The Oxford Movement eBook

Richard William Church
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 377 pages of information about The Oxford Movement.

The Oxford Movement eBook

Richard William Church
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 377 pages of information about The Oxford Movement.
authorities, and specially directed against the foremost man of the party.  From that time the fate of the party at Oxford was determined.  It must break up.  Sooner or later, there must be a secession more or less discrediting and disabling those who remained.  And so the break-up came, and yet, so well grounded and so congenial to the English Church were the leading principles of the movement, that not even that disastrous and apparently hopeless wreck prevented them from again asserting their claim and becoming once more active and powerful.  The Via Media, whether or not logically consistent, was a thing of genuine English growth, and was at least a working theory.

FOOTNOTES: 

[84] Apologia, p. 180.

[85] Essays Critical and Historical, 1871.

[86] Apologia, pp. 181, 182.  Comp. Letter to Jelf, p. 18.

[87] British Critic, April 1839, pp. 419-426.  Condensed in the Apologia, pp. 192-194.

[88] Letter to the Bishop of Oxford (29th March 1841), pp. 33-40.  Comp. Letter to Jelf, pp. 7, 8.

[89] Apologia, pp. 212, 221.

[90] Letter to Jelf [especially p. 19].

[91] Walton’s Life, i. 59 (Oxford:  1845).

[92] No. 90, p. 24.

[93] The following letter of Mr. James Mozley (8th March 1841) gives the first impression of the Tract:—­“A new Tract has come out this week, and is beginning to make a sensation.  It is on the Articles, and shows that they bear a highly Catholic meaning; and that many doctrines, of which the Romanist are corruptions, may be held consistently with them.  This is no more than what we know as a matter of history, for the Articles were expressly worded to bring in Roman Catholics.  But people are astonished and confused at the idea now, as if it were quite new.  And they have been so accustomed for a long time to look at the Articles as on a par with the Creed, that they think, I suppose, that if they subscribe to them they are bound to hold whatever doctrines (not positively stated in them) are merely not condemned.  So if they will have a Tractarian sense, they are thereby all Tractarians....  It is, of course, highly complimentary to the whole set of us to be so very much surprised that we should think what we held to be consistent with the Articles which we have subscribed.”  See also a clever Whateleian pamphlet, “The Controversy between Tract No. 90 and the Oxford Tutors.”  (How and Parsons, 1841.)

[94] See J.B.  Mozley’s Letters, 13th March 1841.

[95] Scil., those cited in the preamble to this resolution.

[96] J.B.  Mozley’s Letters, 13th July 1841.

CHAPTER XV

AFTER NO. 90

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The Oxford Movement from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.