Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
Hurrell Froude was a pupil of Keble's, formed by him, and in turn
reacting upon him. I knew him first in 1826, and was in the closest and
most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 till his death in
1836. He was a man of the highest gifts,--so truly many-sided, that it
would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him, except under
those aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here to speak of
the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the playfulness, the free
elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, and the patient winning
considerateness in discussion, which endeared him to those to whom he
opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon matters of belief and
opinion, and am introducing others into my narrative, not for their own
sake, or because I love and have loved them, so much as because, and so
far as, they have influenced my theological views. In this respect then,
I speak of Hurrell Froude,--in his intellectual aspect,--as a man of
high genius, brimful and overflowing with ideas and views, in him
original, which were too many and strong even for his bodily strength,
and which crowded and jostled against each other in their effort after
distinct shape and expression. And he had an intellect as critical and
logical as it was speculative and bold. Dying prematurely, as he did,
and in the conflict and transition-state of opinion, his religious views
never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their
multitude and their depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me, even
when they did not gain my assent. He professed openly his admiration of
the Church of Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the
notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full
ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, "The Bible and the
Bible only is the religion of Protestants;" and he gloried in accepting
Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He had a high
severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity; and he considered
the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted in thinking of the
Saints; he had a vivid appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its
possibility and its heights; and he was more than inclined to believe a
large amount of miraculous interference as occurring in the early and
middle ages. He embraced the principle of penance and mortification. He
had a deep devotion to the Real Presence, in which he had a firm faith.
He was powerfully drawn to the Medieval Church, but not to the
Primitive.
He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman to
the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete. He
had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art; and he
was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion. He had no
turn for theology as such. He set no sufficient value on the writings of
the Fathers, on the detail or development of doctrine, on the definite
traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, on the teaching of the
Ecumenical Councils, or on the controversies out of which they arose. He
took an eager courageous view of things on the whole. I should say that
his power of entering into the minds of others did not equal his other
gifts; he could not believe, for instance, that I really held the Roman
Church to be Anti-christian. On many points he would not believe but
that I agreed with him, when I did not. He seemed not to understand my
difficulties. His were of a different kind, the contrariety between
theory and fact. He was a high Tory of the Cavalier stamp, and was
disgusted with the Toryism of the opponents of the Reform Bill. He was
smitten with the love of the Theocratic Church; he went abroad and was
shocked by the degeneracy which he thought he saw in the Catholics of
Italy.
It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological
creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught me
to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and in the same
degree to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in
the Real Presence.
* * * * *
There is one remaining source of my opinions to be mentioned, and that
far from the least important. In proportion as I moved out of the shadow
of that liberalism which had hung over my course, my early devotion
towards the Fathers returned; and in the Long Vacation of 1828 I set
about to read them chronologically, beginning with St. Ignatius and St.
Justin. About 1830 a proposal was made to me by Mr. Hugh Rose, who with
Mr. Lyall (afterwards Dean of Canterbury) was providing writers for a
Theological Library, to furnish them with a History of the Principal
Councils. I accepted it, and at once set to work on the Council of
Nicæa. It was to launch myself on an ocean with currents innumerable;
and I was drifted back first to the ante-Nicene history, and then to the
Church of Alexandria. The work at last appeared under the title of "The
Arians of the Fourth Century;" and of its 422 pages, the first 117
consisted of introductory matter, and the Council of Nicæa did not
appear till the 254th, and then occupied at most twenty pages.
I do not know when I first learnt to consider that Antiquity was the
true exponent of the doctrines of Christianity and the basis of the
Church of England; but I take it for granted that the works of Bishop
Bull, which at this time I read, were my chief introduction to this
principle. The course of reading, which I pursued in the composition of
my volume, was directly adapted to develope it in my mind. What
principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene period was the great Church
of Alexandria, the historical centre of teaching in those times. Of Rome
for some centuries comparatively little is known. The battle of Arianism
was first fought in Alexandria; Athanasius, the champion of the truth,
was Bishop of Alexandria; and in his writings he refers to the great
religious names of an earlier date, to Origen, Dionysius, and others,
who were the glory of its see, or of its school. The broad philosophy of
Clement and Origen carried me away; the philosophy, not the theological
doctrine; and I have drawn out some features of it in my volume, with
the zeal and freshness, but with the partiality, of a neophyte. Some
portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music
to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with little
external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These were based on
the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various
Economies or Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages
to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the
manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was
a parable: Scripture was an allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and
mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel.
The Greek poets and sages were in a certain sense prophets; for
"thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given." There
had been a directly divine dispensation granted to the Jews; but there
had been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favour of the
Gentiles. He who had taken the seed of Jacob for His elect people had
not therefore cast the rest of mankind out of His sight. In the fulness
of time both Judaism and Paganism had come to nought; the outward
framework, which concealed yet suggested the Living Truth, had never
been intended to last, and it was dissolving under the beams of the Sun
of Justice which shone behind it and through it. The process of change
had been slow; it had been done not rashly, but by rule and measure, "at
sundry times and in divers manners," first one disclosure and then
another, till the whole evangelical doctrine was brought into full
manifestation. And thus room was made for the anticipation of further
and deeper disclosures, of truths still under the veil of the letter,
and in their season to be revealed. The visible world still remains
without its divine interpretation; Holy Church in her sacraments and her
hierarchical appointments, will remain, even to the end of the world,
after all but a symbol of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her
mysteries are but the expressions in human language of truths to which
the human mind is unequal. It is evident how much there was in all this
in correspondence with the thoughts which had attracted me when I was
young, and with the doctrine which I have already associated with the
Analogy and the Christian Year.
It was, I suppose, to the Alexandrian school and to the early Church,
that I owe in particular what I definitely held about the Angels. I
viewed them, not only as the ministers employed by the Creator in the
Jewish and Christian dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture,
but as carrying on, as Scripture also implies, the Economy of the
Visible World. I considered them as the real causes of motion, light,
and life, and of those elementary principles of the physical universe,
which, when offered in their developments to our senses, suggest to us
the notion of cause and effect, and of what are called the laws of
nature. This doctrine I have drawn out in my Sermon for Michaelmas day,
written in 1831. I say of the Angels, "Every breath of air and ray of
light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of
their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God."
Again, I ask what would be the thoughts of a man who, "when examining a
flower, or a herb, or a pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as
something so beneath him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered
that he was in the presence of some powerful being who was hidden behind
the visible things he was inspecting,--who, though concealing his wise
hand, was giving them their beauty, grace, and perfection, as being
God's instrument for the purpose,--nay, whose robe and ornaments those
objects were, which he was so eager to analyze?" and I therefore remark
that "we may say with grateful and simple hearts with the Three Holy
Children, 'O all ye works of the Lord, &c., &c., bless ye the Lord,
praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.'"
Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a middle
race, [Greek: daimonia], neither in heaven, nor in hell; partially
fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious,
as the case might be. These beings gave a sort of inspiration or
intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action of
bodies politic and associations, which is often so different from that
of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and the
instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and
communions. I thought these assemblages had their life in certain unseen
Powers. My preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally
lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of "the
Prince of Persia" in the Prophet Daniel; and I think I considered that
it was of such intermediate beings that the Apocalypse spoke, in its
notice of "the Angels of the Seven Churches."
In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine. I said to an
intimate and dear friend, Samuel Francis Wood, in a letter which came
into my hands on his death. "I have an idea. The mass of the Fathers
(Justin, Athenagoras, Irenæus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius,
Sulpicius, Ambrose, Nazianzen,) hold that, though Satan fell from the
beginning, the Angels fell before the deluge, falling in love with the
daughters of men. This has lately come across me as a remarkable