Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/61

 peared in six parts between 1860 and 1877, was not addressed to Hebrew students. It was part of a scheme for a popular commentary on the whole Bible, of which Pusey alone completed his share.

Great as was Pusey's oriental learning and widely exerted as was his influence in preventing the adoption in England of immature critical theories, the main work of his career was in connection with that great revival of church life which began between 1830 and 1840.

Pusey was in his early years a liberal in politics. He advocated Peel's re-election for the university in 1829, after his adoption of Roman catholic emancipation, and spoke of the Test Acts as ‘disgraceful laws.’ But the overwhelming triumph of political liberalism in 1832 seemed to him to threaten the church of England with change or mutilation, and, like others of her firmest adherents, he grew alarmed. His first attempt to assist in repelling the attacks of liberalism on the church appeared in the form of a reply to some proposals for the reform of the English cathedral system, which were recommended in 1832 by Lord Henley, the son-in-law of Sir Robert Peel. In his ‘Remarks on the Prospective and Past Benefits of Cathedral Institutions’ (1833), Pusey defended the existing system as having supplied some of the clergy with those opportunities for study which had produced, and would produce again, the chief works in English theology, and the soundest schemes of theological teaching. At the same time he suggested a few changes in the principles on which appointments were made to the chapters. Some of these have since been independently adopted. But Pusey came to see that the times called for a more thorough defence of the church. To meet the prevailing ignorance there was need of a full statement of the points in which the church of England radically differed from the various nonconformist sects, which, to the popular mind, claimed equally to represent primitive Christianity. At the same time the advances of rationalism could only be stemmed by the steady growth among the church's defenders of the conviction that she was divinely instituted. His friend Newman grasped this position before Pusey, and soon gave practical effect to his view. In September 1833 Newman commenced the ‘Tracts for the Times,’ with the object of ‘contributing something towards the practical revival of doctrines [such as the apostolic succession and the holy catholic church] which, although held by the great divines of our church, have become practically obsolete with the majority of her members’ (Tracts for the Times, vol. i., advertisement). Keble and others joined him at once. At the end of the year Pusey began to work with them, but it was nearly two years before he had health and leisure to throw all his energy into the movement.

Pusey's adhesion to the Oxford movement lent it great weight. His learning, academical and social position, high character, and open-hearted charity had already made him well known. ‘He was able,’ as Newman said, ‘to give a name, a power, and a personality to what was without him a sort of mob.’ Popular report soon gave him a prominence beyond that which was due to his actual share in the early stages of the work. He was ranked with Newman as the prime mover, and the whole revival was called indifferently ‘Puseyism’ or ‘Newmania.’ He soon altered the character of the ‘Tracts’ from stirring appeals to solid doctrinal treatises. His own most important contributions to them were those on baptism and on the holy eucharist. The former, entitled ‘Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism,’ was published in three parts (Nos. 67, 68, and 69 of the ‘Tracts’) in August-October 1835. In these Pusey maintained that regeneration is connected with baptism both in scripture and in the writings of the early church. A second edition of the first of the three tracts appeared in 1839; in it the argument was entirely confined to scripture, but was expanded from forty-nine to four hundred pages. Pusey never had leisure to restate the argument from the fathers. His ‘Tracts’ on the holy eucharist appeared in 1836. Their primary object was to recall the attention of churchmen to the almost forgotten sacrificial aspect of the eucharist, as it was held by the early church and constantly asserted in the writings of the best Anglican divines. At the same time he was careful to guard his statements against any popular confusion with the distinctive doctrine of the Roman church.

But he rendered perhaps greater literary service to the work of the Oxford school by his scheme for translating the most valuable of the writings of the fathers. ‘The Oxford Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, anterior to the Division of East and West,’ was planned in the summer of 1836. It at once enlisted the interest of William Howley, archbishop of Canterbury, and of a wide circle of readers; at one time there were 3,700 subscribers. The first volume appeared in 1838. It was a translation of St. Augustine's ‘Confessions,’ with a careful preface by Pusey on the value and necessity of patristic study, and on the special interest of St.