Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/654

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PUSET


582


PUSET


The English Puritans regarded this system from two diametrically opposed points of view. It was ap- proved by the Presbyterians and condemned by the Independents. But for a time they were kept united by the common necessity of opposing the alUanee be- tween the High Church party and the Crown which took place under James I. The struggle became political, and the Arminianism, Episcopalianism, and divine right of the sovereign maintained by the one party were opposed by the Calvinism, Presbyterian- ism, and Repubhcanism of the other. When the enactments of the Long Parliament had resulted in victorj' for the Puritans, their own internal dif- ferences clamoured for settlement and the West- minster Assembly of 1643 was an unsuccessful attempt at composing them. The four parties, Mod- erate Presb\ierians, Scottish Presbyterians, Eras- tians, and Independents having quarrelled fiercely, agreed on a compromise favouring the Moderates. The Presbyterians, however, gradually lost ground, o^^-ing to the growing power of the Independents who had the strong support of Cromwell and his army. They in their turn were destroyed as a political power by the Restoration, since when Puritanism ceased to be a force in England under that name, and sun-ived only in the various Nonconformist sects which have increased and multiplied in number down to the present day, without, however, any augmentation of collective strength. Many of these bodies have long ceased to represent Puritanism in any respect save that of dissent from the Established Church. One of the most picturesque incidents in the historj' of Puritanism and one of far reaching influence on sub- sequent American history was the departure of the "Pilgrim Fathers" — seventy-four Engli-sh Puritans and twenty-eight women — who sailed from England in the May Flower and landed on Plymouth Rock, 25 December, 1620. There they founded a colony, representing both types, the Plymouth colony being Congregationalists, the Massachusetts Bay settlers, Presbj-terians.

Campbell, Puritanism in Holland, England, and America (London. 1S92) ; Dexter, England and Holland (London. 1906) ; Gregort. Puritanism (London, 1S95); W.vkeman, The Church and the Puritans: 1570-1660 (London, 1S87); Byisoton. The Puritan in England and New England (London, 1S96). gi^Tng a useful bibliography; Ne.il, History of Ihe Puritans, 1517-16S8 (London, 1S22) ; Stowell and Wilson, History of the Puritans in England (London, 1S49) ; Hopkins. The Puritans: Church, Court and Parliament during the reigns of Edward VI and Eliza- beth (Boston, 1S59-61); Marsden, History of the early Puritans, to 1642 (London, 1S50); Idem, History of the latfr Puritans, 16i2-6g (London, 1S52); Tclloch, English Puritanism and its leaders (Edinburgh. 1861): ^LlITU\XD. The Anglican Settlement and the Scottish Reformation in Cambridge Modern History, II (Cambridge. 1903); Treveltan. England under the Stuarts (London, 1904). See also Reprints of the Clarendon Historical Society (Edinburgh, 1882-6).

Edwin Burton.

Pusey and Puseyism. — Edward Bouverie Pusey, b. at Pusev House, Berkshire, 22 Aug., 1800; d. at Ascot Priory, Berkshire, 16 Sept., 1882; divine of the Established' Church of England, patristic scholar, voluminous wTiter, preacher and controversialist, after whom the "Catholic" revival among Anglicans was termed Puseyite. His father, Philip^ Bouverie. was the youngest son of the first \'iscount Folkestone; his mother was Lady Lucy Sherard, daughter of the fourth Earl of Hajborough. The family was of Huguenot descent. In ISO" he went to school at Mitcham in Surrey and began the course of education which made him afterwards a deeply learned man, according to the older, uncritical, but massive scholar- ship of the seventeenth century. From Mitcham he passed to Eton in 1812. .\lways delicate, shy, and serious, he made few friends and took little part in boys' games. In January, 1819, he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was destined to spend his life, except for an interval of study abroad. He formed an attachment, while a mere youth, to


Maria Barker whom he married in 1828 after

vicissitudes which almost shook his reason, and which revealed the intensely emotional character of Pusey's temperament. His affections counted for much in the part that he played as a champion of orthodoxy; but his principles were sternly held, and to them he sacrificed more than one friendship. He became an enormous reader, cultivated acute verbal accuracy, showed no turn for metaphysics, and was always religious-minded.

At Easter, 1822, he took a First Class with dis- tinction, one of the examiners being John Keble. He was elected Fellow of Oriel in 1823; won the Latin Essay in 1824; and at Bishop Lloyd's instance went off next year to Germany, intending to combine the study of languages with a theological training. He attended lectures by Eichhorn, made acquaintance with Hengstenberg and Tholuck, learned something from .Schleiermacher, and brought home a tinge of Liberalism in theology which did not go deep. His affinities were with devout mystics; he admired the teaching of Spener and was himself a pietist, feeling kindly at all times towards the English "Evangeli- cals". In 1826-27 he paid a second visit to Berlin etc. and became an excellent Arabic scholar under Freitag.

His long and almost unbroken career of contro- versy was opened by the volumes (1828, 1830), afterwards withdrawn, in which he defended German religion against H. J. Rose. Both writers had the same object in view; they became friends; and Pusey's covert intention was to warn Englishmen against the dangers of Rationalism. The Tractarian movement found him in sympathy with Newman, but he did not join it formally until 1835. His tracts on Holy Baptism (67-8-9) were, like all Pusey's writings, too long, but impressive from their weight of erudition and pleading earnestness. He neglected style, was often obscure, and could not throw him- self into the mind of his opponents. "Imperturb- ably sanguine", he took the movement to be simply Anglican; hence, when it betrayed tendencies towards Rome he was shocked, but not alarmed. The friend- ship between himself, Keble, and Newman, roman- tically devoted to one another, made them triumvirs in an agitation of which the double issue became only by degrees apparent. In 1840 the world talked of "Puseyism", and with a sure instinct, for Newman had gone upon the solitar\- path where the High CTiurch host would not follow him. But, although with hesitations, it followed Pusey. Dtiring the Hampden troubles (1836) he had fought for Catholic dogma and denounced the Nominalism which made short work of creeds. His position never wavered. It was founded, he said, on the teaching of the Fathers "anterior to the separation of East and West". When Tract 90 appeared he upheld it on principle as giving a Catholic interpretation, i. e. the sanction of antiquity, to the Thirty-Nine Articles. He acted on Newman's behalf in the negotiations with the Bishop of Oxford. But when the Bench of Bish- ops charged against the Tract, their condemnations, which Newman reckoned to be the voice of the Church, left Pusey undismayed.

He was himself suspended from preaching by the authorities of the university, in consequence of his sermon on the Holy Eucharist in 1S43. The pro- ceedings were flagrantly unjust as well as grotesque, and they helped to destroy the old Oxford constitu- tion. Pusey, like other great scholars, was ver>' simple-minded; he let himself be circumvented by the astute Provost Hawkins and put in the wTong. However, in 1846 he repeated from the same pulpit his former doctrine, which was in its drift Anglican, while much of the language had been taken from St. Cyril of .\lexandria. Newman's submission to the Catholic Church in October, 1845, though a stunning