Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
To make this clear, I proceed to refer to the chief preachers of the
revived doctrines at that moment, and to draw attention to the variety
of their respective antecedents. Dr. Hook and Mr. Churton represented
the high Church dignitaries of the last century; Mr. Perceval, the Tory
aristocracy; Mr. Keble came from a country parsonage; Mr. Palmer from
Ireland; Dr. Pusey from the Universities of Germany, and the study of
Arabic MSS.; Mr. Dodsworth from the study of Prophecy; Mr. Oakeley had
gained his views, as he himself expressed it, "partly by study, partly
by reflection, partly by conversation with one or two friends, inquirers
like himself:" while I speak of myself as being "much indebted to the
friendship of Archbishop Whately." And thus I am led on to ask, "What
head of a sect is there? What march of opinions can be traced from mind
to mind among preachers such as these? They are one and all in their
degree the organs of one Sentiment, which has risen up simultaneously in
many places very mysteriously."
My train of thought next led me to speak of the disciples of the
Movement, and I freely acknowledged and lamented that they needed to be
kept in order. It is very much to the purpose to draw attention to this
point now, when such extravagances as then occurred, whatever they were,
are simply laid to my door, or to the charge of the doctrines which I
advocated. A man cannot do more than freely confess what is wrong, say
that it need not be, that it ought not to be, and that he is very sorry
that it should be. Now I said in the Article, which I am reviewing, that
the great truths themselves, which we were preaching, must not be
condemned on account of such abuse of them. "Aberrations there must ever
be, whatever the doctrine is, while the human heart is sensitive,
capricious, and wayward. A mixed multitude went out of Egypt with the
Israelites." "There will ever be a number of persons," I continued,
"professing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly and
strangely, do odd or fierce things, display themselves unnecessarily,
and disgust other people; persons, too young to be wise, too generous to
be cautious, too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be humble.
Such persons will be very apt to attach themselves to particular
persons, to use particular names, to say things merely because others
do, and to act in a party-spirited way."
While I thus republish what I then said about such extravagances as
occurred in these years, at the same time I have a very strong
conviction that those extravagances furnished quite as much the welcome
excuse for those who were jealous or shy of us, as the stumbling-blocks
of those who were well inclined to our doctrines. This too we felt at
the time; but it was our duty to see that our good should not be
evil-spoken of; and accordingly, two or three of the writers of the
Tracts for the Times had commenced a Series of what they called "Plain
Sermons" with the avowed purpose of discouraging and correcting whatever
was uppish or extreme in our followers: to this Series I contributed a
volume myself.
Its conductors say in their Preface: "If therefore as time goes on,
there shall be found persons, who admiring the innate beauty and majesty
of the fuller system of Primitive Christianity, and seeing the
transcendent strength of its principles, _shall become loud and voluble
advocates_ in their behalf, speaking the more freely, _because they do
not feel them deeply as founded_ in divine and eternal truth, of such
persons _it is our duty to declare plainly_, that, as we should
contemplate their condition with serious misgiving, _so would they be
the last persons from whom we should_ seek support.
"But if, on the other hand, there shall be any, who, in the silent
humility of their lives, and in their unaffected reverence for holy
things, show that they in truth accept these principles as real and
substantial, and by habitual purity of heart and serenity of temper,
give proof of their deep veneration for sacraments and sacramental
ordinances, those persons, _whether our professed adherents or not_,
best exemplify the kind of character which the writers of the Tracts for
the Times have wished to form."
These clergymen had the best of claims to use these beautiful words, for
they were themselves, all of them, important writers in the Tracts, the
two Mr. Kebles, and Mr. Isaac Williams. And this passage, with which
they ushered their Series into the world, I quoted in the Article, of
which I am giving an account, and I added, "What more can be required of
the preachers of neglected truth, than that they should admit that some,
who do not assent to their preaching, are holier and better men than
some who do?" They were not answerable for the intemperance of those who
dishonoured a true doctrine, provided they protested, as they did,
against such intemperance. "They were not answerable for the dust and
din which attends any great moral movement. The truer doctrines are, the
more liable they are to be perverted."
The notice of these incidental faults of opinion or temper in adherents
of the Movement, led on to a discussion of the secondary causes, by
means of which a system of doctrine may be embraced, modified, or
developed, of the variety of schools which may all be in the One Church,
and of the succession of one phase of doctrine to another, while that
doctrine is ever one and the same. Thus I was brought on to the subject
of Antiquity, which was the basis of the doctrine of the _Via Media_,
and by which was not to be understood a servile imitation of the past,
but such a reproduction of it as is really new, while it is old. "We
have good hope," I say, "that a system will be rising up, superior to
the age, yet harmonizing with, and carrying out its higher points, which
will attract to itself those who are willing to make a venture and to
face difficulties, for the sake of something higher in prospect. On
this, as on other subjects, the proverb will apply, 'Fortes fortuna
adjuvat.'"
Lastly, I proceeded to the question of that future of the Anglican
Church, which was to be a new birth of the Ancient Religion. And I did
not venture to pronounce upon it. "About the future, we have no prospect
before our minds whatever, good or bad. Ever since that great luminary,
Augustine, proved to be the last bishop of Hippo, Christians have had a
lesson against attempting to foretell, _how_ Providence will prosper
and" [or?] "bring to an end, what it begins." Perhaps the lately-revived
principles would prevail in the Anglican Church; perhaps they would be
lost in some miserable schism, or some more miserable compromise; but
there was nothing rash in venturing to predict that "neither Puritanism
nor Liberalism had any permanent inheritance within her."
Then I went on: "As to Liberalism, we think the formularies of the
Church will ever, with the aid of a good Providence, keep it from making
any serious inroads upon the clergy. Besides, it is too cold a principle
to prevail with the multitude." But as regarded what was called
Evangelical Religion or Puritanism, there was more to cause alarm. I
observed upon its organization; but on the other hand it had no
intellectual basis; no internal idea, no principle of unity, no
theology. "Its adherents," I said, "are already separating from each
other; they will melt away like a snow-drift. It has no straightforward
view on any one point, on which it professes to teach, and to hide its
poverty, it has dressed itself out in a maze of words. We have no dread
of it at all; we only fear what it may lead to. It does not stand on
intrenched ground, or make any pretence to a position; it does but
occupy the space between contending powers, Catholic Truth and
Rationalism. Then indeed will be the stern encounter, when two real and
living principles, simple, entire, and consistent, one in the Church,
the other out of it, at length rush upon each other, contending not for
names and words, or half-views, but for elementary notions and
distinctive moral characters."
Whether the ideas of the coming age upon religion were true or false, at
least they would be real. "In the present day," I said, "mistiness is
the mother of wisdom. A man who can set down a half-a-dozen general
propositions, which escape from destroying one another only by being
diluted into truisms, who can hold the balance between opposites so
skilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam, who never enunciates a truth
without guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the
contradictory,--who holds that Scripture is the only authority, yet that
the Church is to be deferred to, that faith only justifies, yet that it
does not justify without works, that grace does not depend on the
sacraments, yet is not given without them, that bishops are a divine
ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the same religious
condition as those who have,--this is your safe man and the hope of the
Church; this is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but
sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through
the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and
No."
This state of things, however, I said, could not last, if men were to
read and think. They "will not keep in that very attitude which you call
sound Church-of-Englandism or orthodox Protestantism. They cannot go on
for ever standing on one leg, or sitting without a chair, or walking
with their feet tied, or like Tityrus's stags grazing in the air. They
will take one view or another, but it will be a consistent view. It may
be Liberalism, or Erastianism, or Popery, or Catholicity; but it will be
real."
I concluded the Article by saying, that all who did not wish to be
"democratic, or pantheistic, or popish," must "look out for _some_ Via
Media which will preserve us from what threatens, though it cannot
restore the dead. The spirit of Luther is dead; but Hildebrand and
Loyola are alive. Is it sensible, sober, judicious, to be so very angry
with those writers of the day, who point to the fact, that our divines
of the seventeenth century have occupied a ground which is the true and
intelligible mean between extremes? Is it wise to quarrel with this
ground, because it is not exactly what we should choose, had we the
power of choice? Is it true moderation, instead of trying to fortify a
middle doctrine, to fling stones at those who do?... Would you rather
have your sons and daughters members of the Church of England or of the
Church of Rome?"
And thus I left the matter. But, while I was thus speaking of the future
of the Movement, I was in truth winding up my accounts with it, little
dreaming that it was so to be;--while I was still, in some way or other,
feeling about for an available _Via Media_, I was soon to receive a
shock which was to cast out of my imagination all middle courses and
compromises for ever. As I have said, this Article appeared in the April
number of the British Critic; in the July number, I cannot tell why,
there is no Article of mine; before the number for October, the event
had happened to which I have alluded.
But before I proceed to describe what happened to me in the summer of
1839, I must detain the reader for a while, in order to describe the
_issue_ of the controversy between Rome and the Anglican Church, as I
viewed it. This will involve some dry discussion; but it is as necessary
for my narrative, as plans of buildings and homesteads are at times
needed in the proceedings of our law courts.
* * * * *
I have said already that, though the object of the Movement was to
withstand the Liberalism of the day, I found and felt this could not be
done by mere negatives. It was necessary for us to have a positive