EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY1

T was only at mid-day on Monday last that I received your Rector's summons to fill the gap created by the regretted illness of Mr. Mackay. The suddenness of the demand, and the pressure of business which could not be displaced, will, I hope, be my sufficient excuse for the utterly inadequate handling of a great theme. For the sake of clearness and lucidus ordo, let me begin with a few leading dates. Edward Bouverie Pusey was born on August 22, 1800. His father was the Hon. Philip Bouverie, a younger son of Lord Folkestone, and took the name of Pusey when he inherited the property called "Pusey" near the Vale of White Horse. This Mr. Philip Bouverie-Pusey married Lady Lucy Sherard, daughter of the fourth Earl of Harborough, who was a clergyman. Lady Lucy Pusey lived till 1858, when she died at the age of eighty-six. She is an important link in the chain; for Dr. Pusey said in 1879, "The doctrine of the Real Presence I learned from my mother's explanation of the Catechism, which she had learned to understand from older clergy." This roughly links the Sacramental theology of 1880 with that of 1780, when Lady Lucy was a child, or even with 1712, when her father, the clergyman, was born. In 1812 Edward Bouverie Pusey went to Eton; from A lecture delivered at St. Margaret Pattens, Rood Lane, 1901,

Eton to a private tutor's; and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. In the summer of 1822 he took his degree, being examined by Mr. Keble, and placed in the First Class. In 1823 he was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel College; and he then made two prolonged visits to Germany, where he became personally acquainted with some of the pioneers of free thought and Biblical criticism.

Returning to England, he was ordained Deacon on Trinity Sunday, 1828, and immediately afterwards married a lady to whom he had long been attached. In the winter of the same year he was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and became, in virtue of his professorship, a Canon of Christ Church. It was his first and last preferment. On November 23, 1828, he was ordained Priest by Dr. Lloyd, Bishop of Oxford; and on Christmas Day following he celebrated the Holy Communion for the first time. On September 16, 1882, he died. What happened in that long interval must now be briefly summarized.

In reviewing cursorily so prolonged, so laborious, and so crowded a life, it is palpably impossible to enter minutely into dates and details. The chronological method must, therefore, now be laid aside; and we must confine our attention to three or four principal and transcendent services which Dr. Pusey was raised up by God to perform. Those services, of course, were rendered in close connexion with what men have come to call "the Catholic Revival in the Church of England," or, more briefly, "The Oxford Movement." That movement began in 1833, and had its origin in the actual and threatened attacks on the Church, which immediately succeeded the Reform Act of 1832. On July 14, 1833, John Keble preached in St. Mary's, Oxford, his famous Assize Sermon on "National Apostasy," and immediately

afterwards the issue of the famous "Tracts for the Times" began.

The first Tracts were a series of short papers-in many cases hardly more than notes-on great questions which the attack on the Church had suddenly forced into prominence. They affirmed, in emphatic and purposely startling form, the true and essential nature of the Church as a spiritual society founded by our Lord Himself, entirely independent of the State. They put in the very forefront the truth of the Apostolical Succession, and its necessity to a valid ministry. They went on to deal with such topics as the Standing Ordinances of Religion, the Prayer-book, Fasting, and Ecclesiastical Discipline. The motive power of the Tracts the author of many, the inspirer of all—was John Henry Newman; and he must unquestionably be regarded as the leader of the Catholic Revival in its earliest years, with the potent, though unseen, influence of John Keble in the background, and the enthusiastic aid of a band of younger disciples whom he had gathered round him at Oxford.

But soon an event occurred which had a decisive effect upon the character and fortunes of the Movement. This was the accession of Dr. Pusey. In earlier days he had been thought to have some sympathy with the "Liberal" theology of Germany, and he had not been closely associated with the beginning of the Movement, which was pre-eminently, and before all else, an attack on what is miscalled "Liberalism" in the sphere of religion. But he had been gradually drawn to the Movement, partly by his friendship with Newman, and partly by the development of his own convictions. The effect of his adhesion is thus described by a contemporary : I quote from Dean Church's "History of the Oxford Movement " :

Cardinal Newman, in the "Apologia," has attributed to Dr. Pusey's unreserved adhesion to the cause which the Tracts represented a great change in regard to the weight and completeness of what was written and done. "Dr. Pusey," he writes, "gave us at once position and a name. Without him we should have had no chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making any serious resistance to the Liberal aggression. But Dr. Pusey was a Professor and Canon of Christ Church; he had a vast influence in consequence of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his charities, his Professorship, his family connexions, and his easy relations with the University authorities. . . . There was henceforth a man who could be the head and centre of the zealous people in every part of the country who were adopting the new opinions; and not only so, but there was one who furnished the Movement with a front to the world, and gained for it a recognition from other parties in the University."

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This is not too much to say of the effect of Dr. Pusey's adhesion. It gave the Movement a second head, in close sympathy with its original leader, but in many ways different from him. Dr. Pusey became, as it were, its official chief in the eyes of the world. He became also, in a remarkable degree, a guarantee for its stability and steadiness, a guarantee that its chiefs knew what they were about, and meant nothing but what was for the benefit of the English Church. "He was," we read in the "Apologia," a man of large designs; he had a hopeful, sanguine mind; he had no fear of others; he was haunted by no intellectual perplexities. . . . If confidence in his position is (as it is) a first essential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it." An inflexible patience, a serene composure, a meek, resolute self-possession, was the habit of his mind, and never deserted him in the most trying days. He never for an instant, as the paragraph witnesses, wavered or doubted about the position of the English Church.

From 1835 to 1845 Newman and Pusey may be said to have jointly led the Catholic Revival. In October, 1845, Newman seceded to the Church of Rome, saying, "We trusted our Bishops, and they have failed us." Pusey said, "I never trusted the Bishops; I trusted the Church of England." And he therefore stood firm. After Newman's secession Dr. Pusey was left in an

unique position of undivided authority, and this, in spite of all changes and chances, he occupied till his death. For the rest of his life he devoted his whole time and his whole being to a triune cause-the maintenance of the Catholic Faith in its entirety against all assaults, from whatever quarter proceeding; the vindication of the position and claims of the Church of England as the Catholic Church in this land; and the cultivation of personal sanctity in individual souls.

He was left a widower in 1839, and from that date onwards the mark of a profound asceticism was unmistakably impressed on his character and life. He lived in a deep seclusion of prayer and discipline and study, from which he was only drawn forth by the imperative claims of his professorship, or by the necessity of championing some imperilled truth. The result of his life-long labours may be read in the titles of his published writings, which occupy fifty closelyprinted pages in the fourth volume of his Life.

In considering this huge output of devout and learned labour, I must perforce dismiss everything of secondary consideration. I shall, therefore, say nothing about the criticism of the Old Testament, or the limits of ceremonial, or the Athanasian Creed, or the relations of the Church to the State, or the principles of "Healthful Reunion" in Christendom. I will take just four, or, at most, five topics.

I

And first, I put the signal work which Dr. Pusey did in reaffirming and establishing the true doctrine of Holy Baptism. His first definite contribution to the Oxford Movement was to write three of the Tracts (67, 68, 69), afterwards collected into one volume, and