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The Liturgical Dimension of the Oxford Tracts, 1833-1841

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Lawrence F. Barmann S.J.
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Extract

R. W. Church began his classic work on The Oxford Movement with the remark that “What is called the Oxford or Tractarian movement began, without doubt, in a vigorous effort for the immediate defence of the Church against serious dangers, arising from the violent and threatening temper of the days of the Reform Bill.” Historians of the Oxford Movement who, unlike Church, were not participants in the events of which they write need continually to remind themselves that the Oxford Movement was not a premeditated and carefully planned theological campaign. Rather, it was an ad hoc measure to meet a definite and immediate problem.

In the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, agitation for reform of all the national institutions swept across England, and included in these national institutions was the Church of England. In 1828 a resolution favoring the repeal of the Test Act was carried in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, and in 1829 the Relief Bill was carried, allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament and to hold offices under the crown. With the Reform Bill of 1832 the electoral structure for seating men in Parliament was brought into partial conformity with contemporary developments and population distribution. And with the success of parliamentary reform, English churchmen feared that church reform would soon be thrust upon them. The bishops as a group had been hostile to parliamentary reform and to reform in general, with the result that popular pamphlets against churchmen and demand for church reform reached alarming proportions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 1968 , pp. 92 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1968

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References

1. Church, R. W., The Oxford Movement, Twelve Years, 1833-1845 (London, 1892), p. 1Google Scholar.

2. Vidler, Alec R., The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day (Baltimore, 1961), pp. 33–55Google Scholar.

3. The most recent account of this anticlerical outburst is Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church (London, 1966), I, 26–29Google Scholar.

4. Palmer, William, A Narrative of Events Connected with the Publication of the Tracts for the Times (London, 1883), p. 38Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., p. 98.

6. The 59th Tract, entitled “Church and State,” written by Richard Hurrell Froude and published on Apr. 25, 1835, is an effort “to explain what it is that the Union of Church and State consists in, as now enforced by the law of the land.” Tracts for the Times, II, 1834–1835 (London, 1836)Google Scholar, No. 59. See also the sermon preached by John Keble before the university on the anniversary of William IV's accession, June 26, 1835, entitled “Church and State.” Keble, John, Sermons, Academical and Occasional (Oxford, 1847), pp. 149–72Google Scholar. These two pieces from two of the leading Tractarians furnish an adequate introduction to the mind of the early Oxford Movement on the question of church-state relations. The whole of Chadwick's volume cited above is an excellent commentary on the problem by the leading contemporary ecclesiastical historian of the period.

7. Palmer, , Narrative, p. 99Google Scholar. The most recent treatment of tractarian attitudes toward prayer book reform is Härdelin, Alf, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist (Uppsala, 1965), pp. 259 ff.Google Scholar

8. Palmer, , Narrative, p. 99Google Scholar. Bishop Blomneld is said to have expressed himself in a private letter as agreeing with the sentiment which Bishop Marsh had expressed in 1814 that the anathemas “might have been consistently rejected from the Athanasian Creed when it was adopted by our Reformers.” Mathieson, W. L., English Church Reform, 1815-1840 (London, 1923), p. 50Google Scholar.

9. The Advertisement to the first volume of the collected Tracts lists liturgical deficiencies, together with lack of discipline and authority, as causes for what is lamentable in the state of the Church of England at this time.

10. Significant recent studies of Keble are Beek, W. J. A. M., John Keble's Literary and Religious Contribution to the Oxford Movement (Nijmegen, 1959)Google Scholar; Battiscombe, Georgiana, John Keble: A Study in Limitations (London, 1963)Google Scholar; McGreevy, Michael A., “John Keble on the Anglican Church and the Church Catholic,” Heythrop Journal, I (1964), 27–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. It was later published in Keble, , Sermons, pp. 129–48Google Scholar.

12. Newman, John Henry, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, 1864), p. 100Google Scholar.

13. Chadwick, Owen (ed.), The Mind of the Oxford Movement (London, 1960), p. 34Google Scholar.

14. Newman, , Apologia, p. 104Google Scholar.

15. A contemporary's evaluation of Hugh Rose is found in Church, Oxford Movement, pp. 95-96.

16. Williams, Isaac, Autobiography (London, 1892), pp. 64–65Google Scholar, wrote: “We then called on Palmer, who was one of the very few in Oxford — indeed the only one at that time — who sympathized with us, and, although he did not altogether understand Froude, or our ways and views — the less so as he was not himself an Oxford, but a Dublin man — yet he was extremely hearty in the cause; looking more to external, visible union and strength than we did, for we only had at heart certain principles.”

17. On Dec. 15, 1833, Newman wrote to Froude at Barbados: “Soon after I had a letter from Rose, who told me he had not only rated at Palmer for the imbecility of the address, but had remonstrated with him for thwarting the tracts, which he said was the only good part of the scheme. However, Palmer is still dreaming of some grand union of Churchmen against the Government.” Mozley, Anne (ed.), Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman (London, 1891), II, 6–7Google Scholar.

18. Quoted by Worley, George, The Catholic Revival of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1894), p. 61Google Scholar.

19. The Rivington edition of the Tracts for the Times (London, 1836–1841)Google Scholar is used in this study unless otherwise noted. All future references will be abbreviated to Tracts, followed by the relevant volume, tract, and page numbers. The pagination throughout the bound volumes of the Tracts is not cumulative. Rather, each new tract in the volume begins anew its own page numbering.

20. Tracts, I, No. 3, 1.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., I, No. 3, 3.

23. Ibid., I, No. 9, 2-3.

24. Ibid., I, No. 11, 6.

25. Keble, John, Christian Year (London, 1827), pp. v–viGoogle Scholar, noted in the Introduction: “Next to a sound rule of faith there is nothing of so much consequence as a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion: and it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to possess, in her authorized formularies, an ample and secure provision for both. But in times of much leisure and unbounded curiosity, when excitement of every kind is sought after with a morbid eagerness, this part of the merit of our Liturgy is likely in some measure to be lost, on many even of its sincere admirers: the very tempers, which most require such discipline, setting themselves, in general, most decidedly against it.” He then explained how his volume of verse was intended as an aid to help people bring their own thoughts and feelings into greater harmony with “those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book.”

26. Tracts, I, No. 13, 11.

27. Ibid., I, No. 18, 2-3.

28. Williams, , Autobiography, pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

29. Tracts, I, No. 22, 3-4.

30. Ibid., I, No. 22, 9.

31. Ibid., I, No. 43, 5.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., I, No. 43, 8.

34. Ibid.

35. Horton Davies of Princeton University has suggested to the author that the criticism put forward by Tiptop might well be a summary of one of the Evangelical pamphlets current at the time of Keble's writing, and that the name Tiptop might even be a mildly amusing play on the real name of the pamphlet's author. Davies's own reflections on the Oxford Movement and English liturgy can be found in Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England: From Watts and Wesley to Maurice, 1690-1850 (Princeton, 1961), III, 243–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Tracts, I, No. 43, 9.

37. Ibid., I, No. 43, 15.

38. Ibid., I, No. 34, 7-8.

39. Ibid., I, No. 38, 10.

40. Ibid., I, No. 41, 4.

41. Ibid., II, No. 63, 9.

42. This letter is not found in the English edition, but it is included in the American edition. Tracts for the Times (New York, 1839), II, 1 ff.Google Scholar

43. On Aug. 17, 1838, Newman wrote to J. W. Bowden from Oriel College: “Accordingly I have written to the Archdeacon, not as archdeacon, but as a friend, to say that I propose to stop the Tracts and withdraw the existing ones from circulation; that this is very unpleasant to me; that the only way I can see to hinder it is, if I could learn privately from the Bishop any particular Tract he disapproves, which I would at once suppress.” Mozley, , Correspondence of Newman, II, 233Google Scholar.

44. Tracts (American ed.), II, Letter, 3-4.

45. Ibid., II, Letter, 11-12.

46. “We do not then yield to the Romanists, as to the greatness of our privileges; we do not think that our Lord is less really and spiritually present than they; that He communicates Himself less by His Sacraments than they; that we less receive His Body and Blood, that our sinful bodies are less cleansed by His glorious Body: that it is less ‘the salve of immortality and sovereign preservative against death; a deifkal communion; the sweet dainties of our Saviour; the pledge of eternal health; the defence of faith; the hope of the Resurrection; the food of immortality; the healthful grace; the conservatory to everlasting life;’ we do not believe ‘This is my Body’ less than they; we blame them, not as exceeding as to the greatness of the spiritual gift contained in that Sacrament, (all human language and thoughts must fall short,) but for their carnal conceptions of it; for attempting to explain to man's senses the mode of his Saviour's Presence; for trying to solve the apparent contradiction that the elements are still what they were, but are, over and above, to us the Body and Blood of our Lord; for longing, with the weak faith of Nicodemus, to know the how of things Divine and Spiritual, and so for debasing them, and by their explanations leading, at least their Priesthood, to pride, and then to unbelief.” Ibid., II, Letter, 87-88. Härdelin, , Tractarian Understanding, pp. 195 ff.Google Scholar, treats of Pusey's letter.

47. Tracts (American ed.), II, Letter, 122–23Google Scholar.

48. The sermon is published in ibid., III. For a contemporary account of the results of the sermon see Church, Oxford Movement, pp. 328–35Google Scholar.

49. Tracts (American ed.), III, Sermon, iii.

50. Church, Oxford Movement, p. 328Google Scholar.

51. Ibid., pp. 327-29.

52. Tracts, III, No. 75, 1-2.

53. Ibid., III, No. 75, 2.

54. Ibid. The 88th Tract of the series was a translation of the Greek devotions of Bishop Andrews which owed much to the Roman breviary.

55. Ibid., III, No. 75, 2.

56. Ibid., V, No. 86, 7-8.

57. Williams's observations on Methodism take their start from this key sentence: “The benefit of this Heavenly and Divine guide dwelling among us which we have in the Church, thus after a superhuman manner calling us to repent, and then regulating our repentance, may be the more strongly seen by the instance of an irregular call of the same kind, which has extensively prevailed in this country by the teaching of Wesley and his followers.” Ibid., V, No. 86, 63. The remarks on Roman Catholicism take their lead from this observation: “To turn the attention too exclusively to certain great principles, without reference to human affections, and lower responsibilities, may imply presumptuousness in man, and be detrimental, in the highest degree, to the moral character. It were well worthy of inquiry whether there be not some grand fundamental error of this kind developed in the Church of Rome.” Ibid., V, No. 86, 94.

58. Ibid., V, No. 86, 91.

59. Evelyn Underhill, in an interesting article, finds that there are four spiritual results of the Oxford Movement: 1) restoration of Catholic tradition; 2) revival of sacramental and liturgical worship; 3) disciplined life; and 4) sanctity. Underhill, Evelyn, “The Spiritual Significance of the Oxford Movement,” Hibbert Journal, XXXI (1933), 403Google Scholar.

60. Bricknell, W. Simcox, A Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology: A Complete Analytical Arrangement of the Charges Delivered by the Prelates of the Anglican Church, From 1837 to 1842 Inclusive; So Far as They Relate to the Tractarian Movement (Oxford, 1845), p. 596Google Scholar.