Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
solution of a notion which I cannot help holding. Daniel speaks as if
each nation had its guardian Angel. I cannot but think that there are
beings with a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who
are the animating principles of certain institutions, &c., &c.... Take
England with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to
me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell.... Has not the
Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of
these simulations of the truth?... How are we to avoid Scylla and
Charybdis and go straight on to the very image of Christ?" &c., &c.
I am aware that what I have been saying will, with many men, be doing
credit to my imagination at the expense of my judgment--"Hippoclides
doesn't care;" I am not setting myself up as a pattern of good sense or
of any thing else: I am but giving a history of my opinions, and that,
with the view of showing that I have come by them through intelligible
processes of thought and honest external means. The doctrine indeed of
the Economy has in some quarters been itself condemned as intrinsically
pernicious,--as if leading to lying and equivocation, when applied, as I
have applied it in my remarks upon it in my History of the Arians, to
matters of conduct. My answer to this imputation I postpone to the
concluding pages of my Volume.
While I was engaged in writing my work upon the Arians, great events
were happening at home and abroad, which brought out into form and
passionate expression the various beliefs which had so gradually been
winning their way into my mind. Shortly before, there had been a
Revolution in France; the Bourbons had been dismissed: and I held that
it was unchristian for nations to cast off their governors, and, much
more, sovereigns who had the divine right of inheritance. Again, the
great Reform Agitation was going on around me as I wrote. The Whigs had
come into power; Lord Grey had told the Bishops to set their house in
order, and some of the Prelates had been insulted and threatened in the
streets of London. The vital question was, how were we to keep the
Church from being liberalized? there was such apathy on the subject in
some quarters, such imbecile alarm in others; the true principles of
Churchmanship seemed so radically decayed, and there was such
distraction in the councils of the Clergy. Blomfield, the Bishop of
London of the day, an active and open-hearted man, had been for years
engaged in diluting the high orthodoxy of the Church by the introduction
of members of the Evangelical body into places of influence and trust.
He had deeply offended men who agreed in opinion with myself, by an
off-hand saying (as it was reported) to the effect that belief in the
Apostolical succession had gone out with the Non-jurors. "We can count
you," he said to some of the gravest and most venerated persons of the
old school. And the Evangelical party itself, with their late successes,
seemed to have lost that simplicity and unworldliness which I admired so
much in Milner and Scott. It was not that I did not venerate such men as
Ryder, the then Bishop of Lichfield, and others of similar sentiments,
who were not yet promoted out of the ranks of the Clergy, but I thought
little of the Evangelicals as a class. I thought they played into the
hands of the Liberals. With the Establishment thus divided and
threatened, thus ignorant of its true strength, I compared that fresh
vigorous Power of which I was reading in the first centuries. In her
triumphant zeal on behalf of that Primeval Mystery, to which I had had
so great a devotion from my youth, I recognized the movement of my
Spiritual Mother. "Incessu patuit Dea." The self-conquest of her
Ascetics, the patience of her Martyrs, the irresistible determination of
her Bishops, the joyous swing of her advance, both exalted and abashed
me. I said to myself, "Look on this picture and on that;" I felt
affection for my own Church, but not tenderness; I felt dismay at her
prospects, anger and scorn at her do-nothing perplexity. I thought that
if Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of the victory
in the event. I saw that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue
her. As to leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination; still
I ever kept before me that there was something greater than the
Established Church, and that that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic,
set up from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence and
the organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be dealt with
strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a second reformation.
At this time I was disengaged from College duties, and my health had
suffered from the labour involved in the composition of my Volume. It
was ready for the Press in July, 1832, though not published till the end
of 1833. I was easily persuaded to join Hurrell Froude and his Father,
who were going to the south of Europe for the health of the former.
We set out in December, 1832. It was during this expedition that my
Verses which are in the Lyra Apostolica were written;--a few indeed
before it, but not more than one or two of them after it. Exchanging, as
I was, definite Tutorial work, and the literary quiet and pleasant
friendships of the last six years, for foreign countries and an unknown
future, I naturally was led to think that some inward changes, as well
as some larger course of action, were coming upon me. At Whitchurch,
while waiting for the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote the verses about my
Guardian Angel, which begin with these words: "Are these the tracks of
some unearthly Friend?" and which go on to speak of "the vision" which
haunted me:--that vision is more or less brought out in the whole series
of these compositions.
I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean; parted with my friends at
Rome; went down for the second time to Sicily without companion, at the
end of April; and got back to England by Palermo in the early part of
July. The strangeness of foreign life threw me back into myself; I found
pleasure in historical sites and beautiful scenes, not in men and
manners. We kept clear of Catholics throughout our tour. I had a
conversation with the Dean of Malta, a most pleasant man, lately dead;
but it was about the Fathers, and the Library of the great church. I
knew the Abbate Santini, at Rome, who did no more than copy for me the
Gregorian tones. Froude and I made two calls upon Monsignore (now
Cardinal) Wiseman at the Collegio Inglese, shortly before we left Rome.
Once we heard him preach at a church in the Corso. I do not recollect
being in a room with any other ecclesiastics, except a Priest at
Castro-Giovanni in Sicily, who called on me when I was ill, and with
whom I wished to hold a controversy. As to Church Services, we attended
the Tenebræ, at the Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere; and that was
all. My general feeling was, "All, save the spirit of man, is divine." I
saw nothing but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I
knew nothing. I was still more driven back into myself, and felt my
isolation. England was in my thoughts solely, and the news from England
came rarely and imperfectly. The Bill for the Suppression of the Irish
Sees was in progress, and filled my mind. I had fierce thoughts against
the Liberals.
It was the success of the Liberal cause which fretted me inwardly. I
became fierce against its instruments and its manifestations. A French
vessel was at Algiers; I would not even look at the tricolour. On my
return, though forced to stop twenty-four hours at Paris, I kept indoors
the whole time, and all that I saw of that beautiful city was what I saw
from the Diligence. The Bishop of London had already sounded me as to my
filling one of the Whitehall preacherships, which he had just then put
on a new footing; but I was indignant at the line which he was taking,
and from my Steamer I had sent home a letter declining the appointment
by anticipation, should it be offered to me. At this time I was
specially annoyed with Dr. Arnold, though it did not last into later
years. Some one, I think, asked, in conversation at Rome, whether a
certain interpretation of Scripture was Christian? it was answered that
Dr. Arnold took it; I interposed, "But is _he_ a Christian?" The subject
went out of my head at once; when afterwards I was taxed with it, I
could say no more in explanation, than (what I believe was the fact)
that I must have had in mind some free views of Dr. Arnold about the Old
Testament:--I thought I must have meant, "Arnold answers for the
interpretation, but who is to answer for Arnold?" It was at Rome, too,
that we began the Lyra Apostolica which appeared monthly in the British
Magazine. The motto shows the feeling of both Froude and myself at the
time: we borrowed from M. Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose the words in
which Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, "You shall know the
difference, now that I am back again."
Especially when I was left by myself, the thought came upon me that
deliverance is wrought, not by the many but by the few, not by bodies
but by persons. Now it was, I think, that I repeated to myself the
words, which had ever been dear to me from my school days, "Exoriare
aliquis!"--now too, that Southey's beautiful poem of Thalaba, for which
I had an immense liking, came forcibly to my mind. I began to think that
I had a mission. There are sentences of my letters to my friends to this
effect, if they are not destroyed. When we took leave of Monsignore
Wiseman, he had courteously expressed a wish that we might make a second
visit to Rome; I said with great gravity, "We have a work to do in
England." I went down at once to Sicily, and the presentiment grew
stronger. I struck into the middle of the island, and fell ill of a
fever at Leonforte. My servant thought that I was dying, and begged for
my last directions. I gave them, as he wished; but I said, "I shall not
die." I repeated, "I shall not die, for I have not sinned against light,
I have not sinned against light." I never have been able quite to make
out what I meant.
I got to Castro-Giovanni, and was laid up there for nearly three weeks.
Towards the end of May I left for Palermo, taking three days for the
journey. Before starting from my inn in the morning of May 26th or 27th,
I sat down on my bed, and began to sob violently. My servant, who had
acted as my nurse, asked what ailed me. I could only answer him, "I have
a work to do in England."
I was aching to get home; yet for want of a vessel I was kept at Palermo
for three weeks. I began to visit the Churches, and they calmed my
impatience, though I did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the
Presence of the Blessed Sacrament there. At last I got off in an orange
boat, bound for Marseilles. Then it was that I wrote the lines, "Lead,
kindly light," which have since become well known. We were becalmed a
whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio. I was writing verses the whole
time of my passage. At length I got to Marseilles, and set off for
England. The fatigue of travelling was too much for me, and I was laid
up for several days at Lyons. At last I got off again, and did not stop
night or day, (except a compulsory delay at Paris,) till I reached
England, and my mother's house. My brother had arrived from Persia only
a few hours before. This was on the Tuesday. The following Sunday, July
14th, Mr. Keble preached the Assize Sermon in the University Pulpit. It
was published under the title of "National Apostasy." I have ever
considered and kept the day, as the start of the religious movement of
1833.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS FROM 1833 TO 1839.