Reception of the Letter.

79

Pusey and he were in energetic accord as to the direction of the Movement and the principles on which it should be defended; but the 'parting of the ways' was near at hand. Already in their respective attitudes towards the Bishop's charge and the 'Martyrs' Memorial' we seem to see an intimation of divergence which was soon to be more clearly realized, at least by one of them. It was in the summer of the same year that Newman, while studying the Monophysite controversy, saw, as he thought, 'the shadow of a hand upon the wall.'

Pusey's Letter had its effect. It reached a fourth edition in twelve months. How it was welcomed in some quarters will appear from the following:

REV. DR. HOOK TO E. B. P.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,

Vicarage, Leeds, April 3, 1839.

It is impossible for me to thank you sufficiently for your Letter to my Lord of Oxford. It is calculated to do us here more good than anything that has appeared for a long time. It is too dear for the middle classes, who think much of anything they spend in books: I therefore wish you to give me two dozen copies that I may send them about through Yorkshire. . . .

...

I have advertized your Letter to the Bishop last week in our paper, with a little adjunct.

Ever, my dear friend,

Most affectionately yours,

W. F. HOOK.

But the Letter was attacked, among others, by Dr. Christopher Benson, the Master of the Temple; and this, together with the criticisms provoked by Newman's 'Lectures on Justification,' led Pusey to prefix a long and valuable preface on the subject of Justification to the fourth edition of his Letter. Before publishing this preface he sent the proofs to Newman.

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

Oriel College, Aug. 4, 1840.

I have no remark to make on your preface of consequence, except to thank you for the extreme trouble you have taken with me. If I must say something, I would ask whether you are not too sanguine

in saying that we are stationary. And my lectures were not suggested to me by any one, except the clamour on the subject.

Pusey replies:

Brighton, Aug. 11, 1840.

Indeed you did write your 'Lectures. on Justification' at my suggestion, though you of course felt the difficulties too. It was at my request that you set yourself to remove them. I have therefore left the statement [that the lectures were written at the suggestion of another]. It seems somehow a reason why you should not have all this trouble when you did not undertake it of your own mind.

The preface mainly consists of extracts from Newman's 'Lectures on Justification,' so arranged and commented on as to meet the objections which had been urged against them. Thus, although the words in which the doctrine is presented are Newman's, the order and method of the presentation is Pusey's, and has a substantive interest of its own. Pusey does not notice the question which Newman had raised with reference to his statement that

'it is ever the tendency of novelty and schismatical teaching to develop itself further, and detach itself more from the doctrines of the Church. Stationariness is a proof of adherence to some fixed and definite standard.'

He kept the statement where he had placed it, at the beginning of his preface, and at the time nothing more was said of it. But in after years Newman referred to it as an illustration of Pusey's 'confidence in his position.' To Newman himself, when a Roman Catholic, the Movement seemed to have been a steady impulse towards Rome. Pusey saw in it only an influence which restored the true meaning of the formularies of the English Church and quickened its faith and activity by doing so. Newman added, Pusey made his statement in good faith it was his subjective view of it! Of course Pusey might have said the same thing of his friend.

1 'Apologia, 1st ed., p. 138.

CHAPTER XXII.

MRS. PUSEY'S PHILANTHROPIC AND RELIGIOUS WORKHER ILLNESS - CONDITIONAL BAPTISM · STAY AT WEYMOUTH-PUSEY'S SERMONS FOR S. P. G.-MORE ALARMING ILLNESS OF MRS. PUSEY-APPROACH OF

PUSEY'S memory is so closely associated in the minds of Churchmen with his work as a theologian, controversialist and spiritual guide, that the more intimate relations of his private life are apt to be forgotten. No one, however, who was admitted to the intimacy of his home at Christ Church could fail to be deeply impressed with the influence which his character and religious convictions exercised on all who came in contact with him in his domestic circle.

His religious seriousness pervaded every detail of the home life, entering into the very simplest relations with his children; and hence, in spite of the even passionate affection which he felt for them, there was probably a strictness about the discipline of the nursery and schoolroom which friends and relations, even in those severer days, thought somewhat overstrained. But indeed both parents loved their children with the deepest affection; and their correspondence, so far as it has survived, is full of the detailed and tender interest which they took in the development of the characters of their boy and two little girls. It is pleasant to read that when Mrs. Pusey was away from Oxford, Pusey

himself used to be with his children at the time of their saying their prayers in the morning and evening. During such absences also they lived in his study, adding probably to its normal confusion, but relieving the stress of his severe work by their bright childish ways. Sometimes however he would frankly acknowledge that he could not join in their games:-'I do not find it in me.' They were, however, always in his thoughts. Thus on one occasion, when himself absent from home, he writes to his wife ::

[April, 1837.]

'I was very much vexed to recollect on my way to the coach that I had forgotten the children and my promise. However, I blessed them, as I did you, with that choicest of all blessings, "the Peace of God," as I saw the cross on the cathedral presiding over and hallowing our dear home. Tell the children that I blessed them and thought of them much when I woke this morning.'

Until the year 1837 Pusey lived much in the same way as did his brother canons. But his many charities, and, not least, his generous contribution to the London churches, had led him as early as 1835 to consider the question of his expenditure. His growing sensitiveness also on the question of social duties appears from such passages in his letters to his wife as the following:

'I am going to dine to-day with Burton to meet Dr. Russell (Charterhouse, perhaps future Bishop) and only him,-to-morrow Gaudy,―Monday week Bodley dinner. Eheu! fugaces labuntur anni in dinnering.'

In the spring of 1837 they sold, as has been said, their horses and carriage, and in other ways curtailed their household expenses. All this involved some withdrawal from society; and Mrs. Pusey, who now entered with all her heart into her husband's feelings, if she did not go beyond them, sold all her jewels, and gave the money to the London churches.

These particulars of Pusey's home life illustrate the way in which he practically carried out his public teaching. It was on the Sunday after quietly selling his carriage and horses that he told an Oxford audience :

Curtailment of expenditure.

83

'We confess of ourselves that we are a luxurious people, that luxury is increasing, spreading everywhere; that it is taking possession of our land; that we know not how to stem it; and yet we are secure, as if what has taken place everywhere else would not here, as if we were to be an exception to God's dealings'.'

On the evening of the same day he writes to his wife, who was in Guernsey :

'When we meet again we must try to live more like pilgrims [journeying] heavenwards. I am much perplexed by my own sermon: for I know not how I can act up to it, with our Heads of Houses' dinners. And it has come across me, had one not better give them up altogether?'

The London congregation which listened to him on St. Barnabas' Day, 1837, within a week of the sale of his wife's jewels, probably little suspected his moral right to make the earnest appeal contained in his striking sermon on Christian kindliness and charity, in which he presses the example of the saint who, 'having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet' (Acts v. 4).

'If all cannot be parted with lawfully, why not some? Why not some, not merely of our superfluities, year by year, but (what only requires faith) of our substance, so that we may be poorer in the sight of men, richer in the sight of God?... Would there be no blessing if our women broke off the ornaments (which it is at least safer for Christian women not to wear), as the Jewish women of old, for the service of their God? Is there no blessing on luxuries abandoned, establishments diminished, show of display laid aside, equipages dropped, superfluous plate cast into the treasury of God, the rich (where it might be) walking on foot here, that they may walk in glory in the streets of the City which are of pure gold? '

It may be that the clergy are sometimes charged justly with being merely rhetorical in the pulpit. It is a terrible charge: but certainly it is not one which could be laid at Pusey's door.

In this matter of charity, it has been seen, Mrs. Pusey was entirely at one with her husband; in fact, the growth of her character during the eleven years of her married

was a remarkable testimony to the strength and

1 'Par. Serm.' iii. pp. 311, 312. Preached May 25, 1837, in Oxford.

Par. Serm.' iii. 385-387.