cipal. But the minds of strong men become less susceptible. to extraneous impressions as they mature, and Newman, even before he became vice-principal of Alban Hall, was diverging from Whately. Any one who will carefully compare the works which illustrate the Oxford movement will probably conclude that the divergence was promoted by the influence of a younger man, Richard Hurrell Froude, who Richard Hurrell Froude. But his became a commoner of Oriel in 1821. Froude was the son of Archdeacon Froude, of Dartington. He grew up to manhood a Tory among the Tories. politics were from the first insensibly moulded by his religious. views. In religion he was perpetually endeavouring to base his own conduct on what he thought to be the example of the primitive Church, and he practised, as a young man, a strict asceticism which in all probability shortened his days. With much in common with one another, Newman and Froude were rapidly drawn together, and, as the influence of Froude increased, the influence of Whately declined. Several other circumstances tended to diminish Whately's influence. Copleston was removed to Llandaff in 1826, Whately was made Archbishop of Dublin in 1831, Arnold, immediately after taking his degree, withdrew from the University to the active work of tuition; and thus a religious movement, originally led by men in favour of comprehension and reason, passed under the sway of men desirous of exclusion and authority. Wilberforce. This circumstance receives a striking illustration from the lives of the sons of Wilberforce. It was the misfortune of this great and good man to survive the period of his zenith, and to sink to his last repose amidst an increasing obscurity. Embarrassed in his affairs, enfeebled in his health, he gradually withdrew from the society which he had adorned, and sought in the bosom of his own family and in the privacy of his own study the quiet for which 1 Mozley's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 31. 2 For Hurrell Froude, see Newman's account in Apologia, p. 24, and cf. Bishop Wilberforce's judgment. Froude was "upon the whole possessed of the most original powers of thought of any man I have ever known intimately." Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 95. he had frequently yearned in public life. Such a retirement was not favourable to the growth of his school. His own sons were disappointed at the position to which their father had gradually fallen; the ablest of the friends of their youth was telling them that there were not two hundred men in London who believed in the Bible.1 Endowed with the deep religious sense, which they had inherited from their father, they too, like Newman, saw no rest for their faith except it were founded on the rock of authority, and gradually connected themselves with the new party which was rising up at Oxford. Yet, for some time, it was doubtful whether the new party would materially influence thought. Keble, indeed, accus The origin of the Oxford move m nt. The tomed a world of readers to ideas of religion, which in England were almost new, by the graceful poems on the "Christian Year" which he published in 1827. But in 1829 the movement had made so little progress that Newman voted for Inglis against Peel in the struggle for the representation of the University. While his opinions were still immature he was persuaded to join Hurrell Froude and his father on a tour in the South of Europe. The friends set out in December 1832; Newman returned to England in July 1833. While he was abroad, therefore, the first reformed Parliament met, and its meeting seemed pregnant with fatal consequences to the Church of England. ministry brought forward a measure for the suppression of Irish bishoprics; a Radical member of Parliament proposed the disendowment of the English Church; the House of Commons passed a bill sanctioning the admission of Jews to the Legislature; and the agitation began which ultimately led to the repeal of Church rates and to the admission of Dissenters to universities. Every post which reached the travellers brought news of some fresh onslaught on the Church of England; every day seemed to loosen some stone from the crumbling edifice. Yet the information which they had gained on their travels had convinced 1 Mozley's Reminiscences, vol. i. pp. 103, 107. them that the structure was well worthy of repair. Froude had left England with a heart which was yearning for Rome; he returned to England convinced of the errors of what he would himself have called a Tridentine Catholicism. He still desired to revert to a traditional Catholicism, but he concluded that the Anglican had as much claim as the Roman to consider itself in accord with the primitive Christianity of the first three centuries. He still disliked the changes which had been introduced into the English Church at the Reformation, but he disliked still more the reforms which Rome had made at and after the Council of Trent. He desired, therefore, to maintain the English Church, but to mould it anew on the pattern of the Fathers. Reforms, however, such as those which he sought could not be obtained while the Church was linked with the State. He was therefore inclined to join with the Radicals in freeing the Church from the trammels which its connection with the State imposed upon it. He thus left England a Tory by birth, and an Anglican with a strong sympathy for Rome. He returned to England a Liberal, and with a strong aversion to modern Romanism.3 A premature death removed Hurrell Froude at a very early date from the ranks of the reformers, and his place in the history of the Church movement is worth recording, not from what he did, but from what his influence made others do. His friendship and his conversation had already done their part in estranging Newman from his earlier religious views; the tour in Italy confirmed the impression which had been already made. The two friends, one of whom had gone to Italy in the vain hope of baffling the disease which was destroying him, the other of whom fell ill of a fever which proved nearly fatal, persuaded one another that a work was to be done, and that they were the men to do it.* 1 Froude's Remains, vol. i. p. 434. 2 Ibid., p. 293. 3 Ibid., p. 312; and cf. his desire to deprecate every kind of extraecclesiastical interference" in measures affecting the spiritual welfare of the Church in ibid., vol. i. p. 330. The history of Newman's illness is told in the Apologia, p. 34, but VOL. V. S of July. Keble's Assize sermon. Still ill, or weak, Newman reached England on the 9th On the following Sunday, Keble preached an Assize sermon, on National Apostasy, from the University pulpit. The sermon is worth remembering, because Newman has always associated it with the commencement of the great movement which immediately succeeded. But the movement would have occurred if the sermon had not been preached. Keble's words merely augmented the impulse which Newman had already received. By voice and by pen he set himself to work out the scheme of Church reform which he at that time contemplated. Letters to the Record, conferences with clergymen, gatherings at country rectories, were some of the expedients by which the earlier days of the movement were characterised. But these efforts were soon forgotten in consequence of a new decision which gave a name to the cause. The reformers decided on converting Church people to their principles by the publication of a series of Tracts; the Tracts ultimately won for them the name of Tractarians. tarians. The Tractarians were face to face with an attack upon religion and upon the Church. Faith could only apparently The Trac- be supported by opposing authority to reason, and the first condition of the contest involved, therefore, a demonstration that the English Church was entitled to speak cf. the interesting account of it in Hurrell Froude's Remains, vol. i. p. 318; compare also Newman's sayings on his sick-bed, "I shall not die. I have a work to do in England," with Hurrell Froude's lines in the Dialogue between his new self and his old self: "Mourn'st thou, poor soul! and wouldst thou yet In the very month, this Dialogue, Mr. perhaps on the very day, on which Froude was composing Newman was writing, hundreds of miles away from him "I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on," in the beautiful hymn whose whole meaning is hidden to any one who omits to reflect that its author was leaving a bed of sickness to head a great religious movement. Apologia, pp. 35, 119. with authority. Its authority could only be proved if its connection with primitive Christianity were demonstrated. Up to the Council of Trent-so it was urged-there was one Catholic and Apostolic Church in which authority had resided. The dissensions of the sixteenth century had split this Church into fragments, all of which had rapidly accumulated errors after the division. But the errors of the Church of England were not greater than those of the Church of Rome, and were much more easily corrected. For Rome professed that it was infallible, and its profession hindered it from admitting itself wrong, while England made no such profession, and was thus open to reform. The two tasks, therefore, which the Tractarians set themselves were to establish, first, that the authority of the primitive Church. resided in the Church of England, and second, that the doctrines of the English Church were really identical with those of pre-Tridentine Christianity. Perhaps some day their first object will be chiefly recollected because it inspired the earliest serious effort of a young man who lived to become one of the greatest of modern statesmen, and because his arguments were answered, or, as most critics will think, destroyed, by the great Whig historian of the century. The Tractarians' second object is chiefly recollected because it produced the Tract which brought their series to an abrupt conclusion. Tract XC. is an elaborate attempt to Tract XC. prove that the articles of the English Church are not inconsistent with the doctrines of medieval Christianity; that they may be subscribed by those who aim at being 2 1 Lloyd, who was afterwards Bishop of Oxford, while Regius Professor of Divinity, had drawn the distinction between Romanism as defined by the Council of Trent and the Romanism of the Romish Church at the time of the Reformation. Stoughton, Religion in England, 1800-1850, vol. ii. p. 35. 2 Arnold spoke of the Tractarians, in connection with the argument, as "those extraordinary persons who gravely maintain that primitive episcopacy and episcopacy as it now exists in England are essentially the same." Stanley's Arnold, vol. ii. p. 2. He was therefore inclined rather to smile than to be alarmed at the Tractarian movement. But his opinion rapidly changed. In 1836 he wrote the article in the Edinburgh Review on "the Oxford Malignants. But the title to the article was added by Napier, the editor. Ibid., p. 9. |