was Roman. The popular interpreters of the Articles were jealous against superstition, not against irreverence. 'Thus together with "the Romish doctrine of Pardons" the whole subject of Absolution is often discarded: with Purgatory, the intermediate state with Invocation of Saints, the feeling of communion with them in the one Church, of which they are the perfected members: with the veneration of relics, the feeling that "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints," and the belief in the miracles, which, in some cases at least in the early Church, He certainly wrought through them thus admitting in fact the very principles of infidelity, and rejecting on à priori notions what were after all the "mighty works" of God's hand; or together with the un-Catholic veneration of images, people reject as superstitions all outward reverence for holy things and places: they regard the Altar, whence the holy Mysteries of our Redemption are distributed, as no ways distinguished above the rest of God's House, nor that House itself as sanctified by the presence of Angels and the unseen coming of our Lord. The mere Protestant walks up and down with his hat on, "on holy ground,” listening to the solemn tones of the organ at Haarlem. 'It is then, practically also, of moment to distinguish what our Article does condemn as Romish, lest we involve under it feelings, and doctrines, and practices which are primitive. It is of moment to us practically, since it cannot be concealed that many are deterred from practices, which, though not essential, might still be a great safeguard to them, and are countenanced or (under certain circumstances) recommended by our Church, by the fear of approximating to something corrupt in the Romish system'.' The passages in this Letter which refer to the Church of Rome, and particularly to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin, were the result of much correspondence and very careful study. Among several acknowledgments of a copy of the Letter to Dr. Jelf which Pusey received from his friends, Archdeacon Manning's was noteworthy. He was ' especially grateful for the parts which are most anti-Romanistic.' His 'whole conscience was made miserable by the frightful turning aside of the affections of men's hearts from the One Object of worship to the Blessed Virgin.' 'Wiseman's letter,' he wrote, 'is to me enough to convict the whole system. Pusey's Letter to Jelf. 215 His parallel of the fondness of children to their mother and obedience to their father with the affections of faith is dreadful.' Pusey's motive in writing these passages, however, was not any wish to throw a sop to Protestant prejudices, but a sincere anxiety lest one section of the Movement should be shutting its eyes to the danger which threatened them from the Roman quarter; an anxiety which was not without its ground in fact. The following passage from his Letter to Jelf clearly shows his motive:- 'The character in which Rome exhibits herself in England much aggravates our present difficulties: her policy is a corruption of the Apostolic wisdom, to “become all things to all, that by all means it may" gain some; "it falleth down and humbleth itself, that the congregations of the poor may fall into the hands of its strong ones." Her principle, that there is no salvation out of communion with herself, makes it her first object to draw people anyhow into her communion. The extent, too, of her communion is the tangible proof she puts forward of her being the Catholic Church. This is a sore temptation to her to bend, relax, fall in with unholy ways and usages, which promote this her first end. She would further holiness as much as she can; but she cannot afford to do what is right if it would cause the unholy to part from her. She is obliged to temporize, to lure, to condescend, when she cannot control. In some countries she is suffering the penalty of former sins, having to support the credit of false miracles, which she cannot disavow without owning the past to have been a fraud; while in all over which she has dominion she will tolerate and profit by what she dares not approve; will sit by in silence while men tell falsehood or use violence in her behalf; will suffer visions and miracles which she does not believe to be believed by her people, and to bring gain to her clergy; and even in her own guarded province of the faith will permit unauthorised doctrines (such as that of the Immaculate Conception) to creep in and take the public honours of truth1 wherever men are disposed to receive them. It is painful to think and speak of these things in another member of the mystical Body of Christ, who once was the bulwark of the Faith and a pattern of zeal, and who still has holy practices and institutions which we might gladly imitate; but Rome forces it upon us by sending among us to steal away the hearts of the children of our Church, boldly denying whatever corruptions our people have not before their eyes; since these things were swept away by the Reformation, and she has been able to begin anew in a spirit more congenial to that of religious minds here, and more approximating to early Christianity 2. 1 Festivals and Churches in honour of it. CHAPTER XXVI. CONSEQUENCES OF TRACT 90-WARD AND OAKELEYDIVERGENT 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 1e. g. in the cases of W. G. Ward, F. Oakeley, and Mark Pattison. W. G. Ward and Oakeley. 217 that was clear about it to Newman was that 'it needed keeping in order. 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 day. 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.' 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 the actual circumstances of the movement. upon 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. 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. It 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 some whither, 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. |