BX 5199 .W6 D3 
 
 Daniell, George William, 
 
 1853-1931. 
 Bishop Wilberforce 
 
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 tlie Internet Arcliive 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 littps://arcliive.org/details/bisliopwilberforcOOdani 
 
1^ 
 
Samuel WileerfuRck, Bishop of Wincuestf.r. 
 {From a Portrait by G. RiCHMOKD, R.A ) 
 
BISHOP WILBERFORCE 
 
 
 G. W. DANIELL, M.A. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 SIIjc Bibersilic ^rcss, fflambriSee 
 1891 
 
 BY 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CUAP. PAGE 
 
 r. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ... ... ... 1 
 
 II. EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING ... ... ... 9 
 
 III. ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP ... ... ... 20 
 
 IV. ORGANIZING A DIOCESE ... ... ... ... 38 
 
 V. DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES ... ... ... 71 
 
 VI. THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION ... ... 109 
 
 VII. THE BISHOP AND THE BROAD CHURCH PARTY 141 
 
 VIII. RITUALISM AND CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT ... 168 
 
 IX. BISHOP WILBERFORCE's LITERARY INFLUENCE 
 
 AND PERSONALITY ... ... ... ... 196 
 
BISHOP WILBERFOECE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Dean Burgon, in liis work entitled Lives of T'lvclve 
 Good Men, describes and speaks of Samuel Wilberforce 
 as the remodeller of the episcopate. It will be the 
 aim of these pages to endeavour to present his life, 
 work, character, and influence mainly from the point 
 of view thus suggested. We owe a great debt of 
 gratitude to those who will give us right and high 
 ideas of the duties and possibilities that any 
 important rank or position involves. The debt is 
 increased when the true ideal, though once grasped 
 and understood, has been lost, lowered, and obscured 
 by the heavy pressure of unfavourable conditions, acting 
 unrelieved over a long period. Since the Reformation, 
 and more still since the Revolution, conditions of appoint- 
 ment, and the common opinion, had led men too little to 
 seek the office of a bishop in the Church of England as 
 " a good work." It was too much the reward of political 
 service, valued for its secular rather than its spiritual 
 opportunities, favouring an attractive combination of 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 dignity and case. A great apathy fell on the Church 
 iu England, partially deprived, under the circumstances 
 just characterized, of her proper leaders. In a critical 
 moment of awakening, the subject of this memoir will 
 be seen, as Bishop of Oxford, to have been largely 
 instrumental in putting a new life into the order to 
 Avhich he belonged. There was a truth in words written 
 of him by his colleague, the Bishoi3 of Rochester, towards 
 the close of his life — " You have introduced such a 
 system into the episcopate that one has time for 
 nothing." ^ 
 
 Nothing strikes us more than the immense variety 
 of talent and power that was displayed by Bishop 
 Wilberforce in his life and work. Take in hand what 
 he would, he might be relied on to face the public with 
 success, and carry through his undertaking without the 
 heavy disability that is incurred, especially in introduc- 
 ing apparent novelties, by seeming to fail. Other men, 
 from timidity, or want of confidence in themselves or 
 their calling, had hesitated to attempt all that their 
 oflfice and position really required them to do. It is 
 not difficult to copy, or even to make improvements on, 
 that which has once been done ; and if it is, as Bishop 
 Wilberforce's biographer says, " that his idea of true 
 episcopacy is now a familiar one, and to those of a 
 younger generation a matter of course," - it is largely 
 because his gifts enabled him to give a practical 
 illustration of the way in which its many and various 
 requirements might be met. There were few parts of 
 the work that belongs to the episcopal offi-ce, on which 
 he did not fearlessly and boldly embark, considering its 
 
 1 Life, iii. p. 375. 
 
 Ibid. i. p. 344. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 3 
 
 relation, not only to his own diocese, but to the whole 
 state of England, and the Church at large. 
 
 Thus it is, as it has been said, that the life of Bishop 
 Wilberforce touches all the great ecclesiastical, and 
 most of the great social, questions of his day. "No 
 ecclesiastic within living memory — scarcely any English- 
 man — has enjoyed a larger share of personal celebrity 
 than he. It would be easy to recall the names of men 
 who eclipsed him by their achievements, or by the 
 brilliancy of their writings; but it remains a fact not- 
 withstanding, that as a public man, Samuel Wilberforce, 
 by the general suffrage of English society, was without 
 a peer." ^ In all parts of the country, and amongst all 
 classes, he was known, not merely by reputation, but 
 personally. His power of moving about was extra- 
 ordinary ; it was not uncommon for the morning of one 
 day to find him in London, the afternoon in his diocese, 
 and the evening at some house in the neighbouring 
 county — the centre of great and important labours 
 during the working hours, and the chief attraction of 
 some social gathering at their close. We may say 
 of him that he Avas amongst the first to show in 
 railroad days how much might be made of time, and 
 how little might be made of distance, by one who 
 combined power to do what was suggested to him 
 by a high idea of the call made on his energies 
 by the office he held, with a really unusual capacity 
 of mind and body for hard and continuous labour. 
 He was often suffering from severe illness, and in his 
 diaries entries such as "in much suffering all day," 
 " the pain great," are by no means uncommon.'' His 
 domestic afflictions also were from many causes un- 
 ' Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. p. 2. ^ Life, i. p. 348. 
 
4 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 usually great and painful. We find him, however, 
 rising superior to these hindrances, and in the very 
 midst of them, though obviously a man of deep feeling 
 and keen sensibility, keeping stedfastly to work with 
 an unabated courage and vigour. 
 
 We shall see that his ideal of what a bishop might 
 be, and should be, was not merely left as a tradition 
 peculiar to the diocese in which he worked. It has 
 become the inheritance of the Church and the world ; 
 and gives a reality to the leadership under which it is 
 appointed that the Church should work, such as has 
 not failed to give a new enthusiasm and thoroughness 
 to the labours of all subordinate ranks. Oxford, by 
 position and circumstance, was, as Canon Ashwell has 
 pointed out,^ singularly adapted to make this new 
 reading of a long otherwise understood story far-spread 
 and widely known. The accessibility of London, the 
 flood of thinking men constantly pouring forth from the 
 University, Avhich he could not fail to influence, made 
 his personality and his ideas a power with many. 
 Beginning his occupation of his see at a comparatively 
 early age, he had time before him, and was able to 
 start on needed changes and reforms without undue 
 haste. We may then accept the estimate which speaks 
 of his career "as offering an example of that which 
 is too rarely seen — the concurrence of capacity and 
 opportunity." 
 
 This career began at a time of crisis in the history of 
 the Oxford diocese, and in the history of the Church 
 of England. Dr. Pusey, in a letter written to the 
 Bishop-elect, after his election by the Christ Church 
 chapter, characterizes Oxford as a See which at that 
 
 1 LiJ\; i. p. 348. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 5 
 
 time most of all requires " supernatural gifts." i Dr. 
 Newman's secession had brought about a time of 
 intense anxiety, and a great unsettlement. In his 
 letter, Dr. Pusey summarizes the position in these 
 words : — " As far as I can see, what is chiefly at work 
 is not attraction towards Rome, but despondency about 
 ourselves." To the task of reassurance the new bishop 
 was called. He has said of himself that " he could not 
 have borne to be the bishop of a party," and very early 
 in his career, while he was yet Archdeacon of Surrey, 
 we find him thus expressing his feelings on this point 
 in a letter to Sir Charles Anderson : — " Hook's letter 
 pained me deepl}'. It is the very opposite of his own 
 ' Call to Union,' and it seems to me really quite dreadful 
 that he should avow that he thinks it a duty to split 
 into a party. For this is really the force of his words, 
 whereas it is our very blessedness in the Church to 
 know no other party or leader, but to be content in her 
 to take the good of all, and be followers of none 
 beside."'- He was keenly alive to the advantage that 
 it might have been to him to be a party man. "You 
 do not suppose," he writes in a letter to the Rev. C. P. 
 Golightly in 18.57, "that I am so blind as not to see 
 perfectly that I might have headed the Evangelical body 
 and been seated by them at Lambeth." ^ An ever- 
 increasing number of imitators of his methods of 
 government and administration, and of his principles, 
 attest the correctness of the anticipations contained in 
 a letter to the Oxford Journal, written by one of his 
 old clergy just after his death. "No one," says that 
 letter, " strove more than he to point out the true 
 
 1 Life, i. pp. 300-1. 2 i p_ 197. 
 
 3 Ibid. i. p. 3G0. 
 
6 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOECE. 
 
 position which our Church occupies. No one resisted 
 more strongly than he did the importation of doctrines 
 or acts foreign to her spirit. Doubtless this feature of 
 his character will come out more strongly as years roll 
 onward ; and the debt which Churchmen owe to him 
 will be more fully acknowledged. The picture which 
 by his life he has drawn of the Church of England, both 
 in her adherence to scripture and to Catholic antiquity, 
 will be felt to be a true one." 
 
 As regards the materials available for a sketch of his 
 life and influence, a large number of his friends now 
 alive agree in saying that there is little to add to the 
 facts already collected and published in the Life of 
 Bisliop Wilhcrforcc, issued in three volumes by Murray, 
 and written by Canon Ashwell and R G. Wilberforce. 
 Their opinion also decides that " Dean Burgon's is 
 by far the best short sketch." The Dean succeeds in 
 making the great Bishop live again before us, and lets 
 us see him as he was to those who knew him best. 
 
 It was originally intended that the three-volume 
 Life should have been entirely completed by Canon 
 Ashwell. He died, however, after publishing the first 
 volume, and arranging the plan of the other two. He 
 found that the Bishop's life naturally divided into three 
 well-marked stages of different character and com- 
 plexion.^ The first of these, which exhibits Bishop 
 Wilberforce " in the making," and in the full tide of 
 growth, progress, and success, ends with the Hampden 
 Controversy at the close of 1847, and the opening of 
 1848. The second extends from this date to 1860; in 
 it the Bishop encountered a storm of opposition in his 
 dioceso, and outside it, as being " one who favoured the 
 1 Life, Introduction, p. xxxiii. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 7 
 
 unpopular school of the Oxford theology," At the end 
 he came out from the ordeal witli success, and was 
 henceforth looked up to by Churchmen as " a leader 
 ■whose grasp of first principles was firm, and who not 
 only liad the courage of his convictions, but the capacity 
 to give them effect." In the third period, from 18C0 to 
 1873, "he stood out, not only as undisputed leader 
 among the English bishops, but also as undisi^uted 
 master of his diocese, and as something more than 
 either. He was no longer merely ' the Bishop of 
 Oxford,' and foremost among his equals, but he had 
 become the representative man of the English episcopate, 
 in great measure the representative man of the English 
 Church ; and such as by this time he had become, such 
 he remained during the rest of his life." ^ In his diaries, 
 letters, and writings, his biographers have found an 
 abundant material forfilh'ng in the outlines thus marked 
 out. It was his custom to keep somewhat full 
 chronicles of his daily doings, and his thoughts of men 
 and things, as well as notes of conversations in which 
 he took part. These, witli their revelations of his 
 inward and private life, have been drawn upon in the 
 last two volumes of his Life with a certain want of tact 
 and judgment, calculated sometimes to leave an un- 
 favourable impression as to some of his motives and feel- 
 ings.'^ The use made of them illustrates the dangers 
 of diary-keeping, when it goes beyond the barest record 
 of facts, and chronicles phases of thought and feeling 
 which were probably after all but transitory. The 
 Bishop's letters are a fruitful source of information 
 concerning him ; he had a large private correspondence, 
 
 1 Life, Introduction, p. xxxvi. 
 
 2 Quarterly Eevdew, No. 309, Jan. 1883. 
 
8 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 besides his official ona, and made time for very full 
 letters to his family and friends. Every one has heard 
 of him as writing a great deal in the train, or in 
 carriages ; and perhaps, in illustration,^ the story may 
 be quoted of the delivery at his address, Eaton Place, 
 of a letter addressed to "S. Oxon, Esq., Rail, Near Read- 
 ing," in answer to one written on a railway journey, and 
 dated from the train. He liked, as far as he could, to 
 answer his letters himself.- In answer to the question 
 why he did not keep a secretary, he said once to a 
 clergyman, " that it would certainly be a great relief to 
 do so, but then so many people would be disappointed." 
 It was his feeling that a few kind words from liimself 
 would lessen the annoyance of necessary refusals ; and, 
 as a consequence, he has left in his many letters a 
 large material for his biography. From the sources 
 here indicated, the substance of the following pages 
 is mainly drawn. The Life of Bishop Wilbcrforce, by 
 Canon Ashwell and Mr. K G. Wilberforce, and Dean 
 Burgon's sketch from the Quarterly, have been freely 
 used. Often, as in the case of the Cuddesdon troubles, 
 and the difficulties with Dr. Pusey, the writer has only 
 attempted to adapt to the limits of this little book the 
 work of the writers mentioned above. An old friend 
 of the great Bishop suggested the desirability of com- 
 binina; with Mr. R. G. Wilberforce's work Dean Burgon's 
 views ; and tliis hint has been taken. 
 
 ^ Life, Introduction, p. xxxi. - Life, iii. p. 409. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING. 
 
 There is always an interest in the predisposing 
 causes found in descent and heredity to any eminent 
 and distinguished life. Next it is desirable to notice 
 the circumstances of training and education that have 
 contributed to the successful development of the 
 opportunities offered by natural gifts. We will there- 
 fore glance briefly at the history of Samuel Wilberforce 
 from these two points of view, and trace out shortly the 
 genesis of the powers and ideas that made his episcopate 
 such an era in the history of the English Church. 
 
 The family of Wilberforce, or Wilberfoss, can be 
 traced back as far as the days of Henry II., and it is 
 remarkable in its long history that no member of it 
 seems to have entered Holy Orders till the generation 
 to which Samuel, and his two brothers, Robert and 
 Henry, belonged. The work of their illustrious father, 
 William Wilberforce, in the emancipation of the slaves, 
 is well known ; and it is to him that the change in the 
 family traditions which gave three of his four sons to 
 Holy Orders may be ascribed. He was one of the 
 little colony of Evangelicals who, residing at Clapham, 
 were called somewhat contemptuously "The Clapham 
 Sect." Here it was that on September 7th, 1805, his 
 
10 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 third son Samuel was bom. We know very little of 
 this son's childhood; but we can understand the 
 atmosphere of thought and life in which he received 
 his earliest impressions. 
 
 His father seems to have taken a special interest in 
 his training and development. We are told how the 
 elder Wilberforce was accustomed to make his son get 
 up subjects of importance and deliver orations on them ; 
 and that it was in this way that he acquired his 
 remarkable power of public speaking. He was never 
 sent to a large school, or a public school; his father 
 feared them, as likely, through a defective sense of 
 honour cultivated in them, to cause a want of confidence 
 between children and parents. " I know," he says in a 
 letter to his son, " that this is often one of the conse- 
 quences of a youth's living at a great school, especially 
 if his parents are pious, that he has one set of principles 
 and ways of going on in all respects at school, and 
 another at home." Thus he was educated chiefly by 
 private tutors. 
 
 There is still extant a long series of some six hundred 
 letters, which his father began to write to him in his 
 twelfth year. These bear evident traces of careful 
 study, and had, as his father desired, a most important 
 influence on his son's development and character. The 
 results and nature of these letters are thus summarized 
 by Canon Ashwell : — " Nascent faults carefully marked 
 and checked, personal habits of upright conduct strenu- 
 ously enforced, shrewd practical counsels as to social 
 duties and conduct towards his equals constantly 
 suggested, and all these strung upon the one thread of 
 ever-repeated inculcation of the duty of private prayer 
 as the one holdfast of life, — these remarkable lettez's 
 
EAELY YEARS AND TRAINING. 
 
 11 
 
 exhibit the influences which formed that soHd substratum 
 of character which underlay the brilliant gifts and the 
 striking career of Samuel Wilberforce." ^ 
 
 One or tvvo jDractical suggestions, made about the 
 time that he matriculated at Oriel, are worth quoting 
 as having been so evidently acted upon. Thus his 
 father impresses on him the following as a principle 
 upon which he himself has often acted, e. g. the bringing 
 together all men who are like-minded, and who may 
 probably, at some time or other, combine and concert 
 for the public good. He also advises him never to omit 
 an opportunity of getting acquainted with any good man 
 or any useful man. Other suggestions, such as that 
 one should always pay ready money, should be hospitable 
 but not lavish, that Sunday breakfast-parties should 
 be avoided, all bear witness to the careful, wise, and 
 sympathetic guidance that helped to ripen to a healthy 
 maturity Samuel Wilberforce's many and conspicuous 
 natural gifts. 
 
 In Michaelmas term, 1823, he followed his brother 
 Robert to Oriel. During his Oxford career Oriel was 
 almost at the height of its fame, and supplied, in its 
 fellows, scholars, and commoners, a stimulating intel- 
 lectual atmosphere, which had its full effect on Samuel 
 Wilberforce's development. He took a leading part in 
 the debates of the United Debating Society, speaking 
 on the Liberal side, and being therefore often in the 
 minority. His father supplied him with material for 
 some of his speeches, warning him against being too 
 much of a politician, and adding — " Watch, my dear 
 Samuel, with jealousy whether you find yourself unduly 
 solicitous about acquitting yourself creditably, whether 
 1 Life, i. p. 3. 
 
12 
 
 BISHOP WILEEKFOECE. 
 
 you are much chagrined when you fail, or are puffed 
 up by your success. Undue sohcitude about popiilar 
 estimation is a weakness against which all real 
 Christians must guard with the most jealous watchful- 
 ness." He was not at this time in robust health, and 
 took his exercise chiefly on horseback ; nevertheless he 
 managed to combine steady and moderate reading with 
 a thorough use of all the social opportunities of the 
 University. 
 
 In the Michaelmas term of 1826 he took a first 
 class in mathematics, and a second in classics. He 
 tried once for a Fellowship at Balliol,^ but about this 
 time his engagement to Miss Emily Sargent was 
 practically arranged after a long attachment, and his 
 thoughts were taken up with preparations for his 
 marriage and for Holy Orders. It was finally settled 
 that his marriage should take place in the summer of 
 1828, at the end of which year he would be old enough 
 to be ordained Deacon. 
 
 On June 11th, 1828, Samuel Wilberforce was married 
 at Lavington to Emily Sargent. Through his wife at 
 a later period the Lavington property passed to the 
 then Bishop of Oxford, and made him, as he delighted 
 to describe himself, a " Sussex Squire." On December 
 21st, in the same year, he was ordained Deacon in 
 Christ Church Cathedral, beginning his work in the 
 diocese that he afterwards made famous. His curacy 
 was a sole charge — Checkendon, near Henley-on- 
 Thames. 
 
 Just before his ordination he expresses, in a letter to 
 Mr. Patrick Boyle, his determination to moderate his 
 political feelings, which only, in his opinion, became a 
 1 Life, i. p. 32. 
 
EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING. 
 
 13 
 
 clergyman when mildly shown. During his stay at 
 Checkendon his political views underwent a complete 
 change ; he seemed to see in England, and almost all 
 other Continental nations, a state of things foreboding 
 some storm, and says of himself that, whereas he was 
 once a Radical, he was now, with some exceptions, a 
 very high Tory. He had already been offered prefer- 
 ment by Bishop J. B. Sumner of Chester, and had 
 refused it ; but some sixteen months after his coming 
 to Checkendon, BishoiD Sumner of Winchester offered 
 him the pleasant Rectory of Brighstone, in the Isle of 
 Wight, and he was inducted into it in June 1830. 
 In his first curacy, with its non-resident rector, he had 
 to work on his own lines, but there are traces of his 
 work being well and wisely done ; and he was thus 
 fitted for the larger sphere to which he was removed 
 while yet under twenty-five years of age. He left 
 pleasant memories of his work and his personality 
 among the simple inhabitants of the secluded Oxford 
 village, who remembered him, even in the days of his 
 greatness, as " our Mr. Wilberforce." 
 
 His first two years at Brighstone were mainly given 
 to his parish work. Samuel Wilberforce always began 
 with the thing nearest, and, when that was organized 
 and well in hand, looked further for some new field for 
 his energies. At tLe beginning of his incumbency the 
 questions and circumstances connected with the passing 
 of the Reform Bill of 1832 had brought the Church, 
 and specially the Bishops, into great odium with the 
 people. 
 
 Being then, as he himself says, gradually advanced, 
 in Toryism, he took a somewhat pessimistic view of the 
 outlook, as he fuund an " infidel pi ess, an ungodly 
 
14 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 people, and a scorning parliament, which knows not 
 nor will hear the voice of truth except as a matter 
 of ridicule." His remedy was found in using every 
 possible means and effort, in spending and being spent, 
 to make the Church, and its services and means of 
 grace, very much of a reality to his Brighstone 
 parishioners. It had been long an idea with many of 
 the English clergy that rubrics were made to be 
 broken and disregarded, and that it was not unworthy 
 and wrong to consider how little might decently be 
 offered of spiritual opportunity. The Rector of Brigh- 
 stone plainly left no stone unturned to give his 
 people every chance. He added a second Sunday sermon, 
 a week-day evening service and sermon, a service and 
 sermon on all saints' days, and a daily service during 
 Holy Week. Besides this, frequent catechisings, cottage 
 lectures, and communicants' classes were all parts of 
 his parochial machinery. He interested himself in 
 labour questions, then mi;ch to the fore among the 
 agriculturalists; started allotments; wrote a small tract 
 to try and correct the prejudices of the lower orders of 
 farmers in the matter of tithes ; and lived in close 
 sympathy with the country life around him. He also 
 published a hymn-book for his people, in order to give 
 a new life and interest to the Church services, and 
 to help to bring home in a most eflective way the 
 Christian's hopes and trials and aspirations. It is still 
 remembered how his people sat listening with delight 
 to his evening preaching, though he would sometimes 
 go on till it grew dark, so that you could not see him. 
 Being anxious to vindicate the value and usefulness to 
 the nation of the jiarochial clergy, he put together a 
 little volume, called The Note-Book of a Country Clergy- 
 
EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING. 
 
 15 
 
 man, which was meant to ilhistrate, largely out of his 
 own experiences, the sort of influence a resident clergy- 
 man has. It was at this time also that he began with 
 his brother Robert a Life of his father, who had died in 
 1833, and prefixed to Henry Martyn's Life and Journals 
 a notice of the life of his father-in-law, Mr. Sargent, who 
 died in the same year. Wishing also, as a stimulus to his 
 own reading, to be a contributor to some review, he fre- 
 quently sent papers to the British Magazine, which, edited 
 by Hugh James Rose, was the Church organ of the period. 
 
 These years were marked by the issue of the Tracts 
 for the Times, and Ave can see the beginning of the 
 somewhat " peculiar relation," as Dean Burgon calls it, 
 which Samuel Wilberforce held to the movement 
 which led to their publication. He, unlike his brothers, 
 stood outside it, and though " a High Churchman from 
 the first," ^ and " full of reverence for the personal holi- 
 ness of certain of the leaders of the movement, had his 
 eyes wide open to their faults, and, while he instinct- 
 ively assimilated whatever he recognized in it as 
 Catholic and true, whatever in it had a Rome-ward 
 tendency he rejected from the first with unqualified 
 abhorrence." " Thus it was that J. H. Newman de- 
 clined further contributions from S, Wilberforce for 
 the British Critic, on the ground that he is not "con- 
 fident enough in his general approval of the body of 
 opinions which he and Pusey held." ^ Wilberforce, in 
 a letter to Mr. Charles Anderson, speaks of this step 
 with regret as a mark of party spirit, and laments the 
 policy that led Newman and Pusey to set themselves 
 against the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford. 
 
 1 Life, i. p. 54, - Burgon's Tivelve Good Men, ii. jj. 6. 
 
 » Life, i. p. 12G. 
 
1(5 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 It will help to the better understanding of the 
 Rector of Brighstone's later work, to notice some of 
 the ways in which, at this time, he showed himself a 
 strong Churchman. The results of the Reform Bill, 
 and the attitude of the Reformed Parliament towards 
 the Church, had the effect of bringing clearly before 
 Churchmen the necessity of asserting their conviction 
 that, though the Church of England was established, 
 it was something more than a mere department of the 
 Civil Service. It was clear that the time had come 
 when a protest must be made against the Erastian 
 views that had prevailed during the Georgian period. 
 Thus in 1834, and the years succeeding it, meetings 
 of friends of the Church were being held all over the 
 country, and Samuel Wilberforce took a prominent 
 part in the Isle of Wight in these movements. 
 
 The general tendency of his thought and feeling at 
 this time is shown by the attack he made on Lord 
 Palmerston's remarks at a meeting held for the purpose 
 of setting on foot a Diocesan Church Building Society. 
 Lord Palmerston had taken a line which Samuel 
 Wilberforce considered to be inconsistent with true 
 Churchmanship, and which, in a letter to Mr. Charles 
 Anderson, he afterwards said was " really speaking to his 
 dissenting constituents." His success on this occasion 
 shows us how his powers as an orator were maturing ; 
 and when the Duke of Wellington, who was in the 
 chair, was asked why he had not checked the indignant 
 outburst of so young a man, his reply was to the effect 
 that he would only have diverted on himself the stream 
 of eloquence; and "I assure you," he added, "that I 
 would have faced a battery sooner." ^ He took a pro- 
 1 Life, i. p. 108. 
 
EARLY YEARS AND TRAINING. 
 
 17 
 
 minent part in getting up an opposition to Dr. Hamp- 
 den's appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity at 
 Oxford in 1836 ; and, on going up to Oxford to vote 
 for the censure passed against the new Professor and 
 his views in Convocation, says in a letter to Mr. C. 
 Anderson that "it was loose Churchmen against sound 
 Churchmen, whatever were their politics." 
 
 It was only natural that the question of the import- 
 ance of the episcopal office to a real and vigorous 
 Church life should occupy men's thoughts. As early 
 as 1833 the Rector of Brighstone preached a sermon 
 on " The Apostolical Ministry," at the Bishop of Win- 
 chester's Visitation at Newport. ^ It called upon the 
 clergy to prize at a higher rate that unbroken succes- 
 sion, " whereby those who ordained us are joined as to 
 Christ's own Apostles," and it spoke strongly on "the 
 danger of quitting the high vantage ground of Apos- 
 tolical authority, to fight the battle out upon the 
 doubtful level of Erastian principles." The author did 
 not escape criticism, and was accused of bolstering up 
 his Bishop into High Church notions on the subject. 
 He kept, however, to his principles, and in 1837 was 
 asserting strongly the importance of episcopal organ- 
 ization in missionary work. His work on the History 
 of the American Church, published in 1844, illustrates 
 his views on this point, and sets forth plainly how 
 deadness and latitudinarianism seemed to him to arise 
 in churches without bishops. 
 
 Wilberforce was always a great supporter of the 
 Mission work of the Church, and a tour for the S. P. G. 
 in the West of England, towards the close of his stay 
 at Brighstone, did a great deal to make him widely 
 1 Life, i. p. 67. 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 and favourably known. Part of it was arranged to 
 coincide with Bishop Philpott's Visitation tour, and the 
 Bishop was disposed to dread having to listen so often 
 to the same speaker on the same subject. At the end, 
 however, he expressed freely his surprise at the power 
 which always found some fresh point of view from 
 which to advocate the claims of Missions, and declared 
 himself to have been by no means bored, but delighted 
 and interested. 
 
 The Rector of Brighstone soon became a leader of 
 the island clergy. He started a society amongst them 
 with monthly meetings, and became a power in draw- 
 ing them together and inducing an interest amongst 
 them in public questions. Hurrell Froude writes to 
 tell him how he had heard him described as "the 
 /ae'yas bLakXaKTijs of the island," and had heard it said 
 that if it were not for him, " all the parsons would be 
 by the ears." His appointment presently as Rural 
 Dean gave him further oj^portunity for such influence, 
 and made him able to test the possibilities of an office 
 which he afterwards made very important in his 
 diocesan oi'ganization. 
 
 Amidst many occupations, and much bad health, the 
 distance from Briglistone to London and Oxford was 
 often traversed ; the country rector never failed to keep 
 touch ^vith. the great world, and found friends among 
 men of every school of thought. While bringing out 
 his father's Life he left his living in charge of his curate, 
 and stayed for long periods in London with Bishop 
 Sunmer, and his relative Lord Calthorpe. He made a 
 special point of listening to the great preachers of the 
 day, and was brought by his inquiring spirit into 
 intimacies with such men as Maurice and Bunsen, and 
 
EAKLY YEAES AND TRAININa 
 
 19 
 
 also began Ins connection with men of mark in all schools 
 of thought as a member of the " Sterling Club," so 
 called because its members were expected to be free 
 from the unrealities that cling around those who are 
 fettered by prejudice and conventionality. 
 
 Several important offers of preferment were made to 
 him, and declined largely because of his own health 
 and that of his wife. It illustrates in some measure 
 his theological tone to note that he was pressed by Mr. 
 Simeon to take the Vicarage of St, Dunstaa's. Sir 
 Robert Inglis also offered him the living of Leeds at 
 the time when it was taken by Mr. W. F. Hook, 
 These openings were however declined, as well as an 
 exchange to Leamington, in favour of his work in the 
 South, from which the Bishop of Winchester was very 
 unwilling that he should separate himself There his 
 reputation as a speaker and preacher grew rapidly, and 
 Churchmen looked to him as a support and authority, 
 more particularly in reaching practical solutions of the 
 many questions then being agitated. He was promi- 
 nent in an attempt to unite the Church Missionary 
 Society and the S. P. G. ; and took a leading part in 
 the educational questions of the day. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 AECHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 It has often been a ground of complaint that the 
 post-Reformation appointments to English bishoprics 
 have given to the Church leaders with little or no 
 practical experience ; they have had a tendency to make 
 bishops of men of academical and literary distinction, 
 with a necessarily one-sided view of the position and 
 difficulties of the clergy. Thus the clergy have not 
 been drawn together into united action, and have been 
 left to fall into the fault which Bishop Wilberforce 
 did much to remedy, and which he characterized as 
 applying, in their relations to their people, " not the 
 Church system, but a man." It was, and indeed is, an 
 uncommon thing that our English bishops should be 
 those who have filled many of the subordinate offices 
 in the Church before their promotion to the bench of 
 bishops. Samuel Wilberforce had, however, within a 
 short period served in almost every department of the 
 Church's organization, and thus had a thorough practical 
 insight into all parts of Church work. He knew exactly 
 what was the nature and character of the machinery, 
 rusty in places from long disuse, which he had to employ, 
 and keep in motion, in an English diocese. His experience 
 
ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 21 
 
 included service in a country village, and a town parish ; 
 he had been Curate, Rector, Rural Dean, Canon, 
 Archdeacon, Court Chaplain, and Dean of Westminster, 
 when the call came which placed him over the diocese 
 in which he gave, the striking illustration of his idea 
 of the episcoj)ate, which has quite revolutionized the 
 notions that had previously obtained as to the value 
 and possibilities of that office. Added to this he had, 
 from his close intimacy with Bishop Sumner, a great 
 opportunity of studying a good example of a vigorous 
 and vigilant episcopal administration, of a type that we 
 may perhaps be permitted to describe as belonging to 
 the old school. His preaching and public speaking also 
 made him much in demand on all occasions where 
 Church qixestions and interests had to be publicly dis- 
 cussed and maintained. Thus he was au fait with all 
 in the Church life of his day that was of importance 
 and prominence. From his many friendships, both in 
 London and Oxford, and from his acceptability at Court, 
 he knew a great deal also of the mind and temper of 
 the leaders in the political and social worlds, and could 
 judge well of the lines on which it ■«^s safe and 
 desirable to proceed. We shall consider in this present 
 chapter his further growth in power and eminence from 
 the time of his promotion to the Archdeaconry of Surrey 
 in November, 18.39, so as to see better what sort of 
 man it was, that in 184<5 was called upon to succeed to 
 the See of Oxford, just in the doubtful and difficult 
 times of Newman's secession. 
 
 At one time Samuel Wilberforce, his brother Robert 
 Wilberforce, and his brother-in-law H. E. Manning, all 
 filled in different dioceses the office of Archdeacon. 
 There has always existed a certain haziness of idea as to 
 
22 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOECE. 
 
 the precise duties of arclideacons ; Bishop Blomfield's 
 wary definition of them in the House of Lords is famiUar, 
 when he defined them as consisting in the discharging of 
 archidiaconal functions. Samuel Wilberforce, and his 
 relations, gave a large and wide interpretation of their 
 official obligations at a time when the general tendency 
 was certainly not to make too much of them. His 
 great idea was to take advantage of tlie reviving of 
 ruridecanal work and chapters in his archdeaconry ; to 
 gather clergy and laity together in the rural deaneries 
 four times a year, at the Ember seasons, for discussion 
 and Holy Communion, and to be present himself as 
 often as possible. His diaries shoAv how on these 
 occasions he tried to become acquainted with the cha- 
 racter and tendencies of each individual clergyman, and 
 how he made his knowledge and observations a link 
 between them and the Bishop. 
 
 In his annual charges it was his habit to take a wider 
 range of subjects than had been usual, and the six that 
 he delivered during his tenure of office deal with all the 
 more important ecclesiastical matters of the da3^ They 
 were generally read over first to his Bishop, and aimed at 
 giving the clergy of the county of Surrey, which took 
 in the important district of South London, a clear view 
 of what seemed to the writer, in the many movements of 
 the time and the many anxieties of the day, their right 
 attitude to their country, their Church, and their chief. 
 It is worth observing that the novelty thus presented 
 by his charges had not escaped friendly criticism, which 
 fact perhaps, in some sort, illustrates the idea then 
 prevalent that the Bishop was the clergy, and that any 
 but bishops did best to be silent. Canon Ash well quotes 
 a letter from the Archdeacon to Mr. W, E. Gladstone, 
 
AROriDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 23 
 
 written in 184«3, in which he says — "I am far from not 
 perceiving the danger you indicate from non-episcopal 
 doctrinal charges. But it is most difficult to know 
 what at the present time to do in the sort of pseudo- 
 episcopate into which so many causes have changed the 
 archidiaconate. For so much is some expression of 
 opinion looked for by the clergy, that its suppression 
 would appear like a shifty evasion of difficulties." Scat- 
 tered over these charges, besides the allusions to, and 
 elucidations of, the greatest questions of the hour, there 
 are discussions on many points, some of which deserve 
 mentioning as indications of the general mind of tlfe 
 writer. 
 
 In IS-i-i he urged the restoration of the Diaconate, 
 and the encouragement of lay agency in connection 
 with the growing spiritual needs of South London, 
 where, he says, amongst other things, " Church schools 
 for 500 children to a population of 50,000 is the average 
 provision we have yet reached." In his first charge he 
 spoke at length on the proposals made by Government 
 in reference to education, and the terms on which, as 
 regards religious instruction, support was to be given to 
 elementary schools. He had in the same year written 
 a letter to Lord Brougham on the Government educa- 
 tion scheme, and was strong in insisting that the 
 Church must neither accept terms which would make 
 it impossible to give to children definite religious in- 
 struction, nor omit to make arrangements for giving it 
 in the best way. Two agencies are mentioned as likely 
 to have great results in bringing about the desired end — 
 training colleges for teachers, and the immediate and 
 general establishment of diocesan boards of education. 
 It was in the spirit here indicated that a little later the 
 
24 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Church took great advantage of the opportuuity offered 
 her of getting a strong footing in the field of elementary 
 education. Government decided to meet with grants 
 the voluntary efforts made by the various religious 
 denominations for the teaching of the children in whom 
 they were interested. The principle of preference for an 
 Established Church was thus abandoned, and all sects 
 were placed on an equality. Dean Burgon has described 
 how Mr. R. Greswell started the movement, which led 
 to the raising by Churchmen of so large a sum, through 
 voluntary contributions, that they claimed from the State 
 far more than all other religious bodies for the support of 
 their schools. The Factory Commission's Report in 1843 
 drew special attention to the state of education in the 
 manufacturing districts, and the charge of this year 
 urges the necessity of the Church being to the fore. 
 Letters that passed at this time between Archdeacon 
 S, Wilberforce and the Vicar of Leeds, give us the 
 views of the former on Dr. Hook's somewhat impulsive 
 suggestion, that, since it was impossible to educate 
 people in Church principles except out of Church funds, 
 the bishops should voluntarily give up some two-thirds 
 of their incomes for this purpose. " I do not," he says, 
 " believe that the Church ought to strip herself bare as 
 you propose. I do not think that this would be the 
 way to regain a hold on the affections of our people. I 
 do think that we want ' spiritual peers.' " He further 
 gives it as his opinion that the rich laity are the people 
 who ought to provide the needed funds. From the 
 same source also he looked for aid in the work of 
 church restoration, which he urged as most necessary. 
 
 But, besides his practical illustrations of what an 
 archdeacon might be and do in the Church of England, 
 
ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 25 
 
 in his incumbency of Alverstoke Samuel Wilberforce 
 showed, like Dr. Hook at Leeds, what might be done on 
 Church Hues in a large centre of population. In his 
 time Alverstoke, including as it did Gosport, Forton, 
 and a new watering-place, called then Anglesey- Ville, 
 offered a very varied field of experience and labour. 
 He had representatives of all sorts and conditions of 
 men in his flock, and sad instances of the social and 
 moral evils that are so common in a garrison town. 
 His first object was to provide fully for the thorough 
 application of the Church's system, as set out in the 
 Book of Common Prayer, by offering full opportunities 
 for worship, instruction, and the frequent administration 
 of the Sacraments. Living amongst his people, and 
 making it his business to be well acquainted with their 
 characters, circumstances, and wants, great as he always 
 was as a preacher, he was at no time more effective 
 than in his Alverstoke days, in this part of his clerical 
 work. There is perhaps no relation more liable to 
 difficulties, jealousies, and misunderstandings than that 
 which exists between curates, and vicars or rectors. 
 The Rector of Alverstoke added much to his power 
 and influence in his parish by the men, such as W. 
 Burrows, and R. C. Trencli, who served under him as 
 his curates, and by the intimate and happy terms on 
 which he lived with them. He made a great deal of 
 careful and systematic preparation for Confirmation, and 
 drew up each week with his curates full notes of lectures 
 for the candidates, regarding the time of the adminis- 
 tration of this sacred rite as the great opportunity for 
 effecting and establishing a true conversion. 
 
 A plan of regular district visiting was begun amongst 
 the poor, and a great point was made of the district 
 
26 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORGE . 
 
 visitors' meetings, not as mere gatherings for business, 
 but rather as means for uniting the workers, and 
 inspiring them with an intelUgent and devotional 
 spirit. The thread of pastoral work was never, in spite 
 of many outside calls and engagements, broken or lost ; 
 national schools were provided at Gosport and Alver- 
 stoke, and two new churches built. Samuel Wilberforce, 
 at his Bishop's particular request, continued to hold the 
 Rectory of Alverstoke during his short tenure of the 
 Deanery of Westminster. This led to his being charged 
 in the Morning Post newspaper with avarice, and the 
 attack made him enter in his diary an account of his 
 real financial position at this time. A short extract 
 will fitly conclude this paragraph showing how the 
 experience of vicars, curates, and clerical difficulties 
 was gained, which led later to a most effective and 
 sympathetic diocesan administration. The diary for 
 Sunday, October 12, 1845, runs as follows: — " Croker 
 sent me Morning Post with attack on me for avarice. 
 God, Thou knowest herein my innocence. Upon reckon- 
 ing up, I think I have hardly drawn above £400 per 
 annum for myself, the rest having gone in charities, 
 repairs, churches, schools, etc. ; and I have been able 
 to obtain or contribute to permanent Church objects 
 in the five years £9,980. I am most thankful that 
 God has suffered me to see the labour of my hands." ^ 
 
 The events of the years during which the Arch- 
 deaconry of Surrey was held by Samuel Wilberforce 
 brought to a crisis the history of the Tractarian Party. 
 We have already seen how he stood outside it, though 
 admiring and adopting in his ministerial life the lost 
 and forgotten traditions of Catholic practice and 
 1 Life, i. p. 274. 
 
ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 21 
 
 doctrine, winch had ahnost died out of the Anglican 
 Church, till they were revived and brought forward by 
 the earlier Tract writers. The Archdeacon of Surrey 
 was one of those who had no sympathy either with 
 foreign Protestantism or foreign Catholicism ; he desired 
 that the Church of England should be national, but 
 by the power and assertion of true Catholic principles ; 
 he did not desire that she should be acceptable and 
 tolerated by a wholesale sacrifice of these at the will 
 and wish of the State. Holding such opinions, though 
 a High Churchman, and one who rejoiced exceedingly 
 in the revival of Church life in England, he was an 
 active opponent of the later Tractarians ^ in their efforts 
 to find within the Anglican Church a place, not only 
 for the whole body of Catholic belief and practices 
 which was not exclusively Roman, but also for some 
 beliefs and practices which were. His votes at Oxford, 
 during the various crises consequent on the publication 
 of Tract 90, and Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church, 
 were almost uniformly against the side with which the 
 Tractarian party specially identified themselves, as in 
 his voting for Mr. Garbett as Professor of Poetry, and 
 for the condemnation of Mr. Ward's book and the 
 degradation of the writer. He also expresses plainly 
 his dissent from the most ])cculiar features of the teach- 
 ing of the Tract writers. His mind was to secure for 
 the Church of England, by degrees, a freer hand, as 
 against the State, in matters that concerned doctrine 
 and discipline. He was neither ready nor inclined 
 himself to seek in the Church of Rome, as many of his 
 friends did, a refuge from the perplexities, and j^erhaps 
 the inconsistency, that attended the working out of his 
 1 Standard. Letter, August 18, 1890. 
 
28 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 ideal of a Christian and national Church in England. 
 It was clear to him, as it was not clear to the morbid 
 horror of papal aggression which possesses so many 
 religious minds in our country, that Rome is kept afar 
 off by the development, and not by the terror-stricken 
 suppression, of the true Catholic idea. The Jews ouce 
 destroyed the life and fire of inspiration to goodness in 
 God's law by hedging about the actual commandment 
 with a multitude of small precepts and observances of 
 their own devising ; they hoped thereby never to come 
 at an infringement of the Divine precepts themselves. 
 Similarly, men in England thought that safety from 
 Popery could be found only by keeping very far away 
 from it indeed ; they suspected efforts that aimed at 
 the reviving of a more real Church life, and a more 
 frequent and reverent use of the great means of grace. 
 Thus it was that many men who had no sympathies at 
 all with the later Tractarians, and their Rome-ward 
 tendencies, were assailed freely and fiercely as danger- 
 ous enemies of the Church of England. All through 
 his life Wilberforce was often attacked as a Romanizer, 
 and he did not escape even at the time in his life 
 which we are now discussing. The Record newsjDaper 
 had a good deal to say on the teaching that was found 
 in his allegory The Bochy Island, which it describes as 
 offering the " soupe maijo'e of Popery instead of the 
 sincere milk of God's Word." A short passage in a letter 
 of Samuel Wilberforce to his brother Robert, written in 
 1842, marks the position he at that time occupied in 
 the eyes of those inclined on either side to an extreme — 
 " As to Newman, etc. : day by day I am more con- 
 firmed and enlarged in my views ; but I have no new 
 light. Dearest H. says that for three years I have 
 
ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 29 
 
 indulged in the most un- Christian bitterness against 
 them. The Record says I countenance them," 
 
 The period which immediately preceded Wilberforce's 
 accession to the episcopate is marked by the first 
 activities of the now permanent Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mission. At the outset it was acceptable neither to the 
 enemies nor the friends of the Church ; the one feared 
 that it would largely increase her efficiency, the other 
 that it would fetter her activity by making her more a 
 mere department of the State. It was felt by Church- 
 men that the manner of appointing the Commissioners 
 was hardly satisfactory, and that they did not sufficiently 
 represent Church feeling and opinion. This defect 
 was however remedied in 1840, when all the bishops 
 and three deans were made Commissioners, and the 
 clause which had hitherto made the Commissioners 
 removable at the pleasure of the Crown was repealed. 
 As Canon of Winchester and Dean of Westminster, 
 Archdeacon S. Wilberforce had practical experience of 
 the first working of the Cathedral Act. It was his 
 opinion that though it was shown to be the result of 
 good intentions on the part of Sir R. Peel, who .desired 
 to increase out of the cathedral endowments the funds 
 available for parochial purposes, yet that it had really 
 inflicted a blow on what constituted an important 
 element in the life of the Church. Cathedrals and 
 their chapters have a real function in tlie diocesan 
 system ; they are needed as centres of union, learning, 
 and devotion. It was rather assumed in the new Act, 
 that they had not this function, and it was in conse- 
 quence wholly unsatisfactory on its constructive side. 
 Since the Revolution, and more still since the Reform 
 Bill, it has ever been the wisdom of the Established 
 
.30 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOROE. 
 
 Church in England not to repine at what she loses, or 
 seems to lose, but to accept what she can get, and by 
 making a good use of it, to justify a claim for more. 
 The Archdeacon of Surrey in 1840 advised his clergy 
 not to talk over what seemed to many of them the 
 recent spoliation of the cathedrals ; he reminded them 
 that, now the matter was settled, they could have but 
 one object, and that was to lessen the evils and secure 
 the advantages of the new system on which they were 
 entering. His words then precisely describe the temper 
 in which he, in all his career, saw the opportunity 
 rather than the drawback, and never allowed what 
 might have been to deter him from using what was. 
 
 Other indications of the mind that was forming in the 
 future Bishop of Oxford, concerning the importance and 
 possibilities of the episcopal office, deserve and require 
 a word of notice. He was one of those who had great 
 hopes that the Jerusalem Bishopric Scheme, establishing 
 a see there, to which the Crowns of England and 
 Prussia were to nominate alternately, might lead to the 
 gaining over of the people of Prussia to true episcopacy. 
 He hailed with delight, as a mark of a more Catholic 
 spirit in the Church of England, the decision that 
 clergymen of Scottish or American ordination might 
 officiate in English churches; and took a- prominent 
 part in the formation of the fund for founding Colonial 
 bishoprics, and giving to the Colonial churches the 
 necessary support, as he conceived it, of episcopal 
 government and supervision. But, whilst he was eager 
 to do all he could to further Bunsen's noble plan, by 
 which he trusted that "on a back current episcopacy 
 would flow into Prussia," and was one who made a point 
 of wishing Bishop Selwyn " God-speed " on his departure 
 
AECHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 31 
 
 for New Zealand, he was also mindful that tlie vox 
 Ucclesicv is not found only in the utterances of her 
 bishops. In preaching before the Convocation of 
 Canterbury in 1841, he was not, as a letter to his 
 brother shows, without some thoughts of its revival 
 into something more than a mere formal meeting to 
 pass an address to the Crown. 
 
 In 1840 Samuel Wilberforce was elected a member 
 of the Athenseum Club ; and he became, by degrees, 
 much sought after as a speaker and preacher. The 
 growth of his power in these last respects was very 
 rapid after his first great appearance in London, when 
 he took a resolution at a public meeting for the 
 S. P. G., held in the Egyptian Hall, on April 8th, 1840. 
 He characterized it as " a hateful business," but felt 
 that he had no choice in the face of a request from 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury. The result completely 
 established his reputation as a public speaker ; and on 
 June 1 lie again spoke at Exeter Hall, on the occasion 
 of a great anti-slavery meeting, at which Prince Albert 
 made his first public speech in this country. This 
 was his introduction to Prince Albert, who, some six 
 months later, made him one of his chaplains. The 
 close intimacy at Court which followed gave him, by 
 bringing him in contact with great persons, the best 
 education for being great and prominent himself. He 
 was frequently summoned to preach before the Queen ; 
 and Lady Lyttelton, in a letter to her daughter, has 
 given in the following passage a vivid description of 
 the imjjression he made : — " The real delight of this 
 visit is the presence of Archdeacon Wilberforce. I 
 never saw a more agreeable man ; and if such a Hindoo 
 were to be found, I think he would go far to convert 
 
32 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 me, and lead me to Juggernaut; so it is hard if all 
 who know him are not altogether Christians sooner or 
 later." 
 
 There is a record of a discussion with the Prince on 
 the Sunday question, the Prince complaining that the 
 English Sunday was dull, and noticing the want of 
 innocent amusements in England for the common 
 people. Samuel Wilberforce also describes to his 
 brother Robert the interest, in his visits to Court, of 
 seeing the dramatis pcrsoncc near at hand, and of 
 having an opportunity of speaking before such an 
 audience on great subjects, "with the hope that God 
 will bless His own appointment in the ministry of His 
 Cliurch to His own good purpose." It is clear that 
 the writer felt at once the danger and responsibility of 
 his high favour ; and it is also clear that to his appre- 
 ciative nature the intercourse thus enjoyed had a most 
 important influence in fitting him for the right per- 
 formance of the great work of his life. 
 
 In taking account of the forces which make a man, 
 there is nothing to which we look with more interest 
 and expectation than to the effect on his character of 
 pain and sorrow. We should not be doing justice to 
 the " Remodeller of the English episcopate," if we did 
 not remember that he was not a robust man, and that 
 he suffered several times, specially in the earlier part 
 of his life, from attacks of illness that brought him 
 near to death's door. However incredible it may seem, 
 in the light of what he achieved, he confesses himself 
 that he really loved quiet and privacy, and was naturally 
 indolent, so that he had to flog himself into activity. 
 His career, amongst other things, involved a triumph 
 over bodily weaknesses and drawbacks, which have 
 
ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 33 
 
 served to keep even greater geniuses and more shining 
 talents than his, in the dead stagnation of an unworthy 
 obscurity. 
 
 But, beyond this, the anxiety and sorrow of many 
 bitter bereavements early laid their heavy hand 
 upon him, and dimmed the brightness of his first 
 remarkable successes as a public man. The scourge 
 of many English homes, consumption, was in the 
 Sargent family, into which he married ; the steps by 
 which the Lavington property passed at last, through 
 his wife, to himself are the record of several sad 
 partings, involving amongst them the great grief of 
 his life. We know but little of Samuel Wilberforce's 
 domestic life in the Brighstone days, when the family 
 was together, before his wife's death, and he was 
 himself not as yet called in all directions by his many 
 engagements. There are little hints, however, of what 
 it was for him, in the pleasure with which he returns 
 in thought, and in fact, all his life through, to the 
 scene of these his brightest days. Dean Burgon re- 
 marks on the happy relations that existed between 
 him and his wife, that " we look in vain for anything 
 which more conciliates our personal regard for Wilber- 
 force than the many faithful references to this (evidently) 
 admirable, as well as very delightful woman, which 
 are scattered up and down his letters and diaries." 
 Her birthday, their wedding-day, the anniversary of 
 her death, never fail to remind us in diary and letter- 
 book, of the life-long mourning of the husband, which 
 nothing wore out. " Always, on returning to Lavington, 
 the first thing was to visit the churchyard and to lay 
 flowers on her grave ; and after his last visit thitlier, 
 on May 31, 1873, so near to his own departure, he 
 
34 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 wrote to his daughter-in-law, Mrs. R. G. Wilberforce, 
 describing the occasion as ' one never to be forgotten. 
 My dead seemed so near to me in my sohtude, each 
 one following another, and speaking calm and hope to 
 me, and reunion when He will.' " ^ This is enousfh to 
 show how terrible was the blow that on March 10, 1841, 
 called away from him the sharer of " the sorrows and 
 the joys of a twelve years' changeful life," That which 
 is to be noticed now is the effect that the events of 
 that day, which his diary describes as " one of unknown 
 agony," had on his character, his ideas, and his activities. 
 It is plain, from his own records of his feelings, that 
 all came to him as a call to a more complete dedication 
 of himself to the work of the ministry in the Church. 
 He had long had forebodings that, as he expresses it, 
 all that had "made life an earthly Paradise to him" 
 might thus be at one stroke taken away; his prayer 
 had been in the face of it, " that he might not so be 
 scourged into faithfulness " ; he speaks of his tempta- 
 tions to self-indulgence, covetousness, and vanity as the 
 possible causes of his terrible bereavement. As one 
 whose affections were very strong, who literally craved 
 for love in his relations and children, and desired, even 
 to the verge of weakness, to be liked and esteemed by 
 his fellows, the keenness of the pang might well have 
 paralyzed his energies and laid him aside, at least 
 temporarily, from full and active work. He had the 
 courage to seek in the faithful discharge of his duties 
 the true and right relief, though he wished the de- 
 parted back with him all his life through ; and he tells 
 how he cried out, as he lay awake at night, more than 
 twenty years after, that " she would, if she might, show 
 1 Lijc, i. r- 130. 
 
ARCHDEACON, DEAN, BlSHOr. 
 
 35 
 
 herself but ouce to gladdeu his weary eyes." It seems 
 ahuost strange how any one could unfold himself as he 
 did in his diaries, on the subject of his great loss ; but 
 it was plainly his habit in that way to seek relief, and 
 at the same time a better understanding of the real 
 meaning and bearing of the events of life. At any rate 
 we can gather from the records that he regarded this 
 great affliction as a fire meant to purify him from faults 
 and weaknesses, and temper him into a more efficient 
 instrument in maintaining, against the worldly spirit 
 and temper, the cause of truth. The following passage 
 illustrates this for us in a pointed way : — " Oh, may 
 HE enable me to lead a life more devoted to His 
 glory and my Master's work ! May the utter darkening 
 of my life, which never can be dispelled, kill in me all 
 my ambitious desires and earthly jDurposes, my love of 
 money, and jDower, and place." The thoughts that 
 governed him in the hour of his bereavement remained 
 with him through his life. In 1846, on the anniversary 
 of his consecration, he writes thus — " How perpetually 
 is SHE before me ! In business, in society, when I 
 seem full of other things, how there is a constant under- 
 base ringing secretly in my ears ! " 
 
 With all this m view, while we admire the faith and 
 courage that bravely looked for good in an apparently 
 overwhelming evil, we are able to understand some of 
 the force which made Samuel Wilberforce recollect so 
 well a sentence, written by him in a book which had 
 once belonged to his wife, to the effect that " God 
 numbers the Bishop's absent or idle days." 
 
 In his visits to Court we find recorded that the 
 Archdeacon of Surrey often met and conversed with Sir 
 Robert Peel ; he tells us that it had been said to him 
 
30 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 that he would certainly be called upon " episcopari." 
 On March 14th, 1845, there came the offer of the 
 Bishopric of Oxford, and the letter that offered it 
 stated that the Queen had most cordially acquiesced in 
 the suggestion, with very kind expressions on her part, 
 and that of the Prince. A fruit of this was a very 
 cordial letter from Prince Albert himself, containing his 
 views on the right position of a bishop in the House of 
 Lords. The letter suggests that a bishop ought to 
 abstain completelj^ from mixing himself up with the 
 politics of the day, but that he should come forward 
 whenever the interests of humanity are at stake, and 
 give boldly and manfully his advice to the House and 
 country. In religious matters, it advises also that the 
 necessarily active part taken in them be that of a 
 Christian, not of a mere Churchman, remembering that 
 the Church does not exist for itself, and ought to have 
 no higher aim than to be the Church of the people. 
 Lastly it explains how, in the opinion of the writer, a 
 bishop ought to bo uniformly a peacemaker, and to 
 watch jealously over the morality of the State in acts 
 which expediency, or hope for profit, may tempt it to 
 commit, as well in home and colonial as in foreign 
 affairs. This letter shows us the interest that Arch- 
 deacon Wilberforce had aroused, and also gives us some 
 of the lines on which he afterwards acted. Before his 
 consecration he paid a visit to Cuddesdon, and records 
 his delight in finding himself rector of the parish, and 
 thus being able to keep up that pastoral character 
 which our bishops are so apt to lose. A letter, in which 
 he invites his brother Robert to preach his consecration 
 sermon, indicates also the bent of his mind at this time, 
 in its request that tlie preacher will remember how 
 
AECHDEACON, DEAN, BISHOP. 
 
 37 
 
 great evil anything, which just then raised a suspicion 
 of a secret leaning towards Tractarianism in the new 
 bishop, might be likely to do.^ The few days before his 
 consecration were spent in retirement at Lavingtou. 
 His diary shows that the time was given to a calm and 
 deliberate consideration of the possibilities of his new 
 office in the matter of service to God. His own account 
 from his diary for the day of his consecration, Sunday, 
 November 30, 1845, will fitly close this sketch of his 
 preparation, under a rare combination of favourable 
 conditions, for showing during his long episcopate what 
 a bishop might be to the Church of England, and what 
 the Church of England might become under leaders 
 who did not forget her spiritual position and capaci- 
 ties, or her Catholic traditions. The extract runs as 
 follows — " Up early and vmch ioi prayer. At 11 to 
 Laiaheth. The service very overivhelming ; sometimes 
 almost ahove my enchcrance. I trust that I did in very 
 deed hetrothe myself for ever unto my God, and that He 
 mercifully deigned to accept of me, even of me. R.'s 
 sermon, in parts very touching. Came home, and at night 
 much prayer. Many friends round me, and fall of 
 sympathy and love." 
 
 1 Life, i. p. 314. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 When the new Bishop of Oxford went down to 
 Osborne on December 10th, 1845, to do homage for the 
 temporalities of his See, it was just the time when Sir 
 Robert Peel, beginning, in the face of the Irish famine 
 and the Anti-Corn Law League, to accept free-trade 
 principles, was compelled to resign office. The situa- 
 tion was a most critical one, and, to Samuel Wilber- 
 force's strong Conservatism, not at all acceptable. 
 Bringing as it did, however, into life, and activity, and 
 influence, new men, new classes, and new thoughts, it 
 went, with other events of the time, to bring it about 
 that his episcopate should be specially connected with 
 quite a new era in our national history. There was a 
 distinct call for men of wider sympathies as leaders both 
 in Church and State ; there was a great opportunity for 
 exhibiting the working capacity of new ideas ; and the 
 Bishop of Oxford, for all his Conservatism, was ready 
 and willing and able to respond to the call, and listen 
 to the voice of the spirit of the age. The following 
 passage from a letter to Miss L. Noel shows how he felt 
 and appreciated the stir of the moment — " I was down 
 with all the reigning Cabinet on Wednesday. The 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 39 
 
 Queen was mucli agitated. When she held my hands 
 in hers, as I did homage, her hands trembled greatly. 
 No one has a question whether Lord John will be able 
 to hold his ground, or Peel come in again." But the 
 stir in the political world was equalled by the stir in 
 the ecclesiastical world ; the year 1845 was the year of 
 final crisis in the Tractarian movement, when the Rome- 
 ward tendency in the extreme section of it showed itself 
 in many secessions, and above all in the secession of 
 Newman. Oxford was of course the diocese in which 
 all the agitation centred, and Dr. Pusey, in congratulat- 
 ing the new Bishop on his appointment, emphasizes the 
 fact that he will find himself above all called to a task 
 of reassuring those who had been shaken in faith and 
 conviction by recent events. Dr. Pusey meant by this 
 that he would have to reassure those who were fearful 
 that they, like their leader, would find themselves drawn 
 necessarily into the Church of Rome. But there was 
 another and a more difficult reassurance to be effected 
 by the Bishop of Oxford in his diocese, and indeed in 
 the world outside it. The last developments of the 
 revival of Church life, and the spread of Church 
 principles, which the Tractarian movement had so 
 successfully realized, served not unnaturally to arouse 
 the bigoted anti-Roman spirit, which is so entirely 
 unable to distinguish between that which is Catholic, 
 and of primitive antiquity, and that which is really a 
 part of the later errors and corruptions of the Romish 
 Church, It was this alarmed and timid spirit that 
 had also to be reassured, and induced, by reasoning 
 and persuasion, not to cast away and neglect practices 
 and principles of real, permanent, and sterling value in 
 the main,tenance and development of a spiritual life. 
 
40 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Recent political events bad tended to aggravate this 
 feeling in the country, particularly the decision under 
 Peel's Government concerning the Maynooth Grant. 
 The making of this grant certainly very much aggra- 
 vated the anti-Roman feeling in the country, and 
 increased the distrust of those who supported any of 
 the practices, or theories, which the Oxford movement 
 had brought into prominence. 
 
 It was long indeed before the new Bishop, in the 
 Oxford diocese, and in the Church at large, manacred 
 to allay the alarm that was felt on this last point at 
 the time of his succession to the See, He was himself 
 fully credited with tendencies highly dangerous to the 
 true Protestant character of the English Church, and 
 the number of those who seceded to Rome from his 
 own family added greatly to the prejudice that many 
 felt against him on this score. Newman's work on Tltc 
 Theory of Development was published on his secession, 
 and just at the time when Samuel Wilberforce began 
 his episcopal labours. The part that this book played 
 in the movements and controversies of the time is fully 
 discussed in Mr. R. H. Hutton's Cardinal Newman in 
 this scries ; but there is an expression of opinion upon 
 it in a correspondence with Mr. Gladstone, which helps 
 to show the attitude to Newman's latest utterances 
 which Bishop Wilberforce had then taken up. The 
 letter in question is dated from the Deanery, West- 
 minster, December 6th, 1845, and runs as follows : — 
 
 " My dear Gladstone, 
 
 " Have you seen Newman's book ? Acute as 
 it is, porhajDS beyond anything even he has written, I do 
 not think, from what I have seen of it, it is calculated 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 41 
 
 to overthrow the faith of many. For those who believe 
 that the first divine afflatus conveyed to the Church, in 
 the persons of the Apostles, all truth concerning God 
 which man could know, and that the inspired Word of 
 God is the written transcript of that entire knowledge, 
 which it was but given to the Church afterwards to 
 draw out and define with logical accuracy, as heresy 
 created the necessity — for all such the book has no 
 force whatever." 
 
 The difficulties of the position of the new Bishop of 
 Oxford were not lessened by the Icdssez faire policy 
 which his predecessor, Bishop Bagot, had pursued. It 
 had been his desire to have as little as possible to do 
 officially with the Oxford revival, and when at last it 
 was reaching an acute stage, he was glad to accept a 
 translation to the more peaceful field of Bath and Wells. 
 In his time the See had consisted only of the counties 
 of Berks and Oxfordshire. By the Act for the reorgan- 
 ization of some of the dioceses, passed in 1836, the 
 county of Buckinghamshire might have been added ; 
 but the story is that it was declined on an inquiry 
 as to the general character of its clergy, receiving from 
 the Bishop of Lincoln the laconic reply, " Oh ! topboots 
 or Exeter Hall." It was only, then, under Bishop 
 Wilberforce that the three counties were at last united, 
 and thus he had an opening for a complete recasting 
 and reorganization of the whole diocese. His work in 
 this way had really to begin from the very bottom ; and 
 the arranging of the Palace at Cuddesdon, so as to 
 make it a real centre of diocesan life and work, was his 
 first care. The night that the future Bishop spent at 
 Cuddesdon, when he was first nominated to the See, 
 
42 
 
 BISHOP WILBErvFOKOE. 
 
 was disturbed by discordant noises. He was told by 
 his host next morning that it was only the Garsington 
 men going home from an alehouse, which actually stood 
 in the grounds of the palace. This was speedily taken 
 away, and a chapel built, and more bedrooms added to 
 the house, so that it might be possible to take in, on 
 occasion, a large number of guests. There is a passage 
 in a sermon preached by the Bishop at the consecration 
 of Cuddesdon Chapel, in 1846, which gives us his ideas 
 of what his house ought to be to the diocese and the 
 Church. " For as," he says in it, " the Bishop's 
 dwelling-place is not his private house, but the common 
 property of all his diocese, held only in trust by him 
 for them, to be the common centre, at which from 
 every part the scattered pastors may meet together 
 with himself, for counsel, thought, deliberation, and 
 united action ; so is the Chapel at this place theirs as 
 well as his." His occupation of Cuddesdon illustrates 
 the Avorking out of the ideas here expressed on the 
 three lines of devotional intercourse, business inter- 
 course, and social intercourse ; in each and all of which 
 he was well able to take the lead with unrivalled and 
 conspicuous success. 
 
 A passage in the sermon just quoted gives also a 
 suggestive summary of the preacher's ideas of his 
 responsibilities as a bishop. He is unfolding the 
 reasons why he has such great and deep need of his 
 brethren's prayers, and expresses himself thus — " How 
 great a burden to bear lawfully, honestly, is that care 
 of all the churches ! how fearful the condemnation if 
 it be not borne ! If indolence, or self-pleasing, or 
 covetousness, or ambition, or worldliness, or sloth, be 
 found in the seat where the Apostles sat, how great must 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 43 
 
 be the Church's loss ! how horriUe the faithless pastor's 
 condemnation ! And yet, to bear it all how much is 
 needed — what tenderness of spirit; what unwearied 
 patience ; what open-eyed vigilance ; what resolute 
 fortitude ; what unflinching courage ; what unfaltering 
 sympathy ; what an absence of selfishness ; what a love 
 of truth ; what jealous hatred of error ; what love of him 
 who errs ! " It is needless to quote more, as this 
 illustrates sufficiently how high was the conception 
 that Bishop Wilberforce brought to Oxford, of all that 
 was involved in his duties, and their discharge. Wilber- 
 force's idea was that you did not really have the Church 
 without the bishop, and it was this feeling again that 
 made him support the extension of the home episcopate, 
 and enter warmly into Chevalier Bunsen's idea of 
 making the Jerusalem bishopric a means of bringing 
 back the primitive form of Church government to 
 Prussia. One of his first speeches in the House of 
 Lords brings out prominently his feeling about the 
 character and necessity of the office he had just 
 assumed. He pleaded against the then proposed 
 abolition of one of the Welsh bishoprics, and advocated 
 the immediate formation of the See of Manchester. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce valued highly the opportunities 
 that his position as a Bishop of the Established 
 Church gave him in the House of Lords. His gifts 
 as an orator and debater enabled him to make 
 much of them. In a letter to Dr. Hook he ex- 
 presses his plain opinion that the Church needs her 
 spiritual peers, and that their rank and worldly posi- 
 tion could only be given up, or taken away, with real 
 loss and damage to her national influence and her 
 spiritual power. He was certainly desirous of thinking 
 
44 
 
 BISHOP AVILBERFORCE. 
 
 and making a great deal of the " fatherhood " that 
 belonged to his office ; but at the same time by no 
 means disposed to forget, or think little of, the power 
 and advantage which belonged, in the Church estab- 
 lished in England, to its " lordship." In one of his 
 Addresses ^ to his candidates for Ordination, he speaks 
 strongly of the relation of obedience that ought to 
 exist between the ordained and the person from whom 
 they received their Orders. He was always inclined 
 to make much of the bond that the conferrinsj of Orders 
 made between a bishop and those Avhom he sent out ; 
 and when men had left the Oxford diocese, he still con- 
 sidered that they had a claim on him for advice and 
 counsel if they cared to seek it. His dealings with 
 his clergy make it plain that he always regarded 
 himself as related to them on the principles and under- 
 standings that had governed the relationship between 
 bishojis and their clergy from earliest times ; he de- 
 sired to make these the rule of his own episcopal 
 actions, and the basis of his government of his diocese. 
 There is a simple solution of many difficulties, if the 
 theory set out in the following passage might find a 
 ready acceptance amongst the clergy of the Church 
 of England ; but, unfortunately, a bishop's acceptability 
 is much complicated by the system which gives no 
 real voice in his appointment to any one but the 
 Crown and the Government. 
 
 " Primitive Church custom," says the Bishop, " pro- 
 ceeded on the rule that the priesthood and diacon- 
 ate derived their authority from the apostolical 
 commission given to the episcopate. Accordingly, 
 following up this principle, the bond of duty by 
 ' Life, i. p. 22.5. 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 4-5 
 
 which the ordained was bound to the ordainer was so 
 strict that it could be released only at his own will 
 and by his own act. No bishop was allowed to take 
 from the diocese of another his priests or deacons 
 without his entire concurrence ; whilst within his 
 diocese the bishop's rule over his clergy was subject 
 only to canonical restrictions on its exercise, which 
 presujjpose its authority, and by the appellate juris- 
 diction of the metropolitan or provincial synod. All 
 of these details, therefore, lead us back to what was 
 then the universal estimate of the bishop's office, 
 namely, that it was derived from the direct appoint- 
 ment and mission of Christ Himself, and so was the 
 fountain and head of the derived authority and mis- 
 sion of deacons and priests. Thus in each Church the 
 presiding bishop, as one member of the undivided 
 episcopate, was held to be the depositary of ecclesi- 
 astical power and right for that diocese ; whilst the 
 priests and deacons, and other ministers of the Church, 
 were in their sevei'al grades, offices, and employments, 
 his dejouties. To him in his office, it was then believed, 
 had been committed by Christ all the powers of the 
 ministry which He had founded ; whilst from that 
 office, under the leading of the Spirit, had been derived 
 by the Apostles, first the diaconate, and then the 
 priesthood, the holders of which orders were entrusted 
 severally with certain parts of the bishop's office, which 
 they were in his behalf, and in his stead, to exercise 
 under his direction in the different districts of the 
 diocese in which they wei-e placed, and so to multiply by 
 their ministrations that service which it was impossible 
 for him to render everywhere in his own person." ^ 
 1 Addresses to Candidates fur Ordination, p. 243. 
 
46 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOROE. 
 
 This loug extract helps us to see the point of view 
 from which Bishop Wilberforce, in his diocesan adminis- 
 trations, tried to break down the isolation in which 
 the English clergy had lived and worked. It was their 
 desire each jealously to guard his freehold from all 
 encroachments, and to do by himself his own work, in 
 his own way. The old idea set forth above that they 
 were the bishop's representatives, and that they were 
 responsible to him, was a new one indeed, Avhen it was 
 first revived and applied. The bishop was to most 
 of the clergy little more than a confirming and ordain- 
 ing ofiicial, whose interference might be expected in 
 cases of grave and scandalous derelictions in conduct 
 and duty. That he should regard them as only repre- 
 senting him in their cures of souls, and feel himself 
 under an obligation to interest himself personally in 
 their parochial labours, as Bishop Wilberforce did, was 
 a novelty tliat some indeed welcomed, but some 
 resented as an unnecessary, or even an unwarrantable, 
 interference. 
 
 In his addresses to his Ordination candidates, he 
 dwelt on one occasion on a clergyman's duties as a 
 peace-maker. As w'e all know, it requires not only 
 tact and resource, but great courage, to intervene in 
 other men's quarrels. Bishop Wilberforce always felt 
 that quarrels, especially between his clergy and their 
 people, were in a special sense his business ; it was his 
 joy to end them, and bring the once divided into union 
 and fellowship ; and the moral courage that in Alver- 
 stoke days had rebuked Lord for profane speak- 
 ing, stood him in good stead here. He dared to begin 
 a mediation- he dared to persevere in it till all was 
 well. 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 47 
 
 We liave thus seen something of the idea of his 
 sacred office that nerved his arm, and guided his action. 
 We have now to notice the means and methods which 
 he specially employed, and to observe, in the process, 
 how much which is a matter of course now was used by 
 him almost for the first time, and was of his devising, or 
 his reviving. " No man," says Dean Burgon, " ever got 
 more o'at of his clergy than he. They did whatever he 
 bade them do ; and he bade them do as much as he 
 thought they were capable of doing. If any disliked 
 him, it was the timorous, the secular, the obstructive. 
 As for the men who neglected their parishes, their 
 churches, their work — they hated him with a cordial 
 hatred. Few things, nothing perhaps, was more re- 
 markable than the art he had of screwing up to concert 
 pitch (so to express oneself) men whose traditions 
 were lax and unsatisfactory, but who, in his society 
 and under his influence, became really very respectable 
 Churchmen." ^ 
 
 Now we have already noticed his habit in any new 
 work, of beginning from within, and gradually, as it 
 were, extending outwards. Thus it was natural that, 
 in order to get a body of clergy ready to his hand, he 
 should at once make the very most of the opportunity 
 offered in his Ordinations. This was obviously his 
 very first thought. Witness an account of his intentions 
 in the matter set forth in a letter written to Miss Noel 
 less than two weeks after his consecration — " The 
 Ordination has hitherto been conducted thus : — The 
 Archdeacon of Oxford managed all about it, and 
 examined the candidates in his rooms, as a student of 
 Christ Church, and settled who was and who was not 
 ^ Twelve Good Man, ii. p. 47. 
 
48 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 to be ordained. The Bishop came on the Saturday to 
 Oxford, gave a charge to the candidates, and next day 
 proceeded to ordain in the Cathedral. My wish has 
 been, to bring all the candidates as much as possible 
 under my own eye, and to secure all opportunities of 
 social, friendly, and spiritual intercourse. Accordingly, 
 I mean to hold the examinations here. I shall lodge 
 as many as I can in the house, the others in the village 
 round." 
 
 It is necessary, in order to appreciate what this then 
 meant, to remember how Ordinations had been con- 
 ducted in many cases before the establishment of our 
 present ideas in the matter. No attempt at all was 
 made by many bishops to inquire into the characters, 
 modes of thought, and motives in seeking Holy Orders, 
 of their candidates. Examination was only a test of 
 the knowledge of certain books, bearing more on mere 
 scholarship qualifications than the subjects needed to 
 be studied and understood in ministerial work. It is 
 wonderful indeed that, considering the number of men 
 who have at all times sought Orders in the Church of 
 England to take family livings, the standard of clerical 
 life and capacity was even as high as it was; and that 
 men in charge of parishes were not more prone than 
 they were to be carried away with " every blast of vain 
 doctrine." A large dinner, given by the Bishop, often 
 closed the Ordination Day, and represented the sole 
 personal intercourse between him and the ordained. 
 On the days preceding the Ordination, the candidates, 
 without supervision, discipline, or aids to devotion, 
 were lodged in the hotels of the cathedral towns, 
 meeting each other in the evenings for social enjoy- 
 ment. The debt of the Church of England to the man 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 49 
 
 who finally broke down all this, and made the Ordin- 
 ation hour solemn and serious, crowned with a full 
 realization of the momentous issues involved in it, is 
 simply incalculable. There can be no thorough Church 
 work without an earnest clergy, and no effective 
 preaching of the Gospel save from lips and lives of 
 those who have considered, unto a true knowledge, how 
 they were called, and why they were sent. 
 
 The system by which Bishop Wilberforce effected 
 so much for his Church and diocese by his Ordinations 
 is fully set out in a letter from the late Bishop of Ely, 
 Dr. Woodford, who, as one of his able body of e.Kamining 
 chaplains for many years, is well qualified to speak. 
 The main points in it require a short attention, so im- 
 portant an instrument has it been in making the history 
 of the Anglican Church in the nineteenth century a 
 story of life and progress, and not rather one of death 
 and decay. It is told of his first Ordination, that one 
 of the candidates, who was then offering himself, 
 voluntarily withdrew, and gave up for ever the idea of 
 taking Holy Orders. The tendency had been, and 
 often is now, to take a merely professional view of the 
 clerical calling, and therewith to accept, as a matter of 
 course, that any one may be sufficient for the things 
 involved in it. All Bi.'ihop Wilberforce's efforts at 
 Ordinations were directed at dispelling this false notion 
 — at preventing men from blindly assuming a great 
 burden of accountability without full help to bear it, 
 and himself from " laying hands suddenly " on any one. 
 But the voice that was eager to tell the danger, was 
 eager also to indicate the encouragements, and hopes, 
 and privileges which belong to the sacred office. On 
 the Saturday evening that closed the Ember Week, 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 the Bishop was accustomed to give a written charge to 
 those about to be ordained. A volume of these is 
 published on the questions put to priests and deacons 
 in the services for Ordination. They mark the 
 speaker's anxiety to make each man he addresses real 
 in the present, and hopeful and efficient in the future. 
 
 But, besides these final charges, each day of the 
 Ember Week the Bishop himself, at the morning and 
 evening services, spoke, generally from the lessons 
 for the day, on the work and life which was then 
 beginning with those who heard him. It is not wonder- 
 ful that under these influences an increased devoutness 
 settled on the candidates as the week advanced, and 
 that some, in deepening sense of their unfitness, volun- 
 tarily withdrew for a further preparation. The great 
 principle that governed the arranging of these seasons, 
 was first the securincr of a brioht social intercourse 
 
 o o 
 
 among all brought together by them. Every meal was 
 taken at the palace with the Bishop and his chaplains, 
 and the Bishop was unwearied in his efforts to make 
 all at their ease, and to promote a pleasant, all-includ- 
 ing conversation. Spiritual preparation, rather than 
 the mere examination, was made the dominant idea 
 outside the hour of necessary recreation. The questions 
 were never printed, but given out orally, as the result 
 of a previous consultation with the chaplains, each of 
 whom came prepared with a complete set on all the 
 subjects from which selection was made. They aimed 
 at bringing out not mere intellectual knowledge, but 
 the principles on which the candidates would be likely 
 to administer their parishes, and to teach their flocks. 
 All, and especially the question always put to those 
 seeking Priests' Orders, and answered for the Bishop's 
 
OEGANIZINO A DIOCESE. 
 
 51 
 
 view alone, — " What difficulties from within and with- 
 out have you experienced in the exercise of your 
 niinistry ? " — led up to the private interview which the 
 Bishop had with every candidate. This was the time 
 for a close searcliing into character and motives ; for 
 words of rebuke or encouragement ; sometimes for 
 rejection. Tiiere are records of men who, vexed at the 
 time, have thanked the Bishop for thus putting them 
 back ; and the story is that, on such occasions, he would 
 suggest that the rejected should leave him by the 
 window opening on to the lawn, to spare them the 
 mortification of a return to the examination room. All 
 this was new then ; it is old now, it has been improved 
 upon ; but it has been the means of making men much 
 more informed as to what Ordination really involves, 
 and much more ready to act upon that information. 
 
 It was only natural that he, who laid such stress on 
 the right use of the time of Ordination, and its 
 opportunities, should also be anxious to secure, for his 
 candidates, the greatest possible amount of previous 
 special training and preparation. Several theological 
 colleges had been founded about the time when Bishop 
 Wilberforce came to Oxford ; and the foundation of the 
 College at Cuddesdon followed naturally on his new 
 arrangements for Ordinations, as described above. He 
 wished by it to secure, as it were, a longer Embertide 
 for those wishing to take Holy Orders. Cuddesdon was 
 intended, as a rule, for graduates who desired, and 
 could afford, a year's special preparation for the ministry 
 after taking their degree. The course there provided 
 for a happy combination of intellectual, practical, and 
 devotional training, and has done much, with other 
 similar institutions, to improve the education of the 
 
52 
 
 BISHOP WILBEBFORCE. 
 
 clergy of the Church of England for their work. That 
 work has suffered not a little from the fatal fallacy 
 that a man may be a good and efficient clergyman 
 by the light of nature. Theological colleges have done 
 much to remove this wrong impression, and to help 
 men to correspond with the improved standard of 
 ministerial life which Bishop Wilberforce did so much 
 to introduce. 
 
 There was another part of the work of his office also, 
 which the Bishop of Oxford felt gave a great oppor- 
 tunity for establishing a permanent and wide-spread 
 influence over many people in many places. In the 
 past, in Confirmations, as in Ordinations, the bishops 
 had too often preferred to consult their own convenience 
 rather than the edification of those placed under their 
 charge. They held but few Confirmations, and those 
 only in central places ; so that the mob of candidates, 
 the long journey to the place appointed, the rite 
 hastily administered to whole rows of candidates at 
 once, the short, perfunctory, and ill-heard address, 
 destroyed altogether for many the solemnity of the occa- 
 sion, and scattered to the winds all serious thoughts. 
 Thus the great opportunity of life's most impression- 
 able time went too often for nothing, and, instead of 
 being a great source of good, became a source rather 
 of harm. The prevailing sentiment in the matter is 
 well illustrated by the story of the inn-keeper who 
 sought for compensation from the Bishop of Oxford, 
 because the candidates had given up'staying at his house, 
 as they had been used to do, for a ball in the evening 
 of the Confirmation day. A passage from a letter 
 written in 1847 describes well the feelings with which 
 Bishop Wilberforce was possessed in his Confirmations. 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 53 
 
 " There is," he writes, " so much of deep interest iu a 
 Confirmation, that it takes a great deal out of one. 
 The present interest is intense : the single opportunity 
 of making, if God will, a dint in a character ; the 
 gathering iu, if the candidates have been watched over 
 and prayed for, the fruits of past weeks ; the raising 
 them to something quite new, if they have been neglected. 
 Then all the old interest of Brighstone and Alverstoke 
 wakes up. I remember the deep anxiety Avith which 
 I presented one and another, the fear, the doubt, the 
 trembling hope, the joy with which I saw one and 
 another come forward, and the after fulfilment or 
 disappointment." ^ It was iu this spirit that he set 
 himself with untiring energy, and no disposition to 
 spare himself, to hold Confirmations in every part of 
 the diocese ; so that all might see and know the rite, 
 its meanings and blessings, and the young might not be 
 exposed to the peril of dangerous excitement in long 
 journeys. In the town and in the village, in the school, 
 the asylum, and the workhouse, he would give all 
 their chance of making iu this way their open confession 
 that for them Christ and His ways were best. There 
 was an endless variety in what he said on these 
 occasions, based partly on his own observation of the 
 place and scene, partly on the answer to his request, 
 that the clergy, at the place where he was going to 
 confirm, would tell him if there was anything they 
 wished him to say. 
 
 His sympathy with the young, and his intense appre- 
 ciation of the possibilities for good which lay before 
 those presented to him, lent a fresh force and power 
 to his earnest words. " His addresses," says Canon 
 1 Life, i. pp. 401-2. 
 
54 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Asliwell, " at these times were the result of preparation 
 of himself, rather than of that which he was about to 
 vitter." But it was not only what he said, it was also 
 what he did, that gave a deep sense of the importance 
 of the occasion. It was his custom to repress firmly and 
 steridy any apparent levity in the candidates, even to 
 the extent of making one or other of them a public 
 example before the rest. "His way of doing it," says 
 Dean Burgon, "was inimitable: the effect was astonishing. 
 It made the rite a great success, even if the issue of 
 the day had before seemed trembling in the balance." 
 The whole service was concluded by one more short 
 and stirring address, calculated to leave, as it did leave, a 
 lasting impression on many of those who heard it. 
 
 Our day has seen a great deal of efforts to stir up a 
 more vigorous and thorough spiritual life, by means of 
 missions, in districts and parishes. Bishop Wilberforce 
 made use of them in his episcopate, though hardly in 
 the form in which they are too often used now, with 
 certain "un-English characteristics" which appeal un- 
 duly to the emotional element in human nature. These 
 Oxford missions — the first of which was held at Wantage, 
 Farringdon and Banbury in 1850 — occupied some nine 
 or ten days of the Lenten season every year. The 
 Bishop, with a chosen band of preachers, took as a 
 centre some country town where, by daily addresses, 
 frequent Communions, and a stirring evening sermon 
 by some conspicuous preacher, he tried to rouse the 
 inhabitants and neighbourhood from the dull slumber 
 of formalism, or the more fatal torpor of indifference 
 and neglect. Meanwhile, with the co-operation of the 
 neighbouring clergy, services and sermons were arranged 
 in all tlie surroundino- villaoies. Each evening, gather- 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 55 
 
 ings of workers were held at the centre, and, under the 
 guidance of the Bishop, the phases of the work in hand 
 carefully and instructively discussed. With him all 
 went well ; without him such efforts must have been 
 failures, and therefore better left alone. It was his 
 custom to hold his Lent Ordination, and sometimes 
 Confirmations also, at the place of the mission. What 
 he desired was to make it possible for every part of his 
 once much neglected diocese to see the Church at work 
 with all her appointed methods in activity, and so to 
 bring her system really to bear, in one united effort of 
 Bishop and clergy, before the eyes of men. As to the 
 effect for good of all this, it is to the point to quote from 
 the Bishop of Oxford's charge for 1860 his remarks on 
 one of these missions recently held at Reading : — " The 
 last of these missions was recently held at Reading, and 
 manifestly moved, to its centre, the population of that 
 large town. I have yet before my eyes the sight of the 
 great and deeply attentive numbers who listened in 
 its churches to the Sermons, which set forth the suffi- 
 ciency of Christ for man's salvation, and for every want 
 of man's heart ; I seem still to see the large bodies of 
 devout communicants who every morning gladdened 
 our hearts ; and the brotherly assemblage of clergymen 
 and laymen for mutual conference and edification with 
 which the meeting closed. Some days after the mission 
 had closed I had the great pleasure of receiving a 
 deputation of some of the principal inhabitants, bringing 
 with them an address from a considerable number of 
 the laymen of all the parishes of the town, bearing 
 witness to the blessing which had been given to the 
 mission, and asking for a future repetition of what they 
 had found to be such special opportunities for growth 
 
56 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 in grace.' The Bishop's diary for 1869 shows that 
 time increased rather than diminished the effect of 
 these missions. In that year the mission was at 
 Maidenhead, and so much did the people then appre- 
 ciate the efforts being made for them, that all the shops 
 in the town, including those belonging to the Dissenters, 
 were closed at seven every evening, in order that all 
 might go to the evening services. 
 
 Closely connected with this attempt to make known 
 what the Church was, are the courses of Lenten 
 sermons by the greatest preachers of the day, organized 
 by the Bishop at St. Mary's, and afterwards at St. Giles', 
 Oxford. Several courses of these were published, and 
 they served as an evidence that the revival of a more 
 thorough and systematic application of the Church's 
 system neither weakened nor disparaged the power of 
 preaching, and the importance of the pulpit for instruc- 
 tion and exhortation. These courses of sermons the 
 Bishop always introduced in person, and often hurried 
 from important and pressing engagements, in London, 
 and elsewhere, to do it. 
 
 We have already observed how it was part of the 
 Bishop of Oxford's plan to make his palace at Cud- 
 desdon a place of meeting for the clergy, for social 
 intercourse, for business, and for devotional purposes. 
 As regards the first. Canon Ashwell observes that " it was 
 no small element in the hold which he established over 
 his clergy, that to his palace at Cuddesdon he would 
 constantly summon them to meet such celebrities, 
 alike from the clerical and non-clerical world, as might 
 from time to time be visiting him — occasions when his 
 own wit had free play, and drew out corresponding 
 brightness from others — a token of consideration which 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 57 
 
 all men feel, but which to his younger clergy was 
 especially valuable." His social gifts made Samuel 
 Wilberforce a most welcome guest in the greatest 
 houses, and amongst the best society in the land ; but 
 as a host he was inimitable, unwearying in his efforts to 
 bring all into the conversation, or making interest and 
 entertainment by his own brilliant talk, his stories, 
 and his hon-mots. We can imagine the dininjj-table at 
 Cuddesdon on such an occasion, hushed into sudden 
 silence by a great crash, and the voice of the host 
 reassuring his guests with the remark that "it was only 
 the coachman going out with the hrahe!' 
 
 Once every year it was his custom to gather together 
 at Cuddesdon all his rural deans, to discuss the affairs 
 and arrangements of the diocese for the year. His 
 experience in the Isle of Wight had taught him what 
 might be made out of the office of rural dean, and 
 its opportunities. The ruri-decanal chapters were 
 directed to be held at least quarterly ; and were to 
 include sometimes the laity as well as the clergy of the 
 Deanery. Bishop Wilberforce's letters show the use he 
 made of his rural deans, and how much he looked to 
 them to keep him informed as to the affairs of the parts 
 of the diocese immediately under their care, whilst he 
 paid the greatest attention to their representations and 
 their complaints. There is a story told of a brief inter- 
 view between him and a clergyman who was taking 
 charge of a difficult rural deanery, as the Bishop was 
 passing in the train through a station, on the platform 
 of which the clergyman in question chanced to be 
 standing. The Bishop called to him in loud tones — 
 
 " Mr. T , I am very glad to have an opportunity of 
 
 speaking to you. I hear great things of your zeal and 
 
58 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 success as rural dean." " Well, my lord," was the 
 reply, " I believe some people are under the impression 
 that I am somewhat mad." " All I can say then is," 
 replied the Bishop, " I wish you would hite all my rural 
 deans." If this may be taken as illustrating his 
 appreciation of a really zealous man in this capacity, 
 the suggestion by which he extinguished a clergyman, 
 who was claiming at a conference a distinctive title for 
 these officials, must in no sense be thought disparaging 
 to them. On that occasion the Bishop reduced the 
 speaker to silence, by suggesting " Rather Reverend " as 
 a suitable title. 
 
 The charge for 1860 records how there grew out of 
 the deliberations of the rural deans at Cuddesdon in 
 that year two attempts to quicken the life of God in 
 the souls of the clergy. Retreats and Quiet Days have 
 grown to be comparatively common as a means of 
 helping and strengthening that devotional element in a 
 clergyman's character, which must be developed if his 
 ministry is to be effective, and is to enable him to get 
 a real hold on his people. These two meetings, both of 
 which Avere presided over by the Bishop himself, 
 respectively suggested what is now understood by the 
 Retreat and the Quiet Day; the former perhaps may 
 be said to aim at deepening the spiritual life of the 
 individual; the latter at bringing out the fraternal bond 
 of mutual helpfulness which ought to exist between the 
 assembled clergy. The Bishop's comment on the 
 experiment is this — " From these days, I believe, all 
 went back to their work quickened, refreshed, strength- 
 ened and united ; and I gladly assented to the expressed 
 wish that such opportunities of mutual edification 
 should be again secured amongst us." 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 59 
 
 As the rural deaus were annually gathered together 
 for conference at Cuddesdon, so also were the inspectors 
 of schools, a body of voluntary workers at one time as 
 many as forty in number. The Bishop's words about 
 them in his last charge may be quoted as showing his 
 sense of the value and efficiency of their work — " The 
 various parish schools have been raised to a new level 
 by the care and labour of the diocesan inspectors. 
 Alas ! for me, that I shall lose the strengthening, 
 exhilarating meetings for which they were accustomed 
 each spring to gather at Cuddesdon Palace." Those 
 were stirring days in the field of elementary education ; 
 the Government was beginning to take it up, and no 
 longer to leave it to voluntary efforts ; as a consequence 
 the question had to be faced as to tlie conditions under 
 which Government aid could be given to, and accepted 
 by, schools in which a definite religious teaching was 
 given. The general policy of the Government of the 
 day was to meet voluntary efforts, on the part of all 
 religious denominations with pecuniary help propor- 
 tioned to the voluntary contributions given. So 
 vigorous were the efforts of Churchmen that their 
 schools made claim to by far the largest share of this 
 help. The giving of it was of course saddled with 
 certain conditions of inspection and management, and 
 the high " Mountain " party, as Bishop Wilberforce calls 
 them, led by Mr. G. Denison, were for getting it accepted 
 that no plan of receiving Government grants on 
 condition of any management clauses could satisfy the 
 clergy. A motion to this effect was brought forward 
 at what proved a very stormy meeting held at the 
 National Society on June 8th, 1848. The Archbishop 
 and the Committee requested the Bishop of Oxford to 
 
60 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 move an amendment. " I never," he says, " since I 
 addressed the Newport Radicals, spoke to so hostile an 
 audience, but through God's help and the truth of my 
 cause, I so won them over that the motion was with- 
 drawn." The diocesan board, the inspectors of schools, 
 and the training college at Culham were the instruments 
 by which the diocese of Oxford sought to do all it 
 could, on Church lines, under the elementary educational 
 policy of the day. But the educational work of the 
 Oxford diocese did not begin and end with elementary 
 education. Schools for the middle class, under Church 
 auspices, sprang up as at Cowley and Littlemore ; and 
 schools also were founded at Radley, Bradfield, Bloxham 
 and Stony Stratford, where the children of the gentry 
 and clergy might, to use the Bishop of Oxford's words, 
 " be trained in that blessed union of true religion and 
 useful learning, which has ever flourished and abounded 
 in Church of England schools." 
 
 As the annual conferences at Cuddesdon, particularly 
 that with the rural deans and archdeacons, brought 
 the principal clergy of the diocese into contact with 
 the Bishop, and with one another, so did the meetings of 
 the diocesan societies do the like for the leading laity. 
 Both helped to draw together men of various shades of 
 opinion, to which they were encouraged to give a free 
 expression. Both alike served to give them all a sense 
 of a large field for common and united effort, which 
 claimed their whole energies, and really left no time or 
 opportunity for party strifes. The diocesan societies 
 were at first three, the Board of Education, the Spiritual 
 Help Society, and the Diocesan Church Building 
 Society. Later on a Society for Augmenting Poor 
 Benefices was added. 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 61 
 
 The Spiritual Help Society was intended to increase 
 the number of clergy, so as to meet the demand for 
 more services, and for a more thorough visitation of 
 the sick and whole. In his last charge to the diocese 
 of Oxford, the Bishop records that this society, with an 
 income of £1,200 a year, had made it possible to supply to 
 some of the most needy and populous parishes forty-one 
 additional curates. " There are," he adds, " few cases as 
 to which it is more true that two are letter than one than 
 in the spiritual charge of a parish. For nothing more 
 tends to correct that great evil of our parochial system, 
 the isolation of the parish priest, than the presence of a 
 second clergyman." 
 
 The Church Building Society was organized to pro- 
 mote the building, rebuilding, and restoration of churches 
 and parsonage houses. It started its work in 1847, and, 
 at the time of the Bishop's translation to Winchester, 
 had been enabled to grant £32,172 to this object. Its 
 principle always was not to accumulate an invested 
 capital in money, but to invest from time to time in 
 increased Church accommodation the funds it had raised.^ 
 
 The Society for Augmenting Poor Benefices was 
 founded after the Visitation of 1860, with a view to 
 increasing the endowment of the 223 parishes of the 
 diocese which fell below £200 a year, and the 72 
 which did not come up to £100. The Bishop in his 
 charge for 1863 mentions that, if all the calls on the 
 clergy of these parishes were fully estimated, it would 
 be found that they received less than an ordinary skilled 
 labourer. He calls attention to the way in which this 
 extreme poverty of remuneration of the clergy must 
 tell with a disastrous influence on their position in 
 
 1 Charge, 18G6, p. 11. 
 
62 
 
 BISHOP WILBEKFORCE. 
 
 society, and on their future supply. One great object 
 in founding this society was to meet grants offered by 
 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who were setting 
 apart at that time £100,000 a year to meet equal 
 benefactions for poor parishes. In 1866 it is recorded 
 of it that it had, in this way, added £16,000 to the 
 endowments of the diocese; and the charge of 1869 
 states that it had then raised many parishes, from 
 furnishing a merely nominal income, to one Avhich 
 secured for the incumbent just a bare subsistence, and 
 so maintained among scattered poiDulations the separate 
 ministry, the Church and altar. 
 
 It is clear that the Bishop of Oxford had it in his 
 mind to secure for his clergy a diocesan synod. A 
 meeting was held at Oxford on Friday, November 22, 
 1850, to protest against the Papal Bull establishing a 
 Roman hierarchy in England. It was a time of great 
 excitement, and the Bishop writes before it to his 
 brother — " I hope to make Friday's protest a sort of 
 diocesan synod. I have some apprehension from the 
 Low Church party." A conversation with Mr. 
 Wyndham Portal in 187], given in the third volum.e 
 of the Life, of Bishop Wilherforce, explains the Bishop's 
 opinions on the now almost universal diocesan con- 
 ferences, which were then beginning to be held. He 
 expressed his strong disinclination to institute them, 
 " at present." " I know how it will be," he said ; " the 
 Bishop must always attend every meeting, while you 
 laity may do as you please. When all goes well and 
 smoothly you will say, ' See how well we have done 
 it.' When there is a failure from any cause, it will 
 then be said, ' See what a muddle the Bishop has made 
 of it.' " 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 63 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford shows in his charges how great 
 was the interest that he himself took, and that he 
 desired to induce other Churchmen to take, in the 
 missionary work of the Church. He took steps to 
 secure systematic sui^port, in bis diocese, both for the 
 Church Missionary Society and also for the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. In his 
 view taking an active interest in the spread of the Gospel 
 was the mark and indispensable condition of a real true 
 life and progress in any individual, and in any Church ; 
 it was the natural corrective to selfishness, to indolence, 
 and to prejudice. Thus, in a speech at Cambridge on 
 behalf of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, 
 he pointed out the danger of mere religious study un- 
 tempered by works of Christian charity. He said also 
 that for the Universities to be called often from their 
 deep studies, and from their polemical maintainings 
 of the truth, to the practical action of spreading Christ's 
 faith in the world, was a most wholesome and blessed 
 discipline. 
 
 There exist certain private notes made by the Bishop 
 of Oxford after some of his consultations with his rural 
 deans, containing a list of things that in his opinion 
 ought to be done. Amongst these are two entries on 
 the subject of his patronage — one to the effect that the 
 patronage of the See needed to be amended ; and the 
 other to the effect that Chancellor's livings in the diocese 
 and extern livings ought to be exchanged. When 
 Bishop Wilberforce succeeded to the See, as Canon 
 Ash well has pointed out, not only was the number and 
 value of the livings in his gift very small, but the local 
 importance of the benefices was even less. When he 
 left the diocese in 1869 he had obtained the presentation 
 
64 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 to most of the important town livings, while the total 
 number of livings in his gift was one hundred and three 
 as against seventeen ; and of these ninety-five were in his 
 diocese. Thus he had secured the means of promoting 
 the more deserving of his clergy, and was able to choose 
 whom he would place in the most important parishes 
 and spheres of work. At the same time he had provided 
 opportunities for putting into livings many of the 
 curates of the diocese, whose number in his time was 
 largely increased by the successful operations of the 
 Diocesan Spiritual Aid Society. In the Qmrtcrly Review 
 for 1867, there is an article by Bishop Wilberforce on 
 " The Church and her Curates," showing how small their 
 prospects were, and how, in the many more opportunities 
 of other careers, this would be likely to prove a source 
 of weakness to the Church. A passage in this article 
 shows us clearly what the Bishop had in view, amongst 
 other things, in so strenuously setting himself to 
 increase his patronage. " Many are those," he writes, 
 " to whom preferment never does nor can come. That 
 to which the poor hard-working curate may most hope- 
 fully look, the preferment administered by his bishop, is 
 utterly insufficient to supply such claims. Even where 
 the episcopal patronage is most fairly administered (and 
 we know cases in which none but curates of the diocese 
 are admitted to share in it), a very small proportion of 
 the curates can ever attain preferment from its 
 resources." 
 
 Amongst the instruments, methods, and organizations 
 by which the Bishop of Oxford tried to give his diocese 
 the full benefit and help of the Church and her system, 
 it remains to say a few words about bis use of 
 Sisterhoods. They are now a most important part of 
 
OROANIZINO A DIOCESE. 
 
 the machinery of the Church of England ; and the labours 
 of Sisters do a great deal of her work among the fallen, 
 the sick, and the poor. The wise and sympathetic 
 managemeijt of the Sisterhoods at Wantage, Clewer, 
 and Oxford, by Bishop Wilberforce, established them 
 permanently, as recognized and allowable institutions, 
 in the Anglican Church. 
 
 In 1848 at an unfavourable moment in some respects, 
 owing to the outcry raised against some unwise peculi- 
 arities in the management of Miss Sellon's Devonport 
 Sisterhood, a Sisterhood was founded at Wantage. The 
 Bishop of Oxford saw in it a form of zeal that might be 
 made of great and conspicuous use in the Church work 
 of the diocese. " I have," he writes of this foundation, 
 " the deepest interest in its welfare, and would do any- 
 thing in my power to help its progress." But he was 
 very strong that he, as Bishop, should have a control in 
 the government of such establishments, and that they 
 should be managed on lines thoroughly in accord with 
 " the system of the Reformed Church of England, as it 
 is to be found in Bishop Andrewes, Richard Hooker, 
 and many more of like views with them." " It is on 
 this scheme alone," he says in a letter to the head of 
 the Clewer Sisterhood, " honestly, heartily, and com- 
 pletely adopted and maintained, that I can have any 
 share in organizing and promoting Sisterhoods." In 
 accordance witli these principles he laid it down that 
 " the sisters could not be allowed to practise con- 
 tinual confession to, or erect into directors, the warden 
 or chaplains of the house." ^ He also stated that 
 they should not use Roman Catholic books of devo- 
 tion, or wear openly, or exhibit in their rooms, images 
 
 1 Life, iii. pp. 3-26-7. 
 
G6 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 or representations which the Church of England dis- 
 courages. On the question of the unlawfulness of per- 
 petual vows he was always clear. The attitude that 
 he took up towards Sisterhoods is thus described by 
 Canon Butler, in a passage quoted in the third volume 
 of his life — " Nothing could be kinder, wiser or more 
 large-hearted, than the line which he adopted ; and it is 
 certainly not too much to assert, that to him our 
 English Sisterhoods owe their present position of 
 usefulness and acceptance. Instead of standing apart 
 and waiting till they had made their way, he, with his 
 characteristic determination to be the real i-Ca-Ko-os or 
 overseer of all religious movements in his diocese, took 
 the matter into his own hands, without in the least 
 quenching or thwarting the zeal and the ideas of those 
 who gave the first impulse. At least once every year 
 he visited the Sisters, considered their rules, sometimes 
 spoke to each separately, weighed difficult cases, and 
 received into the community those who had been 
 elected." This policy it was that secured for the 
 Oxford diocese, and then for the Church at large, a 
 great power for good, and a vast amount of zealous and 
 devoted labour. 
 
 But the greatness and weight of the Bishop in his 
 diocese was much increased, throughout his career, by 
 his position outside it. He made many distinguished 
 appearances in London during the first year of his 
 episcopacy, and at once gained a brilliant reputation in 
 the House of Lords, where the influence of his oratory 
 and his power as a debater made his support of 
 consequence to the Government, or Opposition, as the 
 case might be. This made him able to get a hearing 
 in matters that affected the interests of the Church at 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 G7 
 
 larofe ; and the estimation in wliich he was held abroad, 
 made it the easier for him to get his clergy at home to 
 accept his reforms, and give his methods a fair trial. 
 A letter to Miss Noel gives a description of his feelings 
 when he took his seat in the House of Lords, in 
 January 1846. "You know," he writes, " how all such 
 real business interests me. But I feel as if I should 
 never take any part in debate; though some day I 
 shall. The impediment of the lawn sleeves must be 
 very great and entangling." It is obvious that his 
 character as a bishop did act as some check on him as 
 a speaker in the House. He was by nature gifted with 
 an unusual power of repartee, and very much inclined 
 to take advantage of it, and thus to put in those 
 " sparkles," as he calls them, " on which the animation of 
 a debate so much depends, but which must be con- 
 tinually regretted." Mr. Anson, writing about his 
 speech on tlie abolition of the Corn Laws, speaks of 
 the use he had been then tempted to make of this 
 power as follows — " If I had your talent and your 
 facility of sending home a pco'sonal shaft, when justly 
 invited, I could not resist taking advantage of it, but I 
 think it a little dangerous. Those men like the pro- 
 tectionist Duke and the insane will never forgive 
 
 the way you showed them up, and made them the 
 laughing-stock of the House. The subtle man on the 
 Bench, too, will watch his opportunity of revenge."^ 
 It was doubtless the feeling that this was "a little 
 dangerous" that made him express his intention " never 
 to debate again, if he could help it;" though at the same 
 time he could not consent to be, as bishops had been 
 too much, no more than " a graceful appendage to 
 > Life, i. p. 3G8. 
 
68 
 
 BTSIIOP WTLBERFOROE. 
 
 Conservatism, a mute in a great assembly, while the 
 social and moral evils of his poor countrymen needed 
 to be witnessed of before princes." ^ At first Bishop 
 Wilberforce simply attended the debates of the house, 
 and observed its usages ; then he broke silence, and 
 by his speeches on four subjects in the session of 1846, 
 showed himself conspicuously capable of combining 
 the roles of statesman and ecclesiastic, and so playing 
 successfully the somewhat difficult part that falls to the 
 lot of a bishop in the House of Lords. 
 
 Thus at the end of his first Session the Bishop of 
 Oxford was established in the House of Lords as a man 
 to be listened to ; he had also shown that he was of 
 independent opinion, and could maintain and defend 
 the line of action which appeared right. He was always 
 eager to play a prominent part in securing legislation that 
 seemed needed for the benefit of the working classes. 
 Accordingly in 1847 he spoke strongly in favour of the 
 Ten Hours Factory Act, which aimed at bringing relief 
 to the excessive labour exacted, specially from women 
 and children. He pointed out the doubtful gain, which 
 was probably really a loss, in the last two hours of a 
 more than ten hours' day, saying that " when exhausted 
 nature failed to give that quickness of eye and rapidity 
 of movement, which were necessary to keep pace with 
 the machinery, the work then done became a sort of 
 drawback to the work done in the other part of the 
 day." An address was presented to him by the workmen 
 of Bradford in 1858, showing how deep and abiding was 
 the impression made on them by the Bishop's successful 
 effort on this occasion. A passage from the address 
 in question runs as follows — "Your Lordship, as a 
 1 Life, i. p. 371. 
 
ORGANIZING A DIOCESE. 
 
 69 
 
 patriot firmly attached to your country, and as a man 
 possessing keen sensibilities for the welfare of your 
 fellows, will not listen to these assurances without 
 unmixed feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. You 
 will rejoice that you bore a part in obtaining that great 
 boon to our manufacturing population, ' the ten 
 HOURS FACTORY ACT,' for which we, on behalf of 
 ourselves and others, beg most respectfully to tender 
 to your Lordship our most grateful acknowledgments." 
 
 But it was not only in the House of Lords, but also 
 in other places outside his diocese, that the new Bishop 
 was making his mark. In the meeting of friends of 
 the Colonial Church on the day after the consecration 
 of the Bishops of Capetown, Newcastle, Adelaide, and 
 Melbourne, the Bishop was one of the chief speakers. 
 So again he preached at Oxford just at this time, at 
 the meeting of the British Association, a sermon which. 
 Canon Ash well says, " if it were not his really greatest 
 sermon, was certainly that which attracted the largest 
 amount of admiration." In the festivities that accom- 
 panied the installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of 
 the University of Cambridge, he was also a prominent 
 figure ; taking his ad mndcm D.D. degree ; preaching 
 several times in Cambridge, and, in the University 
 Church ; advocating the due training of the teachers 
 of our National Schools in the teeth of the old ideas 
 that considered anything, or nothing, good enough 
 here. It was all a brilliant opening to a brilliant 
 career, which, in spite of private griefs and troubles, in 
 bereavements, and the first secessions of some members 
 of his family to Rome, had hitherto been in public 
 one uninterrupted success. The next period of Bishop 
 Wilberforce's life shows us, however, that the man who 
 
70 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOllCE. 
 
 remodelled the English episcopate was not merely a 
 fair-weather sailor, but one who could face a storm — 
 and that too a storm whose severity was aggravated 
 by his own not altogether skilful seamanship in the 
 events which marked its bccjinning. The same circum- 
 stances, as the next chapter will show, which deprived 
 him of the support of many friends, exposed him to 
 attack from those who disliked his reforms, and sus- 
 pected him of favouring principles that were, in their 
 eyes, dangerous in the highest degree. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 In Bishop Wilberforce's diaries a saying of Lord 
 Aberdeen's is quoted, in whicli he expresses his opinion 
 that " the Church of England is two churches, only held 
 together by external forces." This allusion is to the 
 differences of doctrine and idea that seemed, in his 
 day, to cause an irreconcilable antagonism between the 
 members of what are most commonly known as the 
 High and Low Church parties. Now, it is stated that 
 " the fingers of one hand would suffice for numbering 
 those who received promotion, from the Evangelical 
 section of clergy, in the Oxford diocese during Bishop 
 Wilberforce's long episcopate." This is remarkable 
 from one who so clearly had, to use Dean Burgon's 
 words, " an inherited claim on the friendship of men 
 of the Evangelical school." The fact is, that, though 
 the Bishop had no sort of sympathy with the Romaniz- 
 ing tendencies of the Tractarian party, he had a very 
 strong sympathy with that " asking for old paths," and 
 that claiming of Catholic rights, privileges, and methods, 
 which its earliest aims and utterances had induced in 
 so many of the clergy and laity in the Church of 
 England. Bishop Wilberforce was strong in his in- 
 
■72 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 sisteuce on the continuity of the Church established 
 in England in going back, behind the Reformation, to 
 the primitive Church of Christ of Apostolic days. He 
 was entirely at variance with those whose views and 
 inclinations led them to prefer to consider that this 
 same Churcli of England was a new creation of Reform- 
 ation days, and a child of the State. Thus he was 
 active and eager in giving life and expression to the 
 ideas that the Tractarian teaching first brought forward, 
 after they had been long disregarded, as to the divine 
 origin and commission of the Church. This was not 
 acceptable to the Low Church party as a whole, and 
 their inclination was to resist the new, and to defend 
 the old, without considering enough the necessities of 
 growth and progress in Church life. In speaking of his 
 Ordinations held in 1851, it is curious to find Bishop 
 Wilberforce noting, as a satisfactory point, the absence 
 of Low Churchmen amongst his candidates. The fact 
 is, that their apprehensions of a speedy return to the 
 bondage of the Papacy caused the members of the 
 Evangelical party to look with distaste and suspicion 
 on much that Bishop Wilberforce started in the diocese. 
 Thus he did not seem to find in the men of this school, 
 in general and in the same degree as in men of the 
 opposite school, that zeal in developing and extending 
 the work of the Church on which he set a very high 
 value indeed. A really conscientious opposition was 
 apt to seem obstructive ; and the Bishop often plainly 
 expresses his opinion that the doctrines held by many 
 men of this party were those of the Puritans, and 
 not, as he desired, those that he held to be " the 
 doctrines of the Church of England as expounded by 
 R. Hooker." 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 73 
 
 Under all these circumstances the diocese of Oxford 
 was for some twelve years a divided diocese; and the 
 present chapter seeks to unfold the steps by which the 
 opposition was gradually overcome, and the Bishop left 
 in a position to exhibit, in harmony and progress, the 
 \ alue and efficacy of his methods. In some cases the 
 very zeal, which he esteemed so highly in those whom 
 he employed and trusted, was in itself a fruitful source 
 of trouble and misunderstanding. The Bishop's wonder- 
 ful and rapid advancement, his great personal gifts and 
 endowments, his power of dealing with men, made him 
 trust too much to his ability to check and restrain the 
 exuberances and extravagances of some whom he was 
 induced to place in important places. His men would 
 sometimes altogether exceed their commission, and 
 perhaps deliberately, as with his sanction, start on lines 
 which they almost knew he would disapprove. The 
 information would come to him after the event, when 
 the mischief was done ; and Dean Burgon speaks with 
 some humour of " the explosion in the diocese which 
 was sure to follow the dreary discovery that some of his 
 lieutenants had in this way compromised him, been 
 wanting in honest}^, or played him false." Moreover, in 
 his dealings with those of his clergy, whose principles led 
 them to fear all real or apparent innovations as coming 
 from Rome or leading to Rome, it had to be i-emem- 
 bered how much the many secessions to Rome, from the 
 Bishop's own family gave some sort of a reason and 
 excuse for such alarms. These secessions certainly went 
 to hinder his further promotion, and increased, more 
 than lie perhaps was inclined to admit, his difficulties 
 with the Evangelicals in the diocese of Oxford. 
 
 In addition to these considerations, personal to him- 
 
74 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 self, there were other events that occurred between the 
 years 1847 and 1860, which went a long way to increase 
 the dislike and alarm with which the Low Church party 
 in his diocese regarded his administration of it. First, 
 there was the Gorham case, which led Churchmen to 
 put forward very distinctly the Church's doctrine of 
 unconditional regeneration in Baptism, on the right 
 liolding of which Bishop AYilberforce was very strong. 
 Secondly, there were the secessions to the Church 
 of Rome which followed Mr. Gorham's establishment, 
 by the decision of the Judicial Committee of the 
 Privy Council, of his claim to institution to his new 
 living, in spite of his opinions and the Bishop of 
 Exeter's objections to them. Again, the Low Church 
 party were also disturbed by the attempts to revive 
 Convocation, which were prompted by the feeling in the 
 minds of Churchmen, after the Gorham judgment, that 
 an authoritative voice and a body more acceptable to 
 the Church than the Judicial Committee, were needed 
 to propagate declarations on faith and doctrine in the 
 Church of England. To all this must be added the 
 excitement caused in London by the ritual extrava- 
 gances, as they then seemed, practised b}' Mr. Bennett 
 at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and in the Church of St. 
 Barnabas, which he had built for the poor of his 
 parish in Pimlico; and, above all, the papal bull of 
 18.50. 
 
 By this last, Pope Pius IX., encouraged by the seces- 
 sions from the Church of England to Rome, sought to 
 re-establish in Englaad the papal hierarchy with local 
 and territorial titles to the sees. A letter from the 
 Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, to the Bishop of 
 Durham on this subject went to inflame to the utmost 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 75 
 
 the Protestant feeling.^ He denounced the movement 
 as being a pretension over the supremacy of England 
 inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, witli the 
 rights of our bisliops and clergy, and with the spiritual 
 independence of our country, as asserted even in the 
 Roman Catholic times. But this was not all ; he 
 declared that he did not fear so much the claims of the 
 Pope from without, as the treachery within the Church 
 of England itself. These remarks were directed against 
 the Tractariau body as a whole, and not only against 
 the extreme section of it; and the same letter describes 
 them as "unworthy sons of the Church of England," 
 and " men who were leading their flocks to the very 
 verge of the precipice." All this went to make the 
 Bishop of Oxford's work, in a transition period of the 
 Church's history, much more difficult, and to excite 
 against him much opposition^ more particularly as the 
 truth to him lay with the then unpopular side, and 
 with principles, which were the distinct outcome of the 
 earlier Tractarianism. 
 
 Before showing how his policy was worked out, and 
 how, after passing through many waves of opposition, 
 the Bishop at last found himself able to command in 
 his diocese a fairly general and unanimous support, 
 it will be necessary to say something of his conduct 
 in a matter which laid him open to much misunder- 
 standing and obloquy. In November 1847, Dr. Hamp- 
 den was recommended by Lord John Bus sell, then 
 Prime Minister, to succeed Bishop Musgrave at Here- 
 ford. Lord John Russell had been looked on as a 
 friend to the Church, and Bishop Wilberforce had 
 
 1 The Church in Eiujland from William to Victoria, A. H. 
 Hore, vol. ii, p. 353. 
 
76 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 particularly expressed his own couviction that he was 
 houestly determined and disposed, during his Premier- 
 ship, to do what he could to increase its liberty and 
 efficiency. But, as we have noticed, he had been 
 angered and scared by some of the late applications 
 and developments of Tractarian principles ; he thought 
 that these " tended to confine the intellect and enslave 
 the soul," and was inclined, therefore, to do what he 
 might to infuse into the Church a greater liberality of 
 thought. He was moreover strongly disposed to resent 
 any expression of Church feeling on the subject of an 
 appointment to a vacant see, as being a most un- 
 warrantable interference with the royal prerogative 
 and supremacy. Dr. Hampden, at the time he was 
 nominated to the See of Hereford, had lain for eleven 
 years under the censure of the University of Oxford, 
 for opinions expressed in his Bmnpton Lectures of 1832, 
 and more particularly in his Observations on Religious 
 Dissent, ISS-i. 
 
 As a first step, thirteen of the bishops, amongst 
 whom was Bishop Wilberforce, addressed a remon- 
 strance to Lord John Russell; and Dr. Longley, of 
 Ripon, and Archbishop Howley, also wrote to him to 
 the same effect. As we have to consider somewhat 
 fully the Bishop of Oxford's personal share in all the 
 controversy that arose over Dr. Hampden's appoint- 
 ment, it is to the point to establish, by a quotation 
 from the letter to Lord John Russell, the ground that 
 from the first was taken up by those who regarded the 
 Premier's action as at least most injudicious. The letter 
 urges particularly the point of view from which Church- 
 men must regard the nomination, and contains the 
 following passage — " We are persuaded that your 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 Lordship does not know how deep and general a feel- 
 ing prevails on this subject, and we consider ourselves 
 to be acting only in the discharge of our bounden duty 
 both to the Crown and to the Church, when we respect- 
 fully but earnestly express to your Lordship our con- 
 viction that, if this appointment be completed, there 
 is the greatest danger both of the interruption of the 
 peace of the Church, and of the disturbance of the 
 confidence which it is most desirable that the clergy 
 and laity of the Church should feel in every exercise 
 of the royal supremacy, especially as regards that very 
 delicate and important particular, the nomination to 
 vacant sees." 
 
 In seemingly unfit appointments, however, nothing- 
 remains for the Church but to protest, and to minimize, 
 as far as possible, the evil consequences that are at 
 any time apprehended from them. Now, in the case 
 of Dr. HamjDden, this was the policy that Bishop 
 Wilberforce tried to support and pursue. The letter 
 from the thirteen bishops was unsuccessful, as the 
 following extract from Lord John Russell's answer to 
 it plainly shows. " I deeply regret," he writes, " the 
 feeling that is said to be common among the clergy 
 on this subject. But I cannot sacrifice the reputation 
 of Dr. Hampden, the rights of the Crown, and what 
 I believe to be the true interests of the Church, to a 
 feeling which I believe to be founded on misappre- 
 hension and fermented by prejudice." 
 
 As Bishop of the diocese in which Dr. Hampden's 
 charge, the vicarage of Ewelme, was situated, it was 
 clear that the Bishop of Oxford would have to be the 
 instrument by which any process in the Church courts, 
 with a view of obtaining a decision as to Dr. Hampden's 
 
78 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 opinions, could be begun. Clergy in the Oxford 
 diocese bad ah-eady given their diocesan to understand 
 that they meant to move him to that end. Tlie Bishop 
 was anxious to avoid this if he could, though at the 
 same time clear and determined that the Church should 
 have some definite assurance as to Dr. Hampden's 
 orthodoxy. An extract from a letter to his friend, Miss 
 Noel, shows us one of the considerations that, reason- 
 ably enough, weighed much with him at this time. 
 '■' This wliole Hampden business," he writes, " is very 
 painful to me. It is so like hunting a man down that 
 I am at times sick at heart, and feel I could do any- 
 thing to show I hate persecuting him. Then it is 
 painful to me to feel bow probable it is that it will 
 cost me that kindly trust of the Queen which for no 
 end, but for itself, I do, now God has given it me, value 
 highly. But one cannot act on these things." Under 
 these circumstances, relying as he sometimes did too 
 much on his own personal influence, not being suf- 
 ficiently alive to the Premier's peculiar feelings in the 
 matter, and presuming on Dr. Hampden's desire to 
 clear himself publicly from the imputations made 
 against him, he himself wrote a letter to Lord John 
 Russell containing these words — Will your Lord- 
 ship apply to Dr. Hampden the rule you laid down 
 for Dr. Lee, and require him to disprove, before 
 a competent tribunal, the truth of these charges ? 
 This would satisfy the Church." In his reply Lord 
 John Russell writes thus — " Turn the matter which 
 way I will, I cannot see that the course pointed 
 out by your Lordship would act otherwise than pre- 
 judicially." "Thus," to quote from Canon Ashwell's 
 very full account of the whole matter, the Bishop's 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 79 
 
 first effort to promote the peace of the Churcli failed 
 utterly." 
 
 As regards the next act in this painful business, the 
 Bishop's well-meant endeavours to secure the peace of 
 the Church not only cost him his Court favoui', but 
 caused him to be much misunderstood by serious and 
 conscientious men of all parties in the Church. Worse 
 still, they gave his enemies a real handle against him, 
 and impeded very much the growth and extension of 
 the new and wholesome influences which he was calling 
 into activity in his diocese. 
 
 The Bishop hoped that Dr. Hampden's " Letter to 
 Lord John Russell," promised at the time when he 
 received his own answer, would prove to be " a pre- 
 scribed publication," in which he was to ask for a trial. 
 It proved to be nothing of the kind ; it made no 
 request for a judicial investigation, but complained 
 bitterl}^ of Tractarian jJersecution, and asserted strongly 
 the witer's faith in all the fundamentals of Christi- 
 anity. Ui)on this the Bishop of Oxford, at the instance 
 of certain clergy in his diocese, signed the letters of 
 request instituting a suit in the Court of Arches, 
 which would determine whether Dr. Hampden's views 
 expressed in his Bampton Lectures, and especially in his 
 Observations on Rcligioics Dissent, were in accord with 
 the doctrines of the Church of England or not. But 
 here, in his desire to avoid litigation in the Arches 
 Court, whose judge. Sir H. J. Fust, he pronounces to 
 be, in his opinion, " the most unsatisfactory pronouncer 
 possible of a judgment," he made a very false step. 
 In his final letter to Dr. Hampden, he explains that at 
 this stage of the bu.siness it was suggested to him by 
 he promoters that, the matter now being in legal 
 
80 
 
 BISHOP WILBER FORCE. 
 
 train, it was possible that Dr. Hampden might be 
 ■vviUing to render to his private suggestion, as Bishop 
 of the diocese, the satisfaction which would otherwise 
 be sought by a more painful process through the Court 
 of Arches. Thus it came about that, with the assist- 
 ance of the promoters of the suit, he drew up eleven 
 heads of enquiry, which he invited Dr. Hampden to 
 answer, and so to give a formal assurance of his ortho- 
 doxy. There was added a further request, that Dr. 
 Hampden would withdraw, for the peace of the Church, 
 his two objectionable books — " not as admitting their 
 language to be unsound," but because, in the judgment 
 of his Bishop and that of others, they did contain 
 unsound language. The result was that he got from 
 Dr. Hampden, with a protest against being asked to 
 answer these extra-judicial questions, " an unhesitat- 
 ingly affirmative reply" to the queries on his belief, 
 and no answer at all to the request for the withdrawal 
 of the books. At the same time Lord John Russell, 
 to whom the Bishop also explained what he had done, 
 wrote back what Dean Burgon calls a "saucy com- 
 ment" on the letter to Dr. Hampden, wondering that 
 a Regius Professor of Divinity " should be interrogated 
 upon articles formed, not by the Church, but by one 
 of its bishops, as if he were himself a young student 
 in divinity," and refusing to interfere any further with 
 " Dr. Hampden's judgment on his own position." Thus 
 Bishop Wilberforce had made the great mistake of 
 constituting himself at once accuser and judge, and 
 gained nothing from the unfortunate position into which 
 his good intentions and strange want of judgment had 
 put him. 
 
 It would seem that now at any rate the suit must 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 81 
 
 proceed ; but just at this time the Bishop learnt, through 
 a letter written by Dr. Hampden to the Provost of 
 Oriel, that the Observations on Bcligious Dissent were 
 not being sold or circulated with his sanction, but 
 against his wish, and that he had never reprinted the 
 pamphlet since the second edition was sold.^ A note of 
 Canon Ashwell's explains how this had a very impor- 
 tant bearing on the matter. The second edition had 
 been published as far back as 183-i, and, as being more 
 than two years old, could not be made the subject of a 
 charge under the Clergy Discipline Act. This discovery 
 induced the Bishop to urge the promoters, in accordance 
 also with advice received from Archbishop Howley, to 
 drop the suit. He had now, moreover, made a careful 
 study of the Bamiiton Lectures, and convinced himself 
 that, when read in conjunction Avith certain explanations, 
 which their writer had furnished to the public since 
 their first publication, they did not warrant those 
 suspicions of unsoundness to which they had given rise. 
 Besides this, further consultation with lawyers had 
 made it clear to him, that, as he expresses it, his action 
 in transmitting a suit of the nature of that now before 
 him was more judicial, and less purely ministerial, than 
 
 1 In F. W. Newman's book entitled The Early History of 
 Cardinal Newinmi, there appears what the Bishop of Newcastle 
 describes "as the most complete vindication yet published of 
 his father's action in the Hampden Case." Mr. Newman writes 
 thus — " In my belief tliis very clever Bisliop never did an honester 
 and braver deed tlian his acquittal of Hampden. Any pressure 
 from the Court is quite a false idea." He then goes on to 
 show (pp. 8.5-88) how Bishop Wilberforce was induced by Dr. 
 Hawkins to read Hampden's lectures, having previously "only 
 read Newman's elucidation of them." The result was that he 
 felt unable to blame Dr. Hampden, and at once explained to 
 Mr. Keble and others that this was his conviction, and that at 
 all costs he should act up(in it. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 lie had thuuglit. He felt that in transmitting it he was 
 supposed to exjjress an opinion that there was a immd 
 facie case. From the outset he had said that it would 
 not be right for him to pomiiote a suit ; and he had now 
 convinced himself that any charge made could not be 
 sustained. As the result of all this, he wrote to the 
 Provost of Oriel saying, "I have withdrawn from the 
 promoters of the intended suit the Letters of Request." 
 At the same time he still tried, through Dr. Hawkins, to 
 get from Dr. Hampden certain assurances that he 
 would alter, or exj^lain, some of the causes of misappre- 
 hension in a future reprint of the Bumpton Lectures. 
 All this negotiation failed utterly, as Dr. Hampden by 
 this time would only see in the Bishop of Oxford an 
 antagonist, and, acting now on legal advice, would no 
 longer say anything, or answer any questions. To quote 
 from Dean Burgon, " the Hampden business in this 
 way certainly reached a singularly lame and impotent 
 conclusion," and ended, as far as the Bishop of Oxford 
 was concerned, by a published letter to Dr. Hampden 
 announcing his final resolution on the matter, and 
 the steps by which he had come to it. 
 
 The question, however, was not one that concerned 
 the Oxford diocese only, but the whole Church. The 
 proceedings connected with it had been discussed and 
 published in the public press; and there was very 
 strong indignation felt amongst the large body of 
 earnest and conscientious men whose feeling Bishop 
 Wilberforcc had appreciated, and tried — though not 
 successfully — to represent, at his final withdrawal from 
 the business. The assurances that had been indirectly 
 won from Dr. Hampden seemed to them by no means 
 adequate, and did not indeed amount to anything very 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 83 
 
 definite. It was probably true that the opposition 
 raised did prevent any further dangerous appointments, 
 and did go to make it clear that the mind of the Church 
 must not, in the appointment of her bishops by the 
 Crown, be left out of all account. This, however, was 
 hardly felt at the time, and the Bishop of Oxford was 
 inveighed against by all parties for his efforts to give 
 due effect to his desire to maintain the divine and 
 spiritual character of the Church, and at the same time 
 not to endanger in a critical moment its connection 
 with the State. He had wanted to obtain legitimate 
 satisfaction for those who honestly doubted Dr. Hamp- 
 den's orthodoxy, and also to set Dr. Hampden right 
 with the Church by getting from him some public and 
 satisfactory explanation of his real views. Perplexed 
 by other considerations, such as the likelihood that he 
 would lose the Court ftivour, which had been so con- 
 spicuously his, and the fear he had of bringing vital 
 Church questions before tribunals that were not satis- 
 factory, he tried too much, and seems to have relied 
 unduly on his personal influence, and to have been 
 altogether too fertile in expedients. The outside world 
 could not credit him with disinterestedness; and while 
 the Record referred to his proceedings as " courtly," his 
 friend, the Bishojj of Exeter, exi^resses liis surprise at 
 the wonderful want of " judicial discretion" that he had 
 displayed. It is plain that he felt all this very deeply, 
 as he speaks of " the pelting " that he had to endure, 
 and ends a letter to his brother Robert with a half- 
 playful request, that he will write soon and tell him he 
 is not a rascal. 
 
 The whole matter weighted him very nuich in his 
 task of using his office to give a fresh vitality to the 
 
84 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Church ; and the circumstances might well have influ- 
 enced a less determined man to give up the effort to 
 bring out the good in the Tractarian movement, and have 
 made him acquiesce in the old as inevitable, while he 
 floated into favour and power as a supporter only of the 
 more Puritan element in the Church of Euoland. It is 
 to be observed that his conduct of the Hampden diffi- 
 culty was all loss to Bishop Wilberforce, and no gain ; 
 it made bis enemies bolder against him; it awoke in 
 liis friends a certain distrust ; it did lose him the 
 friendship of his Sovereign, and gave force and colour 
 to other misrepresentations made against him at court. 
 It was only natural that the Queen should have dis- 
 liked his fii'st action in the Hampden case ; it came 
 perilously near what might easily be twisted, or con- 
 strued, into an interference with the royal prerogative. 
 His later proceedings in the same matter were, though 
 genuine and honest enough, easily capable of a sinister 
 interpretation, and caused an unfavourable construction 
 to be put on other of his sayings and doings. The 
 change in his relations to the Queen closed up for 
 the Bishop of Oxford great channels of possible useful- 
 ness, and deprived him of a prestige, which would have 
 helped him certainly, with much less friction and 
 misunderstanding, to win acceptance for the view of the 
 system and position of the Church of England, which, 
 amidst much earnest and conscientious opposition, 
 specially from the Low Church Party, he felt bound to 
 maintain. 
 
 After the Hampden trouble, and the Gorham judg- 
 ment, circumstances brought up in rapid succession 
 in the Oxford diocese many of the questions which 
 involved a decision — how far there was a via media in 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 85 
 
 the Church of England, and how far it could be made 
 to hold both parties (High and Low) within its pale. As 
 regards the Gorham judgment, Bishop Wilberforce says 
 of it, that it only affirms that the Evangelical body are 
 not to be expelled, and in a letter to the Rev. W. Butler 
 thus summarizes his opinion of it — " This is to be 
 treated as a mere State decision. It practically leaves 
 the matter where it found it. It only decides that to 
 hold infants need some preparatory grace, analogous to 
 that which works faith and lepentance in adults, for 
 them to be due recipients of the grace conferred in 
 Baptism, is not so plainly repugnant to the Church of 
 England, as that the Court would be ' rigid ' in 
 excluding the holder of such a view. Now I do not 
 see that this leaves us in any way tainted with heresy. 
 It is very likely to mislead, and we must, of course, 
 strive for a better state of things." 
 
 We have already had occasion to observe the way in 
 which Bishop Wilberforce tried to do justice to both of 
 the great parties which exist, and which are meant to 
 exist, in the Church of England. In times of religious 
 apathy, they have gone on quietly enough side by side ; 
 but his lot was cast in times when men were not 
 apathetic, and he had to hold the balance between 
 them when the adherents of the two, seemingly antagon- 
 istic, but really complementary, views, thought honestly 
 that they must, for safety, cast one another out of the 
 established Church altogether. In the charge given 
 to the clergy of his diocese in 1860, the Bishop clearly 
 states his point of view in the matter ; and it was that 
 which, up to that date, he strove hard to establish. He 
 employs a luminous phrase to express his position in 
 the matter, protesting against the commonly received 
 
m 
 
 BISHOP WILBEEFORCE. 
 
 theory that the state of things meant to exist in our 
 Reformed Church is rightly called a compromise ; " it 
 is," he says, "rather indeed a combination than a 
 compi-omise." He then gives as follows his account of 
 what, on this jorinciple, the Church of England is — 
 " Both before and since the Reformation, the sacra- 
 mental and anti-sacramental view has wrought strongly 
 on the religious mind of England. It was a mighty and 
 anxious problem, whether the favourers of these different 
 views could be combined in one Reformed Church, with 
 articles and formularies free from dishonest ambiguity of 
 diction. This problem God gave to our fathers the 
 grace to solve. To a marvellous degree the Church of 
 England did combine all the men of both sections of 
 thought, who possessed any moderation of character. 
 The struggle indeed was long and often renewed ; but, 
 upon the whole, the fusion was most happily accom- 
 plished, and a rare inheritance of peace and purity was 
 bequeathed to English Churchmen. The matter had 
 been wrangled out ; and we still enjoy the good fruits 
 which have grown over the graves of controversies as 
 old as those of Hooper and Ridley, of Travers and 
 Hooker. This has been possible, because our common 
 formularies contain all the positive truth which is 
 needful for each class of minds, with no such contra- 
 diction of what either holds as would make subscription 
 to them dishonest." 
 
 It was this that the Bishop of Oxford had to 
 maintain, and being, as he states in a letter to Lord 
 Ashley written in 1850, " a distinctly High Church- 
 man," he was a champion of the sacramental view, 
 rather than the anti-sacramental. This drew down on 
 him the opposition of the other side as encouraging 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 87 
 
 Romanizing opinions, more particularly in a time when 
 the Englishman's natural horror of Roman errors was 
 intensified by many secessions to the Chui-ch of 
 Rome, and by an increased activity in the pi'opagation 
 of Roman Catholic doctrines in England owing to 
 improved Roman Catholic organization. 
 
 In the letter to Lord Ashley, to which reference is 
 made above, the Bishop makes allusion to the fact that 
 his toleration of Mr. Allies had been alleged as a proof 
 that he (though of the school of Andrewes, Hooker and 
 Beveridge, and opposed to the revival of a system 
 of auricular confession, sacramental absolution, the 
 sacrificial character of the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper, the denial of justification by faith, etc.) was a 
 Romanizer. A few words on the difficulties between 
 Mr. Allies and his Bishop will bring out clearly some 
 of the princii^les on which the Bishop desired to act 
 with those who, though in the Church of England, were 
 yet not of it. The Rev. T. W. Allies, Vicar of 
 Launton, had from the first shown in his charge more 
 zeal than discretion in his advocacy of advanced High 
 Church principles. In 1849 he published a book, about 
 which Bishop Wilberforce wrote to his friend, Miss 
 Noel, as follows : — " I am reading Allies', of Launton, 
 Journal in France. Very painful, very interesting. I am 
 studying it to see if I must notice it. It is the most 
 undisguised, unblushing preference for Rome I almost 
 ever read." The result was that the Bishop wrote to 
 Mr. Allies that his language as to the Eucharist seemed 
 to him to contradict the teaching of our Church, con- 
 demning, in the 28th Article, the Roman dogma of 
 Transubstantiation, He also complained of his tone as 
 to the Church of which he was a minister, as depre- 
 
88 
 
 BISHOP WILP.ERFORCE. 
 
 ciating and even insulting, implying alienation from 
 her, and addiction to tlie Roman Communion. The 
 Bishop's conclusion is that, unless there follows ex- 
 planation or unqualified retraction, he will feel bound 
 to call upon Mr. Allies to discontinue, as an honest 
 man, that ministry which he exercised on condition of 
 holding articles of religion, which he now publicly con- 
 tradicted. j\Ir. Allies made but evasive answers, and, 
 as the Bishop puts it, wished to make out that he 
 might hold all Koman doctrine except the Pope's 
 supremacy, and remain in the Church of England. 
 The Bishop, on the advice of Dr. Lushington (who, 
 though he felt reluctant to recommend the prosecution 
 of a clergyman, thought it was in this case desirable 
 and likely to succeed), determined, with the concurrence 
 of the Bishop of Lincoln, to bring Mr. Allies to trial, on 
 liis further refusal to submit himself. This intention 
 was abandoned, at the intercession of Baron Alderson, 
 who also obtained from Mr. Allies a pledge that he 
 would withdraw his book from future circulation, and 
 would teach and preach in future in the plain literal 
 and grammatical sense of the Articles. The Bishop 
 then took steps to circulate this submission among the 
 clergy, through the Archdeacon of Oxford. Thus the 
 matter dropped, much to the dissatisfaction of the 
 Evangelical party, jjarticularly as Mr. Allies the same 
 year joined the Church of Rome. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce's views on the observance of 
 Sunday ought to be mentioned amongst things that 
 made him distrusted by the more puritanical members 
 of the Low Church party. The matter had come into 
 prominence because of the Post Office Arrangements 
 (Sunday) Bill. As early as 184G the Bishop liad been 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 89 
 
 thought to be lax in the matter of Sunday observance, 
 because he had been present when Prince Albert played 
 at chess on Sunday, and, not considering this in any 
 way a breach of the law of God, had not protested 
 ao^ainst it, though he had asked to be excused from 
 playing himself, on the ground that, in the state of 
 English feeling on the subject, it would be highly 
 inexpedient for him to do so. In a letter written at 
 the time to Professor Walker, he defends the Prince 
 in these words — " The Prince, you must remember, 
 has had a Continental education ; he has been accus- 
 tomed to regard Sunday as it was regarded, I believe, 
 over all Christendom, until the English Puritans altered 
 the English feelingf — not as ' The Sabbath,' but as the 
 great Christian Feast of the Lord's Resurrection, 
 much as we keep Christmas." He goes on to say that 
 the Prince is a " thoroughly sincere Lutheran, and, not 
 feeling our mode of keeping Sunday to be essentially 
 religious, does not feel bound to conform to it ; whilst 
 he does feel that, as our mode of keeping it is now 
 associated with all our religious feelings, he would on 
 no account violate the religious feeling of others." In 
 the matter of the Post Office Bill, Bishop Wilberforce 
 took up the same line, explaining in a letter to the 
 Rev. C. Barter that he could not jDromote any petition 
 resting the obligation of Sunday observance upon the 
 Fourth Commandment, as he did not think that 
 Commandment applied to those in the Christian Church. 
 Thus, the question for him was whether our English 
 Sunday is to be a day of rest from labour, and of 
 religious exercise, or a day of amusement ; and he 
 desired, as his father had, to assert its spiritual 
 chnracter, believing the preservation cf this to be a 
 
90 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 main defence of religion and morals. His conclusion 
 is that he could not, therefore, consent to the opening 
 of museums or other public exhibitions on that day, 
 though he says that at the same time he is " very 
 sensible of the mischievous exaggeration of the puri- 
 tanical view of the subject." 
 
 In September, 1849, came the papal bull, establish- 
 ing a Roman hierarchy in England, and creating 
 Cardinal Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster. The 
 secessions consequent on the Gorham judgment, and 
 the fact that the Government had conceded titular 
 rank and precedence to Romish ecclesiastics in Ireland 
 and the colonies, coupled with this " papal aggression," 
 as it was called, threw all England into a ferment, and 
 excited Protestant feeling to a high pitch of alarm. 
 Bishop Wilberforce's dealings in the matter within his 
 own diocese, and his speech on the Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Bill, against the assumption by Roman Catholics 
 of any titles taken from places in the United Kingdom, 
 show us how he attempted, not unsuccessfully, to curb 
 dangerous and fanatical panic on the one side, and 
 unwarrantable assumptions on the other. The Bishop 
 presided over two great meetings in the Oxford diocese — 
 one at Reading, at which he says, in a letter to his 
 brother, " he rather expected to be blown up," and the 
 other at Oxford, in the Sheldonian Theatre. A form 
 of protest was there solemnly adopted, in a not 
 altogether friendly gathering, against the late usurpation 
 of the Bishop of Rome, and the schisniatical character 
 of his act in intruding a rival Church into ground 
 already occupied by the Protestant Church of England 
 as by law established. The claim made in the pro- 
 test, that " We are THE Apostolic Church of England," 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 01 
 
 was considered objectionable. The Bishop writes on 
 this point thus — " This is the gromid taken by all 
 oar Reformers, and I am not afraid of sharing it 
 with them. . . We are the Apostolical Church of 
 England, holding the truth as contained in God's 
 Word, and explained in primitive times by the Uni- 
 versal Church." In this way the Bishop of Oxford 
 made the question of the moment a means of clearing 
 away some of the misapprehensions concerning the 
 origin and position of the Church of England, which 
 were likely to mar her efficiency, and limit her com- 
 prehensiveness. 
 
 But Bishop Wilberforce's efforts to persuade the 
 Church at large, through his work in his diocese, to 
 remedy some omissions and defects, as it seemed to 
 him, in her use and interpretation of the true Cathol- 
 icism, by no means exhaust the story of his efforts to find 
 in the Church of England a modus vivendi for the two 
 great parties that have always, since the Reformation, 
 existed in her. He also struggled to repress dangerous 
 and un- Anglican excesses, where they seemed to him to 
 involve theories and methods that tended at that time 
 to lead men on to the adoption of the Roman system, 
 and theology, with all its errors. All this then, as now, 
 centred round the doctrine that men held about the 
 sacrament of the Holy Communion ; and, before briefly 
 discussing the Bishop's action in dealing with some 
 whom he conceived to exceed the Anglican teaching in 
 this matter, it may be well to establish by one or two 
 quotations from his writings, what, in his opinion, the 
 Church of England jDosition was. In his charges he 
 often alludes with great satisfaction to tlie increase of 
 the number of celebrations of Holy Communion year 
 
92 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 by year in his diocese. This following passage from 
 his charge for 1857 gives us his idea on the subject. 
 It runs thus — " The more frequent administration of 
 that Holy Sacrament is another means I would 
 mention to you for raising the tone of our ministry. 
 The system of the Church of England plainly supposes 
 a weekly Communion in every parish, where three or 
 four communicants can be found to receive with the 
 minister ; and whilst such a frequency of celebration 
 would probably diminish the numbers present at each 
 time of administration, and so diminish the evil of the 
 length of the service at each time of celebration, it 
 would, I have no doubt, increase the total number of 
 communicants." In 1869, however, he takes occasion 
 to express the apprehension with which he regards the 
 tendency, unquestionably manifested in certain quarters, 
 to change the idea of the Holy Eucharist from a 
 communion of the faithful into a function of the 
 celebrating priest. " Such a change," he says, " is, in 
 my most mature judgment, no lawful progress in 
 increased reverence for that great sacrament upon the 
 lines of our own Church. For in strict agreement as 
 we believe with the words of Holy Writ, and with the 
 teaching of the primitive Church, we do not regard the 
 Communion of the faithful as an accident of the Holy 
 Eucharist, which'may be added to it, or separated from 
 it, at will, leaving the great function of intercession 
 untouched by the omission, but as of the very essence 
 of the sacrament." As marks of this mistaken idea, 
 the Bishop calls attention to the desire with some 
 to make the celebrations at the principal Sunday 
 morning service gorgeous as a display, to the multi- 
 plication of choral Communions, and to the growing 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 93 
 
 custom of iuviting the congregation to remain through 
 the service as spectators, but not to partake of the 
 sacrament as communicants. There is, he states, no 
 ground known to him for supposing that prayer offered 
 up by those who are present at the celebration, but do 
 not partake in it, is one whit more prevailing than 
 prayer at any other time, or in any other place ; while 
 to him it did not seem that a surrounding crowd of non- 
 communicants added any honour to the sacrament.i 
 
 His views as to the Eucharist underlay the Bishop's 
 dealings with Dr. Pusey, in the period during which the 
 latter was not allowed to preach in the Oxford diocese. 
 Dr. Dallas, a leading Evangelical clergyman, writing in 
 1850, reproaches Bishop Wilberforce for forsaking the 
 Evangelical party, and throwing his influence into the 
 opposite side ; the letter suggests that if the Bishop 
 would only inhibit Dr. Pusey from preaching in Mr. 
 Marriott's church, he would thereby show that his 
 sympathies were not wholly on the side of Tractarianism. 
 To the accusation the Bishop's reply is this — "I have 
 always held the great Evangelical truths as the life of 
 my soul. I always opposed real Tractarianism, i. e. the 
 putting tradition into the place which Holy Scripture 
 alone can occupy, ceremony in the 2:)lace of substance, 
 giving to the sacraments the character belonging only 
 to our Lord, craving after confession and absolution, etc., 
 as sacraraentals." To the suggestion the answer was 
 already given. A month before Dr. Dallas' letter. 
 Bishop Wilberforce had requested Dr. Pusey not to 
 preach in his diocese except at Pusey. These pro- 
 ceedings in the matter of Dr. Pusey were by no naeans 
 acceptable to the High Church party, and tended to 
 1 Charge 1869, p. 31. 
 
94 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 draw upon the Bishop of Oxford disapproval from 
 those whose support he had had in some of his previous 
 difficulties in his diocese. Circumstances were gradually 
 leading up to what was almost the greatest trouble of 
 Bishop Wilbcrforce's life, the secession of his brother, 
 Archdeacon Wilberforce, to Rome. Letters make it 
 l^lain that, in the matter of Dr. Pusey, the two brothers 
 were not agreed, and there is a presage of the dreaded 
 outcome of it all in words relating to some passages in 
 the Archdeacon's charge for 1851. The Bishop of 
 Oxford writes to him — " I am very glad that you have 
 got comfortably through your charge, though sorry that 
 you think there is anything in it as to which we should 
 not agree. Oh, may this difference never be widened, 
 I most earnestly pray God ! " It was not till 185i that 
 the decisive step was taken, and so much did the 
 Bishop then feel his brother's decision that he seriously 
 contemplated resigning his Bishopric. The feeling of 
 growing disagreement between them did a great deal, 
 however, to increase the difficulties of the line that, for 
 the sake of the Church and his diocese, the Bishop of 
 Oxford felt bound to take up in the matter of Dr. 
 Pusey and his teaching and influence. 
 
 From the very beginning of his episcopacy there had 
 existed in the Bishojj's mind a distrust, from his point 
 of view, of the influence Dr. Pusey might exercise in 
 the position of leader of the Tractarian party, which was 
 practically thrust upon him by Newman's secession. 
 Mr. Keble and his friends claimed that Dr. Pusey 's 
 influence did really more than anything else to keep in 
 the Church of England many who, but for him, would 
 have gone over to Rome. Thus the following passage 
 occurs in a letter from Mr. Keble to Bishop Wilberforce, 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 95 
 
 written in 1851 — " My own conviction is, as I told your 
 Lordship before, that he has been the greatest drag 
 upon those who were rushing towards Rome ; that such 
 an abuse being inevitable, under our circumstances, 
 whenever the attention of thoughtful persons should be 
 generally drawn towards the doctrine of the one Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church, Pusey was raised, as it were, for 
 this very purpose, to hinder their defection, as by other 
 ways, so especially by showing them that all their 
 reasonable yearnings are sufficiently provided for in the 
 English system rightly understood." In another letter 
 of the same date, the same writer explains how that by 
 Newman's going, many who were ready to follow 
 Newman were by force of circumstances transferred to 
 Pusey, who kept them back for a time. " He was (as 
 Newman once said of himself) like a hen with a brood 
 of ducklings : no fault of his that they took to the 
 water at last." Now the Bishop of Oxford, while he had 
 a great regard for Dr. Pusey's character, holiness, and 
 learning, and acquitted him of heresy, did think that, 
 however unintentionally, it was his fault that many of 
 those who sought his counsel ended with Rome. In 
 1850 he writes to his brother. Archdeacon Wilberforce, 
 on the matter, and explains how he has begun to re- 
 proach himself with slumbering when he ought to be 
 banishing and driving away strange doctrines from his 
 diocese. It was in this year that Mr. Dodsworth, a 
 London incumbent, called in question the wisdom of 
 Dr. Pusey's coui'se in adapting for English use certain 
 devotional books of Roman origin, specially with reference 
 to the view that they suggested about the sacrament of 
 Holy Communion. Upon this the Bishop of Oxford 
 wrote to Dr. Pusey, calling upon him to give some 
 
96 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 distinct ami public answer to Mr. Dodsworth's charges ; 
 and also to satisfy his Bishop, by material changes in 
 the practices he encouraged, and in the tone of his 
 teaching, that he would no longer be likely to lead 
 people to the corruptions, or the Communion, of the See 
 of Rome. The result was that Dr. Pusey acquiesced in a 
 wish of his Bishop's, that he should abstain from preaching 
 in the diocese of Oxford. He was not formally inhibited, 
 and even if he had inhibited him, Bishop Wilberforce 
 makes it clear that he would only have considered 
 himself to be exercising a lesser power vested in him 
 for lesser instances, and by no means to iniply that the 
 man thus restrained was a fit subject for a prosecution, or 
 worthy of deprivation. Both Mr. Kebleand Mr. Justice 
 Coleridge interceded with the Bishop on Dr. Pusey's 
 behalf, and the latter stated his own belief that nothing 
 could so unsettle the minds of a large number of people, 
 at present quite loyal to the Church, as to see a bishop 
 engaged against Dr. Pusey ; he also went on to say, 
 that " though it would not satisfy him with Rome, it 
 would dissatisfy him with the Church of England, did 
 he believe that that Church did not sanction Dr. Pusey's 
 opinions." The Bishop's answer was that he was most 
 anxious not to take further steps, but that he was con- 
 vinced that Dr. Pusey's adapted books had eminently 
 aided, and were aiding, the Romanizing movement; that 
 there were elements in his private ministry tending the 
 same way, and that there were passages in his adapted 
 books actually censurable in a Church Court. In his 
 charge for 1852, the Bishop of Oxford went fully into 
 the question of the dangers of the adapted books, and 
 explained how they were likely to lead men, specially 
 the more uninstructed, into receiving and adopting 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 97 
 
 erroneous views ; he also noted all the dangers which he 
 feared from such a ministry as that which Dr. Pusey 
 seemed to him to exercise, although his own views 
 might nevertheless be in accordance with the Church of 
 England standard of doctrine. The fact that he had 
 done this, taken in connection with private assurances 
 from Dr. Pusey of the strength of his convictions, and 
 the earnestness of his labours against Roman doctrine, 
 seemed to make it right for the Bishop, as he re- 
 membered the large liberty allowed to our clergy, to 
 set him free to preach once more, which accordingly 
 he did. 
 
 Now one of the things, which the Bishop of Oxford 
 specially feared about Dr. Pusey's ministry was, that he 
 was one who encouraged those who came to him to 
 seek private absolution, and to practise regular con- 
 fession. He also feared that he put to those who thus 
 came to him questions which might have the efifect of 
 suggesting evil to otherwise innocent minds, of weaken- 
 ing parental authority, and revealing the lawful and 
 necessary secrets of private family life. As regards all 
 this we find in Dr. Pusey's letters such answers as 
 these — " I never induce or recommend any person to 
 come a second time " ; " All habitual confession is of 
 jieople's own seeking, and I see them very much less 
 frequently than they wish " ; " ' We do not object to 
 any manner of confession, public or private, saving 
 compulsion,' seems the language of all the authorities in 
 the Church of England." But the question of con- 
 fession in the Church of England, and its legitimate use, 
 was one of the points that the Bishop of Oxford was 
 compelled most frequently to explain. The Low Church 
 party often accused him of advocating the Roman 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 system ; and when, in 1858, the accusation against Mr. 
 West, of Boyne Hill, for improperly trying to extort a 
 confession from a sick woman, was declared by the Bishop 
 to be unsupported by evidence, and was thrown out by 
 his commission, an attack was made on him, headed by 
 the Times, as a favourer of the confessional in its 
 worst and most enslaving form. 
 
 In the Sisterhoods of his diocese the Bishop had to 
 set his face against it in an un- Anglican form, as the 
 following passage from a letter to Mr. Carter shows — 
 " If Sisterhoods cannot be maintained, except upon a 
 semi-Romanist scheme with its dii-ection, with its self- 
 consciousness and morbid religious affection, with its 
 exaltation of the contemplative life, its perpetual con- 
 fession, and its un-English tone, I am perfectly con- 
 vinced that we had better have no Sisterhoods." The 
 same difficulty faced him in a lesser degree at 
 Cuddesdon, in the College, and followed him even to 
 Winchester, where, during the last year of his life, he 
 was called upon to make three distinct public utter- 
 ances on the subject of private confession. His views 
 then were identical with those expressed in 1850 in the 
 letters which he wrote to Dr. Pusey, and others who then 
 corresponded with him about Dr. Pusey and his teach- 
 ing. The folloAving extracts from letters written in 
 1851 show us plainly what those views were — " She [the 
 Church of England] discourages such confession as an 
 habitual custom, and gives no authority to her 
 ministers to treat it as the common diet of the soul 
 under the ordinary circumstances of the spiritual life — 
 still less to press, with all the force of spiritual authority, 
 it and its repetition as a duty and means of grace, so 
 that tender consciences are constrained, and feel well- 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 99 
 
 nigh forced to employ it as almost essential to their 
 safety." And once more in a letter to the Rev. C. 
 Marriott — "There is no subject on which the differ- 
 ence of our Church and the Roman Communion seems 
 to me more important thaa this — no religious practice 
 as to which it is more dangerous for our clergy to trifle 
 with Roman tendencies. The difference, as I appre- 
 hend it, lies here. The Romanists altogether in fact, 
 and very largely in theory, supersede conscience by the 
 priest. They believe that none can safely manage 
 their own conscience — that the state, therefore, of 
 religious health is to practise confession to the priest, 
 and receive from him absolution and direction ; and I 
 believe that no single part of their debasing system has 
 produced such deadly fruit as this." It was natural 
 then that in his struggle to disentangle, for the use and 
 life of the Church in his diocese, what was genuine and 
 really Catholic from what was the product of Roman 
 error and corruption. Bishop Wilberforce should find, as 
 he did, peculiar difficulties and misunderstandings in 
 the prejudices and mistakes that gathered round the 
 question of the right use of confession in the Church of 
 England. 
 
 One great result of the Church revival, which had for 
 its cause the first phases of the Tractarian movement, 
 was that Churchmen became alive to the necessity of 
 providing some more special and systematic training 
 for candidates for Holy Orders. To this day the 
 Church of England is lamentably defective in this 
 respect, and enforces much too little preparation on 
 those who are called in her to the work of the ministry. 
 Three lines of thought, born of three sorts of error, have 
 all contributed to this result : first, the idea borrowed 
 
100 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 from Rome, that it requires but little learning to 
 administer the sacraments ; secondly, the notion that the 
 call at once makes the instrument fit ; and thirdly, the 
 natural sympathy that has too often been supposed to 
 exist between the family living and the family fool. It 
 has moreover been increasingly felt that the Universities, 
 specially since they have been open to men of all 
 denominations, supply no more than a good and wide 
 basis for a later special training. Hence has come the 
 multiplication and foundation of theological colleges ; 
 and one of the very first things that Bishop Wilberforce 
 planned for the woi'king of his diocese was a College 
 at Cuddesdon, where graduates might go and spend 
 some time in preparing for their Ordination. His idea 
 was that during their residence these men should receive 
 a threefold training in — (1) Devotion, (2) Parochial 
 Work, (3) Theological Reading. In his charge for 1860 
 the Bishop expresses thus his opinion of the use and 
 function of these colleges — " All the influences of a 
 well-managed theological college are in favour of its 
 inmates. The experience and personal piety of the 
 jiriucipal and his assistant clergy are brought to bear, 
 with a marked individuality of application, upon each 
 one within its walls. The student has everything to 
 invite him to, and to assist him in, theological study ; 
 he is taught, to the infinite saving of time and labour, 
 what to notice, what to learn, and what to pass more 
 lightly over. He becomes accustomed to regular hours 
 of prayer, religious reading, and meditation. The 
 unity of object and preparation which pervades the 
 whole body of students — though injurious in its effect 
 upon the mind before general studies and mixture 
 with men of dilfurcnt purposes of life and different 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 101 
 
 habits of thought have given to it elasticity and 
 breadth — is a most wholesome influence after the 
 course of an English school and an English university 
 on one preparing for an office of such difficulty and 
 importance, and which demands so absolutely, for its 
 due fulfilment, the whole devotion of the whole man 
 to its duties." 
 
 Round this College at Cuddesdon, and its work, 
 centred the last phase of the almost systematic opposition 
 which, in the period after the Hampden difficulty, the 
 Low Church party felt it their duty to offer to Bishop 
 Wilberforce's efforts at Church extension, revival, and 
 reform in his diocese. There was evidently a distrust 
 existing in their minds of the Bishop's dealings with 
 the younger clergy, an evidence of which is found in a 
 formal complaint, which the Bishop amply and suffici- 
 ently answered, one part of which alleged that he had 
 refused a licence, on account of the curate-designate 
 not agreeing with the Bishop's views on baptismal 
 regeneration. Thus the Low Churchmen almost 
 instinctively shrank from Cuddesdon College, and its 
 training, as a place where the younger clergy received 
 a stamp that, in their eyes, was as dangerous in its 
 tendencies, as the Bishop himself considered Dr. Pusey's 
 teaching. Moreover, the life at Cuddesdon, with its 
 quiet order and rule and its devotional character, was 
 strange in those days ; and with men who by tradition 
 and training had an unreasonable dread of Rome, it 
 did seem, in its possible suggestions of monasticism, a 
 part of the supposed conspiracy to unprotestantize the 
 Church of England. Men's minds had not learnt to 
 see how much vitality and force was to be found in 
 Catholic practices and doctrines, which, being dangerous 
 
102 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 perhaps in the ideas that were common at the time of 
 the Reformation, could, as it has been proved, be safely 
 and profitably revived in later times. It is certainly a 
 little difficult now for us to imagine the Times main- 
 taining that two bishops of the Church of England 
 would, if they were conscientious men, resign their 
 preferments, because they advocated their clergy preach- 
 ing in the sui-jilice. We have lived to see that much, 
 which was regarded in the Cuddesdon system as harm- 
 ful, was, and is, really helpful ; though we can also see 
 that the old opposition was, if narrow and illiberal, at 
 any rate conscientious. 
 
 In the Quarterly Bevietv for January 1858, the writer 
 of an article on " Church Extension " made somewhat 
 severe strictures on Cuddesdon College, which had then 
 been in existence some three years and a half Before 
 these could be answered, a circular letter was addressed 
 to the clergy and laity of the Oxford diocese, which 
 practically recapitulated the charges made in the 
 Quarterly, and made distinct charges against the ritual 
 of the College. The letter was written by the Rev. 
 C. P. Golightly, who had convinced himself that the 
 tendency of the College teaching was " to sow broadcast 
 the seeds of Romish perversion in the counties of 
 Oxford, Berks, and Bucks." He had already had a 
 correspondence with the Bishop in the preceding 
 autumn, and appears, in the face of the many perver- 
 sions to Rome which had followed from the last 
 phases of the Tractarian movement, to have viewed the 
 College at Cuddesdon and the training that it offered 
 with alarm, and specially the teaching and influence 
 of the Vice-Principal, the Rev. H. P. Liddon. The 
 Bishop's reply was as follows — " You must let me have 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 103 
 
 a full talk with you on the whole matter, for it is too 
 long for a letter. You are quite right in saying that I 
 abhor Romisli doctrine, but you are mistaken in thinking 
 that I like Romish rites and ceremonies. Everything 
 Romish stinks in my nostrils. I cannot allow the truth 
 of your remark about Cuddesdon College. Men have 
 come there with strong Roman leanings and left it 
 cured, but I do not believe any one has there acquired 
 any Romish tastes. There are, it is true, little things 
 that I should wish otherwise, but men must work by 
 instruments of the greatest possible excellence in 
 fundamentals ; it would, in my judgment, be clearly 
 wrong to cast them away for non-essentials. I think 
 my Vice-Principal eminently endued with the power 
 of leading men to earnest, devoted piety, but with 
 such a man I do not think I ought to interfere, 
 except as to anything substantially important." ^ This 
 does not, however, seem to have satisfied the Bishop's 
 correspondent; it still seemed to him that Bishop 
 Wilberforce's talents and zeal were being misdirected 
 to the support of views and doctrines which were, 
 and ought to be, wholly alien to the mind of the 
 English people at large. A further letter drew from 
 the Bishop a declaration that, in his opinion, Mr. 
 Golightly, and those with him, started from a principle 
 which did not really represent the true spirit and stand- 
 point of the Church of England as the Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church, and that the College might be trusted 
 to turn out then, and in the future, a succession of 
 hearty Church of England men. His own feeling was 
 that the views which were perhaps just then unpopular, 
 and from which the mind of the nation was inclined to 
 1 Life, ii. pp. 358—367. 
 
104 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 alienate itself, were really essential if the Church of 
 England was to be the Church. The attitude which 
 he felt it right to assume in the matter is well explained 
 in a passage from a letter to Mr. Golightly, which 
 runs thus — " If I believe, as in the main I do, that 
 the aversion of the nation is to the declaration of the 
 spiritual presence of Christ, and the personal presence 
 of God the Holy Ghost with the Church, and the 
 consequent truths of God's teaching through sacraments, 
 etc., I could not honestly obtain the sympathy my 
 soul naturally longs for, by in any measure clouding 
 the truth." 
 
 All this, however, did not satisfy the party and school 
 represented by Mr. Golightly ; they thought that Cud- 
 desdon must unprotestantize the clergy as far as its in- 
 fluence could reach. They could not rest, and therefore, 
 rightly enough, made the article in the Quarterly a 
 ground for again pressing their point. The Bishop then 
 appointed a commission to inquire into the charges made 
 against the College, which in its report, to quote the 
 Bishop's words in the letter in which he enclosed it to 
 the Principal, " completely negatived every charge." At 
 the same time the archdeacons, who drew it up, sug- 
 gested certain alterations in the service-book, and in 
 what they considered the too great ornament displayed 
 in the chapel. Bishop Wilberforce urged attention to 
 these, as touching points which were liable to create 
 serious alarm and misunderstanding in the state of 
 feeling that then prevailed. At the annual gathering 
 of the year 1858, the rural deans carried, by a large 
 majority, a resolution to the effect that they wished to 
 express their thanks to the Principal of the College for 
 the statement which he had made, in answer to a 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 105 
 
 question put to him at their meeting, showing how 
 readily he had complied with the recommendation 
 of the Commissioners. They also assured him of their 
 full confidence in his desire to conduct the College in 
 true allegiance to the Church of England. Thus the 
 agitation ended ; though it seemed to some not to be 
 without its effect in the resignations during the follow- 
 ing year of the Principal and Vice-Principal of tlie 
 College at Cuddesdon. The connection, however, 
 between the agitation and these events, if it existed at 
 all, was certainly a remote one, as the Rev. A. Pott, the 
 Principal of the College, found it necessary from ill- 
 health to accept a country living ; and the resignation 
 of the Vice-Principal, the Rev. H. P. Liddon, illustrates 
 another phase of the attitude that Bishop Wilberforce 
 felt it right to adopt toward the religious questions of 
 the day. 
 
 Tlie after-history of the Rev. H. P. Liddon has 
 shown abundantly his greatness, his ability, and his 
 force of character. It is not wonderful that he should 
 have exercised a remarkable and dominant influence 
 over the Cuddesdon students. Bishop Wilberforce did 
 not think that he differed doctrinally from his able 
 Vice-Principal, but he has thus expressed his own idea 
 of the way in which their theological standing-place 
 was not identical — " On the great doctrine of the 
 Eucharist we should use somewhat different language, 
 and our Ritualistic tendencies would be all coloured by 
 this. On confession, and its expedient limits, we 
 should also, I think, differ." Again in a letter to the 
 Rev. W. J. Butler, of Wantage, he writes thus — " Now 
 I do not think the abstract doctrinal difference between 
 us (c. g. on Eucharistic adoration) THE point. It seems. 
 
106 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 to me that between all wlio hold the objective presence, 
 with its consequences, there can be no fundamental 
 difference here. I could quarrel with no man who 
 honestly denied Transubstantiation, as to Eucharistic 
 adoration. It is not therefore exactly Liddon's doctrinal 
 views taken alone, as to which I feel the importance of 
 the difference. It is as much or more a moral question." 
 From the Bishop's point of view, the Vice-Principal of 
 Cuddesdon, out of the greatness of his personality, and 
 the force of his own earnest and deep convictions, 
 stamped his best men at Cuddesdon with a peculiar 
 mark. He seemed to feel himself obliged to go beyond 
 the Bishop, where his views were in advance of his ; 
 and the result was that there went out of the College 
 men whose views were, to use a now common ex- 
 pression, more sacerdotal than those of his chief. The 
 Bishop of Oxford's close connection with his theological 
 college caused it to be, as he himself puts it, that he 
 was judged of in his secret intention for the diocese by 
 the exact shade imparted by it to the men it sent out. 
 His no-party policy in the diocese passed for mere 
 temporizing, and the Cuddesdon man came to be known 
 from the non-Cuddesdon man, not only by his loving 
 more, working more, and praying more, but by other 
 " peculiarities." The Bishop feared that all this might 
 hinder the work he most desired to perform, and so it 
 was that, with a heavy heart, and much regret for what 
 he was losing, he acquiesced in the necessity that 
 caused him to accept the resignation of his Vice- 
 Principal. 
 
 He had still to face more fierce outcries against his 
 Romanizing proclivities after the Boyne Hill case ; and 
 there are also found letters in which at this period of 
 
DIOCESAN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 107 
 
 his career he took the Record to task for its per- 
 sistent calumniations. Then by 1860 came a period 
 of comparative calm ; his troubled diocese, for a variety 
 of causes, grew peaceful and liarmonious. The Oxford 
 clergy had come to understand their Bishop, and to 
 appreciate his character and work. Further attacks of 
 the same nature on the Romanizing tendency of his 
 episcopate called forth expressions of confidence, both 
 publicly and privately ; it began to be freely acknow- 
 ledged that, as a letter to the Cruardian expressed it, it 
 would be hard to find in any one, on or off the episcopal 
 bench, the like amount of ministerial exertion. A 
 pamphlet proceeding from the same source as the 
 objections that had been urged against Cuddesdon, and 
 called " Facts and Documents, Showing the Alarming 
 State of the Oxford Diocese, by a Senior Clergyman of 
 the Diocese," was circulated in 1859. But the diocese 
 in general took this rather as an attack on itself ; it felt 
 that its Bishop did, as he expressed it, " fully sym- 
 pathize with all that was positive in the views of his 
 Evangelical brethren, and knew their favourite truths, 
 as the life of his own soul." Clergy and laity, in large 
 numberg, came forward to assure him that they recog- 
 nized that he had endeavoured to administer his 
 diocese, " so as to maintain and set forward that Evan- 
 gelical truth and that Apostolical order which, through 
 God's mercy, is the precious inheritance of our own 
 Church of England." 
 
 These last are once more the Bishop's own words, 
 contained in his reply to an address of confidence 
 signed by more than five hundred clergy, and sent by 
 one of the oldest clergymen in the diocese, who had, in 
 fact, ministered under six successive Bishops of Oxford. 
 
108 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 The detraction and unpopularity of this Jong period of 
 struggle ; the difficulties of the Hampden case ; family 
 sorrows, in secessions of some of his dearest relatives 
 to Rome, and in the death of his eldest son — all these 
 things, as his more private letters and writings show, 
 worked together to make him more fit to render 
 important services to the Church, which he loved so well, 
 and whose real character and position he so thoroughly 
 understood. Under them he grew wiser, more appre- 
 ciative, and more skilful ; so that he could better bring 
 the Church away from extremes to a more healthy 
 and free place, and allay panic, while much good was 
 reviving in her, which had, not long since, been almost 
 dead. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 In the Quarterly Bcvicxv for October 1863, an article 
 by Bisliop Wilberforce reviews the episcopates of 
 Bishop Blomfield, Bishop Stanley, and Bishop Wilson. 
 The writer explains that he has chosen to discuss these 
 three " indicative lives," because he believes them to 
 contain in an eminent degree the materials from which 
 the religious character and prospects of his own time 
 may be gathered. In his opinion the history of our 
 Church traced through these lives is " a record of pro- 
 gress — of ]'eal and important progress; perhaps, even of 
 progress in every direction " ; and he summarizes this 
 in the following words : — " The Church has far more 
 completely than heretofore learned to realize her own 
 principles and position, and this in great measure by 
 the curative and healthful processes of honest and 
 laborious action. Many mists have been swept away ; 
 many questions solved; a far higher sense of duty 
 become general ; the idea of worship has revived ; 
 preaching instead of being undervalued has risen in 
 general estimation (witness the nave services in our 
 cathedrals, and the leading articles of our newspapers), 
 and yet it has taken far more its true second place in 
 
110 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 our ideas of worship, not because it lias sunk, but 
 because prayer has risen in our ordinary estimation. 
 With far less tendency to the corruptions of Rome, we 
 have put forth more abundantly at home the blessed 
 shoots of a loving cliarity. Our churches have been 
 restored, in some dioceses even marvellously ; larger 
 provision has been made for works of charity ; Sister- 
 hoods have been founded and matured, in which the 
 quick energies of Christian women, wedded to a life of 
 devotion, can be combined and regulated ; associations 
 have risen on every side for increasing church accom- 
 modation, the ministry of the Word and sacraments, 
 and the education of all orders and degrees amongst us. 
 Coeval with these signs of life, there may be traced on 
 all sides more unity, diminished suspicion, amongst 
 those who have not yet learned to feel aright the 
 degradations of party designations within the Church 
 Catholic ; and this with no repression of the open avowal 
 of legitimate differences; with the laity taking more 
 share than they ever did before in all Church matters ; 
 with Convocation sitting regularly, and discussing freely 
 every Church question, and daily more and more 
 referred to, both in and out of Parliament, as the proper 
 exponent of the views of the clergy of England." 
 Under these circumstances, to borrow a telling ex- 
 pression from the same article, it had become clear to 
 far-sighted politicians that the time was passed, " when 
 the Church could be esteemed as a poor relation, whom 
 it was not reputable to disavow, nor possible to acknow- 
 ledge without certain loss." 
 
 Now the change in the position of Convocation, that 
 took place between the years 1847 and 1863, had 
 contributed immensely to the quickening of the vitality 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 Ill 
 
 of the Churcli, and its consequent strengthening as an 
 establishment, to which reference is made above. It 
 was both a cause and an effect in this; for, in the 
 first place, it was the increasing power and influence 
 of the Church that made her desire once again to find 
 her long silenced voice ; and, in the second place, it 
 was the finding of that voice that gave her a power of 
 protest in times of danger and oppression, and enabled 
 her to claim her true position, and make new demands. 
 Our concern is with the part that Bishop Wilberforce 
 played in this revival, and it is not too much to say at 
 once that, without him, it could not have been as 
 successfully accomplished as it has been. It was not 
 that the idea originated with him, or that he was the 
 first, or only one, to perceive that, by making the 
 meetings of Convocation a reality, the Church of England 
 might find relief from many embarrassments and 
 perplexities. It was rather that his energy, his public 
 and private influence, and his great personal gifts, made 
 him able, beyond all his contemporaries, to carry 
 through the delicate and difficult negotiations, whereby, 
 in the face of much mistrust and dislike. Convocation 
 was allowed to wake up in some measure from its long 
 sleep. 
 
 Its suppression, some 140 years before, may be said 
 to have been the outcome of an idea which had long 
 been growing, that the bishops of our Established 
 Church had interests different from those of the Church 
 at large. Their actions and their appointments were 
 governed too much by political and secular con- 
 siderations ; they were willing to think that their seats 
 in the House of Lords gave their Church a sufficient 
 representation in the councils of the nation, and that 
 
112 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 they, without any thought of, or consultation with, the 
 clergy at large, were in effect the Cliurch of England 
 by themselves. Under Queen Anne there had broken 
 out a violent and unseemly contention between the 
 Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation. The Lower 
 House, even when they had right on their side, grew 
 accustomed to assert themselves in a way that was not 
 creditable or seemly. All this helped to foster the idea 
 which was made the very most of by opponents at the 
 time of the revival of synodal action in the Church ; 
 it was repeatedly urged that to call Convocation 
 together for business would only be to initiate strife. 
 But at the time of the actual suppression of the 
 Convocations of the Church of England in the reign of 
 George I., the spirit of the two Houses was better ; they 
 had grown more peaceful in a fuller appreciation of the 
 great and serious importance of their common work. 
 It seems clear that the Upper House would have 
 supported the representations of the Lower House 
 against Bishop Hoadley and his heresies, if the Govern- 
 ment of the day, fearing their unanimity in the matter, 
 had not brought it about that they were suddenly and 
 suratnarily prorogued by order of the King. From that 
 time till 1851 Convocation existed indeed, but only to 
 vote an address to the Crown at the opening of a 
 Session of Parliament. So the Church of England 
 suffered a great disability from its connection with the 
 State. It could not, as other religious bodies in the 
 Kingdom, regulate and discuss its own affairs ; it could 
 not ventilate its grievances ; it could not adapt its 
 organizations and arrangements to the exigencies of the 
 times. And all the while the bench of bishops, as a 
 whole, was well content to have it so; for the State 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 113 
 
 generally came first with them, and their duties to the 
 Government which promoted them had the paramount 
 claim. They did not, moreover, recognize that the 
 clergy at large had, or ought to have, a voice in the 
 affairs of the Church ; it was altogether convenient to 
 them that meetings of Convocation should be a mere 
 form. It is almost strange, under the circumstances, 
 that Convocation continued to exist at all, and that, 
 when the time came that bishops and Churchmen began 
 to desire a means of making the Church heard, they 
 had not, in starting something new, a task more 
 difficult even than the reviving of the old. As late as 
 1832 Bishop Blomfield wrote to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, "We do not wish for a Convocation," and 
 in 1883 to a clergyman, "I am much inclined to doubt 
 whether it be expedient to revive the ancient functions 
 of Convocation as at present constituted." It is to be 
 noticed also, that Bishop Wilberforce himself, in spite 
 of his later ardent advocacy of the revival, had an open 
 and growing mind in the matter, and was himself once 
 as clear as Bishop Blomfield as to the inexpediency of 
 an operative Convocation. The following passage from 
 a letter to the Rev. W. F. Hook, then Vicar of Coventry, 
 written in 1836, illustrates this — "Some recent meet- 
 ings, I see, have proceeded to petition for a restoration 
 of Convocation. It is a painful admission; but I am 
 persuaded that we could not risk a Convocation. The 
 examples commonly alleged fail, I think, of agreement 
 with our case. The Kirk Establishment of Scotland, 
 the Methodist Conference, etc., jwoceed upon generally 
 admitted and maintained general principles ; but the 
 great bulk of our clergy are still so ignorant of Church 
 principles, that we have no sufficient bond of union to 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 resist the necessary divisions which must always spring 
 from the shades of individual opinions, and we should 
 fight in the presence of our enemies." The circum- 
 stances under which Convocation had been suppressed, 
 made even friends afraid that a revival of its powers, 
 amidst the misunderstandings and oppositions of the 
 two great sections of the Church, might lead to harm 
 and trouble. When, in 1840, Archdeacon S. Wilberforce 
 preached the Latin Sermon before the Convocation of 
 Canterbury, it is plain that he sees its revived activity 
 to be yet nearer and more desirable than when he 
 expressed his opinion in 1836. At the same time he 
 clearly feels that the only real hastening towards the 
 desired end involves making haste very slowly and 
 cautiously indeed. All this is shown in the following 
 extract from a letter written after his sermon to his 
 brother Robert — " My sermon has gone off very well. 
 People seemed pleased. All is stirring here. There is 
 a great talk of amending the Archbishop's address, by 
 putting in a general request for a soon Convocation — not 
 that this may now sit for despatch of business, which is 
 thought, by most, premature." His final view on the 
 matter is well expressed in his article in the Quarterly 
 Rtviciu on " The Church of England and her Bishops " ; 
 and the passage in question will lead on naturally to a 
 short explanation of the methods by which Bishop 
 "Wilberforce laboured to give his ideas effect. It runs 
 thus — " Far-sighted men had, with more or less 
 clearness, foreseen for years that under the changed 
 aspect of the times, the restoration of .synodal action 
 was essential to the welfare of the Church. They saw 
 that the absence of free discussion between clergymen, 
 under the restraints of that sense of responsibility which 
 
THE EEVIYAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 115 
 
 is ever bred by the consciousness of being met in a 
 ' lawful assembly,' had already led to the prevalence of 
 far more unrestrained discussions, under no authority, 
 where the absence of all duly recognized chiefs gave 
 to those, who could fill it with least advantage to 
 the Church, the actual position of the guides of thought 
 and action amongst their brethren. Further, they saw 
 that tlie time was come when, whether to resist injurious 
 changes, the imposition of which might be attempted 
 from without, or so to mould from within existingr 
 institutions as to make them equal to the new require- 
 ments of an expanding body, the clergy must be 
 allowed to exercise their undoubted right of formingf 
 and expressing their opinion by full and free debate 
 upon all suggested changes and all needful improve- 
 ments in the system of their Church." 
 
 Now, before this only method of making constitu- 
 tional changes in the national Church could be once 
 more brought into play, there were a great number of 
 prejudices to be overcome. There existed in the minds 
 of many a profound distrust of the synodal action of 
 the Church. The call for it seemed, to the nation 
 generally, to be an outcome of the much-dreaded 
 Romanizing tendency, which ordinary Englishmen 
 discerned in the return to more Catholic principles and 
 methods, that began in the Church of England with the 
 Oxford movement. For this and other reasons many of 
 the members of Convocation itself were inclined to 
 resist, as a matter of conscience, the efforts that were 
 made to make its meetings no longer a mere formality. 
 In the Upper House the Archbishops and many of the 
 bishops were, at first, much more disposed to hinder 
 than to help all that was being done, and were ready to 
 
116 
 
 BISHOP WILBEEFORCE. 
 
 find reasons against the undertaking. Their order had 
 become quite unaccustomed in the past to co-operate 
 with the other clergy; and, with an ignorance of the real 
 facts, there had grown iip an impression that the 
 silencing of Convocation had freed them from a great 
 deal of harassing and unpleasing opposition, which they 
 could only suppose w^ould begin again when the Church 
 again found her proper voice. Besides this, the political 
 aspect of the movement was not regarded favourably. 
 It Avas not considered by the Ministry and Government 
 that, after all, allowing Convocation to proceed again to 
 business was but a matter of justice, according only 
 a liberty to the Church which was freely at this time 
 given to other religious bodies in the land. The aspect 
 of the matter which w'as most regarded was that it gave 
 to the Established Church a position of independence, as 
 against the State, which the traditions of the past were 
 supposed to prove to be of necessity dangerous. In 
 this way it was thought and urged in high places that 
 the proposed revival of Convocation was likely to 
 interfere with the royal supremacy, so that the whole 
 movement was regarded with marked disfavour at 
 Court. Here, as elsewhere, confidence had to be won, 
 and prejudice removed, by the wise and cautious use of 
 the slowly increased opportunities, charily meted out 
 to Conv'ocation by authorities that, Avhile they half 
 scorned it and its proceedings, wholly mistrusted both. 
 
 By 1850 the circumstances of the Gorham judgment, 
 the course taken by the Church authorities in the 
 ritual difficulties with Mr. Bennett, and the course 
 taken by some of the Ministers in the matters con- 
 nected W'ith the papal aggressions, brought matters 
 for the Church to a crisis. It was clear that if a great 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 117 
 
 schism was to be avoided, and the Anglican Church to 
 remain as inclusive as her constitution means her to be, 
 some regular and lawful control over her own affairs 
 must be given to her. The Church Unions already 
 made some of those irresponsible bodies eager to 
 promote discussions, which are, as Bishop Wilberforce 
 points out in a passage quoted above, so dangerous from 
 their irresponsibility. At the same time, there had now 
 actually come into existence a Society for the Revival of 
 Convocation, which consisted both of clergy and laity, 
 and gave the impetus to the action which Bishop 
 Wilberforce, with his talents and wide influence, was 
 conspicuous in bringing to a successful issue. As early 
 as 1847 sometliing had been done in Convocation. Several 
 amendments to the usual Address to the Crown had been 
 brought forward and discussed in the Lower House ; 
 and one, containing an " earnest prayer" that her Majesty 
 would require the advice of the synod, was accepted by 
 the Upper House, and inserted in the Address.^ This 
 was indeed the parvtda radix from which, in Bishop 
 Wilberforce' s able hands, much was to grow. 
 
 His first important action in the matter was in a 
 debate in the House of Lords on July 11th, 1851. At 
 the instance of the Society for the Revival of Convoca- 
 tion, a petition had been presented to the Convocation of 
 Canterbury from the clergy and laity of the province, 
 praying its members to consider the question of the 
 revival of their activity. A motion of Lord Redesdale's, 
 asking for a copy of this petition, brought on a debate 
 on Convocation. Lord Redesdale urged that, if Convo- 
 cation became a reality, it would do a great deal to 
 save the Church from the danger she was in, owing 
 * Perry's English Church History, iii. p. 296. 
 
118 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 to the strife of parties. The course of the debate 
 showed two things — firstly, that tlie Primate feared 
 meetings of Convocation for business; and secondly, 
 that the Government, as represented by Lord Lans- 
 downe, was unfavourable. The Bishop of Oxford replied 
 to Lord Lansdowne's argument, and showed that the 
 dangers feared were unreal, and claimed for the Church 
 that she should be considered to have a divine 
 character, and be freely allowed to exercise her ancient 
 rights. This debate did much to further the cause of 
 Convocation, and to remove jDrejudicial misunderstanding 
 in the country at large. 
 
 In the autumn of the same year a long correspond- 
 ence took place between Bishop Wilberforce and Mr. 
 Gladstone, and ended in an interview between them at 
 Cuddesdon. It was this that determined the Bishop 
 to a more vigorous effort still to get a fuller liberty for 
 Convocation. Mr. Gladstone, as a layman who was a 
 strong Churchman, thought that late events had shown 
 the bench of bishops to be very much divided, and had 
 also shown that, while they could not unite to defend 
 an endangered doctrine of the Church, they could unite 
 to check certain revivals of ceremonial, which were known 
 to tend as a whole to bring our worship a step nearer 
 to that of the Eastern as well as to that of the Roman 
 Church. He said that it appeared to him that " both 
 the particular question of Baptism and the claim of the 
 Church, as against the civil power, to decide or inter- 
 pret all doctrine, are, in the views of the episcopate as 
 a body, open questions properly so called." On the 
 whole it seemed to him that, though isolated individuals 
 amongst the English bishops did stand firm to the 
 Church's teaching, yet the great majority, including 
 
THE PvEVIYAL OF CONVOCATION. 110 
 
 the Archbishop, seemed utterly indifferent to upholding 
 any dogmatic teaching in the Church. The Bishop of 
 Oxford had his answer in the political considerations 
 that govern appointments to the episcopate ; the too 
 great readiness of men at large to accept as true with- 
 out inquiry charges against the bishops ; and the 
 unreadiness of Churchmen in the House of Commons 
 to give explanations on their behalf. At the same time 
 his subsequent activity in the matter of Convocation 
 shows plainly what was in his opinion the true and 
 best remedy. 
 
 When Convocation met, on February 4th, 1852, the 
 Bishop of Oxford, acting on the lines of the action of 
 1847, proceeded to make a fresh effort to waken Con- 
 vocation into life. The opposition offered by Sir John 
 Dodson, the Queen's Advocate, and the Archbishop's 
 legal adviser, marks out the next stage in the struggle. 
 It now occurred to some Churchmen, and notablv to 
 Bishop Wilberforce, that, after all, the legal difficulties 
 in the way of the activity of Convocation might not be 
 so great and insurmountable as was supposed ; it was 
 seen to be quite possible that ideas, as to the length it 
 could, or could not, go without royal license and Govern- 
 ment permission, might well have grown up, and been 
 acquiesced in, without having any real foundation but 
 custom. The Archbishop had prorogued Convocation 
 till August 12th, but before that time the fall of the 
 Government caused a fresh election of proctors, and 
 rumours, without foundation, went about that Lord 
 Derby and his colleagues, who had just come into 
 power, meant to advise the Queen to let Convocation, 
 when it met at the beginning of 1852, actually sit for 
 the despatch of business. Now the legal opinion. 
 
120 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 which had been sought and given, had already made it 
 clear that Lord Derby's intervention was not required, 
 and no further license from the Crown either, beyond 
 what was contained in the ordinary writs, which issued 
 as a matter of routine. It was the lawyers' opinion, 
 that in a duly summoned and convened Convocation no 
 royal license was necessary, except to promulge canons ; 
 and they also considered it almost certain that the 
 Archbishop could not prorogue proprio inotu, and with- 
 out the consent of his suffragans.^ 
 
 Fortified with these opinions, the Bishop of Oxford 
 set himself to do all he could to make the next meet- 
 ings of Convocation a real step in advance. In the then 
 state of feeling on the subject, it was above all things 
 necessary that all should be harmonious ; and there 
 were several points in which collision between conflict- 
 ing and opposing interests was to be feared. In the 
 first place, it was likely that the choice of a prolocutor 
 by the members of the Lower House might involve a 
 difficulty with the Archbishop, if they should select one 
 unacceptable to him, or he should insist on naming one 
 unacceptable to them. This was arranged satisfactorily 
 by the Bishop of Oxford using his influence on both 
 sides, and the following short letter from the Archbishop 
 to Bishop Wilberforce indicates the result — " My dear 
 Lord — Among the instructions concerning Convocation 
 which I received, it was said that the Archbishop 
 names a prolocutor. After advising with the Bishops 
 of London and Winchester, I have obtained the consent 
 of the Dean of Ely to be so named. But I have no 
 idea of disputing the question, if the Lower House claim 
 the privilege of appointing without reference to the 
 1 Perry's English Church History, iii. p. 303. 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 121 
 
 Archbishop. I am faithfully and affectionately yours, 
 J. B. Cantuar." 
 
 Again, the nature of the business on which the houses 
 should first engage had to be judiciously settled, and 
 Mr. Gladstone was consulted on this matter. He 
 pointed out the inexpediency of asking in any way from 
 the Government for anything that the Convocation 
 might after all be quite competent to arrange for 
 itself ; and suggested that a joint committee of the 
 two houses was a better way than a royal commission 
 for rearranarintr the constitution of Convocation. There 
 
 o o 
 
 were, moreover, symptoms of dangerous questions, such 
 as that of education, being introduced; and there 
 was a fear that the Archbishop's power, or claim of 
 power, of proroguing, might prove a fatal bar to courses 
 that might otherwise have been safe and wise. All 
 these difficulties were, however, overcome, largely by 
 Bishop Wilberforce's intervention, who, to quote from 
 the second volume of his Life, " by arguments and by 
 persuasion, induced the Archbishop to declare that no 
 petitions should be presented that did not bear on 
 Convocation itself." How critical was the moment, 
 and how much might be lost by a false step, may be 
 gathered from the fact that a meeting held at this time 
 at Fishmongers' Hall, presided over by Lord Sliaftesbury, 
 denounced all attempts to revive Convocation, and once 
 more maintained that it was quite impossible for it to 
 meet and be at all peaceable. 
 
 On November 5th, 1852, the Convocation met at St. 
 Paul's, and was then prorogued till November 12th. 
 When it met again the Bishop of Oxford took a promi- 
 nent part in the proceedings. He expressed his opinion 
 that, in days like those in which discussion could not be 
 
122 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 stopped, it was better to do that regularly which would 
 otherwise be done irregularly — it was better to call up 
 the proper conciliar action of the Church, than to 
 permit mere popular agitation. He then proposed an 
 amendment to the draft of the Address to the Crown 
 proposed by the President, but withdrew this in favour 
 of an amendment, moved by the Bishop of Salisbury, 
 which set forth that the resumption of active functions 
 by the legislative assemblies of the Church, if granted 
 by her Majesty at no distant date, would be productive 
 of much advantage. On tlie motion of the Bishop of 
 Oxford, there was also added to the address a protest 
 against the late fresh aggression of the See of Rome, 
 which amounted to a denial of the existence of that 
 branch of the Catholic Church which had been so long 
 established in England. He also moved for the appoint- 
 ment of a Committee to consider the subject of clergy 
 discipline, which was agreed to ; and members of the 
 Lower House were added to serve on it conjointly Avith 
 the Bishops, and instructions given to the committee to 
 draft a petition.^ After three sessions had been held, 
 the Arclibishop prorogued Convocation to February 16th, 
 1853, though a protest was made against this, as done 
 without the consent of his suffragans, by the Bishops of 
 Oxford, Salisbury, Chichester, and St. David's. Thus the 
 action of Convocation was, in a great measure, restored 
 after some hundred and forty years, during which, owing 
 largely to the ignorance and indifference of the clergy, 
 it had done nothing, and been practically dead. Govern- 
 ment was as yet, however, not inclined to sanction its 
 revival as a Church Parliament. The idea pi'evailed 
 that the Church and its affairs could, and should, be 
 1 Perry, English CJmrch History, iii. p. 305. 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 123 
 
 managed by the Parliament of the country, and it was 
 not recognized how unjust and undesirable this had 
 become, in the changes that had of late years rightly 
 given Nonconformists their proper place in the legis- 
 lative assemblies of England. After the so far successful 
 efforts of 1852, there was danger that much might have 
 been lost by the premature jubilations of injudicious 
 friends; and Bishop Wilberforce did good service by 
 keeping such from proclaiming their triumph in the 
 newspapers. In a letter to his brother, the Bishop 
 explains how the marvellous silence of John Bull, the 
 Guardian, and the Horning Chronicle was due to him, 
 and was intended " to keep all aslee}) as long as they 
 could act." 
 
 At the end of 1852 Lord Aberdeen came into power. 
 He had a great admiration for Bishop Wilberforce, and 
 once said of him that he ought not to have been a 
 Bishop, but Chancellor in his administration. This, 
 and the fact that the Bishop of Oxford's voice and 
 influence in the House of Lords were of importance to 
 the Government, gave him new and larger opportunities 
 for pressing the revival of Convocation, which was then 
 so vital to the interests of the Church. The Bishop's 
 letters show that he accepted the political situation as 
 a real opportunity for improving greatly the position 
 in matters ecclesiastical, as those well-disposed to the 
 Church were in power, — " the popishly inclined Puseyite- 
 Presbyterian," as the Record called Lord Aberdeen, being 
 head. At the same time the path of progress was 
 difficult. The Low Church dread of Convocation showed 
 itself in many ways, and, under the pressure of it, Lord 
 Aberdeen's first views about Convocation were, as the 
 Bishop of Oxford expresses it, "utterly dispiriting." 
 
124 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 He bad said to his son, " I can't allow tliem to sit " ; 
 and liad added, as his utmost possible concession — 
 "Very well; they may talk till midnight on the 16th, 
 if they like, and pass the Address if they can, but they 
 must not adjourn again. As it is, already, I have had 
 great difficulty in keeping down a clerical oioposition, 
 and have only succeeded by saying that Convocation 
 would be content with one more meeting." 
 
 In the course of January 1853, the Bishop of Oxford 
 had an interview with the Prime Minister, from which it 
 became clear that, though he himself meant well and 
 fairly, he was much hampered by his Cabinet. Lord 
 Aberdeen's ideas were in favour of doing if possible as 
 had been done for the past hundred and fifty years. 
 Bills, he said, might be brought in in the House of 
 Lords by bishops, and if they thought the assent of the 
 clergy requisite, they might be far better represented 
 than in Convocation by an informal meeting of delegates. 
 To him it seemed a mistake to stir up quiet waters ; he 
 did not understand, as the Bishop of Oxford did, that 
 the waters were not quiet, and that, in the growth of 
 Church feeling, the bishops, in their somewhat divided 
 councils, and want of sympathy in many cases with the 
 reviving Church spirit, had not the power to calm 
 them and keep them still. Knowing that any arbitrary 
 prorogation now, or unconstitutional repression, would 
 cause a disruption iu the Church, the Bishop wisely set 
 himself to do all he could to secure the adoption of 
 Lord Aberdeen's other suggestion, that nothing should 
 be done, even by prolonging the Session over one 
 day, to hinder the step already made being brought to a 
 safe and prosperous conclusion. He had been warned 
 that there was a great hankering for a Crown proroga- 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 125 
 
 tion, if not dissolution, even before the 16th, and under 
 the circumstances, wrote to the Archbishop to get him 
 to call together the Committee of Bishops, at the 
 earliest possible day, to meet the Committee of the 
 Lower House, and try to arrange heads of a Bill, which 
 might (according to a suggestion of Lord Aberdeen) 
 be brought into Parliament on the subjects referred to 
 Committees at the last Session of Convocation. On 
 January 19th he was at Windsor, and tried to secure 
 with the highest authorities a more favourable view of 
 the whole question, as the Convocation movement was 
 much misunderstood and misrepresented at Court. 
 His diary for January 19th runs as follows — " Long talk 
 with the Prince in his room on Convocation. Tried to 
 set plainly before him our needs, and internal action 
 our only remedy. He spoke as always, kindly and 
 plainly, and paid great attention to my view." It is 
 clear, however, that it was not accepted at present by 
 the Crown that meetings of Convocation could do 
 anything else but disturb the peace of the Church. 
 Mr. Gordon's account of a discussion of the matter at 
 Windsor is given in the second volume of Bishop 
 WilberfoTce's Life ; ' and it was suggested that the 
 movement might be made to die a natural death if the 
 most active advocates of it were permanently excluded 
 from preferment. The history of the past shows dis- 
 astrous results from attempts to govern the Church by 
 patronage ; and it is matter for thankfulness that, in 
 the present reign, men of all views and parties have 
 been equally placed in the highest positions. Thus has 
 been secured that balancing and moderating force 
 which, even in the obtaining of such an undoubted 
 ' Life, ii. pp. 168-9. 
 
12G 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 advantage as a real and not merely formal Convocation, 
 needs to be considered. 
 
 Meanwhile there was some talk of Lord Aberdeen's 
 Government issuing a commission to inquire into the 
 working and constitution of Convocation, and to suggest 
 improvements. This commission was, however, never 
 appointed, but Bishop Wilberforce's exertions before, 
 and at the time, secured that no attempt was made to 
 extend the meeting of Convocation beyond the one day 
 on w^hich it assembled, February 16th, 18-53. It was 
 then prorogued till August 16th, after voting the 
 Address and, amongst other things, receiving a report on 
 Church Discipline from the committee of the Upper 
 House appointed in the previous session. At the time 
 of prorogation the Lower House was in the middle of 
 a debate as to what was best to be done in the matter 
 of a committee on the Representation of Grievances, 
 which had been appointed, but had been hindered from 
 completing its work. The abrupt ending of the ses- 
 sion brought next day a letter to the Archbishop from 
 Archdeacon Denison, which contained the following 
 passage — " I venture to implore your Grace, humbly, 
 respectfully, most earnestly, not to permit for the time 
 to come that the Convocation of the province of Canter- 
 bury may be convened for a few hours ouly of a single 
 day, lest its very assembling at all degenerate once 
 more into that which it has presented to the world for 
 nearly one hundred and fifty years — into an idle and 
 empty parade and form, to the great discredit of the 
 Church, the gradual undermining of her efficiency, and 
 the impairing of her life." 
 
 In April 1853 Lord Aberdeen asked Bishop Wilber- 
 force to say what definite objects ought, in his opinion, 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. ' 127 
 
 to engage the attention of the proposed Commission on 
 Convocation, if it met. His answer indicates clearly his 
 exact views on the matter at this time. There was, he 
 felt, a widespread belief that the Church at that time 
 required the power of internal action in order to adapt 
 her machinery and organization to the wants and cir- 
 cumstances of the time. There was also a widespread 
 belief that the Church was, " quite competent, as to pru- 
 dence, knowledge, and other qualifications, to discuss 
 these subjects with every reasonable expectation of reach- 
 ing conclusions which would heal hearts, unite separated 
 parties, and strengthen what remains." An inquiry by 
 a fairly constituted commission would, he said, clear, or 
 tend to clear, the following questions : («) Are there 
 matters which for the quiet and strength of the Church 
 need its own internal action ? (J>) Is the present con- 
 stitution of the Church's synod such as to make it really 
 fit for dealing with them ? (c) If not, could its con- 
 stitution be so altered as to make it fit ? (d) What 
 changes should be recommended for its consideration 
 and adoption ? ^ The Bishop had intended to make an 
 effort to proceed to business when the prorogued Con- 
 vocation met again in August ; but the Archbishop was 
 set against it, and plainly told him that Convocation 
 would continue to be one of the subjects on which their 
 views did not coincide, as long as Bishop Wilberforce 
 desired its revival, and he opposed it. On an explana- 
 tion that the Archbishop did not mean by this that he 
 would necessarily resist the wishes of his suffragans in 
 this matter for the future, the Bishop of Oxford, in 
 deference to his wishes, decided to keep silence, and not, 
 on this occasion, to oppose or hinder the prorogation. 
 1 Life, ii. p. 183. 
 
128 
 
 BISFIOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Perhaps tlie fret and worry of all these small negotia- 
 tions, and the unpopularity and annoyance they involved, 
 were more trying than a more open and public struggle, 
 and due account must assuredly be taken of them in 
 considering Bishop Wilberforce's greatest service to the 
 Church. He was really almost the only person who 
 could have carried them on, from his acquaintance with 
 all the leading personages of the day ; and his per- 
 severance in them certainly spoiled the pleasure and 
 confidence of many intimacies which he valued very 
 highly. 
 
 The circumstances connected with the Bishop's efforts 
 to make Convocation in 1854 even a greater reality 
 were very trying, and he writes of himself — " Much cast 
 down in view of Convocation difficulties." The Low 
 Church party were more alarmed than ever, and felt it 
 their duty, through Lord J. Russell, Lord Shaftesbury, 
 and Dean Elliott, to do all they could with Lord Aber- 
 deen and the Archbishop to prevent any more successful 
 advances. At one time the Archbishop was nearly 
 persuaded to prorogue, not by his own authority, but by 
 a prepared form of royal exoneration. But at last all 
 went well, and the settlement that the Bishop of Oxford 
 made with Lord Aberdeen on January 4th was acted 
 upon. The Bishop's diary records the somewhat amusing 
 circumstance that, while he was actually in Lord 
 Aberdeen's house on this occasion, a note arrived from 
 the Primate, " fishing for a Government interruption," 
 and that he and Lord Aberdeen together settled the 
 answer to it. It was also agreel between them that 
 there would be " no hindrance to one day's business, or, 
 if need be, to a second." The diary for February 1st 
 records the success of this meeting, with expressions of 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 129 
 
 thankfulness — " To Convocation, where nearly all day, 
 and D. G. most marvellously succeeded, the Bishops, 
 who heretofore had been our chief opposers, moving and 
 seconding our motions. God be praised, whose work I 
 believe it is." An important part of these proceedings 
 was the appointment of a first committee of both Houses, 
 to consider what steps ought to be taken for the im- 
 provement of the constitution of Convocation. The 
 Bishop of Oxford, supporting the motion for this com- 
 mittee, explained how the enemies of Convocation found 
 an argument against it in the fact that, from its peculiar 
 constitution, it could not be taken in any way to repre- 
 sent the mind of the Church. The same circumstance 
 was also unsatisfactory to its friends ; and as the increase 
 of population, and alteration of the laws and phases of 
 society, made some internal action of the Church need- 
 ful, a more perfect representation of the Church in 
 Convocation was desirable, " though," said the Bishop, 
 " they did not desire the Crown to send its licence for 
 any other reform than the reform of Convocation." 
 Bishop Wilberforce's diary for February 2nd records 
 that Lord Aberdeen expressed to him very strongly his 
 content with the doings in Convocation on this occasion. 
 From the same source we learn shortly what was the 
 result of the next meeting on July 20th — " To Con- 
 vocation ; all passed most amicably. The Archbishop's 
 opposition appears to be very greatly modified, but his 
 extreme gentleness makes it difficult to be sure of his 
 inner feelings." At this session the report on Con- 
 vocation reform was presented, and suggestions for 
 making it more representative of all the clergy were 
 made. The question as to how effect should be given 
 to these recommendations was found a very difficult 
 
130 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCK. 
 
 one. The Bishop of Oxford, as we have seen, thought 
 that a Royal Commission might be helpful in the 
 matter. Others thought that Convocation had best 
 proceed to its own reform, and Sir Richard Bethell and 
 Dr. Phillimore, on being consulted, gave it as their 
 opinion that it would be competent for Convocation, 
 having obtained the licence of the Crown, to discuss the 
 question of the alteration of their representative body, 
 and to make a canon enlarging it, on which they could 
 act, after obtaining the approbation of the canon by the 
 Crown. At present the matter rests here. 
 
 In 1855 Convocation entered as it were upon quite a 
 new lease of life. Tiie Archbishop spontaneously asked 
 Lord Aberdeen in January for prolonged sittings, and 
 urged that there were many things, as for instance the 
 division of services, to which the clergy would pay 
 more general attention if recommended by Convocation 
 than if recommended by the bishops. Lord Aberdeen 
 secured a letter from the Archbishop to tins effect, a step 
 which the Bishop of Oxford urged as important lest he 
 should change. In his diary he records his great relief 
 at such an unexpected turn of events — " I feel as if the 
 stone we had so hardly rolled up the hill were 
 beginning to roll over. May God direct it aright." 
 
 The prolocutor of tlie Lower House, at the request of 
 Bishop Blomfield and Bishop Wilberforce, also wrote to 
 Lord Aberdeen, requesting two or three days for dis- 
 cussion, adding an assurance that he Avould have the 
 support of a large majority of the house in excluding 
 topics of an obnoxious and personal character. Before 
 Convocation met Lord Aberdeen's Government had 
 fallen, and the Bishop's view of the situation is a 
 gloomy one. He writes thus — "For Church matters 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 131 
 
 how dark a prospect ! The only Government which 
 could, or was minded to, be fair to the Church overthrown, 
 because six miles of road not made from Balaklava to 
 Sebastopol ! " Lord Aberdeen's statement as to the 
 views of his successor, Lord Palmerston, on the Con- 
 vocation question was — "He will do whatever is 
 popular. He has no feelings of his own on the subject." 
 
 When Convocation met on Feb. 8th, the three days 
 were more than filled up by discussions on the com- 
 mittee's reports. A debate took place in the Upper 
 House on the alteration of Church services, and the 
 Bishop of Oxford carried a motion that the rubrics 
 might properly be altered, and changes made in the 
 Lectionary. A new departure on this occasion was 
 made by referring resolutions of the Upper House to 
 the Lower House for consideration, and its opinion 
 was found to be unfavourable to altering rubrics, or 
 changing the Lectionary. The proceedings in the 
 Lower House were attended with some difficulty and 
 confusion, many maintaining that, till they were re- 
 formed, they were not competent to discuss matters 
 sent down to them. As regards the question of reform, 
 the Bishop of Oxford had moved that it was not 
 expedient at present to attempt any change in the 
 constitution of Convocation. He had been induced, 
 partly by Mr. Gladstone's representations, to look un- 
 favourably, after all, on a Royal Commission, as likely 
 to put the whole question into the hands of Parliament, 
 whereas Convocation had a status independent of 
 Parliament. 
 
 When the Houses of Convocation met again on June 
 28th, fortified by legal opinions, they agreed to take the 
 very important step of asking the Crown for licence to 
 
132 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 consider changes in their constitution, which might be 
 referred again for the royal approval and consent. 
 This was refused, and Bishop Wilberforce used his 
 influence, both in Convocation itself and outside it, to 
 induce the members of the two Houses to do what they 
 could, witli their existing powers, and in their unre- 
 fonned condition. The following note of a conversation 
 with the Archbishop in Oct. 1855, shows what was the 
 Bishop of Oxford's idea as to the right and best line 
 for Convocation under the circumstances — " He (the 
 Archbishop) assents to my view that, having done what 
 we can to get our instrument perfected, Ave must use 
 the present, and that time for full discussion is the 
 requisite." At the same time the Archbishop agreed 
 to the Lower House of Convocation sitting, unless 
 disturbed by Government, as long as was needed for the 
 discussion of the adaptation of the Church to present 
 wants. Before the Session of Feb. 1856, the Bishop 
 had some further correspondence with Mr. Gladstone, 
 who advised not more than a three days' sitting, lest 
 Government should interfere, and any of the Church of 
 England's slender chances be jeopardized by misuse. 
 As a matter of fact business on this occasion lasted but 
 a single day, though many notices of motion promised 
 no lack of business for the Session to be held in April 
 of the same year. On this occasion the synod of the 
 Southern Province was allowed to proceed in its work 
 unchecked, and the proceedings of both Houses were 
 now fully reported in the Journal of Convocation. In 
 his charge for 1857 the Bishop of Oxford speaks 
 thus of the work that had been, so far, successfully 
 accomplished, and steered by his wisdom and courage 
 through many difficulties into comparative safety — "The 
 
THE EEVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 133 
 
 two Houses of Convocation of the province have, as you 
 are aware, continued their sittings with regularity, and 
 their consultations with increasing interest, during 
 these three years; and I cannot but recommend you to 
 make yourselves familiar with the publislied journal of 
 their proceedings, and especially with the reports of 
 their committees, some of which have dealt, with no 
 little wisdom, with most important practical questions." 
 
 Thus the Convocation of the Southern Province, and 
 by degrees also the Convocation of the Northern 
 Province, woke up gradually into life. Bishop Wilber- 
 force continued as he had beofuu, and watched and cruided 
 anxiously all the early steps of the Convocation of the 
 Southern Province. One of the means that he used 
 most successfully was what he called his " Convocatioa 
 breakfasts," which aimed at directing to order, wisdom, 
 and amity the discussions of the Lower House. The 
 following account of them is taken from the second 
 volume of his Life. On the mornings when Convocation 
 was in Session the Bishop gathered to his house for 
 breakfast the leading men of the Lower House. 
 Breakfast over, the Bishop would bring forward the 
 subject that was for discussion in the Lower House that 
 day, and call upon one of those present to give his 
 views ; others followed, and the discussion ended by the 
 Bishop summing up. By this means, questions which 
 in the early days of Convocation might have created 
 very serious divisions were toned down. 
 
 In 1860 licence was asked for, and obtained from, the 
 Crown to alter the 29th canon, which had prohibited 
 parents from becoming sponsors for their children. 
 The Bishop of Oxford on this occasion expatiated on 
 the harm that was done to the now living and active 
 
134 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOECE. 
 
 Church by tlie present condition of the canons ; and the 
 licence obtained on this occasion opened up quite a new 
 field of helpfulness for the Church through her Convo- 
 cations. The Bishop, in a letter to Mr. Gladstone, 
 explains the movement in these words — " We have 
 agreed unanimousltj to an Address to the Queen 
 praying for her licence to make this canon, which will 
 then be submitted for her assent. That is all a canon 
 needs. There is no going to Parliament. . . . The 
 Lower House of Convocation has unanimously agreed 
 to our Address. Now to refuse this would be really 
 unconstitutional in the highest degree. The clergy 
 submitted to this limiting of their previous right to free 
 discussions in the reign of Henry VIII. on the implied 
 condition that they should receive this licence when 
 they prayed for it." In the same way in 1865 the 
 canons relating to subscription were altered in accord- 
 ance with the recommendations made by the Royal 
 Commission on Clerical Subscription. 
 
 In this, and in many other ways — sometimes by 
 suggestions and discussions, sometimes by initiatitig 
 desirable changes, and sometimes by giving an authori- 
 tative declaration to Churchmen on matters of faith — 
 has Convocation, though, even to' this day, unreformed 
 in constitution, done great service to the Church. 
 Many laboured to secure this end, but it was given to 
 the Bishop of Oxford in an eminent degree to be the 
 instrument whereby these labours were brought on to 
 success. His tact and influence guided Convocation 
 through the many dangers of its new beginning; his 
 wisdom and eloquence gave weight and dignity to its 
 debates. It was he who, with patient persistency, 
 procured the synodical condemnation of Essays and 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 135 
 
 Reviews; it was he who defended the action of the 
 bishops and clergy on this occasion, when it Avas 
 questioned by Lcird Houghton in the House of Lords, 
 and even sneered at by the Lord Chancellor; it was he 
 who explained to that august assembly how that voice 
 of condemnation had quieted men's minds, and sent 
 them back to their ordinary duties, " without being 
 stirred up by the feeling that their Church was resting 
 under an imputation of having allowed to pass uncon- 
 tradicted false doctrine promulgated by her teachers." 
 Here then, as in many matters, Bishop Wilberforce 
 had prevailed to secure that peace for the Church, 
 without which she cannot justify her existence by the 
 due performance of her work. 
 
 So much space has been given here to the stages by 
 which Convocation awoke after its " long hybernation," 
 as Bishop Wilberforce, out of his love for natural histor}', 
 was led to call it, because his share in them was the 
 centre of his episcopal work. The revived Convocation 
 has been since a safety-valve, by whose operation many 
 threatening dangers to the Anglican Church have passed 
 away without hindering or damaging the right working 
 of the organization, which belongs to the Church from 
 primitive and apostolic times. There are still many 
 imperfections, it is true, in its constitution ; there is 
 still much for it to gain in authority, and perhajjs 
 liberty, as against the State. But nieanwlale it is 
 really a voice of the Cliurch, and Churchmen are 
 content that it should speak to, and for, them. So it 
 has helped not a little to find a modus vivcndi for 
 differences of view and opinion, which, when Bishojj 
 Wilberforce's episcopate began, were not at all inclined 
 to dwell together in the Established Church of England, 
 
136 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 but rather felt it a sacred duty to cast one another out 
 by a rigidly enforced uniformity fashioned on the model 
 of each party's own peculiar point of view. 
 
 In connection with the subject just discussed, it is 
 natural to say .a few words on Bishop Wilberforce's 
 attitude to another difficulty that caused much dissatis- 
 faction to Cliurchmen at the time that the agitation 
 for a real Convocation first began. While, after the 
 Reform Bill of 1832, changes were being made in the 
 constitution of the country which gradually removed 
 disabilities under which many had hitherto lain, either 
 from their creed or their class, the bearing of these 
 changes on the liberties of the Established Church, and 
 its members, was not sufficiently realized or regarded. 
 Tiie relations tluit the Church of England had entered 
 into with the State were such that difficulties arose 
 at once, when men entered Parliament and held the 
 highest offices in the land, who rightly enough in many 
 cases felt conscientious!}^ bound to oppose the Church, 
 and who could in no case have a real sympathy with 
 her views and aims, and must necessarily regard as at 
 least indifferent that which she regarded as vital 
 and essential. To them the Church was, as she had 
 consented of late to be, and desired to be, a department 
 of the State, and they could have little or no under- 
 standing of her unwillingness to subject herself iu 
 spiritual things, as a matter of course, to the ordinary 
 tribunals, and to State control. 
 
 While Convocation was silent, and the Church 
 asleep, cases of burning interest involving questions of 
 doctrine did not come up for decision before the Courts 
 that had jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters. Church- 
 men wore content to leave things alone, and laxity 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 137 
 
 of docti'ine, as laxity of life, and carelessness in duty, 
 were allowed to exist among the clergy, unquestioned 
 and unrebuked. With the reassertion of the Catholic 
 character of the Church of England, which followed the 
 Oxford movement, it was only right that those, who saw 
 in that which was put forward nothing but an attempt to 
 deprotestantize the Church, should put in motion every 
 force available to check what they considered so highly 
 dangerous to all they held most dear. Thus prosecu- 
 tions in the Church courts became common, and ques- 
 tions were raised before them, that in the years since 
 the Reformation no one had ever thought of agitating. 
 The Gorham judgment made the members of the High 
 Church party realize how very unsatisfactory the com- 
 position of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 
 was, as giving a final decision on Church questions 
 which came before it. It illustrates the extent to which 
 it was thought unlikely that any vital Church questions 
 could come before it, that we have it on Lord Brougham's 
 authority that, ia the steps that transferred the appeal 
 in ecclesiastical causes from the old Court of Delegates 
 to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, it was 
 not realized that such causes were likely to be heard 
 in it.^ What was then done caused a civil court, 
 entirely devoid of any spiritual jurisdiction, to be 
 appointed to try ecclesiastical causes. It was quite 
 possible that all who sat on this committee might be 
 Dissenters, and it was almost impossible that some, or 
 even the majority, should not be. Bishop Wilberforce 
 gave much thought and labour to obviating the diffi- 
 culties that 'iiimt arise, and the disruption in the 
 
 1 The Church in Eiujla 11(1 from William III. to Victoria, Hore, 
 ii. pp. 344-5. 
 
138 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Church that might arise, from this state of things. It 
 had a great deal to do with some of those secessions to 
 Rome in his own family which caused him so much 
 pain ; and it was a subject anxiously discussed with 
 Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 Though a Royal Commission has since met and reported 
 on this important matter, nothing has as yet been done; 
 and Bishop Wilberforce had in his time, as in the matter 
 of Convocation, to do all he could to minimize the evils 
 that might arise from the unsatisfactory condition of 
 things. He was first of all anxious to prevent questions 
 that might involve doctrines from getting into the 
 Courts. As in the case of Mr. Allies he was ready, as 
 a last resort, to prosecute, but he aimed at getting men 
 to accept, if they would, the bishop's authority and de- 
 cision, and to maintain the peace of the Church, as in 
 his dealings with Dr. Pusey, and his conduct of the case 
 of Ditcher against Denison. This policy of his was 
 very successful in his own diocese, more particularly in 
 troubles about Ritualism ; it caused him to sign the 
 Declaration of the Bishops, when the difficulties with 
 Mr. Bennett first arose, and it made it possible for him 
 to write as follows in his charge for 1866 — " No 
 diocese, perhaps, from various causes, has risen more 
 than that of Oxford with the general rise of Church 
 devotion ; none has been more Iree from these peculiar 
 excesses." 
 
 Again, Bishop Wilberforce was very strong in insisting 
 on the real force for Churchmen of the decisions of the 
 Court of Appeal. In matters of ritual he was ready to 
 defer to them, as being herein concerned with that which 
 was expedient rather than that which was essential. In 
 his charges he urged the observance of these decisions on 
 
THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION. 
 
 his clergy, and altered his own practice into conformity 
 with theni.^ Wlien, as in the Gorham case, the judg- 
 ments of the Court seemed to involve questions of 
 doctrines, he was careful to explain that they were but 
 legal decisions interpreting the exact words of formu- 
 laries in reference to the special circumstances of an 
 individual case, and were in no sense authoritative 
 utterances of the Church. He has set this out very 
 fully in his review in the Quarterly of " Aids to Faith/' 
 where he shows how Dr. Lushington's judgment in 
 the matter of Essays and Revieivs did not condemn the 
 errors or the evils of the document, which had been 
 brought before him, but simply its transgression of the 
 law ; and that he was maintaining, not truth, but the 
 declaration of truth contained in the articles and 
 formularies of the Established Church. In the matter 
 of Essays and Bcviews, the thing for Churchmen to 
 rest upon was the synodal condemnation of the book by 
 Convocation ; and in his efforts for the revival of that 
 assembly the Bishop was seeking amongst other things 
 a solution of some of the difficulties that grew up out 
 of the thorny question of Church courts. 
 
 Lastly, Bishop Wilberforce did not rest from attempt- 
 ing a reform of the Court of Appeal, so as to make it 
 more satisfactory to Churchmen. In 18.59 he supported 
 Bishop Blomfield's Bill, which provided that all cases 
 that affected doctrine in ecclesiastical causes should 
 be removed from the Judicial Committee to the Upper 
 House of Convocation. "Puiely spiritual questions 
 ought," he said, " to be left to purely spiritual persons." 
 This Bill was lost, and in 1852 he, at Mr. Gladstone's 
 instigation, tried to revive it, but in vain. His fiu'ther 
 1 Charge, 1857, pp. 50, 51. 
 
140 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOECE. 
 
 efforts were directed to getting the Archbishops and 
 the Bishop of London removed from the Judicial Com- 
 mittee altogether, as their presence there made a really 
 secular court seemingly spiritual. On this question 
 he expresses himself thus, in his Qiuvrtcrly article on 
 " Aids to Faith " — " The mixture of the spiritual 
 element with the temporal in that Court gives to it 
 an unfortunate appearance of undertaking to decide 
 what is the true doctrine, instead of merely giving 
 a legal exposition to the language in which the true 
 doctrine is already defined." In his charge for 186G 
 the Bishop writes — " The grave question of the recon- 
 stitution of the Court of Final Appeal in matters of 
 doctrine remains unsettled. It is one, the issues of 
 which are so important that, provided only it is not let 
 to fall asleep, I would rather see it wait the gradual 
 clearing away of diificulties, than risk the dangers of a too 
 hasty settlement." Perhaps the wisdom of the Bishop's 
 advice is exemplified by the somewhat disastrous history 
 of the Public Worship Regulation Act, passed soon after 
 his death. Certainly his policy in his lifetime in this 
 matter shows how much he felt that the Church of 
 England must, and may, in spite of drawbacks in her 
 constitution, and in her present relation to the State, 
 go on doing sound and solid work, the performance of 
 which gives to her her best title-deeds. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BISHOP AND THE BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 
 
 In laying out, in the preface to the first volume of the 
 Life of BislioiJ Wilhcrforcc, the lines on which the work 
 in his judgment ought to proceed, Canon Ashwell calls 
 attention to the way in which the Bishop gradually 
 became the "representative man of the English episco- 
 pate, and in great measure the representative man of the 
 English Church." The seeds of distrust of him in hiffh 
 places, sown in the Hampden difficulty, and the un- 
 happy and ill-timed secessions from his family to 
 Rome, prevented his ever being Primate or Archbishop ; 
 and his succession to Winchester was described by 
 Mr. Gladstone as " a tardy and insufficient acknowledg- 
 ment of long services to the Church." But for all this, 
 he was by 1867 the "foremost man in thie Anglican 
 Communion throughout the world," and very much what 
 Dr. Hook, Dean of Chichester, humorously called him, 
 " the great Lord Bishop of England." It was on, and 
 through, the waves of great controversies that he floated 
 into this position ; and it was also from the midst of like 
 waves, that he showed himself the almost generally 
 acknowledged leader of the bench of bishop.s, and in 
 his leadership helped to win a new confidence for the 
 
142 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Anglican episcopate, to give it a new tradition, and 
 stamp it with a new character. 
 
 In the discussions and controversies connected with 
 the publication of Essays and Reviews, the Bishop of 
 Oxford's growing ascendancy first became apparent. 
 He drew up the letter in 1861 which was issued by the 
 bishops in answer to addresses asking them what steps 
 they as bishops intended to take in the matter, in which 
 letter they stated that they could not understand how 
 any clergyman could have published such opinions as 
 those concerning which they had been addressed, since 
 they were plainly inconsistent with an honest sub- 
 scription to the formularies of the Church. He also, in 
 ISG-t, when Mr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, though 
 condemned in the Court of Arches, had been acquitted 
 on their appeal to the Judicial Committee, obtained the 
 synodical condemnation of the book in Convocation, 
 and as spokesman of the bishops, defended their action 
 against Lord Westbury and Lord Houghton, in the 
 House of Lords. Bishop Wilberforce's defence of the 
 faith on this occasion, and some remarks of his on 
 inspiration, made at Oxford, very much modified the 
 hostility with which the Low Church party had hitherto 
 felt bound to regard him. Dr. McNeile said of him — 
 " In our conflict with infidelity, he is our invaluable 
 champion " ; and the Record writes — " We are often 
 painfully compelled to differ from his Lordship, but our 
 confidence has not been disappointed, that in a matter 
 so essentially affecting the foundations of Christianity, 
 the Bishop would be found true to the faith." The 
 necessity of combining against a common danger, 
 brought much more closely together the two parties 
 in the Church which had been most opposed ; and the 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 143 
 
 fact that Bishop Wilberforce was found, under the 
 circumstances of their union, an efficient and staunch 
 leader, did a great deal to secure for him that dominant 
 position among the English bishops to which reference 
 has been made. 
 
 It is clear from charges, sermons, and public utter- 
 ances, that Bishop Wilberforce regarded the publication 
 of Essays and Reviews as an outcome of a rationalizing 
 temper and tendency, which threatened, as he thought, to 
 rob the Church and religion in England of the comfort 
 and support of some of the most vital and important of 
 truths. As regards the book itself, he is careful to ex- 
 plain, in his review of it in the Quarterly, that he, at 
 any rate, does not rank its literary merits high. " There 
 is," he writes, " nothing in this volume which is really 
 new, and little which, having been said before, is said 
 here with any new power, or with any great additions, 
 either by way of amplification, illustration, or research," 
 And again he says — " Here then we leave the critical 
 argument, merely suggesting this as the probable 
 cause why no general refutation of the Essays has yet 
 appeared — that they are in fact but a stringing some- 
 what loosely together of the current, already abundantly 
 repelled objections and fallacies of German rationalism." 
 The popularity and danger of the book seemed to him 
 to lie, like the peculiar piquancy of Sydney Smith's 
 jokes, not so much in what was said, as in the recol- 
 lection of who it was that said it. The fact that the 
 writers were clergymen, and most of them in prominent 
 positions as teachers, made their utterances of doctrines 
 and sentiments, " which seemed at least to be altogether 
 incompatible with the Bible, and the Christian faith as 
 the Church of England had hitherto received it, to some 
 
144 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 delightful, and to others shocking." The Bishop, who 
 has written abundantly on this subject in two articles 
 in the Qaartcrly, expresses very strongly his sense, that 
 some at least of the writers in Essays and Reviews 
 ought, if they were honest men, to resign their positions 
 in the Church of England, as it was " imjjossible honestly 
 to combine the maintenance of their system with the 
 ministry of that Church." One of the Essay writers 
 had dealt with this question from his point of view. 
 He finds a liberty for himself in the matter, which is 
 thus criticized by the Bishop, and thus explained — 
 " Mr. Wilson proceeds accordingly to consider how far a 
 liberty of opinion is conceded by our existing laws, 
 civil and ecclesiastical. The result of his consideration 
 is as follows : — That as no one can be questioned as to 
 his opinions, the teacher may think what he pleases, 
 provided only he teaches as is prescribed ; ' as far,' 
 are his own words, ' as opinion privately entertained, 
 is concerned, the liberty of the English clergyman 
 appears already to be complete.' With most men 
 educated, not in the schools of Jesuitism, but in 
 the sound and honest moral training of an English 
 education, the mere entering on the record such a 
 plea as this must destroy the whole case. If the 
 position of the religious instructor is to be maintained 
 only by his holding one thing as true, and teaching 
 another thing as to be received in the name of the 
 God of truth, either let all teaching cease, or let the 
 fraudulent instructor abdicate willingly his office, before 
 the moral indignation of an as yet uncorrupted people 
 thrust him ignominiously from his abused seat." Mr. 
 Wilson was one of the four tutors who, when Tract 
 90 was published, raised a charge of dishonesty against 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 145 
 
 the principles of subscription therein advocated. The 
 Bishop of Oxford points out the irony of circumstances, 
 which made what was a justifiable and not unnatural 
 action then, a condemnation of the protester's own 
 somewhat similar evasion and subtlety at a later time.i 
 The question of subscription was one much agitated in 
 Bishop Wilberforce's day ; he sat on the Royal Com- 
 mission appointed to consider it, and wrote an article in 
 the Quarterly Bcvieiv on the subject. The old stringent 
 forms of subscription were, as he showed, the results, 
 not of clerical, but of lay, panic, fearing, in a time of 
 liberty, a return to spiritual tyrannies from which an 
 escape had been found. He advocated, and helped to 
 obtain, a relaxation in the stringency of the terras of 
 subscription, and also a limitation in the number of 
 those, who, not being clergy, ought to be called on to 
 make it ; but he had no sympathy with the temper 
 that, having undertaken to discharge certain duties, for 
 certain considerations, on certain conditions, was not 
 prepared to give up position and emoluments on finding 
 it impossible to fulfil its voluntary engagements. 
 
 An attempt was made to assert that the speculations 
 on religious questions, which had become common at 
 the time when Ussays and Bevicxvs were published, and 
 which were " characterized by a repugnance to all fixed 
 belief in dogmas as having been directly communicated 
 by God to man," were the result and issue entirely 
 of a reaction against the Church revival that suc- 
 ceeded the Oxford movement. In his preface to the 
 volume of Replies to Essays and Bcvieivs, Bishop Wilber- 
 force very clearly states his view on this matter in the 
 
 1 Quarterly Article, Essays and Reviews. Bishop Wilberforce's 
 Essays, ii. pp. 14(3-8. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 following words — " It is not other than a very narrow 
 philosophy, which would conceive of them as a mere 
 reaction from recently renewed assertions of the pre- 
 eminent importance of dogmatic truth and primitive 
 Christian practice, or even from the excesses and evils 
 Avhich have, as they always do, attended on and dis- 
 figured the revival of the truth. No ; this movement 
 of the human mind has been far too wide-spread, and 
 connects itself with far too general conditions, to be 
 capable of so narrow a solution. Much more true is 
 the explanation which sees in it the first stealing over 
 the sky of the lurid lights, which shall be shed pro- 
 fusely around the great Anti-christ. For these diffi- 
 culties gather their strength from a spirit of lawless 
 rejection of all authority, from a daring claim for the 
 unassisted human intellect to be able to discover, 
 measure, and explain all things." 
 
 In Mr. Baden Powell's Essay On the Study of the 
 Evidences of Christianity, he speaks of "a work which 
 had then appeared . . . which must soon bring about 
 an entire revolution of opinion in favour of the grand 
 jirinciple of the scIf-cvolving poivers of nature!' The 
 Bishop of Oxford's criticism on this statement runs 
 thus — " These words, ' the self-evolving powers of 
 nature,' convey no meaning to our mind if they do not 
 intentionally resolve the notion of a Personal Creator 
 into the misty hieroglyphics of the Atheist." The work 
 referred to was Mr. C. Darwin's Origin of Sx>ccies, a 
 more wholesome product of the intellectual activity of 
 the time at which it was published, than the religious 
 speculations that were put forward just then, and 
 Avhich were inclined, as the above extract shows, to 
 make capital out of its conclusions. The Bislioji of 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 147 
 
 Oxford wrote a review of Mr. Darwin's book in the 
 Quarterly, and also spoke against the theory he ad- 
 vanced when the British Association met at Oxford 
 in 1860. As regards his quaUfications for these under- 
 takings, it is to be remembered that the Bishop, 
 amongst his many other pursuits and duties, was an 
 ardent naturahst. He had written appreciative reviews 
 of the books of Mr. Knox, in articles entitled The 
 Naturalist in Sussex, and The Naturalist on the Sj^y. 
 His quick eye for a new plant or a rare bird was 
 always remarked by those who rode with him ; and 
 stories are told of his watching from the library at 
 Cuddesdon the species of tit that came to feed on fat 
 placed in a wire cage to attract them ; and changing 
 his wrath against a boy caught breaking down the 
 Cuddesdon hedges to a gift of half-a-crown, when the 
 offender assured him that he had kept a rare bird for 
 him. Thus he did not undertake his attack on the 
 soundness of the new views without some fitness for 
 the task; and there was more in his argument than 
 mere odium theologicum and natural eloquence, as some 
 of the scientific men gathered at Oxford were disposed 
 to tliink. Mr. Darwin himself says of the article on 
 which his speech was based — "I have just read the 
 Quarterly. It is uncommonly clever ; it picks out with 
 skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward 
 all the ditficulties." ^ Bat the Bishoj) did write what 
 he wrote and say what he said, because to him it 
 seemed then that, while the theory put forward was 
 not in accordance with scientific fact, it also tended 
 to views which were not in accord with the teacliinsrs 
 of revelation as to man's real state, nature, and 
 ^ Life (if Dariviii, ii. p. 325. 
 
148 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 position. He feared it, and perhaps feared it more 
 because of the dangerous atmosphere of thought and 
 temper in religious matters into which it was, in his 
 opinion, brought. However, therefore, the true bear- 
 ings of the theory may be seen and understood now, 
 it is to be remembered, in considering Bishop Wilber- 
 force's first attitude to it, that it was for him involved 
 indirectly in the struggle, that he was making at the 
 time of its publication, for questioned and threatened 
 truth. It rejoiced him to feel that he could write 
 thus concerning Mr. Darwin's book — " We think it 
 difficult to find a theory fuller of assumptions — and of 
 assumptions not grounded upon alleged facts in nature, 
 but which are absolutely opposed to all the facts we 
 have been able to observe." ^ His feeling was that 
 the conclusions reached in the Origin of Species did in 
 eflfect banish God from nature, and so it was that he 
 penned the following passage — "And so Mr. Darwin 
 not only finds in it {i. e. nature) those bungling con- 
 trivances which his own greater skill could amend, but 
 he stands aghast before its mightier phenomena. The 
 presence of death and famine seems to him inconceiv- 
 able on the ordinary idea of creation ; and he looks 
 almost aghast at them until reconciled to their presence 
 by his own theory that ' a ratio of increase so high as 
 to lead to a struggle for life and, as a consequence, to 
 natural selection, entailino- diverorence of character and 
 the extinction of less improved forms, is decidedly 
 followed by the most exalted object which we are 
 capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the 
 higher animals.' But we can give him a simpler 
 solution still for the presence of these strange forms of 
 ^ Ussays, Bishop Wilberforce, ii. p. 97. 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 149 
 
 imperfection and suffering amongst the works of God. 
 We can tell him of the strong shudder which ran 
 through all this world when its head and ruler fell." ^ 
 In the matter then of his unfavourable criticism of 
 Mr. Darwin's first great book, Bishop Wilberforce spoke 
 because he believed, and was influenced by, the issues 
 involved in the controversy with what has been called 
 the Broad Church party in the Church, in which, in 
 common with the members of the High and Low 
 Church party, he was then engaged. 
 
 His wide sympathy with all that was real and earnest 
 in thought and action had made him find friends in all 
 schools of thought. It bears on his fitness to guide the 
 assertion of the truth in the Church of England, which 
 he felt necessary at the Essays and Beviews period, to 
 remember that he knew and understood those whom he 
 then opposed. In his early days men had found fault 
 with him for his connection with the Sterling Club, 
 and his meeting there with some who held broad and 
 free opinions on religious matters. He had used his 
 influence, unsuccessfully, to prevent Professor Maurice 
 from being called upon to resign his professorship at 
 King's Collesje because of the unsoundness of his views, 
 holding that explanation might solve the difficulty. 
 He had also had an intimacy with Baron Bunsen, and 
 had entered into his ideas that the Jerusalem Bishopric 
 Bill might be a means of restoring episcopacy in 
 Prussia. Dean Burgon laments his " seeming allowance 
 (sometimes in conversation) of German authors whose 
 writings the Church deservedly holds in abhorrence." 
 This all goes to make it clear that conviction, not 
 narrowness, governed his utterances, and guided his 
 1 Essays, Bishop Wilberforce, ii. p. 97. 
 
150 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 actions, when he felt himself compelled to oppose the 
 movement which, in 1860 and the years that followed, 
 seemed to threaten the rij^ht maintaining of vital 
 truths, and to call on him to assist in "banishing and 
 driving away strange doctrines from his diocese," and 
 from the Church. 
 
 The Bishop in his charge for 1860 summarizes some 
 of the dangers that seemed to him to threaten from 
 Rationalism. He writes thus — " Surely this is not a 
 time when any of us would do anything which, by ever 
 so remote a consequence, might tend to weaken our 
 Church's hold, or obscure its statement, of fundamental 
 truth. Are there not rather, brethren, signs enough 
 abroad amongst us of special danger from this side to 
 make us drop all lesser differences, and combine together 
 as one man in striving earnestly for the faith once 
 delivered to the saints; when from within our own 
 encampment are heard voices declaring that our old 
 belief in the atonement wrought out for us by the 
 sacrifice of the Cross is nothing better than an ignorant 
 misconception, injurious to the character of God ; that 
 the miracles and prophecies of Scripture are parts of ' an 
 irrational supernaturalism,' ^which it is the duty of a 
 ' remorseless criticism ' to expose." 
 
 In the Bishop of Oxford's view the central point in 
 the religious controversies of the time in which Essays 
 and Revieivs were published was the question of the 
 inspiration of Scripture. The Essay writers made much 
 of the necessity of assuming in ourselves a " verifying 
 faculty," in dealing with Scripture. This, and the 
 notion that Holy Scripture is to be treated as any other 
 book, were, as the Bishop thought, the idea of the whole 
 volume; and he understands by the "verifying faculty" 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 151 
 
 the power that was supposed to be in each maa 
 of deciding what is, and what is not, true in the 
 inspired record.^ It seemed to him, as he explains at 
 the end of his Quarterly article on Essays and Reviews 
 that it was being asked that a definition of inspiration 
 should be given, exact far beyond what it is possible to 
 have. His words on the subject are — " We maintain 
 that this craving for ' a theory of inspiration ' is itself a 
 part of the disease we have to treat. In this sense of 
 the word, Holy Scripture has never laid down any 
 theory of inspiration ; the Church has never pro- 
 pounded one; and there are plain and, we think, 
 sufficient reasons for this reticence. On this same 
 subject he expressed himself several times at this crisis ; 
 and in a letter to the Guardian, written to clear up 
 misinterpretations of some remarks of his made at a 
 large conference held at Oxford in 1864, he explains 
 briefly his belief to be that " the whole Bible comes to 
 us as the Word of God under the sanction of God the 
 Holy Ghost; that we cannot pick and choose amidst 
 its contents ; that all is God's Word to us. Still the 
 Holy Ghost speaks to men in it in divers manners, 
 sometimes making a merely mechanical use of the 
 human instrument to convey God's message, and some- 
 times possessing the human instrument with a complete 
 knowledge of what he had to speak, leaving him to 
 express it under His guardianship according to the 
 natural use of the human faculties." It seemed to the 
 Bishop that, if this was grasped, the difficulties which 
 beset the orthodox view, owing to what was called the 
 theory of " verbal inspiration," would be overcome ; and 
 that men would realize what was the essential differ- 
 1 Esmtjs, Bishop Wilberforce, ii. p. 114. 
 
152 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORGE. 
 
 ence between Holy Scripture and other books, namely, 
 that "as all truth comes from God, 'other books' may in 
 a sense be said to be inspired because they are true, 
 but Holy Scripture alone can be affirmed to be true 
 because it is inspired." ^ Such were Bishop Wilberforce's 
 views about this central point; it remains to see briefly 
 how he steered the Church of England in other ways 
 through the time of difficulty which was characterized 
 by a tendency to think lightly of creeds and dogmas, and 
 to trust in religious questions too entirely to reason. 
 
 The Bishop has a word of warning, first of all, for 
 those who hoped that a high morality could be main- 
 tained without the support and sanction of definite 
 teaching as to God — " The articles of the Christian 
 creed," he says, " are in truth as much the basis of 
 Christian morals as of Christian faith." ^ And again, 
 "Remove the theology, and you take away the moi-al- 
 ity." ^ In two University sermons published with the 
 title of " The Revelation of God the Probation of Man," 
 he protests against the tendency shown to suggest 
 doubts to the young, and to treat them, not as a disease, 
 but a state to be encouraged, and " a sacred agony of 
 man's nature in its noblest and most typical embodi- 
 ments." * Against this he urges as a principle that 
 "doubts about revelation are to be met like any other 
 temptations to evil thoughts." Not, however, that doubt, 
 in itself, is to be regarded as sinful, but the allowance and 
 encouragement of doubting ; for it is, as he explains, a 
 peculiar form of temptation, and ought therefore to be 
 resisted as a temptation. He has also a word to 
 say against those who urged that the putting aside of 
 
 1 Life, iii. p. 149. ^ fjssays, Bishop Wilberforce, ii. p. 160. 
 3 rbi'L p. 161. ^ Hjid. p. 210. 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 153 
 
 differences, wliich he advocated in the face of a common 
 danger, was too much aa attempt to unite, by a commun- 
 ity of present hatred, those who had before represented 
 really different sides of the common truth. His answer 
 is, that it is " the agreement rather of men, who have 
 inherited jointly some vast treasure, and who in times 
 of security have differed, it may be, something in their 
 several estimates of the value of itsvarious parts, to defend 
 in a moment of danger the priceless deposit against 
 the common robber." Thus their bond of union was not 
 hatred of the assailant, but love for that which he assails. 
 
 In the whole matter there were three things at which 
 Bishop Wilberforce aimed, so as to get the truth 
 established and maintained. Firstly, at direct assault on 
 the assailants in defence of the threatened doctrines. 
 Secondly, at the calm, comprehensive, and scholarlike 
 declaration of positive truth upon all the matters in 
 dispute. Lastly, at " the distinct, solemn, and if need 
 were, severe decision of authority, that assertions of the 
 character found in Essays and Reviews could not be 
 put forward as possibly true, or even advanced as admit- 
 ting of question by honest men, who were bound by 
 voluntary obligations to teach the Christian revelation 
 as the truth of God." It was to this end that he moved 
 Convocation to do as it had not been able to do for a 
 hundred and fifty years, and censure and condemn the 
 book tfiat caused the offence, and so, by implication, the 
 phase of thought to which it belonged. And the result 
 has been here, as so often in the long and chequered 
 history of Christ's Church, that the attempts of teachers 
 of error have been overruled, and have led, as in the case 
 of Arius, to a more complete assertion, understanding, 
 and triumph of the impugned truth. 
 
154 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 There are yet one or two other actions of Bishop 
 Wilberforce which should be mentioned here, as belong- 
 ing to his defence and maintenance of the authority of 
 Scripture, and the creeds of the Church. The temper 
 of the times towards this authority led him to resist 
 the attempts to alter the Prayer-Book, so as to make 
 the Church of England more comprehensive, that there 
 might be included in the Established Church, as it was 
 urged, a " Living'stone or a Havelock." He would have 
 no such sacrifices of truth as were thus proposed, and, 
 knowing the danger of even more sweeping demands 
 and comprehensions, advised to let the quiet waters 
 remain still and leave the Prayer-Book alone. We 
 can trace his reverence for Scripture in his dealings 
 with the Divorce Bill in 1856, when he fought against 
 provisions such as that allowing the re-marriage of 
 divorced persons during the lifetime of the divorced 
 husband or wife, as being in opposition to the Word of 
 God which is embodied in the law of our Church. 
 Again in 1872 he resisted proposals that would have 
 led to the practical shelving of the Athanasian Creed, 
 The time was a critical one, as the Broad Church party 
 were urgent for a change in the use of the Creed to the 
 extent, at least, of making it always alternative with the 
 Ajjostles' Creed. The High Churchmen, on their side, 
 threatened a serious defection from the Church of 
 England if the Creed were touched. The situation was 
 further complicated by the fact that the Letter of Busi- 
 ness sent to Convocation, when it met at that time, 
 gave it a new liberty in allowing its members to debate, 
 consult, and agree upon points, matters, and things 
 contained in the fourth and final report of the Ritual 
 Commissioners. This involved the consideration of the 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 155 
 
 use of the Athanasian Creed in the Church Services ; 
 and it was mainly by the Bishop's tact that the matter 
 was left in a condition that at any rate saved a disrup- 
 tion. Witness Dr. Pusey's words in a letter to him — 
 " Thanks be to God. I bless Him for your Lordship's 
 interposition." 
 
 It remains to say a few words about the counsels 
 suggested by Bishop Wilberforce in the difficulties 
 with Bishop Colenso. On this occasion, as in the matter 
 of Essays and Reviews — where the two writers who were 
 prosecuted, though condemned in the Court of Arches, 
 were acquitted on appeal — it became plain that, when 
 men were called on to answer charges involving false 
 doctrine, their position in the eye of the law was likely 
 to seem diiferent from Avhat it would appear in the eye 
 of the Church. Their offences were criminal under the 
 existing institutions, and thus they got the benefit of every 
 doubt, and were very proj^erly tried by the letter of the 
 formularies. Bishop Wilberforce would have liked 
 Convocation, or a body of episcopal referees, to have 
 expounded first, in all these cases, what the real doctrines 
 involved in them were, and then that the Courts should 
 have decided under the guidance thus given. Failings 
 this, decisions given in the Courts involving doctrines 
 were often eminently unsatisfactory to Churchmen, and 
 seemed to bring very perilously near a secession from 
 the Church. It was to allay the alarms of men like 
 these, that Convocation was brought to condemn Essays 
 and Reviews, and that it was moved also to give 
 opinions on Bishop Colenso's position after the publica- 
 tion of his books, and especially after his excommunication 
 by the Bishop of Capetown. Once again, in all this, 
 Bishop Wilberforce took a prominent part, and worked 
 
15G 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 to bring about such a position of affairs as would give 
 Churchmen a ground for being satisfied, and cause the 
 Anglican Communion in England, and beyond it, to 
 seem to speak with one voice. In the Colenso trouble 
 the situation was much complicated by the divisions of 
 opinion amongst the English bishops themselves, not 
 indeed as to tlie errors contained in Bishop Colenso's 
 books on the Epistle to the Romans and the Pentateuch, 
 but as to the possibility, the expediency, and even the 
 justice of accomplishing anything real against him. 
 
 In 1862, after the publication of the first book, and 
 a letter from Bishop Gray to Bishop Wilberforce 
 asking that he would consult the Archbishop and the 
 other bishops on his behalf, Bishop Wilberforce tried to 
 get a common agreement of the bishops. His idea was 
 that the)' should say to Bishop Colenso, on his arrival 
 in England, " that he came under a sort of question as 
 to his soundness by his metropolitan ; that tlicy had read 
 the book, and without adjudging whether it was heretical 
 or not, were persuaded that its language was, to say the 
 least, such that it imist suggest to the reader the most 
 unsound views ; that they therefore invited its suppres- 
 sion ; and, failing that, agreed to request him not to 
 officiate in their dioceses until the matter had been 
 legally examined."' Common action proved impractic- 
 able, but individual bishops meant to proceed on the 
 above lines. For the peace of the Church, Bishop 
 Wilberforce, who had a friendship with Bishop Colenso, 
 and by his addresses in Cornwall had first roused in him 
 the missionary spirit, tried privately to induce him, while 
 in England, to do nothing to compel the bishops, either 
 individually or collectively, to notice his publication. 
 1 Life, iii. p. 115, etc. 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 157 
 
 This was in vain, and the bold statements in The 
 Pentateuch Critically Examined, published soon after, 
 forced on some action. At a meeting of bishops, Bishop 
 Wilberforce tried to pass a resolution, " that the bishops 
 agreed, under a great scandal, without passing judg- 
 ment as to heresy, to inhibit." Stormy scenes and 
 divided counsels characterized this " painful meeting," 
 and at the end a committee was appointed, of which 
 Bishop Wilberforce was a member, to draw up a letter 
 to Bishop Colenso, which was signed by forty-one 
 bishops. The essence of this letter is contained in the 
 following passage — " It cannot have escaped you, that 
 the inconsistency between the office you hold and the 
 opinions you avow is causing great pain and grievous 
 scandal to the Church. And we solemnly ask you to 
 consider once more, with the most serious attention, 
 whether you can, without harm to your own conscience, 
 retain your position, when you can no longer discharge 
 its duties, or use the formularies to which you have 
 subscribed." 
 
 This was all of no effect, as was also the desire of the 
 Lower House of Convocation that the book on the 
 Pentateuch should be synodically condemned. The 
 Upper House would take no action then, as they 
 believed the book was to be submitted to the judgment 
 of an ecclesiastical court. It had already been ruled, in 
 the case of Long v. Bishop of Capetown, that the letters 
 patent, constituting the Bishop of Capetown metro- 
 politan and giving him jurisdiction, were invalid. The 
 Bishop of Capetown therefore claimed a consensual 
 jurisdiction, as the Bishop of Natal had accepted his 
 metropolitical authority; and the only appeal from 
 himself, that he would acknowledge, was to the Arch- 
 
158 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 bishop of Canterbury as Patriarch. On his return to 
 Capetown, the metropolitan tried and condemned Bishop 
 Colenso and deposed him from his See, and was pre- 
 pared to excommunicate him if contumacious. Bishop 
 Colenso then presented a petition to the Crown, which 
 was referred to the Judicial Committee, not appealing 
 against the sentence of his metropolitan, for he ignored 
 it, but asking that all the proceedings should be de- 
 clared null and void, and that he should be entitled to 
 hold his See until the letters patent granted to him 
 should have been cancelled by due process of law. 
 
 At this juncture. Bishop Wilberforce was anxious, 
 first of all, to keep the Bishop of Capetown from taking 
 any further steps till the members of the Judicial Com- 
 mittee had given their decision ; and was disposed to 
 think that, after the judgment in the case of Archdeacon 
 Long, they would refuse to hear the case at all. His 
 influence brought it about that, when the suit was heard, 
 the Bishop of Capetown did appear by counsel under 
 protest: and, though this was beyond his instructions 
 from the Bishop of Capetown at the time, the latter 
 afterwards acquiesced in the arrangement as wisest and 
 most respectful to the Queen. Wlien the judgment 
 given by Lord Westbury decided t])at Bishop Gray's 
 letters patent did not give him supreme control over 
 the Church in South Africa, and that i7i km his 
 deposition of Bishop Colenso was null and void, the 
 Bisliop of Oxford tried to persuade him not to excom- 
 municate. His opinion was that, while the deposition, 
 though canonically and .spiritually valid, was not 
 legally so, to excommunicate would only be to increase 
 difficulties; he knew that bishops at home would not 
 be got, as a body, to ratify a sentence of excommunica- 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 159 
 
 tion ; and he felt that an opinion sorrowfully expressed 
 by Mr. Keble at the time was a right one, viz., " that 
 nobody then — at least no Anglican — with very few 
 exceptions, really believed in excommunication," and so 
 it would be disregarded and a world-wide scandal. His 
 advice was that Bishop Gray should at once consecrate 
 a new bishop for Natal. In a letter to him in 18G5 
 he accordingly Avrites thus — " I should advise you to 
 get the laity and clergy to meet and elect a bishop. . . 
 I would then have a trust deed carefully drawn, which 
 he and those who would should sign, declaring himself 
 bishop of the South African Church in full communion 
 with us. I would have him take office on condition of 
 being able to carry out all the resolutions, canons, etc., 
 diocesan and provincial, of your own body ; and one of 
 them should be to submit himself to your judgment, 
 etc., when need was, in camera, as completely and in 
 the same degree as he would be bound to do if you had 
 legal jurisdiction as metropolitan." This was at last 
 done ; but, by the time the new bishop was consecrated, 
 Bishop Colenso had returned to Natal, having also 
 obtained a decision that forced the Colonial Bishoprics 
 Fund still to pay liim his salary on the ground that his 
 letters patent still held good. Tlie account of the 
 struggle between the Church in South Africa and 
 Bishop Colenso does not belong to the matters we are 
 discussing. In Jilay 1865, Bishop Wilberforce moved an 
 address to the Bishop of Capetown, whicli was carried, 
 commending his courage, and thanking the Church in 
 South Africa for its "noble stand against heretical and 
 false doctrine." Tliis address passed no opinion on any 
 of the i"eal points of difficulty, and was really a well- 
 meant effort to end the matter decently and quietly. 
 
160 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 In November 1865, Bishop Gray did excommunicate 
 Bishop Colenso ; and though the Church at home was 
 quite ready to declare that it recognized and held 
 communion with the new Bishop of Natal, it was found 
 very difficult to get a formal recognition of the excom- 
 munication. In 1868 the Lower House of Convocation 
 was prepared to give this, but the Upper House was 
 not; and the matter ended by the adoption of two 
 suggestions of a committee appointed by the Upper 
 House, setting forth that " substantial justice had been 
 done to the accused, and that though the Bishop of 
 Capetown's sentence could claim no legal effect, yet the 
 Church, as a spiritual body, could rightly accept its 
 validity." The whole case illustrates the way in which 
 the Established Church was hampered by its legal 
 position, and the timidity with which its leaders faced 
 new situations born from developments in Church life, 
 which, though healthy and wholesome, were to them 
 strange. The Bishop of Oxford used his great influence 
 to hinder disruptions, which were threatened under 
 such circumstances, and to secure opportunities for the 
 Church to justify herself in the eyes of men by her 
 work. 
 
 In 1867, the first meeting of what is now known as 
 the Pan- Anglican synod was held at Lambeth. It was 
 a natural outcome of the great growth in organized 
 Church life, which had taken place as the American, 
 colonial, and missionary episcopates increased and 
 extended. It was undei'taken at the suggestion of the 
 Canadian and colonial bishops, and was regarded with 
 some suspicion at first by authorities in England, as 
 an undue and dangerous advancement of ecclesiastical 
 claims, and as implying a sort of insubordination 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. IGl 
 
 acrainst legitimate State control. Thus it was that 
 Dean Stanley felt himself obliged to refuse the use of 
 Westminster Abbey to the seventy-eight bishops, who 
 wished to communicate together there, before they 
 began their deliberations at Lambeth. The fact that 
 Bishop Gray desired to obtain on this occasion a con- 
 demnation of Bishop Colenso, while the Archbishop 
 had practically pledged himself to some of his suffragans 
 that this matter should not be brought up, threatened 
 troubles that might well have made the first meeting 
 of the Pan-Anglican synod its last. Once again the 
 Bishop of Oxford, as he expresses it, "gentled" the 
 Bishop of Capetown, and the question of the validity 
 of the excommunication was not brought formally 
 forward, though fifty-six of the bishops signed a 
 declaration pronouncing it a " spiiitually valid sentence." 
 The following passage from a letter to Bishoj) Milman 
 shows us what Bishop Wilberforce really thought and 
 felt in this " very anxious matter of the Pan-Anglican 
 synod." "We cannot," he writes, "act synodically ; 
 and yet to meet and not to act has a damaging air of 
 weakness. The great practical difficulty is Colenso. 
 Passing him over is a practical recognition of the 
 excommunication, which is of no small value ; and yet 
 being silent when the Church, if she could, certainly 
 ought to speak, is no small evil, and must be a scandal." ^ 
 The result of his work and efforts is indicated in the 
 following passage in his diary for September 27, 1867 — 
 " Carried, against London, Winchester and St. David's, 
 our acquiescence in the advice tendered by Convocation 
 to Natal." This was in effect to declare the See vacant ; 
 and the committee appointed to consider the Natal 
 1 Life, iii. p. 229. 
 
 M 
 
1G2 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 scandal reported to the same effect, and urged the 
 Church in South Africa to consecrate another bishop. 
 At the same time a committee was also appointed 
 to report on the best means of maintaining unity in 
 faith and discipline among the several branches of the 
 Anglican Communion, which recommended the organ- 
 ization of a synodal order. Its reports were received 
 and published, though not forinally adopted by the 
 conference ; and it illustrates the position that the 
 Bishop of Oxford held amongst the bishops of his 
 communion to note that the Encyclical Letter was 
 dra^Yn up by him ; and a letter to him from the Rev. 
 Sir H. Thompson describes it "as a very creditable 
 document, of which the vast body of the clergy would 
 greatly approve, owing to the calm, dignified and 
 affectionate spirit that it breathed throughout." A 
 further extract from a letter to Mr. Gordon, written by 
 the Bishoji in November, shows how much he thought 
 that the Pan-Anglican synod, with its suggestions, 
 might be a means of settling many difficulties in a 
 manner satisfactory to Churchmen. His words are — 
 " The Lambeth gathering was a very great success. Its 
 strongly anti-Erastian tone .... strengthening those 
 who hope to maintain the Establishment by maintain- 
 ing, instead of by surrendering, the dogmatic character 
 of the Church, was quite remarkable. We are now 
 sitting in committee trying to complete our work, by 
 agreeing to a court of highest doctrinal appeal for the 
 free colonies of America. If we can carry this out, we 
 shall have erected a barrier of immense moral strength 
 against the Privy Council Latitudinarianism. My view 
 is that God gives us the opportunity, as at home 
 Latitudinarianism must spread, of encircling the home 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 163 
 
 Church with a band of far more dogmatic truth-holding 
 communions, who will act most strongly in favour of 
 truth here." 
 
 This last idea of Bishop Wilberforce's, that the 
 English Church in foreign lands might, from her 
 greater liberty and perhaps reality, re-act favourably and 
 usefully on the Church at home, is altogether a most 
 important one to dwell upon in considering his work 
 and services. It was very necessary that the Church, 
 in face of panics, and jealousies, and Erastian notions 
 about her position that prevailed at home, should have 
 a field where she could be seen working as a spiritual 
 organization, and not so much as a State machine. We 
 are told that Bishop Wilberforce's diaries and letter- 
 books show that he came at last to be consulted in 
 matters of doubt and diflficulty, by bishops and others 
 belonging to the Anglican Communion in all parts of the 
 world. Certainly he had a very great part and share 
 in the development of all the daughter churches, 
 which now send their bishops to attend the Pan- 
 Anglican synods at Lambeth. He was an unwearied 
 and enthusiastic supporter of Bishop Blomfield's great 
 movement for increasing the colonial episcopate, and 
 he laboured unceasingly to establish for the colonial 
 missionary dioceses their right and true position of 
 freedom from legal trammels, that are part of the 
 burden that the Church of England bears, in England 
 itself, from its establishment. 
 
 We have already seen how strongly Bishop Wilber- 
 force pressed the necessity, in efforts made for spreading 
 Christianity over the whole world, of missions and 
 colonial churches being headed by bishops, if the 
 Christianity taught was to be a sound and real one 
 
164 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 based upon a distinct dogma of the faith, and connected 
 with the distinct disciphne of the English Church. 
 Now there was long a deep-rooted prejudice, in the 
 minds of many Churchmen and men in authority in 
 England, against this sending out of bishops for foreign 
 Anglican churches; it was thought that they might 
 well be put under the control of bishops at home. 
 Thus in 1829, when the Duke of Wellington felt that 
 the rapidly increasing Australian colonies must have 
 a Church, it seemed to him sufficient to send out one 
 archdeacon. Bishop Wilberforce was unceasing in his 
 efforts to destroy the evil effects of this fallacy, and in 
 maintaining the principle that it was essential that a 
 Church in a new country should have a bishop, if it 
 was to grow and develope, and that the appointment of 
 a bishop should come first, and not last, in its organ- 
 ization. Some thought that, in the matter of missionary 
 churches especially, the only safe thing was to have 
 them under central control. It was this feeling that 
 led the Church Missionary Society to hinder in 1853 
 the passing of the Church Missionary Bishops' Bill, to 
 enable English prelates to consecrate British subjects 
 to act as bishops in a foreign or heathen country. 
 Bishop Wilberforce was active in obtaining its passage 
 through the House of Lords, and getting support for it 
 in the Commons, where it was lost. In the second 
 volume of his Life, there is a correspondence with Sir 
 James Stephen, whom the Bishop takes to task for 
 misrepresenting the bishops and their aims and objects 
 in passing this Bill. The Bishop complains there, that 
 it was the fear that wtis felt by the Church Missionary 
 Society of missionary bishops superseding Church 
 Missionary committees, which really hindered the 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 165 
 
 bishops from being allowed to head a mission of their 
 Church in Borneo with one of their own order. 
 
 But most difficult of all was the question as to the 
 colonial and missionary bishops and the royal supremacy, 
 and their relations to the See of Canterbuiy. Gradually 
 it has become clear how apparently conflicting interests 
 and principles may be reconciled in this matter ; and so 
 a position and understanding fairly satisfactory to the 
 Churches of the Anglican Communion has been reached. 
 Ministers have come to see that the appointment of 
 bishops in colonies and lands beyond the jurisdiction of 
 the Crown are not rightly dependent on a royal license, 
 and that an Anglican Church's free and voluntary 
 action in choosing a bishop is no violation of royal 
 supremacy, or subversive of any vital principle govern- 
 incj the ricfht relations of Church and State in the 
 British constitution. Those who once thought that 
 there could be no episcopacy without prelacy, and that 
 an Anglican bishop must always be, in his appointment 
 and legal position, just as a bishop of the Established 
 Church in England, have learnt to see their error in 
 this respect, and to acknowledge that such a theory was 
 calculated rather to hinder than aid that Church life 
 and expansion which they themselves most desired to 
 advance. Many laboured to secure what the Church 
 needed in this matter, and to show that for them, as 
 Bishop Blomfield put it, " an episcopal Church without 
 a bishop is a contradiction in terms." Many also 
 laboured to bring it about, that Anglican bishops might 
 be seen to be soniething different from that which 
 Lord Westbury described Bishop Gray and Bishop 
 Culenso to be, in the preamble of his judgment on the 
 Colenso case, where he speaks of them as "ecclesi- 
 
166 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 astical persons who have been created bishops by the 
 Queeu, in the exercise of her authority as sovereign of 
 this reahn, and head of the Established Church." On 
 all occasions, however, where these points and questions 
 were under discussion, and some new step was to be 
 made. Bishop Wilberforce took a prominent part, 
 vindicating now the right of English bishops to 
 consecrate men for the new work abroad ; now the 
 necessity of these new leaders taking the oath of 
 canonical obedience to their own metropolitans ; and 
 now, as in the Colenso case, the importance to the 
 Church and Churchmen of decisions that had a 
 spiritual rather than a mei'ely legal character. So it 
 was that he, and others of like mind, found in Lord 
 Westbury's Colenso judgment, " bristling as it was with 
 Erastian insults," the charter of freedom for the 
 colonial Church. In declaring that the Crown had no 
 power to grant authority by letters patent to one 
 bishop as metropolitan in a colony which had secured a 
 constitution, it had decided that the Church in South 
 Africa was only capable of holding jurisdiction when it 
 was given by the State there. This was what Bishop 
 Wilberforce had always wished to secure, and his 
 desire for it may explain, in some measure, his much 
 criticized action in 1853, when he supported the 
 measure for giving to the Canadian Legislature the 
 power and right to deal with the lands belonging to 
 the Church in Canada called the " Clergy Reserves." 
 Unexpectedly, Lord Westbury's judgment was seen to 
 be after all " of good omen for the Church." It 
 seemed to set the colonial Church free from being 
 hampered, from home, with State restrictions. " The 
 Churches might now be at liberty to uphold discipline 
 
THE BISHOP AND BROAD CHURCH PARTY. 167 
 
 by consensual arrangements, and the domination of the 
 Privy Council was at an end." ^ 
 
 So it was again that, in 1867, Bishop Wilherforce 
 was able to deliver himself of the following opinion as 
 to the true position of colonial Churches, with some 
 confidence that his ideas were at least in a fair way to 
 be realized. He explained that the Church of England 
 was a purely voluntary body in the colonies, and had 
 no connection with the Crown, save that its members 
 were subjects of the Queen. He showed that it was a 
 mistake to suppose, therefore, that the Church in the 
 colonies had the same power of appeal to the Privy 
 Council as the Church at home. Lastly, he said that 
 "the connection between the colonial Church and the 
 Church in England was to be maintained by allowing 
 the Chiirch in the colonies to develope for itself the true 
 Church of England temper, profession of faith, doctrine, 
 and internal government, tlius giving it the help they 
 could give it to stand up among free men there, itself 
 there a free Church, among free religionists a free 
 religion." A zeal for missionary enterprise and 
 Church extension is an essential part of the work of a 
 living Christian Church ; it follows necessarily from a 
 right recognition by the Church of its real responsibilities 
 and privileges. Bishop Wilberforce's efforts to direct 
 the awakening zeal in this respect that characterized 
 the Church movements of his day, and his unwearied 
 labour and care for the right development of the 
 Anglican episcopate abroad, did almost more than 
 anything else to raise and improve the general standard 
 of episcopal life and work amongst the members of the 
 bench of bishops at home. 
 
 1 Perry's English Church History, iii. p. 379. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 These pages have traced thus far Bishop Wilberforce's 
 part, sometimes by way of sympathy and sometimes by 
 way of restraint, in the onward and developing move- 
 ment in the Church of England, which belonged to the 
 time of his episcopate. He had a firm belief in his 
 Church as divinely instituted and commissioned, and 
 felt sure that, if only she had scope, time, and opportunity, 
 she would amply justify herself to the world. Above 
 all things he tried to secure for her this necessary 
 liberty, and was ever conspicuous in his efforts to obtain 
 for the Church her right position as against the State, 
 and to free her from disabilities, in this direction, which 
 past mistakes and errors, partly in action, partly in 
 acquiescence, had laid upon her. The fact that, at 
 different times, he incurred obloquy from all parties and 
 schools of thought in the Church, shows that at any rate, 
 in his endeavours, he did achieve his own expressed 
 ambition of not being the Bishop of a party ; and more 
 than any one else he did over and over again manage 
 to secure a viodios viveiuli, at times when a disruption 
 seemed inevitable. 
 
 Now, at no time, and under no circumstances, was 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHxMENT. 169 
 
 this more conspicuously shown than in Bishop Wilber- 
 force's ojuidance of the Church of England, throug-h all 
 the troubles which arose, in the Church revival of his 
 times, from what we know as Ritualism. To this hour, 
 long after the grave has closed over the great Bishop of 
 Oxford and Winchester, those troubles still exist. Some 
 have seen in the steps taken since his death, and the 
 exasperations consequent upon them, a greater witness 
 than in anything else to the influence that he exercised 
 in putting forward wise and moderate counsels, and 
 restraining ill-advised attempts at repression. There is 
 a story told of a visit paid by Dean Stanley to St. 
 Alban's, Holborn, after which he was asked by the Bishop 
 of London what he had seen. " I saw," he said, " three 
 men in green, and your Lordship will have great diffi- 
 culty in putting them down." We have now to consider 
 what Bishop Wilberforce did in the two directions of 
 preventing ill-considered and ill-devised measures for 
 putting Ritualists down, and hindering men inclined 
 to Ritualism from setting up, at their own pleasure and 
 inclination, rites and ceremonies long in abeyance. 
 
 From the first, in his diocese, and in the Church at 
 large, Bishop Wilberforce had a sympathy with the 
 movement, out of which ritual excesses and extrava- 
 gances at last sprang. He quite saw that the standard 
 of ritual in the Cliurch of England had fallen below 
 what decency and order required, and that it needed to 
 be brought up to it. All efforts in this direction had 
 his fullest sympathy and support, and he evidently felt 
 that, for the time at any rate, progressive, as distinct 
 from merely repressive, zeal in the Church of England 
 was found most in those who were disposed to work 
 for this end. Men were learning to beautify their 
 
170 
 
 BISHOP WILBEEFORCE. 
 
 houses in a time of considerable material prosperity; 
 he quite thought that it was only right to make the 
 "houses of God in the land " beautiful too. Better modes 
 of teaching were being used everywhere, and, more par- 
 ticularly in the education of the poor, there was a 
 general desire and tendency to make instruction more 
 interesting. Bishop Wilberforce quite felt that the 
 Catholic Church had, as part of her lawful heritage, a 
 resource of long-neglected ceremony and ritual, which 
 might well be drawn upon to make worship more 
 instructive and interesting too. Lastly, truer and fuller 
 views on Eucharistic doctrine had come to prevail in 
 the Church of England ; and Bishop Wilberforce knew 
 that there were lawful ceremonies, connected with the 
 great sacrament of the Church, which would, if used, 
 help to inspire a greater reverence, and bring out true 
 doctrine rather than suggest, as many feared they 
 would, that which was false. With ritual excess and 
 extravagance, however, he had no sympathy, and is 
 found to speak and work against it quite as strongly as 
 he spoke and worked against the errors of the Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 Events had shown that there was, in the Established 
 Church of England, a greater liberty and elasticity, in 
 matters of doctrine, than many had supposed, or desired 
 to suppose. The Ritualistic difficulties brought out the 
 fact that a like gi-eater elasticity in ritual was also not 
 only allowable, but desirable. This was a point on 
 which Bishop Wilberforce was disposed most clearly and 
 pointedly to insist, as the following passage from his 
 Charge in 1866 shows : — " Such a moderate and sober 
 development of its ceremonial seems to me to belong 
 necessarily to the Church as a living body ; nor, if it be 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 171 
 
 at all in its normal condition, can its Ritual be healthily 
 congealed into absolutely unalterable forms. Life 
 implies, of necessity, change .... Death only 
 secures immutability. No less certainly must the out- 
 ward expression of the life spiritual change with the 
 changes of its inner currents. Again, in any normal 
 condition of the Church, the spiritual necessities of the 
 body necessitate changes. Every varying phase through 
 which it is passing renders some change expedient, 
 perhaps essential to life. The bark-bound tree, the 
 hide-bound animal, must suffer, and too often die. The 
 rigid clasp of an unalterable ritual may fatally repress 
 zeal, generate formality, or nourish superstition. In the 
 normal condition, therefore, of the Church, ritual must 
 be, and ought to be, elastic and subject to variations." ^ 
 In the development, and in the application of this 
 requisite liberty. Bishop Wilberforce held that it was 
 not desirable to apply for legal decisions to the Church 
 Courts, and also that it was too long and hazardous to 
 " wait for the tedious issues of actual legislation." His 
 idea was that peace was largely attainable, if men 
 would leave matters in their bishop's hands, as the 
 following passage shows — " How often, alas, in our 
 own and in every other Church has the ebbing tide of 
 the spiritual life, by its mere listlessness, reduced to its 
 own new level its nominally unaltered ritual ! How 
 often, thank God ! has renewed love and renewed 
 earnestness in devotion filled the old limbs with a flood 
 of life which has transfigured forms which it retained ! 
 And it is the special duty of the Church's governors to 
 understand such symptoms, and to minister to their 
 relief whatever powers of relaxation or control have 
 1 Charge 1866, pp. 52-3. 
 
172 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOECE. 
 
 been left to them, without incurring the hazard or 
 waiting for the tedious issues of actual legislation. 
 Many such powers our own Church has lodged in its 
 living governors. It is their charge to interpret am- 
 biguous rubrics, to reduce to unity matters diversely 
 taken, to acquiesce in or disallow changes which by 
 minute accretions the living body has silently developed. 
 Great, no doubt, is the judgment, the courage, the 
 knowledge, and, above all, perhaps, the impartiality 
 which is needful to enable them to discharge aright 
 these delicate and often momentous duties. But they 
 cannot leave these duties undone without grievous 
 danger to the polity over which they are appointed 
 overseers ; and, however difficult be the task, there is 
 a strength for its discharge which they who seek it 
 faithfully will find. Such difficulties are the sure 
 accompaniments of times of earnestness and growth ; 
 Avhen the full amount of the inner life must, by reason 
 of its strength, cast itself forth into some new develop- 
 ment. Dull and lazy governors marvel at and hate 
 such things ; and there is a mixture enough of evil in 
 all such movements to make such a feeling plausible at 
 least, if not natural." Thus it was that he and the 
 other bishops in 1867, on receiving the report of the 
 Lower House of Convocation on Ritualism, sent down a 
 resolution based on the rubric concerning the service of 
 the Church in the Book of Common Prayer, in which 
 the Lower House concurred, to the effect that " no alter- 
 ations from long sanctioned and usual ritual ought to 
 be made in Churches until the sanction of the bishop 
 of the diocese had been obtained thereto." So it is 
 again that many letters of Bishop Wilberforce are 
 extant in which, while on the one side, to quote his 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 173 
 
 words, he tries to restrain the "parish Diotrej^hes seeking 
 to dictate merely to those who are set over him in the 
 Lord," on the other he rebukes the zeal, indiscretion, or 
 perversity which suddenly started changes in the 
 externals of worship, without due regard for the feelings 
 or prejudices of the body of worshippers on whom they 
 were imposed. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce was always strong in insisting 
 that in all ritual changes, however slight, as they had to 
 do with accessories and not with essentials, the thing 
 to be first regarded was the welfare and, to some 
 considerable extent, the wish of the people. " I do 
 not," he writes in 1866, "call on you to preach in the 
 surplice, if you in your discretion think it not for the 
 peace of the Church to do so." In the whole question 
 he held that allowance ought, to be made for the 
 "differing conformations of men's minds." A speech of 
 his in Convocation contains the following words on this 
 point — " The conformation of my mind leads me to be 
 satisfied with the simplest form as being the most 
 productive of devotion ; but it is not so with others, 
 and I have no right to make what suits me the law for 
 everybody else." 
 
 A ritual revival under the then existing circum- 
 stances of the Church, and temper of the times, seemed 
 to Bishop Wilberforce natural enough. It was the right 
 reaction against a too great dread of lawful ritual as super- 
 stitious, and belonged to a needed effort to bring the stan- 
 dard of the celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the 
 Church of England up to that set by the Reformers.^ At 
 the same time the Bishop seemed to see everywhere, 
 not only in our own Communion, but in the more earnest 
 1 aiianje 1866, p. 50. 
 
174 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 of the religious sects around it, " a craving for a more 
 expressive symbolism in worship, which was probably a 
 reaction against the chillness in which Puritanism had 
 long been dying out, and against the utter vagueness 
 of modern doubts." ^ In his Charge for 1866, however, 
 the Bishop makes it clear that the healthy tendency had 
 to his mind more than begun to pass into an unhealthy 
 extreme. He says plainly that he considers " actual 
 ritual developments so hastily adopted, in their novelty, 
 multiplication, and amount, as rash, unadvisable, and 
 dangerous." He deplores what seems to him "the 
 unquestionable fact that in some instances there had 
 been a studied introduction of names and usages, which 
 seemed to him to have nothing else to commend them 
 than their distinctively Roman character." ^ Under the 
 circumstances, and in face of the difficulties and 
 excesses of the time, the Bishop in his Charge lays 
 down four conditions under which ritual progress is 
 allowable. It must not, he urges, be contrary to the 
 law ; it must not tend to promote any false doctrine or 
 corrupt practice ; it must be at the least not condemned 
 by living authority ; it must be the gradual expression 
 in outer things of the advancement of the Church's 
 inward life. 
 
 In his own diocese the Bishop of Oxford proceeded 
 successfully on the lines that we have considered. He 
 advocated advance by ''insensible gradation rather 
 than a studied display of large and rapid change." He 
 tried to induce all who were making ritual changes to 
 "lay their case before their Bishop, and act absolutely 
 on his direction." He urged the necessity of consider- 
 ing congregations and their wants, tempers, and capa- 
 1 Charge 1866, p. 55. 2 p 45. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 175 
 
 bilities, and impressed the error of trying to maintain 
 "frozen uniformity" in any direction. The following 
 passage from his Charge shows the result — " It is care- 
 fully to be noted, that where the Church movement itself 
 has been the deepest, there Ritualistic extravagances 
 have the least appeared. No diocese, perhaps, from 
 various causes, has risen more than that of Oxford, 
 with the general rise of Church devotion ; none has 
 been more free from these peculiar excesses." 
 
 A brief account of Bishop Wilberforce's more public 
 labours in the matter of Ritualism will best show how 
 he aimed at serving and strengthening the Church, by 
 retaining for her the good in the movement, and reject- 
 ing what seemed to him the evil in it. In 1851 Mr. 
 Bennett's proceedings in the London diocese first raised 
 the question as to the limits of ritual in the Church of 
 England. He put forward, amongst other things, the 
 plea that omission in the rubrics of the Prayer-book was 
 not prohibition ; and claimed to revive a great deal of 
 ceremony that had long been in abeyance, on the 
 ground that it was inherited from the primitive Church, 
 and was not really connected with Roman error, though 
 cast aside in the reactionary panic of the Reformation. 
 At the time Bishop Wilberforce expresses himself on 
 these points to the Hon. R. Cavendish and Mr. Glad- 
 stone as follows — " I cannot admit that any individual 
 clergyman has a right to restore pre-Reformation 
 observances, merely because they are not totidem verbis 
 condemned by our Church." And again — " The ground 
 on which the Bishop of London accepted Mr. Bennett's 
 resignation, I understood to be the principle avowed 
 by Mr. Bennett of continual progression, combined with 
 an assertion of his right to introduce any ceremony 
 
176 
 
 BISHOP WII.BERFORCE. 
 
 which had ever been used in the Church, and which 
 was not expressly condemned and forbidden at our 
 Reformation. This principle I also esteem to be faulty, 
 believing that our system was intended to be affirm- 
 ative and not simply negative, and that it does not 
 therefore become individual clergymen to restore from 
 ante-Reformation times whatever was not tofAxhm verbis 
 forbidden." ^ Ou these grounds Bishop Wilberforce joined 
 in the united pastoral issued by the Bishops in 1851, 
 protesting against Mr. Bennett's point of view, and 
 specially his way of asserting it. 
 
 Meanwhile till 1867 the Ritualistic development 
 went on; and was at once restrained and encouraged 
 in the Oxford diocese, where the Bishop recognized 
 that, in such things as choral services, surpliced choirs, 
 Church decorations, using of hymns, things lawful and 
 helpful were being revived. Of course, to the school 
 represented by the Record, improvements in the 
 service in the direction of legitimate increases of ritual 
 seemed dangerous, and its adherents felt bound to 
 resist them. The Bishop of Oxford, however, while 
 expressing his utter disapproval of all attempts to 
 introduce "unusual Ritualistic developments," saw that, 
 in many cases, laity and clergy alike were ripe and ready 
 for some ceremonial changes and restorations. This 
 might well be, he maintained, where there was no 
 revival of the obsolete, without the allowance of living 
 authority, and where, in the case of a parish linked by 
 long tradition to a lower but lawful use, " there was 
 no arbitrary alteration for the pastor's pleasure to the 
 wounding of his flock." ^ At the same time in his 
 charges, and by his own practice, he directed obedience 
 1 Life, ii. pp. 126-7. ^ p. 197. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 177 
 
 to the decisions, on points of ritual, of the highest 
 court of appeal in causes ecclesiastical. Thus we 
 have the following passage in his Charge for 1857 — 
 " The peace which God's mercy has given to us in this 
 diocese on these matters (i.e. questions of ritual) makes 
 it needful for me to speak but of two points, in the late 
 judgment, as to which my own observations would 
 lead me to think that in our conduct of our public 
 services we are violating, in some of our parishes, what 
 we are now authoritatively reminded is the plain and 
 express law of this Church and realm; and to obey 
 which, now that it is so pointed out, we of the clergy 
 are in conscience bound by our oaths and promises at 
 our ordination, licensing, or institution." In the spirit 
 here indicated Bishop Wilberforce, after the Martin v. 
 Mackonochie judgment, changed the position in which 
 he had previously stood ; and, during the Consecration 
 Prayer in the office for Holy Communion, stood in front 
 of the Table. When again at a later time the point 
 was otherwise decided, the Bishop, in obedience to the 
 law, reverted to his original position at the north end. 
 The Bishop's action in his own diocese showed a 
 mode by which, if all could have agreed to act on it, 
 without the dangers of legislation and judicial decisions, 
 the worst difficulties occasioned by Ritualistic extra- 
 vagances might have been obviated and controlled to 
 the great advantage of the Church, and the furthering 
 and advancement of her most important influence 
 and work. 
 
 But a general consensus on the matter was by no 
 means easy to obtain. What must be described as the 
 puritanical spirit was strong in England, objecting to 
 the Church's whole system of external rites and 
 
178 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 ceremonies, and regarding, as Bishop Wilberforce says, 
 " our limited customary rites as an essential part of 
 our protest against Popery." It was a perplexity that 
 some of the bishops themselves were not free from 
 this spirit ; and, while there were dioceses in which 
 Churchmen were not at all ready to defer to the " living 
 authority " placed at their head, divided counsels 
 prevailed on the bench of bishops itself. By 1866 it 
 had become plain that' in the opposition and apprehen- 
 sion excited by a not uncommon display of large and 
 rapid changes in ritual of an extreme character, some- 
 thing must be done. There was great danger lest 
 attempts might be made to bind the Church of England 
 down to a rigid minimum in the matter, which might 
 lead to the loss of some of the most earnest of her 
 sous. In his Charge for 1866, Bishop Wilberforce 
 expresses, in the following passage, this difficulty — 
 " We are bound to admit that amongst the clergy and 
 laity (for this has been anything but an exclusively 
 clerical movement), who are conspicuous for the intro- 
 duction of these novelties, are men inferior to none in 
 self-devotion, in apparent love to Christ, in tenderness 
 towards His poor, in zeal for His truth, or in the fervour 
 of their own devotion. Such men we can ill afford to 
 lose. I trust that no taunts from without, and no 
 timorousness within, will lead any of the rulers of our 
 Church to aid in driving out any one who can, con- 
 sistently with truth and faithfulness, be kept amongst 
 us, lest we repeat again our fathers' fault, and lose our 
 brethren, as they lost John Wesley, and his noble 
 fellows." It was this that he strove to prevent. The 
 Lower House of Convocation in 1866 asked the Upper 
 House to take steps, in conjunction with them, fur 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 179 
 
 " clearing the doubts and allaying the anxieties that 
 existed on the subject of Ritualism." As a result, a 
 committee was appointed, which reported in the follow- 
 ing year, deprecating attempts to establish a uniformity 
 of ritual practice, " incompatible with the power, which 
 had ever existed in the Church, of permitting differences 
 of practice, according to the different circumstances 
 and requirements of different times, places, and con- 
 gregations." The report further suggested, that 
 differences of ritual practice, within the limits of the 
 law, ought to be regulated by resort to the fatherly 
 counsel of the bishop, and dutiful acquiescence in his 
 suggestions, and also by " discreet and charitable con- 
 sideration of the circumstances of different places and 
 congregations." This was endorsed by the Upper 
 House, and runs very much on the lines on which 
 Bishop Wilberforce acted in his own diocese, and which 
 he laid down in his charge. 
 
 Meanwhile other action was being taken, by way of 
 legislation through Parliament, without any previous 
 consultation of Convocation. Bishop Wilberforce 
 thought any legislation just then dangerous; but that 
 proposed, ignoring, as it did, the Church's voice and 
 opinion, seemed to him absolutely fatal, a surrender of 
 much that had been laboriously gained, and certain to 
 cause a secession from the Church. He did a great 
 service in averting it, and preventing any new depart- 
 ure, even though it was done at the cost of preserving 
 the, not very satisfactory, status in quo ante. 
 
 In 18G.5 the Archbishop was .stirred up to some 
 action by the Manpiis of Westuieath calling attention 
 in the House of Lords to alleged innovations in the 
 Anglican service. He desired to issue an address to the 
 
180 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 clergy, signed by all the bishops, but by the advice of the 
 Bishop of Oxford, and owing to the difficulty of getting 
 anything signed by all the bishops which was not very 
 general indeed in its character, this was not done. Some 
 of the bishops were for trying a test case ; some were 
 for " fatherly counsel " ; some for legislation ; and the 
 difficulties of the situation were set out in a remark 
 of the Bishop of Exeter — " If you try to enforce the 
 rubric, you will have a rebellion ; try to alter it, and you 
 will cause a shipwreck." 
 
 At this time, as before, in matters touching the in- 
 terests of the Church, Bishop Wilberforce consulted much 
 with Mr. Gladstone, following largely his advice, and 
 relying on his political influence for support of wise 
 measures. The great problem was how to prevent legis- 
 lation, which would fetter the Church, and hopelessly 
 alienate many staunch Churchmen. The gist of Mr. 
 Gladstone's opinion on this matter may be gathered 
 from the following paragraph — " I am against attempts, 
 in present circumstances, to define ritual too much by 
 quantity ; it is quality, proportion, relation, which 
 seem to me to have the true claim to regard. I do not 
 think you can define the maximum of true legitimate 
 demand ; which, under much of the existing demand, 
 in appearance moderate, may notwithstanding be quite 
 illegitimate." Bishop Wilberforce's own ideas on these 
 matters are expressed fully in his Charge for 1866. In 
 his diocese, and with the Archbishop, his words were 
 generally approved, though a small section sent an 
 address to the Bishop, complaining of "his Lordship's 
 elaborate, but, in their judgment, singularly ambiguous 
 and unsatisfactory charge," -"^ His efforts, after this 
 1 Life, iii. p. 203. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 181 
 
 plain expression of his opinions, were directed towards 
 preventing any hasty and unwise legislation. The 
 result has been, largely through his influence, that the 
 matter, as far as legislation goes, has practically been 
 left alone — the only safe course, when desirable 
 changes and interpretations must inevitably have been 
 balanced by most undesirable ones. 
 
 An extract from a letter to Mr. Gladstone shows the 
 first difficulty which Bishop Wilberforce had to face and 
 overcome. The letter asks for Mr. Gladstone's interven- 
 tion with the Archbishop to prevent the evil of the 
 bishops coming with a gagging bill before the House of 
 Commons. The passage in question runs thus — " Last 
 Monday it transpired that Lord Shaftesbury had printed 
 and proposed to read at once a first time a bill, drawn 
 by A. J. Stephens, for making the 58th canon the 
 absolute and sole rule of the Church of England as to 
 ornaments, dresses, etc., throwing over the rights of 
 congregations, the discretion of bishops, and the liberty 
 of the Church for all future expansion. . . . The 
 Archbishop called a meeting of the bishops next day, 
 at which it at once appeared that the whole phalanx 
 of Archbishop and bishops from the north, and all the 
 puritan bishops were hot for it — only three of us 
 opposed it. Worst of all, our own Archbishop, though 
 he did not like it, ' did not see how he could oppose it.' 
 I set before them at length the ignominy of the course, 
 its shameless party spirit, the suicide of the English 
 episcopate being dragged at the tail of Sliaftesbury ; 
 and I so far succeeded that the bishops in league with 
 Shaftesbury said that, if the Archbishop would undertake 
 to legislate, they would persuade Shaftesbury to wait." ^ 
 1 Life, iii. p. 206. 
 
LS2 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 The alternative seemed to Bishop Wilberforce bad 
 enough ; it was almost worse that the Archbishop should 
 legislate, as it made even more offensive to many " the 
 going to Parliament without Convocation to alter a 
 leading rubric governing all the ornaments and ofScial 
 vesture of the Church of England." After statin^ his 
 views and apprehensions plainly to the Archbishop, he 
 asked Mr. Gladstone to use his influence to prevent the 
 Archbishop and other bishops proceeding on the lines 
 proposed, either by supporting Lord Shaftesbury, or 
 bringing in another bill. Mr. Gladstone deprecated the 
 raising of the questions in the House of Commons that 
 the bringing in of any such bills would involve, and 
 said that he feared the introduction of them would 
 throw him into a " very anti-episcopal position." His 
 letter also mentions that he had interviewed the two 
 Archbishops and the Bishop of London, and left them in 
 mind " to drop the bill and propose a commission." Lord 
 Shaftesbury did move the second reading of his bill in 
 May 1867, but an amendment, moved by the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, and supported by Bishop Wilberforce, 
 postponing the second reading till that day two months, 
 was carried by a majority of fifteen, eleven bishops voting 
 in the minority. The bill was not brought on again, and 
 expired with the session ; but the entry in the Bishop's 
 diary for the day is significant as to the peril of the 
 moment — " Lord Derby having sent Lord Malmesbury 
 to me to say that the whips reported that he was in a 
 minority, and must give up, I protested. Carried by a 
 good majority of fifteen." 
 
 Thus this danger was passed, and a Royal Commission 
 on Ritual appointed in 1867 by Lord Derby's Govern- 
 ment. The Bishop of Oxford was desirous that it should 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 183 
 
 be instructed to inquire only into the ornaments rubric, 
 and that something sliould be said in the Commission as 
 to the results of its labours being submitted afterwards 
 to Convocation. He wrote to Sir C. Anderson in March 
 1867--"! have no patience with our being driven to 
 legislate, to put ourselves in the utteidy false position of 
 asking for more power from the House of Commons." 
 His views were not accepted by the Government; it 
 was determined to examine all the rubrics, and also 
 the Lectionary, and no mention was made, in the 
 (Commission, of Convocation. It is to be noticed, how- 
 ever, that the two pieces of legislation that followed 
 on this report — the Act of Uniformity Amendment 
 Act of 1872, and the Prayer-Book Act of 1872— 
 allowing the shortening of services, and revising the 
 Lectionary, were approved by Convocation, before coming 
 into Parliament. After the last report of the Ritual 
 Commission, the Crown took the important step of 
 recognizing the several Convocations so far as to issue 
 to them letters of business, authorizing them to consider, 
 and report on, the final recommendations of the Com- 
 mission. Thus the thing which Bishop Wilberforce 
 stood almost alone in asking for the Church's satis- 
 faction at first was, in effect, granted at last. 
 
 Some difficulty arose about Bishop Wilberforce 
 becoming a member of the Commission. Mr. Walpole, 
 in inviting him to serve on it, said that, without him, it 
 would be the drama of Hamlet with Hamlet left out ; 
 and Lord Shaftesbury said in the House of Lords that, 
 as he himself refused to serve on it as an extreme man, 
 extreme men, like the Bishop of Oxford, ought to keep 
 of? it too. The Bishop's reply contained the following 
 words — " It is very easy for the noble Lord to attack 
 
184 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 me, though he knows I have no extreme views, and 
 though he confesses that he is himself an extreme man. 
 I am not an extreme man. I am one who holds that 
 middle position as to doctrine in the Church that 
 Richard Hooker held." Ultimately he was on the 
 Commission, and took a prominent part in its work, 
 and exercised a large influence over its report. The 
 first report was issued on August 19th, after nineteen 
 sittings, and the draft that was accepted, though 
 nominally the work of Mr. Hubbard, was really the 
 Bishop of Oxford's, as the following extract from his 
 diary for August 19th shows — " Ritual Commission. 
 Long debate on draft report I had drawn up on Tuesday, 
 13th, and given Hubbard to circulate; substantially 
 adopted." His influence, as Lord Beauchamp testifies, 
 had immensely determined the issue. "I fully recog- 
 nize," he writes, " the discretion and skill with which you 
 have steered us. How others could have been brought 
 to agree I cannot divine. Our escape has been marvel- 
 lous." By the Bishop of Oxford's suggestion, the report 
 stated that "it was expedient to restrain in the public 
 services of the united Church of England and Ireland, 
 all variation in respect of vesture from that which has 
 long been the established usage of the said United 
 Church." The word used did not make the vestments 
 in themselves illegal ; every allusion to doctrine was 
 carefully shut out of the report, and Dr. Pusey's 
 statement, " that it was a complete defeat, and that it 
 would have been better to have had all Shaftesbury's 
 bill and let him do his worst," shows that its elasticity was 
 hardly appreciated on the High Church side. When the 
 second report was issued in 1868, the Bishop of Oxford 
 dissented from a clause in it that recommended that the 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 185 
 
 usage of the Church of England and Ireland for the last 
 tltree hundred and sixty years should be deemed the 
 rule of the Church in respect of vestments, lights, and 
 incense. It was wrong, he thought, to attempt to 
 stereotype by legislation for perpetual observance any 
 use not actually enjoined in matters ceremonial. In 
 the fourth and last report Bishop Wilberforce, then 
 Bishop of Winchester, was one of those who signed 
 with reservation ; and many of his fellow commissioners 
 on this occasion dissented from the report on various 
 grounds. His attitude a? regards the question raised 
 on the subject of the position of the Athanasian Creed 
 in the services of the Church, has been already dis- 
 cussed. It showed him anxious to prevent secession 
 from the Church on the one hand, and rigid legislation 
 on the other, in accordance with the policy that he 
 had favoured on the ritual question from the time 
 when it was first agitated. On the whole, he obtained 
 such a measure of success, that he once again secured 
 for the Church, during his lifetime, a fair measure of 
 justice and liberty. 
 
 As he was in 1851 in this matter so was he in 1866, 
 and so was he in 1873. Dean Burgon quotes from his 
 last address to his rural deans, delivered shortly before 
 his death in 1873, as a clear proof that with Ritualistic 
 teaching he had no sympathy. He tells us in the 
 following passage some of the Bishop's feelings in this 
 matter — " Sometimes he would express his secret 
 personal dislike to the very environments of the party 
 with a grotesque fervour which was irresistible. ' I 
 suspect,' I once said to him, 'you like embroidered 
 stoles, surplices cut short at the waist, Gregorian 
 chants, and so on ? ' ' / like Gregorian music ! ' he 
 
186 
 
 inSIIOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 exclaimed, with a look of mingled terror and annoy- 
 ance. ' I assure you I never hear a Gregorian with- 
 out feeling a wish to lie down ou my stomach and 
 howl! " 1 
 
 The address referred to speaks plainly of the teach- 
 ing that habitual confession is almost necessary for the 
 leading of the higher Christian life, as dangerous to the 
 penitent, to the peace and confidence of family life, and 
 to the confessor's own purity of thouglit.^ It condemns 
 the new doctrine of fasting Communion, and the 
 growing practice of non-communicating attendance as 
 leadin'j^ to the great abuse " of coming to tlie sacrament 
 to be spectators instead of partakers." " Thus," says the 
 Bishop, " the Roman theory is creeping in. The 
 sacrificing priest stands between your soul and your 
 God and makes atonement for you." A strong passage, 
 quoted also by Dean Burgon, from this same last 
 utterance, may fitly close this brief account of Bishop 
 Wilberforce's dealings with the Ritualistic movement. It 
 runs thus — " There is a growing feeling, which I can only 
 describe as an ' ashamedness ' of the Anglican Church, 
 as if our grand old Anglican Communion contrasted 
 unfavourably with the Church of Rome. The habitual 
 language held by many men sounds as if they were 
 ashamed of our Church and its position ; it is a sort of 
 apology for the Church of England, as compared with 
 tlie Church of Rome. Why I would as soon think 
 
 OF APOLOGIZING FOR THE VIRTUE OF MY MOTHER TO A 
 
 HARLOT ! I have no sympathy in the world with such 
 a feeling. I abhor this fidgety desire to make every- 
 thing un-Anglican. This is not a grand development 
 as some seem to think. It is a decrepitude. It is not 
 1 Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. p. 59. ^ Iljid. ii. pp. 55-7. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 187 
 
 snmetliing very sublime and impressive, but something 
 very feeble and contemptible." ^ 
 
 It is to be noticed that, all through the difficulties 
 we have just considered, Bishop Wilberforce felt that 
 unwise and unlawful actions from within the Church, 
 met by sharp repressive measures from the State 
 without, might do much to imperil the Establish- 
 ment. In the opening of an article on "The Church 
 and her Curates," in the Quarterly Review for 1867, 
 he notices how the "electric" temper of the times 
 threatens the testing anew, by searching popular 
 inquiry, of some of the noblest institutions of the 
 country, and that among these the Established Church 
 stood perhaps in the fore-front. In the same article 
 the Bishop writes, half-humorously, the following 
 words — "An electric condition of the air quickens 
 into a very troublesome activity all the lower forms of 
 animal life ; and speculators and nostrum-mongers, and 
 men of one idea, are always excited by a thundery 
 state of the political and social atmosphere. Societies 
 for the Revision of the Prayei'-Book, and Anti-State 
 Church Societies, and Liberation Societies, and the like, 
 feel that their time is come, and begin buzzing about 
 amidst the larger and more highly animated organiz- 
 ations which they so pertinaciously infest, and stinging 
 or irritating all whom they can reach." 2 The Bishop 
 felt that the position of the Dissenters towards the 
 Established Church was, by force of circumstances, now 
 changed. The time was past when the Dissenters were 
 asking for equal civil rights, and the removal of tests 
 injurious to their conscience. Writing to Mr. Gladstone 
 
 1 Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. pp. 58-9. 
 ^ Essays, ii. pp. 85-6. 
 
188 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 in 1863, on the subject of Mr. Hadfield's bill, which 
 proposed to abolish the declaration made by mayors, 
 that they would not use their office against the Estab- 
 lished Church, the Bishop explains that he cannot 
 support it, and adds — " They (the Dissenters) are now 
 professedly seeking, not for freedom for themselves, but 
 the abolition of the Establishment ; wherever, therefore, 
 they ask for what tends only to that, we are bound to 
 refuse." ^ In the same correspondence also he states 
 that he is unable to admit that the bishops of the 
 Church of England could take the ground that " their 
 strength lay in the affection of the people, and not in 
 the legal defences of an Establishment." This would be 
 in effect to admit that they belonged to the strongest 
 sect, and not to claim to be, what they were, the 
 national Church. The relation that seemed to him to 
 exist between Church and State was the result of a 
 concordat between the Catholic Church and the Realm. 
 Changes, then, which affected the national Church, were 
 only to be made constitutionally, after consultation with 
 the clergy, through Convocation, since her existing 
 system is the resiilt of the joint assents of the clergy, 
 the laity, and the Crown of England. The following 
 passage from a speech made at Hastings in 1864 
 puts clearly the Bishop of Oxford's ideas as to the 
 charge, duties, and position, that he conceived the 
 nation to have intrusted to the Church of England in 
 its establishment. " By the providence of God this 
 much is certain, and must be admitted by every one, 
 that the Church of England, as treated at present by 
 the State and the nation, is the religious teacher of the 
 people. Mark you that this is so. There has been 
 1 Life, iii. p. 80. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 189 
 
 given, and I think very properly given, perfect liberty 
 to all other religious bodies, and I for one would not see 
 that liberty infringed by prerogative or other legislation 
 in the least degree. But that is not in the least degree 
 giving up the claim that the Church of England is the 
 teacher of the people. ... If you ask me how I can 
 say that the Church of England is the only Apostolic 
 Church in the land, I say that she only possesses the 
 two qualifications, perfectness of organization in a 
 transmitted line of authorized teachers from the Apostles, 
 as apostles from the Lord, combining with that the true 
 transmission of the primitive doctrine. The Church 
 of Rome, as I maintain, failed on both sides. . ." ^ 
 In his Charge for 1866, he refers to the mischievous 
 fallacy that made many think that, because our Church 
 was a national Church, the nation was entitled to settle 
 its doctrine. The compact between the Church and 
 State was not, in the Bishop's view, that the Church 
 shall be the State's instrument for teaching what the 
 State shall from time to time approve, but the teacher 
 for the State of that which she has already convinced 
 the State is — " the Truth." Accordingly, if any new forms 
 of error ever made new definitions of the faith needful, 
 not to change, but to secure the continued sameness of 
 the Church's teaching, it was necessary that both parties 
 to the contract must agree to such an alteration before it 
 could justly be enforced. The Cliurch must propose these 
 definitions in her Convocations, and the State assent 
 to them in her Parliaments. Church questions, then, 
 coming up in the law courts of the realm, look to have 
 it settled what the law in the matter under consideration 
 is, and not what it ought to be. What is to be decided 
 1 Life, iii. p. 150. 
 
190 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 there is whether, for instance, a teacher, against whose 
 teaching complaint has been made, has or has not 
 taught against that old truth which the Church 
 covenanted to declare, and the State covenanted 
 to receive. There was during Bishop Wilberforce's 
 episcopacy, again and again, ground for fearing that the 
 concordat that bound together Church and State might 
 come to an end. He often expresses his own view that 
 it was quite possible that the evil day for the peace 
 and the religion of the land might come, which should 
 sever from each other the Church and State of 
 England. Writing to Mr. Gladstone in 1853, he 
 expresses his opinion that, if the Irish Church is 
 to remain established, she must needs show that she 
 is the Irish Church. The question of her being kept 
 in alliance with the State turns, he sees, on her 
 efficiency most of all, however good her title, how- 
 ever pure her succession, however strong her legal 
 position. So it was that he did all he could to in- 
 crease the efficiency of the Church in England. In 
 bis Charge, delivered in 1863, he notes with satisfac- 
 tion the encouraging change in the mind of the British 
 Parliament towards the Church. This he attributes to 
 the marks of life and vigour so obviously shown in the 
 Church herself; and it is plain that he always felt very 
 strongly that the best, and really the only, defence for 
 the Church is to be found in her devotion, efficiency, 
 and usefulness. Many changes, such as the Divorce 
 Act, and the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, and the 
 claims for an undenominational elementary education, 
 brought embarrassment and perplexity in the relations 
 that existed between the Church of England and the 
 State of England. While these difficulties could not. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 191 
 
 in liis opinion, be ignored or compromised, they need 
 not prevent the machinery from working on, and, in 
 working on, finding strength and power and hberty for 
 more work still. 
 
 The question of the disestablishment of the Irish 
 Church came on in 18G9, and Bishop Wilberforce's 
 proceedings in the matter illustrate to some extent 
 the views that he held on the Establishment question 
 generally. At first he was opposed to it, though 
 apparently accepting Archbishop Trench's opinion that 
 if, after a struggle, the Irish Establishment could not 
 be maintained, and Disraeli's proposal of cutting it 
 down to small dimensions seemed sure to prevail, it 
 would be better to go in for " instant death at the 
 hands of Gladstone, than Disraeli's process of gradual 
 starvation." Thus both in Parliament, and outside 
 in public meetings, he did all he could against it. 
 When, moreover, Mr. Gladstone had carried his reso- 
 lutions in the House of Commons, he was one of 
 those who opposed the Suspensory Bill which was, 
 though carried in the House of Commons, thrown 
 out in the House of Lords. After this, when Mr. 
 Gladstone had appealed to the country on the question, 
 and been returned to power with a large majority, 
 his opposition died away. He told Archbisliop Trench 
 that the time had come to consider " whether any 
 and what compromise was possible." ^ In opposing 
 the Suspensory Bill in the House of Lords, Bishop 
 Wilberforce had argued that, " as a condition pre- 
 cedent to disestablishment, the nation ought to have 
 declared in favour of such a course." This had now 
 been done in a very distinct and emphatic way, and 
 1 Life, iii. \>. 
 
 I 
 
192 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 though personally he could have wished it other- 
 wise, he now used his influence to induce the Irish 
 archbishops and bishops so to act that, in the dis- 
 endownient matter which followed, they might profit 
 by Mr. Gladstone's Churchmanship, and get the most 
 liberal and generous terms possible. In this matter he 
 was disposed to fight to the end that endowments once 
 given to the Church were henceforth Church property, 
 and ought not to be alienated from that Church for 
 any purpose whatever. Ultimately the Bishop did not 
 speak or vote against the second reading of the Irish 
 Churcli Bill ; and in the committee stage explained his 
 action by stating that, in his opinion, that matter had 
 been settled by the answer of the constituencies. 
 
 On the subject of this answer he wrote a pamphlet, 
 which however he did not publish, partly because of 
 Mr. Gladstone's advice, and partly because he was told 
 that Archbishop Trench eagerly deprecated his doing 
 so, and would regard it as " an act of most injurious 
 hostility, which would stir up widespread wrath, and 
 probably require his answering it in a tone which 
 would make all future negotiations more difficult." i 
 In the discussions on tlie subject. Bishop Wilberforce 
 said that "of one thing he was convinced — that while 
 an Establisliment is to a particular Church in many 
 ways a blessing unspeakable, no Church which cannot 
 stand without an Establishment is worth being estab- 
 lished." He looked forward, he said, moreover, much 
 as he lamented the present blow, to the Irish Church 
 showing herself in the future " the true Catholic 
 Church in Ireland, rising into greatness, and leavening 
 more than she had yet done the bulk of the population." 
 1 Life, iii. p. 283. 2 j;,,^/ p_ 290. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 193 
 
 His action on this occasion did not escape the severest 
 criticism from Churchmen and his intimate friends. 
 He was even said " to have been influenced " (to quote 
 his own words from a letter of defence written to the 
 Rev. H. Majendie) "by a miserable desire to get the 
 denuded See of Winchester." Perhaps, however, strange 
 as his action seemed, it did but illustrate his theory 
 that the much-to-be-desired concordat between Church 
 and State, called Establishment, could not be rightly 
 maintained, when one of the parties concerned had 
 declared against it ; and he attributed the unfavourable 
 verdict of the constituencies on the Irish Church ques- 
 tion to the fact that, from a variety of causes, she had 
 not been able to make herself the Church of Ireland. 
 His labour was that the Church of England might not, 
 by a like failure, incur a like disability. 
 
 His ideas on the Establishment question also 
 governed his ideas concerning home reunion and the 
 reunion of Christendom. He longed for both, and as 
 in his younger days he had hoped for a reunion with 
 the Church in Prussia, so also he longed for reunion 
 with the great Eastern Church. Some of his aspira- 
 tions in the matter are to be found in his Charge for 
 1866. As regards the home separation, he declares that 
 he sees no formal differences of the faith which need 
 hopelessly part Churchmen and Nonconformists ; and 
 that time has to a great degree worn away the causes of 
 existing division. As regards the Eastern Church, he 
 writes — " Old ways, old thoughts, old words, seem 
 indeed to hang unchangeable, as in a charmed air, 
 throughout the venerable East ; and many of these are 
 diverse from ours. Still the East is bound to no irre- 
 versible sequence of developed corruptions of the One 
 
 o 
 
BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Faith, and with Her it may be that we may again open 
 intercommunion." But he goes on then to add the 
 following words — " Earnestly as we may long and pray 
 for unity, we can make no overtures for it to any whose 
 first principle is the absolute retention of what we hold 
 to be grave error in doctrine and in practice. I see not 
 how to avoid the conclusion that this must make, at 
 present, impossible all such overtures from us to Rome."^ 
 But with every desire for reunion, and with a capacity, 
 as various occasions in his ministry showed, for living 
 on good terms with men of other denominations, Bishop 
 Wilberforce would -neither abate any of the claims of 
 the Church of England to be the authorized religious 
 teacher of the realm, nor favour any of the "compre- 
 hension schemes," that, in Prayer-Book revision, and 
 other directions, sought to take into the Church some 
 at least of those who dissented from her doctrinal 
 statements. "Concessions so devised," he writes in his 
 Charge for 1860, "from a conviction of their expediency 
 as measures of comprehension, and not from a belief in 
 their truth, would be fatal to those who made, and 
 most hurtful to those who accepted, them. To strive 
 earnestly for the faith, as they have received it, is the 
 common duty of all religious bodies who would not sink 
 into the Dead Sea of absolute unbelief Such a sacrifice 
 of truth as has been suggested would ruin us, and it 
 would, I am convinced, be most injurious to the highest 
 interests of the Dissenting bodies themselves to accept of 
 such concessions as the terms of restored communion." ^ 
 In the same way he was urgent in insisting (and a 
 letter from the Rev. Newman Hall endorses his views) 
 that it was no use concealing the fact that real differ- 
 1 Charge, 1866, pp. 62-3. ' Life, iii. pp. 152-3. 
 
RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT. 195 
 
 ences existed where they did ; more was gained on all 
 sides by a frank and free acknowledgment, that both 
 Nonconformists and Churchmen were what they were 
 on principle, than by feeble attempts to make out that 
 their separation did not involve vital truths. Once 
 again, he felt that the best service he could render to 
 the cause of home reunion was to do all he could to 
 make the Church, in her assertion of Church principles, 
 as thorough as possible, and to secure for her liberty 
 and opportunity for the work which the carrying out of 
 those principles necessarily involved. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 
 
 These pages have so far aimed at indicating some of 
 the main points and phases of Bishop Wilberforce's 
 career ; they have tried to show that, as Canon Ashwell 
 expresses it, " his life was not merely connected ivith, but 
 actually involved, the history of the English, and in 
 great measure of the colonial. Church during his 
 episcopate." Much remains that might be said, but, 
 for limitation of space, must remain unsaid. The 
 present short and concluding chapter has for its object 
 to speak shortly of the great Bishop of Oxford's literary 
 labours ; and to call attention to some of the personal 
 traits that enabled him to accomplish so much. 
 
 The Bishop was once twitted with the ease and 
 dignity that attached necessarily to his position. The 
 occasion was a gathering of working-men, where some, 
 at any rate, of those present had learned only from 
 past traditions of episcopal non-residence and diocesan 
 neglect, and where the audience was inclined to think 
 that labour was a thing unknown, save in the class to 
 which they belonged. " I am," said the Bishop, " as 
 much a labouring man as any one here, and I work 
 longer and harder every day." Dean Burgon has also 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 197 
 
 remarked that lie " habitually /wcec? the work of eighteen, 
 if not of twenty-four, hours " into the twelve hours in 
 which man ought to work. It was but natural that, in 
 such " a continuously active life," little time should have 
 been found for the reading and study which must neces- 
 sarily lie behind any great book. Bishop Wilberforce's 
 pen was as ready as his tongue, but he has not, from 
 force of circumstances, left behind any great literary 
 monument of himself. His collected essays from the 
 Quarterly Review, his charges, his sermons, his works, 
 written in the more abundant leisure of Checkendon 
 and Brighstone days, show us what he was capable of 
 doing, and suggest that he might have succeeded here, 
 as in almost any other department of life upon which 
 he might have entered. In that which he has written 
 there is shown a wonderful command of language, a 
 great power of illustration and a singular clearness of 
 thought ; he can so well appreciate the ideas of other 
 men, detect at once the key to some new intellectual 
 position, expose a fallacy, or explain the strength or 
 weakness of an argument. At one time he thought of 
 delivering a course of Bampton lectures ; he had even 
 begun his reading for them, and advanced in it to some 
 length, but the death of his wife brought this work to 
 an untimely end. Again he was asked to undertake 
 the Lives of the Archbishops of Canterhury, but he 
 found it, on experiment, too great a task for his busy 
 life, and it fell into the able hands of Dean Hook. 
 Either of these works might have given him a wide 
 influence and fame as a man of letters, greater than 
 that which his more ephemeral, though nevertheless 
 distinguished and remarkable, labours in that direction 
 have secured for him. But, having said this muoh of 
 
198 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 him as a writer, a word must be added about his 
 character as a reader and learner. His " readiness " in 
 later life was the result of much careful and systematic 
 reading in his earlier days. The temper of his times 
 and the general tone of his countrymen demanded, as 
 he often said, not merely an earnest and active, but a 
 learned, clergy. He studied to understand the spirit 
 of his Church and the spirit of the age to which he had 
 to present it ; and, to this end, used his times of com- 
 parative leisure, and his odd moments, to gather inform- 
 ation on all subjects. At the end of a long day, he 
 would take away with him to his bedroom a volume of 
 one of the Fathers which he wished to consult; a visitor 
 at Cuddesdon observed in his library a " pile of the new- 
 est sceptical books and reviews upon his table, with each 
 salient passage in their arguments underlined and 
 commented upon in their margin " ; he could rise at six 
 to master twenty pages of Pttsey on Daniel, which he was 
 reading through ; his letters show that he mastered 
 strange subjects of interest, as he gave his opinion on 
 such matters as mesmerism and table-turning. All 
 these things indicate the cost to him of that " readiness," 
 and wideness of view and interest, for which he was 
 famed. They show us how he was able to write all 
 those manifold and various essays, in such a first-rate 
 periodical as the Quarterly, to many of which reference 
 has been made in these pages, as a good index of his 
 own mind in many a crisis, and an evidence of the im- 
 portance men attached to his utterances, and the help 
 they found in them. The five or six editions asked for 
 of the number containing his review of Essays and 
 Bevie^os are a proof that he had not " shut himself up 
 at Cuddesdon for a fortnight, to write it," in vain. 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 199 
 
 But, more even than from books, did Bishop Wilber- 
 force learn from men. Frank and free intercourse with 
 great men of all sorts had very much to do with his 
 marvellous understanding of great questions, and his 
 insight into great affairs. He had the advantage of 
 being able to learn from rulers how to rule ; and he was 
 by nature fitted to profit by, and gather stores of lasting 
 knowledge from, intercourse with famous men. He 
 could hold his own with them ; and the quickness of 
 observation which made him an interested and success- 
 ful student of natural history, made him also an observer 
 of men's characters, and ready to gather and retain the 
 suggestions made to him by their information and their 
 knowledge. He was fond of social intercourse, and 
 almost unrivalled in his day as a conversationahst ; while 
 he talked his best himself he had the power of making 
 his audience talk their best too. He loved to surround 
 himself with interesting people, and to get them to 
 bring out, for his own benefit, and that of his guests, his 
 friends, or his company, the treasures of knowledge or 
 talent that made them interesting. Many stories are 
 told of the silence of breathless attention that would 
 fall on social gatherings, in order to hear sometimes 
 Bishop Wilberforce's story, or some passage of his talk. 
 His old butler recounts the good-tempered dismay with 
 which his faithful and attached servants (for Bishop 
 Wilberforce was ever kind to his servants, and frankly 
 apologized to them for any hasty and impatient word of 
 his) greeted his sudden return to his home after a three 
 months' absence, with almost more than a houseful of 
 guests. Lord Carlisle writes in his diary : — " I admire 
 and envy the Bishop's fearless hospitality, not minding 
 who know each other, and how they will suit," Men 
 
200 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOliCE. 
 
 have laughed at, or spoken with sometliing of horror 
 and alarm, of some of the Bishop of Oxford's friendships 
 and intimacies ; they have urged that he should have 
 consorted more with the rigidly orthodox, and some- 
 what less with the great. But he had a marvellous 
 faculty for mixing the apparently incongruous, for 
 getting out of all their best, for turning the dangerous 
 into the safe. He was always striving to learn of men 
 and from men, and in this way amassed stores of know- 
 ledge, which the incessant activity and occupation of 
 his life forbade him to gather (even if it could so have 
 been gathered) from books. 
 
 Bather, then, as a speaker and preacher, than as a 
 writer of books, has Bishop Wilberforce intiuenced the 
 thoughts of his countrymen and others. We have 
 already said a few words about his powers as a speaker ; 
 and in the House of Lords, and on platforms, at 
 congresses, at conferences, and in social and other 
 public gatherings, a speech from him came to be looked 
 for, and listeaed to, with eager longing, and earnest 
 attention. Many was the good cause that his eloquence 
 carried forward, and lifted into popularity ; not seldom, 
 in the days of his difficulties, did he win a hearing from 
 a hostile meeting, till those who came to hiss and oppose 
 remained to listen and applaud. So was it at Bradford, 
 in 1858, when he went to address a meeting where many 
 came " to resist in a voice of thunder the Tractarian 
 confessionals." He gained a hearing by address- 
 ing the turbulent mob as " Brother Yorkshiremen " ; 
 having gained it he kept it, and, to u.se the words of 
 his biographer, " turned the angry crowd into an orderly 
 and enthusiastic meeting." So again in the House of 
 Lords, he could, and did, hold his own, and proved 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 201 
 
 liiiiiself a match for Lord Westbury and Lord Derby in 
 speaking and in debate. He was a power there indeed, 
 and well sustained, and even advanced, the reputation 
 in the matter of oratory wliich had come back to his 
 order since the day when Bishop Blomfield caused one, 
 wliose delight it had been to bait the bishops in the 
 House of Lords, to exclaim to a friend, " There is a devil 
 of a bishop up at last ! " As a chairman. Bishop 
 Wilberforce was inimitable ; quick to guide or check 
 meeting or speaker; skilful at bringing all, through 
 many risks and dangers, to a right issue. It was his 
 Avisdom and adroitness that saved many troubles, in the 
 infant days of Church congresses, by convincing those 
 who met under his presidency at Oxford of the entire 
 inexpediency of passing resolutions at those gatherings. 
 " At public meetings," writes a clergyman of the Oxford 
 diocese, "as well as in smaller meetings of committee, 
 the decision (as has been oftert* noticed) seemed almost 
 invariably on the side which the Bishop advocated. As 
 an opponent in argument he was always most for- 
 midable ; scarcely any one seemed able to grapple with 
 him. However fortified liis adversary might be in facts, 
 he found himself unable to resist the influence of the 
 Bishop, and probably a laugh would be raised by some 
 juke at his expense." 
 
 As a preacher, the Bishop was perhaps even more re- 
 markable still among his contemporaries. We have many 
 of his sermons ; and their clearness, their variety, their 
 wealth of illustration, their appeals, carrying conviction 
 to the mind and head, and rousing enthusiasm through 
 the affections and the heart, cannot fail to strike those 
 who read them ; though they cannot lie under the spell 
 of the " irresistible voice," that added a vastly greater 
 
202 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 force and power to . these " winged words." Bishop 
 Wilberforce did much by his preaching to raise the 
 standard of the Church of England in this matter. He 
 felt, as he himself says, that the inquiring tone of the 
 times, and the general activity of the day, called for 
 thoughtful, earnest, careful sermons, full of reality, free 
 from affectation, breaking through worldliness by the 
 stirring up of the spiritual affections. The utterances 
 of the pulpit were, and had been, in his opinion, " dull, 
 monotonous, and droning " — mere essays, and not rousing 
 appeals. There was a tendency in the better under- 
 standing of the Church's sacramental teaching, and the 
 growing care for worship, to disparage preaching, " so 
 that one of the very chiefest instruments which God 
 has provided for the saving of souls was likely through 
 carelessness and neglect to lose its efficiency." ^ It is 
 plain too from many of the Bishop of Oxford's charges, 
 that he felt strongly that the growing idea that un- 
 written sermons ought to be preached, even by those 
 who had no gift for such preaching, was leading to 
 weakness, to vapid utterances, which were but words, 
 and "the mere pouring off of the first frothy surface of 
 the mind." For himself he tells us that, with all his 
 natural readiness and eloquence, it was quite fifteen 
 years before he allowed himself to preach without 
 writing. He served a long and laborious apprentice- 
 ship, and his power and facility in the pulpit was, 
 after all, made, rather than born in him. Canon 
 Ashwell tells us how for months together, in his early 
 days at Brighstone, the course of preparation of each 
 sermon is specified and recorded in his diary, together 
 with memoranda as to its efficiency when delivered. 
 1 Chanje, 1857, p. 19. 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 203 
 
 Often, and often, as his diary records, he rose early in 
 the morning to write his sermon ; and, says Dean 
 Burgon, " even to the last he stuck to the practice 
 of at least endeavouring to commit to paper — at the 
 Athenaeum probably, or in the train, — what he proposed 
 to deliver from the pulpit." ^ And again, to quote 
 from the same source, — " There is no describing how 
 exquisite was his oratory. Such a delightful voice and 
 persuasive mode of address ; such a happy admixture of 
 argumentative power with rhetorical skill ; such wealth 
 of striking imagery and unrivalled beauty of diction ; 
 and all this, recommended by the most consummate 
 grace and a truly mellifluous utterance, made him 
 facile princeps, beyond a doubt the greatest living 
 master of his art." He understood well his audience — 
 their capacities, their difficulties, and their wants. To 
 undergraduates in the University church, to a London 
 congregation in a West-End church, to the labourers 
 on his Lavington estate, he was alike acceptable ; he 
 could fathom their wants and difficulties ; he could find 
 words to bring home great truths and realities to all. 
 A working-man once waylaid him, as he left the pulpit 
 in a crowded church, and explained how his fellows had 
 deputed him to ask the Bishop to come and speak to 
 them about religion. They trusted him, of all men, to 
 make them feel and understand ; and the sequel tells 
 us that the Bishop werit.^ So again, there exists a 
 humorous correspondence in verse between the Bishop 
 and Dr. Monsell, wherein the latter's importunity gets a 
 promise from the Bishop that be will come and preach 
 for him at Egham. The Bishoj) proposes substitutes, 
 but in vain. 
 
 ^ Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. p. 40. ^ 
 
 iii. p. 33. 
 
204 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 But though Bishop Wilberforce, as much as he could, 
 wrote and prepared those many great sermons, the 
 delivering of which, with an almost prodigal activity 
 and readiness to be spent in his work, made him well- 
 known throughout England ; it was at last most 
 common for him to preach extempore. His diaries 
 often record how, after preparing a written sermon, on 
 entering the church where it was to be preached, he 
 would perceive that what he intended to say would be 
 unsuitable, and then and there change his subject. 
 Partly, as he said, because he was nervous, and partly 
 for the sake of weaker brethren who were too ready to 
 discard ttie MS. which they needed, where he did not, 
 he liked to take something with him into the pulpit, if 
 only a bundle of blank paper. But, even if he had a 
 written discourse, he often did not use it at all, or left 
 it to enlarge on some point suggested by it, that struck 
 him as likely to be useful at the time. There is a well- 
 known story which tells how, when Bishop Claughton 
 asked him once to let him read again a striking passage, 
 in which he had just spoken, in a sermon, of religious 
 perplexity, the preacher handed him a paper on which 
 was written the single word " fog." Sometimes he would 
 exclaim in the vestry before service, to the friend with 
 whom he was, if suddenly called upon to preach — " Tell 
 me what to say." A few moments of concentrated 
 thought would then suffice ; and, when the time came, 
 he would set forth in a most telling and attractive way 
 the idea suggested. Stories of his wonderful readiness in 
 this way are many. Once he had undertaken to give 
 at Cuddesdon an address on a particular subject; on his 
 arrival, the Vice-Principal was horrified to find that he 
 had entirely forgotten that he had promised to speak 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 205 
 
 on any special point. On being reminded, however, he 
 discharged with wonderful ett'ect the task originally 
 assigned to him. Again, coming to Ryde, prepared to 
 preach for an infirmary, he learnt in the vestry that 
 his sermon had really been promised for schools, and, 
 when the time came, made a striking appeal on their 
 behalf. It was hard indeed to find him, as a preacher, 
 unready at an emergency or unprepared ; but his readi- 
 ness was nevertheless the result of painful and laborious 
 attention to this part of his work, from the time that 
 he first took Holy Orders, and for long years after that. 
 
 The subject of preaching is often discussed by him 
 in his charges, and he has much advice to give con- 
 cerning it, which has a great and unique value as 
 coming from one who was in his day such a " master." 
 " His strength," says Dean Burgon, " lay, not so much 
 in the exposition of obscure passages of Scripture, or 
 in the eliciting of important ethical teaching from un- 
 promising texts, as in the living power with which he 
 brought home Divine precepts to the heart and con- 
 science of his auditory." ' All this was his own, and, 
 " in the best sense of the word, original " ; but he 
 reached this by diligent study of the famous preachers 
 of the day. When he first resided in London he was 
 wont to go about to hear other men's sermons, and to 
 make careful notes of what he heard ; but he was ever 
 a generous critic, quick to note and praise excellencies, 
 tolerant of all that was interesting and well-meant, and 
 had in it anything of thought and meaning ; though 
 he could be unsparing in his criticisms and condem- 
 nations where carelessness and deadness evidently pre- 
 vailed. The experience he gained in the matter caused 
 ^ Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. p. 45. 
 
206 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 him to give counsels such as these. He told his clergy 
 that to prepare their sermons they must first prepare 
 themselves, and in his Charge for 18G3 expresses him- 
 self thus — " It is, I believe, mainly idleness which ruins 
 sermons, which makes them vague, confused, powerless, 
 and dull. We need ever to remember the somewhat 
 caustic words, 'The sermon which has cost little is 
 worth just what it cost.' " And again — " Suffer me to 
 i-ecapitulate in the form of a few direct counsels what, 
 on this great subject, I have gathered from experience 
 or the writings of others. To secure thought and 
 preparation, begin, whenever it is possible, the next 
 Sunday's sermon at least on the preceding Monday. 
 Let prayer for God's help be the beginning. Then 
 select carefully your subject — if possible from the 
 Gospel, Epistle, Lessons or Psalms of the day. Choose 
 it according to your people's need, and your power. 
 Let it be as much as possible resolvable into a single 
 proposition. Having chosen it, meditate upon it as 
 deeply as you can. Consider, first, how to state cor- 
 rectly the theological formula which it involves ; then 
 how to arrange its parts so as to convince the hearer's 
 understanding. Think, next, how you can move his 
 affections, and so win his will to accept it. See into 
 what practical conclusions of holy living you can sum 
 it up. Having thus the whole before you, you may 
 proceed to its actual composition. And in doing this, 
 if any thoughts strike you with peculiar power, secure 
 them at once. . . . Until you have preacheil for many 
 years, I would say, set yourself to write at least one 
 sermon weekly. Study with especial care all statements 
 of doctrine ; to be clear, particular, and accurate. . . 
 Having written 'your sermons, if you must deliver them 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 207 
 
 ■with the manuscript before you, strive to do it as little 
 as if you were reading, and as much as if you were 
 speaking them as possible. Do not be the slave of 
 your manuscript, but make it your servant. If you see 
 that a word is not understood, vary it ; that an appeal 
 is reaching some heart, press it home. If you have the 
 gift, after having written your sermon carefully, make 
 sliort notes of it and preach from these. This will help 
 you greatly to show in your manner that you feel what 
 you say — the first and chiefest rule for making it felt 
 by others." ^ Such are Bishop Wilberforce's words 
 about preaching; and they are worth quoting, and 
 worth studying, for they concern, and more or less 
 contain, the secret of that which was perhaps his most 
 eflfective weapon for guiding, influencing, and instruct- 
 ing the minds of many different men. Thousands 
 came under the spell of the majestic presence, the 
 marvellous voice, the wonderful eloquence of Bishop 
 Wilberforce, as he preached to them, now in the 
 village church, now in the crowded city, touching all 
 classes and kinds of men alike — learned and iofnorant, 
 gentle and simple, rich and poor. 
 
 A story is told illustrating his evident appreciation 
 of other men's trials and temptations, when he spoke 
 on these subjects in his sermons and addresses. On 
 the occasion of the re-opening of a restored church, the 
 Bishop was thanking the churchwarden, an old farmer, 
 for his share in the good work. "And I must thank 
 your Lordship for your sermon," was the reply. " But 
 I could not help thinking, as you talked about sin, 
 that your Lordship must have been a little wildish 
 yourself when you were a young man." In their 
 1 Charge, 1863, p. 83. 
 
208 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 knowledge of human nature, in their earnestness, in 
 their clear and full assertion of truth, Bishop Wilber- 
 force's sermons had a great influence indeed on the 
 thought of his time ; and, written and unwritten, 
 published and unpublished, must be regarded as a 
 distinct and valuable part of the literary activity of 
 the day, brought home as they were to many by the 
 great gifts and striking personality of the man who 
 delivered them. 
 
 A kindly, appreciative, and sympathetic picture of 
 the man, as he was known by those who knew him 
 best, is drawn by Dean Burgon in his TAves of Twelve 
 Good Men. ' There was," writes the author of this 
 pleasant sketch, " a rare amount of real sympathy be- 
 tween him and myself in matters of religious thought 
 and opinion ; " and some of those who were most 
 closely attached to Bishop Wilberforce testify that the 
 Dean's kindly pen has done a fair measure of justice 
 to his friend's character. To men who were not 
 strongly set against him from principle or prejudice, 
 Samuel Wilberforce was singularly attractive. He had 
 a happy knack of drawing the best out of those who 
 were under him ; he showed that he expected earnest 
 effort, and respected it too ; he always backed men up 
 who were working, even if they got into scrapes and 
 made mistakes. Gradually there gathered round him, 
 in his Oxford diocese, a band of devoted men ready 
 to do their utmost to carry out their leader's plans. 
 He was wont to call the " inner circle " of these his 
 " body-guard," and it was his delight to gather them 
 around him, and to feel, and show, that with them 
 he could be frank and open, and live in pleasant 
 intercourse, fearless of misunderstanding, and without 
 
LITEBARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 209 
 
 constraint. He rejoiced unfeignedly in their successes, 
 and appreciated thoroughly their strong points, and 
 was eager to hold up to admiration (as, for instance, in 
 the case of Dr. Woodford's preaching) that which they 
 did well. But the tongue that could praise, where 
 praise was due, could also rebuke terribly sometimes, 
 and was not afraid to speak out. Thus, as Dean 
 Burgon writes, " the men who neglected their parishes, 
 their churches, their work — they hated him with a 
 cordial hatred." Bishop Wilberforce was a wonderful 
 kindler of enthusiasm ; and those who knew him and 
 worked under him grow enthusiastic still, as they tell 
 you of his making some new departure or experiment 
 in Church work, or quietly crushing and paralyzing 
 a formidable opposition, or defeating a dogged and 
 obstinate obstruction. 
 
 It was natural, indeed necessary, that one who did 
 so much to quicken the devotional and spiritual life 
 of others, should himself have the devotional side of his 
 nature strongly developed and carefully trained. His 
 diaries, and his addresses to his candidates for Orders, 
 let us see that he gave himself, and desired to lead 
 others to give themselves, much to prayer and com- 
 munings with God. He made a great deal of the more 
 spiritual side of the training given at Cuddesdon 
 College; he shared in its opportunities and privileges 
 when he was at home, A story is told of his remark- 
 ing, when some were discussing in his presence the 
 obligations of the clergy to say daily the Morning and 
 Evening Prayer, that he had found four o'clock a good 
 time to say the evening office, in a cab. One who 
 often had the opportunity of observing, writes — "His 
 devoutness iu cummunicating must have struck all 
 
210 
 
 BISHOP WlLljERFOIICE. 
 
 who were ministering with him. He evidently made it 
 au occasion for prolonged and special prayer — furnishing 
 himself with a manual partly printed, partly written. 
 He always seemed to me absorbed in the business of the 
 sanctijaiy." ^ His work and life were based then on a 
 real and fervent appreciation of the high .'st tilings. 
 
 Some one has said that Bishop Wilberforce's best 
 testimonial was the afiection with which he was plainly 
 regarded by good men of undoubted spirituality. He 
 speaks almost pathetically of his own craving for 
 sympathy and affection, and it is plain that, while he 
 showed it abundantly to others, he rejoiced and desired 
 to have it returned. The bereavements which came to 
 him were terrible blows, never forgotten; his wife's 
 grave, and the resting-place of his " best-beloved son," 
 were sacred spots, and to the last he was accustomed 
 whenever he came home to Lavington, to visit them, and 
 place flowers there. In all his cares and business, he 
 was full of thoughts of his children, anxious to an 
 uncommon decree about their amusements even, and all 
 their interests. 
 
 It was this affectionateness of disposition that inspired 
 that sympathy which has been picked out as the strong 
 point in his character. Bishop Wilberforce, by nature, 
 by training, by the experience of his life, with its many 
 successes, its great sorrows, and its bitter disappoint- 
 ments, was made to help other men to bear their 
 burdens, and to put himself into their place. He could 
 lend his wonderful powers to enhance the joys of a time 
 of happiness, or to soothe the bitterness of an hour of 
 sorrow. There is quite a marvel of thoughtful, hopeful 
 tenderness in many of the letters of condolence tliat he 
 1 Lives of Txvdtx Good Men, ii. p. 60. 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 211 
 
 wrote ; it is good to read of his enjoyment of a Chi-istmas 
 revel with his children at Cuddesdon ; it is touching to 
 find hira suggesting rest to one of his plainly over- 
 worked clergy, and, with much tact and delicacy, sending 
 timely help to one with narrow means. The same 
 power of sympathy, too, would make him do many little 
 kindnesses, showing, for instance, special hospitality to 
 the more friendless of the Cuddesdon students, drawing 
 out the more shy amongst his candidates for Ordination, 
 setting himself at the end of a long and laborious day 
 to read for the entertainment of guests ia some house 
 where he was staying. In all these ways he conciliated 
 many, even of those who were inclined to regard him 
 with suspicion, or possibly dislike ; and he could disarm 
 prejudice with that happy temper, which Lord Derby 
 once observed and welcomed, when he remarked, "I see 
 the Bishop of Oxford can take a joke." So wide 
 indeed was his sympathy, so all-inclusive, that some who 
 had tasted of it were apt to feel disappointed, and to 
 doubt its reality, when they found with how many their 
 privilege was shared. 
 
 The Bishop was remarkable for his power of remem- 
 bering men and their names, and he increased his 
 capability in this respect by practice. It was not 
 uncommon for clergy and others to be much surprised 
 to find themselves not forgotten by the Bishop, though 
 years perhaps had passed since they had met him. A 
 lady who had once met the Bishop of Oxford after a 
 Confirmation in his diocese, was waiting soon after to 
 cross at tlie top of Regent Street. She was surprised 
 to hear some one saying to her, " You seem in difficulties, 
 
 Miss ; let me help you." It was the Bishop, who 
 
 piloted her safely to the other side. An amusing story 
 
212 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 is also told, illustrating how this instinct was sometimes 
 at fault. At a Confirmation, Bishop Wilberforce saw a 
 boy amongst the candidates, whom he felt sure he had 
 confirmed before. He sent a message to him to say so, 
 and received a denial. Still unconvinced, he sent the 
 clergyman who presented the candidate to say that the 
 Bishop was sure he had confirmed him before. " Tell him 
 he is a liar," was the response. His skill in recognitions 
 was, however, no small element in the Bishop of Oxford's 
 influence with people. It was with many a cause of 
 wonder, and so common and remarkable that stories 
 were current to account for it, as that the Bishop kept 
 photographs of his clergy, and carefully studied before- 
 hand those belonging to any district he meant to visit. 
 Again, there is a story of the Bishop, after leaving his 
 diocese, meeting one of his old clergy, and astonishing 
 his chaplain, who was with him, by the wonderful 
 memory that could bring him to ask the stranger after 
 " the old gray horse." The story goes on to say that, on 
 further inquiry being made as to how the Bishop could 
 have thought of it, the answer was, " Did you not see 
 the hair on his coat ? " 
 
 There was in the Bishop of Oxford, too, in spite of his 
 labours, his sorrows, and his anxieties, a wonderful 
 elasticity of spirits, an almost boyish gaiety, and even 
 boisterousness ; often it was but the reaction, it is true, 
 from deep depression, or the light cloak that concealed 
 a world of sorrow. People saw, as his biographer says, 
 a quickness of transition in his moods, according with 
 the mood of those around him, which must have per- 
 plexed, and often did perplex, comparative strangers, or 
 persons of less susceptible dispositions.^ " Often," he 
 1 Life, i. p. 178. 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 213 
 
 writes to a friend, "when I seem the gayest, I am 
 indeed the most utterly sad." But, any way, the Bishop 
 had a great facility for leaving his cares ; and though, 
 in his later years, illness left him much less able to 
 overcome depression, that facility stood him in good 
 stead in the wear and tear and worry of his laborious 
 life. Dean Burgon's story of the way in which he 
 " took a blessing from him " by playfully pinning him 
 to the wall outside All Souls', and forcing him to say, 
 "God bless you," on his translation to Winchester, illus- 
 trates the trait in Bishop Wilberforce's character to 
 which reference is made. So, too, does the story of 
 his ride with the Bishop of London, in which he 
 gave bis brother bishop a lead over the hedge by the 
 roadside. 
 
 The same playfulness of spirit appeared in the 
 Bishop's conversation, in his jokes, his stories, and his 
 quiet repartees. He became almost proverbial for 
 these ; and, though there are many and many that are 
 ascribed to him which he did not say, or use, or make, 
 still, in his lighter moments, there would always be an 
 abundance of good things of this sort going about 
 where he was. Here again Dean Burgon tells how 
 many recollections there are with those who knew 
 him, of incidents " which can only be designated as 
 laughable. He was so full of boyish spirits, boyish glee, 
 so versatile moreover, and apt (without real levity) to 
 descend from the sublime to the ridiculous in a 
 moment." There were those, of course, who thousfht all 
 this ill-timed, and out of place ; they were inclined to 
 regard it, not as the lawful and happy recreation of a 
 busy and devoted life, but as ill-suited to the high 
 calling of a bishop. One story may be told here which 
 
214 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 illustrates the Bishop's readiness in answer and 
 defence. Every one knows that, early in his career as 
 Bishop, some person or persons gave him the sobriquet 
 of " Soapy Sam." A lady once asked him why he was 
 called thus. " Because, madam," he answered, " I am 
 always in hot water, and always come out of it with clean 
 hands." 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce had, and has, a great reputation 
 for his witty speeches, his good stories, and his jokes. 
 A ruthless literalness has exploded many of them ; as, 
 for instance, his reported answer to a lady who asked 
 him who were the two best preachers of the day. 
 " Why, madam, think of a part of your dress," — mean- 
 ing hook-and-eye. Some he has been heard to deny, 
 as that he capped Lord Palmerston's rallying of him 
 from his carriage, when the Bishop had preferred to 
 walk to church on a wet day. Lord Palmerston is said 
 to have quoted at the Bishop the line, " How blest is 
 he, who ne'er consents by ill advice to walk." The 
 Bishop quoted the next, in playful reference to his 
 host's carriage, "Nor stands in sinners' way, nor sits 
 where men profanely talk." Many of his jokes are too 
 personal to bear repetition in the lifetime of those at 
 whose expense they were, in all good-humour, made. 
 But it is to the point to give from various sources 
 illustrations of a side of Bishop Wilberforce's character 
 which added a great deal to his acceptability with, and 
 influence upon, his contemporaries. Dean Burgon 
 describes him, at his own table, turning round to his 
 neighbour, Archdeacon Gierke, and asking him why 
 an Archdeacon's apron is like unwholesome food ? and 
 supplying the answer — "Because it goes against his 
 stomach." He also tells vis of his reply to an inquiry 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 215 
 
 whether he had not cancer in his mouth — "Yes, to 
 be sure, u)hen I'm eating crab." The same authority 
 speaks of this readiness of wit, even in the Bishop's 
 early days. Once when his tutor appeared with rod 
 in hand on a scene of disorder, Wilberforce thrust 
 forward a certain Jewish schoolfeUow with the plea, 
 " The Jew first, and then the Gentile." Hearing a 
 young man describe how he had the misfortune to slay 
 a deer when permitted to shoot rabbits in the royal 
 park, Bishop Wilberforce expressed a hope that after 
 that the authorities did not give the offender the cold 
 shmddcr. So again, to a mechanic, thinking to con- 
 found him by asking suddenly the way to lieaven, the 
 Bishop at once replied, "Turn to the right, and go, 
 my friend, straight on." After tlie Bishop of Peter- 
 borough's great speech in the House of Lords, on the 
 Irish Church, the speaker's hat was inadvertently taken 
 up by Bishop Wilberforce. On being reminded of his 
 mistake the Bishop surrendered it, remarking grace- 
 fully, that he wished he had the brains which the hat 
 rightfully covered. So was it given to Bishop Wilber- 
 force to conciliate many by his happy power of saying 
 bright and pleasant things. 
 
 Beyond all this, which we have mentioned, — a 
 result perhaps of his wide sympathies, his power of 
 winning men, and his capacity for getting recreation — 
 was Bishop Wilberforce's readiness for hard work. In 
 his Oxford days he did not a little in giving help to 
 other bishops in their diocesan labours; and, on his 
 translation to Winchester, a near relation said, that his 
 larger spliere of work would, at any rate, save him from 
 being " a hack bishop " any longer. Work brought him 
 relief in some of those great troubles that clouded his 
 
216 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 life. Far from allowing them to keep Lim, even for 
 a time, inactive, he carried his heavy heart at once to the 
 routine of duty, and found in this way the true solace ; 
 though he writes in his diary at one such time of trouble, 
 " Very weary at night, a sad heart so increases fatigue." 
 There is a striking passage, bearing on this habit of 
 his of resuming his wonted occupations when in trouble 
 in a letter from Archdeacon Randall to the Rev. 
 R. C. Trench, written just at the time when the 
 Bishop lost his eldest son. The letter has described his 
 many engagements, which the Bishop was even then 
 fulfilling, and the writer adds — '■' These details will 
 make you fear, as I do, that all this must be a heavy 
 wear and tear upon the inward man. But what an 
 astonishing creature he is ! what is he made of? what 
 is he made for^ Surely there must be some great 
 purpose for him to fulfil." ^ We find some answer to the 
 Archdeacon's question, in the recollection that Bishop 
 Wilberforce was pre-eminently the man who steered 
 the Church of England some way along the safe course, 
 in a time of crisis, and brought her out at least into a 
 place of greater liberty. He was ready to spend and be 
 spent ungrudgingly in this, which seemed to him the, 
 want and necessity of his day ; and, as is usual with men 
 who give themselves wholly to any work or cause, he 
 was able to get through so much, that men were fairly 
 astonished at all he accomplished. The trouble in- 
 volved, the opposition that threatened, the novelty of 
 an undertaking, never deterred Bishop Wilberforce 
 from any departure, which his clearness of perception 
 made him see to be desirable, in Church life or 
 Church work. Of course he made some mistakes, and 
 1 ii/t, ii. p. 311. 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 217 
 
 incurred some grievous defeats; but he brought much 
 out to a real success, largely because of his untiring 
 energy, and readiness for laborious work. Not only 
 could he plan, and organize, but details even were 
 not trifles in his eyes — a fortunate circumstance indeed, 
 when the smallest defect might well have given 
 opportunity to prejudice, to timidity, to suspicion, to 
 wreck utterly some of his most important efforts after 
 Church growth and development. 
 
 But Dean Burgon has reminded us that there is 
 another side — or at least that there has seemed to many 
 to be another side — to the character of the great Bishop 
 of Oxford. Men have often questioned the motives of 
 some of the Bishop's actions, and accused him of acting 
 from expediency,and being a man of the world. His quick 
 changes from grave to gay have troubled them, and his 
 social successes and reputation have been regarded 
 (specially by men disposed to judge him hardly) as un- 
 becoming a really spiritual and deeply religious man. 
 Dean Burgon speaks from the point of view of one who 
 knew him intimately and well. He has shown abun- 
 dantly that he had the entire respect, and the full con- 
 fidence and affection, of the band of true, earnest, and 
 devoted men, who have the best right, from their close 
 intercourse with him, to speak of him as he really was. 
 He was clearly too great to escape detraction, and even 
 envy; and it is only natural, perhaps right, that consci- 
 entious men, who dreaded many of his ideas as danger- 
 ous to Church and State, should have been glad to hear 
 whispers against him, and above all, to disparage him in 
 high places. Cautious, Bishop Wilberforce was not ; he 
 learnt a lesson certainly in this respect, notably from 
 the Hampden case. " Sure of himself, and unsuspicious 
 
218 
 
 BISHOP WILBERFORCE. 
 
 of others, he was habitually too confiding, too un- 
 guarded in his utterances." So writes Dean Burgon, 
 and he adds — " But above all, his besetting fault was 
 that he was a vast deal too facile. The consequence 
 might have been foreseen. He was sometimes obliged 
 to ' hark back ' — to revoke — to unsay. Tliis occasioned 
 distrust." It was no small matter, and no easy task, 
 for Bishop Wilberforce, with his quick wit and ready 
 tongue, to prevent himself from saying much too often 
 those smart things which leave a sting behind them. 
 He tells us plainly that he had to put a strong re- 
 straint upon himself in this matter, specially as a 
 speaker in the House of Lords, and often regrets that 
 he has been betrayed into saying what might seem 
 unkindly. Detraction, calumny, and misrepresentation 
 were very bitter to him, and it hurt his affectionate 
 nature very deeply to have to be out with any man. 
 His own words on this point are — "I have no doubt 
 that the sharp frosts of suspicion and detraction are speci- 
 ally useful to those who, like me, naturally crave for 
 sympathy, and shoot out too readily the tendrils of 
 atFection ; but certainly, the process of being frost- 
 nipped, though useful, is painful enough to the shoot- 
 bearer, and often makes me long, if my boys were 
 launched, to lie down and die." i fcieveral times in his 
 life, the Bishop was obliged to make his defence. But 
 he was able, as in the Hampden difficulty, in the Boyne 
 Hill case, in the controversy with Mr. Golightly, to 
 make it clear that he had a pure and disinterested 
 motive. There may have been unwisdom and want of 
 judgment; but a principle lay behind his action all 
 through, and a real desire to do his duty by the Church. 
 1 Lices of Tvxhe Good Men, ii. p. 66. 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE AND PERSONALITY. 219 
 
 It cannot be surprising that a character, versatile and 
 mobile as his was, slmuld have puzzled and caused 
 offence to many. Ordinary human nature may well 
 stand excused if it failed to understand how any one 
 could be so many things to so many men, and yet be 
 no actor, but true to his best self all the while. 
 Circumstances were sure to give them many oppor- 
 tunities for having their wonder and astonishment 
 turned into horror, mistrust, and even into absolute 
 want of confidence. Fearless, outspoken, trusting much 
 to his own great powers, and his personal influence, 
 Bishop Wilberforce did sometimes say too much, go too 
 far, and, above all things, give too much freedom to 
 men who needed rather restraint. All these things 
 marred, and hindered, the carrying out of some of the 
 projects with which he identified himself. It was not 
 a small disability, in the temper and tone of the day in 
 which he lived, that so many of his family and friends 
 seceded to Rome. He rather forgot the weakness that 
 this could not fail to cause, and the suspicion it could 
 not fail to arouse. Tlie consciousness of his own 
 integrity; his unfeigned horror of Roman error, and 
 the Roman system; the great powers that he knew 
 were his — all went to blind him to the consequences to 
 himself and his work of these defections. So Bishop 
 Wilberforce never sat in St. Augustine's chair. But 
 he did give to the work and office of a bishop in the 
 Church of England a new meaning; he gave Church 
 life a new enthusiasm and reality; he laboured abun- 
 dantly amongst those who, in the last fifty years, have 
 done so very much to make the great Anglican 
 Communion able to feel its great mission, and eager to 
 accept its high destiny. Looking back now, and 
 
220 
 
 BISHOP WILBEEFORCE. 
 
 contrasting the Church of England as it is with what 
 it was when Samuel Wilberforce was called, in 1845, to 
 the See of Oxford, one wonders how she has come safely 
 through so many dangers. His life and work are no 
 small part of the answer to such a question. His gifts, 
 his knowledge of men, his appreciation of his Church — 
 all these have done much, very much, to make it 
 possible that that Church should live, and move 
 onward, in very stormy waters, on very troubled seas. 
 
 On Saturday afternoon, July 19th, 1873, an accident, 
 while riding on the Surrey Downs, took away from the 
 great work of organizing his still new diocese of 
 Winchester, the man who had laboured at Oxford to 
 show what being a bishop really meant. For himself 
 it was as he would have had it ; he desired that thus, if 
 it might be, the night should come to him " in which no 
 man can work." For others there seemed a great 
 blank, a desolation, a power passed from earth. A 
 hand which had pointed men upward, would point them 
 upward no more. Men told each other, as the tidings of 
 his sudden death spread through the country, that 
 another great Englishman was dead, and one who had 
 truly " served his generation," before he fell asleep. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, 71, 123, 124-5, 
 
 127-8, 130-1 
 Aldeison, Baron, 88 
 Allies, Mr., 87-8, 138 
 Alverstoke, 25-6, 46 
 Anderson, Sir C, 5, 15, 16, 17, 183 
 Anson, Mr., 67 
 
 Apostolic Ministry, 17, 45, 90, 
 
 103, 107, 189 
 Arches, Court of, 80, 142 
 Ashwell, Canon, 4, 6, 10, 54, 56, 
 
 63, 69, 78, 141, 196, 202 
 Athanasian Creed, 154, 185 
 
 Bagot, Bishop, 41 
 Beauchamp, Lord, 184 ' 
 Bennett, Mr., 74, 116, 138, 175-6 
 Blomfield, Bi.shop, 109, 113, 130, 
 
 139, 165, 175, 201 
 Board of Education, Diocesan, 60 
 Boyne Hill Case, 97, 106 
 Bradford, 68, 200 
 British Association, 69, 147 
 Bioad Church J'arty, 149, 154 
 Brougham, Lord, r?7 
 Bunsen, Baron, 19, 30, 43, 149 
 Burgon, Dean, 1, 6, 8, 24, 33, 47, 
 
 54, 71, 73, 80, 82, 149, 185, 186, 
 
 197, 205, 208, 209, 213 
 Butler, Canon, 66, 85, 105 
 
 Calthorpe, Lord, 18 
 Cambridge, 63, 69 
 Canadian Clergy Reserves, 166 
 Canons, alteration of, 134 
 
 Capetown, Bishop of, 69, 155 
 
 Carlisle, Lord, 199 
 
 Cathedrals 29 
 
 Church Congress, 201 
 
 Church Missionary Society, 19, 
 
 63, 164 
 Church Unions, 117 
 Clapham Sect, 9 
 Clerical Subscription, 145 
 Clewer, 65 
 
 Colenso, Bishop, 155-161 
 Coleridge, Mr. Justice, 96 
 Colonial Bishops, 159, 164-6 
 Colonial Church, 30, 63 
 Commission on Ritual, 183-5 
 Confession, 97, 98, 105 
 Confirmation, 2.5, 52-4, 212 
 Consort, the Prince, 31, 86, G9, 
 89, 125 
 
 Convocation, 31 ; Revival of, 119- 
 136 ; Proposed Commission on, 
 126-7 ; on Bishop Colonso, 160 ; 
 on Ritualism, 179 
 
 Corn Laws, 67 
 
 Cudde-sdon, .36, 41-2, 51, 58, 59, 
 60, 100-106, 147, 198, 204, 209, 
 211 
 
 Cm-ates, 61, 64 
 
 Darwin, Mr. C, 146-7 
 Denison, Archdeacon, 59, 126, 
 138 
 
 Derby, Lord, 120, 182, 201, 211 
 Dioce.sau Church Building So- 
 ciety, Gl 
 
222 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Diocesan Conferences, 62 
 Diocesan Svnod, 62 
 Disraeli, 191 
 Divorce Act, 154, 190 
 Dotison, Sir John, 119 
 Dodsworth, Mr., 95 
 Doubt, 152 
 
 Eastern Church, 118, 193 
 Ecclesiastical Coram's-sion, 29 
 Ecclesiastical Courts, 137-140, 
 155, 171 
 
 Education, 23, 24, 59-60, 69, 
 190 
 
 Elliot, Dean, 128 
 Essai/s and Reviews, 139, 142- 
 154 
 
 Eucharistic Doctrine, 87, 91-2, 
 105, 173 
 
 Evangelical Party, 71-2, 93, 101- 
 
 5, 124, 12S, 142 
 Excommunication, 159, 160 
 
 Factory Act, 68 
 Fasting Communion, 186 
 Free-trade, 38 
 Fust, Sir H. J., 79 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 40-1, 118-19, 
 121, 131, 1.32, 138, 140, 141, 
 175, 181, 1S7, 191-2 
 
 Golii^htly, Mr. C. P., 5, 102-105, 
 
 218 
 
 Gordon, Mr., 162 
 Gorhara Judgment, 78, 84, 90, 
 116, 137, 139 
 
 Hampden, Dr., 17, 75—84, 108, 
 
 141, 217 
 Hawkius, Dr., 81 
 Hii;Ii Church Party, 93, 154 
 Hoadley, Bishop, il2 
 Holy Orders, Training for, 99-100 
 Hook, Dean, 5, 19, 24, 25, 43, 
 
 113, 141, 197 
 Hooker, Richard, 65, 72, 86, 184 
 Howley, Archbishop, 76, 81 
 
 Inspiration, 142, 150-1 
 Irish Church, 190-3 
 
 J ERUSALEM Bishopric, .30 
 Judicial Committee, 74, 137, 158 
 
 Keble, J., 94, 96 
 Knox, Mr., 147 
 
 Lavinqton, 12, 33, 37, 203, 210 
 Lectiouary, New, 131, 183 
 Lenten Sermons, 56 
 Liddon, Canon, 102, 105 
 Lonir, Archdeacon, 157-8 
 Lords, Hou?e of, 66-7, 111, 117, 
 12.3, 13.5, 142, 180, 191, 200-1 
 Lushingtou, Dr., 88, 139 
 
 Majendie, Mr. H., 193 
 Manuiug, Cardmal, 21 
 .ALarriott, Mr. C, 93-99 
 Maurice, F. D., 19, 149 
 Milman, Bishop, 161 
 Jlissions, Diocesan, .54-6 
 Monsell, Dr., 203 
 
 National Society, .59 
 Newman, J. H., 5, 15, 16, 39, 40 
 Noel, Miss L., 38, 47, 67, 78, 87 
 Non-communicating Attendance, 
 186 
 
 Nonconformists, 56, 123, 187-8, 
 193-4 
 
 Ordinations, 44, 46-9, 55 
 O.r ford Journal, opinion on Bishop 
 Wilberforce's work, 5 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 16, 131 
 Patronage, Diocesan, 63 
 Peel, Sn- R., .35, 38, 40 
 Philpntt, Bishop, 18, 74, 83 
 Pott, Archdeacon, 105 
 Powell, xMr. Baden, 146 
 Preaching, 206-7 
 
 Public \\ orship Regulation Act, 
 140 
 
 Pusey, Dr., 5, 16, 39, 93-7, 98, 
 138, 155 
 
 Quarter!)/ Review, 109, 114, 1.39, 
 140, 144, 145, 147, 151, 187, 
 197 
 
INDEX. 
 
 223 
 
 Queen, the, 31, 36, 38, 7S, 84, 
 117, 120, 134 
 
 Raxdall, Archdeacon, 216 
 
 Rationalism, 143, 150 
 
 Record, The, 28, S3, 123, 142, 176 
 
 ReJesdale, Lord, 117 
 
 Reform BUI, 13, llJ, 29, 136 
 
 Reformation, the, 86, 176 
 
 Retreats, 58 
 
 Ritudism, 169-195 
 
 Royal Supremacy, 116 
 
 Rural Deans, 57 
 
 Russell, Lord John, 39, 74, 75- 
 78, 128 
 
 Sellox, Miss, 65 
 Sehvyu, Bishop, 30 
 Sermons, 202 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 86, 121, 128, 
 
 181, 183 
 Sisterhoods, 64-6, 98, 110 
 Smith, Sydney, 143 
 Society for the Propagation of the 
 
 Gospel, 17, 19, 31, 63 
 South London, 22 
 Spiritual Help Society, 61, 64 
 Stanley, Dean, 161, 169 
 Sterling Club, 19, 149 
 Sumner, Archbishop, 13, 118-9, 
 
 121, 122, 129-30, 161, 181 
 Sumner, Bishop, 13, 19, 21, 161 
 Sunday Question, the, 32, 68 
 Synod, Pan- Anglican, IGO 
 
 Thompson, Sir IL, 162 
 
 Titles Bill, 74, 90 
 
 Tractarian Movement, 26-8, 39, 
 
 71, 75, 84, 93, 114 
 Tracts for the Times, 15 
 Trench, Archbishop, 25, 191-2,216 
 
 Vestments, 184, 185 
 
 Wastage, 65 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 16, 164 
 Wesley, John, 178 
 Westbury, Lord, 135, 142, 165-6, 
 201 
 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, divisions of 
 his life, 6, 7 ; school days, 10 ; 
 Oriel, 11 ; marriage, 12 ; or- 
 dination, 12 ; first curacy, 12 ; 
 Brighstone, 13-14 ; his Tory- 
 ism, 14 ; literary work, 15 ; 
 Rural Dean, 18 ; Archdeacon, 
 21-24 ; Alverstoke, 25-6 ; 
 speeches, 31 , 68 ; wife's death, 
 33 — 35 ; consecration, 37 ; 
 Natural History, love of, 147 ; 
 writings, 197-8 ; death, 220 
 V. ilbei-foice, Henry, 9 
 Wilbej force, iAIrs., 12, 33-5 
 Wilberforce, R G., 68 
 WUbei force, Robert, 9, 32, 94, 114 
 Wilbeiforce, William, 9, 10-12, 89 
 Wilson, Mr., 144 
 ^Visenlan, Cardinal, 90 
 Woodford, Bishop, 49, 209 
 
 THE END. 
 
Richard Clay & Soys, Limitbd, 
 
 LOXDON 6 BlNCAY.