The Oxford Movement | Page 6

the better, and the
worse, and the average members of this, which called itself the Church
party, there stood out a number of men of active and original minds,
who, starting from the traditions of the party, were in advance of it in
thought and knowledge, or in the desire to carry principles into action.
At the Universities learning was still represented by distinguished
names. At Oxford, Dr. Routh was still living and at work, and Van
Mildert was not forgotten. Bishop Lloyd, if he had lived, would have
played a considerable part; and a young man of vast industry and great
Oriental learning, Mr. Pusey, was coming on the scene. Davison, in an
age which had gone mad about the study of prophecy, had taught a
more intelligent and sober way of regarding it; and Mr. John Miller's
Bampton Lectures, now probably only remembered by a striking
sentence, quoted in a note to the _Christian Year,_[9] had impressed
his readers with a deeper sense of the uses of Scripture. Cambridge,
besides scholars like Bishop Kaye, and accomplished writers like Mr.
Le Bas and Mr. Lyall, could boast of Mr. Hugh James Rose, the most
eminent person of his generation as a divine. But the influence of this
learned theology was at the time not equal to its value. Sound requires
atmosphere; and there was as yet no atmosphere in the public mind in
which the voice of this theology could be heard. The person who first
gave body and force to Church theology, not to be mistaken or ignored,
was Dr. Hook. His massive and thorough Churchmanship was the
independent growth of his own thoughts and reading. Resolute, through
good report and evil report, rough but very generous, stern both against
Popery and Puritanism, he had become a power in the Midlands and the
North, and first Coventry, then Leeds, were the centres of a new
influence. He was the apostle of the Church to the great middle class.
These were the orthodox Churchmen, whom their rivals, and not their
rivals only,[10] denounced as dry, unspiritual, formal, unevangelical,
self-righteous; teachers of mere morality at their best, allies and

servants of the world at their worst. In the party which at this time had
come to be looked upon popularly as best entitled to be the religious
party, whether they were admired as Evangelicals, or abused as
Calvinists, or laughed at as the Saints, were inheritors not of Anglican
traditions, but of those which had grown up among the zealous
clergymen and laymen who had sympathised with the great Methodist
revival, and whose theology and life had been profoundly affected by it.
It was the second or third generation of those whose religious ideas had
been formed and governed by the influence of teachers like Hervey,
Romaine, Cecil, Venn, Fletcher, Newton, and Thomas Scott. The
fathers of the Evangelical school were men of naturally strong and
vigorous understandings, robust and rugged, and sometimes eccentric,
but quite able to cope with the controversialists, like Bishop Tomline,
who attacked them. These High Church controversialists were too
half-hearted and too shallow, and understood their own principles too
imperfectly, to be a match for antagonists who were in deadly earnest,
and put them to shame by their zeal and courage. But Newton and
Romaine and the Milners were too limited and narrow in their compass
of ideas to found a powerful theology. They undoubtedly often
quickened conscience. But their system was a one-sided and unnatural
one, indeed in the hands of some of its expounders threatening morality
and soundness of character.[11] It had none of the sweep which carried
the justification doctrines of Luther, or the systematic
predestinarianism of Calvin, or the "platform of discipline" of John
Knox and the Puritans. It had to deal with a society which laid stress on
what was "reasonable," or "polite," or "ingenious," or "genteel," and
unconsciously it had come to have respect to these requirements. The
one thing by which its preachers carried disciples with them was their
undoubted and serious piety, and their brave, though often fantastic and
inconsistent, protest against the world. They won consideration and
belief by the mild persecution which this protest brought on them--by
being proscribed as enthusiasts by comfortable dignitaries, and mocked
as "Methodists" and "Saints" by wits and worldlings. But the austere
spirit of Newton and Thomas Scott had, between 1820 and 1830, given
way a good deal to the influence of increasing popularity. The
profession of Evangelical religion had been made more than
respectable by the adhesion of men of position and weight. Preached in

the pulpits of fashionable chapels, this religion proved to be no more
exacting than its "High and Dry" rival. It gave a gentle stimulus to
tempers which required to be excited by novelty. It recommended itself