Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
when I was his Vice-Principal at Alban Hall. I gave up that office in
1826, when I became Tutor of my College, and his hold upon me gradually
relaxed. He had done his work towards me or nearly so, when he had
taught me to see with my own eyes and to walk with my own feet. Not that
I had not a good deal to learn from others still, but I influenced them
as well as they me, and co-operated rather than merely concurred with
them. As to Dr. Whately, his mind was too different from mine for us to
remain long on one line. I recollect how dissatisfied he was with an
Article of mine in the London Review, which Blanco White,
good-humouredly, only called Platonic. When I was diverging from him in
opinion (which he did not like), I thought of dedicating my first book
to him, in words to the effect that he had not only taught me to think,
but to think for myself. He left Oxford in 1831; after that, as far as I
can recollect, I never saw him but twice,--when he visited the
University; once in the street in 1834, once in a room in 1838. From the
time that he left, I have always felt a real affection for what I must
call his memory; for, at least from the year 1834, he made himself dead
to me. He had practically indeed given me up from the time that he
became Archbishop in 1831; but in 1834 a correspondence took place
between us, which, though conducted especially on his side in a friendly
spirit, was the expression of differences of opinion which acted as a
final close to our intercourse. My reason told me that it was impossible
we could have got on together longer, had he stayed in Oxford; yet I
loved him too much to bid him farewell without pain. After a few years
had passed, I began to believe that his influence on me in a higher
respect than intellectual advance, (I will not say through his fault,)
had not been satisfactory. I believe that he has inserted sharp things
in his later works about me. They have never come in my way, and I have
not thought it necessary to seek out what would pain me so much in the
reading.
What he did for me in point of religious opinion, was, first, to teach
me the existence of the Church, as a substantive body or corporation;
next to fix in me those anti-Erastian views of Church polity, which were
one of the most prominent features of the Tractarian movement. On this
point, and, as far as I know, on this point alone, he and Hurrell Froude
intimately sympathized, though Froude's development of opinion here was
of a later date. In the year 1826, in the course of a walk, he said much
to me about a work then just published, called "Letters on the Church by
an Episcopalian." He said that it would make my blood boil. It was
certainly a most powerful composition. One of our common friends told
me, that, after reading it, he could not keep still, but went on walking
up and down his room. It was ascribed at once to Whately; I gave eager
expression to the contrary opinion; but I found the belief of Oxford in
the affirmative to be too strong for me; rightly or wrongly I yielded to
the general voice; and I have never heard, then or since, of any
disclaimer of authorship on the part of Dr. Whately.
The main positions of this able essay are these; first that Church and
State should be independent of each other:--he speaks of the duty of
protesting "against the profanation of Christ's kingdom, by that _double
usurpation_, the interference of the Church in temporals, of the State
in spirituals," p. 191; and, secondly, that the Church may justly and by
right retain its property, though separated from the State. "The
clergy," he says p. 133, "though they ought not to be the hired servants
of the Civil Magistrate, may justly retain their revenues; and the
State, though it has no right of interference in spiritual concerns, not
only is justly entitled to support from the ministers of religion, and
from all other Christians, but would, under the system I am
recommending, obtain it much more effectually." The author of this work,
whoever he may be, argues out both these points with great force and
ingenuity, and with a thorough-going vehemence, which perhaps we may
refer to the circumstance, that he wrote, not _in propriâ personâ_, and
as thereby answerable for every sentiment that he advanced, but in the
professed character of a Scotch Episcopalian. His work had a gradual,
but a deep effect on my mind.
I am not aware of any other religious opinion which I owe to Dr.
Whately. In his special theological tenets I had no sympathy. In the
next year, 1827, he told me he considered that I was Arianizing. The
case was this: though at that time I had not read Bishop Bull's
_Defensio_ nor the Fathers, I was just then very strong for that
ante-Nicene view of the Trinitarian doctrine, which some writers, both
Catholic and non-Catholic, have accused of wearing a sort of Arian
exterior. This is the meaning of a passage in Froude's Remains, in which
he seems to accuse me of speaking against the Athanasian Creed. I had
contrasted the two aspects of the Trinitarian doctrine, which are
respectively presented by the Athanasian Creed and the Nicene. My
criticisms were to the effect that some of the verses of the former
Creed were unnecessarily scientific. This is a specimen of a certain
disdain for Antiquity which had been growing on me now for several
years. It showed itself in some flippant language against the Fathers in
the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, about whom I knew little at the time,
except what I had learnt as a boy from Joseph Milner. In writing on the
Scripture Miracles in 1825-6, I had read Middleton on the Miracles of
the early Church, and had imbibed a portion of his spirit.
The truth is, I was beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to
moral; I was drifting in the direction of the Liberalism of the day[3].
I was rudely awakened from my dream at the end of 1827 by two great
blows--illness and bereavement.
[3] Vide Note A, _Liberalism_, at the end of the volume.
In the beginning of 1829, came the formal break between Dr. Whately and
me; the affair of Mr. Peel's re-election was the occasion of it. I think
in 1828 or 1827 I had voted in the minority, when the Petition to
Parliament against the Catholic Claims was brought into Convocation. I
did so mainly on the views suggested to me in the Letters of an
Episcopalian. Also I shrank from the bigoted "two-bottle-orthodox," as
they were invidiously called. When then I took part against Mr. Peel, it
was on an academical, not at all an ecclesiastical or a political
ground; and this I professed at the time. I considered that Mr. Peel had
taken the University by surprise; that his friends had no right to call
upon us to turn round on a sudden, and to expose ourselves to the
imputation of time-serving; and that a great University ought not to be
bullied even by a great Duke of Wellington. Also by this time I was
under the influence of Keble and Froude; who, in addition to the reasons
I have given, disliked the Duke's change of policy as dictated by
liberalism.
Whately was considerably annoyed at me, and he took a humourous revenge,
of which he had given me due notice beforehand. As head of a house he
had duties of hospitality to men of all parties; he asked a set of the
least intellectual men in Oxford to dinner, and men most fond of port;
he made me one of this party; placed me between Provost This and
Principal That, and then asked me if I was proud of my friends. However,
he had a serious meaning in his act; he saw, more clearly than I could
do, that I was separating from his own friends for good and all.
Dr. Whately attributed my leaving his _clientela_ to a wish on my part
to be the head of a party myself. I do not think that this charge was
deserved. My habitual feeling then and since has been, that it was not I
who sought friends, but friends who sought me. Never man had kinder or
more indulgent friends than I have had; but I expressed my own feeling
as to the mode in which I gained them, in this very year 1829, in the
course of a copy of verses. Speaking of my blessings, I said, "Blessings
of friends, which to my door _unasked, unhoped_, have come." They have
come, they have gone; they came to my great joy, they went to my great
grief. He who gave took away. Dr. Whately's impression about me,
however, admits of this explanation:--
During the first years of my residence at Oriel, though proud of my
College, I was not quite at home there. I was very much alone, and I
used often to take my daily walk by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr.
Copleston, then Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned round, and
with the kind courteousness which sat so well on him, made me a bow and
said, "Nunquam minus solus, quàm cùm solus." At that time indeed (from
1823) I had the intimacy of my dear and true friend Dr. Pusey, and could
not fail to admire and revere a soul so devoted to the cause of
religion, so full of good works, so faithful in his affections; but he
left residence when I was getting to know him well. As to Dr. Whately
himself, he was too much my superior to allow of my being at my ease
with him; and to no one in Oxford at this time did I open my heart fully
and familiarly. But things changed in 1826. At that time I became one of
the Tutors of my College, and this gave me position; besides, I had
written one or two Essays which had been well received. I began to be
known. I preached my first University Sermon. Next year I was one of the
Public Examiners for the B.A. degree. In 1828 I became Vicar of St.
Mary's. It was to me like the feeling of spring weather after winter;
and, if I may so speak, I came out of my shell; I remained out of it
till 1841.
The two persons who knew me best at that time are still alive, beneficed
clergymen, no longer my friends. They could tell better than any one
else what I was in those years. From this time my tongue was, as it
were, loosened, and I spoke spontaneously and without effort. One of the
two, Mr. Rickards, said of me, I have been told, "Here is a fellow who,
when he is silent, will never begin to speak; and when he once begins to
speak, will never stop." It was at this time that I began to have
influence, which steadily increased for a course of years. I gained upon
my pupils, and was in particular intimate and affectionate with two of
our probationer Fellows, Robert Isaac Wilberforce (afterwards
Archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. Whately then, an acute man,
perhaps saw around me the signs of an incipient party, of which I was
not conscious myself. And thus we discern the first elements of that
movement afterwards called Tractarian.
The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual with great
motive-powers, was out of sight. Having carried off as a mere boy the
highest honours of the University, he had turned from the admiration
which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction
in pastoral work in the country. Need I say that I am speaking of John
Keble? The first time that I was in a room with him was on occasion of
my election to a fellowship at Oriel, when I was sent for into the
Tower, to shake hands with the Provost and Fellows. How is that hour
fixed in my memory after the changes of forty-two years, forty-two this
very day on which I write! I have lately had a letter in my hands, which
I sent at the time to my great friend, John William Bowden, with whom I
passed almost exclusively my Under-graduate years. "I had to hasten to
the Tower," I say to him, "to receive the congratulations of all the
Fellows. I bore it till Keble took my hand, and then felt so abashed and
unworthy of the honour done me, that I seemed desirous of quite sinking
into the ground." His had been the first name which I had heard spoken