Apologia Pro Vita Sua — 10 - Chapter 3, Part 1

CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS FROM 1839 TO 1841.

And now that I am about to trace, as far as I can, the course of that great revolution of mind, which led me to leave my own home, to which I was bound by so many strong and tender ties, I feel overcome with the difficulty of satisfying myself in my account of it, and have recoiled from the attempt, till the near approach of the day, on which these lines must be given to the world, forces me to set about the task.

For who can know himself, and the multitude of subtle influences which act upon him?

And who can recollect, at the distance of twenty-five years, all that he once knew about his thoughts and his deeds, and that, during a portion of his life, when, even at the time, his observation, whether of himself or of the external world, was less than before or after, by very reason of the perplexity and dismay which weighed upon him,--when, in spite of the light given to him according to his need amid his darkness, yet a darkness it emphatically was?

And who can suddenly gird himself to a new and anxious undertaking, which he might be able indeed to perform well, were full and calm leisure allowed him to look through every thing that he had written, whether in published works or private letters?

yet again, granting that calm contemplation of the past, in itself so desirable, who could afford to be leisurely and deliberate, while he practises on himself a cruel operation, the ripping up of old griefs, and the venturing again upon the "infandum dolorem" of years in which the stars of this lower heaven were one by one going out?

I could not in cool blood, nor except upon the imperious call of duty, attempt what I have set myself to do.

It is both to head and heart an extreme trial, thus to analyze what has so long gone by, and to bring out the results of that examination.

I have done various bold things in my life: this is the boldest: and, were I not sure I should after all succeed in my object, it would be madness to set about it.

* * * * * In the spring of 1839 my position in the Anglican Church was at its height.

I had supreme confidence in my controversial _status_, and I had a great and still growing success, in recommending it to others.

I had in the foregoing autumn been somewhat sore at the Bishop's Charge, but I have a letter which shows that all annoyance had passed from my mind.

In January, if I recollect aright, in order to meet the popular clamour against myself and others, and to satisfy the Bishop, I had collected into one all the strong things which they, and especially I, had said against the Church of Rome, in order to their insertion among the advertisements appended to our publications.

Conscious as I was that my opinions in religion were not gained, as the world said, from Roman sources, but were, on the contrary, the birth of my own mind and of the circumstances in which I had been placed, I had a scorn of the imputations which were heaped upon me.

It was true that I held a large bold system of religion, very unlike the Protestantism of the day, but it was the concentration and adjustment of the statements of great Anglican authorities, and I had as much right to hold it, as the Evangelical, and more right than the Liberal party could show, for asserting their own respective doctrines.

As I declared on occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, in behalf of who would in the Anglican Church, the right of holding with Bramhall a comprecation with the Saints, and the Mass all but Transubstantiation with Andrewes, or with Hooker that Transubstantiation itself is not a point for Churches to part communion upon, or with Hammond that a General Council, truly such, never did, never shall err in a matter of faith, or with Bull that man had in paradise and lost on the fall, a supernatural habit of grace, or with Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin, or with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no otherwise given than in the Catholic Church.

"Two can play at that," was often in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a right to speak loud, I had the liberty to speak out as well as they, and had the means, by the same or parallel appeals, of giving them tit for tat.

I thought that the Anglican Church was tyrannized over by a mere party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the difference now."

I only asked to be allowed to show them the difference.

What will best describe my state of mind at the early part of 1839, is an Article in the British Critic for that April.

I have looked over it now, for the first time since it was published; and have been struck by it for this reason:--it contains the last words which I ever spoke as an Anglican to Anglicans.

It may now be read as my parting address and valediction, made to my friends.

I little knew it at the time.

It reviews the actual state of things, and it ends by looking towards the future.

It is not altogether mine; for my memory goes to this,--that I had asked a friend to do the work; that then, the thought came on me, that I would do it myself: and that he was good enough to put into my hands what he had with great appositeness written, and that I embodied it in my Article.

Every one, I think, will recognize the greater part of it as mine.

It was published two years before the affair of Tract 90, and was entitled "The State of Religious Parties."

In this Article, I begin by bringing together testimonies from our enemies to the remarkable success of our exertions.

One writer said: "Opinions and views of a theology of a very marked and peculiar kind have been extensively adopted and strenuously upheld, and are daily gaining ground among a considerable and influential portion of the members, as well as ministers of the Established Church."

Another: The Movement has manifested itself "with the most rapid growth of the hot-bed of these evil days."

Another: "The _Via Media_ is crowded with young enthusiasts, who never presume to argue, except against the propriety of arguing at all."

Another: "Were I to give you a full list of the works, which they have produced within the short space of five years, I should surprise you.

You would see what a task it would be to make yourself complete master of their system, even in its present probably immature state.

The writers have adopted the motto, 'In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.'

With regard to confidence, they have justified their adopting it; but as to quietness, it is not very quiet to pour forth such a succession of controversial publications."

Another: "The spread of these doctrines is in fact now having the effect of rendering all other distinctions obsolete, and of severing the religious community into two portions, fundamentally and vehemently opposed one to the other.

Soon there will be no middle ground left; and every man, and especially every clergyman, will be compelled to make his choice between the two."

Another: "The time has gone by, when those unfortunate and deeply regretted publications can be passed over without notice, and the hope that their influence would fail is now dead."

Another: "These doctrines had already made fearful progress.

One of the largest churches in Brighton is crowded to hear them; so is the church at Leeds.

There are few towns of note, to which they have not extended.

They are preached in small towns in Scotland.

They obtain in Elginshire, 600 miles north of London.

I found them myself in the heart of the highlands of Scotland.

They are advocated in the newspaper and periodical press.

They have even insinuated themselves into the House of Commons."

And, lastly, a bishop in a charge:--It "is daily assuming a more serious and alarming aspect.

Under the specious pretence of deference to Antiquity and respect for primitive models, the foundations of the Protestant Church are undermined by men, who dwell within her walls, and those who sit in the Reformers' seat are traducing the Reformation."

After thus stating the phenomenon of the time, as it presented itself to those who did not sympathize in it, the Article proceeds to account for it; and this it does by considering it as a re-action from the dry and superficial character of the religious teaching and the literature of the last generation, or century, and as a result of the need which was felt both by the hearts and the intellects of the nation for a deeper philosophy, and as the evidence and as the partial fulfilment of that need, to which even the chief authors of the then generation had borne witness.

First, I mentioned the literary influence of Walter Scott, who turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages.

"The general need," I said, "of something deeper and more attractive, than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be considered to have led to his popularity; and by means of his popularity he re-acted on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions, which, when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be appealed to as first principles."

Then I spoke of Coleridge, thus: "While history in prose and verse was thus made the instrument of Church feelings and opinions, a philosophical basis for the same was laid in England by a very original thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of speculation, which no Christian can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which were often heathen rather than Christian, yet after all installed a higher philosophy into inquiring minds, than they had hitherto been accustomed to accept.

In this way he made trial of his age, and succeeded in interesting its genius in the cause of Catholic truth."

Then come Southey and Wordsworth, "two living poets, one of whom in the department of fantastic fiction, the other in that of philosophical meditation, have addressed themselves to the same high principles and feelings, and carried forward their readers in the same direction."

Then comes the prediction of this re-action hazarded by "a sagacious observer withdrawn from the world, and surveying its movements from a distance," Mr. Alexander Knox.

He had said twenty years before the date of my Article: "No Church on earth has more intrinsic excellence than the English Church, yet no Church probably has less practical influence....

The rich provision, made by the grace and providence of God, for habits of a noble kind, is evidence that men shall arise, fitted both by nature and ability, to discover for themselves, and to display to others, whatever yet remains undiscovered, whether in the words or works of God."

Also I referred to "a much venerated clergyman of the last generation," who said shortly before his death, "Depend on it, the day will come, when those great doctrines, now buried, will be brought out to the light of day, and then the effect will be fearful."

I

remarked upon this, that they who "now blame the impetuosity of the current, should rather turn their animadversions upon those who have dammed up a majestic river, till it has become a flood."

These being the circumstances under which the Movement began and progressed, it was absurd to refer it to the act of two or three individuals.

It was not so much a movement as a "spirit afloat;" it was within us, "rising up in hearts where it was least suspected, and working itself, though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably, as hardly to admit of precaution or encounter on any ordinary human rules of opposition.

It is," I continued, "an adversary in the air, a something one and entire, a whole wherever it is, unapproachable and incapable of being grasped, as being the result of causes far deeper than political or other visible agencies, the spiritual awakening of spiritual wants."

To make this clear, I proceed to refer to the chief preachers of the revived doctrines at that moment, and to draw attention to the variety of their respective antecedents.

Dr. Hook and Mr. Churton represented the high Church dignitaries of the last century; Mr. Perceval, the Tory aristocracy; Mr. Keble came from a country parsonage; Mr. Palmer from Ireland; Dr. Pusey from the Universities of Germany, and the study of Arabic MSS.

; Mr. Dodsworth from the study of Prophecy; Mr. Oakeley had gained his views, as he himself expressed it, "partly by study, partly by reflection, partly by conversation with one or two friends, inquirers like himself:" while I speak of myself as being "much indebted to the friendship of Archbishop Whately."

And thus I am led on to ask, "What head of a sect is there?

What march of opinions can be traced from mind to mind among preachers such as these?

They are one and all in their degree the organs of one Sentiment, which has risen up simultaneously in many places very mysteriously."

My train of thought next led me to speak of the disciples of the Movement, and I freely acknowledged and lamented that they needed to be kept in order.

It is very much to the purpose to draw attention to this point now, when such extravagances as then occurred, whatever they were, are simply laid to my door, or to the charge of the doctrines which I advocated.

A man cannot do more than freely confess what is wrong, say that it need not be, that it ought not to be, and that he is very sorry that it should be.

Now I said in the Article, which I am reviewing, that the great truths themselves, which we were preaching, must not be condemned on account of such abuse of them.

"Aberrations there must ever be, whatever the doctrine is, while the human heart is sensitive, capricious, and wayward.

A mixed multitude went out of Egypt with the Israelites."

"There will ever be a number of persons," I continued, "professing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly and strangely, do odd or fierce things, display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other people; persons, too young to be wise, too generous to be cautious, too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be humble.

Such persons will be very apt to attach themselves to particular persons, to use particular names, to say things merely because others do, and to act in a party-spirited way."

While I thus republish what I then said about such extravagances as occurred in these years, at the same time I have a very strong conviction that those extravagances furnished quite as much the welcome excuse for those who were jealous or shy of us, as the stumbling-blocks of those who were well inclined to our doctrines.

This too we felt at the time; but it was our duty to see that our good should not be evil-spoken of; and accordingly, two or three of the writers of the Tracts for the Times had commenced a Series of what they called "Plain Sermons" with the avowed purpose of discouraging and correcting whatever was uppish or extreme in our followers: to this Series I contributed a volume myself.

Its conductors say in their Preface: "If therefore as time goes on, there shall be found persons, who admiring the innate beauty and majesty of the fuller system of Primitive Christianity, and seeing the transcendent strength of its principles, _shall become loud and voluble advocates_ in their behalf, speaking the more freely, _because they do not feel them deeply as founded_ in divine and eternal truth, of such persons _it is our duty to declare plainly_, that, as we should contemplate their condition with serious misgiving, _so would they be the last persons from whom we should_ seek support.

"But if, on the other hand, there shall be any, who, in the silent humility of their lives, and in their unaffected reverence for holy things, show that they in truth accept these principles as real and substantial, and by habitual purity of heart and serenity of temper, give proof of their deep veneration for sacraments and sacramental ordinances, those persons, _whether our professed adherents or not_, best exemplify the kind of character which the writers of the Tracts for the Times have wished to form."

These clergymen had the best of claims to use these beautiful words, for they were themselves, all of them, important writers in the Tracts, the two Mr. Kebles, and Mr. Isaac Williams.

And this passage, with which they ushered their Series into the world, I quoted in the Article, of which I am giving an account, and I added, "What more can be required of the preachers of neglected truth, than that they should admit that some, who do not assent to their preaching, are holier and better men than some who do?"

They were not answerable for the intemperance of those who dishonoured a true doctrine, provided they protested, as they did, against such intemperance.

"They were not answerable for the dust and din which attends any great moral movement.

The truer doctrines are, the more liable they are to be perverted."

The notice of these incidental faults of opinion or temper in adherents of the Movement, led on to a discussion of the secondary causes, by means of which a system of doctrine may be embraced, modified, or developed, of the variety of schools which may all be in the One Church, and of the succession of one phase of doctrine to another, while that doctrine is ever one and the same.

Thus I was brought on to the subject of Antiquity, which was the basis of the doctrine of the _Via Media_, and by which was not to be understood a servile imitation of the past, but such a reproduction of it as is really new, while it is old.

"We have good hope," I say, "that a system will be rising up, superior to the age, yet harmonizing with, and carrying out its higher points, which will attract to itself those who are willing to make a venture and to face difficulties, for the sake of something higher in prospect.

On this, as on other subjects, the proverb will apply, 'Fortes fortuna adjuvat.'

" Lastly, I proceeded to the question of that future of the Anglican Church, which was to be a new birth of the Ancient Religion.

And I did not venture to pronounce upon it.

"About the future, we have no prospect before our minds whatever, good or bad.

Ever since that great luminary, Augustine, proved to be the last bishop of Hippo, Christians have had a lesson against attempting to foretell, _how_ Providence will prosper and" [or?

] "bring to an end, what it begins."

Perhaps the lately-revived principles would prevail in the Anglican Church; perhaps they would be lost in some miserable schism, or some more miserable compromise; but there was nothing rash in venturing to predict that "neither Puritanism nor Liberalism had any permanent inheritance within her."

Then I went on: "As to Liberalism, we think the formularies of the Church will ever, with the aid of a good Providence, keep it from making any serious inroads upon the clergy.

Besides, it is too cold a principle to prevail with the multitude."

But as regarded what was called Evangelical Religion or Puritanism, there was more to cause alarm.

I

observed upon its organization; but on the other hand it had no intellectual basis; no internal idea, no principle of unity, no theology.

"Its adherents," I said, "are already separating from each other; they will melt away like a snow-drift.

It has no straightforward view on any one point, on which it professes to teach, and to hide its poverty, it has dressed itself out in a maze of words.

We have no dread of it at all; we only fear what it may lead to.

It does not stand on intrenched ground, or make any pretence to a position; it does but occupy the space between contending powers, Catholic Truth and Rationalism.

Then indeed will be the stern encounter, when two real and living principles, simple, entire, and consistent, one in the Church, the other out of it, at length rush upon each other, contending not for names and words, or half-views, but for elementary notions and distinctive moral characters."

Whether the ideas of the coming age upon religion were true or false, at least they would be real.

"In the present day," I said, "mistiness is the mother of wisdom.

A man who can set down a half-a-dozen general propositions, which escape from destroying one another only by being diluted into truisms, who can hold the balance between opposites so skilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam, who never enunciates a truth without guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the contradictory,--who holds that Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church is to be deferred to, that faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify without works, that grace does not depend on the sacraments, yet is not given without them, that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the same religious condition as those who have,--this is your safe man and the hope of the Church; this is what the Church is said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye and No." This state of things, however, I said, could not last, if men were to read and think.

They "will not keep in that very attitude which you call sound Church-of-Englandism or orthodox Protestantism.

They cannot go on for ever standing on one leg, or sitting without a chair, or walking with their feet tied, or like Tityrus's stags grazing in the air.

They will take one view or another, but it will be a consistent view.

It may be Liberalism, or Erastianism, or Popery, or Catholicity; but it will be real."

I concluded the Article by saying, that all who did not wish to be "democratic, or pantheistic, or popish," must "look out for _some_ Via Media which will preserve us from what threatens, though it cannot restore the dead.

The spirit of Luther is dead; but Hildebrand and Loyola are alive.

Is it sensible, sober, judicious, to be so very angry with those writers of the day, who point to the fact, that our divines of the seventeenth century have occupied a ground which is the true and intelligible mean between extremes?

Is it wise to quarrel with this ground, because it is not exactly what we should choose, had we the power of choice?

Is it true moderation, instead of trying to fortify a middle doctrine, to fling stones at those who do?...

Would you rather have your sons and daughters members of the Church of England or of the Church of Rome?"

And thus I left the matter.

But, while I was thus speaking of the future of the Movement, I was in truth winding up my accounts with it, little dreaming that it was so to be;--while I was still, in some way or other, feeling about for an available _Via Media_, I was soon to receive a shock which was to cast out of my imagination all middle courses and compromises for ever.

As I have said, this Article appeared in the April number of the British Critic; in the July number, I cannot tell why, there is no Article of mine; before the number for October, the event had happened to which I have alluded.

But before I proceed to describe what happened to me in the summer of 1839, I must detain the reader for a while, in order to describe the _issue_ of the controversy between Rome and the Anglican Church, as I viewed it.

This will involve some dry discussion; but it is as necessary for my narrative, as plans of buildings and homesteads are at times needed in the proceedings of our law courts.

* * * * * I have said already that, though the object of the Movement was to withstand the Liberalism of the day, I found and felt this could not be done by mere negatives.

It was necessary for us to have a positive Church theory erected on a definite basis.

This took me to the great Anglican divines; and then of course I found at once that it was impossible to form any such theory, without cutting across the teaching of the Church of Rome.

Thus came in the Roman controversy.

When I first turned myself to it, I had neither doubt on the subject, nor suspicion that doubt would ever come upon me.

It was in this state of mind that I began to read up Bellarmine on the one hand, and numberless Anglican writers on the other.

But I soon found, as others had found before me, that it was a tangled and manifold controversy, difficult to master, more difficult to put out of hand with neatness and precision.

It was easy to make points, not easy to sum up and settle.

It was not easy to find a clear issue for the dispute, and still less by a logical process to decide it in favour of Anglicanism.

This difficulty, however, had no tendency whatever to harass or perplex me: it was a matter which bore not on convictions, but on proofs.

First I saw, as all see who study the subject, that a broad distinction had to be drawn between the actual state of belief and of usage in the countries which were in communion with the Roman Church, and her formal dogmas; the latter did not cover the former.

Sensible pain, for instance, is not implied in the Tridentine decree upon Purgatory; but it was the tradition of the Latin Church, and I had seen the pictures of souls in flames in the streets of Naples.

Bishop Lloyd had brought this distinction out strongly in an Article in the British Critic in 1825;

indeed, it was one of the most common objections made to the Church of Rome, that she dared not commit herself by formal decree, to what nevertheless she sanctioned and allowed.

Accordingly, in my Prophetical Office, I view as simply separate ideas, Rome quiescent, and Rome in action.

I contrasted her creed on the one hand, with her ordinary teaching, her controversial tone, her political and social bearing, and her popular beliefs and practices, on the other.

While I made this distinction between the decrees and the traditions of Rome, I drew a parallel distinction between Anglicanism quiescent, and Anglicanism in action.

In its formal creed Anglicanism was not at a great distance from Rome: far otherwise, when viewed in its insular spirit, the traditions of its establishment, its historical characteristics, its controversial rancour, and its private judgment.

I

disavowed and condemned those excesses, and called them "Protestantism" or "Ultra-Protestantism:" I wished to find a parallel disclaimer, on the part of Roman controversialists, of that popular system of beliefs and usages in their own Church, which I called "Popery."

When that hope was a dream, I saw that the controversy lay between the book-theology of Anglicanism on the one side, and the living system of what I called Roman corruption on the other.

I could not get further than this; with this result I was forced to content myself.

These then were the _parties_ in the controversy:--the Anglican _Via Media_ and the popular religion of Rome.

And next, as to the _issue_, to which the controversy between them was to be brought, it was this:--the Anglican disputant took his stand upon Antiquity or Apostolicity, the Roman upon Catholicity.

The Anglican said to the Roman: "There is but One Faith, the Ancient, and you have not kept to it;" the Roman retorted: "There is but One Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it."

The Anglican urged "Your special beliefs, practices, modes of action, are nowhere in Antiquity;" the Roman objected: "You do not communicate with any one Church besides your own and its offshoots, and you have discarded principles, doctrines, sacraments, and usages, which are and ever have been received in the East and the West."

The true Church, as defined in the Creeds, was both Catholic and Apostolic; now, as I viewed the controversy in which I was engaged, England and Rome had divided these notes or prerogatives between them: the cause lay thus, Apostolicity _versus_ Catholicity.

However, in thus stating the matter, of course I do not wish it supposed that I allowed the note of Catholicity really to belong to Rome, to the disparagement of the Anglican Church; but I considered that the special point or plea of Rome in the controversy was Catholicity, as the Anglican plea was Antiquity.

Of course I contended that the Roman idea of Catholicity was not ancient and apostolic.

It was in my judgment at the utmost only natural, becoming, expedient, that the whole of Christendom should be united in one visible body; while such a unity might, on the other hand, be nothing more than a mere heartless and political combination.

For myself, I held with the Anglican divines, that, in the Primitive Church, there was a very real mutual independence between its separate parts, though, from a dictate of charity, there was in fact a close union between them.

I considered that each See and Diocese might be compared to a crystal, and that each was similar to the rest, and that the sum total of them all was only a collection of crystals.

The unity of the Church lay, not in its being a polity, but in its being a family, a race, coming down by apostolical descent from its first founders and bishops.

And I considered this truth brought out, beyond the possibility of dispute, in the Epistles of St. Ignatius, in which the Bishop is represented as the one supreme authority in the Church, that is, in his own place, with no one above him, except as, for the sake of ecclesiastical order and expedience, arrangements had been made by which one was put over or under another.

So much for our own claim to Catholicity, which was so perversely appropriated by our opponents to themselves:--on the other hand, as to our special strong point, Antiquity, while, of course, by means of it, we were able to condemn most emphatically the novel claim of Rome to domineer over other Churches, which were in truth her equals, further than that, we thereby especially convicted her of the intolerable offence of having added to the Faith.

This was the critical head of accusation urged against her by the Anglican disputant; and as he referred to St. Ignatius in proof that he himself was a true Catholic, in spite of being separated from Rome, so he triumphantly referred to the Treatise of Vincentius of Lerins upon the "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," in proof that the controversialists of Rome, in spite of their possession of the Catholic name, were separated in their creed from the Apostolical and primitive faith.