Ri

3 6

1850 R5

RISE, PROGRESS, AND RESULTS OF PUSEYISM.
(Reprinted from the Rambler for December 1850.)
Lectures on certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in submit
ting to the Catholic Church. By John Hemy Newman,
Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London, Burns
and Lambert.
When a great man draws near his end, his friends begin to
think of writing his biography. The Oxford movement of
1833 has already entered upon its second childhood, but we
fear that no exclusively friendly hand is preparing to pen its
memoirs. In a certain sense, however, we may call ourselves
its friends ; and therefore, before it has entirely ceased to be,
we shall venture upon a brief sketch of its life, by way of
offering some trifling contributions to its future chroniclers,
when men come to review the ecclesiastical history of Eng
land in its progress from Protestantism to Catholicism.
In the year 1833, a small band of Oxford Protestants
formed themselves into a private association for the propaga
tion of what were termed "Church principles." At the be
ginning of that year, the old High-Church party were stricken
with dismay at the progress of reform in politics and latitu-
dinarianism in religion. Educated in the prejudices of the
age, they viewed with nearly equal horror a Whig, a Radical,
a Catholic, a Quaker, a Baptist, a Socinian, and a Jew; and
in the events of the four preceding years, they beheld prog
nostics of the utter destruction of all they held most dear.
In 1829, Catholic Emancipation was carried. In 1830, the
revolution overthrew "legitimacy" in France. In 1831, the
Reform Bill became law in England. "Church Reform"
was among the most popular of cries. The . Bishops were
hated and laughed at ; a separation of Church and State
seemed imminent; and at last, when ten Irish Protestant
bishoprics were suddenly abolished by Act of Parliament, the
patience of High-Churchmen was exhausted, and the time
appeared ripe for the calling into action a wide-spread move
ment in defence of things as they were. Meanwhile the
press teemed with proposals for mending the Church of Eng
land itself. Lord Henley (Sir Robert Peel's brother-in-law)
and Dr. Burton, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford,
Price One Shilling. b

2 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
were among the foremost in the ranks of the pamphleteers.
Dr. Arnold of Rugby proposed that all sects and creeds
should be united by Act of Parliament, and that in one and
the same building, in the course of one and the same Sunday,
Catholics, Establishmentarians, and Dissenters of all denomi
nations, should successively worship and preach ; and the
Athanasian Creed was condemned in the Establishment itself,
as obsolete, barbarous, and bloodthirsty.
It was in the early part of the long vacation, when
Oxford assumes its most dreary aspect, and the heat of the
maturing summer drives all but a few lingering gownsmen
from its academic shades, that two members of the University
met frequently in the common-room of Oriel College, and
exchanged words of mourning sympathy on the evils of the
times. So it happened that these two fitly represented the
two schools of religious opinion now about to be for a time
united in energetic action for the defence of an apparently
common cause. Richard Hurrell Froude and William Pal-
Jmer were as striking embodiments of the Catholic and the
iProtestant tendencies of mind as all England could supply.
J/The former has long since been called away from this life;
-and his course was so short, that the world in general knew
little of the real power he had exercised in giving a definite
direction to the movement, till the publication of two volumes
of his Remains in the year 1838. Sweet and affectionate in
disposition to no ordinary degree, clear-sighted beyond most
of his companions, self-denying to an extent wonderful among
Protestants, he exerted an influence of the most efficacious
description on many minds, notwithstanding a certain way
wardness of character and love of paradoxical statement singu
larly unwelcome to the proprieties of Oxford. His personal
history is, in truth, so striking, as an illustration of the inward
workings of many minds who are without the Catholic Church,
yet are mysteriously subjected to her sway, that no correct
idea can be formed of the real origin of the Tract movement
without a brief sketch of his character.
Richard Hurrell Froude was the son of Archdeacon
Froude, and was born at Dartington, in the county of Devon,
in the year 1803. He died of consumption, on the 28th of
February, 1836, when he was nearly thirty-three years old,
after an illness of four years and a half. He was educated at
Eton and Oxford ; gained high, though not the highest, hon
ours, both in classics and mathematics : and was elected fellow
of Oriel College in 1826. From 1827 to 1830 he was one of
the College tutors, and in 1828 he took orders in the Angli
can Church. °

Rise, Progress, and Results of Pmeyism, 8
The singular genuineness of his character is displayed in
the fact, that for some time he kept a private religious journal,
which stands in most marked contrast to all ordinary Protest
ant diaries. A more determined and more successful effort
at self-examination, and at recording the real truth respecting
his own sins, was probably never accomplished out of the
Catholic Church. His journal, with selections from his let
ters, which bear a like impress of living truthfulness, were
given to the world when Tractarianism was become notorious,
and the astonishment of the anti-Puseyite world was extreme.
The more enlightened reader marked with deep interest the
rapid progress of Froude's mind towards Catholic truth and
towards religious maturity, even amidst occasional outbursts
of anti-Catholic ignorance of facts, and in conjunction with
that timid, trembling grasp of Catholic doctrine, and that
rash, though earnest, asceticism, which often characterise the
early stages of conversion to the faith. Ultra-Protestants, more
acute than admiring Puseyites, discerned the real tendencies
of his mind, and notwithstanding his scattered words of anti-
Roman prejudice, denounced him as a Papist at heart, and as
the most odious of the Oxford plotters against. Protestantism.
Certainly he appears to have been the first who detected
the true character of the " Reformers" from their own acts
and writings ; and the vehement onslaughts of the British
Critic in after years were but the argumentative expression
'pf the epigrammatic sayings in which Froude had been wont
to utter his abhorrence of Cranmer, Ridley, Jewel, and the
Whole school of religious rebels.
It is so seldom that the inward workings of the minds of
conscientious Protestants are displayed to Catholics, that a
few extracts from the journal alluded to will be welcome to
our readers. They were written, it should be noted, in the
year 1826, when Froude was only twenty-three yearsuold. seven
years before the Tract movement*""b"egan to make asceticism
the custom at Oxford, and while the author possessed few
means of access to living Catholics and Catholic writers. The
iirst is on fasting and ceremonies :
" Respecting Church-regiilations for fasts and abstinence,
I consider that if the forms of society are calculated to make
each individual feel his proper place with reference to others,
and to help us in acting right in this relation, it cannot be
absurd to keep up religious ceremonies, which may be wit
nesses to us of the presence of the great King, and of 'the
way of acting and thinking which suits our relation to Him."
(Sept. 1st, 1826.)
Again, on penance :

<& Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
" It came into my head this morning, that it would be a
good thing for me to set apart some days in the year for the
commemoration of my worst acts of sin. I find, that as the
feeling in which they originated becomes extinct, I am too
apt to forget that it was myself who was guilty of them, and
to look on the actions themselves as no longer connected with
niei now that God in his goodness has delivered me from the
temptation to repeat them. Besides, I think it would be the
safest way of doing penance, and the most sure to exclude
any feeling of self-complacency from obtruding itself on my
humiliation and self-chastisement." (Sept. 27th, 1826.)
The next is a longer extract. The opening paragraph
alludes to a subject which occurs in other parts of the Journal
also, namely, a certain sense of perplexity and mingled moral
and intellectual distress, which resulted from his entering into
arguments on religious subjects beyond the former routine of
Anglican doctrine and practice. At such times the sincere
Protestant frequently feels with more than ordinary keenness
the absence of that gift of faith which is the Catholic's privi
lege, and without which he is ever rushing into unreality,
exaggerations,. and contradictions. Froude was unlike others
only in that he recognised and was pained at this uncomfort
able phenomenon. The extract also shews how he fasted;
excessive fasting being only one of the bodily austerities he
put in practice ; while it displays the clearness and honesty
with which he aimed at a_mora\ji^ndsrd__pf perfection, most
unusual among his companionsr
" Had a walk with N. Insensibly got talking in a way
to let him infer I was trying to alter myself. Also allowed
myself to argue. Was puzzled as usual, and have been
uncomfortable and abstracted ever since. Once doubted
whether I had hot been wrong, which made me ridiculously
uneasy. " Was disgustingly ostentatious at dinner in asking for a
china plate* directly, as I had finished my meat. I did it on
purpose too, that the others might see I ate so much less than
they did. Read affectedly in evening chapel. I look forward
to to-morrow with apprehension, and expect uncommon tedium
before night. I hope I shall be able to abstain altogether,
and that the Lord will so purify my motives, that I may
•benefit from this my spiritual sustenance. The affair of the
argument provesto me that I am very proud.
" If God has not given me such high talents as I suppose
what harm can it be to me to find it out ? If being in the
* In college, meat is served on pewter.

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 5
wrong really diminished my understanding, there might be
more ground for being uncomfortable. But it is not argu
ment that must get the better of this folly.
" I have allowed myself to be provoked and bothered at
the  's having cut up my evening,and not having been
sufficiently respectful. How can I expect my trespasses to
be forgiven ?
" Nov. 10th. — Fell quite short of my wishes with respect
to the rigour of to-day's fast, though I am quite willing to
believe ggtauapaxdauably : I tasted nothing till after half-past
eight in the evening, and before that had undergone more un-
comfortableness, both of body and mind, than any fast has as
yet occasioned me, having, I hope, laid a sort of foundation, on
which I may gradually build up the fit spending of a fast in
calling my sins to remembrance. But I made rather a more
hearty tea than usual (quite giving up the notion of a fast)
in W/s rooms, and by this weakness have occasioned another
slip. For having been treated, as I think, without sufficient
respect by the youngest  , I allowed myself to be vexed,
and to think of how I ought to have set him down all the rest
of the evening, instead of receiving it with thankfulness from
God as an instrument of humility. Also I will record another
error, common indeed with me, and which for that reason I
have hitherto overlooked, i. e. speaking severely of another
without a cause. I said I thought  an ass, when there
was not the least occasion for me to express my sentiments
about him ; and yet I, so severe on the follies, and so bitter
against the slightest injuries I get from others, am now pre
senting myself before my great Father, to ask for mercy on my
.most foul sins, and forgiveness for the most excessive injuries.
' How shall I be delivered from the body of this death V "
(Nov. 9, 1826.)
Two years after the commencement of the Tracts, he thus
writes to a friend who thought it right to mix vehement at
tacks upon Catholics with his' advocacy of " Anglo-Catholic"
views :
" Before I finish this, I must enter another protest against
your cursing and swearing at the end of  (naming the work
in question) — [against the Romanists], as you do. What ggod
can it do ? And 1 call it uncharitable to an excess. How
mistaken we may ourselves be on many points that are only
gradually opening on us ! Surely you should reserve ' blas
phemous,' ' impious,' &c. for the denial of the articles of faith."
A few of his sayings in conversation are recorded, from
which the following are to our purpose. The first is extremely
acute :

6 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
" No one can become a great man who speaks of himself.
He who speaks of himself, thereby makes himself inferior to
the person he addresses."
The rest shew his secret feelings towards the truth, and
his gradual approximation towards its confession :
... ?" Catholic enthusiasts may be hated; but they never can
become ridiculous, as the Methodists are."
" I observe in ffll~pic^uTe^~of-trie-^shops of the middle
. ages, a curious expression, as if neither of man or woman, —
a kind of feminine sternness."
" The Reformation was a limb badly set ; it must be broken
again in order to be righted." [This saying was among those
which so mightily affronted the anti-Tractarian party.]
" I wonder a thoughtful fellow like H. does not get to'
• hate the Reformers faster. I think as soon as I began to
know  , I felt they were the very kind of fellows he would
most have hated and despised if he had known them."
" I never could be a Romanist ; I never could think all
those things in Pope Pius's Creed necessary to salvation. But
I do not see what harm an ordinary Romanist gets from
thinking so."
" A good many of the young persons now have got into
a way of ' performing the services impressively.'  has
a little of it. I don't suppose the Catholic service could be
' performed impressively.' "
"  shews a hatred and contempt for parts of the saintly
character, which is immorality ; as for example, he hates the
temper which does not see and yet believes."
In a few charming little occasional poems, Froude at times
poured forth his most secret thoughts. The following (written
just before the commencement of the Tracts) is among the
many proofs his writings furnish of his intense sense, that,
after all, he had yet to find the eternal truth of God.

-

" O Lord, I hear, but can it be
**a"" The gracious word was meant for me ?
O Lord, I thirst, but who shall tell
The secret of that living well,
By whose waters I may rest,
And slake this lip unblest ?
0 Lord, I will, but cannot do,
My heart is hard, my faith untrue :
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come ;
The eternal, ever-blessed Home
Op'd its portals at my birth,
But I am chained to earth.

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 7
The golden keys each eve and morn —
I see them with a heart forlorn,
Lest they should iron prove to me :
Oh, set my heart at liberty.
May I seize what Thou dost give,
Seize tremblingly, and live !"
Ten days before these stanzas were written by Froude at
Oxford, another, bound closely to him by the ties of affection
and friendship, and soon about to be his colleague in com
mencing the movement, was becalmed in the sun off the coast
of Sardinia, and on the deck of a Sicilian sailing vessel, while
the low gurgling of the gently moving waves against the prow
scarce broke the silence of the tideless Mediterranean, he too
spoke in verse thoughts too deep for common utterance, and
the prayer he poured forth was answered by Him who heard,
according to his own divine and merciful interpretation of its
petitions. Few persons probably know that the following
lines, published some time afterwards, were written before
the appearance of the Oxford Tracts :
" FAITH.
" Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom ;
Lead Thou me on !
The night is dark, and I am far from home —
Lead Thou me on !
Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, — one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should'st lead, me on !
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead Thou me on !
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will : remember not past years.
So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone ;
And with the morn those Angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
Such were the inward yearnings of two hearts which then
beat with loyal affection to the Anglican Church, in which
they had been reared, and which in a few weeks were to com
municate their fire to many another breast. It is clear that,
from the first, the ruling minds in the movement were con
scious of their ignorance, and, in the presence of Almighty
God, felt that He was leading them they knew not whither.

8 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
Of these two, one, as has been said, was occupying the
early part of the long vacation in conferences with a man of a
'totally different stamp.
William Palmer, of Worcester College, learned beyond
the average of Protestant divines, and strong in his dislike to
consistent Lutheranism, — William Palmer was as radically an
ultra-Protestant alfh&vgry.time whenJie.aid^djn^JaMshinff
"InTTractsTaTwnen^dTerwarcIs he wrote .<H/e|]terS<^pJi«,Wise-
man, D.D.Ttatling himself Bishop ofMeiipotamus ;" and when,
i on the demise of the British Critic, he undertook the manager
, ment of a review which has rivalled the worst of Evangelical
zealots in its misrepresentations of the Catholic faith. He
was a fair representative of a vast portion of the party which
by degrees took up the movement, whose chief aim appeared
to be self-defence rather than a search after truth, and who
"at times seemed to apologise for Rome, only that they might
the more vigorously repel the attacks of Nonconformity against
Anglicanism. The personal alliance between the two ill-as
sorted coadjutors was speedily dissolved ; and in a published
Narrative of the events in which he had a share, Palmer con
fessed a conviction that Froude's influence was all along ex
erted in a direction opposed to his own.
Acting together, however, for a time, Froude and Palmer
resolved that something must be done to defend the Establish
ment, now robbed of her ten /Irish bishoprics, and threatened
on every side. Their general idea was to establish some sort
of association for the support of " Church principles." A few
friends were consulted without loss of time. A few were
already prepared to join in the scheme. In the beginning of
the year, Mr. Palmer had been in correspondence with the
Rev. Hugh James Rose, the editor of the British Magazine,
then living at Hadleigh in Suffolk, and afterwards Principal
of King's College, London. Rose, who has now been several
years dead, was of a theological school akin to that of Palmer,
but less gladiatorial in spirit. To him and to John Keble
the poet the design was first communicated. Unlike Mr.
Newman and Dr. Pusey,-with whom his name was afterwards
so constantly associated, Keble had always been attached to
the old-fashioned High-Church class of Anglicans. His Chris
tian Year was already giving promise of that extraordinary
popularity which until recently (or even until now) it has
retained. His great principle was expressed in the preface to
that remarkable collection of poems. He thought that the grand
desideratum of a religious mind should be soberness; and in
the Christian Year, with its gentle tones, its steady proprie
ties, its sweet suggestions, its delicate imagery, its glimpses

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.- 9
of truth, and its unintelligible meanderings of thoughts and
words, he gave a secondLBihle to the well-intentioned, cau
tious, sensible, ancToomestic households of English Anglicanism.
He had just been preaching before the University of Oxford
a sermon on the suppression of the ten Irish bishoprics,
which he viewed as a calamity of the most fearful kind, and
condemned as an act of " national apostacy." " The legis
lature of England and Ireland," he says in his preface to the
published sermon, " (the members of which are not even bound
to profess belief in the atonement,) this body has -virtually
usurped the commission of those whom our Saviour entrusted
with at least one voice in making ecclesiastical laws on matters
wholly or partly spiritual." Such being Mr. Keble's views —
though his words " at least one voice" betray his real difference
from the principles of such men as Froude — he very gladly en
tered into the suggestions proposed by him. The Rev. John
Henry Newman, on his return from the continent; immediately
took part in the deliberations ; and after some correspondence,
Froude and Palmer went down to confer with Rose at Had-
leigh, where they met the only other of the original " conspi-j
jftors" not yet named, the Hon. and Rev. Arthur Perceval, 4
Iligh-Churchman of the anti-Roman caste, who, like Palmer.
afterwards published an account of the part he took in organ
ising the movement, and who, also like Palmer, speedjly.,found
that permanent co-operation with men like Froude and New
man, and even with Keble and their subsequent coadjutor
Dr. Pusey, was practically an impossibility. <
After this conference the " conspirators" proceeded to ac
tion. No terms of co-operation could be agreed upon, at once
sufficiently comprehensive, explicit, and cautious, to ensure
the signatures of even this small number of friends. Latent
Establishmentarianism from the first refused to coalesce with
latent Catholicism. Nevertheless, certain articles of agree
ment passed to and fro, and it was determined at once to
commence acting upon the public mind in favour of the doc
trine of the apostolical succession, as the keystone of the
edifice of Church-government, and as the necessary means
to a participation in the body and blood of our Blessed Lord.
Books and tracts were immediately to be written. Proposi
tions were made for the establishment of associations through
out the country for the maintenance of High-Church views ;
and clerical and lay petitions were prepared, addressed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. It speedily became manifest that
the movement must depend for success entirely upon the first
of these instruments. The time was not come for Church
Unions ; and petitions and addresses to the Anglican prelates

10 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
'proved only the simplicity of the petitioners and theultra-
PrqtesJamlasas of the petitioned. Palmer, being a man oTcom-
parative leisure, went about the country, agitating wherever
he could; and notwithstanding the frowns of dignitaries and
the jealousies of the country parsons at these novel proceed
ings on the part of a few nameless young men at Oxford, an
address was presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury in
the following February, signed by nearly 7000 clergy of the
Establishment. The petition really said scarcely any thing at
all, and could conveniently be signed by men of all views who
"wished things to remain as they were. In the following May,
a similar address was presented to the Archbishop by the laity,
signed by 230,000 heads of families.
Of these 7000 clerical and 230,000 lay subscribers, won
derfully few were they who sympathised with the real opinions
of the most influential of the leaders in the movement. When
the Tracts for the Times commenced publication in the autumn
of 1833, inexpressible must have been the bewilderment of the
clerical conservatives of the Establishment, and the eminently
respectable fathers and mothers of families who had been wont
to consider the quiet comforts and peaceable mediocrity of their
Bishops, their clergy, their Prayer-book, and their parsonages,
as the beau ideal of perfection, and the summit beyond which it
was presumption to wish for more. From the first, the Tracts
were the work of individuals, for it was found impossible to
subject them to the revision of any association, and they never
possessed more than the general patronage of all the few per
sons we have mentioned as originating them. From the first,
they displayed a daring vigour, a recklessness of secular con
sequences, and a determination to carry out truths to their
' legitimate conclusions. On the first page of the series, they
wished the Anglican prelates the honour and blessedness of
.^martyrdom ! Hence, notwithstanding the freezing mediocrity
and thoroughly anti-Catholic Anglicanism of many, if not of
the greater part, of the first Tracts, they were early viewed
with deep suspicion by the old school, who patronised them
with cautious reserve, and shrugged their shoulders at the-
mention of the extremes to which these Oxford men seemed
disposed to push their principles.
Such, then, was the tone of the earlier Oxford Tracts.
The first volume was published in 1833-1834. The aposto
lical succession of Bishops, the value of ordinances, the per
fections of the Book of Common Prayer, the via media of
the Church of England as opposed to Romanism on the one
side and Dissent on the other, and the independence of the
Church, were its principal topics. The series also included

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 1 1
several tracts called " Records of the Church," which consisted
of short extracts from the writings of the Fathers, supposed
ito uphold the doctrines inculcated in the original papers.
The moral and spiritual strength of the first volume, however,
lay chiefly in a tract to which the author affixed his initials,
^pn the duty of Fasting. From the time of the publication of
this essay, Dr. Pusey's name became popularly associated with
the movement, and the world in general out of Oxford sup
posed him to be both its chief originator and its most influ
ential guide. Both suppositions were erroneous. His per
sonal influence in Oxford was for a long time considerable,
as his tract on Baptism, published in 1834-1835, unquestion
ably was one of the most effective single publications to which
the movement gave birth. Still, from the first, Tractarianism
owed little or nothing of its Catholic tendencies to Dr. Pusey.
To him it owed much of its unnatural preciseness and solem
nity of tone, its exaggerated though sincere austerities, and
^its partial adoption of auricular confession. From first to
last, nevertheless, Dr. Pusey never even understood the inmost
/feelings and principles of some of his coadjutors, and he was,
in fact, a thorough Protestant. He appears never to have
;grasped~fHe"idea of the Catholic Church as a living body, com
missioned to communicate the revealed truths of the Gospel to
each individual soul. He^jtsvsKar^ippej|_th§ Fathejs^as the

Evangelicals have worshipped the mere letterjjf King James's
English translation of the Bible. His owifprivate judgment
has been his ultimate court of appeal, even- when he has en
tered the lists in defence of the most "Romanising" of his
friends, and been most unscrupulous in appropriating the
writings of the " modern Church of Rome."
Of the first promoters of the movement, some either
never wrote any of the Tracts, or speedily withdrew from
active co-operation with their early associates. Rose wrote
none ; Palmer was only in part responsible for one single
:;Tract (No. 15); and Perceval wrote no more than three,
Nos. 23, 35, and 36. Other and bolder pens were early
found to co-operate ; but the actual number of Tract-writers
was to the last but small.
r\JBefore the year 1833 was closed, an auxiliary series of
tostpers, by Mr. Newman, began to appear in the British
' Magazine. The Church of the Fathers, afterwards re-pub
lished in a single volume, far outstepped the .cautious Jints
of the Tracts themselves ; and furnished a striking indication
of the actual sentiments of at least one of the " Tractarians,"
as they were speedily termed. What had been the early
progress of the writer's mind, under the influence of the study

12 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
of the primitive Fathers, he has himself described in the course
of lectures delivered by him in the London Oratory.
" Even when I was a boy," he says, " my thoughts were turned
to the early Church, and especially to the early Fathers, by the
perusal of Milner's Church History, and I have never lost, I never
have suffered a suspension of the impression, deep and most plea
surable, which his sketches of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine left
on my mind. From that time the vision of the Fathers was always,
to my imagination, I may say, a paradise of delight, to the contem
plation of which I directed my thoughts from time to time, when
ever I was free from the engagements proper to my time of life.
When I first began to read their works with attention and on system,
I busied myself much in analysing them, and in cataloguing their
doctrines and principles ; and when 1 had thus proceeded very care
fully and minutely for some space of time, I found, on looking back
on what I had done, that I had scarcely done any thing at all, that
''I had gained very little from them, and that the Fathers I had been
.reading, which were exclusively those of the Antenicene period, as
far as my reading was concerned, had very little in them. At the
time I did not discover the reason of this result, though, on the
retrospect, it was plain enough : I had read them simply on Pro
testant ideas, analysed and catalogued them on Protestant principles
of division, and hunted for Protestant doctrines and usages in them.
\My headings ran, ' Justification by faith only,' ' Sanctification,' and
the like. I knew not what to look for in them ^ I sffughtjhafe
was not there, I missed what was there ; I labourea^tnrougTTTKe
rhglit, and caught nothing. But I should make one important ex
ception : I rose from their perusal with a vivid perception of the
'divine institution, the prerogatives, and the gifts of the Episcopate ;
| that is, with an implicit aversion to the Erastian principle.
" Some years afterwards I took up the study of them again, when
I had occasion to employ myself on the history of Arianism. I read
them with Bull's Defensio, as their key as far as his subject extended;
but I am not aware that I made any other special doctrinal use of
them at that time."
The Church of the Fathers, nevertheless, and those Tracts
in which the same pen was clearly to be recognised, distinctly
indicated that their author was already far ahead of Lutheran-
ism as well as Erastianism, and that he had learnt not only
the divine institution of the Episcopate, but many another
Catholic truth from the records of Christian antiquity. The
Church of the Fathers, even to a Catholic, is still a charming
and interesting book. It is charming from the graces, at once
refined and homely, of its style; from its judicious selection
of some of the most stirring scenes and sweetest characters
of ancient days; and from the singular, unhesitating faith with
which its writer viewed the divine gifts and glorious deeds of

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 13
saints and martyrs, even from amidst the dull incredulities
and technicalities of the Anglican Establishment. To those
who are interested in the history of this movement — and what
Catholic is not? — The Church of the Fathers is also inter
esting, as a manifestation of the tendencies of its promoters,
and as an example of the mode in which a conscientious and
intelligent Protestant, in many respects orthodox in his faith,
would feel when thrown suddenly into the midst of the living
realities of the Church of God.
Thus^ early, moreover, the Tractarians sent forth a test
among their followers. The publication of The Church of the
Fathers was a stroke of courage, for its very first chapters
'Smote hard at Establishmentarianism, and a Fellow of an
l Oxford College was found daring enough to assert^ the super-
•naturalefficacy of the re^cs/jy[^part^^amtit~°"It was not
"enough" fh~aT"MrT" Newman, with manifest sincerity, eulo
gised the unreformed " British constitution," and pathetically
mourned over " the good old time of King George the Third,"
and even hinted at the sanctity of the same Royal Protestant,
in company with his predecessor " our blessed martyr St.
Charles." Suspicions that things were going too far rapidly
grew up in the first supporters of the Tracts. Men who hoped
for demonstrations in favour of the Thirty-nine Articles and
the Catechism, of the revenues of the Bishops and the privi
leges of the Universities, were puzzled when they read of
the heroism of St. Ambrose, the penitence of Theodosius, the
dogmatics of Vincentius, the conflicts of St. Anthony, and the
apostolate of St. Martin. Still, The Church of the Fathers
was widely read, and its influence was decisive. Its sketches
were ar&disjd^omance £Q,.young and_ hopeful souta Basil
and Gregory, Gervasius and Protasius, Augustine and Athana-
sius, were Saints once more ; and fond believers in the Church
of England began already to anticipate a day when a Regius
Professor might be committed to prison for defying a Prime
Minister, and new fires consume some episcopal martyr for the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
The Church of the Fathers was not, however, the author's
first work on the early Christian ages. In 1832 he had writ
ten, and in 1833 had published, his Arians of the Fourth Cen
tury. This book, which is partly dogmatical, partly contro
versial, and partly historical, furnished decisive indications of
the bent of the writer's mind. Notwithstanding its incidental
Anglicanisms, it placed in startling contrast the Christian
Church of early times with the Establishment which it was
Mr. Newman's aim to vivify with Catholic faith. We have
always regarded the Arians of the Fourth Century as onejof

14 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
his ablest works ; and it is impossible to read it without anti
cipating the time when the same hand would pen the lecture
from which we have quoted, and lay all its learning at the feet
of the glorious saints whose deeds it had early commemorated,
in these striking words :
" I soon found it to follow, that the grounds on which alone
Anglicanism was defensible formed an impregnable stronghold for
the primitive heresies, and that the justification of the primitive
Councils wasas cogent an apology for the Council of Trent. With
out going into the question here, which would be out of place, it
vraas difficult to make out how the Eutychians or Monophysites were
heretics, unless Protestants and Anglicans were heretics also; dif
ficult to find arguments against the Tridentine Fathers which did
not tell against the Fathers of Chalcedon ; difficult to condemn the
,'Popes of the sixteenth century without condemning the Popes of
' the fifth. The drama of religion, and the combat of truth and error,
were ever one and the same. The principles and proceedings of the
Church now were those of the Church then ; the principles and pro
ceedings of heretics then were those of Protestants now. I found
it so, almost fearfully; there was an awful similitude, more awful
because so silent and unimpassioned, between the dead records of
the past and the feverish chronicle of the present. The shadow, of
the fifth century was on the sixteenth. It was like a spirit rising
from the troubled waters of the old world with the shape and linea
ments of the new. The Church then, as now, might be called per
emptory and stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless ; and here
tics were shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever courtino-
the civil power, and never agreeing together except by its aid ; and
the civil power was ever aiming at comprehensions, trying to put
the invisible out of view, and to substitute expediency for faith.
What was the use of continuing the controversy, or defending my
position, if, after all, I was but forging arguments for Arius or
Eutyches, and turning devil's advocate against the much-enduring
Athanasius and the majestic Leo ? Be my soul with the saints !
and shall I lift up my hand against them ? Sooner may my right
hand forget her cunning, and wither outright, a3 his who once
"stretched it out against a prophet of God ! perish sooner a whole
tribe of Cranmers, Bidleys, Latimers, and Jewels ! perish the names
of Bramhall, Ussher, Taylor, Stillingfieet, and Barrow, from the face
of the earth, ere I should do aught but fall at their feet in love and
hi worship, whose image was continually before my eyes, and whose
musical words were ever in my ears and on my tongue !"
The second volume of the Tracts, published successively
in 1834-35, displayed a decided advance onwards. Still ap
plauding and reproducing the correct mediocrities of " Anglo-
Catholic" divinity, and exalting the wisdom of the Prayer-

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 1 5
book, it put forth two startling features ; Dr. Pusey's long,
elaborate, learned, and partly incomprehensible " Scriptural
Views qf Holy baptism" did for one sacrament what a tract
on the ancient Catholic Liturgies did for another. If the
common Protestant belief respecting Baptism was shewn to
be clearly unscriptural and uncatholic, the Church of England
Communion Office was as clearly proved to be a novelty in
the Christian Church. The substance of the tract on Ancient
Liturgies had already been made familiar to studious Angli
cans by Mr. Palmer's Origines Liturgicce, a book of consider
able learning. The argument to be derived from these Litur
gies was now forcibly put forth, and English Protestants were
compelled to see that whereas every ancient Christian Church
was agreed in certain details of the eucharistic rite, the Com
munion Office of the Church of England was defective in the
most important of all these particulars. For the first time
distressed and pious clergymen were taught as follows :
" The four original forms" — (of which the Roman Mass is
one) — " from which all the Liturgies in the world have been
taken, resemble one another too much to have grown up in
dependently, and too little to have been copied from one
another." And therefore, it was argued, they must all have proceeded
from one source, namely, the Apostles themselves. And then
. the Tract continued :
" On a comparison of the different forms of oblation and
consecration, it will be seen that" in each of the four original
Liturgies the Eucharist is regarded as a mystery and a sa
crifice." And therefore again, it was implied that the English Re
formers, who treated the, Eucharist as neither mystery nor
sacrifice, had destroyed the work of the Apostles. All that
the Tract said, indeed, was this cautious hint :
" Such is the view taken of the consecration and oblation
of the Eucharist in the four independent Christian Liturgies.
It is well worth the consideration of such Protestant bodies as
have rejected the ancient forms."
The impression produced by these oracular ambiguities was
naturally slight, in comparison with the effect of Dr. Pusey's
tract on Baptism. Lengthy, complicated, and overloaded with
quotations, while few grasped the whole of the writer's mean
ing, or even gave him credit for having any complete and dis
tinct meaning to communicate, this essay made it clear to
every unprejudiced mind, that if the Bible is to be trusted,
Baptism unquestionably conveys some ineffable spiritual gift
to the soul, to be obtained in no other way, and the perma-

16 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
nent loss of which entails eternal damnation. That Dr. Pusey
ever thoroughly comprehended the Catholic doctrine which he
professed to uphold, is rendered still more doubtful by the
part he has taken in the recent dispute between the Bishop of
Exeter and Mr. Gorham. Be this as it may, the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration became henceforth the chief battle
ground between the new school and their adversaries. All
Oxford rushed to hear the Regius Professor of Hebrew, when
soever his turn came round to preach before the University.
Many of our readers can well picture to themselves the re
markable sight which the cathedral of Christ Church then pre
sented, and the extraordinary impression wrought by those in
tensely earnest sermons. Pale with watching, reading, fast-
I iug, and sickness, a thin, melancholy, and austere yet gentle
preacher astounded his self-satisfied listeners, by asserting that
it was almost impossible that mortal sin after baptism could
be forgiven. Painful from their preternaturally solemn deli
very, obscure in their dogmatic definitions, and for the most
part consisting of a series of interminable antitheses, these ser
mons nevertheless struck home to the heart of many a lux
urious, or idle, or Evangelical college-fellow or undergraduate ;
and from that period the asceticism of the Oxford school was
palpably on the increase. Who was there in those shadowy
cloisters and venerable chapels, whose heart could endure the
searching probe, or rest satisfied in the knowledge that it had
preserved its baptismal innocence unsullied ? Heads of col
leges might frown, tutors might discourage, common-room
gossip and periodical controversy might sneer and argue ; but
there was something in Dr. Pusey's manner, and his known
personal austerities, and the courageous tone of his speech,
which pierced the conscience with a sense of sin, and prepared
it to yearn for the absolution of,a. priest. ~ ~™~— —¦-<"¦'
"""The pracTicaHyTJatholic influence of Dr. Pusey's occasional
sermons was, notwithstanding, extremely small in comparison
with that of another preacher now becoming notorious both
in and out of Oxford. Mr. Newman, as vicar of St. Mary'stf
had in his hands an instrument for the propagation of .the new
doctrlnes,'which~he wielded with "singular power and successl
In the heart of the crty-oft)xford rises a majestic"gpireTonel
of the master-pieces of the fourteenth century. Beneath its
clustering pinnacles is spread out a wide and lofty church, with
a deep chancel and capacious nave. The latter forms what
is called the "University Church," the building being at the
same time the parochial church of the old parish of" St. Mary
the Virgin." The University makes use of it chiefly for the
preaching of sermons on Sundays and Saints' days. Prayers

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 17
are said in all the separate colleges at an early hour in the
morning, and in the course of the day two preachers, one in
the forenoon, the other in the afternoon, preach before the
vice-chancellor and other dignitaries, and the general body of
the University. At the given hour the organ strikes up, a pro
cession winds into the church, brilliant with gilded maces,
black and scarlet gowns, crimson hoods, velvet sleeves, and
ermine ; a single individual disengages himself from the rest,
and while they take their appointed places in all the dignity
of Oxford precision, he mounts the pulpit. A psalm is sung
by a choir ; the undergraduates in the galleries, the masters of
arts below, and the "Dons" in their seats of honour, stand up
and perform that peculiar Anglican ceremony which consists
in burying the face in one's hat or cap for devotional purposes.
The preacher pronounces what is termed the " bidding prayer,"
requesting the congregation to " pray for the whole estate of
Christ's holy Catholic Church, especially that pure and apos
tolic branch of it established in these realms," enumerating,
various classes of persons, and naming especially with honour
—but not for prayer — the founder of his own college (generally
a Catholic). Then he concludes with the Lord's Prayer, and
proceeds with his sermon. This, of course, is indescribable.
In the course of a single year, as there are nearly as many
different preachers as sermons preached, every conceivable
shade of heresy may be heard formally stated, or unconsci
ously blundered into, in that pulpit of many tongues. It is
the Babel of modern days. Tot homines, quot sententice. In
the morning (the period being, that of which we are chiefly
speaking) the Fathers are upheld, in the afternoon they are
ridiculed ; to-day baptismal regeneration is preached, next
Sunday we are taught the Lutheran "justification by faith
only;" a " select preacher" eulogises the Tracts for the Times,.
and is followed by a country parson, who broadly hints that.
Mr. Newman and Dr. Pusey are disguised Jesuits ; and the.
" Bampton Lecturer " for the year expounds some systematic
view or crotchet of his own, which if not the most flagrantly
heretical, is probably the most irresistibly somniferous of all
the heretical and somniferous topics to which this celebrated
pulpit gives birth.
St. Mary's is, however, a parish church as well as the
University church ; and it was the possession of its pulpit,
after the University sermons were ended, that enabled its vicar
to inculcate the Tractarian views, not in dry dogmatic tracts,
but in connexion with the daily realities of a practical religious
life. And for several consecutive years, the sight of those
concluding services was of infinitely greater interest than the

18 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
pompous celebrations and discourses which the University de
lighted in. A few straggling tradespeople and maid-servants
were the bulk of the parochial congregation, properly so
called, for Mr. Newman's preaching was never popular with
the non-academic inhabitants of Oxford ; but scattered thickly
throughout the church were seen a crowd of black-gowned
listeners, young and middle-aged, and sometimes, though
rarely, old, who thronged to hear the clear, even, earnest, and
monotonous voice of one whose whole soul was in every word
he uttered ; and who, with whatever errors or gradual changes
he displayed, was manifestly possessed with the ideas of God,
of sin, of death, of judgment, and of eternity. Very many of
^ these sermons were published, as time went on, in successive
^volumes ; and it cannot be doubted that they have done more
, to save men's souls, by bringing them ultimately into the
Catholic Church, than any other of the instruments which the
movement of 1833 has had at its command. For the most
part uncontroversial, they enforced, first of all, practical reli
gion, in terms at once in harmony with the language of the
Bible, and free from the unreal phraseology of common Pro
testant preachers. By degrees they grew more decidedly
doctrinal and more prominently Catholic, as the mind of the
preacher himself advanced, and his hearers were prepared for
strong meat instead of milk. After a while, the old High-
Church school began to frown and mutter. College authori
ties warned their pupils against Mr. Newman's subtleties ; and
•even such petfy devices were resorted to as the alteration of
¦"Sue dinner-hour, in order to compel the undergraduates to
give up either their meals or the sermons. Still they were
preached, listened to, published, read, and acted on ; and at
£his hour there are hundreds of persons now Catholics who
attribute their ultimate conversion, under Divine grace, to the
'practical influence of these sermons upon their inward hearts
and outward lives. Certain it is, that there are but few
passages in the whole series of the published volumes which
are contrary to Catholic doctrine and morals, and a slight
expurgation leaves them (though, of course, frequently de
fective, yet) perfectly free from all positive evil. It is re
markable also, as a further illustration of what we have stated
respecting the early tendency of some of the Tract-writers
toward the Catholic Church, that 'many of Mr. Newman's
published sermons were preached two or three years, and
some of them as much as eight or nine years, before the
Tracts began. He was inducted as vicar of St. Mary's in the
year 1828.
But it was not alone from the pulpit of St. Mary's that

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 19
the movement gathered strength, and spread. Shut out from
the nave by a solid screen, surmounted by a lofty organ, the
venerable chancel of the church was scarcely known to the
ordinary attendant at the University sermons. The wander
ing eye indeed caught a glimpse of an antique roof, of dingy
walls, and of windows dim with green and decaying glass ; and
if some thoughtful mind ever pondered over the difference
between its neglected shade and the cold precision and dreary
smartness of the restored nave, it could only account for the
distinction by reflecting that an altar was no longer necessary
Jco University celebrations. Yet, as days went on, it was within
.that forgotten chancel that the truest tokens were to be ga-
/ thered of the real life and energy of the rising school. Sin
gular and repelling as the services there celebrated must have
appeared to the true Catholic ; cold, formal, and austere, as
, was the aspect of the greater number of those who there,
from Sunday to Sunday — and fasting — received what they
would fain convince themselves was the body and blood of
\ Jesus Christ, it was impossible not to recognise in those unpre
tending and quiet gatherings a token of the genuineness and
, self-sacrificing sincerity of the ever-increasing supporters of
""Anglo-Catholicism." No fond displays of un- Anglican show,
,no apings of Catholic rites, betrayed unreality of mind, or
fickleness of heart. Week after week, and year after year,
in sunshine and in storm, a body of men availed themselves
of the weekly Communions, which could be found there alone
in all Oxford ; while the occasional princely gifts to the pur
poses of their church, which were given at their offertory,
attested their superiority to the mammon-worship of their
^'country. These and other such acts were a pledge of the
sincerity of many among the earliest followers of the move
ment, which shewed where they must end, unless they would
return to the darkness from which they were emerging. Very
beautifully has Father Newman himself described these times
in the Lectures before us :
"Why should I deny," he says, speaking to those who, from
the sincerity of Anglo-Catholics, would argue the truth of Anglo-
Catholicism, — "why should I deny to your memory what is so
pleasant in mine? Cannot I too look back on many years past,
and many events, in which I myself experienced what is now your
confidence ? Can I forget the happy life I have led all my days,
with no cares, no anxieties worth remembering, without desolate-
ness or fever of thought, or gloom of mind, or doubt of God's love
to me and providence over me ? Can T forget, — I never can forget,
the day when in my youth I first bound myself to the ministry of
God in that old church of St. Frideswide, the patroness of Oxford.

20 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
Nor how I wept most abundant and most sweet tears, when I thought
what I then had become : though I looked on it then as no sacramen
tal rite, nor even to baptism ascribed any supernatural virtue. Can
I wipe out from my memory, or wish to wipe out, those happy
Sunday mornings, light or dark, year after year, when I celebrated
your communion-rite in my own church of St. Mary's ; and in the
pleasantness and joy of it, heard nothing of the strife of tongues
which surrounded its walls ?"
While sermons, tracts, and historical essays, were thus
opening their heavy fire upon the bulwarks of Protestant
ism, a lighter species of artillery began to play upon the
beleaguered citadel. The age of Anglo- Catholic story-books
and newspaper articles was not yet come ; the genius of
Oxford was for awhile too fastidious for aught so secular and
cortimon. Versification was the only device to which it could
stoop, and accordingly a series of short poems appeared from
time to time in the British Magazine, entitled Lyra Aposto-
lica, which were afterwards collected and published in a single
volume. These poems were extremely unequal, both in matter
and versification. Some were unmistakeably and incurably
Anglican in their tone ; others betrayed at once a yearning to
wards Rome, a thoughtful but half-informed habit of medita
tion on her character, united with a mingled horror and fear.
Some were personal in subject, some devotional and general,
some laboriously patristic and repulsively grotesque. Taken
as a whole, there was no mistaking the true meaning of the
dominant spirit of the publication. Its most prolific contri
butor, besides another writer, whose stanzas possessed a more
than usual and classic grace, were clearly not standing still,
but on the road somewhere. The motto of the Tracts from the
first had been, " If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who
shall prepare himself to the battle ?" and now it appeared as
if they who blew the blast had caught some strange respon
sive sound, no mere echo of their own notes, but more mu
sical, more mysterious, and coming forth from some hidden
fount of harmony. Wondering at the melody, and distrusting
their own courageous tones, they seem now to be answering
the unknown voice in strains betokening at once their fears,
their hopes, and their love. Interpreted by the aid of events
that have since come to pass, the significance of many of the
poems in the Lyra is great indeed. For the sake of their sig
nificance, as well as for their intrinsic beauty, we shall quote
two of their most remarkable passages. Already Oxford scru
pled not to publish such a faith in the Sign of the Cross as the
following lines express :

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 21
" Whene'er across this sinful flesh of mine
I draw the holy sign,
All good thoughts stir within me, and collect
Their slumbering strength divine,
Till there springs up that hope of God's elect
My faith shall not be wreck'd.
And who shall say, but hateful spirits around,
For their brief hour unbound,
Shudder to see, and wail tljeir overthrow ?
While on far heathen ground
Some lonely saint hails the fresh odour, though
Its source he cannot know 1"
What a singular homage is paid in the subjoined stanzas
to the mysterious power of Rome to win and command the
heart, even while the ignorance of heresy and schism would
close up its portals to the charmer's voice !
" THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
" Oh that thy creed were sound !
For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch and varied round
Of service in thy Saviour's holy home.
I cannot walk the city's sultry streets
But the wide porch invites to still retreats,
Where passion's thirst is calm'd, and care's unthankful gloom.
There on a foreign shore
The homesick solitary finds a friend :
Thoughts, prison'd long for lack of speech, outpour
Their tears ; and doubts in resignation end.
I almost fainted from the long delay
That tangles me within this languid bay,
When comes a foe, my wounds with oil and wine to tend."
But we recur to the course of events as time gave them
birth. In 1835 a step was taken which, though its effects were
not great, and its rumour did not spread throughout the
country, was a sufficient indication of the increasing progress
;of the movement, and of the organised character it was rapidly
^assuming. A theological society (a portent in English Esta-
"blished Protestantism) was formed in Oxford. This society
was to be managed by a committee, in which it was proposed
to include the two Oxford Professors of Divinity, Mr. E. Gres-
well (a learned theological critic), Mr. Palmer (before spoken
of), together with Dr. Pusey, Mr. Newman, and Mr. Oakeley,

SS, Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
of Balliol College. The first four were in no sense really con
nected with the leaders in the Tract movement; but as the
latter were still firm in their conviction that they were rapidly
carrying out the true principles of the Establishment, these (
others were, in all good faith, requested to join in the scheme.
As it turned out, they would have nothing to do with any
thing so perilous and novel; but Anglo-Catholicism was al
ready strong enough to do without them. The meetings, which
lasted some time, were held once a fortnight at Dr. Pusey's
rooms ; and theological essays, developing Anglo-Catholic prin
ciples, for the most part in the direction of Rome, were read
to crowded and attentive audiences of bachelors and masters
of arts. The esoteric character of the proceedings gave a zest
to the whole ~aftaif7 which, nevertheless, was somewhat dimi
nished by the prohibition of the discussions which at the be
ginning were both permitted and encouraged.
The first of a long series of University struggles now im
pended, and the names of the " Tractarians" began to be seen
in the common newspapers of the day. For the first time
(and for this time only in conjunction with Evangelicalism and
Establishmentarianism) Puseyism met the civil power of the
State in a hand-to-hand conflict. In this its first contest it
partly won the day ; for it can scarcely be doubted that if the
names of Pusey and Newman had not been found in the list
of the opponents of Dr. Hampden, he would have crushed his
opponents of every lower grade. The Whigs were in office ;
but office had not quenched the fires of their University-
reforming zeal. Vague ideas of conciliating the Dissenters,
united with their hereditary hostility to the High-Church
Toryism of Oxford, prompted them to utter many threats of
fundamental change. The Thirty-nine Articles, not yet dis
covered to be the dead weight upon the progress of Anglo-
Catholicism, were marked out by the political and latitu-
dinarian reformers for formal rejection as University tests.
' Dissenters hoped to be admitted to the venerable' halls
whence Cranmer and Ridley had ejected the children of
Wykeham and Waynflete, not for the behoof of Anglicanism
in particular, but for the behoof of nationalism in general.
For common sense, that bitter foe of Oxford exclusiveness,
was now loudly murmuring that, as the Thirty-nine Articles
had ceased to be the sole symbol of the national faith," it was
sheer tyranny to retain them as a test in national seminaries.
The civil power, originally Catholic, when it constituted itself
Anglican, had seized the Universities, and made them Ang
lican also. Now, it was very logically argued, the civil power

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism, 23
having constituted itself latitudinarian, the Universities must
follow the " progress of the national mind," and the Thirty-
nine Articles must go the way of all other Acts of Parliament,
A war of words, spoken and written, ensued, in which much
was uttered and little done. On the whole, victory seemed
to be with the Conservatives ; but they only dammed up the
flood, which poured over their feeble barriers with increased
velocity and power.
Irritated, doubtless, by the contumacious resistance of the
dominant parties in Oxford, in 1836 the Whig Government
struck them a blow where they least anticipated a wound.
Early in that year Dr. Burton, the Regius Professor of Di
vinity, died. His professorship, as its name implies, was of
royal foundation ; and the chief source of its large revenues
arose from the canonry of Christ's Church, which was attached
to the professorship. Until this memorable year the profes
sorship had been sacred ground. No foot of Whig, or Low-
Churchman, or Evangelical, or Latitudinarian, had polluted
it. Its chair was the very oracle of the safe school, — that
school which British authority, as such, ever most loves to
cherish. The deceased professor was not unworthy of his
vocation. Learned in his degree, amiable, respectable, digni
fied, with a due sense of the royal supremacy (even when the
monarch was a Whig), Dr. Burton had creditably performed
his duties ; and though he had mildly insinuated the expe
diency of Church Reform, was regarded with not insincere
respect by most men of any weight in the University.
At length he died ; and Oxford was transfixed by an an
nouncement that Dr. Hampden was to be appointed by Lord
^Melbourne to the vacant post. Of all men in the University
Dr. Hampden was the most unacceptable to the Anglo-Ca
tholics. In 1832 he had preached the " Bampton Lectures,"
an annual series of sermons, of which the usual result is the
demonstration of the incapacity or the_hexesy of the preacher.
In Dr. Hampden's case the latter was the result. A latitudi
narian to an extent unparalleled in Oxford, he had attributed
the Christian faith in the efficacy of the sacraments to the
belief in magic of the middle ages ; dogmatic statements gene
rally he viewed as scholastic refinements, always perilous, and
often mischievous ; and altogether he had avowed opinions
which were regarded, and justly, as tantamount, in principle,
to Socinianism.
) Oxford, however, was in a false position. Appointed to
preach the Bampton Lectures by the usual safe authorities,
the lecturer's heresies had been passed over sub silentio by all
but a few sensitive and discerning minds. Dull and ungainly

24 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
in style, and treating of subjects far removed from the ordinary
gossip of the common-room and the lucubrations of the heads
of houses, his sermons had attracted few hearers, and when
afterwards published found still fewer readers. Subsequently
to their delivery he had been appointed by the Chancellor to
the headship of St. Mary Hall; and in 1834, the most ortho
dox University, by its Vice-chancellor and proctors, and the
heads of three of its chief colleges, nominated the Doctor to
a professorship of moral philosophy, as being (in the words of
the founder's declaration) " recommended by his soundness of
religion, — religionis sinceritate commendatus." In the same
year Dr. Hampden had, further, come forward on the side of
the Dissenters. He wrote a pamphlet avowing in the clearest
terms his hatred of the dogmatic principle. The authorities*
however, had taken no steps to cancel the marks of their ap
probation which they had bestowed upon him ; and when the
prime minister selected him for the Divinity professorship, he
must little have anticipated the storm of indignation he was
about to evoke. Doubtless, Lord Melbourne solely intended
the appointment as a blow at Oxford exclusiveness, and as
a reward for Dr. Hampden's pamphlet in favour of the ad
mission of Dissenters.
Nevertheless, a tempest instantly arose, which, we think,
was mainly owing to the blowing of the breath of Tractarianism.
*" Already the movement had forced upon many minds a vivid
\ conviction of the truth of the dogmatic principle, and a dislike
/of Dissenters, not as nonconformists, but as heretics. To
speak against sacramental grace they accounted a species of
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost ; and armed with new
found doctrinal acuteness, they detected and displayed the
latent enormities of the Bampton Lectures, till the safe men
shrugged their shoulders, and the Evangelicals believed that
Lutheranism itself was in danger. Pamphlets swarmed through
out the country ; letters innumerable deluged the periodicals ;
the common secular newspapers took up the strain, and con
tributed to bring Oxford and its new school prominently
before the public eye. E^trac^s_were_sglexied from the pro
fessor's writings, and circulated in every quarter; and Esta-
blishmentarian Protestantism awoke and found itself burning
with zeal for the Athanasian Creed and the doctrine of sacra
mental efficacy.
The moving power in the agitation consisted of a small
committee in Oxford, who had constituted themselves guar
dians of Anglican orthodoxy against a hostile premier, a
questionable prelacy, and a vacillating board of heads of
,-houses. This committee was ingeniously composed of repre-

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 25
sentatives of various schools, so that Tractarianism should not
appear to be taking the lead in the movement. The Rev.
Vaughan Thomas and the Rev. Edward Greswell together
represented the High and Dry and the Safe and Learned
schools ; the Rev. John Hill represented the Evangelicals ;
the Rev. John Henry Newman and the Rev. Dr. Pusey re
presented the Anglo-Catholics; aud_thj^e^^WiUiam_Sfiwe]l
representedjjjmself. These six prepared addresses, devised
plans, issued circulars, and treated with the heads of houses.
For, as we have stated, the supreme authorities in Oxford
were unwilling to take any severe measures in reprobation of
Dr. Hampden's heresies. Apart from their usual indifference
to theological subtleties, as they considered them, they were
loath to stultify themselves, and brand as a heretic the man
they had recently chosen as a professor of morals. The
committee desired a solemn University condemnation of Dr.
Hampden's doctrines. The Board of College Superiors* with
whom every University act must originate, would tolerate
nothing of the kind. The professor meanwhile refused to re
tract a single line that he had written ; and at length a com
promise of the shabbiest character was effected. The heads
consented to censure the man, while they left his heresies un
touched. Dr. Hampden was disqualified by Convocation from
filling certain University offices; but he remained at liberty,
as Professor of Divinity, to teach whatsoever doctrines he
pleased ! Such was the triumph of orthodoxy in Oxford.
Meanwhile the Tracts for the Times continued their pro
gress, and gained a large circulation. The brief, terse* sug-
*gestive, and cautious papers of the first volume were giving
way to more elaborate and bolder doctrinal essays, shewing
how the writers were silently working their way towards that
Catholic Church against which they still wrote and repeated
harsh and ignorant words. The third volume, for 1835-1836,
contains six Tracts, some of them of remarkable interest. Pre
fixed to the volume was issued a republication of Dr. Pusey's
answer to an anonymous and amusing pamphlet, purporting
to be a Pastoral Epistle from the Pope to certain Members of
the University of Oxford. This " Pastoral Epistle" was an
ingenious squib, in which his Holiness was supposed to ap
plaud the Jesuitical proceedings of the Tract- writers," and to
bid them go on and prosper in their pious labours for con
verting England to the true faith. It was chiefly unfair to the
Tractarians in that it almost imputed to them a consciousness-'
that their doctrines must lead to Rome. In btherrespects
the " Pastoral Epistle" was a very legitimate controversial
weapon, while its delicate irony raised it far above the level

26 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
of the vulgar Protestant assailants of the movement. _ Dr.
Pusey, however, as was natural, thought the joke excessively
profane. Unable to appreciate a jest, even on his own side,
he was grievously scandalised, and printed an Earnest Remon
strance to the author of the " Epistle." His " Remonstrance"
certainly was no jest; and the weapon of his adversary's wit
was scarcely turned aside by the heavy armour he presented
in his defence. A long and tedious collection of those extracts
(which the Tract-writers brought into temporary vogue) was
appended to the " Remonstrance," to shew how many Angli
cans had held some vague notions or other in favour of Epis
copacy, but which proved little more than the industry of cer
tain Oxford men in searching for passages from forgotten books.
Very different were some of the remaining Tracts in the
volume. First came an essay, No. I., against Romanism. It
presents a got-up case, shrinking from the real points at issue,
but already giving tokens of the final pseudo-catholic phase
which the movement assumed previous to its mortal blow in
1845. It was hinted, in no ambiguous terms, that Rome in
theory might be right, and that it was only in her practice
that she was wrong. This was the germ of Tract No. 90 ;
and henceforth all the disclaimers of Popery which the Trac
tarians could put forth were powerless to blind the eyes of
suspicious Protestantism. Then followed a republication of
(Archbishop Ussher's essay on Prayers for the Dead; of which
the gist is, that prayers for the dead are lawful, but that either
jthe dead do not really need them or that they do not profit
the dead at all.
Next to this model of controversial acuteness appeared
a striking essay on two books which are probably unknown
to our Catholic readers, but which, especially one of them,
had attained a wonderful popularity in " the religious world"
of the day. Erskine's Internal Evidence of Christianity and
Jacob Abbott's Corner-Stone were the two works selected by
Mr. Newman as a text wherefrom to lay bare the Infidel
tenderiejeiLj^E^angeJU^^ Erskine was "aTrneTa-
physical Scotchman, substantially of the school of the German
and French sceptics. His book was in principle identical with
such speculations as Morell's Philosophy of Religion, Froude's
Nemesis of Faith, Fox's Lectures on the Religious Ideas, and
Francis Newman's Phases of Faith. He sought for our know
ledge of Almighty God, of his will and of his actions, not
in an external revelation communicated by Himself to man,
but in the innermost recesses of the human intelligence. This
intelligence he treated as the test of all truth, or rather as
containing in itself the germ of all truth, human and (so called)

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 27
divine; Not that these Evangelical unbelievers were prepared
logically to carry out their system to its just issues. They
seemed to talk a species of declaratory dogmatism, partly
orthodox, partly Lutheran, partly sentimental. With all
their rationalism, they clung, or thought they clung, to the
doctrines of the atonement and of the natural corruption of
human nature, as revealed by God. The poison yet worked
subtly in their souls; and the extensive influence which such
writers as Erskine acquired, stands in striking contrast with
the undisguised horror with which open unbelief is even now
viewed by the English world.
Abbot (who is still a popular writer of histories for the
young) is an American. His Comer-Stone was a palpable
piece of Socinianism. In truth, it spoke of our blessed Lord
.in a tone from which many a professed Socinian would shrink
with disgust and pain. Yet because he employed a certain
measure of " Evangelical" phraseology, the " Evangelicals" of
the day were actually fascinated with his lively, simple, and
practical pages. He viewed the Gospel as a manifestation of
the moral character of Almighty God, and as nothing more.. <
The death of our blessed Lord he treated as the~ it&pTessive
summing up of the sermon which his pious life had preached.
The hook, at the same time, was fresh and ingenious, and it
entered into the moral details of the 'Christian life with a
hearty vigour and a common sense which Lutherans and Cal- ,
vinists found delightful, after the cloying monotony and un
realities of their most popular teachers. The Corner-Stone was
the Book of the " religious" community, until Mr. Newman's
Tracts opened men's eyes, and even Evangelicals condescended
to learn caution from his earnest warnings. This Tract is
still well worthy of study by all who would trace the progress
of modern Infidelity. Its author had, indeed, not yet come to
see, that between the belief in an infallible living guide to the
truths of revelation, and the belief that all revelation is really
hidden in germ in the natural intelligence, there is but one
step. Had Erskine or Abbott been equal to the controversy,
they might have retorted upon the Anglo-Catholics, that the
most ultra-patristic theory is in fact but a relegation of the
rights of Almighty God to the critical faculty .of man. The
principle of the Tracts was as logically self-contradictory as
that of the Evangelical infidels; and it was only because
popular religionism is ever as shallow as it is audacious, that
Mr. Newman's keen dissection of their tendencies was not
answered by a challenge either to believe in Rome or to
believe nothing.
The remainder of the third volume of the Tracts was

28 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
chiefly occupied by an essay on the Roman Breviary, with
long extracts from its offices, extending in all to, more than
200 closely-printed pages. It is impossible to peruse the rea
sons given by the writer for his publication without a smile.
With a charming simplicity and ignorance of grammar, he
informed his fellow-Churchmen that " whatever is good and
true in these devotions will be claimed, and on reasonable
grounds, for the Church Catholic in opposition to the Ro
man Church, whose only real claim above other Churches is
that of having, on the one hand, preserved the service with
less of mutilation or abridgment, and, on the other, having
adopted into it certain additions and novelties, ascertainable
to be such in history, as well as being corruptions doctrinally."
Thus, having told his readers that one of the claims of Rome
above other Churches consisted in her having introduced novel
ties and doctrinal corruptions into the ancient devotions, he
went on to give divers reasons for the putting forth of his
essay, based on the view that the Breviary belonged of right
to the Established Church. Then followed a sketch of the
history of the Breviary. In the course of this sketch it was
assumed that because the dates of the composition of the four
Antiphons to the Rlessed Virgin could be stated or guessed
at, therefore they embodied novelties in doctrine. * Little
remembering that on precisely this ground Latitudinarians
reject the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, and in fact
e^ery dogmatic statement whatever, the Tract-writer proceeded
^to a critical analysis of the " hours," and even translations of
considerable portions of the office for different days. In con
junction with these came a new office. A service in comme
moration of the death of the Protestant Bishop Ken was com
piled on the Catholic model, and recommended to the private
use of Anglo-Catholics.
From the time of the publication of this Tract may be
dated the rise of that fondness for "Roman" devotions, which
stills remains one of the tokens of the Tractarian school. On
the fastidious Oxford student or college-fellow, the exquisite
refinement and elaborate polish of the Breviary acted as a
spell. Silently and slowly, a distaste Jor the mangled, de-
c|aiming"T:itTiaT~6T thCBook of Common~T?rayer worked its
way in many a thoughtful and many ajwayward mind. While
the impud^nce-ofthe "Office for Bishop Ken's day 'r was such
as almost to command respect by its fearlessness, the beauties
of the Catholic devotions, now for the first time made a' sub
ject of respectful study, acted upon religious Anglicans like
the first glimpse of the promised land. Already that more
frequent use of their own Prayer-bOok which the movement

Rise, Progress, und Results of Puseyism. 29
had fostered was producing a sense of weariness at the dull
monotonous round. Men who would fain call their congre
gations together daily to prayer both morning and evening,
grew faint beneath the pressure of Act-of-Parliament " ex
hortations" and "absolutions," and sighed for the spiritual
grace and evangelic truth of the Breviary hours. A start
ling phenomenon was seen in Oxford by those privileged to
ywitness its esoteric rites. Protestant clergymen adopted the
rules of Catholic priests, and in whole or in part recited the
Roman Breviary by way of private devotion. In small secret
parties, or in solitary isolation, they said Matins, Lauds,
Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline ; and ac
counted themselves to be carrying out the spirit of the Esta
blishment the while. Some omitted what they deemed the
" novelties and corruptions" of the Breviary, and shrank from
positively addressing our Blessed Lady with a direct invoca
tion. Others, more courageous, more clear-sighted, or more
wilful, recited a Salve Regina or an Alma Redemptoris Mater
with a keener gusto, from a sense of the daring novelty of
their proceedings. Some compiled an Ordo recitandi Divini
Officii adapted to the " English Calendar," i. e. the Calendar
in the Book of Common Prayer, and passed over all Saints'
days not retained by our " venerable Reformers." Others,
already hatinjr^Jjie^Reformation and despising half measures
arI3 cautTorlTgforiedin their Romanising, and loved no' feasts
so well as those. which Protestantism most abhorred. All
this, indeed, was a work of time. It was far from being the
instantaneous result of the publication of the Tract on the
Breviary, though it was already giving symptoms of its ulti
mate progress. At the same time, in its very infancy it was
a token that the movement had completed its first stage, and
was ho longer what it had been at its commencement.
: — • Concurrently with this marked advance of the more ma
tured disciples of the Tracts, a sermon was preached and
published by one of the chiefs, which tended powerfully to
commend the movement to the more sober and "scriptural"
members of the Church of England. Primitive Tradition
recognised in Holy. Scripture was the title of a sermon
delivered by the Rev. John Keble, at a Visitation of Dr.
Dealtry, in Winchester Cathedral, in September 1836. This
discourse did for the Tractarian theory of Tradition what
Dr. Pusey's essay had done for the doctrine of Baptismal
Regeneration. It was made clear that the Bible recognised
the existence of. a certain unwritten deposit of religious doc
trine, to be received by Christians as undoubtedly true. What
that deposit might be, was a distinct consideration. No per-

30 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
son who could read St. Paul's Epistles could deny that frequent
reference was made to some traditional teaching. Whether
"Mr. Keble's deductions on the subject were true, or whether
the Roman doctrine of Infallibility were true, it could no
longer be asserted by men who professed to follow the Bible,
that Tradition, as such, was unsanctioned by the Apostles.
The leaders of the Evangelical party, of course, remained un
convinced. If any tradition was to be tolerated, there was
an end of Lutheranism for ever ; and with an unwonted acute-
ness, the organs and preachers of Lutheranism warned the
public that it was logically impossible to believe in any tra
dition and stop short of Rome. This, however, neither Mr.
Keble nor his friends and followers could see. They had a
theory that the Apostolic Traditions were to be sought for by
historical criticism. The rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, Quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, was proclaimed as their
touchstone. In a happy ignorance of the true bearings of
that famous test, they rested satisfied that while it condemned
Romanism, it would uphold Anglicanism ; and, in the fullest
good faith, they continued to teach the authority of tradition
and the corruptions of Rome.
This sermon had a very considerable sale. The respected
name of its author, its quiet, unoffending tone, its freedom
from all " Romanising" spirit or phraseology, and the unde
niable truth of some of its propositions, all combined to give
it a striking influence on the popular mind. A generation
already sufficiently bewildered by the contradictions of con
troversy and the difficulties of the Scripture text was but
too ready to embrace any apparent solution of its perplexities.
" Here is the clue," it was said, and it was believed. " Let
us go to the Fathers ; let us open the epistles of Ignatius and
Clement ; let us read Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Am
brose ; let us ascertain what St. Paul taught by the same
process through which we ascertain what Julius Caesar did ;
let us ask what the Council of Nice declared to be the Apos
tolic faith, just as we now go to the twelve judges to learn
what is the constitutional law of England." Whether it was
safe to assume that every thing which the Apostles taught was
to be found written in the books of the Fathers, was a ques
tion into which it was not thought prudent or " reverent" to
inquire. Such speculations were needless, it was thought,
and might be dangerous, and therefore the discussion was to
be carried on unhampered by such refinements of reasoning.
The question before the public was simply whether the Apos
tolic Succession, Baptismal Regeneration, a species of Sacri
fice in the Eucharist, and other kindred doctrines, were or

Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism. 31
were not universally believed to be of apostolic origin by the
Christians of the first three jor fjojjr centuries. The settlement
of this doubt was, it was unrVersaTly conceived, not very diffi
cult. Bible -readers, both High Church and Low Church,
who found unexplainable difficulties in Scripture, were agreed
in their interpretation of the Fathers— at least, at second hand.
Moreover, the real writings of the Fathers were, as a fact,
known to very few, and therefore their difficulties were un
known ; whereas the Bible was in every body's hands, and its-
mysteries were familiar to all. Reasoning, accordingly, per
saltum, with true popular recklessness, the multitude con
cluded that the Fathers were easy to be understood. And
thus the matter was settled between the opponents. In their
secret hearts they reasoned as follows : " The Bible," argued
the Tractarians, " is difficult, but theJBibJe jplainly says that.
Tradition is to be reverenced ; the Fathers are T:*a^yrana the
Fathers say that such and such doctrines are taught by Apos<^
tolic Tradition ; therefore, the only right way to ascertain
truth is to ascertain what the Fathers thus assert to be tra
ditional, and to believe it accordingly." The Evangelicals,
on the other hand, thus syllogised : " The Bible is the word
of God, therefore it is easy to be understood ; the Fathers
are not inspired, therefore what they state historically is not
to be believed ; moreover, the Fathers are anti-Lutheran and
Papistical, therefore they are wrong." The Evangelicals had,
further, a corollary to these propositions, which they only
hinted in print, but ceased not to utter plainly in private
and in sermons. It ran thus : " The Bible is easy only to
the spiritually-minded ; therefore it is easy to all who are
spiritually-minded. The Puseyites say it is not easy to them;
therefore they are not spiritually-minded."
And thus stood the controversy at the conclusion of its
third year of existence. The dreams of its earliest infancy
were fading into oblivion ; romance was giving place to re
ality ; already the movement was displaying somewhat of the
energy and recklessness of advancing youth ; and henceforth
we have to watch its rapid progress towards a vigorous man
hood. Then came its transitory season of maturity, its speedy
decay, and its second childhood. In our next Number we
shall continue to trace its history. Meanwhile, we pause
for a brief retrospect of its early stages. Commencing with
an undoubting faith in the divine origin of the Established
Church, its aim was to carry out her true (supposed) princi
ples, and to defend her against her enemies. It had no mis
givings as to her essentially primitive and apostolic character.
It had few, if any, secret sympathies for Rome. It viewed

32 Rise, Progress, and Results of Puseyism.
Puritanism, in all its modifications, as an incubus upon Ca
tholic truth. It abhorred Erastianism, and believed the Re-
j formation to have been conducted on an ti-Erastian principles.
i Accordingly its conduct was in harmony with its aim. It:
: established daily prayers; it taught justification by sacramen
tal grace ; it urged weekly administrations of Holy Commu
nion ; it practised fasting and other mortifications ; it extolled
the Bishops, and looked to them to fight for the Church against
-the State; it called for a restoration of Church discipline; it
claimed the right of giving absolution to the sinner ; and all
: these things it justified by appeals to the opinions of a large
j body of Anglican divines of .the past three hundred years.
As time rolled on, and controversialists attacked the move
ment, and the influx of minds of various types compelled its
leaders, even when most unwilling, to contemplate the conse
quences of their views, its patristic aspect grew more promi
nent, and it was compelled to .defend itself more in detail.
against suspicions of Romanising, and against Rome herself.
The difficulty, of using the Fathers at once against Protest
antism and against " Romanism" was every day found more
insurmountable. The old Anglican nonjuring theory was no
longer applicable^ A new position, both offensive and de
fensive, must be taken up. The threats of Rome must be ,
warded off, while her beauties were acknowledged and her
wealth appropriated ; and all this without giving fresh handle
to the carping unfairness. of the ultra-Protestants.
Thus, then, the first epoch of Puseyism was consummated.
It stood face to face with the Catholic Church, attracted, con
founded, terrified. No suspicion had as yet touched its con-
i science that, after all, the Anglican Church might be no better
than a mob of Wesleyans or Calvinists. The Anglican hier
archy had not as yet " pronounced" against the agitators. . It
still seemed possible to shew that the Church of England "was
Catholic, and the idea of " unprotestantising" her was as yet
in the womb of time. Rome was still to be combated, and
not conciliated, far less obeyed. The British monarch was
still the Defender of the Faith ; and girding themselves up with
new energies for the conflict, the gathering hosts of Trac
tarianism prepared new weapons for the discomfiture of their
foes. How they fought, and how they prospered, we shall in
due time see.

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