Chapter 20: The First Year of the Oxford Movement.
CHAPTER 20
THE FIRST YEAR OF THE
OXFORD MOVEMENT
THE twelve months after July 1834 were busy and productive ones for the new movement, even though the men who had assembled at Hadleigh never solidified as a group because of differences in their personal backgrounds and their views on the course of action to follow. In contrast to the overcautious nature of the older men, Froude and, in some degree, Keble agreed with Newman that “the field is before us,” and we must “stir up the church.”1 In addition to writing tracts and editing those written by others, Newman helped to draft the clergy’s address to the Archbishop. Newman also led the opposition to two bills: one bill would repeal Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles upon matriculation at Oxford, and another would oblige Anglican clergymen to be witnesses of non-Anglican marriages.
The Church suffered not only from its own internal disputes and from the ruling Whig Party but also from the Crown. Henry Phillpotts, the Bishop of Exeter, told the Lords that the king had broken his Coronation oath in which he pledged to defend the Church. Years later, the same bishop denied a clergyman, George Cornelius Gorham, appointment to a rectory because of the clergyman’s unorthodox doctrine on baptismal regeneration. The Crown Court, instead of supporting the Church’s doctrinal authority and discipline, decided against the bishop. In doing so, the Crown not only erred in doctrinal matters, but it also undermined the Church’s legitimate authority.
In letters to friends, Newman pointed out the king’s failure to live up to his oath, and he asked them to stand up in defense of the Church. In an 1834 letter to the Editor of the British Magazine, he compared the usurpation of the power of the Church of England by the State with that of the Pope in the sixteenth century.2 Just as the Act of Settlement secured people’s liberties, the Coronation oath was meant to secure the Church’s liberties. He went on to criticize the State’s control of the Church and its disregard for her protection. As examples, he referred to Henry VIII’s creation of various dioceses and Elizabeth I’s elimination of others. In 1833, another egregious action was mandated under the Irish Church Temporalities Act: the English Crown eliminated two archbishoprics and reduced eighteen Anglican dioceses in Ireland to ten.
In a letter to an Oxford graduate, Newman wrote that the Movement sought to rouse the clergy and assist the bishops in defending these principles: Apostolic Succession and the proper relationship between Church and State. Newman wrote that only bishops and priests should consecrate the Bread and Wine; he believed the Book of Common Prayer should not suffer heretical alterations nor should the Church suffer the appointment of heretical bishops.3 He wrote to Rose: “The Bishops must come forward; else it is intolerable that all sort of nonsense should be thrown out by Churchmen on the side of innovation, without the bishops saying a word, and yet it should not be allowed to us to agitate on the other side.”4
Newman corresponded often in the first months of the Movement with his Trinity classmate John Bowden, by then a London resident. This trusted friend would fill, in many ways, the void left by Hurrell Froude, who remained for a very short time at Oxford. Bowden gave Newman personal encouragement, an open ear, advice, and the warmth of his family. Newman dedicated his second volume of published sermons to Bowden. This volume, prepared for publication at the end of 1835, consisted of sermons on saints’ feast days. The tone of the correspondence between these two friends was spontaneous and confidential. In a letter to Bowden, Newman wrote that the Church should use the power of excommunication. “If I were a Bishop, the first thing I should do would be to excommunicate Lord Grey and half a dozen more, whose names it is almost a shame and a pollution for a Christian to mention.”5
Newman grasped the weakness of the bishops and their need for assistance; for him, the Church was worse off than at the time of the Arian Heresy because it lacked bishops of the moral stature of Athanasius and Basil. However, out of reverence for the Episcopal office, he was determined not to act against the bishops or to offend them. One of his friends warned him of the appearance of possible schism. Newman understood this concern and now thought that their objectives should be presented as those of a committee at Oxford rather than a national body, and thus would not pose a challenge to the overall authority of the bishops.
Newman told his friend Frederic Rogers that he was still a Tory in favor of the monarchy and in favor of the marriage between Church and State, but that if Thomas Arnold, a Broad Church Anglican, were made a bishop, he might reconsider his position. He was beginning to feel like a radical and to see precedents in the exercise of popular acclaim, as at the time of St. Ambrose and St. Thomas Becket.
The addresses by the clergy and by the laity were bold and controversial measures that ran the risk of undermining the Episcopal discipline that the Tractarians sought to uphold. Archdeacon Froude’s friends told him that the address was the most radical step ever taken by the clergy of the Church of England. The clergy were bypassing their bishops. Another friend who claimed to voice the opinion of the clergy of his diocese wrote that the address should have been made through the bishops of several dioceses.
In November, Newman commented to Rose: “Palmer’s Address is milk and water—however it affects three points—it teaches the Clergy to reflect and combine—it strengthens the Archbishop against his opponents; and it brings out the Church as a body and power distinct from the State.”6 The milk and water referred to Palmer’s watering down of the draft that Newman had made.
Newman’s emphasis on the failure of the Whig Party and Crown, and his deference for bishops, left a large part of the problem unaddressed, namely the hierarchy’s failure to grasp and defend the true nature of the Church. The bishops were so identified with the Tories and associated with the temporal power of the State that they did not see themselves as successors of the Apostles. They were afraid to teach and to govern. For the most part, Newman was quiet about the bishops’ errors and ignored the originating cause, the break with Apostolic Succession. Ironically, he grasped this principle, but he failed to recognize that the English Church’s hierarchy had broken away from the Church when it had accepted the model of a church dominated by the king.
In a January 1834 letter to the Editor of the British Magazine, Newman actually criticized the position of the Bishop of Ferns who advocated submission of the English Church to the Pope.7 Newman objected that the tyrannical acts of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I constituted neither precedents for posterity nor a denial of their religious authority. Returning to the king’s Coronation oath, he claimed that the king of England was still, or should still be, Defender of the Faith and Protector of the Church. Despite this theory or desire, Newman was aware that reality was different. In a series of papers, “The Church of the Fathers,” also published in the British Magazine, Newman pointed out that the early Church “threw itself on the people.” That is, the power of the Church did not depend on the ruling class. It was now apparent that the English Crown and aristocracy had deserted the Church, so the Church must depend on the people. Interestingly, this situation of the English Church forced Newman to consider the role of the laity in the first centuries of Christianity and begin to understand that role. Years later, he vindicated the laity’s role as witnesses of Apostolic Doctrine, giving rise to the “sensus fidelium,” a concept which he would explain in an essay entitled “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.”8 Nonetheless, Newman objected to a strict separation of Church and State.
Aspiring to have greater influence through a university post, Newman thought of standing for the Moral Philosophy professorship, vacant every five years. He believed that he had a good chance of gaining it, but in the end, Renn D. Hampden was elected. Newman, however, was elected Dean for Oriel College and continued closely engaged in university life and politics. He had to face these challenges without Froude, his closest friend and aide. In November of 1833, Froude had traveled to Barbados seeking to recover from pulmonary tuberculosis. In 1834, after the death of the university chancellor, Newman attempted to have the Archbishop of Canterbury nominated for the position, but the Duke of Wellington was chosen instead and was appointed by the Crown.
In letters to his supporters, Newman encouraged them to be temperate in their language and to unite the clergy in their common cause, but always to be supportive of the bishops. He was the first to follow his own advice with respect to the clergy and the bishops. With the government, on the other hand, his patience and respect were spent. To a potential supporter he wrote: “We groan under the heterogeneous un-ecclesiastical Parliament, and we will not submit to its dictation.”9 Among those endorsing the Movement were some Archdeacons, the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, many rectors, and a few nobles. He hoped to garner the backing of at least one bishop, but this did not happen.
During this period, Newman wrote a total of six letters to The Record signed “A Churchman.” In the second one, he wrote that Rome is the “pillar and ground of error.”10 He argued that the increase in Papists in England was due to the laxity in Church discipline. The Church, which, according to St. Paul, is the “pillar and ground of truth,” should retain the good elements of the Roman Catholic system and remove the errors. He urged that “popery” should be driven out through a war of living holy lives and teaching the truth. Newman’s severe attack was as sincere as it was mistaken. Only the first five letters were published because The Record began to attack the Tracts and the teaching of Apostolic Succession as the Church’s foundation.
While directing the Movement, Newman managed to give attention to other related projects. The Lyra came out in September; the Church Fathers series started in October; and his first book, The Arians of the Fourth Century, completed in 1832, was finally published on November 5, 1834. Still, Newman’s primary preoccupation was to rouse the clergy and bishops, especially the Archbishop of Canterbury. Considering the bishops’ apparent indifference in the face of abuses by the Crown and the ruling Whig Party, he wrote Rose that the members of the Church were “as sheep without shepherds.”11
In the essays that he published in the British Magazine and The Record, he showed respect to the bishops, but exposed the laxity of Church discipline and the inaction of the Crown. In these essays, Newman also encouraged the educated laity to protest against disregard for early Christian doctrines. Newman was very concerned by the Church’s situation, yet he was confident in God’s Providence. In January 1834, the young Anglican clergyman concluded a letter to the Editor of the British Magazine with the conviction that the Church would overcome her enemies; the gates of Hell would not prevail against her. He ventured to say that the fight was not one to be decided in 1834, or even in one century; it was for their posterity 500 years from then: “We are fighting the battle of 2334.”12
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1LD, Vol. IV, John Keble to JHN, (Aug. 5, 1833), 20.
2LD, Vol. IV, JHN to the Editor of the British Magazine (January 3, 1834), 163.
3LD IV, JHN to Charles Portales Golightly (August 11, 1833), 28-29.
4LD, Vol. IV, JHN to Hugh James Rose (January 1, 1834), 155-59; 156.
5LD, Vol. IV, JHN to John William Bowden (August 20, 1833), 32.
6LD, Vol. IV, JHN to James Hugh Rose(November 23, 1833), 120-122; 122.
7LD, Vol. IV, JHN to the Editor of the British Magazine (January 3, 1834), 163-66; 163.
8John Henry Newman, “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine,” in The Rambler, July 1859, 189-230, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/rambler/index.html.
9LD, Vol. IV, JHN to Charles Girdlestone (November 1, 1833), 79-80; 79.
10LD IV, JHN to the Editor of The Record (November 14, 1833), 102.
11LD, Vol. IV, JHN to Hugh James Rose (January 1, 1834), 155-59; 155-56.
12LD, Vol. IV, JHN to the Editor of the British Magazine (January 3, 1834), 163-66; 166.