The Oxford Movement | Page 4

piety and holy life.[4] But the
fortunes of the Church are not safe in the hands of a clergy, of which a
great part take their obligations easily. It was slumbering and sleeping
when the visitation of days of change and trouble came upon it.
Against this state of things the Oxford movement was a determined
revolt; but, as has been said, it was not the only one, nor the first. A
profound discontent at the state of religion in England had taken
possession of many powerful and serious minds in the generation
which was rising into manhood at the close of the first quarter of the
century; and others besides the leaders of the movement were feeling
their way to firmer ground. Other writers of very different principles,
and with different objects, had become alive, among other things, to the
importance of true ideas about the Church, impatient at the ignorance
and shallowness of the current views of it, and alarmed at the dangers
which menaced it. Two Oxford teachers who commanded much
attention by their force and boldness--Dr. Whately and Dr. Arnold--had
developed their theories about the nature, constitution, and functions of
the Church. They were dissatisfied with the general stagnation of
religious opinion, on this as on other subjects. They agreed in resenting
the unintelligent shortsightedness which relegated such a matter to a
third or fourth rank in the scale of religious teaching. They agreed also
in seizing the spiritual aspect of the Church, and in raising the idea of it
above the level of the poor and worldly conceptions on the assumption
of which questions relating to it were popularly discussed. But in their
fundamental principles they were far apart. I assume, on the authority
of Cardinal Newman, what was widely believed in Oxford, and never
apparently denied, that the volume entitled Letters of an

Episcopalian,[5] 1826, was, in some sense at least, the work of Dr.
Whately. In it is sketched forth the conception of an organised body,
introduced into the world by Christ Himself, endowed with definite
spiritual powers and with no other, and, whether connected with the
State or not, having an independent existence and inalienable claims,
with its own objects and laws, with its own moral standard and spirit
and character. From this book Cardinal Newman tells us that he learnt
his theory of the Church, though it was, after all, but the theory
received from the first appearance of Christian history; and he records
also the deep impression which it made on others. Dr. Arnold's view
was a much simpler one. He divided the world into Christians and
non-Christians: Christians were all who professed to believe in Christ
as a Divine Person and to worship Him,[6] and the brotherhood, the
"Societas" of Christians, was all that was meant by "the Church" in the
New Testament. It mattered, of course, to the conscience of each
Christian what he had made up his mind to believe, but to no one else.
Church organisation was, according to circumstances, partly inevitable
or expedient, partly mischievous, but in no case of divine authority.
Teaching, ministering the word, was a thing of divine appointment, but
not so the mode of exercising it, either as to persons, forms, or methods.
Sacraments there were, signs and pledges of divine love and help, in
every action of life, in every sight of nature, and eminently two most
touching ones, recommended to Christians by the Redeemer Himself;
but except as a matter of mere order, one man might deal with these as
lawfully as another. Church history there was, fruitful in interest,
instruction, and warning; for it was the record of the long struggle of
the true idea of the Church against the false, and of the fatal
disappearance of the true before the forces of blindness and
wickedness.[7] Dr. Arnold's was a passionate attempt to place the true
idea in the light. Of the difficulties of his theory he made light account.
There was the vivid central truth which glowed through his soul and
quickened all his thoughts. He became its champion and militant
apostle. These doctrines, combined with his strong political liberalism,
made the Midlands hot for Dr. Arnold. But he liked the fighting, as he
thought, against the narrow and frightened orthodoxy round him. And
he was in the thick of this fighting when another set of ideas about the
Church--the ideas on which alone it seemed to a number of earnest and

anxious minds that the cause of the Church could be maintained--the
ideas which were the beginning of the Oxford movement, crossed his
path. It was the old orthodox tradition of the Church, with fresh life put
into it, which he flattered himself that he had so triumphantly
demolished. This intrusion of a despised rival to his own