A Sincere and Teachable Heart: Self-denying Virtue in British Intellectual Life, 1736-1859 9004263365, 9789004263369

Table of contents :
A Sincere and Teachable Heart: Self-Denying Virtue in British Intellectual Life, 1736–1859
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: The Meaning Function of Patience and Humility
1 Common Things to Speak of: The Meaning of Patience and Humility in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination
2 From Virtue to Duty: The Victorian Application of Patience and Humility to Social and Intellectual Life
Part 2: The Eighteenth Century
3 Character and Morality in Eighteenth-Century British Thought
4 The Utility of Virtue
5 Patience, Utility and Revolution
Part 3: Oxford
6 Oxford and the Age of Reform
7 The Oxford Movement: Faith and Obedience in a Tumultuous and Shifting World
8 Faith and Reason in Newman’s University Sermons
9 The Hampden Affair: Divergent Paths out of a Spiritual Wilderness
10 Thomas Arnold Confronts the “Oxford Malignants”
11 The Tamworth Letters: Virtue and Science
12 Tract 90 and the Trial of Patience in the Church of England
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

A Sincere and Teachable Heart

Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions Editor M. Feingold (California Institute of Technology)

VOLUME 14

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/slci

A Sincere and Teachable Heart Self-Denying Virtue in British Intellectual Life, 1736–1859

By

Richard Bellon

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Oriel College, Oxford, reproduced from an issue of the Illustrated London News (16 July 1870, p. 73). Reproduced with the kind permission of the Library of Michigan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bellon, Richard (Historian) A sincere and teachable heart : self-denying virtue in British intellectual life, 1736-1859 / by Richard Bellon.   pages cm. -- (Scientific and learned cultures and their institutions, ISSN 2352-1325 ; volume 14)  Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26336-9 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26335-2 (ebook) 1. Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century. 2. Great Britain--Intellectual life--19th century. 3. Self-denial--Social aspects--Great Britain--History. 4. Virtue--Social aspects--Great Britain--History. 5. Patience--Social aspects--Great Britain--History. 6. Humility--Social aspects--Great Britain--History. 7. Ethics--Great Britain--History. 8. Great Britain--Moral conditions. 9. Church of England--History. 10. Oxford movement--History. I. Title. DA485.B43 2015 941.07--dc23 2014035136

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2352-1325 ISbN 978-90-04-26336-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26335-2 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1

Part 1 The Meaning Function of Patience and Humility 1

Common Things to Speak of The Meaning of Patience and Humility in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination 19 2 From Virtue to Duty The Victorian Application of Patience and Humility to Social and Intellectual Life 33

Part 2 The Eighteenth Century 3 4 5

Character and Morality in Eighteenth-Century British Thought 53 The Utility of Virtue 77 Patience, Utility and Revolution 96

Oxford 6 7

Part 3

Oxford and the Age of Reform 115 The Oxford Movement Faith and Obedience in a Tumultuous and Shifting World 132 8 Faith and Reason in Newman’s University Sermons 151 9 The Hampden Affair Divergent Paths out of a Spiritual Wilderness 170 10 Thomas Arnold Confronts the “Oxford Malignants” 189

vi

Contents 

11 The Tamworth Letters  Virtue and Science 210 12 Tract 90 and the Trial of Patience in the Church of England 224 Bibliography 243 Index 268

Acknowledgements I have relied heavily on the guidance and inspiration of friends during the research and writing of this book. I am particularly indebted to Sam Alberti, David Bailey, Keith Benson, Paul Brinkman, Joe Cain, Pietro Corsi, Tom Hankins, Michel Janssen, Doug Luckie, Rob Pennock, Jim Smith, Ryan Sweeder, Naoko Wake, and John Waller. Moti Feingold, my editor at Brill, provided essential support. Janea Schimmel’s expert copyediting scrubbed away errors and obscurities. Two grants aided my work. A harp development grant from Michigan State University in 2012–13 provided time for research. I also used part of my 2013–14 grant from the Uses and Abuses of Biology Grants Programme, administered by the Faraday Institute, St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, to deepen my attention to science in this book. Nell Whiteway, the uab grants coordinator, handled the application and award logistics deftly. I profited greatly from enlivening conversation with Denis Alexander, the parent-grant pi, during the grant conference in September of 2013. The administrative grant support of Christine Root and Kathie Ellis at Michigan State was indispensable. I owe the deepest debt to my family. My parents John and Linda Bellon provide me with constant love and encouragement. I would never have been in the position to write this book—or anything else in my scholarly career— without the sacrifices they made on my behalf. My children John and Sophie keep me grounded. On their strict instruction, I refrained from adding bears to the story where there weren’t any. Above all, is my wife Vicky. My scholarship relies heavily on her wisdom and her sharp critical eye. My life relies absolutely on her love, her enduring support, and her sparkling sense of humor.

Introduction In 1825, the young clergyman John Henry Newman reflected on the temperament necessary for obtaining true knowledge. “Now, it is plain that humility and teachableness are qualities of mind necessary for arriving at the truth in any subject, and in religious matters as well as others,” he preached from the pulpit of St. Mary’s, the university church of Oxford. “Impatient, proud, selfconfident, obstinate men, are generally wrong in the opinions they form of persons and things.”1 More than thirty years later Charles Darwin acknowledged the crucial importance of moving cautiously and modestly when searching for truth. He reassured readers in the opening paragraph of On the Origin of Species (1859) that he had only allowed himself to speculate on the “mystery of mysteries” surrounding the appearance of species after “patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts” for five years.2 The emphasis that these two very different Victorians placed on self-control illustrates the thesis of this book. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British grounded intellectual respectability and authority foremost in stable norms of good character and moral responsibility.3 That the Victorian fixated on “values” has slipped from commonplace to platitude. I propose to deepen our understanding of the meaning and function of these values by showing that they were to a large extent defined by the self-regulating virtues that Newman and Darwin venerated: patience and humility. Systems of belief—theological creeds, scientific theories, philosophies, political ideologies—were fully valid only to the extent that they emerged from and encouraged self-discipline. This ideal was embraced widely across generational and ideological divides. By highlighting the strong shared commitment to a set of behavioral values I am not minimizing the significance of intellectual disagreements. Rather, my project gives a clearer and more accurate picture of the grounds on which these consequential debates were fought. The foul-tempered disputes that ricocheted through Victorian life do not readily call to mind the words patient and humble. Yet, while the constant rhetorical invocations of self-denial were routinely self-serving, they were rarely 1 J.H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (London, 1918–24), vol. 8, p. 113. 2 C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London, 1859), p. 1. 3 Stefan Collini observes that there were widespread disagreements about the foundations of morality in Victorian Britain but “within the dominant culture, the actual [moral] obligations were only rarely contested.” See S. Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850–1930 (Oxford, 1991), p. 64.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004263352_002

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Introduction

cynical. Styles of disputation which from the outside appear to be the very negation of restraint—peevish, partisan, vindictive, remorseless—had a much different pith to those who practiced them. Newman, one of the century’s most accomplished controversialists, advised as a young man that anyone who endangered the souls of fellow men by propagating religious error “should meet with no mercy.” He concluded without a tinge of irony that it would be “uncharitable” to the offender not to treat him “as if he were embodied Evil.”4 Such passionately sincere attachment to the cultivation of man’s moral nature helps to explain the intensity of the nineteenth century’s intellectual conflicts. If you believe that depravity tempts men into error, and vice versa, then it follows that those who hold “wrong” opinions have likely turned their backs on virtue. The furious ­disputes which characterized Victorian intellectual life routinely pivoted on this association between correct belief and virtuous behavior. Controversies, from the nature of the sacraments to the origin of species, frequently achieved a septic quality because the contending parties were convinced that their rivals’ principles tempted souls into wickedness rather than merely minds into error. I first noticed the importance of appeals to patience and humility when attempting to crack a very particular historical puzzle: evolutionary theory made painfully negligible headway for several years after Darwin published the Origin but then, in the blink of five years, emerged as scientific orthodoxy. In 1863, Darwin grumbled that “I do not believe there are above half-a-dozen real downright believers in modification of Species in all England: certainly not more, who dare speak out.” In 1868, he crowed to the same friend that there was “now almost universal belief” in evolution. He publicly declared victory for evolution (if not for his mechanism of natural selection) in the 1872 sixth edition of the Origin. “At the present day almost all naturalists admit evolution under some form,” he wrote, with full justice.5 I concluded that Darwin won the war of ideas only after he demonstrated that acceptance of evolution was compatible with the moral conduct at the heart of the inductive method.

Charles Darwin, Evolution and the True Spirit of Christ

Darwin followed the Origin in 1862 with a treatise of a starkly different character. On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are 4 J.H. Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London, 1833), p. 253. 5 C. Darwin to J.D. Hooker (9 May 1863 and 28 July 1868), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Burkhardt and others (Cambridge, 1985– ), vol. 11, pp. 393–394, vol. 16 (part II), p. 644. C. Darwin, The Origin of Species, 6th ed. (London, 1872), p. 201.

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Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing explained just what its title promised. Darwin’s minute investigations into orchid morphology and physiology showed that the common structural plan shared by each of the six thousand or so species was modified to promote cross-fertilization by insects. This research demonstrated how environmentally specific reproductive needs drove diversification from a common ancestor. Orchids was the crown jewel in nearly a decade of botanical research that produced a steady stream of technical publications. Darwin did not return to the broader theoretical sweep of the Origin until 1868 with Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Historians have paid relatively little attention to Darwin’s botany, and it is easy to understand why. The theory of the Origin set the agenda for modern biology. In the Descent of Man (1871) he wrestled with humanity’s place in nature. His narrative of the Beagle voyage crackles with romantic adventure. Orchids was written for those with the skills, vocabulary and inclination to dissect flowers or study pollen grains under a microscope. No one else, he admitted to his publisher, would find much to enjoy.6 I originally shared this indifference. I first looked at Orchids during my dissertation work—and, after a brief perusal, concluded that its dense technicalities held little of interest. But, as my research continued, I kept stumbling across Victorian men of science who praised Darwin’s botany with unbounded enthusiasm. Take George Bentham. The laconic botanist had a well-earned reputation for caution. Orchids excited him in a way that little else in science ever had. He gushed in his 1862 presidential address to the Linnean Society that “we must all admire [Darwin’s] patient study of the habits of life, with that great power of combining facts, which has revealed to us so much surprising novelty in the economy of nature.”7 Gradually, Bentham and other sources convinced me that Darwin’s sustained attention to plants deserved a good, long look. Botany had not been a sideline for Darwin, I realized. In fact, I reached a headier conclusion: there would not have been a Darwinian Revolution without it. That, at least, was the thesis of my 2011 article, “Inspiration in the Harness of Daily Labor: Darwin, Botany and the Triumph of Evolution, 1859–1868.”8 6 C. Darwin to J. Murray (21 September 1861), ibid., vol. 9, pp. 272–273. 7 G. Bentham, “Presidential Address Read at the Anniversary Meeting of the Linnean Society on Saturday, May 24, 1862,” Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 6 (1862), p. lxxxi. Darwin’s botany eventually broke Bentham’s resistance to evolution; see R. Bellon, “The Great Question in Agitation: George Bentham and the Origin of Species,” Archives of Natural History 30 (2003), pp. 282–297. 8 R. Bellon, “Inspiration in the Harness of Daily Labor: Darwin, Botany and the Triumph of Evolution, 1859–1868,” Isis 102 (2011), pp. 392–420. See also R. Bellon, “Charles Darwin Solves

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Introduction

The Origin was, and is, an audacious book, and this sweep worked against it in the years immediately after publication. Darwin synthesized vast swathes of natural knowledge in the Origin—but as a consequence communicated very few original facts or observations. Darwin first publicly announced his theory jointly with Alfred Russel Wallace at an 1858 meeting of the Linnean Society, but the president Thomas Bell banned any subsequent formal discussion of the theory. Bentham, Bell’s successor, continued the policy, explaining that the society should not spend its time on “theoretical arguments not accompanied by the disclosure of new facts or observations.”9 And Bell and Bentham were sympathetic skeptics. Such hostile critics as Richard Owen and Samuel Wilberforce used the relative lack of new facts in the Origin to convict Darwin of a most grievous intellectual crime: abandoning the discipline of research to indulge in dreamy speculation. Owen’s prediction that in ten years the Origin would be forgotten seemed at first all too likely. The Origin had not been, by itself, sufficient to change many scientific minds. Darwin’s botany demonstrated that evolution by natural selection could guide new inductive research, which in turn associated the theory with (in the words of John Tyndall’s 1854 reflections on the inductive method) “patient industry, and an humble and conscientious acceptance of what Nature reveals.”10 Orchids burst with surprising new observations, and, collectively these details transformed the scientific understanding of floral reproduction. Darwin made sure that his colleagues understood that this triumph was possible only because an evolutionary perspective allowed him to see things other botanists had overlooked or misunderstood. Charles Daubeny, Oxford’s elderly professor of botany, never came around to Darwin’s theory of evolution but nonetheless observed that “even its most determined opponents ought to entertain an indulgent feeling towards a theory which has guided [Darwin] into a train of discoveries, both as to the vegetable and animal kingdom, any one of which would be sufficient to establish the reputation of an

9 10

the ‘Riddle of the Flower’; or, Why Don’t Historians of Biology Know about the Birds and Bees?” History of Science 47 (2009), pp. 373–406; R. Bellon, “The Moral Dignity of Inductive Method and the Reconciliation of Science and Faith in Adam Sedgwick’s Discourse,” Science & Education 21 (2012), pp. 937–958; and R. Bellon, “Darwin’s Evolutionary Botany,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, ed. Michael Ruse (Cambridge, 2013). Bentham, “Presidential Address,” p. lxxxi. J. Tyndall, “On the Importance of the Study of Physics as a Branch of Education for All Classes,” in Lectures on Education: Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London, 1854), p. 190.

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ordinary observer.”11 The inaugural “train of discoveries” needed to support evolution did not have to involve the fertilization mechanisms of flowering plants, of course; but it needed to be something and that is what it turned out to be. The influence of Darwin’s botany on the reception of his larger evolutionary theory is not, however, just an internal scientific story about the importance of practice in theory choice. A recent computational analysis of books and websites placed Darwin as the twelfth most significant historical figure of all time (nestled comfortably between the Tudor super-duo of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I), a result the authors attribute to the fact that Darwin “revolutionized the way we understand our world.”12 While I strongly discourage anyone from swallowing this particular ranking as a valid marker of world-historical influence, it does reveal the widespread perception of Darwin’s importance—if there is one thing everyone thinks they know about Darwin, it is that his ideas radiate with moral and intellectual consequence. My research shows that, for his contemporaries, the behavior that produced those ideas mattered as profoundly. Indeed, Victorians refused to disentangle theory from methods of theorizing, and method from the spirit that animated it. The passage that gave my 2011 article its title makes this plain. In 1844 the Scottish physicist David Brewster wrote an appreciation of the late French naturalist Georges Cuvier for the inaugural issue of the North British Review: Cuvier…was familiarized from his youth with the drudgery of observation. He wrought with the microscope and the scalpel: he collected, he labelled, he delineated, and he arranged; but he was thus a minute and hard-working naturalist, because he had early seen that he could not otherwise become a great philosopher. The grandest of his discoveries seem to have been presented to him as if by inspiration, and in the very bloom of his youth; and when he was sauntering on the shores of Normandy, picking up on the sea-beach a living species, and in the quarry a fossil shell, we doubt not that the existence of successive worlds, previous to 11 12

C. Daubeny, “The President’s Address,” Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art 4 (1865), p. 11. S. Skiena and C. Ward, Who’s Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 220, 356. The project’s website (www.whoisbigger.com; accessed on 17 December 2013) provides a comprehensive ranking of world historical significance of tens of thousands of people, based on its computational system. The results are eccentric: Thomas Arnold, for example, ranks as almost but not quite as significant as a wrestler “currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment on its SmackDown brand” who performs under the nom-de-headlock, “Big Show.”

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our own, had been revealed to him as a poetical conception, to which every new fact, and every profound thought, gave the aspect of truth. This early dream, however, might have terminated in a poem or a romance; but he sought its confirmation in the examination of organic bodies, whether existing or extinct, and after collecting the previous labours of other naturalists, he found it necessary to place himself in the harness of daily labour, in order to obtain the data which were necessary to illustrate and establish his views. For Brewster, Cuvier’s genius was as much moral as it was intellectual. Yes, he had flashes of insight into nature, but he only transformed these gifts of inspiration into science by submitting himself to years of drudgery. His science, in turn, taught us “the lesson of humility and wisdom—if we had not already been taught it in the school of revelation.”13 The implications of Brewster’s portrait of Cuvier become even clearer when it is put alongside a representation of Christ’s character drawn by the Scottish Free Church minister and theologian Robert Smith Candlish in the same issue of the North British Review: His meekness, gentleness, patience—his unwearied zeal in doing good— his piety, with its nightly vigils and prayers—his tender compassion, with its tears, and words, and deeds of sympathy—are all viewed as proceeding naturally, and, in a manner, necessarily, from the perfect balance of his soul.14 Cuvier (at least as Brewster idealized him) pursued his scientific labors with the same unflagging patience that characterized Christ’s pursuit of vigil and prayer. Out of moral character came truth. The corollary: out of vice came error. Darwin’s most venomous critics sought to demolish his ideas by condemning the alleged misconduct behind them. Wilberforce, in a typical example of this strategy, indicted him for discarding “the sober, patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy” for the “jungle of fanciful assumption”; the entire approach to the natural world, the bishop growled, was “utterly dishonourable.”15 Darwin’s meticulous botanical investigations did much more than 13 14 15

D. Brewster, “Flouren’s Eloge Historique de Baron Cuvier,” North British Review 1 (1844), pp. 35, 41. R.S. Candlish, “Sewell’s Christian Morals,” North British Review 1 (1844), p. 219. S. Wilberforce, “Darwin’s Origin of Species,” Quarterly Review 108 (1860), pp. 250, 263.

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open new avenues of research; they rehabilitated his character. He gained renown for placing inspiration in the harness of daily labor. This reputation sold his ideas to the larger public—in some cases, literally. In the back pages of Darwin’s Movement and Habits of Climbing Plants (another product of the productive 1860s), his New York publisher printed sixteen review excerpts to advertise his other books. Nine of the sixteen explicitly praised his patience. This reputation for “patient and painstaking methods” (as one of the blurbs had it) allowed Darwin to supplant Cuvier as the moral icon of natural history. The Rev. George Prothero, chaplain to the Queen, preached at Darwin’s funeral in Westminster Abbey that he was “the greatest man of science of his day, but was so entirely a stranger to intellectual pride and arrogance that he stated with the utmost modesty opinions of the truth of which he was himself convinced, but which, he was aware, could not be universally agreeable or acceptable. Surely in such a man lived that charity which is the very essence of the true spirit of Christ.”16 The Christian and the man of science thus shared identical standards of moral habit: “The study of the laws of nature strengthen and exalt the intellectual powers,” the geologist-clergyman Adam Sedgwick preached in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge; “but strange must be our condition of self-government and tortuous our habits of thought, if such studies be allowed to co-exist with self-love and arrogance and intellectual pride.”17 The passionate sincerity of these convictions helps to explain the intensity of the nineteenth century’s scientific conflicts. If you believe that vice tempts men into error, then it follows that those who hold “wrong” opinions have likely turned their backs on virtue. As controversies arose, disputants routinely fought to associate their preferred ideas with patient and humble hard work—and whenever justifiable (or simply expedient) to delegitimize opposing truth claims and metaphysical positions as the poisoned fruit of rashness, and pride. I developed this interpretation to explain the British reception of evolution by natural selection. But if it was accurate, this dynamic—the evaluation of ideas in the light of their putative relationship to patient and humble behavior—would not be particular to science. The moral issues at play were far too universal to be restricted to one cultural domain. If I was right about Darwinism, 16

17

Six of the review blurbs used the words “patient” or “patience” and the other three same expressed the idea in different words: C. Darwin, The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, 2nd ed. (New York, 1876), pp. [209–211]. Prothero quoted in “The Late Mr. Darwin,” Illustrated London News 80 (1882), p. 418. A. Sedgwick, A Discourse on the Studies of the University [1st ed.] (London, 1833), p. 12.

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the dynamic of evaluating ideas in light of the behavior must apply elsewhere in British life. I began to look outside of science. This book reports some of what I have found.

The Book in Panorama

This book is divided into three parts. They overlap, but each can stand alone. The broader argument builds cumulatively and thematically rather than sequentially. Below I set out a brief outline of the book and provide a panoramic view of its main themes to clarify connections that might otherwise disappear in the details. Part I elaborates my thesis that the concepts of patience and humility were central to British intellectual life in the nineteenth century. I open with Mark Pattison and Thomas Carlyle to argue that building practical rules of duty around patience and humility became an urgent and contentious task for the Victorians. These virtues were adaptable to the different responsibilities of class, gender, race, age, social rank, vocation, and wealth. Patience and humility sustained one set of duties for sons, husbands, and fathers, and another for daughters, wives and mothers. I advance my analysis by drawing on the thought of a diverse cross-section of British intellectuals, including men of science (Augustus De Morgan, Thomas Huxley, Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell), novelists (Ann Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hughes, Geraldine Jewsbury), religious leaders (Edward White Benson, Thomas Chalmers, Benjamin Jowett) and literary figures (Matthew Arnold, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Froude, John Morley, Samuel Smiles). Part II and Part III build off this analysis as case studies. Part II steps back chronologically to examine how these conceptions of virtuous behavior—ones so vital to the Victorians—attained their form and cultural vigor in the eighteenth century. I concentrate on four figures. Three were men of the cloth. Joseph Butler and William Paley attempted to solidify the theology and moral philosophy of the Church of England from within. John Wesley hoped to strengthen the established church through an evangelical awakening, although his Methodist movement ultimately pursued an independent path. Some within the established church ardently embraced evangelicalism; others reacted as ardently against it. Either way, Wesley left an indelible mark on Anglicanism. The fourth person I examine, Samuel Johnson, was not a clergyman (although he did write dozens of sermons for hire). He described his era as an “age of authors”; perhaps no author at the time more

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deftly exploited the creation of popular reading audiences.18 The answers that they gave to burning questions of religious practice, civil society, the origin of virtue, and the nature of the conscience resonated deep into the following century. Part III returns to the nineteenth century and the conflicts which raged in the University of Oxford in the 1830s and 1840s, with Oriel College as the epicenter. The college spearheaded Oxford’s academic rejuvenation in the panicked years after the French Revolution. By the 1820s Oriel had forged association with a cadre of brilliant and ambitious men who sought to align timeless virtue to the requirements of a fast-changing society. An Oriel fellowship provided the launching point for careers in the university, the church and other institutions of national importance. The liberal Noetics—a loose-knit group which included Thomas Arnold, Edward Copleston, Renn Dickson Hampden, Edward Hawkins, Baden Powell and Richard Whately—aspired to invigorate English Christianity through toleration, pluralism and reason. Newman was the driving force behind the rival Oxford Movement which fought to return the Church of England to the traditions, the conceptions of faith, the practices of discipline and the lines of authority of its apostolic foundation. His fellow Tractarians—so called because the Oxford Movement organized around a series of Tracts for the Times—included Hurrell Froude, John Keble and Edward Pusey. The bad blood between the Noetics and Tractarians can obscure points of fundamental agreement between the two groups of Oriel men. Both sides believed that modern men were astray in a spiritually barren wilderness. They disagreed on the direction out of the wasteland. They clashed over means, not ends. The relationship between character and belief was not of course first drawn in Britain. The pagan Greek and Roman literature at the heart of elite British education addressed the intersection of character, conduct and knowledge. The ideals of Christian virtue, the ligaments between practice and precept, were very often literally “proverbial”—the Book of Proverbs provided abundant guidance on the connection between wisdom and the ways of righteousness, perversity, and the paths of wickedness.19 The “cardinal virtues” occupied a central role in the philosophy and theology of the middle ages. The Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic response both paid obsessive attention  to the relationship between integrity, virtue, knowledge and authority. Richard Hooker, the sixteenth-century theologian who more than anyone else 18 19

R. Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (New York, 2000), pp. xxiii, 84–86. I owe this insight to an anonymous referee.

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established a distinct identity for the Anglican Church, built the practical aspects of his divinity on the conviction that pride characterized the corruption at the core of man’s nature. He believed that living with genuine humility and suffering with patience opened a path to God’s divine justice.20 Intellectuals in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain defined the features of vice and virtue in ways that Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas or Hooker would have recognized. In 1739, the young Wesley’s itinerant ministry provoked rebukes from Butler, then the bishop of Bristol. The quality of the Christian temperament was not a point of disagreement; the two men expressed in almost identical terms the conviction that a meek and patient character was a necessity. Paley genuinely believed that suffering was essential to moral development because it tempered selfishness. Modern readers often misunderstand Paley’s Natural Theology by not recognizing this point. He did not consider the pain and misery built into the constitution of nature—the claws, the poison, the disease—as an embarrassment to explain way. The pain was an indispensable means to moral growth and, as such, no less essential to God’s providential order than beauty and harmony. In the following century, Darwin observed to his wife that, whatever doubts he nursed about Christianity, “luckily there were no doubts as to how one ought to act.”21 Pattison and Carlyle approached their roles as historians very differently—Pattison aimed to be scientific, Carlyle prophetic—but they both insisted that the student of the past must have the patience for long, dreary research and the humility to place the results of this perseverant work above self-satisfied conjecture. The Noetics and Tractarians both agreed that to meet spiritual challenges Christians needed “a sincere and teachable heart” (in Arnold’s words), “to be meek, humble, single-hearted, and teachable” (in Newman’s).22 Arnold’s son Matthew famously identified Hebraism—“patient continuance in well doing, self conquest”—as one of the two central forces of human cultural history.23 (He felt, controversially, that England needed to rebalance spiritually towards the other great force: the clarity of thought, beauty and spontaneity which he called Hellenism). In 1863, Pattison delivered a sermon on the obligation to patience, resignation, meekness, charity, 20 21 22

23

J.K. Stafford, “Practical Divinity,” in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden, 2008), pp. 535–561. C. Darwin to E. Darwin (c. February 1839), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, ed. Burkhardt and others, vol. 2, p. 172. T. Arnold, Sermons, with an Essay on the Right Interpretation and Understanding of the Scriptures (London, 1844), vol. 2, p. 375. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8, p. 113. M. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (London, 1869), p. 147.

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long-suffering, mercy, sympathy, and benevolence. These, he noted wryly, “are common things—common to speak of, I mean.”24 The challenge was to move from speaking of virtue to translating it into principles and duties appropriate for specific circumstances. In the eighteenth century, Butler did not acquire lasting standing as a moral philosopher by inveighing against vice in the abstract. He built his legacy responding to the specific threat of deism to orthodox religion; and this, in turn, was driven by the anxiety that fashionable skepticism was entangled in the licentiousness of coffee-house rakes, degenerate aristocrats, and fashionable wits. Johnson in a similar way responded to a new literary marketplace, one he helped to pioneer, where the man of letters made his way by appealing to the book-buying public rather than aristocratic patrons. The dictates of virtue allowed him to bridge learned and commercial culture, and unite the cultural richness of the past with the promise of the future. Patience and humility compelled the modern author to think long-term, in defiance of myopic fads and ephemeral celebrity. Wesley built his understanding of “the method laid down in the Bible” while battling what he saw as the corruption and the dead formality of the established church. Paley drew upon long-established moral codes when he identified intellectual credibility with a willingness to suffer; but he applied this conviction to construct a system of epistemology to answer David Hume’s arguments against miracles. Edmund Burke admired Butler and, in plain outline, their political philosophies bear close similarity. Yet Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France had an urgency and an emotional timbre unlike anything that Butler ever wrote. The application of virtue to political life acquired a distinct new meaning—and practical consequence—when reflected in the blade of a guillotine. The French Revolution and its aftermath delivered sharp blows to British life. The resulting fractures radiated throughout society. By the early 1830s a series of political and social reforms had amplified the discord. Parliament relaxed legal disabilities on nonconformists and Catholics. The Reform Bill of 1832 extended the electoral franchise and transformed parliamentary constituencies. For some, these reforms reinforced Britain’s constitution; for others, they murdered it. One aristocratic lady lamented in the wake of Catholic Emancipation that “the world seems altered in every way. It seems that seasons, people, and principles, are so altered that I can hardly believe I am still in poor Old England.”25 The division between the Noetics and the Tractarians 24 25

M. Pattison, Sermons (London, 1885), pp. 280–282. B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 24–38, 397–398.

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demonstrated the powerful centrifugal effect of national politics in Oxford. The “teachableness” that both Newman and Thomas Arnold prized so intensely was not directed at some ethereal, idealized Christian. They wanted to instruct the flesh-and-blood men and women who lived amongst the very real consequences of parliamentary reform, railroads, steam engines, romantic poetry, scientific breakthroughs, and the other transformations remaking the country, for good or ill. Arnold’s desire to teach the values of patience and humility was the sinew that connected his vocation as a reforming public-school headmaster with his role as a public intellectual. He ran his school along the same general lines that he wanted to reform the Church of England. In both cases he believed that encouraging regulated autonomy was not only practical but the best way to inculcate the habits of moral control. A desire to teach men how to discipline their unruly nature also defined Newman’s diverse activities. He wrote and preached on liturgical rites, the history of the church, the moral philosophy of faith, and the grounds for Christian belief. All served to inspire men and women to reform their moral nature in obedience to God. His 1833 historical study of the fourth-century Arians provides a telling illustration: the  subtitle explained that the book would examine the Arians “doctrine, ­temper and conduct.” These three things were for Newman, as they were for most of his contemporaries, inseparable. A shared attachment to imparting patience and humility propelled Arnold and Newman into such intense conflict that they began to doubt whether the other deserved to be called a Christian at all.26 If truth emerged from a virtuous engagement with the world, then those who believed truly very likely behaved virtuously. The reverse also held: iniquity blinded men to the truth, so those who believed falsely were very likely wicked. Virtue inevitably became a weapon in political and intellectual fights, as opposing sides accused each other of advancing bad behavior through bad ideas. In the eighteenth century, Wesley and his fellow evangelicals faced a constant barrage of criticism for “enthusiasm” which, detractors insisted, betrayed the arrogant and restless spirit at the heart of their theology. This became an issue in his 1739 audience with Butler, who raised reports of hysterical behavior at Wesley’s open-air meetings. Denunciations for encouraging pride and unregulated passion dogged Wesley for the rest of his long ministry. His feeling of unfair treatment did not prevent him from impeaching the ­doctrines of Quakers and Catholics on the basis of their religious practices. In the following century, Darwin faced a similar wave of attacks on his conduct 26

A.P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (London, 1844), vol. 2, p. 43. J.H. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London, 1864), p. 98.

Introduction

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following the publication of the Origin. Wesley’s evangelicalism indulged an enthusiasm that was unrestrained by the sobriety of the established church; Darwin’s evolutionism unleashed imagination from the healthy restraints of the inductive method. The context differed, but the accusation of pride was the same in both cases. When Pattison and Carlyle died in the early 1880s, those who disliked their religious views poured over posthumous accounts of their lives to draw a direct line between their heterodoxy and their personal failings. The Oriel colleagues eyed each other warily in the early 1830s, but their disagreement remained muted as long as it stayed academic. Newman was horrified at the argument of Hampton’s 1832 Bampton lectures on The Scholastic Philosophy Considered in Its Relation to Christian Theology, but held his tongue publically. Then the world intruded. In 1834, Parliament debated a bill that would have opened Oxford to non-Anglican students. Hampden made the Noetic case for removing religious tests in a widely noticed pamphlet. The Tractarians treated the proposal as an existential threat to the university. Two years later the Whig government under Lord Melbourne appointed Hampden to the regius chair of divinity. The Tractarians organized a university-wide protest. Newman and Pusey publicly condemned him for a wide range of heresies, including an indifference to Christ’s divinity. Hampden protested indignantly, and with justice, at the gross distortion of his actual views. Newman and Pusey were unmoved. They serenely replied that Hampden’s personal beliefs hardly mattered. The issue was the implications of his rationalistic theology. They explained that they had honestly followed its vanity and self-will to their logical conclusions. While unable to stop the appointment, they did subject Hampden to a humiliating vote of censure in the university’s governing Convocation. Arnold counterattacked the Tractarians in a furious Edinburgh Review essay. He contrasted Hampden’s openness, patience, and meekness with the moral wickedness of his distractors. Arnold’s principles required him to tolerate differences of opinion but he made it clear that he would not abide what he viewed as iniquity. In the midst of the storm, Melbourne cautioned Pusey that he should consider whether or not his own reputation for orthodoxy would emerge pristine under similarly aggressive scrutiny. This warning proved prophetic. The Tractarians attachment to the pre-Reformation doctrine and practices of the English church inflamed widespread hostility, including from their erstwhile allies in the campaign against Hampden. Pusey was censured by the university for a sermon he delivered on the Eucharist. Newman bore much of the brunt of anti-Catholic suspicion after he wrote a tract which reconciled the church’s Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion with Catholic practices. Virtue and character

14

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buttressed Newman’s case. If the reformers responsible for the Articles had intended a decisive break with Catholic tradition, rather than simply a correction of the errors of Rome, then they would have been guilty of envy, strife and pride. Because they were virtuous men, Newman reasoned, they could not have intended to severe the English church from its apostolic roots. Critics pointed to this tract as alarming evidence of a dishonest stealth campaign to destroy the Protestant character of the Church of England. They declared that no one who behaved honestly would so speciously twist the clear Protestant meaning of the Articles. Newman’s doctrine illuminated his traitorous deeds, and the deeds blackened his doctrine—anti-Tractarians applied the same circular strategy that Newman had wielded so effectively against Hampden. By 1845, Newman felt he could no longer remain an Anglican. He was accepted into the communion of the Roman Catholic Church in October of that year. The Tractarian movement continued, diminished but unbowed, under Pusey’s leadership. Keble was honored after his death by the creation of a new Oxford college in his name. The elderly Pusey delivered the inaugural sermon in its new chapel. He preached that all Christians must seek meekness “learned from Himself, inwrought by His Spirit through continued study of His Divine meekness, the daughter of humility, the mother of patience.”27 For over a decade, from the fight over allowing dissenters into Oxford to Newman’s secession to Rome, aggression and acrimony ratcheted upwards in Oxford with each accusation of misconduct. The anger metastasized not in spite of the fact that all involved claimed to revere patience and humility; paradoxically, the bitterness and recrimination flowed directly from the earnest conviction that blessed are the meek. Both sides were convinced that their opponents wrapped themselves in counterfeit modesty in order to license their impulsive pride. The pattern of associating misbehavior and misbelief appeared again and again in Victorian intellectual and political disputes. The humble man placed his solemn duty to the truth above the desire to avoid unpleasant quarrels. Indeed, there was nothing humble or charitable in tolerating wickedness; hiding from conflict was just another form of self-indulgence. Humility, as the Victorians understood it, was marinated in irony. This helps to explain why differences of opinion so often provoked the “best of times, worst of times” mentality that Charles Dickens memorably assigned to the “noisiest authorities” of both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.28 27 28

E.B. Pusey, “Blessed are the Meek.” A Sermon, Preached at the Opening of the Chapel of Keble College, on S. Mark’s Day, 1876 (Oxford, 1876), p. 18. C. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, introduced by F. Busch, afterword by A.N. Wilson (New York, 2007), p. 7.

Introduction



15

The Common Context

Darwin never betrayed an interest in the Oxford Movement. As a Cambridgeeducated agnostic and self-financed man of science, he worried about theological and ecclesiastical disagreements only when they intruded on science or freedom of inquiry. He was visiting his childhood home in Shrewsbury when Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. Darwin, at the time, was more concerned about the politics of the University of Edinburgh, where a close friend had lost a bid to become professor of botany. He was also anxious about Adam Sedgwick’s recent hostile review of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Sedgwick, his professor of geology at Cambridge and one of the most eminent naturalists in Europe, attempted to eviscerate this popular work of evolutionary cosmology. Darwin caught his breath at Sedgwick’s savagery, but then exhaled when he did not discover any unanticipated argument against evolution.29 Newman, for his part, would later respond to Darwin’s evolutionary theory with a shrug. Evolution troubled him only when used to undermine the moral supremacy of religion.30 Yet Darwin faced the same fundamental challenge in promoting a revolution in natural history as Newman confronted in his mission to renew English Christianity. They had to associate their contentious reforms to the behavioral norms that underwrote both the temperament of the Christian and the philosopher. Both men faced opponents who attacked their ideas by coupling them with the promotion of conceit and self-indulgence. In the April 1836 issue of the Edinburgh Review, published during the furor over Hampden’s appointment to the regius divinity chair, Bonamy Price, an Oxford-educated master at Rugby under Arnold, used a review of Newman’s Arians of the Fourth Century to condemn the broader Tractarian project. He applauded their commitment to “correct and well-regulated moral habit.” He then accused them of stifling the moral improvement that they so desperately promoted. Their methods, especially the attempt to suppress the reasoning faculty, pushed them “into very serious errors, that entail consequences of no slight mischief.” The worst, in Price’s view, was Newman’s growing thirst for persecuting anyone “so wilfully blinded as not to think as he does.” This behavior “weakened and impaired that Christian love which is the very essence of Christian life.” Nearly a quarter century later, the distinguished comparative anatomist 29 30

C. Darwin to J.D. Hooker and to C. Lyell (both 8 October 1845), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, ed. Burkhardt and others, vol. 3, pp. 257–259. F.M. Turner, “John Henry Newman and the Challenge of a Culture of Science,” The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 1 (1996), pp. 1694–1704.

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Richard Owen dissected the Origin in the same journal as a cesspool of “unregulated fancies of dreamy speculation.” He also connected Darwin’s ideas to a pattern of mischief. Most damningly, he accused the man who had up to his point been his friend for encouraging younger naturalists to scorn the virtue of “close and long-continued research, sustained by the determination to get accurate results.”31 Darwin emerged from his struggles victorious. It was Owen’s reputation that ultimately suffered in their confrontation. By the time Darwin died, even Pusey’s disciple Henry Parry Liddon acknowledged that the naturalist’s “greatness is not least conspicuous in the patience and care with which he observed and registered minute single facts, while engaged in arranging groups of facts.” He conceded, not too grudgingly, that the initial fear of Darwin’s theory as “necessarily hostile to the fundament truths of religion” proved largely unfounded.32 Newman’s influence proved more circuitous. The type of charges that Price leveled against him found traction in the wider Church of England. Newman left the church that he felt had repudiated him, and yet his principles exerted a long and deep influence on it. As a Roman Catholic, he gradually settled into the role of a sage, widely admired for personal integrity. A milestone in his cultural rehabilitation came in the 1860s when he successfully answered accusations of dishonesty and hypocrisy leveled by one of Darwin’s warmest admirers in the Church of England, Charles Kingsley.33 Today busts of Darwin and Newman sit next to each other on the top row of the Victorian sculpture wall of the National Portrait Gallery in London.34 The widespread reverence for patience and humility provided a common context for Darwin and Newman’s distinct spheres of activity. This book aspires to deepen the understanding of British intellectual history by examining this context. 31

32

33 34

B. Price, “Newman’s History of the Arians,” Edinburgh Review 63 (1836), pp. 45, 55, 72. R. Owen, “Darwin on the Origin of Species,” Edinburgh Review 111 (1860), pp. 512–513, 529–530. H.P. Liddon, The Recovery of St. Thomas, a Sermon Preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral on the Second Sunday after Easter, April 23, 1882, with a Prefatory Note on the Late Mr. Darwin, 2nd ed. (London, 1882), pp. 28–29. See Bellon, “The Moral Dignity of Inductive Method,” pp. 952–955. O. Chadwick, Newman: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2010), pp. 59–64, 77–78. For chronological parallels between the development of Darwin and Newman’s thought, see F.M. Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 55–64.

Part 1 The Meaning and Function of Patience and Humility

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chapter 1

Common Things to Speak of

The Meaning of Patience and Humility in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination

Mark Pattison, the head of Lincoln College, Oxford, preached in his college’s chapel on All Saint’s Day in 1863. The sermon took its text from Hebrews: “Seeing we also are compassed with so great a cloud of witness,…let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” Pattison insisted that his listeners must not think of saints as exotic creatures whose extraordinary lives and times held few modern lessons. The blessed men and women honored on the first day of November did not belong to a distinctive caste of believer, he insisted; a saint “is nothing more than an eminent Christian—one who in charity and meekness, in gentleness, forbearance, resignation, patience, longsuffering, kindness, mercy, benevolence, sympathy for others, self-denial, has risen above the average attainment of humbler Christians.” This attempt to sweep his college congregation into the communion of saints advanced a lifelong mission, as both an educator and a clergyman, to endow Oxford’s students with moral seriousness and an ethic of self-improvement. A fortnight earlier he had preached to the university at large that education must deal “not with abstract intelligences, but with men.… We may speak of forming the mind,—but we must mean by it forming the character.”1 Thomas Carlyle likewise stressed the moral grandeur of endurance and selfdenial. Celebrations of patience, perseverance, and humility run through Sartor Resartus, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, and Past and Present.2 His moralizing was not just for public consumption. Letters to his brother Jack and his friend John Stuart Mill counselled that the road to a moral life could only be followed, as the Bible enjoined, by “walk[ing] humbly in welldoing.” This humility, he explained to Mill, required “self-killing.” He lectured his sister Jean in even loftier tones.

1 Pattison, Sermons, pp. 72–75, 270, 273–298. See H.S. Jones, Intellect and Character in Victorian England: Mark Pattison and the Invention of the Don (Cambridge, 2007). 2 T. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, vol. 1 of The Centenary Edition of the Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H.D. Trail (London, 1896), pp. 92, 146–157. T. Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, vol. 5 in ibid., p. 9, 76, 133, 151, 244. T. Carlyle, Past and Present, vol. 10 in ibid., pp. 9, 23–24, 62, 91, 100, 158–163, 197–199.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004263352_003

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Persist in what you see to be good and your duty; be patient, gentle, submissive even to ill usage: what are we that we should be well used? Did they use Jesus of Nazareth well? Above all, avoid vanity, self-conceit, Presumption of all sorts: want of Humility (which is a deep and glorious feeling could we see into it) is simply the want of all Religion, of all true Moral worth. I know this by the best of all teachers, Experience. Humility is no mean feeling, but the highest, and only high one; the denial of Self it is, and therein is the beginning of all that is truly generous and noble.3 His particular conception of self-renunciation drew much of its emotional intensity from German romanticism but, at its root, it drew upon the same traditional Christian ethics that animated Pattison’s sermon.4 Pattison and Carlyle were both historians and they explained the moral component of scholarship in similar terms. Carlyle insisted that a historian “must have patience;…must first, with painful perseverance, read himself into the century he studies.” Pattison argued that to understand the past we must approach it with “that equilibrium of the reason, the imagination, and the taste, that even temper of philosophical calm, that singleness of purpose, which are required in order that a past time may mirror itself on the mind in true outline and proportions.” The two men diverged from this common point. Carlyle cast the historian as a prophet who transformed the world through the alchemical mixture of strict accuracy and bold ingenuity. The past always spoke, urgently, to the present. Pattison on the other hand warned above all against contaminating historical understanding with modern politics. The historian must study the past as a neutral observer, not as a polemicist looting it for ideological weaponry. “In the intellectual sphere grasp and mastery are incompatible with the exigencies of a struggle,” he scolded. Carlyle does not appear to have paid Pattison any attention, but, if he had, he likely would have dismissed the Oxford don as a pedantic Dryasdust. Pattison may or may not have had Carlyle in mind when he complained that the public had learned to prefer its ancient history spiked with modern politics, as “the vitiated taste prefers sherry to the pure juice of the grape.” But these disagreements over the use 3 T. Carlyle to J. Carlyle (1 February 1831), to J.S. Mill (20 January 1834), and to J.A. Carlyle (28 October 1834), The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. C.R. Sanders and others (Durham, 1970–2002), vol. 5, p. 225, vol. 7, pp. 73, 329; see also T. Carlyle to various correspondents, vol. 5, pp. 373–376, vol. 7, pp. 58–59, 277–278, vol. 28, p. 302, vol. 12, pp. 104–105, vol. 17, p. 267. 4 For Carlyle’s debt to German romanticism in his conception of self-renunciation, see C.F. Harrold, Carlyle and German Thought: 1819–1834 (London, 1963), pp. 214–230.

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of history and the role of the historian should not obscure agreement on the intellectual qualities—the self-discipline and hard work—required to understand the past. Pattison reflected that a scholar’s greatest monument was not the books he left behind but the character he formed when writing them. “Learning is a peculiar compound of memory, imagination, scientific habit, accurate observation, all concentrated, through a prolonged period, on the analysis of the remains of literature,” he reflected. “The result of this sustained mental endevour is not a book but a man. It cannot be embodied in print, it consists in the living word.” Carlyle would not have disagreed: “Not what I Have, but what I Do is my Kingdom,” he intoned in Sartor Resartus.5 In their very different ways, Pattison and Carlyle reached out for something stable and everlasting amidst a maelstrom of social, economic and intellectual change. As old ways of believing receded, the two men found stability in eternal standards of doing. They were intellectuals but, according to their own ­self-conceptions, they did not live to write. They wrote to live. They wanted to change how their contemporaries thought—not as an end, but as a means to fortify purer conceptions of an unselfish life. Intellectual progress could never be abstracted from moral progress. The growth of right belief cultivated proper behavior. The stress on self-denial as an epistemological value was in no way idiosyncratic to either man. Indeed, they could hardly have been more typical of their age. The virtues of patience and humility dominated the British moral imagination in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Meaning and Moral Significance of Patience and Humility

Patience and humility, as the British understood them in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sanctioned neither apathy nor self-effacement. On the contrary, they demanded engagement with the challenges and the trials of our earthly estate. Patience and humility were the virtues of Carlyle’s heroes, Pattison’s humanist scholars, William Whewell’s exemplars of inductive science, Samuel Smiles’s paragons of self-help, and John Henry Newman’s church fathers. These qualities were noticed in obituaries, praised in speeches, and 5 T. Carlyle, “Baillie the Covenanter,” in vol. 29 of The Centenary Edition of the Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H.D. Trail (London, 1899), p. 237. M. Pattison, Isaac Casaubon, 1559–1614 (London, 1865), pp. 489, 518–525. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, p. 96. On Carlyle as a historian, see C.R. Vanden Bossche, introduction to Historical Essays by T. Carlyle (Berkeley, 2002), pp. xix–lxviii; on Pattison, see Jones, Intellect and Character in Victorian England.

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preached from pulpits. They were, as Pattison rightly observed, in everyone’s mouth. Humility was at its base a willingness to recognize and act upon truth. Everyone had desires, opinions and worldly interests. The humble person recognized that the universe did not exist to cater to his whims and wants. The high-churchman and theologian Henry Parry Liddon captured this point in an Oxford university sermon. Humility, he explained, “is both a moral instinct which seeks truth, and a moral instrument for reaching truth.” This submission to truth did not require intellectual or social leveling. Liddon insisted that the virtue “leads us truthfully to recognize the real measure of our capacity”— whether that capacity be high or low. Samuel Wilberforce, when he preached an impassioned sermon against the evils of pride from the same pulpit, was careful to observe that “humility…is not thinking of ourselves more meanly than is true; for there is nothing good anywhere in untruth.” Nor was humility measured by outward signs. Samuel Taylor Coleridge noted that “it is not impossible that there may be in some an affected pride in the meanness of apparel, and in others, under either neat or rich attire, a very humble unaffected mind.” Liddon’s mentor, the Tractarian leader Edward Pusey, stressed that humility had no origin in “forbearance, out of mere regard to what is seemly.”6 The humble therefore embraced neither weakness nor indecision. They did not seek to fade into the background. They did not flinch from giving offense when rebuke was merited. Rather, the humble renounced all notions of self-sufficiency, acknowledged their own imperfections, accepted their dependence on and duties to their fellows, and placed the dictates of duty above their own narrow interests. Humility forced men and women to align their knowledge with truth and away from the selfishness that blinded them to their moral obligations and long-term interests. Patience provided men with the steel to suffer for truth. In the eighteenth century John Wesley explained that patience was “a disposition to suffer whatever pleases God, in the manner, and for the time, that pleases him.” In the following century the high-churchman Newman found little good to say about Wesley or his theology but on this point he agreed without reservation. “The good cannot conquer, except by suffering,” he preached in 1840. Enduring the 6 H.P. Liddon, Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 3rd ed. (London, 1869), pp. 157–158. S. Wilberforce, Pride a Hindrance to True Knowledge; a Sermon, Preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, before the University, on Sunday, June 27th, 1847 (London, 1847), pp. 12–14. S.T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality and Religion (London, 1825), p. 105. Pusey, “Blessed are the Meek,” p. 18.

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world’s censure, he declared, was a constant struggle for the godly. His ally Pusey made the same point in a prominent sermon delivered in November of 1838 in Oxford on patience as the strength of the church: “by patient (the word implies suffering) waiting for God, an unresisting resistance unto blood, did the Church take root in the whole world.” If we cannot avoid adversity, we can decide how we will face it. Christ’s death on the cross provided the model. “Sooner or later we must all bear our cross,” insisted Newman and Pusey’s friend, John Keble. Whewell took a dark view of Galileo’s moral character because, as he saw it, the Italian buckled in the face of the Inquisition. In Whewell’s telling, Galileo’s “furtive mode of insinuating his doctrines,” his “absence of earnestness,” and his readiness to truckle to illegitimate ecclesiastical authority allowed him to avoid all but the softest punishments for his scientific views. He refused to suffer for philosophical truth.7 Tribulation could come in the form of external calamity. Pusey’s point about patience and suffering had not been an abstract theological observation. Crisis buffeted his family in the year leading up to the sermon. Consumption had been devouring his wife’s health and would soon place her in the grave. A young son Philip battled chronic illness throughout his mother’s decline. He survived, but was permanently deaf and crippled, “a physical condition,” the elder Pusey’s biographer reported, “which was a perpetual trial of fortitude and patience.” Philip dedicated his life to furthering his father’s scholarship until, one evening without warning, he was struck by a fit of apoplexy. He died at his father’s side, not yet fifty years old. Only one of Pusey’s four children outlived him. Such a tragedy-scarred life was not unusual. The national life expectancy in Britain in 1850 was slightly under 40 years (Pusey, his wife, and children averaged 43 years).8 Premature death was far from the only catastrophe that haunted the Victorians. Bankruptcy could loom as an even more horrifying calamity, 7 J. Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley (London, 1872), vol. 6, p. 486. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8, p. 141. E.B. Pusey, Patience and Confidence the Strength of the Church: A Sermon Preached on the Fifth of November before the University of Oxford at St. Mary’s, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1838), p. 16. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year (London, 1883–50), vol. 8, p. 16. W. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Times (London, 1837), vol. 1, pp. 399–401. 8 H.P. Liddon, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, ed. R.O. Johnston, R.J. Wilson, and W.C.E. Newbolt (London, 1893–7), vol. 2, 88–92, 97, 112–113, vol. 4, pp. 346–348. Peter Lindert notes that there were, unsurprisingly, dramatic class differences in life expectancy; in 1850, members of the peerage had an average life of 54.1 years, although that is still shockingly low by modern standards: P.H. Lindert, “Unequal Living Standards,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, 2nd ed., eds. R. Floud and D. McCloskey (Cambridge, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 361–364.

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e­ specially for the middle classes. A volatile economy could erase fortunes and wreck livelihoods without warning. John Dickens’s sentence to debtors’ prison famously seared a mark on the life and art of his son, Charles. Anthony Trollope suffered similar havoc as a child as a result of his father’s financial failures. Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackray endured humiliating financial reverses as adults. Financial ruin often spread with terrifying rapidity, like an individual fever that sparked an epidemic. The banking and stock market crash in 1825 left notably raw psychological wounds. Economic catastrophe held special terror because it entailed not just loss of resources, but of honor.9 The “great moral importance” of financial drama played out vividly in Smiles’s Thrift. “Wealth,” he declared, “is obtained by labour; it is preserved by savings and accumulations; and it is increased by diligence and perseverance.” Unfortunately, he lamented, most people had lost the taste for honest industry and instead “prefer the enjoyment of pleasure to the practice of self-denial.” Extravagance prodded men to seek instant riches “by speculation, gambling, betting, swindling, or cheating.” The inevitable consequences of this degrading behavior were found in “commercial failures, in lists of bankrupts, and in criminal courts.” The harm of fraud and reckless speculation would be bad enough if the guilty alone suffered, but the wave of hardship following bankruptcy did not distinguish clearly between the prudent and reckless, the honest and the swindler. Smiles admitted that a single improvident individual can bury thousands of innocent people in the rubble of his fraud or recklessness. “Every thrifty person may be regarded as a public benefactor,” he insisted for this reason, “and every thriftless person as a public enemy.” If crisis did hit, one must bear it with the dignity of Christian humility and penitence. Smiles celebrated Scott for his “truly heroic” refusal to lose courage or energy in the face of financial ruin.10 Patience thus played a dual economic role: it underwrote the habits necessary to minimize the chance of catastrophe in the first place and it provided the fortitude to bear setbacks, whether they were one’s fault or not. External catastrophes paled in moral significance next to the suffering that emerged from within. Natural human depravity gnawed at everyone from the 9

10

B. Weiss, The Hell of the English: Bankruptcy and the Victorian Novel (Lewisburg, 1986) analyzes the role of financial ruin in novels and other Victorian popular art, with attention to how these representations lined up to reality; she discusses Dickens, Trollope, Scott and Thackeray on p. 15, the need to endure financial collapses with humility and penitence on pp. 132–133, and Smiles on pp. 30–32. B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 147–162, and Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 398–401, places financial catastrophe in the larger context of British religious and economic thought. S. Smiles, Thrift (London, 1875), pp. 1–2, 15, 233, 238–239, 246, 281–282.

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inside out. Whewell embedded this conviction in The Elements of Morality, a two-volume treatise he wrote as Cambridge’s professor of moral philosophy. (He dedicated the work to William Wordsworth, in whose poetry he found “a spirit of pure and comprehensive morality.”) Whewell identified reason and the moral sentiments as the highest parts of our nature. All people had access to these qualities. They also faced the prodding of the lower parts of human nature: desires, affections and appetites (good and bad). In the well-regulated mind the higher parts of our nature governed and purified the lower parts. Reason and the moral sentiments deserved obedience because they were universal. Human desires were not. Each person, with their own idiosyncratic constellation of hopes, fears, cravings, loves, passions and interests, had to align a unique disposition with universal rules. This required unrelenting mastery of self. The Habits of mind by which we resist the impulses of desires and affection, so as to conform to the rules of virtue or prudence, are Self-control, Self-command, Self-watchfulness; Self-mistrust; when the desires which we control are so lively that we cannot suppress them, though we resist them, it is Self-denial. The willingness to tame evil desires was a social responsibility. Self-denial required, at some level, the readiness to incur “pain, danger, or death, to procure benefits for another.” The readiness to sacrifice for the greater good became heroism when combined with courage, as exemplified in Christian martyrdom. The elevation of our selfish desires over external truth was the bedrock of vice. Reason, the “common faculty of discerning truth and falsehood,” was incompatible with the subordination of the universal (our moral duties) to the particular (our appetites). The wicked man turned his back on reason when he refused to think of anyone but himself. Vice was thus both immoral and irrational. Elements of Morality advanced Whewell’s ideological agenda, especially his hatred of utilitarian philosophy. But, beneath the partisan purposes, Whewell appealed to standards of moral conduct that even his most determined contemporary critics did not dispute. He clashed vehemently with John Stuart Mill because each was convinced that his rival’s system of moral philosophy promoted the very selfishness that it ostensibly opposed.11 11

W. Whewell, The Elements of Morality: Including Polity (London, 1845), vol. 1, pp. iii, vii, 31–35, 136–140, 162–163. See L.J. Snyder, Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society (Chicago, 2006), especially Chapter 4 for the points of disagreement between Whewell and Mill on the moral sense.

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Calamity, for the Victorians, was built into the moral and physical structure of the fallen world. Pain struck from the outside and ate from within. Patience offered a resource to endure unavoidable tribulation.

Patience: What it was and What it was Not

Patience as a moral category suffered from ambiguity of meaning. On the one hand, patience could imply dull passivity. On the other, it could denote a calculated restraint that served rather than disciplined appetites. Moralists carefully insulated genuine patience from these alternative meanings. Wesley, Coleridge, and Samuel Johnson all sharply distinguished Christian patience from pagan stoicism. Christians aspired not to deaden their suffering but to bear it with fortitude and peace of mind in obedience to God’s will. “Where there is no feeling at all,” Coleridge argued, “there can be no patience.”12 Charles Darwin addressed the issue in the Descent of Man by repeating an observation attributed to the French naturalist Buffon that genius was patience; Darwin clarified that “patience, in this sense, means unflinching, undaunted perseverance.” A character in Emma Jane Worboise’s novel A Woman’s Patience explained, patience “must be a wise patience, an intelligent, hopeful, prayerful patience, not a mere dull, apathetic content—a stupid, torpid resignation, which, after all, is little better than despair.” So, patience had two faces: strength in suffering and persistence in duty. The Christian must learn to practice, as Christina Rossetti observed, both “patient progress and patient waiting.”13 Thomas Chalmers, the leader of the Scottish Free Church, fretted in particular about the ambiguities of the word “patience,” fearing that they obscured the active aspect of our moral obligations. He celebrated meeting affliction without complaint or restlessness; but his fervent evangelical faith demanded something more, something less passive. He worked out his concerns in sermons on Paul’s epistle to the Romans, first published in 1837 but preached years earlier. He concluded that the word “patience” did not always capture the meaning of scripture. The translation of Hebrews 12:1 in the King James Version—“let us run with patience the race that is set before us”— illustrated his point. “We wait with patience, or sit still with patience, or simply suffer 12 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, pp. 91–92. S. Johnson, The Rambler, vols. 3–5 in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. W.J. Bate and A.B. Strauss (New Haven, 1969), vol. 3, pp. 174–179. Wesley, The Works, vol. 6, pp. 485–488, vol. 7, p. 50. 13 C. Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London, 1871), vol. 2, p. 328. E.J. Worboise, A Woman’s Patience (London, 1879), p. 391. C. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary (London, 1892), p. 266.

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with patience,” he noted; “but surely we run not with patience but with perseverance.” There was glory in suffering the trials that God sent us with resignation; but it was grander still when they propelled moral reform. Mere passive sufferance could reveal indifference to divine chastisement designed to rouse us to “a right and religious course of activity.” His repeated accent on “strenuous perseverance in all habits and principles of Christianity” resonated far beyond fellow evangelicals. John Bird Sumner, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, noted that an atheist might bare suffering with patience “from a conviction of the uselessness of repining.” Only a Christian would follow the injunctions of scripture and “glory in tribulation.”14 Wicked people sometimes endured temporary privation in order to gorge their appetites and passions more completely later. Nefarious ends often required careful planning. The journalist Thomas Escott acknowledged in his survey of English life that the professional burglar typically practiced his theft with “patient and minute care.” But this restraint was transient and venal— counterfeit patience. Those who perpetrate commercial frauds often overcome considerable hurdles with cunning and persistence, but in the end their crimes are provoked by an “ardent and avaricious spirit” that thirsts for wealth quicker than honest industry can provide. In other words, the criminal’s ability to wait and plan was merely haste tailored by intelligence.15 Charles Dickens similarly observed that police detectives needed “extraordinary dexterity, patience, and ingenuity” because thieves employed these similar qualities. Madame Defarge’s sinister watchfulness in A Tale of Two Cities had the outward appearance of patience. But her forbearance dissolves during the frenzied attack on the Bastille. From then on, her impulsive thirst for vengeance stands in stark contrast with the sublime patience with which Sydney Carton and his female fellow prisoners meet the guillotine at the end of the novel. In real life and fiction, villains were disfigured by their pathological lack of humility. Thieves preferred falsehood: “lying is their habit and their trade.” Madame Defarge’s malevolence burnt away all capacity for empathy. When Dickens declared patience “the greatest Christian virtue,” he was embracing the view that waiting and enduring should be used to master our evil impulses, not serve them.16 14

15 16

T. Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, vols. 1 and 2 in Select Works of Thomas Chalmers, ed. W. Hanna (Edinburgh, 1854), vol. 1, pp. 65, 180–188, 191, 204, 386–392. J.B. Sumner, The Evidence of Christianity: Derived from Its Nature and Reception (London, 1824), pp. 391–392. T.H.S. Escott, England: Her People, Polity and Pursuits (New York, 1880), pp. 242–247. C. Dickens, “A Popular Delusion” and “A Detective Police Party,” Household Words 1 (1850), pp. 217, 409–410. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, pp. 176–179, 230–231, 290–293, 384–386. On the moral dimensions of Dickens’s attitude towards criminals and the police, see

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True patience—as opposed to sluggish resignation or guileful waiting— existed only when fortified with humility. Humility in turn depended upon patience. An exaggerated sense of worthlessness could too easily provide a pretext for shirking responsibilities. We needed patience to put our humility to work. “Genuine humility,” preached Liddon, “is in its essence the planting our foot upon the hard rock of truth and fact, and often when it costs us a great deal to do so.” This moral sentiment applied easily to secular pursuits. “True humility which is content not to know what cannot be known, labours and waits,” the freethinking scientist Ray Lankester lectured to a crowd at the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1883.17 Patience and humility in their morally significant sense required us to do things: bear up under our infirmities, master our temptations, persist in our labors. Everyone struggled with unworthy desires—to possess what they had not earned, to occupy stations other than their own, to claim knowledge they did not have, to indulge rather than master their emotions, to taste animal pleasures which degraded their souls—which could only be overcome through humble obedience to truth. Virtuous activity acquired moral value precisely to the extent that doing these things was hard.

Practical Christianity

For the Christian, virtue paid its dividends in the future. A person’s allotted span from birth to death was a time of probation. Earthly pleasures and trials faded into insignificance compared to our eternal destiny. Even the longest life vanished in a flash compared to the infinite glory—or everlasting misery—of the afterlife. Self-denial in this world would be rewarded in the next. But a holy disposition would also benefit us in the here-and-now by aligning our tempers to worldly happiness. Nothing would bring misery more assuredly than enslavement to our passions and impulses. Animal pleasure quickly evaporated when the stimulus ended. Unbroken ease soon degenerated into languidness. The greed for money, applause or social rank was never gratified for long. No sooner had ambition grasped one prize then it started thirsting for the

17

H. Shpayer-Makov, The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England (Oxford, 2011), pp. 194–196. H.P. Liddon, Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (Second Series), 3rd ed. (London, 1883), p. 22. E.R. Lankester, “Presidential Address to Section D—Biology,” in Report of the Fifty-Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Southport in September 1883 (London, 1884), p. 527.

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next. Patience and humility emancipated us from the barbs or our meaner nature. John Ruskin placed patience “at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when impatience companions her.” George Prothero, in a sermon preached before Queen Victoria, compared the self-indulgent to “birds in a stormy sky, driven here and there, this way and, that way, it matters not to them; too light-hearted and thoughtless to consider either the past or the future.” In contrast, as Charles Kingsley preached, “men with deep hearts and strong wills, who set their minds on something which they cannot see, and work steadfastly for it, till they get it; for God gives it to them in good time—when patience has had her perfect work upon their characters, and made them fit for success.” Success earned without the requisite sacrifice was dangerous. “Knowledge, like wealth, is not likely to make us proud or vain, except when it comes suddenly and unlearned,” Whewell lectured at the 1833 meeting of the British Association (the one where he coined the term “scientist”); “and in such a case, it is little to be hoped that we shall use well, or increase, our ill-understood possession.”18 In our secular pursuits, no less than in our spiritual ones, we face setbacks and temptations which we must meet with resolve and equanimity. Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion (1825) insisted that the fortitude of Christian character could serve secular ends. “Religion doth not destroy the life of nature,” he assured his readers, “but adds to it a life of more excellence.” Men of science sanctified their secular activities by associating them with Christian virtue, as the astronomer John Herschel did in his celebrated Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830). He laid out the methodological and philosophical rules of science with clarity and precision and he infused these rules with moral passion. The true man of science depended on “the absolute dismissal and clearing the mind of all prejudice, from whatever source arising, and the determination to stand and fall by the result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and of strict logical deduction from them afterwards.” A man with the moral habits for scientific inquiry “walks in the midst of wonders.” The recognition of these wonders in turn supported virtue: “the observation of the calm, energetic regularity of nature, the immense scale 18

J. Ruskin, Ethics of Dust, in vol. 18 of The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E.T. Cook. and A. Wedderburn (London, 1905), p. 247. G. Prothero, The Armour of Light and Other Sermons Preached before the Queen, ed. R.E. Prothero (London, 1888), pp. 45–46. C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A Set of Parish Sermon (London, 1863), pp. 76–77. W. Whewell, “Address,” in Report of the Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Cambridge in 1833 (London, 1834), p. xxiv.

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of her operations, and the certainty with which her ends are attained, tends, irresistibly, to tranquillize-and re-assure the mind, and render it less accessible to repining, selfish, and turbulent emotions.”19 Whewell amplified this vision in his review of the Preliminary Discourse for the Quarterly Review by gently chiding his friend for not stressing as strongly as he might have done “the persevering and unwearied trials, the patient eagerness, the gradual insight, of those who have earned the fame of true philosophers.” Whewell compared the inductive ascent to the wanderings of an Alpine traveler whose toil, perseverance and moral fortitude was rewarded by ever grander intellectual vistas. The permeable boundary between this moral justification for science and the language of Christianity is illustrated by an address delivered years later by a Rev. E. Jones to students training to become Congregational pastors. Jones blatantly plagiarized Whewell’s words on the slow ascent to truth but stripped out the references to science to insert instead a homily on the “severe and patient thought” necessary for Christian ministry. The result was seamless.20 The bond between scientific patience and Christian patience could and did break. Darwin abandoned the religious faith so integral to the identities of his Cambridge mentors but clutched tightly throughout his life to their standards of behavior. As he explained to his wife, around the time of their marriage, he found his religious doubts easier to bear because “luckily there were no doubts as to how one ought to act” (she gently demurred from this decoupling of religious belief and practice from sound behavior). His son Francis recalled that “he often quoted the saying, ‘It’s dogged as does it;’ and I think doggedness expresses his frame of mind almost better than perseverance. Perseverance seems hardly to express his almost fierce desire to force the truth to reveal itself.” Notably, in the opening paragraph of the Origin of Species he stressed that he had arrived at his theory only after “patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts.” The embrace of evolution by natural selection, he reassured his readers, had not been a “hasty” decision. Darwin’s ally Thomas Henry Huxley took a more aggressive approach in steering the ideal of patient behavior away from Christianity in his articulation of agnosticism (his term). 19 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, p. 91. J. Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London, 1830), pp. 15–17, 79. On the role of importance of patience and humility in the discourse of Victorian science, see Bellon, “Inspiration in the Harness of Daily Labor;” and Bellon, “The Moral Dignity of Inductive Method.” 20 W. Whewell, “Modern Science—Inductive Philosophy,” Quarterly Review 45 (1831), pp. 386, 399–401. E. Jones, “An Address Delivered to the Students of the Western College, Plymouth, September 14th, 1854,” The Christian Witness, and Church Members Magazine 12 (1855), p. 58.

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Agnosticism, he explained in the 1880s, was “not a creed, but a method.” He rhapsodized on “the bright side of Christianity; that ideal of manhood, with its strength and its patience; its justice and its pity for human frailty; its helpfulness, to the extremity of self-sacrifice; its ethical purity and nobility.” He then pivoted from this concession to suggest that agnostic science offered a path to intellectual and moral self-culture unpolluted by the superstition, repression, and error of religious dogma.21 Advice manuals of the time routinely highlighted the absolute necessity for patience, humility and perseverance in the regular course of life. William Cobbett’s Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, In the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829) and George Craik’s The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties (1830–1) identified self-denying perseverance as the foundation of a productive and responsible life.22 James Booth made the same case when stumping in favor of the examination system established by the Society of Arts in the wake of the Great Exhibition of 1851. His lectures, published as How to Learn, and What to Learn, identified “indomitable perseverance [as] the indispensable condition of success.”23 Books offering professional advice routinely noted that, in addition to a body of knowledge and skills, success in a given field depended on steadiness, resilience, and self-control.24 Writers explaining the intricacies of various sports commonly promoted their pursuits as engines of moral improvement. Hunting, fishing, animal training, cricket— all, apparently, demanded the morally elevating exercise of patience.25 21

22

23 24

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C. Darwin to E. Darwin (c. February 1839), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, ed. Burkhardt and others, vol. 2, p. 172. F. Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (London, 1887), vol. 1, p. 149. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, p. 1. T. Huxley, “Agnosticism.” The Nineteenth Century 25 (1889), pp. 186, 190–191. W. Cobbett, Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, In the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (London, 1829), ¶¶ 5–6, 22–23, 46, 351–352. G.L. Craik, The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties: Illustrated by Anecdotes (London, 1830–1), vol. 1, pp. 1–3, 7–8, 244, vol. 2, pp. 110, 116–117, 139, 165–167, 203–204, 275–280, 288, 307, 313, 337–338, 364, 370, 387. On Cobbett, see B. Wilson, The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain: 1789–1837 (New York, 2007), pp. 315–318. J. Booth, How to Learn and What to Learn: Two Letters Advocating the System of Examination Established by the Society of Arts (London, 1856), pp. 11–17, 38–41. See for example: S. Warren, A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies (London, 1835), pp. 49, 90, 93, 110, 113, 159–160, 207–211, 307, 318–319, 340–341, 392–393, 407, 413–414; H.B. Thomson, The Choice of a Profession: A Concise and Comparative Review of the English Professions (London, 1857), p. 24; B. Stuart, How to Become a Successful Engineer, 4th ed. (Edinburgh, 1868), pp. 36–37, 87–88, 97. See for example: H. Davy, Salmonia: or Days of Fly Fishing in a Series of Conversations with some Account of the Habits of Fishes Belonging to the Genus Salmo (London, 1828), pp. 8–10;

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Norms of Moral Behavior

Pattison in his 1863 Lincoln-College sermon characterized the highest duty of Christian life as the obligation to conquer oneself and rise above “vainglory, love of the world, love of riches, love of praise.” He happily denied all claim to originality. These are common things—common to speak of, I mean. There is nothing new or extraordinary or surprising in such an enumeration. These qualities or characteristics which I have been going over are in all our mouths—we all of us sometimes try after them ourselves; we recommend them to others; we find mention of them, or some of them, in all books and discourses.26 He was absolutely right. His ode to self-conquest as a religious and intellectual ideal could hardly have been more ordinary. His plea for the importance of forming character was indistinguishable to those made by Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hill Green and innumerable other Victorians.27 Across the social and ideological spectrum, respectability and authority was not grounded foremost in sets of ideas or bodies of specialist skill, but in remarkably stable norms of moral behavior. J. Pycroft, The Cricket Field: or, the History and the Science of the Game of Cricket, 2nd ed. (London, 1854), pp. 16–18, 266–267; J.H. Walsh, Manual of British Rural Sports, 2nd ed. (London, 1857), pp. 28, 32, 218, 273; J.S. Rarey, The Art of Taming Horses, new and revised ed. (London, 1858), pp. 72–92; W.N. Hutchinson, Dog Breaking, 4th ed. (London, 1865), p. 236. 26 Pattison, Sermons, p. 281. 27 Collini, Public Moralists, pp. 93–94.

chapter 2

From Virtue to Duty

The Victorian Application of Patience and Humility to Social and Intellectual Life

The responsibility to behave with patience and humility was adaptable to all individual circumstances. William Whewell observed in Elements of Morality that “Virtue and Duty differ, as the Habit and the Act.” Virtue emerged from a deep and universal part of our nature. Duty was the application of virtue to an individual set of circumstances. The duty of a landlord differed from that of his tenants, of a husband from his wife, of parents from their children. Actions that are virtuous in one case could be vicious in another. Whewell insisted, for example, that few men—and no students—had any practical business judging philosophical systems. Philosophers manifested their patience in critical habits of mind, non-philosophers in a spirit of respect towards this intellectual labor. Thomas Arnold as headmaster of Rugby expected students to accept adult supervision. “It is a great mistake to address always the reason of a child,” he preached in the school’s chapel, “when you ought rather to require his obedience.” This state of submission was, however, preparatory for “something better,” the ability to live a life of calm and reverent inquiry. For Arnold, a patient schoolboy trusted authority. A patient man had a higher duty to follow light of his own mature judgment.1 The malleability of virtue to specific duties had important practical consequences. It allowed the Victorians to construct divisions of labor and hierarchies of authority on a seemingly stable moral foundation. Arrangements that might have seemed merely expedient, if not outright arbitrary, gained warrant from their alignment with timeless virtue. Whewell, for example, assigned one set of responsibilities and technical rules to scientific theorists, his peers at the social pinnacle of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society, and a complementary one to the “subordinate labourers” who contributed to discovery under the theorists’ direction. Sobriety, modesty and patience underwrote the social organization and other practical requirements of scientific inquiry, as he understood them. He did not hesitate to attack the moral character of those who violated the roles and rules that he 1 W. Whewell, On the Principles of English Education, 2nd ed. (London, 1838), pp. 45–51. Whewell, The Elements of Morality, vol. 1, pp. 169–170. T. Arnold, Christian Life, Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps (London, 1841), pp. 104–109.

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assigned, as he did in his furious attack on the evolutionary theory of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). The anonymous author mangled facts and interpretations but, for Whewell, these errors were merely the symptoms of a defective philosophical temper. He insisted that the writer set himself in opposition to “men of real science” with his “broken and obscure view of nature.” In doing so, he revealed himself guilty of “headlong haste and baseless confidence,” a “selfcomplacent [sic] levity,” and “indolence and vanity.”2 The man behind the curtain of Vestiges, then, committed a double sin: the intellectual misconduct of failing to regulate an out-of-control imagination and the social transgression of misleading the public by speaking on physical nature with a license he had not earned. Whewell’s tactics against Vestiges shows that virtue was a supple armament—a sword or a shield, as need be—in battles of ideas and authority. As a consequence, the great ideological conflicts of the century were infused with appeals to biography. The Victorians did not believe, even in the abstract, that social and intellectual questions could or should be solved without recourse to the personal.3 Richard Whately insisted in his influential Elements of Logic that argumentum ad hominem was fallacious only when it was unfair or inappropriately generalized.4 The Victorians did care deeply about impersonal technical rules, of course. Whewell dedicated much of his remarkably productive career codifying the methodology of inductive science (quarrelling with Whately, John Stuart Mill and many others along the way). But Whewell and his sparring partners always treated proper method as a form of moral action. The acquisition of knowledge required grueling and sometimes futile work 2 W. Whewell, “Address,” in Report of the Third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Cambridge in 1833 (London, 1834), pp, xxiv–xxv. W. Whewell, Indications of the Creator, 2nd ed. (London, 1846), pp. 21–30. The anonymous author of Vestiges was the Scottish publishers Robert Chambers. On Vestiges and its impact, see J.A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago, 2000). 3 I am indebted to the sophisticated analysis of knowledge, virtue and familiarity in modern and late-modern thought in S. Shapin, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago, 2008). For the importance of biography in Victorian thought, see R.D. Altick, Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America (New York, 1965). Collini, Public Moralists, examines how the Victorians gave “evaluative priority to ‘morality’” in their reflections on politics, religious, aesthetics and other aspects of life (p. 63). Philip Davis observes in The Victorians (Oxford, 2002) that for Newman what someone means “is always autobiographical” (p. 116); I would extend that insight more broadly to Newman’s contemporaries. 4 R. Whately, Elements of Logic, 2nd ed. (London, 1827), pp. 190–193.

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which drew deeply on the sustenance of patience. The ability to understand the resulting knowledge with clarity required humility to dispel the fog of ­selfishness. Experts did not claim credibility on the basis of their expertise; rather, the acquisition of expertise served as a marker for the habits of mind that served as the real justification for awarding and asserting social and intellectual authority. The association of truth and character invited special pleading. If you disliked someone’s ideas, it was rarely difficult to yoke perceived error to perceived misconduct. Posthumous revelations about Mark Pattison and Thomas Carlyle’s private lives (discussed below) provided a stick to attack their unorthodox religious views. On the other hand, even the most unlovable of people could be forgiven their failings when their ideas were welcome. By the end of the 1830s, newly uncovered archival material had tarnished Isaac Newton’s reputation for benevolence. Some, like David Brewster, soldiered on with their hero-worship as if nothing truly damning had been uncovered. Others, like Baden Powell and Augustus De Morgan, acknowledged that Newton’s conduct was not above reproach. De Morgan carefully laid the blame instead on Newton’s innate infirmities of personality, ones mitigated by the moral discipline of scientific practice. None of the blemishes of the great natural philosopher’s character was “an acquired failing,” De Morgan insisted; the moral reputation of science remained intact even as the myth of Newton’s saintly disposition dissolved.5 Science did not create perfect men, in this widespread view, but it did produce ones who were better than they would have been otherwise. The Victorians believed that evidence and explanatory success could not be evaluated separately from behavior—whether this was done fairly or not in particular cases is a separate question. Wisdom did not depend merely upon abstract logical proof, but upon the trained temperament of the rational agent and the social order in which he operated. Patience and humility mattered so deeply because they underwrote the constellation of individual duties that made social and intellectual life possible.

Men and Women: Gendered Duties, Universal Virtues

The relationship between universal virtue and specific duty reveals itself clearly in duties drawn along gender lines. The roles of son, husband, and 5 A. De Morgan, Essays on the Life and Work of Newton, ed. P.E.B. Jourdain (Chicago, 1914), pp. 61–63 (first published in 1846). See R. Higgitt, Recreating Newton: Newtonian Biography and the Making of Nineteenth-Century History of Science (London, 2007).

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father, carried one set of responsibilities, those of daughter, wife, and mother another. Common to all these gender-specific duties, however, was the obligation to self-sacrifice for the greater good of the family.6 The fact that virtue, patience, and humility could appear distinctly feminine presented a challenge. Darwin in the Descent codified the orthodox Victorian dichotomy of the male and female character into the language of biology. “Woman,” he stated authoritatively, “seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness.” These qualities sprang from her role as the primary caretaker of children. Man, on the other hand, had greater stores of “courage, perseverance, and determined energy” as well as more highly developed mental faculties. This inventory overlapped uncomfortably with the “two opposite descriptions of character” William Paley outlined in his Evidences of Christianity. The first—“the favourite of the world”—was marked by “vigour, firmness, resolution.” The second was “meek, yielding, complying, forgiving.” The former was pagan, the latter Christian.7 Did that make Christianity feminine? Paley observed that the vigorous temperament was that of “great men” but he otherwise refused to differentiate the two character types of masculine and feminine. Instead, he labeled them “heroic” and “patient.” Christ, by exemplifying the patient character, cleansed it of an exclusive association with femininity. Darwin readily acknowledged that the delight men took in competition, the root of their mental superiority, had a dark side: “this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness.” The patient character did not repudiate the male spirit, only the selfish and violent predispositions that were inconsistent with virtuous conduct. Thomas Chalmers celebrated affliction as a positive good because it was God’s method to chasten a “masculine and overbearing manner” and bring a man to “adoring humility.” Patience removed coarseness but left the noble aspects of the masculine character intact; it ­furnished the gentle in gentleman. Nor was it necessarily assumed that women found it easier to follow the dictates of patient virtue. The feminine disposition towards tenderness carried its own hazards. A soft heart, unfortified by virtue, became easily infected with a weepy, indiscriminate sentimentality that was no less selfish than rough masculine ambition. “Sensibility is not necessarily benevolence,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge observed in Aids to Reflection, because it lacks the active principle of self-sacrifice. He condemned “Slothful 6 On the self-sacrificing moral economy of the Victorian family, see C. Nelson, Family Ties in Victorian England (Westport, 2007), especially pp. 15–16, 35, 48–49, 87, 104–115. 7 Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. 2, pp. 326–328. W. Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity, annotated by R. Whately (New York, 1865), pp. 222–225, 242.

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Loves and dainty Sympathies” as a particularly corrosive from of “effeminate Selfishness.”8 Coleridge’s emphasis on the active nature of virtue—whether for men or women—led him to dispute the standard translation of the 2 Peter 1: 5: “Add to your faith knowledge, and to knowledge manly energy…for this is the proper rendering, and not virtue, at least in the present and ordinary acceptation of the word.” But he did not depart from Paley’s articulation of Christian obligation. Coleridge defined this manly energy as “that holiness and meekness, that patience and faith which shine in the actions and sufferings of the saints.” The saints ultimately drew these qualities from God and from the example of Christ’s sacrifice. Thomas Hughes expressed the same point later in the century in his popular The Manliness of Christ. In this telling, Christ’s life was defined by “a resolute waiting on God’s mind.” Hughes asked his readers “to test in every way you can, whether this kind of patience does not constitute the highest ideal we can form of human conduct, is not in fact the noblest type of true manliness.” This quotation is telling: for Hughes the defining characteristic of Christian masculinity was an ideal of human conduct.9 Samuel Smiles built into his popular philosophy of “industry, perseverance, and self-culture” the notion that men and women had to overcome the nature of their sex in order to conform to a common standard of virtue. Most of his writing concerned itself with the activity of men. He felt most at home in the robustly masculine world of British engineering. His biography of George Stephenson identified the “habit of self-thinking and self-reliance” as “the spring of all true manly action.” Fewer than a dozen women appeared among the more than 750 entries in the index and glossary of names to Self-Help. Women in this book mostly featured as helpmates. He identified the home as a grand theater of virtue, “the crystal of society—the very nucleus of national character.” He repeated the conventional belief that a family’s high moral character existed only through “acts of affection, discipline, industry, and selfcontrol.” He made a more sustained analysis of the role of women in his book on 8 Paley, A View of the Evidences, p. 225. Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. 2, p. 326. Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul, vol. 1, p. 183. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, pp. 51–53. 9 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, pp. 7, 96. T. Hughes, The Manliness of Christ, 21st ed. (Boston, 1896), pp. 50–52, 55–56, 73–74. On Coleridge’s conception of virtue and masculinity, see T. Fulford, Romanticism and Masculinity: Gender, Politics, and Poetics in the Writings of Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Hazlitt (New York, 1999). On Hughes’s, see N. Vance, The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 134–165; and P. Gay, “The Manliness of Christ,” in Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society, eds. R.W. Davis and R.J. Helmstadter (New York, 1992), pp. 102–116.

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Character. He explained, predictably, that “man is the brain, but woman is the heart of humanity; he its judgment, she its feeling; he its strength, she its grace, ornament, and solace.” Most women exercised their moral agency “in the quiet recesses of private life.” Beneath this banal expression of separate-spheres ideology lurked a more complex construction of gendered differences. Smiles explicitly severed courage from physical valor and, for that reason, insisted that women no less than men had the capacity “to endure all and suffer all for truth and duty.” He admired women who pursued public philanthropy precisely because it cut against their natural feminine preference for quite retirement. Nor did women have any less need than men for mental strength. A strong heart had the need for a wise head—and vice versa. “A heartless man is as much out-of-keeping in civilized society as a stupid, and unintelligent women,” he declared. While he pointedly accepted traditional gender roles he also believed that both sexes would better play their separate providential roles if their characters were brought in closer alignment.10 Hughes’s two-novel chronicle of Tom Brown’s progress from Rugby new boy to Oxford graduate further illustrates the importance of patience and humility in the conception of gender roles. The real-life Arnold appears in the first novel as the embodiment of “manly piety.” Yet, as powerful an example as Arnold set, his teaching did not provide everything necessary for salvation. Tom Brown’s School Days ends with a plea that the cultivation of a religious character requires not only “the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers, and brothers, and teachers” but also “the love and tenderness and purity of mothers, and sisters, and wives.” Tom Brown at Oxford concludes with Hughes’s hero renouncing wealth and station in order to serve the downtrodden. Earlier in the novel Hughes placed Tom in the pews of St. Mary’s, Oxford’s university church, to hear a preacher whose “vivid” words were taken from an actual sermon delivered by Arthur Stanley (who was, not incidentally, Arnold’s biographer). Stanley directly exhorted the young men in the congregation to cleanse “extravagance, sin, debt, falsehood” from their soul. Let “one ray of truth let into that dark corner,” Stanley promised, and they would set themselves free. Tom obeys this admonition. This would not have been heroic if it had been easy. Tom admits to “all manner of doubts and perplexities.” Material deprivation does not distress him on his own behalf but he felt anxious for his new 10

S. Smiles, Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (London, 1859), pp. vi, 293–294. S. Smiles, The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer, 5th ed. (London, 1858), p. 266. S. Smiles, Character, new ed. (London, 1876), pp. 38, 123, 150–157, 299–304. On women, gender ideology and Self Help, see P. Sinnema, introduction to Self Help by S. Smiles (Oxford, 2002), pp. xxi–xxiv.

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wife, Mary. She had grown up in luxury and, had she married differently, she could have continued a lifetime of comfort. She reassures him, affectionately but with a hint of exasperation, that she entered the union with her eyes open wide: It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrong you saw on every side, struggling after something better and higher, and siding and sympathising with the poor and weak, that I love you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a young gentlemen satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get on well in society. Yet Tom persists: “It is a man’s business. But why is a woman’s life to be made wretched?” She responds pointedly: why is it not? “Have women different souls from men?” The notion shocks Tom. “God forbid!” he cried. Mary presses her advantage: women, she explains, “are not meant to sit in fine silks, and look pretty, and spend money, any more than you are meant to make it.” Assuaged, Tom gratefully accepts her as a partner in his dreams and struggles. In the end, however, their shared sacrifice and commitment to Christian virtue left the distinctiveness of their roles and duties unchanged. “If a woman cannot do much herself,” Mary concludes, “she can honour and love a man who can.”11 Geraldine Jewsbury’s 1851 novel Marian Withers offered a female-centered perspective on this gendered dynamic. John Withers, the title character’s father, grows up as an outcast in a Manchester workhouse. An indomitable desire for self-improvement, allied to a sober and hardworking character, propels him upwards from his miserable origins. His inspired new design for spinning mules requires an arduous two-year process of development and testing. Money from the sale of his patent allows him to build his own factory. Material prosperity and social honor ensues—the consequence, but never the goal, of his inventive hard work. Jewsbury revered Carlyle and, in John, she created a character who seemed to march resolutely from the pages of On Heroes and Hero-Worship.12 Carlyle notoriously exiled women to the far periphery of his chronicles of heroism. Marian Withers, on the other hand, concentrates on the struggles of 11 12

T. Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days (Cambridge, 1857), pp. 250, 419–420. T. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford (New York, 1883), pp. 311–312, 538–546. G.E. Jewsbury, Marian Withers (London, 1851), vol. 1, pp. 5–83. For a discussion of Jewsbury’s novel, see R. Bodenheimer, The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 84–96.

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Marian, John’s only child, to live in spiritual accordance with her father’s heroic morality, but in fields of activity far removed from the inaccessibly masculine world of industry. For Marian, romantic love promises the renunciation of selfish desires that her father found in his invention; but it also carried the danger of becoming “the easy self-indulgence of a pleasant emotion.” Genuine love demands above all else humility which kindled the courage to perform duty actively. The first volume of Jewsbury’s novel ends with the narrator’s assurance that the cultivation of virtue demanded heroic perseverance. Marian eventually falls into the orbit of her father’s business partner (and her eventual husband), Mr. Cunningham. Notably, Cunningham explains that he pursued an industrial career “more to find a sphere of employment than to increase my fortune.” He wants above all to improve the dignity and condition of the working classes through education. “With education came also enlightened ideas of self-control and self-government,” the narrator reports. In the same way, Cunningham wishes to civilize his fellow industrialists “to look to something higher than their own individual gain and loss.” He undertakes Marian’s moral education along these lines. “No life that has the aggrandisement of self for its ‘being’s end and aim’, can be aught but low and vulgar,” he tells her. Later he scolds her for indulging a fantasy for an all-consuming romantic love: “At first this complete abandonment of yourself to your emotion may seem grand and devoted,” he explains, but “there is idleness and weakness at the root of this apparent generosity.… Self-control, self-discipline is the first law for both man and woman.” The woman who gave her love rashly and unwisely committed the same sin as the man who speculated money recklessly; the acts were different but the selfishness was the same.13 Whewell’s friend, the Cambridge geology professor Adam Sedgwick, provided applied common virtue to gendered duty in his savage review of the anonymous Vestiges. He originally suspected a woman’s hand behind the sweeping evolutionary cosmology because he felt that “no man could write so much about natural science without having dipped below the surface.” (The physicist David Brewster made the associated point in his equally choleric review of Vestiges that “the mould in which Providence has cast the female mind” had made the book an especial favorite “in the boudoir and the drawingroom.”) Sedgwick assured his readers that he intended no disrespect to the “softer sex.” In matters of taste, sentiment, and the moral duties of common life, he placed his “highest trust in woman.” He elsewhere identified the domestic and private affections as the first channel for “the practice of the humbler 13 Jewsbury, Marian Withers, vol. 1, pp. 297–298, vol. 2, pp. 28–30, 123–129, vol. 3, pp. 106–110, 128–131, 241–242.

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virtues.” Christian life had advanced morally over the pagan in large part because “women has now her right place in the world; and a Christian household is the abode of peace and love, and the best school of every virtue.” Science drew on these same virtues—the investigator toiled patiently and “learned a lesson of humility from his own repeated failures”—but in a field that demanded intense physical and mental stamina. Sedgwick accepted that women, too, could be patient and humble, but only in their own appointed sphere. “But we know, by long experience, that the ascent up the hill of science is rugged and thorny, and ill-fitted for the drapery of a petticoat.”14 For the Victorians, men and women occupied the same moral sphere. Flaws flowed from the same vices, strengths from the same virtues. The specific nature of those flaws and strengths varied, of course. Men tended towards pugnacity and self-will, women to listless sentimentality and neediness; but the cure in both cases was the same. Men and women alike must repudiate selfindulgence. Men and women alike must be prepared to suffer patiently for the sake of conscience. Duties varied widely according to sex, age, vocation, talent, family ties, and social rank—in this the spheres were distinctly separate—but the self-sacrificing virtues which underwrote this vast constellation of moral obligation did not. Everyone differed in body—but not in soul.

Failures, Moral and Intellectual

Carlyle died in 1881, Pattison in 1884. James Froude, Carlyle’s literary executor and authorized biographer, oversaw the editing and publications of the Reminiscences that appeared a month after Carlyle’s death. Froude’s four-volume biography of Carlyle followed between 1882 and 1884. Pattison’s Memoirs appeared in 1885. These accounts of their lives fueled an intense public conversation on the relationship between patience, humility, and belief. In their very different ways both Carlyle and Pattison appeared to violate the strictures for patient and humble behavior—Carlyle in his habitual aggressiveness, Pattison in his emotional weakness. There is certainly dark humor in Carlyle’s penchant for lecturing on the need for patience and humility. Froude readily admitted that Carlyle was “defiantly 14 A. Sedgwick, “Natural History of Creation,” Edinburgh Review 82 (1845), pp. 3–4. D. Brewster, “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.” North British Review 3 (1845), p. 503. A. Sedgwick, A Discourse on the Studies of the University, 5th ed. (London, 1850), pp. ccxcv, 168.

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proud” with “a fiercely impatient temperament.” According to the reminiscence of an acquaintance, Carlyle admitted: “only let me have my own way exactly in everything…and a sunnier or pleasanter creature does not live.” This was a jest, perhaps, but one with the bite of truth. Many observers believed that Carlyle’s egotism seeped into writing. Henry Reeve’s notice of Carlyle’s Reminiscences in the Edinburgh Review drew a straight line between Carlyle’s self-centered misanthropy, his rejection of “the eternal truths of God and immortality,” and the weaknesses of his philosophy. Reeve damned Carlyle’s “wail over his own misfortune” upon the death of his wife. “Events which wring the heart-strings, and from which, sooner or later, none of us can escape, are the tests of deep convictions and of self-command,” he moralized. “Carlyle applies these tests to himself, and fails in the trial.” Orthodox Christians did not monopolize this line of criticism. The positivist Frederic Harrison argued that Carlyle’s “indomitable patience” and “fiery imagination” were unconsecrated by humility. A “dogged self-absorption” disfigured much of his life and work as a result.15 But Carlyle was not a hypocrite, at least not straightforwardly. He believed with painful sincerity that we must purge all venal and wishful thinking from our understanding of the world and that we must denunciate the quest for personal happiness. Personal flaws of demeanor paled beside these high spiritual requirements. Carlyle’s American admirer Margaret Fuller Ossoli made exactly that point. She could hardly deny that Carlyle was overbearing— she had witnessed his domineering manner first hand—but excused his arrogance because “there is no littleness—no self-love.”16 Carlyle demonstrates that entreaties to patience and humility were often self-serving but rarely grounded in a smirking insincerity. Pattison had a radically different personality. He instinctually cast his eyes downward in situations where Carlyle would bear his teeth. Pattison disclosed in his Memoir that his undergraduate years in Oxford were marred by a crippling lack of self-confidence: “any rough, rude, self-confident fellow” would instantly bully him into intellectual retreat. As an adult he learned to defend controversial intellectual positions, but he never lost his inward cringe at criticism or longing for reassurance. His life’s great crisis hit in 1851 when he sought election to head Lincoln College. The vote fell to the college’s fellows, a body 15

16

J.A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795–1835 (London, 1882), vol. 1, pp. 50, 54–55, 91. T.H.S. Escott, Great Victorians: Memories and Personalities (New York, 1916), p. 209.H. Reeve, “Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle,” Edinburgh Review 153 (1881), pp. 494–497. F. Harrison, “Letters of Thomas Carlyle from 1826 to 1836,” The Nineteenth Century 25 (1889), p. 628. M.F. Ossoli, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Boston, 1852), vol. 2, p. 189.

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still dominated by the licentious traditions of unreformed Oxford. The drunks and laggards of the Lincoln common room resented Pattison for placing his duties to students above their boozy sociability. This personal animosity was strengthened by the reasonable fear that, as head, Pattison would disrupt the fellows’ cozy torpor. The election was narrowly carried by a nonentity whose only claim to the post, Pattison scowled, was his willingness to “return to the reign of the satyrs and wild beasts.” Defeat broke him: “my mental forces were paralysed by the shock; a blank, dumb despair filled me.” Depression debilitated him for several years.17 Readers and commentators were quick to draw moral lessons from Pattison’s collapse. The agnostic philosopher Henry Sidgwick jotted down in his diary that Pattison’s Memoirs was disfigured by a “sordid egotism” grounded in a failure to examine his own character with the same “cold and bitter criticism that he applies to others” (a distinctly odd reading of Pattison’s self-flagellation). Sidgwick does not elaborate on his distaste other than to comment in passing a few months later that Pattison took “an intense brooding interest in his own life.” John Morley, in deeper public reflections on the Memoirs for Macmillan’s Magazine, found no egotism in Pattison. But his appraisal was even more devastating: “measured by any standard commensurate to his remarkable faculties, Pattison’s life would be generally regarded as pale, negative, and ineffectual.” Morley warmly admired the “industry and spirit of laborious acquisition” of his scholarship and his rejection of all that was “vapid, trite, or common.” Pattison’s writing on university reform stood as “a noble monument of patient zeal.” Yet, Morley observed, when Pattison belatedly ascended to the head of Lincoln in 1861, he retreated into his study as “a decorative figurehead with a high literary reputation” who allowed his college to molder. Morley found in Pattison’s 1851 collapse the defining feature of his life: the inability to respond with equanimity to this trial revealed a profound lack of moral courage, one that weighed down his entire life. This was not humility but selfabandonment.18 A few weeks earlier Morley had noted admiringly of George Eliot that she did not “conceive true humility as at all consisting in hiding from an impostor that you have found him out.”19 A man’s personal strengths and failings did not have to reflect, for better or worse, on the truth of his ideas. Froude’s refusal to swaddle Carlyle in standard hagiography was not meant to impugn the great man’s philosophy. On the 17 18 19

M. Pattison, Memoirs (London, 1885), pp. 47–49, 262–298. A. Sidgwick and E.M. Sidgwick, Henry Sedgwick: A Memoir (London, 1906), pp. 404, 428. J. Morley, “On Pattison’s Memoirs,” Macmillan’s Magazine 51 (1885), pp. 446–461. J. Morley, “The Life of George Eliot,” Macmillan’s Magazine 51 (1885), p. 245.

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­contrary, Froude considered his warts-and-all candor a tribute to the unflinching honesty he saw as Carlyle’s moral legacy. Both Sidgwick and Morley sympathized with Pattison’s hatred of dogmatism, most notoriously embodied in his examination of English religious thought from 1688 to 1750 that appeared the Essays and Reviews. Pattison had not backed down in his Memoirs. “So wholly extinct is scientific theology in the Church of England that the English public could not recognize such a thing as a neutral and philosophical inquiry,” he lamented. He reached the conclusion that stifling orthodoxy had smothered rational discussion and “resolved to wash my hands of theology.” He retreated to the conviction that “religion is a good servant but a bad master.” These incendiary views predictably became entangled in assessments of his  personal character. Sidgwick observed ruefully that Pattison’s life was “a moral fiasco, which the orthodox have a right to point to as a warning against infidelity.”20 Sidgwick’s brother-in-law Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, did just that. He believed that the posthumous portraits of Carlyle’s tempestuous personality and Pattison’s slide from Christian orthodoxy conclusively invalidated the increasingly popular assumption (promoted by people like Thomas Huxley) that men could acquire the humility of a noble temper absent the guidance of traditional Christian belief. 21 A review in the Spectator drew a direct line between Pattison’s adoption of rationalistic theology and his moral frailties, which included the combination of “self-distrust” with “an almost consuming vanity,—the two qualities are not only perfectly selfconsistent but often very closely allied.” Pattison’s refusal to bind himself to the dictates of “pure theology” allowed him to wallow in “the indolent melancholy and the vivid moroseness which the disappointment of legitimate hopes had engendered in him, without making even the slightest moral struggle to turn his own wounded feelings into the sources of a nobler life than any he had lived before.” His rationalism, in short, “was an enervating creed which actually resulted in his own enervation.”22 Is to err to sin? The public conversations about the character of Carlyle and Pattison show how easy it was deploy virtue and, even more potently, its alleged absence in a war of ideas. Most Victorians clung doggedly to the conviction that truth emerged from a patient and humble engagement with the world. The predictable flipside followed: falsity was the poisoned fruit of pride, haste, and selfishness. 20 Pattison, Memoirs, pp. 97–98, 313–317. Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sedgwick, p. 404. 21 For Benson’s reaction to Pattison’s Memoirs and the book’s place in larger debates about the ethics of unbelief, see Jones, Intellect and Character in Victorian England, pp. 120–132. 22 “Memoirs by Mark Pattison,” Spectator 58 (1885), pp. 356–357.

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Historical accounts of nineteenth-century intellectual, social, and political conflicts have concentrated—for good and obvious reasons—on stark differences of doctrine, creed, and theory. Highlighting an almost universal commitment to a set of behavioral values grounded in patient and humble self-denial does not minimize the significance of the century’s many political, religious, and metaphysical disagreements. The fact that the Victorians agreed on standards of virtue did not open up common ground. On the contrary, the tendency to frame intellectual disagreement in moral terms amplified the intensity of disagreement. It is one thing to be told that you err, another that you sin. Intellectual disagreements did not always cast a dark shadow of moral condemnation. But they routinely did, especially when the parties involved considered the issue pivotal—as so many issues were in an age of rapid and disorienting change. Religious discourse was notably riven with bad blood. In 1853, William Conybeare, an Anglican clergyman and author, identified eight distinct parties within his church. Yet, beneath this often deafening cacophony, he found “a substantial unity of faith, and absolute identity of holiness, in the midst of endless diversity of opinion.”23 This observation is well illustrated by the points of agreement between Edward Bouverie Pusey and his fellow Oxford don, Benjamin Jowett. Pusey and Jowett spoke in identical terms about the necessity of taking up the cross and following Christ in patience and humility. Obeying the dictates of virtue made us more receptive to Christian belief; belief strengthened our capacity for obedience. Belief influenced what we did; what we did opened (or closed) our eyes to truth. Both Jowett and Pusey had reservations about Paley’s approach to the evidences of Christianity, although for diametrically opposed reasons (Jowett thought that Paley’s approach had too little of the spirit of modern critical inquiry, Pusey that it had far too much). But neither would have disputed Paley’s insistence that religious belief must foremost exert “a constant influence upon our behaviour.” These deep points of agreement did nothing to prevent Pusey and Jowett from clashing bitterly and repeatedly. Pusey even instigated a prosecution of Jowett for heresy in the 1860s for his contribution to Essays and Reviews.24 23

24

W.J. Conybeare, “Church Parties,” Edinburgh Review 98 (1853), pp. 340, 342. On Conybeare and his essay, see A. Burns, introduction to “Church Parties” by W.J. Conybeare in From Cranmer to Davidson: A Church of England Miscellany, ed. Stephen Taylor (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 214–254. B. Jowett. Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans: With Critical Notes and Dissertations (London, 1855), vol. 1, pp. 108–110, vol. 2, p. 445. E.B. Pusey, Sermons for the Church’s Seasons, from Advent to Trinity (London, 1883), p. 273. W. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects, ed. E. Paley (London, 1825), vol. 1, p. 133. On the conflict between Pusey

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Conybeare clung to the hope that shared concepts of holiness would in time allow a unified Christianity to vanquish atheism, although his optimism was tempered by the fear that “many ages” might pass before final victory.25 The battles between Pusey and Jowett—which themselves were but a microcosm of pervasive Victorian religious conflict—pointed to a less sanguine conclusion: the two Oxford dons disagreed so viciously not in spite of their common understanding of holiness but precisely because of it. Neither man felt willing or able to compromise with doctrines and modes of religious discipline that, in their eyes, encouraged vice.

The Tribute that Vice Pays to Virtue

An 1865 sixpenny book, written under the pseudonym Pamphilius, promised to regale its young readers with Patient Boys; and How by Patience They Become Great Men. It was filled with the predicable salutes to self-denial and industry. The introductory chapter unleashed a fusillade of quotations to this effect from great men (partially invented in the case of Samuel Johnson). But, as a reviewer for the Spectator rightly observed, “the title of Patient Boys scarcely describes the book, which is extremely discursive, wandering into adventures of travel not connected with the subject, and dealing not infrequently less with patient boys than impatient men.”26 The stock celebration of patience allowed Pamphilius to market a motley collection of adventure stories and biographical sketches as a work of high moral purpose. The appropriation of self-denying virtue was of course a staple of politics. The Whig politician Lord Melbourne observed sarcastically that there was nothing like politics to illustrate the depth and breadth of human virtue because “I now find no man ever drops the least hint of any motive but disinterestedness and self-denial—and all idea of gain, or advantage, is the only thing that none seem ever to dream of.”27 Novelists found fertile ground in this type of hypocrisy. Charlotte Brontë and Ann Brontë explored its malevolent side. Mr. Brocklehurt, the vicious headmaster of Lowood School in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, justifies his sadistic treatment of Jane and the other girls in his charge and Jowett, see V. Shea and W. Whitla, ed., Essays and Reviews: The 1860 Text and Its Reading (Charlottesville, 2000). 25 Conybeare, “Church Parties,” p. 342. 26 Pamphilius, Patient Boys; and How by Patience They Become Great Men (London, 1865). Rev. of Patient Boys and Economy of Life by Pamphilius, Spectator 38 (1865), p. 1291. 27 Melbourne’s quip is reported in H. Brougham, Dialogues on Instinct (London, 1844), p. 27.

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by explaining that his plan is “not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying.” Arthur Huntingdon, the abusive husband in Ann’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, responds to his wife Helen’s complaints about his neglect by urging “the exercise of patience, ‘that first of woman’s virtues’.” Edward Casaubon in Eliot’s Middlemarch might not be cynical or sinister but his appeals to “exercises… demanding patience” and “the toil of years” are no less fraudulent. His young wife Dorothea painfully discovers that what she took to be “persevering devoted labour” in fact masked self-indulgence. Casaubon laboriously churned out manuscript pages—worthless ones—in order to evade the risks attendant upon real achievement. He was too blind and inflexible, and too enervated by the “inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy,” to behave with the patience of the accomplished scholar. With these depictions the Brontës and Eliot impeached hypocrisy, not the virtues that the characters misappropriated to mask their selfishness. Jane Eyre’s iron self-command stands in stark contrast to Brocklehurt’s self-indulgence and avarice. Huntingdon’s failure in life and marriage flowed directly from his lack of “self-restraint” for “animal enjoyments.” Dorothea eventually marries Will Ladislaw who, his courage and imaginative power nourished by her patient love and sacrifice, grows into a life of usefulness.28 When not hypocritical, the association of character with right belief often degenerated into an empty tautology. When the high-churchman William Sewell scorned the attempts by men like Paley, Chalmers, Whewell and John Bird Sumner to establish the evidences for Christianity on a rational foundation, he contrasted them unfavorably with the “the poor ignorant uninstructed peasant.” The peasant, said Sewell in the Newman-edited British Critic, did not rest his faith on ornate intellectual proofs but on the trust he placed in the character of his superiors. Those who abused and contradicted traditional faith taught by these superiors, Sewell’s hypothetical peasant thinks, “are not such persons I would wish to follow in any other matter of life, and therefore not in religion.” Sewell’s brand of faith was justified by the opinion of trustworthy men, who were trustworthy because they adhered to his brand of faith. Sewell had applied this logic earlier in when disparaging scientific culture in an 1834 pamphlet attacking the proposed admission of dissenters to Oxford 28

C. Brontë, Jane Eyre, ed. Q.D. Leavis (London, 1988), p. 95. A. Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, introduction and notes by S. Davies (London, 1996), pp. 220, 244. On The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, see L.A. Surridge, Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction (Athens, 2005), pp. 72–82, 90–96. G. Eliot, Middlemarch, introduced by A.S. Byatt (Oxford, 1999), pp. 89, 231, 420.

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University. He had no objection to the extension of natural knowledge, he insisted, but rather directed his ire against the scientific man who twisted science into an idol and turned the pursuit of knowledge into an engine of conceit and vanity. Such a wretch deserved nothing less than “the whip always raised above his back, to lash him into safety and submission. This, Sir, is our duty in this age of danger and temptation from reason.” He explained further: “a nation of Newtons could no more generate a gentleman, than a nation of infidels could create a Christian.”29 Men of science bitterly disputed such attempts to strip their pursuits of autonomy and moral significance, of course, and often fought back with their own competing tautology. De Morgan’s characterization of Newton (discussed above) was one attempt. Whewell, perhaps the most articulate and systematic of those advancing the case for science’s moral dignity, offered another: he stressed “the union of intellectual and moral excellence.”30 This intimate connection runs through his monumental three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences. Newton’s reputation as “the greatest example of a natural philosopher” became a matter of extreme importance in his campaign. It was not enough to celebrate his patience and humility as a scientific investigator, which would offer a weak rebuttal to people like Sewell. Whewell insisted that Newton’s moral excellence brightened all aspects of his life, reporting that his contemporaries “have uniformly represented him as candid and humble, mild, and good.” Unfortunately for Whewell, this was blatantly untrue, as he was forced to concede in a footnote. The recently published letters and manuscripts of Newton’s rival, the Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed, painted the great philosopher as often preening, intolerant of criticism, vindictive, and selfish. Whewell waved away this evidence. Flamsteed was not only a secondrate intellect who failed to recognize Newton’s intellectual achievement but he was also clearly “weak and prejudiced, sore and angry.” Like Sewell’s attack on the moral pestilence of religiously disobedient science, Whewell’s defense of Newton spun in a circle, only in the counter direction.31 29

W. Sewell, “Animal Magnetism,” British Critic 24 (1838), pp. 305–306. W. Sewell, A Second Letter to a Dissenter, on the Opposition of the University of Oxford to the Charter of the London College (Oxford, 1834), pp. 5–7, 37. On Sewell’s relationship to science, see P. Corsi, Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 121, 123; and F.M. Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven, 2002), p. 324. 30 W. Whewell, Newton and Flamsteed, 2nd ed. (London, 1836), pp. 28–29. 31 Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, pp. 183–187. Higgitt, Recreating Newton, examines the Victorian controversies over Newton’s character and their place in shaping the cultural meaning of science. R. Yeo, Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural

From Virtue To Duty

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The boundary between sincerity and hypocrisy was thus permeable. Most professionals, particularly those working in law, medicine and the church, no doubt believed that their work was founded on codes of virtue rather than market exchange. Professionals, John Ruskin insisted with his customary earnestness, “have a work to be done irrespective of fee—to be done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee.”32 This was not just rhetoric, but a principle embedded in British law. The consequences of this legal regime challenged Ruskin’s cozy view of professional virtue. Barristers and physicians could not sue a client or patient for nonpayment but they in turn enjoyed immunity from claims of professional negligence. The lawyer and writer James Fitzjames Stephen admitted grudgingly that this system was open to abuse but insisted that overall it supported a workable ideal that promoted disinterested and even courageous discharge of responsibilities. Not everyone agreed. A bill to remove barristers’ immunity from negligence suits landed in Parliament in 1876. Sir Henry Jackson, the Member for Coventry and a lawyer, objected that the proposed reform would interfere with the “exceeding delicate” relationship between clients and barristers. He praised that relationship as one “of the greatest devotion on the one side, and of the utmost trust on the other.” The barrister, he continued, was neither “agent” nor “servant,” and putting him in such a position would degrade the character of the profession. “The interests of the Profession and of the public are in this matter identical,” he pronounced. The reform failed decisively on a 237–130 vote.33

Spontaneity and Strictness

No age is free of cant and humbug. The phonies and hypocrites of the Victorian era gravitated naturally to the familiar language of patience and humility. Smugness, prejudice, and self-deception were common. Rank cynicism was not—it is all too probable that even Sir Henry genuinely convinced himself that shielding lawyers from negligence claims did in fact line up tidily with the public good and the dictates of virtue. Whewell and Sewell’s competing views

32 33

Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 1993), discusses Whewell’s role more broadly in the nineteenth-century campaign to establish the moral legitimacy of scientific investigation. J. Ruskin, Unto This Last, in vol. 17 of The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E.T. Cook. and A. Wedderburn (London, 1905), pp. 36–41. J.F. Stephen, “Professional Etiquette,” Cornhill Magazine 8 (1863), pp. 101–111. “Barristers and Advocates Fees Bill,” Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 3rd ser. 229 (1876), pp. 316–324. See G.R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998), pp. 107–116.

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of science’s moral character might have been self-serving but, unquestionably, they were also intensely honest. Patience and humility, and the self-denial they reinforced, were so culturally potent precisely because they were practiced with widespread sincerity. Victorian intellectuals often showed a remarkable capacity to combine sustained effort and painstaking attention to detail with intellectual courage. This admirable surrender to hard work encouraged the comforting assumption that one’s intellectual opponents refused to submit themselves similarly to the discipline of virtue—otherwise, why would they persist in error? The definition of humility as obedience to truth underwrote vast amounts of self-satisfied disdain for opposing viewpoints. The existence of this paradox was the defining insight of Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. Arnold worried that his contemporaries had placed far too much prominence on what he called Hebraism: a form of discipline grounded in “self-conquest, self-devotion, the following not our own individual will, but the will of God, obedience.” Ordinary popular literature—the type typically larded with high-minded appeals to self-control—all too often aspired “to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party.” Questioning the absolute supremacy of so-called “Hebraism” provoked a predictable backlash. Smiles for one recoiled. He revered Thomas Arnold but made his disagreement with his son clear in Duty, with Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance. Smiles attacked those who “worship ‘culture’,” a concept he attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s notion of geist. “Culture,” thus polluted by the German poet’s skepticism and vanity, promoted men to “sneer at the old-fashioned virtues of industry and self-denial, energy and self-help.” No loyal heir of Thomas Arnold would in fact ever denigrate the self-denying virtues, and Matthew certainly did not, no matter what Smiles and other critics chose to believe. But the younger Arnold did call for balancing the noble and necessary habits of Hebraism (to a degree, he admitted privately, that his father would not have fully embraced) with Hellenism, “an unclouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play of thought.” For the younger Arnold we could achieve our fullest development only by balancing “spontaneity of consciousness” with “strictness of conscience.” England had a culture so fixated on “walking steadfastly according to the best light it knows” that it failed to recognize that its best light was all too often dim indeed.34

34 Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, pp. 48, 145–150, 263–264. S. Smiles, Duty, with Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance (London, 1880), pp. 18–19, 38–40. M. Arnold to M.P. Arnold (13 June 1868), The Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. Lang, vol. 3, pp. 258–259.

Part 2 The Eighteenth Century

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Character and Morality in Eighteenth-Century British Thought Henry Wallis exhibited his painting Dr. Johnson at Cave’s the Publisher at the 1854 Royal Academy exhibition in London. A reviewer for the Athenaeum described the “cleverly conceived” scene. The indomitable Johnson is seated writing at a desk, placed near a window, behind a screen, that separates him from Urban’s more fashionable company. A pretty, smart servant, evidently recently culled from the upper classes of a parish school, is bringing him a plate of meat, with a contemptuous air and up-turned nose. He is eyeing it in an abstracted purblind way, as if he wondered what it possibly could be.1 The lesson is clear: Samuel Johnson lived in a superficial and pretentious century. His eighteenth-century contemporaries discounted his genius, integrity, and industriousness—unlike the enlightened nineteenth-century crowds which were filtering through the exhibition. Condescension towards the eighteenth century took even blunter form in a Bampton Lecture delivered by the Rev. George Herbert Curteis in 1871. He claimed that “there is no one, probably, now living who does not congratulate himself that his lot was not cast” in that effete, corrupt, garish, and lazy epoch.2 Not everyone agreed, of course. While Curteis fulminated in Oxford, Leslie Stephen worked in London on his landmark History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). He later admitted that he daydreamed of living in the “delightful period” of Johnson and Edward Gibbon, “when political revolutions and mechanical inventions had not yet turned things topsy-turvy.”3 The Victorians were both fascinated and repulsed by the eighteenth century because they found it replete with moral lessons. For Curteis, the century was 1 “Royal Academy,” The Athenaeum no. 1384 (6 May 1854), p. 560. The painting is reproduced in P. Martin, Samuel Johnson: A Biography (Cambridge, ma, 2008), illustration section one after p. 128. 2 G.H. Curteis, Dissent, in its Relation to the Church of England (London, 1872), p. 289. 3 L. Stephen, Studies of a Biographer (London, 1907), vol. 1, pp. 142–143. See B.W. Young, The Victorian Eighteenth Century: An Intellectual History (Oxford, 2007), pp. 103–147.

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dominated by grotesque men who failed to maintain the “spiritual health and soundness, perfect sanity, wholesomeness, and tranquil half-unconscious balance of all the moral functions of the inner man.” He blamed above all a church defiled by casual corruption and a cold and languorous rationalism. The great religious reformer John Wesley provided an exception, walking with a brisk step and upright posture while most of his contemporaries waddled. Too brisk, in fact: Wesley committed a “fatal error” by embracing instantaneous and sensible conversion. This doctrine taught that “the highest spiritual things could be reached at a bound” rather than acquired through a gradual ascent. Wesley himself (Curteis claimed) belatedly returned “to a more tranquil, healthful, and Churchmanlike” judgment. But too late: Wesleyanism had embraced a theology which encouraged spiritual conceit and self-indulgent emotional excess. Curteis invited his audience to recoil at the ravage of human pride in both the eighteenth century’s debauchery and its ill-regulated reaction to it.4 Wallis’s painting also tut-tutted eighteenth-century narcissism. The “indomitable Johnson” embodied the pursuit of truth for its own sake and his shabby clothes and intense concentration rebuked the flippant, self-seeking, and impertinent behavior which surrounded him. The scrupulously clear-eyed Stephen presented a more complex portrait of Johnson in a short biography (his subject never took an abstract view of food, for example) but still found romance in his struggles. Stephen relished telling the story of Johnson knocking an insolent would-be patron to the floor with a sixteenth-century folio and celebrated the creation of Johnson’s famous dictionary as “the biggest job that could be well undertaken by a good workman in his humble craft.” He concluded that, “naturally enough, the fashionable world cared little for the rugged old giant.” Stephen understood the malign consequence of rank and social connection. When he fantasized about living in the Hanoverian age he took care to imagine himself “within the charmed circle where sinecure offices may be rewarded of a judicious choice of parents.” He also recognized that being born lucky allowed many to sink into sensuousness. Gibbon and Johnson fired his admiration because, rather than repudiating the age’s epicureanism, they redirected it to find pleasure in “a strenuous and ceaseless exertion of the intellect upon worthy ends.”5 For the Victorians, casting an eye back on the previous century was like visiting a menagerie of animals from Aesop’s Fables. Cautionary tales abounded, but heroes were not absent nor were the standards for heroism. This chapter and the two that follow look at four men who bequeathed to the Victorians the conviction that everyone must deny their animal appetites and submit 4 Curteis, Dissent, pp. 339–389. 5 Stephen, Studies of a Biographer, vol. 1, pp. 140–145.

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patiently and humbly to the spiritual and temporal work of the world: Wesley (1703–91), Johnson (1709–74), and the clergymen-philosophers Joseph Butler (1692–1752) and William Paley (1743–1805).

Dramatis Personæ

Butler and Paley carried out their clerical duties with care and efficiency at a time of notorious corruption within the Church of England. They saw literary and philosophical work as part of their disinterested service. Butler stressed that “Religion is a practical thing.” His moral philosophy sought to place us on “that course of life which we call virtue” as a means to qualify us for heaven. As a bishop he earned a reputation for using his power of preferment to place men of character in useful positions, rather than to enrich family, friends, and political allies.6 Paley repeatedly stressed the necessity for religion to have “so firm a hold on our minds as to guide and direct our conduct.” For him, to become a Christian meant to accomplish the difficult passage “from thought to action, from religious sentiments to religious conduct.” These principles soured him on the “baseness and servility which like a swine rooting in a dunghill will perform the basest acts for a rich patron, to gain his protection and good benefice.” Paley urged toleration of doctrinal errors which did not have a bad effect on behavior, and vigorous correction of those that did.7 For Anglicans wrestling with a changing and uncertain world, Butler and Paley not only offered a body of useful knowledge but a standard for engagement with the world. Wesley defined a Methodist as “one that lives according to the method laid down in the bible.” His role as founder made him an enduring symbol of this biblical method put into practice. If Butler and Paley showed how the established church could rededicate itself to its pastoral and intellectual missions, Wesley offered an alternative vision of Christian devotion freed from deference to property, the traditional channels of patronage and the other characteristics of the reigning plutocracy.8 Johnson in his very different way carved 6 J. Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, vol. 1 of The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Joseph Butler (Oxford, 1844), pp. 56–61, 82, 282. J. Butler, Sermons, vol. 2 of ibid., p. 15. T. Bartlett, Life, Character, and Writings, of Joseph Butler (London, 1839), pp. 198–200. 7 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 131–132, 263, vol. 2, pp. 114; see also vol. 1, pp. 2, 41–42, 85–89, vol. 2, p. 5, 195, 285. M.L. Clarke, Paley: Evidences for the Man (London, 1974), p. 12. 8 P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 5, 244–245, 252–255.

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out a new identity for the man of letters which was free of traditional aristocratic sponsorship. His charismatic personal struggles, particularly as filtered through James Boswell’s Life of Johnson and later mythologizing by admirers like Wallis and Thomas Carlyle, helped exemplify the literary life for a new age of industrial commerce, one where the reading public became the author’s patron. Johnson laid down a pattern not for what the modern writer should believe but what he should do.9 Butler was born into a nonconformist family of Berkshire linen merchants in 1692, five years after Newton published the Principia. He converted to the established church with his father’s perhaps grudging approval, which opened the English universities to him. He enrolled in Oxford, but found limited intellectual value in the “frivolous lectures and unintelligible disputations.” He nonetheless persevered and took holy orders upon graduation. The friendships he made at university compensated for its educational inadequacies. A friend’s father was the Bishop of Durham, who smoothed his path to preferment after graduation from Oxford in 1718. In 1726 Butler published Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, where he articulated his view of human nature. The Analogy of Religion followed in 1736. His elevation in the church hierarchy continued, with a call to the see of Bristol in 1738, and then a transfer to Durham a dozen years later.10 Butler’s Analogy launched a complex frontal attack on deism and other heterodoxies. The title refers to Butler’s argument that “an analogy or likeness [exists] between that system of things and dispensation of Providence, which Revelation informs us of, and that system of things and dispensation of Providence, which Experience together with Reason informs us, i.e. the known course of Nature.” The deepening of natural philosophy would reveal God’s design of the world in ever more intricate detail. Even more crucially, it revealed how little humans truly did, and could, understand. The more we learned, the more we recognized that our knowledge provided but a feeble light compared to the vast ignorance beyond its flickering compass.11 This fed into Butler’s core theological argument that “probability is the very guide of life.” He rejected as pernicious the expectation that humans could ever achieve certain knowledge of the attributes of God and his creation. “It is 9 Altick, Lives and Letters, pp. 58–74. A.B. Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (Princeton, 1989), pp. 94–117. 10 E.C. Mossner, Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason: A Study in the History of Thought (New York, 1936), pp. 1–12. B. Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry (Woodbridge, 2011). 11 Butler, The Analogy, p. 5.

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then but an exceedingly little way, and in but a very few respects, that we can trace up the natural course of things before us, to general laws,” he explained. In this Butler followed common assumptions about the frailty of human understanding. John Locke, nearly a half century before the Analogy, had claimed in his Essay on Human Understanding that God had afforded us “only the twilight…of probability; suitable, I presume, to the state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased to place us in here.” This, Locke continued, should check “our over-confidence and presumption” and urge us to spend our mortal days “with industry and care.” Butler argued that the failure to acknowledge our limitations pushed men, like René Descartes, into “that idle and not every innocent employment of forming imaginary models of a world, and schemes of governing it.” Butler claimed the high probability for the truth of Christianity did not rest on any single decisive argument or fact. Instead he marshaled a cascade of evidence that rendered unbelief unreasonable as opposed to axiomatically wrong. “Probable proofs, by being added, not only increase the evidence, but multiply it,” he insisted. “The truth of our religion, like the truth of common matters, is to be judged by all the evidence taken together.”12 This scheme responded robustly to apparent anomalies. Since the overall balance of evidence tilted heavily towards Christianity, no one should be perturbed by the odd loose end. A coherent system of positive knowledge did not crumble from partial ignorance. “It is easy to shew, in a short and lively manner, that such and such things are liable to objection, that this and another thing is of little weight in itself,” he observed; “but impossible to show, in like manner, the united force of the whole argument in one view.” Prudent men were never paralyzed in their normal conduct by the lack of absolute proof. Those who refused to act upon Christianity until every one of their quibbles were answered behaved as absurdly as a man who refused to open his door in the morning because he could not say with perfect certainty what he would find on the other side. It ought to be forced upon the reflections of these persons, that our nature and condition necessarily requires us, in the daily course of life, to act upon evidence much lower than what is commonly called probable; to guard, not only against what we fully believe will, but also against what 12

J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 27th ed. (London, 1836), pp. 498– 499 (book IV, chapter 14, § 2). Butler, The Analogy, pp. 1–12, 193, 277–278. For the place of probability in Locke’s thinking and its influence on subsequent philosophy, see L. Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1988), pp. 192–210.

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we think it supposable may happen; and to engage in pursuits when the probability is greatly against success, if it be credible, that possibly we may succeed in them. Faith in what we do know and humility in the face of what we do not “is really a satisfactory answer to all objections against the justice and goodness of Providence.”13 Butler’s system of probability did not depend on mathematical calculation. In this it was unlike the famous theorem developed by his exact contemporary Thomas Bayes. Bayes, a Presbyterian minister, applied considerable mathematical originality to construct a probabilistic framework for serious inquiry, including into the question of God’s existence.14 Butler instead appealed to the impressions of ordinary understanding and warned against clever whirligig arguments against plain truth. Let me just take notice of the danger of over-great refinements; of going besides or beyond the plain, obvious, first appearances of things, upon the subject of morals and religion. The least observation will shew, how little the generality of men are capable of speculations. Therefore morality and religion must be somewhat plain and easy to be understood: it must appeal to what we call plain common sense, as distinguished from superior capacity and improvement; because it appeals to mankind. Persons of superior capacity and improvement have often fallen into errors, which no one of mere common understanding could. Butler insisted that each of us can hear the voice of God within us, if we would but listen. His Christian ethics rested on the existence of an innate conscience which embodied our higher human nature and allowed us to tame our shortsighted animal desires. Logic and wit served irrationality and immortality when unrestrained by our inner sense of right and wrong. Intellectual capability and animal passion were thus not poles on the same axis, but independent qualities. The ability to correctly judge Christianity’s probable truthfulness depended at least as much on our developed conscience as it did on our refined  intellect. The clever were susceptible to overestimating the value of their objections to religious truth: “it is not perhaps easy, even for the most 13 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 128–137, 239, 277–279, 287–288. 14 T. Bayes and R. Price, “An Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances, by the late Rev. Mr. Bayes, F.R.S., Communicated by Mr. Price, in a Letter to John Canton, A.M. F.R.S.,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 53 (1763), pp. 373–374.

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reasonable men, always to bear in mind the degree of our ignorance, and make due allowance for it.”15 Butler’s influence spread widely in the eighteenth century. David Hume followed his general approach to reasoning about morals—he praised the bishop in A Treatise on Human Nature as one of the philosophers “who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing”—even if this same style of march led him to a different destination. Adam Smith, Lord Kames, and Thomas Reid also read Butler closely.16 From this base of respect and influence he became one of the great theological lodestars of the nineteenth century. He exerted particular influence at Oxford, where for decades the Analogy and Aristotle’s Ethics anchored the moral-philosophy curriculum.17 Butler’s appeal endured for multiple reasons. His argument from probability provided ways to reconcile traditional Christian values with the dynamic onrush of new ideas and perspectives. In 1839 Thomas Bartlett declared Butler an antitode to the reckless speculation which would “insidiously [sap] the foundations of revealed truth…in order to vindicate some favourite theory.” Bartlett notably reached this conclusion after endorsing an essay in which Charles Lyell leaned explicitly on Butler to sanctify the rapid advance of geological thought. Lyell insisted that, since the balance of probability supported the new geology, quibbles based on isolated facts or insulated gaps in the evidence had no legitimate standing—in other words, applying putatively scriptural objections to geological theory exploited the same faulty reasoning as religious unbelief.18 15 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 149–152. Butler, Sermons, pp. 62–63. Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry, pp. 27–28, 89–91. On Butler’s place in the development of probabilistic thinking in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment, pp. 204–205; and I. Hacking, The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 82–83, 177–178. 16 A. Garrett, “Reasoning about Morals from Butler to Hume,” in Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies, ed. R. Savage (Oxford, 2012), pp. 169–186. J.A. Harris, “The Early Reception of Hume’s Theory of Justice,” in Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies, ed. R. Savage (Oxford, 2012), pp. 213–217, 222, 230. 17 For a compendium of praise for Butler in the first third of the nineteenth century, see Bartlett, Life, Character, and Writings, of Joseph Butler, pp. 24–71. The place of Butler in curricula of Oxford and Cambridge is discussed in H. Sidgwick, “Philosophy at Cambridge,” Mind 1 (1876), pp. 239–241. For a general discussion of Butler’s place in Victorian thought, see Mossner, Bishop Butler and the Age of Reason, pp. 198–228; Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 170–183; and Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry, pp. 177–210. 18 Bartlett, Life, Character, and Writings, of Joseph Butler, pp. 45–48. C. Lyell, “Transactions of the Geological Society,” Quarterly Review 34 (1826), pp. 538–540.

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More than thirty years later Charles Darwin appended a passage from the Analogy as an epigram to later editions of the Origin of Species. He drew upon the bishop’s authority to insist that God could work as efficaciously through natural law as through miraculous intervention.19 W.A. Spooner’s late-Victorian biography of Butler concluded: While Butler was not one of the very greatest of thinkers, nor one of the very chiefest of saints, he combined the characteristics of the thinker and the saint in an unusual degree.… Such a mind seems to me to have a peculiar value and a special message for times of transition like our own, when discovery is active and speculation almost unlimited. For what men at such times need more than all besides, is ‘in patience to possess their souls’; and this is just the frame of mind which the Analogy, beyond all other books, inculcates and encourages.20 The characterization of Butler as an exemplarily courageous and scrupulous thinker was not limited to theists. Leslie Stephen and John Tyndall, both outspoken agnostics, admired these qualities in Butler even as they disputed the basis of his faith.21 Butler had a reputation for dusty abstraction. He readily acknowledged that his general argument for the evidences of Christianity was ill-suited to “the gaiety and carelessness of common conservation.”22 The Analogy is marked by a dour reclusiveness—little emotion seeps into Butler’s analysis and the first person singular rarely intrudes. William Gladstone observed approvingly that “Butler assuredly was not made for butterflies to flutter about.”23 Even two of his most ardent nineteenth-century champions acknowledged “that he appears to many readers an obscure and vague writer” (said William Whewell) and that his writing “is not only inelegant, but often obscure” (said Richard Whately). Whewell took the matter in hand by rearranging and prefacing the 19 Darwin, The Origin of Species, 6th ed., p. [ii]. J. Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (New York, 2002), p. 96. 20 W.A. Spooner, Bishop Butler (London, 1901), pp. 254–255. 21 L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1876), vol. 1, p. 86. L. Stephen, An Agnostic’s Apology (London, 1893), pp. 33–34. J. Tyndall, “Presidential Address,” in Report of the Forty-Fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Belfast in August 1874 (London, 1875), pp. lxxix–lxxxvii. 22 J. Butler, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy at the Primary Visitation of the Diocese of Durham, in the Year mdccli, 2nd ed., preface by S. Hallifax (London, 1786), pp. 9–10. 23 W. Gladstone, Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop of Butler (Oxford, 1896), pp. 2, 75, 88.

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text of Butler’s Three Sermons on Human Nature.24 Some Victorian clergymen, like the prominent Congregationalist minister John Leifchild, found Butler too cold and metaphysical for the emotional and practical needs of ministry. Others considered his forbidding aspect an asset. John James Blunt, a professor of divinity at Cambridge, noted admiringly that understanding the Analogy demanded “much and patient mediation.”25 The high churchmen John Henry Newman and the liberal theologian Renn Dickson Hampden fought bitter personal battles in Oxford, but they agreed that Butler’s precise attachment to truth was responsible for his severe style. Hampden noted that working through the difficult language trained the reader in the same “patient and close attention” which Butler used to form his conclusions.26 Walter Bagehot had plentiful justification, then, for his mischievous suggestion that the hard work necessary to disinter clear meaning from the bishop made his wisdom “seem more valuable from the difficulty of finding it,” particularly for lecturers in English universities hungry for things “to elucidate, annotate, and expound.”27 He might have added that this scholarly process allowed the dons to discover their own favorite methods and doctrines in Butler’s works. The bishop’s erudite defense of everyday common sense also allowed his interpreters to enjoy the paradoxical pleasure of feeling both smarter and less bookish than their intellectual adversaries. Butler as the Bishop of Bristol played a small but dramatic role in one of the  most important religious developments of the eighteenth century. In 1739, three years after publishing the Analogy, he summoned a 33-year-old 24

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W. Whewell, On the Foundation of Morals: Four Sermons Preached Before the University of Cambridge, November 1837 (London, 1838), p. viii. R. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1828), p. 272. W. Whewell, preface to Butler’s Three Sermons on Human Nature by J. Butler (London, 1848), pp. ix–xi. J.R. Leifchild. John Leifchild, D.D.: His Public Ministry, Private Usefulness, and Personal Characteristics (London, 1863), p. 385. J.J. Blunt, “Works and Character of Paley,” Quarterly Review 38 (1828), p. 307–308. R.D. Hampden, Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity (London, 1827), pp. ix– xii. J.H. Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, Preached Before the University of Oxford (London, 1843), p. 76. J.H. Newman, Lectures on the Scripture Proof of the Doctrines of the Church (Part I), tract 85 in vol. 5 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1838), p. 67. Newman’s friend and ally Edward Pusey thought that Butler was not suited to most students without the guidance of a professor: “a good deal of water must be mingled with the strongest wine to make it healthful for most capacities.” See E.B. Pusey, “Evidence from the Rev. E.B. Pusey, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Ch. Ch,” in Report and Evidence upon the Recommendations of Her Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the State of the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1853), evidence p. 18. W. Bagehot, Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen (London, 1858), pp. 188–189.

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Oxford-educated clergyman who had been preaching without episcopal sanction to enormous crowds of the poor and uneducated in the fields around Bristol. Butler raised several objections over three interviews, both jurisdictional (only he could license preaching in his diocese) and theological (the two wrangled over the justification by faith alone, which the bishop rejected). Perhaps most of all, Butler reacted allergically to the fiery young man’s “enthusiasm” and the “very extraordinary” accounts of people falling into hysteria under his ministry. He ordered the priest to desist from future preaching—and was rebuffed. John Wesley had had his first brush with church authority. Butler did recognize that Wesley appealed to a population ill-served by the church. The bishop in response poured money and political effort into creating a new parish to minister to the working men and women of Bristol.28 Wesley became the most prominent standard-bearer of a vast evangelical revival, one that sought to revitalize what he and many others saw as a moribund established church. Wesley’s Methodism provided a spiritual rallying point in particular for men and women of the lower orders, a point dramatized in George Eliot’s Adam Bede.29 Wesley did not of course build Methodism singlehandedly. He attracted congregations in the thousands because a religious infrastructure for his ministry already existed. But if Wesley was not original, his indefatigability, eloquence, and flair for organization allowed him to put his personal stamp on a burgeoning movement. He read and admired Butler’s Analogy years after his confrontation with its author, but felt it “far too deep for their understanding to whom it is primarily addressed.” He never made this mistake in his flood of devotional literature. This revival provoked angry and sometimes bloody resistance, often instigated by the beneficed clergy. Repression and mob violence failed. The evangelicalism of Wesley’s revival spread from open-air meetings through dissenting chapels and into the established Anglican and Presbyterian churches. By the Victorian period it had ­diffused to all corners of British intellectual life.30 Leslie Stephen and 28 Wesley, The Works, vol. 13, pp. 499–501. C. Cunliffe, “The ‘Spiritual Sovereign’: Butler’s Episcopate,” in Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought: Tercentenary Essays, ed. C. Cunliffe (Oxford, 1992), pp. 43–45. J.C.D. Clark, “The Eighteenth-Century Context,” in The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies, ed. W.J. Abraham and J.E. Kirby (Oxford, 2009), pp. 14–15. Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry, pp. 130–140. 29 G. Eliot, Adam Bede, introduced by F.R. Leavis, afterword by R. Barreca (New York, 2004), pp. 37–38. 30 Wesley, The Works, vol. 2, pp. 7 (on Butler), 110, 264 (on violent reaction). See, Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, pp. 243–281; Clark, “The Eighteenth-Century Context;” Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 7–26; and Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 174–179.

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W.E.H. Lecky had good reason to conclude in their landmark mid-Victorian surveys of eighteenth-century intellectual life that Wesley’s movement represented the most important phenomenon of the age.31 The young Wesley had been deeply moved by William Law’s 1729 A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, a treatise on Christian morality that laid great practical stress on spiritual patience and humility. This book also had a catalyzing effect on the faith of Samuel Johnson, who had picked it up while a student at Oxford to sneer at. Law thoroughly defeated Johnson’s youthful irreverence and changed his life. The effect was not entirely happy: Johnson ultimately found Law’s rigid insistence on the pursuit of Christian perfection oppressive and unrealistic. Yet even as Johnson developed a more pragmatic vision of Christian ethics, he never lost sight of Law’s fundamental point that religion’s purpose rested far more in its exhortation to a righteous course of common life than in its construction of abstract dogma. Johnson never took clerical orders, but did write dozens of sermons on commission for those who had, and Law’s practical morality provided a leitmotif. Johnson’s greatest triumph, A Dictionary of the English Language, contained over two hundred citations to A Serious Call.32 Later, in the nineteenth century, Law influenced both Newman and others in the Oxford Movement.33 The Victorians read Johnson widely. Thomas Carlyle celebrated him as a “hard-struggling, weary-hearted” embodiment of heroism, a model of originality and sincerity for men of letters. Carlyle characterized his originality as a staunch refusal to jettison the wisdom of the past for fads and his sincerity as an utter lack of ostentation: “he does not ‘engrave Truth on his watch-seal;’ no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it.”34 Both Newman and his liberal rival Thomas Arnold, the Rugby headmaster and later Oxford professor of modern history, appreciated Johnson. This approval was not universal.35 31 Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2, p. 389. W.E.H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1878–91), vol. 2, p. 567. 32 W. Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christian. (London, 1729), pp. 57–71. Clark, “The Eighteenth-Century Context,” p. 7. N. Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Oxford, 1988), pp. 190–191. Martin, Samuel Johnson, pp. 90–91, 470–471. 33 R.H. Froude, Remains of the Late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, ed. J.H. Newman and J. Keble (London, 1838–9), vol. 1, pp. 203, 206. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 62. J. Keble, Letters of Spiritual Counsel and Guidance, 2nd ed., ed. R.F. Wilson (Oxford, 1870), pp. 16, 80. P. Brendon, Hurrell Froude and the Oxford Movement (London, 1974), pp. 65, 156–160. 34 Carlyle, On Heroes, pp. 179–184. 35 T. Arnold, On the Divisions and Mutual Relations of Knowledge (Rugby, 1839), p. 26. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 106. I. Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford, 1988), p. 115.

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Thomas Macaulay, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and others faulted Johnson’s style or moral perspective.36 Where Carlyle found an admirably unfashionable allegiance to the truth Stephen detected “staunch beliefs which had survived their logical justifications.” He nonetheless considered Johnson one of the greatest men of his century, the epitome of the England’s “shrewd humorous common sense” and its aversion to abstract speculation. Edmund Gosse’s appreciation of Johnson upon the centenary of his death captured the sense that, for all its defects, his earthy realism had lost none of its relevance. The age in which we live cannot be entirely given up to priggishness and the dry rot of sentiment, so long as any considerable company in it are wont to hang upon Johnson’s lips, without being offended by his jocular brutality, his strenuous piety, or his unflinching enmity to affectation. Stephen appreciated the fact that Johnson (unlike the fashionable pessimism of modern sentimentalists) had “the most hearty contempt for useless whining.… We are in a sad world, full of pain, but we have to make the best of it. Stubborn patience and hard work are the sole remedies, or rather the sole means of temporary escape.”37 No one accused William Paley of pessimism, fashionable or otherwise. But he did share Johnson’s instinctual distrust of headlong innovation and his concern with the concrete necessities of everyday life. He was born in 1743 into a thrifty clerical family in Yorkshire, and this bucolic north-country upbringing permanently colored his outlook (and brogue). He attended Cambridge at a time of notorious decadence. Sinecured professors frequently matched their students in sloth. The professor of botany in Paley’s time never delivered a single lecture from 1796 to 1825, his final three decades in the chair. Yet educational resources existed for those who wished to find them, and Paley grounded himself in logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and mathematics, graduating as Senior Wrangler. After a few years of itinerant work, he returned to Cambridge on fellowship after winning the Member Prize for an essay in Latin critiquing the ancient Stoical and Epicurean moral systems. Even though fellows had few responsibilities besides staying unmarried, Paley poured his energy into teaching and became one of the university’s most effective and 36

S. Lynn, “Johnson’s Critical Reception,” in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. G. Clingman (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 244–245. 37 Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1, pp. 59, 388, vol. 2, pp. 206, 367–376. E. Gosse, “Samuel Johnson,” Fortnightly Review 42 (1884), p. 783. L. Stephen, Samuel Johnson (London, 1878), pp. 170–174.

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inspirational instructors. He left in 1775 for marriage and a career in the church. He performed his clerical duties with unfussy conscientiousness. In 1782 he was appointed archdeacon of Carlisle, where he wrote works of lasting significance. His old Cambridge lecture notes provided the foundation for the Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). Horae Paulinae (1790) demonstrated the historical truth of the epistles of St. Paul. Paley argued the same for the entire New Testament in Evidences of Christianity (1794). Natural Theology (1802), his final book, codified a long Anglican tradition to become the canonical statement of God’s designing activity in the natural world. He also published dozens of lucid sermons on a broad range of themes.38 As a trilogy, Principles, Evidences, and Natural Theology fused moral philosophy, Christian apologetics, and natural science to argue that God desired our happiness and created a world of order and beauty for us to seek it. As Stephen observed, the word “harmony…is never far from his lips.”39 Paley never overlooked cruelty, injustice, discord, sorrow and struggle—on the contrary he embraced them as necessary to our moral improvement. Virtue and vice would have no meaning in a world free of accident and misery. Like Butler, Paley appealed to a comprehensive view of reality. It seems, therefore, to be argued with great probability, from the general economy of things around us, that our present state was meant for a state of probation: because positively it contains that admixture of good and evil which ought to be found in such a state to make it answer its purpose, the production, exercise, and improvement of virtue: and because negatively it could not be intended either for a state of absolute happiness, or a state of absolute misery, neither of which it is.40 We needed the guidance of scripture to pass through this earthly probation. Paley’s own faith was conciliatory, but he conceded that Christianity did not always show its peaceable and harmonious face; this he blamed on human perverseness.41 One early nineteenth-century commentator observed that Paley “instructs with a gaiety and naïveté of a fireside companion.”42 Lucidity was not an 38 Clarke, Paley, pp. 1–56. D.L. LeMahieu, The Mind of William Paley: A Philosopher and His Age (Lincoln, 1976), pp. 1–28, 116. S.M. Walters and E.A. Stow, Darwin’s Mentor: John Steven Henslow, 1796–1861 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 62. 39 L. Stephen, Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking (London, 1873), p. 259. 40 W. Paley, Sermons, on Several Subjects, 5th ed. (London, 1810), pp. 491–505. 41 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 3–4. 42 “Horsley’s Sermons,” Quarterly Review 9 (1813), p. 32.

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­ nalloyed advantage. Stephen (spinning around Bagehot’s wry observation on u Butler’s delectable impenetrability) decided with some truth that Paley became a target for contempt in part because of “his utter inability to be obscure.”43 Whewell and his fellow Cambridge don Adam Sedgwick, two of Paley’s most strident critics, complained that his pleasing style and agreeable moderation (which they dismissed as “accidental merits”) all-too effectively overpowered the unwary imagination. Sedgwick confessed that Paley had once bewitched him.44 Whewell and Sedgwick’s complaints reflected the fact that Paley’s accessibility, geniality, and comprehensiveness made his work immediately popular, particularly in Cambridge. Principles entered the university’s curriculum a year after publication, in time for William Wordsworth to read it for his first-year exams. When Darwin arrived at the university in 1828 all three of Paley’s great works were venerable pillars of the curriculum. Evidences endured on the compulsory Tripos reading list until 1909 and remained an optional subject until 1920.45 Paley wrote on divinity, moral philosophy, practical politics, ethics, metaphysics, natural science, and logic; his fame and omnivorous output made him virtually impossible to ignore or avoid in the nineteenth century.46 His natural theology, for example, placed him at the epicenter of debates over evolution. The Origin summarily ejected Paley’s divine artificer from any direct supervisory role in species origin. But this obscures the nature of the intellectual relationship between the archdeacon and the naturalist. Darwin remembered his undergraduate encounters with Paley fondly. The Origin and Natural Theology share an appreciation of adaptive complexity as the distinctive feature of life, even if two books offered vividly different explanations for it.47 More subtly, but not necessarily less significantly, both Darwin and Paley looked on nature with a cheerful delight that was far from obvious given their acute awareness 43 Stephen, Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking, p. 37. 44 Whewell, On the Foundation of Morals, p. vi. W. Whewell, Lectures on Systematic Morality (London, 1846), p. 148. Sedgwick, A Discourse on the Studies of the University [1st ed.], p. 49. 45 Sidgwick, “Philosophy at Cambridge.” p. 240. B.R. Schneider, Jr. Wordsworth’s Cambridge Education (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 31–37. Clarke, Paley, pp. 126–127. M.M. Garland, Cambridge Before Darwin: The Ideal of a Liberal Education, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 1980), p.  57. P. Addinal, Philosophy and Biblical Interpretation: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Conflict (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 35–37. Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 170–172. D.M. Thompson, Cambridge Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 26–30. 46 Garland, Cambridge Before Darwin, p. 57. 47 C. Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. N. Barlow (London, 1958), p. 59. M.  Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? (Cambridge, ma, 2003), pp. 124–128.

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of pain, privation, and struggle. Darwin consoled his readers that, despite the gladiatorial competition that drove natural selection, “the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply;” in short, he agreed with Paley that “it is a happy world after all.”48 Wordsworth reacted differently, concluding that Paley’s moral system rested on semantic slight-of-hand and lacked the power “to incorporate itself with the blood and vital juices of our minds and thence to have any influence worth our notion in forming [good] habits.” This criticism cut the heart out of Paley’s entire project.49 The nineteenth century was awash in multiple editions of the works of Butler, Wesley, Johnson, and Paley.50 These books were not keepsakes. They were read and debated. Methodism began to splinter as multiple factions fought to own the adjective “Wesleyan.”51 Johnson’s judgments on William Shakespeare, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and other canonical British writers had a living presence in Victorian education and literary discussion.52 Matthew Arnold oversaw the publication of an abridged version of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets as a uniquely valuable resource for anyone who wanted “an insight into the history of English literature and life.” More even than that, Arnold believed, “the student will get a sense of what real men were.”53 Testimonials to Butler’s wisdom formed a staple of the Bampton and Boyle lecture series, two of Britain’s great showcases of theological thought.54 The four writers remained relevant because the issues they dealt with remained relevant. When Whewell identified Butler and Paley as the most familiar moral writers of the modern 48 Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pp. 78–79. W. Paley, Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 12th ed. (London, 1809), pp. 456–459. See G. Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, revised ed. (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 93–95, 121–124. 49 Schneider, Wordsworth’s Cambridge Education, pp. 233, 252–253. 50 On Paley, see A. Fyfe, “Publishing and the Classics: Paley’s Natural Theology and the Nineteenth-Century Scientific Canon,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 33 (2002), pp. 729–751; on Butler, see Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry, pp. 1, 177–178. 51 Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, p. 529. M. Marquardt, “Methodism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies, ed. W.J. Abraham and J.E. Kirby (Oxford, 2009), pp. 86–87. 52 Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print, pp. 287–297. Lynn, “Johnson’s Critical Reception,” pp. 244–245. 53 M. Arnold, ed., The Six Chief Lives from Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” with Macaulay’s “Life of Johnson” (London, 1878), pp. xii–xiii. 54 “Butler’s Analogy: Its Strength and Weakness,” Westminster Review 102 (1874), p. 2.

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period he was not simply making a straightforward descriptive statement.55 Whewell set these heavyweights at each other’s throats as rival standard bearers in the debate over the existence of an innate conscience. This, in turn, was a proxy battle in his crusade against secular utilitarians. Hugh Strickland and Charles Kingsley on the other hand allied Butler and Paley as the joint founders of a contemporary natural theology which strengthened with the progress of nineteenth-century science.56 Stephen accepted the first part of this, but scoffed at the second. As he saw it, Christians of his time used the two divines as analgesics to dull the painful symptoms of dawning skepticism while ignoring its underlying cause.57

Patience and the Character of Christ

Paley believed that “the character of Christ is a part of the morality of the Gospel.”58 That character was in vivid display in the Garden of Gethsemane. Christ’s sweat flowed like great drops of blood as he knelt in agonized prayer, with arrest and crucifixion imminent. He beseeched God to allow this cup to pass from him. Yet he nevertheless accepted without reservation that God’s will, not his own, must be done. Evidences noted that the first three gospels relate this story in almost identical language (John used another example to convey Jesus’ pious resignation). For Paley, this correspondence revealed a profound truth about Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Jesus could acquiesce meekly to his trial because he had mastered his own terror with constancy and resolution grounded in faith. Jesus’ submission to suffering characterized the morality of the gospels and the subsequent rise of Christianity. Peter, Paul, and the other pillars of the early church endured violent persecution. Paley drove this point home with numerous examples of  steadiness under distress drawn from the entire breadth of the New Testament.59 His sermons repeatedly emphasized that patience was one of the “foremost duties of the Christian profession.” He preached repeatedly that the Christian must absolutely reject all haughty, peevish, and malicious 55 56

W. Whewell, Lectures on Systematic Morality (London, 1846b), p. 142. H. Strickland, “On Geology, in Relation to the Studies of the University of Oxford,” in Memoirs of Hugh Edwin Strickland by W. Jardine (London, 1858), pp. 212–213. C. Kingsley, “The Natural Theology of the Future,” Macmillan’s Magazine 23 (1871), p. 376. 57 Stephen, Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking, pp. 330–332. 58 Paley, A View of the Evidences, p. 242. 59 Ibid., pp. 59–61, 89–90, 75, 242–243, 264–265.

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behavior in favor of a disposition that “is mild and gentle, patient and longsuffering, forbearing and forgiving.”60 These ideas had deep historical roots. In classical antiquity Aristotle identified steadfastness and self-restraint as essential to nobility.61 Cicero, following the earlier Stoics, esteemed patience and perseverance (along with magnificence and confidence) as core dispositions of courage, one of the four cardinal virtues. These classical schemes were drawn into Christian thought by Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, and other medieval theologians who believed that ancient notions of patience acquired a radically different and more elevated meaning when sanctified by God’s divine example. This became a central theme in Christian theology.62 Butler highlighted the moral failure of heathen philosophy. True moral discipline required resignation to the sovereignty of the Christian God. There was nothing worthy in forbearance when it ministered to gross appetites and secular power. Paley agreed. Evidences claimed deep originality for the gospels’ omission of daring and active qualities in favor of the unworldly and scorned virtues of humility and endurance. “No two things can be more different than the Heroic and the Christian characters,” he insisted. The Christian temperament uniquely sanctified suffering; otherwise, the endurance of physical evil was nothing more than the submission to arbitrary punishment. Wesley preached that when the Christian spoke of patience he meant neither a heathen virtue nor a natural indolence, but “a gracious temper, wrought in the heart of a believer by the power of the Holy Ghost.” Christian fortitude represented a new and more genuine form of courage, one which extinguished rather than fanned the fires of personal ambition, vengeance, and physical fierceness. The outward mode of Christian tranquility might superficially resemble the classical ideal, but the inward motive was distinctly different: a loving obedience to God exemplified by the Crucifixion.63 60 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 153, 228; see also vol. 1, pp. 46, 58, 112–113, 130, 143–144, 221; vol. 2, pp. 31–33, 39, 49–53, 66, 80, 156, 169–170, 284, 290–293, 364–367. 61 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. and trans. R.C. Bartlett and S.D. Collins (Chicago, 2011), pp. 135–162. 62 R. Muers, “Silence and the Patience of God,” Modern Theology 17 (2001), pp. 85–98. Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought, pp. 123–124. R.E. Houser, The Cardinal Virtues: Aquinas, Albert, and Philip the Chancellor (Toronto, 2004), pp. 51–52, 80–81. 63 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 101–105, 145–146. Paley, A View of the Evidences, pp. 222–223. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 451–452. Paley, Natural Theology, p. 533. Wesley, The Works, vol. 6, p. 485.

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Johnson observed that calamity was an unavoidable consequence of life, and we had a duty to face it “with decency and propriety.” Paley identified St. Paul’s submission to repeated torture and eventual martyrdom as “a most eminent pattern of patience unto all ages.” The point was never to suffer in quiet apathy. Wesley pointedly insisted that Christian patience “is at the utmost distance from stoical stupidity!” He taught instead that to “let patience have its perfect work,” as the apostle James counseled, we must resign ourselves, “body and spirit,” to God, and this obedience in turn was “consequent upon the trial of our faith.”64 Johnson also rejected the “radical” stoical principle of treating pain with indifference—if pain was not an evil then there is no need to bear it with Christian fortitude. Nor is there any moral lesson to learn from it. “Philosophy may infuse stubbornness,” he claimed, “but religion only can give patience.” Christian conduct palliated rather than eliminated misery. The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony, or prolonging its effects. God called few modern Christians to confront the torment endured by the early Christians but everyone faced daily temptation. Jesus in his crucifixion and his apostles in their martyrdom left examples to guide men through their own persistent if less severe trials. Patience was not simply about mastering the moment: “physical evil may be…endured with patience,” Johnson advised, “since it is the cause of moral good.”65 Heaven is free of suffering and temptation, Butler acknowledged, but the saved would still draw eternally upon the habits of dutiful resignation that they built through earthly submission to God’s will.66 Patient obedience catalyzed other virtues. Paley noted in Principles that when scripture recited our duties, “they are put collectively, that is, as all and every of them required in the Christian character.” He cited the admonition in 64 Johnson, The Rambler, vol. 3, pp. 174. Paley, A View of the Evidences, pp. 74–75. Wesley, The Works, vol. 6, pp. 485–488. See also Paley, Natural Theology, p. 533. 65 Johnson, The Rambler, vol. 3, pp. 174. S. Johnson, The Idler, in vol. 2 of The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. J. Bate, J.M. Bullitt and L.F. Powell (New Haven, 1963), pp. 131, 277–278. 66 Butler, The Analogy, p. 82. On the similarity between Butler and Johnson on the importance of trial, see Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought, pp. 102–103.

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the Second Epistle of Peter: “Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity.” Of all the virtues demanded by Christianity, patience was allied most closely with humility and meekness. These qualities distinguished the patience of a Christian from the sinner bidding his time in order to better pamper his desires or slake his desire for revenge. Paley emphasized humility in particular because, as noted in a sermon, its absence “may vitiate all…other good qualities.” Wesley held that “there is no love of God without patience, and no patience without lowliness and sweetness of spirit. Humility and patience are the surest proof of the increase of love. Humility alone unites patience with love; without which it is impossible to draw profit from suffering.”67 The theological weight placed on patience merged with the other core components of the Christian message. Paley scolded those who assigned a single preeminent meaning to the death on the cross. Jesus did not suffer crucifixion merely to illustrate obedience to God. His manner of death provided “a pattern to us of patience and humility;” it was the sacrificial price Jesus paid to redeem mankind from sin; and it was God’s way of showing his implacable hatred of sin and his love of creatures. These are not competing explanations, Paley explained, but integral and equal components of its whole meaning. For Wesley, the patient temperament—“the mind that was in Jesus Christ”— reflected “a change wrought in our souls when we are born of the Spirit” as “pride and haughtiness subside into lowliness of heart.” The virtue of patience, then, reflected our born-again rejection of selfish pride; it provided us a path to those graces which brought us closer to God; and it increased our happiness amidst the tempests of our fallen world.68

Belief and Virtue

A true understanding of religion was of no avail to those who did not place it into practice. Butler, Johnson, Wesley, and Paley agreed: belief alone could never tame our depravities or secure our salvation. Butler observed that “going over the theory of virtue in one’s thoughts, talking well, and drawing fine 67 W. Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (London, 1785), p. 43. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, p. 101. Wesley, The Works, vol. 11, pp. 214, 342–343, 437. 68 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 2, pp. 49–50. Wesley, The Works, vol. 6, pp. 159–160, 236, 487–488.

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­ ictures of it” was worse than worthless for instilling habits of industry, selfp government, and obedience. Passive impressions became dimmer each time they passed through our mind, invariably weakening our capacity for virtuous action. Johnson promised hellfire to those who contented themselves with apathetically believing in Christianity without placing trust in God through repentance, obedience, and supplication. Wesley dismissed “bare belief” as “utterly vain and ineffectual.” Paley preached that no amount of belief could save a person who ignored the duties and the prohibitions set forth in the Sermon on the Mount.69 The moral power of ideas depended on their ability to spur meaningful action, for good or evil. But this general principle did not explain how particular forms of belief influenced habits. The controversies over Methodism illustrate the complex and often self-serving nature of these judgments. Wesley declared himself indifferent to the “externals and circumstantials” that divided Christian denominations. He also claimed to pay little notice to theological subtleties. “I am sick of opinions,” he sighed in A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1745). “Give me solid and substantial religion; give me an humble gentle lover of God and man;…a man laying himself out in the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labour of love.” He explained the origins of his ministry in these terms in a 1773 letter. As young men he and his brother left Oxford to attempt “a reformation, not of opinion, (feathers, trifles not worth naming,) but of men’s tempers and lives; of vice in every kind; of everything contrary to justice, mercy, or truth.” This focus on motives and moral character in the here and now led him to treat salvation and holiness as synonymous. He dismissed the “vulgar notion” that salvation meant only deliverance in the afterlife. Holiness of the heart would save us in this world by refreshing our souls, regulating our tempers and rescuing us from our sinful nature. This state of faith mattered above all else—“as to all opinions which do not strike at the root of Christianity, [Methodists] think and let think.”70 Wesley provided a different cast to his early career in an account from 1779. “My brother and I were convinced of that important truth, which is the foundation of all real religion, that ‘by grace we are saved through faith’,” he recalled. “We vehemently defended it against all mankind.” His lofty refusal to argue over “opinions” obviously did not extend to anything that mattered to him. Much of his posture of tolerance was designed to blunt doctrinal criticisms of 69 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 85–87. S. Johnson, Sermons, vol. 14 in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. J. Hagstrum and J. Gray (New Haven, 1978), p. 156. Wesley, The Works, vol. 8, p. 67, 183–184. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, p. 79. 70 Wesley, The Works, vol. 8, pp. 47–48, 136, 243–244, 340, vol. 12, pp. 477–478.

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Methodism (“trifles”) without foreclosing his ability to speak on “weightier matters of the law.” Nor in practice did he take a light view of “erroneous” religious beliefs and practices. This was not hypocrisy, at least not of a crude variety. He was no doubt sincere when he affirmed his desire to embrace all with “holiness of heart and life” as brethren, “whatever [their] opinions be.”71 But this declaration of tolerance belies his conviction that the judgments of the mind were never incidental to the quality of the heart. In his practical theology, one deplored false beliefs not just because they were false but because they worked against gentleness, meekness, and patience. He did not disdain those who held the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional predestination. But he did revile the hardness of heart that, he insisted, flowed from this erroneous doctrine. He did not condemn the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church simply because he found them unscriptural. He indicted opulent vestments and the other extravagant paraphernalia of the Catholic priesthood for fostering a poisonous spirit of self-indulgence. He raised no objection in principle to the Quaker codes of plain speaking and unornamented dress. But he contended that their rules encouraged hypocrisy by allowing indulgence in everything that was not formally proscribed (expensive silk was no less luxurious in black then in crimson). In these cases, as in others, Wesley attacked false or misapplied beliefs and practices for facilitating vanity and self-will. The errors allowed men to substitute artifice for the hard work of faith, to obey men’s rules rather than God’s will. The problem, then, was not the follies themselves but the sinful temper that they flattered. Acquiescence to truth would never by itself ensure salvation—but error did ease the way to damnation.72 Wesley and his fellow Methodists knew firsthand the effectiveness of conflating disliked ideas with bad behavior. They confronted constant accusations of “enthusiasm.” From his audience with Butler in 1739 to his death more than  sixty years later, Wesley faced an unrelenting barrage of criticism for replacing sober piety with unregulated passion. Critics of Methodism attacked its theology by associating it with dubious behavior—indeed, given the connection between enthusiasm and frenzy, with mental illness. Ecstasies and convulsions often characterized Wesleyan revival meetings. Welsh Methodists, for example, were pilloried as “Jumpers.” Satirists feasted on the mouthwatering opportunities for mockery while graver critics bemoaned the predictable ­turmoil which resulted when traditional social and religious control slipped. Serious theological disagreement underlined the worries over popular 71 72

Ibid., vol. 8, p. 206, vol. 11, pp. 492–493, vol. 12, p. 477. Ibid., vol. 8, pp. 184–191, 340–341, vol. 11, pp. 494–496.

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e­xpressions of religious euphoria. Methodists emphasized that the saved would feel the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The entire course of Wesley’s own life changed when his “heart was strangely warmed” during a religious meeting in London.73 Many contemporaries rejected this religion of the heart as antithetical to true Christian faith. Law, the author of A Serious Call, objected that seeking an inward sense of God’s grace and other such feelings “lay the Foundation of spiritual Pride; and so become a Wall of Partition between God and the Soul.”74 Johnson did not entirely understand the Methodist position on sensible grace, but that did not prevent him from declaring it “utterly incompatible with social or civil security” because it encouraged individuals to place their imagined communication with God above written law. His Dictionary defined “enthusiasm” as “a vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication.” The association between enthusiasm and vanity highlighted the moral consequences of unregulated imagination.75 Paley adopted a gentler line. He quibbled with Methodists doctrine but was quick to defend them from ridicule. He conceded that their preachers “frequently transgress the limits of decorum and propriety, and that these transgressions wound the modesty of a cultivated ear.” But he admired their sincerity. “A man who is in earnest in religion cannot be a bad man,” he insisted, “still less a fit subject for derision.” Nonetheless he also objected to their vehement manner, which contrasted unfavorably with “calmness, the sobriety, the good sense, and I may add, the strength and authority, of our Lord’s discourses.”76 Wesley relentlessly insisted that his theology was beautifully and thoroughly consistent with patience, meekness, and self-denial. He emphasized that religious feeling must never unbalance our minds or deflect us from the duties of Christian conduct; if it did, it was not genuine. The perception of grace illuminated our way to salvation, as the sunrise might light the path through a wilderness. We still had to walk forward on our own. Those saved from sin could still fall. Wesley distrusted paroxysms and considered visions to be little things 73 Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, pp. 277–281. 74 W. Law, The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration, 6th ed. (London, 1762), pp. 85–86. 75 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), vol. 1, n.p. Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought, pp. 210–212. 76 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 379–380. Paley, Sermons, on Several Subjects [1810], pp. 20–22. Paley, A View of the Evidences, pp. 236–237. On Paley’s doctrinal differences with Methodism, see W. Paley, “Appendix,” in vol. 1 of The Works of William Paley, D.D. and an Account of the Author by the Rev. Edmund Paley, A.M., new ed. (London, 1838), pp. ccliv–cclvi.

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compared to “humble, gentle, patient love.” He acknowledged the existence of false zeal among his brethren but insisted that “a few weak, warm-hearted men” did not reproach the work of the “sober-minded” multitude. He condemned emotional and imaginative extravagance no less emphatically than Johnson or any of his other contemporaries. Beware of that daughter of pride, enthusiasm.… Give no place to a heated imagination.… One general inlet to enthusiasm is, expecting the end without the means; the expecting knowledge, for instance, without searching the Scriptures, and consulting the children of God; the expecting spiritual strength without constant prayer, and steady watchfulness; the expecting any blessing without hearing the world of God at every opportunity.77 His opponents ignored these pleas. Condemnation of Methodist “enthusiasm” remained a potent line of attack, one that neither Wesley nor his successors silenced.78 This demonstrates how easy, and tempting, it was to stigmatize distrusted doctrines and distasteful modes of worship as hostile to virtuous behavior.

Moral Reformation as a Practical Matter

Butler, Wesley, Johnson, and Paley all agreed that professions of belief were worse than worthless if they did not inspire moral reformation and Christian penitence. The standard of that reformation and penitence—a spirit bathed in patience and humility—was not under dispute. Measuring it was trickier. They looked to the performance of daily obligation, and this is where controversy erupted between them. How do we conduct intellectual investigations and evaluate truth claims? How do we justify—or impeach—the existing distribution of wealth, social prestige, and political power? How do we conduct agriculture, trade, and industry? How do we organize Christian worship and lines of clerical authority? The debates over these questions—seen, for example, in controversies over Quaker plain-speaking, Methodist “enthusiasm,” and so forth—reveal no disagreement about the absolute necessity of a patient and humble steadiness 77 Wesley, The Works, vol. 8, p. 215, vol. 11, pp. 427–430. 78 A. Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, 1999), pp. 18–19, 47–58, 63–65.

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for a Christian life. Disputes did reveal how contentious it was to translate virtue into duties appropriate to a changing society, particularly when the nature of those changes rested under severe dispute. Butler, Wesley, Johnson, and Paley would all be forgotten today if they had contented themselves with advocating patience and humility in the abstract. These virtues were common cultural currency. The four men left enduring legacies because they translated the obligations of virtue into practical rules for living and thinking, as the next two chapters will show.

chapter 4

The Utility of Virtue Commerce in its broadest sense characterized Britain in the eighteenth century.1 Samuel Johnson’s famous Dictionary of the English Language defined commerce as the “exchange of one thing for another.” His first example of the word in use showed that it was not restricted to economic exchange. He quoted the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker’s description of churches as places “for mutual conference, and, as it were, commerce to be had between God and us.”2 Commerce of all types expanded dramatically from Joseph Butler’s birth in the late seventeenth century to William Paley’s death in the early nineteenth. The steady enclosure of open-field agricultural land transformed the economic, social, and physical landscape of much of rural Britain. The expansion of coal mining fueled new industry, particularly the spread of iron foundries. The need to remove floodwater from mines led to the invention and improvement of the steam engine. New turnpike roads and canals allowed for unprecedented movement of men and goods (coal particularly) across the country. Ports served as nodes for these new transportation networks. Bristol, where Butler served as bishop from 1738 to 1750, had some of the world’s busiest docks. The city served as a crucial gateway to both international markets and the domestic coasting trade. Banks and stock markets expanded to stoke the flow of capital for this economic expansion. People and ideas flowed alongside goods. In 1735, John Wesley departed for the American colony of Georgia, sharing the outbound voyage with German missionaries from the Moravian Church. This encounter deeply influenced the evangelical theology he spread personally throughout England after his return. Robert Southey’s 1820 biography of Wesley observed that there were no turnpikes when he began his itinerant Methodist ministry but, by the time he died, he “probably paid more for turnpikes than any other man in England, for no other person travelled so much.” Publishing was a growth industry. Around 6,000 book titles appeared in England in the 1610s, nearly 21,000 in the 1720s, and more than 56,000 in the 1790s. Newspapers and pamphlets proliferated. Widespread plagiarism and unauthorized reprinting created new channels of intellectual distribution and provoked modern concepts of literary property.3 1 Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, makes an elegant case for this interpretation. 2 Johnson, Dictionary, vol. 1, n.p. 3 R. Southey, The Life of Wesley, 2nd ed. (London, 1820), vol. 2, p. 51. W.H.B. Court, A Concise Economic History of Britain: From 1750 to Recent Times (Cambridge, 1964). Langford, A Polite © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004263352_006

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Commerce drove social change and conflict. The evangelical awakening that Wesley and other footloose preachers spread throughout the country transformed British religious practice, in the maw of passionate, organized, and sometimes violent opposition. The anti-Catholic Gordon Riots which shook London for nearly a week in 1780 revealed the destructive potential of urban unrest. The enclosure of rural land did not exactly intrude upon an idyll of rural social harmony, but it did sunder old communal bonds and leave thousands disposed. Industrial development exacerbated class tension. Coal mining was brutal and dangerous and the relationship between owners and workers was routinely as toxic and incendiary as the subterranean gases that killed miners by the dozens. Even resentment over turnpike tolls sometimes boiled into riot. In this tumult, aligning commerce—the exchange of money, ideas, goods, practices—with the dictates of virtue was an acute challenge. The Christian, in theory, could protect his soul by withdrawing from secular affairs. Men cannot be tempted by prizes they do not seek or be corrupted by races they do not run. Butler, Wesley, Johnson, and Paley all foreclosed this option. Men, they insisted, had a duty to improve the world, not retreat from it. Jesus came to save us from our sins, not from our temptations, Wesley declared.4 Humility reminded the engaged Christian that his business in the world had nothing to do with selfish advantage or short-term gain, both of which were often ephemeral. The creation of new wealth was boom-and-bust erratic in the eighteenth century. The sordid South Sea Bubble of 1720 demonstrated how much damage impatient greed could do. The South Sea Company’s crashed catastrophically after a breathtaking ascent driven by speculative fever, wishful thinking, and outright fraud. Reality eventually intruded and the price collapsed. Extensive damaged rippled through the British economy, harming not just the profligate who sowed the catastrophe but the provident as well.5 This trauma provided a dramatic illustration of the general point that men needed patience to endure economic reversals and uncertainty. (Johnson, for example, only narrowly avoided imprisonment for debt.) A Christian temperament, then, steeled men against the temptation for the type of reckless gambles at the heart of the South Sea Bubble and it gave them the equanimity to face the unavoidable insecurities of life. Virtue inured men to greed. But, paradoxically, it also provided the surest path to the secular prosperity which greed thirsted after. Conceptions of and Commercial People, pp. 90–99, 391–417, 432–442. Porter, Enlightenment, pp. 72–95. A. Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (Chicago, 2009). 4 Wesley, The Works, vol. 6, p. 485. 5 J. Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689–1727 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 334–338.

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Christian duty threatened to dissolve into general standards of self-interested prudential behavior if men acted with forward-looking deliberation in order to increase their access to esteem, power, and wealth, rather than in submission to God. Temperance, frugality, perseverance—the behavior best suited to bringing us closer to God—might also alienate us from our spiritual duty by smothering us in worldly success. The uncomfortably fuzzy boundaries between secular prudence and Christian virtue invested the moral sense of our conscience with deep religious and philosophical significance. The conscience distinguished moral obligation from worldly expedience, but this in turn raised another problem. Where did moral sense originate? Did God build an innate sense of right and wrong into the constitution of the human mind? Butler and Wesley thought so. Or did He equip men to develop moral understanding by reasoning on His providential design of nature? Paley defended this position. Johnson vacillated between both views. At issue was not the existence of human moral sense, but whether it was developed by listening to intuition within one’s self or by looking to consequences outside.

Patience, Duty and Utility

Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees placed the sticky relationship between virtue and self-interest in stark relief in the opening quarter of the eighteenth century. He notoriously insisted that charity and self-denial merely masked the pursuit of pleasure and advantage—vice gussied up as virtue. Codes of honor called us to deny an impulse only to better indulge another.6 Adam Smith deepened the problem. He rejected Mandeville’s cynicism, arguing that humans desired not only approval but “being what ought to be approved of.” His theory of material progress was built nonetheless around the pursuit of self-interest. The character of that self-interest was critical, however. Smith’s rational economic actor repudiated impulsiveness in favor of forward-looking moderation. This conception of prudent self-control provided the moral sinews which connected his Theory of the Moral Sentiments to The Wealth of Nations.7 Smith drew on natural theology to invest the “invisible hand” of the market with the warrant of providence. This opened space in economics for

6 B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees; or, Public Vices, Public Benefits (London, 1795), p. 132. 7 P.B. Mehta, “Self-Interest and Other Interests,” in The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, ed. K. Haakonssen (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 246–269.

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submission to God.8 But enough to be theologically acceptable? That proved a thornier question. Butler responded to Mandeville by claiming that self-love was fully consistent with virtue. True interest resided in achieving happiness and satisfaction, which the Christian temper of meekness, forgiveness, compassion, and goodwill promoted. Those with hearts roiled by envy, rage, ambition, malice, greed, and resentment—which “are in themselves mere misery”—suffered constant dissatisfaction. Slaking turbulent and unregulated thirsts bought only temporary respite from vexation, but never genuine enjoyment. Our proper interest, then, always drove us to seek justice, honesty, and charity rather than wealth and reputation because only the former could make us happy. Butler concluded: Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way. Duty and interest are perfectly coincident: for the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future, and the whole; this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect administration of things. Thus they who have been so wise in their generation as to regard only their own supposed interest, at the expense and to the injury of others, shall at last find, that he who has given up all the advantages of the present world, rather than violate his conscience and the relations of life, has infinitely better provided for himself, and secured his own interest and happiness. God designed nature expressly to produce “the most virtue and happiness possible,” with the two qualities inextricably linked morally and practically.9 The virtue of patience underwrote Butler’s moral principles in three ways. First, God in his beneficence provided humans with faculties to foresee the consequences of their actions. The divine gift of prudence restrained immediate desires in favor of long-range interests, uniting spiritual and material interests. Commerce increased the number of people in the “middle rank,” who were much less likely to succumb to the carnality which beset the rich above and the poor below. International trade also helped spread the Gospel. Most 8 P. Force, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge, 2003), p. 67–86, 193–194. P. Oslington, “Divine Action, Providence and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand,” in Adam Smith as a Theologian, ed. P. Oslington (New York, 2011), pp. 61–74. P. Harrison, “Adam Smith, Natural Theology and the Natural Sciences,” in ibid., pp. 77–91. 9 Butler, Sermons, pp. 29–36; see also pp. xxi–xxviii, 13–14. Butler, The Analogy, p. 8; see also p. 85.

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crucially, however, commerce “is plainly inconsistent with idleness and profusion” and so trains men to regulate their passions. Second, Butler believed that men must prepare themselves for a world in which God distributed pains and pleasures according to a plan they could never fathom: “the Almighty may cast clouds and darkness round about him, for reasons and purposes of which we have not the least glimpse or conception.” Our happiness ultimately relies upon placing ourselves “in a state of discipline and improvement, where [our] patience and submission is to be tried by afflictions.” We must not tot up present pains and pleasures but instead have faith that “all shall be set right at the final distribution of things.” Third, Butler used his analogy of natural and revealed religion to insist that we should model our behavior on God’s governance of the natural world. The whole natural world and government of it is a scheme or a system; not a fixed, but a progressive one: a scheme, in which the operation of various means takes up a great length of time, before the ends they tend can be attained. The change of seasons, the ripening of the fruits of the earth, the very history of a flower, is an instance of this: and so is human life.… Thus rational agents…are naturally directed to form each his own manners and character, by the gradual gaining of knowledge and experience, and by a long course of action.… Men are impatient, and for precipitating things: but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout his operations. The problem ultimately was not that men considered their own self-love, but they succumbed so often to their unregulated passions, trading short-term pleasure for long-term misery, and they habitually failed to consider the good of others.10 Paley built his utilitarian philosophy of moral philosophy around two pillars: promoting the general welfare of mankind, and seeking personal salvation through obedience to God. These dual obligations were in fact identical: “God Almighty wills and wishes the happiness of his creatures; and, consequently, that those actions, which promote that will and wish, must be agreeable to him; and the contrary.” Paley stressed that by happiness he meant communal wellbeing. His controversial insistence that “whatever is expedient is right” generated much misunderstanding. His critics routinely overlooked the fact that he carefully defined an “expedient” action as one that tended to 10 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 3–8, 49, 58–59, 90, 196–197. Butler, Sermons, pp. 13–14, 196–198, 216, 227, 305–306.

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promote long-term social welfare rather than individual interest. We are encouraged to look after our interests not as an end but as a means to contribute to the general good. In any case, no amount of luxury or popularity could bring true contentment to anyone alienated from God through selfishness. Sin was self-defeating even on its own profane terms.11 Paley noted that scripture did not condemn the pursuit of fame and fortune as a vice but merely insisted that virtue could not be self-seeking. The motive, rather than the mode, consecrated a course of behavior: an action that resulted in praise and comfort was virtuous as long as it was motivated not by these pleasant outcomes but rather by “the single internal purpose of pleasing God.” A man who relieves the suffering of a beggar performs virtuously if this deed sprang from charity and not to solicit applause. Outward shows of piety and religion were pernicious and displeasing to God when motivated by spiritual pride and the desire to accrue social advantage. Improper motives not only imperiled an individual’s hope of salvation but also failed on utilitarian grounds: pride and ambition spread unhappiness by mutilating the proper spirit of religion into something “morose, censorious, unforgiving, and disdainful.” Paley grudgingly conceded that the envy which prodded many artists, scholars, and soldiers might occasionally produce a useful result; “nevertheless, since in its general effects it is noxious, it is properly condemned, certainly is not praised, by sober moralists.”12

The Utility of Passive Virtue in an Unpredictable World

The Christian virtues of patience and humility provided a crucial resource for navigating a world that could appear arbitrary because humans lack the perspective to see the grand sweep of providence. Vigor, high-spiritedness, and daring carried a majesty and dignity that won popular acclaim, Paley observed. They characterized great men. But energetic courage carried a whiff of pride even at its most admirable. The active man sought to remake things according to his own lights. Paley found that the “passive courage” of patience and humility conformed better to the acceptance of world as God designed it and our individual fate as providence set it.13 11 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 56–57, 61, 68–72. 12 Paley, A View of the Evidences, pp. 224, 230–231. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 2, pp. 209–210. W. Paley, Sermons on Several Subjects, Sermons on Public Occasion (London, 1823), pp. 397–400. 13 Paley, A View of the Evidences, pp. 222–223.

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Butler pointed out that in the “infinite disorder of the world” the rewards of virtue and the punishments of vice were probabilistic rather than absolute.14 Wesley stressed that we could never hope to understand individual instances of divine dispensation.15 Johnson reflected repeatedly that the relationship between integrity and earthly gain was indirect. Fame, and wonder, and applause, are not excited but by external and adventitious circumstances, often distinct and separate from virtue and heroism. Eminence of station, greatness of effect, and all the favours of fortune, must concur to place excellence in publick view; but fortitude, diligence, and patience, divested of their show, glide unobserved through the crowd of life, and suffer and act, though with the same vigour and constancy, yet without pity and without praise. God alone dispensed “riches and poverty, honour and disgrace, pleasure and pain, and life and death.” But the possibility of failure mattered little to the virtuous man who “is animated through the course of his endeavours by an expectation which though not certain, he knows to be just.… That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.” There would be no esteem to earn in a world without pain and failure. Only the avoidance of future evil prodded us to forego debauchery.16 Paley agreed. He observed in Natural Theology that God would have excluded the passive virtues from our constitution if happiness followed morality, and misery wickedness, consistently. This crucial point corrects a misunderstanding of Paley’s argument from design. The imperfections, cruelties, and profligacies found in nature were not embarrassments to explain away. He acknowledged that claws, talons, teeth, beaks, venom, and other natural weapons inflicted untold pain, but this did not contradict God’s munificence towards his creatures. From the confessed and felt imperfection of our knowledge, we ought to presume, that there may be consequences of this œconomy which are hidden from us; from the benevolence which pervades the general designs of nature, we ought also to presume, that these consequences, if 14 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 49–59. 15 Wesley, The Works, vol. 6, p. 347. 16 Johnson, The Rambler, vol. 3, pp. 179, 358–359. S. Johnson, The Adventurer, in vol. 2 of The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. W.J. Bate and A.B. Strauss (New Haven, 1963), p. 276.

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they could enter into our calculation, would turn the balance on the favourable side. This is not simply ad hoc special pleading, but a component of his overall understanding of the structure of God’s creation. Paley’s moral and political philosophy already established the principle that present suffering can serve the greater good, and that seeking immediate profit can produce long-term loss. He had also preached that we must approach the fundamentally mysterious vicissitudes of life with composure: “unsearchable does not mean arbitrary. Our necessary ignorance of the motives which rest and dwell in the Divine mind in bestowing of his grace, is no proof that it is not bestowed by the justest reason.” Most importantly, Paley—like Butler, Wesley, and Johnson—believed that we could not perfect our moral character without tribulation. The imperfections and seemingly random distribution of comforts and misfortunes in nature were not failures of God’s design. They were central “expedient” features of a moral and physical economy carefully created to promote ultimate (as opposed to transitory) happiness, which did not depend upon “the temporary condition into which we are cast, but upon our behaviour in it.”17 The passive virtues did more than habituate individuals to duty; they underwrote happiness. Paley rejected the belief that Christian seriousness ever led to melancholy, although sometimes those with depressed spirits bathed their religious ideas in darkness of their “distempered imagination.” He declared that “no man’s spirits were ever hurt by doing his duty.” On the contrary, a habit of good acts and self-denials buoyed the spirits far more successfully than any amusement or indulgence. The conclusion that religious men were not generally happy rested on a fundamental misperception: “the cheerfulness which religion inspires does not show itself in noise, or in fits and starts of merriment, but is calm and constant.” This constancy provided a durable resource not just in good times, but bad. The pleasures of the ungodly man could not sustain him during life’s inevitable moments of sadness and uncertainty. No man could truly appreciate the value of Christian precepts until he lived his life under their guidance.18 For Paley, the alignment between Christian virtue and happiness defined the calculation of expedience. We must never judge the rightness of an action based merely on its immediate and direct outcome. Distant and collateral 17 Paley, Natural Theology, pp. 468–469, 530–535. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, p. 255. 18 W. Paley, Sermons on Several Subjects, Sermons on Public Occasion (London, 1823), pp. 14–16, 137.

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c­ onsequences mattered more. This had profound practical implications. The assassination of a tyrannical landlord might bring immediate relief to the dependents suffering under his domination, for example; but setting the precedent of murder would sow far more chaos and misery than the depredations of a single wicked man. We must bear our afflictions when their alleviation would create long-term harm by breaking a general moral rule. The future had an insistent claim upon the present.19 Our duty, then, was clear. We must engage the world and leave it better than we found it. Johnson pointedly noted that the dictates of patience do not give license to cowardice and indolence: the calamities of life are “calls to labour and exercises of diligence.” We must “lawfully struggle” against the difficulties dispensed by Providence rather than sink beneath them in acrimony or fruitless anguish.20 This was never clearer than when extending the store of human knowledge.

Scholarship and the Christian Temper

Scholarship reflected the behavior which produced it. Here we can see the clearest practical example that the dictates of patience did not preclude worldly success. Butler, Wesley, Johnson, and Paley did not acquire high and lasting reputations in absence of mind. Paley drove hard bargains with publishers for his copyrights, earning substantial sums to supplement an already comfortable clerical salary.21 According to James Boswell, Johnson believed that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Boswell chalked up this “strange” opinion to Johnson’s “indolent disposition.” Johnson, however, struggled against financial hardship most of his life, at one point narrowly escaping imprisonment for debt.22 His “strange opinion” reflected pragmatic necessity. Johnson needed money, but in seeking it he did not take moral shortcuts or damage anyone else’s legitimate interest. Christian piety fully accommodated this eye to business because it was regulated by honesty and toil. The relationship between virtue and the life of the mind had more profound implications than allowing Christians to make money from their intellectual 19 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 61–67. 20 Johnson, The Rambler, vol. 3, pp. 174–179. 21 Clarke, Paley, p. 41. 22 Johnson’s bouts of “indolence” resemble what today we would characterize as clinical depression, not laziness. On this and his money problems, see Martin, Samuel Johnson, especially pp. 247–248, 312, 335, 346–347.

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toil in good conscience. The legitimacy of scholarship was tied to its practice. Men did not just hold a belief. They acquired it—and the conduct behind this acquisition profoundly influenced its veracity. Men willing to sacrifice themselves for truth were more likely to obtain it than those who craved only applause and wealth. A belief did not become true because the man who held it was patient and humble; but these qualities made it much more probable that he formed correct judgments. All forms of scholarship were collective and not just individual activities. The advance of genuine knowledge depended upon a social order that respected the past and cared about the future. Johnson contended that “every science” owed its advancement to “the emulous diligence” of investigators and “the gradual discoveries of one age improving on another.” He lamented the impetuosity of contemporary writers: they trusted to their unassisted genius and scorned “the dull caution of our laborious ancestors.” Veiled laziness drove this professed faith in natural talent and sudden intuition. These men, because they had little interest in mastering the hard-won knowledge of earlier generations, risked leaving behind nothing once the “flowery luxuriance” of their hasty compositions wilted with the changing season. Vice removed them from moral communion with both the past and the future. Johnson’s ideal scholar cared little for celebrity. He submitted himself dutifully to drudgery, knowing that it may bring nothing more than obscurity and apparent failure. Those who sought applause or riches would not submit to the risk and labor necessary for genuine achievement; they “generally expect to be gratified on easier terms.” Some attempted to obtain fame with superficial wit. The wealthy could purchase acclaim more straightforwardly with money. Johnson noted acidly that a rich man could buy the products of courage and industry without suffering hazard or fatigue. He also observed that many of those who professed to disdain wealth and reputation were not motivated by high-minded moderation, but the dread of the labor necessary to achieve what they clandestinely desired.23 If patience and humility were fundamental epistemological values, then pride threatened both the quality and moral character of scholarship. Wesley responded to a critic of the astronomy in his Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation with this advice: “Be not so positive; especially with regard to things which are neither easy nor necessary to be determined.” He admitted that the failures of his own cocksure youth had pounded away his arrogance so that he held nothing but God’s revelation as absolutely sure. Wesley used natural 23 Johnson, The Rambler, vol. 5, pp. 37–42, 54–59, 133–135, 243–247.

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t­ heology to convince his readers that studying the beauty and order of divine creation promoted a reverent humility which deterred arrogant theorizing.24 Johnson emphasized that scholars must resist sensual pleasures and vanity. Someone “wise in his own conceit” would not submit himself to “tedious and laborious” investigation. Someone who (in his own imagination) stands at the zenith of human knowledge will see no advantage in the unpleasant labor of further ascent. Knowledge is to be attained by slow and gradual acquisitions, by a careful review of our ideas, and a regular superstructure of one proposition on another; and is, therefore, the reward only of diligence and patience. But patience is the effect of modesty; pride grasps at the whole; and what it cannot hold, it affects to despise; it is rather solicitous to display, than increase its acquisitions; and rather endeavours by fame to supply the want of knowledge, than by knowledge to arrive at fame. The danger of complacency never receded. The scholar could never unyoke himself from toil without the risk that his knowledge would congeal into prejudice and his hard-won excellence would rot away.25 Paley agreed, arguing that “vice is wonderfully acute in discovering reasons on its own side.” Sins of debauchery, in particular, corroded the integrity of intellectual judgment.26 Butler’s darker view of the world left him particularly concerned about conceit. He feared that pride of knowledge and the caprice of imagination could divert attention from the only inquiry that truly mattered, “the science of improving the temper and making the heart better.” He disdained the “reveries” of “vain and idle speculation,” particularly when they granted “imaginary freedom from [religion’s] restraints.” Yet Butler did not promote intellectual quietism. His argument from probability collapsed without active investigation—otherwise how could we know that the balance of evidence supported Christianity? He advocated “very exact thought and careful consideration” of religious questions, vouchsafed “by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty,” drawing upon the same faculties used in secular investigation. He stoutly condemned thinkers like René Descartes, whose attempts to jump 24 Wesley, The Works, vol. 13, p. 399. See also M.J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 93–95; and J.H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 189–191. 25 Johnson, Sermons, pp. 85–95. See Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought, pp. 136–138. 26 Paley, Sermons on Several Subjects, Sermons on Public Occasion [1823], p. 137.

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to certain truth made them unwitting hostages to passion, private interest and fanaticism.27 Instead Butler promoted untiring and humble inquiry which required, as his Victorian hagiographer Thomas Bartlett observed, “cautious hesitation in coming to a conclusion without a comprehensive view of the whole bearing of the case.”28 Butler allowed that discoveries were useful if they “serve the cause of virtue and religion, in the way of proof, motive to practice, or assistance in it; or if they tend to render life less unhappy, and promote its satisfaction.” He even tolerated casual curiosity if it did not interfere with better work.29 Paley counseled against the vanity that diverted us from pleasing God.30 Both men, then, were deeply concerned with the morally corrosive effects of pride; the pessimistic Butler feared it most acutely in the conceit of the learned man who forgets how little he truly knows, Paley in the complacency of the ignoramus too lazy to inquire into his unwarranted assumptions. The epistemological importance of virtue becomes particularly clear in debates over the warrants of Christianity. These were not fought merely as clashes of abstract systems. This becomes particularly clear in Paley’s response to David Hume’s caustically skeptical evaluation of religious belief in general and the credentials of scriptural miracles in particular. Hume insisted that no one who tested his beliefs against the evidence could accept miracles and the other supernatural paraphilia of Christian revelation. Paley responded in Evidences of Christianity by litigating his case against Hume in the same court of reason. In doing so, he articulated criteria for creating and evaluating knowledge claims with implications far beyond Enlightenment debates over scripture. Paley censured Hume for a “want of argumentative justice” in questioning the historical reliability of New Testament miracles. Evidences made the apostles’ willing exposure to “lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering” the ultimate mark of their probity. Paley argued on both the internal consistency of the New Testament and the corroboration of other contemporary accounts that the persecution of the apostles was historically genuine. This led to a stark conclusion. If it be so, the religion must be true. These men could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might have avoided all these sufferings, 27 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 6–8, 183–184. Butler, Sermons, pp. xxv, 192–204, 295. See Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry, p. 15. 28 Bartlett, Life, Character, and Writings, of Joseph Butler, p. 12; see also pp. 35, 54, 284–285, 334. 29 Butler, Sermons, p. 201–202. 30 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 2, pp. 208–217.

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and have lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw; assert facts which they had no knowledge of; go about lying, to teach virtue; and, though not only convinced of Christ’s being an impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity and hatred, danger and death? Paley dismissed as illogical the notion that the apostles fraudulently concocted miraculous tales to promote either a belief in revelation or their own political advantage. Why would good men lie so brazenly? Why would bad men suffer for cynical fabrications? Nor was it remotely probable that they were delusional fanatics. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb, he did not simply materialize momentarily before a lone observer. Dozens witnessed his return to his family. So it was with most scriptural miracles: the multitude of witnesses removed any meaningful chance of hallucination or hoax.31 In Paley’s system, the reliability of apostolic testimony depended in the first instance on the moral character of the witnesses. Their severe personal sacrifice demonstrated the subordination of personal desire to the truth. The communal authentication of evidence guarded against individual fraud, mistake, and delirium. In other words, self-denying Christian patience warranted trust, and collective witness guaranteed truth. This reasoning carried tremendous significance beyond its function in Christian apologetics. Paley articulated a standard for evaluating truth claims that transferred easily to purely secular questions. He preached that flashes of intellectual genius—particularly those of the young—needed to be disciplined by “patience in writing and industry in revising.” This was particularly true in the study of the natural world, where “all progression of science” depended on “patience of thought.”32 For Paley, active inquiry inoculated the mind against the self-satisfied ease of ignorance, which is “a great flatterer, a great soother of conscience, an opiate to the souls of men.”33 Rationality did not depend merely upon abstract logical proof but upon the trained temperament of the rational agent and the social order in which he operated. 31 Paley, A View of the Evidences, pp. 15–17, 59–61, 177–197; quotations from pp. 15, 177 and 190. 32 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 345–347; vol. 2, pp. 7–9. 33 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 21–27, 351. See also Paley, Natural Theology, p. 543.

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The Origin and Nature of the Christian Conscience

Butler, Wesley, Johnson, and Paley all agreed on the requirement of a Christian moral sense in this fallen world, but diverged on its fundamental source. In other words, they agreed on the basic structure of moral behavior, but disagreed on where we acquired this knowledge. This lack of consensus reflects the fact that the nature and reality of the moral sense was one of the great philosophical flashpoints of the century, attracting intense attention from John Locke, Anthony Cooper (the third earl of Shaftesbury), Francis Hutcheson, Henry Home (Lord Kames), Thomas Reid, David Hume, Adam Smith, and many other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers.34 The debate intensified as it spilled over into the nineteenth century as Victorian theists used the reality of a divinely-given conscience as a firewall against the spread of secular moral philosophy. For Butler, we acquired our knowledge of virtue inwardly. He provided a systematic defense of the belief that we all had the law of virtue written innately in our hearts. Let any honest man, before he engages in any course of action, ask himself, Is this I am going to do, right, or is it wrong; is it good, or is it evil? I do not in the least doubt but that these questions would be answered agreeably to truth and virtue by almost any fair man, in almost any circumstances. This divinely implanted knowledge was absolutely essential because “reason alone, whatever any one may wish, is not in reality a sufficient motive of virtue in such a creature as man.” In our fallen state we had to unite reason “with those affections which God has impressed upon his heart.” He acknowledged that “the voice of God within us” constantly warred against other equally natural components of our constitution, but since our conscience was “a faculty in kind and nature superior over all others” to disobey it was unnatural. He gave the example of a man ensnared in foreseeable ruin by quenching a fleeting desire. This rash action would be disproportionate to the nature of man (unlike an animal) but “not from considering the action singly in itself, or in its consequences; but from comparison of it with the nature of the agent.” Butler emphasized that utility was a consequence and not the definition of virtue. Man remained morally blind without a conscience. The fact that people so routinely allowed their lesser nature to usurp the conscience “makes no alteration as to 34

Harris, “The Early Reception of Hume’s Theory of Justice.”

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[its] natural right and office.” God gave us our moral dignity and through this gift we had an inborn and uniquely human capacity to sacrifice present satisfactions for greater future rewards.35 Wesley also emphasized the moral significance of the conscience. He carefully distinguished it as a faculty of our soul, “a spiritual gift of God, above all his natural endowments.” This gift did not manifest itself as an abstract ability to determine right and wrong, but as a continuing spiritual relationship with God. Without God’s grace we would be unable to disentangle our duty from our own irregular passions. Wesley denied that we could think of conscience as “natural” because this opened the possibility that moral decisions could exist independent of God’s active and persistent supervision.36 This stance allowed Wesley to navigate the corrosive effects of wealth. “How uncommon a thing is it,” he observed from the pulpit, “to find patience in those that have large possessions!” William Gladstone later explained the problem. Wesley predicted with justice that the effect of reclaiming large bodies of men from ignorance, idleness, debauchery, and irreligion to habits of sobriety and diligence, and to a sense of piety, would be so fundamental to alter and improve their condition on the whole, as to bring in a new set of dangers and temptations, which lurk in the train of prosperity.37 The Christian could only avoid the snares of wealth if, with the grace of God, he made steadiness an element of his character and not a tactic to achieve secular ends. Johnson’s views of the conscience were less consistent. He noted that standards of conduct varied by culture. We could, he believed, define goodness by identifying where conceptions of moral excellence converged. Would this comparative approach disinter the working of Butler’s antecedent supreme authority from the confounding accidents of individual social customs? Or would it allow us to create the ultimate standards of moral truth from 35 Butler, Sermons, pp. 15–31, 56, 69, 164–165. See Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry. 36 Wesley, The Works, vol. 7, pp. 186–194. See R.W. Lovin, “Moral Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies, ed. W.J. Abraham and J.E. Kirby (Oxford, 2009), pp. 649–651. 37 Wesley, The Works, vol. 7, pp. 12–13, 215–217. Gladstone, Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop of Butler, pp. 302–303. See also R.H. Stone, John Wesley’s Life and Ethics (Nashville, 2001), pp. 120–122.

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a broad test of experience? He seemed to trim his opinion on these questions to the particular needs of a given argument.38 Paley strongly doubted that any instinctive love of virtue and hatred of vice existed; if it did, it was impossible to disentangle from learned custom. Like Johnson before him, he noted the diversity of opinion: “suicide in one age of the world is heroism; in another felony.” Aristotle, he pointed out, considered slavery self-evidently natural, which conveniently justified Greek practice; no doubt eighteenth-century slave traders ripping men, women, and children from their homes in Africa would find comfort in Aristotle’s odious rationalizations. Paley feared that the concept of an innate conscience too readily mistook attitudes born out of local exigencies and prejudices as the indelible dictates of nature. This shielded customs and habits from rationale examination. It is no safe way of arguing, to assume certain principles as so many dictates, impulses, and instincts of nature, and then draw conclusions from these, as to the rectitude or wrongness of actions, independent of the tendency or wrongness of actions, independent of the tendency of such actions, or any other considerations whatever. Advocates of an innate conscience reasoned in a circle, Paley claimed. This supposed instinct was moral because God implanted it, and we know that God implanted it because it was moral. He offered his system as a straighter and surer road to virtue: the test of utility would identify rules of conduct without appeal to some internal standard which may or may not exist.39 This does not mean Paley rejected either the existence or the spiritual necessity of conscience. He envisioned it as a quality we created and nurtured through “the operation of God’s spirit,” not as a facility independent of personal religious conduct.40 These differences on conscience were complex and subtle. Butler and Wesley agreed that we acquired our ability to discern right and wrong as an inward gift from God; Paley believed we secured it through pious behavior and observation of external consequences. Wesley and Paley agreed that the 38 Hudson, Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought, pp. 46–47, 136–137, 148–154. I am particular indebted to Hudson for the observation of Johnson’s strategic inconsistency on the question. 39 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 8–17, 195–198. 40 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 18–26. See also Paley, A View of the Evidences, p. 376.

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conscience arose through the ongoing process of our relationship with God; Butler believed this relationship nurtured rather than created the conscience. Johnson equivocated.

“As Light from Darkness”

A shared moral seriousness united Paley and Butler’s visions of man’s moral constitution. In this crucial sense, despite their differences, they presented a united front against those who scoffed at religion. Butler in his 1751 Charge to the clergy in his diocese of Durham, published a year before his death, bemoaned “the general decay of Religion in this nation.” He laid particular blame on the “sceptical and profane men” who amused themselves by making sport of sacred matters. This ribaldry left the essential truth of Christianity untouched as an intellectual and moral matter but it had a corrosive social effect on belief. “People are too apt inconsiderably to take for granted, that things are really questionable, because they hear them often disputed,” he lamented.41 Two decades later, Paley likewise cautioned his Cambridge undergraduates that in “the high and gay scenes of life” it had become fashionable to sneer at religion. His subsequent sermons routinely warned against the dangers of loose conversation, profane amusements, and coarse company.42 In Butler and Paley’s shared battle against the frivolity of the age, the stirring of the sober Christian conscience took on the highest importance. Its origin was a more academic question. The Victorians understood the situation differently. Oxford’s Richard Whately observed in the 1820s that the enemies of religion in his age posed a far more formidable threat than the foppish religious skeptics who flitted from play house to coffee house to whore house in the previous century.43 This new breed of atheists tossed aside superficial wit for the armory of knowledge and logic. Disbelief was their weapon, not their joke. In the face of such an adversary the origin of the moral sense mattered acutely. If reason alone could never spur men to righteousness, as Butler insisted, then virtue was exclusively the gift of God for the people of God. The unbeliever could never lay claim to morality because he cut himself off from its fundamental source. 41 Butler, A Charge, pp. 3–12. 42 Paley, “Appendix,” pp. cclii–ccliii. Paley, Sermons on Several Subjects, Sermons on Public Occasion [1823], pp. 1–18, 298–299, 345–347. Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, pp. 31–32, 165, 259–268. 43 Whately, Elements of Logic, p. xxviii.

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For this reason Whately accused Paley of erring grievously by not deferring to Butler’s view of our moral faculty.44 In Oxford, both Whately’s theological allies like Renn Dickson Hampden and enemies like John Henry Newman agreed.45 The same opinion received prominent support in Cambridge. Adam Sedgwick insisted that Butler’s understanding of man’s moral nature differed from Paley’s “as light from darkness.” His friend William Whewell warned that to follow Paley was to “plunge willingly into the slough of selfishness.”46 This preference for Butler over Paley on the moral sense was not limited to Anglicans. In Presbyterian Edinburgh, the great evangelical leader Thomas Chalmers credited Butler with making the innate conscience the fundamental principle of moral science. Paley, in contrast, was “so meager in his demonstration of the moral attributes.”47 Paley had promised the readers of his treatise on moral philosophy that he would forego “the usual declamation upon the dignity and capacity of our nature.” Whewell spoke for Victorian orthodoxy when he condemned this attitude a shocking dereliction of duty—an intellectual failure with profound practical implications. Individual moral progress depended on religious truth, which in turn could never be established by an exclusive appeal to prudence. More than that, a just and stable society could only exist under the guidance of Christian leadership. Civil discord followed when the educated classes failed in their religious duty. Whately excoriated the eighteenth-century tendency to treat intellectual and religious disagreement as a matter for the educated classes alone, assuming “that the mass of the people were to acquiesce in the decision of their superiors…[and] to stand by, like an unarmed population of serfs, awaiting the issue of a combat which is to decide who shall be their masters.” He underscored the catastrophe that followed “when the minds of a vast mass of grossly-ignorant people are acted on…by a small number of intelligent,

44

R. Whately, editor’s preface and annotations to Paley’s Moral Philosophy (London, 1859), pp. iii, 23–31. R. Whately, Miscellaneous Lectures and Reviews (London, 1861), pp. 105–106. 45 R.D. Hampden, A Course of Lectures Introductory to the Study of Moral Philosophy (London, 1835), pp. 15–17, 129, 169. Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 19–21. 46 Sedgwick, A Discourse on the Studies of the University [1st ed.], p. 56. Whewell, On the Foundation of Morals, pp. 73–75. 47 T. Chalmers, On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man (London, 1833), vol. 1, pp. 68–98, 109–110, vol. 2, pp. 15–16, 98, 108–119. See Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 183–188.

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and educated, but not well-educated men.”48 Butler’s innate conscience moored men to Christianity in a way that Paley’s appeal to external standards of utility did not. For that reason the Butlerian conscience offered a much more robust defense of orthodox Christianity—and the virtuous civil society which it underwrote—from enemies who sought to destroy it, not merely to mock it. 48 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 18–19. Whewell, preface to Butler’s Three Sermons, pp. x–xi. R. Whately, Essays on Some of the Dangers to the Christian Faith, which May Arise from the Teaching or the Conduct of Its Professors (London, 1839), pp. 75–80.

chapter 5

Patience, Utility and Revolution In 1839, Richard Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin, grounded his warning against the evils of organized and erudite infidelity in the terrifyingly recent example of the French Revolution. Whately of course recognized that irreligious intellectual systems were not merely continental imports nor did they suddenly appear at the end of the eighteenth century. Britain had produced homegrown anti-Christian writers like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. But Whately claimed that these “highly anti-democratical” men wrote almost exclusively for a select educated audience. The modern adversaries of religion sought to infect a much wider swath of public opinion. Living infidel philosophers like Jeremy Bentham, failing to learn the lessons of the French Revolution, catered to a “blind craving for novelty for its own sake, and a veneration for the ingenuity of one’s own inventions.”1 As the shadow the guillotine spread from the Place de la Révolution across the face of Britain, virtue acquired apocalyptic importance. The cultivation of patience and humility became matters not just of individual salvation but of national survival.

Virtue and Talent in the Age of Revolution

In 1784 a supporter of Prime Minister William Pitt declared in Parliament that “the salvation of the country required virtue as well as talents.”2 Six years later, Samuel Horsley, Bishop of St. David’s, endorsed this outlook in his Charge to the clergy of his diocese. But by 1790 national salvation appeared more precarious than it had a few years earlier, and the prospect was darkening. These diocesan instructions appeared as France spiraled deeper into revolution. Horsley reacted with immediate alarm. He believed desperately that clergy of Britain must act as a bulwark against the degradation and anarchy radiating outward from Paris.3 1 Whately, Essays on Some of the Dangers to the Christian Faith, p. 80. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, pp. 141–145. 2 Quoted in Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, p. 113. 3 R. Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 161–162.

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Although Horsley achieved his greatest renown as an indefatigable champion of Tory high church principles in the tumultuous years following the French Revolution, his national prominence dated from a dispute with Joseph Priestley in the early 1780s. Priestley’s two-volume History of the Corruptions of Christianity unleashed a series of insults to orthodox belief, including a Unitarian attack on the Trinity, the denial of Christ’s virgin birth and opposition to the doctrine of original sin. Horsley repudiated Priestley’s theology as a “gross…insult on the learning and discernment of the age.”4 Priestley responded aggressively and the two exchanged polemics laced with personal abuse over several years. Both man confidently claimed victory.5 The dispute established Horsley’s reputation as a high churchman of learning, passion and ability. He took his seat on the bench of bishops with appointment to the see of St. David’s in May of 1788, just as political crisis deepened in France. He was translated to Rochester at the end of 1793, three months after the National Convention in Paris formally declared Terror to be the order of the day. His rousing and eloquent defense of authority and revelation helped to provide intellectual and emotional substance for the growing popular conservatism of Britain’s war years. His militant defense of Church and State earned him tremendous respect and influence, even among those who hotly disputed his theology.6 Much of Horsley’s Charge of 1790 did not appear outwardly remarkable. He reminded his brethren, for example, that Christianity had more demanding requirements than irreproachable conduct. Does the control of moral obligation reach the secret mediations of the mind, and the silent desires of the heart? does it impose restraint upon the sensuality of the imagination and the private prurience of appetite? Like Divine law, does it extend to every secret energy of the mind, the will, and the appetite; and require the obedience of the inner no less than of the outer man? Horsley pressed this commonplace sentiment into service of a sharply partisan religious and political agenda. His Charge targeted Methodists in particular for 4 S. Horsley, Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley upon the Historical Question of the Belief of the First Ages in Our Lord’s Divinity, 3rd ed., ed. H. Horsley (Dundee, 1812), p. 11. 5 R.E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (University Park, 2004), pp. 215–39. 6 Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 19, 23, 47. Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, p. 60.

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vulgarizing Christianity in their “disorderly zeal.” He agreed that men must bring their behavior into conformity with Christian duty but insisted that Methodists destroyed this aim with their “irregular ministry.” He refused to pick a sustained fight with the dissenters over the meaning of either Christian doctrine or virtuous behavior: the real issue was the authority to instill and police behavior and doctrine—to speak for virtue and talent. The urgency of this debate intensified with the trauma of revolution and war. Horsley suffered deepening paranoia. His Charge in 1800 bluntly identified Methodists as Jacobin tools, an inflammatory indictment that he only walked back at the end of his life when the worst of the war panic had receded. In his apocalyptic vision the toleration of dissenting sects and the weakening of the established church directly served the purpose of the Antichrist.7

Butler, Burke, and the Philosophy of Vanity: From Rakes to Revolutionaries

Samuel Johnson was dead for nearly five years when revolutionaries stormed the Bastille. John Wesley was an old man (he died in 1791, approaching ninety) with a long-established hostility to revolution. In 1775, he had published a pamphlet against the gathering storm in the American colonies, plagiarizing Johnson’s anti-colonist arguments. His Methodist successors ostentatiously supported the state during the turbulent 1790s, although they did not retreat from reproaching the established clergy.8 Maximilien de Robespierre, Georges Danton, and Napoleon Bonaparte had not yet been born when Joseph Butler was laid to rest in Bristol cathedral in 1752. Butler had displayed little passion for politics. He discharged his parliamentary duties in the House of Lords passively, providing a rubberstamp vote for the ruling Whig ministries.9 His intellectual preoccupation was moral, not political, philosophy. The Analogy concentrated on the natural and moral ­constitution of the world and the personal habits necessary for men to align themselves with this moral government. Butler’s views on virtue and human nature—or ones very nearly identical—nonetheless exerted a decisive 7 S. Horsley, The Charges of Samuel Horsley (Dundee, 1813), pp. 1–46, 147–148. Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order, pp. 160–173. 8 Stone, John Wesley’s Life and Ethics, pp. 178–179, 219–220. Clark, “The Eighteenth-Century Context,” pp. 4, 21–24. 9 Cunliffe, “The ‘Spiritual Sovereign’,” pp. 45–48. Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Ministry, pp. 124–128.

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i­ nfluence on the British reaction to the French Revolution thanks to his admirer Edmund Burke.10 Butler did not ignore questions of political organization. “God exercises the same kind of government over us,” he explained in the Analogy, “which a father exercises over his children, and a civil magistrate over his subjects.” He fleshed out the implications of this connection in a pair of sermons preached before the House of Lords. The first, in 1741, marked “the day appointed to be observed as the day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I.” The second, in 1747, celebrated the anniversary of George II’s accession to the throne. In 1741, Butler counseled England to avoid “the mischief of setting things afloat, and the danger of parting with those securities of liberty, which arise from regulations of long prescription and ancient usage.” He approved pragmatic improvements to the constitution so long as they were “practicable without endangering the whole” but warned strongly against “romantic schemes of restoring it upon a more perfect plan.” Butler, in short, used an unhappy political anniversary to caution his fellow lords temporal and spiritual against repeating the strife, fanaticism, and hypocrisy of England’s seventeenth-century Civil War. The subsequent sermon made clear, however, that his paramount worry was not violent disruption to the established order, but its internal rot. The chief enemy of genuine civil liberty—”one might say, the only enemy of it, we have at present to fear”— was unrestrained personal excess. Butler’s only known parliamentary vote against the government opposed lowering alcohol duties. “Licentiousness,” he observed darkly, “has undermined so many free governments, and without whose treacherous help no free government, perhaps, ever was undermined.” The requirement to live like a Christian was a civil as well as moral duty.11 The shared concerns which linked Burke to Butler are on clear display in A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), Burke’s first major entry into public debate. Published when he was still in his mid-20s, the pamphlet addressed recently published posthumous work by Henry St. John, the first viscount Bolingbroke, which insisted that the rigorous application of reason demolished the intellectual foundations of revealed religion. Burke ridiculed Bolingbroke’s “fairy land” deism with an elaborate argumentum ad absurdum. Not everyone recognized his irony, so he laid out his concerns straightforwardly in the preface to the second edition. “A Mind which has no restraint from a Sense of its own Weakness, of its subordinate Rank in the Creation, and of the extreme Danger of letting the Imagination loose upon some Subjects, 10

M. Einaudi, “The British Background of Burke’s Political Philosophy,” Political Science Quarterly 49 (1934), pp. 576–580. 11 Butler, The Analogy, pp. 46, 116. Butler, Sermons, pp. 252–256, 282–284, 289–290.

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may very plausibly attack every thing the most excellent and venerable,” he argued. Sweeping speculation proved well suited to lazy and narrow minds, but such vulgarity evaporated when subjected to “a painful, comprehensive Survey of a very complicated matter…which requires a great Variety of Considerations.” Burke, unsurprisingly, drew a straight line from the moral and intellectual failures of deism to the strength of the state. “The same Engines which were employed for the Destruction of Religion might be employed with equal Success for the Subversion of Government,” he warned.12 A Butlerian framing of social and moral agency dominated Burke’s reaction to the French Revolution. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) he argued that society not only required individuals to tame their passions but needed civil institutions to subdue the disorderly appetites of the masses. Patience and humility must guide all governmental reform: “it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society.” This forbearance was alien to men who, “in the pride and intoxication of their theories,” spurned the tedious practical work of public affairs. He continued this theme the following year in his next great broadside, A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. A vehement attack on Jean-Jacque Rousseau, “the insane Socrates of the National Assembly,” anchored his condemnation of the French revolutionary government. Burke explained that patient selfmastery underwrote all true freedom. “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,” he declared. “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.” French legislators severed themselves from both liberty and virtue by embracing Rousseau’s “philosophy of vanity.” “They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True humility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm, foundation of all real virtue.” All of their folly and crimes flowed directly from their arrogance and impatience.13 Burke thus altered little the underlying political message contained in the sermons Butler preached before the House of Lords nearly a half-century before the French Revolution. In his 1747 sermon Butler had argued in his 12 13

E. Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society, 2nd ed., in vol. 1 of The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed.T.O. McLaughlin and J.T. Boulton (Oxford, 1997), pp. 133–136. E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 9th ed, in vol. 8 of The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. L.G. Mitchell (Oxford, 1989), pp. 112–114. E. Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in vol. 8 of ibid., pp. 312–315, 332.

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t­ ypically galumphing style that “the tyranny of our own lawless passions is the nearest and most dangerous of all tyrannies.” Burke sliced away the verbiage: “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” His innovation was not translating Butler’s concerns into muscular language, but expanding the message into a fully elaborated political response to a radical and pressing threat to Europe’s established order. Burke built on a subtle but important difference with Butler apparent in his early attack on Bolingbroke.14 As Whately astutely perceived, the theologian and the politician emphasized different hazards in their response to deism. Butler concentrated primarily on defending doctrine, Burke on securing the institutions of religion.15 The two men also perceived different chief adversaries. Burke’s hatred burned no less hot than Butler’s for “the polluted nonsense of…licentious and giddy coffeehouses,” but rakes no longer presented the paramount menace. The real danger came instead from “a gang of assassins” who had confiscated the civil and military machinery of a great European nation and from the villains who cheered this crime and sought to replicate it in Great Britain.16 Christian virtues, and the Christian state that was sustained by them, stared down the point of a bayonet. Burke was Butler armed for battle.

Paley and the Art of Contentment

William Paley was in his mid-forties when the revolution began and entering the peak of his intellectual productivity. The Bastille fell between the publication of his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy and his Evidences of Christianity. A reviewer in the Quarterly Review, looking back from 1813, identified Horsley and Paley as the revolutionary age’s two dominant theological figures, although of dramatically different temper: “Horsley is never playful, and Paley is never long or willingly grave.”17 Distinct outlooks resulted in distinct flavors of conservatism. Paley remained calm, hopeful, and broadly tolerant where Horsley and Burke projected panic. Paley saw the revolution as catastrophically unwise, Horsley and Burke as apocalyptically evil. If the threat of a British revolution did not fill Paley, as it did Burke, with frenetic alarm, his opposition was nonetheless unequivocal. In a two-pence 14 Butler, Sermons, p. 290. Burke, Letter, pp. 332. 15 Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, pp. 99–100. 16 Burke, Reflections, pp. 118. 17 “Horsley’s Sermons,” p. 32.

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anti-revolutionary pamphlet published in 1792 he counseled British workers “to learn the art of contentment,” because neither elevation of rank nor fortune were central to personal happiness. Even if they were, “it would be ill purchased by any sudden or violent change of condition.” The revolutionaries were mistaken in their ends as well as their means—the French had ventured onto a stormy sea for nothing.18 The Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levelers, a club close to and perhaps founded by the British government, used Paley’s pamphlet in their loyalist propaganda.19 These antirevolutionary views reflected the pragmatic temper of Paley’s moral philosophy. He raised an early and influential voice against the “abominable tyranny” of slavery and argued openly that neither clergymen nor Cambridge graduates should be obliged to subscribe to the Anglican Church’s statement of doctrinal principle, the Thirty-Nine Articles. In Principles he illustrated the injustices of private property by imaging a hundred pigeons gathering the seeds of a field for the exclusive enjoyment of a single bird, “and that the weakest perhaps and worst pigeon of the folk.” This was little different, he noted, from what we see in the practice of men. This startling analogy might have cost Paley a bishopric even though he gingerly refused to follow its logic to any radical political conclusion. He explained that the vast inequality of property in Europe was an unfortunate byproduct of a system that, by encouraging industry and art, was beneficial overall. He also maintained that luxury was constructive because it spurred productive employment (provided that an inappropriate and unrealistic thirst for sumptuous goods did not trickle down to the lower orders and distort their constructive habits and social relations). In his ideal society “a laborious frugal people [ministered] to the demands of  an opulent, luxurious nation.” His sermons encouraged satisfaction with one’s rank. Restless and impatience in the situation of life [is]…extremely prejudicial to a man’s happiness, as it will not suffer him to acquiesce in, or enjoy, the satisfactions which are within the reach of his present situation; and is no mean whatever of procuring him a better. It has an ill effect upon 18

W. Paley, Reasons for Contentment; Addressed to the Labouring Part of the British Public (Carlisle, 1792), especially pp. 17–22. 19 LeMahieu, The Mind of William Paley, pp. 2–26. R. Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country: The English Loyalists and the French Revolution (Lexington, 1983), pp. 55–59, 93. Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order, pp. 129–130. Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 61, 70.

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his virtue; as no man accommodates himself properly to the duties of a ­station with which he is discontented—which he is labouring only to get rid of. Paley opposed reform of the House of Commons because he believed that its undemocratic character tempered political interests and passions. A more popular and “rational” scheme of representation would encourage factions to trample other branches of government. The existing system of selecting legislators, for all its oddities and inequities, discouraged Parliament from rash and narrowly selfish behavior. His loyalist pamphlet advised laborers to trust religion, not revolution, because Christian resignation provided the only reliable succor for afflictions in this world and erased all inequalities in the next. Temperance and utilitarian ethics, then, underwrote an inegalitarian social and political order.20 In the 1830s, the stiffly traditionalist Henry Thompson, a Cambridge-educated scholar and divine, insisted that Paley had been “providentially raised from the chaos of the French atheism” to answer the “infidel sophisms” of coxcombs like Thomas Paine.21 The reliance on the test of expediency meant that Paley’s support for the British status quo was contingent rather than absolute. Principles resolved all civic obligation to expediency as a matter of God’s will. No law, custom or institutions had a claim to permanence outside its general utility. Paley dreaded political revolt and insisted that we had a moral duty to submit to civil authority. But, if evil of a particular form of political organization outweighed the bloody consequences of revolt against it (a high but by no means impossible hurdle), God sanctioned the uprising. Such was the case in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.22 Paley’s stance on political institutions dovetailed with his attitude toward the conscience. In both cases the calculation of expediency from experience provided the only sanction of right and wrong. God invested neither our faculties nor our governments with any form of divine right. 20 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 16, 91–95, 180–182, 195–198, 486–496; Paley, Reasons for Contentment, p. 20; Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, p. 208. See Clarke, Paley, pp. 17–23, 37; Thompson, Cambridge Theology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 25; and A. Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views of Human Evolution (Boston, 2009), pp. 58–59. There was justification for Paley’s view of parliamentary function: see Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, pp. 712–714. 21 H. Thompson, Life, vol. 12 in The Works of Hannah More, new ed. (London, 1838), pp. 148– 149. See P. Allen, The Cambridge Apostles: The Early Years (Cambridge, 1978), p. 26. 22 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 423–430.

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Some of Paley’s contemporaries recognized and distrusted the radical potential lurking underneath his defense of the established order. The evangelical Thomas Gisborne, for example, wrote Principles of Moral Philosophy (1789) to correct the “defects” of Paley’s principles. Gisborne attacked Paley for allegedly encouraging all men—rulers and subjects alike—to trample “every law, human and divine, whenever such conduct accords with [their] notions of general expediency.” Assassination, rebellions, and treason became our duty if such dark acts served (or had the pretext of serving) the general good. This grotesque conclusion was the natural conclusion of a doctrine that elevated selfindulgence above submission to God.23 Gisborne’s intemperate and one-sided depiction of Paley’s thought was uncharitable, bordering on dishonest; but he  nonetheless underlined the tension between the contingencies of Paley’s political philosophy and the unchanging values of the Christianity upon which it rested. The potency of Gisborne’s attack increased as events unfolded in France. This line of criticism did not acquire enough purchase to strip Paley of respectability but it did ensure that his views would remain controversial.

Bentham and Malthus

Two other thinkers, Thomas Malthus and Jeremy Bentham, further increased the voltage of the debate over Paley’s Christian utilitarianism. Bentham was travelling in Russia when Paley’s Principles appeared in 1785. For the previous five years Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation sat largely completed but unpublished. This work, which finally appeared to the public in 1789, advanced a utilitarian argument similar to Paley’s. Bentham elevated utility, which he defined as the principle which approves or disapproves of every action based on its tendency to increase or decrease the sum of human happiness, as the only legitimate moral gauge. Rival moral systems “deal in sound instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.” Like Paley, Bentham scorned arguments in favor of innate moral sense in all guises as circular reasoning which shielded prejudices from collision with external evidence.24 23

24

T. Gisborne, The Principles of Moral Philosophy (London, 1789), pp. 1–8, 179–182. See Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order, pp. 81–82; and J. Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 243–244. J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London, 1789), pp. i–vi, xiii–xvii. See J.E. Crimmins, “Religion, Utility and Politics: Bentham versus Paley,”

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Yet there was one point of profound, defining disagreement: Bentham dissolved the alliance of utilitarianism and Christianity—or, as Leslie Stephen drolly observed in the nineteenth century, “Bentham is Paley minus a belief in hell-fire.”25 Bentham contemptuously dismissed the fear of eternal punishment “at the hands of a splenetic and revengeful Deity” as harmful superstition and the religious pretense of renouncing pleasure as either poisonous or hypocritical (which he concluded it mostly was). Bentham was particularly scathing about the widespread conviction that (as Paley put it) “in a religious view (however we may complain of them in every other) privations, disappointments, and satiety, are not without the most salutary tendencies.”26 While hardly masked in the Introduction, Bentham’s hostility to religion became even more explicit in later, pseudonymous work. In one he attacked the argument from design at the heart of Paley’s natural theology. In another he unmasked St. Paul—who Paley credited with teaching the whole world righteousness through his “eminent pattern of patience”—as a fraud in order to impeach the historical accuracy of revelation. Bentham sought nothing less than to argue Christianity out of existence.27 This would collapse Paley’s principle of utility, which depended upon the rewards of heaven and the restraints of Christian duty.28 Bentham felt little affection for the existing state of British politics and society, particularly its inequality; he disdainfully consigned Paley to the “everything-as-it-should-be-school.” Bentham greeted the French Revolution with enthusiasm, at first. He peppered the new revolutionary government with essays and memoranda laying out an array of reform schemes. The French state honored him with honorary citizenship in 1792—and thoroughly ignored his advice. The newly minted citoyen soon recoiled from the revolution’s increasingly bloody fanaticism, which in turn tempered but did not extinguish his reformist zeal in domestic British politics. Bentham used France as a cautionary tale of the anarchical excesses of democracy and the dangerousness of prattle about moral and natural rights.29 in Religion, Secularization and Political Thought: Thomas Hobbes to J.S. Mill, ed. J.E. Crimmins (London, 1989), p. 131. 25 Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2, p. 175. 26 Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, pp. vii–xx. Paley, Natural Theology, p. 535. 27 J.E. Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, 1990), pp. 207–277. Paley, A View of the Evidences, p. 74. 28 Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order, pp. 76–78. Crimmins, “Religion, Utility and Politics,” pp. 133–134. 29 J. Dinwiddy, Bentham (Oxford, 1989), pp. 7–8, 11–12, 85. Crimmins, “Religion, Utility and Politics,” pp. 131–132. P.J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and

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Bentham’s political radicalism and aggressively secular outlook transformed utilitarianism. He did not force utilitarians to ditch Christianity—obviously, given Paley’s long-continued popularity—but he did provide the option. Many took it. Bentham’s friend James Mill developed a similar hostility to religious creed. Butler’s Analogy had convinced Mill that he could not honestly take refuge in deism; this coaxed him back temporarily to orthodox Christianity before his intellectual momentum carried him to agnosticism. His son John never faced a similar spiritual struggle. He grew up without any religious belief.30 The younger Mill reflected in the middle of the nineteenth century that utilitarian theory acquired its greatest significance after it ceased to be the commonplace tool of the establishment thanks to Bentham and likeminded thinkers.31 If Bentham allied utilitarianism to political and religious unorthodoxy, Malthus enveloped it in gloom. Malthus was, in a sense, Paley’s intellectual grandchild. Paley mentored William Frend in Cambridge in the 1770s, who in turn tutored Malthus a decade later.32 The intense debate sparked by the French Revolution inspired Malthus to address contemporary utopian ideas, particularly those of William Godwin (who Mill had identified as one of Bentham’s kindred spirits) and the Marquis de Condorcet. The first edition of Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population appeared in 1798. He advanced the theory that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” The corollary was a devastating indictment of all egalitarian political experiments. Relentless population pressure precluded a society in which all members “should in live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure.” All schemes to create such an outcome will inevitably collapse in catastrophic failure.33 Malthus directly contradicted the hopeful assumption in Paley’s Principles that under temperate government “the number of inhabitants [of a country] will produce the double quantity of happiness.” Paley did not ignore resource restraint—happiness required “the means of healthy subsistence.” He also understood human fecundity could create a population in excess of environmental capacity. But these natural constraints were, in almost all practical cases, theoretical rather than real: “the number of the people have seldom, in

30 31 32 33

Civil Law (Oxford, 1990), pp. 55–57. J. Riley, “Mill’s Political Economy: Ricardian Science and Liberal Utilitarian Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. J. Skorupski (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 320–321, 335n87. J.S. Mill, Autobiography (New York, 1873), pp. 38–43. See also J.S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion (New York, 1874), pp. 214–215. J.S. Mill, “Whewell’s Moral Philosophy,” Westminster Review 58 (1852), p. 352. P. James, Population Malthus: His Life and Times (London, 1979), p. 31. T. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, [1st ed.] (London, 1798), pp. 1–17.

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any country, arrived at this limit, or even approached it.” Agriculture productivity, at least in temperate climates, could improve enough to feed a happily growing population.34 Paley’s Natural Theology summarized Malthus’s population theory sympathetically to Malthus’s delight.35 But the endorsement was largely hollow (and Paley’s un-Malthusian reflections on population remained unaltered in his 1804 fifteenth edition of Principles). Paley did concede to Malthus that human population pressure imposes “labour, servitude, restraint” and prevented all members of society from living in easy circumstances. This marked no departure from his earlier views. He emphasized that Malthus’s theory should not discourage efforts to meliorate social and economic conditions. Nature might place impassable barriers on the efficacy of reform, but—in words which directly mirror his contention in Principles that Europeans are a long way from exhausting their land’s agricultural capacity—the “limits [are] not yet attained, nor even approached, in any country of the world.”36 Paley clearly had little difficulty transforming Malthus’s population trap into just another ameliorable evil in a reassuringly hospitable world.37 Some of Malthus’s allies worked hard to find sunshine poking through the thunder clouds enveloping his political and moral philosophy. His lifelong friend, Bishop William Otter, found a “bright side to [Malthus’s] law of nature” by casting it as the tool of providence which “excites the best energies of mankind into action, overcomes their natural indolence, and gives spirit and perseverance to their most valuable labours.” He extolled Malthus’s own benevolence and philosophical character in illustration. William Empson, a younger colleague, reached similar conclusions. He declared that Malthus’s “earnestness and perseverance” in working for the poor had inspired his speculations. Malthus carried out his benevolent inquiry with the “utmost perfection [of] the two great philosophical qualities of single-mindedness and patience.” Empson optimistically tried to convince his readers that Malthus’s observations on mankind contained even more cheer than Paley’s.38 34 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 588–591. 35 W. Empson, “Life, Writings, and Character of Mr. Malthus,” Edinburgh Review 64 (1837), p. 483. 36 W. Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 15th ed. (London, 1804), vol. 2, pp. 382–387. Paley, Natural Theology, pp. 504–507. 37 Clarke, Paley, p. 87. R.M. Young, Darwin’s Metaphor: Nature’s Place in Victorian Culture (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 27–31. 38 W. Otter, “Memoir of Robert Malthus,” in Principles of Political Economy, Considered with a View to Their Practical Application by T.R. Malthus, 2nd ed. (London, 1836), pp. xlvii–l.

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All of this carried the whiff of defensiveness. Utilitarian ethics as a whole acquired a much darker edge from its encounter with population theory. Malthus transformed the greedy pigeon of Paley’s analogy in Principles from a contingent to a necessary outcome of natural law. Those who recoiled from Malthusian melancholy routinely rejected Paley as part of the dour package. Percy Bysshe Shelley observed that he would “rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than to go to heaven with Paley and Malthus.”39 Samuel Taylor Coleridge lamented the sight of “this mighty nation, its rulers and its wise men listening—to Paley and—to Malthus! It is mournful, mournful.”40 Empson reacted hysterically to Coleridge’s criticism, which revealed its potency.41 Malthus’s pessimistic philosophy placed an unmistakably Christian emphasis on the spiritual and practical necessity of self-denial. For Malthus, chastity of course represented the ultimate triumph of foresight and self-denial. Humans can predict, and thus forego, the harmful consequences of sexual indulgence. Yet he also coolly acknowledged that lust regularly trumped prudence, with misery and vice the inevitable consequences. For this reason he placed the highest value on the “Christian virtues” of charity, meekness, and piety, which humanized our hearts and allowed us to weather distress and sorrow. Pain also prodded men to overcome their natural sluggishness and rise above their savage state—or, rather, the predictability of pain. God built the law of population into the regularity of the universe. Without this regularity, virtuous foresight would go unrewarded. The constancy of the laws of nature, is the foundation of the industry and foresight of the husbandman; the indefatigable ingenuity of the artificer; the skilful researches of the physician, and anatomist; and the watchful observation, and patient investigation, of the natural philosopher. To this constancy, we owe all the greatest, and noblest efforts of the intellect. To this constancy, we owe the immortal mind of Newton. Subsequent editions of Essay on the Principle of Population developed this lesson further. Malthus noted that the regulation of passion by reason provided a

39 40 41

Empson, “Life, Writings, and Character of Mr. Malthus,” pp. 471, 482–483, 499–501. See Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 73–80. Quoted in James, Population Malthus, p. 379. S.T. Coleridge, The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. H.N. Coleridge (London, 1836–9), vol. 1, p. 348. Empson, “Life, Writings, and Character of Mr. Malthus,” pp. 472–473, 491.

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means to earthly as well as eternal happiness, particularly for the poorer classes.42 It is essential not to exaggerate the extent to which shifting cultural attitudes and priorities in the years after 1789 worked against Paley’s optimistic theism. In 1809 the Tory Quarterly Review lauded his “singularly great” intellectual and moral achievement. His books became Cambridge educational institutions well after the full force of Bentham, Malthus, and the French Revolution, hit British life.43 The political and intellectual response to the revolution raised the stakes, however. It now seemed clear to millions of Britons that the wrong moral and political philosophy could unleash civil, military, and demographic catastrophe. Malthus, in a passage from his Essay reminiscent of the famous opening of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, captured the changed mood: the French Revolution, “like a blazing comet, seems destined either to inspire with fresh life and vigour, or to scorch up and destroy the shrinking inhabitants of the earth.” These melodramatic stakes (which Malthus presented with an exasperated roll of his eyes) convinced many that, for better or worse, the revolution had incited “changes that would in some measure be decisive of the future fate of mankind.”44 This portrait is a touch crude, no doubt because Malthus sketched it while using his other hand to pat himself vigorously on the back for calm impartiality. And yet the satirical lines of this caricature only slightly exaggerated the truth. During the revolutionary period the more relaxed sensibility of earlier decades largely evaporated under ideological heat.45 Longstanding debates— over the correct path to spiritual salvation, the just structure of civil society, the origin and requirements of virtue, the existence of the conscience— acquired an intensity and anxiety that colored the next century. In the 1780s Horsley and Priestley traded ill-tempered volleys in print. In 1791 King-andCountry rioters torched Priestley’s Birmingham house and drove him into exile in the United States.46

Habit, Mind and Character

When William Gladstone retired from politics in 1894 he turned to a long cherished ambition. He shepherded a new two-volume edition of Butler’s work 42 Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population [1st ed.], pp. 15–17, 65–66, 363–373. T. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 6th ed. (London, 1826), vol. 2, pp. 270–271, 358–359. 43 “Paley’s Sermons and Memoirs,” Quarterly Review 2 (1809), pp. 75–88. 44 Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population [1st ed.], pp. 2–3. 45 Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 30–31, 58. 46 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 285–289.

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through the press, supplemented by his extensive Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler. Gladstone felt a lifelong debt to Butler’s “bold unshrinking declarations as to the use & authority of reason” in defending the Christian faith.47 Butler’s belief in the radical intractability of our ignorance never encouraged his readers to turn inward toward their conscience and leave the recalcitrant mysteries of the external world where they found them. For Gladstone, the spirit of the Analogy “is summed up in the word ‘ought’; while to this ‘ought’ there is no other sequel than the words ‘to inquire’.” The former prime minister admired Butler in particular because his theology forced a Christian into a “field of arduous investigation” which radically disrupted the complacent notion that we can ever take spiritual rest. Our Almighty Father is continually, aye every day and hour, calling upon us, almost compelling us, to act. Now acting is not the mere discharge of an outward function. It is a continuing process, in which we are responsible throughout. …It is that our actions modifies, that is to say progressively but silently alters, from time to time, and eventually shapes, our own mind and character. Gladstone believed that “there is nothing more characteristic of the unphilosophic mind than impatience of doubt and premature avidity for system.”48 For this reason he celebrated Butler’s method—the “inductive” collection and reasoning upon facts and the rejection of “speculative castle-building”—as his greatest contribution. The bishop taught Christian truths by training men in Christian mental habits.49 There was little in Gladstone’s paean to Butler that could not have been said with equal justice about Wesley, Johnson, or Paley. For these eighteenthcentury religious thinkers, spiritual regeneration pushed the Christian “not only to work, but…to persist to the end.”50 Those words from Paley’s pulpit exemplify one of the great legacies of the eighteenth century. The celebration of patience and humility set the field upon which future intellectual battles were fought. Virtuous behavior led to clarity 47

R. Shannon, Gladstone: Heroic Minister, 1865–1898 (New York, 1999), pp. xiii, 73, 117, 229, 442–443, 567, 573–574. Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 337–361. 48 W. Gladstone to F. Rogers (25 February 1866), quoted in Hilton, The Age of Atonement, p. 348. 49 Gladstone, Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop of Butler, pp. 1–11, 32–33. 50 Paley, Sermons on Various Subjects [1825], vol. 1, p. 26.

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of thought, which allowed one to distinguish and submit to truth much more successfully, which in turn encouraged more virtuous behavior. Vice and intellectual error amplified each other through an identical feedback process. Gladstone learned this lesson as a student in his beloved Oxford. After graduating with distinction in 1831 he visited Cambridge University, where among other dignitaries he met William Whewell, the future master of Trinity College. Gladstone’s decision to open his study of Butler with an examination of “those characteristics of his work and working, which lie outside the express indications of the text” captured the spirit of both universities and of an age that refused to distinguish method and argument as separable things.51 51 Gladstone, Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop of Butler, p. 1. H.C.G. Matthew, “Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898),” in vol. 22 of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004), p. 385.

Part 3 Oxford

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Oxford and the Age of Reform William Gladstone acquired his love of Joseph Butler at the University of Oxford. As an undergraduate he studied Butler alongside Aristotle, Euclid, Herodotus, and other Oxford fixtures. The bishop conferred upon him “an inestimable service”: “I declare that while in the arms of Oxford, I was possessed through and through with a single-minded and passionate love of truth.” Nor did he feel that this benefit flowed to him alone. By the early 1830s the study of Butler “laid the ground for new modes of thought in religion” in Oxford.1 When the future statesman arrived to a place at Christ Church College in 1828, the integration of Butler into the Oxford curriculum represented one part of a broader reevaluation of the university’s mission, structure, and identity. The year before Gladstone began his studies, a writer who signed himself “Septuagenarian” in the Gentleman’s Magazine marveled at the university’s improved character. “The discipline…was then scandalously relaxed,” he reported of his undergraduate years five decades earlier. Few students then allowed even a pretense of scholarship to interfere with their “ignorant jollity.” The rot sunk far deeper than dissipated students. The men who should have been guiding the rising generation instead “preferred indolence to the discharge of their duties.”2 The French Revolution broke the complacency surrounding this culture of idleness and debauchery. Ralph Churton captured the new spirit in a widely noted sermon preached before the university in 1793. He blamed the horrors across the English Channel in part on “the want of ­subordination, the impatience of discipline in the seminaries of learning.” Similar evils in Britain needed to be “crushed…in the bud; we should recommend by our example, and enforce by our authority, habits of sobriety, of decency, of order” (all in limited supply in Oxford).3 A reinvigorated curriculum and new competitive examination system emerged in 1800 to impose 1 J. Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (New York, 1904), vol. 1, pp. 50–51, 56, 64–65, 68, 75, 77–78, 84–85, 161. 2 Septuagenarian, “On the Improved State of the Universities,” Gentleman’s Magazine 47 (1827), pp. 202–204. 3 R. Churton, A Sermon, Preached before the University of Oxford, at St. Mary’s, On Friday, April 19, 1793 (Oxford, 1793), pp. 15–18. See H. Ellis, Generational Conflict and University Reform: Oxford in the Age of Revolution (Leiden, 2012), p. 72.

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counterrevolutionary rigor. As “Septuagenarian” pointed out, the character of the university only improved when these academic reforms imposed moral discipline on student and instructor alike.4 Gladstone thrived academically in Christ Church. It had a reputation for intellectual excellence, and had served as a model for university-wide reforms of the examination system. But herds of rakes and dilettantes stilled prowled the quadrangles and cloisters. In 1825 an epidemic of wild student parties created a crisis in the college. The situation almost tipped into a riot when authorities attempted to reassert control.5 Further rounds of reforms throughout the university targeted libertine excesses. The intricate and often adversarial relationships between the members of the university (undergraduates, tutors, ­fellows, professors, provosts, and so forth) complicated negotiations over workaday matters such as syllabi, exams, teaching methods, and rules of discipline. These internal debates took place as prominent outsiders turned cold eyes on what they perceived as Oxford’s educational inadequacies, inbred privilege, and undeserved prestige. Scottish intellectuals—Henry Brougham, Charles Lyell, William Hamilton, Thomas Macaulay—launched particularly cutting critiques. For the men of Oxford, the fate of their university teetered on the balance— and, so it increasingly seemed, did that of the nation the university served.

Noetics and Tractarians: Growth or Healing?

By the 1820s, British life increasingly resembled the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope, itself a new scientific invention. The country suffered a cascade  of economic and political shocks from the middle of the decade. The shadow of war finally receded after the protracted hostilities of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Renewed cultural exchange with continental Europe—and particularly with the former enemy France—electrified 4 For background on the reform of Oxford in the decades following the French Revolution, see W.R. Ward, Victorian Oxford (London, 1965), pp. 12–20; Corsi, Science and Religion; M.G. Brock, “The Oxford of Peel and Gladstone, 1800–1833,” in Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I, ed. M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys, vol. 6 in The History of the University of Oxford, general ed. T.H. Aston (Oxford, 1997), pp. 7–71; A. Briggs, “Oxford and Its Critics, 1800–1835,” in ibid., p. 134–145; M.C. Curthoys, “The ‘Unreformed’ Colleges,” in ibid., pp. 146–173; Curthoys, “The Examination System,” in ibid., pp. 339–374; and Ellis, Generational Conflict and University Reform. 5 R. Jenkins, Gladstone: A Biography (New York, 1997), pp. 18–24. Curthoys, “The ‘Unreformed’ Colleges,” pp. 154–155.

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British intellectual life. The effects of industrialization had become unmistakable. Networks of canals and turnpike roads had already improved transportation in the late eighteenth century, and railways would transform the British life and landscape even more dramatically starting in the 1820s. Publishers experimented with new formats to reach mass reading audiences; by the 1830s print would become fully industrialized thanks to steam-driven printing presses and railway distribution. National scholarly organizations proliferated. Ones dedicated to astronomy, Asian culture, literature, zoology, law, and geography appeared between 1823 and 1830.6 Provincial societies and voluntary associations also thrived. As the verities of the old order crumbled, the national mood—exhilaration in some corners, panic in others, antagonism sloshing all around—infected Oxford and radicalized its politics. During Gladstone’s undergraduate years battle lines were forming that would pit Oxonians in a battle—at least as far as the combatants saw it—for the heart and fate of Britain. As one participant in these conflicts reflected, “the University of Oxford is both a centre which draws to itself all that is powerful in this country, and a source from which those elements return to their several spheres of influence with an immense accession of strength, whether for good or ill.”7 The front line of Oxford’s civil war ran through Oriel College. No other college had been more active in leading the revitalization of the university after its long eighteenth-century slumber, and there was no more coveted prize for an Oxonian of high intellectual aspirations than an Oriel fellowship. When the prominent reformer Edward Copleston ascended to the provost’s chair of Oriel in 1814 he deepened the college’s reputation for sharp intellectual exchange and educational reform. Its fellows did not expect to luxuriate listlessly in the warm comfort of the Oriel Common Room—they did not treat the fellowship as a sinecure. It provided a singular opportunity for young men to prepare themselves for leadership. Copleston left Oxford for the bishopric of Llandaff in 1826. Many other men moved from Oriel to positions of distinction. Thomas Arnold achieved fame as the headmaster of Rugby School and later returned to Oxford as the regius professor of modern history. Richard Whately became Archbishop of Dublin (he learned of his nomination while staying at Rugby 6 J. Morrell and A. Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), pp. 1–34. E.J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870 (London, 1983). M. Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination (New Haven, 1999). Secord, Victorian Sensation, pp. 24–40. P. Noon, ed., Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism (Minneapolis, 2003). Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 32, 372–437. 7 F. Oakeley, Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement (London, 1865), p. 22.

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with Arnold, who had also been under strong consideration). Edward Hawkins succeeded Copleston as Oriel provost, holding the post for more than a half century. Several Oxford professorships fell to Oriel fellows, including Renn Dickson Hampden (moral philosophy and then divinity), Edward Bouverie Pusey (Hebrew) and John Keble (poetry). Baden Powell attended Oriel as an undergraduate and remained intimately associated with the college during more than three decades in the geometry chair. Gladstone was in the midst of the four-day mathematics final when he heard another Oriel fellow deliver a sermon on Sunday, December 11, 1831. John Henry Newman, the vicar of the university church of St. Mary’s, preached on “The Usurpation of Reason.” Newman lamented that reason had come to trump faith as the arbiter of religious and moral questions: “intellectually-gifted men” had displaced “the children of wisdom.” He pleaded for a return to the spirit of Christ. “The Almighty Teacher” disdainfully rejected all displays of argumentative skill and shallow eloquence, Newman insisted, “confining Himself to the enunciation of deep truths.” Gladstone declared the sermon “a most able discourse of a very philosophical character,” but admitted that his exams had left him too mentally exhausted to grasp its argument fully. He certainly did not recognize, at least not then, that Newman had deliberately packed a political bomb beneath the sermon’s impressive philosophical covering.8 As the political and cultural winds picked up speed and rotation, Newman, Keble, Pusey, Hurrell Froude, and other likeminded Oriel fellows felt increasingly alienated not only from their “intellectually-gifted” colleagues, but the temper of the age. By the end of the 1820s Newman increasingly saw himself and his friends as actors in a drama that stretched back millennia. Oxford’s rich theological libraries fostered communion with the early fathers of the church. Froude helped to spark Newman’s fascination with medieval traditions. The religious and political travails of the seventeenth century absorbed Newman’s imagination. He envisioned John Milton living in the forested outskirts of the city, “before he was contaminated by evil times and the waywardness of a proud heart.” (This pride led the poet, in Froude’s words, to mistake “paltry petulance…for the calm equanimity of virtue.”) Charles I and William Laud, his Archbishop of Canterbury, haunted Newman on his walks through Oxford’s ancient thoroughfares. Both men were executed—martyred in Newman’s view—during the English Civil War of the 1640s.9 He felt a particular affinity to 8 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 39–59. Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, vol. 1, pp. 57–58, 79. 9 J.H. Newman to J.W. Bowden (16 January 1830), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. C.S. Dessain and others (Oxford, 1961–2008), vol. 2, pp. 188–189. T. Mozley, Reminiscences,

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Laud, who had dedicated much of his life to Oxford, including a tumultuous tenure as the university’s chancellor.10 Laud served as a popular hate figure, as Newman well knew. In 1828 Thomas Macaulay declared in the Edinburgh Review that he felt “more unmitigated contempt [for Laud] than for any other character in our history”—a “ridiculous old bigot,” whose “oppressive acts” were incubated in vanity and wantonness, “the luxuries in which a mean and irritable disposition indulges itself from day to day.” Less luridly, Samuel Taylor Coleridge accused Laud of exaggerating the authority of the early church, which in turn led him to the “fundamental apostasy” of conflating the authority of the clergy with the sanctity of the Church.11 In Newman’s eyes this odium only validated Laud’s legacy as “a Reformer and Restorer” who made a “noble and almost chivalrous effort (as it appeared) to reclaim the University from Calvinism to the pure and primitive faith which was unjustly stigmatized at the time as Popery.”12 Newman and his friends concluded that the Church of England would never survive in any spiritually useful sense if it did not absolutely resist the profane trajectory of the age. They launched the Oxford Movement to restore the apostolic and sacramental tradition of the third and fourth centuries. They expected the laity to show dutiful obedience to the divinely appointed authority of the clergy. A series of Tracts for the Times defined their goals and lent them the name “Tractarian.” The publisher never made much money, but few if any works exerted a deeper influence on Victorian British religious thought. The “Tractarians” also elaborated the movement’s principles in a constant stream of reviews, essays, histories, scholarly treatises, poetry, published sermons, and novels.13

10 11 12 13

Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement (London, 1882), vol. 1, p. 180. Froude, Remains, vol. 2, p. 321. On Newman’s romantic attachment to Oxford’s past, see P. Nockles, “An Academic Counter-Revolution: Newman and Tractarian Oxford’s Idea of a University,” History of Universities 10 (1991), pp. 143–145. On the Tractarians’ disdain of Milton, see Brendon, Hurrell Froude, pp. 45, 53–54. R. Pattison, The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy (Oxford, 1991), pp. 43–44. J.H. Newman, “Le Bas’ Life of Archbishop Laud,” British Critic 18 (1836), p. 358. T.B. Macaulay, “Hallam’s Constitutional History,” Edinburgh Review 48 (1828), pp. 134–135. Coleridge, The Literary Remains, vol. 3, pp. 377, 386. J.H. Newman, “Le Bas’ Life of Archbishop Laud,” British Critic 18 (1836), p. 371. E.G.K. Browne, History of the Tractarian Movement (London, 1856), pp. 252–253. Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 1, pp. 268–274. Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 87, 135. Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 92–105. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 65–69, 162–168. S.A. Skinner, Tractarians and the “Condition of England”: The Social and Political Thought of the Oxford Movement (Oxford, 2004). Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 468–470.

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The Oxford Movement clashed angrily with a loose-knit group of Oriel men known as the Noetics.14 The word “noetic” means “intellectual” in Greek. The Oriel men might have adopted this lofty name for themselves, or their detractors might have slapped it on them in ironic reproach. Either way: they took no pains to hide either their brilliance or their drive. Copleston and John Davison laid the foundation of Noetic principles earlier in the century: adults should have wide latitude in their spiritual and political choices; Christianity’s strength lay in its moderation and reasonableness; education should equip men for virtue by teaching self-reliance. Davison expressed what would become the general Noetic view: the advance of truth relied on “controversy, when it is carried on in the sound and manly spirit of investigation.” This spirit meant that the controversialist must repudiate partisan zeal, which hampered the search for truth by spawning suspicion and personal hostility. The “friendly violence” of disputation must stay friendly. Copleston made much the same point when he condemned invective (particularly when directed by outsiders against Oxford’s system of education). Partisan spirit, he insisted, invariably produced argument of the “unmeasured headstrong kind which, reckless of consequences, as having nothing at stake, aims at immediate triumph.” The genuine scholar distrusted novelty and proceeded with “more laborious processes of balancing contrary evidence, of calculating the necessary aberrations of practice from pure theory, and of reconciling abstract principles with the entangled interests of real life.”15 Younger men like Whately, Hawkins, Powell, Hampden, and Arnold extended this vision. Whately’s 1822 Bampton Lectures denounced the scandalous animosities created by “party spirit” in religion, which he attributed to vanity and ambition, fondness for novelty, and love of controversy. He grounded his call for moderation, discretion and charity on St. Paul’s precept that “the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.” This ideal informed his educational practices and political beliefs. “I am not one of those jealous lovers of freedom who would fain keep it all to themselves,” he explained in his undergraduate textbook on rhetoric; “nor do I dread ultimate danger to the cause of truth from fair discussion.”16 Manly ­discussion, toleration, and patience were all. 14

15 16

E.L. Williamson, The Liberalism of Thomas Arnold (Tuscaloosa, 1964), pp. 36–37. R. Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion, and Reform, 1830–1841 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 145– 183. Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 19–22. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 65–69. T.E. Jones, The Broad Church: a Biography of a Movement (Lanham, 2003), pp. 55–62. J. Davison, “Tracts on Baptismal Regeneration,” Quarterly Review 15 (1816), p. 477. E. Copleston, “The London University,” Quarterly Review 33 (1825), pp. 257–258, 266–267. R. Whately, The Use and Abuse of Party-Feeling in Matters of Religion (Oxford, 1822), pp. 45–60, 135–139. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, p. x.

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This genuine skepticism of party spirit discouraged the Noetics from turning the bonds of friendship and intellectual sympathy towards coordinated action to the same degree as the Tractarians. The fact that Copleston, Davison, Arnold, and Whately left Oxford to take challenging positions elsewhere further limited coordination.17 The Noetics emphasized toleration and opposed dogmatic theology, not to accelerate social and political change, but as a means to better contain and direct it. Religious knowledge provided the necessary foundation for all other forms of scholarship. They defended the establish church because, as Powell explained in Rational Religion Examined (1826), its system of faith exhibited “the very model of caution and discrimination.” In contrast, the excesses of Unitarians, Methodists, and Roman Catholics interfered with the “humility of mind which leads to a submissive reception of revealed truth.” The church’s sacred authority rested exclusively on scripture, and not on the accretions of antique tradition.18 The Noetics wanted a community based on shared and enforced standards of virtuous behavior, and not on forced genuflection to rigid creeds.19 Men could believe as they would as long as they behaved as they ought. Arnold, who prominently endorsed Coleridge’s accusation that Laud had undermined the church by amplifying the dominance of its clergy, captured Noetic principles succinctly: “it is desirable…to require a profession of obedience [to law] rather than of belief.”20 None of the Noetics felt the smallest pang of sympathy for secular ideologies like Benthamite utilitarianism which, in their view, undermined virtue. Arnold personally considered Jeremy Bentham “a bad man” and gave him a prominent place in his “genealogy of evil.”21 Copleston scorned the new London University, organized on Benthamite principles, because it lacked “character… which can be expected to form the manner, the morals, or the religious opinions of its members—points which are most indispensable to complete the idea of a generous education.”22 Arnold adopted a more tolerant attitude to the university. He briefly considered serving as its professor of history before 17

R. Brent, “Whately, Richard (1787–1863),” in vol. 56 of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004), pp. 391–400. 18 B. Powell, Rational Religion Examined (London, 1826), pp. 37–38, 158–160, 239, 249–250. See Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 59–79, 91–105. 19 T. Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History (Oxford, 1842), pp. 59–60. 20 Arnold, Christian Life, epigram opposite p. i. 21 T. Copley, Black Tom: Arnold of Rugby: The Myth and the Man (New York, 2002), p. 250. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 184, 188. See also R. Whately, Essays on Some Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul, 2nd ed. (London, 1830), pp. 40–41. 22 Copleston, “The London University,” pp. 270–271.

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accepting the Rugby headmastership. He served on its senate from 1836 to 1838 in order to coax the new institution away from “the Antichrist of Utilitarian unbelief.” He explained to a friend that we “must associate with those whom we disapprove of, in order to do good.” In the end, however, the battle went too much against him and he resigned in protest of the university’s refusal to mandate the study of scripture.23 The Noetics nonetheless felt a grudging respect for secular opponents like Bentham. Whately believed that utilitarians erred grievously by making expediency the standard of truth, rather than the reverse. But he admitted that a reader would not find Bentham’s work purely vicious, provided that he possessed “sufficient patience in investigation, and power of discrimination, to separate the particles of gold-dust from the mass of sand with which they are blended.” The fact that the modern enemies of Christianity possessed extensive knowledge, logic, and argumentative skill made them altogether more impressive—and threatening—than the “men of wit and pleasure about Town” who were the chief opponents of religion for most of the previous century.24 The Oriel men saw the wave of change washing over Britain as both opportunity and peril: England would be better for its transformation, provided the church adapted its spiritual mission to the new circumstances. Both Noetics and Tractarians drew on analogies of life and growth. Whately explained that the social diffusion of intellectual culture had created “a dangerous state of affairs…in the same sense and the same manner that bodily growth is dangerous.” The processes of maturation could be misdirected but not stopped. A neglected child did not remain an infant, but grew into a deformed and rickety adult. An intellectually impoverished people did not remain quiescent, but succumbed to the ravages of doubt, discontent, and infidelity. Healthy and balanced social growth required the church to strip away the vestiges of dogmatism and clerical autocracy—in other words, to complete the unfinished business of the Reformation. The Tractarians appealed to images of healing. As Froude enjoyed saying, the Reformation “was a bad setting of a broken limb. The limb needed breaking a second time, and then it would be equal to its business.”25 23 Copley, Black Tom, pp. 57, 92. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 100–110, 120. 24 Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, p. 145. Whately, Elements of Logic, pp. xxviii–xxix. For a similar point, see Arnold, Sermons, vol. 2, p. 165. 25 Whately, Essays on Some of the Dangers to the Christian Faith, pp. 78–91. J.A. Froude, “Reminiscences of the High Church Revival,” Good Words 22 (1881), p. 19 (a less vivid version of the saying appears in Froude, Remains, vol. 1, p. 433).

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Oxford and the Legacy of the Eighteenth Century

The legacy of the eighteenth century loomed large in the civil war between Tractarians and Noetics. Butler became a pillar in Oxford’s intellectual infrastructure. Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, and William Paley did not receive official sanction, but all had a living presence. Of the four, Johnson cast the shortest shadow. His work and reputation were acknowledged in his alma mater. As an undergraduate in Christ Church, Gladstone studied his reflections on Shakespeare. The young Mark Pattison absorbed Johnson’s Lives of the Poets with “an instinct that here was a congenial subject to which, when free, I would return, and where I would set up my habitation.” Newman praised him as a “sturdy moralist,” and appreciated his vigor in “taking the gloomy side of religion.” Arnold celebrated him on a par with Bacon, Butler, Coleridge, Milton, and Shakespeare. John Blackett, a fellow of Merton College, invoked Johnson in his memorial to Arnold after his untimely death in 1842. Arnold’s self-critical love of truth resembled that of Hume, Blackett claimed, but “the rest of [his] character was all Johnson,—Johnson refined, in all his generosity and strength, in his noble strife with evil days and evil tongues, in his unflagging faith in the victory of Right.” Admiration for Johnson was not universal among the Oriel men, however. In a letter to Arnold’s widow, Whately rolled his eyes at Blackett’s comparison of his liberal friend to “a most sincere and deep-rooted Tory.”26 In Whately’s view, Johnson had only risen partially above the vanity and snobbery of his age. As a writer, he dissipated the native vigor of this thought with a weakness for verbal artifice and ornamentation. Worse, as an intellectual, he had the “low estimate of the claims of truth” typical of his contemporaries. He tended to argue “more for victory than for truth.” When he did contend in earnest for the truth, as he did in favor of Christianity, he deigned only to address the more-educated classes and treated the common people as if they were merely mute spectators. The events of the French Revolution and onwards demonstrated just how dangerously erroneous such an assumption was.27 While Johnson’s role defining a modern man of letters remained a cultural resource, his work provided neither a deep font of inspiration nor a flashpoint for controversy. 26 Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, vol. 1, p. 77. Pattison, Memoirs, p. 153. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 106. Arnold, On the Divisions and Mutual Relations of Knowledge, p. 26. J. Blackett, “Dr. Arnold’s Lectures: The Church and the State,” British and Foreign Review 16 (1844), p. 366. E.J. Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately (London, 1866), vol. 2, pp. 27–28. 27 Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, pp. 238–241, 266. Whately, Essays on Some of the Dangers to the Christian Faith, pp. 76–77.

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The same was decidedly not true of Paley. The Noetics felt qualified admiration for the archdeacon. Arnold criticized those who “indulge in very misplaced contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof of [Christianity].” Whately considered Paley “justly celebrated,” indeed underread, and published new and extensively annotated editions of the Evidences and the Moral Philosophy. But both he and Hampden strongly condemned what they saw as Paley’s terrible blunder in dismissing the reality of an innate moral faculty. On this question, Whately said, the archdeacon “would have found a much safer guide in the celebrated Bishop Butler.” Nonetheless, Whately respected much in the Moral Philosophy. He advised students to study it, but not to swallow it whole. Paley never achieved popularity in Oxford—unlike in Cambridge—but the Noetics appreciated his toleration and his emphasis on reasoned inquiry. They agreed with him that training and ­exercising individual judgment offered the surest path to a Christian temperament.28 The Tractarians labored under no such mixed feelings. Paley represented everything they sought to excise from the Anglican tradition. Newman’s sermon on the usurpation of reason, the one Gladstone heard during in 1831, never mentioned Paley by name but he was an unmistakable target. The Tractarians considered Paley’s rationalism both corrupt and shallow—the epitome of cleverness at war with wisdom. Newman, in another sermon, accused Paley directly of drawing men away from “the true view of Christianity” by promoting the iniquitous belief “that Faith is mainly the result of argument, that religious Truth is a legitimate matter of disputation, and that they who reject it rather err in judgment than commit sin.” Privately he indicted Paley’s Evidences for inciting an “evil frame of mind.” The only path to a patient and humble character involved reverent obedience to the sacred doctrines of the early church, whose truth was grounded in faithful wisdom and not self-satisfied inquiry.29 The Noetics and the Tractarians adopted sharply different views of Paley, then, because they disagreed on the patterns of belief that would lead to Christian virtue. Theological differences over the meaning of the Eucharist illustrate how these opinions on proper conduct provoked doctrinal quarrels. 28 Arnold, Christian Life, pp. 464–465. Whately, editor’s preface and annotations to Paley’s Moral Philosophy, pp. iii, 23–31. Whately, Miscellaneous Lectures and Reviews, p. 85. Hampden, A Course of Lectures Introductory to the Study of Moral Philosophy, pp. 15–17, 129, 169. 29 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 189–190. J.H. Newman to A.P. Perceval (11 January 1836), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 5, p. 196.

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Paley in his Moral Philosophy located the glory and the power of the Reformation in its embrace of “diligent and faithful” inquiry. For him, the rejection of Transubstantiation, the Catholic doctrine that the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist represented the real physical body and blood of Christ, exemplified this inquiring spirit: the reformers “exonerated Christianity of a weight which sunk it” by demonstrating that this “extravagant absurdity” lacked support in scripture.30 The Tractarians distrusted the reformers’ view of the Eucharist. Froude in particular felt “more and more indignant at the Protestant doctrine on the Eucharist, and think that the principle on which it is founded is…proud, irreverent, and foolish.” While Newman criticized popish corruptions, he urged caution in “how we put aside other usages of the early church concerning this sacrament.”31 Pusey insisted that Christ had a real spiritual presence in the Eucharist, if not the physical one of Roman Catholic doctrine, a view which enveloped him in substantial controversy.32 The Noetics had no such sympathy for any vestige of the Roman Catholic doctrine. Whately condemned Transubstantiation as idolatrous. He did not consider it an honest misinterpretation of scripture, but the selfish twisting of holy writ to prop up a preconceived notion. This in turn offered doleful proof that the Roman clergy “were seduced from humble vigilance into a proud and careless reliance on the greatness of their privileges.”33 Powell held the same view and would later scoff at the Tractarian stance on the Eucharist as “a farrago of extravagant assertions, without a shadow of argument.”34 Arnold spent the evening before his untimely death in 1842 criticizing the Tractarians’ “false notions of the Eucharist.”35 The Tractarians indignantly refused to profane their wisdom with the type of argument which would satisfy the Noetics. The issue at stake for both sides was not merely doctrines but behavior, not just what to believe but how. The response of both groups to Wesley started from a common point: the established church deserved much blame for the rise of Methodism. Arnold 30 Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. i–vii. 31 Froude, Remains, vol. 1, p. 391. J.H. Newman, Rites and Customs of the Church, tract 34 in vol. 1 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1834), p. 3. 32 D. Jasper, “Pusey’s ‘Lectures on Types and Prophecies of the Old Testament’,” in Pusey Rediscovered, ed. P. Butler (London, 1983), pp. 64–68. Herringer, “Pusey’s Eucharistic Doctrine.” 33 R. Whately, The Errors of Romanism Traced to Their Origin in Human Nature (London, 1830), pp. 27–30, 180–182, 308–312. Whately, Essays on Some Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul, pp. 143, 359–360. 34 B. Powell, “Anglo-Catholicism,” British and Foreign Review 16 (1843–4), p. 5. Powell, Rational Religion Examined, pp. 63–65. 35 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 330–331.

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expressed contempt for the eighteenth-century Church of England’s haughty neglect of the poor. Newman condemned its spiritual debility: it “sent out at that time a wan and feeble ray, and exerted a languid influence, and was as little able to warn and guide her children.” The continued strength of dissent proved that the danger had not passed. Arnold remarked that at present men “crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last century was without.” Newman decided that “there is at this moment a great progress of the religious mind of our Church to something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century.” He observed ominously that “what the Church will not do well, others will do ill instead.” There was agreement, then, that Wesley and his fellow Methodists had offered a bold, vigorous, and living alternative to an enervated church—and that this alternative was tragically defective.36 Powell lumped together Methodists and other evangelical dissenters as “fanatics” whose “deceitful principle of a fancied internal illumination” led them to reject “all reasonable authority.” Whately worried similarly that the Methodists tended too much towards a prideful and self-aggrandizing party spirit. He marveled that Wesley himself “seems to have been, in a most remarkable degree, unconscious of the ambitious feelings by which he was so much influenced.” Arnold believed that the church needed to draw the poor into ministry, but recoiled from Wesley’s conviction that the clergy “had no more to do with being gentlemen than with being dancing-masters.” Such a doctrine would “infallibly” mar the Church with “coarseness and vulgarity.” Wealth and refinement, when used appropriately, provided the Church with the necessary means to carry out its spiritual mission. The goal was to strike a better balance than either the eighteenth-century establishment or the Methodists had ­managed between making “the Church at once popular and dignified,—to give the people their just share in its government without introducing a democratic spirit.”37 For the Noetics, the proper response to Wesley’s challenge did not involve suffocating dissenters beneath stifling dogmatism and legal persecution. Instead, England’s natural leaders needed to set an example of tolerant, rational, and patient engagement with scripture. In this way they could provide gentle but effective supervision of their social inferiors, neither 36 Arnold, Christian Life, pp. xliii. J.H. Newman, “Memoir of the Countess of Huntingdon,” British Critic 28 (1840), pp. 275, 282. J.H. Newman, A Letter to the Rev. R.W. Jelf, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1841b), p. 25. 37 Powell, Rational Religion Examined, pp. 60–61 (he included Unitarians in this indictment). Whately, The Use and Abuse of Party-Feeling in Matters of Religion, pp. 46, 93–96. T. Arnold, Principles of Church Reform (London, 1833), p. 41–45. A.P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 13th ed. (London, 1882), vol. 2, p. 340. See Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 31, 85–95.

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abandoning them to their own devices nor futilely attempting to bully them into submission. The Tractarians were even more firmly convinced that Methodism was riddled with spiritual sickness. The failures of the established church explained but did not excuse the dissenters’ decision to remove themselves from its discipline. “There is not a dissenter living, but, inasmuch and so far as he dissents, is in a sin,” Newman preached in St. Mary’s. Schism inevitably destroyed a man’s Christian character. On the whole, deliberate insubordination is the symptom, nay, often the cause and first beginning of an unhumbled, wilful, self-dependent, contentious, jealous spirit; and, as far as any man allows himself in acts of it, so far has he upon him the tokens of pride or of coldness of heart, going before or following after. “We did not make the Church,” he declared; “we may not unmake it.”38 This line of condemnation posed an obvious difficulty: the Tractarians swore allegiance to a church which itself had split from the Roman communion. Isaac Williams (a disciple of Keble) addressed this problem in Tract 86. He explained that the “authorized and commissioned” reformers conserved ancient customs and lines of authority. They freed England from the corruptions of Rome in order to preserve practices which disciplined the depravities of our nature. The “irregular and self-chosen” Methodists, on the other hand, sought to unbind themselves from this tradition. They indulged their depravities. The answer to Methodist challenge was an established church willing to reclaim its vigor, authority, and tradition. Newman scorned the way that, in his view, the church responded to the evils of schism with feeble squeaks of disapproval rather than bold reassertion. “The office of ecclesiastical authorities is to lead and guide to their rightful issues the great movements of the human mind, which are ever characterized by passion and error, but ever based on some portion of truth,” he declared.39 The Noetics and Tractarians, then, agreed broadly that Methodism and other forms of dissent were incapable of effectively cultivating and disciplining 38 Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 3, pp. 202–204. See Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 130–131, 263, 287, 346–347. 39 I. Williams, Indications of a Superintending Providence in the Preservation of the Prayer Book and in the Changes which It has Undergone, tract 86 in vol. 5 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1839), pp. 63–64. Newman, “Memoir of the Countess of Huntingdon,” pp. 272–276, 282.

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moral nature. They also agreed that a rejuvenated Church of England offered the only answer to the challenge of dissent. Neither side held out any hope for taming sinful pride without the spiritual guidance of a strong national church. They disagreed fundamentally on the nature of this rejuvenation. “No man cares much about a system in which he is wholly passive; in which he never acts himself, but is always the object of the care and regulation of others,” Arnold declared. Newman reached a starkly different conclusion. “If he would possess a reverent mind, he must begin by obeying,” he taught; “if he would deserve the praise of modesty and humility, he must repress his busy intellect, and forebear to scrutinize.” This state of mind required pious sacrifice to the opinion of the church because “few have minds tutored into patient inquiry, attention, and accuracy” to judge scripture rightly on their own. If left to reason by themselves, most men would stumble into Wesley’s errors or into some other similarly self-satisfied heresy.40 Much of the subsequent bad blood between the Noetics and the Tractarians emerged from their opposing strategies for dealing with the challenge of dissent from the established church. The Oriel obsession with patience, humility, and self-denial converged in an embrace of Butler’s pessimistic assessments of human judgment and the depravities of human nature.41 None of the fellows disputed Keble’s poetical observation that “sin is with man at morning break / And through the live-long day.” This shared view of the human condition was rooted in a deeper agreement about its origin in the Fall. Arnold believed that understanding man’s sinful state after the Fall “must be the foundation of all sound views of human nature.” Newman insisted that “from the time that Adam fell, all his children have been under a curse.… Human nature, fallen and corrupt, was under the wrath of God.”42 Hampden spearheaded Butler’s formal introduction to the Oxford curriculum. No one in the middle decades of the century could qualify for an Oxford 40 Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, p. 44. J.H. Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism, 2nd ed. (London, 1838), pp. 161–179. 41 H.F.G. Swanston, Ideas of Order: Anglicans and the Renewal of Theological Method in the Middle Years of the Nineteenth Century (Assen, 1974), p. 4. Brendon, Hurrell Froude, pp. 54, 64, 157, 160–162, 175. Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, pp. 153–159. Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 27, 76–77. Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 172–173. J. Garnett, “Bishop Butler and the Zeitgeist: Butler and the Development of Christian Moral Philosophy in Victorian Britain,” in Joseph Butler’s Moral and Religious Thought: Tercentenary Essays, ed. C. Cunliffe (Oxford, 1992), pp. 66–73. 42 J. Keble, The Christian Year, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1827), p. 190. Arnold, Christian Life, p. 1. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6, pp. 76–79.

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ba without demonstrating a basic understanding of the Analogy.43 Hampden wrote, preached, and lectured extensively on the Butlerian theme that our moral fitness depended absolutely on “the discipline of habits.” No intellectual case for virtue, no matter how cogent, could ever reach a man locked in iniquity.44 In the same vein Whately concluded that moral and religious training “are not to be taught as mere sciences, but as practical habits.” He credited Butler with the insight that nodding sluggishly to philosophical and religious discourses actually undermined virtue. Wicked and lazy men used passive assent as a substitute for ceaseless endeavor. Whately cared passionately about thinking clearly and arguing cogently. He wrote influential textbooks on logic and rhetoric. But accurate reasoning and clear argumentation were but means towards building character. While acknowledging that in general men were too apt to judge a measure based on who proposes it rather than what is proposed, Whately nonetheless defended using the character of disputants as a partial means of evaluating disagreements in religion, politics or morality.45 Arnold likewise agreed that knowledge alienated from practice corroded character.46 So did the Tractarians.47 Keble drew heavily from Butler for The Christian Year (1827). This celebrated volume of devotional poetry encouraged Christians to align their thoughts, feelings and actions with the practical wisdom of the Anglican liturgy. God’s wrath was as implacable as a storm at sea, Keble warned. A footnote invited his readers to consult Butler’s discourse on divine moral government for more guidance on this point. While this was Butler’s only explicit appearance in the volume, pulsating under the surface was the bishop’s precept that (as Keble described it elsewhere) men as a matter of practice should take “the side of virtue and self-denial, where-ever the evidence seems doubtful.” Newman and Froude followed Keble and built Butler’s principles of analogy and probability into the foundation of Tractarian theology. As Newman 43 Swanston, Ideas of Order, pp. 3–20. Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 26–27, 76–77. R. Brent, “Note: The Oriel Noetics,” in Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I, ed. M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys, vol. 6 in The History of the University of Oxford, general ed. T.H. Aston (Oxford, 1997), pp. 73, 75. Brock, “The Oxford of Peel and Gladstone,” p. 10. Ellis, Generational Conflict and University Reform, p. 162. 44 R.D. Hampden, Parochial Sermons Illustrative of the Importance of the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ (London, 1828), p. 293. Hampden, Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity, p. 274. 45 Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, pp. 162–164. Whately, Miscellaneous Lectures and Reviews, pp. 5–8, 21, 320–322. Whately, Elements of Logic. 46 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 2, p. 393. 47 J. Pereiro, Ethos and The Oxford Movement: At the Heart of Tractarianism (Oxford, 2008), pp. 85–99, 222–227.

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pointed out in an early Tract, “the faintest probabilities are strong enough to determine our conduct in a matter of duty.” This made adherence to the apostolic succession the soundest course of action. He applied this lesson most poignantly in an intense private disagreement with his younger brother Charles over the foundations of the Christian faith in 1830. Newman played Butler as his trump. We all act according to the principle of probability, he explained at the end of a long, heartfelt, and erudite letter. No amount of logic-chopping could diminish the strong probability of Christianity’s truth. This probability provided a sufficient basis for certainty of action.48 Both the Noetics and the Tractarians located their own doctrinal preferences in Butler. Hampden cited the bishop to back the view that “the Bible speaks plainly enough as to all the fundamentals of salvation.” Williams appealed to Butler in Tract 87 to make the opposite case in favor of the indispensable authority of Catholic antiquity. Newman bracketed Butler with Laud as defenders of a true apostolic Anglicanism.49 Butler’s role in doctrinal and political disagreements was laid bare in a nasty conflict over the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles. Hampden provoked a furious response (and not just from the Oxford Movement) when in 1834 he advocated allowing dissenters to enroll in the university and no longer demanding subscription to the Articles as a condition of graduation. Whately, now Archbishop of Dublin, voiced his cautious support for this reform to the Whig prime minister, Charles Grey. Oxford students should be thoroughly immersed in the study of divinity, as they had been under his tutelage. “My plan was to trust more to instruction, and less to subscription.” This was an explicitly Butlerian position: the disciplined exercise of reason mastered pride. Forced submission to authority fostered either passivity or cynicism, both of which were far worse than useless for habituating men to Christian duty. Newman disagreed passionately. He told the royal chaplain Arthur Philip Perceval that compulsory subscription to the Articles “impress[ed] upon the minds of young men the teachable and subdued temper expected of them. They are not to reason, but to obey.” This too was an explicitly Butlerian position: obedience taught men to tame their 48 Keble, The Christian Year, p. 89. J. Keble, Sermons, Academical and Occasional, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1848), p. 32. J.H. Newman, On Arguing Concerning the Apostolical Succession, tract 19 in vol. 1 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1833), p. 1. J.H. Newman to C.R. Newman (19 August 1830), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 2, pp. 266–281. See also Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. 77–78. 49 R.D. Hampden, A Lecture on Tradition (London, 1839), p. 19–22. I. Williams, On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge (Conclusion), tract 87 in vol. 5 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1840), p. 87. Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, p. 21.

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selfish impulses. Encouraging intellectual self-reliance only incited conceit.50 The debilitating conflict over Oxford admission policy had its roots in a ­common reverence for Butler and a shared disquiet with Wesley’s social and moral legacy.

Reform: But in What Direction?

Noetic and Tractarian agreed that, in Arnold’s words, “impatience…is one of the diseases of the age.” They agreed that only the Church of England could serve as a reliable antidote.51 They agreed that the church needed reform if it were to guide England through the intense challenges of the nineteenth century. But how to reform? The fundamental disagreement which separated the Oriel colleagues— reform through reason or through obedience?—should not obscure the fact that both sides pursued the same goal. They agreed entirely that Britain would not weather modern challenges if men and women were not trained to submit to their Christian duty. Their battles became so acrimonious because they could not agree on the doctrinal structures necessary to underwrite this essential training. The battle of ideas in Oxford came down to a vehement contest over the ownership of virtue and practical Christian morality. Neither side would win. 50 Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, vol. 1, pp. 225–229. J.H. Newman to A.P. Perceval (11 January 1836), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 5, pp. 196–198. 51 T. Arnold, “Rugby School,” Quarterly Journal of Education 7 (1834), p. 249. Arnold freely acknowledged that he and Newman agreed on the importance of the Church, but clashed over their rival visions for what it must be; see Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, p. 239.

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The Oxford Movement

Faith and Obedience in a Tumultuous and Shifting World

John Henry Newman did not immediately love Oxford. He arrived in 1817, a serious sixteen year old on scholarship to Trinity College. He largely abstained from the alcohol that sloshed through his college. His clothes attracted guffaws from more fashionable classmates. No one at first seemed able to tell him which books he should be reading. Even the weather proved oppressive. But in time he found his feet. A close friendship with John William Bowden, a studious fellow first-year, eased his loneliness and social isolation. His appealingly strict tutor, Thomas Short, encouraged intellectual ambition.1 The wine-soaked antics of Newman’s fellow students proved that the old culture of rowdiness—one that both Butler and Johnson would have recognized from their undergraduate experiences decades earlier—refused to evaporate at the first heat of reform. The attempts to impose order often carried an air of desperation. Oriel College tried to ban wine. Undergraduates were to enjoy tea instead. Trinity adopted a particularly stern line during Newman’s time. “There are lamentations in every corner of the increased rigour,” Newman reported to his mother; “it is laughable, but it is delightful, to hear the groans of the oppressed.” But his sympathies did not rest exclusively with the forces of order. In 1819 he and Bowden surreptitiously published a student magazine, The Undergraduate. It crackled with indignation at the senior members of the university, whose ideal of discipline was “the sulky homage of the sneering undergraduate.” After six weekly issues, word somehow leaked of Newman’s responsibility and the young men promptly abandoned their “impudence.” This mild rebellion surprised his fellow students (many refused to credit it) and it appears, superficially, even more unexpected in hindsight from a man who a decade later became the university’s leading apostle of submission to authority. Two basic principles connects this burst of youthful assertion to his mature convictions: those in the office of leadership must obey the obligations of beneficence and paternal kindness laid down by Christ and codified by the early church; and, obedience could only truly exist in a community bound together by affection and common moral purpose. The teenage Newman did not object to university officials exercising authority. He condemned them for abandoning it for “reverence by arbitrary rule.” His seniors confused obedience 1 Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 6–11.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004263352_009

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for obsequiousness.2 Eleven years later he reviled the eighteenth-century church and its dealing with Methodists in identical terms. “Man craves an object of veneration: and if not supplied with those which God has appointed, he will take what offers,” he warned.3 This lesson defined his own teaching. Hurrell Froude’s younger brother James became a sharp critic of the Oxford Movement, but this never diminished his admiration for the care Newman took with students. “He was never condescending with us [undergraduates], never didactic or authoritative,” the younger Froude remembered; “but what he said carried conviction along with it.”4 Newman’s advancement into the senior ranks of the university almost never happened. Overworked but underprepared, he made a disastrous showing in his final exams in both mathematics and classics. Faith allowed him to weather this calamity. “The glory of religion is seen in affliction,” he explained to his aunt. Those who long to love God “exult in undergoing trials and passing through the flames of calamity, for they trust and expect to come forth purified and refined, with the dross of human corruption purged away.” With few other prospects, he decided to compete for an Oriel College fellowship, although with no expectation of success. Despite the odds, he won election to the fellowship. “I thought I should have need of long patience,” he concluded, attributing this “complete…deliverance” with ostentatious humility to “God and God alone.”5 The relationships he forged in the Oriel common room transformed his life. The men he met there could have burrowed into their academic specialties or concentrated exclusively on the parochial concerns of the college. Instead they all engaged deeply with national affairs—and this would tear them apart.

National Apostasy

Newman dated the start of the Oxford Movement to July 14, 1833. On that Sunday John Keble delivered an impassioned sermon before a large congregation in St. Mary’s. He responded furiously to a planned reform of the established 2 J.H. Newman to various correspondents (1817 and 1819), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 1, pp. 47–48, 61–64. Ellis, Generational Conflict and University Reform, pp. 126–129. 3 Newman, “Memoir of the Countess of Huntingdon,” p. 282. 4 Froude, “Reminiscences of the High Church Revival,” p. 164. 5 J.H. Newman to E. Newman (7 November 1821 and 28 April 1822), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 1, pp. 115–116, 137–139. Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 11–18.

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Church of Ireland winding its way through Parliament. The ultimately successful Irish Temporalities Bill abolished ten of twenty-two Irish bishoprics to rationalize church finances and reduce the rates levied to support a wealthy church that served only a tenth of the population. From the Whig government’s point of view, this was a sensible reform which better aligned administrative and financial structures to Irish realities. Keble viewed it as a profane and graven betrayal of the Apostolical Church, an act (as the sermon’s title declared) of National Apostasy. Keble’s burn path spread far beyond this particular ecclesiastical reform, however. His deeper targets were “the impatient patrons of innovation” and “the fashionable liberality of this generation.” The reforms to the Irish church merely represented a particularly egregious example of the “restless, godless spirit” which engulfed Britain.6 Keble did not merely call men to rise up in defense of “our endangered Church.” He advocated a renewed commitment to “the daily and hourly duties…of piety, purity, charity, justice. …An Apostle once did not disdain to urge good conduct upon his proselytes, upon the ground, that, so doing, they would adorn and recommend the doctrine of God our Saviour.” He cautioned scrupulous care to ensure that public preoccupations never interfered with the performance of ordinary devotional obligations.7 Keble meticulously framed civic involvement not as an end in itself, but an organic outgrowth of a life lived with devotion and virtue. Keble’s jeremiad did not flash from nowhere. Four years earlier he and Newman had canvassed vigorously against the reelection of Robert Peel as the university’s Member of Parliament. The election took place in the Convocation, the supreme governing body of the university, where university officials and Oxford graduates could vote. Peel as Home Secretary had reluctantly shifted his position to support Catholic Emancipation in response to deteriorating political circumstances in Ireland. This concession proved popular among the Noetics. Thomas Arnold published a pamphlet supporting political rights for Catholics as a matter of Christian duty and not just of political expediency. Edward Hawkins and Richard Whately threw their support behind Peel and  assumed that they would rally the college on his behalf. They would soon be painfully disabused. Opinion fractured as Keble and Newman organized against Peel. (Pusey had not yet pried himself away from his youthful 6 J. Keble, National Apostasy, Considered in a Sermon Preached in St. Mary’s, Oxford, Before His Majesty’s Judges of Assize, on Sunday, July 14, 1833 (Oxford, 1833), especially pp. 13–15. See Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 69–72; and Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, p. 496. 7 Keble, National Apostasy, pp. 24–26.

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liberalism and backed Peel.) They made the case that the Home Secretary’s actions had not been a necessary accommodation to a dangerous situation but (in Keble’s words) a shockingly unprincipled example of “the dangerous laxity of modern politics.” Catholic Emancipation proved deeply unpopular throughout Oxford and Peel suffered a bitter and humiliating defeat to an ultraconservative opponent. He had to slink back into Parliament through a pocket borough.8 Keble and Newman had tasted blood—and yet their victory did nothing to slow the pace of national change, a fact illustrated by the Great Reform Act of 1832. Five months after it passed Newman thundered from the pulpit that “every inflexible instrument, and every antiquated institution, crumbles under the hands of the Great Innovator, who creates new influences for new emergencies, and recognizes no right divine in a tumultuous and ­shifting world.”9 By the summer of 1833, stung by the indignity of the Irish Temporalities Bill, Newman and Keble resolved to organize for more direct action. Newman and his allies explicitly sought a second reformation. In their view, the reformed English church had freed itself from the corruptions of Rome only to fall under the yoke of the state. Current events underlined the fact that secular government would not hesitate to trample the church’s eternal spiritual interests beneath short-term political calculations. The Tractarians insisted that they did not spark the current crisis: they merely reacted to attacks on the church. “We are driven by the pressure of circumstances to contemplate our own position, and to fall back upon first principles,” Newman explained; “nor can an age, which prides itself on its power of scrutiny and research, be surprised if we do in self-defense what it does in wantonness and pride.” Newman lamented that in unhealthy and confused times it was no longer possible to eject or silence troublesome members of the church. This forced him and his allies to take up argument and disputation, “just as we think it lawful to carry arms and barricade our houses during national disorders.” Their reaction was not merely a protective crouch but a bold strike for renewal. The church needed to reclaim its authority and independence based on apostolic succession—the uninterrupted ecclesiastical connection to the early apostolic church. The primitive church provided the ultimate model because, in 8 T. Arnold, The Christian Duty of Granting Claims of the Roman Catholics (Oxford, 1829). Keble quoted and Pusey’s role discussed in Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 1, pp. 197–199. On the election, see P. Nockles, “Pusey and the Question of Church and State,” in Pusey Rediscovered, ed. P. Butler (London, 1983), pp. 265–266; Brock, “The Oxford of Peel and Gladstone,” pp. 56–60; Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 16–18; and Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 391–398. 9 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, p. 117.

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Newman’s words, its “collective holiness” made “as near an approach to the pattern of Christ as fallen man ever will attain.”10 The goal was not to pine for some supposedly pristine former age (the Tractarians conceded that even the early church suffered isolated corruptions), but to apply timeless truths to the requirements of the present. Newman explained that a church “fully imbued with Ancient Truth” did not mean “any blind antiquarian adherence to early times.” Churchmen must apply apostolic wisdom to the requirements of the present day rather than attempt vainly to “move ourselves literally back to the times of the Fathers.” While the modern church must bend to antiquity in all “important matters,” in unimportant matters, the present could follow its own way. Reaffirming and strengthening the connection to the apostolic tradition allowed the current church to move forward without the need to seek counterfeit legitimacy from either the state or public opinion.11 The Oxford Movement injected the High Anglican tradition, represented in an earlier generation by men like Bishop Samuel Horsley, with angry energy and intellectual depth. The high churchmen of the 1820s looked with horror at the tides of reform, but their political defense of the traditional establishment lacked robust doctrinal justification. Newman would later dismiss these dignitaries as “the high-and-dry school” which responded to the Church’s existential peril by remaining cozy with the Tory party and organizing committees of “safe, sound, sensible men.” The Oxford Movement instead launched a theologically intense defense of orthodoxy and tradition which, while profoundly conservative, rejected partisan Tory politics as a matter of principle.12 Pusey (repenting sorely of his vote for Peel) concluded that righteous men should not “risk the future of the Church on the fidelity or wisdom of persons whose principle it is to keep what they think they can, and part with the rest.” Peel’s betrayal underlined his conviction that “politicians…are accustomed to the 10 Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, pp. 5–6, 12. Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, p. 68. 11 Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, pp. 30, 160. J.H. Newman, “State of Religious Parties,” British Critic 25 (1839), p. 413. 12 Newman quoted in E.A. Varley, The Last of the Prince Bishops: William Van Mildert and the High Church Movement of the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 2–3. For the relationship between Tractarianism and the traditional high church, see ibid., p. 193–194; G.I.T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832 to 1868 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 75–77; S. Gilley, “John Keble and the Victorian Churching of Romanticism,” in An Infinite Complexity: Essays in Romanticism, ed. J.R. Watson (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 227–229; P. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 33, 53, 68–72; Davis, The Victorians, pp. 114–121.

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unconscientious servility of worldly men.”13 They promoted regeneration through the power of truth and personal examples of holiness rather than the grubby compromises of coalition building. Newman abjured being a party to “the ordinary political methods by which professed reforms are carried or compassed in this day.” The only hope was a unified church, and that would require the “supernatural influence” of answered prayers. The need for uncompromising virtue acquired a particular urgency in ominous times. Newman saw in modern London “many of the tokens of the Apocalyptic Babylon,” although he allowed that “the full antitype may be still to come.”14 An early expression of this fighting spirit came in the form of a petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury which Newman organized for circulation among Anglican clergymen. It “earnestly deprecate[d] that restless desire of change which would rashly innovate in spiritual matters” and implored the archbishop to carry into effect “any measure that may tend to revive the discipline of ancient times, to strengthen the connexion between the bishop, clergy, and people, and to promote the purity, the efficiency, and the unity of the Church.” Thousands of clergymen signed. Newman, however, considered the petition a compromised triumph. He gritched at granting concessions in wording and sentiment to placate “moderate” opinion.15 Such trimming found no place in the Tracts for the Times. Newman intended the series to be written “as a man might give notice of a fire or inundation.” But the ultimate goal was never simple intellectual agitation. Isaac Williams, a ­fellow of Trinity College, Oxford and close friend of Keble, explained the Tracts in 1839. The subjects treated of in the ‘Tracts’ were not set forth as mere parts of an ideal system, or as themes for disputation, matters only of sentiment, or party, or idle speculation, but are rather urged as truths of immediate and essential importance, bearing more or less directly on our every day behaviour, means of continual resource and consolation in life, and calm and sure hope in death. 13 Pusey, Patience and Confidence, p. 132. Nockles, “Pusey and the Question of Church and State,” pp. 275–276. 14 J.H. Newman, Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, tract 90 in vol. 5 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1841), p. 3. J.H. Newman, A Letter to the Rev. Godfrey Faussett, D.D., Margaret Professor of Divinity, on Certain Points of Faith and Practice (Oxford, 1838a.), pp. 39–40. 15 Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 81–82. Varley, The Last of the Prince Bishops, pp. 194–195, 247n50.

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Newman wrote the first three tracts, all published on September 9, 1833. A fourth by Keble appeared less than a fortnight later. Eighteen authors overall contributed to the ninety tracts published over more than seven years.16

The Practice of Obedience

Pusey’s Tract 18, Thoughts on the Benefits of the System of Fasting Enjoined by Our Church, which appeared shortly before Christmas of 1833, explained that the early church survived persecution through severe self-denial. Christians faced terrible spiritual peril when these severe physical dangers receded. Christianity could have degenerated into an easy profession, compatible with luxury and self-satisfaction. Fasting maintained an essential connection to the purifying struggles of the early Church. Pusey argued that the practice of mortification retained particular relevance in the current “luxurious and scoffing age.” The first paramount evil which destroys its tens of thousands, is probably self-indulgence; the second, which hinders thousands in their progress heavenwards, is being ‘busy and careful about many things’, whether temporal or spiritual. …In the present conflict throughout the world, in which the pride of human and Satanic strength seems put forth to the utmost, humility and a chastened dependent spirit would seem to have an especial efficacy. Earnest Christians might legitimately object that foregoing food was trivial compared to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Pusey responded that the spiritual benefits of fasting emerged from the cumulative development of pious habits. Salvation resulted not from “any great acts or great sacrifices” but a succession of small actions which built our moral character—actions that required the practical guidance of the Church’s rituals. “It were scarcely a discipline,” he noted, “if its practice brought with it an immediate reward.”17 16

17

J.H. Newman, Advertisement to vol. 3 of Tracts for the Times (London, 1836), p. vi. I. Williams, Advertisement to vol. 1 of Plain Sermons, by Contributors to the ‘Tracts for the Times’, ed. I. Williams and W.J. Copeland (London, 1839), p. 2. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 164–166. For a list of the tracts, their dates and authors, see Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 3, pp. 473–480. E.B. Pusey, Thoughts on the Benefits of the System of Fasting Enjoined by Our Church, tract 18 in vol. 1 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1833).

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Pusey’s advocacy of fasting reflected the broader Tractarian agenda.18 He explained elsewhere that the Tracts’ great object was to “bring up men’s practice to the standard of their Church.” For this reason the Tractarians stressed that no one can become obedient to God without, as Newman put it, “a vigorous struggle, a persevering warfare against ourselves.” Christ’s Passion, of course, embodied and defined this standard of self-denying virtue. He stressed that we must pattern our lives according to Christ’s lived experience because we all “suffer pain, sorrow, bereavement, anxiety, desolateness, privations.” We could not redeem our sinful natures without affliction. Pusey preached that “our first step is patience, ‘Enduring the Cross’.” Keble agreed: We have all need of patience: one and all, we have great need of it. Sooner or later we must all bear our cross; only He will give us our choice, whether we will take it unwillingly, and with fretful hearts, like the impenitent thief by our Lord’s Cross: or rather, with humble, lowly, yet hopeful spirits, like him who relented, and who saw Christ that day in Paradise. Through careful and unremitting practice our virtues would grow together in mutual support and create a Christian temper of mind. The Gospels transformed pain from a punishment into a privilege—a truth that had a lamentably weak hold on modern minds. The Tractarian movement sought to return men to a more robust faith by reminding them of their Christian legacy. “Taking hardship from a Saint is like depriving a mother of one of her children,” Frederick William Faber rhapsodized in his entry on St. Wilfrid for Newman’s Lives of the English Saints series. Only obedience to God, Faber noted, had higher value to a saint than his austerities.19 Newman and Keble oversaw the publication of the ultimate statement of Tractarian principles of devotion, the multivolume Remains of the Late Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude (1838–9). Froude succumbed to a long battle with tuberculosis in 1836. His anguished friends resolved to bring his vivid private reflections to a public audience because, in Newman’s words, “we have 18 19

On the Tractarian insistence on cultivating right patterns of behavior through patient endurance and self-denial, see Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 184–227. E.B. Pusey, A Letter to the Right Rev. Father in God, Richard Lord Bishop of Oxford, on the Tendency to Romanism imputed to Doctrines Held of Old, as Now, in the English Church, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1839), pp. 183–184. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol, 7, pp. 86–101, vol. 8, pp. 137–138, 148–149, 204–205 (quotations on vol. 7, p. 86 and vol. 8, p. 149). Pusey, Sermons for the Church’s Seasons, pp. 261–273 (quotation on p. 264). Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. 8, pp. 14–17; see also vol. 6, pp. 263–264. F.W. Faber, Lives of the English Saints: St. Wilfrid, Bishop of York (London, 1844), pp. 66–67.

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often said [our] movement, if any thing comes of it, must be enthusiastic— now here is a character fitted above all others to kindle enthusiasm.” This passionate emotional engagement was distinct from the public ecstasies and sudden conversions popularly associated with evangelicalism. Froude observed that “Catholic enthusiasts may be hated, but they never can become ridiculous as the Methodists are.” Rather the Tractarians channeled “enthusiasm” into private asceticism, settled conviction and silent wonder at the sacramental beauty of the traditional liturgy—“feelings of awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness which may be especially called Catholic,” as Newman later put it. He valued Froude in particular for his exemplary ability to “indulge metaphysical speculations to the utmost extent and yet be practical.”20 When packaging the “remains” of Froude’s life, Newman and Keble decided to begin the first volume with the practical—with the young Froude’s intense personal struggle to sanctify his life in patience, humility, and self-denial. In part, this editorial decision was tactical. Newman recognized that Froude’s heated disdain for the English Reformation and his fervent desire to restore the Church of England to its medieval Catholic roots would provoke recrimination. Best, Newman told Keble, to start with Froude’s private struggles and thoughts, which “will interest persons in F’s favor, who do not know him” before releasing material “which might offend prejudices.” This decision also aligned Froude’s personal journey to the Oxford Movement’s larger ideals. As Newman had preached in 1830, for Christians to arrive at truth “they must begin by a moral reformation, by self-denial.” It was absolutely essential to depict Froude’s “metaphysical speculations” as the fruit of a prior obedient submission to God and not as the conclusions of self-wise reasoned inquiry.21 The sermons Froude wrote after his 1829 ordination into the priesthood, the subject of volume two of the Remains, are defined by their persistent calls to self-command. “The course of things is so arranged as to make patience and industry the only means by which we can be brought to any good, first in this life, and then in the life to come,” he observed in one representative passage. He embraced the “Catholic Faith” of the apostolic church with such fervor 20

21

J.H. Newman to J. Keble (30 June and 16 July 1837), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 6, pp. 86–87, 96–98. Froude, Remains, vol. 1, p. 433. Newman, A Letter to the Rev. R.W. Jelf, p. 26. For context, see P. Brendon, “Newman, Keble and Froude’s Remains,” English Historical Review 87 (1972), pp. 697–716; Brendon, Hurrell Froude; Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 145–150; and Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 79–90, 136–139, 158–159, 313–321. J.H. Newman to J. Keble (30 June and 16 July 1837), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 6, pp. 86–87, 96–98. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, p. 227.

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because he held it as absolutely certain that it fortified Christians to “return to our labours more diligent, and more humble, and more charitable to all mankind.” In the narrative that Newman and Keble constructed, these opinions followed as the culmination of Froude’s prior struggles towards holiness as detailed by extracts from his journal published in the prior volume. The journal entries began in 1826 at a hinge in Froude’s life. In the spring, shortly after his 23rd birthday, he won a coveted Oriel fellowship, but this external achievement paled next to his intense inward spiritual battle. “I must fight against myself with all my might, and watch my mind at every turning,” he grimaced. Again and again he met defeat: in the months between winning the fellowship and returning to Oxford in October he had, to intense self-loathing, “allowed myself to relax in all self-denial.” He determined on a “fresh start…[to] begin a sort of monastic austere life, and do my best to chastise myself before the Lord.” He would rise early and study hard, attend chapel regularly, eat little and plainly, save money, avoid the allures of unserious society, and keep the fasts of the Church rigorously but without ostentation. He faced crisis in November when he started to worry that “abstinences and self-mortifications may, themselves, be a sort of intemperance. …They ought not be persevered in, further than as they are instrumental to a change of character in things of real importance.” With this thought he relaxed his regimen, only to recoil after two days in shame at “my want of patience.” Even if his original resolution had been rash, he would not again waver from it. He could not treat persisting in a pledge of behavior to God as voluntary—especially if the terms of the pledge had been injudicious. The harsh rigors “will be an excellent discipline of patience, like an illness, or any other natural evil.” “Perseverance without regard to events” provided “a dignified and manly course” that placed trust in God’s wisdom and not in the whims of self-will. These inner struggles merged with Froude’s intellectual reflections to impress upon him the necessity for the sacramental acts and the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline which characterized the early church.22 The Remains thus presented a portrait not merely of a personal journey towards obedience and self-mastery, but the dawning awareness that only the ancient apostolic forms of devotion and worship made such mastery possible. The patient heart led and purified the intellect. The perpetual need to tame our rebellious natures did not mean that the Christian should withdraw from the business of the world. On the contrary, as Froude emphasized, there was a spiritual necessity for diligence in secular matters. “Active and constant occupation,” he explained, offered the surest 22 Froude, Remains, vol. 1, pp. 5–68, 94, 99–100, vol. 2, pp. 14–41, 68–69. Brendon, Hurrell Froude, pp. 75–84.

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security against indulging self-conceited and impure impulses. But a purely secular path to virtue did not exist because our corrupted nature could never progress to righteousness on its own. Keble explained: For great indeed is our natural slothfulness: the sloth and languor in spiritual things of every man since the fall. …If we have won ground during Lent and Easter; and surely it is our own fault entirely, if we have not; so many and gracious are the helps provided for us by our Lord in His Holy Church; we must not expect to keep it as a matter of course; we have still need of patience and perseverance. We are like people in a boat on a running stream: if we leave off exerting ourselves, we shall not stay where we are, but shall drift off course downwards, and lose all we have gained before we are aware.23 Our never-ending exertions—our constant struggle, as Newman expressed it in his devotional poetry, “to quell [our] restless thoughts and envious sighs and doubts”—provided a necessary but insufficient condition for repentance and salvation. We had the duty to wait submissively on providence and not imagine that our own efforts could do anything other than prepare us to accept undeserved grace. Our ability to endure did not belong to us but was a gift from God. “It is a very dangerous deceit of impatience,” Pusey warned, “to think we could be patient under any other than what God gives us.”24 Patient and humble obedience to God demanded submission to a unified church. The Tractarians fought tenaciously against any notion that Christians should tolerate (much less welcome) a diversity of opinions because, as Newman explained, “what seems to be a small deviation from correctness in the abstract system, becomes considerable and serious when it assumes a substantive form.” The Church alone possessed the moral competency and divine presence to tame our sinning natures with a set of doctrines, rules, and rituals that bound us to the will of God. We risked a forfeit of God’s grace if we opened ourselves even momentarily to Satan’s power. The idea that we could navigate a world awash in temptation on our own was suicidal hubris. Newman 23 Froude, Remains, vol. 2, pp. 34–36. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. 6, pp. 263–264. 24 J.H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions (London, 1868), p. 55. Pusey, Sermons for the Church’s Seasons, p. 267. On the necessity of never-ending perseverance in Christian duty, see Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 5, p. 264; and Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. 1, p. 57, 198–227, vol. 2, p. 408, vol. 3, p. 13, vol. 5, p. 101. On the need to wait on God’s providence and to accept undeserved grace, see ibid., vol. 5, p. 101, vol. 8, pp. 16–17.

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c­ ompared those who wanted to emancipate their private study of scripture from the teachings of the church to “the self-sufficient natural philosopher, who should obstinately reject Newton’s theory of gravitation, and endeavour, with talents inadequate to the task, to strike out some theory of motion by himself.”25 Keble explained the interaction between ecclesiastical authority, personal conduct, and salvation. Let us beseech God to give to them and to us all such patience as dutiful children practise, when they see their parents ordering matters in a way very different from what they (the children) would expect. If they are dutiful children, they submit to all that, quietly: so let us submit to the dealings of our heavenly Father, both with the Church outwardly, and inwardly with our own souls. Let us make up our minds beforehand, that we are bad judges, that God knows better than we, that He will take care of the events of things, only let us take care of our duties. So not losing time and temper in vain imaginations, our hearts will be free to look after the one thing needful, pleasing Him and doing His will.26 A personal relationship with scripture, no matter how deep or reverent, did not free us from governance of the church because, as Newman said, the Bible provided “a rule of faith, not a rule of practice; a rule of doctrine, not a rule of conduct or discipline.” Although the Tracts encouraged reverence for ritual, liturgy, and church adornment, their authors never saw such things as goods in themselves. Their importance resided in their proficiency in molding and disciplining behavior. Newman in an early Tract did not oppose the alteration of the liturgy because he considered it perfect. He worried instead that liturgical reform, however well-meaning, and perhaps even justified on abstract grounds, would invite a “temper of innovation” to seize the mind: “when we begin to examine and take to pieces, our judgment becomes perplexed, and our feelings unsettled.”27 25

J.H. Newman, On Purgatory (Against Romanism.—No. 3), tract 79 in vol. 4 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1837), pp. 1–2. Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 50–51. On the danger of giving into temptation even once, see Pusey, Patience and Confidence, pp. 128– 129; Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. 3, p. 13; and Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8, pp. 204–205. 26 Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. 9, pp. 287–288. 27 J.H. Newman, The Grounds of Our Faith, tract 45 in vol. 1 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1834), p. 4. J.H. Newman, Thoughts Respectfully Addressed to the Clergy on Alterations in the Liturgy. The Burial Service. The Principle of Unity, tract 3 in vol. 1 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1833), pp. 1–3. On Tractarian attitudes to ritual and ceremony, see Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 209–233.

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The Tractarians believed that no one in the English church could define the doctrines and rites necessary to mold Christian conduct more authoritatively because no one spoke with their authenticity on the genuine apostolic tradition. In Newman’s eyes, those he condemned were heretics, those who condemned him were schismatics, with nothing in between. Emphasis on individual judgment and personal freedom promoted nothing other than arrogance, self-indulgence, and restlessness—it was, Newman insisted, a “shallow and detestable” creed radically incompatible with obedience to God and as such “is now Satan’s instrument in deluding the nations.” “Men are led on to gratify the pride of human nature,” he lamented further, “by standing aloof from all systems, forming a truth for themselves and countenancing this or that denomination of Christians according as each maintains portions of that which they have already assumed to be the truth.” Newman noted that those who clamored to grant each man his individual judgment in religious matters blithely violated this principle in other provinces of knowledge. He noted that they rightly expected the common run of men to defer to the judgment of Isaac Newton and the great naturalist Georges Cuvier. When it comes to legal questions, men of common sense do not say that “I will not believe lawyers until I understand the laws.”28 No solution to this problem existed other than a return to an apostolic tradition freed from the subsequent corruptions of popery. This was particularly vital in an age which made an idol of the human tendency “to generalize freely, to be impatient of such concrete truth as existing appointments contain, to attempt to disengage it, to hazard sweeping assertions, to lay down principles, to mount up above God’s visible doings, and to subject them to tests derived from our own speculations.”29

Vanity, Liberal and Evangelical

Liberalism and its political expression in the Whig party represented the embodiment of selfishness and vanity. Newman considered the Whigs to be 28 Newman, A Letter to the Rev. Godfrey Faussett, pp. 7–8. Newman, Thoughts Respectfully Addressed to the Clergy, p. 1. Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, p. 117. J.H. Newman, On the Controversy with the Romanists, tract 71 in vol. 3 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1836), p. 27. Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, p. 4–5. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6, pp. 330–332. 29 J.H. Newman, On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion, tract 73 in vol. 3 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1836), pp. 20–21.

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“vile vermin.” Their political success filled Keble with shame for his country. Froude marveled “how Whiggery has by degrees taken up all the filth that has been secreted in the fermentation of human thought!”30 The Tractarians routinely associated liberalism with “latitudinarianism.” The label originally appeared in the middle of the seventeenth century. In a narrow sense it referred to Restoration clergymen who attempted to heal the wounds of the English Civil War through theological moderation. The word almost immediately slipped this neutral descriptive mooring and became a term of contempt for indifference, laxity, skepticism, and permissiveness in religious belief and observance. It also acquired an imputation of impious rationality; one seventeenthcentury clergyman barked that latitudinarians made “Reason, Reason, Reason, their only holy Trinity.”31 This abusive sense carried into the nineteenth century. Newman formally defined latitudinarianism as the doctrine that no man could hold another to account for his private judgment about the meaning of scripture. This in effect subordinated scripture to the caprice of individual reason. Keble in his National Apostasy sermon identified one of the worst symptoms of a diseased age as “the growing indifference, in which men indulge themselves, to other men’s religious sentiments. Under the guise of charity and toleration we are come almost to this pass; that no difference in matters of faith, is to disqualify for our approbation and confidence, whether in public or domestic life.”32 The Tractarians of course accepted as axiomatic that licentiousness and heresy naturally resulted from this rudderless approach to sacred truth. Newman also stated that latitudinarianism carried the stench of mental weakness in its rejection of “manly understanding.” Or, when not actually weak, the latitudinarian was a hypocrite who attempted to impose his will on others while pretending to do otherwise. “Latitudinarians…profess charity towards all doctrines,” Newman noted, but in practice they “count it heresy to oppose the principle of latitude.” As Newman’s pupil and brother-in-law Thomas Mozley explained, “neutrality, …in the matter of religion, is no neutrality at all.” Newman endorsed Bishop Horsley’s apocalyptic vision that a pretense of universal toleration would herald the coming of the Antichrist. Latitudinarianism would tear Christianity into rival and increasingly ineffectual sects. The most 30

J.H. Newman to R.H. Froude (10 August 1831), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 2, p. 348. Froude, Remains, vol. 1, p. 340. 31 M.I.J. Griffin, Latitudinarianism in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England, ed. L. Freedman, annotated R.H. Popkin (Leiden, 1992), pp. 3–13. 32 Newman, Lectures on the Scripture Proof, pp. 14–26. Keble, National Apostasy, p. 15 (italics in original).

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rancid heresies would then overwhelm an enervated and fragmented community of faith. Newman explicitly used this horrifying vision to rally his followers to place “a curb upon our self-willed, selfish hearts.”33 Liberal latitudinarianism represented a soft target. The Tractarians tapped into widespread anxiety about accelerating social, political, cultural, and economic transformation. The attack on evangelicals, both within and outside the established church, presented a more delicate challenge. Evangelicalism offered a competing spiritual home for those disconcerted by the pace and direction of modern life. The Tractarians argued that evangelicals in fact also truckled to contemporary narcissism. They objected in particular to two central tenets of evangelical thought: the justification by faith in Christ’s Atonement, and the supremacy of scripture. For evangelicals, Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross opened the only path towards salvation. The Scottish evangelical Thomas Chalmers explained that those who repudiated their sinful natures by placing faith in the Atonement unite “peace to their own souls with glory to God, in the highest, [and]…experience a love which was before unfelt, which weans them from all their idolatrous affections, and translates them from the state of the carnally to that of the spiritually minded.” He stressed that we achieved this spiritual security “not by working for the atonement but simply by receiving the atonement.”34 This sharply contradicted the Tractarians’ conviction that immersion into the mysteries of faith happened gradually as a result of personal holiness and obedience mediated through the Church. Tracts by Williams attacked the evangelical understanding of the Atonement for promoting the false belief that we could acquire salvation through “a mere effort of the feelings or imagination.” This error encouraged “a state of the mind when the feelings are strongly moved by religion, but the heart is not adequately purified nor humbled.” This “puffing up” posed grave spiritual danger by discouraging “a self-denying and consistent performance of religious duties in secret.” The evangelicals’ “supposed sense of the Atonement” committed the same sin as liberalism: “substituting a system of man’s own creation for that which god has given.” Pusey condemned the Wesleyan ideal of ­sudden conversion as a “developed heresy” which checked the working of 33

J.H. Newman, “Apostolical Tradition,” British Critic 20 (1836), p. 174. Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, p. 294. T. Mozley, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” British Critic 30 (1841), p. 64. J.H. Newman, Advent Sermons on Antichrist, tract 83 in vol. 5 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1838), pp. 52–54. 34 Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul, vol. 1, pp. 228, 519–520. The Tractarians’ attitude to Chalmers is discussed in Skinner, Tractarians and the “Condition of England,” pp. 97–100. See also H. Wilberforce, “Dr. Chalmers’s Lectures on Establishments,” British Critic 26 (1839), pp. 228–244.

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repentance. For Wesleyans “‘experiences’ are not the results of ‘patience’, which ‘the trial of our faith worketh’.” Newman similarly insisted that the evangelical notion of sudden conversion pandered to the age’s profane instincts: “Nor is there among the theories of the world any more congenial to the sated and remorseful sensualist, who, having lost command of his will, feels that if he is to be converted, it must be by some sudden and violent excitement.”35 The Tractarian position on the Atonement provoked ire far beyond evangelical circles, sparking a controversy which radiated throughout the English Church, particularly after suspicion of the Tractarians’ commitment to Prote­ stantism reached a crescendo in the early 1840s. In 1841 James Monk, the conservative high-church Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, declared in a Charge to the clergy of his dioceses that withholding the Atonement from Christian teaching was inexcusable.36 Both Williams and Pusey replied indignantly that they never in fact advocated any such thing; rather, as Pusey angrily explained, they objected “to a sadly irreverent way of preaching it, as the means of conversion.” It was necessary, he continued, to ensure that the Atonement was not introduced “when minds are for the time unfit to receive it, when it might harden rather than soften them.” But this simply pried open another point of contention. Monk had also insisted that the duty of studying the scriptures was not limited to ministers but fell to every literate Christian. “There is no more dangerous Doctrine than that of leaving to the judgment of fallible man what parts of God’s Word are to be published, and what are to be kept back,” he claimed. For the Tractarians, human fallibility required the laity to behave as dutiful children. Williams alleged that circulating Bibles and other religious publications indiscriminately undermined the devotional habits of self-denial by fostering the illusion that we could approach God before acquiring the inward grace of taking up the Cross ourselves. He lamented that in the illdisciplined modern world there was “a great impatience, not only of any holding back of this Divine truth, but of the inculcation of it being accompanied with that of the necessity of mortification and obedience on the part of man.” 35

36

I. Williams, On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge (Parts I–III), tract 80 in vol. 4 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1837), pp. 13, 55–57. Williams, On Reserve (Conclusion), pp. 77–78. E.B. Pusey, A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, on Some Circumstances Connected with the Present Crisis in the English Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1842), pp. 127–128, 159–163. Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, p. 137. On the doctrine of reserve, see Hilton, The Age of Atonement, p. 27; Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 198–200; Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 283–289. J.H. Monk, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, at His Visitation in August and September MDCCCXLI (London, 1841), pp. 30–37.

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Williams, Pusey, and Newman all invoked Jesus’s admonition not to cast your pearls before swine to argue that the minister must carefully regulate access to scripture.37 As Keble’s national apostasy sermon demonstrated, deep angst about the relationship between church and state existed at the core of the Oxford Movement. Williams in Tract 86 drew a straight line from the “disobedience to authority which has so much infected this nation” to the defiance of God. Pusey provided the most systematic articulation of Tractarian political precepts in Patience and Confidence the Strength of the Church, a sermon he delivered from the pulpit of St. Mary’s on November 5, 1837. He dedicated the published text to Keble. Tractarians rarely addressed church-state questions so directly. They did of course routinely discuss the bond between the individual and the church. Pusey reflected on the clear political implications of that bond—ones that were rarely absent even if seldom spelled out so explicitly. The sermon commemorated two iconic moments in British political history: the anniversaries of Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and the landing of William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Pusey illustrated two principles: “1. That we may safely leave things to God. 2. That there is great risk, that man, by any impatience of his, will mar the blessing which God designs for His church.” From here he reached a startling conclusion. These principles not only justly condemned the Gunpowder Plot but, if applied consistently, also rendered the Glorious Revolution indefensible. One Tractarian sympathizer marveled that Pusey was probably the first clergyman to preach prominently against the Glorious Revolution since the opening decade of the eighteenth century.38 Pusey deployed an abundance of scriptural references to demonstrate that we could achieve God’s blessing only through patient submission to injury. The early church took root through suffering. The early martyrs did not lack the strength to resist persecution. No, he insisted, “they had strength not to resist, 37 Pusey, A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, pp. 61–62. I. Williams, A Few Remarks on the Charge of the Lord Bishop of Glocester [sic] and Bristol (Oxford, 1841), pp. 7–10. Williams, On Reserve (Parts I–III), pp. 69–80. Williams, On Reserve (Conclusion), pp. 14–15. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, p. 307. J.H. Newman to A.P. Perceval (6 September 1833), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 4, pp. 40–41. Monk’s Charge is discussed in Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 393–394. 38 Williams, Indications of a Superintending Providence, p. 24. Pusey, Patience and Confidence, p. 33. For the background and context of Pusey’s sermon, see Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 1, p. 406, vol. 2, pp. 25–27; Nockles, “Pusey and the Question of Church and State,” pp. 255– 256, 278–285, 290–291; and Skinner, Tractarians and the “Condition of England,” pp. 122–133.

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because they had strength to resist themselves.” Their endurance proved mightier than “what men call active virtues”: had they directly battled the Roman Empire they would have been infected by its degeneracy. The English people and their Church grievously forgot this lesson in 1688. James’s tyranny—Pusey conceded it as such—should have been met with a passive obedience that left the disposition of affairs in the hands of God. Instead, in tragic contrast with the church fathers, plotters and schemers refused to “await God’s time, to suffer so long as He wills, not to help ourselves.” This decision to call in William had catastrophic moral consequences. A complicit Church had bowed not to God but to the maxims of the world. After William and his wife Mary ascended to the throne they required their subjects to swear an oath of allegiance. This was no inconsequential demand: oath-taking was a sacred responsibility, and the new monarchs required the British people to break an earlier vow to James II. A small minority refused, including about four hundred clergyman. The regime purged these non-jurors from their offices. For Pusey, the amputation of these righteous men plunged the church into stagnation for more than a century. The purpose of this sermon was not to refight the battles of the seventeenth century, however, but to illustrate lessons for the 1830s when rebellion was conducted through acts of Parliament rather than force of arms. Pusey made this point explicitly in an abstract to the published version of the sermon. The main object of the Sermon was to inculcate, in the times which are coming upon the earth, patience and self-denial; the Revolution of 1688 was (as the day suggested) animadverted on as a signal case of the reverse, of a fretful and self-depending impatience and self-will; and that, both as an object of repentance, and in warning; the Church has once disobeyed, and she has suffered, not as yet in her temporal estate, but in her spiritual; a great revolution in part has, in part is, taking place with regard to the relation of the State to her, which must, at last, break up many of those bonds, which have been entwined round her, since, and as the consequence of, the Revolution. The Tractarians consistently preached that, for an individual, one violation of  moral law degraded a whole character. Pusey explained that the same ­principle applied to a nation as a whole. “We are not what we were,” he lamented; “but by God’s blessing we may again be.”39

39 Pusey, Patience and Confidence, pp. vi–vii, 15–31, 46–48, 92–93, 128–137. On the nonjuring clergy, see Hoppit, A Land of Liberty?, pp. 35–36, 216–217.

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Pusey’s sermon provoked widespread objection. For evangelicals, it confirmed their dark suspicion that the Tractarians wanted to rekindle the papist bonfires of the seventeenth century. The evangelical politician Anthony Cooper, Lord Ashley and the future seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, took Pusey’s “whitewashing James, and blackening King William” as evidence of the Tractarians’ “half-hearted” allegiance to the British constitution. The moderate high-churchman James Beaven preached a sermon shortly afterwards warning against Pusey’s politics.40 Liberals were predictably appalled at Patience and Confidence. Arnold admitted privately that his opinion of Pusey had declined even further after his “startling assertions…which appear to advocate pure despotism.” Herman Merivale, Oxford’s professor of political economy, reacted in the Edinburgh Review with incredulity. “The great work of our forefathers is plainly denounced as a sin, and held up as deserving national humiliation, instead of thanksgiving,” he marveled. He accused Pusey and his party of advancing “the very same spirit which looks with sinister misgivings on every attempt to extend the domain of thought—in natural and metaphysical science, as well as in the study of human life and history—as if they were so many insidious invasions of the province of Faith.” This marriage of dogmatism with “high disdain of all compromise and expediency” threatened Britain’s religious health.41 The publication of the first two volumes of Froude’s Remains less than a half year after Pusey’s sermon inflamed suspicions further. By the end of the 1830s, the Tractarians had carved out positions that invited distrust, if not outright hostility, from high church, low church, and broad church. This was driven in part by the intellectual trajectory of their theology. Newman worked out in dense philosophical detail the proper relationship between faith and reason. The resulting epistemological principles were daring, sophisticated, and uncompromising. They defined a way of knowing which demanded action, not just reflection. Newman and his allies acted. The eagerness to put their theology to work in the world placed them in collision with men whose values and interests were incompatible with the dictates of patience and humility as the Tractarians understood them. 40

E. Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Early of Shaftesbury, K.G. (London, 1886–7), vol. 1, p. 344. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 73–74. 41 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, p. 104. H. Merivale, “Dr.  Pusey’s Sermon on the Fifth of November,” Edinburgh Review 66 (1838), pp. 396, 404–405, 415.

chapter 8

Faith and Reason in Newman’s University Sermons When Edward Pusey joined the Oxford Movement John Henry Newman celebrated in a telling way: “his great learning, his immense diligence, his scholar-like mind, his simple devotion to the cause of religion” provided an indispensable resource for their “resistance to the liberal aggression.”1 The Tractarians depended heavily on scholarship, in particular on thorough study of the history and theology of the early church. Their work brought life to traditional apostolic Christianity. But reconstructing the dogma of the primitive church did more than inform their doctrine. The Church Fathers provided a model for living (as at present) “in most troublous time.”2 Fine theological libraries filled Newman with devotional awe. Look along their shelves, and every name you read there is, in one sense or other, a trophy set up in record of the victories of Faith. How many long lives, what high aims, what single-minded devotion, what intense contemplation, what fervent prayer, what deep erudition, what untiring diligence, what toilsome conflicts has it taken to establish its supremacy!3 Newman found writing a protracted and sometimes agonizing ordeal but at the same time believed rightly that his patient and scrupulous scholarship earned him influence.4 The relationship between virtue and knowledge concerned Newman his entire adult life. He reflected on the mutual reinforcement of learning, faith, and righteousness in one of his earliest sermons as an Anglican priest. Now, it is plain that humility and teachableness are qualities of mind necessary for arriving at the truth in any subject, and in religious matters as well as others. …Impatient, proud, self-confident, obstinate men, are 1 E. Short, Newman and His Contemporaries (New York, 2011), p. 95. 2 J.H. Newman to R.H. Froude (14 June 1834), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 4, pp. 274–275. See B.E. Daley, “The Church Fathers,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, ed. I. Ker and T. Merrigan (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 29–46. 3 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 314–315. 4 Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 150.

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generally wrong in the opinions they form of persons and things. Prejudice and self-conceit blind the eyes and mislead the judgment, whatever be the subject inquired into. Noetic colleagues in Oriel College had also laid claim to humble and patient character. Estrangement from these “liberal aggressors” forced Newman to recognize that he had to do more than generate a competing body of scholarship but a new relationship between knowledge and understanding. As he explained in 1838: What we need at present for our Church’s well-being, is not invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning in our divines, at least in the first place, though all these gifts of God are in a measure needed, and never can be unseasonable when used religiously, but we need peculiarly a sound judgment, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehensive mind, an abstinence from all private fancies and caprices and personal tastes,—in a word, divine wisdom. Newman recognized that assigning intellectual achievement as a handmaiden of wisdom undercut the claims to virtue made by liberals and evangelicals alike. Knowledge alone could never guide right judgment. Wisdom validated knowledge. Knowledge did not create wisdom.5 Meticulous familiarity with the early church was central to his project. “We have a vast inheritance,” he observed, “but no inventory of our treasures.” Such an inventory would provide the intellectual foundation for the forms of Christian duty. There would be no disunity in a church whose clergy were molded by a knowledge of antiquity. But it was not just the facts of the early church but the means by which men acquired them that would vanquish the multitude of modern errors. He defined the principles behind knowledge production in ways that disqualified his ideological opponents as “teachable” creators of genuine wisdom. He did this by distinguishing between God’s gift of grace, “given, not that we may know more, but that we may do better,” and the methods of “mere reasoners, disputers, [and] philosophical inquirers.”6 He articulated his ideas in their most sophisticated and coherent form in fifteen sermons preached before the University of Oxford between 1826 and 5 Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8, pp. 113–114. Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, pp. 30–31. 6 Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, pp. 30, 161–172. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, p. 203.

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1843.7 University sermons had been an integral part of Oxford life since the twelfth century and a tangled thicket of rules assigned the pulpit for these frequent occasions. They offered Newman an ideal forum for elaborating his epistemology because, unlike in a regular parish service, the congregation was exclusively academic. His goal was not simply to lay out the propositions of “paper logic” but to develop a practical theory of how men, with their fleshand-blood spiritual yearnings, acquire understanding.8

Faith, Reason and the Philosophical Temper

Newman argued in his first university sermon that (as the title indicated) “The Philosophical Temper [was] First Enjoined by the Gospel.” Pagans, he claimed, did not pursue truth with gravity and forbearance. They built systems for a variety of self-indulgent motives: amusement, disciples, material or social gain, gratification of their imagination and ingenuity. The resulting systems might have been clever and even useful in their limited compass, but they were not genuinely philosophical. Christianity created philosophy, properly understood, by advancing the first coherent system of virtue. This system in turn produced the philosophical temper. To be dispassionate and cautious, to be fair in discussion, to give to each phenomenon which nature successively presents its due weight, candidly to admit those which militate against our own theory, to be willing to be ignorant for a time, to submit to difficulties, and patiently and meekly proceed, waiting for farther light, is a temper (whether difficult or not at this day) little known to the heathen world; yet it is the only temper in which we can hope to become interpreters of nature, and it is the very temper which Christianity sets forth as the perfection of our moral character. The opposite qualities—“rashness of assertion, hastiness in drawing conclusions, unhesitating reliance on our own acuteness and powers of reasoning”— impeded discovery. Even granting this jaundiced view of pre-Christian 7 For a rich and comprehensive analysis of Newman’s university sermons, see J.D. Earnest and G. Tracey, editors’ introduction and editors’ notes to Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford by J.H. Newman (Oxford, 2006); for a discussion of what a university sermon was, see pp. xxi–xxviii. See also Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 258–269. Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority, pp. 16–17. T.J. Norris, “Faith,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, ed. I. Ker and T. Merrigan (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 78–83. 8 Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 285.

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intellectual history, Newman still faced an obvious objection. He acknowledged that many distinguished modern philosophers were “ill disposed towards those doctrines which Revelation enjoins upon our belief.” This did not contradict his point, he argued. Successful intellectuals needed only an attenuated form of Christian humility, enough to avoid the pitfalls of haste and arrogance but insufficient for salvation. “The philosopher confesses himself to be imperfect,” Newman observed; “the Christian feels himself to be sinful and corrupt.” He worried that as science became more developed and selfsufficient it would increasingly forget and then “disown the parent to whom it has been so greatly indebted.” He offered a solution: “early religious training.”9 This sermon contained little new—William Paley, John Wesley, Samuel Johnson, and Joseph Butler would have endorsed its definition of the philosophical temper, as would Noetic contemporaries like Richard Whately, Renn Dickson Hampden, and Thomas Arnold. The lack of innovation is not surprising. Newman wrote the sermon at age twenty-five at a time when, by his own later admission, he had not yet shaken free of Whately’s influence.10 He never repudiated its views but used them to build a sophisticated theory of the interplay between faith, reason, and the Christian character in the production of human wisdom. He would solve two crucial problems that he had left hanging in 1826: why did philosophers all-too-routinely fail to achieve transcendent virtue? and, why would early religious education solve the problem? His first university sermon represented the common ground he would always share with his liberal opponents; the subsequent ones demonstrated the radically different conclusions he drew from these shared conventions. Newman postulated that the human mind possessed distinct but complementary faculties which, when in balance, allowed us to comprehend reality in its different aspects. Our senses granted us direct but imperfect knowledge of the material world. Our reasoning minds organized and extended these perceptions to travel, indirectly, through time and space. Reason and sense perception were, however, utterly incompetent in granting access to immaterial reality. Here we had to draw upon what the Epistle to Hebrews called “the evidence of things not seen.” This required faith, “the particular faculty or frame of mind… regarded in Scripture as the chosen instrument connecting heaven and earth.”11 Newman did not assign reason exclusively to the discovery of physical phenomena and leave to faith the investigation of spiritual realms. Our understanding of the material world required leaps of insight. Formal logic and 9 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 1–16. 10 Earnest and Tracey, introduction and notes to Fifteen Sermons, pp. xv–xvi. 11 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 167–170, 197–209.

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technical systems appraised and codified great scientific and philosophical advances but did not produce them. The most remarkable victories of genius, remarkable both in their originality and the confidence with which they have been pursued, have been gained, as though by invisible weapons, by ways of thought so recondite and intricate that the mass of men are obliged to take them on trust, till the event or other evidence confirms them. …Let it be considered how rare and immaterial (if I may use the words) is metaphysical proof. In precisely the same way, reason could never give us access to immaterial truths or “Him who is unseen,” but it did provide an indispensable tool for organizing and evaluating our spiritual experiences. The unlearned person who “savingly believes the Gospel, on the word of his teacher,” acts on the gift of “supernatural grace.” The great philosopher acts on the gift of genius. The faculties in each case reach their different objectives by following the same general path. Sense, reason, and faith thus did not compete within in a properly regulated mind. We needed to draw fully upon our compound nature to grasp, however imperfectly, “the clear, calm, accurate vision, and comprehension of the whole course, the whole work of God.” Privately, he attributed Hurrell Froude’s intellectual achievement to “his denying himself that vulgar originality that is rationalistic”—in other words, that he brought reason and faith together in a reverent and productive partnership.12 In this scheme, faith and reason were not things we had but did. When men drew upon their whole nature—faith and reason working in perfect symmetry—they brought their action and their belief into harmony. Philosophy cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be surprised, cannot fear, cannot lose its balance, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because it discerns the whole in each part, the end in each beginning, the worth of each interruption, the measure of each delay, because it always knows where it is, and how its path lies from one point to another. He spent little time defending his view of reason as “a living spontaneous energy within us.” Much more effort went into establishing faith as a habit of

12

Ibid., pp. 209–211. J.H. Newman to J. Keble (30 June 1837), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 6, pp. 86–87.

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mind and an instrument of personal conduct. “A man is responsible for his faith,” he insisted, “because he is responsible for his likings and dislikings, his hopes and his opinions, on all of which his faith depends.” No one could dispense with either reason or faith as acts of the mind: the only question is whether he did these acts well and virtuously. Not everyone had the training and ability to reflect accurately on the processes by which they arrived at conclusions; “in other words, all men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.” Faith depended upon the state of the heart. Right Faith is the faith of a right mind. Faith is an intellectual act; right Faith is an intellectual act, done in a certain moral disposition. Faith is an act of Reason, viz. a reasoning upon presumptions; right Faith is a reasoning upon holy, devout, and enlightened presumptions. Faith ventures and hazards; right Faith ventures and hazards deliberately, seriously, soberly, piously, and humbly, counting the cost and delighting in the sacrifice. No one lacked faith. The atheist made the same leap as the believer, just in the opposite direction. The only variable was the quality of the faith and this depended on the feedback loop between a man’s behavior and his moral condition. Without holiness of heart the faith of the professed Christian degenerated into prejudice, bigotry, credulity, and fanaticism—qualities that propelled him ever farther from God. Arrogance was the surest mark of this spiritual failure. Narrow-minded men could neither admit ignorance nor maintain truth as a duty larger than themselves. They distorted knowledge to serve their systems. A “teachable and humble spirit,” on the other hand, strengthened virtue into both a principle and a habit.13 Newman stressed that we must remain vigilant “while we freely cultivate the Reason in all its noble functions, to keep it in its subordinate place in our nature.” The argumentative exercises of reason could never be independently moral. We could develop and express our moral temper only through the prior rectitude of our faith, which could then, and only then, sanctify our reason. Newman observed that scripture remained silent on intellectual excellence precisely because it had no independent religious authority. The purpose of the Bible was “not to unfold a system for our intellectual contemplation, but to secure the formation of a certain character.” Under this view, science could never do more than create a “hypothetical law or system for convenience sake.” Those laws and systems might represent magnificent achievements, but they 13 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 65–67, 102–103, 170, 175–179, 184, 218, 223, 227–232, 252–254, 279, 290, 304.

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paled in importance beside “the real, primary and universal principles which guide the acts of a Mind,” which only faith could supply.14 The usurpations of reason destroyed the basis for this sound intellectual culture by fracturing our perspective and inflaming our vanity. Ancient philosophy illustrated the problem: the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, and other pagan schools sought excellence for self-veneration. Intellectual success proved self-defeating: “they began by being humble, and, as they advanced, humility and faith wore away from their character.” Intellectual progress at that point reversed. This failure was inevitable because they did not have access to the only thing that could have checked degeneration into proud self-complacency, the Son of God manifested in the flesh.15 This excuse was not available to the impious and unphilosophical men of the nineteenth century who had forced their secular inquiries and intellectual systems into the sacred preserve of morals and religion. This invasion of reason into morals and religions proved spiritually catastrophic. Reason, when unshackled from the disciple of faith, becomes a tool to gratify rather than conquer our basest desires. This left ordinary Christians morally adrift. Diligent collection of evidence, sifting of arguments, and balancing of rival testimonies, may be suited to persons who have leisure and opportunity to act when and how they will; they are not suited to the multitude. Faith, then, as being a principle for the multitude and for conduct, is influenced more by what (in language familiar to us of this place [Oxford]) are called εἰκότα [eikota] than by σημεία [semeia],—less by evidence, more by previously-entertained principles, views, and wishes. Newman of course denied that the multitude could develop right principles, views, and wishes on its own. The Gospel insisted that moral truth was not easily discerned. Most people remained ignorant “of those precepts of generosity, self-denial, and high-minded patience, which religion enforces.” They required “the personal influence, direct and indirect, of those who are commissioned to teach [the Truth].” These teachers alone had the legitimate authority to interpret scripture. The conviction that each individual could interpret truth and achieve virtue through his own reasoned judgment promoted an arrogant reliance on self which lured men away from the discipline of the church, the only reliable path towards obedient faith.16 14 15 16

Ibid., pp. 41–44, 58, 68–69, 75, 97, 171–176, 186, 208–209. Ibid., pp. 29–31, 283–290. Ibid., pp. 64–85, 179–180.

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Newman poured scolding contempt on “those flimsy self-invented notions, which satisfy the reason of the mere man of letters, or the prosperous and selfindulgent philosopher!” The pretensions of men of science received particular censure. He acknowledged that science produced wonderful knowledge, but its exclusive reliance on reason could also exercise “a tranquillizing influence” on the mind. In a parochial sermon he claimed that “sciences conversant with experiments on the material creation tend to make men forget the existence of spirit and the Lord of spirits.” In many cases, science ruined a man’s personal religious perceptions without wholly destroying his philosophical character. These unfortunates recognized and respected (even if they no longer felt) religion’s proper public claims. Too often, however, rasher and less philosophical colleagues rushed clamorously onto ground “which a reverent Faith wishes to keep sacred.” The operations of reason were particularly insidious because they appeared (falsely) separable from the person furnishing them. Unbelievers congratulated themselves on their rationality but “not because they decide by evidence, but because, after they have made their decision, they merely occupy themselves in sifting it.” When it came to fundamental moral questions—and none was more fundamental than the existence of God—no one arrived at their conclusions rationally. Men chose not to believe even if they pretended that disembodied reason had decided for them. This self-deception provided “unchecked opportunity for injustice and falsehood” because it allowed men to absolve themselves from having to take personal responsibility for unbelief.17 Newman dated the ascendancy of reason over faith to the Reformation. Protestants overreacted to the tyranny of Rome by overthrowing legitimate ecclesiastical power. Reason rushed into the vacuum “to render the proof of Christianity independent both of the Church and of the law of nature.” Newman made it clear that he was not attacking reason itself but rather the “popular sense” of the word. Over the course of his sermons he deployed a small army of adjectives to describe misapplied reason: captious, mere, human, forward, rebellious, versatile and garrulous, wrong, unaided, weak, bad, insufficient, unstable, and (most importantly) usurping.18 Faith appeared weak and inadequate if judged (falsely) by the standards of reason. The inferences of faith reached spontaneously inwards towards the conscience. Reason grasped outwards towards external evidence. Because the conscience brought with it 17

Ibid., pp. 39–40, 53–54, 75–77, 186, 201–202, 221–223, 280–281. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, p. 225. 18 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 19, 22, 40–41, 45–46, 50–51, 54, 57, 74, 78, 98, 196, 223–224, 336.

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no proof, the modern world considered faith “the reasoning of a weak mind, whereas it is in truth the reasoning of a divinely enlightened one.”19 Science and other forms of secular philosophy “must not dare profane the inner courts, in which the ladder of Angels is fixed for ever, reaching even to the Throne of God, and ‘Jesus standing on the right hand of God’.” This subservience had a crucial consequence: moral demotion brought with it a wide degree of autonomy. It would be an absurdity to attempt to find out mathematical truths by the purity and acuteness of the moral sense. It is a form of this mistake which has led men to apply such Scripture communications as are intended for religious purposes to the determination of physical questions. This error is perfectly understood in these days by all thinking men. Newman acknowledged that the Bible places the sun in motion around earth while science insists on the opposite; but he denied that this represented a true contradiction. Scripture and astronomy meant different things by “motion” and so each statement is “true for certain practical purposes in the system in which they are respectively found.” Setting science and revelation against each other not only served to create idle controversy, but, as he preached in a parochial sermon, it demonstrated a failure of the Christian temperament. We are led on to consider, how different are the character and effect of the Scripture notices of the structure of the physical world, from those which philosophers deliver. I am not deciding whether or not the one and the other are reconcileable; I merely say their respective effect is different. And when we have deduced what we deduce by our reason from the study of visible nature, and then read what we read in His inspired word, and find the two apparently discordant, this is the feeling I think we ought to have on our minds;—not an impatience to do what is beyond our powers, to weigh evidence, sum up, balance, decide, and reconcile, to arbitrate between the two voices of God,—but a sense of the utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate things as they really are. Science therefore held no responsibility for “real, primary and universal” moral principles. Its technical conclusions held little moral consequence and so 19

Ibid., pp. 20–21, 69–70, 201–203, 217–218.

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required light moral supervision—provided that these conclusions did not overstep their boundaries.20

Paley’s Science and Butler’s Faith

Taken as a whole, Newman’s sermons of the 1830s (both to the university and to his parish) illustrate the centrality of the eighteenth century—“a time when love was cold”—to his concepts of faith, reason, philosophy, and wisdom. William Paley embodied everything Newman hated about the theology and philosophy of the previous century. Utilitarian moral philosophy represented an especially impudent encroachment of mere reason into areas it did not belong. Newman looked no more kindly on Paley’s Evidences and Natural Theology. He did not object to Paley’s arguments but to their intended role in devotional life. Paley did not believe the wrong things; he believed them in the wrong way. It was a tragic mistake when he responded to the challenge posed to Christian belief by David Hume and others as if he were a barrister ambling into a courthouse to try a case. The evidences of Christianity, in the way that Paley deployed them, had no power to move men to belief because, to be successful, they had to assume the very thing they needed to prove: “one person… is convinced by Paley’s argument from the Miracles, another is not; and why?” Because one had already accepted God, the other had not. For Newman, the lesson could not be more clear: Paley’s view that we can establish faith through rational argument in fact led men away from Christianity. Natural theology and Paley’s approach to the evidences of Christianity encouraged irreverent disputation. Belief was a matter of obligation, not judgment. We would only perceive God’s creative hand in the fabric of nature when our faith prepared us to see it. Paley and other natural theologians mistook the effect of faith for its cause. Newman even conceded that “it is indeed a great question whether Atheism is not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the physical world, taken by themselves, as the doctrine of a creative and governing Power.” There could only be one safeguard against scientific inquiry sinking into infidelity: “the inward need and desire, the inward experience of that Power, existing in the mind before and independently of their examination of His material world.” Natural theology, by discounting the inward voice in favor of external evidence, fatally undermined its devotional goals.

20

Ibid., pp. 41–45, 348–353. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 2, pp. 207–209.

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There is no greater fallacy than to suppose…works [of natural theology] to be in themselves in any true sense religious at all. Religion…is something relative to us; a system of commands and promises from God towards us. But how are we concerned with the sun, moon, and stars? or with the laws of the universe? how will they teach us our duty? how will they speak to sinners?…There cannot be a more dangerous (though a common) device of Satan, than to carry us off from our own secret thoughts, to make us forget our own hearts, which tell us of a God of justice and holiness, and to fix our attention merely on the God who made the heavens; who is our God indeed, but not God as manifested to us sinners, but as He shines forth to His Angels, and to His elect hereafter. Newman indicted Paley’s particular emphasis on benevolence and harmony as a shallow pretext for ignoring the scriptural requirement to submit to God in self-denial. “A mutilated and defective evidence suffices for persuasion where the heart is alive,” Newman preached; “but dead evidences, however perfect, can but create a dead faith.”21 From his perspective, Paley’s cheerfully rationalistic theology and moral philosophy were not merely dead but rotting. Newman had a more complex relationship with Joseph Butler. He first read the Analogy in 1825 and the bishop’s ideals took an even deeper hold when he encountered their living application in Keble’s celebrated book of devotional poetry, the Christian Year of 1827.22 Froude, also under Keble’s inspiration, further embedded Butler into the Tractarian vision of apostolic Christianity.23 Newman, reflecting more than four decades after his first encounter with Butler, credited the Analogy with supplying two great insights. First, Butler’s analogy between the separate works of God convinced him that we must approach all forms of knowledge humbly. Second, Butler’s famous tenet that “probability is the very guide of life” allowed Newman to explain why humans, born to ignorance and suffering under the irreparable limitations of our faculties, must act in accordance to the accumulated evidence of God’s sovereign truth.24 He responded to his brother Charles’s skepticism of Christianity by insisting that “certainty in the business of life means a conviction sufficient for practice. …For everything we do, is done on probabilities.” He waved away the 21 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 50–56, 96–103, 185–192, 269–273. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, pp. 316–320. 22 Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 26, 31. L. Richardson, Newman’s Approach to Knowledge (Leominster, 2007), pp. 9–11. 23 Brendon, Hurrell Froude, pp. 54, 64, 157, 160–162, 175. 24 Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. 67–68, 77–78, 154.

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requirement that he prove the truth of Christianity beyond all theoretical doubt. “There is always a chance of error,” he conceded, but only a fool would refuse to look about him when awoken by a fire alarm. The possibility that the call might be in error does not justify slipping off back to sleep: “his abstraction objections will not save him from being burnt.” A humble acknowledgement of our own limitations thus did not provide an excuse for refusing to behave in accordance to the probable truth of eternal principles. “There is no inherent weakness in an argument from probabilities in a question of practice,” he lectured his brother.25 Newman endowed emotional intensity to Butler’s belief that the proof of Christianity “may be compared to what they call the effect in architecture or other works of art; a result from a great number of things so and so disposed and taken into one view.”26 The analogy between natural and revealed religion allowed Newman to treat the mysteries of nature and the mysteries of grace as notes in an intricate symphony. Its beauty, sublimity, and truth depended on the integrity of the whole—a whole that we could perceive only darkly and never through the dissections of superficial reason. Newman agreed passionately with Butler that humans were fundamentally ignorant. “The mystery with which we are encompassed all about” did not involve one or two points of religion but extended “to almost every sacred fact, and to every action of our lives.” In the case of the natural world we used reason to develop various tools of discovery, but eventually all reach their limit and result “in some great impossibility or contradiction, or, what we call in religion, a mystery.” These failures showed: that all along [our rule of discovery] has been but an expedient for practical purposes, not a true analysis or adequate image of those recondite laws which are investigated by means of it. …Though we use it with caution, still we use it, as being the nearest approximation to the truth which our condition admits. The situation was different in matters of faith, where we had the doctrines and precepts of scripture as “one bright Light before us.” As long our deductions are religious, we had no cause to worry whether or not they satisfied some academic standard of philosophy.27 25

J.H. Newman to C. Newman (19 August 1830), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 2, p. 280. Newman’s debt to Butler becomes particularly clear by comparing his comments to his brother to Butler, The Analogy, p. 239. 26 Butler, The Analogy, p. 240. 27 Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 2, pp. 210, 215. Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, p. 348.

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But how could we tell if our deductions were religious? Here Butler’s concept of probability proved decisive, but only after Newman modified it to his purpose. Butler argued that the balance of evidence left a strong presumption in favor of Christianity—but, as Newman recognized, this carried an implication that the Christian should merely place the smart spiritual bet. Newman wanted something entirely more robust: not to assuage doubt but to exclude it, not to provide functional but absolute certainty. His use of “probability” bore no relationship with sophisticated statistical methods meant to bring chance under rational analysis. Faith is a moral principle. It is created in the mind, not so much by facts, as by probabilities; and since probabilities have no definite ascertained value, and are reducible to no scientific standard, what are such to each individual, depends on his moral temperament. A good and a bad man will think very different things probable. In other words, our ability to correctly determine “probability” in spiritual matters depended on our habitual obedience to a clear and vigorous conception of our faith.28 Newman also stressed another central component of Butler’s system, the conscience as a constituent part of human nature. Here too he significantly adapted the inheritance. Butler had aligned the prodding of our conscience to our self-interest, not just absolutely for our state in the next world but for the most part for life in this one, too. Newman refused to make any such concession to the principle of expediency. He insisted that the stern and gloomy dictates of our conscience served only to chasten our disobedience and mold our moral character. It had no tendency towards our temporal advantage (in any case, nothing was so likely to damage the conscience as the comforts of life). But the conscience did provide the arena where the immaterial reality of God’s grace could guide our activities within the sensible world. Through its agency we made our true calculations of probability. Since the inward law of Conscience brings with it no proof of its truth, and commands attention to it on its own authority, all obedience to it is of the nature of Faith; and habitual obedience implies the direct exercise of a clear and vigorous faith in the truth of its suggestions, triumphing 28 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 179–184. See, T.J. Norris, Newman and His Theological Method: A Guide for the Theologian Today (Leiden, 1977), pp. 19–22, 133–135; and Richardson, Newman’s Approach to Knowledge, pp. 9–10, 104–105.

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over opposition both from within and without; quieting the murmurs of Reason, perplexed with the disorders of the present scheme of things, and subduing the appetites, clamorous for good which promises an immediate and keen gratification. Newman stressed the need to tame our appetites because the conscience did not function as a storehouse of abstract moral principles but as an instrument of moral action.29 Newman’s university sermons provided a systematic formulation of what his closest friends already believed. Keble credited Butler’s views on doubt and intellectual difficulty as a key inspiration. He insisted that we cannot pursue genuine learning absent moral excellence. A man could never see truth if his eyes were clouded with vanity and self-will. The usefulness, even of newly-discovered truths, must depend in a great measure upon something besides the ability of the discoverer. …Patience, simplicity, and diligence, are, comparatively, all in all. These must choose our course aright, and ensure perseverance in it: without which, mere velocity and energy would only take us farther wrong. Just as a traveller, without a compass, the faster and more fearlessly he goes, will but lose himself the more entirely in the mazes of an Indian forest.30 Keble worried that science, when not properly subordinated to religion, had a tendency “to make men overweening and irreligious.” Christians could avoid “idolizing…the material world” by seeing it as awash in poetic moral lessons; natural phenomena reflected the interaction of living symbols, not dead matter.31 More prosaically, Pusey in the 1850s stridently opposed university reforms proposed by a Royal Commission (Baden Powell was a commission member and Arthur Stanley, the disciple of the Tractarians’ old foe Thomas Arnold, served as secretary). Oxford’s purpose, Pusey maintained, was “not to furnish a mere stimulant for intellectual study, but so to impart knowledge and to 29 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 19–24; see also, pp. 65–67, 93, 141, 162–163, 174–176; and Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 1, p. 312. For the broader place of the conscience in Newman’s thought, see G.J. Hughes, “Conscience,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, ed. I. Ker and T. Merrigan (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 189–220. 30 Keble, Sermons, Academical and Occasional, p. 5; see also pp. vi–xvi, 17–18, 42. 31 J. Keble, On the Mysticism attributed to the Early Fathers of the Church, tract 89 in vol. 5 of Tracts for the Times, ed. J.H. Newman (Oxford, 1840), pp. 140–143.

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discipline the mind, as to form (by God’s grace) Christian men.” A strictly professional education cramped the mind if begun before the student formed “habits of patient and persevering attention.” He lamented the current tendency “to look to mere knowledge, not to the disciplining and training of the powers of the mind, as the one end to be obtained” in education. This he considered to be a tragic inversion since only moral discipline prepared the mind for life’s duties, including new discovery.32

Induction and the Noetic Defense of Reason

The relationship between faith and reason that Newman defined with such care in his university sermons purposefully alienated him and his followers from the Noetics. The stress that Richard Whately laid on the reasonableness of Christianity provided a central point of departure for Newman. Whately wrote his famous Elements of Logic (first ed., 1826) in large part to train Christians in the mental skills necessary to combat religious skeptics. “The cause of Truth, and not least, of religious Truth, is benefited by everything that tends to promote sound reasoning and facilitate the detection of fallacy,” he wrote. “The adversaries of our Faith would…have been on many occasions more satisfactorily answered…had a thorough acquaintance with Logic been a more common qualification than it is.”33 Newman himself had provided the germ of Whately’s Logic. He used essays that Newman wrote on logic under his direction as the jumping off point for his treatise. Whately’s encouragement and guidance electrified the timid and insecure young man. Newman told Whately in 1827 that he had taught him “to think correctly, and…to rely upon myself.” He affirmed this debt decades later in his Apologia pro Vita Sua. But it was clear by the close of the 1820s that this spirit of self-reliance had pushed student and teacher apart. The bitter contest over Robert Peel’s reelection as mp for the university in 1829 brought the breech into the open. Whately retaliated against Newman’s campaign against Peel with an elaborate prank. He deliberately invited the least intellectual, most port-sodden members of the university to a dinner party—and sat Newman down in their midst. When the farce was over, Whately pointedly asked Newman if he was proud of his

32

Pusey, “Evidence,” pp. 73–75, 96, 172–173. See Ward, Victorian Oxford, pp. 180–209; I. Ellis, “Pusey and University Reform,” in Pusey Rediscovered, ed. P. Butler (London, 1983), pp. 1–33; and Shea and Whitla, Essays and Reviews, pp. 778–779. 33 Whately, Elements of Logic, pp. xxvii–xxviii.

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friends.34 Newman’s university sermons were in essence an extended riposte to the comedy of manners which Whately had engineered. The sermons were intended to demonstrate that he could match, even exceeded, the Noetics’ philosophical rigor—whatever else there were, the sermons were not designed to go down well with port—while repudiating their rationalism. Whately left Oxford in 1831 to serve as Archbishop of Dublin. Newman preached his third university sermon, on the “Usurpation of Reason,” seven weeks after Whately’s consecration in Ireland. From that point forward, Hampden and Powell embodied in Oxford the principles that Newman sought to drive from the university and the larger church. The two Noetics conspicuously embedded their thought in the inductive method at the heart of modern science—a fact gleaming with cultural significance. Newman felt no concerns about induction as an instrument of physical investigation, but he did object strenuously to its use as a moral standard or as a means to interrogate religious matters. When Hampden and Powell associated their religious and political values with the inductive method, they adopted a pattern of virtuous behavior and Christian duty that in the light of Newman’s university sermons was stained with heresy and self-will. Powell, as a man of science, had the deeper personal and intellectual connections to inductive philosophy. In 1823, while still in his twenties, he lauded the support geology gave to revealed religion. The geologist must never distort his theories to support a literal reading of Genesis, he counselled. But his discoveries nonetheless gave proof of God’s providential design of nature. More than that, however, the inductive method of geological investigation was one which “could not fail to repress that hasty spirit of unfounded generalization which is too commonly the parent of infidelity.” Powell developed this position in detail in his first book, Rational Religion Examined (1826). Induction promoted a strict and accurate reasoning that was as necessary for theology as it was for science. More importantly, it fostered a sense of cautious humility that was necessary for the advance of knowledge.35 Isaac Newton exemplified the power and sanctity of this method in practice. While Powell, unlike many of his scientific colleagues, did not envelope 34 Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. 68–74. J.H. Newman to R. Whately (14 November 1826), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 1, pp. 306– 307. See also, Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 19; Brent, “Whately;” Earnest and Tracey, introduction and notes to Fifteen Sermons, pp. xv–xvi, xxx–xxxv. 35 B. Powell, “Geology of England and Wales,” British Critics 20 (1823), pp. 297–298. Powell, Rational Religion Examined. Corsi, Science and Religion, analyzes the ways that Powell used inductive methodology in developing his theological views.

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Newton in uncritical hero-worship, the triumph of his theory of universal gravitation still provided a model—as much moral as intellectual—for obtaining knowledge. This reverence for the Newtonian methodology was commonplace in Powell’s scientific circle. Cambridge’s professor of geology Adam Sedgwick argued in his widely read Discourse on the Studies of the University (1833; 5th ed., 1850) that Newtonian philosophy provided ideal training for bringing “rebellious faculties into obedience to the divine will.” The Scottish theologian and moral philosopher Thomas Chalmers wrote that “we feel it almost a proud thing for Christianity” that it had received the worship of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Robert Boyle, and, above all, Newton. Newman’s follower Henry Wilberforce responded to Chalmers—and more broadly to the moral reverence paid to the inductive method—with a hearty prayer that the English church would not be infected by such blasphemy. The religion of Christ, he argued, did not receive honor from a mortal man just because he “happened to be somewhat superior to his fellows in intellectual powers.”36 This was all bad enough from Tractarians’ point of view, but it paled beside Hampden’s decision to apply the inductive method to his study of medieval scholasticism, a subject (unlike physical science) ideologically and emotionally central to their theology. Although Hampden did not have any scientific expertise, he aspired to approach theology in the same cautious spirit and reverence for facts that led to Newton’s grand discovery of universal gravitation. The centrality of methodology in the ensuing dispute is illustrated by the fact that Hampden laid greater stress on the inductive foundations of his thought as his conflict with the Tractarians deepened.37 The Noetics and their allies predictably viewed the philosophy that Newman articulated in his university sermons and elsewhere as sophistical rather than sophisticated. In 1836, Bonamy Price, a master at Rugby School under Arnold, conceded in the Edinburgh Review that Newman and his friends were innocent of the “profane and vulgar clinging to the temporalities of the Church” which characterized most high-churchmen. Nonetheless, the Tractarians’ aura of learning and noble purpose contributed “perhaps the most valuable aid of all

36 Sedgwick, A Discourse on the Studies of the University [1st ed.], pp. 9–12. T. Chalmers, On Church and College Establishments (Glasgow, 1838), p. 298; Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul, vol. 2, p. 231. H. Wilberforce, “Dr. Chalmers’s Lectures,” p. 244. Higgitt, Recreating Newton, analyzes Victorian arguments over Newton’s status as an intellectual and moral exemplar. 37 R.D. Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy Considered in its Relation to Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1837), pp. xl–l.

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to the general cause. They are constantly appealed to by the baser sort”—in other words, by the type of men that Whately assembled around Newman at the punitive 1829 dinner party—”as splendid proofs that talent and lofty feeling support the justice of their cause.” Price also cut directly to the issue at the heart of Newman’s university sermons: the relationship between reason and faith. Newman’s emphasis on the cultivation of right habits, admirable in the abstract, had taken on a mischievous cast in practice, Price concluded. The Tractarians under Newman’s leadership had tipped into a rigid obsession with moral conduct, one which lead “to the disregard, and even the suppression of all exercise of the reasoning faculty.” Their descent into fanaticism was one malign consequence. Another was an idolatrous fixation on the authority of antiquity: “they would rather err with the men of the fourth century than see the truth with those of the nineteenth.” These lines of criticism represented a standard Noetic response to Newman’s principles. Price added something more ominous: he reminded his readers that “the Reformation was achieved in the name and by the authority of Reason.” Price’s portrait of Newman morphed from the Tory dupe of Whately’s dinner party to something altogether more sinister: a quasi-Roman-Catholic revanchist set on breaching the Church of England’s Protestant settlement from within. The principles of Newman’s university sermons invited this accusation of clandestine papism. The consequences would in time prove explosive.

“What is Often Stigmatized as Party Strife”

As Pusey’s fight against university reform showed, reflections on Christianity, virtue, and philosophy were never abstract intellectual exercises. The Tractarians created manifestoes for action. Truth, Newman observed, was upheld neither by books nor by temporal power “but by the personal influence of such men…who are at once the teachers and the patterns of it.” Pusey noted that a professor exerted his greatest influence on students through his conduct as a Christian and a scholar, and not as a lecturer. This personal influence carried grave public responsibilities. Newman made this clear more than six months before Keble preached on national apostasy in 1833. Our great danger is, lest we should not understand our own principles, and should weakly surrender customs and institutions, which go far to constitute the Church what she is, the pillar and ground of moral truth,— lest, from a wish to make religion acceptable to the world in general, more free from objections than any moral system can be made, more immediately and visibly beneficial to the temporal interests of the

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community than God’s comprehensive appointments condescend to be, we betray it to its enemies.38 This was not empty chest-thumping. In an early tract, Newman insisted “that to believe in CHRIST is not a mere opinion or a secret conviction, but a social or even a political principle, forcing one into what is often stigmatized as party strife.”39 Theological principles collided with politics in 1834. A group of Cambridge professors led by Sedgwick petitioned Parliament to abolish the religious tests that prevented dissenters from taking degrees in their university. He defended the proposal in a long letter in the Times. Cambridge, he insisted, should not be “for the church merely, but for all learned faculties, a great scientific body, and a lay corporation.” This controversy quickly spread to Oxford, as members of Parliament looked at its admission policy, which, unlike that of Cambridge, did not allow dissenters to attend, much less graduate. The proposed changes threatened the Tractarians’ ideal for an Anglican university at its most basic level—indeed, as Newman saw it, the principle underlying the reform threatened “to make a shipwreck of Christian faith.” In case they nursed any doubt as to who stood behind this profane attack on the English universities’ sacred mission and ancient constitution, Sedgwick cleared it up. “Of those who, as Professors, are employed in carrying on the scientific work of the University, three-fourths at the last are favourable to the prayer of the petition,” he reported. Powell and Hampden both publicly advocated allowing non-Anglicans into the life and study of Oxford. This position triggered furious resistance from Tractarians and other conservatives. Newman tartly informed Hampden that his promotion of the reform took the first step “towards interrupting that peace and mutual good understanding which has prevailed so long in this place.” He predicted that the uproar over the admission of dissenters “will be succeeded by dissentions the more intractable because justified in the minds of those who resist innovation by a feeling of imperative duty.”40 Party strife engulfed Oxford. 38 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 58–59, 77–78. 39 J.H. Newman, The Visible Church (In Letters to a Friend), tract 11 in vol. 1 of Tracts for the Times (Oxford, 1833), p. 5. See also Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 276–278. Pusey, “Evidence,” pp. 16–20. 40 A. Sedgwick, “Cambridge Petition,” The Times (10 April 1834), p. 3. J.H. Newman to R.D. Hampden (28 November 1834), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 4, p. 371. On Sedgwick’s campaign for reform, see D.A. Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge (New York, 1977), pp. 83–96. On the situation in Oxford, see P. Nockles, “‘Lost Causes and…Impossible Loyalties’: The Oxford Movement and the University,” in Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I, ed. M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys, vol. 6 in The History of the University of Oxford, general ed. T.H. Aston (Oxford, 1997), pp. 212–222.

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The Hampden Affair

Divergent Paths Out of a Spiritual Wilderness

The Tractarians’ sense of political and spiritual crisis deepened in 1836 with the appointment of their Noetic foe Renn Dickson Hampden to Oxford’s regius chair of divinity by the hated Whig government of Lord Melbourne. John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey led the campaign to overturn the nomination in what would become one of the bitterest controversies in the university’s history.

Hampden’s Application of Noetic Theology

Hampden’s theology fell comfortably within a Noetic consensus shared with Richard Whately, Baden Powell, Thomas Arnold, Edward Copleston, and others. Hampden came to embody the rot of liberalism in the eyes of the Oxford Movement because he, more than any of the others, applied Noetic ideals in ways that directly offended Tractarian values and interests.1 His 1832 Bampton lectures on The Scholastic Philosophy Considered in Its Relation to Christian Theology originally generated no public outrage. Thomas Mozley later observed, with some truth, that the first lecture’s esoteric topic and dreary delivery had so anesthetized the audience with boredom and bafflement that few took anything from it or returned to later lectures for additional doses of sedative.2 Newman, however, had not nodded off. He stalked out at the end of the first lecture in a lather, convinced that Hampden had directly subverted the explicit purpose of the Bampton series to confirm Christian faith and to confute heretics and schismatics. The Oriel colleagues had previously enjoyed cordial terms—the two men dined frequently and Newman presided over the funerals for Hampden’s two infant daughters—but from this point forward he identified Hampden as an enemy. Newman decided at the time against making his

1 Swanston, Ideas of Order, pp. 2–53. Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 100–102. Pattison, The Great Dissent, pp. 62–66, 81–95. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 209–212. Ellis, Generational Conflict and University Reform, pp. 175–179. 2 R.D. Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy Considered in its Relation to Christian Theology (Oxford, 1833). Mozley, Reminiscences, vol. 1, pp. 351–354.

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objections public (John Keble’s galvanizing sermon on national apostasy was still more than a year away). The relationship soured further two years later when Hampden successfully stood, at the last minute, for Oxford’s chair of moral philosophy, snatching the office away from Newman, who had been the sole candidate.3 This thorn of private rivalry added sting to the increasingly intense political and theological disagreement, not only between Hampden and Newman but coursing through Oxford as a whole. The tremendous pressures that had been building for the past couple of years finally released in waves of public controversy in 1834. Hampden applied Noetic teachings to advocate a provocative political position: admitting dissenters to Oxford and allowing graduates to forego subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. For the Tractarians, this mortal affront demanded a ferocious response. Hampden shared the general Oriel reverence of Joseph Butler. He applied a Butlerian conception of the inductive method to religious belief in his Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity (1827). [Butler’s] is the true spirit of the philosophy of Bacon applied to theology. For he calls upon us to abandon our theories,—to curb our imaginations,—to lay aside our prejudices,—and to come, as athletes, bared for the conflict of severe inquiry into the truth, to the consideration of what the constitution of nature in fact is,—and accordingly to accept the conclusions to which such an inquiry may lead us, however repugnant to our antecedent views,—however unacceptable to speculative reason. Hampden’s moral-philosophy lectures likewise venerated Butler for providing “a very exact and clear statement of the method of inquiry pursued by the moral philosopher” and speaking to “the feelings of candour, and simplicity, and honesty.” He extolled Butler’s determination to build moral principles on the observation of “the facts of human nature as we find them.” (On this basis Hampden rejected “the unreal ground of expediency” of William Paley’s Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy and “its entire poverty of information concerning the active principles of human nature.”).4 Hampden’s sermons concentrated on revelation “in its real importance, as a Rule of Life.” He stressed that “a single effort may suffice for a spirited 3 Pattison, The Great Dissent, p. 63. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 211–212. 4 Hampden, Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity, p. 282. Hampden, A Course of Lectures Introductory to the Study of Moral Philosophy, pp. 15, 96–97, 115–117, 169, 192–193, 221–225, 241–242, 270–271. See, Swanston, Ideas of Order, pp. 3–4, 17–53; and Pattison, The Great Dissent, pp. 84–95.

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beginning [of religious conduct]: a series of efforts is indispensable for the prosecution of it.” This required the truly Christian graces of steadiness, patience, perseverance, resignation, and humility. He followed Butler in defining religion as “essentially abnegation of self. …It works on the heart by faith, hope, love patience; means which, in themselves, divert us from confidence in our own activity, and so far check that activity.” This religious disposition needed to be balanced with an appreciation of the conditions of human life— retreat into extreme asceticism was a “sublime luxury” that damaged healthy moral development. We must never lose sight of Christ’s experience “as one mixing in affable converse with men, and drawing us to him with cords of humanity no less than by the life-blood flowing from his cross.” We needed religion to remind us of our duties as spiritual creatures and to tame the restlessness of our spirit. But we also needed philosophy to remind us of our duties as “heirs of flesh and blood.” A system of morality stripped of its religious underpinnings carried men into a devious course; but so did the “extravagances” of exclusive religious principle.5 Hampden’s inductive approach to knowledge and behavior led him to draw a sharp distinction between the eternal truths of scripture and the cacophony of competing, historically contingent doctrines which had accumulated around that truth. In this he was extending Noetic teaching. Whately had broached this topic earlier in a serious of Oxford lectures published in 1828 as Essays on Some Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul. Whately lamented that Christianity groaned under the weight of speculative dogma. Great error arose from attempts to interpret scripture “on the principle of a scientific system.” Men imposed technical definitions onto the Bible, often in the haste of confirming a favorite hypothesis, and lost themselves (and their followers) in “a maze of fruitless logomachy.” Some clung to religious systems because they were old, others because they were new. Few were willing “to inquire sedulously in each case what is true.” The success of this inquiry required an understanding of the Gospels as a record of activity rather than a body of knowledge: they annunciated “what God has done for Man: what Man is to do on his part,—the means towards the end,—the Christian faith and practice by which he must attain to a share of the proffered blessings.” Whately pleaded for Christians to stop conflating “the most important and truly-practical doctrines of Christianity” from all of the other “tenets which are not practical.” Christianity needed to return to its roots as a guide for aligning our life and heart to the will of God—and this required stripping away the intellectual systems that clothed 5 Hampden, Parochial Sermons, pp. ix–xvi, 175–176, 339–340. Hampden, A Course of Lectures Introductory to the Study of Moral Philosophy, pp. 97–103.

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the purity of God’s word in the clothes of human vanity. He reminded his audience that “the same authority which forbids us to ‘diminish aught’ from the word of God, forbids us also to ‘add thereto’.”6 Hampden’s Bampton lectures on scholastic philosophy explored this antidogmatic theme in dense academic detail. He opened the first lecture by observing that Christianity from its beginning had to surmount “obstructions of a twofold character; the self-righteousness of the human heart, and the presumption of the human understanding.” In short, Christ declared war on human pride. Pride counterattacked with two powerful weapons: the force of vice and the force of theory. Hampden argued that prideful “theory” began to breach Christian fortifications as early as the third century with the rise of scholasticism. The schoolmen obscured scriptural fact, “the only ancient, only catholic, truth,” when they adulterated Christianity with “the mysticism of Plato…[and] the analytical method of Aristotle.” Their transformation of theology into a deductive science of necessary principle and exact definitions had mischievous consequences. Theologians turned their elaborate arguments into “idol-abstractions, not unlike that of the people of old, who are said to have beaten the air with spears, to expel…foreign gods.” Instead of treating the Bible as a historical record that “teaches us…both how to feel, and how to act, towards God” the schoolman rummaged through scripture to illustrate and defend—rather than to develop and test—their speculative deductions. These indulgent practices inflicted terrible damage on the broader Christian community. Ecclesiastical power, by creating “a servile dependence on the ministration of the priest,” erected a barrier between the Christian heart and heaven. This left men poorly prepared to resist “the temptations and dangers of the world.” Hampden noted that the Reformation had corrected the worst outward abuses of scholastic theology, but Protestants had yet to free themselves fully from the error of conflating theological theories with God’s eternal truth.7 From a Tractarian perspective, Hampden’s Bampton lectures contained much to hate. The exclusive association of scripture with primitive and Catholic truth particularly infuriated Newman. He advanced the opposite argument in the Arians of the Fourth Century, Their Doctrine, Temper, and Conduct, published in 1833 and dedicated to Keble. Newman claimed that the “self-restraint 6 Whately, Essays on Some Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul, pp. 39–40, 60–61, 120–128, 139– 140, 187–188, 209–210, 223–232, 335–336. See W. Blackburn, “Matthew Arnold and the Oriel Noetics,” Philological Quarterly 25 (1946), pp. 73–74. 7 Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, pp. 5–6, 53–56, 77–81, 148–150, 251–256, 373–379. See Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, pp. 159–161; Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 100–101; and Turner, John Henry Newman, p. 209.

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and abstinence” which characterized the early church’s promulgation of sacred doctrine followed the general rule that these doctrines “have never been learned merely from Scripture.” The history of these fourth-century religious disputes was, for Newman, pregnant with contemporary relevance. The heart of the book detailed the collision between two great factions in the early church, one centered in Antioch, the other in Alexandria. Antioch incubated the ideas of Arius and his namesake heresy (a claim that required Newman to explain away the troublesome fact that Arius had been born and trained in Alexandria). Newman attributed Arianism’s doctrinally abhorrent denial of the Holy Trinity to moral wickedness rather than misguided error. Arius, “turbulent by character,” reveled in attacking received opinion and ecclesiastical authority, as much for sport as for principle. These individual failings did not explain the spread of his corrupt views, however. Antioch’s cultural and intellectual environment nurtured Arius’s heresy and flattered his pretensions. The city was home to powerful schools of heathen philosophy which spread their cold, rationalistic temper to their Christian neighbors. A powerful Jewish community infected Antioch, Newman said, with “festive, self-indulgent habits.” Superstition and “licence to the grosser tastes of human nature” flourished under this alleged (in fact imaginary) Jewish influence. In Newman’s telling, the wholesome doctrine of divine unity withered in the face of skeptical heathen logic and Judaic hedonism. The Church of Antioch became an open manifestation “of the spirit of the Antichrist.” The “strict and uncompromising” Church of Alexandria provided the anecdote to the evils emanating from Antioch. The Alexandrians obeyed God with a whole heart and an openness to the faith-sustaining power of sacred mystery. They ultimately triumphed over Antioch but, with Satan still active in the world, this victory could never be permanent.8 Hampden promoted, as Newman saw it, a fundamentally false, even fraudulent, understanding of Christian history in his Bampton lectures. The two men looked intently at the same history and saw radically different things. Hampden counted St. Clement of Alexandria among the “philosophizing Divines” who elevated priestcraft over scripture. Newman celebrated the same man for teaching Christian truth as a means “to rouse the moral powers to internal

8 Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 4, 12, 20–21, 31–33, 55, 106. For more on Newman’s historical reconstruction of the early church and its relevance to the theological divisions of the 1830s, see Daley, “The Church Fathers,” pp. 30–33; and B.J. King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2009), pp. 70–180.

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voluntary action.”9 Such disagreements were the signs, rather than the source, of discord. Newman saw his rival’s method as a recapitulation of Antiochian evil; Hampden had revealed himself to Newman as a modern-day Arius—a man who presented his cold and offensive rationality as an offering to a profane, rebellious, and self-indulgent age. And, like Arius’s heresy before him, Hampden’s corrupt rationality portended even worse sacrilege to come. The quarrel was, at this point, literally academic. Hampden did not sound a call to action—that is, until the concluding sentence of his Bampton lectures. He promised that if Protestants stopped mistaking doctrine for truth, “it will inculcate…candour, forbearance, charitable construction of the views of others, an humble and teachable disposition towards God.”10 What this meant practically became clear in 1834 with his pamphlet Observations on Religious Dissent, with Particular Reference to Religious Tests in the University (1834). Before, only Arnold had applied the Noetics’ anti-dogmatic principles so directly to raw political controversies, and he had done so from outside of Oxford. Hampden did not wade innocently into this explosive issue. He had forged a close, if quiet, relationship with the Whig leadership in London. He crafted his argument, a logical extension of his Bampton lectures, to influence the political debate and to advertise himself as a candidate for preferment.11 Hampden argued that Christians should no more adhere everlastingly to “unvarying formularies” than physicians should never depart from the medical theories of Hippocrates and Galen. Men of science constantly revised their theories to seek ever closer accord with physical reality. Doctrinal systems should also remain open to revision. Christians should be able to correct the errors of previous generations to bring their conceptions closer to scriptural truth. The form of the Articles did not represent everlasting law. They were but the prudent accommodation to circumstances made by honest and pious men at a particular pivot in English history. As such, the Articles deserved deference, not inflexible reverence.12 Hampden lamented the intolerance that resulted when “opinions on religious matters are regarded as identical with the objects of faith.” He was not advocating that we do away with doctrine because, as a practical matter, we 9 Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, p. 42. Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 53–56. See Pattison, The Great Dissent, p. 95. 10 Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, p. 391. 11 Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 101–102. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 207–211, 220. Nockles, “‘Lost Causes’,” pp. 218, 223. 12 R.D. Hampden, Observations on Religious Dissent, with Particular Reference to Religious Tests in the University, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1834), pp. 7, 14–15, 21–24.

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could never transcend the natural tendency of our minds to speculate on the divine word. But we should distinguish between divine truth and “the guiltless differences of fallible judgments.” A multiplicity of religious opinions was our inevitable lot; ceaseless conflict over these differences did not have to be. Charitable religious judgment “that thinks no evil” would ease insoluble doctrinal disputes. This in turn would “insensibly work a blessed change in the minds and hearts of those who are now estranged from us.” Once Christians stopped warring over dogma and learned to distinguish moral truth from theological opinion they would recognize that they disagreed far less than they supposed. Every page of scripture outlined the duties of conduct. The faithful could—and should—unite around this shared inheritance of Christian virtue. In Hampden’s view, policing doctrine with rigid and unforgiving zeal paradoxically nourished the very error it attempted to stamp out. Dogmatism corroded the humility of spirit that served truth: “heresy may spring up in the barren and proud heart, and entrench itself within the dogmas of a superficial and arrogant reason.”13 Hampden stressed that defining religious doctrines as imperfect human opinion did not release men from the moral discipline imposed by a fixed system of beliefs. No one had the freedom to flutter from one religious opinion to another. Men might have no reliable basis for denouncing the content of particular Christian beliefs, but they should condemn those who refused to place themselves under the discipline of any consistent doctrine. Everyone had the obligation to live according to their principles, even if they did not have the right to impose them on anyone else. Heresy, in other words, was delinquent behavior rather than false belief. Steadfastness implies, the being deeply and firmly grounded in any persuasion or pursuit; and keeping such hold of it, as to follow it with invariable attachment to the principles on which we have adopted it. In our religious profession, …more than in any other pursuit, it is especially necessary, that we should have determinate principles of action—not vaguely adopted through mere tradition, but matured by the patient deliberation of our own judgment—not the variable suggestions of the moment, but abiding convictions—actuating the man on all occasions, and forming an essential constituent of his character. Hampden insisted that the personal exertion of forming and then following convictions provided the stoutest defense against the temptation of using 13

Ibid., pp. 5–7, 12, 28–33.

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passing events as an excuse to conform to, rather than to combat, evil. He did not, however, deny a significant role for traditional religious institutions. The authority of the church provided an essential guide for “the infancy or uncertainty of individual judgment,” exactly in the same way that someone untutored in geometry must defer to the trained judgment of a mathematician. This authority remained auxiliary: submitting to a clergyman, to a mathematics tutor, or to any other expert was justified only as an expedient for training individual judgment and never as a substitution for it.14

The Tractarian Counterattack

The Tractarians saw in Noetic theology a preemptory demand for their unconditional surrender. Hurrell Froude captured Tractarian sentiment in his acerbic response to Arnold. The doctrine of Apostolical Succession, involves the belief that God has appointed on earth ‘an unchangeable Priesthood’. Now surely it is no very tolerant spirit in Dr. Arnold, which, as a condition of toleration, would compel all who believe that God has appointed an unchangeable Priesthood, to believe, at the same time, that this Priesthood may be innocently changed. Newman despised in particular Hampden’s belief that doctrinal forms were merely “accidentally useful.” Under that formula nothing could protect traditional beliefs from being swept away in the tide of changeable human opinion. Men (especially those of the nineteenth century) would never have trouble concocting so-called practical reasons for gutting whatever part of received doctrine interfered with their whims.15 Newman persuaded his disciple Henry Wilberforce (the son of the evangelical politician William and younger brother of Samuel, the future Bishop of Oxford) to act as his factotum. Wilberforce wrote a blistering pamphlet addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury entitled The Foundation of the Faith Assailed in Oxford. He staked his plea for “pure and uncalculating loyalty  to the Church” at the intersection of faith and scholarship. He praised unnamed Oxford professors (obviously Newman, Keble, and Pusey) for their 14 Ibid., pp. 23–41. Hampden, Parochial Sermons, pp. 97–98, 294–295. 15 Froude, Remains, vol. 3, p. 365. J.H. Newman, Elucidations of Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements (Oxford, 1836), pp. 41, 47.

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“patient study and teachable humility” which sought to preserve the Church’s sacred tradition against the impiety and impulsive arrogance of the modern temperament. There exists an unequivocal disposition to modify our system by a series of liberal changes, tending to make knowledge, rather than moral discipline, the object of our studies, and to cultivate rather the habit of bold and irreverent inquiry, often conducted in the most flippant tone and spirit, and sparing no subject, whether human or divine, for that humility and self-distrust which characterizes the true philosopher, whatever be his subject, and which is, above all things, indispensable to the beneficial pursuit of religious truth. The fate of Oxford—indeed, the destiny of the British nation—hinged on the education of “humble and teachable disciples, labouring to ascertain what has been the Church’s faith and practice.” The country had no need of “sceptical disputants” who placed their own self-presumed acuteness above the accumulated wisdom of the Church.16 The already strained personal relationships between Hampden and the Tractarians understandably degenerated into severe bitterness. In the midst of this tension Edward Burton, Oxford’s regius professor of divinity, died. Newman feared the worse: the Whig government would hand the chair to Arnold, Hampden, “or other such ‘forerunner of Antichrist’, (for it does not now do to mince matters).”17 This was not humorous exaggeration. Newman believed with deadly earnestness that a flaccid indifference to religious truth would facilitate the arrival of the Antichrist.18 Anxiety about the divinity chair proved well founded. Melbourne selected Hampden. Newman recoiled in revulsion. There is no doctrine, however sacred, which he does not scoff at—and in his Moral Philosophy he adopts the lowest and most grovelling 16

H. Wilberforce, The Foundation of the Faith Assailed in Oxford: a Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1835), pp. pp. 5–10, 27. See Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 215–217. 17 J.H. Newman to T. Mozley (23 January 1836) and to R.H. Froude (17 January-1 February 1836), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 5, pp. 210, 221. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 220–221. “Forerunner of Antichrist” appeared in Greek in the Newman’s original letter. 18 Newman, Advent Sermons on Antichrist, pp. 52–54.

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utilitarianism as the basis of Morals—he considers it a sacred duty to live to this world—and that religion by itself injuriously absorbs the mind. Whately, whatever his errors, is openhearted, generous, and careless of money—[Joseph] Blanco White is the same, though he has turned Socinian—Arnold is amiable and winning—but this man, judging by his writings, is the most lucre loving, earthly minded, unlovely person one has ever set eyes on. Newman also recognized an opportunity amidst calamity. Burton’s middling opinions had upheld a spirit of equivocation on contentious religious issues. Oxonians would have to adopt a side now that he was gone and Hampden proposed in his place. The crisis would validate the Tractarians’ claims of liberal persecution and draw allies to their cause. Pusey called a meeting of sympathetic university residents on the day that word of Hampden’s appointment leaked. Two days later the opposition formalized into the Corpus Christi Common Room Committee. It circulated a petition beseeching King William IV to overturn the nomination (like all crown appointments the chair was legally in the gift of the monarch). The Hebdomadal Board, the body responsible for day-to-day university governance, declined after acrimonious debate to forward the petition to either the king or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Newman in the meantime worked feverishly to detail the case against Hampden for public consumption. His anonymous pamphlet Elucidations of Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements appeared within the week.19 Newman set out to eviscerate Hampden’s reputation, despite his lofty profession simply to reveal his opponent’s opinions “with as much fairness as may be attainable by one who has his own opinions about them.” Elucidations crafted a picture of a man whose religious beliefs were so slack that he hardly expected (much less required) anyone to agree with him or the church on any point whatsoever. Newman indicted Hampden with a long list of heterodox opinions and then supported the prosecution with selections culled from his writing. Most damningly, he insisted that Hampden said “that it is a matter of opinion, whether a man believe in the Divinity of Christ or not” and “that [he] considers the doctrine of the Trinity, as held by himself, to be but one out of the infinite theories which might be formed on the facts of the Scripture revelation.” Newman was unable to quote anything from Hampden to support the first charge so he illustrated the point by citing Blanco White, a Noetic who had “started from the very theory maintained by Dr. Hampden.” The second charge 19

O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church (Oxford, 1966–70), part I, pp. 112–117. Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 124–126. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 217–224, 227.

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rested on several quotations where Hampden does appear to suggest that scripture does not force belief in the Trinity.20 Newman omitted the parts of these passages where Hampden emphatically claimed otherwise.21 Hampden in fact advanced a Butlerian position that difficulties over the doctrine of the Trinity “arise from metaphysical considerations—from abstractions of our own mind, quite distinct from the proper, intrinsic, mystery of the holy truth itself” and this caused “the wisdom of God to be received as the foolishness of man.” Similarly, Newman quoted Hampden apparently endorsing the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds only because he found them preferable to “others more obviously (sic) injurious to the simplicity of the faith” (the use of “sic” allowed Newman to accentuate his outraged incredulity). This led him to the primary count of his indictment: Hampden treated “correct, logical, and true” articles of faith as “merely human opinions.” Hampden in fact complained about the unphilosophical language of creeds which, in his view, invited misconception about the sacred truth of the Trinity. He did not hold that truth either lightly or grudgingly, as Newman insinuated.22 Newman remained utterly unmoved when Hampden wrote a bitter letter complaining that his principles and opinions had been distorted.23 Newman’s tract (no. 73) On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion had been released less than a week before the controversy broke. In it, he claimed that “Rationalism takes the words of Scripture as signs of Ideas; Faith, of Things or Realities.” Hampden’s personal acceptance of the Trinity was irrelevant because he based it on cold analysis that did not compel him (or anyone else) to receive this sacred truth. As Newman declared in a different context, “to say that a thing must be, is to admit it may not be.” To Newman, dull-hearted men like Hampden absurdly attempted to correct the weakness of the human intellect by relying upon it. At issue was not just the Trinity but a range of doctrines, including the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Sacraments, and the Communion of Saints. In fact, the long list of revealed doctrines which Newman’s tract identifies as “anti-rationalistic” line up directly with the

20 Newman, Elucidations, pp. 4, 11–13, 17. See Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 125; and Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 217–224. 21 This point is made with considerable anger in T. Arnold, “The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden,” Edinburgh Review 63 (1836), pp. 229–230. 22 Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, pp. 145–146, 377–379. Newman, Elucidations, pp. 5–6. 23 R.D. Hampden to J.H. Newman and Newman to Hampden (both 14 February 1836), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 5, pp. 235–236.

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doctrines that his pamphlet published eleven days later would accuse Hampden of refusing to treat as matters of doctrinal necessity.24 The truth of Hampden’s views rested in their tendency towards practical evil. Newman articulated his thinking on such error with brutal clarity in Arians of the Fourth Century. In this lies the difference between the treatment due to an individual in error, and to one who is confident enough to publish his innovations. The former claims from us the most affectionate sympathy, and the most considerate attention. The latter should meet with no mercy; he assumes the office of the Tempter, and, so far forth as his error goes, must be dealt with by the competent authority, as if he were embodied Evil. To spare him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself. Newman clearly felt that standards of fairness and charity did not obligate him to credit the excuses and worthless subtleties which Hampden used to evade the consequences of his irreverent preference for reason over faith. “Many a man would be deterred from outstepping the truth, could he see the end of his course in the beginning,” Newman observed in Arians.25 As Newman saw it, Hampden faced a trial of character. The evil consequence of his errors had been exposed and now he had to recant his errors or intentionally persist in evil. Newman’s Elucidations concluded on an apocalyptic note: those who failed to fight Hampden’s appointment committed a dereliction of duty “greater than has been incurred by Members of this University for many centuries.”26 This signaled the Tractarians’ intention to do far more than rubbish Hampden’s reputation. They intended to use every lever they could to overturn the appointment or, failing that, reduce the chair to a besieged and isolated outpost. The liberals would not have a beachhead for further aggression. Even though the petition never reached the king officially, he nevertheless learned of the dispute and expressed his alarm to Melbourne (whose judgment on religious matters he did not entirely trust). The prime minister reassured him that Hampden enjoyed the support of the Archbishops of Canterbury and 24 Newman, Elucidations. Newman, On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion, pp. 2–5, 9–14, 18–20. J.H. Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” in Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects, 4th ed. (London, 1885), p. 293. 25 Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, p. 253. 26 Newman, Elucidations, p. 47.

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Dublin and explained that the commotion arose from academic politics rather than any genuine question of religious orthodoxy. Melbourne had no intention of abandoning Hampden, whose views on subscription he appreciated. The prime minister also received reports that painted the Tractarians as bigots and closet Roman Catholics. Independent of principle, it would set a horrendous political precedent if a government allowed itself to be bullied so easily out of freely exercising patronage. Pusey wrote an impassioned letter to Melbourne which tried to convince him to withdraw Hampden. The prime minister in answer observed darkly (and, as it would turn out, presciently) that Pusey’s own theological opinions might not emerge from close scrutiny with a clean bill of orthodoxy. He counseled peace. The Tractarians believed that (as Newman put it later) “the claims of truth must not be compromised for the sake of peace.” Pusey replied that “Dr. Hampden’s appointment would have a direct tendency to corrupt our Church” and so opposition would proceed undeterred.27

The Tendency of Hampden’s Speculations

Hampden’s opponents had no legal avenues to spike the appointment but, as Pusey had explained to Melbourne, there were ways to hobble Hampden. The Corpus Christi Common Room Committee pressed the Hebdomadal Board to draft a motion of condemnation for the consideration of the Convocation. The goal was to drive students away from Hampden’s lectures and to strip the chair of its ex officio duties and prerogatives. This required marshaling a broad coalition. Pusey heatedly disputed the claim that the Tractarians manufactured the outrage against Hampden “since there prevailed throughout Oxford one universal feeling of alarm…as soon as the appointment was known.” This picture of spontaneous agitation was brazenly disingenuous. Newman, Pusey, and their allies did a devastatingly effective job of building opposition to Hampden by defining his opinions for the majority of Oxonians who had limited or no direct experience of them. The Tractarians successfully inflamed and directed the outrage because they found a receptive audience for it. Traditional highchurch Tories, who outnumbered Whigs in Oxford, were prepared to believe the worst against liberal theology. They also relished the opportunity to embarrass Melbourne. Evangelicals disliked the anti-dogmatic aspects of Hampden’s 27 Newman, A Letter to the Rev. Godfrey Faussett, p. 6. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, part I, pp. 116–118. Pattison, The Great Dissent, pp. 67–68. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 230–234.

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theology and were alarmed by the Whig ministry’s dalliances with Catholics and radical dissenters. The Hebdomadal Board (with two Hampden allies absent) voted narrowly on March 11 to advance the censure motion.28 The following day Pusey published under his own name Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements and the Thirty-Nine Articles Compared to supplement Newman’s earlier pamphlet with a “more decided condemnation” than “the mild author of the ‘Elucidations’ has allowed himself to pass.”29 Drawing shoulder-to-shoulder with Newman in this fight represented for Pusey the culmination of more than a decade of personal, intellectual, and spiritual turmoil. His religious views were still in flux when he entered Oriel in 1823 on fellowship. Hard working, bookish, and ambitious, he conformed comfortably to the college ethos. German religious scholarship, which had not then penetrated Oriel, attracted his attention. Pusey arrived in Germany in 1825, expecting to drink of religious orthodoxy. Instead, he found to his horror that much of the vitality from German faith had been siphoned off by a corrupt rationality which had pulled Christianity down “to its low and carnal standard.” Individual theologians attempted to maintain this or that shred of revealed religion “as his own gradually altered tone of mind enabled him to understand”; but the overall trend relentlessly stripped Christianity of its spiritual identity.30 The enemy, then, was clear. But what was the cause of (ir)religious rationality and what was the proper response? Pusey struggled with these questions. In 1828 he published An Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in the Theology of Germany. He identified the historical roots of the rationalist cancer in a suffocating German scholasticism which prized “a dead and contented orthodoxism” that was more resistant to genuine religious feeling than even unbelief. Around this time he resumed a courtship of Maria Barker which he had been forced to abandon earlier under the duress of family objections. He explained to his future wife, who too was struggling with her conceptions of faith, that Christians should hold a tolerant view on doctrinal and liturgical differences in order to avoid crowding out the essentials of Christianity with the glosses of human systems. 28

29 30

E.B. Pusey, An Earnest Remonstrance to the Author of the “Pope’s Pastoral Letter to Certain Members of the University of Oxford” (London, 1836c), pp. 33–34. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 246–254. E.B. Pusey, Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements and the Thirty-Nine Articles Compared (Oxford, 1836a), pp. iii. E.B. Pusey, An Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in the Theology of Germany (London, 1828–30), pt. 1, pp. 129–131, pt. 2, p. 48.

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He felt too unsettled about his own motives and behavior for this comfortable Noetic creed to represent a fixed point, however. Pusey fretted that Historical Enquiry, and the controversies it created, served to advance his reputation through intellectual display, and not to bring himself and others closer to God. He watched Newman and Keble closely in the midst of his anguished selfevaluation. They lived, it seemed to him, in humble obedience to God, a state of calm submission he desperately wanted to emulate. The strong gravity of their moral example pulled him into their intellectual orbit.31 Pusey filtered his reading of Hampden through his experience with German rationalism. He reported in his anti-Hampden pamphlet that rationalistic German theology had already begun to spin apart, with one party following its inexorable logic to atheism and another rejecting this logic in the restoration of a sounder and more vigorous faith. Hampden represented a tendency “even more alarming” than the one that had done and was doing so much harm to Germany. Pusey explained that Hampden’s “rationalistic mode of stating the truth” might ape the Church’s catechism but nonetheless remained essentially antagonistic to it. He assured his readers that he had accumulated Hampden’s statements “patiently and candidly,” and for that reason he “guarantees fairness and accuracy.” Pusey denied that he distorted Hampden’s views by drawing a sharp distinction between personal piety and the implications of a system of thought. Indeed, in Pusey’s telling, Hampden’s piety actually made his theology all the more treacherous because “the private character of the individual disguises the danger involved in his tenets.” Hampden might be able to maintain outward orthodoxy despite the implications of his irreligious speculations. But what would happen when these ideas were laid before impressionable students who had not yet formed fixed principles? “This is fearful to think of,” Pusey shuddered.32 Hampden delivered his inaugural divinity lecture on March 17, 1836. The enormous audience included his enemies. He promised to serve God and the church faithfully in “my own sincerity of purpose, and not in the vanity of a fanatical confidence.” It was the great truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, “received into the heart by faith as a living principle of conduct…to which I shall direct all my exposition of Scriptural doctrine. By this standard I demand 31

Ibid., p. 80. For sophisticated reconstructions of Pusey’s early intellectual odyssey, see L. Frappell, “‘Science’ in the Service of Orthodoxy: The Early Intellectual Development of E.B. Pusey,” in Pusey Rediscovered, ed. P. Butler (London, 1983), especially pp. 19–20; and Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 93–109. 32 Pusey, Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements and the Thirty-Nine Articles Compared, pp. iii–viii, xxi, xxxv–xxxvi.

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to be tried.” He stressed that upholding a “humble and devout subordination to the Divine word” did not undermine the authority of the church. Men still relied upon it to train them in spiritual discipline and lead them in the ways of faith. But he refused to back down from his conviction that we must study scripture using “the same method as in all other inquiries for ascertaining the truth.” To those who might have been alarmed by some of the statements culled by his opponents, he conceded that he had not always stated his convictions “in the fullest, clearest manner, so as to have avoided all possibility of misinterpretation.” But he refused to grant that the controversy over his appointment rested primarily on honest misinterpretation. I come before you under a cloud of prejudice and clamour, which, however easy for the feeblest among us to raise and diffuse, it is the hardest thing in the world to remove or even diminish. …Nothing again is easier than to detach sentences from the context and general scheme of an Author’s observations, and to found on them almost any charge which an objector’s own views may suggest. …When once suspicions have been scattered among the public, it is no light task to undo the delusion. The sophistry may be exposed, but the impression on the mind of many remains. …But I appeal from an excited spirit to a spirit of soberness and candour. I demand not to be tried by the conclusions of an adverse school, but by the calm and gentle reason of men disposed to give me credit for no less love of the truth and the faith than themselves, and who will openly contend with me by argument, not by censure, and intimidation, and the array of hostile numbers. Hamden concluded by appealing with humility to the judgment of God.33 Pusey responded immediately with another pamphlet, Dr. Hampden’s Past and Present Statements Compared. He attempted to box in Hampden. Two ways apparently lay open to [him]; either to re-affirm the statements of his former works, and to endeavour to shew that they were not inconsistent with the teachings of our Church, nor led to the perilous consequences which were anticipated; or openly to retract them, and to express regret for the scandal which they had given. Dr. Hampden has done neither of these.

33

R.D. Hampden, Inaugural Lecture Read before the University of Oxford in the Divinity School, 4th ed. (London, 1836), pp. 2–5, 9–10, 16–23, 26–29.

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Hampden had in fact “reaffirmed” his opinions; what he refused to do was accept Pusey and Newman’s framing of them. Pusey refused to allow Hampden to speak for the meaning and tendency of his own ideas. This left Hampden two options, both of which would have stripped him of intellectual and moral standing: he could apologize for heresy or he could fight as a heretic. Pusey did not simply pursue a cynical debating strategy. He appeared genuinely exasperated that Hampden was too stubborn or too stupid to be “at length startled at the tendency of his speculations” after they had been patiently pointed out to him. In any case, he concluded that “things then in reality remain just as they were.” In case there was any doubt, Pusey deployed still more quotations from Hampden to prove that his theology encouraged men to discard God’s word whenever they found it inconvenient to their vanity or worldly ambitions.34 Butler’s Analogy became a point of sharp dispute between Hampden and the Tractarians. In his inaugural lecture Hampden reiterated his conviction that “the true Christian inquirer…pursues what is called the analogy of faith, analysing and combining the passages of Scripture, and so forms a comprehensive scheme of religious truth from the Bible.” He added a note to the published version that explained his application of the term “fact” had been misunderstood and he appealed to the Analogy to explain his intended meaning. Both of Pusey’s pamphlets attempted to wrench ownership of Butler away from Hampden. He disputed Hampden’s claim that his inductive theology represented a legitimate application of Butler. Pusey admitted that the bishop had in fact confronted deists and atheists on “the low ground of comparing facts with facts.” But he insisted that this method was meant to invalidate unbelief, not to achieve positive religious knowledge. “What Bishop Butler employs against à priori objections, Dr. Hampden has changed into an à priori argument,” Pusey charged; “what Bishop Butler maintained negatively, Dr. Hampden has assumed as the sum of his positive truth.” Pusey also insisted that Butler’s notion of “fact” was thoroughly inconsistent with Hampden’s usage in his Bampton lectures.35 This seemingly abstruse debate about the meaning of Butler’s eighteenthcentury theology represented the epicenter of the conflict between Tractarians and Noetics. The two sides reached bitterly contradictory conclusions about 34 35

E.B. Pusey, Dr. Hampden’s Past and Present Statements Compared, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1836), pp. 3–4, 18, 33–35. R.D. Hampden, Inaugural Lecture Read before the University of Oxford in the Divinity School, 4th ed. (London, 1836), p. 23, 31–33. Pusey, Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements and the Thirty-Nine Articles Compared, pp. xiv–xvi. Pusey, Dr. Hampden’s Past and Present Statements Compared, pp. 25–30. See Swanston, Ideas of Order, pp. 18–20.

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Butler’s lessons. For Hampden and his fellow Noetics, Butler pointed to a tolerant religious pluralism. We had no basis to sanctify our personal or sectarian dogmas with a pretension to stable truth. Hampden’s inductive approach to theology underwrote this toleration. The Tractarians travelled in the opposite direction from the same starting position. Pusey accused Hampden of deforming Butler’s attack on à priori systems into such a system to demolish the philosophical legitimacy of this inductive theology. Newman in his university sermons provided the intellectual justification for elevating faith above the methods of secular reason. Isaac Williams in Tract 87 (published in 1840) appealed to “the high authority of Bishop Butler, the great master of morals,” to provide crucial support for the conviction that we could only strengthen and preserve moral character, given our natural weaknesses, through the constant repetition of devotional acts. Men, acting both alone and collectively, should refrain from pursuing grand reforms because our vast and enduring ignorance prevented us from doing so reliably. Those “whose thoughts and knowledge are most superficial, are most apt to systematize.” The Tractarians evoked Butler to buttress their conclusion that the apostolic tradition and the doctrines derived from it provided the only way to discipline our naturally wayward behavior and thought, a line of reasoning which cut equally against both the evangelical democratization of religion and the Noetics’ doctrinal accommodations.36 Hampden invoked Butler when observing that the Christian who lacked the proper methods of right judgment “is like a man going to sea without chart, or compass, or rudder, to be drifted wherever the tide and wind may carry him.” While the church, ministers, parents, and friends all had essential roles to play in our journey, ultimately scripture served “as our only divine oracle of belief and duty.” Newman used the same metaphor in an article that appeared the following month: the men of the present day are “travellers on a desert without sun or landmark, chart or compass; they do not know how they came there, or whither they are tending, so that every step is fearful lest it should be in the wrong direction.” He advised the study of ecclesiastical history as a means for combating the vapid cynicism of latitudinarianism and the corruptions of Roman Catholicism and puritanism. Butler’s “sobriety of mind” also provided Newman a model of resistance to evil times.37 The conflict over Hampden’s appointment to Oxford’s divinity chair turned so spiteful precisely because both Tractarians and Noetics shared Butler’s pessimism about the frailty of 36 Williams, On Reserve (Conclusion), pp. 56–58, 87. See Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 288–289. 37 R.D. Hampden, Inaugural Lecture Read before the University of Oxford in the Divinity School, 4th ed. (London, 1836), pp. 22–24. Newman, “Le Bas’ Life,” pp. 354–355, 372–373.

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human judgment, the inherent depravities of our nature and the absolute moral necessity of taming sinful pride. Modern men found themselves astray in a dangerous and spiritually barren wilderness. Newman and Hampden stood at a crossroads with two very different maps in hand, pointing lost souls in opposite directions. Censure In the heated immediacy of the conflict, competing interpretations of Butler and other arcane issues of course yielded to political maneuvering. The Convocation met on March 22, 1836, the day after Pusey’s second pamphlet appeared, to consider the motion against Hampden. Any Oxford graduate who attended the Convocation had the right to vote. Arnold encouraged Oxonians on his Rugby staff to attend in support of Hampden. Tory newspapers whipped for the other side. Over 450 voters assembled in the Sheldonian Theatre, an enormous number. Hundreds of boisterous undergraduates (who did not have voting rights) created a circus atmosphere. The anti-Hampden forces had clearly amassed a crushing majority. The vote, however, never took place. University rules allowed the two proctors (the officials responsible for maintaining good order and discipline) to quash any motion brought to the floor, an interposition, as the Oxford University Calendar explained, that was “almost as rare as the Royal Veto in Parliament.” The entire affair was singular and the proctors exercised their veto. Their annual terms expired the following month, however, and their replacements declined to intervene when the Convocation next convened on May 5. Undergraduates were barred to restore decorum. They responded by battering open the locked doors and pouring into the gallery. In the midst of this riot, the censure motion carried, 474 to 94.38 38

Oxford University Calendar (Oxford, 1836), pp. 18, 28. See Ward, Victorian Oxford, pp. 99–103; Chadwick, The Victorian Church, part I, pp. 119–120; Pattison, The Great Dissent, pp. 69–70; and Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 247–254.

chapter 10

Thomas Arnold Confronts the “Oxford Malignants” No liberal counterattack raised more blisters during the 1836 controversy over Renn Dickson Hampden’s appointment to Oxford’s regius chair of divinity than Thomas Arnold’s 1836 essay in the Edinburgh Review. The edited provocatively titled it “The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden.” It appeared in April, between the originally vetoed censure vote in the Convocation in March and the successful one in May. Arnold’s fury was certainly understandable. The political maneuvering against Hampden violated what he considered the tacit rules governing university politics. The Tractarians also trampled his standards of intellectual decency by slicing up and caricaturing Hampden’s views. The desire to strike back did not resolve the problem of how to do so. Arnold chose to indict the Tractarians for bad behavior.

“Our Path is Not Backwards, But Onwards”

The journey that brought Arnold into the Hampden controversy began a quarter-century earlier when he arrived in Oxford on an undergraduate scholarship, the same year (1811) that both Richard Whately and John Keble were elected Oriel fellows. His genial social life combined intense intellectual activity—far beyond academic requirements—with vigorous outdoor pursuits. As an Oriel fellow he cultivated an aptitude for sophisticated historical analysis. Keble became an intimate friend and later godfather to Arnold’s son Matthew, born in 1822. Fellows could not marry, so Arnold left Oriel after four years to run a private school with his new brother-in-law. He applied for the headmastership of Rugby in 1828. Oriel’s provost Edward Hawkins predicted in recommendation that Arnold would change the face of public-school education in England; this and similar praise was enough for Rugby’s trustees, who voted to hire Arnold without a personal interview with a one-vote margin over Thomas Short, John Henry Newman’s former Trinity-College tutor.1

1 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 1, pp. 7–26. J. Rickaby, “Arnold and Newman,” Month 99 (1902), p. 17. Williamson, The Liberalism of Thomas Arnold, pp. 25–40. Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 9. M. McCrum, Thomas Arnold, Headmaster: A Reassessment (Oxford, 1989), p. 1. A.J.H. Reeve, “Arnold, Thomas (1795–1842),” in vol. 2 of

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When Arnold arrived at Rugby it had a reputation for barbarous student behavior, bad curriculum, vicious discipline, and squalid living conditions (although things were not as dire as they were in 1797 when rebelling pupils set off a bomb and provoked an armed response from the military). Arnold accelerated improvements began by the previous headmaster.2 Accounts by Rugby graduates like Thomas Hughes and Arthur Stanley venerated him as the patron saint of mid-Victorian education. A former pupil christened him “the heroschoolmaster of English public schools” and another Victorian commentator (who did not attend Rugby) gushed that Arnold was “the greatest schoolinstructor of our age—perhaps the greatest that has ever discharged the office.”3 A single visit convinced Thomas Carlyle that Arnold’s “unhasting unresting diligence” had transformed Rugby into “a temple of industrious peace.”4 Samuel Smiles in Self-Help held up the school under Arnold as a model for creating serious and perseverant men.5 Arnold neither claimed nor deserved all this credit—Rugby’s vitalization and the larger public-school revival relied on far more than the efforts of one man, no matter how indefatigable and charismatic. The public school also developed into something other than he intended. Lytton Strachey observed in Eminent Victorians that Arnold’s headmastership had a strange after-history. He had not intended to define the public school around the “worship of good athletics and worship of good form”—even if he helped create a system that did just that. Tom Brown’s School Days (1857), Hughes’s novel of Rugby life in the 1830s, celebrated cricket as an institution for building moral character to the point that victory in

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004), pp. 501–505. 2 A. Briggs, Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes, 1851–1867 (Chicago, 1972), pp. 140–167. McCrum, Thomas Arnold. N. Murray, A Life of Matthew Arnold (New York, 1996), pp. 16–19. Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846, pp. 465–467. 3 K. Lake, Memorials of William Charles Lake, Dean of Durham, 1869–1894 (London, 1901), pp. vi, 6–12. 4 A.P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 13th ed., vol. 1, p. 203, vol. 2, p. 275. The phrase that Carlyle used to describe Arnold, according to Stanley, appeared in print prior to Carlyle’s visit to Rugby. In his 1839 essay on “Chartism,” which Arnold admired, Carlyle contrasted the “noisy vehement Irish” with the qualities of the “Saxon Britain”: “justice, clearness, silence, perseverance, unhasting unresting diligence, hatred of disorder, hatred of injustice which is the worst disorder.” T. Carlyle, “Chartism,” in vol. 29 of The Centenary Edition of the Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H.D. Trail (London, 1899), p. 140. For another account of Carlyle’s 1842 meeting with Arnold, see J.A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of the His Life in London, 1834–1881 (London, 1884), vol. 1, pp. 253–255. 5 Smiles, Self-Help, pp. 255, 269, 291, 307–308.

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school-house matches was preferable to winning prestigious university scholarships. His former headmaster would have blanched at this.6 Arnold’s God worked actively in the world. He attributed the destruction of the mighty army that Napoleon assembled at Dresden in 1812—”earthly state has never reached a prouder pinnacle”—not to the armies of England or Germany or Russia but to “the hand of God alone.”7 Both his theology and his historical scholarship placed conventional stress on “the spirit of patience and cheerful submission which God gives with it.” This spirit depended on the cultivation of personal habit. We could not simply repent of our sins whenever convenient. Long-continued debauchery destroyed our appetite for good. Nor could we trust passively to our good intentions if we did not steadfastly put them to practice. “Nothing is more unworthy, nothing is more ruinous,” he preached, “than to be a Christian by halves.” We could not hope to become perfect Christians at once. All men find it hard and distasteful at first to persevere in righteousness but, eventually, “according to a well-known law of our faculties,” the performance of our Christian duties became easier (if never easy). The power of Christ’s perfect self-denial provided us with the grace necessary to maintain our exertions and overcome our trials. If in life Christ taught us how to live, his resurrection and ascension into heaven told us why. Men naturally become weary in well-doing, especially when the reward appeared distant or uncertain. Good conduct did not reliably earn respect in the eyes of the world. Christ died and rose again to promise us that if we persisted in resisting evil we too will be saved. If this was a false promise, why resist evil? Patience, self-denial, and love became folly because, if we vanished into nothing upon death, such virtues served us no better than pride and pleasureseeking. The rejection of the Resurrection was thus nothing more than a selfdelusion to justify wickedness.8 Toleration was central to Arnold’s vision. He preached that “we should carefully study the frequent exhortations in the Gospel to humility, the commands not to judge our brother, the warnings not to look upon ourselves as holy and marked out from the profane world.”9 In 1833 Arnold proposed inviting dissenting sects (and their distinct doctrines and modes of worship) into the 6 L. Strachey, Eminent Victorians (New York, 1918), p. 241. Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days, pp. 136, 394. 7 Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, pp. 27–28, 177–179. 8 Arnold, Christian Life, pp. 7–8, 54–55, 121, 192 (quotation), 261–262. Arnold, Sermons, vol. 2, pp. 38, 164–166, 201–202, 217–218, 277–279 (quotation), vol. 3, pp. 140–152, 320–329. Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, pp. 11–12. 9 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 1, p. 22.

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established church to combat the “monstrous evil of sectarianism.” He insisted that such a scheme could work because Christians agreed on several fundamental points: the supremacy of scripture, an all-perfect and indivisible God, the divinity of Christ, the Atonement, and resurrection and judgment after death. There was also universal agreement on the nature of the virtue which embedded in these doctrines. We all have, with very few exceptions, the same notions of right and wrong; or, at any rate, the differences on these points do not exist between Christians of different sects, but between sincere Christians of all sects, and those who are little better than mere Christians in name. We all hold that natural faults are not therefore excusable, but are earnestly to be struggled against; that pride and sensuality are amongst the worst sins; that self-denial, humility, devotion, and charity, are among the highest virtues. If Christians could unite beneath a broad institutional umbrella then they might redirect the energy currently being wasted on pointless internecine controversy to the moral improvement of society. Instead of an unseemly scene of one minister preaching against another, we should probably have an earnest union in great matters, and a manly and delicate forbearance as to points of controversy, such as would indeed become the disciples of Him who is in equal perfection the God of truth and the God of love. Arnold acknowledged that such sweeping reorganization would not be easy, but it was visionary only if Christians refused to try it. The alternatives were grave: “if Reform of the Church be impracticable, its destruction unhappily is not so, and that its enemies know full well.”10 Arnold’s accent on toleration opened him to the potent insult of “latitudinarianism.” Unsurprisingly, Arnold, like Hampden, indignantly rejected the label.11 Nor did they deserve it, at least not in its derogatory sense. Arnold 10 Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, pp. 29–33, 68–69, 87–88. Arnold’s proposal for church reform overlapped with John Wesley’s ecumenical ideals; see R.P. Heitzenrater, “The Founding Brothers,” in The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies, ed. W.J. Abraham and J.E. Kirby (Oxford, 2009), pp. 47–48. 11 Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, p. 82. Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, pp. 383– 384. Hampden, Observations on Religious Dissent, pp. 27–28, 32. R.D. Hampden, Inaugural

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responded no less fiercely or firmly than the Tractarians to the threats he perceived to faith. The spread of “fashionable” unbelief appalled him. He did not see the real threat as intellectual. Arguments against Christianity—which in any case men like Butler had already demolished—only served to validate a course of sin by freeing a man from the obligation to humility and self-denial. In other words, unbelief was much more likely to be the consequence then the cause of sin: “Any man may easily and certainly become an atheist if he will but reject all good practices, all self-examination, all scruple of crime, and do the bidding of the devil without reserve.” Arnold did concede that not all atheists were motivated by self-indulgence. As a practical matter, however, their systems sanctioned vice as assuredly as more vulgar denials of God’s dominion. There could be no virtue without the sanction of obligation and duty, which atheism could never genuinely provide. A feedback loop existed between behavior and belief: virtue and truth were mutually reinforcing, as were vice and error. This was true for societies and individuals. His scholarly history of the Roman republic blamed its demise on the accretion of sin in all channels of life. Pagan theories of virtue proved catastrophically unable to check human crime. The birth of Jesus Christ and the rise of Christianity amidst this misery and chaos created for the first time a system of virtue capable of restraining destructive human passions. The implications for Britain if it adopted Bentham utilitarianism or some other secular philosophy were clear. Arnold’s argument against atheism mirrored the Tractarian censure of liberal theology: both judged a belief system on its tendency rather than its professed aims.12 Arnold agreed with the Oxford Movement that the evidences of Christianity did not provide a reliable path to faith. Christian education must cultivate the moral nature before attempting to instill rational understanding.13 But from here he diverged radically from Tractarian theology. He stridently rejected the conviction that we must wall off doubt in matters of faith. “It is not scriptural, but fanatical, to oppose faith to reason,” he told his protégé Stanley. “God is not served by folly.”14 He preached that, as boys matured into men “their Christian reason craves to be satisfied, that so all their nature may go on in God’s service

Lecture Read before the University of Oxford in the Divinity School, 4th ed. (London, 1836), p. 26. 12 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 1, pp. 166–167, vol. 2, pp. 164–169, 407–408, vol. 3, pp. 396–405. See Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority, pp. 245–247. 13 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 3, pp. 201–203. For the Tractarian agreement with Arnold on some practical aspects of Christian education, see W.G. Ward, “Arnold’s Sermons,” British Critics 30 (1841), pp. 300–303. 14 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, p. 51–52.

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with equal steps.”15 We could only continue along the right spiritual path if we accepted that the pursuit of understanding was unavoidably “painful.” We did violence to our nature if we attempted “to combine knowledge with an undisturbed tranquillity of belief, to enjoy the pleasures of a clear and active mind, without being subject to its pains. …[Our belief] must be all reasonable, or all blind; otherwise it will soon vanish altogether, and be succeeded by unbelief.”16 In other words, the Tractarians and those of like mind peddled false certainty in place of “imperfect knowledge patiently endured.”17 The Christian teacher actually discouraged belief in others, particularly in intelligent and ardent young men, when he tried to silence doubt “by considerations wholly inconclusive as to the point at issue.” We could not simply appeal to tradition to resolve our dilemmas. God made his revelations to man progressively, with each adapted to his state at the time. This did not mean we were free to disregard God’s commandments as irrelevant to our current condition. With Christian faith there must be no tampering; we cannot afford to propitiate an adversary by sacrificing the points which he objects to; we dare not describe the method of salvation as different from what God has appointed; we dare not content ourselves with any lower standard of holiness than God’s perfect law. We did have to distinguish rules that served a particular circumstance from “eternal and universal obligation.”18 We could not make this essential judgment if we could not subject church tradition to reverent investigation. The goal was to form “a perfect character in manhood” and “a state of mind at once docile and enquiring, which best becomes us both as men and as Christians.” Forcing submission to unchangeable tradition and unchallengeable dogma created habits of cowardice, not the steady, fearless and faithful obedience of “a sincere and teachable heart.”19 15 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 3, pp. 202–211, 273–274 (quotation on p. 203). 16 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 2, p. 376. This quotation, and several to follow in this paragraph, comes from Arnold’s “Essay on the Right Interpretation and Understanding of the Scripture,” which set out his view on the relationship between reason, enquiry, virtue and faith; see pp. 374–425. 17 Arnold, Christian Life, pp. xliii–xliv, 194–195. 18 Arnold, Sermons, vol. 2, pp. 376, 379, 423. 19 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 374–375. 387, 424. Arnold, On the Divisions and Mutual Relations of Knowledge, p. 29. Arnold argued that Christians had to update the particular application of their religion’s eternal principles to changing circumstances. Failure to do so would

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Arnold believed that his young charges in Rugby came to him with the emptiness of innocence. The goal of education was to fill this spiritual space with Christian devotion. Otherwise viciousness and vice would rush in. The brutal and cowardly bully—the fictional Flashman in Tom Brown’s School Days provides an iconic example—was a boy in the grip of wickedness. This degraded inner life was easy to recognize. We know him by the manifold signs of folly, coarseness, carelessness; even when we see not, as yet, his worse fruits of falsehood and profligacy. We know him by the sign of an increased, and increasing, selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions of our nature, all for ever calling out, ‘Give, give;’ all for ever impatient, complaining, when their gratification is withheld, when the call of duty is set before them. We know him by pride and self-importance, as if nothing was so great as self, as if our own opinions, judgment, feelings, were to be consulted in all things. Arnold’s goal was of course to produce the opposite of this despoiled character by encouraging each student to accept God’s spirit. He placed little importance on intellectual achievement for its own sake but expressed deep admiration for those who acquired understanding through honest, humble, and zealous effort (especially when not blessed with natural aptitude).20 As a consequence, Arnold largely left Rugby’s traditional classics curriculum untouched. “It is not so much our object to give boys ‘useful information’, as to facilitate their gaining it hereafter for themselves, and to enable them to turn it to account when gained,” he wrote in an essay describing and defending his school’s emphasis on classical education.21 He did not open any significant space for scientific instruction—in fact he undermined the limited science lectures he had inherited—and subordinated mathematics to the study of logic.22 His attitude towards science revealed a great deal about the practical implications of his theology. He expressed admiration for the “sublime” subjects of physical research and scorned those who would contort the facts of geology to fit some blinkered reading of revelation. The lectures of the geology professor William Buckland electrified Arnold as a student. His continuing

result in their abrogation; see Arnold, The Christian Duty of Granting Claims of the Roman Catholics, pp. 8, 124–125; and Arnold, Christian Life, pp. xliv–xlviii. 20 Arnold, Sermons, pp. 164–166, 194–195. See Briggs, Victorian People, pp. 140–167; and McCrum, Thomas Arnold. 21 Arnold, “Rugby School,” pp. 240–249. 22 McCrum, Thomas Arnold, pp. 62–65, 116–117. Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 109–110.

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interest in the subject led to his election to the fellowship of the Geological Society in 1830.23 But he also considered natural science, for all its beauty and usefulness, as supplemental, an investigation into “lower matters.” He explained his reasoning at length in an address to the Rugby Literary and Scientific Society in 1835. His core principle was to consider both moral and physical science “as a matter of duty rather than of simple knowledge: the knowledge being in all cases referable to a farther end, that is, our duty in compliance with God’s will.” For that reason, religious and moral training took absolute precedence in education. Thus while we see that no knowledge whatever is to be despised, and while we rejoice in the cultivation of all science of whatever kind, we yet cannot but perceive also, that thus looking upon all nature as ministering in a manner to man, and the knowledge of it as valuable because it ministers to his happiness, if other knowledge ministers to his happiness more, and more universally, then that knowledge must be deemed as yet more valuable than the knowledge of nature, and the possession of it must be considered essential to perfect education. Secular education served a valuable purpose if it instilled “habits of unimpassioned inquiry”; it was positively mischievous if it diverted us from “higher matters.” Arnold kept science out of the Rugby curriculum because teaching it in the depth necessary for mastery would distract from moral instruction. Students educated in Christian duty would be prepared to acquire science later as their inclinations and interests dictated. But boys given an exclusively scientific education would not be able to rectify easily their moral deficiencies. In fact, an insularly secular education would fail on its own terms because it was incompetent to eradicate the spirits of unbelief, impatience and bigotry inimical to investigation of all types.24 The emphasis on active Christian piety that drove Arnold’s educational philosophy also provided a model for his political engagement.25 His theory of

23 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 1, p. 19, vol. 2, pp. 74, 330, 362. R. Murchison, “Anniversary Address of the President,” Proceedings of the Geological Society of London 4 (1846), p. 66. 24 Arnold, On the Divisions and Mutual Relations of Knowledge, pp. 13–14, 20, 28–29. 25 On Arnold and his application of political philosophy, see: Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 1, pp. 48–49; L. Trilling, Matthew Arnold (New York, 1939), pp. 46–62; Williamson, The Liberalism of Thomas Arnold, pp. 170–205; Chadwick,

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government explicitly assigned the same responsibility to government that he had as a headmaster: the cultivation of morality above all other concerns.26 The existence of widespread social evil in England began to weigh increasingly on his mind in the years immediately before he moved to Rugby. He took it as given that the health of the nation required a strong established church (he hated the separation of church and state in the United States). Such strength required the church to adapt its eternal mission to modern circumstances. The alternative to reform was to watch “abuses and inefficient institutions obstinately retained, and then at last, blindly and furiously destroyed.”27 Practical reforms which reduced injustice, selfishness, and folly would extend Christianity’s influence on British life. Whereas he who knows the origin of society and its actual vicissitudes on the one hand, and has learnt from Christ’s Gospel to understand what it ought to be on the other, will at once see that the antiquity of an institution does not afford a presumption in favour of its excellence; and that instead of idle language about holding fast to the laws of our ancestors, our constant object should be to carry on those successive improvements to which all that is good in them is owing; not to doat upon the productions of our childhood, but to labour to bring them to the perfection of the ripest wisdom of manhood.28 In other words, “our path is not backwards, but onwards.”29 His toleration had limits (he campaigned on behalf of political rights for Catholics, for example, but opposed similar reforms for Jews because they “are strangers in England”).30 But overall he applied the Noetic principle to the public issues of the day with logical consistency and moral force—if not always with politic judgment and concrete results. Arnold’s political activities attracted wide opposition during the angry 1830s. Even some well-wishers felt he was too intemperate. Lord Melbourne, although a great admirer, confessed privately that Arnold “has published

The Victorian Church, part I, pp. 42–46, 113, 160; Briggs, Victorian People, pp. 140–167; Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, pp. 178–180; McCrum, Thomas Arnold, pp. 87–89; Reeve, “Arnold.” 26 Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, pp. 49–50, 65–66. 27 Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, pp. iii–iv, 13–15, 76–79, 88 (quotation). 28 Arnold, The Christian Duty of Granting Claims of the Roman Catholics, pp. 21–22. 29 Arnold, Christian Life, p. 5; see also pp. xliv–xlviii, lxv–lxvii. 30 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 32–33. E. Alexander, The State of the Jews: A Critical Appraisal (New Brunswick, 2012), pp. 15–22.

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indiscreet opinions…. [which have] without any adequate reason or object, impaired his own utility.” Arnold’s friend William Wordsworth drew the same conclusion. His opponents also suspected that his zeal was counterproductive. Hurrell Froude wondered to Newman “if all Arnolds [sic] attacks on the Priesthood etc make more converts to it than not.”31 Whatever the consequences, Arnold saw his political activities as essential to his effectiveness at Rugby, “not, of course, for the folly of proselytizing the boys, but because education is a dynamical, not a mechanical process, and the more powerful and vigorous the mind of the teacher, the more clearly and readily he can grasp things, the better fitted he is to cultivate the mind of another.”32 A striking parallel existed between Arnold’s proposal for church reform and his system at Rugby: both decentralized authority. He wanted to invite dissenters back into the Church of England based on the principle, as he expressed it later, that “all societies of men, whether we call them states or churches, should make their bond to consist in a common object and a common practice, rather than in a common belief.”33 In any case, when it came to Christianity, “differences of opinion…are absolutely unavoidable.” He also believed that church governance overall needed to become broader. He lamented that “the very word Church has lost its proper meaning, and is constantly used to express only the clerical members of it.” The impracticalities of clerical rule alienated the laity and left the church dysfunctionally governed. Congregations must assume a greater role in church administration. A more efficient and comprehensive system would strengthen the church as a source of social organization and give the parishioners a collective role in “keeping up…religious discipline.”34 At Rugby he delegated most day-to-day discipline to prefects. This was in part a concession to reality: the masters simply did not have the reach to constantly oversee hundreds of boys directly. But Arnold also felt that the prefect system, when properly designed and monitored, cultivated Christian conduct by allowing the boys to exercise moral judgment and self-reliance. He did not of course envision modeling the Church of England directly on the public 31

L.C. Sanders, ed., Lord Melbourne’s Papers, 2nd ed. (London, 1890), p. 507. Murray, A Life of Matthew Arnold, p. 22. R.H. Froude to J.H. Newman (3 September 1835), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 5, p. 128. 32 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, p. 26. 33 Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, pp. 50–51. 34 Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, pp. 15–16, 41–48. On Arnold’s desire to broaden the power of the laity in the Anglican Church, see also Arnold, Christian Life, pp. lii–liv. On Arnold as a church reformer, see Williamson, The Liberalism of Thomas Arnold, pp. 121–136.

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school.35 In his vision of the church, power was diffused far more widely than he would ever tolerate in Rugby, for the obvious reason that adults required autonomy unsuitable for children. Yet the general logic was the same. In a boarding school the children were going to govern themselves to a large extent; the only question was whether the masters would help the boys guide their affairs responsibly or, in a quixotic attempt to maintain exclusive adult control, empower the cruel ones to rule surreptitiously through physical violence. In a diverse nation citizens will disagree on spiritual issues; the only question was whether the established church would unify earnest believers in mutual forbearance and goodwill or, in a quixotic attempt to impose uniformity through priestcraft, sever Christians from each other and the bonds of national communion. Governance only worked, both morally and practically, when it extended self-rule as widely as possible. This standard had a crucial corollary: autonomy did not mean license. In 1835 Arnold explained that liberal principles insisted on punishing moral offenses if looking the other way contributed to “the evil tendencies of human nature.” Liberty was a means towards religious, moral, and intellectual excellence and not an end in itself. He made these comments in an essay on disciplining schoolboys, although political asides revealed that he was not thinking just about children. Neither liberal theology nor liberal education could function without punishment for those who violated Christian norms of behavior. As Whately noted earlier in his Rhetoric, the circle of toleration did not encompass those who resorted to “insults, libellous personality, and falsification of facts.” Arnold granted no liberality to tyrants at Rugby. Nor, as his “Oxford Malignants” essay demonstrated, would he prove more lenient when the bullies were Oxford dons. Henry Parry Liddon, Edward Pusey’s disciple and biographer, later sneered that Arnold’s “bigoted ferocity” proved conclusively that latitudinarians were only tolerant when it suited them. The sting of this criticism relied upon the convenient assumption that “latitudinarian” tolerance was either synonymous with craven permissiveness or it was cant. Arnold recognized this rhetoric trap. The Tractarians, he noted acidly, were always “ready to call conciliation cowardice, and firmness pride.”36

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T. Arnold, “On the Discipline of Public Schools,” Quarterly Journal of Education 9 (1835), pp. 280–292. On the system of discipline at Rugby, see McCrum, Thomas Arnold, pp. 66–82. Arnold, “On the Discipline of Public Schools,” pp. 280–281. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, p. x. Arnold, “The Oxford Malignants,” p. 232. Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 1, pp. 381–385; see also vol. 2, p. 286.

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Not Error But Moral Wickedness

Arnold did not write the “Oxford Malignants” as a dispassionate application of his political and theological ideals to a contemporary controversy. His collisions with the Tractarians began before the movement had even coalesced and, over several years, misgivings about his friends’ doctrines and actions had relentlessly built to hostility.37 By 1832 his friendship with Keble had cooled. Keble explained to a mutual friend that, despite his respect for Arnold, “he really shows himself so willful and presumptuous in his way of dealing with holy things, a most erroneous and dangerous way, I think and a palpably sophistical way, that I cannot any longer look on him as a fellow-worker in the same cause. He seems to me now like a well-meaning heretic.” Keble’s National Apostasy horrified Arnold. He lamented to the same friend that “Keble & his Party…set up their own morbid Feelings as the Criterion of Truth & Holiness, and call those who dispute them aliens from the Church of God and Rebels against their Saviour.”38 After Pusey published his tract on fasting Arnold warned him that, though it was not objectionable in itself, “you are lending your co-operation to a party second to none in the tendency of their principles to overthrow the Gospel” in favor of the “idol of Tradition.”39 This criticism only hardened Pusey’s alliance with Newman and Keble.40 Arnold and Newman did not know each other personally (they met face-to-face only twice) but sparred from a distance.41 Newman denied bearing any type of personal grudge against Arnold, whose efforts at Rugby he genuinely respected (at least Arnold pursued useful and earnest work, Newman explained to Keble, unlike Whately and Hawkins, who were “merely talkers.”)42 Wilberforce’s anti-Hampden pamphlet of 1835 condemned Arnold for placing the development of the intellect above acquiring sound doctrinal views in order to depict Hampden’s objectionable theology as a component of a dangerous movement rather than isolated individual error.43 37

See for example, Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 40–43, 238–241. 38 Keble and Arnold quoted in Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 77–78; see also pp. 377, 395. 39 Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 1, pp. 282–283. 40 Short, Newman and His Contemporaries, pp. 95–96. 41 On Newman and Arnold’s interactions, see Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 98; Rickaby, “Arnold and Newman”; Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 245–246; and McCrum, Thomas Arnold, pp. 4–5. 42 J.H. Newman to J. Keble (12 September 1842), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 9, p. 87. 43 Wilberforce, The Foundation of the Faith Assailed in Oxford, pp. 26–28.

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The April 1836 issue of the Edinburgh Review contained two anti-Tractarian counterblasts from Rugby. The first was written by Bonamy Price, an Oxford graduate with a double-first in mathematics and classics who had served as a master under Arnold since 1830. He loudly shared his boss’s liberal politics, his “humble, profound, and most religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth,” and his spirit of historical inquiry and scriptural exegesis.44 Price’s review excoriated Newman’s Arians of the Fourth Century, which had been published three years earlier. He rated Newman poorly as a historian. The pattern of serial misrepresentation in Arians “condemns him either of gross partiality for his previously formed opinions, or else of great incapacity.” Scholarly criticism served as the foundation of a comprehensive condemnation of the broader Tractarian project. Price admired the aspiration “to tame and discipline the unruly will of man.” But, he concluded, the Tractarians’ method in pursuit this goal self-immolated. Their suppression of reason and their insistence in seeing the world in stark black-and-white terms “makes them guilty of obedience to evil, and then uncharitableness.” Newman personally stood condemned as a fanatic who “is quite ready to execute judgment on such as are so wilfully blinded as not to think as he does.” Price never made direct reference to the unfolding controversy over Hampden’s appointment but he clearly had it in mind when objecting to Newman’s “unfair mode of judging others.” “There is nothing so false, and so unjust,” Price insisted, “as to make men entertain all the conclusions which a rigorous use of logic can derive from their principles.” This unjust style of disputation stoked in Newman and his allies an arrogant spirit of persecution “which never has, and never will root out a single opinion from the world.” Far better, Price concluded, to behave in the spirit of love that was “the very essence of the Christian life.”45 Arnold’s “Oxford Malignants,” the second volley in the April issue, addressed the Hampden controversy bluntly. He did not offer a systematic defense of liberal theology and his attack on Tractarian ideas was less sustained than Price’s. Rather, Arnold contrasts two startlingly different patterns of conduct. 44 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 1, pp. 40–44, 213–219. See also various letters, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 4, pp. 84, 273, vol. 5, p. 128; and W.A.S. Hewins and M.C. Curthoys, “Price, Bonamy (1807– 1888),” in vol. 44 of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004), pp. 283–284. 45 Price, “Newman’s History of the Arians,” pp. 44–47, 55, 60, 70–72. It is notable that Price’s criticism of the Tractarians presaged the reflections on Hebraism and Hellenism that Matthew Arnold would articulate more than a quarter century later in Culture and Anarchy.

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He praised Hampden’s inaugural divinity lecture for “how meekly and patiently he laboured to remove misunderstanding.” This “misunderstanding,” in Arnold’s telling, had not been innocent. It was “the mingled fraud, and baseness, and cruelty, of fanatical persecution” which had seeped from the Tractarians’ “party malignity.” He accused both Newman and Pusey of deliberate dishonesty in their use of “pretended quotations” from Hampden’s writing. Arnold made the point—with much more clarity than Hampden had managed—that the entire purpose of the notorious Bampton lectures was to defend the fundamental doctrines of the Church of England from corruptions of language and metaphysics. The Tractarians compounded their distortions by ignoring Hampden’s published sermons, which set out an affirmative case for orthodox faith. In the closing paragraph Arnold explained that he did not denounce the Tractarians on doctrinal grounds. We should be most unwilling to speak harshly of any mere differences of opinion, utterly false and mischievous as we hold the views of the High Church party to be; yet, if it were merely an intellectual error, it should be confuted, indeed, firmly and plainly, but still, with all tenderness to the persons of those who held it. But the attack on Dr. Hampden bears upon it the character, not of error, but of moral wickedness.46 The accusation of wickedness not only ratcheted up the aggression but (far more importantly) justified it. In the end, however, the logic of Arnold’s theology carried him beyond a straightforward denunciation of misconduct and into some subtle but serious intellectual contradictions. He pronounced the Tractarians guilty of a “degraded and low-principled” heresy—“never was that term more justly applied.” He explicitly linked their bad conduct to the “foolery” of their theological beliefs. Their objects would “lead to no good, intellectual, moral, or spiritual; to no effect, social or religious, except to the changing of sense into silliness, and holiness of heart and life into formality and hypocrisy.” It remains unclear whether Arnold thought that their “moral wickedness” was a cause or consequence of their “foolery.” But he had to link them. His insistence that Christianity provided us with the only means to tame our corrupted nature and place ourselves on a path of virtue allowed him to impeach Benthamite utilitarianism and other godless philosophies; but it also compelled him to attack putatively Christian doctrines and modes of worship which also undermined Christian conduct. “Differences of opinion will exist,” he insisted in his 1833 46

Arnold, “The Oxford Malignants.”

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plea for church reform, “but it is our fault that they should have been considered equivalent to differences of principle, and made a reason for separation and hostility.”47 Arnold’s attack on the Tractarians did not contradict this position, at least in theory. True Christian opinions promoted charity; unchristian attitudes sowed spite. That was a core message in both Price’s and Arnold’s essays. But the test was incompatible with a unified established church. Arnold preserved Rugby’s Christian character by routinely expelling incorrigible troublemakers. These boys went away. They did not colonize part of the school grounds or stalk off to create a competing public school dedicated to rival ideals. The Church of England did not have access to such swift and effective discipline. Expelling or silencing the wicked promoted sectarianism. Buying peace by overlooking corruption and wrongdoing—becoming “latitudinarian” in the pejorative sense— emboldened fanatics and bullies. Arnold dreamed of the church becoming a beacon of unity, charity, and discipline; the Hampden affair proved that it could not simultaneously be all three. This was not so much a blow against his specific church reforms from three years earlier (which in any case had gone nowhere) but against the broader Noetic principles that motivated them. There would be no united front to ensure that the ideals of duty—of patience, humility, and self-denial—remained the exclusive property of Christianity. Price and Arnold’s articles provided little immediate help to Hampden. If anything, Arnold’s intervention made matters worse. The pro-Whig Edinburgh Review enjoyed little goodwill in the university. His strident tone surprised even some of his allies, young and old.48 Pusey responded in a postscript to yet another anti-Hampden pamphlet by wishing that Arnold’s ignorant and unchristian attack could be “passed over in mere sorrow.” But he refused to leave unchallenged the assertion that Hampden’s Bampton lectures dealt only with matters of technical language rather than doctrinal truth. Arnold accused the Tractarians of ignoring Hampden’s published sermons. Pusey gloated that he had engaged Hampden’s Parochial Sermons and insinuated that Arnold criticized what he had not bothered to read. Pusey in fact had merely culled a few isolated sentences from a single sermon to create the impression that Hampden was wobbly on the Trinity; he excised Hampden’s insistence that the Trinity “is not a mere dogma, or formal declaration of some opinion concerning God.”49 47 Arnold, “The Oxford Malignants,” pp. 235–236. Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, p. 18. 48 Corsi, Science and Religion, p. 144. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 250–254. 49 Pusey, An Earnest Remonstrance, pp. 38–42. Hampden, Parochial Sermons, pp. 25–32. Pusey, Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements and the Thirty-Nine Articles Compared, pp. xix, xxi.

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Arnold’s article had one immediate effect. It came perilously close to costing him his job at Rugby. Though anonymous (as customary), rumor quickly pegged him as the author and he took no pains to hide it. Lord Howe, a Rugby trustee, insisted that Arnold explicitly acknowledge or disavow responsibility. This demand blatantly violated the established etiquette which protected an author’s anonymity. Arnold responded that his opinions on the events in Oxford were public knowledge, but as to authorship he had no intention of answering a question that only a personal friend had the right to ask. Howe moved a vote of censure against Arnold at a trustees meeting. It failed on a 4–4 deadlock. The controversy took a toll as the number pupils in the school slid (Charles Kingsley’s Tory father, for one, refused to place his son anywhere near Arnold). In the meantime, rumors spread that Melbourne was considering Arnold for one of three recently vacated bishoprics. The Tory press used cuttings from the “Oxford Malignants” to agitate against this possibility. Melbourne sidled away from the divisive Arnold for the time being.50 Arnold felt neither chastised nor beaten down, unlike Hampden who had proved a nervous, reluctant warrior (even supporters observed that his feelings were “acute and sensitive to an almost morbid degree.”)51 Hampden hoped to exchange his frontline position in Oxford for a bishopric. Arnold wished for that, too, on the prospect of barreling with clenched fists into the vacated divinity chair. “My spirit of pugnaciousness would rejoice in fighting out the battle with the [Tractarians], as it were in a sawpit,” he told Whately. Melbourne had no stomach to prolong this particular fight, however, and left Hampden and Arnold as they sat. Arnold had to remain content at arrow-shot distance in Rugby. In the meantime he continued to pour his energies into family, school, and historical scholarship. None of these activities were ever entirely separate from his rivalry with the Oxford Movement, however. In the same letter to Whately he noted that his loved ones would eagerly stand behind him in battle; he had tough skin, but “my wife’s is tougher, and the children’s toughest of all.”52 While his historical research followed its own impetus he did not forego opportunities to undermine the Tractarians’ appeal to the historical record.53 50 Trilling, Matthew Arnold, pp. 64–65McCrum, Thomas Arnold, pp. 26–27, 87. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, part I, pp. 121–124. . R.B. Martin, The Dust of Combat: A Life of Charles Kingsley (New York, 1960), p. 29. On the etiquette of anonymity, see Secord, Victorian Sensation, p. 393. 51 R. Congreve, “Oxford and Dr. Hampden,” British and Foreign Review 15 (1843), p. 185. 52 Jones, The Broad Church, p. 100. 53 Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 109–110. McCrum, Thomas Arnold, pp. 83–92. Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, p. 175.

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His sermons in the Rugby chapel frequently attempted to inoculate his pupils against Tractarian theology. In September of 1836, for example, he associated idolatry with his adversaries in Oxford. Nothing is more common than to see great narrowness of mind, great prejudices, and great disorderliness of conduct, united in the same person. Nothing is more common than to see the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol of its own, and supporting that idol with the most furious zeal, and at the same time utterly rebellious to Christ, and rejecting with scorn the enlightening, the purifying, and the loving influence of Christ’s Spirit. …Those which tempt the highest minds…by their show of sacredness and excellence, make us fancy, that while following them we are following Christ. …Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all become idols. Arnold left nothing to confusion by listing the church, the clergy and the sacraments among such good things. He beseeched his young congregation to resist the allure of idolatry by surrendering their souls to the name of Jesus Christ, “before which obedience, reverence without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may all be duly rendered.”54

“Their Ends Should be Good Rather Than Truth”

Arnold developed his fullest statement against Tractarian theology in a sixtyeight-page introduction to a collection of sermons (most preached in Rugby school chapel) published in May of 1841 as Christian Life, Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps. The title captured the importance he placed on Christianity as a pattern of living. He adopted a calmer tone and a more methodical approach than in the “Oxford Malignants.” Although the censure was no less categorical, he shifted from the Tractarians’ “moral wickedness” (he blandly conceded that as individuals they were not necessarily foolish or wicked) to their system’s mischievous errors and blind partisan spirit. Arnold’s condemnation had four interlocking arguments: a hysterical overreaction to the political events of the nineteenth century drove the Tractarians to seek refuge in the apparent purity of the early church; political motives prejudiced their reading of the past and pushed them towards a tyrannical system of priestcraft; they abandoned the necessary reverence for scripture because it 54 Arnold, Christian Life, pp. 215–217.

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failed to warrant their view of God and the church; and, finally, their movement degenerated into self-aggrandizement without the discipline of scripture. Arnold accused the Tractarians of an irrational hatred of the nineteenth century which led them to condemn all that belonged to it “simply because it does belong to it.” This “diseased” view of the present led them to caricature the voices of Christian antiquity and invent an “imagined golden age” in order to concoct a justification for their “peculiar” doctrine of apostolical succession that was lacking in scripture. Arnold noted caustically that Newman and his friends preached not Christ, but the Church; “we must go even farther and say, not the Church, but themselves. What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation.” He continued: “Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, in [Newman’s] system, is altogether independent of his doctrine concerning the priesthood.” Arnold insisted, however, that his goal was not simply to contradict. I am anxious to show…that Mr. Newman’s system is to be opposed not merely on negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and positive truth, that perfection of Christ’s church, …which I value and desire as earnestly as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My great objection to Mr. Newman’s system is, that it destroys Christ’s church, and sets up an evil in its stead. We do not desire merely to hinder the evil from occupying the ground, and to leave it empty; …but we desire to build on the holy ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own devices, but according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given us the outline, and told us what should be its purposes. The collected sermons provided this positive vision for a “protestantism of the nineteenth century.”55 This latest salvo did not go unanswered. William George Ward, one of Newman’s young disciples, excoriated Christian Life in the British Critic, the Oxford Movement’s house organ. Ward insisted that errors contained in Arnold’s sermons were grave enough to deprive their author any weight “as a guide in theological matters to the serious and humble enquirer.” Arnold was simply altogether unsuited to foster a “specially Christian character of mind” because he failed to advocate effectively the “habitual self-denial and taming of the flesh.” His misfiring attack on Tractarian doctrines demonstrated the “arrogant and egotistical manner” of his theology. Ward conceded that Arnold 55

Ibid., pp. i–lxviii.

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possessed personal virtue but then marveled “how singular he is among good men” in his superficial, self-willed, delusive opinions. In any case, he “will meet the usual fate of those who lack the faith to pursue God’s end in God’s way rather than their own.” On this point “we do think that with humble and teachable seekers for truth the question is at an end.”56 This fight over teachable character showed that the debate had settled into an intellectual stalemate as the two sides exchanged erudite versions of the playground taunt “I know you are but what am I?” The political situation in Oxford had begun to shift, however. In the summer of 1841—between the appearance of Christian Life and Ward’s attack on it— the Melbourne government finally gratified Arnold’s longing to return to Oxford by naming him regius professor of modern history (a subject Newman distrusted for its potential to serve as a liberal political weapon).57 One of the Oxford Movement’s most clear-spoken, pugnacious and charismatic foes would deliver professorial lectures a five-minute walk from Newman’s pulpit in St. Mary’s. The political implications were unmistakable. Arnold gave his inaugural address in December. He took the necessities of the occasion far too seriously to reengage with the Tractarians directly, no doubt disappointing many in the unusually large audience. But anyone willing to listen carefully would recognize that he had his ammunition well stocked. “History forbids despair without authorizing vanity,” he lectured. He deprecated the desire to retreat to the past. We should not feel morally superior to past generations, he noted, but we would be “shamefully inferior to them, if we do not advance beyond them.” The judicious and fair-minded study of the past told us how we arrived at our present state so we may move forward and not shrink backwards.58 The warm reception of the lecture convinced him that “in returning to Oxford I was going to no Place full of Enemies.”59 An appendix to the published version of the inaugural lecture waded more directly into controversial waters. Arnold’s explicit target was a recent Edinburgh Review essay in which Thomas Macaulay defined that the state’s 56

Ward, “Arnold’s Sermons.” pp. 303, 306, 315, 318–322, 335–336, 361. See Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 420, 460, 556. Ward held Whately in even lower regard than Arnold; see W.G. Ward, The Ideal of a Christian Church Considered in Comparison with Existing Practice, 2nd ed. (London, 1844), p. 5. 57 J.H. Newman to C. Anderson (24 January 1836), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 5, pp. 212–213. 58 Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, pp. 39–41. 59 T. Arnold to F. Buckland (7 December 1841), The Letters of Matthew Arnold, ed. C.Y. Lang (Charlottesville, 1996–2001), vol. 1, p. 46.

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primary end exclusively as the protection of people and property. Government, Macaulay insisted, should pursue moral ends only when doing so did not interfere with its paramount temporal responsibilities, in the exact same way that a hospital should never sacrifice the health of its patients in pursuit of their spiritual improvement. In disagreeing, Arnold elaborated a theory of social organization that cut as directly against the Tractarians as it did against Macaulay. “All societies of men, whether we call them states or churches, should make their bond to consist in a common object and a common practice, rather than in a common belief,” he explained; “in other words, their ends should be good rather than truth.” While he agreed that “union in action” tended towards “union of belief,” the reverse was not and could not be true. With this point established, he locked his two foes, the Tractarians and the secularists, into embrace. If the state had no primary responsibility for religion, as Macaulay’s view of temporal statehood stipulated, then the church must govern itself. Cutting the church adrift accorded beautifully, he asserted, with false notions of apostolical succession and a divinely appointed priesthood. He mischievously cast Macaulay and Newman as inadvertent allies.60 Arnold’s appendix cleared up all doubt—in the unlikely case that there was any—that he intended to fight on multiple cultural and political fronts. The Tractarians did not, however, treat Arnold’s opening course of lectures as a provocation. Ward in the British Critic declared mildly that the published lectures were “in a very high degree able and interesting.” He loudly applauded Arnold’s refutation of Macaulay’s “wretched sentiments” but only obliquely addressed the parallel attack on Tractarianism, regretting that Arnold “has not more completely rescued history from the dominion of that heathenism which, it is to be feared, has infected every branch of study in Protestant hands.”61

“May He Keep Me Gentle and Patient”

Arnold never had an opportunity to rejoin the battle against the Oxford Movement publically. The appendix to his inaugural lecture became an epitaph rather than a plan of battle.

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T.B. Macaulay, “Church and State,” Edinburgh Review 69 (1839), pp. 273–276. Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, pp. 44–77. W.G. Ward, Notice of Arnold’s Introductory Lectures on Modern History, British Critics 31 (1842), pp. 244–245.

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He suffered ill-health earlier in the spring of 1842 but seemed to recover fully.62 On June 11th he hosted William Charles Lake, a former Rugby head boy and tutor to Arnold’s son, Matthew. Despite this close connection to the Arnold family, Lake had fallen into Newman’s orbit at Oxford. The friendly visit mostly steered clear of theology, but on a stroll through the garden Arnold did, cordially but firmly, denounce the moral and intellectual faults of the Tractarians’ approach to the Eucharist. He felt fine when he went to bed around midnight. He awoke at five in the morning with piercing chest pains radiating down his left side. Death followed three hours later, a day shy of his 47th birthday.63 Five days before his death he recorded one of his last diary entries. I have felt better and stronger all this day, and I thank God for it. But may he keep my heart tender. May He keep me gentle and patient, yet active and zealous, may He bless me in Himself and in His son. May He make me humble minded in this, that I do not look for good things as my portion here, but rather should look for troubles as what I deserve, and as what Christ’s people are to bear. “If ye be without chastisement, of which all are partakers,” &c. How much of good have I received at God’s hand, and shall I not also receive evil? Only, O Lord, strengthen me to bear it, whether it visit me in body, in mind, or in estate.64 62

On Arnold’s heart disease, see F.B. Alberti, Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotion (Oxford, 2010), pp. 90–102. 63 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 320–341. P.M. Latham, Lectures on Subjects Connected with Clinical Medicine (London, 1845–6), vol. 2, pp. 373– 378. Lake, Memorials of William Charles Lake, p. 34. For Arnold’s criticism of the Tractarian doctrine of the Eucharist, see Arnold, Christian Life, pp. xxxiii–xxxv. 64 Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, p. 323.

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The Tamworth Letters Virtue and Science

In the 1830s John Henry Newman articulated a clear idea in his university sermons: religion’s moral supremacy left science autonomous in its own limited sphere. The tacit rules of the sermon placed strict limitations on how far he could apply this principle to current events. He could not pursue explicit political controversies or target opponents by name from the pulpit.1 (Indirect attacks were possible). Newspapers offered altogether more room for polemical maneuver. Newman made the most of the opportunity when the proprietor of the Times commissioned his response to a recent speech by Robert Peel, then the Tory opposition leader, in his parliamentary constituency of Tamworth in Staffordshire. In seven prominently placed letters published between the 5th and 27th of February, 1841, Newman used his criticism of Peel’s address as a platform for attacking the forces of secularism. The first installment appeared anonymously, the rest he signed “Catholicus.” Even his friends initially did not know he was responsible. He paired the Tory politician with a seemingly unlikely confederate, Henry Brougham, first Baron Brougham and Vaux. The charismatic Brougham, a leading Whig politician, was Peel’s longstanding partisan enemy. This of course served Newman’s purpose brilliantly: yoking the two politicians together allowed him to indict the entire political establishment for its craven failure to protect the nation’s spiritual health and religious heritage.2

On Education: The Tory and the Whig

Peel commemorated the laying of the cornerstone for the Tamworth Library in January of 1841. The planned institution was to be open to everyone over the age 1 J.H. Newman, A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, Richard, Lord Bishop of Oxford (Oxford, 1841), p. 41. 2 See Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 206–212; W.V. Harris, “Newman, Peel, Tamworth, and the Concurrent of Historical Forces,” Victorian Studies 32 (1989), pp. 189–208; J. Coats, “John Henry Newman’s ‘Tamworth Reading Room’: Adjusting Rhetorical Approaches for the Periodical Press,” Victorian Periodicals Review 24 (1991), pp. 173–180; and Turner, “John Henry Newman and the Challenge of a Culture of Science.”

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of fourteen, male and female, without political or religious test, on payment of a one-shilling quarterly subscription. The city’s existing subscription library charged more than five times that amount for access, in addition to a joining fee. Women were invited to participate on equal terms in administration of the new library. Scientific lectures would become a common feature. In addition to a well-stocked library and a comfortable reading-room, the members would have access to maps and, hopefully, a mineralogical collection.3 Hundreds of libraries and mechanics organized along the same general lines had appeared over the past fifteen years. For Newman, precisely this ubiquity represented the relentless invasion of secular education into the proper domain of religious training. Brougham had campaigned effectively for the past decade and a half to disseminate secular and scientific knowledge to all segments of British society. “The sacred thirst for science is becoming epidemic,” he rejoiced in one 1825 article for the Edinburgh Review. “Free discussion is all we want,” he proclaimed in another.4 He himself had published papers on the refraction and reflection of light in the Transactions of the Royal Society as a teenager in the 1790s and won election to the fellowship of the Royal Society at twenty-five. As an mp he championed the expansion of education. In 1820 he proposed a bill that would have created a system of universal (but not compulsory) elementary education, highly subsidized by local rates. It floundered because leading high churchmen objected that the scheme did not grant the Church of England enough control while many dissenters objected that it conceded too much. He had more success founding Mechanics’ Institutes, starting in London in 1823. He also helped launch the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (sduk) in 1826 to make nonreligious general information affordable for working-class homes. London University opened the same year. He had dedicated his energetic organizing and fundraising to launch the first university in England outside of Oxford and Cambridge. He lamented that clergymen continued to monopolize Oxbridge instruction, even though they have become, “in many respects, far less adapted than the laity to perform the office of instructors.” This arrangement, he lamented, made the English universities “the great depositaries of Ecclesiastical influence, and the great bulwarks of the Establishment.”5 He hoped that the new London University, priced to be 3 R. Peel, An Inaugural Address Delivered by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, Bart. M.P., President of the Tamworth Library and Reading Room, 2nd ed. (London, 1841), pp. 4–7. R. Stone, Tamworth: A History (Shopwyke Manor Barn, 2003), p. 97. 4 H. Brougham, “High Church Opinions on Popular Education” and “Mechanics’ Institutions,” Edinburgh Review 42 (1825), pp. 216, 499. 5 H. Brougham, “New University in London,” Edinburgh Review 42 (1825), pp. 346–349.

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affordable to the middle classes, would deliver the “finishing blow to the High Church Bigots.”6 (Peel, then Home Secretary, fought the new university as a blunt challenge to Tory-Anglican power). The new university provided a seat for Benthamite philosophy, although the now-elderly philosopher had little direct organizational role.7 The men who founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science attempted, unsuccessfully, to enlist Brougham in a leadership position. He did attend several meetings, however, and in one declared to general approval that one of the principal reasons for the association was to unite “on the neutral ground of science, men of all countries, all religions, and of all shades of political opinion.”8 Brougham did not see his campaign for secular education as hostile to religious belief. He wrote extensively on natural theology, which he celebrated as the point where the moral and practical benefits of science and religion converge. He insisted that we could never demonstrate the existence and benevolence of God as a necessary truth from à priori principles. Our knowledge of the divine depended on experience and could only be established as a contingent truth following the inductive rules taught by Francis Bacon and exemplified in practice by Isaac Newton. This meant that our views of the attributes and the will of God must always remain imperfect and impartial, if subject to improvement. He took it as axiomatic that true understanding of the physical and moral properties of the world was not possible for those who take “whatever is laid down regarding [science] merely upon trust.” In the end, however, he was convinced that science would support revelation, appealing on this point to Joseph Butler’s Analogy, “the most argumentative and philosophical defence of Christianity ever submitted to the world.”9

6 Brougham quoted in A. Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London (Chicago, 1989), pp. 25–41. 7 For background on Brougham’s activities in educational reform, see M. Lobban, “Brougham, Henry Peter, first Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868),” in vol. 7 of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford, 2004), pp. 970–980; Desmond, The Politics of Evolution, pp. 25–41; W.D. Sockwell, Popularizing Classical Economics: Henry Brougham and William Ellis (New York, 1994), pp. 122–151; and A. Fyfe, Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain (Chicago, 2004), pp. 43–45. 8 Brougham quoted in D. Brewster, “The British Scientific Association,” Edinburgh Review 60 (1835), p. 394. See Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 32, 45, 73. 9 H. Brougham, Dissertations on Subjects of Science Connected with Natural Theology, (London, 1839), vol. 1, pp. viii. H. Brougham, A Discourse of Natural Theology, 4th ed. (London, 1835), p. 202; see also pp. 32–33, 49–51, 81–89, 157–159.

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Peel’s address at Tamworth drew on similar assumptions about the bond between expertise, human industry, religion, and morality. He identified a recent treatise on diseases in wheat by Cambridge botany professor John Stevens Henslow as the epitome of the type of useful work the library would make available to the district’s largely agricultural population. But he also stressed that there was a much higher purpose to the institution. The library and its associated activities and resources would tend to “the moral condition and moral improvement of the people.” Peel argued that science promoted moral as well as practical advantage by quoting at length from Newton and Humphry Davy. Newton observed that the heavens could have had no origin other than God. Davy, in the passage Peel read, reflected on the qualities of the true philosopher inquirer. His mind should always be awake to devotional feeling; and in contemplating the variety and the beauty of the external world, and developing its scientific wonders, he will always refer to that infinite wisdom, through whose beneficence he is permitted to enjoy knowledge; in becoming wiser, he will become better; he will rise at once in the scale of intellectual and moral existence—his increased sagacity will be subservient to a more exalted faith, and in proportion as the veil becomes thinner, through which he sees the causes of things, he will admire more the brightness of the Divine light, by which they are rendered visible. Peel explained that the local clergy would oversee the prohibition of all books of “a frivolous, or immoral, or evil tendency.” But “works of controversial divinity” would also be banned. For Peel, a “comprehensive view of the order of the universe” acquired on the reverent but theologically neutral ground of science provided the best way to morally enrich and politically pacify the laboring classes.10

“Aristotle Changes into Butler”

Newman used his prominent national platform in the Times to draw a broad indictment of apostasy. The two politicians represented targets much different than Renn Dickson Hampden and Thomas Arnold. Peel’s Tamworth address lacked the subtle engagement with philosophical and theological issues that characterized 10 Peel, An Inaugural Address, pp. 10–11, 14–15, 27–30.

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Hampden’s academic discourses, as one would of course expect from a politician fulfilling a routine civic obligation. Peel’s bland conventionality made his address a good index of popular opinion and so a tantalizing target. Newman could rail against the spirit of the age and demonstrate that the practical consequences of Peel’s far-from-harmless platitudes were social and religious disintegration. Brougham’s more substantial writing, and his role in the sduk and London University, allowed Newman to draw a direct line from Peel’s inanities on education to liberal politics, natural theology, utilitarianism, and rationalism. Newman’s Tamworth letters drew on the themes and concerns of his university sermons. In 1831 he preached against secular education as a “dangerous artifice of the usurping Reason.” Eight years later he attacked Brougham (although not by name) for claiming in his inaugural discourse as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow that, because men can control only their actions and not their belief, we must respect conscientious differences of opinion. The Tamworth letters allowed him to explain in depth why Brougham’s opinion epitomized “the infidel principle.”11 In Newman’s telling, schemes for secular and nonsectarian education were ingredients in a toxic brew which included other poisons like reform politics, latitudinarianism, natural theology, and the false moral pretensions of science. He condemned, above all, the presumption that “Knowledge can do for Society what has hitherto been supposed the prerogative of Faith.” “The badge of Christian saintliness is conflict,” he insisted. Secular education could never prepare us for our unavoidable spiritual trials. Attempts to do so “by philosophy what once was done by religion” produced “an uppish, supercilious temper, much inclined to skepticism.” Reverse the order, “put faith first and knowledge second,” and the situation transformed dramatically—“Aristotle changes into Butler.”12 While Newman treated Brougham as a naked infidel, he noted approvingly that Peel as a religious man “colours the phenomena of physics with the hues of his own mind.” Newman adopted a strategy against Peel similar to the one he used against Hampden. Peel’s heavy accent on the moral qualities of science—like Hampden’s theology—damaged others by robbing them of the ability to recognize God’s vibrant presence in spiritually monochrome natural 11 Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, pp. 57, 184. Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” p. 259. H. Brougham, Inaugural Discourse of Henry Brougham, on Being Installed Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1825), pp. 47–48. 12 Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” pp. 274–275, 287, 292. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 321–333.

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philosophy. The rationalistic ideals Peel parroted at Tamworth were all the more dangerous because so many well-meaning men could not smell the reek of their irreverence. Newman blamed William Paley and other superficial men for cloaking this stench in the perfume of false piety. The Tamworth letters do not mention the archdeacon by name, but, like Newman’s university sermons, they represented a broad and uncompromising rejection of Paley’s entire project. The attack on Brougham’s Benthamite utilitarianism swept up Paley’s moral philosophy. Newman allowed that utilitarian considerations were fine as long as they followed rather than preceded faith. He scorned turning “theology into evidences” because this subverted the proper method for accepting religious truth. Natural theology peddled the same spiritually fatal promise that we could arrive at faith through rational analysis. No, Newman growled; evidences of religion and natural theology might be “grafted into the mind of the Christian,” but they could never bring him to grace in the first place. Instead they would ensure descent into “the broad bosom of scepticism.” If we resolved to start by believing nothing and testing everything, then our lives will end long before we arrived at first principles. Peel (again like Hampden) did not recognize the danger of rationalistic ideas because he had acquired a healthy religious faith before adopting them.13 Newman insisted that he had no argument with science as long as it remained ancillary to faith, but he strongly objected to Peel, Brougham, and others expropriating for science what he believed belonged exclusively to Christianity. “It is Religion…which suggests to Science its true conclusions,” he explained; “the facts come from Knowledge but the principles come from Faith.” Properly subordinated, science could then serve usefully to “comment on Genesis or Job.” (This comment risked leaving the impression that geological theory should conform to scriptural exegesis. Newman had to clear up the confusion in a footnote when he republished the letters). Science could not serve as a source of moral education or as a standard of moral action because it never achieved stable truth. It offered at best a temporary anchor in a sea of doubt. Our souls thirsted for conviction. Contingent truth offered no useful substitution for the certainty which only religion could provide. “Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.” This meant that science could never inculcate the patience necessary for men to withstand the trials of life: it served well in fair weather but dissolved in downpours of tribulation. It does not require many words, then, to determine that, taking human nature as it is actually found, and assuming that there is an Art of life, to 13

Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” pp. 262–263, 269, 274–275, 280–281, 294, 298.

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say that it consists, or in any essential manner is placed, in the cultivation of Knowledge, that the mind is changed by a discovery, or saved by a diversion, and can thus be amused into immortality,—that grief, anger, cowardice, self-conceit, pride, or passion can be subdued by an examination of shells or grasses, or inhaling of gases, or chipping of rocks, or calculating the longitude, is the veriest of pretenses which sophist or mountebank ever professed to a gaping auditory. If virtue be a mastery over the mind, if its ends be action, if its perfection be inward order, harmony, and peace, we must seek it in graver and holier places than in Libraries and Reading-rooms. Newman asked archly: “Who was made to do any secret act of self-denial, or was steeled against pain, or peril, by all the lore of the infidel La Place, or those other ‘mighty sprits’ which Lord Brougham and Sir Robert eulogize?” This reference to Pierre Simon Laplace stands out. The Tamworth letters never deigned to mention another man of science by name other than a few desultory allusions to Bacon and Newton.14 The combination of Laplace’s well-known unbelief and his fame in Britain—Brougham’s repeated celebration of the Frenchman’s “immortal labours” was typical—made him an inviting target.15 Laplace demonstrated that science was not only incompetent to provide moral education but that, much worse, it tended ruinously towards atheism when undisciplined by prior submission to Christ.

Science and the Truly Christian Character

The Tamworth letters reflected the Oxford Movement’s history of unease with science. The Tractarians sincerely emphasized that they did not oppose mathematics or physical sciences themselves, but their misuse in support of rationalism, liberal reform, and latitudinarianism. In Tract 73, On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion (1836), Newman scorned an essay on Halley’s Comet published by Dionysius Lardner the previous April in the Edinburgh Review. Lardner composed on ode to the moral power of scientific observation: “how soothing and yet how elevating it is to turn to the splendid spectacle which offers itself to the habitual contemplation of the astronomer!” Newman found in these sentiments an “almost avowed infidelity.” When he 14 15

Ibid., pp. 258, 267–282, 289, 292–294, 298–301. For praise of Laplace, see Brougham, A Discourse of Natural Theology, pp. 41, 72; and Brougham, Dissertations, vol. 1, pp. xii–xiii, vol. 2, p. 329.

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revised the essay in later decades he pointedly accused Lardner of elevating astronomy and exact mathematical knowledge above the Gospel. He acknowledged that the writer would not necessarily own this conclusion “when brought to book; but it is the legitimate sense of his words, and the secret thought of his heart, unless he has but enunciated a succession of magniloquent periods.” As he done with Hampden, Newman burrowed beneath stated opinions to locate a deeper truth in the tendency of a “narrow and egotistic temper of mind.”16 The problem was not the conclusions of science—Newman had no objection to physical explanations of celestial motion—but the diseased state of heart that turned to such explanations for reverent wonder and noble passion. The conviction that science and mathematics, when elevated beyond their place, promoted an irreverent temper predated the coalescence of the Tractarian movement. The fear provoked the anonymous 1830 pamphlet Considerations Respecting the Most Effectual Means of Encouraging Mathematics in Oxford. The authorship remains murky. Baden Powell attributed it to Robert Wilberforce, a Tractarian fellow of Oriel who had abandoned the evangelical faith of his famous father under John Keble’s sway. Newman and Keble, however, credited Hurrell Froude, reprinting the pamphlet as part of his Remains. It is possible that Froude and Wilberforce collaborated. Regardless of who wrote it, Considerations foreshadowed the general Tractarian unease with the footprint of science and mathematics in the Oxford curriculum.17 The problem was not inherently the subject itself. Wilberforce had earned first-class honors in mathematics as an undergraduate. Froude also had nature talent, finishing with a respectable second. (He would later fret that the time he spent on mathematics would have been better devoted to other subjects like divinity). Considerations celebrated classical mathematics, Euclid above all, for disciplining and ennobling the mind. This ancient knowledge stood in sharp contrast with “modern Mathematics.” The pamphlet conceded that scientific advance depended upon new mathematical approaches, but that did not make them a fit tool for education. The mastery of modern mathematics instilled the type of skill appropriate for a banker’s clerk. A scholar and a gentleman required something far richer. A morally empty rote quality clung to the 16 Newman, On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion, pp. 5–7. D. Lardner, “The Approaching Comet,” Edinburgh Review 61 (1835), pp. 82–128. J.H. Newman, Essays, Critical and Historical (London, 1871), vol. 1, pp. 36–39. Lardner also lectured on Halley’s Comet at the Royal Institution in London in April and May of 1835. 17 R.H. Froude, and/or R. Wilberforce, Considerations Respecting the Most Effectual Means of Encouraging Mathematics in Oxford (Oxford, 1830); reprinted in: Froude, Remains, vol. 2, pp. 325–334. I am indebted to Pietro Corsi for insight into the authorship of Considerations.

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modern mathematics even in its higher applications. Neither the subject nor the sciences which depended upon it could ever contribute meaningfully to genuine moral culture. Oxford must not retreat from its commitment to provide “a wholesome, gentleman-like education” in preference for the type of “narrow and confined studies” that reigned in Cambridge. Mathematics would serve its educational function most effectively by abolishing the separate examination that had existed since 1807. The subject should be safely rolled back into the classics exam.18 This attack cut directly and painfully—and no doubt purposefully—against the aspirations of Powell, the Savilian professor of geometry. Powell scrawled irritated comments and mocking caricatures in the margins of his copy.19 He responded publicly in the introductory lecture of his 1832 mathematics course which he subsequently published. He dismissed the Tractarians’ concerns as unintelligible in general and ridiculed in particular the notion that an undeviating study of Euclid provided effective mental training. Most students treated the geometer’s Elements as a “compulsory requisition,” good for nothing beyond chalking up points on examinations. They unsurprisingly shed whatever shallow attainment they acquired as soon as the ink dried on their exam papers. Powell argued that this evil could be alleviated if students understood the utility of mathematics to “the circumstances of the present age.” Many found classics and other traditional subjects unpalatable to their tastes or talents. Mathematics and the physical sciences offered them an alternative track to moral and intellectual improvement.20 This dispute turned less on the abstract intellectual merits of different mathematical subjects and methods. The real clash pivoted on the spirit of mathematical innovation. Did it promote the self-directed acquisition of a patient and humble character, as Powell believed, or did it foster shallow pride by distracting young men from obedient duty, as the Tractarians insisted? A mocking rejoinder to Powell’s lecture from a pamphleteer signing himself “a Master of Arts” noted triumphantly that the geometry professor “well knows 18 19 20

Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 462, 467. Brendon, Hurrell Froude, pp. 17, 100. Curthoys, “The Examination System,” p. 352. Ellis, Generational Conflict and University Reform, p. 168. Powell’s copy of Considerations is held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and can be viewed online through Google Books. B. Powell, The Present State and Future Prospects of Mathematical and Physical Studies in the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1832), quotations on pp. 10–11, 27. See Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 112–117; and K.C. Hannabuss, “Mathematics,” in Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part II, ed. M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys, vol. 7 in The History of the University of Oxford, general ed. T.H. Aston (Oxford, 2000), pp. 443–447.

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that he is a minority in Oxford” in his “rage for improvement.”21 Even Powell’s Noetic allies saw little advantage to rallying in defense of mathematics and science. He hoped that holding the 1832 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford would exert external pressure for reform.22 The meeting provoked predictable outrage from Newman and his friends. The Association brought in a heavy contingent of Cambridge men. For the Tractarians, Oxford’s sister university reeked of latitudinarianism.23 William Whewell, then Cambridge’s professor of mineralogy and, by 1841, the powerful Master of Trinity College, prowled the meeting as one of its lions. His address condemned the scholastic error of establishing distinctions and definitions as the first, rather than the last, step of systematic knowledge. Significantly, Whewell’s dismissive picture of the scholastics—men who Newman revered— rested in part on the scholarship of Hampden, the Tractarians’ Noetic archenemy.24 But at least Whewell, however misguided, belonged to the Church of England. Keble and Newman were nauseated by dissenters parading freely through the ancient seat of Anglican education. If that was not bad enough, the university granted honorary degrees to men who Keble dismissed as a “hodge-podge of philosophers.” None were communicants in the English Church (David Brewster, Michael Faraday, Robert Brown, and John Dalton). The Tractarians concluded that it was no coincidence that the despicable campaign to open the English universities to dissenters immediately followed the meetings of the British Association in Oxford and, the following year, Cambridge.25 Keble in Tract 89 applauded the early church fathers for excluding “the speculations of the mere natural philosopher” from their literature because science “was but very remotely connected with the proper duty and happiness of mankind.”26 21

A Master of Arts, A Short Criticism of a Lecture Published by the Savilian Professor of Geometry (Oxford, 1832), pp. 6, 27. 22 Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 115–117. 23 Mozley, Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 179. Nockles, “An Academic Counter-Revolution,” pp. 144–145. 24 W. Whewell, “Report on the Recent Progress and Present State of Mineralogy,” in Report of the First and Second Meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; at York in 1831, and at Oxford in 1832 (London, 1833), p. 350. Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 311–316. 25 J.H. Newman, “Memorials of Oxford,” British Critic 24 (1838), pp. 144–145. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 230–233, 240–242, 390–393. Nockles, “An Academic Counter-Revolution,” pp. 159–164. Brock, “The Oxford of Peel and Gladstone,” pp. 68–69. Turner, “John Henry Newman and the Challenge of a Culture of Science.” 26 Keble, On the Mysticism, pp. 137–144.

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Hostility to science coursed through The Foundation of the Faith Assailed in Oxford (1835), a pamphlet written at Newman’s urging by Robert Wilberforce’s younger brother, Henry. Wilberforce excoriated Hampden and his recent call to open Oxford to dissenters. The jeremiad celebrated the university’s refusal to grant any prominent place in her curriculum “to those elegant and scientific pursuits” that had recently acquired a popularity unjustified by their intrinsic value. Science might develop the intellect but it did nothing to discipline the moral powers. On the contrary it appealed to the novice precisely because it afforded, “beyond all other studies, the means of immediate display.” Wilberforce contrasted the “scientific and liberal man,” who was so puffed up by his supposed public utility, with the “faithful son of the Church,” who revered and pursued truth as an end in itself and fought bravely in the “weary contest between the principles of good and evil.”27 John William Bowden did a suppler job than Henry Wilberforce in praising science while lamenting its misuse four years later in the British Critic. His 1839 essay on the British Association stressed that Christians had no cause to fear “the direct and legitimate results” of research into the physical world. The geologists could freely enjoy their virtual infinity of time and the astronomers their virtual infinity of space. The problem was overreach, the way in which “physical science, the science, in other words, of matter and material things, now arrogates in effect the name ‘science’ exclusively to itself.” Modern men imagined that they saw further than ever before when in fact they shielded their vision from the sweeping vistas open to their ancestors. The world had become so intoxicated by empty rationalism that it blinded itself to “the great and allcomprehending system of the moral universe.” The eminent French mathematical astronomer Pierre Simon Laplace could weigh and measure the planets but, in his notorious atheism, could not perceive the most obvious moral truth. (Laplace received veneration at the British Association meetings; his name appeared dozens of times, for example, in reports on astronomy, the study of tides and meteorology included in the association’s first volume of proceedings.) Bowden accused the British Association of corrupting physical science with “the fashionable religion of the world.” Its meetings were not sober, dignified affairs, but noisy spectacles of fashionable amusement and ambition. Worse by far, the association promoted “the rationalism—the latitudinarianism—the anti-church, and therefore anti-Christian, theology of our time” by embracing the heresy that men who agreed in science could disagree in religion. He did not criticize the content of scientific theories but the refusal of 27 Wilberforce, The Foundation of the Faith Assailed in Oxford. On Wilberforce and science in Oxford, see Corsi, Science and Religion, pp. 113–114.

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those who formulated them to behave in “a spirit of dutiful submission to the revealed councils of heaven.” Newman considered the essay a model of “mildness and forbearance.”28 The Tractarians had an often tense relationship with the men who held Oxford’s science chairs, not just Powell but also the geologist William Buckland and the botanist Charles Daubeny.29 It is probably not coincidental that attendance at Buckland’s geology lectures dried up about the time that students were flowing into the pews of St. Mary’s to hear Newman preach.30 Newman’s brother-in-law Thomas Mozley reported in his Reminiscences that Keble and Buckland argued heatedly and nonstop during a fifty-mile coach journey from Oxford to Winchester. Keble insisted that fossils and all of the other apparent marks of the earth’s antiquity had in fact been produced during the six days of Creation chronicled in Genesis.31 Intellectual disagreement and personal friction was not inevitable, however. As an undergraduate Newman enjoyed Buckland’s lectures.32 Edward Pusey contributed extensive footnotes to Buckland’s Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1836), lending his authority as professor of Hebrew to the geologist’s nonliteral reading of Genesis.33 The Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton’s admiration of Tractarian theology (if leavened by skepticism of its views on church ceremony and discipline) led to a cordial acquaintance with Pusey.34 In 1845 Henry Acland, newly appointed to an Oxford anatomy 28

J.W. Bowden, “The British Association,” British Critic 25 (1839), pp. 1–48. J.H. Newman to M. Johnson (13 March 1839), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 7, p. 50. For examples of Laplace’s ubiquity in British science see G.B. Airy, “Report on the Progress of Astronomy during the Present Century;” J.W. Lubbock, “Report on the Tides;” J.D. Forbes, “Report upon the Recent Progress and Present State of Meteorology,” in Report of the First and Second Meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; at York in 1831, and at Oxford in 1832 (London, 1833), pp. 125–258. Ironically, by the late 1830s Brougham came to share Bowden’s concern that the British Association catered too much to popular excitement; see Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, p. 247. 29 J.H. Newman to J.W. Bowden (4 September 1838) and to M. Johnson (13 March 1839), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 6, p. 313, vol. 7, p. 50. 30 N.A. Rupke, The Great Chain of Being: William Buckland and the English School of Geology (Oxford, 1983), pp. 202–205, 267–273. 31 Mozley, Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 179. 32 J.H. Newman to J. Newman (4 June 1819), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 1, p. 65. 33 W. Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, (London, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 21–27. 34 T.L. Hankins, Sir William Rowan Hamilton (Baltimore, 1980), pp. 229–244.

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readership, directly asked Pusey (a distant relative) if he, Newman, Keble and their friends discouraged the study of physical science. “It is so,” Pusey acknowledged. “We notice that it engenders in those we know a temper of irreverence and often arrogance inconsistent with a truly Christian character.” Acland pressed further: did Pusey consider him dangerous and mischievous for pursuing his calling earnestly? Pusey laughed and reassured him that “the desire to acquire [scientific] knowledge, and the power to obtain it, are alike the gift of God, and to be used as such. While you discharge your duties in that spirit you may count on my assistance whenever you need it.” He kept his promise. Pusey allowed Acland to use his stables for creating anatomical preparations and, far more crucially, provided decisive support for Acland’s scheme in the 1850s to build a science museum in Oxford.35 A friendly personal relationship overcame (though it did not remove) Pusey’s abstract distrust of science—which was entirely consistent with the view that the test of science was the character of its practitioners and not the content of its theories.

The Message Intensified

Newman passed the editorship of the British Critic to Mozley, in early 1841. Unsurprisingly, Mozley applauded the Tamworth letters in the July issue, the first under his helm. He did not then “know who this Catholicus may be” (but privately suspected his mentor and patron).36 The review endorsed Catholicus’s view with a sharp sarcastic edge. Mozley, for example, ridiculed the moral pretensions of science by scoffing at the notion that you could learn “to exalt your minds with entomological researches, to learn magnanimity by decimal fractions, to tranquillize your tempers with the study of chemical affinities, and to refresh your daily lassitude by calculating of planetary revolutions.” Mozley did not simply recap and endorse Newman’s message. He intensified it. Newman treated Peel roughly but he explicitly (if perhaps somewhat disingenuously) refused to impugn his “high character” or personal piety. Mozley showed no such restraint or magnanimity. He sneered that Peel’s expertise did not extend beyond “questions of malt, registration, and sugar.” His embrace of secular public education, justified on such “flimsy and unoriginal” grounds, served only a craven desire for popularity—”pearls above all price are bartered away

35

J.B. Atlay, Henry Wentworth Acland, Bart., K.C.B., F.R.S., Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford: A Memoir (London, 1903), pp. 42, 140–149, 210–211. 36 Mozley, Reminiscences, vol. 2, pp. 244–245.

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as freely as the glass beads and strips of red calico which the navigator gives to savages in exchange for pigs and plantains.”37 Mozley’s aggression was no aberration. The July issue contained his even more notorious attack on Godfrey Faussett, Oxford’s Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. Faussett had recently published Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, a stinging rebuke of Newman’s Tract 90 (more on this in the next chapter). The Tractarians were never likely to swallow this scolding in silence. As he had done with Peel, Mozley showered the professor’s character, conduct, and motives with undiluted contempt. He ruthlessly accused Faussett of “the easy wantonness of authority, the supercilious pride of place.” He heightened the insult by appending a mocking apologue to his article which cast Faussett and Newman as a pair of dogs in a gentleman’s household. Faussett was the fat, wheezy, and stupid Growler, Newman the brave and patient Fido. One night Fido attacks a pair of robbers only to be assaulted by the confused Growler. The criminals escape, Fido sets chase and Growler gobbles up the mutton the crooks had tried to steal. The impropriety of this clumsy satire not only inflamed the Tractarians’ opponents but shocked even Pusey and Keble. Both complained to Newman, who promised to rein in Mozley, William George Ward, and other younger firebrands.38 This was not a new problem. Tensions had already arisen in Tractarian ranks because Ward and others had started to strain publicly against the English church’s protestant fetters. Their provocations in the British Critic and elsewhere increasingly served a pro-Roman-Catholic line that startled the older Tractarians. When Isaac Williams published the first volume of Plain Sermons, by Contributors to the “Tracts for the Times” in 1839 under his editorship he plead for moderation. The Oxford Movement did not want “loud and voluble advocates,” he chided, but those who “in the silent humility of their lives” were willing to venerate the apostolic tradition through “habitual purity of heart and serenity of temper.”39 These growing internal pressures mixed combustibly with external controversies. Purity of heart and serenity of temper proved difficult to reconcile.

37 38 39

Mozley, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” pp. 47, 58, 60–65, 79–81. Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room,” p. 254. T. Mozley, “The Oxford Margaret Professor,” British Critic 30 (1841), pp. 221, 237–240. Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 2, pp. 218–224. Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 227. Williams, Advertisement to vol. 1 of Plain Sermons. See Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 217– 219; Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 143–145; Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 356–364; and Skinner, Tractarians and the “Condition of England,” pp. 48–61.

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Tract 90 and the Trial of Patience in the Church of England John Henry Newman had insisted in an 1837 tract that “we are in no danger of becoming Romanists.”1 Not everyone was reassured, especially after Newman and John Keble oversaw the publication of Hurrell Froude’s Remains, which crackled with unabashed criticism of the Protestant reformation. Godfrey Faussett, the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford, was among many who reacted with alarm. A high churchman, he shared many priorities with the Tractarians. He fought Renn Dickson Hampden’s campaign to loosen the hold of the Articles in Oxford and more generally shared the Tractarians’ disgust with liberal philosophy and its “schemes of insidious or mistaken policy” which threatened the connection between civil and religious institutions.2 But he could tolerate neither Froude’s “wild and visionary” preferences for “Romish corruptions” nor his complaints against the Reformation. He expressed his displeasure in 1838 with a conspicuous sermon against the “revival of popery.” This account reversed the narrative of the Remains to depict Froude’s attachment to the medieval church as self-indulgence, detecting “pride, the primeval curse of man’s race,” in the Tractarians’ flirtation with the idolatry, superstition, and spiritual despotism of the Roman Church. Faussett offered this advice: “Above all, let us not, though impatient zeal and the premature and vain expectation of realizing Catholic views in the midst of the surrounding desolation, incautiously entangle ourselves in those mysteries of iniquity, from which God’s mercy has once granted us so signal a deliverance.”3 Newman was not chastened. He responded indignantly that the Catholic practices which Faussett denounced fell entirely within the “liberty of thought” allowable under the church’s existing terms of communion.4 1 Newman, On Purgatory, p. 3. 2 G. Faussett, The Alliance of Church and State Explained and Vindicated in a Sermon Preached Before the University of Oxford at St. Mary’s, on Sunday, June 8, 1834 (Oxford, 1834), p. 3. 3 G. Faussett, The Revival of Popery: A Sermon Preached Before the University of Oxford, at St. Mary’s, on Sunday, May 20, 1838 (Oxford, 1838), pp. 13–14, 30–37. 4 Newman, A Letter to the Rev. Godfrey Faussett, pp. 8–9. For the growing backlash against Tractarian that crystalized after the publication of Froude’s Remains, see Brendon, “Newman, Keble and Froude’s Remains;” Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, pp. 79–80, 187–188,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004263352_014

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Newman understood that many of his followers wanted to use this “liberty” to embrace the sort of Catholic devotional practices that aroused general distrust within the Church of England. He attempted to placate these men with Tract 90, Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, which he published on February 27, 1841, the same day the seventh and final Tamworth letter appeared in the Times. It opened a controversy that would propel him from the Church of England and shatter the Oxford Movement in its original form.

The Articles: Perfected in Humiliation and Grief or in Pride, Elation and Triumph?

Newman explained publicly that he wrote Tract 90 to argue that “the Articles need not be so closed as the received method of teaching them closes them, and ought not to be for the sake of many persons.” Artificial restrictions on the legitimate meaning of the Articles would marginalize and demoralize AngloCatholics and send them “straggling in the direction of Rome.” The message was intended for an audience internal to the Oxford Movement and, as he told Edward Pusey, “I was UTTERLY without any idea that the Tract would make any disturbance.”5 Tract 90 followed the logic of Newman’s response to Faussett in attempting to demonstrate the Articles’ compatibility with pre-Reformation Catholic tradition. While he worked out in detail the concordance between the individual articles and Catholic tradition, appeals to the virtue of humility underwrote the enterprise as a whole. Even supposing then that any changes in contemplation, whatever they were, were good in themselves, they would cease to be good to a Church, in which they were the fruits not of the quiet conviction of all, but of the agitation, or tyranny, or intrigue of a few; nurtured not in mutual love, but in strife and envying; perfected not in humiliation and grief, but in pride, elation and triumph. By this logic, the moral legitimacy of the Articles depended upon their continuity with the deep Catholic past. If they did represent a break then this would 239, 281–282; Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority, pp. 50–55; and Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 313–321. 5 Newman, A Letter to the Rev. R.W. Jelf, pp. 26–27. J.H. Newman to E. Pusey (18 March 1841), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 8, p. 97.

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place upon them the sin of willful schism. If, on the other hand, “the Articles are not written against the creed of the Roman Church, but against existing errors in it,” they retained the divine sanction and guiltless spiritual authority of the early church. If that was true, and Newman insisted that it was, the Articles “may be subscribed by those who aim at being catholic in heart and doctrine.”6 The strategy of appealing to his followers backfired badly when outsiders took notice of the tract. As one hostile commentator observed, by early 1840s the Tractarians had spent down all of the benefit of the doubt they had originally been granted. With Oxford already awash in suspicions of their allegiances, formal opposition to Tract 90 emerged almost immediately. Conventional Tory high churchmen and evangelicals, groups that the Tractarians had so effectively marshaled against Hampden, joined the liberals against Newman. Archibald Tait, who would succeed Thomas Arnold as Rugby headmaster, wrote a letter to the Times with three other Oxford tutors which condemned the “highly dangerous tendency” of the argument that the Articles countenanced the errors of the Roman church. This broadside thrust the controversy onto the national stage. Within three weeks Vice-Chancellor Philip Wynter, the Heads of Houses and the Proctors produced a public censure of Tract 90. Richard Bagot, the Bishop of Oxford, summoned Newman and Pusey to an uncomfortable audience. Although the bishop had been friendly with the Tractarians, he pressed Newman to formally suppress Tract 90. Newman resisted. Bagot disliked conflict and did not want to force the issue peremptorily for fear of handing an apparent victory to the low-church evangelicals who were clamoring loudly against Newman. Nearly two weeks of negotiations followed. Eventually the two sides agreed that Newman would publicly acknowledge the bishop’s objections to Tract 90 and agree to end the Tract series.7 Newman felt bruised but otherwise satisfied that he avoided retracting any significant view. His public letter to Bagot apologized for disturbing the peace of the church and admitted to some vagueness and deficiency of expression in Tract 90. But he also suggested that much of the controversy arose from a misreading of his intentions. I do not wonder that persons who happen to fall upon certain writings of mine, and are unacquainted with others, and, as is natural, do not understand the sense in which I use certain and words and phrases, should 6 Newman, Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, pp. 2–4, 59. 7 Congreve, “Oxford and Dr. Hampden,” pp. 186–187. Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 216–227. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 365–375, 584–549.

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think I explain away the differences between the Roman system and our own, which I hope I do not. Ultimately, Newman only sought to make the Church of England “more holy, more self-denying, more primitive, more worthy our high calling.” The Tractarians immediately signaled a refusal to retreat.8 Keble, Pusey, and William George Ward published unapologetic defenses of Tract 90. Pusey endorsed his friend’s interpretation of the Articles as “not only an admissible, but the most legitimate, interpretation of them.” His defense placed great stress on “the necessity of a higher standard of holiness, self-denial, self-discipline, almsgiving, than has of late been common among us.” He argued that Newman’s points had been severely misunderstood because of a sad tendency to conflate the holy practices of the primitive church with subsequent Romish corruptions, with “injury to sound doctrine or to habits of mind thence ensuing.” He blamed this state of affairs on “a large negative theory” which is “morbidly sensitive of any thing which it thinks may unduly exalt the Priestly office, but careless as to securing our individual humility and self-discipline.” Pusey addressed Newman’s treatment of individual articles case-by-case to demonstrate that his friend never distorted or relaxed church teaching. Anyone who thought otherwise betrayed their own superficial understanding of the ecclesiastical history. Newman’s critics, and especially those who led the censure proceedings in the university, attacked “‘modes of interpretation’, which they inferred to be contained in [the tract], but which never had any real existence.”9 These controversies unfolded in a changing national political environment. In July of 1841, the Tories under Robert Peel won a thumping victory in the general election. The Whigs slumped off into opposition, but Tory ascendency did not bring good news for the Oxford Movement. Liberals chortled at the conflict brewing between Tories and Tractarians. In London, the Morning Chronicle had observed maliciously in February that the two could not coexist comfortably for long. The journalist compared the Tories to a carcass lacking “the vitality of principle.” This undead shell shambled onwards under the possession of “the demonism of expediency” and “sinister class interest.” The intensely principled Tractarians, on the other hand, disdained compromise and expediency in pursuing their conviction that “men are born slaves [and]

8 Newman, A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, Richard, Lord Bishop of Oxford, pp. 20, 43. 9 E.B. Pusey, The Articles Treated on in Tract 90 Reconsidered and Their Interpretation Vindicated (Oxford, 1841). Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 2, pp. 212–215. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 375–389.

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slavery is the necessity of their nature.”10 The Tory leadership saw its growing estrangement from the Oxford Movement differently, of course. The ardently evangelical Anthony Cooper, Lord Ashley and the future seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, explained the political situation to the presumptive prime minister two days after the election ended. The Church of England was riven by evangelicals and Tractarians, who looked at each other “with the greatest dislike and suspicion.” Cooper warned Peel bluntly that the appointment of any Tractarian to high church office would invite a devastating backlash from evangelicals. But, more than this, Cooper reminded Peel that “no statesman will ever have acceded to office with so many and so fervent prayers to the throne of grace.” Dalliance with the Tractarians would do more than alienate an important constituency; it would invite the displeasure of God in a time of “novel difficulties and unprecedented dangers.” Peel hardly needed to be coaxed. Standing against Newman and his followers gave the new prime minister a delicious opportunity to gratify high principle, personal animosity, and political expediency. A few strategic appointments to the church, he expected, would do more to break the Tractarian fever than thousands of controversial tracts. One of his government’s first university postings placed William Whewell in the mastership of Trinity College with a mandate to fight the spread of Tractarian ideals in Cambridge.11

The Question of Mr. Newman’s Morality

Cracks were appearing in the Oxford Movement despite the outwardly uniform support for Newman and his contentious tract. Pusey fought to keep the movement anchored in Protestantism while Ward and others drifted towards Rome.12 The entire affair had left the movement in a dangerously embarrassing position. Memories of their campaign against Hampden remained raw. They had condemned the tendency of his thought and then wailed when opponents turned that same tactic on them. They demanded liberty for their judgment on

10

“London: Friday, February 12, 1841,” Morning Chronicle (12 February 1841), pp. 2–3 The article is partially reproduced in Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 8, p. 40. 11 Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Early of Shaftesbury, vol. 1, pp. 343–345. C.S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel: From His Private Papers (London, 1899), vol. 3, pp. 422–423. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 551–553, 714n47. 12 Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 382–389.

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the Articles while reacting in horror at the possibility that anyone they disliked might be granted the same allowance. Their opponents exploited these apparent inconsistencies without mercy. If the Tractarians were allowed to interpret the Articles as it suited them then nothing could stop dissenters from attending Oxford under the same liberty. Wynter tartly informed Pusey that Newman’s tract was guilty of exactly the type of looseness that led to Hampden’s censure in 1836. For many, Newman’s deviations from orthodoxy were in fact worse than Hampden’s because they invited the Roman enemy into the English church. A writer in a Whig newspaper captured a common sentiment: “Dr. Hampden’s errors—if errors they were—arose from his desire to advance the Protestant principle of private judgment; Mr. Newman’s labours, on the other hand, have been directed to crush the right of free inquiry, and make mankind dependent on the priest.”13 Tract 90, then, allowed the Tractarians’ growing list of enemies to discover supposedly conclusive evidence of a secret and parasitic Roman Catholicism burrowing itself within England’s Protestant church. The Tractarians had for years faced allegations of “Popery.” Now, however, their opponents could tie this accusation to concrete misbehavior.14 Tract 90 allegedly encouraged candidates for ordination to harbor a secret meaning to the Articles that conflicted with the public understanding of their subscription. Richard Whately saw this as a straightforward incitement to lying.15 Arnold congratulated Tait on the Times letter, explaining that he found Newman’s tract “far more objectionable morally than theologically.” He elaborated on this point to Arthur Stanley. Roman Catholics, he said, were honest enemies. Tractarians were treacherous ones. The first were akin to French soldiers fighting in their own uniform, the second to infiltrators disguised in British redcoats; “I should honour the first, and hang the second.”16 An Oxford newspaper denounced Newman for casting “the seeds of spiritual pride and fanaticism” into the clergy by encouraging them to harbor private interpretations of the Articles.17 Baden Powell argued that the Tractarians could not 13

A. Tait, T.T. Churton, H.B. Wilson and J. Griffiths. “Oxford Tractarians,” The Times (11 March 1841), p. 6. Cantabrigiensis, “The Oxford Authorities,” The Morning Chronicle (20 March 1841), p. 5. Turner, John Henry Newman, p. 366. 14 See for example, Congreve, “Oxford and Dr. Hampden,” pp. 186–187. 15 Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 440, 443. 16 R.T. Davidson and W. Benham, Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1891), vol. 1, pp. 86–87. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, vol. 2, pp. 286–287. 17 Quoted in Turner, John Henry Newman, p. 465.

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simultaneously appeal to a pre-Reformation ideal of clerical authority while at the same time remaining loyal Anglicans. They had to accept the Protestant confession of faith upon which the English church rested, or they had to retreat into the folds of Rome. Their “arrogant” attempt to carve out a middle ground tottered upon “futile and childish inconsistencies.” Faussett’s hostile lecture on the Tract 90 (the one Mozley attacked with such impolitic scorn in the British Critic) claimed that Newman’s sophistical view of the Articles would degrade them into “a cloak for hypocrisy,—an encouragement to sin.” The situation became even worse for the Tractarians when several bishops not only publically condemned their theology but questioned Newman’s honesty. Bishop Monk was typical in dismissing Newman’s tract as vain and dangerous sophistry.18 The evangelical press radiated alarm. The Christian Guardian and Church of England Magazine, for example, kept up a steady volley against the Oxford Movement throughout 1843. Every monthly issue contained some warning against a party that, in its editorial view, brought “the very existence of the Church of England into peril.” (The antipathy was mutual: Newman years earlier identified this mouthpiece for “schismatics” as an enemy of the Anglican Church.) The frontispiece for the 1843 volume featured an engraving of the recently inaugurated memorial to the “Oxford Martyrs,” Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, and Hugh Latimer, three bishops who had been burned at the stake in the sixteenth century by the Catholic Queen Mary. The raising of this memorial, the reporter observed, “is the most pleasing one,—we had almost said, the only pleasing one,—connected with the University of Oxford in late years. …It is hardly needful to add, that this monument has been raised without the least assistance from the Tractarian party.” (The memorial had not originated as a rebuke to the Tractarians, but their public refusal to subscribe to it transformed it into just that.) The Tractarians appeared again and again as an insidious force that expropriated the “self-denying labours” of true Christians in order “to pervert and destroy.” Even Keble’s Christian Year aroused suspicion. The magazine wrapped its disdain and anxiety in coverage of the wider controversy. It reprinted, reported on, or reviewed dozens of public utterances—books, sermons, articles, lectures, pamphlets, and episcopal charges—dedicated in whole or part to attacking Tractarian principles.19 18

19

Powell, “Anglo-Catholicism,” p. 29. G. Faussett, The Thirty-Nine Articles Considered as the Standard and Test of the Doctrines of the Church of England (Oxford, 1841), p. 44. Monk, A Charge, p. 36. Christian Guardian and Church of England Magazine 35 (1843), pp. 1–2, 72, 111, 189; see also 1–4, 13–14, 31–32, 70–72, 110–111, 149–154, 189–190, 219–220, 267–271, 281–285, 344–356,

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The opponents of the Oxford Movement had placed a great deal of ammunition at each other’s disposal. The Edinburgh Review pounced in an essay on Tract 90 written by Bonamy Price. Five years earlier in the same journal he reported detecting a “Popish” aroma wafting from Newman’s Arians of the Fourth Century. Tract 90 confirmed the worst of his suspicions. In his review of this work, Price identified the “quality of [Newman’s] actions” as the defining issue. Encouraging ordinands secretly to adopt Newman’s perverse and self-seeking interpretation of the Articles “shocks us” as “destructive of public truth and morality.” Such sophistry and special pleading could never be consistent with morality or genuine religious practice. He even insinuated that Newman’s failure to follow his convictions and leave the Church of England showed a willingness to forfeit honesty to worldly interests. The overriding goal of Price’s article was to detach Newman from his casual admirers by challenging them with this question: “if you are sincerely convinced that his opinions are true, then we ask you, whether you adopt Mr Newman’s morality?”20 Both Arnold and Price advanced essentially the same argument in the Edinburgh five years apart: the Tractarians’ bad behavior demonstrated a lack of moral judgment which in turn refuted their fanatical theology. The context had changed dramatically, however. In 1836 the Tractarians’ led a broadly popular battle against Hampden’s liberal theology. In 1841 they fought (or so their foes successfully claimed) a wildly unpopular battle against the Reformation. William Empson, professor of law at the East India College, Haileybury, and the future editor of the Edinburgh Review, added a long footnote on Newman to his 1845 Edinburgh essay on Arnold’s recently published Life and Correspon­ dence. Empson observed that, after the Hampden affair, “it was no longer a question of how [Arnold] ought to feel towards persons holding false opinions, but how he ought to feel towards persons guilty individually of unjust and oppressive acts.” He drew a stark distinction between the “double mask” and “insidious cowardice” of Newman and the “noble, simple-hearted, and truthloving spirit” of Arnold.21

20 21

263–267, 382, 425–433, 462–463, 483–489, 491–498. J.H. Newman to J. Newman, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 2, p. 130. On the controversy attached to the Oxford Martyrs Memorial, see Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 172; and Nockles, “‘Lost Causes’,” pp. 235–237. Price, “Newman’s History of the Arians,” p. 65. B. Price, “Tracts for the Times—Number Ninety,” Edinburgh Review 73 (1841), pp. 288–292. See Turner, John Henry Newman, p. 444. W. Empson, “Life and Correspondence of Dr. Arnold,” Edinburgh Review 81 (1845), pp. 192–195.

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Hampden avenged himself in a divinity lecture delivered on June 1 1842 and quickly published. He accused Tract 90 of abandoning the clear meaning and guidance of the Articles for Romanist glosses and modifications. This effaced the legitimate differences between the English and the Roman churches that, if not vigorously opposed, would cut Anglicans dangerously adrift from the teachings and traditions of their community. “Let conciliation be carried to the utmost, as far as persons are concerned,” Hampden declared. “Let us try to make men at peace with one another, however dissentient, however at variance. But let not principles and doctrines be subjected to such treatment.” He extensively contrasted his behavior with his foes’. I have formed no party around me. …I have not construed the Scripture so as to justify me in hating those who hold a different creed, as if they were necessarily haters of God. …It is true, that I have not ceased to warn those whom I have addressed against the Romanist tendencies of principles now so boldly propagated, both within and without this University. …And I ought not to wonder therefore that the authors and abettors of the Tracts for the Times should be disquieted and uneasy with me. …I certainly have opposed what have now obtained the name of Tractarian views; and shall still oppose them,—I mean in the field of argument and of truth,—and with weapons proper to such a contest,—so long as they continue to infest the Church. …I am defending the Catholic truth, inherited from our immediate fathers in the faith, the Reformers of our Church, and, through them, from the Apostles themselves. Hampden used the controversy over Tract 90 to vindicate his assertion that Newman and Pusey had systematically distorted his views. His six years in the divinity disproved all charges against him: his commitment to the Articles had proven unshakable. The Tractarians had behaved altogether differently. God keep me, God keep us all from this double-dealing, this secret discipline of reserve, this esoteric doctrine of subscription. It is nothing to be wondered at, indeed, that they should suspect another’s sincerity, and seek a person’s meaning, rather from artful constructions than from direct statements, who have countenanced by their expositions the utmost laxity of interpretation of the Articles and subscription to them.22

22

R.D. Hampden, The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 2nd ed. (London, 1842), pp. 26–28, 43–52.

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Hampden clearly enjoyed accusing his tormentors of permissive and seditious behavior. He showed no recognition that his own ideals of toleration should have made him sympathetic to the Tractarians’ request for leniency in their subscription to the Articles. Given the oceans of spite between him and the Tractarians, it is not surprising that he failed to mount a principled defense of Tract 90. Training his fire on the Tractarians for misbehavior allowed him to evade the uncomfortable logical implications of his inductive theology and his earlier pleas for doctrinal pluralism. He could exact revenge with apparent untroubled sincerity. The bishops’ condemnation of Tract 90 left Newman feeling increasingly isolated in the Church of England. He grieved from the pulpit of St. Mary’s in late 1841 that “the outward notes of the Church are partly gone from us, and partly going.” He acknowledged that men and women had been tempted to leave the Church of England “in consequence of the miserable confusion of the time” but were stopped by “a nameless feeling within them.”23 He made it clear that this tether was strong but not unbreakable—he was clearly a man trying to talk himself into remaining in place and not entirely succeeding. He recognized, as he told Keble, that he followed and encouraged “doctrines and practices which our Church does not sanction.” He found himself in an impossible position: “I am in danger of acting as a traitor to that system, to which I must profess attachment or I should not have the opportunity of acting at all.”24 Keble had just coaxed him from resigning St. Mary’s in 1843 when another crisis struck. Pusey preached a sermon on the Eucharist that located Christ’s real spiritual (but not physical) presence in consecrated bread and wine. Faussett denounced these views as heretical. He invoked a university statute that required a tribunal of six doctors to weigh the sermon’s orthodoxy. Hampden would have sat on the panel if the Convocation had not stripped him of the responsibility in favor of the Lady Margaret Professor—Pusey’s accuser thus sat as one of his judges. Pusey was denied an official opportunity to confront the accusations. The six doctors censured the sermon for advancing “certain things” which conflicted with church doctrine. No one ever spelled out exactly what those things were. Pusey’s enemies wanted to hobble and humiliate him with a guilty verdict but apparently could not agree on the 23 24

J.H. Newman, Sermons, Bearing on the Subjects of the Day, 2nd ed. (London, 1844), pp. 378–387. J.H. Newman to J. Keble (14 March 1843), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 9, pp. 279–281. See Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 235, 273–288; and Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 452–456.

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precise charges. The sentence, however, was clear: he was barred from preaching before the university for two years.25 He protested bitterly that he had always assented to church doctrine on the Eucharist and “I have been condemned either on a mistaken construction of my words, founded upon the doctrinal opinions of my judges, or on grounds distinct from the Formularies of our Church.” He published the sermon—or a version of it, since he had not originally preached from a set text—to vindicate his orthodoxy. The preface explained that his ordeal proved that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” and that “patience is one great grace which God is now calling forth in our Church.”26 This manhandling of Pusey confirmed to Newman that the university intended to “put down Catholicism at any risk.”27 He finally quit his living at St. Mary’s. The attacks on Newman’s allegedly hypocritical and deceitful behavior were connected ineradicably to condemnation of Tractarian theology. Dangerous ideas and an arrogant spirit reinforced one another, just as Arnold had alleged in his notorious “Oxford Malignants” article. Now, however, the indictments were infused with a rich cultural tradition of anti-Catholicism. Clandestine treason and Jesuitical conspiracy lurked at the nexus of Tractarian vice and error. Newman, Pusey, Keble, and their followers continued to defend themselves and their movement with appeals to patience and humility. Their line of conduct told a very different story, one of self-willed men who used counterfeit virtue as a cunning snare to corrupt the unwary—that, at least, was the case their critics made against them with devastating effectiveness. What the Tractarians saw as patience their enemies described as the endurance of the wicked; their profession of humility became hypocrisy, guile or morbidity. The war of ideas hinged on the battle over virtue, and it was a battle that had started to turn very badly for the Tractarians.

To Rome

William George Ward precipitated the next crisis with The Ideal of a Christian Church Considered in Comparison with Existing Practice. The book argued 25 Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 455–460, 700n92. Liddon, Life of Pusey, vol. 2, pp. 306–369. 26 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 329. E.B. Pusey, The Holy Eucharist A Comfort to the Penitent (Oxford, 1843), p. vii. See C.E. Herringer, “Pusey’s Eucharistic Doctrine,” in Edward Bouverie Pusey and the Oxford Movement, eds. R. Strong and C.E. Herringer (London, 2012), pp. 91–113. 27 J.H. Newman to A. St. John (20 June 1843), Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain and others, vol. 9, p. 401.

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forthrightly that an Anglican could legitimately adopt the full panoply of Roman doctrine and practices. Ward paid obsessive attention to self-abnegation—to patience, obedience, humility, unworldliness—as the defining components of Christian character. He insisted that Protestant theology and modes of worship—he singled out the Lutheran doctrine of Justification for sustained abuse—could never reliably place and keep men on the path of obedience and self-denial. Only the Roman Catholic system “wholly or even partly bases its inculcation of Christian truth on its careful enforcement of moral discipline.” He condemned the self-complacent English church for abrogating its proper role in leading and disciplining its communicants. Ward thundered that he could not conceive of “a more senseless and perverse superstition” than the notion that men could gain religious truth outside of the church’s guidance. Yet he expressed optimism that the Church of England not only could but was reversing the horrible mistakes made when gross political calculations of the sixteen century led to its secession from Rome: “We find, oh most joyful, most wonderful sight! we find the whole cycle of Roman doctrine gradually possessing numbers of English Churchman.” For his own part he reaffirmed that “in subscribing the Articles I renounce no one Roman doctrine: yet I retain my [Balliol College] Fellowship which I hold on the tenure of subscription, and have received no Ecclesiastical censure in any shape.” This boast incited a predictably swift and furious response in Oxford. Ward’s book was formally brought before the Convocation for condemnation. Keble published a pamphlet in support of Ward, declaring that “I can imagine few things more unfair and cruel in themselves, or more likely to be ruinous under our present circumstances, than his condemnation, should it unhappily be carried.” He pleaded that the church could ill afford to cast out such an able fighter against “the Latitudinarian and Rationalistic schools,” one eager “to work within and under the Church of England in all charity, patience, and self-denial, against the common enemies of us all—vice and unbelief.” Newman and Tract 90 were inevitably drawn into this latest storm, particularly since Ward’s book had repeatedly appealed to Newman’s “precise, clear, and edifying” views.28 An attempt to haul Tract 90 before the Convocation for censure collapsed with a proctorial veto. The Convocation in February 1845 did condemn the Ideal of a Christian Church by a huge majority (777 to 386), and then on a narrower vote (569 to 511) stripped Ward of his Oxford master’s degree. Newman felt limited sympathy for Ward. He had by this time long since tired of his disciple’s

28 Ward, The Ideal of a Christian Church, pp. 44–45, 193, 237–266, 565–567. J. Keble, Heads of Consideration on the Case of Mr. Ward (Oxford, 1845), pp. 10, 15.

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provocations. But finding himself and Tract 90 once again under substantial attack dissolved the last vestiges of the “nameless feeling” which attached him to Church of England.29 In 1840, a few months before he published Tract 90, Newman declared confidently that the renewal of the Church of England was inevitable because it was a true branch of the apostolic church. The persistent retreat from renewal over the next half decade pointed to an inescapable conclusion: the English church had forfeited the gift of providence. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church on October 7, 1845. His friendship with Keble ended for the next twenty years. His bond with Pusey survived, but uneasily. He would not set foot in Oxford again for more than three decades. The departure to Rome by Newman and several of his followers was greeted with the smug vindication. “Shame on them that they did not do so long since!” Adam Sedgwick growled privately to a friend. He admitted that he did not know the members of the Oxford Movement personally but found their principles suffused with fanaticism and idolatry. “I pity their delusion, I despise their sophistry, and I hate their dishonesty.”30 The evangelical George Stanley Faber contributed a series of twelve letters to the Christian’s Monthly Magazine reflecting on “Tractarian secession to popery.” These were shortly afterwards published as a book by the Protestant Association. Faber triumphantly quoted suspicions he had published in 1841 in the wake of the controversy over Tract 90. Newman’s secession and retraction of former criticisms of Roman Catholicism proved that he had been “a concealed Papist” from the dawn of the “Tractarian conspiracy.” Faber accused Newman of elevating his own “vain imaginations” and “unauthorized vagaries” over the clear word of God, in sharp contrast with the “teachable believers” who followed the dictates of scripture in reverent Protestant fashion. Worse, Newman built this arrogant presumption into a “system of uninquiring submission” that tempted his “dupes” into following him into “moral suicide.”31 Henry Hart Milman, canon of Westminster, eschewed Faber’s hyperbole for a detached academic tone in responding to Newman’s conversion. Milman began his review of Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine in the Quarterly Review with a comically unconvincing show of hoping that Newman might escape the reproach of himself and others “for having sown the bitter seeds of religious dissension in 29 Ker, John Henry Newman, pp. 269–281, 294–301. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 515–535. Short, Newman and His Contemporaries, pp. 106–111. 30 J.W. Clark and T.M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (Cambridge, 1890), vol. 2, pp. 93–94. 31 G.S. Faber, Letters on Tractarian Secession to Popery (London, 1846), pp. x, 54–77.

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many families.” The long review concentrated on the “subtle labyrinth” of Newman’s historical scholarship, but Milman noted that it was “impossible altogether to separate the examination of his work from…the psychological study of his mind.” He placed Newman among the “monk-like men” whose gloomy asceticism represented a selfish retreat from the “sphere of duty, of virtue, of usefulness to mankind.” England needed men of a different psychological stamp, “whose religion is not sadly and vainly retrospective, but present and hopefully prospective.”32 Sedgwick’s personal pique, Faber’s pungent dread of Catholic conspiracy, and Milman’s detached scholarly analysis all share one important point. Each man drew an indelible line between the defects they found in Newman’s ideas, the selfishness they found in his behavior and the horrific practical consequences of both that his conversion to Rome exposed. The shattered compact between the founders of the Oxford Movement did not mean that its ideals and activities stuttered to a halt, even if the angry energy of the past dozen years dissipated somewhat. Pusey retained his place in the heart of Oxford and assumed the mantle of leadership in Newman’s absence. Keble had quit Oxford for a Hampshire country parish in 1836 but remained active as an oracle if only occasionally as a political infighter. The civil war that spilled out of the Oriel College Common Room in the 1830s continued. The Whig government of Lord John Russell, spoiling for a fight, nominated Hampden to the see of Hereford in 1847. Pusey and Keble spearheaded an unprecedented public challenge to the government’s patronage, using every legal lever at their disposal to deny Hampden’s consecration. They failed. This new campaign reopened the wounds of 1836, in ways that did the Tractarians little good. Pusey considered his fight against Essays and Reviews (1860), the intensely controversial collection of liberal essays on theology, as “a death struggle” with rationalism for the soul of the church. There were multiple links between the seven essayists and the conflicts of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Baden Powell, the oldest, was a Noetic. Frederick Temple was headmaster of Rugby. Henry Bristow Wilson was, with Tait, one of the four tutors who wrote the letter to the Times against Tract 90. Mark Pattison followed Newman in the late 1830s before repudiating Tractarian theology in the following decade. Benjamin Jowett also sympathized with the Oxford Movement as a young man before allying himself with Tait and Stanley. Pusey instigated a prosecution of Jowett in the

32

H.H. Milman, “Newman on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” Quarterly Review 77 (1846), pp. 404–405, 412–413, 430, 440, 463–465. On Newman and Milman’s differing views of historical scholarship, see Young, The Victorian Eighteenth Century, pp. 78–86.

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Chancellor’s Court at Oxford for heresy. Pusey and others v. Jowett collapsed on procedural grounds.33 The university itself bore the marks of the movement’s influence. In 1845, a month after Newman’s conversion, Richard Ford, a prolific writer on art and Spanish subjects, visited Oxford and noted disapprovingly how much it had changed in the two decades since his graduation. “The youths drink toast and water and fast on Wednesdays and Fridays,” he observed with pursed lips. “They have somewhat of a priggish, macerated look; der Puseyismus has spread far among the rising generation of fellow of colleges.”34 Tractarians remained a significant presence among the Anglican clergy. An educated guess in 1853 assigned one clergyman in eighteen (approximately 1,000 overall) to the movement.35 Thanks primarily to William Gladstone’s patronage as prime minister, and in spite of Queen Victoria’s hostility, Tractarians from the 1860s onward occupied many of the church’s highest offices. When Keble died in 1866 Gladstone and Henry Parry Liddon organized the creation of a new Oxford college named in his honor.36 The elderly Pusey preached at the opening of the new college’s chapel in 1876. He adopted as his text St. Mark’s beatitude: “blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” He explained that this meekness was “no soft natural temperament, no sweetness of soul, however beautiful, no forbearance, put of mere regard to what is seemly; but meekness, learned from Himself, inwrought by His Spirit through continued study of His Divine meekness, the daughter of humility, the mother of patience.”37

Perseverance and Disunity

In 1841 Arnold insisted that the church must be changeable, “not in its object, which is for ever one and the same, but in its means for effecting that object; changeable in its details, because the same treatment cannot suit various diseases, various climates, various constitutional peculiarities, various external

33 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, part I, pp. 237–249. Pattison, The Great Dissent, pp. 77–76. Ellis, “Pusey and University Reform,” p. 320. Shea and Whitla, Essays and Reviews. Turner, John Henry Newman, pp. 244–245. B. Hilton, “Moral Disciplines,” in Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, ed. P. Mandler (Oxford, 2006), p. 233. 34 R.E. Prothero, ed., The Letters of Richard Ford, 1797–1858 (London, 1905), pp. 202–204. 35 Conybeare, “Church Parties,” p. 338. See Burns, introduction to “Church Parties.” 36 Ward, Victorian Oxford, pp. 265–270. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, part II, pp. 337–339. 37 Pusey, “Blessed are the Meek,” pp. 3–7, 18.

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influences.” At the end of his Anglican period Newman turned his attention to the problem of accounting for the undeniable changes to Christian teaching over the previous eighteen centuries. He previewed his ideas in his final university sermon of 1843 and then gave them mature form two years later in a book awash in the influence of Joseph Butler, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. He acknowledged: If Christianity be an universal religion, suited not to one locality or period, but to all times and places, it cannot but vary in its relations and dealings towards the world around it, that is, it will develope. Principles require a very various application according to persons and circumstances, and must be thrown into new shapes according to the form of society which they are to influence. Newman devoted the book to elaborating standards for distinguishing genuine developments, which conserved what became before them, from corruptions, which did not.38 Had Arnold lived, Newman’s reflections on doctrinal development would not have pushed the two men towards détente. They had already agreed on human nature: Butler was right that we must constantly battle our tendency towards depravity. They had already agreed on virtue: the renunciation of pride and the patient commitment to Christian duty provided us with the only way to triumph over the sinful part of our nature. They had already agreed on education: a firm grounding in Christian morality had to precede any acquisition of secular expertise. They had already agreed on the need for a strong established church: neither individuals nor England as a whole could surmount the challenges of the modern world without the Christian unity only a strong church could provide. Arnold and Newman disagreed about two interconnected concerns: the proper connection between the individual and the church; and the relationship between reason and faith in acquiring religious knowledge. Why did these two issues overwhelm their points of agreement and set them against each other as enemies? Newman and Arnold both placed dependable moral conduct above intellectual consistency—patterns of behavior in the messy arena of daily life and not patterns of typeset logic provided the ultimate test for theology and philosophy. The method of acquiring religious truth and the compact between the individual and his church determined, 38 Arnold, Christian Life, pp. xlii–xliv. J.H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1845), pp. 87–88, 96.

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more than anything else, whether the Christian would acquire a sincere and teachable heart. The Noetic and the Tractarian were convinced that their rival’s principles tempted souls into sin rather than minds into error. Arnold and his fellow Noetics believed that we could not cultivate virtue without enquiry and toleration. We must always question our theological speculations in order to combat the self-indulgent conflation of our own inevitably flawed conceptions with eternally stable truth. Blind submission to authority prepared us badly to face the trials and temptations of life. Borrowed certainty did not produce strength of character. We must tolerate the mature opinions of others because to behave otherwise exposed a lack of humility. Christianity could not respond to the challenges of the modern world by remaining stagnant, much less by retreating to the supposed purity of some mythical past. Newman and his fellow Tractarians reached the opposite conclusion. Skepticism enflamed our pride by severing us from the only conduct capable of dousing our tempestuous selfishness: a reverent obedience to the stable wisdom and sacraments of the apostolic Church. He saw no falseness in demanding liberty for Catholic beliefs and practices within the English church while fighting all accommodation to liberals like Arnold. In his eyes, he sought a closer approach to Christianity’s primordial articles of faith; liberals on the other hand wanted to grant each man the license to believe whatever he found convenient. He left the English church when he became convinced that it had become too enervated with anti-Catholicism to resist the corruptions of the modern world. He encapsulated his denunciation of liberalism in a sermon on “Faith and Doubt,” delivered shortly after his conversion to Rome. He mocked the supposed liberal view that “it is a fault ever to make up our mind once for all on any religious subject whatever.” To inquire into faith was to negate it, he insisted; to question the Church dogma was “to begin in pride and disobedience, and…end in apostasy.”39 In this sermon Newman reassured his congregation that God “has chosen you, will be faithful to you; put your case in His hand, wait upon Him, and you will surely persevere.”40 Arnold would never have disputed this sentiment— and that was the root of the problem. He had his own convictions about how best to wait upon God and he resolved to persevere in them. Hampden, Pusey, Keble, and the other combatants in the civil war which spilled out of Oriel College, all persevered.

39 40

J.H. Newman, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (London, 1849), pp. 227–228, 237–239, 246. Ibid., p. 228.

Tract 90 and the Trial of Patience in the Church of England

241

In his treatise on church reform Arnold excoriated “the spirit of sectarianism” and lamented that division among Christians “make them more adverse to each other than to the cause of ungodliness and wickedness.” In Tract 90 Newman contended that “our church’s strength would be irresistible, humanly speaking, were it but at unity with itself: if it remains divided, part against part, we shall see the energy which was meant to subdue the world preying upon itself.”41 The harder the Noetics and the Tractarians fought for their particular solutions to Christian schism the worse the discord became. The Christian unity they all so intensely desired—a unity to bring Christians into lasting obedience to God—proved radically incompatible with all their perseverance. The insistence that Christianity alone provided a path to a teachable and humble disposition emerged battered from these conflicts. On the most merciful reading, Christianity in Britain was riddled with heresies that undermined the religion’s most fundamental devotional purpose—a tragedy without an apparent remedy. From a less sympathetic perspective, the warfare within the church exposed the fundamental conviction of both the Tractarians and the Noetics—that Christianity held a monopoly on the cultivation of moral behavior—as nothing more than cant. 41 Arnold, Principles of Church Reform, pp. 13–14, 27–28. Newman, Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, pp. 3–4.

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Index Acland, Henry  221–222 Aesop’s Fables  54 Africa  92 agnosticism  30–31, 43, 60, 106 agriculture  75, 78–79, 107, 213 Aitken, Jean (Carlyle)  19–20 Albert the Great  69 Alexandria  174 American Revolution  98 anatomy  16, 108, 221–222 animal training  31 Antichrist  98, 122, 145, 174, 178 Antioch  174–175 Apostolic tradition  9, 13–14, 21, 68, 70, 89, 118–119, 125, 130, 132, 134–136, 138, 140–141, 144, 151–152, 161, 168, 173–174, 177–178, 187, 206, 219, 225–227, 232, 236, 240 Aquinas, Thomas  10, 69 Arianism, Arius  12, 15, 173–175, 181 201, 231 Aristotle  10, 59, 69, 92, 115, 173, 214 Arnold, Mary (Penrose)  123, 189, 204 Arnold, Matthew  8, 10, 50, 67, 189, 209 Arnold, Thomas  9–10, 12, 50, 117–118, 120–121, 154, 164, 170, 178, 179, 213 accused of latitudinarianism  177, 192–193, 199 advocates Catholic Emancipation  134 appalled by Edward Pusey’s Patience and Confidence sermon  150 appreciation of Samuel Johnson  63, 123 and Matthew Arnold  10, 50, 189, 209 attitude towards Jews  197 attitude towards religious dissent  126 attitudes towards science  195–196 on Joseph Butler  123, 193, 239 as a church reformer  12, 128, 131, 175, 191–192, 195 197–200, 202–203, 208, 238–241 criticizes Tractarian theology  125, 193–194, 198, 200–201, 204–209, 229, 231 death  123, 125, 208–209 educational reforms of  12, 189–191, 195–196 on the Eucharist  125, 209

and the Fall of man (Genesis)  128 friendship with Edward Pusey  200 friendship with John Keble  189, 200 as historian  121, 191, 193, 204–208 hostility to secular utilitarianism   121–122, 193, 202 and London University  121–122 opinion of the eighteenth-century Church of England  126 “The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden”  13, 189, 199–205, 231, 234 on William Paley  124 political views of  196–202, 205–208 posthumous reputation  38, 50, 123, 190, 231 as regius professor of modern history  118, 207–208 as Rugby headmaster  12, 15, 33, 38, 117, 122, 167, 188–191, 193–200, 203–205, 226 self-denial as a religious principle  10, 12, 33, 129, 191, 193–194, 202–203, 205–206, 209, 239–241 supports R.D. Hampden  13, 188–189, 202- 205 Ashley, Lord (Anthony Cooper; subsequently the seventh earl of Shaftesbury)  150, 228 Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levelers  102 astronomy  29, 48, 87, 117, 159, 161, 216–217, 220, 222 Athanasian Creed  180 atheism and unbelief  27, 46, 57, 59, 93, 103, 122, 156, 158, 160, 183–184, 186, 193–194, 196, 216, 220, 235 Atonement, The  146–147, 180, 191–192 Bacon, Francis  108, 123, 167, 171, 212, 216 Bagehot, Walter  61, 66 Bagot, Richard  226 Bampton lectures  13, 53, 67, 120, 170, 173–175, 186, 202–203 bankruptcy  23–24 Bartlett, Thomas  59, 88

Index Bayes, Thomas  58 Beaven, James  150 Bell, Thomas  4 Benson, Edward White  8, 44 Bentham, George  3–4 Bentham, Jeremy  96, 104–106, 109, 121–122, 193, 202, 212, 215 Birmingham  109 Blackett, John  123 Blunt, John James  61 Bolingbroke, first viscount (Henry St. John)  99–101 Bonaparte, Napoleon  97, 116, 191 Booth, James  31 Boswell, James  56, 85 Botany  2–4, 6–7, 15, 64, 81, 213, 221 Bowden, John William  132, 220–221 Boyle lectures  67 Boyle, Robert  167 Brewster, David  5–6, 35, 40, 219 Bristol  56, 61, 61, 78, 97, 147 British Association for the Advancement of Science  28–29, 33, 212, 219–220 British Critic  47, 206, 208, 220, 222–223, 230 Brontë, Ann  8, 46–47 Brontë, Charlotte  8, 46–47 Brougham, Henry (first Baron Brougham and Vaux)  116, 210–212, 214–216, 221n28 Brown, Robert  219 Buckland, William  195, 221 Buffon, comte de  26 Burke, Edmund  11, 98–101, 178–179 Butler, Joseph  8, 10–12, 55, 65–66, 75–76, 78, 132, 154 Analogy of Religion  56–57, 59–62, 97 , 99, 106, 110, 129, 161, 186, 212 Christian apologetics of  71 death  97 fear of licentiousness  93, 99, 101 on heathen philosophy  69 on human nature and the conscience  58, 110, 163, 79, 80, 90, 90–91, 91, 92–93, 94, 95, 97 influence in the nineteenth century  55, 59–61, 67–68, 94, 95, 109–111, 115, 123–124, 128–131, 161–164, 171, 180, 186, 187–188, 193, 212, 214, 239 political views and activity  97, 99–101

269 probability and the reasonableness of Christian belief  56–59, 83–84, 87, 130, 161–163 on the relationship between virtue and scholarship  85, 87–88, 110 on secular prudence and Christian virtue  78–81, 83, 90–91 and John Wesley  61–62, 73 youth and early career  56 Calvinism  73, 119 Cambridge University  30, 40, 61, 64–65, 66, 93–94, 102–103, 106, 109, 111, 124, 167, 169, 211, 213, 218, 219 Trinity College  7, 111, 219, 228 Canals  78, 117 Candlish, Robert Smith  6 Cardinal virtues  9, 69 Carlisle  65 Carlyle, Jack  19 Carlyle, Jane (Welsh)  42 Carlyle, Thomas  8, 10, 13, 19–21, 35, 39, 41–44, 56, 63–64, 190 Catholic Emancipation  11, 134–135 Chalmers, Thomas  8, 26–27, 36, 47, 94, 146, 167 Chambers, Robert  34n2 Charles I, King  99, 118 chemistry  222 Christian Guardian and Church of England Magazine  230 Christian’s Monthly Magazine  236 Christ  7, 20, 23, 36–37, 45, 68–71, 78, 89, 118, 125–129, 132, 136, 138–139, 146–147, 159, 167, 169, 172–173, 179, 184, 191–193, 197, 205–206, 216 Church of England  8–16, 44–46, 54–56, 62, 65, 119, 126–128, 131, 140, 144, 147, 168, 191–192, 197–199, 202–203, 211–212, 219, 225–239 See also Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion Church of Ireland  134 Churton, Ralph  115 Cicero  69 classical literature  9–10, 59, 64, 69, 92, 115, 133, 173, 175, 195, 201, 218 class and social privilege  8, 24, 33, 40, 47, 53–56, 62, 78–80, 83, 86, 94, 102–103, 108, 123, 126, 212–213, 217, 227

270 coal mining  78–79 Cobbett, William  31 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor  8, 22, 26, 29, 36–37, 64, 108, 119, 121, 123 Condorcet, Marquis de  106 conscience and the moral faculties  9, 25, 41, 50, 58, 68, 79–80, 89–95, 97, 103–104, 109–110, 124, 158–159, 163–164 Conybeare, William  45–46 Cooper, Anthony (the third earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713)  90 Cooper, Anthony (Lord Ashley; subsequently the seventh earl of Shaftesbury, 1801–1885)  150, 232 Copleston, Edward  9, 117, 120–121, 170 Corpus Christi Common Room Committee  179, 182 Coventry  49 Craik, George  31 Cranmer, Thomas  230 cricket  31, 190 crime and criminal behavior  24, 27, 40, 78, 223 Curteis, George Herbert  53–54 Curzon-Howe, Richard (first Earl Howe)  204 Cuvier, Georges  5–7, 144 Dalton, John  219 Danton, Georges  97 Darwin, Charles  1–7, 10, 12, 15–16, 26, 30, 36, 60, 66–67 Darwin, Emma  30 Darwin, Francis  30 Daubeny, Charles  4, 221 Davison, John  120–121 Davy, Humphry  213 De Morgan, Augustus  8, 35, 48 deism  11, 56, 99–100, 101, 106, 186 Descartes, René  57, 87 Dickens, Charles  8, 14, 24, 27, 109 Dickens, John  24 divine providence  10, 38, 40, 56–58, 60, 79, 80–85, 103, 107–108 , 142, 166, 191, 212–213, 228, 236 Dresden  191 Durham  56, 93

Index East India College, Haileybury  231 Edinburgh Review  13, 15–16, 42, 119, 150, 167, 189, 201, 203, 207, 211, 216, 231 Eliot, George  8, 43, 47, 62 Elizabeth I, Queen  5 Empson, William  107–108, 235 enclosure  78–79 English Civil War (1642–1651)  118, 145 enthusiasm  12–13, , 54 , 62 , 73–75 , 140 epicureanism  54, 64 Escott, Thomas  27 Essays and Reviews  44–45, 237–238 Eucharist  13, 124–125, 209, 233–234 Euclid  115, 217–218 evangelicalism  8, 12–13, 26–27, 62, 78–79, 104, 125–126, 140, 146–147, 150, 152, 177, 182–183, 187, 217, 226, 228, 230, 236 evolution  1–7, 13, 15–16, 30, 34, 36, 40, 60, 66–67 Faber, Frederick William  139 Faber, George Stanley  236–237 Fall of man (Genesis)  128 Faraday, Michael  219 fasting  138–139, 141, 200 Faussett, Godfrey  223, 224–225, 230, 233 Fawkes, Guy  148 finance  24, 27, 40, 78–79, 217 Flamsteed, John  48 Ford, Richard  238 France  9, 11, 27, 53, 96–98, 100–102, 100–101, 104–106, 109, 115–117, 123 fraud and financial crime  24, 27, 40, 78 French Revolution  9, 11, 27, 53, 96–98, 100–102, 104–106, 109, 115, 116, 123 Frend, William  106 Froude, (Richard) Hurrell  9, 118, 122, 125, 129, 133 , 139–142, 145, 150, 155, 161, 177, 198, 217–218, 224 Froude, James  8, 41–44, 133 Galen  175 Galileo  23 geist  50 gender  8, 29, 31, 33, 35–41, 46–47, 120, 145, 197, 211 Genesis, Book of  128, 166, 215, 221 Geological Society of London  196

Index Geology  7, 15, 40, 59, 166, 195–196, 211, 215, 220–221 George II, King  99 Georgia (American colony)  78 Germany  20, 183–184, 191 Gethsemane, Garden of  68 Gibbon, Edward  53–54 Gisborne, Thomas  104 Gladstone, William  60, 91, 109–111, 115–118, 123- 124, 238 Glorious Revolution of 1688  103, 148–149 Godwin, William  106 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  50 Gordon Riots  79 Gosse, Edmund  64 Gray, Charles  130 Great Exhibition of 1851  31 Gunpowder Plot (1605)  148 Halley’s Comet  216, 217n16 Hamilton, William Rowan (mathematician, 1805–1865)  221 Hamilton, William Stirling (philosopher, 1788–1856)  116 Hampden, Renn Dickson  9, 120, 154, 187, 213, 215, 217, 219, 226 accused of latitudinarianism   179–180, 192 applies the inductive method in theology  166–167, 171–172, 175, 186–187, 233 advocates opening Oxford to dissenters  13, 130, 169, 171, 175, 224 appointed bishop of Hereford  237 on Joseph Butler  61, 94, 128–130, 171, 180, 186–188 censured  13, 188, 229, 233 conflict with the Oxford Movement  13–15, 61, 169–171, 173–174, 177–189, 200–204, 228–229, 231–233, 237 on the conscience  94, 124 on William Paley  94, 124, 171 as professor of moral philosophy  118, 171, 178–179 and regius chair of divinity  13, 15, 118, 170, 178, 183–184, 186–187, 189, 204, 232

271 Scholastic Philosophy Considered in Its Relation to Christian Theology  13, 170, 173–175, 186, 202–203 self-denial as a religious principle  129, 171–173, 176–177, 185, 240 Hampshire  237 Harrison, Frederic  42 Hawkins, Edward  9, 118, 120, 134, 189, 200 heaven  28, 55, 70, 72, 105, 108, 138–139, 154, 173, 191–192, 220 Hebraism and Hellenism (M. Arnold)  10, 50 hell  28, 72, 73, 105, 108 Henry VIII, King  5 Henslow, John Stevens  213 Hereford  237 Herodotus  115 Herschel, John  29–30 Hippocrates  175 Hobbes, Thomas  96 Holy Ghost  69, 74 Home, Henry (Lord Kames)  59, 90 Hooker, Richard  9–10, 77 Horsley, Samuel  96–98, 101, 109, 136, 145 Howe, first Earl (Richard Curzon-Howe)  204 Hughes, Thomas  8, 37–39, 190–191, 195 Hume, David  11, 59, 88, 90, 96, 123, 160 hunting and fishing  31 Hutcheson, Francis  90 Huxley, Thomas  8, 30–31, 44 Incarnation, The  180 inductive method  2, 4–7, 13, 21, 29–30, 33–35, 40, 48, 110, 166–167, 171–172, 175, 186–187, 212, 233 industry and industrialization  37, 39–40, 56, 75, 77–81, 102, 117 Inquisition  23 Ireland  134, 166 Irish Temporalities Bill  134 Jackson, Henry  49 James II, King  149–150 Jesus  7, 20, 23, 36–37, 45, 68–71, 78, 89, 118, 125–129, 132, 136, 138–139, 146–147, 159, 167, 169, 172–173, 179, 184, 191–193, 197, 205–206, 216 Jews and Judaism  174, 197

272 Jewsbury, Geraldine  8, 39–40 Job, Book of  215 Johnson, Samuel  8–9, 11, 26, 55–56, 64, 75, 75–76, 110, 132, 154 Christian apologetics of  70–71 on the conscience  79, 90–93 death  98 A Dictionary of the English Language  54, 63, 74, 77 and enthusiasm  74–75 on heathen philosophy  70 influence in the nineteenth century  46, 53–55, 63–64, 67, 123 on Methodism  74 on secular prudence and Christian virtue  78–79, 83–85 on the relationship between virtue and scholarship  85–87 suffers financial hardship  78, 85 youth and early career  63 Jones, Rev. E.  30 Jowett, Benjamin  8, 45–46, 237–238 Justification, Lutheran doctrine of  235 Kames, Lord (Henry Home)  59, 90 Keble, John  9, 14, 118, 127, 137–138, 173, 177, 217, 223, 233–234 advocates the revival of strong clerical and ecclesiastical authority  143 on Joseph Butler  129, 161, 164 campaigns against R.D. Hampden’s appointment to the see of Hereford  237 Christian Year  129, 161, 230 condemns latitudinarianism  145 death  238 defends Newman’s Tract 90  227 defends W.G. Ward  235 edits Hurrell Froude’s Remains with J.H. Newman  139–142, 217, 224 friendship with Thomas Arnold  189, 200 hatred of liberals and Whigs  133–134, 145 hostility towards religious dissent  219 Keble College, Oxford  14, 238 leaves Oxford for a rural parish  237 National Apostasy  133–134, 145, 148, 168–169, 171, 200

Index J.H. Newman’s conversion to Rome breaches friendship  236–237 opposition to admitting dissenters to Oxford  219 as a poet  118, 128, 129, 161, 230 as a professor of poetry  118 on science  164, 219, 221–222 suffering, obedience and self-denial as religious principles  23, 128–129, 134, 139, 142–143, 235, 240 King-and-Country riots  109 Kingsley, Charles  16, 29, 68, 204 Lake, William Charles  209 Lamb, William (second Viscount Melbourne)  13, 46, 170, 178, 181–182, 197–198, 204, 207 Lankester, E. Ray  28 Laplace, Pierre Simon  216, 220 Lardner, Dionysius  216–217 Latimer, Hugh  230 latitudinarianism, as a term of abuse  145–146, 177, 187, 192–193, 199, 203, 214, 216, 219–220, 235 Laud, William  118–119, 121, 130 law and legal profession  49, 117, 144, 231 , 237 Law, William  63, 74 Lazarus  89 Lecky, W.E.H.  63 Leifchild, John  61 Liddon, Henry Parry  16, 22, 23, 28, 199, 238 Linnean Society  3–4 Locke, John  57, 90, 167 logic  34–35, 58, 64, 66, 89, 93, 122, 129, 152, 154–155, 165, 174, 195, 201, 239 London University  121–122, 211–212, 214 London  16, 53, 74, 79, 121–122, 137, 175, 211, 214, 227 Lutheranism  235 Lyell, Charles  59, 116 Macaulay, Thomas  64, 116, 119, 207–208 Malthus, Thomas  104, 106–109 Mandeville, Bernard  79–80 Mary (princess of Orange and consort of William II)  149 Mary I, Queen  230

Index mathematics  58, 64, 118, 133, 159, 163, 166, 177, 195, 201, 216–222 medicine and medical professionals  49, 108, 175 Melbourne, Lord (William Lamb)  13, 46, 170, 178, 181–182, 197–198, 204, 207 Merivale, Herman  150 Methodism  8, 11, 54–55, 62–63, 67, 72–75, 78, 97–98, 121, 125–128, 133, 140, 146–147 Mill, James  106 Mill, John Stuart  19, 25, 32, 34, 106 Milman, Henry Hart  236–237 Milton, John  67, 118, 123 Mineralogy  211, 219, 221 Miracles  11, 88–89, 160 Monk, James  147, 230 Moravian Church  78 Morley, John  8, 43–44 Morning Chronicle  227–228 Mozley, Thomas  145, 170, 221–223, 230 National Assembly (France)  100 National Convention (France)  97 National Portrait Gallery (London)  16 natural theology  10, 65–68, 79–81, 83–84, 86–87, 105, 107, 160–161, 212–217, 221 Newman, Charles  130, 161 Newman, John Henry  1–2, 10, 12, 16, 16, 22–23, 47, 63, 182, 189, 198, 200, 206–209, 228, 230 advocates the revival of strong clerical and ecclesiastical authority   142–143, 148, 157, 240 alienation from the Church of England and conversion to Roman Catholicism   14–15, 225, 233–238, 240 on the Antichrist  145, 174, 178 appreciation of Samuel Johnson  63, 123 argues that Catholic devotional practices fall within the liberty of the Church of England  224–229, 240 Arians of the Fourth Century  12, 15, 173–174, 181, 201, 231 attitude towards science  15, 143–144, 154–161, 210, 214–217, 219, 221–222 on Joseph Butler  61, 94, 129–131, 161–164, 187–188, 214, 239 campaign against Robert Peel’s election (1829)  134–135, 165

273 clashes with R.D. Hampden  13, 15, 61, 130, 169, 170–171, 177–183, 186–187, 202, 232–233 condemns natural theology  160–161, 214–217 on the conscience  94, 158–159, 163–164 conversion to Rome opens ruptures with John Keble and Edward Pusey  236–237 criticism of Tory “high-and-dry” high churchman  136 criticizes pagan philosophy  153–154, 157, 174 early life and career  118–119, 132–133 edits Hurrell Froude’s Remains with John Keble  139–142, 217, 224 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine  239 on the Eucharist  125 and the Fall of man (Genesis)  128 hatred of liberals and Whigs  133–135, 144–145, 152, 170, 178–179, 181, 210, 214, 216, 240 honesty and morality questioned in the wake of Tract 90  226, 229–234, 236–237 hostility towards religious dissent  22, 126–128, 130–131, 133, 144–145, 147, 219 on the intersection of scholarship, virtue and wisdom  151–155, 158, 162 on Jews  174 opinion of the eighteenth-century Church of England  126, 133, 160 opposition to admitting dissenters to Oxford   13, 130–131, 169, 177–178, 219–220 on William Paley  94, 124, 160–161, 215 on reason and faith  118, 124, 150, 154–169 , 174–175, 180–181, 187, 210–211, 214–217, 239–240 reviles latitudinarianism  145–146, 179–180, 187, 214, 216, 219 and the start of the Oxford Movement  9, 119, 133–138 study of and fascination with history   12, 15, 21, 118–119, 124–125, 130, 136, 139, 151–152, 173–174, 179–181, 187, 201 suffering, obedience and self-denial as religious principles  10, 22–23, 133, 140–144, 146, 161, 164, 173–174, 214–217, 225–226, 240–241

274 Newman (cont.) “Tamworth Reading Room”  210, 213–217, 222, 225 theological disagreements with his brother Charles  130, 161–162 and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion  13–14, 130, 171, 223, 229–231, 233–237, 240 Tract 90  13–14, 223, 225–227, 229–237, 241 The Undergraduate  132 university sermons  118, 124, 152–168, 187, 210, 214–215, 239 and Richard Whately  154, 165–166, 168, 179 Newton, Isaac  35, 47–48, 56, 108, 143–144, 166–167, 212–213, 216 Nicene Creed  180 Noetics see Thomas Arnold, Edward Copleston, R.D. Hampden, Edward Hawkins, Baden Powell, Richard Whately Non-juring clergy  149 North British Review  5–6 orchids  2–4 Ossoli, Margaret Fuller  42 Otter, William  107 Owen, Richard  4, 16 Oxford Martyrs Memorial  230 Oxford Movement see John William Bowden, (Richard) Hurrell Froude, John Keble, Thomas Mozley, John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, Tracts for the Times, William George Ward, Henry Wilberforce, Robert Wilberforce, Isaac Williams Oxford University  9, 12, 38, 53, 56 , 59, 61, 63, 72, 111, 115, 117–119, 124, 129–132, 135, 157, 170, 175, 178, 181, 201, 204–205, 207, 209, 211, 217–218, 219, 220, 226, 229–230, 236–238 Balliol College  235 chair of botany  4, 221 chair of geology  195, 221 chair of moral philosophy  118, 171, 222 chair of poetry  118 Christ Church College  115–116, 123 Church of St. Mary, The Virgin  1, 38, 118, 127, 133, 148, 207, 221, 233–234 controversy over admission of dissenters (1834)  13, 14, 47–48, 130–131, 169, 171, 175, 177–178, 219–220, 228

Index Convocation  13, 134, 182, 188–189, 233, 235 Corpus Christi College  179, 182 Hebdomadal Board  179, 182–183 Keble College  14, 242 Lady Margaret chair of divinity  223, 228, 237 Lincoln College  19, 42–43 Merton College  123 natural history museum  222 Oriel College  9, 13, 117–118, 120, 122–123, 128, 131–133, 141, 152, 170–171, 183, 189, 217, 237, 240 readership in anatomy  221–222 reform after the French Revolution  9, 115–116, 132 reform in the 1850s  164–165 regius chair of divinity  13, 15, 118, 170, 178, 183–184, 186–187, 189, 204, 232 Savilian professor of geometry  118, 217–219, 221 Trinity College  132, 137, 189 Paine, Thomas  103 Paley, William  8, 11, 36–37, 55, 75–76, 78, 110–111, 154 Christian apologetics of  65, 68–71, 88–89 Christian utilitarianism of  81–85, 92, 102–108, 160, 171, 215 on the conscience  79, 90, 92, 92–93, 94, 103, 104 Evidences of Christianity  36, 65–66, 68–69, 88, 101, 124, 160 on the Eucharist  125 fear of licentiousness  93 on heathen philosophy  69 Horae Paulinae  65 on David Hume  88–89 influence in the nineteenth century  45, 47, 55, 65–68, 94, 109, 123–124, 160–161, 171, 215 and Thomas Malthus  106–108 on Methodism  74 Natural Theology  10, 65–66, 83–84, 107, 160–161 political philosophy of  84, 101–105 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy  65–66, 70, 94, 101–104, 106–108, 124–125, 171

275

Index on the relationship between virtue and scholarship  82, 85, 87–89 on secular prudence and Christian virtue  78–79, 81–85 youth and early career  64–65 Pamphilius (pseud.)  46 Paris  96–97 Pattison, Mark  8, 10–11, 13, 19, 20–22, 32, 35, 41–44, 123, 237 Peel, Robert  134–136, 165, 210–216, 222–223, 227–228 Perceval, Arthur Philip  130 Pitt, William  96 Plato  108, 173 poetry  12, 25, 67, 118–119, 123, 128–129 , 142, 161, 230 Pope, Alexander  67 positivism  42 Powell, Baden  9, 35, 120, 164, 170 advocates opening Oxford to dissenters  169 attacks Anglo-Catholicism  229–230 attitude towards religious dissent  126 on the Eucharist  125 and the inductive method  166–167 contributes to Essays and Reviews  237 Rational Religion Examined  121, 166 as Savilian professor of geometry  118, 217–219, 221 predestination  73 Price, Bonamy  15, 16, 167–168, 201, 203, 231 Priestley, Joseph  97, 109 probability  56–59, 65, 83, 87, 130, 161–163 professionalism  27, 31, 49, 165, 217 Protestant Association  236 Protestant Reformation  9–10, 122, 125, 135, 140, 158, 168, 173, 224–226, 230–232, 235 Prothero, George  7, 29 publishing  7, 8, 11, 53, 55, 78, 85, 117, 119 Pusey and others v. Jowett  45, 238 Pusey, Edward  9, 16, 151, 177, 199, 223, 225, 234 advocates the revival of strong clerical and ecclesiastical authority  148 assumes leadership of the Oxford Movement  14, 241–242 on the Atonement  147 on Joseph Butler  61n26, 186–187 censured  13, 233–234

clashes with R.D. Hampden  13, 170, 179, 182–188, 202–203, 233 defends Newman’s Tract 90  226–227, 229 early life and career  183–184 educational ideals  164–165 on the Eucharist  13, 125, 233–234 family life  23, 183 on fasting  138–139, 200 fights reform of Oxford in the 1850s  164, 168 friendship with Thomas Arnold  200 Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in the Theology of Germany  183–184 hostility towards religious dissent  13, 146–147 J.H. Newman’s conversion to Rome strains friendship  236–237 joins Oxford Movement  118, 138, 151 and Keble College, Oxford  14, 238 opposition to Essays and Review  45, 237–238 Patience and Confidence the Strength of the Church  148–150 political views  134–138, 148–150, 170, 182 professor of Hebrew  118, 221 resists the Tractarian slide toward Catholicism  228 on science  221–222 suffering, obedience and self-denial as religious principles  22–23, 138–139, 142, 184, 227, 238, 240 youthful liberalism  134–135, 183–184 Pusey, Maria (Barker)  23, 183 Pusey, Philip (Edward Pusey’s son, not brother)  23 Pythagoreanism  157 Quakers  12, 73, 75 Quarterly Review  30, 101, 109, 236 Race  8 Reeve, Henry  42 Reform Act (1832)  11, 135 Reid, Thomas  59, 90 Ridley, Nicholas  230 Robespierre, Maximilien de  97 Rochester  97

276 Roman Catholicism  9, 12–16, 73, 79, 121, 125, 134–135, 168, 182–183, 187, 197, 223, 224–232, 234–236, 240 Romanticism  12, 20 Rossetti, Christina  26 Rousseau, Jean-Jacque  100 Royal Academy  53 Royal Society  33, 211 Rugby public school  12, 15, 33, 38, 63, 117, 122, 167, 188–191, 195, 197–201, 203–205, 209, 226, 237 Ruskin, John  29, 49 Russell, Lord John  237 Russia  104, 191 scholasticism  13, 167, 170, 173–175, 183, 219 science  1–7, 10, 12–13, 15–16, 23, 28–31, 33–35, 40, 44, 47–48, 50, 56–57, 59–60, 65–67, 81, 83–84, 86, 89, 108, 116, 143–144, 154–156, 158–161, 164, 166–167, 169, 175, 195–196, 210–212, 214–222 scientist, coining of  29 Scott, Walter  24 Scottish Free Church  6, 26 Sedgwick, Adam  7, 8, 15, 40–41, 66, 94, 167, 169, 236–237 Septuagenarian (pseud.)  115–116 Sermon on the Mount  72 Sewell, William  47–49 Shaftesbury, third Earl of (Anthony Cooper, 1671–1713)  90 Shaftesbury, seventh Earl of (Anthony Cooper; previously Lord Ashely, 1801– 1885)  150, 228 Shakespeare, William  67, 123 Shelley, Percy Bysshe  108 Short, Thomas  132, 189 Sidgwick, Henry  43–44 slavery and the slave trade  92, 102, 232 Smiles, Samuel  8, 21, 24, 37–38, 50, 190 Smith, Adam  59, 79, 90 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge  211, 214 Society of Arts  31 South Sea Bubble  78 Southey, Robert  78 Spooner, W.A.  60 sports  31, 190 St. Clement  174

Index St. James  70 St. John, Henry (first viscount Bolingbroke)  99–101 St. John  68 St. Paul  26, 65, 68, 70, 105, 120, 172 St. Peter  37, 68, 71 St. Wilfrid  139 Stanley, Arthur  38, 164, 190, 193, 229, 237 steam engines  12, 78, 117 Stephen, James Fitzjames  49 Stephen, Leslie  53–54, 60, 62–66, 68, 105 Stephenson, George  37 stoicism  26, 64, 69, 70, 157 Strachey, Lytton  190 Strickland, Hugh  68 Sumner, John Bird  27, 47 Tait, Archibald  226, 233, 241 Tamworth (Staffordshire)  210–211, 213, 215 Temple, Frederick  237 Terror, the (French Revolution)  97 Thackray, William Makepeace  24 Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion  13–14, 102, 130, 171, 175, 183, 223, 224–227, 229, 231–233, 235 See also Church of England Thompson, Henry  103 Times (London), The  169, 213, 225, 226, 229, 237 Tracts for the Times  9, 119, 130, 137–139, 143, 146, 223 No. 18  138 No. 73  180, 216 No. 86  127, 148 No. 87  130, 187 No. 89  219 No. 90  13–14, 223, 225–227, 229–237, 241 Trollope, Anthony  24 turnpikes  78–79, 117 Tyndall, John  4, 60 Unitarianism  97, 121 United States  109, 197 University of Edinburgh  15 University of Glasgow  214 utilitarianism  25, 68, 81–82, 103–106, 108, 121–122, 160, 171, 179, 193, 202, 212, 214–215

277

Index Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation  15, 34, 40 Victoria, Queen  6–7, 29, 238 Wallace, Alfred Russel  4 Wallis, Henry  53–56 Ward, William George  206–208, 223, 227–228, 234–236 Wesley, Charles  72 Wesley, John  8, 10–13, 22, 26, 55, 75–76, 110, 154 and the advent of Methodism  61–63, 72–73 and Joseph Butler  61–62, 73 Christian apologetics of  71 on the conscience  79, 90–93 and enthusiasm  73–75 on heathen philosophy  69–70 hostility to revolution  98 influence in the nineteenth century  54–55, 67, 123, 125–126, 128, 131 on Quakers  73 on the relationship between virtue and scholarship  85–87 on Roman Catholics  73 on secular prudence and Christian virtue  78–79, 83–84, 91 youth and early career  63, 72–73, 78–79, 86 Westminster Abbey  7 Whately, Richard  9, 34, 117, 170, 189, 199, 200, 204 advocates opening Oxford to dissenters  130 against “party spirit” in religion  120, 126 ambivalence about Samuel Johnson  123 on Joseph Butler  61, 101, 124, 129

on the conscience  94, 124 criticizes J.H. Newman’s Tract 90  229 on the dangers of modern unbelief  93–96, 122 Elements of Logic  34, 129, 165 on the Eucharist  125 on the French Revolution  96 hostility to secular utilitarianism  122 and John Henry Newman  154, 165–166, 168, 179 as a leading Noetic  120, 165–166 leaves Oxford to become Archbishop of Dublin  121, 166 opposes dogmatism and clerical autocracy  122, 172–173 on William Paley  94, 124 self-denial as a religious principle  129 supports R.D. Hampden  182 supports Robert Peel  134, 165 Whewell, William  8, 21, 23, 25, 29, 30, 33–34, 40, 47–49, 60–61, 66–68, 94, 111, 219, 228 White, Joseph Blanco  179 Wilberforce, Henry  167, 177, 200, 220 Wilberforce, Robert  217–218, 220 Wilberforce, Samuel  4, 6, 22, 177 Wilberforce, William  177, 217 William II, King (prince of Orange)  148–150 William IV, King  179, 181 Williams, Isaac  127, 130, 137, 146–148, 187, 223 Wilson, Henry Bristow  237 Worboise, Emma Jane  26 Wordsworth, William  25, 64, 66–67, 198 Wynter, Philip  226, 229 Yorkshire  64