Result of the Charges. 239 insisted on the deference claimed for Bishops in the Ignatian Epistles; and the moral passion for an unreserved obedience to a living ruler went hand in hand with the kindred enthusiasms for a definite creed and a life of genuine self-sacrifice. To balance one principle by another is not given to men of all temperaments; and it is rarely possible in days of youth and inexperience. The Bishops may or may not have been alive to the higher value which was assigned to their words now that Divine authority had been more fully asserted on behalf of their office; but their language was unhappily calculated to aggravate the difficulties of the situation by encouraging Latitudinarian or Puritan attacks on the Oxford writers, and by producing in the minds of younger men widespread distrust of the Church which the Bishops represented. No one had better opportunities than Pusey of observing these disastrous results, and he describes them in his published Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1842, as follows: 'The Bishops' Charges have been made the occasion of attacks, too often, alas! from the pulpit, and that in language little fitted for the sanctuary of God, where our Lord is "in the midst" of us. Persons who hate the principles of the Church for their strictness, or for subjecting the individual will, who, with the condemnation of what they hate, mix up ribaldry and profaneness, have still been glad to carry on their unholy warfare under the banner of our Bishops. Those severed from the Church and wishing her destruction, still plead the authority of our Bishops. Thoughtful sermons on sacred things have been noted down and blasphemously commented upon and ridiculed. It is inconceivable what a flood of profaneness has been, in the last few months, poured out upon our unhappy land under the plea of speaking against what such persons have ventured to call "heresy." And all this, through (one must say) blasphemous writing in the worst part of the periodical press, has reached every corner of our land; they who cannot read, hear; they who understand not what they read, still partake of the general agitation; the repose of our once peaceful villages is broken in upon; the most stable part of our population unsettled; the less thoughtful seem to look forwards to some evil which is to come upon them unawares; "we are all," it seems, (to use their own language,) to become Papists"; and so they are prepared to desert our Church when occasion offers; others are taught to mistrust the ministers who have been labouring faithfully among them for years: if former negligences are anywhere repaired, the negligent have the popular cry ready for their plea; the serious and earnest-minded stand aghast, looking in sorrowful perplexity, what all this can mean. Until of late, men of more thoughtful minds were the more stirred to enter into Holy Orders, because our gracious Master Himself seemed to be "hiring labourers into His Vineyard," and "giving each his work"; now, some such even shrink back, doubting, and in dismay what our Bishops may do. What wonder, if some are faint-hearted whether our Lord be in the vessel, which is not only so tempest-tost, but whose very shipmen and pilots are so disunited, how or whither to guide her, "neither sun nor stars appearing 1"?" The effects of these Charges soon became apparent. 'At Bristol,' wrote Pusey to Harrison on November 9, 'shortly after I had preached there for the S. P. G., a clergyman preached against the "hell-born heresy of Puseyism": the same person omits in the week-day parts of the lessons, yet we are the only persons censured.' On November 17th Pusey writes again to Harrison : 'Mr. Close the other day thanked God in his pulpit that the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol had condemned us as preaching another Gospel; and though he (the Bishop) did not mean it, his words bear it out.' In another great city the people were instructed to look upon the teaching of a portion of the ministers of their Church as the teaching of Satan. Would that this were an insulated case 2!' Pusey saw only too clearly whither all this might lead, and, read in the light of much that has followed, the language of his Letter to the Archbishop has an almost prophetic character: 'If this goes on, my Lord, where is it to end? If our own Bishops and others encouraged by them say to us-sore as it is to repeat, they are their own words-"Get thee hence, Satan,"-while those of the Roman Communion pray for us, and invite us, is it not sorely adding to the temptations, I say not of ourselves, but of younger men? The young are guided by their sympathies more than by their convictions; our position is altogether an unnatural one; it was never meant, nor did he who first originated the idea of our Tracts, contemplate, that we should stand thus; we never wished to be leaders; he who has been forced into that unenviable eminence loved 1 Letter to Archbishop of Canterbury,' pp. 114-116, ed. 3. Result of the Charges. 241 retirement and obscurity; we wished, as I said, to rouse, at a critical moment, the sense of our Church to the value of a part of her deposit which she was neglecting; our first Tracts were the short abrupt addresses of persons who, when the enemy was upon them, seize the first weapon which comes to hand and discharge it; our more elaborate ones grew under our hands and became such almost without our own will; we formed no system; we did nothing to gather people round ourselves; we besought others (though in vain) to preach in this place on the same doctrines, that those doctrines might not be identified with us; we wished to guide people away from ourselves, and pointed them on, and have been essaying to lead them, to the Ancient Church, in connexion with our own; our publications of the Fathers which had the sanction of your Grace and other of your Brethren, had this as its main object, to present the fullness of the Ancient system, in faith and life, apart from modern statements and modern controversies; we forewent much which any of us might have desired to do, in order that the Church might be listened to, not ourselves; in whatever degree we have been made a party, it has been the act of others, not our own; we are held together not by party ties but by our common faith, and our common object of restoring our Church. 'We wish to be merged in our Church, to be nothing but what is of all the highest, ministers and servants of our God in her, "repairers of the breach, restorers of paths to dwell in." But if we are thus singled out from the rest of our Lord's flock, as diseased and tainted sheep, who must be kept separate from the rest, lest we corrupt them; if a mark is thus set upon us and we are disowned, things cannot abide thus. For us, who are elder, it might be easy to retire from the weary strife, if it should be ever necessary, into lay communion, or seek some other branch of our Church, which would receive us; but for the young, whose feelings are not bound up with their Church by the habits and mercies of many years, and to whom labouring in her service is not become a second nature, an element in our existence, their sympathies will have vent, and, if they find themselves regarded as outcasts from their Churchto a Church they must belong, and they will seek Rome. 'Among those, in whose minds serious misgivings have been raised, are not merely what would be ordinarily called "young men"; these are, one may say, some of the flower of the English Church; persons whose sense of dutifulness binds them to her, who would, to use the language of one of them, "feel it to be of course their duty to abide in her as long as they could." What we fear is not generally a momentary ebullition, but rather lest the thought of seceding from our Church should gradually become familiar to people's minds, and a series of shocks loosen their hold until at last they drop off, almost of themselves, from some cause which in itself seems wholly inadequate, because their grasp had gradually been relaxed before. What we fear is lest a deep despondency about ourselves and our Church come over people's minds, and they abandon her, as thinking her case hopeless; or lest individuals who are removed from the sobering influence of this ancient home of the Church, should become fretted and impatient at these unsympathizing condemnations, and the continued harassing of the unseemly strife now carried on under the shelter of your Lordships' names, and losing patience should lose also the guidance vouchsafed-to the patient'.' 1 Letter to Archbishop of Canterbury,' pp. 71-75, ed. 3. CHAPTER XXVII. VISIT TO IRELAND-THE JERUSALEM BISHOPRIC-THE POETRY PROFESSORSHIP-FRIENDLY REMONSTRANCES. 1841-1842. IN the eventful summer of 1841, Pusey spent July and August in Ireland. He had intended to make this visit in the previous year, partly as change of air for his children, but chiefly to see the working of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods there, with a view to establishing 'an order of deaconesses' in the English Church. Circumstances compelled him to postpone this plan in 1840 in consequence of his son's state of health; meanwhile they gave him additional reasons for making it. He was particularly anxious to meet Dr. Todd, of Trinity College, Dublin, one of the leading Churchmen in Ireland. He also desired an opportunity of observing the working of the Roman Catholic Church in a country where it could control the majority of the population. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the troubles consequent upon Tract 90 might not be diminished by his visit at such a moment. Pusey wrote in May 1841 to Dr. Todd to apprise him of his intention, and received a warm welcome in reply. REV. DR. TODD TO E. B. P. Trin. Coll. (Dublin), May 10, 1841. I am rejoiced to find that there is a chance of seeing you here this summer. I hope we shall be able to get you to preach once or twice in Dublin, were it only to convince people that you do not wear a Pope's tiara or a Cardinal's hat. ... I am very glad that you are writing on Tract 90. That the view it gives of our Articles is substantially true I have not the least doubt, |