and, unable himself to bring about the birth, he turned back upon the dead old world, a conspicuous, though personally blameless and most attractive, specimen of the class of those who sink ‘from the van and the freemen’ back ‘to the rear and the slaves.’
Great part of Newman’s power and attractiveness depended upon his exquisite literary gifts. His mind grew up at Oxford, and few have shown so much of the genius loci. He is academical in the best sense. There is a polished scholarliness in all his work, and very little English prose can be ranked as superior to his. Yet it is perfectly simple. With the true scholar’s instinct he strives for lucidity rather than magnificence. His writings frequently breathe passion, but there could be nothing less like what is commonly called ‘impassioned prose.’ Compare him with De Quincey or with Ruskin. They frequently betray a straining for effect, Newman rarely or never. His passages of eloquence come, like his friends, ‘unasked, unhoped,’ because the fervour of his own thought, or the pressure of circumstances, like the calumnies that provoked the Apologia, wrings them from him. Always clear, faultless in taste, capable of great elevation but never too high for the occasion, Newman’s prose is as likely to be permanently satisfying as any of this century.
Edward Bouverie Pusey
(1800-1882).
Edward Bouverie Pusey was, as regards his contributions to formal theology, superior to Newman; both as a man and as a writer he was indefinitely smaller. Pusey early won a great reputation for learning, and Newman considered his accession to the movement an event of the first importance. He had great tenacity, and his adhesion, once given, was sure. Notwithstanding suspicions at the time of Newman’s perversion, there never was the least chance that Pusey would go over to Rome; the Via Media, which had crumbled under Newman’s feet, was solid enough for him. He was not sufficiently imaginative to push his way into the bog which, like another Chat’s Moss, swallowed up all the material Newman could collect. On the contrary, for the forty years of his life after Newman’s secession, he went on diligently stopping the holes which Stanley and others were ‘boring in the bottom of the Church of England.’ And it is certainly a wonderful tribute to the strength of Pusey’s character that, never quailing beneath the blow of Newman’s perversion, never yielding to the opposition which looked so formidable when his party was small and feeble and despised, unretarded and unhurried, he should have steadily pursued his course and raised that party to a foremost place in the Church. One or two events of his life make it matter of thankfulness that its temporal power was not equal to its spiritual fervour. He did all he could to maintain the Anglican exclusiveness of the universities; and he would, if he could, have used the civil power to suppress opinions he deemed dangerous.
Pusey’s writings are purely technical theology, not literature like those of Newman. Of their value diverse opinions will long be entertained. They are oracles to the High Church party; but it is well to consider what opponents think, especially such as have some grounds of sympathy. Pius IX. compared Pusey to ‘a bell, which always sounds to invite the faithful to Church, and itself always remains outside.’ In a similar spirit another great Romish ecclesiastic, when questioned as to Pusey’s chance of salvation, is said to have playfully replied, ‘Oh, yes, he will be saved propter magnam implicationem.’ These are just the criticisms of those who have attacked the Puseyite position from the point of view of free thought. They are also the criticisms implied in Newman’s action. It is at least remarkable that critics from both extreme parties, together with the ablest of all the men who have ever maintained the views in question, should concur in the same judgment.
Samuel Wilberforce
(1805-1873).
Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, deserves a passing mention, though he was more remarkable as a man of affairs than as a man of letters. He was of the High Church, but was opposed to the extreme Tractarians. He was still more opposed to the advanced Liberals. He wrote an article in the Quarterly Review against Essays and Reviews, he framed the indictment against Colenso, and he was one of the chief opponents of evolution before it had been discovered that evolution is all contained in Genesis. His most formal literary work is the allegorical tale of Agathos; but his wit and power of expression find their best outlet in the letters which give to his Life a zest rare in ecclesiastical biography.
John Frederick Denison Maurice
(1805-1872).
There is no other theological sect as compact as the Oxford school, but there are two others of considerable importance and distinguished by fairly well-marked characteristics. Both are imbued with that German thought of which Newman was so unfortunately ignorant; and one of them especially had what he would have considered a deep taint of the hated ‘liberalism.’ John Frederick Denison Maurice was the chief of the first section, while Kingsley, who was more of a novelist than a theologian, and perhaps F. W. Robertson, may be regarded as affiliated to it. Maurice went to Cambridge, but was prevented by the Unitarian faith he then held from proceeding to his degree, and ultimately he graduated at Oxford. He became Professor of English Literature and History at King’s College, London, but fell into trouble because his views on eternal punishment were unsound. At a later date Cambridge honoured him and herself by appointing him Professor of Moral Philosophy.
Maurice’s theology was always a little indefinite, but it seems best described by the word broad. His friendship for the remarkable Scotch theologian, Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, who, though not a Calvinist, thanked heaven for his Calvinistic training, is significant on one side; his position as a disciple of Coleridge on another. Coleridge made Maurice more orthodox than he had previously been, but also preserved him from narrowness. Thanks to Coleridge, reason fills a greater space in Maurice than it does in the Tractarians. From Coleridge also Maurice derived some of the mysticism, if not mistiness, which characterised his thought. The want of clear outline is one of his chief defects. Though always suggestive, he is often somewhat elusive; and perhaps it is for this reason that his influence seems to dissipate itself without producing anything like the effect anticipated from it. The practical outcome of the school of Maurice is poor in comparison with that of the school of Pusey. This however was not wholly Maurice’s fault. The Oxford school has drawn strength from what, nevertheless, may ultimately prove to be its weakness,—the appeal to authority, so tempting to many minds for the relief it promises. Maurice is not chargeable with this fault to the same degree. But neither is he entirely free from a kindred fault. He too, like Newman, argues to a foregone conclusion. In Mill’s opinion, more intellectual power was wasted in Maurice than in any other of his contemporaries, and it was wasted because all Maurice’s subtlety and power of generalisation served only ‘for proving to his own mind that the Church of England had known everything from the first.’