“I apprehend having given the ill-disposed a pretext for considering me a semi-Pelagian, a contemner of the Sacraments, or denier of the Son, a perverter of the doctrine of justification, and therefore a crypto-Catholic theosophist, heretic, and enthusiast, deserving of all condemnation. I have written it because I felt compelled in conscience to do so.”
Again (II. p. 87):—
“In my letter to Mr. Gladstone, I have maintained the lawfulness and the apostolic character of the German Protestant Church. You will find the style changed in this work, bolder and more free.”
Attacks, indeed, became frequent, and more and more bitter, but Bunsen seldom took any notice of them. He writes:—
“Hare is full of wrath at an attack made upon me in the ‘Christian Remembrancer’—in a very Jesuitical way insinuating that I ought not to have so much influence allowed me. Another article execrates the bishopric of Jerusalem as an abomination. This zeal savors more of hatred than of charity.”
But though Bunsen felt far too firmly grounded in [pg 375] his own Christian faith to be shaken by such attacks upon himself, he too could be roused to wrath and indignation when the poisoned arrows of theological Fijians were shot against his friends. When speaking of the attacks on Arnold, he writes:—
“Truth is nothing in this generation except a means, in the best case, to something good; but never, like virtue, considered as good, as the good,—the object in itself. X dreams away in twilight. Y is sliding into Puseyism. Z (the Evangelicals) go on thrashing the old straw. I wish it were otherwise; but I love England, with all her faults. I write to you, now only to you, all I think. All the errors and blunders which make the Puseyites a stumbling-block to so many,—the rock on which they split is no other than what Rome split upon, self-righteousness, out of want of understanding justification by faith, and hovering about the unholy and blasphemous idea of atoning for our sins, because they feel not, understand not, indeed, believe not, the Atonement, and therefore enjoy not the glorious privileges of the children of God,—the blessed duty of the sacrifice of thanksgiving through Him who atoned for them. Therefore no sacrifice,—therefore no Christian priesthood,—no Church. By our fathers these ideas were fundamentally acknowledged; they were in abeyance in the worship of the Church, but not on the domestic altar and in the hymns of the spirit. With the Puseyites, as with the Romanists, these ideas are cut off at the roots. O when will the Word of God be brought up against them? What a state this country is in! The land of liberty rushing into the worst slavery, the veriest thralldom!”
To many people it might have seemed as if Bunsen during all this time was too much absorbed in English interests, political, theological, and social, that he had ceased to care for what was passing in his own country. His letters, however, tell a different tale. His voluminous correspondence with the King of Prussia, though not yet published, will one day bear witness to Bunsen's devotion to his country, and his enthusiastic attachment to the house of Hohenzollern. From year to year he was urging on the King and his [pg 376] advisers the wisdom of liberal concessions, and the absolute necessity of action. He was working at plans for constitutional reforms; he went to Berlin to rouse the King, to shame his ministers, to insist in season and out of season on the duty of acting before it was too late. His faith in the King is most touching. When he goes to Berlin in 1844, he sees everywhere how unpopular the King is, how even his best intentions are misunderstood and misrepresented. Yet he goes on working and hoping, and he sacrifices his own popularity rather than oppose openly the suicidal policy that might have ruined Prussia, if Prussia could have been ruined. Thus he writes in August, 1845:—
“To act as a statesman at the helm, in the Fatherland, I consider not to be in the least my calling: what I believe to be my calling is to be mounted high before the mast, to observe what land, what breakers, what signs of coming storm there may be, and then to announce them to the wise and practical steersman. It is the same to me whether my own nation shall know in my life-time or after my death how faithfully I have taken to heart its weal and woe, be it in Church or State, and borne it on my heart as my nearest interest, as long as life lasted. I give up the point of making myself understood in the present generation. Here (in London) I consider myself to be upon the right spot. I seek to preserve peace and unity, and to remove dissatisfaction, wherever it is possible.”
Nothing, however, was done. Year after year was thrown away, like a Sibylline leaf, and the penalty for the opportunities that had been lost became heavier and heavier. The King, particularly when he was under the influences of Bunsen's good genius, was ready for any sacrifice. “The commotion,” he exclaimed, in 1845, “can only be met and overcome by freedom, absolute freedom.” But when Bunsen wanted measures, not words, the King himself seemed [pg 377] powerless. Surrounded as he was by men of the most opposite characters and interests, and quite capable of gauging them all,—for his intellect was of no common stamp,—he could agree with all of them to a certain point, but could never bring himself to go the whole length with any one of them. Bunsen writes from Berlin: “My stay will certainly not be a long one; the King's heart is like that of a brother toward me, but our ways diverge. The die is cast, and he reads in my countenance that I deplore the throw. He too fulfills his fate, and we with him.”