CHAPTER XXVI.

CONSEQUENCES OF TRACT 90-WARD AND OAKELEY— DIVERGENT VIEWS OF THE REFORMATION - TREATMENT OF MR. KEBLE'S CURATE - PUSEY'S VISIT TO THE ARCHBISHOP-EPISCOPAL CHARGES.

1841.

THE hopes that the controversy might die away, which so often find expression in letters of this period, were not to be realized. They were frustrated partly by the reiterated outcries of ultra-Protestant controversialists, and partly, it must be added, by the exaggerated or paradoxical advocacy which was sometimes employed in defence of the tract. Pusey and Keble could not monopolize the defence of Tract 90. The men for whom it was mainly written would have something to say about it, and they would not be disposed to minimize the expressions in it which had provoked Low Church or Latitudinarian criticism. Indeed one effect of the tract was to make a section of the Oxford school, which had lately come into notice, keenly conscious of its separate temper and aims, which were not those of Pusey and the older men. As Newman afterwards said, this section was 'sweeping the original party of the Movement aside and was taking its place.' It was, as compared with the older party, less careful about authority, whether Primitive or Anglican; more disposed to à priori reasoning, to the elaboration and advocacy of symmetrical systems, to the imperious exigencies of bare logic, to bold and striking generalizations, to a philosophical treatment of pure theology. Such a mental disposition might, and indeed did eventually, lead in more directions than one1; but what its direction would be was as yet uncertain; the only thing

1

e. g. in the cases of W. G. Ward, F. Oakeley, and Mark Pattison.

W. G. Ward and Oakeley.

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that was clear about it to Newman was that 'it needed keeping in order1. Of this section the two prominent men were Oakeley and Ward. They came to be what they now were out of very different antecedents, and they were very unlike each other. But they were at this moment united by a disposition to urge the Movement forwards in a manner calculated to imperil its original scope and purpose, its present coherence, and the eventual loyalty, at least of some of its members, to the English Church.

Certainly not the least remarkable products of the controversy about Tract 90 were given to the world when Mr. W. G. Ward published two pamphlets and an appendix on the question of the day2. These pamphlets contained several propositions which went beyond the ground actually occupied by Newman; and Pusey was distressed not only by their general tone, but also by the disparaging language contained in them about the Reformers. Certainly this language got its author into trouble, which, it must be added, he took very quietly. He felt bound to resign his two lectureships at Balliol, and he was inhibited from preaching in Margaret Chapel, of which the Rev. F. Oakeley was, at the time, minister. Oakeley felt warmly about the treatment of his friend, and Pusey found it difficult to say what he really thought about Ward's unbalanced logic without appearing to sympathize with the severe treatment that was dealt out to him. The difficulty was increased by the correspondence which followed between Oakeley and Pusey. Oakeley sent a message from Ward to Pusey on June 22nd to the following effect :

'Ward knew of no theological subject on which he should venture to have an opinion different from Newman.... At the same time, Ward would certainly not pledge himself not to join Rome under any circumstances, nor from what he has heard N. say, does he think he would.'

1 Newman, 'Apologia pro vita sua (ed. 1880),' p. 164.

2 On April 10, 1841, appeared 'A few words in support of No. 90.' Oxford, Parker, 1841. On May 21, 'A few more words in support of No. 90,' by the Rev. William George

Ward, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College Oxford, Parker, 1841. On June 21, 'Appendix to a few more words in support of No. 90, in answer to Mr. Lowe's pamphlet,' by the same. Oxford, Parker, 1841.

Then the July number of the British Critic, which had now passed into the hands of Mr. T. Mozley, contained an article by Oakeley on Bishop Jewel. It is a clever, but one-sided essay, containing much truth, and some exaggerations. about Jewel and the Reformers, and no adequate statement of the causes which made some reformation necessary. But the real interest of the article lay not in its worth as a piece of historical criticism, but in its bearing upon the actual circumstances of the movement.

'We cannot stand,' the writer observes, 'where we are. go backwards or forwards, and it will surely be the latter'.'

We must

Pusey was on a visit to Ireland when he received this article. It was best to go at once to head-quarters: so he wrote to Newman.

E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.

Kingstown, July 20, 1841.

It

Oakeley has sent me his article in the last British Critic (my own copy has not reached me). I am grieved that he and Ward think it necessary to act as 'public prosecutors' against the Reformers. is surely not leaving it 'an open question' if the British Critic, which is supposed to express all our opinions, engages in such a crusade against them. I do not see how, according to any etiquette, the British Critic could, in another number, apologize for the Reformers, and if not, then it is committed to a view of a certain section. I am very anxious, too, about the movement tone which it implies. He speaks (last page but one) as if all which had been hitherto gained since the Tracts commenced were nothing, not sufficient to justify 'the breach of peace and charity' which has taken place; as though it were nothing to have recovered the true doctrine of the two Sacraments, of Justification, the Church, Judgment to come, Repentance, Apostolic Succession, Charity, Fasting, Submission to the authority of the Church, the quod ubique, &c., unless we take a certain view of the Reformation and 'go forwards,' he does not say whither. I should think this indefiniteness in itself very injurious: it is one thing for ourselves privately to feel or to say that (if so be) we have not cleared our views as to the Power of the Keys, or to confess that we have or may have much yet to learn, another to set persons adrift, tell them that they are to go forwards somewhither, urge them on, and give them (in the case of younger men) neither chart nor compass. And why may not such as I, if we can, think the English Reformers meant to be Catholic? There are

1 British Critic, No. 59, p. 45.

'The British Critic.

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confessedly two elements in them-submission to the authority of the early Church, and perplexed views on subjects which the foreign Reformers had perplexed. Why should not one think them (if one can) implicitly Catholic while their language is perhaps Zwinglian? Or why should their appeal to Zurich be thought fatal to their Catholicism, when persons confessedly Catholic, as Cosins and Andrewes and Laud (who had not seen the development of the foreign Reformation) maintain that the foreign Reformers meant the same as we, i. e. were equally Catholic? Why should the tables be turned and it be argued that they meant that we were the same as they really are, i.e. Uncatholic?

I should not regret so much the breaking-up which these views imply (although one does feel any parting); we might do all the better for evidently not being a party; but I fear it will give the Romanists occasion to triumph the more over our disunion, and perplex still more those who are inclined to leave, when they see nothing to lean on-one giving them one solution of the act by which our Church was continued to us, one another. Thus I could not [but] fear much perplexity in a case in which I am engaged: one tells her that the act of consecrating Archbishop Parker was a sin; another, as myself, justifies it. It must be a great additional temptation to secede from our Church when even the one section of it, whom such people would be inclined to trust, is at variance within itself, and yet attaching so much importance to the point at issue as the last number of the British Critic does. But I am yet more concerned for the 'movement party itself.' The British Critic throws out this view as the only rope to a drowning man, and yet implies a doubt in italics whether it will hold? It makes one heavy-hearted and think that one's office is done.

Oakeley's article was not Pusey's only grievance.

The same number of the British Critic contained also a review of a lecture which Dr. Faussett, in his capacity of Margaret Professor of Divinity, had delivered on Tract 90 in the Divinity School. The lecturer defended the popular interpretation of the Articles, and denounced the tract as evasive and fallacious. The reviewer, who was no other than the new Editor of the British Critic himself, had no difficulty in pointing out the weakness and inconsistencies of the lecture; but, being a man. of great humour, he was tempted to illustrate it by an apologue, which soon became more famous than either the lecture or the review. Everybody in and out of Oxford knew who were meant by the two dogs 'Growler

and Fido'; and the sombre controversy of the hour was lighted up by a flash of inevitable and well-nigh universal merriment1.

Pusey was by no means without a sense of humour, but he distrusted humour as a weapon of religious controversy; its employment blinded men to the greatness of the issues at stake and to the requirements of charity. Accordingly he continues his letter to Newman as follows:

[July 20, 1841.]

'I enclose a letter from Jelf, written, as you see, hastily, and not as meant to be seen, but which shows the effect of these articles on such men. I could not but regret myself (and so did Dr. Todd) the tone of the article against Dr. F[aussett]: it seems like the work of a follower who wished to avenge his leader (you) and thought it did not matter how hard blows he dealt, since he was not "avenging himself," but forgot that, as it is scarcely known that you have ceased to be editor, and it is still naturally under your influence, he was committing you. If anything could create sympathy for Dr. F., or spoil our cause, it would be such an article. We write mildly with our names, but our supposed organ is as vehement as the Record or the Observer.

'I have poured out my sorrows to you, and you will excuse it.' Keble wrote to Newman on July 4th in the same sense about the Growler and Fido' article:

'Has not our friend,' he asked, 'gone beyond the just limits of Christian, and if it may be said in the same breath, of gentlemanly severity in several parts-I fear, to be honest, I must say—in the general conception and execution of that paper? To persons who do not know M.-how far he is from everything that is spiteful, the very consciousness of which, I imagine, makes him freer in his rebukes-it will seem, I fear, as if something like personal malice and revenge had to do with it. . . . Would it not be well to put a drag on T. M.'s too Aristophanic wheels, else he will get us all into a scrape? You will guess I was startled when I tell you that I was rather looking for an apology for the sentence of which I complained to you in the last number, about "How happy should I be with either," &c., and instead of it I find him running riot in a whole long paper.'

Keble added that he 'particularly liked' Oakeley's article on Jewel.

Newman replied sympathetically. He did not wish to

'See 'Letters of J. B. Mozley,' p. 121.