bright and beautiful Froude " ; a third, Thomas
Mozley,t says : " The strength of his [Froude's]
religious impressions, the boldness and clearness
of his views, his long habits of self-denial, and his
unconquerable energy of mind, triumphed over
weakness and decay, till men with all their
health and strength about them might gaze
upon his attenuated form, struck with a certain
* " In this mortal journeying, wasted shade
Is worse than wasted sunshine."
Henry Taylor, Sicilian Summer^ Vol. III.
t "British Critic," April, 1840, p. 396.
92 THE STORY OF
awe of wonderment at the brightness of his
wit, the intenseness of his mental vision, and
the iron strength of his argument."
In 1845, after Newman's secession, Isaac
Williams, who knew him very intimately, said :
"If Hurrell Froude had been living he would
not have left the Church of England."
Surely here was a beautiful life, all, as it
seemed to his dearest friends, too short. He
was a typical Englishman, loved the sea, sailed
his own boat, and was a bold cross-country
rider. A thorough Churchman in the best
and truest sense of the word, and a man who
desired, above all things, that the primitive
doctrine, so long in abeyance, should be once
again revived in the old Church of England,
which he loved so well. None spoke of him,
none thought of him, as ever likely to proclaim
or extol the doctrines of the Church of Rome.
Clearly, whatever else he was, he was an
English Churchman, and that, too, of the best
and highest type.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 93
Of Charles Marriott, a Fellow of Oriel, who
joined the Movement at a later stage, Sir John
Coleridge writes : *
" I recall the name of a man justly dear
to many, and too early taken from us, a man
of great learning and ability, but more re-
markable for his rare simplicity, zeal, and
purity, of a charity in one sense bounded only
by his means, in another and higher sense
unbounded. He died in the prime of life,
still a Fellow."
" He was," says Dean Church,f " profoundly
and devotedly religious, without show, without
extravagance ... a man under an uncouth
exterior, of the noblest and most affectionate
nature ; most patient, indulgent, and hopeful
to all in whom he took an interest, even when
they sorely tried his kindness and his faith
in them. . . Marriott moved to Oriel, and
* " Memoir of John Keble," p. 264.
t "The Oxford Movement," p. 80.
94 THE STORY OF
became the friend of Mr. Newman. Master and
disciple were as unlike as any two men could
be ; they were united by their sympathy in the
great crisis around them, by their absorbing
devotion to the cause of true religion. Marriott
brought to the Movement, and especially to
its chief, a great University character, and an
unswerving and touching fidelity. He placed
himself, his life, and all that he could do at
the service of the great effort to elevate and
animate the Church."
Mr. Marriott was at one time Principal of
the Theological College at Chichester, and
afterwards Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. It
was this earnest worker for the Church who
took over the buildings at Littlemore, com-
menced by Mr. Newman, and made use of
them for the purpose of printing religious
books. He was a great worker, a most
generous-hearted man, whose purse was ever
at the service of the first person in need or
distress. " There was no claimant on his
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 95
purse or his interest," writes Dean Church,*
" who was too strange for his sympathy
raw freshmen, bores of every kind, broken-
down tradesmen, old women, distressed
foreigners, converted Jews, all the odd and
helpless wanderers from beaten ways were to
be heard of in Marriott's rooms."
Mr. Marriott was one of the editors, with
Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey, of a projected
edition of the works of the early Fathers who
had flourished before the division of Christen-
dom into East and West. These two made
themselves responsible for a certain selection of
the works which, with the help of a number
of University men whose names were publicly
made known, were translated and printed. It
is pleasant to remember that these men refused
all pecuniary profit arising from the issue of
this " Library of the Fathers," which, however,
was never fully completed. " All through his
life," writes Dean Church, "he (Mr. Marriott)
* "The Oxford Movement," p. 87.
96 THE STORY OF
was a beacon and an incitement to those who
wish to make a good use of their lives. In
him all men could see, whatever their opinions,
and however little they liked him, the sim-
plicity and the truth of a self-denying life of
suffering (for he was never well) of zealous,
hard work unstinted, unrecompensed."
In a serious outbreak of small-pox at Ox-
ford in 1854, in visiting a sick person, he was
struck down by this disease, and though he
was supposed to have recovered from its effects,
there is no doubt that a constitution never
strong was thereby greatly weakened, for a
year later he was seized with paralysis, from
which he never wholly recovered, dying Sep-
tember 25th, 1858.
Isaac Williams was a Welshman, and a close
friend of Newman's, with whom he almost
daily walked and dined. He was born in
1802, so was ten years younger than John
Keble. He was an excellent Latin scholar
and a good cricketer, won a scholarship at
..
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 97
Trinity, and was one of the merriest, and, in
some ways, at one time of his life, one of the
most unthinking youths at the University.
All this was changed by what some would
call the " accidental " bringing together of Mr.
Keble and the young student. In Mr. Williams'
own words, " It was this trivial accident, this
short walk of a few yards, and a few words
spoken, which was the turning-point of my
life. If a merciful God has miraculously in-
terposed to arrest my course, I could not have
had a stronger assurance of His presence than
I always had in looking back to that day."
Mr. Williams contributed his share of the
"Tracts for the Times," and aided the Move-
ment by his poetical works, many of which
are of a high order, and by writing a series
of Plain Sermons, which were largely read by
the clergy, and thus his opinions, and those
who wrote with him, became more widely
known.
Of William John Copeland little need be
9
I
98 THE STORY OF
said, except that he was a friend of Mr.
Williams, and was constantly consulted by his
colleagues when he lived at Oxford.
Mr. W. G. Ward, who joined the Movement
at a later stage, was a great controversi-
alist, with strong leanings to Rome, into which
Church he was ultimately admitted. He was
a man of many attractive parts, a brilliant
conversationalist, and described by a friend as
" possessed of a fund of wit and good humour,
a great musical critic, a great admirer of the
opera, and an admirable buffo singer."* He
had had no such training as Keble or Pusey,
and was in consequence not so devotedly
attached to the Church of England as the
pioneers of the Oxford Movement certainly
were, and, above all, he was extravagantly a
one-sided individual, as his writings clearly
* " Ward and Oakeley (Rev. F., Minister at Margaret Chapel)
were united in a disposition to urge the Movement forward, and
in a measure calculated to imperil its original scope and purpose."
Canon Liddon, " Life of Pusey," Vol. II., p. 217.
*
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 99
show, a man with a mind but ill-propor-
tioned*
There remain two names, and certainly not
the least important amongst the pioneers of
the Movement, to mention Dr. Pusey, who
became its head, and Mr. (afterwards Cardinal)
Newman names which * the writer has pur-
posely left to the last to touch upon.
These two eminent and remarkable men, for
this they certainly were, are only bracketed
together here for purposes of convenience, the
names of " Pusey and Newman " being fre-
quently upon men's tongues. Here is a des-
cription of Newman, a man of surpassing
personal influence, taken from the words of
Dean Church, one who knew him well, and
who regularly attended his sermons at St.
Mary's, t
" None but those who remember them
can adequately estimate the effect of Mr.
* Mr. Mozley's " Reminiscences."
t "The Oxford Movement," p. 129.
I
ioo THE STORY OF
Newman's four o'clock sermons. The world
knows them, has heard a great deal about them,
and has passed its various judgments upon them,
but it hardly realises that without those ser-
mons the Movement might never have gone
on, certainly would never have been what
it was. Even people who heard them con-
tinually, and felt them to be different from
any other sermons, hardly estimated their real
power, or knew at the time the influence
which the sermons were having upon them.
Plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English
that was only pure and lucid, free from any
faults of taste, strong in their flexibility and
perfect command both of language and thought,
they were the expression of a piercing and
large insight into character and conscience and
motives, of a sympathy at once most tender
and most stern with the tempted and the
wavering, of an absolute and burning faith
in God and His counsels, in His love, in
His judgments, in the awful glory of His
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 101
generosity and His magnificence. . . Unsought
for, as the Apologia makes so clear unsought
for, as the contemporary letters of observing
friends attest unsought for, as the whole tenour
of his life has proved the position of leader
in a great crisis came to him because it must
come. He was not unconscious that, as he
had felt in his sickness in Sicily, he ' had a
work to do,' but there was shyness and self-
distrust in his nature as well as energy, and
it was the force of genius, and a lofty character,
and the statesman's eye, taking in and judging
accurately the whole of a complicated scene
which conferred the gifts, and imposed in-
evitably and without dispute the obligations
and responsibilities of leadership. Dr. Pusey
was, of course, a friend of great account, but
he was as yet in the background, a venerated
and rather awful person, from his position not
mixing in the easy intercourse of common
room life, but to be consulted on emergencies.
Round Mr. Newman gathered, with a curious
102 THE STORY OF
mixture of freedom, devotion, and awe, for
with unlimited power of sympathy, he was
exacting and even austere in his friendships,
the best men of his college . . . bound
to him not merely by enthusiastic admiration
and confidence, but by a tenderness of affec-
tion, a mixture of the gratitude and reliance
of discipleship with the warm love of friend-
ship of which one has to go back far for
examples, and which has had nothing like it in
our days at Oxford."
Mr. James Mozley,* a great authority and
a man whose judgment was ever regarded as
independent and entirely free from bias, testi-
fied to the marvellous power of Newman's
sermons, wrote that "a sermon of Mr. New-
man's enters into all one's feelings, ideas,
modes of viewing things. He wonderfully
realises a state of mind, enters into a diffi-
culty, a temptation, a disappointment, a grief;
he goes into the different turns and incidental
* "Christian Remembrancer," Jan., 1846, p. 169.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 103
unconscious symptoms of a case with notions
which come into the head and go out again,
and are forgotten till some chance recalls them.
. . . Here is the point. Persons look into
Mr. Newman's sermons and see their own
thoughts in them. This is, after all, what, as
much as anything, gives a hold upon the mind."
Mr. Newman not only preached wonderful
sermons, but he preached them in a wonderfully
persuasive manner ; the silver intonation of his
voice will be recalled by many who heard him
read the daily lessons, or preach the simple
Gospel message of salvation. And marvellous
as it may appear to some to believe, there was
about his services neither pomp nor display ;
indeed there was a marked absence of
" ritualism," as is commonly understood by the
word to-day.
"With an unrivalled command of logic and
pathos," writes Canon Liddon,* "he combined
a singularly subtle beauty of style ; and this
* Liddon, " Life of Pusey," Vol. I., p. 272.
104 THE STORY OF
combination caused his eulogies to bring home
to his contemporaries the realities of spiritual
things never before appreciated . . . and
the majority of these tracts, the earliest and
the most important, were the work of Newman.
It was his power of speech and writing, com-
bined with his enthusiasm, practical energy, and
attractive personality which could alone supply
the necessary impetus at the start."
Dr. Newman, we all know, unhappily seceded
from the Church of England, greatly to the
regret of Church of England folk. It was, of
course, a deplorable act, and especially so in
such a man, one whose saintliness of character
and literary attainments were matters of com-
mon knowledge to all the world, and nothing
can excuse or alter that ; yet when he died
full of years (in August, 1889) it was admitted
by friend and foe alike that the world was the
poorer, that it had lost a man of uncommon
genius, of wonderful gentleness, and of exalted
character. Once he was hailed as one of the
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 105
brightest ornaments of the Church of England,
and when he passed away, secular and religious
papers alike had for the writer of the familiar
and beautiful lines, " Lead, Kindly Light," little
else but praise. " Forty-five years ago," said
a writer in a daily paper of the time, " he was
the most virulently abused man in this country.
* Renegade ' and ' traitor ' were among the
epithets freely applied to him at public meet-
ings and in the columns of the press. His
character was eloquently vilified by some of
the most eminent Englishmen of that day, who
for the most part lived to repent the intem-
perance of their language and the injustice of
their accusations. John Henry Newman lived
through that tempest of wrath and scorn . . .
and Englishmen of all parties and creeds are
now united in a common sorrow over his
grave."
"The real originators of this Oxford Move-
ment," writes Canon Liddon,*"were undoubtedly
* " Life of Pusey," Vol. I., p. 270.
io6 THE STORY OF
Keble and Newman. It is, however, difficult
to say in what exact sense or proportion the
leadership should be assigned to each of these
two men. Undoubtedly, to the world at large
Newman, at any rate at first, was the principal
figure in the revival, but it may be questioned
whether he did not himself derive from Keble
his first impulses as well as many underlying
principles. Newman himself speaks of Keble
as the 'true and primary author of the Move-
ment.' ' I compared myself with Keble,' he
says, 'and I felt that I was merely developing
his, not my, convictions.' " *
The Oxford Movement, it will be seen, was
initiated almost exclusively by junior men,
nearly all of whom belonged to one college
Oriel College, Oxford and it was not until
after it had been started a year or more that
Dr. Pusey, Canon and Professor of Christ
Church, joined the pioneers.
* " Apologia," p. 75.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 107
Pusey had been a friend and fellow worker
of Newman, and his adhesion greatly elevated
the character of the Movement ; in Newman's
words, " gave us at once a position and a name."
Dr. Pusey was a man possessed of an intensely
religious mind, of unbounded liberality, and
was on terms of equality with the collegiate
authorities. He was essentially designed by
nature to be a leader of men, and destined to
become the particular head, the chief director
of the Oxford Movement. Resolute self-pos-
session and a fixity of purpose, with full and
perfect confidence in the cause he headed and
worked for, Dr. Pusey never for an instant
wavered in his sincere attachment for the
Church of England.
" Dr. Pusey," says Dean Church, " was, indeed,
a man of 'large designs.' The vision rose
before him of a revived and instructed Church.
. . . He was prepared for opposition ; but
he had boundless reliance on his friends and
in his cause. His forecast of the future, of
xo8 THE STORY OF
great days in store for the Church of England,
was, not unreasonably, one of great promise."
Surely the promise, to anyone who thinks
about it at all, has been abundantly redeemed,
for it is true beyond the shadow of a doubt
that during the last sixty years the Church
of England has enormously deepened its influ-
ence and demonstrated its power over the
world in a way and probably to an extent
that even the most sanguine of these pioneers
of the Oxford Movement, in its inception,
never for one moment deemed possible.
Although there were many who did not then,
as there are many who do not at the present
day, see eye to eye in all things with Dr. Pusey's
teaching, there were, and are, few, if any, who
knew him intimately who could not but be
struck with the greatness and the goodness of
this eminently great and good man, for he was
in reality both the one and the other.
An intimate friend of the author, and one
who knew Pusey well, writes as follows :
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 109
" Much as I dislike a good deal of his teach-
ing, and regret a good deal of his influence,
he was undoubtedly one of the greatest and
best men of the nineteenth century. The
Dons of the University of Oxford snubbed and
persecuted him in the early forties ; but within
twelve years, when they were themselves
attacked by the University Commission, they
were glad to shelter themselves under his
shield ; and his defence of the University
occupies nearly one-half of the volume which
they published, and which I possess." A sec-
tion of the Press had unlimited venom for him,
and The Record invented the nick-name,
" Puseyite." But I remember how in the later
fifties it published a letter from his pen, and a
leading article upon it, in favour of joining
the High Church and Evangelical forces, when
the " Essays and Reviews " were attacking the
foundation " of the Faith."
Concerning his writings the same correspon-
dent asks : " Has the nineteenth century
no THE STORY OF
produced any Commentary deeper or more
spiritual than Pusey's on ' The Minor Prophets ' ?
How many defences of Holy Writ have been
worth more than his book on Daniel?"
But, perhaps, it was as a man of intense cour-
age, and almost infinite compassion, that caused
Pusey to be regarded by many as a prince
among men. One incident in his life illustra-
ting this point must suffice. When the writer
of this little volume was a boy at school, the
cholera was raging in London, and " cholera "
powders were always placed ready for instant
use each night before we went to our beds.
One hot August afternoon Pusey went down to
the East End of London, and pulled the door-
bell of a rector's house, and offered to give
up his vacation to pastoral work there, and,
though at that time a man of sixty years
of age, actually hired lodgings, and devoted
his holidays to visiting the worst parts and
the poorest people in that squalid and cholera-
stricken parish. Who but a man of infinite
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. in
courage and compassion would have done
such a thing ?
If we cannot all agree with Pusey's lofty
ideas concerning doctrine, we can at least
admire nay, we must admire, his work, and
his devotion as a parish priest.
Such, then, in few words, was the character
of the men who began the Oxford Movement,
a movement which led to such an uprising in
the Church as the world has never seen. We
shall see as we read on that, though extrava-
gance of thought, disproportion, and often
dangerous exaggeration, marked the character
of some of the writings of certain of the
followers of the pioneers of the Movement, yet
it is certain that the leaders were men who
thought nothing of themselves, but who, having
fixed a high standard of religious principle,
gave up all else in their endeavour to attain
and to lead others to attain to it
ii2 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.
Above all, whatever they were, certainly
they cannot be regarded as " Romanizers," but
as staunch Church of England men, if we may
except Newman and Ward, who began well,
but ended badly.
CHAPTER VI.
THE " TRACTS FOR THE TIMES."
the "Tracts for the Times," all of which
created so unusual an amount of interest,
and some of them even alarm that is, in
certain quarters Dean Church has left it on
record that "there was no Romanism in them,
nor anything that showed a tendency to it."
But custom, and the prevalence of other systems
and other ways, made their readers forget, as so
many forget to-day, the simple facts about the
Church, her history, and her position. Men
did not know then as for the most part they
do not know now the difference between
"Catholic" truth and "Roman Catholic error."
The vast tract that separates " Popery " from
10
ii4 THE STORY OF
primitive Church doctrine, is for most an abso-
lutely unknown region. So many thought
erroneously, of course then, as many no doubt
think now, that the Tracts were meant to spread
the errors of the Papacy in the Church of
England ; whereas, instead, they were directed
to quite another and a wholly different object.
There was, as Dean Church assures us, " abso
lutely nothing in them but had the indisputable
sanction of the Prayer-book."
On July I4th, 1833, Mr. Keble preached a
remarkable sermon on National Apostacy, which
created no small stir in the country, and in
which, amongst other things, he said that there
were "hundreds, nay thousands, of Christians,
and that there soon will be tens of thousands,
unaffectedly anxious to be rightly guided." And
what he said was true, as time and the events
proved.
The first step in the direction of producing
the " Tracts for the Times " was taken at a
little meeting of friends at Mr. Hugh James
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 115
Rose's parsonage at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, in
July, 1833. At this meeting were assembled
Mr. Rose, Mr. Wm. Palmer, Mr. A. Perceval,
and Mr. Froude. Two others, at least, were
concerned in the work of producing the first
Tracts, Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman, both of
Oriel College ; but neither was present at the
first meeting.
It seems clear that Mr. Keble, though absent,
was the mainspring of the Movement, and it
was from this meeting that the first issue of
the Tracts was decided upon. Mr. Rose, who
died six years later, was a man of great
energy of character, a Churchman of the best
type, utterly opposed to anything that tended
towards Romanism.
Keble's " powerfully constructive mind," writes
Canon Liddon,* "grasped from the beginning
the strength of the Anglican position as opposed
to Protestantism, and Rationalism, as well as to
the (yet unappreciated) power of Romanism."
* "Life of Pusey," Vol. I., p. 271.
u6 THE STORY OF
He saw, as he stated in one of the earliest
Tracts, that the Apostolical Succession was
the essential bond, recognised by the sixteenth
and seventeenth century divines, associating the
English Church, through Reformation and Papal
dominion, with that primitive Catholicism in
which Anglicans laid their foundations, and
to which they always appealed. He was
never conscious of being an innovator. And
with this firmness of conviction and principle,
he was able, in spite of his position, not only
to strike heavy blows in controversy, but on
occasion to head protests and even agitations.
The first Tract was issued on September 9th,
1833. The beginnings were like the begin-
nings of many other great movements very
humble. " A tract," wrote Newman, " would
be long enough if it filled four octavo pages.
We hope to publish tracts for hawkers' baskets
in time." The first Tracts were chiefly con-
cerned in setting forth the constitution, ordi-
nances, and services of the Church.
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 117
One of the commonest mistakes, as we have
said, is to suppose that the Tractarian Move-
ment was intended to favour or spread the
doctrine or practices of the Church of Rome.
Nothing appears to have been further from
the thoughts and intentions of the writers.
" We all concurred most heartily," writes Mr.
Palmer,* " in the necessity of impressing on
people that the Church was more than a merely
human institution ; that it had privileges, sacra-
ments, a ministry ordained by Christ ; that it
was a matter of the highest obligation to
remain united to the Church,"
This is the criticism of a distinguished
Roman Catholic writer :
" The scope of the Tracts," writes Cardinal