Chapter XIII: Part II: ――comments (2)

‘He was not very easy even under conventional vulgarity, still less under the vulgarity of egotism; but, being essentially a partisan, he could put up with both in a man who was really in earnest and on the right side. Nothing, however, I think, would have induced him to tolerate false sentiment, and he would, I think, if he had lived, have exerted himself very trenchantly to prevent his cause being adulterated by it. He was, I should say, sometimes misled by a theory that genius cut through a subject by logic or intuition, without looking to the right or left, while common sense was always testing every step by consideration of surroundings (I have not got his terse mode of statement), and that genius was right, or at least had only to be corrected, here and there, by common sense. This, I take it, would hardly have answered if his trenchancy had not been in practice corrected by J. H. N.’s wider political circumspection. He submitted, I suppose, to J. H. N.’s axiom, that if the Movement was to do anything it must become “respectable”; but it was against his nature.

‘He would (as we see in the _Remains_) have wished Ken to have the “courage of his convictions” by excommunicating the Jurors in William III.’s time, and setting up a little Catholic Church, like the Jansenists in Holland. He was not (as has been observed) a theologian, but he was as jealous for orthodoxy as if he were. He spoke slightingly of Heber as having ignorantly or carelessly communicated with Monophysites. But he probably knew no more about that and other heresies than a man of active and penetrating mind would derive from text-books. And I think it likely enough, not that his reverence for the Eucharist, but that his special attention to the details of Eucharistic doctrine, was due to the consideration that it was the foundation of ecclesiastical discipline and authority: matters on which his mind fastened itself with enthusiasm.’

From ‘APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA,’ BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., of the
Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London: Longmans, Green, Reader &
Dyer, 1873.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. W. P. Neville of the Oratory,
and of Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘… Hurrell Froude was a pupil of Keble’s, formed by him, and in turn reacting upon him. I knew him first in 1826, and was in the closest and most affectionate friendship with him from about 1829 until his death in 1836. He was a man of the highest gifts: so truly many-sided, that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him, except under those aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility of mind, and the patient winning considerateness in discussion, which endeared him to those to whom he opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon matters of belief and opinion, and am introducing others into my narrative, not for their own sake, or because I love them and have loved them, so much as because, and so far as, they have influenced my theological views. In this respect, then, I speak of Hurrell Froude, in his intellectual aspect: as a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing with ideas and views, in him original, which were too many and strong even for his bodily strength, and which crowded and jostled against each other, in their effort after distinct shape and expression. And he had an intellect as critical and logical as it was speculative and bold. Dying prematurely, as he did, and in the conflict and transition-state of opinion, his religious views never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their depth. His opinions arrested and influenced me even when they did not gain my assent. He professed openly his admiration of the Church of Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, “The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants,” and he gloried in accepting Tradition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He had a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity, and he considered the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted in thinking of the Saints; he had a vivid appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its possibility and its heights; and he was more than inclined to believe a large amount of miraculous interference as occurring in the early and middle ages. He embraced the principle of penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to the Real Presence, in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully drawn to the Mediæval Church, but not to the Primitive.

‘He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was an Englishman to the backbone in his severe adherence to the real and the concrete. He had a most classical taste, and a genius for philosophy and art; and he was fond of historical inquiry, and the politics of religion. He had no turn for theology as such. He set no sufficient value on the writings of the Fathers, on the detail or development of doctrine, on the definite traditions of the Church viewed in their matter, on the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, or on the controversies out of which they arose. He took an eager courageous view of things, on the whole. I should say that his power of entering into the minds of others did not equal his other gifts: he could not believe, for instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be anti-Christian. On many points, he would not believe but that I agreed with him, when I did not: he seemed not to understand my difficulties. His were of a different kind: the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a High Tory of the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with the Toryism of the opponents of the Reform Bill. He was smitten with the love of the Theocratic Church: he went abroad, and was shocked by the degeneracy which he thought he saw in the Catholics of Italy.

‘It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He taught me to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and, in the same degree, to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence.

* * * * *

‘There were other reasons, besides Mr. Rose’s state of health, which hindered those who so much admired him from availing themselves of his close co-operation in the coming fight. United as both he and they were in the general scope of the Movement, they were in discordance with each other, from the first, in their estimate of the means to be adopted for attaining it. Mr. Rose had a position in the Church, a name, and serious responsibilities; he had direct ecclesiastical superiors; he had intimate relations with his own University, and a large clerical connection through the country. Froude and I were nobodies, with no characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us. Rose could not go ahead across country, as Froude had no scruples in doing. Froude was a bold rider: as on horseback, so also in his speculations. After a long conversation with him on the logical bearing of his principles, Mr. Rose said of him, with quiet humour, that “he did not seem to be afraid of inferences.” It was simply the truth. Froude had that strong hold of first principles, and that keen perception of their value, that he was comparatively indifferent to the revolutionary action which would attend on their application to a given state of things; whereas, in the thoughts of Rose, as a practical man, existing facts had the precedence of every other idea, and the chief test of the soundness of a line of policy lay in the consideration whether it would work. This was one of the first questions which, as it seemed to me, on every occasion occurred to his mind. With Froude, Erastianism, that is, the union (so he viewed it) of Church and State, was the parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable and sufficient tool of Liberalism. Till that union was snapped, Christian doctrine never could be safe; and while he well knew how high and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose, yet he used to apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his mouth: Rose was “a conservative.” By bad luck, I brought out this word to Mr. Rose in a letter of my own, which I wrote to him in criticism of something he had inserted in his Magazine: I got a vehement rebuke for my pains; for though Rose pursued a conservative line, he had as high a disdain as Froude could have of a worldly ambition, and an extreme sensitiveness of such an imputation. But there was another reason still, and a more elementary one, which severed Mr. Rose from the Oxford Movement. Living movements do not come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out through the post, even though it had been the penny post. This principle deeply penetrated both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended to us the course which things soon took spontaneously, and without set purpose of our own.

* * * * *

‘It was an apparent accident which introduced me to [the Roman Breviary], that most wonderful and most attractive monument of the devotion of Saints. On Hurrell Froude’s death, in 1836, I was asked to select one of his books as a keepsake. I selected Butler’s _Analogy_; finding that it had been already chosen, I looked with some perplexity along the shelves, as they stood before me, when an intimate friend at my elbow said: “Take that.” It was the Breviary which Hurrell had had with him at Barbados. Accordingly, I took it, studied it, wrote my Tract from it, and have it on my table in constant use till this day.[309] That dear and familiar companion,[310] who thus put the Breviary into my hands, is still in the Anglican Church. So, too, is that early-venerated long-loved friend,[311] together with whom I edited a work which, more perhaps than any other, caused disturbance and annoyance in the Anglican world, Froude’s _Remains_; yet, however judgments might run as to the prudence of publishing it, I never heard any one impute to Mr. Keble the very shadow of dishonesty or treachery towards his Church in so acting.’

From ‘THE CHERWELL WATER-LILY AND OTHER POEMS,’ BY THE REV.
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, M.A., Fellow of University College,
Oxford. London: Rivingtons; and Oxford, Parker, 1840.

[By the kind permission of the Rev. Charles Bowden of the London
Oratory.]

Verses sent to a Friend with a copy of Froude’s _Remains_.[312]

‘The languid heart that hath been ever nursed
By strains of drowsy sweetness, ill can brook
The rude rough music that at times doth burst
From him whose thoughts are treasured in this book.
It was his lot to live in days uncouth
That shrink from aught so hard and stern as Truth.

I know my generous friend too well to fear
This holy gift will be unsafe with thee:
Thou never yet hast had the heart to sneer
At the eccentric feats of chivalry;
And well I know there are cold men who deem
This saintly Cause a weak knight-errant’s dream.

When thou hast marked him well, thine eye will trace
Lines deep and steadfast; features grave and bold;
Beauty austere and masculine; a face
And stalwart form wrought in the antique mould;
And if some shades too broad and coarse are thrown,
’Tis where the Age hath marred the block of stone.’

From ‘THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION,’ IN ‘ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL
BIOGRAPHY,’ by the Right Honourable Sir JAMES STEPHEN, K.C.B.
London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1849.[313]

[By the kind permission of Herbert Stephen, Esq., and of Messrs.
Longmans, Green & Co.]

‘… In obedience to the general law of human affairs, arrived the day of reaction. A new race of students had grown up at Oxford. They were men of unsullied, and even severe virtue; animated by a devotion which, if not very fervent, was at least genuine and grave; conversant with classical literature, and not without pretensions, more or less considerable, to an acquaintance with Christian antiquity. As they paced thoughtfully along those tall avenues, to which, a hundred years before, Whitfield and the Wesleys had been accustomed to retire for meditation, they recoiled, with a mixture of aversion and contempt, from the image of the crowded assemblages, and the dramatic exercises, in which the successors of those great men in the Church of England were performing so conspicuous a part. They revolved, not without indignation, the intellectual barrenness with which that Church had been stricken, from the time when her most popular teachers had not merely been satisfied to tread the narrow circle of the “Evangelical” theology, but had exulted in that bondage as indicating their possession of a purer light than had visited the other ministers of the Gospel. They invoked, with an occasional sigh, but not without many a bitter smile, the reappearance amongst us of a piety more profound and masculine, more meek and contemplative. They believed that such a change in the religious character of their age and country was a divine command, and that a commission had been given to themselves to carry it into effect.

* * * * *

‘… It came to pass, in the Oxonian as in other leagues, that the head moved forward by the impulse of the tail. Step by step in their progress, “the Church,” whom they worshipped, changed her attitude and her aspect. She soon disclaimed her Elizabethan or statutory origin, and then made vehement efforts to escape from her Elizabethan or statutory ceremonial. She assumed the title, and laid claim to the character, of the Primitive Church, or the Church of the Fathers, and at length arrogated to herself the prerogatives of that Catholic or universal Church, which “lifts her mitred front in courts and palaces,” whether at Rome, at Moscow, or at Lambeth, but whose presence is never vouchsafed to any who cannot trace back from Apostolic hands an Episcopal succession.

‘At this stage of the history of the Oxonian league, its progress was quickened and animated by the panic which exhibited itself from one end to the other of the hostile camp. The disciples of Whitfield and of Wesley, united to those of Newton and Scott, of Milner and of Venn, and, reinforced by the whole strength of the Nonconformists, began to throw up, along the whole field of controversy, entrenchments for their own defence, and batteries for the annoyance of their assailants. Amongst the literary missiles cast by the contending hosts against each other, there are few better worth the study of those who wish to estimate the probable result of the conflict, than the _Life_ of Richard Hurrell Froude. It was launched from a catapult under the immediate direction of Messrs. Keble and Newman themselves, and, though it is a book of no great inherent value, it has a considerable interest as the only biography which the world possesses of a confessor of Oxford Catholicism. It contains a vivid picture of the discipline, the studies, the opinions, and the mental habits of his fraternity, and is published by the two great fathers of that school, with the avowal of their “own general coincidence” in the opinions and feelings of their disciple. We have thus a delineation, at full length, of one of those divines who are to effect the conquest which was attempted in vain by the Bellarmines and the Bossuets of former times. If it teaches us nothing else, this biography will at least teach us what is the real extent and urgency of the danger which has so much disturbed the tranquillity of the guardians of the Protestant faith of England.

‘Richard Hurrell Froude was born, as we read, on the “Feast of the Annunciation,” in the year 1803, and died in 1836. He was an Etonian, a Fellow of Oriel College, a priest in Holy Orders of the Church of England, the writer of unsuccessful prize essays, and of journals, letters, and sermons; an occasional contributor to the periodical literature of his theological associates; and, during the last four years of his life, an invalid in search of health, either in the south of Europe or in the West Indies. Such are all the incidents of a life to the commemoration of which two octavo volumes have been dedicated. A more intractable story, if regarded merely as a narrative, was never undertaken. But Mr. Froude left behind him a great collection of papers, which affection would have committed to the fire, though party spirit has given them to the press. The most unscrupulous publisher of diaries and private correspondence never offered for sale a self-analysis more frank or less prepossessing. But the world is invited to gaze on this suicidal portraiture, on account of “the extreme importance of the views, to the development of which the whole is meant to be subservient,” and in order that they may not lose “the instruction derivable from a full exhibition of his character as a witness to those views.” Heavy as are the penalties which the Editors of these volumes have incurred for their disclosure of the infirmities of their friend, the world will probably absolve them if they will publish more of the letters which he appears to have received from his mother, and to have transmitted to them. One such letter which they have rescued from oblivion, is worth far more than all which they have published of her son’s. Though both the parent and the child have long since been withdrawn from the reach of this world’s judgment, it yet seems almost an impiety to transcribe her estimate of his early character, and to add that the less favourable anticipations which she drew from her study of him in youth, were but too distinctly verified in his riper years. She read his heart with a mother’s sagacity, and thus revealed it to himself with a mother’s tenderness and truth.

‘“From his very birth his temper had been peculiar; pleasing, intelligent, and attaching, when his mind was undisturbed, and he was in the company of people who treated him reasonably and kindly; but exceedingly impatient under vexatious circumstances; very much disposed to find his own amusement in teasing and vexing others; and almost entirely incorrigible when it was necessary to reprove him. I never could find a successful mode of treating him. Harshness made him obstinate and gloomy; calm and long displeasure made him stupid and sullen; and kind patience had not sufficient power over his feelings to force him to govern himself. After a statement of such great faults, it may seem an inconsistency to say that he nevertheless still bore about him strong marks of a promising character. In all points of substantial principle his feelings were just and high. He had (for his age) an unusually deep feeling of admiration for everything which was good and noble; his relish was lively, and his taste good, for all the pleasures of the imagination; and he was also quite conscious of his own faults, and (_untempted_) had a just dislike to them.”’

‘Exercising a stern and absolute dominion over all the baser passions, with a keen perception of the beautiful in nature and in art, and a deep homage for the sublime in morals; imbued with the spirit of the classical authors, and delighting in the exercise of talents which, though they fell far short of excellence, rose as far above mediocrity, Mr. Froude might have seemed to want no promise of an honourable rank in literature, or of distinction in his sacred office. His career was intercepted by a premature death; but enough is recorded to show that his aspirations, however noble, must have been defeated by the pride and moroseness which his mother’s wisdom detected, and which her love disclosed to him; united as they were to a constitutional distrust of his own powers, and a weak reliance on other minds for guidance and support. A spirit at once haughty, and unsustained by genuine self-confidence; subdued by the stronger will or intellect of other men, and glorying in that subjection; regarding the opponents of his masters with an intolerance exceeding their own; and, in the midst of all his animosity towards others, turning with no infrequent indignation on itself,――might form the basis of a good dramatic sketch, of which Mr. Froude might not unworthily sustain the burden. But a “dialogue of the dead,” in which George Whitfield and Richard Froude should be the interlocutors, would be a more appropriate channel for illustrating the practical uses of “the Second Reformation,” and of the “Catholic Restoration,” which it is the object of their respective biographies to illustrate. Rhadamanthus having dismissed them from his tribunal, they would compare together their juvenile admiration of the drama, their ascetic discipline at Oxford, their early dependence on stronger or more resolute minds, their propensity to self-observation and to self-portraiture, their contemptuous opinions of the negro race, and the surprise with which they witnessed the worship of the Church of Rome in lands where it is still triumphant. So far all is peace, and the _concordes animæ_ exchange such greetings as pass between disembodied spirits. But when the tidings brought by the new denizen of the Elysian fields to the reformer of the eighteenth century, reach his affrighted shade, the regions of the blessed are disturbed by an unwonted discord; and the fiery soul of Whitfield blazes with intense desire to resume his wanderings through the earth, and to lift up his voice against the new apostasy.

‘It was with no unmanly dread of the probe, but from want of skill or leisure to employ it, that the self-scrutiny of Whitfield seldom or never penetrated much below the surface. Preach he must; and when no audience could be brought together, he seized a pen and preached to himself. The uppermost feeling, be it what it may, is put down in his journal honestly, vigorously, and devoutly. Satan is menaced and upbraided. Intimations from Heaven are recorded, without one painful doubt of their origin. He prays and exults, anticipates the future with delight, looks back to the past with thankfulness, blames himself simply because he thinks himself to blame, despairs of nothing, fears nothing, and has not a moment’s ill-will to any human being. Mr. Froude conducts his written soliloquies in a different spirit. His introverted gaze analyses with elaborate minuteness the various motives at the confluence of which his active powers receive their impulse, and, with perverted sagacity, pursues the self-examination, until, bewildered in the dark labyrinth of his own nature, he escapes to the cheerful light of day by locking up his journal. A friend (whose real name is as distinctly intimated under its initial letter, as if it were written at length) advises burning confessions. “I cannot make up my mind to that,” observes the penitent; “but I think I can see many points in which it will be likely to do me good to be cut off for some time from these records.” On such a subject the author of _The Christian Year_ was entitled to greater deference. That bright ornament of the College _de Propagandâ_ at Oxford had also gazed on his own heart through the mental microscope, till he had learnt the danger of the excessive use of it. While admonishing men to approach their Creator not as isolated beings, but as members of the Universal Church, and while aiding the inmates of her hallowed courts to worship in strains so pure, so reverent, and so meek, as to answer not unworthily to the voice of hope and reconciliation in which she is addressed by her Divine Head, this “sweet singer” had so brooded over the evanescent processes of his own spiritual nature, as not seldom to render his real meaning imperceptible to his readers, and probably to himself. With how sound a judgment he counselled Mr. Froude to burn his books, may be judged from the following entries in them:

‘“I have been talking a great deal to P.[314] about religion to-day. He seems to take such straightforward practical views of it that, when I am talking to him, I wonder what I have been bothering myself with all the summer, and almost doubt how far it is right to allow myself to indulge in speculations on a subject where all that is necessary is so plain and obvious.”――“Yesterday, when I went out shooting, I fancied I did not care whether I hit or not; but when it came to the point, I found myself anxious, and, after having killed, was not unwilling to let myself be considered a better shot than I described myself. I had an impulse, too, to let it be thought that I had only three shots when I really had had four. It was slight, to be sure, but I felt it.”――“I have read my journal, though I can hardly identify myself with the person it describes. It seems like having someone under one’s guardianship who was an intolerable fool, and exposed himself to my contempt, every moment, for the most ridiculous and trifling motives; and while I was thinking all this, I went into L.’s room to seek a pair of shoes, and on hearing him coming, got away as silently as possible. Why did I do this? Did I think I was doing what L. did not like? or was it the relic of a sneaking habit? I will ask myself these questions again.”――“I have a sort of vanity which aims at my own good opinion, and I look for anything to prove to myself that I am more anxious to mind myself than other people. I was very hungry, but because I thought the charge unreasonable, I tried to shirk the waiter: sneaking!”――“Yesterday I was much put out by an old fellow chewing tobacco and spitting across me; also bad thoughts of various kinds kept presenting themselves to my mind when it was vacant.”――“I talked sillily to-day, as I used to do last Term, but took no pleasure in it, so I am not ashamed. Although I don’t recollect any harm of myself, yet I don’t feel that I have made a clean breast of it.”――“I forgot to mention that I had been looking round my rooms, and thinking that they looked comfortable and nice, and that I said in my heart, ‘Ah, ah! I am warm.’”――“It always suggests itself to me that a wise thought is wasted when it is kept to myself, against which, as it is my most bothering temptation, I will set down some arguments to be called to mind in time of trouble.”――“Now I am proud of this, and think that the knowledge it shows of myself implies a greatness of mind.”――“These records are no guide to me to show the state of my mind afterwards; they are so far from being exercises of humility, that they lessen the shame of what I record, just as professions [of] goodwill to other people reconcile us to our neglect of them.”

* * * * *

‘As it is not by these nice self-observers that the creeds of hoar antiquity, and the habits of centuries are to be shaken; so neither is such high emprise reserved for ascetics who can pause to enumerate the slices of bread and butter from which they have abstained. When Whitfield would mortify his body, he set about it like a man. The paroxysm was short indeed, but terrible. While it lasted, his diseased imagination brought soul and body into deadly conflict, the fierce spirit spurning, trampling, and well-nigh destroying the peccant carcase. Not so the fastidious and refined “witness to the views” of the restorers of the Catholic Church. The strife between his spiritual and animal nature is recorded in his journal in such terms as these: “Looked with greediness to see if there was goose on the table for dinner.”――“Meant to have kept a fast and did abstain from dinner, but at tea eat buttered toast.”――“Tasted nothing to-day till tea-time, and then only one cup and dry bread.”――“I have kept my fast strictly, having taken nothing till near nine this evening, and then only a cup of tea and a little bread without butter, but it has not been as easy as it was last.”――“I made rather a more hearty tea than usual, quite giving up the notion of a fast in W.’s rooms, and by this weakness have occasioned another slip.” Whatever may be thought of the propriety of disclosing such passages as these, they will provoke a contemptuous smile from no one who knows much of his own heart. But they may relieve the anxiety of the alarmists. Luther and Zwingle, Cranmer and Latimer, may still rest in their honoured graves. “Take courage, brother Ridley, we shall light up such a flame in England as shall not soon be put out!” is a prophecy which will not be defeated by the successors of the Oxonian divines who listened to it, so long as they shall be [able?][315] to record, and to publish, contrite reminiscences of a desire for roasted goose, and of an undue indulgence in buttered toast.

‘Yet the will to subvert the doctrines and discipline of the Reformation is not wanting, and is not concealed. Mr. Froude himself, were he still living, might, indeed, object to be judged by his careless and familiar Letters. No such objection can, however, be made by the eminent persons who have deliberately given them to the world on account “of the truth and extreme importance of the views to which the whole is meant to be subservient,” and in which they record their “own general concurrence.” Of these weighty truths take the following examples: “You will be shocked at my avowal that I am every day becoming a less and less loyal son of the Reformation. It appears to me plain that in all matters which seem to us indifferent, or even doubtful, we should conform our practices to those of the Church which has preserved its traditionary practices unbroken. We cannot know about any seemingly indifferent practice of the Church of Rome that it is not a development of the Apostolic ἦθος, and it is to no purpose to say that we can find no proof of it in the writings of the first six centuries: they must find a disproof if they would do anything.”――“I think people are injudicious who talk against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints and honouring the Virgin and images, etc. These things may perhaps be idolatrous: I cannot make up my mind about it.”――“P. called us the Papal Protestant Church, in which he proved a double ignorance, as we are Catholics without the Popery, and Church of England men without the Protestantism.”――“The more I think over that view of yours about regarding our present Communion Service, etc., as a judgement on the Church, and taking it as the crumbs from the Apostles’ table, the more I am struck with its fitness to be dwelt upon as tending to check the intrusion of irreverent thoughts, without in any way interfering with one’s just indignation.”――“Your trumpery principle about Scripture being the sole rule of faith in fundamentals (I nauseate the word), is but a mutilated edition, without the breadth and axiomatic character, of the original.”――“Really I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more, and have almost made up my mind that the Rationalist spirit they set afloat is the ψευδοπροφήτης of the Revelations.”――“Why do you praise Ridley? Do you know sufficient good about him to counterbalance the fact that he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer?”――“I wish you could get to know something of S. and W.” (Southey and Wordsworth), “and un-Protestantise, un-Miltonise them.”――“_How is it_ WE _are so much in advance of our generation?_” Spirit of George Whitfield! how would thy voice, rolled from “the secret place of thunders,” have overwhelmed these puny protests against the truths which it was the one business of thy life to proclaim from the rising to the setting sun!

* * * * *

‘Penetrating the design and seizing the spirit of the Gospels, the Reformers inculcated the faith in which the sentient and the spiritual in man’s compound nature had each its appropriate office: the one directed to the Redeemer in His palpable form, the other to the Divine Paraclete in His hidden agency; while, united with these, they exhibited to a sinful, but penitent, race the parental character of the omnipresent Deity. Such is not the teaching of the restored theology. The most eminent of its professors have thrown open the doors of Mr. Froude’s oratory, and have invited all passers-by to notice in his prayers and meditations “the absence of any distinct mention of our Lord and Saviour.” They are exhorted not to doubt that there was a real though silent “allusion to Christ” under the titles in which the Supreme Being is addressed; and are told that “this circumstance may be a comfort to those who cannot bring themselves to assume the tone of many popular writers of this day, who yet are discouraged by the peremptoriness with which it is exacted of them. The truth is, that a mind alive to its own real state often shrinks to utter what it most dwells upon; and is too full of awe and fear to do more than silently hope what it most wishes.”

‘It would indeed be presumptuous to pass a censure, or to hazard an opinion, on the private devotions of any man; but there is no such risk in rejecting the apology which the publishers of those secret exercises have advanced for Mr. Froude’s departure from the habits of his fellow-Christians. Feeble, indeed, and emasculate must be the system, which, in its delicate distaste for the “popular writers of the day,” would bury in silence the Name in which every tongue and language has been summoned to worship and to rejoice. Well may “awe and fear” become all who assume and all who invoke it. But an “awe” which “shrinks to utter”[316] the Name of Him Who was born at Bethlehem, and yet does not fear to use the Name which is ineffable; a “fear” which can make mention of the Father, but may not speak of the Brother, of all;――is a feeling which fairly baffles comprehension. There is a much more simple though a less imposing theory. Mr. Froude permitted himself, and was encouraged by his correspondents, to indulge in the language of antipathy and scorn towards a large body of his fellow-Christians. It tinges his Letters, his Journals, and is not without its influence even on his devotions. Those despised men too often celebrated the events of their Redeemer’s life, and the benefits of His Passion, in language of offensive familiarity, and invoked Him with fond and feeble epithets. Therefore, a good Oxford Catholic must envelope in mystic terms all allusion to Him round Whom, as its centre, the whole Christian system revolves. The line of demarcation between themselves and these coarse sentimentalists must be broad and deep, even though it should exclude those by whom it is drawn, from all the peculiar and distinctive ground on which the standard of the reformed Churches has been erected…. The martyrs of disgust and the heroes of revolutions are composed of entirely opposite materials, and are cast in quite different moulds. Nothing truly great or formidable was ever yet accomplished, in thought or action, by men whose love for truth was not strong enough to triumph over their dislike of the offensive objects with which truth may chance to be associated.

‘Mr. Froude was the helpless victim of such associations. Nothing escapes his abhorrence which has been regarded with favour by his political or religious antagonists. The Bill for the Abolition of Slavery was recommended to Parliament by an Administration more than suspected of Liberalism in matters ecclesiastical. The “witness to Catholic views,” “in whose sentiments, as a whole,” his Editors concur, visits the West Indies, and they are not afraid to publish the following report of his feelings: “I have felt it a kind of duty to maintain in my mind an habitual hostility to the niggers, and to chuckle over the failures of the new system, as if these poor wretches concentrated in themselves all the Whiggery, dissent, cant, and abomination that have been ranged on their side.” Lest this should pass for a pleasant extravagance, the Editors enjoin the reader not to “confound the author’s view of the negro cause and of the _abstract negro_ with his feelings towards any he should actually meet”; and Professor Thöluck is summoned from Germany to explain how the “originators of error” may lawfully be the objects of a good man’s hate, and how it may innocently overflow upon all their clients, kindred, and connections. Mr. Froude’s feelings towards the “abstract negro” would have satisfied the learned Professor in his most malevolent mood. “I am ashamed,” he says, “I cannot get over my prejudices against the niggers.”――“Every one I meet seems to me like an incarnation of the whole Anti-Slavery Society, and Fowell Buxton at their head.”――“The thing that strikes me as most remarkable in the cut of these niggers is excessive immodesty, a forward stupid familiarity intended for civility, which prejudices me against them worse even than Buxton’s cant did. It is getting to be the fashion with everybody, even the planters, to praise the emancipation and Mr. Stanley.”

‘Mr. Froude, or rather his Editors, appear to have fallen into the error of supposing that their profession gives them not merely the right to admonish, but the privilege to scold. Lord Stanley and Mr. Buxton have, however, the consolation of being railed at in good company. Hampden is “hated” with much zeal, though, it is admitted, with imperfect knowledge. Louis Philippe, and his associates of the Three Days, receive the following humane benediction: “I sincerely hope ‘the march of mind’ in France may yet prove a bloody one.”――“The election of the wretched B. for ――――, and that base fellow H. for ――――, in spite of the exposure,” etc. Again, the Editors protest against our supposing that this is a playful exercise in the art of exaggeration. “It should be observed,” they say, “as in other parts of this volume, that the author used these words on principle, not as abuse, but as expressing matters of fact, as a way of bringing before his own mind things as they are.”

‘Milton, however, is the special object of Mr. Froude’s virtuous abhorrence. He is “a detestable author.” Mr. Froude rejoices to learn something of the Puritans, because, as he says, “it gives me a better right to hate Milton, and accounts for many of the things which most disgusted me in his (not-in-my-sense-of-the-word) poetry!”――“A lady told me yesterday that you wrote the article on Sacred Poetry, etc. I thought it did not come up to what I thought your standard of aversion to Milton.” … There are much better things in Mr. Froude’s book than the preceding quotations might appear to promise. If given as specimens of his powers, they would do injustice to one whom we willingly would believe to have been a good and able man, a ripe scholar, and a devout Christian; though as illustrations of the temper and opinions of those who now sit in Wycliffe’s seat, they are neither unfair nor unimportant. But they may convince all whom it concerns, that hitherto, at least, Oxford has not given birth to a new race of giants, by whom the Evangelical founders and missionaries of the Church of England are about to be expelled from their ancient authority, or the Protestant world excluded from the light of day and the free breath of Heaven.’

From ‘A MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN KEBLE, M.A., Late Vicar of Hursley,’
by the Right Hon. Sir J. T. COLERIDGE, D.C.L. Oxford. London:
James Parker & Co., 1870. [3rd ed.]

[By the kind permission of Messrs. J. Parker & Co.]

‘Of Hurrell Froude Dr. Newman has written: “He was a pupil of Keble’s, formed by him, and in turn reacting upon him.” This sentence is followed by a short and striking account of this extraordinary man, to which it would be unwise in me to attempt any addition, except as it may bear on the object of this memoir. I knew [Hurrell Froude] from a child, and I trace in the somewhat singular composition of his character, what he inherited both from his father, and his highly gifted mother: his father, whom Keble after his first visit to Dartington Parsonage playfully described to me as “very amiable, but provokingly intelligent, one quite uncomfortable to think of, making one ashamed of going gawking as one is wont to do about the world, without understanding anything one sees”; his mother very beautiful in person and delicate in constitution, with a highly expressive countenance, and gifted in intellect with the genius and imagination which his father failed in. Like the one, he was clever, knowing, quick, and handy; like the other, he was sensitive, intellectual, imaginative. He came to Keble full of respect for his character; he was naturally soon won by his affectionateness and simplicity, and, in turn, he was just the young man in whom Keble would at once take an interest and delight, as pupil; and so in fact it was. I find him again and again in Keble’s letters spoken of in the most loving language, yet often not without some degree of anxiety as to his future course: he saw the elements of danger in him, how liable he might be to take a wrong course, or be misunderstood even when taking a right one. Yet his hopes largely prevailed; and especially I remember his rejoicing at his [Froude’s] being elected Fellow of Oriel, thinking that the new society and associations, with the responsibilities of College employment, would tend to keep him safe. That Keble acted on him (I would rather use that term than “formed”) is certain; and even when, in the later years of his short life, symptoms of coming differences in opinion may be traced in his letters, there is no abatement of personal love and reverence, nor, indeed, in a certain sense, of his feeling the weight of Keble’s influence; and though I gather from these that there was more entire agreement with Dr. Newman as to action, yet it seems to me that there still remained a closer intimacy and more filial feeling with regard to Keble….

‘… That Hurrell Froude “re-acted on Keble” is true also, I have no doubt, in a certain sense; it could scarcely be otherwise where there was so much ability and affectionate playfulness, with so much originality on one side; so much humility on the other; and so much love on both. It would be idle to speculate on what might have been, when the hour of trial came which none of those specially engaged probably then foresaw. Before it arrived, Hurrell Froude had sunk under the constitutional malady against which he struggled for four years. What he would have been, and what he would have done, had his life been prolonged, no one can say; it would be unfair to judge him by what he left behind, except as rich grounds of promise. This I believe I may confidently say, that those who knew him best loved him the most dearly, and expected the most from him.

‘… My readers will have observed how Keble writes respecting Hurrell Froude and his _Remains_. His death was a heavy blow to him, and no wonder: those who knew him but were not on terms of intimacy, could not but regard mournfully the end of one so accomplished, so gifted, so good and so pure; a man of such remarkable promise, worn out in the very prime of life by slow, and wasting, and long-hopeless disease. But it was much more than this with Keble: they were more like elder and younger brothers. Reverence in some sort sanctified Froude’s love for Keble, and moderated the sallies of his somewhat too quick and defiant temper, and imparted a special diffidence to his opposition, in their occasional controversies with each other; while a sort of paternal fondness in Keble gave unusual tenderness to his friendship for Froude, and exaggerated, perhaps, his admiration for his undoubted gifts of head and heart. And these were greater than mere acquaintances would be aware of: for he did not present the best aspects of himself to common observation….

* * * * *

‘I had the misfortune of giving [Keble] pain, not only by differing from him on the subject [of the _Remains_], but, owing to misinformation, or misapprehension, on my part, by what turned out to be a fruitless and ill-timed interference to prevent the publication. I need not now explain how this arose; but I must confess that my opinion remains unchanged. It is a deeply interesting book; not only perfectly harmless now, but capable of instructing and improving those who will read it calmly and considerately. Still, I think that it was calculated, at the time, to throw unnecessary difficulties in the way of the Movement; that it tended to prevent a fair consideration of what the “movers” were attempting, to excite passion, and to encourage a scoffing spirit against them. Some part of the anger and bitterness with which the Ninetieth Tract was afterwards received, may fairly be traced to the feeling created, unjustly indeed, but not unnaturally, by the publication of the _Remains_. The one seemed to be the result of the other, and the sequence of the two was held to show a deliberate hostility to the Anglican, and an undue preference of the Roman Church.’

From ‘ESSAYS HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL,’ BY J. B. MOZLEY, D.D.
Rivingtons, 1878. [From the Essay on Dr. Arnold.]

[By the kind permission of Messrs. J. R. & H. W. Mozley.]

‘The Church of England had, after a century of growing laxity, just come to the point at which she must either retrace her steps into a stricter state, or go forward into a formal latitudinarianism. Arnold was for the latter course; the writers of the _Tracts for the Times_ for the former. The two schools met at these cross-roads, as it were, and a remarkable contrast indeed they presented. The foremost characters in the Church Movement (if they will excuse us looking at them so historically) were undoubtedly phenomena in their way, as Arnold was in his. Of one of these we can speak: the death that robs us of so much, gives us, at any rate, this privilege. Singular it is that antagonist systems should so suit themselves with champions; but if the world had been picked for the most fair, adequate, and expressive specimens of German-religionism and Catholicism (specimens that each side would have acknowledged), it could not well have produced better ones for the purpose than Dr. Arnold and Mr. Froude. Arnold, gushing with the richness of domestic life, the darling of Nature, and overflowing receptacle and enjoyer, with strong healthy gusto, of all her endearments and sweets,――Arnold, the representative of high joyous Lutheranism, is describable: Mr. Froude, hardly. His intercourse with earth and Nature seemed to cut through them like uncongenial steel, rather than mix and mingle with them. Yet the polished blade smiled as it went through. The grace and spirit with which he adorned this outward world (and seemed, to an undiscerning eye, to love it), were but something analogous in him to the easy tone of men in high life, whose good-nature to inferiors is the result either of their disinterested benevolence, or sublime unconcern. In him, the severe sweetness of the life divine not so much rejected as disarmed those potent glows and attractions of the life natural: a high good temper civilly evaded and disowned them. The monk by nature, the born aristocrat of the Christian sphere, passed them clean by with inimitable ease, marked his line, and shot clear beyond them into the serene ether, toward the far-off Light, toward that needle’s point on which ten thousand angels and all Heaven move…. The Catholic system, as it advanced from the worlds beyond the grave, came with some of the colour and circumstance of its origin. It contrasted strangely with the light, hearty, and glowing form of earth that came from wood and mountain, sunshine and green fields, to meet [it]. And the unearthly, supernatural, dogmatic Church opposed a ghostly dignity to the Church of Nature and the religion of the heart….

* * * * *

‘The notion of the Church being an independent body, and able to keep her own succession going on, apart from the State, is [to Arnold] “all essentially anarchical and schismatic,” and he is only defending, he says, “the common peace and order of the Church, against a new outbreak of Puritanism, to oppose it.” It appears a curious objection at first sight, from a man like Arnold, to urge against a particular religion the claim that it would have been considered treasonable in the days of Queen Elizabeth. But this … is the period of English History to which he always goes for his ecclesiastical principles. Another point of accusation, more of a moral one, does not come with peculiar grace from Arnold, viz., the charge of immodesty and impudence in personally daring to go so counter to received opinions in their views of things and persons. “I have read Froude’s volume,” he says, “and I think that its predominant character is extraordinary impudence. I never saw a more remarkable instance of that qualification than the way in which he, a young man, and a clergyman of the Church of England, reviles all those persons whom the accordant voice of that Church, without distinction of party, has agreed to honour, even perhaps with an excess of admiration.”[317] Now, let it be ever so true that “the accordant voice of the Church of England” has taken one view of Cranmer and the Reformers, whereas Mr. Froude took another, Arnold was not precisely the person to found a charge of impudence upon such a fact. A man who without a vestige of internal scruple or misgiving, unchristianised the whole development of the Church from the days of the Apostles; who made the very disciples, friends and successors of the Apostles teachers of corruption; who made the priesthood an Antichrist, and had just himself shocked the whole Church of England by the promulgation of a religious theory repugnant to the feeling and ideas of almost all her members to a man,――was certainly not a person to be tender in requiring compliance with received views from another, or quick to call impudence in another what in himself was the necessary adjunct of philosophy.’

From ‘MEMOIR OF JOSHUA WATSON,’ EDITED BY EDW. CHURTON, Archdeacon
of Cleveland. 2 vols. Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1861.

[By the kind permission of Messrs. J. Parker & Co.]

‘… The first clear indication of this new principle [a theory of Catholic union, to which all other considerations were to bow] was seen in the publication of the _Remains of R. H. Froude_, a young man of great promise, Fellow of Oriel College, who died at the early age of thirty-two, and of whose stray papers, letters, and remnants of conversation, a full collection was published by J. H. Newman, then a Fellow of the same College, now for some years past a member of the Society of the Oratory in the Church of Rome. The first two volumes of these _Remains_ were published early in 1838. The work never obtained a wide circulation; but enough was done to give deep offence to many minds, and to unsettle the principles of many more.