Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/196

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
180
The Oxford Movement

sense we may say they were driven out of the Church of England by the action the Bishops took. [1]"The Tractarians had been condemned by the Bishops," said Mr. Hore, "almost without exception. They had been told incessantly that they were Papists in disguise; that they were dishonest men, professing one thing and teaching another; till at length they began to believe it themselves. It was very hard to bear. To be stigmatized as Papists when they were writing strongly against Rome; violators of Rubrics when they were enjoining obedience to the Rubrics; upholders of human tradition when they were thanking God that the Church rested on no human names, but was derived from the Apostles; founders of a party when they advocated the maintenance of One Catholic Church; their position was unique; they were accused of being inventors of novelties and bigots of antiquity."

I think it is perfectly certain that they were driven into Rome because they saw no prospect of a better state of things in the English Church. But they were over-hasty in their conclusions. It is not stated without reason that Newman went over to solve his doubts and to be freed from the responsibility of deciding his own religious convictions for himself. The "Sturm-und-Drang" of the last fifteen years must have told upon his endurance. Newman, without doubt, was a saintly man, a great scholar, and a great loss to Oxford and to the cause which he had at heart.

It is interesting to notice what he said of the Anglican church long after he joined the Romanists, as stated in his "Apologia." In that book he says, [2]"I recognize in the

  1. Hore, pp.308, 309.
  2. Apologia, p. 340.