Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and CommentsGuiney, Louise Imogen
History
Hurrell Froude: Memoranda and Comments
Guiney, Louise Imogen
Froude, Richard Hurrell, 1803-1836
‘He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman
to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete.
He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art;
and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion.
He had no turn for theology as such. He set no sufficient value on the
writings of the Fathers, on the detail or development of doctrine, on
the definite traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, on the
teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, or on the controversies out of
which they arose. He took an eager courageous view of things, on the
whole. I should say that his power of entering into the minds of
others did not equal his other gifts: he could not believe, for
instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be anti-Christian. On
many points, he would not believe but that I agreed with him, when I
did not: he seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a
different kind: the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a High
Tory of the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism of the
opponents of the Reform Bill. He was smitten with the love of the
Theocratic Church: he went abroad, and was shocked by the degeneracy
which he thought he saw in the Catholics of Italy.
‘It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological
creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught
me to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and, in the
same degree, to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea
of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe
in the Real Presence.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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