The Oxford Movement; Twelve Years, 1833-1845Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Religion
The Oxford Movement; Twelve Years, 1833-1845
Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Oxford movement
complicated and perplexing reality, was not to his taste. He was apt to
accept them on what he considered adequate authority, and his
argumentation, formidable as it always was, recalled, even when most
unanswerable at the moment, the application of pure mathematics without
allowance for the actual forces, often difficult to ascertain except by
experiment, which would have to be taken account of in practice.
The tendency of this section of able men was unquestionably Romewards,
almost from the beginning of their connexion with the movement. Both the
theory and the actual system of Rome, so far as they understood it, had
attractions for them which nothing else had. But with whatever
perplexity and perhaps impatience, Mr. Newman's power held them back. He
kept before their minds continually those difficulties of fact which
stood in the way of their absolute and peremptory conclusions, and of
which they were not much inclined to take account. He insisted on those
features, neither few nor unimportant nor hard to see, which proved the
continuity of the English Church with the Church Universal. Sharing
their sense of anomaly in the Anglican theory and position, he pointed
out with his own force and insight that anomaly was not in England only,
but everywhere. There was much to regret, there was much to improve,
there were many unwelcome and dangerous truths, _invidiosi veri_, to be
told and defended at any cost. But patience, as well as honesty and
courage, was a Christian virtue; and they who had received their
Christianity at the hands of the English Church had duties towards it
from which neither dissatisfaction nor the idea of something better
could absolve them. _Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna_ is the motto for
every one whose lot is cast in any portion of Christ's Church. And as
long as he could speak with this conviction, the strongest of them could
not break away from his restraint. It was when the tremendous question
took shape, Is the English Church a true Church, a real part of the
Church Catholic?--when the question became to his mind more and more
doubtful, at length desperate--that they, of course, became more
difficult to satisfy, more confident in their own allegations, more
unchecked in their sympathies, and, in consequence, in their dislikes.
And in the continued effort--for it did continue--to make them pause and
wait and hope, they reacted on him; they asked him questions which he
found it hard to answer; they pressed him with inferences which he might
put by, but of which he felt the sting; they forced on him all the
indications, of which every day brought its contribution, that the
actual living system of the English Church was against what he had
taught to be Catholic, that its energetic temper and spirit condemned
and rejected him. What was it that private men were staunch and
undismayed? What was it that month by month all over England hearts and
minds were attracted to his side, felt the spell of his teaching, gave
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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