Walter Walsh's "The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England: 1833-1864," pp.52-56

Walter Walsh's "The History of the Romeward Movement in the Church of England: 1833-1864," pp.52-56. An overview of John Henry Newman, Tractarians, and Anglo-Catholics and their insinuation into Evangelical, Reformed and Confessional Christianity in the Anglican way. This well-researched expose of Tractarianism and Anglo-Romanizing won't get press at www.virtueonline.org, AMiA, CANA or the ACNA. The "so-called" evangelicals in the ACNA sit loose re: these anti-Confessional, anti-Reformational, and anti-Protestant squatters.

In these pages, we see the relationship of Tractarians to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Latitudinarianism of Dr. Hampden and the Tractarian underbelly: opposition to the Protestant and Reformed faith.

Bishop Iker, ACNA, was open and public that he and his Texan ilk would read the Reformed Confession of the English Reformation as did Newman, Keble and Pusey. "I am no friend to the Articles" said Newman (among many other things...it gets alot worse). The same holds for Ackerman of Quincy and Schofield of California. The neo-Tractarian REC, in essence, holds to Tract XC as one way to read the Reformed Confession. See their "wash" at the REC website with an article entitled, "True Unity." Double-speak and integrity-problems.

http://www.archive.org/stream/a611877700walsuoft/a611877700walsuoft_djvu.txt

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We pick up where we left off.

At a special meeting " of the Board of Heads of Houses, he wrote," on Thursday last, it was the subject of deliberation whether any step should be taken by the Board in consequence of the rumour that it was the intention of Ministers to place me in the Divinity Chair. Numbers were canvassed before-hand in order to get a majority for the hostile measure designed, and they tried, out of mock kindness, to prevent my attendance. I did attend, however, to confront their folly and intolerance, and with the kind and skilful support of the Provost of Oriel succeeded in disappointing their attempt." 2 Mr. Henry George Liddell, afterwards well known as

1 Lord Melbourne's Papers, p. 504.
2 Memorials of Bishop Hampden, p. 54. NEWMAN'S "ELUCIDATIONS"

Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was in Oxford at the time of the Hampden controversy, and wrote an interesting description of the meeting of the Heads of Houses, at which Dr. Hampden was present : "On Wednesday," wrote Mr. Liddell, "the Heads of Houses, roused by the energy of the Movement party, called a meeting. To the horror and surprise of the Doctors, the Principal of St. Mary Hall (Dr. Hampden) himself appeared. ' Strange,' said the Dean of Christ Church, 'very strange that you should be here, Mr. Principal : we have met to talk of you. Do you mean to stay? ' 'I do,' was the reply. 'And to vote?' interposed Shuttleworth (Warden of New College). ' I have not made up my mind,' said Hampden. A very angry discussion followed, after which certain propositions (I know not what) were put to the vote. On the first two Hampden was left in a minority, himself taking no part. On the third the division was equal, whereupon Dr. Hampden interposed, and by his vote turned the decision of the august body in his own favour." x Newman was quick in perceiving that attacks like these needed supplementing by material of a more formidable kind. He therefore at once set to work to write a pamphlet containing extracts from Hampden's published works, adding to them such comments as he thought necessary. It was published on February I3th, only five days after the rumour of the appointment had reached Oxford. He had to sit up all through one night writing, so as to get it out as quickly as possible. It bore the title of Elucidations of Dr. Hampden s Theological Statements and formed a pamph let of forty-seven pages. It was certainly the most influential document ever produced against Dr. Hampden ; and yet, by friends and foes alike, it was censured for unfairness. Mr. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, subsequently known as Dean Stanley, was at that time in residence at Oxford, and took the deepest interest in the Hampden controversy. He did not approve of the new appointment to the Divinity Chair, but when the Elucidations appeared, he attacked the pamphlet in the most vigorous style.

1 Henry George Liddell ', D.D.: A Memoir , p. 33.

" No one," he remarked, " who has not compared Newman and Pusey'sl extracts with the original writings of Hampden, and who has not had experience, in himself or others, of the fearfully erroneous impression that those extracts convey, can duly appreciate the appearance that must have presented itself to Arnold's mind of shameless and wilful fabrication. If they (the extracts) had been made by any one else than Newman and Pusey, I should not have hesitated to attribute them to wilful dishonesty; as it is, I must call it culpable carelessness, blindness, and recklessness, in matters of the most vital importance to the Church and nation, and to the peace of a good man. They have applied to doctrines what Hampden says of phraseology, to the Atonement what he said of Penance, to denial of Sacramental Grace, and original sin, and regeneration, and Trinitarianism, what he has said in confirmation and approval of all these truths. They have, till they were compelled by counter-pamphlets to notice that there were such books, kept out of sight his Parochial Sermons and Philosophical Evidences which contain the very essence of orthodoxy ; they have attacked him because he has impugned their own peculiar theory of Church authority, and the submission of human reason, and have enlisted in their ranks persons who differ as entirely from that theory as does Hampden himself; and all this while they themselves hold tenets barely compatible with their remaining in the English Church." 2 Newman's Elucidations had a most powerful effect on the public mind. People were entirely guided by the pamphlet who had never read a word of Hampden's writings in his published books. The Rev. T. Mozley, one of the opponents of Hampden, and all his life through a friend of the Oxford Movement, frankly tells us that when Hampden was condemned by the Oxford Convoca- tion : 11 The great mass of the multitude that inflicted this penalty were very, if not entirely, ignorant of the book which was the corpus delicti. They might have seen it on a counter, or on a table ; they might have opened it, turned over a leaf or two, and might even have had their attention directed to a few passages. The very hurry in which the thing was done, and the fact that the book was and is compararatively

1 Dr. Hampden's Past and Present Statements Compared. By Dr. Pusey. Oxford : Parker. 1836.

2 Life of Dean Stanley ; vol. i. p. 163. London. 1893.

rare, forbid the supposition that there could have been much, or even an adequate, acquaintance with its contents." 1 One of those who took a leading part in opposing Dr. Hampden's appointment was the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, who based his opposition on the extracts from his Bampton Lectures given in Newman's Elucidations. It was not until Hampden's appointment to the Bishopric of Hereford, in 1847, that Wilberforce carefully read the book for himself, and then he at once changed his opinions on the question. How this change of opinion came about is told, in an interesting narrative, by Newman's brother, Mr. F. W. Newman : " My old friend, the late Bonamy Price, well known in recent Oxford, had been a Rugby Master, and with Grenfell and the rest had voted against disabling Hampden. Happening to be in Oxford just after the Bubble burst [i.e. in 1847], he called upon Dr. Hawkins, who had been gracious to him in old days ; and inevitably the two began mutual congratulation on the event [i.e. Bishop Wilberforce's decision to veto the proposed prosecution of Hamp- den]. Hawkins was delighted and boiling over, and soon poured out ample details of what passed between him and the Bishop [Samuel Wilberforce]. " After the Bishop perceived that his old tutor looked grave on the open war against Crown Patronage, and on the rumour that the Dean of Hereford would risk a Praemunire, the Bishop said that to listen to Keble was not a new or active deed : that in fact he was constrained to it [that is, to grant permission to prosecute Hampden] by consistency ; for he had voted against Hampden's becoming Regius Professor of Divinity, and he could not possibly make light of unsoundness concerning such a doctrine as the Trinity. (These two points were the fulcra of the talk.) On the former, the Provost said, 'You voted in 1836, true; but then you were a Curate ; then you were one out of four hundred ; now you are a Lord Bishop : then your responsibility was nil; now, you will bring on yourself the chief responsibility. An error here may affect all your future life.' When the Bishop made some remark that for sacred truth we must encounter great risk, he so expressed himself that Hawkins exclaimed : ' Bless me ! why, you cannot have read Hampden's lectures ; you can only have read Newman's Elucidations of

1 Mozley's Reminiscences of the Oxford Movement vol. i. pp. 366, 367.

them.' The Bishop replied : ' Well, I must confess I could not for a moment distrust Newman.' ' Ah ! my Lord, I do not blame you ; four hundred trusted him, and I have no right to say, believe me rather than him. But since you have not read Hampden yourself, and must now, as Bishop, seem to judge his book, and to oppose his appointment by the Crown, I do say, that if you are a wise Bishop you will read his book at once. And I will tell you what 1 w ought this evening to sit side by side, and read the book together.' " The Bishop freely confessed the wisdom of the advice, and acted on it. The two sat together, with feet on fender, and read the lectures through from end to end. " Then the Bishop said, ' My kind old tutor, you are right. I have no right to open my lips against Hampden.' " What actual words the Bishop next day used to Keble I am not sure that I learned from Bonamy, but either from him or from some other quarter I heard them to be : ' I have now read Hampden myself and cannot presume to blame him.' " This interview between Bishop Wilberforce and Dr. Hawkins took place, as Mr. F. W. Newman informs us, in December 1847, and the substantial accuracy of the story of what took place is corroborated by a letter of Wilberforce himself to Hampden, dated December 28, 1847, as published in his biography. In this he wrote : " Unless I was satisfied that there was matter for a criminal suit, I could not think myself justified in sending an accusation against you to be tried in the Arches Court. Whether there was such matter could be determined by me only after a careful study of the works in question, with all your explanations in my mind. " Regarding, then, the Observations on Dissent as virtually with- drawn, I accordingly applied myself to a thorough and impartial examination of the 'Bampton Lectures.' I have now carefully studied them throughout, with the aid of those explanations of their meaning which you have furnished to the public since their first publication, and now in your private communications. The result of this exami- nation, I am bound plainly to declare, is my own conviction that they do not justly warrant those suspicions of unsoundness to which they have given rise, and which, so long as I trusted to selected extracts I myself shared." 2

1 Contributions Chiefly to the Early History of the late Cardinal Newman. By his Brother, F. W. Newman. 1891, pp. 85-88.

2. Life of Bishop Wilberforce, vol. i. pp. 486, 487.

Not only was Bishop Wilberforce misled by Newman's Elucidations : many Evangelical Churchmen also joined in the hue and cry against Hampden, under the impression that he was heretical in his teaching as to the Trinity and the Incarnation. But, after all, the question here arises, was there sufficient ground for these charges ? As early as February 27, 1836, Hampden wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury: " I may be indulged on this occasion with saying, that a belief in the great revealed truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation has been my stay through life ; and I utterly disclaim the imputation of inculcating any doctrines at variance with these foundations of Christian hope." Though not holding heretical views on these points himself, Hampden was, apparently, willing to oppose the use of strong abuse against those who really were heretical. It was true that he held very liberal views as to the value of Confessions of Faith and Articles of Religion ; but, as Bishop Wilberforce cleverly showed in the letter just cited, Newman himself, at about the very time when Hampden's accused publications had first appeared, was himself guilty of a very similar offence. " I read in them [Hampden's Bampton Lectures]," wrote Wilberforce, " a thoughtful and able history of the formation of dogmatic terminology, not a studied depreciation of authorised dogmatic language, still less any conscious denial of admitted dogmatic truth. 1 see in them, in fact ', so far little more than what has already been ex pressed in the words (never, I believe, considered liable to censure) of one of your ablest opponents [Newman] in 1834, who says: "If I avow my belief that freedom from symbols and Articles is abstractedly the highest state of Church communion and the peculiar knowledge of the Primitive Church, it is ... first, because technicality and formality are, in their degree, inevitable results of public Confessions of Faith.' And again : ' Her rulers were loth to confess that the Church had grown too old to enjoy the free unsuspicious teaching with which her childhood was blest, and that her disciples must for the future calculate and reason before they acted ' (Newman's Arians, pp. 41, 42)." 2

1 A Few Memorials of Bishop Hampden, p. 55.

2 Life of Bishop Wilberforce vol. i. p. 487.

The fact is that it is now admitted by prominent High Churchmen that Hampden was not, strictly speaking, heretical at all. That well-known High Churchman, Lord Selborne, admits that : " Dr. Hampden, as a Bishop, was neither better nor worse than many others ; he did nothing to confirm any suspicion of his orthodoxy." Archdeacon Clark testifies, " after twenty years' intimacy " with Dr. Hampden, that : " He was as loyal and sound a member of the Church of England as any of her sons ; as orthodox in his views and teaching on the doctrines of the faith as it is held by our Reformed Church, and expressed in her Articles and formularies, as any who belong to the ranks of her ministering clergy ; as clear and as sound in his views and teaching on the subject of the Church's two Sacraments, nay, much more so than many who thought it their duty to attack him." 2 The testimony of the late Dean Church will, no doubt, carry great weight with many High Churchmen. And this is what he says : " Dr. Hampden was in fact unexceptionably, even rigidly orthodox in his acceptance of Church doctrine and Church Creeds. He had published a volume of sermons containing, among other things, an able statement of the Scriptural argument for the doctrine of the Trinity, and an equally able defence of the Athanasian Creed." 3 Why, then, it may be asked, was such an ado made about the appointment of such a man to the office of Regius Professor of Divinity in 1836 ; and, again, to his appointment as Bishop of Hereford in 1847? The real fact is, I believe, that the outcry against Hampden for heresy was but the ostensible and not the real cause of the furious opposition of the Tractarian party. They simply used this cry for the purpose of blinding the eyes of Evangelical Churchmen, and induce them to join in the hue and cry against him. The real head and front of Dr. Hampden's offence was his Protestantism, and his

1 Memorials Family and Personal, 1766-1865. By the Earl of Selborne, vol. ii. p. 10.

2 Memorials of Bishop Hampden, p. 259. 8 The Oxford Movement. By Dean Church, ist edition, p. 144.

well-known opposition to the sacerdotal doctrines of the rising Tractarian party, whom he thoroughly distrusted. The Rev. William Sinclair, who knew him well, tells us that (apparently soon after the commencement of the Tractarian Movement) : " I well remember seeing the Doctor come into his study, flushed with excitement and with a little tract in his hand. It was one of the well- known Tracts for the Times. His remark upon it was : 1 These gentlemen, without even knowing it, have passed the Rubicon ; they do not see that they are already Romanists." Hampden's Protestantism was seen in his Observations on Religious Dissent, in which he placed the Holy Scriptures above every human composition, and avowed himself an opponent of the theory that Tradition is of equal value with the Bible. He wished to " guard the depository of sacred doctrine, the Scripture itself, against the inroads of Tradition, or any human authority" ; and he urged his readers "to go to Scripture for every matter of religious debate. If the alleged point cannot be proved out of Scripture, it is no truth of revelation" 2 In his Bampton Lectures Hampden's opposition to the Sacerdotalism which had been adopted by the Tractarian leaders, was revealed in a most unmistakable manner. He attributed the "theory of Sacramental influence," advocated in the Scholastic philosophy, not to Holy Scripture, but to " the general belief in Magic in the early ages of the Church." 8 " The relative importance of the Eucharist," said Dr. Hampden, "in comparison with the other Sacraments, and, indeed, with the whole doctrine and ritual of Christianity, in the system of the Church of Rome, may be drawn from this primary notion of Sacramental efficiency. It may well be asked, why this sacred rite should stand so pre-eminent in the scheme of Christianity. I do not say, that it ought not to hold a principal station among the observances of a holy life. But it is the doctrinal supremacy given to it, to which I refer. View it, as it exists in the Roman Church, and it is there found absorbing into it the whole, it may be said,

1 Memorials of Bishop Hamfden t p. 32.

2 Observations on Religious Dissent, 2nd edition, p. 9.

8 Hampden's Scholastic Philosophy Considered, ist edition, p. 315.

of Christian worship. There, the ministers of religion seem to be set apart chiefly for this sacred celebration : it is the spiritual power of their office the essence of their priesthood. If we ask then, why this particular Sacrament should have attained this superiority over all other rites of Christianity, we may find an answer in the Scholastic theory. Whilst the other Sacraments, recognised by that theory, participate of the virtue of Christ's passion, this is the passion itself 'of Christ the whole virtue of His priesthood mystically represented and conveyed. ... It was freely admitted that Christ was once offered for all on the Cross ; that henceforth He is seated at the right hand of the Divine Majesty, to die no more. But the sacrifice performed by the priest was still a real offering of Christ; as being the appointed channel through which the expiatory virtue of the Great Sacrifice descends in vital efflux from the person of the Saviour. 1 "The history of the Sacraments, in the Scholastic system, is, God working by the instrumentality of man. The theory is of the Divine causation, but the practical power displayed is the sacerdotal ; the necessary instrument for the conveyance of Divine grace becom- ing in effect the principal cause. "Surely it requires no research into ecclesiastical history or philosophy, to see that so operose a system is utterly repugnant to the spirit of Christianity. Contemplate our Saviour at the Last Supper, breaking bread, and giving thanks, and distributing to His disciples ; and how great is the transition from the institution itself to the splendid ceremonial of the Latin Church? Hear Him, or His Apostles, exhorting to repentance ; and can we suppose the casuistical system, to which the name of Penance has been given, to be the true sacrifice of the broken and contrite spirit ? . . . "Thanks to the Christian resolution of our Reformers, they broke that charm which this mystical number of the Sacraments carried with it, and dispelled the theurgic system which it supported. We are not, perhaps, sufficiently sensible of the advantages which we enjoy through their exertions in this respect exertions which cost them so many painful struggles, even to the bitterness of death. They have taken our souls out of the hand of man, to let them repose in the bosom of our Saviour and our God. We have been enabled thus to fulfil the instruction of Scripture, to 'come boldly to the throne of Grace,' and ask of Him who gives liberally and denies to none. The perplexities and distress of heart, of which we have been relieved, none perhaps can now adequately conceive.

1 Hampden's Scholastic Philosophy Considered, pp. 321, 322.

We must ask of those who have experienced the false comfort of that officious intercession of the Sacramental system of the Latin Church. They will tell us that, under that system, they knew not the liberty of the Gospel. They were unhappy without resource. Their wounds were opened, but there was none to heal." In statements such as these we find, I believe, the real cause of the Tractarian attack on Dr. Hampden. Latitudinarian views as to Holy Scripture are now very common and widespread amongst a certain section of the Ritualistic party. Their zeal now, as was that of their predecessors in 1836, is mainly directed to building up that sacerdotal system against which our Reformers testified with their blood. Hampden protested against the same evil system; hence the hatred of Pusey; Newman, Keble, and others, who made the life of their opponent unhappy for many years. In saying this I wish to guard myself against being supposed to be a friend to Hampden's Latitudinarian views. I have no sympathy with them whatever, and I think that Lord Melbourne in 1836, and Lord John Russell in 1847, would have acted more wisely had they selected some one else who valued Christian doctrines more highly than did Dr. Hampden. We now return to the history of the case. The appointment of Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity was published in the London Gazette on February 17, 1836, and after that it was felt by his opponents that there was no chance of upsetting it. But it was possible to move the University to express its disapproval of the appointment. The first attempt in this direction proved, as I have already stated, a decided failure owing to the firm action of Hampden himself. But the effort could be renewed, and it was renewed. At last the Heads of Houses decided, though with not a little hesi- tation, that they would bring before Convocation a new statute, providing that Dr. Hampden should not (like his predecessors in office) be placed on the Board which nominated select preachers before the University ; and

1 Hampden's Scholastic Philosophy Considered, pp. 341-343.

that he should not be consulted when a sermon was called in question before the Vice-Chancellor. The Convocation was to meet to decide this important matter on March 2 2nd, and in preparation for it Pusey issued a pamphlet entitled : Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements and the Thirty-Nine Articles Compared. It contained extracts from Hampden's writings. Every effort was made to bring up voters from the country, and with the result that on the eventful day about 450 members were present. But they came up in vain, for no sooner had the Vice-Chancellor put the question of the proposed new statute, than the Proctors interposed with their veto, which at once put an end to the proceedings. The Tractarians were, of course, very much vexed, but they certainly had subsequently an ample revenge, when, in 1844, a proposal to censure Tract XC. was, in the interests of the Tractarians, vetoed by the then Proctors, Mr. Church and Mr. Guille- mard. The names of the Proctors who vetoed the proposed statute against Dr. Hampden should here be mentioned. They were the Rev. E. G. Bayly, Fellow of Pembroke College ; and the Rev. Henry Reynolds, Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College. Though defeated on this occasion the opponents of Hampden did not lose hope. They knew that new Proctors would soon be appointed. This was done on April I3th. In that month appeared Dr. Arnold's famous article in the Edinburgh Review, on " The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden," which, by the strength of its denunciations of the.........to be continued.