The Oxford Movement

The Oxford Movement

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Title: The Oxford Movement Twelve Years, 1833-1845
Author: R.W. Church
Release Date: April 20, 2004 [EBook #12092]
Language: English
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OXFORD MOVEMENT ***

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THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
TWELVE YEARS 1833-1845
R.W. CHURCH, M.A., D.C.L.
SOMETIME DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S AND FELLOW OF ORIEL
COLLEGE, OXFORD

ADVERTISEMENT
The revision of these papers was a task to which the late Dean of St.
Paul's gave all the work he could during the last months of his life. At
the time of his death, fourteen of the papers had, so far as can be judged,

received the form in which he wished them to be published; and these,
of course, are printed here exactly as he left them. One more he had all
but prepared for publication; the last four were mainly in the condition
in which, six years ago, he had them privately put into type, for the
convenience of his own further work upon them, and for the reading of
two or three intimate friends. Those into whose care his work has now
come have tried, with the help of his pencilled notes, to bring these four
papers as nearly as they can into the form which they believe he would
have had them take. But it has seemed better to leave unaltered a
sentence here and there to which he might have given a more perfect
shape, rather than to run the risk of swerving from the thought which
was in his mind.
It is possible that the Dean would have made considerable changes in
the preface which is here printed; for only that which seems the first
draft of it has been found. But even thus it serves to show his wish and
purpose for the work he had in hand; and it has therefore been thought
best to publish it. Leave has been obtained to add here some fragments
from a letter which, three years ago, he wrote to Lord Acton about
these papers:
"If I ever publish them, I must say distinctly what I want to do, which is,
not to pretend to write a history of the movement, or to account for it or
adequately to judge it and put it in its due place in relation to the
religious and philosophical history of the time, but simply to preserve a
contemporary memorial of what seems to me to have been a true and
noble effort which passed before my eyes, a short scene of religious
earnestness and aspiration, with all that was in it of self-devotion,
affectionateness, and high and refined and varied character, displayed
under circumstances which are scarcely intelligible to men of the
present time; so enormous have been the changes in what was assumed
and acted upon, and thought practicable and reasonable, 'fifty years
since.' For their time and opportunities, the men of the movement, with
all their imperfect equipment and their mistakes, still seem to me the
salt of their generation.... I wish to leave behind me a record that one
who lived with them, and lived long beyond most of them, believed in
the reality of their goodness and height of character, and still looks
back with deepest reverence to those forgotten men as the companions
to whose teaching and example he owes an infinite debt, and not he

only, but religious society in England of all kinds."
January 31st, 1891.

PREFACE
The following pages relate to that stage in the Church revival of this
century which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use
its nickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences and
conditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but the
impelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which
these pages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly
associated with Oxford, from which it received some of its most
marked characteristics. Oxford men started it and guided it. At Oxford
were raised its first hopes, and Oxford was the scene of its first
successes. At Oxford were its deep disappointments, and its apparently
fatal defeat. And it won and lost, as a champion of English theology
and religion, a man of genius, whose name is among the illustrious
names of his age, a name which will always be connected with modern
Oxford, and is