The Oxford Movement: THE SETTING In 1833 the spirit of reform
was sweeping across England. The reforms of the Whig governments of
Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel touched many areas of English
life, including that of the Established Church. JOHN KEBLE How surprising it must have been, then, when on July 14th, 1833 the judges of the Assize court assembled in Oxford and gathered in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin to hear the professor of poetry, the Reverend John Keble, preach. Keble was troubled by the recent infringement upon the rights of the Church in the Irish Temporalities Act. Behind the turn of political events Keble discerned the loosening of the Christian faith as the bond of English society. Religion was being treated as a private matter a grave concern for churchmen whose faith spoke of a divine society, living by the grace of God, communicated through the sacraments and the words of Scripture. His sermon, known by the title "National Apostasy," was a protest against such a situation, and Keble himself believed that the subjection of the Church to the State was no longer tolerable when the State had ceased to profess the faith of the Church. "Under the guise of charity and toleration," he said, "we are come almost to this pass: that no difference, in matters of faith, is to disqualify for our approbation and confidence, whether in public or domestic life." The sermon was significant not so much in itself, but because of the character of the preacher. John Keble was born in 1792, the son of a parish priest who raised young Keble in the high Anglican tradition. In his early Christian formation Keble became familiar with the Seventeenth century Anglican divines and with the devotions of the Non-Jurors, those high-churchmen who had left the Church of England after the revolution in 1688, when William and Mary succeeded James II, rather than betray their oath of allegiance to James. In 1808, at age fourteen, Keble went up to Oxford, to Corpus Christi College. In 1811 he qualified for the highly coveted fellowship at Oriel College, founded in the fourteenth century and officially known as "The House of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Oxford." After his appointment as an Oriel tutor in 1817 Keble began to exercise a profound influence upon several Oriel students and fellows who later joined the Oxford reform movement: John Henry Newman, Robert Wilberforce, Isaac Williams, Hurrell Froude and Edward Pusey. Born a poet, and steeped in all that was noblest in Greek and Roman literature, with keen sympathy for the new Romanticism which the poet Wordsworth represented, Keble had found poetry a means of expression for feeling stirred by the many aspects of human life. In 1827 he became widely known throughout England through the publication of The Christian Year, a volume of poems based upon the Sundays, festivals and services of the Book of Common Prayer. Though now dated in their style, the poems played a major part in the recovery of an understanding of the symbolic and sacramental character of Christian doctrine and worship that was to be so central in the teaching of the Oxford Movement. Keble's theology was one of transfiguration: the glory of God revealed in every part of creation. We are not to look for strange and outlandish experiences; our daily lives provide us with ample opportunity to discover the love and presence of God:
Our own liturgical tradition has been enhanced by musical settings of several of Keble's poems in The Christian Year and of his translations of ancient Christian hymns. The hymn, entitled 'Hursley,' after the town where Keble lived as a parish priest when he left Oxford in 1836, is widely known:
But best loved is this hymn: Blest are the pure in heart,
John Henry Newman wrote after Keble's death in 1866 that Keble had done for the Church of England what only a poet could do, "He made it poetical," and he added that "for Christians a poetical view of things is a duty." Newman did not mean by this that Keble made the Church unreal or sentimental; he saw rather that it was the poet's gift, as it was the gift of people of spiritual vision, to invite others to look beneath the surface of things and penetrate to deeper meanings. As Keble himself recognized, the vision and imagination of the poet were a necessary corrective against a mechanistic, deterministic view of the world, interpreted in terms of commercial advantage or technological achievement. The poet and the Christian were both concerned with the value of life. Keble taught his students that moral truth was always to be preferred to intellectual cleverness; that theological investigation was linked with holiness; and that faith was evoked not by strident slogans, but through love kindled by the love of God. Keble gave his contemporaries a vision of holiness, and did so in an unself-conscious way. "No man ever lifted so many to heaven without mentioning it, as John Keble," remarked Canon Liddon, after Keble's death. Such was the man who proclaimed national apostasy from the pulpit of St. Mary's Church, Oxford, on July 14th, 1833. Keble's sermon incited the High Churchmen in Oxford into a militant stance against the spirit of Liberalism. Among those bolstered by the sermon was the Reverend Hugh James Rose, the most eminent Anglican theologian of the time. He immediately wrote to a friend in Oxford proposing action: "That something is requisite is certain. The only thing is, that whatever is done ought to be quickly done; for the danger is immediate, and I should have little fear if I thought we could stand for ten or fifteen years as we are." Rose called together several concerned churchmen from Oxford and they met in his parsonage at Hadleigh, in Suffolk, at the end of July. At this little gathering the ideas and anxieties which for some time had filled the thoughts of a number of earnest churchmen, came to a head, and issued in the determination to act. As a consequence of the Hadleigh Conference the younger high churchmen, in particular Hurrell Froude and John Henry Newman, decided that a direct, determined response was needed. It was necessary, Newman believed, "to unite on this single principle- with a view to stir up our brethren to consider the state of the Church, and especially to the practical belief and preaching of the Apostolical Succession." So, in September of 1833 John Henry Newman began the Tracts for the Times to alert the Church to the danger it faced from an apostate government, to incite the Church to action, and to reclaim Anglicanism's ancient, apostolic faith. It was from the writing of such tracts that these Oxford men became known throughout the Church as "Tractarians." Newman launched the Tracts with a four-page leaflet
entitled "Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission
Respectfully addressed to the Clergy." It was a vigorous
defense of the doctrine of apostolic succession, that is, the belief
that the integrity of the Church's life and the assurance of grace communicated
by the sacraments depends upon the presence of ministers ordained by
bishops who have themselves been rightly ordained by bishops in a succession
reaching back to the ancient Church and the apostles. Newman and the
others recognized the urgent need for finding a secure foundation for
their view of the Church as a divinely established institution whose
authority rested upon Jesus Christ by direct delegation to his apostles
and their successors. Only in this way could the Church be secured against
the assaults of the secularism of the time. Between 1833 and 1841 ninety tracts were published. They included translations from ancient Christian writers, selections from the seventeenth and eighteenth century Anglican divines, and contemporary explanations of the doctrines and practices of the Book of Common Prayer. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN During these years following 1833, until 1845, John Henry Newman was the intellectual leader of the Movement. Unlike Keble, though, he was not of the old high church tradition. Born in 1801, the eldest son of a London banker, Newman's mother taught him a simple Bible Christianity. Illness and financial disaster in the family brought about Newman's first deep spiritual crisis, and in 1816 he experienced what he later called his "great change of thought," in which he gained a new sense of the reality of God. A year later he went up to Trinity College, Oxford, intending to become a barrister. Newman's intellectual capacity was widely recognized and in 1822, following in the steps of John Keble, he passed the Oriel fellowship examination, the most demanding intellectual test in Oxford at the time. Though Newman entered Oriel as an awkward, shy Evangelical, in the Oriel Common Room he found himself a member of a closely-knit community of sharp minds and remarkable personalities. Among them was John Keble. In the following year, 1823, Edward Pusey was admitted to their ranks, and later Hurrell Froude and Robert Wilberforce, all of whom fell under the spell of the saintly Keble. Oriel was very much the college of the Oxford Movement. It was in his room in the front quadrangle of the College that Newman studied, thought, wrote and finally rejected the liberal, calvinistic perspective with which he had come to Oxford. Under the influence of men like Keble and Charles Lloyd, briefly Bishop of Oxford, he came to recognize that "Antiquity was the true exponent of the doctrines of Christianity and the basis of the Church of England." This appeal to the faith and practice of the ancient undivided church of the fathers became a hallmark of Tractarian thought and teaching. There they found a theology deeply imbued with a sense of the mystery of God, profoundly scriptural, and rooted in the sacramental life of the Church and the quest for holiness. Two other projects developed out of the Tracts for the Times. These were, first, The Library of the Fathers, begun with Dr. Pusey's edition of St. Augustine's Confessions in 1838; and second, the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology in eighty-eight volumes in which the works of post-Reformation high-church divines were reprinted and edited. The series included works of classic Anglican spirituality such as Lancelot Andrewes' Preces Privatae, or Private Devotions, as well as more weighty theological works such as Bishop Pearson's Exposition of the Creed. Through both of these projects the Tractarians performed an invaluable service in recovering the forgotten scope of the Anglican tradition. Between the years of 1828 and 1843 Newman was the Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. If the Tracts which Newman had begun were pungent, uncompromising statements in defense of catholic faith and apostolic order, Newman's preaching provided that very personal communication of the Tractarian vision. Great, decisive preaching was not unknown to St. Mary's. In 1738, in an earlier movement of Church renewal which bears striking similarities to the Movement of the 1830s, the Anglican preacher and high churchman John Wesley preached his famous sermon on justification by faith in the pulpit of St. Mary's. The poet and critic Matthew Arnold was a student in Oxford when Newman was vicar. Like so many listeners whose hearts were stirred by Newman's sermons, Arnold was drawn by the impression the preacher made week after week:
The effect of Newman's preaching impelled men to join not just a crusade to save the Church of England, but to join an army to overcome the forces of evil threatening the souls of the righteous. In his preaching Newman opened up a whole other world to his listeners, one whose claim upon every Christian was absolute. He gave them a new sense of Christian vocation by asserting that there is another world to which all Christians belong, and to which they owe their allegiance. Preaching on a text from Second Corinthians, Newman spoke of this other world:
Often we see our way dimly, Newman was aware, as this hymn, written in 1833 makes plain:
All that Christians do, he insisted, they do as spokesmen for another, far-greater reality, and it is this divine reality which nourishes and sustains them:
And so, the words of the angelic chorus from Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius, now part of the Anglican musical heritage, are very much our words too: Praise to the Holiest in the height,
Publication of the Tracts continued until 1841 when Newman published his famous Tract 90, entitled "Remarks on Certain Passages in the 39 Articles." In this essay he advanced the view that the Articles were not substantially at variance with official Roman Catholic teaching on matters such as the Eucharist, the invocation of saints, or the authority of the Church. Rather, Newman claimed, they were criticisms of popular Roman Catholic practices. The Tract was considered far too pro-Roman and was immediately condemned by the heads of most Oxford Colleges. At the request of the Bishop of Oxford, Newman consented to suspend further publication of the Tracts. Shortly afterward, Newman retired to Littlemore, just outside of Oxford, where he had established a chapel-of-ease to the parish Church of St. Mary's. In discouragement, he abandoned active participation in the Movement and, with several friends gathered about him, withdrew into semi-monastic retirement to ponder his future as an Anglican. In "The Priory," as it was called Newman lived and agonized for months. By September, 1845 his soul-searching came to an end. He decided to leave the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic. On September 25th, the anniversary of the consecration of the Littlemore chapel, Newman preached his last sermon as an Anglican, appropriately entitled "The Parting of Friends." "O my mother," lamented Newman, speaking of the English Church,
On October 8th, 1845, Newman was received into the Roman church by Father Dominic Barberi. EDWARD PUSEY With the secession of Newman to the Church of Rome, the leadership of the Movement fell to Dr. Pusey, the Regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral. By his own admission, Pusey was the least likely leader of an ecclesiastical 'party.' Born into a moderately aristocratic family in 1800, Edward Bouverie Pusey's intellectual eminence was very apparent when he went up to Christ Church, Oxford at the age of nineteen. In 1823 he was elected to an Oriel Fellowship, joining the ranks of Keble, Newman and the others in the Oriel Common Room. Five years later, though only twenty-eight years old, Pusey was made the Regius Professor of Hebrew, a post he held until his death. Pusey entered the Movement of 1833 cautiously. When at the end of 1833 his own name was added to the list of tract writers, tremendous prestige was given the Movement. "He at once gave to us a position and a name," Newman wrote years later,
Pusey's contribution was two-fold. He was, perhaps, the most learned of the Tractarians and did much to recover the witness and influence of the Greek and Latin Fathers in Anglican theology. The testimony of the ancient, undivided Church, asserted Pusey, had first place in determining the teaching of the Anglican Church. His first tract, on fasting, revealed Pusey's reliance on the witness of the ancient Church. The fast days of the Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer were an indication, he wrote, of "the peculiar character of our Church, which is not a mere Protestant, but a Primitive Church." But the fathers were, in Pusey's eyes, witnesses to something much more important; namely, to the interconnection of theology and spirituality. If Pusey's learning was significant, it is because it was the learning of a deeply spiritual man, a man immersed in prayer. Pusey has even been described as the doctor mysticus, "the mystical teacher," among the Tractarians. In 1843 he preached a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral entitled The Holy Eucharist, a Comfort to the Penitent. Following the phraseology of the ancient Fathers, Pusey emphasized that the life bestowed in the Eucharist "is greater than any gift, since it is life in Christ, life through his indwelling, Himself, who is Life." He spoke of "that bread which is his flesh," and of "touching with our very lips that cleansing Blood." Pusey urged more frequent celebrations of the Eucharist certainly more than the once-a-month pattern which prevailed in the Cathedral at the time. Though he expressly denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, his sermon was condemned as heretical by the University authorities and Pusey was prohibited from preaching in the University for two years. In 1846, when Pusey was permitted again to preach, he returned to the theme of penitence present in his sermon three years before. In this sermon, The Entire Absolution of the Penitent, he preached the use of sacramental confession. As the first sermon Pusey preached before the University following the lifting of the sentence of suspension, and considering the subject was bound to arouse anti-catholic sentiment, it is not surprising that the occasion attracted considerable attention. Canon Liddon of St. Paul's Cathedral, a keen disciple of Pusey, records an eye-witness account:
Pusey spoke of the way in which the sacraments, such as Absolution, do not supplant the ministry of Christ himself, but are forms of his own presence and action; in fact, the sacraments are a continuation of God's approach to us in the Incarnation. "It may be one of the fruits of the Incarnation," Pusey said concerning Absolution,
The Church aimed, he argued, "Not to diminish sorrow for past sin, but to make it joyous." Sacramental confession was to be, as the ancient Fathers said, "A Baptism of tears." At first sight it seems difficult to understand the power of Pusey's preaching. But year after year, even late in life, hundreds flocked to hear him. He did not have Newman's intense power to persuade by beauty of language, and his style was far from clear. He had none of the arts and accomplishments of oratory. His pace was constant, his tone of voice without variance; nor did he ever look up from his page, but kept his eyes fixed down. Rather, it was the simple, earnest integrity, the reality of holiness, which drew people and which sometimes achieved a kind of divine eloquence. "If we would see Him in His Sacraments," says Pusey,
Pusey grounded his understanding of salvation as participation in the divine nature in the character of that nature as love, which in giving to the uttermost transforms entirely into its likeness.
Issuing out of Pusey's concern for holiness was his interest in the revival of the religious life in the English Church. But his interest in monasticism was not just spiritual. He was aware of the appalling social conditions of parts of London and in the large industrial centers such as Leeds. There was a widespread need for nursing and welfare work among the poor. Orders of nursing sisterhoods, bound by vows and nourished by prayer and the sacraments, were ideal for such ministry. In 1841 Pusey received Miss Marian Hughes under the vow of chastity. She later became the superior of the Society of the Holy Trinity. Soon, other sisterhoods emerged, such as that of St. Mary at Wantage and the sisterhood of St. Margaret in East Grinstead. Though not a ritualist himself, Pusey often came to the defense of the Ritualists, many of whom, like Fr. Machonokie, were on the cutting edge of Tractarian influence through their ministry among the neglected of English society. Parish churches like St. Alban's, Holborn, were stunning architectural testimonies to the theological, moral, spiritual and liturgical vision of the Tractarians. On September 14, 1845, the new Church of the Holy Cross was dedicated in the industrial city of Leeds in an area of great deptivation and vice. The Church was designed according to the principles of the Cambridge Camden Society which John Mason Neale had founded ten years before in Cambridge and whose purpose was to foster the revival of the principles of Gothic church design and decoration. As part of a penance Pusey believed he owed on account of the death of his wife in 1838, he anonymously assumed the cost for construction for the new church- his only stipulation, that an inscription be attached with these words: "Ye who enter this holy place, pray for the sinner who built it." Later, when John Keble died, in 1866, Pusey was one of the main contributors to the Oxford College which bears Keble's name. In 1882 Oriel College commissioned for its Common Room a portrait of Newman, who had been created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII three years before. When it was completed the Provost sent it over to Christ Church for Pusey to see. "Kindest thanks," Pusey responded,
Pusey died later that year, and Newman eight years later in 1890. SUMMING UP It is almost impossible to describe adequately the changes in Anglican church life which the Oxford Movement, under the leadership of Keble, Newman and Pusey, fostered. From them Anglicans learned that their faith is that of the holy catholic Church; that every baptized Christian is called to personal holiness; that the sacraments must be the regular sustenance of a Christian; that the tradition of the Christian East and West belong to Anglicans; and that our ordained ministry is God given. Writing of the significance of those first years of Tractarianism before Newman's secession when Keble, Newman and Pusey labored to recover and renew the Anglican tradition, Richard Church ends his history of those first twelve years by noting that.
Their story is now our story; and much of it yet remains to be written.+ ___________________ Sources: |
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