As we saw in the
previous posting on this subject, a number of people became worried
by the success of the Oxford Movement in waking people up to the perceived need
to return the Church of England to a more traditional understanding of
Christian doctrine and even the meaning and purpose or religion. Those with a vested interest in adapting
doctrine and practice to modern conditions to make the Church of England more
relevant to the modern age needed a cause around which they could rally.
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| Alexis de Tocqueville |
These included Whig (liberal) politicians, adherents of
the “democratic religion” soon to be known as socialism, and “Protestantizers,”
i.e., those who disagreed with the
theory that the Church of England is a “Catholic” church. It was becoming increasingly apparent, just
as de Tocqueville was observing at this time in his notes for Democracy in America— possibly with the
Church of England in mind — that the Church of England was beginning to come
apart at the seams, always a danger for a political religion of any faith or
philosophy if the political entity to which it is linked changes its philosophy
of government or loses its independence.
As related in the previous posting on this subject, the
incident that provoked a storm of protest from virtually all the parties at
Oxford except for the budding “Broad Church” (socialist) sect was the
appointment by Lord Melbourne of Reverend Renn Hampden to the Regius Divinity
professorship. Hampden’s Bampton
Lectures, which had pretty much been forgotten until Melbourne gave Hampden the
plum assignment in an obviously political move, were filled with what Newman
and others declared would cause dissension among the members of the university
— which proved to be the case. A large
number of University faculty petitioned King William IV to rescind the
appointment. Having no effective power,
of course, the king was not about to withdraw the Royal Assent, regardless of
his personal feelings in the matter.
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| John Henry Newman |
Once again, the basic issue was the question of the
identity of the Church of England. Is it
Protestant as the “Low Church” party claimed?
Is it Catholic as the “High Church” party theorized? Or is it even Christian as that term is
traditionally meant, or in the “democratic religious” (socialist-modernist) sense
as the new “Broad Church” party was beginning to assert?
Newman responded with his theory of “the Via Media,” the “Middle
Way,” an existing concept to which he added the results of his researches into
the early Church Fathers. This was a
term found in the philosophy of Aristotle, who taught that the way of virtue is
to follow the middle way between two extremes; “moderation in all things.”
In Anglicanism,
the origin of the Via Media has traditionally been assigned to the theologian
Richard Hooker (1554-1600) in his Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594,
1597, and later). Recent scholarship
reveals that Hooker never actually used the term, although he used the concept
— in a different sense than Newman.
The older, pre-Newman sense of the Via Media dates from
the earliest days of the English Reformation in an effort to avoid the
political controversies that led to open warfare on the continent. To ensure political stability — an important consideration
in an England still divided following the Wars of the Roses — the idea was that
civil authority would have the final say-so in religious disputes.
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| Richard Hooker |
This understanding of the Via Media, as might be expected,
was unacceptable to the members of the Oxford Movement as it supported
Erastianism, the belief that the State has the ultimate power to decide matters
of religious truth. As this was one of
the chief complaints that inspired the Movement, Newman’s use of the term was a
very bold as well as clever move.
By using a term that scholars associated with the
“Elizabethan Settlement” that had led to the adoption of the Thirty-Nine
Articles, Newman sought to strengthen the link between the original reformers
and the Movement. This would allow the
members of the Movement to assert with some degree of credibility that both
they and the early Anglican divines were walking a middle way between the
radical reformers who sought to change fundamental Christian doctrines, and the
Catholic Church under the pope. Its
validity remains controversial in Anglicanism to this day.
What made the situation much more volatile was the fact
that the Oxford Movement had now caught the attention of the public. Unfortunately, this was a public almost as
ill-equipped to understand the complexity of the issues as the people of
today. Almost the sole advantage the
Oxford Movement (as well as Gregory XVI) enjoyed was that socialism, modernism,
and New Age thought were still in their infancy and had not yet entered the
public consciousness as the right way to think.
Newman’s concept of the Via Media appeared in a number of
tracts, later collected and published in book form. The authorities and the public, however, were
beginning to get suspicious of what was going on. It was at this point that the old charge of
“Romanism” or “Popery” reared its head and began gaining a great deal of force.
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| Rev. R.W. Church |
The problem was that Newman and a number of others, in
order to counter the popularity of Hampden’s pamphlet, adopted a more
aggressive stance in defense of orthodox Christianity against what in substance
was a vague deism. In defense of
Hampden’s new version of Christianity and innovative theology tailored to the
presumed needs of the modern age, Hampden’s supporters accused Newman and the
other leaders of the Movement of “Romanizing.”
This was a little ironic, as the Thirty-Nine Articles had been designed
and intended to institute a religious test specifically to exclude Catholics.
According to R.W. Church, suggesting the opponents of the
Movement realized they could not defeat Newman and the others on the basis of
logical argument or empirical evidence, a satirical pamphlet was published. The pamphlet, Pastoral Epistle from His Holiness the Pope to Some Members of the
University of Oxford, was probably (according to Church) written by Charles
Dickinson (1792-1842) under the inspiration — or at the direction — of Richard Whately,
a strong supporter of Hampden.
Playing to ignorance and popular prejudice, the pamphlet
was (in Church’s opinion) clever, but hardly truthful or honest. It purported to be an encyclical from Pope
Gregory XVI to the leaders of the Oxford Movement who — in the best style of
the peculiarly English type of anti-Catholic bigotry — are portrayed as secret
agents of the pope and dupes of Rome.
It was perhaps just a little too cunning. As Church remarked, “It was clever, but not
clever enough to stand, at least in Oxford, against Dr. Pusey’s dignified and
gravely earnest Remonstrance against
its injustice and trifling.” (Church, The
Oxford Movement, op. cit., 141.) Dickinson,
by the way, was given the Anglican bishopric of Meath in 1840, and served until
his death, coincidentally on July 12, 1842, the day of the annual celebration
of the defeat of “popery” in Ireland at the Battle of the Boyne, July 12, 1690
(July 1, O.S.).
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| Rev. Renn Hampden |
The pamphlet, however, accomplished its purpose, which was
not so much to defend Hampden’s religious opinions. Rather, it was to divert attention away from
the issue — the effort to transform Christianity — by turning Hampden into a
martyr and calling into question the motives of the members of the Oxford
Movement. To this day histories of the
Oxford Movement written from a “Broad Church” perspective neglect to mention
that Hampden had the full force of Church, State, and public opinion behind him
and present the whole episode as a “persecution” of Hampden rather than as a
defense of orthodoxy.
The tactic, while violating the principles of both faith
and reason, succeeded in diverting attention away from the real issue of
religious orthodoxy, and united former antagonists under the banner of “No
Popery.” Those who had been angry with
Hampden for his reinvention of Christianity — Evangelicals, High Church, Low
Church, and political liberals and conservatives — were now united against the
Movement by the fear of the Romish Menace.
Nor was the Movement prepared for either the accusation or
the manner in which it was made. It is
one thing to counter bad arguments with logic or alleged facts with the truth. This the members of the Oxford Movement were
well capable of doing, as they had proven time and again.
It is quite another thing altogether to be confronted with
vague and formless assertions with no specific accusation ever being leveled. After all, how can anyone disprove an
accusation that is never made, or deny a hidden or interested motive based on
mere assertion?
The answer, of course, is that no one can. As might be expected, the underlying problem
— as far as the anti-Catholic parties were concerned — were the Tracts
themselves. By inserting fundamental
Christian principles and the traditional concept of religion into a debate over
the definition of the Church of England, the Movement went directly contrary to
the spirit of the age as established by the French Revolution.
#30#
