foundation on which the Church was built. These facts were so clear that, if the Privy Council had contented itself with reversing the judgment of the Court of Arches, most parties in the Church would probably have acquiesced in silence in its decision. But, in addition to doing so, the two Primates, who were members of the Court, took occasion to declare that the opinions held by Gorham were opinions which had been held in the past by a host of great and good Churchmen. This opinion, promulgated by the Archbishops and endorsed by a Court composed chiefly of laymen, struck a fatal blow at the Tractarian party, and at the larger body of High Churchmen who, unprepared to accept the whole of Newman's teaching, sympathised with his desire to assert the authority of the Church. The Privy Council was officially declaring that the right of determining doctrines resided in the State and not in the Church; and that, whatever might be the High Church. theory, the Church had no authority other than that which the State allowed to it.1

Thus, while the Gorham judgment encouraged the Evangelical or Low Church party, by sanctioning an opinion which many of them had tacitly held, and had not ventured openly to pronounce, and the Latitudinarian or Broad Church party, by widening the area of legal doctrine, it forced the High Church party into renewed activity by the force of a blow aimed at the citadel of its position. And, before six months were over, the Prime Minister, alarmed at the Pope's action in dividing England into Roman Catholic sees, gave the High Church fresh cause for resentment by a phrase in the Durham letter. 2 He went out of his way to declare that the danger to the Church of England from the conduct of her own "unworthy sons," in "leading their flocks step by step to the very verge of the precipice of Rome, was much greater than any danger to be apprehended from a foreign prince of no great power."

The Durham letter.

1 Life of Wilberforce, vol. ii. p. 38. For the case, see also Recollections and Suggestions, Appendix I.; Stoughton's Religion of England, 1800-1850, vol. ii. p. 176; and Greville's Memoirs, Pt. ii. vol. ii. pp. 300-304.

2 For the Durham letter vide infra, ch. xxiii.

It is never wise for statesmen in high positions to apply names to those from whom they differ; and it was in the highest degree unwise for a Prime Minister to call a great party of religious men who-whether right or wrong in their opinions were bringing zeal and earnestness to their work, unworthy sons of the Church. It was inevitable that such language should either drive them from the fold or impel them to new efforts for increasing Church authority. It was attended with both consequences. The Gorham judgment and the Durham letter were followed by fresh conversions to Rome, and by a fresh agitation for authority. Blomfield, Bishop of London, had already introduced a measure for transferring the appellate functions of the Privy Council to the Upper House of Convocation. The defeat of this bill induced the leaders of the High Church party to agitate for the restoration to Convocation of its previous powers. Two prelates, Convoca Oxford and Exeter, took the lead in the new movement, and in 1853, in the ministry of Aberdeen, Convocation was at last suffered to resume its place in the State as a consultative body.1

tion.

The history of Convocation since 1853 has proved in a striking way the difference between an assembly created to

1 It hardly falls within the scope of this work to trace the history of Convocation. It is sufficient to say, that the Convocation of Canterbury was the assembly in which originally "subsidies were granted" by the Church "and ecclesiastical canons enacted." The power to enact fresh canons without the king's licence was expressly taken away by a statute of Henry VIII., and the taxation of clergy by the clergy was discontinued after 1664. From that date Convocation had practically nothing to do. After the Revolution, indeed, the High Church party endeavoured to revive it, but the attempt only led to differences between the Upper and the Lower House, and Convocation was finally prorogued in 1717. Thenceforward a few members of each House met at the commencement of each new Parliament, voted addresses to the Crown, and were immediately prorogued. So matters continued till 1853, when, in consequence of the agitation of the High Church party, Convocation was again allowed to assemble. There is a good account of the History of Convocation in Hallam's Constitutional History, vol. iii. p. 242 seq.; cf. Sir Travers Twiss' article on it, sub verb. in Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition; Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 414; and Life of Wilberforce, vol. ii. pp. 136, 268. It ought, perhaps, to be added that a motion for summoning Convocation was made in the House of Commons so early as 1837, and only rejected in a thin House by 24 votes to 19. Hansard, vol. xxxviii. p. 461.

General effects of the Oxford movement.

do something and an assembly with something to do. It may safely be asserted that the deliberations of the Right Reverend and Reverend Houses have, in no single particular, affected the history of their country or of their Church. But, though the outward and visible result of the High Church movement has not fulfilled the expectations of the ambitious prelate who recalled Convocation to life, its effects are still visible, and are perhaps still extending. It has galvanised the religious world into vitality, and the stimulus which it has given to religion has been felt by bodies widely dissenting from the Tractarians. High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, Nonconformists and Roman Catholics, have all made an effort, such as was never made before in England, to infuse religious activity into the nation; and, in an age in which a large and increasing section of society is emancipating itself from the old lessons of its childhood, and perhaps in many instances ceasing to hold any belief, other persons are actively promoting Church work, impressed with a firm faith in the truth of the great doctrines which they share in common one with the other, and with a still firmer faith in the truth of the little dogmas which each sect of these earnest people holds alone.

Nor must it be forgotten that to the High Church movement we owe the increasing warmth and colour of public worship, the restoration of Gothic architecture, an increasing attention to church music, and the more cheerful associations

The observance

of Sunday.

with which Sunday is being gradually surrounded. The Evangelical school, inheriting the tradition of the older Puritans, had regarded the Sabbath as a day of abstention from work and movement. The High Church party had always considered it as an opportunity for healthy recreation. The history of the Sabbath, however, so curiously illustrates the history of thought, that it is worth. while adding to a chapter, already too long, a few more paragraphs on the subject.

1 Mr. Lecky has noticed this in a note to one of the most beautiful and striking passages in the History of Rationalism, vol. i. p. 256, note.

It was a remark of Whately in 1836 that the very mention of a Sabbath was a startling novelty a little more than 200 years ago. Hallam relates that in 1621, "a bill having been brought in for the better observance of the Sabbath, usually called Sunday, one Mr. Shepherd, sneering at the Puritans, remarked that as Saturday was dies Sabbati, this might be entitled a bill for the better observance of Saturday, commonly called Sunday." The witticism cost Shepherd his seat; he was expelled the House. But the Lords, less Puritan than the Commons, struck out the word Sabbath, and substituted the words "the Lord's Day," and the Act thus amended may still be read on the Statute Book. Such legislation was new in modern England. The Reformers had required the clergy to teach the people that they would grievously offend God if they abstained from working on Sundays in harvest-time;+ and a statute of Edward VI., regulating the keeping of holy days, declared that "it shall be lawful to every husbandman, labourer, fisherman, and to all and every other person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition he or they be, upon the holy days aforesaid, in harvest or at any other time. in the year when necessity shall require, to labour, ride, fish, or work any kind of work at their free wills and pleasure; anything in this Act to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding."5

It is clear, therefore, that the observance of the Lord's Day, or of the Sabbath, as it came to be called, arose with the growth of Puritanism in the seventeenth century, and it may be interesting to add that the Puritans carried their opinions about the Sabbath to America, and that strict laws were passed in the New World for regulating conduct on that day. The puritanic view of Sunday survived the Restoration. An Act

1 Life of Whately, vol. i. p. 337.

2 I Car. I., c. l. Hallam, is, I think, inaccurate (Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 400) in placing the incident in 1621. The Act is one of 1625.

3 It was, however, adopted in Anglo-Saxon times. See Paterson's Liberty of the Press and Public Worship, p. 354

6 See De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, vol. ii. Appendix E.

VOL. V.

T

of 1676 made it illegal to trade, to work, to travel on the Sunday; it closed the courts on that day. So far as the Legislature could make it, the Sabbath was made a day of

rest.

2

Neither the High Church reaction which occurred in the reign of Anne, nor the growth of Deism and doubt in the eighteenth century, were favourable to the puritanical conception of the Sabbath. The holy day resumed its old sense of holiday; and, if men abstained from toil, they devoted. Sunday to amusement. The upper classes set the example. They used their carriages and horses as a matter of course on the Sunday. Cabinet dinners were usually given, Cabinet Councils were frequently held, on the Sunday; and the evening of the first day of the week was the favourite date for fashionable entertainments. The custom of giving Cabinet dinners on Sunday fell into gradual disuse, but the custom of holding Cabinets on Sunday remained in full force. It may, however, be worth while to place the circumstance beyond dispute, and, for the purpose of doing so, it may be convenient to show how many Cabinets in a particular period were held on Sundays. There was a Cabinet on the 9th, 16th, and 30th of March, on the 13th of April, and on the

1 29 Car. II., c. 7. The Act did not make it illegal to travel; but it said that, if any one travelling on the Sunday were robbed, the Hundred should not be responsible, and the person robbed should be barred from bringing any action.

2 Even in Scotland, the High Commissioner always gave his breakfast and dinner to the General Assembly on Sunday. This custom fell into disuse in 1832, when Chalmers was Moderator, and declined to attend Lord Belhaven's entertainment. Life of Chalmers, vol. iii. p. 340.

3 So lately as 1847, Escott said in Parliament the Parks were crowded with carriages every Sunday. Hansard, vol. xci. p. 842. Warburton said in 1835 that, thirty or forty years before, Sunday was the favourite day for parties of gaiety. Ibid., vol. xxvii. p. 234. Roebuck, on one of the many proposals made at that time to stop Sunday travelling, said that on a recent Sunday at noon he saw Wellington on horseback in Piccadilly; in Hyde Park poor men were engaged watering the ride; at Knightsbridge the soldiers were exercising; at Hammersmith the Chief-Justice was out riding with a servant behind him; and at 3 P.M. he met Peel in the galleries at Hampton Court. Ibid., vol. xxviii. p. 154. A petition was presented to the Lords in 1834, objecting to the custom of holding Cabinet dinners on Sunday. Ibid., vol. xxiii. p. 472.