PAGE 306 370 398 SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS- -FIRST PROJECT OF A CHURCH FOR LEEDS LAYING THE FOUNDATION STONE COSTLY GIFTS-ALTAR PLATE-ALARM AT SECES- ADDRESS ΤΟ THE BISHOP - PUSEY'S ANTI-ROMAN POSITION-RELATIONS TO NEWMAN-HIS UNCHANG- ING FAITH IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH-NEWMAN'S MATURE ESTIMATE OF PUSEY. PAGE 466 DR. PUSEY PREACHING THE 'CONDEMNED' SERMON, FROM A SKETCH BY THE REV. EDWARD KILVERT. THE LIFE OF EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY CHAPTER XIX. ROMAN CONTROVERSY AND CHARGES OF ROMANIZINGTRACTS ON ROMANISM-ON PRAYER FOR THE DEAD -ON PURGATORY—ATTACKS FROM THE 'RECORD' AND 'CHRISTIAN OBSERVER '-ARCHDEACON SPOONER -LETTER TO BISHOP BAGOT. 1836-1837. IT was in the year 1836 that the controversy on the subject of the claims and position of the Roman Catholic Church again emerged. That such a renewal of ancient strife should take place was inevitable. It was impossible to appeal to Church principles, as the Tractarians had appealed to them in controversy with Latitudinarian and Puritan forms of thought, without being asked the question, How far do you mean to go? For those Church principles were in the main common ground between the Roman and the English Churches. 'We agree with Rome,' said Keble, 'about our major premisses, our differences are about the minor.' This amount of agreement placed the Tractarians between two fires: they were reproached from one quarter with treachery, from another with inconsistency; and they had to show, as well as they could, that they were neither inconsistent nor treacherous; that abstract logic has to take account of the checks which are imposed on it by history; and that the real strength of a position is not to be measured by the assaults to which it may be apparently exposed at the hands of popular controversialists. In the earlier days of the Movement nothing was heard of the Roman question. ... 'Romanism,' wrote Pusey, 'in our earlier days, was scarcely heard of among us. It was apparently at a low ebb, and partook of the general listlessness which crept over the Church during the last century. It seemed to present but the skeleton of the right practices which it retained, and helped by its neglect of their spirit to cast reproach upon them. The writer of a work then popular1 would even speak of it as extinct among us. There was in our younger days no visible Church to which to attach ourselves except our own. The Roman communion had in this country but her few scattered sheep, who had adhered to her since the times of Queen Elizabeth. She was herself asleep, and scarcely maintained herself, much less was such as to attract others "' The change which had taken place was not due only or chiefly to the Church revival at Oxford. 'The Roman Church also has, in some countries certainly, partaken of the same refreshing dew as ourselves: the same Hand which has touched us and bid our sleeping Church, Awake, Arise, has reached her also. Our Lord seems to be awakening the several portions of His Church, and even those bodies which have not yet the organization of a Church, at once *.' But if the revival of religious activity in the Roman Church was independent of anything in the English, it was stimulated and given a new direction by the publication of the Oxford Tracts. They at once roused its hopes and provoked its hostility, and the new situation which was thus created demanded the serious attention of their authors. 'The controversy with the Romanists,' wrote Newman in January, 1 Father Clement. 2Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury,' by Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. Oxford, 1842, 3rd ed., p. 8. 3 Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 8. Tracts against Rome. 1836, 'has overtaken us "like a summer's cloud." 3 We find ourselves in various parts of the country preparing for it. Yet when we look back we cannot trace the steps by which we arrived at our present position. We do not recollect what our feelings were this time last year on the subject-what was the state of our apprehensions and anticipations. All we know is that here we are, from long security, ignorant why we are not Roman Catholics; and they, on the other hand, are said to be spreading and strengthening on all sides of us, vaunting of their success, real or apparent, and taunting us with our inability to argue with them'.' Towards the summer of 1835 Newman had been disposed, as has been already mentioned, to bring the 'Tracts for the Times' to a close. Pusey had encouraged him, for several reasons, to continue them. One was the urgency of the Popish controversy.' It was needed in present circumstances, and it would prevent a onesided estimate of their position and aims. 'With the Popish question one might get at all the Low Church: on others the High Church are afraid of us.' Accordingly coincidently with the struggle against Hampden's Latitudinarianism —a campaign was opened against Roman Catholicism. The third volume of the 'Tracts for the Times' begins with two tracts 'against Romanism.' The British Magazine offered to its readers. the striking and original papers entitled 'Home Thoughts abroad,' from Newman's pen. And throughout 1836 Newman was hard at work upon his 'Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church,' which contrast the Anglican position so vividly with that of Romanism on the one side and popular Protestantism on the other. 'It is plain,' he writes, 'that at the end of 1835 or beginning of 1836 I had the whole state of the question before me, on which, to my mind, the decision between the Churches depended".' Many other symptoms of the same kind of activity were by no means wanting 3. 1 Tracts for the Times,' No. 71, p. I (dated Feast of the Circumcision, 1836). 26 Apologia' (ed. 1880), p. 111. See Brit. Mag. vols. ix. and x., passim. |