their late successes, to have lost that simplicity and unworldliness
which I admired so much in Milner and Scott. It was not that I did
not venerate such men as the then Bishop of Lichfield, and others of
similar sentiments, who were not yet promoted out of the ranks of
the clergy, but I thought little of them as a class. I thought they
played into the hands of the Liberals. With the Establishment thus
divided and threatened, thus ignorant of its true strength, I
compared that fresh vigorous power of which I was reading in the
first centuries. In her triumphant zeal on behalf of that Primeval
Mystery, to which I had had so great a devotion from my youth, I
recognised the movement of my Spiritual Mother. "Incessu patuit Dea."
The self-conquest of her ascetics, the patience of her martyrs, the
irresistible determination of her bishops, the joyous swing of her
advance, both exalted and abashed me. I said to myself, "Look on this
picture and on that;" I felt affection for my own Church, but not
tenderness; I felt dismay at her prospects, anger and scorn at her
do-nothing perplexity. I thought that if Liberalism once got a
footing within her, it was sure of the victory in the event. I saw
that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue her. As to
leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination; still I ever
kept before me that there was something greater than the Established
Church, and that that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up
from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence and
organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be dealt with
strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a second
Reformation.

At this time I was disengaged from college duties, and my health had
suffered from the labour involved in the composition of my volume. It
was ready for the press in July, 1832, though not published till the
end of 1833. I was easily persuaded to join Hurrell Froude and his
Father, who were going to the south of Europe for the health of the
former.

We set out in December, 1832. It was during this expedition that my
Verses which are in the Lyra Apostolica were written;--a few indeed
before it, but not more than one or two of them after it. Exchanging,
as I was, definite tutorial labours, and the literary quiet and
pleasant friendships of the last six years, for foreign countries and
an unknown future, I naturally was led to think that some inward
changes, as well as some larger course of action, was coming upon me.
At Whitchurch, while waiting for the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote
the verses about my Guardian Angel, which begin with these words:
"Are these the tracks of some unearthly Friend?" and go on to speak
of "the vision" which haunted me:--that vision is more or less
brought out in the whole series of these compositions.

I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean, parted with my friends
at Rome; went down for the second time to Sicily, at the end of
April, and got back to England by Palermo in the early part of July.
The strangeness of foreign life threw me back into myself; I found
pleasure in historical sites and beautiful scenes, not in men and
manners. We kept clear of Catholics throughout our tour. I had a
conversation with the Dean of Malta, a most pleasant man, lately
dead; but it was about the Fathers, and the Library of the great
church. I knew the Abbate Santini, at Rome, who did no more than copy
for me the Gregorian tones. Froude and I made two calls upon
Monsignore (now Cardinal) Wiseman at the Collegio Inglese, shortly
before we left Rome. I do not recollect being in a room with any
other ecclesiastics, except a Priest at Castro-Giovanni in Sicily,
who called on me when I was ill, and with whom I wished to hold a
controversy. As to Church Services, we attended the Tenebræ, at the
Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere; and that was all. My general
feeling was, "All, save the spirit of man, is divine." I saw nothing
but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I knew
nothing. I was still more driven back into myself, and felt my
isolation. England was in my thoughts solely, and the news from
England came rarely and imperfectly. The Bill for the Suppression of
the Irish Sees was in progress, and filled my mind. I had fierce
thoughts against the Liberals.

It was the success of the Liberal cause which fretted me inwardly.
I became fierce against its instruments and its manifestations. A
French vessel was at Algiers; I would not even look at the tricolour.
On my return, though forced to stop a day at Paris, I kept indoors
the whole time, and all that I saw of that beautiful city, was what I
saw from the Diligence. The Bishop of London had already sounded me
as to my filling one of the Whitehall preacherships, which he had
just then put on a new footing; but I was indignant at the line which
he was taking, and from my steamer I had sent home a letter declining
the appointment by anticipation, should it be offered to me. At this
time I was specially annoyed with Dr. Arnold, though it did not last
into later years. Some one, I think, asked in conversation at Rome,
whether a certain interpretation of Scripture was Christian? it was
answered that Dr. Arnold took it; I interposed, "But is _he_ a
Christian?" The subject went out of my head at once; when afterwards
I was taxed with it I could say no more in explanation, than that I
thought I must have been alluding to some free views of Dr. Arnold
about the Old Testament:--I thought I must have meant, "But who is to
answer for Arnold?" It was at Rome too that we began the Lyra
Apostolica which appeared monthly in the _British Magazine_. The
motto shows the feeling of both Froude and myself at the time: we
borrowed from M. Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose the words in which
Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, "You shall know the
difference, now that I am back again."

Especially when I was left by myself, the thought came upon me that
deliverance is wrought, not by the many but by the few, not by bodies
but by persons. Now it was, I think, that I repeated to myself the
words, which had ever been dear to me from my school days, "Exoriare
aliquis!"--now too, that Southey's beautiful poem of Thalaba, for
which I had an immense liking, came forcibly to my mind. I began to
think that I had a mission. There are sentences of my letters to my
friends to this effect, if they are not destroyed. When we took leave
of Monsignore Wiseman, he had courteously expressed a wish that we
might make a second visit to Rome; I said with great gravity, "We
have a work to do in England." I went down at once to Sicily, and the
presentiment grew stronger. I struck into the middle of the island,
and fell ill of a fever at Leonforte. My servant thought that I was
dying, and begged for my last directions. I gave them, as he wished;
but I said, "I shall not die." I repeated, "I shall not die, for I
have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against light." I
never have been able to make out at all what I meant.

I got to Castro-Giovanni, and was laid up there for nearly three
weeks. Towards the end of May I set off for Palermo, taking three
days for the journey. Before starting from my inn in the morning of
May 26th or 27th, I sat down on my bed, and began to sob bitterly. My
servant, who had acted as my nurse, asked what ailed me. I could only
answer, "I have a work to do in England."

I was aching to get home; yet for want of a vessel I was kept at
Palermo for three weeks. I began to visit the Churches, and they
calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. I knew
nothing of the presence of the Blessed Sacrament there. At last I got
off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. We were becalmed a whole
week in the Straits of Bonifacio. Then it was that I wrote the lines,
"Lead, kindly light," which have since become well known. I was
writing verses the whole time of my passage. At length I got to
Marseilles, and set off for England. The fatigue of travelling was
too much for me, and I was laid up for several days at Lyons. At last
I got off again and did not stop night or day till I reached England,
and my mother's house. My brother had arrived from Persia only a few
hours before. This was on the Tuesday. The following Sunday, July
14th, Mr. Keble preached the assize Sermon in the University Pulpit.
It was published under the title of "National Apostasy." I have ever
considered and kept the day, as the start of the religious movement
of 1833.

Footnote

[1] _Vid_. Mr. Morris's beautiful poem with this title.

Part IV

History of My Religious Opinions--1833-1839

In spite of the foregoing pages, I have no romantic story to tell;
but I wrote them, because it is my duty to tell things as they took
place. I have not exaggerated the feelings with which I returned to
England, and I have no desire to dress up the events which followed,
so as to make them in keeping with the narrative which has gone
before. I soon relapsed into the every-day life which I had hitherto
led; in all things the same, except that a new object was given me.
I had employed myself in my own rooms in reading and writing, and
in the care of a church, before I left England, and I returned to
the same occupations when I was back again. And yet perhaps those
first vehement feelings which carried me on were necessary for the
beginning of the movement; and afterwards, when it was once begun,
the special need of me was over.

When I got home from abroad, I found that already a movement had
commenced in opposition to the specific danger which at that time was
threatening the religion of the nation and its church. Several
zealous and able men had united their counsels, and were in
correspondence with each other. The principal of these were Mr.
Keble, Hurrell Froude, who had reached home long before me, Mr.
William Palmer of Dublin and Worcester College (not Mr. W. Palmer of
Magdalen, who is now a Catholic), Mr. Arthur Perceval, and Mr. Hugh
Rose.

To mention Mr. Hugh Rose's name is to kindle in the minds of those
who knew him, a host of pleasant and affectionate remembrances. He
was the man above all others fitted by his cast of mind and literary
powers to make a stand, if a stand could be made, against the
calamity of the times. He was gifted with a high and large mind, and
a true sensibility of what was great and beautiful; he wrote with
warmth and energy; and he had a cool head and cautious judgment.
He spent his strength and shortened his life, Pro Ecclesia Dei, as
he understood that sovereign idea. Some years earlier he had been
the first to give warning, I think from the university pulpit at
Cambridge, of the perils to England which lay in the biblical and
theological speculations of Germany. The Reform agitation followed,
and the Whig government came into power; and he anticipated in their
distribution of church patronage the authoritative introduction of
liberal opinions into the country:--by "liberal" I mean liberalism in
_religion_, for questions of politics, as such, do not come into this
narrative at all. He feared that by the Whig party a door would be
opened in England to the most grievous of heresies, which never could
be closed again. In order under such grave circumstances to unite
Churchmen together, and to make a front against the coming danger, he
had in 1832 commenced the _British Magazine_, and in the same year he
came to Oxford in the summer term, in order to beat up for writers
for his publication; on that occasion I became known to him through
Mr. Palmer. His reputation and position came in aid of his obvious
fitness, in point of character and intellect, to become the centre of
an ecclesiastical movement, if such a movement were to depend on the
action of a party. His delicate health, his premature death, would
have frustrated the expectation, even though the new school of
opinion had been more exactly thrown into the shape of a party, than
in fact was the case. But he zealously backed up the first efforts of
those who were principals in it; and, when he went abroad to die,
in 1838, he allowed me the solace of expressing my feelings of
attachment and gratitude to him by addressing him, in the dedication
of a volume of my Sermons, as the man, "who, when hearts were
failing, bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake
ourselves to our true Mother."

But 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, ever
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 own
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 into the 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. Universities are the natural centres of
intellectual movements. How could men act together, whatever was
their zeal, unless they were united in a sort of individuality?
Now, first, we had no unity of place. Mr. Rose was in Suffolk, Mr.
Perceval in Surrey, Mr. Keble in Gloucestershire; Hurrell Froude had
to go for his health to Barbados. Mr. Palmer indeed was in Oxford;
this was an important advantage, and told well in the first months of
the Movement;--but another condition, besides that of place, was
required.

A far more essential unity was that of antecedents,--a common
history, common memories, an intercourse of mind with mind in the
past, and a progress and increase of that intercourse in the present.
Mr. Perceval, to be sure, was a pupil of Mr. Keble's; but Keble,
Rose, and Palmer, represented distinct parties, or at least tempers,
in the Establishment. Mr. Palmer had many conditions of authority and
influence. He was the only really learned man among us. He understood
theology as a science; he was practised in the scholastic mode of
controversial writing; and I believe, was as well acquainted, as he
was dissatisfied, with the Catholic schools. He was as decided in his
religious views, as he was cautious and even subtle in their
expression, and gentle in their enforcement. But he was deficient in
depth; and besides, coming from a distance, he never had really grown
into an Oxford man, nor was he generally received as such; nor had he
any insight into the force of personal influence and congeniality of
thought in carrying out a religious theory,--a condition which Froude
and I considered essential to any true success in the stand which had
to be made against Liberalism. Mr. Palmer had a certain connection,
as it may be called, in the Establishment, consisting of high Church
dignitaries, archdeacons, London rectors, and the like, who belonged
to what was commonly called the high-and-dry school. They were
far more opposed than even he was to the irresponsible action of
individuals. Of course their _beau ideal_ in ecclesiastical action
was a board of safe, sound, sensible men. Mr. Palmer was their organ
and representative; and he wished for a Committee, an Association,
with rules and meetings, to protect the interests of the Church in
its existing peril. He was in some measure supported by Mr. Perceval.

I, on the other hand, had out of my own head begun the Tracts; and
these, as representing the antagonist principle of personality, were
looked upon by Mr. Palmer's friends with considerable alarm. The
great point at the time with these good men in London,--some of them
men of the highest principle, and far from influenced by what we used
to call Erastianism,--was to put down the Tracts. I, as their editor,
and mainly their author, was not unnaturally willing to give way.
Keble and Froude advocated their continuance strongly, and were angry
with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of
his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not
unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness
at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom
he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures
for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and
scandalised him considerably. As for me, there was matter enough in
the early Tracts to give him equal disgust; and doubtless I much
tasked his generosity, when he had to defend me, whether against the
London dignitaries, or the country clergy. Oriel, from the time of
Dr. Copleston to Dr. Hampden, had had a name far and wide for
liberality of thought; it had received a formal recognition from the
_Edinburgh Review_, if my memory serves me truly, as the school of
speculative philosophy in England; and on one occasion, in 1833, when
I presented myself, with some the first papers of the movement, to a
country clergyman in Northamptonshire, he paused awhile, and then,
eyeing me with significance, asked, "Whether Whately was at the
bottom of them?"

Mr. Perceval wrote to me in support of the judgment of Mr. Palmer and
the dignitaries. I replied in a letter, which he afterwards
published. "As to the Tracts," I said to him (I quote my own words
from his pamphlet), "every one has his own taste. You object to
some things, another to others. If we altered to please every one,
the effect would be spoiled. They were not intended as symbols
_è cathedrâ_, but as the expression of individual minds; and
individuals, feeling strongly, while on the one hand, they are
incidentally faulty in mode or language, are still peculiarly
effective. No great work was done by a system; whereas systems rise
out of individual exertions. Luther was an individual. The very
faults of an individual excite attention; he loses, but his cause
(if good and he powerful-minded) gains. This is the way of things:
we promote truth by a self-sacrifice."

The visit which I made to the Northamptonshire Rector was only one of
a series of similar expedients, which I adopted during the year 1833.
I called upon clergy in various parts of the country, whether I was
acquainted with them or not, and I attended at the houses of friends
where several of them were from time to time assembled. I do not
think that much came of such attempts, nor were they quite in my way.
Also I wrote various letters to clergymen, which fared not much
better, except that they advertised the fact, that a rally in favour
of the church was commencing. I did not care whether my visits were
made to high church or low church; I wished to make a strong pull in
union with all who were opposed to the principles of liberalism,
whoever they might be. Giving my name to the editor, I commenced a
series of letters in the _Record_ newspaper: they ran to a
considerable length; and were borne by him with great courtesy and
patience. They were headed as being on "Church Reform." The first was
on the Revival of Church Discipline; the second, on its Scripture
proof; the third, on the application of the doctrine; the fourth,
was an answer to objections; the fifth, was on the benefits
of discipline. And then the series was abruptly brought to a
termination. I had said what I really felt, and what was also in
keeping with the strong teaching of the Tracts, but I suppose the
Editor discovered in me some divergence from his own line of thought;
for at length he sent a very civil letter, apologising for the
non-appearance of my sixth communication, on the ground that it
contained an attack upon "Temperance Societies," about which he did
not wish a controversy in his columns. He added, however, his serious
regret at the character of the Tracts. I had subscribed a small sum
in 1828 towards the first start of the _Record_.

Acts of the officious character, which I have been describing, were
uncongenial to my natural temper, to the genius of the movement, and
to the historical mode of its success:--they were the fruit of that
exuberant and joyous energy with which I had returned from abroad,
and which I never had before or since. I had the exultation of health
restored, and home regained. While I was at Palermo and thought of
the breadth of the Mediterranean, and the wearisome journey across
France, I could not imagine how I was ever to get to England; but now
I was amid familiar scenes and faces once more. And my health and
strength came back to me with such a rebound, that some friends at
Oxford, on seeing me, did not well know that it was I, and hesitated
before they spoke to me. And 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 away 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 be a 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.
Bishopricks were already in course of suppression; Church property
was in course of confiscation; sees would soon be receiving
unsuitable occupants. We knew enough to begin preaching upon, and
there was no one else to preach. I felt as on a vessel, which first
gets under weigh, and then the deck is cleared out, and the luggage
and live stock stored away into their proper receptacles.

Nor was it only that I had confidence in our cause, both in itself,
and in its controversial force, but besides, I despised every rival
system of doctrine and its arguments. As to the high church and the
low church, I thought that the one had not much more of a logical
basis than the other; while I had a thorough contempt for the
evangelical. I had a real respect for the character of many of the
advocates of each party, but that did not give cogency to their
arguments; and I thought on the other hand that the apostolical form
of doctrine was essential and imperative, and its grounds of evidence
impregnable. Owing to this confidence, it came to pass at that time,
that there was a double aspect in my bearing towards others, which it
is necessary for me to enlarge upon. My behaviour had a mixture in it
both of fierceness and of sport; and on this account, I dare say, it
gave offence to many; nor am I here defending it.

I wished men to a agree with me, and I walked with them step by step,
as far as they would go; this I did sincerely; but if they would
stop, I did not much care about it, but walked on, with some
satisfaction that I had brought them so far. I liked to make them
preach the truth without knowing it, and encouraged them to do so. It
was a satisfaction to me that the _Record_ had allowed me to say so
much in its columns, without remonstrance. I was amused to hear of
one of the bishops, who, on reading an early Tract on the Apostolical
Succession, could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine
or not. I was not distressed at the wonder or anger of dull and
self-conceited men, at propositions which they did not understand.
When a correspondent, in good faith, wrote to a newspaper, to say
that the "Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist," spoken of in the Tract,
was a false print for "Sacrament," I thought the mistake too pleasant
to be corrected before I was asked about it. I was not unwilling to
draw an opponent on step by step to the brink of some intellectual
absurdity, and to leave him to get back as he could. I was not
unwilling to play with a man, who asked me impertinent questions. I
think I had in my mouth the words of the wise man, "Answer a fool
according to his folly," especially if he was prying or spiteful. I
was reckless of the gossip which was circulated about me; and, when I
might easily have set it right, did not deign to do so. Also I used
irony in conversation, when matter-of-fact men would not see what I
meant.

This kind of behaviour was a sort of habit with me. If I have ever
trifled with my subject, it was a more serious fault. I never used
arguments which I saw clearly to be unsound. The nearest approach
which I remember to such conduct, but which I consider was clear of
it nevertheless, was in the case of Tract 15. The matter of this
Tract was supplied to me by a friend, to whom I had applied for
assistance, but who did not wish to be mixed up with the publication.
He gave it me, that I might throw it into shape, and I took his
arguments as they stood. In the chief portion of the Tract I fully
agreed; for instance, as to what it says about the Council of Trent;
but there were arguments, or some argument, in it which I did not
follow; I do not recollect what it was. Froude, I think, was
disgusted with the whole Tract, and accused me of _economy_ in
publishing it. It is principally through Mr. Froude's Remains that
this word has got into our language. I think I defended myself with
arguments such as these:--that, as every one knew, the Tracts were
written by various persons who agreed together in their doctrine, but
not always in the arguments by which it was to be proved; that we
must be tolerant of difference of opinion among ourselves; that the
author of the Tract had a right to his own opinion, and that the
argument in question was ordinarily received; that I did not give my
own name or authority, nor was asked for my personal belief, but only
acted instrumentally, as one might translate a friend's book into a
foreign language. I account these to be good arguments; nevertheless
I feel also that such practices admit of easy abuse and are
consequently dangerous; but then again, I feel also this,--that if
all such mistakes were to be severely visited, not many men in public
life would be left with a character for honour and honesty.

This absolute confidence in my cause, which led me to the imprudence
or wantonness which I have been instancing, also laid me open, not
unfairly, to the opposite charge of fierceness in certain steps which
I took, or words which I published. In the Lyra Apostolica, I have
said that, before learning to love, we must "learn to hate;" though I
had explained my words by adding "hatred of sin." In one of my first
sermons I said, "I do not shrink from uttering my firm conviction
that it would be a gain to the country were it vastly more
superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion
than at present it shows itself to be." I added, of course, that it
would be an absurdity to suppose such tempers of mind desirable in
themselves. The corrector of the press bore these strong epithets
till he got to "more fierce," and then he put in the margin a
_query_. In the very first page of the first Tract, I said of the
bishops, that, "black event though it would be for the country, yet
we could not wish them a more blessed termination of their course,
than the spoiling of their goods and martyrdom." In consequence of a
passage in my work upon the Arian History, a Northern dignitary wrote
to accuse me of wishing to re-establish the blood and torture of the
Inquisition. Contrasting heretics and heresiarchs, I had said, "The
latter should meet with no mercy; he assumes the office of the
Tempter, and, so far forth as his error goes, must be dealt with by
the competent authority, as if he were embodied evil. To spare him is
a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands,
and it is uncharitable towards himself." I cannot deny that this is a
very fierce passage; but Arius was banished, not burned; and it is
only fair to myself to say that neither at this, nor any other time
of my life, not even when I was fiercest, could I have even cut off a
Puritan's ears, and I think the sight of a Spanish _auto-da-fé_ would
have been the death of me. Again, when one of my friends, of liberal
and evangelical opinions, wrote to expostulate with me on the course
I was taking, I said that we would ride over him and his, as Othniel
prevailed over Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. Again, I
would have no dealings with my brother, and I put my conduct upon a
syllogism. I said, "St. Paul bids us avoid those who cause divisions;
you cause divisions: therefore I must avoid you." I dissuaded a lady
from attending the marriage of a sister who had seceded from the
Anglican Church. No wonder that Blanco White, who had known me under
such different circumstances, now hearing the general course that I
was taking, was amazed at the change which he recognised in me. He
speaks bitterly and unfairly of me in his letters contemporaneously
with the first years of the Movement; but in 1839, when looking back,
he uses terms of me, which it would be hardly modest in me to quote,
were it not that what he says of me in praise is but part of a whole
account of me. He says: "In this party [the anti-Peel, in 1829] I
found, to my great surprise, my dear friend, Mr. Newman of Oriel. As
he had been one of the annual Petitioners to Parliament for Catholic
Emancipation, his sudden union with the most violent bigots was
inexplicable to me. That change was the first manifestation of the
mental revolution, which has suddenly made him one of the leading
persecutors of Dr. Hampden and the most active and influential member
of that association, called the Puseyite party, from which we have
those very strange productions, entitled, Tracts for the Times. While
stating these public facts, my heart feels a pang at the recollection
of the affectionate and mutual friendship between that excellent man
and myself; a friendship, which his principles of orthodoxy could not
allow him to continue in regard to one, whom he now regards as
inevitably doomed to eternal perdition. Such is the venomous
character of orthodoxy. What mischief must it create in a bad heart
and narrow mind, when it can work so effectually for evil, in one of
the most benevolent of bosoms, and one of the ablest of minds, in the
amiable, the intellectual, the refined John Henry Newman!" (Vol. iii.
p. 131.) He adds that I would have nothing to do with him, a
circumstance which I do not recollect, and very much doubt.

I have spoken of my firm confidence in my position; and now let me
state more definitely what the position was which I took up, and the
propositions about which I was so confident. These were three:--

1. First was the principle of dogma: my battle was with liberalism;
by liberalism I meant the anti-dogmatic principle and its
developments. This was the first point on which I was certain. Here I
make a remark: persistence in a given belief is no sufficient test of
its truth; but departure from it is at least a slur upon the man who
has felt so certain about it. In proportion then as I had in 1832 a
strong persuasion in beliefs which I have since given up, so far a
sort of guilt attaches to me, not only for that vain confidence, but
for my multiform conduct in consequence of it. But here I have the
satisfaction of feeling that I have nothing to retract, and nothing
to repent of. The main principle of the Movement is as dear to me now
as it ever was. I have changed in many things: in this I have not.
From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of
my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea
of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to
me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without
the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme
Being. What I held in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864.
Please God, I shall hold it to the end. Even when I was under Dr.
Whately's influence, I had no temptation to be less zealous for the
great dogmas of the faith, and at various times I used to resist such
trains of thought on his part, as seemed to me (rightly or wrongly)
to obscure them. Such was the fundamental principle of the Movement
of 1833.

2. Secondly, I was confident in the truth of a certain definite
religious teaching, based upon this foundation of dogma; viz. that
there was a visible church with sacraments and rites which are the
channels of invisible grace. I thought that this was the doctrine of
Scripture, of the early Church, and of the Anglican Church. Here
again, I have not changed in opinion; I am as certain now on this
point as I was in 1833, and have never ceased to be certain. In 1834
and the following years I put this ecclesiastical doctrine on a
broader basis, after reading Laud, Bramhall, and Stillingfleet and
other Anglican divines on the one hand, and after prosecuting the
study of the Fathers on the other; but the doctrine of 1833 was
strengthened in me, not changed. When I began the Tracts for the
Times I rested the main doctrine, of which I am speaking, upon
Scripture, on St. Ignatius's Epistles, and on the Anglican Prayer
Book. As to the existence of a visible church, I especially argued
out the point from Scripture, in Tract 11, viz. from the Acts of the
Apostles and the Epistles. As to the sacraments and sacramental
rites, I stood on the Prayer Book. I appealed to the Ordination
Service, in which the Bishop says, "Receive the Holy Ghost;" to the
Visitation Service, which teaches confession and absolution; to the
Baptismal Service, in which the Priest speaks of the child after
baptism as regenerate; to the Catechism, in which Sacramental
Communion is receiving "verily the Body and Blood of Christ;" to the
Commination Service, in which we are told to do "works of penance;"
to the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, to the calendar and rubricks,
wherein we find the festivals of the apostles, notice of certain
other saints, and days of fasting and abstinence.

And further, as to the Episcopal system, I founded it upon the
Epistles of St. Ignatius, which inculcated it in various ways. One
passage especially impressed itself upon me: speaking of cases of
disobedience to ecclesiastical authority, he says, "A man does not
deceive that Bishop whom he sees, but he practises rather upon the
Bishop Invisible, and so the question is not with flesh, but with
God, who knows the secret heart." I wished to act on this principle
to the letter, and I may say with confidence that I never consciously
transgressed it. I loved to act in the sight of my bishop, as if I
was, as it were, in the sight of God. It was one of my special
safeguards against myself and of my supports; I could not go very
wrong while I had reason to believe that I was in no respect
displeasing him. It was not a mere formal obedience to rule that I
put before me, but I desired to please him personally, as I
considered him set over me by the Divine Hand. I was strict in
observing my clerical engagements, not only because they _were_
engagements, but because I considered myself simply as the servant
and instrument of my bishop. I did not care much for the bench of
bishops, except as they might be the voice of my Church: nor should I
have cared much for a Provincial Council; nor for a Diocesan Synod
presided over by my Bishop; all these matters seemed to me to be
_jure ecclesiastico_, but what to me was _jure divino_ was the voice
of my bishop in his own person. My own bishop was my pope; I knew no
other; the successor of the apostles, the vicar of Christ. This was
but a practical exhibition of the Anglican theory of Church
Government, as I had already drawn it out myself. This continued all
through my course; when at length in 1845 I wrote to Bishop Wiseman,
in whose Vicariate I found myself, to announce my conversion, I could
find nothing better to say to him, than that I would obey the Pope as
I had obeyed my own Bishop in the Anglican Church. My duty to him was
my point of honour; his disapprobation was the one thing which I
could not bear. I believe it to have been a generous and honest
feeling; and in consequence I was rewarded by having all my time for
ecclesiastical superior a man, whom had I had a choice, I should have
preferred, out and out, to any other Bishop on the Bench, and for
whose memory I have a special affection, Dr. Bagot--a man of noble
mind, and as kind-hearted and as considerate as he was noble. He ever
sympathised with me in my trials which followed; it was my own fault,
that I was not brought into more familiar personal relations with him
than it was my happiness to be. May his name be ever blessed!

And now in concluding my remarks on the second point on which my
confidence rested, I observe that here again I have no retractation
to announce as to its main outline. While I am now as clear in my
acceptance of the principle of dogma, as I was in 1833 and 1816,
so again I am now as firm in my belief of a visible church, of
the authority of bishops, of the grace of the sacraments, of the
religious worth of works of penance, as I was in 1833. I have added
Articles to my creed; but the old ones, which I then held with a
divine faith, remain.

3. But now, as to the third point on which I stood in 1833, and which
I have utterly renounced and trampled upon since--my then view of the
Church of Rome;--I will speak about it as exactly as I can. When I
was young, as I have said already, and after I was grown up, I
thought the Pope to be Antichrist. At Christmas 1824-5 I preached a
sermon to that effect. In 1827 I accepted eagerly the stanza in the
Christian Year, which many people thought too charitable, "Speak
_gently_ of thy sister's fall." From the time that I knew Froude I
got less and less bitter on the subject. I spoke (successively, but I
cannot tell in what order or at what dates) of the Roman Church as
being bound up with "the _cause_ of Antichrist," as being _one_ of
the "_many_ antichrists" foretold by St. John, as being influenced by
"the _spirit_ of Antichrist," and as having something "very
Antichristian" or "unchristian" about her. From my boyhood and in
1824 I considered, after Protestant authorities, that St. Gregory I.
about A.D. 600 was the first Pope that was Antichrist, and again that
he was also a great and holy man; in 1832-3 I thought the Church of
Rome was bound up with the cause of Antichrist by the Council of
Trent. When it was that in my deliberate judgment I gave up the
notion altogether in any shape, that some special reproach was
attached to her name, I cannot tell; but I had a shrinking from
renouncing it, even when my reason so ordered me, from a sort of
conscience or prejudice, I think up to 1843. Moreover, at least
during the Tract Movement, I thought the essence of her offence to
consist in the honours which she paid to the Blessed Virgin and the
saints; and the more I grew in devotion, both to the saints and to
Our Lady, the more impatient was I at the Roman practices, as if
those glorified creations of God must be gravely shocked, if pain
could be theirs, at the undue veneration of which they were the
objects.

On the other hand, Hurrell Froude in his familiar conversations was
always tending to rub the idea out of my mind. In a passage of one of
his letters from abroad, alluding, I suppose, to what I used to say
in opposition to him, he observes: "I think people are injudicious
who talk against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints, and
honouring the Virgin and images, etc. These things may perhaps be
idolatrous; I cannot make up my mind about it; but to my mind it
is the Carnival that is real practical idolatry, as it is written,
'the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.'" The
carnival, I observe in passing, is, in fact, one of those very
excesses, to which, for at least three centuries, religious Catholics
have ever opposed themselves, as we see in the life of St. Philip, to
say nothing of the present day; but this he did not know. Moreover,
from Froude I learned to admire the great medieval Pontiffs; and, of
course, when I had come to consider the Council of Trent to be the
turning-point of the history of Christian Rome, I found myself as
free, as I was rejoiced, to speak in their praise. Then, when I was
abroad, the sight of so many great places, venerable shrines, and
noble churches, much impressed my imagination. And my heart was
touched also. Making an expedition on foot across some wild country
in Sicily, at six in the morning I came upon a small church; I heard
voices, and I looked in. It was crowded, and the congregation was
singing. Of course it was the Mass, though I did not know it at the
time. And, in my weary days at Palermo, I was not ungrateful for the
comfort which I had received in frequenting the Churches, nor did I
ever forget it. Then, again, her zealous maintenance of the doctrine
and the rule of celibacy, which I recognised as apostolic, and her
faithful agreement with Antiquity in so many points besides, which
were dear to me, was an argument as well as a plea in favour of the
great Church of Rome. Thus I learned to have tender feelings towards
her; but still my reason was not affected at all. My judgment was
against her, when viewed as an institution, as truly as it ever had
been.

This conflict between reason and affection I expressed in one of the
early Tracts, published July, 1834. "Considering the high gifts and
the strong claims of the Church of Rome and its dependencies on our
admiration, reverence, love, and gratitude; how could we withstand
it, as we do, how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness,
and rushing into communion with it, but for the words of Truth
itself, which bid us prefer It to the whole world? 'He that loveth
father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.' How could 'we
learn to be severe, and execute judgment,' but for the warning of
Moses against even a divinely-gifted teacher, who should preach new
gods; and the anathema of St. Paul even against Angels and Apostles,
who should bring in a new doctrine?"--_Records_, No. 24. My feeling
was something like that of a man, who is obliged in a court of
justice to bear witness against a friend; or like my own now, when I
have said, and shall say, so many things on which I had rather be
silent.

As a matter, then, of simple conscience, though it went against my
feelings, I felt it to be a duty to protest against the Church of
Rome. But besides this, it was a duty, because the prescription of
such a protest was a living principle of my own church, as expressed
in not simply a _catena_, but a _consensus_ of her divines, and the
voice of her people. Moreover, such a protest was necessary as an
integral portion of her controversial basis; for I adopted the
argument of Bernard Gilpin, that Protestants "were _not able_ to give
any _firm and solid_ reason of the separation besides this, to wit,
that the Pope is Antichrist." But while I thus thought such a protest
to be based upon truth, and to be a religious duty, and a rule of
Anglicanism, and a necessity of the case, I did not at all like the
work. Hurrell Froude attacked me for doing it; and, besides, I felt
that my language had a vulgar and rhetorical look about it. I
believed, and really measured, my words, when I used them; but I knew
that I had a temptation, on the other hand, to say against Rome as
much as ever I could, in order to protect myself against the charge
of Popery.

And now I come to the very point, for which I have introduced the
subject of my feelings about Rome. I felt such confidence in the
substantial justice of the charges which I advanced against her, that
I considered them to be a safeguard and an assurance that no harm
could ever arise from the freest exposition of what I used to call
Anglican principles. All the world was astounded at what Froude and I
were saying: men said that it was sheer Popery. I answered, "True, we
seem to be making straight for it; but go on awhile, and you will
come to a deep chasm across the path, which makes real approximation
impossible." And I urged in addition, that many Anglican divines had
been accused of Popery, yet had died in their Anglicanism;--now, the
ecclesiastical principles which I professed, they had professed also;
and the judgment against Rome which they had formed, I had formed
also. Whatever faults then the Anglican system might have, and
however boldly I might point them out, anyhow that system was not
vulnerable on the side of Rome, and might be mended in spite of her.
In that very agreement of the two forms of faith, close as it might
seem, would really be found, on examination, the elements and
principles of an essential discordance.

It was with this supreme persuasion on my mind that I fancied that
there could be no rashness in giving to the world in fullest measure
the teaching and the writings of the Fathers. I thought that the
Church of England was substantially founded upon them. I did not know
all that the Fathers had said, but I felt that, even when their
tenets happened to differ from the Anglican, no harm could come of
reporting them. I said out what I was clear they had said; I spoke
vaguely and imperfectly, of what I thought they said, or what some
of them had said. Anyhow, no harm could come of bending the crooked
stick the other way, in the process of straightening it; it was
impossible to break it. If there was anything in the Fathers of a
startling character, it would be only for a time; it would admit of
explanation; it could not lead to Rome. I express this view of the
matter in a passage of the preface to the first volume, which I
edited, of the Library of the Fathers. Speaking of the strangeness at
first sight, presented to the Anglican mind, of some of their
principles and opinions, I bid the reader go forward hopefully, and
not indulge his criticism till he knows more about them, than he will
learn at the outset. "Since the evil," I say, "is in the nature of
the case itself, we can do no more than have patience, and recommend
patience to others, and, with the racer in the Tragedy, look forward
steadily and hopefully to the _event_, [greek: tô telei pistin pherôn],
when, as we trust, all that is inharmonious and anomalous in the
details, will at length be practically smoothed."

Such was the position, such the defences, such the tactics, by which
I thought that it was both incumbent on us, and possible to us, to
meet that onset of liberal principles, of which we were all in
immediate anticipation, whether in the Church or in the University.
And during the first year of the Tracts, the attack upon the
University began. In November 1834 was sent to me by the author the
second edition of a pamphlet entitled, "Observations on Religious
Dissent, with particular reference to the use of religious tests in
the University." In this pamphlet it was maintained, that "Religion
is distinct from Theological Opinion" (pp. 1, 28, 30, etc.); that it
is but a common prejudice to identify theological propositions
methodically deduced and stated, with the simple religion of Christ
(p. 1); that under Theological Opinion were to be placed the
Trinitarian doctrine (p. 27), and the Unitarian (p. 19); that a dogma
was a theological opinion insisted on (pp. 20, 21); that speculation
always left an opening for improvement (p. 22); that the Church of
England was not dogmatic in its spirit, though the wording of its
formularies may often carry the sound of dogmatism (p. 23).

I acknowledged the receipt of this work in the following letter:--

"The kindness which has led to your presenting me with your late
pamphlet, encourages me to hope that you will forgive me, if I take
the opportunity it affords of expressing to you my very sincere and
deep regret that it has been published. Such an opportunity I could
not let slip without being unfaithful to my own serious thoughts on
the subject.

"While I respect the tone of piety which the pamphlet displays, I
dare not trust myself to put on paper my feelings about the
principles contained in it; tending, as they do, in my opinion,
altogether to make shipwreck of Christian faith. I also lament, that,
by its appearance, the first step has been taken towards interrupting
that peace and mutual good understanding which has prevailed so long
in this place, and which, if once seriously disturbed, will be
succeeded by dissensions the more intractable, because justified in
the minds of those who resist innovation by a feeling of imperative
duty."

Since that time Phaeton has got into the chariot of the sun; we,
alas! can only look on, and watch him down the steep of heaven.
Meanwhile, the lands, which he is passing over, suffer from his
driving.

Such was the commencement of the assault of liberalism upon the old
orthodoxy of Oxford and England; and it could not have been broken,
as it was, for so long a time, had not a great change taken place in
the circumstances of that counter-movement which had already started
with the view of resisting it. For myself, I was not the person to
take the lead of a party; I never was, from first to last, more than
a leading author of a school; nor did I ever wish to be anything
else. This is my own account of the matter, and I say it, neither as
intending to disown the responsibility of what was done, nor as if
ungrateful to those who at that time made more of me than I deserved,
and did more for my sake and at my bidding than I realised myself.
I am giving my history from my own point of sight, and it is as
follows:--I had lived for ten years among my personal friends; the
greater part of the time, I had been influenced, not influencing; and
at no time have I acted on others, without their acting upon me. As
is the custom of a university, I had lived with my private, nay, with
some of my public, pupils, and with the junior fellows of my college,
without form or distance, on a footing of equality. Thus it was
through friends, younger, for the most part, than myself, that my
principles were spreading. They heard what I said in conversation,
and told it to others. Undergraduates in due time took their degree,
and became private tutors themselves. In this new _status_, in turn,
they preached the opinions which they had already learned themselves.
Others went down to the country, and became curates of parishes.
Then they had down from London parcels of the Tracts, and other
publications. They placed them in the shops of local booksellers,
got them into newspapers, introduced them to clerical meetings, and
converted more or less their rectors and their brother curates. Thus
the Movement, viewed with relation to myself, was but a floating
opinion; it was not a power. It never would have been a power, if it
had remained in my hands. Years after, a friend, writing to me in
remonstrance at the excesses, as he thought them, of my disciples,
applied to me my own verse about St. Gregory Nazianzen, "Thou couldst
a people raise, but couldst not rule." At the time that he wrote to
me, I had special impediments in the way of such an exercise of
power; but at no time could I exercise over others that authority,
which under the circumstances was imperatively required. My great
principle ever was, live and let live. I never had the staidness or
dignity necessary for a leader. To the last I never recognised the
hold I had over young men. Of late years I have read and heard that
they even imitated me in various ways. I was quite unconscious of it,
and I think my immediate friends knew too well how disgusted I should
be at the news, to have the heart to tell me. I felt great impatience
at our being called a party, and would not allow that we were. I had
a lounging, free-and-easy way of carrying things on. I exercised no
sufficient censorship upon the Tracts. I did not confine them to the
writings of such persons as agreed in all things with myself; and, as
to my own Tracts, I printed on them a notice to the effect, that any
one who pleased, might make what use he would of them, and reprint
them with alterations if he chose, under the conviction that their
main scope could not be damaged by such a process. It was the same
afterwards, as regards other publications. For two years I furnished
a certain number of sheets for the _British Critic_ from myself and
my friends, while a gentleman was editor, a man of splendid talent,
who, however, was scarcely an acquaintance of mine, and had no
sympathy with the Tracts. When I was Editor myself, from 1838 to
1841, in my very first number, I suffered to appear a critique
unfavourable to my work on Justification, which had been published a
few months before, from a feeling of propriety, because I had put the
book into the hands of the writer who so handled it. Afterwards I
suffered an article against the Jesuits to appear in it, of which I
did not like the tone. When I had to provide a curate for my new
church at Littlemore, I engaged a friend, by no fault of his, who,
before he entered into his charge, preached a sermon, either in
depreciation of baptismal regeneration, or of Dr. Pusey's view of it.
I showed a similar easiness as to the editors who helped me in the
separate volumes of Fleury's Church History; they were able, learned,
and excellent men, but their after history has shown, how little my
choice of them was influenced by any notion I could have had of any
intimate agreement of opinion between them and myself. I shall have
to make the same remark in its place concerning the Lives of the
English Saints, which subsequently appeared. All this may seem
inconsistent with what I have said of my fierceness. I am not bound
to account for it; but there have been men before me, fierce in act,
yet tolerant and moderate in their reasonings; at least, so I read
history. However, such was the case, and such its effect upon the
Tracts. These at first starting were short, hasty, and some of them
ineffective; and at the end of the year, when collected into a
volume, they had a slovenly appearance.

It was under these circumstances, that Dr. Pusey joined us. I
had known him well since 1827-8, and had felt for him an
enthusiastic admiration. I used to call him [greek: hô megas].
His great learning, his immense diligence, his scholarlike mind, his
simple devotion to the cause of religion, overcame me; and great
of course was my joy, when in the last days of 1833 he showed a
disposition to make common cause with us. His tract on Fasting
appeared as one of the series with the date of December 21. He was
not, however, I think fully associated in the Movement till 1835 and
1836, when he published his tract on Baptism, and started the Library
of the Fathers. He at once gave to us a position and a name. Without
him we should have had no chance, especially at the early date of
1834, of making any serious resistance to the liberal aggression.
But Dr. Pusey was a Professor and Canon of Christ Church; he had a
vast influence in consequence of his deep religious seriousness,
the munificence of his charities, his Professorship, his family
connections, and his easy relations with university authorities.
He was to the Movement all that Mr. Rose might have been, with that
indispensable addition, which was wanting to Mr. Rose, the intimate
friendship and the familiar daily society of the persons who had
commenced it. And he had that special claim on their attachment,
which lies in the living presence of a faithful and loyal
affectionateness. There was henceforth a man who could be the
head and centre of the zealous people in every part of the country,
who were adopting the new opinions; and not only so, but there was
one who furnished the Movement with a front to the world, and gained
for it a recognition from other parties in the University. In
1829 Mr. Froude, or Mr. R. Wilberforce, or Mr. Newman were but
individuals; and, when they ranged themselves in the contest of that
year on the side of Sir Robert Inglis, men on either side only asked
with surprise how they got there, and attached no significancy to
the fact; but Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression, a host in
himself; he was able to give a name, a form, and a personality to
what was without him a sort of mob; and when various parties had to
meet together in order to resist the liberal acts of the Government,
we of the Movement took our place by right among them.

Such was the benefit which he conferred on the Movement externally;
nor was the internal advantage at all inferior to it. He was a man of
large designs; he had a hopeful, sanguine mind; he had no fear of
others; he was haunted by no intellectual perplexities. People are
apt to say that he was once nearer to the Catholic Church than he is
now; I pray God that he may be one day far nearer to the Catholic
Church than he was then; for I believe that, in his reason and
judgment, all the time that I knew him, he never was near to it at
all. When I became a Catholic, I was often asked, "What of Dr.
Pusey?" when I said that I did not see symptoms of his doing as I
had done, I was sometimes thought uncharitable. If confidence in his
position is (as it is), a first essential in the leader of a party,
Dr. Pusey had it. The most remarkable instance of this, was his
statement, in one of his subsequent defences of the Movement, when
too it had advanced a considerable way in the direction of Rome, that
among its hopeful peculiarities was its "stationariness." He made it
in good faith; it was his subjective view of it.

Dr. Pusey's influence was felt at once. He saw that there ought to be
more sobriety, more gravity, more careful pains, more sense of
responsibility in the Tracts and in the whole Movement. It was
through him that the character of the Tracts was changed. When he
gave to us his Tract on Fasting, he put his initials to it. In 1835
he published his elaborate treatise on Baptism, which was followed by
other Tracts from different authors, if not of equal learning, yet of
equal power and appositeness. The Catenas of Anglican divines which
occur in the series, though projected, I think, by me, were executed
with a like aim at greater accuracy and method. In 1836 he advertised
his great project for a Translation of the Fathers:--but I must
return to myself. I am not writing the history either of Dr. Pusey or
of the Movement; but it is a pleasure to me to have been able to
introduce here reminiscences of the place which he held in it, which
have so direct a bearing on myself, that they are no digression from
my narrative.

I suspect it was Dr. Pusey's influence and example which set me, and
made me set others, on the larger and more careful works in defence
of the principles of the Movement which followed in a course of
years,--some of them demanding and receiving from their authors, such
elaborate treatment that they did not make their appearance till both
its temper and its fortunes had changed. I set about a work at once;
one in which was brought out with precision the relation in which we
stood to the Church of Rome. We could not move a step in comfort till
this was done. It was of absolute necessity and a plain duty, to
provide as soon as possible a large statement, which would encourage
and re-assure our friends, and repel the attacks of our opponents. A
cry was heard on all sides of us, that the Tracts and the writings of
the Fathers would lead us to become Catholics, before we were aware
of it. This was loudly expressed by members of the Evangelical party,
who in 1836 had joined us in making a protest in Convocation against
a memorable appointment of the Prime Minister. These clergymen even
then avowed their desire, that the next time they were brought up to
Oxford to give a vote, it might be in order to put down the popery of
the Movement. There was another reason still, and quite as important.
Monsignore Wiseman, with the acuteness and zeal which might be
expected from that great prelate, had anticipated what was coming,
had returned to England in 1836, had delivered lectures in London on
the doctrines of Catholicism, and created an impression through the
country, shared in by ourselves, that we had for our opponents
in controversy, not only our brethren, but our hereditary foes.
These were the circumstances, which led to my publication of "The
Prophetical office of the Church viewed relatively to Romanism and
Popular Protestantism."

This work employed me for three years, from the beginning of 1834 to
the end of 1836. It was composed, after a careful consideration and
comparison of the principal Anglican divines of the seventeenth
century. It was first written in the shape of controversial
correspondence with a learned French Priest; then it was re-cast, and
delivered in Lectures at St. Mary's: lastly, with considerable
retrenchments and additions, it was re-written for publication.

It attempts to trace out the rudimental lines on which Christian
faith and teaching proceed, and to use them as means of determining
the relation of the Roman and Anglican systems to each other. In this
way it shows that to confuse the two together is impossible, and that
the Anglican can be as little said to tend to the Roman, as the Roman
to the Anglican. The spirit of the volume is not so gentle to the
Church of Rome, as Tract 71 published the year before; on the
contrary, it is very fierce; and this I attribute to the circumstance
that the volume is theological and didactic, whereas the Tract, being
controversial, assumes as little and grants as much as possible on
the points in dispute, and insists on points of agreement as well as
of difference. A further and more direct reason is, that in my volume
I deal with "Romanism" (as I call it), not so much in its formal
decrees and in the substance of its creed, as in its traditional
action and its authorised teaching as represented by its prominent
writers;--whereas the Tract is written as if discussing the
differences of the Churches with a view to a reconciliation between
them. There is a further reason too, which I will state presently.

But this volume had a larger scope than that of opposing the Roman
system. It was an attempt at commencing a system of theology on the
Anglican idea, and based upon Anglican authorities. Mr. Palmer, about
the same time, was projecting a work of a similar nature in his own
way. It was published, I think, under the title, "A Treatise on the
Christian Church." As was to be expected from the author, it was a
most learned, most careful composition; and in its form, I should
say, polemical. So happily at least did he follow the logical method
of the Roman Schools, that Father Perrone in his treatise on dogmatic
theology, recognised in him a combatant of the true cast, and saluted
him as a foe worthy of being vanquished. Other soldiers in that field
he seems to have thought little better than the _lanzknechts_ of the
middle ages, and, I dare say, with very good reason. When I knew that
excellent and kind-hearted man at Rome at a later time, he allowed me
to put him to ample penance for those light thoughts of me, which he
had once had, by encroaching on his valuable time with my theological
questions. As to Mr. Palmer's book, it was one which no Anglican
could write but himself,--in no sense, if I recollect aright, a
tentative work. The ground of controversy was cut into squares, and
then every objection had its answer. This is the proper method to
adopt in teaching authoritatively young men; and the work in fact was
intended for students in theology. My own book, on the other hand,
was of a directly tentative and empirical character. I wished to
build up an Anglican theology out of the stores which already lay cut
and hewn upon the ground, the past toil of great divines. To do this
could not be the work of one man; much less, could it be at once
received into Anglican theology, however well it was done. I fully
trusted that my statements of doctrine would turn out true and
important; yet I wrote, to use the common phrase, "under correction."

There was another motive for my publishing, of a personal nature,
which I think I should mention. I felt then, and all along felt, that
there was an intellectual cowardice in not having a basis in reason
for my belief, and a moral cowardice in not avowing that basis. I
should have felt myself less than a man, if I did not bring it out,
whatever it was. This is one principal reason why I wrote and
published the "Prophetical Office." It was on the same feeling, that
in the spring of 1836, at a meeting of residents on the subject of
the struggle then proceeding some one wanted us all merely to act on
college and conservative grounds (as I understood him), with as few
published statements as possible: I answered, that the person whom we
were resisting had committed himself in writing, and that we ought
to commit ourselves too. This again was a main reason for the
publication of Tract 90. Alas! it was my portion for whole years to
remain without any satisfactory basis for my religious profession, in
a state of moral sickness, neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism,
nor able to go to Rome. But I bore it, till in course of time my way
was made clear to me. If here it be objected to me, that as time went
on, I often in my writings hinted at things which I did not fully
bring out, I submit for consideration whether this occurred except
when I was in great difficulties, how to speak, or how to be silent,
with due regard for the position of mind or the feelings of others.
However, I may have an opportunity to say more on this subject. But
to return to the "Prophetical Office."

I thus speak in the Introduction to my volume:--

"It is proposed," I say, "to offer helps towards the formation of a
recognised Anglican theology in one of its departments. The present
state of our divinity is as follows: the most vigorous, the clearest,
the most fertile minds, have through God's mercy been employed in the
service of our Church: minds too as reverential and holy, and as
fully imbued with Ancient Truth, and as well versed in the writings
of the Fathers, as they were intellectually gifted. This is God's
great mercy indeed, for which we must ever be thankful. Primitive
doctrine has been explored for us in every direction, and the
original principles of the Gospel and the Church patiently brought to
light. But one thing is still wanting: our champions and teachers
have lived in stormy times: political and other influences have acted
upon them variously in their day, and have since obstructed a careful
consolidation of their judgments. We have a vast inheritance, but no
inventory of our treasures. All is given us in profusion; it remains
for us to catalogue, sort, distribute, select, harmonise, and
complete. We have more than we know how to use; stores of learning,
but little that is precise and serviceable; Catholic truth and
individual opinion, first principles and the guesses of genius, all
mingled in the same works, and requiring to be discriminated. We meet
with truths overstated or misdirected, matters of detail variously
taken, facts incompletely proved or applied, and rules inconsistently
urged or discordantly interpreted. Such indeed is the state of every
deep philosophy in its first stages, and therefore of theological
knowledge. What we need at present for our Church's well-being, is
not invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning in
our divines, at least in the first place, though all gifts of God are
in a measure needed, and never can be unseasonable when used
religiously, but we need peculiarly a sound judgment, patient
thought, discrimination, a comprehensive mind, an abstinence from all
private fancies and caprices and personal tastes,--in a word, Divine
Wisdom."

The subject of the volume is the doctrine of the _Via Media_, a name
which had already been applied to the Anglican system by writers of
name. It is an expressive title, but not altogether satisfactory,
because it is at first sight negative. This had been the reason of my
dislike to the word "Protestant;" in the idea which it conveyed, it
was not the profession of any religion at all, and was compatible
with infidelity. A _Via Media_ was but a receding from extremes,
therefore I had to draw it out into a shape, and a character; before
it had claims on our respect, it must first be shown to be one,
intelligible, and consistent. This was the first condition of any
reasonable treatise on the _Via Media_. The second condition, and
necessary too, was not in my power. I could only hope that it would
one day be fulfilled. Even if the _Via Media_ were ever so positive a
religious system, it was not as yet objective and real; it had no
original anywhere of which it was the representative. It was at
present a paper religion. This I confess in my Introduction; I say,
"Protestantism and Popery are real religions ... but the _Via Media_,
viewed as an integral system, has scarcely had existence except on
paper." I grant the objection and proceed to lessen it. There I
say, "It still remains to be tried, whether what is called
Anglo-Catholicism, the religion of Andrewes, Laud, Hammond, Butler,
and Wilson, is capable of being professed, acted on, and maintained
on a large sphere of action, or whether it be a mere modification or
transition-state of either Romanism or popular Protestantism." I
trusted that some day it would prove to be a substantive religion.

Lest I should be misunderstood, let me observe that this hesitation
about the validity of the theory of the _Via Media_ implied no doubt
of the three fundamental points on which it was based, as I have
described above, dogma, the sacramental system, and opposition to the
Church of Rome.

Other investigations which followed gave a still more tentative
character to what I wrote or got written. The basis of the _Via
Media_, consisting of the three elementary points, which I have just
mentioned, was clear enough; but, not only had the house to be built
upon them, but it had also to be furnished, and it is not wonderful
if both I and others erred in detail in determining what that
furniture should be, what was consistent with the style of building,
and what was in itself desirable. I will explain what I mean.

I had brought out in the "Prophetical Office" in what the Roman and
the Anglican systems differed from each other, but less distinctly in
what they agreed. I had indeed enumerated the Fundamentals, common to
both, in the following passage:--"In both systems the same Creeds are
acknowledged. Besides other points in common we both hold, that
certain doctrines are necessary to be believed for salvation; we both
believe in the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement;
in original sin; in the necessity of regeneration; in the
supernatural grace of the Sacraments; in the apostolical succession;
in the obligation of faith and obedience, and in the eternity of
future punishment" (Pp. 55, 56). So much I had said, but I had not
said enough. This enumeration implied a great many more points of
agreement than were found in those very Articles which were
fundamental. If the two Churches were thus the same in fundamentals,
they were also one and the same in such plain consequences as are
contained in those fundamentals or as outwardly represented them.
It was an Anglican principle that "the abuse of a thing doth not
take away the lawful use of it;" and an Anglican Canon in 1603 had
declared that the English Church had no purpose to forsake all that
was held in the Churches of Italy, France, and Spain, and reverenced
those ceremonies and particular points which were apostolic.
Excepting then such exceptional matters, as are implied in this
avowal, whether they were many or few, all these Churches were
evidently to be considered as one with the Anglican. The Catholic
Church in all lands had been one from the first for many centuries;
then, various portions had followed their own way to the injury, but
not to the destruction, whether of truth or of charity. These
portions or branches were mainly three:--the Greek, Latin, and
Anglican. Each of these inherited the early undivided Church _in
solido_ as its own possession. Each branch was identical with that
early undivided Church, and in the unity of that Church it had unity
with the other branches. The three branches agreed together in _all
but_ their later accidental errors. Some branches had retained in
detail portions of apostolical truth and usage, which the others had
not; and these portions might be and should be appropriated again by
the others which had let them slip. Thus, the middle age belonged to
the Anglican Church, and much more did the middle age of England.
The Church of the twelfth century was the Church of the nineteenth.
Dr. Howley sat in the seat of St. Thomas the Martyr; Oxford was
a medieval University. Saving our engagements to Prayer Book and
Articles, we might breathe and live and act and speak, in the
atmosphere and climate of Henry III.'s day, or the Confessor's, or of
Alfred's. And we ought to be indulgent of all that Rome taught now,
as of what Rome taught then, saving our protest. We might boldly
welcome, even what we did not ourselves think right to adopt. And,
when we were obliged on the contrary boldly to denounce, we should do
so with pain, not with exultation. By very reason of our protest,
which we had made, and made _ex animo_, we could agree to differ.
What the members of the Bible Society did on the basis of Scripture,
we could do on the basis of the Church; Trinitarian and Unitarian
were further apart than Roman and Anglican. Thus we had a real wish
to co-operate with Rome in all lawful things, if she would let us,
and the rules of our own Church let us; and we thought there was no
better way towards the restoration of doctrinal purity and unity. And
we thought that Rome was not committed by her formal decrees to all
that she actually taught; and again, if her disputants had been
unfair to us, or her rulers tyrannical, that on our side too there
had been rancour and slander in our controversy with her, and
violence in our political measures. As to ourselves being instruments
in improving the belief or practice of Rome directly, I used to say,
"Look at home; let us first, or at least let us the while, supply our
own short-comings, before we attempt to be physicians to any one
else." This is very much the spirit of Tract 71, to which I referred
just now. I am well aware that there is a paragraph contrary to it in
the prospectus to the Library of the Fathers; but I never concurred
in it. Indeed, I have no intention whatever of implying that Dr.
Pusey concurred in the ecclesiastical theory, which I have been
drawing out; nor that I took it up myself except by degrees in the
course of ten years. It was necessarily the growth of time. In fact,
hardly any two persons, who took part in the Movement, agreed in
their view of the limit to which our general principles might
religiously be carried.

And now I have said enough on what I consider to have been the
general objects of the various works which I wrote, edited, or
prompted in the years which I am reviewing; I wanted to bring out in
a substantive form, a living Church of England in a position proper
to herself, and founded on distinct principles; as far as paper could
do it, and as earnestly preaching it and influencing others towards
it, could tend to make it a fact;--a living Church, made of flesh and
blood, with voice, complexion, and motion and action, and a will of
its own. I believe I had no private motive, and no personal aim. Nor
did I ask for more than "a fair stage and no favour," nor expect the
work would be done in my days; but I thought that enough would be
secured to continue it in the future under, perhaps, more hopeful
circumstances and prospects than the present.

I will mention in illustration some of the principal works, doctrinal
and historical, which originated in the object which I have stated.

I wrote my essay on Justification in 1837; it was aimed at the
Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only was the cardinal
doctrine of Christianity. I considered that this doctrine was either
a paradox or a truism--a paradox in Luther's mouth, a truism in
Melanchthon. I thought that the Anglican Church followed Melanchthon,
and that in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism, between high
Church and low Church, there was no real intellectual difference on
the point. I wished to fill up a ditch, the work of man. In this
volume again, I express my desire to build up a system of theology
out of the Anglican divines, and imply that my dissertation was a
tentative inquiry. I speak in the Preface of "offering suggestions
towards a work, which must be uppermost in the mind of every true son
of the English Church at this day,--the consolidation of a
theological system, which, built upon those formularies, to which all
clergymen are bound, may tend to inform, persuade, and absorb into
itself religious minds, which hitherto have fancied, that, on the
peculiar Protestant questions, they were seriously opposed to each
other."--P. vii.

In my University Sermons there is a series of discussions upon the
subject of Faith and Reason; these again were the tentative
commencement of a grave and necessary work; it was an inquiry into
the ultimate basis of religious faith, prior to the distinction into
creeds.

In like manner in a pamphlet which I published in the summer of 1838
is an attempt at placing the doctrine of the Real Presence on an
intellectual basis. The fundamental idea is consonant to that to
which I had been so long attached; it is the denial of the existence
of space except as a subjective idea of our minds.

The Church of the Fathers is one of the earliest productions of the
Movement, and appeared in numbers in the _British Magazine_, and was
written with the aim of introducing the religious sentiments, views,
and customs of the first ages into the modern Church of England.

The translation of Fleury's Church History was commenced under these
circumstances:--I was fond of Fleury for a reason which I express in
the advertisement; because it presented a sort of photograph of
ecclesiastical history without any comment upon it. In the event,
that simple representation of the early centuries had a good deal to
do with unsettling me; but how little I could anticipate this, will
be seen in the fact that the publication was a favourite scheme of
Mr. Rose's. He proposed it to me twice, between the years 1834 and
1837; and I mention it as one out of many particulars curiously
illustrating how truly my change of opinion arose, not from foreign
influences, but from the working of my own mind, and the accidents
around me. The date at which the portion actually translated began
was determined by the publisher on reasons with which we were not
concerned.

Another historical work, but drawn from original sources, was given
to the world by my old friend Mr. Bowden, being a Life of Pope
Gregory VII. I need scarcely recall to those who have read it, the
power and the liveliness of the narrative. This composition was the
author's relaxation on evenings and in his summer vacations, from his
ordinary engagements in London. It had been suggested to him
originally by me, at the instance of Hurrell Froude.

The series of the Lives of the English Saints was projected at a
later period, under circumstances which I shall have in the sequel to
describe. Those beautiful compositions have nothing in them, as far
as I recollect, simply inconsistent with the general objects which I
have been assigning to my labours in these years, though the
immediate occasion of them and their tone could not in the exercise
of the largest indulgence be said to have an Anglican direction.

At a comparatively early date I drew up the Tract on the Roman
Breviary. It frightened my own friends on its first appearance, and,
several years afterwards, when younger men began to translate for
publication the four volumes _in extenso_, they were dissuaded from
doing so by advice to which from a sense of duty they listened. It
was an apparent accident which introduced me to the knowledge of 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.

That dear and familiar companion, who thus put the Breviary into my
hands, is still in the Anglican Church. So too is that early
venerated long-loved friend, 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 judgment 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.

The annotated translation of the treatise of St. Athanasius was of
course in no sense a tentative work; it belongs to another order of
thought. This historico-dogmatic work employed me for years. I had
made preparations for following it up with a doctrinal history of the
heresies which succeeded to the Arian.

I should make mention also of the _British Critic_. I was editor of
it for three years, from July 1838 to July 1841. My writers belonged
to various schools, some to none at all. The subjects are
various,--classical, academical, political, critical, and artistic,
as well as theological, and upon the Movement none are to be found
which do not keep quite clear of advocating the cause of Rome.

So I went on for years, up to 1841. It was, in a human point of view,
the happiest time of my life. I was truly at home. I had in one of my
volumes appropriated to myself the words of Bramhall, "Bees, by the
instinct of nature, do love their hives, and birds their nests." I
did not suppose that such sunshine would last, though I knew not what
would be its termination. It was the time of plenty, and, during its
seven years, I tried to lay up as much as I could for the dearth
which was to follow it. We prospered and spread. I have spoken of the
doings of these years, since I was a Catholic, in a passage, part of
which I will quote, though there is a sentence in it that requires
some limitation:

"From beginnings so small," I said, "from elements of thought so
fortuitous, with prospects so unpromising, the Anglo-Catholic party
suddenly became a power in the National Church, and an object of
alarm to her rulers and friends. Its originators would have found it
difficult to say what they aimed at of a practical kind: rather, they
put forth views and principles, for their own sake, because they were
true, as if they were obliged to say them; and, as they might be
themselves surprised at their earnestness in uttering them, they had
as great cause to be surprised at the success which attended their
propagation. And, in fact, they could only say that those doctrines
were in the air; that to assert was to prove, and that to explain was
to persuade; and that the Movement in which they were taking part was
the birth of a crisis rather than of a place. In a very few years a
school of opinion was formed, fixed in its principles, indefinite and
progressive in their range; and it extended itself into every part of
the country. If we inquire what the world thought of it, we have
still more to raise our wonder; for, not to mention the excitement it
caused in England, the Movement and its party-names were known to the
police of Italy and to the back-woodmen of America. And so it
proceeded, getting stronger and stronger every year, till it came
into collision with the Nation, and that Church of the Nation, which
it began by professing especially to serve."

The greater its success, the nearer was that collision at hand. The
first threatenings of the crisis were heard in 1838. At that time, my
bishop in a charge made some light animadversions, but they _were_
animadversions, on the Tracts for the Times. At once I offered to
stop them. What took place on the occasion I prefer to state in the
words, in which I related it in a pamphlet addressed to him in a
later year, when the blow actually came down upon me.

"In your Lordship's Charge for 1838," I said, "an allusion was made
to the Tracts for the Times. Some opponents of the Tracts said that
you treated them with undue indulgence ... I wrote to the Archdeacon
on the subject, submitting the Tracts entirely to your Lordship's
disposal. What I thought about your Charge will appear from the words
I then used to him. I said, 'A Bishop's lightest word _ex cathedra_
is heavy. His judgment on a book cannot be light. It is a rare
occurrence.' And I offered to withdraw any of the Tracts over which I
had control, if I were informed which were those to which your
Lordship had objections. I afterwards wrote to your Lordship to this
effect, that 'I trusted I might say sincerely, that I should feel a
more lively pleasure in knowing that I was submitting myself to your
Lordship's expressed judgment in a matter of that kind, than I could
have even in the widest circulation of the volumes in question.' Your
Lordship did not think it necessary to proceed to such a measure, but
I felt, and always have felt, that, if ever you determined on it, I
was bound to obey."

That day at length came, and I conclude this portion of my narrative,
with relating the circumstances of it.

From the time that I had entered upon the duties of public tutor at
my College, when my doctrinal views were very different from what
they were in 1841, I had meditated a comment upon the Articles. Then,
when the Movement was in its swing, friends had said to me, "What
will you make of the Articles?" but I did not share the apprehension
which their question implied. Whether, as time went on, I should have
been forced, by the necessities of the original theory of the
Movement, to put on paper the speculations which I had about them, I
am not able to conjecture. The actual cause of my doing so, in the
beginning of 1841, was the restlessness, actual and prospective, of
those who neither liked the _Via Media_, nor my strong judgment
against Rome. I had been enjoined, I think by my Bishop, to keep
these men straight, and wished so to do: but their tangible
difficulty was subscription to the Articles; and thus the question of
the articles came before me. It was thrown in our teeth; "How can you
manage to sign the Articles? they are directly against Rome."
"Against Rome?" I made answer, "What do you mean by 'Rome'?" and then
proceeded to make distinctions, of which I shall now give an account.

By "Roman doctrine" might be meant one of three things: 1, the
_Catholic teaching_ of the early centuries; or 2, the _formal dogmas
of Rome_ as contained in the later Councils, especially the Council
of Trent, and as condensed in the Creed of Pope Pius IV.; 3, the
_actual popular beliefs and usages_ sanctioned by Rome in the
countries in communion with it, over and above the dogmas; and these
I called "dominant errors." Now Protestants commonly thought that in
all three senses, "Roman doctrine" was condemned in the Articles: I
thought that the _Catholic teaching_ was not condemned; that the
_dominant errors_ were; and as to the _formal dogmas_, that some
were, some were not, and that the line had to be drawn between them.
Thus, 1, the use of prayers for the dead was a Catholic doctrine--not
condemned; 2, the prison of purgatory was a Roman dogma--which was
condemned; but the infallibility of ecumenical councils was a Roman
dogma--not condemned; and 3, the fire of Purgatory was an authorised
and popular error, not a dogma--which was condemned.

Further, I considered that the difficulties, felt by the persons whom
I have mentioned, mainly lay in their mistaking, 1, Catholic
teaching, which was not condemned in the Articles, for Roman dogma
which was condemned; and 2, Roman dogma, which was not condemned in
the Articles, for dominant error which was. If they went further than
this, I had nothing more to say to them.

A further motive which I had for my attempt, was the desire to
ascertain the ultimate points of contrariety between the Roman and
Anglican creeds, and to make them as few as possible. I thought that
each creed was obscured and misrepresented by a dominant
circumambient "Popery" and "Protestantism."

The main thesis then of my essay was this:--the Articles do not
oppose Catholic teaching; they but partially oppose Roman dogma; they
for the most part oppose the dominant errors of Rome. And the problem
was to draw the line as to what they allowed and what they condemned.

Such being the object which I had in view, what were my prospects of
widening and defining their meaning? The prospect was encouraging;
there was no doubt at all of the elasticity of the Articles: to take
a palmary instance, the seventeenth was assumed by one party to be
Lutheran, by another Calvinistic, though the two interpretations were
contradictory to each other; why then should not other Articles be
drawn up with a vagueness of an equally intense character? I wanted
to ascertain what was the limit of that elasticity in the direction
of Roman dogma. But next, I had a way of inquiry of my own, which I
state without defending. I instanced it afterwards in my Essay on
Doctrinal Development. That work, I believe, I have not read since I
published it, and I doubt not at all that I have made many mistakes
in it;--partly, from my ignorance of the details of doctrine, as the
Church of Rome holds them, but partly from my impatience to clear as
large a range for the _principle_ of doctrinal development (waiving
the question of historical _fact_) as was consistent with the strict
apostolicity and identity of the Catholic Creed. In like manner, as
regards the 39 Articles, my method of inquiry was to leap _in medias
res_. I wished to institute an inquiry how far, in critical fairness,
the text _could_ be opened; I was aiming far more at ascertaining
what a man who subscribed it might hold than what he must, so that my
conclusions were negative rather than positive. It was but a first
essay. And I made it with the full recognition and consciousness,
which I had already expressed in my Prophetical Office, as regards
the _Via Media_, that I was making only "a first approximation to a
required solution;"--"a series of illustrations supplying hints in
the removal" of a difficulty, and with full acknowledgment "that in
minor points, whether in question of fact or of judgment, there was
room for difference or error of opinion," and that I "should not be
ashamed to own a mistake, if it were proved against me, nor reluctant
to bear the just blame of it."--P. 31.

In addition, I was embarrassed in consequence of my wish to go as far
as was possible, in interpreting the Articles in the direction of
Roman dogma, without disclosing what I was doing to the parties whose
doubts I was meeting, who might be thereby encouraged to go still
further than at present they found in themselves any call to do.

1. But in the way of such an attempt comes the prompt objection that
the Articles were actually drawn up against "Popery," and therefore
it was transcendently absurd and dishonest to suppose that Popery, in
any shape--patristic belief, Tridentine dogma, or popular corruption
authoritatively sanctioned--would be able to take refuge under their
text. This premiss I denied. Not any religious doctrine at all, but a
political principle, was the primary English idea at that time of
"Popery." And what was that political principle, and how could it
best be kept out of England? What was the great question in the days
of Henry and Elizabeth? The _Supremacy_;--now, was I saying one
single word in favour of the supremacy of the holy see, of the
foreign jurisdiction? No; I did not believe in it myself. Did Henry
VIII. religiously hold justification by faith only? did he disbelieve
Purgatory? Was Elizabeth zealous for the marriage of the Clergy? or
had she a conscience against the Mass? The supremacy of the Pope was
the essence of the "Popery" to which, at the time of the Articles,
the supreme head or governor of the English Church was so violently
hostile.

2. But again I said this;--let "Popery" mean what it would in the
mouths of the compilers of the Articles, let it even, for argument's
sake, include the doctrines of that Tridentine Council, which was not
yet over when the Articles were drawn up, and against which they
could not be simply directed, yet, consider, what was the religious
object of the Government in their imposition? merely to disown
"Popery"? No; it had the further object of gaining the "Papists."
What then was the best way to induce reluctant or wavering minds, and
these, I supposed, were the majority, to give in their adhesion to
the new symbol? how had the Arians drawn up their creeds? Was it not
on the principle of using vague ambiguous language, which to the
subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic sense, but which, when
worked out in the long run, would prove to be heterodox? Accordingly,
there was great antecedent probability, that, fierce as the Articles
might look at first sight, their bark would prove worse than their
bite. I say antecedent probability, for to what extent that surmise
might be true, could only be ascertained by investigation.

3. But a consideration came up at once, which threw light on this
surmise:--what if it should turn out that the very men who drew up
the Articles, in the very act of doing so, had avowed, or rather in
one of those very Articles themselves had imposed on subscribers,
a number of those very "Papistical" doctrines, which they were now
thought to deny, as part and parcel of that very Protestantism, which
they were now thought to consider divine? and this was the fact, and
I showed it in my Essay.

Let the reader observe:--the 35th Article says: "The second Book of
Homilies doth contain _a godly and wholesome doctrine, and necessary
for_ these times, as doth the former Book of Homilies." Here the
_doctrine_ of the Homilies is recognised as godly and wholesome, and
subscription to that proposition is imposed on all subscribers of the
Articles. Let us then turn to the Homilies, and see what this godly
doctrine is: I quoted from them to the following effect:

1. They declare that the so-called "apocryphal" book of Tobit is the
teaching of the Holy Ghost, and is Scripture.

2. That the so-called "apocryphal" book of Wisdom is Scripture, and
the infallible and undeceivable word of God.

3. That the Primitive Church, next to the apostles' time, and, as
they imply, for almost 700 years, is no doubt most pure.

4. That the Primitive Church is specially to be followed.

5. That the four first general councils belong to the Primitive
Church.

6. That there are six councils which are allowed and received by all
men.

7. Again, they speak of a certain truth which they are enforcing, as
declared by God's word, the sentences of the ancient doctors, and
judgment of the Primitive Church.

8. Of the learned and holy Bishops and doctors of the first eight
centuries being of good authority and credit with the people.

9. Of the declaration of Christ and His apostles and all the rest of
the Holy Fathers.

10. Of the authority of both Scripture and also of Augustine.

11. Of Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and about thirty other
Fathers, to some of whom they give the title of "Saint," to others of
ancient Catholic Fathers and doctors.

12. They declare that, not only the holy apostles and disciples of
Christ, but the godly Fathers also before and since Christ were
endued without doubt with the Holy Ghost.

13. That the ancient Catholic Fathers say that the "Lord's Supper" is
the salve of immortality, the sovereign preservative against death,
the food of immortality, the healthful grace.

14. That the Lord's Blessed Body and Blood are received under the
form of bread and wine.

15. That the meat in the Sacrament is an invisible meat and a ghostly
substance.

16. That the holy Body and Blood ought to be touched with the mind.

17. That Ordination is a Sacrament.

18. That Matrimony is a Sacrament.

19. That there are other Sacraments besides "Baptism and the Lord's
Supper."

20. That the souls of the Saints are reigning in joy and in heaven
with God.

21. That alms-deeds purge the soul from the infection and filthy
spots of sin, and are a precious medicine, an inestimable jewel.

22. That mercifulness wipes out and washes away infirmity and
weakness as salves and remedies to heal sores and grievous diseases.

23. That the duty of fasting is a truth more manifest than it should
need to be proved.

24. That fasting, used with prayer, is of great efficacy and weigheth
much with God; so the angel Raphael told Tobias.

25. That the puissant and mighty Emperor Theodosius was, in the
Primitive Church which was most holy and godly, excommunicated by St.
Ambrose.

26. That Constantine, Bishop of Rome, did condemn Philippicus, the
Emperor, not without a cause indeed, but most justly.

Putting altogether aside the question how far these separate theses
came under the matter to which subscription was to be made, it was
quite plain, that the men who wrote the Homilies, and who thus
incorporated them into the Anglican system of doctrine, could not
have possessed that exact discrimination between the Catholic and
Protestant faith, or have made that clear recognition of formal
Protestant principles and tenets, or have accepted that definition of
"Roman doctrine," which is received at this day:--hence great
probability accrued to my presentiment, that the Articles were
tolerant, not only of what I called "Catholic teaching," but of much
that was "Roman."

4. And here was another reason against the notion that the Articles
directly attacked the Roman dogmas as declared at Trent and as
promulgated by Pius the Fourth:--the Council of Trent was not over,
nor its decrees promulgated at the date when the Articles were drawn
up, so that those Articles must be aiming at something else. What was
that something else? The Homilies tell us: the Homilies are the best
comment upon the Articles. Let us turn to the Homilies, and we shall
find from first to last that, not only is not the Catholic teaching
of the first centuries, but neither again are the dogmas of Rome, the
objects of the protest of the compilers of the Articles, but the
dominant errors, the popular corruptions, authorised or suffered by
the high name of Rome. As to Catholic teaching, nay as to Roman
dogma, those Homilies, as I have shown, contained no small portion of
it themselves.

5. So much for the writers of the Articles and Homilies;--they were
witnesses, not authorities, and I used them as such; but in the next
place, who were the actual authorities imposing them? I considered
the _imponens_ to be the Convocation of 1571; but here again, it
would be found that the very Convocation, which received and
confirmed the 39 Articles, also enjoined by Canon that "preachers
should be _careful_, that they should _never_ teach aught in a
sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the people, except
that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament,
and _which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected_
from that very doctrine." Here, let it be observed, an appeal is made
by the Convocation _imponens_ to the very same ancient authorities,
as had been mentioned with such profound veneration by the writers of
the Homilies and of the Articles, and thus, if the Homilies contained
views of doctrine which now would be called Roman, there seemed to me
to be an extreme probability that the Convocation of 1571 also
countenanced and received, or at least did not reject, those
doctrines.

6. And further, when at length I came actually to look into the text
of the Articles, I saw in many cases a patent fulfilment of all that
I had surmised as to their vagueness and indecisiveness, and that,
not only on questions which lay between Lutherans, Calvinists, and
Zuinglians, but on Catholic questions also; and I have noticed them
in my Tract. In the conclusion of my Tract I observe: They are
"evidently framed on the principle of leaving open large questions on
which the controversy hinges. They state broadly extreme truths, and
are silent about their adjustment. For instance, they say that all
necessary faith must be proved from Scripture; but do not say _who_
is to prove it. They say, that the Church has authority in
controversies; they do not say _what_ authority. They say that it may
enforce nothing beyond Scripture, but do not say _where_ the remedy
lies when it does. They say that works _before_ grace _and_
justification are worthless and worse, and that works _after_ grace
_and_ justification are acceptable, but they do not speak at all of
works _with_ God's aid _before_ justification. They say that men are
lawfully called and sent to minister and preach, who are chosen and
called by men who have public authority _given_ them in the
Congregation; but they do not add _by whom_ the authority is to be
given. They say that Councils called by _princes_ may err; they do
not determine whether Councils called in the name of Christ may err."

Such were the considerations which weighed with me in my inquiry how
far the Articles were tolerant of a Catholic, or even a Roman
interpretation; and such was the defence which I made in my Tract for
having attempted it. From what I have already said, it will appear
that I have no need or intention at this day to maintain every
particular interpretation which I suggested in the course of my
Tract, nor indeed had I then. Whether it was prudent or not, whether
it was sensible or not, anyhow I attempted only a first essay of a
necessary work, an essay which, as I was quite prepared to find,
would require revision and modification by means of the lights which
I should gain from the criticism of others. I should have gladly
withdrawn any statement, which could be proved to me to be erroneous;
I considered my work to be faulty and objectionable in the same sense
in which I now consider my Anglican interpretations of Scripture to
be erroneous, but in no other sense. I am surprised that men do not
apply to the interpreters of Scripture generally the hard names
which they apply to the author of Tract 90. He held a large system
of theology, and applied it to the Articles: Episcopalians, or
Lutherans, or Presbyterians, or Unitarians, hold a large system
of theology and apply it to Scripture. Every theology has its
difficulties; Protestants hold justification by faith only, though
there is no text in St. Paul which enunciates it, and though
St. James expressly denies it; do we therefore call Protestants
dishonest? they deny that the Church has a divine mission, though St.
Paul says that it is "the Pillar and ground of Truth;" they keep the
Sabbath, though St. Paul says, "Let no man judge you in meat or drink
or in respect of ... the sabbath days." Every creed has texts in its
favour, and again texts which run counter to it: and this is
generally confessed. And this is what I felt keenly:--how had I done
worse in Tract 90 than Anglicans, Wesleyans, and Calvinists did daily
in their Sermons and their publications? How had I done worse, than
the Evangelical party in their _ex animo_ reception of the Services
for Baptism and Visitation of the Sick?[2] Why was I to be dishonest
and they immaculate? There was an occasion on which our Lord gave an
answer, which seemed to be appropriate to my own case, when the
tumult broke out against my Tract:--"He that is without sin among
you, let him first cast a stone at him." I could have fancied that a
sense of their own difficulties of interpretation would have
persuaded the great party I have mentioned to some prudence, or at
least moderation, in opposing a teacher of an opposite school. But I
suppose their alarm and their anger overcame their sense of
justice.

In the universal storm of indignation with which the Tract was
received on its appearance, I recognise much of real religious
feeling, much of honest and true principle, much of straightforward
ignorant common sense. In Oxford there was genuine feeling too; but
there had been a smouldering stern energetic animosity, not at all
unnatural, partly rational, against its author. A false step had been
made; now was the time for action. I am told that, even before the
publication of the Tract, rumours of its contents had got into the
hostile camp in an exaggerated form; and not a moment was lost in
proceeding to action, when I was actually in the hands of the
Philistines. I was quite unprepared for the outbreak, and was
startled at its violence. I do not think I had any fear. Nay, I will
add I am not sure that it was not in one point of view a relief to
me.

I saw indeed clearly that my place in the Movement was lost; public
confidence was at an end; my occupation was gone. It was simply an
impossibility that I could say anything henceforth to good effect,
when I had been posted up by the marshal on the buttery hatch of
every College of my University, after the manner of discommoned
pastry-cooks, and when in every part of the country and every
class of society, through every organ and occasion of opinion,
in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at
dinner-tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway carriages, I was denounced
as a traitor who had laid his train and was detected in the very act
of firing it against the time-honoured Establishment. There were
indeed men, besides my own friends, men of name and position, who
gallantly took my part, as Dr. Hook, Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Perceval: it
must have been a grievous trial for themselves; yet what after all
could they do for me? Confidence in me was lost;--but I had already
lost full confidence in myself. Thoughts had passed over me a year
and a half before which for the time had profoundly troubled me. They
had gone: I had not less confidence in the power and the prospects of
the apostolical movement than before; not less confidence than before
in the grievousness of what I called the "dominant errors" of Rome:
but how was I any more to have absolute confidence in myself? how was
I to have confidence in my present confidence? how was I to be sure
that I should always think as I thought now? I felt that by this
event a kind Providence had saved me from an impossible position in
the future.

First, if I remember right, they wished me to withdraw the Tract.
This I refused to do: I would not do so for the sake of those who
were unsettled or in danger of unsettlement. I would not do so
for my own sake; for how could I acquiesce in a mere Protestant
interpretation of the Articles? how could I range myself among the
professors of a theology, of which it put my teeth on edge, even to
hear the sound?

Next they said, "Keep silence; do not defend the Tract;" I answered,
"Yes, if you will not condemn it--if you will allow it to continue on
sale." They pressed on me whenever I gave way; they fell back when
they saw me obstinate. Their line of action was to get out of me as
much as they could; but upon the point of their tolerating the Tract
I _was_ obstinate. So they let me continue it on sale; and they said
they would not condemn it. But they said that this was on condition
that I did not defend it, that I stopped the series, and that I
myself published my own condemnation in a letter to the Bishop of
Oxford. I impute nothing whatever to him, he was ever most kind to
me. Also, they said they could not answer for what individual Bishops
might perhaps say about the Tract in their own charges. I agreed to
their conditions. My one point was to save the Tract.

Not a scrap of writing was given me, as a pledge of the performance
on their side of the engagement. Parts of letters from them were read
to me, without being put into my hands. It was an "understanding." A
clever man had warned me against "understandings" some six years
before: I have hated them ever since.

In the last words of my letter to the Bishop of Oxford I thus
resigned my place in the Movement:--

"I have nothing to be sorry for," I say to him, "except having made
your Lordship anxious, and others whom I am bound to revere. I have
nothing to be sorry for, but everything to rejoice in and be thankful
for. I have never taken pleasure in seeming to be able to move a
party, and whatever influence I have had, has been found, not sought
after. I have acted because others did not act, and have sacrificed a
quiet which I prized. May God be with me in time to come, as He has
been hitherto! and He will be, if I can but keep my hand clean and my
heart pure. I think I can bear, or at least will try to bear, any
personal humiliation, so that I am preserved from betraying sacred
interests, which the Lord of grace and power has given into my
charge."

Footnote

[2] For instance, let candid men consider the form of Absolution
contained in that Prayer Book, of which all clergymen, Evangelical
and Liberal as well as high Church, and (I think) all persons in
University office declare that "it containeth _nothing contrary to
the Word of God_."

I challenge, in the sight of all England, Evangelical clergymen
generally, to put on paper an interpretation of this form of words,
consistent with their sentiments, which shall be less forced than the
most objectionable of the interpretations which Tract 90 puts upon
any passage in the Articles.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left _power_ to His Church to
absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great
mercy forgive thee thine offences; and by _His authority committed to
me, I absolve thee from all thy sins_, in the Name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

I subjoin the Roman form, as used in England and elsewhere "Dominus
noster Jesus Christus te absolvat; et ego auctoritate ipsius te
absolvo, ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti, in quantum
possum et tu indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo à peccatis tuis, in
nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritûs Sancti. Amen."

Part V

History of My Religious Opinions--1839-1841

And now that I am about to trace, as far as I can, the course of that
great revolution of mind, which led me to leave my own home, to which
I was bound by so many strong and tender ties, I feel overcome with
the difficulty of satisfying myself in my account of it, and have
recoiled from doing so, till the near approach of the day, on which
these lines must be given to the world, forces me to set about
the task. For who can know himself, and the multitude of subtle
influences which act upon him? and who can recollect, at the distance
of twenty-five years, all that he once knew about his thoughts and
his deeds, and that, during a portion of his life, when even at the
time his observation, whether of himself or of the external world,
was less than before or after, by very reason of the perplexity and
dismay which weighed upon him,--when, though it would be most
unthankful to seem to imply that he had not all-sufficient light amid
his darkness, yet a darkness it emphatically was? And who can gird
himself suddenly to a new and anxious undertaking, which he might be
able indeed to perform well, had he full and calm leisure to look
through everything that he has written, whether in published works
or private letters? but, on the other hand, as to that calm
contemplation of the past, in itself so desirable, who can afford to
be leisurely and deliberate, while he practises on himself a cruel
operation, the ripping up of old griefs, and the venturing again upon
the "infandum dolorem" of years, in which the stars of this lower
heaven were one by one going out? I could not in cool blood, nor
except upon the imperious call of duty, attempt what I have set
myself to do. It is both to head and heart an extreme trial, thus to
analyse what has so long gone by, and to bring out the results of
that examination. I have done various bold things in my life: this is
the boldest: and, were I not sure I should after all succeed in my
object, it would be madness to set about it.

In the spring of 1839 my position in the Anglican Church was at its
height. I had supreme confidence in my controversial _status_, and I
had a great and still growing success, in recommending it to others.
I had in the foregoing autumn been somewhat sore at the bishop's
charge, but I have a letter which shows that all annoyance had passed
from my mind. In January, if I recollect aright, in order to meet the
popular clamour against myself and others, and to satisfy the bishop,
I had collected into one all the strong things which they, and
especially I, had said against the Church of Rome, in order to their
insertion among the advertisements appended to our publications.
Conscious as I was that my opinions in religion were not gained, as
the world said, from Roman sources, but were, on the contrary, the
birth of my own mind and of the circumstances in which I had been
placed, I had a scorn of the imputations which were heaped upon me.
It was true that I held a large bold system of religion, very unlike
the Protestantism of the day, but it was the concentration and
adjustment of the statements of great Anglican authorities, and I had
as much right to do so as the Evangelical party had, and more right
than the Liberal, to hold their own respective doctrines. As I spoke
on occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, in behalf of who would, that he
might hold in the Anglican Church a comprecation with the saints with
Bramhall, and the Mass all but transubstantiation with Andrewes,
or with Hooker that transubstantiation itself is not a point for
Churches to part communion upon, or with Hammond that a general
council, truly such, never did, never shall err in a matter of faith,
or with Bull that man lost inward grace by the fall, or with
Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin, or
with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no otherwise
given than in the Catholic Church. "Two can play at that," was often
in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the
Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a
right to speak loud, I had both the liberty and the means of giving
them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church had been
tyrannised over by a party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the
promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the
difference now." I only asked to be allowed to show them the
difference.

What will best describe my state of mind at the early part of 1839,
is an article in the _British Critic_ for that April. I have looked
over it now, for the first time since it was published; and have been
struck by it for this reason:--it contains the last words which I
ever spoke as an Anglican to Anglicans. It may now be read as my
parting address and valediction, made to my friends. I little knew it
at the time. It reviews the actual state of things, and it ends by
looking towards the future. It is not altogether mine; for my memory
goes to this,--that I had asked a friend to do the work; that then,
the thought came on me, that I would do it myself: and that he was
good enough to put into my hands what he had with great appositeness
written, and I embodied it into my article. Every one, I think, will
recognise the greater part of it as mine. It was published two years
before the affair of Tract 90, and was entitled "The State of
Religious Parties."

In this article, I begin by bringing together testimonies from our
enemies to the remarkable success of our exertions. One writer said:
"Opinions and views of a theology of a very marked and peculiar kind
have been extensively adopted and strenuously upheld, and are daily
gaining ground among a considerable and influential portion of the
members, as well as ministers of the Established Church." Another:
The Movement has manifested itself "with the most rapid growth of the
hot-bed of these evil days." Another: "The _Via Media_ is crowded
with young enthusiasts, who never presume to argue, except against
the propriety of arguing at all." Another: "Were I to give you a full
list of the works, which they have produced within the short space of
five years, I should surprise you. You would see what a task it would
be to make yourself complete master of their system, even in its
present probably immature state. The writers have adopted the motto,
'In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.' With regard
to confidence, they have justified their adopting it; but as to
quietness, it is not very quiet to pour forth such a succession of
controversial publications." Another: "The spread of these doctrines
is in fact now having the effect of rendering all other distinctions
obsolete, and of severing the religious community into two portions,
fundamentally and vehemently opposed one to the other. Soon there
will be no middle ground left; and every man, and especially every
clergyman, will be compelled to make his choice between the two."
Another: "The time has gone by, when those unfortunate and deeply
regretted publications can be passed over without notice, and the
hope that their influence would fail is now dead." Another: "These
doctrines had already made fearful progress. One of the largest
churches in Brighton is crowded to hear them; so is the church at
Leeds. There are few towns of note, to which they have not extended.
They are preached in small towns in Scotland. They obtain in
Elginshire, 600 miles north of London. I found them myself in the
heart of the highlands of Scotland. They are advocated in the
newspaper and periodical press. They have even insinuated themselves
into the House of Commons." And, lastly, a bishop in a charge:--It
"is daily assuming a more serious and alarming aspect. Under the
specious pretence of deference to Antiquity and respect for primitive
models, the foundations of the Protestant Church are undermined by
men, who dwell within her walls, and those who sit in the Reformers'
seat are traducing the Reformation."

After thus stating the phenomenon of the time, as it presented itself
to those who did not sympathise in it, the Article proceeds to
account for it; and this it does by considering it as a reaction from
the dry and superficial character of the religious teaching and the
literature of the last generation, or century, and as a result of
the need which was felt both by the hearts and the intellects of
the nation for a deeper philosophy, and as the evidence and as the
partial fulfilment of that need, to which even the chief authors
of the then generation had borne witness. First, I mentioned the
literary influence of Walter Scott, who turned men's minds to the
direction of the middle ages. "The general need," I said, "of
something deeper and more attractive, than what had offered itself
elsewhere, may be considered to have led to his popularity; and by
means of his popularity he reacted on his readers, stimulating their
mental thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions,
which, when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently
indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be
appealed to as first principles."

Then I spoke of Coleridge, thus: "While history in prose and verse
was thus made the instrument of Church feelings and opinions, a
philosophical basis for the same was laid in England by a very
original thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of speculation,
which no Christian can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which
were often heathen rather than Christian, yet after all instilled a
higher philosophy into inquiring minds, than they had hitherto been
accustomed to accept. In this way he made trial of his age, and
succeeded in interesting its genius in the cause of Catholic truth."

Then come Southey and Wordsworth, "two living poets, one of whom in
the department of fantastic fiction, the other in that of
philosophical meditation, have addressed themselves to the same high
principles and feelings, and carried forward their readers in the
same direction."

Then comes the prediction of this reaction hazarded by "a sagacious
observer withdrawn from the world, and surveying its movements from a
distance," Mr. Alexander Knox. He had said twenty years before the
date of my writing: "No Church on earth has more intrinsic excellence
than the English Church, yet no Church probably has less practical
influence ... The rich provision, made by the grace and providence of
God, for habits of a noble kind, is evidence that men shall arise,
fitted both by nature and ability, to discover for themselves, and
to display to others, whatever yet remains undiscovered, whether in
the words or works of God." Also I referred to "a much venerated
clergyman of the last generation," who said shortly before his death,
"Depend on it, the day will come, when those great doctrines, now
buried, will be brought out to the light of day, and then the effect
will be fearful." I remarked upon this, that they who "now blame the
impetuosity of the current, should rather turn their animadversions
upon those who have dammed up a majestic river, till it had become a
flood."

These being the circumstances under which the Movement began and
progressed, it was absurd to refer it to the act of two or three
individuals. It was not so much a movement as a "spirit afloat;" it
was within us, "rising up in hearts where it was least suspected, and
working itself, though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably,
as hardly to admit of precaution or encounter on any ordinary human
rules of opposition. It is," I continued, "an adversary in the air, a
something one and entire, a whole wherever it is, unapproachable and
incapable of being grasped, as being the result of causes far deeper
than political or other visible agencies, the spiritual awakening of
spiritual wants."

To make this clear, I proceed to refer to the chief preachers of the
revived doctrines at that moment, and to draw attention to the
variety of their respective antecedents. Dr. Hook and Mr. Churton
represented the high Church dignitaries of the last century; Mr.
Perceval, the tory aristocracy; Mr. Keble came from a country
parsonage; Mr. Palmer from Ireland; Dr. Pusey from the Universities
of Germany, and the study of Arabic MSS.; Mr. Dodsworth from the
study of Prophecy; Mr. Oakeley had gained his views, as he himself
expressed it, "partly by study, partly by reflection, partly by
conversation with one or two friends, inquirers like himself;" while
I speak of myself as being "much indebted to the friendship of
Archbishop Whately." And thus I am led on to ask, "What head of a
sect is there? What march of opinions can be traced from mind to mind
among preachers such as these? They are one and all in their degree
the organs of one Sentiment, which has risen up simultaneously in
many places very mysteriously."

My train of thought next led me to speak of the disciples of the
Movement, and I freely acknowledged and lamented that they needed to
be kept in order. It is very much to the purpose to draw attention to
this point now, when such extravagances as then occurred, whatever
they were, are simply laid to my door, or to the charge of the
doctrines which I advocated. A man cannot do more than freely confess
what is wrong, say that it need not be, that it ought not to be, and
that he is very sorry that it should be. Now I said in the Article,
which I am reviewing, that the great truths themselves, which we were
preaching, must not be condemned on account of such abuse of them.
"Aberrations there must ever be, whatever the doctrine is, while the
human heart is sensitive, capricious, and wayward. A mixed multitude
went out of Egypt with the Israelites." "There will ever be a number
of persons," I continued, "professing the opinions of a movement
party, who talk loudly and strangely, do odd or fierce things,
display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other people; persons,
too young to be wise, too generous to be cautious, too warm to be
sober, or too intellectual to be humble. Such persons will be very
apt to attach themselves to particular persons, to use particular
names, to say things merely because others do, and to act in a
party-spirited way."

While I thus republish what I then said about such extravagances as
occurred in these years, at the same time I have a very strong
conviction that they furnished quite as much the welcome excuse for
those who were jealous or shy of us, as the stumbling-blocks of
those who were well inclined to our doctrines. This too we felt at
the time; but it was our duty to see that our good should not be
evil-spoken of; and accordingly, two or three of the writers of the
Tracts for the Times had commenced a Series of what they called
"Plain Sermons" with the avowed purpose of discouraging and
correcting whatever was uppish or extreme in our followers: to this
series I contributed a volume myself.

Its conductors say in their Preface: "If therefore as time goes on,
there shall be found persons, who admiring the innate beauty and
majesty of the fuller system of Primitive Christianity, and seeing
the transcendent strength of its principles, _shall become loud and
voluble advocates_ in their behalf, speaking the more freely,