Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/364

 The English Law Courts. nineteenth centuries, however, the English Church, largely owing to mischievous Han overian and Whig influences, had not only drifted from, but lost sight of her moorings, and had sunk into a state of torpor which was scarcely distinguishable from spiritual death, and which was the causa causans for all practical purposes of English noncomformists. About — roughly speaking — the year 1830 a handful

of young men at Ox- ford University set themselves to the Herculean task of arousing the Church to a true conception of her mission and spiritual powers. Foremost among them were Richard Hurrcll Froude and John Henry Newman — afterwards the famous Cardinalpriest of Birmingham. The way had already been prepared by the hymns of the saintly Keble, in which the catholicity of the Church was insistent ly proclaimed. The CARDINAL Oxford reformers conveyed their views to the world in a series of short pamphlets entitled " Tracts for the Times." It need scarcely be observed that this reassertion of the position of the Church aroused the strong hostility of clergymen and laymen of " low" or " broad " church sympathies. The oppo sition reached a climax when Newman, in his memorable tract No. 60, analyzed the thirty-nine articles, and showed that they were ejastic enough to embrace many doc trines hitherto supposed to be distinctively and exclusively Roman. That Newman was right in his contention is now conceded

33i

by all educated controversialists. The most superficial survey of the history of the Reformation demonstrates the fact that the articles were intended to be articles, not of compromise, but of comprehensiveness. But the atmosphere was far too highly charged with electricity for a cool consider ation of facts like these at that time and the storm descended on the heads of the Oxford movement with a violence which drove 'the brightest intellect in England into the Church of Rome. The ludicrous project — in whose concep tion Baron Bunsen played an operative part.— of a Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem (a project, by the way, which the pres ent Archbishop of Dublin has recently made a foolish at tempt to rival by his consecration of Senor Cabrera) did New man's Anglicanism to death. The un sound and injurious decision of the Privy NEWMAN. Council in the Gorham case produced the secession of Archdeacon, afterwards Cardinal, Manning. Other men went to Rome also, and its enemies thought that the Oxford counter-reformation was dead. In point of fact, it was signally and finally vic torious. Pusey, the greatest statesman in the church, stood firm. Younger men grew up and gathered round him. The Catholic idea spread. In the brilliant language of Mr. Gladstone, the Church had " lit up like wildfire, the blazing title of catholicity on her brow "; and the dullest observer of English religious life could not fail to see