APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XXIII.

The following letter is appended as showing the attention which the Oxford Movement was now beginning to attract in the United States of America.

MR. C. S. HENRY TO E. B. P.

REV. AND DEAR SIR,

New York, Oct. 10, 1839.

I have asked my friend the Rev. Dr. Wainwright to give me the enclosed note of introduction because I wished to take the opportunity of Mr. Cogswell's visit to Oxford to send you the accompanying parcel-in which you will receive the American edition of the 'Tracts for the Times,' as far as they have been published to this time. After endeavouring for some time without success to find a publisher who would bring out in this country on his own account an edition of the 'Tracts for the Times' (with the related writings) I have at length assumed myself the pecuniary responsibility of the undertaking. You will pardon the style in which they are printed, when you consider that my object was to make them as cheap as could well be done, in order to secure their wider circulation. A volume of 552 pages is given for one dollar, or about seven shillings sterling.

I have a deep conviction that in this country a great conflict is preparing in which the Church will be called to take stand against Romanism on the one hand, and the rationalizing tendencies of the various other sects. I cannot (when looking at the character [of] our present religious controversy) help feeling the immense importance of recalling (I should rather say calling) the public mind here to the entirely disregarded questions concerning the Sacraments, the authority of the Church in matters of faith no less than of discipline, and the more reverent study of primitive antiquity. With this conviction I have been led to undertake the bringing out of the Oxford Tracts with other writings in their strain by yourself, Mr. Newman, Keble, Hook, &c.

Besides this I am desirous to have some well-devised effort made to supply the common mind of the country with a better kind of religious books than are now to be found in general circulation-infected as they nearly all are with the miserable spirit of Ultra-Protestantism. By judicious republications of old treatises of the great divines of the seventeenth century, as well as of a later day, in harmony with the

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general doctrine [of the] 'Tracts,' and by such other works as may require to be specially prepared for this country, a series might be brought out that with the Divine Blessing might do great good. I have been for some time conferring with Dr. Wainwright in regard to such a series, and hope that something may be done. Among the works that I should like to include in such a series (besides the more directly doctrinal works) would be a good popular History of the English Reformation, one of the time of the 'Commonwealth,' one relating to the period from 1688 through the Non-juring times.

The religious condition of this country is now peculiarly interesting. On the one hand the Romanists are at work with great ability and adroitness, taking advantage of the innumerable sects into which the community is split; and on the other hand these sects are mingled in a complicated strife-the so-called Orthodox or Evangelical schools conflicting among themselves, yet all uniting in opposition to the Unitarians, which latter body again is in hourly danger of a splitthat will divide the old Priestleyan Socinians against the followers of the German Rationalistic form of infidelity. In the mean[time] the rationalizing spirit has deeply infected the body of the yet Orthodox Independents and Presbyterians. And it is a pity to be obliged to add that the so-called Evangelical or Low Church party in our Episcopal Church have but little comprehension and less sympathy with the Catholic principles of the English Reformation. On the contrary, their sympathies seem to be with the sectarians; they are vehement and bitter in their denunciations of the Oxford theology; they are inclined to secure the credit of possessing (in the minds of the other sects) all the 'vital piety' there is in the Church, by sinking the claims of the Church and its ministry; and with pseudo-liberality affecting to regard the distinctive features of our Church as so much unessential Gothic carved work, ornamenting indeed the outward form of the Church but not affecting the question of spiritual benediction— which is as much warranted to other sects as to theirs! It seems to me therefore unspeakably important that true notions of the Church as the depository of the Sacraments and the divinely constituted dispenser of spiritual benediction, as well as deeper views of the nature and significance of the Sacraments themselves, should be earnestly presented.

Along with the 'Tracts' I have put for your acceptance some other things which I have brought out. In themselves they have but little claim upon your notice. Some of them are the crude views of a mind not yet matured in its views-especially on the proper relation of the speculative intellect to theology. The only reason I have for offering them to you is that being yet a comparatively young learner (I am but little beyond thirty years old), and having recently found myself deeply indebted to you and your fellow-labourers, both for what you have written and for what you have put me upon reading of others' writings-I feel a natural impulse to connect with this note of

acknowledgment some other visible memorials of my own mind and

pen.

If you should do me the favour of a line in reply, I beg to assure you that any suggestions you may make concerning the great and good cause in which you labour would be thankfully received, as also any information of the progress and condition of your publications and endeavours.

I have been unable to procure from London the second part of vol. ii. of the Tracts, being yours on Baptism. The time is near for needing it for our reprint. If my friend Mr. Cogswell (who has been my associate in the New York Review for the past year) should fail to find a copy at the booksellers, could I tax your kindness so far as to put him in the way of procuring a copy for me, to send over as soon as possible?

Hoping for your indulgent reception for this hastily written and long note, and your kind allowance of the liberty I have taken in addressing you,

I am, Rev. and dear Sir,

Very respectfully and faithfully yours, &c.

C. S. HENRY.

Rev. Dr. Pusey.

CHAPTER XXIV.

UNION FOR PRAYER—THE LITTLEMORE 'MONASTERY' WHAT IS PUSEYISM?-THE ORNAMENTS RUBRICPROPOSAL TO PRINT THE SARUM BREVIARY-RELATIONS WITH THE EASTERN CHURCH-FEARS OF SECESSION-GATHERING HOSTILITY.

1840.

DURING the spring of 1840 there was a good deal of discussion on a subject which powerfully affected the inner life of the Oxford party. This was a proposed union for prayer. The suggestion came originally from the Hon. and Rev. George Augustus Spencer, better known afterwards as the Passionist Father Ignatius, who had passed from an earnest phase of Evangelicalism to the Church of Rome. In January, 1840, Mr. Spencer visited Oxford.

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

Oriel College, January 9, 1840. Mr. Spencer, the R. C., has been in Oxford, indeed is now. I declined dining to meet him. He is with Palmer of Magdalen. Upon this he called on me, having it very much in heart to talk to every one on one particular subject. He has lately been instrumental in getting Christians in France to pray for the English Church, to whom the Germans are now being added, and he wants in like manner to get the English to pray for the Continental Christians. I suppose he would like nothing better than to have a practice set on foot of praying, e.g. every Thursday (which is their day), for their restoration to the true faith and for the unity of the Church. He urged very strongly that all difficulties would soon vanish if there was real charity on both sides. He is a gentlemanlike, mild, pleasing man, but very smooth.

Pusey hesitated at first. He had declined a similar proposal when it came from a Low Church quarter.

E. B. P. To Rev. J. H. NEWMAN.

Brighton, January 12, 1840.

I am suspicious as to any combinations within our Church. It seems to me that till the system of the Church is more carried out one is rather drawing people off from the right direction by combining even to realize in a greater degree what she has provided for us. It is what one has been objecting to Mr. Stuart's plan and the Low Church generally. We do pray, as a Church, for the Churches in the Communion of Rome, as for all others, twice daily; they only pray for us once in the year as lying under an anathema; so that, much as we are obliged to Mr. Spencer and those joined with him, our Church, as a Church, has the superiority in doing for them, as a Church, what they are only doing for us as individuals. (I read part of your letter to Manning, who was with me, and he seemed to think that any union corresponding to that of Mr. S. would put those who did not like it in perplexity.) Ought not the day also to have been a fast-day? for which Thursday is specially ill-suited, besides the difficulty of instituting private fasts. I do not collect from your letter what your own thoughts about it are, so send mine and Manning's.

Newman rejoined that he did not see any harm in one day being fixed to pray for Unity. Such an arrangement did not involve the formation of a society. The new commandment to love one another had been given on a Thursday.

There the matter ended, so far as Pusey was concerned, until the end of March, when Newman proposed that if a union of prayer throughout the whole Church was impossible something might be attempted within the Church of England. In this modified proposal Pusey was ready to coincide.

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

Christ Church, Eve of the Annunciation, 1840. I should like the plan of 'an union for prayer for internal union' very much, if it could be shown to be regular, and not give countenance to irregularities, such as October 4 commemorations, Mr. Stewart's plan, &c. It would be excellent, as originating on our side, who are looked upon as disturbers of the public peace, and the L[ow] C[hurch] must come into it and be softened by it. But how could it become extensive and regular too? Could one ask the Bishop of Oxford and make it diocesan, so that other dioceses might join? or the Archbishop of Canterbury, so at least as to be able to say that they did not