Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/182

 credence table—everything, in short, bore witness to a state of carelessness and neglect, and desecration of God's House."

It is well that you should hear these details respecting the state of the Church before the Oxford Movement, that you may be the more ready to enter into the spirit of that Movement.

There were men at Oxford who, dreading the future of the Church if this state of things were allowed to go on, determined to do something to save the Church. They were alarmed at the indifference of the Broad Churchmen to the importance of doctrine to the life of the Church.

It was in the year 1833—remember that year, it is a very important one—the Oxford Movement began in the Common Room of Oriel College. Its chief leaders were Newman, Keble, Pusey, the two Wilberforces, and Hurrell Froude. They were all resident Fellows of Oriel. They saw "that the Church could no longer stand still," as Mr. Hore has said; "it must either become worse or better; either become committed to a formal Latitudinarianism, and the Broad Church become the Church of the future, in which case there would be an expungement from its services, certainly of the Athanasian Creed, probably of the Nicene Creed, possibly of the Apostles' Creed also, or she must reclaim her Catholic birthright."

These men, therefore, upheld the Catholicity of the Church of England. They taught that the Church was Apostolic in origin; that the Bible should be received as interpreted by the Church and Fathers of the early centuries. They laid great stress upon the importance of doctrinal