The Oxford Movement; Twelve Years, 1833-1845

by R. W. Church

"Something must be done," but what? This was not so easy to say. It was obvious that men must act in concert, and must write; but beyond these general points, questions and difficulties arose. The first idea that suggested itself at Hadleigh was a form of association, which would have been something like the English Church Union or the Church Defence Association of our days. It probably was Mr. Palmer's idea; and for some time the attempt to carry it into effect was followed up at Oxford. Plans of "Association" were drawn up and rejected. The endeavour brought out differences of opinion—differences as to the rightness or the policy of specific mention of doctrines; differences as to the union of Church and State, on the importance of maintaining which, as long as possible, Mr. Newman sided with Mr. Palmer against Mr. Keble's more uncompromising view. A "third formulary" was at length adopted. "Events," it said, "have occurred within the last few years calculated to inspire the true members and friends of the Church with the deepest uneasiness." It went on to notice that political changes had thrown power into the hands of the professed enemies of the Church as an establishment; but it was not merely as an establishment that it was in most serious danger. "Every one," it says, "who has become acquainted with the literature of the day, must have observed the sedulous attempts made in various quarters to reconcile members of the Church to alterations in its doctrines and discipline. Projects of change, which include the annihilation of our Creeds and the removal of doctrinal statements incidentally contained in our worship, have been boldly and assiduously put forth. Our services have been subjected to licentious criticism, with the view of superseding some of them and of entirely remodelling others. The very elementary principles of our ritual and discipline have been rudely questioned; our apostolical polity has been ridiculed and denied." The condition of the times made these things more than ordinarily alarming, and the pressing danger was urged as a reason for the formation, by members of the Church in various parts of the kingdom, of an association on a few broad principles of union for the defence of the Church. "They feel strongly," said the authors of the paper, "that no fear of the appearance of forwardness should dissuade them from a design, which seems to be demanded of them by their affection towards that spiritual community to which they owe their hopes of the world to come; and by a sense of duty to that God and Saviour who is its Founder and Defender." But the plan of an Association, or of separate Associations, which was circulated in the autumn of 1833, came to nothing. "Jealousy was entertained of it in high quarters." Froude objected to any association less wide than the Church itself. Newman had a horror of committees and meetings and great people in London. And thus, in spite of Mr. Palmer's efforts, favoured by a certain number of influential and dignified friends, the Association would not work. But the stir about it was not without result. Mr. Palmer travelled about the country with the view of bringing the state of things before the clergy. In place of the Association, an Address to the Archbishop of Canterbury was resolved upon. It was drawn up by Mr. Palmer, who undertook the business of circulating it. In spite of great difficulties and trouble of the alarm of friends like Mr. Rose, who was afraid that it would cause schism in the Church; of the general timidity of the dignified clergy; of the distrust and the crotchets of others; of the coldness of the bishops and the opposition of some of them—it was presented with the signatures of some 7000 clergy to the Archbishop in February 1834. It bore the names, among others, of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity; Dr. Gilbert, of Brasenose College; Dr. Faussett, and Mr. Keble. And this was not all. A Lay Address followed. There were difficulties about the first form proposed, which was thought to say too much about the doctrine and discipline of the Church; and it was laid aside for one with more vague expressions about the "consecration of the State," and the practical benefits of the Established Church. In this form it was signed by 230,000 heads of families, and presented to the Archbishop in the following May. "From these two events," writes Mr. Perceval in 1842, "we may date the commencement of the turn of the tide, which had threatened to overwhelm our Church and our religion."[45] There can, at any rate, be little doubt that as regards the external position of the Church in the country, this agitation was a success. It rallied the courage of Churchmen, and showed that they were stronger and more resolute than their enemies thought. The revolutionary temper of the times had thrown all Churchmen on the Conservative side; and these addresses were partly helped by political Conservatism, and also reacted in its favour.

Some of the Hadleigh friends would probably have been content to go on in this course, raising and keeping alive a strong feeling in favour of things as they were, creating a general sympathy with the Church, and confidence in the peculiar excellency of its wise and sober institutions, sedulously but cautiously endeavouring to correct popular mistakes about them, and to diffuse a sounder knowledge and a sounder tone of religious feeling. This is what Mr. H.J. Rose would have wished, only he felt that he could not insure the "ten or fifteen years" which he wanted to work this gradual change. Both he and Mr. Palmer would have made London, to use a military term, their base of operations. The Oriel men, on the other hand, thought that "Universities are the natural centres of intellectual movements"; they were for working more spontaneously in the freedom of independent study; they had little faith in organisation; "living movements," they said, "do not come of committees." But at Hadleigh it was settled that there was writing to be done, in some way or other; and on this, divergence of opinion soon showed itself, both as to the matter and the tone of what was to be written.

For the writers of real force, the men of genius, were the three Oriel men, with less experience, at that time, with less extensive learning, than Mr. Rose and Mr. Palmer. But they were bolder and keener spirits; they pierced more deeply into the real condition and prospects of the times; they were not disposed to smooth over and excuse what they thought hollow and untrue, to put up with decorous compromises and half-measures, to be patient towards apathy, negligence, or insolence. They certainly had more in them of the temper of warfare. We know from their own avowals that a great anger possessed them, that they were indignant at the sacred idea of the Church being lost and smothered by selfishness and stupidity; they were animated by the spirit which makes men lose patience with abuses and their apologists, and gives them no peace till they speak out. Mr. Newman felt that, though associations and addresses might be very well, what the Church and the clergy and the country wanted was plain speaking; and that plain speaking could not be got by any papers put forth as joint manifestoes, or with the revision and sanction of "safe" and "judicious" advisers. It was necessary to write, and to write as each man felt: and he determined that each man should write and speak for himself, though working in concert and sympathy with others towards the supreme end—the cause and interests of the Church.

And thus were born the Tracts for the Times.[46] For a time Mr. Palmer's line and Mr. Newman's line ran on side by side; but Mr. Palmer's plan had soon done all that it could do, important as that was; it gradually faded out of sight, and the attention of all who cared for, or who feared or who hated the movement, was concentrated on the "Oxford Tracts." They were the watchword and the symbol of an enterprise which all soon felt to be a remarkable one—remarkable, if in nothing else, in the form in which it was started. Great changes and movements have been begun in various ways; in secret and underground communications, in daring acts of self-devotion or violence, in the organisation of an institution, in the persistent display of a particular temper and set of habits, especially in the form of a stirring and enthralling eloquence, in popular preaching, in fierce appeals to the passions. But though tracts had become in later times familiar instruments of religious action, they had, from the fashion of using them, become united in the minds of many with rather disparaging associations. The pertinacity of good ladies who pressed them on chance strangers, and who extolled their efficacy as if it was that of a quack medicine, had lowered the general respect for them. The last thing that could have been thought of was a great religions revolution set in motion by tracts and leaflets, and taking its character and name from them.

But the ring of these early Tracts was something very different from anything of the kind yet known in England. They were clear, brief, stern appeals to conscience and reason, sparing of words, utterly without rhetoric, intense in purpose. They were like the short, sharp, rapid utterances of men in pain and danger and pressing emergency. The first one gave the keynote of the series. Mr. Newman "had out of his own head begun the Tracts": he wrote the opening one in a mood which he has himself described. He was in the "exultation of health restored and home regained": he felt, he says, an "exuberant and joyous energy which he never had before or since"; "his health and strength had come back to him with such a rebound" that some of his friends did not know him. "I had the consciousness that I was employed in that work which I had been dreaming about, and which I felt to be so momentous and inspiring. I had a supreme confidence in our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church, and which was registered and attested in the Anglican formularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient religion had well-nigh faded out of the land through the political changes of the last 150 years, and it must be restored. It would be, in fact, a second Reformation—a better Reformation, for it would return, not to the sixteenth century, but to the seventeenth. No time was to be lost, for the Whigs had come to do their worst, and the rescue might come too late. Bishoprics were already in course of suppression; Church property was in course of confiscation; sees would be soon receiving unsuitable occupants. We knew enough to begin preaching, and there was no one else to preach. I felt," he goes on,[47] with a characteristic recollection of his own experience when he started on his voyage with Froude in the Hermes, "as on a vessel, which first gets under weigh, and then clears out the deck, and stores away luggage and live stock into their proper receptacles." The first three Tracts bear the date of 9th September 1833. They were the first public utterance of the movement. The opening words of this famous series deserve to be recalled. They are new to most of the present generation.

TO MY BRETHREN IN THE SACRED MINISTRY, THE PRESBYTERS AND DEACONS OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN ENGLAND, ORDAINED THEREUNTO BY THE HOLY GHOST AND THE IMPOSITION OF HANDS.

FELLOW-LABOURERS,—I am but one of yourselves—Presbyter; and therefore I conceal my name, lest I should take too much on myself by speaking in my own person. Yet speak I must; for the times are very evil, yet no one speaks against them.

Is not this so? Do not we "look one upon another," yet perform nothing? Do we not all confess the peril into which the Church is come, yet sit still each in his own retirement, as if mountains and seas cut off brother from brother? Therefore suffer me, while I try to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats, which it has been our blessedness hitherto to enjoy, to contemplate the condition and prospects of our Holy Mother in a practical way; so that one and all may unlearn that idle habit, which has grown upon us, of owning the state of things to be bad, yet doing nothing to remedy it.

Consider a moment. Is it fair, is it dutiful, to suffer our bishops to stand the brunt of the battle without doing our part to support them? Upon them comes "the care of all the Churches." This cannot be helped; indeed it is their glory. Not one of us would wish in the least to deprive them of the duties, the toils, the responsibilities of their high office. And, black event as it would be for the country, yet (as far as they are concerned) we could not wish them a more blessed termination of their course than the spoiling of their goods and martyrdom.

To them then we willingly and affectionately relinquish their high privileges and honours; we encroach not upon the rights of the SUCCESSORS OF THE APOSTLES; we touch not their sword and crozier. Yet surely we may be their shield-bearers in the battle without offence; and by our voice and deeds be to them what Luke and Timothy were to St. Paul.