THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL.
" I ^O the Methodist movement succeeded a
fresh revival in the Church, in which
what is known as the " Evangelical " School
took its rise, about the year 1775. One of
the characteristics of the Evangelistic School
was the sermon, which was what most of us
would now regard as of unnecessary length,
and highly flavoured with the views and opinions
of Luther, and of those who thought with him.
" Even this bald, mutilated form of Theology,"
writes Jennings, in his " Ecclesia Anglicana" *
" was a vast improvement on the lifeless system
* Page 469.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 39
hitherto prevalent. Its professors were pious,
hard-working parish priests, strict to the verge
of prudery in their manner of life, yet en-
thusiastic and sympathetic on the one point of
religion. Under the influence of the Methodist
and Evangelical movements, the Church here
and there recovered vitality. There was a
re-action against profligacy and scepticism.
Many philanthropic schemes were carried out
But it was ever the inspiration of detached
units, not of the mass. For corporate action,
the Evangelical system offered no scope. It
was a purely subjective religion : one based on
feelings, to the exclusion of creeds and means
of grace. Its view of the Christian gathering
was fundamentally at variance with the con-
gregational system of our Prayer-book, and it
attached no value to accessories of worship.
Naturally the services continued as slovenly,
and the fabrics as uncared for, as during the
period of religious apathy."
The strength of the movement was with the
40 THE STORY OF
Clergy, not with the Bishops. Amongst the
Fathers of the Evangelical School were Fletcher
of Madeley, Venn of Huddersfield, Toplady of
Broadhembury, Newton of Olney, and Rowland
Hill, a famous preacher in his time, who it
will be remembered eventually established a
considerable following at the Surrey Chapel in
the Blackfriars Road, London, which Chapel,
by the way, is now used as a dep6t for the
sale of agricultural implements.
It is only necessary here to mention in
particular, John Fletcher of Madeley, an ideal
of Christian saintliness, who lived about the
middle of the eighteenth century. Fletcher
was a Swiss by birth, but came, early in life,
to England, and was ordained in 1753, becoming
tutor to the sons of Mr. Hill, of Terne Hall-
Mr. Hill, who was the patron of a living,
offered it to Mr. Fletcher, describing it as one
where the population was small, and the income
good ; a recommendation which had no attrac-
tions for Mr. Fletcher, who preferred rather to
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 41
accept, by way of exchange, the living of
Madeley, which possessed but half the income,
and had twice as many parishioners.
Madeley was a large Shropshire village, full
of rough colliers, with but few well-to-do
residents ; the latter were willing enough to
pay their tithes, but seldom went to church.
Fletcher accordingly wrote a letter to his richer
parishioners, in which, after reminding them that
they " are no less entitled to my private labours
than the inferior class of my parishioners," he
urges them, affectionately, to accept his minis-
trations, which he offers in the shape of his
" written " morning meditations, in the hope that
those " well-meant efforts of my pen will be
more acceptable to you, than those of my
tongue."
Rich and poor, old and young, were soon
irresistibly attracted to "Fletcher of Madeley,"
whose saintly life is still recalled by many an
old inhabitant. His life, indeed, was so Christ-
ie e, that Voltaire, asked to name a character
42 THE STORY OF
as nearly as possible perfect, at once named
Fletcher of Madeley.
John Wesley's opinion of Mr. Fletcher is
worth recalling for our own edification. " I was
intimately acquainted with him for more than
thirty years. I conversed with him morning,
noon, and night, without the least reserve,
during a journey of many hundred miles, and
in all that time I never heard him speak one
improper word, nor do an improper action."
Fletcher died at Madeley in 1785.
Towards the middle of the eighteenth
century Unitarian doctrines spread with great
rapidity amongst many of the clergy, and
this gave rise to a remarkable controversy
respecting the doctrine of the Trinity.
Some one had suggested that the time had
arrived for abolishing subscription to the
Thirty-nine Articles ; and one of the more
active supporters of the movement was Arch-
bishop Blackburne, and the then Bishop of
Clogher.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 43
To oppose these men and others who
supported their views, an Evangelical clergyman,
by the name of " Jones of Nayland," wrote a
remarkable book in defence of the doctrine
of the Trinity under the title of " The Catholic
Doctrine of the Trinity." It was written
upon the principle that scripture is its own
best interpreter, and it was composed of a
series of well-chosen texts from the Bible,
placed in order, to each of which was added
a brief explanation showing its application to
the doctrine of the Trinity.
Upon one point " Jones of Nayland " is
most emphatic, viz., that every Article of the
Christian Faith depends upon the doctrine of
the Trinity ; and he illustrates this (in his
Address to the Reader, prefixed to his book)
by applying it to our creation, redemption,
sanctification, resurrection, and glorification, by
the power of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.
" Jones of Nayland " stands out as one of
the few bright and shining lights in a dark
44 THE STORY OF
and dismal age ; and had he done nothing
else than write his little pamphlet, headed
" A Letter to the Common People in answer
to some Popular Arguments against the
Trinity " more useful perhaps, because more
widely read, than his book upon the doctrine
of the Trinity he would not have lived in
vain.
The outbursts of zeal and conversions due to
the work of the Wesleys, and Whitefield, stirred
up other clergy to emulate their example. At
Clapham the Rev. John Venn, a preacher of
great power, attracted to his work wealthy
laymen such as John Thornton, the banker,
and the great orator Wilberforce, and the tide
of infidelity, which had for years been steadily
rising, began to ebb. In 1799, Mr. Venn in
the chair, at a meeting consisting of sixteen
clergy and nine laymen, held at the Falcon
Inn, in Bishopsgate Street, it was agreed to
found a society for sending missionaries to
heathen lands, and this was the first meeting
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 45
of the now great and flourishing Church
Missionary Society. This was followed by
the formation of the Religious Tract Society,
the Bible Society, and the British and Foreign
School Society.
One of the results of this " Evangelical
Revival," was the establishment of Sunday
Schools, the first of which was started at
Gloucester, by Robert Raikes, a printer, and
Mr. Stock, a clergyman.
But the " Evangelical Revival," excellent
as it undoubtedly was, and thankful as we
ought to be for all it accomplished, did not
teach the people the doctrines of the Church
of England, did not do much to elevate the
character of the Church, did not set forth the
high standard of religious duty which was
everywhere then neglected, did not influence
the people in any very marked degree.
Some of the fault no doubt lay with the
episcopate. The revenues of some of the Bis-
hops' Sees were then enormous in proportion to
46 THE STORY OF
what they are to-day.* The Bishops were
chosen, to a great extent, from the sons of
the nobility. In the year 1815 we read that
" younger sons and connections of peers, or pri-
vate tutors to the families of noblemen and
statesmen, filled nineteen out of twenty-six
bishoprics." t When not engaged in affairs of
State they commonly spent their hours in lettered
ease. Such episcopal duties as Confirmation
and examining for Orders, were neglected, or
performed in a slovenly and perfunctory fashion ;
consequently the Bishops became unpopular
with the people. The clergy, too, were often
non-resident, but with more excuse. The clerical
status had altered, but nothing had been done
to provide residences fit for persons who now
ranked as gentlemen. In numberless parishes a
ruinous cottage betokened the site of the ancient
* In those days the Archbishopric of Canterbury was
endowed with 27,000 a year, and the Bishop of Durham
received ^17,000 a year. All this was altered sixty years ago.
t " Eccltsia Anglicana," p. 470.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 47
parsonage, and there were no means of securing
a better accommodation. Many livings were
therefore amalgamated. Not unfrequently two
or more churches were served on Sunday from
someone living in the nearest town, and this
was all the parishes probably ever saw of
their pastor. Fifteen churches in the Nor-
wich Diocese were said to be served by
three brothers, as recently as 1837. Hannah
More speaks of "thirteen contiguous parishes
without even a resident curate." A clergyman
living in the diocese of Norwich, wrote:
"When I first came here in 1837, out of
twenty-eight parishes, five churches only were
open for divine service twice on the Lord's
Day." It was no uncommon custom for a
clergyman to ride over from his house, to
different neighbouring villages, to preach the
sermon on Sundays, but he was not seen again
amongst them during the week. The state of
the church fabrics of that day defies descrip-
tion, and it was rare for new churches to be
48 THE STORY OF
built to meet the wants of the ever increasing
numbers.*
Concerning the Church worship of those
times, the late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone,
writing in 1 874, of his own personal knowledge
thus sums up the position : " That even no
longer than fifty, and forty, years ago, the
actual state of things as to worship was bad
beyond all parallel known to me in my ex-
perience or reading. Taking together the
expulsion of the poor and labouring classes
(especially from the town churches), the mutila-
tion and blockages of the fabrics, the baldness
of the service, the elaborate horrors of the so-
called music, above all, the coldness and
indifference of the lounging and sleepy con-
gregation, our services were probably without
a parallel for their debasement ; as they would
have shocked a Brahmin or a Buddhist, so they
hardly could have been endured in this country
had not the faculty of taste, and the perception
* Here's "Eighteen Centuries of Church History," p. 545.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 49
of the seemly or unseemly, been as dead as
the spirit of devotion."*
That a hundred years ago and more the
nation as a whole appears to have been utterly
corrupt may be inferred from the testimony of
William Wilberforce, who, writing in 1785 to
Lord Muncaster, speaks of the " Universal cor-
ruption and profligacy of the times, which,
taking its rise amongst the rich and luxurious,
has now extended its baneful influences and
spread its destructive poison through the whole
body of the people." \
Was there not a cause? Aye, and a mighty
one and this disgraceful, demoralized state of
affairs, both in Church and State, it was,
which was so largely responsible for, and gave
birth to, the so-called " OXFORD MOVEMENT."
* Ritual and Ritualism. Article in "The Contemporary
Review," October, 1874.
t "Life," I., p. 84.
THE MOVEMENT
AND
THE MEN.
"IF THE TRUMPET GIVE AN UNCERTAIN SOUND, WHO SHALL PREPARE
HIMSELF TO THE BATTLE? "Motto of the " Tracts f or the Times," 1833.
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
OIXTY-FOUR years after the great Religious
Revival, known as the ' Oxford Movement,"
took definite shape (i.e., in 1898), someone invents,
as the title of a book, its so-called " SECRET
HISTORY."
But why "SECRET"? As a matter of fact, there
was nothing in the nature of a " secret " side to
the Oxford Movement at all. It exists only in
imagination ; therefore, such a title is misleading,
to say the least of it.
The pioneers of the Oxford Movement, whatever
else may be alleged against them, were pious,
God-fearing men, wholly incapable of deceit, and
anything in the nature of " secrecy " or duplicity
in connection with their great work in arousing
the nation, and uplifting the Church to its true
position and dignity, would have been simply
abhorrent to one and all alike.
The common-sense, plain-spoken Englishman, who
can see and read with unprejudiced eyes (and for
such these pages have been written), will, as he
proceeds, probably agree with the author, that
whatever its faults or failings, there were absolutely
" No SECRETS " whatever to reveal in connection
with the labours of those who initiated the
OXFORD MOVEMENT.
G. H. F. NYE.
THE STORY
OF THE
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT THE OXFORD MOVEMENT WAS.
"PROBABLY there are few important move-
ments which have taken place in the
Church of England certainly none within the
memory of living man which have had more
influence upon, not the Church only, but the
national life, nor any more commonly mis-
understood by English people to-day, than
what is known as the " Oxford Movement."
54 THE STORY OF
Some there are who appear to think that it
was a movement the intention and design of
which was to introduce Romish doctrine into
the Church of England, to bring about unity
with Rome, to place the old Church once
again under the control of Papal power.
The writer has even heard men affirm that
they always believed the founders of the
Movement to be Roman Catholics, and in
consequence preferred to attend a decided
Evangelical place of worship, rather than any
which favoured " Catholic " (understood,
erroneously of course, to mean " Roman
Catholic ") practices.
Now it is certain that whatever else is, or
may be, untrue concerning this great religious
movement, it was the creation solely of Church
of England men, of whom there were then
none more staunch, men who certainly, as we
shall see as we proceed, had not the slightest
intention of "Romanizing" the Church of
England, of introducing " Romish " doctrine,
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 55
or of seeking to bring the Church under the
thraldom or leadership of Papal administration.
The aims and intentions of the pioneers of
the Movement are thus summarised in the
advertisement to the first volume of "The
Tracts for the Times," dated Oxford, Feast
of All Saints, 1834: "The Church of Christ
was intended to cope with human nature in
all its forms, and surely the gifts vouchsafed
it are adequate for that gracious purpose.
There are zealous sons and servants of her
English branch, who see with sorrow that she
is defrauded of her full usefulness, by par-
ticular theories and principles of the present
age, which interfere with the execution of one
portion of her commission, and while they
consider that the revival of this portion of
truth is especially adapted to break up exist-
ing parties in the Church, and to form instead
a bond of union among all who love the Lord
Jesus Christ in sincerity, they believe that
nothing but these neglected doctrines, faithfully
56 THE STORY OF
preac/ted, will repress that extension of Popery
for which the ever multiplying divisions of the
religious world are too clearly preparing the
way (italics ours).
Surely these are not the words of
" Roman izers," or of men who wished to re-
store the Papal power in England !
Canon Liddon* tells us how the Oxford
Movement began :
" The great movement of religious thought
and life named after the Tracts, which were
its earliest product, and very largely its direct-
ing influence, first began in Oxford during the
summer of 1833. To no small degree it was
a result of the re-action from the encyclopedist,
or negative, temper, which had preceded and
created the great French Revolution, and had
been felt in every country in Europe. When
the flood-gates of human passion had been
opened on a gigantic scale in the horrors of
war and anarchy, men felt that religion, and
'"Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey," Vol. i, p. 253.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 57
a clear, strong, positive religious creed, was
necessary, if civilization was to be saved from
ruin. ... It acquired a new intensity in the
eventful months which followed on the death
of George IV. The three days of July, 1830,
in Paris, and the wide-popular agitation in this
country, culminating in the Bristol Riots, which
preceded the passing of the first Reform Bill,
appeared to contemporaries to threaten a re-
newal, perhaps on another scene, of the days
of the Terror, and revived and deepened the
convictions with which religious Englishmen
like Burke, or Bishop Home, had regarded the
work of Marat and Robespierre.
Of this re-action one element was a new
interest in the Middle Ages, which the literary
men of the eighteenth century had agreed to
denounce with a violence which was only
V
greater than their ignorance. The Middle Ages
were not perfect, they had evils all their own,
but they were very unlike what they appeared
to the gloomy imagination of a French theo-
58 THE STORY OF
philanthropist. Of the new interest in the
Middle Ages, the pioneer, in his century, was
Sir Walter Scott ; his indirect relation to the
Oxford Movement was often dwelt upon by
Pusey in private conversation. That relation
consisted not only in the high moral tone
which characterised Scott's writings, and which
marked them off so sharply from the con-
temporary popular writers of fiction, but also,
and especially, in the interests which he aroused
on behalf of ages and persons who had been
buried out of sight, to an extent that in our
generation would appear incredible.
Another influence very unlike Scott's, yet
distinctly contributing to the Tractarian move-
ment, was that of S. T. Coleridge, the
philosopher of Highgate. . . . He was a great
force in making men dissatisfied with the
superficiality so common a hundred years ago
in religion as in other matters ; and in this,
if in no other way, he prepared the English
mind to listen to the Oxford teachers.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 59
Viewed on another side, however, the Oxford
Movement was a completion of the earlier
revival of religion known as Evangelical. That
revival was provoked by the prevalence of a
latitudinarian theology in the last century, and
by a dry and cold preaching of morality,
often only of natural morality, which left out
of view, or at least failed to assign, its rightful
place to the Person, and Work, of our Divine
Redeemer. This failure led to the movement
which, outside the Church, became Wesleyanism
and within it Evangelicalism. " In its earlier
days, the Evangelical Movement was mainly,
if not exclusively, interested in maintaining a
certain body of positive truths. . . . The
deepest and most fervid religion in England
during the first three decades of this century
was that of the Evangelicals, and to the last
day of his life Pusey retained that 'love of
the Evangelicals,' to which he often adverted,
and which was aroused by their efforts to
make religion a living power in a cold and
gloomy age. . . ."
60 THE STORY OF
But the more immediate incitement to action
was the introduction into Parliament in Feb-
ruary, 1833, of 5Lord Stanley's Irish Church
Temporalities Bill, suppressing one-half of the
Irish Episcopate, which Bill was carried in the
House of Lords by a majority of 135 to 81.
The " Oxford Movement," then, or as it was
called by some the " Tractarian Movement,"
was so called because it had its origin at
Oxford. It was started by men of the Uni-
versity of Oxford, and Oxford was not only
the place of its birth, but the scene of its hopes,
its fears, and its early successes.
The causes for the Movement were many,
and no doubt were due to the spirit of the age
when it was first promoted. Political forces
were then, as now, arrayed against the Church,
which presented but a feeble and listless
condition, and had no means for resisting the
onslaughts made upon her as a National
Institution. There was a great and growing
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 61
desire upon the part of the people for
" Reform" in the political world, which found
its counterpart in the Church, at a time when
this very subject was discovered to be not
only in the ' air,' but on the floor of the
House of Commons.
In such a bad way was the Church supposed
to be some sixty years ago even about the time
Queen Victoria ascended the throne that
prominent men gave expression to their
convictions that the days of the Old Church
were numbered ! The famous Dr. Arnold, of
Rugby one whose words were always received
with the respect due to so eminent a man
deliberately stated in 1832 his belief that the
Church, as it then stood, "no human power
could save."* A year later this same learned
headmaster wrote : " Nothing, as it seems to
me, can save the Church, but a union with
Dissenters ; now they are leagued with the
anti-Christian party, and no merely internal
*"Life," I., 326.
62 THE STORY OF
reforms will satisfy them"* (though it is right
to say that in later days he thought this
expression of opinion was rather exaggerated).
The Church of England was, as we have
seen, in fact in a very bad way. It was
as a well-known writer has put it "imperilled
amid the crude revolutionary projects of the
Reform epoch, and something bolder and more
effective than the ordinary apologies for the
Church was the call of the hour. The
official leaders of the Church were almost
stunned and bewildered by the fierce outbreak
of popular hostility. The answers put forth
on its behalf, to the clamour for extensive,
and even destructive, change, were the work
of men surprised in a moment of security.
They scarcely recognised the difference of
what was indefensible and what must be
fought for to the death ; they mistook subor-
dinate, or unimportant, points, for the key to
their position ; in their compromises, or in
"Life," I., 336.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 63
their resistance, they wanted the guidance of
clear and adequate principles, and they were
vacillating and ineffective.
" But stronger and far-seeing minds perceived
the need of a broad and intelligible basis on
which to maintain the cause of the Church.
For the air was full of new ideas ; the temper
of the times was bold and enterprising." *
The only redeeming feature of the English
Church of those days was probably its family
life of purity and simplicity ; the great blot
its worldliness. The fortunes of the Church
were unsafe in the hands of a clergy the
greater part of whom took their obligations all
too easily. It was a Church of slumber and of
sleeping, which was soon to be thoroughly
awakened in a way and in a manner never before
remembered, by the great change which had
itb origin in the Oxford Movement of sixty
years ago.
Mr. W. Palmer, one of the first of the
"The Oxford Movement," Dean Chuich, pp. i, 2.
64 THE STORY OF
leaders of the Movement, explains in an article,*
that it was the Irish Bishoprics Act which
actually brought things to a crisis. " Its
result was the Oxford Movement, which,
however some may have sought to explain it,
really sprang from necessity ; the need felt by
various minds agreeing in their essential
feeling towards the Church of England and its
principles. It became evident to them that
something was required to be done in order
to meet changes which had become tangible,
and which threatened to become intolerable."
Between the years 1825-1830 there were two
recognised parties in the Church of England.
One may be termed the Anglican School, men
who followed in the steps of the great divines,
such as Hooker, Bishop Wilson, Jeremy Tay-
lor, and good brave Bishop Ken. The best of
this school of thought for there were good and
bad amongst them instituted or re-established
daily services, which had never wholly ceased
* " Contemporary Review," p. 639.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 65
in England, and regarded, and accustomed their
congregations to regard, the Service of Holy
Communion with reverence deep and abiding.
One of the best exponents of this party was
the celebrated Dr. Hook, whose work at Leeds
is cited to-day as one of the remarkable efforts
of this great Apostle of the Church of modern
times. Through good and evil report Dr.
Hook worked on, the supporter of a Church
which knew not the errors of the Papist, nor
the innovations of the Puritan.
The other party, no less influential and far
more numerous, was the Evangelical party,
inheritors of the traditions of Wesley, and those
zealous clergy and laity who sympathised with
and worked for the Methodist revival. Their