c
THE THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS
OF OXFORD AND THEIR
MOVEMENTS
JOHN WYCLIFFE JOHN WESLEY
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
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TORONTO
THE THREE RELIGIOUS
LEADERS OF OXFORD AND
THEIR MOVEMENTS
JOHN WYCLIFFE JOHN WESLEY
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
BY
S. PARKES CADMAN
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
All rights rtJterved
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
734011
A8TOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
^ 1918 I
COPTBIGHT, 1916,
bt the macmillan company.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916.
Narinaati i^naa
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Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Zo
WALTER COUTANT HUMSTONE
OF BROOKLYN
IN TOKKN OF CllATITCDE FOR YEARS ILLUMINATED
BY HIS MANY ACTS OF WISE AND
TENDER FRIENDSHIP
THIS BOOK
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
PREFACE
This book was suggested by a course of lectures delivered
under the auspices of The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and
Sciences during the Lenten season of 1913. It has since
been revised with some care, and would have been issued
earlier but for the pressure of pastoral and public duties.
It deals with three great Englishmen, great Christians,
great Churchmen, and loyal sons of Oxford, who, as it seems
to me, are the foremost leaders in religious life and activ-
ity that University has yet given to the world. Many
prophets, priests, and kings have been nourished within
her borders, but none who in significance and contribution
to the general welfare compare with Wycliffe, the real
originator of European Protestantism; Wesley, the Angli-
can priest who became the founder of Methodism and one
of the makers of modern England and of English-speaking
nations ; Newman, the spiritual genius of his century who
re-interpreted Catholicism, both Anglican and Roman.
Hence I have named the volume " The Three Religious
Leaders of Oxford and their Movements," a title which
appears to be vindicated by the facts so far as I have
been able to ascertain them. It will probably be said
that I omit some of these and misconstrue others. This
is more than likely, and if it be so, I must be held
wholly responsible. I can only plead in extenuation that
I have tried to be as disinterested and as just as my stand-
point and the information at my disposal would permit,
and that throughout I have sincerely intended to give an
impetus to that fraternal spirit which leads to a more
Viii PREFACE
complete apprehension of divine truth. I shall be amply
rewarded if those who have any sympathy with the men
and the movements I have attempted to portray, whether
Roman Catholics or Protestants, are drawn more closely
together in the bonds of a common faith and fellowship.
My thanks are due and are here respectfully extended
to the Reverend Doctor Herbert B. Workman, Principal
of Westminster College, London, who used his unsurpassed
knowledge of Wycliffe and of Wesley to correct the first
eight chapters ; to my colleague at Central Church, the
Reverend David Loinaz, for his constant research in the
subjects discussed ; to my friends, the Reverend Doctor
W. L. Watkinson, formerly Editor of The London Quarterly
Review^ the Reverend John L. Belford, rector of the Roman
Catholic Church of the Nativity, Brooklyn, and the Rev-
erend Doctor Joseph Dunn Burrell, pastor of the Classon
Avenue Presbyterian Church, in the same borough, for
the loan of valuable volumes and documents ; to Professor
Edgar A. Hall, of Adelphi College, and the Reverend
Charles Waugh for their fruitful suggestions and verifi-
cation of quotations ; and to the Reverend Oscar L. Joseph
for his scholarly assistance and preparation of the Index.
The reader is asked to remember that the lectures were
given before an audience composed of different religious
denominations, and this circumstance rendered necessary
explanations and details which otherwise might seem
superfluous.
S. PARKES CADMAN.
Central Congregational CnnRcn,
Brooklyn, Np;w York City.
September the first, 1915.
PROLOGUE
Among many other benefits for which History hath been honoured,
in this one it triumpheth over all human knowledge, that it hath given
us life in our understanding, since by it the world itself had life and
beginning, even to this day : yea, it hath triumphed over Time, which
besides it nothing but Eternity hath triumphed over. For it hath
carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space of so many
thousands of years and given so fair and piercing eyes to our mind, that
we plainly behold living now, as if we had lived then, that great world,
magni Dei sapiens opus — 'The wise world,' saith Hermes, 'of a great
God ' — as it was then, when but new to itself. By it, I say, it is that
we live in the very time when it was created ; we behold how it was
governed ; how it was covered with water and again re-peopled ; how
kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen, and for what virtue and
piety God made prosperous, and for what vice and deformity He made
wretched, both the one and the other. And it is not the least debt
which we owe unto History, that it hath made us acquainted with our
dead ancestors, and out of the depth and darkness of the Earth dehv-
ered us their memory and fame. In a word, we may gather out of
History a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and appli-
cation of other men's aforepassed miseries with our own like errors and
ill-deservings. — From the Preface: History ; Its Rights and Dignity.
Sir Walter Raleigh.
PROLOGUE
The study of history cannot give mathematical certainty;
yet, rightly pursued, it should instill the serious and reverent
temper which lessens the danger of partisan blindness. A
sense of the largeness and complexity of the experiences of
the past is an aid to the recover^' of their vital phases. The
more deeply these experiences are pondered, the more com-
pletely they are stripped of the accidental and non-essential,
the more clearly manifest becomes their fundamental rela-
tion to the process of human development.
Such considerations are always of value, but never more
so than in the period before us. For during the medie-
val epoch Church and State were intimately related, and
those who would gain a just apprehension of the era must
endeavor to attain the state of that practised observer
"... whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild,
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole."
Again, throughout the Middle Ages the limitation of man's
power over his environment is everjivhere strikingly ap-
parent. Of means of expression for aspiration and ideal
there was no lack, but any practical realization was
obstructed by the difficulties and complications imposed
by circumstances. How philosophical theories influenced
statesmanship and politics, how their seeming triumphs
so often ended in disaster, and what qualities either in them
or in their advocates clothed them with influence and insured
XU THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
permanent benefits, solidifying government and people,
the career of Wycliffe may perhaps serve to illustrate;
for the Reformer embodied much of the genius of medieval
England. The attempt to reproduce the life of the period
is materially hampered, however, by the obscurity of per-
spective in which many lines of action and the chief per-
sonalities of the age are alike enveloped. The original
authorities upon whom historians must rely for informa-
tion were, as a rule, advocates of some particular cause.
They knew little or nothing about reducing vexed questions
of the time to definite limits, nor did they study them in
the light of their initiatory circumstances. Swayed by con-
temporary views, they seldom subordinated their partisan
proclivities to fairness of statement, and their work bears
the impress of the passions rather than of the intellect.
Private opinion or special sympathy biased their judgments,
and the chroniclers sought in their records to vindicate poli-
cies and individuals agreeable to their peculiar persuasions.
Where one group could find nothing but the beneficial,
another perceived the portents of grave disaster. Even
the best among them did not recognize the superiority, as a
historical method, of close observation over empty argu-
ment. Their writings ranged from the grotesquely imagina-
tive, credulous of physical prodigies and disdainful of facts,
to vapid and colorless recitals without pith or meaning.
Evidences of predetermination were rife in the widely differ-
ing estimates of pontiffs, princes, prelates, and scholastics
whose careers were woven into the tangle of current contro-
versies. And the well-poised, many-sided historian who
might have bequeathed to us a detached and comprehensive
survey of the ecclesiastical events around which medieval
civilization centered, and from which modern ideas were
projected, was then scarcely a possibility. Eminent scholars,
however, such as Freeman, Stubbs, Creighton, Seeley, and
Lord Acton, have recovered the gains of long past centuries
and have enabled us to understand medieval men and affairs,
PROLOGUE XIH
not only when they were swayed by unusual circumstances,
but also by those common sentiments which influence all
ages alike. The process has dwarfed some heroes and
robbed some events of a spurious greatness, but the dis-
illusionment was as necessary as it was wise.
Ranke's axiom, which he himself exemplified, "simply
to find out how things occurred," requires far more than the
perusal of ancient manuscripts. The knowledge of the main
lines of history ; of the motives at the root of steadfast
national purposes; of constantly interfering factors of in-
fluence ; and a vivid realization of the continuity of the
historical process, and of the shaping power of vigorous per-
sonality, are prime requisites for the successful interpreta-
tion of the past. Our gratitude is due to the historians who
have conformed to these principles; they recall the Greek
adage that truth is the fellow-citizen of the gods.
It was a notable achievement to bridge the gulf made by
the Renaissance between the Medieval and the Modern era.
The faith and laws, the ideals and practices, the conceits
and fancies of our remoter progenitors still appear strange
and perplexing to the unaccustomed eye. But the trained
and patient interpretation of the nineteenth century scholar
has brought them nearer to us, moralized the entire method
of research, and taught us to moderate alike our denuncia-
tion and our eulogy. The occupants of that era confronted
obstacles too great for their resources to surmount. The
influx of a larger, freer life had seriously weakened many
venerable customs and institutions, and while these slowly
succumbed the reconstruction of the social fabric was de-
layed by treachery, violence, and war. Yet even in this
disdainful passage of the irresistible tide, preparatory to
impending change, the primal elements of human progress
were not submerged. Amid the chaos, the pretensions of
the aristocracy and the delusions of the proletariat were
checked ; clericalism measured itself against the rapacity
and pride of kings and barons; municipalities arose, en-
XIV THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
riched by the growth of trade, the magnates of which some-
times thwarted the rulers they lavishly entertained, and
for whose campaigns they were financially responsible.
Guilds of artisans and tradesfolk, unified by mutual interest
and external opposition, flourished in the chief cities of
Europe. When clerics were recalcitrant, or where mer-
chants and workmen did not preponderate, their respective
organizations still served as counteracting forces, and their
union was a factor monarchs and lords were compelled to
respect. Feudalism reluctantly yielded to the social im-
pact, while the disguise of chivalry availed it less and less.
Slaves became freemen, freemen became burghers, burghers
acquired a firmer hold on the sources of national revenue and
the control of the State. Education was no longer a clerical
monopoly,. and the few learned laymen who had then secured
recognition were pioneers of that distribution of knowledge
which eventually characterized Humanism. Justice be-
tween man and man was not simply exact conformity to
preexistent and obligatory law. Legal relations were sifted
in the light of advancing intelligence. That vague, uncodi-
fied borderland which is now called social justice, as distin-
guished from the statutes of the realm, was sufficiently
defined for the periodical introduction of laws which in-
corporated some of its claims and validated certain personal
and property rights. The baneful dogma which assumed a
natural servitude for the vast majority became politically
inexpedient among the bold insurgents who threatened
Richard the Second's reign. Foreign intercourse disturbed
the insularity of England ; the Crusades brought the West
face to face with the East, and men began to be aware of the
breadth and splendor of the world. The nationalism which
arose after the defeat of the Holy Roman Empire by the
Papacy vanquished in its turn the schemes of the latter for
a consolidated Christendom. No country gave a more
generous reception to the new consciousness of the integrity
of the State than did England. Her geographical situation
PROLOGUE XV
and the temper of her people had always separated her from
the currents of continental opinion, and, while this was a
loss in some respects, in most it proved a decided gain. The
stages in human evolution are seldom noted until they
stand out in the bold relief of a crisis. Their occurrence in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was registered, and
their changes accomplished, through such intermediaries
as St. Francis, Innocent III, Grosseteste, Edward I, Wycliffe,
and other great personalities, who focused and intensified
the tendencies of their day.
These observations also apply to the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. John Wesley expressed the spiritual
aspirations and transformed the character of his age more
profoundly and permanently than did any other contempo-
rary Englishman. Even the younger Pitt, who defeated
Napoleon the Great, and added India to the British Empire,
is now seen to have been inferior in lasting influence to the
apostolic evangelist who revived the consciousness of a
redeeming God. Newman quickened a sense of ecclesiastical
universalism which his insular countrymen had deemed
obsolete. He linked Anglican to continental Christianity.
This achievement has largely determined for the past sixty
years the conceptions of the Establishment concerning its
ministerial and sacramental efficiency, its forms of worship,
and its relations with other Communions. The reader will
expand for himself the consequences following such major
events as the American Revolution, the French Revolution,
the growth in politics and in morals of those plain and fun-
damental principles which a series of tragical experiences
discovered to be the basis of just government. The ever-
increasing conviction that sovereignty must reside with the
people gave rise to the American Republic, regenerated
France, democratized the British nation and its colonies,
and still strives for an intelligent formulation in other coun-
tries of mankind. Nor were these later centuries deprived
of publicists whose passion for leadership was an energetic
XVI THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
activity both for good and evil. The interregnums between
Walpole and Gladstone, Bolingbroke and Russell ; between
Louis XIV and Napoleon the Great, or Washington and
Webster, filled as they are with prominent personalities and
achievements, can be surveyed to-day with a more impartial
eye. Few, if any, of these monarchs and statesmen escaped
"the contagion of the world's slow stain." At the same time
they were in closest fellowship with the erring millions they
led in peace and war. And if some among them sacrificed
principle to power and ambition, ever and anon others ap-
peared who redeemed the credit of the race and showed what
could be effected by untrammeled character and service.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
JOHN WYCLIFFE AND LATER
MEDIEVALISM
OHAPTEB PAOB
I. Heralds of Reform 3
II. Sources of Wycliffianism 47
III. The Quarrel with the Papacy .... 81
IV. Princes and People 12.5
Epilogue and Bibliography 165
BOOK II
JOHN WESLEY AND THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
V. Ancestry and Training 175
VI. Darkness and Dawn 213
VII. Conflict and Victory 259
VIII. Consolidation and Expansion 311
Epilogue. Important Dates. Bibliography . . 365
BOOK III
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN AND THE OXFORD
MOVEMENT OF 1833-1845
IX. The Nineteenth Century Renaissance .
X. Newman's Development and Personality
XI. Tractarianism and its Results
Epilogue and Bibliography
Index
387
433
505
572
591
BOOK I
JOHN WYCLIFFE
AND
LATER MEDIEVALISM
Give me a spirit that on this Hfe's rough sea
Loves t' have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.
George Chapmajv : Tragedy of Charles,
Duke of Byron. Act III, Sc. I.
CHAPTER I
HERALDS OF REFORM
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not Hght them for ourselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch 'd
But to fine issues, nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor.
Both thanks and use.
Shakespeare : Measure for Measure. Act I, So.
CHAPTER I
HERALDS OF REFORM
Wycliffe's place in history — His protest against religious and polit-
ical oppression — Sketch of development of Anglican resistance to
Papal claims — Hildebrand — His conception of a theocracy — Rela-
tions with William the Conqueror — Controversy regarding lay inves-
titure — Henry II and Becket — Constitutions of Clarendon — Becket's
influence on his countrymen — King John — His quarrel with Innocent
III — Papal interdict on England — John's excommunication and his
abject surrender — Great Charter — Grosseteste — His resistance to
Innocent IV — Henry de Bracton — Simon de Montfort — Edward I
— His conflict with Boniface VIII — The development of English
nationalism under his rule — Contrast between 13th and 14th cen-
turies — Period of Wycliffe's birth one of general decadence — Birth-
place of the Reformer — Early years — Entrance at Oxford — Early
history of Oxford — Origin of the University — Medieval meaning of
the terms "University" and "College" — Founding of English college
system — Walter de Merton — William de Wykeham — Physical
characteristics of Medieval Oxford — Conditions of living — Beneficent
influence of College Founders — Obsciu-ity of Wycliffe's Oxford life —
The "Nations" — Resources of Medieval students — Laical spirit of
the Colleges — Their freedom from class-distinctions — Wycliffe as the
Master of Balhol — Election to benefices — Obtains degree in theology
— His position as a scholar.
The paramount interest of Wycliffe's work as a reformer
centers in his courageous stand for religious and political
freedom during the quarrel between the English government
and the Papacy. This recurrent conflict had its sordid and
repulsive phases, which were relieved by the devotion of the
few who, concentrating their energies on the principles in-
volved, gave the dispute a moral significance, and largely
5
6 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
determined the outcome. A brief resume of the points at
issue in this protracted strife is in place here.
The origin of the struggle is traceable to the extravagant
claims of the Holy See and the characteristically independent
spirit of the Anglican Church. This age-long rivalry explains
the powerful yet ineffective protest of Wycliffe, and also the
later revolt under Henry VHI, which, unjustified as it was in
some respects, met a national demand and culminated in
an English Reformation. The degree of liberty enjoyed
from the beginning by the English hierarchy should not be
exaggerated, for there was a connection with the Papacy
which served distinct purposes and was neither feebly nor
thoughtlessly established. Nothing is gained by trying to
prove that the relationship never existed, any more than by
disregarding the substantial reasons for its severance.
Hildebrand, who gave a definite enunciation to the Papal
claims, was elevated to the throne of St. Peter in 1073 and
assumed the title of Gregory VH. As an ecclesiastic he was
at once philosophical and practical, large-minded enough to
conceive or revive far-reaching policies, and possessed of a
penetrative knowledge of mankind and a prophetic under-
standing of the spirit of his age. The purity of his personal
life, the strength of his character, and the force of his will
cooperated with his zeal for service to make him a born leader
of men. Before his lofty vision arose the stupendous ideal
of a theocratic State, embracing the entire world, over which,
as God's Vicegerent, he asserted his sovereignty. Civil or
religious rulers might not question the prerogatives of his
office, since they were conferred by the Deity Himself, to
Whom alone the Pontiff was responsible. Far from being
content to leave these august designs in the realm of remote
theorj^ Hildebrand strove to make them actual, and to bring
them into closest touch with those days of violent disruption
and constant change. No man could have been selected as
the Vicar of Christ who was better fitted by nature and cir-
cumstances to act for the cause with which his name is asso-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 7
ciated. Sagacious and ardent, he knew how to conform to
the immemorial traditions of the Papacy, and also how to
stamp upon its fabric and diplomacy the impress of his com-
manding nature. Although he failed in certain directions,
he nevertheless succeeded in investing the Holy See with a
spiritual influence which overawed and yet in a measure
cemented the continental nationalities. He accomplished
by the subtle suggestions and definite claims of sacerdotal
authority a task which armed hosts would have found im-
possible. But the defects latent in Hildebrand's statecraft
began to appear even during his own administration, and
increased in after times. He could not induce England to
bow to his spiritual autocracy : then as now she was sheltered
by that splendid isolation which has always guarded her
from continental ecclesiasticism. The inherent sense of
freedom which the Anglo-Saxon people cherished survived
even the Norman Conquest and prevented the feudal system
from taking deep root on English soil.
Hildebrand knew that Englishmen would not willingly
permit the imposition upon them of any system, however
impressive in its scope and purpose, which jeopardized their
national autonomy ; and in the hope of counteracting this
sentiment he had advised his predecessor, Alexander II, to
bestow his blessing upon the expedition of the Duke of
Normandy in 1066. The desires of the two ecclesiastics were
frustrated by the Conqueror himself, who so quickly ab-
sorbed the leaven of his new realm that when the three
legates were despatched from Rome by the Pope to demand
homage from the king for his new island dominion, they met
with the severe rebuff, — " Homage to thee I have not
chosen, nor do I choose to do. I never made a promise to
that effect, nor do I find that it was ever performed by my
predecessors to thine." The Norman bishops who were
appointed to English sees were careful to adopt their mon-
arch's policy. The Primates of Canterbury and York had
always been supreme in their archiepiscopates, and there
8 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
were no indications in the tenor of previous Papal decrees or
edicts that the Pope claimed the right of overlordship.
Thus sustained by precedent, the civil power, both before
and after the Conquest, retained certain rights in England
which it did not possess in Germany. It should be added,
however, that the Anglican Church was far from being
locally independent, and that no one was more anxious than
the Conqueror to bring it into touch with continental
Catholicism.
Hildebrand resorted to other measures: in 1075 a bull
was issued denying to the laity the right of investiture
for churches ; three years later investitures were pronounced
invalid when thus bestowed, and the penalty of excommuni-
cation was passed upon those disobeying the edict. Lay
investiture originated when bishops and abbots became
temporal lords and bestowed upon laymen extensive church
properties in return for military service. Ecclesiastical
office was then held to be of the nature of a fief for which
homage was due to the king. If a Chapter's choice of its
bishop or abbot was displeasing to the monarch, he could
refuse to ratify the election, whereupon during the interval
the income of the benefice reverted to the Crown. William
Rufus, the unscrupulous son and successor of the Conqueror,
was a notorious transgressor in this respect. He kept the
see of Canterbury vacant four years that he might appro-
priate its emoluments. In a fit of remorse, due to his fear
of death, he nominated to the Primacy the saintly and
learned Anselm, abbot of Bee in Normandy, a thinker, a
sensitive pietist of the character which Englishmen seldom
appreciate sympathetically, but one who, to quote the phrase
of Ronsard, "had traveled far on the green path that leads
men into remembrance." Upon the king's recovery from
sickness his compunction vanished, and he resumed an open
and shameless barter of spiritual dignities. Anselm's gentle
and sincere nature was not devoid of sterner qualities : he
opposed the despotism of Rufus, and defended not only the
JOHN WYCLIFFE 9
clerical order, but also the imperiled rights of the subject.
Finding it unsafe to remain in residence, the Archbishop
appealed in person to Pope Urban II. It was during his
absence from Canterbury that the prelate, who was pre-
dominantly the quiet scholar, found leisure to write his
celebrated treatise, "Cur Deus Homo." After the death
of Rufus, he refused to do homage to Henry I, or receive
investiture at his hands. Pope Paschal II sanctioned the
Primate's action, and eventually a compromise was effected.
After the vexed reign of Stephen, during which the armies
of the bishops fought against those of the king, the next
open breach with the Papacy occurred under Henry II.
The clergy now demanded trial in their own courts, which,
in accordance with the unwise legislation enacted at the
Conquest, were separated from the regular jurisdiction. The
flagrant partiality of the clerical judiciary, its frequent mis-
carriages of justice, and the number and influence of those
tonsured miscreants who were thus exempt from the common
law, constituted a grave menace to peace and order by making
the sacerdotal office a haven for criminals. The higher
clergy surrounded themselves with retinues of armed re-
tainers, among whom were warrior priests and not a few of
the baser sort. In the ranks of the lower clergy were
numerous rascals who had escaped punishment for offenses of
which they were palpably guilty. While the controversy
was at its height Henry bestowed the archbishopric upon his
chancellor, Thomas a Becket, succinctly described by Wil-
liam of Newburgh as one "burning with zeal for justice,
but whether altogether according to wisdom, God knows."
Becket at once became the champion of the extreme clerical
party, and his sturdy resistance of Henry's efforts to subdue
it strained their friendship to the breaking point. In
January, 1164, a Great Council was convened at Clarendon,
near Salisbury, to reduce the friction between Church and
State. The resolutions then framed, and subsequently
placed upon the statute-book, were termed the "Constitu-
10 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
tions of Clarendon." They provided that accused clerics,
when condemned and degraded by their own courts, should
be transferred to the King's court to receive sentence ; to
which Becket properly objected that this would be trying a
man twice for the same offense. Civil cases involving
their members were to be adjusted before the ordinary
tribunals. The clergy were forbidden to leave the country
without the monarch's consent, neither could appeals be
taken to Rome without the royal license. The agreement
concerning investiture, under the terms of which the Pope
allowed bishops and abbots to do homage to the king for
their temporal properties, was confirmed. After repeated
quibblings and equivocations Becket gave a reluctant assent
to these changes, and then, speedily repentant, refused to
affix his official seal. Pope Alexander III encouraged the
Archbishop's refractory attitude, and Becket fled to France
in November, 1164, to escape Henry's anger. There he
remained six years in exile. Upon his return to Canterbury
the townsfolk went in procession to meet him outside the
city, and escorted him in triumph to his church.
The jubilations were scarcely ended before the smoulder-
ing fires broke out again, only to be quenched by the as-
sassination of the fearless prelate in one of the chapels of the
Cathedral. The crime excited universal horror and execra-
tion : the four knights whose ferocious daring in the king's
service prompted the murder had absolutely ruined their
master's projects. Henry quailed before the storm of in-
dignation which swept over Europe; he submitted to the
Papal decrees, annulled the Constitutions of Clarendon,
and made an open expiation in his dolorous pilgrimage to
Becket's tomb. The popular admiration which had followed
Becket during his later life was due to his courageous deter-
mination and steadfast zeal for what he held to be justice
against king and barons. Nothing could have enhanced
that admiration more than the manner of his ending. No
Englishman of the Middle Ages made so indelible an im-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 11
pression on his countrymen as did Thomas of Canterbury.
It has been well said that if Anselm was a saint whose supe-
riority to ordinary motives made him a statesman, Becket
was a statesman whose political audacity was transformed
by the popular imagination into sainthood.
II
A deeper humiliation awaited the Crown in the reign
of the second Henry's son John, whose folly and wickedness
plunged the nation into turbulence and dishonor. After
the death of Archbishop Hubert Walter, which occurred on
July 12, 1205, a dispute arose between the king and the
Chapter of the see in reference to Walter's successor. The
younger monks met in haste before the deceased Primate
was buried, and without applying for the royal warrant
elected their sub-prior Reginald. They even went so far
as to install him, and then secretly dispatched him to Rome
to obtain the Papal confirmation. During his passage
through Flanders, Reginald violated the confidence of his
brethren by publicly announcing himself as the Archbishop-
elect. In the ensuing tumult the king nominated John de
Grey, Bishop of Norwich, the bishops and the older monks of
the Chapter acquiescing, and a second deputation at once
set out for the Vatican to push the claims of the king's
candidate.
The Pontiff, Innocent III, was a consummate administra-
tor, in counsel wary, in fidelity to his office impregnable, and
an unflinching advocate of absolutism as enunciated by
Hildebrand. "Regal dignity," said Innocent, "should be
but a reflection of the Papal authority and entirely sub-
ordinate to it." He was not prone to deceive himself, and
he was not liable to be deceived by others. His fame has
been clouded by the contention that he originated the
Inquisition, and it is beyond question that he gave impetus
to the extirpation of heresy by physical violence, deeming
12 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
it high treason against Heaven. The Livonians and the
Albigenses felt the weight of his hand ; the continental
rulers bent before his inflexible sway, and he was more than
a match for the irresolute and demoralized John.
During the week before Christmas, 1206, the rivals for
the archbishopric were heard at the Papal court, where the
king's duplicity precipitated his defeat. While openly
protesting that the Pontiff's decision would be acceptable
to all, he attempted to bribe the officials of the Curia, and
enjoined the monks whom he had commissioned to elect
no one but Grey. The futility of such double dealing was
demonstrated in this negotiation with the astute Innocent,
who could neither be cajoled nor affrighted by it. The
election of Reginald was quashed as informal, that of Bishop
de Grey was pronounced illegal on the ground that it occurred
while the appeal was pending ; ^ and Cardinal Stephen
Langton, an Englishman by birth, and the first scholar in
the foremost university of Europe, was named by Innocent
for the see. The representatives of the Chapter concurred,
regardless of their secret pact with John, and accordingly
Langton was chosen. It is beyond reasonable doubt that
Innocent was aware of the treachery of the English monarch,
and he seems to have been sincerely solicitous that the throne
of Augustine should be filled by a man of Langton's worth
and caliber. He proceeded cautiously and declined to
complete the election by consecrating Langton until the king
had given his approval. This John emphatically refused to
bestow, and, notwithstanding his previous professions of
admiration for the Archbishop, he now complained that he
did not even know the obscure person who was being thrust
upon him. At this unblushing prevarication, the Pope took
the initiative and consecrated his nominee, whereupon the
fury of the reckless king fell upon the monks who had dared
to disobey his mandate. Innocent countered his assaults
' Bishop William Stubbs : " Historical Introduction to the Rolls Series" ;
pp. 467-468.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 13
with an impressive manifestation of the Papal authority
which recalled that made by Hildebrand at Canossa. In
the spring of 1208, the realm was suddenly deprived of its
religious instruction and ministry, and those holy offices
of faith and consolation which were believed necessary to
eternal salvation were simultaneously withdrawn. This
stupendous sentence, a formidable but also self-destruc-
tive weapon of the medieval Church, filled the heart of the
nation with grief and dismay. What effect it had on the
king can only be conjectured ; at any rate he offered Lang-
ton the royalties of his see and gave him permission to visit
England. But overtures for peace were at an end by the
time the Archbishop arrived at Dover; the bishops fled
the country, the parochial clergy were outlawed from their
charges, and the monasteries and nunneries were brought
to the verge of starvation. The Papal interdict prevailed
until 1212, and John took advantage of the general distress
by appropriating ecclesiastical benefices and funds to his
own use. Finally the Pope exconununicated him, and
when he retaliated with renewed defiances and plunderings.
Innocent declared his deposition from the throne. Con-
temporary accounts of the calamitous struggle assert that a
prophecy of Peter of Wakefield played upon the king's su-
perstitions and ended his resistance. However that may have
been, it suddenly collapsed, and on May 15, 1213, he made an
abject and total surrender in which he ceded the kingdoms of
England and Ireland in perpetuity to Innocent and his
successors, agreeing to hold them in fief from the Pope at
an annual tribute of one thousand marks. By this act
John endeavored to enlist the Holy See against the baronage,
which was restive beneath the consequences of his misrule.
Innocent insisted upon a guarantee of good behavior from
the king, and in the final adjustment many significant
constitutional changes were effected. But the people re-
fused to place their confidence in a monarch who had
dissipated every resource of loyalty and respect, and when
14 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the barons brought him to bay at Runnymede they compelled
him to sign the Great Charter, which was the chief token
and instrument of the growing national consciousness.
The shortcomings and disasters of John's malignant
policy stimulated England's resolution to avoid such
contingencies in the future. For although the prelates and
lords acted in the place of the people, they did so in a rep-
resentative capacity and to a certain extent with their
consent and allegiance. The Charter long remained valu-
able for what it promised rather than for what it actually
performed ; since those who drafted and signed it were either
unable or unwilling to enforce its articles. Yet its presence
in the political life and history of the realm was a gain
which neglect obscured but could not destroy. After eighty
years of comparatively inoperative existence, one of the
greatest epochs, the thirteenth century, which produced
Dante, St. Francis, St. Louis, and the first Edward, witnessed
its vitalization under the prince last named, a king as faith-
ful as John was perfidious. Its provisions were incorporated
into the principles of his government, promoting that har-
mony and justice which were its steadfast bulwark.
The reign of John brought about the consummation of
Papal supremacy in England, the kingdom being formally
annexed as a province of the spiritual empire, whose capital
was the Vatican and whose disposer was the Pope. Reform
within the Church was impossible so long as it was con-
trolled by the Curia, and Englishmen composed themselves
to make the best of a situation to whic^h they were far from
being reconciled. The Charter with which Stephen Lang-
ton had been largely identified made no mention of Papal
suzerainty. The implicit alliance between the throne and
the clergy was severed for a long period, and notwithstand-
ing the backset due to John's reprehensible conduct, in-
dependency reasserted itself, not only in secular afi'airs
but also in the more personal and religious life of the
nation.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 15
III
It was a tribute to the unquestioned heroism and pic-
turesqueness of Becket's Hfe that Stephen Langton should
have been proud to reckon him among the fathers of
English liberty. Both Archbishops resented foreign in-
tervention, and when Matthew Paris sought to make
Langton a national saint he based his biography on the
model of Thomas, maintaining that the two were representa-
tives of the kingdom of England. Langton's importance
is further shown by the fact that he was the connecting
link between Becket and Edmund Rich and Robert Grosse-
teste. Rich was far removed, however, in the mildness
and simplicity of his temper from the haughty and im-
perious Becket. The Saint of Abingdon was better fitted
for the cloister than for the archiepiscopal throne, and,
while his writings were full of spiritual insight and charm,
he was incapable of accurate estimate or vigorous action in
reference to men and affairs. Although as Archbishop he
was unable to arrest the laxity and intrigue of the day, the
affection of his intimate friends led to his canonization
within seven years from his death.^
Robert Grosseteste, Chancellor ^ of Oxford University,
and afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, equaled Becket in firmness
and surpassed him in wisdom. His vast diocese included
the present sees of Lincoln, Peterborough, Oxford, and part
of Ely, and his administration affords an outstanding proof
of human capacity, not only with respect to the conduct
of the business of his bishopric but also to its manifold re-
lations with the Roman Curia and the Church at large.
Wycliffe, chary of his praise, gave it to Grosseteste without
» W. H. Hutton: "The English Saints" ; p. 266.
* The reader should not identify the university chancellorship of that
period with the office of the same name at the present time. As Bishop of
Lincoln in which diocese Oxford was, Grosseteste was of course the eccle-
siastical head of the University ; the title of ' Chancellor ' would not be given
to him, however, but to his representative at Oxford.
16 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
stint. The versatility of his gifts and the extent of their
exercise made him the most alert and universal intelligence
in Britain. Among many appellations applied to him which
indicated the admiration and love of his contemporaries
were "The Lord Robert," "Robert of Lincoln," "Lin-
colniensis," "St. Robert," and "that great clerk Grosse-
teste." Roger Bacon averred he was the only man living
who was in possession of all sciences, and had his warning
been heeded, the University might have been diverted from
its profitless plowing of the sands of later Scholasticism.
He composed French verse, was well informed in law and
medicine, and wrote with authority upon a wide range of
subjects. His knowledge of Hebrew has been disputed ;
but the translations from his Greek manuscripts made by
John of Basingstoke and Nicholas the Greek are not ques-
tioned, and show that Grosseteste was proficient in this
language. None could deny his large and varied learning,
his surpassing intellectual capacities, his consecration to
duty, or his immense working powers. These endowments
and attainments were evinced in his supremacy as a bishop, a
theologian, and a preacher. He strove to harmonize the
respective truths of natural and revealed realities, and urged
his pupils and clergy to study physical science in addition
to the sacred literatures in their original tongues. The
vibrant energies he imparted thrilled his diocese and were
felt throughout the land. But the crowning proof of his
superiority was the fact that his intellectual and moral
growth continued to the last. Every year found him more
necessary to Church and State than before. So deserved
was his reputation for determining the essence of vexed ques-
tions that those who were divided on many other matters
were a unit in their reliance upon his arbitration. For his
exposition and defense of public rights, for his fearless pro-
tests against foreign tyrannies, whether temporal or clerical,
for his disinterested patriotism, he was venerated by his
countrymen. His occasional indiscretions, which were due
JOHN WYCLIFFE 17
to defects of temperament and incurred merited rebuke,
were not sufficiently grave to mar his work or limit his adapta-
bility and usefulness ; and an acquaintance with his achieve-
ments is indispensable for those who would understand the
religious development of his age in the direction of freedom
and of self-control.
Previously to 1247, Grosseteste had either favored or
submitted to the ecclesiastical claims for which Becket
died. This policy cannot be rightly judged by those for
whom the Holy See is a standing conspiracy against the
liberties of mankind or by those for whom it is always and
everywhere an infallible organization for the regeneration
and moral control of the world. An unprejudiced criticism
will recognize even more clearly than the plenitude of
partisan erudition that the weight of testimony is against
these extreme opinions. Rome's authority, although far
from perfect or desirable in every case, was not actuated
solely by selfish motives, nor was it always inimical to the
welfare of medieval society. Mr. Frederic Harrison's trib-
ute to Innocent III is applicable to other Pontiffs: "His
eighteen years of rule from 1198 to 1216 were one long
effort, for the moment successful, and in part deserving
success, to enforce on the kings and peoples of Europe a
higher morality, respect for the spiritual mission of the
Church, and a sense of their common civilization. We feel
that he is a truly great man with a noble cause." ^ The
Papacy's better side will appear again in these pages;
nevertheless, when the supremacy it claimed came into
conflict with the spirit of awakened nationalism, it encoun-
tered an opposition so formidable that it was driven
to the devious courses of an intriguing diplomacy which
it has since pursued. Without debating whether Hil-
debrand or Wycliffe was correct in his interpretation of
the Divine presence in human affairs, we may agree to
so much as this : that where absolutism once reigned it
^ ^ " The Meaning of History " ; p. 150.
18 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
reigns no longer, and that the decentrahzation of its former
powers is the present result of an extended and arduous
experience.
When in 1250 the Crown and the Papacy again cooperated
for the subjugation of the English clergy, Grosseteste
condemned the alliance, and even contemplated resigning
his see. But his love for the Church prevailed, and he
continued his labors in extirpating abuses and promoting
reforms. His loyalty to Rome never recovered from the
shock it then sustained, and he openly denounced the
financial expedients which Innocent IV adopted to defray
the cost of his campaign against the Emperor. It was this
Pontiff who demanded of Grosseteste a prebend at Lincoln
for his nephew, Frederick De Lavagna, an Italian who could
not speak English. The Bishop's famous reply, later known
as the Sharp Epistle, is a valuable document for the
study of the tendency of Anglicanism at this period.^ He
said, " It will be known to your wisdom that I am ready to
obey apostolical commands with filial affection and with
all devotion and reverence, but to those things which are
opposed to apostolical commands, I in my zeal for the
honor of my parent, am also opposed. By apostolical
commands are meant those which are agreeable to the
teachings of the Apostles and of Christ Himself, the Lord
and Master of the Apostles, whose type and representation
is specially borne in the ecclesiastical hierarchy by the Pope.
The letter above mentioned is not consonant with apostolical
sanctity, but utterly at variance and discord with it."
Innocent was so enraged by this bold unprecedented censure
from one whom he regarded as a renegade, that his Cardinals
had difficulty in dissuading him from pronouncing excom-
munication upon the most beloved bishop in Europe. The
members of the Curia, notwithstanding the fact that
' Tho Sharp Epistlo was not written to Popo Innocent, hut to Master
Innocent, the Papal Legate in England, a fact which alters the wliole drift
of the document.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 19
Grosseteste had blamed them for the oppressions he de-
nounced, participated in the veneration freely offered to the
aged and saintly churchman of spotless integrity, and
besought Innocent to let him end in peace. His enemies
had not long to wait; on October 9, 1253, he passed to a
well-earned rest. "The Church," said the dying man,
"will not be free from her Egyptian bondage except at the
point of the blood-stained sword." His valiant affirmation
of the apostolic rule against those who sought to degrade
it had ended in a seeming failure which saddened his last
hours. Actually it played a considerable part in destroying
the evil she mourned, and went far to fulfill Adam Marsh's
enthusiastic prediction that "it should, by the aid of God,
benefit all ages to come."
The ideas and aims of Grosseteste were further developed
in the writings of his friend Henry de Bracton, the well-
known authority on English common law, who in his cele-
brated work carefully defined the always sensitive relations
between Church and State. He treated clerical claims to
patronage as an unwarrantable interference destructive of
the regularity and equity of the civil power and administra-
tion. Decidedly national in temper and reasonable in state-
ment, Bracton's argument was an additional example of
the nature of the opposition to Papal supremacy.
Another friend and junior contemporary of the Bishop
of Lincoln was Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the
leading member of the oligarchic party during the Barons'
War. He was regarded by the populace ^ as a saint and
martyr and was eulogized as such by the Scottish chronicler
of Melrose, whose comparison between him and Simon
Peter, the prince of the Apostles, was probably traceable
to the monk's animosity against Edward I, for whose
career that of de Montfort served as a heroical but tragic
prelude. His father, Simon de Montfort the elder, was
noted for a crusade of persecution against the Albigenses.
* See Wright's "Political Songs of the Middle Ages" in the Rolls Series.
20 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
The son, born in France about the year 1200, succeeded to
the earldom of Leicester in 1231, and his marriage in 1238
allied him with the royal family. Jealousies and intrigues on
the part of many of the nobility caused a breach between
him and the king, and for a time drove him out of England.
On his return and reconciliation with Henry in 1241, however,
the barons, who had hitherto regarded him as a foreign
interloper, joined him in his opposition to monarchical
misrule. In a song which commemorated his victory at
Lewes in the year before his death the Earl was hailed as the
deliverer of the Church and the avenger of her wrongs, while
the king's responsibility for his own acts and his liability
to correction were also proclaimed. This was a partisan
tribute, but the fact that Simon became famous among Eng-
lish patriots and was a hearty supporter of Grosseteste's
ecclesiastical reforms is established by his action in signing
the protest of 1246 against the exactions of Rome. He was
a practised warrior, a man of ascetical temperament and
religious spirit, who championed the lower clergy and the
commonalty, sought to abolish arbitrary procedure, and to
promote government upon laws framed by the representa-
tives of the people. In 1264 Henry the Third's hostility
to these changes provoked a rebellion which issued in the
battle of Lewes, when Simon vanquished and captured the
king and his sons, Prince Edward and Richard of Cornwall.
He utilized his advantage to establish a triumvirate of
which he was the head, and the Council which he summoned
in 1265 succeeded to some extent in controlling public
affairs. This legislative body may be looked upon as the
germ of the modern British Parliament, and, notwith-
standing repressions and retroactions, since Simon's day
England's government has never lacked a constantly
increasing element of popular representation. When the
natural reaction set in he was accused of having designs
upon the throne, and Edward, the young heir apparent,
marched against him with an army which Simon himself
JOHN WYCLIFFE 21
had trained in military strategy. "By the arm of St.
James!" he exclaimed, with a touch of soldierly pride, as
he watched the advance of the royalist forces at Evesham
on August 4, 1265, "they come on in wise fashion, but it was
from me they learned it." He knew that the die was cast
against him, and, commending his soul to God, fell fighting
to the last.
The prince who redeemed the credit of his House in war
renounced its favorite policy when the victory was won.
Edward I discarded for the time being the Papal alliance
upon which his Plantagenet predecessors had relied, and
showed himself capable of appropriating the best ideas of
his age. Far from abolishing representative assemblies,
he saw in them the means of securing the stability of his
ttrone and the welfare of his subjects. These objects he
made his own, despite the embarrassments of his position,
the exigencies of national defense, and the necessary re-
construction which followed the distractions of civil con-
flict. He chose in word and deed to be king of England,
and the choice brought him honor and renown. His wise
and zealous maintenance of law and order have earned for
him the title of the Justinian of the Empire. He made
that resistance to Papal interference with the affairs of the
realm which was a salient characteristic of its best statesmen
and rulers. In 1297 he gave his confirmation to the Charter,
which had previously been neglected or openly violated,
and its articles were applied with a firmness of faith and
an intellectual lucidity that caused his reign to become a
fountain of justice and equity, the currents of which continue
their course into the present age. Boniface VIII tried out
the issue when in 1296 he promulgated the bull " Clericis
Laicos"^ which forbade the taxation of ecclesiastics except
by consent of the Holy See. Edward promptly retaliated
by depriving the clergy of legal protection, arguing that if
iFor a translation of the Bull "Clericis Laicos," see E. F. Henderson:
"Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages." (Bohn) pp. 432-434.
22 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
they would not contribute to the national exchequer they
could not expect to share the benefits of the commonwealth.
The clergy themselves were in sympathy with this position,
and Boniface temporarily gave way only to reassert his
authority in the case of Edward's relations to the throne
of Scotland. The reply of the English Parliament to the
Pope's letter indicated the extent to which the nation re-
sented ecclesiastical supervision of its civil matters ; it
announced that the monarchs were not, and never had been,
answerable for their political acts to any judge but their
conscience and their people. Thus, at last, under Edward's
directing hand, England converted into stepping-stones the
obstacles placed in the path of her progress, and before the
end of his reign became a united nation. Although the
king was harsh and domineering, he cherished a warm affec-
tion for his subjects, who responded in kind. He revived
and applied the useful measures he found in abeyance with
a sense of honor and of fairness and an earnest desire to ad-
vance every legitimate interest. In this he succeeded, and
his unique place in the history of England is attributable
to that success. He reduced and incorporated Wales ; and,
had he lived and succeeded in the conquest and settlement
of Scotland and Ireland, the three kingdoms might have
escaped centuries of turmoil and misery. But the racial
barriers between the peoples were too strong to be shattered
even by his terrific impact and it was left for after ages to
complete his designs of consolidation and expansion. He was
fortunate in that he escaped the toils of the French wars,
which enmeshed the administration of his grandson, the third
Edward. He created a national parliament, a national
system of justice and of taxation, and a national army. The
years from 1272 to 1290 were more fruitful in historic leg-
islation than any other period of English history before the
nineteenth century, and for these laws Edward supplied the
initiative. He was in truth a great monarch, second to
none in the long array of those who have occupied the throne
JOHN WYCLIFFE 23
of the kingdom wherein he stimulated the development
of that constitutional procedure and respect for precedent
which have made modern Britain an example of practical
wisdom and justice among the governments of mankind.
The disastrous career of Edward II terminated in the
tragedy of his assassination at Berkeley Castle on September
21, 1327. His name is associated with famine, conspiracy,
tumult, civil war, and the decisive English defeat at Bannock-
burn. Yet the Court which surrounded this weak, self-
willed and frivolous monarch was a solidly organized insti-
tution, with traditions and resources of government that
enabled it to direct every department of the State. Pro-
fessor Tout argues with considerable force against the
popular estimate of the second Edward's reign, and attrib-
utes its earlier failure to the policy of his father, which
was on the verge of collapse at the moment of the great
king's death. ^ The reasons for this statement are given in
some detail and afford room for thought. On the surface,
however, there was a wide and sobering contrast between
the two reigns which indicated the change then sweeping
over Christendom.
IV
The new spirit arose with the transfer of the Papal
seat to Avignon in 1309, an event which destroyed the
absolutism Hildebrand had elaborated, and which his
successors, with the possible exception of Innocent III,
were unable to maintain. The thirteenth century had
been one of buoyancy, enthusiasm, and promise, rich
in the number and character of its leaders, and mem-
orable for their achievements in religion, philosophy,
statesmanship, and art. Pulsating with conscious mental
vigor, animated by high hopes and rejoicing in widened
horizons of experience and reflection, rulers and peoples
• "The Place of the Reign of Edward II ia English History."
24 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
received with gladness the stimulus of the mission of the
friars to European Christianity. The colloquial speech and
homespun wit of the Franciscans rescued the faith from an
esoteric seclusion and communicated its joys and inspira-
tions to the daily life of the multitude. In England they
were more learned than the Dominicans, who hardly counted
there, though they exercised a profound influence in con-
tinental Europe. Many schools and universities were then
founded, in addition to those already existing, and a keen
zest for the conquests of the mind was everywhere mani-
fested. But the golden epoch passed into eclipse with
dramatic suddenness; a strange apathy fell upon these
short-lived energies; a fatal prosperity divorced the friars
from their self-abnegation and from the plain folk, and
diverted their zeal into material and selfish channels. It
should be added, however, that during the Black Death in
1348,^ they showed by their devoted service that an un-
paralleled calamity could recall them to the spiritual signifi-
cance of their order. Nor were they responsible for the
moral fatigue which was a universal distemper, paralyzing
individual and collective efforts for betterment. Humanity
in general was daunted by the melancholy retreat of cour-
age and optimism, and refused any longer to follow the
path over which shone " the high white star of truth." What
had seemed to men the dawn of a new day proved to be a
false light, as evanescent as the pale radiance which gleams
across the northern skies.
In this gloomy environment of negation and disappoint-
ment, due to exhaustion rather than design, John Wy cliff e
appeared as one born out of due time. The exact place and
date of the Reformer's birth are uncertain. The antiquary
Leland states that he "drew his origin" from Wy cliff e-on-
Tees, a locality celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in " Rokeby, "
and in another passage he says, "John Wycliffe, Hereticus,
J The year 1349 is usually given as the date of the Black Death, though it
actually bcgau in 1348.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 25
was born at Ipreswel, a small village a good mile off from
Richmont." Neither is there now, nor was there ever, a
place of this name in the vicinity of Richmond. The mis-
take is due to a misprint in Hearne's printed copy of Leland's
" Itinerary." Ipswell, the modern name for Ipreswel, is at
least ten miles from Richmond, which even Leland could
hardly call a good mile, and the reference shows that he is
recording gossip. There can be little doubt that Wy cliff e
was born at Wycliffe-on-Tees, where the tomb of his father
Roger, the lord of the manor, may still be seen. The year
1320 is the earliest that can be assigned for his birth,^ and
he may have been born several years later. The differences
need not detain the narrative : it is at least certain that he
was a Yorkshireman, and possessed the independence and
resolution native to that province. Little enough is known
concerning the earlier stages of his career and some of its
subsequent periods are equally vague. The last decade of
his life is, however, an exception, for there his processes as
a thinker and a theologian can be traced with much greater
certainty than elsewhere, owing to the clearness and full-
ness of our knowledge of the closing phase. But centuries
of neglect have obscured the external conditions of the man
to whom Shirley refers as a "dim image which looks down
like the portrait of the first of a long line of kings, without
personality or expression." ^
It is perhaps useless to speculate upon the circumstances
and influences which shaped his formative period, although
they are not without considerable interest. He received
the impressions of a static community, whose lonely exist-
ence was undisturbed by the echoes of the city's crowded
ways. This seclusion had compensations : it afforded him
opportunity for the cultivation of sterling worth, candor,
•According to the genealogical tree in Whi taker's "Richmondshire,"
Roger Wycliffe and his wife Catherine were married in 1319. The eldest
son would seem to have been William Wycliffe, who, however, was dead
before 1362.
2H. B. Workman; "The Dawn of the Reformation"; Vol. I, p. 107.
26 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and integrity ; virtues which, as a rule, are better inculcated
in rustic retreats than in the centers of population. The
yeomanry of the Yorkshire Ridings have retained under all
changes certain refreshing qualities, a goodly heritage from
their progenitors. Their provincial speech, energy, deter-
mination, prudence, courage, and hatred of any form of
injustice stamp them as a peculiar people, whose temper
has never been disposed to indulge the arrogance of
caste. A better passport to their favor is that assertive in-
dividualism which, however distasteful to the assumptions
of arbitrary rank, and even injurious in some directions,
has hitherto been the sustaining source of democracy. In
this respect Wycliffe was a true son of the North, blunt and
incisive in address, with an unconscious equality of manner,
and a passionate sympathy for the unfortunate and the poor
which inspired his disconcerting fierceness of attack upon
their oppressors. That such an advocate of the cause of
the proletariat in religion and in politics should have emerged
from the remotest dales of a shire, at that period rude and
unvisited, is another of the many vouchers for the debt the
race owes the wilderness and its children.
Living as he did in so retired a spot, Wy cliff e's early
instruction was probably received from the village priest,
who usually dwelt with the manorial family and taught
the rudiments of Latin, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, and
geometry. The conjecture that he was educated at a
monastery school cannot be substantiated, since these in-
stitutions no longer opened their doors to outsiders. Nor
is there any evidence that he attended one of the schools
maintained by collegiate churches, by chantry priests, and
by the guilds of various towns.
Lechler surmises that he was fourteen or possibly sixteen
years old when he entered Oxford. That some students
were no older is evident from the comment of Richard
Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who complained that
many youths under fourteen years of age were already con-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 27
sidered members of the University. Lechler's reckoning is
based upon 1320 as the year of Wydiffe's birth, but if
this date is too early, the surmise is incorrect. It is highly
probable that he was still in his nonage when he began
the southward journey along the great Roman road which
ran from the Cheviot Hills to London and passed near his
father's house. He would not lack for company : students,
like other wayfarers, banded together for mutual protection
against lusty rogues and outlaws who infested the high-
ways, and sometimes robbed them of their baggage and
entrance fees even in sight of their destination. After
ten days of more or less excitement and peril, the intrenched
and walled fourteenth century town, w'ith its encircling waters
and massive Norman keep commanding the approaches
which converged from the surrounding hills, would be in full
view.
Oxford is situated in the middle reaches of the Thames
valley, and shares that beautiful pastoral scenery for which
the river is noted from Richmond to Sonning Bridge. The
ruins of its ancient fortifications remain to show its
former strategical importance, and its venerable appear-
ance is enhanced by the gray fronts of halls and colleges
along "the High" and other thoroughfares. But the
thriving borough did not arise, as many have imagined, in
response to the needs of the colleges; the place enjoyed
five hundred years of municipal and commercial prominence
before any student was seen in its streets. Equally erroneous
are the popular beliefs regarding the beginnings of the
University itself. That the great seat of learning had its
inception in one of the schools established by Alfred the
Great is only another of the many legends which historical
research has compelled antiquaries to relinquish. Nor
did the fame of churches and monasteries of Oxford have
anything to do with the origin of those schools which were
28 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
afterwards merged into the University, It is far nearer
the truth to say that Oxford's classical reputation was an
outgrowth of its geographical location and civic strength.
The earliest mention on which reliance can be placed refers
to the nunnery founded by St. Frideswide during the turmoil
of the eighth century, on or near the site of the present
Cathedral. A brief entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for
912 states that Edward the Elder, the successor of Alfred,
"took possession of London and Oxenford and of all the lands
which owed obedience thereto." ^ The ravages of the Danish
wars afterwards fell heavily upon the town, which was then
a frontier fortress of the Mercian and West Saxon kingdoms,
and involved it in burning and destruction. The citizens
repaired the mischief wrought by fire and siege in 979, 1002,
and 1010, and subsequently Oxford continued to be a
theater of national gatherings.
The security of tenure which followed the Norman Con-
quest promoted the town's growth and trade, and trans-
formed the architecture of its religious and public buildings.
In 1074 the collegiate church of St. George arose within the
recently constructed castle; the priory, afterwards called
the Abbey of Austin Canons, was erected in the next cen-
tury ; the palace of Beaumont was built by Henry I in the
fields to the north. The church of the monastery of St.
Frideswide, which at the Reformation became the Cathedral
of the new diocese, dates from the same period, and these
indefatigable masons also renovated the existing parish
churches. One of the wealthiest of English Jewries was
planted in the center of the town : a settlement having its
own religion, language, dress, laws, customs, and commerce,
independent of local authorities and subject only to the
Crown. There is no doubt that Oxford's general progress
was promoted by the financial loans of wealthy Hebrews,
and that indirectly its academic methods felt the influence
of their rabbis, whose volumes aided the first researches of
* James Parker : ' ' The Early History of Oxford " ; p. 1 16.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 29
physical scientists and gave Roger Bacon access to the older
world of material inquiry.^
While it is not our immediate purpose to deal at length
with the interesting details of those educational facilities
which were mainly due to the faith and energy of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they should receive
the consideration commensurate with their importance.
Their larger beginnings have been ascribed to a migra-
tion of scholars from Paris, which took place about the
year 1169. Such migrations were perfectly congruous with
the nomadic habits of medieval clerks, and those universities
in Northern Europe which did not arise in connection with
some prominent collegiate church were the offspring of a
similar exodus. The history of the University of Paris has
emerged from the uncritical period when the foundation
was attributed to Charles the Great, although his fame as
a founder is still celebrated thoughout the colleges of France
by an annual festival named in his honor.^ What the
Emperor actually did was to establish collegiate schools in
the municipalities of his dominions,' and of these the " Ecole
du Parvis Notre Dame" eventually won a high reputation,
surpassing its rivals at Chartres and Laon. With the
widening of intellectual activity the curriculum broadened,
while the growth of culture and the decay of monasticism
increased the demand for new sources of education and for
the better training of the secular clergy. During the
eleventh century learned theologians taught there and also
at the adjacent school of St. Genevieve, among them being
Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester II, Fulbert, and Be-
ranger of Tours. But to the brilliant pupil of William of
Champeaux, Abailard, and to the successors he trained,
1 John Richard Green : "Oxford Studies" ; p. 9.
* This new lord of the world was not a Frenchman, but a German, a fact
which the French appellation Charlemagne has frequently obscured.
3 He designed to have collegiate churches in which the clergy should live
together with one of their number, called the Chancellor, responsible for
education. Hence arose the title of Chancellor in universities.
30 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
men who "grew straight in the strength of his spirit,"
Paris owed her academic prestige, and the natural evolution
of the University out of her schools. Abailard, at that time
a layman, commenced a school of his own near to that of
St. Genevieve, where not less than five thousand scholars
are said to have attended his lectures.^ His youth and
genius, illimitable lore, and audacity were assets of a magnetic
personality which drew to itself many future dignitaries of
the Church, including a pontifF, nineteen cardinals, and fifty
bishops ; within a short period after his death the University
became the Mecca of European students, scholars, and doc-
tors.^ Again, Abailard's prominence fifty years after the
death of Anselm, the greatest of monastic teachers, showed
that higher education had escapyed the control of the regular
clergy, and that their essential selfishness was gradually
driving it to seek other leaders. Moreover, the conflict
between the claims of reason and those of faith, which was
always imminent, was precipitated by the fears of the clergy
that in his efforts to unify all knowledge Abailard would
minimize the importance of theology. He finally became
a Benedictine in 1119, but this did not save him from con-
demnation by the Church.
In 1201 Philip Augustus, who reigned from 1180 to 1223,
and was in many respects the reincarnation of the far-seeing
spirit of Charles the Great, gave the schools exemption from
civil jurisdiction. Masters and scholars were placed under
the control of ecclesiastical tribunals. In 1212, when the
Chancellor, as the Bishop's representative, sought to compel
all masters to take an oath of obedience to himself. Innocent
III interposed, defeated the scheme of the local hierarchy
to control the schools, and forbade the oath. During the
' Medieval statistics should be received warily. Wycliffe, for instance,
states that there were thirty thousand scholars at Oxford, when its i)opula-
tion was not quite five thousand.
* The Isle do Cit6 never was the center of University life ; St. Genevieve
was the place where the University grew, and became the rival of the School
of Notre Dame.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 31
carnival of 1229 a riot arose in a Paris tavern, like unto
the quarrel which began the "Great Slaughter" at Oxford
in 1354, whereupon the police of the provost savagely sup-
pressed the students, leaving several of their number dead.
The masters demanded redress for the outrage, and, failing
to obtain it, dissolved the University for six years and re-
tired with their scholars to Oxford, Cambridge, and Angers.
Eventually Gregory IX exercised his good oflSces, the court
and the municipal authorities promptly assisted him, and
in 1231 the University returned to Paris, confirmed in its
former charter and with the grant of additional exemptions.
It was finally incorporated by St. Louis, who succeeded to
the throne in 1226.
Among the distinguished foreigners who visited or studied
at Paris were John of Salisbury, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger
Bacon, Raymond Lully, and Stephen Langton. Dante is
reputed to have attended lectures there in 1309, Petrarch
boasted of the crown the University proffered him, and, as
late as the sixteenth century, Tasso came to the schools of
France, Normandy, Picardy, and Germany, situated in the
Rue du Fouarre. At the center of the city stood then, as
it now stands, Notre Dame, the spiritual citadel of the
capital. The Sainte Chapelle, inclosed by the ancient palace
of the kings, arose hard by, the most definite, delicate, and
graceful monument of French Gothic architecture. The area
extending from the south bank of the Seine up Mont St.
Genevieve had been surrendered to the expanding schools.
From the hill of the patron saint its buildings, gardens,
and open spaces sloped steeply down past the ruined resi-
dence of the Roman emperors to the river and the Isle de la
Cite.
At the height of its power and throughout the Middle
Ages, this place was the intellectual center of Christendom,
as Rome was its political and ecclesiastical metropolis. The
University practically dictated the theology of the Church,
and even the Popes were careful about controversy with
32 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the doctors of Paris concerning dogmatic statements. It
was more completely cosmopolitan than any modem seat
of learning; scholars from all parts of Europe repaired
there for instruction from its gifted teachers, and, since
those who came could, and doubtless did, return in great
numbers to their respective homes, there is no difficulty in
accepting the statement that a body of English students
left Paris and built up a studium at Oxford when recalled
by their monarch, Henry II, during his dispute with the
French king. Again, the presence in Oxford of such teachers
as the legist Vacarius, Thibaut d'Estampes, and Robert
Pullein, which anticipated this incursion, had served to
raise the city's reputation. Vacarius visited it during the
reign of Stephen: he lectured there in 1149, and prepared
a compendium in nine books of the Digest and Code of
Justinian. When the king ordered him to desist from
lecturing, Vacarius is said to have been rewarded with a
prebend in the church of secular canons at Southwell.^
Beyond the events narrated, the causes which operated
to make the already ancient town the seat of the second
university in Europe are far from obvious. For some time
after the exodus from Paris it was naturally overshadowed
by that seat of learning of which it was the offspring, and
which played a noble part in European civilization. Yet
forty years after the time of Vacarius, Oxford's scholastic
standing was well won ; at the opening of the thirteenth
century she was supreme in her own country, and had also
obtained the recognition of older continental foundations.
The medieval meaning of such terms as university and col-
lege should not be confused with their modern connotation.
The Latin word universitas, from which the English deriva-
tion comes, originally denoted any collective body, regarded
as such. When employed in a strictly educational sense it
• The name of Vacarius does not appear in Le Neve's "Fasti," the index
of which has been examined by the author at the British Museum. This
would cast doubt on the preferment of Vacarius to the prebend.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 33
was supplemented by an additional phrase, the current ex-
pression being, "Universitas magistrorum et scholarium."
In late fourteenth century usage the term university was
defined as a community of teachers and scholars whose
corporate existence had secured the consent and approval
of either or both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The
term studiwn and later studium generale, denoting a center
of instruction open to all, was the more customary designa-
tion of these communities. The studium generale slowly
evolved into the universitas at such well-known places
as Paris, Bologna, and Oxford, and in the case of the two
former cities the change was confirmed by Papal bulls, issued
in the reign of Nicholas IV. The word college was simply
the old Latin collegium, which signified any organized guild,
religious, educational, industrial, or political, applied in
course of time to secular priests living in common, and after-
wards to those residences at Oxford where secular students
did likewise.
The distinctive features of the English college system
are found in the final form of the Statutes of Merton bearing
the date 1274 and the seals of the first Edward. The orig-
inal code, which perpetuates the name of the ecclesiastical
statesman, Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, was
drawn up ten years earlier, in 1264, and was itself the result
of previous schemes for the maintenance of indigent scholars
at Maiden in Surrey. The generous endowments provided
by Merton were employed for the benefit of twenty students
and two or three priests for whom a hall was to be set apart
at Oxford, or elsewhere, if such a lodging was procurable
at a more flourishing seat of learning. This design was
afterwards expanded, rules of collegiate discipline were
enacted, and eventually Oxford became the permanent home
of these students. The intellectual freedom of the college
marked a departure from the monastic idea, prevented it
from being a nursery for the advocates of Papal supremacy,
and enabled it to train a succession of graduates who rendered
34 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
eflBcient service to Church and State. These measures, as
bold in their innovation as they were beneficial and far
reaching, became the sources of a normal policy of adminis-
tration under which colleges superseded monasteries and halls
as the residences of students and strongholds of discipline.
It was apparent that they could not realize such aims
without buildings which should be a nucleus for the
accumulation of the best traditions of the past and of
worthy purposes for the future. In this undertaking
Merton's efforts were seconded by the foundation of New
College in 1379, under the patronage of William de Wyke-
ham. Bishop of Winchester. The last of the great episcopal
architects of the Middle Ages, Wykeham, was perhaps more
renowned for his structures than for his statesmanship.
He adorned the bare Norman interior of his cathedral
with the Perpendicular style, and the school he established
in the former capital city shares with Eton the honor of
being a college in the true sense of the word. But his rank
as the second founder of the college system is determined
by the grandeur and regularity of the noble quadrangle
and still nobler chapel which were the most dignified and
beautiful of their kind Oxford had yet seen. That which
Merton had accomplished in the statutorj'^ regulations
of the colleges, Wykeham furthered by their architectural
dignity and domestic comfort as compared with the older
hostels.'
VI
In any attempt to recall the Oxford of Saxon, Norman,
and later eras, the modern city must be dismissed from the
mind. There was little in the outward aspect of its humble
genesis and slow development, retarded by violent periods
of war, riot, and pestilence, to suggest those mystical en-
chantments which owe much to the hand of Time. The
bewitching vision, steeped in sentiment, of graceful towers,
> G. C. Brodrick : "History of the University of Oxford" ; pp. 32-33.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 35
quiet cloisters, embowered gardens, immemorial elms, and
lawns of living green,
"Where a thousand gray stones smile and sigh,
A thousand rustling trees,"
is very largely the growth of later days. When Wy cliff e
entered the place he plunged into a bewildering maze of
mean, filthy streets, lined with dingy hovels and crowded
with a jostling, brawling throng of townsmen, priests,
scholars, and vagrants. Within the houses the floors and
halls were strewn with rushes, beneath which accumulated
refuse decayed, the windows were unglazed, the chambers
airless and pestiferous, the atmosphere reeked with foul
odors. Single rooms served for the common purposes of
cooking, dining, visiting, and sleeping. Sanitation was
unknown, and frequently dirt was regarded as a sign of
sanctity. Even the homes of the better classes were not
exempt from these conditions ; and the churches and church-
yards were indescribably noisome. Courts and lanes, in
which darkness prevailed, were knee deep with feculent
matter and rendered dangerous by open cesspools. The
recurring pestilences which decimated Europe can be under-
stood when it is remembered that these barbarous habits
were characteristic of continental and English towns. The
wonder is, not that so many died, but rather that so many
escaped death. Yet, notwithstanding the toleration of such
evils, there was in Oxford, as in many other municipalities
of the later Middle Ages, a sense of civic virtue and of social
obligation which eventually established better conditions.
In the meantime, religious duty, though vaguely con-
ceived in many practical directions, was the source of
genuine corporate life and unity. Master and man, teacher
and student, trader and artisan, knew how to think and act
together because they were held in the bonds of a catholic
faith. The thirteenth century was distinguished by the
founding of University, Balliol, and Merton Colleges; the
36 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
fourteenth, by that of Oriel, Exeter, Queens, and New
Colleges. Thus Oxford's high water mark in architecture
and other material provisions for education was attained in
an era when the country at large was devastated by plagues
and insurrections.
We have already noted the dissimilarity between the
intelligent energy and design of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries and the comparative confusion and barren-
ness of the age of Wycliffe. For nearly two hundred years
the uniform depression of the Middle Ages had been broken
by an interval, the enthusiasms and aspirations of which
were too generous to be permanent. The revulsion which
followed sprang from an utter weariness of soul, accentuated
by bitter disappointments, painful uncertainties, and wide-
spread distrust. Men were not willfully disobedient ; they
were sorely spent, and unable any longer to realize the vision
which disappears when it is neglected. Such enervation
is still the human fate : the cycles of day and night persist,
and though the one is not so welcome, it is as natural as the
other. Yet we are not at liberty to suppose that every
good cause was wrecked or forsaken. The edifices and
endowments which are now not only a national but practi-
cally a world-wide heritage were, in part, the products of
the period many historians have unsparingly denounced.
They cannot be dissociated from their authors, who, if
the buildings are a guide, well knew that they were deal-
ing with the fortunes of an enduring institution. They
may have foreseen that these structures would help to con-
vey to future generations the changes, the conflicts, the
questionings, the reactions, and the advances which have
been experienced in the past six hundred years. The sway
of such personalities as Walter de Merton and William of
Wykeham is still felt within Oxford's precincts, and all
its founders share in the honor, the gladness, the suffering,
and the achievement of the life of scholarship. Some deeds
these men did are best buried with tlieir bones, but their
JOHN WYCLIFFE 37
toil for the first University of the English-speaking nations
should be gratefully remembered, not only there, but also
here in the New World, of whose mission they were the
forerunners. It was wrought when immense impediments
had to be overcome, in an age of sparse and ignorant pop-
ulations cursed by poverty and superstition. And the
greatest glory of these men and of their buildings was not
in stone nor gold, but in that essential spirituality, that
stern watchfulness, that meritorious sympathy, that approval
or condemnation, of which John Ruskin speaks, and which
is felt, if anywhere, in such places as Oxford, whose walls
have so long been "washed by the passing waves of
humanity."
VII
The absence of personal references in the writings of
Wycliffe compels us to glean our ideas of his university life
from the academic conditions of the period. As a northern
man he would probably find his way to Balliol College, and
the belief long held that in 1356 he was a fellow of Merton,
together with the fact that his name was enrolled among the
commoners of Queens, is best explained by the contem-
porary presence in Oxford of two other John Wycliffes
with whom he has been confused. Workman states that one
of these was an almonry boy at Queens ; ^ the second a
portionist at Merton.^
Balliol was founded between the years 1263 and 1268'
by John Balliol of Barnard Castle, Yorkshire, the father of
the nobleman to whom Edward I assigned the crown of
Scotland and whom he afterwards deposed in 1292. The
northern and southern "nations," whose feud disturbed
for centuries the order of the place, had their headquarters
* Almonry boy : one who in return for elementary instruction served in
the chapel choir or rendered other services. He was generally lodged under
the care of the Almoner.
* Portionist : A scholar supported on the foundation of the college.
* The most assured date is shortly before June, 1266, when a hall was
38 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
at Balliol and Merton respectively, and the lines were so
sharply drawn that from 1334 onward Merton refused to
admit northern scholars into its society. Minor rivalries
inflamed the quarrel, which influenced academic action,
and especially the election of the Chancellor, whose assist-
ants were known as the northern and southern proctors.
The frequent fights and riotous behavior of these and other
factions led in 1274 to the adoption of the "Concordia,"
the precise articles of which read like those of a treaty of
peace between hostile powers rather than an act of uni-
versity legislation. But they did not prevent the disturb-
ances against which they were enacted : a fierce uproar
in 1297 and a brutal affray of the student clans in 1319
evidenced the militant lawlessness of such groups. The
"Great Slaughter" of 1354, although a town and gown affair,
gave further proof of the anarchical conditions which then
prevailed. The scholars were herded together in miserable
chambers and lecture rooms, where care and comfort were
unknown ; college governance was still very primitive,
while that of the University had scarcely begun. The
frank and intimate relations which afterwards became the
cohesive bond of varying classes were then all but impossible
by reason of the existing provincialism and poverty. The
latter state obliged medieval students to obtain manual
labor for support, and at intervals they even took to the road
and begged for a pittance.
The resources of knowledge were few and unsatisfactory ;
museums and libraries which are now at the service of all
were then beyond the wildest dreams. Wycliffe and his
fellow clerks pored over the faded characters of worn manu-
scripts in chambers deprived of the sun by day, and in a
nightly darkness faintly relieved by flickering oil lamps or
rushlights. The nature and extent of their learning were
founded for sixteen poor students. John Balliol died two years later, in
1268, and the College received its greatest aid from his wife, Dervorgilla,
whose benefactions date from 1284, when Balliol first obtained a house of
its own.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 39
amazing; their industry probably surpassed that of any
later scholars. They lived a separated life, avoiding the
ordinary recreations and athletic exercises of the youth of
England, with no outdoor pursuits or pastimes to vary
their arduous study. Yet its tasks were illuminated by the
ambitions which burned within them the more steadily be-
cause of their privations. Regardless of the din and revelry
of drunken roysterers in alley and lane, the best of these
men plodded steadily onward, memorizing or copying mys-
terious phraseologies which are now meaningless, but were
then accepted and conned as primary truths that might at
any turn in their pursuit reveal a universal law prevailing
throughout the whole realm of knowledge. Those who were
able to endure the necessary exertion of body and mind
knew the joy of the strong; their intellectual capacities
became firm and flexible, and, had these students enjoyed
the advantages of the scientific method, they would have
demonstrated their superiority over successors who have
been more fortunate in their environment, but not in native
or acquired ability. It ill becomes their heirs to mock at
efforts which, though wrongly directed, still merit the
recognition due to heroic striving.
That men of the type of Wycliffe sometimes fell short
of the goal is nothing against them, since they accom-
plished all that was possible in the nature of their studies.
Meanwhile, their failure cleared the ground for the New
Learning of the next century. Only as the theories they
painfully evolved proved worthless, could thinkers be
made to understand that their system was insufficient,
and thus be set free to pursue more correct methods of
investigation. In this way they helped to transfer the
center of gravity from deduction to induction, from dog-
matic assumption to experiment and hypothesis. The
progress of human affairs owes something to these indirect
courses, in which steadfast men strove to attain truth
by means of conceptions which, although in themselves
40 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
imperfect, eventually pointed to the substance of which
they were the shadow.
Again, the monastic inJBuence at Oxford had steadily
waned from the days of Edmund Rich, whose beautiful and
pathetic story heightened the religious temper of the Uni-
versity, but could not check its tendency toward secular
inquiry. Where monasticism as a spiritual ideal separated
itself from the world, it frequently fell a victim to the forces
it despised; on the other hand, where it linked itself with
other systems it invariably lost its professed sanctity. In
its purest form it was averse to unhampered development in
any direction save that of mystical speculation, and when
the laity asserted their title to a place in the sun of assured
knowledge, the gradual emancipation of learning from cleri-
cal tutelage was unavoidable. These causes explain the
fact that the monastic colleges are of minor importance
in the history of education. The monks never heartily
applied themselves to the scholastic philosophy, and the
older monastic orders did not produce a single first class
theologian from St. Bernard's time to the closing days of
medievalism. The coming of the friars gave a fresh impetus
to clericalism, and the Benedictines ^ strove to remedy the
shortcomings of their order by sending a few selected
members to the University.^ But they could not repress
the laical spirit in the colleges which grew apace under the
sheltering protection of the Church. Their general contact
with an ampler existence began in the latter half of the twelfth
century, and despite the contraction of the syllabus in the
direction of dialectics, before the close of Edward the Third's
1 As a matter of fact there never was any monastic control of education
at Oxford, nor did the monasteries make any effort to set up foundations
there until the Chapter General of the Benedictines held at Abin>;don in
1289, which imposed a levy of two ijenoe in the mark to build a hall. In
1284 temporary provision was made for the Benedictines in a house on Stock-
well Street. The first real monastic college was Gloucester Hall, built in 1291.
' These were few indeed. Christ Church monastery at Canterbury rarely
found that it could maintain more than four students at Christ Church,
Oxford, and the total number of monks at the University was always small.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 41
reign they had become suflficiently national to justify the
description of their secular aims contained in the third book
of Gower's "Vox Clamantis." This temper fostered con-
ceptions which questioned those accepted dogmas that had
hitherto been the staple themes of instruction. Nor can
there be any doubt that it influenced Wycliffe, the bent of
whose mind harmonized with its aggressiveness.
It was not as a semi-ecclesiastical corporation, but as a
center of religious vitality and positive thinking that the
Oxford he knew contributed to the shaping of character
both in men and in the times. It had been said of Paris
that whatever was read and taught there was sooner or
later read and taught in Oxford. But, with the rupture of
the once close intimacy of the two institutions, this sub-
serviency had ceased, and the younger no longer shone
in a borrowed light. She boasted doctors of her own,
whose daring and versatility outdistanced those of the older
and more conservative body at Paris.^ Wycliffe's rela-
tions to these thinkers and the subjects they discussed can
be set forth later ; meanwhile it should be noted that some
of them were in latent opposition to the orthodox systems of
the Middle Ages. Their feudal presumptions depended on
the segregation of human groups, and necessarily decreased
when arbitrary distinctions of blood and birth lost ground.
Their alignments had hitherto been determined by the
accidents of temporal boundaries and by the paramountcy
of those material forces which are generally recognized as
subversive of the social order. Against this condition as a
whole the European schools were at once a protest and to
some extent a remedy.' The students who frequented them
were known as the "nations," and the universities earned
the credit of creating and welding together the most liberal
and international of fraternities. Notwithstanding their
internal bickerings and jealousies they shared a classical
' H. Rashdall : "Universities of Europe in tlie Middle Ages"; Vol. II,
pp. 519-520.
42 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
language which, however badly construed and spoken, was
at least freed from the strife of variant tongues. Intellec-
tual kinships throve apace, the doctrines of celebrated
masters were diffused in widely separated communities, and
leavened the fear and dislike which had rendered every
foreigner suspect.^
Chaucer's familiar lines indicate the good impression
which the best type of student made on the people at large :
" A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That un-to logik hadde longe y-go.
As lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he nas nat right fat, I undertake;
But loked holwe, and ther-to soberly.
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy;
For he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce.
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye.
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre.
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he might of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wher-with to scoleye.
Of studie took he most cure and most hede,
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche.
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche." ^
His unpretentious appearance, mute evidence of the
hardships of a life devoted to knowledge and to the memories
of pious founders, not only disarmed prejudice, but com-
mended him to public esteem and confidence. Monks and
» The "nations" at Paris were fourfold: those of France, Picardy, Nor-
mandy, and England. The English " nation " included the Scotch and Ger-
manH. At Oxford there wore but two nations, the Australs and the Borcals.
2 Prof. W. W. Skcat's edition.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 43
friars no longer secured the donations of the great and
wealthy for their religious houses. Instead, these gifts
were bestowed upon the secular clergy, who were rapidly
formulating an ethical and political system deriving its
principles elsewhere than from the Church, and setting up
a rival authority not yet clearly defined, but nevertheless
sedulously maintained. In summary, it can be said that in
an age of change and doubt, when human life was deprived
of the light of a former faith, the gloom was pierced at inter-
vals by the radiance which streamed from the colleges.
VIII
We obtain a glimpse of Wycliffe at Oxford between the
years 1356 and 1360, when he was elected Master of Balliol,
an office not then by any means so considerable as now, but
for which he could hardly have become a candidate had he
not been a fellow of that institution. In 1361 he relin-
quished it for the college living of Fillingham in Lincoln-
shire; in the same year "John de Wyclif of the diocese of
York, M. A. " petitioned the Roman Curia for his designation
to a prebend, canonry, and dignity at York, "notwith-
standing that he holds the church at Fillingham." The
prayer was answered, though not as Wycliffe desired, and
on November 24th, 1369, he received the prebend of Aust
in the collegiate church of Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol.^
It is probable that Wycliffe occupied this benefice ; and the
latest investigations show that the connection of his name
with the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, although deemed
erroneous by some, has substantial evidence in its favor.
The Hall was planned to shelter both seculars and monks,
an intention frustrated by their endless wranglings from
^ There was nothing unusual in this preferment on the part of the Pope ;
it was really a medieval equivalent of the modern fellowship, and was
granted to such masters as were selected by the Pontiff from the lists which
the universities submitted.
44 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
1365 to 1371. Small importance, however, is attached to
WycHffe's association here, save that in after years his
enemies attributed his attacks upon the rehgious orders
to the severe treatment he was then supposed to have re-
ceived from Archbishop Langham. The diocesan registers
of Lincoln state that in 1368 Bishop Buckingham granted
WyclifFe two years' leave of absence from his church in
order that he might devote himself to the study of letters
at the University. About this time he exchanged his living
at Fillingham for the rectorate of Ludgershall, in Bucking-
hamshire, which brought him within sixteen miles of Oxford.
In 1372, after sixteen years of incessant preparation, he
obtained the coveted degree in divinity which gave him the
right to lecture on theology, and in the following year the
Pope conferred upon his " dilectissimus filius" a canonry
of Lincoln, while allowing him to retain the prebend he
already held at Aust.
From these fragmentary records, some of which are far
from explicit, two facts distinctly emerge. The first is that
he was a pluralist and an absentee rector, accepting and
practising the customs he afterwards denounced ; the second,
that his return to Oxford was utilized for the further enrich-
ment of his learning. His controversy with the Papal
authority had not yet arisen, and the mistaken assertion
that he published his " Determinatio Quaedam de Dominio"
in 1366 as a protest against the tribute levied by Urban V,
is without admissible support. This work contained only
hints of his doctrine of "lordship," and was not written until
at least seven years after the Pope's levy. During the
interval before the storm, wind and tide were with him, no
untoward circumstances sapped his strength or diverted
his attention from that philosophy in which, as Knighton
avers, "he was second to none: in the training of the
schools without a rival." Arundel, the relentless foe of
the Lollards, bore testimony to the purity of his personal
life, acknowledging to Thorpe that "Wycliffe was a great
JOHN WYCLIFFE 45
clerk, and many men held him a perfect liver." Some of his
lectures have been preserved in an unrevised notebook
where the display of their range and erudition is only equaled
by their complete mastery of the Holy Scriptures.^
His endowments shed a departing gleam upon the philo-
sophical system of which he was the last exponent, and
from the fascinations of which he never freed himself. In
the perspective of history he stands forth as one of the
dominant figures in "a, mighty and astonishing style of
scholarship which, doubtless from the absence of the proper
social conditions, will never be seen again." ^ It has already
been affirmed that in the fourteenth century Oxford's
philosophers surpassed those of any European university,
and that in increasing numbers they were not cloistered but
secular clergy. Certainly at no earlier time could the
seculars have claimed three such doctors as Thomas Brad-
wardine, Richard Fitzralph, and John Wycliffe. The
Reformer's political employments and controversies were
not without detrimental effects, but they came late in life,
when the gaze of friends and foes alike was fixed upon his
formidable power of advocacy. The massive intellect of the
man, his strong personality, his gift of lucid and weighty
utterance, immediately brought his colleagues in the Uni-
versity under the spell of his influence, and eventually won
him preferment in the Church and an international reputa-
tion.
' H. B. Workman : " The Dawn of the Reformation " ; Vol. I, pp. 113-114.
* John Fiske : " Darwinism and Other Essays" ; p. 250.
CHAPTER II
SOURCES OF WYCLIFFIANISM
47
"When religion and the interest of the soul are the subjects of de-
bate, the sparks of human energy are kindled as by a charm, and spread
with the rapidity of an electric fluid. Opinions work upon actions,
and actions react upon opinions ; the defense of truth or error stirs
up the moral powers, and leads men on to deeds of vigor, and the
effects of active zeal reflect upon the opinions and systems of men, and
raise them to those heights of speculative and logical abstraction,
wliich are the wonder of beholders and the engima of future genera-
tions.
Life of St. Germamis.
48
CHAPTER II
SOURCES OF WYCLIFFIANISM
Wycliffe's literary associations with Oxford — His relation to Scho-
lasticism — The Scholastic method — Its rise and progress — Nomi-
nalism and Realism — The teaching of Aquinas — Duns Scotus and
liis absolutist doctrines — Reaction in WUliam of Ockham — "Defen-
sor Pacis" of Marsiglio — Difference between English and Continen-
tal Scholasticism — Wycliffe and the Nominalist controversy — His
modified Realism — His attitude towards theological problems —
Thomas Bradwardine — Wycliffe's criticism of Bradwardine — Trea-
tises on "Divine Dominion" and "Civil Lordship" — Wycliffe the
last great Schoolman — His alliance with John of Gaunt — Confer-
ence of Bruges — Wycliffe's literary activity.
At this time Wycliffe had achieved the desire of his
heart; his associations with Oxford were destined to be
prolonged and memorable, and from there his prolific pen
gave forth those larger works on philosophy and theology
which are now seldom read. Many of his pamphlets and
treatises on papal claims and imposts, the political status
of the clergy, indulgences, and other contentious issues
were also written at the University. His friendship with
its teachers and doctors was a welcome aid and a protection
in his hours of loneliness and danger. And w^hen in his
declining years its leaders forsook him, their desertion
was a severe blow to his propaganda. In the interval, if
the practical affairs of the nation were benefited by his
diversified yet systematized knowledge, those which related
to religious and clerical questions were quite as fortunate.
His utterances and writings were very unequal in merit,
E 49
50 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
but the best of them were not mere turgid rhetoric pro-
fusely poured out ; they crystaUized around an axiomatic
and intrepid reasoning which was the imperative working
principle in many of his intellectual and literary efforts. His
premises may not be ours ; indeed, we may think them often
obscure or incomplete, and at times unwarranted. Yet it
is patent that some were carefully chosen, and while in the
absence of the inductive method the matter of his argument
was frequently at fault, its form was usually correct. In
brief, Wycliffe was a Schoolman, whose strength and weak-
ness were alike due to an inherited system which should
be explained in order that his merits as a thinker may be
appreciated.
Scholasticism was an able and praiseworthy attempt to
reconcile the dogmas of faith with the dictates of reason,
and thus formulate an inclusive system on the presup-
position that the creed of the Church was the one reality
capable of rationalization. As the product of Christian
intellectualism, it acted under the Aristotelian method,
and was governed by the fundamental assumption that all
phenomena must be understood from and toward theology.
The early Fathers had bequeathed to their successors a
well-articulated and comprehensive theological dogma,
and also the philosophical apparatus which determined
and shaped its content. When the Schoolmen realized the
nature of the bequest they endeavored to recover the spirit
of inquiry which lay behind its results, and consequently
the Church entered, almost automatically, upon a period
of stress and strain similar to those she had previously
experienced. Now, however, additional factors intervened
and intensified the situation. The organization and growth
of the Papacy reinforced the predicates of authority, catho-
licity, dogmatism, and the predominance of spiritual claims,
while the imperial influence of St. Augustine was widely
diffused in contemporary theology.
The Scholastic system can be surveyed in two nearly
JOHN WYCLIFFE 51
equal divisions of the period extending from the ninth to the
end of the fifteenth century. The first of these divisions,
which terminated with the twelfth century, was represented
by Erigena,^ Roscellinus, Anselm, William of Champeaux
and his pupil Abailard ; the second, by Albertus Magnus,
Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
The science of these scholars, in so far as that term is appli-
cable, dealt almost exclusively with divinity. Yet theirs
was an age of reason as well as of faith, and no part of their
work could be canceled without a shock to the continuity
of progress. It is easy for the disciples of later intellectual-
ism to say that their pursuit of truth was a mockery, since
they started upon the journey carrying their convictions
with them, or that they fabricated absurd and ridiculous
problems and then proceeded to demonstrate their validity
or invalidity. The Schoolmen do not deserve these gibes;
they keenly felt the spiritual experiences on which they
discoursed, and craved an adequate defense for them.
Careless criticism of their action has been displaced by
the weighty judgment of Harnack, that their system " gives
practical proof of eagerness in thinking and exhibits an
energy in subjecting all that is real and valuable to thought
to which we can find, perhaps, no parallel in any other
age." ^ If their philosophy was not an effective means for
enriching knowledge, it was a method for the training of the
intellect which strengthened the reasoning powers and pre-
pared them for penetrative and comprehensive work. In
these respects the metaphysic of the Middle Ages is closely
related to that of later experimental schools ; its mission was
to expand and invigorate the human mind until the bound-
less fields of the natural sciences were opened to research.
1 Erigena was really of the spiritual tradition of the Christian Mystics
and intellectually a Neo-Platonist, rather than a typical Scholastic. He
may be regarded as a connecting link between these schools and the more
pronounced Scholasticism which predominated from the eleventh to the
fourteenth centuries.
"^ " History of Dogma " ; Vol. VI, p. 25.
52 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
The two camps of Realists and Nominalists furnished the
material for scholastic discussion. The Introduction to the
"Isagoge" of Porphyry, the Neo-Platonist, anticipated the
differences which afterwards separated them. "Next con-
cerning genera and species the question indeed whether they
have a substantial existence, or whether they consist in bare
intellectual concepts only, or whether if they have a sub-
stantial existence they are corporeal or incorporeal, and
whether they are inseparable from the insensible properties
of things, or are only in these properties and subsisting
about them, I shall forbear to determine, for a question of
this kind is very deep." The majority of his readers will
undoubtedly cheerfully acquiesce in this decision.
The Realists contended that reality belonged only to
universal conceptions, and that particulars of any kind were
merely mental conveniences. For example, the term
"house" did not denote the thing itself, but only the im-
material idea. This reasoning was also applied to man,
for whom reality consisted in the humanity shared with
all men and not in a distinct ego. Individuality was entirely
dependent upon its participation in the general essence of
the species. Everything in heaven and on earth was pri-
marily of one substance with the all-comprehending Universal
Being. The germs of the Pantheism of Spinoza can be de-
tected here, and also those of later forms of Idealism. The
Nominalists maintained that universals were merely terms,
and that reality had no meaning apart from the individual
and the particular; intellectual conceptions and universal
relations being purely mental processes without any actual
existence. These unqualified assertions were sufficiently
damaging to orthodoxy to alarm its supporters. Their
instincts revolted against a doctrine of which, as Dr. Rash-
dall comments, the skeptical sensationalism of Hume and
the crudest forms of later materialism were but illogical
attenuations. Yet, while Nominalism did not secure any
permanent hold upon the accepted theology of the Church,
JOHN WYCLIFFE 53
its insistence that the particular and the individual were the
only realities paved the way for the inductive method in
physical investigation.
II
Realism received its greatest exposition and defense
from St. Thomas Aquinas, an Italian of rank and the School-
man par excellence, who lived from 1227 to 1274. The
pupil of Albertus Magnus in the Dominican school at
Cologne, in 1245 he followed bis master to Paris, where he
graduated in theology, after which he returned to Cologne
to become assistant to Albertus. Aquinas surpassed all
other teachers as the embodied essence of Scholasticism
and the most admirable example of the spirit and doctrine
of the medieval Church.^ His "Summa Theologise" is
an unequaled effort, in which the mysteries of the Christian
faith and the certitudes of the human reason are defined as
the two sources of knowledge. While they are distinct in
themselves, revelation has the indisputable priority, since,
as the fountain of absolute truth, it manifests the life of
Deity, and its sovereign precepts are the causes and not the
results of that manifestation. Both faith and reason
must be received as they are given, in their completeness
and unity, with no part advanced at the expense of the
rest. The Holy Scriptures and Church tradition being
the appointed channels of Divine verity, the student should
know the doctrines of the Bible and the interpretations of
the Fathers, together with the decisions of the Councils
thereupon.
Reason, as Aquinas conceived it, was infinitely more than
the product of any single brain. It was the presiding and
inspiring attribute of the collective human mind, which
hitherto had found its freest vent in the meditations of
Plato and the methods of Aristotle. The life of reason did
not remain in a state of disintegration and confinement to
1 H. B. Workman: "The Dawn of the Reformation" ; Vol. I, p. 132.
54 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
separate points, but resulted in the formation of a common
intellectual harmony. Both revelation and reason were
under the direction of the living and creating energies of
the Eternal Being. They shared one origin and one goal,
and their offspring in theology or philosophy presented
that compatibility which was one of the main tenets of
Scholasticism and, indeed, practically monopolized its
argument. The prepared and diligent seeker might himself
become a vehicle for their communications, and thus, in
his turn, add to the definite gains which benefited history
and society. But he was admonished that they contained
a superior knowledge forever beyond the grasp of man,
who was compensated by a secondary knowledge to which
he could attain. The truths within human reach were but
the foothills of an inaccessible height where God reserved
the pattern of His omniscient will. Toward that lofty
region revelation and reason converged, and there found
their perfect reconciliation. While Aquinas regarded
Christian theology as the sum and crown of all inquiry,
he included the Greek philosophers in his spacious survey
and was influenced by Averroes and Avicenna, the Saracenic
interpreters of Aristotle. For he held that far from being
explicable by natural processes, as these are usually under-
stood, the generalizations of non-Christian thinkers were
traceable to the authority of those sacred writings which
really controlled every intellectual movement, and their
teachings were specified by him as the axioms of an all
pervasive spiritual life. His superb learning was evinced
in the "Catena Aurea, " where, under the form of a
commentary on the Gospels, he gave a succinct summary
of the traditional views concerning them. His more direct
exposition of the Psalms, the prophecies of Jeremiah and
Isaiah, and the Epistles, was equally clear and concise.
Erom these studies he turned to the Greek thinkers, suprem-
acy among whom he accorded to Aristotle, whose dialectic
suited the complexion of his own mind.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 55
Indeed, it can be said that the philosophy of St. Thomas
is Aristotle Christianized, and that the doctors for whom
he was the spokesman looked on nature and man through
the medium of the Stagirite's formulae. Principal Fairbairn
remarks that " if churches always canonized their benefactors,
Aristotle would long ago have been at the head of the Roman
Calendar. There were many Schoolmen, but they all had
one master, and they built by his help and to his honor
systems that even he would have acknowledged to be ency-
clopedic and marvels of architectonic craft." ^
The ambition of Aquinas that his "Summa" should be
the totality of learning, fused into a living unity and
subject to ecclesiastical guardianship, was seconded by the
spirituality which interpenetrated his work. It was, and
still is, for the Papacy and the Curia, the standard the-
ology, and its efforts to prove "that religion is rational
and that reason is divine, that all knowledge and all truth,
from whatever source derived, must be capable of har-
monious adjustment," ^ deserve the attention of those who
accept the sentiment of Aubrey Moore that whatever is
truly religious is finally reasonable. The moderate Realism
which the "Angelic Doctor," who is the patron saint of
many Roman Catholic institutions of learning,^ so trium-
phantly interpreted became a shining mark for the attacks
of the Nominalists of the next generation.
Foremost among its assailants was the Franciscan John
Duns Scotus (1275 ?-l 308). The broken and uncertain
records of his unique career assert that he died when only
thirty-four years of age. If this is correct, the rapidity
1 "Christ in Modern Theology" ; p. 119.
* H. Rashdall : "Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages"; Vol. I,
p. 367.
' The Franciscans have never completely acknowledged the supremacy of
St. Thomas, although Pope Leo XIII practically made his teaching the
official authority of the Church. It is also interesting to note that his doc-
trines have been echoed in the theories of Bergson. Both thinkers use the
method of analogy and their concept of order is essentially practical and
theological. The Bergsonian views are anticipated in the "Summa" to a
limited degree, but it would be absurd to claim their wholesale agreement.
56 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and extent of his literary output, to say nothing of its
microscopic detail and tortuous processes, are among the
marvels of human achievement. His controversial attitude
was swayed by the current antagonism between the Fran-
ciscans and the Dominicans. Aquinas was constructive,
Scotus destructive ; the former was essentially a philosopher,
the latter a critic whose dexterous turns earned him the
title of "Doctor Subtilis." He insisted that his great
predecessor erred in founding theology upon speculation
rather than practice. Faith was an act of the will and
not an outflow of the mind, and the intellect could not easily
find what was loosely called a rational basis for the
phenomena with which faith dealt. The most careful
defense of this position was open to the attacks of the
skeptical. Revelation and dogma were the only reliable
guardians of anything noble and true, and the ontology of
Aquinas was therefore worthless as an apologetic. The
existence and nature of God could not be proved by reason.
Even the Gospels were unworthy of credence save on the
authority of the Church, and the tenets of religion were
accepted and obeyed, not in deference to human under-
standing, but under the immediate impulse of divine neces-
sity. God commands what is good because it is good,
argued Aquinas; the good is such because God wills it,
rejoined Scotus ; had He willed the opposite, the fact of
His doing it would constitute its righteousness. In the
one case the determinant was an ethical volition; in the
other an arbitrary affirmation which had no necessary ethical
quality.
The tendency of the philosophy of Scotus was, as Dr.
Rashdall phrases it, towards "an emotional prostration
before authority popularly called faith," and its ulti-
mate drift lay in the direction of doubt. His extravagant
advocacy of ecclesiastical supremacy, his superfluous in-
tricacies and imaginary entities were more than merely
fanciful ; they marked the fast approaching decay of
JOHN WYCLIPFE 57
medieval thought, and this was hastened by his less pal-
pable but graver error in divorcing faith from reason,
thus threatening the citadel of the wisest Schoolmen.
Neither his zeal for higher doctrine nor his identification of
faith with a blind submission to the Church could repair
the havoc he had wrought by weakening the distinctions
between right and wrong. He made moral action dependent
on the unconditioned arbitrary will of God, and reduced
duty to a mere matter of prudent calculation.^
The inevitable reaction found its advocate in William of
Ockham, the "Invincible Doctor" whose new interpretation
of Nominalism heralded the dissolution of Scholasticism and
repudiated its historic loyalty to the Holy See. "Univer-
sals," for Ockham, existed only in "the thinking mind," and
no theological doctrines were rationally demonstrable. The
modern scientist could accept many of his statements with-
out serious modification, and in the light of later philosophy
he was not so much a Nominalist as a Conceptualist. But,
while he revived Nominalism of a qualified sort, he could
not overcome the current of Realism which "dimly and
blindly testified to the part mind plays in the constitution of
the objects of our knowledge — to the truth that in all our
knowledge there is an ethical element which comes not from
any supposed 'external object' but from the mind itself." ^
His forceful individuality was felt in his leadership of the
Spiritual Franciscans, who, so long as he was their head,
observed both by precept and example the vows of their
order. This policy revealed the latent antagonism between
the political autocracy of Hildebrand and the etherealized
aspirations of the Saint of Assisi. When Ockham with others
inveighed against the Papal decisions on property. Pope
John XXH pronounced condemnation on the Franciscan
doctrine relating thereto, an act which led to further differ-
1 H. Rashdall : "Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages"; Vol. II,
p. 534.
2 Ibid., Part II, pp. 356-357.
58 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ences until the order was denied official recognition and
placed under the ban of the Church.
Ockham's contention that the State was a divine ordina-
tion, and should therefore be freed from ecclesiastical con-
trol, aggravated the discontent which provoked the conflicts
between the Pope and the Emperor. From these in turn
sprang the nationalism to which reference has been made, and
which nurtured the theories of religious freedom and the
rights of civil government. Through Wycliffe and Hus the
protest against the temporal claims of the Papacy passed into
the keeping of the sixteenth century Reformers. Yet Ock-
ham's courageous impeachment was exceeded by that of his
pupil Marsiglio de Mainardino (1270-1342),^ whose " Defensor
Pacis" was the most original political treatise of the Middle
Ages. As the title indicates, it was intended to establish the
concord of society upon a democratic basis, maintaining that
the source of law was in the people themselves, who should
elect the chief executive of the nation, be the judges of his ad-
ministration, and if it were found errant or corrupt, hold him
liable for its failures and crimes. The fictitious supremacy
of the Papacy was denounced as the root of the troubles
which afflicted the State ; the Pope, his bishops and clergy,
were denied all right to promulgate interdicts or excom-
munications, or in any way insist upon the observance of
what they deemed the divine law. This power was vested
in the Church alone, acting in unity and with the consent
of the entire body of believers, and to that end General
Councils ought to be composed of clerics and laymen alike.
The Bible was the sole authority of faith and doctrine, and
Papal decrees should be subjected to its teachings. Such
was the quality of Marsiglio's plea for constitutional freedom,
which gave him a prior claim to the honors afterwards be-
stowed on Wycliffe; indeed, in the bull directed against
' Marsilius of Padua is distinguished by the best critics from Marsiglio
de Mainardino, though in the British Museum Catalogue they are identi-
fied. Marsiglio de Mainardino was a Canon of Padua in 131(5.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 59
the English schismatic, Gregory XI declared that the here-
sies of the Reformer but represented with a few terms
changed "the perverted opinions and ignorant doctrine of
Marsiglio of damned memory, and of John of Jandun."
Yet this execrated thinker alone divined the secret of an
age unborn, and laid down in all essentials the principles
which were to mold the political institutions of the distant
future.^
Ill
The strange neglect which seemed to follow these men to
their graves prevented any just appraisal of Marsiglio's
services. The enemies of Roger Bacon, the most illustrious
English scholar and thinker of his day, who moved heaven
and earth to come into direct contact with reality, almost
succeeded in destroying his reputation, and only within a
comparatively recent period has it emerged from a long
eclipse. Similarly, in the case of Wycliffe, his voluminous
works, with few exceptions, remained in manuscript for
over five hundred years. Even now many of them are still
unpublished, and, so far as their present interest is concerned,
are likely to remain so. Enough have been rescued from
oblivion, however, to show that he stood in a philosophical
sequence to the scholars already named.
Although the great movement which had illuminated
the spiritualities of life from the time of Anselm and Abailard
virtually ended with Wycliffe, it nevertheless retained suffi-
cient virtue to enable him to rank as a learned clerk versed
in the labyrinthine windings of scholastic philosophy.
The majority of his predecessors were unanimous in their
devotion to the Papacy, but that allegiance was now shaken
and the Holy See openly assailed. This hostility was one
among other symptoms of the restlessness which pervaded
Oxford and Paris, and was encouraged in the former
'Archibald Robertson: "Regnum Die"; p. 313.
60 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
and repressed in the latter University. At Paris the
theologians were at their wits' end to quiet the doubts and
questionings which fermented beneath a correct and prosaic
surface. Oxford, with the rest of England, enjoyed immu-
nity from the terrors of the Inquisition, which were un-
known there until Henry IV needed the support of the
Church because of his beclouded title to the crown.
The University was therefore undeterred in those courses
which inspired and reflected the national will. Her doctors
were not only expounders and defenders of metaphysics;
they were also the organ voices of the secular govern-
ment and its claims. Thus while Latin Scholasticism was
for political reasons prevented from occupying the wider
and more genuinely intellectual interests, the English type
increasingly assimilated an independency evoked by the
events of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Wycliffe turned this conditions of aflfairs to good account :
the unembarrassed speculative and practical tendencies of
his life as a scholar offset to some extent the difficulty he
experienced in dealing with a decadent system which was
rapidly degenerating into a philosophical quarrel. While
this situation forbade originality, it drove him to other
spheres of inquiry, in which he was the founder of a school
of his own, the chief authorities of which were the Fathers
of the early Church. He possessed in an unusual degree
the power of seizing upon and adapting the products of crea-
tive minds in such a manner as to secure for them a favor-
able hearing. His leading ideas were either restatements or
modifications of tradition ; his minor principles were truths
recovered from long obscurity. He acted without the prece-
dents he afforded to Hus, and in this sense he may be re-
garded as a discoverer.^
As between the Realists and the Nominalists Wycliffe
stood with the former, albeit with some concessions to the
objections urged by the opposing school. His position was
' C. M. Trevelyan : "England in the Age of Wycliffe" ; p. 173.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 61
a protest against the extravagances of the Scotists and of
the revised NominaHsm of Ockham; for his thorough-
going disposition the substratum of their creeds was an im-
possibiUty. His ReaUsm, though modified, ran counter
to any theory of illusion : he ascribed reality to mental
ideas, and denied the subjectivism which treated them as
mere phantoms of the imagination.^ The Realists' faith in
the validity of knowledge was grounded upon reason and upon
the actuality of the objective world. But reality also per-
tains to subjective consciousness, and it is only when both
are taken into account that a reconciliation can be effected.
Wycliffe's doctrine of the Deity showed a leaning toward
that philosophical Pantheism which characterized all varieties
of Realism. "God is all and in all. Every existing thing
is in reality God itself, for every creature which can be named
is, in regard to its 'intelligible,' and consequently its chief,
existence, in reality the word of God." Perceiving the
dangerous side of these propositions he amended them by
adding, somewhat illogically, that they gave "no color to
the conclusion that every creature whatsoever is God." ^
The will of God "is His essential and eternal nature by
which all His acts are determined." Creation is conditioned
by it, and is neither an arbitrary selection nor a process of
emanations, but the only possible universe and an immediate
work at a specific time. This was directly contrary to the
affirmation of the Scotists that God does not choose to do
anything because it is best, but that whatever He does is
best solely because He pleases to do it. He regarded Divine
Omnipotence as self-determined and morally regulated by
the inner laws of God's Being. Omniscience argues an
eternal Now : that which is to be in point of time is and
ever was in relation to the Supreme Mind. His discussion
1 H. B. Workman: "The Dawn of the Reformation"; Vol. I, pp. 139-
140.
^Quoted by G. V. Lechler: "Wycliffe and his English Precursors";
pp. 253-254.
62 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of the Trinity proceeded on lines laid down in part by the
Fathers and in part by the Schoolmen. Its main interest
centers in the doctrine of the Son as the Logos, the sub-
stantive Word; an inclusive theory which embraced all
"realities that are intelligible," that is, capable of being
realized in thought, and of which the Logos was the mediating
element or member between God and the Universe.^
He compromised on the question of predestination and
free-will, using for the purpose the Aristotelian distinc-
tion between that which is absolutely necessary and that
which is necessary on a given supposition. When he faced
the fact of sin in the light of his own statement that God
wills only that which has being, he replied that sin was the
negation of being and therefore could not be willed by the
Deity, Who necessitated men in their deeds, which, in them-
selves, were neither right nor wrong, and took of morality
only through man's use of them by means of his free agency.^
Here Wycliffe forsook the teaching of Thomas Bradwardine
(1290-1349), the "Doctor Profundis" with whom he had an
intellectual kinship to which the development of his own ideas
was indebted.
Bradwardine's importance has been overlooked by modern
writers, and he deserves more than a passing reference.
Neander does not mention him and Gieseler does so only
to misconstrue his teaching. More recently, however, such
authorities as Lechler and Workman have given him the at-
tention he merits. He was a native either of Hartfield
in Sussex, or of Chichester, and a student at Merton
College. In 1325, the year when the University was largely
freed from the control of the Bishop of Lincoln, Bradwardine
was appointed its proctor. In 1339 he became chaplain and
confessor to Edward the Third, whom he accompanied to
the French Wars. His earnestness and benevolence pro-
cured for him the Archbishopric of Canterbury, to which
> G. V. Lechler: "Wycliffe and his English Precursors" ; p. 253.
* Encyclopadia Britannica, XI Edition, Article on Wycliffe.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 63
he ascended unsullied by the slightest stain of selfishness or
worldly ambition. After a journey to Avignon to receive
consecration, he returned to London only to be smitten with
the Black Death at Lambeth Palace, where he died on
August 26, 1349. Few prelates have been so widely and
deservedly loved and esteemed ; his untimely decease was
a national sorrow in which king, lords, and people alike
shared. A spiritual awakening he had experienced while
still a student at Oxford regenerated his entire life, and
was the secret spring of his religious insight and moral
distinction. Anticipating Bunyan and Wesley, he narrated
this visitation in words of the heart, ascribing his conver-
sion to elective grace rather than to his own volition.
"So then," he quoted from St. Paul's Epistle to the
Romans, "it is not in him that willeth, nor in him that
runneth, but in God that showeth mercy." It is hardly sur-
prising that his theology was profoundly necessitarian; his
treatise "De Causa Dei" became the fountain of Anglican
Calvinism, which asserted that in the act of sin there is
a complete exclusion of freedom of choice, since the Ever-
lasting Will infallibly determines man's conduct, and con-
sequently human free wdll has no existence.
This was too radical for Wycliffe, who objected that any
criminal, however desperate and wicked, would be justified
in saying "God determines me to all these acts of trans-
gression, in order to perfect the beauty of the Universe." ^
Such a conclusion totally condemned the suppositions from
which it was drawn. Hence, although influenced by the
obdurate predestination theory which was embedded in
Bradwardine's theology, Wycliffe swerved from its more
pronounced position, and while he agreed with the Arch-
bishop that everything which takes place does so of neces-
sity, and further, that the Divine Being cooperates in all
actions of the human will to the extent of determining them,
he tried to save man's freedom of choice from any prejudice
1 Quoted by G. V. Lechler: "De Dominio Divino" ; I, e. 15, p. 265.
64 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
due to the cooperation. In particular he repudiated the
arbitrary notion that if any man sins it is God Himself who
determines him to the act, contending that the motive
which prompts the evil deed, and is the main element of
transgression, did not proceed from God.
IV
Wycliffe's unique contribution to later medieval
thought is found in his treatises "De Dominio Divino"
and "De Dominio Civili." The former was an extension
of Richard Fitzralph's phrase that "dominion is founded
in grace" and the latter a corollary of the former. Fitz-
ralph, who has already been quoted in reference to the age
of the undergraduates of Oxford, was a fellow of Balliol
College about the year 1320, appointed Chancellor of the
University in 1333, and in 1347 consecrated Archbishop of
Armagh. He employed his theory as a weapon to assail
the Franciscan doctrine of evangelical poverty, arguing that
to abjure all holding of property was to run counter to the
laws governing social relations, and also to those between
God and man. In this Wycliffe favored the austerity of
Ockham and the Fraticelli as against Fitzralph's inter-
pretation. Further, Wycliffe's treatment of lordship was
powerfully affected by Augustine's views on the nature of sin.
According to these " sin is nothing, and men, when they sin,
become nothing. Evil is a negation and those who yield
themselves to it cease to retain any positive existence.
Clearly, then, they can possess nothing, can hold no lordship.
That which they seem to possess is no real or proper posses-
sion at all ; it is but the unjust holding of that which they
must one day restore to the righteous. 'From him that
hath shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.'
As thus the wicked hath nothing, so on the other hand the
righteous is lord of all things." ^
> Quoted in "Social England," Vol. II, pp. 163-164 ; edited by H. D. Traill.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 65
Wycliffe's discussion of this and corresponding matters
is still in manuscript form, the only extant copy of which is
kept at Vienna. It filled three volumes, which were pre-
liminary to his major and collective work, the "Summa in
Theologia." Lechler regards these volumes as the indica-
tion of his transition from the philosophical to the strictly
theological phase of his career, and it is conjectured that he
wrote them shortly after he had completed his studies in
theology at the University. The contemporary disputes
between Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII, and be-
tween the Emperor Louis of Bavaria and Pope John XXII,
raged around the vexed questions of Papal supremacy over
the State, and thus directly concerned lordship or dominion.
These quarrels may have been a contributing cause in
determining Wycliffe's views with regard to lordship;
another cause was the controversy of the Holy See with the
Spiritual Franciscans, who sought to enforce that rule of
their order which forbade it to hold either personal or cor-
porate property. Out of this dispute arose the larger issue
whether or not Christ and His Apostles had individually or
collectively authorized such a regulation. The obligation
of poverty as a vow of the mendicant friars clashed with
the policy of John XXII, who personally was far removed
from such drastic renunciations, and declared against them
in a series of bulls ending in the sentence of excommunica-
tion upon those who opposed his decision.
Whatever was the effect of these events upon Wycliffe,
there is ample proof that he gave prolonged consideration
to the general question and carried it forward into a
practical communism, the perils of which were somewhat
mitigated by his implication of lordship with service. In his
opinion each was essential to the other. The Lordship of God
Himself began only when He created beings to perform His
service. Moreover, the Supreme Lordship was distinguished
from that of man by the fact of its domination over all crea-
tures, and by the same condition of service ; for every living
66 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
being owes it to his God to serve Him with his whole being.
"God rules not mediately through the rule of vassals who
serve Him, as other kings hold lordship, since immediately
and of Himself He makes, sustains, and governs all that which
He possesses, and assists it to perform its works according
to other uses which He requires." ^ Nor does He give
any lordship to any of His servants "except He first give
Himself to them."
The principle that in the sight of God all men are equal
had been recognized from early times ; but WyclifPe, not
content to leave it in the sphere of sentiment, built it into
his political philosophy. In feudal phraseology he would
have said that all men held from God on the same terms of
service. From this he argued that the standing which a
man has before God is the criterion by which his position
among men must be determined. If through transgression
a man forfeited his divine privileges, then of necessity his
temporal privileges also were lost. Even the Pope himself,
if morally unsound, retained his right of lordship no longer.
The entire theory was attached to the article that the
creature could produce nothing save what God had already
created. Anything He granted to His servants was first a
part of Himself, and when bestowed He was still suzerain
and retained the ultimate disposition of the gift. It followed
from this that the Divine Lordship was forever and in all
respects supreme, and that upon it human lordship was
dependent. Men held whatever they had received from
God as stewards, and if found faithless could justly be
deprived of what may be called their fief. A subtle distinc-
tion was made between lordship and actual ownership ;
nothing of the former was of the nature of property, for
property was the result of sin ; hence Christ and the Apostles
would have none of it.
Wycliffe met the obvious possibility that all men were
1 "De Dominio Divino," I, c. 5: quoted in "Social England," Vol. II,
pp. 162-163.
I
JOHN WYCLIFFE 67
liable to dispossession for breach of tenure, in that all had
sinned, by urging that his theory required a pure social ideal,
and, while in actual practice "dominion was denied to the
wicked, power might be permitted to them to which Chris-
tians should submit from motives of obedience to God,"
His emasculated conclusion was quickly seized upon by
opponents, nor could Wycliffe prevent it from passing over
into an absurdity.
The paradoxical nature of this part of the argument did
not interfere with its general application to the Church as
the standard of universal faith and morals. Wycliffe
agreed with Ockham's contention that she should hold no
property. He urged that endowments had an injurious
effect by involving her in temporal affairs. Her work
lay within the sphere of the soul, and her influence
should be restricted to spiritual supervision. He rejected
the policy of Hildebrand and his successors, declaring that
the Papacy had nothing to do with civil government,
and that it ought to regain its old ideal of supremacy
over men's hearts and consciences ; " for to govern tempo-
ral possessions after a civil manner, to conquer kingdoms
and exact tribute, appertain to earthly lordship, not to the
Pope ; so that if he pass by and set aside the office of spiritual
rule, and entangle himself in those other concerns his work is
not only superfluous but also contrary to Holy Scripture." ^
He further declared that it was the duty of the State to
vindicate its right of control over its own affairs. Terri-
tories and revenues held by the Church should revert to the
nation. The likelihood of the Church's retaliation upon its
plunderers led to his well-known utterance on the matter of
excommunication. If she should use such a weapon, it
could be of no effect unless by his own sin a man had ex-
communicated himself and cut himself off from all spiritual
communion. No external decree pronouncing spiritual
banishment could overcome a man's consciousness of his
1 "De Dominio Civili," I, 17, quoted in "Social England," Vol. II, p. 164.
68 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
continuation in a state of divine grace. Wy cliff e studiously
avoided saying anything derogatory to the reigning Pope.
On the contrary, he expressed himself in terms of loyalty,
but with the reservation that such loyalty did not obviate
the duty of resistance to the Pontiff if his claims were in
contravention of Holy Writ.
The readiness with which he passed from scholastic
theology to complicated political and social conditions
showed that instinct and feeling were the trusted guides of
his mind. He occasionally forgot that the logic of meta-
physics was one thing and the logic of life another. His
lack of moderation and his contentment with a technically
correct dialectic sometimes betrayed him into an unreal
and almost fantastic discourse, in which he viewed the issue
at stake as one wherein pure theory could operate, regard-
less of any other consideration. This weakness was ap-
parent when he insisted that the Church, and the Universities
as a part of the Church, should cease to hold real endow-
ments; and that the clergy should confine themselves to
theological studies. In the first instance he pushed to the
extremes of formal disputation opinions he had imbibed
from the mendicant friars ; in the latter, his postulate that
the Holy Scriptures were perfectly sufficient for a clerical
education was advanced beyond reasonable boundaries
and unsupported by his personal example. Yet these
extravagances and inconsistencies were redeemed by the
warmth of his natural sympathies, which generally were
rightly bestowed and gradually led him to become aware
of something nobler and more vital than the exactitudes of
Scholasticism or the unquestioning zeal of partisanship.
When force of reasoning failed him he was frequently aided
by that insight and prevision which enable prophetical men
rightly to value the germinating power of apparently hope-
less but pregnant ideals. His solitariness as the last of the
Schoolmen intensified both this faculty of vision, and also
his faults as a thinker. The ages which preceded his own
JOHN WYCLIFFE 69
had produced great figures who stood forth from among their
contemporaries upon the higher levels of thought and achieve-
ment. It was a sign that disintegration had already begun
when he was fated to stand alone. The richer the summer,
the greater the decay of autumn. Wycliffe came to the
vineyard at the eleventh hour, when Scholasticism's day was
departing and its sky was already imbrowned with shadows.
Chill mists had begun to fall upon those fields in which were
found no fellow laborers of equal capacity to correct his
peculiarities or counteract his excesses.
Fortunately for himself he was fertile in distinctions and
expedients, yet not so fortunate in his facile handling of the
abstract as though it were the concrete. The former gift
combined with the substantial justice of the causes he
undertook to overcome the difficulties of his temperament,
training, and isolation. He formulated a series of proposi-
tions which other leaders defended and furthered against
the claims of the Holy See. The avowal that the King was
God's vicar as well as the Pope, and that the State had a
natural right and dignity which should not be impaired by
ecclesiastical trespass, was carried beyond the theoretical
stage as early as 1366, when Parliament finally refused pay-
ment of the annual Papal tribute. The report of the debates
on this action was strongly influenced by Wycliffe's views;
and such could not have been the case except for his acquaint-
ance with public affairs, which saved him from mere syllogistic
manipulation and prevented him from beating the air.
His critics should bear in mind that, had not his more
daring conceptions and innovations been couched in the
formal phraseology of the Schools, they would probably
have been instantly rejected. Their nakedness was clothed
with a garb academically correct, which concealed the fact
that they constituted a revolutionary departure from the
authorized tenets then current, and embodied a new theory
of the relation between Church and State. Hence the main
results of his efforts are not to be found, as some of his
70 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
readers have contended, in those inventions which were
largely the surplusage of his genius. On the contrary, they
appear in the broadening of that individual and national
freedom for which an unbroken lineage of scholars and
doctors had striven. Marsiglio had demanded that the
Church should limit herself to her own province ; Ockham
had vindicated the necessity and justice of an autonomous
secular power ; the Spiritual Franciscans had exemplified the
evangelical poverty which the Gospels inculcated; Grosse-
teste had denounced pluralities and provisions; Fitzralph
had insisted that dominion was founded in grace; and
Wycliffe blended these separate ideas into a measurably
consistent unity.
Pope Urban V has come down to us as the best of the
Avignon popes, so far as purity of character and religious
fervor are concerned. His labors to repress simony and cor-
ruption were creditable, and it was he who in his desire
to escape the vicious life of the French seat made an un-
successful attempt to reestablish the Papacy in Rome.
Equally futile was his ill-timed demand for the homage of
England, which Wycliffe, at the command of Edward III,
answered, as we have seen, in 1366.^ The Reformer was still
teaching at Oxford when he summarized in his reply the
arguments which had already been advanced in Parliament
against Urban's action. The temper of the national legisla-
ture, as reflected in these arguments and speeches, indicated
a strong antipapal sentiment in England, which increased
as the fourteenth century progressed.
Apart from the royal mandate, the causes of Wycliffe's
diversion to politics may have lain in his weariness of the
endless hairsplittings of the philosophical schools. Their
members essayed to elucidate eternal mysteries by logic
• Whether the date is 1366 or 1374 is very doubtful. Some authoritiea
favor the later date. The Pope's demand was repeated in 1374.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 71
while they enshrouded plain everyday truths in a dense
mist. Political action offered him a broader path and firmer
footing than theological discussion. Again, not only were
philosophy and theology an intellectual unity at that time,
they also stood in close relation to every public question.
The theologian and the metaphysician were political econo-
mists of a sort, and Wycliffe's attainments in the first two
sciences fitted him to deal with questions of State policy.
By far the most distinguished of his patrons at this stage
of his career was John of Gaunt (1340-1399), the ablest
and most unscrupulous Englishman of the time; a prince
who shared the qualities and ambitions of the Plantag-
enets, and devoted his talents, as the leader of a small but
compact and active party, to the aggrandizement of the
Lancastrian dynasty and its supporters. When he and
Wycliffe conjoined, the gloom of impending national mis-
fortune had begun to darken the last years of Edward III ;
the renewal of continental peace had flooded England with
a stream of returning soldiers, whose training in the wars
had rendered them unfit for civil life; France was pre-
paring to wrest herself free from the yoke of her enemies;
and the Black Prince, whose knighthood mirrored departing
chivalry, was nearing the end of his brilliant military
career. It seems to the student of to-day that there were
more natural portents of evil, more droughts, famines, pesti-
lences, seasons of abnormal suffering and degradation than
the world has ever known since.^ Aristocratic and terri-
torial prerogatives remained unrestricted, and society was
drifting towards the thunders of the cataract. Strange
combinations of somber circumstances were forming when
Parliament in 1371 petitioned the throne that secular men
only should be employed in the royal court and household.
The Duke of Lancaster's alliance with Wycliffe was
prompted by selfish motives on the part of the prince. He
1 This sentence was written before the outbreak of the great war in
Europe. It might now possibly bear revision.
72 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
was in hearty agreement with the Reformer's proposal that
"the king and his witty lords" should take back the wealth
and endowments of the Church "by process of time";
that prelates should vacate their secular offices and that the
extensive ecclesiastical estates should be forcibly recovered
from those guilty of their misuse. But here the concurrence
ended. Wy cliff e would have applied the proceeds of such
restitution to the welfare of the realm ; Gaunt was bent on
securing them for partisan ends. Meanwhile the compact
remained unshaken, although Wycliffe was disappointed
at the pusillanimous conduct of the new administration.
When the Papal collector of tribute, Arnold Garnier, visited
England, the royal officials merely extracted from him the
customary oath that he would do nothing contrary to the
laws and liberties of the kingdom. Their mildness angered
Wycliffe, who indignantly remarked in one of his pamphlets
that it could not be otherwise than subversive of the laws
and liberties of the realm that a foreign potentate should
plunder it at will.
He was perversely slow to suspect Gaunt of less commend-
able aims than his own, and Gaunt was quick to make good
use of the Schoolman's trenchant pen. In April, 1374,
he was appointed by the Crown to the living of Lutterworth,
bestowed upon him, not primarily because he was a learned
and pious clerk, but rather as a reward for his services to
the government. The authorities took advantage of the
minority of the regular patron, Henry de Ferrers, to assign
the benefice to their nominee, and Wycliffe's enemies cir-
culated rumors that further preferments were in store for him,
and that he was to be elevated to the see of Worcester on
the death of its occupant, William de Leme.
The wrongs which patrons of benefices suffered at the
hands of the Pope through the constant violation of the
Statute of Provisors continued to be the subject of protests
in Parliament, and finally it was arranged that the matter
should be discussed at Bruges with the commissioners of
JOHN WYCLIFFE 73
Gregory XI. Accordingly on the 26th of July, 1374, John
Gilbert, afterwards Bishop of Bangor, was made the head of
the English delegation, with Wycliffe as a subordinate mem-
ber.^ The outcome was discomfiting to them. The six
bulls which the Pope dispatched in September, 1375, while
deploring past irregularities, gave no promise of future
redress. The promotion of the Bishop of Bangor was looked
upon as a payment for the betrayal of the interests of the
Anglican Church, and Gaunt was suspected of similar
treachery in his negotiations with France.
In order to furnish some idea of the grievances that
were aired at the conference, it is necessary to revert to the
time of King John's humiliation at the instance of Innocent
III. After that event the Holy See steadily drew to itself
the patronage of the highest ecclesiastical offices and emolu-
ments in England, acting in connivance with the reigning
monarch, whose interests generally coincided with those
of the Pontiff. " Were the king of England to petition for
an ass to be made a bishop, we must not refuse him," was a
piece of sacrilegious effrontery attributed to Clement V.
An example of the innumerable abuses which sprang
from this sinister association, and from the ramifications
of the extortionate system and the helplessness of the
Anglican bishops to check it, is afforded by the dioce-
san annals of Salisbury. Here twenty-eight out of fifty
prebends in the gift of the Bishop had been provided for by
the Popes, while not more than three of the holders resided
in them. Eight additional candidates were on the waiting
list with the promise of preferment at the first vacancy.
* The latest researches by Dr. Workman show that Wycliffe was not a
member of the official Conference at Bruges which settled the terms of the
Concordat with the Pope. He was only there for seven weeks and was
in no sense a chief figure. Bishop Gilbert was practically supreme, and
the Concordat, which was so disastrous for England, was not determined
upon until 1376, when the moving spirits were Simon Sudbury and John of
Gaunt. The statement of Lechler that John of Gaunt and Wycliffe met at
Bruges is a fiction. Wycliffe had finally left Bruges long before John of
Gaunt went there to participate in the Conference.
74 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
At length this senseless rapacity was restrained by the
English government, which defied the Papal court at Avi-
gnon as the head and fount of unblushing simony, " where a
caitiff who knows nothing and is worth nothing is promoted
to churches and prebends to the value of a thousand marks."
The Pontiff's hitherto unquestioned right of nomination to
bishoprics rendered vacant by translation had also been
wantonly exercised. Their occupants were removed from
one see to another as often as possible in order that
the usual fees and first-fruits, i.e., the first year's income,
might be collected from the outgoing and incoming prelates.
The nominees were more often than not absentees as well
as foreigners, content to receive the revenues of offices
they had never seen. The shameful spectacle of these ad-
venturers enriching themselves out of the treasury of the
national Church and the funds gathered from the gifts of
the poor and the faithful excited strong indignation.
Wanton avarice had reached its climax and battened on
its ill-gotten gains until the notorious evil sharpened the
popular appetite for reform. Thus, apart from doctrinal
and intellectual developments, the Wycliffian movement
suited the resolution of his countrymen, exasperated as they
were by clerical parasites who drained the financial re-
sources of communities to which many of them were entire
strangers.
The Statute of Provisors of the year 1351 was designed to
prevent the Pope from providing English livings for foreign
clerics, from making provisions for benefices during the
lifetime of the incumbent, and from reserving them for
Papal use and benefit while their occupancy was de-
layed for that purpose. It also prohibited the acceptance
of Papal letters of provision, and vested the patronage thus
bestowed in the king. Further, by this Statute the free
election of candidates for the higher offices reverted to the
ancient procedure of their choice by the Cathedral Chapter,
and the dignitaries thus chosen were allowed to have free
JOHN WYCLIFFE 75
presentations of the benefices under their jurisdiction. The
fact that the Statute had to be supplemented two years
later by the first Statute of Praemunire showed that it had
failed to accomplish desirable results. After thirteen years
more stringent legislation was passed, applying the inhibi-
tions of the latter Statute to the Curia, which it boldly
named. Finally, in 1393 the Great Statute of Prsemunire
subjected all appellants to Rome to the forfeiture of their
case. This succession of enactments, six in all, during the
period from 1350 to 1393, proved the ineffectiveness of the
various measures designed to end the Avignon tyranny.
But if such means did not avail to abolish foreign eccle-
siastical control, they supplied the precedents which gave
color to Henry the Eighth's plea that he was acting within the
law when he destroyed the independence of the Church and
monopolized for the Crown and the nobility the estates and
incomes hitherto shared with the Papacy.
After what has been said it is not inexplicable that the
Commission of Bruges should have truckled to the Pope and
the king, or that its negotiations were as fruitless as the
English court no doubt intended they should be. The claims
of corrupted usage continued to fetter the liberties of Angli-
canism, and the few concessions agreed upon were only
meant to save the face of the commissioners. The Bishop
of Bangor was appointed to certain benefices by means of
the very "provisions" he had been instructed to denounce;
Wycliffe remained merely a parish priest in rank, and held
the living at Lutterworth until his death. Yet he was promi-
nent in the country, and his alliance with Gaunt kept him
in the political arena. The declining health of Edward III
and the death of the Black Prince made the Duke of Lan-
caster supreme, while his reactionary influence served to
undo the legislation of the "Good Parliament." Wycliffe
resided at Lutterworth and at Oxford, making frequent jour-
neys to the capital, where by this time he was equally well
known as a trusted adviser of the Crown and as a preacher
76 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
whose ardent eloquence fitted him to inspire and direct public
opinion.
His labors during this period were only exceeded by those
which followed between the years of 1378 and 1382, when
his efforts for reform literally consumed him. They seem
to have been prompted by the belief that physical decline
could not long be deferred, and that what he had to do
must be done quickly. Within six or seven years he not only
wrote all his English works, of which, according to Shirley's
catalogue, there are sixty-five,^ but revised or completed at
least half of his Latin writings, of which the same authority
enumerates ninety-seven, and these herculean tasks were
augmented by his share in translating the Bible. He also
originated the pamphlet as a weapon of controversy. The
Scholastic doctor, esteemed by his contemporaries as excel-
ling in profundity and subtlety, now doffed the cumber-
some armor of abstruse propositions couched in syllogistic
forms and a dead language. His tracts, addressed to fellow
citizens in their own speech, were clear in substance and
style, with many a racy aside and pungent sally which dis-
closed in the writer a union of rare qualities of heart and
brain. They were terse, pithy, incisive, vehement in feel-
ing; not without antics in which the most learned were
capable of indulging on occasion; and relieved and em-
phasized by the play of sarcasm, banter, and raillery. Some
of these broadsides were not more than a couple of pages
in length, yet in that brief compass they frequently conveyed
a masterly exposition bearing directly upon the matter in
hand.
The lack of other literary models than the Bible and a
few Latin authors threw him back upon his own originality.
The classics were preserved in the libraries of St. Albans,
Glastonbury, York, and Durham. Richard Aungervyle,
better known as Richard de Bury, author of the " Philobib-
• The English are much inferior to the Latin works both in bulk and im-
portance.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 77
lion," which dealt with his favorite pursuit of book collect-
ing, was the owner of a great library secured at infinite
pains. He bequeathed it to Durham College, a munificent
endowment indeed, since such libraries were rare before the
time of Duke Humphrey. Peter Lombard's "Sentences'*
and Gratian's "Decretum" were the better known reposi-
tories of learning, and Wycliffe's acquaintance with St.
Augustine and St. Chrysostom was probably due to Gratian.
No interpreter of Wycliffe's writings can rate the Re-
former an optimist. The world he saw was sorely distressed ;
the inconstancy of human things ever inclined them toward
the great abyss; the common people were bad, the civil
rulers worse, the clergy, and especially the higher ecclesiastics,
worst of all. Perilous times had come, in which offenses
abounded. Their mischief was the more vexatious by con-
trast, for they directly followed a period of superabundant
energy which once bade fair to rejuvenate society. All author-
ities were now recreant in that they had forsaken Christ, sur-
rendered to human maxims, and become the slaves of tyranni-
cal greed and caprice. The following quotation from one of
his sermons shows how far short of Wycliffe's expectations
Christendom had fallen, and how freely he reprimanded the
religious dearth and coldness of the age. " It is as clear as day
that we so-called Christians make the creatures to be our
gods. The proud or ambitious man worships a likeness of
that which is in heaven (Exodus xx. 4), because, like Lucifer,
he loves, above all things, promotion or dignity in one form
or another. The covetous man worships a likeness of that
which is in the earth beneath. And although, arrayed in
sheep's clothing, we hypocritically confess that our highest
of all service is in the worship of God, yet it would very well
become us carefully to inquire whether we faithfully carry
out this confession in our actions. Let us then search and
examine whether we keep the first and greatest command-
ment, and worship God above all. Do we not bend and
bow ourselves before the rich of this world more with the
78 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
view of being rewarded by them with worldy honor or tem-
poral advantage, than for the sake of their moral character
or spiritual help? Does not the covetous man stretch out
now his arms and now his hands to grasp the gold, and does
he not pay court untiringly to the men who have it in their
power to hinder or to help his gains ? Does not the sensual
man, as though he were making an offering to the idol
Moloch, cast himself down with his whole body before the
harlot ? Does he not put upon such persons worldly honor ?
Does he not offer to them the incense of purses of gold, in
order to scent the flow of sensual delight with the sweetest
perfumes? Does he not lavish upon his mistress gift upon
gift, till she is more wonderfully bedizened with various
ornaments than an image of the Holy Virgin ? And does not
all this show that we love the flesh, the world, and the devil
more than God, in that we are more careful to keep their
commandments than His? What violence do we hear of
the Kingdom of Heaven suffering in our times (Matthew
xi. 12), while the gates of hell are bolted? But alas ! broad
and well-trodden is the way which leadeth to hell, and narrow
and forsaken the way which leadeth to heaven ! This it is
which makes men, for lack of faith, love what is seen and
temporal more than the blessings which they cannot see,
and to have more delight in buildings, dress, and ornaments,
and other things of art and man's invention, than in the
uncreated archetypes of heaven." ^
Whatever may be thought of the justice of this whole-
sale condemnation, its sincerity is beyond dispute. Self-
deception is not dishonesty, though it is often mistaken for
it, and the fact that a man's opinions and practices do not
always square with his words does not necessarily prove
him to be a charlatan. We may be sure, however, that
history is not written in such pronounced colors as black
» Liber Mandatorum (Dccalogus): c. 15, fol. 13G, col. I ; fol. 137, col. 2.
Quoted by Lechler, "John Wycliffe and his English Precursors" ; pp. 303-
304.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 79
and white, and certainly not in black alone, but in the half
tints and manifold shades which are necessary to depict the
varieties of human character. The unqualified terms of
Wycliffe's homily were employed for the sake of mental
convenience as well as moral correction, and those who
are given to the use of such terms, as he was, generally have
in mind the increase of the good and the defeat of the evil
in their surroundings.
CHAPTER III
THE QUARREL WITH THE PAPACY
81
Had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against
the divine and admirable spirit of Wyclif to suppress him as a schis-
matic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Hus and Jerom, no,
nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known : the glory
of reforming all our neighbors had been completely ours.
Milton, Areopagitica.
82
CHAPTER III
THE QUARREL WITH THE PAPACY
Wycliffe and Church institutions — William Courtenay, Bishop of
London — Wycltffe's trial in 1377 — Gregory XI's five bulls against
him — Second trial in 1378 — Wycliffe's polemic against the friars —
Sketch of rise, development, and decadence of monasticism — Con-
trast between monks and friars — Popular accusations against the
latter — The Great Schism and its effect on Wycliffe — His defense
of Gaunt — His change of attitude towards the Papacy — Wycliffe's
doctrine of the Church — His teaching upon Transubstantiation —
Development of the dogma — Wycliffe's friends forsake him.
Wycliffe was in all respects a typical Englishman, inde-
pendent in thought, jealous for the honor of his country and
consistent in his patriotism. He was seldom wanting in self-
confidence ; a maker rather than a creature of precedent,
with a high spirit unaffected by the external circumstances
which sway weaker characters. His practical bent made
him impatient of dreams and ecstasies. As to his rank in
learning, he was "in theology most eminent, in philosophy
second to none, in scholastic exercises incomparable." ^
The conscious authority of these distinctions invested his
bearing with an austerity age did not perceptibly soften, and
lent his temper a brusqueness that tolerated no dallyings.
He lived near enough to conscience to be discontented
with things as they were, and when the test was applied he
passed into social and political retirement rather than sur-
render his convictions. His integrity arose out of a solicitude
for what he conceived to be spiritual religion. Excessive care
1 Bishop Mandell Creighton : "Historical Essays and Reviews" ; pp. 173-
174.
83
84 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
for received dogmas did not deaden his moral sense; he
impeached any ecclesiastical ascendency that depended upon
resistance to the lawful authority of the State, and encoun-
tered no adversaries sufficiently strong to silence or even
deter him. He was positive, militant, and eager for direct
action because apparently doubtful concerning any self-
righting principle in human development. While faithful
to his own beliefs, he was not always just toward antagonistic
views, and in the heat of controversy sometimes forgot that
unbalanced truth is itself untrue. He was far more willing
to be hurried than idle ; the familiar German proverb,
"Ohne Hast, ohne Rast," was scarcely descriptive of a career
the moderation of which was altogether disproportionate
to its restlessness and resolution. These traits were displayed
to the full in his disputes with the Csesarean clergy, the friars,
the Papacy, and finally, in regard to the doctrine of Transub-
stantiation. Little allowance was made by the stern re-
monstrant for the inevitable shortcomings of human nature
that found expression in these organizations and this dogma.
The refinements of analysis which can detect potential good
in some present evils were beyond him ; in brief, sailing close
to the wind was for him an impossible art. Thus one of the
exhilarating aspects of his record was its moral intrepidity,
which, apart from his connection with John of Gaunt, was
seldom deflected from desirable ends.
The denunciations and the virulence of his quarrels grew
as the Caesarean clergy gave place to the friars, the friars
to the Papacy, and the Papacy to Transubstantiation.^
He found abundant incentive in existing conditions; Euro-
pean politics were suffering from the consequences of the
later Crusades, which had lapsed into ruffianism, leaving small
choice between the conduct of the infidels who held the Holy
City and that of the adventurers who strove to wrest it from
them. France lay broken and bleeding beneath the weight
> The question has been raised whether or not Wycliffe's attack on the
friars preceded that upon the doctrine of Transubstantiation.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 85
of the first half of the Hundred Years' War. In Italy and
Gennany the conflicts between the Empire and the Papacy
had shaken the foundations of society, and their cities were
overrun with a rabble of mercenaries and free-lances. Eng-
land had been fortunate enough to escape the distractions of
civil strife, nevertheless her social state was wretched beyond
words. Compared with those of the Continent, her pro-
vincial towns were small and insignificant ; outside their
closely guarded walls and noisome precincts the peasants of
the shires groveled before their lords, for whom they were
hewers of wood and drawers of water. Yet there still
smoldered in these men the ashes of their fathers' wonted
fires ; ashes which had heat enough left in them to kindle the
conflagration that threatened to devour the ruling powers
at the time of the Peasants' Revolt.
When the Lancastrian faction forced William of Wykeham
to resign the Chancellor's seals, his deprivation and at-
tempted punishment led to further recriminations and im-
peachments, and the clergy made Wykeham's cause their
own. However desirable Wycliffe's abstention from politics
might have been, it was now practically impossible : he
could not have retreated without loss of honor and
injury to his cause.^ Moreover, his doubts and question-
ings, as well as his beliefs, were no longer latent. Once
released from the habit of absolute submission and obedience,
they proceeded apace, and their radical tendencies affected
matters of public moment rather than scholastic discourse.
He openly avowed in London churches the tenets of dis-
endowment and of the sanctity of clerical poverty which he
had formerly taught in the University. Rumors of his sen-
timents were verified by his actual declarations, and his
writings were closely scrutinized for further evidences of his
disaffection by those whose practices were unsparingly
^ Wycliflfe's connection with John of Gaunt might also have arisen from
the fact that the manor of Wycliffe was in the 'honor of Richmond,' one of
Gaunt's fiefs.
86 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
assailed, and also by others whose honest convictions
opposed his own.
Among the latter was William Courtenay, the aristo-
cratic Bishop of London, a member of the family of the Earls
of Devon and, on his mother's side, a direct descendant
of Edward I. This prelate forced the hand of the tem-
perate Archbishop Sudbury, whom he virtually supplanted
as leader of the clerical party, and Wycliffe was summoned
early in 1377 either before Convocation, or more probably,
according to Bishop Creighton, before the Archbishop as his
Ordinary, to answer charges of heresy, which had been pre-
ferred against him for his opinion concerning the wealth of
the Church. On February nineteenth of that year the Re-
former appeared at St. Paul's Cathedral to defend his
position, accompanied by four friars of Oxford, and under
the escort of John of Gaunt and Lord Henry Percy, who
eleven days previously had been made Marshal of England as
the price of his support of the Lancastrians and in place of
the Earl of March, who was exiled to Calais. The dramatic
but useless scene which followed has vividly impressed itself
upon the imagination of later generations. Gaunt, who was
detested by the freemen of the city for his cupidity and
arrogance no less than for the plottings and chicaneries of
his followers, stood at Wycliffe's side throughout the stormy
interview, fuming and threatening that he would pull down
the pride of all the bishops in England. He was aware that
Wycliffe was regarded as the instrument of his schemes for
the confiscation of Church offices and revenues. Sudbury
and Courtenay were not intolerant prelates, but rather
ecclesiastical politicians, whose decision to resist the Duke's
measures can be ascribed to their vigilance on behalf of the
menaced privileges which they held essential to the existence
and standing of the Church. Percy's insolent behavior
exasperated the spectators crowding the aisles of the ancient
church and the adjacent streets, and the disturbance which
attended the passage to the Lady Chapel annoyed Courtenay,
JOHN WYCLIFFE 87
who declared, had he known beforehand that Percy would
act the master in the Cathedral, he would have barred his
entrance. The Duke, blind with rage, replied for his re-
tainer that he should do as he pleased. While prince and
prelate exchanged defiances, Wycliffe seems to have calmly
awaited the hearing. Even Courtenay, the most gifted and
resolute of his foes, whose opposition finally crushed the
Wycliffian movement, sank into comparative insignificance
when contrasted with the last great Schoolman of Europe,
the first clerk of Oxford and the noblest and most astute
thinker left in a decadent and reactionary age. Lechler's
idealized description portrays him as " a tall, thin figure, clad
in a long, light gown of black, with a girdle about his body ;
his head, adorned with a full, flowing beard, exhibiting fea-
tures keen and sharply cut, his eye clear and penetrating, his
lips firmly closed, in token of resolution — the whole man
wearing an aspect of lofty earnestness, and replete with
dignity and character." ^
The issue between the two parties was sharply drawn and
thorough examination was desirable, since the justice of the
case was by no means confined to Gaunt's faction, but the
decorum befitting so grave a trial was altogether absent.
Heated rejoinders and personal vilifications ended any pre-
tense to judicial dignity, and were so freely used that Gaunt,
overmatched verbally, resorted to threats of physical vio-
lence. The Londoners, who loved neither Courtenay nor
the Duke, had already been aroused by the introduction of a
bill into Parliament on that very afternoon which proposed
to deprive the city of its municipal rights and vest its govern-
ment in an ofiicial chosen by the Court. This news created
such a tumult against Lancaster that the sitting was sus-
pended, while in the riot which ensued he was compelled to
flee, and barely escaped with his life. The enraged citizens,
disappointed of their prey, sacked his Palace of the Savoy,
refusing to desist till Bishop Courtenay interposed to avert
1 "John Wycliffe and his English Precursors" ; p. 159.
88 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
their further vengeance. The unexpected deUverance of
Wychffe convinced the writer of the English Chronicle that
the entire affair was a device of the devil to protect his elect
servant.
Courtenay now had recourse to the Holy See, which re-
quired little instigation from him to interfere in English affairs,
and on May 22, 1377, Gregory XI, who had just restored
the Papacy to Rome, promulgated there in the church of
St. Maria Maggiore five bulls against Wycliffe, which he
dispatched to the king, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Bishop of London, and the University of Oxford. Three of
these bulls were jointly directed to the Primate and the
Bishop, and the other two to the king and the University re-
spectively. Eighteen erroneous articles were transcribed
from Wycliffe's writings, all of which, with one exception, were
correctly quoted from his treatise "De Dominio Civili."
They were condemned as theses and their conclusions ex-
pounded and repudiated, the Pontiff affirming with truth that
their substance was to be found in the works of Marsiglio,
the advocate of the imperial cause against John XXII, The
doctrine of evangelical poverty, which Wycliffe set forth
against the material magnificence of the Avignon Court, to-
gether with his theory of lordship, supplied the material
which now came under official censure. The bull ad-
dressed to the University chided its members for suf-
fering "tares to spring up among the pure wheat of their
glorious field"; the one to the king prayed him to grant
the Papal commissioners his favor and protection in the
discharge of their duty. Sudbury and Courtenay were
reproved as "slothfully negligent, insomuch that latent
motions and attempts of the enemy are perceived at Rome
before they are opposed in England." Plenary powers were
granted to the bishops to ascertain whether these pestiferous
opinions were actually taught by Wycliffe, and the Pope di-
rected that "the said John" should be arrested and impris-
oned in safe custody until further commands were received.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 89
The edicts reached England at an inopportune moment.
Edward III died on June twenty -first of that year ; the
first Parhament of Richard II at once manifested a strong
animus against the encroachments of the Papacy, and the
regency of the Princess of Wales was controlled by political
exigencies which for the time made Wycliffe the leader of the
nation at large. He was consulted by Parliament as to
" whether the realm might not legitimately stop the export of
gold to Rome, considering the necessities of her defense,"
and promptly answered in the affirmative.^ "The Pope,"
he argued, " cannot demand treasure except by way of alms
and by the rule of charity, but all charity beginneth at home,
for our fathers endowed not the Church at large, but the
Church of England." The document concluded with the
plea " that the goods of the Church should be prudently dis-
tributed to the glory of God, putting aside the avarice of
prelates and princes."
The last clause annoyed those who had predatory pur-
poses of their own, and he was enjoined by the young king
and the Council to keep silence. But Parliament and
people were so enthusiastically in favor of Wycliffe that,
while John of Gaunt was excluded from the Council of
his nephew, any effort to indict the Reformer would have
been an attempt to indict the nation. It is not surprising
that the higher clergy acted circumspectly at this juncture,
or that the University doubted whether the Papal bull
could be received. The Archbishop's request that Wyc-
liffe should appear before the Commissioners in February,
1378, was extremely courteous in tone, and made no
mention of the severe measures the Pope had commanded
in the event of his resistance. He came to Lambeth,
• The export of gold from England by the religious orders was a constant
drain on the nation. An example is furnished by the forty English de-
pendencies of the French Abbey of Cluny, which ia Wycliflfe's time re-
mitted annually to the latter place a sum equivalent to $300,000 or more
in modern money. There were many other instances of this continual
exaction.
90 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
but owing to the pleas of the Princess Dowager of Wales
and the clamor of the populace, the conclave was speedily
dissolved. Courtenay withdrew his clericals, who were
probably much relieved to be freed from their thankless
task. Many of the Oxford doctors were in sympathy
with Wycliffe's heresies; even his enemies hesitated to lay
hands on an influential subject at the behest of a foreign
ruler, and during the crisis, the ulterior aims of politicians
and the patriotic pride of citizens united to sustain the
Reformer as the upholder of national honor. Walsingham,
chronicler of St. Albans, mourned over such a dearth of zeal,
and chided the cowardice of the bishops who were as " reeds
shaken by the wind. Their speech became as soft oil, to the
loss of their own dignity and the injury of the Church. They
were struck with such a terror that you would fancy them to
be * as a man that heareth not, in whose mouth there is no
reproof.'" This jeremiad provided the funeral baked meats
for the anti-Wycliffians, whose personal attacks on the
Reformer virtually ended in the important year of 1378,
when the Great Schism turned the attention of bishops and
statesmen to heresiarchs of larger magnitude, and to the
evils that arose out of their conduct.
II
Wycliffe's emphatic nationalism developed his first heresies
round the grievances of the State, but he passed on to dis-
cover in Scripture and Apostolic custom a firm basis for his
remonstrance against the friars. His former sentiments
toward their self-imposed poverty and sanctity were respect-
ful and affectionate. He spoke of them as " those evangelical
men very dear to God," and his early distinction between
them and the wealthy monastic orders (religiosi possessionati)
was accompanied by an unmeasured rebuke of the indolence,
mercenary disposition, and pride of the monks. Historians
are generally agreed that it was not till the year 1380, when
JOHN WYCLIFFE 91
first he attacked the doctrine of the Mass, that he became
embroiled with the friars.^ Be this as it may, his aversion
was not pronounced so long as he recognized that the early
Franciscans had been established for the edification of the
Church. But when he witnessed with all observers their
inconceivably rapid degeneration his references ceased to
be eulogistic; in 1378 he protested against those practices
which were divorced from their vows, and after 1381 he
was their relentless opponent. This revulsion was the more
complete because of his previous regard for their excellen-
cies. His unbending nature could not forgive their open
derelictions, and these profoundly influenced his attitude
toward clerical authority and doctrinal orthodox;y'. As
monasticism in general was thus the second important
factor in his controversies with the Church, a word of explana-
tion concerning the origin and progress of the various orders
will enable us better to understand their relation to medieval
ecclesiasticism and to Wycliffe.
Monasticism arose in the Orient, and was conmion to
antiquity as well as to modern times; to Buddhism and
Mohammedanism, as well as to Christianity. In the third
and fourth centuries the deserts of Egypt and Syria abounded
with hermits and anchorites, who emulated the rigor and
followed the precepts of St. Anthony and St. Pachomius.
The former was the first Christian monk, and admittedly
the father and prototype of Christian monasticism; the
latter, its organizer, who founded nine retreats with three
thousand inmates and drew up rules for their guidance in
fraternity life. Pachomius' cenobitical rules were made still
more stringent by Basil the Great in Cappadocia. When the
system entered the West, it received a practical impulse and
flourished under better forms than in its original home.
Benedictine houses and congregations arose spontaneously,
with- leaders of piety and personal gifts, whose work was
adopted, regulated, and utilized by the inclusive policy of the
^ Bishop Mandell Creighton : "Historical Essays and Reviews" ; p. 192.
92 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Holy See. The fundamental laws which governed all alike
were labor, poverty, obedience, and chastity ; beneath their
sway monasticism fixed the standards and absorbed the
forces of the Church, her doctrine and her devotion. Not-
withstanding the fact that by Wycliffe's time the virtues and
achievements of the system had passed into decline and could
no longer overcome the self-assertion of the pagan world, its
earlier regime had protected an immature civilization, and
was useful in the reduction of its brutal tendencies. The
monastic cells enshrined the asceticisms and prayers of
innumerable lovers of God whose hard pitiless life was illumi-
nated by those emotions and meditations which are the re-
verberations of eternity within the human spirit, and their
visions of infinitude and holiness are now reflected in some
of the choicest devotional literature. Cloistral life in its best
periods furnished a center for the spiritual aspirations of
mankind, and protected them against a Church too often
secularized in heart and soul and a world filled with folly,
lust, and cruelty. In addition, the first monks were agricul-
turalists whose holdings were models of thrift and industry.
They did for the rural provinces a work similar to that done
by the trade guilds for the cities and towns. The regulars
were more than recluses occupying retreats where their
beautiful structures, clustering around a Norman or Early
English church, arose by the side of some quiet stream en-
circled by woods and meads. Nor did they spend their
entire time in a round of ritualistic oSices while they
depended on inherited or contributed means for support.
They cleared the land of bracken and bramble, drained and
tilled it, dug the fishponds, reared the barns which housed
the harvests of an erstwhile wilderness, and built the fanes
they filled with psalmodies. Their economic and religious
value for the half-starved, ignorant peasantry was very con-
siderable. This pioneer work taught the rustics to have some
care for their bodies and homes, and the monks further in-
structed them in respect to their souls' welfare. A colonizing
JOHN WYCLIFFE 93
habit and a communistic life were the focus for missionary
efforts, in which educational provisions and medical dis-
pensaries were included. Hospitality was a sacred duty,
embracing all ranks and conditions. The vestiges of art
which survived that stormy interregnum were preserved
in the monasteries. They were the treasure houses for
the traditions and examples of a former learning, and the
sacred books and the writings of the Fathers were kept
intact in their libraries and copied in their scriptoria.
But the institution which was comparatively irreproach-
able in the tenth century was questionable in the fourteenth :
later monasticism had forsaken some of its healthy occupa-
tions, and was no longer kept pure by sacrificial toil. It in-
curred the adverse judgments of such loyal Catholics as St.
Bonaventure, St. Catherine of Sienna, and the great Gerson
himself.^ The details of its decadence are too lengthy for
recital here, nor do the learned and apologetic works of such
writers as Cardinal Gasquet ^ deal as fully as could be desired
with the official arraignments of the regular clergy during
the four centuries preceding the Reformation. The state-
ments therein contained are explicit and conclusive, and the
Cardinal's explanations are characterized by a partisanship
which the careful student is bound to take into consideration.
On the other hand, Thorold Rogers' description of the later
monasteries as "dens of gluttony and vice" is entirely too
severe. Abandoned wickedness was prevalent in some quar-
ters, but it was the exception and not the rule. Where the
charges of immorality are true, as are those given in the
painstaking accounts of Dr. H. C. Lea, they are likely to be
misleading unless regarded in relation to the age in which the
offenses were committed. The restraints and licenses of pub-
' John Gerson (1363-1429), French scholar and divine, Chancellor of the
University of Paris and leading spirit in the Ecumenical Councils of Pisa
and Constance. He labored to spiritualize university life, reform the clergy,
and end the Church schism, and also to abolish scholastic subtleties from
the university curriculum.
^ The Head of the Benedictines in England, elevated to the Sacred Col-
lege on May 25, 1914.
94 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
lie opinion were felt even in the cloister ; its devotees were not
all of a superior sort ; to a great extent they represented the
social conditions from which they had been transferred,
and they should not be condemned without reference to
current practices, which, although they do not excuse, help
to explain the failure of religious professions.
Sporadic attacks of sensuality were not the real causes
which led to the decline of monasticism. The system ceased
to live because it had forsaken its first love and lay en-
gulfed in its selfish introspections. The terms monk and
monastery lost their once grateful sound ; local com-
ments turned from praise to blame; esteem and affection
gave place in the breasts of their tenants and underlings to
contempt and hate. The hostels of the lowly Nazarene, in
which the poor and the maimed were no longer welcome,
housed lordly abbots and their wasteful retinues. The
effects of the unseemly change were seen in many direc-
tions, and in none more than in this, that whenever local
riots arose the monastery or abbey was almost sure to be
the first building upon which the people vented their dis-
pleasure. When Wycliffe assailed the monks and friars they
were no longer formidable. The seculars had begun to sup-
plant them in the cure of souls ; the Universities had found
them a negligible quantity ; the education of the youth of the
nation had passed out of their keeping ; the people resented
their aloofness ; the barons hungered for their broad acres,
and patriots viewed them as the watchdogs of an alien
power.
At this juncture, when the noble impulses of Benedictines,
Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans were trembling
on the verge of extinction, the ravages of the Black Death
destroyed at a blow one half the inmates of the religious houses
in England. Then, as we have seen, the friars rendered a
laudable service to stricken humanity. But the fearful visita-
tion crushed the monastic establishments. Their broken
and dispirited survivors could not fill the vacancies thus
JOHN WYCLIFFE 95
created, and their funds went unreplenished by any entrance
fees. In England during the fourteenth century only sixty-
four new monasteries were established, as compared with two
hundred and ninety-six in the thirteenth century, and four
hundred and ninety in the twelfth century.^ Conciliation
by means of a more public-minded policy and service was at
an end. The state of affairs before Wycliffe came upon the
scene has been depicted by Dr. Jessopp : the monk " fled
away to his solitude ; the rapture of silent adoration was his
joy and exceeding great reward ; his nights and days might
be spent in praise and prayer, sometimes in study and re-
search, sometimes in battling with the powers of darkness
and ignorance, sometimes in throwing himself heart and
soul into art which it was easy to persuade himself he was
doing only for the glory of God ; but all this must go on far
away from the busy haunts of men, certainly not within
earshot of the multitude." ^
Monasticism had received repeated warnings to set its
house in order ; nor did the injustice of some of its enemies
excuse its own perversity and pride. It evaded embarrassing
situations and suppressed realities until doom fell upon the
proudest and richest order of its chivalry, the Knights Tem-
plars of France, and none could foretell where the next stroke
would fall. In May, 1308, fifty knights were hurried to the
stake ; five years later Pope Clement V decreed the dispersal
of the order, and the tragedy was completed, on March
14, 1314, by the burning of Jacques de Molay, the Grand
Master, with three of his principal subordinates. A small
island in the Seine, at the western end of the city of Paris,
where now the Pont Neuf rests between the arms of the river,
was the scene of the execution. The flames rose against the
dusk of evening and crimsoned the shores, which were lined
with spectators. While the Grand Master stood in the fire
1 In the fifteenth century only one or two monasteries were built in England,
the chief of which was the Bridgettine Syon, at Isleworth, Middlesex,
founded by Henry V in memory of his father.
* "The Coming of the Friars" ; p. 7.
96 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and slowly roasted to death he summoned the Pope and the
French king to appear with him at the bar of the Almighty.
Within forty days Clement obeyed the call, and Philip the
Fair within the year.^
A century and more before these events, monasticism's
loftiest ideal had found its most perfect realization in St.
Francis of Assisi, the young Italian who for a moment molded
the world to his own will, and better still, kept himself
unspotted from it. The life of St. Francis is an imperishable
example of the divinest elements victorious in human nature,
surviving every vicissitude and bringing the race nearer to
the goal of righteousness and obedience. The son of a mer-
chant of Assisi, Pietro Bernardone, he is said to have received
the name Franciscus because he was born during his father's
absence in France in 1182, although some biographers have
attributed it to his own residence there as a youth, and to his
familiarity with the language of the Troubadours. In 1206
he was brought to the verge of death by successive attacks of
sickness, which decided his career. Out of their regen-
erating purification emerged the transcendently beatific
figure of the saint, who turned from his boon companions
and their pleasures that he might taste the powers of the
world to come. Relinquishing his inheritance, he took upon
himself the vows of poverty, and appeared clad in a single
tunic of coarse woolen cloth, girt with a hempen cord, the
dress which afterwards became the garb of his famous order.
The greatest of the Popes, Innocent III, gave him the
sanction for which Francis had petitioned that discerner of
spirits, and the young devotee settled the constitution of his
fraternity upon the threefold basis of chastity, poverty, and
obedience. From the beginning the second of these vows was
first in spiritual importance and efficacy. The chosen motto
of the brotherhood was Christ's word, "Ye cannot serve God
and Mammon"; its practice, that each member should
esteem himself the least and most unprofitable of all. "He
» M. S. C. Smith : "Twenty Centuries of Paris" ; pp. 115, 118.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 97
that will be chief among you," said the founder, "let him be
your servant." Those whose self-consequence would not
allow them to submit to these precepts were rejected, and
the remnant became fratres, freres, or friars, who were
sent out to proclaim their evangel to the ends of the
earth.
The companion order of the Dominicans was established
in 1216, the year of Innocent's death and of his formal authori-
zation of the Franciscans. St. Dominic, their founder, was
a native of Calahorra in Old Castile, born in or about 1170,
the year of Becket's murder. When still a young man of
twenty-three he was so well known for piety and learning
that the Bishop of Osma appointed him to a canonry, and
relied upon his help in the reform of the Chapter according to
the Augustinian rule. His missionary labors among the
Moslems, and especially among the Albigenses of southern
France, convinced Dominic that the cruelties to which these
sufferers for their faith were subjected could not convert or
even shake the resolution of the victims. "We must meet
them with other weapons and greater faith!" he cried.
And in the belief that such heresies lured the souls of
men to everlasting ruin, he conceived the order which
bears his name. On December 22, 1216, he obtained an
audience with Innocent's successor, Honorius III, who reluc-
tantly confirmed his predecessor's stipulation that the first
Dominican community, then located at the Church of St.
Romain in Toulouse, should be called a house of Augustinian
canons. The endowments of St. Dominic as a preacher
naturally led him to insist on the agency of the pulpit for the
silencing of opponents and the instruction of the ignorant.^
In 1220 the Dominicans, imitating the Franciscans, adopted
vows of poverty so rigid that not even as a corporation could
they hold houses or lands. The two orders, thus nearly
simultaneous in their origin, were known from the color of
their robes as the Grey and the Black friars, and their
'A. Jessopp: " The Coming of the Friars " ; p. 24.
H
98 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
mission, while practically the same in its object, was suflB-
ciently varied in methods to suit their distinctive gifts.
Enough has been said to indicate that monks and friars were
not simply different in degree, but also in kind. The monk
clung to his possessions, the friar had not where to lay his
head ; the monk lived apart from, the friar with, the people.
The self-abnegation of the latter set him free to spend and
be spent in their behalf. While he raised his voice against
their lusts and iniquities, he was alive to their distresses and
shared their hopes and fears. The story of the first appear-
ance of the friars in England during the year 1224 surpasses
romance in its fascinations. The land was just recovering
from the religious destitution consequent upon the Papal
interdict against King John when they entered it, delivering
as they went the message that neither birth, nor station, nor
riches, nor learning counted for aught, but rather goodness,
meekness, sympathy, and truth. Men could live above the
base and the vile, and find their highest selves while pursuing
their ordinary vocations. Such words fell upon hearts
longing for the truth, and the consistent conduct of the
preachers, seconded by their brief and intense sermons,
gained an eager response from all classes. The striking
resemblance between the earlier friars and the itinerants of
eighteenth century Methodism has been widely observed.
"St. Francis," comments Dr. Jessopp, "was the John Wesley
of the thirteenth century whom the Church did not cast
out." Both the friars and the circuit riders saw that the
Church was lifeless, that the parochial system had collapsed,
and that the only means of recovery was by a return to the
spirit and letter of the New Testament Evangel, in absolute,
unquestioning obedience to its teachings. This they essayed,
without disputing on useless issues, and unhindered by
superfluous dogmas or rules. But the parallel was incom-
plete in one salient particular. The friars were conformable
to the general policy of the Roman Church, and when John
XXII condemned the strict observance of the vows of their
JOHN WYCLIFFE 99
order they even burnt their brethren who clung to the tradi-
tions of St. Francis. The Methodist Churches, whether in
England, America, or elsewhere, have always been independ-
ent of any ecclesiastical authority outside their own borders.
Papal corruption had little to fear from the friars so long
as the Curia exercised control. When the Spiritual Francis-
cans developed their own principles and became the Fraticelli,
they drew upon themselves the censure of popes, of kings,
and of those who represented the conservative interests of
society. The lower minds among them surrendered those
ideals which had awed Europe into adoration, and sank
down into an organized hypocrisy. The loftier intellects,
who did not share St. Francis' contempt for learning,
were harassed, silenced, banished, or imprisoned. Fore-
most among such men was Roger Bacon, whose vast knowl-
edge and investigations in physics enabled him to confront
tradition and authority with facts demonstrated by experi-
ment. Time worked its deterioration on the friars' single-
ness of aim ; the exacting regimen of Assisi was honestly
believed by many of the saint's followers to be impossible of
fulfillment. Spiritual romanticism was followed by sudden
and violent disenchantment. The millennial vision vanished
after its collision with reality. The consequences were
such as might have been expected ; those who set up as
idealists while at the same time living on the naturalistic
level hastened the triumph of the forces against which they
professed resistance. "Whether there be prophecies," said
the Apostle, "they shall fail;" and those pseudo-prophets
who were unable to breathe the rarefied atmosphere of the
altitudes attained by seers of the past could no longer utter
oracles with any meaning. Yet "Love never faileth," and,
although their brotherhood was demoralized, their concord
broken by disloyalties and divisions, that wonderful example
of a life of holiness and service which at the first the friars
placed before the world has been a source of strength and
inspiration in every branch of the Church.
100 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
III
An expert in adopting other men's ideas, Wycliffe incor-
porated the friars' doctrine of voluntary poverty into his own
teaching and copied their methods of evangeUzation when he
sent out his poor preachers. The more devout among them
were always cherished by him, and he coveted their aid in his
revival of their neglected practices. Some responded, and
many students, failing to notice this, have been puzzled by
the presence of four friars as his advisers when he appeared
before the Convocation at St. Paul's. But, once he was
persuaded that the orders as a whole were lost to their
proper aspirations and no longer abstained from all pursuits
common to men that they might preach the Gospel of Jesus
in word and deed, he set them apart for contempt and scorn.
They were outside the pale of decency, reprobate and ab-
normally wicked. Nor was he alone in these accusations ;
all classes, save those which profited by the friars' lapse,
were a unit in protesting against their outrages, hypocrisies,
and lusts. Exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, they were
severely censured by the bishops who could not control
their excesses. The monastic orders eyed them askance as
successful rivals, and fiercely assailed them. But the general
and prolonged outcry against them and the nearly universal
hatred heaped upon their works and ways can only be ex-
plained by the fact that the offenses laid at their door were
substantially true. They had fallen to the lowest levels of
society, and the height of their first endeavors gave momen-
tum to the headlong descent.
They glossed the Scriptures to extenuate the crimes of male-
factors, and heard confessions and granted absolutions with
such flagrant disregard for the sanctity of the priestly xocsl-
tion that the Pope was driven to contemplate its withdrawal.
Freed from parochial responsibilities, they wandered where
they pleased, refusing with impudent nonchalance to face the
results of their evil deeds, and leaving behind them an in-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 101
creasing army of villains and outlaws shriven for a fee and
cleansed of all their sins. These sorry specimens of the
pardoning power were the despair of the secular priests and
of the bailiffs alike. The sober testimony of such dignitaries
as Archbishop Fitzralph supports what otherwise might
appear to be rhetorical exaggerations. He averred that
he had two thousand ^ such in a year " who are excommuni-
cated for willful robbery, arson, and similar acts, of whom
scarce forty come to me or my parish priests for confession,
preferring to confess to the begging friars who at once
absolve and admit them to communion." " Any accursed
swearer, extortioner, or adulterer," thundered Wy cliff e,
"will not be shriven by his own curate, but will go to a
flattering friar that will assoil him falsely for a little money
by the year, though he be not in a will to make restitution and
to leave his accursed sin." He branded them with the name
of Cain, spelt Caym, and taken from the initials of the Carmel-
ites, Austins, Jacobins or Dominicans, and Minorites or
Franciscans. Their farcical pretensions to religious over-
sight were satirized in the political ballads of the street, of
which the following stanza is a specimen :
"For had a man slain all his kin,
Go shrive him to a friar,
And for less then a pair of shoon
He will assoil him clean and soon."
Chaucer's optimism gave place to irony when he depicted
among the Canterbury pilgrims the monk "who had
but one fault, forgetfulness of the rules of his order, and an
inordinate love for hunting." The smooth-tongued friar;
the summoner, with his "fire-red pimpled face, narrow
eyes and loose morals ; the pardoner of beardless chin,
goggle eyes, dark yellow hair and squeaking voice," were an
unedifying group of clerical figures in the poet's narrative.
' The number varies : some authorities giving two thousand, others two
hundred.
102 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Many had degenerated into hucksters; "Charity," wrote
Langland, "hath turned chapman." Their profits were too
often spent in dissipation. The friars "knew the tavernes
well in every town." Popular songs imputed to them the
worst of crimes.
"All wickedness that men can tell
Reigneth them among,
There shall no soul have room in hell
Of friars there is such a throng."
Wycliffe did not accuse them of the grossest forms of im-
morality, but Langland, widely divergent from him in tem-
perament and outlook, did, and issued his tirade against the
mendicants, pardoners, summoners, and other such "cater-
pillars of the commonwealth." They were chiefly intent on
humoring the lewd and the godless and inducing them to open
their pockets after their harangues. Nor did they confine
their solicitations to the poor. Lady Meed, the incarnation
of illicit gain in "Piers Plowman," had scarcely arrived in
London when
"Came there a confessor coped as a friar
It: * * * * it
Then he absolved her soon, and sithen he said,
We have a window a-working will cost us full high,
Wouldst thou glaze that gable and grave therein thy neme,
Sure shall thy soul be heaven to have."
So notorious were the infamies of these parasites that the
authorities, and especially those of the Universities, were com-
pelled to rise against them. But the friars were aware of
their power as a useful organization to be employed in emer-
gencies by unscrupulous superiors. They also had a firm
hold upon the ignorant and the refractory, whose prejudices
and oft'enses they fostered or excused, and they could afford
to ignore the threatenings of the higher clergy. This defiant
attitude was emphasized by the alignment of the orders
in opposite political camps. The Franciscans naturally
JOHN WYCLIFFE 103
cast their weight on the side of the peasantry, from whose
ranks they were recruited ; while the Dominicans favored the
wealthier groups. Both alike were advocates of Papal
claims, emissaries of Rome, and defenders of the highest
sacerdotal views of the priesthood and of the Sacrament
of the Mass. They shared in the repression of intellectual
freedom at Oxford, and hunted down Wycliffe's preachers
wherever found.
He attributed their depravity to the inflated notions of
clerical power then prevalent, and the wanton abuse of its
prerogatives convinced him that it must be destroyed before
any permanent reform in the Church could be accom-
plished. As with many intellectual people, Wycliffe's in-
exorable reasoning was more consistent than his insight
was sure. He did not perceive that the real cause for
the breakdown of the Franciscan ideal was to be found
in the inevitable reaction which followed Francis ' premature
attempt to project his scheme on an agitated and wicked
age. No such spiritual conception could remain alive and
prosper unless the losses to its disciples from death and
disaffection were repaired by compensatory gains the ad-
verse conditions of the period did not supply. The saint
of Assisi was set on the immediate regeneration of men
and society after the pattern of his own transformation.
The less obvious and more patient processes which enable
the mass of mankind gradually to transcend the limita-
tions of evil in themselves and in their environment were
rejected for a frontal attack upon iniquity and selfish-
ness, which, while it was magnificent, was not war. It
may be remarked in passing that the decline of the orders
coincided with a desirable change in the fortunes of the
parochial priesthood. The seculars were no longer to be
ousted from their charges, nor deprived of their pastoral
standing, nor robbed of their income in order that some
fraternity might reap advantage, or an already wealthy
abbey be increasingly endowed. The founding of Merton,
104 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Queens, and New Colleges was the genesis of an educational
system intended to supply, among other requisites, a godly
and learned ministry for the churches of the nation. The
necessity for this waited long upon its fulfillment, but at any
rate the diversion had been made, and while the regulars
decreased the seculars grew in efficiency and serviceableness.
Moreover, the Black Death bettered the condition of the
survivors among the parochial clergy by increasing the de-
mand for their labors. The registers show that during and
directly after the pestilence, the number of priests instituted
to livings increased from thirty-seven to seventy-four in every
hundred cases. Notwithstanding episcopal edicts, their
stipends were raised commensurately, and in this and
other ways the disparity between them and the rest of the
clergy was reduced. Thus the Black Death did in one year
what the Ecumenical Council of Lyons had conspicuously
failed to accomplish, although summoned by a reforming
Pontiff, and prompted by such disciplinarians as St. Bona-
ventura and his fellow Franciscan, Eudes Rigaud of Rouen.^
From the moment that Wycliffe resented the sacerdotalism
which the friars embodied and abused, his severance from
Rome was simply a question of time. His hesitancies were
dismissed by the Great Schism which six years before his
death tore asunder the Papacy, and continued from 1378 to
1417. This event convulsed Christendom and gravely
affected the standing of the Holy See. The confusion
and distress which resulted from it were an impressive
tribute to the historical service of the Papacy as a cen-
tralizing and cohesive power. "For nearly eight hundred
years," says Dr. Workman, in an eloquent passage, "Rome
had stood, not merely for righteousness, but solidarity. Her
bishops were not only the vicars of God ; they were the sym-
bols and source of a brotherhood that would otherwise have
perished. Men remembered their services in the past ; how
they had tamed the barbarians, enforced law upon the lawless,
' G. C. C. Coulton : "Chaucer and his England" ; p. 305.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 105
preached the subordination of the individual to society,
curbed the lust and despotism of kings, held up ideals of
purity and truth in the darkest ages, saved the Church
from the triumph of the Cathari,^ maintained a unity of
faith and hope in the days when all creed was in danger of
disintegration." ^ Whether or not everything in this list of
notable deeds was Rome's actual work, or an appro-
priation of that of other agents, the people of the four-
teenth century neither knew nor cared. It sufficed for the
vast majority that they held her claims valid, and her Pon-
tiffs a divinely ordained succession. Any infringement upon
the integrity and rights of the throne of St. Peter was there-
fore a desecration of the controlling authority in civiliza-
tion. There had always existed in the Church a liberal and
legitimate trend of thought and effort, which was not at
variance with any vital principle of Catholicism, but, on
the contrary, essential to its functions as a unifying force.
The representatives of this trend knew that "if in a higher
world it is otherwise, yet here below to live is to change, and
to be perfect is to have changed often." Yet when sagacious
ecclesiastics, recognizing that the human element in the
Church stood ever in need of correction and readjustment,
made any overtures for reform, a conflict was invariably
precipitated, in which the conservatives, with the Vati-
1 The Cathari, also known as Paulicians, Albigenses, Bulgarians, Mani-
cheans, etc., were a widely scattered sect both in the East and the West.
They believed in the existence of two Gods, one good, the other evil, both
eternal, though as a rule they subordinated the evil to the good ; that Satan
inspired certain parts of the Old Testament, and was the ruler of this world,
which was spiritual, not material ; that all men would finally be saved,
but that those dying unreconciled to God through Christ must return to
earth for a further term of imprisonment in the flesh, either in a human or
an animal body. They fell into two well-marked divisions: the Cate-
chumens or BeUevers, and the Perfect, who had received the gift of the
Paraclete. The latter, which included women, formed the priesthood and
controlled the Church. The influence of the Cathari on Christendom was
enormous. To counteract it Innocent III instituted his crusades, and celi-
bacy was finally imposed on the clergy ; the great mendicant orders and
the sacrament of Extreme Unction were also evolved by way of competing
with the teachings and practices of the sect.
« "The Dawn of the Reformation" ; Vol. I, p. 12.
106 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
can at their head, generally won an easy victory. Ger-
son's plea for a constitutional Papacy deriving its authority
from conciliar representation, or the plan advocated by
Grosseteste, who asked that methods of raising revenue should
be reformed and a stricter discipline enforced, received
scarcely less rebuke from Rome than the revolutionary pro-
posals made by Marsiglio and Wycliffe. The outward
unity of Christendom was finally shattered, and the re-
proach incurred by the Holy See for its part in the calamity
was the more deserved, because this was hastened by the
resistance of the Popes to human progress and by their
ambition for temporal sovereignty. The very raison d'etre
of the Papacy consisted in its being the divinely appointed
trustee of the legacy of faith and morals bequeathed to
mankind by Christ. The fidelity and energy with which
this treasure should have been guarded were squandered on
earthly affairs, and struggles for political ascendency.
Further, in demolishing the Holy Roman Empire the Pa-
pacy irretrievably damaged its own edifice. Conjoined, the
two powers were supreme because they were complementary ;
separated, each was deprived of the federation of secular
and ecclesiastical authority which had been a mutual sup-
port in their subjection of European tribes and kindreds.
Their centripetal forces were spent in what was really a
civil war ; Gregory IX and Innocent IV even went to
the length of proclaiming their conflict with the Em-
peror Frederic II a crusade, and, on that assumption,
demanded funds from the Church and the faithful. The
struggle ended in the defeat of the Emperor, once known as
the "wonder of Europe," a ruler of high ideals and pursuits.
He died in the summer of 1250, leaving many projects
unfulfilled ; on the subsequent ruin of his house, the Cape-
tians strengthened their dynasty in France and the English
monarchy became a still more essential part of that nation.
Rome discovered, too late, the nemesis of her triumph over
the Empire in the widespread conviction, which she could
JOHN WYCLIFFE 107
not shake, that the building up of separate nationaUties
was the future task of statesmen and the goal of history.
Thus a deadly blow was inflicted upon her prestige by those
results which she had imagined would increase it.
There was nothing novel in the idea of national automony,
though it had long been dormant when the dissolution of the
Holy Roman Empire and the passing of the medieval prin-
ciple of internationalism reawakened it and made possible
its realization. The Popes asserted anew their claim to
authority, only to find that the moral grounds on which the
Papacy originally rested its case were no longer tenable
and that the lower methods of diplomacy and of war
were their only resources. Rulers and peoples were not
disposed to readmit spiritual prerogatives or bow to
clerical control without the closest scrutiny, and, at times,
open defiance. That astute and unscrupulous politician,
Boniface VIII, endeavored to remove this antagonism, but he
could not depend, as did his predecessors, upon the Euro-
pean princes as his feudatories and the instruments of his
will. Where compulsion was unavailing, negotiation was
the last resort ; by its employment of artifice and strategy
the Papacy lowered itself to the level of surrounding gov-
ernments, and incurred reprisals that were a contradiction
of its theories of overlordship. To make confusion worse
confounded Boniface plunged into a quarrel with Philip the
Fair of France which ended in the defeat and capture of the
Pontiff, who was sent to Rome as a hostage, where he was
imprisoned by the Orsini in the Vatican, until, on October the
eleventh, 1303, death mercifully released him from further
humiliation. Such a tragedy had not been known since the
fall of Rome ; the spiritual sovereignty of Christendom had
become a mere adjunct in the administration of one among a
group of developing states. The successor of Boniface like-
wise perished with mysterious suddenness, and the choice
of the next Papal candidate was dictated by Philip, who
forced the new Pope to give pledges that he would revise the
108 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Vatican's policy in harmony with the king's wishes. This
infamous betrayer of his Pontificate, Clement V, was born a
subject of Edward I in or about the year 1264. He became
Archbishop of Bordeaux, and was crowned Pope at Lyons
on November 14, 1305.
After his elevation to the throne of Peter, Clement peremp-
torily refused to reside in Rome, nor did he visit the capital
of Christendom during his sovereignty. In 1309, consist-
ently with the deliberate exploitation of the Holy See by the
French Court, he transferred its seat to Avignon. The act
was worse than a blunder, it was a crime. The Pope and
Rome were inseparably one, a necessary unity for the religious
symbolism which was cosmopolitan, not national, and still less
sectional ; intelligible to all, understood by all. Their un-
natural separation startled and repelled Catholics of every
land ; it chilled the heart and numbed the intelligence of
those who ardently cherished divine things.
Avignon is separated from the rest of the world by the
legends and histories that haunt its embattled walls and
thirty-nine towers. Innocent IV built these fortifications,
whose strength stayed for a time the prowess of Bertrand
du Guesclin, the foremost warrior of fourteenth century
France. In Avignon, Petrarch is said to have looked
on Laura for the first time, and the city still claims her
tomb. Along its streets rode the beautiful Queen Jeanne
of Naples, attended by her courtiers, when she came to
answer for the murder of her husband, and to sell the
place to Clement VI for eighty thousand gold florins.
Rienzi also found his way here, shadowed by his approaching
fate. The Palace of the Popes, a sanctuary and a fortress,
is enthroned on the Roches des Domes, three hundred feet
above the Rhone, and in its hall of audience the politics of
Europe centered for a century and a half. The Court of
Avignon during this period was a plague-spot of wholesale
bribery, simony, and debauchery, Petrarch, whose language
should be received with some reservation, described the gloomy
JOHN WYCLIFFE 109
stronghold as " the city of the Captivity, the common
sink of all vices, false guilt-laden Babylon, the forge of lies,
the horrible prison, the hell upon earth." Beyond ques-
tion its villainies saddened the souls of believers and stim-
ulated the antagonism in which Wy cliff e figured. The
morale of the Church was impaired by the sight of the
Pontiff acting as the ally of France, and subjected by French
statesmen, to their schemes for dominating the continent.
The tribunal which had been the court of arbitration for
Western Christianity, and whose judgments, as the one un-
trammeled and absolute authority above the control or
influence of secular states, had been dispensed with so even
a hand as to command general approval, now became a
hissing and a byu^ord.
In England dissatisfaction slowly passed into open hos-
tility. The reasons were evident : not only was any measure
which ran counter to French interests promptly suppressed,
but these interests were aided and abetted by Papal decrees.
Clement V and his brother supplied the French army with
several millions of pounds sterling during the wars of
France with the island kingdom, which itself had previously
contributed to the Papal exchequer a large part of the
grant. The treacherous deed filled England's cup of bitter-
ness to overflowing; it was typical of the conscienceless
extortions wrung under every conceivable pretext from
all regions within the Papal jurisdiction. The end of such
a course could be nothing short of the degradation of the
Papacy, the ruin of its standing and authority. And
so the event proved. "The Church is pale," lamented
Catherine of Sienna, " through loss of blood drained from her
by insatiable devourers."
The suicidal proceeding entered its last phase in the
Schism, when two rival Popes reviled and excommunicated
each other with every insult and calumny unheeding
anger could evoke. They were compared by Wycliffe to
hungry dogs snarling over one bone. After more than
110 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
seventy years of the Avignon Papacy, Gregory XI returned
to Rome in the winter of 1376-1377, reluctantly taking this
step after repeated solicitations from St. Catherine, whose
remarkable letters to the Pontiff on various occasions were
replete with literary charm and spiritual fervor. He found
the city a desolation and the Lateran Palace uninhabitable ;
an ominous emblem of the irreparable havoc which had been
wrought upon the Holy See itself.
This brief summary of the causes and consequences of the
collapse of Romanism, as conceived by Hildebrand and real-
ized in part by Innocent III, leaves one occupied with con-
jectures upon what might have been the future of Christen-
dom if the warnings of Dante, the foremost religious genius of
the last millennium, had been effectual. His " Divina Com-
media" is the grandest medieval memorial of a completely
enfranchised soul, and the chief token of its power. Indi-
vidual as his work is, it sets forth a universal system, in which
he passes beyond the farthest boundaries of man's mind.
The great poet sorrowed over the destruction of the Empire
and the lost unity of the Church which had been the nexus of
the nations. He foresaw that without some auspicious inter-
vention further calamities would ensue. The conclusions of
saints of happier times, such as St. Bernard, St. Victor, and
St. Thomas, haunted his remembrance. He heard the fail-
ings of the Church on earth recounted in the courts above ;
the splendors of Paradise grew dim while St. Peter denounced
the sins of those who had disgraced the Holy See. But
notwithstanding Dante's cyclonic bursts of wrath against
her iniquities, Rome remained for him the center of the
world and the hope of the race. The idea of a supreme
divine development in which human institutions, however
holy, were but the foam on the wave, did not relieve his
distress. He knew only the things of the past; salvation
from the disasters he mourned lay, not in the womb of the
future, but in the restoration of a departed authority whose
grandeur comported with the notions of his own mind*
JOHN WYCLIFFE 111
Believing this he turned to the reconstituted Church and
Empire as the only source and anchorage of humanity.
The results he presaged came in full measure, pressed
down and running over. The Papacy, which had cowed
Abailard, silenced the speculations of Arnold of Brescia, and
at every hazard held fast to the orthodox faith, itself fell a
victim to the heresies of the Renaissance. Emerging from
the French Captivity crippled and shorn, it became degraded
even in its own eyes, and the refined sensualism of the
later Pontiffs was only purged away by the defection of
the half of Christendom, The wounds then inflicted have
not been healed ; the unity and the universality lost under
Boniface VIII and Clement V have not been recovered, nor
has the Holy See since resumed its overlordship of the Euro-
pean nations. Nevertheless, though sorely pressed on many
sides, and sadly mutilated, it regained the old severe and
rigid method, and continued to serve as a great reservoir
of influences and powers which have steadily contributed to
the organization of modern society.
The splendid dream of Hildebrand, like that of St. Francis,
was foredoomed for lack of elasticity. When realized, it
was defeated by the expanding life of Christian States which
the Church knew better how to evolve than to control.
Beneath the moral turpitude, the exodus to Avignon,
the treacheries, grievances, complaints, and wars, lay the
Papacy's fundamental error: its slowness to perceive that
feudalism in the fourteenth century had begun to die and
was no longer possible as an organic system. The higher
civilization which supplanted it could not be permanently re-
strained by the lower. While the northern peoples increased
in vitality and ethical superiority, the Holy See lost its
breadth of sympathy and was unconsciously narrowed by
Latin traits and tendencies. It vainly trusted in the glamour
of outward rank and circumstance ; in the unyielding moni-
tions of a hierarchy, and in the stilted formulae with which it
expressed the major truths of life and faith. These had little
112 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
meaning for the more powerful communities which eventually
gained supremacy in Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Great
Britain and her colonies of the New World. Rome's tra-
ditional arguments, which her wisest children would have
modified, were not sufficiently strong to support a position
rendered patently anomalous by the growth of knowledge
and freedom. The outcome was far too complex and exten-
sive for its various aspects to be characterized in a phrase.
The mischievous result for the Holy See was the loss of its
genuine catholicity. On the European continent the anarchy
and war which followed offset the otherwise notable advan-
tages of release from Roman supremacy.
IV
While Sudbury, Courtenay, and their fellow bishops were
anxiously pondering how to obey the Pope without offending
the English people, Wycliffe escaped scot free. His first
appearance in public affairs after the proceedings connected
with the Papal bulls of condemnation was in the autumn
Parliament of 1378. John of Gaunt had violated the sanc-
tuary at Westminster by sending a band of armed men to
seize two knights who had taken refuge there, one of whom
was slain in the melee which ensued. Wycliffe was requested
to write a defense of the Duke's high-handed action ; he re-
sponded with a state paper which is still preserved and
incorporated in his treatise "De Ecclesia, " As an argu-
ment against the abuse of such privileges the document
is creditable enough, but it was not applicable to the case in
question. The result was that it gave color to the accusation
that Wycliffe was a hireling of the Lancastrian party, and
neither helped Gaunt nor increased its author's reputation.
Wycliffe occupied a far stronger position when he resumed
with unabated vigor his philippic against theCsesarean clergy.
His ecclesiastical protestantism voiced a common feehng of
discontent. Its political elements contained the germinal
JOHN WYCLIFFE 113
conceptions of modern as substituted for medieval ideas of
man and society, and in giving them utterance Wycliffe
confirmed his position as a leader of the nation. The
luxurious residences and appointments of the wealthier prel-
ates savored of the devil ; their flourishing estates were a
scandal to the service of Him who had said, " My kingdom is
not of this world"; the exactions and sinecures of the hier-
archies and the orders were derogatory to the honor of God.
Here he halted before assailing the Papacy, restrained by the
reflection that it was the animating principle of the Church
and the focus of her external forms. Yet the rift between
him and the Holy See was made in the first instance by
logical deductions from his own theories on lordship and its
counterpart in service, which bore heavily upon the Papal
claims. Then came the Schism, which demanded force
instead of logic, and certainly could not be met by Wycliffe's
fixed faith in the virtues of argumentative persuasion.
In this change of sentiment toward the Pontiffs the
antithesis of Church and State was implicated, and to such
opposition as his the genesis of the Reformation must be
ascribed. Yet he earnestly desired the preservation of the
Holy See, believing that its dignity and prestige were as
essential to the stability of Christendom as its entangle-
ment with matters temporal was subversive of that end.
He contended that the spheres of temporal and spiritual
sovereignty were necessarily separate and distinct, that the
Church should neither influence politically nor be influenced
by the secular power.
Impelled by these and similar arguments he slowly drifted
from his loyalty to the Papacy. Prior to 1378 he had
acknowledged its governance, although denying its uncon-
ditional plenary power. As late as that same year he hailed
the election of Urban VI with a burst of approbation :
" Praised be the Lord who has given to our Church in the days
of her pilgrimage a Catholic head, an evangelical man, who,
in reforming the Church that it may live in accordance with
114 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the laws of Christ, begins in due order with himself and his
own household, so from his works we believe that he is our
own Christian head." Even after the Schism, Urban was
still, in Wycliffe's words, "our Pope." But the death of
Gregory XI at Rome changed all this. His successor had to
be elected there, and the violence of the populace so alarmed
the Conclave that to appease it they chose Urban, an Italian
by birth. Five months later he outwitted the French repre-
sentation in the College and entrenched himself in power by
nominating twenty-eight new Cardinals, a majority sufficient
to end the Galilean control of the Curia. At this turn of
events the malcontents elected their anti-pope, Robert of
Geneva, who assumed the title of Clement VII, and was ulti-
mately deposed by the Council of Constance. Thus the
Curia itself destroyed the unity of the Church and created
that incipient revolt which ended in the upheaval of the
sixteenth century. The conduct of Urban and Clement in
their violent outbursts against each other soon quenched
Wycliffe's praise of the former claimant. Both became for
him as "crows resting on carrion," and he advised that they
should be discarded, since they had "little in common with
the Church of the Holy God." The description was justified ;
Urban, a man of meager cultivation and harsh manners,
behaved with the ferocity of a savage, and Clement, although
less cruel by nature, was conspicuously deficient in moral
character. Selfish oligarchies had met their usual fate, and,
while Christian people looked on, helpless and depressed,
both Popes pursued a tumultuous course of personal ven-
geance, wherein tortures, imprisonments, assassinations, and
wars occurred which the Cardinals themselves endeavored
to arrest.
Neutrality was impossible, and Wycliffe's detestation
extended beyond the rival disputants to the system which
they were tearing to pieces. He publicly denounced the
Papacy as accursed in root and branch, employing epithets
which echoed the fury that raged at Rome and Avignon.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 115
"Christ," said he, "has begun to help us graciously in that
he has cloven the head of Antichrist and made the one part
fight against the other." The primacy of St. Peter could
not be proved ; the claims based upon it were mythical ;
Papal infallibility and the right to canonize or excommunicate
were wicked delusions. He placed upon the Curia the onus of
blame for the oppression, immorality, strife, and misgovern-
ment that disgraced the Papal court and administration,
and referred to the Pope himself as an apostate to venerate
whom was blasphemous idolatry. While he traced the source
of these grievous misdoings to the Pontiffs, he asserted that
their poison had spread throughout the ecclesiasticism they
personified. The " twelve daughters of the diabolical leech"
were found in the hierarchical grades of the clergy, beginning
with the Cardinals, and ending with the doorkeepers who did
their bidding. None had scriptural warranty, and least of
all those of the higher ranks, who should be plucked out of
the seats they defiled. The pastoral offices were safer in
the keeping of simple and godly clerks than in that of learned
ingrates, and, unless such virtuous men were installed and
the Church purged of crafty and ambitious worldlings who
had so long been her woe, she could not be restored to her
ancient purity and service. It is difficult to determine
how much of this objurgation originated with Wycliffe, as
distinguished from that attributed to him. Current con-
troversial literature abounded with references to Antichrist,
a mysterious, awful being who was regarded as the sum of
diabolical iniquity, whose name was employed by all and
sundry to heighten their vilification of opponents. Many
of the pamphlets then issued have been confused with
the writings of Wycliffe, and, later, of Hus. It is fairly
certain that Wycliffe did not object to the Holy See so long
as it was invested with its essential qualifications. Nor can
his adverse attitude be ascribed to the removal of the
Papal Court to Avignon, an event which took place before
he was born. His abhorrence arose from the disgrace of
116 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
rival successors of St. Peter frantically issuing excommuni-
cations and raising armies against each other. This prodi-
gious evil infected the entire Church, and, so far as Wycliffe
was involved, after 1378, the memorable year in his
career, he had no dealings with Rome, except as an open
adversary.
His doctrine of the Church, when freed from the scholastic
abstractions which mystified it, may be divided into three
parts : the Church triumphant, the Church militant, and
the Church "asleep in Purgatory." The second of these,
which alone concerns us, he defined as consisting exclusively
of those who were predestined to salvation. This assign-
ment was so arbitrary that the Pope "wots not whether he
be of the Church or whether he be a limb of the fiend."
The number of the elect was entirely an allocation of the
Divine Will, and their indissoluble spiritual union did not
require the countenance of hierarchies, nor that of the " sects "
of monks, friars, and priests. He showed here, as elsewhere,
the deep distrust of human arrangements which he seems to
have inherited from Ockham, carrying it to the extent of
complete disorganization. Not only might Pope and Cardi-
nals be set aside, but he further asserted that he could im-
agine a state of society in which the Church should consist
solely of the laity. The law of the Gospel, as her sufficient
and absolute rule, rendered her independent of such adventi-
tious aids as masses, indulgences, penances, or any other in-
ventions of spurious sacerdotalism. He found it impossible
to defend his statements by Christian tradition or by the
canon law, and his unhistorical procedure was really retro-
grade. But, though he did not see the direction in which
the Church shoukl be guided, he did see that the hierarchical
system which had hitherto commanded his assent had ended
in disgrace and failure. And he expressed the national
instinct in his approach towards that evangelic-alism which
has since largely incorporated the religious life of English-
men and Americans. He further contended that the reign-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 117
ing monarch should be the head of Christ's commonwealth,
popes and bishops being subjected to him. This frankly
Erastian doctrine could scarcely have withstood the reasons
adduced against it from the encounter of Louis the Fair of
France with Boniface VIII and Clement V, wherein French
treachery was more to be dreaded than German truculence.
What might have been its consequences during Edward the
Third's later period, when he was in his dotage and John of
Gaunt and Alice Ferrers distributed the patronage of the
Crown, or again, during the troubled years of Richard II,
may be surmised from the robberies and confiscations which
were afterwards perpetrated in the reign of Henry VIII.
The way is now clear to discuss Wycliffe's teachings upon
Transubstantiation, in which he advanced from his opposi-
tion against the Papal power to that indictment of all sacer-
dotalism and of its visible evidence in the Mass which exposed
him to the definite accusation of heresy and completely
separated him from Catholicism. In the summer of 1381 he
first publicly denied that the elements of the altar suffered
any material change by virtue of the words of consecration,
an avowal which filled his closing years with agitation and
eventually cost him the support of the monarchy, the Lan-
castrian party, and the University. Here follows a survey of
the chief landmarks in the history of the dogma he withstood
at such risk. The term Transubstantiation originally occurs
in a treatise of the eleventh century, by Hildebert de Savar-
din of Tours, or Le Mans, although the ideas which the term
conveys were familiar at a much earlier date, and arose out
of the disputation concerning the Eucharist that extended
from the ninth to the eleventh century. During this era
theologians endeavored to place the holy mystery of the
Christian faith upon a philosophical basis. In 844 the learned
monk Radbertus Paschasius published a monograph on the
"Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ," which defined
the dogma more clearly and was instrumental in its develop-
ment. As Radbertus interpreted it, the bread and wine
118 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
became internally changed into the veritable flesh and blood
of the Lord's actual Body. Against this the Benedictine
monk Ratramnus contended that the consecrated wafer was
simply a memorial or mystery of the spiritual body existing
under the vail of the material, but he failed to secure any
general agreement with his conception. Materialistic ideas
of the Eucharist found such favor that when Berengarius of
Tours, who lived from 998 to 1088, declared against them,
asserting that the Real Presence was only spiritually con-
ceived and received, the Lateran Council of 1059 forced him,
under threat of death, to recant the heresy. One of its indi-
rect consequences was the remarkable statement of Guitmund
of Aversa, that the entire Person of the Divine Redeemer was
present in every particle of the associated elements. This
St. Thomas subsequently amplified into the dogma that the
Blood was contained in the consecrated wafer, and therefore
the cup could properly be withheld from the laity. Tran-
substantiation was treated by Lanfranc from the standpoint
of the Realists, who sought to refine the coarse materialism
in which it was set by the Nominalists. He emphasized the
distinction between the universal substance held to be present
in any particular thing included under it, and those accidents
or sensible properties which appeared only when the pure
form clothed itself in matter. Accordingly, by the act of
consecration the substance of the elements was changed
while the sensible properties remained the same. It is clear
from this reasoning how the Roman Catholic belief in the
Mass came to be based upon what was held to be apostolic
practice, and also that later Realism supplied its philosophi-
cal ground.^ The orthodox standard was officially an-
nounced by the Church at the Fourth Lateran Council, in
1215, which adopted the term Transubstantiation as the
expression of New Testament teaching. The summary of
that teaching, quoted here from Roman Catholic sources,
may be stated as follows : Christ is really and truly present
• See Catholic Encyclopaedia : Article on Eucharist ; p. 577.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 119
in the Holy Eucharist, under the appearances of bread and
wine, so that His real Body and Blood, His Soul, and His
Divinity are present. The living Christ is on the altar, or in
the consecrated wafer. The change that takes place at the
moment and by the act of consecration is Transubstantia-
tion ; a change whereby the substance of the bread and wine
passes over into the substance of Christ, who, under that form
of bread and wine, becomes and remains present so long as the
accidents remain uncorrupted.^
This doctrine had been gradually accepted in the Western
Church, tacitly held for more than five centuries, and for-
mally and authoritatively enunciated for three. Fortified
by the learning of the Schoolmen, it gradually became the
citadel of priestly power, which worked a daily miracle
before the adoring faith of God's believing children. In the
Sacrifice of the Altar they found the offering of Supreme
Love, and in the solemn worship that surrounded it the peace,
rest, and meditation belonging to eternal realities thus divined
and appropriated. From his youth Wy cliff e himself had
been taught to revere the sacred Ordinance, and, resolute
innovator though he was, its hold upon him caused him to
place it above the remaining Sacraments as the highest and
most honorable of all. He was convinced that no other
had so sure a guarantee in Holy Scripture. It was not indeed
the Sacrament itself, but rather the doctrine of the change
of substance, that aroused his misgivings. His contribution
to Protestant theology under this head did not go beyond the
destruction of that theory ; it was left to Hus to deal with
the denial of the cup to the laity, and to Luther to contend
against the sacrificial feature of the Mass. For a long time
Wycliffe accepted the interpretation of the changing sub-
stance, and there are no hints in his earlier writings of
any doubt concerning it. On the contrary, he expressly
' See Catholic Encyclopaedia : Article on Transubstantiation ; p. 579.
Also " Hierxirgia " by Dr. Rock, Chapter I, sections 3 and 4, and Chapter
II, section 1.
120 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
stated in the "De Dominio Civili" that our Lord, there
described as the eternal Prophet, Priest, and King, "was a
Priest when in the Supper He made His own Body." The
clear inferences of this phrase were twofold : first, that the
words of Christ effected the miracle; and again, that the
officiating priest, who stood in the apostolical succession,
brought it to pass by virtue of the words of consecration
which he repeated, and not by his own authority. The belief
that the Body of Christ was present under the accidents of
bread and wine was then practically universal, and this is
precisely the meaning of the dogma as it is now held.
Beneath all his deviations Wycliffe was very much of the
Schoolman, and to the last his theological positions were
conditioned by his propensity for metaphysical expressions.
Hence his denial of Transubstantiation was directly related
to the theory that annihilation was a fiction, for " it was not
in the power, because not in the nature of God to annihilate
anything." This adherence to philosophical theories in
theological discussion, together with his contempt for sacer-
dotalism and his painful experiences with the superior clergy
and the mendicants, helps to explain his rejection of the
orthodox view of the Sacrament. At the same time he was
eager to validate and safeguard the Ordinance in every
possible way, but his study of the Scriptures and of the
earlier worship of the Church convinced him that the weight
of evidence was against its more recent developments.
According to Wy cliff e, these were unknown to the doctors
of the early Church ; medieval sophistry had supplanted
Biblical and patristic teachings, and this usurpation had
taken place three hundred years previously, when "Satan
was unbound for a millennium." The only theories of the
Eucharist he knew at his transitional moment were those of
Aquinas, already mentioned, and of Scotus, who, on the basis
of his doctrine of the omnipotent and unconditioned will of
the Deity, formed the conception that accidents existed inde-
pendently of their substance. If this was so, it followed that
JOHN WYCLIFFE 121
the bread and wine existed independently of the Body of
Christ. Wy cliff e urged in refutation that accidents always
presupposed substance, and that to argue otherwise was to
indulge a nonsensical plea which overthrew the very nature of
the Sacrament. He challenged the defenders of the Mass to
define what was properly the element which remained after
consecration ; one replied, quantity ; another, quality ; a
third, nothing. Such disagreement demonstrated the unten-
ableness of their doctrine, and he capped his opposition with
the words of the Gospel : " A kingdom divided against itself
cannot stand." Even if such a miracle as they claimed were
possible, it was superfluous, for why should bread be anni-
hilated in order that Christ's Body may be present ? When a
man became a lord or prelate, he remained the same being,
notwithstanding his higher rank. So it was with Christ.
He did not cease to be God because he became man. In like
manner the substance of the consecrated wafer was not
destroyed, it was promoted to higher uses.'^
The Reformer's reasonings showed the weakness of con-
troversy; they were not always consistent, and there are
indications that he had at one time sought a metaphysical
interpretation which could satisfy the demands of his
mind, while conserving his reverence for the Eucharist.
In his expositions of its nature he did not allow his mili-
tancy to carry him beyond due bounds, nor did he forfeit
that refined devotion which is for religion what the per-
fume is for the rose. Theologically he held that the bread
and wine were the Body and Blood of Christ, for Christ
had so ordained them at the Last Supper; the words of
institution contained in the Gospel were conclusive on that
point. But how the Lord of the Feast was concealed in the
elements he could not explain, and sometimes lost himself
while endeavoring to do so. He saw an analogy between the
Person of Jesus Christ, as being neither solely Creator, nor
solely creature, and the bread of the altar which was both
* G. V. Lechler : " Wycliffe and his English Precursors " ; p. 347.
122 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
earthly and heavenly; real bread, and at the same time,
the real Body. The Real Presence was a reality, occa-
sioned by the words of consecration, which were necessary
for the supernormal change. The bread and wine remained
such, but also became in verity the Body and Blood of the
Redeemer. Not that the glorified Body of Christ descended
from Paradise to enter the elements : He was present in an
imponderable and intangible manner, as the soul of man was
present in his body. "The Sacrament of the altar, " he said,
" is the Body of Christ in the form of bread — bread in a
natural manner, and Body in a sacramental manner," and
the communicant spiritually perceived and handled the Lord's
Flesh and Blood thus concealed in the Host. Its grace and
blessing depended upon the faith of the recipient, and a nice
distinction was drawn between the corporeal and spiritual
taste of the consecrated elements.^ These conclusions, while
differing in important details, are closely allied to the Lu-
theran theory of Consubstantiation.
The abuses connected with the worship of the Altar were
condemned by Wycliffe, whose resentment was particularly
aroused against the clergy's deliberate use of the Mass to
increase their power and importance in the eyes of the simple.
" Can a creature," he demanded, " give being to his Creator ? "
Some who pretended to do so, he continued, were priests of
Baal, not of Christ. But though he described their idea of the
Mass as a mischievous fable, he did not correctly estimate its
place in the medieval Church as the keystone of her doctrinal
system and the secret of her organic life. The bishops pro-
tested that were it modified or relinquished, the faith and
obedience of communicants would be subverted, a statement
which is partly justified by the fact that the hold of clericalism
is strongest to-day where a high doctrine of the Eucharist is
accepted. This assertion is made with the knowledge that
there are in Catholicism not less than four permissible ex-
« G. V. Lechler : "Wycliffe and his English Precursors" ; pp. 332-361.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 123
planations of the dogma, upon which there has been as yet no
authoritative decision.
The uproar following Wycliffe's revolt showed how deeply
entrenched the Mass was in the hearts of believers. As
early as 1380 Chancellor Berton and a council of twelve
members condemned his theses, and forbade the Reformer
to lecture at the University. John of Gaunt hurried to
Oxford and besought his advocate not to meddle with
the ark of the Lord. The government withdrew its patron-
age from him, and his friends, with a few exceptions, left
him to encounter the hurricane alone. It was a triumphal
hour for Courtenay, when, as it seemed, the results of Wyc-
liffe's gigantic labors had instantaneously vanished. Even
at this juncture he might have retracted and yielded to
Gaunt's importunities, sacrificing conviction to personal gain
and remaining the eminent doctor and teacher, and the
chosen advisor of princes. There is little doubt that the
hierarchy would have welcomed and rewarded the sub-
mission of its most gifted and formidable foe. But such
was not the mettle of the man who, whatever his failures
and shortcomings, now turned his back upon the temptations
of place and power. He petitioned the throne that his teach-
ings should be publicly expounded in the churches of the
nation, and continued, undismayed, his resolute efforts in
behalf of what he believed to be the truth of God.
CHAPTER IV
PRINCES AND PEOPLE
125
Once more the Chxirch is seized with sudden fear,
And at her call is Wyclif disinhumed :
Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed
And flung into the brook that travels near ;
Forthwith, that ancient Voice, which Streams can hear,
Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind.
Though seldom heard by busy human-kind) —
"As thou these ashes, little Brook ! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst
An emblem yields to friends and enemies
How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."
Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets.
126
CHAPTER IV
PRINCES AND PEOPLE
Political life of England in the fourteenth century — The wars
with France — The Black Prince — Edward III — John of Gaunt —
Social conditions in England — The Black Death and its effects —
Peasants' Revolt of 1381 — Wycliffe accused of compUcity — The
Earthquake Council — Wycliffe's translation of the Scriptures — Pur-
vey's version — Wycliffe's Poor Priests — Trialogus — Opus Evangeli-
cum — Cruciata — Wycliffe cited before Urban in 1384, — Illness and
death — Summary of his character.
The history of religion in England during the fourteenth
century is largely a record of debates and differences which
affected the political status of ecclesiasticism. Yet these
controversies and Wycliffe's part in them were but one phase
of the life of the commonwealth. The main currents of
his thought and action can be best ascertained and their
background surveyed by a reference to the fate which that
generation endured in peace, in war, and above all in the
pestilences which came to stay for the next four centuries,
and caused unparalleled suffering throughout Europe. The
one hundred and seventy-eight years which elapsed between
the death of the first Edward and the accession of Henry VH
were distracted by calamity and turmoil at home, by initial
victory and ultimate defeat to English arms abroad. The
Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt and the campaigns in
France were the events of this period which proved to be most
serious and lasting in their consequences. The early tri-
umphs over the French revealed to European chivalry the
prowess of Edward the Third's redoubtable infantry and the
archers and knifemen of Wales, who, under his strategy,
127
128 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
hurled back the attack of the French knighthood at Crecy in
1346, and, though four times outnumbered, remained the
masters of the field. Ten years later, the Black Prince,
having already fought as a lad of fourteen under his father's
eye at Crecy, won a still more astounding success behind the
vineyards of Poitiers, where the French King John, surnamed
the Good, was taken prisoner. But these adventures proved
as useless as they were brilliant ; they inflamed that military
arrogance which sought occasions for a quarrel ; their mone-
tary cost increased by leaps and bounds ; and the baronage,
which seldom vailed its crest to the French foe, could not
long endure the restraints of domestic p>eace. The scions of
the aristocracy, who respected little except physical force,
fell foul of one another, and were finally exterminated in the
ferocious Wars of the Roses.
The treaty of Bretigny, confirmed on October 26, 1360, by
which France ceded nearly one third of her territory to Eng-
land, ended the first stage of the Hundred Years' War. The
rewards of battle enriched the cities and castles of Edward's
Kingdom, and his fiftieth birthday was kept with the pomp
befitting so unexampled a conquest. His fame rang in
all men's ears; no other ruler of the day could equal
the regalities of the chief prince of Christendom, con-
trasted as they were with the distress and humiliation of
his defeated foes. For the nonce all went merrily, and
the royal court was the scene of stately ceremonials and
sumptuous feastings. At this apex of prosperity, when a
moribund phase reasserted itself, deeds of valor and knightly
defiance were commemorated in the Round Tower at
Windsor, where the Order of the Garter was established
in the winter of 1347, shortly after the king's return from
France.
But the suffering and discontent of the people were in
glaring contrast with the artificial exuberance of their rulers.
The laborers of six surrounding counties were impressed to
build Edward's Tower, and his Order was instituted when
JOHN WYCLIPFE 129
nearly every household in the land lay stricken by the Plague.
The sycophantic yet observant Froissart gave his readers
glimpses of an impending catastrophe. He complained that all
was not well with England. Notwithstanding the intoxica-
tion of militarism, the plain folk were vindictive, disloyal
toward their superiors, and disdainful of foreigners. A
nearer view than Froissart's would have recognized that the
disaffection, which began as early as 1349, was due to ex-
orbitant taxation, to other economic and political evils, and
to the incessant demand for fresh levies to defend the French
possessions of the Crown. As an aftermath of these excesses
came the useless expedition of February, 1367, when the
Black Prince and his troops marched through the snowy
defiles of the Pyrenees and restored Pedro III to the throne
of Castile. This gallant campaign cost the Prince his
health and bankrupted his exchequer, while the monarch
who gained a temporary advantage from it was utterly
unworthy of its sacrifices. The Prince's Duchy of Aqui-
taine rose in rebellion against the financial measures
necessary to discharge his huge indebtedness. In September,
1370, he turned upon the city of Limoges, where the insurrec-
tion centered, and stormed and sacked it with a savagery
that left a dark stain upon his memory. The following
spring he returned home to languish for six years in the grip
of a mysterious malady which defied the primitive remedies
then in vogue, and was aggravated by his despair over the
ruin of the Plantagenet sovereignty in France. His father,
now fast approaching senility, had transferred the manage-
ment of state affairs to his second son, John of Gaunt, who
ruled by the fear rather than the affection of the realm.
Gaunt was unjustly suspected by his brother of designs
upon the throne, and these suspicions were heightened by
stories of favoritism, corruption, and lawlessness brought to the
invalided Prince at Kennington Palace. The nation now
knew that its beloved hero was physically shattered. His
prospective subjects were dismayed by the somber clouds
130 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
which spread rapidly over the horizon of their future. They
had relied upon his wisdom and justice no less than upon his
prowess in the field. "Their welfare," said the Chronicler
of Walsingham, "seemed bound up in his person. It had
flourished in his health, it languished in his illness, and
perished at his death ; in him expired all the hopes of the Eng-
lish." He died on June 8, 1376, in his forty-sixth year, at
the Palace of Westminster ; his work demolished, his spirit
broken, and the kingdom seething with mutiny. There
was no available space among the royal tombs in the sacred
mound of Edward the Confessor, and the Prince was buried
in Canterbury Cathedral, where the arms he wore in battle
are hung above his tomb. His separation from his house,
even in the place of sepulture, betokened his mute protesta-
tion against the degeneracy of the father "whose folly he
had vainly tried to correct, and the son whose doom he
might foresee, but could not avert." ^ Although his eulogists
invested him with some virtues he did not possess, his charac-
ter transcended the general morals of the time. It was sullied
by the violent outbreak at Limoges, an act foreign to his nature
and committed when he was weak and irascible from con-
tinued illness. The eloquent and discriminating Bishop
Brinton of Rochester spoke of him in terms of respect and
praise, and the majority of his contemporaries indorsed the
Bishop's verdict.
Eight years after the rejoicings and tournaments which
ushered in Edward the Third's fiftieth birthday, he had
lost nearly all his territories beyond the Channel. The
interminable wars with France had broken out again ; the
English coasts were menaced by pirates ; and John of Gaunt's
reactionary Parliament provoked the popular wrath. Alice
Perrers, the king's mistress, decked in the dead Queen's
jewels, masqueraded at the tilting yards as the Lady of the
Sun. She sat openly at the judges' side in the law courts,
interfered with legislation, and dispensed the royal patronage
> G. M. Trevelyan : "England in the Ago of WyclifTo" ; p. 27.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 131
to her flatterers. On the jubilee of his reign Edward granted
a general amnesty, which proved to be his last act of govern-
ment. A few months later, on June 21, 1377, he died at the
roj'al manor of Sheen, robbed by his leman in his last moments
of the very rings on his fingers. While he lay in the final
agony, moaning for a priest to shrive him, she forsook him and
fled ; the parasitical ministers also hastened away to greet
the new monarch, and the servants of the household plun-
dered the death chamber. Richard II, who succeeded his
grandfather, fulfilled the gloomy destiny of the Plantagenets.
Beginning as a handsome and promising youth, he ended as
a despised, deposed, and murdered king, the moody, fitful,
treacherous " Richard the Redeless," in whom none could put
faith. His uncle, John of Gaunt, has already figured in this
history as the most distinguished political personality who
offered protection to Wycliffe. The Duke took his name from
Ghent, where he was born at the Abbey of St. Bavon in 1340,
when his parents were in Flanders on a diplomatic errand.
He inherited the stalwart build and manly features of the
Angevins, and with these physical traits their pride and
ambition. Flashes of hereditary distinction from time to
time broke through his haughty reserve ; he was a pleasant
companion where he chose to award his preferences, and he
had the courage of his blood, a blind courage, however, so far
as his generalship was concerned. Poets and dramatists and
a series of propitious circumstances have combined to thrust
celebrity upon him. Chaucer was wont to frequent his
lordly house upon the Strand, and listen to the " softe speeche "
of the golden-haired lady of whom he sang in the " Booke of
the Duchesse." He may have met Wycliffe there, since the
latter's connection with the Duke required their frequent in-
tercourse. Gaunt was twice married, first to Blanche, the
youngest daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, whose title
and estates he inherited, and next to Constance, the heiress of
Don Pedro of Castile, who brought him additional wealth
and honors. To these marriages the great feudatory of the
132 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
fourteenth century owed that multiplicity of hereditary claims
with which he was ever busy. For fifteen years he was the
titular king of Castile ; for twelve the ruler of England in all
but name ; his son Henry IV seized the throne from Richard
II, and his heraldic devices are still found on the arms of
Bordeaux, and are carried on those of the reigning House of
Hanover.
He merited no such preeminence, either as a strategist or as
a statesman. The people understood him better than did
Wycliffe, and they hated and plotted against him as the foe
of justice and liberty. The grotesque exaggerations of his
villanies by the Monk of St. Albans, who saw him " playing
Beelzebub to Wy cliff e's Lucifer," can be summarily dis-
missed. On the other hand, his soldiers spoke kindly of a
captain who seldom led them successfully in battle, and,
while neither cursing nor blessing him, asserted that he was
never guilty of that most serious of offenses, disloyalty.
How narrowly must this the unpardonable sin of medieval
chivalry have been avoided by a leader who at no time won
distinction for fidelity ! Chaucer's favorable judgment of
him is less trustworthy than that of his troops, because it
was dictated by prepossessions arising from friendship and
social advantage. And if Gaunt was true to the interests of
class and party, he certainly felt no impulse to repress the
tyrannies of which they were guilty. The regenerating zeal
of his ancestor Edward I was not in him ; on the contrary,
he subordinated his policies to the schemes of a selfish and
lordly group which disguised base ends beneath professions of
heroism. The caste of which he was the representative was
as ignoble as he ; not only did it neglect its opportunities for
service, but, alert to suppress effort for betterment from any
quarter, trampled down in blood the rising spirit of prog-
ress. Subsequent generations have forgiven the Duke's
betrayal of the people's cause, chiefly for the reason
that he relieved the poverty of Chaucer and rescued Wyc-
liffe from peril, two generous acts that secured for him the
JOHN WYCLIFFE 133
indorsement of Shakespeare and the resounding name, "old
John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster." With the excep-
tion of Edward I, and even in his case the exception is
not absolute, the Plantagenets wasted their substance and
energy upon wild escapades. Those who witnessed their
ending in Richard II must have recalled the defiant saying
of Coeur de Lion, "From the devil we came and to the
devil we shall all go." Yet laudable objects were some-
times accomplished contrary to their intention, thus making
their evil an unexpected means for good. The rise of self-
government in England, of national unity and patriotic
resistance in Scotland and France, and the breaking down
of commercial barriers between the island kingdom and the
continent, should be weighed against deeds which in them-
selves were high-handed wrongs.
We may now turn from the princes of the period to the
plain people, those who really suffer from war and its deadly
allies, famine and pestilence, which destroy what war has
spared or failed to reach. From the middle of the thirteenth
to the close of the fourteenth century, the average price of
wheat was thirty dollars a quarter, which was of course pro-
hibitive for the peasantry. Proclamations were issued to
cheapen victuals, but without effect. Not only the poor but
the more fortunate, including the monks, felt the pinch of
want. Starvation induced disease, and the epidemic of 1349
followed, stalking through Oxford during Wycliffe's residence
there and blotting out the thought of lesser miseries by the
extent and deadliness of its contagion. This overwhelming
calamity which befouled England and the European coun-
tries arose in Asia, and, according to Walsingham, extended
from the shores of China to those of Galway in Ireland. It
was first heard of in its western course at a small Genoese
fort in the Crimean peninsula, whence it was conveyed to
Constantinople by trading vessels whose crews lay dying on
the decks, and from that place, traversing the entire sea
coasts, was borne to all parts of Europe. A contemporary
134 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
friar, Michael Platiensis, has left a graphic account of the
Plague in Sicily. "A most deadly pestilence," he wrote,
" sprang up over the entire island. It happened that in the
month of October, 1347, twelve Genoese ships, flying from the
divine vengeance which our Lord for their sins had sent upon
them, put into the port of Messina, bringing with them such a
sickness clinging to their very bones that, did any one speak
to them, he was directly struck with a mortal sickness from
which there was no escape." ^ Almost simultaneously with
its appearance in Italy the pestilence obtained a foothold in
France, and was carried from Calais, then an English posses-
sion, to the Channel Islands, and finally into England.
Beginning at Melcombe Regis, or Weymouth, in Dorsetshire,
the horrible disease, now known as the bubonic plague,
steadily invaded the southwestern and midland counties,
and on the first of November passed within the gates of
London, Its symptoms developed with extreme rapidity,
and inspired such terror that the nearest relatives of the
stricken shrank from the ordinary ofiices of charity. "The
sick man lay languishing alone in his house and no one came
near him. Those most dear to him, regardless of the ties of
kindred or affection, withdrew themselves to a distance;
the doctor did not come to him, and even the priest with fear
and trembling administered the Sacraments of the Church.
Men and women, racked with the consuming fever, pleaded,
but in vain, for a draught of water, and uselessly raved for
sorhe one to watch at their bedside. The father or the wife
would not touch the corpse of child or husband to prepare it
for the grave, or follow it thither. No prayer was said, nor
solemn office sung, nor bell tolled for the funeral of even the
noblest citizen ; but by day and night the corpses were borne
to the common plague-pit without rite or ceremony." ^
The annals of its ravages in England are found in the
episcopal registers, monastic chronicles, and town records of
the kingdom. The mortality was so enormous that in the
> Cardinal Gasquot: "The Black Death" ; p. 15. * Ibid., pp. 22-23.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 135
words of a writer of the period, "very many country
towns and quarters of innumerable cities are left altogether
without inhabitants. The churches or cemeteries before
consecrated did not suffice for the dead; but new places
outside the cities and towns were at that time dedicated to
that use by people and bishops." ^ Conservative authorities
agree that the population of England decreased from five
millions to two and a half millions. An unconsciously
pathetic comment upon these deplorable statistics is found
in "Piers Plowman," where Langland conceives that all the
people of the realm could be gathered into a single meadow
to hear his rebukes and exhortations. His imagination will
not appear at fault if we recall that the entire interval of
four hundred years between Wycliffe and Wesley was re-
quired to repeople England upon the scale of the early four-
teenth century. In other words, the England of George I
was no larger in numbers than that of Edward II. Still
more significantly, the realm over which Henry VII reigned
was neither as enlightened nor as humane as that of Edward
I ; by the time the first of the Tudors united the houses of
Lancaster and York in his marriage, repeated wars and their
accompaniments had worked their wicked will on the nation.
The strong and steady progress of national consolidation
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries received an
effectual check in Wycliffe's day, the worst disaster, that of
the pestilence, descending upon a country already stagger-
ing beneath the burdens of a protracted and indecisive
conflict, a luxurious and licentious court, and a turbulent
nobility.
Yet the almost universal visitation did not morally chas-
ten its survivors, who manifested a stolid indifference to
their miserable surroundings, and in many instances gave
way to the lowest passions. Although commerce fared
better than some have supposed, the overthrow of es-
1 B. Mus. Cott. M. S., Vitell., A. xx, fol. 56, quoted by Cardinal Gasquet :
"The Black Death" ; p. 187.
136 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
tablished conditions was so severe that not only the mon-
asteries, but also the Universities, the system of land
tenure, the political machinery, the art and architecture
of England, alike felt the cataclysmic shock. The working
classes, however, were the chief sufferers, and their diminu-
tion brought about a complete social change which ramified
from the bottom upwards. The selective processes of the
Plague introduced a new scale of life and manners, and so
modified or revolutionized the agrarian situation that there
is hardly a modern economic problem that cannot be traced
to them. The study of these effects verifies two conclusions :
first, that not all were injurious, and second, that they were
met and borne with a reckless courage which did much to
relieve the gravity of the situation. Medieval England was
disgraced by transgressions, but she was also disciplined by
hardships which, bitter though they were, could not obliter-
ate the color, the variety, nor the joy of her life. The
twentieth century peasant knows no such zest and gaiety as
blessed his ancestors, who, though they lacked facilities for
prompt material recovery from the ravages of the scourge,
were not hampered by the fear and disillusionment which too
often sadden the prospect of the modern laborer. All who
outrode the storm had shared a common peril, and the
frequency with which they had looked on death made them
despise it. Meanwhile the present moment was their own,
and they built again the world they knew, undaunted
by difficulty or danger. A fatalistic tinge in their out-
look taught them that what had perished had perished,
and no time was to be wasted in vain regrets. In Europe
great names arose out of the darkness, St. Roch, St. Cath-
erine, Petrarch, and Gui de Chauliac. The era bent, but
did not break ; it was still sufficiently resilient to reassert its
vitality and guard the germinal growth of freedom and
justice.
If constitutional progress was retarded it was at least
preserved. The national consciousness solidified under ad-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 137
versity, and was still resentful of foreign dictation. The
men who believed with WyclifFe that the safety and well-
being of the kingdom were to be found in independence of
the Holy See were patriots. But patriotism was not con-
fined to one sect or faction ; it became a conscious passion
in all hearts. Love of country throbs in the verse of Chaucer,
than whom no poet was ever more intensely English in his
character and sympathies. The nine and twenty pilgrims
of the Tabard Inn are a vivid company, standing clearly
against the misty background of their time. His inimitable
descriptions of the men and manners of his native land made
Chaucer its premier poet. Society was still comparatively
so simple that his narrative was able to embrace most of the
types that had survived the Plague. Wandering by the
way became the favorite pursuit of all classes. Pilgrims and
travelers were everywhere abroad, exulting in the freedom
of the king's highway, and presenting at once the unity and
the diversity of medieval life. The pedlar and the pardoner,
the mendicant and the outlaw, the juggler and the gleeman,
the flagellant and the soldier, journeyed cheek by jowl, cast-
ing admiring or envious eyes upon the cavalcades of royalty
and gentry riding past. Knights and barons entertained one
another in castles and manors, and counted hospitality a
habit of courtesy and pleasure. Franklins and merchants
frequented the better class of hostelries ; the alehouses and
meaner inns were crowded with foresters and laborers. The
roads, good or bad, were the arteries of trade, and every hall
or hut a medium for news. There the nobles met in nightly
conclave; the "poor priests" kept aglow the flame of a
purer faith ; the friars fawned or threatened ; and the serfs
and underlings debated their wrongs, which were so unendur-
able that at last they assumed decisive shape in the most
spontaneous uprising of the laboring folk that ever took place
in England.^
I G. M. Trevelyan : " England in the Age of Wycliffe " ; p. 1.
138 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
II
During the two years preceding the Peasants' Revolt in
the spring of 1381 Wycliffe remained in comparative retire-
ment at Lutterworth. The Great Schism was the crucial
point in his public life, when he became to all intents and
purposes a Protestant. While he was still busy berating the
popes, sometimes unjustly, as in the case of Gregory XI, and
again for reasons which almost excused the virulence of his
language, the social outbreak occurred which forever de-
stroyed his hopes of any improvement by means of State
interference. During one month the volcanic but mercifully
brief terror put half the realm in arms ; for some days the
existence of the government was imperilled by the efforts
of the peasants to avenge their injuries. The causes of their
rebellion were both near and remote ; they extended far into
the past, and were too complicated for prolonged examination
here. One third of the working population had perished in
the Plague, and, as already stated, this abnormal depletion
disorganized agrarian and commercial relations. The sur-
vivors were determined to get rid of oppressive usages and
secure higher wages. The lords were equally resolved to
prevent free competition in labor and to tighten their hold
on the situation with bonds of their own choosing. Stripes
and brandings were inflicted on stubborn offenders. Repres-
sive legislation begot a reckless lawlessness among those
whom it afl'ected. In London and other cities the guilds
were agitated by internal difficulties peculiar to themselves.
The stringent provisions of some charters granted to towns
by spiritual lords and abbots added to the friction. The
poll tax of one shilling a head on every adult person in the
land which had been voted by the Nottingham Parliament
of 1380 was the final aggravation in a quarrel that had lasted
for more than thirty years. Then came the terrific explosion,
astonishing the court and the nobles, stupefying the clergy,
and bewildering the administration. But the source of
JOHN WYCLIFFE 139
such an organized resistance lay even deeper than civic
and economic causes. England was besotted by the lust of
militarism, and degenerated by the vices that followed in
the train of the French wars. Impoverished, weakened,
betrayed, the nation grew desperate, and distrustful of its
hereditary leaders. It is but just to observe that the
young king Richard II and his murdered ministers. Arch-
bishop Sudbury and Sir Richard Hales, were not altogether
culpable for an anarchy which they did not create and
could not control. The line of Horace,
" Not Heaven itself upon the past hath power,"
could be appropriately applied to many troubles and ob-
stacles that threatened the new reign. John of Gaunt, who
had been identified with the enormities of his father's court,
was the first man the insurgents singled out for punishment.
He was absent in Edinburgh when they broke loose, or he
would have shared the fate of Sudbury and Hales ; as it was,
his Palace on the Strand, stored with the richest treasures
of foreign spoil, went up in flames. The insurrection de-
feated his policies, the disendowment of the Church was
postponed to the time of an equally rapacious and more
powerful prince, and the Duke's influence as a publicist sus-
tained irreparable injury.
The immediate results were a callous mockery of the fine
promises and unconfirmed charters which Richard readily
gave to induce the rebels to return to their homes. His
advisers knew that parliamentary action was necessary to
redeem these pledges, and also that it would be impossible
to secure any such consent. Wat Tyler was killed at Smith-
field in the presence of the king ; John Ball, a forerunner of
modern reform, together with thousands of his disciples, paid
for their untimely efforts with their lives. For the moment,
under the pressure of a universal danger, the regulars and
seculars forgot their enmities, and the bishops made peace
with the friars. Church and State united in the task of
140 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
torturing and hanging their victims, many of whom were
executed without process of law. Nobles returned to their
castles from their hiding places in the woods, and resumed
their former practices. The exhausted passions of the de-
feated and hunted peasantry left them helpless, and the nation
sank back into apathy and neglect. The proletariat forgot
that spasm of outraged self-respect which had caught the
barons off their guard. Chaucer's glad morning song, so
surprising in this dark epoch, waited long for its antiphony in
"Those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo stUl."
Serfage revived, despite the brave attempt to do away with
its abominations. Yet the beneficiaries of feudalism had
received a wholesome lesson, not the less impressive because
unaccompanied by the nameless horrors of the Jacquerie in
France. It taught the proud, self-sufficient aristocrat to
beware of his underlings, and he at least understood that
fearful possibilities were lodged in men he had hitherto de-
spised. He moved more cautiously among his dwindling
claims ; the system of villeinage feebly lingered on and came
to an almost unobserved end in the days of the Tudors.
Wycliffe did not escape without charges of implication in
these movements ; his enemies averred that he had been " a
sower of strife, who by his serpent-like instigations had set
his serf against his lord." Notwithstanding the dying con-
fessions of John Ball and Jack Straw, which involved him^
there is no proof of the truth of their accusations.' He had
little appreciable influence upon the purely secular aims of
the insurgents, who were bent on deliverance from practical
grievances in which spiritual afl'airs played no part.^ Uni-
versity doctors were not found among them, and John Ball's
1 We hear nothing of these confessions until twenty years afterward.
They are not found in any contemporary chronicle, and were probably
extorted by the rack.
« C. Oman : "The Great Rebellion of 1381 " ; p. 27.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 141
itineraries in behalf of the peasants had commenced while
WycHffe was still an undergraduate at Oxford. But his
sweeping declaration that "every righteous man is lord over
the whole sensible world" could easily be distorted by impul-
sive orators who paid no regard to the refined subtleties with
which he qualified the statement. In any case he did not
desert the persecuted patriots in their emergency. They had
no conception of the communism which was latent in his
theories, but he openly avowed his sympathy with their
demand for individual freedom and his anger at their oppres-
sion. He stood alone in his plea for clemency, and by this
unselfish attitude still further separated himself from the
ruling powers and the nobles, and was condemned to po-
litical impotence. His consistent conduct furnished an
instructive contrast to that of Luther under somewhat similar
circumstances during the sixteenth century. The Zwinglian
heresies, the Rising of the Anabaptists, and the Peasants' War
of that era were the logical outcome of Luther's theory of the
right of private judgment and dissent. This theory had
served him well in the severance of his allegiance from Rome.
Yet when others used it for their own purposes he seceded
from the people to the princes, complaining loudly of the
preachers of blood and treason whom the devil inspired to seek
his destruction, and impressing upon his followers the neces-
sity of passive obedience to the State. The popular phase
of his Reformation was quickly abandoned, while he took
refuge in the arms of the civil power, and purchased the safety
of his doctrine by the sacrifice of its freedom.^
If Luther's idealism gave place to compromise, Wycliffe
steadily refused to surrender his convictions or be silent
upon them. "The heresiarch of execrable memory" was
cut off from all but a small minority of his supporters, and the
unfortunate coincidence of his protest against the endowments
of the Church and the pretensions of clerical power with the
insurrection of the peasants gave Courtenay an opportunity
' Lord Acton: "Essays on Liberty" ; pp. 155-156.
142 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to suppress opinions which he believed were responsible for
the death of his predecessor, Archbishop Sudbury. Wyc-
liffe, so far from being abashed by the connection of his
opinions with these depredations, reaffirmed his position on
questions of controversy. He denied Transubstantiation
afresh, after having appealed to the king in 1381 for secular
help in a purely theological issue. In reply to Gaunt's
earnest request that he should rest his case, he memorialized
Parliament in 1382 with a lengthy petition, wherein he
recited a list of grievances and asked that the Statutes of
Provisors and Praemunire be enforced against the Pope,
above all urging that "Christ's teaching concerning the
Eucharist may be openly taught in churches."
The Archbishop retaliated by convening the " Earthquake
Council" on May 21 of that year at the House of the Black
Friars in London. The assembly derived its name from the
occurrence of a seismic disturbance during its proceedings.
This was construed by the Wycliffians as a sign of Heaven's
wrath against the higher clergy, and by the prelates as a
token of its approval of their efforts to expel heterodoxy
from the bosom of the Church. Of the twenty-four Articles
examined ten were pronounced heretical, and fourteen errone-
ous. The Council, in condemning the Reformer's doctrines,
also struck at the University which had nurtured them.
Courtenay and the regulars, aided by Richard U, won the
fight against the doctors and students who prized religious
and intellectual freedom. Dr. Rigg, the Chancellor, who
had hitherto favored Wycliffe, was summoned to Lambeth
and warned by the bishops and the Privy Council that his
support of the Lollard Repyngdon as against Stokes must
cease, the disaffected be subdued, and concord restored.
The seculars who had exhorted the University authorities
to expel all friars and monks were themselves excluded.
A Convocation for the suppression of heresy met at Oxford ;
the royal writ ordered a monthly inquisition upon the fol-
lowers and the works of Wycliffe, and within half a year the
JOHN WYCLIFFE 143
second school of the CathoHc Church was recovered to
orthodoxy at the expense of her academic standing in
Europe. The inquisitors made a desolation and called it
peace, and Courtenay unwittingly became one of the greatest
enemies to Oxford's reputation for scholarship she has ever
known. The University sank into stupor and decline;
speculation was throttled ; Cambridge was regarded by
cautious parents as the place unvexed by reactionary
ecclesiasticism, and Paris regained the intellectual eminence
Oxford had so long disputed. Thus the later medieval
period of the University's leadership ended w^ith Wycliffe;
Courtenay could not cope with the vigorous dialectic of the
last of the Schoolmen, but he could and he did unreservedly
destroy Oxford's capacity to produce another like him.
Cast down, but not dismayed, Wycliffe was now beyond
the pale of the Church and of the Schools. Yet he was of that
type of men who hope,
"And see their hope frustrate,
And hope anew."
He was enough of the ascetic to despise the lures of the world ;
of the man of affairs to know the deceptions of political strife ;
of the saint to regard that which he held as truth as more im-
portant than place or power. The material side of life was
for him reduced to a minimum, and, although ambitious, he
desired no influence which required him to subject his con-
science to the incitements of temporary convenience or
success. His last days at Lutterworth were spent in appeals
to the people at large, in which his further separation from
sacerdotalism was evident in the unwise declaration that
preaching is of more value than the administration of any
sacrament. He forsook learned clerks and titled supporters
for the weavers and artisans of Norwich and Leicester, and
devoted the remainder of his life to its most notable achieve-
ment, the translation of the Holy Scriptures. Henry of
Knighton, a canon of Leicester during the second half of
144 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the fourteenth century, and a fierce hater of the Lollards,
complained that Wycliffe's action in translating the Scrip)-
tures "which Christ gave to the clergy and doctors of the
Church" had scattered abroad the pearls of the Gospel to
be "trodden under foot by swine" ; " the jewel of clerics was
turned to the sport of the laity." ^
The Reformer's previous insistence upon the supremacy
of the Sacred Writings had obtained for him, while still at
Oxford, the title of "Doctor Evangelicus." In his attack
upon dogmatism or in defense of his own conclusions, he
unhesitatingly used quotations from the Old and New
Testaments as final proofs, setting aside the weightiest
traditions in their behalf. "Neither the testimony of Au-
gustine nor Jerome, nor any other saint, should be accepted
except in so far as it was based upon Scripture," and to
this he added the assertion that every man had the right to
examine the Bible for himself.
The quotation from Knighton contains the substance of
similar animadversions against Wycliffe's enterprise, which,
nevertheless, was justified by the example of primitive Chris-
tianity. For the right of religious independence must have
been tacitly assumed by the early Christians to justify their
position, and the publicity of the Hebrew Scriptures was
presupposed in the works of the apologists of the second cen-
tury. Even so late as the fourth century no dignitary of the
Church dreamt of forbidding the reading and interpretation
of the Bible by the laity. On the contrary, Origen held that
it was the purpose of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures to be
intelligible to those who were uneducated and insignificant
in the eyes of the world. Theodoret, who shared the current
presumption that the Scriptures needed defense as literature,
in a burst of eloquence turned this lack to gain, declaring
that "all the heralds of the truth, to wit the Prophets and
Apostles, though unendowed with the Greek gift of eloquence,
• At that time Knighton was dead. The author whose records are quoted
here is known as hia "Continuator."
JOHN WYCLIFFE 145
were yet filled with true wisdom, brought to all nations both
Hellenic and Barbarian the divine doctrine, and filled all
lands and seas with their writings, whose content is virtue
and piety. And now all men having renounced the follies
of the philosophers, feast upon the doctrines of fishermen
and publicans and reverence the words of the Tent-maker." ^
Chrysostom recommended that the sight of the Bible should
be so familiar to children as to form a necessary part of their
home scenery, and poetically remarked that " the very touch
of the Book of the Gospels of itself awakens the heart." ^
Had these counsels been heeded in after times, the false step
taken by the Church when she began to withdraw the Scrip-
tures from the laity and place them in the custody of eccle-
siastical tradition might have been avoided. Nor could
the unchecked sacerdotalism that ensued have escaped the
restrictions imposed by a better acquaintance with the
Bible.
The entire Old Testament and the greater part of the New
were translated into the French language before the middle
of the fourteenth century. England was not so fortunate :
the Anglo-Saxon versions, some manuscripts of which are
as late as the twelfth century, had become unintelligible
by Wycliffe's time, with the result that, although the Bible
was fairly well known among the clergy and superior lay-
men, the masses were utterly ignorant of it, and had no
means of being otherwise. Anglo-Norman was then the
speech of the schools, the colleges, the courts of law, and
polite society. English prevailed among the humbler classes
and the tillers of the soil. It is not certain that Edward IH
could address the Commons in the vulgar tongue, as Henry
IV took pains to do when he appeared before them to claim
the throne. Yet by the end of the fourteenth century,
French had become a sickly exotic and English had sup-
planted it as the official language, first in the courts, and
1 Harnack : "Bible Reading in the Early Church" ; p. 90.
^Ibid., p. 101.
L
146 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
later in Parliament. A doctor of laws confessed in 1404,
"We are as ignorant of French as of Hebrew." John de
Trevisa attributed its sudden disappearance to the Plague,
but the decline antedated this event, and, despite legislative
efforts to arrest it, the use of French gradually diminished.
It may have survived in Parliamentary debates, however, for
fifty years after Chaucer's death.^ The statutes of the realm
continued to be published in French until the reign of Henry
VIII. One of the main factors which contributed to the
spread of English was the friars' preaching in that lan-
guage throughout the country, a habit which goes far to
explain their hold upon the people. Another factor was the
important aid Chaucer rendered by welding the strength of
both into one speech different from either, superior in
the richness of its vocabulary and the simplicity of its
structure, and which became the life blood of the new nation-
alism. From his day to our own the development and ex-
pansion of English have gone steadily forward; but the
poet's largest service to the mother tongue was the pref-
erence he awarded it during a bilingual period, a literary
precedent which later writers were constrained to follow.
This transition from French to English deprived the ver-
sions of the Bible in the earlier language of their usefulness,
and an attempt was made to meet the needs of the situation
by partial translations, including the Psalms, which were
made into English in 1320 and 1340. The first of these is
ascribed doubtfully to William of Shoreham ; the second, to
Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole.^ Both men used the
Vulgate as a basis, and their work was provincial in dialect
' Parliament was first opened with an English speech in 1363 ; and with
an English sermon by Courtenay, in 1381. This will indicate that the de-
bates may have been in English, although their reports were actually pub-
lished in French.
* Rolle was born in Yorkshire about 1290, and died at Hampole in 1349.
He was one of the first religious authors to write in the native language,
which he used for the instruction of those who knew no Latin. His poetical
manuscript, "The Prickc of Conscience," is freely quoted by Warton in his
"History of English Poetry."
JOHN WYCLIFFE 147
and circulation. But to Wycliffe and his coadjutors in the
task belongs the credit of first setting forth the whole Scrip-
tures in their own speech, an indescribably meritorious
achievement, and the first fruits of a series of versions which
have to a large extent molded the nature and determined the
course of English civilization. From the literary standpoint,
Wycliffe's translation was a contribution to that move-
ment in which, as we have seen, Chaucer was the central
figure, and his version should be viewed in that relation. Of
necessity a translation of such intrinsic worth, and one
which so closely affected the spiritual interests and ideals of
the nation, could not have been woven into its life and
character without considerable benefit to the language.
But Wycliffe was not a stylist in the larger meaning of
the term, and the relatively rudimentary condition of
the language made it impossible to produce a finished
rendering like that of the translation of 1611. Indeed, the
Authorized Version stands apart from all others, "equally
untouched by the splendor of Elizabethan and the extrava-
gance of Jacobean prose," and marked by the noble simplicity
of ancient times. Wycliffe's version owed much to its later
revision by his curate Purvey, who, in or about 1388,
smoothed out the harsh literalness of the original and sub-
stituted short marginal comments, many of which were taken
from Nicholas de Lyra, for the frequent glosses of the text.
The desire of Wycliffe and of Nicholas of Hereford, who
was his chief assistant in the rendition of the Old Testament,
to be scrupulously faithful to the Latin of the Vulgate was
the source of the pedantries and obscurities which are found
in their work. Others besides Nicholas and Purvey must
have cooperated in an enterprise of such magnitude, and the
multiplication of copies proceeded so rapidly that of the one
hundred and seventy existing manuscripts the majority were
written within forty years after the completion of the trans-
lation.
Purvey's version, which should be carefully distinguished
148 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
from Wycliffe's, was eagerly sought and read by all who could
obtain it. The princes of the royal house and the sovereign
himself did not disdain to possess it. Nor was there any
formal condemnation of the first English Bible. The assump-
tion of sectarian writers that the medieval Church prohibited
the translation and circulation of the Scriptures is contra-
dicted by the fact that manuscripts were plentiful both in
England and on the continent. Although printing was not
yet invented, Germany had fifty complete and seventy-two
incomplete versions. Seventeen printed editions of the Bible
preceded the great version of Luther. The French transla-
tions extensively used in England have been named. Arch-
bishop Arundel, the burner of heretics, commended Queen
Anne of Bohemia, consort of Richard II, for having owned in
English "all the four gospels with the doctors upon them."
Wycliffe's reiterated appeals to the support of the Scrip-
tures, uttered long before his translation was made, would
have no meaning for a clerical body unacquainted with them.
Such were the principal circumstances connected with the
memorable versions of Wycliffe and Purvey, the earliest
rendering of the complete Bible England possessed in her
own language.^
Cardinal Gasquet ^ has advanced the theory that the so-
called Wycliffe translation is really a "Catholic Bible," and
some extreme Anglicans have taught this supposition. He
emphasizes the fact that there was nothing in Wycliffe's
writings to show that he had either translated or attempted
to translate the Holy Scriptures. While this is true, it
should also be noted that those writings are full of passages
advocating such a translation. His intimacy with the Bible
had been one of the governing forces of his life, and his grow-
' For Wycliffe's and Purvoy's Bible see the account in the preface to
Forshall and Madden's edition.
' This distinguished prelate and scholar was appointed in 1907 hy the
late Pope, Pius X, President of a Commission for the revision of the Vulgate,
to restore it, as nearly as possible, to the pure text of St. Jerome ; a task
which is not likely to be completed for many years.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 149
ing sense of dependence upon its sanction finally obtained
an absolute control over his intellectual processes and re-
ligious views. It also dictated his rejection of the vener-
able dogmas and solemn mysticism of his Church, a course
which found its justification in his belief that "the New
Testament is full of authority and open to the understand-
ing of simple men, as to the points that be most needful to
salvation." Lechler's surmise that the perilous conditions
of the time imposed a prudent silence on those responsible
for such an undertaking is not convincing : secrecy and
subterfuge were foreign to Wycliffe's character, and he had
scanty regard for men who differed from him. His courage
drew him from the set paths which pierced the jungle of
medieval life, and he thrust his way in new directions, ac-
companied by some who, although they lacked his audacity
and endurance, were prepared to help him.
Moreover, while the claim that Wycliffe translated the
version attributed to him is not invalidated by arguments
derived from silence, its probability is confirmed by con-
temporary evidence, corroborating the testimony of Knigh-
ton already given. At the Synod held at St. Frideswide's,
Oxford, on November 28, 1407, an edict was passed adverse
to any version of Scripture texts " by questionable hands with-
out authoritative sanction." The provisions enacted at the
Synod and afterwards promulgated at St. Paul's, London,'^
granted the bishops power to control the circulation of the
volume without positively proscribing it. Archbishop Arun-
del and his suffragans, addressing Pope John XXIII in 1412,
accused Wycliffe, " the child of the old serpent and fosterling
of Antichrist," with having devised, in order to fill up the
measure of his malice against the Church, the plan of a trans-
lation of the Scriptures into his mother tongue. John Hus
affirmed in a polemical tract issued during 1411 : "It is plain
from his writings that Wycliffe was not a German, but an
Englishman ; for the English say that he translated the whole
1 The date of the promulgation is given as January 14, 1409.
150 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Bible from Latin into English." These and other quotations
of a similar character support two conclusions : first, that
Wycliffe's reputed work was actually his own ; and again,
that it escaped, to some extent, the inhibitions of the eccle-
siastics.
Cardinal Gasquet's further contention that an earlier
English version than that of Wycliffe existed is founded on
refutable statements. Sir Thomas More, who is his authority
for this assertion, remarked in his "Dialogue" that he had
seen " Bibles fair and old written in English, which have been
known and seen by the bishop of the diocese and left in
lawmen's hands . . . who used them with devotion and
soberness." He added that the " Holy Bible was long before
Wycliffe's day by virtuous and learned men translated into
the English tongue." ^ Since More did not know Purvey 's
version when he saw it, it is very probable that he mistook
that version for an earlier work. He strongly condemned this
translation of heretics who purposely corrupted the holy text,
as he accused Wycliffe of doing, while he was totally unaware
that the English Bibles of his friend Bishop Bonner and of
other orthodox persons and of numerous churches and con-
vents were copies of Purvey's version. More was not alone
in his confusion of the two editions of Wycliffe's Bible as
distinct translations. Until a comparatively recent period
all writers mistook Purvey's revision for a translation anterior
to Wycliffe's. The assurance that Wycliffe and his associates
translated the Bible into English, that their translation was
the first complete version thus made, and that Purvey re-
vised it to its great benefit, is too well attested to be easily
disturbed.
Bishop Westcott shows that the history of the English
Bible, as we now have it, began with the work of William
Tyndale, rather than with that of Wycliffe. Tyndale him-
» Light has been shed upon the question of the Old English Version by a
work of A. C. Paues. entitled "The Fourteenth Century English Biblical
Version" (1902), showing that there was an iiulcpendent translation of
some parts of the New Testament made before Wycliffe.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 151
self stated that he was not " holpen with English of any
that had interpreted the same or such like thing in the Scrip-
ture beforehand." Yet the two men, though separated by a
century and a half of time, were of the same spiritual gene-
alogy, and one in the loving veneration for the Scriptures
which actuated their labors. The translation by WyclifFe
stands apart, like a mountain separated and remote from
meaner ranges, bearing the marks of primeval origin ; in its
solitary and rugged grandeur a fitting monument and witness
to the 'Doctor Evangelicus,' to his unwearied patience and
prodigious toil.
Ill
His separation from Oxford isolated him as a scholar ; the
lack of mechanical means for the diffusion of his teachings,
and his conflict with the hierarchy drove him to copy the
methods of St. Francis, and his ripening experience convinced
him that the organized societies within the Church were
backslidden sects which could not prevent her decay. To
obviate this he adopted the extraordinary measure of institut-
ing an order of poor priests, who were sent out to declare the
message of the New Testament in the rejuvenated spirit
of the earlier friars. Lutterworth became the headquarters
for these evangelists, some of whom were Oxford graduates
who had felt the impulse of Wycliffe's influence while he
was still at the University, but the majority were unlettered
men. Although at first ordained, the demands of their
mission superseded clerical limitations and laymen were
soon found among them. In Wycliffe's later writings they
were no longer called "simplices sacerdotes," but "viri
apostolici " or " evangelici." A remarkably effective preacher
himself, Wycliffe carried the betterment of preaching upon
his heart, and many of his sermons and addresses were
directed to that end. He complained that useless specula-
tions, legends, tales, and fables were substituted for Scripn
tural instruction, and that ornamented rhetoric marred
152 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the pulpit utterances of the better sort of clergy. Had he
not been constrained to examine and reject the intellectual
foundation of Catholic belief, he might have shared the honors
of St. Francis and St. Dominic as the founder of another
order of preaching friars. His own prototypes of Wesley's
helpers were superior to the regular ecclesiastics in self-
effacing zeal. They shared that collective sagacity of the
Anglo-Saxon folk which has sometimes outwitted the designs
of the wise and the noble. Poverty and plainness of speech
gave them ready access to their countrymen. Clad in a rustic
garb of undressed wool, dependent on charity for their daily
bread, provided only with a pilgrim staff and a few pages from
Wycliffe's tractates or sermons as the staple of their brief and
pointed homilies, they survived the contempt of the hier-
archy and secured the good-will of the people. Courtenay,
whose aversion to such men and measures can be imagined,
referred to them as wolves in sheep's clothing. Their suc-
cess, which exceeded the most sanguine expectations, was
confessed in the exaggerated avowal of Knighton that the
" sect was held in the greatest honor and multiplied so that
you could scarce meet two men by the way whereof one was
not a disciple of Wy cliff e." ^
Under such auspices, the heart of the rector of Lutter-
worth seemed proof against the frosts of age, or that more
deadly blight which the world's harsh treatment so often
inflicts upon hope and faith. He saw the good ends his
evangelists served, and the restricted areas of his concluding
period only intensified its energies. Released from the
intrigues of political cabals, his desire to project new activity
into the morals of his age found another outlet in the stream
of pamphlets that flowed from his pen, both in Latin and in
English. Two of his larger works, the "Trialogus," most
erudite of all his productions, and the unfinished "Opus
Evangelicum," were also written at this time. Nor did his
seclusion render him indifferent to those issues of the State in
• G. G. Coulton: "Chaucer and his EDgland"; p. 307.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 153
which he had so recently been conspicuous. When Henry
Spencer/ Bishop of Norwich, obtained a commission from
Pope Urban VI to lead a crusade against the adherents of his
rival at Avignon, Clement VII, Wycliffe published a small
Latin treatise entitled "Cruciata," in which he exposed and
condemned Spencer's proceedings, probably the more readily
because that bishop had become notorious for his brutal
treatment of the peasants during their insurgency. In
Wycliffe the prelate encountered an opponent not so easily
subdued, who characterized his action as a prosecution
unbecoming true Christians, and an invasion of the faith.
Not content with this, Wycliffe addressed a letter to the
Primate covering the same grounds. The scheme he ar-
raigned failed; on Spencer's return to England the tem-
poralities of his see were withdrawn, and he was cited
before Parliament to answer for his conduct. Courtenay
had tightened the reins to no purpose if he meant to curb
Wycliffe. Yet the Archbishop was reluctant to push matters
to extremes, and although this hesitation has been generally
credited to the status of the Reformer as a renowned doctor
of Theology, his immunity from personal attack may have
been due in some measure to more generous motives on the
part of Courtenay. The evangelists themselves received
no consideration ; they were harassed on every side, expelled
from the University, forced to abjure their opinions, and
to renounce their allegiance to the arch-heretic. One after
another submitted, but a faithful group, chiefly composed
of men of humble position and relatively small attainments,
refused to recant, and displayed that fortitude for which
the English yeoman has been justly esteemed.
Their leader was neither banned nor excommunicated,
and the fable of his recantation is too flimsy for serious dis-
cussion. He had realized his freedom, the outside world
had lost its charms and terrors for him, and he was not re-
' Also known as Henry le Spencer or Despenser ; born in 1341 or 1342,
died in 1406 ; a soldier rather than a churchman.
154 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
strained from stimulating to the fullest extent the adapta-
tion of his teaching to actual conditions. In the inquiry
which Courtenay had set on foot no mention was made of any
individual. The doctrines condemned were not attributed
to any particular party ; ecclesiastical discipline has seldom,
if ever, been maintained with more moderation. On the
other hand Wycliffe was not so much a Reformer with a
numerous and determined body of supporters as an earnest
seeker after truth who, although he could no longer accept
things as they were, had no deliberate system of his own
to offer in their stead.
Thus in a comparatively peaceful eventide, his hitherto
unwearied day drew near its close. A paralytic seizure in
1382 had warned him that his incessant toils could not be
long extended ; still, except in so far as physical debility
imposed restraints on him, he gave no sign of relinquishing
his duties. The consciousness that his race was well-nigh
run could not induce him to retire from the field, in which he
labored against the friars and the Holy See with unabated
mental and moral force. Some of his biographers assert that
the friars appealed to Rome in protest, and that in 1384
Urban summoned Wycliffe to appear before the Papal Court.
His reply to the Pontiff, they inform us, showed that the
emaciated recluse, " spare and well-nigh destitute of strength,"
while mellower in tone, could still use the speech of contro-
versy with old-time skill and promptitude : " I have joyfully
to tell to all men the belief that I hold, and especially to the
Pope, for I suppose that if my faith be rightful and given of
God the Pope will gladly confirm it, and that if my faith be
error, the Pope will wisely amend it. Above this I suppose
that the Pope is most obliged to the keeping of the (iospel
among all men that live here, for the Pope is highest vicar
that Christ has here on earth. For the moreness (superiority)
of Christ's vicar is not measured by earthly moreness, but by
this, that this vicar follows Christ more closely by virtuous
living. Now Christ during the time He walked here was
JOHN WYCLIFFE 155
the poorest of men, and put from Him all manner of worldly
lordship. From this I take it as a wholesome counsel that
the Pope should abandon his worldly lordship to worldly
lords, and move speedily all his clerks to do the same. For
thus did Christ, and thus He taught His disciples, until the
fiend had blinded this world. And if I err in this sentence
(opinion) I will meekly be amended, yea even by death,
for that I hope would be a good to me."
This was the last flash of his expiring fires; a few weeks
later, "on the day of the Holy Innocents," said John Horn,
a priest and an eyewitness, " as Wycliffe was hearing Mass
in his church at Lutterworth, at the time of the elevation of
the Host, he fell down smitten by a severe paralysis." Three
days afterward, on Saturday, December 31, 1384, his tran-
scendent spirit, whose great gifts, activities, and aspirations
commanded the admiration of friends and enemies alike,
entered into rest with the departing year. The manner of
his decease, after all he had said and done, might well be
described in the language of Dante's "Convito" : "Natural
death is as it were a haven and a rest after long navigation.
And the noble soul is like a good mariner; for he, when he
draws near the port, lowers his sails and enters it softly
with gentle steerage. For in such a death there is no grief
nor any bitterness ; but as a ripe apple is lightly and with-
out violence loosened from its branch, so our soul without
grieving departs from the body in which it hath been." ^
Wycliffe was buried at Lutterworth, but by a decree of the
Council of Constance, dated May 4th, 1415, his remains were
ordered to be exhumed and cast away. Thirteen years later,
Bishop Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, Oxford,
carried out the order. When Charles V stood beside the
tomb of Luther at Wittenberg, those about him suggested
that the body of his triumphant enemy should be disinterred
and burned at the stake in the market place. "I war not
with the dead," was the Emperor's reply, a chivalrous word
1 Dr. Carlyle's translation.
156 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
which stands in contrast to the malevolent uselessness of
Fleming's deed.
In any attempt to present a unified view of Wycliffe's
character and service as the first English prophet who smote
the rock of medieval ecclesiasticism, first place should be
given to that spiritual insight which outlasts the transient
value of his intellectual efforts. The forms of his thought
have perished with the age that gave them meaning, but the
spell of his soul's presence is with us still. "Feeble unit in
a threatening infinitude" though he was, his reliance was
upon Christ, Whom he set forth under terms of high political
phraseology, as the supreme Head of the race, the "Caesar
semper Augustus," the Saviour of the whole number of
the elect. Yet the esoteric strain was seldom apparent in
Wycliffe ; he expressed little of that poignant sense of individ-
ual transgression which is the plaint of such men as St. Paul,
St. Augustine, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, nor does a
rapt communion with God seem to have been vouchsafed
to his religious experience. His intellectual habits to a
large extent controlled his devotional attitude. He closely
identified knowing with being, and the legalistic rather than
the strictly evangelical appropriation of divine grace found
favor in his sight. This was expressed in his article that
"working by a right life ended after God's will maketh a
man God's child," a statement which, however true in itself,
stood unrelated to the doctrine of Justification by Faith.
Indeed, despite Wycliffe's familiarity with the New Testa-
ment, he did not give that emphasis to St. Paul's teaching
which was the mainspring of the sixteenth century Refor-
mation. Notwithstanding his incessant appeal to reason,
his words are suffused with a direct earnestness, a passion
for truth, and an unaffected sincerity which lift them above
the chilling mists of mere abstraction. Moreover, the opera-
tions of Puritan theocracy were foreshadowed in his religious
development. If reason and the exposition of holy doctors
approved by the Church were his earlier guides in the inter-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 157
pretation of the Scriptures, in his later writings he insisted
that the Spirit of God alone could expound the Bible to the
individual Christian. He only can hope to understand aright
who seeks the truth therein contained in holiness of heart
and humility of mind. "He that keepeth meekness and
charity hath the true understanding and perfection of all
Holy Writ," for "Christ did not write His laws on tables,
or on skins of animals, but in the hearts of men!" "The
Holy Ghost," he adds, "teaches us the meaning of Scripture
as Christ opened its sense to His Apostles."
Milton praised Wycliffe in the " Areopagitica " as a "di-
vine and admirable spirit," and, if his rectitude and in-
tegrity, his enthusiasm for the cause of religion and his
ardent longing for the purification of the Church are recalled,
it cannot be gainsaid that the austere poet's eulogium was
on the whole deserved. Some of his theological convic-
tions have sunk to the level of curiosities, and men have
turned away from others because they have ceased to retain
any interest. The rest were held by him in an intelligent
and a spacious way, and were full of enlightenment and hope.
His theory of the lordship of God was more than an indefi-
nite aspiration or a supreme feeling for the loftiest object
of human contemplation. He was not content with the idea
of a Deity Who was the mere creation of metaphysics, and
whose attributes were so arbitrarily expressed as to baflBle
those who sought His aid. By deriving human from divine
lordship, and by making the former dependent on character
and service, Wycliffe but employed feudal language to
sweeten the lives of suffering multitudes and lift from their
shoulders the burdens that bowed them down. The didactic
phraseology of his constructive thinking was seldom without
an application to the problems of actual life.
His granitic character was unmantled by superficial ten-
derness, and as a celibate he could not enjoy the domestic
intercourse which contributed to Luther's humanness and
popularity. Yet his temperament, though naturally inclined
158 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to forcible action, never knew those revulsions of sentiment
which frequently accompany such a disposition. He was
in a great ethical sense a lover of God, of goodness, and of
his fellow creatures; especially such as were deserted and
forlorn ; victimized by the outrageous evils which a merciless
caste system inflicted on the poor. These he cared for as
though they were his own, and the more persistently because
of their wretchedness. For love is not only the impulse of
natural affection, it is also that moralized devotion which
seeks the highest welfare of its object. This passion pre-
vailed in Wycliffe ; it made him solicitous for the nation, the
Church, the Bible, and for those helpless members of the
State who could not ward off hunger, cold, and misery.
"Poor men," he cried, "have naked sides and dead walls
have plenty of waste gold." The recurrence of such abject
conditions has brought back these and similar phrases into
modern speech. They have not yet escaped the stir made
five hundred years ago by his opinions, opinions which, while
somewhat inchoate, nevertheless had a real influence for their
own age, as the Peasants' Revolt sufficiently attests.
Even friendly observers have complained of his constant
invective against the established order, and certainly he
indulged an unseasonable readiness for scathing rebuke.
Believing, because of his sensitiveness to more commanding
interests, that property was the capital offender against the
common weal, he scorned its inheritors, and propounded
impossible schemes for their elimination from the social
organism. His hate of greed and of the despotisms which it
dictated was the militant aspect of his ecclesiastical and
political righteousness. Yet these explanations do not justify
his language in controversy, which was harsh, imperious, and
vituperative. His opponents returned it in good measure
after the fashion of the era. Dignitaries of the Church and
of the University were prone to scurrilous abuse as well as
stiff argumentation, and were seemingly oblivious of the
fact that such methods lowered the merit of their debate. A
JOHN WYCLIFFE 159
witty Frenchman satirized Geoffrey's vitriolic criticisms by
announcing that he died as the result of having inadvertently
tasted the tip of his own pen. But Geoffrey was mild and
soporific when compared with the fourteenth century doctors
and disputants, whose picturesquely blasphemous epithets
need not be recounted here. Courtesy and fairness were
then unknown, and his admirers cannot claim that Wycliffe
did aught to discover them.
But the principles of tolerance were known ; and the men
of that age never thought of persecution as right; they
used it as a necessary instrument in the maintenance of the
churchly organization as a vital factor of the State. Even so
enlightened a scholar as Gerson entirely declined to recognize,
except for his own purposes, his avowed principle of the non-
coercion of opinions, and when Hus applied it to the revival
of spiritual religion it at once became heretical.^ Wycliffe
did not suggest physical violence against his adversaries, but
he did recommend that they should be stripped of their
honors and emoluments. He might have said in the words
of Goethe, "I can promise to be sincere but not impar-
tial," and his unlicensed speech injured his cause and ex-
posed him to the just accusations of his enemies. On the
other hand, a judicial attitude was scarcely possible in con-
tentious matters which went to the root of a semi-civilized
life. Both he and his adversaries struck for a definite object,
and received hard blows in return. Moreover, the clergy
upon whom he poured out his anger were not forgiven by
following generations. A century and a half later the laity
of many countries revolted against them, and to-day no
progressive people would tolerate them for a moment.
All conquests are, more or less, the prize of courage, and it
is essential for the forward march of the race that deeds of
daring should grapple boldly with fate. In this respect
Wycliffe has received no blame and requires no defense. He
had other characteristics; moral earnestness, a horror of
1 Bishop Mandell Creighton : "Persecution and Tolerance" ; pp. 100-101.
160 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
hypocrisy, honesty that did not shrink from the confession
of failure, and the temper which brought opinions to the test
of practice ; quaUties expressed in an undaunted bearing
which never flinched, and made him the foremost citizen of
England while he was a simple clerk at Lutterworth. To
attempt, to persist, to affront unjust power, and to stand in
his own place faithful to what he believed, was habitual with
him, and constituted him an example of genuine greatness.
He was further distinguished for an indomitable will, which
harmonized his strong and varied gifts and directed them
upon specific lines of action. Amid the mire and malignancy
of his environment, he pushed onward and cleared the
path for those who had less initiative. His contempo-
raries were aware of this determination, and his ablest
opponent, Archbishop Courtenay, was wary in his dealings
with one whom he knew to be as immovable as himself.
If there was in Wycliffe any reluctance to face obnoxious
circumstances, he seldom permitted it to appear. Indeed,
he preferred those dangerous pursuits from which prudence
would have retreated, and the greater the risk, the more
ready seemed his undertaking. This hardihood was not
stimulated by any optimistic outlook ; few clear-eyed men
were optimists after the Black Death and its consequences.
Langland asserted that "the last stronghold of Christianity
had already succumbed to the assaults of Antichrist and
the teachings of the friars. Henceforth his pattern of
simple faith, Piers Plowman, must shake the dust of the
past from his feet and wander forth alone in search of the
Christ that is to be." ^ Even Chaucer, who stood alone in
his inexplicable buoyancy, struck a less cheerful note in his
latest song. Wycliffe anticipated Langland, and declared
that the Church would never be reformed except by the
conjunction of an irresistible movement from within and a
heroical pressure from without. Half the truth of this asser-
tion was preceptible to his vision, but the remainder was not.
' G. G. Coulton : "From St. Francis to Dante" ; p. 350.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 161
He saw that men had begun to pass their accustomed bound-
aries and to find other fears and hopes far exceeding the griefs
and joys they knew. But he did not foresee their expansion
into a freedom which could dispense with narrow creeds and
scholastic interpretations, nor rise to an apprehension of that
search for good before which such formularies fade away.
Yet dejection never impeded his efforts, and, so far as the
immediate future was concerned, his wisdom was justified
by his accurate prediction of the troubles which fell upon
Christendom.
Material for volumes of disquisitions upon justice and
righteousness, or upon ecclesiastical and political plots and
counter-plots, can easily be obtained from a study of his
writings. Their treatment of these issues is far more akin
to the problems of our generation than are his acquire-
ments in the Scholasticism he expounded, and from which
he could never separate his modes of thought. But though
he was not the intellectual equal of the greater Schoolmen,
and it is vain to compare him with the premier thinkers
of the Middle Ages, nevertheless, in the opinion of those
best qualified to judge he was chiefly important because of
the weight and extent of his learning. He soared far above
others in the range of his genius and surpassed them in the
profundity of his knowledge. SuflBcient evidence to confirm
this has already been quoted from his contemporaries,
who were agreed that in philosophy, theology, and famil-
iarity with the Scriptures he had no living equal. Scho-
lasticism was in its recession when he arrived upon the
scene; yet Wycliffe's assiduity so redeemed what oppor-
tunities were left as to secure him this eminence. The
limitations of the metaphysic in which he wrought were
shown in the fact that men argued first and thought after-
wards. His formal treatment of certain themes moved in a
circle, and it was only when he reached the question he
desired to prove that he displayed an intellectual vigor and
ease which the clumsiness of his methods could no longer
162 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
conceal. Here the keenness of his mind and his strategical
handling of arguments for attack or defense, while derived
from the discipline of the Schools, went far beyond them,
and transferred him into the region of the reformer.
Passing from his intellectual qualities to his services as a
Christian patriot, it is relevant to say that his differentiat-
ing principle was the dependence of the individual soul upon
God alone. This doctrine, which assigned to every single
person an equal place in the regard of Deity, contained the
seed of destruction for the carefully graded hierarchies of
the Middle Ages. It sounds trite to our ears since custom
has deprived it of freshness and force. But the prelates who
resisted it did so because they recognized in its implications
the handwriting on the walls of their lordly houses. Wycliffe
transferred the conception from religion to politics, and the
result was that he fell into those paradoxes which perplexed
his friends and assisted his foes. Yet even here the for-
mula has still to be reckoned with ; for, though it is not the
final expression of the truth, it must be held as a depository of
what truth it contained, that this may be used as a means for
new light upon the relations of character to material posses-
sions.
Wycliffe's thunderings against medieval authority should
be estimated in the light of the fact that rulers were unaware
of the distinction between civil and religious liberty as a
principle and as an actual achievement. The fact, if not the
theory, they were compelled to accept at spasmodic intervals
as an unwelcome intruder into a well-ordered condition.
Kings and popes granted it, but in reality it was the force of
circumstances which gave it, and what were deemed conces-
sions from above were really conquests from below. The
government of Christian States rested on an absolutism which
flatly contradicted the democracy of the New Testament,
and Wycliffe was too close a Biblical student not to know
its plain teachings. Codes, statutes, franchises, charters,
dispensations, and similar instruments were frequently ex-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 163
torted by force, or procured by money payments to needy
exchequers. Occasionally they were regarded as fragments
of a larger freedom not yet evolved out of the surrounding
confusion, but never acknowledged by the governing powers
as a fundamental social necessity. Wycliffe was shrewd
enough to detect this temper in the princes, bishops, and
nobles, and if he did not perceive it with the lucidity of
Marsiglio, yet his speculations were sufficiently incisive to
disturb those who regarded his theory of lordship as a fore-
runner of anarchy and madness. Further, these views, how-
ever visionary, were the stimulus for those active mental
and moral processes by which he sought to attain beneficial
results, and which saved him from ending in a morass of
impossibilities. He called upon the students of Oxford to
renounce the grandiose puerilities of a barren curriculum
and occupy themselves with solid and useful verities. The
exhortation was enforced by his own researches beyond
lordship in the State into the baseless assumptions of a
sacerdotal hierarchy, whose pretensions he met, as we have
said, with his exposition of the theory of the immediate
dependence of the individual soul upon God ; a relation which
needed no priestly mediation and to which the Sacraments of
the Church, however desirable and edifying, were not abso-
lutely necessary.^ But powerful minds are not always safe
minds, and when he divorced the idea of the Church from any
connection with its official or formal constitution, he advo-
cated an impossible radicalism which verified his description
of himself as one who " stammered out many things he was
unable clearly to make good."
Enough has been said to show that the typical religion
which rises above changes of earth, above schools of the-
ology, above conflicting doctrines; the religion which is
created by a man's realization that as man he must stand
face to face with the Supreme Being, and that God has
given him his manhood for this specific purpose, — was
1 Encyclopaedia Britannica: 11th edition: article on Wy cliff e.
164 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
WyclifFe's, his unfailing source of confidence and of hope.
His virtues stood high in the ethical scale, and the motives
which inspired his conduct were, as a rule, unmixed. The
gross and open immorality then prevalent did not touch
him, even by rumor, to sully his priesthood, and apart from
politics, no compromise with wrong has been laid to his
charge. Among his contemporaries his influence corre-
sponded with the elevation of his character and the large-
ness of his mind. Yet he could not persuade a comparatively
primitive society whose spiritualities had been nourished by
that marvel of construction, the dogma, ritual, and liturgy
of Roman Christianity in the Middle Ages, to turn at once
to his purer and more exacting creed.
But the irresistible forces of Time were enlisted in behalf of
his teaching, while the convictions of his countrymen have
moved toward its more refined articles and away from dwarfed
finalities whose leaden, motionless infallibility arrests change
by destroying life. He was brought into contact with issues
which could not be discussed without differences nor settled
without leaving in the conclusions the leaven of some error.
The difficult role of the cleric in politics was not undertaken
without risk to his reputation, but here the sturdiness which
was inimical to his statesmanship served him well, in that it
prevented him from making final shipwreck of his honor.
Venomous misrepresentation was heaped upon his public
acts ; he was in no way idealized by what was said about
him after he was gone. His memory was either left to
the mercies of a rabid ecclesiasticism, jealous for its corpo-
rate powers and privileges, or connected with a despised
and obscure group of sectaries which dwindled to extinction
under persecution and its own fanaticisms. In his earlier
days a pluralist, a beneficiary of the Crown, and an associ-
ate of the Lancastrian party, in his later years he spurned
higher rewards within the compass of his talents because
their acceptance would have involved a sacrifice of principle.
Thus the gulf between preferment and his own self-respect
JOHN WYCLIFFE 165
had widened, nor would he bridge it by betrayal. He
supported the peasants in their revolt against the festering
abuses and iniquities of their rulers, and the deprivations
which ensued redounded to his credit and usefulness.
The approval of the inward monitor, the translation of the
Bible which he loved and venerated, the ministrations of his
parish and the direction of his poor priests afforded him en-
joyments beyond those he had forfeited. Besides, Wycliffe
was built for battle, and for him to renounce patronage was
less difficult than to abstain from onslaughts upon sordid
wrongs. If we are safe in believing the evil which men assert,
not of their antagonists, but of their companions, then cleri-
cal avarice, luxury, simony, and similar works of darkness
abounded in high places and under the disguise of spiritual
authority. Against these, the wearisome reiteration of which
would fall short of their actual extent, he waged a good
warfare, and in adversity he kept a high mien which discon-
certed his adversaries. The reaction against the Papacy,
which began in the reign of Henry HI, reached its high-water
mark in John Wycliffe, and, though a subsidence followed,
it increased the independence of the nation and created
precedents for a larger freedom. His final months of
earthly life ran their course unvexed ; a certain grandeur
overspread the man, who seemed to gather to himself in that
sunset calm those loftier hopes and fulfilments which have
made his memory the treasured heritage of a nation excep-
tionally rich in such bequests. His dust escaped the hate of
ignominious reactionaries and has the world for its tomb,
though he needed neither tomb nor epitaph to guard a name
than which no braver glows in the golden roll of English
sires.
Epilogue
Those who approach the study of the later medieval period
in England through the poetry of Chaucer or the glories of
Gothic architecture may find it difficult to reconcile the joy-
166 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ous and sublime triumph of these master works with the
physical and moral wretchedness of the populace we have
depicted. The fourteenth century Church which Wy cliff e
pronounced abandoned and degenerate could still erect those
exquisite cathedrals and abbeys which are to-day the monu-
ments of her religious culture. If anywhere there were
sermons in stones, capturing the imagination to an extent
that can be claimed by few buildings in the world, they
were found in Gloucester's reconstructed pile, in Abbot
Litlington's additions at Westminster, and in the trans-
formation of the great Hall of Rufus by Richard II. But the
marks of decadence were on them, and, though its progress
was slow, the change which reduced the free and flowing lines
of the earlier Gothic to the stiff utilitarianism of the later
style was already in process and continued during the life-
time of Wycliffe. Nor did their fascinations satisfy men's
cravings for a more spiritual setting of the Christian faith
than " long drawn aisles and fretted vaults " supply. Seekers
after God turned from their cloying beauties and from the
elaborate rituals they housed, as they had turned from the
subtleties of academic argument. Wycliffe, although given
to a proper ceremonialism, showed scanty appreciation for
these holy fanes. They were memorable achievements, but
the world could not live by them. Sculptures, however
skillfully wrought, were not the bread of Heaven ; not the
realities upon which piety must feed to live. Intonings and
chantings had not increased the morality of the worshipers.
Their constant repetition dulled the hearing of the heart, and
sacred offices hardened upon the accustomed mind like a
shell. He quoted St. Augustine's dictum — "As often as
the song delighteth me more than that is songen, so oft do
I acknowledge that I trespass grievously" — against the
endless array of vested priests and choristers who enlisted
the senses at the cost of the spirit.
But although he was the chief contemporary Englishman
who berated such cherished ways of worship, and also op-
JOHN WYCLIFFE 167
posed the hierarchical control of the State, he did so without
rightly estimating their latent usefulness, and his proposals
for their abolition failed because they were premature in
origin and negative in character. It has been pertinently
observed that it was the misfortune of his position to
have to attack abuses at a time when their abolition was
but too likely to be followed by worse abuses, and to de-
fend the rights of the State at a time when its rights were
likely to be asserted in practice for the satisfaction of a
clique of nobles more greedy, more unscrupulous, and more
incompetent than the respectable ecclesiastical statesmen
in whom Wycliffe saw no good thing. The governing classes
were aware that the modifications and balances afterwards
introduced to adjust the relations of Church and State had
as yet found no place in English law. Nor could the towns
and cities, those repositories of a larger freedom, advance the
Reformer's schemes, since they were fully occupied in pro-
tecting their civic interests. The peasants and artisans to
whom he appealed in his extremity were deprived of any
means for an effective response. Hence he attempted to
pluck the fruit before it was ripe; the experiments in de-
mocracy which he advocated, if they had been carried out,
would have turned back by centuries the hands of the clock.
He saw the needs of the present, and to some extent the possi-
bilities of the future, but he did not sufiiciently esteem the
spirit of the past from which they could not be separated if
they were to be satisfied. Constructive policies were abso-
lutely essential in dealing with the great fabric which previ-
ous ages had reared with untold pains and sacrifices. These
policies were not forthcoming, and the Reformer mediated
between the methods he condemned and those he could not
fully formulate. Thinker though he was, his first principles
were sometimes far from cohesive ; on specific questions his
was too often the logic that flourished in seclusion but withered
in the open. It should be added that he indulged no roseate
dreams about victory ; on the contrary, he never concealed
168 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
from himself nor from others the foreboding that their joint
efforts would be defeated and driven back. His strength
was found in the faith he had in truth and righteousness.
And in this temper, more manly and deserving than the
artificial courage which is kindled by success, he bore a brave
front and wrought valiantly.
Some of his former companions in tribulation were after-
ward tormentors of the Lollards who inherited his teaching ;
one of these backsliders, Philip Repyngdon, became Bishop
of Lincoln and a Cardinal of the Church. This prelate hu-
manely refused to obey the official order from the Council of
Constance commanding that the bones of his old master be
exhumed and burned. Nicholas Hereford also recanted his
Wyclifiian opinions, and, last and most melancholy, John
Purvey, who had been so closely identified with the Reformer's
dearest hopes and labors, and to whose gifts was due the
revision of the first version of the Wycliffe Bible, revealed
the untrustworthiness of scholastic Lollardism by his abjura-
tion of the cause in which he had been a leader. He after-
wards repented of his cowardice, recalled his recreancy,
and disappeared from view. William Thorpe, a more honor-
able man, kept the faith, enduring imprisonment in 1397 and
again in 1407, and on being brought before Archbishop
Arundel, gave the Primate a moving account of his own life,
and witnessed that historic confession for Wycliffe from which
we have already quoted . B ut the Lollards gradually perished ,
the University relinquished its hard-won rights and returned
to the bosom of the Church, and during the perjured and
disgraceful reign of Henry IV the heads of colleges became the
persecuting agents of the bishops. Shakespeare made that
unhappy monarch, the son of John of Gaunt, denounce his
own career, when he cried out that God knew by what
crooked means he had obtained the crown, and continued,
"I myself know well how troublesome it sat upon my head."
He rests beneath the infamy of being the first English king
who burned his subjects in the name of religion. This policy
JOHN WYCLIPFE 169
could not endure, and after an interval the persecutions of his
successor, Harry of Agincourt, and of Archbishop Arundel,
were quietly abandoned, although such was not the case until
Wycliffe's mission was apparently obliterated in England.
But if his opinions were subdued in his native land, they
rose again in Bohemia, and the account of their revival in
southeastern Europe is among the dramatic phases of Prot-
estant history. John Hus and Jerome of Prague continued
there the enterprise Wycliff e had begun at Oxford and Lutter-
worth. Hus obtained his forerunner's manuscript works
through scholars who came to England with Queen Anne
of Bohemia, the consort of Richard H, and, while this in-
fluential disciple did not accept all his master's teachings,
he raised their essentials to the dignity of a national faith.
His tracts, pamphlets and books were copied ipsissima verba
from Wycliffe's works and freely circulated among the people
of that distant land. An Englishman who heard the exami-
nation of Hus before the Council of Constance, which con-
demned and burned him, declared that he thought he saw
standing before him "the very Wy cliff e." It required little
stretch of imagination to see, looming in the background, the
majestic shade of that great Englishman " for whose doctrine
Hus went to the stake." Their memories, with Luther's,
are enshrined in three medallions at the University of Prague,
which depict the evolution of Protestantism for a century and
a half, from the Anglican Scholastic through the Bohe-
mian martyr to the German Titan. The first shows Wy cliff e
striking gleaming sparks from a flint ; the second, Hus
kindling the coals with the sparks ; the third, Luther bearing
a blazing torch he has lit at their fires.
Throughout this review we have seen that belief in
liberty as an essential part of the good of all things, and
dread of liberty as a dangerous innovation, were then, as
they are now, the polar instincts meeting there, as every-
170 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
where, in ceaseless antagonism. The rulers of the period
were intent on securing its aims and ideals in their own way,
by the consolidation of Church and State, and the preserva-
tion of that loyalty to both upon which, as they held, all
welfare here and hereafter alike depended. "Obedience is
the first lesson in social progress, and this lesson was well
worth learning, even though it took centuries to make it
an instinctive motor reaction. By the steady pressure of
authority the Church was modifying the very brain tissue of
the Christian world, and inculcating habits of thought which
lie at the basis of social progress. The Church may perish,
but the psychic qualities it created will endure as long as
European civilization." ^
The time came when self-knowledge and self-control were
sufficiently developed to attack with success the evils
Wycliffe deplored, and the failure of the Roman Church to
withstand the onset must be sought in the domain of morals
as well as that of religion. Protestantism consecrated the
home life of the people, enforced the Ten Commandments,
put the ban upon lawless communal pleasures, and reminded
men and women that they could attain sainthood by living
in the world rather than fleeing from it. The mention of these
things does not detract from the inestimable worth and
spiritual character of other and more familiar causes that
also contributed to the same result, but they are emphasized
for the reason that they have not always received adequate
consideration. The German Reformation was the outcome
of an ethical quite as much as of a theological revolt. When
its day dawned and the shadows fled, men saw with astonish-
ment that throughout the long night preceding a few faithful
souls had kept their vigil, and that the succession of the truly
apostolic order had never been entirely broken. In that suc-
cession, always supreme because nearest to God's right' hand,
John Wycliffe stood first and greatest, as its noblest and most
serviceable member during the later medieval period.
» S. N. Patten : "Development of English Thought" ; pp. 89-90.
JOHN WYCLIFFE 171
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For a scholarly and authoritative study of Wycliffe and his times
the student is strongly recommended to consult "The Dawn of the
Reformation," by Herbert B. Workman, M.A., D. Lit., of Westminster
College, London.
Acton, Lord. History of Freedom and Other Essays.
Acton, Lord. Historical Essays and Studies.
Acton, Lord. Lectures on Modern History.
Armitage-Smith, Sydney. John of Gaunt.
BoASE, Charles W. Oxford (Historic Towns Series).
Brodrick, Hon. George C. A History of the University of Oxford.
Capes, W. W. The Enghsh Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries.
-iCARRiCK, J. C. Wycliffe and the Lollards.
CotJLTON, G. G. Chaucer and his England.
CouLTON, G. G. From St. Francis to Dante.
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Creighton, Bishop Mandell. Historical Lectures and Addresses.
Creighton, Bishop Mandell. History of the Papacy.
Creighton, Bishop Mandell. Persecution and Tolerance.
Creighton, Bishop Mandell. Simon de Montfort.
Denton, W. England in the Fifteenth Century.
I Encyclopcedia Britannica. Article on Wycliffe. Vol. XXVIII. 11th
3 edition. "
FoRTESCUE, Adrian. The Mass.
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GiHR, Nicholas. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Green, Alice S. Town Life in the Fifteenth Century.
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Green, John Richard. Short History of the Enghsh People.
Gribble, Francis. The Romance of the Oxford Colleges.
GuizoT, M. The History of England, Vol. I.
Harnack, Adolf. History of Dogma.
Harnack, Adolf. Bible Reading in the Early Church.
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Middle Ages.
Jessopp, Augustus. The Coming of the Friars, and other Historical
Essays.
Jusserand, J. H. English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages.
(Fourteenth century).
172 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Lechler, Gotthard v. John Wycliffe and his EngHsh Precursors.
Locke, Clinton. The Age of the Great Western Schism.
Oman, Charles. The Great Revolt of 1381.
vPoole, Reginald Lane. Wycliffe and Movements for Reform.
Rait, Robert S. Life in the Medieval University.
Ramsay, Sir James H. The Angevin Empire.
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Rashdall, Hastings. The Universities of Europe in the Middle
Ages. Vol. II, Part II.
Rock, D. Hierm-gia, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Sanderson, Edgar. History of England and the British Empire.
Skeat, Walter W. Geoffrey Chaucer.
Stevenson, Francis S. Robert Grosseteste.
SruBBS, Bishop William. Historical Introduction to the Rolls Series.
O^AYLOR, H. O. The Medieval Mind.
Tout, T. F. The History of England. Vol. II.
3?REVELYAN, George Macaulay. England in the Age of Wycliffe.
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y\^ARD, Adolphus W. Chaucer.
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BOOK II
JOHN WESLEY
AND
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
173
I have felt
A Presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense subhme
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Wordsworth : Lines at Tintern Abbey.
174
CHAPTER V
ANCESTRY AND TRAINING
175
Avo yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch
At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb;
Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch
Till the white-winged reapers come.
Henry Vaughan : The Seed Growing Secretly.
" But God, Who is able to prevail, wrestled with him ; marked
him for His own."
IzAAK Walton.
176
CHAPTER V
ANCESTRY AND TRAINING
Religion in England in the eighteenth century — Personality the deter-
mining factor in progress — Wesley's birth and ancestry — The early
years at Epworth — The Wesley family — The Charterhouse — Ox-
ford University — Wesley's self-condemnation — Preparation for Holy
Orders — His Ordination — Elected Fellow of Lincoln College —
Curate of Wroote — WiUiam Law and the "Serious Call" — Charles
Wesley at Oxford— The "Holy Club" — Death of Samuel Wesley
— The Mission to Georgia — General Oglethorpe — The Moravian
Brethren.
We deal in these chapters with the history of an almost
unparalleled transformation of the English national character
effected under the impulse of a revival of Christianity which
subsequently spread throughout the British Empire and
the United States. That revival was preceded by a period
of spiritual decline and moral inertia which itself had fol-
lowed the brief reign of Puritanism in the seventeenth
century. The clergymen who filled the pastoral offices of
Anglicanism or of Nonconformity during the eighteenth
century were, with few exceptions, convinced that the im-
mediate, direct action of the living God upon the spirits
of men was practically impossible in reality and well nigh
blasphemous in conception. They differed widely about
theological systems and methods of Church organization,
but they were united in relegating the intervention of Deity
in matters of personal religion either to the far past or to
the future that lay beyond the grave. To ward off assaults
upon their respective institutions and beliefs seemed to all
alike a more imperative duty than to contend against the
N 177
178 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
deplorable vice and crime which afflicted society on every
side. The regenerating faith of the New Testament was
obscured, while the scholarship and energies which should
have heralded it to a needy race were expended in guarding
sectarian prejudices and shibboleths, the meanings of which
were not always intelligible.
Yet this untoward generation produced out of the heart
of Anglicanism the man of Puritan ancestry who reaffirmed
the truth of God's presence in His children, and who was in-
strumental in stimulating and organizing a faith which rested
upon Christ's personal word and self-communicated life;
a faith that could not be depreciated by controversy, nor
shocked by intellectual changes, nor convulsed by social
upheavals; an overmastering faith, the progress of which
won conquests similar to those of the Acts of the Apostles.
Many had perceived the crying need of this faith, but John
Wesley became its embodiment and messenger. In him
and in his work Anglican and Puritan coalesced — the order
and dignity of the one, the fearless initiative and asceticism
of the other — and admirably served their mission to his
own and succeeding ages. His quenchless zeal enabled
him to quicken in multitudes of his fellow men that repent-
ance for sin and sense of the renewed favor of God which
had wrought his own deliverance. His labors had a pro-
found and pervasive influence on the evolution of Protest-
antism, to which Mr. Lecky bears witness in the following
words: "Although the career of the elder Pitt and the
splendid victories by land and sea that were won during his
ministry, form unquestionably the most dazzling episodes in
the reign of George H, they must yield, I think, in real im-
portance to that religious revolution which shortly before had
begim in England by the preaching of the Wesleys and White-
field." ^
This deserved tribute, which has received a tardy yet
» " History of England iu the Eighteenth Century " ; Vol. III. p. 1.
JOHN WESLEY 179
increasing approval, serves to bear out the contention of
Goethe, Carlyle, and Emerson, that personaHty rather
than ideas is the determining factor in human progress.
But while a character such as Wesley's does infinitely more
for the advancement of morals and religion than any ab-
stract theory or mechanical formula possibly could accom-
plish, it also creates the diflBculty of interpreting him
adequately. There is a mystery of genius as well as a
mystery of godliness, and he shared in both. The Oxford
cleric who became the center of the revolution which Lecky
described possessed a significance which requires patient and
thorough examination. Literary ingenuity can set forth the
motions of his gifted mind and the outward expressions of
his far-reaching and benevolent sympathies, but it falters
in attempting to delineate the secret history of his rich and
contagious spirituality. Although his was one of those hap-
pily constituted intellects which pierce through immaterial
and irrelevant accretions to the core of a question, his nature
was complex, and his spirit accommodated many apparently
contradictory elements. He shared the sentiments common
to saints of every school, and displayed an admirable cath-
olicity toward those who did not hold his opinions. Yet
some of his biographers have embalmed him rather than
made him vital to our apprehension, and others have treated
him as a quarry from which to excavate the building mate-
rial for the defenses of their orthodoxy. The living Wesley,
as one of the chosen vessels of God's grace and a prophet
of divine realities whose life and teaching were an inspiration
and a blessing to the Church, should not be submitted to
these stereotyped processes. Nor can his varied qualities
be compressed into those simplifying generalizations which
gratify the advocates of a theological system but fail to
elucidate the deeper meaning of the man.
He was born at Epworth rectory, in the county and dio-
cese of Lincoln, on the 17th of June, 1703,^ and came
' The new style of reckoning would make it the 28th of June.
180 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of a sturdy Anglo-Saxon stock whose later members fur-
nished their quota of scholars and clergymen to the service
of the Church.^ Bartholomew Westley, the great-grand-
father of John, was the third son* of Sir Herbert West-
ley, of Westleigh, Devon, and Elizabeth de Wellesley, of
Dangan, County Meath, Ireland. An Oxford man, he
studied both medicine and divinity in the University where
his son, grandson, and three great-grandsons were after-
wards educated. In 1619 he married the daughter of Sir
Henry Colley of Castle Carberry, Kildare, Ireland, and after
an interval, during which little definite is known concerning
his career, Westley became in 1640 the Rector of Catherston,
and also held the neighboring living of Charmouth in
Dorset. When Charles II fled from Cromwell's "crowning
mercy" at Worcester in 1651, he attempted to cross the
Channel from Charmouth to France. But the delay of
the boat chartered to convey the king to the vessel jeopard-
ized the scheme, and he barely escaped. The "puny par-
son's" bold avowal that he would have captured the monarch
had he been present was an indication of the political opin-
ions which speedily involved Mr. Westley in the troubles
of the Restoration. In 1662 he suffered ejection from his
living under the Act of Uniformity, and thereafter practiced
as a physician among his former parishioners and at Brid-
port. His blameless and benevolent character seems to have
been a protection during the persecuting days. He lived
to a ripe and honored age, and at his death was laid to rest
in the churchyard at Lyme Regis.
John Westley, the son of Bartholomew and the paternal
grandfather of the man who bore his name and inherited
his spirit, was born in 1636, and graduated from Oxford in
his twenty-second year with a reputation as an Oriental
' In old parish registers of churches in the vicinity of Bridport, near
Dorchester, the name of John Westley appears in 1435 as prebendary and
vicar of Sturminster : in 16.55 Jaspar, son of Ephraim Westley, gentleman,
resided at Weymouth, and in 1691 James Westley was ono of the bailiffs
of Bridport.
JOHN WESLEY 181
linguist. The Vice Chancellor, Dr. Owen, had imbued
him with Dissenting views of Church government, and
Westley, probably avoiding Episcopal ordination, exercised
his first ministry among the fishermen of Radipole, a hamlet
near Weymouth. In 1658 his piety and culture secured
for him the pastorate of Winterborne- Whitchurch, in Dorset,
and Cromwell's Board of Commissioners, known as "Triers,"
who pronounced upon the fitness of candidates for the min-
istry of the Church, approved the selection. In 1661, the
second year of the Restoration, he was imprisoned for de-
clining to use the Book of Common Prayer, and a year later
was ejected from his living. The remaining sixteen years
of his life were marked by repeated labors and hardships;
he died when still in the forties, prematurely worn out and
apparently thwarted in his aims. But his legacy to the
Wesley family was treasured by his widow and children,
who transmitted to the sons of Epworth rectory his lofty
example of a singularly pure and sacrificial career, ennobled
by the sufferings he endured for the sake of conscience.
His wife was the daughter of Dr. John White, the patriarch
of Dorchester, a member of the Westminster Assembly and
one of the original patentees of the Massachusetts colony.
Her uncle, Samuel Fuller, the witty divine and church histo-
rian, described her father as "a grave man, who would yet
willingly contribute his shot of facetiousness on any just
occasion." Mrs. John Westley received the sympathy of
those who had admired her husband's adherence to his
convictions, and by their assistance she was enabled to
educate her children. Her son Matthew became a physician
in London ; Samuel, the father of John and Charles Wesley,
was intended for the Dissenting ministry, and was sent to
Mr. Martin's Academy on Newington Green in that city
to obtain his training.^ The lack of genuine religion and
1 These academies were established after the passing of the Toleration
Act. Prior to that, Dissenting ministers acted as private tutors in families
or received pupils in their own homes. Many of the ministers were men of
learning and power and linked their schools with the history of Noncon-
182 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the prevalence of sectarian controversy among his fellow-
students chilled his Nonconformity, and, notwithstanding
his tender regard for his father's memory and for his mother's
wishes, he began to examine the questions at issue between
the Established Church and Dissent. He naturally felt
reluctant to inform his mother and her friends of his impend-
ing change; yet he met the emergency with characteristic
courage and promptitude, and having carefully considered
the situation and invoked Heaven's directing wisdom, he
determined to seek admission to the Anglican Church. With
this end in view, he set out on foot for Oxford, with little
or no provision for his expenses, and on arriving there en-
tered as a servitor at Exeter College. After the completion
of his studies, he was ordained deacon on August 7, 1688,
and priest in February, 1689 ; thus reuniting his branch of
the family with the Church which had expelled his father and
grandfather, and which afterwards looked with prejudice
on the efforts of his sons. It may be noted here that the
change in the spelling of their name from Westley to Wes-
ley was made by Samuel on the ground that the latter was
the original form.
John Wesley was equally well born on the maternal
side. His mother was the youngest daughter of Dr. Samuel
Annesley, a graduate of Queen's College, Oxford, and an
able, genial, and erudite divine whose conspicuous gifts were
highly esteemed by his brethren. Ejected from the historic
London Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, Dr. Annesley
afterwards ministered to a congregation worshipping at
Little St. Helens, Bishopsgate, where his reputation as a
trusted leader earned for him the title, "the St. Paul of
Nonconformity." Mrs. Wesley, like her husband, was dis-
satisfied with the Calvinistic tenets of Puritan theology then
prevalent, and while still a girl had deliberately renounced
formity. But the intellectual activity of these schools injured their spiritual
life, and herein lay the secret of their bickerings and ultimate atrophy. See
The Cambridge History of English Literature: Vol. X, pp. 431-432.
JOHN WESLEY 183
them and returned to the Anglican fold.^ This renunciation
created a mutual sympathy between her and Samuel Wes-
ley, whose good fortune it was to marry her during the
year of his ordination. From the first the young couple
struggled under burdens of poverty and debt consequent up-
on a meager income and a growing family. After a London
curacy, a chaplaincy in the navy, and a brief tenure in the
small living of South Ormsby, Lincolnshire, they came in
1697 to Epworth, the place destined to be the scene of their
joint labors for nearly forty years. The new rector, then
thirty-five years of age, received scarcely enough support
for his necessities. The rectory was a three-storied building
of timber and plaster, thatched with straw; the parish-
ioners were ignorant and degraded farmers and peasants,
bitterly opposed to their parson's Tory politics, and the
majority remained long heedless of his religious exhortations.
They have been described by the Rev. W. B. Stonehouse
as descending from the Fenmen, "a race according to the
place where they dwell, rude, uncivil, and envious to all
others." In the early eighteenth century these people main-
tained the bad reputation of their ancestors. They formed
an insulated group, much below even the pitiable average
of rural intelligence, turbulent and vulgar, profane and
corrupt. The deference usually shown to superiors in long
settled communities was entirely absent from their behavior,
and they despised and habitually neglected the conventional
observances of religion.
The market town of Epworth, containing a hitherto
stationary population of about two thousand, is situated
on the Isle of Axholme,- a strip of land ten miles long and
four broad, once enclosed by five rivers, two of which are
now only marked by the willow trees lining their former
1 Archbishop Laud, to his credit, had always protested against these
tenets.
^ The Isle of Axholme still retains the chief remaining examples of the old
three-field system which was the ancient Aryan method of tillage, showing
how little the place has been affected by the surrounding order of progress.
184 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
banks. The fertile plains of Lincolnshire stretch in green
expanse beyond the gentle slope on which the place is
located, their stagnant marshes drained and dotted with
woodland groves, prosperous farmsteads, and herds of cattle.
On the rising ground commanding the town stands the
church with its massive tower. The parsonage in which
John Wesley was born was destroyed by an incendiary fire
on a winter's night in 1709, and although the rector promptly
began the work of rebuilding, the new edifice remained half
furnished for several years. The present rectory is a Queen
Anne structure of comfortable dimensions, with one of those
old-fashioned English gardens which harbor peace and con-
templation in their bordered walks.
Few clergymen seemed less fitted to minister to such a
parish than Samuel Wesley, and even his wife's superior
discernment could not prevent frequent misunderstandings
between pastor and flock which occasionally involved her
also. Yet choleric, stubborn of temper and somewhat ec-
centric in conduct as the rector was, his shortcomings
were offset by his cheerful optimism, his courage, and his
fidelity to his calling. He contended with pecuniary diffi-
culties and the indifference and malignancy of his parish-
ioners until his high sense of duty and his independence
finally won the reluctant confidence of those whom he
served according to his own ideas instead of their desires.
His tastes and aspirations as a scholar found expression in
voluminous writings, none of which had any particular
value. Swift in the "Battle of the Books," and Pope in
the "Dunciad," dismissed his versifications with a phrase,
and even the favorable eye of his son John failed to detect
any signs of poetry in them. His chief work in prose was
a Commentary on the Book of Job, in which he brought
to the memory of the much enduring Patriarch an accumu-
lation of curious and varied learning. Yet these literary
efiForts kept alive in his frugal household the traditions of
scholarship, and doubtless served to cheer the lonely lot of
JOHN WESLEY 185
an intellectually ambitious man who was severed from
fellowship with craftsmen of the pen. He weathered the
storms of his tempestuous passage, and steadily maintained
the Apostolic vision of a world converted to the true faith,
himself volunteering for missionary service in the far East
that this cause might be advanced. An ardent patriot
and a churchman, he never despaired of affairs in the home-
land. "Charles," said the father as he lay on his death-
bed and addressed his youngest son, " be steady ; the Chris-
tian faith will surely revive in these kingdoms. You shall
see it, though I shall not." To John he had before testified,
" The inward witness, son, the inward witness, — this is
the proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity."
"I did not at the time understand them," remarked
John in after days, speaking of these dying words; yet
when viewed in the light of Methodist history, they show
the prophetic instinct, and how the far-reaching fibers of
the Evangelical Revival were nurtured in the hearts of that
family from the days of Bartholomew and John Westley to
those of Samuel Wesley and his sons.
His wife exercised the dominant influence in the house-
hold, and John was essentially his mother's child. Her
Anglicanism was blended with the sterner qualities of her
Puritan father, and her zeal was no less ardent because it
was equable. Although deficient in some milder attributes
of the feminine nature, and without that sense of humor
which would have softened the rigidities of her domestic
rule, she excelled in simplicity, dignity, practicality, and
firmness of purpose, traits which made her affection a source
of strength and security. Of the numerous children ^ born
to this excellent lady all were gifted, and some were doomed
to saddened and disappointed lives, but two of them founded
the Methodism of which she was a primal source. Her
' Epworth was the birthplace of fifteen of the nineteen children of Samuel
and Susannah Wesley. Samuel, the eldest son, who was born in London,
was thirteen years older than John, and Charles four years younger.
186 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
home was a school of manners, morals, and religion, in which
their conversation and intercourse were closely guarded, and
turned into the most profitable channels. She taught them
letters; their knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and pro-
fessions of piety were the objects of her unstinted care, from
which the duties and privations of her household could not
detain her. Although her Spartan regime reacted on some
of the children, in later days they referred to her in terms
of the liveliest gratitude, seeking her counsel, and making
her the recipient of their confidences. The touch of human-
ness, which would have relieved the austerities of her disci-
pline without lowering its tone, came with the passing of
the years; time was generous to Mrs. Wesley in that it
mellowed her, adding to her grace and tenderness. Her
assiduous defense of the circle she adorned was a revela-
tion of her goodness and wisdom, virtues which her letters
to John and Charles abundantly confirm. With such a
mother, the Church would have been justified in expecting
great things from the sons. To enlarge upon her worth
is superfluous, since that has been emphasized by many
authors and moralists who have wondered at her tranquil
authority over a family so highly individualized, and one
which conferred such priceless benefits on mankind. The
latent Puritanism to which her sons afterwards appealed
with an unerring belief in its desire for God, and which
produced its best results in regions beyond the sphere of
the State, found no finer or more complete setting for
the spiritual phases of Protestant history than that given
at Epworth by Susannah Wesley. Content to cultivate
in poverty and seclusion the purer ideals which political
struggles and changes had failed to maintain, she lived to
a beautiful and venerable age, and grew in holiness and influ-
ence, until called to the life beyond, when her happy spirit
passed from peace to deeper peace with confidence and
thanksgiving.
JOHN WESLEY 187
II
The first decade in Epworth was full of vexations. When
John was but two years old his father was committed to
Lincoln Castle for debt. The rector's enemies not only
brought this trouble upon him ; they also destroyed his
crops, injured his cattle, and after several attempts, burned
his home. John, who had been overlooked in the confusion,
was rescued from the upper story at the last moment by
a man raised on the shoulders of others to snatch the child
out of the flames. Immediately afterwards the roof col-
lapsed, and his father, overcome with gratitude, fell upon
his knees and acknowledged the providence which had
delivered the lad. In later days John frequently recurred
to the incident then stamped upon his memory as a proof of
God's personal supervision of his life, and desired that his
epitaph should commemorate it in the words, "Is not this
a brand plucked from the burning?" The capricious esca-
pades of "Old Jeffrey," the ghost which haunted the rectory,
were also among the vivid recollections of his youth. He
had entered the Charterhouse School when this much dis-
cussed visitor from another world began those disturb-
ances which continued during the months of December and
January, 1716 and 1717. The real source of the phenomena
was never discovered; the Wesleys attributed them to a
supernatural cause, but seemed not to have been affrighted
by this impression. Whenever prayers were offered for the
Royal Household the spirit manifested its Jacobite sym-
pathies by vigorous poundings, a form of remonstrance
which greatly amused the children. John's frank acceptance
of this and similar marvels, references to which are frequent
in his writings, was more than an ordinary recognition of
such occurrences ; it savored strongly of superstition.
Samuel, the eldest son, entered Westminster School in
1704, became a Queen's scholar in 1709, and went up to
Christ Church, Oxford, in 1711. He returned to West-
188 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
minster as head usher, was admitted to Holy Orders, and
in process of time made the acquaintance of a group of
notables whose political and ecclesiastical opinions he fully
shared. Of that select company were Bishop Atterbury,
the stormy petrel of the AngUcan episcopacy, Harley, Earl
of Oxford, Prior, Addison, and Dean Swift. This Samuel
Wesley was a poet of some moment, an accomplished scholar,
and a conservative man of retiring disposition who looked
with alarm upon the religious "extravagances" of his younger
brothers. He was designated in 1732 head master of Blun-
dell's School at Tiverton in Devonshire, well known to
readers of Blackmore's "Lorna Doone," and died there on
November 6, 1739, without having realized the preferment
which might have been his had the Tory party not been
defeated by its allegiance to the Stuarts.
John entered the Charterhouse School, London, at eleven
years of age, on the nomination of the Duke of Buckingham,
and remained there until he was seventeen. The name of
this famous school is derived from the French Maison Char-
treuse, a religious house of the Carthusian monks, and as such
was applied to the various Carthusian monasteries in Eng-
land. Its familiar and corrupted usage is connected with
the Charterhouse, where on a former burying ground near
the city wall. Sir Walter de Manny, at whose death all
England mourned, and Bishop Northbury, founded in 1371
the Priory of the Salutation. After the dissolution of the
great monasteries in 1535 the property passed through
various hands until in 1611 the Earl of Suffolk sold it to
Thomas Sutton, one of Queen Elizabeth's Masters of Ord-
nance, who here established a brotherhood for eighty poor
men and a school of forty poor boys. The latter has long
ranked as one of the foremost public schools of the realm,
and boasts among its scholars the names of Crashaw,
Lovelace, Barrow, Roger Williams, Addison, Steele, Wesley,
Blackstone, Grote, Thirlwall, Leech, Havelock, and Thack-
eray. The school was removed to its handsome new build-
JOHN WESLEY 189
ings at Godalming, Surrey, in 1872, but the fascinating
place which Wesley loved and frequently revisited stands
practically the same to-day, and the gentlemen pensioners
whom Thackeray immortalized in "Colonel Newcome"
still gather at the sound of the curfew in the stately Eliza-
bethan hall, and worship in the dim chapel which contains
Sutton's alabaster tomb.
Public school life in Wesley's England was cruel beyond
degree; the elder boys bullied the younger ones, who had
to be content with short commons at table, and submit to
brutal treatment on every side.^ The discipline of the rec-
tory had prepared John for his ordeal ; he did not complain
of the food, nor resist the rough handling of his companions,
as Charles did at Westminster when he thrashed one of his
worst tormentors. Yet his quiet persistence and advanced
knowledge gained him a standing even in that ruffianly
crowd, and he always attributed his abstemious habits and
longevity to the scanty diet and abundant exercise of the
Charterhouse. The Rev. Luke Tyerman makes the por-
tentous announcement that "John Wesley entered the
Charterhouse a saint, and left it a sinner." ^ What particu-
lar kind of saint or sinner he had in mind the vigorous biog-
rapher of Wesley does not define ; and the statement can
be dismissed as one of those vagaries which are due to theo-
logical prejudice. It is highly questionable if the boy
suffered any loss of genuine faith or purity. He had come
from a sheltered existence at home, where his early interest
in religious matters induced his father to admit him to Holy
Communion when he was eight years old. His fastidious
scruples had already attracted the attention of those about
him, and needed no further encouragement, while the drastic
treatment he received from his schoolfellows probably saved
him from becoming a pious prig by discouraging any dis-
» Leech's "Winchester College" and the article on Eton in the Victoria
County History of Buckinghamshire give striking accounts of the harshness
and ill usage of eighteenth century public schools.
" "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 22.
190 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
position towards artificiality. During his six years in
London he kept in close touch with his parents and his
brother Samuel, who had oversight of Charles at Westmin-
ster and of John at the Charterhouse throughout the four
years the three brothers were together in the capital. Sur-
rounded by these influences, John maintained his private
devotions and communicated on the appointed days.
He entered Christ Church, Oxford, in the summer of 1720,
having already gained solid advantages in the breadth and
sincerity of his character and a thorough drilling in the
classics. As a Carthusian scholar at the University he
received an annuity of forty pounds, an income which made it
almost impossible for him to keep out of debt. His father's
finances were too straitened to be of much avail, and his
mother's letters contained frequent advices on the need for
economy. Yet the monetary drawback did not hinder his
serious use of those opportunities which his fellow students
for the most part neglected.
The University was at a low ebb, too careful for the
interests of the banished Stuart dynasty, and so indifferent
toward scholarship as to provoke Wesley's exclamation —
"Oh! what is so scarce as learning save religion?" Edward
Gibbon described a typical tutor of the day as a man who
" remembered that he had a salary to receive, and forgot that
he had a duty to perform." ^ Separated from the life and
progress of the nation, supercilious toward the Hanoverian
succession, which, despite its foreign e\i:raction, was the
safeguard of constitutional liberties, and without any effective
internal supervision, Oxford had fallen on evil days, the
more pronounced because of its perverse blindness to any
defects. Students evaded their classes, wasting their time
in drinking and gambling. Idleness, ignorance, and decep-
tion abounded. Candidates for degrees could purchase a
dispensation freeing them from attending lectures, some of
' It should be noted that Gibbon's impressions of Oxford were received
when he was a youth of fifteen.
JOHN WESLEY 191
which were never given, and had others been omitted no
serious loss would have been incurred. This betrayal of
trust and the general immorality intensified Wesley's sense
of separateness. Twenty years later he rebuked them in a
sermon preached before the University and exhorted the
colleges to mend their ways. In the meantime the reli-
gious devotion of his adolescence began to weaken under
the stress of his studies and social engagements. But he
was far removed from the gross pursuits of many of his
fellow students, thoroughly reputable and conscientious in
his dealings, and justly respected for the propriety of his
conduct. His earliest diaries show that he read popular
dramas, took a special interest in the gay Horace, and
studied the graver works of Homer, Virgil, Juvenal, Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton.
He spent the Christmas of 1725 with college friends,
at the rectories of Broadway and Stanton, villages situated
under the Cotswold Hills, in one of the loveliest valleys
of England. Here he met Miss Betty Kirkham, probably
the "religious friend" who had first induced him in the
preceding April to enter earnestly upon a new life.^
Another of his companions was Mrs. Pendarvis, of
the Granville family of Buckland, a third place in the
vicinity. This fascinating young widow, the niece of Lord
Lansdowne, afterwards the wife of Dr. Delaney of Dublin,
was one of the accomplished women of the time, to whom
Edmund Burke paid an unusual tribute for her culture and
conversation. Wesley maintained a correspondence with
both ladies, addressing Miss Kirkham as Varanese and Mrs.
Pendarvis as Aspasia. He danced at a wedding which took
place during the vacation and also with his sisters at Ep-
worth upon his visits there, and returned to Oxford to
reproach himself for his susceptibility to the charms of a
bewitching circle. It was his custom on Saturday evenings
* "The Journal of John Wesley": edited by Rev. Nehemiah Curnock;
Vol. I, p. 15.
192 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to record the events of the moving hours, and confess his
faults. "Have I loved women or company more than
God?"^ he asked, shortly after his return from Stanton.
The inquiry showed that while enjoying the pleasures
of a refined taste, he also felt that to fear God and to
have no other fear is the principle which not only safeguards
religion, but asserts its truth and wisdom in all affairs
of life. In retrospect he was unsparing toward himself, and
sometimes demanded more than his nature or circumstances
could then afford, striving after a degree of excellence well-
nigh unattainable in those who have to mingle in the current
of human affairs. With guileless and unreserved candor he
exposed the inmost secrets of his soul, and his sincerity led
him to reflect, "Who more foolish and faithless than I was?"
He did not insinuate his experiences nor gloss them; he
proclaimed them from the house-tops. "I still said my
prayers, both in public and private; and read, with the
Scriptures, several other books of religion. . . . Yet I had
not all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness;
nay, went on habitually and, for the most part, very con-
tentedly, in some or other known sin; though with some
intermission and short struggles, especially before and after
the Holy Communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice
a year." ^ This confession disquieted him more than it
need disquiet others. While we should not refuse to admit
the inferences which lie on the surface of his statement, we
must not suffer the phraseology to mislead us. The " known
sin" of which Wesley speaks can be judged in the lig"ht of
his maturer experience, when a leaning toward asceticism
rendered him sensitive to what may have been at their best
harmless amusements, and at their worst mild indiscretions.
Assuredly, he did not easily yield to the temptations of
a University career. He was remiss in his expenditure
> "The Journal of John Wesley": edited by Rev. Nehemiah Curnock;
Vol. I, p. 52.
2 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. 1, p. 24.
JOHN WESLEY 193
of money, considering its scarcity at Epworth, and his
parents properiy warned him to be more careful in this
respect, but he never deUberately disregarded the obvious
distinction between good and evil. The content of the
term sin varies with acuteness of spiritual perception;
where this faculty is unduly alert, acts are included in the
category of sins which by no means fall within the proper
meaning of the word. Spiritually-minded men and women
are the severest arbiters of their own past, and are always
prone to depreciate their motives and deeds. Their writings
teem with accusations against themselves, which not infre-
quently are the shadows cast by an intense yearning to know
and do the will of Heaven, that they may enter into its more
perfect fellowship. It should be understood that from his
earliest youth Wesley had been attached to noble ideals,
and that throughout a long life he seldom swerved from
the hard and narrow path of duty.
During the first four years of his residence at Oxford he
gave no indication that he proposed entering the Anglican
ministry, although there is little doubt that his parents
had always hoped such would be his decision. His father
frequently expressed the desire that he should do so, and
in 1725 Wesley began to read the works of Thomas a Kempis
and Jeremy Taylor, with the result that his religious life
became more pronounced, and he gave himself to prayer
and meditation. His correspondence with his mother, who
was then, as always, his guide and confessor, shows that he
seriously questioned his fitness for Holy Orders. The ideal
of the writer of "De Imitatione Christi" repelled him as
being too cold and austere, and he complains in a letter to
his mother of a Kempis for "inverting instead of disciplin-
ing the natural tendencies of humanity." Taylor's exhor-
tation to humility seemed to him to clash with the claims
of truth.^ Notwithstanding these criticisms, both authors
1 Jiilia Wedgwood: "John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the
Eighteenth Century" ; p. 33.
194 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
introduced Wesley to depths and reaches of the spiritual
realm hitherto unknown to him. They stimulated his
faith, and placed him under an obligation he afterwards
acknowledged. Taylor's "Holy Living and Holy Dying"
had exceedingly affected him. He remarked, "Instantly I
resolved to dedicate all my life to God — all my thoughts, and
words, and actions, — being thoroughly convinced there was
no medium ; but that every part of my life (not some only)
must either be a sacrifice to God, or myself, that is, in effect,
the devil." ^ His mother did not always satisfy his inquiries,
but she admirably summed up the question of his general
relation to the world in the following manner, "Take this
rule — whatever impairs the tenderness of your conscience,
obscures your sense of God, or takes the relish off spiritual
things, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may
be in itself." ^ Her anxiety for his safe emergence from
theological perplexities prompted similar counsels which
reveal her at her best both as a Christian and a thought-
ful student of current doctrinal statements. "But if
you would be free from fears and doubts concerning your
future happiness," she wrote on July 21, 1725, "every morn-
ing and evening commit your soul to Jesus Christ, in a full
faith in His power and will to save you. If you do this
seriously and constantly, He will take you under His conduct ;
He will guide you by His Holy Spirit into the way of truth,
and give you strength to walk in it. He will dispose of the
events of God's providence to your spiritual advantage;
and if, to keep you humble and more sensible of your de-
pendence on Him, He permit you to fall into lesser sins, be
not discouraged ; for He will certainly give you repentance,
and safely guide you through all the temptations of this
world, and, at the last, receive you to Himself in glory." ^
1 L. Tyerman: "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 36.
2 Julia Wedgwood: "John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the
Eighteenth Century"; p. 34.
' L. Tyerman: "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 38.
JOHN WESLEY 195
As his ordination approached, the Thirty-nine Articles
were scrutinized, particularly those relating to Predestination,
and Mrs. Wesley comments on its extreme interpretation
in a letter dated August 18, 1725. "The doctrine of predes-
tination, as maintained by the rigid Calvinists, is very shock-
ing, and ought to be abhorred, because it directly charges
the Most High God with being the author of sin. I think
you reason well and justly against it ; for it is certainly in-
consistent with the justice and goodness of God to lay any
man under physical or moral necessity of cormnitting sin,
and then to punish him for doing it." ^ Their interchange of
sentiments occupied eight months, at the end of which time
Mrs. Wesley wrote, "I approve the disposition of your mind,
and think the sooner you are deacon the better." With
such commendation, and after exercising every care in prep-
aration for the office he was about to assume, John Wesley
solemnly offered himself for the Christian ministry. He
was ordained deacon on Lord's Day, September 19, 1725,
by Doctor John Potter, Bishop of Oxford, who three years
and three days later admitted him to priest's orders.
Ill
This event marked the beginning of an era in Wesley's
religious development. Hitherto he had known some re-
laxation from his studies, and an acquaintance who must
have shared his hours of ease described him as "the very-
sensible and active collegian, baffling every one by the
subtleties of logic, and laughing at them for being so easily
routed ; a young fellow of the finest classical taste, of the
most liberal and manly sentiments. He was gay and
sprightly, with a turn for wit and humor." ^ His excellent
character and scholarship, combined with his social gifts,
obtained for him a fellowship of Lincoln College in the
1 L. Tyennan : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 40.
2 John Telford : "The Life of John Wesley" ; p. 33.
196 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
spring of 1726, an honor indeed for one so young, who had
not yet received his master's degree. With his entrance
there at the beginning of the October term, he imposed a
stricter rule upon himself and wrote to his brother Samuel,
"Leisure and I have taken leave of one another." Mon-
days and Tuesdays he gave to Greek and Latin; Wednes-
days to logic and ethics ; Thursdays, to Hebrew and Arabic ;
Fridays, to metaphysics and natural philosophy ; Saturdays,
to oratory and poetry ; Sundays, to divinity. He was
appointed Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes, which
assembled six times a week for disputation on stated themes,
his duty being to preside over and conclude the debates.^
While he always disliked needless controversy, by means of
this occupation he acquired a dexterity in argument which
was afterwards of no small service. His general reading
was well chosen and showed him to be a scholar of a substan-
tial sort, without that fear for the corrosive effect of intel-
lectualism on faith which has beset so many advocates of
religion. Writing to one of his pupils in August, 1731, he
tendered the following advice: "You, who have not the as-
surance of a day to live, are not wise if you waste a moment.
The shortest way to knowledge seems to be this : 1. To
ascertain what knowledge you desire to attain. 2. To read
no book which does not in some way tend to the attainment
of that knowledge. 3. To read no book which does tend
to the attainment of it, unless it be the best in its kind.
4. To finish one before you begin another. 5. To read them
all in such order, that every subsequent book may illustrate
and confirm the preceding." ^
His father, then verging on old age and enduring many
afilictions, rejoiced over the preferment of his "dear Mr.
Fellow-Elect of Lincoln. What will be my own fate God
only knows, sed passi graviora, wherever I am, my Jack is
' The disputations were the relics of that medieval system which in-
sisted on logic as the main part of a University training.
* L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. SI.
JOHN WESLEY 197
Fellow of Lincoln." ^ The college was founded in 1427,
by Richard Fleming, the recreant Lollard who, as already
stated, became Bishop of Lincoln, burnt Wycliffe's bones,
endeavored to extirpate his teachings at Oxford, and ordered
that "any fellow tainted with these heresies should be cast
out, like a diseased sheep, from the fold of the college."
Wesley's fellowship on Fleming's foundation once more
demonstrated the folly of such provision against the inevi-
table changes of time. The crass materialism and neglect
which demoralized the University during the eighteenth
century were not so prevalent at Lincoln as elsewhere
in Oxford. The atmosphere of the college was more con-
genial to Wesley's intentions than Christ Church had been,
where he resented those companionships of which he after-
wards said, "Even their harmless conversation, so-called,
damped all my good resolutions. I saw no possible way of
getting rid of them, unless it should please God to remove
me to another college. He did so, in a manner utterly con-
trary to all human probability. I was elected Fellow of a
college where I knew not one person. I foresaw abundance
of people would come to see me . . . but I had now fixed
my plan. I resolved to have no acquaintance by chance,
but by choice ; and to choose such only as would help me
on my way to heaven. ... I knew that many reflections
would follow ; but that did not move me." ^ The men of
Lincoln were "well-natured and well-bred," yet their polite
intercourse palled on him ; he repelled their advances, and
shut himself up to his own pursuits. Even at this the world
was too much with him, and he looked with longing upon
the prospect of a mastership in a Yorkshire school, " so pent
up between two hills that it is scarce accessible on any side,
so that you can expect little company from without, and
within there is none at all." For such solitude he was
prepared to sacrifice his position at Oxford. In a less bal-
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of Samuel Wesley" ; p. 399.
^ Ibid., "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 55.
198 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
anced nature than Wesley's the consequences of this inordi-
nate craving for a cloistered retreat would have been inju-
rious, and as it was the desire determined the course of his
private life. Yet his companions did not charge his seclu-
sive habits to any lack of geniality ; on the contrary, those
who were admitted to his friendship lauded his amiability,
and one of them wrote to him, lamenting his enforced ab-
sence from the college as a deprivation for them.
After spending the summer of 1726 at Epworth, where he
acted as his father's curate, he passed a year in residence
at Oxford, returning again to Epworth in 1727, when he
assumed charge of the obscure parish at Wroote, which
formed a part of the living. In this lonely hamlet of the fen-
lands, surrounded by bogs and tenanted by a hopeless peas-
antry, he spent the next two years and three months. His
ministrations were addressed to "unpolished wights" as
"impervious as stones," and the innate aristocracy of the
Wesleys, which denoted, not a class, but a creed, was exhib-
ited toward these stupid parishioners both by John and
by his lively sister Hetty. Few details of his curacy are
available, and those that are have no particular interest.
It was evident he did not then possess the secret of that
marvellous power which enabled him to kindle an un-
paralleled enthusiasm in town and hamlet when he rode the
length and breadth of the three kingdoms during later days.
He tells us, " I preached much, but saw no fruit of my labor.
Indeed, it could not be that I should ; for I neither laid the
foundation of repentance, nor of believing the Gospel;
taking it for granted that all to whom I preached were
believers, and that many of them needed no repentance." ^
His relaxation was found at Epworth, where a renewed
intercourse with the family rendered the tedium of his un-
profitable days less irksome. While in the disenchanting
hermitage of Wroote, and probably when he began to feel
that distaste for the limitations of parochial work which he
* L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" : Vol. I, p. 57.
JOHN WESLEY 199
always retained, he reverted to his religious meditations.
William Law's "Serious Call," to which later references
will be made, was pubUshed in 1728, and shortly afterwards
Wesley obtained the volume and read it with eagerness.
It is notable for its religious fervor and for the insight and
skill of its contrast between the life of the flesh and the life
of the spirit — qualities the more admirable when the gen-
eral lukewarmness and formalism of eighteenth century de-
votional literature are recalled. Law's book followed no
contemporary models. It ploughed up new ground, and
restored to an age of barrenness in religion, to a church
that had become a mere adjunct of public life and which
confounded the Body of Christ with the Anglican Estab-
lishment, and to a Puritanism submerged in Socinian the-
ology, some forgotten ideals of Evangelical Christianity.
The writer's sway was evidenced by the thoroughly appre-
ciative tributes of leading minds far different from his
own. He lived with the Gibbons at Putney, near Lon-
don, where he acted as tutor to the father of the histo-
rian. A rubicund man, jovial in appearance, Law gave
little indication of the devotee and the philosopher, yet
such he was, and one of the very few who then bestowed
specific attention upon religious problems. His discussion
of these was sympathetic and illuminating, and many who
were troubled with spiritual or doctrinal difiBculties resorted
to him for help.
The Wesleys, John and Charles, valued his counsel so
highly that on several occasions they walked from Oxford
to London to obtain it. After John's unseemly quarrel with
Law the latter remarked, "I was once a kind of oracle to
Mr. Wesley," and at least one saying of the oracle was
fastened in the recollection of the younger man : " We
shall do well to aim at the highest degrees of perfection if
we may thereby attain at least to mediocrity," — a remark
destined to accelerate that deeper belief in the divine possi-
bilities of human nature which Wesley did much to implant.
200 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
"If some persons," wrote Law, "should unite themselves in
little societies professing voluntary poverty, retirement, and
devotion, that some might be relieved in their charities, and
all be benefited by their example, such persons would be so
far from being chargeable with any superstition that they
might be justly said to restore that piety which was the boast
and glory of the Church when its greatest men were alive.^
The early Franciscans might have been the inspiration of
this statement, which flatly contradicted the grosser ideals
of Hanoverian Protestantism, It was not by any means
Law's greatest conception, but certainly it was reflected in
Wesley's conduct and in that of the Holy Club, to say
nothing of its palpable effect upon the life of Evangelical
Methodism.^
IV
Charles Wesley, who was elected a student of Christ
Church, Oxford, from Westminster School, about the same
time that John became fellow of Lincoln, was the more san-
guine and emotional of the two brothers. His affectionate
disposition was instanced by his refusal to leave his parents
when Mr. Garret Wesley, an Irish gentleman of fortune
who was in no wise related to the family, offered to
adopt him as his heir. The individual who accepted the
offer, one Richard Colley, assumed his benefactor's name
and became the grandfather of the Duke of Wellington,
who appears in the army list of 1800 as Arthur Wesley.
During his residence at Oxford, Charles indulged buoyant
habits which, although harmless, were not conducive to
sudden and serious changes, and he resented John's over-
tures in behalf of ascetical piety by impatiently declining
to become a saint all at once. But this mood soon passed,
and his letters during his brother's sojourn at Wroote showed
' Julia Wedgwood: "John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the
Eighteenth Century" ; p. 39.
' The best account of Law can be found in Canon Overton's volume on
the Non-Jurors.
JOHN WESLEY 201
that habitual deference to John's superior judgment which
nothing could disturb in Charles except his pronounced
Anglicanism. He now began to shun his former com-
panions, communicated weekly in the college chapel, and
persuaded a friend whom he had reclaimed from doubtful
society to do likewise. This was the germ of the fellowship
of Oxford Methodism which Charles instituted and John
directed. The latter states that "in November, 1729, four
young gentlemen of Oxford, Mr. John Wesley, Fellow of
Lincoln College, Mr. Charles Wesley, Student at Christ
Church, Mr. Morgan, Commoner of Christ Church, and
Mr. Kirkham, of Merton College, began to spend some
evenings a week reading, chiefly the Greek Testament."
To these were subsequently added among others George
Whitefield, John Clayton, Benjamin Ingham, John White-
Iamb, Westley Hall, John Gambold, and James Hervey,
the author of "Theron and Aspasio" and "Meditations
among the Tombs." The friendships then begun were
afterwards ended by death or separation or dissimilar views.
Clayton, the Jacobite and High Church rector of Manchester,
eventually shunned the Wesleys; Hervey opposed them in
his writings ; Ingham forsook them ; Gambold avowed he
was ashamed of his youthful relation with them ; and White-
field, after being their colleague in labor and persecution,
was for a time alienated from them by doctrinal differences.
In their college days they were a harmonious group of
kindred souls, and when in 1729 Wesley, at the request of
Dr. Morley, the rector of Lincoln, resumed his residence
as fellow of the College, he at once became the "curator of
the Holy Club." The wicked wit of the University sporting
fraternity was spent in vain upon these " crackbrained
enthusiasts." Behind John and Charles stood the rector
of Epworth and his wife, who advised them " in all things
to endeavor to act upon principle," and not to "live like
the rest of mankind who pass through the world like straws
upon a river." Nothing was further from their purpose;
202 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the foremost member of the band never knew the meaning
of retreat, and until he left Oxford in 1735, John remained
the controlling spirit of the organization. Wesley's pre-
dominance in a group which included Hervey, Clayton,
and Whitefield, was an indication of his gifts as a leader
of men. The Club flourished or declined according as he
was present or absent ; its permanent adherents were less
numerous than the timid backsliders who could not en-
dure the obloquy which membership entailed. All alike
were tenacious of order; scrupulously observant of the
statutes of the University and the ordinances of the
Church. Their community life and frugality afforded a
surplus from their united incomes which they devoted to
the relief of the poor and of prisoners. Regular seasons for
prayer and fasting were observed, and frequent attendance
on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, with other means
of grace and self-denial, was made obligatory. A system-
atic visitation of the slums and jails of Oxford and its
surrounding villages was undertaken at the instance of Wil-
liam Morgan. Neglected children were instructed in the
Bible ; debtors confined in the "Bocardo" ^ and felons under
sentence of death received the consolations of religion.
Upon Wesley's solicitation, prompted by his father's advice,
the bishop of the diocese gave his approval to these works
of mercy and charity, and a few of the clergy followed his
example.
But such thirteenth century practices were bound to meet
the censure of a pleasure-loving generation. Fogg's Weekly
Journal protested against the presence of these sons of
sorrow who had committed themselves to an absurd per-
petual melancholy designed to make the whole place a
monastery. While they passed for religious persons and men
' The "Bocardo" was a prison over the North Gate of the city on what
is now known as Cornmarket Street. It may have been so named from the
form of syllogism called Bocardo, which presented certain logical difficul-
ties ; or again, from Brocardia, a legal term signifying a contentious and
difficult matter.
JOHN WESLEY 203
of extraordinary parts among themselves, to outsiders they
appeared as madmen and fools. The galled jade winced;
careless professors and undergraduates of open moral lassi-
tude were incensed by this return to the sacrificial devotion
of typical Christianity, and their contempt was poured
upon a few fellow members of the University whose offense
lay in their regularity and piety. Efforts were made to
breed dissensions among them; abuse and calumniation
raged apace. Nicknames were plentiful; in addition to
those already given, these young men were known as Bible
Bigots, Bible Moths, Sacramentarians, and Methodists.
The last term was supposed by Wesley to have been derived
from Bentley's allusion to the Methodici, as opposed to the
Empirics, two ancient rival schools of medicine. This was
far-fetched; the waggish student with whom the epithet
probably originated may have found the name of the largest
English-speaking Protestant Church among the sectarian
disputes of the previous century. In 1638 a sermon preached
at Lambeth contained the following passage, "Where are
now our Anabaptists and plain pack-staff Methodists, who
esteem all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than
stinking weeds?" and in 1693 a pamphlet was published en-
titled, " A War among the Angels of the Churches ; wherein
is shewed the Principles of the New Methodists in the
Great Point of Justification." ^ When applied to the
Oxford men who dared to be singular, the appellation, if not
new, was aptly descriptive; it at once clung to them, and
was afterwards bestowed on the Church which inherited
some of their characteristics.^
If Wesley needed further support, the rector of Epworth
certainly gave it. He wrote in ringing words to his sons,
" Go on, then, in God's name, in the path in which the Saviour
has directed you and that track wherein your father went
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 67.
2 For a full discussion of the term see the Oxford English Dictionary ;
also H. B. Workman's "Handbook on Methodism."
204 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
before you." Their brother Samuel interposed a mild ob-
jection to their " being called a Club, a name calculated to do
mischief." "But," he continued, "the other charges of
enthusiasm can weigh with none but such as drink away
their senses." He lived to make similar charges himself
when Methodism shook off its academic chains and essayed
the conquest of a wider field. There was nothing in the
bearing of Wesley and his friends leaning toward sensa-
tionalism, neither were they whimsical nor unnecessarily
precise. They looked inwardly and outwardly with a gaze
which was pure and intent on increased purity. Wesley's
defense of their habits was almost invariably wise, calm
in tone, and modest in statement. His presentation of
the case was unmarred by any arrogant assumptions, and
showed he was sincerely convinced that the renunciations
they made were essential to Christian character. Yet St.
Francis himself could scarcely have surpassed his assevera-
tion that no man was in a state of salvation until he was
contemned by the world, and unfortunately the prevailing
attitude toward those who sought to exemplify their faith
in deeds largely confirmed his opinion.
This earlier Oxford movement made no impression on the
University when compared with that led a hundred years
later by Rose, Keble, Pusey, Hurrell Froude, and Newman.
Some of its followers, as already observed, became the
censors of the later Methodism of which it was a foretoken
rather than a cause. Indeed, but for Whitefield and the
Wesleys, Oxford Methodism would have been no more
than an ephemeral outburst of pious devotion ; an earnest
inquiry for the heart of the Gospel rather than a mani-
festation of the Gospel's subduing grace. Its isolation and
environment would have successfully impeded any propa-
ganda, since Oxford at that time could scarcely maintain,
far less originate, vitality in morals or religion. Nor were
the few who enlisted in the premature attempt as yet
equipped for a crusade in behalf of spiritual regeneration.
JOHN WESLEY 205
In fact, the majority retained throughout life the sense of
clerical separatism and excessive deference to churchly
authority which formed an effective barrier between them
and democracy. The enterprise was commendable because
it rebuked a moribund University. Yet it proved that
such religious efforts, although taking their rise in centers
of learning, must find a speedy outlet in the unhampered
service of the people, or dwindle and perish at the source.
The venerable rector of Epworth was now approaching
the end of his ministry, and in January, 1735, he suggested
to John the propriety of becoming his successor. In a
later letter he put the matter more definitely and urged
it as a personal request. Wesley's reply revealed his need
of emancipation from the notion that he was only safe when
sequestered. He gave a lengthy but irrelevant list of reasons
for remaining where he was, their burden being that he was
determined to shun the world and its distracting activities,
in order that he might preserve intellectual growth from the
blight of material concerns, and shield religious contem-
plation from the assailments of hypocrisy or wickedness.
He could be holier in Oxford, he asserted, than anywhere
else. Mingled with this ambition was his love for the
University, a sentiment not readily appraised by those who
have not felt its force. His father was bewildered by the
scruples John raised, and his reply seems to have removed
them. "It is not dear self," he wrote, with mature wisdom,
" but the glory of God, and the different degrees of promoting
it, which should be our main consideration and direction
in the choice of any course of life"; and again, "I cannot
allow austerity, or fasting, considered by themselves, to be
proper acts of holiness, nor am I for a solitary life. God
made us for a social life ; we are not to bury our talent ;
we are to let our light shine before men, and that not merely
through the chinks of a bushel for fear the wind should
blow it out." ^ This was a healthy breeze from the fen
» C. T. Winchester: "The Life of John Wesley" ; p. 39.
206 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
country which John's enervating atmosphere sorely needed,
and after further discussion he made a belated and unsuc-
cessful application for the Epworth living.
The rector died on April 25, 1735, joyous and hopeful
to the last. Thirty-eight of the forty-six years of his pas-
torate had been spent in the one parish, and he took leave of
it and of his dear ones with a holy confidence which his
son Charles, who was with him at the time of his decease,
must have had in mind when he composed some of his
matchless hymns upon the triumph of the saints in their
mortal hour. John was still bent on "saving his own soul,"
and this resolution dictated his acceptance of an invitation
to establish a mission in Georgia. The longed-for conscious-
ness of his personal relation to God through Christ Jesus,
which he had hitherto failed to gain, might, he thought, be
achieved by his consecration to the task of converting the
Indians. He set everything else aside for the primitive and
unpromising conditions of a recently founded settlement in
the New World. As Dr. Workman pithily observes, "In
words that would have charmed a Rousseau he dreamed of
a return to nature as a return to grace." "I cannot hope,"
said Wesley, "to attain the same degree of holiness here
which I may attain there." Charles shared his sentiments
and joined his mission, and also agreed with John's un-
sophisticated ideas concerning the innate virtues of the
Indians among whom they proposed to dwell. Having
obtained their widowed mother's consent and blessing, they
sailed for Georgia in the month of October, 1735, accom-
panied by Benjamin Ingham, a member of the Holy Club,
and Charles Delamotte, a friend and also an Oxford man. / >
General Oglethorpe, the founder and first governor of
Georgia, the youngest of the English colonies in North
America, was the son of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe of Godal-
ming in Surrey. His varied career was full of interesting
events as a soldier, legislator, pioneer, philanthropist, and
patron of literature. Dr. Johnson was his intimate friend, and
JOHN WESLEY 207
Hannah More, the high priestess of the Evangelicals, spoke
of Oglethorpe as "a delightful old beau." Touched by the
miseries of the English prisoners for debt he determined to
give the unfortunate inmates of the Fleet and the iSIarshalsea
another opportunity beyond the seas. He required a chap-
lain for the expedition who would care both for the whites
of the proposed colony and for the Indians. Dr. Burton of
Corpus Christi College recommended John Wesley for the
post. The Epworth family was already known to the Gen-
eral ; he had been the largest subscriber to the rector's
volume on Job, and by this and other timely assistance
had won the author's affectionate gratitude, who declared
that had he been a younger man he would have joined
Oglethorpe's enterprise. Under these favorable circum-
stances John and Charles were offered the position. Their
acceptance was actuated by their desire for personal sanctity,
and by a solicitude for the cure of souls and the extension
of God's kingdom.
Other clergymen had anticipated their missionary effort;
their father, as we have noted, had his dreams of a more
aggressive Christianity in foreign parts ; and Bishop George
Berkeley preceded them and their comrades in his attempt
to establish the Gospel among the people of Bermuda, leav-
ing an attractive position in England only to return a dis-
illusioned and defeated man. The college he had planned
was still unbuilt, and Oglethorpe obtained his consent to
petition Parliament that the funds assigned for its erection
should be diverted to the Georgian scheme. The Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel also supported the Gen-
eral's undertaking, and public grants and private gifts were
contributed toward the necessary expenses. During the
westward voyage of the Simmonds the Oxford men faith-
fully observed their religious exercises, and when some of
the ship's officers took umbrage at this they drew upon
themselves a severe rebuke from Oglethorpe. Among the
passengers were twenty-six ^Moravians, headed by their
208 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
bishop, David Nitschmann, who were about to join their
brethren already settled in Georgia. Their acquaintance
with Wesley and his companions was fraught with impor-
tant consequences, which necessitate a brief account of the
Church they represented.
Count Zinzendorf avowed it had not been founded by
him, but was " the most ancient of the Protestant Churches,
if not their common mother," since its origin dated from the
movement of John Hus in the early fifteenth century. After
numerous vicissitudes the Brethren, as they called them-
selves, attained a numerical growth which in 1609 included
half the Protestants of Bohemia and more than half those
of Moravia. But the Thirty Years' War practically abol-
ished their congregations, and for a century afterwards they
were an almost extinct body. The renowned bishop, John
Amos Comenius, whose work, "The Great Didactic," is
still one of the textbooks of historical education, had pre-
served, however, the episcopal succession and discipline, and
after decimating persecutions in Moravia the Church was
resuscitated in Germany. Its members, descendants of
former German immigrants, retreated to the Fatherland,
crossing the border into Saxony, and were received at Herrn-
hut ^ by Count Zinzendorf, who had to satisfy the State
government that the community could be brought under
the conditions of the peace of Augsburg, and also quiet the
misgivings and suspicions of the Lutheran clergy. The
refugees belonged to more than one sect; oppressions
had made them cling pertinaciously to small differences of
belief, worship, and polity, and it was with the utmost diflB-
culty that the Count induced them to live together harmo-
niously. Despite his high personal example and tireless
energy, their conduct was so fanatical that they combined
in his own house to denounce Zinzendorf as the Beast of
' Zinzendorf offered them an asylum on his estate of Berthelsdorf,
where he built for them the village of Herrnhut (the Lord's keeping). The
refugees came thither in various groups between 1722 and 1732.
JOHN WESLEY 209
the Apocalypse, and his helper Rothe as the False Prophet.
Presently a better temper obtained, and they conformed to
the Count's wishes. Instead of reviving Moravian orders
they professed themselves as pietistic Lutherans, and
attended the services of the parish church. But after an
extraordinary unifying experience at a Communion Service
on August 13, 1727, they renewed their allegiance to Mora-
vianism, and that date has since been celebrated as its
birthday.
Two conflicting parties were now found among them.
The first regarded Zinzendorf as their head, and built their
settlements on the estates of friendly noblemen, where they
lived a retired life and enriched the spirituality of "the
scattered" in the Church at large without attempting to
proselytize. The second was recognized in 1749 by the
British Parliament as an ancient Protestant Episcopal
Church and played a significant part in the religious revival
of the eighteenth century. The importance of the Moravians
must be measured by their influence upon Christendom at
large, and upon such individuals as the Wesleys, Schleier-
macher, and, in a measure, Goethe. Their contribution to
the missionary spirit of Protestantism is notable for the
fact that they were the first to revive the duty of the
Church to present the Gospel to all nations. This achieve-
ment, together with their blameless conduct, has given them
an ascendency in Europe and America altogether out of
proportion to their numbers, which, as late as 1909, showed
no more than 444 congregations with 62,096 communicants.
Their first appearance in England dates from the early
seventeenth century, when, during the first stages of the
Thirty Years' War the Bohemian Protestants were routed
at the battle of White Hill, fought in 1620, and the Brethren,
driven from their homes, took refuge in various countries.^
Their simplicity and fraternity, expressed in a social life
of ordered piety, were singularly attractive; and they
1 Encyclopsedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Article on The Moravians.
P
210 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
made a deep impression on devout and meditative people
weary of a hard and superficial age. Julia Wedgwood fit-
tingly speaks of the "cool mysticism of these monks of
Protestantism" which "afforded a welcome shade from the
prosaic aridity of rationalism." ^
During the tedious voyage of the Simmonds, Wesley had
ample opportunity for the close observation of a people
whose Christianity was both unusual and exemplary.
Their patient willingness to serve the sick, their humility,
untainted by self-consciousness, and their tranquil behavior
during the fierce storms which swept the Atlantic, won
his respect and confidence. "Were you not afraid?" he
queried, after a hurricane. "I thank God, no," replied
the one addressed. This insensibility to the peril of the
ocean, which was not permitted to interrupt their stated
worship, aroused Wesley's curiosity and his repeated refer-
ences to the Moravians revealed his interest in them and
their affairs. After landing at Savannah, he sought them
out again, and asked one of their elders, August Gottlieb
Spangenberg, to advise with him about his new field. " Have
you," said Spangenberg, " the witness within yourself ? Does
the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are
a child of God?" Wesley faltered before these pertinent
inquiries, whereupon the Moravian elder pushed them home.
"Do you know Jesus Christ?" he continued. "I know that
He is the Saviour of the World," rejoined Wesley. "True,
but do you know He has saved you ? " "I hope He has died
to save me," was the hesitating answer. "Do you know
yourself?" his inquisitor demanded. Wesley was non-
plused by this pointed address, couched in terms afterwards
familiar enough, but which were then strange to him. He
could only express a faint affirmative, and subsequently
doubted whether he was justified even in that. He lived for
a time with the Brethren, and discovered in them other
1 "John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury" ; p. 94.
JOHN WESLEY 211
vital elements of religion till then foreign to his conceptions.
Their election and ordination of a bishop prompted the fol-
lowing reflection : " The great simplicity, as well as solem-
nity, of the whole, almost made me forget the seventeen
hundred years between, and imagine myself in one of those
assemblies where form and state were not, but Paul the tent-
maker or Peter the fisherman presided, yet with the demon-
stration of the Spirit and of power." ^ It was indeed a
far cry from stately Oxford and the latitudinarian Georgian
clergy to these few radiant souls on a lonely shore where
the light of a hitherto unsuspected phase of Christian ex-
perience began to play upon Wesley's sacramentarian-
ism. He did not yield to it, however, without a severe
and prolonged struggle, and he was never more active as a
champion of ecclesiastical formalism than during his sojourn
at Savannah, which lasted from February 5, 1736, until
December 2, 1737. But he had seen, if only as through a
glass darkly, the great truth that the divine order is not
perfectly fulfilled till the soul has believed, not because of
indirect evidence, but because of its regenerating contact
with the living Christ. And that glimpse must be remem-
bered by those who would understand Wesley's career.
• "The Jovirnal of John Wesley"; edited by Rev. Nehemiah Curnock,
Vol. I, p. 170.
CHAPTER VI
DARKNESS AND DAWN
213
Oft when the Word is on me to deliver,
Lifts the illusion, and the truth lies bare :
Desert or throng, the city or the river,
Melts in a lucid Paradise of air, —
Only like souls I see the folk thereunder.
Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings, —
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder.
Sadly contented in a show of things ; —
Then with a rush the intolerable craving
Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call, —
Oh to save these ! to perish for their saving,
Die for their life, be offered for them all 1
Give me a voice, a cry, and a complaining, —
Oh let my sound be stormy in their ears !
Throat that would shout but cannot stay for straining,
Eyes that would weep but cannot wait for tears.
Quick in a moment, infinite for ever,
Send an arousal better than I pray.
Give me a grace upon the faint endeavor,
Souls for my hire and Pentecost to-day I
F. W. H. Myers : Saint Paul, XVII and XX.
214
CHAPTER VI
DARKNESS AND DAWN
Wesley in Georgia — Religious condition of the settlers — Charles
returns to England — Miss Hopkey — Williamson's suit against Wesley
— Wesley's return to England — Effect of Georgia mission on his later
development — Peter Bohler — Wesley's dispute with William Law
— His conversion — Its results — Social condition of England in the
eighteenth century — The effect of Methodism on EngUsh national
life.
Wesley's residence in Georgia is described at length in
the new edition of his Journal, for which the Christian Church
is under lasting obligation to its painstaking editor, the
Reverend Nehemiah Curnock.^ It gives a graphic picture
of the social and religious conditions of the colony which
have only to be comprehended to explain Wesley's compara-
tive failure there : indeed, the wonder is that he did any good
whatever for so motley and turbulent a throng. It is note-
worthy that the Brethren seem to have been equally unsuc-
cessful ; despite their evangelical teaching they were unable
to overcome the indifference and reserve of the emigrants,
whose scanty numbers embraced various nationalities and
beliefs, with few things in common except ignorance and
prejudice. The Moravians and Salzburgers did not need
Wesley's oversight, having their own Bishop Nitschmann.
The Scotch Highlanders clung to their priestless worship,
and offended Wesley's sense of decorum by assembling in a
barn. French Huguenots, Italian Waldenses, and Spanish
Jews formed the fringe of a population of broken Englishmen,
including insolvent debtors and disappointed adventurers, of
^Died, November 1, 1915.
215
216 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
some of whom the Motherland was well rid, whose chief
pursuits were found in the ale-house or in low intrigues
against the parson who denounced rum and slavery. Such
parishioners would doubtless have afforded a more moderate
man a welcome excuse for being cautious in his dealings with
them. But Oglethorpe craved Wesley's aid, and he aban-
doned his mission to the Indians, who showed no propensity
for anything better than tribal wars and the vicious habits
of the white settlers, that he might enforce upon the latter
a meticulous code of ordinances in accordance with the
literal directions of the Book of Common Prayer. His
requirements were so exacting as to suggest that he was not
altogether assured in his own mind of their legitimacy or
usefulness. "He that believeth shall not make haste";
and Wesley's ardor in imposing this regimen, which he
himself observed by going unshod, reading prayers thrice
every day, fasting, communicating, and refusing to bury
Dissenters, or baptize children save by triple immersion,
may have been an indication of the secret longings of a
spirit which found vent but not satisfaction in the minutiae
of punctilious ecclesiasticism. The ^Moravians, who were
also in that Apostolical Succession which he held necessary
to faith and order, and upon which he believed the stability
of the Church and the Gospel depended, did not encourage
his sacerdotalism nor make experiments similar to those
which inevitably led to his disappointment. Yet they lived
in the strength of a calm and constant joy, while he, ill at
ease and restless in spirit, "drenched his flock with the
physic of an intolerant discipline." ^Nlany rebelled against
his lack of wisdom ; others, however, disarmed by his personal
piety and his incessant labors in their behalf, at length
yielded him a reluctant support.
Equally tactless was Charles Wesley's connection with
the mission. During a six months' stay at Frederica, a
small township south of Savannah, he alienated nearly
ever^^body, and ended by quarreling with Oglethorpe, where-
JOHN WESLEY 217
upon he returned home. John's disillusionment was now
complete, and the impending hostility between him and
the colonists was precipitated by his love afPair with Miss
Sophy Hopkey. This young lady was the niece and ward of
Thomas Causton, the principal magistrate of Savannah,
a man of doubtful antecedents, and of an overbearing and
boorish disposition which attracted to him acquaintances
of a like kind. His home became the resort of dissolute
characters, and afforded little protection to a beautiful,
modest, and affectionate girl of eighteen. One of her uncle's
boon companions, who had shortly before proposed mar-
riage to her, was arrested and thrown into jail. This
humiliating experience drove Miss Hopkey to the consola-
tions of religion, and her friendship with Wesley developed
rapidly. When she removed to Frederica to escape the Caus-
tons and the threats of her imprisoned admirer, Wesley fol-
lowed and begged her to return. His persuasions, coupled
with Oglethorpe's, induced her to do so, and the two young
people made the six days' journey back to Savannah together.
While encamped one cold, stormy night on St. Katherines
Island, Wesley, moved by a sudden impulse, earnestly de-
clared, "Miss Sophy, I should think myself happy if I was
to spend my life with you," at which she begged him not
to speak to her again "on this head," but in such a way as
to indicate that the declaration was not distasteful to her.
On their arrival at Savannah she spent her mornings and
evenings with Wesley, the Caustons, who regarded the
match as assured, consenting to the arrangement. Devo-
tional exercises and literary studies could not prevent what
Wesley ingenuously calls " such intimacy of conversation as
ours was." Here began the tragic struggle between love
and duty, the alternate phases of which are recorded in the
Journal. His friends Ingham and Delamotte for somewhat
selfish reasons opposed the marriage, and after the former
had returned home, Delamotte implored Wesley to surren-
der all claims to the lady of his choice. The assertion
218 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
that the Moravians gave such advice is incorrect; indeed,
Toltschig, the pastor, astonished the despondent lover by
declaring, "I see no reason why you should not marry her."
Tlie affair was another instance of that witless suscepti-
bility to feminine society which Wesley had previously
evinced in the case of the far less worthy Mrs. Hawkins,
whom he met on shipboard. Yet while his heart was deeply
affected, his sense of responsibility to the ministry and his
conviction that he should live a single life warred against
his inclinations. Miss Hopkey naturally resented his vacil-
lationSy and the methods he adopted to reach an irrevocable
decision were not calculated to appease her. After prayer
Wesley and Delamotte proceeded to a solemn casting of lots,
when the latter drew the paper on which was written the
last alternative, " Think no more of it," and Wesley at once
accepted this as a divine injunction against the marriage.
Such talismanic dealing with a pure and natural attach-
ment was its own condemnation. Determined as he was
to find and follow the Highest Will in a matter so important,
Wesley's ignorance of the feminine nature and his repre-
hensible habit of settling questions of moment in a hap-
hazard way were responsible for the unhappiness which
ensued. Miss Hopkey was by far the most suitable woman
he could have chosen for his wife, and probably she was the
only woman he ever really loved. He was then thirty-three
years old, and when unembarrassed by his leanings toward
celibacy, an insistent and ardent suitor. She, whUe con-
siderably his junior, was unusually mature for her age, and
needed the help and guidance such a husband as Wesley
would have given. Although not his equal in education,
she surpassed him in prudence and courage under difficult
circumstances, and her affectionate disposition warrants the
assumption that, had he formed a union with her, he would
have been saved from the domestic wretchedness to which
he was afterwards subjected. His sentimentality over-
spread the entire proceedings with a half-fabulous tinge.
JOHN WESLEY 219
The credulity he displayed in arriving at his decision by lot,
a trait which sometimes impedes reason and practicality in
one who is known as a master of men, was always latent in
Wesley, at intervals dimly present, and occasionally far too
active for his good or for the good of others.
The sequel of this unfortunate incident was grievous
enough. Miss Hopkey, prompted by her relatives, accepted
a certain Thomas Williamson as her prospective husband,
and, much to Wesley's distress, became his wife a few days
after the separation from the man of her heart. Her decla-
ration that she would never marry was thus violated by
events which she could not altogether control ; where-
upon Wesley began to act in a manner indicative of the
feelings of the injured lover who was also a domineering
priest. Williamson was naturally unwilling that his wife
should have any further acquaintance with Wesley, and
would not allow her to enter the parsonage. Wesley, on
the other hand, exhorted her to continue her religious duties,
and upon her failing to do so with regularity, proceeded to
rebuke her. On the strength of a talebearer's gossip he
further upbraided her; and at length, about five months
after her marriage, publicly excluded her from the Lord's
Table. Her husband, justly outraged at this inexcusable
action, brought suit against Wesley for defaming her
character. The malcontents of the town, with Causton as
their leader, ranged themselves on Williamson's side of the
quarrel, and desired nothing better than such an oppor-
tunity for getting rid of a pastor who had frequently offended
them for righteousness' sake. However, when the charges
against him were sifted from the scandals and calumnies
with which the small and self-centered community abounded,
no case was left against Wesley. He had acted within his
clerical rights, although in such a way as to impair the con-
fidence of the best people of the settlement in his motives,
and the agitation which followed ended his usefulness in
Georgia.
220 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Delamotte agreed with him that his best course was to
return home, and accordingly he posted a notice in the
public square of Savannah that he was about to leave the
colony. Mr. Williamson at once announced that he had
sued Wesley for one thousand pounds damages, and would
prosecute any one who aided his escape. The magis-
trates also forbade him to leave until the case had been
heard. Wesley reminded them that he had attended seven
sessions of the Court, at none of which had he been
allowed to answer the charges against him. Nevertheless
they demanded that he sign a bond, pledging himself,
under a penalty of fifty pounds, to appear in Court when-
ever required to do so. He refused to give either bond or
bail, and the magistrates retaliated by ordering the officers
of the law to prevent his departure. These measures may
have been a mere pretense, but, whether seriously intended
or not, they failed. After evening prayers, which he con-
ducted publicly before going to the boat, Wesley, accom-
panied by four friendly men, set out for Purrysburg,
twenty miles down the river, and arrived there the follow-
ing morning. From Purrysburg the party of five went on
foot to Port Royal, an exhausting journey through track-
less forests and swamps. From Port Royal they shipped
to Charlestown, and there Wesley embarked for England
on December 22, 1737.
Such were some of the main factors in his Georgian prepa-
ration for a greater embassy. When the day of his mis-
sion dawned, he observed, "Many reasons I have to bless
God for my having been carried to America contrary to all
my preceding resolutions. Thereby I trust He hath in some
measure humbled me and proved me and showed me what
was in my heart." Certainly self-denial, resolute sacrifice,
a sense of sin, and a constant hope for deliverance from sin
were in that heart, so sad and weary, which turned back
from the New World to the Motherland, and was destined
there to redress the religious balance of the British people.
JOHN WESLEY 221
These feelings already opposed in him the evils of formalism
and of a provincial orthodoxy, and, whatever else was lost
or won, he had guarded his integrity as a Christian pastor,
even to the crucifying of his natural affections. If a little
more humanness would have added to the geniality of
Wesley's disposition, it might also have detracted from the
completeness of a consecration, the intensity of which has
seldom been equaled. His autocratic temper was a fault
for which he had to make his own atonement. Of quite
another sort were the qualities which enabled him to handle
with unrivaled strategy and daring the recruits who en-
listed in his crusade. These qualities made him prompt,
fearless, decisive, a bold leader in extremity, who kept the
marks he followed well within the range of his vision. His
later innovations, although deplored by his clerical brethren,
were dictated by necessity and prompted by the lessons he
had learned when defeat had been the outcome of ecclesi-
astical regularity. In reality he always maintained the
better part of Anglicanism as he conceived it. Swayed by
its spirit he expatriated himself for a life of devotion and
service. It sustained him during his absence from congenial
society, while as a missionary wearing coarse clothes and
eating coarse food he w^andered through a virgin territory in
blistering heat or biting cold. His endurance of these hard-
ships is proof that the things in him which could be shaken
were being removed in order that those which were funda-
mental might remain. Oxford Methodism began to lan-
guish among the chaotic morals of a turbulent community,
but the world's Methodism was already in process of gesta-
tion ; and the pains Wesley endured were the birth pangs
of its deliverance. In Georgia he did nothing more than
experiment with a pietistic individualism rooted in ritual-
istic Anglicanism, which showed small understanding of the
central truth of the New Testament. The outcome was
disastrous, but would his determined soul have submitted
to anything less disastrous? For while these traditions
222 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of his earlier religious life, as permanent elements in his
nature, were blended with the more complete experience of
his conversion and his subsequent growth in divine grace,
they never again controlled his energies or invalidated his
action. His narrowness and indifference to the interests
of the Church universal, and his trust in the merit of good
works, had received a definite challenge. Extreme notions
regarding ecclesiastical prerogatives and sacramental grace
were no longer so acceptable as they once had been. The
quietism of the Moravians and the ignorant apathy of
the colonists, although nothing akin, had shown Wesley
that his exclusive ideas of the Gospel were not its most
efficient interpretation, a discovery which gave rise in him
to chastening reflections. Yet those who cannot recall
his career without a sense of gratitude will not too hastily
judge his stay in Georgia a fruitless period. It was a
necessary stage in his evolution, and Whitefield, who fol-
lowed him there, wrote enthusiastically that "the good
Mr. Wesley has done in America is inexpressible." This
was perhaps the exaggerated tribute of one who seldom had
difficulty in believing what he wished to believe. Neverthe-
less good had been done, and in no direction so much as in
this, that Wesley's larger self emerged from uncongenial
surroundings which rebuked his fastidiousness and pride,
and taught him the lessons of patience and wisdom. The
illumination of his powers for serving men to the full was pre-
ceded by the consciousness of a failure which finally wrought
in him a more productive faith. His confessions during
the homeward voyage corroborate these sentiments. "I
went to America to convert the Indians ; but oh ! who
shall convert me? ... I have a fair summer religion. I
can talk well ; nay, and believe myself, while no danger
is near. But let death look me in the face, and my spirit
is troubled. . . . Whosoever sees me, sees I would be a
Christian. . . . But in a storm I think, what if the Gospel
be not true? Then thou art of all men most foolish. For
JOHN WESLEY 223
what hast thou given thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy
reputation, thy country, thy life? For what art thou
wandering over the face of the earth ? — A dream, a cun-
ningly devised fable ! Oh ! who will deliver me from this
fear of death? ... A wise man advised me some time
since, 'Be still, and go on.' Perhaps this is best, to look
upon it as my cross." ^ Doubtless these melancholy solil-
oquies were prompted by his wounded affections as well
as by spiritual disquietude. Miss Hopkey's hand in mar-
riage had been, to quote his own words, "the desire of my
eyes and the joy of my heart; the one thing upon earth I
longed for," Such a love, unsealing as it does the nethermost
springs of life, creates, when thus repressed, a grief likely
to become permanent. But notwithstanding these grave
discouragements, he accepted the wise man's word, and went
on, not knowing that his greater heritage was near.
II
Wesley landed at Deal on the first of February, 1737,
just a few hours too late to receive the greetings of his
friend Whitefield, whose whole-souled companionship would
have been especially acceptable at this time. But after
a victorious experiment in field-preaching, Whitefield was
then sailing down the Channel on a voyage to Savannah.
During the first months after his return, Wesley passed
through a period of restless discontent, not to say vehement
agitation. Clerical complacency was a banished sentiment ;
conventional beliefs had lost their authoritative note;
he chafed beneath that sense of impotence so distressing
to men who are intent upon noble ends and have not yet
found the means for their attainment. The account of
this interval and of his efforts to meet its emergencies,
as given in the Journal, is in all respects a clear, manly,
"The Journal of John Wesley": edited by Rev. Nehemiah Cumock;
Vol. I, p. 418.
224 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and candid narrative. He was entering upon an epoch where
extensive changes were to prevail, and he had a tough
struggle to break through the barriers of prejudice and
habit. His emotions and aspirations were such as led him
to deeds of capital consequence. Beyond doubt he was a
Christian and practically at one with all Christians on the
fundamental questions of morality and worship. But
hitherto his advanced sacramentarianism and legalism had
been the trusted vehicles for communication of divine life,
and the revolution now imminent in him was such a com-
plete displacement of those doctrines, and one so entirely due
to the royal faculty of faith, that it became a signal event
in the history of evangelical methods. His entire being
verged upon a new world, wherein he was to become supreme,
overcoming by the weight of his witness those Anglican
ideas which had previously governed him.
Meanwhile he hastened to London, and reported to the
Trustees of the Georgia Settlement. There he found his
brother Charles, who entered heartily into his projects, and
they began to attend the gatherings of the Brethren. Peter
Bohler, a native of Frankfort, a graduate of Jena and a
convert to Moravianism, had been ordained in Germany
and commissioned by Count Zinzendorf for missionary work
in the Carolinas. During his stay in London he was intro-
duced to the Wesleys, who were much edified by his quiet
and persuasive preaching. Although ministering through
an interpreter, his words were suffused with a mystical in-
fluence which subdued and elevated the secluded audiences
he addressed, and his connection with the Wesleys has
since cast a solitary beam of splendor upon his brief so-
journ in England. Charles gave him lessons in the lan-
guage; John cross-examined him on the matters which
prevented his own peace. Bohler's answers consisted, in
the main, of quotations from Scripture, specifically those
passages which deal with regeneration. He showed that
salvation is of God, through Christ Jesus, and by means of
JOHN WESLEY 225
His Death and Resurrection ; the sole conditions of its be-
stowal being repentance and faith on the part of the re-
cipient. These graces are supplied by the Holy Spirit, Who
inclines believing hearts to respond to the overtures of mercy,
and confirms in them the assurance of their filial relation
with the Heavenly Father, The content of this creed,
sanctioned as it is by Holy Writ, is summarized in the text,
"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." The
challenge Luther hurled at the conscience of Christendom
was due to his vivid apprehension of the declaration, " Now
the just shall live by faith," and his conversion furnishes an
instructive parallel with that of Wesley. In both cases a
large space of time is covered with a series of confessions
which reveal important points of change and progress ap-
parently inconsistent, and, to those not in spiritual sjinpathy
with the men, somewhat perplexing. Luther's mind was emi-
nently intuitional, glancing with an eagle's eye at truth when-
ever it rose before him. Wesley's mind was eminently
logical, arriving at conclusions by argumentative processes.
Luther's theology sprang directly from his experience;
Wesley's was illuminated and applied by his experience.
He learned the doctrine of Justification by faith before he
exercised the faith which brought him consciously into a
justified condition. Both were alike in that they did not
at once gain certitude without wavering, but tarried for a
fuller revelation which secured their unreserved consent, and
induced in them a state of exaltation and of praise.
The placid but observant Bohler saw that the Wesleys
had come to the parting of the ways, and in a letter to
Zinzendorf he gave his impressions of their state. "I
travelled with the two brothers from London to Oxford.
The elder, John, is a good-natured man; he knew he did
not properly believe on the Saviour, and was willing to be
taught. His brother, with whom you often conversed a
year ago, is at present very much distressed in his mind, but
does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the
226 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
Saviour. Our mode of believing in the Saviour is so easy
to Englishmen, that they cannot reconcile themselves to it ;
if it were a little more artful, they would much sooner find
their way into it. Of faith in Jesus they have no other idea
than the generality of people have. They justify themselves ;
and therefore, they always take it for granted, that they
believe already, and try to prove their faith by their works,
and thus so plague and torment themselves that they are
at heart very miserable." ^ On the journey, and while at
Oxford, Wesley began dimly to apprehend the secret Bohler
strove to impart. This in substance was the verification by
actual experience of the principal teachings of the New Testa-
ment. These were also embedded in the doctrinal formulae
long familiar to Wesley, but he had not yet abandoned
himself to them with that resolution which surmounts every
obstacle, or in that faith which is disengaged from all
supplementary considerations and fixed on Christ alone.
Dependence on the outward form instead of the inward vital-
ity of the Gospel was seldom more palpably shown, yet it
is only too frequent in professed Christians, and operates
so subtly that they think of it as little as of the air they
breathe. A Laodicean contentment arising out of super-
ficial assent to mere dogma deprives many believers of
real fellowship with their Risen Redeemer. Here, as else-
where, the witness of Christian consciousness, which extends
not merely to abstract or speculative opinions, but to the
whole current of feeling and of action in the regenerated
soul, is left stranded on the shore of oblivious years, while
men forget the solemn warning that "the letter killeth but
the spirit giveth life." Justification by faith is an historic
phrase covering the profound depths of religious experience,
of which the content cannot be expressed in any statement,
however full or apposite. The tides of that experience be-
gan to stir in Wesley, and though they ebbed, they ebbed
to flow again, bringing on their returning crest a strength
»L. Tyerman: "Life and Times of John Wesley"; Vol. I, pp. 181-182.
JOHN WESLEY 227
of will, a courage, and an assurance which made him a
wonder to himself and to others.
Decisive moments which affect the wider circles of hu-
man existence are rare indeed, and Wesley now approached
one that has seldom been surpassed in interest or impor-
tance. God's intervention drew near, when the manifesta-
tion of love divine ended the travail of this seeker after
the highest life and truth, and endowed him with gifts for
the strengthening of his brethren. The crisis showed that
even the best and most sincere men are never the masters
of their highest destiny : that heaven in recognition of
their single-mindedness takes their wood and gives them
iron ; their iron, and gives them gold.
Between February the first and the date of his conversion
he preached at least eighty sermons in London, Oxford,
Manchester, and other centers, to congregations so widely
separated as the prisoners of the common jails and the
students and professors of the University. Although not
averse to this duty, he was still in bondage ; and he tells us
that he spent March the fourth with Bohler, " by whom, in the
hands of the great God, I was on Sunday, the fifth, clearly
convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby we
are saved." "How can I preach to others who have not
faith myself ? " was his pathetic query. In his bewilderment
he turned again to Bohler, who counseled him, "Preach
faith till you have it, and then because you have it you
will preach faith." Implicit reliance upon the Moravian's
precept was not a simple process for the High Churchman.
It involved the consummation of behefs he already held,
but which did not as yet hold him in their resistless grasp ;
yet, once they were freed from opposing elements, his soul
was drawn to them as flame is drawn to flame, and faith be-
came the definite, preponderant ingredient of his personal
relation with God in Christ Jesus. This explanation suf-
fices to show the impropriety of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
stupid comment on Wesley's dilemma. The Highgate
228 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF [^OXFORD
philosopher avowed that Bohler's suggestion was tanta-
mount to saying : " Tell a lie long enough and often enough
and you will be sure to end by believing it," a cheap and
shallow criticism devoid of application and lacking moral
insight and sympathy for a situation of peculiar delicacy.
On Monday, March the sixth, Wesley put Bohler's doc-
trine to the test by proclaiming to a felon awaiting execution
eternal life and blessedness through voluntary acceptance
of the promises of the Lord Jesus Christ. The condemned
man at once responded, relying with absolute confidence
upon the Gospel as thus stated, and its consolations en-
abled him to die with a " composed cheerfulness and serene
peace." Wesley's questionings were silenced ; he hastened
from the cell of the outcast to a renewed study of the Holy
Scriptures, where he found sufficient evidence that repent-
ance at the last hour was a possibility and conversion fre-
quently instantaneous. On Lord's Day, the twenty-third of
the following month, he heard further testimony from " liv-
ing witnesses," who declared that these operations of saving
grace were not confined to the Apostolic Age. They had
persisted throughout the schisms and heresies wrought by
rites and ceremonies, symbols and theories, ecclesiastical
claims and counter claims, and were being repeated in his
own day. Thus he was slowly drawn from under the cold
shadows of clerical intolerance and misconception into the
sunshine of the all-sufiicient Love Divine. "Here ended,"
he wrote, " my disputing. I could now only cry out, ' Lord,
help thou my unbelief.' " ^ Such were the heraldings of the
dawn which abolished his misgivings, extending and irra-
diating his spiritual horizon, and fixing his faith upon its
central luminary, the Son of God Who loved him and gave
Himself for him.
While the actual moment of his daybreak lingered, it was
anticipated by that of his brother Charles, who lay sick in
•"The Journal of John Wesley": edited by Rev. Nehemiah Curnock ;
Vol. I, p. 455.
JOHN WESLEY 229
mind and body at the home in Little Britain ^ of a tradesman
named Bray, where he was visited by his brother John,
Bohler, and other friends. They held frequent conver-
sations with him, and offered prayers for his recovery.
Mrs. Tm'ner, the sister of his host, who had recently found
peace through believing, consented to bear a message of
comfort and command to their guest. Accordingly, on the
anniversary of the Feast of Pentecost, coming to the door
of his room, she called to him in soft, clear tones, "In the
name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise and believe and thou
shalt be healed of thy infirmities." Charles at once obeyed
the injunction and trusted the promise; at the instigation
of an obscure agent began for him his rejuvenated being,
and for the Church that enraptured burst of Christian song
which has kindled and refined her adoration of the Holiest.
Meanwhile, John's resentment was aroused against the theo-
logical guides he had read or consulted, because they had not
directed him to the simplicity which is in Christ. He wrote
a letter to William Law, arraigning him in terms reminiscent
of his old hierarchical temper, bearing down upon his for-
mer mentor with a stringency indicative of his inward dis-
turbance, and an immoderation which for the time over-
came his charity. "Now, sir," he demanded, in reference
to Bohler's views, " suffer me to ask, how will you answer it
to our common Lord, that you never gave me this advice?
Did you never read the Acts of the Apostles, or the answer
of Paul to him who said, 'What must I do to be saved'?
Or are you wiser than he ? WTiy did I scarce ever hear you
name the name of Christ ? Never so as to ground anything
upon faith in his blood ? Who is this who is lajdng another
foundation? If you say you advised other things as pre-
paratory to this, what is this but lajdng a foundation below
the foundation ? . . . I beseech you, sir, by the mercies of
God, to consider deeply and impartially whether the true
reason of your never pressing this upon me was not this —
1 A London street still to be found in the eastern section of the city.
230 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
that you had it not yourself?" ^ Law met this fulmination
with the reply that his instruction had been in substance,
though not in expression, identical with that of Bohler,
and concluded with the timely admonition, "Let me advise
you not to be too hasty in believing that because you have
changed your language you have changed your faith. The
head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying
faith in the blood of Jesus as with any other notion, and the
heart which you suppose to be a place of security, as being
the seat of self-love, is more deceitful than the head." ^
Law was not appreciated by the deists of his generation,
nor could this be expected ; for, as Sir Leslie Stephen remarks,
"A mystic in a common sense atmosphere can no more
flourish than an Alpine plant transplanted to the Lowlands."
But he had a claim to Wesley's grateful respect on the
grounds both of his personal character and his teaching.
Even Gibbon, who showed scanty appreciation for Chris-
tianity, referred to Law in his Autobiography with affec-
tionate esteem. "In our family," observed the historian,
"he left a reputation of a worthy and pious man who be-
lieved all he professed and practised all he enjoined." In
later days Wesley himself acknowledged that Law's writings
first sowed the seed of Methodism, and stemmed the torrent
of infidelity and immorality which had submerged the Eng-
lish people since the Restoration. Certainly "it was Law
who, alone of living writers, materially influenced Wesley's
mind ; and gave to universal principles that special form
which rendered them suitable at the moment." ^ His sub-
jective treatment of Christian doctrine, particularly of the
Atonement and other articles of which Wesley had com-
plained, was characterized by remarkable spiritual origi-
nality. Law's superiority to Wesley as a thinker was shown
in the correspondence that ensued between them. The
' L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 186.
2 Ibid., p. 187.
'Sir Leslie Stephen: "English Thought in the Eighteenth Century";
Vol. I. p. 158.
JOHN WESLEY 231
honors of the dispute remained with Law, the more so be-
cause his opponent injected into it personal charges which
should not have been made. The unfortunate aspect of
the controversy was that it estranged two sincere servants
of God. Of the few glaring indiscretions of the sort which
can be charged against Wesley, this perhaps was the most
unnecessary. He turned from its embarrassments to con-
sult with Bohler until the latter's departure for the Caro-
linas, and then went forward to his Peniel alone.
The twenty-fourth of May, 1738, has always been kept by
Methodists as the day which ended their Founder's night of
wrestling. Wesley rose at five o'clock on that memorable
morning, and, opening the New Testament, read these words :
"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises ; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine
nature." After a while he again opened the book and read
— "Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God." In the
afternoon he attended St. Paul's Cathedral, where the an-
them was taken from the 130th Psalm as found in the Book
of Common Prayer : ^ " Out of the deep I have called unto
thee, O Lord : Lord, hear my voice. O let thine ears con-
sider well the voice of my complaint." As the strains of
supplication and praise rolled in long melodious thunder
beneath the soaring arches and lofty dome of the sanctu-
ary, this humble worshiper found his refuge in the words,
" My soul fleeth unto the Lord : before the morning watch,
I say, before the morning watch." The choristers sang of
trust in His changeless mercy and plenteous redemption :
outpourings of a faith which had been the stay of Juda-
ism, and was now the comfort of one who was to become a
prince in God's spiritual Israel.
He left the Cathedral to enter upon the experience which
he describes in simple, solemn, convincing language, un-
colored by hectic emotion, and stamped with reality. His
' The music for this anthem was probably written by Purcell, the greatest
of English composers of cathedral anthems.
232 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
words have burned in countless hearts, many of which have
known their inmost meaning. " In the evening I went very
unwillingly to a Society ^ in Aldersgate Street where one
was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans.
About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the
change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ,
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ,
Christ alone for salvation ; and an assurance was given me
that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me
from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my
might for those who had in a more especial manner despite-
fully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly
to all there what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not
long before the enemy suggested, 'This cannot be faith;
for where is thy joy?' Then was I taught that peace and
victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our
salvation ; but that, as to the transports of joy that usually
attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have
mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes with-
holdeth them, according to the counsels of His own will."
His regeneration should not be confused with those renun-
ciations of religious or philosophical opinions at the behest
of conviction, under the impulse of which Carlyle left
the Calvinism of his youth; Martineau ceased to be an
orthodox Unitarian ; Mill rejoiced over his social gospel
after reading Dumont's interpretation of Benthamism in the
"Traite de la Legislation"; and Newman passed into the
Roman Catholic Church. Wesley's was preeminently a vital
change, which, while more or less sharing the intellectual
importance of the instances named, surpassed them in the
qualities it evinced and the services it rendered. In many
respects it closely resembled St. Paul's conversion, and can
be more fittingly compared with that classic proof of justify-
ing faith, or with the transformation wrought in Luther, than
' This was the Anglican Society in Nettleton Court, conducted by James
Button, and not, as many have supposed, a Moravian gathering.
JOHN WESLEY 233
with any other individual witness to the saving knowledge of
Jesus Christ. Certainly after Wesley's realization of eternal
verities his former limitations disappeared : his soul yielded
to "the expulsive power of a new affection," and the priest
was merged into the prophet. He was no longer compelled
to rest his case as a Christian upon human authority, however
sacred. His belief in the Church and in the Bible had
enabled them to bear an indirect testimony sufficient to
stimulate his devout and conscientious inquiries. But he
had discovered that any beliefs which hinged upon the
word of an earthly witness worked under defective condi-
tions, and varied with his estimate of that witness; that
faith so founded could be weakened, and lacked the tenacity
and the purity which characterized the faith that came
through personal contact with the Son of God. In these
experiments he at last seized upon the very essence of the
Gospel of his Lord, and occupied a position from which he
could not be dislodged. Based upon the rock of an in-
disturbable assurance, his religion was never again mini-
mized into a mere scheme of probabilities : he felt the
results of a living intercourse with Christ, and he might
have stated them in the words of the Samaritans to their
country-woman : " Now we believe, not because of thy say-
ing, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this
is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." •,
The chronic irritation which had given him no rest was
banished ; he drew from the springs of heavenly love a vital
energy, and with his spiritual faculties thus quickened he
gained the perception of truth; not the deceptive half-
truth of material science that conceals the germs of agnos-
ticism, but the truth that transcends mere intellectual
knowledge, the truth which is the objective of such faith as his.
In the prime of manhood, he passed at a bound to a high
point of being, and carried to the grave untarnished and
unimpaired the plenitudes of restoration and of power which
then became his own. Neither life nor death was suffered
234 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to take one jot of their meaning from his heart ; their reg-
nancy increased with the passing of his years. His regen-
eration, apparently spontaneous, was really the outgrowth
of all he had been. But he was now enlarged, enriched,
illuminated in every province of his nature. Nor could sub-
sequent changes of feeling or circumstance weaken his hold
on God or on his fellow-men.
It is no detraction from his superior value as a Christian
to recognize in him the egoism out of which his growth
and service were shaped by higher impulses. If he some-
times spoke, like St. Augustine and Bunyan, as though
the Creator and himself were the only valid ends for
which all things else were the means, this re-adjustment
of his soul's fellowship with its Maker ennobled every
other relation he sustained. Fixed in his conscious accept-
ance with God, he was enabled to move with freedom in
the entire region of his reconstructed existence. The grace
he had received imparted no flawless excellence, but it en-
dowed him with a vigilance, a resolution, and a wisdom
which were typical of Protestant Christianity at its best,
and it rebuked the materialized conceptions and indirect
methods of its appropriation which proceed from external
things.
Our reverence for Wesley is the greater because of the
devotion with which he accepted and acted upon the in-
disputable fact of his new life in Christ. Only in the
light of that devotion, and of all it involved, can we
form an adequate estimate of the warm, aspiring saint, as
distinguished from the artificial character, cold as monu-
mental marble, which some have ascribed to him in the
interests of doctrinal theories. He was deeply aware that
he had been created again in Christ Jesus, and the knowl-
edge gave him rest and gladness. Yet he offered his sacri-
fice in humility, as one who was not meet, being careful
to reserve nothing from the altar of consecration. More-
over, because the Gospel was a sanctifying energy, he re-
JOHN WESLEY 235
sented every effort to belittle or obscure it. Yet the
controversialist and the precisionist were no longer welcome
to him : he rather laid emphasis upon the grace of God
manifested in the forgiveness of his sin and in his deliverance
from its shame and guilt. This grace solved the problems
which once perplexed him ; answered the questions that had
not spared his tranquillity ; imbued him with a divine sensi-
bility and equipped him for the mission which at once be-
came an inherent part of his life. The vision of Christ as the
Redeemer of mankind was the heart of his message; the
only Gospel suflBcient for the saving of his own soul and of
them that heard him.
Such, then, was the nature of Wesley's faith, prepared as
it was to forsake derivative beliefs, if by so doing it could
secure that immediate access where the finite draws life
from the infinite. He pushed his interrogations to the last
issue, distinguishing, as he did so, between opinions and
convictions, and construing truth in the light of the spirit
and word of the New Testament. Beginning with inquiry,
he was not content to detect his inconsistencies, or dwell
upon his needs, but went forward till he found an all-
sufficient object in Christ Jesus, and fastened his trust and
obedience upon Him. Cardinal Newman remarked that
this was an inverted process : that the Roman devotee begins
with belief, and reverently following the divine instincts,
draws out their hidden oracles into the- symmetry of a holy
philosophy. The distinction is worth attention, but the
fruits of Wesley's faith are the best answer to Newman's
objection. That his extraordinary experience should arouse
criticism, especially after it became the type and standard
of countless similar experiences, was to be expected. Skep-
ticism could not suffer so startling a rebuke to pass unno-
ticed ; for men resent nothing so much as the unexpected
advent of a truth that wrecks their assumptions. Whether
cultured or ignorant, imaginative or stupid, they agreed in
protesting against the claims made by Wesley and his fol-
236 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
lowers. The transformations of life and character on which
they were based confuted those who were forced to admit
their actual occurrence, but attached to them their own
explanation. Hence Coleridge maintained that Wesley's
assurance of salvation was nothing more than "a strong
pulse or throb of sensibility accompanying the vehement
volition of acquiescence : an ardent desire to find the posi-
tion true and a concurring determination to receive it as
truth." This may be a correct psychological definition of
some conversions, but in Wesley's case its sonorous phrase-
ology is misleading. Coleridge evidently took it for granted
that the divine element dominant in the change then
wrought was not worthy of his consideration. He had no
valid ground for any such attitude, and the omission of that
element so completely vitiated his analysis that it had about
as much bearing on Wesley's actual experience, its nature,
intensity, and extent, as the nebulous vapors of the heavens
have upon the motions of the planets.
Further, notwithstanding Wesley's occasional lapses into
sentimentalism, it must not be forgotten that he was a great
Christian who was also a great Englishman. He belonged to
a people whose pieties have never been divorced either from
reason or ethics, who were Pragmatists before Pragmatism,
and whose accepted test for enthusiasm, vehemence, or pro-
fession, is practice. Their first question concerning theories
or institutions is not, " What can be said for or against them ? "
but, "How do they work?" Their theology and religion
have always been influenced by politics and morality ; hence
the paradoxical compromises of the English Reformation
defied the consistency so dear to the French mind, in order
that they might include the main currents of public opinion.
Innate conservatism is apparent at every stage of the reli-
gious development of the nation in which Wesley became a
representative teacher. The mystical fervors found in the
Latin race, which ran to extremes even in the Moravians,
were moderated by the utilitarian tendency of Anglican
JOHN WESLEY 237
saints. They usually related their ecstasies to earthly
affairs, economizing them for that purpose; the extrava-
gances of St. Francis, of St. John of the Cross, and even of
Boehme were foreign to the more sober but equally intent
piety of such men as Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker,
and Jeremy Taylor. In a letter written to his brother
Samuel, dated November 23, 1736, Wesley says, "I think
the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the
faith was the writings of the mystics; under which term
I comprehend all, and only those, who slight any of the
means of grace. . . . Men utterly divested of free will,
of self-love, and self-activity, are entered into the passive
state, and enjoy such a contemplation as is not only above
faith, but above sight. . . . They have absolutely renounced
their reason and understanding ; else they could not be
guided by a Divine Light. They seek no clear or particular
knowledge of anything, but only an obscure, general knowl-
edge. . . . Sight, or something more than sight, takes the
place of faith." ^ These avowals of the dangers he had so
barely escaped leave no doubt on the point at issue. He
clung to the venerable guarantees of historic Christianity,
avoiding sensational and gratuitous changes, but adopting
those dictated by the expansion of his heart and work. ^
It is one of the triumphs of originality not to invent or
discover what is probably already known, but by a revivify-
ing of former things to make their meaning new and irre-
sistible. Wesley's conversion was a good example of this
process. His entire life hitherto had been steadily directed
toward the inflatus it then received and the decision with
which he received it. Even his doubts and difficulties had
contributed to his regeneration. He might have said in
the language of a later day,
"Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped ;
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, pp. 133-134.
238 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
All I could never be,
All men ignored in me.
This was I worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."
He was early set apart by his mother's diligent care for
his soul, and her reminder that he could be saved only
by keeping all the commandments of his Maker. This
excited his sense of moral responsibility, making him appre-
hensive of the approaches of evil and painfully censorious of
himself. It prevented him from regarding sin as being
nothing more than a general imperfection, and his grief
over past failures strengthened in him the presuppositions
of the Gospel which delivers men from sin. In his dealings
with heaven he could not brook trifling or evasion ; every
act of worship was candid and absorbing. The despair
his previous state had evoked was the prelude to the
rapture of his deliverance, and his subsequent ministry
was proportioned by his experiences both of sorrow and
of joy. His affection for the beauty and appropriateness
of the Anglican liturgy remained unchanged. He con-
tinued to associate faith not only with worship but with
work, and he had no sooner begun to preach than he
established an orphanage at Newcastle. Alert to the
dangers of exuberant emotionalism, he warned his con-
verts that an uprush of feeling did not necessarily indicate
divine sonship. It was to be validated by corresponding
deeds, since a profession of religion without its fruits
was vanity. Here the young Oxonian of the Bocardo
reappeared, and while he preached faith he also main-
tained that "he who doeth righteousness is righteous."
The presumptions of those who imagined they had exclusive
rights to evangelicalism were rebuked in the following obser-
vations : " I find more profit in sermons on either good tem-
pers or good works, than in what are vulgarly called Gospel
sermons. That word has now become a mere cant word ;
I wish none of our Society would use it. It has no deter-
minate meaning. Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal,
JOHN WESLEY 239
that has neither sense nor grace bawl out something about
Christ or His blood or justification by faith and his hearers
cry out, 'what a fine Gospel sermon!'" In later days he
wrote again, "When fifty years of age, my brother Charles
and I in the simplicity of our hearts taught the people that
unless they knew their sins forgiven, they were under the
wrath and curse of God, I wonder they did not stone us.
The Methodists know better now." The spirit of the New
Testament was nurtured in Wesley by the combination of
numerous differing phases and gifts. Many streams fed
the mighty river of gracious influence which issued from
his personality, a river still flowing, and bearing the life of
men toward happier havens beyond.
Julia Wedgwood in her able study of Wesley states that
his regeneration transferred "the birthday of a Christian from
his baptism to his conversion, and in that change the parti-
tion line of the two great systems is crossed." This is
true so far as characteristic Wesleyanism is concerned, but
it does not take sufficient account of the significance of
the religious education of the young, or of the Christian con-
sciousness of the Church universal. Later Methodism has
been compelled to acknowledge these factors as in many
instances modifying the older conception which limited con-
version to an immediate and pronounced experience. Count-
less hosts of Christians owe their faith to early religious
training, or to the Sacraments which have undoubtedly
fostered it. These multitudes can neither be ignored nor
dismissed by a sweeping generalization. The operations
of the Divine Presence in human hearts do not submit to
the rough and ready assignments of man. "The wind
bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof,
but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth :
so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
Such then in outline was the inwardness of Wesley's change
as he published it to the world, to be read by all who desire to
form a sober judgment on this supreme issue. Anything more
240 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
restrained in temper, more cogent in statement, more per-
suasive in appeal, it would be difficult to find . In many respects
it is the wisest as it is the most impartial modern utterance
that has interpreted Christian origins and Christian history
by Christian experience. And although some of its suggestions
may be open to minor criticism, its value as an apologetic
and as an eirenicon is beyond estimate. It recalls the flame
from the Altar of Eternal Love which burned in the breasts
of the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Martyrs, and afterwards
burst forth again in St. Francis and the heroes of the Refor-
mation. How well it fulfilled in Wesley the more perfect
will of God is dispassionately stated in a further quotation
from Mr. Lecky : " It is, however, scarcely an exaggeration
to say that the scene which took place at that humble meet-
ing in Aldergate Street forms an epoch in English history.
The conviction which then flashed upon one of the most
powerful and most active intellects in England is the true
source of English Methodism " ^ — a judgment far too
modest in its ascription. That conviction set free the reli-
gious genius whose light flashed on England when the moral
condition of her inhabitants was aptly summarized in the
somber phrase of the Hebrew prophet : " They sat in dark-
ness and the shadow of death." Yet neither England nor
English Methodism was the sole beneficiary of Wesley's
consecrated faculties; his words have gone out unto the
ends of the earth.
Ill
The vile conditions for which the eighteenth century was
unenviably notorious were at their worst in its second
quarter, and continued even after the Evangelical Revival
had succeeded in abolishing some of their most deplorable
features. Mark Pattison describes the age as "one of decay
of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, pro-
faneness of language, — a day of rebuke and blasphemy
* " England in the Eighteenth Century "; Vol. Ill, p. 48.
JOHN WESLEY 241
... an age destitute of depth and earnestness ; an age
whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was
without insight, and whose pubUc men were without
character; an age of Might without love,' whose very
merits were of the earth, earthy." ^ Since these essays
were published in 1860 we have learned to understand the
eighteenth century better ; to know that, despite the sordid-
ness and materialism which characterized it, the period was
not and could not have been wholly corrupt. Agents and
forces of purification are always present in every society,
however debased and degenerate that society may seem to
be, and they never cease to operate, though at times too
far below the surface for their presence to be detected by
the superficial observer.
Yet without question the disorder of England during the
years included in Pattison's survey was far-reaching and
obstinate. Professor Henry Sidgwick has remarked that
the national character was such as to make belief in a con-
stitutional government impossible. In the judgment of
wise and patriotic men absolutism was necessary, because of
the ignorance, materialism, and waywardness of the people.
The morality of polite circles was content to express itself
in epigrams and maxims, while their rampant vices shel-
tered behind these useless formulae, Hume, in an essay
published in 1741, complained of the tyranny of political
factions, and concluded that, "We should, at last, after
many convulsions and civil wars, find repose in an ab-
solute monarchy, which it would have been happier for us
to have established peaceably from the beginning." If we
may judge from these and many other authoritative criti-
cisms, social stability was by no means assured. License
was too frequently mistaken for liberty: the general well-
being was hindered by those who bawled for freedom in
a senseless mood, and there was a justifiable distrust of popu-
lar sentiment. The wise political instinct now attributed
'"Easays"; Vol. II, p. 42.
242 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to the British people, and the actual establishment of civic
solidarity and virtue, are far more recent than is commonly
supposed. Levity, caprice, selfishness, and turbulence were
prevalent. The fickleness and perversity of the populace,
which Milton in his treatise on "A Free Commonwealth" re-
garded as dangerous, were due in a measure to the sourest
and narrowest type of Puritanism. Notwithstanding the
short tenure of the Cromwellian Protectorate, the religious
enthusiasm it generated, and the triumphs of peace and
war it secured, the reaction against it flung aside morality
altogether, and had not spent its force in Wesley's day.
Men still spoke with detestation of the attempts to enforce
virtue and suppress vice by penal statutes, and- the orgies
of the court of Charles the Second were perpetuated in the
dissoluteness of the aristocracy and the degradation of the
masses. The reign of the saints was succeeded by the revels
of the sinners; the profligates of the Restoration had
produced a progeny almost worse than themselves, whose
cynical brutalities it would be difficult to exaggerate.
Rational goodness seemed as impossible as art to a nation
smitten with color-blindness. The highest elements in
human existence were cast away; conduct drifted into
wrong channels ; conscience was defiled ; then indeed was
"Time a maniac scattering dust,
And life a fury slinging flame."
Yet on the low dark verge might be discerned the twilight
of a new day. For there was a saving remnant not unmind-
ful of the honor of God, which waged war on the evils that
usurped His claims, however hopeless the undertaking seemed.
The earlier reformers who strove to stem the pestilential
flood of wickedness voiced their anxiety in the words of Dr.
Woodward. Writing in 1699, he declared, "Our great enjoy-
ments in liberty, law, trade, etc., are in manifest danger of
being lost by those horrid enormities which have for some
years past abounded in this our nation ; for indeed they are
JOHN WESLEY 243
gross, scandalous, and crying, even to the reproach of our
Government and the great dishonor of our rehgion." The
"Proposal for a National Reformation of Manners," issued
in 1694, anticipated Woodward's accusation. "All men
agree," states its opening paragraph, "that atheism and pro-
faneness never got such a high ascendant as at this day.
A thick gloominess hath overspread our horizon and our light
looks like the evening of the world . . , vice and wickedness
abound in every place, drunkenness and lewdness escape
unpunished; our ears in most companies are filled with
imprecations of damnation; and the corners of our streets
everywhere the horrible sounds of oaths, curses, and blas-
phemous execrations." ^
The monarchs of England contributed to the deplorable
state of affairs. Thackeray's lectures, "The Four Georges,"
show that these princes, with the exception of George III,
while less openly depraved than Charles II, were infinitely
more vulgar. The novelist's masterly portrait of the hero
of Dettingen, — the second George, a strutting, self-impor-
tant, irascible little boor, who corrupted society by his
example and coarsened it by his manners, — is not a whit
overdrawn in its fearless and repulsive delineation. His
Queen, Caroline of Anspach, described by Sir Walter Scott
in "The Heart of Midlothian" as a sagacious and attractive
princess, although personally chaste and deserving of a better
husband than the man to whose puerile eccentricities she
sacrificed everything, did not hesitate to jest about his
paramours nor to indulge in obscene allusions. The life
and thought of the nation were infected by this betrayal of
decency in high places : its intelligence, virtue, and seemly
demeanor were constantly discouraged ; its worst propensi-
ties found their instigators among those who were miscalled
noble. In spite of his loyalty to the throne, Wesley felt and
avowed a healthy contempt for the upper classes. The
1 Jvilia Wedgwood: "John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the
Eighteenth Century" ; pp. 116-117.
244 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
barriers which the advocates of an empirical philosophy
of cultured common sense strove to oppose against con-
tagious vices were swept away by passions which neither
the serene guidance of Addison nor the stern protest of
Johnson could withstand. An increase of wealth and trade
furnished the means for tasteless profusion and animalistic
excess. Folly, filthy conversation, libertinism, and gluttony
were the pursuits of the majority. The landed proprietors
and the squirearchies took pattern from the reigning house,
which was sunk in debauchery until the accession of George
III, who allied his court with domestic regularity. What-
ever may be urged against him as an incapable ruler
whose ambition for executive supremacy ended in the dis-
memberment of the Empire, in his private character George
III was well nigh irreproachable, strongly and simply re-
ligious, given to prayer and to observance of the ordinances
of the Church. Yet he and his bigoted consort, Charlotte
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, never controlled their unruly sons,
who mocked and defied the quiet ways of Windsor, and
came near to overthrowing the Hanoverian dynasty in
Britain.
The mania for gambling reached its height during this
epoch, wielding an absolute sway over rich and poor alike,
who turned to its lure as naturally as to food or sleep, and
viewed the hazarding of fabulous sums as nothing worse
than an indiscretion. Any vice which receives general
approval ceases to be looked upon as such, and there were
few who escaped the ruinous fascinations of the race track
and the casino. All ranks and conditions gambled pro-
digiously and systematically. "Whist," wrote Walpole to
Sir Horace Mann, "has spread a universal opium over the
whole nation. On whatever pretext, and under whatever
circumstances, half a dozen people of fashion found them-
selves together, whether for music, or dancing, or politics,
or for drinking the waters or each other's wine, the box was
sure to be rattling and the cards were being cut and shuf-
JOHN WESLEY 245
fled." ^ The habitues of St. James's Palace staked nothing
less than two hundred pounds apiece at their nightly play,
and when Lady Cowper declined to enter the game because
she could not afford to risk the wager, she was chided for
her lack of courage. Lord Ilchester lost thirteen thousand
pounds at one sitting, a debt of honor he never paid. Top-
ham Beauclerk, the patron and friend of the literati who met
in the taverns of Fleet Street and the Strand, declared that
the extremities to which Charles James Fox was reduced
after he had parted with his last guinea were pitiable beyond
words. Before this orator and statesman was twenty-four,
he had incurred gambling debts to the amount of five
hundred thousand pounds, more than a fifth of which
sum represented the losses of one evening; and during
his lifetime he squandered a million pounds in the same
pursuit. Instead of being sobered by such wild exploits.
Fox jested about them and referred to the anteroom where
his Hebrew creditors waited to negotiate his paper as the
Jerusalem Chamber. White's Coffee House was one of
the favorite resorts of those who courted the smile of the
goddess of chance. Mr. Thynne won twelve thousand
pounds there in one night. Beau Brummel is said to have
won twenty thousand, and General Scott one hundred thou-
sand pounds in the same place at a single sitting. Nor were
these instances extraordinary ; in proportion to their means
the majority of gamblers were equally profuse.
The State patronized lotteries until near the close of the
century; the mischief which ensued passes description.
Great numbers of people were beggared in mind and body ;
the havoc among the tradesfolk, farmers, and artisans was
greater than can now be imagined : they were in every
sense demoralized. The racing towns of Epsom and New-
market swarmed with sharpers, blacklegs, and their dupes.
Loaded dice, fullams, and other apparatus for trickery
1 Sir George O. Trevelyan : "Early History of Charles James Fox";
p. 89.
246 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
were carried In the pockets, caps, and sleeves of these
knights of the craft, who viewed their calHng as the industry
of the age. The financial speculations of Exchange Alley
victimized thousands rendered gullible by the national pur-
suit. No project was too ridiculous to win support. The
place was filled, according to Smollett, "with a strange con-
course of statesmen and clergymen, churchmen and dis-
senters, Whigs, and Tories, physicians, lawyers, tradesmen,
and even females ; all other professions and employments
were utterly neglected." Companies were formed for dis-
counting pensions, insuring horses, providing perpetual
motion, discovering the land of Ophir, and for the manifestly
superfluous enterprise of improving the breed of asses. Even
when that bloated venture, the South Sea Bubble, burst
and reduced thousands to poverty and despair, the madness
received no perceptible check. Fresh devotees consigned
their fortunes to greedy schemers; estates, heirships, trust
funds, even chastity and life, were flung into the insatiable
maw of this iniquity. The players plunged without stint,
laying all they had or could obtain upon the board, while
they watched the turns of the game with oaths and im-
precations. Flown with wine and rendered desperate by
their losses or their lust for gain, men without conscience
or honor quarreled and fought, and satisfaction was de-
manded and given in numerous duels which became infamous
for that vulturous ferocity peculiar to the confirmed gambler.
Until Garrick revived the Shakesperian traditions, the
stage was monopolized by farces and spectacles of which
Congreve, Wycherley, and Vanbrugh were the chief pur-
veyors. Their ribald comedies suited current taste by
exalting pruriency and laughing the marriage vow out of
fashion. The scenes reeked of the stews ; rakes and deb-
auchees were heroes ; skepticism of any possible virtue,
especially between the sexes, was paraded with sickening
reiteration. The dialogues took it for granted that there
was an essential antagonism between what was moral and
JOHN WESLEY 247
what was witty and admirable. Fielding, who was by no
means fastidious about such matters, makes Parson Adams
say in "Joseph Andrews" he had never heard of any plays
that were fit to read except Addison's "Cato" and Dicky
Steele's somewhat prosy "Conscious Lovers." The obser-
vation is corroborated by the fact that ladies wore masks
at the theaters, a custom which lasted until long after the
accession of George III. Tragedies were filled with tedious
declamations upon the flagrant crimes of the classic monsters
of Greece and Rome, which made little appeal to the mind
and less to the heart. This repression of the deeper emotions
was inimical to the higher drama : instead of envisaging
the sacredness of human fate, resolution, and endurance, it
languished in the unrealities of finely polished couplets and
rhetorical bravado. Yet these disadvantages could not
prevent the triumph of David Garrick's inimitable genius
as an actor, nor were they incompatible with the develop-
ment of a delightful and masterly series of comedies from
those two genial Irishmen, Sheridan and Goldsmith, whose
treatment of the lighter aspects of life did something to
redeem wantonness and intellectual sterility. The fourth
Earl of Chesterfield, a pattern of etiquette, inculcated
an exquisite bearing and address which was the cloak
for a refined impurity much more detrimental to morals
than the salacious frankness of Fielding or the grossness of
Smollett. Historians may willingly accord him posthumous
justice as an able, careful, conscientious statesman who de-
served well of his country and despised bribery by money or
preferment in an unscrupulous era when Sir Robert Wal-
pole surveyed the benches of the House of Commons and
declared "All these men have their price." Chesterfield
was not only the representative of his class ; he was also
a patron of literature, and in a lesser degree an author of
some merit. In the former capacity his lack of generosity
provoked Johnson into writing one of the best letters of the
language; in the latter, his lack of virtue induced him to
248 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
instruct his son in the arts of intrigue, seduction, and
adultery as accompUshments highly becoming a gentleman.
Women of rank appeared at private functions and in public
places of entertainment clad in the scantiest garb, and far
from incurring disapproval, their immodesty was applauded.
Drunkenness was an established custom, with a code of regu-
lations which decreed the order of merit for the bibulous, and
arranged the incessant rounds of wine and wit, punch bowl
and song. The Prince Regent, hailed by his boon com-
panions and flatterers as the first gentleman in Europe,
caroused nightly with Sheridan, Grattan, and other celeb-
rities of the Carlton House coterie. He conspired with
his brothers — those stout, well-fed princes whose farmer-
like faces look down upon the visitor from the walls of Eng-
land's Portrait Galleries — to make her premier noble, the
Duke of Norfolk, drink a toast with every seasoned toper at
the royal board. Norfolk would not refuse the challenge,
and the debauch went on till the aged Duke's gray head lay
stupefied among the decanters while the wine ran like blood
on the table. Lord Eldon was a six bottle man, as were
other legal and political luminaries; William Pitt emptied
a bottle of port wine at home before going to the House of
Commons, and after the debates betook himself to Bellamy's
with Dundas and helped to finish a couple more. Addison,
Steele, Poulteney, Goldsmith, Fox, and Lord Holland were
all addicted to the cup. Sir Gilbert Elliot, writing to his
wife in 1787, said, "Men of all ages drink abominably . . .
and Gray more than any of them." The beaux of the town,
known as "frolics," "bloods," "mohocks" and "macaronies,"
consumed large quantities of fermented liquor. Byron's
letters contain references to the sprees of Cambridge profes-
sors and students, and he informed his friend Jackson, the
pugilist, of the masquerades at Newstead Abbey, where
goblets fashioned out of human skulls were quaffed by young
scapegraces attired in monastic robes. Ministers of State
reeled to their places in Parliament or at the opera, and some-
JOHN WESLEY 249
times even clergymen, with their wigs awry, went to the
sacred desk to hiccough in the pauses of their discourse.
Routs, assembUes, balls and ridottos were thronged with
fashionable patrons ; Vauxhall and Ranelagh gardens were
frequented by the upper and middle classes. The Spectator
describes Sir Roger de Coverley's visit to the former resort,
then one of the sights of the metropolis, which the good knight
enjoyed when he came up from Worcestershire. Between
the social extremes were the territorial proprietors who
shared in the common decadence. The local magnates,
parsons, and magistrates of the shires, with their isolation,
ignorance, pride, static politics, uncouth speech, and rustic
garb, furnished material for the satire of the novelists and
the moralizing of the essayists. It was an epoch of hilarious
feasting, fiddling, dancing, and buffoonery : in many aspects
unmanly, imbecile, and pitiable. The wreck of talent,
the untimely ending of individuals who might have been
shining lights in a perverse generation, but who left noth-
ing except painful memories of needless error and suffering,
fill the observer with a sense of irreparable loss. The hope
of the nation's redemption lay in the best of the clergy,
the merchants, and the yeomanry, and from their ranks came
the leaders of Methodism, who supported Wesley in his
efforts to reclaim the debased multitudes.
These neglected hordes were exactly what the ruling powers
had made them. Had those who exercised civil and religious
authority been wise and just, pure in life, sincere in motive,
and honorable in their dealings, the proletariat would
undoubtedly have felt the restraint of their example. But
such virtues were far to seek, while the vices we have noted
spread in virulent form among the workmen and peasants.^
» The editor of the Gloucester Gazette wrote : " Is it not mysterious that
gambling which has been known to bring calamity on the greatest and rich-
est men should now become common among the common people them-
selves?" Piety and gentleness must have lived in the shade. Brutality
flourished in the daylight. Public executions and whippings were every-
day spectacles ; bull-baiting, dog-fighting, and duck-hunting — the last
250 THKEE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Gin was the chosen beverage of the great unwashed, out-
bidding ale, porter, rum, and brandy in competition for
popular favor. Hogarth's pictures of Beer Street and Gin
Lane were delineations of the neighborhoods of St. Martin's
and St. Giles. The first represented John Bull engaged
in his national pastime, when the butcher, the drayman, and
the blacksmith drained their foaming tankards, flourished
a prime leg of mutton, and sang in praise of beer :
"Labor and art, upheld by thee,
Successfully advance,
We quaff the balmy juice with glee,
And water leave to France."
In contrast to this scene of counterfeit merriment was the
nauseating squalor of Gin Lane, where human nature, naked
and unashamed, wallowed in the depths of bestiality. The
artist vented his wrath on the cursed fiend, with murder
fraught, which preyed on the vitals of his countrymen.
Nothing in his terrific arraignment of contemporary immo-
rality was more awful in its fidelity than the portrayal of
that scene where old and young, and even mothers with
infants in arms, greedily drank the potations doled out in
return for their coppers. During a debate on the question
of drunkenness in 1736, it was reported to Parliament that
within the precincts of Westminster, Holborn, the Tower,
and Finsbury there were over seven thousand houses and
shops which retailed spirituous beverages, — and this in a
city which then contained only 600,000 inhabitants, of
whom over one fifth were directly interested in the traffic.
two during service-time on Sundays — were usual. Reputable Londoners
made it their Sunday afternoon amusement to repair with their families
to the Old Bethlehem Hospital, to watch the maniacs who were chained
naked to the pillars. At this time some two hundred thousand persons
usually gathered in tea-gardens about London every Sunday afternoon, and
at the end of the day they were to be classified thus: "Sober, 50, 000 ; in
High Glee, 90,000 ; Drunkish, 30,000 ; Staggering Tipsy, 10,000 ; Muzzy,
15,000; Dead Drunk, 5,000." In every circle of life it was unusual for a
party to disperse while one masculine member of it was sober.
JOHN WESLEY 251
Distilleries and breweries increased apace, and Mr. Lecky
states that, small as is the place which gin-drinking occupies
in English history, it was probably, if all the consequences
that flowed from it are considered, the most disastrous prac-
tice in the eighteenth century.^ Painted boards were sus-
pended from the door of almost every seventh house, invit-
ing the poor to get intoxicated for a penny, and dead drunk
for twopence ; straw whereon to lie being provided without
charge until they had slept off the effects of the first debauch
and were ready to start afresh. Dr. Benson, Bishop of
Gloucester, writing from Westminster to Bishop Berkeley
of Cloyne on February 18, 1752, says, "Your lordship calls
this the freest country in Europe. There is indeed freedom
of one kind in it ... a most unbounded licentiousness of
all sorts ... a regard to nothing but diversion and vicious
pleasures. . . . Our people are now become, what they
never were before, cruel. Those accursed spirituous liquors
which, to the shame of our Government, are so easily to be
had, and in such quantities drunk, have changed the very
nature of our people. And they will, if continued to be
drunk, destroy the very race of the people themselves." ^
Life and property were menaced by this waste of soul
and substance : thugs and footpads, recruited from bagnios
and taverns, were quick to take advantage of the unpro-
tected condition of society. Armed with murderous weapons
they sallied forth at dusk from their hiding places and skulked
in dismal alleys or on the heaths, to rob wayfarers and
travelers, beating or killing those who resisted them. The
Strand and Covent Garden were infested by these ruffians,
and mail coaches were liable to be held up on Hounslow
Heath, Gad's Hill, or any other open space. Fraternities
of criminals banded together under names which indicated
1 "England in the Eighteenth Century " ; Vol. II, p. 101. See also " Mem-
oirs of William Hickey (1749-1775)"; edited by Alfred Spencer.
* W. C. Sydney : "England and the EngUsh in the Eighteenth Century" ;
pp. 62-63.
252 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
their various depredations; some were driven to theft by
poverty, many more preferred it to work, not a few esteemed
it a chivalrous occupation. James Maclean,^ the "gentle-
man highwayman," and others of his kidney, after they had
lost their all in pursuit of pleasure and lust, took to the
road with horse, mask, cutlass, and pistols. Cavaliers of
plunder invested its sordid realities with a fictitious romance,
and had a doggerel of their own, vended everywhere, and
especially at the foot of the gallows, where they paid the
penalty for their misdeeds. The adventures of Jack Shep-
pard and Dick Turpin, who were better known to the aver-
age Englishman than any other heroes of the hangman's
rope, were chanted in alehouses by admiring yokels, and
roared in drunken chorus on the streets. The criminal
code was a ferocious and sanguinary legal instrument. Sir
Samuel Romilly, who commands the admiration of poster-
ity for the enlightened principles of legislative justice and
mercy he advocated, on reviewing it, said, "The first thing
which strikes one is the melancholy truth that among the
variety of actions which men are daily liable to commit no
less than one hundred and sixty have been declared by Act
of Parliament to be felonies without benefit of clergy ; or
in other words, to be worthy of instant death." Yet, un-
deterred by this Draconian severity, crime was outrageous
and incessant ; the jails were filled with criminals awaiting
transportation to the penal colonies or the cart that should
convey them to Tyburn ; the frequent public executions at
Newgate and at the county towns were occasions for a
junketing. Men who owed a few pounds they were unable
to pay languished in the Fleet Prison ; women were hanged
for petty thefts.^ All that has been affirmed here can be
• Also spelt Muclaine, or Maclcane.
2 Even Oxford students suffered the extreme penalty. Dr. Routh (born
in 1756, died in 1855) had seen this. "What, Sir, do you tell me, Sir,
that you never heard of Gownman's Gallows? Why, I tell you. Sir, that
I have seen the undergraduates hanged on Gownman's Gallows in Holywell
— hanged, Sir, for highway robbery." A. D. Godley : "Oxford in the
Eighteenth Century" ; p. 35.
JOHN WESLEY 253
verified from the pages of Gay, Walpole, Fielding, and
Smollett ; from the Newgate Calendar, the columns of the
Spectator, the Tatler, the Ledger, the London Evening,
and from the caricatures of Gillray and the pictures of
Hogarth.
The testimony of these authors, journalists, and artists
was largely limited to London, because there the Court, the
Government, the social dictatorship, much of the wealth
and one tenth of the population of the country were located.
But in the provinces and agricultural districts a similar state
of affairs prevailed ; indeed, Wesley regarded the rural peas- *
antry as the most inaccessible of all the laboring classes.
The legislator and the moralist left Hodge out of their calcu-
lations, and there seemed to be no remedy for his senseless
antagonism to new conditions. Corrupt and contented,
his daily life was a dull, sullen, insensate round, his lot a
bitter inheritance of deprivation and practical serfdom.
Many of the agrarian wrongs which had enraged the insur-
gents of the fourteenth century were still in existence,^ and
even now the backward condition of these people is a social
problem aggravated by their conservatism and apathy.
The more active spirits among them migrated to the
towns, and settled in congested spots which bred a general "
depravity. The miners of Cornwall, the potters of North
Staffordshire, the colliers of South Staffordshire, Shropshire,
Newcastle, Yorkshire, and the Forest of Dean, the stock-
ingers of Northampton, and the weavers of Lancashire, were
at once the most unruly and the most promising workmen
of England. Their moral deterioration was so marked that
respectable members of the community despised them,
oblivious of the fact that they had been denied those pri-
mary elements and means of knowledge which human beings
have a right to expect and acquire. The character of these
» As a matter of fact, the state of the English peasantry was worse at this
time (1760-1820) than during the Middle Ages, owing to the inclosure of
the common lands and the injustice and hardship that this wrought.
254 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
men and women was in the main shaped by the circumstances
in which they were placed and the laws by which they were
governed. When these changed they changed, and notwith-
standing their faults and profligacies they were at all times
vital and responsive. Physical standards of manhood
inured them to the hardships of the coalpit and the forge.
The wake and the fair were the occasions for their dissipa-
tion, affording them relief after exhausting labors which
humiliated the body and apparently canceled the last traces
of humanity in the soul. Employers, enriched by their
exertions, demanded from them an unremitting toil which
benumbed their intellectual life and flung them back into
paganism. Anything which could uplift them was either
forgotten or scouted ; when released from work they were
left at the mercy of their animal instincts, the reckless indul-
gence of which, as their only means of recreation, made them
thenceforth impatient of moral restraint. The heartlessness
and avarice of the masters and the crushing slavery of the
workers were a monstrous contradiction of New Testament
teaching in a nominally Christian land. The larger part of
the inhabitants of the mining and manufacturing districts
were without hope, because they were without God.^ The
few lived at the expense of the many. Pay day was preceded
by semi-starvation and followed by a saturnalia. The agents
and managers of the pits and factories were not infrequently
owners or lessees of adjoining taverns where they practically
confiscated the hard-earned pittance of the workmen, who
must perforce spend it there or suffer for their abstinence.
Dog-fighting, cock-fighting, pigeon-homing, and bouts of
fisticuffs were interspersed with horse-racing and bull-baiting.
Almost any place that could muster a sufficiently profitable
crowd to witness the latter spectacle provided accommoda-
tion for it, and one of the squares of the city of Birmingham
* Notwithstanding the increase in population of manufacturing centers,
few new parishes had been created. The State Church was so inflexible
that it was difficult to adapt it to these growing needs.
JOHN WESLEY 255
still retains the name of the Bull Ring. The Weekly Journal
for June 9, 1716, advertised that a bear-baiting to the death,
with bull-baiting in addition, would begin at 3 o'clock in
the afternoon, as the sport promised to be lengthy; a wild
bull was also to be released with fireworks all over its body.
Nameless torturings and mutilations were necessary in order
to attract the largest gatherings. Sometimes, to the huge
relish of on-lookers, a cat was tied to the bull's tail ; and the
delight of the mob knew no bounds when an unfortunate
wight was tossed by the frantic beast.
A well known resort of those who matched game cocks
armed with steel spurs, was found in Bird Cage Walk, under
the shadow of Westminster Abbey. It was here that
Hogarth sketched the outline for his picture "The Cockpit,"
painted in 1759, although he might have obtained material
anywhere, since cock-pits were common, even at the public
schools, and patronized by all classes. Some mains lasted
three days, and not less than two or three hundred birds
were killed. The church bells had been known to ring
a merry peal when town or county secured the coveted
prize. The names of famous pugilists were household
words : their portraits were found in the gun-rooms of the
wealthy, the students' haunts at the Universities, and on
the walls of the coaching hostelries and taverns. Matches
were arranged by the nobility and gentry, who presented
belts bestudded with gold to the successful combatants.
Even royalty did not disdain the prize ring when some first-
rate exponent of "the manly art of self defense" occupied
the arena, and it is on record that the House of Commons
adjourned on February 27, 1770, to attend a contest at Car-
lisle House in Soho. The gilded youth of Piccadilly and Pall
Mall aspired to fistic honors, and lent their countenance to
any likely lad for the companionship. Men, and sometimes
women, delirious with drink and deviltry, circled around the
half-naked pugilists, urging them forward and betting
excitedly on the outcome. Comment on such despotisms
256 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of fleshly lust is unnecessary: sufiiee it to say that they
further enchained the hapless masses which the rise of indus-
trialism in towns and cities had already brought under its
dominion. The people, who delved into every other abyss
before they reached that of the grave, literally perished for
lack of knowledge.
Yet any survey of eighteenth century England from the
ethical standpoint should not fail to emphasize the good
qualities which lay dormant beneath such riot and confu-
sion. Because some annalists have neglected to do this,
their accounts, while true as to facts, are misleading in im-
port. He would be an unscientific hydrographer who should
describe the ocean in nothing more than terms of its surface
calms, its currents, its storms, and tempests. Beneath these
lie silent depths, the reservoirs of its life and power, in which
are contained the remnants of past ages and all those forms
of recurring sanitation and renewed existence that help to
preserve the habitable globe. The illustration applies to
humanity in any period, and especially in such an age as
Wesley's, which, apparently so impotent, in reality had a
decided capacity for regeneration. There has always been
virtue enough in the world when there has been sufficient
religious earnestness to call it forth, and always religious
earnestness enough when there were strong convictions to
arouse it. Individual and social conduct may be reprobate
when acting under the governance of swiftly succeeding
passions of the baser sort, but it still has to reckon with
those fundamental laws of soul and conscience and with
those necessities of character upon which the making of
Christian civilization depends. The impressionist can find
abundant social phenomena in the days of the Georges to
justify pessimistic conclusions, but he should correct his
observations by extending them to the eras that went be-
fore and came after. The very wickedness of the period
furnished opportunities for the evangelist and the reformer.
Faith had the last word, and during the dreary interval
JOHN WESLEY 257
the few who held fast the beginning of their confidence
without wavering had the consolation that
"Power is with us in the night
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the hght alone."
Past and future had large interests at stake in the eighteenth
century : and where such interests are found their rights
and claims must eventually be asserted. More powerful
than all else was the unchanging truth that one Image is
indelibly engraven on the mind of Christendom : the Christ
who reveals the Father in all times and to all His children
was still present with His scattered flock. Those who felt
the inward strivings of divine monition still heard His voice
and followed Him. Wherever any resemblance to the great
Original was perceptible in ideals of charity and deeds of
sacrifice, there the most lawless were subdued and paid a
becoming reverence. The Spirit of the Eternal brooded
then, as He ever does, over the social abyss, to dispel its
apathy and illuminate its gloom. Merchants, miners, and
artisans were mysteriously prepared by His ofiices to receive
the message and mission of Whitefield and Wesley. After
the long dearth of nearly a hundred years their preaching
was as grateful to these hearers as the return of spring.
Amidst every facility that could be given to treacherous
and ignoble traits, and to leaders in State or Church who
seldom manifested any moral apprehension or spiritual
desire, the revival of religion was born from above, to
strengthen the sinews and the heart of England. It re-
kindled, as already observed, her consciousness of God, and
prevented her from political and social revolution. The
first result was a primal and an unmixed blessing, the
second was by no means without qualifications, — although,
in view of the enormities of the French uprising, which yet
rendered signal service in shattering the corrupt traditions
of the century and in punishing its luxury, frivolity, and
258 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
oppression, it was perhaps salutary for Europe that England
should have maintained her ancient constitutional polity.
When in the rush of these fearful events the first Napoleon
climbed to power, and, to quote Lord Rosebery, "his
genius had enlarged indefinitely the scope of human con-
ception and possibility," it was the resilient strength of
the United Kingdom which clashed with his boundless
ambition. Aided by the reaction of his stupendous gifts,
she defeated the final efforts of the conqueror who had
carried the faculties of war and administration to their far-
thest point and held a continent in awe. Few severer tests
could be imposed on any people than those which Britons
then met and satisfied. The outcome goes beyond the period
with which we are directly concerned, but its causes belong
there. Certainly the statesmanship of Pitt and Burke,
Clive's conquest of India, the campaigns of Moore and
Wellington, and the naval victories of Hood and Nelson,
regained in the East the prestige which had been lost in the
West, and Great Britain never stood so high in the councils
of the world as after Waterloo. That the Evangelical Re-
vival was one of the chief factors in evoking and conserving
the solidarity and discipline of the forces thus engaged can-
not be seriously gainsaid; and, although domestic reforms
were too long postponed, eventually they could not be re-
strained. The same trustworthy reserves of character which
had furnished Wesleyanism with its constituencies, defended
the Homeland from invasion, and extended the boundaries
of the Empire, also helped to secure the social advantages
which have never ceased to accrue to English democracy.
CHAPTER VII
CONFLICT AND VICTORY
259
Let not that image fade,
Ever, O God ! from out the minds of men,
Of him, Thy messenger and stainless priest,
In a brute, sodden, and unfaithful time,
Early and late, o'er land and sea, on-driven ;
In youth, in eager manhood, age extreme —
Driven on forever, back and forth the world,
By that divine, omnipotent desire.
RiCHABD Watson Gilder : Ode to Wesley.
260
CHAPTER YLl
CONFLICT AXD VICTORY
Political development of England in the eighteenth century — Liter-
ature of the period — Increasing prosperity of the countrj' — English
religious thought rationalistic in tone — Adherence to Locke — Con-
flict between o^thodox^• and deism — Loss of spirituality in the Church
caused by undue insistence on rationalizing — Clergy of the Estab-
lishment not entirely to blame — Their poverty — Decadence of Dis-
sent — Spiritual awakenings in England and Scotland prior to Wesley
— Wesley's \dsit to Herrnhut — Christian Da\'id — Warburton and
Wesley — George ^^^litefield — His field preaching — Wesley joins
Wliitefield — John Nelson's description of Wesley's labors — Emotional
outbursts consequent on Wesley's preaching — Clerical opponents —
Bishops Gibson, Lavington, and Warburton — Wesley's relation to
the Establishment — Popular outbreaks against the Methodists.
The British dominions expanded rapidly during Wesley's
lifetime, their gro-^-th being due to the colonizing and com-
mercial activities of Englishmen and also to their numerous
conflicts Ts-ith France. Sixty-four of the one-hundred and
twenty-six years between the reigns of James II and George
III were spent in a series of wars, the longest of which
lasted twelve and the shortest seven years, their general
result being that Britain became the mother of free common-
wealths in the West and at the Antipodes, whose inhabitants
shared with her a common language and law. The revolt
of the American Colonists in 1776 showed that communi-
ties derived from the parental stock could not be held to
their allegiance when unwise legislation offended their love
of freedom, and least of all by the threat and emploj-ment
261
262 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of physical force. The outcome ensured the ehmination
from British policy of those structural defects that had re-
sulted in the dissolution of previous empires, consisting of
alien nationalities mechanically compressed into a superficial
unity. The triumph of Washington and his fellow-patriots
was an impressive lesson in the rights of self-government
which English statesmen have not forgotten, and it was not
less instructive for the founders of the Republic. The world
had never known what they proposed to establish, an
enlightened and popular authority intended to operate on
a continental scale. Hitherto republican institutions had
existed only in cities and compact provinces such as the
Italian municipalities and the Swiss Confederacy; even
ancient Rome failed in her efforts to realize the mean be-
tween anarchy and despotism. Hence, from the beginning
the American experiment was viewed with disfavor by
European rulers whose interests were imperiled by its grow-
ing success, and with anxiety by publicists who felt a
sincere distrust of democracy. That it succeeded is a
tribute to the respect for precedent and for law which
animated its leaders.
While Britons arose every morning to hear of new victo-
ries on land or sea, they took pains to push the business
ventures that provided funds for the costly military proj-
ects of the government, and left a handsome surplus to
their capital account. Financial interests were carefully
fostered by Sir Robert Walpole, who was brought to the
front rank of politics in 1721 by the panic that followed the
collapse of the South Sea Bubble and involved several
ministers of State. He had warned the country against the
scheme, and it was to him that the English people looked for
guidance and recovery when disaster overtook them. Wal-
pole sprang from the country gentry whose vices he shared
without their stupidities. He owed his long continuance in
office to a variety of causes, but chiefly to his predominance
as a man of affairs when men of affairs were few in the House
JOHN WESLEY 263
of Commons. More trustworthy than the gifted but treach-
erous St. John ^ whom he succeeded, Walpole saw what
even Stanhope had failed to see : that the masses were
not prepared to participate in affairs of government, which,
as yet, must be reserved for the upper classes. His dil-
atory tactics and pacific temperament staved off the
wars for which the nation clamored, while he devoted his
wise and useful talents to its material prosperity. In no
sense a scholar, a courtier, or a wit, Walpole was never-
theless a statesman of firm temper and imfailing good
humor; sane, self-contained, and shrewd in practical con-
cerns. These gifts enabled him to impose his will on the
Cabinet, and for twenty years he was the virtual head of the
State, the first of a series of Prime Ministers who have
gradually limited the prerogatives of the Crown and estab-
lished the party system which obtains in England. Somers
and Montague, Harley and Bolingbroke, were foremost
members of administrations which had no premier : Walpole,
on the other hand, inaugurated the slow and silent change
by which the English constitution was transformed from an
hereditary monarchy with a parliamentary regulative agency
into a parliamentary government with an hereditary regu-
lative agency. He was accused of wholesale bribery and
corruption, but a careful scrutiny of his conduct does
not altogether sustain the charges nor justify the reproach
that has blackened his reputation. His successor, Henry
Pelham, employed methods which Walpole disdained to use,
and Pelham's brother, the Duke of Newcastle, who suc-
ceeded him, had lower standards of public honesty than
either of his immediate predecessors. The wars with France
virtually ended Newcastle's ministry, and then emerged the
elder Pitt, Lord Chatham, whose lofty appeal to the patriot-
ism of his countrymen enthralled England and marked
the beginning of a new era in her affairs. With too much
dignity of character to care for the emoluments of office,
' Elevated to the peerage in 1712 as Viscount Bolingbroke.
264 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Pitt governed by the force of his tremendous personality
and his splendid example rather than by political sagacity.
His commanding countenance and bearing indicated the
born ruler of men. He was filled with ideals and hopes
which, though they could not always be realized, stamped
him as something apart from the courtiers and placemen
by whom he was surrounded. His chronic and abysmal
melancholy deepened this impression on those who knew
him, and the tragic scene of his last protest against the
policy of George the Third convinced the nation that its
true greatness had been safest in the keeping of the dying
hero who, "wounded sore, 'sank foiled,' but fighting ever-
more." The career of his son, "the heaven-born minister
of State," was made famous by his resistance of Napoleon
I and his life-long duel with his great adversary, Charles
James Fox. Above all other statesmen of the period in
his eloquent and profound exposition of constitutional ques-
tions stood Edmund Burke, the illustrious orator whose
hatred of the excesses of the French Revolution prompted
those "apocalyptic ravings" which, while they deflected
his genius from its true objects, added to his renown.^
The endless intrigues and controversies of the century
were not conducive to the growth of domestic reform, yet
they were interpenetrated with larger, better public aspira-
tions for which the efforts of the more enlightened Whigs and
Radical partisans were chiefly responsible. But aristocratic
interests were then very powerful : borough-mongering was
everywhere accepted, ecclesiastical monopolies were abun-
dant, and equal and speedy justice in ordinary matters was
' In his Lectures on Literature, Schlegel says : "If we are to praise a man
in proportion to his usefulness, I am persuaded that no task can be more
difficult than that of doing justice to Burke. This man has been to his own
country and to all Europe — in a very particular manner to Germany — a
new light of political wisdom and experience. He corrected his age when it
was at the height of its revolutionary frenzy ; and without maintaining any
system of philosophy, he seems to have seen farther into the true nature of
society and to have more clearly comprehended the effect of religion in con-
necting individual security with national welfare, than any philosopher or
any system of philosophy of any preceding age."
JOHN WESLEY 265
difficult to obtain. The nation's greatest need, however,
was not a social readjustment, nor an educational program,
so much as a spiritual regeneration. Many perceived and
desired this, but the means they employed were wholly
inadequate. They had forgotten that man is an emotional
being, and appealed solely to his reason, treating any display
of feeling as folly, and branding it with the opprobrious name
of enthusiasm, a term which moved into an entirely new
atmosphere after the Evangelical Revival, passing from
contempt to honor. The preaching of Whitefield and the
Wesleys, which was mainly directed to the individual heart
and conscience, supplied their clamant necessities and gave
to numberless Englishmen a vigorous social coherence
through a common religious experience. Wesley's contribu-
tion was a powerful organization which, when once es-
tablished, did not always follow the course of its author,
but adapted itself to the exigencies of unforeseen circum-
stances.
Movements in literature corresponded with those of
ethics and religion. They sprang into being from a soil
not upturned by any violent convulsion, but in which an
irrepressible vitality had been secretly at work. From the
age of Milton to that of Wesley, Puritanism had been ban-
ished from the superficial life of the world. "Yet, Bunyan
had dreamt his dream, and visualized forever his imaginings ;
Addison had reconciled literature with the earnest purposes
of human existence; Defoe had grasped the concrete sub-
stance of things and breathed truth into fiction." ^ When
deism entered the field it infected with its cold and un-
sympathetic outlook the school of which Alexander Pope
was the acknowledged master. The new birth of Puritan-
ism and the resurrection of emotion reacted against this,
and concurred in giving rise to the romanticism of Burns
and Scott. They demonstrated that the spirit of man
demanded emancipation from a one-sided intellectualism,
1 "The Cambridge History of English Literature" ; Vol. X, pp. 1-2.
266 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
•
and Wordsworth afterwards enforced the demand by
prompting that return to nature of which Rousseau's
writings were so poor an expression. These underlying
principles are merely mentioned here, but they should be
taken into serious account in any attempt to appraise and
interpret the literary output of the century, which began
with Pope, but was really fathered by Dryden.
The work of the high priest of pseudo-classicism, thor-
oughly imbued as it was with the spirit of his art, furnished
current speech with many of its quotable phrases. The
"Rape of the Lock" has been termed the most brilliant
occasional poem in the language, and as a rule Pope's verse
reached the height of polished perfection. When its faultless
monotony began to weary the ear of a more earnest genera-
tion, Robert Burns appeared, and heralded another epoch for
humanity in his spontaneous song. He was so completely
the greatest of Scottish poets that no other comes into the
reckoning. Sir Walter Scott's genius was more eclectic, but
in the essential elements and spirit of the ballad Burns is still
unsurpassed. He used the narrow cranny of a rustic dialect
to pour out a lyric so unaffected, so compassionate, so clear,
and so appropriate, that it rejuvenated his nation. Be-
ginning as the bard of his shire, he became the poet of
Scotland, and ended as the singer of love, nature, patriot-
ism, friendship, and courage for the English-speaking race.
Thomas Gray and William Collins strove to revive the
designs of Greece, both in the fullness and maturity of their
style: Gray's "Elegy" remains, as Lord Morley has said,
"an eternal delight and solace for the hearts of wearied
men," and had Collins lived, he might have rivaled Keats.
Oliver Goldsmith vocalized the new feeling for man and
nature in his "Traveller" (1764) and the "Deserted Village"
(1770). The merits of the humble and obscure, the charms
of pastoral environment and the blessings of the religious
life were expressed in the works of Cowper, which mark the
second phase of poetry in the eighteenth century. In 1782,
JOHN WESLEY 267
when past his fiftieth year, he gave forth from a life of sad
seclusion his first volume, and three years later "The Task
and Other Poems" was published. The strong sense, good
morals, domestic piety, and love of rural scenery expressed
in them revealed possibilities in poetry which many who
worshiped Pope had not suspected.
In other branches of literature influential writers some-
times forgot that works to be enduring must be elevated
above contemporary standards and interests. The unscru-
pulous partisan whose reputation was based upon contro-
versial skill paid little regard to the literary conscience, his
principal aim being the proving of his case wholly right and
that of his antagonist wholly wrong. Philosophers who hesi-
tated because they held more comprehensive and balanced
views were far less acceptable to the popular taste than es-
sayists and pamphleteers who settled vexatious questions
with dogmatic assurance, and carried their opinions on re-
ligion, ethics, or politics to the last extreme. The century
was impatient of the twilight zone in these discussions; it
welcomed the man who was entirely positive, clear, and
unhampered by misgivings. Jacobites and Hanoverians,
Whigs and Tories, Romans and Protestants, Churchmen
and Dissenters, Jurors and Non-Jurors, Skeptics and Sec-
taries stoutly contended for their respective orthodoxies,
and denounced the rest with an intolerance ignorant of
compromise. When Dean Swift's pen was enlisted in
support of Harley and Bolingbroke, he at once turned
upon his former friends Addison and Steele and abused them
with unseemly violence, looking upon his rivals, not as
opponents to be defeated, but as enemies to be driven out
of public life. His amazing genius found an opening for
its display in his pamphlet on "The Conduct of the Allies,"
which rendered one of England's most popular wars so odious
that the people loudly demanded peace on almost any
terms. For inventiveness, ridicule, scorn, and hate, no
satires have surpassed "Gulliver's Travels" and few if any
268 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
political authors have wielded these weapons so effectively.
In England, Swift turned the current of feeling against the
Whigs, and Ireland's capital still reveres his memory.
But although some traits of his singular character were
praiseworthy, physical disease and moral deformity united
to vitiate his imagination, and he acquired that taste for
loathsome ideas which defiled the workings of his powerful
but gloomy mind. The most dreaded writer of his age,
his vindictive passions prevented him from attaining personal
success ; he began by attacking partisans, he ended with a
fearful and depraved assault upon the human race, "letting
irony blacken into savage and impious misanthropy," —
and the darkness which finally enveloped him was fore-
shadowed in his later books.
Of fiction it must suffice to say that Richardson, Smollett,
Fielding, and Sterne continued the tradition so delightfully
begun by Defoe, and mirrored in a large and varied way the
life of their times. The periodical essay was the creation
of Steele and Addison: "I have brought," said the latter,
"philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges,
to dwell in clubs and assemblies." The claim was genuine,
and the humanity, refinement, humor, and instruction of
the Taller and the Spectator were widely appreciated,
although they had little effect upon the corruption and de-
pravity of the period. The historians Hume and Robert-
son were largely influenced by Montesquieu and Voltaire.
Notwithstanding that Hume's History was written from a
prejudiced standpoint, its philosophic tone and literary qual-
ity partly reconcile the reader to its failings as a trustworthy
account. His "Treatise on Human Nature" proved to be
the original impulse of the Scottish philosophy, and his
"Political Discourses," published in 1752, announced the
economic principles afterwards formulated into an elabo-
rate system by Adam Smith in his "Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." Robert-
son's "History of Charles V," while less distinguished for
JOHN WESLEY 269
style than Hume's work, was more careful as to facts. Ex-
tended comment on Gibbon's " Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" is superfluous: the book was suggested to him in
1764 as he wandered among the ruins of the Eternal City ;
since 1787 it has been one of the few works that all educated
men and women have felt obliged to read, and " still remains
unique for its supreme and almost epic power of moulding
into a lucid array a bewildering multitude of details." Bos-
well's life of Dr. Johnson, which is perhaps the best biography
in the language, portrays with exactitude and life-like detail
the most impressive literary character of the century. John-
son's moral dignity and independence of spirit, so intrepidly
shown in his fight against poverty and patronage, was
a patch of blue in leaden skies, and gave him a monarchical
influence over his contemporaries. Always true to himself,
he was more afraid of his conscience than of the world's
judgment. R. H. Hutton has justly said, "He towers above
our generation because he had the courage to be what so
few of us are — proudly independent of the opinion in the
midst of which he lived." From the society by which he
was surrounded, a society false to God and false to man, the
observer turns with relief to this paladin of letters, with the
tea-slopped vest, fuzzy wig, and shabby coat, who walked
with elephantine motions down Fleet Street to his lodging
or favorite tavern, muttering to himself and hitting the way-
side posts with his cudgel. His unswerving loyalty to duty,
which presented itself to him in the form of certain definite
principles, was based, not only upon the general practice of
the best of mankind, but also upon the Divine Law as laid
down in Scripture. His "Lives of the Poets" and the "Dic-
tionary" attest his critical gifts and his industry as a scholar.
His table talk, as recorded by the devoted Boswell, covered
a host of convictions, prejudices, axioms, and criticisms on
men and events, alike expressed in vigorous and un-
mistakable speech. It has become an inseparable part of
literature, and is in itself a memorial of his tremendous and
270 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
virtuous personality. An evening spent with Johnson and
his chosen friends was an introduction to the inner circle
of the most gifted and creative men of the English-speaking
world : even Wesley succumbed to the attractions of the
Literary Club, and paused in his endless labors that he
might enjoy a chat with the oracle of the "Cheshire Cheese."
The period may be likened to a low-lying and arid plain
from which ever and anon arose towering mountain peaks.
Swift, Gibbon, Chatham, Burke, Johnson, and Wesley were
great in the largest sense of that overworked term, and be-
low their height was no dearth of first-class talent. Yet the
gracious and elevating elements which make Christian society
and conversation were lacking, and one has but to compare
such a cleric as Swift with the Founder of Methodism to
perceive the gulf which separated them. Wesley's life
spanned the century ; and he was more familiar with the
England of his time than any other man in it. Born in
the reign of Queen Anne and dying in that of George
III, he saw in his old age, and regretted, the separation
of the American colonies from the historical development
of English-speaking men ; and heard the news that the
Parisians had guillotined Louis XVL The first entry made
in his Journal was dated October 14, 1735, the last, October
24, 1790; during the interval his country's religious and
social phenomena were perhaps as fully recorded there as
in any contemporary volume. Written large in its pages is
the evidence of the moral and spiritual obtuseness of the
people and the apathy of the educated and clerical
classes; dead weights of stupidity and indifference with
which he had to deal. No explanation of the Evangelical
Revival can be complete unless these adverse conditions
are taken into account ; no just estimate of the greatness of
Wesley is possible without an appreciation of the obstacles
he surmounted.
The otherwise disastrous days of the Stuarts had wit-
nessed a steadily increasing commercial prosperity, which,
JOHN WESLEY 271
although interrupted by the French Wars, speedily revived
after the peace of Utrecht in 1713. The value of exports
reached their lowest point in 1705, when it fell to about
twenty-six million dollars; ten years later it was nearly
forty millions. In the course of the eighteenth century ex-
tensive changes took place in agriculture, which was for
a long time to come the leading industry. Until the reign
of the second George, methods of tilling the soil were ex-
tremely primitive, more than half the cultivated land
being divided and worked on the old open-field system.
The credit for effecting an improvement was due to
Jethro Hill and to George the First's Secretary of State,
Lord Townshend, who also introduced the turnip root into
England, thereby earning for himself the nickname of
"Turnip Townshend." The increased productiveness of
the soil, which was at least fourfold that of Wycliffe's age,
aided the growth of population and manufactures. Sta-
tistics are scanty and faulty, but it is generally assumed that
the population of England at the close of Elizabeth's reign
did not exceed two and a half millions. By the time of
James II, Macaulay estimated that it had reached five or five
and a half millions. In the eighteenth century there was a
large increase, and Professor Thorold Rogers concludes that
in 1772 England contained about eight million inhabitants.^
The people enriched the waste land and drained the marshes.
The commons were enclosed and cultivated in order to supply
the towns with foodstuffs. In this development, however, the
yeomanry were sacrificed ; men of slender means could not
afford to purchase their holdings at the enormously advanced
prices, and for the same reason small owners were induced
to sell. These classes either moved into the towns and
cities, or became tenants and laborers on proprietary estates.
The group of intellectuals, with its salons, its life of cultured
ease, of epigram, and sententious wisdom, was apparently
as unaware of these changes as were the coteries of fashion
* "Six Centuries of Work and Wages" ; p. 477.
272 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and of politics. At the very moment when England boasted
that she had won half the world and controlled the other
half, the once contented workers of the countryside were
being robbed of their farmsteads, their ancient rights,
their economic freedom, and reduced to the most forlorn
condition of all British toilers.
Manufacturing enterprises were also revolutionized during
this period. Cotton was scarcely known in England before
the eighteenth century, and when it appeared legislation
was uselessly enacted to prevent its competition with the
time- honored trade in woolen goods. But the most marked
improvement resulted from the invention of machinery.
Newcomen applied steam power to manufactures in 1712,
and James Watt constructed his first steam engine in
1765. Kay's flying shuttle, Hargreaves' spinning jenny,
Arkwright's spinning frame, Compton's mule-jenny. Cart-
wright's power loom, and similar inventions gave Britain
her preeminence in textile fabrics. The basic industries,
however, were coal mining and iron smelting, in which, until
the latter half of the nineteenth century, Great Britain en-
joyed practically a monopoly.
These important operations, with others which naturally
resulted from them, changed the face of the country. Some
neighborhoods lost their wild, shaggy appearance, and be-
gan to assume the pastoral aspects which are their present
charm. Others were disfigured by unsightly banks of shale
and refuse from the mines, while the smoking chimneys
of factories and mills polluted the atmosphere. Life in
such localities was neither so wholesome nor so happy as
when it had been spent on the heath and the upland. Cities
and trade grew at the expense of flesh and blood ; em-
ployers were heedless of the physical and moral well-being
of their workmen. At the worst the unsanitary cottages of
rustic hamlets were surrounded by fields and forests where
the peasants could breathe pure air ; now they were huddled
together without regard for health and decency. The ugly
JOHN WESLEY 273
stories of vice and crime already touched upon were sequences
of these abuses. As soon as it was discovered that child
labor was profitable, the greedy clutch of capital seized the
little ones whom parents or guardians surrendered at a ten-
der age to prolonged hours of dreary and dangerous toil.
Enervated hordes, ill-fed, ill-clothed, without education or
religion, swarmed in municipalities which supplanted the
cathedral towns in commercial importance. Edinburgh,
Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Liverpool,
Manchester, and Birmingham became the centers of the
nation, and diverted the volume of trade to the northern
provinces.
The dense ignorance then prevalent contributed to the
evils attendant upon industrialism and the congestion of
manufacturing towns. It also prompted one of the educa-
tional movements that stand to the credit of Anglicanism.
In 1699 Doctor Bray founded the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, which in turn established numer-
ous schools, especially in the larger cities. Thirty years
later Griffith Jones organized in Wales a staff of school-
masters who traveled throughout the Principality and taught
adults to read the Bible, In 1775 the Kingdom could muster
only 1193 schools with 26,920 pupils. The emergency was
so grave that in 1782, Robert Raikes established his first
Sunday School at Gloucester. The idea did not originate
with Raikes: Wesley held Sunday classes for children
in Savannah during 1737 ; Theophilus Lindsey at Catterick
in Yorkshire in 1769; Hannah Ball at High Wycombe in
the same year; and Jenkin Morgan near Llandiloes in 1770.
These schools combined secular with sacred instruction well
on into the next century. Such provisions were of course
inadequate ; there was no national educational policy until
many years afterwards, and Wesley's reiterated insistence
upon knowledge as well as piety was due to the fact that
in addition to folly and vice he was confronted at every
turn by illiteracy and superstition.
274 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
n
The predominant feature of English religious thought in
the eighteenth century was its universal acceptance of rea-
son as the criterion of truth. It might be strenuously con-
tended by opposing schools that a given doctrine or miracle
was or was not agreeable to reason, but that the issue was
to be decided by reason was never questioned by either
party to the dispute. The words of Bishop Gibson in his
second Pastoral Letter, 1730, indicate the position occupied
in common by all theologians of the period : " It is univer-
sally acknowledged that revelation itself is to stand or fall
by the test of reason." To the same effect wrote Tillotson,
Butler, Rogers, Foster, Warburton, and other divines.
They were agreed upon and taught the doctrines of
Locke, the father of English Rationalism, that "Reason
is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light,
and fountain of all Knowledge, communicates to mankind
that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of
their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason en-
larged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God
immediately, which reason vouches the truth of by the testi-
mony and proof it gives that they come from God. So that
he that takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts
out the light of both ; and does much the same as if he
would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to
receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope." ^
This theory, which Dr. Loofs calls " rational supra-natural-
ism," deduced religious belief from an intellectual process
— just the reverse of its actual history. Primarily all
dynamic religious belief issues out of religious experi-
ence, and the necessity of coordinating that experience with
other contents of one's mental world arises later. In
other words, religious experience is the raw material of vital
* "Essay" ; Book IV, ch. 19, sec. 4.
JOHN WESLEY 275
theology : " men spake from God being moved by the Holy
Ghost."
The praiseworthy purpose which inspired the attempt
of moralists and thinkers to rationalize religion was two-
fold. First, they sought to check the growing immorality
by preserving in dialectical form the principles of ethical
and religious conduct. The problem being one of moral
depravity rather than of theological heresy, they labored
less in the interests of dogma than in those of virtue. Hence
their theme was a prudential ethic, cogently enforced by
Scriptural warrants of final rewards and punishments. While
this rationalized morality of consequences held the field,
dogmatic theology died out, except with a few obscure writers,
and it was not long before Christianity, as Mark Pattison ob-
serves, appeared made for nothing else but to be proved.
Reason, first heralded as the basis of faith, gradually became
its substitute. The mind was too busy examining and testing
the evidences of Christianity to appropriate its life and power.
The only quality in Scripture dwelt upon was its credibil-
ity. Dr. Johnson denounced the process as "Old Bailey
theology," in which "the apostles were being tried once a
week for the capital crime of forgery." It would not be
just, however, to accept as true this undiscriminating criti-
cism, for the religious thought of the rationalizing age had
varying degrees of merit and fell within two distinct periods.
In the earlier, the endeavor was to demonstrate the com-
patibility of Biblical revelation with reason; in the later,
which dates from about 1750 onwards and is mainly repre-
sented by the schools of Paley and Whately, attention was
confined to the genuineness and authenticity of the Scrip-
tures. Neither, of course, was religious instruction in the
real meaning of the term, but the former did in a measure
concern itself with vital matters of revelation, and by so
much it was superior to the later evidential period, which
was incessantly grinding out artificial proofs that proved
nothing except the unreality of the whole procedure.
276 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
A second cause for the rationalizing process was attributable
to its conflict with the deists, who, casting aside the fetters of
prescriptive rights, positive codes, and scholastic systems,
set themselves to follow exclusively the light of nature.
Thomas Hobbes, more radical than Sir Francis Bacon,
prematurely conceived a universal construction of knowledge,
which would include society and man within its verifiable
explanations. His daring inquiries were remarkable for
what they suggested rather than for what they accom-
plished, and their influence can be traced in many
directions. Midway between Bacon and Locke, and in
contact with each only at a single point, Hobbes gave a
decided impulse to the ethical speculation which has since
been carried on by his countrymen, and his skepticism evoked
those intellectual tendencies which weakened authority and
established the supremacy of reason.
The inductive method, as taught by Bacon, and adopted
by the Royal Society, the senior association for scientific
research in the kingdom, gained ascendency over the ablest
minds among the clergy. The six folios of Stillingfleet, who
died Bishop of Worcester in 1699, mark the transition from
the contention with Rome to the declaration of war against
Locke. The deistic controversy raged during the first four
decades of the century, and then gradually subsided. By
the time of Bolingbroke's death in 1751 interest in the ques-
tion was practically at an end. His executor, Mallet, pub-
lished his works three years later, but there was very
little demand for them. According to Boswell, Johnson
voiced the sentiments of well-principled men when he
said concerning Bolingbroke, "Sir, he was a scoundrel, and
a coward ; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against
religion and morality ; a coward, because he had not
resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a
beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death."
The controversy was by no means the mere empty sound
and folly of words which some have supposed ; on the con-
JOHN WESLEY 277
trary, the objections which occasioned it were acutely
felt by many who, though not always equal to sustained
thinking, were determined not to be imposed upon by un-
substantiated dogma, whatever name it might assume.
As the dispute developed, the sufficiency of natural religion
became its pivotal issue. The deists contended that the
inherent law of right and duty was sufficient, and so abso-
lutely perfect that God Himself could add nothing to it.
On the other hand, Anglican doctors maintained that nat-
ural religion required to be supplemented by a supernat-
ural revelation, and that neither excluded or was contrary
to the other; indeed, both were essential, the former
as the foundation, the latter as the superstructure, of the
Temple of Truth. Accordingly, with all the ingenuity and
erudition at their disposal, they strove to demonstrate the
mutual harmony of natural and revealed religion. Chris-
tianity was placed on a philosophical basis, and its claims
reconciled, ostensibly at any rate, with those affirmations
of the rational consciousness that were unanimously ac-
cepted. Their theology and philosophy were blended
in an effort of the intellect to become liberalized, com-
prehensive, even latitudinarian. They wrought in the
belief that their doctrines could be demonstrated as being
not only products of revelation, but also a body of necessary
truths, and apparently they were unaware that such gener-
alizations do not seriously affect the majority, who yield to
sentiment rather than to reason.
The willingness of the English theologians to listen to the
case for deism, and to meet it with the legitimate weap-
ons of argument, stands in favorable contrast to the ob-
scurantist attitude of Bossuet and his fellow ecclesiastics
of the French Church, who were implacable against even the
shadow of doubt, and strenuously asserted the authority of
the Church, as expressed by Councils and Popes in their
definitive agreement, in matters of faith and doctrine. The
questions which were answered in England received no
278 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
sufficient reply in France, where attempts made to sup-
press unbelief served to propagate it, thus dignifying those
heterodoxies which culminated in the works of the En-
cyclopedists. This resort to force instead of argument in
dealing with opponents was typical of the methods of the
Galilean Church in that age, and resulted in the calamities
which have since befallen her.
The Anglican orthodox party had every advantage that
talent, learning, and prestige could bestow, while the deists,
although they included Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the
originator of the sect, Matthew Tindal, William Wollaston,
John Toland, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Bolingbroke,
Anthony Collins, Thomas Chubb, and Henry Dodwell,
presented a marked disparity of resources. Sir Leslie
Stephen refers to their volumes as "shabby and shrivelled
little octavos, generally anonymous, such as lurk in the
corners of dusty shelves, and seem to be the predestined prey
of moths." Against them were arrayed Bentley, the fore-
most critic of the period ; Locke, its greatest philosopher ;
Berkeley and Clarke, keenest of disputants; Waterland, a
scholar of wide range ; and Butler, distinguished far above the
rest by a largeness of outlook and a moral considerateness
diffused over all his work — a series of formidable apologists
bent on the destruction of deism. For them fought others,
who stood without the Establishment, such as Leslie and
Law among Non-Jurors, and Lardner, Foster, and Doddridge
among Dissenters. Tl\gy had little difficulty in finding the
vulnerable points of their adversaries, for whom the ordi-
nary feeling was "a combination of the odium theologicum
with the contempt of the finished scholar for the mere dab-
bler in letters. . . . They are but a ragged regiment, whose
whole ammunition of learning was a trifle when compared
with the abundant stores of a single light of orthodoxy;
whilst in speculative ability most of them were children by
the side of their ablest antagonists. Swift's sweeping asser-
tion, that their literary power would hardly have attracted
JOHN WESLEY 279
attention if employed upon any other topic, seems to be
generally justified." ^
Yet such excellence is sometimes its own deterrent, and
so it proved in this instance. The people at large were
untouched by the discussion; the Church suffered because
her altar fires burnt low; placid insistence upon the exter-
nals of faith rather than upon its inward reality worked havoc
among the clergy, whose activities were directed toward
unprofitable and lifeless discourses which expounded a creed
divested of all resemblance to New Testament Christianity,
except for a tacit acknowledgment of the veracity of the
Gospel narratives and a belief in the dogma of the Trinity.
The clarity and atmosphere of ascertained conviction were
lacking in the sermons they preached, conscious that few
believed them, scarcely believing what they said themselves.
The vapid rhetoric of Blair was deemed the ideal of homiletic
art even by those who posed as arbiters of literary taste
and doctrinal correctness. As the dispute became more
trivial and meaningless, the ministry suffered a further
decline in zeal, influence, and integrity. It was one task,
assuredly not unimportant, to cope with the deists' pro-
test against tradition and with their misrepresentations
of history; it was another, and not so easy a task, to
withstand their criticisms of Chillingworth's position that
"the Bible only is the religion of Protestants"; and the
most difficult of all, to quicken the religious instincts of the
nation, which had been allowed to remain dormant lest
they should prove troublesome. For if the deists failed in
their leading design to assert the sufficiency of natural reli-
gion, and their cult became a reproach even amongst those
who were in no wise defenders of orthodoxy, the Anglicans
and their allies made the unhappy mistake of occupying
only the outworks of faith, while its citadel, which is the
personal experience of the power of revealed truth, was de-
1 Sir Leslie Stephen: "English Thought in the Eighteenth Century";
Vol. I, p. 87.
280 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
serted. This poor strategy left them with little more than
the creed of their antagonists, abstract and argumentative,
and separated from all that was individual, peculiar, and
intense. The substance of theology concerns a world largely
beyond the sphere accessible to human reason, and when
they proposed to treat their inductions as equivalents for
Christianity, they overlooked the danger that in the process
the latter might be divested of its vital elements.
The outcome has been succinctly summarized as follows :
"Upon the whole, the writings of that period are service-
able to us chiefly, as showing what can, and what cannot,
be effected by common-sense thinking in theology. . . .
If the religious history of the eighteenth century proves
anything it is this : That good sense, the best good sense,
when it sets to work with the materials of human nature
and Scripture to construct a religion, will find its way to an
ethical code, irreproachable in its contents, and based on a
just estimate and wise observation of the facts of life, rati-
fied by Divine sanctions in the shape of hope and fear. . . .
This the eighteenth century did and did well. It has
enforced the truths of natural morality with a solidity of
argument and variety of proof which they have not received
since the Stoical epoch, if then. But there its ability
ended. When it came to the supernatural part of Chris-
tianity its embarrassment began. It was forced to keep it
as much in the background as possible, or to bolster it up
by lame and inadequate reasonings. The philosophy of
common sense had done its own work; it attempted more
only to show, by its failure, that some higher organon was
needed for the establishment of supernatural truth." ^
That common sense, by which is meant the sense men
have in common, has its place in theology and in religion,
few will deny. But the fatal defect of the Georgian apolo-
gists lay in their sole dependence upon it. They were also
too much of one kind, men cast in the same mold, who,
> Mark Pattison : "Essays" ; Vol. II, pp. 84-86.
JOHN WESLEY 281
while representing positive and conservative opinion, were
unanimously agreed that emotionalism was useless and
harmful. Mediocrity in all else save what they held as
practical wisdom was their habit; and their beliefs, while
having a similitude of reasonableness, were at heart narrow
and ineffectual. The inexorable march of ideas has de-
prived their thinking of its pertinency, yet its concentration
on the moral aspects of faith inadvertently prepared the
way for that reaction of the religious emotions against an
exclusively intellectual emphasis which made possible the
Evangelical Revival.
The gains of their victory over the deists were relatively
meager : after the controversy had collapsed, its negative
side came to the front, and to such effect that infidelity,
and still more indifference, was commonly avowed in polite
circles. Christianity was looked upon as merely an amiable
superstition, which served as a desirable safeguard of society,
and for that reason should be maintained. In the "Adver-
tisement" to his "Analogy" Bishop Butler says: "It is
come I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many
persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of
inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be
fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if nothing re-
mained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and
ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long
interrupted the pleasures of the world." And in his charge
to the clergy of the diocese of Durham, delivered in 1751,
speaking of the general decay of religion in the nation, he
declares that the saddest feature of the age "is an avowed
scorn of religion in some and a growing disregard of it in
the generality." Testimony of a like kind is furnished
by works of other writers. Butler's "Three Sermons on
Human Nature," while profound and illuminating, them-
selves reveal the chief defects of the moral philosophy he
expounded. Even the "Analogy" confined itself to the pro-
vincial issues of the day, being in this respect greatly inferior
282 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to Pascal's "Pensees," which was concerned with specula-
tions upon the higher and more universal reason. But its
chief weakness consisted in reducing religion to a Probabil-
ism unable to control human nature in behalf of spiritual
development. Nor could Butler's style do justice to the
native force of his metaphysic : "so far from having the
pleasures of eloquence, it had not even the comfort of
perspicuity." The abseace of any freedom for flight into
the upper regions of revelation prompted Tholuck's criti-
cism : "we weary* of a long journey on foot, especially through
deep sand." That is it in a word : the theology of the
eighteenth century had no wings.
The studied moderation of Butler's argument was adopted
by the clergy, and literature likewise felt the detriment of
submission to an undue subjectivism. The marked dif-
ference between the poetry of Dryden and that of Pope, or
the prose of Swift and that of Addison, was analogous to the
contrast between the pulpit orators of the periods they
severally represented. The persistent needs of human
nature found no rfelief in the presentation of an atten-
uated Gospel powerless to make new conquests, or appease
the spiritual hunger of men, or kindle that enthusiasm
which was the bugbear of the period. Not content with
separating themselves from the slightest suspicion of this
offense, the clergy were equally eager to protect the good
name of the apostles from its defilement. The substitu-
tion of an ethical for a spiritual basis of religion ended, as it
must always end, in languor and humiliation ; for religion
is devitalized the moment it is lowered to the position of
a mere purveyor of motive to morality. Accommodated
beliefs and articles were reiterated and argued until they
became obscure, justifying the satirical remark of Collins,
that nobody doubted the existence of Deity until the Boyle
lectures had undertaken to prove it.
The seriousness of the problem was aggravated by the gen-
eral social degeneracy, though this eventually furnished some
JOHN WESLEY 283
means for Its solution. The seething, festering masses of
unleavened humanity had no native aversion to goodness;
indeed at bottom they were incurably religious, and when the
surfeit of sin began to be felt they craved a purer life. But
skepticism had nothing to offer them, and the ministry was
little better off : that which it did offer was not bread, and
the parochial system throughout England was ossified. The
energy of the clergy was further dissipated by internal strife
and by quarrels with rival sects, socially obscure but safe-
guarded in their freedom by the Act of Toleration. Chief
among the controversies within the Church were the non-
juror schism and the dispute over the doctrine of "divine
right." ^ During the reigns of the first two Georges, these
causes of dissension, together with the system of political
appointments to the episcopacy, seriously impaired the
harmony and lowered the doctrinal standards and religious
ideals of the Establishment.
Any indictment of the clergy must be qualified by the fact
that thousands of livings were without parsonages and their
incomes utterly insufficient for the maintenance of the self-
respect, let alone the comfort, of the incumbents. Bishop
Burnet states in his History that after Queen Anne's Bounty
had somewhat mitigated the poverty of the lesser clergy, there
were still hundreds of curacies w^ith an income of less than
twenty pounds, and thousands with less than fifty pounds.
It is not surprising that non-residence became the rule or
that Church fabrics fell into decay. On the other hand, it
can be charged against bishops and deans that they made
fortunes, and used their extensive patronage for private
purposes. The gulf between the rich and the poor clerics
was broad and deep ; indeed, the rich frequently plundered
the Church while the poor suffered the consequences. The
1 This doctrine was the one upon which the Anglican Church was agreed
and which it emphasized. It owed its origin to the nationalism which pre-
vailed at the Reformation, and was intended to offset the papal claim to
supremacy.
284 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
chosen few who moved in the upper ranks of society reserved
their attention for the affluent, and the dull round of parish
duty was left to their subordinates.
Indolent and worldly ministers were found within and
without the Establishment, more anxious to be deemed
respectable and rational than to become effective servants
of the Gospel to their parishioners. Even the zeal of the
more excellent was tempered by their indulgence in mate-
rial pleasures, which Doddridge attempted to justify because
of the benefit to trade. Yet care must be taken not to make
the condemnation too sweeping. The sacred memories of such
shepherds of the flock as Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, the
judicious Hooker, George Herbert of Bemerton, Bishop Wil-
son, Isaac Watts, and Nathaniel Lardner were treasured in
rectories and manses throughout the land. It remains true,
however, after all extenuations and exceptions, that spiritual
as well as material destitution marked the ministry at large.
The parson, with frayed cassock and seedy appearance,
was too often the lickspittle of the local magnate, content
to purchase favor by enduring his insults and obscenities.
His education and manners in most instances were no more
than might be expected in an age so sordid that it cut off
the supplies necessary for trained spiritual overseers. Some
of these clergymen lived godly and useful lives, and many
others might have done so had they not been reduced to prac-
tical vagabondage. Hired to read prayers in the houses of
the great at ten shillings a month, or appointed as private
chaplain to some noble family where the master treated him
as a menial and the servants despised him as a parasite, the
cleric without a benefice was jibed at as a "mess-John," a
"Levite," and a "trencherman"; placed below the salt at
table, compelled to listen with feigned or real enjoyment
to many a bibulous jest, and dismissed when the pastries
appeared. Sometimes he was married off to a woman of
no social standing or even of damaged reputation. Treated
thus by patrons and parishioners, how could the unfortunate
JOHN WESLEY 285
man be otherwise than craven or cunning, as circumstances
seemed to demand? Nor was it entirely to his discredit
that he should have sought to mend his fortunes by dubious
courses, and assuredly the ecclesiastics who enjoyed the
stipends of pluralities were not the men to remonstrate.
The bishops appointed by the Hanoverian Court were
first considered with regard, not to their fitness, but to
their political sympathies. The cautious worldliness which
characterized these prelates did not prevent grave scan-
dals. Some were enthroned by proxy ; others never visited
their sees; distant parts of the dioceses were left without
supervision, and in not a few instances without ministra-
tions of any kind. Generally speaking, the clergy were not
in any sense deeply religious, and to this fact is primarily
due the tradition of shame which clings to the Church of the
eighteenth century.
Puritanism had fallen from its high estate long before
that period and was in the most abject years of its
deterioration. The glories of such patriots, scholars, and
saints as Hampden, Pym, Owen, and Baxter had faded,
and the hard angularity of mind of the Dissenters
prejudiced the nation against them. Their participation
in political embroilments, with the subsequent persecutions
and deprivations inflicted upon them, had undermined their
influence and destroyed the higher aims which once ani-
mated Nonconformity. Chapels and conventicles were
frequented by adherents who prided themselves on their
independency, but whose doctrines had lost their appeal.
The pluralist, the controversialist, the man-pleasing, place-
hunting prelate, the priest of disgraceful life, and the sec-
tarian minister who moodily ruminated on his social sub-
jection or preached Socinianism, effectually deprived the
nation of religious instruction and guidance.
Passion for work, perseverance, self-sacrifice, tranquil
fidelity, magnanimity, devotion to the future, were not
unknown, but the Nonconformist divine yielded to
286 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the conditions described, which also held the parson of
the Established Church in bondage, and forced each
to obey the conventional rule. The inertia and blind-
ness of both underlay and accentuated the grievous moral
situation. National conduct can be reformed in one
way only: by the recovery of the consciousness of the
Eternal in a renewed sense of those relations between God
and man which make the creature truly devout; and any
nation which is not in this meaning a Church will not long
remain a State. Herein lay the essential infirmity of the
English people : they had forgotten God ; and, because they
had forgotten God, they fearfully forgot themselves. What
freedom they had, subserved the riotous pleasures and pur-
suits upon which the best and wisest among them looked with
grave apprehension. The appreciation of the duties and
responsibilities of moral beings, and the ambition to domesti-*
cate the virtues and to purify society with the principles of
Christianity, had alike vanished. Religion, in its truest
significance, as the life of God in the soul of man, the saving
element in creeds and sects, the source of evangelizing
aggressiveness and of what Mrs. Humphry Ward calls "a
sense of social compunction," was little known by the men
and women of the eighteenth century. Because of this
fatal ignorance the intellectual classes became the prey of
infidelity; the clerical, of indifference; the profane, of
blasphemy and license; and the masses, of turpitude and
lawlessness.
Ill
This, then, was the nation which confronted Wesley with
its almost insuperable tyranny of wrong thinking and wrong
doing. Yet such a state could not persist forever among a
people whose past had been deeply ingrained with Christian
ideas and whose territories were covered with symbols of
religious devotion. In his "Vision of Saints," Lewis Morris
JOHN WESLEY 287
sees the "apostolic form" of Wesley "blessing our land,"
and speaks of his having
"Relit the expiring fire, which sloth and sense
And the sad world's unfaith had well-nigh quenched
And left in ashes."
The flame then kindled by the regenerate soul of this master
spirit rose high and spread far. But before he began his
work other men had prepared the way for it. Reference
has been made to the writings of Law and also to the
Moravian teachings that led Wesley into Christian life
and peace. Prior to these, however, was the establish-
ment in the Anglican Church of religious societies which
had an organic connection with earlier German pietism, and
anticipated the class meeting which afterwards became the
nucleus of Methodism. These associations were founded
by Dr. Smithies of St. Giles' Church, Cripplegate, and Dr.
Horneck, Lutheran minister at the Savoy Chapel ; their
principal features being a close connection with the State
Church and a pronounced evangelistic tendency. When
they declined in usefulness other kindred organizations arose,
less restricted in their aims, which in turn gave birth, in 1670,
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, and, in 1698, to the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge.
Such signs and tokens were by no means limited to Eng-
land. In Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1729, the very
year the Oxford Methodists formed the Holy Club, a
revival which profoundly affected the entire Colony took
place under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards, who de-
clared, "The new Jerusalem had begun to come down
from heaven, and perhaps never were more prelibations of
heaven's glory given." Simultaneously the provinces of
Wales felt a similar impulse, where Howel Harris was, to
quote WTiitefield, "a burning and shining light, a barrier
against profanity and immorality, and an indefatigable
288 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
promoter of the Gospel of Christ." Scotland also expe-
rienced an awakening of which the Reverend James Robe
of Kilsyth published an account in 1742, telling of its
spread to many cities and towns of the northern kingdom.
Thus in places so far apart as Germany and New England,
and under pastors and evangelists as widely separated in
theology and method as Edwards, Harris, and Zinzendorf,
thousands of penitents received blessing, and their lives bore
witness to the genuineness of the change.
Almost immediately after his conversion Wesley visited
the Moravian settlement at Herrnhut, in order that by fur-
ther conversation with "those holy men he might establish
his soul." On his way thither he was received at Marien-
born by Count Zinzendorf. It would appear that each was
disappointed in the other, and Wesley proceeded on July 19,
1738, to Herrnhut, where he remained for three weeks, at-
tending the services of the Brethren, and conversing with
the teachers and elders upon their doctrines and discipline.
He conceived a warm affection for them, and especially for
that remarkable saint, Christian David, who deserves a
more adequate remembrance. An unlettered man, he was
twenty years of age before he saw a Bible ; yet at twenty-
seven he had become a prominent preacher among his
countrymen, afterwards establishing the first missions in
Greenland, and making excursions into Holland, Denmark,
and England. Wesley, scholar and priest as he was, sat
at his feet, and wrote to his brother Samuel, "God has
given me at length the desire of my heart. I am with a
church whose conversation is in heaven; in whom is the
mind that was in Christ, and who so walk as He walked. , . .
Oh how high and holy a thing Christianity is ! and how
widely distinct from that — I know not what — which is so
called, though it neither purifies the heart, nor renews the
life, after the image of our blessed Redeemer!" Yet a
hint of his subsequent rejection of some articles of the Mora-
vian teaching was conveyed in the courteous letter of thanks
JOHN WESLEY 289
addressed to Zinzendorf and dated from London on Sep-
tember 16, in which he says: "The love and zeal of our
brethren in Holland and Germany, particularly at Herrnhut,
have stirred up many among us, who will not be comforted
till they also partake of the great and precious promises. I
hope to see them at least once more, were it only to speak
freely on a few things which I did not approve, perhaps be-
cause I did not understand them." ^ What those things
were can be surmised from the contents of a second letter,
which was not dispatched, complaining of their adulation of
the Count and of their communion ; of their reserve and
dissimulation; in brief, of those failings which are more
or less incident to a life of subjective piety unrelated to
human affairs.
Wesley now rejoined Charles in labors among the social
wreckage of the metropolis, preaching as often as pos-
sible, and ministering to the prisoners in the jails. The
brothers also obtained an interview with Dr. Gibson, the
Bishop of London, that they might explain their methods
and secure his approval. This prelate, who was highly re-
spected for tact and prudence, failed to appreciate the oppor-
tunity he now had to render a lasting service both to the
cause of religion and to his Church. The Anglican epis-
copacy has often shown an ineptitude for wise and cour-
ageous action at similar crises, and in this respect com-
pares unfavorably w^ith the more alert hierarchy of Rome.
The Wesleys were in no sense aliens or rebels ; in fact
both were stricter Anglicans than the bishop himself,
whose timid low churchmanship appeared in his answer
to their question, "Are the Societies conventicles?" "I
think not," he replied; "however, you can read the acts
and laws as well as I, — I determine nothing," — an un-
happy conclusion applicable to himself and his brethren in
more senses than one.
Others, though equally helpless, were not so acquiescent
1 R. Southey : "Life of Wesley" ; pp. 104-105.
290 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
as Gibson. The doughty Warburton, afterwards Bishop of
Gloucester, that "knock-kneed giant" of debate who had
distinguished himself in the deistic controversy as a belli-
cose cleric of whom it may be said
"That twice he routed all his foes
And twice he slew the slain,"
now fell foul of Methodism. Writing to an acquaintance, he
inquired, " Have you heard of our new set of fanatics, called
the Methodists ? There is one Wesley, who told a friend of
mine that he had lived most deliciously last summer in
Georgia, sleeping under trees, and feeding on boiled maize
sauced with the ashes of oak leaves ; and that he will return
thither, and then will cast off his English dress, and wear a
dried skin, like the savages, the better to ingratiate himself
with them. It would be well for virtue and religion if this
humor would lay hold generally of our over-heated bigots,
and send them to cool themselves in the Indian marshes." ^
This ranting abuse, of which Warburton was more than
once guilty, was the keynote of other attacks made upon
the Wesleys, and showed that they had little to expect
from the clergy except misrepresentation and slander.
By the close of the year John was almost uniformly
excluded from the pulpits of the Establishment. While
the storm of opposition was closing in upon him and his
followers he met with his brother Charles, George White-
field and others of like mind at Fetter Lane to celebrate
the last hours of that annus mirabilis of 1738 in solemn
acts of prayer, praise, and renewed consecration.
Whitefield, who has already been named as an Oxford
student, a member of the Holy Club, and a close friend
and admirer of Wesley, was the youngest and at that time
the best known of the three men. He was born December
16, 1714, at the Bell Inn, Gloucester, of which his father was
then the tenant. His general worth and gift for elocution
' L. Tycrman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 208.
JOHN WESLEY 291
procured him friends who assisted him in obtaining a Uni-
versity education. He was ordained deacon in 1736, and
delivered his first sermon in the magnificent Cathedral of
his native city. He then began an itinerary through
the western provinces of England, and also in London,
where he attracted immense audiences ; indeed, his name
quickly became a household word in Bath, Bristol, and the
capital. After his return from Georgia to receive priest's
orders and collect money for the orphanage he had founded
there, he was included in the marked disapproval the clergy
had shown toward the Wesleys, and with characteristic
impetuosity he at once commenced field preaching. When
the churches of Bristol were closed against him he re-
paired to Rose Hill, just outside the city, and there faced
the grimy pitmen and laborers who were the terror of the
locality, subduing them by his dramatic utterance. The
entranced listeners quailed beneath his fervid, searching
appeals; their deadened sensibilities were so aroused that,
as he afterwards described the scene, tears of penitence
channeled "white gutters on their blackened cheeks." As
the throngs increased, he wrote, — "The open firmament
above me, the prospect of adjacent fields with the sight of
thousands and thousands, some in coaches, some on horse-
back, and some in the trees, and at all times affected and
drenched in tears together, to which sometimes was added
the solemnity of approaching evening, was almost too much
for me and quite overcame me." He left Bristol escorted
by a guard of honor composed of his converts and friends
and with a handsome subscription for a charity school to be
established among them; a project eventually carried out
by Wesley at Kingswood.
Before the midsummer of 1739 Whitefield repeated his
triumphs in London, where his audiences at Hyde Park,
Blackheath, Moorfields, and Kennington Common were the
sensation of the town. He asserts that eighty thousand
persons assembled at one time; although this estimate
292 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
was probably exaggerated, there can be no doubt
that few have addressed larger gatherings for a similar
purpose or served them to a better end. The Thames water-
men could not ferry over all the people determined to hear
him, suburbs and shuns were emptied while his sermons
were in progress, and their effect was acknowledged by the
educated as well as the illiterate. Foremost among his
supporters was Lady Huntingdon, regarded by some as the
most remarkable woman of her age and country, an aristo-
crat whose life was "a beautiful course of hallowed labor"
and her death "the serene setting of a sun of brilliant hue."
Among others of rank who flocked to hear him were the
Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cumberland, the Duchess
of Ancaster, Lady Townshend, Lady Franklin, Lady Hin-
chinbroke. Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Chesterfield, Lord
Lyttleton, Lord North, Bubb Doddington, George Selwyn,
and William Pitt. David Garrick remarked that he would
give his whole fortune to be able to pronounce the single
word "Mesopotamia" with the pathos and power he had
heard Whitefield put into it. Horace Walpole, who had a
keen eye for foibles, noted that "Methodism in the me-
tropolis is more fashionable than anything but brag. The
women play very deep at both, as deep, it is much suspected,
as the matrons of Rome did at the mysteries of Bona Dea."
And again, writing to Sir Horace Mann, his lifelong corre-
spondent, he said, " If you ever think of returning to Eng-
land, you must prepare yourself for Methodism. . . . Lady
Frances Shirley has chosen this way of bestowing the dregs
of her beauty : Mr. Lyttleton is very near making the same
sacrifice of the dregs of all the characters he has worn. The
Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work
on, and, indeed, they have a plentiful harvest. Flagrance
was never more in fashion, drinking is at the high water
mark."
That a young clergyman not yet twenty-six should have
compelled the attention Whitefield received from high and
JOHN WESLEY 293
iowly was in itself significant. His facial appearance was
not altogether prepossessing, but in earlier manhood his
well-proportioned figure and superb voice made him, like
Danton, the tribune of the open spaces. Exuberant physi-
cal energy, sincerity of conviction and earnestness of manner,
lent weight even to his unguarded statements. He could
denounce the treacheries of sin, describe the doom of the
sinner, enforce the remedies of the Gospel, and comfort the
sorrows of the penitent with winged and irresistible words.
Dr. Doddridge, Dr. Isaac Watts, and others competent to
judge objected to his excessive emotionalism; but, al-
though its modification might have avoided some undesir-
able results, it would have deprived him of his chief element
of power as an unrivaled orator. He was neither a philoso-
pher nor a theologian, but, what was more rare than either,
an evangelist whose heart had been fired and his lips
anointed to proclaim the saving message of the Cross to a
moribund generation.
The most profitable outcome of his work was its formative
influence upon Wesley, who not only emulated Whitefield's
example as a field preacher, but garnered much of the
harvest of his sowing. Early in March, 1739, he received
a message from Whitefield urgently soliciting his presence
and help in Bristol. Fully employed as he was at the time,
Wesley was reluctant to leave London, and his brother
Charles vehemently opposed his doing this. In their per-
plexity they reverted to the customary practice of sortes
BihliccB, the results of which were not encouraging until
Charles, making a last attempt, opened at the words, —
"Son of man, behold, I take from thee the desires of thine
eyes with a stroke ; yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep,
neither shall thy tears run down," Upon this he withdrew
his opposition, and John decided to go to Bristol.
This was the turning point in Wesley's public career.
He was about to take a step that would separate him from
his ecclesiastical superiors and brethren, and cost him the
294 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
confidence and affection of the Church of his birth and
training, nor is it Hkely that he was sustained by any pre-
vision of the outcome which waited upon his temerity.
Preaching on unconsecrated ground, to say nothing of
addressing promiscuous gatherings which were never more
secularized in feehng than at that time, was considered by
even the best of AngHcans a disorderly act, a disturbance of
the peace of Church and State. Reluctant to the last, on
hearing Whitefield preach in the open air, Wesley com-
mented, "I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this
strange way of which he set me an example on Sunday;
having been all my life till very lately so tenacious of every
point relating to decency and order, that I should have
thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been
done in a church." Notwithstanding, on April 2, 1739, a
date next in importance to that of his conversion, he "sub-
mitted to be more vile," and standing on a grassy mound
addressed a great crowd from the words, "The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to
preach the Gospel to the poor." The appropriateness of
the text to the events which had brought him to that place
and hour was only equaled by its prophetic character. He
deliberately rejected the earthly prizes of his calling that he
might proclaim the religion of the New Testament to men
and women who were looked upon by the more refined as
hopeless barbarians. Yet no Christian statesman could
have issued a better justification for this extraordinary pro-
cedure than is contained in the opening paragraphs of
his "Earnest Appeal to Men of Faith and Religion." After
comparing the formal and lifeless professions then prevalent
with the renewing energy the Methodists had experienced,
he showed how he and his friends had stumbled in the
gloom of past days, having none to guide them into "the
straight way to the religion of love, even by faith." "By
this faith," he continued, "we are saved from all uneasi-
ness of mind, from the anguish of a wounded spirit, from
JOHN WESLEY 295
discontent, from fear and sorrow of heart, and from that
inexpressible hstlessness and weariness, both of the world and
ourselves, which we had so helplessly labored under for
many years, especially when we were out of the hurry of the
world and sunk into calm reflection. In this we find that
love of God and of all mankind which we had elsewhere
sought in vain. This, we know and feel, and therefore
cannot but declare, saves every one that partakes of it both
from sin and misery, from every unhappy and every unloved
temper." ^
This manifesto, so lucid, emphatic, and unanswerable
by those who accepted Christianity at all, is quoted as a
first-rate specimen of the statements which exposed Wesley
to the censure of Anglican dignitaries and of the learned and
the worldly. The ecclesiastical authorities were provoked
against Methodism because it violated their rule and rebuked
their failure ; the devotees of fashion and culture because it
disturbed their complacency and pride. Neither had any
desire to leave their protected shores and venture after
Wesley into the agitated deeps of undisciplined human life.
They were repelled by the noise and confusion of its emo-
tional outbreaks and were too punctiliously correct to be
anything more than nominally religious. Whitefield was
patronized by some among them who endured his opinions
for the pleasure of listening to his oratory, but Wesley's
putting of the same truths aroused their indignant remon-
strance. Yet his "Appeal" and his sermons were in sub-
stance the accepted doctrines of their own Church, and better
still, a fair presentation of the teaching and spirit of the
New Testament. In them he showed himself a master of
the proper sentiment and the fitting word. Without strain-
ing after grandiloquence, in language the chief notes of which
were sincerity, simplicity, and restraint, with every appear-
ance of unstudied utterance, he discovered the secrets of
many hearts and applied to them the blessings of pardon and
» John Telford : "Ibe Life of John Wesley" ; pp. 112-113.
296 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
restoration. Old fustian and purple patches were not
tolerated, yet the phrase that uplifts, the feeling that is most
intense when most repressed, the intellectual rather than
the clamorous accent, enabled him to make the deepest im-
pression of any preacher of his age. His speech combined
abundance with economy, the little with the much. Its
form was concise, its meaning infinite, its character luminous.
There were more accomplished thinkers and rhetoricians
than Wesley, but as an advocate of religion and an organizer
of its forces he was unsurpassed. The level reaches and
tranquil flow of his discourse were sometimes stirred by a
divine afflatus of which his hearers afterwards spoke with
bated breath ; the pillars of the sanctuary seemed to tremble,
the Eternal One Himself bowed the heavens and came down,
while all the people stood in awe of Him, and the souls of
the worshipers were shaken by the winds of God. John
Nelson, a well-poised Yorkshireman, has left a forceful de-
scription of Wesley which amplifies the difference between
him and Whitefield in that respect. "Whitefield was to me
as a man who could play well on an instrument, for his
preaching was pleasant to me and I loved the man . . . but
I did not understand him. I was like a wandering bird
cast out of its nest till Mr. John Wesley came to preach
his first sermon at Moorfields. ... As soon as he got
upon the stand, he stroked back his hair and turned his
face towards where I stood, and, I thought, fixed his eyes
upon me. His countenance fixed such an awful dread upon
me, before I heard him speak, that it made my heart beat
like the pendulum of a clock ; and when he did speak, I
thought his whole discourse was aimed at me. When
he had done, I said, 'This man can tell me the secrets of
my heart ; he hath not left me there ; for he hath showed
the remedy, even the blood of Jesus,' ... I durst not look
up, for I imagined all the people were looking at me. Be-
fore Mr. Wesley concluded his sermon he cried out, 'Let
the wicked man forsake his way, and the unrighteous man
JOHN WESLEY 297
his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He
will have mercy upon him ; and to our God, for He will
abundantly pardon.' I said if that be true, I will turn to
God to-day."
Although Wesley was short of stature and slight of build,
his personal appearance was benign and commanding.
His carriage was erect and graceful, and in that time of wigs
he wore his own hair long, parted in the middle, and falling
upon his shoulders with a slight curl. Austerity and be-
nevolence were harmoniously blended in his bearing; his
voice, which he carefully modulated, was melodious and pen-
etrating; his movements agile and dignified. The slightly
feminine cast of his clean shaven face and robed figure was
balanced by the masculine strength of his profile, with its
Roman nose and firm mouth. In the gallery of beautiful
and impressive faces of renowned men, such as those of
Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, and the youthful Burns, a
place has been rightly given to that of Wesley, who resem-
bled Milton more than any other great Englishman, not only
in physical appearance but to some extent in spiritual com-
plexion. Richard Watson Gilder in his Ode to Wesley,
exclaims :
"In those clear, piercing, piteous eyes behold
The very soul that over England flamed !"
They retained to the last the searching expression which
Nelson had noted, and numerous contemporaries spoke of the
glance, swift to encourage, steadfast to control, before which
the dainty exquisite Beau Nash and the mobs of the Mid-
land shires alike shrank.
Whitefield's energies were divided long before he died,
and Charles Wesley's itinerant preaching, which began
with promise, practically ended after his marriage, but John
continued his beneficent joumeyings to the end of life. In
them he kept to the centers of industrial population, leav-
ing the remoter regions to be afterwards evangelized by his
298 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
helpers. London, Bristol, and Newcastle were the points of
an isosceles triangle which included the principal areas of
his mission. Not a moment of the long day was lost ;
he rose at four, frequently preached at five, and then
rode, or in his older years drove, over wretched roads to his
appointments. Nothing was allowed to disturb the schedule,
the intervals of which, when he tarried at an inn or at the
home of a friend, were occupied in reading or in making
notes, in writing tracts and pamphlets and in conducting an
interminable correspondence. Duty wisely and scrupu-
lously carried out according to a fixed program never had
a more faithful disciple. His love of orderliness, a good
index of the mind, was seen not only in the neatness of his
dress but in every particular of his liffe> ^iWheiievfei''.he might
be, he was satisfied, absorbed, detached, free from vexation
of spirit, and able to pursue his meditations, whether among
the wild hills of Wales or tossing on the Irish Sea, or in the
bleak and inhospitable fastnesses of the Cornish coast. He
crossed St. George's Channel nearly fifty times, and traveled
250,000 miles on land — this when there were no turnpikes
in the north of England, and the London stage coaches
did not run beyond York. In June, 1750, he was nearly
twenty hours in the saddle and covered ninety miles in one
day; in 1778 he speaks of having made 280 miles in 48
hours, and in the winter weather of Scotland he rode an equal
distance in six days. His northern route in February, 1745,
was one of the severest he ever undertook. Gateshead
Fell was covered with snow, no roads were visible; wind,
hail, and sleet, accompanied by intense cold, made the coun-
try one sheet of impassable ice. The horses fell down and
had to be led by Wesley and his companions, who were
guided by a Newcastle man into the town. The following
winter he was crusted from head to foot by a blizzard as he
struggled on from Birmingham to Stafford. In 1747 the
drifts almost swallowed him upon Stamford Heath. In his
eighty-third year he was as fearlessly energetic as ever. While
JOHN WESLEY 299
travelling in the "Delectable Duchy" he came to Hayle,
on his way to preach at St. Ives. The sands between the
towns were covered with a rising tide, and a sea captain
begged the old hero to wait until it had receded. But he
had to be at St. Ives by a given time, and he called to his
coachman, " Take the sea ! take the sea ! " At first the horses
waded ; ere long they were swimming, and the man on
the box feared that all would be drowned. Wesley put his
head out of the carriage window to encourage him — " What
is your name, driver?" he inquired. "Peter, sir," was the
reply. "Peter, fear not; thou shalt not sink," exclaimed
the patriarch. When they reached St. Ives, after attend-
ing to Peter's comfort, he went into the pulpit, drenched
as he was, and preached. The philosophical coolness and
brevity with which he recorded these and similar adven-
tures show that he regarded them as merely incidental to
that cause he had assigned as the sole purpose of his exist-
ence, and to which he consecrated all his gifts. He delivered
forty-two thousand sermons in fifty years, an average of
over fifteen a week. He was beyond seventy when thirty
thousand people gathered to hear him in the natural amphi-
theater at Gwennap Pit, Cornwall. Ten years later he
wrote, "I have entered the eighty-third year of my age.
I am a wonder to myself, I am never tired, either with
preaching, writing, or travelling." By no preconcerted
scheme, nor under the impulse of the moment, but calmly,
deliberately, and with the love that endures to the end,
Wesley became the most devoted, laborious, and successful
evangelist the Christian Church has known since Apostolic
days.
He had read with amazement of the physical contortions
and convulsions during the New England Revival, little
dreaming that his renewed ministry would produce such phe-
nomena. He had no more than begun it, however, when at
a service in Baldwin Street Meeting House, Bristol, he could
scarcely be heard for the groanings and wailings of stricken
300 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
penitents. In the audience sat a Friend who was annoyed
by what appeared to him unseemly pretense, till he himself
was carried away by the same resistless feeling, for the time
being losing all self-possession, and declaring on his recovery,
"Now I know that thou art a prophet of the Lord." Al-
though the greater number of these seizures occurred in
small crowded rooms, there were instances of persons affected
in like manner in their homes. John Haydon, by profession
an Anglican, and a man of good standing, who had hitherto
regarded such outbreaks as of the devil, while seated in his
own house, reading a sermon on "Salvation by Faith,"
suddenly fell writhing to the floor. Wesley, who was in the
vicinity, hastened to Haydon's relief. "Aye," cried the
smitten one on his recovery, "this is he who I said was a
deceiver of the people ; but God has overtaken me. I said
it was all a delusion ; but this is no" delusion." These ebulli-
tions were in the main as unsought by Wesley as they were
surprising to him, nor did the whole series amount to more
than a passing incident. His Journal and letters mention
only about sixty cases, an insignificant number when the
thousands of his converts are recalled ; a few were extremely
painful and prolonged, the rest comparatively mild and brief.
His explanation of them was derived from the dreams,
trances, and visions of Biblical report. But he added that
after a time natural depravity polluted the work of grace,
which Satan cunningly imitated in order to defeat its ends ;
so that, while the hand of Deity was undoubtedly present in
these mysterious events, Satan's was no less evident — "a
singular cooperation," as Sir Leslie Stephen observes, "be-
tween God and the devil." Many subjects of these
manifestations, however, proved by their after life the
reality of a gratifying change of heart coincident with the
seizures. Later simulations, some of which were quickly
detected and silenced, modified Wesley's belief in their
value. In a letter to his brother Samuel, who was alarmed
by the wild rumors which spread abroad concerning John's
JOHN WESLEY 301
preaching, he protested that his work should not be judged
by outward signs, whatever might be their cause, but by
its true element; that quickening spirit, a greater wonder
than any other recorded, which remade society, and brought
into the Kingdom of God men and women whose iniquity
had been notorious. He urged that such regenerated souls
were living arguments which could not be successfully
disputed.
The psychological aspects of the question merit a fuller
treatment than can be given here. It seems strange that
this loss of self-control should have first occurred under
Wesley, who could not, in the usual sense of the term, be
called an emotional preacher. The explanation is probably
to be found in his very restraint. While Whitefield, with his
torrential eloquence, and Charles Wesley, by his impassioned
appeal, deeply stirred the heart, their own tears and ecstasies
suggested to their hearers these more normal avenues for
the expression of excited feelings. On the other hand, the
steady beat of Wesley's plain, measured discourse, expound-
ing hitherto unfamiliar doctrines which searched the con-
sciences of a benighted people as with the candle of the
Lord, was enforced by a solemnity of manner and a peculiar
yet repressed intensity overwhelming in their influence.
Unlike his brother or Whitefield, he discouraged by his
outward composure the facile discharge of agitations which
he nevertheless aroused in far higher degree than either
of them. Hence the only outlet for the volcanic emotions
he kindled in the miners of Kingswood and Newcastle was
in that sympathetic nervous action which those emotions
induced.^
The hostility of official Anglicanism towards his mission,
which, as we have seen, showed itself from the beginning,
was naturally inflamed by these irregularities; and it
increased with the rapid growth of the movement. There
• For a discussion of this subject see Professor Frederick M. Davenport's
volume, "Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals."
302 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
was not sufficient expansiveness in a State Church governed
by rule and rote to admit, much less assimilate, the extra-
neous practices of the Wesleys and Whitefield. Macaulay
speculates that the Papacy would have absorbed the enthu-
siasm and adopted the new organization for the benefit of the
Holy See. "At Rome the Countess of Huntingdon would
have been given a place in the calendar as St. Selina, . . .
Elizabeth Fry would have been the first Superior of the
Blessed Order of Sisters of the Jails. John Wesley would
have become General of a new society devoted to the honor
and interests of the Church." Without by any means in-
dorsing another oft-quoted passage, in which Cardinal New-
man laments the callous perversity of the Establishment,
it was at least more applicable to Wesley than to any
other Anglican since the Reformation : " Oh, my mother !
whence is it unto thee that thou hast good things poured
upon thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children
yet darest not own them? . . . How is it that whatever
is generous in purpose and tender and deep in devotion,
thy flower and thy promise falls from thy bosom and finds
no hope within thy arms?" The Church which too often
tolerated laxity and idleness promptly stigmatized Wesley's
effort to remedy these evils as a breach of ecclesiastical
discipline. It could see the occasional extravagances and
mistakes of Methodism, but was blind to its religious value.
Thus, when Wesley solicited the countenance of Butler,
then Bishop of Bristol, even he, the bright particular star
of the episcopacy, replied: "Sir, since you ask my advice,
I will give it freely — you have no business here ; 3"ou are
not commissioned to preach in this diocese. Therefore I
advise you to go hence." Wesley had but one defense :
he was a churchman no less than his lordship, with no desire
to disturb the order which had been habitual to both, yet,
when that order sought to check the influx of spiritual life
which he had every reason to believe was divinely bestowed,
he was constrained to take his own course. He openly
JOHN WESLEY 303
avowed : " God, in Scripture, commands me, according to
my power, to instruct the ignorant, reform the wicked, con-
firm the virtuous. Man forbids me to do this in another's
parish ; that is, in effect not to do it at all, seeing I have no
parish of my own, nor probably ever shall. Whom then
shall I hear? God or man? I look upon all the world as
my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I
am, I judge it meet, right and my bounden duty to declare
unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of sal-
vation." ^
Bishop Gibson, whose interview with the Wesleys is men-
tioned earlier in this chapter, showed in his later references
a more pronounced antagonism to their mission, classing
them with "Deists and Papists," and condemning their re-
spective errors as " greatly prejudicial to religion and danger-
ous to the souls of men." An anonymous tract ascribed to
him, and which at least received his approval, vigorously
berated Whitefield for violating Church discipline; the
Wesleys for having had the effrontery "to preach in the
fields and other open places, and by public advertisements
to invite the rabble to be their hearers" ; and the Methodists
in general for daring to remain in the Anglican communion.
Gibson returned to his arraignment, describing them as
"enemies of the Church who give shameful disturbance to
the parochial clergy, and use every unwarrantable method
to prejudice their people against them and to seduce their
flocks from them." Wesley kept silent as long as silence
seemed wise, but, notwithstanding his esteem for the epis-
copal office and for Gibson personally, he now felt that the
bishop had exceeded all bounds, and he published a chasten-
ing rejoinder, which, apart from its specific aim, deserves
mention. The asseveration that the bishop was "an angel
of the Church of Christ, one of the stars in God's right
hand, calling together all the subordinate pastors, for whom
he is to give an account to God, and directing them in
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; "Vol. I, p. 235.
304 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the name of the great Shepherd of the sheep, the First
Begotten from the dead " — is one of the noblest passages
Wesley ever penned. His dignified rebuke was accom-
panied by an argument which dwelt upon the breakdown
of the parochial system, and vindicated Methodism as a
source of supply for the religious needs of the people. He
concluded with a solemn warning which reversed their posi-
tions, leaving the aged diocesan the accused and himself
the accuser : " My lord, the time is short ; I am past the
noon of life, and my remaining days flee away as a shadow.
Your lordship is old and full of days. It cannot, therefore,
be long before we shall both drop this house of earth, and
stand naked before God ; no, nor before we shall see the
great white throne coming down from heaven and He that
sitteth thereon. . . . Will you then rejoice in your success ?
The Lord God grant it may not be said in that hour,
* These have perished in their iniquity : but their blood I
require at thy hands.'"
The next episcopal assailant, George Lavington, Bishop of
Exeter, was incomparably inferior to Butler and also to Gibson.
Following the usual line of Englishmen of the day, who at
once assigned any beliefs or actions they did not understand
to the malignant machinations of Rome, he published in 1749
an anonymous pamphlet entitled, "The Enthusiasm of
Methodists and Papists compared." This precious produc-
tion, which was nothing better than a continent of mud,
was issued in two parts, the last being worse than the first.
His attack sank to its lowest depth of vileness when Laving-
ton pretended to argue that the Eleusinian mysteries, with
their gross physical symbolism, were "a strange system of
heathen Methodism." Wesley could well have afforded to
ignore such scurrility; but the natural man in him pre-
vailed, and he met Lavington with a naked blade, exposing
his garbled quotations, limping logic, and bad grammar, and
ending by indignantly challenging him to come out from his
hiding place and drop his mask. This unusual burst of
JOHN WESLEY 305
righteous indignation did not prevent him from having
later and friendly intercourse with Lavington. They met
in the autumn of 1762, and partook of the Lord's Supper
together. The bishop died a few weeks later, and his epi-
taph in Exeter Cathedral eulogizes him as an overseer " who
never ceased to improve his talents nor to employ them to
the noblest purposes ; . . . a Man, a Christian, and a Prel-
ate, prepared, by habitual meditation, to resign life without
regret, to meet death without terror." It would be difficult
to identify from this description the unscrupulous contro-
versialist whose prevarications and invectives earned the
contempt of right-minded men. Ten years after the Laving-
ton episode Warburton reappeared, and led the van of
mitred brethren and college dons against these detestable
renegades who menaced the peace of the community. Origi-
nally intended for the law, Warburton had drifted into
divinity, carrying with him those pugnacious tendencies
and arrogancies which were hit off in the phrase, "There is
but one God, and Warburton is His Attorney-General."
Yet, overbearing, reckless, and abusive as he was, he did
not hide under anonymity, and the vigor and honesty of
his attacks made him a formidable opponent. The last and
the most honorable of anti-Methodist bishops was Dr.
George Home, President of Magdalen College, afterwards
appointed to the see of Norwich. He entered the debate
when its virulence had subsided, and in any case his amiable
and refined disposition made it impossible for him to proceed
to the extremes of the earlier disputants. While sincerely
believing that Methodism led to Antinomian practices, he
was amenable to correction, and thirty years later, on
Wesley's asking for the use of a church in Norwich, Home
assured the incumbent that there was no reason to refuse
the request.
So far nothing had occurred to separate Methodism
from the parent Church ; Wesley still regarded his Societies
and helpers as existing solely for the purposes of religious
306 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
culture, and despite the strained relations they, like their
Founder, were loyal members of the Establishment. The
Nonconformists had their own ministry and ordinances,
but Wesley was careful to avoid instituting either, or in any
way needlessly offending the susceptibilities of the clergy.
He used different names for his organizations, and insisted
that they should meet at other than the stated times for
Anglican services. Further, his followers were urged to
attend their respective parish churches and to communi-
cate there. Unfortunately, in many instances they were
rudely treated, and given to understand that they were in-
grates and rebels. As they increased in numbers, this
deprivation was deeply felt, and the Wesleys were glad to
avail themselves of the offer of Mr. Deleznot, a Huguenot
pastor, to lend them his sanctuary in Hermitage Street,
Wapping, for the administration of the Lord's Supper. A
thousand members from the Foundery partook of the Eu-
charist there ; and Charles Wesley was forced to administer
it to the Kingswood Society in their school building, declar-
ing, stout cleric though he was, that, if no other place had
been accessible, he would have communicated in the open.
In the last decades of Wesley's life a marked reaction was
perceptible among the clergy themselves, many of whom
found matter for reflection in the marvelous changes for
the better which his work had wrought. An attitude of
tolerance found its way into their common habits by a
process of pacific penetration. Evangelical sentiments be-
gan to leaven the Anglican fold, and some who could not
adopt Wesley's methods nevertheless yielded to his teach-
ing. This doubtless contributed to his prolonged but im-
practicable attempt to maintain the fiction of union between
Anglicanism and Methodism, in which there could be little
meaning so long as the two communions were dissimilar in
spirit and practice, and the clergy strove to unchurch the
converts who, as they supposed, outraged ecclesiastical
procedure. The growing impossibility of such a relation at
JOHN WESLEY 307
last dawned on his reluctant mind. He was not less percep-
tive than others, though in this instance less willing to admit
the distressing but palpable fact of which he wrote three
years before his death, "A kind of separation has already
taken place and will inevitably spread, through slow de-
grees." He also addressed a remonstrance to one of the
bishops, and said, "The Methodists in general, my lord,
are members of the Church of England. They hold all her
doctrines, attend her service, and partake of her sacraments.
They do not willingly do harm to any one, but do what good
they can to all. To encourage each other herein, they fre-
quently spend an hour together in prayer and mutual exhor-
tation. Permit me then to ask, Cui bonof for what rea-
sonable end would your lordship drive these people out of
the Church? Are they not as quiet, as inoffensive, nay, as
pious, as any of their neighbors ? Except perhaps here and
there a hairbrained man, who knows not what he is about.
Do you ask, 'Who drives them out of the Church?' Your
lordship does; and that in the most cruel manner. . . .
They desire a license to worship God after their own con-
science. Your lordship refuses it ; and then punishes them
for not having a license. So your lordship leaves them only
this alternative, 'Leave the Church or starve.'" ^
Of all ideas toleration, while so much less than equality,
would seem to be the very last in the general mind. When
the fervid pioneers of Methodist principles struck directly at
the wickedness of their day, they could not long escape the
resentment and then the violence of the mob, incited by
ignorance and drink, and sometimes by the clergy or their
agents. Lawless outbreaks occurred in the Midlands, the
North, Cornwall, and Ireland. The local parsons and mag-
istrates frequently abetted the persecution, and dealt harshly
with its victims. These administrators of petty justice
were infuriated by the vehement exhortations which burst
upon their neighborhoods, oppressed as they were by
> L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. Ill, p. 613.
308 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
wrong and sodden in poverty and vice. They looked upon
the evangeHsts as enemies of the peace, or as Jesuits in
disguise. Hate and calumny, superstition and bigotry,
found vent in many places, and nowhere more than at
Wednesbury in Staffordshire, a town which has long since
atoned for its outrageous treatment of Wesley by its loy-
alty to him and to his Church. During the summer and
autumn of 1743 houses and shops were plundered and gutted,
their contents destroyed, and the occupants maltreated, the
members of the Society being in hourly jeopardy. Wesley
writes, "I received a full account of the terrible riots. . . .
I was not surprised at all ; neither should I have wondered
if, after the advice they had so often received from the
pulpit as well as from the episcopal chair, the zealous high
churchmen had rose and cut all that were Methodists in
pieces." ^ The situation, created by the unwise conduct of
the preacher in charge, aggravated by the angry protestations
of Mr. Egginton, the local clergyman, and by the vicious
propensities of the miners and iron workers, who were even
worse than those of Kingswood or the keelmen of Newcastle,
compelled a suspension of Methodist services for some
weeks, and finally required the personal attention of Wesley
himself. He rode into the town on October 20, and
preached at noon in the open air. Three hours later a
turbulent crew appeared before the house where he was
staying, and demanded that he should come forth. After
some parleying, he accompanied them to the magistrate,
who, being in bed, refused to see them, and whose son
advised the ringleaders that they should release their
captive and quietly disperse. Instead, they trudged on to
Walsall, an adjacent town, where another magistrate also
declined to interfere. The mob had scarcely left the
place before a second and more dangerous one appeared,
led by the doughty prize fighter, "honest Munchin," and
'"Journal of John Wesley"; edited by Rev. Neheaiiah (^urnock;
Vol. III. p. 79.
JOHN WESLEY 309
swept all before it. Wesley was now at the mercy of this
contingent, and for a time his life was in grave peril.
These "fierce Ephesian beasts," as his brother Charles
termed them, cried "Kill him!" and some even attempted
to brain him with their cudgels. But his tranquil demeanor
subdued those nearest to him, and the rest reluctantly fell
back while he passed through their midst and returned to
Wednesbury, escorted by a body guard recruited from their
own ranks. The next morning, as he rode through the town,
he was saluted with such cordial affection that he could
scarcely believe what he had seen and heard. Charles, who
met him at Nottingham, bruised, tattered, and torn, said that
he looked like a soldier of Christ fresh from the fray.
Others were not so fortunate. Thomas Walsh was im-
prisoned at Brandon, and took his revenge by preaching
through the barred windows of his cell to the crowd outside.
Alexander Mather's house was pulled about his ears in Wol-
verhampton, and at Boston in Lincolnshire he was left for
dead. At York, John Nelson was beaten into unconscious-
ness, and afterw^ards forced to enlist in the army. Thomas
Olivers was pursued at Yarmouth, and barely escaped with
his life. The list of these veterans of the Cross could be
extended indefinitely. From 1742 to 1750 hardly a month
elapsed without references in Wesley's Journal to simi-
lar scenes. At Penfield a baited bull was let loose on
the congregation; and at Plymouth and Bolton howling
fanatics, dancing with rage such as had never been seen
before in creatures called men, hunted the preacher like
a pack of wolves. There is nowhere a hint that any of
these humble helpers retreated before such outrages :
indeed they showed the same fortitude and courage which
were characteristic of the Wesleys. Some, like Thomas
Walsh, died while still young; others lived to see the
harvests that, in the abundance of their reaping, redeemed
the tears and blood in which they had been sown. The
meanest peasants rose above the sorrow and confusion of
310 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the time, and took a part in the molding of the destinies
of the nation. Mob leaders became class leaders, and
directed their prowess toward spiritual ends. The pugilist
who was foremost in the Wednesbury riot afterwards joined
the Society there, and made a good confession of his faith.
The services of the growing Church were conducted by lay
preachers and itinerants who had once purposed to destroy
it, but now gladly yielded obedience to the leader whose
genius compacted them into a healthy and harmonious
organization.
CHAPTER VIII
CONSOLIDATION AND EXPANSION
311
The epoch ends, the world is still,
The age has talk'd and work'd its fill —
The famous orators have shone.
The famous poets sung and gone.
The famous men of war have fought,
The famous speculators thought.
The famous players, sculptors, wrought.
The famous painters fill'd their wall,
The famous critics judged it all.
The combatants are parted now —
Uphung the spear, unbent the bow.
The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low.
And in the after silence sweet,
Now strifes are hush'd, our ear doth meet,
Ascending pure, the bell-like fame
Of this or that down-trodden name,
Delicate spirits, push'd away
In the hot press of the noon-day.
And o'er the plain, where the dead age
Did its now silent warfare wage —
O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom.
Where many a splendor finds its tomb,
Many spent fames and fallen mights —
The one or two immortal lights
Rise slowly up into the sky
To shine there everlastingly,
Like stars over the bounding hill.
The epoch ends, the world is still.
Matthew Arnold : Bacchanalia; or the New Age.
312
CHAPTER VIII
CONSOLIDATION AND EXPANSION
Wesley's withdrawal from Fetter Lane — The Foundery — Contro-
versy with Whitefield — Sermon on Free Grace and Predestina-
tion — Continuance of Calvinistic controversy — Toplady — Thomas
and Rowland Hill — Wesley's clerical supporters — Fletcher and Grim-
shaw — Lay Preachers — Their sufferings — Wesley's care for them
— The Class Meeting and other Methodist institutions — First Meth-
odist Conference — Wesley's theological position — Methodism in
North America — Philip Embury and Barbara Heck — Bishop As-
bury — Bishop Coke — Wesley and Coke's ordination — Deed of
Declaration — Death of Charles Wesley — Last Days of John Wesley.
Before Methodism was solidified and shaped to his pur-
pose, Wesley had to encounter internal as well as external
strife. Nor is this to be wondered at, in view of its recent
origin, the dissimilar views of its supporters, and the
enthusiasm, not always salutary, of its converts. The
Fetter Lane Society, founded on the advice of Peter Bohler,
and composed chiefly of Moravians, showed, as early as 1739,
the inherent differences which separated German and Angli-
can types of religious life. For a time Wesley calmed the
contentious spirits, but the exuberance of his followers
was repugnant to the passivity of the Moravian group,
whose leader, Philip Molther, advised the discontinuance of
reading the Scriptures, of prayer, and of good works. He
urged that expectant believers, undisturbed by such employ-
ments, might passively await the assured fulfillment of the
promises of the Gospel. Once established in this manner,
they were at liberty to observe or neglect the ordinances, as
they saw fit. Wesley continued to act as peace-maker, en-
313
314 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
deavoring by seasonable means to correct an attitude which
would have killed his enterprise. But the outcome was
such as might have been expected, and he and Charles
were at last convinced that any further attempt at union
between Moravianism and Methodism would be a surrender
of the ideals of both for the sake of a temporary truce.
On July 16, 1740, the Society resolved that John should
not be allowed to preach there again. On the following
Lord's Day evening he arose in his place and read a brief
explanation of his position, which among other things con-
travened the Moravian teaching concerning ordinances.
After this he and a few sympathizers withdrew.
They repaired to the Foundery, where their associates
gladly received them into a union which became the first
distinctive Methodist Society, itself the unit of the future
Church. The outcome of these internecine troubles was
decidedly helpful to Wesley's efforts, which now had a free
course. The Foundery remained his headquarters until
1778, when City Road Chapel was erected. As the name
indicates, it was formerly a government ordnance factory
which, after being wrecked by an explosion, lay in ruins
until purchased by Wesley. Here he established his depot
for religious literature ; the edifice was consecrated by the
presence of his venerable mother, who spent her last days
within its precincts, and died there on July 23, 1742. The
building stood in Windmill Street, near Finsbury Square,
and has long since disappeared ; the present Wesley an
Methodist Book Room and City Road Chapel are con-
tiguous to its site, and continue its sacred traditions.
Although his intercourse with the Moravians was now at
an end, Wesley always realized his extensive obligation to
such men as Peter Bohler and Christian David. The
separation was dictated by his conviction that he had gone
almost too far for safety in the direction of their mys-
ticism ; when this was remedied, he recalled them with
gratitude, and his later references to them were kindly
JOHN WESLEY 315
and respectful. Nor was his caution unjustified : had he
not halted and realigned his forces, he would have forfeited
to an artificial peace the responsibilities and results of half
a century's war upon sin in all its forms, secret or open.
"Stand still!" was their exhortation. "Necessity is laid
upon me; I must go forward," was the substance of his
reply.
Far more important in its scope and results was the
doctrinal dispute between Whitefield and Wesley. In
this case the dogma of predestination was the cause of
dissension, — that Gordian knot which no theologian nor
philosopher can untie; the insoluble problem of Divine
Sovereignty and the freedom of human will as bearing on
mortal destiny. We have observed that during his prep-
aration for the ministry Wesley had revolted against the
extreme interpretation of the Anglican article which treats
on the question, and that his mother agreed with him. His
view was, that while Omniscience necessarily foreknew
men's future state, that state was entirely determined by
their own act of personal acceptance or rejection of the
Gospel. In 1740, he published his sermon on "Free Grace,"
preached in the previous summer. It was the utterance of
one who saw only a few great principles, but expounded
them with clarity and earnestness. The Calvinistic theory
of election was summed up as follows : " By virtue of an
eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God, one part
of mankind are infallibly saved, and the rest infallibly
damned ; it being impossible that any of the former should
be damned, or that any of the latter should be saved. To
say that Christ does not intend to save all sinners is to
represent Him as a gross deceiver of the people, as mocking
His hapless creatures, as pretending the love which He had
not. He in whose mouth was no guile, you make full of
deceit, void of common sincerity. Such blasphemy as this
one would think might make the ear of a Christian to tingle.
So does this doctrine represent the most holy God as worse
316 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
than the devil, as both more false, more cruel, and more
unjust."
Miss Wedgwood speaks of the "provoking glibness" of the
discourse, and of Wesley's incapacity for perceiving diflS-
culties "which is the characteristic of an early stage of
culture." He certainly did not meet the argument that,
if the design of Christ is to save all and the result is
He only saves some, His work is to that extent a failure.
Nor can the horrors of the lost be extenuated by relieving
the Almighty of responsibility for their doom. Man's free
will is a transparent mockery if, too weak to stand alone, he
is placed amidst temptations which inevitably seduce the
masses of mankind and consign them to eternal reprobation.
Neither reason nor revelation, wisely interpreted, entirely
supports the eschatology of the Arminian or that of the
Calvinist. They do not warrant the notion of eternity as a
perpetual prolongation of time : it is rather one of the
attributes of Him Who is incomprehensible, and theologians
invade His Being when they thus attempt to measure or
announce His judgments. Out of this invasion have arisen
certain repulsive conceptions of the penalties of perdition
for which there is often but a slight basis of truth. Yet
Wesley's chastisement of Calvinism was an effective effort
to modify the awful dogma which left nothing to human
choice, and to soften the pitilessness of a theology which
protected its logic at the expense of every instinct of justice.
Notwithstanding Peter Bohler's crude assertion that "all
the damned souls would hereafter be brought out of hell,"
for "how can all be universally redeemed if all are not
finally saved," Wesley heartily accepted the orthodox
teachings concerning human depravity and everlasting
punishment for wilful transgression of the divine law and
conscious rejection of the divine mercy. He knew nothing
of the modern temper, deeply felt by Protestantism, which
assigns rights to man as well as to Deity, conceiving of all
divine-human relations from an ethical rather than from
JOHN WESLEY 317
an arbitrary standpoint. One of the postulates of contem-
porary theology is that punishment must be remedial if it
is to be just, and must terminate if it is not to be futile. Nor
does he seem to have considered the impermanence of evil,
as St. John reveals it : a more or less mundane phenom-
enon which passes away, in contrast to the essential reality
of good, which alone abides. He did not hesitate to pro-
claim the terrors of the Law, although they were not the
staple of his preaching. And it must be remembered that
a more balanced opinion would have been of little avail for
the majority of his audiences, to whom moderation on such
an issue might have appeared as a decision for, rather than
against, their open wickedness. It is a hard saying but a
true one, and not without support in a more enlightened
age, that many individuals are only moved by three or four
circumscribed fears : those of hunger ; of force ; of law ; or
of the dread hereafter. And many who heard Wesley's
denunciations with guilty and trembling hearts frequently
proved that if the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,
the love of God is its end.
Whitefield, on the other hand, had always leaned towards
the doctrinal position originally derived from Genevan
sources. Hard and consistent thinking was alien to his
nature, and his expositions of Calvinism, the most consistent
of systems, were fragmentary and disjointed. He was con-
tent in this matter to submit to one of the greatest minds
that ever combined power in thought with equal power
in speech and action. Jonathan Edwards, the foremost
intellect America can boast, was primarily a philosopher
rather than a theologian, whose excessive speculations marred
his religious thinking, and who used them to bring into pain-
ful prominence those severe dogmas of the Puritan the-
ocracy, the reaction against which was found in earlier
Unitarianism and later in the transcendentalism of Emerson.
Under different circumstances this recluse of New England
and Princeton might have developed a metaphysical system
318 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
comparable for its intellectual influence with that of Hume
or Kant ; as it was, he derived his chief inspiration from a
nearly obsolete theology which, but for the impetus he
supplied its flagging energies, would probably not have
known the renaissance it enjoyed. A survey of his narrower
range shows how steadfastly credal formulse persist, even
after reason and truth seem to have uprooted them. Yet,
if prophets have a right to be unreasonable, Edwards was
thus privileged, for he grasped the essentials on which
real morality depends, though, while expanding the doctrine
of the absolute Sovereignty of God on lines necessary
to that end, he carefully refrained from dealing likewise with
others not so necessary to his main purpose. Even in such
superior natures as his the windows of the mind are all too
limited for an ample prospect of things pertaining to other
worlds than this. And it must not be forgotten that what-
ever else he did or left undone Edwards knew how to awaken
the best feelings and impulses of men, to stimulate their
faith, and to kindle and keep alive the religious zeal of the
commonwealth. His writings are full of spiritual subtleties
and great verities, tinged with the melancholy of a lofty
spirit who was much misunderstood.
Whitefi.eld's admirers were frequently more fervent than
helpful, and their unqualified homage gave him no hint of any
of his defects. Sir James Stephen speaks of him as "leaping
over a state of pupilage" to become "at once a teacher and
a dogmatist." His convictions upon Calvinistic doctrines
must have been strong, or he would not for a moment have
sacrificed for them his friendship with Wesley. But election
and reprobation as expressed by him were not the scandalous
Theism which their worst forms presented. Their presence
can rather be detected under such sweet and exultant phrases
as the "sovereign," "electing," "distinguishing" love of the
Eternal Father, whose "irresistible call" had brought him
out of darkness into the light of "the chosen"; "a mere
earthen vessel," meriting naught but wrath, but filled with
JOHN WESLEY 319
undeserved mercies. This was the language of the impas-
sioned orator, who felt the presence of his audience, but did
not comprehend the basic phases of Calvinistic teaching.
In New England these prevailed for a period suflBciently
extended to reveal their lamentable consequences. Chiefly
because of the sheer fatalism which separated the elect
from the non-elect, the clergy opposed the religious educa-
tion of the young, and proscribed missionary activities. In
the Northern States slavery was regarded as a regrettable
necessity; below Mason and Dixon's line it was accepted
as a Scriptural provision, by which Whitefield, among numer-
ous other clergymen, felt free to profit. The mechanical
and lifeless rationalism of this theory, as held by disciples
who had neither Edwards' genius nor his devotion, created
endless disputings, and drove many people into sects of
religious liberalism. Some of these supplanted the im-
possible and irresponsible egoism which had hitherto been
postulated as the determinant of Divine action, with the
ideal of God as the Universal Father, and of all men as
essentially and permanently related to Him. Others, in
their rebound from a relentless system, went much further,
and formed that rationalizing caste which has been an
influential factor in American Unitarianism. Such, then,
were the beliefs which Whitefield proposed to incorporate
into Methodism, and had Wesley not anticipated the pro-
tests of Bushnell and Beecher, the evolution of evangelical
Christianity might have followed very different lines.
Writing from London on June 25, 1739, to Wesley at
Bristol, Whitefield refers with alarm to his colleague's
intention to print a sermon on predestination. "It shocks
me to think of it ; what will be the consequences but con-
troversy? If people ask me my opinion, what shall I do?
I have a critical part to act, God enable me to behave aright !
Silence on both sides will be best. It is noised abroad al-
ready, that there is a division between you and me ; oh, my
heart within me is grieved!" When a copy of Wesley's
320 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
sermon on "Free Grace" was sent to Whitefield at Savannah,
he entered into a lengthy correspondence with the author,
which, at first affectionate enough, grew less conciliatory
as it proceeded. He prepared a formal answer to the
sermon "in the spirit of candid friendship " ; but the friend-
ship was not so obvious as the candor. Charles Wesley, to
whom he submitted it before publication, advised its with-
drawal. Nevertheless it was published, and Whitefield
notified John that hereafter he was resolved to preach against
him and his brother wherever he went. Wesley remonstrated
with him on the unwisdom of such a course, and criticized
the pamphlet for its random rhetoric and flippancy. In
March, 1741, he wrote: "Mr. Whitefield, being returned to
England, entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends,
because they did not hold the decrees. Here was the first
breach, which warm men persuaded Mr. Whitefield to make
merely for a difference of opinion. Those who believed
universal redemption had no desire to separate ; but those
who held particular redemption would not hear of any
accommodation, being determined to have no fellowship
with men that were in such dangerous errors. So there were
now two sorts of Methodists : those for particular and those
for general redemption." ^ Happily, however, personal
rancor subsided ; Howel Harris interposed to reconcile
them, and Whitefield made a handsome apology for the
allusions in his pamphlet to Wesley's habit of casting lots.
On April 23, 1742, they spent "an agreeable hour" to-
gether, concerning which Wesley made the self-complacent
comment, "I believe he is sincere in all he says concerning
his earnest desire of joining hand in hand with all that love
the Lord Jesus Christ. But if (as some would persuade me)
he is not, the loss is all on his own side. I am just as I am.
I go on my way, whether he goes with me or stays behind." ^
' "Wesley's Works" ; Vol. VIII, p. 335.
» "Journal of Rev. John Wesley" ; edited by Rev. Nehemiah Curnock ;
Vol. Ill, p. 4.
JOHN WESLEY 321
A less dubious note was struck toward the close of 1755,
when Wesley declared : " Disputings are now no more ;
we love one another, and join hand in hand to promote the
cause of our common Master." ^
But the ties which prevented an irreparable breach be-
tween them did not bind their followers, and after White-
field's death the controversy broke out again in uproar-
ious fashion. The London Conference in 1770 sent forth
a counterblast against Antinomianism, which rebuked this
deduction from Calvinism for its ethical rather than for
its theological errors. Lady Huntingdon, with some of the
ministers who inherited the work and opinions of White-
field, took umbrage at this, the more so because Methodism
was drifting away from the Anglican Church. Her desire
that it should remain within the Establishment, and her
impatience with Wesley's Arminianism, assumed such violent
forms that she vowed she would go to the flames in pro-
test against the "infamous Minutes" of the Conference.
Whatever may have been her ladyship's cravings for martyr-
dom, she was apparently more willing to inflict punishment
on others than suffer it herself. Neither she nor her partisans
had arrived at the state of intellectual freedom in which,
while holding to one's own conclusions, it is possible to believe
that others who think differently may be right, or, at any
rate, equally honest. Accordingly, she summarily dismissed
the learned and able Joseph Benson from his tutorship at
Trevecca College, and even the saintly Fletcher was so
harassed that he could not remain there. Wesley's magis-
terial expostulations with the Countess had no effect : she
was just as accustomed as he was to having her own way,
and "Pope John" and "Pope Joan" joined issue. The
Honorable and Reverend Walter Shirley entered the lists
in aid of his titled relative, and sent out a circular letter
declaiming against the action of the Conference. Their
* " Joxirnal of Rev. John Wesley" ; edited by Rev. Nehemiah Curnock;
Vol. IV, p. 140.
T
322 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
attack ended in a fiasco, the Countess suffered the unusual
■experience of a decided reverse, and Shirley felt obliged
to apologize for his unseemly language.
His strictures evoked the defense of Arminianism by
John Fletcher and Thomas Olivers, while Augustus Top-
lady, Sir Thomas Hill, and his better known brother Rowland
became their antagonists. The honors of the acrimonious
discussion were with Fletcher, whose "Checks to Antino-
mianism" were more admirable for their Christian temper
than for their philosophical grasp of the difficult problems
about which others wrangled while he at least reasoned.
Toplady's contributions are best passed over in charitable
silence, in view of the fact that he was the author of one of
the noblest hymns in the language. The then youthful
Rowland Hill's talent was perverted to abusive epithets and
studied insolence : Wesley, according to this son of a land-
owning Shropshire family, was "the lying apostle of the
Foundery " ; " a designing wolf " ; " a dealer in stolen wares " ;
"as unprincipled as a rook and as silly as a jackdaw," " first
pilfering his neighbors' plumage, and then going forth dis-
playing his borrowed tail to the eyes of a laughing world."
Such ramping recalled Lavington's escapade, and, like it,
had no bearing on the question. Wesley replied to Hill
in his pamphlet entitled, "Some Remarks on Mr. Hill's
Review of all the Doctrines taught by Mr. John Wesley,"
in which he also "drew the sword and threw away the
scabbard." "I now look back," said he, "on a train of
incidents that have occurred for many months last past,
and adore a wise and gracious Providence, ordering all
things well ! When the circular letter was first dispersed
throughout Great Britain and Ireland, I did not conceive
the immense good which God was about to bring out of that
evil. But no sooner did Mr. Fletcher's first Letters appear
than the scene began to open ; and the design of Providence
opened more and more, when Mr. Shirley's Narrative and
Mr. Hill's Letters, constrained him to write his Second and
JOHN WESLEY 323
Third Checks to Antinomianism. It was then indisputably
clear, that neither my brother nor I had borne a sufficient
testimony to the truth. ... I will no more desire any Ar-
minian, so called, to remain only on the defensive. Rather,
chase the fiend, reprobation, to his own hell, and every doc-
trine connected with it. Let none pity or spare one limb of
either speculative or practical Antinomianism, or of any doc-
trine that naturally tends thereto ; only remembering that,
however we are treated by men, who have a dispensation
from the vulgar rules of justice and mercy, we are not to fight
them at their own weapons, to return railing for railing.
Those who plead the cause of the God of love are to imitate
Him they serve; and, however provoked, to use no other
weapons than those of truth and love, of Scripture and
reason." ^
This outspoken document scarcely exemplified the charity
it advised, but it eliminated Calvinism from Methodist
theology. After the purification and the later secession of
some fanatical advocates of perfectionism, Wesley found
himself at the head of a homogeneous and aggressive body,
delivered from doctrinal uncertainty, and animated by
unshaken confidence in its mission.
II
While his independence of the world helped him to
know it as no worldling can, and to guard his infant cause
against its foes, he was not without the steadfast sympathy
and friendship of a group of Anglican clergymen, some of
whom stood by him to the last. The first of these was Vincent
Perronet, Vicar of Shoreham, Kent, a man of whom it may
be said, in Jowett's phrase, that for him things sacred and
profane lay near together but yet were never confused. Al-
though seldom in the public eye, he counseled the coun-
selors, and few things of importance were undertaken by
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. Ill, p. 144.
324 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the Wesley s without his approval. Another was William
Grimshaw, vicar of Haworth, a moorland town in the heart
of the West Riding of Yorkshire, since associated with the
famous daughters of his successor, the Reverend Patrick
Bronte. Grimshaw was an eccentric but frank, fearless,
and companionable man, large in nature as in stature, and a
warm advocate of Methodism so long as it remained within
the Established Church. Another was John Berridge, of
Everton, in the Midlands, a useful and widely known col-
league, whom Wesley loved to visit. But the extravagant
conduct of Berridge and the prostrations and ravings of
his converts were excesses Wesley found it difficult to
explain.
The ripest, most apt and perfect saint of Anglican Meth-
odism was Fletcher of Madeley, a naturalized Swiss of
patrician descent, whose holiness of character impressed even
Voltaire, and is still an inspiration and a power. His memory
is encircled by an ethereal luster which has given him a unique
place in the annals of his own Church and in those of Meth-
odism. Many devout men and women of all persuasions
have derived their best ideals and conceptions of evangel-
ical Christianity from his personal example. Disregarding
his parent's intention that he should enter the ministry,
Fletcher, like many of his countrymen, sought employment
as a soldier of fortune, and being frustrated in this attempt,
repaired to England, where he secured a position as tutor
in the family of Mr. Thomas Hill of Tern Hall, Shropshire.^
While residing with his patron in London, he became an
earnest Christian, and at once showed that capacity for the
religious life in which he has had few equals. An ardent
love for New Testament truth and inward purity possessed
him. He was set apart to the pastorate in his twenty-
eighth year, and during the first months after his ordination
ministered at Atcham Church, an ancient structure of
Norman foundation, standing near one of the loveliest
> Now called Attingham Hall and the seat of the Berwicka.
JOHN WESLEY 325
windings of the Severn River, In this rural paradise, sur-
rounded by a landscape full of unmarketable beauties of
glade and hedgerow, where, beyond the skirting woods of
Attingham and Haughmond, the spires of Shrewsbury pierce
the horizon and the gray walls of the former Cistercian Abbey
of Buildwas are seen in the adjacent valley, Fletcher entered
upon the work of his life. Two livings were offered him, one
of comparative ease, the other, at Madeley, an industrial
parish seven miles distant, small in stipend and overflowing
with vice and iniquity. He chose the latter, and there began
that ministry which could not be confined to any locality.
At first wantonly opposed, at last tenderly loved, in a then
obscure village Fletcher led a life crowded with these alter-
nations, but crowned in the sequel by the unbounded rev-
erence of his parishioners and many others who held him
well-nigh infallible in the higher matters that pertain to
the spirit. His unadorned story, like that of St. Francis,
whom he resembled in sanctity, is as fascinating as any
romance of medieval religion.
His frail body could not adequately sustain the intensity
of his meek but unquenchable soul, and when, at length, it
gave way, he spent his last Lord's Day in the sanctuary at
the altar of the Holy Communion, and was carried thence
to his death-bed amid the blessings of his people. His
wife, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, survived him many years,
and was herself counted among the saints of Methodism,
Wesley, who had chosen Fletcher as his successor, mourned
his decease, and testified of him : " Many exemplary men
have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years ;
but one equal to him I have not known, one so inwardly
and outwardly devoted to God. So unblamable a character,
in every respect, I have not found either in Europe or
America ; and I scarce expect to find such another on this
side of eternity." ^
Other assistance came, however, and Wesley soon
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol, III, p. 464.
326 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
obtained an active corps of workers. In the first days
of the movement, preaching was confined to ministers
of episcopal ordination, but its spread in wider areas
where the Anghcan pastors were unfriendly led to develop-
ments which eventually separated Methodism from the older
Church. On occasions when no such clergyman was pres-
ent to address the congregations, lay helpers had ventured
to do so. Of these were Joseph Humphreys, John Cennick,
and Thomas Maxfield. As early as 1738, Humphreys had
assisted Wesley at Fetter Lane, and after 1740 the other
two were identified with the more distinct Methodism at
the Foundery. By the end of that year the Wesleys were
isolated : Whitefield was in America ; Gambold and Brig-
ham had joined the Moravians; and Anglicans generally
had washed their hands of the enterprise. Under these
circumstances the forerunners of the itinerant preachers
appeared. Cennick was a man of some culture, the Master
of Kingswood School, who celebrated his conversion in
several well-known hymns, among which are those beginning
"Children of the Heavenly King"
and
"Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb."
Requested to reprove him for expounding the Scriptures
to a congregation disappointed of its minister, on the con-
trary Wesley so encouraged him that he gave his spare
time to preaching and exposition in the neighborhood of
Bristol. Yet when Wesley received word there that Thomas
Maxfield had also "turned preacher," and in the London
Society at that, he was greatly disquieted. One surmises
that his dismay was due to the relative importance of the
Foundery and to the difference between Cennick and Max-
field, rather than to Maxfield's presumption. A man of
unstable disposition, the latter had been converted under
Wesley's preaching at Bristol on May 20, 1739, and became
the servant and companion of his brother Charles. John
JOHN WESLEY 327
now hurried to London, determined to silence him, but
there he received an unexpected caution from his mother :
"You know what my sentiments have been," said Mrs.
Wesley. "You cannot suspect me of favoring anything of
this kind, but take care what you do with respect to that
young man, for he is as surely called to preach as you are."
He yielded to her advice to hear Maxfield for himself, and,
after doing so, the matter ended with his hearty sanction.
Within a year there were twenty recognized lay preachers
in the various Societies, an innovation which again annoyed
the clergy of the Establishment. "I know your brother
well," remarked Dr. Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh, to
Charles Wesley. "I could never credit all I heard respect-
ing him and you; but one thing in your conduct I could
never account for — your employing laymen." "My lord,"
rejoined Charles, "the fault is yours and your brethren's."
" How so ? " asked the Archbishop. " Because you hold your
peace, and the stones cry out," answered Charles. "But
I am told," urged his Grace, "that they are unlearned men."
"Some are," said Charles, adding with a flash, "and so the
dumb ass rebukes the prophet," whereupon the Archbishop
asked no further questions.^
The truth that laws and institutions are not made, but
grow out of necessity, was illustrated by this emergence
from the neglected people of their spiritual guides and
teachers. Those who were chosen for such offices carried
the Gospel into places where Wesley, ubiquitous as he
was, could never have penetrated. Their advent into
his evangelizing scheme delivered it from the contingencies
which might have arisen at his death; the work ceased to
hang on the thread of a single existence, and the confident
prophecies of its opponents that the movement would soon
perish were doomed to remain unfulfilled. Within twelve
years eighty-five helpers had already entered the service, of
whom six had died, ten had retired, one had been expelled,
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 277.
328 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and sixty-eight were in active employment. At the Leeds
Conference in 1755 rules regulating their conduct were for-
mulated and published by Wesley. They were expected
to be always earnestly alive to their duty, patterns of self-
denial ; to drink only water, to rise at four, to fast
on Fridays, to visit from house to house, to insist on a
definite religious experience in the members, and to make
a quarterly report of their labors. No one else could
have required such self-effacement with any hope of
obtaining it from men characteristically independent.
He did not make these demands, however, in the spirit of
mere supremacy, but because he was satisfied that they
were absolutely essential to the welfare of his workers and
the success of their work. On their part, the preachers were
content to submit to ordinances which the ruler himself
was the first to obey. When he was criticized for investing
himself with arbitrary power, he answered artlessly, " If by
arbitrary power you mean a power which I exercise singly,
without any colleagues therein, this is certainly true, but I
see no hurt in it." There was little, because his love for
these obscure laborers was that of a father for his children,
and theirs for him was blended with a reverent awe. Once
his prejudices were overcome, none rejoiced in their presence
and progress more than did Wesley. He knew them in-
timately, read their respective traits with a discerning eye,
watched over their temporal and spiritual wants, was patient
with their misunderstandings, mourned over their defections,
which were few, and covered the pages of his Journal with
accounts of their struggles and triumphs. The hardships of
their lot were such as even he had not known, save for a
brief period. They were subjected to inhuman treatment long
after their leader, by general consent, had obtained exemp-
tion from the penalties the world is wont to inflict on
prophets of the truth. Relentlessly pursued by their enemies,
denounced, ridiculed, caricatured, threatened, maltreated ;
penniless and a-hungered, sometimes sick unto death; and
JOHN WESLEY 329
all for no other reason than their exercise of the liberty
to testify concerning the Gospel; yet as a rule they
were found faithful to the end. A word of praise from
Wesley's lips was as eagerly prized as is the cross for valor
by the soldier on the battle-field. The testimony of a con-
science void of offense and the bliss of a regenerated life
were at once the secret of their heroical character and the
burden of their message.
Doubtless there were violations of good taste, prudence,
and sobriety of judgment, but, when the origin, training and
environment of the first itinerants are considered, these
mistakes appear relatively slight. It is apparent that they
not only met a national religious emergency, but that on
the whole they were the best equipped men to meet it. The
gulf which separated the lettered cleric from the artisan
and the peasant was unknown to them. After the manner
of those of the New Testament these democratic disciples
consorted with the multitude, and captured many strong-
holds of sin which had withstood the parochial clergy.
They introduced to homes ravaged by vice and crime the
thrift and industry, the domestic piety and rectitude of
conduct which form the hearth where the soul of a country
is nurtured and protected. Wesley's estimate of them was
judicious : " In the one thing which they profess to know
they are not ignorant men. I trust there is not one of them
who is not able to go through such an examination in sub-
stantial, practical, experimental divinity as few of our can-
didates for holy orders even in the University (I speak it
with sorrow and shame and in tender love), are able to do."
He had his full share of the scholar's hate of ignorance ; none
knew better the advantages of an educated ministry, and he
was at great pains in aiding his helpers to gain knowledge.
"Your talent in preaching does not increase," he wrote to
one of these. "It is lively, but not deep. There is little
variety; there is no compass of thought. Reading only
can supply this, with daily meditation and daily prayer.
330 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
. . . Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily.
It is for your life ! There is no other way ; else you will
be a trifler all your days and a pretty, superficial preacher.
Do justice to your own soul ; give it time and means to grow ;
do not starve yourself any longer." He lectured to them
on "Pearson on the Creed," "Aldrich's Logic," and similar
works; discussed their difficulties, instructed them in the
art of correct thinking and speaking, and arranged the course
of their studies. His "Notes on the New Testament,"
taken from Bengel, and the "Rules for Action and Utter-
ance" were written primarily for them, and his "Christian
Library," an abridgment of some fifty well-known works,
while meant for a larger public, was also intended for his
helpers. Whatever came from his pen was eagerly read by
them in order that they might become a more efficient
fighting unit under his generalship. The time was not
ripe for constitutional Methodism : indeed a division of
its government at this stage would have been equiva-
lent to placing an army confronting the enemy under a
committee of half-trained officers. It was necessary that the
preachers should cultivate a talent for administration before
they could safely be intrusted with its powers. This was a
wise policy, preserving the integrity of the movement from the
undesirable elements which a few zealots were eager to intro-
duce. Although an autocrat, Wesley was generally careful
to ascertain as far as possible the wishes of his preachers.
No Protestant clergyman ever exercised a more fascinating
influence over his brethren. The charm was personal,
whether diffused through his conversation, his correspon-
dence, or his kindly acts. His preachers, old and young,
were free to offer suggestions, which he readily adopted
if they commended themselves to his judgment; and
Henry Moore, who took advantage of this privilege more
frequently than did his brethren, was relished for his
freedom of speech. When a younger minister's frank
expression of opinion provoked the blunt and militant
JOHN WESLEY 331
Thomas Rankin to chide him for impertinence, Wesley at
once interposed in his defense, and added, "I will thank
the youngest man among you to tell me of any fault you see
in me; in so doing, I shall consider him my best friend."
This was his usual bearing in a singular position not easily
understood in this day of distributed ecclesiastical authority.
While he lived, his absolutism was tempered and adjusted
by his paternal conduct ; after he died, not even the Confer-
ence, in its collective wisdom, could exercise it as he had
done without encountering resistance and material loss.
The fact that one great soul made his ideas and convic-
tions the sources of spiritual vitality for generations of men
and women is impressive. Wesley's Christian nature, en-
dowed with an intellectual energy unrivaled in its attrac-
tion for the plain folk, made him the figure of his century
which brightens on the historic canvas while other figures
fade. The bishops and statesmen whom he could not per-
suade nor prompt, who would not hearken to his counsel and
despised his reproof, wax dimmer and dimmer, while he looms
larger and more influential. But this would have been
impossible had he not extended his work through the helpers
whom he brought to the rescue of a degraded populace and
controlled and directed with singular firmness united with
equally remarkable tact. Thus it was not only his renovated
forms of theological faith or his unique individuality coin-
ciding with opportunity or necessity, but the fertility of
his organizing genius and, most of all, the devotion of his
preachers, that accounted for the spread of Methodism.
Some of his subordinates were designated "half itinerants,"
such as John Haime, William Shent, William Roberts,
Charles Perronet, John Furz, Jonathan Jones, Jonathan
Maskew, James Roquet, John Fisher, Matthew Lowes,
John Brown, and Enoch Williams; others, "chief local
preachers," such as Joseph Jones, Thomas Maxfield, Thomas
Westall, Francis Walker, Joseph Tucker, William Tucker,
James Morris, Eleazer Webster, John Bakewell, Alexander
332 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Mather, Thomas Colbeck, Titus Knight, John Slocomb,
and Michael Calender. Southey, in reviewing these lists,
describes the appearance of John Haime, the soldier evange-
list, dwelling on his mean and common features, his small,
inexpressive eyes, scanty eyebrows and short, broad, vulgar
nose, "in a face of ordinary proportions which seemed to
mark out a subject who would have been content to travel
a jog-trot along the high-road of mortality, and have looked
for no greater delight than that of smoking and boozing in
the chimney corner. And yet," adds Southey, "John Haime
passed his whole life in a continued spiritual ague." ^ True,
Haime had his disordered humors, and he was troubled
about many things. But his case showed that when religion
reaches and uplifts the lowest in the human scale illimitable
are the hopes it inspires of what humanity may be permitted
to attain. On May 11, 1745, he stood in the stricken ranks
at Fontenoy and was among the last to retreat. When
the army camped in Flanders, Haime, although he had
never seen Wesley, preached his doctrines to his comrades,
and led them to the Cross. They went into action
singing Methodist hymns, and died on the field praising
God for His salvation. John Downes, who left sixpence
as his total fortune, and was forced to relinquish preaching
because of ill-health, was a mathematician and a mechanical
expert, and best of all, a godly and an honorable man.
Thomas Walsh, one of the Irish converts of 1749, in some
respects the foremost member of the pioneer band, was dis-
tinguished not only for his fervid piety, but also for his learn-
ing. Wesley regarded him as the best Biblical scholar he
had ever known. His proficiency in Hebrew and Greek
was such that he read these languages as easily as he did his
native Erse, and could tell how often and where a given word
occurred in the original Scriptures. "The life of Thomas
Walsh," said Southey, "might almost convince even a
Catholic that saints are to be found in other communions
« "Life of Wesley" ; pp. 292-298.
JOHN WESLEY 333
as well as in the Church of Rome. . . . His soul seemed
absorbed in God ; and from the serenity and something
resembling splendour which appeared on his countenance
and in all his gestures afterwards, it might easily be dis-
covered what he had been about." ^ He was widely accepted
among his own people, to whom he became an ambassador
of Christ Jesus for nine years before he died at the early age
of twenty-eight.
Among the six preachers admitted at the Limerick Con-
ference of August, 1752, the first held in Ireland, was Philip
Guier, Master of the German school at Ballingran. Of the
seven thousand Germans who in 1709 had been driven by
persecution from the Palatinate of the Rhine to England,
three thousand were sent to America, and the majority of
the remainder settled in or around Limerick, where Guier
taught Embury his letters and instructed Thomas Walsh
in the faith. The leader of Methodism at Limerick until
his death in 1778, Guier tended the little flock so assiduously
that a hundred years later his name was still a hailing sign
of the people for the itinerants. John Jane certainly earned
a place in the roll of self-sacrificing devotees. Unable to
purchase a horse, he undertook his journeys on foot, and
Wesley once met him at Holyhead without food or means,
but in capital spirits after a long tramp from Bristol, during
which he had spent seven nights on the road and managed
to exist with only three shillings to his account. Weakened
by privations and exposures, he died a few months later,
sixteen pence and his clothes being his total estate —
"enough," said Wesley, "for any unmarried preacher of the
Gospel to leave his executors." The list of these worthies
could be enlarged indefinitely, and even so late as the early
Victorian period, the Primitive Methodist exhorters and
preachers were subjected to similar hardships.
Southey's criticism that as a rule Wesley's men " possessed
no other qualifications than a good stock of animal spirits
J "Life of Wesley" ; pp. 381-388.
334 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and a ready flow of words, a talent which of all others is
least connected with sound intellect," would make them the
merest accident in a tremendous moral conflict of which they
were actually the center. On the contrary, their preaching
served to emphasize the fact that the tongue is eloquent in
its own language and the heart in its own religion. That
religion was sheltered in their deepest consciousness, and
for it they wrought and suffered greatly, finding in its ideals
the true life of the spirit and an inspiration to disinterested
action.
Ill
Wesley's success as an organizer was further due to his
resourcefulness in adopting or modifying methods and plans
already existing as well as those he formulated himself.
Neither the name nor the idea of the Societies originated
with him, and he refers to his own use of them as follows :
"The first rise of Methodism was in November, 1729, when
four of us met together at Oxford ; the second was at
Savannah in April, 1736, when twenty or thirty persons
met at my house ; the last was at London, when forty or
fifty of us agreed to meet together every Wednesday evening,
in order to free conversation, begun and ended with singing
and prayer." ^ The Society in Aldersgate Street, where
he was converted, was held under Anglican auspices pre-
viously to Molther's appearance, and so was that at Fetter
Lane. Three years after the exodus to the Foundery,
distinctively Methodist organizations had spread from
London to Bristol, Kingswood, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and
were soon multiplied throughout the kingdom. A book of
rules for their guidance, which was issued at Newcastle in
1743, and signed by the Wesleys, contained their definition
of a Society as "a company of men having the form and
seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray
* Ecclesiastical History, IV, p. 175, quoted by Canon J. H. Overton :
" John Wesley " ; p. 121.
JOHN WESLEY 335
together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch
over one another in love, that they may help each other
to work out their own salvation." They naturally de-
sired fellowship, and in providing for it Wesley reverted
to the practice of the Apostolic Church, where he found
the authorization of those measures without which his
congregations would have been impaired if not destroyed.
The institution most typical of Methodism was the class
meeting, which began at Bristol in 1742. In order to
raise funds for the extinction of the debt upon the Horse
Fair Chapel, one Captain Fry proposed that every mem-
ber should give a penny a week. The objection was
made that some were too poor to afford this modest sum,
whereupon Fry volunteered to underwrite the contri-
butions of eleven such members, and suggested that
others should do likewise. His advice was taken, the entire
Society was divided into groups of twelve, the responsible
member being called the leader, and the rest his class. In
this way originated the fiscal system which has since been
employed for the support of the ministry, and also that
communion of saints which has had no superior.
The watch night service, which was akin to the vigilce
of the early Church, was at first held monthly, but later, on
New Year's eve only. The quarterly meeting arose out of
the necessity for pastoral supervision of the Societies and class
meetings, and gradually became the local church court for
the circuits assigned to the preachers, who also gave tickets
to the members in good standing. The band meetings
and love feasts were intended to cultivate in their at-
tendants a grateful sense of God's mercies, and self-
examination concerning their state, sins, and temptations.
The penitents' meeting is sufficiently described by its
name, the hymns and exhortations being such as were
suitable for mourners who had lost their assurance of for-
giveness. It is evident that these means for religious growth
were more nearly a reproduction of those of the New
336 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Testament than many others then extant, and that nothing
had been done as yet to contravene the ideals of AngH-
canism concerning the priesthood of the clergy. On this
issue even Wesley contended that the priest was a repre-
sentative character, with derivative functions, and traces of
his conception have appeared in some of his ministerial
followers. We return to the class meeting because it was
the soul of the peculiar fraternity and social worship which
have been the cohesive bonds of Wesleyanism. Within its
hallowed circle the sinful were warned to " flee from the wrath
to come," the careless were reproved, the backsliders re-
covered, the faint-hearted encouraged, and the presump-
tuous restrained. As the fundamental part of a polity
which was dictated by necessity rather than expediency,
it directed spiritual energies, and conserved the divine
life out of which these arose. It gave Wesley and his
members an inviolable retreat for their souls' safety; it
freed them for the most aggressive evangelism England
and America have known; it coordinated in one Christian
democracy colliers, laborers, artisans, ironworkers, mer-
chants and scholars, and fused them into a brotherhood
whose main objects were to live soberly and righteously,
and grow daily in the knowledge and love of their Re-
deemer. It also produced an extensive hagiology, in which
for the first time the miner and the plowman had their
proportionate numbers and distinction. The majority
of its adherents came from a harassing environment
to the cherished spot where they learned to endure
as seeing Him Who is invisible. "It can scarce be
conceived," wrote Wesley, "what advantages have been
reaped from this prudential regulation. Many now
experience that Christian fellowship of which they had
not so much as an idea before." The leaders essayed the
difficult task of spiritual culture, and despite many draw-
backs discharged its duties with courage, fidelity, and wisdom.
Such an intercourse could not fail to be mutually helpful
JOHN WESLEY 337
and enriching. It was at once the outer court and the inner
sanctuary of that temple of Hving souls which arose before
the unbelieving gaze of bigoted clerics and cynical secular-
ists, and while it was held dear the missionary spirit of
Methodism remained invincible.
The first Conference convened at the Foundery on Monday,
June 25, 1744, and remained in session for five days. It
consisted of ten members : the two Wesleys, John Hodges,
Rector of Wenvo, Henry Piers, Vicar of Bexley, Samuel
Taylor, Vicar of Quinton, John Meriton, an incumbent in
the Isle of Man, and four lay preachers, Thomas Richards,
Thomas Maxfield, John Bennett, and John Downes. Al-
though of these last named only Downes remained with
Wesley to the end, they were the representatives of the lay
preachers who in Britain now occupy ten out of every
twelve of the pulpits of Methodism. Small in numbers as
the Conference was, this did not prevent it from devising
a large program. On the Lord's Day previous to the open-
ing session the Holy Communion was administered to the
London Society of over two thousand members. Charles
Wesley delivered the oflficial sermon, which was followed
by a series of discussions on doctrine and order, when it
was resolved to maintain Anglican standards both by
preaching and example. The new disciples were urged to
build one another up in faith and diligence in order that
Scriptural holiness might be spread throughout the land.
The itinerants were minutely directed as to their general
conduct, and exhorted to remember that "a preacher is to
mind every point, great or small, in the Methodist discipline.
Therefore you will need all the grace and sense you have,
and to have all your wits about you."
These ten men, the majority of whom were Anglican
clergymen, created the annual Conference, over forty-seven
sessions of which Wesley himself presided, and which has
met for one hundred and seventy-two successive years.
The Conferences of American and Australian Methodism,
338 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
both annual and quadrennial, were afterwards modeled
upon it. As organizations they have spread a network of
jurisdiction throughout the English-speaking world and
over missionary lands, becoming the high courts of legisla-
tion and executive control, and conveying the spirit and
doctrines of their Founder to every quarter of the globe.
The apparent innovation of Wesley's teachings was largely
due to the fact that what is seen or heard for the first time,
however ancient, appears novel. He did little more than
expound the principles of Christianity contained in the
Articles of the Church of England, and interpreted by
Moravianism. This led him to the regenerated life which
is supreme over ecclesiasticism and dogmatism. From
Moravianism he also derived some major conceptions of
how that life was received and propagated. In its ex-
ample he saw the possibility of forming vital groups within
the Church rather than of founding an independent com-
munion, and enacted his measures accordingly. He deemed
the position of the Scriptures impregnable, and wrote of
them in the Preface to his Sermons. "Let me be homo
unius libri. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men.
I sit down alone : only God is here. In his presence I read
His book ; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there
a doubt concerning the meaning of what I read? I lift up
my heart to the Father of lights, and ask him to let me know
His will. I then search after and consider parallel passages
of Scripture. I meditate thereon with all the attention and
earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt
still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things
of God ; and then the writings whereby, being dead, they
yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach." ^
His language shows that few men have been less
hampered in their religious energies by the critical in-
tellectual atmosphere. While he never regarded regularity
in minor theological issues as of supreme importance, he
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. I, p. 532.
JOHN WESLEY 339
always insisted upon the necessity of repentance, regenera-
tion, and justification by faith. These, though separable
in thought, were quite inseparable in fact. "The moment
we are justified by the grace of God through the redemption
that is in Jesus, we are also born of the Spirit. . . . Jus-
tification implies only a relative, the new birth, a real change.
God in justifying us does something for us; in begetting
us again He does the work in us. By justification, instead
of enemies we become children; by sanctification, instead
of sinners we become saints. The first restores us to the
favour, the other to the image of God."
His view of regeneration was inconsistent. In his
"Treatise on Baptism," published in 1756, he states that
"By baptism, we, who were 'by nature children of wrath,'
are made the children of God. And this regeneration, which
our Church, in so many places, ascribes to Baptism, is more
than barely being admitted into the Church, though com-
monly connected therewith : being ' grafted into the body of
Christ's Church, we are made the children of God by adop-
tion and grace.'" Again in his sermon on the New Birth
he says, " It is certain our Church supposes that all who are
baptized in their infancy are, at the same time, born again ;
and it is allowed that the whole Office for the Baptism of
Infants proceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an objec-
tion of any weight against this that we cannot comprehend
how this work can be wrought in infants. For neither can
we comprehend how it is wrought in a person of riper years." ^
This was sound Anglicanism, but when Wesley faced the
truth that regenerated infants developed into unmistakable
sinners, he promptly abandoned it. Becoming impatient
with the futility of arguing back to any presumptive change
in infancy, he exclaimed, "How entirely idle are the com-
mon disputes on this head ! I tell a sinner, * You must
be born again ! ' * No,' say you, ' he was born again in bap-
tism; therefore he cannot be born again.' Alas, what
1 L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. II, pp. 264-265.
340 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
trifling is this ! What if he was then a child of God ? He
is now manifestly a child of the devil. Therefore do not play
upon words. He must go through an entire change of
heart. . . . Remember that if either he or you die without
it, your baptism will be so far from profiting you that it
will greatly increase your damnation." Here, as was his
custom, Wesley concerned himself with the facts of the
case and left the theories to take care of themselves. The
two standards are hard to reconcile, nor did he attempt their
reconciliation ; he preferred to dwell on the transformation
which God effects in the soul when He raises it from the
death of sin to the life of righteousness, recreating it in
Christ Jesus, and renewing it in His own likeness. At
that moment the affections were transferred from things tem-
poral to things eternal ; pride became humility, and passion
meekness ; hatred, envy, and malice were supplanted by a
sincere, tender, disinterested love for all mankind. He
did not insist upon the instantaneousness of this revolution,
although he had been told by Bohler that it occurred at a
given moment. "I contend, not for circumstance, but for
the substance," he observed. "So you can attain it another
way, do; only see that you do attain it."
His sermon on "The Duty of Constant Communion,"
published in 1788, shows that he looked upon the Eucharist
as the food of souls, giving strength for the performance
of duty, and leading its recipients toward perfection. He
held both Sacraments in such reverence that he persist-
ently refused to allow either of them to be administered by
any except episcopally ordained clergymen. Nevertheless he
was not a Sacramentarian in the sense that permits out-
ward and visible signs to displace an inward and renewing
grace; a grace, as he avowed, received by faith, not by
material media, and which depends upon the witness of the
Holy Spirit and the assurance of the believer's heart, rather
than upon conformity in communicating. Again, this assur-
ance differed from the tenet of final perseverance ; it could be
JOHN WESLEY 341
forfeited by lack of faith or lapse of conduct ; it was active
only in those who continued steadfast in well-doing, and
who brought forth the fruits of righteousness in their daily
lives. It was also diametrically opposed to the governing
concept of sacerdotalism, Anglican as well as Roman, which
repudiates the idea of the believer's certainty of forgiveness,
save on priestly authority. In the medieval Church the
mystics alone professed this independent certitude; Wyc-
liffe rejected it absolutely ; Calvin found no sufficient place
for it in his deterministic scheme; Luther, though it was
contained in his teaching on salvation by faith, receded from
it in proportion as he narrowed the meaning of faith to
intellectual acceptance of dogma. The Church of England
was committed, by the implication of her Homilies, if not
by their specific declarations, to the doctrine of assurance;
but this had been completely overlooked, and Wesley's
teaching was invested, even in the minds of her leading
instructors, with a dangerous if not heretical tendency, " an-
other illustration," as Dr. Workman remarks, "of the
familiar truth that the working creeds of a Church are by
no means the full contents of its official symbols."
The doctrine of Christian perfection was the crown
of Wesley's teaching, and the corollary of his appeal to
experience. A genuine consciousness of sonship in the be-
liever implies the possibility that such consciousness may
become complete, and this as a present possibility, else
the experience would not be in consciousness. Its inward
truth has been common, as an experience rather than as
a doctrine, to saints of all ages. It has been misinter-
preted through regarding time as an actuality rather than
as a quality of consciousness, the latter being Wesley's
understanding of it. Those who would dismiss it either
as an egoistical delusion or an iridescent dream, which,
like that of St. Francis, cannot overcome contact with the
earth, may perhaps be induced to turn to it again by the
observation of Professor Huxley, that perfectibility is the
342 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
one rational goal of progressive existence. This suggests
the further reflection that the life everlasting would seem
to demand the final unity of all being in the likeness and
will of God. Wesley derived his ideal from those Scriptural
passages which enjoin unreserved surrender to Christ Jesus,
and a heart overflowing with love toward God and man. He
not only expounded these graces without faltering, but also
verified the type of Christian life they produced by an
open discussion of its results. Wherever they were prac-
ticed he noted a quickening among his people, and this
caused him to preach perfection more constantly, as of the
utmost importance for the growth of believers. Writing to
Adam Clarke in November, 1790, he says, "To retain the
grace of God, is much more than to gain it ; hardly one in
three does this. And this should be strongly and explicitly
urged upon all who have tasted of perfect love. If we can
prove that any of our local preachers or leaders, either
directly or indirectly, speak against it, let him be a local
preacher or leader no longer . . . how impossible it is to
retain pure love without growing therein." ^ To Robert
Brackenbury he wrote in the same year, "This doctrine is
the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people
called Methodists; and, for the sake of propagating this
chiefly. He appeared to have raised them up." ^ He
commented on the Society at Otley in Yorkshire : " Here
began that glorious work of sanctification which now from
time to time spread through most parts of England and all
the south and west of Ireland. And wherever the work of
sanctification increased, the whole work of God increased
in all its branches." He had visited the Otley Methodists
and examined them one by one. Some of them he doubted,
but of the majority he wrote, "Unless they told wilful and
deliberate lies, it was plain : (1) That they felt no inward sin,
and, to the best of their knowledge, committed no outward
» L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. Ill, p. 633.
> Ibid., p. 625.
JOHN WESLEY 343
sin. (2) That they saw and loved God every moment, and
prayed, rejoiced, and gave thanks evermore. (3) That they
had constantly as clear a witness from God of sanctifica-
tion as they had of justification. In this," he added, "I do
rejoice and will rejoice. ... I would to God, thousands had
experienced thus much; let them afterwards experience
as much more as God pleases." ^
In his "Plain Account of Christian Perfection" he dwelt
upon it at length, but despite his avowals many devout
Methodists have held that while these higher levels
are divinely authorized, they are not always humanly
possible. Nor was Wesley under any delusion concerning
the measure of his own sanctification. He never claimed
for himself that the goal was won : on the contrary, it
was ever before him, and his language was that of antici-
pation rather than acquirement. He scrupulously avoided
the phrase, "sinless perfection," yet the term perfection
was itself susceptible of abuse, both from the indifferent
and from those whose zeal outran their knowledge. Stand-
ing midway between these extremists was a group of men
and women who satisfied his highest hopes. Cardinal
Newman's test of the claim of a Church to be in the
apostolic succession by its ability to produce saints was
not only met by John Fletcher and Thomas Walsh, to
whose splendor and serenity the world could offer no bribe,
but also by such children of Methodism as Hannah Ball,
Nancy Bolton, Hester Rogers, Martha Thompson, William
Bramwell, Roger Crane, Ezekiel Cooper, Thomas Taylor,
David Stoner, William Carvosso, Thomas Collins, Benja-
min M. Adams, Bishop Marvin, William Owen of Old
Park, and numberless others — elect souls who verified the
reality of Christ's word, "I am come that they might have
life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
The contrast furnished by the unseemly ebullitions of a
cult of perfectionists in the London Society grieved Wesley,
' L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. II, p. 417.
344 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and alarmed the more sedate brethren. Thomas Maxfield,
among other heady emotionaHsts, began by professing entire
sanctification, and ended in hysterical delusions. Upon
being rebuked by the preachers, he displayed a temper
anything but holy, and Fletcher, anxious for the pres-
ervation of genuine spirituality, wrote to Wesley : " Many
of our brethren are overshooting sober Christianity in
London. . . . The corruption of the best things is always
the most corrupt." When Wesley returned there, in
October, 1762, he found the Society rent in twain, and
Maxfield and his sympathizers inclined to further mischief.
They had withdrawn from fellowship, and one of them, George
Bell, a former soldier and a noisy fellow whose obsessions
were incurable, became a full-blown prophet of the Millennial
Advent, which he solemnly announced would take place on
February 28, 1763. God had done with preaching and
ordinances, and His presence was now strictly limited to
the assemblies of the Bellites. These lurid apocalypses
led astray the unwary, and Wesley's patience with them
ceased to be a virtue. But Maxfield, who through the good
offices of Wesley had obtained ordination from the Bishop
of Londonderry, had been prominent in Methodism, and
Wesley was reluctant to silence the preacher who had received
the commendation of his mother. Finally Maxfield with-
drew from the Society, taking two hundred of its mem-
bers with him, to whom he ministered for twenty years
after the schism. It is gratifying to add that toward the
close of his life he came to a better mind ; friendly rela-
tions with his old associates were resumed ; Wesley preached
in his church, and visited him in his last illness. The dissen-
sions cost the London Society four hundred members, a
loss from which it did not recover for a long period. In
the sequence, however, the purging was beneficial. Phari-
saism was halted, and credulity and irrational exaltation
were discontinued. Similar disturbances in later times have
raised the question whether the distinction between regen-
JOHN WESLEY 345
eration and sanctification is valid in actual experience, or
whether the latter is simply an intensified expression of
regeneration. In any case, the moral is that doctrines
should be as catholic in scope and simplicity as the
nature of the truths they are intended to set forth will
allow. Methodism was bound to keep alight on its altars
the flame of holiness, though perhaps they might have been
more effectually guarded against strange fires. Be this as
it may, in nothing did Wesley show his sagacity more admi-
rably than in his refusal to yield to senseless vaporings on the
one hand, or, on the other, to lassitude and indiflFerence.
While the heart is not another kind of reason, it is a
recognized faculty for discerning truth. It represents
implicit judgments, the relative values of different senti-
ments and purposes, and supplies the regulating principles
of life. Upon it Wesley relied for these gifts in the enforce-
ment of his teachings. With Plato and St. Paul and other
prophets, he perceived by its illumination things eternal,
and that these could be attained by mortals. He modified
these implicit judgments, and fashioned them into the
stated beliefs now known as Wesleyan theology. It was
not always easy to do this, but he persevered until he felt
he had alike satisfied the claims of reason and of religion.
His success was apparent in those who received his message :
they were no longer ensnared in a melancholy rotation of
sinning and repenting, but having gained the liberty of the
children of God, became a people " for His own possession,"
unafraid in the day of battle, and who made a specific
contribution not only to the life and thought of Protestant-
ism, but to "the total of truth and vantage of mankind.'*
He also transferred the basis of the doctrine of assur-
ance from the objective grounds of the Church and the
Sacraments to those of an experimental witness within the
believer. Although he substituted an infallible Book for
an infallible Church, it was not necessary to the structure
of which he was the architect. Methodist theology is not
346 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
SO highly articulated that its living growth cannot supply
the wastes incurred by large variations of thought or advances
in knowledge. Its assignment of experience as the final
criterion of religious truth guards it from the liabilities of
less fortunate systems which dare not yield one premise
without endangering the entire argument. But its claim
for the validity of introspection and its subordination of
the objective to the subjective were kept within bounds,
and it is "the conjunction of belief in the authority of an
organic Church with insistence upon the value and reality
of individual experience as the final test which gives to
Methodism its special position in the Catholic Church." ^
The sectarian asceticism which clouded English society
with the gloom of bigotry was not unknown in Wes-
leyanism. Until the Tractarians taught the needed lesson
that all life was sanctified in Christ, a suspicion of culture
and of the aesthetic conscience was found in Methodism as
a natural revulsion against their abuse elsewhere.
Its inner history is a record of the freedom and univer-
sality of the Gospel operating on a scale which has seldom,
if ever, been equaled since the earliest ages, when, as it
seemed to the first missionaries of the Cross, the resto-
ration of all things was at hand. Unquestionably it is
the purest phase of New Testament Christianity which has
arisen in modern times. One is filled no less with wonder
at the measure of its achievements than with the conviction
of its origin in the counsels of Eternity. Without adventi-
tious aids or questionable alliances, despised and rejected
by the wise and great of the world, employing for its propa-
ganda the unfettered Evangel mediated through Wesley,
and relying solely upon the Holy Spirit for its success, the
little company which first followed him has multiplied in
many lands, and in some is the dominant Protestantism of
this era. As such it must be explained, either by the scientific
' "A New History of Methodism"; edited by W. J. Townsend, H. B.
Workman, and G. Eayrs ; Vol. I, p. 16.
JOHN WESLEY 347
methods which now prevail in the study of the past, or
treated as a rehgious mystery without any perceptible cause.
Theories which limit the conveyance of saving grace to
prescribed channels of apostolical succession will have to be
accommodated to the magnitudes of this latest offspring
from the higher powers, or suffer the fate of hypotheses
which ignore integral facts.
The most vivid delineation of the inner life of Methodism
is found in the hymns of Charles Wesley, which have glorified
Christian worship more than any other similar lyrics, with
the possible exception of those written by Isaac Watts.
They set forth intimate as distinguished from legalistic
religion, radiant with the beauty of holiness and the arts
of consolation, and overflowing with tenderness and joy.
The cry of penitence, the answer of faith, the defiance of
death, the sound as of a trumpet, the opened vials, the
broken seals, the solemn doom of Judgment, the triumphant
certainty of an immortality of passionless renown, and all
the signs and wonders of the Kingdom's triumph, were more
persuasively and exultingly expressed in them than in any
other productions of sacred literature since the Reforma-
tion. Their principal theme was the adoration of the
Everlasting Father for His supreme gift in Jesus Christ
and for the love He is always seeking to impart through
Him to His children.
" 'Tis Love ! 'tis Love ! Thou diedst for me I
I hear Thy whisper in my heart ;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure universal Love Thou art ;
To me, to all, Thy mercies move ;
Thy nature and Thy name is Love."
The peasants who turned from their ancestral fanes to
worship in the humble meeting-houses where such praises
rang forth were amply rewarded by the strength and
comfort they imparted. Here the Real Presence was
manifested before their reverent faith while with sacred
348 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
song they made melody in their hearts. In their in-
sistence upon personal sin, personal forgiveness, and per-
sonal assurance, the hymns echo the individualism which
is a dominant note of the Gospel in its essential application,
but they do not express those larger social aspects of reli-
gion which are now monopolizing the vision of the Church.
Charles's productiveness was amazing ; he wrote over six
thousand compositions, of very unequal quality, but num-
bering some unsurpassed in any language. He was in a
marked degree the creature of his inspiration. Sometimes
his poetic impulse hardly lifted him above the flatness of
doggerel, again it suddenly failed after a burst of promise,
but, in those sustained flights of lyrical rapture which it
occasionally made, it opened for the poet a passage to the
skies and raised him as on seraph wings to the very throne
of God. His hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my soul," stands at
the summit of odes of its order; that on "Wrestling Jacob"
Isaac Watts averred to be among the finest ever written;
"Rejoice, the Lord is King" is an entirely different but
equally noble example of his powers. These and others of a
notably high character have been woven into the very fiber
of millions of souls, and in them we come to the sanctum sanc-
torum of Christian faith. Nor is it too much to aflBrm that
they are one of the strongest bonds of universal Christian
fellowship. The limitations under which poetry must always
move are more severely felt in hymnal composition than in
other forms of its expression. Dr. Johnson declared that
metrical songs meant for Christian worship could not be
poetry, since it was necessary to exclude from them that play
of imagination which would violate orthodoxy. On the
contrary, this term has little meaning in hymnology : a
sacred lyric need but arouse the devout sentiments that
control human nature to secure a place in the services of
every sect. There is no better evidence of the underlying
unity of truly religious natures than their independence of
theological speculations when they find a hymn which
JOHN WESLEY 349
blends their spirits with the Spirit of the Eternal. True,
they revert to\ their creeds again, but stanzas that voice with
glowing phrase the unconquerable beliefs of men also fashion
them, and in this respect Charles Wesley gave the people
much of their theology.
John's fastidious taste revised his brother's poetry and
modified its exuberances. His own translations of the
Moravian hymns, while somewhat bald and literal, were
excellent; among them are Scheffler's "I thank Thee, un-
created One," and Terstegeen's "Thou hidden love of God
unknown," which has in it "a sound as of the sound of the
sea." John Bakewell and Edward Perronett also wrote
some choice lyrics, but it was reserved for Thomas Olivers
to rival even Charles Wesley in his sublime ascription to
the Everlasting :
"The God of Abraham praise, —
Who reigns enthroned above.
Ancient of Everlasting days
And God of love.
Jehovah, Great I Am,
By earth and heaven confest ;
I bow, and bless the sacred name
Forever blest."
Commenting on this hymn of the little Welsh preacher, whom
Toplady ridiculed as an ignorant cobbler, James Mont-
gomery said, "There is not in our language a lyric of more
majestic style, more elevated, or more glorious imagery.
Its structure indeed is unattractive on account of the short
lines, but like a stately pile of architecture severe and simple
in design, it strikes less on the first view than after deliber-
ate examination." The realization of divine grace which
gave Methodism its first outburst of Christian song had
many other far-reaching effects, but none of these compare
with the influence of its sacred poetry over all classes, and
especially over the poor and illiterate multitudes who
were thereby taught to worship God aright. Dr. James
350 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Martineau asserted that the "Collection of Hymns for the
Use of the People called Methodists," issued in 1780, was,
"after the Scriptures, the grandest instrument of popular
religious culture that Christendom has ever produced."
The beginning remains always the most notable moment,
and this carries the genesis of Methodism beyond the reach
of artificial growths in ecclesiastical order into the heart
of primitive Christianity. At the risk of repetition it
must be said that its practices were really reproductions
of those which first established the teaching of Jesus. And
in these lay its authority, for "when a religion has become
an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over ; the spring is
dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone
the prophets in their turn. The new Church, in spite of
whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth
counted on as a stanch ally in every attempt to stifle the
spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings
of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own
supply of inspiration." ^ There could be no better descrip-
tion of the conditions which Methodism met and overcame
in the power of a holier faith and purpose. God has or-
dained that life should be endowed with an almost unerring
discrimination in favor of its necessities and against that
which is inimical to its welfare. Applying the ordinance to
religion, we find that when any particular form of Christian-
ity seemed requisite, it emerged from the implicit to the
explicit stage, was then adopted as a governing factor, and
finally passed away with the ending of its usefulness. This
process affords an argument for the predetermination of the
end which such forms have been made to subserve, and
although the theologian and the priest may mourn its
operation, it furnishes a basis for belief in a superintending
Power. This belief is strengthened by the fact that, be-
neath these changes in the superficial region of revealed
religion, there is always an irreducible body of truth
'William James: "Varieties of Religious Experience"; p. 337.
JOHN WESLEY 351
necessary to life. Upon this sure foundation, John Wesley
built his theology and his Church.
Before dealing with the memorable legislation of the year
1784, which made the Societies in Britain and America to
all intents and purposes self-regulating, it is necessary to
speak of the introduction of Methodism into the colonies
of North America, since its presence there precipitated
its separation from Anglicanism. Wesleyan teaching had
been carried to New York by Philip Embury and Barbara
Heck, who were among the immigrants from Limerick in
1764 and 1766. Embury's devotion languished in his new
surroundings until Barbara Heck revived it,^ when, to-
gether with other friends, they began services in a private
house. Captain Webb, an oflScer of the forty-second
regiment of British infantry stationed at Albany, who had
been converted under Wesley at Bristol, joined the little
company at New York, and in 1768 a chapel was erected
in John Street, Embury making the pulpit with his own
hands, and preaching the first sermon on October 30. From
these origins and those at the log meeting house on Sam's
Creek, Maryland, and at Lovely Lane, Baltimore, arose
the Methodism which was destined to surpass the parent
body in numbers. The English Conference of 1769, held at
Leeds, received and responded to an appeal for help from the
American brethren by appointing Richard Boardman and
Jacob Pilmoor as their pastors, and subscribing fifty pounds
towards the debt on John Street Church, and twenty pounds
for the expenses of the new ministers. Pilmoor was stationed
at Philadelphia, and Boardman in New York. Lloyd's
Evening Post of London, amused by these bold measures,
announced that other promotions would soon be listed :
"The Rev'd. George Whitefield to be Archbishop of Bos-
ton, Rev'd. William Romaine to be Bishop of New York,
Rev'd. John Wesley to be Bishop of Pennsylvania, the
> Despite common report some modern Methodists have informed the
author that Embiu-y did not lose his zeal.
352 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Rev'd. Martin ]Madan to be Bishop of the Carolinas,
Rev'd. Walter Shirley to be Bishop of Virginia and Rev'd.
Charles Wesley to be Bishop of Nova Scotia;" a squib in
which a clown for once came near to prophecy.
Before the War of Independence, American ^lethodism
had a membership of 3148, yet in 1777 the minutes of the
English Conference do not even mention the branch in the
colonies. "They inform me," said Wesley, "that all the
Methodists there are firm for the Government and on that
account persecuted by the rebels, only not to the death;
that the preachers are still threatened but not stopped, and
that the work of God increases much in Maryland and
Virginia." He was strongly opposed to the Revolution;
and his pamphlet, issued in 1775, "A Calm Address to our
American Colonies," which procured for him the thanks of
the British government, added greatly to the distresses and
difficulties of his disciples in the West. The pamphlet was
an almost literal transcription of that undiluted sample of
fatuous Toryism and hackwork, Johnson's "Taxation no
Tyranny," and Wesley's wholesale appropriation laid him
open to the charge of plagiarism. His friends in America
suppressed it, a kindness indeed in view of the fact that its
sentiments flatly contradicted some of his earlier utterances.
In a letter to Lord North against that minister's policy,
he wrote, "All my prejudices are against the Americans;
for I am a High Churchman, the son of a High Church-
man, bred up, from my childhood, in the highest notion of
passive obedience and non-resistance ; and yet, in spite of
all my long-rooted prejudices, I cannot avoid thinking, if
I think at all, that an oppressed people asked for nothing
more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest
and inoffensive manner that the nature of the thing would
allow. But, waiving all considerations of right and wrong,
I ask, is it common-sense to use force towards the Ameri-
cans ? These men will not be frightened : and, it seems,
they will not be conquered as easily as was at first imagined,
JOHN WESLEY 353
they will probably dispute every inch of ground ; and, if
they die, die sword in hand." ^
No nobler or more impressive figure rose above the politi-
cal and religious confusion of the Revolution than that of
the great Englishman and bishop of American Methodism,
Francis Asbury. Although many of the Episcopal clergy
and five of his own colleagues withdrew from their pastoral
charges, he refused to follow their example, suppressed his
natural sympathies with his native land, and never ceased
to preach and toil among his scattered and aflSicted members.
He was born on August 20, 1745, at Handsv%-orth, near
Birmingham, a few miles from the locality where Wesley
underwent his fiercest persecution and won one of his most
signal triumphs. Blessed in his parentage, and always
spiritually disposed, Asbury, then in his fourteenth year,
hearing of the Wednesbury riots, went to the scene of the
disturbance to find out what kind of piety it was that had
aroused and then subdued the hostility of the mob. He
returned a [Methodist, and a warm advocate of Methodism.
About three years later he began to hold public meetings,
and when other places were closed against him had recourse
to his father's house, where he exhorted and prayed with
the neighbors. When he was twenty-one, Wesley enrolled
him among his itinerants, and in 1771 sent him to Maryland.
Asbury felt some misgivings that he had perhaps undertaken
a venture beyond his powers, and wrote in his Journal,
"If God does not acknowledge me in America, I will soon
return to England." With this resolution he saUed from
Bristol, never to see his relatives or Wesley again. But
though the seas separated them, the ideals and doctrines
of [Methodism were embodied and proclaimed by him as by
no other preacher except Wesley himself, whom he equaled,
if indeed he did not exceed him, in privations and labors.
The text of his first sermon at Baltimore was a suitable motto
for forty-five years of illustrious service : " I determined
» L. Tj-erman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. Ill, p. 19S.
2a
354 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified." Sorely grieved and hampered by the quarrel
between the two nations, the one the countr}^ of his birth,
the other of his adoption, he was nevertheless sustained by
the ambition that the newly acquired freedom of the United
States should be enlightened and purified by the saving knowl-
edge of God. His was that higher patriotism which soared
beyond strife and blundering, and, when every attachment
to the past became an avenue of pain, and his choice for
the future caused many to malign him, he transcended the
darkness and dismay and became an historic pleader for the
peace and federation of the Kingdom of Christ.
Asbury showed an adaptability for the Republic and
its institutions beyond that of any other clergyman of
English birth. He came from the artisans and laborers of
the Midland shires to the plain folk of the Eastern States,
unembarrassed by social or ecclesiastical prejudices. One
fears to speculate on what might have been the fate of
American Methodism had such a cleric as Charles Wesley
controlled it at the critical juncture. Fortunately for his
own reputation and for his brother's work, this was not the
case. Although Asbury had few intellectual gifts comparable
with theirs, he possessed a loyalty, a determination, and a
soundness of judgment which enabled him to hold intact the
thin lines of his little army until the propitious moment came
for advance and conquest.
Tall, gaunt, and ascetic in appearance, clad in a plain
drab suit, a stock, and a low, broad-brimmed hat, and
married only to the Church, twice yearly he rode along the
Atlantic seaboard from Connecticut to the Carolinas, and
westward through the mountains to the farther slopes of the
Alleghanies, then the frontiers of civilization. He forded
rivers and followed trails which led to the solitudes of the
virgin forest. Indian savages or white fugitives from justice
were frequently his only companions in the wilderness. If
his horse cast a shoe, he bound the hoof with bull's hide and
JOHN WESLEY 355
pushed on. In a time when steamboats and railroads were
unknown and coaches rare, he made his tours of four to five
thousand miles annually, preaching at least once a day, and
three times on the Lord's Day. The families he encountered
in these lonely journeyings were not always decent or hospi-
table, but he never called on them without prayer, or left
them without a blessing. Quarterly meetings, camp meet-
ings, and seven annual Conferences, all widely apart, were
the rallying points of his activity, and he visited them at
least once a year, besides writing a thousand letters annually
to his preachers and helpers. This prodigious exertion was
accomplished under constant bodily suffering ; yet aches and
pains, chills and fever, were mere trifles to his superior spirit,
and could not dismay him. A diligent student, he became
proficient in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, was a master of the
Holy Scriptures, and had a respectable acquaintance with
other branches of literature. In his old age, when weak and
crippled by infirmity, he reluctantly consented to use a
light carriage. He clung to his office with tenacity, con-
tinually ordaining preachers, planting churches, sending
fourth pioneers, and like the bird which sees not the case-
ment for the sky, he was slow to learn that neither his ardor
nor his austerity could be imparted to others without their
consent. But these were only spots on his sun, and, bishop
though he was, as all men knew, his spirit of beautiful
humility was shown in his charge that after his death no
mention should be made of him, nor any biography be
written. He died on March 31, 1816, at the house of his
old friend George Arnold, near Fredericksburg, Virginia,
where he had tarried on his way to the Conference at
Baltimore.
Some results of his unremitting devotion are seen in the
growth of the movement during his episcopate. At his ordi-
nation, in 1784, there were eighty-three itinerants traveling
forty-six circuits, and less than fifteen thousand members;
at his death there were over seven hundred preachers
356 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ministering to more than two hundred and eleven thousand
members. Among the noble band of circuit riders, who
emulated their bishop's example of sacrificial service, were
Jesse Lee, Enoch George, Thomas Ware, Hope Hull,
Ezekiel Cooper, Freeborn Garrettson, Benjamin Abbott,
John Emory, William McKendree, Robert Roberts, John
Dickins — a succession of prophets of God, of whom the
Church and the Republic they lived to serve may well be
proud.
The Societies were organized under Wesley's plan, and
guided by his wishes ; the class meeting, the love feast, and
the quarterly and annual Conferences being duplicates of
those in Great Britain. At first New England was averse
to Methodism, but in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
the Southern States, and on the ever receding frontiers it
had a free field, and soon became an important factor, some
of its preachers helping to build cities and commonwealths
as well as churches. They came at an opportune moment ;
the pastoral office in America had defaulted in respect to
the Sacraments, the majority of the Anglican clergy had
been dispersed by the conflict with Britain, and those who
remained were at a low ebb of learning and religion. Bishop
White lamented that " the Church of England was becoming
more and more unpopular, a useless burden on the com-
munity." Dr. Hawks relates that a large number of its
edifices in Virginia were ruined, and twenty-three out of
ninety-five parishes forsaken.^ Under these circumstances
the Methodists began to inquire why their own ministers
should not have authority to administer the Holy Com-
munion. For the time, Thomas Rankin induced the
preachers to await Mr. Wesley's advice, but the agitation
increased, until in 1779 it widened into an actual breach
between the Northern preachers, who pleaded for patient
delay, and those south of Philadelphia, who asked for full
' For a description of the American Episcopal Clergy in Virginia, see
"Richard Carvel," by Winston Churchill.
JOHN WESLEY 357
ministerial rights. The latter were temporarily conciliated
by Asbury's promise that he would appeal to the Founder
for an adjustment of the matter. The interests of souls
were at stake, and the demands actuated by this considera-
tion brooked no further parleying.
Wesley had already met the clergyman whom he was
about to designate as Asbury's senior colleague, and whose
name is connected with acts which led to the constitution
of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America. Thomas
Coke, a gentleman commoner of Jesus College, Oxford,
became Wesley's first lieutenant, visiting the Societies in
Ireland alternately with him and exercising some of his
delegated authority. Coke was the founder of the Foreign
Missionary Society and one of its most generous supporters,
and he wrought earnestly in behalf of Home Missions in
England and Wales. Asbury, on hearing of his death, spoke
of him as "a minister of Christ, in zeal, in labors, and
in services the greatest man of the last century." Not-
withstanding his many excellencies, Coke's restless energies
were not always judiciously directed. On more than one
occasion his ambitions excited resentment, nor does Dr.
Stevens's defense of him quite remove the impression that he
had entertained designs upon the superintendency to which
he was ordained. Yet as an Oxford graduate, a priest of
the Church of England, a doctor of laws, and a more gifted
preacher than Asbury, Coke would naturally be preferred
for that office. Wesley did not proceed in the matter
without deliberation, and only after he had failed in his
efforts to persuade Dr. Lowth, then Bishop of London, to
ordain a preacher that the pastoral necessities of Ameri-
can Methodists might be regularly met. Hitherto he had
been correct in his contention that nothing he had set in
motion was inconsistent with his position as an Anglican
clergyman. But he was now confronted by a condition,
not a theory; and one accentuated by political misunder-
standings eventuating in war and separation. Nor did
358 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
he have any means at hand to supply the imperative
requirements of his American members. Fletcher of Made-
ley was so sensible of their neglected state that he would have
gone to its relief had his health permitted, and he besought
Wesley, by whom he was esteemed above other advisers,
to accede to the request of the American Methodists and
grant them an ordained ministry. It was superfluous to ask
for Charles Wesley's opinion ; since he would have sacrificed
the Methodism of the Republic to Anglican conceptions
of unity and order. Coke only consented to go on the
stipulation that Wesley should give him "by the imposi-
tion of hands the power of ordaining others." Accordingly,
without haste, and in the full knowledge that he was
about to incur the lasting disapproval of his Church,
Wesley summoned Coke, with two itinerants, Richard What-
coat and Thomas Vasey, to Bristol, and there on the 20th
of September, 1784, in his private chamber, he set apart
the itinerant preachers as presbyters, and laid his hands on
Coke, consecrating him "to the office of Superintendent of
the work in America."
He instructed Coke to take with him the two newly made
presbyters, and in like manner set apart Asbury, first as a
deacon, then as a presbyter, and then as his associate in
the superintendency. Forms of ordination for deacons,
elders, and superintendents were prepared by Wesley, which
indicated that acts and terms he had purposely avoided at
home were now to be authorized in America. Thus he
assumed episcopal functions, and, if the ordination of Coke
meant anything at all, it signified that he had received the
same functions from Wesley, subject to the ratification of
the American preachers. It was so understood and approved
by them ; at the Christmas Conference of Baltimore, on
December 27th of the same year, the selection of Coke was
confirmed, and Asbury was elected by the Conference and
consecrated by Coke, assisted by several presbyters. Several
presbyters and deacons were also elected and ordained on
JOHN WESLEY 359
the following day. In this manner began the Methodist
Episcopal Church in the United States of America. It was
the first Church thus established in the young Republic, shar-
ing its hopes and fears, and occupying a continental expanse
which gave it ample room for its singular admixture of auto-
cratic and democratic traits in a system approved by Wesley,
Fletcher, Coke, Asbury, and its own preachers. In May, 1789,
its chief pastors presented an address to President Washing-
ton beginning with the superscription "We, the bishops of
the Methodist Episcopal Church" ; and since then its life and
work have been incorporated with those of the nation in
which it is to-day the largest Protestant denomination.
After the irrevocable step was taken the hitherto unques-
tioned rule of Wesley was no longer absolute. The arbitrary
change of the title of superintendent to that of bishop
irritated him because of the adventitious dignities it sug-
gested, but he was powerless to prevent it. Nor could the
liberties he had granted to the ministry abroad be finally
withheld at home, and after a prolonged interval they became
the unquestioned right of all the preachers there. At the
American Methodist Conference in 1789 the first question
asked was, " Who are the persons that exercise the episcopal
office in the Methodist Church in Europe and America?"
The answer was, " John Wesley, Thomas Coke, and Francis
Asbury by regular order and succession." Although their
office was strictly defined as such and not as an order,
these phrases must have sounded grandiloquently imper-
tinent in the ears of ecclesiastics who had hitherto monop-
olized them. Apart from this they had several advan-
tages ; and not the least, that the colorless character and
deferential attitude of a hybrid organization were abolished.
The language of the New Testament was also used to
describe other institutions and offices of the Church, whose
episcopacy has since been held, not in any sense as the em-
bodiment of an apostolic succession, but as a personalized
and historic center of unity, administration, and efficiency.
360 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Charles Wesley reproached his brother for the bold and un-
expected procedure which frustrated his hopes, and appeared
to him as "the beginning of a schism as causeless and un-
provoked as the American Revolution." His complaints
and groanings were vented in a letter to the Rev. Dr.
Chandler, dated April 28, 1785: "I never lost my dread
of separation, or ceased to guard our Societies against it. I
can scarcely yet believe it, that, in his eighty-second year,
my brother, my old, intimate friend and companion, should
have assumed the episcopal character, ordained elders,
consecrated a bishop, and sent him to ordain our lay preachers
in America. I was then in Bristol, at his elbow ; yet he never
gave me the least hint of his intention." Charles further
affirmed that Lord Mansfield, the Chief Justice of England,
had told him a year before that ordination was separa-
tion ; and such it was from the standpoint of the church-
manship which he represented. To what, then, beyond the
necessitous circumstances already related is to be attributed
Wesley's conviction that he had a right to discard the prin-
ciples his brother so strenuously upheld ? He had read in 1746
Lord King's account of the Primitive Church, from which
he derived the teaching that bishops and presbyters were
originally one order. In his " Notes on the New Testament"
he cautiously commented that "perhaps elders and bishops
were the same . . . and their names were used promiscu-
ously in the first ages." In 1756 he stated that he still believed
the episcopal form of Church government to be Scriptural
and apostolical, but that it was prescribed in Scripture he
did not believe. This opinion, which he once zealously
espoused, he had been heartily ashamed of since studying
Bishop Stillingfleet's "Irenicon." Canon Overton laments
that so well-read and thoughtful a man as Wesley should
have attached any weight to the youthful utterances of
these two men. King and Stillingfleet, who afterwards re-
canted.* Nevertheless they leavened Wesley's churchman-
1 "The Evangelical Revival"; p. 18.
JOHN WESLEY 361
ship, and he now wrote to Charles that he firmly believed
himself to be " a Scriptural episcopos as much as any man in
England." The uninterrupted succession, he declared else-
where, was "a rope of sand ; a fable that no man could
prove."
The endless debates on this affirmation have no place
here ; they have been best summed up in Bishop Lightfoot's
verdict that the episcopal office did not arise out of the
apostolical by succession, but out of the presbyteral by
localization.^ This conclusion has found powerful advocates
in modern scholarship,^ and if it is valid, Wesley's acts were
in keeping with the ancient order. On the other hand, for
forty years he had carefully abstained from them, and had
even said that for an unordained preacher to administer
within his Societies was a sin which he dared not tolerate,
although by sending out scores of preachers without ordina-
tion, he had really made apostolic succession an anachronism
so far as he was concerned. Of course his setting apart of
Coke was indefensible from the standpoint of Anglicanism.
"What could Wesley confer upon Coke which Coke might
not equally have conferred upon Wesley?" queries Canon
Overton. And the answer is, if given according to the
Canon's conception of ordination, nothing. But a large
body of Christians have denied the dogma of apostolical
succession; they have resented its imputations, and have
liberated themselves from its oppressions. Wesley, at least,
gave Coke the premiership in a great Church, with the
practical results that followed, and Canon Overton adds,
with justice, that the true explanation of his conduct in
^ See the references to this question in the subsequent chapters on Newman.
* For an interesting discussion on this question see "Some Remarks on
Bishop Lightfoot's Dissertation on the Christian Ministry," by Charles
Wordsworth, D.D., Bishop of St. Andrews; also "The Leaves of the Tree:
Studies in Biography," by Arthur Christopher Benson. Whatever contra-
diction of misunderstandings Bishop Lightfoot afterwards made he did not
retract the main statements of his Essay on the Christian Ministry,
found in the Appendix to his " Commentary on the Epistle to the Philip-
pi ans."
362 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
this, as in other things, was the practical character of his
mind, which led him to make everything subservient to
his work of restoring the image of God in the soul of man.
An unprejudiced review of the matter, which in thought,
purpose, and accomplishment covered nearly half a century,
shows that any inconsistencies — and there were some — ■
did not affect the integrity of Wesley's main position. He
treated ordinances and offices as means of grace which should
be held paramount so long as they promoted Christianity.
When they ceased to do this they were set aside, and
he took occasion, under necessity, to make the freedom
and accessibility of God's Kingdom wider than antiquity
had decreed. What he said will be long remembered, what
he did will be conserved in the general outcome. The vast
majority of his sons and daughters in the family of Metho-
dism partake of the Living Bread in their own sanctuaries,
unhindered by any consciousness of the warfare he waged
with himself and others for their birthright ; and those
who have reflected upon it partake with no less faith because
of the course he adopted.^
The Deed of Declaration which was executed on February
28, 1784, and a few days later enrolled in Chancery, has
been called the Magna Charta of Wesley an Methodism. It
substituted for Wesley a permanent body of one hundred
ministers, selected by him and authorized to bear the re-
sponsibilities and discharge the duties of the supervision of
the Societies. This instrument was adopted none too soon ;
he was now an old man, and though still vigorous, could
no longer be expected to take oversight of the Church in
England, Ireland, and America, which in 1790 numbered
nearly one hundred and fifty thousand members. He
unwillingly restricted his hitherto incessant journeyings,
and approached a peaceful twilight which the night of death
■ See the Methodist Review for July-August, 1915, for a very able article
by the Rev. Dr. J. M. Buckley on the Methodist Episcopacy ; also the
Christian Advocate for September the 30th, 1915.
JOHN WESLEY 363
lingered to disturb, moving among the people of the three
kingdoms as the most apostolic figure of his generation.
In Ireland as much as in Great Britain his last appear-
ances were scenes of affectionate farewell and open sorrow
at his departure. The accusations that he was a Jesuit, a
Jacobite, a fanatic, a former rumseller, and a wily hypo-
crite, had gone never to return. Many Anglican clergymen
and their congregations gave him a respectful hearing, and
he received more invitations to preach before them than he
could accept. "I am become," he said in 1785, "I know
not how, a most honorable man. The scandal of the Cross
is ceased, and all, rich and poor. Papists and Protestants,
behave with courtesy, nay, with seeming good will." "It
was, I believe," wrote Crabb Robinson, "in October, 1790,
and not long before his death, that I heard John Wesley in
the great round Meeting House at Colchester. He stood
in a wide pulpit, and on each side of him stood a minister,
and the two held him up, having their hands under his arm-
pits. His feeble voice was scarcely audible, but his reverend
countenance, especially his long white locks, formed a pic-
ture never to be forgotten. There was a vast crowd of
lovers and admirers ; ... of the kind I never saw anything
comparable to it in after life."^ In a farewell letter dated
February 1, 1791, addressed to Ezekiel Cooper, an Ameri-
can preacher known as the Lycurgus of his Church, Wesley
told of his infirmities and how that time had shaken his hand
and death was not far behind. Although eighty-six years
of age, he enjoyed comparative freedom from pain : his
sight and strength had failed, but he could still "scrawl a
few lines and creep though not run." He concluded with
the consoling prediction that his work would remain and
bear fruit, and that Methodists were one throughout the
world and would ever continue one,
'" Though mountains rise and oceans roll.
To sever us in vain.' "
* Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary ; Vol. I, p. 19.
364 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Whitefield died at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770,
about the time Asbury entered the field from which the
famous orator was suddenly removed. Charles Wesley,
though nearly five years younger than John, died on March
29th, 1788, His unequalled brother, on whom rested the
glow of his approaching translation, was preaching in Staf-
fordshire at the time. At the very moment when Charles
passed away, the congregation, unconscious of this, was
singing his hymn,
"Come, let us join our friends above
That have obtained the prize."
Wesley did not hear of his death until the day after the
funeral. He deeply felt the separation, and a fortnight
later, when attempting to give out another of Charles's
hymns on "Wrestling Jacob," he faltered at the lines,
"My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee ; "
sat down in the pulpit, and buried his face in his hands.
The singing ceased, and the people wept with him. In a
little while he regained self-control, and proceeded with the
service. He hastened to London from the North, that he
might console the widow and children of the departed poet.
His sermon at Leatherhead, Surrey, on Wednesday the 23d
of February, was his last public utterance ; the text being,
" Seek ye the Lord while He may be found ; call upon Him
while He is near." With this message of mercy and exhorta-
tion his peerless ministry ended as it had begun, in the
urgency of compassion, the strength of righteousness, the
light of love, and the demonstration of the Spirit. The
next day he spent with Mr. Wolff at Balham, and there
penned his well-known letter to William Wilberforce, con-
cluding with the stirring appeal, "O! be not weary in well
doing. Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His
might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw
JOHN WESLEY 365
the sun, shall vanish away before it. ..." ^ It was entirely
appropriate that the warfare he had waged for sixty years
upon the cruelty of society toward the fallen and the help-
less should conclude with this impassioned protest against
human bondage.
Returning to his house in City Road on Friday, the 25th,
he spent the remaining hours in prayer and praise. During
an interval he asked those around him that his sermon on
"The Love of God to fallen man" should be scattered broad-
cast and given to everybody. Later, he blessed them, and
lifting his hand in grateful triiunph, exclaimed, "The best
of all is, God is with us!" Shortly afterwards, on March
the second, 1791, this splendid being put on immortality.
Epilogue
The history of Methodism beyond its leading events in
the eighteenth century has been necessarily excluded from
this account. Speaking generally, it followed three main
lines of development : the rise and progress of the Evangeli-
cal Revival ; the organization of the Methodist Churches
therefrom ; and their more familar expansions of the modern
period, which by no means exhaust the results of the
movement, for in many instances its palpable and its
hidden influences have blended with the life of the nations
it affected, purifying and strengthening them for domestic,
social, and political reforms. Nor have the limits imposed
here allowed us to dwell at length upon the multifarious
details of Wesley's personal career, which abound in
the biographies of Southey, Watson, Lelievre, Tyerman,
Telford, Fitchett, and Winchester, the books of Workman,
and also in Wesley's self-revelatory Journals. He had
the serenity of one who is at home in his own mind, who
draws his water from his own fountain, and by means of
whose inward light the path ahead is always plain. These
' L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. Ill, p. 650.
366 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
outstanding qualities, and others which have been men-
tioned, reveal with unusual directness their heavenly sources.
Like the large-minded man in Aristotle's " Ethics " he thought
himself equal to grand moral achievements, and was justified
to the extent that the rare virtue of absolute disinterested-
ness gradually became a ruling factor in his conduct. He
lavished all his energies and some of his best years upon the
search for divine illumination. This obtained, he at once
became the director of a religious crusade which has helped
to upraise the race. The means he employed were exposed
to reprobation, but they proved stronger than the formidable
display of earthly and ecclesiastical powers arrayed against
them. Nor is it possible to escape the conclusion that in
all these things his course and destiny were not self-chosen,
after the usual meaning of the phrase, but in a special and
peculiar sense shaped by the guidance of his Maker. For
God has always been pleased to build his best bridges with
human piers, never allowing their faults to impede the work-
manship when men were solicitous that they should not
do so.
The leisure of mind which followed the stirring epoch in
which Wesley acted so creatively has produced a number
of tributes vindicating him in every quarter of his historical
firmament. Mr. Augustine Birrell says that " no man lived
nearer the center than John Wesley, neither Clive nor Pitt,
neither Mansfield nor Johnson. You cannot cut him out of
our national life. No single figure influenced so many
minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other
man did such a life's work for England." ^ Macaulay's
better known eulogy is equally generous. The famous
essayist compared him with Richelieu, whose genius so-
lidified the French nation and stimulated the authority
of its monarchy. In like manner Wesley's weak chain of
organizations was lengthened link by link, and as they
developed he formulated rules for their guidance, until
' "John Wesley," in "Essays and Addresses" ; p. 35.
JOHN WESLEY 367
Methodism became nothing less than an army intent on the
moral conquest of the race.
An eighteenth century man, he shared in no small degree
the strange contradictions of his age. His character was
both simple and complex because it was in some measure
the reflection of the people in which he moved, whose national
texture has been thickly packed and plaited fold upon fold
by an endless variety of custom and habit. In a correspond-
ing way he dealt with many-sided truths and situations,
undeterred by dread of paradox or the inconsistency of poli-
cies which might appear to lead in opposite directions. His
experiences were both extensive and remarkable, and per-
haps this may explain the supernatural aspect which he
gave to them. Yet in matters where he was not directly
interested he was capable of a becoming skepticism, and his
belief in witchcraft and in the doctrine of particular Provi-
dence, which he sometimes carried to great lengths, showed
no more credulity than did the notions of Addison, the pride
of Oxford, whose " Essays on the Evidences of Christianity "
include stories as absurd as the Cock Lane ghost, and for-
geries as rank as William Henry Ireland's " Vortigern."
Exact and vigorous in his thinking, Wesley's ideas were as far
removed from what is meretricious or vulgar as were those
of the best classics with which he was familiar. In his
case great talents and considerable learning proved their
suitability for a world-wide and permanent religious propa-
gandism, and his career as an evangelist, who was also a
man of culture, is an effective answer to those who deprecate
the value of intellectual attainments in such efforts. There
have been many imitators of Wesley, but, as yet, he has
had no successor.
His steadfast mind discouraged the fitful gleams of self-
deception from which he was not entirely free. Hasty
or false assumptions were distasteful to his more robust
processes of thought, and any tendency to purely emotional
excitement in himself or in others was generally subdued
368 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
by his innate conservatism. Clerics and philosophers whose
prejudices he encountered dubbed him a fanatic; the be-
lievers whose faith he aided extolled him as a saint and a
sage. He went quietly forward, living down rancor and
disregarding praise, examining and restating his doctrinal
views and qualifying them by their hold on life. A per-
vading reasonableness gave weight to his utterance, and its
sincerity and restraint enabled him to overcome his critics.
In the excitement attending a great revival he did not for-
feit his sanity, his poise, his love of books, or his good breed-
ing. His prescience as a statesman preserved that which
he had won by aggressive attacks upon degeneracy and
vice. And throughout life he readily yielded to truths
hitherto neglected, or to aught else when refusal to yield
would have been less than right or rational.
Although his conversion was beyond doubt, he repeatedly
returned to it, allowing neither foregone conclusions nor
deference to pious opinion to check his constant scrutiny
of the basis of his assurance. In many of his confessions
one knows not whether the feeling is deeper than the reflec-
tion, or the reflection deeper than the feeling. If some of
his instinctive recognitions of God were in their nature mys-
tical rather than intellectual, it would be difficult to overesti-
mate the corrective value of such a religion of the heart
when contrasted with that latitudinarianism which denied
the possibility of Wesley's transfer into the boundless realm
of the living, moving, progressive Spirit who led him into
light, wisdom, and truth ; into the very presence and per-
suasion of the Soul of souls. A sense of spiritual union
springing from his voluntary surrender to Christ was
strengthened by grave and habitual meditation, until he
reached the plane where contradictions cease, Pondering
the highest he knew till it became more than his ideal, he
appropriated it as a part of himself, thus blending his life
with the life everlasting that he might do God's work in the
world.
JOHN WESLEY 369
Although he was compelled to act without her approval,
and, indeed, in the face of her undeserved rebuke, the
Anglican Church was always dear to him, and the liturgi-
cal forms of her worship harmonized with his sense of
order and of the beauty of holiness. That by her opposi-
tion she lost the greatest opportunity she has yet had to
strengthen her ranks and become a truly national church
is beyond question; but this loss was compensated by the
gains to the Kingdom of God which resulted from Wesley's
independence of ecclesiasticism. Dr. Joseph Beaumont, in
speaking of his attitude toward the Establishment, likened
it to that of a strong rower who looks one way while every
stroke of the oar propels him in the opposite direction.
Further light is cast upon Wesley's relations to Anglicanism
by excerpts given here from a letter, hitherto unpublished as
fully as here, written by Dr. Adam Clarke to Mr. Humphrey
Sandwith, and dated from Bridlington, on October 1, 1832 : —
" I have been a preacher in the Methodist Connexion more
than half a century: and have been a travelling Preacher
47 years, and I ever found many people in most places of
the Connexion very uneasy at not having the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper administered in our own Chapels, by
our own Preachers. Mr. J. Wesley mildly recommended the
people to go to the Church and Sacrament. Mr. C. Wesley
threatened them with damnation, if they did not : for even
in very early times the contrary disposition appeared in
many Societies. In 1783, at the Bristol Conference where
I was admitted into full Connexion, I heard Mr. Charles
Wesley preach in Temple Church, on IMatt. xi. 5. 'The
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk,' etc., in which
Discourse, and on that part, the lame walk, he spoke the fol-
lowing words, which I shall never forget : — ' My brethren,
the lame man, that was healed by Peter and John at the
beautiful gate of the Temple went into the Temple with
the Apostles to worship God : — They who are healed under
the ministry of my Brother and myself, go with us into the
2b
370 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Church : — Abide in the Church — if you leave the Church,
God will leave you, or you will go halting all the days of your
life, should you even get to heaven at last : — but abide in
the good old Ship, and some on Boards, and some on broken
pieces of the Ship, and you'll all get safe to Land.' On
this I make no comment.
It was only when the cry became universal, and the people
were in danger of being everywhere divided or scattered,
and a party of Rich men, principally Trustees in the Con-
nexion, rose up to prevent any concessions to be made to
the people, and it was too evident, that those very men aimed
not only, as they professed, to keep the people to the Church,
but to rule them and the Preachers too, that the Preachers in
general declared in behalf of the Societies; and then, and
not till then, did I argue in their behalf.
At the London Conference, in 1788, Dr. Coke, thinking we
were in danger of losing our people, and that our avowed
connexion with the Church hindered our work, proposed in
Conference, that 'the whole Methodist Body should make a
formal separation from the Church.' In this Dr. Coke was
not only earnest, but vehement. It was stated, ' that it was
impossible to keep up the Connexion with it, that all the
Churches in the nation could not accommodate our Congre-
gations, nor the Communion Tables receive the members
of our Societies, as Communicants ; and that as they gen-
erally called out for the Sacrament from the hands of their
own Preachers, they should have it,' etc. After the Doctor
had said what he wished at the time Mr. Wesley rose up and
with great calmness said : — * Dr. Coke would tear all from top
to bottom — I will not tear, but unstitch.' He had begun
to unstitch. Witness the ordination for America and for
Scotland and his calling Mr. Myles the year after to come
JOHN WESLEY 371
within the rails of the communion-place in Dublin, to assist
him by giving the Cup! — It has been said, 'the members of
our Societies were taken out of the Church, and in forming
Societies out of its members, we made a Schism in the Church.'
This is a total mistake. I know well what has been, and
what is the composition of our Societies. Our Societies
were formed from those, who were wandering upon the dark
mountains, that belonged to no Christian Church; but were
awakened by the preaching of the Methodists, who had
pursued them through the wilderness of this world to the
High-ways and the Hedges, — to the Markets and the
Fairs, — to the Hills and Dales, — who set up the Standard
of the Cross in the Streets and Lanes of the Cities, in the
Villages, in Barns, and Farmers' Kitchens, etc. — and all
this in such a way, and to such an extent, as never had been
done before, since the Apostolic age. They threw their
drag-net into the troubled ocean of irreligious Society, and
brought to shore both bad and good : and the very best of
them needed the salvation of God : and out of those, who in
general had no Christian Communion with any Church
were formed by the mighty power of the God of all grace
the Methodists' Societies. Thus they travelled into the
wilderness, and brought back the stray sheep, that, had it
not been for their endeavours, would in all likelihood have
perished on the Dark Mountains. Our Founders were
Ministers of the Established Church, — but what good did
they do as Ministers in that Church ? — They were obliged
to go over its pale, in order to reach the lost sheep of the house
of Israel. Had they continued regular in that Church,
Methodism would not now be found in our ecclesiastical
vocabulary. And since we, as a Body, threw aside the
trammels of our prejudices, God has doubly, trebly blessed
us in our work." ^
Such was the attitude of Wesley when he stood on the
' The extracts are inserted here by the kind permission of the Rev. W. L.
Watkinson, D.D., who is the owner of the letter.
372 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
verge of the grave. The cry for honorable independence
came from an influential minority of his preachers who re-
sented the indignities to which they were subjected and the
anomalous position in which they were expected to do their
work, but their leader's attachment to Anglicanism for a
time prevented the fulfillment of their desires. Whether
or not their proposals would have secured the stability and
prosperity of the infant Church is still an open question.
Those who hold that its Founder made the most intelligent
and timely provision possible have to meet the fact that a
large minority of the Methodists enrolled in Great Britain
are outside Wesleyanism, principally because of schisms
concerning the vexed questions of ministerial authority
and relevant issues. Doctrinal difficulties were a negligible
quantity in these disputes, which, whatever their causes,
have greatly hindered Methodism. Its more progressive
members sometimes formulated their claims regardless of
evidence and experience; the conservatives clung to the
status quo with unwise persistence; the consequences were
lamentable accusations and disruptions. Many of the de-
mands for advanced legislation which formerly aroused
intense opposition have since been granted by the parent
body, whose adjustment of clerical and lay authority has
only been obtained after many years of cautious experiment.
The growth of Methodism in the United States, where it
was not overshadowed by a State Church, afforded no
sufficient argument for a like policy in Britain, where Wesley's
revered name and unique position deferred the advantages
afterwards secured at considerable cost.
His rule, while not perfect, was unblemished by the
caprice, selfishness, or tyranny which have generally accom-
panied the sense of unrestrained power, and made so many
great men bad men. Never since the eras when the Church
held sway over every action has any ecclesiastic possessed a
more complete autocracy, or more straitly guarded it as a
trust deposited with him by God for the welfare of the people.
JOHN WESLEY 373
Sir Leslie Stephen complains of his disagreeable temper,
but there are surprisingly few instances of its exhibition.
On the contrary, he knew how to cloak his occasional severity
and arbitrariness with an urbane or a patriarchal manner.
Audacity balanced by caution, firmness vailed by benevo-
lence, inflexibility compensated by goodness, and a courage
that revealed, when necessary, the fire beneath his calm ex-
terior, were the chief features of his administrative capacity.
Some accounts of his unfortunate marriage with Mrs.
Vazeille have not been entirely just to that lady, a dis-
passionate view of whose conduct shows her to have been a
much abused woman, who suffered 'more severely than her
husband. Wesley, notwithstanding the best intentions, did
not properly discharge the duties of married life, nor devote
himself to Mrs. Wesley with the ardor he showed for his
mission. He was as mistaken in his conception of her as
she was in her jealousies of him; and his bearing toward
other women, while morally blameless, was indiscreet in view
of her extreme sensitiveness. Wrapped a little too exclusively
in his rectitude, he addressed her in terms which added fuel
to the flame of her anger, and which were better suited to a
rebellious preacher than to a wife who indulged the morbid
susceptibilities of her ill-regulated heart. In after years
he told Henry Moore that the schooling of sorrow which his
marriage brought to him had been overruled for good, since
if Mrs. Wesley had been a better wife, he might by seeking
to please her have proved unfaithful to his calling.
The light and shade of ordinary existence were as
foreign to Wesley as the joys of domestic life. He had to
yield to a pressure from all sides which injured his more
human qualities. His declaration that he dared no more
fret than curse indicated a self-consciousness which was also
shown in his lack of humor, and one cannot avoid a feeling
of thankfulness that at intervals he let himself go and
found relief. Yet the English people, however racy in
their exchanges, distrust a jocular clergyman; and Wesley
374 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
could never have gained their confidence had he scintillated
rather than shone. The classes to which he chiefly appealed
highly esteemed seriousness in the ministerial character;
they would only have been puzzled by such brilliant by-play
in Wesley as Sydney Smith indulged, and doubtless would
have resented it. Dr. Johnson, craving further conversa-
tion with Wesley, and failing to obtain it, growled about his
absorption in his work. He abstained from social inter-
course, even when it was as an arch through which
"Gleamed the untravelled world,"
and he was openly bored by the aristocratic circles which
Whitefield admired and courted. When he chose, he could
be a most delightful companion, but his steadfast gaze was
on the religious needs of the race, and on
"... The whole of the world's tears,
And all the trouble of her labouring ships.
And all the trouble of her myriad years."
Like St. Paul at Athens, he passed, not unheeding, yet un-
moved, through scenes which would have enchained a lesser
spirit. This aloofness injured his followers more than it in-
jured him, for while he regarded some things as secular which
in essence were sacred enough, he was always a liberal thinker
and a sympathetic student of men and affairs.
He lacked the boldness of imagination which could frame
philosophical or theological hypotheses and generalizations.
His intellect was of the prosaical sort, uninfluenced by those
higher but more hazardous motions which characterized his
contemporary, Jonathan Edwards. His sentimentalism and
taste for the romantic, like his drift toward Moravian mysti-
cism, were finally mastered by his will and his reason. A
feeling which did not evince itself in action counted for
little : he measured mental and moral processes by their
results in conduct; the only indications of a change of
heart he felt free to accept were a sensible regeneration and
JOHN WESLEY 375
its outward evidence in purity of life and conversation. He
perceived that in the great matters of existence people are
not convinced by argument. Good logic may remove diffi-
culties which impede belief, but faith has its origin in a
moral temper, and when this is absent the most cogent
dialectics are wasted. Intellectual operations have never
been readily adjusted to those religious impulses, which,
though they remain among the deeper mysteries of human
being, have yet been powerful enough to transform its en-
tire character, and direct it into new channels. Thus, while
there is a Wesley an theology, a Wesley an hymnology, and a
Wesleyan type of religious experience, there is no Wesleyan
philosophy. His system was never endangered by such
streams of metaphysical speculation as flowed in Calvinism.
For this and lesser reasons certain authors have supported
the charges of his earlier opponents that Wesley swung the
pendulum from the intellectual to the emotional side of
Christianity. What he really did was to demonstrate the
values of spiritual experience to such a degree that philosophy
was compelled to acknowledge them. That he did this un-
wittingly does not detract from its importance, and the
latest modern thought has confessed that his movement
re-enthroned a religious consciousness which must be recog-
nized and respected.
His Journal contains many allusions to literature in
general, with reflections and comments upon particular works
of numerous authors, as for example, Machiavelli's " Prince,"
of which he observes that it engendered in European govern-
ment universal enmity and strife, its policies being bound
by no moral obligation to God or man, and thriving on
destruction. Mandeviile's "Fable of the Bees," a very
shrewd and advanced commentary on national hypocrisies,
which asserted that private vices were public virtues, was
even more abandoned than "The Prince." Marcus Aurelius
was " one of those many who shall come from the East and
the West and sit down with Abraham, while nominal
376 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Christians are shut out." Rousseau was "a shallow yet
supercilious infidel, two degrees below Voltaire." Ignatius
Loyola, whose career he studied with care, was "surely
one of the greatest of men that was ever engaged in the
support of so bad a cause," one who set out "with a full
persuasion that he might use guile to promote . . . the
interests of his Church, and acted in all things consistent
with his principles." Of the Puritans he wrote, "I stand in
amaze, first, at the execrable spirit of persecution which
drove these venerable men out of the Church, and with
which Queen Elizabeth's clergy were as deeply tinctured as
ever Queen Mary's were : secondly, at the weakness of those
holy confessors, many of whom spent so much of their time
and strength in disputing about surplices and hoods or
kneeling at the Lord's Supper." There were deeper ele-
ments in the Puritan controversy than are indicated by this
criticism, which is, however, admissible so far as it goes.
On reading Richard Baxter's "History of the Councils,"
he vigorously denounced their evil side : " How has one
Council been perpetually cursing another, and delivering
all over to Satan, whether predecessors or contemporaries,
though generally trifling, sometimes false and frequently
unintelligible and self-contradictory?"
His judgments were not always within the mark, yet
the desire to be just made him aware of the good in disputing
sectaries, whose religious life was a unity at its source.
Anglican, Nonconformist, and even Roman Catholic divines,
theologians, and exegetes shared in the approval he generously
bestowed where he deemed it deserved. In art, although
he saw the weakness of design in the great cartoons of
Raphael, his opinions were negligible. Music was always
his delight, especially the oratorio, in which England has
excelled. In his later years he loved to linger among the
monuments of Westminster Abbey, where his own has since
received its place.
Wesley could not be called a great scholar, in the present
JOHN WESLEY 377
technical sense of the term, although the University training
he received, which was linked with the names of such men as
Blackstone, the legal commentator, Lowth, the lecturer on
Isaiah, the Wartons, especially Thomas, who was poet
laureate, Addison, and Dr. Johnson, can be truly said
to have left its mark on England. Oxford's thinkers of the
eighteenth century acquiesced in the supremacy of Aristotle,
and contributed little to the progress of organized or meta-
physical inquiry. Erudition was constantly endangered by
the acerbities of political partisanship, and few of the dons
shared in the rapid expansion of learning which characterized
their rivals at Cambridge. Alexander Knox states, however,
that Wesley had an attachment to the English Platonists,
including Taylor, Smith, Cudworth, Worthington, and
Lucas. His life of ceaseless journeyings and labors gave
him little time for literarj'^ interests, and it is greatly to his
credit that he read as widely and wrote as accurately as he
did. His Journal, which is among the first half dozen works
of the era, shows the diflBculties under which he pursued
his studies. Neither tempestuous winds nor dripping skies,
summer heat nor winter cold, breakdowns on the road nor
impassable highways, threatening mobs nor the necessities
of his Societies, could restrain his avidity for books, and,
above all, for the One Book with which he was most con-
versant. Blessed with a compact and sinewy frame, and
an equable temperament, he neither hurried nor chafed,
nor did he suffer any reaction from his toils. The anxieties
which corrode the lives of those who wear themselves out
in battling for temporalities were unknown to him : the
inspiration of his aims sustained him against every cir-
cumstance. During eighty-eight years he lost but one
night's sleep, and at all times his composure enabled him
to withdraw within himself. His seat in the saddle or the
chaise became a cloister where he read and meditated,
regardless of his surroundings.
There he planned his sermons and writings and reprints
378 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
of other men's works, which had an enormous circulation
and influence. The magazine which he estabhshed in 1778
is now the oldest periodical of its kind in Great Britain. The
entire list of his publications would form a volume in itself,
and a glance at their contents enables one to realize the
tireless energy and skill of the man. They ranged from the
standard doctrines of a growing church to the quaint pre-
scriptions of "Primitive Physic," and most of them were
eagerly accepted and practised by the multitudes to whom his
word was law. His style was decidedly inferior to that of
Newman and other masters : he did not have nor did he
desire to have the subtleties of thought and expression
which were the great Tractarian's. In answer to the query,
"What is it that constitutes a good style?" he said, "I
never think of it at all, but just set down the words that
come first. Only when I transcribe anything for the press,
then I think it my duty to see that every phrase be clear,
pure, proper, and easy. Conciseness, which is now as it
were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit of strength." ^
Sir Leslie Stephen observes, "He shows remarkable literary
power ; but we feel that his writings are means to a direct
practical end, rather than valuable in themselves, either in
form or substance. It would be difficult to find any letters
more direct, forcible, and pithy in expression. . . . The
compression gives emphasis and never causes confusion." ^
In summary, if culture consists in knowing much of the
best that has been thought and said, in breadth of outlook
and intellectual sympathy, then it cannot be denied that
Wesley was a cultured man. Pagan masters, heretics of
the ancient Church, and "excellent Unitarians," like Thomas
Firmin, whose biography he commended to his followers,
were included in his appreciative review. As early as 1745
he issued a letter to his people which has a message for them
to-day. " Have a care of anger, dislike or contempt toward
' L. Tyerman : "Life and Times of John Wesley" ; Vol. Ill, p. 657.
» "English Thought in the Eighteenth Century" ; Vol. II, p. 409.
JOHN WESLEY 379
those whose opinions differ from yours. You are daily
accused of this (and indeed what is it where you are not
accused?), but beware of giving any ground for such accusa-
tion. Condemn no man for not thinking as you think. Let
every one enjoy the full and free liberty of thinking for him-
self. Let every man use his own judgment, since every
man must give an account of himself to God. Abhor every
approach, in any kind or degree, to the spirit of persecution.
If you cannot reason or persuade a man into truth, never
attempt to force him into it. If love will not compel him to
come in, leave him to God, the Judge of all." "The Meth-
odists," he said at another time, "do not impose, in order
to the admission of persons to their Society, any opinions
whatsoever. Let them hold particular or general redemp-
tion, absolute or conditional decrees ; let them be Church-
men or Dissenters, Presbyterians or Independents, it is no
obstacle. Let them choose one mode of baptism, it is no
bar to their admission. The Presbyterian may be a Presby-
terian still ; the Independent or Anabaptist use his own
mode of worship. So may the Quaker, and none will con-
tend with him about it. They think and let think. One
condition and one only is required — a real desire to save
their soul. Where this is, it is enough ; they desire no more ;
they lay stress upon nothing else; they ask only, 'Is thy
heart therein as my heart? If it be, give me thy hand.'"
He was alive to the defects of many who make much of
religious feeling or strict dogmatic statements, yet are
lamentably deficient in Christian charity. His own catho-
licity was accompanied by a chivalrous bearing towards
opponents, to be ascribed, not to the indifference which
treats doctrines and creeds as superfluous, but to his certi-
tude concerning what he held as of faith, and to the more
perfect love which casts out fear. The character such faith
and love create is of far more importance than intellec-
tual gifts. Too often highly rationalized convictions are
found in men of weak purpose or low motive, and though
380 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
opinions are an important part of character, and never
more so than when they affect sacred matters, they should
not be confused with it.
While his complex personality was not faultless, two
things were never possible for Wesley : to betray even
for a moment his religious vocation, or to hesitate at any
sacrifice in its behalf. No one could be less careful of his
own interests ; he despised mercenary considerations, and
the end of life found him as poor as he was at his birth.
The narrowing lust of gold was abolished in him by his
literal compliance with the word of the Master, a word
which has always been one of the very last His followers
are willing to apply to themselves. Wesley met it with
thoroughness by giving away everything he had, and on his
own showing he never possessed a hundred pounds which he
could call his own. He brought himself and his followers
within the divine injunction, " If thou wouldest be perfect,
go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor;" and his
latest discourses contain frequent warnings against the
demoralization of unconsecrated wealth. This is but one,
and yet how suflBcient an illustration of that profoundly re-
ligious spirit which dictated his affairs and sought through
them to do the Highest Will. During a long and exalted
career, of which he himself was the straitest censor, he
occupied a height on which the light was always beating ;
content to be an inexplicable mystery to those who, actuated
by a less devout or comprehensive temper, shared neither
his convictions nor his experiences, and to fulfill the Apostle's
ideal, "I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me." He believed
that God, in assuming human flesh, living sinlessly in its
limitations, and dying for sinners, had effected that recon-
ciliation between Himself and man which is the greatest
achievement in moral history. This doctrine of the Person
of our Lord he unfeignedly accepted ; this, and this alone,
was for him the unquestioned basis of his confidence and joy.
He neither modified nor minimized it. It was "the creed
JOHN WESLEY 381
of creeds, involved in, and arising out of, the work of works."
The Church no less than the individual lived in and by its
central truth; the collapse of religion quickly followed its
abandonment. In that faith is to be found the intrinsic
explanation of Wesley's moral greatness, and the devotion
it inspired has always been the salient characteristic of
those, who, like him, have attained holiness in the patience
of Jesus Christ.
No spirit shines by its own radiance, and none can trans-
mit more light than its purity enables it to receive. The
strength and range of Wesley's illumination reflect the
closeness of his fellowship with the Light of lights. The
faith and works of the saint, the evangelist, the statesman,
the theologian, and the builder of the Church were derived
directly from his risen Lord. Had Christ entered the room
in Aldersgate Street as He did that other room in Jerusalem,
visible to the worshiping gaze of His disciples, and silencing
the doubts of Thomas, Wesley could not have left it more
determined to follow Him in His ministry of mercy and
redemption. From that moment he was borne upward
and onward by a supreme affection to freedom and to power
as the anointed servant of his century and of the nations.
As it is the function of fire to give light and warmth, so it
was the function of his new-found love to spread the sense of
love. His conversion discovered him an ecclesiastic ensnared
in legalisms ; it made him the greatest prophet and evan-
gelist the English-speaking people have known. Everything
lived at his touch, and as an agent of religious revolution
he earned the praise and reverence of those who imitated
his example, whether in his own or in other communions.
Undeterred by the appalling contrasts between his tastes
and habits and those of the degraded masses, he entered the
dreary haunts of physical and moral destitution, a spiritual
Archimedes, who had found his leverage and proposed to
upraise the lost and the abandoned, not only to decency,
but to holiness. He foresaw, gathered from these waste
382 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
places, an ideal Church of regenerated souls, broadly and
securely based on love and social duty. Toward that divine
society the faith of mankind is ever steadily growing, a
society not of antagonisms, but of concord, not of artificial
separation, but of spiritual unity — the Bride for whose
coming her Heavenly Bridegroom waits.
If Wesley presented an extraordinary combination of
characteristics seldom found in any individual, it is also of
the first importance to remember that, unlike strong men in
other spheres, he had the satisfaction of carrying out his own
ideas. The sequence of events placed him in the unique
position for which his qualities were exactly fitted ; even the
contradictions of his age enlarged his capacity for arousing
and handling passional forces that previously had no outlet
in religion. He made such diligent use of his entire equip-
ment that the Church which was his own embodiment be-
came to Britain and America the purveyor of his affection,
his courage, his prudence, his detestation of sin, his love of
the sinner, and his faith in a Higher Power. Memory fre-
quently tells a tale almost as flattering as that of hope, but
few characters appear in the teeming fields of retrospect
which justify its optimism more than does that of Wesley.
Happy is the nation which gave him to the highest possible
service. Incalculable are the obligations North America and
the world at large owe her for such a gift. Blessed are the
people in whose midst he moved, vigorous without vehemence,
neither loud nor labored, but as a fixed star of truth and
goodness, a pattern of private excellence and public virtue.
And while he is regarded with ever deepening reverence
and gratitude, not the least cause for thankfulness is the assur-
ance that He who sent him forth as the angel of the churches,
to "turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the
disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the just ; to make
ready for the Lord a people prepared for Him," can and will,
in His infinite goodness, grant His Israel another prince
who shall continue Wesley's work.
JOHN WESLEY
383
IMPORTANT DATES IN WESLEY'S LIFE
1725 Ordained Deacon.
1726 Elected Fellow of Lincoln College.
1727 Degree of M.A. conferred at Oxford, February 14.
1727-28 Curate at Epworth and Wroote.
1729-35 Tutor at Oxford.
1736-38 Georgia, America.
1739-91 Itinerated in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Presided at the following Conferences :
1744
London
1760
Bristol
1776
London
1745
Bristol
1761
London
1777
Bristol
1746
Bristol
1762
Leeds
1778
Leeds
1747
London
1763
London
1779
London
1748
Bristol
1764
Bristol
1780
Bristol
1749
London
1765
Manchester
1781
Leeds
1750
Bristol
1766
Leeds
1782
London
1751
Bristol
1767
London
1783
Bristol
1752
Bristol
1768
Bristol
1784
Leeds
1753
Leeds
1769
Leeds
1785
London
1854
London
1770
London
1786
Bristol
1755
Leeds
1771
Bristol
1787
Manchester
1756
Bristol
1772
Leeds
1788
London
1757
London
1773
London
1789
Leeds
1758
Bristol
1774
Bristol
1790
Bristol
1759
London
1775
Leeds
Born at Epworth, June 28, 1703.
Died at City Road, London, March 2, 1791, aged 88 years.
384 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BiRRELL, Augustine. Essays and Addresses.
Davenport, F. M. Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals.
EncyclopcBdia Britannica. Article on Wesley. Vol. XXVIIL 11th
edition.
Faulkner, J. A. The Methodists.
FiTCHETT, W. H. Wesley and His Century.
Godley, a. D. Oxford in the Eighteenth Century.
Gregory, J. Robinson. A History of Methodism.
Inge, W. R. Studies of English Mystics.
Jackson, Thomas. Life of Charles Wesley.
James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience.
Lecky, W. E. H. History of England in the Eighteenth Century.
Mains, G. P. Francis Asbury.
McCarthy, Justin. The Four Georges.
Methodism, A New History of. Edited by W. J. Townsend, H. B. Work-
man, and George Eayrs.
Overton, J. H. John Wesley.
Overton, J. H. The Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth Century.
Pattison, Mark. Essays.
RiGG, J. H. The Living Wesley.
Roscoe, E. S. The English Scene in the Eighteenth Century.
Seeley, J. R. The Expansion of England.
Simon, J. S. The Revival of Religion in the Eighteenth Century.
Snell, F. J. Wesley and Methodism.
SouTHEY, Robert. Life of Wesley.
Stephen, Sir Leslie. English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.
Sydney, W. C. England and the English in the Eighteenth Century.
Telford, John. Life of Charles Wesley.
Telford, John. John Wesley.
Tyerman, Luke. Life and Times of Rev. John Wesley.
Tyerman, Luke. The Oxford Methodists.
Wedgwood, Julia. John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of
the Eighteenth Century.
Winchester, C. T. John Wesley.
Wesley's Journal. Standard Edition. Edited by Nehemiah Curnock.
BOOK III
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
AND
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT OF 1833-1845
385
And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left,
Deposited upon the silent shore
Of memory, images and precious thoughts.
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.
Wordsworth: The Excursion, Book VII.
386
CHAPTER IX
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE
387
Without doubt, if religion could remain in the pure realm of sen-
timent, it would be beyond the jurisdiction of science; but religion
expresses and realises itself in doctrines and institutions which cannot
be exempted from criticism. These doctrines, which bear upon their
face the indelible date of their birth, implicate as to the constitution
of the universe, the history of the early ages of humanity, the origin
and nature of the writings in the canonical Scriptures, certain notions
borrowed from the philosophy and general science of a bygone period
of human history. To force them upon the philosophy and science of
to-day and to-morrow is not merely to commit an anachronism; it is
to enter upon a desperate conflict in which the authority of the past is
defeated in advance.
This is why traditional theology appears always to be in distress;
one by one she abandons her ancient positions, having been unable to
find security or a basis of defence in any of them.
AUGUSTE SaBATIER.
388
CHAPTER IX
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE
Newman and the Oxford Movement — Historical preparation —
Method of study — Political and economic antecedents — Dawn of
a new era — Utilitarianism — Kant's ethic — Lessing — Schleier-
macher's new theology — Renaissance of science — Thomas Carlyle
— Wordsworth — High and Low Church parties — Broad Church
thinkers — Coleridge's Neoplatonism — Historical and Biblical criti-
cism— MUman's "History of the Jews" — The Cambridge apostles
— Connop Thirlwall — The Oxford Noetics — Richard Whately —
Dr. Lloyd and the Prayer Book — The nation Anti-Catholic and Eras-
tian — The Tractarian reaction.
No modern religious revival has received more attention
from writers of literary distinction than the Oxford Move-
ment of the early Victorian period. The main reason for
any further reference to it is that each succeeding generation
sees it from a different point of view, and fashions for itself
its own conceptions of the issues which the Movement pro-
jected into art, poetry, ecclesiasticism, theology, and religion.
Moreover, the transcendent personality of John Henry
Newman is inseparably associated with that particular epoch
in Anglicanism, and has been a perennial source of attraction
for representatives of every school of thought. Dr. A. E.
Abbott, Thomas Huxley, James Martineau, Dean Burgon,
Dean Church, Thomas Mozley, Principal Fairbairn, Wilfred
Ward, and Algernon Cecil are distinguished names selected
at random from a host of contemporaries and biographers
who have been identified in the effort to shape a true history
both of the Movement itself and of Newman as its most
commanding figure. His pervasive influence upon religion
389
390 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and human life gave rise to endless controversies, in which
friend and foe were aUke inspired by the sentiment that he
belonged not only to his own but to following eras, and though
no longer for many of them what he was for the first group of
followers at Oxford, still for all, and for those who should
come after them, one of the spiritual geniuses of the race.
The memorable year of 1833 marked an awakening in
the Established Church of England, due in large measure
to the conjunction of Newman with John Keble and Richard
Hurrell Froude at Oriel College. That awakening trans-
formed the ecclesiastical ideals of High Anglicanism : it
manifestly affected the worship and ritual of churches derived
from Puritanism, and it materially modified the attitude
of the British nation toward the Papacy. Principles and
opinions which seemed farthest removed from the actual
surface consciousness of Englishmen were recovered and
disseminated with astonishing vigor and success. Doctrines
and ordinances that had become well-nigh obsolete and indeed
difficult to understand were quickened by the interpretative
imagination of this new cult of Catholic Anglicans.
The principal outlines of their propaganda have long been
familiar, and although its legitimacy has been seriously
questioned, those who write to prove that the Oxford Move-
ment did not confer lasting blessings upon the Church as a
whole waste their own time and that of their readers. Yet
at its worst it has been a source of strife and schism rather
than of peace and unity among believers in one Lord and one
Gospel. Its advocates were prone to set aside things evi-
denced in behalf of things assumed. Their habit of ignoring
realities which refused to be accommodated to their peculiar
theories, and of wrongly distributing cause and effect, nar-
rowed their outlook, confused their judgments, and cheap-
ened their estimates. However, the one important matter
about the sun is not its spots, but its light and heat, and
although there were extensive discolorations and false ap-
pearances in the radiance which arose at Oxford during the
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 391
last century, at least it dispelled the indifference and doubt
which had hitherto thwarted the progress of the Established
Church.
The type of Anglicanism to which Keble and Froude, and,
through them, Newman belonged was not common either
among the clergy or the laity. It originated, not only from
the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists, but also from the
teachings of the Latin Fathers, and from the traditions of
medieval Christianity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The depositum fidei of these periods, though frequently
neglected, was always latent in Anglicanism ; when given
an opportunity by the failure of Calvinistic Evangeli-
calism, and stimulated by a series of political agitations, it
suddenly sprang into prominence, showed an unexpected
vitality, and assailed some time-honored theories which had
hitherto contained the substance of loyal churchmanship.
But while what may be called the historic leaven of Trac-
tarianism ^ existed long prior to its emergence, its charac-
teristic forms and tendencies were determined by the local
atmosphere and by current events. It is therefore necessary
to ascertain as fully as may be possible its direct and indirect
causes, the motives which governed its initiators, their rela-
tive importance, their particular efforts, their relations with
other clerical parties, their political, social, philosophical,
and religious environments, and the sum total of these various
factors. Some such comprehensive survey, which seeks to
examine and combine into coherent unity a great variety of
elements, many of which are ostensibly unrelated, is never
more requisite than when dealing with the operations of the
human mind in the realm of religious speculation. For no-
where else does the blended life of thought and action become
so subtle and intricate, or spread its roots over such widely
separated areas. It draws its sustenance from sources which
1 Christopher Benson (1798-1868), Canon of Worcester and Master of
the Temple, an Evangelical of the more liberal sort, is credited with the
invention of the name "Tractarian" as applied to Newman and his col-
leagues.
392 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
betray no kinship among themselves. And even when the
lines of research are extended beyond the ordinary, contrib-
utory facts are likely to remain outside them. The pro-
posed method of investigation is exacting, and any attempt
to follow it must at best be but approximate. Yet it is as
indispensable for a veritable history as for a judicial verdict
upon its material, and should lead to that last and best
result — a sympathetic knowledge of the whole.
Nor can it be forgotten that beyond and far above the
assertions and disputes which confront us at every turn is a
ceaseless moral force, a divine tribunal, which regulates
their claims, and admits or rejects their pleas, so that any
effort to find the exact points of continuity between past and
present Anglicanism, to connect its apparently isolated eras,
and rightly present their meanings, should be reverent in
spirit as well as catholic in purpose.
During the opening decades of the nineteenth century,
Europe was absorbed in the dramatic and overwhelming
career of Napoleon the Great. His name was on every tongue,
the menace of his measures in peace or war disturbed every
heart. Great Britain's integrity was at stake ; even the
destruction of her commerce and the capture of her out-
lying provinces and dependencies were contingencies entirely
overshadowed by the threatened invasion of the Homeland
itself. The energies of the nation were monopolized by the
political dangers of a ravaging time. There was neither
opening nor inclination for matters of less immediate con-
cern ; these, however imperative in themselves, were post-
poned to a more convenient season. What vitality the
Church possessed spent itself in subservience to the antag-
onisms of theological and political partisanship, or in de-
nouncing the tenets inculcated by the Revolutionists of
France. The ideas mediated through Voltaire, Rousseau,
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 393
Diderot, and other savants and philosophers to men of fearful
and decisive action, such as Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton,
DesmouHns, and the Terrorists, were originally adopted
from English history, political philosophy, and romance.
For enlightened Frenchmen England became the dream-
land of freedom of conscience, and those who knew her
language of liberty began to evince an independence of
thought which foreboded the hurricane that followed. But
although the anaemic organism of France had been flooded
with life by Scotch and English thinkers and economists, the
vast majority of sober if shortsighted Britons heeded Burke's
magnificent warnings, and refused to have any dealings with
a regeneration disfigured by prodigious cruelties and excesses.
Even those who regarded with a measure of approval the
doctrines of liberty, equality, and fraternity deferred their
consideration. A strong reactionary temper pervaded society
and nullified the demand for domestic reforms.
The Crown had been subjected to repeated humiliations
by the intellectual, and still more the moral frailty of succes-
sive monarchs. Aristocratic circles dictated the wobbling
experiments of a Government incapable of self-improvement
and without that steadfast support which a policy of justice
toward the oppressed might have obtained. The narrow
and despotic caliber of such publicists as Sidmouth, Castle-
reagh, Eldon, and Liverpool displayed a skill that wore many
of the aspects of intrigue against the popular welfare and
defeated every proposition in its behalf. Even more enlight-
ened statesmen, including Tierney, Brougham, and Mackin-
tosh, who urged legal propriety in the numerous trials for
sedition and treason, and less drastic punishment for lawless
outbreaks, were prompt to disclaim any relation with the
deluded Radicals. The gross and open corruption of an
extremely limited franchise by noble and wealthy families;
the political and religious disabilities to which large and grow-
ing towns and cities were subjected, while insignificant and
in some instances nearly extinct constituencies were over-
394 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
represented in Parliament, aroused the wrath of industrial
magnates who owed their positions to their own enterprise
and their exploitation of labor, Whigs and Tories were more
at variance with the masses than with each other. Nor
would this composite and depressing picture of the aristoc-
racy, the landowners, and the merchants be complete with-
out a reference to the oflBcial nepotists and place-hunters
who
" leech-like, to their fainting country ' clung/ "
heartily despising the proletariat and defending the minis-
ters who rewarded them with jobs, titles, and pensions.
The universities and the public schools which fed them had
too often fostered obscurantism in preference to light and
freedom. Reflecting, as they did, stolid prejudices and cus-
toms, they became the haunts of ultra-conservatism rather
than dispensaries of knowledge at any risk, encouraging that
love of truth "for which youth is the inevitable season." At
Oxford, as nowhere else, were to be found the last ponderous
links of the shattered chains of feudalism, chafing her temper
and hampering her advance. The scrutiny of spiritual or
secular authority at once offended her well-drilled instincts.
Tastes and habits inherited and inborn, arising from the
depths of her immemorial past, protested against change
of any kind.
At this critical juncture the bishops and heads of colleges
were found in alliance with other stable elements of polite
society against that painful revulsion to actual life which
sharply disturbed their stock notions and comfortable exist-
ence. So long as the dread of Napoleon's hegemony lasted,
revolt against them and against governmental control by
the landed proprietors, although incipient, was held in check.
Once released, it became aggressively persistent ; allegiance
to the monarchy visibly declined, the prescriptive rights of
prelates and peers were rudely assailed, and acquiescence in
the rule of existing hierarchies of Church and State was with-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 395
drawn. From 1812 to 1832 these privileged orders were
made the objects of popular attack. The leaders of the
onslaught represented nearly every rank and condition of
society, and those who made it effective were men of birth
and breeding. But its underlying causes existed in the
general discontent, wretchedness, and poverty.
Artisans and peasants, crushed by the burden of the
largest debt ever yet incurred by any nation, were not al-
lowed to participate in public affairs. The destitution which
crowded on the heels of an artificial prosperity, due to war
tariffs and inflated prices, led to misery and disaffection
among the poor. For the time, labor-saving machinery,
which eventually gave England her commercial supremacy,
bore hard on the hand-craftsmen. Agriculture was pros-
trated, farms went out of cultivation, half the inhabitants of
many rural parishes were reduced to beggary, and the price
of iron, the staple product in manufactures, fell fifty per
cent. As a consequence bread riots were frequent, and had
to be repressed by the use of the military arm.
This widespread distress was not only accentuated by the
selfishness and incapacity of the Government, but exagger-
ated by the fiery harangues of patriots and demagogues.
Among the exponents of a larger freedom whose motives were
sincere, William Cobbett was remarkable, rather for his em-
bodiment of the hopes and fears of the yeomanry than for any
consistent scheme of reform. Amazing as were his extrav-
agances, his exhaustless store of passionate and picturesque
rhetoric, racy of the soil, enabled him to wield such an ex-
tensive sway that Hazlitt declared he formed a Fourth
Estate in himself. The violence of pamphleteers and orators
like Hobhouse and Hunt, and the satirical and denunciatory
poetry of Byron and Shelley, excited public indignation until
it became permanent and dangerous.
Such a lamentable state of affairs was further aggravated
by the eternal problem of Ireland, where those outside the
pale of Ulster looked upon those within it as occupants of a
396 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
stolen territory. The history of the sister island pronounced
judgment upon Englishmen as strong, resourceful, but un-
scrupulous rulers. The wrongs inflicted upon Roman
Catholic natives because of their ancestral faith were kept
alive by vivid recollection and frequent recurrence. The
name and fellowship of Britons were abominated. The
news of their supremacy at home or abroad was heard with
loathing, the anticipation of their defeat nurtured as the
best of consolations.^ These woes at last found a trumpet
voice in Daniel O'Connell, whose pleading for the annul-
ment of the penal laws against their religion entranced his
countrymen. His arraignments of this bigoted discrimina^
tion marked the turning of the tide of Toryism, which at
last had overreached itself and, despite the unique influence
of the Duke of Wellington, then the "foremost captain of
his time," began to run swiftly in the opposite direction.
The Dissenters now rallied their forces for the total repeal
of the Corporation Act and the Test Act.^ Among other
persons of consequence the Duke of Sussex, Lord Holland,
and Lord John Russell came to their aid, and insisted upon
a complete restoration of the civil and religious rights of
three million subjects who belonged to Nonconformist
churches. These Acts were an evil legacy from the reign of
Charles H, and the question of their repeal had been shirked
from 1790 until 1828. In operation they had gradually sunk
beneath the level of contempt, and were denounced for inject-
ing the venom of theological quarrels into political discussion,
and profaning religion with the vices of worldly ambition,
thus making it both hateful to man and offensive to God.
Lord Eldon predicted that their removal from the statute-
» W. S. Lilly: "Characteristics from the Writings of John Henry New-
man" ; pp. 158-159.
* The Test Act compelled all persons holding oflSce of profit or trust under
the Crown to take the oath of allegiance, to receive the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England, and to sub-
scribe to the declaration against Transubstantiation. The Corporation
Act, of like import, militated against the ascendency of Nonconformists
in cities and towns.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 397
book, which took place in 1826, would speedily be followed
by a Catholic Emancipation Bill. The event justified his
forecast ; O'Connell's election to Parliament in the same year
raised the question in such an acute form that Wellington
and Peel found themselves powerless to quell the agitation
which ensued, and on April 13, 1829, that measure became
law.
The long-delayed abolition of these anomalies was only the
prelude for an extension of the electoral franchise obtained
three years later under I^ord Grey's premiership. The
Tories realigned their shattered ranks to save the constitu-
tion, as they declared, from the invasions of an insolent
rabble bent on destroying the Crown, the Church, the landed
system, and whatever else made England truly great. The
nobles were impervious to social pressure ; the isolation im-
posed upon them by their position made them contemp-
tuous of changes near at hand ; changes they could not
prevent, but which they scorned with the fury of outraged
pride and injured self-interest. Their wild prophecies of
irremediable evil were groundless. The Reform Bill intro-
duced by Lord Grey contained nothing inconsistent with the
principles or practices of England's unwritten constitution,
or that in any way violated the precedents upon which it was
founded. Pitt had contended for the aristocracy as against
the usurpations of the personal rule of George the Third ;
Grey contended for the bankers and manufacturers as against
the monopolies of the aristocracy. The democracy which
had borne the weight of the Napoleonic wars lay outside the
range of Whig statesmanship.
Nothing was done to remove the economic grievances from
which the nation suffered, and many other notorious wrongs
were left unredressed. Yet the Bill encountered such deter-
mined opposition, prepared to go to any length for its defeat,
that a more comprehensive enactment could not have been
secured without incurring the risks of civil war. If the
formidable and weighty reasonings of Grey and Russell could
398 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
not be refuted, the Bill could at least be voted down in that
Malakoff of Toryism, the House of Lords ; and voted down
it was. Twenty-one bishops registered themselves in the
total majority of forty-one against it.
Upon its rejection the people rose in resistless strength,
and converted Grey's proposals into law. Disturbances at
Bristol, Nottingham, Derby, and other industrial centers
showed that no faction could hold its own against the will
of an aroused commonwealth, and after being presented to
the House three times in twelve months, the Bill again passed
the Commons. A hundred and fifty thousand men met at
Birmingham, formerly the scene of the depredations of a
Church and King mob which destroyed Dr. Priestley's house,
and petitioned William IV to create as many new peers as
might be necessary to ensure the success of the measure.
It was no longer a question of what the Lords would do with
the Bill, but of what the country would do with the Lords.
At the final moment, and just in time to prolong the Hanove-
rian dynasty for happier days, the King yielded, the Bill
passed both Houses, and received the royal assent. The
peers, who had withdrawn their opposition, skulked in clubs
and country mansions, careless to dissemble their chagrin.
Although this broadening of the suffrage was too restricted
to accomplish any immediate revolutionary changes, it
renewed the youth of England without forfeiting the ad-
vantages of her rich experience. It battered down some
strongholds of privilege, released a forward impulse for the
causes of religious and civil equity, preserved the realm from
internecine strife, and placed its government on a surer basis
of confidence and good will. Boundaries were prescribed
for the haughty claims of a hereditary peerage, and the en-
croachments of a self-perpetuating oligarchy received a
decided repulse. Best of all, and most conducive to the
welfare of the nation, Lord Grey's victory animated the
public mind with a spirit of courage, patience, and generous
enthusiasm. It enabled men to bide their time and devote
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 399
themselves afresh to the justice and freedom for which the
Bill of 1832 supplied a precedent. Hope rather than reali-
zation inspired the rejoicings which everywhere prevailed.
Nor was that hope to be made ashamed. It found its
fruition in an orderly and lawful development of popular
control under which Britain has become the mother and the
maker of States, and which has furnished the model for
similar constitutional efforts.
II
The political and social conditions which gave birth to those
events that precipitated the Oxford Movement were naturally
followed by a revival of philosophical speculation, which
raised new issues for theology and controverted current
orthodoxy with unwonted boldness. Reflective minds,
freed from the distractions due to international difficulties,
reverted to the more congenial pursuits of intellectual and
ethical inquiry. "The several religious parties, disengaged
from their civic campaign, were sent home to their spiritual
husbandry, and thrown upon their intrinsic resources of
genius and character. The time, ever so critical for Church
and doctrine, had come at last, — the time of searching
thought and quiet work. Other charity than would serve
upon the hustings, — a deeper gospel than was known at
apocalyptic tea tables, — a piety stimulant of no platform
cheers, became indispensable in evidence and expression of
the Christian life." ^
Among the currents of reforming thought which flowed
into the stream of nineteenth century philosophy the first
in order, though not in merit, was the ethical system of the
Benthamites, known as Utilitarianism. No divination of
impending changes which arose on the ruins of the Napoleonic
regime was more keen and resolute than that of these thinkers,
who followed in the wake of Locke's seventeenth century
'James Martineau : "Essays, Reviews, and Addresses"; Vol. I, p. 222.
400 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
empiricism, and also reproduced the strength and the weak-
ness of eighteenth century philosophy. In the midst of
intellectual and social unrest, of doubt, perplexity, and
hesitation, the writings of the Benthamites were distinguished
for their cool acumen, fearlessness, dogmatic assurance, and
for a fastidious integrity which gave them a wide popularity.
They were not collections of desultory remarks, but orderly
and articulated discussions of absorbing themes which per-
mitted no deviation. Their beginnings had referen6e to
their conclusions, and almost every part had some relation,
and frequently a close one, to other parts.
Jeremy Bentham concentrated his attention on jurispru-
dence, James Mill on psychology, and John Stuart Mill ex-
pounded a new political economy. Although the subjects
with which they dealt were too full of the contentions
brought about by the growth of knowledge for their works
to become permanent authorities, nevertheless they were
erudite, thorough, far-reaching ; notable for skillful capacity
and high aims. The writers were principally concerned to
discover the meaning and obligation of the moral code under
which men lived. Finding, as they contended, nothing save
contradictions, they resolved to begin de novo. Their un-
flinching application of reason to moral phenomena led them
to a complete abandonment of prevailing ethical creeds.
Thus deprived of any assistance from the past, they fixed at-
tention on man himself as the one indispensable reality.
Utilitarianism defined matter as "the permanent possibil-
ity of sensation," and mind as "the permanent possibility
of feeling." Experience was the sole source of knowledge,
and the mind derived its entire fund of materials through the
senses, a •priori and intuitive elements of every kind being
rejected. The so-called primary truths or innate ideas
were only habits of the mind which time and repetition had
rendered irresistible. The mind, the Benthamites averred,
contributed nothing of itself to the structure of knowledge.
John Stuart Mill went so far as to deny the principle of con-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 401
tradiction, and declared that we were not even sure that we
were not sure. When Hume conceded the necessary truth
of the axioms of EucHd, Mill rebelled against the concession,
and urged that " there might be another world in which two
and two make five." "My mind is but a series of feelings,"
he remarked, "a thread of consciousness, however supple-
mented by the believed possibilities of consciousness, which
are not, though they might be realized."
Although Mill disliked the inference, and tried to escape
it, these views were closely affiliated with necessitarianism.
"An act of will," quoting from his own words, "is a moral
effect which follows the corresponding moral causes as cer-
tainly and invariably as physical effects follow their physical
causes." This and similar statements which dealt with the
subtleties of human nature lacked Mill's customary clearness
and accuracy. Their looseness and confusion have since
been remarked by more critical philosophers, to whom it was
obvious that they aimed a mortal blow at ethical freedom,
and annulled that personal responsibility which is the source
of moral character.
The attack on the integrity and reality of mind as the nexus
of personality and on the will as the decisive factor in con-
duct has now spent its force. It endeavored to undermine
the only intelligent basis for experience, notwithstanding
that on experience the Utilitarians rested their whole case.
From it alone they sought to derive the laws which govern
mental and moral life, but they gave no satisfactory explana-
tion of the unity of consciousness which is presupposed in
every form of intellectual activity. Apart from that unity,
such self-evident functions of mind as discrimination and
combination are altogether impossible. The mind itself,
reduced to a mere series of feelings, is destroyed as a real
agent. And in his oscillations between idealism and mate-
rialism. Mill was frequently compelled to recognize personal-
ity, the existence of which he sought to disprove.
The assertion that individual and universal happiness
2d
402 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
according to reason was the most desirable end, was a
further and incurable defect in Utilitarianism and also
a virtual impeachment of its entire ethical position. The
qualitative distinction between one form of happiness and
another required a moral sense to discern it. For Bentham
push-pin was as good as poetry provided it afforded equal
pleasure. Mill shied at this ludicrous deduction, and averred
that it was better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satis-
fied. Many critics heartily echoed Mill's plea, but he could
not urge it and remain consistent. His observation dis-
placed pleasure as the standard and goal in itself. Carlyle
chuckled over the lameness of Mill's logic in the statement
that each person's happiness was a good to that person, and
therefore the general happiness a good to the aggregate of
persons. Even later Utilitarians, without any admiration
for the Sage of Chelsea's somewhat uncouth retort, have felt
equally impatient with reasonings that entailed such a
sordid and unlovely view of human nature.
A theory which denied the existence of a priori ideas and
the trustworthiness of the moral sense necessarily obliterated
the fundamental distinction between right and wrong, and
ended by enthroning social utility, with personal happiness
for its inspiring motive, as the paramount law of conduct.
The bases of faith were thus swept away, and conscience
was merged into enlightened self-interest, the prevalence of
which would presently demonstrate that Christianity was
superfluous.
In rebuttal, it has been shown that the true relation
between the individual and social welfare is not sentimental
but rational. On the ground that man is incapable of
finding contentment in gratified feeling, but capable of self-
realization in a common good, the opponents of Utilitarian-
ism were justified in setting aside arguments founded on
comparisons of pleasures. The conviction that the emotional
nature provides no ground of authority for moral conduct,
and that conscience and reason do this, and do it in all
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN >Q403
realms, awakened Thomas Arnold's antipathy to Ben-
thamism and Newmanism alike as "the two grand coun-
terfeits forged at the opposite extremes of error. The one
merged the conscience in self-interest, the other in priest-
craft : the one identified moral and sentient good, the other
separated moral and spiritual. Both extinguished the
proper personality and individual sacredness of man ; the one
treating him as a thing to be mechanically shaped, the other
as a thing to be mysteriously conjured with. In opposition
to both systems, which sought for human conduct some exter-
nal guide, the one in social utility, the other in church author-
ity, Arnold held fast to the internal guidance which he
maintained God had given to all, and through which His Will
was practicable and Himself accessible to all." ^
The repelling effect of the Utilitarian ethic upon confident
believers in a Divine order, who held with passionate inten-
sity definite views of the constant workings of that order in
the world, can scarcely be imagined now. Set forth, as it
was, in penetrating ways, the creed owed as much to the
weakness of its antagonists as to its inherent strength, and
released a militant spirit with which the Church seemed
unable to cope. Enjoying nothing of that noble intimacy
with the inner facts of life which illuminates philosophical
speculation, its stark individualism made a powerful appeal
to those who delighted in things which perish with the
using, and who looked upon pleasure as the sole end of
being.
Yet on its better side this philosophy rebuked the indiffer-
ence of churchmen and religionists to social disparities. It
gave pause to the cold-blooded rapture with which some
Evangelicals portrayed the doom of the material universe.
It originated and set in motion many useful and wisely
considered reforms, and by its thoroughgoing treatment of
personality it compelled theologians to reexamine moral
and religious intuitions, and to seek less assailable grounds
' James Martineau : "Essays, Reviews, and Addresses" ; Vol. I, pp. 73-74.
404 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
for their opinions. They were admonished to remember that
Christianity should be reasonable as well as devout ; should
invigorate the intelligence as well as transform character;
that it should neither darken the conscience nor scandalize
the mind. But behind the efforts of the Benthamites to
explain man lay that belittling estimate of human nature
which impaired their discourse and thwarted their enter-
prises. Notwithstanding that their economic teachings have
borne fruit in many directions, their system as a whole is a
warning that a sufficient doctrine of man's essential nobility
must lie at the foundation of any speculation or action which
proposes the betterment of the race.^
Among other opponents to Benthamism, the Tractarians
donned their armor and entered upon a campaign in which
they proved, if not invulnerable, at any rate, uncompromis-
ing antagonists, who neither gave nor asked for quarter.
Yet John Stuart Mill, the latest oracle of rationalistic inspira-
tion, had much to say for these determined adversaries. " He
used to tell us," remarked Lord Morley, "that the Oxford
Theologians had done for England something like what
Guizot, Villemain, Michelet, Cousin had done a little earlier
for France ; they had opened, broadened, deepened the issues
and meanings of European history; they had reminded us
that history is European, that it is quite unintelligible if
treated as merely local. Moreover, thought should recognize
thought and mind always welcome mind ; and the Oxford
men had at least brought argument, learning, and even phi-
losophy of a sort to bear upon the narrow and frigid conven-
tions of the reigning system in church and college, in pulpits
and professional chairs. They had made the church ashamed
of the evil of her ways, they had determined that spirit of
improvement from within, which, if this sect-ridden country
is ever really to be taught, must proceed pari passu with
assault from without.'" ^
' For a further treatment of Utilitarianism see the author's volume oa
"Charles Darwin and Other EuRlish Thinkers" ; pp. 91-139.
»"Life of Gladstone"; Vol. I, pp. 103, 1(34.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 405
The ethical speculations enumerated were quickened by
the inflow of Teutonic thought, whether to deluge or to
irrigate, which began about this time at the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge. In Germany Hume's appeal to
the world of the five senses had long ceased to chann superior
minds. A succession of poets and thinkers emulated one
another in brushing aside the sandy sophisms of Locke and
the conclusions of his school. They destroyed the after-
math of eighteenth century deism which encouraged the
notion of an absentee God, and they reinvested His creation
with spiritual significance and splendor. The infinite and
finite elements in man and nature were reiterated by Goethe
and Kant, Hegel and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller. Meta-
physics was reestablished upon an ampler basis, psychology
assumed a subordinate place, and the universe was viewed by
them as pulsating with the mystery and majesty of endless
life and purpose.
Immanuel Kant continued the apologetic of Butler in
behalf of supernaturalism, but he went far beyond the Eng-
lish doctor's Probabilism, and rejected the mischievous idea
that the chief end of religion was to promote morality. His
reasoning demonstrated that in the sequence such a notion
was inimical to religion. Disinterestedness was the essence
of virtue ; wherever ulterior motives prevailed, and however
derived, they were subversive of genuine morality. The
scarcely disguised Utilitarianism of Paley, who defined virtue
as the doing of good to mankind in obedience to the will of
God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness, made virtue
to spring from self-seeking, and found its sanction in rewards
and punishments. This other-world selfishness, as it has
been justly termed, was set aside by the categorical impera-
tive of Kant, which rested morality on duty, and defined
religion as the love of goodness for its own sake, and the
cheerful acceptance of duty without regard to gain or loss,
because it was the manifested will of the Eternal.
On that day in the year when the faculty of the University
406 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of Koenigsberg went to the town church to worship, Kant
paused at the entrance of the sacred edifice and returned
home to his study, thus revealing his attitude toward Lu-
theran theology and discipline. Yet inadequate as his inter-
pretation of religion was in the direction of practical devo-
tion, it served to vindicate faith on its philosophical side, and
to rescue it from the oblivion to which some advanced thinkers
had consigned it, transferring it to an invigorating intellectual
climate, in which evasive conformity or patronizing superior-
ity was no longer the accepted mark of culture.
Lessing felt as keenly as Kant the necessity for a rejuve-
nated ethic and religion. But realizing that he was without
the capacity to bring this about, he invoked the advent of a
stronger thinker. The Messiah of the new era was Schleier-
macher, with whom Luther's reform returned to its creative
principle — justification by the faith of the heart — and
Protestantism entered upon a new phase.
His Moravian antecedents endowed Schleiermacher with a
warm intense piety, not unduly dogmatic. His philosophical
caste was fashioned in the dialectic of Plato and Spinoza.
He strove to reconcile sentiment and reason, and to find a
scientific theory for faith. His " Discourses upon Religion,"
which appeared in 1799, blended the passion for religion,
which is in truth a great romanticism, with the play of a
marvelous sympathy, which, again, is only another aspect of
imagination. The happy abstractions of the scholar were
varied by the fervid aspirations of the saint. His readers
felt the emission from his words of something pure and kind-
ling, which evoked their better selves. Those in whom piety
was at odds with mental temperament and circumstances
were reconciled by the teachings of a prophet who could not
conceive of religion except in terms of the subjective con-
sciousness and apart from anything external. The divine
life in man had its residence in the emotions, and was as care-
fully separated from dogmatic authority as it was from ethical
precepts. Independent, because in itself supreme, religion,
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 407
according to the famous German preacher and theologian,
was an ineffable communion between the heart and God. " It
vindicates for itself its own sphere and its own character only
by abandoning entirely the provinces of science and practice ;
and when it has raised itself beside them, the whole field is
for the first time completely filled and human nature per-
fected. Religion reveals itself as the necessary and indis-
pensable third, as the natural complement of knowledge and
conduct, not inferior to them in worth and dignity." ^
The origin and development of experiences must be ana-
lyzed before reliable data could be obtained . Hence the proper
subject for religious inquiry was the mind engaged and ab-
sorbed in the knowledge that God is all and in all. In brief,
the entire question of the nature of religion and its expression
was transferred from philosophy to psychology, and its
authority was found in no creed nor volume, still less in an
ecclesiastical organization, but in the attested experiences of
the devout. External standards could not bind the spiritual
man ; he judged all things ; within his breast and nowhere
else, the divine law registered those decisions from which
there was no appeal. Theology, therefore, was not specula-
tive but expressive. Its subject matter consisted of the facts
of Christian experience, and its function was to formulate
these without reference to the problems of metaphysics or
the discoveries of physical science.
But while every believer's personal consciousness of sin
vanquished and overcome by the mediation of Christ con-
stituted for him the ultimate ground of his confidence, it was
impossible for him to isolate this experience from that of
others similarly blessed. A nature steeped in the life of
faith clung to the principle of association, without which it
could not reach its fullest possibilities. Furthermore, the
immanence of God in humanity, an idea fundamental to
Schleiermacher's entire system, was directly related to the
1 Quoted by Arthur C. McGiffert: "The Rise of Modern Religioua
Ideas"; pp. 66 et seq.
408 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
rise and structure of the Church as its manifestation.
On these two immovable pillars he founded her strength and
security, conceiving her, not as an institution, nor as an
hierarchy, but as the congregation of faithful souls, in whose
corporate existence the dwelling of the Divine Spirit for-
bade schisms, casting out the self-will and discords which
created them, and fusing its members into one living body
which radiated a glowing fellowship to every part.
This transfer of the seat of religious authority to experi-
ence, while still preserving the place and integrity of the
Bible and the Church, delivered believers from apprehension
concerning those changes which attend expansion in knowl-
edge. The Church, steadfast in the spiritual conscious-
ness of her children, was under no necessity to practice
methods which, while they stifled doubt, failed to reach the
truth. Her path was cleared of sacerdotal and credal
obstacles; vulnerable theories of Biblical inerrancy and
ecclesiastical infallibility, which could not survive the tests
now being brought to bear upon them, were relegated to the
rear. The growth of God's Kingdom was hastened by this
spirit of courageous candor, which welcomed truth for its
own sake, let it emanate whence it may.
The sources of Schleiermacher's views are traceable
to the Greek Fathers of the second century, in particular
to Clement of Alexandria. Both in its positive and negative
elements Schleiermacher's mind was as entirely Greek as
St. Augustine's was entirely Latin. The juristic theology of
the latter was dissolved under the imaginative mystical
quality of Schleiermacher's conceptions. He resented con-
crete things, and preferred to think of Christianity as a living
organism endowed with the potentiality for continuous
growth. Hence, the content of the spiritual consciousness
was always being increased, and this increase was the material
for a progressive as opposed to a static theology. The Augus-
tinian doctrines of total depravity, atonement in the terms
of sacrificial Judaism, and the endless punishment of the
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 409
unregenerate, were set aside as repugnant to God and man.
The conception of God as a Being between Whom and His
creatures yawned an impassable gulf was rejected as deroga-
tory to the self-communicating life and love of the Eternal
Father. On the contrary, Schleiermacher proclaimed an
illimitable range of possibilities as the chief feature of divine
and human intercourse. And although such boundlessness
was too vague and shadowy for less refined and mystical
intellects, or for those which were attached to dogmatic and
symbolic forms, it was equally true that in recovering and
amplifying the idea of God which had prevailed in the ancient
Church, Schleiermacher summoned the leaders of his own
and after times to a fountain of suggestiveness which has
fertilized many areas of Christian thought and replenished
the inspiration for Christian living.^
To him belongs, therefore, the honor of giving a fresh
impulse and direction to metaphysics and theology. He
showed that there could be an experimental science of
religion, which observed, classified, and elucidated spiritual
phenomena. Thus, in the words of Sabatier, to obtain
independence for religion and for the science of religion
its uncontested supremacy was the most eminent service
which Schleiermacher rendered at once to faith and philos-
ophy. His interpretations were instrumental in emphasiz-
ing much that is highest and best in the life of the spirit.
Directly or indirectly, he left a permanent impress on Prot-
estantism, both in Europe and America, and even ecclesias-
tics who have refused to make any terms with Modernism
and for whom an unchanging order is the governing power of
faith, have felt to some extent the vivifying touch of this
luminary of his age.
The new blossoming of the European mind, largely due
to the fundamental brain work of German metaphysicians
and scholars, began to manifest itself in science and
'Alexander V. G. Allen: "The Continuity of Christian Thought";
p. 397.
410 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
history. The publication of Sir Charles I^yeH's "Principles
of Geology" heralded the advent of Evolution, with its
immense range of biological facts, and caused nothing short
of a panic in those circles already gravely perturbed by po-
litical and theological liberalism. Its "wild theories and pre-
posterous conclusions," which were more easily denounced
than answered, contravened the cosmogonies of Genesis,
and the coincidence of the appearance of Lyell's volume with
the formation of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science seemed darkly ominous to the orthodox. To make
matters worse, the book steadily won approval from experts
competent to judge, and marked the beginning of a serious
attempt to arrange scientific phenomena in more coordi-
nated forms. Lyell's work and its extensive implications
altered the whole tone of Darwin's thinking, who declared
that but for the inspiration derived from Lyell his own con-
clusions might never have been obtained. "I have long
wished," he wrote in 1845, "not so much for your sake as for
my own feelings of honesty, to acknowledge more plainly
than by mere reference how much I owe to you. Those
authors who, like you, educate people's minds, as well as
teach them special facts, can never, I should think, have full
justice done to them except by posterity." These inquiries,
while possessing the romantic interest attached to excursions
in hitherto unknown fields, were also conspicuous for their
intellectual impressiveness and fidelity to detail. They were
vindicated in a revolution foreshadowed by Newman in his
"Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," and
which gave coherence and meaning to the accumulations of
natural knowledge. The entire field of human effort acquired
new promise and dignity. For although geology and biology
were the cradles of the evolutionary hypothesis, its ramifica-
tions spread rapidly into many other spheres. Statesmen,
sociologists, reformers, and theologians were inoculated with
the theory of progressive development and determined to
parallel its story in nature with a similar unfolding in politics,
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 411
ethics, and religion. In directing the gaze of mankind toward
an ideal all the more attractive because its frontiers were lost
in the radiance of a possible perfectibility, Lyell and Dar-
win did the greatest service men can render to their fellows.
They showed that creation and man were not isolated units,
that the creature had a princely inheritance from an inter-
minable past, the recesses of which were beyond discernment,
and its irrepressible energies mobilized in himself.
Thomas Carlyle, who, together with Wordsworth, directed
some of these conceptions into popular channels, was perhaps
the most important literary accessory in the revolt against tra-
dition. While scornful of conventional opinions, he was at
heart hostile toward materialism. As an author, virile, vehe-
ment and iconoclastic in temper ; as a thinker, intuitional rather
than logical, impatient with the letter and mechanism of his-
tory, this shaggy Titan, who was so eager for the realities and
forces underneath outward events, gave a more cosmopolitan
range to English literature. Carlyle was so constructed that
" the prophet who reveals and the hero who acts could be his
only guides." He stirred the lethargy and aroused the resent-
ment of his readers by his antagonisms rather than by his
sympathies. His habitual eccentricities of style and method,
and his absorption in the higher learning of the philosophers
who resided between the Rhine and the Oder offended more
sedate and careful scholars, who doubted the soundness of
many of his conclusions. But these shortcomings and
prejudices were compensated by his reverence for truth, his
imaginative grasp of facts, and his fascinating humanness.
His superabundant vitality and candor gave the first clear
expression to the struggling heart of a desolate yet aspiring
time, making a clean breast of many repressed unbeliefs and
noble hatreds. He generated a tempest which swept away
some shams, whether in Church or State, and cleared the
ground for affirmative thinkers.
Yet so far from being purely destructive, he was always
mindful of the "Everlasting Yea," and if he inspired rather
412 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
than illuminated, he certainly provided an immediate foot-
hold for faith and loyalty at a moment when some ancient
landmarks were being removed. The infinite natm-e of
duty was the token of the Divine Presence which never
forsook him. Only in submission before that Presence could
any worthy freedom be found. The higher self within was
the one medium of contact with the Supreme Will. Through
obedience and renunciation the soul entered its divine king-
dom. It was Carlyle's powerful presentation of such truths
as these, far more than his vitriolic objurgations against
cant or the pretensions and quackeries, real or imaginary,
which he detested, that gave him a tremendous hold upon
his admirers. They saw in him the survival of a moral
code inherited from generations of honest God-fearing
ancestors, at first stifled by doubt and questioning, and then
majestically quickened and purified under the stress of
deepened insight and the sense of high responsibility. How
much they owed to him cannot be easily computed, but that
his early writings may be reckoned among the chief forces
of liberation working in those years is beyond dispute,
"Whilst the schools of the Economists were laboriously de-
molishing the homes of prejudice and superstition, Carlyle's
battering ram made such a noisy assault upon them that
all were bound to listen." ^ His discordant summons to
sincerity was heard in every walk of life, rousing opposition
as well as discipleship, and further disquieting the ecclesias-
tical centers which were already alarmed by what they
deemed the impious aberrations of the world.
Thus the period was one of confusion, in which devout men
were timid, nervous, and, for the most part, resourceless.
The transposition of values had driven Wordsworth from his
earlier radicalism into a practical alliance with the Tories.
The evolution of his opinions was both straightforward and
intelligible, but it affected his productive powers, which
' F. Warre Cornish: "A History of the English Church in the Nine-
teenth Century" ; Vol. I, p. 196.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 413
henceforth were intermittent in their effusions. The social
anarchies of France as represented by the "Terror," and
WilUam Godwin's "Enquiry Concerning PoHtical Justice,"
which was calmly subversive of marriage and similar in-
stitutions, compelled Wordsworth to abandon his liberalism
in behalf of the quiet of an ideal state, in which the bonds
of domestic piety were strengthened by the contemplation of
God in nature, thus conserving the spirit of the simple
society in which he had been bred.^
Beset on every side by a renascent philosophy, theology,
science, and literature, churchmen in Germany and France,
and later in England, saw their systems subjected to severe
ordeals; the past, at the instigation of the growth of
knowledge, rose up to grapple with its own progenies in the
present. The heart of things as they were was ruthlessly
torn open and scrutinized. What existing party could abide
the hour of reckoning? The polite and titled cliques which
loathed democracy were on the defensive. The prelates
and dignitaries of the Establishment scented danger every-
where. For dreamers and poets the day of Utopia had
dawned. Would the Church herself, as the last hope, prove
equal to the emergency, or be made a show of in the open as
natively incapable of readjustment to its necessities?
Ill
The answer must be sought in the condition of the two
predominant parties into which Anglicanism, speaking
generally, was divided. These were known respectively as
High and Low Churchmen. The former included non-jurors,
other irreconcilables, and a large proportion of the ortho-
dox, a term applied to those who accepted the Reforma-
tion and the Prayer Book, and who, although sacramental
in theory, were content with a minimum of ritual and observ-
*" Dictionary of National Biography"; Vol. LXIII, article on Words-
worth.
414 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ance. The Low Churchmen consisted of both Evangelicals
and Latitudinarians. Indeed, at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century these terms were loosely used, and there was
no very wide divergence, either in doctrine or practice, be-
tween the two main groups or their subdivisions. Alexander
Knox observed that the old High Church race was fatigued,
the majority being men of the world, if not of yesterday.
They boasted their direct succession from a series of learned
divines beginning with Hooker and ending with Waterland,
who embodied for them the authentic and unchanging mind
of their communion. Passionless, scholarly, contemptuous
of zeal, content to take things as they found them, they
coveted reasonableness and repudiated emotionalism. Their
preaching spent itself in a balanced presentation of Carolinian
theology and in a steady effort to avoid every kind of ex-
travagance.
"The better members," says Dean Church, "were highly
cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of irregularities both
of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by an un-
ostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst
forth, on occasion, into fervid devotion." ^ Their whole-
some though restrained ministry was too frequently "coun-
teracted by pluralist and fortune-loving brethren, many
of whom were nothing more than country gentlemen in
Holy Orders who used the advantages of their calling for the
pursuit of personal interests and pleasures. Thanks to the
regenerating effects of Tractarianism, this type of cleric has
long since disappeared, and nothing more than a misty
reminiscence of the sporting parson, or the clergyman who
held his office as a sort of perquisite, lingers in rural regions.
Although their number was far smaller than has been com-
monly supposed, the Evangelicals furnished the prevailing
religious and philanthropic tendencies of the first generations
of the century. They were related to the Revival from which
they took their name, with two very marked differences;
» "The Oxford Movement" ; p. 10.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 415
that they owned no allegiance to Methodism as a sect, and
accepted the Calvinism of Whitefield, Toplady, and Hill as
against the Arminianism of Wesley and Fletcher. High
Churchmen accused them, not without reason, of being
morbid pietists, whose jaundiced vision regarded an enjoy-
able world as a dreary wilderness overshadowed by impend-
ing doom. This antipathy was too often synonymous with
a mistaken hatred of all that made life beautiful, combined
with a quick appreciation of whatever added to its material
comfort. Their favorite teachers and guides were such men
as Hervey, Romaine, Cecil, Newton, Thomas Scott, and
Charles Simeon. The Evangelicals were students of the
Bible, deeply versed in its contents, pronounced literalists,
experts in the doctrinal views they accepted, and frequently
more than equal to the controversialists they were called
upon to meet. Nevertheless, they were too circumscribed in
range and deficient in imagination and sympathy to supply
an adequate theology for the age. "The history of the
Evangelical Revival illustrates the limits of religious move-
ments which spring up in the absence of any vigorous rivals
without a definite philosophical basis. They flourish for a
time because they satisfy a real emotional craving ; but they
have within them the seeds of decay. A form of faith which
has no charms for thinkers ends by repelling from itself even
the thinkers who have grown up under its influence. In the
second generation the able disciples revolted against the
strict dogmatism of their fathers, and sought for some more
liberal form of creed, or some more potent intellectual
narcotic. . . . When the heart usurps the functions of the
head, even a progressive development will appear to be
retrograde." ^ Their instruction was subordinated to the
dogma of election and its corollaries, insistence upon which
engendered that aversion felt at Oxford toward Calvinism,
where it supplied one of the first incentives to the Tractarian
'Sir Leslie Stephen: "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century"; Vol. II, pp. 431 and 435.
416 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Movement. Their fatalism inclined many of them to
Premillenarianism as a refuge from the approaching catas-
trophes of the present dispensation. The breadth and verve
of Luther, or the logical array and incisiveness of Calvin, or
the "platform of discipline" of Knox and the earlier Puritans
was not in them nor in their followers.
Social conditions had slowly changed their once unbending
bearing in an environment which laid stress on what was
fastidious or ingenious or genteel : almost insensibly they
inhaled the subtle poison of these requirements, and devel-
oped an accommodating spirit toward them. Despite de-
terioration, however, the more intense Evangelicals warred
against prevalent evils in Church and State, thus incurring
proscription as enthusiasts and bigots. Their preaching
lent weight to the charge; it abounded in credal phrases
which had lost their significance, and left untouched large
and vital needs of human life. References to ethical obli-
gation and the necessity for righteous conduct were dis-
paraged if they seemed to clash with salvation by faith and
for the elect alone. The result was that their homilies
seldom ventured beyond the rudiments of the Gospel, pre-
ferring the well-worn track of a call to repentance and a
conditional assurance of pardon.^ Arrogant exclusiveness, a
sure sign of decay, began to show itself among them. They
set themselves apart as the truly religious, the chosen depos-
itaries of Christian verity, culture, and experience, with a
dialect of their own ; and were inclined to regard those who
were not of their persuasion as worldlings and soothsayers.
It was but one remove from this temper to the materialism
which believed in making the best of both worlds, projecting
the theory of rewards and punishments into the future with
reckless profusion, and emphasizing it as the chief stimulus
' Sydney Smith wrote : "The great object of modern sermons is to hazard
nothing. Their characteristic is decent debility, which alike guards their
authors from ludicrous errors and precludes them from striking beauties.
Every man of sense in taking up an English sermon expects to find it a
tedious essay."
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 417
to godly living. Their progenitors had braved the anger of
Georgian bishops by exhortations and practices that drew
all classes to their churches. The descendants were found
in the rich and fashionable pulpits of London and the
provinces. Yet, notwithstanding this decline in value
and breadth of service, a large contingent of Anglicans
still clung to the Low Church, cherishing its devout in-
heritance and earnestly expecting a renewal of those gifts
and graces which were now its fondest traditions. Famous
divines strengthened and adorned the wider ranks of
Evangelicalism, but few such were found within the pale of
the Establishment. Robert Hall, John Foster, William Jay
of Bath, Edward Irving, the eccentric genius, and in Scotland^
Thomas Chalmers, represented the vigor and fearlessness of
an earlier day and maintained the excellence of Evangelical
preaching.
It should be added that, notwithstanding its waning fires,
the party conferred upon humanity some of its foremost
benefactors. The men and women whose unstinted labors
and sacrifices were instrumental in founding the foreign
missionary propaganda, in obtaining clemency for the Hindu
and freedom for the slave, in abolishing cruel penal laws
and purifying noisome prisons, as a rule, owed allegiance to
the Clapham sect vividly described by Macaulay, or to its
lesser rival, the Clapton Sect, and were active and influential
members of the evangelical wing of the Church.
Standing apart from High and Low Churchmen were cer-
tain thinkers and writers to whom the term Broad Churchmen
has since been conveniently applied. These may be divided
into two sections, the philosophical, which began with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and passed on to such typical divines as
Frederick Denison Maurice, and later, Brooke Foss Westcott ;
and the critical or historical, represented by Henry Hart
Milman, Newell Connop Thirlwall, Julius Charles Hare,
Thomas Arnold, and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The Platonic
gospel of Coleridge discarded the apologetic of Paley, which
2e
418 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
found all good in happiness, and the empiricism of Locke,
which posited all knowledge in phenomena as derived by
reflection from what the senses reveal. With Schleiermacher,
Coleridge traced the sources of religious faith to experience,
but he also affirmed the existence of an intellectual organ for
the apprehension of God. This he defined as the Reason,
which was loftier in nature, and dealt with higher truths than
the Understanding. For while the Understanding was wholly
dependent upon perception for its data, and generalized from
the material presented by the senses, the Reason was con-
cerned intuitively and immediately with necessary and
universal truths. The former operated in the world of time
and space, and was in a measure shared by animals, whose
instinct was only a lower kind of "adaptive intelligence."
The latter fulfilled its office in the spiritual sphere, and its
presence in man proved his affinity with a supernatural order
as certainly as the Understanding related him to the physical
creation. The Reason had two functions : the cognitive, from
which proceeded all ontological thinking, ideas of cause,
unity, infinitude, and the like ; and the active, from which
arose the postulates of moral action, such as obligation,
freedom, and personality.
This, of course, was another way of stating Kant's resolu-
tion of the Reason into its components, the speculative and
the practical, and the indebtedness of Coleridge to the founder
of the critical philosophy is everywhere apparent. From
Kant and Schelling his metaphysic received its primary
impulse.
Both functions of the Reason, argued Coleridge, were
fulfilled in definite religious faith. The speculative element
could give the conception of an Absolute Being, but since its
content was purely ontological it could not predicate His
character. On the other hand the practical element, or
moral consciousness, revealed the Absolute as the Holy One,
who was "visible" in that degree in which the perceiving
heart was pure. The Reason which discharged this double
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 419
function was not a detached personal faculty, but the imma-
nence in human apprehension of the Divine Reason, " the light
which lighteth every man," the link between the Creator and
the creature, and the essential medium for that fellowship
which apprises men of spiritual realities. Since the basic ideas
of religion were derived from the Reason, thus understood,
it followed that the deistic view of "natural religion" was
precluded as a contradiction in terms.
The psychological analysis of the soul was supplemented by
the reverse process. Having worked upwards from the data
of human consciousness to the Divine Being, Coleridge pro-
ceeded on a descending path from the Absolute One to His
manifestations in the finite. The Logos or Son of the Father
was the one mediator between God and the universe, sus-
taining cosmic relations to all that is, directing the eternal
process in history, and inspiring the soul with moral and
spiritual truth. In Jesus, the Son attained a concrete per-
sonal expression, which while specialized in a profoundly
impressive manner, was neither exclusive nor final in
the sense that He had withdrawn from the rest of mankind.
Humanity as a whole felt the throbbings of His light and life,
without Whom nothing could exist. Thus the particular
Incarnation the Gospels recorded revealed and realized the all-
pervading truth that the race was the offspring of God, Who
through self-manifestation and utmost sacrifice ever sought
to reclaim and reconcile His errant children.
The apprehension of this fundamental truth made possible
the new birth which was the chief purpose of the Son's
redemptive mission, and which consisted, not in an improved
self, but in "a Divine other-than-self." The mind of Christ
blended with the mind of believers, and a life of the
Spirit was inaugurated, a life of trust and love, a life of
closest and most intimate communion with the Father,
through the Son. The two paths of ontological dialectic and
psychological examination converged to the point where God
and man met in a living union. The powerless abstractions
420 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
of deism gave place to a Holy Father whose love, worship,
and service evoked and satisfied the deepest feelings of
regenerate hearts, which intuitively demanded a Personal
Deity rather than a principle as the source of their salvation
and the center of their faith.
! If this Christianized Platonism was a reaction from the
sterile thinking and materialized necessity of current philos-
ophies, it was no less opposed to some main articles of
the reigning Calvinistic theology. The opposition was
interpretative rather than negative. Coleridge admitted
the fact of sin and the consequent alienation of every soul
from the Everlasting Will, so that man was always the object
of a necessary redemption. But Calvinism had formulated a
doctrine of Original Sin issuing in that hereditary depravity
which infected the entire race at birth. Upon this it pro-
ceeded to construct a scheme of atonement, viewed as a
propitiation of the wrath of Divine justice by means of the
penalty which fell upon Christ. Sin, contended Coleridge,
was a moral not a natural fact, and therefore could not be
born in man, but must be the outcome of his own volition :
the only Original Sin was that which each man himself
originated. The aim of redemption was not to discharge an
ancestral debt which involved all men, but to deliver them
from the dominion of iniquity which had its seat in the de-
flected will ; in brief, to recreate them in Christ Jesus.
In the matter of Biblical criticism, Coleridge sympathized
with the historico-rationalistic methods of Germany. His
system, like Schleiermacher's, was sufficiently expansive to
incorporate the results of the new scholarship without detri-
ment to the objectives of faith, as he understood them. Too
susceptible to impressions of various kinds to be always con-
sistent, too mystical and remote to be always clear, neverthe-
less Coleridge imparted a needed impetus to the spiritualizing
of theology in England, where he was esteemed by his dis-
ciples as the greatest religious thinker of his time. Just so
surely as Carlyle widened and deepened the insular channels
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 421
of literature, so surely Coleridge, notwithstanding his occa-
sional obliquities, challenged the champions of an orthodoxy
which had hidden behind the authority of the Church or the
Bible and used the medium of a hidebound theology. New-
man, speaking for many others who agreed with him in little
else, protested against Coleridge's speculations, and said
that they took for granted a liberty which no Christian could
tolerate, and carried him to conclusions which were often
heathen rather than Christian. Yet he admitted that
Coleridge "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," ^
Prominent among the critical and historical group of
scholars was Henry Hart Milman, who, after a most cred-
itable career at Oxford, became Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral,
London, in 1849. While retaining some of the intellectual
habits of the eighteenth century, Milman was markedly
friendly to the larger ideas of the succeeding era, holding
himself free to accept and spread their light, however trying
it might prove to older perspectives. His cautious and
independent nature allowed nothing to pass without exam-
ination, and he was too devoted to truth to accept or reject
conclusions' merely because of their age or novelty. If he
was not exactly the forerunner of Higher Criticism in Eng-
land, he was a pioneer in that school of criticism which has
since developed fruitful inquiries in many directions, and
especially in the study of the Holy Scriptures. His " History
of the Jews," which appeared in 1829, marked an epoch in
the historical scholarship of Anglicanism, and was at least
fifty years in advance of the times. Dean Stanley, who was
in some respects Milman's successor, described the work as
"the first decisive inroad of German theology into England,
the first palpable indication that the Bible could be treated
like any other book ; that the characters and events of sacred
• "Apologia" ; p. 97.
422 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
history could be treated at once critically and reverently."
Its inferences and suggestions, even more than its actual
statements, led to such a furore that the publication of the
manuals in which it was one of a series came to a sudden
end. Oxford joined in the outcry against it, and Newman
reviewed it adversely in the British Critic. Once the
right of entry into the hitherto inclosed field of Biblical
history was ceded, important consequences were bound to
follow. Philosophers and theologians might indulge in
ceaseless disputes without arriving at any agreement ; under
Milman's treatment the records of Scripture were no longer
matters of opinion, but of fact, dependent upon accurate
knowledge derived from the scientific study of their contents.
To men who held that the inspired writings were immune
from research, his method appeared nothing better than an
abomination of German infidelity introduced into the English
-Church at a moment when she was imperilled by a crumbling
ethic and a vanishing faith.
The slumbering tenacities of the Universities were now
slowly awakening. At Cambridge those who resented the
dogmatism of arrogant ignorance, and advocated a sound
and reasonable view of life, formed a coterie of better spirits
known as the Apostles Club. Impatient with the banalities
of purblind regularity, Thirlwall, Hare, and Maurice,^ to-
gether with others not already named, such as John Sterling,
Adam Sedgwick, Richard Chenevix Trench, Arthur Hallam,
Alfred Tennyson, and Charles BuUer, attached themselves
either to Coleridge or to more spacious beliefs in politics
and religion. They earnestly desired a dispassionate
and penetrative spiritual life and thought, and, while loyal
to the substance of Christian teaching, asked for a searching
revision of current creeds which would render them accept-
able to changed conditions. Thus the clerical edicts against
further quest for truth wrought effectively in the opposite
direction.
• Maurice belonged to both Universities.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 423
Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop of St. Davids, was con-
spicuous even among these eminent men as one of the
princeHest intellects of the century. With Hare, who could
not be assigned to any particular theological cult, he
labored to supplant the formulae then in vogue by more
accurate and progressive principles. Among their many
services in this direction they collaborated in the translation
of Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which Hare supported by
his "Vindication of Niebuhr" against the charge of skepti-
cism. In 1825 Thirlwall published Schleiermacher's " Critical
Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke," containing an introduc-
tion that revealed his extensive acquaintance with German
theology, a field of learning as yet hardly known to
English students. Thirlwall's endowments and catho-
licity of outlook made him a competent and trustworthy
guide for those who cared to follow him. In 1834 he
petitioned and wrote in favor of the admission of Free
Churchmen to university degrees. He also condemned the
collegiate lectures in divinity and compulsory attendance at
Chapel, " with its constant repetition of a heartless mechani-
cal service." This pamphlet was issued on May 21, 1834;
five days later Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Master of
Trinity, wrote to the author, asking him to resign his appoint-
ment as assistant-tutor; Thirlwall at once complied.
In 1840 Lord Melbourne offered him the bishopric of St.
Davids, a see the solitude and retirement of which exactly
suited his philosophical and literary tastes. He rarely
quitted "Chaos," as he called his library, except to attend to
the duties of his diocese.
Seldom was a severer strain of self-suppression necessary
at a moment when the natural desire should have been to
obtain information, and to bring to the common stock what-
ever of well-considered suggestion or of legitimate criticism
might be available for the attainment of those reforms
on which the future of the Church depended. Thirlwall
was well qualified to further such aims, but his great
424 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
qualities as a thinker without passion or prejudice, and the
fearlessness with which he expressed his views on disputed
questions, separated him from the clergy and the bishops.
His first charge was a broadly conceived defense of the
Tractarians, then the anathema of all parties. He was one
of the few prelates who refused to inhibit Bishop Colenso of
Natal for his heretical expositions on the Pentateuch. Among
important legislative acts that won his approval, of which
two at least have since been ratified by the nation, were
the admission of Jews to Parliament, the granting of State
funds for the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth, and the
disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland. A per-
vading sanity characterized the workings of his mind ; he
humanized the episcopacy of which he was an unusual but
influential member, and endeavored to secure the inclusive
policy and action of the Church in a nation emphat-
ically Protestant, and to preserve it from being controlled
by an obscurantist sacerdotalism. Partisan opposition could
not separate him from these resolves. His devout reason-
ableness counted for infinitely more with far-sighted men
and women than abstract systems deduced from assumed
first principles. His massive intelligence and sagacious
judgment were as deserving of reverence as the tender and
fragrant piety of Charles Marriott. The fear which Words-
worth says
"has a hundred eyes, that all agree
To plague her beating heart,"
was unknown to Connop Thirlwall. He believed in man
because he believed supremely in God and in the ultimate
triumph of His will.
While the genius of German philosophy was welcomed
by the Cambridge men, who passed quickly from admiration
to penetration of the new soul and an understanding of its
meanings, Oxford was alert under other forms ; forms less
pliable, less evenly just, less open to the inflow of continental
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 425
thought and the modification of assured facts: more
dialectical, dogmatic, and imaginative. Oriel, in particular,
stood forth as the center of a succession of more or less per-
ceptive men. Under Provost Eveleigh it was the first college
to throw open its fellowships to competition and to ask for
the institution of university class lists. From the days of
Copleston to those of Hampden it harbored a breadth then
unknown elsewhere in Oxford. Its reputation for liberalism
was enhanced by a resident band known as the Noetics,
who "fought to the stumps of their intellects." They repre-
sented the common loyalties and sympathies of Oxonians,
intermingled with an extensive variety of gifts and opinions,
and accompanied by a mutual concession of the rights of
inquiry. The evangelical, sacerdotal, mystical, and rational
aspects of religion were freely discussed, and, notwithstand-
ing a certain aridity of mind which characterized some of the
Noetics, out of the ferment they stimulated Tractarianism
arose.
The most prominent figure among them was Richard
Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, who had an
exceptional knowledge of and power over his acquaintances.
So far as he may be classified at all, Whately belonged to the
Liberal wing, but there was no necessary incompatibility
between his position and a definite traditional standpoint.
In fact, his theory of the Church was the acknowledged
precursor of a more advanced doctrine. But he was too
original and self-contained to be a good partisan. Contem-
porary Evangelicals deemed him a typical Latitudinarian
of the previous century; High Churchmen rested some of
their conclusions upon his premises ; Broad Churchmen have
claimed him as one of their founders. His communicating
qualities as a thinker were demonstrated by their operation
in such divergent directions. Upon none did he exercise
them more freely, and for a time successfully, than upon
Newman, and the part Whately played in his career will be
mentioned later.
426 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Whatever else the Noetics questioned they were con-
vinced that the Church of England must change her course
or presently be wrecked. The first to forfend this eventual-
ity, and to articulate the claims of High Anglicanism, was
Dr. Charles Lloyd, who had been Sir Robert Peel's tutor, was
appointed in 1822 Divinity Professor at Oxford, promoted to
the bishopric of that see in 1827, and died in 1829. Those
who resorted to his lectures, among whom were Pusey, New-
man, Hurrell Froude, and the Wilberforces, heard for the
first time an exposition of the history and structure of the
Prayer Book as a translation and adaptation of the Missal
and the Breviary. Engrossing contentions with rational-
istic deism had obscured these antecedents of the Litany,
the study of which enabled Lloyd's students to discern that
the Church was far more than a mere creature of the State.
He announced in a tentative form the doctrines to which
the Tractarians were subsequently converted. These were
afterwards more completely stated by Newman, who said :
"We were upholding that primitive Christianity which was
delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church,
and which was registered and attested in the Anglican formu-
laries and by Anglican divines. That ancient religion had
well-nigh faded out of the land throughout the political
changes of the last one hundred and fifty years, and it must
be restored. It would be, in fact, a second Reformation — •
a better Reformation — for it would be a return not to the
sixteenth century, but to the seventeenth." ^
This transformation of the nature and claims of the
Anglican Communion insisted upon her place in the
Church Universal as an organized society founded by her
Divine Lord, independently of the will of the State. She
was regarded as the one true and sufficient source, in Eng-
land and among English speaking men, of instruction in
faith, worship, and morals. The spiritual authority con-
ferred by Christ upon the Apostles was, under the guidance
• "Apologia" ; p. 43.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 427
of the Holy Spirit, transmitted by them to their successors,
to be exercised in conformity with the original commission.
Its discipline and edification were the sole prerogatives of
the bishops, who maintained by ordination an unbroken
line of descent from the New Testament Church, as a solemn
trust belonging solely to them and to the priesthood which,
to use the cryptic speech of High Church clerics, had the
inalienable power of the keys. They and they alone were
entitled to administer the Sacraments as the appointed means
of regenerating and renewing grace.
These theories minified the Evangelical principle which
treated the community or the Church as secondary and placed
the individual face to face with God. They magnified the
external and corporate existence of the Church as opposed
to the purely internal life of the believer. The fact that
attenuated catenas of this kind were out of date as bonds
of union was not known to the Tractarians. Their idea of
origins has since succumbed to historical evidence, which
takes the question no farther back than the cautious state-
ment of the Ordinal that the three orders of bishops, presby-
ters, and deacons existed from the time of the Apostles.
Even at that they were limited to the precedent of St. John
and the region of Asia Minor. As to whether the ordination
was of the esse of the Church or only of the bene esse, An-
glican divines could be quoted in both directions. Hall,
Taylor, Laud, Montague, Gauden, Barrow, Beveridge, Hicks,
Brett, Hughes, Daubeny, Van Mildert, and Heber ranged
themselves on the side of the necessity of the episcopate.
Against them were Hooker, Andrewes, Usher, Cosin, Leigh-
ton, Burnet, Sherlock, and Thorp. Non-episcopal orders are
now described, even by High Churchmen, as irregular rather
than invalid. The difference is significant, and while the
Church of England stands for episcopacy with resolute deter-
mination, it evinces more reasonableness than did the more
ardent Tractarian advocates of the theory.
The bishops of the first decades of the nineteenth century
428 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
bore no resemblance to some of the magnates whose
names have just been quoted. The long tenure of
Latitudinarianism had demoralized their spiritual force
and leadership. Many among them had been appointed for
political or family reasons : once enthroned, they subsided
into their natural insignificance, and it was left to Samuel
Wilberforce to become the restorer of their office. The
early Tractarians rendered them submissive obedience until
it was clear that they did not propose to secure that free-
dom of speech and action for the Church which was necessary
to her welfare. Yet it should be remembered that the bishops
shared the temper of the nation, which was frankly Erastian
and anti-Catholic. The English people had seen unmoved a
series of religious and ecclesiastical revolutions, facilitated and
encouraged by their own indifference. Henry VIII, by his will
alone, sealed the national faith and prescribed the forms of
the Church; Edward VI abolished the Catholic doctrine
his father preferred, and brought in an undiluted Protestan-
tism, while Mary's accession was the signal for that rehabilita-
tion of Papal authority against which her sister Elizabeth in
turn rebelled. At the time in question, apart from a few
scattered clergymen and enthusiasts of Oxford there seemed
to be no desire for changes, least of all for such as offended
the strongest instincts of the people. The bishops believed it
their duty to maintain the dignity of the Crown from which
they had received their preferment : to leave authoritative
reforms to the government, and to administer the existing
order as they found it. Although at fault in their neg-
lect of spiritual affairs and in their excessive subservience
to the State, they were not without justification for the
policy they pursued.
This fragmentary review of the period when a new heaven
and a new earth emerged to view can now be recapitulated.
The mighty deeps had been broken up by the French Revolu-
tion and its sequel in the Napoleonic wars. Then came a
swell of soul at home and abroad which bore forward on its
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 429
crest a series of poets, prophets, thinkers, and statesmen, with
every kind of talent and genius in human affairs. Although
they assailed or defended vested interests and creeds, the one
constructive project which engaged all alike was the rebuild-
ing of the social structure. The sons of the new liberalism
urged this on the basis of religious and political reform. The
defenders of rank and privilege preserved as best they could
the remnants of their station in life. The traditionalists,
whether Roman or Anglican, resumed their pleas for the
sanctions of custom and antiquity which had been interrupted
by the revolutionary epoch. Serious men for whom religion
meant the most awful and most personal thing on earth
were dismayed : theologians were either retroactive or
cautiously progressive, philosophers were averse to current
orthodoxy, and scientists, absorbed in their first vision of
the wonder of physical phenomena, were advancing theories
which had to run the gauntlet of a bitter opposition. The
need for unified processes of thought and action was apparent.
But none seemed to have that gift of generalization which
could bring the era to a focus, or show its bearing upon
the forces of a growing communism to be realized by the
spread of intelligent and identical aims among all classes.
Yet the difficulties and perils of the situation have been exag-
gerated. It was not in any sense a widespread crisis; the
stern discipline of war or of a common calamity had no place
in its history. There was no leveling of the artificial differ-
ences which separate man from man. The depths of life
were still left unplumbed. The majority of the people
remained indifferent to the perpetual strife of the clericals
and anti-clericals. The religious instincts and emotions,
which are as remote from dogma as they are from politics,
asserted themselves independently of the clash of opinions
between the clergy and their opponents. Neither the Oxford
Movement nor any other stir in the troubled affairs of the
time had power to reveal on a large scale the essentials of
human being ; to obliterate social caste, to transform surface
430 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
existence to simple sincerity of word and deed, and, as in a day
of supreme searching trial, to banish the dross of base desire
and ignoble triviality and purify the national character.
Neither the High nor the Low Church party was conspic-
uous for clarity of thought or warmth of sentiment; both
were deficient in philosophical essentials ; both were deprived
of sufficient intellectual guidance. And if their constantly
accumulating obligations to the advancing mind of the
times found them without the means of payment, from the
moral and religious standpoints their condition was even
worse. Dean Church declared that Tractarianism to a large
measure had its spring in the consciences and character of its
leaders reacting against the prevalent slackness in the religious
life of their fellow churchmen, many of whom were afflicted
with a strange blindness to the austerity of the New Testa-
ment. Yet when all these factors have been weighed, the
origin and results of the High Church Revival remain some-
what of a mystery, in the interpretation of which hasty
judgments are to be deprecated. For the profound changes
which have been wrought by modern life and thought were
then no more than embryonic. In addition to the political
developments named, a system of compulsory education
has since been established throughout the British Empire.
Ecclesiastical claims that once seemed essential to the in-
terests of religion have been set aside and an unaccustomed
breadth imparted to the symbols and standards of theological
opinion. The scientific temper which was formerly an out-
cast is at last dominant in art and literature. The entire
conception of society and of the functions and duties of
government has been enormously extended. The Tracta-
rians were under the duress of the sacerdotalism already
described. In behalf of a divinely authorized Church they
were indifferent toward immediate or prospective better-
ment, and disparaged what was near at hand for the sake
of what was afar off. They set forth much that was
romantic and, to the British mind, obscure, in terms that
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 431
sounded like a grotesque perversion of facts and rhetoric.
A reaction to Catholicism which seemed to be born out of
due time was thus equipped and treated with a homage
having in it the note of an older world. Nor were they sub-
ject to that discipline which accepted what was prejudicial
to previous convictions, if it was true, or rejected what seemed
favorable, if it was unaccompanied by substantial proof.
Nevertheless, they made headway in an age when science
began to vaunt itself as competent to deal with philosophy
and religion. Among a people avowedly Protestant, the
Tractarians managed to baffle their assailants, overcome ap-
parently insuperable difficulties, and, armed with weapons
despised as archaic, to continue the struggle against the
rationalism of the eighteenth century.
The chief agent in this achievement was a child of Cal-
vinistic Evangelicalism and a son of Oxford, devoted to the
medievalism which prevailed in its institutions as in its
architecture. "Destined, like Wesley, to traverse the cen-
tury; like him to exercise on all who came near him a
miraculous influence of attraction or repulsion ; like him also
to be rejected of his University and his Church, and to set a
large movement going in many directions," ^ Newman,
though not the actual originator of Tractarianism, was its
regal personality, its leader of radiating power. He gave
it life, breath, being ; apart from him, and his intrepid genius,
it is highly problematical whether it could have attained a
permanent existence. And after he had ceased to be a
member of the Church of his birth his unprecedented pre-
dominance was long felt in her history. His Anglican career
was another proof that the exceptional man is the solution of
problems which yield to nothing else: the man with that
touch of heart and brain which cannot be defined, but which
all instinctively recognize as sufficient for the occasion.
Such was Newman ; he flashed through the mass of medioc-
rity that vital light without which no development of ordi-
nary qualities can prosper.
1 Dr. William Barry : "Cardinal Newman" ; p. 5.
CHAPTER X
NEWMAN'S DEVELOPMENT AND PERSONALITY
433
The stage on which what is called the Oxford Movement ran
through its course had a special character of its own, unlike the cir-
cumstances in which other religious efforts had done their work. The
scene of Jansenism had been a great capital, a brilliant society, the
precincts of a court, the cells of a convent, the studies and libraries of
the doctors of the Sorbonne, the council chambers of the Vatican.
The scene of this new Movement was as like as it could be in our
modern world to a Greek ttoXis or an Italian self-centered city of the
Middle Ages. Oxford stood by itself in its meadows by the rivers,
having its relations with all England, but, like its sister at Cambridge,
living a life of its own, unlike that of any other spot in England, with
its privileged powers and exemptions from the general law, with its
special mode of government and police, its usages and tastes and tradi-
tions, and even costumes which the rest of England looked at from
outside, much interested but much puzzled, or knew only by transient
visits. And Oxford was as proud and jealous of its own ways as Athens
or Florence, and like them it had its quaint fashions of polity ; its demo-
cratic Convocation and its oligarchy; its social ranks; its discipline,
severe in theory, and usually lax in fact; its self-governed bodies and
corporations within itself; its faculties and colleges, like the guilds
and "arts" of Florence; its internal rivalries and discords; its "sets"
and factions. Like these, too, it professed a special recognition of
the supremacy of religion ; it claimed to be a home of worship and
religious training, — Dominus illuminatio mea, — a claim too often
falsified in the habits and tempers of life.
Dean Church : The Oxford Movement; pp. 159-160.
434
CHAPTER X
Newman's development and personality
Newman's various aspects — Birth and parentage — Charles and
Francis Newman — A sister's portrayal — Mystical ideahsm — School-
days — His conversion — Thomas Scott — William Law — John New-
ton — Impressionable yet independent — Personal influence — The
"Apologia" — First Oxford phase — Success and failure — Dr,
Whately — Ordained — Appearance — Opposite qualities — Deepen-
ing solitude — Anglican Calvinism and High Church doctrine —
Dreamer and Dogmatist — Blanco White — Hurrell Froude — Keble
— Newman's pessimism — Illness and bereavement — Break with
Liberalism — Revivalism — Romanticism — Appeal to Antiquity —
Angelology — Dr. Hawkins — Vicar of St. Mary's — Disagreement with
Hawkins — The Arians — Newman as a preacher — His continental
tour — Visit to Naples, Rome and Sicily — Influences of the Journey —
Interviews with Dr. Wiseman — Newman's illness — His poems.
Newman was an exemplification of his own contention that
the same object may be viewed by various observers under
such different aspects as to make their accounts of it appear
more or less contradictory. To some he was the religious
philosopher, the Pascal of his period ; to others he was the
great doctor, whose work on the Arians would be read and
studied by future generations as a model of its kind. To a
certain type of admirers he was the superb preacher, the
Chrysostom of St. Mary's, Oxford, and of the Oratories of
Brompton and of Edgbaston ; to a less favorable group he
was nothing more than a cunning master of English prose,
a writer of incomparable artistry and seductive charm, who
made siren words do duty for rational and coherent think-
ing. Lord Morley, from whom we quote, observes that
style has worked many a miracle before now, but none
435
436 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
more wonderful than Newman's.^ Again, some asserted
that his knowledge of the first centuries of Church history
entitled him to rank among the foremost ecclesiastical his-
torians, while for apologists and disputants his merit
lay in his controversial skill. Both Modernists and Tradi-
tionalists have claimed him as their own. Catholic Angli-
cans revere his proud yet melancholy memory because he
was their great pleader at a critical moment and in an anoma-
lous position. Perhaps his most notable achievement was
this: that he actually raised the Roman Communion to
which he seceded out of the contemptuous misunderstand-
ing and deep dislike of his countrymen to a place in their
recognition, if not esteem, which before his appearance
would have seemed unattainable. His presence in the midst
of her was an incalculable help to the Roman hierarchy,
which did not, however, fully appreciate his value. The
fact that the most brilliant and gifted son of the Church of
England was content to be the eremite of Edgbaston, be-
cause of his exceeding love for antiquity and for a system
they had despised and rejected, never ceased to puzzle and
chasten eager Protestants. For them and many besides,
John Henry Newman was, and still is, the grand enigma.
He was born in Old Broad Street, London, on the 21st of
February, 1801, the eldest of six children, three sons and
three daughters. His father, John Newman, a banker in that
city, is said to have traced his descent from the Newmans
who were small landed proprietors of Cambridgeshire.
They claimed Dutch extraction, and in an earlier generation
spelt their name "Newmann," a form which has given rise
to the conjecture that they were of Hebrew origin, but there
is no conclusive evidence that such was the case. Although
the "Apologia" is silent about the elder Newman, his son's
"Letters and Correspondence" contain numerous and affec-
tionate references to him. He was a Freemason of high
standing; a man of the world, prosaic, honest, choleric^
* "Miscellanies" ; (Fourth Series), p. 161.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 437
enterprising, full of good sense; animated by a love of
justice and a hatred of oppression and fraud. Newman
eulogized his forbearance and generosity as a father, and
while the son's genius was all his own, he inherited from him
a taste for classical music and an excellent capacity for
business.
Like another famous contemporary, James Martineau,
Newman also sprang from Huguenot stock. His mother,
Jemima Fourdinier, belonged to the French Protestant
family of that name long and honorably established in Lon-
don as merchants. For her he cherished a filial love,
which was not, however, without occasional moods of
self-assertion and flashes of an exacting disposition. She
had some part in his earlier religious development, but was
temperamentally unable to follow his leadership in later
days, and he spoke with regret of the differences on reli-
gious matters which separated them, and that he missed the
sympathy and praise she could not conscientiously bestow.^
His introduction to literature began while listening to her
reading of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," and when
"Waverley" and "Guy Mannering" appeared, he spent
the early hours of summer mornings in bed eagerly devour-
ing them. Scott was always one of his favorite authors,
but the Holy Scriptures were his constant companion : from
the dawn of his understanding he was trained in their pre-
cepts, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that he
knew the Bible by heart. In old age he described in beauti-
ful and pathetic language the hold it had upon him and how
impossible it was to elude or even lessen the sweet influences
of this, his first and last treasured possession.
A fleeting glimpse is caught of him as a child playing in
Bloomsbury Square with young Benjamin Disraeli, but
his best remembered home was at Ham, then a rural
retreat, near Richmond-on-Thames. Its charms always
lingered in his recollections, and in his eightieth year he
1 "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. II, pp. 176-177.
438 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Wrote : " I dreamed about it when a schoolboy as if it were
paradise. It would be here where the angel faces appeared
'loved long since but lost awhile.'" His two brothers
shared the intellectual endowments of the family, but Charles
Robert, who stood next to him in age, was eccentric to the
verge of insanity, and the purposes of his life were defeated
by his personal habits. Francis William, the youngest of
the three, had a more successful undergraduate career at
Oxford than John, obtaining a double first class in 1826 and
a fellowship at Balliol in the same year. After a diversified
and eventful life as a missionary in Persia and professor in
several schools, he was appointed to the chair of Latin in
University College, London, where he remained from 1846
to 1869, an extended tenure during which his versatility in
writing on many and different themes attracted wide atten-
tion. Some of these were of such an erudite or fantastic
nature as to defy popular apprehension. He was a much
misunderstood and disappointed man, whose life and work
were in striking contrast to those of his eldest brother. The
one drifted toward the shelter of an infallible dogma, the
other toward the tempestuous seas of doubt. Carlyle
spoke kindly of Francis as "an ardently inquiring soul, of
fine university and other attainments, of sharp-cutting rest-
lessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious enthusiasm,
whose worth, since better known to all the world. Sterling
highly estimated." ^ Of the three sisters the eldest, Harriet
Elizabeth, married Thomas Mozley, the author of the
"Reminiscences," a work necessary to students of Newman;
the second, Jemima Charlotte, married John Mozley of
Derby ; and the third and favorite sister, Mary Sophia, died
unmarried in 1828.
Harriet's portrayal of John Henry as a young man, while
showing a sister's partiality, is significant and candid. He
was inclined to be philosophical, observant, considerate
of others, dainty in his tastes, and extremely shy; his
* "Life of John Sterling" ; p. 184.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 439
views were moderate, his judgments measured, his regard for
truth absolute. Social intercourse of any kind bored him,
and his dislike of praise or blame induced him to practice an
unusual reserve which hid even from his parents the fact,
not without its pathos, that the son lived in another world
than theirs. God intended him, as he supposed, to be lonely,
and his mind was so framed that he was in a large measure
beyond the reach of those around him. He found consola-
tion in music, and became so proficient on the violin that
Thomas Mozley assures us he would have equaled Paganini
had he not become a doctor of the Church.
His reveries bemused him, a sense of things ethereal,
subtle, remote, haunted him ; he loved to surrender himself
to vague and formless imaginings: unknown influences,
magical powers and adumbrations entranced his youthful
spirit. He lay passive and luxuriant in their embrace while
they wafted him to an upper realm, wherein, as he says — "I
thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all the world
a deception, my fellow angels by a playful device concealing
themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance
of a material world." ^ This persuasion of the illusory
nature of sensible phenomena came early in his life and per-
sisted to its close. He moved freely in the home and the
social circle, contributing to their pleasure by his accom-
plishments, but always separated from them by an imponder-
able barrier. For the moment in these things, he was never
of them. Like an occasional visitant from another sphere,
who might choose at intervals to dwell among appearances as
unsubstantial as his own experience was vividly real, yet
without being deceived by them or capitulating to their
charms, so Newman came and went. Life everywhere hid
beneath its delusions something better to be gained. This
nearness to the invisible aroused his superstitious fears, and
he states that for some time previous to his conversion he used
constantly to cross himself on going into the dark.^
» "Apologia" ; p. 2. « Ibid., p. 2.
440 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
At the age of seven he was placed in a private academy
at Ealing conducted on Eton lines by Dr. George Nicholas.
Thomas Huxley, whose father was a tutor there, was also
a later pupil, and the high reputation of the school was
increased by the fact that it helped to shape the lives of
two such entirely different men as Huxley and Newman.
Although he showed no interest in the favorite pursuits of his
companions, his character and gifts soon elicited their esteem
and confidence. He was of a studious turn and quick appre-
hension, and Dr. Nicholas, to whom he became greatly at-
tached, was accustomed to say that no boy had run from the
bottom to the top of the school as rapidly as John Newman.
Still he lost something by not being a public school man,
for, while he acquired an accurate knowledge of mathemat-
ics, he was deficient in Latin. He used to regard with ad-
miration the facile and elegant construing which a pupil of
very ordinary talents would bring with him from the sixth
form of Rugby or Winchester ; yet he assisted in rendering
the plays of Terence which were frequently given at the
school, and acted the parts of Davus in the "Andria" and of
Pythias in the "Eunuchus." He wrote both prose and verse
with grace and flexibility ; at first he imitated Addison ;
later Johnson's sonorous roll could be detected in his efforts ;
then the stately cadences of Gibbon manifestly affected him ;
finally he found himself, and began to show traces of that
artistic construction wherein by practice his style became so
nearly perfect, so complete, as to suffice for the permanence
of his works.
His preternatural religiousness was greatly stimulated
after he matriculated at Oxford by his conversion, of which
he says in the "Apologia," "I am still more certain than that
I have hands or feet." After seventy years had elapsed it
was difficult for him to realize his continuous identity before
and after August 18, 1816.^ The sudden uprush and con-
summation of continuous processes which drew so clear a line
' " Letters and Correspondence"; p. 19.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 441
between the two periods is discussed at length in the " Apolo-
gia " : "I fell under the influences of a definite Creed, and
received into my intellect impressions of dogma, which,
through God's mercy, have never been effaced or obscured.
Above and beyond the conversations and sermons of the
excellent man, long dead, the Reverend Walter Mayers, of
Pembroke College, Oxford, who was the human means of
this beginning of divine faith in me, was the effect of the books
which he put into my hands, all of the school of Calvin.
One of the first books I read was a work of Romaine's;
I neither recollect the title nor the contents, except one doc-
trine, which of course I do not include among those which I
believe to have come from a divine source, viz., the doctrine of
final perseverance. I received it at once, and believed that
the inward conversion of which I was conscious would last
into the next life, and that I was elected to eternal glory.
I have no consciousness that this belief had any tendency
whatever to lead me to be careless about pleasing God.
I retained it till the age of twenty-one, when it gradually
faded away ; but I believe that it had some influence on my
opinions, in the direction of those childish imaginations which
I have already mentioned, viz., in isolating me from the ob-
jects which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mistrust
of the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in
the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously
self-evident beings, myself and my Creator." ^ This account
of his inmost experiences is important for several reasons.
It unveils the secret motives and aspirations which he felt
and favored at this jimcture ; it shows that from adolescence
onward his intellectual life was as full of contrasts as his
emotional, and that his excessive sensibility was the explana-
tion at once of his frailty and his strength. Even in the
moment of their real awakening, his religious instincts found
other than normal outlets. In his comparison of the impres-
sive change which supervened in him with other remarkable
^ " Apologia " ; p. 4.
442 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
personal experiences which demonstrated Christianity's
regenerating effectiveness, he was careful to state that
his own had none of their special characteristics. It
was without violent feeling : he did not pass through the
prescribed stages of conviction of sin, terror, despair,
and acceptance of a free and full salvation followed by
joy and peace. His emotions were peculiar to himself.
While he considered that he was predestined to salvation,
his mind did not dwell upon the general fate of man-
kind, but only upon the mercy displayed toward him-
self. Indeed, normal Evangelicals doubted whether he
had been regenerated at all, and when in 1821 he tried to
write a description of the inwardness of this reality he added
in a note, " I speak of conversion with great diflBdence, being
obliged to adopt the language of books. My own feelings,
as far as I can remember, were so different from any account
I have ever read, that I dare not go by what may be an
individual case." ^
To the unsophisticated believer, triumphant in a newborn
realization of his personal Saviour, a logically coherent
dogmatic system such as Newman accepted is, for the time
being, a secondary consideration. In the words of Thomas a
Kempis, the soul which has heard the Eternal Voice is de-
livered from its opinions ; the greatness which is from above
does not spend its first strength on such details. The avowed
absence in him of conviction of sin and of the consequent
enraptured sense of deliverance from sin deepens the mys-
tery of the process. It was an influx of divine life, but
that life appears to have been conveyed through channels
unknown to the general consciousness of Christians re-
specting their conversion. If in this crucial hour such
was Newman's case, it may help to explain his constant
endeavors to defend his faith, Hort remarked of him, "A
more inspiring teacher it would be difficult to find, but the
1 Wilfred Ward : "The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman" ; Vol. I,
p. 30.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 443
power of building up was not one of his gifts." ^ " Certainly,
books with a system abound in his work, but he does not need
much pressing to make him admit the essential brittleness
and contingency of these provisional structures." ^ His
survey of divine things, begun with much apparent confi-
dence, is often shadowed by reflections that what has been
said is "but a dream, the wanton exercise, rather than
the practical conclusions of the intellect." "Such," he
continues, "is the feeling of minds unversed in the disap-
pointments of the world, incredulous how much it has
of promise, how little of substance ; what intricacy and
confusion beset the most certain truths ; how much must be
taken on trust in order to be possessed; how little can be
realized except by an effort of the will ; how great a part of
enjoyment lies in resignation." ^ This reasoning is accept-
able to those upward striving men of whom Matthew Arnold
speaks, who walk by sight and not by faith, yet have no open
vision. But it plays a minor part in that warm certitude
which is the product of living faith in the revelation of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
In summary, as a child Newman felt with unusual intensity
the sense of the presence of God. He has already told us
in solemn and memorable phrases of the moment when
the still pool within his heart became a living fountain,
divinely thrilled by the spiritual quickening which blended
his innermost being with the love, the omnipotence, and the
nearness of the Almighty, Ever afterwards this event was
a ruling factor in his religious attainments, but the essence
of the Gospel of Redemption did not seem to be luminous to
his apprehension.
Among other writers who contributed to his spiritual
welfare was Thomas Scott, the commentator, of Aston San-
ford, "to whom" he averred, "humanly speaking I almost
owe my soul." Scott, who had been won from Socinianism
» "Life and Letters" ; Vol. II, p. 424.
* Henri Bremond : "The Mystery of Newman" ; p. 330.
» "Prophetical Office" ; Lecture XIV, pp. 392-393.
444 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
by John Newton, the friend of Cowper, denied and abjured
the "detestable doctrine" of predestination, and planted
deep in Newman's mind "that fundamental truth of religion,
a zealous faith in the Holy Trinity." Law's "Serious Call"
convinced him of the relentless warfare between the powers of
light and those of darkness, and he took for granted the hard-
and-fast dualism which was afterwards injurious to his
interpretation of life.^ The doctrine of eternal rewards and
punishments he accepted with full inward assent, as delivered
by our Lord Himself, though he tried in various ways to
soften the truth of endless retribution so that it would be
less terrible to his apprehension. He made his first acquaint-
ance with the Fathers through the long extracts from St.
Augustine and St. Ambrose given in Joseph Milner's Church
History. Simultaneously with these, of which he was nothing
short of enamoured, he read Newton's ^ " Dissertations on the
Prophecies," and became firmly convinced that the Pope was
the Antichrist predicted by the prophet Daniel, and also by
St. Paul and St. John. He complains of his imagination
being " stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the year
1843 ; it had been obliterated from my reason and judgment
at an earlier date ; but the thought remained upon me as a
sort of false conscience." '
' We have already noted the extent of Law's influence over Gibbon, Wes-
ley, and other dissimilar men ; it is interesting to observe that Dr. Johnson
also testified to the power of that writer. "I became," he says, referring to
his early youth, "a sort of lax talker against religion, . . . and this lasted
till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I
took up Law's 'Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find it a dull book,
as such books generally are, and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law
quite an overmatch for me ; and this was the first occasion of my thinking
in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational enquiry ..."
"From this time forward," adds Boswell, "religion was the predominant
object of his thought. . . . He much commended Law's 'Serious Call,'
which he said was the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language."
(Boswell's "Life of Dr. Johnson"; Everyman's Library, Vol. I, pp. 32-33,
and 390.) Law was also one of the favorite authors of Richard Hurrell
Froude.
2 Thomas Newton, 1704-1782, Bishop of Bristol and Dean of St. Paul's,
London. In 17.54 he lost his father and his wife, and distracted hia grief by
composing these Dissertations.
* "Apologia" ; p. 7.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 445
From the moment that Newman entered Oxford his Hfe
continued to be in the main the record of a series of
varied influences poured into his highly receptive nature.
His vigorous and expanding intellect displayed an unusual
aptitude for imbibing the thoughts and ideas of others.
This unique impressionability had an unfortunate bearing
on his course both as an undergraduate and a fellow of the
University. It was the cause of that perpetual modification
or relinquishment of principles which has fastened upon a
man of commendable motives the reputation for fickleness
and vacillation. The successive formations of his beliefs
resembled the accumulating deposits of an alluvial soil.
Yet as the strata underneath the soil remain stable, so
despite his hospitality toward different views Newman
retained a steady and fixed individuality. "Perhaps,"
says Mrs. Mozley, "no man, passing through a course of
change, ever remained more substantially the same through
the lapse of years and revolution of circumstances and
opinions." ^ He selected from the instructions and advices
he received those elements which seemed necessary, and, this
done, he did not hesitate, in many instances, to discard the
mentor. "John," observed his sister, "can be the most
amiable, the most generous of men ; he can make people
passionately devoted to him. But to become his friend the
condition sine qua non is to see everything with his eyes and
to accept him as guide." ^
In a University sermon preached on January 22, 1832, he
dealt with personal influence as the means of disseminating
truth. Commenting on the text "Out of weakness were
made strong," he asked, how came it that, notwithstanding
persecution, those who first proclaimed the Christian dis-
pensation gained that lodgment in the world which has con-
tinued to the present day, enabling them to perpetuate princi-
ples distasteful to the majority even of those who professed to
> "Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman" ; Vol. I, p. 1.
* Francis Newman; "The Early Life of Charles Newman" ; p. 72.
446 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
receive them? The answer was that the evangel overcame
the vast obstacles confronting it, not because it was upheld
by a system, or by books, or by argument, or by any tem-
poral power, but by a few highly endowed spirits who shone
in the reflected light of Christ's perfect life, and communi-
cated their radiance to lesser luminaries. They were enough
to carry on God's noiseless work, and their successors in
holy character and service rescued the generations that
followed.^
Newman was a first-class example of transmitted influ-
ence ; both receiving it himself and imparting it to others,
sometimes inexplicably, almost always with unusual facility
and leavening power. Although this readiness hindered
him from dealing adequately with many scattered facts and
discriminations lying beyond the range even of his percipient
spirit, it contributed to the fecundity of a heart rarely
equaled for its skill in contemplating those outflowing
tides from the Supreme Being, which men call life when they
rise in us, and death when they ebb again to Him.
The "Apologia" is an acknowledged masterpiece of literary
portraiture. Certain passages in it are of the highest quality ;
the characterizations are as fine and close as need be ; bold
and pitilessly outright. Its self-revelation and self-criticism
show much candor and strength, mingled with a delicate
evasiveness or an eloquent silence about some persons and
events which betrays the author's feelings toward them. A
wholly detached and disinterested observation of his own
career was hardly to be expected, indeed, was not within his
power, yet the volume is of primary importance for those
who would understand how this raw bashful youth, who at
first seemed likely to dwarf his mental stature through
diflSdence and modesty, was rescued from his extreme reti-
cence and an overweening anxiety to guard against solecisms.
He began his first phase at Oxford as an ardent Calvinistic
Evangelical, with a reproachful and pensive view of life
* Oxford University Sermona ; pp. 75-97.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 447
which drew him away from transitory things toward an exclu-
sive concern for the spiritual side of existence. The Univer-
sity of which he afterwards became an avatar was steeped in
the traditions of immemorial generations. Its guarded and
venerable precincts represented dignity, wealth, and undis-
puted place. Its history embraced the hot issues of his
own and opposite creeds. The romance of its yesterdays
had not infrequently become the reality of its to-morrows.
Schoolmen and Medievalists, Roman Catholics and Protes-
tants, Humanists and High Churchmen, Anglicans and
Puritans, in turn had contributed to the intellectual and
moral atmosphere which was now Newman's vital breath.
Although his scholarly attainments were nothing remark-
able, — indeed he was never noted for extensive or profound
learning, — yet his first tutor at Trinity, the Reverend
Thomas Short, formed a high opinion of his abilities, and
encouraged him to compete for the only academic distinction
he won as an undergraduate, a scholarship of sixty pounds,
tenable for nine years. This proved a timely assistance, for
in the following year, 1819, the bank in which his father was
a partner suspended payment, and although all obligations
were met, their discharge crippled the resources of the family.
Nothing remained but his mother's jointure. In these de-
clining fortunes Newman read the call to a higher and more
congenial profession than that of the law, for which he had
actually been preparing, having kept a few terms at Lincoln's
Inn.^ The loss of opportunity in other quarters naturally
increased his anxiety to do well in the final University ex-
amination ; the result was further disaster. It was scarcely
surprising that, although he had passed with credit his first
examination, a youth not yet twenty should have fallen
short in his efforts to win the highest honors. He was below
the average age of candidates for the B.A. degree; he had
read too discursively and was unable, in the time that re-
mained, to remedy the deficiency. His energies were never
1 Thomas Mozley : "Reminiscences" ; Vol. I, p, 16,
448 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
more diligently employed, but they were misdirected. He
worked to the point of exhaustion, and, being called up
earlier than he expected, was compelled, after making sure
of his degree, to retire altogether. "My nerves," he wrote to
his father, "quite forsook me, and I failed." When the
lists were published his name did not appear on the mathe-
matical side of the paper, and in classics it was found in the
lower division of the second class which went by the contemp-
tuous term of "under the line." Anxious to remain at
Oxford, he received private pupils and read for a fellowship
at Oriel, then the center of the intellectualism of the Univer-
sity. The coveted election was won exactly a year after his
graduation, on the 12th of April, 1822, a day which he ever
felt the turning point of his life and of all days most memo-
rable. " It raised him," he says, writing in the third person,
"from obscurity and need, to competency and reputation.
He never wished anything better or higher than ' to live and
die a Fellow of Oriel' and he was constant all through his
life in his thankful remembrance of this great mercy of
Divine providence." ^ It was then that he met John Keble
for the first time. "How is that hour fixed in my memory
after the changes of forty-two years, forty-two years this
very day on which I write ! I have lately had a letter in my
hands, which I sent at the time to my great friend, John
William Bowden. ... 'I had to hasten to the Tower,' I
say to him, ' to receive the congratulations of all the Fellows.
I bore it till Keble took my hand, and then felt so abashed
and unworthy of the honor done me, that I seemed desirous
of quite sinking into the ground.' His had been the first
name which I had heard spoken of, with reverence rather
than admiration, when I came up to Oxford. When one
day I was walking in High Street with my dear earliest friend
just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out * There's
Keble !' and with what awe did I look at him." ^
• "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 64.
* "Apologia" ; p. 17.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 449
The one, however, to whom Newman owed most at this
juncture was Dr. Whately, who saw with his accustomed keen-
ness the promise of great things in the newly elected fellow.
" He was a man of generous and warm heart . . . particularly
loyal to his friends. . . . While I was still awkward and
timid in 1822 he took me by the hand and acted toward me
the part of a gentle and encouraging instructor. He, emphat-
ically, opened my mind, and taught me how to think." ^
But teacher and scholar were built on entirely different lines.
Whately was a loud and breezy conversationalist, brimful of
accurate information on many subjects, and by no means loth
to impart it. He overflowed with rough humor, and was
impervious to self-reproach for his numerous breaches of
university etiquette. Imbued with a resolute sense of jus-
tice ; zealous, courageous, conscientious, he boldly en-
countered obstruction and misconception, and rendered
valuable service to the cause of education and of a reasonable
religious belief. In his intercourse he was wont to use others
as instruments by which to shape and define his own views,
a habit the more readily cultivated because of his freedom
from party spirit.
Newman was equally steadfast and uncompromising. By
this time the seductive charm of his fascinating per-
sonality, so mild yet so invincible, began to assert itself in
unmistakable ways. He spoke and acted as the man of
interior life who held the secret of an illimitable purpose,
which in the eyes of his associates invested him with an
indefinable superiority. His combination of gentle manners
and responsive kindness with unseizable reserve and inca-
pacity for subordination was a deceptive but formidable
obstacle between him and Whately. They began to drift
apart : Whately openly, and Newman tacitly, resented inter-
ference, and the more the older man provoked the younger
one's independence, the nearer they came to the inevitable
separation. Newman seems to have forced the issue, and
• "Apologia" ; p. 11.
2a
450 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
confessed that although he had meant to dedicate his first
book to Whately, the intention was abandoned, and that
after the year 1834, Whately "made himself dead to me."
Dr. Abbott asserts that Newman was mainly responsible
for the rupture.^ He spoke of the anguish which it inflicted
on him to pass Whately in the street coldly, but this senti-
ment was hardly consistent with the tone of a letter which he
wrote to the now Archbishop, and in which he said : " On
honest reflection I cannot conceal from myself that it was
generally a relief to see so little of your Grace when you were
in Oxford ; and it is a greater relief now to have an opportu-
nity of saying so to yourself." He proceeded to explain at
great length his reasons for this extraordinary statement, so
charged with personal feeling. Whately's support of the
Irish Church Temporalities Act, passed in August 14, 1833,
which prospectively abolished two archbishoprics, and re-
duced the suffragan bishoprics by consolidation from eighteen
to ten, had provoked a painful resentment in Newman, who
referred with utter aversion to the secular and unbelieving
policy in which Whately was implicated. The letter men-
tioned, which was a mixture of piety and presumption, was
written in 1834, when Newman was no more than an ordinary
member of the University, while Whately, who had been
warmly attached to him, was his senior, his former patron,
and a high dignitary of the Anglican hierarchy. Evidently
these considerations counted for little. However Newman
may protest that "in memory" there were few men whom
he loved so much as Whately, the Archbishop was no longer
of consequence. Newman's sentiment toward him was not
one of personal hostility, but rather of ecclesiastical and
theological antipathy. More than a year previously he
had said in a letter to Bowden, "As to poor Whately, it is
melancholy. Of course, to know him now is quite impossible,
yet he has so many good qualities that it is impossible also
not to feel for him ... for a man more void of, what are
' "Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman" ; Vol. I, p. 304.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 451
commonly called, selfish ends does not exist." ^ Such an
attitude explains the fatality which beset so many of New-
man's associations. He frequently expressed it in passages
similar to that which declares that " every individual soul is a
closed world, and that the most intimate friendship does not
succeed in penetrating the solid wall behind which each of us,
in spite of himself, is hiding." - As yet only the surface
of his spirit had been ruffled by the first gust which
heralded other storms. It had flung up its chill spray, and
sunk again to suave placidity. But anger in any form is a
great revealer, and no air of high-bred indifference toward
those who did not agree with his unyielding certitude could
effectually conceal the reservations to which even New-
man's admirers have never been quite reconciled.^
He was ordained on Trinity Sunday, June 13, 1824, and
at the suggestion of Edward Bouverie Pusey, also a fellow
of Oriel, he became curate of St. Clement's Church, Oxford.
He had felt a preference for foreign missionary work, which
accentuated his desire to be free from any domestic rela-
tionships, and he began to practice those abstentions in
which religious enthusiasm takes shape in sacrifice. The
heart which could but durst not love remained faithful to
the vow never to surrender to any creature that which was
meant for God alone. He questioned the direction of his
' "Letters and Correspondence"; Vol. I, p. 395. Five years later he
and Whately met. "He is so good-hearted a man that it passed off well," was
Newman's comment. (Ibid., II, p. 238.) A friend looking back to a day when
Whately, then Archbishop of Dublin, was in Oxford," remembers accusing Mr.
Newman to his face of being able to cast aside his friends without a thought,
when they fairly took part against what he considered the truth." (Ibid.,
Vol. I, p. 88.)
* Bremond : "The Mystery of Newman" ; p. 29.
' The inferences which Dr. Abbott draws from Newman's letter to
Whately appear to be somewhat overstrained. The reader is referred to
the entire correspondence contained in the second volume of Newman's
Letters, pp. 61-63. Mozley says, "He would have been ready to love and
admire Whately to the end, but for the inexorable condition of friendship
imposed by Whately, absolute and implicit agreement in thought, word,
and deed. This agreement, from the first, Newman coiold not accord.'l
"Reminiscences"; Vol. I, pp. 29-30.
452 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
life, whither it was leading him, and of what worth it was to
other souls, with a startling perspicacity. These unusual
refinements of thought and aim, seldom found in one so
young, were reflected in his physical appearance. James
Anthony Froude described him as " above the middle height,
slight and spare. His head was large, his face remarkably
like that of Julius Csesar. The forehead, the shape of the
ears and the nose, were almost the same. The lines of the
mouth were very peculiar, and I should say exactly the same.
I have often thought of the resemblance, and believe it
extended to temperament. In both there was an original
force of character which refused to be moulded by circum-
stances, which was to make its own way, and become a power
in the world ; clearness of intellectual perception, a disdain
for conventionalities, a temper imperious and wilful, but
along with it a most attaching gentleness, sweetness, single-
ness of heart and purpose. Both were formed by nature to
command others, both had the faculty of attracting to them-
selves the passionate devotion of their friends and followers,
and in both cases, too, perhaps the devotion was rather due
to the personal ascendency of the leader than to the cause
which he represented. It was Caesar, not the principles of
the empire, which overthrew Pompey and the constitution.
'Credo in Newmannum' was a common phrase at Oxford,
and is still unconsciously the faith of nine tenths of the Eng-
lish converts to Rome." ^
The clerical cast of his countenance was diminished by its
Dantean severity, which indicated an exalted and influential
personality, animated by a passion for divine truth and for
a better order of daily life. In his social interchanges he
was at once simple and complex, reserved and approachable,
constrained and genial. These opposite qualities drew to him
many and very difi'erent men who found in their variety
some common interest. Meanwhile, as Dr. Barry observes,
he paid the penalty of genius in a deepening solitude; a
'"The Oxford Counter-Reformation" in "Short Studies"; Vol. IV.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 453
shadowy figure in those days, his feet were set upon a strange
path toward a goal which few foresaw and from which there
was no turning. After Hurrell Fronde's death no one took
his place in Newman's affections. Never again did he sur-
render the pass key to his spirit : the strong man armed kept
his own house, and during the spiritual conflict of his last
phase at Oxford, he excluded even those who stood nearest
to him, and went forward almost without witnesses.
II
The reaction from the creed of Calvinism had long been
felt when this youthful recluse entered Trinity College, At
first the continental reformers won a widening way in Angli-
canism, and during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies the "Institutes" of the Genevan theologian prevailed
at Oxford and Cambridge. Archbishop Whitgift had striven
to amend the Thirty-nine Articles by inserting in them the
salient features of Calvin's doctrines. Those doctrines
thrived because they constituted an authoritative standard
against the inroads of the Jesuit controversialists, and in-
stilled those religious and political convictions which pro-
tected the integrity of the nation and of the Church
against the intrigues of the Papacy. But they also usurped
the Protestant right of private judgment by an arbitrary
theory of Biblical interpretation. The Calvinists deified the
Scriptures, the Romanists deified the Church. Both rever-
enced the framework of religion to the detriment of religion
itself. Presently the Independents began to complain that
" New presbyter is but old priest writ large,"
and at the other extreme the hierarchical tendencies of the
Church of England reasserted themselves. The episcopate
and the Sacraments were elevated until they became repug-
nant to Puritans of every stripe. Ritual grew more sacerdo-
tal in meaning and more profuse in display. The warfare
454 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
between the factionists increased in virulence. The stiff-
necked individuaUsm of the sectaries was forever associated
with great deeds and great men, but it antagonized that
veneration for the solidarity of the visible Church and for its
governing priesthood which prevailed in the Laudian school.
The articles of predestination and election were deprecated
by those who argued that Christian life and history, as
vouched for by personal experience, rested on a more enduring
basis than arbitrary decrees.
These factors in the evolution of Anglicanism had their
sources in racial sentiment, in political and religious quarrels,
in the statecraft of princes and bishops, and, supremely, in
the ceaseless energies which resulted from even a limited
degree of the freedom which such leaders as Milton
appropriated to the fullest extent. The toleration eventu-
ally forced upon Englishmen by their struggles for civil and
religious equality led to a placidity and contentment that
induced the lassitude and decay of the eighteenth century,
which, in turn, gave an opportunity to the Evangelical
Revival.
Newman's search for a divine philosophy confronted these
peculiarities of opinion in the forms in which they had passed
over into his era. The Noetics, who questioned everything
in order to ascertain its characteristics and external relations,
belonged to the rationalistic group in that they subjected
orthodoxy to reason. They had introduced Newman to a
larger world where the beliefs of his home life lost their
significance. Hawkins, not yet Provost of Oriel, taught him
that the Bible was to be understood in the light of a living
tradition. From Whately he learned that the Christian
Church was a divine appointment, and, as a substantial
visible body, independent of the State, endowed with rights,
prerogatives, and powers of its own. His pastoral service
at St. Clement's convinced him that the faith he had received
from John Newton and Thomas Scott would not work in a
parish, and that Calvinism was not a key to the phenomena
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 455
of human nature as they occur in the world. His alienation
from these doctrines was a gradual process, extending over
his first phase at Oriel, and some traces of their former hold
upon him remained visible to the end. But from the moment
he came to Oxford the doom of his earliest creed was assured.
Its emotional and peculiar content was subordinated to
an objective and concrete faith, succeeded by a dogmatic
ecclesiasticism that found its logical conclusion in the Church
of Rome. His restless spirit showed its dissatisfaction with
the specific gifts of these transitory states to his peace and
welfare, nor was his assurance so perfected as to be beyond
disturbance, even in the final outcome.
As we have seen, he was a dreamer, full of eloquent and
radiant imageries, and a poet, having the poetical tempera-
ment and mastery of poetic form which exuded an atmos-
phere redolent of his own personality. The higher loveliness
which springs out of poignant introspection suffused his
utterances. Dr. E. A. Abbott complained that Newman's
imagination dominated his reason; it certainly carried
him far away from the charted routes of investigation.
The undue subjectivism, not to say egoism, of his nature
received no salutary restraint from the best results of
modern thought. He had none of that admirable curiosity
which would have driven him to inquire of those experts in
philosophy and religion who had recreated the ideas of some
of his contemporaries. Dean Stanley exclaimed: "How
different the fortunes of the Church of England if Newman
had been able to read German ! " Mark Pattison declared
that all the grand development of human reason, from
Aristotle to Hegel, was a sealed book to Newman, who
himself confessed in old age, "I never read a word of Kant,
I never read a word of Coleridge."
Nor was his imagination, when left to itself, at all flexible.
Underneath its surface fluctuations he was conscious of
a hardness and a centralization which nothing beyond
him could touch. "I have changed in many things," he
456 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
said, "in this I have not changed. From the age of fifteen
dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion;
I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion;
religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.
As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as
devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being. What I held
in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864. Please God, I
shall hold it to the end. Even when I was under Dr. Whate-
ly's influence I had no temptation to be less zealous for the
great dogmas of the faith." ^ For Newman, Christian belief
and character were determined by an unquestioning accept-
ance of this position. He wrought earnestly to understand
and apply credal statements received upon authority, which
he believed could not be neglected without incurring Heaven's
displeasure. His reliance was increasingly placed upon the
Church and her institutions. Moored to this anchorage, he
felt that he was safe and better able to measure the strength
of the currents which bore mankind either from or toward her
welcome haven. Under her protection, he craved a close
fellowship with God, compared with which the honors and
intercourse of the University sank into nothingness. The
prizes and emoluments others coveted never allured him;
fame itself was but a mere breath, an empty sound, a vibra-
tion of the air in words. The maxims of Thomas Scott,
"Holiness rather than Peace," and "Growth the only evi-
dence of Life," were his chosen guides, the mottoes of a
heart intent on the vision of eternal realities through the
medium of the divine society on earth.
His unquestioning acceptance of the ipsissima verba of
Holy Writ was another evidence of the innate conservatism
which blended with his progressiveness, another tribute of his
spirit to the stability of the historic past. From first to last
he treated every text, every expression, every emblem, every
idea the Bible contained as a settled and saving truth, to be
developed later, perhaps, by the Church, but never to be
» "Apologia" ; p. 49.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 457
doubted. His severe adherence to concrete and explicit
authority found an outlet in this notion of Biblical infalli-
bility, which he maintained practically unmodified after his
submission to Rome. Unafraid of the inconsistency which
is "the hobgoblin of little minds," he carried to the Roman
Cardinalate one of the basic teachings of his hereditary Prot-
estantism. Anything savoring of exegetical research and
criticism was distasteful to him, and if the results of construc-
tive scholarship trespassed on his theological dogmatism he
promptly ignored them. For him, at this stage, spiritual
culture was synonymous with absolute trust in the Holy
Scriptures and in the Church of England as their guardian.
Contradictions could no more be permitted in the prescribed
principles of religion than in those of astronomy or chemistry.
On the entire issue he might well have held the Authorized
Version inspired for any critical use he ever made of it.
A keen observer has remarked that whereas the Vatican
Council had declared the whole Bible has God for its author,
Newman's belief was that God was its editor.
Blanco White detected these strivings between the old and
the new, and predicted that Newman's preference for history
over experience as the revelation of whatever was true and
holy would unfailingly draw him within Latin Christianity,
the home of that conception. White was qualified to judge :
he had formerly been a priest in Spain, was afterwards an
Oxford man, a traveler, a student of literatures, and a power-
ful writer on philosophical and religious subjects untroubled
by the thoughts of yesterday. But his volatile and erratic
temperament could exercise no restraint upon Newman, now
beset by a host of reflections he revealed to none. On the
very day he fulfilled White's prophecy and accepted the rule
of Rome, White himself renounced that of Canterbury :
thus they separated, journeying in opposite directions.
Chief among the reflections mentioned was the persuasion
that an inevitable nemesis and reaction permeated life, an
idea which rendered Newman sensitive to signs and tokens
458 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
in whatever happened. Ordinary events were viewed in the
light of a special Providence, which graciously intervened
to provide these stepping stones on a dark and perilous road.
His daily routine was never in his own keeping, his ordinations
were from above. Confident of this, he became impersonal
in his ambitions, cherishing his calling as Christ's anointed
messenger beyond any other pursuit, and saying of it :
"Deep in my heart that gift I hide,
I change it not away
For patriot warrior's hour of pride
Or statesman's tranquil sway;
For poet's fire, or pleader's skill
To pierce the soul and tame the will."
His break with Whately was due, not as some have as-
serted, to their disagreement over Sir Robert Peel's candida-
ture at Oxford as the reluctant advocate of Catholic Emanci-
pation, when Newman was found in the camp of vociferous
Orangemen and No-Popery zealots, but to his growing separa-
tion from the Noetics, whose offense lay in their being the
forerunners of a reasonable theology. Equally dissatisfied
with the immovable orthodoxy of Evangelicals and the dull
pompous inertness of High Churchmen, the Noetics dis-
countenanced both factions and cultivated a spirit of modera-
tion and sympathy impossible within either. Newman's
Evangelicalism had not deterred them from receiving him
with respect and kindness, nor was the broadening effect
of their intimacy entirely lost upon him. On the contrary,
Dr. Wilfred Ward states that as a thinker pure and simple,
although confined in range, his reputation was never more
deserved than when he was under their spell.^ But
he could not permanently identify himself with what he
conceived to be the nebulous theories of a few intellectual
aristocrats who did not even agree among themselves. As
an Evangelical, he had far more in common with Catholic
* " Life of John Honry Cardinal Newman " ; Vol. I, p. 38.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 459
teaching than with a Rationahsm, however disguised, which
held all formularies at arm's length. The same may be said
of other notable seceders : Sibthorp, Manning, Ryder, Dods-
worth, Hope-Scott, Noel, Faber, and the Wilberforces "pro-
ceeded from Oxford to Rome as they had already marched
from Clapham to Oxford."
In 1826 Newman resigned the curacy of St. Clement's
to become one of the four public tutors at Oriel. And now
the friend and companion who finally vanquished his tenta-
tive and short-lived liberalism appeared upon the scene, the
"bright and beautiful" Hurrell Froude, who was destined to
have a part in Newman's inspiration and recollection analo-
gous to that which Arthur Hallam had in Tennyson's "In
Memoriam." He was the eldest son of Archdeacon Robert
Hurrell Froude, of Totnes, Devon, a High Churchman of the
most extreme and exclusive type, who loathed Puritanism,
denounced the Evangelicals, and brought up his sons
to do the same. The aged President of Magdalen College,
Dr. Martin Routh, a relic of the far past, represented this
nearly extinct cult at Oxford long before and after the Trac-
tarians had resuscitated it. Hurrell Froude thus conveyed
to Newman's mind an indoctrination hitherto alien to its
experience ; he became the living bridge over which Newman
passed from the Evangelical to the Catholic conception of
Anglicanism. During the first stages of the Oxford Move-
ment, Froude was its most pervasive force, and the after-
glow of his personality lingered long subsequently to his short
day. He caricatured and mocked the vacillations and com-
promises of Erastianism, assailing with unsparing invective
its surrender of the heroical attributes of High Churchman-
ship and its insular and egregious complacency. These de-
fects were contrasted with the bold and consistent policies
of the Holy See, for which he openly avowed his affection.
A rash and adventurous critic, without accurate information
on many issues he presumed to determine, Froude rejoiced in
the little he knew about the Puritans, since it gave him a
460 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
better right to hate John Milton, whom Newman also re-
proached as contaminated by evil times and the waywardness
of a proud heart.^ Froude adored Charles I, and venerated
Archbishop Laud, whose apparition Newman gravely
declared might even then be found in Oxford, anxiously
awaiting the developments of events.
Froude's extravagances were probably intensified by his
prolonged illness, which ended his life when he was not yet
thirty-three. While he lived, the light of battle was in his
eye, and as though prescient of death, he eagerly spread a
feverish restlessness among the Tractarians, who received his
reckless statements with avidity. These he proclaimed in
the temper of a zealot, describing himself as a priest of the one
Holy Catholic Church allowed by her Divine Lord to mani-
fest herself in Great Britain, and engaging his loyalty to her
and to her alone. Other Protestant communions, English or
continental, were the objects of his violent detestation and
abuse. Their great institutions, no matter how beneficial,
were viewed satirically. The variety of his gifts, the vehe-
mence of his ecclesiasticism, and his insatiable craving for
sympathy endeared him to kindred spirits, who could not
resist his unrestrained outpourings, even when these did not
win their entire approval.
Dean Church has suggested that Froude's intemperate
language and demeanor, which in some instances came near
to ill-bred and useless folly, were such as could be easily
misinterpreted by those not admitted to his confidence, and
that his insolent pronouncements were uttered at random and
not intended for the public ear. The Dean added that
friends were pained and disturbed, while foes exulted over
such disclosures of the animus of the Oxford Movement. But
the editors of the " Remains," of whom Newman was one,
asserted that, " right or wrong, they were his deliberate opin-
ions, and cannot be left out of consideration in a complete
estimate of Froude's character and principles. The off-hand,
' "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 195.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 461
unpremeditated way in which they seemed to dart out of him,
hke sparks from a luminous body, proved only a mind en-
tirely possessed with the subject, glowing as it were through
and through." ^ The volume speaks for itself and for the
incurable provincialism and ignorance that infest its pages,
in which violence of assertion was the ideal method, assertion
that sought no ultimate proof higher than prejudice. It
abounds in flouts, jibes, and sneers ; exhibiting those pre-
possessions which corrupted the history and also cramped the
intellectual processes of the entire group for whom Froude
was an apostle. Neither he nor they realized that a church-
manship imbedded in dread of democracy, in separatism,
and in uncharitableness toward its rivals and opponents,
could not withstand the strain of crisis.
James Anthony Froude, the younger brother, described
Hurrell as one who went forward, taking the fences as they
came, and sweeping his friends along with him. Hugh
James Rose distrusted him from the first, and the descrip-
tion of Froude's position as that of a Catholic without the
Popery and a Church of England man without the Protes-
tantism made many others distrust him, and irritated those
who regarded these as irreconcilable terms. But he pene-
trated Newman's proud isolation to such a degree that the
latter was unable to write with confidence unless he had
received the imprimatur of Froude : " He was one of the
acutest and clearest and deepest men in the memory of
man," avowed Newman. Other equally keen and far more
sagacious thinkers were avoided or forsaken because their
ability to conserve spiritual interests was distrusted. New-
man's self-knowledge was not balanced by a sufficient knowl-
edge of his fellow creatures. Hence he admitted within the
sacred walls of his individuality this hectic young dogmatist,
who helped to make him a resolute and aggressive Church-
man, aglow for the Catholic Anglicanism Newman was after-
' Preface, "Remains of the Late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude";
p. 20.
462 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
wards to renounce and ridicule. "He taught me," said
Froude's illustrious pupil, "to look with admiration towards
the Church of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike
Puritanism. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to the
Blessed Virgin and he led me to believe in the Real Pres-
ence." ^ How much farther Froude would have proceeded
toward Rome had he lived is a speculation. True to his
origin he seemed well intrenched in Anglicanism, and just
before his death declared his faith in it as a branch of the
Catholic Church, with the right of apostolical succession
in its ministry and free from sinful terms in its communion.
But the "Apologia" shows how firmly and how far he
planted Newman's feet on the road toward secession. It
also delineates Froude as so many sided that it would be
presumptuous to attempt to describe him, except under those
aspects in which he came before Newman himself. He
speaks of this man of dew and fire as gentle and tender ; of
the free elasticity and graceful versatility of his mind, and the
patient and winning considerateness in discussion which
endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart. Depict-
ing a very different Froude than the one the "Remains"
presents, Newman extolled him as " a high genius, brimful
and overflowing with ideas and views, in him original, which
were too many and too strong even for his bodily strength,
and which crowded and jostled against each other in their
effort after distinct shape and expression." ^ Bereaved of his
companionship, he took refuge in verse —
"Oh dearest! with a word he could dispel
AH questioning, and raise
Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well
And turning prayer to praise,
And other secrets too he could declare,
By patterns all divine,
His earthly creed retouching here and there,
And deepening every line."
1 "Apologia" ; p. 25. » Ibid., p. 24.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 463
The significant achievement of Fronde's brief career, as
he himself regarded it, and the one on which he dwelt with
satisfaction, is related in the "Remains," where he inquires:
" Do you know the story of the murderer who had doae one
good thing in his life? Well, if I were asked what good
deed I had ever done, I should say that I had brought Keble
and Newman to understand each other." There was need
of this, for Keble had suspected Newman of the taint of
Evangelicalism. Nor did they at any time enter into the
closest and most sympathetic intercourse ; Newman's
nature precluded such affinities, and rendered him superior
rather than fraternal. Like Napoleon on his way to Elba,
his thoughts were his only real companions. He was never
fully alive to the fact that a man's life consists in the relations
he bears to others — is made or marred by those relations,
guided by them, judged by them, and expressed in them.
That Christianity from the first had been a social and not a
solitary religion, and that aspirants after its ideals cannot
run counter to this truth, did not seem to occur to him. The
instinct for human fellowship was foreign to his breast.
The relaxation, the joy, the refreshment which belong to the
fellowship of saints were sacrificed to those grand designs
which he carried from childhood up to manhood and on to
old age.
Even Froude was far from being Newman's alter ego ; in
many respects he was of a contrary as well as a complemen-
tary temperament, abounding in traits which Newman either
suppressed or did not have. Froude, as we have seen, was
nothing if not original, daring, thorough, open; delighting
in publicity and abrupt effective sallies. Newman's shrewd
judgments of the foibles and follies of the many were re-
served for the few : and even they were kept in suspense as
to what he really thought. Yet like most people who follow
an elusive labyrinth, he was deficient in prevision, and did
not anticipate the vigorous resentment which his neatly
arranged plans excited. Both men were engrossed with the
464 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
theory of a complete hierarchical system, and of a sacerdotal
power which granted the fullest liberty to ecclesiastical
prerogatives at the expense of every other kind of freedom.
Froude, in particular, had an almost superstitious reverence
for the physical despotisms and spiritual transcendencies of
the saints of the Middle Ages.
Thus the Oxford Catholics occupied a region filled in its
upper ranges with courage, determination, and the spirit of
sacrifice, but poisoned on its lower levels by a miasma
that has bred misunderstanding and division. The one
man who by mutual consent of all parties lived on the heights,
secure and serene, was John Keble, vicar of Hursley.
Homely and unambitious, it seemed strange that this retiring
and sequestered clergyman should have been one of the prin-
cipal factors in the most important religious movement of his
day. His personality was not easy to analyze : and as a re-
sult, opinions about him have not been free from confusion.
A rigid sacerdotalist, he divided the human family into three
classes : Christians, properly so called ; Catholics, Jews, and
Mohammedans; heretics, heathen, and unbelievers. Yet,
while knowing little of the magnitude of mind which is in-
comparably above any other intellectual endowment, he had
generous views of life within certain marked limitations,
disapproving the severities of William Law, and remarking
that even the "Imitation of Christ" should be read with
caution. He adopted Butler's dictum that Probability,
not demonstration, is the guide of life, to which he always
adhered, and the robust polemic of Warburton was also
congenial to the more masculine features of his nature.^ His
writings were as diversified as his intellectual character.
They contained the most exquisite passages and stanzas
mingled with almost unintelligible references based upon his
conceptions of the infallibility of the Church and the Bible.
Acting under an impulse that had its source in beliefs which
many educated men had abandoned, he endeavored to substi-
' "Dictionary of National Biography" ; Vol. XXX, pp. 291-295.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 465
tute for the creeds of Protestant Anglicanism those of his
CavaUer forefathers. But everything was forgiven, if not
forgotten, by all Christians to whom his Evening and Morn-
ing Hymns had been a benediction, and one of his strongest
opponents described him as " a great and good man whose
memory will last as long as Christian devotion expresses itself
in the English tongue." Born in a secluded country parish
of Gloucestershire just before the close of the eighteenth cen-
tury, Keble was the fortunate child of an old-fashioned rectory
where his father represented scholarly culture, Prayer Book
piety, Carolinian Churchmanship, and congenital Toryism.
From the first the son was nurtured in conceptions which
afterwards breathed in his poetry and were exemplified in his
character. As Methodism sprang from Epworth rectory,
so the Oxford Movement sprang from the vicarages of Coin
St. Aldwins and Totnes. Keble and Froude were High
Churchmen by ancestral right ; the tenets they conveyed to
Newman were theirs by inheritance; his doctrinal ante-
cedents differed in many essentials. But the three men
found a unity of place and of ideas at Oxford; she
refashioned and blended them and gave them to the
Catholic Revival, and with them. Miller, Palmer, Pusey,
Hook, and Ogilvie. Like Froude, Keble remained unshaken
in his allegiance to his Church. When others bent to the
storm, or asseverated from their pulpits that, although faint,
they were still pursuing, or silently stole away to Rome, he
gave full proof of his staunchness as an Anglican priest, and
this notwithstanding that the logic of his beliefs pointed
directly to the refuge in which his friends and proteges found
shelter. But though he admitted the strength of Rome's
canonical position, and objected to her doctrinal corruptions
with a timid and deferential air, he chose the domestic
privacy which suited his pacific disposition, forsook further
preferment in his University, married, and stayed in his lot
to the end of his days.
Testimony to his importance as the actual founder of
466 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Tractarianism has been given by Dean Church and also by
Newman. " Long before the Oxford Movement was thought
of, or had any definite shape, a number of its characteristic
principles and ideas had taken a strong hold of the mind
of a man of great ability and great seriousness . . . John
Keble." ^ "The true and primary author of it, as is usual
with great motive powers, was out of sight. Having carried
off as a mere boy the highest honors of the University, he had
turned from the admiration which haunted his steps and
sought for a better and a holier satisfaction in pastoral work
in the country. Need I say that I am speaking of John
Keble." ^ Pusey confirmed these statements and so did
Dr. James B. Mozley, who was regarded by competent
judges as the most stimulating thinker the Church of
England had produced since Butler.
When Oriel was the center of Oxford's talent and learning
Keble was hailed as the glory of the college, for whom every
visitor inquired and expected to see. " The slightest word he
dropped was all the more remembered from there being so
little of it, and from it seeming to come from a different and
holier sphere." ^ Yet such giants as Copleston, Hawkins,
Davison and Whately gathered around the fire in the
Oriel Common Room ; they gave tone to the University,
and it was impossible that Keble, a recently elected
fellow, could be equal to their skill in disputation. Truth to
tell, he was not, and Sir John T. Coleridge hinted that he
sometimes yearned for the less exacting society of his old
friends at Corpus. His intellectual endowments were inferior
to his classical knowledge. In scientific matters he was a
tyro. Thomas Mozley recites his amusing argument with
Buckland, the geologist, which lasted all the way from Oxford
to Winchester. Keble took his stand on the certainty of the
Almighty having created the fossil remains of former exist-
ences in the six days of Genesis.^ He was an elegant scholar,
' " The Oxford Movement " ; p. 32. * " Apologia " ; p. 17.
* Thomas Mozley: " Reminiscences " ; Vol. I, p. 38. * Ibid., p. 179.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 467
who could discourse with wisdom to congenial listeners, but
nothing original was in him, nor was he fitted for leadership
in large affairs. He rather served as an embodiment of
usages and institutions first deemed Laudian and then
Apostolic, and as such he was regarded by Froude and New-
man. Disliking speculation and the competition of trained
minds, he embraced with childlike trust the teachings of
the Church he apostrophized as his mother, retained untar-
nished the impressions of his youthful goodness, and relin-
quished the University eminence to which his consecrated
character entitled him, that he might bury himself in his
curacy at East Leach and Burthorpe. This decision, while
entirely in harmony with his wishes, was a genuine self-
effacement. Yet by it he gained what he most desired,
nearness to his family, escape from the turmoil of a belliger-
ent world, and a suitable environment for uninterrupted
communion with God.
In 1831 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
succession to Dean Milman, and held the chair for ten years.
His motives and experiences as an author were indicated by
his definition of poetry as the vent for surcharged feelings or
a full imagination. His muse was a gracious gift dedicated
to the sanctuary and the inner life : serving faith and the
objects of faith with chasteness and purity of speech. " The
Christian Year," published in 1827, was the first literary
expression of Neo-Anglicanism, and the volume made him
the central sun of his then contracted but rapidly enlarging
sphere. Newman mildly remonstrated that its doctrines,
although lovely, were not sufficiently thorough, but he cheer-
fully conceded that the popularity of Tractarian ideas was
due to Keble's poetry. Those ideas centered around material
phenomena as both the types and the instrmnents of things
unseen, and embraced in all its fullness whatever was received
by Catholics as well as Anglicans concerning the Sacraments,
the communion of saints, and the mysteries of religion.
Although the lyrics in which these were expressed were
468 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
thoughtful and soothing, their awkward meter and construc-
tion and occasional obscurity were so marked that Words-
worth offered to correct their English. Nor were they poetry
of the inevitable kind : they lacked the highest play of
passion or pity, and their placidities were far removed from
"the Dantean flame in which all things are transmuted to
the colors of a supernatural world." Despite these draw-
backs they were favorably received not only by the Church
in general but also by the literary world. All felt that Keble
had struck an original note and aroused a new music in the
hearts of multitudes.
Taking the Book of Common Prayer for his guide, he com-
posed a poetical manual of religious sentiment which, though
sometimes degenerating into sentimentalism, became an un-
doubted source of pious inspiration. The winsome tenderness
he displayed toward the ideals of High Anglican worship was
couched in moving and unaffected language. Antique prej-
udices and extreme opinions occasionally protruded, yet they
were not so pronounced as to arouse sectarian resentment,
which was lulled to slumber by the unction of the writer's
melodies. The well-known truth already mentioned in the
chapters on Wesley, that sacred poetry is blind to hetero-
doxy, was seldom better illustrated. His habit, however,
of mapping out the slightest allusion in the Gospels so as
to have a well defined and appropriate mood of poetry
for as many days as possible in the calendar evoked the
rebuke of sonje critics, who complained, not without justice,
that the smallest item of historic incident or moral epithet
was forced into the service of thin and feminine verse, which
was often vague and formless. Bagehot's pungent comment
was that it translated Wordsworth for women. The poems
contributed to the "Lyra Apostolica" and the "Lyra Tnno-
centium," which followed those of "The Christian Year,"
added nothing to Keble's fame. This was permanently
secured by his best lyrics, which will long l)e associated with
those of Bishop Ken for their fragrant devotion and in-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 469
sistence upon the daily consecration of Christian fellowship.
Full of spiritual suggestiveness, replete with sweetness and
delicacy, happy in their references to the nobler aspects
of Nature, and steeped in the sacramental usages of the
Church and in the letter and spirit of the Bible, they have
heightened, adorned, and hallowed the praises of the Church.
Resentful of the preponderant intellectualism of the day,
with its attendant egotism and sterility in motive power;
given to allegorical and fanciful interpretation; subservi-
ent to patristic illustrations of ritual and worship ; as a rule
meek as a lamb, but liable to outbreaks of temper when his pet
theories were assailed ; and separated from the social exist-
ence of the majority of his fellow countrymen; such was
John Keble, the saint and singer, who lived to see his princi-
ples promulgated in countless parishes and his ministrations
extended throughout England and America. His spiritual
elevation, his laudable consecration of visible means, his
passion for the holiness of Christian adoration helped to
remove from the Church the stagnation and dearth he
deplored. He passed his days surrounded by the propi-
tious circumstances of an orderly and somewhat aristo-
cratic society, in which he dwelt at peace, yet resentful
toward many aspects of the actual life of his time. The lov-
ing eulogies lavished on him were not always wise or dis-
criminating, for the Tractarians sometimes used very exalted
terms about one another, and few of them could be trusted to
sit in judgment on their patron saint. Notwithstanding
these misapprehensions, the real man was singularly lofty
and unassuming ; in most respects worthy not only of esteem
but of affectionate reverence. Keble College, Oxford,
erected after his death, was raised, said Canon Liddon,
"to the memory of a quiet country clergyman, with a very
moderate income, who sedulously avoided public distinc-
tions, and held tenaciously to an unpopular school all his
life. . . . The more men really know of him, who, being
dead, has, in virtue of the rich gifts and graces with which
470 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
God has endowed him, summoned this college into being,
the less will they marvel at such a tribute to his profound and
enduring influence." ^ In these words we feel the orientation
of Keble's spirit ; by them we are made aware of his saint-
liness and of his nobler aspirations, which
"... come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of Morn on their white shields of Expectation."
Ill
One of the first fruits of Newman's friendship with Froude
and Keble was a marked increase in the sense of his personal
responsibility for the spiritual welfare of pupils committed
to his care. Esteeming his college duties a pastoral privilege,
he refused to merge the cleric in the scholar. A lofty pro-
phetic strain began to pervade his utterances. The law of the
Church, which he construed yet more and more according
to the standards of Catholic Anglicanism, prevailed in his
conduct and in that of those whom he influenced. Writing
to his mother he informed her that his engagements pre-
empted his time and energy, making him an exile from those
he so much loved. ^ Everything else was eclipsed by his
devotion to the inamediate service of God, which expelled all
lesser affairs as a strong plant in a hedgerow drives out or
sterilizes the rest. Froude, who had been elected to an Oriel
fellowship and tutorship in 1826, entered enthusiastically
into the propagandisms which were the daily bread of both
men, and when he deemed it desirable did not hesitate to
urge his companion to still greater lengths. In relation to his
age, Newman may be regarded as a pioneer of the High
Anglican movement then gathering its first impetus. But
his was not a happy, full-blooded spirit, and in his struggle
> "Clerical Life and Work" ; pp. 353-354.
» " Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 115.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 471
against a vigorous opposition, he abandoned himself to that
beUttling view of human nature which is frequently an
evidence of religious fatigue rather than of religious dis-
cernment. Other and very different personalities of the
nineteenth century shared his despair over a general
condition which offered large opportunity for discontent as
well as renunciation , Though some new truths which sounded
dolefully to him were grateful to them, all alike were dis-
tressed by the moral and spiritual enigmas their times pre-
sented. George Eliot, who somewhat resembled and greatly
admired Newman, distilled through fiction a stoical resigna-
tion and a calm resolve to endure the worst. Arthur Hugh
Clough gave up the whole problem, yet still clung to it in
blank bewilderment. Tennyson eventually succeeded in
reaching a stage of faith where, on the whole, the odds were in
favor of heaven. Browning's optimism, so often lauded, was
sometimes too insistent to be convincing. Newman, like
Matthew Arnold, at this moment was dejectedly
"Wandering between two worlds,
One dead, the other powerless to be born." ^
He complained of the present state of things, which his change
of opinion obliged him to represent in its worst form, and
retreated to an obscure past, over which he threw the legend-
ary halo of an exceeding sanctity. Harassed by modernity,
and its supposed preference for material aggrandizement,
he resorted to antiquity and its supposed preference for
qualitative perfection. The future, being supreme, became
as nothing; the past became everything. In journey-
ing toward this goal, he forsook to a large degree the
wider areas of human life and forfeited that wholeness of
contemplation which becomes the historian and the thinker.
The large majority of men who must be content to dwell far
below the summits of achievement, but who instinctively
renew their youth and perform the cyclopean tasks of the
1 John F. Genung : "Stevenson's Attitude to Life'* ; p. 6.
472 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
race, were of little moment compared with the few outstand-
ing figures to whom he attached the entire meaning of exist-
ence. Beneath his failure to accommodate himself to his
surroundings operated a vivid retentive mind, content to
dwell in the primitive organizations of Christianity, finding
in their persecutions and conquests the example and the
stimulus for a present readjustment. The mighty drama
of God's ceaseless working was thus woefully circum-
scribed, and many of the forces which have helped to
weave the fabric of Christian civilization were treated as
negligible quantities.
He voiced his dissatisfaction with the barren levity and the
thirst for false and worthless things and the blindness to all
majestic or tragical tendencies in the following sentiments :
"We can scarce open any of the lighter or popular publica-
tions of the day without falling upon some panegyric on our-
selves, on the illumination and humanity of the age, or upon
some disparaging remarks on the wisdom and virtue of
former times. Now it is a most salutary thing under
this temptation to self-conceit, to be reminded, that in
all the highest qualifications of human excellence, we
have been far outdone by men who lived centuries
ago; that a standard of truth and holiness was then set
up, which we are not likely to reach; and that, as for
thinking to become wiser or better, or more acceptable to
God than they were, it is a mere dream." ^ He ear-
nestly wished that St. Paul or St. John could rise from the
dead to show this untoward generation that its boasted
knowledge was but a shadow of power, and cause the minute
philosophers who dared to scrutinize the traditions of the
faith to shrink into nothingness. " Are we not come to this,"
he asked, "is it not our shame as a nation, that, if not the
Apostles themselves, at least the Ecclesiastical System they
devised, and the Order they founded, are viewed with cold-
ness and disrespect? How few there are who look with
1 "Parochial and Plain Sermons"; Vol. II, Sermon XXXII.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 473
reverent interest upon the Bishops of the Church as the
Successors of the Apostles; honoring them, if they honor,
merely because they like them as individuals, and not from
any thought of the peculiar sacredness of their office." *
The dexterity of these statements is apparent, and much
they contained enlists approval. But his identification of
the Apostles, who were the immortal servants of mankind
and the personal sources of an unparalleled reconstruction of
religion, with his own ecclesiastical order was a gratuitous
assumption which deft phrasing could not conceal. His
adoration of former times and depreciation of the present
and the future led him to ignore one half of history. The
services of justice and freedom, knowledge and philanthropy
in nineteenth century England were left outside his con-
sideration. He felt that she had few affinities with
Apostolic life and thought, but many with Greek and Roman
paganism. That she also had, as have all nations, organs
and proclivities for living the life of the spirit apart from
sacerdotal governance, he would not concede. The theory
of universal depravity he had retained from Calvinism over-
looked some better elements which must be present in men's
souls if they are to recognize, understand, and obey the over-
tures of divine love. And in addition, Newman was always
liable to an emotional logic which blurred important facts
and lamed his conclusions.
A serious illness which befell him about this time left him
with a quickened realization of his religious needs. Never
robust in body, always an endless toiler, he spent himself
until what health he had was seriously impaired. His
eyesight failed, his voice grew faint, his form was worn to
emaciation. At last he collapsed, but despite everything, he
still felt the impulse of his purposes, and the contrition of a
genuine seeker after God, who confessed to Him what he
would never confess to man, and having done so, renewed his
vows and resumed his quest. Then came the death of his
1 "Parochial and Plain Sermons" ; Vol. II, Sermon XXXII.
474 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
much loved sister Mary, bringing with it the moral elevation
of a lasting sorrow, and ingeminating those indefinite,
vague, and withal subtle feelings which made the soul
within him forlorn and well-nigh comfortless. Nor did he
find relief in the rural haunts of the west country, where he
spent a brief holiday while convalescing. Tragic occurrences
were associated with pastoral sights and scenes ; they re-
minded him of the dear one who had gone : " Mary," he said,
" seems embodied in every tree and every hill. What a veil
and curtain this world of sense is ! beautiful, but still a
veil." 1
His campaign for the high doctrines of the Church now
became more direct, shaped as it was by these causes that
separated him from other contentions and interests not
germane to the main concern. Alarmed by the negativism
of the rationalists and by the destructive tendency of
philosophers who considered intellect and enlightened virtue
all their own, he passed out of the shadow of liberalism
which had hitherto darkened his orbit into a resentful mood
which confused constructive and sympathetic teaching with
the errors of infidelity and looked upon all theories an-
tagonistic to his own as one chaotic mass. Though uncon-
scious of it, he and his allies were themselves in bondage to
the deistic notion of an infinite separation between the Cre-
ator and creation. Schleiermacher's doctrine of Divine
Immanence, and also that developed by Coleridge, seemed
to High Churchmen a presumptuous and pantheistic denial
of the personality of God but one remove from atheism.
The open-mindedness of the German theologian toward the
Holy Scriptures was equally repugnant. Tractarians claimed
that they could understand a Bible miraculously indited and
preserved intact throughout its wonderful history ; they
could not understand that the Holy Spirit directed the sacred
authors without emptying them of their individuality. Any
attack upon the accepted position that the Bible was through-
• "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 161.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 475
out an unimpeachable revelation of the will of God they
vigorously resented. The idea that its contents were the
more convincing because the writers were not reduced to the
level of automata, but freely exercised their several gifts
and graces, was obnoxious to them. In a word, the differ-
ence between their viewpoint and that of the new scholar-
ship was the difference between hypnosis and inspiration.
Again, revivals of religion such as the one which swept
through Britain and her colonies in the preceding century
were denounced by Anglo-Catholics as detrimental to the
life and action of the Church : emotional whirlwinds, raising
the dust of fanaticism, heresy, and schism. Periodical re-
generations had a Scriptural and historic sanction quite as
traceable as that of apostolic succession, and one which was
by no means as open to valid objections. The power to move
men and women to spiritual decision has always been a hall-
mark of New Testament authority and benediction. Never-
theless clerics of the type of Newman, Keble, Froude, and
Pusey, together with many educated and ignorant laymen in
the Church of England, were thoroughly set against these
manifestations and all that they portended. The Tractarians
enunciated the principle that formal law obtains in the
spiritual as in the physical realm. Irregular and spasmodic
outbreaks of religious fervor contradicted their main premise
that the divine life in man was part of an external process,
and as such, acted independently of his transient states of
mind. They believed that the sources of spiritual renewal
and sustenance were as stable and irrevocable as the opera-
tions of nature, and, like these, were universal, not provincial ;
continuous, not intermittent ; primarily obtained by submis-
sion and obedience to ostensible authority, rather than
through inward experience. This sacerdotal rule suited the
complexion of minds content to rest on its assumptions, and
not repelled by its mechanical and materialized processes.
But it destroyed the New Testament democracy of believers
by treating the dispensation of Divine grace as a hierarchi-
476 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
cal monopoly, and by denying the right of approach to God
unless mediated through an ordained priesthood. Loyalty
to concrete objectives of faith, which asserted unbroken
relations with the very presence and word of Jesus Christ
while He actually walked on the earth, was substituted for
the wrestlings and pleadings of guilty sinners who, like Jacob
at the brook Jabbok, invoked for themselves the Everlast-
ing Mercy. Yet, as in his case, the discipline of these more
heroical ventures obtained for men their divinest gifts
and produced the grand personalities of the Church. They
were not as general in their scope as was the easier method
which depended upon the guarantees of a visible organiza-
tion. But though they had no such width of application,
their certitudes were enshrined in the human soul, their in-
securities were on the surface.
At this moment Romanticism appeared, creating a senti-
mental appreciation for Catholic peculiarities, and flinging
a delusive glamour over the so-called ages of faith. Re-
fined spirits of an aesthetic turn, whether in Germany, France,
or England, were enraptured with the sensuous beauty and
seemliness of medievalism. Loving every era better than
their own, they turned from the rush of surrounding forces
which they dreaded to bewitching presentations of the
chivalry they adored. Their literature and art idealized the
triumphs, the tragedies, the gay loves, the deadly hates
of the period, until it began to assume the appearance
of a golden age, wherein men wrought greatly because
they greatly obeyed and believed. Its strange veneering
of both tenderness and ferocity by religious rites and
observances gave scope to those whose actual knowledge
of the events they treated was too often a thing of shreds
and patches but whose fancies were no longer fettered.
There was also a revulsion against the debased taste
in architecture that had bestudded the land with squat
ugly meeting-houses and nondescript Georgian churches, the
very hideousness of which was supposed to be a protection
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 477
against the lure of Rome's gorgeous fanes and ritualistic
decorations. The paramount influence of Sir Walter Scott
was due to the fact that "he turned men's thoughts in the
direction of the Middle Ages. The general need of something
more attractive than what had offered itself elsewhere may be
considered to have led to his popularity ; and by means of his
popularity he reacted 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 after-
wards be appealed to as first principles." ^ This rallying to
fiction as the storehouse of first principles was the infirmity
of some Romanticists, who, had they known more, would
have imagined less. Impervious to the verdicts of knowledge
and reason, they attempted to turn the tide and again im-
pose upon the church and nation those forms of supremacy
that had been thrown off by the resurgent energies of life
itself. The degradation, the cruelty, the oppression which
characterized medievalism were ignored, while its stately
symbolism and sacramental authority were lauded and imi-
tated by clerics, artists, poets, essayists, and novelists who
viewed them through the media of pontifical and princely
display, knights in shining armor, Gothic minsters, and
Dante's poetry. They had much to say which gave veri-
similitude to their pleas for the soul of honor and of virtue in
past days of mingled good and evil. But what they said
was not always substantiated by the facts which divide and
compound man's dual nature. Prophets who prophesied
falsely, they eluded disagreeable realities; fomented the
dissensions which have weakened the structure of English-
speaking society and aggravated the religious divisions they
proposed to obliterate. Their god was resplendent to the
uninstructed eye, but its feet were of clay. Scott was con-
scious of this misdirection, and, contrary to his predilections,
gave the laurel to the Covenanter rather than to his perse-
1 "Apologia" ; pp. 96-97.
478 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
cutors. Thus while the work of the Romanticists was in many
instances injurious to rehgion, it was conducive to a renais-
sance of CathoHcism. Professor McGiffert properly ob-
serves that " the Oxford Movement gave delayed but some-
what distorted expression to certain elements of the romantic
spirit." ^
Newman, who felt a growing attachment to Christian
antiquity, contrasted its unity, continuity, and effectiveness
with the hazardous experiments of intellectualism then being
inflicted upon the faith. To offset these he returned to the
precedents of third and fourth century churchmanship, ad-
vocating them without sufficient allowance for the organic
changes which had since been evolved. It was not alto-
gether native to his habit to reason in this fashion ; for he was
instinctively distrustful, and showed at intervals that his be-
lief in the heroic epochs of Catholicism was not only deter-
minative of his new creed, but still more a refuge from the
tempestuous doubts and questionings to which his soul was
susceptible. He had rebelled against those who, as he
conceived, were endeavoring to undermine the principle of
authority to which he rendered special reverence. If the
Church was not the guardian of ethics and religion, the quali-
fied censor of morals, the natural champion of faith, the
mentor of mankind in spiritual matters, what could be said
for organized Christianity ? Separated from his former com-
panions and from much of the actual life of his fellow men ;
entranced, as he was, by the ideal of a living, growing Ecclesia
either opposing or controlling the world, Newman knew not
for the moment where his true strength lay. Beset by such
trying circumstances, his subjective faith broke down beneath
the weight of externalism. That assurance which is not
an energy of intellect, or heart, or imagination, but rather
the spontaneous and irresistible vitality which uses these
faculties, was not his at the crisis. At the beginning of his
ministry, with the doctrines of Evangelicalism retreating into
* "The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas" ; p. 194.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 479
those subconscious realms from which they were never en-
tirely eliminated, he whose mission it was to proclaim salva-
tion to others was no longer sure of it himself. In his
distress he renewed his youthful fondness for the Fathers
whom Whately had flippantly termed "certain old divines,"
and found in them the remaining source of his reconstructed
theology. Having little or no confidence in a progressive
development that was not controlled by the Church, and
an ever-present fear of scientific investigations as entailing
moral anarchy, he must needs flee with unspeakable relief
to the ancient masters who became his Strong Rock and
House of Defense. Beginning with St. Ignatius and St.
Justin, he read them in their chronological order until he
arrived at the broad philosophy of St. Clement of Alexandria
and Origen. Their homilies and meditations carried him
back from present evils to their own times, and in his re-
cession he conceived a still greater detestation for modern
methods which created more difficulties than they settled.
The Fathers' discourses " came like music to my ear," he
declared, " as if the response to ideas which I had cherished
so long. They were based on the mystical or sacramental
principle, and spoke of the various Economies or Dispensa-
tions of the Eternal." His search for the heart of Religion
ended in the dreams of his childhood, now realized in
these Elder Brethren of the household of God whose writ-
ings exhibited an ideal of Christian regnancy in im-
pressive contrast with the fears and doubts of Oxford's
churchmanship. In them was found the antidote to the
baneful practice of resting religion on an intellectualism that
was everything in turn and nothing long, for the supernatural
order had revealed itself more freely and convincingly in
them than in their derelict successors. He was enthralled by
such saints as Irenseus and Cyprian, supremely typical of the
Christianity which molded society and subdued the hearts
of men, and to their guidance he unreservedly submitted his
judgment. Hereafter precedent and tradition dictated his
480 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
arguments; and, individualized though he was, the use of
independence became a temptation to be withstood.
This fragmentary story of his momentous change may be
regarded as an illustration of the saying that the most singu-
lar lapses are those of gifted men. With all his brilliance and
insight, Newman had accomplished nothing more than the
kindling of his churchly zeal to its utmost. The real battle
was not yet in sight ; many imperfectly known antagonisms,
including the philosophical and moral conceptions of his own
day, had yet to be faced, nor could he escape the obligations
arising out of that fact. Every system or creed, however
ancient and well tried, must be prepared to reckon with new
conditions of constantly evolving life. Meanwhile, despite
heresy, lukewarmness, and failure, the Church of his baptism
was still for him the living representative of the Apostles;
she had not lost for a moment her vital nexus ; she was still
capable of recovery, restitution, and compliance with the
divine commandment. Her spirit freed, her confidence re-
gained, the future opened before her with an illimitable
prospect.
Thus believing, he pushed the issue to its limits, adding to
his conceptions of clerical sanctity and prerogative, and
defending them against the learned who derided him. Dis-
cerning the perils that menaced faith, he contended that
scholarly coteries with strong inclinations toward the rejec-
tion of pious heritages were no schools for saints. Their
detrimental measures must be overthrown by the doctrines
of past ages, providentially preserved, and communicated
through chosen men, who, while not acceptable to profane
wisdom, had faithfully guarded the deposit committed to
them. In a letter to his mother, under date of March 13,
1829, he set forth the situation as it appealed to him.
" We live in a novel era — one in which there is an advance
towards universal education. Men have hitherto depended
especially on the clergy for religious truth ; now each man
attempts to judge for himself. Now, without meaning of
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 481
course that Christianity is in itself opposed to free inquiry,
still I think it is in fact at the present time opposed to
the particular form which that liberty of thought has now
assumed. Christianity is of faith, modesty, lowliness, sub-
ordination ; but the spirit at work against it is one of latitu-
dinarianism, indifferentism, and schism, a spirit which tends
to overthrow doctrine, as if the fruit of bigotry and discipline
— as if the instrument of priestcraft. All parties seem to
acknowledge that the stream of opinion is setting against
the Church. . . . And now I come to another phenomenon :
the talent of the day is against the Church. The Church
party (visibly at least . . . ) is poor in mental endowments.
It has not activity, shrewdness, dexterity, eloquence, practi-
cal power." ^
From the Fathers, Newman also derived a speculative
angelology which described the unseen universe as in-
habited by hosts of intermediate beings who were spiritual
agents between God and creation, and determined to some
extent the character of various peoples. Of these inter-
mediaries some were good, directed by a superior wisdom,
and content to serve the Supreme Will in the economy of
material worlds ; others were neither angelic nor reprobate,
partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty,
benevolent or malicious, as their qualities were evoked by
differing environments; the remainder, being farthest
removed from divine contact, were lowest in the scale; in
essence evil, and an active hindrance to the higher progress
of mankind. The Angels proper were the real causes of
motion, light, and life and of what are called the laws of
nature. Those who were neither banned nor blessed gave
a sort of intelligence to nations and classes of men. The
case of England was cited as an example of their operations.
"It seems to me," he commented, "that John Bull is a spirit
neither of heaven nor hell." The third order represented the
principle of evil ; and it was of infinite moment to man that
1 "Letters and Correspondence"; Vol. I, pp. 178-180.
2i
482 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
he should know how to avoid their seductive overtures
and thus keep his rehgious nature unclogged and unsuUied.^
It is obvious that this attenuated hypothesis had no neces-
sary connection with the faith; it was theosophical rather
than Christian in its development, and renewed some features
of the heresy which St. Paul rebuked and corrected in his
Colossian Epistle, Indeed, Newman's cosmogony was essen-
tially Gnostic, and echoed the teaching of Cerinthus, who
is best entitled to be considered as the link between the
Judaizing and Gnostic sects.^
His earlier intention to become a missionary had now
vanished ; he felt that his vocation was at Oriel, and this
seemed likely enough until Dr. Edward Hawkins was elected
Provost of the college. Hawkins, who united a limited power
of decisive thinking with great talent for action, held the
provostship within four years of half a century, from 1828
to 1874. He magnified his office and introduced many re-
forms, usually opposing, however, such as did not originate
with himself. A man of practical intelligence, he showed his
discrimination in the oft-quoted prediction that if Thomas
Arnold were elected to be Master of Rugby he would change the
face of education all through the public schools of England.'
But the University in which the distinguished Provost ad-
ministered was sorely vexed about many things, and its
turmoils helped to turn his activity into " a channel of obsti-
nate and prolonged resistance and protest, most conscientious
but most uncompromising, against two great successive
movements, both of which he condemned and recoiled from as
revolutionary — the Tractarian first and the Liberal Move-
ment in Oxford." "* The last trace of Newman's connection
with the Noetics was seen in his support of Hawkins for
Provost, whom they had adopted as their candidate in pref-
• "Apologia"; pp. 28-29.
^ Lightfoot: "Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and
Philemon"; pp. 71-111.
» Dean Stanley : "Life of Thomas Arnold" ; Vol. I, p. 51.
< Dean Church: " Occasional Papers " ; Vol. II, pp. 344-347.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 483
erence to Keble. When Froude criticized the choice,
Newman replied that had they been electing an angel
he would have voted for Keble ; but it was only a Pro-
vost. He did not believe that Keble could manage men,
whereas, about Hawkins he had no doubt, and the interests
of Oriel demanded a strong and capable head. A little
later he would probably have reversed his judgment and
selected a candidate of High Church principles. As it was,
Keble retired to Hursley, and Hawkins proved to be far more
aggressive than some desired. The pulpit of St. Mary's,
rendered vacant by Hawkins' transfer to Oriel, now fell to
Newman, who made it his throne of power for some years
prior to the "Tracts for the Times." A considerable amount
of ingenuity has been expended on what might have been had
events shaped themselves differently. Keble as Provost
might have remained unmarried, and would certainly have
been in closer contact with Newman, in which case Dr. E. A.
Abbott surmises that their joint composition of the "Apolo-
gia" was within the bounds of possibility. As a matter of
fact, Keble never dreamed of seeking relief in the Roman
communion, and Newman's secession grieved him beyond
measure. Again, if Hawkins had stayed at St. Mary's, he
would have deprived Newman of his matchless opportunity
to set forth, as he alone could, the Via Media so nobly em-
bodied by Richard William Church, as a desirable compro-
mise between the Papacy and Puritanism. This Newman
did, and did marvelously well, until the Anglican Church
ceased to be any longer the prophetess of God for him.
However, these conjectures must not divert us from what
actually happened. Newman's indignation was aroused
by the want of system, waste of effort, and paucity of results
in the responsible affairs of the University. Above all else,
he objected to the religious formalism and lassitude which
left the undergraduates over-shepherded yet shepherdless.
They were compelled to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles
as a preliminary to admission to the University, and to attend
484 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the Holy Communion, whatever their state of Hfe and con-
duct. After these requirements had been observed, they
were free to follow their own inclinations, with results that
might have been expected. Drunkenness and vice were
prevalent ; idleness and distaste for scholarly pursuits ended
in repeated failures and humiliations. Newman's protests
against these abuses enlist approval now : many will share
his feeling that tutorial work in an Oxford college implied far
miore than its leaders were willing to admit, and justified such
aims at the growth of virtuous character as might fairly
occupy a clergyman.^ Accordingly he suggested that the
tutors of Oriel should divide into groups the men under their
care, each tutor being responsible for the religious as well as
the educational guidance of those intrusted to him. In
conjunction with Froude and Robert Isaac Wilberforce, he
sought to remodel the lectures, introduce new textbooks, and
revive other important academic interests which were sacri-
ficed by conservatism and negligence. Hawkins rejected
these proposals, whereupon the three tutors tendered their
resignations. This ultimatum did not daunt the Provost,
who promptly called in Hampden to give lectures, and though
he could not compel the tutors to relinquish the pupils they
had, he announced his intention to send them no more.
Out-generaled and defeated, Newman surrendered, and
Hawkins doubtless felt relieved that he was rid of a teacher
who attempted to act on his own discretion, and whose
theological opinions were too radical for the welfare of the
college. Newman, on his part, declared that the Oxford
Movement never would have been had he not been practically
dismissed from his tutorship, or had Keble, not Hawkins, been
Provost.
More than half of 1S30 had now gone, a year of trials and
troubles. "I am desponding," he wrote to Froude. "All
my plans fail. When did I ever succeed in any exertion for
' E. A. Abbott: "The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman"; Vol. I,
p. 206.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 485
others? I do not say this in complaint, but really doubting
whether I ought to meddle." He steadied himself with the
reflection that disappointment and self-denial were necessary
for the reception and retention of spiritual truth; and, re-
leased from his duties at Oriel, awaited other employment.
Dr. Jenkyns invited him to participate in a projected Eccle-
siastical History, the outcome being, as far as Newman was
concerned, his volume on the Arians. In writing it he felt an
intense intellectual pleasure he had not previously known.
Yet the task was not altogether congenial for so versatile and
discursive a mind as his. He had to deal with such un-
fathomable truths as the Triple Personality and the Divine
Unity, those vast and remote ideas in the revelation and
philosophy of religion which have taxed even greater spirits.
Nor did he enjoy that thorough acquaintance with patristic
literature at which his sister Jemima hinted when she reminded
him that Archbishop Usher had spent eighteen years in read-
ing the Fathers. In the December of 1831 he wrote, "I was
working too hard at the 'Arians.' It was due next summer,
and I had only begun to read for it, or scarcely so, the sum-
mer past." Froude grew impatient with his "dallying,"
declared against his "fiddling" any longer with the introduc-
tion to the work, and predicted his ending in "a scrape."
Newman was resolved, however, to muster all the learning
within his reach : he toiled with a vengeance, and where his
learning was at fault, his rhetorical gifts admirably served
his immediate purposes. Yet two defects could scarcely be
concealed : his neglect of scientific research, and the irrele-
vancy of some of his dissertations. Desirous always of lean-
ing on authority in religious matters, he forgot that history
has no prejudices in behalf of ecclesiasticism, and he intro-
duced a sort of reasoning, best described as heart-foam, to
supply the lack of that strict historical accuracy which checks
undue speculation and is content to set down the thing that
actually occurred.
His general treatment of the Arian period was based on St.
486 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Clement's theory that all religion was from God, and that
Christianity did not supersede so much as it corrected and
sanctified other forms of belief. While divine in its origin,
it depended on human agents for its transmission, and con-
sequently suffered some diminution of content and quality.
The teachings of the New Testament were limited by the
intellectual processes that conveyed them, since these were
necessarily unequal to their full comprehension. The creeds
likewise were in spirit and essence far below the level of the
august propositions they attempted to embody, hence the in-
troduction from time to time of orthodoxy's multiplying and
minute articles as a protection against specific errors and
heresies. With their growth Christian societies naturally
became more complex, and required additional explanation
and defense. Exactitude of credal expression was elevated
to a theological virtue, requisite for the permanence of
primitive Christianity and but for that exactitude the char-
acter and meaning of the Apostolic age would have been
lost to mankind. Upon these grounds Newman pleaded for
a rigid enforcement of formulae. "If the Church," he
averred, "would be vigorous and influential, it must be
decided and plain spoken." The corrosive effects of liber-
alism, so energetic in Arian days, were still in evidence, still
demanding precedence and sanction. Left unchecked,
they would destroy not only the basis of revealed religion,
but ultimately everything that could be called religion at alL
His study of the Arian controversy strengthened his convic-
tion that Apostolic precept and practice were in complete ac-
cord with the characteristic conceptions of Anglo-Catholicism.
He saw, or thought he saw, instructive parallels between the
sees occupied in the fourth century by Arian bishops and
those of his own communion. In both instances the purity
of faith was preserved by a few valiant reformers, who had
confidence in a divine intervention for their cause. Atha-
nasius had arisen in solitary grandeur against the defilers of
God's heritage ; similarly some holy warrior would be
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 487
found, equipped, and sent forth, to deliver the distressed
Anglicanism of the earlier nineteenth century.
The volume, which was the result of a little over six
months' strenuous effort, might well have taken him more
than as many years. "Tired wonderfully," he says of
himself, "continually on the point of fainting, quite worn
out." He had been relieved of a crushing burden none too
soon, and at the same time he was also giving up the last of
his pupils at Oriel. The cessation left him free to brood in
theological gloom over the forbidding prospects of the faith,
the result, as he supposed, of the ever widening opposition
between the Church and the world.
IV
His pent-up feelings found their outlet in the incomparable
parochial sermons which he began to deliver at St. Mary's
in 1828. They enforced his contention that things could
not stand as they were, that Christ's Church was indestructi-
ble, that she must rise again and flourish, when the poor
creatures of a day who opposed her had crumbled into dust.
As a preacher he was profoundly conscious of the sacredness
of his vocation, and in its fulfillment was superior to any other
divine of his day. Oxford's foremost pulpit had several
famous occupants during the nineteenth century : among
them, Pusey, saint and scholar, whose personality for a
time overshadowed Anglicanism; Mozley, the deepest
yet clearest thinker of the group; Manning, self-conscious,
politic, and facile of speech; Liddon, "with the Italianate
profile, orator and ascetic." But none approached Newman
in his analysis of the human heart, his exquisite rhetoric, his
tender or indignant fervor. He united simple earnestness
and refinement with a sense of reserved power on the verge
of being released. Although his audiences were often small,
they were influential, and eventually he brought Oxford to
his feet. "His hearers felt," said Principal Shairp, "as
488 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
though one of the early Fathers had returned to earth."
He appealed to them with a directness and force, and a
passionate and sustained earnestness for a high spiritual
standard, to be seriously realized in conduct, the more im-
perative because the nation had come to the verge of religious
dissolution, and was resting complacently in its own pride
and might, while divine judgment threatened its recreancy.
Mr. Gladstone said of him : " Dr. Newman's manner in the
pulpit was one which, if you considered it in its separate parts,
would lead you to arrive at very unsatisfactory conclusions.
There was not very much change in the inflection of the
voice ; action there was none ; his sermons were read, and his
eyes were always on his book ; and all that, you will say, is
against eflficiency in preaching. Yes ; but you take the man
as a whole, and there was a stamp and a seal upon him, there
was a solemn music and sweetness in his tone, there was a
completeness in the figure, taken together with the tone and
with the manner, which made even his delivery, such as I
have described it, and though exclusively with written ser-
mons, singularly attractive." ^ The stamp and seal were,
indeed, manifestly impressed by nothing less than conse-
crated genius. His two discourses on " Holiness Necessary
for Future Blessedness," and "The Ventures of Faith," are
worthy examples of a new type of prophetical speech, heard
with strained attention, and long remembered and repeated.
Holiness he defined as an inward separation from the world,
and in answer to the question, "Why salvation is impossible
without this frame and temper of mind ? " he replied : " Even
supposing a man of unholy life were suffered to enter heaven,
he would not be happy there, so that it would be no mercy to
permit him to enter. ... He would sustain a great dis-
appointment, he would find no discourse but that which he
shunned on earth ; no pursuits but those which he had dis-
liked or despised ; nothing which bound him to ought else in
the universe and made him feel at home, nothing which he
* Justin McCarthy : "History of Our Own Times" ; Vol. I, p. 142.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 489
could enter into and rest upon. He would perceive him-
self to be an isolated being, cut away by Supreme Power from
those objects which were still entwined around his heart." ^
The second sermon, "The Ventures of Faith," is a search-
ing and inspiring challenge to all who would direct their
heavenward path by that high and unearthly spirit which is
the royal, unmistakable sign of the children of the Kingdom.
The text, taken from the reply of James and John to the
words of Jesus, "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall
drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am
baptized with?" was used to emphasize the wisdom of
endeavors after the Christian life even when they are at-
tended by no promise of absolute attainment. "No one
among us knows for certain that he himself will persevere
unto the end ; yet every one among us, to give himself even a
chance of success at all, must make a venture." Faith is the
essence of a Christian life, and our duty lies in the hazardous
directions where faith is demanded, since fear, risk, danger,
anxiety, require its presence and attest its nobility and
excellence.^
"No one," comments Dr. Alexander Whyte, in speaking of
other discourses in this series, "can feel the full force of New-
man's great sermons on 'The Incarnation' and on 'The
Atoning Death of God the Son ' who has not gone with New-
man to the sources of the sermons in Athanasius, and in Basil,
and in Cyril." ^ Nothing in his homilies showed any sign of
the youth and comparative inexperience of the preacher, or
was immature and technical in treatment. The creeds,
confessions, and catechisms were vitalized ; reclothed with
the beauty and the majesty of genuine sacred oratory. They
were poems, and better still, transcripts from the most in-
spired souls, as well as from the souls to which they min-
istered ; reasonings in a lofty dialectic ; views of life and
of goodness, of sin and its malefic consequences, which, in
» "Parochial and Plain Sermons" ; Vol. I, Setmon I.
* Ibid., Vol. I, Sermon XX. ' "Newman, An Appreciation" ; p. 125.
490 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
numerous instances, marked the beginning of a new life in
those who heard them. Their chaste yet glowing diction
and spiritual perception were employed to such effect that
Newman's followers crowded St. Mary's as the Piagnoni did
San Marco at Florence to listen to Savonarola, and exhibited
an equal enthusiasm, if not extravagance.
On December 2, 1832, when preaching before the Univer-
sity, on "Wilfulness, the Sin of Saul," he entered upon a
sweeping condemnation of English society and a defense of
religious partisanship: "The present open resistance to
constituted power, and (what is more to the purpose) the
indulgent toleration of it, the irreverence towards Antiquity,
the unscrupulous and wanton violation of the commands and
usages of our forefathers, the undoing of their benefactions,
the profanation of the Church, the bold transgression of the
duty of Ecclesiastical Unity, the avowed disdain of what is
called party religion (though Christ undeniably made a
party the vehicle of His doctrine, and did not cast it at random
on the world, as men would now have it), the growing indif-
ference to the Catholic Creed, the skeptical objections to
portions of its doctrine, the arguings and discussings and
comparings and correctings and rejectings, and all the train
of presumptuous exercises, to which its sacred articles are
subjected, the numberless discordant criticisms on the
Liturgy, which have shot up on all sides of us ; the general
irritable state of mind, which is everywhere to be witnessed,
and craving for change in all things; what do all these
symptoms show, but that the spirit of Saul still lives ? — that
wilfulness, which is the antagonist principle to the zeal of
David, — the principle of cleaving and breaking down all
divine ordinances, instead of building up." ^ It will be
remembered that one of the sins of Saul was his refusal to
perpetrate a wholesale massacre on the Amalekites, an act
which compared very favorably with Samuel's demand that
the unfortunate captives should be ruthlessly exterminated,
' "University Sermons" ; Sermon IX.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 491
or with David's betrayal of the unsuspecting Uriah. The
misuse of the word party suggested that our Lord Him-
self originated religious factions because He employed a small
group of His countrymen as the immediate emissaries of His
Gospel. The preacher's exaggerated references to the crav-
ing for change in all things were characteristic of the Univer-
sity don who is proverbially blind to widespread interests
beyond his narrow domains, and on the other hand, so alert
to whatever occurs within their boundaries, as to overrate its
actual importance. Even as a preacher Newman harbored
these incapacitating sentiments, refusing to view from any
other standpoint than his own the measures he denounced
in adroit periphrasis.
Three days after this deliverance he was at Falmouth
awaiting Hurrell Froude and his father, and hourly
expecting the vessel which was to take them and him to
the Mediterranean. He found it hard to leave Oxford ;
a brief visit to Cambridge had only intensified his longing
for the former place, but rest and recreation were im-
perative both for him and for Hurrell Froude, who had
been out of health for some months. They set sail at a
moment when the Anglican Church, in Mozley's phrase, was
folding her robes about her to die in what dignity she could.
The bill for the suppression of the Irish sees was in progress,
and the English bishops were warned by Lord Grey that they
too must set their house in order. "I had fierce thoughts
against the Liberals," confessed Newman, and again, "We
have just heard of the Irish Church Reform Bill. Well
done ; my blind premier, confiscate and rob, till, like Samson,
you pull down the Political structure on your own head." ^
For the moment his attention was turned to less troubled
prospects, yet go where he would, he could not escape him-
self. The subjective world in which he dwelt, into which he
fully admitted none — a world quick and intense beyond the
ordinary — created its own pain, welcomed its own infre-
1 "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 310.
492 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
qiient gleams of joy, and indulged its own reveries. "He
changed his climate, but not his mind,"
His letters and the poems he composed while journeying
abroad give a suflficient account of his sentiments and ex-
periences at this stage. During the voyage he enlarged in
his correspondence with his mother upon the pleasures of
external things, avowing that he had never spent happier days
than those he described. Nature's ministries had evidently
refreshed him, and for a brief space his interests ceased to
be purely personal. He spoke of the ocean's entrancing as-
pects and varied colors ; of the rich indigo of its placid sur-
face, of its white-edged waves ruffling into foam under a stir
of wind, and again, curling into flashing, momentary rain-
bows. The sun was setting in a car of gold ; the horizon
above changed from pale-orange tints to a gradually heighten-
ing dusky red. As night closed in upon these ravishing
scenes the evening star appeared high and pure in the deepen-
ing gloom. The Portuguese coast slipped past like a veiled
pageant, tantalizing in its dim outline, over which stood the
summits of Torres Vedras, where Wellington had kept at bay
the valor of France. At the foot of the reddish brown cliffs
the breakers dashed and rebounded in crested spume which
rose like Venus from the sea ; " I never saw more graceful
forms, and so sedate and deliberate in their rising and falling." ^
Yet these delights could not long detain him ; the mood was
transient ; his mind soon reverted to its introspective habit,
and he began to fear the dangers concealed beneath sensuous
perceptions. Penetrating but a little way into reality it-
self, these might easily distract him from the more preg-
nant elements of being. The principle of dualism had so
infected his reasonings that where inspired psalmists and
prophets had seen in Creation the wisdom and beneficence of
God, Newman frequently discerned "the craft and subtlety
of the Tempter of mankind." He touched on natural won-
ders not so much for their own sake, as to explain the motions
• "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 267.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 493
of his breast. "I have good hope," he writes, "I shall not
be unsettled by my present wanderings. For what are all
these strange sights but vanities, attended to, as they ever
must be, with anxious watchfulness lest the heart be cor-
rupted by them." ^
He was still on the verge of the thirties, and had only
recently undergone his metamorphosis into the extreme
clerical form. Yet one might imagine that the ecclesiastic
had been organized in this new made divine by a hereditary
transmission of long descent. He was a compound of the
evangelicalism of his youthful home and the sacerdotal-
ism of his University circle. His negative feeling of
antagonism to the sensible world, and his positive feel-
ing of a divinely appointed mission combined to separate
him from the most charming surroundings. Even when he is
on the track of Ulysses, gazing on Ithaca, and aware that at
last his earliest visions were made actual before his eyes, he
turned back to the memories of his father's garden at Ham ;
memories so faint, so shadow\% that they evaded his pursuit ;
memories of that twilight before the dawn " when one seems
almost to realize the remnants of a preexisting state." ^
The historic landscapes teeming with classic reminiscences
which have usually fascinated poets and scholars could not
prevail against his inwardness ; he was interested in them,
but nothing more, and would have been well satisfied to find
himself suddenly transported to his rooms at Oriel.^ "I
shrink voluntarily from the contact of the world, and, whether
or not natural disposition assists this feeling, and a per-
ception almost morbid of any deficiencies and absurdities —
anyhow, neither the kindest attentions nor the most sublime
sights have over me influence enough to draw me out of the
way, and, deliberately as I have set out about my present
wanderings, yet I heartily wish they were over, and I only
endure the sights, and had much rather have seen than see
1 "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 266.
* Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 279-280. ^ jbid,. Vol. I, pp. 281-282.
494 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
them, though the while I am extremely astonished and almost
enchanted at them." ^
This paradoxical state increased his determination to seek
afresh the benefits of self-seclusion, and he seized the occa-
sion to write a eulogistic sonnet on Melchizedek, the legend-
ary king and priest, of whom he sings,
"Thrice blest are they, who feel their loneliness;
To whom nor voice of friend nor pleasant scene
Brings that on which the sadden'd heart can lean.
Yea, the rich earth, garb'd in her daintiest dress
Of light and joy, doth but the more oppress,
Claiming responsive smiles and raptm-e high,
Till, sick at heart, beyond the veil they fly,
Seeking His Presence Who alone can bless.
Such, in strange days, the weapons of Heaven's grace :
When, passing by the high-born Hebrew line,
He forms the vessel of His vast design.
Fatherless, homeless, reft of age and place,
Severed from earth, and careless of its wreck,
Born through long woe His rare Melchizedek." ^
Although such isolation was conducive to atrabilious views
and an open rebellion against the conventionalities, neverthe-
less it was measurably justified. For Newman was at
bottom neither a complacent egoist nor an ambitious ecclesi-
astic, but an earnest servant of truth, as he understood it.
The extent of his influence has been variously estimated, and
his career has given rise to numerous and contrary inferences.
Yet it would be a desecration to make capital out of the worst
of these, nor should it be forgotten that one of his most
relentless critics has testified that in his conduct of the Trac-
tarian Movement he showed few, if any, symptoms of a wish
to be the head of a party, but, on the other hand, a laudable
desire to do anything that seemed likely to please God.^ For
this end he sacrificed otherwise desirable projects, and ex-
J "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 282. * Ibid., Vol. I. p. 288.
* Edwin A. Abbott: "The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman";
Vol. I, pp. 256-257.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 495
posed himself to serious misunderstandings, holding his
integrity at heavy charges to himself, and facing the issue
that in dealing with unseen verities the human mind is
bound to accept truths beyond its powers of demonstra-
tion, liike the microscopist who carefully separates the
organism he investigates, shuts off superfluous light and
adjusts his instrument to what light he requires, Newman
economized by consecrating imagination, intellect, memory,
and utterance to those transcendencies which were, as he
believed, jealous of any diversion from themselves.
His reflections soon turned from obvious historical asso-
ciations to others of Scriptural or Churchly origin. "What
has inspired me . . . these two days is the thought that I
am in the Mediterranean. Consider how its coasts have
been the seat and scene of the most celebrated empires
and events which are in history. Think of the variety of
men, famous in every way, who have had to do with it.
Here the Romans and Carthaginians fought; here the
Phoenicians traded ; here Jonah was in the storm ; here St.
Paul was shipwrecked ; here the great Athanasius voyaged
to Rome." At the mention of Athanasius, he broke into
somewhat halting verse, and pathetically asked,
"When shall our Northern Church her Champion see,
Raised by Divine decree
To shield the ancient Truth at his own harm?" ^
The ferment in that " Northern Church " from which he was
temporarily absent was ever present in his mind. In his
highest flights of vision or his most mournful soliloquies he
interrupted himself to fling an admonitory parenthesis at
" frowning Gibraltar," " infidel Ammon," and " niggard Tyre,"
alike pressed into the service of the "Bride of Heaven," who
was exhorted to be patient and to bide her time. The one
thing now needful for her, as for him, was to find the basis
of suflBcient Authority upon which to rest her religious de-
1 "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, pp. 266-267.
496 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
velopment, and no longer be driven to hunt for it indefi-
nitely beyond the bounds of possibility, or attempt illogically
to construct it with the aid of Private Judgment} Hitherto
he had said very little about the sinister side of the Greek
or Roman Churches, but the spectacles he and Froude
witnessed in Sicily and Naples both men lamented. Froude
wrote to Keble: "The Church of England has fallen low,
and will probably be worse before it is better; but let the
Whigs do their worst, they cannot sink us so deep as these
people have allowed themselves to fall while retaining all
the superficial of a religious country." ^ Newman seconded
Froude's views: "The state of the Church is deplorable.
It seems as if Satan was let out of prison to range the whole
earth again. As far as our little experience goes, every-
thing seems to confirm the notion received among ourselves
of the priesthood, while on the other hand the Church is
stripped of its temporalities and reduced to distress." ^
Rome was reached at last, the city of divine apocalypses ;
too complex, manifold, contradictory, magnificent, for New-
man's understanding. As he walked along the Appian Way
over the Pontine marshes and looked upon the metropolis
of Christianity, a mingled throng of bitter thoughts and
sweet besieged him : he hesitated whether to name her
"Light of the wide West,
Or heinous error-seat."
Her titles glowed in the stern judgment-fires which would end
earth's strife with heaven and open the eternal woe.^ Eventu-
ally the place of celestial traditions subdued his questionings ;
the superstitions of his youth that Rome was the "Beast"
which stamped its image on mankind, the "Great Harlot"
who made drunk the kings of the earth, were dispelled, and
he began to regard her as vicariously bearing, in her corrup-
> Edwin A. Abbott: "The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman";
Vol. I, p. 240.
« "Remains" ; Vol. I, p. 294.
8 " Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 310. * Ibid., Vol. I, p. 315.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 497
tion and distress, the sins of the whole world. He wrote to
Frederic Rogers, who next to Froude was his confidant,
"There is such an air of greatness and repose cast over the
whole, and, independent of what one knows from history,
there are such traces of long sorrow and humiliation, suffer-
ing,,punishment, and decay, that one has a mixture of feelings,
partly such as those with which one would approach a corpse,
and partly those which would be excited by the sight of the
spirit which had left it. It brings to my mind Jeremiah's
words, . . . when Jerusalem, or (sometimes) the prophet,
speaks as the smitten of God. Oxford, of course, must ever
be a sacred city to an Oxonian, and is to me. It would be a
strange want of right pride to think of disloyalty to it, even
if our creed were not purer than the Roman; yet the lines
of Virgil keenly and affectionately describe what I feel
about this wonderful city." ^ He begged that Rogers would
repeat to himself the passage from the Eclogues to which he
referred and dwell upon each word :
"Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi,
Stultus ego, huic nostrae similem," etc.
The quotation describes the change in a rustic of northern
Italy who had been presumptuous enough to imagine that
Rome was like his own city, but who soon knew that she was
to the latter as a cypress tree to a bramble bush. The com-
parison is informing : Newman never ceased to love Oxford,
but another love was now beginning to divide his loyalty.
It was not the Rome of the Emperors, nor that of Michel-
angelo and Raffaelle ; it was the Rome of the Apostles and the
Martyrs that impressed his prepared imagination, and made
a bid for his heart.
The "Apologia" omits some important facts connected
with this visit, and, although it states that Newman and
Froude twice waited upon Dr. Wiseman, then Rector of the
English College, and afterwards famous for his pastoral
1 "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, pp. 318-319.
2k
498 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
letter to England dated "from out the Flaminian Gate," no
hint is given of the object or the result of their interviews.
From Froude's "Remains," however, we learn that they
sought to ascertain whether or not the perversions of the
truth, which were adapted for Rome but not for England,
could be regarded as non-essentials ; and as to what were the
fundamental differences between Catholicism and Anglican-
ism, and whether these were so great as to prevent all hope
of union. They discovered to their dismay that not one step
could be gained in that direction, unless their Church
"swallowed the Council of Trent as a whole." Froude
frankly expressed his resentment and disgust in the ensuing
note:
" We made our approaches to the subject as delicately as
we could. Our first notion was that the terms of commun-
ion were within certain limits under the control of the Pope,
or in case he could not dispense solely, yet at any rate the
acts of one Council might be rescinded by another ; indeed,
that in Charles the First's time it had been intended to negoti-
ate a reconciliation on the terms on which things stood before
the Council of Trent. But we found to our horror that the
doctrine of the infallibility of the Church made the acts of
each successive Council obligatory for ever, that what had
been once decided could never be meddled with again; in
fact, that they were committed finally and irrevocably, . . .
even though the Church of England should again become
what it was in Laud's time, or indeed, what it may have been
up to the atrocious Council." ^ " Right pride " in Oxford and
the Establishment of which it was the citadel had certainly
met with a fall when two Anglican clergymen could seek inter-
views with a distinguished Roman theologian, afterwards a
Cardinal, in order to discuss the terms on which their Church
could obtain reconciliation with the Papal See. Froude, as
we have noted, made no effort to conceal his feelings ; New-
man said little, but the probabilities are that he was even
1 "Remains"; Vol. I, p. 307.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 499
more profoundly depressed. " I ought to tell you," he wrote
to his sister Jemima, " about the Miserere at Rome, my going
up St. Peter's, and the Easter illumination, our conversations
with Dr. Wiseman and with M. Bunsen, our search for the
Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, my pilgrimage to the
place of St. Paul's martyrdom, the Catacombs, and all the
other sights which have stolen away my heart, but I forbear
till we meet. Oh that Rome were not Rome ! but I seem to
see as clear as day that a union with her is impossible. She is
the cruel Church asking of us impossibilities, excommunicat-
ing us for disobedience, and now watching and exulting
over our approaching overthrow." The conversations with
Wiseman were one of the significant events of Newman's
journey ; they afterwards echoed in his heart, and begot that
uneasy questioning which ended with his repudiation of
Anglicanism. The mental peculiarities which are produced
by granting to dogma, resting on a very puzzling structure of
evidence, the place and power of primary truth, had already
become apparent in him. The wholesome, regulative co-
operation of the intellect with the heart by which the impulses
of the latter are carefully examined with the view of deter-
mining their legitimacy, came to be regarded by him as
savoring of presumption. When men, however richly en-
dowed, slip into this state of mind, and require no other pass-
port for theological statements than that they shall accord
with their own fixed conceptions of the revelations of Deity,
they are apt to search not for facts as such, but for facts that
appear to support their position. Adverse evidence can only
be encountered by stratagems that demoralize healthy think-
ing, and the last expedient is to throw the burden upon
conscience, thus depriving reason of its proper function and
elevating questionable articles of faith to the dignity of re-
ligion.
Froude and his father having started for England, Newman,
full of uncertainty about the future, returned for a while to
Naples. He was repelled by its glitter and glare, which were
500 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
in painful contrast with the grave melancholy of the capital.
"Oh, what a change from the majestic pensiveness of the
place I have left, where the Church sits in sackcloth calling
on those that pass by to say if any one's sorrow is like her
sorrow !" ^ "How shall I describe the sadness with which I
left the tombs of the Apostles ? Rome, not as a city, but as
the scene of sacred history, has a part of my heart, and in
going away from it I am as if tearing it in twain." ^ He
elaborated this latest opinion in order to dismiss his lingering
belief that in some sense the Papal Church was recreant.
The city itself, he asserted, had possessed but one character
for two thousand five hundred years ; of late centuries the
Christian Church had been the slave of this character. The
day drew near, however, when the captive would be freed.
Meanwhile Rome's memory would ever be soothing to him ;
Jerusalem alone could impart a more exalted comfort. Thus
he sums up : " In point of interest I have seen nothing like
Ithaca, the Straits of Messina, and Egesta (I put aside Rome),
and in point of scenery nothing like Corfu. As to Rome, I
cannot help talking of it" . . . and once more he utters the
plaintive cry — " O Rome, that thou wert not Rome ! " ^ She
stood out like a towering mountain on a receding shore and
outvied them all in the endlessness and power of her
appeal.
He had drawn away from his companions that he might
see again the towns and hill country of Sicily, and there plan
the campaign on which he and Froude were jointly resolved.
When Monsignore Wiseman expressed the courteous hope
that they would visit him again, Newman replied, with great
gravity, "We have a work to do in England." '' How seri-
ously they took themselves and their projected crusade
appeared in their choice of Achilles' proud speech as the
motto for the "Lyra Apostolica " : "They shall know the
' "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, p. 338.
' Ibid., Vol. I, p. 336. » Ibid., Vol. I. p. 344.
'"Apologia"; p. 34.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 501
difference now that I am back again." ^ Tiie saying was not
inappropriate to the warfare that ensued, which was to cause
so many wounds, and leave so many ugly scars behind.
His heart thus full of the portents of this conflict, Newman
fell ill of a fever, a circumstance which he regarded as provi-
dential and afterwards repeatedly described in most solemn
and searching words. It marked another sovereign moment
in his life, appearing to him partly as a judgment on his past
faults, and partly as an assurance of heaven's forgiveness and
direction. ''I felt God was fighting against me, and felt at
last I knew why — it was for self-will." The sense of his
frailty, the peril of his pride, the burden of his mission, and his
insufficiency for its discharge, instigated a severe examination
of his motives. Nor was this the result of hasty decision
induced by physical weakness, for he remanded the case un-
til he returned to Oxford : his illness occurred in May, 1853,
his account of it was not begun until August 31 of the year
following, and was continued at intervals as late as 1874.
" I felt and kept saying to myself ' I have not sinned against
light,' and at the one time I had a most consoling overpower-
ing thought of God's electing love, and seemed to feel I
was His. . . . Next day I seemed to see more and more
of my utter hollowness, I began to think of all my professed
principles, and felt they were mere intellectual deductions
from one or two admitted truths. I compared myself with
Keble, and felt that I was merely developing his, not my
convictions. . . . Indeed this is how I look on myself;
very much as a pane of glass, which transmits heat, being
cold itself. I have a vivid perception of the consequences of
certain admitted principles, have a considerable intellectual
capacity of drawing them out, have the refinement to admire
them, and a rhetorical or histrionic power to represent them ;
and having no great {i.e. no vivid) love of this world, whether
» Iliad XVIII, L. 125. "TvoTev d' ws 5i^ Sijpdv iyu woXifMio veiravfiai"
the assertion of Achilles to Thetes when he returned to the fray that he might
avenge himself on Hector for the death of Patroclus.
502 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
riches, honours, or anything else, and some firmness and
natural dignity of character, take the profession of them upon
me, as I might sing a tune which I like — loving the Truth,
but not possessing it, for I believe myself at heart to be nearly
hollow, i.e. with little love, little self-denial. I believe I have
some faith, that is all ; and, as to my sins, they need my
possessing no little amount of faith to set against them and
gain their remission." ^
Studied impartiality was foreign to Newman's character;
his strong sense of what was real, or of what he wished to
believe was real, prevented him from always doing justice
either to himself or others, so that his confessions, like many
similar ones, were excessive in their self-depreciation. As-
suredly he was prepared for any sacrifice which would bene-
fit his soul ; and despite his skeptical tendencies faith was his
in abundance, whatever may be urged against some objec-
tives to which he attached it. His love, however, was not
of that quality which
"Gives to every power a double power
Above their functions and their offices."
Toward men, except for his closest friends, it was narrow and
embarrassed, and lacked the glow of sympathy ; even when
offered to God it did not have that restful response of the
heart made perfect in the charity which casts out fear.
His dread that essential truth was not his has been shared
by devout thinkers whose conceptions of the truth and of
the nature of its sanctifying power have widely differed.
But "wisdom is sometimes nearer when we stoop than
when we soar," and nothing testified more clearly to the
genuineness of Newman's religious nature, or to the presence
of the life of God in him, than did these admissions and
penitences.
Four-fifths of his published poems, if the "Dream of
> "Letters and Correspondence" ; Vol. I, pp. 365-366.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 503
Gerontius" is excluded, were written during his tour in
Southern Europe. Many of them first appeared in the Brit-
ish Magazine as lyrical compositions of the "proper kind."
Although they were spontaneous effusions, springing directly
from the thoughts and events of the moment, and dealing
with sentiments then present in his heart, competent critics
have given them a high place in literature, and Mr. R. H.
Hutton asserts : " For grandeur of outline, purity of taste, and
radiance of total effect, I know hardly any short poems in the
language that equal them." ^ Nor were they without pres-
ages of the future. Despite weakness and humiliation,
Newman felt that he was being divinely led onward to some
enterprise, he knew not what, but for which grace and wisdom
would be given. His wistful yet resigned longing to see
the way before him, the pathetic but uncomplaining en-
treaties for guidance of an eager soul caught and confused in
the darkness, found permanent form in the beautiful hymn
which he wrote on the orange boat that carried him from
Palermo to Marseilles, when becalmed in the Straits of Boni-
facio. Familiar as the lyric is, it must be transcribed here,
since it has long enjoyed the grateful appreciation of a multi-
tude of similarly seeking or sorrowing ones who are content
to wait until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
"Lead, kindly light, amid th' encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on ;
The night is dark, and I am far from home ;
Lead Thou me on ;
Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, — one step enough for me.
" I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on ;
I loved to choose and see my path ; but now
Lead Thou me on.
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will : remember not past years.
1 "Cardinal Newman" ; p. 44.
504 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone ;
And with the morn those angel-faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
CHAPTER XI
TRACTARIANISM AND ITS RESULTS
505
"Old customs and institutions, even of the most trivial kind, linger
long after their origin has been forgotten and some new justification
has been invented for them. Forms of language and of thought have
a similar vitality, and persist long after they are recognised as cum-
brous and misleading. Every change must originate with some indi-
vidual who, by virtue of his originality, must be in imperfect sympathy
with the mass of his contemporaries. Nor can any man, however
versatile his intellect, accommodate his mind easily or speedily to a
new method and a new order of ideas."
Sir Leslie Stephen.
" Thou shalt leave each thing
Beloved most dearly; this is the first shaft
Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove
How salt the savour is of other's bread;
How hard the passage to descend and climb
By other's stairs."
Dante.
506
CHAPTER XI
TRACTAEIANISM AND ITS RESULTS
Suppression of Irish bishoprics — Abuses of AngHcanism — Keble's
sermon on National Apostasy — Formation of the Tractarian party —
The Tracts and their teachings — The sources of Anglicanism — Cath-
oUcity of Anglicanism — Impeachment of Protestantism — Pusey's
part in the movement — Hugh James Rose — William Palmer — Rob-
ert Isaac Wilberforce — Charles Marriott — Isaac Williams — William
John Copeland — The Hampden and other controversies — Appear-
ance of Tract Ninety — Newinan's trend toward Rome — Condemna-
tion of the Tract — Opposition of the bishops — Establishment of the
Jerusalem bishopric — Defeat of Wilhams and Pusey — Degradation
of Ward — Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine — New-
man's secession — His career in the Roman Catholic Chiu-ch — Epi-
logue.
I
Fully restored to health and eager for the conflict, New-
man returned to England in July, 1833, to find that political
developments were helping to mature the projects over
which he and Froude had brooded. The long-expected
blow at the Establishment had fallen; ten Irish suffragan
bishoprics and two prospective archiepiscopal sees were
about to be suppressed ; a contingency which outraged the
feelings of many Anglicans, tended to sever other friendships
besides that between Whately and Newman, and crystallized
the action of clerg^Tnen who were intent on a larger measure
of independence for the Church in her relations to the
State. They were not agreed on this question : advanced
Churchmen favored a practical autonomy ; with the rest it
was a matter of convenience rather than conviction. The
disestablishment of a State Church which did not muster
more than half the Protestants south of the Tweed, and an
507
508 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
infinitely less number across the Irish Channel, appealed to
the sense of justice in many publicists, while to leaders such
as Keble, Froude, and Newman the proposition savored of
disruption and anarchy. The problem was further compli-
cated by the rapid growth of population in the United King-
dom during the nineteenth century, a condition that inten-
sified the hitherto neglected demand for additional church
accommodation, which zealous men of various parties vigor-
ously urged. Friends and foes alike were also disturbed by
the anomalous inequalities of Church funds. The income
of bishoprics ranged from thirty-two thousand pounds for
Canterbury and twenty thousand pounds for Durham to
sums which were barely sufficient to cover expenses. The
deaneries of Westminster, Windsor, and St. Paul's netted
from seven thousand to twelve thousand pounds each, and
a number of rectories from five thousand to ten thousand
pounds. At the other extreme the poorer clergy were mis-
erably paid, not less than four thousand of the livings in
England and Wales having a stipend under one hundred
and fifty pounds a year. Large numbers of these fell be-
low fifty pounds, and as a consequence parochial work was
pauperized. One third of the clergy were pluralists, some
holding as many as five benefices. The law that required
incumbents to reside in their parishes was openly violated,
canons and rectors living where they chose and leaving their
duties to curates on a starvation wage. One clergyman
holding two rectories bringing in twelve hundred pounds
was said to have paid eighty-four pounds for the work done
in both. Bishop Sparke of Ely, his son, and his son-in-law
jointly received annually over thirty thousand pounds of
Church moneys. Archbishop Moore is reputed to have
died a millionaire, and that mild but rapacious prelate,
Archbishop Manners Sutton, presented seven of his relatives
to sixteen benefices besides several cathedral dignities.^
' F. W. Cornish: "The English Church in the Nineteenth Century";
Vol. I, pp. 102-109.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 509
This nepotism and greed became a scandal, and in 1831
a Royal Commission was appointed to report upon its
causes and consider what remedies should be adopted.
Parliamentary control was responsible for such rank
abuses : it now endeavored to abolish them by legislation.
The long-continued evil and their helplessness to eradicate
it evoked from indignant hearts the query, Has the Church
no voice in her own affairs ? Evangelicals were not partic-
ularly concerned to reply ; as a party they had taken little
interest in ecclesiastical changes, so long as the status quo
favored or at least did not interfere with their doctrinal
preferences. But Oxford inhaled an atmosphere which made
it distrustful of all reforms and especially of those which
affected the Church or the Crown. Its strictest loyalties
centered around the former; idealized as the fond mother,
who had inspired the best creations of the past, and who
maintained the highest and widest possible relations with
religion, learning, art, architecture; while the Crown was
revered as the fountain of national honor and security.
Both were so interdependent that neither could be touched
without weakening the other, and the marauding hand that
was raised against them must be prompted by ignorance,
impiety, or treason. The misguided or deliberate enemies
of settled government who went about to suppress bishoprics
antedating the State itself, and to confiscate or redistribute
endowments derived from the gifts of pious founders, would
presently, without doubt, find in University affairs the next
object of their unlicensed interference. Such sentiments
were current, not only in Oxford, but in a thousand town and
country parsonages throughout the land. They found a
historic expression in John Keble, who, despite his disinclina-
tion to public controversy, emerged from seclusion, and
challenged parliament and the nation in behalf of the rights
and liberties of Anglicanism. He believed that the Establish-
ment, although in dire need of purification, was not only a
formal recognition of religion by the State, but its bulwark
510 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
against liberalism and moral degeneracy — conditions which
he identified as cause and effect. After repeatedly discuss-
ing these and kindred themes in the Common Room at
Oriel, Keble and his friends pledged themselves to write and
speak for the Church. Their situation was somewhat incon-
sistent, inasmuch as they conceived their communion to be a
divine ordination, and esteemed its spiritualities above every-
thing else, yet these were of necessity closely associated with
the temporal authority which nominated deans and bishops,
and regulated doctrine and discipline. Moreover, her union
with the State made the Church the ally of the powerful
and the rich. And for the Tractarians to company with
these, while condemning others who ardently desired her re-
generation as anti-Christian in their policy, involved the
definition of what Christianity really was and how its teach-
ings affected the entire question.
This Keble undertook to some extent in his Oxford Assize
sermon, delivered on Lord's Day, July 14, 1833. He felt
that the duty and the hour for its discharge had been granted
him, and he used the opportunity to the full in his discourse,
entitled "National Apostasy." To his utterance Newman
attributed the actual origin of Tractarianism, saying that
he had ever considered and kept the day as the start of
the religious movement of 1833. A superficial view has
ascribed Keble's impeachment to the suppression of the
Irish bishoprics, but actually its main causes were to be
found in the spiritual dearth of Anglicanism, which enabled
unscrupulous politicians, as he deemed them, to take advan-
tage of the general weakness. Further, he believed that
faith and order were jeopardized when the episcopate was
reduced in numbers or in authority by civil decrees. On
this matter he and his colleagues were sincere, inexorable,
and imited. The consideration that no changes in ecclesi-
astical methods could permanently impair the vitality and
energy of the New Testament Evangel had no weight with
clerics who were swayed by the influences, good or bad, of
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 511
their unique surroundings. They invested their sacerdotal
claims with the sanctity of an absolute revelation, and held
that the totality of God's working force in the world was,
in essence, a priestly possession. The ability to see every
side of a question, so necessary for comprehensive and safe
conclusions, was not a gift of the Tractarians, yet their nar-
rowness of outlook was not due to any conscious paltering
with the facts, but to certain mental and moral limitations.
That all men are more or less the victims of these limita-
tions is a truism that should restrain impatience at what
naturally seems the astonishing infatuation of the Tracta^
rians, and Keble's observations can be judged accordingly.
Churchmen, said the preacher, and by this he meant
Anglicans, had hitherto taken it for granted that England
" had for centuries acknowledged, as an essential part of her
theory of government, that, as a Christian nation, she Ls also
a part of Christ's Church, and bound in all her legislation
and policy by the fundamental laws of that Church." This
proposition practically asserted that Anglicans should dic-
tate the laws of England, and it could have been extended
with equal legitimacy to the Presbyterianism established in
Scotland. " When a government and people, so constituted,"
he added, "threw off the restraint which in many respects
such a principle would impose upon them, nay, disavowed
the principle itself," such conduct was a "direct disavowal
of the sovereignty of God. If it be true that such enactments
are forced on the legislature by public opinion, is Apostasy
too hard a word to describe the temper of such a nation ? "
These extracts present the substance of a remonstrance con-
ceived in the strictest partisanship, yet addressed to all
England. Its language disclosed no careful study of those
stages in national evolution which had rendered unavoidable
the changes painfully resented by Keble. It manifested
a temper belonging to the genial days of the Act of Uniform-
ity rather than the nineteenth century. Community of in-
terest and sympathy, which is the root of social justice, was
512 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
destroyed by such extraordinary prejudices. Contemptu-
ous toward that excellent and persistent spirit operating in
human progress, the strength of which no circumstances,
however adverse, and no creed, however inflexible, can
permanently overcome, Keble and his disciples refused to
credit their generation with any good thing, and mourned
over its shortcomings with a mistaken grief. Some among
them were inordinately lachrymose : deprived of domestic
joys and feeding on the despair of their own hearts, they
were wont to display an ill-regulated emotion over events
out of all proportion to the tears expended on them.
"No matter where ; of comfort no man speak :
Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs ;
Make dust our paper, and with raining eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth."
They applied themselves to their theories with unswerving
vigor, and regarded them as living verities, never to be
doubted, always to be obeyed, whatever the consequences.
History is plentiful in similar examples showing how merci-
less and unjust theories can be : how they can cut like a
scythe, separating men and nations, once they are allowed
to obsess the mind and to become the watchwords of reli-
gious or political cliques.
Twelve days after Keble's sermon was preached, and seven-
teen after Newman's return from the continent, Hugh
James Rose convened a gathering at his rectory of Hadleigh
in Suffolk, to consider the state of the Church and what
measures should be adopted for its betterment. William
Palmer, Arthur Philip Perceval, and Hurrell Froude accepted
the invitation ; Keble and Newman, though absent, actively
cooperated with the rest. "The meeting was the first
attempt to combine for the preservation of great principles,"
remarked Palmer ; but small in numbers though it was, its
members were not agreed, and finally they adjourned to Ox-
ford. Those who maintained that sacred beliefs and ordi-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 513
nances were not subject to fluctuations of ideas, or to scientific,
economic, and political conditions, and that apart from
hierarchical authority there could be nothing but confusion
and loss, encountered a show of resistance from the more
cautious brethren. Nevertheless, "the Hadleigh conspir-
acy," as Froude and his foes alike termed it, cleared the way
for simultaneous action, and Rose and his companions after-
wards spoke of themselves as "the Society." During the
long vacation of 1833 they met again at Oriel, and by the
third of September or thereabouts, Newman had put forth
the first three in the series of "Tracts for the Times." ^
Resentment against modern thought and a sense of
its danger to religion were their main burden. This
danger was manifested in the secularization of the Church
and the proposed alteration of the Prayer Book in a latitu-
dinarian sense by authority of parliament. Existing heresies
and infidelities were to be overcome by archaic shibboleths
duly refurbished ; the doctrines of apostolical succession and
sacramental grace, taking the place of evangelical theories of
conversion by means of prayer and preaching, were trusted
to put to confusion enemies within and without the Church,
which, purged of the one and defended from the other,
would return to her ancient beliefs and renew her forgotten
services.
Ne\\Tnan's first Tract, respectfully addressed to his
brethren in the sacred ministry^ struck this note at once.
It was an imperative summons to forsake ungodliness, and
to set the example of unworldly men taking their solemn
office seriously and sacrificially. They were exhorted not
to rest upon that secular respectability, or cultivation, or
polish, or learning, or rank which gave them a hearing
with the many; and to have done forever with the false
notion that present palpable usefulness, producible results,
acceptableness to the flock are indubitable evidences of
1 Authorities differ as to this date ; Dean Burgon gives September 3d ;
Dean Church, September 9th ; Wilfred Ward, " the December following."
2l
514 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
divine approval. In the last day, Scripture warns us, the
recital of such proofs will in many instances be met by
the stern sentence, "Depart from me, for I never knew you."
The Tract was as intentionally provocative as Keble's
sermon, and also as exclusive and uncompromising. It as-
sailed whatever was unworthy and much that was customary
in the Church, and boldly exalted the ages of intolerance and
asceticism. This backward gaze on denser times was a pre-
vailing trait in the Tractarians. A surprising passage occurs
in one of Keble's homilies, entitled "The Religion of the
Day," which would have made an appropriate motto for his
cause, and wherein he declares that it would be a gain to
England "were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted,
more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it
shows itself to be."
The second Tract applied the principles of the first to
practical Church politics. Was the State the Church?
Had the State the right to create a clergy, to regulate dio-
ceses, to determine in any way the propaganda of the
Church? The answer did not tremble; it was emphatic,
even defiant. The Holy Catholic Church was a living
reality, placed in the Creed as an article of faith immedi-
ately after the belief in the Holy Ghost ; Apostolic, because
founded by the Apostles; Catholic, because it knew no
limitation of race ; Visible, in its divinely instituted orders
of bishops, priests, and deacons; and essentially above all
civil authority in matters of doctrine and ritual. Further-
more, communion with the Church, thus defined, was
"generally necessary to salvation in the case of those who
could obtain it." In short, the Tract was a declaration of
war against the right of parliament to any voice in religious
matters, and against the Evangelical and Broad sections of
Anglicanism. "I stand amazed," wrote Arnold to Pusey,
"at some apparent efforts in this Protestant Church to set
up the idol of tradition."
In the third Tract Newman deplored a current pro-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 515
posal to revise the liturgy. "In a day like this," he
wrote, "there are but two sides, zeal and persecution, the
Church and the world ; and those who attempt to occupy
the ground between them at best will lose their labour,
but probably will be drawn back to the latter. Be practical,
I respectfully urge you." Any changes in the liturgy
would lead, he felt, to controversy and unbelief ; the way
would be opened to objectors who disliked its teaching
rather than its form to tamper with both.
During 1834 twenty Tracts were published, nine of them
being from NeuTuan's pen. The theology and practice of
the eighteenth century were discarded and denounced, and
the clergy were admonished to betake themselves to the
Carolinian divines and to their instructors, the early Fathers.
In November of the same year the first volume of Tracts,
forty-seven in number, was pubRshed, "with the object
of contributing something towards the practical revival of
doctrines, which, although held by the great divines of our
Church, at present have become obsolete with the majority
of her members, and are withdrawn from public view even
by the more learned and orthodox few who still adhere to
them." At intervals five more volumes appeared. In
the preface to the third of these, issued in 1836, the editors,
referring to the first Tracts, remarked that they "were
written with the hope of rousing members of our Church to
comprehend her alarming position . . . ; as a man might
give notice of a fire or an inundation, to startle all who
heard him ... to infuse seriousness into the indifferent.
. . , Now, however, discussion became more seasonable
than the simple statements of doctrine with which the series
began ; and their character accordingly changed."
Simultaneously with the Tracts other books were sent
forth to support the novel theories, in accordance with
Newman's plan of giving them a wide publicity. His own
works on "The Prophetical Office of the Church," on "The
Arians," already noticed, and also on " Justification" appeared
516 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
in 1837 and 1838. In the latter year the first volume
of the "Library of the Fathers," of which Charles
Marriott became managing editor, was published, followed
by fifty volumes in succeeding years, the object being
to furnish the clergy with the teaching of the Church
before the division between East and West. About the
same time another series was issued, the "Library of Anglo-
Catholic Theology," comprising the writings of notable
English divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In 1839 Isaac Williams, of whom we shall hear again,
commenced a series of " Plain Sermons by Contributors to
the Tracts for the Times " for the purpose of heartening the
fearful and guiding the perplexed. In the periodical press
the Movement was ably and vigorously represented by the
British Critic and by its successor the Christian Re-
membrancer. Among others who contributed to the Tracts
were Keble, his brother Thomas, Benjamin Harrison, George
Bowden, Hurrell Froude, Isaac Williams, Alfred Menzies,
and Pusey. Despite Newman's deprecation of corporate
effort, and his avowal that no great achievement was
ever wrought by a system ; whereas systems, on the con-
trary, arose out of individual energy. Palmer insisted on
further organization ; the laymen were enlisted, and an ad-
dress of protestation was signed by eight thousand Angli-
cans and presented to the Primate.
These proceedings came none too soon ; the third decade
of the nineteenth century found the Established Church
in large measure what she had been when she rejected the
Wesleys and their mission. She was still slumbering and
sleeping when the days of trouble came upon her. " Nothing,
as it seems to me," Dr. Arnold confessed in 1833, "can save
the Church but union with the Dissenters; now that they
are leagued with the Anti-Christian party, and no merely
internal reforms will satisfy them." ^ This widespread
hostility, followed, as it was, by the publication of the
' Dean Stanley: "Life of Arnold" ; Vol. I, pp. 326-345.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 517
Tracts, alarmed the officials both of Church and State;
but they were totally unprepared to meet the emergency,
and behaved as men surprised in a moment of fictitious
security. Lulled to somnolence by their detachment from
the clergy and the people, the bishops at last awoke to the
possibility of a collapse largely due to their prolonged neglect
and indifference. Even when aroused, some were content
to indulge the luxury- of moral indignation against Erastian
mismanagement, and at the same time to insist that the
Church should continue to enjoy the material advantages
she derived from State supervision. But to the majority of
the bishops and to all the Evangelicals, the Tracts seemed
glaringly inconsistent with the doctrine and discipline of the
Church ; an act of betrayal solemnly perpetrated by grave
and reverend men, who violated the sacredness of their
calling and the legitimate construction of the Rubrics and
the Articles.
In reality, Tractarianism was a development of the free-
dom which Anglicanism obtained at the Reformation, when
Europe was divided into two camps, and scholars and
Humanists became persecutors and martyrs. In the long
interval that had elapsed, the creative source of the theologi-
cal opinions enunciated by Newman and his companions
had been forgotten. The Semitic mind, which produced
the New Testament; the Hellenistic, which produced
ecumenical dogma; the Imperialistic, which produced the
Papal rule; the Feudal, which produced medieval theories
of ecclesiastical governance ; the National, which produced
Protestantism — were all involved in the chaos of that era
out of which the Establishment arose under the suprem-
acy of Henry VIII. How much self-governance was left to
Anglicanism had long been disputed. The compact between
Church and Crown, if such it was, at any rate presumed
that the Church had power to make it. Precisely what it
signified, and the interpretations derived from its statements,
grants and reserv^ations, became an acute problem which dis-
518 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
tressed and distorted the thoughts of Churchmen. The
Tractarians contended that the Church did not concede, nor
was she asked to concede, that her doctrine should be deter-
mined or her laws administered by other than her own clergy.
Original powers of direction and guidance were carefully
distinguished from those relating to constraint and correc-
tion. But the distinction was too fragile to withstand the
rough usage of revolutionary politics. The sudden appro-
priation to themselves of the spiritual authority hitherto
vested in the Papacy aroused acrimonious discussion among
its new possessors. During the Tudor and Stuart periods
many valuable prerogatives were left lying loose which des-
potic rulers and ambitious statesmen were quick to use for
their own ends. Neo-Anglicans denied the plea that the
Holy See was until the sixteenth century both the source and
center of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the supreme judge
of doctrine. Following Laud, Andrewes, Ken, Wilson, and
Hammond, they went behind the transfer of headship
from the Pope to the monarch ; behind the controversies and
schisms which succeeded the corruptions of the period;
and found their basis for the Prayer Book, its liturgies
and forms of ordination, in the purer and more uni-
versal faith and practice which flourished from the eleventh
to the thirteenth centuries. The ancient jurisdiction of
that era, they argued, was restored at the Reformation,
without vital injury to the continuity and integrity of the
Anglican Church. Mr. Gladstone summed up the contro-
versy as follows : " I contend that the Crown did not claim
by statute, either to be of right, or to become by convention,
the source of that kind of action, which was committed by
the Saviour to the Apostolic Church, whether for the enact-
ment of laws, or for the administration of its discipline;
but the claim was, that all the canons of the Church, and all
its judicial proceedings, inasmuch as they were to form parts
respectively of the laws and of the legal administration of
justice in the kingdom, should run only with the assent and
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 519
sanction of the Crown. They were to carry with them a
double force — a force of coercion, visible and palpable ; a
force addressed to conscience, neither visible nor palpable,
and in its nature only capable of being inwardly appre-
ciated." ^ Without commenting on this rather labored dis-
crimination between a force of coercion and one addressed
to conscience, it is enough to add that Mr. Gladstone him-
self admitted that while, according to the spirit and letter
of the law, such appear to be the limits of the royal su-
premacy relative to the legislative action of the Church, in
other branches it goes farther, and that the claim of the
Crown to determine at any point the jurisdiction of the
Church may also be construed to mean that the Crown is
the ultimate source of jurisdiction of whatever kind.^ When
Henry VIII delivered the Church from the bonds of Rome,
he did not free her; he merely substituted the sole control
of the Crown for the dual authority hitherto exercised by
the Pope and the monarch.
These scattered hints may serve to convey some idea
of the Tractarian position, the validity of which is
repudiated by able advocates of opposing schools. Cer-
tainly her connection with the State, and the compromises
forced upon her by national and religious necessities,
enabled the English Church to shelter many shades and
varieties of mind and opinion. Whatever has been her
bearing toward some outgrowths of Puritanism, and in
this she has little on which to look with equanimity,
within her own borders she has preserved a commen-
dable breadth. By resisting the swashbucklers of peculiar
orthodoxies, who sought to stereotype creeds and forms and
thus sever the Church from the life of the nation, she has
saved herself from disintegration and conferred great benefits
on her members. Her forces have not always been rightly
> "Remarks on the Royal Supremacy, as it is Defined by Reason, History,
and the Constitution"; Guardian, July 10, 1850.
* Dean Church : "Occasional Papers" ; pp. 8-9.
520 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
directed, yet, at intervals, leaders have appeared who refused
to fall back from ever-widening horizons upon circumscribed
areas. An organization which included Hooker, Thirlwall,
Maurice, Robertson of Brighton, Stanley, Jowett, and
Tait, together with Laud, Law, Keble, Froude, Pusey,
Church, and Liddon, can be said in this respect to have
been truly catholic. Cynical observers have criticized the
divisions which separated these eminent men, and out-
siders entirely friendly to Anglicanism have remarked with
justice, that apart from its alliance with the State, it would
probably fall asunder into contending sects. The fact
remains, however, that its wisest sons, although separated
in some beliefs, have generally been faithful Churchmen
who were not blind to their inheritance or to the
sacrifices of its past and the hope of its present and
future. Neither Tractarians, Evangelicals, nor Broad
Churchmen have always rightly conceived and used their
freedom, but this is not a sufficient reason for its withdrawal,
nor for the uniformity which would deaden, if not destroy,
liberty of conscience and opinion. Upon that liberty as a
sure foundation rests the strength of a Church which
aspires to be truly national; in which different types of
character and temperament have found a habitation for
Christian scholarship, and a center for worship and service.
This digression helps to indicate the obstacles the Trac-
tarians encountered, in which the first question confronting
them was, " What is the Church as spoken of in England ?
Is it the Church of Christ?" Hooker, whose conclusions
were the outcome of a nobly temperate mind, had defined
it as the nation, viewed in its entirety, and Arnold
simply echoed his definition. The Nonconformists declared
that it was the aggregate of separate congregations, locally
independent and in fellowship one with another. Erastian
lawyers and politicians regarded it as the creation of the
State, an establishment by law under parliamentary legis-
lation and control. Roman Catholics asserted that it was
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 521
not, in any apostolic and catholic sense, a Church at all,
but a sectarian schism, cut off from communion with the
fountain of grace and spiritual authority, and hampered
by an ignominious history of subservience to the Crown.
Whately's affirmation, already quoted, advanced the prop-
osition that it was a divine religious society, distinct in
its attributes from any other. Froude and then Newman
adopted and heightened this theory, and a majority of the
Tractarians followed suit, teaching that the Anglican Church
was the one historic uninterrupted ecclesia, than which
there could be no other in England.^ While this doctrine
defied Erastianism, it left the internal life and teaching of
the Church in need of further elucidation, which the Tracts
endeavored to supply.
Although described by Dean Church as "clear, brief,
stern appeals to conscience and reason; sparing of words,
utterly without rhetoric, intense in purpose ; the sharp,
rapid utterances of men in pain and danger and pressing
emergency," ^ they varied in quality, and as literature are
now deservedly forgotten. Some, indeed, were meager and
desultory, others consisted of quotations from the Fathers,
or did not rise above the level of dogmatic assertion, and
while those which came from Newman's pen stood out in
favorable contrast to the rest, little that he contributed
enhanced his reputation. Pusey's cooperation supplied a
needed element of scholarship, and what he wrote was
afterwards considerably expanded. A spirit of chiding and
rebuke breathed in the words of these leaders, which seemed
to burn with the heat of their compression. They were
exasperated beyond endurance by the lassitude and delusive
respectability which deadened the enthusiasm and spirit of
the Church. She had become the sanctuary of the " Gigman-
ity" and "Philistinism" against which Carlyle and Matthew
Arnold railed, and nourished within her borders the sort of
1 Dean Church : " The Oxford Movement" ; p. 51.
»Ibid.; p. 110.
522 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
gentlemen, lay and clerical, who worshiped the deductions
of their own reason and the creations of their own fancy ,^
but who, nevertheless, were warmly attached to the Estab-
lishment, a fact which Froude and Newman did not sujBB-
ciently recognize. Nor were the times as ready for radical
changes as the Tractarians imagined. The University and
the nation were widely separated in thought and feeling;
the trimming diplomacy of the majority, and the fact that
the Church always sailed a little behind the age, pleased the
conservatism of those who were free from the dread that
she would be stranded upon the shoals of liberalism. Much
that the Tractarians addressed to the nation sounded strange,
shifty, and unsubstantial. The apostolic origin and catholic
nature of Anglicanism as a branch of the one visible Church
had no special charm for that generation. A certain bishop
declared that he was not sure in what manner his office was
derived ; others denounced the sacerdotalism which glori-
fied them as chief pastors. Undismayed, however, the
Neo-Anglicans inculcated their notions on the alleged
unbroken apostolic rights of the priesthood, and the re-
generating sacraments. Notwithstanding Dean Church's
comment that they appealed to the intellect, they seldom
discussed religion from the standpoint of reason or from
that of an intimate acquaintance with the comparative
study of the various forms Christianity has assumed in
the course of its philosophical speculations. Nor did
they extricate themselves from a mass of intricate details
to rise to large and luminous generalizations. Apart
from Pusey, and perhaps Newman, none of them was
specially distinguished as an exponent of historical and con-
structive theology. Solidity and depth of thought were as
absent as massive and inspiring eloquence, or as the gener-
ous culture which could appreciate the best in other com-
munions. When they proceeded to accuse the common
source from which all alike derived, by asseverating that there
• Newman : "Idea of a University" ; p. 211.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 523
were grievous errors and structural defects in Protestantism,
and that the Reformation was by no means as impeccable
in principle or practice as was generally supposed, they not
only shocked the sensibilities of those fellow-countrymen who
had long looked upon the Papacy with unmitigated aversion,
but also aroused their permanent distrust. The further
statement that the Establishment had many features in
common with those Churches which rested their claims on
apostolic succession evoked an indignant challenge from men
of divergent views, who charged the Tractarians with being
guilty of intellectual immorality.
Undoubtedly there were among them spirits as pure and
devoted to truth as any who have wrought in the arid
region of religious polemics. But some betrayed a de-
cided tendency towards decorated language, word-juggling,
and beguiling sophistry, a sort of verbal craft which was a
poor substitute for direct speech. They approached their
unusual theories with the vanity of inexperience and laid
upon them burdens they could not sustain. An immovable
preference for reality, at whatever cost, was hard to main-
tain in an environment agitated by disputes and full
of well-nigh reckless anxiety for causes which had now
become sacred. It was easy to succumb to the insidious
temptation that truth was not suflBcient for its own de-
fense, but must also be served by other weapons in-
ferior to its single two-edged sword. The dreadful tangle
of economies and reserves; the esoteric interpretations of
phrases the import of which seemed obvious enough; the
clericalism which read into the Articles and Rubrics a mean-
ing diametrically opposed to the common apprehension,
irritated those who had taken Anglicanism on their own
terms, and were baffled by this jungle of beginnings and
developments. After making every allowance for the bias
which deflected the compass of even experienced mariners
in these stormy seas, and for the insular prejudices which
prevailed among nearly all classes, it must be admitted that
524 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the Neo-Anglicans did not set an example of intellectual
integrity such as posterity should emulate. Their antag-
onists also fell under the same reproach. The Evangelicals
were more intent on defending their teaching and under-
mining the position of their adversaries than upon deter-
mining with open minds what of substance lay behind these
wranglings. Among liberal Churchmen, Maurice, while
more truly catholic, was scarcely less subtle and mystical
then Newman and Keble. If the latter were driven to doubt-
ful expedients of verbal legerdemain in the task of developing
Anglican unity out of the few explicit and the many sup-
posedly implicit Roman elements of the Establishment,
Maurice was equally at fault in laboring against reason and
facts to reconcile these elements in a common formula.
Low Churchmen enlightened nothing, but added to a grave
and unfathomable confusion by twisting and torturing the
phraseology of the Articles in order to wring out of them
their own definite and severe Protestantism.
Far more potent than the Tracts in drawing sympathy
and support to the Oxford Movement were Newman's ser-
mons at St. Mary's, in which the preacher cast the spell
of his fastidious diction, psychological skill, and spiritual
influence over his followers, led upward by him on a golden
stairway of sequences to powerful climaxes. Paradoxically
enough, they taught that religion is a life of pure inward-
ness, while they associated its expression with venerable
forms which were sanctioned and guarded by an infallible
Church. Without the sermons, says Dean Church, "the
Movement might never have gone on, certainly would
never have been what it was." The living voice of an ir-
resistible personality drove home the meanings and implica-
tions of the Tracts. It created the atmosphere in which
their statements became incumbent upon all who were sus-
ceptible to the appeals of this type of Anglicanism.
The local and personal beginnings of the High Church
reaction antedate the appearance of the Tracts by nearly
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 525
two decades, under aspects, however, which, so far as Newman
is concerned, were very different from those of subsequent
developments. Thirteen years before the Tracts were ad-
vertised, Newman defended the EvangeHcal side in a contro-
versy on baptismal regeneration, and in 1828 Pusey ac-
counted for the extravagances of German Rationalism on
the ground of the intolerable orthodoxy of Lutheranism.
He welcomed the aid of Kant and Schelling in behalf of a
higher faith, gave great praise to Schleiermacher, recognized
De Wette's genuine Christianity, and described the gratia
ministerialis — the efficacy of the Sacraments and offices,
though administered by evil men — as an absurd and
pernicious fiction. "For awhile," observes Dr. Martineau,
"it seemed doubtful which of the two paths the Oxford
High Church was to take — Germanism or Romanism —
theological advance or ecclesiastical retrogression." ^ New-
man supplied an explanation for this remark when he said
that "the same philosophical elements lead one mind to
the Church of Rome ; another to what, for want of a better
word, may be called Germanism." ^ In 1829, Dr. Pusey
had supported Catholic Emancipation and Sir Robert Peel's
unsuccessful candidature as member of Parliament for
Oxford University. Newman, as we have seen, opposed
both, and voted with the most pronounced partisans of the
Protestant faction. Foiled in these earlier efforts, the two
leaders were now united, only to be separated later. The
devoted Anglican, who stood unsheltered to the end, and
whose steadfastness probably saved the Church from schism
after Newman's withdrawal, came over from the camp of
Liberalism; the future Roman prince from that of the
Orangemen. Pusey, like Keble, brought to the Trac-
tarians a type of Churchmanship which he derived through
his parental training from Bishop Ken, Robert Nelson, and
the Non-Jurors. His mind was formed before Evolution
1 "Essays, Reviews and Addresses" ; Vol. I, p. 230.
2 "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine" ; p. 71.
526 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
and Development had become the normal channels of
thought, and his large and systematic learning is now out
of date. It was then enlisted in behalf of the fabric he con-
structed out of analogies, resemblances, and metaphors,
obtained from Biblical, historical, and legendary sources,
some of which have no value and abound in fanciful flights
and barren ingenuities. Any attempt to disparage these
was set down as indicating a want of piety and an unteach-
able and rebellious nature. The light inseparable from
the life of religion, and which is the constant outpouring
of the Spirit of God and of Holy Scripture, was feared by
those who, like Pusey, declared that faith depended on
authority, not on reason, and that the faculty of thinking
and conceiving was detrimental to the spiritualities within
men. The understanding became a drudge to what was
described as the conscience, but was in many instances
the unlicensed use of imagination to sustain theoretical
speculations upon apostolical succession and its sacerdotal
sequences. Reflection was condemned as inimical to obedi-
ence, and thus the balance of reason and faith was disturbed
by arbitrary opinions.
Pusey's accession to the Oxford Movement gave it con-
siderable impetus. The second son of Philip Pusey, and
grandson of Lord Folkestone, a fellow of Oriel, a German
scholar, an Orientalist, and Regius Professor of Hebrew at
Oxford, he had a standing and dignity in the University
which no other Tractarian could then claim. Newman called
him "o^Lieya?" and dwelt with joyful gratitude upon the
immense diligence and simple devotion of the welcome re-
cruit. "Without him we should have had little chance,
especially at the early date of 1834, of making any serious
resistance to the Liberal aggression ... he was able to
give a name, a form and a personality to what was without
him a sort of mob." ^ No man of his age exceeded him in
his devotion to duty, which, as he conceived it, was to spread
• "Apologia" ; pp. 61-62.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 527
among Churchmen the conviction that only on the doctrines
of the Fathers and the early Anglicans could Christianity be
based. "My life," he says of himself, "has been spent in
a succession of insulated efforts bearing indeed upon one
great end — the growth of catholic truth and piety among
us." His influence for a time was overwhelming, as evi-
denced alike by the praises of his adherents and the
aspersions of his opponents. It cannot be ascribed pri-
marily to his enduring courage, his exhaustive research, or
his sturdy blows against indifferentism, deism, and ultra-
Protestantism. First and foremost, he was a true saint and
minister, whose pronounced defects were offset by a thor-
oughly original and consecrated character. Those who
judged him by his morbidness, his remorse, his penances,
his impolitic utterances and abortive efforts, or in the light
of their sincere dislike of the practices he inaugurated and
the ordinances and means of grace he restored, were not
always aware that the unbending ecclesiastic, incessant
disputant, and High Churchman jacile princeps, had a
charity toward his critics which begot in him a patience and
a hopefulness that never flagged. He once exclaimed, in a
burst of tenderness, "I have always had a great love for the
Evangelicals." Not many Evangelicals of that day could
have said the same about Pusey. He stands out, even in
Newman's company, as an impressive figure, strong, rugged,
awkward, indomitable. If his style had none of the grace
and allurement which were prominent in Newman's prose,
his nature disclosed a passion for holiness that tempered
the hardness, as of iron, with which he repelled the doubter
and the heretic. There was nothing harmonious or artistic
in his make-up, and while he defended his section of the
Church with great ability, the foes he encountered were
largely imaginary, so that he never really faced the forces of
essential agnosticism. But he was sincere and single-minded
in his refusal to accommodate the perplexities of religion
for the sake of those who sought relief therefrom by a pro-
528 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
cess of simplification, and he deplored the utilization of
spiritual instincts or institutions for the benefit of the pre-
vailing social order or to serve the fagged moods and jaded
tempers of secular minds. "It seems to be thought that
those who have faith may always be sacrificed with impunity
to those who have none," he wrote when Archbishop Tait
showed sympathy with the effort to rid the Prayer Book of
the Athanasian Creed. The ghosts of the past were his
fond care, and his biography is full to repletion of the his-
tory of skirmishes in their behalf, many of which have long
since disappeared before the advance of substantial and
dangerous enemies of religion. Believing, as he did, that
there was an adequate objective correspondence for every
faculty of the soul and that to disregard the law which
governed their relations afforded ground for wholesome
dread of retribution, he sometimes expounded this article
in terms which sounded harsh and inhuman. Yet he was a
man of heart, pitiful toward the sinner who was repentant
and submissive. And for the Church at large he was a
defender of traditions which he identified with all that
was sacred or salvatory. No matter to what sect or creed
such leaders belong, or how widely and justly we differ
from them, they usually transcend their boundaries and
help to illuminate the life we live. Pusey does not stand
among the immortals, but he had felt the spirit of the High-
est, and was one of those who
"Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny;"
who are ever ready to aver,
"Yea, with one voice, Oh World ! though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I."
II
The Tractarians disturbed the stagnancy of Anglicanism,
and contradicted the prevailing notion that the Church of
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 529
England was as sacrosanct as the House of Commons. The
works of divines of the palmy Stuart days were rescued from
dusty bookshelves, while those of Paley, Horsley, Hoadley,
and Warburton went a-begging. The leaders of the cult
knew exactly what they wanted, and in that knowledge
lay their strength. Outwardly deferential to the episcopacy,
Keble and Pusey and Froude were at heart even more in-
dependent than Newman; he trusted the bishops, they
depended on the organization. All took their stand upon
antiquity and were ever ready to give reasons for the hope
that was in them, to define and advocate their position.
The Evangelicals had come to the end of their tether, the
Broad Churchmen were divided in sentiment and circum-
stances. Whately had retired to the comparative seclusion
of archiepiscopal dignity, Thirlwall was too philosophical for
the needs of faction, Arnold's impetuosity marred his useful-
ness, Hampden was laborious and uncouth. The Trac-
tarians held the field at Oxford, the center of the strife, and
shared the interest of onlookers with the Utilitarians and
Romanticists. The strong, daring sternness of their opinions
was in singular contrast to the composed meekness and sub-
mission of their bearing. Statesmen, scientists, and literary
people, as well as opposing clerics, began to ask what these
things meant. No man among the earlier and wiser Trac-
tarians was better able to answer the question than Hugh
James Rose, at whose Hadleigh rectory the Movement
had been initiated. For a time he ranked foremost among
the university dons and parish priests who, like him, con-
tended for the spiritual supremacy of the Church and the
restoration of certain usages which had come to the verge
of extinction. His powerful mind readily adopted every
means of information offered to it, and his earnest disposi-
tion commended him to his companions, who entertained
the liveliest expectations for his future. Without a trace
of self-seeking, he rose to an unusual place in the regard
of the Church as a whole. The German drift of Prot-
2m
530 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
estantism at Cambridge aroused his vigorous objections,
and as a graduate of the University, and a Select Preacher
there, he endeavored to arrest the ravages of what he deemed
a false liberalism. Pusey replied to the strictures of Rose
in two volumes, afterwards withdrawn from circulation,
in which, as we have seen, he defended and explained con-
tinental rationalism. Among Newman's correspondents,
Rose alone acted as his born equal, an assumption which
Newman allowed without demur, believing him to be the
one above all others best fitted to make headway against the
difficulties of their day. His cool and cautious judgment
and his confidential relations with the higher ecclesiastical
authorities prevented him from running with the root and
branch Tractarians, so that Froude soon lost faith in him as
a possible leader. But his death at the age of forty-three
was a heavy blow to those who were averse to ill-considered
and extreme action. For some time before his decease he
had only a small part in the affairs of Tractarianism, yet had
he lived, its course might have been very different.
Newman's verdict that William Palmer was the one
thoroughly equipped scholar among High Anglicans was
well within the mark. His beliefs were ably expounded in
his "Treatise on the Church of Christ," which has been
cherished as the most powerful and least assailable defense
of Anglicanism from the sixteenth century onward. Rome-
ward inclinations never affected Palmer, whose study of
Bellarmine, Bossuet, and other Catholic doctors enabled
him to detect and disavow the methods and ideas which
allured some of his friends. He identified the fortunes of
his Church with those of the State, and was persuaded that
both had sunk to their lowest ebb. A communion entirely
separated from the Papacy on the one frontier and from
Puritanism on the other, with its own inherent life and
ministry of grace, was his ideal, and he deplored the apathy
and coldness of the public mind toward it. Another elect
spirit was Robert Isaac Wilberforce, the second son of the
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 531
well-known philanthropist. Wilberforce lost contact with
Newman after their dismissal from the joint-tutorship at
Oriel, but in 1843 he formed a friendship with Henry Man-
ning, then rector of Lavington and archdeacon of Chichester.
The amiable character, innate modesty, and accurate sense
of right and wrong of Wilberforce were prized by his fellow
Tractarians, and especially by Manning, who afterwards
turned to him as to a father confessor for relief concern-
ing his misgivings about the validity of Anglicanism.
The Gorham Judgment of 1850, which denied that the re-
generating grace of Infant Baptism was a necessary dogma
of the Church of England, and ratified her subjection to
State control even in so cardinal a doctrine, added gall to
the bitterness Manning and Wilberforce already felt. On
April 8, 1851, the former was received into the Catholic
fold, and three years later, Wilberforce followed him, but
did not long survive his secession. While journeying to
Rome in 1857 to receive ordination, death deprived those
who loved and trusted him of an unfailing helper, incapable
of unworthy motives; one who shone in many directions
with a steady if subdued radiance. He was the recipient of
the confidences of partisans whose merits he was well qualified
to determine, and he left them an example of intellectual
rectitude they did not always sedulously imitate.
In these and other respects Charles Marriott, "the man
of saintly life," was much akin to Wilberforce. To Mar-
riott the Oxford students repaired for spiritual direction
after Newman had departed. His devotion to Christ, to
His Church, and to the Movement, was without stint. No
other more completely sacrificed himself, for he placed upon
the altar of his offering all that he was and all that he had.
Dean Burgon states, in his "Lives of Twelve Good Men,"
that Marriott's prevailing grace was an unbounded charity,
which ministered to those who sat in darkness and in
the shadow of death, and enabled him to see the good
in everything and everybody. Halting to eccentricity
532 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
in manner and conversation, nevertheless he usually brought
out the core of matters at stake, and his discourse, though
scanty, was unfailingly instructive. He was so averse to
publicity that his literary labors were not always as widely
known as those of other writers who depended on his assist-
ance, and Pusey called attention to the fact that Marriott
had entire charge for some years of "The Library of the
Fathers." To the last he was unwilling to admit that
Rome had captured Newman. When this could no longer
be denied he remained steadfast and spent the balance of
his brief period and enfeebled physical strength in gathering
up the things that remained. Amid the panic that followed
Newman's conversion no man, except James B. Mozley, did
more to allay the fears and stem the flight of those who
believed that Newman could do no wrong. Marriott could
not draw large congregations ; he did not leave behind him
works of genius ; he enjoyed few of the pleasures or even the
necessities that are found in other fields of enterprise. He
labored day and night in the search and defense of divine
truth.^ His reward was with him, in that he distilled upon
the heated air of controversy the refreshing fragrance of
simple goodness, unshaken hope, and love without reproach.
Isaac Williams, a fitting companion for Wilberforce and
Marriott, was the son of a Welsh lawyer and landowner,
and a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford. He formed his
friendships at Oriel, and after he had won the Chancellor's
prize for Latin verse, came under the direction of Keble,
who looked upon him and Robert Wilberforce and Hurrell
Froude as his special pupils. Although accustomed to
lean on others for support, Williams had a will of his own,
and on occasion did not hesitate to assert himself. He
acted as Newman's curate at St. Mary's, and afterwards
gave this impression of his vicar : " I was greatly delighted
and charmed with Newman, who was extremely kind
to me, but I did not altogether trust his opinions ; and
' Thomas Mozley: " Reminiscences " ; Vol. I, p. 448.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 533
though Froude was in the habit of stating things in an ex-
treme and paradoxical way, yet one always felt conscious
of a ground of entire confidence and agreement ; but it was
not so with Newman, even though one appeared more in
unison with his more moderate views." The magician
ultimately prevailed, and the Tracts 80, 86, and 87 were
written by Williams. It was the hard fate of this
unsophisticated man that the first of these, which dealt
with "Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge,"
brought upon its author a crushing rebuke. The title was
misleading because it seemed to justify the charge that the
Tractarians were evasive in their methods, but the con-
tents offered no adequate cause for the complaint. Bishop
Monk of Gloucester was obliged to admit that he had con-
demned the Tract without knowing its argument, and his
apology was so flimsy that Thomas Keble, more unyielding
than his brother, resigned his rural deanery in that diocese,
and thus began the quarrel with the bishops. That Williams
should have produced an unfortunate document which
unjustly exposed him to popular indignation and calumny
was extremely distressing to his guileless nature. He strove
to retrieve the error of his ill-selected thesis, but this was
beyond him, and the meditative poet who was revered by
his college historian as too good for this world, was regarded
by the Evangelicals as the most perfidious and dangerous
member of a wicked band of conspirators. His friend and
fellow tutor, William John Copeland, contemplated writing
a history of the Movement in which they participated, a
task for which his wide acquaintance with its supporters
and his retentive memory eminently fitted him. But
pastoral duties largely absorbed his energies, and until his
death in 1885 he gave what time he could afford to his
correspondence and to the editing of Newman's "Plain and
Parochial Sermons." Copeland also contributed to the Tracts,
and translated the " Homilies of St. John Chrysostom in the
Epistle to the Ephesians" for the "Library of the Fathers."
534 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
The general current of Tractarianism now began to be
ascertainable. It was marked by the rise of forces which
swept away the barriers secrecy and caution at first had
erected : forces full of a new willingness and striving ;
forces that threatened to disrupt the doctrinal beliefs
upon which recent ideals of Anglicanism and Romanism
had been founded, and have since materially modified
these beliefs and ideals. They took their shape in repeated
disputes which endured for a decade ; of small intrinsic im-
portance in themselves; with no more than an adventi-
tious interest derived from their connection with the Oxford
Movement and also with the devouring claims of Rome.
They were usually trials of strength, engineered now
by the High Churchmen, now by their adversaries, not
always with conspicuous candor or fairness, nor fraught
with any good for either party. Amongst these was
the nearly forgotten Hampden controversy, which assumed
dimensions out of all proportion to its deserts. Cynics
and others who were not cynical have derided it as a
tempest in a tea cup, with no attraction except for bigoted
fanatics and antiquaries. We are not going to weary the
reader with an extended digest of this quarrel. Yet it should
be said that it furnished the Tractarians with a prominent
object for their attack and a coveted opportunity to state
their case. They desired nothing better than to come to
conclusions, not with Hampden, but with that for which he
stood, and their pent-up energies were released with alacrity.
Liberal Churchmen were disgusted by such an unseemly
display of High Anglican rancor ; Erastians found fresh
guarantees for their assertion that the power of appoint-
ment to certain preferments in the Church and the Universi-
ties was exercised most justly when left in the hands of the
civil government. Hampden was a sober, plodding scholar,
who owed his elevation to a combination of circumstances
rather than to his talents or services. He had made him-
self obnoxious to High Churchmen because he subordinated
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 535
dogma to religious liberty, and contrasted the benefits of
toleration with the evils of exclusiveness. Few, if any
Christians, he asserted, were really at odds ; even Unitarians
and Anglicans might realize a common fellowship if only
faith were no longer hampered by its doctrinal forms. This
foretaste of genuine catholicity was a pestiferous heresy to
those who could not conceive of religion except as guarded by
ecclesiastical monopolies and dogmatic statements. New-
man spoke for them when he declared that he would not trust
himself to put on paper his sentiments about Hampden's
principles. Upon the publication of his lectures on Moral
Philosophy, reactionaries of all Anglican schools combined to
silence him as an anti-Christian writer and a purveyor of
baleful and erroneous opinions. Unshaken and unterrified,
he came to grips with them in Convocation, where he pro-
posed that compulsory subscription to the Thirty-nine Arti-
cles as the condition of admission to the University should
be abolished. The proposal was overwhelmingly defeated,
but it called the attention of the Prime Minister, Lord
Melbourne, to Hampden's temerity as a liberal in politics
and religion, and Melbourne determined to nominate him
Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. His decision gave
the disturbance a fresh start and a wider area, in which the
fury of opposition ran so high that Hampden considerately
offered to resign and thus relieve Melbourne of the odium
attending his appointment. But this the Premier would
not permit ; and when William IV, who had been petitioned
by the Tractarians through Archbishop Howley not to
confirm the appointment, attempted to intervene, his
outspoken minister bluntly reminded the king that such
an action would affect the honor of the national ad-
ministration and constitute an abuse of the royal
prerogative. Quarrels seldom turn upon the point in
dispute, and this one became a duel between Newman
and Pusey on the one side and Arnold and Archbishop
Whately on the other. Newman issued a broadside
536 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
entitled "Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological
Statements," in which quotations from his opponent's
Bampton Lectures and other writings were so openly
garbled and wrenched from their context as to suggest that
he who wills the end wills the means. Pusey came to his
assistance with a more careful presentation and criticism of
Hampden's views. Arnold gave the reins to his wrath in
an article on "The Oxford Malignants," which was published
in the volume of the Edinburgh Review for 1836. His
words breathed the fiery indignation of a wholesome but
frustrated reformer whose hopes for the betterment of the
Church were clouded by the intrusion of the Tractarians.
He averred that Newman's methods implied intentional
dishonesty, and Whately stigmatized their product as a
tissue of deliberate and artful misrepresentations. There
were not suflEicient grounds for impugning Newman's moral
integrity, but his understanding was such that when disturbed
by matters he held paramount it became essentially illogical
and inveterately imaginative. Reason and equity were
smothered beneath the profusion of his hypotheses and
imageries, and, as Sir James Stephen commented, he
could not do justice, either to himself or to his opponents.
Although every possible influence was brought to bear,
nothing availed to annul Hampden's appointment, and,
aware of this, the Evangelicals made common cause with the
High Churchmen to hunt the wolf in sheep's clothing from
the fold. After two attempts Convocation succeeded in
depriving him of the right to vote for Select Preachers,
and he remained officially censured and theologically dis-
credited by the University in which the Crown had chosen
him as the instructor in divinity. The persistency of his
enemies might have led some to suppose that he was any-
thing except what he actually was, an orthodox Churchman,
albeit one sufficiently enlightened to observe the relative
importance of life and dogma and to respect the scruples of
the Nonconformist conscience. But the Tractarians repro-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 537
bated him because of his stalwart Protestantism, and the
Evangelicals disparaged him because he extended it be-
yond their credal confines. The humiliating fight ended
with neither side the winner, and when in 1847 Hampden
was elevated to the see of Hereford, some of his per-
secutors had already renounced the Church over which
they formerly assumed proprietary rights, and departed to
Rome.
The ill-assorted union between the Tractarians and
the Evangelicals speedily dissolved ; animosities which
had been temporarily forgotten during this alignment
revived again. The Evangelicals felt that they had
overshot the mark, and the publication of Froude's "Re-
mains" in 1838 intensified their chagrin. The book shed a
strong light on the worst aspects of High Anglicanism, and
placed its leaders under grave suspicion concerning their
motives and objects. The Movement began to encounter
a power which could be matched even with that of Rome
herself: the Protestant character of the British nation.
So far from assuming a Catholic demeanor. Englishmen
demanded that the secret and undermining foes lurking
within the Establishment should be expelled. The first re-
sult of this formidable sentiment was seen at Oxford when
the University was solicited to erect a memorial to the
martyrs, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, who had suffered
there during the Marian burnings. The threefold purpose be-
hind the scheme was to marshal the full strength of Oxford's
allegiance to the Reformed faith, to provide a counterblast
to Froude's volume, and to discover whether there were
any vestiges of Protestantism left among the Tractarians.
Newman and Keble hated the term Protestant, and much
that it connoted. They held aloof from the proposal, and
after some hesitation, Pusey and those who felt as he did
followed suit. To honor the faith and sacrifice of the
three bishops was an impeachment of Anglican catholicity
and an indirect indorsement of the Genevan theology which
538 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the Tractarians abjured. "Any thing," said Keble, "which
separates the present Church from the Reformers I should
hail as a great good." The memorial was set up without
their aid, to be, in the words of Dean Church, "a decisive
though unofficial sign of the judgment of the university
against the Tractarians."
It showed that they had nothing favorable to expect
from the authorities, and that • they were fast severing
themselves from the nation. They were still one in their
professions of fidelity to the Church, but the last of the Tracts
was about to appear and divide them on that question. Its
pages glowed with light, heat, color; they were written
with the pen of a ready scribe, never crude, always graceful.
Yet despite Newman's rare gifts, his in many ways unsur-
passed charm, his unique personality, he was not convincing.
High intentions conferred on him no sufficient powers of
I>ersuasion. "The father of them that look back," he was
unable to perceive that
" Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole : !'
in a world of dust and ashes he predicated an almost endless
durability for venerable ideas and symbols which were being
forsaken when he prophesied. His mind worked under
conditions which his age refused to accept and from stand-
points it instinctively rejected. The far-reaching extent
and apparent antiquity of the Papal Church were always
before him. They molded his conceptions of faith as
forever associated with secondary, incidental things, with
a formula, a hierarchy, an institution. For him there was
but one goal, ominous and repellent as it then appeared —
Christianity meant Rome. The prolonged oscillations of his
heart and brain, the innumerable impressions which he had
received from widely separated sources, could not divert him
from the underlying equilibrium he eventually found in the
Papacy.
These inward wrestlings he revealed to none, but Tract
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 539
Ninety could not have been written had he not experienced
them. They began anew in 1839, when he read the history
of the Monophy sites, and, as it seemed to him, saw their
heresy reflected in the sixteenth and nineteenth centm-ies.
If these ancient sectaries who contended that Jesus Christ
was neither wholly divine nor wholly human but in part
both, were heretics, so were Protestants and Anglicans of
to-day. "The drama of religion and the combat of truth,
were ever one and the same. The principles and proceed-
ings of the Church now, were those of the Church then;
the principles and proceedings of heretics then, were those of
heretics now." The similarity may not have been patent to
others, but it was to him ; he grieved over it, and spoke of the
awful likeness between the dead records of the past and
the feverish chronicles of the present. What use was there
in continuing his labors if he was only forging arguments
for Arius or Eutyches, turning devil's advocate against the
much-enduring Athanasius and the majestic Leo ? " Be my
soul with the saints ! " he exclaimed ..." anathema to a
whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Latimers, and Jewels." ^
During the August of that year he read an article by Dr.
Wiseman in the Dublin Review, which did not specially
interest him until a friend called his attention to the words
of St. Augustine quoted by Wiseman, "Securus judicat
orbis terrarum." They became for Newman as a nail
fastened in a sure place ; indeed, driven through the heart
of his theory of a Via Media. Although his Anglican prin-
ciples refused to be silenced, they were mortally wounded.
Out of the mists which had so long enshrouded his vision
there leaped up a sudden definite presentiment that in the
end Rome would be victorious. To use his own phrase,
he had seen the shadow of a hand upon the wall. Here-
after he felt a growing dislike to speak against the formal
teachings of the Papacy. Yet as a moral, social, and political
fabric, it was vulnerable, and in any event he felt bound
1 "Apologia"; pp. 114-116.
540 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
to return to the defense of his mother Church. What she
lacked in cathoHcity she gained in apostoHcity. Her re-
juvenation was still possible if the vulgar misunderstandings
of her Articles could be removed, and the doctrines of the
purer faith were permitted to live and speak in her
formularies. He felt a grave responsibility for the younger
Tractarians, who were bound in the toils of his personality,
to whom he was the real primate, the source of light and
leading. Some were straining on the leash, others straggling
toward Rome. He could neither consent to part with them,
nor admit that their threatened defection was justifiable.
Its ostensible cause was their resentment against the historic
Protestantism of the Articles, and in order to disabuse their
prejudices Newman wrote his Tract.
Its governing principle was the interpretation of the
Reformed confessions in the most inclusive sense they
would admit, entirely subjecting the particular beliefs of
their framers to the beliefs of the Church universal. Its
object was to assure his followers that they could still find
divine life and shelter in Anglicanism. Its fundamental
errors were that it contradicted a known historical develoj>-
ment and dealt solely with credal mechanisms which were
incapable of repairing their o^ti injuries. In pursuance
of these principles and aims, Newman attempted the
subjective creation of a historic situation by his manip-
ulation of language. None could have made a better at-
tempt, but not even he could achieve success. The license
with which he treated historic phraseologies was a blot upon
his argmnent. His shadings, softenings, circumlocutions,
special pleadings, careful avoidances of decisive features,
were by this time familiar to his critics. Like Napoleon, he
had revealed to obsers'ant foes the secret of his strategic
genius. Dean Church remarked that he pared down lan-
guage to its barest meaning. His conclusion was that
though the Articles were the product of an unCathoHc age,
they were patient of a Catholic interpretation. Since this
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 541
was the marrow of his contention, other matters which he
mentioned can be passed over. Material in proof of his
position was compiled from sundry- som^ces without regard
for the exceptions and qualifications from those same sources,
which, if produced, as they should have been, must have
altered the substance of his reasoning. His antagonists
based their objections on the history and the words of the
Articles. They demonstrated that the Anglican divines of
the sixteenth centurs', although they loved and revered
the earlier Church, joined themselves to the continental
Reformers against the Renaissance Papacy, and restricted
the Rule of Faith to the Holy Scriptures. The precise
weight to be ascribed to the literal and grammatical sense
of the Articles, which Newman claimed he had given, was
not sufficient for their explanation. Had it been sufficient,
it bore heavily against his exposition. They were so avowedly
Protestant in dealing with Purgatory-, Pardons, Adoration
of Images, and the dogma of the ^Nlass, that Newman was
hard driven to construe them in any other way. A review
of the edicts of Councils and Parliaments during the reigns
of Edward \^ and Elizabeth plainly shows that it was
the purpose of those who took part in them to formulate a
theological system which should be distinctly Protestant,
and at the same time, not incompatible with the retention
of Catholic liturgies. This would secure, as they hoped,
solidarity for the State Church, and uniformity of religious
practice for the nation. So far as the framers of the Articles
were concerned, they intended to allow a reasonable lati-
tude for their interpretation without compromising their
Protestant determination. That such an intricate process
afforded Newman a suitable opportunity for his dialectical
cleverness could not be gainsaid. But he failed to convince
either friend or foe, or, as it proved in the sequel, himself.
The Tract fell like a bomb shell in the camps of Evan-
gelicals and High Churchmen. Oxford was attacked in the
House of Commons as a seed plot of Roman teaching ; even
542 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
the majority of Newman's friends felt that he had advanced
too far into a doubtful region : his opponents accused him of
false doctrine, false history, false dialectics, and deliberate
dishonesty. Ten days after the Tract appeared Churton
of Brasenose, H. B. Wilson of St. John's, Griffiths of Wad-
ham, and Tait of Balliol communicated with Newman as
the editor of the series, calling upon the author to divulge
his identity and accusing him of opening the way for Roman
doctrines and practices to be taught in the University.
The Hebdomadal Board met and without granting Newman
a hearing, condemned the Tract out of hand as ev^ading
rather than explaining the sense of the Articles and rec-
onciling subscription to them with the adoption of errors
they were designed to counteract. Newman admitted that
he was its author, and enlarged upon his distinction between
the Tridentine decrees and the Scholasticism on which
modern Papal beliefs were founded. The hastiness of his
arraignment was a selfish blunder which recoiled on the
perpetrators. It brought him sympathy from unexpected
quarters and summoned the more moderate Tractarians to
his aid. After some correspondence with his bishop, Dr.
Bagot, it was agreed that the Tracts should be discontinued,
upon which for a brief space the tumult subsided. Newman
was gratified at the outcome ; the bishops, as he supposed,
were anxious for peace, and to this he consented, provided
Tract Ninety was not to be withdrawn nor condemned. He
decided to surrender nothing which he held on conscience, and
did not yet realize that he had helped to kindle a conflagra-
tion which was beyond his power or that of any other man
to extinguish. The summer of 1841 found him at Little-
more, set upon banishing cares and controversies, and
busy with a translation of St. Athanasius.
Such a reaction from overstrained tension must have seemed
to him like a dream of the Fortunate Isles. Yet self-centered
as he was in everything, not from morbid vanity or pride, but
because he stood alone, fashioning for himself more congenial
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 543
conditions, he had made but little way in his work when
his troubles returned, escorted, as usual, by the Arian
specter, which came to taunt him with the helplessness of
his attempts to reconcile the perplexing disparities between
opposing theories or assign their place and eflBciency in
history. He again perceived, and again retreated from the
perception, that the pure Arians were the Protestants of
their age, the semi-Arians the Anglicans, and that Rome
was now what she had always been. The misery of this
unsettlement was heightened by a second blow which
seriously weakened his hold upon Anglicanism. The
bishops, to use his own language, "began charging against
us," and the Tractarians met with the usual fate of those
who traffic in new ideas. For three years Bloomfield of
London, Sumner of Chester, his brother Charles of Win-
chester, Phillpotts, known as "Harry of Exeter," Copleston
of Llandaff, and other prelates maintained a steady assault
upon Newmanism. "Bishops' charges," says Mr. Augus-
tine Birrell, "are amongst the many seemingly important
things that do not count in England." But on this occasion
they did count, and their warnings, remonstrances, and
inhibitions were read and discussed in political and clerical
circles. Even Bagot ceased to temporize, and although
lamenting the violence and unseemliness of some other at-
tacks, he felt compelled to disapprove interpretations which
he said were so full of vagaries that the Articles may be made
to mean anything or nothing. Newman knew that public
confidence in him was rudely shaken, his place among his
brethren lost, his occupation in the Movement gone. He
abandoned his attempts to persuade the shepherds of the flock
that the Church of England was infinitely more than a
mere national institution; that it was a living member of
the one Church which God had set up from the beginning;
and, weary of Anglicanism, again retired to Littlemore, to be
" denounced as a traitor who had laid his train and was de-
tected in the very act of firing it."
r
544 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
Programs, prospects, hopes, friendships changed with
startUng rapidity. Newman's transparent scorn of the
bishops and their followers was expressed in words the more
cutting because scrupulously civil; he was wounded to the
quick, nor did any truly capable leader appear who might
have redeemed him to Anglicanism. On the contrary,
the man who, after Newman, was chiefly responsible for
wrecking Tractarianism now forged to the front. The
audacious brochures of W, G. Ward created consternation
in his own ranks, and amazed and gratified his op-
ponents. That which Newman had either left unsaid
or cautiously suggested, this unmanageable disciple openly
avowed, tearing away his master's closely woven veils of
rhetoric, and demanding subscription to the Articles, not as
they read, nor according to Newman's reading of them, but
in a non-natural sense. Such elasticity of conscience in
the region of theological bias is not the least notable
curiosity of human nature, but while Pusey deprecated
it in Ward, Newman gave no hint of repudiating him. The
Via Media, the Tractarian party, the Anglicanism of its
irreconcilable members, alike crumbled before the merciless
onfall of Ward's logic, an outcome which delighted rather
than alarmed its agent. He was the refreshingly candid
radical of the Oxford group, in some respects its most
estimable and philosophical theologian, a man of splendid
and diversified gifts and personal seductiveness. The
extensiveness and quality of his acquirements and the
good-natured contempt with which he treated his changing
fortunes recall the lines of the Archbishop of Canterbury
in Henry the Fifth :
"Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring with an inward wish,
You would desire the King were made a prelate.
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs.
You would say, it hath been all in all his study :
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 545
A fearful battle rendered you in music :
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose
Familiar as his garter."
Ward exhibited a marked development of the reflective over
the imaginative faculty and a capacity for abstract reason-
ing which made his writings on the doctrines of the Creator
and of the free, responsible, and immortal spirit of man,
works of the best character. The reaction of an over-
wrought brain, stimulated by his huge body, incurable
pessimism, and numerous eccentricities, led him to take
refuge in occupations not often found in a metaphysician.
He was full of contradictoriness and perversity, and would
sometimes talk by the hour "with such intense gravity and
such elaborate logical sequence, that a stranger would think
he must have missed the drift of his words." In religion
he was nothing if not controversial, and during the intervals
between his incessant debates he found relaxation in music,
fiction, and the drama ; passing from the gravest tasks to the
opera and theater with equal facility, and, as he avowed, with
equal benefit. The vigor and acumen of his analytical and
critical powers were not cramped, apparently, by his settled
orthodoxy. Although he was supposed to reason under
confessional restrictions, his agile mind enabled him to con-
vey the impression of consistent argument, which, if not
correct, was, as a rule, in clear agreement with its premises.
The accepted opinion that intense religious convictions are
not easily compatible with the free motions of the intellect,
or that purely arbitrary traditions impede the functions
of philosophical reflection, was not sustained in the case
of Ward. Despite his theological narrowness and avowed
sacerdotalism, he was, said Deari Church, " the most amusing,
the most tolerant man in Oxford ; he had round him per-
petually some of the cleverest and brightest scholars and
thinkers of the place ; and where he was, there was debate,
cross-questioning, pushing inferences, starting alarming
2n
546 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
problems, beating out ideas, trying the stuff and mettle of
mental capacity. If the old scholastic disputations had
been still in use at Oxford, his triumphs would have been
signal and memorable. His success, compared with that of
other leaders of the Movement, was a preeminently intel-
lectual success." ^ In his first phase he was a latitudinarian,
wavering between the Broad Churchmanship of Tait, Arnold,
and Stanley, and the milder Utilitarianism of John Stuart
Mill. In this and much else, " he represented the intellectual
force, the irrefragable logic, the absolute self-confidence,
and the headlong impetuosity of the Rugby School. What-
ever he said or did was right. As a philosopher and a
logician it was hard to deal with him." ^ His hesitation
ended after his first contact with Hurrell Froude and New-
man, although the latter only mentions him once in the
"Apologia." The conversations at Oriel and the lectures
and sermons at St. Mary's completely separated him from
Broad Churchmen and the Millites, and he became one of
the most indefatigable, industrious, and yet independent
adherents of the Tractarian party.
Beneath his adherence to dialectical forms and his ex-
cessive love of aesthetics was a profoundly religious temper-
ament which drove him to seek for a greater assurance in
matters of faith than reason could supply. He longed
for an authoritative organization to which he could sur-
render his perturbed mind, and enter into the peace
attained by submission. From Newman he derived the
conviction that primitive Christianity might have been
corrupted into Popery, but that no form of Protestantism
could possibly have developed into Catholicism. This led
him to the conclusion that the Tridentine decrees were obliga-
tory and that the Anglican Church must reconcile her Arti-
cles with them or surrender her claim to Catholicity. The
distinction which Newman made between what was es-
1 "The Oxford Movement" ; pp. 343-344.
* Thomas Mozley : "Reminiscences" ; Vol. II, p. 5.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 547
sentially Catholic as opposed to what was purely Roman
did not satisfy Ward, who argued that while the Articles
were " patient of a Catholic meaning they were ambitious of
a Protestant one ; the offspring of an unCatholic age, and a
hindrance to truly Catholic belief in the English Church."
He endeavored to substitute for their accepted teaching his
conjectural emendations on their original doctrine, or, at
any rate, what in his view that doctrine should have been.
Because of this proceeding, at the request of Tait, his friend
and fellow-tutor, he was deprived of his lectureship at
Balliol, an act which he cheerfully accepted and declared
quite proper. His advance toward Rome grieved Newman,
who, destined in this to follow instead of lead, suggested pru-
dence and delay. Nothing was more contrary to Ward's
temper, and after the older Tractarians saw that he would
not yield to their wishes, they turned against him. Keble,
Pusey, Williams, and Palmer were now separated from New-
man, and yet further from Ward and his admirers. The
publication in 1843 of Palmer's "Narrative of Events"
voiced the grievances of these conservatives, who complained
of their unruly subordinates as contemptuous toward the
Church of England and her reformers, and servile in their
adulation of Rome. Ward replied by giving forth his "Ideal
of a Christian Church considered in comparison with exist-
ing Practice." The exuberant gymnastics of the volume,
which showed how he could leap from one side of the fence
to the other with astounding ease and indifference, earned
for him the sobriquet of "Ideal Ward." In manner argu-
mentative, in matter lacking cogency, his production con-
sisted of one syllogism, the major premise being that every-
thing pertaining to Rome was divinely authorized; the
minor one, that the common forms, methods, and rules of
the Church of England were contrary to those of Rome:,
hence the conclusion, Rome was right and all else was wrong.
Although Ward continued to assure his half-amused, half-
outraged readers that he was still an Anglican, he expati-
548 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ated on the Roman Church in glowing terms, as the nearly
perfect incarnation of Christian fellowship, against which
the Protestant sects stood out in odious contrast. These
exasperating sentiments had their sequel in his degradation,
the story of which is postponed in deference to the chrono-
logical order of events and to the account of the third shat-
tering blow which awaited Newman.
Ill
This was the establishment, at the instance of King
Frederick William of Prussia, of the Jerusalem bishop-
ric, an act which, together with Newman's misgivings over
ancient heresies and their modern counterparts, and the
reprisals of the bishops, ended his relations with Angli-
canism. The Chevalier Bunsen, a well-known scholar, his-
torian, and diplomatist of the early Victorian period, was
commissioned by the Prussian monarch to arrange with the
English government for a dual protectorate over the Chris-
tians in Palestine who were outside the pale of the Eastern
Churches, The origin of the project may have been due to
a royal whim, but under Bunsen's guidance, it was brought
to a successful issue. He knew and admired England and
Englishmen, and was anxious to cultivate amicable relations
between his native land and the country in which he spent
the larger part of his life, where he was for thirteen years
ambassador at the Court of St. James and popular among
all classes. The bishopric was founded to be filled alter-
nately by the two governments; a mutual recognition of
Anglican and Lutheran orders and creeds. was agreed upon;
Dr. Alexander was consecrated to the see, and authorized
to ordain German Protestants in the Holy Land on their
signing the Thirty-nine Articles as well as assenting to the
Augsburg Confession. The scheme was approved by Broad
Churchmen, some of whom were Bunsen's personal friends ;
the High Churchmen disliked it ; the Tractarians repudiated
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 649
it; and Newman labeled it "fearful," "hideous," and
"atrocious." In July, 1841, he wrote in the British
Critic : " When our thoughts turn to the East, instead of
recollecting that there are Christian Churches there, we
leave it to the Russians to take care of the Greeks, and
the French to take care of the Romans, and we content our-
selves with erecting a Protestant Church at Jerusalem . . .
or with becoming the august protectors of Nestorians,
Monophysites, and all the heretics we can think of, or
with forming a league with the Mussulman against Greeks
and Romans together." ^ In November he sent a solemn
protest to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to his own
bishop, in which he fulminated against Lutheranism and
Calvinism as "heresies, repugnant to Scripture, springing
up three centuries since, and anathematized by East as well
as West." The assumption that the Anglican Church was
in origin and doctrine closely allied to the German Evangeli-
cal Churches was abominated by those whom he represented.
Once admitted, as it was in this case, such an assumption
destroyed the claim of the Church of England to be considered
a branch of the Catholic Church, and condemned the theory
of the Via Media. From now onward, in Newman's estimate,
Anglicanism was "either not a normal portion of that one
Church to which the promises were made, or at least one in
an abnormal state." ^ It may be added that the "Fancy
Church," as Mr. Gladstone called the organization at Jeru-
salem, had a very brief and ineffective existence, and after
the joint arrangement had furnished three bishops it was
relinquished.
These three blows which had fallen upon Newman were
now followed by three defeats. The Liberal Churchmen,
encouraged by their success in the matters of Tract Ninety
and the Jerusalem episcopate, resolved to push their advan-
tage, and the contest for the Professorship of Poetry at
Oxford, which Keble resigned in 1841, gave them an
» "Apologia" ; pp. 141-142. ^ /^^^.^ pp, 149-150.
550 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
opening. Isaac Williams, the Tractarian candidate,
possessed some poetical gifts of which his victorious rival,
James Garbett, was entirely guiltless. Williams was placed
in nomination only to discover how seriously his candida-
ture had been prejudiced by his partisan connections and
by his authorship of the Tract on "Reserve." He was
further handicapped by an ill-timed circular letter which
Dr. Pusey sent out recommending him for the professorship
on the ground of his religious views. His failure to obtain
the chair so deeply distressed Williams that he withdrew
from Oxford to Stinchcombe, near Dursley, where he
found consolation in writing those devotional commentaries,
poems, and hymns which are still prized by some High
Churchmen. Far more important than this, the first set-
back of the Tractarians as a party, was the attack made on
Dr. Pusey and headed by Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel.
On May 24, 1843, Pusey preached in Christ Church
Cathedral on the Holy Eucharist, and although, according to
Dean Church, he used language strictly in accordance with
that of other Anglican divines, the sermon was made the
basis of action against him for heresy. Its assessors were
Hawkins, Symons, Jenkyns, Ogilvie, Jelf, and Faussett, two
of whom acted as both accuser and judge. They condemned
Pusey and inhibited him from preaching within the Uni-
versity for two years. The proceedings were irregular
throughout; Pusey was neither allowed a hearing nor
acquainted with the charges made against him. He did
not even know who the objectors were, except from
rumor, nor to what standards his sermon had been sub-
mitted. Consequently, although he offered to sign an
explanatory statement, he would not formally retract
what he had said, and his illegal and unjust suspension
remained in effect. It both confirmed High Churchmen in
their obduracy and brought Newman nearer to secession.
"Things are very serious here," he wrote to a friend; "the
authorities find that, by the statutes, they have more than
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 551
military power, and the general impression seems to be,
that they intend to exert it, and put down Catholicism at
any risk." ^
Ward was the next offender slated for a severe punishment,
and one which marked the final overthrow of the original
phase of Tractarianism. On the 13th of February, 1845,
Convocation ratified formally the action to censure him
already adopted by the Hebdomadal Council. He made a
unique defense of his opinions, and assured the Convocation
that he was still loyal to Anglicanism, while at the same
time he held the whole content of Roman doctrine. Such
arguments strengthened the resolution of his enemies to
silence him : his book on the " Ideal Church" was condemned
and his degrees taken from him. Upon this he resigned his
fellowship, and although hitherto an avowed believer in
celibacy, he married, retired to Rose Hill, near Oxford,
and in September of that year, was received into the Church
of Rome. The career of this richly endowed but wayward
genius has been portrayed in the admirable and impartial
biography written by his son. Dr. Wilfred Ward. Tenny-
son, who was neighbor to him in his last days, composed
the well-known epitaph which commemorated a most
extraordinary and lovable character.
"Farewell, whose living like I shall not find,
Whose faith and work were bells of full accord,
My friend, the most unworldly of mankind.
Most generous of all ultramontanes, Ward,
How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,
How loyal in the following of thy Lord."
Ward rightly rebuked Protestant harshness towards Rome,
but it is questionable whether he was ever in the vanguard
of spiritual leadership in Britain, and although he made
sport with logic, ultimately logic took its revenge on him.
He addressed his appeals to his countrymen, heedless that
* "Apologia" ; p. 179.
552 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
they deprecated the exaltation of any theories beyond their
legitimate sphere as working hypotheses, and were wont to
apply the antiseptic of common sense to the laudations of
those who worshiped an abstraction. Even Ward's skillful
handling could not avoid the collision between sentiment and
reason, or lessen the distaste of those who held with Burke
that nothing absolute can be affirmed on any moral or
political issue. Consequently they rejected a religious
philosopher who was wanting in gravity, and who, at a pinch,
could make the worse appear the better reason. Yet, in
the larger sense. Ward's personal life was anything but in-
consistent, and, in the lesser sense, many of his inconsisten-
cies were due to the wide sweep of his vision and the great-
ness of his nature.
His condemnation and secession to Rome marked the
exit of other notable converts, amongst whom were Dal-
gairns, Frederick Oakley, Ambrose St. John, and F. W.
Faber, Newman testified in words often quoted : " From
the end of 1841, I was on my deathbed, as regards my
membership with the Anglican Church, though at the time
I became aware of it only by degrees." ^ It was indeed a
lingering death and yet one which the events we have cited
rendered certain. He relinquished the editorship of the
British Critic and asked that his name should be kept
out of it as far as possible. A little later, in 1842, he left
his room at Oriel, and went to Littlemore, where he and a
few disciples lived in monastic seclusion, praying, fasting,
studying, and repeating the daily offices. In 1843 he made
a formal retraction of all the hard things he had said
against the Roman Church, and on September 18th of that
year he resigned the living of St. Mary's. On the 25th he
uttered his valedictory as an Anglican preacher : the sermon
on "The Parting of Friends," delivered to a small and
grief-stricken congregation in the church at Littlemore.
The October following he returned to Oxford, where, on the
' "Apologia" ; p. 147.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 553
15th, he celebrated the Holy Eucharist at St. Mary's for the
last time, when those worshipers to whom he meant more
than words could express gathered around the altar with
conflicting emotions. He had now come to the margin,
but he feared to launch away. Though he "was very far
more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman
additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments,
arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine De-
positum of Faith," ^ two years were to elapse before he en-
tered on the unknown regions ahead ; an interval during
which he wrote his " Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine."
This was his apologetic for the step he was about to take.
Through it he hoped to demolish the objections against Rome
because of the accretions of her later beliefs and practices,
by proving that these were simply expansions of the
original seed of truth committed to the Apostles. The
work was begun in 1845, and as it advanced his diflS-
culties vanished ; he no longer referred to those who held
the views he discussed as " Roman Catholics " but as "Cath-
olics"; he had not completed his task when he resolved to
be received into their faith, and the volume remains in the
unfinished state in which it was then.- He stated that it
was his intention and wish to have carried the book through
the press before his secession, but he recognized in himself a
conviction of the truth of the conclusion to which the dis-
cussion led, so clear as to supersede further deliberation.
Here followed one of those passages, observes Mr. Hut-
ton, "by which Newman will be remembered as long as the
English language endures."
"Such," he wrote, "were the thoughts concerning 'The
Blessed Vision of Peace' of one whose long-continued peti-
tion had been that the Most INIerciful would not despise
the work of His own hands, nor leave him to himself ; while
1 "Apologia" ; pp. 208-209.
* Ibid., p. 234.
554 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
yet his eyes were dim, and his breast laden, and he could
but employ Reason in the things of Faith. And now, dear
reader, time is short, eternity is long. Put not from you
what you have here found ; regard it not as mere matter of
controversy; set not out resolved to refute it, and looking
about for the best way of doing so ; seduce not yourself with
the imagination that it comes of disappointment, or disgust,
or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or undue sensibility, or
other weakness. Wrap not yourself round in the associa-
tions of years past, nor determine that to be truth which
you wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipa-
tions. Time is short, eternity is long. Nunc dimittis
servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace,
quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum." ^
The "Essay" has received more attention than any other
prose work of Newman's except the "Apologia," and in
it theologians have found grounds for their assertion that
Newman was the progenitor of Modernism. Its construc-
tive statements dealt with the wide divergencies between the
teachings of the New Testament and those of Catholicism.
These were apparent, not only in degree but in essence, and
presented a strong prima facie case against the historical
continuity of Roman doctrine. Not only so, but when the
authorized creeds current in different ages of the Church
were compared, large variations were disclosed. How could
these variations be harmonized as actual necessary parts
of a homogeneous whole? Newman arrested the argument
at this stage to point out that Christianity, however ex-
plained, was first and last a supreme fact established in his-
tory, and could not be treated as a matter of private opinion.
Theories did not create its importance, but its importance
created them. Therefore they should neither over-ride
nor minimize the reality of a faith which had found its
objective existence not in the cloister nor the sanctuary,
but in the world. It had been public property for many
' " Development of Christian Doctrine " ; p. 445.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 555
centuries, and to know it men must listen to the records of
the past. He was so confident history was at last on
his side that he could afford to be careless and over-lib-
eral in allowing a greater weight to its evidence in behalf
of his opponents than they could properly claim. "Let
them consider," said the polemic who in defiance of history
had endeavored to wrest out of the Thirty-nine Articles
the Catholic meaning he coveted, "that if they can criticize
history, history can retort upon them." It was neither
creed nor catechism, but none could mistake its general
import in this matter, whether he accepted or rejected it.
Its bold outlines and broad masses of color arose in per-
spective, distant, incomplete, but still definite. And one
thing was certain ; whatever history taught, whatever it
magnified, whatever it extenuated, whatever it said or un-
said, at least the Christianity of history was not Protestant-
ism. If ever there was a safe truth, it was this, and Prot-
estantism had ever so felt it. If not, why had its founders
thrust aside historical Christianity, dispensing with it al-
together and forming their doctrine from the Bible alone?
The long-continued neglect of ecclesiastical history in
England, and even in the Anglican Church, was accentuated
by the melancholy reflection that perhaps the only English
author who had any right to be considered an ecclesiastical
historian was the unbeliever Gibbon. The utter incongruity
between Protestantism and historical Christianity extended
alike to early and later times ; it could as little bear its Ante-
nicene as its Post-tridentine period.^ To be deep in history
was to cease to be a Protestant, whereas, on the other hand,
the Roman Catholic communion was the heir of patristic
Christianity. All parties agreed that did St. Athanasius
or St. Ambrose come suddenly to life they would find them-
selves more at home with such men as St. Bernard or St.
Ignatius Loyola, or with the lonely priest in his lodging,
than with the teachers of any other creed. ^
1 "Development of Christian Doctrine" ; pp. 7-8. ' Ibid., pp. 97-98.
556 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Newman admitted the abstract possibility of changes in the
original deposit of the faith, but added that those who advanced
the assumption should sustain it, for unbelief must justify
itself as well as faith. And until positive reasons grounded
on facts were advanced to the contrary, the most natural
hypothesis was to consider that the society of Christians
the Apostles left on earth were of that religion to w hich
they had been converted. The external continuity of name,
profession, and communion argued a real continuity of
doctrine. Christianity began by manifesting itself to
mankind in a given shape and bearing. Therefore it went
on so to manifest itself. To take it for granted that the
intervening periods had preserved in substance the very
religion which Christ and His Apostles taught in the first
centuries was not a violent supposition, but mere abstinence
from the wanton admission of a principle to the contrary
which necessarily led to the most vexatious and preposterous
skepticism. Whatever may have been the modifications
for good or for evil which lapse of time and the vicissitudes
of human affairs had impressed upon the original revelation,
in essence it was the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever.''
Conceding the emergence of certain apparent variations
in the teaching of the Church, he sought to explain them
without hurt to the unity, directness, and consistency of
that teaching. Doctrinal development arose out of the
power of Christianity to impress its ideas upon the mind,
and these, being subject matter for the exercise of reason,
expanded into other ideas, harmonious with one another,
and in themselves determinate and immutable, as was the
objective Christianity which they represented. The more
vital ideas were, the more manifold their aspects would
be. Too deep and opulent for immediate apprehension,
their bearings, multiform, prolific and ever resourceful,
kept pace with the changing fortunes of mankind. The
longer they endured, the more clearly they were ap-
* "Development of Christian Doctrine" ; p. 6.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 557
prehended and expressed. Contemplation and reflection
gradually absorbed meanings which, implicit from the
first, sometimes persisted through many generations
before they became explicit. True everywhere, supremely
true of Christianity, this principle overthrew the objection
that the inspired writings definitely decreed the limits of
Christian doctrine.
The dogmas which Protestants renounced as superfluous,
were in reality the latest forms of ideas, which, though not
found in the Bible, were incipient in the sacred writers and
in their readers. This was a wise provision, for Christian-
ity, as a universal religion, intended for all times and peoples,
was bound to adapt itself to different environments or cease
to be effective. Its teachings were capable of infinite appli-
cations which corresponded with the social demands made
upon them. Nor were the straitest orthodoxies of the
Reformed Churches exempt from the workings of this law
of change. The duty of public worship, the substitution
of the first for the seventh day of the week as the Lord's
Day, the rite of Infant Baptism, and the aflBrmation that the
Bible alone was the religion of Protestantism, had little if any
prominence in the New Testament. They were not derived
from the direct usage and sanction of the sacred writings,
but from the unconscious growth of ideas fostered by the
Christian experience of nearly twenty centuries. Similarly,
mmierous other questions were found in Scripture which
Scripture did not solve; questions so real and practical
that they must be answered by a development of the letter
of revelation. So much was this the case, that it was impos-
sible to avoid the conviction that post-biblical evolutions
of Christian teaching were part of the providential
purpose of its Divine Author. The presence of need
and its supply in nature constituted a convincing proof
of design in the material creation ; in like manner the
breaches which occurred in the structure of the original
creed of the Church made it probable that those develop-
558 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ments which grew out of the truths surrounding that creed
were intended to fill up its fissures.
This probability was reenforced by the consideration that
the entire Bible was written under the governance of the
principle of development — " line upon line, precept upon
precept." Its revelations were disclosed "in sundry parts
and divers manners," ever new, ever old; the new being
not a renewal but an expansion of the old. Our Lord Him-
self declared : " Think not that I am come to destroy the
Law and the Prophets, I am not come to destroy but to ful-
fil." Nor could the exact point be found, either in the
Apostolic teachings or afterwards, where the vital growth
of dogma ceased and the Rule of Faith was established in
finality. No doctrine was so complete in its primary stages
as to require nothing in addition. The Apostolic Church
received the seed of truth, the nucleus of a coherent system
of belief; a living seed, a living nucleus, to be developed
by its own potentialities reacting upon society, and beneath
the direction of the Spirit of the living God.
Thus far Newman enlisted general assent, and showed
how magnificently he could have handled theological prob-
lems in the light of the biological learning he uncon-
sciously heralded. But when he entered the next phase
of the discussion and tried to justify Roman doctrine
and practice as the inevitable outcome of the residual
forces, implicit or explicit, of New Testament Christianity,
his touch was not so sure. The contrary elements injected
by human malignancy and misdirection have sadly inter-
fered with the smooth operation of this theory in the realm
of faith and morals. On every hand contending sects arose,
alien to one another, each equally confident of its direct
and unmixed descent from the parental stock. How was
the vexed question of their opposing claims to be adjudi-
cated ? Newman replied, by an infallible Church. " In
proportion to the probability of true developments
in the Divine Scheme, so is the probability also of the
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 559
appointment in that scheme of an external authority
to decide upon them, thereby separating them from
the mass of mere human speculation, extravagance, cor-
ruption, and error, in and out of which they grow." ^
There is small chance of escape from his conclusion for either
Romanists or Protestants who identify religious life with
the acceptance of doctrinal formulae. An infallible revela-
tion committed to the care of fallible custodians is only a
large indication of the exasperating risks of ultra-ortho-
dox5\ To the precise and logical intellect of Newman such
a revelation, when subjected to the thousand and one inter-
pretations of private judgment, was too variable a compass
for safe navigation. He argued that certain Catholic doc-
trines professing to be Apostolic, and possessing high an-
tiquity, were universally considered in each successive age as
the echo of doctrines of the times immediately preceding,
and thus were continually thrown back to a date indefinitely
early. Moreover, they formed one body, so that to reject
one was to disparage the rest. They also occupied the whole
field of theology and left nothing to be supplied, except in
detail, by any other system. From these statements he drew
the inference that the nearest approach to the religious
sentiment and Ethos of the Early Church, even of the
Apostles and Prophets, was to be found in Roman teaching.
All would agree, he urged, that Elijah, Jeremiah, the Bap-
tist, and St. Paul were in their history and mode of life more
like a Dominican preacher, a Jesuit missionary, or a Carmelite
friar ; more like St. Toribio, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Francis
Xavier, or St. Alphonso Liguori, than any individuals, or
classes of men, that could be found in other communions.^
Why all should agree to this monopoly of resemblance does
not appear. John Wesley, Henry Martyn, Adoniram Judson,
David Livingstone, Bishop William Taylor, and a host of
other Protestant worthies had many external features
in common with the Biblical heroes named.
1 "Development of Christian Doctrine"; p. 78. ^ Ibid., pp. 99-100.
560 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
He next enumerated the features which every genuine
development of Christian ideas presented and by which it
could be recognized : preservation of type, continuity of
principles, power of assimilation, logical sequence, antici-
pation of its future, conservative action upon its past, and
chronic vigor. Neither Thomas Huxley nor Herbert Spencer,
who had the advantage of the evolutionary hypothesis, ex-
celled Newman in the invention and suitability of scien-
tific nomenclature. The rest of the volume was devoted to
applying these seven tests to the doctrines of the Roman
Catholic Church. An extended argument on the first —
the preservation of type — was prefaced by the following
inquiry: "What is Christianity's original type? and has
that type been preserved in the developments commonly
called Catholic ? Let us take it as the world now views it in
its age ; and let us take it as the world once viewed it in its
youth ; and let us see whether there be any great difference
between the early and the later description of it. . . . There
is a religious communion claiming a divine commission, and
holding all other religious bodies around it heretical or in-
fidel ; it is a well-organized, well-disciplined body ; it is
a sort of secret society, binding together its members by
influences and by engagements which it is diflBcult for
strangers to ascertain. It is spread over the known world ;
it may be weak or insignificant locally, but it is strong on
the whole from its continuity ; it may be smaller than all
other religious bodies together, but it is larger than each
separately. It is a natural enemy to governments external
to itself; it is intolerant and engrossing, and tends to a new
modeling of society ; it breaks laws, it divides families. It
is a gross superstition ; it is charged with the foulest
crimes ; it is despised by the intellect of the day ; it is fright-
ful to the imagination of many. And there is but one com-
munion such. Place this description before Pliny or Julian.
. . . Each one knows at once who is meant by it." ^
' "Development of Christian Doctrine" ; pp. 207-208.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 561
In enlarging upon the second note — continuity of prin-
ciples — the following ideas were evolved from the doc-
trine of the Incarnation : Dogma, or supernatural truths
committed to human media; Faith, as the necessary
correlative of dogma; Theology, which was the output
of the human mind operating upon the truths given by
dogma to faith ; the Sacramental principle, which con-
veyed the supreme gift of God in the material and visible
medium of our Lord's physical body; the necessary use of
Mystical Language, since words were invested with a sacra-
mental office ; the Sanctification of Grace ; the practice of
Asceticism ; the possible Holiness of Matter as well as mind.
Will any one say, asked Newman, that all these principles,
directly arising out of the New Testament doctrine of the
Incarnation, have not been retained in vigorous action in
the Church at all times? and he proceeded to answer the
question in a series of historical surveys.
Passing over his discussion of the third note of a genuine
development, we come to the fourth, that of logical se-
quence, with which this review can perhaps best be concluded,
since the crux of his argument lies here. If the doctrines
of modern Roman Catholicism were logical sequences of
the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, there was nothing
further to be said ; it would only remain for those who re-
ceived the New Testament to do as Newman did, secede to
Rome. In illustration of one doctrine leading to another,
he used the instance of Baptism. In the primitive Church,
the Sacrament of Baptism was held to convey inestimable
benefits to the soul, its distinguishing gift being the plenary
forgiveness of sins past. The Sacrament was never repeated.
How then, since there was but one baptism for the remis-
sion of sins, was the guilt of post-baptismal sins to be
removed ? Or was there no hope for such sinners ? Differ-
ences of opinion arose. Some conceived that the Church
was empowered to grant one, and only one, reconciliation to
baptized transgressors. In the West, idolatry, murder, and
2o
562 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
adultery, if committed after baptism, were by many held
unpardonable. But as Christianity spread, and gathered
converts of every kind, a more merciful rule gradually
obtained. Penances were appointed, and by the end of
the third century as many as four degrees of penance came
into vogue, through which offenders had to pass in order to
a reconciliation. The length and severity of the penance
varied. Sometimes, for serious transgressors it was lifelong,
without any remission ; in other cases it was for a period
of years. But the bishop always had the power of ab-
breviating and altering it.
The further question arose, Were these punishments
only signs of repentance, or were they also in any sense
satisfactions for the sins committed? If the former, then
it was in the discretion of the Church to remit them as soon
as true contrition was discovered. But if they were also
an expiation made to the Almighty Judge, how then? "It
cannot be doubted," said Newman, "that the Fathers con-
sidered penance as not a mere expression of contrition, but
as an act done directly towards God and a means of avert-
ing His anger." Suppose, such being the case, that death
intervened before the plena yoenitentia was accomplished,
how and when would the residue be exacted ? According to
Bishop Kaye, whom Newman quoted, Clement of Alexandria
answered this question v&ry plainly. "Clement distin-
guishes between sins committed before and after baptism :
the former are remitted at baptism; the latter are purged
by discipline. . . . The necessity of this purifying dis-
cipline is such, that if it does not take place in this life, it
must after death, and is then to be effected by fire, not by
a destructive, but a discriminating, fire, pervading the soul
which passes through it." ^ After further references to
1 Clement, Chap. 12. We do not recall, and have failed to find in Clem-
ent's works, any passage in support of Bishop Kaye's statement. At
the end of the 24th chapter of the fourth book of The Stroraata, Clement
has the following on post-baptismal sin, but nothing suggestive of purga-
tory: "There are two methods of correction, the instructive, and the
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 563
early Church writers, Newman concluded: "Thus we see
how, as time went on, the doctrine of Purgatory was brought
home to the minds of the faithful as a portion or form of
Penance due for post-baptismal sin;" and again, "When
an answer had to be made to the question, how is post-
baptismal sin to be remitted, there was an abundance of
passages in Scripture to make easy to the faith of the inquirer
the definitive decision of the Church."
We are then carried on to the doctrine of Meritorious
Works as the corollary to that of Purgatory. For if post-
baptismal sins were debts which must be paid to the utter-
most farthing, virtues, no less, passed to the credit side of
the book of life, and might be drawn upon both for the souls
concerned and for others. Finally, Monasticism was brought
forward as a logical sequence of Penance. The penitential
observances of individuals were necessarily on a larger scale
as the Christian community increased in numbers, and the
Church, divinely guided, adopted the important principle
of economic science that everything should be turned to
account and no waste allowed : she gave to penances the
form of works, whether for her defense or for the spiritual
and temporal benefit of mankind. Thus in cleansing their
souls from sin the penitent monks and nuns were at the same
time serving the Church and humanity.
Traces of the argument from the theory of development
were found in Cliristian Apologetics long before Newman
employed it to wall up the Via Media. Petavius and Mohler
had substantially shown him how to use it; Pascal had
made references to it, the eighteenth century divines had
dwelt on it to some extent, and Gibbon's assault upon it
in his history had become famous. But what Darwin after-
wards did for the evolutionary hj-pothesis in biology, in a
less degree Newman did for it in theology. He raised its
primitive, which we have called the disciplinary. It ought to be known,
then, that those who fall into sin after baptism (kovrpbv) are those who are
subjected to discipline ; for the deeds done before are remitted, and those
done after are purged."
564 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
importance for the purposes of Catholic defense and aggres-
sion, and placed High Anglicans in an awkward dilemma.
The only way of escape from his inexorable conclusions
was to reject his premises, which was exactly what they
did not propose to do. Although based on the identical
principle of an external and absolute authority, Tractarian-
ism and Romanism were now placed in powerful contrast.
As a nominal Anglican, Newman exposed the illogical
nature and illegitimate claims of the fellowship he had al-
ready inwardly forsaken. Those who did not admit his
assumptions, whether Anglicans or Protestants in general,
were not involved in their result. Once his basic plea for
an inerrant document, which necessitated an inerrant inter-
preter to unfold its germinal verities, was granted, the force of
sequence would carry men all the way with him. Deny him
this, or even a part of it, and the whole of his cleverly con-
structed fabric fell asunder. That Christian experience of the
past was of the essence of authority few, if any, of his oppo-
nents for a moment doubted, and revolutionary iconoclasm was
as repugnant to them as it was to him. Yet such an author-
ity was not so determinate as to exclude them from looking
toward the future for light and wisdom, nor could it bring
every motion of their minds under slavish subjection to the
past. Men must be allowed to make trial of those new ways
which are in keeping with the promptings of Christian in-
telligence and Christian conscience. To make this trial is
to incur the risks of misunderstanding ; to refuse to make it
is either to surrender religion altogether, or to relinquish the
hope of assimilating the assured results of knowledge and
the slow achievements of moral effort. These considerations
point to that kingdom of God within men which Christ
Himself proclaimed, and they also imply a divine and
ceaseless revelation in the growing human consciousness.
The touchstone that discriminates between the true and
the false, the essential and the accidental, in morals
and religion, is not the sole right and property of tradi-
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 565
tion, nor of the Fathers, nor even of the Scriptures.
Objective authority in reUgion goes beyond these and is
vested in the Person of God and of Jesus Christ, Whom He
has sent. In operation, this authority is not a fixture of
chronology, nor a matter of antiquity, but the voice and
spirit of the Eternal speaking through all the media of His
life in the race, and not therefore separable from the sub-
jective authority of conscience.^ This reasoning was fatal
to Newman's position ; and he would have none of it, nor
would he extend the idea of organic development beyond
the arbitrary limits he had assigned it. Thus, although his
system was the legitimate product of his theory, it ignored
some main truths relative to God and the creature. Admis-
sible in the courts of rigid ecclesiasticism, his case broke
down in the wider court of human life. He was not strong
enough to face doubt and then rise beyond it. In an era
which plagued him with justifiable fears he could not lift
his faith to those serene certainties which need no confirma-
tion of the reason, and in confusing dogma with faith, he,
who was perhaps the finest religious nature of the century,
failed the Church universal in the hour of trial. Agnos-
tics saw in him a superstitious mind, accompanied by
symptoms of admirable intellectual clarity and depth.
Ultramontanes questioned his right to impugn, ever so
slightly, the changelessness of the decrees of tradition. The
more liberal Roman Catholics afterwards rejoiced in his
Essay as the basis for further modifications of dogma in
behalf of culture. Tractarians lamented his discharge of
what appeared to him an unavoidable duty, linked, as it
was, with the semblance of disloyalty and the wrecking of
their hopes. In the United States of America the volume
was discussed by the Unitarians, and Dr. Brownson quoted
it as evidence that the Trinitarian doctrine was not primi-
tive but a development of the third century. The Roman
Catholic bishops of the Republic declared that it was half
1 James Martineau : "Essays, Reviews, and Addresses" ; Vol. I, p. 248.
566 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Catholicism and half infidelity. It was scarcely surprising,
remarks Sir William Robertson NicoU, that after his seces-
sion the theological guides of the Papacy thought that New-
man should be a learner, not a teacher.
The mental and physical strain entailed upon him was evi-
denced in a letter of June, 1835, which he wrote to Mr. William
Froude : " Did I tell you I was preparing a book of some
sort to advertise people how things stood with me? Never
has anything cost me (I think) so much hard thought and
anxiety, though when I got to the end of my ' Arians ' thir-
teen years ago, I had no sleep for a week, and was fainting
away or something like it day after day. ... I have
not written a sentence which will stand, or hardly so." ^
As it approached completion he stood at his desk for
hours, a pale, thin, nearly diaphanous form, his face almost
transparent, his wearied hand revising and correcting what
he had put down. The end of his strange, unearthly pil-
grimage from Calvinistic Evangelicalism to the shelter he
found in Rome was in sight. Father Dominic, the Italian
Passionist friar, was expected in Oxford on October 8, 1845;
and, although Newman's associates at Littlemore did not
deny that he would become a Catholic, they were ignorant
of his intentions in detail and wondered when it would occur.
That afternoon Dalgairns and St. John set out to Oxford
to meet the Passionist Father, and Newman said to Dal-
gairns in a very low and quiet tone, "Wlien you see your
friend, will you tell him that I wish him to receive me into
the Church of Christ?" Dalgairns answered "Yes," and
no more.^ The evening drew on dark and stormy, the wind
blew in gusts, rain fell in torrents; that night Newman
seceded to the Roman Catholic Church. At almost the
same time Renan arrived in Paris, bade farewell to St. Sul-
pice, put off his clerical habit, and renounced the faith
'Wilfred Ward: "Life of John Henry CardiDal Newman"; Vol. I,
pp. 86-87.
«/6td.. Vol. I, p. 93.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 567
Newman accepted ; an historical coincidence which, as Dr.
William Barry has observed, "will register its consequences for
a long time to come." ^ The midnight scene in the little
chapel where Newman made his confession was deeply
impressive : he was so overcome that when it was over he
could not stand alone, and his companions led him out of
the tiny Oratory. The final separation had been before his
imagination continually ; he had reflected upon it with
such intensity and insistence, he had thought so constantly
of the consternation, the dismay, the sorrow, it would
bring to his Tractarian associates, that when the deed was
done, he had already largely paid the penalties it exacted.
The bitterness of his death to Anglicanism was past, the
future was tinged with tranquil hope and assurance. Nor
did he ever afterwards regret what here occurred. His
proud imperious spirit was fated to endure many chasten-
ings, yet in seasons of the most humiliating depression he re-
ferred to his second conversion with unshaken confidence,
and with an accent of conviction it would be dishonorable
to question ; Rome was for him the only safe anchorage ;
Protestantism "the dreariest of possible religions." He
never saw Oxford again, except at a distance, until he re-
visited the city after an absence of more than thirty years.
But in one of the rooms of his residence at Edgbaston hung
an engraving of the place displaying the Radcliffe dome with
its attendant spires and towers, and under it was inscribed
the legend from the prophet Ezekiel, " Can these bones live ? "
According to Newman, they could not, save through ac-
ceptance of his theological creed.
The English Church received the news of his departure
with mingled feelings. Many openly rejoiced that he was
gone, others regarded him as an apostate ; his closest friends,
although they had expected his action, placed their hope
against their fear, lest fear should become despair. Up to
this hour they had met with not a few disasters but none
1 "Cardinal Newman" ; p. 64.
568 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
seemed irretrievable. The more sanguine spirits still
believed that the prospect might change ; Anglicanism might
retain him ; the Movement might prosper. Now they were
undeceived, and their party overthrown. "It was more
than a defeat," said Dean Church, "it was a rout in which
they were driven from the field." Principal Shairp spoke
of the event and of the sentiments it evoked both in those
who loved and those who feared Newman, in the follow-
ing words. "How vividly comes back the remem-
brance of the aching blank, the awful pause, which fell on
Oxford when that voice had ceased, and we knew that we
should hear it no more. It was as when, to one kneeling by
night, in the silence of some vast cathedral, the great bell
tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still. To many,
no doubt, the pause was not a long continuance. Soon they
began to look this way and that for new teachers, and to
rush vehemently to the opposite extremes of thought. But
there were those who could not so lightly forget. All the
more these withdrew into themselves. On Sunday forenoon
and evenings, in the retirement of their rooms, the printed
words of those marvelous sermons would thrill them till
they wept abundant and most sweet tears. Since then
many voices of powerful teachers they may have heard, but
none that ever penetrated the soul like his." ^
The limits imposed on this volume prevent us from
discussing Newman's after life, and in view of the recent
publication of his Biography by Wilfred Ward, to do more
than barely indicate its outline would be an impertinence.
He faced the critical years when Pius IX was reigning,
when Manning was omnipotent in English Catholicism, and
the Infallibilists were "an aggressive and insolent faction."
The fires of the Vatican Council, kindled on the ruins of
the Temporal Power, may have tested Newman's allegiance
to the Papacy, but they did not touch his Catholicism. Yet
1 Wilfred Ward: "The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman"; Vol.
I. pp. 77-78.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 569
he could not have known what awaited him, or that he would
become as a discrowned king, and a forsaken prophet
amongst his Roman brethren. " Had he died directly after
his sixty-third birthday," says Dr. Ward, "at an age which
would have fallen not very far short of the allotted days of
man on earth — his career would have lived in history as
ending in the saddest of failures. His unparalleled emi-
nence in 1837 would have been contrasted by historians with
his utter insignificance in 1863. His biography would have
been a tragedy." ^ One of the main reasons for the apathy
and even open hostility he encountered was his curious
reversion to liberalism. Contrary to his Anglican prece-
dents he stood increasingly for a broader policy and looked
with distrust and dislike upon the Syllabus and Papal
Infallibility. The very firmness of his new foundation
granted him unusual freedom ; he felt that he could afi'ord
to relax and incline toward the shades of opposition.
This determination was shown in his ill-timed effort to
impress upon the authorities the need of his doctrine
of organic development, and by his misunderstandings with
the Irish hierarchy, the Roman episcopate in England,
with Cardinal Manning, and many others. Everything to
which he set himself came to grief. The finest mind of
the Catholic faith was consigned to a harshness of exile
which seemed to have no chance of release. Accused by
Ultramontanes such as W. G. Ward and Manning of luke-
warmness toward the Holy See, Newman complained that
one who was not extravagant was found treacherous, and
that those who frustrated his plans regarded every intellec-
tual man as being on his way to perdition. The fact was,
he had been accustomed to command, and now felt it exceed-
ingly difficult to obey. To his superiors, at home and
especially abroad, he remained an enigma. Their knowl-
edge of his antecedents was of the vaguest, they felt no
particular interest in his philosophical and theological spec-
» "Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman" ; Vol. I, pp. 10-11.
570 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
ulations, they resented his provincial Oxford ways, and the.
English of which he was a master was an unknown tongue
at Rome. He bore himself in silence and outward submis-
sion, but the ordeal wore on him ; his health declined, his
countenance changed, he even made ready for death. Then
in 1864 came Charles Kingsley's headlong, random remarks
concerning him, and Newman, finding his honesty assailed,
laid aside the verdict he had previously passed upon himself
as " an evaporating mist of the morning, " and told the world
the plain story of his life in the "Apologia." Fortunately
for his fame, he afterwards deleted some opening phrases
of the volume, and it went forth to bring back to him the
heart of England. "Thenceforth John Henry Newman was
a great figure in the eyes of his countrymen. English
Catholics were grateful to him and proud of having for their
champion one of whom the country itself had become sud-
denly proud as a great writer and a spiritual genius. He had
a large following within the Catholic Church, who hung on his
words as his Oxford disciples had done thirty years earlier.
Opposition in influential quarters continued. But his sup-
porters among the bishops stood their ground, and the
battle was on far more equal terms than before." ^ True,
he did not esteem the dialectics with which he could have
vanquished far abler controversialists than Kingsley, but the
book revealed Newman in all his grandeur and his weakness.
Those who had long been indifferent or angry, turned to
him again, and the generation that had arisen since the
days of relentless war judged him more justly. He
now lived under kindlier local skies, and once more felt that
responsive warmth of sympathy which was necessary to
his temperament and his gifts. In 1878, Trinity College
elected him an honorary fellow, and at the same date Pio
Nono, who had long misconceived him, died. Encouraged
by the Duke of Norfolk and other distinguished Roman
• Wilfred Ward: " The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman " ; Vol. I,
p. U.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 571
Catholic laymen, Leo XIII elevated the noble Oratorian to
the Cardinalate, the distinction being the more marked be-
cause Newman was a simple priest and not resident in Rome.
The newly elected Pope thus placed the highest approval on
his works, and forever disposed of suspicions as to his fidelity.
Manning, who could never be charged with subtlety any
more than could Newman with ambition, interfered with his
promotion in ways difficult to understand or to forgive.
Their antipathy was primarily due to the conflict of an
objective with a subjective mind. But if some human
frailty entered into their relations, especially from Man-
ning's side, his weaknesses were redeemed by his phil-
anthropic labors in behalf of the poor and oppressed, in
which he showed an instinct for true Christian democracy
that Newman seldom felt. The venerable dignitary, im-
mured in the busy Midland city of Birmingham, was not
often visible elsewhere. His honors came too late to be
much more than an official vindication and a source of
personal comfort. He was now a very old man, and not
without the misfortunes and vapors of such an age ; but as
one to whom holiness had become a habit and not a phrase,
despite encircling gloom, he gradually ascended the heights
which led him up to God. On rare occasions his speaking
countenance and red robed figure could be discerned in
the pulpits of his communion ; a figure on which a fierce
light had beaten, on which there now shone a more ethereal
radiance, inducing a host of memories which recounted the
unsurpassed dramatic interest of his career, and left a sad
and solemn music in many hearts. In describing an inter-
view with him, in 1884, James Russell Lowell wrote: "The
most interesting part of my visit to Birmingham was a call
I made by appointment on Cardinal Newman. He was
benignly courteous and we excellencied and eminenced each
other by turns. A more gracious senescence I never saw.
There was no monumental pomp, but a serene decay, like
that of some ruined abbey in a woodland dell, consolingly
572 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
forlorn." He died at Edgbaston on August 11, 1890, having
practically covered the century of which he was a foremost
personality and which he never suffered to forget that the
things which are seen are temporal, the things which are not
seen are eternal.
Epilogue
The Tractarians who remained steadfast after Newman's
departure were compelled to remodel their party. Unde-
terred by the accusations, invectives and taunts hurled at
them from all quarters they still believed that Anglicanism
had a Catholic origin, and that a synthesis could be effected
between traditional ecclesiasticism and the Established
Church. Under the guidance of Pusey, Keble, Mozley,
and Marriott they gradually recovered from the shock of
Newman's secession, and retained an unalterable love for
their former associations with him. Nor could his " Lectures
on Catholicism in England," which he considered his best
effort, and in which he cast down and derided the ideals he
had once exalted to the skies, separate the hearts of his former
comrades from him. After some years, the old friend-
ships with him and Keble were resumed ; Dean Church
became his confidant, at whose home Newman stayed when
he visited London, and who probably knew more about
the convert's opinions and sentiments than any other man
except Father Ambrose St. John. When the Cardinal was
over eighty he traveled to Oxford to see in his last illness
Mark Pattison, a scholar widely apart from him and Pusey
in matters of belief, but one with them in their love for the
University and for each other. Newman does not seem to
have formed an intimacy with any man, Roman or Anglican,
who was not reared at Oxford.
Yet these personal exchanges could not affect the impor-
tant fact that the Movement assumed other and very different
forms, some of which fell behind and others went beyond
the designs of its originators. The liberalism they hated
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 573
and fought a Voutrance reasserted itself ; the spirit of inquiry
necessary to intellectual research and achievement was no
longer proscribed ; Oxford emerged from the backwash of
medievalism, and resumed her true vocation as a University
of unhampered learning. Religious barriers were thrown
down, credal tests were abolished, academic honors were
distributed without regard to Anglican preferences; in
brief, the attempt to arrest the heavens and the earth in
behalf of clerical control and dictation ended, as it deserved
to end, in complete failure. Newman himself, despite his
secession, received an honorary fellowship in Trinity College,
and was congratulated upon the part he had played as a
Roman Catholic doctor in rescuing the University from its
former narrowness.^ Viewed from this standpoint, the
Movement was cut off from its base of supplies at Oxford.
It could not be recruited as a matter of privilege from the
ranks of her professors and students. The Alma Mater which
had spurned Wycliffe and Wesley, also subordinated Anglo-
Catholicism to her general purposes.
While the University was entering upon another era, which
made Tractarianism seem almost as remote as Scholasticism,
historical theology slowly undermined some basic teachings
of the sacerdotalists. They were men of their own tune,
with their own methods, desperately opposed to those who
would not concede, in the phrase of Abbe Loisy, that the
past should remain the present and become the future. This
attitude exposed them to the attacks of progressive scholar-
ship, which divorced itself from many of their claims. It
argued that there could be no greater fallacy than to identify
the medieval Church with any species of Catholicism.
Rather it was the parent stem of which modern communions
are the branches. These afterwards developed on their
specific lines, the static and centripetal elements being found
in the stereotyped Roman Church, the active and cen-
1 Lord Bryce, then a professor at Oxford, was the toastmaster who of-
fered the congratulations to Newman.
574 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
trifugal in the various reformed Churches. Neither branch
entertained conceptions of liberty of conscience, or a critical
or scientific theology. To attribute such intellectual virtues
to Romans or Protestants of the sixteenth century did
violence to their psychology and their history. Those who
understood the inner spirit and structure of orthodoxy,
whether Genevan, Lutheran, Anglican, or Roman, ceased
to wonder that Socinians, Baptists, and Quakers, the step-
children of the Reformation, as they have been happily
called, fared nearly as hardly as the Huguenots of France or
the victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Investigations of
this radical character are still under way, and whatever else
they may accomplish, they will not produce anything ad-
vantageous to Tractarianism or its successors.
A far more serious matter for them was the impairment
of the theory of apostolic succession already mentioned in
the chapters on Wesley. Upon this unbroken ordination
all Catholicism rested its case, and Newman boasted that
whatever else may happen, not a link in the chain was miss-
ing. His position in this respect, whether as an Anglican
or a Romanist, was destined to be overthrown at the in-
stance of a great English bishop and scholar. John Barber
Lightfoot of Durham, Newman's superior in the massive-
ness and extent of his learning, showed that there was no
threefold order in the church of the Apostles. The Syriac
Peshito, the first version into which the New Testament
was translated, and the "Didache," most venerable of
Christian documents recently recovered, verified Lightfoot's
argument. Pusey's defense of the Anglican succession was
questioned not only by fellow Churchmen but also by New-
man, who maintained that his former colleague did not
affect to appeal to any authority but his own interpretation
of the Fathers. "There is," he said, "a tradition of High
Church and Low Church, but not what is now justly called
Puseyism." Baptismal Regeneration, the Real Presence in
the Holy Communion, and other dogmas which derive their
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 575
sacramental value from the validity of Anglican Orders,
while still believed and taught by Anglo-Catholics, must
eventually be affected by the large variations already felt
at the heart of their creed. Its advocates were driven by
the invidious nature of their claims to unearth material
for the support of foregone conclusions. Their researches
travestied the past, and supplied them with no key to the
processes of Christian thought. They stood, and still
stand, upon an imaginary platform, "from which," in the
language of Principal Tulloch, "they proceeded to the con-
demnation of everybody else, or the apotheosis of themselves
as the representatives of Christian antiquity."
Further, the publication of "Lux Mundi," a series of
essays by a group of gifted High Churchmen, which was
edited by the present bishop of Oxford, Dr. Gore, frankly
recognized that the dogma of the inerrancy of Holy Scrip-
ture was another fallen fortress. Let it be granted that
some speculative conclusions put forth by the modern view
of the Bible are as mischievous as the letter-worship against
which they are drawn. Yet these aberrations do not make
a rational interpretation of Sacred Writ the less necessary,
and if those who are competent to deal with such intricate
questions could be deprived of their freedom to do so, the
last state would be worse than the first. The setting aside
of one of Newman's main postulates, the absolute infallibility
of all parts of the Holy Scriptures, was extremely adverse
to the authority of those records of Jewish priesthoods, rit-
uals, and sacrifices which had been a plentiful storehouse for
the language and customs of the Eucharistic altar.
The second phase of Tractarianism found expression in its
modes of worship. Newman's religious temper was indicated
in his preference for Palladian over Gothic architecture. He
loved definition; the dim recessed spaces, pillared gloom,
half lights and shadows of English cathedrals did not appeal
to him. Neither he nor Pusey cared for a highly ornate
service, but Pusey's disciples depended on its concrete
576 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
visible means whereby to impart Catholicism through sign
and symbol to the less receptive minds of their flocks. Here
the Movement fell into the care of minor spirits, who were
charged with deflecting the adoration of the worshipers
from the proper objectives of faith. The use of vestments,
incense, sacring bells, candles, crucifixes; the genuflexions,
and adoration of the Host, which constituted what has been
described as the sacred dance around the altar; the prac-
tice of celibacy and of confession; the observance of fasts
and feasts and saints' days without stint, and the homage
paid to the Virgin Mary, created considerable excitement
in England and kept the bishops busy in their efforts to sub-
due a civil war within the Church, preserve discipline, and
adjudicate the disputes of rebellious priests with their
parishioners. Some Anglicans looked upon these innova-
tions as well-meant vagaries, others, less complaisant,
pointed out that they were not only a violation of the sim-
plicity which is in Christ, but also of the Apostolic and
patristic Christianity to which the Tractarians had first
resorted, and of the Canon Law of the Church. As a
matter of fact, they reproduced and almost transcended
the later developments of Roman Catholicism. The
Anglican Articles and Rubrics had enjoined no special type
of faith and worship : the exposition of their doctrinal and
liturgical standard was laid upon the conscience of the
clergy as enlightened by Holy Scriptures. But this liberty
was guarded by the Book of Common Prayer, which, after
the Bible of 1611, was the noblest heritage of the Church,
the finest example of pure vernacular English, the most
complete expression of Christian truth and supplication,
which recognized and included the laity with the clergy in
their united approach to God. Possessed by all, accessible
to all, these external guides, the Bible and the Prayer Book,
sustained the Church in her gravest emergencies, and, de-
spite her inconsistencies, helped to make her one of the
greatest religious forces of the world. Ecclesiastical parties
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 577
had flourished, fought, declined, having this in common,
the authority of the two classics derived in their stated form
from the Reformation period. If Erastians had frequently
neglected the spiritual economies of the Church in behalf of
her political utility, they had also saved her from the fantastic
inspirations of zealots against her unity. Her efficiency as a
national organization had not been intrusted to an apostolic
succession, but to the necessity and the usefulness of her insti-
tutions. And her most dispassionate and weighty intellects,
such as Hooker, had judged and approved her on that
basis. Now the stupidity against which even the gods
contend in vain had broken loose, and for the first time
in Anglicanism there was a marked divergence between the
clerical and laical mind.
A similar divergence had long been felt in Latin Chris-
tianity, but the counteraction of Puritanism had prevented
its leaven from spreading in England. Authority and
liberty were again at odds, and the arbitrary self-exaltation
of the Ritualistic cult was a heady wine for the younger
Tractarians to drink. They carried over the residue of
conservative reaction in the late eighteenth century into
another outbreak in the nineteenth, which enthroned the
priest as the mediator of divine grace, and the representative
of God to the congregation. This special ambassadorship
was asserted in the pious rhetoric with which such preten-
sions are usually conveyed, but no phraseology could make
them palatable to the average Briton. Prosaic as he ap-
peared to be, he was not deceived by it. Ritualism re-
mained a mere decoration, and its sensuous materialism,
irrational attitude, and reckless bearing were deeply resented.
Neither the ardor of its advocates, nor their affection for
environments befitting Christian worship could avert the
condemnation of the nation at large, or make amends
for the actual peril of priestly control and monopoly of
the Church. The opposition this peril encountered was
not always wise or courteous. Good men entangled in
2p
578 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
their own fancies were caricatured and maligned ; accused
of wilful and mischievous plottings against the peace and
welfare of the communion for which many of them felt a
sincere affection and served at considerable cost to them-
selves. But the persecutions which they endured and
which advanced rather than retarded their cause, were
only the surplusage of a widespread and justifiable objec-
tion to rabid extremists who furnished abundant cause for
the adverse sentiments with which they were regarded.
Presently they displayed contempt for Anglicanism, and
moderate High Churchmen perceived that sacerdotal par-
tisans, conscious of their anomalous standing, were willing
to dispense Christianity only on their own terms. The
extent of this perversity was revealed in a recent occurrence
at Oxford, when two Anglo-Catholic professors proposed to
omit from the theological degree the title of "sacred" and
to throw it open to Buddhists and other non-Christians.
The Warden of Keble College supported the motion and the
Regius Professor of Divinity asserted that he did not know
in these days what constituted a Churchman.^
Yet ritualism had a brighter side ; the slovenliness of early
Victorian observances was abolished, fabrics which had
fallen into disrepair were rebuilt, monuments of antiquity were
preserved, abbeys and cathedrals which had been ravaged by
previous "restorations" assumed their original beauty and
became the sanctuaries of daily praise and supplication.
And though the ceremonialists seemed to have little inclina-
tion for missionary efforts abroad, they adorned the superfi-
cial life of their own land with many tokens of their devotion.
The third phase of Tractarianism, and in many respects
the best, is the present passion of Anglo-Catholics for human-
ity and for social service. Their disturbance of complacent
officialism in 1833 finds its sequel in the agitation for a
Christian democracy in 1915. The bishops, the majority
* A. H. T. Clarke: "Collapse of the Catholic Revival" ; The Nineteenth
Century for October, 1913.
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 579
of whom are High Churchmen, no longer Hve in aristocratic
aloofness, surveying with indifference or contempt the
struggle of the people. They have exceeded the example of
Samuel Wilberforce and enlarged their office by allying it
with all classes in their dioceses; giving guidance and
succor to the outcast and the helpless with a per-
sistency and an inspiration drawn from a fresh vision
of Christian truth and Christian institutions. Nothing
more significant has been accomplished in modern Angli-
canism. The rank and file of the clergy have also ex-
perienced a renewal of spiritual life which manifests
itself in these admirable ways. Thousands of them
are found ministering in obscure and depressing parishes
of city slums and rural regions, remote from notice, with
no desire for emoluments and benefices. A self-denying,
consecrated pastoral force covers once neglected spots,
instituting daily services, catechizing the children, consoling
the sick and bereaved, and injecting into the most brutalized
and hopeless conditions a sense of eternal things. The work
of Father Stanton in Holborn and Father Dolling in the
East End of London was typical of similar labors and laborers
throughout England. Much that is said and done is ques-
tionable, but notwithstanding mistakes and retrogressions,
the war on unbelief, on godless wealth, on luxury, on ease,
and on the vices of drink and immorality goes steadily for-
ward. To agitate, to innovate, to succeed, are its mottoes.
Incensed by the misery they have witnessed, many of these
men are Socialists of a sort, and proclaim against the vicious-
ness of the present economic system with unsparing words.
Even the Establishment, that sacred organism in behalf of
which Keble uttered the indictment that began the Oxford
Movement, has been assailed, and Anglo-Catholics of the
pattern of the late Father Stanton are found in the libera-
tionists' camp, denouncing the injustice and disgrace of an
alliance of Church and State in terms which would have sur-
prised and charmed Edward Miall.
580 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OP OXFORD
Nonconformists and Low Churchmen, who for a time stood
afar off and thanked Heaven they were not as those Roman-
izing fanatics, eventually imitated their zeal for the better-
ment of the nation, giving to it a renewed measure of that
evangelical effort they have always and honorably bestowed
on foreign territories. The great missions of Wesley an
Methodism in many cities and that of Whitefield's Tabernacle,
London, with which the names of Hugh Price Hughes,
Samuel F. Collier, F. h. Wiseman, George Jackson, J. Ernest
Rattenbury, and C. Silvester Home are signally associated,
were organized and soon became living agencies for religious
and social improvement. Those who have no sympathy
with the clerical pretensions of Anglo-Catholics concede that
their latest developments inspire a respect which has never
been felt for their historical or logical positions. This re-
spect is intensified by their opposition to the narrowness of
that spurious liberalism which reduces the vital content
of the Gospel to a bloodless phraseology, and views it as an
ethical system shorn of any adequate religious dynamic.
In such relations the Oxford Movement reverted to the
Evangelicalism from which, in a measure, it originated, and
against which it had set itself. The life animating both
these historic parties was lodged beneath their deepest
differences and could not be exterminated. They unitedly
repudiated the half-hearted replica of the Christianity of
Christ which costs little, involves few, forgets no prudences,
runs no hazards, and at last incurs reproach and decay.
Thus the Oxford Movement was more than a theological
reform, and infinitely more than an emotional episode ; " it
was a protest against the loose unreality of ordinary reli-
gious morality" and in this, the summary of its wisest his-
torian, is the explanation of its value for the universal Church.
Newman was a prime instance of the persistence of earlier
traits in an unfriendly environment ; and, as we have seen,
other converts from Tractarianism to Rome were, like him,
Evangelicals by birth and training. His strength and theirs
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 581
lay in a quick sense of the supernatural, a profound
consciousness of religion as a personal experience, to which
his genius gave a historic setting. God and himself were
the only two, almost coordinate realities, the fixed foci of an
ellipse around which revolved the world with its staggering
burdens, as so much nebula, dream-stuff, phantasmagoria.
Myself, my God, my end : and all things else mere means
to that end — such was Newman's plea. The struggle to
maintain each member of this system in its due place, and
to cultivate their spiritualities by subjecting the forces of
conquered egotism to their service constituted his moral
greatness. Making a serious account of obstacles, he
yet accepted all turns of affairs, drawing them into his main
current, and moving on towards his goal ; a simple, humane,
universal goal ; the doing of God's will on earth. Ever and
anon he relaxed his customary vigilance and the opposition
of his regnant will was revealed. The conflict engraved
its traces on his soul, and in all probability he remained
unsatisfied to the end. "That which won his heart and his
enthusiasm," said Dean Church, "was one thing, that which
justified itself to his intellect was another." This striking
verdict from one who appraised him best, conducts us as
near to the mystery of his being as it seems possible to get.
His ultimate sense of the life, the society, and the principles
of action contained in the Apostolic fellowship constrained
bim to seek that organization in which they were most
completely embodied. In the search he surrounded himself
with distillations of all kinds and arguments orientalized
to the last degree. Questions of logical legitimacy gave way
to the all-important issue of a vital system of Christianity.
The high ideal of a Church which lived and wrought as
Christ and His Apostles had lived and wrought offered the
only adequate object to his reason and faith alike. The
pursuit of that ideal engrossed him as it had Wycliffe and
Wesley ; the historian and all else in him were made obedient
to his endeavors to attain that object. His first effort
582 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
was a confessed mistake. In language which fulfilled the
highest standards of the writer's art; dignity of manner,
persuasiveness, crystalline clearness, fervor with restraint,
he bared the innermost chambers of his heart to the world's
gaze, and admitted that he had theorized wrongly. In his
second effort he theorized successfully, but great results
were denied him. He had lost touch with the younger
generation, and could no longer take account of the form and
pressure of his times, or remake the stock of his conceptions,
or cast aside the prepossessions of his life. Caught in the
toils of his own personality, he settled nothing for the prob-
lems of human freedom and human thinking. Behind him
lay a divided Anglicanism, before him a bewildered and
apathetic Romanism. The most loyal of Englishmen and of
Oxford's sons was drawn by his sense of duty and by the
logic of his premises into " a great cosmopolitan association
in which England counted for little and Oxford for nothing at
all." With dexterity of argument he tried to account for the
indisputable fact that Papal doctrine and discipline were in
many essential respects far removed from the Church of
the New Testament. But neither the Essay on Development
nor aught else could soothe his own disquietude ; his reason-
ing and his style were the images of his mind rather than
of his subject. Their elusiveness gives rise to the mingled
admiration and doubt of which his readers are aware. They
watch the manifestations of his intellect with the suspicion
that he engages it to confirm the demands of his heart. These
distractions prevented in him the purest faith, and made his
story a sad one even to the casual observer. Although histori-
cally he was an Oxonian, a Calvinist, an Evangelical, an
Anglican, a Tractarian, a Roman Catholic ; primarily he
was none of these, but always a Newmanite. The rest
could assert themselves through his complex personality ;
none could diminish or overawe it. This invincible in-
dividualism, expressed in ways which outvie romance in
their interest, accounted for the strange fascination he
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 583
exercised over disciple and opponent. It isolated him, as
we have seen, in the most congenial or inquisitive societies
to which he successively adhered.
Hence few of his official overseers understood him : Haw-
kins, Whately, the English bishops, the Roman hierarchy,
were equally at fault in their judgments concerning him.
He was practically driven out of Anglicanism, he was snubbed
and neglected by the chief pastors of the Church of his adop-
tion. In 1860 he wrote in his Journal : " I have no friend
in Rome : I have labored in England, to be misrepresented,
backbitten and scorned. I have labored in Ireland, with a
door ever shut in my face." Seven years later he continued
— " Now, alas ! I fear that in one sense the iron has entered
into my soul. I mean that confidence in any superiors what-
ever never can blossom again within me. I shall, I feel,
always think they will be taking some advantage of me."
This was both his misfortune and his fault. In the pithy
phrase of the London Spectator: "as an Anglican he stood
for medieval principles in a scientific age; as a Roman he
stood for a measure of scientific thought in a Church com-
mitted to medieval theology." That which Oxford did he
chided Rome for not doing, yet he had left Oxford because
she did it. The liberalism he denounced in the one place,
he assumed in the other. This may explain why Archbishop
Cullen intercepted the mitre, and Manning nearly prevented
the scarlet hat from being bestowed on him. Not until
he was harmless was he permitted to take his place among
the Princes of the Church, and it is doubtful if even Ward's
biography contains the full account of his differences with
the Curia, and with the Roman Catholic episcopacy of
Great Britain and Ireland.
He saw the defects of systems more keenly than their
merits, and his sensitiveness inclined him to despair of their
permanence or usefulness. Because he never shared the
delusion that England was hungering for the true Church and
on the verge of conversion to Catholicism, he set about re-
584 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
forming instead of propagating it among his countr;yTnen.
Here, as elsewhere, he was bound to make his brain consent
to what his heart approved. They cajoled each other,
and most conspicuously in his treatment of faith, in which
he reversed the usual order and dealt with the essential
truths of religion as neither known nor knowable in themselves
but guaranteed by the sufficient explanation they gave of
facts and by their practical values for human nature.
The rationalistic conception of faith as an intellectual act
of belief based on sufficient evidence, and the moral concep-
tion of faith as the carrying out by the will of that which
had been accepted by the understanding, Newman dis-
allowed ; the first because it confounded faith with opinion,
the second because it confounded faith with obedience.
Thus faith was placed above the operations of intellect ; the
early Christians, he said, believed first and were afterwards
instructed as to what they believed. Glacial intellect
construed the spiritual as though it were the physical and
were incapable of the love and reverence which colored faith.
To an evil heart these were no more than dark suspicions,
and it was prone to accept the shadows cast by its own re-
flections as realities. But to a humble mind love and rev-
erence were clear trusts, in behalf of which reason ceased
its struggle for supremacy, and cast in its fortunes with their
higher possibilities. Such, according to Newman, was saving
faith : its judgments were intuitive, immediate, detached,
unsystematic, flashes in our gloomy depths ; begotten in us,
not created by us. His own faith was an act of will, vetoing
reason, or perhaps to be more just to him, a moral act of the
reason, transcending the requirements of demonstration.
The logical sequence was, that an authoritative guardian of
faith became necessary as a protection against skeptical
desolation. Hence faith for him was a philosophy, Chris-
tianity an idea, truth a matter of impression ; evidences
were presumptions, hypotheses, ventures, rather than sub-
stantiated realities ; conclusions which provoked Fairbairn's
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 585
retort that Newman was an agnostic baptized with religious
emotion.
In all probability he was the greatest apologist for the
Roman Catholic Church since the days of Bossuet. Neither
of them would endure the reconciliation of faith with reason ;
the one appealed to force, the other to imagination, against
the process. But Newman succeeded in mitigating the irra-
tional resentment which had prevailed against the Papacy
in England. The silent force of his example, even more than
the eloquence of his writings, gave pause to those ardent
partisans who saw nothing good in Rome.
The breach between faith and knowledge is not healed,
yet this is not as impossible as traditionalists declare. It was
successfully attempted by Clement and Origen, unsuccess-
fully by Abailard, and actually accomplished by Aquinas.
Scholasticism was formerly as strongly reprobated by the
Curia as Modernism is now. The New Learning was re-
jected by the Council of Trent for definite and interested
reasons. Yet the New Learning has returned as Modern-
ism to find Scholasticism sanctioned and its own repre-
sentative banned. Surely it is within the highest possi-
bility that the Church which gave Aquinas to the most
illustrious services any man could render by the will of
God to his own generation, will produce from her living
soul another great doctor who can make the bounds of
lawful freedom wider yet. The premature and desultory
efforts of Father Tyrell in this direction are not forever
forfeited, and if history is any warrant, it is a safe prediction
that the things for which he stood will yet bear fruit after
their kind and in their season. So far as Anglicanism is
concerned, it was founded on sound scholarship, and, con-
sidered broadly, has never departed from that basis. Its
leaders have welcomed the pioneers of truth who were glad
to find shelter at Canterbury and Oxford. Cranmer, Hooker,
586 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
Tillotson, Thirlwall, Lightfoot, Westcott, Hort, Stubbs, and
Creighton, to mention but a few historic names, toiled for
the unification of learning and piety. That obscurantism
has been all too active and mischievous among certain
groups of Anglicanism is beyond question. But this should
not confuse the general situation. For Churchmen of every
stripe, wherever found, have felt the weight of these inquiries
concerning past, present, and future. The separation which
has disfigured the loveliness of the Church of England,
narrowed and embittered Puritanism, divided and weakened
Christendom, and gathered Protestant peoples into numerous
sects, cannot endure the pressure now brought to bear upon
its misconceptions and errors, nor is it congenital to Prot-
estantism when the issues are properly understood and
balanced. This understanding and balancing enjoy favor-
able prospects because the battle is no longer one of prel-
ates or divines in "a vast, dumb, listless, illiterate world,"
or waged between a few sequestered university dons. It is
an open contention, fraught with religious and moral conse-
quences which embrace the honorable dealings of inter-
nationalism, the perpetuity of a just and universal peace,
social reconstruction, the reconciliation of various forms
of truth, the maintenance of essential spiritualities, the
simplification of credal statements; in a word, the pres-
ervation of the Kingdom of God upon earth. At this
moment the ferocious cruelties of an unparalleled war are
driving home these reflections; a war which has revealed
the indescribable perils that knowledge and culture incur
when they are separated from the control of genuine religion,
and subjected to the dictates of hate and greed, and
to the anarchy of physical violence. In such a crisis,
the magnitude and horror of which baffle description, the
Christian Church must restore civilization to the purposes
from which it has been wantonly deflected. Whatever
tlie errors, the rectifications, the risks, the losses, this
obligation entails. Catholic and Protestant, Traditionalist
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 587
and Modernist, are bound to gird themselves for its fulfill-
ment. Had they bestowed the same assiduous care upon
the realities of love, and mercy, and righteousness which
has been devoted to their respective peculiarities of belief,
mankind might have escaped the sickening catastrophe which
has overtaken it. And if the flamings of this wrath shall
purge the Church militant of her dross, and through
suffering and deprivation sanctify her for the noblest
ideals of her faith and the sacrifices necessary to attain
them, then even such a vial of destruction as the European
conflict will not have been poured out in vain.
588 THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD
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INDEX
Abailard, 29 f., 51, 111, 585.
Abbott, Dr. E. A., 455.
Acton, Lord, 141.
Addison, Joseph, 244, 247, 268, 367.
Albertus Magnus, 53.
Aldersgate Street Society, 334.
Alexander II, 7.
Alexander III, 10.
Allen, Alexander V. G., 409.
Almonry boy, 37.
American colonists, 261.
American Methodism, 351 ff., 358 f.,
372.
Andrewes, Lancelot, 237, 284.
Anglican Church, 301 ff., 369, 390,
413, 426 f., 454, 520 fE., 529, 549,
564, 574, 585.
Anglo-Catholics, 486, 575 «., 578,
580 (see also High Churchmen).
Annesley, Dr. Samuel, 182.
Anselm, 8, 30, 51.
Antinomianism, 321.
Apostles' Club, 422.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 51, 53 f . ;
"Summa," 55 ff. ; "AngeUc Doc-
tor," 55 ; constructive philosopher,
56, 585.
Aristotle, 53 ff., 366.
Arnold of Brescia, 111.
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 403, 417, 482,
514, 516, 529, 536.
Arundel, Archbishop Thomas, 44, 168.
Asbury, Bishop Francis, 353 ff., 358.
Avignon, 23, 108.
Bacon, Sir Francis, 276.
Bacon, Roger, 16, 29, 59, 99.
Bagehot, Walter, 468.
BaUiol CoUege, 35, 37.
Barry, Dr. William, 431, 567.
Basil the Great, 91.
Beeket, Thomas k, 9 ff., 15.
Beecher, Henry Ward, 319.
Benedictines, 40.
Benson, Joseph, 321.
Bentham, Jeremy, 400.
Berridge, John, 324.
Bible translations, 144 ff.
Biblical criticism, 420 f., 575.
Birrell, Augustine, 366, 543.
Black Death, 94, 104, 133 ff.
Black Prince, The, 128 ff.
Blair, Hugh, 279.
Boardman, Richard, 351.
Bohler, Peter. 224, 313, 316, 340.
Bolingbroke, 276.
Boniface VIII, 22, 65, 107, 217.
Boswell, James, 269.
Bossuet, J. B., 277, 585.
Bracton, Henry de, 19.
Bradwardine, Thomas, "Doctor Pro-
fundis," 45, 62 f.
Bray, Dr. Thomas, 273.
British Association for Advance-
ment of Science, 410.
Broad Churchmen, 417, 520.
Browning, Robert, 471.
Bryce, Lord, 573.
Buckley, Dr. J. M., 362.
Bunsen, Chevalier, 548.
Burgon, Dean, 531.
Burke, Edmund, 264, 393.
Burnett, Bishop, 283.
Burns, Robert, 265 f.
Bury, Richard de, 76, 79.
Bushnell, Horace, 319.
Butler, Bishop Joseph, 278, 281 f.,
302, 405.
Byron, Lord, 395.
Calvin, John, 416.
Calvinism, 315 ff., 420, 453.
Cariyle, Thomas, 402, 411 ff., 420.
Cathari, The, 105.
Catherine of Sienna, 109 f.
Cennick, John, 326.
Charles the Great (Charlemagne), 29.
Charles V (Emperor), 155.
Chaucer, 42, 101, 137, 146, 160. 165.
Chesterfield, Lord, 247.
Chillingworth, William. 279.
Christian Year, The, 468.
591
592
INDEX
Church, Conceptions of the, 520 ff. ;
endowments of, 69.
Church of England (see Anghcan
Church).
Church, Dean R. W., 414, 430, 460,
483, 540, 545. 572.
Clapham sect, 417, 459.
Clapton sect, 417.
Clarendon, Council of, 9.
Clarke, Dr. Adam, 342, 369.
Class meeting, 287, 335 ff.
Clement V. 73, 95, 108 f.
Clement VII, 153.
Clergy, cloistered and secular, 48.
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 471.
Cobbett. Wmiam, 395.
Coke, Thomas, 357, 370 f.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 227, 236,
417 ff., 474.
College, meaning of word, 33.
Comenius, John Amos, 208.
Constance, Council of, 116, 155, 169.
Copeland, William John, 533.
Corporation Act, 396.
Courtenay, WiUiam, 86 ff., 160.
Cowper, William, 266.
Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 83, 91, 159.
Crusades, xiv.
Curnock, Nehemiah, 215.
Dante, 110; "Convito," 155.
Darwin, Charles, 410. 563.
David, Christian, 288.
" De Causa Dei," 63.
" Defensor Pacis," 68.
Deism, 265, 276 f.
Dissenters (see Nonconformists).
Divine Right, doctrine of, 283.
Dolling, Father, 579.
Dominic. Father, 566.
Dominicans, 24, 97.
Dryden, John, 266.
Earthquake Council, The, 142.
Edward I, xv, 21 ff.
Edward II, 23.
Edward III, 70 ff.
Edward VI, 428.
Edwards, Jonathan, 287. 317 f., 374.
Eliot, George, 471.
Embury, Philip, 351.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 317.
England, social condition of, in eight-
eenth century, 240 ff., 282 ff. ;
expansion of, 261 ; in nineteenth
century, 392 ff.
English State Church (see Anghcan
Church).
Epworth. 183.
Erastianism. 117, 521, 534, 677.
Erigena, Scotus, 51.
Eucharist. 119 ff.
Evangelicalism, 427.
EvangeHcals, 414 ff., 517, 521, 524.
537, 580.
Evangelical Revival, 258, 265, 281,
415.
Fairbairn, Principal A. M., 55.
Faith and reason, 584.
Fetter Lane Society, 313.
Feudalism, xiv, 140.
Fielding, Henry, 268.
Fiske, John, 45.
Fitzralph, Richard, 45, 64.
Fleming, Richard, 155, 197.
Fletcher of Madeley, 321 ff., 358.
Foundery, The, 314.
Francis of Assisi, 96 ff.
Franciscans, 24, 64, 70, 91. 96 ff.
FraticelU, The, 99 ff.
Frederick II. 106.
French Revolution, 428.
Friars and monks, 90 f., 100 ff.
Froissart, James, 129.
Froude, James Anthony, 452, 461.
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 390, 453,
459 ff., 490, 498 f.
Garnier, Arnold, 72.
Garrick, David, 246 f.
Gasquet, Cardinal, 134 ff., 148 ff.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 169.
German pietism, 287.
Gerson, John, 93, 106, 159.
Gibbon, Edward, 269, 555.
Gibson, Bishop, 289, 303.
Gilbert, John, 73.
Gladstone, W. E., 488. 518, 549.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 266.
Gorham judgment, 531.
Gray, Thomas, 266.
Great Schism, 104, 109.
Great Slaughter, 38.
Gregory VII (Hildebrand), 6 ff., 67.
Gregory IX, 31, 106.
Gregory XI, 73, 88, 110, 138.
Grimshaw, William, 324.
INDEX
593
Grosseteste, Richard, xv ; Chancel-
lor of Oxford University and bishop
of Lincoln, 15 fif. ; the "Sharp
Epistle," 18 f.
Guier, Philip, 333.
Hampden controversy, 534 £f.
Hare, Julius Charles, 417, 423.
Harnack, Adolf, 51, 145.
Harris, Howell, 287, 320.
Hawkins, Dr. Edward, 482 ff.
Hazlitt, William, 395.
Hebdomadal Council, 542, 551.
Heck, Barbara, 351.
Henry I, 28.
Henry II, 9 f.
Henry III, 20.
Henry IV, 60, 168.
Henry VII, 127.
Henry VIII, 428, 517, 519.
Hereford, Nicholas, 168.
High Churchmen, 413, 420, 430, 534,
575 ff. (see also Anglo-Catholics).
Higher criticism, 421.
Hildebrand (Gregory VII), 6 flf., 17,
57, 111.
HiU, Rowland, 322.
History, Study of, xi, xiii, 78.
Hobbes, Thomas, 276.
Hogarth, 250, 253, 255.
Holy Roman Empire, 106 f.
Honorius III, 97.
Hooker, Richard, 237, 520, 577.
Hopkey, Miss Sophy, 217 ff.
Home, George, 305.
Humanism, xiv.
Hume, David, 241, 268, 405.
Humphreys, Joseph. 326.
Huntingdon, Lady, 292, 321.
Hus, John, 60, 149, 169.
Button, R. H., 269, 503.
Hutton, W. H., 15.
Hymns of Methodism, 347.
Innocent III, xv, 11 fif., 17, 30, 96.
Innocent IV, 18, 106.
Inquisition, 60.
Interdict on England, 16.
Ireland, The eternal problem of, 395.
Irish Church, Disestabhshment of,
507 f.
James, William, 350.
Jerome of Prague, 169.
2q
Jerusalem bishopric, 548.
Jessopp, Augustus, 97 f.
John, king of England, 11 fif.
John XXII (pope), 57, 65.
John XXIII (pope), 149.
John of Gaunt, 71 ff., 87, 113, 123,
129, 131 ff., 139.
John Street Church, 351.
Johnson, Samuel, 269, 276, 348, 374.
Jones, Griffith, 273.
Kant, Ethic of, 405, 418.
Keble, John, 390 f. ; first meeting
with Newman, 448 ; real founder
of Oxford Movement, 463 ff. ;
"The Christian Year," 468; Ox-
ford Assize Sermon, 510 ff.
Keble, Thomas, 533.
Kempis, Thomas k, 193, 442, 464.
Kingsley, Charles, 570.
Knights Templars, 95 f.
Knox, John, 416.
Langham, Archbishop, 44.
Langland, WilHam, 102, 135, 160.
Langton, Stephen, 12, 15 f.
Lavington, George, 304.
Law, William, 199, 287, 444, 464.
Lay investiture, controversy on, 11.
Lay preachers, 326 ff., 337.
Lea, Dr. H. C, 93.
Lechler, G. V., 25, 61 ff., 78, 87,
121 ff.
Lecky, W. E. H., 240.
Leo XIII, 555, 571.
Lessing, G. E., 406.
Liberty, 169 f.
Liddon, Canon H. P., 469, 487.
Lightfoot, Bishop J. B., 361, 574.
Lloyd, Dr. Charles, 426.
Locke, John, 274.
Lollards, 168.
Loofs, F., 274.
Lowell, James Russell, 671.
Low Churchmen, 414, 430, 524.
Luther, Martin, 141, 169, 225, 416.
"Lux Mundi," 575.
Lyell, Sir Charles, 410.
Macaulay, Lord, 302, 366, 417.
Magna Charta, 17.
Magnus, Albertus, 51.
Manning, Cardinal, 487, 531 ff., 568 f.
Marriott, Charles, 531 f.
594
INDEX
Marsiglio, 58 ; herald of democracy,
60 f., 79 ff., 106.
Marsilius of Padua, 58.
Martineau, Dr. James, 350, 399, 403,
437.
Mather, Alexander, 309.
Maurice, F. D., 417, 524.
Maxfield, Thomas, 326, 344.
McGiffert, A. C, 407, 478.
Medievalism, 3 f., 41 ff.
Merton, Walter de, 33 f., 36.
Merton College, 35.
Methodism, 99 ; name, 203 ; inner
history and theology, 346 f . ; an
army, 367 (see, also, John Wes-
ley).
Mill, James, 400.
Mill, John Stuart, 400 ff.
Milman, Dean H. H., 421.
Milton, John, 157, 242, 460.
Molther, Philip, 313.
Monasticism, 40, 91 ff.
Monks and friars, 90 f., 100 ff.
Montfort, Simon de, 19.
Montgomery, James, 349.
Moravian Church, 208, 288, 313 ff.,
338.
More, Sir Thomas, 150.
Morley, Lord, 404, 435.
Mozley, Dr. James B., 466, 487, 532.
Mozley, Thomas, 532.
Napoleon I, 258, 292.
Nelson, John, 296.
Neo-Anglicans, 522.
New England theology, 319.
New Learning, 39.
Newman, Frances William, 438.
Newman, John Henry, vii, xv, 235,
302 ; transcendent personality,
309 ; father and mother, 436 ;
conversion, 440 ; at Oxford, 441 ff. ;
example of transmitted influence,
446 ; fellow of Oriel, 448 ; or-
dained June 13, 1824, 451 ; curate
of St. Clement's church, 451 ;
public tutor at Oriel, 459 ; friend-
ship with Hurrell Froude, 459 ff. ;
serious illness, 473 ; study of the
Fathers, 479 ff. ; St. Mary's Ox-
ford, 483 ; dismissed from Oriel,
484; "The Arians of the Fourth
Century," 485 ; " Parochial and
Plain Sermons," 487 ff. ; traveling
in Southern Europe, 491 ff. ; con-
versations with Dr. Wiseman,
497 ff. ; " Lead, Kindly Light," and
poetry, 503 ; origin of Tractarian-
ism, 431, 510; "Tracts for the
Times," 513 ff. ; sermons at St.
Mary's, 524 ; Hampden contro-
versy, 524 ff . ; limitations, 538 ;
Tract Ninety, 538 ff. ; Episcopal
assault upon Newmanism, 543 ;
Jerusalem bishopric, 548 ; re-
signed St. Mary's, 552; "Essay
on the Development of Christian
Doctrine," 410, 553; secession,
566 ; "Apologia," 446, 570 ; honor-
ary fellow of Trinity College, 570;
Cardinal, 571 ; died August 11,
1890, 672; "Lectures on Catholi-
cism in England," 572; a misun-
derstood man, 580 ff. ; greatest
apologist for Rome, 585.
Nicholas IV, 36.
Nicoll, Sir W. Robertson, 566.
Noetics, 425, 458.
Nominalists, 52 ff.
Nonconformists, 396, 520, 536.
Norfolk, Duke of, 248.
Ockham, William of, the "Invin-
cible Doctor," 51, 57 f., 61, 70.
O'Connell, Daniel, 396.
Oglethorpe, General, 206.
Ordination, Controversy on, 360 f.
Orthodoxy, 574.
Overton, Canon J. H., 360 ff.
Oxford University, 27 ff., 30 ff., 34 ff.,
41 ff., 48, 90, 377, 394.
Paley, William, 405.
Palmer, William, 516, 530, 547.
Papacy, The, 9, 14, 23, 70. 73 ff.,
88 ff., 106 ff.. Ill, 116.
Paris, Matthew, 15.
Paris, University of, 29 ff., 44.
Parochial priesthood, 105.
Pascal, Blaise, 282.
Pattison, Mark, 240, 275, 282, 455,
572.
Peasants' Revolt, 138 ff.
Peel, 397.
Penance, 562.
Perronet, Vincent, 323.
Peter of Wakefield, 13.
Philip the Fair, ()5, 90, 107.
INDEX
595
Philip Augustus, 30.
Pilmoor, Joseph, 351.
Pitt, William, xv, 248, 264, 397.
Pius IX, 568.
Portionist, 37.
Predestination, 315.
Premillenarianism, 416.
Protestantism, 170, 523, 540, 555, 586.
Purgatory, 562 f.
Puritanism, 242, 285, 577.
Purvey, 147 ff., 168.
Pusey, Edward Bouverie, 451, 487,
521, 525 ff., 550, 574 f.
Rankin, Thomas, 356.
Rashdall, Hastings, 41, 52, 55 ff., 57.
Rationalism, 274 ff.
Realists, 52 ff., 61.
Reason and understanding, 418 f.
Reform Bill, 397.
Reformation, origin of, 115.
Reginald, Sub-prior, 11 f.
Renan, Ernest, 566.
Renaissance, 111.
Rich, Edmund, 15, 40.
Richard II, 89, 131.
" Richard Carvel," 356.
Richardson, Samuel, 268.
Ritualism, 577 ff.
Robertson, A., 59.
Rogers, Thorold, 93, 271.
Rolle, Richard, 146.
Roman CathoUc Church, 498, 538,
560 ff., 573.
Romanticism, 476.
Rome, 496.
Romilly, Sir Samuel, 252.
Rose, Hugh James, 461, 512 f., 529.
Rosebery, Lord, 258.
Rousseau, J. J., 266.
Routh, Dr. Martin, 459.
Royal Society, 276.
Ruskin, John, 37.
ScheUing, F. W. J., 418.
Schleiermacher, F. E., 406 ff., 418,
420, 470.
Scholasticism, 50 ff., 585.
Scott, Thomas, 443, 456.
Scott, Sir Walter, 243, 265 f., 477.
Scotus, John Duns, 51, 55; "Doctor
Subtilis," 56, 58.
Shairp, Principal, 568.
Shelley, P. B., 395.
Shoreham, William of, 146.
Sidgwick, Henry, 241.
Smith, Sydney, 374, 416.
Smollett, Tobias. 268.
Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, 287.
Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 273, 287.
Southey, Robert, 332 ff.
South Sea Bubble, 246, 262.
Speculation, religious, 391.
Spencer, Henry, 53.
Stanley, Dean H. P., 417, 421, 455.
Stanton, Father, 579.
Statute of Provisors, 74 ff.
Steele, Richard, 268.
Stephen (King), 9.
Stephen, Sir James, 319, 536.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 230, 278, 301,
373, 415.
Sterne, Laurence, 268.
Stillingfleet, Bishop Edward, 276.
Stubbs, Bishop William, 12.
Sudbury, Archbishop, 142.
Sunday schools. Origin of, 273.
Swift, Dean, 267, 270.
Sylvester II (Pope), 29.
Tait, Archbishop, 528.
Taylor, Jeremy, 193, 237.
Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 471.
Test Act, 396.
Thackeray, W. M., 243.
Thirlwall, Bishop Connop, 423 f ., 629.
Thorpe, William, 168.
Tolerance, 159.
Toleration, Act of, 283.
Toplady, Augustus, 322, 349.
Tractarians, 346. 404, 431, 475, 528 ff.
Tractarianism, 391, 414, 425, 430,
510, 517, 534, 544, 574 ff.
"Tracts for the Times," 513 ff., 521.
Transubstantiation, 117 ff., 142 f.
Trevelyan, Sir G. M., 60, 130.
Tulloch, Principal John, 575.
Tyndale, William, 150.
TjT-rell, Father George, 585.
Unitarianism, 317, 319.
University, meaning of word, 36.
Urban II, 9.
Urban V, 44. 70.
Urban VI, 115, 153.
Utilitarianism, 399 ff.
596
INDEX
Vacarius, 32.
Vasey, Thomaa, 358.
Walpole, Sir Robert, 247. 262.
Walsh, Thomas, 309, 332.
Walsingham, Thomas, 92.
Warburton, Bishop William, 290, 305.
Ward, Dr. Wilfred, 551, 568.
Ward, W. G., 544 ff., 551.
Warton, Joseph, 146.
Washington, George, 262.
Wat Tyler, 139.
Watchnight service, 335.
Watkinson, Dr. W. L., 371.
Watts, Isaac, 347.
Wedgwood, Julia, 239.
Wellington, Duke of, 396.
Wesley, Charles, 200, 216, 320, 327,
347 ff., 358, 360, 364.
Wesley, John, vii, xv ; prophet of
divine realities, 179 ; birth and
early training, 179 ff. ; Charter-
house, 188; Christ Church, 190;
deacon and priest, 195 ; fellow of
Lincoln College, 195, 201 ; curate
at Wroote, 198 ; Holy Club, 201
"Methodist," 203; with the Mo-
ravians, 208 ff. ; Savannah, 215 ff.
Miss Hopkey, 217 ff. ; conversion
231 ff., 381 ; heart of his message
235; Journal, 270, 365; Herrn-
hut, 288 ; excluded from Anglican
pulpits, 290; field and itinerant
preaching, 293 ff. ; "Earnest Ap-
peal," 294; preaching, appearance,
and manner, 296 f . ; Bristol, 299 ;
persecution and opposition, 301 ff. ;
first Methodist Society at the
Foundery, 314; Fetter Lane, 314;
dispute with Whitefield, 315;
London Conference in 1770, 321 ;
lay preachers, 326 ff. ; "Notes on
the New Testament," 330; organ-
izer, 334; "Treatise on Baptism,"
339 ; Christian perfection and
assurance, 341 ff. ; hymn transla-
tions, 349 ; Methodism in Colonies,
351 ; ordained Coke for America,
358 ; Deed of Declaration, 362 ;
honored in old age, 363 ; letter to
Wilberforce, 364 ; death, 365 ;
character and influence, 366 ff. ;
literary labors, 377 f.
Wesley, Samuel, 184, 187, 193, 196, 203.
Wesley, Susannah, 182 ff., 193, 195,
327.
Westcott, Bishop B. F., 150, 417.
Westley, John, 180.
Whatcoat, Richard, 358.
Whateley, Richard, 425, 449 ff., 456,
529.
White, Blanco, 457.
White, Dr. John, 181.
Whitefield, George, 201, 222, 290 ff.,
315, 364.
Whitgift, Archbishop, 453.
Whyte, Dr. Alexander, 489.
Wilberforce, Robert Isaac, 530 f.
Wilberforce, Samuel, 579.
Williams, Isaac, 516, 532, 550.
Wiseman, Cardinal, 497 ff., 539.
Wordsworth, WiUiam, 266, 411.
Workman, Dr. H. B., 25, 45, 53, 61,
73, 104, 206, 341.
Wycliffe, John, originator of Euro-
pean Protestantism, vii ; early
environment and training, 21 ff. ;
Oxford, 27 ; moral and spiritual
exhaustion of the times, 36 ; Mas-
ter of Balliol, 43 ; Doctor of Di-
vinity, 44 ; Schoolman, 50, 70, 122 ;
realist, 60 f . ; political and anti-
papal pamphlets, 68 ff. ; rector of
Lutterworth, 72 ; literary activity,
76; on church endowments, 67 f.,
85 ; a typical Englishman, 83 ;
quarrels with Papacy, 84 f., 114;
ecclesiastical trials, 86, 89 ; five
bulls against him, 88 ; evangelical
poverty, 88 ; polemic against
friars and monks, 90 f., 101 ff. ;
faulty logic, 103 ; against sacerdo-
talism, 104 ; ecclesiastical protest-
antism, 112; doctrine of the
Church, 116; condemned by Uni-
versity Council, 123; exiled from
Oxford, 143 ; translating the Scrip-
tures, 143 ff. ; "Doctor Evangeli-
cus," 144; order of poor priests,
151 ff. ; "Trialogus," "Opus Evan-
gelicum," "Cruciata," 152 ff. ;
smitten by paralysis and death,
154 f. ; character, 156 f.
Wykeham, William, 34. 36, 85.
Zinzendorf, 208 f., 224 f., 288.
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