THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

CHAPTER I

THE CHURCH IN THE REFORM DAYS

WHAT is called the Oxford or Tractarian movement began, without doubt, in a vigorous effort for the immediate defence of the Church against serious dangers, arising from the violent and threatening temper of the days of the Reform Bill. It was one of several and widely differing efforts. ficially it had its origin in the accident of an urgent necessity.1 The Church was really at the moment imperilled amid the crude revolutionary projects of the Reform epoch; 2 and something bolder and more

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1 The suppression of the Irish bishoprics. Palmer, Narrative (1883), pp. 44, 101. Maurice, Life, i. 180.

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2 The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save (Arnold to Tyler, June 1832. Life, i. 326). "Nothing, as it seems to me, can save the Church but an union with the Dissenters; now they are leagued with the antichristian party, and no merely internal reforms will satisfy them" (Arnold to Whately, January 1833, i. 348). He afterwards thought this exaggerated (Life, i. 336). "The Church has been for one hundred years without any

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effective than the ordinary apologies for the Church was the call of the hour. The official leaders of the Church were almost stunned and bewildered by the fierce outbreak of popular hostility. The answers put forth on its behalf to the clamour for extensive and even destructive change were the work of men surprised in a moment of security. They scarcely recognised the difference between what was indefensible and what must be fought for to the death; they mistook subordinate or unimportant points for the key of their position: in their compromises or in their resistance they wanted the guidance of clear and adequate principles, and they were vacillating and ineffective. But stronger and far-seeing minds perceived the need of a broad and intelligible basis on which to maintain the cause of the Church. For the air was full of new ideas; the temper of the time was bold and enterprising. It was felt by men who looked forward, that to hold their own they must have something more to show than custom or alleged expediency -they must sound the depths of their own convictions, and not be afraid to assert the claims of these congovernment, and in such a stormy season it will not go on much longer without a rudder" (Whately to Bp. Copleston, July 1832. Life, i. 167). "If such an arrangement of the Executive Government is completed, it will be a difficult, but great and glorious feat for your Lordship's ministry to preserve the establishment from utter overthrow (Whately to Lord Grey, May 1832. Life, i. 156). It is remarkable that Dean Stanley should have been satisfied with ascribing to the movement an "origin entirely political," and should have seen a proof of this "thoroughly political origin" in Newman's observing the date of Mr. Keble's sermon National Apostasy as the birthday of the movement. Edin. Rev. April 1880, pp. 309, 310.

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victions on men's reason and imagination as well as on their associations and feelings. The same dangers and necessities acted differently on different minds; but) among those who were awakened by them to the presence of a great crisis were the first movers in what came to be known as the Tractarian movement. The stir around them, the perils which seemed to threaten, were a call to them to examine afresh the meaning of their familiar words and professions.

For the Church, as it had been in the quiet days of the eighteenth century, was scarcely adapted to the needs of more stirring times. The idea of clerical life had certainly sunk, both in fact and in the popular estimate of it. The disproportion between the purposes for which the Church with its ministry was founded and the actual tone of feeling among those responsible for its service had become too great. Men were afraid of principles; the one thing they! most shrank from was the suspicion of enthusiasm. Bishop Lavington wrote a book to hold up to scorn the enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists; and what would have seemed reasonable and natural in matters of religion and worship in the age of Cranmer, in the age of Hooker, in the age of Andrewes, or in the age of Ken, seemed extravagant in the age which reflected the spirit of Tillotson and Secker, and even Porteus. The typical clergyman in English pictures of the manners of the day, in the Vicar of Wakefield, in Miss Austen's novels, in Crabbe's Parish Register, is represented, often quite unsuspiciously, as a kindly

effective than the ordinary apologies for the Church was the call of the hour. The official leaders of the Church were almost stunned and bewildered by the fierce outbreak of popular hostility. The answers put forth on its behalf to the clamour for extensive and even destructive change were the work of men surprised in a moment of security. They scarcely recognised the difference between what was indefensible and what must be fought for to the death; they mistook subordinate or unimportant points for the key of their position: in their compromises or in their resistance they wanted the guidance of clear and adequate principles, and they were vacillating and ineffective. But stronger and far-seeing minds perceived the need of a broad and intelligible basis on which to maintain the cause of the Church. For the air was full of new ideas; the temper of the time was bold and enterprising. It was felt by men who looked forward, that to hold their own they must have something more to show than custom or alleged expediency -they must sound the depths of their own convictions, and not be afraid to assert the claims of these con

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government, and in such a stormy season it will not go on much longer without a rudder" (Whately to Bp. Copleston, July 1832. Life, i. 167). "If such an arrangement of the Executive Government is completed, it will be a difficult, but great and glorious feat for your Lordship's ministry to preserve the establishment from utter overthrow (Whately to Lord Grey, May 1832. Life, i. 156). It is remarkable that Dean Stanley should have been satisfied with ascribing to the movement an 'origin entirely political," and should have seen a proof of this "thoroughly political origin" in Newman's observing the date of Mr. Keble's sermon "National Apostasy" as the birthday of the movement. Edin. Rev. April 1880, pp. 309, 310.