OXFORD
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OXFORD
Gobbet's indictinont of the Reformation no lanRuaKe
had so stirred the ra^e of "general ignorance", long
content to talic its lenoiuls on trust. Kroude's " Ke-
mains" were a challenge to it in one way, as the " Li-
brary of the Fathers" was in another, and yet again
the ponderous "Catenas" of High Church authorities,
to which by and by the "Parker Society" answered
with its sixty-six voluriies. mostly unreadable, of the
Cranmer, Hullinger, uiul Zurich pattern. The Refor-
mation theology wa,s doomed. What the ".\nglican
regiment" has accomplished, J. A. Froude proclaims,
"is the destruction of the Evangelical party in the
Church of England".
When Samson ])ulled down the temple of the Phil- istines, he wa.-i buried in its ruins. Newman did not shrink from that sacritice; he was ready to strike and be stricken. Though Hampden's condemnation would never have been carried by the Tractarians alone, they gave it a force and an edge in the very spirit of Laud. To put down false teachers by author- ity, to visit them with penalties of censure and de|)ri- vation, they held wius theduty of the Church and of the Slate as Cod's minister. They would have repealed Catholic Kmani'ipation. They nvsisted the grant to the College of Maynool h. They had .faved the Prayer Book from amendments, and frightened politicians, who would have distribiileil the spoils of the Church among more or less " Liberal " schemes. By the year 1S38 they had won their place in Oxford; the "Times" was coming over to their side; Bampton Lectures were beginning to talk of Catholic tradition as the practical rule of faith; and Evangelicals, infuriated if not dis- mayed, were put on their defence. Whateley from Dublin, Hawkins, Faussett, Hampden, Golightly, in Oxford, were calling up a motley array, united on one point only, that Tractarians must be handled as the emissaries of Rome. Dr. Arnold in the "Edinburgh" launched an invective against the "Oxford Malig- nants", accusing them of "moral dishonesty". New- man's former friend, Whateley, shrieked over "this rapidly increasing pestilence", and transfixed its lead- ers with epithets; they were "veiled prophets"; their religion was "Thuggee"; they were working out "in- fidel designs". Lord Morpeth in the House of Com- mons trampled on "a sect of damnable and detestable heretics lately sprung up at Oxford", and mentioned Newman by name. From every quarter of the com- pass a storm was blowing up; but it moved round a thunder cloud called "Rome".
"Just at this time, June, 1838", saysNewman, "was the zenith of the Tract Movement." A change of for- tune began with his bishop's charge, animadverting lightly on its Roman tendencies, to which the answer came at once from Newman, that if it was desired he would sui)press the tracts. It was not asked of him; but he had written to Bowden the significant words, " 1 do not see how the bishop can materially alter his charge or how I can bear any blow whatever". Some of his friends objected to publishing the tract on the Roman Breviary; for it was not then realized how much the .\nglican Prayer Book owes to Catholic, i. e. to Latin and papal sources. Newman impatiently re- joined that they must have confidence in him. To Keble he disclosed his idea of giving up the tracts, the " British Critic ", and St. Mary's. For while preaching high Anglican doctrine, he said, "one cannot stop still. Shrewd minds anticipate conclusions, oblige one to say yes or no." He collected in January, 1839, "all the strong things" which he and others had flung out against the Church of Rome, and made of them "ad- vertisements" to the Puseyite publications. By way of protest on the I>ow Church side, bishops, clergy, and laity united in the Martyrs' Memorial to Cranmer and Latimer, set up near the spot where they suffered, in front of Balliol College. But the tracts were selling fa.ster than the printers could meet the demand. In July, Newman, taking up again his always projected
and never issued edition of Dionysius of Alexandria,
l)lunged into the record of the Monophysites and the
Coimcil of Chaleedon. In September he wrote to F.
Rogers, "I have had the first real hit from Roman-
ism"; an allusion to Wiseman's telling article on the
Donatist .schism in the "Dublin" for August. Walk-
ing with II. Wilberforce in the New Forest he made to
him the "astounding confidence" that doubt was upon
him, thanks to "the position of St. Leo in the Mono-
physite controversy, and thi' principle 'Sei-urus judi-
cal' orbis terrarum' in that of the Donatisls." A vista
had opened to the end of which he did not .see. His
mind was never settled again in .Vnglicanism. "He
has told the story . . . with so keen a feeling of its
tragic and pathetic character", as Dean Church truly
says, "that it will never cease to be read where the
English language is spoken." It was the story of a de-
liverance. But still Samson paid for it with all he held
dear.
Parallels from antiquity might affect a student like Newman. To the many, inside cjr beyond ( )xford, they meant nothing. Thi' live question .ihvays was, how to combat Rome, which appeared at the end of every vista :is the goal of Tractarian reasoning. The ".shrewd minds" which now harried and drove on their leader did not take to any "middle way"; these men cut into the movement at right angles and sang loudly Tciiihinii.s in Laliuin, they were pilgrims to St. Peter's shrine. J. B. Morris, Dalgairns, Oakeley, Macmullen (converts in the sequel ), came round New- man while his older associates had not advanced. But the captain of the band was W. G. Ward, lecturer at Balliol, a friend of Stanley's and for a time attracted by Arnold, then suddenly changed for good by the .ser- mons at St. Mary's, with his one sole article of faith, Credo in Newmannum. Ward, a strange, joyous, pro- voking figure, pervading the university with his logic and liis jokes, was the enfant lerrihle of this critical time, as Froude had been previously. They differed in a hundred ways; but both certainly urged Newman forward at a pace he would not have chosen. Froude "did not seem to be afraid of inferences"; Ward rev- elled in them. It was Froude who first taught New- man "to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome". Ward, of all men the least inclined to com- promise, did not care one jot for the Church of Eng- land, except in so far as it could be proved Catholic, by which he understood, as Protestants and Liberals did before him, the doctrine and discipline of the [xipal communion. He had "the intellect of an archangel", as he said ingenuously; his acuteness and audacity were a continual challenge to Newman, who partly re- sented but still more yielded to them; and so the prob- lem took a formidable shape:— how much of "infused Catholicism" would the Establishment bear. It ^va8 "like proving cannon". The crucial test was applied in "Tract 90", which came out on 27 February, 1841.
Once more, as in the case of Fronde's "Remains", Newman miscalculated. He had drifted so far that he lost sight of the ever-enduring Protestantism which, to this day, is the bulwark of the national feeling against Rome. He thought his peace-offering would not cause offence. But Ward prophesied, and his in- stinct proved true, that it would "be hotly received . A lively epistle from Church (afterwards Dean of St. Paul's) to F. Rogers at Naples shows the storm raging eariy in March. What "Tract 90" affirmed was that the "Thirty-Nine Articles might be signed in a Catho- lic, though not in a Roman sense; that they did not condemn the Council of Trent, which in 1562, the (late of their publication, was not ended; and that a distinc- tion must be drawn between the corruptions of P"PU"" religion and the formal decrees approved by the Holy See. It is now admitted, in the language of J. A. Froude, that "Newman was only claiming a position for himself and his friends which had been purposely left open when the constitution of the Anglican
