
 hand, those principles, as apart from dogmas, were con- 
 stantly inculcated, or implied, which rest on the im- 
 mutable basis of Catholic truth.* 
 
 It must be admitted again, in all fairness, that the 
 aspects of ecclesiastical authority and public opinion 
 were greatly weakened in their impressiveness and 
 seriously marred in their effects by the inconsistencies 
 with which they were clouded. It was too evident that 
 they proceeded on no fixed principle, but were uncertain, 
 capricious, and impulsive. This circumstance, again, 
 
 * One of the many evidences of a Catholic spirit which the congrega- 
 tion manifested was that of a munificent and self-denying liberality 
 towards religion and the poor. As an instance I may mention that on 
 a weekday in the summer of 1844, when the first collection was made 
 towards the building of the new chapel, the offertory exceeded i 
 though fewer than eighty persons were present, I have heard that the 
 same spirit exists in the present congregate u oi Margaret Street. I will 
 this public opportunity of bearing I stimony to the value of the 
 assistance which 1 received when al Margarel ('Impel from my este< med 
 co-adjutor in its ministry, the Rev. W. >'. Richards. 
 
A False Position. 69 
 
 created a strong temptation to criticise rather than 
 obey, and to ignore rather than conciliate. We might 
 have candles, we were told, provided we would not light 
 them. We were restricted to one bouquet of flowers 
 on the communion-table, and were required to take 
 especial care that white did not predominate on the feast 
 of a virgin, nor red on that of a martyr. We nwht 
 
 o 7 JO 
 
 collect offerings on a dish, but a bag was considered 
 6 popish.' We must not gaze intently on the alms-dish, 
 lest the people should think that we worshipped it.* We 
 might preach in a surplice in the morning if we would 
 wear a black gown in the evening, and thus neutralise 
 Rome by Geneva. Duty was rendered very difficult, and 
 life very uncomfortable, by having to defend ourselves 
 against objections which presumed such a want of 
 common-sense, and to confide in authorities who evi- 
 dently had no confidence in us. Still we bore the trial 
 longer than might have been expected, under the con- 
 sciousness of good intentions, and for the sake of the 
 many sincere and earnest persons who seemed to be 
 attached to our ministry. 
 
 Had the Tractarians acted as a party, instead of 
 wisely leaving each one to follow out what may be 
 called his own special 'vocation' in the work, it is 
 probable that this purely collateral and tributary move- 
 
 * A distinguished divine wrote me a long letter to prove that alms- 
 perilous novelties. We accordingly had the alms, when col- 
 placed in a large dish which a clergyman held at the communion 
 rails. To prevent looking about him he, very properly, casl his 
 down upon the dish. Then a person wrote to the bishop, saying thai w< 
 made an idol of the dish, and his lordship seriously brought the matter 
 under my notice. 
 
70 Generosity of the leading Tractamans. 
 
 ment in London would either have been checked alto- 
 gether or, at any rate, materially crippled. Though a 
 really spontaneous and independent effort on the part 
 of persons who were nowise bound to the Tractarian 
 leaders, and one therefore which those leaders felt that 
 they had no right to obstruct, yet there was anothei 
 course which they might have taken, and which some 
 of them perhaps, if animated by a less generous spirit, 
 would have been disposed to adopt — that, namely, of 
 publicly disavowing it. Nothing has impressed me 
 more, on reviewing the events of that period with the 
 light cast upon them by contemporary publications, 
 than the admirable spirit of moderation and forbearance 
 by which the Tractarian leaders were actuated ; more 
 especially those of them who, like Dr. Pusey and Mr. 
 Keble, were somewhat in arrear of Mr. Newman in 
 their religious opinions. Here they were, themselves 
 perhaps not altogether pleased with what they heard of 
 certain proceedings at a distance, surrounded too by 
 persons who, no doubt, were continually urging them 
 to separate themselves by some formal protest from the 
 acts and words of disciples who, by extravagance and 
 imprudence, were helping to undo their work. Yet, 
 far from in an}^ way publicly disengaging themselves 
 from those acts or words, they wisely let things take 
 their course, as if diffident of their own right to put 
 obstacles in the way of what might be Grod's method of 
 effecting His own purposes. As time goes on, and still 
 further developments of the movement come before us, 
 we shall find more and more reason, in the fact I have 
 just noticed, for admiration and gratitude. 
 
Growing Complications. 71 
 
 In spite, however, of the many ways in which Divine 
 Providence seemed to bless our work in London, it was 
 impossible not to feel sensibly, from time to time, that 
 our position was in the highest degree anomalous and 
 critical. The best which could be said of it was that 
 it was a state of transition; and then the question 
 would recur, of transition into what ? And, again, even 
 as a state of transition could it be justified ? We were 
 at cross purposes with our ecclesiastical superiors ; looked 
 upon by the great body of our communion as the 
 fomenters of division ; an occasion rather of generous 
 forbearance than of active sympathy, even to most of 
 those who might be said to be of our own part}*; cut off, 
 upon a theory which bore every appearance of being got 
 up to meet a difficulty, from Catholics of England and 
 Ireland, and absolutely disowned by those w foreign 
 Churches,' as we called them, with which we regarded 
 ourselves as in real though invisible communion. 
 Many were the ways in which these various incon- 
 sistencies would be practically forced upon our un- 
 willing attention. There were, perhaps, not more than, 
 two or three of the London clergy, if so many, whom 
 we could invite to preach in our chapel without almost 
 a certainty of having the whole fabric of our religious 
 teaching smashed in its very stronghold by some anti- 
 Catholic protest. Again, there would come, from time 
 to time, those official acts on the part of authorities or 
 tribunals popularly, at any rate, identified with the 
 - Church of England,' which, if not each one by itself, 
 yet at all events in their cumulative force, seemed to 
 strike at the root of her claims, and which sounded 
 
ji A Visitor from the Continent. 
 
 in our ears like minute-guns ushering in the funeral of 
 our hopes. 
 
 But, of all the trials to which we were exposed, none 
 were harder to bear than those which came from the 
 attitude taken in regard to us by foreign Catholics ; an 
 attitude, on the one hand, of kindness and sympathy 
 towards us as individuals, but, on the other, of evident 
 protest against our religious position. I remember, on 
 one occasion, a French Catholic gentleman (I forget if 
 he were a priest) calling upon us at Margaret Chapel. 
 After a short conversation he requested to f see my 
 church.' As it was close at hand the request was easily 
 granted. We walked across the street, and, on observ- 
 i g its exterior, my companion appeared to be somewhat 
 surprised. He probably, however, remembered, or was 
 reminded, that even abroad beautiful churches have 
 sometimes a poor outside (St. Paul's, at Rome, for 
 instance) — that ' omnis gloria Regis ab intus,' &c. <y,c. 
 We entered the chapel. He put out his hand for holy 
 water, which he did not find. He walked straight up 
 to the communion-table, and there, after surveying the 
 cross and candlesticks, addressed the minister of the 
 chapel nearly as follows: e Mais, monsieur, qu'est ce 
 que c'est que ca; quelle espece de religion?' He 
 was answered, somewhat hesitatingly, 'C'est VEglise 
 nationale? ' Nationale et ProtesianteV he asked. 
 ' Non, monsieur,' 1 was the somewhat indignant re- 
 joinder; 'nationale et Oatholique. 9 'Pardon, 
 sieurj he mildly responded; 'eeriest pas Oatholique 
 ca; de tout, de touV About the same time an 
 Oxford graduate was travelling in the North of Italy. 
 
Enthusiastic Travellers. 73 
 
 It should be observed that although disciples of the 
 Oxford School had a general sympathy with all ( foreign 
 Churches/ it was much stronger with some than with 
 others, accordingly as they supposed those e Churches 
 to have retained more or less of the national or f primi- 
 tive : element. As, therefore, many of them hoped, 
 though in vain, to make common cause with France 
 on the ground of the ' Grallican liberties,' so Milan 
 seemed to offer a point of contact with the early 
 against the existing Church, in the Ambrosian tradi- 
 tions. To Milan, accordingly, our travellers repaired, 
 and there fell in with a priest. As few Oxford men 
 could speak Italian, whereas all Italian priests can 
 speak Latin, the conversation which ensued was carried 
 on in that language. ' Catholicus es f ' said the priest 
 to one of the travellers. ' Utique, Domine, sum Catho- 
 licus: non tamen Ramano-Catholicus' ' Catholicus, 
 nan RomanuusV said the priest, in evident surprise. 
 Then, putting his hand to his chin, and looking, as it 
 . into the air for a solution of the difficult} 7 , he 
 exclaimed, as if having hit the point, 6 Ah, Puseyista 
 forsan .' ' 
 
 We endeavoured, especially the younger and less 
 occupied members of our society, to improve our rela- 
 tions with foreign Catholics by occasional visits to the 
 Continent. For this purpose Belgium was preferred to 
 France, because of the greater external manifestation of 
 religion in that country. Whatever our Tractarian 
 friends may have been on this side of the Channel, 
 there could be no doubt of their perfect Catholicity on 
 the other. It was, in fact, of so enthusiastic and demon- 
 
74 A happy Recognition. 
 
 strative a character as to astonish the natives themselves, 
 and sometimes even perhaps to shame them. Our 
 friends used to distinguish themselves by making extra- 
 ordinarily low bows to priests, and genuflecting, even 
 in public places, to everyone who looked the least like 
 a bishop. In the churches they were always in a state 
 of prostration, or of ecstasy. Everything, and every- 
 body, was charming ; and such a contrast to England ! 
 Catholics might have their faults like other people, but 
 even their faults were better than Protestant virtues. 
 There was always a redeeming point even in their 
 greatest misdemeanours; their acts of insobriety were 
 far less offensive than those of Englishmen, and evi- 
 dences of their Catholicity might be traced in their very 
 oaths. 
 
 There is an anecdote of a different kind connected 
 with these visits to the Continent which, with strict 
 fidelity to historical fact, combines so much of the inte- 
 rest and beauty of romance, that I may almost be 
 thought to have borrowed it, to adorn my pages, from 
 one of Mr. Burns's series of edifying religious stories. 
 When at Antwerp, in the year 1842, 1 made acquaintance 
 with a youth of twelve or thirteen years of age, who was 
 then one of the choir-boys in the cathedral of that city. 
 I was so much struck by his piety and intelligence that, 
 on my return home, I wrote about him to my friend 
 Mr Ward, who thought the account worth publishing in 
 his ' Ideal of a Christian Church,' among the testimo- 
 nies to the practical effects of Catholicity which are 
 collected in the appendix to that work. I said in my 
 letter, — 
 
Geographical Catholicity. 75 
 
 I was pleased beyond measure with the tone and den 
 nour of this boy, who, we learned, was in the habit of con- 
 fessing every fortnight. He spoke with delight of his duties 
 in the church, and of his hopes of one day attaining to the 
 dignity of the priesthood.* 
 
 This was in 1842, when I was still a Protestant. In 
 1858 I visited Antwerp as a Catholic priest, and one 
 day, after saying mass in the Church of St. Charles 
 Borromeo, a } r oung man came up to me in the habit of 
 a priest, and made himself known as the little choir- 
 boy whom I had met sixteen years before, producing 
 from his pocket a book of French devotions which I 
 had given him, as a keepsake, on taking leave of him. 
 In the interval w 7 e had both become priests — he who 
 was then not even a student, I who was then not even a 
 Catholic : and we met, after an interval of sixteen years, 
 saying mass together in the same church. f 
 
 It is needless to add that w T e were by this time 
 growing out of what was once called, in the Dublin 
 Mevieiv, the ' ultramarine ' theor}*, or that according to 
 which a Catholic became a schismatic by crossing the 
 straits of Dover. About this time there was an opinion 
 among us parallel to that development of Donatism 
 w T hich is associated with the name of one Tichonius, 
 according to which both the Catholic and Anglican 
 bishops were considered to have lawful jurisdiction in 
 the same territory. But this theory would not hold ; 
 and accordingly the view which excludes one or the 
 
 * Ward's 'Ideal,' Appendix, p. 600. 
 
 t His name is the Rev. John Baptist Van Aafsen, and he is at 
 present one of the chaplains of the Antwerp Prison. 
 
7 6 The British Critic. 
 
 other from communion with the orbis terrarum was 
 restored, only with this difference, that now the Angli- 
 can, not the Catholic, was the side excluded. 
 
 With the view of counterbalancing the tendency to 
 an undue elevation of ceremonialism, attempts were 
 about this time made in more than one quarter to bring 
 out the devotional and ascetical side of Catholicity. 
 The ascetical fell by a natural attraction to Dr. Pusey, 
 who published a series of valuable Catholic books in 
 English. The devotional was taken up in London and 
 elsewhere, and several little manuals were put out ; 
 such as ' Devotions on the Passion,' ' Devotions for 
 Holy Communion,' ' St. Bonaventure's Life of Christ,' 
 &c. These books were eagerly bought and read by our 
 own friends, though even to some of these they were 
 not wholly palatable. But upon the bishops they pro- 
 duced no effect whatever in mitigating opposition ; on 
 the contrary, they seemed even to embitter it. The 
 6 Devotions on the Passion ' happened to come out while 
 Bishop Bagot of Oxford was holding his visitation ; and 
 that amiable prelate, who was really one of the most 
 liberal members of his bench, felt it his duty to add an 
 Appendix to his Charge, in which he denounced these 
 Devotions as a mischievous publication. Perhaps among 
 all the various notes against the Anglican communion, 
 this was the most discouraging. 
 
 A powerful stimulus was given to the movement by 
 the periodical appearance of the British Critic. This 
 review passed under the editorship of Mr. Newman 
 about 1838, and from that time till October 1843, when 
 it was discontinued, it may be said to form a faithful 
 
Its Services to Religion, 77 
 
 reflection of the progress of Tractarian opinions. Some 
 of the earlier articles are unsatisfactory, and occasionally 
 offensive ; one upon which I have happened to stumble, 
 called the i Revival of Jesuitism,' I do not hesitate to 
 say is, in parts, actually though of course unconscious ly 
 profane. But, as time goes on, we shall find that this 
 heretical virus is to a great extent, though never of 
 course wholly, discharged ; while the contributions of 
 the editor himself, of Mr. Ward, and others exhibit 
 continual advances upon the tone of the earlier num- 
 bers. It were to be wished, indeed, that those of Mr. 
 Newman might be revised and republished by him, as 
 they are undoubtedly some of the most precious of his 
 pre-Catholic writings. 
 
 It may not be uninteresting, nor altogether out of 
 season, to wind up this paper by inquiring briefly into 
 some of the causes to which the BritisJo Critic may lie 
 thought to have owed its extraordinary influence. The 
 subject is intimately connected with the general one 
 upon which we are engaged ; for this periodical may 
 be said to have been the principal channel through 
 which Tractarianism passed out of its early and more 
 technical form, and entered upon that more interesting 
 stage of expansion and development in which it directly 
 prepartd the way for the conversions to Rome. The 
 British Ci 'die has also an important place in our 
 history, as it helped to conglomerate and cement, the 
 various forms of Tractarianism into something like a 
 consistent whole, and to give them a practical bearing 
 upon society at large. It cannot be denied that the 
 ish Critic, like other accessories to the great work 
 
78 The British Critic. 
 
 at Oxford, owed much of its success to the influence of 
 party feeling. People wrote, I am afraid, all the more 
 forcibly, read all the more greedily, worked all the more 
 vigorously, gave all the more liberally, because they 
 had a cause to vindicate before bishops and against 
 objectors, and a great problem to work out, if possible, 
 on the side of quiescence and conservatism — a Church, 
 as they considered, to elevate, unsettled minds to steady, 
 and stragglers to keep within bounds. Our motives of 
 action in Christ's true Church are infinitely higher, 
 infinitely purer, and therefore infinitely more powerful ; 
 but proportionately less exciting. In the Church of 
 Christ things do not depend, thank God ! upon our 
 individual efforts ; the work is indefinitely distributed, 
 and secured by guarantees which would remain in all 
 their force if we were out of the way. It would be sad 
 indeed if these consolations should ever be a check 
 rather than an incentive to exertion ; that the advance- 
 ment of a cause, or the defence of a party, should nerve 
 the arm with vigour, or open the hand to liberality, 
 with greater power than the graces of the Church and 
 the associat'on with the communion of saints. 
 
 But there were other circumstances which had to do 
 with the success of the British Critic, happily less 
 limited and partial in their operation. Among these 
 the first place must be given to the editor. If he had 
 a fault as an editor, it was that he erred on the side of 
 forbearance and largeness of spirit. He used the 
 pruning-knife, if anything, too sparingly ; and as to 
 some of the articles actually published, like that on the 
 ' Eevival of Jesuitism,' it might be said that one erasure 
 
( 'auses <</ its Sued ss. 79 
 
 would have been better than many; the 'una sola 
 litura ' which would have expunged the whole at 
 once. But, in genera 1 , the Review gained by these 
 expansive principles of tolerance. In matters of detail 
 and administrative policy the Critic was worthy of all 
 admiration. Light articles, which must always be an 
 editor's great difficulty, are mingled in due proportion 
 with the graver, and they are generally pervaded by a 
 brilliant and accomplished tone of kindly wit.* 
 
 What is still more to the point, the writers, as a 
 general rule, seem to write as if they mean what they 
 say. This may be considered a very modest demand 
 upon authors, but it is really one of their greatest and 
 rarest merits. Sincerity in authorship is the essential 
 condition of a valuable influence. f Si vis me flere, 
 dolendum est primum ipsi tibi.' Hence, too, it was a 
 great, perhaps the greatest, element of success iu this 
 periodical, that the Review, on the whole, presented an 
 aspect of unity and consistency. To preserve this in 
 company with the spirit of freedom and forbearance, 
 which has been already mentioned, must be the main 
 problem of every editor of a periodical ; and the British 
 Critic, in >pite of all its varieties, offers a successful 
 solution of it. Xay, even those very varieties are evidences 
 of the genuineness and geniality of the work, since th ex- 
 are owing, in great measure, to the progressive course 
 and shifting phases of the movement itself, of which the 
 Review, indeed, is a kind of index or epitome. 
 
 But that which constituted the crowning excellence 
 
 * See especially one on 'Exeter Hall,' July 1S38; and another on 
 ■-writ i no;,' Jan. 1842. 
 
8o Letters of Cathol icus. 
 
 of the British Critic, as compared with the leading 
 Protestant periodicals of its time, was its thoroughly reli- 
 gious spirit, pervading as that spirit did, on the whole, 
 not only its directly ecclesiastical articles, but those 
 which were engaged with other subjects. Nothing was 
 treated — whether history, biography, travels, fiction, or 
 subjects of the day— in a simply worldly or literary 
 point of view, or as if religion were a kind of profes- 
 sional peculiarity, or official badge, the assumption of 
 which out of its place was gratuitous, pedantic, or in 
 bad taste. Yet, on the other hand, nothing is more 
 remarkable in this Eeview than the entire absence of 
 what is called 6 cant,' the opposite and vicious extreme, 
 between which and irreligiousness the golden mean is so 
 hard to preserve. Nor, again, was the spirit in question 
 maintained at the very slightest cost of literary ability or 
 even public reputation ; for I believe I am correct in 
 saying that it was Mr. Newman's articles in the Critic 
 which led to his being invited by the proprietors of The 
 Times to come out in that journal with some remarks 
 upon literary projects of the day, and that the result of 
 these overtures may be seen in the celebrated letters of 
 * Catholicus.' 
 
 It is almost needless to say that the articles of the 
 illustrious editor himself were always looked out for 
 with anxiety, recognised with ease, and read with eager- 
 ness. Though conceived in a spirit of singular caution 
 and moderation, calculated rather than purp< 
 intended to disarm suspicion, they could not fail, as the 
 compositions of so genuine a writer, to betray, at 
 to observant and sympathising readers, very perceptible 
 
Article on c Private Judgment' 
 
 tokens of what was passing in bis mind. The article 
 on the ' Catholicity of the English Church,' which 
 appeared in January 1840, was followed at the distance 
 of eighteen months by another, somewhat of the same 
 character though on a different subject — that on 'Pri- 
 vate Judgment,' which, though not actually the last, 
 was the last significant and characteristic paper of the 
 gifted writer. 
 
 The contents of this essay must have surprised many 
 who had formed their expectations of it from its title. 
 With High Churchmen of the time ( private judg- 
 ment ' was synonymous with self-will, and involved, as 
 it would involve with Catholics, the spirit of heretical 
 insubordination. In this article, however, a certain 
 place and function w T ere assigned to private judgment in 
 the actual state of religious interests and parties in 
 England. It might be employed, said the writer, in 
 discriminating not between religions but between 
 teachers or, in other words, ' Churches.' It was plain 
 that the argument of St. Augustine against the Donatists 
 had worked itself into the writer's mind; indeed, he 
 refers to it even more definitely than in the article of 
 January 1840, upon the 'Catholicity of the English 
 Church.' He almost admits that the note of schism 
 rested on the Anglican communion, and parries the 
 charge by an argumentum ad hominem, or rather ad 
 Ecclesiam, founded on a parallel note, as he considers, 
 of e quasi idolatry.' Things being thus reduced, he ar- 
 gues, to an alternative of difficulties, it is, he implies, 
 the duty of Anglicans to stay where they are — the fact 
 of e possession ' determining their course, under the 
 
 G 
 
82 Article on 'Private Judgment' 
 
 circumstances, on the side of remaining in the state of 
 life in which it had pleased Grod to place them. With 
 the slight exception of the paper in the Critic of April 
 1842, on the 'Works of the Rev. J. Davison,' this arti- 
 cle on ' Private Judgment ' was Mr. Newman's last 
 appearance on the stage of Protestant critical literature. 
 Its final words are eminently characteristic of himself 
 and significant of his state of mind : — 
 
 If, nefas dictu, our Church is by any formal act rendered 
 schismatical, while Greek and Roman idolatry remains not of 
 the Church hut in it merely, denounced by Councils though 
 admitted by authorities of the day ; if our own communion 
 were to own itself Protestant, while foreign communions still 
 disclaimed the superstitions of which they are too tolerant ; if 
 the profession of ancient truth were to be persecuted in our 
 Church, and its teaching forbidden, — then, doubtless, for a 
 season Catholic minds among us ivould be unable to see their 
 way* 
 
 Catholics will be tempted to exclaim, upon reading 
 these last words, ( most lame and impotent conclu- 
 sion!' But their writer was one of those who always 
 kept his words in arrear of his practice, instead of allow- 
 ing them, as is the way with many, to outrun it. Mean- 
 while his example stands forth as their comment or 
 their apology. In my next Paper I will follow Tracta- 
 rianism through its final stages into that which is now 
 proved, almost demonstratively, to have been its provi- 
 dential end, — the amplification and expansion of the 
 Holy Catholic Church in England. 
 
 * British Critic, vol. xxx. p. 134. 
 
Sy mpto ms of Co llapse. 8 3 
 
 PAET IV. 
 
 CLOSING SCENES OF TITE MOVEMENT : ITS CHARACTER 
 AND EFFECTS. 
 
 The histories of real life, like the plots of the drama, 
 are apt to increase in fervour of action and multiplicity 
 of incident as they draw near the term of their appointed 
 course : their fifth act is generally busier than all 
 the preceding put together. Events come thickly and 
 almost jostle one another— partly from the natural 
 effect of contact, partly through the operation of some 
 hidden iaw of sympathy which produces a coincidence 
 of results without any apparent concatenation of causes 
 or community of motives. 
 
 It was thus with the history which I am engaged in 
 illustrating. In the autumn of 1844 symptoms of what 
 is familiarly called a i break-up' began to manifest them- 
 selves ; and from that period till the corresponding season 
 of 1845 there occurred a succession of circumstances 
 bearing on the movement, some of greater and some of 
 less public interest, but all contributing more or less to 
 indicate the designs of Divine Providence in this remark- 
 able and, in some respects, unprecedented dispensation. 
 
 Yet was the process of development hardly less 
 mysterious than the work itself whose meaning had 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Symptoms of Collapse. 
 
 thus to be cleared up. There was a simultaneous 
 failing of hearts without any adequate pressure, or 
 ostensible influence, or mutual comparison of personal 
 impressions. There were tokens of decay and prog- 
 nostics of dissolution in several quasi-religious com- 
 munities which had been formed with the view of 
 Catholicising the English Establishment and keeping 
 unsettled members within its pale. These proofs of 
 weakness within the camp were accompanied by signs 
 of more than ordinary vigilance and determination on 
 the part of adversaries. The policy of conciliation and 
 forbearance seemed to have run its course, and the time 
 for vigorous action to be at hand. The ecclesiastical 
 and academical authorities were evidently pressed on 
 every side to take some decisive step ; and it is probably 
 to the difficulties which they found in resisting this 
 pressure, rather than to any well-grounded convictions 
 of their own, that we are to attribute the measures 
 which they now began to adopt for the suppression of 
 Tractarian opinions. At Oxford, especially, there were 
 persons who hunted down the leading Tractarians with 
 implacable fury and unwavering pertinacity. They 
 acted the part of jackals to the nobler beasts of prey. 
 They had their emissaries in the suspected colleges, 
 and their eyes were intent upon every action, and even 
 gesture, from which the purposes of those whom they 
 regarded as the enemies of religion could be collected 
 or conjectured. There is the best reason for believing 
 that the opposition to Tract 90 was fostered, if not set 
 on foot, by one of these active subordinates ; and the 
 partial success of that effort was such as to encourage 
 
Mr. Ward's ' Ideal of a Christian Church. 1 85 
 
 the repetition of similar attempts as the occasion for 
 them arose. 
 
 It will readily be understood that the appearance of 
 Mr. Ward's * Ideal of a Christian Church,' towards the 
 end of the year 1844, would be a signal for renewed 
 hostilities. Though actually published in London, its 
 author was then resident at Oxford, so that the brunt 
 of the battle- had to be sustained in the university. 
 Had not the academical mind been at the time in a 
 state of morbid excitability, the very bulk of this volume 
 would surely have pleaded for an arrest of judgment. 
 It was no impetuous flyleaf, no slashing pamphlet, no 
 piquant article in a suspected review, but an obese 
 octavo, extending to six hundred closely printed pages, 
 the writer of which must have found time to mitigate 
 the ardour of the most infuriated spirit in the process 
 of its composition, and the reader to work himself clear 
 of the most inveterate prejudice in the course of its 
 perusal. The great probability, however, is that com- 
 paratively few of the numbers who voted for its con- 
 demnation were at the pains to read it throughout ; so 
 that its size, instead of securing it a patient reception, 
 operated simply to its disadvantage. 
 
 The impression of careful stud}^ and calm deliberation 
 which the very form of this remarkable volume was 
 fitted to create would have been abundantly confirmed 
 by an acquaintance, however superficial, with its actual 
 contents. The titles of its chapters alone ought to have 
 been enough to prove that in its general scope, at all 
 events, it was directed to no other object than the 
 amelioration of the National Church and the sanctifica- 
 
86 Argument of the c Ideal.' 
 
 tion of individual souls. But the fact was that the 
 body-politic of Anglicanism had reached the historian's 
 climax of confusion, in which it was intolerant even of 
 the remedies for its evils, and manifested that last and 
 most fatal sign of an impenitent spirit in which no 
 enemy is so obnoxious as he who reminds the offender 
 of his faults. He therefore who sought to disengage 
 the Anglican communion from a share in the miserable 
 work of the Eeformation, to relieve it of many soul- 
 destroying traditions, and to strengthen its position by 
 seeking out points of association and awakening hopes 
 of reunion with the Catholic Church, was accounted 
 not as a devoted son or as a valuable ally, but as an 
 alien and a traducer. Accordingly, certain passages of 
 the ' Ideal,' in which the author expressed with charac- 
 teristic intensity his opinions against the Reformation 
 and in favour of the Catholic Church, were selected, with 
 conspicuous unfairness, from among the vast amount of 
 qualifying matter in which they were embedded, and 
 exhibited in a string of startling theses to the distorted 
 vision of Protestant critics. Two separate bills of 
 indictment were prepared for the occasion — the one 
 against the work, the other against the author : the one 
 declaring the theses selected to be inconsistent with 
 * honest' subscription to the Articles, the other that the 
 author was unworthy of the degree of Master of Arts. 
 to which he had been admitted in consequence of such 
 subscription, and ought therefore to be deprived of it. 
 
 If the arraignment of Mr. Ward was the occasion of 
 eliciting a more than usual amount of prejudice and 
 unfairness, it was also, on the other hand, the means of 
 
Pamphlets of Mr. Keble and Dr. Moberly. 87 
 
 drawing forth more than one proof of sympathy, which 
 must have been as gratifying to Mr. Ward himself as 
 they were honourable to the quarters from which they 
 proceeded. Among these a prominent place must be 
 given to the pamphlets of Mr. Keble* and of Dr. 
 Moberlyf — the latter then, as at present, head-master 
 of Winchester School. These pamphlets, though dif- 
 fering considerably in the amount of agreement with 
 Mr. Ward's opinions which they severally expressed, 
 must be estimated in their respective relations to the 
 known religious sentiments of their authors, and in this 
 light are eminently deserving of the description just 
 given of them. Both contain the strongest expressions 
 of personal respect for Mr. Ward's character and for 
 the honesty of his intentions; but Mr. Keble, espe- 
 cially, evinces no small degree of interest in the line of 
 argument and of acquiescence in the general principles 
 of the ' Ideal.' This fact will cause no surprise to 
 those who remember how strongly Mr. Keble has com- 
 mitted himself, in the preface to Mr. Froude's c Kemains,' 
 to an estimate of the English Eeformation and Re- 
 formers not very different from that taken by Mr. 
 Ward himself, and how honourably he is distinguished 
 from the High Churchmen of his time in the tone which 
 he adopts towards Catholic doctrine in parts of the 
 ' Christian Year.' But however these two writers may 
 vary from one another in their precise appreciation of 
 Mr. Ward's argument, they are entirely agreed in con- 
 
 * ' Heads of Consideration on the Case of Mr. Ward.' Oxford: 184'). 
 f ' The Proposed Degradation and Declaration considered in a Letter 
 to the Rev. the Master of Ealliol College, Oxford.' 1845. 
 
Proceedings at Oxford. 
 
 demning the intended proceedings against him as in 
 the highest degree unjust, and fraught with mischief to 
 the cause of religion. 
 
 But when the minds of a large body of man are 
 occupied by a prejudice so deep as that which prevailed 
 at the time in the University of Oxford, and still more 
 among the country clergy who were members of the 
 academical convocation, and possessed, therefore, the 
 light of voting upon both of the questions affecting 
 Mr. Ward, a temperate argument (like that of the 
 pamphlets to which I refer) has seldom any other effect 
 than that of serving as a protest on the part of certain 
 individuals against the acts of the majority. The suit, 
 accordingly, was vigorously pressed in spite of such 
 occasional remonstrances ; and for one pamphlet or 
 flyleaf which advocated Mr. Ward's cause, there were 
 at least a score which took part against him. It should 
 be mentioned that, with the view of consulting that 
 intolerance of large books from which Mr. Ward had 
 materially suffered, it is a practice at Oxford on occa- 
 sions of public excitement to put forth single sheets on 
 either side of an academical controversy, in which the 
 reasons pro and con are summarised with that pithy 
 sententiousness and telling effect so easy of command 
 to practised intellects. Between the announcement of 
 the intention to proceed against Mr. Ward and the 
 actual day of battle it is historically certain, though I 
 cannot vouch for the fact upon any producible evidence, 
 that the common-room tables of Oxford were daily 
 strewn with such ephemeral sallies of academical in- 
 genuity in the form of f A Few Words to Members of 
 
The Thirteenth of February, '45. 
 
 Convocation,' i Ten Eeasons against Mr. Ward,' ' The 
 Argument of the Ideal briefly Considered,' ' Queries on 
 the Proposed Vote of Convocation,' while, buried under 
 the accumulated mass, there perhaps would be found 
 < A Plea for Mr. Ward.' 
 
 The day fixed for the great trial of strength was the 
 13th of February 1845; the place Avas the Sheldonian 
 Theatre. For the sake of those who do not know 
 Oxford, I may mention that the Sheldonian Theatre is 
 not, as its name might seem to import, a place for 
 dramatic representations ; although, on the occasion in 
 question, it presented a scene in which the features of 
 tragedy and comedy were singularly united. It is a 
 large semicircular hall, devoted, by ancient usage, to 
 the most solemn and august purposes of academical 
 state. It is here that the heads of the university 
 assemble annually, in dignified consistory, to confer 
 honorary degrees upon distinguished men of the day. 
 It is here that, on the same occasion, the verse and 
 prose compositions to which the university prizes have 
 been adjudged are recited by their several authors. 
 And although, by a custom more honoured perhaps in 
 the breach than the observance, the junior members of 
 the university, who fill the galleries of the theatre on 
 these occasions, are permitted to give vent to their 
 opinions on men and things in general with a freedom 
 which borders on license, yet this accompaniment of 
 the ceremonial is so evidently of the nature of a mere 
 accident, entirely under the command of the autho- 
 rities, that it has the effect rather of diversifying a 
 solemnity of more than ordinary tediousness and dul- 
 
90 Scene in the Sheldon i 'an Theatre. 
 
 ness than of marring its attractiveness or compromising 
 its dignity. 
 
 How different a scene from that of this annual festival 
 did the theatre of Oxford present on that memorable 
 13th of February! Instead of an imposing semicircle 
 of placid dignitaries in rich academical costume, there 
 appeared a forbidding phalanx of time-worn faces, 
 flushed with excitement or wrinkled with discontent. 
 No bevies of elegantly dressed visitors, the friends of 
 happy undergraduates, gave to the graceful acclivities 
 behind the resemblance of a bank of pinks and gera- 
 niums. Crowds of Masters of Arts did, indeed, occupy 
 the area; but their faces also bore the unbecoming 
 marks of sectarian bitterness or controversial anxiety, 
 rather than the glow of festive joy and the augury of 
 an approaching long vacation. Undergraduates, too, 
 dotted rather than choked the galleries ; but the looks 
 of the dignitaries and the strangeness of the occasion 
 acted as a check on their wonted enthusiasm, though 
 it manifestly inclined towards the side of the party 
 arraigned. The weather was raw, the building was 
 cold, and the whole appearance of the affair in the 
 highest degree ungenial. But of all the innovations 
 upon a time-honoured tradition, the most extraordinary 
 was that which met the eye in the rostrum, or pulpit, 
 which projects from the side of the building. From 
 this, and from the desk opposite, there had been wont 
 from time immemorial to proceed orations of the most 
 measured character and the most unimpeachable ortho- 
 doxy ; an annual commemoration in Latin of ' founders 
 and benefactors,' from which no man living ever gained 
 
Mr. Wards ' Degradation! 
 
 any definite idea of their peculiar merits ; poems in 
 Latin and English, classical, elegant, and melodious, 
 but eminently uncontroversial ; and essays, the general 
 purport of which was to say in the most unexceptionable 
 language that which upon a subject of the least possible 
 public interest had the least tendency to excite differ- 
 ence of opinion. But now, on the contrary, the same 
 spot was occupied by the champion of a most unpopular 
 cause, unused to flatter and unskilled in compromise, 
 who, in the presence of his judges and of his jury, and 
 before a tribunal which comprised a large proportion of 
 the prejudice as well as of the intelligence of Protestant 
 England, was to defend himself from the charge of 
 disloyalty to the Church Established, not by denying 
 but by maintaining the positions which formed the 
 grounds of that charge. As a special privilege, granted 
 by the authorities in what they must afterwards have 
 regarded as an evil hour, Mr. ^Yard pronounced his 
 defence in the vernacular. The greater part of it he 
 delivered in a speech without book. There was, of 
 course, no reply. The votes of the Convocation were 
 taken, first upon the question of condemning the book, 
 and then upon that of the author's degradation. The 
 book was condemned by a large majority ; the sentence 
 of degradation was passed by a considerably smaller one. 
 A third proposal, for extending the condemnation of Mr. 
 Ward's claim to the argument of Tract 90, was defeated 
 by the veto of the two proctors. Many a downcast look 
 and many a despairing word denoted the impression 
 which the day's work had produced upon the friends of 
 the Tractarian Movement, even those of them \\\\o by 
 
92 Mr. Newman at Little mo re. 
 
 no means sympathised to the full extent with Mr. 
 Ward's opinions. Much as they might regret that the 
 crisis had been provoked, they could not but feel its 
 gravity and anticipate its inevitable consequences. They 
 beheld in it the beginning of a new era in the history of 
 the Established Church, and one which they rightly 
 regarded as most disastrous to her supposed interests. 
 
 It is time for us to return to Mr. Newman, who had 
 long since withdrawn from the university. One of his 
 last ministerial acts, in his office as Vicar of St. Mary's, 
 was to preach a course of Advent Sermons, in which, 
 waiving for the moment the claim of Divine authority 
 on behalf of the Anglican Church, he grounded the 
 duty of adherence to its communion principally upon 
 the note of personal experiences. Taking as the text 
 of his discourses the words, ' The kingdom of God is 
 within you,' he appealed to those impressions of the 
 truth of the Anglican system which might be derived 
 from special warnings or consolations of which it had 
 been the medium to individual minds and consciences. 
 But I have now arrived at that point in my history at 
 which the reader must be introduced to the last scene 
 of Mr. Newman's exile, and one which, as he passed 
 immediately from it to his home in the Church of God, 
 must ever possess a peculiar interest in the eyes of 
 Catholics. 
 
 About two miles from Oxford, a little off the London 
 Eoad, is situated the Hamlet of Littlemore, then an 
 ecclesiastical dependency of the Vicarage of St. Mary 
 the Virgin, and consequently a part of Mr. Newman's 
 spiritual charge as incumbent of that church. Thither 
 
His Farewell Sermon. 93 
 
 he had been in the habit of retiring from the bustle 
 and excitement of the University, more particularly 
 since he had become, so much against his will, the 
 object of its notice and the topic of its conversation. 
 For several years, I believe, he had spent in its grate- 
 ful seclusion the penitential seasons of the Church, and 
 probably had long looked to it as one day to be the 
 scene of a still more complete retirement and a still 
 more ascetical mode of life. Rumour soon became 
 busy as to the probability of his carrying some such 
 plan into effect : and the dons, who at this time were 
 more than usually apt to take their afternoon stroll in 
 the direction of Littlemore, remarked, in significant 
 phrase, that what used to be a mere cluster of cottages 
 was assuming, under the hands of carpenters and masons, 
 a somewhat monastic appearance. It was not long before 
 these suspicions were fully confirmed. Mr. Newman's 
 visits to Littlemore became less frequent only because 
 they were more continuous ; and somewhere, I think, 
 about the end of the year 1842 he took up his abode, 
 with several young men who had attached themselves 
 to his person and to his fortunes, in the building which 
 was not long in vindicating to itself the name of the 
 Littlemore Monastery. Up to the summer of 1843 
 Mr. Newman continued to officiate in the church which 
 had been erected in the forementioned village under his 
 skilful eye. But somewhere about that period, as well 
 as I can remember, he took his final leave of the Pro- 
 testant pulpit in a sermon* of singular beauty and 
 memorable interest to all his friends, who wept audibly, 
 * Included in the ' Sermons on Subjects of the Day.' 
 
94 Failure of Mr. Newman's Hopes. 
 
 as they felt only too surely convinced that the voice so 
 familiar to them was about to be hushed. From that 
 period Mr. Newman took no prominent part in the 
 church services, although, till within a few days of his 
 conversion, he and his little band of faithful friends 
 were constant attendants upon them. These friends, 
 rath the exception of one who had the start of the rest 
 in reaching the goal of their common destiny, remained 
 in the Establishment till about the time when Mr. 
 Newman left it, and entered the Catholic Church 
 simultaneously with him. It is needless to add, because 
 the fact is generally known, that the life at Littlemore 
 was founded upon the rule of the strictest religious 
 orders. Over and above Mr. Newman's object in 
 choosing for himself and his companions so austere a 
 mode of preparing for any change which might await 
 them, he ma}^ perhaps have intended to try a kind of 
 crucial experiment upon the powers of the system of 
 which he was resolved to hope even against hope. ' If 
 (we may fancy him saying) ' our lot be still cast in a 
 portion of the True Church, the fact will best be proved 
 by our finding ourselves able to live securely the life 
 which from the earliest ages has been distinctive of 
 that Church ; whereas if (rod have any other will in 
 our regard, it is by a life like this that we shall most 
 certainly learn His purpose, and may most confident ly 
 depend upon His illuminating grace.' 
 
 It may possibly have been with somewhat of the 
 same intention that Mr. Newman authorised, about the 
 same time, the publication of a series of biographies of 
 English saints, though he did not take any personal 
 
Sequel of Proceedings against Mr. Ward. 95 
 
 part in the work, or make himself responsible for the 
 opinions of individual writers. I well recollect the dis- 
 appointment he expressed when this final experiment 
 proved a failure, and the ' Lives of the English Saints ' 
 had to be dropped in deference to the threatened oppo- 
 sition of authority long before their subject had been 
 exhausted. 
 
 I have now once more brought up my history to 
 the year 1845, in the summer of which a blow was 
 struck at Margaret Chapel, and its disorganisation 
 added to the other events by which the progress of 
 Tractarianism was discouraged. The minister, who had 
 for some time committed himself to Mr. Ward's view 
 of subscription to the Articles, and who felt that in 
 the recent vote of the Oxford Convocation a wound had 
 been inflicted upon himself which rendered his position 
 extremely difficult in conscience, resolved upon bring- 
 ing matters to an issue by drawing attention to his 
 own published statements, and offering to abide by 
 the consequences.* His challenge was taken up, not 
 
 * I was much, and in part rightly, blamed for this act, but it was not, 
 as it might have appeared, an attempt to extricate myself from my 
 position in the Established Church, in which I was never really unsettled 
 till the Bishop of London entered the suit against me in the Arches' 
 Court. Shortly before Mr. Ward's condemnation, I had published my 
 difficulties about joining Ronu- in the English Churchman. The object 
 I had in view in drawing the attention of the University to my own case 
 was, to reopen the question of the incompatibility of an academical 
 degree with opinions held in common by 3Ir. "Ward and myself, in tin 
 hope of practically reversing a sentence passed, as I believed, under 
 excitement. I had the cause, not myself, in view; but the act was 
 precipitate and impulsive, nor can I wonder, or complain, that it was 
 misunderstood. 
 
g6 Sentence of the Court of Arches, in 1845, 
 
 where he had given it, at Oxford, but where he did not 
 think that it would be noticed, in London. Had he 
 left matters to rest as they were, no prosecution could 
 probably have been sustained against him, because the 
 words complained of were published out of the limits of 
 the London diocese. But his good angel prompted him 
 to write a defence of his challenge, and to publish it in 
 London, which at once gave his vigilant diocesan a han- 
 dle against him. A suit was accordingly instituted, on 
 behalf of the bishop, in the Court of Arches. Fearful 
 of being a party to the profane discussion of doctrines 
 which he had already begun to regard with somewhat 
 of Catholic reverence, and weary of a strife which he 
 looked upon as unbecoming in itself and hopeless in its 
 result, he voluntarily tendered the resignation of his 
 licence. The bishop, however, was not to be propitiated, 
 and refused to accept his resignation. The suit was 
 actively followed up, and, as the defendant absolutely 
 declined to put in any plea on his own behalf, judgment 
 went by default. The judge, however, unwilling to lose 
 so good an opportunity of entering the protest of the 
 highest ecclesiastical court against what were called 
 ' Eomanising opinions,' pronounced a condemnation of 
 Catholic doctrines seriatim. The court gave sentence 
 to the effect that the minister should be perpetually 
 suspended, except in the event of his retracting the 
 alleged errors in terms satisfactory to the bishop. It is 
 a very significant fact that, while an interpretation 
 of the Anglican formularies on the Catholic side was 
 punished ' by perpetual inhibition from clerical duty, 
 the construction of them which favours the doctrines of 
 
Contrasted w ith that of 1 8 G 2 . 97 
 
 ' Essays and Reviews' has been recently visited by a far 
 milder penalty — that of suspension for a single year. 
 In the latter case, too, the sentence does not give any 
 opportunity for withdrawing the obnoxious doctrines ; 
 and the reason assigned is curious. It is founded on 
 the relative positions of the two defendants, the unbe- 
 neficed minister being supposed to be without those 
 inducements to hypocritical retractation by which the 
 wealthy rector is thought likely to be influenced.* The 
 conclusion is inevitable. A clergyman who publicly 
 denies the truth of parts of the Scripture history^, the 
 miraculous character of the Christian dispensation, and 
 the eternity of future punishments, is allowed to resume 
 his ministry, without retractation, after a twelvemonth ; 
 while one who claims to ' hold, but not to teach,' 
 Roman doctrine is perpetually suspended. I am far 
 from quarrelling with either decision, least of all with 
 the anti-Roman one ; but the contrast is alarmingly 
 significant of the real character of the Anglican 
 Church.f 
 
 * ' There was a distinction to be drawn between the case of Mr. Oake- 
 ley, referred to by the Queen's Advocate, and the present one. In the 
 former case the defendant (who professed to hold all Roman doctrine) 
 held only a curacy ; the sentence was that his licence was to be su>- 
 pended until he had retracted the erroneous doctrines he had avowed. 
 That was the only ease he was aware of where such a punishment had 
 been inflicted. His lordship thought it would be wrong to suspend the 
 defendant until he had retracted, as that judgment might cause a 
 retractation which did not come from the h<;art! — Judgment of Dr. 
 Lushington. .See Times of Dec. 16, 1862. 
 
 t Since tli*- above was written the contrast between the two results 
 has been made infinitely stronger by the reversal of the sentence of 
 the Arches' Court, on appeal to the Privy Council. 
 
 H 
 
98 The Ninth of October, '45. 
 
 Mr. Newman's conversion, though incomparably the 
 most momentous, was not the first in point of time of 
 those by which the year 1845 was signalised. Mr Ward 
 preceded him by several weeks — Mr. Grant, Mr. Tickell, 
 and Mr. Bridges (all now Fathers of the Society of 
 Jesus) by a considerably longer interval Till the very 
 day of Mr. Newman's reception into the Church, hopes 
 were entertained by his Anglican friends that he might 
 still repent of his intention, nor was the fact of his con- 
 version believed even after it had occurred. This was 
 owing in part to the obscurity which hung over it, and 
 of which the circumstances attending it will furnish a 
 sufficient explanation. 
 
 It was a memorable day that 9th of October 1845. 
 The rain came down in torrents, bringing with it the first 
 heavy instalment of autumn's ' sere and yellow ' leaves. 
 The wind, like a spent giant, howled forth the expiring 
 notes of its equinoctial fury. The superstitious might 
 have said that the very elements were on the side of 
 Anglicanism — so copiously did they weep, so piteously 
 bemoan, the approaching departure of its great repre- 
 sentative. The bell which swung visibly in the turret 
 of the little gothic church at Littlemore gave that day 
 the usual notice of morning and afternoon prayers ; but 
 it came to the ear in that buoyant bouncing tone which 
 is usual in a high wind, and sounded like a knell rather 
 than a summons. The ( monastery ' was more than usually 
 sombre and still. Egress and ingress there were none 
 that day ; for it had been given out, among friends 
 accustomed to visit there, thai Mr. Newman 'wished to 
 remain quiet.' One of these friends, who resided in the 
 
Mr. Newman a Catholic. 
 
 99 
 
 neighbourhood, had been used to attend the evening 
 office in the oratory of the house, but he was forbidden 
 to come ' for two or three days, for reasons which would 
 be explained later.' The 9th of the month passed off 
 without producing any satisfaction to the general curio- 
 sity. All that transpired was that a remarkable-look- 
 ing man, evidently a foreigner, and shabbil} 7 dressed in 
 black, had asked his way to Mr. Newman's on the day 
 but one before ; and the rumour was that he was a 
 Catholic priest. In the course of a day or two 
 friend before mentioned was readmitted to the evening 
 office, and found that a change had come over it. The 
 Latin was pronounced for the first time in the Roman 
 way, and the antiphons of Our Lad}^, which up to that 
 day had been always omitted, came out in their proper 
 place. The friend in question would have asked the 
 reason of these changes, but it was forbidden to speak 
 to any of the community after night-prayers. Very 
 soon the mystery was cleared up by Mr. Xewinan and 
 his companions appearing at mass in the public chapel 
 at Oxford. He had been received into the Church on 
 the 9th by Father Dominic, of the Congregation of the 
 Passion. Thus noiselessly and unobtrusively did the 
 event come to pass which, whether we consider it- 
 importance as an insulated fact or its undoubted influ- 
 ence upon the succeeding conversions, must be pro- 
 nounced to have been, if not the providential end of the 
 Tractarian Movement, at any rate the symbol and mea- 
 sure of its true significance. Three weeks after Mr. New- 
 man's conversion he and his companions, with another 
 clergyman who had been received into the Church in 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo Effects of the Movement 
 
 the interval, were kneeling before the altar of St. Mary's, 
 Oscott, to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost in the 
 Sacrament of Confirmation. This was on the Feast of 
 All Saints, Saturday, November 1st, 1845. The Sacra- 
 ment was administered by the Eight Eev. Dr. Wiseman, 
 who had long watched the movement at Oxford with 
 the deepest interest, and saw in the event of that day, the 
 fulfilment of many anxious hopes and fervent prayers. 
 
 Having now brought this historical sketch to its 
 natural termination, all that remains is to give a 
 brief analysis of the character of the religious move- 
 ment which I have undertaken to describe, and a 
 summary of its principal effects. For a reason which 
 will afterwards appear, it will be convenient to give the 
 precedence to the last of these subjects of inquiry. 
 What then have been the effects of Tractarianism ? — and, 
 first, upon the religious system out of which it sprang ? 
 
 This inquiry is more or less difficult. Some may think 
 it to be even presumptuous in the hands of a Catholic, 
 who must necessarily take his point of view from an 
 external position, and who will be considered a partial 
 if not a prejudiced witness in the cause. Yet, on the 
 other hand, there are certain public facts bearing upon 
 the argument, which it requires no ingenuity to inter- 
 pret, and involves no departure from my proper province 
 to criticise. These facts lead to the conclusion that, 
 whatever the Established Church may have gained by 
 the Tractarian Movement in freedom of action, it has 
 lost that which no gain can compensate where the claim 
 of a Church is the matter in dispute — sensitiveness to 
 doctrinal truth. I do not speak merely of those legal 
 
on the Established Church. 101 
 
 decisions whereby, first, the Sacrament of Baptism and, 
 eventually, the Inspiration of Holy Scripture and the 
 Eternity of Future Punishments are pronounced to be 
 questions upon which Christians are at liberty to differ, 
 but of other phenomena of the Established Church 
 tending, if possible, even more significantly in the same 
 direction of latitudinarian indifference. Where is now 
 the zeal in behalf of dogmatic theology in which such 
 works as Mr. Newman's ' St. Athanasius ' had their 
 origin ? Where are those who were once the leaders of 
 protests against the latitudinarian ism of the Church 
 and the Erastianism of the State ? Their voice, it would 
 seem, is all but hushed, while Eationalism is vigorous 
 and Infidelity on its march. Quiescence appears to be 
 the order of the day in what a quarter of a century 
 ago was the great party of action ; and anti-Christian 
 opinions are taking advantage of the supineness which 
 is fostered by the dread of conversions to that Church 
 which is, and has ever been, the only consistent witness 
 to dogmatic truth.* So long as there be any grounds 
 for these apprehensions, the spirit of Tractarianism has 
 vanished, and its object in aiming at the elevation of 
 the National Church as a teacher has been entirely and 
 conspicuously defeated. Nor is it of any avail to answer 
 
 * This was written more than a year ago. Since that time I have 
 seen with real pleasure that Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble are at length h< ad- 
 ing a movement in the right direction, and they have my cordial v, 
 for its success. They are doing good Catholic work in trying to st< m 
 the tide of rationalism and infidelity, whencesoever and wheresoever 
 flowing. Meanwhile, Dr. Pusey more especially is entitled to the thanks 
 of all Catholics for the eminent services he is rendering to the cause of 
 Biblical literature. 
 
102 Effects of the Movement 
 
 that Anglican clergymen can do with impunity what 
 years ago was found to be impracticable — that they can 
 burn candles by daylight, wear chasubles, start confra- 
 ternities, order precessions, and the like. For surely 
 such practices, where they do not express a generally 
 received doctrine, or harmonise naturally with the 
 s} r stem in which they are found, are more likely to bring 
 disrespect upon religion than to serve its best interests. 
 They are parts of a great whole, and when torn from 
 their place in it, become at best but the tokens of 
 eccentricity, and very probably also the occasions of a 
 serious delusion. 
 
 One feature there is of actual Anglicanism which 
 deserves a more respectful treatment at the hands of a 
 Catholic : I mean the quasi-religious sisterhoods which 
 have been undoubtedly multiplied during the last few 
 }^ears, and which appear to have assumed the rank of 
 something like an institution of the National Estab- 
 lishment. Rumours reach us, apparently on good 
 authority, concerning these communities, which, if true, 
 would seem to betoken a very insufficient notion of the 
 obligations of the Religious State. But I have no pre- 
 disposition to believe anything but what is good of such 
 establishments. The more highly, however, we rate 
 them — the more fully we are satisfied that they imply 
 the true spirit of sacrifice and self-denial, the more 
 surely may we reckon upon their fulfilling their destina- 
 tion as training-schools for the Catholic Church. So 
 far, therefore, as they are fruits of the Tractarian Move- 
 ment, they bear out the view which has here been 
 taken of its appointed end. 
 
on the Established Church. 103 
 
 On the other hand, it is certain that the conversions 
 to the Church which have directly followed upon the 
 movement have served to bring out a portion of the 
 mass left behind in an unsatisfactory point of view. 
 Few, comparatively, of those partisans of the movement 
 who have not become Catholics have continued alto- 
 gether upon their ancient level. Those who have not 
 advanced have receded: and it is sad to think that more 
 than one who took a part in the more extreme develop- 
 ments of the work has since been conspicuous on the 
 rationalistic side of more recent controversies. Others 
 who once almost touched the threshold of the Church 
 have since settled down in contented or, at any rate, 
 acquiescent Protestantism.* 
 
 The demeanour, again, adopted towards converts by 
 those who have not seen it right to follow them has 
 been often unamiable, ungenerous, and inconsistent 
 with former professions. I do not deny that there have 
 
 * Anglicans who have remained such are apt to observe, as a set-off 
 against these unquestionable facts, that some of their body who have 
 become Catholics have, as they are pleased to say, ' deteriorated.' If so 
 it bi I am heartily grieved for the result, and am quite sure that the 
 Church, at any rate, is not responsible for it. But, again, when 
 who have been clergymen before haVe taken to professions incongruous 
 with their former one, may not this prove that they had 'mistaken their 
 vocation' before, rather than that they are acting inconsistently with it 
 now ? And what more probable, considering the absence of any sufficient 
 preparation for the ecclesiastical calling in the Established Church, and 
 of any clear line of separation between it and the world ? Another expla- 
 nation of the difference sometimes observed in the same converts ; 
 and after conversion, is that the peace of mind and freedom from official 
 responsibility which follow upon conversion are apt to produce a certain 
 joyousness or, as it would be called, 'jauntiness' of manner very likely 
 to be mistaken for levity or heartlessness. 
 
1 04 Mr. Ward and the ' Christian Remembrancer.' 
 
 been cases in which this behaviour has been provoked 
 by the bearing of converts themselves, who, to a cordial 
 detestation of the heresy they have renounced, are 
 surely bound to add a large amount of forbearance and 
 sympathy towards those with whom they were so re- 
 cently associated in their errors. But the pages of the 
 Christian Remembrancer and the columns of the 
 Guardian have often betrayed tokens of signal un- 
 fairness towards those among the converts who have 
 been even distinguished for their generosity and ten- 
 derness in their judgment of their former co-reli- 
 gionists* 
 
 The separation which actually, and to a great extent 
 necessarily, exists between the Catholic converts and 
 their former friends renders it extremely difficult for 
 either party to know exactly what is passing in the 
 minds of each with respect to one another ; and this 
 thought should induce forbearance on the other side as 
 
 * A prominent instance of this unfairness occurs in the conduct of the 
 Christian Remembrancer towards Mr. Ward, and is noticed by that gentle- 
 man in ' Three Letters to the Editor of the Guardian] published in 18o2. 
 The Christian Remembrancer had stated that Dr. Newman's account of 
 ' the origin of the existing dogmatic theology' is ' substantially identical ' 
 with that of Mr. Ierson, who considers our Lord to have been a 'mere 
 preacher of natural religion.' Mr. Ward proved, by an extract from the 
 work of Dr. Newman thus referred to, that his statement, so far from being 
 'identical' with that of Mr. Ierson, was in direct opposition to it. 
 Mr. Ward drew the attention of the editor of the Christian Bernem*- 
 brancer once and again to the unfounded nature of his imputation upon 
 Dr. Newman, in the full belief that upon the universally acknowledged 
 principles of literary justice, to say nothing of generosity, life would have 
 retracted his assertion. Will it be believed that from that hour to this 
 no notice whatever, either private or public, has been taken of Mr. Ward's 
 communicat ion ? 
 
Effects of the Movement. 105 
 
 well as our own. For my own part, I deeply regret 
 that the language even of apparent unkindness should 
 ever have been used on our own side in speaking of 
 those with whom we were once connected, and with 
 whose difficulties we ought to sympathise from expe- 
 rience. Still I think that the language of converts has 
 often been subjected to unfair and unkindly criticism ; 
 that much has been set to the account of harshness or 
 contempt which has been really consistent with the 
 highest kind of charity, or rather the result of it, though 
 expressed, it maybe, in a way liable to misunderstand- 
 ing. On the other hand, it is well for some of our 
 former friends to know that we also, on our side, feel a 
 too frequent absence of the sympathy to which we 
 consider that their intimate knowledge of us gives 
 us some right in point of feeling, and our essential 
 community in many religious aims even a claim in 
 principle. Instead of a disposition to appreciate the 
 sacrifices which many converts have made, at any rate in 
 the cause of conscience if they will not admit it to be 
 the cause of truth, we have often met ^ith an inclina- 
 tion to attribute to some unworthy motive — such as 
 personal pique, intellectual conceit, love of religious 
 externals, and the like — an act which has, at any rate, 
 stood the test of time, and ought, as that time has 
 proceeded, to have cleared itself, in the judgment of 
 equity, from the suspicion of shallowness and incon- 
 siderateness. We are also surprised that they who are 
 avowedly occupied in disengaging their religious com- 
 munion from the stain of heresy and the imminent 
 danger of infidelity should often exhibit more sympathy 
 
106 Conversions — their Influence 
 
 with those whom, upon their own principles, they are 
 bound to consider in deadly error than with the 
 members of that Church which is now, and in every age 
 has been, the sole authoritative and consistent witness 
 to those great truths in whose ascendency they profess 
 so laudable an interest. 
 
 The effect of the Tractarian Movement upon the 
 Catholic Church is a subject upon which we can speak 
 with much greater confidence and certainty. Its merely 
 numerical additions to the ranks of our little army 
 are by no means inconsiderable, and far outstrip the 
 calculations of our Protestant fellow-countrymen. They 
 have been measured, very naturally, by the names of 
 those more distinguished converts who happen to have 
 figured in the public journals and otherwise. But these 
 records take no account of the multitudes of the middle 
 and poorer classes who are flowing into the Church in 
 an uninterrupted stream. In London alone, if we are 
 to judge by the statistics of our churches and chapels, 
 the number of converts must annually amount to several 
 hundreds ; and to this number we have to add the 
 converts made, in due proportion, in the large provincial 
 town?.* Doubtless there are drawbacks upon this com- 
 putation : occasional relapses among converts, and losses, 
 especially in the younger part of our population, through 
 the effects of a proselytism as unscrupulous in its means 
 as it is indefatigable in its exertions. Yet the fact re- 
 
 * The register of my own church exhibits a regular influx of one con- 
 vert a fortnight for the last four years. These converts are exclusively 
 from the middle and poorer classes. In churches at the west- end of 
 London the average is higher. 
 
not measurable by Numbers. 107 
 
 mains, with whatever deductions, that during the last 
 twenty years several hundreds of the Established clergy 
 (many of them learned and highly educated) and main- 
 more thousands of the laity have entered the fold of the 
 
 rch— a number far greater than that of all the con- 
 verts united whom the Church gained in the century and 
 
 I f preceding. 
 But it is not by the mere numerical addition to our 
 ranks that the real weight of these conversions is to be 
 estimated. Each single convert, and eminently each 
 clerical convert, represents an accession of influence to 
 the Church greatly beyond the fact of his individual 
 adhesion. Over and above the souls which he brings 
 directly along with him, there is the weight of his ex- 
 ample, the testimony of his consistency, and in many 
 
 -. a- we may hope, the illustration which his conduct 
 
 - to the principles which he has embraced, often at 
 much sacrifice, with the consequent diminution of pre- 
 judice and removal of misunderstanding in quarters to 
 which the Church had before no access. It is to this 
 cause among others that we are to attribute the manifest 
 impression which Catholicity has produced upon the 
 public mind during the last few years, as intimated no less 
 by the hostility than by the sympathy of the Press. Even 
 in England the Church is too great, too powerful, too 
 mysterious to be any longer ignored. A barrier, avS I 
 have found occasion in a former part of this sketch to 
 observe was heretofore placed between English Catholics 
 and their fellow-countrymen, which, by cutting off all 
 communication, helped to augment the natural opposi- 
 tion which must ever subsist between heresy and truth. 
 
108 Character of the Movement. 
 
 This opposition is so strong as to require no addition 
 from personal misconceptions. Now the converts have 
 acted as a link of union between the two extremes, which 
 without, it is to be hoped, a compromise of essential and 
 vital truth, has subserved the interests of peace by 
 aiding those of charit} 7 and justice. 
 
 These conversions, once more, have acted as a new 
 evidence of the Divine character of the Church. A 
 writer in the Dublin Review, as far back as the year 
 1846, ventured to anticipate that such would be one of 
 their manifold effects, and so it has proved. It may 
 safely be said that no religious body of merely human 
 origin could have sustained, as the Church has done, 
 this remarkable crisis. With some exceptions, of which 
 it is not necessary to investigate the causes, the converts, 
 as a body, have settled down into the Church with a 
 facility, a quietness, a completeness which, if it be some 
 proof on their side of a spirit of obedience and accommo- 
 dation which the graces of the Church could alone have 
 guaranteed, is no less a proof on hers of an elasticity 
 and expansiveness which are singularly not the attributes 
 of human, especially of human religious societies. Here 
 are some thousands of persons of indefinitely various an- 
 tecedents — many of them men of great experience and 
 of cultivated intellect — taken up, as it were, at once into 
 solution by the Church, as easily and as naturally as if 
 they had always been in some sort her own, the sharers 
 of a congenial element, the natives of an homogeneous 
 soil. Why there is no religious body in the world, I 
 will make bold to assert, but that whose capacities of 
 good are indefinite and whose powers of adjustment are 
 
Its Religious Earnestness. 109 
 
 inexhaustible, which would not have split up into ten 
 thousand fragments upon the introduction of an agent 
 so powerful and so explosive. 
 
 A brief examination, in the last place, of the character 
 of the movement itself will tend still further to exhibit 
 it in the light of a marvellous attestation to the Divine 
 authority of Catholic truth, and in some respects an 
 attestation of a new and original character. Never was 
 there a religious work which bore more evidently on its 
 surface the marks of conscientiousness, disinterestedness, 
 and unworldliness. Those in whose conversion it has 
 resulted, speaking generally, had nothing which is of 
 this world to gain, but everything to lose, by becoming 
 Catholics. Their sympathies, prepossessions, interests, 
 prospects — the fond memories of early years, the anxious 
 anticipations of years to come — all were enlisted on the 
 side of the religious system in which they had been reared. 
 Every step which they took in their progress towards 
 their present convictions was thwarted by natural impe- 
 diments and haunted by dispiriting visions. If young, 
 the longer was the train of bright hopes and attractive 
 prospects which they must quit ; if of mature age, the 
 deeper were the roots which they had struck into their 
 ancient soil, the greater the difficulty of becoming ac- 
 climatised to their new country. Hardly one of them 
 was so wholly isolated as to act independently of such 
 embarrassing trammels or such fascinating attractions, 
 while most of them found themselves actually entangled 
 in meshes successively woven at an earlier period of 
 their lives, when nothing was less present to their 
 thoughts than the probability of grave religious diffi- 
 
i io The Movement a Testimony 
 
 culties intervening to complicate and damage such as- 
 sociations. 
 
 The Tractarian Movement, whether as regards those 
 it has propelled forward, or those it has left behind, was, 
 on the whole, a serious, painstaking, deliberate, and emi- 
 nently religious work, undertaken with entire singleness 
 of aim, and conducted with a remarkable absence of 
 passion and prejudice. The spirit of Mr. Newman, its 
 great chieftain, was diffused more or less through its 
 whole range ; and no one who associated with him 
 during its progress can ever forget the cautious wisdom 
 with which he proceeded in every step : repressing indis- 
 creet zeal, sustaining the weak-minded, steadying the 
 irresolute, softening the over-severe, and ever interposing 
 the sage counsel and the charitable construction in aid 
 of the erring judgment or in arrest of the hasty censure. 
 
 Once more — the movement took its rise from the 
 very centre of intelligence and education, and has thus 
 helped to set for ever at rest the theory of an essential 
 opposition between Catholic truth and processes of in- 
 tellectual inquiry conducted in the spirit of Christian 
 simplicity and reliance on Divine aid. Here were nun. 
 who had everything which this world holds valuable to 
 keep them within their original boundaries, entering 
 upon a course of theological study with no other object 
 than that of confirming themselves in their actual belief: 
 yet in no long time we find them impelled by it, in 
 spite of themselves, in an unlooked-for direction. What 
 is most remarkable of all is that this effect is produced 
 not by the study of especially Roman divines but of the 
 earlier Fathers, whose writings were read by Dr. Newman, 
 
to the Catholic Religion. 1 1 1 
 
 as he somewhere tells us, over and over again, and each 
 time with an ever-increasing bias towards the same 
 point. Other courses of study, meanwhile, followed up 
 by other persons according to the bent of their tastes 
 or the requirements of their particular occupation, con- 
 verged by different paths to the same centre. 
 
 This brings me, in conclusion, to the last note of the 
 Tractarian Movement of which I am to speak in connec- 
 tion with the result in which that movement has issued ; 
 I mean its essentially independent and external character 
 as a witness to Catholic truth. I do not forget the 
 impulse for good which it received from within the 
 Catholic Church through the unwavering interest and 
 learned efforts of one eminent person. For this ad- 
 vantage, indeed, I have made allowance in a former 
 Paper; but this aid was certainly no less exceptional 
 than it was valuable. It is no discredit to the generality 
 of Catholics both at home and abroad, though it is all 
 the more to the honour of the individual in question, 
 that, as a general rule, the movement was very long 
 before it excited any sufficient interest among them, and 
 even when at length it did excite that interest was 
 but partially understood and imperfectly appreciated. 
 Moreover the remarkable fact is, not that it should have 
 attracted the attention of one and been furthered by 
 his aid, but that it should have proceeded as far as it 
 had when it first received that notice by the mere force 
 of an intrinsic and self-acting power, and have attained, 
 at any rate, a capacity of being affected with such mar- 
 vellous results by that external agency. I am not aware, 
 though I speak under correction, that there is any 
 
1 1 i The Movement, External and Independent, 
 
 precedent in the history of the Church for so mighty 
 an effect being produced upon her state and destiny, in 
 a purely spiritual point of view, by influences which in 
 their origin, early history, and general character were so 
 extrinsic to her system and so independent of her teaching. 
 I am here speaking of the movement antecedently to 
 Mr. Newman's conversion, for since that time the case 
 has been far otherwise. Many of those who have more 
 recently come over to us have owed their convictions, 
 under Grod, to the direct influence of Catholic teaching 
 far oftener sought out by them than pressed upon them. 
 But up to the year 1845, which was a critical epoch in 
 the history of Tractarianism, it was not so. Mr. Newman, 
 as I have heard, had only the barest acquaintance with 
 one or two Catholic priests, and was supposed rather to 
 avoid than to court their society. I ought however 
 to sa}% once for all, that whenever in these Papers I have 
 ventured to speak of Mr. Newman — or of others who 
 were connected with this movement, but in departments 
 of it which were more or less foreign to my own — I have 
 done so by an historical license only, according to the 
 best means of information at my command, but under 
 correction of those with whose names I have taken this 
 libert} 7 . With regard, however, to myself (so far as what 
 relates to me individually can have any claim to public 
 interest), as well as to others of whom I can speak with 
 the same confidence as of myself, I can state positively 
 that many of us had no personal knowledge of any 
 Catholic priest till within a short time of our conversion ; 
 that I myself was never in a Catholic church in these 
 islands but once, when I made a speedy retreat out of 
 
A Work of Divine Grace. 1 1 3 
 
 it under a panic of conscience ; and that I was, moreover, 
 all but entirely ignorant of the structure and ceremonies 
 of the Mass before I became a Catholic, as was almost 
 ludicrously evidenced when I did so. 
 
 On the whole, the more accurately we examine the 
 character of this great movement in connection with its 
 results, both actual and probable, the more we are thrown 
 back from the uncertainty of our own conjectures upon 
 the mystery of the Divine operations. ( A Domino 
 factum est istud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris.' 
 Twice before in these latter centuries has the Catholic 
 Church seemed in the way to regain her hold upon the 
 English nation — in the reign of the First Mary and 
 that of the Second James. But the cup of promise was 
 dashed away from her lips before it had neared them, 
 and the hope which for the moment had been awakened 
 had its reaction in periods of a still deeper depression. 
 May it have been that her Lord reserved for her some 
 better destiny; that He would have the work of resto- 
 ration to begin not from above but from below — its 
 instruments to be not the princes and nobles of this 
 world but the missionaries of the poor ; that He would 
 lay its foundations deep in the spirit of obedience, 
 conscientiousness, and self-sacrifice, instead of suffering 
 it to be hurried into a premature and evanescent luxu- 
 riance, under the baneful action of influences which 
 might have accelerated its growth without insuring its 
 stability ? 
 
LONDON 
 
 PEINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 
 
 NEW-STIiEET SQUAEE 
 
l/LA/Vv% 
 
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Canon Oakeley was a bold man, as indeed he feels himself to be, in I 
 reprinting bis Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement (Long- 
 man) from the Dublin Rcvieio after the appearance of Dr. Newman's 
 "Apologia." Of course, every one who was connected with that move- 
 ment or remembers it has his story to tell; but the question is, 
 whether it is worth the telling. Friends or foes, we think, admirers 
 or critics, will hardly learn much from these " historical notes," except 
 the writer's kindliness and general courteousness of tone, his elegant 
 and finished style, his innocent bliudness to everything but his own 
 side of the question, and his absolute unconsciousness of the difficulties 
 besetting the alternative in which he sought refuge from the difficulties 
 of Anglicanism. The work abounds in praise, admiration, honourable 
 mention, and for direct opponents charitable excuse and generous 
 palliation; it is only for those who have remained Anglicans, and 
 who have had the misfortune to find themselves in opposition to 
 their former friends, that his judgment is unfavourable; and even this 
 unfavourable judgment is a mild one, and from his point of view a 
 very natural one. Mr. Oakeley's sketch of the movement is, as he 
 says himself, mainly one from without, and, we may add, is loose, 
 superficial, and inexact. "Tutors of colleges," he says, describing the 
 way in which " the lecture-rooms at Oxford were barred against Trac- 
 tarianism," " who were known to share the new opinions were speedily 
 disposed of by some one among those hundred methods of regulating 
 his society according to his own views which the head of a college 
 possesses." There was, doubtless, harsh dealing against the new 
 opinions ; but Mr. Oakeley's memory and an old Oxford Calendar 
 would show him, if he would consider more carefully, that such a 
 statement is a ludicrous exaggeration throughout — not less at its close 
 than at its opening. The main interest of such notes is, after all, in 
 their records of personal observation and experience. Dr. Newman 
 has told us how he sought his way amid the deepest moral and intel- 
 lectual difficulties ; Mr. Oakeley's only contribution of this kind is 
 an account of his efforts to act up to a Catholic standard at 
 Margaret Chapel, and the most striking part of this is a 
 very humorous account of the discontent- of a rusty old clerk, 
 and the excessive disturbance of the services by a colony of 
 cats, supposed to be secretly encouraged by the clerk. It reads 
 like an extract from a middle age monastic chronicle ; but, after 
 all, it has not much to do with the "Tractarian movement." Of 
 course, Mr. Oakeley is fully satisfied with the result of the movement 
 as regards the interests of his own Church, and tells us with much 
 authority all that has been gained by those who have joined it, and all 
 that has been lost, in moral excellence, religious truth, and generosity 
 of conduct, by those who have not. It is obvious how easily the 
 picture might be reversed; but is it really worth any Berious man's 
 while tu waste his time and perhaps his temper on such idle generali- 
 ties, and on comparisons which he must know, if he is honest with 
 himself, that he b uuable to teat?