‘It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught me to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and, in the same degree, to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to
the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence.
* * * * *
‘There were other reasons, besides Mr. Rose’s state of health, which hindered those who so much admired him from availing themselves of his close co-operation in the coming fight. United as both he and they were in the general scope of the Movement, they were in discordance with each other, from the first, in their estimate of the means to be adopted for attaining it. Mr. Rose had a position in the Church, a name, and serious responsibilities; he had direct ecclesiastical superiors; he had intimate relations with his own University, and a large clerical connection through the country. Froude and I were nobodies, with no characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us. Rose could not go ahead across country, as Froude had no scruples in doing. Froude was a bold rider: as on horseback, so also in his speculations. After a long conversation with him on the logical bearing of his principles, Mr. Rose said of him, with quiet humour, that “he did not seem to be afraid of inferences.” It was simply the truth. Froude had that strong hold of first principles, and that keen perception of their value, that he was comparatively indifferent to the revolutionary action which would attend on their application to a given state of things; whereas, in the thoughts of Rose, as a practical man, existing facts had the precedence of every other idea, and the chief test of the soundness of a line of policy lay in the consideration whether it would work. This was one of the first questions which, as it seemed to me, on every occasion occurred to his mind. With Froude, Erastianism, that is, the union (so he viewed it) of Church and State, was the parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable and sufficient tool of Liberalism. Till that union was snapped, Christian doctrine never could be safe; and while he well knew how high and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose, yet he used to apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his mouth: Rose was “a conservative.” By bad luck, I brought out this word to Mr. Rose in a letter of my own, which I wrote to him in criticism of something he had inserted in his Magazine: I got a vehement rebuke for my
pains; for though Rose pursued a conservative line, he had as high a disdain as Froude could have of a worldly ambition, and an extreme sensitiveness of such an imputation. But there was another reason still, and a more elementary one, which severed Mr. Rose from the Oxford Movement. Living movements do not come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out through the post, even though it had been the penny post. This principle deeply penetrated both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended to us the course which things soon took spontaneously, and without set purpose of our own.
* * * * *
‘It was an apparent accident which introduced me to [the Roman Breviary], that most wonderful and most attractive monument of the devotion of Saints. On Hurrell Froude’s death, in 1836, I was asked to select one of his books as a keepsake. I selected Butler’s Analogy; finding that it had been already chosen, I looked with some perplexity along the shelves, as they stood before me, when an intimate friend at my elbow said: “Take that.” It was the Breviary which Hurrell had had with him at Barbados. Accordingly, I took it, studied it, wrote my Tract from it, and have it on my table in constant use till this day.[309] That dear and familiar companion,[310] who thus put the Breviary into my hands, is still in the Anglican Church. So, too, is that early-venerated long-loved friend,[311] together with whom I edited a work which, more perhaps than any other, caused disturbance and annoyance in the Anglican world, Froude’s Remains; yet, however judgments might run as to the prudence of publishing it, I never heard any one impute to Mr. Keble the very shadow of dishonesty or treachery towards his Church in so acting.’
From ‘The Cherwell Water-Lily and other Poems,’ by the Rev. Frederick William Faber, M.A., Fellow of University College, Oxford. London: Rivingtons; and Oxford, Parker, 1840.
[By the kind permission of the Rev. Charles Bowden of the London Oratory.]
Verses sent to a Friend with a copy of Froude’s Remains.[312]