ENGLISH THEOLOGY, 1837-1937.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 27, Issue 9, 1 September 1937, Page 7

ENGLISH THEOLOGY, 1837-1937.

(From "The Times" Literary Supllement.)

Continued from Last Month. Newman was by no means easy among his new associates. His most substantial work for some years was his "Idea of a University" (1852), m which he outlined his view of a true education. But m 1864 he fully recovered his former reputation with the public. Charles Kingsley (1819---75), m reviewing Froude's "History of England," asserted that "Father Newman informs us that truth for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be (a virtue of the Roman clergy." After a preliminary bout with pamphlets, Newman write m bi-monthly parts an "Apologia pro Vita Sua." This was immediately recognised as one of the greatest religious autobiographies of all time, worthy to rank with St. Augustine's "Confessions." Six years later Newman made a more general study, m his "Grammar of Assent," of the reasons which compel belief. In this, his most carefully written work, he was led to the somewhat desperate expedient of postulating an "illative sense."

It had seemed when Neman seceded that the Isis would flow wholly into the Tiber. But Keble and Pusey stood firm. Keble's "Lyra Innocentium," a book of hymns (1846), and his "Sermons Academical and Occasional" (1847) showed that the Anglican Church could, at any rate, produce true piety; and just before his death he published a "Life of Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man," exhibiting anew the continuity the Catholic tradition m the Anglican communion. Pusey had m 1843 come under almost as great suspicion as Newman. For his sermon, afterwards published, on "The Holy Eucharist, a Comfort to the Penitent," he was suspended from preaching m the University for two years. But he was not driven out of the Church. He repeated the substance of the sermon on the next occasion, translated the Abbe Gaume's "Manual for Confessors," and m a monstrous appendix of 700 pages to a sermon expounded "The Doctrine of the Real Presence." Nor did he remain faithful to the Anglican Church by abusing Roman. He continued, until 1870, to hope for reunion, and for that purpose wrote three "Eirenica," of which one was described by Newman as an "olive branch discharged from a catapult." At an advanced age he published "What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment" (1880), a work of great influence m its day. The other figures of the Oxford Movement continued to teach its doctrines as they had received them m 1833-45. Two series of Bampton lectures call for notice. In 1865 James Bowling Mozley (1813-1878) examined the credibility of miracles as such, apart from any question of evidence,, and m 1866 Henry Parry Liddon sought to prove the Divinity of Christ by the argument "Christus, si non Deus, non bonus." A glance may also be given at the later writings of Gladstone, whose political opinions were m a state of continual evolution but whose theological opinions scarcely wavered. His pamphlet against the Vatican decrees m 1874 roused great attention, as also did his "Impregnable Reck of Hody Scripture" (1890). In 1896 he brought cut an edition of Butler, m whom

several of the Oxford divines had acknowledged a master. # * # But Liddon and Gladstone were already m 1880, so far as their theological opinions were concerned, survivals from a former age. The defeat of the Tractarians m 1845 caused the Liberal movement to raise its head once more. Both had sprung from the Oriel Common Room which m those days "stank of logic," and they had come into collision m 1837, when the Tractarians moved to exclude Renn Dickson Hampden (1793-1868) from the board for nominating select preachers. Hampden had given offence by his Bampton lectures on "The Scholastic Philosophy considered m its relation to Christian Orthodoxy." The proctors used their veto to prevent the ban, but the wretched Hampden was neither forgiven nor forgotten..Fortyfive books and pamphlets were issued m a wordy warfare, and m 1848, when he was made Bishop of Hereford, another thirty flew from the presses. After his departure the battle for Liberalism was taken up by Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893). He collaborated with Dean Stanley m a series of commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles, his editions of Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans appearing m 1855. Like most of his books, they were slipshod m their scholarship, but stimulating fare. The storm broke m 1860, when Jowett and six others collaborated m "Essays and Reviews." Little objection was taken to four of the contributors, among them Mark Pattison, who had been swept into the Oxford Movement by the force of Newmans personality, and had contributed to the "Lives of the Saints," but before long found his true home m the Liberal camp. The wrath of the Conservatives fell on Rowland Williams for his essay on "Bunsen's Biblical Researches,'" Henry Bristow Wilson for "The National Church," and Jowett for his essay "On the Interpretation of Scripture." Williams and Wilson were condemned by the Court of Arches, but tho Judicial Committee of the Privy Council exonerated them. Fruit-

less attempts were then made to bring Jowett to book before the ViceChancellor. The root of offence m the case of Williams, Wilson and Jowett had been their attitude to Holy Scripture. That this was the prime issue between Conservatives and Liberals was . made clearer m the even more famous controversy provoked by John William Colenso (1814-1883), Bishop of Natal. He had been second wrangler at Cambridge and had written school treatises on arithmetic and algebra, but secured more notoriety by his commentary on Romans (1861). According to his metropolitan, Bishop Gray, of Capetown, it bristled with heresies from beginning to end. A year later he began a critical examination of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. It was not finally completed until 1879, but the first volume was sufficient to lash Conservatives into a fury. Colenso's subject was described by "The Times" m one of the happiest of misprints (if the standard is a maximum dislocation of sense with a minimum dislocation of type) as "the mosaic origin of the Pentatuch." He showed that the books commonly attributed to Moses could not have been written by him, but were of a later date and of a composite (and often unhistorical) nature. Such views could not expect to pass unnoticed. The Bishop of Capetown deposed Colenso after a form of trial which the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council later declared to be null and void. A literary answer to Colenso's theories was provided m "The Speaker's Commentary," and to this Colenso replied m turn with his "New Bible Commentary literally examined." * * * The new views' of Holy Scripture were accompanied by greater emphasis on the human nature of Christ. This current of thought was typified by "Ecce Homo," published anonymously m 1866 but afterwards acknowledged to be the work of Sir John Seeley (1834-95). In dignified and stately prose it did not deny the transcendental element m Christ but treated Him as a man among men. The strength of this current of