Chapter 19: 1833: The Start of the Oxford Movement
CHAPTER 19
1833: THE START OF THE
OXFORD MOVEMENT
SINCE 1826 or earlier, the principles behind the Oxford Movement had been developing and gathering strength in the minds of its founders. Newman, however, ascribed the start of the movement to a famous sermon by Keble on National Apostasy delivered from the university pulpit on Sunday, July 14, 1833, a week after Newman’s return from Europe. Newman gave credit to Keble and, indirectly, to Froude, his former student, for igniting the religious renewal. In his sermon, Keble argued that the English nation had broken its covenant with God by the abolition of the Test Act and the suppression of Irish sees; the latter was an act of National Apostasy, which rejected the divine theocracy that in England had been accepted for centuries. The rejection of divine authority over the State obliged Christians to submit to the tyranny of the State.
The birthday of the Movement might also be considered as January 22, 1832, the day on which Newman, as one of the Select Preachers for the university that year, delivered a sermon titled “Personal Influence, the Means for Propagating the Truth,” which was an appeal to Christian holiness. Newman pointed out how doctrinal truths are easily questioned and apparently defeated by secular reason because “Truth is vast and far-stretching, viewed as a system; and, viewed in its separate doctrines, it depends on the combination of a number of various, delicate, and scattered evidences; hence it can scarcely be exhibited in a given number of sentences.”1
However, Truth prevails because it is not a system upheld in the world by books, arguments, or temporal power, but by the personal influence of men who are teachers of it and at the same time, examples of it.2 Newman praised these men for their “unconscious holiness,” simple, honest devotion to God, moral excellence, and consistency in the practice of virtue. These men are the “hidden saints” chosen by God in every age, who are His noiseless instruments carrying the flame of Truth from one generation to another.
Newman’s University Sermon titled “Willfulness, the Sin of Saul,” preached on December 2, 1832, also contained seminal ideas that would be central to the Movement. In that sermon, Newman denounced those who wish to rid themselves of the shackles of Revelation and constitute themselves as self-appointed prophets. He likened Saul’s sinfulness to the modern indifference to the Catholic Creed, wanton violation of the Church’s commands, irreverence toward Antiquity, “craving for change in all things,” and the transgression of ecclesial unity.3
The foundational meeting was held at the end of July 1833, at Hugh James Rose’s parsonage in Hadleigh, Suffolk. Rose gathered a group of Churchmen who shared the serious concerns voiced by Keble. Rose, William Palmer of Worcester College, and Arthur Perceval, the older men at the meeting, were judicious persons already established in society; in comparison to these, Keble, Newman and Froude, all from Oriel College, were young men. Newman and Froude were just beginning their careers. The Oriel men were more adamant in their response to the attacks against the Church of England and had much less to lose in case of defeat. They spoke plainly and preached forcefully. They entered into a sort of religious “warfare” with the liberal political establishment and its designs on religion. Newman even spoke of the need for a second Reformation, but one better than the first. Keble and Newman did not actually attend the meeting, but they actively corresponded with those who did.
Despite the differences in their character and circumstances these men were bound by a common belief in the sacred nature of the Church. They recognized that the government was attacking the Church’s authority, doctrine, and liturgy, and they wished to lessen the number of liberal-minded preachers and theologians, and their influence on the Church. Rose was the most prominent man in the group. He was a widely respected theologian, loyal to the English Church. In addition to great learning, he possessed the character of a statesman. He commanded authority and courageously insisted that soon, “something must be done” about the situation in the Church.4
From the onset, Rose and especially Palmer wanted to form an association that would prepare addresses and petitions to fight the government’s abandonment of the Anglican Church. They were cautious men who moved slowly and wished London to be the center of the Movement. Newman resisted Palmer’s idea of establishing an association—he felt it would bog down efforts and water down the individual temper of people’s responses. Newman explained that an association would require the sanction of the local bishop, one that they did not have. He was not opposed, however, to an association formed in the future; he only objected to one at the start.
Instead of the plan for an association rejected at Hadleigh, Newman agreed to present an address to the Archbishop of Canterbury and wrote the initial draft. The signatures of 7000 clergy were obtained, and the address was delivered to the Archbishop in February of 1834. It included the signatures of the Masters of Trinity and Brasenose colleges. A Lay Address followed; it was signed by 230,000 heads of families and presented to the Archbishop in May of 1835.
Within months of the meeting at Hadleigh, under Newman’s organization, the group began to publish pamphlets soon called Tracts of the Times. As the Tracts spread throughout England, the Movement was dubbed “the Tractarian Movement.” Newman wrote about one third of the Tracts; other contributors were Perceval, Froude, John Keble, Thomas Keble, Bowden, Harrison, Mezies, Pusey, J. Miller, Copeland, and Williams also contributed some. The first Tracts were short, direct, and strong statements aimed at rousing people from fear or inaction. Newman argued against having a committee review the Tracts for publication because he thought that this would limit the spontaneity of the authors and make them overcautious.
The first three Tracts, written by Newman, appeared in the autumn and winter of 1833. They defended the authority of bishops and priests on the basis of its Apostolic origin. Newman made it clear that the sure foundation for the authority of priests could not be popular agreement or financial support, as it was in the Protestant churches, but rather Apostolic descent or succession. Christ’s ministers in the Church were ordained by the power of the Holy Spirit through uninterrupted succession since the Apostles. Government should protect this sacred appointment. Newman challenged church ministers to act: “CHOOSE YOUR SIDE. To remain neuter [sic] much longer will be itself to take a part.”5
Froude’s ideas influenced Newman. On the one hand, Newman decried, as Froude did, the Erastian position of State control of the Church and, on the other, the religious Liberalism that threatened the Church from within. Palmer wrote Tract no. 15, titled “On the Apostolic Succession in the English Church,” but fearing the strong tone of the Tracts, he wrote a letter to friends in which he disassociated himself from them. With some hesitation, Newman consented to suppressing the Tracts, but soon afterward, Froude convinced him of the need to continue publication and not to take part in the association proposed by Palmer.
At first the authorship of the Tracts and membership in the Movement was anonymous. Later on, the Tracts were printed with the initials of the author. Some of the Tracts were extracts from respected ecclesiastical writers or theologians such as Bishop William Beveridge, Bishop Thomas Wilson and Bishop John Cosin. Other Tracts were translations from early Church Fathers—Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, and Irenaeus.
Initially, collaborators such as Thomas Mozley, Bowden, or Archdeacon Froude distributed the Tracts. Other friends and Newman himself called upon clergy and traveled to their meetings to distribute the Tracts. Soon, in December, Newman consigned the distribution of the Tracts to Rivington’s, a London bookseller. Newman also wrote to many friends and acquaintances to ask them to buy and distribute the Tracts.
The Tracts soon raised interest and gained support for the Movement, but Newman’s four o’clock Sunday sermons at St. Mary’s Church became the real voice and soul of the new movement. Through these sermons Newman drew out the moral and spiritual consequences derived from the doctrinal principles he put forth in writing. He created a spiritual atmosphere of renewal that naturally attracted men around himself and the Movement. Newman, a talented organizer, was also capable of getting into people’s ways of thinking and enlisting their help. He inspired his young colleagues with high ideals and roused them from their comfortable and indulgent college lives to think about the Church’s doctrine and mission.
From the outset, people objected that the Tracts favored “Romanism,” but the Tracts in fact maintained the Anglican teaching and tradition embodied in the official Book of Common Prayer. The advertisement or preface of a volume with the first forty-six Tracts expressed the intention of reviving the basic doctrines held by the English Divines of the seventeenth century regarding Apostolic Succession and the nature of the Holy Catholic Church.
Apostolic Succession was an important doctrine to defend, for it affirmed the uninterrupted link of bishops in the Church that began with the Apostles and thus Christ Himself. This link provided certainty that the Church’s beliefs and practices were handed down by Jesus Christ Himself. The doctrine of Apostolic Succession holds that Christ gave authority to the Apostles to organize the Church and to sanction its practices. Newman found that the teaching of the visible Church, with its sacraments and rites as the channels of invisible grace, was present in Scripture, the early Christian Church and the Anglican Church.
The preface of the first volume of Tracts asserted that sinful men need to be taught “that the Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources of Divine Grace; that the Apostolic ministry had virtue in it which went out over the whole Church, when sought by the prayer of faith; that fellowship with it was a gift and privilege, as well as a duty …”6 With a desire to stimulate renewal in the Anglican Church, he admitted that both Catholicism and Methodism served as “the foster mother of abandoned children.”7 Anglicans were deprived of sacramental grace in the Church. In this preface to the Tracts, Newman cataloged the abuses and grievances that the Movement sought to redress: “the neglect of daily service, the desecration of festivals, the Eucharist scantily administered, insubordination permitted in all ranks of the Church, orders and offices improperly developed …”8
Newman’s criticism of the Roman Catholic Church voiced earlier during his Mediterranean travels continued on his return to Oxford. He seldom explained the reasons for his criticism other than to enumerate stereotypical complaints related to devotion to saints and Purgatory. Newman erred in his rash judgments of Catholicism and the harshness of his expressions. Part of these mistakes can be attributed to his youthful zeal for the Anglican Church.
For the most part, clergy and educated men welcomed the Tracts’ call for religious and ecclesiastical renewal. Surprisingly, the Evangelical party’s Christian Observer and later The Record criticized the Tracts. But this seemingly bad publicity actually provided the Movement with the attention of a wider public. Newman considered it a blessing, and the sale of the Tracts increased.
Perceval, one of those present at the Hadleigh meeting, wrote a systematic exposition of the nature and claims of the Anglican Church titled The Churchman’s Manual. Unlike the Tracts it was a rather dry summary of Anglican teaching and of the English Church’s position toward Roman Catholics and Dissenters. Its emphasis was on Apostolic Succession and the integrity of Christian doctrine found in the Book of Common Prayer. Perceval was alarmed and angry that some of the persons in government who nominated the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, were schismatic, or non-Christian. As expected, the manuscript was well received by his High Church friends, but the Archbishop did not give it his endorsement.
At the end of 1834, Edward Pusey added strength to the Movement by fully adhering to it. Already from the start, he had shown favor toward the Movement and he had contributed a paper on the practice of fasting, which became Tract 18. Pusey was Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church. He was a man of extensive theological learning, of whom Newman later wrote: “Dr. Pusey gave us at once a position and a name. Without him, we would have had no chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making any serious resistance to the Liberal aggression.”9
Rose had an untimely death in 1839. Newman wrote that Pusey became to the Movement all that Rose would have been had he lived longer, but unlike Rose, he had the indispensable close friendship with those who had begun the Movement. According to Newman, Pusey became the head and center of the Movement for people in different parts of England and gained recognition from other parties at the University. In effect, Pusey became the Movement’s second head in close friendship with its original leader.
One of Pusey’s notable contributions was the change in the character of the Tracts. Initially they lacked the proper form and completeness in the exposition of doctrine. In 1835, Pusey wrote three Tracts (67, 68, and 69) that formed a treatise on Baptism. After this treatise, the Tracts were either serious theological papers or a re-edition of catenae from Church Fathers or Anglican Divines. Pusey wished to give the Movement the theological foundations that it needed and made plans to promote college Fellows, prepare serious publications, and start a library of the writings of Church Fathers and English Divines. Shortly afterward in 1836, “The Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church Anterior to the Division of the East and West” was announced with a dedication to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Pusey, Keble and Newman were the editors.
By 1834, the Oxford Movement had spread quickly in Oxford and parts of England. Through his Tracts and sermons at St. Mary’s as well as his charismatic personality, Newman had become the primary leader. By 1835, Pusey became a second leader, giving the movement the weight of his prestige and scholarship. Thus Newman and Pusey each contributed his own gifts and strengths to the Movement. With the ability and determination of these leaders and their collaborators, the first years of the Movement would prove to be very successful.
________
1“Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth,” in US, 90.
2Ibid., 91-92.
3“Willfulness, the Sin of Saul,” in US, 174.
4According to Church, Rose said: “That something must be done is certain. The only thing is, that whatever is done ought to be quickly done.” Church, The Oxford Movement, 93.
5John Henry Newman and others, Tracts for the Times (London: J.G.F. & J. Rivington, 1833-34), No. 1, 4, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/times/index.html. After this they will be cited Tracts.
6Tracts, Vol. I, Advertisement, iv.
7Ibid.
8Ibid.
9Apo., 61.