III

HACKNEY AND CLAPHAM

73

souls than the Evangelicals, and opposed both to individualism in religion and to the emotional excesses which attend conversion, and which were conspicuous in the early evangelical revival.

The brotherhood of North - East London may be distinguished, among other characteristics, from the group of earnest Christians on the other side of the Thames by the quiet and sure possession of a complete and settled body of dogma, which taught them to be incurious of novelties. It may almost be said that the Claphamites had one doctrine, the Atonement, preached according to a certain scheme of theology; the Hackney brethren, whilst laying stress on the Holy Catholic Church,' did not exalt one article of the Creed above another, but held all bound together by the tenet of Church authority; and this gave them a broader basis for a unity which did not need to be fostered by neighbourhood, or by hearing the same preacher, or using a common language. The High Church school may have had less unction, less glow, less spontaneous warmth of charity; but their piety was of a more solid texture, and had more promise of effective continuance. Its chief fault was the narrowness which is inseparable from a strongly defined dogmatic belief. Joshua Watson did not like the terms 'Established Church,' 'Establishment,' and so on. The worthies who founded the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, he said, knew of no other church in the country than the Church of England; 'We should like to think that there were no such persons as Dissenters in the world'; and he objected to the custom of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge of selling books written by Nonconformists, even the Pilgrim's Progress. How different from Isaac Milner, who would go hand in hand with Dissenters as far as possible,' and the founders of the Bible Society, who admitted them to their Committee on equal terms with Churchmen. We may think this exclusiveness uncharitable, and a narrowing of God's grace; but it makes for unity of doctrine and fellowship within the body, and for those without builds a hedge round the law, keeping indifferentists and sectaries at a distance. This was

the attitude of the High Church party, and this attitude they preserved throughout the times of the Oxford movement

and those which followed. There is strength in definiteness; the advance of the High Church party during the nineteenth century is due not only to the influence of saints and divines, nor to the reasonableness of their teaching, but also to their refusal to compromise, and their consistent opposition to latitudinarianism and dissent.

Of the leaders at the time of which we are speaking Daubeny is the narrowest, and Watson among the broadest ; but the difference is one of temperament rather than of principle. For all the school there was a high wall built on the side of dissent and foreign Protestantism, and a less high wall, though as yet too high to look over, on the side of Rome. The denunciations of Rome, which are strong enough, have an academical sound, as if the writer were proclaiming his agreement with a received proposition; the hostility to dissent and evangelical laxity is more cordial, and there was reason for this; the danger from 'poor and loose theology' was at hand, the danger from Rome was remote. The challenge of the Roman Catholic divine, John Milner, in his End of Religious Controversy, published in 1824, drew attention to the weak side of Protestantism, as indicated by its negative name. Henry Phillpotts, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, answered Milner, and another Roman writer, Charles Butler, who replied to Southey's Book of the Church by the Book of the Roman Catholic Church. Daubeny also was not unaware of a change in public opinion, and expressed his anxiety in his archidiaconal charges; but few, if any, saw how near at hand the crisis was. The teaching of Watson's friends opened a door which could not be shut. It was handed on by their successors, and it may be safely said that without the practical foundation laid by them the Oxford movement would have had a different history.

The Hackney school was active in missionary work. In 1814 Watson became Treasurer of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was then working hand in hand with the Lutheran missions in India; he and Christopher Wordsworth wrote to the Archbishop 'to uphold the Protestant missions of India,' and mentioned the desire of Bishop Middleton to add to the Church of England six to seven hundred thousands of half-taught Christians.

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RELIGIOUS PUBLICATIONS

75

Under this stimulus the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge voted £5000 to the Bishop, and the Prince Regent granted a Royal Letter. They were also forward in church building, the movement for which was set on foot by Daubeny; and when, in 1820, Lord Liverpool appointed a Commission to inquire into the subject, Watson and Cambridge were among the Commissioners.

Periodical

literature.

It was by the exertions of these men, and especially Norris, that the Christian Remembrancer was founded in 1819. The British Critic had its place as a publication which was intended to instruct the country clergy, and which it was hoped would rank with the Quarterly and Edinburgh, and introduce a more enlightened element into religious literature. It is not easy to estimate an influence of this kind at a time like the present, when newspapers, magazines, and reviews in their manifold variety neutralise each other. The Edinburgh, the Quarterly, the Eclectic Review, the Christian Remembrancer, the British Critic had their own readers, and did much to direct thought into their several channels, and to instruct in facts as well as to lay down principles. In religious as well as secular politics the importance of the press was daily increasing; the review was taking the place of the sermon. Watson, Van Mildert, and Lloyd wrote in these reviews. Charles Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, ‘a happytempered, wise, and good man'; 'honest Lloyd, bluff and blunt,' a university professor who gave animation and interest to his divinity lectures, well read in Bishop the Fathers and in Church history and Roman Catholic literature, an intimate friend of Sir Robert Peel, and a man always mentioned with respect and admiration by Newman, kept Hackney in touch with Oxford, as Christopher Wordsworth with Cambridge. But Watson numbered among his friends and followers men of mark in every line. appears to have had a sense of proportion, and a statesmanlike instinct of public opinion, which, if he had been a politician, would have been felt in the world. A strong conservative bias is to be noted in all that is recorded of him and his circle. They disliked, by a natural instinct, all innovation, whether in Church or State; the Ecclesiastical

Lloyd.

He

Commission, the suppression of Irish sees, any concession to Dissenters, whether by admission to the S.P.C.K. or by reform of the Liturgy; a point interesting with regard both to the past history of the High Church party, and to the great change which took place after 1833.

Note.--For a fuller account of Jones, Stevens, and their friends, see Vol. VII. of this work.

AUTHORITIES.-Canon J. H. Overton's English Church in the XIXth Century is the best account of the period from 1800 to 1833. The Life of Joshua Watson, by Archdeacon Churton, should be read with this. J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England in the 19th Century; Remains of Alexander Knox; T. Mozley, Reminiscences; Wm. Stevens, Life of Wm. Jones of Nayland; Sir James Alan Park, Memoir of Wm. Stevens.

CHAPTER IV

CHURCH BUILDING AND EDUCATION

tion.

THE insufficiency of church accommodation, in proportion to the rapid increase of population in the early part of the nineteenth century, was perceived to be a danger to Want of the Church of England and to religion generally; church and among the good works begun and partly accommodaaccomplished in the early years of the nineteenth century, that of church building is not the least remarkable. It would not be right to impute to any want of selfsacrificing energy the fact that the reproach of want of church room has not even now been done away with. Rather it would be right to praise the liberality which has done and is doing so much. The evil was not created by the indifference of the clergy or laity of the Church. It is true that the gravity of it was not at once perceived; but at no time was it ignored. The growth of population exceeds all that can be done in building churches, especially since Parliamentary grants are no longer made, nor Royal Letters issued.

In 1811 a series of letters on the state of the Church was addressed to the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in which it was stated that in the great London churches, St. Marylebone and St. Pancras, there was not room for one-ninth of the parish population. During the whole reign of George III. hardly a dozen churches were built in London. Perceval himself was active in the cause of church building, Liverpool, so was Lord Liverpool, who succeeded him; but the chief part in initiating the movement for church building

Perceval and

1811.