The Oxford Movement | Page 5

teaching about
the Church--teaching in which he believed with deep and fervent
conviction--profoundly irritated him; all the more that it came from
men who had been among his friends, and who, he thought, should
have known better.[8]
But neither Dr. Whately's nor Dr. Arnold's attempts to put the old
subject of the Church in a new light gained much hold on the public
mind. One was too abstract; the other too unhistorical and
revolutionary. Both in Oxford and in the country were men whose
hearts burned within them for something less speculative and vague,
something more reverent and less individual, more in sympathy with
the inherited spirit of the Church. It did not need much searching to
find in the facts and history of the Church ample evidence of principles
distinct and inspiring, which, however long latent, or overlaid by
superficial accretions, were as well fitted as they ever were to animate
its defenders in the struggle with the unfriendly opinion of the day.
They could not open their Prayer-Books, and think of what they read
there, without seeing that on the face of it the Church claimed to be
something very different from what it was assumed to be in the current
controversies of the time, very different from a mere institution of the
State, from a vague collection of Christian professions from one form
or denomination of religion among many, distinguished by larger
privileges and larger revenues. They could not help seeing that it
claimed an origin not short of the Apostles of Christ, and took for
granted that it was to speak and teach with their authority and that of
their Master. These were theological commonplaces; but now, the
pressure of events and of competing ideas made them to be felt as real
and momentous truths. Amid the confusions and inconsistencies of the
semi-political controversy on Church reform, and on the defects and
rights of the Church, which was going on in Parliament, in the press,
and in pamphlets, the deeper thoughts of those who were interested in
its fortunes were turned to what was intrinsic and characteristic in its

constitution: and while these thoughts in some instances only issued in
theory and argument, in others they led to practical resolves to act upon
them and enforce them.
At the end of the first quarter of the century, say about 1825-30, two
characteristic forms of Church of England Christianity were popularly
recognised. One inherited the traditions of a learned and sober
Anglicanism, claiming as the authorities for its theology the great line
of English divines from Hooker to Waterland, finding its patterns of
devotion in Bishop Wilson, Bishop Horne, and the "Whole Duty of
Man," but not forgetful of Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, and
Ken,--preaching, without passion or excitement, scholarlike, careful,
wise, often vigorously reasoned discourses on the capital points of faith
and morals, and exhibiting in its adherents, who were many and
important, all the varieties of a great and far-descended school, which
claimed for itself rightful possession of the ground which it held. There
was nothing effeminate about it, as there was nothing fanatical; there
was nothing extreme or foolish about it; it was a manly school,
distrustful of high-wrought feelings and professions, cultivating
self-command and shy of display, and setting up as its mark, in contrast
to what seemed to it sentimental weakness, a reasonable and serious
idea of duty. The divinity which it propounded, though it rested on
learning, was rather that of strong common sense than of the schools of
erudition. Its better members were highly cultivated, benevolent men,
intolerant of irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were
governed by an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to
burst forth on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were
jobbers and hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and
endowed families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders,
who rode to hounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did
worse things. Its average was what naturally in England would be the
average, in a state of things in which great religious institutions have
been for a long time settled and unmolested--kindly, helpful,
respectable, sociable persons of good sense and character, workers
rather in a fashion of routine which no one thought of breaking,
sometimes keeping up their University learning, and apt to employ it in
odd and not very profitable inquiries; apt, too, to value themselves on

their cheerfulness and quick wit; but often dull and dogmatic and
quarrelsome, often insufferably pompous. The custom of daily service
and even of fasting was kept up more widely than is commonly
supposed. The Eucharist, though sparingly administered, and though it
had been profaned by the operation of the Test Acts, was approached
by religious people with deep reverence. But besides