D-TT

OXFORD HIGH ANGLICANISM AND
ITS CHIEF LEADERS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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London: CHARLES H. KELLY, 2, Castle Street, City Road, B.C.
And 66, Patbenostee Row, E.C.

OXFORD
HIGH ANGLICANISM
ANB ITS CHIEF LEADERS

BY THE

Eev. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D.
PRINCIPAL OF WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE
PRESIDENT OF THB WESLEYAN METHODIST CONFERENCE IN 1878 AND 1892

CHAELES H. KELLY
2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD. ; AND 66, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1895

MORRISON .VXD GIBIl, PRINTERS, EDINRUROH

PREFACE.

rpHIS book is the result of many years' study. It is
-*- nearly forty years since I wrote a volume entitled
Modern Anglican Theology, which is now in its third edition,
and which dealt specially with the views of the " Broad
Church," and particularly of the Coleridgian section of the
clergy, at that time apparently on the ascendant scale
in England. That volume contains evidence that I had
already, at that date, begun the serious study of Oxford
Anglicanism. During the years which have followed I
have often been asked to write what my friends spoke of
as a companion book to that volume, dealing dispas
sionately and thoroughly with modern Anglicanism of
the Oxford school. Till lately, however, the materials
for a thorough treatment of the subject historically did
not exist, and therefore, though I followed closely the
developments of the school, so far as I was able, and from
time to time wrote articles on such phases of the history
as could be best and most suggestively dealt with, I
did not, till a few years ago, contemplate at all seriously
the undertaking whieh was now and again still suggested
to me ; and I was the more indisposed to make any
attempt in that direction, because my duties and engage
ments left me very little leisure for systematic special
work. Within the last few years, however, the needful
materials for a history of modern Oxford Anglicanism have

VI PREFACE
rapidly accumulated. Mr. WUfrid Ward's two volumes
giving the history of his father's life ; Dean Church's
History of the Oxford Movement ; and Dr. Pusey's
Biography, — with the side-hghts of Archbishop Tait's Life,
the Letters of Mozley and Newman, and (though this, of
course, was earher), Bishop Wilberforce's Life, — added to the
old basis of Newman's Apologia, and other publications of
thirty years ago, have made it possible to gain a historical view
which should not only be authentic and true, but living and
complete, of the development of the Oxford High Anglican
Movement from its earliest stirrings down to the present
time. I have accordingly undertaken to write a history of
that development, making it, as in the case of my volume
on Modern Anglican Theology, a history woven in consider
able part out of biographies, and in which what is living
and personal is made the vehicle for conveying historical
views of theological truths and principles, and of their
influence and working.^ I have written frankly as a
liberal and yet evangelical Protestant ; still I hope it will
be seen and felt that I have taken pains to understand and
have not unfairly represented the ideas with which I do
not agree. I do not think I am a bitter Protestant ; I
shall hardly, I imagine, be regarded as a narrow Evan
gelical. I have written other books of argument and
1 In the case of the two chief leaders of the distinctively Tractarian
Movement, Newman and W. G. Ward, I have not limited my use of
biographical material to the period during which they still remained
ostensibly adherents of the Cliurch of England, because the true
meaning and force, the specific quality and influence, of their charac
teristic principles, ecclesiastical and theological, came fidly out not
before, nor in, but after their secession. The after period of tlieir
lives best illustrates the character of their Tractarian principles,
and furnishes, in fact, the most powerful and convincing argument
against tbem. The illustration, moreover, is such as to need little
or no argumentative exposition ; it suggests very plainly its own
application.

PREFACE vii
controversy, relating to ecclesiastical and theological ques
tions, and have not been reproached with partisan bitterness
or strong denominational prejudice. I hope my present
book will not be held to discredit my record.
This volume is the only attempt to write anything
like a history of Oxford High Anglicanism which as yet
has been, so far as I know, made by a Nonconformist.
It is also the only book written by any one which
attempts to trace the history from its early origins more
than sixty years ago, through its successive developments
and phases down to the present time. These two points,
it will be admitted, give a characteristic distinction to the
present volume. It is, besides, the work of a septuagenarian
and the fruit of nearly fifty years of reading and observa
tion on the part of one whose opportimities for gaining
knowledge of different schools of Christian opinion, both
theological and ecclesiastical, have been exceptionally
favourable. These considerations may perhaps be regarded
as affording some warrant for a difiicult undertaking and
a venture which, if I were a young man, I might feel to be
perilous. At my time of life risks to reputation are dis
counted. It is for truth on a great subject that I have
to care. I have described myself as a Nonconformist. As some
passages, especially in the latter part of the volume, may
seem to some readers to wear an aspect of unfriendliness to
the modern Church of England, or at least to what seems
at present to be the most active and influential section of
that Church, it may not be improper, as a personal
explanation, to add that I am, nevertheless, not a " political
Dissenter." I am a Wesleyan Methodist of what may
perhaps be regarded as the older school. While recognis
ing the pressing need for reform in the Church of Eng-

vm PREFACE
land, both as to its inner constitution and its adminis
trative organisation, and also as to its relations ¦with the
State and the nation, I do not feel compelled to dissent
from it for conscience' sake, either on the ground that some
thousand years ago it became the endowed national Church
of England, or on the ground of its episcopal government.
I can conceive circumstances in which I might thankfully
accept the religious hospitality of its communion. I say
as much as this, whilst disclaiming any sympathy with the
Utopian dream of organic union between my own world-wide
Church and the great historic Church of England. I say it
because I wish to be believed in affirming that, so far as I
am competent to judge of my own feelings or motives, no
partisan animosity or prejudice of education, whether sec-
tariah or anti-sectarian, has lent bitterness or exaggeration
to the objections expressed or implied throughout the
volume to the principles of Oxford High Anghcanism,
objections for which I would fain gain the candid consi
deration of High Churchmen no less than the approval of
Nonconformists. JAMES H. RIGG.
23)'d September 1895.

CONTEKTS.

CHAPTER I.
The First Le.wen of the Cxford Movement •—
PAGE
Keble, Hurrell Froude, and Ne'svman : THEIR Mutual
Relations — Kebt,e's Life and Character — The Chris
tian Year ... 1
CHAPTEE II.
The Crisis of Distress for the Church of England — The
Help Needed — The Two Universities — Hugh James
Rose and Newman — Newman writes and publishes
THE first Tract for the Times — The True Unity op
the Church . . .33
CHAPTEE III.
The Tracts for the Times — Newman and "Ward — The Ad
vance Romeward — Ward's Ideal op a Christian
Church — His Character and History — His Degrada
tion and Secession . ... 49
CHAPTER IV.
The Tract.vrian ^Movement as Seen and Known from the
Interior : —
Dean Church's History of the Oxford Movement . 87

CONTENTS

CHAPTEE V.
PAO V.
The Master Spirit op the Movement . 124

CHAPTER VI.
Ward's Life as a Roman Catholic Theologia'n and Philo
sopher . . . 160
CHAPTEE VII.
The Transition from Newman's Tractarian Movement to
THE WIDER Movement known as Puseyism — What
PusEYiSM means To-day 188

CHAPTEE VIII.
Pusey's Earlier Life — University Career — Residence in
Germany— Controversy with Rose— Change of Vie-O'—
Coalition with Newman . . . 192

CHAPTEE IX.
Pusey's Middle Period— His Doctrine of Baptism and Con
fession . . 220
CHAPTEE X.
The Later and Fuller Development op Pusey's Teaching
AND Influence : —
Confession- Celibacy— Sisterhoods— The Eucharist . 243
CHAPTEE XI.

Pusey's Doctrine of the Real Presence— His Eirenwon as
to Reunion with Rome

. 287

CONTENTS XI
CHAPTEE XII.
PAGE
Pusey's Special Personal Characteristics — His Inconsist
encies — His Relations with Nonconformists — Puseyism,
Ritualism, and Romanism . . 307
CHAPTEE XIII.
The Outlook . 337

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>.it': - ^ : \ J' i,j< Ji .. ;. i i ¦'¦..-' .', J 1 t..„' ;,':.;¦'..
<.. X :¦ ... D ,

OXFORD HIGH ANGLICANISM AND ITS
CHIEF LEADERS.
CHAPTER I.
The First Leaven of the Oxford Movement.
keble, hurrell froude, and newman: their mutual
RELATIONS — KEBLE's LIFE AND CHARACTER — THB
CHRISTIAN TEAM.
TN an article on " The Evangelical Movement," which
Mr Gladstone has republished ^ in the Evangelical
Magazine for January 1895, it is ingeniously suggested
that the Oxford Movement owes its parentage — indirectly,
if not immediately — to the same revival of evangelical
feeling which produced the recognised Evangelical Move
ment in and beyond the Church of England. In con
nexion with this suggestion, Mr. Gladstone refers to the fact
that Newman's " conversion," which he ever afterwards re
garded as the beginning of his spiritual life, took place under
evangelical influences. This, no doubt, is true. Newman
then gained, for the first time, a vivid consciousness of his
personal relation to God, — to the " living God," — the sense
and strength of which remained with him always thereafter,
1 It was publislied originally in the British Quarterly Review.

2 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
safeguarding him from atheism and materialism amid all
his metaphysical questionings. This was the vital principle,
giving a sort of unity and continuity to the history of his
soul through all its movements, and with all its oscillations.
But in the de-Calviuised transformation of his doctrinal
belief, which was consummated at Oxford, no characteristic
doctrine of the evangelical theology was left. As to the
doctrines of faith, justification, and sanctification, he had
ceased to be " evangelical " some time before the first idea
of the Tractarian revival took shape in his mind. In
fact, his principles as the active leader of the Oxford Move
ment were imbibed from his intercourse with Keble and
Hurrell Froude.^ Newman himself says expressly and
emphatically that Keble was the real father of the Oxford
Movement ; and it was the influence of Froude which brought
together Keble and Newman. It was Froude who effected
that blending and focussing of the sympathies and aims
of Keble, Newman, and himself which furnished the first
inspiration and impulse of the Oxford Neo-AngUcan Move
ment. Newman, that is to say, though afterwards the
leader, was first the disciple of Keble, and even of Froude ;
and Keble and Froude derived their Anglican indoctrination
and inspiration, not assuredly from the evangelical re-vival,
1 The authority on whom I have mainly relied in this chapter
is Mr. Keble's almost lifelong friend, the late Sir J. T. Coleridge,
who wrote Keble's Life,— published in 1869,— who also wrote for the
Guardian newspaper several communications of considerable length
during the month (April 1866) following his death. The letters to
the Guardian are full and very valuable, but the Life is somewhat
disappointing. It contains no correspondence -with either New
man or Pusey. The aged author, moreover, was very feeble, and
lived not many days after the publication of the biography. Of
course, I have also used Newman's Apologia, Church's Oxford Move
ment, and Pusey's Life, which makes large use of Keble's letters.

THE OLD H/GH CHURCH SCHOOL 3
which they were brought up to hate, — and did both sincerely
hate through life, — but from the High Church school of the
early years of the eighteenth century, of which Profossog-
Eouth was a living representative at Oxford for not a few
years after Keble obtained his fellowship at Oriel. Bishop
Ken, Eobert Nelson, and William Law in his earlier period,
before he had become Behmenised and ultra-mystical, were
their ideals as Churchmen ; their sympathies were with the
Nonjurors, and their politics were of the Divine Eight com
plexion. Clayton, the Jacobite Methodist of Oxford, who,
after he had become chaplain of the Manchester Collegiate
Church, and when his intimate friends, the Wesleys, had
entered upon their evangelistic career, disowned his friend
ship with them, and utterly refused to recognise them,
either personally or ecclesiastically — was a true repre
sentative of the school of Churchmanship in which the
Kebles were, by their father, a clergyman of the old, old
school, brought up ; and with which Froude, Keble's
much-loved pupil, as well as Keble's other pupils, Eobert
Wilberforce and Isaac Williams, were identified. The author
of the Christian Year, indeed, is not generaUy understood
to have belonged to so extreme and exclusive a Church
school as this, because the history of his secluded life as a
parish priest is not known, and because he never appeared
before the public eye. But yet it is true that no Church
man of the century has been less tolerant of Dissent than
John Keble — none more narrow and exclusive in his
ecclesiastical principles and sympathies. In 1847 he
published a volume of Sermons, Academical and Occasional,
whieh Newman redeemed from obscurity by a well-known
reference to one of them in his Apologia as an epochal
utterance, as sounding the first clear note of the new

4 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD MO VEMENT
spirit which was arising to awaken and uplift the Church
and the age. In the Preface to this volume Keble
distinguishes mankind, as respects their religion, into three
classes — " Christians, ^roper/y so called, i.e. Catholics; Jews,
Mohammedans, and heretics ; and heathens and unbelievers.''
Thus deliberately, in the fulness of his strength and the
zenith of his life, he placed on record his judgment that
Dissenters, not being Catholics, can only be classed as
heretics, between whom and. true Christians, Jews and
Mohammedans have an intermediate place. With this
position his course was in harmony to the end of his life.
And yet when, less than twenty years after the publi
cation of this volume of sermons, and of that Preface as
explaining the ecclesiastical tone and the main line of
thought pervading the whole, Keble finished his earthly
course, no remembrance — no sense whatever, as it would
seem — of the fact that he had throughout been identified
with Newman's course as an Anglican, standing by him to
the very last; and that he had, in the passage I have
quoted, gone very far beyond Newman in his antagonism
to Dissenters — marred the complete harmony of reverent
and loving lamentation with which all denominations of
Christians mourned his death. Very remarkable and very
beautiful was the unanimity of affectionate admiration and
regret with which the intelligence of his decease was
responded to by Christian men of every shade of
denominational colour. In that first week of April 1866,
the NonconformiBt vied with the Guardian in its tribute
to his merits as a sacred poet and his goodness as a man.
Even the literary critic seemed in this case to forget his
craft. The chief, if not the only, exception to this last
remark was in the case of the Spectator. That journal

THE CHARACTER AND OPINIONS OF JOHN KEBLE 5
alone, so far as I could find, was so sternly true to its
vocation as to criticise with strict fidelity the poetry of the
Christian Year, and to attempt to enforce discrimination in
the praise bestowed on that volume.
The reason for this immunity from harsh criticism, and
this agreement in tender reverence, accorded to a man of
extreme and unbending opinions like Keble, is worth
particular attention. Indeed, unless we understand the
reason, we shall hardly understand the man all round. In
these studies my object is not merely to criticise the
opinions of those who pass under review, but to see them
in their li'ving reality as men and Christians. If this be
done justly and truly, needful dissent from opinions or
condemnation of conduct will have its due weight ; and
will be recognised, even if severe, as an integral part of a
true and complete presentation of the men as they actually
were in life among their fellows. Keble was the tutor and
the loving and sympathetic friend of the bitter and
contemptuous Froude, who "hated the Eeformation," and
reserved his utmost scorn and antipathy for " irreverent
Dissenters." He was not only at other points the friend
and counsellor of Newman, but he regarded himself as
jointly responsible for Tract 90, and wrote in its defence.
Yet those who, not unjustly, were indignant against
Froude, and those who utterly distrusted and deeply
condemned Newman and his methods, cherished nothing
like anger against the friend and teacher of Froude, and
seemed even to condone Keble's complicity with Newman.
Newman's Apologia, indeed, published not long before
Keble's death, may have done something to prepare the
way for gentle judgments of Keble. But this of itself will
go no way towards explaining the generosity of affection

6 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
with which lamentation was made by the Christian world
for Keble. In fact, the sorrow at his death did but express
the love which had been gathering about him during his
life. For nearly forty years, with the exception of a brief
interval in the very height of the Tractarian controversy,
Keble, the Tractarian poet, had been growing in the esteem
of his countrymen. He seemed to bear a charmed life.
Those who spared none besides spared him. Several reasons
concurred to produce this result. But perhaps the deepest
and most really operative causes were not the obvious
ones. Not a little was due, no doubt, to his character as
a poet — as a sacred poet. A vates of pure and lofty spirit,
even in these modern times, is looked upon with reverence
as well as admiration. But there was much more than this.
Keble had led a secluded, saintly life, worthy of a
Christian pastor and poet, far from the world's strife,
far even from the Church's rivalries, declining all pre
ferment, eschewing all ambition, holding to the friends
of his youth, abiding in the parish to which his way
was guided in early manhood, li'ving for thirty years
among the same scenes and the same people, dying as he
had lived, and carried to his long rest among his own
parishioners in his own ^churchyard from the beautiful^
church which he had built and adorned out of the profits
of his own ohurchly poems. During all this long life he
had entered actively into no controversy, whatever may
have been his personal sentiments, or his religious habits
and practices. In such a life there was a unity, a purity,
a beauty, which could not fail to touch refined and Chris
tian hearts. For the sake of all this, the nation forgave
Keble's antique prejudices and extreme ecclesiastical prin
ciples. His personal opinions were extreme, so extreme as

KEBLE'S SECLUDED AND SAINTL V LIFE 7
to lead him to admire the character of Froude/, in spite of
his immodesty, his intolerance, and his puerile asceticism ;
because there was in the young man such heartiness, such
good fellowship, such zeal, such talent, and all consecrated
to the cause of " Catholic " restoration and Christian
progress, as he understood it ; so extreme, again, were his
opinions as to carry him along with Newman in all that he
did, including the publication of Tract 90, until he seceded
to Eome. But Keble's personal disposition was tender
and loving, and his own administration was mild and
peaceful. His Church principles were " sentiments " — to
use the convenient French word in its proper sense — rather
than energies. He dreamt, and mused, and meditated;
but he did not seek actively to revolutionise. It is
remarkable that in his beautiful church, with all its rare
and costly adornments, ritualism was not carried to any
puerile extreme. He was the oldest and most intimate
friend of Sir J. T. Coleridge, himself the dearest friend of
Arnold. And widely as Arnold and he, who had been
early friends, came to be sundered, each bore towards the
other throughout a deep and affectionate regard. Such a
man, and the friend of such men, could not but be loved
in spite of Eomanising sympathies and opinions.
It is not an insignificant circumstance, as affecting the
character of Keble, that he was never at a public school.
His father was vicar of Coin St. Aldwyn's, near Fairford,
in Gloucestershire, and resided at Fairford, in his own
patrimonial house. The father conducted the education
of his two sons himself, and prepared them for the
university. He was, we are informed, a man of no ordinary
ability and character, and " he lived to his ninetieth year,
in the occasional discharge of his duty up to within a few

8 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD MO VEMENT
months of his death." The manner in which his son
acquitted himself on his entrance within the university is
decisive proof of. the abihty and scholarship of the father ;
while the reverence and love with which his son always
spoke of him, may be taken as evidence of his moral
worth. Young Keble was not quite fifteen when, in
December 1806, he competed successfully for a scholarship
at Corpus Christi College, of which college his father had
been a Fellow. In Easter Term 1810, being but a little
more than eighteen years of age, he obtained his B.A.
degree — a double-first. A double-first at such an age was
an extraordinary instance of precocious scholarship; and
we have the testimony of Sir J. T. Coleridge that the first
classes in that examination were very distinguished. Such
rare scholarship at so early an age was not likely to have
been attained by one educated at any of the public schools
of England more than fifty years ago. In the coarse and
Spartan age when our grandfathers went to school, our
public schools were much less efficient than they have been
of later years. Neither, we may add, is it likely that if
he had gone to Winchester or Harrow, to Westminster or
Eton, young Keble would have retained untarnished that
bloom of youthful goodness which seems to have been
eminently characteristic of him from the first. From his
father's house at Fairford to Oxford was an easy ride ; and
the loving and home-nurtured youth seems never to have
departed from the godly ways in which he had been trained
under his father's eye. No doubt this fact has some
relation to the exquisite simplicity and purity which dis
tinguished Keble's character in after life.
The consequence of his success as a scholar of Corpus
Christi was, that Keble was speedily elected to what, at

KEBLE AS A UNIVERSITY MAN g
that time, was counted the most distinguished honour 'his
university could bestow— a fellowship at Oriel. Among
the Fellows of Oriel were such men as Copleston,
Davison, and Whately. Intellectually, Keble was not
at any time of his life the equal of such men, although
as a mere scholar he may have been superior to more
than one of them. It cannot be imagined that at
nineteen this " junior Fellow " could have been equal to
sustaining his part with such intellectual athletes in what
Sir J. T. Coleridge, writing in the Guardian soon after
Keble's death, describes as the "learned and able, not
rarely the subtle and disputatious, conversations round
the fire in the Oriel common room." It is no wonder that
his friend fancies that Keble " sometimes yearned for the
more easy, yet not unintellectual, society of his old friends
at Corpus." We may be permitted, perhaps, to imagine
that such disputations as those in which Whately and his
friends took part, may have tended to produce in the mind
of their immature and unequal colleague some distaste for
subtle and daring speculations, may have led a youth of
his reverent spirit and feminine genius to fly for refuge to
the traditions and authority of the Church, which in his
poems he so often apostrophises as " his Mother " ; and here,
again, it is not out of place to remark, that if his home-
breeding had preserved uninjured the bloom of his mind's
'virgin purity, the bold play and competition of tempers and
wits at a public school might have tended to develop a
manliness and self-reliance of character which might have
preserved him from the errors of a superstitious externalism,
and given to his intellect and to his poetry a distinctness and
force, the want of which was one of his admitted defects.
The conscientious industry of Keble had enabled him to

10 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
take the highest honours in the mathematical studies pre
scribed for the Honours course at Oxford. These studies,
however, were not at Oxford at that time so advanced as
Cambridge mathematics, and there can be no doubt that
his chief success as a scholar, if he had devoted his life to
scholarship, would have been in the classics and elegant
literature. In 1812 he won the Chancellor's Essay prizes both in
Latin and English. At this time he might have been
regarded as the most rising man at Oxford. But ambition
was not one of his passions, although he could hardly have
been altogether insensible to its solicitations. He seems to
have been one of those happily constituted men in whom
human affections are paramount. A devoted son, an affec
tionate brother, and a devout Churchman, duty and affection
appear to have ruled him from his youth up. " If he
had ambition in his nature," says Sir J. T. Coleridge, " he
had very early and effectually suppressed it. The Church he
had deliberately chosen as his profession, and he desired to
follow that in a country cure." These were his principles ;
in such channels flowed the even current of his affections.
Keble became a tutor in his college about the year
1814. Soon afterwards he was appointed one of the
Examining Masters for the university, an office which he
filled more than once in the course of his connexion with
Oxford. He was ordained deacon in 1815, being twenty-
three years of age, and priest in the year following. He
served the curacies of two small parishes near Fairford,
but at a considerable distance from Oxford. How Keble
contrived to serve these parishes as curate, and at the
same time to discharge his laborious duties as Examining
Master and tutor in his college, seems difficult to under-

KEBLES CURACY — INTRODUCED TO NEWMAN ii
stand. It has been suggested, in the way of explanation,
that the parishes were extremely small, and were contiguous
to each other ; and, also, that, as they were near to Fairford,
he might count on the assistance of his fatlier. It might
also be suggested that curates eighty years ago did not
work in their parishes as they do now. We cannot,
however, but conclude that the parochial work of young
Keble was somewhat slightly performed. Even at that
period he was beginning to write the poems which were
afterwards published in the Christian Year.
It was in the year 1822 that Newman was elected a
Fellow of Oriel. At that time Keble was one of the most
eminent and honoured men at the university.
" The first time," says Newman in his Apologia, " that I
was in a room with him was on the occasion of my election
to a fellowship at Oriel, when I was sent for into the
Tower to shake hands with the Provost and Fellows. How
is that hour fixed in my memory after the changes of forty-
two years — forty-two this very day on which I write ! I have
lately had a letter in my hands which I sent at the time
to my friend John Bowden, with whom I passed almost
exclusively my undergraduate years. I had to hasten to
the Tower, I say to him, to receive the congratulations of
all the Fellows. I bore it till Keble took my hand, and
then felt so abashed and unworthy of the honour done me
that I seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground. His
had been the first name which I had heard spoken of, with
reverence rather than admiration, when I came up to Oxford.
When one day I was walking in High Street with my dear
earliest friend just mentioned, with what eagerness did he
cry out, There's Keble ! and with what awe did I look at
him ! Then, at another time, I heard a Master of Arts of

12 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
my college gi'ving an account how he had just then had
occasion to introduce himself on some business to Keble,
and how gentle, courteous, and unaffected Keble had
been, so as almost to have put him out of countenance.
Then, too, it was reported, truly or falsely, how a rising
man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of St. Paul's,
Dr. Milman, admired and loved him, adding that somehow
he was unlike anyone else. However, at the time when I
was elected Fellow of Oriel he was not in residence, and he
was shy of me for years in consequence of the marks which
I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal schools ; at
least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us
together about 1828 ; it is one of the sayings preserved in
his Remains — Do you know the story of the murderer who
had done one good thing in his life ? Well, if I was ever
asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that
I had brought Keble and Newman to understand each
other." 1
Personal reminiscences are, perhaps, as little to be
trusted about one's self as about one's friends. There must
be some mistakes in the passage just quoted. Keble, Sir
J. T. Coleridge tells us, was Examining Master for the
university from Michaelmas 1821 to Easter 1823.
Newman was elected Fellow of Oriel, Keble's own college,
in 1822. Keble, therefore, must have been in ordinary
residence at Oxford at the time, although his parochial
duties may have required his occasional absence in
Gloucestershire. Moreover, it is hardly likely that the
main reason of Keble's distance from Newman at this time
was the connexion which, sometime before, Ne'wman had
had with the " evangelical and liberal school." Keble was
^ Newman's Apologia, pp. 75-77 (1st edition).

FROUDE BRINGS KEBLE AND NEWMAN TOGETHER 13
for years the friend of Arnold — hberal of liberals ; he
was also friendly with Whately and Milman. It can
hardly be imagined that the slight tincture of liberahsm
which had passed upon Newman would alone have been
sufficient to keep Keble aloof from one who, as it is plain,
earnestly desired his acquaintance. This would scarcely
have comported with the character of one so " gentle " and
" courteous." Still less is it to be supposed that the mild
and inoperative remains of Newman's evangelical opinions
or tendencies would have made him distasteful to such a
man as Keble. The reason of Keble's distaste for Newman
is not, I think, difficult to divine ; although it could hardly
be expected that Newman would have the gift to divine it.
This is a point of some importance as well as of much
interest. Their characters were not likely to blend, except
under the influence of some common solvent — some medium
of overpoweringly strong affinity with both, through which
characters so sharply contrasted might he combined in
sympathy and united in counsel. Both had much that was
feminine in their nature ; ^ but Keble's nature resembled
that of a gentle, meditative woman, devoted to home duties,
to parish work, to pious musings, to country walks and
garden pleasures, to poetry and music, and especially to
sacred minstrelsy; whereas Newman reminds us of a
woman of genius and force, at once dreamy and busy,
benevolent and ambitious, devotional and speculative,
refined and controversial, restlessly active, zealously
propagandist — such a one as would found sisterhoods,
write clever but extreme books, and revolutionise a
religious community. Any who have studied human
1 See the Note at the end of this chapter on " The Feminine Vein
in Newman's Character."

14 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD I\fO VEMENT
nature will at once understand, if two such women were
brought together, with what mild but settled aversion the
gentle sister would regard her restless, unsafe, and
ambitious compeer. Such a neighbour would disturb her
tranquillity, spoil her meditations, interfere with her plans,
and, like the baleful comet of which Milton speaks,
" perplex with fear of change." Very much of this sort,
I cannot but think, were the feelings with which, at
first, Keble regarded Newman, whose mind was essentially
speculative and sceptical, and whose temper was eminently
ambitious ; who, indeed, as Bishop Copleston once declared
to a friend, was neither understood nor trusted by any of
his colleagues at Oriel. It was the Anglo- Catholic enter
prise which finally brought the two into harmony and
mutual understanding. Nor could a fitter instrument have
been found for bringing about the union on this basis than
Hurrell Froude. He was himself in several respects as
great a contrast to Keble in character as even Newman.
But then he had been Keble's pupil, and he remained
his devoted and admiring friend. Whatever his pride and
bitterness against those whom he regarded as heretics, he
was dutiful and reverent to his former tutor. Moreover,
although Newman in his Apologia speaks of Froude as
" speculative," he was not metaphysically sceptical, and his
speculations appear to have been confined within theo
logically safe regions. Froude, in fact, stood in fear of
Newman's speculative tendency ; and in one place, whilst
expressing his delight in his companionship, expresses his
doubt at the same time whether he is not more or less of
a " heretic." In no sense was Hurrell Froude doctrinally or meta
physically speculative. He had, in fact, seemingly from the

RELATIONS OF FROUDE WITH KEBLE AND NEWMAN 15
first, bound himself to tradition. His affections went after
antiquity ; but, in particular, he doted upon the mediajval
Church. I [is speculations never led liiiu towards the verge
of unboliel'. Whilst his zeal was hot and his mind active,
his iiitolloct socnied to make good its safety by servility to
traditional dogma. II' he mocked at the Eeformers, he held
fast by the " saints." Furthiu'inoro, although such a zealot
for traditional Church authority, and so bold and hot
against all Protestants and Puritans, he was to his friends
gentle, toiiddv, playful, pleasant, and most open-hearted. It
is easy to see by what ties such a man would be attached
to Kohlo and to Newman. The former regarded him
somewhat as a motlior regards a high-spirited, spoilt, but
rra,uk, truo-s])okon, and all'ectionate son. She is proud of
him, wliilo she disapproves of some of his proceedings.
Slio reproves him, but gently, lovingly — too gently by far.
She views all his conduct with a, partial oyo. His very
I'aults scorn to her but the exuberances of a noble sjiirit.
It must be rcmnmbered also that Froude's animosities
eorreapondo.d to Keble's dislikes, and that his enthusiastic
and passionate admiration was bestowed in accordance with
Keble's preroreuccs. The tempers of the teacher and pupil
were very diU'erent, but their tastes and opinions were well
a.greed ; a.nd, in fa.ct, iJiose of I^'roude had been formed by
Ki>.blo. What Keble instilled by gentle influence became
in It'roude a, poti^it and heady spirit. Keble, accordingly,
forga,vi^ tho violonce ol' his i)upil, in part for the sake of his
orthodoxy, and iu part because of his dutifulness and
affection to him personally. His oxcosses wove but tho
excesses of a line young nature on behalf of wliat was good
and right. "E'en his failings leaned to virtue's side."
While such were tho ties whicli attached Kcblo to Froude,

I6 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
Newman was drawn to him both by agreement in theological
and ecclesiastical opinions and tendencies, and also by a
strong natural affinity of disposition. No one can read
Newman's description of Froude and of himself in the
Apologia without feeling that he and such a man as Froude
must have been most congenial companions. Both were
intellectually what he describes Froude as being, " critical
and logical," " speculative and bold." Newman, no less
than Froude, " delighted in the notion of an hierarchical
system, of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty."
" Hatred of the Eeformers," " scorn " of Protestantism, are
noted by Newman as characteristics of Froude.^ And, as
to himself : " I became fierce," " I was indignant," " I
despised every rival system," " I had a thorough contempt
for the evangelicals " — such expressions as these abound in
his delineation of his own character at this period of his
life.2 It is no wonder, therefore, that Froude and Newman
clave to each other ; and it is easy to understand how,
through the influence of such a common friend as Froude,
and of their common ecclesiastical and theological sym
pathies, Newman and Keble came to be intimately associated
and warmly attached.^ Keble was Newman's senior
as a university man, and was also much his superior in
university infiuence. To make such a man his friend
must have been a great object with Newman, especially
as the feeling of a vocation to reform the Church and the
1 Apologia, p. 85. 2 Ibid. pp. 97, 113, 114, etc.
' It must not be forgotten that Keble and Newman were the joint
editors of Froude's Semains—a, book which was published contrary
to the judicious advice of Sir J. T. Coleridge, but which did not a
little to reveal the true and the extreme character of the views which
were common to the three friends.

THE UNION OF KEBLE AND NEWMAN 17
spirit of a propagandist began to take hold of him.
Newman, there can be no doubt, used every effort to win
Keble. And when once Keble had overcome his aversion
and distrust in regard to Newman, he, like nearly all who
came into intimate relation with that magnetic man, fell
under the spell of his personal fascination, and became
strongly attached to him ; so that Newman's secession to
Eome was, as Sir J. T. Coleridge tells us, " the greatest
sorrow of his life."
The Christian Year was published in 1827, when
Keble was thirty-five years of age, and still unmarried.
The work had been in silent progress during many years.
Sir J. T. Coleridge tells us that he had himself " the
hymns for Septuagesima Sunday, St. Mark's Day, the
Purification, and some others in MS. as early as 1819."
Keble's original plan had been to " complete the series
of poems," to " go on improving it all his life," and " to
leave it to come out, if judged useful, after he should be
out of the way." Such was his statement to his friend
Coleridge in a letter dated 1825; but, acting on the
advice of his friends, he published the book, by which for
sixty years past he has been known throughout all the
Churches of English-speaking Christians, in the year I
have mentioned, 1827. It was in the year following the
publication of the Christian Year, as we have seen, that
Hurrell Froude was the means of introducing Newman to
the friendship of Keble. From the union of these three
the Tractarian Movement may be said to have received its
first inspiration. Newman has spoken of Keble as the " true
and primary author " of " that Movement afterwards called
Tractarian." ^ He traces to the Christian Year influences
1 Afohgia, p. 75.

1 8 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
which he imagines to have given such shape and impulse
to men's thoughts and feelings as tended directly towards
his own Tractarianism. He mentions, in particular, as
pervading the volume, " the doctrine that material
phenomena are both the types and the instruments of
real things unseen," — a doctrine which, he says, " embraces
not only what Anglicans as well as Catholics believe
about sacraments properly so called, but also the article of
the " communion of saints " in its fulness, and likewise the
" mysteries of the faith." ^ Newman also professes to have
learnt his doctrine of faith in part from Keble, but
supposes himself to have improved upon Keble's doctrine,
with which, although " beautiful and religious," he was
" dissatisfied," as not sufficiently thorough — as logically
altogether inadequate. If we were to accept Newman's
account of Keble's views, I should hardly think Newman's
any improvement upon them ; his doctrine of faith, indeed,
being one of the weakest and worst parts of his system, as
intellectually faulty and contradictory as it is unevangelical.
I confess, however, that Newman's discoveries of his own
system in Keble's Christian Year seem to me altogether
fanciful. It is, in fact, very satisfactory that there is so
little evidence to prove that Keble was in any sense a
master spirit in the Tractarian theological development ;
or that his theological teaching in the Christian Year was
imbued to any serious extent with such puerile — and worse
than puerile — superstitions as make up the substance of
that system of theurgic mysticism which our modern High
Anglicans have substituted for the glorious gospel of the
blessed God. In fact, the theological views of Keble
during the ten years antecedent to 1827 — the period
1 Apologia, pp. 77, 78.

THEOLOGY OF THE " CHRISTIAN YEAR " 19
during which the hymns of the Christian Year were
composed — were as yet more or less eclectic, and fell far
short of the exalted sacramental doctrine which appears in
some of his later poems published in Lyra Apostolica and
Lyra Innocentinvi. It was during 1828 and some following
years that Keble settled definitely on the basis of con
fessional and sacramental Anglo-Catholicism, which was
afterwards common to the whole Tractarian school; and
which Newman, partly through Froude's influence, embraced
in its full extent some while later than Keble. Newman,
in his reference to Keble's theology, quotes no single
passage from the Christian Year, and adduces no single
fact to show that Keble took a leading part in moulding
the doctrine or in dictating the policy of the Tractarian
organisation, though there can be no doubt that after 1833
he was an intimate associate and fellow- worker with
Newman, so far as one not resident in Oxford could be.
The one fact which seems directly to connect Keble with
the origination of the Tractarian Movement as a distinct
force, is that Newman ever kept the anniversary of the
day on which Kelile preached the Assize sermon at Oxford,
which he published under the title of National Apostasy, as
" the start of the religious movement of 1833." But that
sermon, as the context in the Apologia'^ clearly shows,
derives its emphasis and importance, in the view of Newman,
much more from the crisis in the ecclesiastical and reli
gious history of the Anglican Church, in conjunction with
which it was preached, than from any quality or force in
the sermon itself. The sermon must have been the mere
occasion — in no sense the cause — of the combination from
which the Movement arose; it was the taper by wliieli a
1 Pp. 96-100,

20 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
train was ignited. There is nothing wonderful or electrical
about the sermon ; it is a solemn but feeble threnody on
the deepening politico-ecclesiastical liberalism of the nation,
mingled with exhortations to the pious not to cease to pray
for the country. But the " times were ripe " 'vvhen it was
preached. The hour and the man had come : that man
was Newman, shielded and recommended by the support of
Keble's churchly, decorous, and prudent-seeming goodness.
The sermon itself contains no outline, suggests no idea, of
the Tractarianism which was so soon thereafter to be
organised by Newman.
Nor will even a keen-eyed critic find more in the
Christian Year, as originally published, than the reverent
High Church utterances of a tender and poetic spirit. The
hymn on Holy Communion contains no high sacramental
doctrine. No one, out of any hint in that poem, could
develop Pusey's doctrine of the Eucharist. The hymn
on Holy Baptism teaches the doctrine of baptismal
regeneration broadly and strongly; but that doctrine
does not imply all that is taught by Anglo- Catholics.
What is said by Archbishop Trench in his poems as to
baptism is much the same, in effect, as what Keble says
in his hymn. The hymns on Confirmation and Ordination
contain no doctrine in excess of what every reverent
and tenderly devout High Churchman would feel to be
appropriate to those solemnities. Nor will distinct traces
of those pronounced opinions, which belong to the modern
Anglican imitations of Eoman doctrine and ritual, be
anywhere found in this favourite manual of devotional
poetry. In the hymn on the Annunciation, high honour
is done to her who was hailed by the angel as blessed
among women; but it would be difficult to prove that

EARLIER AND LATER THEOLOGY OF KEBLE. 21
anything in this hymn involves really Romish doctrine.
It is a high poetical rhapsody — a poetical apostrophe.
But it would certainly be wrong to regard it as an
invocation. As a precedent the hymn may have done
harm. The transition is easy from poetical apostrophes to
personal invocation. Still, remembering that poetical
apostrophes to the memories of great men — heroes,
patriots, poets, founders of ecclesiastical communities —
have not been uncommon in any age, ancient or modern,^
it would not be just or candid, on the ground of this
hymn alone, to condemn Keble as intending to lend
countenance to Mariolatry. The most suspicious lines
in the hymn are : " Ave Maria ! Thou whose name All
but adoring love may claim." Protestant admirers of
Keble could wish that these lines had been blotted
from the poem; but it must be remembered in reading
it that Keble was obliged, in the prosecution of the plan
of his book, to write upon the Annunciation ; that
the words of the Annunciation are : " Hail, thou that
art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee : blessed art
thou among women " ; and that the stanzas of the hymn
whieh have been objected to are little else than a paraphrase
of the words of the angel. The one passage in the Christian
Year, as now published, which teaches the Tractarian
doctrine as to the Eucharist is, in fact, a change from the
original made by Keble's executors in conformity with the
requirement of his will, in order to bring the teaching of
the Christian Year up to the Tractarian level. In one of
the stanzas on the Gunpowder Treason, there occurred the
1 See the peroration to Robert Hall's grand sermon on the " Senti-
ment.s proper to the prosuut crisis," and also the Preface to the same

22 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
line : " Present tu the heart, not in the hand," as applied to
the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, — words distinctly anti-
Tractarian. These words were changed by Keble's
executors into " Present in the heart as in the hand," and
in that form the line appears in the present editions of the
Christian Year. That change, made after Keble's death in
accordance with the express requirement of his will, may
serve in part to measure the difference between the
theology of the Christian Year as Keble sent it forth in
1827 and the system of theology which a few years later
he adopted, and which was identical with that of the
Tractarian school, especially as set forth by Dr. Pusey.
I have referred to Keble's Lyra Innocentium as much
more advanced in its theology than the Christian Year.
The wide difference between Keble's earlier and later
theological views would have been stUl more strikingly
shown if he had not at the urgent request of some of
his friends, Coleridge among the number, suppressed several
hymns intended for this volume, which, if pubUshed, would
have alarmed and incensed public feeling. One of these
hymns Sir J. T. Coleridge felt it to be his duty to print in
his biography of Keble, and in this hymn Mary is addressed
as "Mother of God''; and these lines appear —
"Whom thousand worlds adore.
He calls thee Mother evermore."
Keble resolutely defended this language, and expressed
his surprise that his friends should object to it. His
theology in middle and later Ufe was, in fact, very different
from that of the Christian Year. In a letter to Coleridge,
dated 18th of June 1845, there occurs the following
sentence: "No doubt there would be the difference in

KEBLES HIGH CHURCH INTOLERANCE 23
tone which you take notice of between this and the former
book; for when I wrote that I did not understand (to
mention no more points) either the doctrine of repentance
or that of the holy Eucharist as held, e.g., by Bishop Ken,
nor that of justification."
I have spoken in the earlier part of this chapter of
Keble's deliberate intolerance of spirit. An illustration of
this is given in his biography. Sir J. T. Coleridge says :
" He writes playfully to me at an earlier time — ' Hurrell
Froude and I took into our consideration your opinion, that
" there are good men of all parties," and agreed that it is a
bad doctrine for these days ; the time being come in which,
according to John MUler, " scoundrels must be called
scoundrels"; and, moreover, we have stigmatised the said
opinion by the name of Coleridge's heresy.' " In another
letter Keble says to his correspondent, " I speak the more
feelingly because I know that I was myself inclined
to eclecticism' at one time ; and if it had not been for my
father and my brother, where I should have been now, who
can say ?"
The one thing to be said on behalf of Keble, Newman,
and the whole of the ultra-High Church party is, that the
premisses from which the whole system of so-called Catholic
doctrine may, with some plausibility, be inferred by one
sided and prejudiced interpreters, seem to be, in part
distinctly and in part indistinctly, presupposed or impUed
in various formularies of the Church of England ; and that
this system in its essentials has, in fact, been held and
taught by a succession of Church of England divines, some
of them bishops, others at least doctors or dignitaries,
from the time of James I. to the present time, including
especially some of those divines who were most intimately

24 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD MO VEMENT
connected with the revision of the Prayer-Book and the
passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662. It appears
certain that Keble honestly believed that Puritanism, as he
called it, by which he meant the evangelical system of
doctrine, was alien from the Church of England, was an
intrusion and a heresy. His reading, it may well be
believed, had been onesided. He perhaps hardly knew
how grand a succession of profound and scholarly divines
in the Church of England had maintained views strongly
opposed to those of his party. But he must surely have
known that he and his fellows had gone a long way
beyond his own special saint and hero Bishop Wilson,
and that the theology of Hooker, whose works he edited,
and of Barrow, was distinctly opposed to the system of
sacramental and confessional theology which he upheld.
The teaching of Hooker and of Barrow on the subject of
justification by faith is fundamentally and completely
irreconcilable with the views which Keble learnt from his
father and brother, and which he and Froude and Newman
embraced as the basis of Tractarian teaching. Nor is it
possible for all the subtle casuistry of Newman's Tract 90
to transform the Thirty-nine Articles into a system of
theology conformable to Tractarian teaching or unfavourable
to the essential principles of what Keble stigmatised as
Puritanism. All Keble's sympathies went along with the Tractarian
Movement as it proceeded. He did not write much, but he
belonged to the council which superintended the publication
of the Tracts for the Times. He was a direct party to
the publication of Tract 90, and he wrote in its defence.
He was associated with Pusey and Newman in editing the
Library of the Fathers and the Anglo-Catholic Library. He

KEBLE'S PERPLEXITIES AS A CHURCHMAN 25
mourned most deeply over the secession of Newman, not,
however, because he disapproved of Newman's doctrinal
opinions either before or after his secession, but because,
for himself, separation from the Church of England seemed
to be at once an impiety and an impossibility. In his letter
in explanation and defence of Tract 90, after quoting what
some had formerly said about going to another Church if
any did not like the Church of England, he says : " As if
there were any other to which he could go." It has been
said, and I think justly said, that Keble had not the nerve
to leave his own Church, and that, accordingly, like Pusey
and all the clergymen in whom the domestic religious
affections overpowered their doctrinal attractions to Rome,
he remained in the English communion.
Though he remained in the English Church, however,
the ten years foUowing the pubUeation of Tract 90, that
is, the period between 1841 and 1851, were for him years
of very painful perplexity. He was determined he could
not go to Rome ; but for a considerable time he was in doubt
whether he must not give up his position as a clergyman
in the Church of England, or at least subside into the
position of a communicant without a cure of souls. He
did not see how to justify his Church's ecclesiastical
position; while her doctrine, he felt, was painfully deficient,
and her condition divided and distracted. On the other
hand, the canonical position of the Church of Rome seemed
to him perfect, but her doctrine to be corrupted with super
fluities and falsities. In the Preface to his one volume
of sermons, Keble's defence of the Church of England is
throughout faint, feeble, extenuatory ; his objections to the
Church of Rome timid and deferential. In fact, his one
strong reason for remaining in the Church of England was.

26 THE FIRST LEAVEN OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
that he was actually there, and knew not whither else to
betake himself. Such twine as this would not hold New
man and Manning ; but of these, the one was unmarried,
the other a widower. Keble was domestic, unenterprising,
happily fixed in an honoured privacy, his hymns sung in a
vast proportion of English Churches. He could not tear
himself from the Church of his fathers, his friends, and his
country. During the last fifteen years of his life, however,
Keble seems to have found more to object to in Rome and
Romanism, and to have become steadily settled in his own
Church. The defection, in 1854, of Robert Wilberforce,
who had been one of his pupils, was a severe trial to him.
It touched him more than that of anyone except Newman.
When he left the Church, Keble wrote as follows to his
friend Coleridge : " I thought he was too good-tempered
really to go there, besides his learning and truthfulness.
But he had got into a Utopian dream, and rather than give
it up, he shut his eyes and made a jump, and now he must,
and I suppose will, keep his eyes shut all his life long."
No sharper or more vivid description was ever given of the
process by which such men as Wilberforce and Manning
were first brought to embrace Romanism, and then hardened
and sharpened into Ultramontanism.
I have not, thus far, noted that Keble was elected
Professor of Poetry in Oxford in 1831, and that, according
to the ancient usage, he read and published his lectures in
Latin. On the death of his father, in 1835, at the age of
90, he removed from Fairford, accepted the vicarage of
Hursley from his intimate friend Sir William Heathcote,
and settled iji its parsonage as a married man. From that
period to the end of his days he continued to dwell at
Hursley, leading a most enviable life, as it seems to human

KEBLES LAST YEARS 27
sight, of saintly seclusion, united with pastoral cares and
duties. He religiously kept the wise man's injunction —
" Thine own friend, and thy father's friend forsake not," and
his friends in return clave lovingly to him. He was born
on St. Mark's Day 1792, and died on the 29th of March
1866. His old friend and biographer, whom I have so
often quoted, says of him : " Looking back through an
intimacy unbroken and unchilled for more than fifty-five
years, he seems to me now to have been at once the
simplest, humblest, and most loving-hearted man, and withal
the hoUest and most zealous Christian I have ever known."
As a Christian poet, Keble must be judged by his
Christian Year. His Lyra Innocentium has not added to
his reputation, although some of the choicest pieces in that
volume, and some other poems contributed by him to
the Lyra Apostolica, are, perhaps, higher in strain than
almost anything in the Christian Year. What will be
posterity's precise judgment of the Christian Year, it
would be hazardous to anticipate. The volume has had
great advantages. Besides its intrinsic beauty, its
character as a companion to the Prayer-Book, and, in
particular, to the Daily Service, eould not but recom
mend it to the attention of a very wide circle of persons
possessed of refined culture, of poetic taste, and of leisure
for indulging their taste. The world could not furnish such
a clientela for a denominational poet to appeal to as was
open to an Anglican poet, who should provide pleasant
and pious daUy morsels of appropriate sentiment and
graceful verse for the votaries of his Church — the Church
of the gentle, the dainty, the leisurely, the cultured. In
this respect Keble had an advantage far beyond even
that enjoyed by the Wesleys in their Hymn-Book for " the

28 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD MO VEMENT
people called Methodists." The Daily Service, it must be
remembered, is more or less observed, and the Prayer-
Book is most extensively used, m all countries where
the English language is spoken. The Christian Year,
however, has won a popularity far wider than the area
represented by the English Church Service. It was a
denominational critic of the sterner Dissenting school who,
in the Nonconformist, a few days after the death of Keble,
paid a graceful tribute to the memory of the Tractarian
poet, whom he described as " a good and great man, whose
memory will last as long as Christian devotion expresses
itself in the English tongue. We know what he was.
He was a Tractarian ; he was a sacerdotalist ; he was a
very rigid cleric ; in almost everything that relates to
Church life and outward Christian worship on earth he
was opposed to us and to that which we most cherish.
Yet, if we were to single out one man in the Established
Church who was almost a personification of the Christian
graces, we should single out John Keble. He was as
gentle as the gentlest woman, and as spiritual as a saint.
He was a saint — a good and holy man, with some human
weakness ; he perhaps knew as little of sin as any man
who has lived in these times. Keble is to the Christian
Church what Tennyson is to all of our own age, whether
of Christ or not — the poet of lofty spirituality. We wish
that he had not so often sung in sectarian dress, but we
have always forgotten the dress when we have heard the
song." Such was the judgment of this Nonconformist
critic. It is possible, however, that just because he was a
Nonconformist he may have been partial in the poet's
favour. Nonconformists, it could easily be shown, have not
seldom overpraised such Churchmen as they have praised

THE LEADING IDEA OF THE " CHRISTIAN YEAR "

29

at all, whether in regard to their talents or to their dis
position. At all events, let us hear what the Spectator
has to say about Keble. The judgment of the Spectator
is cool, without its spirit being caustic ; besides which, being
familar with Church of England circles of thought, what
was said in this journal may represent the opinion of
some who are not amiable and impressible outsiders, but
to whom familiarity with Anglican habits of thought and
feeling has given superior steadiness and clearness of
vision. This authority, then, ventures to say that Keble's
" one great faculty was for verse," " of which he wrote a
great deal that is very sweet, very thin, and very feminine."
This judgment of the Spectator having been questioned,
the journalist justified it in a subsequent article. He
says : " The idea of the Christian Year, the idea of so
mapping out the various little hints and allusions made in
the Gospels, as to find a well-defined and appropriate
mood of spiritual poetry for as many days as possible in
the calendar, seems to us to have been popular rather for
its faultiness than for its merit. Religious men and
women in general, especially the latter, want something
more to lean upon than God has actually given. There
is something so oppressive to them in the infinite, un-
travelled night, lighted here and there by suns or planets,
but stretching, for the most part, beyond our utmost reach
of knowledge, that they catch with relief at the proposal
of the Puseyite poet to trace out with mimic stars —
really lamps lighted by human ingenuity, at the verbal
suggestions of revelation — the yearly round of human
exercises, by finding or forcing a mood of occasional piety
out of the smallest items of historic incident or moral
epithet in the great history of revelation. , . . The

30 THE FIRST LEA VEN OF THE OXFORD MO VEMENT
characteristic attempt of the Puseyite poet is not to throw
the light of God's character and revelation on the new
world in whieh we live, but to find some definite chain of
pious and antique associations in connection with the
lessons or Gospels appointed for each of the days in the
Church's Calendar."
These words I believe to be true, whether they
sum up all the truth relating to the matter or not. On
the whole, the late Principal Shairp's estimate of Keble's
position and qualities as a poet is perhaps that which is
most likely to be accepted by men of culture and taste,
though to regard him as a " primary poet," in Keble's
own sense, while Keble classes Dryden and Milton as
" secondary poets," ^ may well excite a smile. Nor can
it be disputed that in the Christian Year, to use
Newman's words, he " struck an original note and woke
up in the hearts of thousands a new music." But if
Keble had been a greater poet he could never have clung
so tenaciously throughout to the Daily Service, with its
calendared events and services. He would have soared
into the empyrean with angel-song, or he would have
gazed with trembling reverence into the mysterious abyss.
But his feminine genius clung like the ivy to the forms of
the Church which he so often apostrophises as his "Mother";
and it is the one praise and merit of his poetry that it has
draped and festooned the daily order of service with tender
and graceful verse. Nothing can be more exquisite than
many of his verses, and not a few entire poems are of rare
beauty. At the same time, many of the poems are vague
and formless, and connected by the very loosest allusion
with the days for which they were written, while
1 Shairp's Studies in Poetry and Philosoph-t/.

KEBLE AS A POET 31
many separate stanzas are exceedingly, some hopelessly
obscure. Some writers have compared or contrasted Wesley and
Keble. Not much is to be learnt by such comparisons or
contrasts. Keble occupies his own niche. It would be
eminently unwise to attempt to cast down any other
poets of great and true renown in order to exalt
him. Refined and pure and pre-eminently reverent,
all tenderness and gentle devotion, Keble's poetry, even
when it lacks strength or loftiness, breathes, almost
throughout, a " mystical faint fragrance " of sweet and
delicate quality. We love him as all love him, and
day by day his morning hymn seems to us to gather
depth and beauty. Ken and Keble, two High Church
poets, will teach daily duty and consecration to Christians
from generation to generation.
In his relation to Newman and the Oxford Movement,
I have felt it needful to speak the truth with impartial
fidelity as respects the poet of the Christian Year. As a
man I have tried to do justice to the unblemished purity
and godliness of his character. As a poet his merits and
his charm are the lasting possession of a Christendom
vastly wider than was embraced within his recognition
and sympathy.

NOTE TO PAGE 13.
The Feminine Vein in Newman's Character.
It was no less true of Newman than of Keble, that he had a marked
feminine vein in his character,— a character much more complex than
Keble's,— although the close seclusion of his life, not only after, but for
several years before he left Oxford for Rome, has not, perhaps, allowed
it to be so generally recognised. He wais not, indeed, effeminate ; but

32 THE FEMININE VEIN IN NEWMANS CHARACTER
he seems to have been without any specially masculine tastes, pursuits,
or passions — at least outside the region of ecclesiastical study. He
was addicted to no specially manly exercises. He was not an athlete,
he had no tastes in that direction ; he was an ascetic. He embraced
celibacy with sympathetic facility. Mr. J. A. Froude, indeed, in his
Short Studies, Fourth Series, compares him, curiously enough, to Julius
Csesar. But his comparison does not go to contradict what I have now
said. " A disdain for conventionalities, a temper imperious and wilful,
but along with it a most attaching gentleness, sweetness, and single
ness of purpose," are a combination quite as likely to be found in a
woman as in a man. If Newman gained a commanding influence
over many minds, it was not by force of a masculine capacity for
command. It was by virtue, in part, of a penetrating subtlety of
sympathy and influence which carried his ideas into the consciousness
of his closeted intimates, and, in part, of his captivating and jser-
suasive sermons ; it was chiefly by means of qualities not less appro
priate to the feminine than to the masculine temperament. As the
history of the Oxford Movement is unfolded in this volume, the truth
of this general description will appear with increasing distinctness.

CHAPTER II.
The Crisis of Distress for the Church of England —
The Help Needed— The Two Universities — Hugh
James Rose and Newman — Newman writes and
publishes the first Tract for the Times — The
True Unity of the Church.
"VTEVER since the days of the Commonwealth had the
position of Anglican Episcopacy been so assailed and
threatened as during the Reform Bill period, of which
1832 may be taken as the central date. In the Apologia,
Newman has described in his vivid way the distress, the
despondency and alarm of devout and earnest Churchmen.
" The Whigs had come into power ; Lord Grey had told the
Bishops to set their house in order, and some of the prelates
had been insulted and threatened." The Revolution had been
consummated in France. Eevolutionary principles seemed to
be in the ascendant, both in England and almost through
out Europe. Against the Church, in particular, there was
arrayed an unprecedented combination of parties, political
and ecclesiastical, secular and sectarian, Christian and anti-
Christian,whilethe Church itself was di-vided and disorganised,
and seemed for long almost helpless. For all sacred and
constitutional principles it appeared to Churchmen to be
a life or death crisis. If the Church and the country were
to be saved, the hierarchy must now rally the aristocracy 3

34 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
to its aid ; and, in return, the Church must throw its ajgis
round the aristocracy. A new Church movement — a
movement of defence — was already beginning to take shape
in the country before Newman began the Tractarian Move
ment, and throughout England Churchmen of high and
resolute principles were looking for leaders and a defensive
organisation adequate to the crisis. Now or never was the
opportunity. Toryism throughout the country was rally
ing to its strongholds, and it was for the churchly friends
of the Church to unite with its political allies, to take the
tide of reaction at the flood, and so to float themselves
onward to " fortune " and to victory. Some, indeed, who
were earnest and resolute Churchmen, were hardly prepared
to cast in their lot with a politico-ecclesiastical alliance.
Newman himself was of this number. But all those who
had any insight into the actual condition of affairs were
agreed that, within the Church itself, there was need of a
common ground for the defence of Church principles, and
of union on that ground for defensive action. Above all,
there was needed a spring of new life, and the uprising of
a Church leader with a band of able and devoted followers.
The first man of high mark who made an effort
to rally the tribes of the Anglican Israel against the
foes who were arrayed against it, was the learned and
able Hugh James Eose, of whom Newman has given
a beautiful sketch in the Apologia, and to whom he dedi
cated, in 1838, the fourth volume of his sermons, as the
man " who, when hearts were failing, bade us stir up the
gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true
Mother." It was he who established and, tUl his death in
1838, edited the British Magazine, in the pages of which,
chiefly from the pen of Newman, began to appear as early

HUGH JAMES ROSE AND NEWMAN 35
as 1832 the series of poems entitled Z^/m .^^osto^tca, which
were afterwards collected and published separately. This
magazine was intended to be the organ of the new Church
movement, though it was afterwards superseded by the
British Critic, which was Newman's special organ.-^
It was at Eose's rectory at Hadleigh in July 1833 that
a meeting was held of a few clergymen, of whom Hurrell
Froude was one, but where Newman was not present, at
which meeting it was resolved to fight for the doctrine of
apostoUcal succession and for the integrity of the Prayer-
Book. This seems to have been the first combined and
definite undertaking on behalf of the Church of England
entered into in those troublous times. Two months later
Newman, who never joined this Movement, beUeving, as he
explains in his Apologia, not in committees or organised
associations, but in personal effort and influence, began the
Tracts for the Times, as he states, " out of his own head,"
thus, by the first tract, taking the practical initiative of
systematic defence and reconstruction out of Eose's hands.
Eose, however, is the leader whom, as a divine and a
Churchman, Dean Burgon, in his lAves of Twelve Good Men,
1 Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Palmer, of Worcester College, an
Irishman who had migrated from Trinity College, Dublin, to Oxford,
— the author of Origines Liturgicce and other learned works, —
published in 1843, and republished in 1883 with additions, a
Narrative of Events connected with the " Tracts for the Times," which
is very valuable for its accuracy and for its completeness, though it
deals rather with the surface of the history than the deeper causes and
feelings involved in the Tractarian Movement. Mr. Palmer evidently
regarded himself as qualified to give critical guidance in the difiiculties
of the time. Newman, while acknowledging his superior learning, —
probably in ecclesiastical learning he had no equal among High
Churchmen, — explains that he was quite incompetent to take the
position he aspired to, partly for want of " depth," and partly because
he was not an Oxford, but a Dublin man.

36 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
desired most of all to honour, and whom he thought of all
the Churchmen of his age most worthy of the Church's
confidence. His early death (at the age of forty-three) he
regarded as, humanly speaking, the greatest calamity the
Church had known in his generatioii. He gives his hero
the title of " The Eestorer of the Old Paths." According to
his account it was Eose, rather than Newman, who really
originated the Anglican Eevival. Eose disapproved of
Newman's errors and excesses, acted powerfully as a
moderator upon him and his Oxford band, and, if he had
Uved, would, in Dean Burgon's view, have been such a
counter-power as might have saved the Church of England
from the calamitous collapse and the leakage from perver
sions which marked the period following 1844. He and
not Newman would have been the true " restorer " and
leader' for the Church, and he was strong enough. Dean
Burgon believed, to have held the position of arbiter or
leader even in the face of Newman and his mighty influence.
Eose died in 1838, worn out with disease and over
work. Newman, to use his own words in his Apologia,
was "from the end of 1841 on his deathbed as regarded
his membership with the Anglican Church " ; and in October
1845, to use Dean Burgon's words, " actually transferred his
allegiance to that Church which a few years before he had
publicly denounced with unsparing bitterness as under the
actual domination of Satan." For some time before his death
Eose had been growingly uneasy, not to say suspicious, as
to the tone and tendency of Newman's writings, and as to
the effect upon the rising generation of University men of
the spirit and influence emanating from Newman and his
congenial friend — perhaps we might say prompter — Hurrell
Froude. Dean Burgon publishes a number of Eose's letters

THE TWO UNIVERSITIES 37
to Ne-wman of this period, with small portions of Newman's
own share of the correspondence. From these it is evident
that Eose, as he was senior to Newman, and altogether
independent of him, and was also doubtless at the time a
man of wider theological reading and greater influence,
besides being of a firm character and settled purpose, felt
himself able and entitled to speak to Newman with a
plainness of speech such as no other person could use, and
that Newman deferred to him more than to anyone else.
It may weU be doubted, however, whether, if Eose had
lived, he would have continued to preserve anything like
the same relation to Newman. The intellects of the two
men were incommensurable. Newman's infiuence arose
from sources altogether different from any faculty of infiu
ence and authority possessed by Eose, and touched accord
ingly a different order of minds. Newman's " Catholic "
intensity of bias and feeling derived much of its quaUty
from a transformed evangelical ecstasy and experimental
assurance which was altogether foreign to the character of
Hugh James Eose's Anglican orthodoxy. Eose was content
to walk in the old ways of traditional Anglicanism. New
man had a vein of enthusiasm, a power of imagination, and
a gift of genius, which made it impossible that he should be
confined within the same limits.
Besides all which, Eose was a Cambridge man, and
Newman was magnetising the young men of Oxford, and
always gathering and radiating influence at that focus.
The metaphysical and theological genius of the two univer
sities has always been different. Cambridge had already
received its revival through Simeon and his school. The
revival of Oxford was now to come, with Newman to
kindle it instead of Simeon. Between the Simeonite

38 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
EvangeUcals and the rising Broad Church, Cambridge was
preoccupied. It had no faculty, no receptivity, no fuel to
spare for the establishment of a new school of Ailglican
zeal and devotion. In 1832 the rising school of religious
thought, for the moment, was that of Hare, which was
presently stimulated and distorted into the Neo-Platonic
mysticism of Maurice. It was the turn now of Oxford to
have its Church revival. Oxford, according to its traditions,
could hardly be widely swept by any but a High Church
influence. But that influence was not likely to emanate
from a stiff Cambridge High Churchman walking in the
fetters of Carolan theology and Church theories.
Nor was this all. The general studies and tendencies
of the age had brought earnest and systematic students of
ecclesiastical principles face to face with the question of
the historical unity and continuity of the Church. The
works of Neander, in regard to this subject and to other
ecclesiastical questions, represented a movement of the
mind which was awakening inquiry, not only in Germany,
but also in England. The writings of Archdeacon Hare
are full of the evidences of this fact. The poUtico-
ecclesiastical speculations of Coleridge directed attention to
it. There were two wrong solutions of the question of the
Church's historical continuity and unity which presented
themselves to many minds ; one, the Broad Church solution,
which was expounded most fully and with great abiUty a
few years later by Maurice m his Kingdom of Christ,
which, in a vaguer and less objectionable form, was
adopted not only by Arnold, but, in the first instance,
by Pusey, when, as his earUest writing, he pub
Ushed his defence of German Protestantism against the
strictures of Hugh James Eose, and when his writing

THE QUESTION OF THE CHURCH'S UNITY 39
savoured rather of Eationalism than of Romanism. The
other solution was that of the medifeval Catholic and
the Anglican High Church — or, as we now speak, the
Anglo-Catholic view. Both these solutions erred in
placing the identity and continuity of the Church in
Christianity as visibly organised. The first, or Broad
Church view found tlie Christian Church in the national
or other public communities, which, however loosely or
generally, professed the Christian name and faith. Collect
ively, from generation to generation, these constituted tho
Christian Church. Of this view Maurice was, as I have
intimated, the ablest and most complete expositor. Tho
other, or " Catholic," view found the identity and con
tinuity of the Christian Church iu a direct succession of
Churches, holding the orthodox faith, and having a ministry
or priesthood lineally derived from the primitive and
apostolic Church. Both these views assume that Christi
anity is founded and rooted in external conditions. The
true view, the Pauline view, regards the true and living
Church of Christ as consisting of the whole multitude,
from age to age, of living Christians spiritually united to
Christ Jesus, their Divine-Human Head, and constituting
His one ever-living mystical body, invisible in regard to its
spiritual glory and beauty, inasmuch as the " life " of its
members " is hid with Christ in God," although Christians
individually are visibly connected with various Christian
Churches and communions. This, however, is a view
which appears rarely to have entered into the thought
of High Churchmen as at all possible, or as even con
ceivable ; although, besides its being the New Testament
doctrine, it is the view which has always been held
by the most spiritually united and devoted Christian

40 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
brotherhoods from age to age. The succession of mystics
of the better side, whether Catholic or Protestant; the
German pietists, who, in the worst days of dead Lutheran
faith and formaUsm, kept alive the light and tradition of
living Christian experience in Germany ; Protestant
continental divines of the most profound spiritual
intelligence and insight — such, for example, as Vinet in
recent times ; all evangelical Nonconformists, and nearly
all thoroughly evangelical Churchmen, — have agreed in
holding this view. It was, with a sort of necessary and
unconscious acceptance, assimilated as a part of Christian
doctrine by that succession of earnest and experimental
Christians at Cambridge, of whom for half a century
Simeon was the recognised leader, and who were often
honoured with the epithet of " Methodist " ; it has always
been a central part of the Christian faith of the followers
of John Wesley, who learnt it from their Founder, who had
freed himself from Oxford High Church externalism by
embracing the true doctrine of faith and salvation. But it
was a view of the Christian Church entirely opposed to
the genius and all the traditions of Oxford, which, in this
respect — -unlike Cambridge, but always consistent with
itself — has, since the light of Wiclif died out of its cloisters,
held with unchanging tenacity to the externalist and
Anglican High Church view of ecclesiastical and religious
questions. It is true that, even in Oxford, Whately led
and Arnold supported an opposite view. But how un
congenial their teaching was to the atmosphere of the
place was strikingly shown by the total failure of their
influence to counteract in any degree the Tractarian
Movement. It is true, also, no doubt, that the revolutionary
changes of recent years have produced effects more or less

CAMBRIDGE AND OXFORD 41
disturbing in the tone of thought on this subject. But I
am speaking of Oxford as it was forty years ago and more.
In the Oxford University of which we are speaking
— the Oxford of half a century ago — the character and
opinions of Hugh James Eose, if he had been a resident,
might well have had great conservative influence. They
would have been congenial to the place. But then he was
not a resident ; and that which Newman was to initiate
was not a conservative restoration, but an ecclesiastical
and religious revival, in which there should be an alto
gether new inspiration and influence. Newman himself,
in his Apologia, indicates both these reasons as having been
fatal to Eose's ascendancy, or moderating power, in the
destined Movement.
" There was another reason," he says, " which severed
Mr. Eose from the Oxford Movement. Living movements
do not come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out
through the post. . . . Universities are the natural centres
of intellectual movements. How could men act together,
unless they were united in a sort of individuality ? . . .
But another condition, besides that of place, was required.
A far more essential unity was that of antecedents — a
common history, common memories, an intercourse of
mind with mind in the past, and a progress and increase of
that intercourse in the present."
In such words, and others to a similar effect, which go
fully into detail, the Apologia explains why Eose could
not lead or inspire an Oxford Movement. But that
autobiography of the Tractarian leader also indicates that
no mere conservative restoration such as Rose would
have desired to organise, would have been likely to succeed
at that crisis of feeling in Oxford. Froude was the

42 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
energetic and wUful partner of Newman in the new
enterprise — Froude, who, with less genius, far less personal
tact and persuasiveness, and no gift of public or pulpit
suasion, such as Newman possessed in a wonderful degree,
was a man of intense and resolute character, of great
logical daring, of unsparing pugnacity, of far-reaching ideas,
whom Newman greatly admired and even loved, though
he was loved by few besides. These two men were
mutually complementary ; together they planned and
marked out the lines of the Tractarian Movement, as the
private enterprise of Newman and his coterie is vaguely,
but conveniently called. Dean Church in his history of
the Movement, with which I shall have presently to
deal, protests against its being spoken of as a " con
spiracy." Let us avoid the inconvenient and Ul-omened
word. But yet we must note that the Movement was
an enterprise privately planned, a scheme deeply laid and
worked with great subtlety, the fell influence and effects of
which at this hour are tainting with deadly poison the great,
and in some respects admirable, Anglican revival ; and,
indeed, are threatening the very existence of the Church of
England, not merely as an Establishment, but as a united
organisation. With Newman and Froude it was impossible
for Rose really to coalesce. " Mr. Rose," says the Apologia,
"had a position in the Church, a name, and serious
responsibUities. . . . Eose could not go ahead across
country, as Froude had no scruples in doing." Froude
appUed to Eose in a " reproachful " sense, as Newman says,
the epithet " conservative." " Froude " — we are told, and
Froude was Newman's friend and fellow — " was com
paratively indifferent to the revolutionary action which
would attend on the application of the principles " which

THE LEADER NOT ROSE, BUT NEWMAN 43
Newman and himself made it theU business to teach,
" whereas, in the thoughts of Eose, as a practical man,
existing facts had the precedence of every other idea."
These considerations are sufficient to show that with
Newman and Froude at Oxford together, in the flrst
instance, and afterwards with Newman there supreme,
when he became the sole guide and leader of the Neo-
AngUcan coterie, Eose would have had no chance what
ever of influencing the University. The leaders of the new
Movement intended something with a new soul in it, and
with unlimited capacity of development and extension.
The motto of Eose — as of William Palmer, of Worcester
College, who, however, had not for a moment his finger on
the real centre and spring of action, and who, before long,
was left away in the background — was Stare super antiquas
vias — to go back to the Anglicanism of the seventeenth
century. This was not at all Newman's idea, nor
would it have met the wants of the Church at that
tune. What Newman, with a truer apprehension of the
problems involved, felt to be necessary, was to furnish a
clear and adequate statement of the distinctive principles
and claims of the Church of England ; and a restatement,
adapted to modern conditions, of the AngUcan relations to
the Eoman Church and its doctrines.
Newman had not been brought up a High Churchman,
but an Evangelical. His father was a banker of Dutch
descent — the family name was Newmann; his mother
belonged to a well-known French Huguenot family.-^ His
extraction was more foreign than English, and he had been
1 See Mr Lily's very careful and exact article in the Dictionary of
National Biography, the article of a friend and co-religionist, but a
trustworthy outline of facts and personal history.

44 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
trained in no Anglican Church principles. He was, in
reality, at this time rather ignorant of Carolan Churchman
ship, and never seems greatly to have cared for it. In
abandoning his early evangelical principles, or, as he would
call them, prejudices, he retained a vivid conviction of the
reality of his evangelical conversion. This conviction
abode with him through all his changing phases and
subsequent developments of opinion. He was, and he
remained through life, " more certain of his inward
conversion than that he had hands and feet." The writer
who made a deeper impression on his mind than any other,
and to whom, he tells us, " humanly speaking," he " almost
owed his soul," was the evangelical commentator, " Thomas
Scott, of Aston Sandford." With these experiences and
memories graven on his consciousness, the writer of the
Apologia tells us that he came to Oxford. Here, in contact
with the influences of the place, he gradually exchanged
Low Church for High Church views. But, not being at
the time a man of either much learning or trained habits
of logical investigation, he leaped impulsively to extremes,
as shallow evangelical Christians, who exchange any of
their original distinctive principles or prejudices for any
one High Church principle or view, are very apt to do.
That able and guarded High Churchman, Provost Hawkins,
the provost of his College, seems to have given him the
first impulse which, not by any means necessarily, but
because of the unfurnished and untrained condition of his
own mind, and because of his natural susceptibility of
temperament, set him distinctly on the road to the theology
of mere tradition and development. The provost taught
him what many Low Churchmen overlook — the office and
worth of tradition, especially, as in the first instance, the

EARLIEST ST A GES IN NE WMAN'S DE VEL OPMENT 45
one primitive and oral teacher of Christian doctrine. Not
perceiving that the truth in this view left intact the
authority of Scripture as the surest and only unerring test
of primitive doctrine, Newman lost his interest in the Bible
Society, and soon after withdrew his name from the list of
subscribers. Thus he started on the way to Eome — not
really on the way to Carolan Anglicanism. Bramhall and
Andrewes and Laud were not his masters ; he had not been
brought up in their school, and he never really took to
them. Thomas Scott had been more to him than they
ever were. High and dry Anglicanism was not congenial
to him ; he had been introduced to the life of conscious
salvation; he continued to believe in high and rapt
reUgious experience, though now what he admired and
longed for was of the mediaeval or monastic type. He
had no admiration for a ponderous machinery of religious
externaUsm, and no personal taste for mere brilliance of
ritual display. His loving contemplation and desire went
back, not to the origines of the Church of England as
purged and reformed, though he might fall back on them
as an intermediate study and a proximate guide and
authority, but to the earliest ages of the Church — the ages
of primitive (or quasi-primitive) zeal, of the grand historical
victories and development of Christianity, of the great
Church councils, when Catholic doctrine was defined and
determined. He was bent upon identifying himself and
his Christianity with the grand course of Christian history
and development. Having taken the postulates of ex
ternaUsm with him from the beginning of his inquiries and
speculations, — having missed the only true solution of the
question of the Church's continuity and unity, — it was^
indeed, a foregone conclusion that such a mind as his could

46 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
not eventually find any resting-place till he was constrained
to seek refuge in Eome. But as yet this was hidden from
his view. From the first, however, it was impossible for
him to be a mere High Churchman of the past. It was
impossible that he should remain shut up within the
barriers of Anglicanism, as if that were the " happy valley "
from which he might in tranquillity survey the whole
schismatic universe of Christianity around him — on the one
hand, schismatic Nonconformity ; on the other, schismatic
and corrupt Eoman Catholicism, with the incommensurable
Eastern Churches far away in the dreamy distance. New
man was, at heart, a mystic ; he was, both in religion and
philosophy, a transcendentalist ; he was a poet and a dreamer;
and, above all, in virtue of his devotion, his enthusiasm, his
industry, his combination of unworldliness with knowledge
of character and with subtilty of adaptation to worldly
conditions, and his unique charm as a preacher, — a charm
which had in it the elements of intellectual distinction and
force, of persuasiveness, suggestiveness, and even at times
of spiritual ecstasy, — he was the absolute and unquestioned
master, the admired and almost adored disposer, of a
multitude of earnest and enthusiastic spirits. Such a man,
with such followers, could never have coalesced with Hugh
James Eose ; nor, able as Eose was, and much more widely
read as a theologian and as a European scholar than Newman,
was it possible that he could ever have prevented the
supremacy of Newman, least of all in Oxford. Dean
Burgon's idolatJ)ry of Eose, and his attempt to show that
he, and not Newman, might best and most fitly have
been the leader of the High Church revival, is merely
evidence of the limited calibre of the dean himself. The
worship of Carolan Anglicanism could never reanimate the

THE FIRST INSPIRATION 47
Church of England. With all his errors, Newman was
far too large and gifted a man to be reduced to contem
plate such an aim. We may justly lament with bitter
grief for England and the Church of England the effects of
his influence, and stUl more of the deadUer influence
exercised within the Church of England by his friend
and early co-worker, Pusey. The joint result is that a
fatal leaven of essentially Eomish doctrine, of Eomanising
superstition, has taken deep hold of England. England wUl
yet be sorely shaken by the controversies that must result.
Agnosticism and unbelief have been very greatly strength
ened. The Church of England will probably be disestabUshed,
not because of outward assaults, but of internal errors and
schisms, and, being thus disestablished, will be divided into
two, or possibly even three, distinct Churches ; all this
seems likely to happen.^ All this perhaps must happen,
if ever the implicated superstitions and corruptions which
now deform and consume the life of the Church are to be
purged out. But one thing at least is certain^ — Eevived
Laudianism could never have reanimated the Church of
England or won the allegiance of the English nation.
My business, however, is not to prophesy, but to note the
* In the Guardian for February 27, 1889, the Rev. Mr. Enraght
published a letter criticising the Bishop of Liverpool's address on
the subject of the Sacrament and Sacramental Superstitions— which
address has been a bitter pill for the Romanising section of the clergy
to which Mr. Enraght belongs. In this letter Mr. Enraght, -with
characteristic modesty and decency, speaks of the dislike felt towards
" the Eucharistic sacrifice " by " the Bishop of Liverpool in common
with his co-reliyionists." It seems accordingly that Mr. Enraght had
already decreed an ecclesiastical separation between Evangelical Church
men, the " Bishop and his co-religionists," and himself and his " co
religionists.'' Dissenters could not have been more distinctly cut
away from Church communion. That phrase speaks volumes.

48 THE CRISIS OF DISTRESS FOR THE CHURCH
points and progress of an historical development. For the
reasons which I have now suggested, the work of rallying
and reviving the forces, of organizing and developing the re
sources of the Church of England, was one which, while it
could only be accomplished from a university centre, could
not be accomplished from Cambridge. Newman had the
gifts and the qualities of character fitting him to become the
master-spirit in a movement of seminal Church reform and
reorganisation, of which Oxford was the congenial centre.
There he established a sort of school of the prophets.
There he trained instruments and prepared the materials
of propagandism. He restated the principles of the Church
of England ; and he began the work of re-defining the
Anglican position in regard to Eome, but broke down
before the work was really finished, and ended by capitu
lating altogether to Eome. For his characteristic work at
Oxford, Newman had been prepared by the influence of
Keble and Froude. To quote Dean Church, " Keble had
given the inspiration, Froude had given the impetus, then
Newman took up the work." If Froude had lived a few
years longer, it cannot be doubted that he would have gone
over the imaginary line of division, and would have found
himself consciously and professedly at Eome. Keble had
neither logic nor courage to take him across the Une, and
therefore remained a beneflced clergyman of the Church of
England, whUe his esoteric principles were those of a
GalUcan Eomanist. In the secret place of his doctrinal
sympathies he was one at heart with Bossuet or Dupin.
Newman, alone of the three, slowly and reluctantly, but
by force of sincere and overmastering convictions, followed
his principles out to the complete end and so finished his
career a cardinal of the Church of Eome.

CHAPTER III.
The " Tracts for the Times " — Newman and Ward — The
Advance Eomeward — Ward's " Ideal of a Christian
Church " — His Character and History — His
Degradation and Secession.
TN 1832 and 1833 Newman and Froude took a con-
tinental tour together, spending much time in Italy.^
They separated before the tour ended, Froude returning
to England first. Newman returned on July 9, 1832.
On July 14, Keble preached the Assize Sermon at
Oxford in the University Church, the sermon which he
published with the startling title, " National Apostasy," and
the date of the delivery of which Newman thereafter
solemnly kept as " the start of the Oxford Movement." In
the following September, Newman published the first tract
of the famous series of Tracts for the Times, a tract in
which he laid down what he assumed to be the foundation
1 From Froude's Remains we learn that Newman and he at Rome
"got introduced to Dr. Wiseman to find out whether they" — the Romish
Church — " would take us in on any terms to which we could twist our
consciences," and found to their dismay that it would be absolutely
necessary for them "to swallow the Council of Trent as a whole."
Newman, as co-editor with Keble of the Remains, explains that this
was Froude's "jesting way" of telling a friend that they wanted "to
ascertain the ultimate points of issue between the Churches." The
statement of Froude and the explanation of Newman are equally
characteristic of the writers respectively. 4

so NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
principles of the Cliurch of England, apostolical succes
sion being the main " plank " of the " platform." Eight
years later, in 1841, he published Tract 90, which brought
down the hand of Church authority to put an end to the
series. First the Heads of Houses — the Hebdomadal
Board — severely censured the tract. Then the Bishop of
Oxford, Newman's kind friend. Dr. Bagot, officially re
quested that the series of tracts might be discontinued.
Presently the bishops, one after another, in due succession,
condemned the tract in their charges ; condemned, also, the
series generally of which this was to be the last. The
object of the tracts throughout was to educate Churchmen,
especially the clergy, in the principles, the practices,
and the policy which befitted the claims and character
of the Apostolic and Catholic Church of England. The
great authorities recognised were " the Fathers " of the
first four centuries. Their teachings, and the Church
practices which their writings disclosed, were assumed
to be the teachings and the practices of the primitive
Church, although, in fact, the actual development of
the Church during the first four centuries of its exist
ence had so modified and even transformed the teachings
of Christ and the apostles into conformity with the
spirit of " the world," ^ and the seductive precedents and
practices of surrounding paganism, as to make up a
whole of Church organisation and influence sadly in
contrast, at many points, with the purity, simplicity, and
unworldly majesty of true primitive Christianity. The
general effect of the teaching of the tracts was to lessen
continually, and at point after point, the differences between
the Anglo-Catholic and the Eoman Catholic Church, as
1 1 John ii. 15-17.

THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES" 51
regarded by the disciples of the Tractarian school. To effect
this result discreetly and without weakening too much the
position of the Church of England, was the most difficult
problem for Newman to solve. The purpose of Tract 9 0 was
to show how much of Eomish doctrine might be held by
an Anglican priest without legally or indisputably violating
the Articles of the Church. The attempt, howeverj though
exceedingly subtle and skilful, was too daring, and brought,
as such, the whole Tractarian Movement to the ground.^
Of the ninety tracts, indeed, — of the greater part
of which Newman was himself the writer, — there are
three which stand out from the rest as of pre-eminent
importance, and as affording together a sufficient indica
tion of the tendency and purpose of the whole series.
These are the first and the last, to which I have already
referred, and Pusey's unfinished but voluminous and
epoch-making tract, or treatise, on Baptism. The first —
on Apostolical Succession — marked out the line Eomeward ;
the last — No. 90 — defined the fatal extent of concession
and approach to Eome to which Newman had already,
in 1841, advanced in his conduct of his disciples, bring
ing the party close up to the gates of the Papal City.
Thus the law of the movement was fixed on the strictly
ecclesiastical side. Pusey's tract was complementary
in its character. It did not deal with questions of
1 Newman himself says that the immediate cause which led to his
Tractarian career was his being deprived of his college tutorship, and
his public career at Oxford being brought to an end by his quarrel
with his provost (Hawkins) as to the scope of his tutorial powers and
responsibilities. He considered his office of a religious nature, which
Hawkins did not. Deprived of his tutorship, he went with Froude to
the Continent. It was Newman's own influence which had turned the
scale in favour of Hawkins' election as provost, as against Keble, who,
though " an angel," was not fit to be provost.

52 NEWMAN AND WARD — -THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
Church order, but with the theology of sin and salva
tion ; and it laid the foundation of that degrading and
demoralising doctrine of Confession and Absolution, and
of sacramental efficacy ex opere operate, which lies at
the heart of the special system of papal superstition
and hierarchical domination from which it had been
hoped that the Eeformation had deUvered the people
of England. The Tractarian Movement was thus inspired
by the teaching and infiuence of Newman and Pusey.^
Other points there were connected with those I have now
noted, such as the disciplina arcani, the doctrine of reserve,
the ascetic and the celibate life, and the mystical interpre
tation of Scripture. But those I have marked out from
the rest were the points fundamental and essential to the
whole scheme of the Movement. Eound these, moreover, the
conflict still has to be carried on in that larger Movement
of which Oxford has all along been the chief centre, and
into which the original Tractarian Movement has developed.
Whilst feeling his way along the perilous line I have
described, Newman, in 1837, published a volume on
Bomanism and Popular Protestantism, in which, while con
ceding much to Eome, he insisted strongly on some of
the errors and corruptions of the Eomish Church. It
was written after the death of Froude, and was an attempt
to discover a Une of safety — a via media — lying between
popular Protestantism on the one hand and Eomanism on
the other. This via media charmed many ultra-High
1 Pusey, indeed, did not really identify himself with the Movement
till two years after its commencement. But his accession, when he
did join, added to it not a little of moral weight, and still more of
University credit and social prestige, though he never really took an
active lead in its direction. But of Pusey there will be much to say
in my later chapters.

WARD'S POINT OF VIEW 53
Churchmen, and after Newman had abandoned it, some
still clung to it. In after years he poured contempt upon
it. Perhaps, if that strong Eomaniser, Froude, had been
by the side of Newman, his criticism of Eome would
have been gentler than it was, and his concessions still
larger. At all events, the Apologia furnishes evidence
that not long after its publication Newman doubted
whether he had been just to the Eomish Church in
his book. In 1838, Ward, a yet stronger and much
more trenchant Eomanising critic of the Church of Eng
land than even Froude had been, had become a close
friend of Newman, and his influence was daringly, and
even recklessly, pro-Eomish, as will be shown in this
chapter. With him as his friend and prompter, Newman
carried on his series of tracts, and flnally published Tract
90 ; a tract, however, which, it should never be forgotten,
had been beforehand read and approved by Keble, and was
afterwards defended in detaU by Pusey. In February
1843, in his subtle and secret way, Newman anonymously,
yet with signiflcant intimations which to the well-informed
revealed his identity, published in an obscure journal,
never heard of, as it has been said, before or since, — -the
Conservative Journal, — a retractation of all the hard things
he had said against the Church of Eome.
The view maintained by Ward with increasing pressure
of logic and of will was, that the ecclesiastical position of
Eome gave it an indisputable superiority over the Church
of England, and that this position carried with it the whole
question as between the two Churches. From the pre
misses which he learned and adopted from Newman this
was a legitimate conclusion. The only thing, therefore, for
Newman to do, who knew not how to resist this contention.

54 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
and who was in reality inferior to Ward in keenness and
force of logic, was to Eomanise as far as possible the Church
of England, and to bring about, if that should be possible,
a reconciliation between the two Churches. Ward had
joined him as a disciple implicitly trusting and obeying a
master ; but the disciple presently began to dominate his
teacher. The faults and disabilities of Eome, as Newman
was now brought to think, were, however serious, less serious
and formidable than the schismatic attitude and course,
and the grievous deflciencies in doctrine and ritual, and,
above all, in ecclesiastical authority and position, of the
Church of England. Hence the publication of Tract 90,
the arguments and the assumptions in which excited the
almost universal indignation and alarm of the bishops and
the older clergy, and still more of the laity of the Church
of England, rousing especially to righteous rage the powerful
EvangeUcal section of the Church.
It was thus towards the close of the interval covered by
the publication of the tracts, and at a time when Froude
had lately been removed by death from the side of Newman,
that W. G. Ward became his intimate counsellor and friend.
Ward was to carry forward the process which Froude had
begun until Newman had worked out the logical results of
his premisses, and by his definitive secession to Eome had
followed to its end the highroad which he had chosen for
himself, and into which he had allured so many others, of
whom it is sorrowful to think how many — and painful, at
the same time, to think that perhaps too few — followed him
to the same goal. Ward became Newman's chief, and by
far most urgent, counsellor in 1838 or 1839, two or three
years before Tract 90 was published. He remained in
intimate association with him till 1845, the year in which

MR. WILFRID WARD'S LIFE OF HIS FATHER 55
flrst Ward and afterwards Newman actually joined the
Eomish communion. Mr. WUfrid Ward, the son of New
man's friend, has published his father's life, of which the
first volume is entitled, W. G. Ward and the Oxford
Movement} That volume takes us into the heart of our
subject. Of its singular accuracy as a history of facts,
and of its not less remarkable fairness of spirit, — though
it is written by the Eoman Catholic son of such a con
vert to Eome as W. G. Ward, — there can be no doubt
whatever. As to the second stage of the Tractarian Move
ment, properly so called, after the death of Froude,
and when the spirit and tendency of the tracts came
to be understood with increasing distinctness, a stage
of which Newman's account in the Apologia is by no
means complete, never even referring to Ward, — this
volume furnishes us with invaluable information. It
suppUes a critical deficiency in our avaUable materials.
Ward and Newman, as we shall see, though they had strong
points of mutual sympathy, had also antipathetic points
of character; and after they had gone over to Eome
represented contradictory tendencies as to Church policy,
— a fact which comes out strongly in the second volume
of Mr. WUfrid Ward's life of his father, -with which we
are not concerned in this chapter. This may perhaps
account for Newman's silence as to Ward in the Apologia.
The special period of the movement which Mr. WiUrid
Ward's voUune covers is that between 1841 and 1845,
during which, the Tracts for the Times ha-ving with Newman's
No. 9 0 found their climax and come to a collapse, Newman
himself was in retirement, chiefly at Littlemore. It was
the period during the earUer years of which the British
' Macmillan & Co.

56 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
Critic, with Mr. Thomas Mozley as its editor, and Ward
as one of its chief writers, was the organ of the now
increasingly advanced and Eomeward movement. When,
in 1843, after passing all bounds of ijossible toleration in
its ever-increasing Eomanising and its incessant attacks
on the Anglican position and claims, the British Critic
came to an end. Ward, no longer able to use it as his
organ, wrote his Ideal of a Christian Church, which he
pubUshed in June 1844, and that publication was followed,
in February 1845, by the formal censure of the Uni
versity. Convocation not only condemned the Ideal,
but degraded the writer of the condemned work, so
that, though still a Fellow, he was reduced to the
status of an undergraduate. The natural result very
shortly foUowed. Ward, having in the meantime married,
joined the Eomish communion, and became a professor
at Old College. Newman also, whose hand Ward's
active influence had forced as early as 1841, went
over to his destined haven and home in the same com
munion very soon afterwards. It was, indeed, only by the
official veto of the proctors that Tract 90 escaped formal
condemnation in 1845 by the same Convocation of the
University which degraded Ward. The Oxford Tractarian
Movement was thus brought to an end, although the
influences which emanated from it have since continued
to spread through the churches and parishes of England,
in some respects in a more intense degree and form than
were ever known in Oxford during the rise and develop
ment of the movement as such.
Since 1841, Ward had well-nigh outgrown the posi
tion of a disciple. In the last phase of the Tractarian
evolution he may be said to have exchanged places

WARD'S UNIQUE IDENTITY 57
with his former master, and he became the leader in the
final clash and conflict. Oakeley, of Margaret Street, — the
common friend of Newman and Ward, friend also of
Hope-Scott and Gladstone, — who, lUce Ward, had long
been really a Eomanist, took his place by the side
of Ward, being received into the Church of Eome
within a few days of his friend. Of the earlier part of
his father's history, up to the crisis I have now spoken
of, Mr. Wilfrid Ward writes in the volume before us. In
a volume published three years later he has dealt with
the remaining forty years of his father's life, which he
passed as a member of the Church of Eome. With
Ward in this his second phase of character, however, I
have not to do in the present chapter.
Reserving for a later place in this chapter a con
secutive sketch, in outline, of Ward's earUer life while
stUl professedly an Anglican, let me first endeavour to
present the man himself in his unique identity as
revealed in his son's narrative, and described by his
Oxford friends or acquaintances, especially in his relations
to Newman — relations of likeness and unlikeness, of
sympathy and contrariety, but always interesting and
important, because no man had such an electrical influence
on Newman as Ward.
Ward was from the beginning of his student Ufe —
was even at school — a bold and ardent abstract thinker,
with no taste for the concrete in any form. He loved
abstract, but hated applied or mixed, mathematics. He
was a good linguist and grammarian, but could never be
induced to get up the collateral history or illustrations
which related to any author he was reading. History
he detested, and throughout life remained phenomenally

58 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE^ ROMEWARD
ignorant of it. He had no taste for poetry. And if for
music he had a real passion, yet as to art in general, and
architecture, he was a mere barbarian. His tastes for
abstract study were balanced and counteracted only by a
passion for fiction, burlesque, and, as I have said, music.
To the opera and the burlesque stage he remained a
devotee even after he had become a devoted and ascetic
Romanist; but of high dramatic art he seems to have
shown little appreciation. He became a well-read Roman
Catholic theologian, and especially delighted in the syste
matic and logical theology of the Jesuit masters. But a
really learned theologian he never did become, because he
cared almost as little for ecclesiastical as for other history,
and because he had never studied the historical develop
ment of theology. In pure metaphysics he revelled in his
mature and later life, as in his earlier life he had revelled
in pure mathematics. But he knew no more of physiology
or physiological psychology than he did of mechanical
theories or applied mathematics. Student as he was of
systematic theology and ascetic books, he seems to have
known nothing whatever of Biblical exegesis or New
Testament criticism. The illustration, from any external
source of light or knowledge, of the Scriptm'e text,
regarded as history or narrative, seems never to have been
recognised by him as a matter of importance. Very Uttle
in this way, as Dean Stanley has remarked, in a well-
known article in the Edinburgh Review} was done by his
master, Newman. Ward seems to have been altogether
insensible to the attraction of any such work. His ascetic
exercises were a discipline he felt the need of, but which
he set as far as possible to music. His religion outside
' For April 1881.

WARD'S EARL Y LIFE 59
the practice of moral duties and of prescribed rules and
services was an abstract science — mere theology and
metaphysics. So far did he carry his abstractions that
he denied that there was any special or necessary duty of
love to parents as such, or attachment to one's country ;
he refused to recognise patriotism as in any sense a virtue.
In his early life Ward was strongly attracted towards
Bentham and, especially, Mill — their abstract argumenta
tion and their hard matter-of-factness were very much to
his taste. Mill's strict, though utilitarian, regard for
ethics and practical morality also impressed him favour
ably. But, notwithstanding his logical hardness. Ward
had a profound religiousness of nature. Conscience within
him bore strong and peremptory witness to the being and
government of God. With this the intrinsic agnosticism
of Mill's phUosophy was irreconcilable. For some time
Ward wavered in painful and agitating suspense — for a
long time he was tormented with doubts. The immoraUty
of which he had been witness at Winchester School, the
low standard of moraUty which he saw in the nominally
Christian world around him, had strengthened the attrac
tion for him of Mill's equitable character and enlightened
ethical teachings, and had conspired with his merely intel
lectual difficulties to tempt him to scepticism. But in
good time the character and influence of Dr. Arnold, and
especially the high practical tone of his Christian teaching,
helped the young student in his struggles against the
philosophy of Mill. When he received deacon's orders.
Ward signed the Thirty-nine Articles as a disciple of
Arnold, although when he received priest's orders he
signed them as follower of Newman — or, as his son uses
the word, as a Newmanite. Newman drew him from

6o NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
Arnold. All through, indeed. Ward had missed in Arnold's
teaching the abstract basis, the ground of authority, the
completeness of grip and scope, which his mathematical
genius desiderated. What he wanted was not a mere
practical system of Christianity, with a working doctrinal
compromise at its base, such as Arnold's teaching offered
him; he craved a complete and logical system of faith and
religious practice founded on abstract principles. Even when
drawn towards Mill he had, feeling his want of such a rest
ing-place, turned a longing and half-fascinated look towards
Roman Catholicism, as affording the sort of system in which
he might, if only he could accept it, find the repose he craved.
Newman seemed to furnish Ward with at least the promise
and earnest of what was necessary in this kind. At the
same time, the great preacher's ethical tone, and his
severely chaste and restrained, but persuasive, eloquence
charmed and fascinated the young inquirer, while his
sidelong hints and questionings subtlely searched again and
again the fiaws and faults of Mill's material utilitarianism.
Ward thus, within a few years after gaining his BalUol
fellowship, became a follower of Newman — an enthusiastic,
devoted and, for some time, an implicitly trustful disciple.^
What he seemed to himself always to need was an infallible
guide, and Newman was, in effect, his Pope. This is very
e'vident from many passages in the volume before us.
Nevertheless, there was such a difference — such a contrast
— in temper and intellectual tone between the master and
the disciple, that it was inevitable, sooner or later, that
' He was fond of quoting Carlyle's dictum — "True guidance in
return for loving obedience, did he but know it, is man's prime
need." For several years he thought he had found all that he needed
in Newman.

WARD'S THOROUGHGOING BOLDNESS 6i
they should cease to keep even step and close company.
For long, indeed, before their mutual relations were sensibly
changed, the questions and continual urgency of the disciple,
however respectful, however deferential, had been felt by
the master to be unwelcome and embarrassing — they were
as goads to one who desired not to be urged by anyone to
quicken his speed, or hastUy to adventure new departures,
but who was supremely anxious to do everything with all
caution, and according to the requirements of the most
skilfully calculated policy. Ward was a much bolder and
more direct man than Newman. The disciple, after a time,
began to point in advance of his master, and to ask if the
way were not onward in the direction of Eome. Ward
embodied the logic of principle, and, in his foresight of
inevitable consequence, he also represented the logic of
coming fact, which, as he foresaw, was destined to over
take the cautious and tentative policy suggested by
Newman, always with more or less indirectness, by
means of hints contained in his tracts and sermons, or
intimated in his private whisperings, — hints and intima
tions which went to make up the substance of a new, though
undeclared and undeveloped, system, — a system nominally
Anglican, but virtually Eomanist. Newman threw out
these suggestions as an evolutionist feeling his way out of
the perplexities of Anglo-Catholicism into the solid —
or solid seeming — and symmetrical system of Eoman
CathoUc theory, — a system, which, however unreasonable it
may appear to the impartial intellect, however unnatural
and really impracticable it may be, yet within its own
sphere of artificial abstractions, of imaginary qualities and
quantities, appears to be closely compacted, logical, and
complete. Ward was impatient of his master's timid and

62 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
dUatory process, and desired to be led boldly onward to the
destined goal. Thus it came to pass that while Newman
was first Ward's guide and oracle, who had deUvered his
disciple from scepticism. Ward became afterwards almost
as a prophet and leader to Newman, interpreting him to
himself in distinct utterance, and showing him in the
Eomish Church the only possible fulfilment of his ideas
and the necessary goal of his wavering, but gradually
advancing, footsteps. All this had been more or less
known before ; but never has it been set in the full light of
complete evidence before the eye of the inquirer into this
strangely, and in many respects sadly, interesting chapter
of English Church history, as it is now shown in Mr.
Ward's volume.
Newman's real deficiencies as a thinker combined with
his fine special gifts to heighten the contrast between
himself and Ward. While Newman was an adept at using
the analytic scalpel in the investigations of microscopic
introspection, he was greatly wanting in synthetic power,
a fact of which his Grammar of Assent affords striking
evidence and illustration. He felt his way from point to
point, almost with the preternaturally quick and subtle
sensibiUty of the sightless traveller ; but his was not the
bright, keen, far-reaching vision which reveals to the
wayfarer at one view the country that lies before and
around him, the goal towards which he is joui-neying, and
the roads among which he must choose his path. With
this natural want of far-sighted perspicacity another quality
combined to make him slow and cautious in his movements.
Alike from his personal experience and his long and inti
mate fellowship with earnest AngUcans of different shades
of opinion, and also from a natural fineness and deUcacy

CONTRAST BETWEEN NEWMAN AND WARD 63
of sympathetic sensibiUty, he was very keenly alive to all
the prepossessions and scruples of English Churchmen.
Corresponding to this, also, he possessed a wonderful
faculty of persuasiveness in answering, or, still more
effectually for his purpose, in anticipating and seeming to
clear away beforehand, without formal statement or argu
ment, difficulties or objections which appeared to stand in
the way of his present counsels or conclusions. Hence,
for all these reasons, it was eminently characteristic of
Newman to be slow, patient, tentative, circuitous in his
movements and the guidance of his party. In all the
particulars I have noted. Ward was a complete contrast to
his leader. Ward had no tenderness for Anglican traditions,
or sympathy with Anglican scruples and sensitiveness. He
was, indeed, a man destitute of fine. susceptibilities, except,
perhaps, upon the point of honour. Large, strong, almost
elephantine in physical frame, he was governed intellectually
by unmitigated logic, save only that he had a strong sense
of religious responsibility. Eegardless of prepossession, or
prejudice, or sentimental scruple, he would have marched
boldly and swiftly, from step to step, along the line of his
argument, driving remorselessly home his conclusions, how
ever harsh or even revolting they might appear to others.
The contrast between the character and methods of
Newman and Ward, during the time that they stood to
each other nominally in the mutual relation of leader and
follower, and almost up to the time when Ward set his teacher
the example of leaving the English Church for the Eoman
communion, is very well set forth by his son in the follow
ing paragraphs : —
" To undo the work of the Eeformation, and to restore
to the EngUsh Church her original Catholic character, with

64 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
the ultimate, if distant, prospect of restoration to the papal
obedience, was his" (Ward's) "declared aim, and the pro
gramme which he advocated for the Oxford school. . . .
If this programme differed from that of the earlier
phases of the Movement, much more did the method
in which it was advocated differ from that of the early
tracts. And it was the peculiarity of this method
which brought things to a crisis and ultimately broke
up the party. If Ward's theory was unwelcome to
Anglicans, his mode of advocating it could not but
make it more so, as the unwelcome elements were those
he most insisted on. The early tracts had appealed
to English ecclesiastical patriotism. There was a Church
with a noble history, immemorial traditions, a beautiful
liturgy, a roll of saints in her calendar — ^all this rich
inheritance of English Churchmen was being set aside by
the accidental views and ignorant bigotry of the moment.
They protested against an invasion of Protestantism as
against the inroads of Popery. They refused to take
their theology from Geneva as they refused to take it from
Eome. They said that the English Church should be true
to herself and her own past. Augustine had brought to
England the faith of the early Fathers. These were the
spiritual ancestors of English Christians. Eome had
deflected from the original traditions, though she had Uke
wise preserved, as was natural, tokens of their common
parentage. Both Churches had been in different ways
untrue to themselves. The concern of Englishmen was
with their own Church. Let them study the past records
of her history and its existing witness in her liturgy, and
restore to nineteenth century Anglicanism the spirit which
the Uves of Bede, Cuthbert, Anselm, on the one hand, and

WARD'S INTREPID LOGIC

65

the Church of England -Prayer- Book on the other, breathe
in every page. Whatever the precise view taken of the
Eeformation by the different writers of the tracts, and the
precise period at which the EngUsh Church was supposed
first to have been untrue to herself, it is evident through
out that the appeal is of the kind here indicated — an
appeal to esprit de corps among English Churchmen, to
their pride in the Church's liturgy, in its institutions, in
its history, in its monuments throughout the land. . .
Mr. Ward's tone was the very reverse of this. Whilst
in theory he was bent on restoring the Anglican Church
to what she had been before the Eeformation, he preached
practically a doctrine of humiliation before a foreign power.
He dwelt throughout — partly perhaps from his love of
looking at the furthest consequences of his principles, and
viewing his theory as a whole, partly from an almost
unconscious taste for what seemed startling and paradoxical
— on all those results and aspects of his view which were
most irritating to English Churchmen. He defended his
tone on the ground that perfect frankness and straight
forwardness were imperative in a party which had been
accused of preaching Popery in secret, and of being gener
ally disingenuous. Moreover, he did, no doubt, think that
all Anglican explanations of the Movement did veil or make
little of what was, in his view, essential. The spirit of
loyal submission to papal authority, and of readiness to
accept the doctrines taught by the Eoman See — these
were not minor points, but integral parts of the Catholic
position as he viewed it. To win converts by concealing
this seemed to him unfair" (pp. 222, 223).
Ward's strength was that of the intrepid logical
reasoner, who shrinks from no clear or sure consequences 5

66 NEWMAN AND WARD — THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
which flow from his reasoning. His weakness was that of
the man who endeavours to apply abstract reasoning where
it cannot be applied ; to define out of his own head where
concrete facts of history alone can help us to a true
analysis of phenomena or a true definition of principles.
His assumptions as to fact and as to doctrine were often
erroneous ; the premisses of his arguments were thus
fatally flawed. One defect which invalidated all his
reasonings and judgments in regard to Church systems,
was his amazing ignorance of history. He may be said to
have known nothing of history ; he cared nothing for it ;
he loudly confessed, he almost boasted of, his ignorance.
He was as ignorant of ecclesiastical as of general history.
Whilst professing, in some sort and in certain respects,
to be a Catholic theologian, he had not even begun
to study the times and lifework of Athanasius ; he
knew almost as little of patristic lore as if he had been a
Dissenting village preacher. And yet history is, alike in
Christian theology and Christian apologetics, the necessary
complement of abstract thought and argument. In the
facts of history, justly interpreted, — in a true induction
applied to the facts of history as taken in connexion
with the facts of consciousness, — are to be found for
religion, as in the facts of nature inductively interpreted
are to be found for science, the principles of truth and the
theory of life. For religion as well as for science, for
faith as well as for reason, in the verified records of fact,
¦ — in the one case the facts of history and consciousness,
in the other the facts of natural existence,^ — are found
respectively the demonstrations which, on the one hand,
stand in relation to our spiritual intuitions, and those
which, on the other hand, establish the physical laws of

WARD'S "IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH" 67
the universe and stand in relation to our faculty of induc
tive or scientific reason.
When, in his later life, and as a Eoman CathoUc
professor. Ward had to deal -within the comparatively
narrow, but profound, sphere of the highest metaphysics,
with the relations of the human spirit to God and to
moral law, with questions which touched only the sphere
of consciousness, and with which neither history nor
physical science stands in any relation, then his wonderful
keenness of logical understanding enabled him to expose,
as very few besides could have done, the fallacies of the
materialistic school of sceptical thought to which he was
so strongly drawn in his youth. He had gained from
Newman some pregnant hints which, aided by his deep
religious feeling, pointed him at the time to the way of
escape from that danger. These hints, after he had
become a teacher in a Roman CathoUc university, he
developed in a series of powerful arguments which were
immeasurably superior in piercingness and in linked strength
and closeness of thought to anything in the way of meta
physical writing which has been done by Newman. But
that subject more properly belongs to the latter period of
Ward's life, and to a later chapter in this volume.
Ward's phenomenal ignorance of history should have
prevented him from attempting to write such a treatise as
his fdeal of a Christian Church. If he had had any com
petent knowledge of the history of Christendom he would
not have attempted to exhibit the Church of Rome as
fulfilling his ideal ; he would have understood that his
" ideal," confronted with the reality of the history of the
Roman communion, could only have the effect, at very
many points, of a withering satire. Nor, if he had made

68 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
I
himself really master of the history of Luther and Luther-
anism, instead of using for his purpose detached second-hand
passages borrowed from Sir William Hamilton and Moehler,
would he have laid himself open to Archdeacon Hare's
scathing criticism in his Vindication of Luther, much less
would he have made his own travesty of Lutheranism
stand as the common description of evangelical Protestant
ism everywhere. Neither would he have subjected himself,
by his monstrous misrepresentation of all that relates to
the Reformation in England, to such a complete and
humiliating castigation as that infiicted upon him by Mr.
Gladstone in the Quarterly Review} For a man so totally
devoid of any knowledge of history, before or after the
time of Christ, to undertake the writing of such a work as
the Ideal of a Christian Church,was nothing less than farcical.
It is scarcely a matter of surprise that the judgments con
tained in the book are as arrogant and the tone often as
bitter as the treatise, in its historical references, is ignorant
throughout. Had Ward really known both the history of
Christendom and the vital elements of spiritual religion,
according to the apostolic doctrine and the primitive
experience of the Christian life, he would have learned that
the unity of the Church is not to be sought in any
organised communion or communions, but can only be
fulfilled in the mystical and invisible body of Christ;
that in that spiritual Church alone is the New Testa
ment ideal to be reaUsed. But he would also have
known that, notwithstanding all errors and all divisions,
Christians throughout the world, and the different Churches
of Christendom, are helping towards the fulfilment in a
continually growing measure of the grand principles of
1 October 1844. See also Gladstone's Gleanings, vol. v.

WARD'S INTELLECTUAL SCEPTICISM 69
the Lord Jesus Christ's Ufe and teaching. One cannot
but wonder what Ward might have become if, as a student
of Church history, he had sat at the feet of Neander and,
in his longing after Church unity, had entered into feUow-
ship of spirit with JuUus Hare, and, above all, if he had
also been made in early life a partaker, in full and clear
consciousness, of personal salvation through faith in Christ
his Sa-viour. This would have been the best cure for his
scepticism. This would have relieved that continually
threatening melancholy, to remedy which he sought diversion
in society and discussion, or excitement at the theatre, or
consolation and inspiration in music. Had he been a
partaker of the peace and joy of evangelical faith, he would
have been better fitted to be a profound theologian, and
might have refreshed and relieved his mind and heart by
•assiduous attendance, not at special offices of the Roman
CathoUc Church, but at Christian meetings for devotion
and fellowship of the true primitive type.
" In Mr. Ward's view," we are told by his son, " the cere
monial of the Church was a grand antidote against the
constant sceptical imaginings to which he was a prey. At
times, when the spiritual world seemed totally unreal, when
the difficulties against faith, with which, as we have seen,
the material creation abounded in his eyes, tried him most,
it helped his imagination to look at the outward symbols
of great religious mysteries. The doubts were, to a great
extent, imaginative rather than intellectual, and a remedy
was required appealing primarily to the imagination."
(p. 147). After all, we find here an unexpected Unk of alliance
between the high Roman CathoUc idealist and the fervent
Cornish Methodist, or the earnest and spiritually awakened

70 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
captain of the Salvation Army. All aUke make physical
influences and sensuous symbolism contributory to the pur
poses of devotional realism and spiritual ecstasy.
I must not pass away from the subject of the Ideal
of a Christian Church without referring to the doctrine of
conscience as there set forth. It forms part and parcel of
Ward's theory on the subject ; but, though founded on one
side on a great and deep truth of human consciousness, it is
yet, as he sets it forth, scarcely less misleading or liable to
abuse than any fanatical errors as to the conscience ever
broached by the most unenlightened sectaries of the
Commonwealth period. The authority of conscience,
according to his teaching, stands in no relation to the
understanding. It must not even seek for information or
enUghtenment. Its " feeling " is at once and absolutely
to be obeyed. The conscience of the " holy " man is
sure to be a true guide. To seek Ught from the under
standing would be for the conscience to abdicate its
rights. A doctrine this which seems to us to be very
near akin to the error of Ward's master, Newman, in
regard to faith, as taught both in his university sermons
and in his Grammar of Assent, according to which faith
and reason are so far in opposition to each other, as that
the man who believes the most upon the least evidence or
ground of mere reason, is the man of the greatest and
truest faith ; and so to beUeve all that the Church tefiches
absolutely, apart from all reason or evidence, is the per
fection of faith.1 It is in strict accordance with this view
that his son represents Ward as teaching that " Church
authority is the external embodiment of a perfect con-
^ London Quarterly Beview, January 1871, Art. v. Newman's
Grammar of Assent. See also Froude's Short Studies, Fourth Series.

WARD'S FAMIL Y HISTOR Y 7 1
science" (p. 74). Viewed from another side, Ward's
confused and incoherent doctrines as to conscience cannot
but remind us of the error of the extreme " Plymouth "
sectary which makes him his own pope, and his conscience,
or what he supposes to be such, to be the absolute rule of
truth both for himself and others.
Such was the man himself, while still a member of the
Church of England and the University of Oxford. A
sketch of his earlier Ufe will enable us more fully and
exactly to appreciate his unique personality.
The family of William George Ward has been settled for
more than a century in the Isle of Wight, where the Ward
property is contiguous to that of Lord Tennyson, who was
a friend of Ward's in his later life, and who wrote some
memorial lines on " the most generous of all Ultramon-
tanes." At the same time, the Ward family were eminent
in the circles of City finance, and Ward's father was Tory
member for the City of London, — where Ward was born in
1812, — and was also one of the most famous of cricketers.
Ward himself seems not to have taken after his father ; at
anyrate, he had no taste or capacity either for commerce
or cricketing.! Ward's mother was Miss Combe, of the well-known
^ Among the collateral relatives of his father was Robert Plumer
Ward, who was a member of several Tory ministries, and author of
Tremaine, a novel of considerable ability, and which contained the out
line of a thoughtful argument in favour of Christianity, a book which
the writer of this volume remembers with pleasure and gratitude after
the lapse of nearly half a century. It is certain, however, that nothing
of the tone or spirit of Tremaine was reproduced in the writings of
William George Ward. Another distinguished member of the Ward
family was the son of the author of Tremaine, the late Sir Henry
Ward, G.C.M.G., who was at one time Lord Commissioner of the
Ionian Isles, and died Governor of Madras in 1860.

72 NEWMAN AND WARD — THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
brewery firm, her brother, the' head of the firm, being also
a popular master of hounds in Surrey. The son seems to
have in no respect resembled in taste or character any of
his relatives. " Even as a child," we are told, " his Ukes
and dislikes were very intense. He had a passion for
music and the drama, and for mathematics. He detested
general society." He seems to have grown up under
undesirable influences, and altogether without proper, if
any, discipline. He hated the commonplace of life — even
of boy-life — from the first. He could not live with
out intense excitement, either of thought or of dramatic
representations. When very young, the reaction after the
play sometimes made him cry from depression of spirits.
He could not endure even a few minutes' interval of rest
and quiet. Between the acts of the play he would be busy
with his mathematics. He knew the names of all the actors
and supernumeraries, of subordinates as well as principals.
At the same time, he was deep in logarithms at an
early age.
He was, withal, a clumsy, shy, unsociable boy, given to
biting his nails, sitting or standing apart, and looking
generally bored. Taken to a children's dancing party, he
left abruptly and walked home through the country roads
in his dancing shoes, notwithstanding the pelting rain.
He was not asked to go to another party. When eleven
years old he went to Winchester School as a commoner.
Here he was shocked and disgusted with the wickedness of
the school, and seems to have found no compensations.
He had no aptitude for games. This fact, added to his
natural shyness and his moral austerity, made him gener
ally unpopular. Lord Selborne, a schoolfellow, says of
him : " Physically he was strong. In appearance ponder-

WARD'S SCHOOL DA YS 73
ous, in manners brusque and eccentric, he was no cultivator
of the Graces, and was not at his ease in strange society."
" He despised, or affected to despise, poetry and romance."
At the same time, with his friends he was " good company.
He had a pleasure in paradox and a keen sense of the
ludicrous, and far from being offended at the amusement
others found in his peculiarities, he was quite capable of
entering into a joke at his own expense." His memory
was remarkable, and stood him in good stead both in
his classical and mathematical studies. But he quite
refused to work seriously at the versemaking of which
classical Winchester made so much. He gained the
gold medal, however, for Latin prose composition in his
eighteenth year, against such competitors as Roundell
Palmer 1 and Robert Lowe.
He loved, even in his schoolboy days, abstract discus
sion and reasoning. The contrast between his quick
perceptions in mathematics or ethical speculation, or in
the details of the ideal world of the dramatic stage, and
his inadvertence in matters of common life, was from the
first remarkable. A story is told of his asking, at twelve
year of age, when eating a sole, what it was ; and when the
name of the dish was told him, saying, " It is very nice ;
where do they grow ?"
At the same time, this strange, uncouth boy was
strictly moral, with a deep sense of religion, of which
he sometimes spoke to his eldest sister, and to a governess
of his younger sisters, whom other people seem to have
regarded as dull, but who was an earnest evangeUcal
Christian, and whose society he so much sought as to give
rise to famUy pleasantries on the subject. This same
1 The late Lord Selborne.

74 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
sense of religion seems to have led, his son tells us, " to a
horror at the immoraUty prevalent at Winchester, startling
in its degree to most of those who conversed with him on
the subject." Probably this deep sense of morality was
connected with the insurrection against his authority as
prefect which broke out in the school, and which was
immediately occasioned by his determination to punish an
offending boy. He was mobbed and dragged off by a large
number of the boys. Six boys were expelled in con
sequence. The matter got into the newspapers, and Ward
was condemned rather than applauded by the guardians of
society in the press. The offender was a young man of
good family and position. The method of discipline at
Winchester which gives to the prefects the right and duty
of " funding " offenders against discipline has often been
brought unhappUy under public attention, and certainly
affords no good model for other schools. But what public
school is much better in this respect ? It is hardly even
a question of degree ; there seems to be very little to
prefer among them all, though all, no doubt, are im
proved since the period when Ward was at Winchester,
and TroUope at Winchester and Harrow.
It is no wonder if so strange a boy as Ward was not
understood even by his relatives. His parents do not seem
to have made much of him, and in after years he did not pre
tend to feel any special, or, as others would have expressed
it, "natural" affection for them. His holidays were generally
spent either with his grandfather, Mr. George Ward, in the
Isle of Wight, or with his uncle, the brewer and sportsman,
at Cobham. It was at his uncle's that his quaUties were
first, m part, discovered ; not, it need hardly be said, by his
uncle, but by " an eminent and cultured dignitary of the

WARDS INTENSE MELANCHOLY 75
Anglican Church," whose name one would be glad to know.
After this discovery of his powers of reasoning and of
conversation, he was looked upon by his relations in a more
respectful light. Already the intense melancholy which
preyed upon him through life had become a part of his
character. Had he been differently brought up, it may be
fairly supposed that it would not have estabUshed itself as
it did. A gentle, kindly, religious nurture, a true Christian
training instead of a regimen of playgoing from his baby
hood, with no system of discipline whatever, would have
produced a different character from that which I have
described. He left Winchester in 1829 and entered
Oxford in 1830, having in the interval devoted himself to
the study of mathematics and of political economy and
philosophy as taught by Bentham and Mill.
At Oxford, Ward became almost at once a distinguished
debater at the Union. He was called the " Tory Chief " of
the Society, and was elected its President in 1832.
Though called a Tory, however, he soon showed that he had
been sitting at the feet of Radical teachers. In 1833 he
brought forward a motion — which, of course, was lost — for
the admission of Jews to the Legislature. His great pas
sion, however, in his undergraduate days, as Archdeacon
Browne in particular testifies, "was for music, in every
kind of which he took the greatest delight, from the operas
of Mozart and Rossini to the burlesques at the Olympic."
His reading was miscellaneous, and he was in no sense a
student. " He had no idea," his son tells us, " of taking
honours untU his father's embarrassed circumstances made
it a matter of importance that he should obtain a fellow
ship." With this view he stood for a scholarship at
Lincoln, and was unanimously elected in 1833. But

76 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
nothing could induce him to work at subjects not to his
taste ; and when given by his tutor, on the eve of a critical
examination, a set of specially important formulae in
mechanics to learn, he sat up reading one of Miss Austen's
novels instead. " The rapidity and accuracy of his work
in pure mathematics were said to be wonderful ; but he
could not bear applied mathematics." Experimental
methods and approximate results were especially distasteful
to him. " The study of fractions," he used to say, " makes
me feel literaUy sick." So again, in classical scholarship,
in Latin especially, he greatly excelled. " But in the
matter of collateral knowledge," says his son, " as to the
history of the works he was reading, the circumstances of
their composition, the lives of their authors ; and, again, as
to the history of the times with which they dealt, — except
so far as it was conveyed in the actual works themselves, —
he professed total ignorance. He said that such things did
not interest him, and that he did not understand them, so
he simply left them alone." It is hard to understand
such stupid indolence as this in the case of a man of
undoubted capacity, and of liberal education, brought up in
contact with general intelligence. It was evidently a form
of selfishness and self-will, as well as of intellectual indol
ence, and indicated a narrow range of sympathies, a
cramped " humanity," an undisciplined mind and character.
Here was at least one professedly Christian student and
destined clergyman who could not appreciate the force and
beauty of the famous heathen apothegm — " Homo sum :
nihU humani a me aUenum puto." This fatal defect in his
character and intellectual equipment, however, remained
with him to the end. It had much to do with the one
sided development of his mind.

WARD'S ECCENTRICITIES AT OXFORD ¦j'j
Even when under examination for his degree Ward
amazed his examiners by the singular and wilful negligence,
not to say contempt, which he displayed of all relating to
the subjects of examination that was not, as he chose to
think, " in his line."
" One of Cicero's letters to his brother Quintus is
chosen, and the examiner tells Ward to turn to a par
ticular part. Ward reads it admirably. Attention is
aroused. The audience, consisting of a large number
of undergraduates and a good sprinkling of dons, is on
the qui vive. The construing comes next, which, if not
so good as the reading, still bears out the expectation of
first-rate ability. At the end, the examiner says : ' Well,
Mr. Ward, now let me ask you, what are the principal
extant letters of Cicero ? ' Ward (without the slightest
hesitation) : ' I really don't know.' The examiner (sur
prised, and after a short pause) : ' The letter from which
you have just construed was written on the eve of a very
eventful time ; can you tell me something of the events
which immediately followed ? ' Ward : ' I know nothing
whatever about them.' Examiner : ' Take your time, Mr.
Ward, you are nervous.' ' No, sir,' replies Ward, ' it is
not nervousness ; pure ignorance.' Examiner (making
another attempt) : ' In what year was it written ? ' Ward
(with energy) : ' I haven't the slightest idea ' ; his last
replies being given almost in a tone of resentment "
(p. 27). Though far from being as ignorant as Ward, Newman
also, as we know, was weak on the side of history, having
no taste for its original and impartial investigation, resort
ing to its stores and sources only when he had a special
conclusion to establish, a brief to support, for which it was

78 NEWMAN AND WARD — THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
necessary that he should gather some evidence. " History
is not my line," said Newman to Ward in 1841 (p. 180)
In the case of both Newman and Ward, this special defect
in the point of historical knowledge was closely connected
with their theological errors. A curious illustration, in
the case of Ward, will presently be added to what has
already been said on this subject.
Ward's passion for music and the drama was still
greater at Oxford than in his school-days. This is said to
have been owing to the insupportable attacks of melan
choly to which he was subject. " He fled from the
perplexities and religious doubts to which he was subject,
and threw himself into any form of congenial recreation
with the utmost unreserve. Music and the drama were
his great means of transporting himself into this ideal
world, and he availed himself of them continually."
Such statements sound somewhat strange in regard to
one of whose "deep seriousness" and consequent "dignity"
of character we also receive emphatic testimony. But his
seems to have been a character in which startling contrasts
were combined. His shyness was not incompatible with
real abandon, when the ice was broken and he found him
self in congenial and stimulating society, as when he went,
as the Bishop of London describes, to a party at Balliol,
where there was to be a large and lively gathering, with
music and dancing. He made up his mind to go after
mastering some serious scruples of conscience as to the
lawfulness of the recreation, and the different claims of
duty. But as he walked home with his friend he said :
" My dear Temple, what a delightful evening — one of the
pleasantest I ever spent — and what deUghtful ladies.
I could have proposed to any one of them on the spot."

HOW WARD BECAME A DISCIPLE OF NEWMAN 79
Ward took his degree in 1833, attaining a second-
class, notwithstanding his wilful negUgence and wayward
faults as a student both in classics and mathematics. In
1834 he was elected Fellow of Balliol. Sometime after
this he came under the infiuence of Newman. For a
long time he had refused even to go near him. " Why,"
he asked, " should he listen to such myths ? " But having
been cleverly seduced into St. Mary's Church by a friend
one Sunday evening when Newman was to preach, he came
immediately under the preacher's spell, and, before long,
submitted wholly to his ascendency. " That sermon,"
the late Professor Bonamy Price wrote, changed his
whole life." Newman's sermons and lectures were more
than a match for Ward's mere uninformed dialectics.
They seemed also, as I have already observed, to furnish
htm with a way of escape from the teachings of Mill.
He yielded to the fascination which enthralled almost the
whole generation of earnest and religiously disposed young
men at the university. Before, however, he finally sur
rendered himself to the influence of Newman, he determined
to visit his friend Bonamy Price, then a master at Rugby,
and talk the matter over with him. The result, curiously
illustrative of Ward's onesidedness of intellect and judg
ment, and of his impatience of historical inquiry, will best
be told in Professor Price's own words.
" I received a letter from Ward which stated that
he was on the point of changing his religious views,
but that before carrying out the change he wished to
discuss with me the religious elements involved in this
grave matter. He hoped, therefore, that I would be
wUUng to receive him at Rugby as my guest for a week,
which would aUow time for a thorough examination of the

8o NEWMAN AND WARD — THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
principles at issue. I replied that it would give me great
pleasure to welcome him at my house, and to do my best
to carry on the discussion, ... so accordingly he came.
The first day passed very pleasantly, and the discussion
proceeded smoothly. On the second day, to my infinite
surprise, Ward broke out suddenly with the remark : ' Had
I known beforehand the treatment I was to receive here I
should never have come.' I was thoroughly taken aback.
I exclaimed : ' Have I been rude or discourteous, my dear
Ward ? I had not the slightest intention of being so ; but
if I have, I will ask for your forgiveness most sincerely.'
' Oh, dear, no,' he rejoined, ' but you have been eminently
disagreeable.' . . . Undoubtedly his remark was true ; I
had been very disagreeable, and I could not help it. But
why, and how ? I had discovered that he had come down,
if I may say so, to play a trick literally, not on me, but on his
conscience. He had resolved, under the inspiring infiuence
of Newman's preaching, to adopt his view of religion, but
he had neither time nor inclination to analyse the problem
to the very bottom, so it occurred to him to go down and
have a talk with ' that Protestant Price.' He would say
to himself that his arguments were all rubbish, and so he
would be able to effect the conversion with greater ease
and confidence to himself. On making this discovery I
saw clearly what had to be done. I resolved to personate
that conscience which he was trying to silence. I put
myself in its place, and asked those very questions which
he wanted to shUk. I said to him : ' You assert that a
certain fact occurred and a certain doctrine existed at the
very beginning of the Church different from the opinion
held in the Protestant Church of England; have you
examined the evidence on which you make that objec-

WARD a" NEWMANITE" 8i
tion ? ' ' Oh, dear, no,' he replied. ' Then why do you
adopt it ? ' ' John Newman says it is so.' After a whUe
he again brought forward a doctrine built on alleged fact,
which differed from the view taken in the EngUsh Church.
Again I asked : ' Have you searched out, and can you
state the evidence on which you contradict the view you
have hitherto held ? ' Again the answer, ' No,' rolled
from his lips, and again he took his stand on what
Newman said. Some more questions foUowed, all ending
in the same answer. Therefore I remarked : ' Then
Newman is your sole authority. His word is the only
thing you stand upon. Has he worked a miracle on
which to claim your assent ? ' It was then that he
spoke the angry words which put an end to the whole
discussion." It was in 1838 that Ward became a " Newmanite."
To the Rev. James Lonsdale he said soon afterwards : " My
creed is very short : ' Credo in 'Newmannum,' " although
I may observe, in passing, that this characteristic saying
does not square with what Mr. Lonsdale tells us of
his "apparent desire of fairly sifting all questions to the
bottom." Ward's sifting took no account of any historical
evidence ; it was the sifting of a dialectical gladiator —
it was mere logical sword-play. This sort of work is
valuable in its place, but will not avail to sift questions
to the bottom.
Ward had many and distinguished friends at Oxford.
He was a brilUant conversational debater, and was per
fectly good-tempered; he was in his personal relations
a frank and generous man. Among his closest friends
were Arthur Stanley and Clough the poet. Their friend
ship began at the time when he was a brilliant and
6

82 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
dangerous — sometimes also an irreverent — rationaUst, at
least in his ordinary course of conversation and discussion.
It is said that his clever talk did no harm to Stanley. It
is admitted, however, and it was a matter of painful and
remorseful confession on his part in his later life, that he
was largely instrumental in destroying the hopeful and
happy early faith of Clough. On the whole, he must have
been somewhat of an enfant terrible. Dean Church says
of him in his contribution to Mr. WUfrid Ward's volume —
" The most amusing, the most tolerant man in Oxford,
he had round him perpetually some of the cleverest and
highest scholars and thinkers who were to be the future
' Oxford ; and where he was, there was debate, cross-
questioning, pushing inferences, starting alarming pro
blems, beating out ideas, trying the stuff and mettle of
mental capacity — always rapid and impetuous, he gave no
quarter. . . . ^ But he was not generally persuasive in
proportion to his powers of argument. Abstract reasoning,
in matters with which human action is concerned, may be
too absolute to be convincing. . . . Ward, in perfect con
fidence in his conclusions, rather liked to leave them in a
startling form, which he innocently declared to be manifest
and inevitable. And so stories of Ward's audacities and
paradoxes fiew all over Oxford, shocking and perplexing
grave heads with fear of they knew not what. Dr. Jenkyns,
the Master of Balliol, — one of those curious mixtures of
pompous absurdity with genuine shrewdness which used to
pass over the university stage, — liking Ward, and proud of
1 The effect of a visit of a few days, which he paid to Dr. Arnold
at Rugby, in school-term time, was, that after his departure Arnold
had to take to his bed for a day. His evenings with Ward, following
his work in school, had completely knocked him up.

WARD'S BURLESQUE JOCOSENESS 83
him for his cleverness, was aghast at his monstrous
language, and driven half wUd with it."
Excessive and burlesque jocoseness was a striking
feature of Ward's character. Although deep seriousness is
spoken of repeatedly as the foundation of his character,
this opposite characteristic would appear to have been
much more " in e-vidence " when he was with his
companions. Nor was any occasion serious enough to
restrain him. " Dulce est desipere in loco " may be a
good motto for a companionable life. But to play the
fool out of place and out of time is not an estimable or
pleasing feature of character. This is what Ward did on
the day and on the morrow of his degradation in connec
tion with the condemnation of his Ideal, as may be read
on pp. 343, 344 of his son's record. On one of these
occasions Cardinal (then Archdeacon) Manning adminis
tered a not ungentle, but dignified, rebuke. An instance
of his extraordinary faculty for mixing up things sacred
and profane, or at least devotional and altogether worldly,
is also furnished in the foUo'wing anecdote. The narrator
is Professor Jowett.
" He once took me, on a Sunday evening in the middle
of summer, about the year 1839, to Mr. Newman's church
at Littlemore, where he was to preach. We drove out
after dinner, and walked home. Two things I remember
on that occasion which were highly characteristic of him.
The sermon which he preached was a printed one of Dr.
Arnold's, but with additions and alterations, which, as he
said, it would have driven the author mad to hear. We
walked back to Oxford in the twilight, along the Iffley
Road He was in high spirits, and sang to me songs out
of ' Don Giovanni ' tyid other operas, with which his memory

84 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
was well stored. He was not the less serious because he
could pass an hour or two in this way."
On the Lord's day evening, after the holy service —
such it should have been to a serious " Catholic " preacher
— he could, it seems, without impairing his seriousness,
sing songs out of the Don Juan opera for an hour or
two ! Is this after the CathoUc and ApostoUc model and
spirit ?
Ward, as we have noted, became a " Newmanite " in
1838. Between 1841 and 1845 he led the advanced
Romeward Movement, Newman having retired from the
front after the condemnation of Tract 90. In 1844, Ward
published his Ideal. In 1845 his book was condemned
by the Convocation of the university, and he was degraded.
In the same year he married, his engagement having been
made public during the Convocation which condemned
his book, and soon afterwards he and his wife were
" received " by Father Brownhill in the Jesuit Chapel,
Bolton Street.-'' When they made confession to the Jesuit
1 A writer in the Guardian for March 25th, 1891, reviewing Dean
Church's book on The Oxford Movement, refers to Ward as "that
curious creature and lovable man," who so loved the ludicrous that he
could bear with perfect good humour and almost rollicking fun to see
himself the object of the laugh, and as one who, "with wonderful
simplicity and extraordinary impudence, would obtrude what most
me-n would reserve." "Perhaps," he adds, "this culminated in his
apology for his marriage, which he defended on the plea that, if the
Church of England were what it claimed to be, she could never have
admitted him into the priesthood." His engagement was announced
at the crisis of the fight in Convocation, and was received in the
theatre at Oxford "with universal, immense laughter." A sedate
colonial bishop, at the end of a dinner-table, was heard to say in the
quietest of voices : " I presume that, in the next edition of the
Ideal, there will be this epilogue : ' On such a day Mr. Ward was
married, and the lady and gentleman are now a happy couple.' "

WARD'S DEGRADA TION AND SECESSION 85
Father, " he showed," we are told, " such knowledge of
human nature. He told Mrs. Ward to make a retreat
and to practise certain austerities ; but he told " Ward him
self " to unbend as much as possible, and to go to the
play as often as he could." They went soon afterwards to
reside at Old Hall, near the College of St. Edmund, Ware.
Here Ward built a house of which Pugin was the architect.
Ward, however, knew nothing of architecture, and had
no reverence for Gothic, having, indeed, never heard of
" mulUons " till he met Pugin. He tried the patience of
Pugin by insisting on having windows " of large number
and goodly size." Here his son leaves him at the end of
this volume, poor as yet, but steadfastly anchored in the
haven of the " Roman obedience." Here also I leave him
for the present, reserving to a later chapter a review of his
uniquely interesting and instructive history after he had
become a Roman Catholic theologian and an Ultramontane
philosopher of the high spiritual school.
As a son's biography of a father's life before he
had found his spiritual settlement and home, or taken
up the final work of his life — as an account of that
period of his life which was full of controversy and con
flict, and which was more or less out of harmony with
the last forty years of his history — as a record sent forth
by the son for the information, in the first place and chiefiy,
of readers professing a creed and holding principles of the
highest and most sacred import in opposition to the creed
and principles both of the subject and of the author of the
biography — it is a singularly impartial production. The
views are here most fairly presented of all the survivors
from among Ward's most distinguished university friends —
including such men as Dean Stanley and Jowett, as Dean

86 NEWMAN AND WARD  THE ADVANCE ROMEWARD
Church and Dean Goulburn ; — of men who were best fitted
to speak of his character and position, — of whom several
have now followed their early friend into the unseen world ;
— and of all these none are Roman Catholics. StUl, nowhere
throughout the volume is any representation given, is even
a glimpse afforded, of the true spiritual and evangelical
Church theory, which is neither Broad Church nor High
Church, nor, in any distinctive and definite sense, nationalist.
In some of the books whose titles are given below, truths
are set forth of which not only William George Ward,
but all his university friends seem to have been totally
unaware, and by which the eyes of young students may
perhaps be preserved from the dazzle and confusion apt to
be produced by the study of such a book as the one with
which we have been chiefly concerned in this chapter.'^
1 The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints. By the Rev.
B. Gregory, D.D. Methodism in the Light of the Early Church. By
the Rev. W. F. Slater, M.A. I may here also refer to Dr. Jacob's
valuable volume on The Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testanunt
as the one modern volume by an English Churchman which expounds
the true spiritual view of the Church. I will venture also in this
connexion to refer to a volume of my own, entitled, A Comparative
Vieiv of Church Organisations — Primitive and Protestant.

CHAPTER IV.
The Tractarian Movejient as seen and kno-wn
from the Interior.
dean church's history of the oxford movement.!
rpHE materials for the late Dean Church's volume on The
-^ Oxford Movement must have been in preparation for
many years. It relates strictly and properly to the Tractarian
Movement — it closes with the secession of Newman in
1845. Its author belonged to the Inner Tractarian circle,
and was an intimate and cherished friend of Newman.
Fulness of knowledge, mastery of detaUs, ripeness of judg
ment — from the author's own point of 'view — distinguish
the history from first to last. The style is not everywhere
finished. In the latter part of the volume there are
blemishes here and there — not by any means numerous —
which show that the writer had not re'vised his first draft.
These, however, are but superficial, and do not affect the
substance or sense of any paragraph or passage ; they are
not such as to involve any confusion of thought or incon
sistency of statement, or even to introduce any superfluity
into the narrative. Here and there occur in different
1 The Oxford Movement (1833-1845). By R. W. Church, M.A.,
D.C.L., etc. Macmillan & Co. Letters and Correspondence of J. H.
Neioman during his Life in the English Cliurch. Edited by Anne
Mozley. Longmans. 87

88 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
.chapters instances of repetition, but hardly more than
must occur in every history which has to go back from
time to time to the same subjects, or to revive them in
new connections. The book accordingly, though posthum
ous, may, as a whole, be regarded as the mature and
finished product of the writer's mind.
It had been for some time known among the intimate
friends of the late Dean that he was writing the history of
the Oxford Movement, and that the work was nearly ready
for publication. It was, of course, looked for with great
interest. Church had not only himself been one of New
man's friends and disciples at Oxford, but he had retained
his close friendship with him through all his life. As one
of the university proctors — the junior of the two — he had,
on occasion of the condemnation in 1845 of W. G. Ward's
Ideal of a Christian Church, borne his part in the responsi
bility of the veto pronounced by his colleague on the
proposal brought before Convocation by the Hebdomadal
Board of the university (after having condemned and
degraded Ward) to pronounce a formal censure on the
principles taught in Newman's Tract 90, pubUshed nearly
four years before. Soon afterwards he left Oxford, and
during many years of retirement from public life, years spent
for the most part in the seclusion of an obscure country
parish, he was understood to have devoted himself very
largely to those wide and various studies of literature and
ecclesiastical history, chiefly continental, of which the
results are found in his well-known and justly valued
works. It was therefore expected that, notwithstanding
his well-understood High Church principles, his Oxford
training and history, and his friendship with Newman, his
account of the Oxford Movement would be written with a

DEAN CHURCH'S 0 WN POSITION 89
detachment of mind and a freedom from prejudice — especi
aUy after the lapse of nearly fifty years — such as could not
be expected in the case of anyone who had taken part in
the intermediate history and controversies as a recognised
public leader of the party which had followed, first New
man and afterwards Pusey, along the line of doctrinal
development and ecclesiastical controversy. As regards
this point, the volume before us is somewhat disappointing.
Rarely indeed is Dean Church at all unkindly in his tone ;
his temper in speaking of the adversaries of his party is
sometimes generous, and nearly always respectful ; only,
indeed, in the case of Dr. Hampden do his censures seem
to savour of unfairness, or any other narrowness than
such as was necessarily imposed upon him by the principles
which belong to his Church party. But to those principles
he holds tenaciously. It is only from 1840 that his views
begin to diverge in any important sense from those of
Newman. As to what are really main principles, it is
evident that he never differed from the views which
Newman taught at Oxford ; he held fast also, at least
in general, to Pusey's views, which, it is certain, and
indeed virtually acknowledged by Pusey himself in his
Eirenicon, and now made stUl more evident in his Life,
were in essential agreement with all the necessary agenda et
credenda of the Eoman communion, except only the vulgar
Mariolatry and the Papal InfalUbiUty. The position of Dean
Church, indeed, as disclosed in this volume, does not appear
materially to differ in any respect from that of Pusey.
He does not regard any as " Roman " so long as they do
not approve or accept the Curial Policy of the Papacy —
the special Papal Development — Mariolatry, InfalUbUity.
The list he gives of men " not Roman," who were in full

go INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
sympathy with Newman and his teachings up to 1840, is
sufficient evidence on this point. Chief among these Tract-
tarians who were " not Roman " he sets down Pusey, joining
with him such men as Isaac Williams and Charles Marriott.^
The true Protestant view is very different. It is that
Puseyism is essentially Popery; not, Uke the Laudian
Movement, Popery revived from its embers in a nation of
which the great mass of the people had never really
embraced the Reformation, but Popery revived after
ages intervening in which England, through all its ranks
and classes, had ceased to be Popish, and, -with whatever
shortcomings, had yet been an enlightened and Protestant
nation, delivered aUke from the gross superstitions and the
spuitual despotism of Rome. The two plague-spots of
Puseyism — of High Church Catholicism— are its sacra
mental perversions, whereby the holy seals of the Christian
faith and profession are turned into superstitions ; and its
dehumanising doctrine of the confessional. And these two
roots of error being once accepted, there is no tenet, either
of Tridentlne or of modern Popery, which may not be
received. Those who, following Pusey, have learned to
regard the priest-confessor as the searcher of hearts and
the healer and absolver of the soul, gifted for his
office with corresponding attributes and authority from
God, need find no difficulty in addressing prayers to the
Virgin Mary, or to perfected saints, and can surely find
nothing too hard for them in the doctrine of the Pope's
' Both these men were High Tractarians, and went far along the
Romeward road, though neither of them wholly followed, or always
fully trusted, Newman. Isaac Williams was a true poet, but a man
of little or no active influence. Marriott was the self-effacing, absent-
minded scholar of the party. He was always grinding at the mill for
his leaders and their followers.

AS TO THE LEADERS OF THE MOVEMENT 91
InfallibUity, when speaking ex cathedrd, as the " Vicar of
Christ." Dean Church would, no doubt, have accepted for him
self the ecclesiastical character or description of an " Anglo-
Catholic." He was a Catholic ; he followed Newman in
accepting that designation ; but he would not have dropped
the qualifying Anglo. He held to the character of an
English Churchman. But he would not have allowed him
self to be regarded as a simple EngUsh Churchman, apart
from all that is implied in the special designation Catholic.
The position represented by Dean Burgon in his Twelve Good
Men would have been regarded by Church as too narrowly
national, too strictly Anglican. He was a High Anglo-
Catholic. His history of the Movement is, of course, strung
upon a succession of names of leaders. It will be found,
however, that in this history, as given by Church, the
number of actors — of actual leaders — is very small. As
the whole Movement, as regarded in this volume, only em
braced thirteen years, this is what might be expected.
Pusey is little more than a name — to the Movement in
its earlier stages he contributed comparatively little, and
the full meaning and scope of what he contributed was
not at first apparent. Church has less to say of him
than even of Charles Marriott, who was little more
than a Uterary drudge, an editorial hack, working to the
order of others, chiefly Newman. Both Pusey and Marriott
were absolutely blind to the intellectual and ecclesiastical
laws and influences which governed the Movement and
drove its leaders to their destiny. The vital Imks in the
succession of personal forces which ruled the Tractarian
Movement were Keble and Newman, with whom must be

92 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
bracketed Froude, and Ward. Isaac WUliams was an
echo of Keble, who had been his tutor, and the strain
of his influence soon died away. What in this volume
is most valuable relates to the four men whom I have
specially named. Of the four. Ward is the marplot — ¦
or the over-zealous partisan — through whose unre'strain-
able impetuosity and honest, though always more or less
ill-informed, perversity the grand " catastrophe," as the
author calls it, took place, which broke up the Tractarian
alliance, and brought the Movement to an end, by the
secession of Newman, foUowing Ward, to the Roman
communion. The drama which ended with this " cata
strophe " is the subject of this volume, and Newman is its
hero, in whom, more and more, as we advance from stage
to stage of the history, all the interest and fortunes of
the narrative are concentred, and with whose passing off
the Oxford stage the volume terminates. With a force of
language and in a style altogether unusual in the tranquU
writing of Dean Church, he refers (p. 27G) to " the strange
and pathetic events of 1845 " as having " for a time hushed
even anger in feelings of amazement, sorrow, and fear," and
as having " imposed stillness on all who had taken part in
the strife, Uke the blowing up of the Orient at the battle of
the Nile." How it was that Church did not accompany his admired
teacher and friend in his parting from the Church of Eng
land — at what precise point in his course he found himself
unable further to follow him — how, whilst agreeing with
so large a part of his premisses, he escaped his ultimate
and decisive conclusion — it is by no means easy to discover.
The question is not distinctly dealt with by Dean Church,
and it is only by a careful observance of the places where

CHURCH'S RELATION TO NEWMAN 93
he faUs directly or indirectly to indicate his agreement
with Newman, and a few places besides where the turn of
expression or the form of reflection shows that the author
is speaking distinctively for himself, and at the same time
is gently criticising or intimating his difference from his
master, that we are able to learn in what respects Dean
Church fell short of his master in sympathy with Roman
doctrine. The upshot of the whole is, that, knowing much
more history than Newman, and being at the same time
less logical as a speculative reasoner and less under the
sway of ecclesiastical considerations and motives, he could
not, although conscious of the false position of the Church
of England, leave it for a Church which had such a history
as that of Rome in respect of its hierarchy, especially its
Popes, and in respect of its corruptions, such as those
which stirred up the indignation of Luther, including indul
gences and relic worship, and the excesses of Mariolatry and
other forms of hagiolatry. He held that the objections on
such grounds against the Church of Rome were as grave
and as undeniable as any objections which Rome could urge
against the Church of England, and therefore that it was
his duty to remain in the Church of his nation, and of
his early choice. Possibly the fact that he was of Quaker
descent, of Irish parentage on one side and German on
the other, and that, born in Spain, and spending his
early youth in Italy, he had no Anglican antecedents or
connections, may have contributed to Church's comparative
detachment of mind and feeling.
If Dean Church, however, had been a less biassed
thinker, he would have seen that this argument of his
in extenuation of the defective notes and titles of the
Church of England, as co-heir with the Church of Rome

94 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
of the Catholic character and inheritance of the true
Church of Christ, is an irresistible weapon of defence,
which he places in the hands of continental and Noncon
formist Christian Churches, for their own use and service
against Anglo-Catholic as well as Roman Catholic pre
tensions. For, first, it cuts away the ground from under
the assumption which Dean Church accepted from Newman
— as set forth in the first of the Tracts — that the Catholic
Church character descends of necessity and exclusively by
the line of apostolico-episcopal succession. That principle,
as Newman in the end came to 'see and feel, must, for all
that hold it fast, invest the Romish communion, notwith
standing all its faults and corruptions, and especially as
against the claims of an excommunicated Church like the
Church of England, with an indefeasible supremacy,
reducing the Church of England, as Cardinal Manning,
criticising Pusey's Eirenicon, long ago insisted with unan
swerable force and pungent emphasis, to a relative position
towards the Church of Rome, corresponding precisely
to that which Churchmen assign to Nonconformist com
munions in England. Then, in the next place, if, notwith
standing the superior ecclesiastical claims of the Church of
Rome, Dean Church, for such reasons as he assigns, felt
himself bound to maintain his allegiance to the Church of
England, by parity of reason the Nonconformist Churches,
such, for example, as Wesleyan Methodism, might well,
in view of the frequent blemishes and stains of that
Church's history, of the abuses, the irregularities, the
worldliness, the barrenness and impotence which have too
often marked its annals, sometimes for several generations
in succession, and especially which, by confession of its
own best and greatest sons, gave to its history during the

WHERE CHURCH STOPPED SHORT 95
eighteenth century a peculiar flagrancy of discredit, — hold
fast their allegiance to their own Church principles and
ecclesiastical organisations, even if they were prepared to
admit, as they are not, the superior ecclesiastical claims
and titles of the Church of England.
The following passage expresses, in part, the feeling
of which I have been speaking, as enabling Church to
resist the influence of his leader's example in going over
to Rome : —
"The English Church was after all as well worth
living in and fighting for as any other ; it was not only in
England that light and dark, in teaching and in Ufe, were
largely intermingled, and the mixture had to be largely
allowed for. We had our Sparta, a noble, if a rough and
an incomplete one ; patiently to do our best for it was
better than leaving it to its fate, in obedience to signs and
reasonings which the heat of strife might well make
delusive. It was one hopeful token, that boasting had to
be put away from us for a long time to come. In these
days of stress and sorrow were laid the beginnings of a
school whose main purpose was to see things as they are,
which had learned by experience to distrust unqualified
admiration and unqualified disparagement ; determined
not to be blinded even by genius to plain certainties ; not
afraid to honour all that is great and beneficent in Rome,
not afraid with English frankness to criticise freely at
home ; but not to be won over, in one case, by the good
things, to condone and accept the bad things; and not
deterred, in the other, from service, from love, from self-
sacrifice, by the presence of much to regret and to resist "
(p. 347). With this passage may well be compared the Dean's

96 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
description of the Tractarian Movement in the stage of
its best early promise and hopeful vigour.
" It might well seem that it was on its way to win over
the coming generations of the EngUsh clergy. It had on
its side all that gives interest and power to a cause. . . .
It had the promise of a nobler religion, as energetic and
as spiritual as Puritanism and Wesleyanism, whUe it drew
its inspiration, its canons of doctrine, its moral standards,
from purer and more venerable sources — from communion,
not with individual teachers and partial traditions, but with
the consenting teaching and authoritative documents of the
continuous Catholic Church" (pp. 193, 194).
The " continuous Catholic Church " is a large and
impressive phrase, but is scarcely more than a phrase.
And notwithstanding its supposed derivation and descent
from this hypothetically defined but scarcely verifiable
organisation, — scarcely verifiable at least by an EngUsh
Churchman, — the Church of England, according to the
showing of Dean Church, had fallen into such a state of
lethargy and confusion, of neglected duties and traditions
or of divided counsels, that the 'violent remedy of the
Movement had become necessary to correct its errors
and to reorganise and revive it, and the highest point of
success which that Movement had in this its vigorous
youth attained, was that " it had the promise of a nobler
religion, as energetic and as spiritual as Puritanism and
Wesleyanism." Surely, in the light of such testimony,
" Puritanism and Wesleyanism " may quite as fitly, and to
the full as boldly, maintain their ecclesiastical position
against the unlimited claims to superiority and allegiance of
the Church of England, as that Church assert its legitimacy
and authority agamst the^ claims of the Church of Rome.

BETWEEN 1840 AND 184s 97
In another passage, with which, of course, one cannot
but sympathise, and which, it is evident, is part of a
contemporary record of Church's own reflections and
mental struggles in the later agonies of the Movement,
a Tractarian is described who shrinks with all his heart
from the thought of giving up his " best friends and the
most saint-like men in England," in order to " escape the
very natural suspicion of Eomanising," and yet " has no
feeling towards Eome, does not feel, as others do, the
strength of her exclusive claims to aUegiance, the per
fection of her system, its right so to overbalance all the
good found in ours as to make ours absolutely untrust
worthy for a Christian to rest in, notwithstanding all
circumstances of habit, position, and national character ;
has such doubts on the Eoman theory of the Church, the
Ultramontane, and such instincts not only against many
of their popular religious customs and practical ways of
going on, but against their principles of belief {e.g. divine
faith = relics), as to repel him from any wish to sacrifice
his own communion for theirs " (p. 345 ).
Such was Church's own position in the interval between
1840 and 1845, whUe Newman, urged continually by Ward,
was coming nearer and nearer to Rome. During the latter
part of this interval, indeed, Newman was engaged in
buUding that bridge of argument in his Essay on the
Development of Christian Doctrine, by which, as he imagined,
he made for himself a sure and solid roadway from
the position of advanced Tractarianism which he had
reached in 1840, into the territory of the Roman com
munion which, simultaneously with the publication of the
work to which I refer, he at length entered in 1845.
Up to 1840, or, at anyrate, 1839, Church went
7

98 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
entirely with Newman, as will be seen from the following
comprehensive and unqualified eulogy which he pronounces
on the Movement and its leaders during the earlier period
of their history : —
" Anglicanism was agreed, up to this time — the summer
of 1839 — as to its general principles. Charges of an
inclination to Roman views had been promptly and stoutly
met ; nor was there really anything but the ignorance or
ill-feeling of the accusers to throw doubt on the sincerity
of these disavowals. The deepest and strongest mind in
the Movement was satisfied ; and his steadiness of con
viction could be appealed to if his followers talked wUdly
and rashly. He had kept one unwavering path ; he had
not shrunk from facing with fearless honesty the real
li'ving array of reasons which the most serious Roman
advocates could put forward. With a frankness new in con
troversy, he had not been afraid to state them with a force
which few of his opponents could have put forth. With
an eye ever open to that supreme Judge of all our contro
versies, who listens to them on His throne on high, he had
with conscientious fairness admitted what he saw to be
good and just on the side of his adversaries, conceded
what m the confused wrangle of conflicting claims he
judged ought to be conceded. But after all admissions
and all concessions, the comparative strength of his own
case appeared all the more undeniable. He had stripped
it of its weaknesses, its incumbrances, its falsehoods ; and
it did not seem the weaker for being presented in its
real aspect and on its real grounds. People felt that he
had gone to the bottom of the question as no one had yet
dared to do. He was yet staunch in his convictions ; and
they could feel secure.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE MO VEMENT

99

"But a change was at hand. In the course of 1839
the little cloud showed itself in the outlook of the future ;
the little rift opened, small and hardly perceptible, which
was to widen into an impassable gulf" (pp. 194, 195).
Of what nature the " Uttle rift " was, and into what a
" gulf " it opened during the four or five following years,
has been indicated in the previous quotations. The last
quotation shows how absolutely Church was able to identify
himself, not only at the time, but permanently, with
Newman's course up to 1839 or 1840, and with his
original principles as the founder of the Tractarian
party. Let us then turn to the very first of those
tracts, those " early tracts," which, as Dean Church
writes, "were intended to startle the world, and suc
ceeded in doing so," and learn from it on what foundation,
first and most of all, Newman built up his ecclesiastical
system of principles and aims. " I fear," he says, " we
have neglected the real ground on which our authority is
built — Our Apostolical Descent. We have been born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave His Spirit
to the apostles : they in turn laid their hands on those
who should succeed them ; and those again on others ; and
so the sacred gift has been handed down to our present
bishops, who have appointed us as their assistants, and
in some sense representatives " (p. 101). This postulate
of Tractarianism Church accepted and held fast. He
embraced all that followed in the long series of tracts
up to No. 90, as to some points in which he appears to
have had doubts and scruples. Among the preceding
eighty-nine, besides those tracts which contained Newman's
own development of his opinions, some of which (especially

100 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
No. 71) had anticipated the methods and processes of No.
90, although they had not disclosed the whole scope of
its purpose and meaning, there were Pusey's portentous
misinterpretations of baptismal texts and references, and
the monstrous errors of doctrine he built upon those false
interpretations, in his tract or tracts on Baptism, and
there was Isaac Williams' tract ou " Eeserve iu Communi
cating Religious Knowledge," to say nothing of Keble's on
" The Mysticism of the Fathers in the Use and Interpreta
tion of Scripture." The whole of this series Church had
accepted as true and timely teaching, or, if there were
some points as to which he might have doubts, they
involved nothing serious or material.
He was therefore, in this respect as well as in others,
eminently fitted to write a history of the Movement as
seen and known from the interior. Although his was not
naturally the temper and spirit of the partisan, although
his temper was serene, and his disposition habitually liberal
and kindly, he was steeped to the lips in the spirit of tho
Oxford Movement, and ho appears, with all his breadth
of culture, never to have outgrown or in any way lost his
Tractarian habit of thought and feeling, although, lilce
Pusey, he never became an extreme ritualist of the now
prevailing type. The volume he has left may therefore
be regarded as a most authentic relation of the main
history of the Movement from beginning to end as
regarded in the most favourable light, written by one of
its most reasonable and least extreme adherents. It .is
accordingly unique in its authority and importance. The
Apologia was the personal defence of the head and chief
of the Movement after he had led his followers to destruc
tion from the Anglican point of view, and had himself taken

WHAT NEWMAN OWED TO CHURCH loi
refuge in the enemy's citadel, and become the censor and
satirist of his former disciples. Mr. Wilfrid Ward, in the
Life of his father, W. G. Ward, has described the Movement
from the point of view of a Eoman Catholic bred and
trained as such, although a man of remarkable candour,
insight, and fairness in dealing with all parties concerned,
and by uo means a mere partisan or eulogist of his father,
the logical driver and the enfant terrible of the Movement.
From such narrators Dean Church stands sharply distin
guished. He was a loyal disciple of Newman, until it
could no longer be hidden from any but recluse and one
sided men like Pusey and Marriott, that, with what
ever hesitation and windings, Newman was leading the
way down a steep declivity towards the Eoman territory,
which he had already approached within measurable dis
tance. When he could no longer follow his leader. Church
retained his personal relations of friendship with him, and
to the end, even when he had himself reached one of the
most eminent positions in the English Church, he kept
up his intimacy with him. No wonder the Cardinal
always treated the Dean of St. Paul's with distinguished
regard. At Oxford he had owed not a little to the junior
proctor who bore half the responsibility of shielding the
author of Tract 90 from the express condemnation of the
University. His memory was to owe still more to the
writer of The Oxford Movement. The-Dean's book was
written as the history of the lifework, as an Anglican, of
his still surviving ancient friend. It is evident, as has
been already intimated, that he was carrying out a long-
cherished idea. His intimate familiarity with every detail
of the history, as wrought out on the side of Newman and
his immediate co-workers, is manifest on every page. The

I02 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
volume must have been largely composed from contemporary
documents, journals, or letters. Some of his references, by
way of iUustration, in the text, and especially in the notes,
tell of a leisurely study and re-vision of the narrative in its
details and in its points of analogy -with the records and
remains of ancient as well as later literature.
Dean Church follows Newman in recognising Keble as
the " true and primary author " of the Tractarian Move
ment. In a qualified sense, this is no doubt true. His
infiuence contributed much to the Movement ; it was one
of the chief sources from which emanated the ideas that
prepared the AngUcan mind, not only at Oxford, but stUl
more outside of Oxford, for the reception of Newman's
teaching. It was natural, also, that Newman should be
disposed to place the name of so distinguished and revered a
man as Keble in the forefront of his own group of intimate
associates, and not less natural that Church, himself, in
some marked respects, a man of Keble's sort and of Keble's
spirit, should foUow Newman in this. But Church's own
description of the two men sufficiently settles the question
as to which of them was the real leader and the informing
spirit of the Movement. To the Movement, as a Movement,
Keble seems to have actively contributed no momentum
whatever, although his reputation, Uke Pusey's later on,
lent it a powerful sanction. To Newman belongs all the
merit or demerit of the Tractarian line of policy and action.
Without him the Movement would never have taken form
or gathered way. Froude was, very early, a powerful and
energetic colleague- — indeed, without him Newman would
not have been what he was, or done what he did. And
Froude's principles were taught him by Keble. But as to
Keble, let the words of Dean Church be noted —

AS TO KEBLE AND THE MOVEMENT 103
" Mr. Keble had not many friends, and was no party
chief. He was a brilliant university scholar, overlaying
the plain, unworldly country parson ; an old-fashioned
English Churchman, with great veneration for the Church
and its bishops, and a great dislike of Eome, Dissent, and
Methodism, but with a quick heart; with a frank, gay,
humility of soul; with great contempt of appearances,
great enjoyment of nature, great unselfishness, strict and
severe principles of morals and duty" (p. 23).
On the preceding page we read that " he had no popu
lar aptitudes, and was very suspicious of them " ; that
" he had no care for the possession of infiuence — he had
deliberately chosen the fallentis semita vitw, and to be what
his father had been, a faithful and contented country parson,
was all that he desired." Of Keble's character, genius,
and life I have written at some length in my first chapter.
There is nothing in Dean Church's volume but what is in
agreement with the view I have ventured to set forth.
All we know goes to establish the conclusion that Keble
was of too absolutely old-world a character, was too in
flexible in his views, too narrow and limited in his personal
sympathies, to have inspired and shaped the policy of a
new party in the Church, or to have led a great move
ment. What he was as a poet we know, but he was in no
sense a leader of men. He did, however, as we have seen,
impregnate with his intense and intolerant High Church
spirit one who became, with Newman, the joint originator
of the Tractarian Movement. Froude became the pupil of
Keble, and. Dean Church tells us, " Keble attracted and
moulded Froude — he impressed Froude with his strong
Churchmanship, his severity and reality of Ufe, his poetry
and high standard of scholarly excellence. Froude

I04 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
learned from him to be anti-Erastian, anti-Methodistical,
anti-sentimental, and as strong in his hatred of the
world, as contemptuous of popular approval, as any
Methodist. ... In accepting Keble's ideas, Froude resolved
to make them active, public, aggressive ; and he found
in Newman a coUeague whose bold originaUty responded
to his o-wn. . . . Keble had given the inspiration ; Froude
had given the impulse ; then Newman took up the
work, and the impulse henceforward, and the direction,
were his "(pp. 27, 28).
Of Froude, also, I have spoken at some length in my
first chapter. But something more should be said here as
to his direct relation to the Tractarian Movement as a
co-worker -with Newman. The chief interest attaching to
Froude is that; being what he was, he so powerfuUy
influenced Newman, who said of him, in his Lectures on
ATiglicanism, that he, " if any, is the author of the Move
ment altogether " ; a saying hardly, however, consistent
with the statement already quoted fi'om the Apologia as to
Keble's relation to the Movement. Froude was a man of
much force of wiU and superior natural gifts ; he was
handsome and attractive, a bright and Uvely companion, a
warm and affectionate friend, a " good feUow," but very
free indeed of his tongue; he was ignorant, self-confident
and audacious, as intense a hater as he was a warm friend,
a bitter bigot, a reckless revolutionist, one who deUghted
to speak evU of dignities and of departed worthies and
heroes reverenced by Protestant Christians at home and
abroad. Church, who did not know him, but took his
estimate of him mainly from Newman, makes a conspicuous
figure of him, gi-ving much more space to htm than to Pusey,
more even than to Keble. That this should be so shows

AS TO HURRELL FROUDE 105
how deeply Church had drunk into the spirit that prompted
and inspired the tracts. Even his friendly hand, however,
cannot omit from his picture certain features which, to an
outsider who is not fascinated by the camaraderie of the
Tractarian clique as it was in the early days of the Move
ment, wUl be almost sufficient, without further evidence, to
warrant the phrase, " a fUppant railer,'' in which Julius
Hare — himself assuredly no evangelical bigot or narrow
sectary — describes the man whose Remains were edited
and published by his two great friends, that Anglican
Churchmen might be led to admire the zeal and devotion,
and to drink into the spirit, of this young hero of the new
party. According to their -view, his early death, in the
odour of sanctity, although of true Christian saintliness in
temper or spirit he seems to have had as little tincture
as any persecuting Spanish saint, left an aureole of glory
upon his memory.
Such was Froude's hatred of Puritanism that, as may
be learnt from Dean Church, he was " blind to the grandeur
of MUton's poetry." Church speaks himself of his " fiery
impetuosity, and the frank daring of his disrespectful
vocabulary." He quotes James Mozley as saying : " I
would not set down anything that Froude says for his
deliberate opinion,' for he really hates the present state of
things so excessively that any change would be a reUef to
him." He says that " Froude was made for conflict, not
to win disciples." He admits his ignorance. " He was,"
he tells us, "a man strong ia abstract thought and
imagination, who wanted adequate knowledge." He quotes
from the Apologia Newman's admission of two noticeable
deficiencies in Froude : " he had no turn for theology " ;
" his power of entering into the minds of others was not

io6 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
equal to his other gifts." Such a power, we may note, is
very unlikely to belong to men of fierce and hasty
arrogance and self-confidence. It finds its natural home
in company with the " wisdom from above," which is not
only "pure," but "gentle and easy to be entreated," the
characteristics of a saintUness of another sort than that of
Froude. Dean Church admits that the Remains " contain
phrases and sentiments and epithets surprisingly at variance
with conventional and popular estimates " ; as, for example,
we may explain, when Froude speaks of the Ulustrious
Bishop Jewel, whom Hooker calls " the worthiest di-vine
that Christendom hath bred for the space of some hundreds
of years," as " an irreverent Dissenter." Church adds that
" friends were pained and disturbed," while " foes exulted,
at such a disclosure of the spirit of the Movement." The
apology he offers is that, " if the off-hand sayings of any
man of force and wit and strong con'victions were made
known to the world, they would by themselves have much
the same look of flippancy, injustice, impertinence to those
who disagreed with the speaker or writer. . . . The friends
who published Froude's Remains knew what he was ; they
knew the place and proportion of the fierce and scornful
passages ; they knew that they did not go beyond the
liberty and the frank speaking which* most people give
themselves in the abandon and understood exaggeration of
intimate correspondence and talk." To which the reply is
obvious — If the editors (who were no other than Newman
and Keble) had disapproved of the tone and style of these
Remains, as it is evident that Dean Church himself, notwith
standing his strong friendly bias, could not help disappro'ving
of them, they would either not have published them, or
would at least have suggested some such apology as that

FROUDES "REMAINS" — HIS EDITORS 107
suggested by Dean Church. But, in fact, they pub
lished them without any such apology, and it cannot
be seriously doubted that they rather rejoiced in than
condemned such gross improprieties. Further, if this sort
of writing is common in the intimate correspondence of
responsible clergymen, how is it that it is so hard, if it is
at all possible, to match the flippancy and insolence of
these Remains in any other correspondence or remains of
men of Christian culture and character known to literature ?
Dean Church, indeed, cannot but admit that " Froude was
often intemperate and unjust," and that " his strong
language gave needless exasperation." He endeavours,
however, to make one point in favour of the Movement
from the publication of the Remains. Whether it was
wise or not, he argues that " it was not the act of cunning
conspirators ; ' it was the act of men who were ready to
show their hands and take the consequences — it was the
mistake of men confident in their own straight forward
ness." I have no wish to revive against the leaders of
the Movement, as represented by Froude and the admiring
editors of his Remains, the charge of being conspirators.
Certainly Froude, in the earUer stage of the Movement,
like Ward in its later stages, had Uttle in him of the
conspirator's subtlety or craft, whatever may be said as
to Newman. But an unbiassed historian would hardly
describe the act of publication as Dean Church does ;
he would rather say that it was the act of men whose
honesty may be admitted, but who were sanguine and
arrogant partisans — men carried away by their sectarian
temper, by their overbearUig self-confidence.
But it was a strange little world — the world of
Oxford — in which Froude was regarded as a bright and

loS INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
leading character sixty years ago. It seems as we look
back upon it to be very much farther away than half a
century, and to belong almost to a different planetary
sphere. Here is a scene as described by an early friend
of Newman and Froude, the late Lord Blachford, better
known by his earUer style and title as Sir Frederick
Eogers, long Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies,
and who was ennobled by his school and college con
temporary and lifelong friend, Mr. Gladstone —
" I remember one day his (Froude) grievously shocking
Palmer, of Worcester, when a council in J. H. N.'s rooms
had been called to consider some memorial to which Palmer
wanted to collect the signatures of many, and particularly
of dignified persons, but in which Froude wished to express
the determined opinions of a few. Froude, stretched out
his long length on Newman's sofa, broke in upon one of
Palmer's harangues about bishops and archdeacons and tho
like, with the ejaculation : ' I don't see why we should
disguise from ourselves that our object is to dictate to the
clergy of this country, and I, for one, do not want anyone
else to get on the box '"(p. 54). "He would," we are
told by the same relator on another page " (as we see
in the Remains) have wished Ken to have the ' courage
of his convictions,' " by setting up a little Catholic Church,
like the Jansenists in Holland.
It was, in fact, a young and ignorant, as well as
bigoted, circle in which the idea of the Oxford Movement
first germinated. Newman, doubtless, was far superior in
knowledge, in ability, and in depth and gravity of feeUng,
as well as in insight and caution, to those who were in the
closest fellowship with him. It was a schoolboyish sort of
clique, and in wildness, enthusiasm, ignorance of the actual

THE TRACTARIAN COTERIE IN OXFORD 109
forces and the gathering movements of the world outside,
their projects and dreams remind us of schoolboy plans
and projects for moving the world and achieving fame and
greatness. The Tractarians lived in an unreal world all
through their party history. Newman, it cannot be doubted,
crossed over in his dreams from Oxford to Eome. Even
the last " catastrophe " was but as an interval of sharp
disturbance aud partial awakening to a dreamer, and
having crossed the border he dreamed again. Oxford was
a semi-monastic, secluded, academic world. That most
quaint antique, Eouth, like a survival from the seventeenth
century, was its great ancient. The principles of Jacobite
times and parties had descended through successive genera
tions, who had inherited from old-fashioned and hereditary
clerical famUies or fossilised gentry the traditions of the
Stuart Church and State. Hence the possibility of such
sentiments as those cherished by Froude, — as expressed
in the last quotation, — and which, no doubt, had been
strengthened by his association with Keble. These things
must be borne in mind in trying to understand the
character of the Oxford Movement. The special camara
derie of the place must also be remembered. Schoolboys'
friendships are often intense and romantic. Those of
Newman and his circle were passionately deep and warm
— more like those of boys in some respects than of men,
perhaps still more lUie those of women who live aloof
from the world in the seclusion of mutual intimacy, —
intimacy suffused with the fascinating but hectic bright
ness of a sort of celibate consecration to each other,
apart from any thought of stronger or more authoritative
human ties that might some time interfere with their sacra
ment of friendship. This morbidezza of moral complexion and

no INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
temperament, this more or less unnatural and unhealthy
intensity of friendship, was a marked feature in Newman's
relations with those around him. There is no doubt a
touching side to this feature in the Tractarian society of
Oxford. Dean Church speaks of " the affection which was
characteristic of those days," and adds that for both Isaac
Williams and William John Copeland, " Mr. Newman had
the love which passes that of common relation" (p. 57).
Of the mutually feminine attachment which bound Newman
and Froude together, there is no need to say more than I
have said in a preceding page. The Apologia sets it forth
all the more fully because Froude was no longer living. It
was indeed one of Newman's greatest powers for the work
that he had taken in hand, that he fascinated, not only into
admiration, but into entire and enduring friendship, so
many of his companions, although at the same time he
inspUed most of them, as Isaac Williams, for example,
with more or less of distrust. They admired him,
were fascinated by him, obeyed him, but he was yet a
mystery to them, and they stood in awe, and sometimes
in doubt, as to what his deepest purposes might turn out
to be. The following description of Oxford as it was at the
beginning of the Tractarian Movement is interesting and
instructive in relation to the points which have been
suggested —
" The scene of this new Movement was as Uke as it
could be in our modern world to a Greek ttoXi?, or an
ItaUan self-centred city of the Middle Ages. Oxford stood
by itself in its meadows by the rivers, having its relations
with all England, but, Uke its sister at Cambridge, living
a life of its own, unlike that of any other spot in England,

OXFORD SIXTY YEARS AGO in
with its privileged powers and exemptions from the general
law, with its special mode of government and police, its
usages and tastes and traditions, and even costume, which
the rest of England looked at from the outside, much
interested but much puzzled, or knew only by transient
visits. And Oxford was as proud and jealous of its own
ways as Athens or Florence, and lUie them it had its
quaint fashions of polity ; its democratic Convocation and
its oligarchy ; its social ranks ; its discipline, severe in
theory, and usually lax in fact ; its self-governed bodies
and corporations within itself; its faculties and colleges,
like the guilds and ' arts ' of Florence ; its internal rivalries
and discords ; its ' sets ' and factions. Like these, too, it
professed a special recognition of the supremacy of religion ;
it claimed to be a home of worship and religious training, —
Dominus illuminatio mea, — a claim too often falsified in the
habits and tempers of life. It was a small sphere, but it was
a conspicuous one ; for there was much strong and energetic
character, brought out by the aims and conditions of
university lUe ; and though moving in a separate orbit,
the influence of the famous place over the outside England,
though imperfectly understood, was recognised and great.
These conditions affected the character of the Movement
and of the conflicts which it caused. Oxford claimed to
be eminently the guardian of ' true religion and sound
learning'; and therefore it was eminently the place where
religion should be recalled to its purity and strength, and
also the place where there ought to be the most vigUant
jealousy against the perversions and corruptions of religion.
Oxford was a place where everyone knew his neighbour,
and measured him, and was more or less friendly or
repellent ; where the customs of life brought men together

112 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
every day and all day, in converse or discussion; and
where every fresh statement or every new step taken
furnished endless material for speculation or debate, in
common rooms or in the afternoon walk. And for this
reason, too, feelings were apt to be more keen and intense
and personal than in the larger scenes of life ; the man who
was disliked or distrusted was so close to his neighbours
that he was more irritating than if he had been obscured
by a crowd ; the man who attracted confidence and kindled
enthusiasm, whose voice was continually in men's ears, and
whose private conversation and life was something ever
new in its sympathy and charm, created in those about
him not mere admiration, but passionate friendship, or
unreserved discipleship. And these feelings passed from
individuals into parties, the small factions of a limited
area. Men struck blows and loved and hated in those
days in Oxford as they hardly did on the wider stage
of London politics or general reUgious controversy" (pp.
139—141). This was the world in which Newman
exercised an unrivalled — a unique — ascendency over the
minds of many earnest young High Churchmen, men of
intense religious character.
A picture of Newman, drawn from the life by his admir
ing friend, explains in some degree his power —
" Mr. Newman, who lived in college in the ordinary
way of a resident Fellow, met other university men, older
or younger, on equal terms. As time went on a certain
wonder and awe gathered round him. People were a
little afraid of him ; but the fear was in themselves, not
created by any intentional stiffness or coldness on his part.
He did not try to draw men to him, he was no proselytiser;
he shrank with fear and repugnance from the character —

NEWMAN'S LIFE AND INFLUENCE AT OXFORD 113
it was an invasion of the privileges of the heart. But if
men came to him, he was accessible ; he allowed his friends
to bring their friends to him, and met them more than
half-way. He was impatient of mere idle worldliness, of
conceit and impertinence, of men who gave themselves
airs ; he was very impatient of pompous and solemn
emptiness. But he was very patient with those whom
he believed to sympathise with what was nearest his
heart; no one, probably, of his power and penetration
and sense of the absurd, was ever so ready to comply
with the two demands which a witty prelate proposed to
put into the examination in the Consecration Service of
Bishops : ' Wilt thou answer thy letters ? ' ' Wilt thou
suffer fools gladly ? ' But courteous, affable, easy as he
was, he was a keen trier of character ; he gauged, and
men felt that he gauged, their motives, their reality and
soundness of purpose ; he let them see, if they at all came
into his intimacy, that if they were not, he, at anyrate, was
in the deepest earnest. And at an early period, in a
memorable sermon, the 'vi'vid expression of which at the
time stUl haunts the recollection of some who heard it, he
gave warning to his friends and to those whom his influence
touched, that no child's play lay before them ; that they
were making, it might be without knowing it, the
' Ventures of Faith.' But feeling that he had much to say,
and that a university was a place for the circulation and
discussion of ideas, he let himself be seen and known and
felt, both publicly and in private. He had his breakfast
parties and his evening gatherings. His conversation
ranged widely, marked by its pecuUar stamp — entire
ease, unstudied perfection of apt and clean-cut words,
unexpected glimpses of a sure and piercing judgment.

114 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
At times, at more private meetings, the vioUn, which he
knew how to touch, came into play" (pp. 161, 162).
At the same time, the artist who paints this descrip
tion has to add that Newman's influence was limited, and
more or less marred by what seemed Uke " over-subtlety,"
and that " his doctrine of the Church had the disadvantage
of an apparently intermediate and ambiguous position."
Newman was accessible and conversible, was an adept in
the arts of conversational persuasion and casuistry, —
especially evasive casuistry, — but appears to have been
very rarely frank and outright, even when most con
fidential. Froude was more extreme in his language, but
then he was always outspoken — leaving no suspicion of
an undisclosed meaning or an arriire pensie. Hence,
quiet men like Isaac Williams, though disapproving of his
violence, felt they understood and could trust him ; whUe
much as they admired the abler and more cautious Newman,
they were, in regard to him, haunted by a sense of distrust.
Their relation to Newman, accordingly, was " a curious
mixture of the most affectionate attachment and intimacy,
with growing distrust and sense of divergence " (pp. 64,
67, 68). Froude in the earliest. Ward during the later
stages of the Movement, were powerful motive forces
by the side of their leader. Both of them alike were easy
to read ; they used plain speech, and spoke aloud so that
all might hear. Their leader's object was to win over
adherents one by one, by every lawful art of persuasion,
to detach them gradually from their old principles, to
transform the very aspect and colour of the traditional
Church of England to their medicated vision, to bring
them unawares to points of view from which the past
should appear to them altogether different from what they

NEWMAN'S RESERVE AND AUSTERITY 115
had heretofore understood it to be. Hence, his methods
were in contrast with those of his outspoken friends.
Hence, too, even those who admired Newman much, and
could not resist his spell, in following him felt that they
did not share his deepest counsels, and could not foresee
whither he might lead them, or into what perplexing or
even alarming position he might bring them in the end.
This being so, we are not surprised to learn from Dean
Church that a certain " austerity " was felt as tingeing the
relations of Newman with his disciples, or that these
regarded him with more or less of " awe."
This volume does not add much to our previous know
ledge of the main points in Newman's history as an
Anglo-Catholic, or the chief features in his character and
influence. He was a very gifted man within a Umited
range of personal and intellectual influence ; he was a
man of sympathy and insight in regard to character, and
the relation of character and conduct to circumstances
and environments ; he was an exquisite writer of English ;
he was a man of true poetic genius. He was a preacher
of extraordinary power of persuasion and penetration when
dealing with conduct, motives, the realities of character ;
not a popular preacher, not a preacher for any but cultivated
people, people of discipUned habits of mind, but a soul-
searching preacher. His preaching, in fact, was a yet greater
power than his private influence ; and his personal influence
would not have prevailed as it did in private intercourse
apart from the power of his pulpit ministry at St. Mary's,
though his audiences were very rarely numerous — were
generally, indeed, small.
His main logical instrument as an ecclesiastical leader
and innovator was always the same, — he used con-

li6 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
tinually the same leverage. By degrees he drove home
the master principle of external Church unity, as deflned
by the postulate of apostolical succession laid down in
his first tract. In dealing with short-sighted people it
was, perhaps, one cause of his success that he himself
was almost as short-sighted as they were. His prin
ciples eould not but lead to Eome ; but it took even
Newman many years to find this out. When at length
this truth began to take definite and solid shape to his
vision he was terribly alarmed — hesitated, shuddered, would,
if possible, have drawn back. But the slow compulsion of
his first principles gradually, through years of agony and
latterly of seclusion, wrought out its necessary results upon
one who was at bottom sincere, and whose logical faculty,
though only quick when playing a short-distance game of
verbal fence or subtlety, 'was yet, in its power of slow and
gradual evolution of results from accepted principles, a
living force that could not but in the end obtain the
mastery. It led him, by a singular combination of un
warranted assumptions, erroneous views of history, and
ingenious, though unconscious, sophistry, to the results
embodied in his final argument, or, I might say, apology,
for completing the passage, by way of the " succession "
road, to Eome ; — his Development Theory, by which he
was enabled to accept the mediaeval corruptions of the
Eoman Church as part of the whole authorised teaching
of the One True and Apostolic Church.
The Movement began, Dean Church expressly tells us,
in Mr. Newman's determination " to force on the public
mind in a way that could not be evaded the great
article of the Creed, ' I beUeve one Catholic and Apostolic
Church.' " Into what form and attitude the Movement

MOMENTOUS CHANGE IN FIVE YEARS 117
had shaped itself long before the " catastrophe " came —
five years before — is vividly described by Dean Church —
" Thus a great and momentous change had come over
the Movement, over its action and prospects. It had started
in a heroic effort to save the English Church. The claims,
the blessings, the di-vinity of the English Church, as a true
branch of Catholic Christendom, had been assumed as the
foundation of all that was felt and said and attempted.
The English Church was the one object to which English
Christians were called upon to turn their thoughts. Its
spirit animated the Christian Year, and the teaching of
those whom the Christian Year represented. Its interests
were what ealled forth the zeal and the indignation re
corded in Froude's Remains. No one seriously thought
of Eome, except as a hopelessly corrupt system, though
it had some good and catholic things, which it was Christian
and honest to recognise. The Movement of 1833 started
out of the anti-Eoman feelings of the Emancipation time.
It was anti-Eoman as much as it was anti-Sectarian and anti-
Erastian. It was to avert the danger of people becoming
Eomanists from ignorance of Church principles. This was
all changed in one important section of the party. The
fundamental conceptions and assumptions were reversed.
It was not the Eoman Church, but the English Church,
which was put on its trial; it was not the Eoman Church,
but the English, which was to be, if possible, apologised for,
perhaps borne with for a time, but which was to be re
garded as deeply fallen, holding an untenable position, and
incomparably, unpardonably, below the standard and the
practical system of the Eoman Church. From this point
of view the object of the Movement was no longer to
elevate and improve an independent English Church, but

Ii8 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
to approximate it as far as possible to what was assumed
to be undeniable — the perfect Catholicity of Eome. More
almost than ideas and assumptions, the tone of feeling
changed. It had been, towards the English Church,
affectionate, enthusiastic, reverential, hopeful. It became
contemptuous, critical, intolerant, hostile, with the hostUity
not merely of aUenation, but disgust. This was not, of
course, the work of a moment, but it was of very rapid
growth. ' How I hate these Anglicans ! ' was the ex
pression of one of the younger men of this section, an
intemperate and insolent specimen of it. It did not
represent the tone or the language of the leader to whom
the advanced section deferred, vexed as he often was
with the course of his own thoughts, and irritated and
impatient at the com'se of things without. But it ex
pressed but too truly the difference between 1833 and
1840" (pp.210, 211).
How narrow with all its keeness and subtlety, was the
intellect of Newman, cannot but be evident to any un-
fascinated person who wUl exercise serious thought, from
the fact that it was Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman's
quotation of St. Augustine's words in reference to the
Donatist controversy Securus judical orbis terrarum} " ringing
continuaUy in his ears, like words out of the sky," which
really vanquished Newman. That saying " opened a vista
which was closed before, and of which he could not see the
end." Nor is it less indicative of intellectual weakness on
the part of Newman, notwithstanding his gifts and accom
plishments, that " one of the blows which broke " him, as
he himself says in the Apologia, was the business of
the Anglo-Prussian bishopric of Jerusalem. Only a man
^ " The judgment of the whole world must stand good."

WEAKNESS OF NEWMAN'S CHARACTER 119
already under the spell and bondage of an intrinsically
Eomish superstition could so have felt. Such weakness as
is thus disclosed was a main part of Newman's character.
Not less marked was that perhaps amiable, but extreme
and almost ultra-feminine, self-consciousness which is dis
closed in his correspondence, especially that with his sister,
in regard to the ecclesiastical questions which wrung his
soul. The letters are touching ; they reveal a character
which had its aspect of true sincerity as well as acute
sensibility; but they do not well harmonise with the idea
either of mental or moral greatness.
That Newman, the fashioner of the Tractarian school
of thought and character, was himself a man of large and
enlightened intellectual and moral character ; that he was
accustomed to live consciously in an atmosphere of
straight and truthful thinking, — is more than any im
partial critic can be expected to admit. He did not
believe in logical truth as an instrument of spiritual
influence or instruction. He did not believe in objective
truth at all, as scientifically or intellectually regarded.
All truth for him was merely relative, except what was
du'ectly disclosed to him in consciousness or made known
by di-vine revelation. His doctrine of faith and obedience
stood in no relation whatever to history or argument ; the
only faith he acknowledged was immediate and implicit,
recognising the direct authority of God, or of the Church,
and the priests of the Church, as representing God, and
ignoring besides this, the whole world of thought and fact,
of feeling and consciousness. Eeason for him, as such,
had no authority. A man habitually dwelling in such an
atmosphere of unreal thinking must, however sincere, be
devoid of the intellectual sensibility which compels the

120 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TKACTARI.IN MOVEMENT
trained Christian reasoner, no less than the critical philo
sopher, to recognise the laws of thought, alike in history
and in abstract science, by which truth is discriminated
from falsehood. Hence, although it led to harsh judgments,
which strict and impartial investigation has compelled later
generations to abandon or to modify, there was a natural
aud by no means unreasonable ground for the views which
prevailed fifty years ago as to the subtlety and deoeitfulness
of the whole Tractarian system of thought and teaching,
and which were held by men of such high character and
ability, and so well-informed, as Dr. Arnold, Dr. Whately,
and Henry Rogers.^
Perhaps the ablest and the most spirited pa.rt of Dean
Church's volume is that in which he deals specially with
W. G. Ward and his relations to Newman and the Move
ment. He gives many pages to Ward's Ueitl of a Ohrist'lan
Church, and his account and criticism of that famous, but
very Uttle read, book may fitly be described as masterly.
It hardly lies, however, within the scope of tliis volume to
say more as to that remarkable and eccentric production
than has been said in tho preceding chapter. It is a huge
and tedious, though clever and curious, book ; and it has
had no appreciable effect on the course of events, or even on
the course of controversy, " because," to use Dean Church's
words, " on the face of " this even more than " his " other
" writings," — and he wrote much in the Jlril.ish. Critic and
elsewhere, — Ward " was so extravagantly onesided, so in-

1 What Mr. J. A. Frond o says, from jiersonal knowledge, on the
points touched on in this paragraph, is decisivo testimony. (See
his account of Newman in Short Studies, Fourth Series.) But tluB
evidence is only a small part of the whole to tho same effect. I shall
return to this subject in the next chapter.

WARD'S INFLUENCE OVER NEWMAN 121
capable of an equitable view, so much a slave to the
unreality of extremes." He was totally ignorant of history ;
he wove his argument in the main on the basis of mere
assumptions ; he adapted his assumptions to his preconcep
tions ; his preconceptions were those of a mere idealist
who dwelt in the region of abstractions ; and thus he com
posed his Ideal of a Christian Church, in which he was
keen to show the inconsistencies and logical dilemmas of
the Church of England, while he attributed to the Romish
Church all the perfections which his Ideal required.
It is, however, important to note the influence which
Ward exercised on Newman, and how this contributed to
what Dean Church speaks of as the " catastrophe " of
Newman's leaving the Church of England. Church's de
scription well agrees with the view which Mr. Wilfrid Ward
gives, and which has been quoted in the last chapter, as
to the mutua.l relations of Newman and Ward.
" Mr. Ward," says Dean Church, " was continually
forcing on Mr. Newman so called irresistible inferences :
' If you say so and so, surely you must also say something
more.' Avowedly ignorant of facts, and depending for
them on others, he was only concerned with logical con
sistency. Accordingly, Mr. Newman had continually to
accept conclusions which he would rather have kept in
abeyance, to make admissions which were used without
their qualifications, to push ou and sanction extreme ideas
which he himself shrank from because they were extreme.
... Ho had to go at Mr. Ward's pace and not his own.
He had to take Mr. Ward's questions, not when he wanted
to have them and at his own time, but at Mr. Ward's. . . .
Engineers tell us that, in the case of a ship rolUng in a sea
way, when the periodic times of the ship's roll coincide

122 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT
with those of the undulations of the waves, a condition of
things arises highly dangerous to the ship's stability. So
the agitations of Mr. Newman's mind were reinforced by
the impulses of Mr. Ward's."
Newman, in fact, found in Ward the Nemesis of his
own errors. The inferences which Newman disliked were
based by Ward on the " facts " which he had taken for
granted on the authority of Newman. Newman knew far
too little of history, and depended too much on misapplied
logical processes. Historical induction as applied to theo
logical and ecclesiastical questions he was unable to use to
any serviceable extent. In theological science also, as
derived from apostolic teaching, he was strangely weak —
weak and ill-informed. Ward was a keener and stronger
logician than Newman, but was absurdly ignorant of history.
His intellectual character was a striking but grotesque
caricature of Newman's. Hence he, in effect, brought his
master's claims and contentions, as an Anglican, to a
reductio ad absurdum. With a light heart, and almost as
if the whole movement were a huge and ridiculous ab
surdity, he exploded the Tractarian mine. He went over
laughingly to Rome, and dragged Newman after him. On
the 14th February 1845 the Oxford Convocation con
demned Ward's Ideal, and degraded the writer, reducing
him to the position of an undergraduate. On the same
day Tract No. 90 was rescued from the formal university
censure, which the Convocation were prepared to pronounce
upon it, by the interposition of the proctors, — Church being
one of the two, — who had power so to interpose in sus
pension of any proposed decree of Convocation. The
proposed decree of censure might conceivably have been
renewed and adopted in the following year, when new

WARD'S WITNESS AGAINST NEWMAN 123
proctors would have come into office. But before that
period Newman had left the Church of England. After a
seclusion of many months he was, on the 8 th October
1845, received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father
Dominic the Passionist.
I ought not to pass away from the view of Ward's
relations to Newman, as presented by Dean Church, with
out referring to the fact that, as to the controversy on
the subject of Tract 90, Ward in his Ideal goes over, so
far as the case between Newman and his Anglican censors
is concerned, to the side of those who, as Anglicans, con
demned Tract 90. He contended that the articles of the
Church, though "patient of a Catholic meaning, were
ambitious of a Protestant meaning ; whatever their logic
was, their rhetoric was Protestant." " With characteristic
boldness, inventing a phrase which has become famous,
he wrote : ' Our twelfth Article is, as plain as words can
make it, on the Evangelical side ; of course, I think its
natural meaning may be explained away, for I subscribe it
myself in a non-natural sense.' " After such a confession
from the lips of his closest counsellor and confederate, it
was hardly possible that Newman should continue to main
tain the position of an English Churchman. That position
had become on every side untenable. Nor was it either
unnatural or unreasonable that Convocation, besides con
demning Ward and his Ideal, should have been prepared
explicitly to censure Tract 90. In fact. Ward may be
justly cited as a witness to prove the charge of disin
genuous subtlety which the great majority of competent
judges had brought against the casuistry and the non-
natural explanations of Tract 90.

CHAPTER V.
The Master Spirit of the Movement.
rpO be gentle and generous to the memory of the dead
-*- is a maxim which pre-Christian ci'vilisation has handed
down to modern times ; and never was it so generally or
generously acted upon as at the present day, especially in
the case of men of genius. In commemorating the
deceased, genius is made to cover a multitude of sins.
When, besides, genius is united with eminent rank and
with distinguished achievements, and when its renown
lends lustre to a protracted old age, admiration on the part
of the English public is apt to grow into something like
idolatry. The faults, however grave, of a famous life,
much of which seems already to have become ancient, are
forgotten. A sort of mythical haze and splendour gathers
around the memory of a renowned and venerable man, as
the gathering glories of the sunset attend the parting day.
Most of all is this so when the deceased, whether with or
without genius, has been a famous leader, — military,
political, or ecclesiastical, — who having in his time borne
hard blows and sometimes unjust or excessive censure, has
left at length the scene of his lUe's conflicts and -vicissi
tudes. The general interest and enthusiasm in such cases
knows no bounds. Illustrations of what I have been
saying will recur to the memory of all my readers. The
124

EXTRA VAGANT EULOGIES OF NEWMAN 125
names of Wellington, Palmerston, Pusey, Beaconsfield —
not to name another of whom all will think — will come at
once to mind. Nor is it a grateful task to undertake to
say anything by way of chastening the exuberance of such
feelings, even though they may be altogether excessive.
Nevertheless, there are instances in which it may be neces
sary so to do.
Protestants generally, however liberal and well-
informed, still believe that Popery as such — by which I
mean the organised ecclesiastical system of which the Pope
and Papal Court at Rome are the head and centre, with its
unchanged policy, its aggregate of Bulls and Decretals, of
General Councils, and conciliar Acts — constitutes a vast
and pernicious perversion of Christianity, and that in regard
to no perversion of truth in the world's history is the
proverb more justly applicable, corruptio optiini jyessima.
I say this whilst retaining all charity towards individual
Eoman Catholics, and whilst recognising that not a little
that is good has always been found within the limits of the
Eoman CathoUc Church, and that the roll of its hagiology
includes many true saints as well as many false.
There seems, however, just now, over a considerable
area of cultivated society in England, to be a marked
tendency Eomeward. Capital is being made by Eomish
and Eomanising writers out of the extravagant eulogies
on Cardinal Newman, with which, after his death, the
public press was inundated : eulogies written, I can
not but believe, either by personal friends and admirers,
by Eomish or Eomanising partisans, or by writers very
Uttle informed as to the true history of Newman's life,
or his real character and merits as a teacher and writer.
How far this tendency will yet develop, or how long it

126 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MO VEMENT
will last, it would be rash to conjecture. We can but
hope that the tide may turn before very long. But, in
the meantime, the influence of Mr. Hutton's monograph^ on
Cardinal Newman will be all in the wrong direction. For
some years past there have been rumours from time to
time to the effect that the Editor of the Spectator was
about to join — indeed, there have been rumours that he
had already joined — the Eoman Catholic communion.
It was scarcely possible for those who had long known
and, on the whole, greatly admired the writings of this
distinguished man, and the devout and religious spirit in
which he has conducted his journal, to lend any credit to
these rumours, notwithstanding the increasingly and sur
prisingly High Church tone and tendency of his newspaper
for many years past. After reading his book on Newman,
however, many wUl feel that it would scarcely surprise
them if they were to learn before very long that he had
joined the communion which it is evident that, on the
whole, he admires more, if he does not more fully agree
with it, than any other Church.^ Considering the point from
which he started, some forty years ago or more, on his
doctrinal ascent as a thinker and writer ; considering the
avenue of thought through which, under the guidance of Mr.
Maurice, he found his way on to the platform, and within

1 Cardinal Newman. By R. H. Hutton. Methuen & Co.
2 " Is there truer worship anywhere, in sjnte of its greedy tradi
tionalism," asks Mr. Hutton, " than in the Church of Rome 1 "
Referring to Newman's final "birth" into the communion of the
Church of Rome, he speaks of that Church as "the one Christian
Church which has a historical continuity and an external organisation
as impressive and conspicuous as even his heart could desire for the
depository of revealed truth." The Church of Rome " the depository
of Revealed Truth " !

THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR" ON NEWMAN 127
the precincts, of the Church of England, — the last thing
that would have been expected, in the case of Mr. Hutton,
would have been that he should end his course on the
margin of the Eomish Church. In 1850, however, it
appears that he heard Father Newman deliver his lectures
on the Difficulties of Anglicanism. He was fascinated by
the lectures, and especially by the gifts of the lecturer.
Subsequently he became a personal friend of Father
Newman. Few Englishmen, outside of Newman's own
circle as a Eoman Catholic, who have ever come into close
contact with him, have been able altogether to escape his
" spell." The result in the case of Mr Hutton, I suppose,
appears in the altogether partial and onesided account
which he has published of Newman and his life-work.
There is another sort of view of Newman given by a
namesake of Mr. Hutton's in three numbers of the
Expositor} Mr Arthur Hutton writes as one who lived
with Cardinal Newman for years at the Birmingham Oratory.
His account bears every mark of being a genuine and
truthful transcript of the writer's personal knowledge and
experience, not discoloured by prejudice or temper, but
written with the calm impartiality of a friendly though
disenchanted witness, who had been long accustomed to
see Newman in his own cloistral home, in his everyday
life, both in its strictly religious and in its more or less
secular aspects, in full dress and undress, and in all his
varying moods.
It would seem that the editor of the Spectator has, in
common with journalists generally, been fascinated by the
1 Reminiscences of Cardinal Newman. By Arthur Hutton, M.A.
Expositor, September to November 1890. Mr. Hutton represented
Cardinal Newman at the funeral of Dr. Pusey.

128 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
gifts, the genius, and the personal ascendency of Cardinal
Newman, and on the strength of these has been prepared
to regard him as what he styles him in the title of his first
chapter, a " great man."
I demur, however, in limine, to such a description
of Cardinal Newman, and ask what are the qualities
which entitle him to be called a great man ? He was,
doubtless, a gifted man, and a man of great personal
influence ; he was even a man of genius. But to say this
is not to say that he was a great man. Was Newman a
man of truly great character ? Was he even a man of
great and fruitful intellect ? Was he a great theologian,
or a great administrator, or a great phUosopher ? Was he
even a great scholar ? Was he a man of great and sterling
attainments in any leading branch of humane or liberal
knowledge — as, for example, in history ? He led far
astray many followers ; but is he on this account to be
regarded as great ? On what ground is he to be exalted as
meriting the magnificent title of a great man, — as belonging
to the enthroned circle of earth's peerless immortals ?
The world has seen very many men of rare gifts, many
men of genius ; but of these comparatively few have been
admitted within the ranks of the great men of the earth.
Mr. Hutton professes to base his judgment as to the
greatness of Cardinal Newman " chiefly on the ardour and
energy which he devoted to adequate objects." But surely
this is a very inadequate definition of human greatness,
and one which, if adopted, would admit into the category
of great men a vast multitude of persons who have, indeed,
devoted ardour and energy to worthy objects, but whom
the world has never begun to look upon as great. In the
sentence following the words I have quoted (page 6),

WAS NE WMAN A GREA T MAN? 129
Mr. Hutton speaks of the " vividness of his faith in divine
guidance," and his " exultation in the wisdom and spiritual
instinct of his Church," as having " furnished him with his
confidence and guaranteed his success." What Mr. Hutton
means by " his success " it is hard to understand. To me
his life appears to have been anything but a success in
any such good sense of that word as should entitle a
Christian thinker and leader to the character of greatness.
Mr. Hutton, however, proceeds to speak of his intellect as
having " taken exact measure of the depths of the various
channels by which he might safely travel to the ' haven
where he would be ' ; the care with which he has buoyed
the quicksands and the sunken rocks, and the anxious
vigilance with which he has traced out the winding and
often perilous passages in the way." Where and how
Newman did anything of the sort here described I think
Mr. Hutton would be unable to point out. The description
appears to be perfectly inapplicable to the mode of proce
dure by which Newman found his own way into the " haven "
of the Eomish communion, and still less applicable as a
description of any method of instruction and guidance
which at any time he made known to others. Indeed,
Mr. Wilfrid Ward's life of his father furnishes sufficient
evidence that Mr. Hutton's description of his hero is
purely imaginary. There is no book except the Apologia,
so far as I know, to which the words could even be
imagined to have any possible application ; and that volume,
though it explains in part the process by which he himself
" went sounding on a dim and perilous way," does not
really answer at all to the description I have quoted.
Mr. Hutton's words suggest a reminiscence of a well-
known passage in Newman's Difficulties of Anglicanism, in
9

130 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
which, in an insolent and ungenerous strain, he satirises
his own Anglican followers, the Tractarian residue whom
he first misled and then forsook for the Eoman communion.
, " Their idea," he says, " was simply and absolutely
submission to an external authority ; to it they appealed,
to it they betook themselves ; there they found a haven of
rest ; and hence they looked out upon the troubled surge
of human opinion, and upon the crazy vessels which were
labouring without chart or compass upon it. Judge, then,
of their dismay when, according to the Arabian tale, on
their striking their anchors into the supposed soil, lighting
their fires on it, and fixing in it the poles of their tents,
suddenly their island began to move, to heave, to splash, to
frisk to and fro, to dive, and at last to swim away, spouting
out inhospitable jets of water upon the credulous mariners
who had made it their home" {Lectures, etc. p. 124).
It was Newman himself who had professed to "measure
the depths of the channels " by which his comrades and
followers might travel to this deceitful " haven," and to
" buoy the quicksands and the unseen rocks." Mr. Hutton's
language would go to imply that, after he had escaped
from their company and found refuge in Eome, Newman
had really done such a service as Mr. Hutton describes for
such of the forlorn and deceived mariners as might be
" credulous " enough to trust him as their leader on a
second venture, in " sounding on " still farther their " dim
and perilous way " tUl they should find, with him, the true
" haven of rest " in the Eoman obedience. But unless Mr.
Hutton means to say that Newman has done this in his
Essay on Development, of which Mr. Hutton has himself
sufficiently exposed the fallacies to show at least its utter
untrustworthiness, or in the two series of clever and

WHY NOT A GREAT MAN 131
occasionally brUliant, but paradoxical and utterly un
authentic and unhistorical, lectures which he delivered at
Birmingham, from one of which I have taken my last
quotation, and to which I shall presently have occasion to
refer at some length, I cannot hazard a guess as to when
or how he can be imagined to have done it.
Mr. Hutton further speaks of the " profound and
passionate conviction which lay beneath all this delicate
intellectual appreciation of difficulties." Doubtless within
narrow limits a profound conviction of spiritual reaUties —
that is, as Newman himself explains, of " himself and God,"
derived from the experience, in early life, of his own " con
version," whilst still a Calvinistic " evangelical " — did
underUe his intellectual movements, however vacillating
and uncertain.^ This fact, however, carries us noway
towards the conclusion that, in any adequate sense of the
phrase. Cardinal Newman was a great man. He was an
idealist ; he was a poet of fine genius ; he was an exquisite
writer of English ; he had in perfection the gifts of a
special pleader ; his power of personal fascination and
infiuence over university men of devout and churchly
minds was extraordinary ; and, understanding perfectly the
character of university society, and of the average Anglo-
Episcopal mind, he adapted his written addresses with
^ He uses the word " conversion " in the Apologia. He speaks of
himself as " resting in the thought of two, and two only, supreme
and luminously self-e'vident beings — myself and my Creator." " I
believed," he says, " that the inward conversion of which I was con
scious — and of which I am still more certain than that I have hands
and feet — would last into the next life, and that I was elected to
eternal glory." He adds that, though he regarded himself as pre
destined to salvation, he did not think of others as predestined to
eternal death, but thought only of the mercy to himself.

132 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
consummate skill to the special audience for which they
were intended. But all this taken together is far from
warranting such an exaltation of Cardinal Newman to a
place amongst the great men and heroes of the world as
that which Mr. Hutton claims for him. As has been shown
in preceding chapters, Newman's was a characteristically
feminine nature ; it was feminine in the quickness and
subtlety of his instincts, in affection and the caprices of
affection, in diplomatic tact and adroitness, and in a gift of
statement and grace of phrase which find their analogies
in the conversation, in the public addresses, and even in
the written style of gifted women. He was wanting in
virility, in manly strength, and we cannot easily accept as
a great man anyone who is not a truly manly man.
Hurrell Froude, his chosen and most congenial friend, was
more feminine still than Newman — feminine in his faults
as well as in his gifts and his defects. For sympathy and
mutual intelligence the two were wonderfully well assorted,
Newman delighting in the very faults of Froude, though
at the same time it was his work to chasten and restrain
his friend. Ward, on the other hand, as has been shown
in his biography, was, in the frank and masculine traits of
his undiplomatic character, was in his blunt manliness, a
striking contrast to Newman. But, apart from this funda
mental point, where can we find in Newman, regarded in
any capacity in which he might have been supposed to
claim the character of a thinker or leader, any of the cha
racteristics of greatness ?
Mr. Hutton seenis not to have fathomed the true
character of his hero. Nothing can be more amazing
than his denial of Newman's natural intellectual scepticism.
The argument he gives to the contrary, — his only argu-

, HIS SCEPTICAL HABIT OF MIND 133
ment, it would seem, — that amidst all his perilous soundmgs
and questionings Newman never lost hold of the conviction
he derived from his early religious experience as to the
existence of a personal God and his own personal relations
to Him, is, I venture to think, nothing whatever to the
purpose. His habit of mind, on the purely intellectual
side of his nature, was pre-eminently sceptical. Mr.
Froude's statements in his Short Studies, already referred
to, are strong e'vidence on this point. But, indeed, the
testimony of those who knew him most closely, and
the evidence of his writings, agree absolutely to the
same effect. Mr. Hutton appears not to have mastered
the general principles and scope of Newman's Grammar
of Assent. That book, which furnishes the key to New
man's intellectual character in its aspect towards meta
physics and phUosophy, Mr. Hutton dismisses with a
slight and inadequate description towards the end of his
volume ; a description so slight and inadequate as to suggest
that the writer did not comprehend the significance of the
book, the intricate obscurities of which, indeed, it is exceed
ingly difficult to follow, by reason especially of its continual
fallacies and self-contradictions. The very dilemma pro
pounded in that book is, that " assent " and " certitude "
are in no sense possible on any ground of logic or philo
sophy or induction, and are only attainable through religious
faith and obedience, leading up to Church infallibility as the
one sole guarantee for mankind of divine truth and reality.
Mr. Hutton's admiring sympathy with Newman has
enabled him to do such justice to the best side of New
man's character and gifts as has hardly been done before.
Putting himself in Newman's place during the years in
Oxford when he was slowly moving Romewards, Mr.

134 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMJ^T
Hutton has shown the pathos, and set forth the power, of
his searching, subtle, persuasive, and sometimes pathetic,
sermons, preached at St. Mary's, as no critic has done
before. Those sermons, doubtless, are many of them
masterpieces of their kind. They show a spiritual
power, as Mr. Hutton seems in effect to admit, such
as no later writings of Newman's show. They suggest
a style of Ufe and consecration, and an earnestness of
character, much superior to that which is revealed to us
as having belonged to Cardinal Newman in the later years
of his life at Birmingham, so far as we may judge from
the plain and direct evidence furnished by Mr. Arthur
Hutton. It is not wonderful that an admiring friend of Cardinal
Newman should have dwelt at length on his ministry at
St. Mary's, and should have given a more thorough and
complete account of that than of any other part of his life
and life's work. It is surprising, however, that Mr. Hutton
has not exposed the monstrous perversions of history of
which Newman was guilty in the lectures which he deUvered
after he had joined the Roman CathoUc Church. Some very
sUght intimations, indeed, of the glaring paradoxes and per
versions which Father Newman set forth as facts of history
Mr. Hutton has given, but his dealing with these produc
tions of Newman's Roman CathoUc Ufe, the genius and
brUUancy of which he highly praises, is strangely inadequate,
and this side of Newman's professional work is treated with
a gentleness which is scarcely faithful to the requirements
of truth. Newman's lectures were fuU of libels upon his
nation and travesties of history. Mr. Hutton should not
have gently passed over such faults as these.
No trained metaphysician who studies Newman's

HIS " GRAMMAR OF ASSENT" 135
(xrammar of Assent could admit any claim on behalf of
the writer to be a metaphysician or even a logician. The
blunders in logic in that book are as signal as the faults
in metaphysical definition and statement, and are yet more
frequent, so that a well-known writer, who signed himself
" Cantabrigiensis," in commenting, in the Times, on the
excessive eulogies of Newman which were flooding the
press, was justified in speaking of him as the writer of " the
best EngUsh and of the worst logic " in his generation.
The late Mr. James Macdonell, the brilUant leader-
writer of the Daily Telegraph, and finally of the Times,
took in hand to read the Grammar of Assent, with a strong
predisposition to admire the intellect and logic of the writer,
being, like most other journalists of his time, smitten with
admiration generally of the writer of the Apologia, who, if
he had been a writer for the daily press, would no doubt
have easily excelled most competitors, even of the rank of
Mr. Macdonell. In one of his letters Mr. Macdonell
expresses, somewhat naively, the puzzled feelings with
which he read, or tried to read, the treatise. Writing to a
friend, to whom in advance, and with great expectations as
to the value of the volume, he had sent the Grammar of
Assent as a present, he finds himself constrained to say,
" I confess that I never saw more painfully inconclusive
reasoning come from a logical pen than that which I note
on some pages." " Logic is good, and so is mysticism ; but
as I find myself cast alternately from one to the other as
Newman finds convenient, I confess that my sense of
logical precision and my faculty of faith, such as it is, are
both irritated." ^ The effect of this volume is completely
to sever faith from reason, and philosophy from reUgion.
1 James Macdonell, Journalist. By W. Robertson Nicoll (p. 180).

136 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
Among other things, Newman teaches (p. 4) not only —
as he might truly maintain — that a man may be a beUever of
" unhesitating faith," though he knows nothing of Christian
evidence, — of the reasons of his faith, — and never regards his
reUgious faith as sustained by any " conclusions of reason " ;
but, that such a "man of unhesitating faith" is the very
ideal of a " beUever," is the purest and truest type of a
Christian ; — as if true phUosophy and true reUgion were
not in harmony with each other; as if phUosophy inca
pacitated for faith ; as if grounds of reason did not form
part of the true and only stable support for the believer's
" unhesitating faith " ; as if, in a word, reason had never
Ughted the way to faith, and reason and faith could never
coalesce in the heart of the enUghtened but humble Christian
into an absolute unity of solemn con-viction and reverent
trust. This is Newman's deUberate science on the subject
of faith and reason. It is the fuU and, so far as we know,
final development of the doctrine taught comparatively
early in his course in his Oxford sermons, to the effect
that faith and reason were so far in opposition to each
other as that the man who beUeved the most upon the
least evidence or ground of mere reason was the man of
the greaiest faith, so that to beUeve aU that the Chm-ch,
teaches, absolutely apart from aU reason or evidence, is the
perfection of faith.^
Many of Newman's difficulties in this book are due to
the fact that/aiY/( throughout the volume stands merely in
relation to creed, and is used to mean the unshaken and
immovable acceptance by the mind as infallibly true of a
certain modicum of belief. Hence he teaches (p. 181) that
1 See as to this point al.so, Froude's testimony in his Short Studies.
Fourth Series.

NEWMAN'S SCEPTICAL HERESY 137
" we cannot, without absurdity, caU ourselves at once
believers and inqmrers also." And yet it is certain that
for many men the way to an immovable faith, in the true
comprehensive sense of the word faith, leads by the avenues
of many doubts, — doubts not indeed welcomed as such, but
yet considered in the clear Ught of reason untU distinctly
imdei-stood, and kept in view tUl, by the help of the Spirit
of Truth, the answer has been learnt and given. Nor is it
possible to read this very book, the Grammar of Assent,
wthout feeling that he who writes in it of doubt and
beUef, of investigation and impUcit faith, of inference and
assent, is one to whose own restless intellect doubt has
been as famiUar as faith and reUgion are to his susceptible,
shrinking, cUnging heart.
For a somewhat detaUed re-view of the Grammar of
Assent, 1 may refer to an article in the London Quartcrh/
Review for January 1871, from which I have borrowed
some sentences in the last page. In that article, notwith
standing my general criticisms in the sense just indicated,
I did not faU to recognise the beauty, feUcity, and
instructiveness of a good deal of what the book contains
on the subject of the unconscious Ulative processes of our
mind. At the same time, I speak of what I describe as
Newman's " sceptical heresy," and the result of an analysis
is given in these words —
" He does not beUeve in any absolute certainty, except
such as may be established by mathematical or syUogistic
proof. He does not beUeve in the 'intuitions of the
mind,' or in objective truth. Inductive certainty with him
is the mere accumulated probabUity of the world's ex
perience. Dr. Newman holds with Hume and MUl that
experience alone has generated our faith in the constancy

138 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
of nature, — that it is not primary and intiUtive, and that
all our assurances are but the feelings or opinions which
grow up within us from the impressions produced by
experience. He teaches throughout that certainty is
altogether relative and subjective. He gives up all hope
of finding a ' common measure ' of truth in any pro
vince of thought, or any ' criterion ' by which to test
principles and conclusions. In a word, he is a sceptic
in philosophy." Newman does believe in " assent " and what he calls
" certitude," but only as resting on authority and deter
mined by the wUl. His, in short, is the fit philosophy of
a man of keen and sceptical intellect, who has settled his
doubts and difficulties by betaking himself to the in
fallible direction and authority of the Roman communion.
Faith with him is merely and absolutely the response
of the conscience to authority. Faith, as understood
in the sense, and as resting on the grounds indicated
in a recent timely volume by the late and lamented
Dr Dale,^ is a thing totally unknown to the theology
or experience of Cardinal Newman. Such a teacher is
not entitled to be regarded as great, either in philosophy
or theology. The truth is, that to this dominantly sceptical habit of
Newman's mind was due the whole course of his ecclesi
astical and theological development ; for his development
was first ecclesiastical, and only secondarUy theological.
He himself says, in his lectures on the Difficulties of
Anglicanism (p. 120), when describing the progress of
Tractarianism, and referring to the Tract writers, that " the
principle of these writers was this, — an infalUble authority
1 The Living Christ and the Four Gospels.

HIS PURSUIT OF INFALLIBILITY 139
is necessary. We have it not, for the Prayer-Book is all we
have got ; but since we have nothing better, we must use it as
if infallible." ^ It was this pursuit after infallibility which
continually led forward _Newman as he " went sounding on
his dim and perilous way," coming ever nearer and nearer to
Rome. Intellectual scepticism, accordingly, is the one and
only key by which to explain Newman's course. In philo
sophy he was an empiric ; but, holding as he did to his
spiritual conviction of the existence of God, and of himself
in relation to God, he was bound to look always for some
living representative of God whose voice was to give
assurance to the believer, and whose authority could
command obedience. Prophets represented God under
the Old Testament ; Jesus and His apostles under the
New ; the Church, and, as representing the Church in its
unity and authority, the Pope, for all after ages, all these
being personal and divine authorities. From these sources
alone could come assurance, moral certitude, rest and peace
to the searching spirit. Such, in brief, is a summary of
Newman's faith and philosophy.
That Mr. Hutton should have missed the real key to
Newman's whole character and course, — his despair of
human reason as affording any light or help in regard to
objective truth, natural or spiritual, — and should have
taken upon himself to deny the fundamental and over
mastering scepticism of his mind, is a matter of
astonishment. In this he differs from all those of
Newman's contemporaries who had most closely studied
1 So also, in a passage already quoted, he says, " Their idea was,
simply and absolutely, submission to an external authority. To it
they appealed, to it they betook themselves : there they found a haven
of rest."

140 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MO VEMENT
his writings and his character, and who were most
competent to judge. I might quote, for instance, Henry
Rogers, a writer and a critic not easily to be surpassed in
dealing with the borderland of thought which belongs to
theology and to philosophy, and who criticised New
man's writings and ecclesiastical course with singular
ability in his Essays, of which the main substance was
originally pubUshed in the Edinburgh Review. I might
cite the language of Bishop Wilberforce, who surely had
the means, as few besides could have, of understanding
intimately the character and tendencies of Newman's mind
and teachings, and who, to quote a pregnant expression in
one of his Addresses to Candidates for Ordination, speaks,
with a manifest reference to Newman, of those who have
taken their flight " on the wings of an unbounded scepticism
into the bosom of an unfathomed superstition." But, above
all, I may adduce the authority of Archdeacon Hare, the
most learned, the most acute and searching, the most
competent, in regard to all the largest questions of con
troversy with Newman, and at the same time the most
polished and courteous of Newman's contemporary critics,
who seems, moreover, to have carefully read all that
Newman had published. This master alike of philosophy
and theology — as also, I may parenthetically note, of history
— thus describes Newman's course of intellectual develop
ment —
" Probably it wUl have seemed to many, when they
terminated their wanderings through the mazes of his
Lectures on Justification, that the text prefixed to the first
lecture (' Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words unthout
knowledge ? ') has been selected under a judicial blindness as
the aptest motto for the whole work. Moreover, when we

NEWMAN'S VIEW OF FAITH 141
look back upon the author's subsequent career, when we
reflect how he has gone on year after year sharpening the
edge of his already over-keen understanding, casting one
truth after another into his logical crucible, and persuading
himself that he had dissolved it to atoms, and then exhi
biting a like ingenuity in compounding the semblance of
truths out of flctions, — when we call to mind how in this
way he appeared to be gradually losing the faculty of
distinguishing between truth and falsehood, and the very
belief in the existence of any power for discerning truth,
nay, as it seems at times, in the existence of any positive
truth to be discerned, and how, taking refuge from the
encroachments of a universal scepticism, he has at length
bowed his neck under a yoke which a man, gifted with
such fine quaUties of mind and character, would hardly
assume until he had put out the eyes of his heart and of
his conscience as well as of his understanding, — it is not in
scorn and triumph, but in deep sadness and awe, that we
repeat, ' Who is this that darkeneth counsel iy words without
knowledge V"^
These words were written by Archdeacon Hare long
before the Grammar of Assent was published. They do
but anticipate the judgment as to the character and
tendencies of Newman's mind which that volume so
completely establishes.
In the preceding observations I have been led to speak
of Newman's teaching as to faith. Mr. Hutton has given
no clear or adequate idea of Newman's doctrine on this
subject, and leaves his own views altogether in a haze. I
must dwell briefly on Newman's view of faith as regarded
from another side, because it gives character to his whole
1 Vindication of Luther, pp. 99, 100.

142 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
system of theological teaching. I have indicated the
relations of faith to reason as taught by Newman. I wish
now to give a view of his teaching as to the relations of
faith to spiritual life. Spiritual and truly Christian
faith then, according to Newman, signifies impUcit belief
inwrought in the soul through the grace of baptism, and
standing in no relation to love or good works, or the
" fruits of the spirit." It differs absolutely and com
pletely from faith as understood by all evangelical teachers ;
it stands entirely apart from any such conception of
faith as that expressed in Wesley's well-worn words,
"faith which works by love and purifies the soul." In
his Diffijculties of Anglicanism (p. 223), Newman says
explicitly : " Catholics hold that faith and love, faith and
obedience, faith and works, are simply separable, and
ordinarily separated in fact ; that faith does not imply
love, obedience, or works.'' " It is," he says, " a certainty
of things not seen, but revealed, preceded ordinarily by the
instrumental Sacrament of Baptism, but caused directly by
supernatural influence." Of this faith, indeed, he speaks
as a " spiritual sight," applying to it, because he must,
the really inappropriate and inapplicable words of Heb.
xi. 1. In no respect, however, is faith, according to his
teaching, a high moral or a true spiritual grace, open-eyed
to the revelation of God's character and the Saviour's
mission and work : it is mere implicit belief. Archdeacon
Hare says of such faith as Newman describes, that it is not
spiritual but magical. " A spiritual power," he says, " acts
upon the wUl and the conscience, and through them : a
magical power produces its changes arbitrarily, independent
of the will and the conscience. Such is the belief which
Newman calls faith, and which he supposes to manifest

CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT COUNTRIES 143
itself by outward acts, by the repetition of prayers by rote,
without any renewal of the spirit ; such is the baptismal
change of nature as substituted for the new birth ; such is
the belief of a string of propositions on the authority of
another, without any inward personal conviction of their
truth ; such is the infallibiUty ascribed to Popes, without
any reference to their moral or spiritual condition." 1 In
the foregoing words Hare has summed up the description
of faith and its effects, as gathered from Newman's Lectures
on the Difficulties of Anglicanism. That Newman should
speak of such faith as this as a spiritual sight of the
unseen, applying to it the words of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, serves to show how bold and unhesitating a
polemic he was. But this comes out much more fully in his
Grammar of Assent, when he is contrasting religion among
Catholic populations with religion in England, and among
Protestant populations generally. " Religion among Catholic
populations," we are instructed, " is real ; in England,
speaking generally, it is but notional." The astonishing
sentence I am about to quote points the contrast as New
man conceived it : " As to Catholic populations, such as those
of mediaeval Europe, or the Spain of this day, or quasi-
Catholic as those of Russia, among them assent to religious
objects is real, not notional. To them the Supreme Being,
our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, angels and saints, heaven and
hell, are as present as if they were objects of sight ; but
such a faith does not suit the genius of modern England." ^
Here tawdry images are confounded with real spiritual
vision. Newman selects the worst examples of corrupt
1 With what is said above may be compared Newman's Theses tie
Fide, as given in the Expositor for November 1890.
^ Grammar of Assent, p. 53.

144 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
and degraded " Catholic " Christianity, — the semi-paganism
of mediseval Europe and of the Spain of this day, the super
stitious and ignorant devotion of the Russian peasantry, —
and parades this as " real religion " in comparison with
which the average and staple modern English Protestantism,
as professed and practised by persons of decidedly reUgious
character, is but " notional," " an empty form and routine
of Bible reading," as he describes it, and " stereotyped
aspects of facts." This is a wantonness of daring and of
insult of which it might have been thought that Newman
would have been incapable. What was the "religious
realism " of mediaeval Europe ? What is the " religious
realism " of Spanish and of Russian vUlages and towns ?
The paintings in mediaeval cathedrals and in Russian
churches may help us to understand its character and
quality ; paintings of the Persons of the Trinity, pictures
filled with " angels and saints, heaven and hell " ; paintings
of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin, who, we are told, are
as " present as if they were objects of sight " to the " real "
devotion of Catholics. This is the realism in religion of
Catholic populations which Newman has dared to place as
in favourable contrast with the " notional " religion of
England. This is the 'vision of the unseen furnished by
the faith of which he speaks.
Mr. Hutton all through his volume appears to be
ignorant of the true character and quality of faith as taught
by Newman. In closing his chapter on Newman at St.
Mary's he writes the following sentence, which is the
last in a fine paragraph : " I cannot help thinking that
Newman, though he always insisted on the certainty of the
communion between God and the individual soul as the
very starting-point of revelation, has conceded too much to

DEFECTS OF HIS TEACHING AS TO FAITH 145
those who speak of God as only presenting Himself to us
through sign and symbol and mediate adaptation, and has
hardly dwelt enough on those aspects of revelation in which
we see the very majesty and the very hoUness of His
character without a film to hide its splendour and its
purity from our eyes." This sentence refers to Newman's
sermons at St. Mary's when, as yet, he had not left the
Church of England, though his theology was even then,
essentially, much more Roman than Protestant. His
doctrine of faith had even then almost altogether lost the
touch and quality of evangeUcal reality which had been
derived originally from his Calvinistically evangelical sense
of converting experience. What remaUied to him of that
experience was rather a metaphysical assurance as to the
personal relations between God and his own soul, coupled
with the keen and clinging sense of moral dependence and
need, than any high -vision of God in Christ, as Father and
Saviour. Hence the omission, throughout even the series
of sermons which he preached at St. Mary's, and to which
in real elevation and moral power nothing that he wrote
after he joined the Church of Eome can for a moment
compare, of all such views of revelation in its high moral
and spiritual aspects as those the want of which Mr.
Hutton so justly and impressively points out. But it is
evident that the real reason of this want is hidden from
Mr. Hutton. He does not see that Newman's view of
faith was one which did not lead him at all to a con
templation of the moral and spiritual effects of the gospel-
revelation, in its grandeur and tenderness, upon the
beUe-ving soul. Already at Oxford the tone of his urgent
admonitions, the strain of his severe analysis and scrutiny
of character and motives, is that of a teacher with whom
10

146 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
faith is merely the force urging to religious observances, to
moral austerity, to legal obedience, not the faith which
derives joy and strength and evangelical motives to
hoUness from the vision of God in Christ reconciling the
world unto Himself. If ]\lr. Hutton had penetrated to the
real character of Newman's theology and religion, he would
not have expressed in gentle words of surprise his sense of
the deficiency of which he speaks. He would have under
stood and pointed out its reason and source. It is,
however, stUl more remarkable that throughout the volume
Mr. Hutton never seems to have become aware of the
character or the reason of the defect he has thus indicated.
Even later, and when referring to Newman as a Eoman
Catholic, he intimates simUar mUd surprise. He heard, as
he tells us, the Lectures on the Difficulties of Anglicanism,
or some of them ; but they do not seem to have disclosed
to him their main theological lesson as to the character of
Newman as a Christian believer and teacher.
The historical illustration just quoted from Newman of
his views as to the quality and effects of Eoman CathoUc
as contrasted with Protestant religion among the nations of
the world, leads me naturally to notice one of the great
features of Newman's teaching as a Eoman Catholic
lecturer, as to which Mr. Hutton has scarcely spoken at
all. I have referred to the point some pages back. I
desire now to give illustrations of my meaning. Arch
deacon Hare speaks in one place of Newman's " CUcean
talent for metamorphosing historical facts," and, in
another, of his "favourite feat of turning white black
and black white." The language is not too strong. It
was his business, in his Lectures on the Diffxiulties of
Anglicanism, — lectures which made such a critical im-

TURNING WHITE BLACK AND BLACK WHITE 147
pression upon Mr. Hutton, — to show the superior moral
and spiritual condition of Eoman Catholic countries as
compared with Protestant. The following passage is a
sample of the style in which he accomplishes his work.
He is describing, and in comparison vindicating, the moral
and spiritual condition of Eoman CathoUc countries : —
" Vice," he says, " does not involve a neglect of the
external duties of religion. The crusaders had faith
sufficient to bind them to a perilous pUgrimage and
warfare ; they kept the Friday's abstinence, and planted
the tents of their mistresses within the shadow of the
pavUion of the glorious St. Lewis. There are other
pilgrimages besides mUitary ones, and other religious
journeys besides the march upon Jerusalem.
" It is a mixed multitude, some most holy, perhaps
even saints ; others penitent sinners, but others again a
mixture of pilgrim and beggar, or pilgrim and robber, or
half gipsy, or three-quarter boon companion, or at least
with nothing saintly and little religious about them. . . .
Yet one and all, saints and sinners, have faith in things
invisible which each uses in his own way. Listen to their
conversation, listen to the conversation of any multitude,
or any private party ; what strange oaths mingle with
it : God's heart, and God's eyes, and God's wounds, and
God's blood ; you cry out how profane. Doubtless, but do
you not see that the special profaneness above Protestant
oaths lies not in the words, but simply in the speaker, and
is the necessary result of that insight into the invisible
world which you have not. ... It is the consequence of
mixed multitudes all having faith ; for faith impresses the
mind with supernatural truths, as if it were sight, and the

148 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
faith of this man and the faith of that is one and the same,
and creates one and the same impression. Sin does not
obUterate the impression. Ordinarily speaking, once faith
always faith. ... It is just the reverse among Protestant
people. . . . They have no certainty of the doctrines
they profess. They do but feel that they ought to believe
them, and they try to believe them, and they nurse the
offspring of their reason as a sickly child, bringing it out
of doors only on fine days. They feel very clear and quite
satisfied while they are very still ; but if they turn about
their head, or change their posture ever so little, the vision
of the unseen like a mUage is gone from them. So they
keep the exhibition of their faith for high days and great
occasions, when it comes forth with sufficient pomp and
gravity of language and ceremonial of manner. Truths
slowly totter out with Scripture texts at their elbow as
unable to walk alone. Moreover, they know if such and
such things be true, what ought to be the voice, the tone,
the gesture, and carriage attendant upon them ; thus
reason, which is the substance of their faith, supplies the
rubrics, as I may call them, of their beha-viour. This some
of you, my brethren, call reverence ; though I am obliged
to say it is as much a mannerism, and an unpleasant
mannerism, as that of the Evangelical party. . . . They
condemn Catholics, because, however religious, they are
only unaffected, easy, and cheerful in the mention of sacred
things, and they think themselves never so real as when
they are solemn."
In his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in
England, delivered in 1851, he undertakes to vindicate in
its results the doctrine of celibacy as inculcated by the
Eoman Catholic Church. He maintains, not only that

ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT MORALITY 149
matrimony does not prevent cases of immoraUty among
Protestant ministers, but that ceUbacy does not cause them
amongst CathoUc priests. His argument on this subject is
subtle and ingenious, but, I need hardly say, totaUy opposed
to the great stream and volume of historical evidence. He
is bold enough to say —
" I have as much right to my opinion as another to his,
when I state my deUberate con-viction that there are, to
say the least, as many offences against the marriage vow
amongst Protestant ministers, as there are against the vow
of ceUbacy amongst Roman CathoUc priests" .(p. 129).
The hterature of Eoman CathoUc countries, especiaUy
of France, Spain, and Italy, is itself a sufficient argument
upon this subject as a whole. It is notorious that of the
gross and Ucentious tales of these countries a large pro
portion of the grossest and most licentious are told of
priests and monks. If some Protestant countries to-day
furnish discreditable records as to this subject, an examina
tion of their history prior to the Eeformation wiU show how
immeasurably worse things were then than now, and that
the Eeformation itseU marked the period of improvement
in this as weU as in other respects. But Ne-wman had
his brief; and the logic of his faith compeUed him to
maintain the historical paradox to which I refer, and not
only to maintain this paradox, but greater and more
outrageous paradoxes stiU.
As to the Church of Eome and her persecutions,
Newman, in the lectures from which I have last quoted,
uses the foUo-wing language : —
"In the course of 1800 years, though her chUdren
have been guUty of various excesses, though she herseU is
responsible for isolated acts of most solemn import, yet for

150 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
one deed of severity with which she can be charged there
have been a hundred of her acts repressive of the perse
cutor and protective of his victims ; she has been a
never-failing fount of humanity, equity, forbearance, and
compassion." Newman further proceeds to quote and adopt the
words of Balmez —
" We find in all parts of Europe scaffolds prepared to
punish crimes against reUgion, scenes which sadden the soul
were everywhere witnessed ; Eome is the one exception to
the rule. . . . The Popes, armed with a tribunal of in
tolerance, have scarce spUt a drop of blood ; Protestants
and philosophers have shed it in torrents" (p. 213).^
Eeferring to the reign in England of her whom he
calls " Bloody Elizabeth," he speaks of the severities
exercised in her reign without the slightest intimation of
the political grounds, which, indeed, were the only grounds,
of those punishments. On the other hand, he pleads that
the " burnings in Queen Mary's reign " were the acts of
an English party inflamed with revenge against their
enemies, and were opposed by Cardinal Pole. He takes
care not to state that the " English party " of which he
speaks included the whole body of the English Eomanists,
with the bishops at their head ; aud he conceals the fact
that the wise and tolerant Cardinal Pole, who, at the
Council of Trent, had incurred suspicion as being too
favourable to Protestants and Protestant views, and was
obliged to quit the CouncU, was also superseded in England
as legate by the Pope, his milder policy failing to meet the
papal approval. "Protestantism," he says (p. 209), "has
1 " Philosophers," who were not " Protestants," but were themselves
brought up within the pale of Romanism.

THE POPES HAVE NOT BEEN PERSECUTORS 151
ever shown itself a persecuting power. It has perse
cuted in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in Holland, in
France, in Germany, iu Geneva." "To be sure," exclaims
Archdeacon Hare, in fine irony, " did not the Dutch burn
Alva and his army in the Netherlands ? Did not the
Huguenots massacre Charles ix. and Catherine de Medici,
aud every Eoman Catholic in Paris, on the famous night of
St. Bartholomew ? " Newman must have been well aware
that for the Huguenots' massacre in which the numbers
slain amounted to 50,000, Pope Gregory xm. went in
procession to St. Mark's to return thanks to Almighty
God ; and yet he pretends that there is one spot upon
earth, namely, Eome, where reverence for liberty of con
science is a nati^'e growth, and one heart from generation
to generation in which it has always been inherent — the
heart of the Pope. " To the Pope," as Archdeacon Hare
says, " has the glorious privilege been granted of trans
mitting the sacred principle of toleration from age to age."
If there be any appearance of truth in the statement that,
in the immediate territory of Eome itself, there has been
less persecution than elsewhere, the reason is obvious
enough. All life aud liberty had been absolutely trampled
down and suppressed within that territory ; nor could
healthy independence of thought breathe in its mephitic
air. Butler, the Eoman controversialist, adjured Southey
as a Christian and a gentleman to say on which side the
balance of persecution lies : the Eoman Catholic or the
Protestant. " Put the Inquisition in the scale," was
Southey's reply, " and nothing can be found to counterpoise
it, unless heU itself be plucked up by the roots " ; and yet
Newman undertook to maintain that Eome had been a
" iiever-faUing fount of humanity, equity, forbearance, and

152 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
compassion." Such and so monstrous historical paradoxes
as these, which form a very large and leading part of
Newman's Lectures, should have been duly characterised
by Mr. Hutton, instead of which he passes them over in
silence, praising the Lectures generally as "giving the
fullest scope to his powers of orderly and beautiful
exposition, and opening out a far greater range to his
singular genius for gentle and delicate irony than anything
which he had previously written." He speaks of one of
the lectures as delivering " one of the most powerful
attacks ever opened on the Anglican theory of the Church
as independent of the State," and of another as powerfully
describing the " collapse of the Anglican theory of the
Church when applied to practice." But of such portions
of the Lectures as I have referred to he has nothing to
say, except that Newman's observations " raise as many
difficulties as they remove," and that the Lectures are
" much more powerful in attack than in defence."
I have referred to these Lectures as illustrating the
want of historical knowledge and of the historical sense
in Newman, and as showing how he has travestied history
in such daring and paradoxical misrepresentations as have
been quoted. In further illustration of the same quaUty
in his character, I may refer to a very searching analysis
of some portions of his letter to the Duke of Norfolk,
written in reply to Mr. Gladstone's " Expostulation " on
the subject of the Papal Syllabus, which forms a note in
Mr. Arthur's learned and able work on The Pope, the
Kings, and the People, and is entitled, Dr. Newman on
the Syllabus (vol. i pp. 183-194).
As to the point which we have been considering, I
may fitly quote some illustrative matter from Mr. Arthur

NEWMAN AND DOLLINGER 153
Hutton's " Eeminiscences " of Cardinal Newman in the
Expositor. " It is natural," he says, " to compare or
contrast Newman with Dollinger. . . . DoUinger had
visited Newman a few years before, and the two men
had found it hard to get on with each other. ' It was
like a dog and a fish trying to make friends,' so the latter
described it sometime later. The ultimate basis of New
man's dogmatic theology was feeling ; that of DolUnger's
was history. ... It is never easy to estimate what a
man's historical knowledge may be unless he has written
on that period which we have ourselves specially studied.
My impression is that in this respect Newman was vastly
inferior to Dollinger. Of course, there was a period which
he had made his own, that of the Arian controversy.
Doubtless, too, there were sundry episodes and sundry
personages belonging to other epochs about which he had
good information and clear and correct ideas ; but of the
earlier centuries he appeared to know but little, and not
to care much for what could be known, while he scarcely
entered upon the great field of Church history subsequent
to the days of Arianism and extending to our own times."
Newman, in fact, was not a really well-informed man
in respect of the deep and exact knowledge proper to the
character either of a student of history or a student of
theology or biblical criticism. Of biblical criticism he
knew no more than he did of philosophy or of metaphysical
science. Mr. Arthur Hutton may here again be quoted.
" Behind the Vulgate, Newman, as I knew him, never cared
to go. Of recent criticism of the Greek Testament, he
knew nothing ; and, as to the Old Testament, never having
studied Hebrew or its cognate languages, he was not in a
position to do more than follow the received Latin or

154 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
English texts. So far as I can judge, he had never so
much as heard of recent theories ; and as he knew no
German, and never had occasion to meet the English
exponents of the German and Dutch criticism, I believe
that this was really the case."
I have spoken more than once of the idealistic tone of
Newman's mind, and of the f eminUie quality of his character.
In his Apologia he paints his own portrait, and sketches his
own opinions as held in his earlier Oxford life (pp. 90—93).
From the interesting account there given of himself, we
may form an estimate of the basis of his character through
life. The description he gives is not that of a calm
philosopher, of a profound divine, of a wise and true
expositor. There is fancy, susceptibility, genius, dreamy
speculation ; but what some might take for philosophy is
at best but poetry. The exposition of his views does not
even pretend to be founded upon any basis of reason or
sober thought. From his boyhood he was at once fanciful,
sceptical, and superstitious. Never brought into contact
either with the various strife and life of the outer world,
or with the practical claims and duties of home life, the
youth grew up to be a cloistered enthusiast, a student, a
scholar, though by no means in his scholarship exact or
profound, a controversialist with many accomplishments,
with such faculties as are the instruments of private dis
cussion and personal persuasion most highly cultured, most
fully developed, but without that steadfast, self-suppressing
devotion to the study of history for its own sake as the
record of humanity, to the study of nature and science for
their own sake as the revelation of the God of the universe,
and above all to the study of the word of God in its own
simplicity as the revelation of the God of holiness and love.

ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER 155
without which speculation cannot but degenerate into fancy,
controversy into word-play, and theology into traditional
error and priestly invention.
Later on, in the same record of his history (pp.
111-118), we have a picture of himself which is certauily
not attractive, which exhibits a combination of intellectual
and hierarchical pride and ambition from which it was not
likely that the fruits of truth and peace would grow. He
is depicted by his own hand as full of an overweening
self-confidence, as a sort of hierarchical champion, proud of
his Church . and his Orders, and prouder still of his logic,
and in this spirit conceiting himself to be the destined
leader of a second and a better and greater Eeformation.
He speaks of his " fierceness " and of his " sport." He took
Froude for his prompter, of whom he says that " he delighted
in the notion of a hierarchical system of sacerdotal power
and of full ecclesiastical liberty" (p. 85). I have referred
to this before ; but it is necessary to refer to it here again
in attempting to give a general and comprehensive estimate
of his character. It was through the force of sympathetic
prepossession, not of reason or strict inquiry, that Newman
became what he was from point to point, changing from
Calvinism to High Anglicanism, and so onward till he
joined the Eoman Church. With Newman, as with people
of a commoner sort, feelings, prepossessions, prejudices,
determined the creed ; his logic was ever an afterthought
and a mere instrument of defence or persuasion. In this
as in so many other respects Newman's was, I must be
allowed again to repeat, a characteristically feminine mind,
poetic, impressible, receptive, and reproductive, rather than
original and commanding ; and with the feminine mind was
joined a feminine temperament.

156 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
Mr. Arthur Hutton, in his " Eeminiscences," confirms
and illustrates this view of Newman's character. He
speaks of him in his old age as a venerable man,
" singularly winning, courteous, and considerate, very
feminine in his affection, yet withal very dignified and
fitted to command respect " ; adding that he was by his
temperament unfitted to be a ruler, or, at all events, that
he made no attempt to rule. With this statement may
be combined the passage I am about to quote —
" One of his short poems, ' The Married and the Single,'
written in 1834, expresses very clearly the view of the
relation between the two sexes to which he held con
sistently throughout his Ufe. It is the view of the
Catholic Church, which makes the celibate state essentially
the higher one for all. The outcome of this view is to
degrade the idea of all love between man and woman that
is more than friendship : and it was remarked to me of
Newman, by one who had known him long and well, that
he never could distinguish between such love and lust.
. . . On the whole, he held the sex in something Uke
contempt. ' You know I think them great liars,' he once
said to me, smUing ; and seemed shocked at his own
boldness." What has now been brought forward justifies fully,
as I think, the statement made in the early part of this
chapter, to the effect that Newman was wanting in virUity ;
as indeed were most of the group of Anglican clergymen
with whom he was closely identified.
In his later years Newman was a venerable and
interesting figure, but Mr. Arthur Hutton's "Eeminis
cences," the genuine and authentic character of which
impresses one more strongly the more they are studied.

NEWMAN AT THE ORATORY — HIS LAST YEARS 157
show that his moods were not aU or always attractive.
His Protestant visitors, such as Dean Church, Canon
Liddon, or Lord Coleridge, were sure to be well and even
affectionately received, and would carry away a delightful
impression of his brightness and affabUity. It was other
wise when his visitors were Roman CathoUcs. It was
often with difficulty that even distinguished ecclesiastics
from other countries could -obtain access to him; and to
such visitors he had Uttle to say, and was seldom otherwise
than reserved. The visits, we are told, of his own bishop
he hardly affected to treat otherwise than as a bore.
Another very peculiar point relating to his Sunday
social habits is mentioned by Mr. Hutton. The Oratory
School at Birmmgham stands in the midst of residential
houses. In spite of remonstrances from Protestant
neighbours he supported the boys of the Oratory School
in playing cricket and other games on Sunday after
noons ; while at the same time within the house the
recreation room was made merry with the sounds of
violins and other instruments, he himself never failing to
be present when any concerted music that interested
him was to be performed. With ascetic severity,
indeed, he seems to have had, as an Oratorian, very
Uttle, if any, sympathy. A sort of " indolence " appears
to have been one of his not infrequent characteristics.
He was diligent, however, in reading his Times daUy,
following with keen curiosity pubUc affairs.'^ He found
^ From the Short Life of the Cardinal, by his admiring friend and
co-religionist, J. S. Fletcher, we learn that he was also a diligent novel
reader, and that the library in his country retreat (Rednal), on the
slope of the Lickey Hill, contained a choice collection of the best
English modern novels.

158 THE MASTER SPIRIT OF THE MOVEMENT
congenial recreation and employment in editing Latin
plays for the Oratory boys to act, and in taking the
part of theatrical manager for all the details of the
acting, and of the costumes and scenery. He studied
with close attention the whole of the intricate cere
monial connected with his appearance as Cardinal at
all functions whatever. In these things he found inte
resting occupation and hearty pleasure. He corresponded
also with some chosen friends. But to the weighter
matters of biblical or theological study he seems to
have given no attention. Nor do social or philanthropic
subjects, even those closely touching the most pressing
questions of humanity, seem to have in the least commanded
his attention. In this respect, as in some others, he was
a striking contrast to his brother Cardinal, Manning.
Newman, in his Apologia, undoubtedly 'vindicated his
good faith and personal honour ; indeed, his secession to
the Church of Rome, considering the potent motives which
might have bound him to the Church of England, is itself
an evidence of his conscientiousness, however ill-lighted or
perverted his conscience might sometimes have been.
Especially, when placed in contrast with the conduct of
others as essentially Romanising as himself, who remained
within the Anglican pale, Newman's conduct rises in our
estimation. But yet his vindication of his good faith was
effected at the expense of his intellectual reputation. The
Apologia, perfectly written as it is, is nevertheless a
humUiating tissue of disclosures. It reveals an acute,
subtle, sceptical intellect, penned up within narrow limits,
and exercising its faculties in a dim and darkling sphere,
groping its way from premiss to consequence, often from
fallacy to fallacy, and only discerning the error of the

HIS GOOD FAITH AND PERSONAL HONOUR 159
latest fallacy through which it has passed in order to
plunge into a new, subtler, deeper, and more perilous
error, untU at last, utterly wearied out, it sinks down self-
blinded, to find its rest henceforth within the arms of
Popish despotism and superstition.
He has gone from his " haven of rest " in the Oratory
to his eternal rest. Every heart will sympathise with the
sentiment of his Church's benediction — Requiescat in pace.
Most gladly would I have been silent as to his errors, as I
look back from his tomb over the course of his life. But
when by both Catholics and, however inconsistently, by
Anglo-Catholics — and by mere men of the world also —
lessons are drawn from his life in favour of Romanism or
of Romanising tendencies, and the whole effect of the
current exaggerations and misstatements is to assist the
great and terrible work of doctrinal corruption and
ecclesiastical usurpation which is spreading over England,
I have felt that it is the time not " to be sUent," but " to
speak.''

CHAPTER VI,
Ward's Life as a Roman Catholic Theologian and
Philosopher.!
1\fl"R. WILFRID WARD'S first volume on his father's
-'-'-*- remarkable history closed with the reception of
W. G. Ward into the Eoman Catholic communion. The
volume which forms the subject of this chapter takes up
the biographical story where the first volume left it, and
thenceforward opens out to view phase after phase of the
" Catholic Eevival," not only as it has taken form in
England, but as it lias developed on the Continent, using
the course of Ward's life, after his secession to Eome, as tho
line of movement from which successive views are given
of the whole course and field of modern Eomanist advance.
If Mr. Wilfrid Ward's first volume was exceedingly
interesting and valuable, the second appears to us scarcely
less so, though in a different way. The first greatly helped
towards completing our knowledge of the Oxford Movement,
and our understanding of the character and ascendancy of
its chief leader, who sat at the centre, and, when he ceased to
guide by articulate counsel, did not cease to influence those
who had been of his intimate companionship. But the second
1 William George JVard and the Catholic Revival. By Wilfrid Ward,
author of IVilliam (Ic.orge Ward and the Oxford Movem,ent,. Macmillan
&Co.
100

ENGLISH ROMANISM FIFTY YEARS AGO i6i
volume introduces us to spheres hitherto almost utterly
unkno-wn, even to cultivated Englishmen, although some
have had a dim inkUng of movements going on there,
coupled with a profound and curious interest in what, to
nearly aU people, were regions of mystery. Led by Mr.
Wilfrid Ward, -with his perfect EngUsh information and
insight, and at the same time his famUiar knowledge both of
English and continental Eomanism, to the inner history of
which he seems to have command of aU the keys, we are
introduced, in succession, to a range of -views of extra
ordinary interest. The first scenes are in England. From
the quiet, secluded, unambitious, uiUnteUectual old-fashioned
EngUsh CathoUcism of St. Edmund's CoUege, Ware, —
where the inmates, and the famiUes which frequented and
sustained the coUege, and the colony -with which it was
connected, are described as a gens lucifuga, — the steps are
traced by which the regime of Bishop Challoner and Bishop
Griffiths, under whose sway the comparatively mUd Eoman
CathoUc principles of Alban Butler formed the recognised
standard of English orthodoxy, passed into the much loftier
dispensation of Cardinal Wiseman, with which was associated
the revival in England of the organised Eoman CathoUc
hierarchy and the corresponding " Papal claims"; and after
wards into the yet more fuUy developed CathoUcism, so
speciously and seductively presented, so cleverly economised,
so -wioningly and effectively administered by Cardinal Man
ning. At a later point in the volume, the origin and progress
of the great " CathoUc Eevival," which, during the larger
part of the century now closing, has been developing on the
Continent, are unfolded, from the first faint stirrings and
timid movements during the period of the great Napoleon
onward, from point to point, tUl now, when that revival has

i62 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
taken a wide and powerful hold of continental Catholicism,
especially in the Ehine provinces of Germany, and stUl
more in France, in which country Eomanism was, perhaps,
never so livingly organised or so spirituaUy powerful
as it is to-day. These are matters which, known more
or less to careful and candid inquirers and students for
twenty years past, have now in this authentic volume
found, for the first time, in outline, an orderly and
historical record in our own language. It is of the
utmost importance that the truth as to such questions
should be understood by evangeUcal Protestants, who
should always remember that one part of the power of the
" CathoUc Eevival " results from the fact that evangeUcal
truths have, so to speak, filtered from the Eeformed
Churches into the old hierarchical communities, and espe
cially that the attitude of Eomanism in regard to the Bible
has, however slowly and with whatever caution and reluct
ance, to a considerable extent been modified, so that Bible
reading and preaching from the Scriptures prevail among
Eoman Catholic communities more widely than many
Protestants suppose. In the social and civil commerce,
direct and indirect, of the nations and of the various
Churches, there is more of occult mutual sympathy, more of
mutual influence, more participation in common tendencies
and movements, for good as well as for evU, than is generally
recognised. The Bible Society, also, it must never be
forgotten, has been perpetually, and over the whole breadth
of the Continent, for fifty years past, but especially in
Germany and France, diffusing the knowledge of the
Scriptures among CathoUc as well as Protestant populations.
Another little-known region into which, following the
line of his father's history, Mr. Wilfrid Ward introduces his

THE LAST FORTY YEARS OF WARD'S LIFE 163
readers, is the Metaphysical Society of London, a society
founded in 1861 by Mr. James Knowles, afterwards and at
present editor of the Nineteenth Century, and which Mr.
Ward describes as " an attempt to form a microcosm of the
English intellectual world," a society where the representa
tives of all forms and fashions of speculative thought met
on the ground of frank and friendly discussion, including
such opposites as Ward and Mill, Stirling and Huxley,
a society of which Ward at one time was president.
The chapter on the " Metaphysical Society " is one of the
freshest and most interesting in the book, and is fitly
followed by a chapter on " The Agnostic Controversy," in
which the course of the very important controversy between
Ward and MUl is described.
On these wide and momentous subjects, however, it would
be beside the purpose of this volume for me to enter at
any length. The personality and experiences of Ward him
self, as a refugee from scepticism and Protestantism to the
coverts of Eomanism, are of profound and unique interest,
and, for evangelical Protestants, possess an instructiveness all
their own. He was a man altogether apart from other men,
and combined in himself seeming contradictions. I do not
think that the critics, even the best informed critics, of the
son's volume have succeeded in bringing distinctly into
view the peculiarities of Ward as faithfully but modestly
and gently indicated in his son's biography, or in exhibiting,
as a living whole, a character which, in its special combina
tion of strong qualities and of weaknesses, of virtues and
faults, is without parallel. In an earlier chapter an
attempt was made, from the materials afforded by the first
volume of the biography, so far as these were available, to
make a sketch of the man himself. The second volume.

i64 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
however, gives much fuller information, and enables
us to gain a larger and more lifeUke view of WUliam
George Ward as he fulfilled his course durmg the
last forty years of his life, and to gather some, at
least, of the striking lessons taught by his unique
history. It may seem strange to describe as a fanatic a man
who could meet in frank social and intellectual intercourse
men of all schools of thought, including agnostics aud
unbelievers, — one who, being a CathoUc, even corresponded
on friendly terms with MUl and Bain, one who for a time
was president of the Metaphysical Society. Yet a fanatic
he was, albeit a personally tolerant fanatic ; and without
bearing this in mind it is almost impossible to understand
his conduct or his course, his private habits or contro
versial life. He was a Papal fanatic, with all the onesided
zeal and enthusiasm of a pervert and neophyte who has
looked only on one side of the field of a great controversy.
I may venture to add, 'viewing the controversy in its whole
breadth and complexity, that he was a fanatic, because in
regard to a great part of what is regarded as general culture
he was either altogether ignorant, or was at best a man of
only very shallow knowledge or information. This was shown
in his attitude in the InfalUbiUty controversy, in which he
took the most extreme position possible, such as it would
have been thought only an ignorant monkish devotee or
a Spanish bigot could have taken. He was intoxicated
with the doctrine of Papal InfalUbiUty, and enamoured of
Papal Bulls and decrees, so that he said, of course more or
less jocosely, but yet as conveying an intimation of his
serious 'views, that he should enjoy his breakfast the more
if, morning by morning, he had a fresh Bull always laid

AN ULTRAMONTANE IDEALIST 165
on the table.'' This spirit linked him with Veuillot in
opposition to Dupanloup, and produced a long estrangement
from Newman. No man with a scholarly tincture of
historical knowledge, with anything of the spirit of
historical criticism, could possibly have taken such an
extreme position. Speaking of the difference between
Newman and Ward, Mr. Wilfrid Ward says : " He (New
man) could not forget the human elements which affected
policy, though they could not touch the essence of doctrine.
Saints have been called on to rebuke Popes, though Popes
can define doctrine infallibly and saints cannot. Ward's
sanguine trust appeared to be based on an ideal of guidance
from on high, which, however desirable, had not been m
fact vouchsafed" (p. 282).^ That is to say. Ward dwelt
in the world of abstractions, uninstructed by the realities
of history. We have in this a special illustration of the
ill - balanced character of his mind. Of history, as was
shown in a former chapter, he knew nothing, and did not
care to know anything ; for what was concrete he had no
faculty. Of the limitation of his knowledge and faculties as
to concrete facts, a curious iUustration is given in this volume.
Father Vaughan, now Cardinal Vaughan, was visiting
Ward at Old Hall, where he lived, being at the time
professor at St. Edmund's Catholic College. It was Father

1 His words were : " I should like a new Papal Bull every morning
with my Time& at breakfast " (p. 14).
^ In another place the biographer says : " Ward's attitude was far
simpler (than Newman's). The narrow field in which his intellect
moved so actively did not include many of the problems which per
plexed Newman ; and thus, while the latter had very much to consider
before he could interpret the decrees to his satisfaction, the former
applied them without difficulty in their simplest and most obvious
sense, and rejoiced in them as fresh light without any shadow."

i66 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
Vaughan's first visit to Ward. " What fiiie beech trees,"
Father Vaughan remarked, as they turned into an avenue.
The reply to this not very pregnant observation startled him.
"Wonderful man!" exclaimed Ward. His visitor waited
for an explanation. " What a many-sided man you are,"
pursued Ward ; " I knew that you were a dogmatic theo
logian and an ascetic theologian ; and now I find that you
are acquainted with all the minutice of botany." " The
Vice-President" (Father Vaughan) adds the biographer,
" was thoroughly puzzled ; and it took him some Uttle
time to realise that to his new acquaintance the difference
between a beech and an oak was one of those mysterious
truths which, although undoubted, nevertheless brought
home to him painfully and sadly the limitation of his
faculties " (p. 48).
Ward certainly was not a " many-sided man " ; his
inteUect seems to have been developed only on one side.
He may almost be said to have been intellectually a
monster ; his faculties for abstract thought were abnorm
ally developed, while nearly all his other powers were
undeveloped. Except his musical faculty, and his taste for
fiction and burlesque and spectacular plays — not for the
Shakspearian, the historical, or in any sense the classical
drama — all else on the intellectual side of his nature seems
to have been strangely stunted. He was like some mis
shapen men, a combination of giant and dwarf, half
Hercules, half cripple. That this arose in some measure
from his own obstinate wilfulness from childhood upwards,
rather than from any natural incapacity, leaves the actual
result the same.
Hence his rapid and natural passage into Popery, so
direct and decisive, and in such contrast with that of

THEISM AND POPERY 167
Newman, who, though weak, as he himself confessed,
in his historical grasp and range, was vastly better in
formed than Ward, and possessed a faculty of historical
imagination which, though not duly disciplined or informed,
and consequently predisposed to illusion, was yet vivid and
powerful. Ward's faith in Popery was founded on abstract
argument, and had no respect whatever for any facts of
history, either ancient or modern. Having, by meta
physical and logical reasoning, established the existence
of God and Divine Providence, he deduced thence the
principles of Divine Eevelation, Divine Eedemption,
Divine Guidance for God's people, one Divine Sa-viour,
one Holy Church, infallibly taught and led, and one
human Head of the Church, representing its Divine-
Human Head, and infallibly guided into all spiritual
truth as such guidance came to be needed. Given the
Godhead, the Papal infallibiUty for Ward followed by
logical and necessary sequence. His one fundamental,
and his only grand, controversy was the theistic con
troversy. This, with its necessary metaphysical correlates,
among which the law of causation and the question of the
liberty of the will held a central place, was the great
argument of his life. Here he felt that he could hold
his ground against whatever adversaries. He had fought
and conquered his own doubts, and he found nothing really
and radically new in the doubts of others. He enjoyed
this conflict, because the more victories he won over others
the more he strengthened his personal position. His own
doubts were publicly slain when he overthrew such
antagonists as Bain and Mill, and a wide audience "assisted"
as witnesses at their overthrow. These were "foemen
worthy of his steel." He understood and respected their

i68 WARD, AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
doubts and demurs ; the Uke doubts had at one time or
other arrested him. To prove himself more than a match
for the greatest champions that represented the enemy's
side in his own internal confiicts, was to gain attestation to
the reality of his victories over the temptations which had
darkened his own spirit. He thus kept himself in heart,
and fortified his own faith and confidence in that which for
him was the one point in question ; he secured his hold on
the one premiss, on which, in his -view, the whole argument
on behalf of the Christian faith hinged. Nor did it distress
him, or ruffle his pleasant and almost cordial relations with
his antagonists, that they were defending the citadel of
infidelity from which all moral evil and eternal misery
naturally flowed. He made great use, for the purpose
of charitable hope, of the allowance made by Eoman
Catholic theologians for " invincible ignorance," especiaUy
in the case of men whom he regarded as honourable and
sincere, though misguided ; and, through his refutation of
them, he trusted that the writings of these leaders of
unbehef would prove greatly helpful to the final victory of
di-vine truth.
An amusing instance is given of the manner in which
he would humorously fall back on the plea of " invincible
ignorance " on behalf of his friends — in the instance now
to be given, not of an unbelieving, but of an Anglican
friend. " I need not say," says Dean Goulburn, in a paper of
reminiscences, " that all the walks I had with him became,
U they did not start by being, argumentative. Argument
was to him what whist is to many — one of his most
favourite pastimes. . . . Once, when I had expressed sur
prise to him that seriously-minded Eoman Catholics could,

HIS FAITH AND ITS GROUNDS 169
in view of the dogma Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, have any
comfort or happiness in thinking of theU Protestant friends,
he expounded to me the theory of ' in-vincible ignorance,' as
excusing a large amount of heresy, and placing heretics
who have erred under its infiuence, within the pale of
salvation. 'And I am quite sure, my dear Goulburn,' he
added, with the greatest earnestness and emphasis, ' that
your ignorance is most iu'vincible ' " (p. 77).
A direct consequence of the peculiarity in his intel
lectual character of which I have been speaking was, that
his faith in Christianity seemed to derive little or no
support or brightness, and his soul no conscious comfort,
from the sense of life and reality, from the felt " grace and
truth," which evangelical and experimental Christians, who
are also close and loving students of Scripture, derive from
their Bible readings, and especially from the study of
our Lord's Ufe in the Gospels. To not a few Christians
the revelation of Jesus Christ contained in the Scriptures
is itseU the most living and convincing evidence of the
truth and reaUty of the gospel revelation. There is not
a trace, not a hint, throughout the two volumes of
Ward's Life of any such use or comfort of the Scrip
tures in his case. His faith in Christ seems to have
rested solely on high d priori grounds. He held it fast
most firmly when he was full of the sense and force of
abstract argument. But, if he ceased to feel the argu
mentative compulsion, his faith suffered, or was tending to
suffer, occultation. Anything like the tranquU enjoyment
of the sense of the divme reaUty of the gospel history, as
history, as history of transcendent self-evidencing power,
as history so full of divine light and power and consolation,
that out of its fulness, as from the fulness of the Incarnate

I70 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
Word Himself, believing students feel themselves to be
receiving into their souls both truth and grace, — any such
enjoyment as this appears to have been a thing unknown
to Ward. His religion was nothing if not strenuous ;
his faith faltered when it ceased to be argumentative and
more or less combatant. The -views which this volume
affords of his pecuUarities, and his daUy course of life and
working, illustrate and confirm the view of his character
I have now given, as will be seen from the selection of
extracts which I am about to cite, all taken from one
chapter — that on his " Closing Years."
Tennyson was Ward's next neighbour in the Isle of
Wight, where his large landed property was situated, and
where, at Weston Manor, he chiefly resided during the
later years of his life. His biographer points some of the
contrasts between the two men —
" Tennyson's love of trees, and his love of all Nature,
were a part of the intensely sensitive perceptions and
concrete mind of the poet, in marked contrast to Ward's
imperfect observation of the concrete and love of the
abstract and mathematical. . . . Minute beauty did not
appeal to him, because he could not perceive it at aU. He
could not distinguish one tree or flower from another. A
bird was an object of vaguest knowledge to him. It was
primarily a thing which made a noise and kept him
awake. Trees shut out the fresh air, shut out the grand
views which he loved, however little he marked their^
details" (pp. 396, 397).
" His daily routine was precise and methodical. Eising
at half-past six, he went to chapel at seven for meditation
or mass. The number of his meditation books, and the
numerous pencU references in them, show how systematic

DAILY ROUTINE OF LIFE 171
a work this was with him. He breakfasted at eight in his
study, reading at the same time the evening paper of the
previous day. He went to chapel again at nine. Then he
read and answered his letters — nearly always answering
by return of post. Then came the serious work of the
day — the philosophical essay on which he was engaged, or
the address to the Metaphysical Society, or the theological
controversy, or the reading necessary for any of these
works. The other fixed items in his programme were a
walk and a solitary luncheon in his study at one o'clock, a
drive at two, and then another walk. He generaUy came
to the drawing-room for five o'clock tea, and dined with
his family at half-past seven. . . .
" After a year spent at the Gregorian University in
Eome (in 1878), I arrive in the afternoon, and the message
comes that I am to go into his study at 4.30. I appear,
as I think, at the appointed time, and, after cordial greet
ings, he points to the clock and observes that I am whole
two minutes late. The talk with me is to last a quarter
of an hour. He is using his dumb-bells, which have taken
the place of the riding of a former date. He does not
pause in his gymnastic exercises, but begins at once a con
versation about Eome. The professors at the CoUegio
Eomano are discussed. The length of the course and the
nature of the work are elicited with great rapidity. . . ,
" The quarter of an hour is passed before the subject
has been pursued far ; the dumb-bells are put down, and
he returns to his study table, on which lie in order five
books, each with a marker in it. One of them is Father
Kleutgen's work. La Philosophic Scolastique ; another, a
volume of Newman's Parochial Sermons ; a third, Blanche's
Reminiscences ; a fourth, Barchester Towers ; the fifth, Sar-

172 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
dou's comedy, ' Les Vieux Gardens.' ' My working powers
are getting so uncertain,' he explains, as he takes up
Planche's Reminiscences, ' that I find I have five different
states of head, and I keep a book for each. Kleutgen is
for my best hours in the morning, Newman comes next,
then Planch(5, and then Trollope ; and, when my head is
good for nothing, I read a French play.' . . .
" We meet at a punctual half-past seven dinner. ' When
you left me,' he begins, ' I read a great deal of Planch^.
Some of the anecdotes are delightful.' . . .
" Dinner can scarcely pass without some reference to
Oxford and Newman, a subject which ever arouses deep
feeling. ' Was there ever anything in the world like New
man's influence on us ? ' he repeats for the hundredth time.
And the scene at Littlemore during the farewell sermon
on the ' Parting Friends,' often described before, is told
with even fresh pathos. . . .
" After dinner he retires early to his study, and a
message, half an hour later, summons me for further con
versation. I find him in high good humour, buried in a
French play, the third he has read in the course of the
day. ' This is a delightful play,' he explains ; ' truly
French. The height of romance and self-devotion, as long
as it can be combined with breaking a large proportion of
the Ten Commandments.' . . .
" He points to a large cupboard full of French plays.
' I read these things so fast now,' he explains, ' that I some
times get through six in an evening — being fit for nothing
better ; — that is, I read as much as I want to, and master
the plot. I therefore wrote to Stewart to send me every
French play that has ever been written. I am leaving
them to you in my wUL'

HIS MANIA FOR THE SENSATIONAL DRAMA 173
"The rest of the conversation is on things dramatic.
The autumn opera season, and the prospect of Mr. and
Mrs. Bancroft moving from the Prince of Wales Theatre
to the Haymarket especially interest him" (pp. 382-387).
The foregoing extracts, nearly all taken from an account
which occupies several pages of the son's intercourse with
the father, during one day, furnish a Uvely picture of some
of Ward's peculiarities, and especially his mania for the
sensational drama, and, in particular, for French plays,
notwithstanding their impiety and nastiness. His son,
however, informs us that he did not inherit the legacy of
French plays which his father had led him to expect.
The vast collection was kept till within a year of Ward's
death, when he resolved to burn them. To complete the
-view of Ward's character, I must add some other extracts —
" No picture of Mr. Ward at this time would give him
' in his habit as he lived ' without reference to two phases
of his thought and conversation which were at opposite
poles — the one his deep sense of the melancholy aspect of
life, the other the relief he found in talking elaborate and
fantastic nonsense. His sense of the amount of unhappi-
ness in the world was constant ; and, although his faith
and religious habits became, he said, more and more sup
porting as life went on, he never got rid of the habitual
trial to which he was subject from the thought of the more
terrible side of religion, and the difficulties which beset
' the probation of many of our fellow-creatures.' . . .
" The strain of an overwrought mind would bring a
reaction, and he used sometimes to take refuge in talking
utter nonsense for an hour at a time. It was often
brought forth, however, with the deepest mock seriousness.
Nonsense was talked with such intense gravity and such

174 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
elaborate logical sequence, that a stranger would think he
must have missed the drift of his words."
The biographer proceeds to give examples of his
father's nonsense — the most laboured, cold-blooded, and
extraordinary nonsense ever heard, I suppose, from the lips
of a sane philosopher, or, indeed, a sober sensible man of
any kind. One trick of wearisome absurdity centred round
the name of a Mrs. Bright, of Trentham, and was, with
minor variations, repeated again and again. He had been
to Stoke to see his daughter at the Dominican Con
vent, and in reference to this journey he engaged in some
interesting discussions with Father Dalgairns as to the
monastic system. Diverging, in grave continuity of obser
vation, from this subject, he went on to say that " the most
remarkable thing about the village of Trentham is that it
is not the birthplace of Jeremy Bentham." The company
protested against such nonsense ; but he proceeded : " You
don't believe me. I assure you it is so. I made inquiries
and there is no doubt whatever about it." Further protests
were useless ; and he went on with his unaccountable
fooUng, which was as devoid of humour or amusingness as
of reasonableness or any sort of meaning. " I found out
more than this,'' he continued, and went on to say that
" a dear old landlady, a Mrs. Bright," with whom he was
staying at a pretty old-fashioned inn, and who was some
eighty years old, and knew all the local history, had told
him that her inn had originally been a private house ; and
there seemed to him to be no doubt that that was the
identical house in which Bentham was not born; adding
that he beUeved his room was the very room, though that
point was uncertain, as it rested only on a " vague tradi
tion." And so for half an hour he held on his way. This

CONTRASTED PHASES OF CHARACTER

175

particular joke frequently came up again, suddenly reap
pearing in a new form. After nearly a year's interval,
however, during which his family had heard nothing of it, and
had begun to hope they would never hear it again, he asked
one day, " Where do you think I went last week ? " His son
looked up, expecting to hear of some new opera. But the
answer came, " To see our old friend, Mrs. Bright." His
son had forgotten the name, and what belonged to it.
" Don't you remember ? " said Ward. " At Trentham."
Vainly his family tried to burke the story. Ward went
on with his nonsense. " Yes, but you don't know what a
curious visit it was. By a most singular coincidence I was
there on the 26th of July. Now the 26th of July is the
anniversary of the very day on which Jeremy Bentham
wasn't born." After further vain remonstrance, he proceeded
with a touch of sad seriousness : " The world does not for
get as easily as one is apt to think. Jeremy Bentham was
a great man. You have no idea of the number of people,
and the kind of people, who didn't come in honour of the
occasion. The Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of York,
the Bishop of London, the Dean of Westminster, and a
considerable number of minor clergy — I daresay upwards
of a hundred — didn't come. It was very remarkable."
It is hard to know what to make of this elaborate
and empty nonsense-making, which cannot be construed
into satire,, and has in it no real touch of fun or humour,
although its continuous solemnity of unaccountable absurdity
did at length, in some cases, provoke laughter from strangers.
To his family such exhibitions were a painful annoyance,
and they .would not laugh, that they might not encourage
him in his eccentric habit. The habit, however, seems in
later life to have become a characteristic of his free family

176 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
intercourse ; it is a feature which his filial biographer
thought it necessary to describe at length, and it
cannot properly be omitted in a picture of him as he was.
That he indulged in such fooling when he visited, as he
not seldom did, his great neighbour Tennyson, who wrote
for him a noble epitaph in a few striking lines, would seem
to be impossible.
Mr. Wilfrid Ward, as we have seen, explains this
pecuUarity as a reaction from the strain of an overwrought
mind, and after giving nearly two pages to an account of
it, he recurs very soon to the same subject of his pessimism
and his melancholy, in connection with some reminiscences
furnished by Father Haythornthwaite, Ward's chaplain. The
chaplain relates, that after a dinner-party, at which Ward
had been the life of the company, he would be found in his
study in a state of brooding melancholy, or even in tears.
" Pessimistic 'views and the remembrance of death coloured
all his thought. ' I don't think,' he said, ' the thought of
death is absent from my mind for five minutes in the day.'
Truly," continues Father Haythornthwaite, " the sa'ving
uses of Christianity were never so apparent as they were
in his case. The sense of God's presence in which he
lived, and the graveness of his under-life, made aU life a
serious and a deeply interesting business."
Surely this life, so revealed to us, in all its phases and
with contrasts so violent, is a unique mystery. Beading
the last passages quoted, we feel them to jar strangely as
we think of the French plays, and of other matters in this
biography. For many years Ward was accustomed, during
some portion of the year, to exchange his Isle of Wight home
at Freshwater for Hampstead. Of all the advantages and
delights of Hampstead — beyond its salubrity, beyond the

WARD AND FABER 177
society of such men as E. H. Hutton, beyond everything
else — " above all," he rated this one advantage, that he
" could go every night to the play or opera." This, how
ever, he regarded as necessary to his health. To his sons
he wrote, in 1879, "the Haymarket is the region whence
salvation cometh. Hampstead is only the sine qua non.
Long live Captain Armit, of whom, however, you have
probably never heard." In a footnote his son explains
that Captain Armit was " one of the dramatis personce of
some play.''
An amusing story told by his son in his account of
the familiar intercourse between Ward and Father F. W.
Faber, the poet (known also as Dr. Faber, as he received
the diploma of Doctor in Philosophy from Pio Nono at
the same time as Ward), illustrates rather 'vividly the
pecuUarities of Ward on the side to which I have been
referring. The anecdote relates to the period when, having
lately left St. Edmund's College, he was often at the
Oratory in London, in the company of his spiritual
director. Father Faber, and the other Fathers of the
Oratory. It was in 1858 or thereabouts. A discussion
was in full course between Ward and Faber on Grace and
Predestination, Faber taking the Thomist -view. Ward sup
porting the less rigorous opinion of Alfonso Liguori.
" Definitions, citations from the great scholastics, are
quoted with the exact memory and knowledge of men
whose lives are absorbed in the study of such authorities."
Ward, in particular, is in a white heat, swaying to and fro
as he argues with intense earnestness. In the -violence
of his bodily movements, a pamphlet falls from his pocket.
One of the Fathers present picks it up, and, mechanically
opening it, instead of the title De Actibus Humanis, or

178 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
some such title, is startled to read, " Benefit of Mr. Buck-
stone. The celebrated comedian will appear in his original
character of Box, in ' Box and Cox,' " and so forth. The
argument goes on, but the audience becomes distracted.
The playbill, after having circulated, finds its way back to
its owner. Ward drops the discussion and joins in the
laughter. Risu tabidcc solvuntur."
Faber, whose saintliness no one will dispute who is
familiar with his life and writings, especially his hymns,
was Ward's " Spiritual Director " for a good many years after
this time. He was sympathetic and indulgent in his
treatment of Ward. Nothing can be more unlike the
" sobriety " of the Anglican Church as characterised by
Keble, than the ecstasies and spiritual excitement of the
Eoman Catholic Church. Faber and Ward, we are told,
" seldom meet without some electric shock occurring in the
course of conversation." " Shall I go into retreat ? " Ward
asked one day, when he felt that the absorbing interest of
his intellectual work needed some counteracting spiritual
influence. " A retreat ! " exclaimed Faber. " It would be
enough to send you to heU. Go to the play as often as
you can, but don't dream of a retreat." So it was. Ward
was always at an intense strain, but could not endure any
considerable interval of reUgious solitude and meditation.
He gave two or three brief spaces in a day to a sort of
ordered, half-mechanical, half-active meditative exercise on
religion ; but natural, unrestrained, peaceful, and happy
spiritual converse with God and divine things was no part
of his religious life. When strenuous reUgious work, by way
of argument or of high and intense text-book meditation,
of mass, or other ritual, or of prescribed activities of teach
ing or of charitable works, did not occupy him, he had no

HIS CHARACTER A UNIQUE STUDY 179
peace, and his escape from collapse or pessimistic misery
was found in the theatre, or in fiction, especially French
plays. Of literary culture, of the enjoyment of general read
ing. Ward seems to have known very little. He " dearly
loved a parson," we are told, and liked much to have
a "rector" next to him at dinner. Perhaps, on that
account, he seems to have appreciated TroUope's novels.
But Barchester Towers and " Trollope " are the only words
in the volume that remind us of general literature,
Walter Scott is never referred to. For poetry. Ward
professed as complete distaste as for history. Tennyson
was his next neighbour in the Isle of Wight, and was
his friend, but Ward seems never to have read the poet.
In Memoriam he declared himself unable to understand.
Throughout all his writings we catch not the most distant
or general allusion to the " world of letters " — to general
literature, or to any favourite authors belonging to that
world. The region of abstractions — the world of abstract
thought — was his home. If he left it, it was for the
strangely contrasted world of comic, sensational, or musical
dramatic entertainments. Such was the man ; and his
character and life afford a unique study ; he was altogether
sui generis — a specimen ap)art. Yet he was a profound
reasoner ; he has rendered signal service to his generation ;
he was the friend of E. H. Hutton ; the friendly corre
spondent, as well as redoubtable antagonist, of Mill ; the
champion of Theism, free will, and the spiritual world ; the
intimate friend of the saintly Faber ; and the valued co
worker of three great Catholic Signori — Wiseman, Manning,
and Vaughan.
The way in which, notwithstanding his singularities

i8o WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
and his disadvantages as " a convert and a married man,"
he surmounted prejudice and opposition at St. Edmund's
College, where he was first Professor of Philosophy, and
afterwards Teacher of Theology, is exceedingly remarkable.
From his intense earnestness, and from his spirit and
special aims as a teacher, evangelical professors and
teachers may have something to learn. Father Lescher,
of Netting HUl, who was one of his pupils, describes his
lecturing in some striking paragraphs, part of which I
must quote —
"What chiefiy gained our hearts was his wonderful
earnestness. He carried us away with him, and often we
came out of his lecture as if we had been to a retreat
sermon. . . . His great love of the poor also, and his
extreme desire that we should carry to them the real sub
stantial food of the gospel, of doctrinal truth, won the love
of all of us. He got quite moved to tears, whilst, with
uplifted face to heaven, he dwelt on their unfair position ;
the beautiful truths of the Church often unknown to
them, and nothing to gratify their propensions but sin.
" Coming from his lectures was like coming from the
lectures of St. Thomas, whose heart burned with what he
taught. I shall never forget the way in which he brought
before us strongly the presence of God amongst us, and the
ingratitude of forgetting One who, though our greatest
benefactor, stood like a forgotten friend in a corner of the
room. It was like an electric shock'' . . . (pp. 36, 37).
I must add a few sentences taken from his final
address to his students when he resigned his professorship
and left St. Edmund's College, where, as a married layman
and a convert from Protestantism, his position had never
been quite easy and congenial, although he was throughout

HIS REAL EARNESTNESS i8i
sustained by the warm support of Cardinal Wiseman and
of Father (now Cardinal) Vaughan.
" For what purpose," he asked, " has God revealed
those great truths which we contemplate in theological
studies, whether those which concern Himself directly, or
those which relate to His operations in the souls of men ?
For what purpose, except that we may spiritually grow on
such truths — that we might be more and more conformed
to the likeness of that God, of that crucified Saviour, whom
theology places before us? . . . May God ever protect
you from an increased zeal for intellectual activity, which
shall not be accompanied, in at least a corresponding
degree, by an increased love of the interior Ufe, by
an increased yearning for those only true joys which
the Holy Ghost reserves for those who abandon to
Him their whole hearts ! May God ever protect you from
seeking any part of your rest and peace in the empty,
delusive, and most unspiritual pleasures of mere intellectual
excitement. . . . Who am I, and of what kind is my daily Ufe,
that I should dare so to speak ? . . . Willingly, wUlingly
would I have been silent, but that I have been stung with
the remembrance of those great principles which I have
just been stating. Had I succeeded in obtaining your
deep interest in a purely intellectual view of that great
science committed to my. charge, I should have been your
worst enemy. I should have been preparing the way for
the greatest calamity, which under ordinary circumstances
can hereafter befall you — I mean the habit of effusio ad
externa, of being carried away by the excitement of present
work from the heart's deep and tranquil anchorage in God "
(pp. 54, 55).
On Ward's retirement from St. Edmund's College (in

1 82 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
1858), he began to visit London more frequently than he
had done, and he renewed a number of old friendships.
He was, as we have noted, much at the Oratory, and in the
company of Father Faber. It was at this period also that
he resorted, for the sake of his health, to that form and
method of riding exercise which Dean Goulburn has so
amusingly described in an account from which paragraphs
have appeared in journals of all sorts. Nothing can be
more grotesque or ludicrous than the picture given of his
six horses, each hired to trot under him ten minutes at a
time, and each of which was well tired with the work, so
heavy and so unwieldy was the passive body that bumped
upon the saddle during the successive periods, till the full
hour of exercise was accomplished in the riding school, to
which place a theological work was latterly brought him
to read " between the acts," while he rested and the horses
were changed.
But his mental energies could not be satisfied merely by
society and devotional duties, intermingled with doctrinal
discussions. " Coming fresh upon the world from the
absolute seclusion in which he had lived for fourteen years,
Mr. Ward was at once struck with what Mr. Mill has
called ' the mongrel morality ' of the later nineteenth
century, -with its intellectual confusion," and with " the
growth of the secularist spirit." Looking at the disturbed
scene from the point of view of an Ultramontane Catholic,
he naturally cast his eyes across the Channel to where
France and Germany, but France especially, had for many
years been passing through the earlier stages of what is
spoken of as the " CathoUc Eevival," a revival which was,
in fact, one of two contrary movements generated as a
consequence of the French Eevolution, the other being the

HIS RELATIONS TO LIBERAL CATHOLICISM 183
democratic advance throughout Europe which dated from
that terrible upheaval, whUe the " Eevival " was the reac
tionary and complementary movement. In a long and
instructive chapter Mr. Wilfrid Ward describes the views
and influence, in succession, of Chateaubriand, de Maitre,
de Bonald, " the founder of TraditionaUsm ; " de Lamennais,
who aimed at fusing and developing Ultramontanism and
TraditionaUsm, but ended by bending his efforts to trans
form Ultramontanism into a democratic movement; of
- Montalembert and Lacordaire, who, following Lamennais,
brought in the first stage of the " Liberal Catholic move
ment"; of Veuillot and the Univers, which became the
organ of the Neo-Ultramontanes ; of Abb(5 Gaume and his
extravagances ; of Dupanloup and Ozanam. He describes
also the " Catholic Eevival " in Germany, bringing into
view Stolberg and Schlegel, Overbeck and the Eomantic
School, Mohler and his Symbolism, the Prussian Govern
ment and the Archbishops. He mentions as a feature
common to the French and the German " Eevivals," that
they " both invoked Catholic tradition against a destructive
¦phUosophy." He thus prepares the way for explaining
Ward's relations to Liberal Catholicism in England ; his
opposition to the Rambler, a Eoman CathoUc journal (called
afterwards the Home and Foreign Review), because of its
" liberal " laxity of tone and doctrine ; his private contro
versy and his strained relations, during not a few years,
with Newman, who for a short time edited the Rambler ;
his connection with the Dublin Review, of which he became
eventually the editor, and in connection with which he did
the great work of his life by contributing to it a number
of masterly articles in opposition to the materialism of
Mill and in defence of theistic philosophy. A considerable

i84 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
part of the volume is occupied with the matters I have
thus slightly indicated, and, as connected with them, is
concerned with Ward's extreme Ultramontanism on the
subject of the Syllabus of Pius ix. and the Infallibility
decree of the Papal Council of 1870, in contradistinction
from the somewhat less unreasonable Ultramontanism of
Newman. Ward was at the height of his Ultramontane zeal and
partisanship, when, in 1869, or soon afterwards, he joined
the Metaphysical Society, to which I have already referred.
The two chapters on this society, and on the Agnostic Con
troversy, are, as I have intimated, of special interest ; as also
is the " EpUogue," in which, as between his father's extreme
Ultramontanism and what may, perhaps, be described as
Cardinal Newman's liberal Ultramontanism, Mr. WUfrid
Ward sums up, as it seems, rather in favour of Newman
than his father, though he pronounces no judgment on the
controversy as a whole. There are, besides, three valuable
appendices, one of which contains a number of letters from
Newman to Ward ; while " two psychological studies " of
Ward, one by Baron F. von Hiigel, and the other, by Mr,
Hutton of the Spectator, are very interesting contributions
towards the comprehension of one of the most original
characters which this century has produced.
Original, Ward certainly was ; his eccentricities verged,
at some points, on repulsiveness. We learnt from the first
volume of his biography that he refused to recognise
patriotism as in any sense a 'virtue. This, however, though
a singular and undesirable opinioij, is intelligible, and might
be taken as a sign of cosmopolitanism, or even as a form —
though Cardinal Manning would not have allowed this — of
Papal Catholicism. But he also denied, as we are informed

HIS ECCENTRICITIES 185
in the same volume, that there was any special or necessary
duty of love to parents, as such.^ From this second volume
we learn that he manifested no natural affection to his
children as infants, and all but ignored their existence till
they were old enough to be intelligent companions. Never
theless, as they grew up, he showed himself a good father, and
treated them with frank confidence and steady generosity.
In all our judgments of him it must be remembered that
he knew nothing in his tender years of any tender nurture
or wise training; that his strong reUgious sensibUities
received no welcome or guidance from a well-instructed or
devoutly-disposed parent ; and that at Winchester School the
barbarities and the immoralities which prevailed darkened
and depressed his mind and heart. His noble povvers at
no time received any recognition, much less any guidance
and culture, except a chance recognition from a dignitary
of the English Church, whose name is unknown, who some
times met Ward at his uncle's. Ward was brought up, from
his very babyhood, on a diet of perpetual playgoing ; while,
at the same time, his shyness and awkwardness made
him avoid society, no one about him ha-ving skill or sym
pathy enough to draw forth his really bright faculties
for society, or his companionable qualities, which,
though latent, were strong. Thus he grew up the
eccentric, angular being so vividly described in his bio
graphy ; full of contradictoriness and wilfulness, though at
heart also full of fun, frankness, and generosity. Thus
he grew up the shy, seclusive, absent-minded, inadvertent
man, with no eye for material phenomena, for anything
-visible on the surface of life, with a dislike of all details,
strangely ignorant of common things, disUking all records
1 Ward and the Oxford Movement, p. 124.

i86 WARD AS A ROMISH THEOLOGIAN
of facts, even the facts of history, and only happy in the
inner world of abstract thought, where his powers found a
free and undisturbed sphere — revelling in mathematics, in
metaphysics, in argumentative discussions, but otherwise
finding no pleasure, no congenial occupation, — except in
music, for which he had a passion, in fiction, burlesque,
or spectacular plays, — i.e. always in an emotional world
of excitement, — never in the actual play and commerce of
life. Such a man came across Mill, and but for his deep
and awful sense of God's reality, and the reaUty and life of
the soul as related to God, would probably have yielded
himself to that master of discussion ; then he found his
guide and oracle in Newman during a critical period of his
life, and was at least weaned from Mill, and brought into
deep and earnest religious relations with God and Chris
tianity ; then, following what seemed to be the laws of
abstract logic, divorced from history and actual Ufe, he
threw himself passionately into the arms of the Eoman
Catholic Church, and became the most ultra of the Ultra-
montanes. Throughout life Ward was the same restless,
strenuous spirit as when, in his boyhood, he equally refused
all customary recreation and all quiet. Eest he could not ; he
must be always vehemently engaged about something. When
he had not some good and useful thing to do, he must needs
be amused, or else be given over to misery. Thus the
passion of his childhood for the theatre remained the
passion of his mature life, even to his latest years. But,
at anyrate, by his magnificent contributions to Christian
philosophy of the highest quality, philosophy the most
abstract and abstruse, — but also the most central,
sublime, and far-reaching, — W. G. Ward did for the
theistic controversy and for the doctrine of humanity, as

HIS MERITS 187
involving the relations to the Creator of a free spirit,
moral, responsible, and immortal, a greater service than
any man of his generation.
Nor must we forget how highly Ward was esteemed
by Tennyson, and in what terms the poet expressed, in the
epitaph which may be read on Ward's monument at Weston
Manor, his opinion of the qualities of his neighbour and
friend, totally ignorant though that friend was of the poet's
writings. The tribute to Ward's generosity contained in
the poet's lines is true, albeit Ward was so extreme a Papist,
this being one of the many contradictions in his character.
I may not unfitly close this chapter, in which the grievous
faults and errors and the singular intellectual deficiencies of
Ward have been distinctly exhibited, with Tennyson's kindly
lines on his friend —
" Farewell, whose living like I shall not find —
Whose faith and work were bells of full accord —
My friend, the most unworldly of mankind.
Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward,
How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,
How loyal in the following of thy Lord ! "

CHAPTER VIL
The Transition from Newman's Tractarian Movement
to the wider Movement known as Puseyism —
What Puseyism means To-day.
TN the foregoing chapters we have seen the beginning and
-*- end of the Tractarian Movement, as such. The first
tract, Newman's original manifesto and appeal, went on
the ground of episcopal orders and an uninterrupted minis
terial succession. This ground was spoken of, in brief, as
the principle of apostolical succession. Evangelical Non
conformists hold, and, if the laity are counted, as they
ought to be, a majority of well-educated Churchmen have
always held, with John Wesley, that the " uninterrupted
succession " is " a fable." With modern High Churchmen,
on the contrary, it is an article of faith, to be received, on
divine authority, lUte any other divine mystery, as unques
tionably true. Being thus accepted, it leads earnest and
resolute logicians, unyielding and intrepid doctrinaires of
the High Catholic school, direct to Eome. This principle
is the basis and bond of hierarchical externalism and
exclusiveness. At first the ultra High Church neophyte
welcomes the idea of a threefold CathoUc Church, one in
three branches, the Greek Catholic, the Eoman CathoUc,
and the Anglo-Catholic, the third being the most enlight
ened, the purest, and the most truly primitive. But, unfor-
188

WHY PUSEY DID NOT GO TO ROME 189
tunately, the English Church has cut itself off from, and
has been excommunicated by, the Eomish Church, and is
held to be schismatic by the Greek or Eastern Church,
while Anglo - Catholic Churchmen dare not pretend to
unchurch either the Eoman CathoUc or the Greek CathoUc
Church. Inflexible doctrinaires, accordingly, Uke Newman,
Ward, Eobert Wilberforce, Faber, Oakeley, Hope -Scott,
and many more, following out their principle to its clear
logical conclusion, went over to Eome. If others, who
sympathised with Newman, did not follow him to Rome,
the reason could only be that they practically abandoned
the ground that Christian life and salvation absolutely
depended upon the legitimate succession of bishops and
of duly ordained priests.
Some there were, however, apparently incapable
of feeling the force of the logical arguments which
appealed so strongly to the consistency 'and sincerity of
men like Newman and Robert Wilberforce. Of this number
were Keble and Pusey. Of Keble I have no more to say.
Of Pusey as yet I have said little. His Une of thought
and feeling was different from Newman's ; he worked
on another level. Pusey proceeded, indeed, on the same
postulate of exclusive ministerial character and authority,
as descending through the line of " apostoUc succession " ;
but he simply assumed that the English and the Romish
Church in common possessed this apostoUcal succession and
concomitant transmitted authority, and set himself to study
the conditions under which the ministerial prerogative in
the Anglo-Catholic Church must be exercised, so as to
make that Church, to all who join its communion, the
unfading channel of grace and salvation, desiring and ex
pecting that some day Canterbury might be reunited

190 FROM TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT TO PUSEYISM
to Rome, the archbishops be reconcUed to the Pope. What
was necessary was to show a way of salvation which, while
it did not provide for the conveyance of saving grace to
any but " CathoUc " communicants, should open forth to
every such sincere communicant a sure and safe channel
of salvation, alike in the English and in the Roman com
munion. He believed himself to have found what was
necessary in the doctrine of sacramental grace, by means
of baptism and the Eucharist, duly administered by duly
ordained priests ; and especially in the efficacy of the
" sacrament," as he described it, " of confession and absolu
tion " ; with which, as a part of the complete sacramental
view, he combined a dogma of the Real Presence, scarcely to
be distinguished, if at all, from the doctrine of transubstan
tiation, as taught by some of the most subtle and famous
among Eomish theologians. In this way Pusey, working
ever in harmony with Newman's principles, though he did
not follow Newman to Eome,pro'vided a foundation within the
pale of the EstabUshed Church of England, on which all the
essential doctrines of Eome — all those against which the
Eeformers had protested — might be buUt up. Auricular
confession, priestly prerogative and influence, not only in
the pulpit, but in the most secret recesses of family life, and
especiaUy over the souls, individually and apart, Of women
and children, the confessional priest m schools, penance,
sisterhoods, all these elements of Eomanism Pusey introduced
into the Church and into society, and Uved to see them take
deep root, and spread far and wide. All this was hardly
included in the idea of Tractarianism as first initiated by
Newman. But Pusey, -^vorking ever silently and with
much secrecy and subtlety, had begun his work, and sown
much seed carefully and deeply, before Newman passed

THE LIFEWORK OF PUSEY 191
out of view, and the Tractarian Movement proper came to
an end. After Newman's secession, he was recognised as
the head of the resulting Movement, stUl largely an
" Oxford Movement," which grew out of the Tractarian
Movement, and which has gone so far during the last
generation in Eomanising the Church of England. He has
thus prepared many Anglican priests and some lay
devotees, including a few men of education, such as Lord
HaUfax, to welcome and work for such an identity of
doctrine, ritual, and practice with the Church of Eome as
may prepare the way for what is now confessed to be
the goal of their efforts, an extensive reunion of English
clergy and Churchmen with the Eoman See and the Latin
Catholic Church. The remainder of this volume, accord
ingly, will be occupied chiefly with the life and lifework of
Pusey.

CHAPTER VIIL
Pusey's Earlier Life — University Career — Eesidence
in Germany — Controversy with Eose — Change
of View — Coalition with Newman.
A ECHDEACON SINCLAIE, in an address delivered at
"^ the Church Congress of 1893, on the subject of the
English Church Union, drew attention to an authoritative
publication put forth by that Union, which, to quote the
Archdeacon's words, " pointed out with great frankness the
mistakes of the Eeformers in our present Prayer-Book,
proposed the omission of the Ten Commandments, advo
cated mediaeval additions to the Church office to bring it
into line with Sarum, pronounced fasting reception to be
necessary, urged the practice of reservation, proposed the
introduction of the Eomish service of Benediction, wished
to alter our cathedral services so that there should be Mass
every morning, longed that everybody should recognise that
our chief religious duty was the oblation of the Lamb of
God, insisted on the restoration of the word Mass, and
deplored the disastrous effects of the Eeformation." If to
this authentic enumeration we add, as among the objects
aimed at, the establishment of sisterhoods and monasteries,
and the restoration of the confessional, with all that it
implies, we have a fairly representative but by no means
complete account of the retrograde movement towards the

THE GOAL OF FUSE YISM 193
mediaeval practices of the Church of Eome, which would
seem to be in the ascendant at this time, within the Umits
of the Eeformed Church of England. Words faU to describe
the fatal meaning and tendency of this movement. A
passage, however, from the Guardian for October 1893
may fitly be placed by the side of what has been quoted.
The Guardian knows its market and weighs its words ; it
represents the highest faculty and best informed judgment
of the High Anglican party. The following is the passage.
It occurs in an article on the subject of " Eeunion," as
brought before the Church Congress of that year : —
" No doubt, according to a pregnant sentence of the
Archbishop of Dublin, there is more difference between
High Churchmen and Low Churchmen within the Church
of England than there is between High Churchmen and
Eoman Catholics on the one side and Low Churchmen and
Dissenters on the other. But then this is the result of
an ecclesiastical accident. The combination in one and the
same Church of opinions so widely divergent can be ex
plained historically, but not logically. It is hardly con
ceivable that it could have existed, if the Church had not
been established, or that it should continue to exist if the
Church ceased to be established. Any religious and intel
ligent Dissenter, who was invited to come into the Church,
would naturally, we think, ask into which Church of Eng
land am I to come ? Is it the Church of Lord Halifax,
or the Church of Sir Eobert Lighten ? "
This passage teaches, in terms of unmistakable plain
ness, that the difference is altogether less between High
Anghcanism and the Church of Eome than between High
Anglicanism and the EvangeUcal and Protestant portion of
the Established Church ; and that, but for the coercion of
13

194 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
the State bond, there would, of necessity, be a complete
organic separation of the one party from the other — the
High Anglican section being the true Church of England,
and Evangelical Episcopalians no part whatever of that
Church. It teaches that the true Church of England is
as narrow, as exclusive, as ritualistic as " the Church of
Lord Halifax," which is no other than the Church of the
" Church Union," Lord Halifax being the official head and
the presiding spirit of the Union. This Eomanising sect,
according to the Guardian, is the true national Church of
England. The claim is a grotesque absurdity. But the
deliberate utterance of such a judgment by the Guardian
is a very dark sign of the times. It shows that in the
opinion of that journal there is no need any longer to keep
on terms with the evangelical section of the Established
Church. In anticipation of the day of disestablishment,
that journal distinctly and deliberately looks forward to
the division of the existing Established Church into at least
two sections, of which that alone is to be accounted as repre
senting, and indeed as being, the true Church of England,
which is in close affinity and sympathy with the Church
of Eome, and which severs itself completely from the Evan
gelical and Protestant portion of what has hitherto been
deemed the Church of England, and from the convictions
and sympathies of the great majority of Englishmen.
It seems not improbable, indeed, as I have intimated
on an earUer page, that there will be, in the event of
disestablishment, not two, but three distinct sections —
a Eomanising, an " evangelical," and a Broad Church
section. Such is the prospect which faces us. How
far the Neo-Eomanising section, the Church of the
Church Union, would be likely to go when freed from the

WHICH ANGLICAN SECTION IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 195
State bond and organised into a separate sect, must remain
a question. But, judging from what we know of the zeal
and extravagance of the high sacramental sections of our
Colonial Churches in South Africa and Australia, even in
the midst of what in England would be regarded as middle-
class social conditions and democratic institutions ; judging
also from the recent developments of ritualistic supersti
tion and bigotry in the United States, and from the
increased and strengthened tendency of the Anglo-Irish
Episcopal Church towards Eitualism and High Sacrament-
arianism, since Disestablishment took place, it might fairly
be doubted whether in the England of Laud and of Pusey
the adherents of the " Church of Lord Halifax " would
shrink from any ritualistic and Eomanising extreme short
of acknowledging the Papal politico-ecclesiastical claims,
if even they would refuse to acknowledge those claims.
The greatest force in bringing about the present lament
able condition of things was unquestionably the teaching and
influence of Pusey. He more widely, more diligently, and
with more of personal influence than any other man, sowed
the seeds of the harvest which our country is now reaping.
Keble, Newman, and Pusey, these are the three men whose
names must always be associated as the founders of the Neo-
Eomanising Movement in the Church of England of the last
two generations. Keble, however, alone would only have
handed down to a few the tradition which had come down
to him from the Divine Eight Non-jurors of the last
century. There was no motive energy, no propagandist
force in him. Newman was the man of magnetic influ
ence, the man of intellectual superiority and force. It was
he who laid the ferment and suppUed the ideas which
were to start, to inform, and for ten years to inspire and

196 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
guide the whole Movement. But, after his secession to
Eome, the Movement must have died a natural death
before many years had passed, if it had not been taken up
and fostered for nearly forty years by Pusey, who,
though not a man of any originality, combmed in himself
many of the qualities which go to foster ideas, and to build
up a school of reUgious devotion. In some respects, indeed,
he had points of special superiority as the leader of a party.
Newman and his short-lived but powerful comrade Froude
were able, astute, and daring — daring almost to reckless
ness. But these bachelor fellows, being at first men of no
school or set, were also men of no social position, and at
the beginning of their work had little personal infiuence.
For a whUe at least they unsettled and alarmed more
powerfully than they attracted or persuaded. What Pusey
did for the new Movement is told by Ne-wman himself in
his Apologia. Newman says : '' Without him we should
have had no chance of making any serious resistance to the
Liberal aggression. He had a vast influence in consequence
of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his
charities, his professorship, his family connections, and his
easy relations with the university authorities." He was
able to give " a name, a form, and a personality to what
without him was a sort of mob." He lent dignity and
prestige to the Tractarian Movement, though he never
led in its counsels. To the end he gave his moral
support to Newman, though he did not follow him to
Eome. After Newman's death he became the prophet
and teacher of the Tractarian residue, and extended his
infiuence more and more widely and deeply through the
ranks and circles of the ultra High Anglican devotees.
At length a part of Pusey's biography has been

HIS BIOGRAPHY tt^-j
published, after many years of expectation. Dr. Liddon,
Pusey's disciple and intimate friend for many years, and
one of his trustees, had done much in the way of prepara
tion, but he had not altogether finished even the collection
of matter for the work, nor had he throughout perfectly
moulded his own material into form. The volumes, how
ever, which have been published, and which cover the
greatest and most important part of Pusey's life, must be
taken as substantially the work of Dr. Liddon. So far as
it goes, notwithstanding its voluminous character, the
biography fails to give a complete exposition of Pusey's
views, or a complete account of his work and infiuence.
Even Dr. Liddon, it would seem, has not ventured to go
thoroughly into the meaning of all Pusey's work, or
exactly and fully to expound his doctrine. His life was
the life of a saint, but a saint of a morbid and mis
guided school. His history is capable of being written in
its main personal outlines, which are generally interesting
and sometimes touching, without undertaking to exhibit
fully throughout the inner meaning of his line of develop
ment in doctrine and in spiritual counsels. There are also
facts connected with his history which may be gathered
elsewhere, but which are not necessary for the continuity
of the narrative, and the insertion of which might not
appear to be advantageous to his memory as a di-vine of the
Eeformed Church of England. Yet some of the information
omitted may be necessary in order to a just estimate of his
work,andtothe needful counteraction of the grievous mischief
which he wrought, not only within the Church of England,
but, more or less, throughout all EngUsh-speaking countries.
The name of Pusey did not belong to the ancestors of
the future ecclesiastical leader, but to the estate which came

igS PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
to his father as a gift from two sisters bearing the name
of Pusey, who were co -heiresses of the Pusey property,
and sisters-in-law of the first Lady Folkestone, Pusey's
grandmother. His father was the Honourable Philip
Bouverie, son of the Earl of Eadnor ; he took the name of
Pusey with the Pusey estates. The Bouverie famUy were
Walloons, who became naturalised EngUsh subjects in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, and were ennobled in
the eighteenth ; the family, before it migrated to London,
having been for more than one generation settled as part
of the Walloon colony at Canterbury. Pusey was there
fore descended from Low Country Protestants of the
French Eeformed Confession, who had been driven from
their country on account of their religious faith. He
recognised in himself the strain of Walloon breed and
temperament. He would sometimes say, with a smile,
" You know I am phlegmatic, and indeed Dutch." Canon
Liddon intimates that his business instincts and habits
might have been in some sort inherited from his commer
cial line of ancestry. His mother traced her descent to
an Anglo-Saxon family which was already ancient in the
time of the Plantagenets. She was the daughter of the
Earl of Harborough, was married when very young to Sir
Thomas Cave, and was left a widow at twenty-one. At
the age of twenty-six she married the Honourable PhiUp
Bouverie Pusey. Her father, though an Earl, was also a
clergyman, and she undertook the religious education, after
a plain, old-fashioned Anglican fashion, of her children.
" She used to talk to her son as if she represented a reU
gious temper which had belonged to her race in earlier
days. ' All that I know of religious truth,' Pusey used to
say, ' I learnt, at least in principle, from my mother.' "

THE BOUVERIE FAMILY 199
She taught her children their Catechism, and read the
Scriptures largely with them.
So much, in brief, we gather as to the ancestors of
Pusey from a very long genealogical appendix, of which
the greater part refers to the Puseys, with whom, whether
in respect of blood or of training, the inheritor of their
name had nothing more than a legal and incidental connec
tion. His wealth came mainly from them, but that was
all. What strikes one on looking over his pedigree is that
diligence, common sense, and business traiiung seem to
have been hereditary ; but that along the whole line, at
least since the days of the De Bouveries of the Burgundian
Court in the Middle Ages, there is no glimmer of real dis
tinction either in Church or State, in arms or learning.
Pusey House did not contain a library of any value.
Pusey belonged, however, to the noblesse of England ; he
called such a nobleman as the Earl of Shaftesbury his
cousin ; he inherited a large estate.
Edward Bouverie Pusey, the second son of his parents,
was born in 1800 at Pusey House, a mansion situated
in Berkshire, twelve miles from Oxford, near a hamlet
consisting of some dozen cottages, and in the midst of
a sandy region timbered mostly with fir trees. Here,
through the greater part of his life, was his study and
home ; his fellowship first, and afterwards his professorship
and his canonry, being at Oxford, where the pulpit of Christ
Church, sometimes exchanged for St. Mary's, was his place
of power. After his elder brother's death, the paternal
home, with the estates, became his own property. He died,
however, at a Cottage Eetreat, near Ascot, to which he was
accustomed to retire when he sought perfect privacy.^
J- Annual Register, 1883.

200 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
Pusey's first schoolmaster, the Eev. Eichard Eoberts,
of Mitcham, to whose care he was sent at the early
age of seven, taught and disciplined him as a classical
scholar of 1807 might have been expected to do. He
flogged him once for cutting a pencU at both ends ; he
flogged him out of false quantities ; he made him an adept
for his age, both in Latin and Greek verses ; he prepared
him thoroughly for Eton. Pusey used to say in after life
that he could have passed the University Little-Go before
he went to Eton. He worked more than ten hours a day,
though he was only eleven when he left Mitcham. Dr.
Keate was his master at Eton. There he continued the
same course of application into which he had been intro
duced at Mitcham. The late Eev. Edward Coleridge, who
sat on the same bench with him, wrote of him in 1882
that he " did not engage in sports, did long exercises, and
was very obscure in his style." " The child was father of
the man " — of the " portentous student " of after days, who
knew the rules of Latin and Greek syntax and prosody,
but not the niceties of style and composition in his mother
tongue, which he never learned to write elegantly or idio
matically. With English literature he seems never to
have gained any considerable acquaintance, and his resi
dence in Germany in early manhood probably did not tend
to supply the defects of his earlier education, but rather to
.aggravate the imperfections of his English scholarship.
There was one respect, however, in which he acquired
the accomplishments of an EngUsh gentleman whilst still
young. He learnt to shoot well, and was a good rider
across country. It was a saying of Charles Kingsley —
to which I have before had occasion to refer — that all
the Tractarian leaders were wanting in viriUty, i.e. not so

AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE 201
much effeminate, as naturally more woman-like than mas
culine. Few who have closely studied the characters of
Newman, Keble, Froude, and some others of the foremost
Tractarians, will, I think, deny the general truth of the
observation. In some respects also it seems to have applied
to Pusey ; but in the point now noted, at anyrate, perhaps
also in some other points, Pusey was more masculine than
his chief Tractarian associates. At Eton his reUgious
character, as might be expected, was not developed. His
period there, however, coincided in great part with that of
Napoleon's greatest victories, with the amazing growth and
the culmination of his power and ascendancy, and with his
overthrow. These critical years of the world's history
" contributed to develop that sense of the presence of God
in humau affairs, as attested by swift and awful judgments,
which coloured so largely his religious convictions." Alto
gether his Eton course appears to have been studious and
creditable, but not distinguished. He was no doubt moral,
but of special religious character or experience there is
little trace. He gained no school honours. On leaving
he went to read, at Buckden, near Huntingdon, with a
private tutor, Dr. Maltby, afterwards Bishop of Durham.
Here, during his stay of fifteen months, he seems to
have made real progress in classical studies in prepara
tion for university honours at Oxford. He said in
after life that he was " very happy with Maltby ; there
were no black sheep at Buckden " — an evident reference
to the " black sheep" of Eton, with whose character and
conduct it is clear that he had no sympathy.
In January 1819, Pusey went to Oxford, and, as an
Eton boy, naturally entered Christ Church. Among his
friends at Oxford was his cousin, the future Earl of Shaftes-

202 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
bury. Their friendship, however, was checked by Pusey's
decUning to read for lectures with Lord Ashley. Had
this check not occurred, and had the future heads — one as
a clergyman, the other as a layman — of the two antagon
istic bodies of the modern Church of England grown into
pubUc life as intimate friends, the Anglican history of the
century might, perhaps, have been materially different from
what it has been. Another friend was John Parker of
Sweeney Hall, Shrewsbury, afterwards a clergyman. I
refer to him because he tried, in vain, to bring his friend
to study and master a good and true style of English
writing. " It is easy," he warned him, " to write moderate
English, but far from easy to write it finely. I am sorry
to say that almost the only man who writes English with
purity, though he is frequently vulgar, is that infamous
William Cobbett." When, in 1828, Pusey sent him a copy
of his Theology in Germany, Parker replied: "I will care
fully read it, and criticise the style, as that is the only
part where my opinion would be of use to you." Certainly
in that publication there was ample scope for criticism of
style. Another intimate friend of Pusey's undergraduate
life — a friend also in after years — was E. W. Jelf, after
wards Canon of Christ Church.
Just before going up to the university, Pusey had
become deeply attached to the lady to whom he was
eventually married, and who must have been as interesting
and attractive a woman as she proved herself to be a sym
pathising and devoted wife. Of her history and family
connections, however, little or nothing is learned from
the biography, except that she had been baptized by a
Dissenter. For some reason, not disclosed, Pusey's father
refused his consent to his son's engagement to this lady.

HIS UNIVERSITY CAREER 203
to which her own family also seem to have been opposed.
Nor was it tiU after her father's death, in 1827, that the
way was cleared for the engagement to be contracted with
all proper consents. During the years that elapsed before
the obstacles to his engagement were removed a settled
cloud rested upon his mind. No other object seems even
for a day to have distracted his desire or affection. His
disappointment overcast his college life, and at one time
threatened to interfere with his university work for the
schools. However, after prodigious work during his last
year at college, — to the extent sometimes of sixteen or
seventeen hours a day, so that he himself described his
later undergraduate life at Christ Church as "that of a
reading automaton who might by patience be made a human
being," — he finally gained a first class, with high honour.
His strength, however, as we are told, — but should scarcely
have needed to be told, — " lay in accurate verbal scholar
ship rather than in philosophy."
His degree won, he went with a college friend to
Switzerland, spending three months on the tour. Under
the influence, at least in part, of his disappointed affections,
he indulged, as his Diary shows, in not a little morbid
sentiment — in what his biographer describes as " Byronism,"
as he himself, indeed, called it. This Byronic mooning is
not what would have been expected in the case of such a
young man as Pusey ; it is deliberate and elaborate, as the
passages quoted from his Diary show. At the same time
these passages evince more than a little susceptibility to
the grand and beautiful features of natural scenery, and
show also that he took a lively interest in the history,
topography, and geology of the regions through which he
passed, especially the glorious Savoy scenery between Geneva

204 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
and Chamounix. Pusey's Byronism did not affect his
religious faith or his morals, but it made him indulge,
with a sort of self-satisfaction, in gloomy and morbid ideas
and feelings. His own account in after years was as
follows : —
" The extreme force and beauty of Byron's poetry, com
bined with a habit of deep, and in some degree, morbid
feeUng, which had always more or less a shade of gloom,
induced us to give our assent to, and even in some measure
exult in, feelings of whose full extent we were either at
the time not aware, or at least against which we half, and
but half, shut our eyes."
This description is not perspicuous, but it is suffi
ciently intelligible, and it harmonises, in some sort, with
his characteristics through life. He seems almost always
to have been surrounded, more or less, by an atmosphere
of depression, and to have been full of sorrowful foreboding
as to the course and aspect of the times, though he was
free from religious doubts and intellectually full of self-
confidence. He was always, on the other hand, very
hopeful and indeed sanguine in regard to the health and
well-being of those with whom his heart's affections were
bound up.
So self-confident was he, at the very early age of which
I am writing, when he was but twenty-three years old,
that, although philosophy and speculative thought were all
through his life uncongenial and foreign regions of thought
to him, and therefore he must have been peculiarly incom
petent to play the part of " Christian advocate," as a repre
sentative champion against speculative unbelief, he never
theless undertook an argumentative correspondence, which
seems to have continued during many months, with a well-

TOUR IN SWITZERLAND 205
read sceptic and atheist of the French school, who had been
a friend of his at Eton. The correspondence ended as
might have been expected. Pusey was not in the least,
so far as appears, disturbed in the soUdity of his own
Christian faith, nor his correspondent at all infiuenced by
Pusey's arguments. One effect this correspondence had
on Pusey which gave a colour to his Ufe, it produced the
conviction " that the faith of Christ had, in the very heart
of Christendom, implacable enemies just as ready to crush
it out of existence, if they could, as any who confronted
the apostles of the Church of the first three centuries."
It is amusing to read that —
" As Byron to a certain extent spoUed Pusey's view of
the Swiss mountains, so Pusey at first read Walter Scott
with Byron's eyes. His brother PhUip induced him to read
Rokeby by telling him that he had a great deal of Wilfrid
in his character. ' I read the book,' he said long after
wards, ' most carefully, and found it so ; it became from
that time my greatest favourite. Maria, of course [the
lady he loved], occupied the place of Matilda. My destiny
was, T know not how far, identified with Wilfrid's. You
may, or rather cannot, conceive the effect of the beautiful
" cypress wreath," or the few last words which WUfrid
addresses to Matilda.' The love of study, the love of
nature, the pensive melancholy mood, were to a certain
extent common to Edward Pusey and WUfrid."
Dr. Liddon goes on to quote, as more or less applicable
to Pusey, some of Scott's lines, including these four —
"No touch of childhood's frolic mood
Showed the elastic spring of blood :
Hour after hour he loved to pore
On Shakespeare's rich and varied lore."

2o6 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
The first three lines seem to apply remarkably well, but as
to the fourth I have never seen a glimmer of evidence that
Pusey was a student of Shakespeare.
Pusey returned from his tour in time to be present at
the marriage of his elder brother to Lady Emily Herbert,
daughter of the Earl of Carnarvon. This happy marriage
gave him an accomplished and charming sister-in-law, of a
strongly religious character, and, in after Ufe, was one of
those family or social connections which contributed not a
little to his influence and authority as a Churchman.
" For more than thirty years, to her husband's delight
and satisfaction. Lady Emily corresponded constantly with
her brother-in-law. . . . This friendship lasted undimmed
to Lady Emily's last hours. He admitted her [after his
wife's death] to share his thoughts and hopes and fears in
those years when his heart and mind were taxed to the
uttermost by the demands of the great Movement in which
his share was so great and so responsible ; and he found in
her a sympathy more intelligent and responsive than that
of any other member of his family. In her last hours he
was at her bedside, and in his ministrations and words she
found her greatest comfort and support."
Lady Emily wrote at least one novel, of which the title
is not given, but in which, we are informed, she introduced
Edward Pusey into her pages under the name of Edgar
Belmore, setting forth his high and strict religious character,
as she conceived it, and reproducing a part of his early
history. Eeturning to Oxford, Pusey applied himself to the
work of gaining a settlement there, and took his Une for
life as a scholar and a divine. His ambition, though
sedate, was high and steadfast, an Oriel fellowship was his

AIMS AT A FELLOWSHIP 207
mark — Oriel, at that time, being the selectest garden of
intellectual and religious culture in the university. The
Fellows of Oriel were men of high accomplishments, and
especially of discipUned intellect. Without doubt Pusey
was intellectually below the Oriel standard. Copleston
was Provost, Davison and Arnold had but lately ceased
to be Fellows. Whately, Keble, Hawkins, Jelf, were
of the Fellowship. Newman was in his year of pro
bation. The college was famous for its pre-eminence in
logic. It was coarsely said to "stink of logic." To the
end of his days Pusey was singularly defective in logic and
logical methods of thought and teaching. He himself con
fessed that he was quite wanting in the speculative faculty
which was the distinction of several of the Oriel Fellows.
Most of the Oriel men also were distinguished for the
simplicity and purity of their English style, whereas Pusey's
style was often rugged and sometimes almost barbarous.
Nevertheless he won his Fellowship, though with the
significant quaUfication that he was not to be a college
tutor. It is evident enough that his was a favoured suit
for preferment from the very outset. In those times
intellectual merit and scholarly attainments counted for
less in the competition for Fellowships than they do at
present. Character, connections, and position counted for
much more. Even as a classic, whilst his reading, no
doubt, had been large, and his grammatical knowledge must
have been exact, it is more than doubtful whether he ever
attained to the elegancies of style and composition whieh
have distinguished high university scholars both in earlier
and later times. He was, however, elected. A description
of him is quoted from one of Newman's letters when Pusey

2o8 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
was an undergraduate of twenty-two years of age, but
already aspiring to an Oriel Fellowship, and when he was
a guest of his friend Jelf at Oriel high table —
" His Ught curly head of hair was damp with the cold
water which his headache ma.de necessary for his comfort ;
he walked fast with a young manner of carrying himself,
and stood bowed, looking up from under his eyebrows ; his
shoulders rounded, and his bachelor's gown not buttoned at
the elbow, but hanging loose over his wrists. His counten
ance was very sweet, and he spoke little."
During the examination for the Fellowship, Pusey had
one of his bad headaches, and broke down. He tore up his
essay, saying that there was no good in going on with it.
Jenkyns, one of the examiners, picked up the bits, put
them together, and showed the essay to the Fellows.
Newman says that it was a capital essay. Later in the
examination, after an hour's unsuccessful effort, he wrote a
letter begging to retire from the competition, and left the
hall. The Fellows, however, requested the Eev. C. J.
Plummer to go over to his lodgings and persuade him to
revoke his decision. The result was that Pusey persevered
and gained his Fellowship. The porter at the college gate
was asked on the last day who would be elected, from
which it may be inferred that quick and acute porters
sometimes hear a good deal, and know more than most.
" What do you think, sir," was the reply, " of that gentle
man in the chapel ? " Pusey was alone in the chapel or
ante-chapel on that day.
" It must be owned," Dr. Liddon remarks, " that the
Society of Oriel did not endow Pusey with its characteristic
excellence of clear writing." Pusey quotes and adopts a
description of himself at that time from the letter of a

VISITS GERMANY AS A STUDENT 209
friend as " shy," and expressing himself with hesitation and
obscurity. " To the end of his life," according to Dr.
Liddon (vol i p. 144), "Pusey's sermons were marked by
a complete indifference to method and rhetorical effect."
It is evident that this fault in his writing was the result of
simple incapacity. A mind insensible to logical relations
in thought is a mind incapable of method in discourse or
argument, and destitute of the faculty which must lie at
the basis of effective rhetoric. It is easy to understand a
judgment upon Pusey which was passed by two young
men at the time of his preaching his first sermon in 1828.
A relative of Mrs. Pusey's writing about Edward Pusey, as
she calls him, says : " He is entirely engrossed with the
subject of divinity, and unless upon that point is a silent
man ; he listens and makes great observation on character,
and always leans to the most amiable side in his judgment;
but he is not by the generality thought agreeable ; Thomas
and Eeginald think him very stupid."
His Fellowship being gained, and his position in his
university assured, Pusey undertook — in 1825 — the critical
enterprise of visiting Germany, that he might study in its
most distinguished universities, and make acquaintance
with its greatest scholars. It was a bold step to take, and
affords a measure of the scholarly zeal and the thirst for
learning which were characteristic of Pusey. The strongest
motive, however, which determined his decision was the
advice of Dr. Lloyd, at that time Professor of Theology at
Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of the Diocese. People
were saying — such was Pusey's own account to Liddon in
later life — that the new German theology was full of
interest. Only two persons in Oxford were understood to
know German. One day Dr. Lloyd said to Pusey : " I wish
14

210 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
you would learn something about those German critics."
In the obedient spirit of those times, Pusey set himself to
learn German, and afterwards went to Germany himself.
There he made acquaintance with Eichhorn, Tholuck,
Schleiermacher, Neander, Freytag, Liicke, Sack, and others ;
attended lectures at Gottingen, Berlin, Bonn, and else
where ; paid particular attention throughout to Hebrew
and Arabic studies; and finally returned in 1827, after
spending the greater part of two years in that country.
This visit largely determined the after-course of his life.
" My life," he said to Liddon, " turned on that hint of
Lloyd's." Whilst he was studying in Germany the Eev. H. J.
Eose published his four discourses, delivered at Cambridge
in May 1825, on The State of Protestantism in Germany.
These sermons created a deep impression in England, and
were soon the subject of severe criticism in Germany.
Pusey, full of friendly feeling for his German friends and
teachers, was displeased at the tone, here and there, of
Eose's strictures, and regarded the sermons on the whole as
giving an incorrect and injurious impression of the state
and prospects of the Protestant religion in Germany. He
therefore, with characteristic self-confidence, formed the
purpose, whilst still in Germany, of replying to Eose.
Mr. Eose at that time was a clergyman of high dis
tinction and great influence, being many years, of course,
Pusey's senior. Pusey was only twenty-six, and not yet
a Deacon. He was a young layman who knew Uttle
of theology, and who, as to German studies and history,
must be regarded as a mere neophyte. But he had no
hesitation as to measuring swords with Mr. Eose. At
that time "the history, the results, the temper, and the

CONTRO VERSY WITH HUGH JAMES ROSE 211
tendencies of German Protestant theology were as little
understood in England as though they had belonged to
another and a distant continent, far beyond the pale of
Christendom and civilisation."
Pusey returned from Germany in 1827, but did not
publish his reply to Mr. Eose untU the following year. In
the meantime his friend and patron. Dr. Lloyd, Professor of
Theology at Oxford, had succeeded to the Episcopate. He
himself, about the same time, became engaged to the lady
to whom for eight years he had been attached, her father
having died, and all opposition to the marriage having
passed away on the side of his father. This lady having
been baptized by a Dissenter, it may be presumed that
her family had at one time been members of a Dis
senting congregation. She had latterly with her family
attended the ministry of Mr. Close, the well-known
evangelical clergyman, afterwards Dean Close, at Chel
tenham. She was full of religious knowledge and religious
scruples and questionings. The correspondence between
Pusey and herself was most voluminous, and dealt with
many bristling points of controversy, religious and ecclesias
tical, including also moral and social questions. Eventually
she became as High a Churchwoman as any High Church
man could have desired, and became also her husband's
helper — largely his amanuensis. She was a devoted
wife, and possibly her health was undermined by the
strenuous sympathy and co-operation she continually gave
to her husband. Her death, in 1839, marks an epoch
in the history of her husband's religious development.
In 1828, the year following Pusey's engagement, his
father died at the age of eighty-one. Pusey was ordained
Deacon, and shortly afterwards married ; and what Pusey

212 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
would probably have thought still more important even
than his marriage — John Keble was rejected, Dr. Hawkins
was elected, as successor to Copleston in the Provostship
of Oriel. The Puseyite school, with one consent, appear to
have been of opinion that if Keble, who was at one with
Newman and Pusey in regard to the whole teaching of the
Oxford Tracts, had been chosen, the High Church party
would have escaped all the troubles which followed, and
which they regard as so disastrous, especially the con
demnation of Tract 90, and the consequent secession of
Newman. There is, however, another way of reading
history which would regard the election of Hawkins instead
of Keble as pecuUarly providential, and the condemnation
of Tract 90 as a beneficial event in the history of the
English Church, one altogether necessary to its consistency
of character and to its well-being. There can be no doubt
that it was Newman's infiuence which cast the die in
favour of Hawkins, and that he so prepared the way for his
own official censure. It also cannot be doubted that, for
all the ordinary official responsibilities of a Provost,
Hawkins was a much fitter man than Keble.
In 1828, Pusey pubUshed his reply to Mr. Eose, under
the title, A Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of
the Rationalist Character lately predominant in the Theology
of Germany; and two years later, under the same general
title, he pubUshed the second part of the Enquiry, contain
ing an explanation of some points misconceived by Mr.
Eose, and further illustrations. This second pamphlet was
a reply to strictures which Mr. Eose had published in the
interval on his former pamphlet. The former of these
publications issued from Messrs. Eivington's house before
its author had received his appointments as Professor of

HIS CHURCHMANSHIP //V 1830 213
Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, and before he had
been ordained Priest. The latter, which is much the larger
of the two, was published when he had been ordained
Priest, and had been appointed Professor and Canon, but
had ceased to be a Fellow. Throughout these remarkable
first-fruits of his theological studies, Pusey wrote as an
English divine of the moderate High Church school, whose
views had been enlarged and liberalised by intercourse with
the best and ablest continental divines, might have been
expected to write sixty years ago.^
He was, however, in 1830, far from being a Low
Churchman, although, as yet, he had not entered within the
coils of extreme High Church principles, within which he
was so soon afterwards entangled. He refers, for instance,
without disapproval, to the Lutheran practice of confession,
as this practice had been in use in the earlier and better
times of Lutheranism. He mentions, in particular, the
fact that the saintly Spener was the confessor of the
Elector of Saxony, observing, however, that because of the
growing hoUowness and formalism of the times, Spener was
thankful to retire from his confessorial office. But, at the
same time, throughout this Enquiry he speaks habitually of
" Churches " generally, besides those calling themselves
" Catholic " ; and of the " German " Church, as well as of
the "Eoman" and the "English" Church; no exclusive
epithet, no employment of the word " Catholic," as is
now customary among High Churchmen to distinguish
" Apostolic " and " Episcopal " communions from other sects,
being found in the Enquiry from first to last. He speaks
1 For a view of the scope and contents of Pusey's Enquiry, I may
refer, not only to what is said upon the subject in the biography, but
to my Character and Life Work of Br. Pusey (pp. 26-35).

214 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
enthusiastically of " the immortal heroes, the mighty agents
of the Eeformation." Mr. Eose had attributed German
heterodoxy largely to three causes — the want of diocesan
episcopacy, the absence of binding Articles, and the want of
such a Uturgy as that of the EngUsh Church. Pusey
objects that Mr. Eose's view " involved the abandonment of
the fundamental principles in Protestantism and derogated
from the independence and the inherent power of the
word of God." In after years Pusey came to agree very
closely with the views of Mr. Eose. Undoubtedly his own
view as to the state of religious belief in Germany was
much too sanguine. It is almost ridiculous to think that
in 1828, with Strauss and Baur and their followers yet to
come, Pusey in the title to his pamphlet speaks of the
rationalism "lately predominant in Germany." But Mr.
Eose was, of course, utterly at fault in supposing that
bishops and Articles and a liturgy could have saved
Germany from the devastations of rationalism. The rigid
suppression of anything like ecclesiastical autonomy or
liberty, under the iron hand of the State, together with
the entire absence of any freedom of evangelical life and
fellowship within the German Churches, were the chief
causes of German rationalism.^
At the point where Pusey stood when he wrote these
pamphlets, he was not far removed from the position
occupied by Archbishop Tait thoughout his course, — a
position completely opposed, as the Church and the
world were to learn during many years of controversy,
to that maintained by Pusey during his long history as
leader of the Oxford Movement. It is an interesting
1 See " Religion in Germany,'' vol. ix. of the London Quarterly
Review.

BECOMES A HIGH ANGLICAN 215
question how it happened that, holding such a position in
1830, he came within five short years to the position
marked out by his Oxford Tract on Baptism. Of the chasm
between his position in 1830 and that occupied by him in
1835, Pusey himself, indeed, would seem to have been un
conscious. It was one of his peculiarities that he fancied
himself, and the Movement of which he came to be the
centre, to be all along fixed and stationary as to points of
Church-principle.^ There can be little doubt, however, that
it was the question of the historic unity of the Church of
Christ which determined his position in after-life. To use
striking words, originally applied to Sibthorp by Bishop Wil
berforce, who. High Churchman as he was, never lost hold of
the root-principle of evangeUcal life and unity, Pusey " held
the TTpwTov yjrevSo';, that unity is to be gained by the mem
bers of the Church Catholic through union with one visible
centre." ^ He knew little or nothing of evangelical teach
ing and experience on the point, and he was dazzled by the
picture of visible external unity, as presented in the writings
of the hierarchical " fathers " of the patristic age, who had
themselves departed from the spiritual simplicity and
majesty of St. Paul's teaching as to the Church. Just
here is the watershed which divides two systems of
ecclesiastical and theological thought and obedience. For
an English ultra-Churchman, the way just here goes off
direct to Eome. Here is brought into view the difference
between the citizenship of the " Jerusalem above," " which
is free," and of the Jerusalem of the Eoman unity, which
" is in bondage with her children."
Considering his antecedents, and especially his experi-
^ " Stationary " was his o-wn word.
2 Wilberforce's Life, vol. i. p. 203.

2t6 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
ence in Germany, Pusey might well, one would think, have
shrunk from embracing the High Church sacramentarian
system of doctrine ; but, missing the true principle of
apostolic doctrine as to the Church of Christ, it may have
been that to him the alternative seemed to lie between
accepting the whole scheme of hierarchical and theurgical
transcendentalism or going the entire length of the German
rationalism within which it is hardly too much to say
that he had felt the danger of being entangled. It is
certain that, having put his hand to the ritualistic plough
in the Oxford furrow, he never looked back. Of his
adhesion to the hard and extreme externalist school, he
gave the pledge and first-fruits, not so much by his Tract
on Fasting in 1833 — one of the earUest of the Oxford
Tracts — as by that on Baptism in 1835.
Perhaps I should note, in this connection, that it was
not until after Pusey's marriage and his settlement at
Oxford in 1830 that he came closely and fully under the
spell of Newman. At an earlier period Newman had
taken a liking to him, and had drawn him out, encouraged
him, and more or less patronised him. The shy young
man had responded feelingly to Newman's attentions. But
now Pusey was not only a college don, but a university
professor and a canon ; he was, to use Newman's own
words, in " easy relations " with all the university authori
ties, and also with many people of rank and infiuence.
Mrs. Pusey's Diary shows that, however secluded was
Pusey's Ufe after his wife's death, ten years later, they
kept good company, and saw a good deal of it, for some
time after he went into residence at Oxford. Newman
henceforth cultivated Pusey assiduously, and Pusey felt
sympathetically the power of that master-mind and the

NEWMAN AND PUSEY COALESCE 217
fascination of his influence. Pusey rapidly graduated, accord
ingly, in the new Oxford school, and, before long, fairly
kept step with him whom, in common with the rest of the
Tractarian company, he recognised as leader. StUl, we
find that, as late as 1835, in delivering the "Inaugural
Address " to the " Theological Society " which he founded,
and of which he was the first Moderator, he laid stress
on the advantages of the Eeformation, and spoke of the
Lutheran and Eeformed " Churches." In starting it, more
over, he tells his wife in a letter that he sees elements of
disunion, in that John [Newman] will scare people (vol. i
p. 336). As yet, therefore, he must have been sometimes
a little restive. In the account which his biography gives
of the rise of the Oxford Movement, there is, as the critics
have said with one consent, little that is new. There was,
indeed, little left to tell, although, in a biography intended
to be historical and monumental, and relating to the second,
and, in later years, the sole leader and chief of the school,
an adequate chronicle of the whole growth and progress of
the Movement was a matter of necessity. Some things, U
Dr. Liddon's intention had been completely to exhibit the
life and conduct of his hero in all its aspects and infiuences,
should have found a place in the record which are actually
wanting, and those things would have been less known
than much of what is told. But the biographer has been
prudent as well as authentic, and has discreetly left certain
points in the shade which it will be necessary for me to
bring into the light.
From 1830 to 1838, when the state of Mrs. Pusey's
health obliged her husband to live much away from Oxford,
and to give up his generous hospitalities, Pusey used his
wealth in such a way as to make not a few his grateful

2i8 PUSEY'S EARLIER LIFE
debtors. For some years he had received students into his
house, James B. Mozley being the chief of these, as the
readers of his letters will remember. When his wUe's con
dition of health obliged him to give up this place, Pusey took
another house for the same purpose, of which James Mozley
seems to have been the head, and where, for a time, Mark
Pattison resided. The effect on Pattison, as we know from
his autobiography, was by no means happy ; and, on the
whole, this second arrangement proved a failure. The
house was closed in 1840. Pusey's reputation, however,
was already estabUshed in 1837 as " the great benefactor
of Oxford," the Cambridge visitor who so describes him
adding, that " he supports five divinity students in
his own house, and his benefactions to the poor are
very great." This unnamed visitor further states, after
referring to the immense excitement produced by Pusey's
5 th of November Divine Eight sermon in that year, that
he was said to "possess an indirect but great influence
over the whole clergy of Oxford," including even those
who were not favourable to his views (i. 406). At
this time (1837) Pusey had already published his
famous tract on Baptism ; but as to auricular con
fession, we learn that he feared it was " a grace which
had been lost to the Church, and could not be restored "
(p. 407). Here, then, we see Pusey established as a great and
growing power in Oxford just as Newman's influence was
approaching its climax, which was so swiftly to be followed
by his fall. As yet Pusey's designs are not unfolded — he
does not himself at present see how far they are to take
him. The beginnings of his confessional theory perplex
him. But his work differs altogether from that of

HIS POWER IN OXFORD 219
Newman. He does not live in a world of ideas and ab
stractions, but of penitential feeling, of theological con
templation, and patristic studies. Newman's secession will
not move him, for logic does not govern his thoughts or
his aims.

CHAPTER IX
Pusey's Middle Period — His Doctrine of Baptism and
Confession
TT will be convenient, at the beginning of this chapter, to
-¦- note that Dr. Liddon quietly throws over two errors
which at different times have found a good deal of support
from Anglican writers, and even in the columns of the
Guardian. One of these has been that Hooker sanctions the
high sacramental doctrine of Pusey and his followers. The
author of the great sermon on Justification ought never to
have been supposed to hold such doctrine ; the idea is
strangely astray. The allusions to the subject of the Lord's
Supper in the Ecclesiastical Polity do not lend the slightest
colour of support to such an idea ; they plainly imply the
contrary. Dr. Liddon, in effect, concedes this, and, as
accounting for Hooker's fading to agree with the standard
of high sacramental orthodoxy taught by the Laudian
school, and revived by the Oxford Tractarian writers, refers
to the " Calvinistic tinge " which remained in Hooker's
teaching. This phrase seems to indicate the source of the
error on this subject which has prevailed. Because Hooker
was the defender of AngUcan Episcopacy against Calvinistic
Presbyterianism, it appears to have been imagined that he
must have been high Anglican all round. This erroneous
assumption is born of deep and far-reaching ignorance.
220

PUSEY'S DEVELOPMENT AS A CHURCHMAN 221
In fact, the great champion of EngUsh episcopal govern
ment was as little of an apostolical successionist, in the
sense of modern ultra-High Churchmen, as of a high
Oxford sacramentarian. On all points he held the scales
fair and even between the opposing schools ; he was neither
Lutheran nor Calvinist ; he was neither patristic nor Zwing-
lian ; he was Pauline and scriptural ; he was an evangelical
English Churchman, a true son of the English Eeformation
in its best, its ripest, its most justly balanced form. Not
less unfounded is the other error to which I refer, viz.
that Alexander Knox was in some sense a forerunner
of the Oxford Tractarian school. He was the intimate
friend of Wesley for many years, and after his revered
friend's death continued to delight in the preaching of
Wesley's most eminent " assistants," especially Adam
Clarke. His doctrine of faith is identical with that
taught by Wesley in his Appeals to Men of Reason and
Religion, and nearly resembles that of Luther, and also that
taught by Archdeacon Hare ; it is contradictory to that
taught by Newman and Pusey. His doctrine as to the
Eucharist, also, is very far removed from Pusey's doctrine
of Consubstantiation and the Eeal Presence.^
It is my aim in this chapter specially to note the
points of progress and development in Pusey's growth out
of the " liberal " High Churchmanship of his early manhood,
into the extreme Eomanising position which he maintained
for nearly half a century. I have said that of his adhesion
to the Tractarian school he gave the pledge, by his tract
on Baptism in 1835, five years after he had published the
second part of his Enquiry in answer to Mr. Eose on the
1 As to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in particular, I may
refer to his letter to Hannah More (Remains, iv. pp. 308-311).

222 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
subject of German rationalism. His earlier tract on Fasting
was distinguished from the other tracts of the series by
the signature of Pusey's initials, and it contains nothing
characteristic of the special sacramentarian teaching of the
Tractarian school. The tract on Baptism was unsigned,
and took its place strictly and fully as one of the anonym
ous series of Tracts for the Times.
By it he laid the foundation of that definite doctrine
on grace, and all that relates to the innermost and essential
Christian lUe, which has since been the peculiar character
istic of the modern Sacramentarian school of Oxford.
Here also he began to mark out sharply for the Oxford
school that line of e'vident divergence from the spiritual
doctrine of the Eeformation which before long alienated
Samuel Wilberforce from the new High Anglican party.
He was, indeed, but a clumsy exponent of the new -views,
which were afterwards presented in a much more plausible
and attractive form by Eobert Wilberforce, who was able
to give an aspect of phUosophical system and method to
what was reaUy not so much mystical and transcendental
as contradictory and impossible — as contradictory as that
two and two make five, as impossible as a fourth dimension
in solid geometry. But, however clumsily, Pusey, a pious
and earnest Christian, so taught his doctrine as to
make it appear, to those who received it, a vital part of
spiritual theology, as exhibiting in its first beginnings the
work of the Holy Spirit in renewing and sanctifying the
soul. This he did with a gravity, a solemnity, I had
almost said an unction, which impressed many of his readers,
however much they might be puzzled by some parts and
startled by other parts of his teaching. Dr. Liddon has
hardly done justice to his subject at this point. He seems

HIS TRACT AND HIS PREACHING ON BAPTISM 223
himself to hesitate as to endorsing or professing to under
stand all that his master has written. He leaves the reader
to infer from what he quotes, as said by eminent High
Churchmen, as to the difficulties raised by Pusey's teaching
and from his own silence, that the tract raised serious
questions in the minds of the ablest High Church divines,
recognised authorities in their own school, such as he him
self cannot undertake to remove. He quotes also admissions
from Pusey himself that he had not clearly or satisfactorily
explained his own views ; and he gives us to understand
that, though the tract was afterwards enlarged, though
several editions of it were published, it was never so
enlarged as to supply what was needed, and was at last
left by its author unsatisfactory and incomplete. But the
biography contains no real explanation of the special
teaching of the tract, although some pages are occupied
in vague statements, partly quotations, intended to indi
cate its general purpose and drift. This deficiency I must
endeavour to supply.
All that I am about to write is founded on a first-hand
study of the tract and of Pusey's sermons. The promised
sequel to the tract, a sequel never pubUshed ; the ex
planations which Pusey never gave in any connection
with the tract, — explanations which, we may reasonably
hold, he had not fully worked out when the tract was
written, and so far as he saw them coming into 'view,
shrank at that period from making known to an un
prepared English pubUc ; — were in effect involved in that
full-blown confessional system which, to the bitter grief
of his archbishop, and the bishops of the southern dioceses
especially, harassed and disturbed Pusey's episcopal supe
riors during the later years of his life, — that confessional

224 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
system which, as we have seen, when he set about writing
the tract, he regarded as a " grace and blessing lost to the
English Church."
The first occasion on which Pusey aroused public
attention on the subject of baptism was when he
preached at Christ Church his remarkable sermon —
Thomas Mozley, in his Reminiscences, calls it his " great
sermon " — on " Sin after Baptism." Unless the order
of the Reminiscences is hopelessly confused, this sermon
was preached at an earlier period than the publica
tion of the tract. The text was Heb. vi. 4-6. Mr.
Mozley says : " Every corner of the church was filled ;
one might have heard a pin drop. Every word told.
The keynote was the word 'irreparable,' pronounced
every now and then with the force of a judgment."
The sermon does not appear to have been pubUshed.
But Mozley 's account of it shows what was the leading
idea of the exposition and of the commination fulminated
by the preacher. He made the language of the terrible
passage refer directly and properly to baptism. In baptism
the Hebrew reprobates had once for all, a-ira^, been
" enlightened," and through confirmation had been " made
partakers of the Holy Ghost." Such baptized persons
having " fallen away " from grace by wilful sin, it was
impossible to " renew again unto repentance." Their loss
was " irreparable." It is no marvel if the sermon was
never published, for deliberately to justify its exposition to
the satisfaction either of divines or of New Testament
scholars would have been impossible.
The exegetical ignorance which could so misinterpret
a text — the reference of which to publicly apostate Jews,
who in returning to the camp of blaspheming antichristian

AS TO SIN AFTER BAPTISM 225
Jews, " crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh and
put Him to an open shame," should have been very plain to
a biblical student — is beyond what could well have been
thought possible in an Oxford Professor of Hebrew even in
the era of Lord Grey's or Lord Melbourne's Ministry. Nor
is it wonderful that the alarming question as to Sin after
Baptism first raised by a sermon not to be forgotten, then
raised again vaguely, but with emphasis, in his tract on
Baptism, a question left quite unanswered, should have
been cast up against Pusey by one after another even of
his High Church friends, and should be implicitly recog
nised by his biographer as a problem unsolved. How Pusey
came to solve it afterwards wUl be presently explained.
Meantime I proceed to show that other parts of his
teaching on the subject of baptism, as these are set forth
in his tract, ' if not so dark and repulsive as this, are
scarcely less difficult or incredible. He gathered up the
substance of the first part of his tract, as several times
revised and as very greatly enlarged, in a volume entitled.
The Doctrine of Holy Baptism. In this volume he
makes baptism the one means and channel of the whole
Christian life at its initiation, whether for adults or infants.
Herein, and only herein, is conveyed forgiveness, and the
new birth, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The meaning
and operation of faith in the case of penitents are restricted
to the preliminary work of accepting the authority of the
Church and the teaching of the priest as to the way of
salvation. According to, Pusey, St. Paul knew nothing
whatever of Christian grace until after his baptism. " As
yet," he says, " neither were his sins forgiven, nor had he
received the Holy Ghost ; much less was he born again of
the Spirit, untU it was conveyed to him through the
15 •

226 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
Saviour's sacrament." " Before his baptism, he appears
neither to have been pardoned, regenerated, justified, nor
enlightened." During the three days and nights of his
blindness and agony he was unvisited by any illumination
of the Spirit, or any infiuence of the special grace of
Christ. All that transformed him from the state of
bondage, darkness, and terror was accomplished in and by
his baptism at the hands of Ananias. In that his pardon
was declared, his soul regenerated, and the Holy Ghost
imparted to him in sudden power and fulness.
The case of Cornelius, indeed, is admitted to be a sort
of exception, the solitary exception, except the primary
and palmary case of the disciples who, on the Day of
Pentecost, were baptized with the Holy Ghost in order to
qualify them for baptizing others " with water and with the
Holy Ghost." The case of Cornelius and his household,
Pusey virtually identifies with that of the first disciples in
the upper room. Unfortunately for any such identification,
the first disciples on the Day of Pentecost had not been
baptized unless with John's baptism ; while, on the other
hand, Cornelius was baptized immediately after recei-ving
the Holy Ghost. That is to say, when he had already
received the Holy Ghost, he afterwards received that
baptism of which the characteristic virtue is, according to
Dr. Pusey, that in and by it the gifts of pardon and of the
indwelling Holy Spirit are conveyed to the baptized.
Pusey's name is great, and the object of his bio
graphy is to make it greater than ever, not only as a
man of saintly devotion and life, but as, of this age,
the greatest " Master in Israel." For this reason my
readers must bear with me while I exhibit still more
fully the actual teaching of the Oxford High Church rabbi

HIS EXEGESIS AND EXPOSITION OF ST. PAUL 227
— the great theologian of his school. St. Paul declares
(1 Cor. i.) that to the Corinthian believers Christ had been
made " wisdom from God," " and righteousness and sancti
fication and redemption." The direct and proper reference
of the apostle here, Pusey teaches, was strictly and
directly to the baptism of the Corinthian Christians as the
immediate source of all these high and heavenly blessings.
He teaches this without appearing to note the contradic
tion he thus gives to the apostle's own words almost
immediately preceding, in which he says that Christ sent
him " not to baptize, but to preach the gospel," and even
thanks God that he had himself baptized only two persons
at Corinth, " lest any man," as he explains, " should say
that ye were baptized into my name." So, again,
Pusey's interpretation makes St. Paul teach that it
was in and by baptism, as the direct and only means
and instrument, that the Corinthians " were washed,
were sanctified, were justified, in the name of the Lord
Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. vi. 11);
although this would imply, that with this great work,
inasmuch as he did not baptize them, the apostle himself
had nothing to do. The words of John the Baptist, " I
indeed baptize with water, but there cometh One after me,
who shaU baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire," are
interpreted as finding their direct and proper fulfilment in
the effects of Christian water-baptism as administered by
the disciples and their converts on and after the Day of
Pentecost. The Ephesians, we read, were " sealed by the
Spirit of God unto the day of redemption," " were sealed
with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest
of our inheritance." This seaUng, Pusey teaches, is only
another name for baptism. SimUarly, when the apostle

228 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
says in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians that God had
" anointed " and " sealed " the Corinthian believers, and
given them the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts, the
full and proper meaning of the passage is said to be
satisfied by referring it to the direct and necessary results
of the water-baptism of these Corinthians. Nay, even when
St. John, in his First Epistle, speaks of the " unction from
the Holy One,'' the reference, according to the Puseyite
theology and exegesis, is to the gift and blessing bestowed
in and by the act of baptism as means and instrument.
With characteristic intrepidity, with the sanguine thorough
ness of purpose which, as Newman has taught us, in the
case of Pusey, was unconscious of any " intellectual per
plexities," the plough of Tractarian superstition is thus
driven straight through the plainest teaching of apostolic
doctrine — and this in the name of apostolicity !
The following passage will serve to present in his own
words a summary view of Pusey's doctrine as to baptism : —
" No change of heart, then, or of the affections ; no
repentance, however radical; no faith, no Ufe, no love,
comes up to the idea of this ' birth from above ' ; it takes
them all in and comprehends them all, but itself is more
than all : it is not only the creation of a new heart, new
affections, new desires, and, as it were, a new birth, but it
is an txctual birth from above or from God, a gift coming
down from God, and given to faith, through baptism ; yet
not the work of faith, but the operation of ' water and the
Holy Spirit.' . . . Faith and repentance are the conditions
on which God gives it ; water, sanctified by our Lord's
baptism, is the* womb of our new birth."
Here, in passing, let us note that the faith of which
Pusey here speaks is not at all that "faith of the Son

AS TO INFANT BAPTISM 229
of God," that " faith of the operation of God," of which St.
Paul speaks, and whereby he tells us that he lived (Col.
ii 12; Gal. ii 20); it is faith before grace, faith apart
from any special influence of the Holy Spirit. What it
may be understood to mean in the case of the baptized
infant, Pusey makes no attempt to explain.
Thus much, however, we learn as to infant baptism —
that infant baptism and confirmation are part and parcel
of the same sacrament. According to this view, in
baptism " original sin is washed away and divine grace
imparted " through the Spirit of Christ ; in confirmation,
regarded as part of baptism, the fuller and richer gifts and
influence of the Holy Ghost are, under the laying on of the
bishop's hands, imparted to the catechumens. Pusey
approves and adopts the expressions which speak of
conflrmation as " part of baptism," as " the complement of
baptism " ; and he quotes with approval from Bingham the
language of Haime — a High Church writer — which affirms
" in so many words — ' The gift of the Holy Spirit is given
in baptism by the imposition of the bishop's hands.' "
I add another quotation, the reference of which is to
infant baptism. After referring to the earliest memories
of happy homes, and to " bright visions of the past " in
childhood's happiest days, Pusey proceeds as follows : —
" It is not then in vain, surely, that throughout His
whole Church He has blended with that early past one
brighter spot which sheds its lustre over all, and from
which the light of their sun shines sevenfold, our baptismal
morn. , . , Our baptism is of inexpressible value and
comfort, even because it is the act of God ; it has nothing
earthly mixed with it ; it was simply His who chose us ' to
the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,' and 'pre-

230 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
destinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ
unto Himself.' ... Our comfort, our joy, our peace, our
consolation, our glory, is to have what we have purely from
Him, and conveyed by a formal act of His, whereby, ' not
according to works of righteousness which we did, but
according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing
of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.' "
Such was Pusey's teaching as to the new birth and
the gift of the Holy Ghost in baptism, equally for adults
and infants. The Christian life so begun in the soul was,
of course, as he taught, to be nourished and maintained by
the "Holy Eucharist," in which our Lord in His perfect
fulness, as God and man, as Son of God and Christ, is
consubstantiated with every particle of the consecrated
bread and wine. But on that subject I shall not enter in
the present chapter. I will show, hereafter, what that
doctrine involves, and that it is not to be distinguished
from the Eomish transubstantiation.
The question as to sin after baptism now, however,
comes back to us. The sources and channels of the divine
life, the Christian life, in man, according to the Puseyite
teaching, have been shown. But what is the case of those
who, by wilful sin after baptism, have lost the life imparted,
have fallen from grace and from Christ, and incurred an
"irreparable" forfeiture? This is what Pusey did not
explain in his tract, but what on all sides, after his awful
sermon at Christ Church, he was expected to explain. The
explanation was never given as a part of his Doctrine of
Holy Baptism. The demands of his friends were never
explicitly dealt with. Expectations were held out that
he would explain ; he intimated that in a larger treatise,
deaUng with the whole Christian life, what was needed

THE REMEDY FOR SIN AFTER BAPTISM 231
might be supplied. But the direct explanation never
came. Indirectly, however, Pusey's views were at length
made known in print, and then it was not difficult to
understand why they were not earlier and more plainly
and fully set forth. When he had defined his views on the
subject, he thought it prudent to keep back the pubUeation
of his remedy for post-baptismal voluntary sin until he
had privately prepared the mind of his disciples for
receiving and applying it. Like all his school, he beUeved
in the doctrine of reserve, taught in more than one of the
tracts. In brief, his remedy was The Confessional, with
priestly absolution, effectuated and completed by the
reception of the Holy Eucharist.
Among his published sermons — sermons published
many years after the tract on Baptism — are some on the
very subject. I am about to quote from the preface to his
first sermon on Entire Absolution to the Penitent.
Eeferring to penitents, he says : " They wish to be, and
to know that they are, in a state of grace. God has pro
vided a means, however deeply they have fallen, to replace
them in it." And then he explains what is the means so
provided of God. " By His absolving sentence," he says,
" God does efface the past." But, inasmuch as they
" cannot estimate their own repentance and faith, God
has provided physicians of the soul to relieve and judge
for those who ' open their griefs ' to them." Such was
Pusey's doctrine. It is not the Spirit of God, the " Spirit
of adoption," imparted from above to the penitent and
believing suppliant, that delivers from the "spirit of
bondage unto fear." It is the voice of the priest-physician,
declaring " the absolving sentence " of God, whereby He
"effaces the past." It is the priest-physician judicially

232 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
" estunatuig the repentance and faith " of the penitent,
who "judges for" and, when he is satisfied, " relieves those
who open their griefs " to him. As the priest, under the
Mosaic law, examined the leper, and either pronounced him
clean, or sent him back to his seclusion as unclean, so the
Anglican priest, the Anglican "physician," according to
Pusey's doctrine of faith and salvation, examines and
judges as to the state of the penitent, and either " esti
mates" his repentance and faith to be sufficient, and
accordingly restores him to the congregation of the faithful,
declaring, as God's voice, that the " past is effaced," or else
judges them to be insufficient, and sends him back to
prolonged penance, with directions to return and submit
himself for judgment on a future day.
Thus the penitent may get comfort from the priest, and
from him alone can he receive any sure or lawful comfort.
Here, in this " sacrament of confession and absolution," and
here alone, is the rightful source of consolation for the
troubled conscience. For venial sin, indeed, for hasty and
unconscious transgression, the daUy confession in the public
prayers at church, and the public absolution from the
priest following thereupon, — the whole service being read
and interpreted under high Anglo-Catholic light, — might
be sufficient. But for all wUful sin that troubled the
conscience, the one true and legitimate remedy was the
confessional. This was Pusey's consistent doctrine, although the fear
of episcopal censure often led him to use language which
rather implied than straightforwardly expressed it, —
language which laid down the principle, but did not in full
distinctness draw out the conclusion, — and his practice for
forty years was in strict agreement with his doctrine.

THE SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 233
Most earnestly and repeatedly did Bishop WUberforce
endeavour to gain from him some substantial concession as
to this point of Pusey's teaching ; but he completely failed.
Pusey neither frankly told the whole truth as to his
own teaching and example, nor gave any pledge as to his
future course.
Pusey's preaching, when not addressed to beUever s,
was of the most stern, searching, and awakening character,
— sometimes, indeed, startUng and scathing in its bold
and almost fierce outspokenness, — but never coupled with
any direction of sinners immediately to Christ as their
Saviour ; its characteristic effect was to drive his hearers
to the priest and the confessional. One sentence in
the preface to the first volume of his Parochial Sermons
puts in very strong light the antagonism between his
views and those of John Wesley as to the point which
is now before us. " Wesleyanism," he says, " substituted
its doctrine of ' present salvation ' for the comfort through
the ordinance of confession and absolution." If we
turn this sentence round, the truth comes out in the
following form: Puseyism substitutes for the blessed
doctrine of a present and conscious salvation, through
" repentance towards God, and faith toward our Lord
Jesus Christ," such comfort as may be obtained from con
fession to a human priest, and absolution pronounced by
his lips. If this prime and deadly element of Popery,
together with the essentially Eomish doctrine of the Mass,
are now widely spread through England, and if they are
in course of increasingly active propagation, Pusey, more
than any other man, contributed to the lamentable result.
What shall we say to such teaching as this ? With
what prerogative of heart-searching does it invest the

234 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
priest ! " I the Lord . . . try the reins," so we read in
Scripture. But here it is the parish priest who " searches
the hearts and tries the reins of the children of men."
This is the provision whereby we common, unordained
sinners, coming to the young curate of our parish, who was
ordained priest last week, may be assured, " however deeply
we have fallen," that we are restored, and may be made to
" know that we are in a state of grace." This is " the means
which God has provided." One shrinks from using the
only words which can truly describe such teaching. To a
serious thinker, who comes fresh from the contemplation of
the divine majesty and grace to the view of this dogma, it
is a hard thing to refrain from whispering to himself the
question: "But is this less than blasphemy, — to invest poor,
frail, and fallible young mortals, fresh from college, with
such attributes as these ? " While to the man who comes
direct from personal intercourse, in flesh and blood and
broadcloth, with the priests and " physicians " of whom this
great Churchman speaks, the pretensions set up on their
behalf cannot but appear ludicrous in their absurdity.
Indeed, but for the intrinsic impiety of these claims, they
might be expected to dissolve amid "inextinguishable
laughter." ^
What I have now stated will enable the readers of
Pusey's biography to understand the feeling excited by
his tract, as otherwise they hardly could understand it.
To the " terrible " sermon the biography makes no refer
ence. And yet that sermon explains some references in
the biography. Mr. Eose, for example, we are informed,
thought that Pusey " ought to have answered the serious
and pressing question — 'What is that grievous sin after
1 See Note at the end of this chapter {Archdeacon Garbett's Charge).

QUESTIONS RAISED BUT NE VER PLAINL Y ANSWERED 235
baptism which involves a falUng from grace ? ' " The
reference here, no doubt, is in part to certain obscure
phrases or allusions in the tract ; but, still more, it can
hardly be doubted, the reference is to the sermon. Eose,
we are told, understood Pusey to teach " no remission of
sin after baptism." Pusey himself said in later years, and
the quotations I have made from his later sermons throw
on his words a full light such as the biography does not
afford : " From the moment of my completing the tract on
Baptism, I felt that I should have written on Christian
repentance, on confession and absolution." The tract was
originally published in three parts. The first part, which
consisted of forty-nine pages, was republished in a volume
of 400 pages as the first part of a treatise, this being the
volume from which I have quoted. Parts II. and III.
were never republished. " Part IL," Pusey wrote to Keble
in 1841, "will be suspended till I can read about absolu
tion." " The remainder," he wrote about the same time to
Archdeacon Harrison, '' must wait a while, until I can read
more on absolution and the absolving influence of the Holy
Eucharist." He waited forty years, but never completed
his tract or, rather, treatise. Meantime, he developed his
teaching and influence in the organisation, far and wide, of
the confessional movement, working especially by means
of sisterhoods and of schools. Even boys of tender years
were trained to practise confession. But this practical
development of his doctrine belongs to his later Ufe, and is
beyond the scope of this chapter.
From the period of his publishing this famous tract,
Pusey took his position as the great spiritual teacher and
preacher of the patristic revival. The solemnity of his
tone continually deepened, his consecration of life was

236 FUSE Y'S MIDDLE PERIOD
more and more recognised, his earnestness was profound
and contagious ; sin and holiness, the solemnities of life
and death, were the themes of his awakening sermons.
The great sorrow of his life — the loss of his wife — came
upon him before the excitement occasioned by his bap
tismal utterances had passed away. Even in connection
with her death there is a touching, but surely also a
painful, example of the manner in which his legal and,
to speak plain truth, his Pharisaic teaching had taken hold
of the wife he so passionately loved, and who seems to
have been so worthy of his love. As I have already
noted, Mrs. Pusey had been baptized by a Dissenter.
In her last lingering illness this matter disturbed her
peace. She could not find "rest to her soul" simply
in her Saviour ; she could find no peace till " conditional
baptism " had been administered to her. Newman
accordingly rebaptized her, and her gratitude to him
for this act was painfully abject. It is all but certain
that, if she had been under the spiritual guidance of
Cardinal Manning, no such scruple would have been
allowed by him to vex her soul. Her death (in 1839)
left Pusey disconsolate. Not only so, he regarded this
sorrow and bereavement as a chastisement laid on him
for his sins, and himself as only fit to be treated as
a lifelong penitent, who was to take his place alongside
guilty sinners at the feet of Jesus — his duty through life
being fcuicre pcenitentiam. This feeling deepened the
sombre tone of his saintUness — for we may not deny
that he was, notwithstanding his errors, a devoted and
saintly man — and increased the severity of his discipline
both towards himself and others. From this time he
lived an absolutely secluded life. He shut up the

DEATH OF MRS. PUSEY 237
drawing-room door at his Christ Church house, never
to open it agam ; he did not go into public ; he shunned
society. This must be borne in mind when we come across
such traces of his character and influence as are to be
met with in the biography of Mr. J. E. Hope, after
wards Mr. Hope-Scott, whom Pusey, in effect, tramed
into a Eomanist, though he himself never thought of
entering the Eomish communion, and though he seemed
to be no less amazed than grieved, in Hope's case as in
that of Newman, Manning, and many more, when he saw
one whom he had encouraged in his approaches Eomewards
pass forward to the obvious goal which had long fascin
ated his vision, but which Pusey himself was so blind
as never to have seen standing full in view at the
end of the road he was taking.^
1 " None are so blind as those who will not see," so says the
proverb. Nearly seven months before Newman seceded to Rome
he wrote — it veas in March, 1845 — a long letter to Pusey, explaining
frankly and fully his position. In this letter he says : " I cannot hold
precisely what the Church of England holds, and nothing more. I
must go forward or backward, else I sink into a dead scepticism, into
which too many in Oxford are now sinking. You cannot take them
a certain way in a line, and then, without assignable reason, stop
them." If there had been anything in Pusey of logic or speculative
power of thought, this might have awakened or in some way intel
lectually moved him. Its only effect seems to have been to restrain
him from in any way opposing the claims of Rome ; — all its essential
and necessary doctrines, as at that time authoritatively set forth,
all that was " of faith," he already held as fully as Newman. In
credible as it may appear, four months later, in July, he actually
" wrote to Newman for advice with regard to some people under his
own charge who were tempted to join the Church of Rome." Within
a few days after Newman's secession, Pusey wrote a long letter to the
English Churchman, in which he suggested that Newman had, in
answer to the long-continued and earnest prayers of a multitude of

238 PUSEY'S. MIDDLE PERIOD
In the year 1844, Pusey wrote a letter to Mr.
Hope — not as yet Hope-Scott — which Dr. Liddon has
not thought necessary to quote or to refer to in
this biography, exhaustive as it is supposed to be, but
which I quote here because I think it important as
an illustration of the real character of Pusey's influence
— of the frightful lengths to which he went himself,
and encouraged others to go, in the Eomeward direction.
Mr. Hope was travelling on the Continent, and Pusey
in his letter gives his friend a number of commissions.
One of these commissions is reserved for the postscript,
and is given as follows : —
" There is yet a subject on which I should Uke to
know more, if you fall in with persons who have the
guidance of consciences — what penances they employ for
persons whose temptations are almost entUely spiritual,
of delicate frames often, and who wish to be led on to
perfection ? I see in a spiritual writer that even for
such, corporal severities are not to be neglected ; but
so many of them are unsafe. I suspect the ' discipline '
to be one of the safest, and with internal humUiation
the best , . , could you procure and send me one
by B.i What was described to me was of a very sacred
character ; five cords, each with five knots, in memory
persons in the Church of Rome for his conversion, been given to that
Church, and taken from the Church of England, where there was no
scope for his great faculties ; he had, by Pro-vidence, to quote Pusey's
words, been " transplanted into another part of the -vineyard, where
the full energies of his powerful mind can be employed, which here
they were not." Such were the views, such the spirit, of the man
whose memory is worshipped by the " Church of Lord Halifax " as the
leader who has moulded the character and opinions of modern High
Anglicans. (Vol. ii. pp. 449-463.)
1 Badeley.

STRANGE COMMISSION GIVEN TO A FRIEND 239
of the five wounds of our Lord. ... I should be glad
to know also whether there were any cases in which it
is unsafe — e.g. in a nervous person." ^
It was almost immediately after the death of his
wife, and in order to carry out his plans of penitent
self-sacrifice, that Pusey conceived the thought of build
ing a church in Leeds. The melancholy and instructive
history of that plan and of its accompUshment is partially
given in the last chapter of the second volume of the
biography, and is resumed and finally disposed of in the
third volume. I shall return to the subject in my
next chapter, having in this given a fuller account
of his teaching as to baptism than has before been pub
lished. Here, however, I desire to close the chapter
with a few explanatory words. I have felt it my duty
plainly to expose Pusey's fatal errors, fraught, as they
were, with incalculable mischief to the cause of evan
gelical truth and life in England ; but at the same time I
have acknowledged, and desire once more to acknowledge
fully and frankly, Pusey's sincere and earnest piety. No
saint of the Eomish Church has ever, perhaps, been more
devoted, or lived a more consecrated Ufe. The best people
in all Churches may learn not a little that is good from
his life and example. He was a good man, however
lamentably in error ; and, though his Ufe and influence
have wrought terrible mischief, they have also been, in
some respects, an inspiration for good. Some of his
own words may fitly be quoted here : " We should not
think," he says in one of his sermons, " the comparative
holiness of these men any test as to the truth of any
one characteristic doctrine. Holiness (whether produced
1 See Ornsby's Memoirs of Hope-Scott.

240 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
in the teacher or the taught) proves the presence of
some truth, not of the whole truth, nor of the purity of
that truth." As with many others, his working faith was
better than his teaching. He held doubtless much truth
implicitly or unconsciously which he could not, or even
would not, have explicitly defined or confessed.
But his praises will be sounded by many writers. His
biography sets forth, I will not say unfairly, rather I should
say inevitably, a biassed and too favourable -view of his
whole character and influence. The biographer, from his
youth up, was his disciple and intimate friend. He belonged
to the same school, and felt for his master the deepest
veneration ; as was to be expected, accordingly, the bio
graphy faUs to exhibit features of Pusey's character and
influence which in the interest of our national Protestantism,
of evangelical truth, of free and manly Christianity, it was
neccessary to bring fully to the light. It would have
been more pleasant to have dwelt chiefly upon the bright
and exemplary side of Pusey's character and course. It
has been my unwelcome duty, on behalf of the truth, and
it -will yet again be my duty, to show his errors and faults.
It is needful to do this, because the prevalence of Puseyism,
rightly so caUed, the growing influence of that ritual
istic and superstitious form of reUgion, which, though
Pusey was never himself a puerile ritualist in matters of
ecclesiastical taste and service, has all naturally grown
out of principles which he inculcated, is alienating more
and more the manly strength of the nation from traditional
Christianity, and is increasing the difference and distance,
in respect of religious feeling and sympathy, between
the majority of the clergy of the nation and the vast
majority of its laity. It is now commonly acknowledged

ROOT OF ERROR AND FRUIT OF EVIL ii,\
by clerical correspondents in Anglican ecclesiastical news
papers that the middle classes refuse to accept the
sacramental teaching and the ritualistic opinions and
practices of the dominant section of the clergy. This
fact, though satisfactory from one point of view, is, on
the whole, disquieting. That the congregations should
reject the systematic teaching of their clergy is of evU
omen for the future of religion in England. Nor can
it but be injurious to Christian nobleness of character
in the rising generation among the English upper classes,
if the principles of priestly rule over the conscience and
of sacramental confession are inculcated by those who
have a chief hand in the moulding of the character of
cultivated Englishmen. These things, it must further
be said, exasperate religious schisms and differences ; they
tend to erect the Church of England into a great social
as well as ecclesiastical barrier, which casts its baleful
shadow widely over the Christianity of the country, and
which is itself the schismatic cause of rancorous and un
charitable feelings in the Nonconformist Churches of the
land. Already the influence of the causes I have indicated
has gone very far towards alienating the mass of EngUsh
Methodists from the Established Church, and making
not a few of them, in effect, throughout a large part of
the country, leaders in the movement for its downfall.
In truth, as already shown, the effects of Puseyism go to
divide the Church of England itself into two, if not
three, distinct Churches, as well as to spread religious
bitterness and controversy through all classes of the
community.

i6

242 PUSEY'S MIDDLE PERIOD
Note to Page 234.
The Claims of Anglican Pribst-Oonpessoes.
After this chapter was already in print, I met with a passage in
Archdeacon Garbett's Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Chichester,
August 1851, which I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting, be
cause of the apt confirmation it affords of what I have said in the text.
" We are compelled to acknowledge," says Archdeacon Garbett, " for
instance, the insensibility of mankind to the nature of sin — its deadli-
ness, its hatefulness to Almighty God, and its wasting effects upon the
soul. We learn by mortifying experience how little men's minds appre
ciate the dignity and, under whatever light you regard it, the awfulness
of our office, and the reverence due to us as the commissioned servants
of God. ... In this mood it strikes us that to be invested with a
veritable priesthood, to stand visibly between man and God, and,
with the prerogatives of a judge, to hold aloft the keys of heaven and
hell, will thrill all hearts with the sense of a real spiritual presence,
and alternately shake and support, terrify and attract, as need may be,
the souls of sinful men. . . . But, meanwhile, who are we that
we should clothe ourselves, even by delegation, in the awful and eternal
priesthood of Christ ? Who are we that we should draw men's eyes
down from the Lamb that lies bleeding before the ' throne, and is
everlastingly presented and pleaded before Him that sitteth upon it,
to men like ourselves, and to a visible mediation ? Had God intended
us to exercise so tremendous an office as a portion of the normal discip
line and inherent attributes of His Church, is it credible, or consistent
'with the analogy of His dealings, that He would have left us destitute
of the faculties which are absolutely indispensable to its discharge?
Has He given us, as a matter of fact, by virtue of our ordination, the
power of searching the soul ? Can we, indeed, with the penetrating
glance of the All-present, see into locked hearts, unravel at a touch
the tangled skein of sincerity and self-delusion, and, by an absolute
and infallible sentence, anticipate the sentence of the judgment-day 1
' I absolve thee, and in heaven my sentence is ratified. 0 man, thou
art unloosed,' or ' Thou art bound, and it is I who have bound thee.'
Can we try the very hearts and reins ? . . . Had He intended His
ministers judicially to absolve and condemn, and thus grasp in their
hands the keys of heaven and hell, He would at the same time have
bestowed on them the necessary faculties. He would have made us
heart-searchers. Men would be forced to recognise in us, by many
infallible proofs, not by a mere faith without sight, but as a thing,
like every other fact, demonstrated by experience, the possession of
this awful and mysterious prerogative." — Archdeacon Garbett's Charge
to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Chichester, August 5, 1851, pp. 29, 32.

CHAPTER X.
The Later and Fuller Development of Pusey's
Teaching and Influence.
confession — celibacy  sisterhoods  THE EUCHARIST.
rriHE materials of the last chapter were largely derived
-^ from the first two volumes of Pusey's biography.
The contents of the third volume will furnish the chief
materials for the present chapter.
Whatever expectations may have been formed as to
the contents of these volumes of Pusey's Life, I venture
to say that, in one respect at anyrate, they have not
approached the reality which is presented in the third
volume. Such highly-coloured and self-loathing pictures of
penitential experience, such confessions of inward sin and
guiltiness, are not to be found, so far as I know, in any
modern biography, scarcely even in the confessions of such
penitents as Bunyan, John Nelson, or Newton of Olney.
They are profoundly pathetic, but it almost makes one
shudder to read them. They are the confessions, to make
the case more extraordinary, not of an unconverted and
unchurchly man, but of the Canon of Christ Church, the
great university preacher, the guide of forlorn and penitent
souls. Besides these startling revelations, there will be
found very much else to surprise the student of human

244 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
nature and of the history of the Church of England. The
character of Pusey is seen as under the limelight, and the
meaning of Puseyism is revealed, not, indeed, completely
and in all aspects, but yet with an insight and an authentic
and confidential fulness of disclosure not elsewhere to be
found in any single work. By the publication of these
volumes, taken in connection with certain other authorities
which I shall cite, the means are for the first time avaUable
for forming sornething like a complete judgment on the
merits of Pusey as a party organiser and leader. It is a
satisfaction to know that Dr. Liddon, by his statement of
the case and the history belonging to it, has done all for his
revered leader, and for his party, that any man could do ;
his information, his abiUty, and his discretion as a disciple
and apologist being all that the friends of Pusey could
desire. If, with these volumes in our hands, the verdict of
public opinion should be adverse to the principles and policy
which Pusey spent his Ufe in teaching and promoting, that
verdict, it may be beUeved, is little likely to be reversed.
In the preceding chapter, after tracing Pusey's history
and the development of his character up to the period of
his settled conversion from liberaUsm in Church and
State to Tractarianism, I dealt with his tract, afterwards
expanded to a treatise, on Baptism, but yet never com
pleted, with his " great sermon " on Sin after Baptism, and,
anticipating at this point the contents of the third volume,
I showed how that tract and that sermon were followed up,
years afterwards, by the sermon on the "Entire Absolution
of the Penitent," preached in the University pulpit in
1845, The tract and the sermons enabled me to draw out
distinctly and pretty fully the principles of Pusey's whole
scheme of sacramental doctrine, and especially what he

YEARS OF SORROW AND CONFLICT 245
taught as to the relations of private confession to " absolu
tion " and the " Holy Eucharist." ^ I was able also to supply
evidence from a letter of Pusey's to Mr. Hope-Scott, pub
Ushed in the memoirs of that gentleman, himseU a convert,
largely through Pusey's influence, to Eomanism, as to the
terrible lengths to which Pusey was prepared to carry
penitential discipline even in the case of women. In the
sequel of the biography, as might be expected, we find
further and yet more startling developments of Pusey's
teaching, both as to the confessional and as to other points
of Eomanising discipline, with an account of troubles and
controversies between himself and his episcopal superiors.
It will be my duty, however, in this chapter, even more
than in the preceding, to supplement from other sources
the information given by the biographer, so as more com
pletely to represent the actual truth as to the character
and methods of Pusey, and the operation and influence of
Puseyism within the Church of England.
Before I lead the way to the record of penitential
history and discipline, which is the great feature in the
earUer portion of the third volume, it wUl be necessary to
set down in order a few points in Pusey's earlier history
which must be borne in mind in following, however freely,
the lines of his later lUe-history from 1845 onwards. , The
fifteen years of the life, from 1845 to 1860, included in
1 A sermon on the Eucharist, preached in 1843, intended as a sort
of sequel to his sermon on " Sin after Baptism," led to his being ex
cluded by the Vice-Chancellor, on the demand of " Six Doctors," from
the University pulpit for two years. At the close of this period, his
first sermon before the University reasserted the teaching of 1843
more largely. The sermon was that on " Entire Absolution " referred
to above. I did not refer in my last chapter to the sermon of 1843,
because as to the points under discussion that of 1845 was fuller and
more explicit.

246 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
the third volume, ma,y be described generally as a period of
severe confiict, in which Pusey had more personal diffi
culties to contend with than at any other period of his
history, I have just referred in a Note to his suspension
in 1843—1845 from his position as preacher in turn
before the university. During those two years the crisis
of Newman's career took place. His secession was a
terrible blow for Pusey. WhUst he was still staggering
under the effects of that blow, the consequences of his
undertaking at Leeds, as the founder of St. Saviour's Church
and Mission, began to unfold themselves, one after another
of the St. Saviour's clergy going over to Eome, while the
Bishop of Eipon, Dr. Longley, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, was roused to indignation against Pusey and
his agents. Almost coincident with Newman's departure
from Oxford was the introduction upon the scene, as
Pusey's episcopal "father in Christ," of Dr. Wilberforce,
who in 1845 was appointed by Sir Eobert Peel to the See
of Oxford, from which Dr. Bagot was most thankful to be
translated to that of Bath and Wells. Wilberforce's rela
tions with Pusey from the first were those of a watchful
guardian of old EngUsh orthodoxy and Church order, who
was filled with suspicions of Pusey's teaching and infiuence ;
and soon Pusey, whose period of suspension by the Vice-
Chancellor had just come to an end, found himself privately
inhibited from preaching within the diocese of Oxford.
This inhibition lasted for two years, and was only removed
in consideration of certain explanations and pledges the
bishop had received from Pusey. It was the immediate
consequence of the delivery by Pusey, in 1845, of the
sermon on the " Entire Absolution of the Penitent," which
was regarded by Pusey as the " fit and natural conclusion "

PENITENTIAL HISTORY AND DISCIPLINE 247
of the sermon condemned in 1843 by the Vice-Chancellor
and the Six Doctors. It was the reverse of a recantation
of that sermon. Great domestic and personal sorrow and
suffering came upon Pusey about the same time. His
eldest daughter's death in 1845 was a bereavement second
only to the loss of his wife. He himself was prostrated
by serious illness, and had to retire for many weeks to
Tenby in order to his restoration.
These points being borne in mind, my readers wUl be
prepared to follow me in the remarks which I am about to
offer on the most salient points in the third volume. I
shall, as I have intimated, make it my business here and
there to supplement the information afforded by Dr.
Liddon, who has by no means furnished all the facts and
evidence which are necessary in order to a complete and
true judgment of the character and infiuence of the " Master
in Israel " at whose feet he himself sat as a student, and
whom he regarded with such deep affection.
The thUd volume of the biography enables us to see
what effects the principles which Pusey taught in his
sermon on the " Entire Absolution of the Penitent " pro
duced upon his own mind and life. It shows the results of
his teaching in his own case. He regarded himself as a
penitent who had greatly sinned after baptism, and who
could obtain peace only through confession and absolution.
His wife's death he regarded as a direct punishment for his
sins, and his suspension as a preacher as a providential
chastisement for his "secret faults." The death of his
daughter also was a punishment for his sins. His illness
was another stroke of punishment from the hand of God.
He therefore urgently desired to make his private con
fession to Keble m the church at Hursley, that through

248 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
his ministry he might receive admonition, strengthening,
and comfort. He had begun to press for this as early as
1844, the date of his ominous letter to Mr. Hope-Scott,
quoted in the last chapter.
" My dear wife's illness," he writes to Keble, " first
brought to me what has since been deepened by the
review of my past life, how, amid special mercies and
guardianship of God, I am scarred all over and seamed
with sin, so that I am a monster to myself ; I loathe my
self ; I can feel of myself only like one covered with
leprosy from head to foot ; guarded as I have been, there
is no one with whom I do not compare myself, and find
myself worse than they ; and yet, thus wounded and full
of sores, I am so shocked at myself, that I dare not lay
my wounds bare to anyone : since I have seen the
benefit of confession to others, I have looked round
whether I could unburden myself to anyone, but there is
a reason against everyone. I dare not so shock people ;
and so I go on, having no such comfort as, in good Bishop
Andrewes' words, to confess myself ' an unclean worm, a
dead dog, a putrid corpse,' and pray Him to heal my
leprosy as He did on earth, and to raise me from the dead :
to give me sight, and to forgive me the 10,000 talents;
and I must guide myself as best I can, because, as things
are, I dare not seek it elsewhere.
" You will almost be surprised that, being such, I
should attempt, as I do, to guide any. I cannot help it.
Those whom I in anyway guide were brought to me, and
by experience or reading, or watching God's guidance of
them, I do what I can, and God who loves them has
blessed them through me, though unworthy. But I am
trying to learn to wish to influence nothing on any great

FUSE Y ASKS KEBLE TO BE HIS CONFESSOR 249
scale ; to prefer, I mean, everyone's judgment to my
own, and only to act for myself as I best may, and for
any souls whom He employs me anyway to minister to.
When I can, it is a comfort to use words classing myself
with other sinners : it is a sort of disowning of what
people make of me. I hope all this will not shock you
too much, or do you harm ; the real testimony to the life
of the Church is not in such as me, but in simple people,
such as my own dear child. He is working marvels
among such ; it quite amazes me to see His work with
individual souls. So then pray be not dismayed at what
I write. I have not said so much to anyone for fear of
dismaying them. It seemed as if I had no right. But
there is abundant, superabundant, proof of God's great
grace with people's souls in our Church, though I am a
poor miserable leper. . . ."
Keble did not respond to his friend's wish. The
feelings, however, expressed in the sermon on Confession
and Absolution which Pusey preached in 1845 at Christ
Church — a sermon of which parts of the pointed and
solemn application had in his own mind a direct and
special reference to his own case, and to his own need, as
a sinner and a penitent, of confession and absolution ; — his
distress arising from Newman's secession ; his own long
illness ; and his seclusion during his convalescence at Tenby,
— combined to bring Pusey to a final decision on the
subject of personal confession, which Keble found himself
unable any longer to resist, much as he shrunk from
compliance. Pusey demanded that Keble should put him
to severe discipline and self-mortification as a preparation
for confession. To this Keble repUed : " Mere suffering
is the first and simplest thought ; but then there are duties

250 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
to be done. And have we a right to disquaUfy our
selves for them ? Is it not best to leave it to the
Almighty to do so, if He see fit, by sickness ? " No
such considerations, however, avaUed to satisfy or restrain
Pusey. " I am," he wrote, " a great coward about inflicting
pain on myself, partly, I hope, from a derangement of my
nervous system ; haircloth I know not how to make pain :
it is only symbolical, except when worn to an extent
which seemed to wear me out. I have it on again, by
God's mercy. I would try to get some sharper sort.
Lying hard I like best, unless it is such as to take away
sleep, and that seems to unfit me for duties. Eeal fasting
— i.e. going without food — ^was very Uttle discomfort,
except in the head, when the hour of the meal was over,
and Dr. W[ooten] said and says, ' It was shortening my
life.' Praying with my arms in the form of a cross
seemed to distract me, and act upon my head, from this
same miserable nervousness. I think I should like to be
bid to use the discipline. I cannot even smite on my
breast much, because the pressure on my lungs seemed
bad. In short, you see I am a mass of infirmities. But
I might be able to do something, in faith, if I was bid to
do it." Having in the meantime composed and delivered a
sermon in reply to Dr. Jcune, who, in the University
pulpit, had attacked Pusey for his sermon on Absolution,
Pusey, on December 1, 1846, went to Hursley and made
his confession, sending, before he left, a thank-offering in
money for Hursley Church, '' from one who feels himself
unworthy to offer it himself." A day or two afterwards
he wrote the following letter to his father confessor : —

HIS SELF-LOATHING CONFESSIONS 251
" My dearest Father, — I dare not write much, yet
thus much I may say, in comfort for all the sorrow I gave
you last week, that I cannot doubt but that through your
ministry and the power of the keys, I have received the
grace of God, as I know not that I ever did before. I
can no more doubt of His mercy vouchsafed to me thus
far, than of my own past misery. All indeed is very bad.
, . . However, things seem with me other than they
ever were before ; at least, I seem to hate myself more
thoroughly, and bad as my prayers are, still to have a
love and hope I never knew before. So although, through
my wretchedness, you have seen that what is seeming
may be hoUow, yet through God's unbounded mercy you
wUl have seen anew that His grace is vouchsafed through
His ordinances to penitents, however fallen. You will
pray that it be not in vain. You will know, in some little
measure, what a hard task is before me. To think of
myself as last in God's sight (had He made me such)
would be nothing ; but to feel that I have had gifts of
nature and drawings above others, and to feel that this
wreck is my own making, it is very bitter. . . . May it
only be healing. And then I found my late sermon
printed. Alas ! what a key you have to it. I hardly
know how I could have got through it now. Oh that
that miserable thing should be I ! Yet I trust, by His
mercy, it is no more I. It ought to have cut one's heart
open to read it. However, do not think (I pray) that I
need comfort. It seems to me the most blessed sorrow (when
occupation does not take it away) I ever felt. God would
not deal thus with me, if He had not pardoned me."
It need hardly be said that " that miserable thing "

252 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
referred to as being himself, is the unconfessed, unabsolved
sinner described in the University sermon of 1845,
Pusey had brought with him a rule of discipline for
Keble to sanction. It is portentously voluminous and
detailed — it might be the rule of a Middle Age ascetic ;
it reminds one of the discipline of Oriental ascetics who
have never known anything of divine grace, or Christ's
mercy, or the liberty of the children of God. Among an
infinite number of detaUs, he resolved " to wear haircloth
always by day unless ill ; to use a hard seat by day and
a hard bed by night ; not to wear gloves or protect his
hands ; to eat his food slowly and penitentially, ' making
a secret confession of unworthiness to use God's creatures
before every meal ' " — how unlike the apostle's exhorta
tion, to " eat our food with gladness and singleness of
heart " ! One of his rules was " never, if I can, to look at
the beauty of nature without inward confession of un
worthiness " ; another, " to make mental acts, from time
to time, of being inferior to everyone I see " ; another, " to
drink cold water at dinner, as only fit to be where there
is not a drop to ' cool this flame ' " ; stiU another, " to
make the fire to me from time to time the type of hell."
These are a few selected out of scores of rules. Some, of
course, are good rules for useful and lowly li'ving ; but
most are conceived in a spirit of mechanical self-humUia-
tion, which is most painful to realise, and which ought
to open the eyes of all, except those who are completely
disciplined and dehumanised ascetic bond-slaves, to the
terrible degradation of Christian teaching and principle
involved in the doctrines and discipline of " Puseyism."
It would seem that, however reluctantly, Keble let all
these rules pass with a general caveat and remonstrance.

PENANCE AND "DISCIPLINE" 253
There were some other proposed rules, however, which he
absolutely refused to sanction —
" Pusey was very anxious to use ' the discipline ' every
night with Ps. li. Keble did not advise it. Pusey
entreated. ' I still scruple,' wrote Keble, ' about the dis
cipline. I could but allow, not enjoin it, to anyone.'
Another rule which Pusey begged to have set him was,
' Not to smile, if I can help it, except with children, or
when it seems a matter of love (like one who has just
escaped the fire).' But Keble hesitated. ' I should not
be honest,' he wrote, ' were I not to confess that I cannot
yet reconcUe myself to not smUing. Is it not a penalty
on others more than on oneself ? "
That Pusey was sincere in what he said and did
respecting this question of confession and priestly absolu
tion, is, of course, beyond dispute. Nor can we be insens
ible to the pathetic aspect of his penitential experience.
In the " Confessions " which are here in part disclosed we
have furnished to us some explanation of the morbid tone
of his theology — onesided as it was throughout ; we hear
the keynote of the minor strain of feeling which dominated
all his life-service. But the issue we have to deal with
is not affected by the question of personal sincerity
and devoutness. Our question is as to the truth and
wisdom of his work and counsels ; the good or evil of his
characteristic aims and influence ; and whether he was fit
and competent to fill the part of a religious leader and
guide. The reply must be that he was in many ways,
and on the whole, very unfit. He lived in a private
world of his own, which was visited mostly by morbid
souls. Of the actual play of life, of the influences which
mingle in life's battle, or life's school, and by which

254 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
character is moulded or marred, he had no true, sober, or
practical knowledge. If I could have produced here so
much — and, long as it is, it is but a portion — of his
voluminous letter to Keble in preparation for his Confes
sion, as is printed by his biographer, my readers would
have had a striking illustration of the infinite multiplicity
of mere particulars, many of them quite insignificant,
which, in his view, made up the total of conduct, the
school of character, the picture of the soul's life and state.
The moral principles, of which once and again we catch
just a glimpse, are for the most part lost and submerged.
Of the grand evangeUcal truths which make up the gospel
revelation as taught by our Lord, as insisted upon and
illustrated by the apostles, there seems to be scarcely any
recognition. We are in the school, at once Pharisaic
and ascetic, of mechanical ordinances — " touch not, taste
not, handle not " ; we see a soul in bondage, and, it would
seem, totally unconscious of the nature or conditions of
true spiritual life and liberty. We are reminded of
the petty fanaticism of a mediteval devotee, totally
ignorant of the writings of St. Paul, and with no know
ledge, at first hand, of the Gospels. Instead of the pardon
of sin to the believing penitent by the Saviour of sinners,
we are told of the remission, by the authority of the
priest who carries the "keys," of sins confessed to him
one by one. It is he who pronounces absolution after
having summed up the items of the confession. The
" Great Absolver " is out of sight ; the eye of faith is not
directed to the " Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world," nor to the one and only Mediator between
God and man, who breathes His peace into the soul of
the believing penitent.

CONFESSION IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH 255
The Church of England allows confession to be made
to the minister of Christ where, for the comfort and relief
of the soul, the penitent sinner feels the need of such
confession ; but the mind of the Church of England, as
expounded by her highest authorities, and gathered from
her broad and general teaching, is unquestionably opposed
to the habitual practice of confession, and especially to
any claim on the part of its ministers to require such
confession, and to pronounce an authoritative sentence of
divine absolution. When this was urged upon Pusey, his
stereotyped reply was that he did not enforce confession.
What was this but a disingenuous subterfuge 1 He taught
that in the case of wUful sin after baptism there was no
means of peace, no provision for the sinner's pardon and
absolution, except by the way of auricular confession to the
" priest-physician," who is invested with authority to hear
the confession, to judge as to the sincerity and sufficiency
of the repentance, and to pronounce or withhold absolution.
A number of priestly-minded clergymen received Pusey's
doctrine on this subject with conviction and enthusiasm. It
was whispered with awe and solemnity from lip to Up, it
was embraced by women, it was taught to children, and, as
the one message of hope to souls awakened to a sense of
their sin and the peril of eternal damnation, it became in
many quarters the High Church gospel of forgiveness. It
had this advantage over the mere formalism of the dry
High Church, that it recognised the fact of sin in the
depths of human nature, of sin as a barrier between man
and God, and the need in order to pardon of conviction and
repentance. But, whatever Pusey might say, this doctrine
did, in effect, enforce confession to the priest on all who
received it. It did so by the most potent methods,, under

256 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
the most severe and stringent spiritual penalties. Whilst
Pusey in his correspondence with Dr. Hook and his bishop
(Wilberforce) pleaded that he did not teach compulsory
confession, that he left it free to his disciples either to con
fess or to abstain from confessing, he was, in fact, using
with all his authority and with terrible solemnity the
motives which belong to the eternal world and the dread
hereafter, in order to constrain all that came within the
scope of his teaching, if they desired peace of con
science and any assurance of pardon, to seek this from
the priest by the way of confession. Any other kind of
enforcement, any legal compulsion, was, of course, out
of the question.
The difference between such a doctrine as this and that
of the Church of England, even as understood by a High
Churchman Uke Dr. Hook, is shown by a passage in a
letter from Keble to Pusey, given in Pusey's biography as
part of the correspondence relating to the case of St.
Saviour's Church, Leeds. Keble, who had visited Leeds
at Pusey's request in connection with that case, reports
as follows to Pusey : —
" I called on Hook, and asked him if he objected to
the principle or to the way of carrying it out. He said,
' To the principle, for they \i.e. Pusey and his followers]
taught confession and absolution as a " mean of grace," '
whereas he considered that ' the Prayer-Book allows it only
as a " mean of comfort," and that only in " exceptional
cases." ' I asked him how he reconciled this with what he
himself said to me about his opinion of the practice in
1844. He said 'he was of the same mind then as now,
that the confession he approved and practised was no more
than confession to a Christian friend (quoting St. Jas.

AURICULAR CONFESSION AND PRIESTLY ABSOLUTION 257
V. 16), and that more than that was more than the English
Church allowed.' " 1
Bishop Wilberforce, Pusey's diocesan, held consistently
and often insisted on the same view.^ Hook, in a letter
to Bishop Longley, thus states his own feeling and
experience on this point : " Often, very often, in my life,
God knows, I have required and sought ghostly advice and
counsel, but in my early years I sought and opened my
grief to a friend who was, and is, a layman ; and for the
last two-and-twenty years I have obtained it from one who
is bound to me by the closest ties which can bind together
two human beings, and without whose tender care and
affectionate support I should not have been able to endure
the hard warfare I have had to sustain during the last
fourteen years," etc.^
This doctrine of auricular confession and priestly
absolution, with all that it involves, its whole depth and
mystery, was taught by Pusey through books of Eoman
Catholic devotion and spiritual discipline, which, with more
or less, sometimes with very little omission or adaptation,
he printed and circulated for the use of the priests of
his party, and the congregations under their charge.
I am not particularly concerned to defend the formu
laries of the Church of England, in which are to be found
some expressions that seem to favour in part the teaching
of Pusey. There can also be no doubt that some of its
divines and devotional writers have used expressions liable
to be interpreted as favouring more or less the views of
1 Puse'ifs Life, vol. iii. p. 357.
2 See, especially, Wilberforc^s Life, vol. iii. pp. 419, 420, and vol. ii.
pp. 76-79.
3 Hooh's Life, vol. ii. p. 347. 17

258 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
Pusey and the Anglican ConfessionaUsts of to-day. But
there was unquestionably a definite distinction between the
principles which underlay Pusey's system of doctrine and
those which since the Eeformation have ruled in the
Church of England, and which give character in general to
her formularies. That difference Dr. Hook in one of his
letters printed in the biography very clearly indicates. He
speaks of himself as regarding the Bible and the patristic
divines, taken together, as the authorities for the teaching
of the Chureh of England. He intimates that Pusey had
dropped the Bible from his basis, and had felt himself at
liberty, at his own will, without the authoritative guard
and correction, if need were, of the Bible, to adopt such
opinions as he found and approved in the patristic divines
he chose for his authorities.
It seems abundantly clear that the teachings of the
Bible, especially of the New Testament, and in particular
of St. Paul, scarcely enter into the theology of Pusey
except so far as they may have been recognised
directly or indirectly, — or, as not seldom is the case,
utterly perverted, — by the patristic authorities on whom
he relied.^ Dr. Pusey insisted on the benefit of confession to
children, especially to young boys. This practice of
juvenile confession has been characteristic of the whole
1 Bishop Wilberforce printed in the Appendix to his Charge of
1851 passages from the religious books of devotion borrowed from the
Church of Rome which Pusey had reprinted and circulated. He
quotes a recent writer of the Romish communion who, referring to
" Dr. Pusey's doctrines," says : " For one whom our books of contro
versy have brought round, twenty at least have yielded to the power
of our devotions." The bishop further says : " Even if all direct
statement of Roman error were excluded, yet they are alien to the

YOUNG BOYS IN THE CONFESSIONAL 259
Puseyite school. No feature of the movement organised
and led by Pusey is more painful or deplorable. In
the lAfe of Archbishop Tait this subject is dealt with
at length, as it formed one of the subjects with
which the archbishop was especially called upon to deal.
We find him quoting confessional questions addressed to
children of six years old, and he gives the following
passage from one of several High Church bishops who
condemned the full-blown system of confession which was
the direct fruit of Pusey's teaching : —
" Bishop Moberly of Salisbury, as one who had spent
most of his life as headmaster of a great pubUc school,
expressed his firm conviction that the practice of habitual
confession was ' mischievous in the highest degree.' ' I
confess,' he added, ' that there is not one thing in all the
world which is deeper in my heart and conscience than the
corrupting influence of any such system as this getting
into our schools. As to little children being taught to go
to confession in the manner described, it appears to me to
be cruel in the last degree, and not only cruel, but utterly
and entirely false.' " ^
Pusey's heresy on the point of confession and absolu
tion was the tap-root of all the mischievous and fatal
influence which he exercised as a leader in his Church,
and I cannot refrain from quoting here the words of one
established teaching of the Church of England " ; and amongst other
passages he gives the foUo'wing as a sample of the sort of devotional
book which Pusey introduced to the congregations of the English
Church : " On the second day thou wilt offer homage to the heart of
Jesus, lying as an infant in the stable, on the third to His mouth, on
the fourth to His eyes, on the fifth to His hands, on the sixth to His
feet, on the seventh to His flesh."
^ Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. ii. p. 179.

26o LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
who had no sympathy with the views of the Low Church
Evangelicals, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Speaking of the
Church of Eome, he uses language which condemns the
Puseyism of the Church of England. Having in the first
volume of his Biographia Literaria set down certain views
and considerations which seem to favour the Eoman theo
logy at some points, he proceeds as follows : —
" As, at the risk of passing for a secret favourer of
superannuated superstitions, I have spoken out my views on
the Eoman theology, so, at a far more serious risk of being
denounced as an intolerant bigot, I will declare what, after
a two years' residence in exclusively Popish countries, was
the impression left on my mind as to the effect and influ
ence of the Eomish religion, as it actually and practically
exists. Eepeating t]j[e answer long since returned to a
friend, when I contemplate the whole system as it affects
the great fundamental principles of morality, the terra flrma,
as it were, of our humanity ; then contrast its operation
on the sources and conditions of national strength and well-
being; and lastly, consider its woeful influences on the
innocence and sanctity of the female mind and imagination,
on the faith and happiness, the gentle fragrance and un
noticed ever-present verdure of domestic life, — I can with
difficulty avoid applying to it the Eabbin's fable of the
fratricide Cain after the curse, that the firm earth trembled
wherever he strode, and the grass turned black beneath his feet."
Such has been the effect of that which is the central
curse of the Eomish system, the practice of sacramental
confession and priestly absolution. The same system cannot
but directly tend to produce the like results even in Eng
land. The influence of the " priest," with his prerogative
as confessor and absolver, upon the confidences and the

COLERIDGE ON THE CONFESSIONAL 261
family integrity of the home, is one part of the evil effect
to which Coleridge refers, and scarcely less injurious per
haps than the depraving moral influence of the confes
sional in its secret questions and private answers. The
two evils are indissolubly linked together. All the ele
ments of evil, though not as yet, it may be, fully
developed, are present in germ in the organised system
of Anglican confession and family influence.
Let me add that, as introduced by Pusey, the system
lacked certain provisions which are found in the Church of
Eome, and which, though themselves often connected with
naturally allied evils, yet at least recognise great dangers
and difficulties ignored by the system of confession in
the AngUcan Church, and against which Pusey would
have been powerless to make any provision, even if he
had been conscious of the need of such provision. The
Church of Eome does not entrust the power of the "keys,"
the sacramental secrets of the confessional, the ministry
of absolution, to utterly unprepared and untrained strip
lings, fresh in many instances from all that belongs to the
secularity and worldliness of university life and English
society. Pusey's theory was that even a full-blooded and
undiscipUned university man, issuing from the midst of
his comrades, had no sooner passed through the forms
of ordination and under the hands of the bishop, than
he was definitely empowered and commissioned to receive
secret confessions of sorrow, temptation, and sin ; to
make what private and privileged inquiries might seem
to him to be right ; to administer consolation or rebuke
according to his best judgment ; to pronounce absolution
from guUt, and admit into the favour of God and the
fellowship of the Church, or to repel the unsatisfactory

262 LATER DE VELOPMENT OF FUSE Y 'S INFLUENCE
penitent from the sacrament and the Church. The
" priest," invested with such an office, ought to have a
wisdom more than human ; ought to have grace and godU-
ness beyond question, and well approved in the sight of the
Most High ; ought to be something between a man and an
angel. Such, in truth, is the theory of the Eoman Catholic
Church. Their priests have been trained for their office,
and are supposed to share the " angelic life." Every priest,
moreover, is not, as such, entitled to receive confessions.
Confessors have a special training and a special licence.
How lamentably the Eoman Catholic theory breaks down,
as practically known and tested, there is no need to
say ; Coleridge's words describe the result, and the letters
of Erasmus, with much literature besides, remain as evi
dence before the world ! But, at least, that Church recog
nises the monstrous absurdity of investing young men,
taken fresh, without training, from the mixed ranks of a
seething and promiscuous life, with attributes for which no
man can be equal, which, in fact, involve a usurpation of
the prerogative of the one and only Priest and Saviour of
human kind.
I have intimated that at the bottom even of Pusey's
errors there was a truth — the deep truth of man's sinful
ness and need for pardon. Let me add — for I desire to
be in all things fair and just — that there is truth in what
Pusey often says as to the benefit to be derived in
certain cases, and especially in the case of the young, from
penitent or grievously tempted souls " opening their griefs,"
their temptations, their besetting sins, their intellectual
and moral perplexities, to a wise and good father in Christ,
a good man of much experience and approved sympathy
and wisdom. But the deadly poison of his teaching on

CONFESSORS AND SISTERHOODS 263
this subject consists in this, that it is not simply a wise
and good man, but it is the priest only — the " priest-physi
cian " of souls — of whom he speaks, the ecclesiastical father-
confessor, and that this physician and confessor is, according
to his teaching, invested with the power both of searching
the heart and of pronouncing or withholding absolution
as from God. It is this which turns priestly claims into
blasphemy, and depraves spiritual counsel and fellowship
into terrible degradation, into demoralising slavery of soul
and will.^
The subject of sisterhoods naturally comes into view
"^ When the text was sent to press, I had not seen an article on
Pusey in the Month for October 1882. The article is manifestly well-
informed, and is evidently from the pen of an Anglo-Catholic convert
to Rome. It is -written, of course, from the point of view of one who
has completed his career, by exchanging the position of an Oxford
Anglo-Romaniser for that of a Roman Catholic. The writer says of
Pusey : " He did much to spread the practice of confession among
Anglicans. There are strange stories told of his treatment of his
penitents ; of the severe, not to say cruel, penances he inflicted ; of
the written confessions he exacted from some, of the unjustifiable
promises he forced upon others. This was but the necessary result
of an earnest muddle-headed old man, without the grace of the
sacraments to help him, untrained and untaught, without Catholic
instinct, venturing to practise, unbidden and unsent, the most
delicate of all the works entrusted to the priests of God." Else
where this Roman Catholic writer says : " Outside the Church, dogma
tism is sure to degenerate into self-assertion ; the confessional into an
organ of clerical despotism ; the claim of sacramental powers into a
source of superstition and unconscious idolatry ; the glorious Catholic
ritual into the feeble, effeminate, man- millinery of modern Ritualism."
The sting of this censure from the mouth of a full papist, coming down
on the Anglo-Catholic quasi- Pope, is the cutting truth of which it is
the appropriate expression from the Romish point of view. It is coarse
and insolent in tone ; but such insolence was, perhaps, not unnatural,
however ungraceful, considering the relations of Pusey at once -with
Rome as his oracle of inspiration, and with the Church of England,
whose earnest and penitent children he so fearfully misguided.

264 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
in connection with that of confession. I need not say
there was truth in Pusey's general feeling that, when
the work of Christ needed to be carried on in society, and
especially to be carried into certain classes of society, this
could best be accomplished by means of the organised
service of devoted women. He was not the first discoverer
since the Eeformation, and amongst Protestant nations, of
the great benefit and need of women's services in the
way indicated. German Protestants, as Pusey knew, had
organised sisterhoods at an earlier period than Pusey's first
movement in the same direction. Sisterhoods, indeed, have
been more steadily and effectively organised in connection
with the High Anglican party in the Church of England
than with any other section of religious society in England.
Too high praise can scarcely be given to the manner in
which they have often done their work, especially in hos
pitals. They have set a high and noble example to the
Christian women of all the Churches. And yet this move
ment has too often been spoiled, sadly marred, even seriously
tainted, because of a principle, derived from his patristic
authorities, which Pusey associated with it from the very
first, as well as by the introduction into many of the
Anglican sisterhoods of Pusey's confessional system. That
principle was " the superior sanctity of unmarried life."
The doctrine I am now referring to, that of the supe
rior sanctity of the unmarried life, is nothing less than a
heresy against the primary and fundamental constitution
of humanity, and has in it a taint of heathen Gnosticism.
It involves treason against the " honourable " and the
di-vinely-appointed " estate of matrimony." It was a part
of the doctrine of celibacy, as taught by mediaeval monkery,
and incorporated in the popular teaching, the hagiology.

AS TO CELIBACY 265
and the cherished institutions of the Eomish Church. It
is possible to conceive of ccenobite institutions, apart from
any such doctrine, as founded on high and fine ideals,
and as congenial resorts and refuges for sincere devotees,
who longed to be separated from the world's corrup
tions, and consecrated to the service of their fellow-men
in all good ways, both in respect to this world and the
world to come. Pusey, however, embraced the false and
morbid idea just indicated, — an idea which is in direct
antagonism to the teaching of the Bible, and which
the actual history of the monastic system, regarded in its
broad aspect and character, and allowing for happy and
eminent exceptions, refutes with a terrible irony of prac
tical contradiction. That consecrated men and women
may, in response to a manifest call of combined need and
opportunity, and under the highest Christian motives, feel
themselves constrained to forego the attractions and com
forts, the manifold blessings and means of blessing others,
connected with family Ufe, and to give themselves up
wholly and solely to sacred missions for many years to
gether, or even in the end for life, no well-informed Chris
tian student of history can doubt. But for men or women
to take such a course because a life of celibacy is conceived
to be intrinsically holier, more saintly, than any other Ufe,
even than the life of a truly Christian wife and mother, —
to be a life approaching the angelic, — and, in conformity
with this idea, to consecrate themselves by a lifelong vow,
this is in reality an antichristian error of the deepest dye,
equally opposed to divine doctrine, whether in relation to
creation or redemption, to nature or to grace. This, how
ever, was the error which Pusey imbibed, at a comparatively
early period of his history, from his patristic guides. In

266 LAIER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
discreetly chosen language his biographer informs us that
Pusey's object was not so much to " reUeve the misery and
ignorance of the great towns," as to " restore the conse
crated single life." A " consecrated Ufe " is, of course, the
true idea ; a consecrated single life may, in some instances,
be a noble instance of self-denial and self-sacrifice. But a
consecrated married life may be equally noble, equally
saintly, not less angelic, if such a word is to be used at all.
It may involve even sorer trials and greater self-sacrifice
than would, to all human seeming, have been known in a
single life, and it may be at least as fruitful in high moral
and spiritual results. Here I may quote a few manly and
at the same time Christian lines from Dr. Hook's letter of
congratulation to Dean Stanley on his marriage. " I look,"
he says, " upon a good wife as a means of grace intended
by God to soften man's heart, and to prepare it for that
heavenly joy which is experienced by those over whose
heart the love of God is shed by the Holy Ghost through
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. How all is love when
we approach our Lord ! " ^
Pusey's knowledge of human nature was continually
at fault, an exemplary illustration of which is afforded
by the history of the ill-omened St. Saviour's Church.
It would seem, indeed, that at one time his friends
dared even to amuse themselves with stories showing
his weakness on this point, if we may judge from a
story which is told in J. B. Mozley's Letters, and which
may be quoted as a relief to this discussion, as well as an
illustration of Pusey's want of insight into character —
"I heard," writes J. B. Mozley to his sister in 1841,
" rather an amusing account of a young lady's 'visit to
1 Dr. Hook's Life, vol. ii. p. 418.

PUSEY AND HUMAN NATURE 267
Oxford last term. The young lady, who had come to
Pusey in such deep distress and perplexity, it seems, was
flaunting about with young gentlemen a good deal of the
time — shopping, going down the river, and amusing herself
very pleasantly ; dear, good Pusey all the time being f uU of
pity and concern for her painful state of doubt and anxiety.
A certain young kid-gloved and scented gentleman of 
college was a particular favourite of the young lady, but
she had several others as well, and used to go about quite
comitata catervd, as we say in the classics, surrounded by a
bodyguard of handsome young gentlemen. . . . Pusey had
ventured to suggest that she might dress a little more
soberly, but had been answered by her sister : Would he
have young ladies to go about like nuns ? " ^
Mozley, it will be remembered, a few years before the
date of this letter, had for several years been domesticated
within Pusey's house, and knew him better than almost
anyone else did. A recluse of such a character was not
fitted to organise sisterhoods.
The man who had the clearest knowledge about the
sisterhoods which were founded and administered under
Pusey's influence was Bishop Wilberforce ; and next to him,
for distinct and intimate knowledge of the whole matter,
must be ranked Archbishop Tait. These two authorities
absolutely agreed in their practical judgment and counsel
as to this question, as may be read in the Archbishop's
Life.^ It was Wilberforce's misfortune to be called to the
episcopate just as Pusey's Eomeward leading had become
conspicuous and prominent. It was his pecuUar difficulty
and sorrow that by personal association and the closest
' J. B. Mozley's Letter.'!, p. 111.
2 See, in particular, vol. i. p. 452 (cf. 457, 458).

268 LATER DE VEL OPMENT OF FUSE V 'S I NFL UENCE
family ties he was connected, and indeed had been generally
identifled in public opinion, with the party of which Pusey
was the head. Two of his brothers, to whom he was
most tenderly attached, were among the most influential
supporters of Pusey, and both went over, some years later,
to Eome. Under these circumstances, for him to deal
with Pusey as his diocesan was a trial and difficulty of
extraordinary severity. A dispassionate judge of the case
will, I think, admire the bishop's conduct in this matter
more than anything in his life-history. His insight, his
patience, his skill in the controversy, and his steadfast
firmness and fidelity, maintained during many years, are
beyond praise. In this volume of Pusey's biography, as
might be expected, an attempt is made to represent Wilber
force as incompetent, for want of patristic learning, to
judge or any way deal with Pusey. Let the reader refer
to the bishop's Life, and on this point judge for himself.
Though not so learned in patristic lore and mediaeval
theology as Dr. Pusey, Wilberforce was a competently
learned prelate : he was not ignorant of the best patristic
writers, and he was at pains especially to inform himself as
to the views of the standard divines of his own Church.
He was moreover incomparably superior to Pusey in theo
logical insight and faculty, as indeed is shown by his acute
and able criticism of Pusey's own special views. Not only,
however, was it his duty, at the very outset of his episcopate,
to deal in the way of discipline with Pusey, whom he felt
compelled privately to inhibit from preaching in the Oxford
diocese, but he found it necessary, years afterwards, after
long consideration, to remove from Cuddesdon the author of
this biography of Pusey, because, with all his learning and
excellences, and notwithstanding his self-restraint as a

BISHOP WILBERFORCE AND PUSEY 269
follower of Pusey, Liddon's influence in the college was
proved to have been rather Puseyistic than AngUcan, to
have been the means of imbuing the theological candidates
with a Romanising bias, and was increasingly distrusted
by loyal Anglican supporters of the college. Dr. Liddon
was a great preacher and divine ; Christendom owes
much to his Bampton Lectures; but his Romeward and
mediaeval bias must have been more extreme than has
been generally supposed. The whole tone of this bio
graphy, quietly as it is written, tends to show this. He
admits no fault in Pusey, except an amiable and over-
sanguine confidence in his followers or instruments. He
writes throughout as a sedate and discreet partisan, who
never forgets himself or uses extreme language, but also,
except under the strongest compulsion, makes no con
cessions to the opposite side. Once, indeed, he forgets his
prudence and commits himself. Bishop Longley (then of
Ripon) had desired Mr. MacmuUen, Pusey's representative
and nominee as one of the clergy of St. Saviour's, " to
retract the assertion that the Blessed Virgin intercedes."
Dr. Liddon hereupon remarks that for such a " retractation
it would surely be difficult to allege authority either from
Scripture or the formularies of the Church of England "
(p. 125). So far Dr. Liddon had gone towards Mariolatry ;
so unsafe an interpreter was he of the tenets sanctioned by
the Reformed Church of England. It is noticeable that, as
Liddon holds Wilberforce to have been wrong where he
came into collision with Pusey, so he condemns Bishop
Longley of Eipon for the part he took, in concert with Dr.
Hook, in removing the Eomanising clergy from St. Saviour's
Church, which Pusey had built and endowed. He couples
Bishop Wilberforce and Bishop Longley as having, in their

270 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
dealings with Pusey and Puseyism, shown a " curious
pedantry," and he expresses his beUef that if Bishop
Longley had exhibited towards St. Saviour's Mission, from
which clergyman after clergyman went over to Eome, —
till, first and last, the number exceeded a dozen, — the
" same discriminating judgment which characterised his
gracious sway as Archbishop of Canterbury, much bitter
ness might have been avoided, and the Church of England
might have been spared serious loss" (p. 368). And yet
Bishop Longley was the same man as the archbishop, was
nearly of the same ripeness in years, and not more infirm
or less acute in judgment. It was his fault as Bishop
Longley that he differed gravely from Pusey.
The Bishop of Oxford, as might have been expected,
was a great friend and zealous promoter of sisterhoods, but
not of sisterhoods organised on Pusey's lines. Canon
Butler, of Wantage and Worcester, as High a Churchman
as is at all compatible with any sort of loyalty to the
Church of England, — ^there was not a little of the Eome
ward tendency in him, — bore this testimony to the bishop's
administration and influence as regards sisterhoods —
" Most tenderly and delicately," he writes, " the bishop
enforced his opinions, so that in many delicate and com
plicated questions we always felt that whether his mind
was or was not entirely the same as our own, we should
ever be sure of a fair hearing. 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."
Bishop Wilberforce, however, was totally opposed to
the underlying principle of celibacy which to Pusey was of

THE HOUSE OF MERCY AT CLEWER 271
SO much importance, and, of course, to the use of confession
among the sisterhood. The House of Mercy at Clewer,
perhaps the best known of all the sisterhoods, was founded
under the direction of Pusey, and was a source of no little
anxiety and trouble to the bishop. In regard to that
establishment the bishop writes as foUows to the Lady
Superintendent, a sort of Prioress, who had been placed by
Pusey in charge —
" I suppose," he says, " that such a life as that of the
Sisters of Clewer is likely specially to attract those who
would desire and probably have practised constant con
fession, who would wish to submit their lives to the
direction of the priest, who would crave after books of
Roman Catholic devotion, simple or adapted, and who
would probably desire to wear and see crucifixes and the
like. How, then, are such persons to be treated by us ?
(1) We cannot provide for such a life, because we dis
approve of it. (2) We cannot suffer it to be led as a part
of the common life in sisterhood, so as to give really its
colour to our institution. We cannot, e.g., allow the
Sisters to practise continual confession to, or elect into
directors, the warden or chaplain of our house. Nor can
we allow them to use amongst their Sisters, still less to
lend to them, Roman Catholic books, or to wear openly, or
to exhibit in their rooms, images or representations which
the Church of England discourages ; nor can we allow them
to be visited in the house by other clergy than those of our
house, for the carrying out by their means of any system
which we do not administer by our clergy."
About the same time, in a letter to the '\vell-known
Rev. T. T. Carter, whom Pusey had placed in charge
of Clewer, Wilberforce writes as follows : —

272 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
" I see plainly that Clewer has a tendency to run into
a system with which I can have nothing to do. If sister
hoods cannot be maintained except upon a semi-Eomanistic
scheme, with its direction, with its development of self-
conscious and morbid religious affection, with its exaltation
of the contemplative life, with its perpetual confession and
its un-English tone, I am perfectly convinced that we had
better have no sisterhoods. . . . You must not let the soft
influences of the women's souls with which you have to
deal lead you into becoming a director. You must with
me distinctly act, and say that Clewer is to be Church of
England and no more. We must have no evasions as to
Eoman Catholic books, as to the going at stated times to
Eichards, Pusey, etc. Evasion seems to me to be the very
clinging curse of everything Eomanistic."
Against the perpetual vow, in particular, the bishop
never ceased to bear his testimony and assert his authority.
To a clergyman of the Puseyite school he wrote in
1850 objecting "absolutely, as un-Christian and savouring
of the worst evils of Eome, to the vows involved in such a
statement as ' she is for ever consecrated to the service of
her Heavenly Spouse.' " " I object," he says, " to the
expression itself as unwarranted by God's word, and
savouring of one of the most carnal perversions of the
Church of Eome." In November 1854, to another clergy
man who had written to him on behalf of a young woman
who desired to take a vow and enter a sisterhood, he wrote
a letter, from which I take the following extract : —
" When you ask me to give her the apostolic benedic
tion ' on her public resolution of chastity and devotion to
Christ,' you ask me to do what it is quite impossible for me
to do. Such a resolution made publicly, and confirmed by

SISTERHOODS AND PERPETUAL VOWS 273
a bishop's act, is really and bond fide a vow. Now even a
secret resolution of chastity is what I should dissuade. No
one has, without God's express appointment, the right, in
™y judgment, to bind themselves for the future in such
matters. Let them follow the guiding hand of God from
day to day, and rely for persevering in a course of right
or service on His daily gifts of guiding, enlightening,
strengthening grace, and not on the strength of any past
vow or resolution."
In 1860, Wilberforce had still to contend against the
same agitation in favour of perpetual vows. In his Diary,
November 30th, he says: "Clewer. Early Communion,
and admission of three Sisters — two rejected. Would not
consent to alter the rule about no vows." At the Church
Congress in 1862 he thus expresses himself : " I believe
that the abuses of that life have come (1) from the promises
of perpetuity, and (2) from the vows connected with the
admission of persons having property, and being allowed to
give that property up in any moment of excitement to this
purpose." He adds a paragraph in regard to the special
application of the word " religious " to such a life, which I
quote here for a reason which wUl immediately appear —
" One single word on the use of the term ' religious.'
I confess that I have the very deepest objection in any
way to apply the word ' religious ' to such a life. I think
it was adopted at a time when the standard of lay piety
was very low ; and, at all events, as no good seems to me
to be got by the use of a word ambiguous, at least in its
meaning, and whieh seems to imply that God can be better
served in the unmarried sisterhood than in the blessed and
holy state of matrimony, I think it is a pity that it should
be used," 18

274 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
Now, let US compare with what I have quoted a
passage in the biography relating to this subject. If we
read intelligently and with well-informed minds between
the lines, it wUl, I think, appear to be in effect an
admission of the substantial truth of the current charges
against Pusey, which are very distinctly intimated in
Bishop Wilberforce's Letters and Diary, as well as a
skilful apology on his behalf. It refers to Pusey's tone
of feeling and manner of life about the year 1848, — that
is, when his work as an organiser of the confessional and
of sisterhoods was just beginning —
" Probably he had hardly realised the gravity and
intimacy of these questions, — questions often involving
delicate family relations, — which he would be called upon
to settle, nor the force of prejudice that the religious Ufe
would not unnaturally excite, nor the difficulty of guiding
and restraining the emotional and sensitive characters with
whom he might be brought in contact. It must be
remembered that in England and in English families, with
the exception of the limited circle of the older Eoman
Catholics, there had been for centuries literally no ex
perience of the religious life. The special vocation of a
Sister of Mercy, the character involved and the claims of
such a character, were altogether unknown. That young
ladies who were considered ' serious ' should object to
theatres and dancing was looked upon as a pardonable
eccentricity; but that those who were not evangelical
should take a stricter 'view of life, should shrink from
society and entertain thoughts of a vow of celibacy in
place of an eligible marriage, was almost inconceivable.
Besides, there was then, especially amongst religious-
minded people, a very high and right sense of fiUal

ADMISSIONS IN THE BIOGRAPHY 275
obligation. There was also a notorious jealousy of inter
ference on the part of a spiritual guide in the private
arrangements of famUy life.
" With his unworldliness and sunplicity, his over
whelming sense of divine guidance, the sanctity of the
human soul, and the nothingness of all worldly objects and
aims, Pusey found himself, almost before he was aware of
it, opposed to the wishes and judgments of respected
friends, and sometimes thwarting the most cherished aims
which they entertained for their children. Again, his
small knowledge of the outer world, and his own dis
ciplined disposition, were not the best qualifications for
guiding any excitable and emotional temperaments -with
which he might have to deal ; and, in those delicate
relations which a gainsaying and censorious world could
not rightly appreciate, he laid himself open to miscon
ception and gossip, against which a man more worldly-wise
would have been on his guard. ... In his simplicity
Pusey himself was as unconscious of the gossip as he was
regardless of the means to avoid it. The fact is, as Keble
suggests, that he was so centred on the great spiritual
efforts on which his heart was set, that he was too little
careful of social conventionalities, the observance of which
would have prevented those misinterpretations of his
conduct, and reUeved his friends of the pain which he
could not understand that he was causing them."
So much in general Dr. Liddon has to say by way of
explaining, and at the same time explaining away, what he
speaks of as exaggerated and distorted stories in rela
tion to Pusey's conduct and deportment as a spiritual
director and father, when he had to deal with emotional
and excitable women, who came to him for religious

276 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
counsel and guidance. The tone of the passage is that of
one who has himself accepted the views which Pusey held
in regard to spiritual direction, to the vow of celibacy, and
to what he speaks of as the "religious Ufe," thus laying
himself open to the reproof contained in the preceding
extract from Bishop Wilberforce.
There are not wanting evidences, indirectly furnished
in the biography, of the extent to which Pusey carried the
practices of which he was continually accused, but as to
which he seemed always to have some evasion to fall back
upon. The Eev. Mr. Dodsworth, one of his closest friends
and associates for many years, one of his most trusted
allies, at length made up his mind to follow Newman and
Manning into the Church of Eome. His tongue was then
loosed, and being out of patience because Pusey still, as he
thought, unfairly and more or less dishonestly, Ungered
within the Church of England, he wrote a public letter to
Pusey, describing the extent to which his former guide
had been accustomed to go in the Eomanising direction.
The date is May 1850, and the subject is "the position
which Dr. Pusey had taken in the present crisis."
" You," he said, " have been one of the foremost leaders
on to a higher appreciation of that church system of
which sacramental grace is the very life and soul, both by
precept and example. You have been amongst us the
most earnest in maintaining Catholic principles. By your
constant communion and practice of administering the
sacrament of penance ; by encouraging everywhere, if not
enjoining, confession and giving special priestly absolution ;
by teaching the propitiatory sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist
as applicatory of the one sacrifice on the Cross, and by the
adoring of Christ's real presence on the altar in the form

THE TRUTH LAID BARE 277
of bread and wine ; by your introduction of Eoman
Catholic books, adapted to the use of our Church ; by en
couraging the use of rosaries and crucifixes, and special
devotions to our Lord — as, e.g., to His five wounds ; by
adopting language most powerfully expressive of our
incorporation into Christ — as, e.g., our being incorporated
by the blood of our Lord ; by advocating counsels of
perfection, and seeking to restore, with more or less
fulness, the conventual or monastic life, — I say, by the
teaching and practice, of which this enumeration is a
sufficient type and indication, you have done much to
revive amongst us the system which may be pre-eminently
called sacramental. And yet, now, you seem to shrink from
the front rank, you seem ready to hide yourself under soft
assurances of truth which, it is said, no six men in the Church
of England will be found to deny, and behind ambiguous
statements which can be subscribed in different senses."
Dr. Liddon seems to have felt it necessary to quote
these statements of Mr. Dodsworth, made in a pamphlet
too famous to be ignored. But no reply is given or even
attempted. Pusey never dealt with them frankly or
directly. His biographer has no observation to make.
They are fully borne out by the statements of Mr. MaskeU,
who, like Mr. Dodsworth, had for years been one of Pusey's
most infiuential disciples and helpers, and whose " accom
plishments as a liturgical scholar, and position as chaplain
to the Bishop of Exeter," — to borrow Dr. Liddon's own
description of the grounds of his importance as a critic of
Pusey's conduct and methods, — lend special importance to
his assertions. The passages I am about to quote are from
a reply by Mr. MaskeU to the pamphlet which Pusey,
in the form of a letter to his fellow-helper, the Eev. W.

278 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
Upton Eichards, had in 1850 been compelled to write,
in consequence of the publication of a joint letter addressed
to himself by Mr. Allies, Mr. Dodsworth, and Mr. Maskell,
all of whom had then joined the Church of Eome, which
letter raised the searching question : " Under what
authorisation," to use Dr. Liddon's words, " private con
fessions were received and absolutions given in the Church
of England," thus attacking Pusey at the central point
in his confessional system, and showing also how at that
point he was personally most vulnerable as an Anglican
priest. In Mr. Maskell's reply to Pusey's pamphlet occurs
the following passage : —
" In page 6 of your letter to Mr. Eichards, you blame
Mr. Dodsworth for having said in his pubUshed letter to
you that you have ' enjoined ' auricular confession, and you
say that you could not enjoin it. Suffer me to say that Mr.
Dodsworth's use of the word was just and reasonable. He
does not use it simply without limitation ; he says that you
have ' encouraged, if not enjoined,' auricular confession ;
but it is evident that in the sense of compulsion, he knew,
as well as yourself, you could not possibly enjoin auricular
confession. And he knew also, as I know, that to say
merely that you have encouraged it, would fall as far short
of what your actual practice is, as the word enjoin in the
sense of compelling would exceed it. He knew that you
had done more than encourage confession in very many
cases ; that you had warned people of the danger of
deferring it, have insisted on it as the only remedy, have
pointed out the inevitable dangers of the neglect of it, and
have promised the highest blessings in the observance,
until you have brought penitents in fear and trembling
upon their knees before you.

MR. DODSWORTH AND MR. MASKELL 279
" There are some other parts of your letter to Mr.
Richards which have somewhat more than startled me. I
have almost begun to doubt the accuracy of my memory,
or that I could ever have understood the commonest rules
of plain speaking upon very solemn mysteries and duties
of the Christian faith. I mean such passages as these :
' We are not to obtrude, nor to offer our services, nor to
cause confusion by intruding into the ministry of others.
... In like manner, when residing elsewhere ' ; from
which, of course, no one would suppose that you go from
home into other dioceses for the express purpose of
receiving auricular confession . . . ' when any came to
me I ministered to them. But not having a parochial
cure, I have not led others to confession.' . . . Far be it
from me to say you do not beUeve every word of these
sentences to be strictly and verbally true ; what I do
say is, that so far as I have known it, they do not in any
adequate or real way represent your practice. . . . The
Bishop of Exeter would repudiate with horror the system
of particular and detailed inquiry into every circumstance
of sin, which, in correct imitation of Eoman Catholic rules,
you do not faU to press. . . . What, then, do you con
ceive that the Bishop of Exeter would say of persons
secretly received against the known will of their parents,
or confession heard in the houses of common friends, or of
clandestine correspondence to arrange meetings under
initials, or in envelopes addressed to other persons ? and
more than this, when such confessions are recommended
and urged as a part of the spiritual Ufe, and among
religious duties ; not in order to quiet the conscience
before receiving the communion. I know how heavily the
enforced mystery and secret correspondence regarding

28o LATER DE VEL OPMENT OF FUSE Y 'S I NFL UENCE
confession in your communion has weighed down the
minds of many to whom you have ' ministered ' ; I know
how bitterly it has eaten, even as a canker, into their very
souls ; I know how utterly the specious arguments which
you have urged have failed to remove their burning sense
of shame and deceitfulness." ^
The reference to the Bishop of Exeter in this extract
derives peculiar force and authority from the fact that before
he went over to Eome Mr. Maskell had been chaplain to
Bishop Philpotts of Exeter, who had done much to shield
Pusey from censure, especially in the case of Miss Sellon
and the Plymouth Sisterhood.
If we compare Mr. Maskell's statements with the apolo
getic passage I have quoted from the biography, it will be
seen how close the correspondence really is between the
positive assertions of the one and the inner meaning —
scarcely veiled — of the other. Why Dr. Liddon thought
it necessary to quote Mr. Dodsworth, but could not bring
himself to quote the more distinct and fuller statement of
Mr. Maskell, I shall not try to conjecture. It is evident,
however, that in this third volume, as in the volume pre
ceding, the biography omits singularly important and very
damaging evidence as to the private influence used and the
sort of discipline carried out by Pusey.
The history of the St. Saviour's Church and Mission at
Leeds, which was begun in the second volume of the
biography, is completed in the present volume. It was
the immediate frmt of the penitential sorrow which took
hold of Pusey after his wife's death ; which deepened
"^ The foregoing passage is quoted from Maskell's Letter to Dr. Pusey,
pp. 17-21, by the Rev. Bourchier Wrey Saville in his pamphlet
entitled. Dr. Pusey : an Historic Sketch.

ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH AND MISSION 281
during the following years of trouble and grief, when his
beloved and devoted daughter was taken from him, and
when his sufferings culminated in his illness, compelling him
to leave his work and his home, and to seek health on the
coast of South Wales ; sorrow which knew no relief tUl he
had made his soul's confession to Keble in Hursley Church.
During the former part of this period Pusey conceived the
thought of making a penitential offering by building and
endowing a church and a college for mission priests in
Leeds, where his friend, Dr. Hook, was vicar, on whose
sympathy and co-operation he thought that he could rely.
His intention was to apply his system, in full development
and force, to a dense and spiritually needy population, con
sisting chiefly of working men. The parish clergy were to
be of his nomination, acting as patron, and they were to be
assisted by a college of unmarried priests or deacons.
Suspicion, however, was awakened against the project
almost from the first, not only in the minds of Dissenters
and Evangelicals, but of Dr. Hook and Bishop Longley,
neither of whom was in any sense a Low Churchman.
The ornaments, the memorial window, and especially the
inscription above the porch of the church, asking the
prayers of all that entered for the soul of the sinner who
buUt the church, — an inscription standing there to-day,
— alike suggested Eomish proclivities. The bishop felt
it his duty frequently to intervene with objections, all of
which did not prevail. He objected strongly to the in
scription, but was informed that the unknown benefactor
insisted upon that being retained as an absolute condition
— without which the whole scheme must be abandoned.
Years passed before the church was ready to open. The
opening services, in which Pusey took by far the greatest

282 LATER DEVELOPMENT OF PUSEY'S INFLUENCE
share, did not serve to allay suspicion. Not a word of
disclaimer, not a sentence implying at any point a difference
from Eome and Eomanism, was uttered throughout the
twelve services. Pusey, indeed, though by this time his
bosom friend, Newman, was known to be determined,
and to have made every • preparation, to go over to
Eome, steadfastly refused his consent to a word being
spoken by anyone to reassure those who naturally identi
fied the views of Pusey with those of Newman. Then
came the clergy of the college. Their methods and teach
ing, and the whole spirit of their administration, savoured
of Eome. The books of devotion, the Breviary which was
recommended for use, the administration of the Sacraments,
all were, at least to the general view, nothing but popish.
Dr. Hook remonstrated. The bishop interfered. Pusey was
appealed to, and Pusey called in Marriott and Keble. It
was in vain. The clergy, one after another went over to Eome
— till more than a dozen had so gone over. All but one em
ployed during the first five years went away to that goal.
Dr. Liddon has given a very fair account of this un
happy business, with quotations on both sides, in which he
seems to admit that Pusey cannot be acquitted of grave
error in administration, although he blames Hook for his
vehemence, and — this, 1 think, is unfair and unreasonable
— seeks to make the bishop and Pusey, by their severity
of judgment, responsible, at least in part, for the secessions
to Eome. Dr. Hook was, indeed, placed in a pitiable con
dition by the course of events, and certainly in no way and
to no degree gave any countenance to the Eomanising
methods and practices of the offending clergy. The fol
lowing extract from a letter to Pusey may serve to indicate
what his feelings were in the matter : —

DR. HOOK'S LETTERS 283
''Knowing St. Saviour's to be a semi-papal colony,
however careful the clergy there may be to keep within
the letter of the law, I shaU take an early opportunity,
and I expect one soon to offer, of speaking of it as I think,
and so of disconnecting it in men's minds from Leeds. . . .
" Do not write upon this subject any more, for it is
useless. When I compare your defence of St. Saviour's
with what goes on there, you only make me the more
suspicious. You are either incorrectly informed, or you
have got into the habit of defending a cause. I am not
going to argue with you. If you are, as you say you are,
agreed with me in principle, instead of writing, you wiU set
to work to eradicate Eomanism in St. Saviour's. If in your
attempt to do so you fail, then we shall be in the same
boat. I do not care for what men say : I look to what they
do. What you have done is to send Eomanisers here — one
of them the friend of some of the late perverts; if guided
or in ignorance, try to prevail upon them to resign. Undo
what you have done, or at least attempt it. If you either
csinnot or wUl not, do not write any more. All you can say
is, that you think that they are not Eomanisers ; and all I
can say is that, as I know them to be Eomanisers, I shall
warn all men of the danger of touching pitch."
When Charles Marriott, at Pusey's request, went to
visit St. Sa-viour's, he reported to Pusey that " there was
more to complain of here than you thought for," and justi
fies the bishop in removing one of Pusey's trusted agents,
whUst he also decides that another, of whom Hook had
complained repeatedly and bitterly, was unfit for his post,
and ought to be induced to resign. This was in 1846—7.
In 1851 things came to a final crisis at St. Saviour's, the
result of which is described in a note from Pusey to Keble :

284 LA TER DE VEL OPMENT OF FUSE Y 'S INFL UENCE
" I had a sad -visit to St. Saviour's. It has again to be
built up from its foundation. The bishop has cleared
everything away, and I fear that two at least wUl come
back as Eoman priests with a Eoman mission." This
was in March 1851. All the clergy but one went over.
Even Dr. Liddon has to confess that " Hook, if he expressed
himself with unguarded vehemence, took the measure of
men more accurately than Pusey." The man that led the
march Eomeward in the first instance was backed up by
Pusey to the end of his connection with St. Saviour's, and
it is to this fact that the biographer refers. Besides which,
he was sent to the Church, as Pusey had in the end
to confess, when he was known by Pusey to " have been
seriously shaken as to the English Church."^ So that
there was colourable ground for Hook's charge that Pusey
had knowingly sent to St. Saviour's men who were dis
affected to the English Church, and Papists at heart — " a
colony of Papists," Hook said. Hook's generosity and
personal friendship for Pusey, notwithstanding the acute
ness of his vexation and his deep indignation, sometimes
vehemently expressed, prevented him in his correspondence
with Pusey from completely uttering his mind as to the
whole character of the Movement which Pusey led. But
in a letter to his intimate friend Lord Hatherley, written
on New Year's Day, 1847, he pours forth freely the bitter
ness of his grief and vexation : " Out of my family," he
says, " my joy, my happiness was in my parish. I had
gained the confidence of my people ; my opponents were
softened and coming round ; I was beginning to feel that
Leeds had become a perfect paradise, and now it is a
howling wilderness. ... I have not wept so much for
1 Letter from Pusey to Hook, vol. iii. p. 131.

DR. HOOK ON PUSEYISM 285
many years as dm'ing the last three months. ... As I
have fought for the Church of England against the Puritans,
so will I now fight for her against the Eomanisers." ^ In
Hook's Life also, extracts are given from a very strong
letter which, thoroughly roused, he sent to the Guardian in
1850, and in which he speaks out fully in regard to the
Puseyite Movement. He describes the Puseyite party as
" calumniators of the Church of England, and vindicators of
the Church of Eome ; palliating the vices of the Eomish
system, and magnifying the deficiencies of the Church of
England; sneering at everything Anglican, and admiring
everything Eomish ; students of the breviary and missal,
disciples of the schoolmen, insinuating Eomish sentiments,
circulating and republishing Eomish works ; introducing
Romish practices in their private, and infusing a Eoman
tone into their public devotions ; introducing the Eomish
confessional, enjoining Eomish penances, adopting Eomish
prostrations, recommending Eomish litanies ; muttering the
Eomish shibboleth, and rejoicing in the cant of Eomish
fanaticism ; assuming sometimes the garb of the Eomish
priesthood, and venerating without imitating their celibacy ;
defending Eomish miracles, and recei-ving as true the
lying legends of Eome ; almost adoring Eomish saints, and
complaining that we have no saints in England since we
purified our Church ; explaining away the idolatry, and
pining for the Mariolatry of the Church of Eome ; vitu
perating the English Eeformation, and receiving for the
truth the false doctrines of the Council of Trent ; whisper
ing in the ears of credulous ignorance, in high places as well
as low, that the two Churches are in principle the same."^
1 Life of Lord Hatherley, vol. ii. p. 197.
2 Hook's Life, vol. ii. pp. 278, 279.

286 LA TER DE VELOPMENT OF FUSE Y 'S INFL UENCE
It will be seen that this vivid picture, photographed
from the life, taUies closely -with the passages already
quoted from the letters of Dodsworth and Maskell, and
with the statements as to the tactics of Pusey and his
coadjutors contained in Bishop Wilberforce's Life. The
consensus of evidence is indeed conclusive as to the con
scientious stealthiness and subtlety with which Pusey used
his private counsels and infiuence in the process of Eoman
ising the Church of England. Very saintly men have
indisputably thought, in some instances, that it was their
duty to use such means in the prosecution of their religious
purposes. The Tracts for the Times had given lessons in
the needful arts. Hook, in his letters, repeatedly describes
such tactics as Jesuitism. There is, however, a more
charitable explanation to be given, as I shall try to show
in a later chapter.

CHAPTER XI.
Pusey's Doctrine of the Eeal Presence — His
Eirenicon as to Eeunion with Eome.
TjlOE the special purpose of this volume, in what re-
-^ mains to be said as to the action and influence
of Pusey as a leader of the Eomanising Neo-Anglican
Movement, little further help is to be had from the
third volume of his Life, whilst it appears that there
is no prospect of the speedy publication of a fourth
volume. The third volume closes with a chapter on
the " Second period of the Eucharistic Controversy,"
which was connected with the well-known cause ciUbre
of Archdeacon Denison. Into that case, however, there
is no need for me to go. But I must needs refer to
the huge volume which was Pusey's contribution to
the controversy which arose out of that case ; and I
will at the same time deal with the question generally
of his teaching on the subject, as he would have phrased
it, of " The Eucharistic Sacrifice." This will form the
proper sequel to the subject of confession and absolution
already dealt with, and will be found to lead on to that
of Pusey's suggestions for reunion with the Church of
Eome. Pusey's doctrine as to baptism, confession, and abso
lution was rounded and completed by his teaching as
287

288 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
to the " Eeal Presence " — by which he meant the
spirituo-corporeal presence — of the Lord Jesus in the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. On this subject, how
ever, not much is learned from the Life, so far as it
has gone. The Denison case in 1854 reopened a
question of doctrine, as to which it would seem that
Pusey would have been content to say as little as
possible. The sermon on that subject, which he had
delivered in 1843, and for which he had been suspended
from preaching before the University, he had promised
to supplement by notes containing patristic evidence in
favour of his teaching. He had, however, done nothing in
the matter ; but the Denison case compelled him to act.
He therefore published in 1855a volume of 722 pages, con
sisting almost entirely of extracts from the " Fathers " of the
centuries succeeding the period of pure and apostolic doc
trine in the Church ; that is to say, the third, fourth, and
fifth centuries, Cyril of Alexandria being his chief authority.
The sayings of these imperfectly informed writers, —
these, for the most part, altogether undisciplined thinkers
and teachers,— their grossest confusions of thought, their
turgid and exaggerated rhetoric, he accepts as if they were
the words of profound metaphysical thinkers, of trained
and learned theologians, of inspired divines, of men whose
most exalted phrases must be taken as equivalent to
exact scientific definitions ; and insists that they must
be swallowed whole by Christians to-day. However
learned or devout, however versed in theology, in
philosophy, in New Testament exegesis, modern divines
may be, they must accept as authoritative the crude
and gross language of the men whom Pusey calls
the Fathers of the Church, of extracts from whose

HIS SERMONS ON THE EUCHARIST 289
writings his sermons on this subject were largely com
posed. The sermons on which we have to rely for
a direct statement of his own views are chiefly two,
one the University sermon of 1843, already referred to,
for preaching which he was suspended for two years ;
and the other, the sermon preached before the Uni
versity in 1871 from the text, "This is My body."
In the sermon of 1843 he uses the following lan
guage : " Eeceiving Him (the Lord Jesus) into this very
body, they who are His receive life which shall pass
over to our very decaying flesh," and quotes in support
of this language the following passage from Cyril of
Alexandria : " As, if one entwineth wax with other wax
and melteth them in the flre, there resulteth of both
one, ev tl (literally, something that is a unity — one thing) ;
so through the participation of the body of Christ,
and of His precious blood. He in us and we again
in Him, are co-united ; for in no other way could that
which is by nature corruptible be made alive, unless it
were bodily entwined with that which is by nature Ufe,
the Only-begotten." It is from such crass materialism
as this that he derives his doctrine, and by such
patristic authority that he supports it. So again he
says : " We are members of Him, not by love only, but
by very deed ; mingled with that flesh, mingled with
Him, that we might, in a manner, be one substance
with Him." " He is commingled and co-united with
us." We have " received into ourselves, bodily and
spiritually. Him who is by nature and truly the Son."
" He hath united the nature of His own flesh with His
eternal nature." In so grossly materiaUstic a sense as
this he says in the same sermon, " Having Christ
19

290 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
within him, not only shall he have, but he hath already
eternal life " — words which, applied in an evangelical
sense, might be joyfully taken home by every true
believer, but which he uses in a materialising sense. The
Puseyite sense comes out very grossly in the Devotions
for the Holy Communion, one of the Puseyite text
books of devotion — a book at one time well known,
though now, perhaps, partly lost to sight. " Eeceive, 0
most loving Father, those thanksgivings which the Blessed
Virgin, mother of the only-begotten Son, offered when
she conceived and bore in her womb Him whom I now
hold in my breast."^
Thus the Christian life begun in the soul in baptism
was, as he taught, to be nourished and maintained by the
" Holy Eucharist." In this way, and in this way only,
the flame of the holy life would be fed with its pure, its
appropriate, its homogeneous aliment. In this sacrament

^ I borrow the last quotation from an able and instructive re-view
of the sermon from which I have taken the preceding quotations, by
Archdeacon Garbett, the accomplished Professor of Poetry at Oxford,
a man in every way of the highe.st qualities and character, who was
successful in competition for that office against Isaac Williams, the
Puseyite poet, in 1841. I will add here that Pusey's volume of 1855
was critically dealt with by the Rev. John Harrison, D.D., in an ex
ceedingly learned > and very able volume published by Longmans,
and entitled Br. Pusey's Challenge Answered respecting the Doctrine of
the Real Presence To this masterly work Pusey attempted no reply.
All Pusey's quotations are sifted, and the true sense of many of the
passages quoted is ascertained from their context, and established in
opposition to the gross or perverted sense in which they are taken by
Pusey. The whole subject is profoundly and thoroughly argued,
the evidence, both from Scripture and from the writings of the
Fathers, being clearly adduced and collated. The work is a
treasure and mine of learning, such as earnest students will know
how to value.

MATERIALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSUBSTANTIATION 291
life was to be replenished by life, — the life of the Spirit
of Christ imparted in baptism, — by the very life of Christ
Jesus Himself in His real presence, at once corporeal and
spiritual, and impregnating the whole humanity of the
duly prepared participator. Eomanists are supposed — ¦
and suppose themselves — to believe that what common
people would regard as the material substance and proper
ties, what Eoman theologians speak of as the accidents of
bread and wine, are transubstantiated, under the con
secrating energy and efficacy of the priestly invocation,
into the nature of our risen and glorified Lord, at once
human and divine, into His body, soul, spirit, and perfect
and absolute divinity. Pusey and his followers believe
and teach that the substance and properties, the accidents,
of bread and wine indeed remain, but that they are inter
penetrated with and by the nature and personal presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ, as God and man, or, in other
words, — though words in truth are altogether incommen
surable with propositions so contradictory and unthinkable,
— that our Lord, in His perfect fulness, is consubstan
tiated -with every particle of the consecrated bread and
wine. The title of the sermon from which I have taken all
the preceding quotations, except the last, is " The Holy
Eucharist, a Comfort to the Penitent " ; it was written and
preached as a comforting sequel to the terrible sermon on
" Sin after Baptism," and the portentous treatise on Baptism.
Pusey's special application of his special doctrine of the
real presence, in the way of comfort to the penitent,
affords a striking, and also, I venture to say, repulsive
illustration of the gross character of his teaching as to
sacramental efficacy ex opere operato. The specific ground

292 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
for comfort is that the penitent " drinks his ransom,"
" drinks his salvation." These are the very words. It is
also said that Christ is " the Bread of Life ; whoso, then,
eateth life cannot die. How should he die whose food is
life ? how perish who hath a living substance ? " These
words are borrowed partly from Ambrose. They are
applied by Pusey in the gross spirituo-corporeal sense of
which we have had so many specimens. Thus, the
penitent receives the Eucharist, the spirituo-corporeal
elements, the divinely - penetrated and consubstantiated
elements, for the " remission of sins."
Bishop Wilberforce on a hasty first glance at this
sermon, as we learn from a letter contained in his Life,
hit one anti-evangelical fault in it, when he says that the
sermon " denies the forgiven state of the justified man, and
breaks down the one great act of forgiveness into a number
of acts of forgiveness, thus contradicting St. Paul " ; and he
hits another blot when he says that the doctrine of the
sermon amounts to teaching the continuation of the atoning
sacrifice in every celebration, in direct contradiction to the
31st Article of the Church of England. Later and on fuller
thought, when he was resolved to speak out his mind, he
went much further and deeper in his condemnation of this
and all such teaching, as was shown especially in his
address to the rural deans of his diocese, an address not
intended for publication, delivered at Winchester House,
without notes, three days before his death, and to which
reference is made in Dean Burgon's Lives of Twelve Good
Men, vol. U. In this address he speaks of " the substitu
tion of a semi-materialistic presence for the actual presence
of Christ in the soul of the faithful communicant " as an
" abomination."

CONSUBSTANTIATION AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION 293
Pusey's doctrine of consubstantiation — if that be the
right word — is not less repulsive, and is, if possible, more
self-contradictory than the Eomish teaching as to tran
substantiation, and in its effect on faith and worship, is
identical. Alike on the Puseyite and on the Eomanist
view, the consecrating lips and hands of the priest work
the spell by which so unspeakable a result is effected ; and
the very Christ Himself is placed in the hands and in the
mouth of every participator. If priests are believed able
to do this, it is scarcely to be wondered at that, as con
fessors and absolvers of penitent sinners, the attributes of
the Searcher of hearts, the " God of judgment, by whom "
both motives and " actions are weighed," are attributed to
them. Of course it follows, with the most evident
necessity, from such teaching as this, that the communicat
ing congregation cannot but kneel and worship the Saviour,
who is both bodily and spiritually with them all and each.
The step between such doctrine and worship in Anglican
churches, and the celebration of the Mass as in Eomish
churches, is too short and easy to be appreciable. Pusey's
teaching, indeed, leads directly and necessarUy to such
Eomish ritualising as that of the late Father Lewder or
Mr. Mackonochie.
I wUl quote one more passage on this subject from
Pusey's writings. It will be found in his sermon, entitled,
" This is My Body," preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, in
1871— " Finding that the words ' Real Presence ' were often
understood of what is in fact a ' Real Absence,' we added
the word ' Objective,' to express that the LUe-giving Body,
the res sacramenti, is, by virtue of the consecration} present
1 The italics are mine.

294 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
without US, to be received by us, in the words of the
Fathers, ' for us to lay up Christ in ourselves and place
the Saviour in our breasts.' ... I will only add briefly,
that the doctriae of the Eucharistic Sacrifice and of
Eucharistic Adoration are involved in the doctrine of the
Eeal Presence. . . . ' The essence of the Sacrifice of the
Eucharist,' Bossuet had said, ' consists precisely in the
consecration, whereby, in virtue of the words of Jesus
Christ, His Body and precious Blood are placed really on
the Holy Table, mystically separated under the species of
bread and wine. By this action, taken precisely, and
without anything added by the priest, Jesus Christ is
really offered to His Father, inasmuch as His Body and
His Blood are placed before Him, actually clothed with the
signs representing His death.' "
That is, of course. Popery. Indeed, Pusey quotes
Bossuet, quite simply and naturally, as representing his
own views as to the real presence and as to the sacrifice
of the Eucharist.
Pusey, as a matter of fact, though he never went
over to Eome, had for forty years before his death been
more advanced in his Eomanising than was Newman when
he found himself compelled, equally by logic and by
conscience, to leave Anglican Oxford and to join the
Eoman communion. In addition to the view already
given of Pusey's opinions, the special evidences in proof
of what I have now said are to be found chiefiy in the
Preface which he contributed to an edition of Ne-wman's
Tract 90, and in his Eirenicon. I shall refer here only to
the latter. When Newman had gone over to the Church of Eome,
he wrote as follows, in November 1845, as he tells us in

NEWMAN AND PUSEY 295
his Apologia : " I have felt all along that Bishop Bull's
theology was the only theology on which the English Church
could stand. I have felt that opposition to the Church of
Eome was part of that theology ; and that he who could
not protest against the Church of Eome was no true
divine in the English Church. I have never said, nor
attempted to say, that anyone in office in the English
Church, whether bishop or incumbent, could be otherwise
than in hostility to the Church of Eome." He had written
on an earUer page of the Apologia : " From the end of 1841
I was on my deathbed as regards my membership with
the Anglican Church, though at the time I became aware
of it only by degrees."
These statements of Newman's are sufficient of them
selves to prove that up to the very eve of his concluding
that he could no longer remain in the Church of England,
Newman's sentiments were less favourable to the Church
of Eome than those of Pusey during the last thirty or
forty years of his life. The Eirenicon, published in
1865, expounds the views in relation to the Church of
Eome which Pusey had held for not less than twenty
years. If, as Newman held, so long as he retained his
position within the Church of England, he who could
not protest against the Church of Eome was " no true
divine of the Church of England," Pusey had for many
years ceased to be a " true divine " of the English
Church. The precise object of the Eirenicon, indeed, was
to show that no divine of the Church of England was
under any necessity whatever of protesting against the
Church of Eome. The volume propounds a basis of union
between Canterbury and Eome, that basis being nothing
else than the very Decrees of the Council of Trent, those

296 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
decrees being generously and forbeartngly interpreted on
the part of Eome, and generously and with lowly and
loving trustfulness accepted on the part of the EngUsh
Church. In his letter to Dr. Jelf, in explanation of Tract 90,
Newman sums up the meaning and intent of that famous
tract. He desired that " taking away the doctrine
of transubstantiation from the Mass, we shall have no
dispute about the sacrifice." Pusey, however, not only
taught " the sacrifice," but in his Eirenicon he takes
particular pains to show that his own doctrine of the real
presence differs only in the mode of expression from the
Eomish doctrine of transubstantiation. Newman would,
at that time, have left open the point, as he phrases it,
of " comprecation with the saints." But Pusey would
have gone further, and accepted a determination of the
Council of Trent which pronounces the invocation of saints
to be "good and useful." In 1841, and for some years
afterwards, Newman held that the worship of the
Virgin was, at least in principle and tendency, idolatrous,
and was very often distinctly idolatrous in practice ;
whereas, although Pusey had shown in his Eirenicon,
almost ad nauseam, to what frightful lengths of blas
phemous superstition this worship had been carried in the
Eomish Church, he was not prepared to affirm that the
Eoman CathoUc worship of the Virgin was in itself, or in
its essential principle, idolatrous.
Pusey was, in fact, about as good a Papist as
Bossuet or Dupin. Protestant is a designation which he
utterly rejected. Nor could he be classed under any
variety or category as receiving the doctrines of the
Eeformation. He rejected the doctrine of Luther as to

PUSEY AND MANNING 297
faith and justification; he denounced the doctrine of
Cal-vin as to grace and the sacraments ; he explained away
the doctrines of the Articles and Homilies of the Church
of England, as elucidated by the writings of the English
Reformers. He can only be described as a mild Romanist.
who received the Tridentlne Decrees, — these decrees being
indeed his proposed basis of union between Rome and the
Church of England, — but who would interpret them in the
sense least obnoxious to Protestant Christians. Like some
of the most eminent Romanist divines, he did not believe
in papal infallibility, which, indeed, at the time he wrote
his Eirenicon, was not yet an article of faith,, but he
believed in the infalUbility of General CouncUs of the
whole Church. The only point as to which, thirty years
ago, there was, according to Cardinal Manning, any
essential difference between Pusey and himself, was
that of the authority of tradition. But, according to
Newman, there was no difference at this point between
the views of Pusey and of Romanists. In his letter
to Pusey, called forth by the Eirenicon, Dr. Newman
declares that the difference " is merely one of words." If
so, then was Pusey, thirty years ago, to all intents and
purposes a Romanist in faith and doctrine.
Pusey could not indeed go all lengths with the
Roman Church, as judged by its vulgar faith and ordinary
practices. But neither do Roman Catholics of superior
intelUgence and culture. His rejection of papal infalli
bility would, it may be presumed, preclude him from being
accounted a modern Papist. But his faith seems to have
strictly coincided with that of the more enUghtened
Eomanists of the naturalised English or of the Galilean
school. He was assuredly not an adherent, in any sense.

298 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
of the Reformed faith. Bishop Wilberforce had ample
reason and right when he charged him with doing the work
of a Romish priest and confessor within the orders of the
Church of England.
He was indeed the main strength of the Romanising
conspiracy within the Church of England ; he was the very
Archimago of all the subtlety and mischief which were
practised and organised throughout the kingdom for
enlisting women, for instructing and training boys, for
infiuencing associations of clergy, for taking hold of
important centres in the interest of the Romanising
propaganda. Let us clearly understand that Puseyism, indeed, is
essentially Popery ; not, like the Laudian Movement,
Popery revived from its embers in a nation of which the
great mass of the people had never really embraced the
Reformation, but Popery revived after ages intervening in
which England, through all its ranks and classes, had
ceased to be Popish, and, with whatever shortcomings, had
yet been an enUghtened and Protestant nation, delivered
alike from the gross superstitions and the spiritual
despotism of Rome. The two plague-spots of Puseyism —
of High Church Catholicism — are its sacramental perver
sions, whereby the holy seals of the Christian faith and
profession are turned into superstitions ; and its de
humanising doctrine of the confessional. And these two
roots of error being once accepted, there is no tenet either
of Tridentlne or of modern Popery which may not be
received. Those who have learned to regard the priest-
confessor as the searcher of hearts, and the healer and
absolver of the soul, gifted for his office with corresponding
attributes and authority from God, need find no difficulty

PUSEYISM AND POPERY 299
in addressing prayers to the Virgin Mary, or to perfected
saints, and can surely find nothing too hard for them in
the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility, when speaking ex
cathedrd, as the " Vicar of Christ."
The papal infallibility is, in reality, a less revolting
tenet than that which invests the parish priest with the
prerogative of confessor. And yet if the priest by his
consecrating act can bring to pass the sacramental
miracles, what wonder if attributes are imputed to him
which are much more than merely superhuman ? All the
landmarks of truth are confused in such a system ; all the
perspective of things human and divine is lost and con
founded ; men are no longer to be sanctified through God's
word, which is " the truth," but by participation in
theurgic mysteries, wrought by the hands of priests. He
who has accepted the main roots of the whole system of
error in the sacramental and confessional doctrines, need
not stumble even at the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin. Pusey said that, if the
Gorham controversy had turned against his party, he
should have gone over and accepted Popery whole. He
need have found no difficulty in doing this at any time.
Nor was it at any time a real revulsion from the doctrines
of Popery which retained him within the Church of
England. Pusey, in fact, spent more than forty years in carry
ing out, on a different and a deeper level, the same
work of preparing the Church of England for amalga
mation with the Romish Church which Newman began
but found himself unable to carry through with the
consent and co-working of his reason and his conscience.
Newman has, in his Apologia, laid bare, in great part.

300 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
the working of his mind in this matter. He says of
himself in 1840: "I beUeved that we had the apostolic
succession in the Anglican Church and the grace of the
sacraments ; I was not sure that the difficulty of its
isolation might not be overcome. ... I was not sure
that it would not revive into full apostolic purity and
strength, and grow into union with Rome herself (Rome
explaining her doctrines and guarding against their
abuse) ; that is, if we were but patient and hopeful.
I wished for union between the Anglican Church and
Rome, if, and when, it was possible." That was his
position, conscientiously and deliberately recognised in
1840. In the following year, 1841, he "was on his
deathbed as regarded his membership with the Church
of England, though he only became aware of it by
degrees"; in 1844 he resigned his offices; in 1845 he
went over to Rome. But during the whole interval —
nearly half a century — between 1840 and his death,
Pusey was steadily and subtly workiag towards the same
end, which now the English Church Union avowedly
has in -view, the time for silence and privacy having, it
seems, passed away. Indeed, in his Eirenicon, published
thirty years ago in the form of a letter to Keble,
Pusey set distinctly forth his method for the consum
mation of the same end on the basis of the Decrees
of the Council of Trent. He argues that there might
well be a union between the Roman Catholic and the
Anglo-Catholic Churches on the assumption or condition
that the decrees of the Roman Catholic Council received
a mitigated and minified interpretation ; whilst, on the
other hand, a relaxed interpretation was allowed on the
Thirty-nine Articles. As, however, such an agreement

REUNION WITH ROME 301
would imply a maximum of Romanising expansion and
relaxation in the interpretation of the Articles, the con
templated union would leave behind and out of account
all ministers and members of the Church of England,
doubtless much more than one-half of the whole body
of Churchmen, who could not be induced to consent
to such an interpretation of the Articles. So that if
it could be imagined possible for it to take effect, all
true English Churchmen, whether called Evangelical or
not, would be left behind in the Anglican Umbo, — a
point of which Pusey and all Puseyites seem never to
have taken account. Pusey pleads the authority of a
great name in favour of the idea of the possibUity of
reunion. He refers to the precedent of Archbishop
Wake in his well-known correspondence with Dupin ; but
it seems never to have occurred to him that there was
no real parallel between his proposal and Archbishop
Wake's. The archbishop's object was not to attach the
English Church to the Roman communion, but to de
tach the Galilean Church from the Roman communion,
— a proposal which in the early part of the eighteenth
century might have seemed not beyond the bounds of
possibUity. In the Church of Bossuet and Dupin, the
Church also of Pascal and Arnauld and Fdn^lon ; in the
days of the Galilean liberties, and before the Jesuits
had obtained the control of the Royal Court and Council
Chamber of France ; such a proposal was not altogether
Utopian. Archbishop Wake's aim was to foster the
latent Protestantism of France in the hope that the
French Catholic Church might follow, to some extent,
the example of the Church of England, under the lead
of a monarch ; following, to some extent, the precedent

302 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
of Henry vili. All this was worthy of an ecclesiastical
statesman like Archbishop Wake, of whom it must be
remembered, moreover, that, in this respect also unlike
Pusey, his love of peace and unity was so impartial
and comprehensive that he did not merely seek to establish
intercommunion between the national Churches of England
and France, but frankly admitted the valid ecclesiastical
character of Presbyterian and other non-Episcopal Churches
in England, and the validity of the ministerial acts per
formed by the pastors of such Churches.^
Pusey's proposal, in which he is followed by the
Puseyites of to-day, was very different, indeed, from that
of Archbishop Wake. Pusey was prepared to accept the
Decrees of the Council of Trent with certain explanations.
He was prepared to recognise the primacy of the Romish
See. His hope was that through the influence and work
ing of himself and his party, the Church of England,
as a whole, might be brought eventually to accept his
ideas and feelings on this subject. The actual result
to-day shows that Pusey was not so absurdly sanguine
as was generally supposed at the time. His work has
been only too successful. To-day Lord Halifax and the
Church Union are drawing consciously and undisguisedly
near the papal centre ; nor with the possibility of Church
disestablishment in -view have we any right to assume
that the counsels of the Church Union will prove to be
absolutely futile. Let us suppose that the Church being
disestablished falls asunder — as everyone expects it wUl—
into at least two, possibly into three, distinct Anglican
organisations, — the High AngUcan organisation being the
Church of Lord HaUfax and the Church Union, — what
' See Maclaine's Edition of Mosheim's Church History, the last chapter.

HO W FUSE Y 0 UTWENT NE WMAN 303
is to prevent that High Anglican section from carrying
out the programme of the Church Union, and bringing
about an organic union between the Romish Church and
itself ? Long ago Newman, as we have seen, before he
himself went over, had contemplated the possibUity of
such a union taking place. He had intimated, more
over, as we also learn from the Apologia, that in order to
effect it, certain special conditions might be claimed by
the English and conceded by the Romish Church ; as, for
example, the concession of the cup to the laity, and
some explanation of points in the Tridentlne Decrees, and
of Transubstantiation and Mariolatry. There is, in fact,
an identity and continuity of idea from the time of
Newman, more than fifty years ago, to the present hour,
which has been kept up by the influence of Newman and
Pusey, and of their coadjutors and successors.
Such an idea, however, was, abstractly regarded, less
outrageous in 1840 than it is in 1895. In 1840 the
Immaculate Conception of the Virgin had' not yet been
deflned as an Article of Faith, the Syllabus-Decree had not
yet been issued ; above all, the InfallibUity-Dogma had not
been defined and ratified by a General Council. Ultra
montanism, as it has been revived, developed, and reasserted
during the last quarter of a century, was hardly as yet
thought of. The Primacy of Rome did not imply nearly
all that it implies to-day. Sanguine Anglicans and Uberal
and sanguine Roman Catholics in those days agreed in
cherishing the hope that the claim of infallibiUty had
become obsolete and was not likely to be revived, and was
least of all likely to be made a dogma by the decree of a
General Council; and that Rome itself was accepting
and assimilating modern and, up to a certain point.

304 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
liberal ideas. Such, no doubt, were the cherished hopes of
men like Dr. Dollinger and Lord Acton. In such ideas
and hopes such Anglicans as Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly
sympathised. It is easy to understand, and difficult not
to some extent to sympathise with, the feelings which led
men, such as those I have named, to cherish the hope that
some day the breach in the Western Catholic communion
might be healed, at least so far as to reconcile the Church
of England to Rome ; and that, as a further step towards
manifest Christian union throughout the world, a friendly
understanding might be brought about between the Western
CathoUc Church and the Eastern Catholic Church. All
such hopes, however, have been rendered unreasonable by
the developments of the last quarter of a century. The
modern Ultramontanism of Rome has quenched them all.
The part which Mr. Gladstone has taken in opposition to
that development is a symptom of deep significance. I
venture myself to connect with his abandonment of hopes
cherished in his earUer Ufe the remarkable manUesto of
his present views and sympathies in regard to CathoUc
Christian union, which he has lately published. I refer, of
course, to his article on Heresy and Schism. He looks now
for the realisation of Christian unity, not to an amalgama
tion with the Church of Rome, or any sort of recognised
union and fellowship with it; but to the broad, general
agreement in Christian orthodoxy and Christian feeling of
Christian Churches throughout the world.
Even now, and for Evangelical Christians of the free
Churches, it is lawful to hope that some time — sooner,
perhaps, than we can see our way to calculate — the Ultra
montane and semper eadem policy of the papal conclave
will utterly break down, though in principle it cannot be

THE ONE HOPE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD 305
abandoned. That is the one hope, not only of the
Christian world at large, but even of the Western
Catholic communion itself, if it can realise its actual
position. That the Roman Catholic nationalities of the
world will become Protestant, that they will give up the
name Catholic, is hardly to be expected. But Popery
proper is a priestly growth and usurpation. It is the
special creation of the Roman ecclesiastical court ; it is
no genuine development of the common Christian life of
Europe, corrupt and enfeebled as that Ufe was during the
dark and middle ages. Many of the developments sanctioned
by the Roman Court were resisted, even by a large portion
of the clergy, and were odious to such of the laity as were
aware of them. Throughout there has been a struggling
protest in the body of the Roman Catholic Church itself.
Unhappily, the interests of the priests are bound up with the
papal policy — so it has been contrived ; and the priests and
clergy of every order are accepted as such only on condition
that they uphold the uttermost claims of the Papacy.
The ecclesiastical claims and official declarations of
the Papacy are, indeed, unchanged, except by being
enunciated as dogma ; they are as presumptuous, as arro
gant, as daring and impious as ever ; but this is perfectly
consistent with the real weakening of the Roman power.
The Papacy may have all the more wrath, because of
its presentiment that its power is fading away. Pius ix.
could summon a so-called CEcumenical Council, but he
could not enact the part of a Hildebrand. He could
claim for himself and his successors official infalli
bUity, but he could not set his foot upon the neck
of princes, or cast the fearful yoke of an interdict over
the breadth and body of an empire. He could not even

3o6 PUSEY'S DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE
prevent his holy city from being wrested from his hands,
and made the capital of a free kingdom. The Pope is now
the Primate of an aggregate of sects ; he could no longer
be imagined to be triple-crowned, the great potentate of
the world. The next stage in the enfranchisement of the
Western Catholic nations must be the development of the
national liberties, and of ecclesiastical independency for the
nations and their rulers. The Roman Catholic Churches
will themselves become truly national in their character
and development in proportion as the pulse of national
liberties beats more and more powerfully, as true national
life works more and more freely in the breasts of the
people, nation by nation, citizen by citizen. The concession
of the Primacy to Rome by the English Church would be
a terribly retrograde step, would tend to rivet spiritual
oppression and corruption on the Catholic world. So long
as the papal supremacy lasts in its full Romish sense, the
Roman communion is bound to all its traditions, must go
encumbered with the weight of all its millennial growth and
accumulation of corruptions, impieties, and contradictions.
Take this iron-woven swaddling band from off the limbs
and the Ufe of the great Western Catholic Church, and she
will be able to rise and to move freely. Break up the
papal yoke, cast off the papal incubus, throw to the winds
the papal supremacy, and national Catholic Churches may
grow up in the midst of rising national liberty, and may
gradually purge and reform themselves. They would not
call themselves Protestant ; but they would be national,
with their own synods, and with separate governments. In
that direction lies the hope alike of liberty and of religious
union for Christendom, union — not indeed organic, but
moral and practical — for the ends of Christian civUisation.

CHAPTER XIL
Pusey's Special Personal Characteristics — His Incon
sistencies — His Relations with Nonconformists —
Puseyism, Ritualism, and Romanism.
"pUSEY'S was a character hard to read — he was a man
whose meaning was hard to follow. The ordinary
man of general intelligence, the mere literary man, the
average Churchman, especially the Evangelical Churchman,
the average Dissenter or Wesleyan Methodist, or the mere
politician, — all alike found his position unintelUgible. He
seemed to be almost unclassifiable — to be an anomalous
specimen of the genus Churchman, and especially to stand
apart and alone among modern divines. In 1864 the
Protestant and orthodox evangelical section of the nation
joined hands with him in his opposition to Broad Church
latitudinarianism, and there seemed to he a rapprochement
between him and his cousin. Lord Shaftesbury. He had
earned the thanks, about the same period, of orthodox and
anti-rationalistic Christian students by his Lectures on
Daniel the Prophet, and his Commentary on the Minor
Prophets. Yet all the time he had not changed any of
his views as to confession, absolution, and sacramental
efficacy. It is notable also that in 1864, on the fiy-leaf
of his misnamed (so it proved to be) Eirenicon, there were
advertised as " In the Press," besides part iv. of the
Minor Prophets, and the fourth thousand of his Daniel,
307

3oS PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
" A preface, chiefly historical, to Tract XC. of the Tracts
for the Times, together with Tract XC."
The key to his character, given by his old friend in
the Apologia, explains these seeming inconsistencies. Pusey
had a " sanguiae, hopeful mind," and was " haunted by no
intellectual perplexities." When his own party " had
advanced," as Newman witnesses, " a considerable way
in the direction of Rome," Pusey was still rejoicing in
the confidence and conviction that " among its hopeful
pecuUarities was its stationariness." This was "his sub
jective view of it."
Such a man was not likely to be understood. His
tactics were naturally denounced as Jesuitical. The plain
Protestant could not conceive any honourable explanation
of his inconsistencies. Nor was his reputation for honesty
improved in 1865 by the announcement in the daily
papers that he had been visiting two Romish bishops in
the south of France, and at Bordeaux had spent his Sunday
in the convent of the Dominicans.
Nevertheless, though blinded and doting on more
points than one, Pusey was an honest man. His views
might be self -contradictory ; but that does not affect
the question. A man who can believe as Pusey pro
fessed in his sermon on the Eucharist to believe, can
believe any quantity of self-contradictions. His special
doctrine of the real presence, the Puseyite consubstantia
tion, is yet more uncouthly self-contradictory than even
the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation, as to the
contradictions and absurdities of which Jeremy Taylor
says so many hard and witty things, — things which if
modern Low Churchman or Dissenter were to say of
Pusey's doctrine, he would forthwith be charged by the

AN HONEST BELIEVER IN CONTRADICTIONS 309
earnest and unhesitating devotee with profanity or even
blasphemy.^ But, notwithstanding its contradictions,
which he contrived to get over by means of the verbal
distinctions which are mistaken for realities, Pusey for
more than forty years believed wholly and absolutely in
this doctrine of consubstantiation.
It is scarcely possible to set limits to the power of
the human mind to believe in contradictions. A man can,
indeed, believe any sort of contradiction except a con
tradiction in terms. Pusey is essentially one with the
Romanists, at least in dogmatic definition, respecting the
doctrine of justification by faith. It is inferred from this
that, therefore, he can have no sympathy or fellowship
with evangelical life or with experimental religion. Hence,
when it is found in his Commentary that he has sympathy
with what is spiritual and experimental, with the life of
sanctification, with the habitual faith of the Christian
saint, readers are confounded, and they know not what
to believe. The natural conclusion was that there
must have been some exaggeration in reference to his
semi-Popery, or that his -views when he wrote that Com
mentary must have materially changed from the time
when he published his treatise on Baptism and his sermon
on the Eucharist. But, in truth, there had been no change
whatever. Newman's Apologia compelled his contemporaries to
revise the judgment which they had passed upon him.
If ever casuistry seemed to be possessed by the spirit
of crafty falsehood, " paltering with us " throughout " in
a double sense," it was the casuistry of Tract 90. And
yet from the Apologia it seems to be certain that
1 See the Preface to Pusey's sermon on the Eucharist (1871).

3IO PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Newman was never a consciously dishonest man. He was
a man whose over-subtlety bUnded him. He possessed a
highly-trained faculty of mental obUquity, — a faculty which
long and skUful culture had developed to a marvellous
and pernicious perfection. He had acquired the power
of duping himself. But he retained, in an important
sense, his moral integrity notwithstanding; he never
ceased to be, in the main, an honourable and conscientious
English gentleman. There is no doubt some danger lest,
in exercising charity towards either Newman or Pusey,
or any of their school, we might seem to apologise for
what, to the common apprehension, must appear to be
dishonest craft.^ The explanation, however, is, that men
trained, as the Tractarians had been trained, and as
most Roman theologians are trained, in a school of
verbal quibbling and scholastic subtleties, have lost the
power of appreciating truth. Their theology is mainly a
matter of words and phrases. They have not learned to
look in the face any fact of life or of nature. A petitio
principii is always latent in their definitions, or distinc
tions, or propositions. And so they can believe anything.
What student of philosophy knows not that a portentous
1 Newman, indeed, was in his later life dissatisfied with Tract
90. He admits that " the tract did not carry its object and con
ditions on its face, and necessarily lay open to interpretations
very far from the true one. I considered," he says, " that my inter
pretation of the Articles would stand, provided the parties imposing
them allowed it. When in the event the bishops and public opinion
did not allow it, I gave up my living, as having no right to retain it."
He quotes from his " Loss and Gain '' what, though put into the lips
of an interlocutor, is his own present judgment respecting his own
tract : " The view is specious certainly. But you have no sanction to
show me. As it stands, it is a mere theory struck out by individuals."
~~Newman's Letter to Pusey, pp. 15, 16.

HONEST AND GOOD ROMAN CATHOLICS 311
system of merely verbal metaphysics was invented in order to
expound and defend the doctrine of transubstantiation, — a
system to which there is actuaUy no truth or reaUty, no fact
of nature or Ufe, corresponding ? Of course, on this system
of pseudo-metaphysical quibbling, transubstantiation may be
defended. This system is borrowed by the Tractarians ; and
they are able to believe that what Eomanists call the acci
dents — what they call the substance — of bread and wine
can remain, and yet the bread be the very body, and the
wine the very blood, of the Saviour. To all others these
are the craziest of absurdities and contradictions. After
this, to consubstantiate Protestant evangelical truth, i.e. a
certain modicum of it, with the Tridentlne Articles, or to
transubstantiate the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles into a
system of quasi-Tridentine theology, is a practicable feat.
These observations are designed to show how Pusey
was, almost from the first, consistent with himself in
his professions and in his course. As Pascal, and F^n^lon,
and the Marquis de Eenti, although all of them honest
" Catholics," and all of them bound by the Decrees of the
Tridentine CouncU, were yet good men who loved and
trusted in Christ, and lived to God a life of prayer and
faith, in virtue of truths which, however inconsistently,
they yet held 'vitally in connection with a dogmatic
adherence to principles altogether contrary ; so Pusey
contrives, in holding to the mildest interpretation of the
Tridentine Canons and Decrees, at the same time to hold
fast -vitally by such truths of the gospel as suffice to bring
him into personal union with his Sa-viour and into sym
pathy, at some points, with evangelical Christians.^
1 John Wesley held strong opinions as to Romish doctrine. He
says in one place that he has "the same assurance that Jesus is the

312 PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
There are some statements in the Eirenicon which bear
directly on the point now under consideration. Cardinal
Manning, in his tractate on The Workings of the Holy
Spirit in the Chureh of England, having spoken of Pusey's
co-operation with the EvangeUcal party as, on his part,
" a drifting back from old moorings," the following is
Pusey's explanation and defence : —
" Ever since I knew them (which was not in my earliest
years) I have loved those who are called ' Evangelicals.'
I loved them because they loved our Lord. I loved them
for their zeal for souls. I often thought them narrow ;
yet I was often drawn to individuals among them more
than to others who held truths in common with myself,
which the Evangelicals did not hold, at least explicitly. I
believed them to be ' of the truth.' I have ever believed
Christ, and that no Romanist can expect to be saved, according to the
terms of His covenant." Yet no man exercised a more candid and
charitable judgment in regard to individuals. " Persons," he says,
'' ma,y be quite right in their opinions, and yet have no religion at
all ; and, on the other hand, persons may be truly religious, who
hold many wrong opinions. Can anyone possibly doubt of this,
while there are Romanists in the world ? For who can deny, not
only that many of them formerly have been truly religious, as
Thomas k Kempis, Gregory Lopez, and the Marquis de Renti, but
that many of them, even at this day, are real inward Christians?
And yet what a heap of erroneous opinions do they hold, delivered
by tradition from their fathers." " Let us then," he says in another
place, " make all that allowance to others which, were we in their
place, we would desire for ourselves. Who that knows the amazing
power of education can expect a member of the Church of Rome
either to think or speak clearly on this subject [justification] ?
And yet, if he had heard even dying Bellarmine cry out when he
was asked, — ' Unto which of the saints wilt thou turn ? ' — ' Fidere
meritis Christi iutissimum ' — ' It is safest to trust in the merits of
Christ,' — wOuld he have affirmed that notwithstanding his wrong
opinions, he had no share in this righteousness?" — Works, i. 208;
vi. 186, 187 ; v. 224.

PUSEY AND "EVANGELICALS" 313
and believe, that their faith was and is, on some points of doc
trine, much truer than their words. I believed and believe,
that they are often withheld from the clear and full sight
of the truth by an inveterate prejudice, that that truth, as
held by us, is united with error, or with indistinct acknow
ledgment of other truths which they themselves hold sacred.
Whilst, then, I lived in society, I ever sought them out,
both out of love for themselves, and because I believed that
nothing (with God's help) so dispels untrue prejudice as
personal intercourse, heart to heart, with those against
whom that prejudice is entertained. I sought to point out
to them our common basis of faith. I formed some lasting
friendships with some among them who have finished their
course, and with others who still remain. When occasion
came, as in some of our struggles at Oxford, we acted
together. . . .
" It was not, then, anything new that when, in high
places, fundamental truths had been denied, I sought to
unite with those, some of whom had often spoken against
me, but against whom I had never spoken. It was the
pent-up longing of years. I had long felt that common
zeal for faith could alone bring together those who are
opposed ; I hoped that, through that common zeal and
love, inveterate prejudices which hindered the reception of
truth would be dispelled. . . .
" But whUe, on the one hand, I profess plainly that love
for the Evangelicals which I ever had, I may be, perhaps,
the more bound to say, that, in no matter of faith, nor in
my thankfulness to God for my faith, have I changed.
This was understood on both sides. We united to oppose
unbelief, holding each what each beUeved that God had
taught him." — Eirenicon, pp. 4-6.

314 PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Pusey's Eirenicon, indeed, is written in a spirit of
charity towards those who differ from him in theological
opinions, provided only they hold to the doctrine of the
atonement. This charity extends not only to his " evan
gelical " brethren of the Church of England, but to orthodox
and evangelical Nonconformists. And he goes as far in
his concessions to such wanderers from the true fold as an
Anglican semi-Papist can be expected to go. But still he
unchurches aU non-episcopal communities, and claims for
the pious votaries of High Church principles, in virtue
especially of their sacramental grace and life, a style of
piety altogether more saintly and heavenly than that of
the best of Nonconformists.
After his Eirenicon was pubUshed, small popes ^ in dif
ferent parts of England condescended to express themselves
towards Wesleyans and Dissenters in terms borrowed
from Pusey's book, denying the validity of their Church
orders and ordinances, but at the same time allowing that,
individually, their Christian experience may be genuine,
and their Christian character high, and that their irregular
and unecclesiastical ministrations may be to some the
means and channels of personally sanctifying grace. It is
consoling, however, to Nonconformists who — with some
goodwill, not unmised with a sense of the ludicrous ; with
some admiration, not unmixed with disgust — receive these
acknowledgments from Anglo-Catholics, to know that pre
cisely the same measure is meted out to Anglo-Catholics
themselves which they mete to Protestant Nonconformists.
What Pusey says, with embarrassed affabUity, to me. Arch
bishop' Manning, with a bland smile and with superior
grace, says to Pusey.
' See Note at the end of the chapter, " Small Popes.''

PUSEY'S CHARITY 315
" God blesseth," says the AngUcan doctor, " through the
sacraments ; and God blesseth through truth. If a Wes
leyan minister preaches his naked gospel, that ' we are all
sinners,' that ' Christ died to save sinners,' that ' He bids
all sinners to come to Him,' and saith, ' whoso cometh unto
Me, I wUl in no wise cast out,' this is, of course, fundamental
gospel truth ; and when God blesses through it those
who know no more. He blesseth them through faithful
reception of His truth. So, again, as to the Presbyterians.
They deny, in regard to the Holy Communion, what we
believe ; and their account of their communion is somewhat
less than what we mean by a spiritual communion. ... I
do not mean any disparagement to any pious Presbyterians ;
but, believing the Holy Eucharist to be what we, in common
with the whole ancient Church, know it to be, we cannot
but know that they who receive it worthily have a much
greater closeness of union with our Lord than they who
do not. Presbyterians have what they believe ; we, what
we believe. But they who have observed pious Presby
terians and pious English Catholics have discerned among
our people a spiritual Ufe of a kind which was not among
theirs — in a word, a sacramental life." ^ — Eirenicon, pp.
272-276. It was in this manner that Pusey reconciled his exclus
ive sacramentarian theory with his charity. The Noncon
formist may be sanctified and saved, the Spirit co-operating
with the truth, the " naked gospel," which is received from
the lips of the preacher ; but this is only as it may be, for
" the Spirit blow eth where it Usteth." But the reverent
recipient of the consecrated elements at the hand of the
priest, whether any gospel has been preached or not, must
^ See Note at the end of the chapter, " Sacramental Life."

3i6 PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
be a partaker of sa-ving grace, and of — what no Non
conformist can enjoy — " sacramental life." Grace and
salvation are held in tail by the apostolic and Catholic
priesthood. Salvation waits of necessity on their mini
strations. One cannot read such passages as these without pity
ing these Churchmen in their dire perplexity. Neither
can one well avoid thinking of the Apostle Paul and his
" naked gospel." The Wesleyan minister, I apprehend, is in
good company. " I came," says Paul, " not to baptize, but
to preach the gospel." " We preach Christ crucified, to
the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness ;
but to them which are saved, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God." This is the
very " naked gospel " of the Wesleyan minister.
Leaving aside, however, all questions of doctrine and
all comment on the opinions and principles contained in
what has been quoted, let us see how Cardinal Manning,
on his part, deals with Anglican Nonconformists. Pusey
might have learnt his lesson of charitable exclusiveness
from Manning. Before Pusey enacted the part of conde
scending High Church charity towards Wesleyans and Dis
senters, he had had the advantage of seeing how Manning
enacted the like part of condescending charity towards
schismatics in general, and towards Anglican Churchmen
in particular. With high impartial charity the foremost
among the prelates of " Catholicism " showed himself indul
gent to the involuntary errors of all. But he allows no
superiority to Pusey over the " Wesleyan minister " ; on the
whole, he rather gives the Presbyterian and Dissenter an
advantage over the Episcopalian.
" The English people as a body are baptized, and there-

CARDINAL MANNING'S CHARITY 317
fore elevated to the order of supernatural grace. Every
infant, and also every adult baptized,having the necessary dis
positions, is thereby placed in a state of justification ; and, if
they die without committing any mortal sin, would certainly
be saved. They are also, in the sight of the Church, Catholics.
St. Augustine says : ' Ecclesia etiam inter eos qui foris sunt
per baptismum generat sues.' . . . With perfect confidence
of faith we extend the shelter of this truth over the millions
of infants and young children who every year pass to their
heavenly Father. We extend it also in hope to many more
who grow up in their baptismal grace. Catholic mission
aries in this country have often assured me of a fact,
attested also by my own experience, that they have received
into the Church persons grown to adult life, in whom their
baptismal grace was still preserved. Now, how can we
then be supposed to regard such persons as no better than
heathens ? To ascribe the good lives of such persons to
the power of nature would be Pelagianism. To deny their
goodness would be Jansenism. And with such a conscious
ness, how could anyone regard his past spiritual life in
the Church of England as a mockery ? I have no deeper
conviction than that the grace of the Holy Spirit was with
me from my earliest consciousness. Though at the time,
perhaps, I knew it not as I know it now, yet I can clearly
perceive the order and chain of grace by which God merci
fully led me onward from childhood to the age of twenty
years. . . .
" We make the largest allowance for all who are in
invincible ignorance, always supposing that there is a
preparation of heart to embrace the truth when they see
it, at any cost, a desire to know it, and a faithful use of
the means of knowing it, such as study, docility, prayer,

3i8 PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
and the like. But I do not now enter into the case of the
educated or the learned, or of those who have liberty of
mind and means of inquiry. I cannot class them under
the above enumeration of those who are inculpably out of
the truth. I leave them, therefore, to the only Judge
of all men. . , ,
" It must not, however, be forgotten for a moment that
this applies to the whole English people, of all forms of
Christianity, or, as it is called, of all denominations. What
I have said does not recognise the grace of the Church of
England as such. The working of grace in the Church of
England is a truth we joyfully hold and always teach.
But we as joyfully recognise the working of the Holy
Spirit among Dissenters of every kind. Indeed, I must say
that I am far more able to assure myself of the invincible
ignorance of Dissenters as a mass than of Anglicans as a
mass. They are far more deprived of what survived
of Catholic truth ; far more distant from the idea of a
Church ; far more traditionaUy opposed to it by the pre
judice of education ; I must add, for the most part far
more simple in their belief in the person and passion of
our divine Lord. Their piety is more Uke the personal
service of disciples to a personal Master than the Anglican
piety, which has always been more dim and distant from
this central light of souls. Witness Jeremy Taylor's works,
much as I have loved them, compared with Baxter's, or
even those of Andrewes, compared with Leighton's, who was
formed by the Kirk of Scotland. . . .
" To be just, I must say that if the Church of England
be a barrier against infideUty, the Dissenters must also be
admitted to a share in this office and commendation. And,
in truth, I do not know among the Dissenters any works

MANNING ON CHURCHMEN AND DISSENTERS 319
Uke the Essays and Reviews, or any biblical criticism like
that of Dr. Colenso. They may not be very dogmatic in
their teaching, but they bear their witness for Christianity
as a divine revelation, for the Scriptures as an inspired
book, and, I must add further, for the personal Christianity
of conversion and repentance, with an expUcitness and
consistency which is not less effectual against infidelity
than the testimony of the Church of England. I do not
think the Wesleyan Conference or the authorities of the
three denominations would accept readily this assumed
superiority of the Anglican Church as a witness against
unbelief. They would not unjustly point to the doctrinal
confusions of the Church of England as causes of scepticism,
from which they are comparatively free. And I am bound
to say that I think they would have an advantage. I weU
remember that while I was in the Church of England I
used to regard Dissenters from it with a certain, I will not
say aversion, but distance and recoil. I never remember
to have borne animosity against them, or to have attacked
or pursued them with unkindness. I always believed many
of them to be very earnest and devoted men. I did not like
their theology, and I believed them to be in disobedience
to the Church of England ; but I respected them, and lived
at peace with them. Indeed, I may say that some of the
best people I have ever known out of the Church were
Dissenters or children of Dissenters. Nevertheless, I had
a dislike of their system and of their meeting-houses. They
seemed to me to be rivals of the Church of England, and
my loyalty to it made me look somewhat impatiently upon
them. But I remember, from the hour I submitted to the
Catholic Church, aU this underwent a sensible change. I
had no temptation to animosity towards them ; for neither

320 PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
they nor the Church of England could be rivals of the
imperishable and immutable Church of God. The only
sense, then, in which I could regard the Church of England
as a barrier against infidelity I must extend also to the
Dissenting bodies." ^
These are undoubtedly the severest rebukes, from the
most authoritative quarter, which Anglican Churchmen
have yet received. Pusey's charity looks pale and narrow
by the side of the archbishop's ; while the setting do-wn,
by the quondam Oxford man, of exclusive Anglican preten
sions, is as just as it is decisive. The petty Eomanism of
the High Anglican was never so effectually humbled. It
was not for Pusey or any High Anglican to deny the
orthodoxy, the precedence, the Church authority, of Eome,
so long as all Anglican exaltados profess to derive their
own authority from the same common source and through
the same line of priestly succession, and so long as they
are willing to admit the theology of Trent and the primacy
of the Pope. Their position is utterly untenable, and
nothing is so likely to make them feel it as such writing
as that which has now been quoted.
The position which Cardinal Manning occupied in
regard to Pusey is precisely equivalent with that
which Pusey assumed towards Nonconformists. Mutatis
mutandis, the following propositions, maintained by
Cardinal Manning, would be maintained by Pusey. Put
Nonconformist Churches for the Church of England,
and these propositions wiU express the High Churchman's
position. " Let me, then, say at once —
^ Workings of ihe Holy Spirit in the Church of England, pp. 10-20,
31-33.

THE CARDINAL AS UMPIRE 321
" 1. That in denying the Church of England to be the
Catholic Church, or any part of it, or in any divine and
true sense a Church at all, and in denying the validity of
its absolutions and its orders, no Catholic ever denies the
workings of the Spirit of God or the operations of grace
in it. " 2. That in affirming the workings of grace in the
Church of England, no CathoUc ever thereby affirms that
it possesses the character of a Church." ^
So the Ultramontane prelate qualifies and guards his
admissions in regard to the personal godliness and Chris
tianity of many Anglican schismatics ; and after just the
same manner do the small popes in English parish churches
guard and qualify the admissions which they are constrained
to make in regard to the true Christian character and
experience of many Nonconformists. To a Nonconformist
it cannot but be interesting to see the High Churchman
put into the corner as a heretic and schismatic, to see " the
engineer hoist with his own petard."
Pusey labours in his effort to come down from his
Anglican eminence and meet Nonconformists with a con
descending friendliness. The Cardinal with bland and
beaming geniality, meets all non-Catholics, Anglicans, and
Dissenters alike on a common platform, placed, to be sure,
somewhere below his own, of easy friendship. Some seem
to think it much to say in behalf of Pusey, that, at
anyrate, he never left the Church of England ; as if on that
account he were to be favourably distinguished from New
man or Manning. But is it not, on the contrary, a part of
the case against him that he did not leave the Church of
England ? The evU is not so much going over to Eome,
1 Ibid., p. 8.

322 PUSEY'S SPECIAL PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
as being a Eomanist at heart, or a Eomaniser within the
Church of England. It is the characteristic doctrines and
practices, corruptions and superstitions of Eome which
constitute the real evil of Eomanism, — not the name, but
the thing. It is an incomparably more evil and mischievous
thing to remain in the Church and make it a business to
Eomanise it, than even to join the Papal communion ; it is
far worse to corrupt one-third of the clergy, and through
them many of the laity, than to go over to Eome with a
few companions. But that is not a complete and frank
statement of the case. The Eomanising leaven introduced
into the Church of England, and remaining there, is in
in itself a worse thing than the same amount of Anglo-
Eomanism is after it has found its proper home within the
Eoman Catholic Church. The confessional, as organised
by Pusey, has been in itself a more deadly evil, so far
as it took hold, than the practice of confession as used by
English Eoman Catholics. The Eomish Church does not
teach raw and untrained university men of last evening
that to-day they are, by the bishop's hands, made competent
to act the part of priest-confessor, of searcher, physician,
and judge of souls. The Father Confessors of the Church
of Eome are, at anyrate, trained, discreet men, of tested
character. In England, so far as can be learned, they are
men of high character. Neither does the Church of Eome
summon into the confessional boys of six. Not tUl the
period of confirmation do any young people in the Eomish
Church present themselves for confession and absolution.
These two pecuUarities of Puseyism, for both of which
Pusey personally cannot but be held responsible, are more
pernicious and monstrous errors, involve usurpation more
terrible and demoralisation more unnatural, than can easUy

PUSEYISM AND RITUALISM 323
be paralleled even in the Church of Eome. That Pusey
was devout, earnest, generous, and sympathetic with the
experience of saintly people — Calvinists and the like —
beyond the limits of the " CathoUc " Churches, so caUed, is
a fact not to be denied, and enlarges our -view of the
possibilities of error and inconsistency in sincerely religious
men ; but this fact cannot avail to annul such other facts
as I have referred to, or to redeem the character of
Pusey from the reproach of being a " false teacher." That
is the phrase which St. Paul would have applied to him, in
view of his pernicious doctrine, no less than to the " false
teachers " of the Churches in Galatia.
It is not a sufficiently grave view of the case to
regard Pusey as, in effect, the father, as he was always the
defender, of " ritualism." What I have referred to in the
preceding paragraph suggests thoughts deeper and more
serious than are generally associated with the word " ritual
ism." But it is, at the same time, true, and it is in itself
a grave charge to make, that Pusey's principles lay at the
foundation of the ritualism which intelligent Protestants
condemn ; this is a point by no means to be lost sight of.
By " ritualism " is sometimes meant nothing more or worse
than an aesthetic and ornate service organised by clergymen
who are not disloyal to the Eeformation. Of such ritualism
I have nothing here to say. Its wisdom or otherwise is a
question of taste and degree. Even such ritualism, though
it conceals underneath its displays no hierarchical pretensions
or Eomanising corruptions, may nevertheless be excessive,
and little conducive to religious solemnity or elevation of
feeling. But I refer here only to rituaUsm which is either
symboUc of unscriptural hierarchical pretensions and claims,
or which is adopted for the sake of what Dr. Littledale

324 PUSEYISM, RITUALISM, AND ROMANISM
has described and strongly recommended as " histrionic "
worship, — worship intended to entertain and excite the
performers in the true spirit of heathen celebrations.
Pusey himself no more used such ritualism than Newman
or Keble ; he could not well have set it up or main
tained it where he was accustomed to worship or to
minister, and it was, besides, alien to his natural tastes,
which were grave and solemn, and in no way favourable to
artistic and imaginative display. Nevertheless, Pusey never
failed to use his influence in favour of ritualisers, such as
Purchas, for example, at Folkestone, and Mackonochie at St.
Alban's. EituaUsm is Puseyism adapted to popular accept
ance — Puseyism dressed up to suit the tastes and to
attract the attendance alike of the gay and frivolous
classes on the one hand, and of the mob on the other —
Puseyism put on the stage for the public enjoyment. Any
one who doubts the truth of this may refer to the reports
of the Eitual Commission, and to the two volumes on The
Church and the World, for the evidence. When, in 1867, the
Archbishop of Armagh asked one of the most distinguished
associates and followers of Pusey, Mr. Bennett, then of
Frome, in earlier years of St. Barnabas, Pimlico, what
doctrine was involved on wearing a chasuble at the cele
bration of " the Eucharist," Mr. Bennett answered, " the
doctrine of sacrifice was involved," and that he himself was
" a sacrificing priest," a priest who " offered a propitiatory
sacrifice." Mr. Nug^e, again, of Wymering, one of the most
advanced of ritualists thirty years ago, had embroidered on
his altar-cloths, not only I. H. S., but B. V. M.i Pusey,
while protesting in his Eirenicon against the disgusting and
even blasphemous excesses of Mariolatry, had yet allowed
^ Third Report of the Ritual Commission.

RITUALISM AND DOCTRINE 325
the lawfulness of the worship of the Virgin. In 1867 a
few went to the length of Mr. Nugee ; now many do. Pusey
sowed the seed whilst protesting against overdoing, ahd
lived to see an abundant crop of English -grown Mass-
worship and Mariolatry. Since his death the harvest has
become more and more abundant. Burns and Oates, the
Eoman Catholic publishers, find large custom for their
idolatrous hymns to the Virgin among the worshippers in
Anglican churches. So long ago as 1867 an article was
published in the Union Review, in which the name Eitualist
was repudiated on behalf of the party so called "as con
veying a false impression, and misleading people into
supposing that we are mere aesthetes fighting for forms
and ceremonies, and nothing more." " ' No,' says the writer,
' if we must have a name, call us Catholics.' Our belief is
that the Church is Catholic, and that Protestantism in any
shape or form has no legal place within her." So in 1889
the President of the English Church Union, recognised for
thirty years past as the centre of the Eitualist Propaganda
spoke as follows : —
" The Catholic revival ha-ving been so largely concerned
with the doctrine of the real presence, — a doctrine which
necessarily affects the character of pubUc worship, — how
inevitable it was, since outward acts attract so much more
general attention than words spoken or written, that a contest,
if contest there was to be, should take the form of a contest
about ritual. At the present moment the attempt to
forbid lights, the mixed chalice, the eastward position,
the taking of the ablutions, the singing the Agnus, and the
use of the sign of the cross in the celebration of the Holy
Communion, are an illustration of what I say. Everyone
knows that these observances are attacked on account of

326 PUSEYISM, RITUALISM, AND ROMANISM
their connection with doctrine, because they symbolise the
identity in all essentials of our present Communion office in
England with the old Communion office of the English Church
as it used to be said in Latin. The attack is on ritual, but
the object struck at is the doctrine of the real presence
and the eucharistic sacrifice." And Dr. Lee of Lambeth,
in one of the Essays on the Reunion of Christendom, uses the
following language : —
" The marvel is, that Eoman Catholics, whatever their
views may be, do not see the wisdom of aiding us to the
utmost. Admitting that we are but a lay body with no
pretensions to the name of a church, we yet, in our belief
(however mistaken) that we are one, are doing for England
that which they cannot do. We are teaching men to
believe that God is to be worshipped under the form of
bread, and they are learning the lesson from us which
they have refused to learn from the Eoman teachers who
have been among us for the last three hundred years. We
are teaching men to endure wilUngly the pain of confession,
which is an intense trial to the reserved Anglo-Saxon
nature, and to believe that a man's ' I absolve thee ' is the
voice of God. How many English Protestants have Eoman
priests brought to confession compared with the Anglican
clergy ? Could they have overcome the English dislike to
' mummery ' as we are overcoming it ? On any hypothesis,
we are ' doing their work.' "
The attack on Protestantism is skUfully and scientific
ally, as well as earnestly and daringly, carried on. Even
ritualistic displays which are not obviously Eomanising,
but are often regarded as merely aesthetic and attractive
performances, may yet be doing the work of de-Protest
antising the nation, as the ritualists themselves explain ;

THE ATTACK ON PROTESTANTISM 327
while much fashionable ritualism is of such a nature, and
is so managed, as to teach the complete system of Puseyite
Popery. The mode of operation was thus explained in the
Union Review long ago (1867): —
" The choirs are properly marshalled outside the cathe
dral, and then they march in a long procession, each choir
preceded by its banners, and sing a processional hymn as they
enter. True, these choir festival services are seldom associ
ated with that chief Christian worship, the offering of the
Holy Sacrifice. But still they have a great value, as accus
toming our people to an external cultus on a grand scale, as
well as to the association of that which delights eye and
ear with the worship of God. They strike at the root of
the old puritanical idea of worship, and that is a great
matter. Also, you know the worth of ' hymnology ' as a
means of spreading the faith. We are wonderfully rich in
hymns in England ; and the collections issued by the
Catholic party are very extensively used even in Protest
ant congregations, who are thereby unconsciously imbibing
the very essence of Catholic truth. It is impossible
to overestimate this most important agency at our
command."^ In this way the suggestions of Dr. Littledale, in an
essay on the " Missionary Aspect of Eitualism," contributed
in 1866 to the well-known series of essays, entitled. The
Chureh and the World, have actuaUy been carried out.
He argued for what he justly styles, with an unconscious
feUcity of satire, " histrionic worship," as the great means
of popularising what may be described as Anglican Neo-
Popery, of attracting working men to church, and of
1 For two of the foregoing extracts I am indebted to Mr. Lamb's
A Briton's Birthright (Nisbet & Co.).

328 PUSEYISM, RITUALISM, AND ROMANISM
training them to sympathy with Anglo-Catholic teaching.
He compares it to " object-lessons " in an infant school.
In carrying out these methods, the followers of
Pusey, with his full sanction, have for more than thirty
years past contended — and did contend before the Eitual
Commission of 1866 — for the use in church of the follow
ing ornaments, used formerly in England, although disused
since the full establishment of the Eeformation in the
reign of Elizabeth, viz. for the church : " Two Candlesticks,
Cense-Pot, Cross for Processions, a lesser Cross for the
Dead, Eogation Banners, Images, principal Image of the
Saint to whom the church is dedicated, and Lenten Veil " ;
and for the minister the ornaments following : " Amice,
Albe and Girdle, Surplice, Stole, Maniple, Sudarium,
Chasuble (or principal Vestment), Silk Cope for principal
Festivals, and two other Copes for presiding in the Choir at
the same, Dalmatic for the Deacon (or Gospeller), Tunicle
for the Sub-Deacon (or Epistoler)." They contended
for the " Two Lights on the Altar, the Incense, the Mixed
Chalice, the Eastward Position in front of the Altar, at the
time of the Communion, of the Priest and his Assistants
in the Celebration."^
What was thus contended for has, in great part, been
gained. Pusey ceased not to insist that there could be no
peace between the Evangelicals and his own party until the
vestments and the eastward position had been conceded.^
His contention, as we know, has in effect been won.
Further, images to the Virgin and to the " saints " are
freely introduced ; " altars " are multiplied, Mary-altars
' I have put together these items from The Church and the World
(Longmans, 1866).
^ Archbishop Tait's Life, ii. p. 291.

THE ROMANISING ADVANCE 329
being conspicuous in some churches, and chapels to suit
being also in some cases provided, so that the beautiful and
majestic ideal of English Church worship has, in many
instances, been exchanged for the garish shows of Eomish
services. Indeed, by the restoration of such vestments and
ornaments as those enumerated, and the lavish use in con
nection with them of music and incense, of ceremony, gesture,
and genufiection, a total effect is, in many churches, produced,
by far more gaudy, more costly, and more gorgeous, than was
ever known in England before the Eeformation. Modern
splendour of gold and silver, of form and finish ; of rich
material and radiant dye, green and violet, purple and
crimson ; modern magnificence in musical effect ; the exact
ness and completeness of modern organisation and discip
line, — all combined in the highest degree, — cannot but
consummate upon the basis of the ancient ritual a miracle
of ecclesiastical artistry, such as to outdo, in luxury of
refinement and sensational effect, all the shows of England
outside the modern theatre or scenic show. The pomp of
cathedral ritual in the days of Becket and Wolsey is likely
soon to be, if it is not already, outdone in our High
Anglican churches. Thus religion is to be popularised, and
the " masses " are to be made Christian, by means of a
gaudy, luxurious, sensational, " histrionic " rituaUsm. Thus
the " lust of the eye " and the " pride of life " are made
" means of grace " in modern England, and thus " the
world " is to be reconciled to " the Father."
What had advanced so far in 1867 has continued
steadUy to push its way during the years which have
intervened. Now reunion with Eome is the public poUcy
of the party. If the EngUsh Church Union and the Pope
are not on terms of mutual understanding, it is not owing

330 PUSEYISM, RITUALISM, AND ROMANISM
to any want of zeal, goodwill, and expUcitness on the part
of Lord Halifax, who has paid a personal visit to the Pope,
or of the Church Union of which Lord Halifax is chairman.
Such reunion has long been prayed for by the Puseyite party ;
the English cardinals and Eoman Catholics, and the Pope
and his counsellors, have long made prayer for the con
version of England their continual exercise ; so, at least,
we have often been assured. No wonder that Cardinal
Vaughan should see strong grounds for hope and rejoicing
in view of the prospect in England. I will quote some of
his words ; they are enough to make all who read them
deeply serious, they are painfully suggestive and instructive.
" The sacramental power of orders," he said in 1890 in
his pamphlet on England's Conversion, " the need of juris
diction, the real presence, the daily sacrifice, auricular
confession, prayers and offices for the dead, belief in
Purgatory, the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the
saints, religious vows, and the institution of monks and
nuns, — the very doctrines stamped in the Thirty-nine
Articles as fond fables and blasphemous deceits, — all these
are now openly taught from a thousand pulpits within the
Establishment, and as heartily embraced by as many
crowded congregations."
"The Church of England," he further says, "may not
be so far off her crisis; pray that, when the State
abandons her and the royal supremacy is withdrawn, she
may return to the supremacy of the Vicar of Christ."
The one thing now wanting to the consummation of the
hopes alike of the cardinal and the English Eoman Catholics
on the one side, and of Lord Halifax, Mr. Athelstan Eiley,
Canon Knox Little, and the multitude of English Puseyites
on the other, is, it would seem, that the Church of England

THE PRESENT ATTITUDE TOWARDS ROME 331
be disestablished. Then it is confidently expected that
the Puseyite portion of the Anglican Church will separate
from the rest, and go over bodily to Eome. That the bulk
of the laity would be a party to such a course is incredible ;
but there seems every reason to expect that the Puseyite
clergy and the deluded lay leaders who take counsel with
them, will complete the results of the Oxford Movement
by joining the Eomish Church.
Meantime, even High Church correspondents in the
Guardian are beginning to take alarm at the actual
condition of things. The course pursued, indeed, by the
Guardian — able and scholarly journal as it is — has been
open to the gravest censure. Its own chosen writers have
made it their business to accept as belonging to the saints
of Anglicanism every Eoman saint, as such, St. Dominic,
to wit, for one, and to whitewash, whenever possible and
as far as possible, every Pope, making excuse even for Pope
Gregory xiiL, " the Pope of St. Bartholomew." ^
1 In the Guardian for March 6, 1895, there is a review of Carpece-
latro's Life of St. Philip Neri, from which review I take the following ex
tract : — "The counter-Reformation is associated in the minds of English
men with so much of questionable politics and doubtful religion, that they
are apt to forget altogether that it had a deeper and much more worthy
side to it. To most Englishmen Philip 11. is the cruel persecutor of
the Netherlands and the ambitious lord of the Armada, rather than
the sincere and morbidly devout religionist. Pius v. is the author of
the Elizabethan bull of deposition, and the instigator of assassination
plots, rather than the .saintly ascetic; Gregory xm. is the Pope of
St. Bartholomew, and not the friend and companion of St. Philip Neri.
The outward success of the movement appears on the face of history
as so largely due to the mundane weapons of fire and sword, persecu
tion and big battalions, that the careless reader is apt to overlook the
moral influences at work." That is to say, the Duke of Alva's savage
and ruthless massacres, his inhuman tortures, his fire and sword and
hellish cruelties, were but a minor auxiliary in the work of extirpating
"heresy" in the Netherlands; the work was mainly accomplished by

332 PUSEYISM, RITUALISM, AND ROMANISM
The main and governing policy of the Guardian, with
occasional relapses into orthodox Church of England views,
has, on the whole, been towards obliterating the distinction
between the Church of England and the Eomish com
munion. Now its perplexed correspondents point to the
actual condition of things. " Extreme Churches " and
" Perplexed Priests " appear in natural conjunction in the
index and letter headings of the journal. One corre
spondent (June 5) wonders if his " bishop has ever been to
' High Mass,' or ' Solemn Evensong and Procession ' at one
of the most extreme churches of the so-called Catholic
party " ; adding, " It is high time that High Churchmen
themselves protested against some of the doings of the
modern party." Another — a " Perplexed Priest " — says
(June 19): "With the introduction of 'high celebrations,'
often without communicants ; the revived observance of
"moral infiuences." To couple the Duke of Alva and the Spanish
subjugation of the Netherlands with "moral influences at work" is
something wonderful. French and English Protestants also, it seems,
are to forgive the public rejoicings, the special High Mass and Holy
Festival, ordered by Gregory xm., and the medals struck in com
memoration of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, in consideration
that the Pope was the friend of " St. Philip.'' All these enormities
are to be regarded as " questionable politics," or, perhaps, as " doubtful
religion." The Duke of Alva's horrible inhumanities are " question
able politics " ; Pope Gregory's applause and sacred benediction
bestowed on the murderers of Coligny and his fellows are " doubtful
religion." What the meaning may be of the reference to Philip's
Armada in this connection is not clear. One is at a loss to discover
the "deeper side" of the " counter- Reformation " in Spain. The
Armada, no doubt, was an achievement of " questionable politics " ;
but it is hard to imagine where "moral influences" came in to
strengthen the position of the Spanish " counter-Reformation," or
where there can have been any " counter-Reformation " with which
, Philip had to do except in the Netherlands, where surely it was physical
and not moral force which crushed and eradicated Protestantism.

"EXTREME CHURCHES" 333
days which have been excluded from our calendar, such as
Corpus Christi, All Souls, the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin ; the multiplication of altars in some of our
new churches, and so forth, it becomes very perplexing to
an ordinary Christian, trained up in Prayer-Book principles,
to know exactly where he stands, and what is in store for
him in the future. If the bishops are not on the alert,
the movement will get beyond them, and they will find
many of their best supporters falling off from them. . . .
We are at present like a ship without a pilot, or rather
with everyone taking upon himself the office of pilot."
Another, who seems to be a straightforward and practical
man, says (June 12), in reference to what a correspond
ent had said as to " the majority of the laity " being " either
evangelical or moderate High Churchmen," who " would
not see the work of the Reformation undone," that " they
have been seeing it undone for half a century past," and
that, in the " utter confusion " of his own mind, he shall be
compelled to leave the Church altogether, and " become
an ' unsectarian ' believer."
All this lamentable weakness and confusion, this
mystery of inconsistency and unfaithfulness, of superstition
and manifold schism, all that is included in Puseyism or
has grown out of it, is traceable to the principles of
ecclesiastical externalism to which the English High Church
party have bound themselves. They place the unity of
the Church where it is not to be found; they do not
understand in what sense its perpetuity is guaranteed by
the Lord's promise; they, accordingly, are driven to
identify themselves with Rome, and are at their wits'
end how to make out the triune identity of the Greek, the
Roman, and the AngUcan communions, to say nothing of

334 PUSEYISM, RITUALISM, AND ROMANISM
the Armenian, the Coptic, and the Abyssinian Churches.
Whereas the true spiritual principle allows those who hold
it to acknowledge the good and the truly Christian elements
that are to be found in all these Churches, and to recognise
all true believers in all of them as members of the one true
spiritual Church of the Lord Jesus, which is wider than
any Church, wider than all the Churches, and yet excludes
the unbelieving and the truly evil professing members of
every Church. This is the position happily expressed in
the daily Liturgy, where Christian believers are virtually
defined as those "professing and calling themselves
Christians," who maintain the "unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace and in righteousness of Ufe."
From its rise under the joint inspiration of Keble,
Froude, and Newman — through the line of Tractarian
organisation and influence until Tractarianism was merged
in Puseyism — through the development of Puseyism from
point to point, from deep to deep, till it combined in itself
a confessionalism more exacting and oppressive than that
of Rome, with the gaudiest ritualism ever assumed
by corrupt Christianity as its outward dress ; — the
growth of Oxford Anglican Neo-Popery has been traced in
the foregoing chapters. The question as to the future
remains to disturb and perplex us. Has England seen the
worst ? Is there reason to hope that a manly and a truly
evangelical reaction is at length beginning to make itself
felt? SMALL POPES, p. 314.
In the Quarterly Review for October 1878, an article was published,
entitled. Is the Church of England Protestant ? It is an old-fashioned,
orthodox, though not illiberal. High Church article. " The effect," it
says, " of the new High Church and Roman doctrine is to make a

" SMALL POPES " AND " SACRAMENTAL LIFE " 335
particular succession and order of men indispensable to the administra
tion of the sacraments, and therefore to the reception of the special
graces of the gospel. It is evident that, if there be such a class of
men, if this be the character of the priesthood and of the episcopacy.
Christians in general are at the mercy of priests and bishops. An
indispensable caste can make its own terms. Its members are in the
position of a king reigning by divine right ; and, in short, the only
difference between such a system and Roman Catholicism is that it
possesses a corporate Papacy, composed of several thousand clergy, instead
of a single Pope. This is the sacerdotalism which the English laity
repudiate.'' SACRAMENTAL LIFE, p. 315.
The following passage is taken, with some slight alterations, from
An Ordination Charge delivered at the Wesleyan Methodist Conference at its
Meeting in Cardiff in 1893. " The administration of the Lord's Supper,
rightly apprehended, is, in truth, only another way of 'preaching
the Word.' i It is the Divine Truth, of which the Sacrament is the
vehicle, applied by the Holy Spirit, which is the means of quickening
the soul. It is not that, by digital contact, divine grace and power —
the very life of Christ — have been conveyed through the hands of the
priestly celebrant, and are received by the communicant after a mode
at once physical and hyperphysical. It is not that as through the
working of a spell, under the words and handling of the ' priest,' the
bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of the
Saviour, thus presented corporeally, as well as spiritually, to the com
municants who receive Him, Body, Soul, and Spirit, into their body,
soul, and spirit. This, alas ! is the superstition that makes union
among Christian churches impossible, even in this Christian country;
this is the great source of schism in the land. By this superstition,
the work of the Reformation is frustrated, and the darkness and
narrowness of mediseval popery are brought back. According to the
Scriptural view, it is by the manifold truth, — the summary of mutually
enfolded sacred truths, — relating to salvation and life in Christ Jesus
which the Lord's Supper so vividly presents to the faith of the
Christian, it is by this Divine Truth, applied by the Holy Spirit,
that the believer's soul is fed, and his life in his Saviour is
quickened and replenished. Thus regarded, the Holy Sacrament
^ See Dr. Harrison's Br. Pusey's Challenge Ansivered (chap. xi. 17-25)
for e'vidence that this was the direct and frequent teaching of Origen,
Cyril, Ambrose, and others of the Fathers, as well as in strict harmony
wdth St. Paul's doctrine on the subject.

336 SACRAMENTAL LIFE
becomes to the faith of the devout believer transfigured into glorious
and divine meaning. Like a gem of many facets, it reflects radiance
from every point of view. The Lord Christ is in the Sacrament
revealed in all His offices, as our Atonement and our Life, as dying
for us, and as living in us while we live in Him, as Brother and
Friend, as Master and Redeemer, as going for us to the Father by the
way of death, and returning as Judge and King to call us to the feast
eternally new in His kingdom. As thus by faith we realise His
spiritual pleasure —
' We feed upon him in our hearts.
And find that heaven and Christ are one.'
Such a divine mystery of death and life, of sanctification and re
demption, is the Lord's Supper to the believing communicant."

CHAPTER XIIL
The Outlook. f
TTI OR fifty years the Oxford Movement has contUiu-
ally gained ground, with only one serious check,
that which followed the publication of Tract 90. For
forty years its progress has been rapid. Its good has been
a wide awakening of religious interest and zeal, and the
diffusion in many minds of a high ideal of self-denying
earnestness. Its evil has been indicated, perhaps inade
quately, in the foregoing pages. Both its good and its evU
correspond to the good and the evil found in the leader
from whom it derived its characteristic moral and eccle
siastical inspiration. It is Pusey's own movement.
Newman's inspiration and example would never have
taken such hold of the Church of England as Pusey's
moral and social power, his preaching and example, have
done. The real truth, however, as to Pusey was never
known untU his biography was published. His was the
life of a recluse ; a halo of mystery surrounded the oracle
whence issued the counsels of this man of vast learning,
of high rank, of awfully sanctified life, who dwelt in
unviolated solitude, and scarcely ever visited the outer
day. The repulsive hardness of his ghostly counsels was

338 THE OUTLOOK
sometimes intimated in whispers ; but the secret was
darkly kept as to his penitential discipline, his super
stitious legalism, the slavery more abject than that of
Eome to which he reduced his penitents, and the terrible
depths of corporeal mortification and suffering which
formed an essential part of his treatment, both for him
self and for others. Now, however, his biographer has
had no alternative but to disclose so much of the truth as
must disenchant most of his readers. He has not told all
— not told the worst. The letter to Mr. Hope-Scott was
not published by Dr. Liddon, but by the Eoman Catholic
biographer of the distinguished barrister. Nor do we
learn from the biography, what is revealed to us in an
article in the Nineteenth Century as these pages pass through
the press, that chief among those who complained to
Bishop Wilberforce of the undue infiuence exercised by
Pusey in sisterhoods, and generally over women and girls,
and of his completely popish spirit, was that eminent and
ultra-High Anglican " Father," T. T. Carter. Still enough
is disclosed in the biography to show the real character
of Pusey's religious teaching and influence. The long-
looked for volumes are not likely to increase the prestige of
Pusey or Puseyism. The picture presented by his most
distinguished and deeply attached disciple is one more
likely to alarm than attract. So long as Pusey was little
more than a name and an ideal, an ideal shrouded in
secrecy, but known to be worshipped by some emi
nent and distinguished persons, the element of mystery
heightened his influence, and assisted in concealing the
actual facts concerning his work and his teaching. His
great age also combined with his seclusion to enhance the
veneration with which some who were by no means

SOURCES OF PUSEY'S GREAT PERSONAL INFLUENCE 339
Puseyites .regarded him. He was understood to lead a
saintly Ufe, apart from all worldly strife or show. His
learning was beUeved to be profound, old 'world, and com
plete within its range. He was a man of high famUy con
nections, and of assured social position ; and he was not only
very wealthy, but very generous. Such a combination of
characteristics placed him on a pedestal apart ; he was, as
Newman said, 'O Miyai; — Pusey the Great. But, besides
all this, he had spent half a century in magnifying the
prerogatives of the " priesthood," and had maintained their
claims by all the resources of his learning, all the influence
of his urgent and Boanerges-like sermons, and by the un
bounded use of his private resources. That AngUcan
ministers of a priestly temper and of high ministerial claims
and pretensions, some of them also, like Pusey, men of
marked religiousness of spirit, should use all the means in
their power to magnify his fame and bring disciples to his
school, was natural and inevitable. He was just the sort
of man, also, to influence a certain class of devout, benevo
lent, and enthusiastic women. Such women have great
power over other women sympathetic with themselves.
So, not only through sisterhoods, but in many ways
besides, the character and influence of Pusey were held
up to admiration, and seemed to grow more attractive
and potent, from year to year, within a certain zone of
church lUe. Since his death, tradition has risen up to
do him reverence, a Pusey-cult has been established, a
nimbus of glory and sanctity has gathered about his
name and memory. Now, however, that the real facts
are brought to light and can be scrutinised closely,
now that a deliberate analysis of his character and the
elements of his influence is possible, it may be hoped

340 THE OUTLOOK
that the process of disenchantment will take place speedily
and effectually.
Except, indeed, within the ecclesiastical circle which
has been indicated, Pusey was never a man of living
influence. In the world of hterature, in the sphere of
intellectual thought, even in the circle of theological
science, he has no place; he has made no mark, he has
never sent a thrill into the minds of men, or waked an
echo in the consciousness of the age through which he
Uved. He was not in any sense whatever a popular man ;
nor was he, what some men hardly to be called popular
have been, a man of the people. Seldom has any man who
attained name and fame been so utterly dead to the nation
and the world within ten years after his passing from the
world's view, as Dr. Pusey. Since his death, thirteen
years ago, nothing has been written about him to meet
any popular demand. Not so much as a sketch of his life
appears to have been published by his followers. At the
Christian Knowledge Society's House, in all their pile of
booksellers' catalogues, the soUtary publication of any sort,
the title which could be shown to me, when, for the pur
pose of this volume, I went there a few weeks ago to
inquire, was a sUght study of his Life and Life-Work,
published some years ago by myself. At Masters', to
which ritualistic publishing house I was referred as the
most likely to furnish the information I required, I was
informed that no sketch of his life was known.
And yet his work lives on, in its effects ; his school
survives in the congenial errors with which he had it
in his power to infect so many clerical minds. What he
had absorbed from the darkness of ages, in which so
much of heathenism was held in solution by Christianity,

HOW PUSEY'S WORK LIVES ON 341
what he adopted from the schools and the special devo
tions of the Eoman Church, was readily assimilated
by priestly minds prepared to welcome hierarchical or
hierurgical ideas, and has become, alas ! part of the inherit
ance of our modern Church of England. Doubtless Pusey,
with all his errors and faults of character was a devoted
and self-sacrificing man, who did some good as well as
much evil in his life. But in another sense than that
which the words were intended to bear in Antony's
mouth, it is sometimes true that whUe " the evil that
men do lives after them," " the good is interred with their
bones." Is there any reason to hope, now that the real
Pusey is known as he was in life, and that at the same
time public opinion would seem to be stirring itself in
anger against the daring strides towards Popery which
the Church Union is taking before High Heaven, that a
real national reaction is about to set in against Puseyism
and its ways ?
The biography, indeed, would rather intimate that the
tide is flowing afresh in favour of Pusey's character and
memory. Dr. Liddon quotes some words, attributed to
Dr. Hook, which speak of Pusey as the "saint whom
England persecuted," and leaves it to be inferred that
after Dr. Hook's disgust and indignation, because of St.
Saviour's Church history, he in later years went back to
his former admiration of Pusey. I take leave to alto
gether distrust this representation. Hook, indeed, always
admitted, even in the fiercest heat of his righteous anger,
the personal saintiiness of Pusey ; but that he ever changed
his mind as to the evUs of his Eomanising influence,
as to the fatal and terrible mischief of Pusey's teaching
on the subject of the confessional, I venture to say there

342 THE OUTLOOK
is no evidence ; certainly there is none either in his Life,
or in the Life of his brother-in-law and constant corre
spondent. Lord Hatherley. On the contrary, we find him
speaking in 1864 of the High Church party as being
damaged by the assumption of its name " on the part of
those who are grovelling in the lowest depths of Eomanism."
This was at a period when Dr. Hook had for some years
been settled at Chichester as dean, and when many years
had passed since the St. Saviour's troubles. Still later, in
1869, when he was much advanced in life, he defined a
true High Churchman to be one who " cordially accepted the
work of the Eeformers ; hating Eome as much as Eome hates
us." These are not the phrases that would have been em
ployed by Hook if he had changed his mind as to the
infiuence and effects of Puseyism in the English Church.
Outside the EngUsh Church the effect of the development of
Puseyism and its influences has been to render much more
intense the antagonism of Nonconformists generally to the
Established Church, especially outside of the large towns. In
country towns and in villages wherever Dissent, and especi
ally Methodism, has obtained a footing, the Established
Church is regarded by an increasing number 'with an
awakened, an alert, an intense feeling of sectarian ani
mosity, such as has not before been known. In London,
and some other large towns, the effect of this is seen
in the sharp divisions on the School Boards, the Uke of
which were not known in the great towns twenty years
ago. Secularism and unorthodoxy make a gain out of
the prevalence of High Anglican Eomanising claims and
superstitions. The tide, indeed, we may fairly hope, within the Church
of England itself, has begun to turn against the Eomanising

SIGNS OF HEALTHY REACTION 343
party. Mr. Gladstone's article on Heresy and Schism is, I
think, one sign of this. The recent correspondence in the
public journals, and especiaUy in the Times, on the subject
of Anglican Orders is a very striking " sign of the times."
It arose out of Cardinal Vaughan's attack on the Orders of
the Church of England, first in his address twelve months
ago on the Eeunion of Christendom, and afterwards in a
private letter of explanation published in the Times for
October 5, 1894. To Cardinal Vaughan, as to Cardmal
Manning, Anglican clergymen, from Pusey himself, or
the Archbishop of Canterbury downwards, stand in the
same category as Nonconformist clergymen ; all alike are
merely laymen. No Anglican minister can prove his true
apostolical succession, or establish any claim to be a " sacri
ficing priest." In response to the cardinal's challenge.
Dr. Taylor of Liverpool, the Archdeacon of Warrington,
promptly wrote to the Times} blithely consenting to his
conclusion. " Cardinal Vaughan," he says, " is quite right.
On the basis he assumes the Orders of the Anglican clergy
are invalid, and for this simple reason, that the Church of
England neither has, nor professes to have, ' a sacrificing
priesthood,' which he holds to be the essential character of
the Catholic rite of ordination." He proceeds to sum up
the evidence in proof that the Church of England, as
Eeformed, distinctly abandoned (1550—1554) for its clergy
the claim and character of a sacrificing priesthood. He
closes his letter much as he begins it, disallowing, indeed,
the cardinal's contention that the Church of England has
" no valid' ministry," but earnestly hoping that the cardinal's
" authoritative statement wUl have some effect in dissipating
in many minds the idea " that there is in the Church an
1 October 9, 1894.

344 THE OUTLOOK
Order of " sacrificing priests." The Archdeacon of War
rington thus boldly joins Dean Farrar and Archdeacon
Sinclair in their antagonism to such Romanising priestly
claims as Dr. Pusey spent most of his life in contending
for.i After a fortnight's discussion, the leading journal, in
its issue of October 20, sums up the case in a remarkable
article. It was the pretence of Pusey and his party — a most
audacious pretence — that their system of theology and
their priestly claims were founded on the teaching of the
"judicious Hooker." The Times cites a passage from
Hooker — not a few other passages might be quoted — which
effectually refutes this claim, and which closes by asking,
" what better title could be given " to the clergy than " the
reverend name of presbyters or fatherly guides," and by
affirming that " the Holy Ghost, throughout the body of
the New Testament, making so much mention of them,
doth not anywhere call them priests." " Can a Church,"
says the writer in the Times, " which declares in its Articles
that the sacrifices of Masses were blasphemous fables and
dangerous deceits, be thought to assert for its ministers the
sacrificial functions which it thus expressly repudiates ? "
'^ The Archdeacon of Manchester also takes his place publicly with
his brother of Warrington in his recognition of Nonconformist ministers.
Dean Farrar, whilst still archdeacon, published two trenchant articles
in the Contemporary Review, in the later of which (" Undoing the
Work of the Reformation," July 1893), he quotes the Archdeacon of
Llandafl as to the cause of Welsh popular animosity against the Church
of England. " The Welsh cannot," he tells us, " bear with a Church
in which the ' Mass ' is being made the centre of religious worship ;
ministers have, in practice, become sacrificing priests ; sacerdotalism,
with its train of dangerous error, has become the prominent power of
our churches ; the private confessional is being made the door of full
membership."

THE ARCHDEACONS AND THE " TIMES" 345
After intimating that Newman's Tract 90 is the stronghold
of the ritualistic innovators, and their only line of defence,
from which it has no wish to drive " men of such high
personal character and such devotion to their duties as
many of them are," the Times closes its article with these
significant words : " They must not complain if ' An Ordinary
Layman ' and his like regard their claims and their prac
tices ' sometimes with irritation and always with con
tempt.' " The last words are quoted from a letter, under
the signature " An Ordinary Layman," which is published
in the same issue of the paper, and which reflects the
prevalent feeUng of the laity on the subject. " Among a
not inconsiderable acquaintance," says the writer, " I know
but a few laymen who would trouble their heads about it
at all, and not more than one or two who even profess to
believe that either of the miraculous powers claimed by
Cardinal Vaughan for the Romish priest are possessed in
any degree by our own clergy." This is on one side a
reassuring statement; but it suggests alarming questions.
What, if this be true, do the laity think of their clergy ?
And how far are the monstrous, and for most men quite
incredible claims, which for nearly half a century have
been asserted by a large and often highly-placed section of
the reUgious teachers and guides of the people of England,
answerable for the scepticism which during the same period
has disturbed the minds and desolated the hearts of so
many men of masculine intellect and powerful character ?
Nevertheless, for the reasons I have intimated, may we not
venture to hope that the worst effects of the Romanising
conspiracy are over? Forty or fifty years ago Thomas
Mozley, at that time one of the innermost circle of the
Tractarian school, inspired the Times on all ecclesiastical

346 THE OUTLOOK
subjects, while the same circle sustained religious reviews
and magazines of much apparent learning and of subtly-
trained abUity, especially in the field of casuistry and
special pleading. To-day all this is changed. The balance
of learning and ability as writers is no longer on the side
of the Anglican Romanisers ; there are schools of evan
gelical training in theology which are no less learned and
able than orthodox ; while the press teems with volumes
of Christian exposition and instruction, to which Noncon
formist divines largely contribute, and which are read by
students of all Churches. Best of all is the distinct and
resolute uprising within the Church of England of a school
of teaching at once liberal and orthodox, which is altogether
and strenuously opposed to the Romanising and ritualising
party in the Church of England. Not only, as I have
shown, are deans and archdeacons uniting to arrest the
tide of corruption, but there are on the episcopal bench a
larger proportion of outspeaking supporters of the Eeforma
tion than for many years past. The reaction, indeed, comes
late — very late. One cannot but lament that the English
Church did not earlier learn the things which belong to its
peace. The middle classes distrust Anglican clericalism,
even when they go to church. Politieal power has come
to vUlage Methodists and Dissenters coincidently with the
development of the irreconcUable spirit of antagonism of
which we have spoken. What is threatened for Wales
they confidently expect, before long, to see consummated
for England. All that is involved in the question they
seldom, indeed, understand. But the situation is not the
less serious on that account. I am myself no enemy of
the Church of England ; but it is not the less a duty to
state unpleasant truths on so grave and momentous

DEAN FARRAR 'S FORECAST 347
a subject, and to do my part towards disturbing the
clergy in that " fools' paradise," where a large proportion of
them, it is evident, continue to dream their dreams in fatal
unconsciousness. Ecclesiastical arrogance and intolerance
— the intolerance of a curiously ignorant bigotry — coupled
with degrading superstitions, weigh, like a sentence of
doom, on the neo-Eomanising Anglicanism of modern
England. Few men can have had better opportunities for forrning
a probable estimate of the effect on the national mind of
the full ritualistic and Eomanising development of Puseyism,
as now disclosed to the people of England, than the
late chaplain of the House of Commons. I may therefore
fitly quote from Dean Farrar's article in the Contemporary
Review on " Undoing the Work of the Eeformation," the
following passage : " Disestablishment will be one of the
first consequences of the triumph of Eitualism ; and,
immediately after Disestablishment, will come the neces
sity for, and the certainty of, a New Eeformation to
re-establish the truths which Eitualism endeavours to
overthrow. . . . There are myriads of Englishmen, and
not a few even among the clergy, who will not stand a
Church of England which shall tend to become Eomish
in all but name, or perhaps Eomish even in name. The
days of disruption are being hastened on with giant strides.
May God avert the unspeakable evils which they will
inevitably bring in their train." ^ If what Dean Farrar
forebodes shall come to pass, and the Church of England
be in consequence, not disprivileged by graduated stages
of reform, with the due unfolding of her intrinsic forces
and her liberated faculties, and with ample and kindly
1 Contemporary Review, July 1893.

348 THE OUTLOOK
regard to all the equities involved in the case of a National
Church with so grand and, on the whole, till Puseyism
arose, so truly national a history, the result will be due to
nothing else but the development of Puseyism into the
Eomanising and superstitious system, of which the Church
Union has for thirty years been the representative and the
exponent.^ ' In sending the final sheet of this volume to the press, it is not
unfitting to refer to the latest official utterance of Cardinal Vaughan
on the subject of " Reunion," in his address at Bristol to the " Catholic
Truth Society." The Cardinal, indeed, has said nothing more or less
than he was bound to say, although some have received his words with
astonishment at his unyieldingness, while others have been struck
with admiration of his sincerity. No prince of the Romish Church —
nor even the Sovereign Pontiff himself — can cheapen the terms of
admission to the Church, so as to allow Anglicans, even if the whole
Church united in the petition, to be excused from accepting every
dogma, every decree, of the Church. The Cardinal had before insisted
on the necessity of reordination for Anglican " priests," now he insists
that Roman Mariolatry and the Infallibility Dogma must be distinctly
and fully accepted. The multitude waiting at the Gates of Rome
can only be received on condition of passing under the yoke of the
conquerors. What Newman had to accept must be accepted also by
these suitors for the Church's grace.

^ORRIHOK AND GIHU, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

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