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291.: PUSEYISM [1] MORNING CHRONICLE, 1 JAN., 1842, P. 3 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIV - Newspaper Writings January 1835 - June 1847 Part III [1835]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIV - Newspaper Writings January 1835 - June 1847 Part III, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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291.

PUSEYISM [1]

MORNING CHRONICLE, 1 JAN., 1842, P. 3

The controversy within the Established Church of England over its Catholicity, historically and doctrinally, was greatly heightened by the publication of Tracts for the Times, which gave interpretations of the Thirty-nine Articles that minimized their Protestantism, by a group variously known as the “Tractarians,” the “Oxford Movement,” and the “Puseyites.” The leaders were Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-82), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford; John Keble (1792-1866), Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1831-41) and vicar of Hursley, whose sermon on national apostasy attacking Erastian liberalism had initiated the movement in 1833; and John Henry Newman (1801-90), the greatest controversialist of all, whose Tract 90 had given most offence. Mill’s two letters on the subject (this and No. 292) were prompted by letters in the Morning Chronicle in December 1841 by “Philo-Puseyite” (18th, p. 3, and 24th, p. 3) and by “Miso-Jesuit” (23rd, p. 3, and 30th, p. 3), as well as by editorial attacks on the Puseyites (see the leading article on the Oxford Professorship of Poetry, Morning Chronicle, 3 Dec., p. 2). This item is headed “Puseyism,” with subhead, “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.” The letters are described in Mill’s bibliography as “Two letters on Puseyism, signed Historicus, in the Morning Chronicle of 12th [sic] and 13th January 1842”

(MacMinn, p. 54).

sir,—

I address you as one of, I believe, many who although most remote from any connection, either personal, or through their opinions, with Puseyism, have seen with pleasure the letters of “Philo-Puseyite,” in the first place, because we agree with that writer in a large portion of his sentiments, but also, and still more, because we approve of the tone of mind, which is less eager to hold up to obloquy the errors of an adversary, than conscientiously to examine what portion of truth exists in those errors, and gives them their plausibility. We not only esteem it a more healthful exercise of the mind to employ itself in learning from an enemy, than in inveighing against him; but, we believe, that the extirpation of what is erroneous in any system of belief is in no way so much promoted as by extricating from it, and incorporating into our own systems, whatever in it is true. If your correspondent, “Miso-Jesuit,” had taken heed of these things, he would probably have spared you his ill-tempered and uncourteous second letter—a document which would prove, if such proof were required, that there is nothing which a zealot, Christian or infidel, dissenter or churchman, can so little pardon, or on which he is so incapable of putting a candid interpretation as the offence of not going with him to the full length of his narrow-minded antipathies.

It was scarcely needful for your correspondent to remind “Philo-Puseyite” that the Oxford theologians would not thank him for such advocacy as his, and that whoever stands up for toleration or charity in their behalf claims for the Puseyites what the Puseyites would not be willing to bestow.1 The leaders of this sect, for a sect it is, are, as it is evident that “Miso-Jesuit” himself is, conscientious bigots: like him, however, they are not bigots to error, but to one-half of the truth; and are, in the present writer’s estimation, entitled to the approbation and goodwill which he cannot but feel towards all such persons, provided that the portion of truth they contend for is one which the age specially needs, and provided (he must add) they have not the power of burning him for heresy, a fate which, to say truth, if their doctrines ever obtained the ascendancy in this country, he does not well see how he could hope to escape. It is not, therefore, out of any special partiality to them that he undertakes their apology. But not to our friends alone is justice due from us and to the Puseyites; permit me to say, it is more particularly due from your paper, inasmuch as you have repeatedly in your leading articles done them cruel injustice, of the kind likely to be most severely felt by conscientious men, and most likely also to prejudice impartial bystanders against your good cause, by your perpetual denunciations of them as hypocrites and mammon-servers, because, holding doctrines which you (not they) deem inconsistent with the articles of the church, they yet do not secede from it.2

Can you be serious, sir, in addressing this particular reproach to men of whom it is the distinctive feature, among all other religious parties, to maintain that no difference of opinion whatever is capable of justifying the sin of schism? That the first command of Christ is adherence to the standard which he has erected upon earth, and for the recognition of which he has appointed certain criteria, of which the profession of a particular set of theological tenets3 is not one; that even if the whole human race, one person excepted, should desert that standard and set up another, by proclaiming a church of man’s ordinance, not God’s, it is they who apostatize, and he, that one person, be his opinions what they may, is the Christian church upon earth; or if, instead of themselves seceding from the communion, they forcibly exclude him from it (as the Romish church did Luther),4 he refusing and protesting, they, by so doing, constitute their church a schismatic body, while he remains a member of the church as before! In common candour, sir, ask yourself whether persons of whose belief this is a correct expression, are sacrificing their principles to lucre because they do not take upon their consciences what they esteem a deadly sin.

And since we are on the subject of interested motives, give me leave to ask you, as a man acquainted with the world, and aware of the ordinary course of affairs in political life, whether you do or can think other of these men than that by professing their opinions they are abandoning all hope of further advancement in worldly advantages? If the extraordinary acquirements and powers, for example, of Mr. Newman had been employed in any of the modes in which able men in the church of England usually seek to distinguish themselves—in the paths, for instance, by which Dr. Blomfield, or Dr. Philpotts rose to eminence,5 is there any dignity in the Establishment to which he might not have aspired? And do you believe that either the present government, or any other ministry that could be formed, would dare to raise an avowed and active Puseyite to episcopal, or any other high ecclesiastical honours? Let me answer for you, sir. You know the contrary: you are not ignorant of the sort of feelings with which practical politicians of every class invariably regard the speculative men who formulize either into philosophic theories or religious dogmas the extreme doctrines of their own party. You know that those whose business is conciliation and compromise, the smoothing of difficulties and the allaying of apprehensions, do not hold their most determined adversaries in so much dread as they do those who display to public view all the vulnerable points in their system of opinions, in the manner most fertile of misgiving to friends, and irritation to opponents, and proclaim as sacred principles, to be acted upon without qualification or reserve, all which they in their practice not only sedulously guard by countless modifications and restrictions, but are so often forced, even honestly, to surrender altogether, in points of detail at least, on the summons of declared opponents. If we know this, think you that Mr. Newman knows it not? Think you that a man so deeply read in history, and who has analysed in so one-sided, but yet so profound a manner, the course of the stream of human affairs from age to age,6 is ignorant of what every school-boy knows, that the philosophers of a creed are seldom its successful politicians?

It would do you credit, sir, to desist from these incessant attacks upon the disinterestedness of the Oxford theologians, or to reserve them until you find the Puseyites violating the doctrines of their own creed, by disobeying the authority, canonically exercised, of their ecclesiastical superiors. Such imputations of insincerity are applied with a very bad grace to a party from whom, whatever may be said against the reasonableness or the real Christianity of many of their doctrines, this acknowledgment cannot be withheld, that instead of being insincere members of the church, they are the only party in it who attempt, or even pretend to attempt, to be perfectly sincere. I assert this without qualification as one of the greatest, or rather as the very greatest of the peculiarities which, in my opinion, entitle this school to be warmly welcomed among us. They are the first persons in the Church of England who for more than a century past have conscientiously and rigidly endeavoured to live up to what they nominally profess—to obey the regulations of that church of which they call themselves members. Even Philo-Puseyite speaks of their “predilection for ceremonies, and vestments, and fastings, and vigils, and saints’ days,” as something “revolting.”7 But is it forgotten that these things are actual ordinances of the Church of England, and that the Puseyites are simply acting out the written code of their religion? If these things are absurdities, with whom lies the fault? They were not placed in the Rubric8 by the Puseyites. The charge of insincerity brought against this party for remaining in the church without assenting, or while assenting only in a latitudinarian sense, to the articles, may be much more fairly retorted upon those who, without considering, as the Puseyites do, adherence to the church to be the paramount duty of a Christian, nevertheless remain in it with a tacit reservation that they are to conform to just as many of its rules and authoritative precepts as to them appear reasonable. Let the opposite party, then, bestir themselves to cause such of the ceremonies, and such of the religious exercises prescribed by the church as they disapprove of, to be abrogated in the lawful manner, by canonical authority. But until this is done, I confess I honour far more those who act up to what is professed by all, than those who take one part of it and leave another, as suits themselves.

It is not, sir, by continuing to profess opinions, and silently forbearing to act upon them, that either religious or any other prevailing doctrines are to be freed from whatever of irrational or pernicious they may contain. It is too true that this is the ordinary course of changes of opinion. It is a disgusting, but sometimes inevitable era of transition between the pristine vigour and final downfall of creeds or doctrines, originally too deeply rooted in the soil to admit of being eradicated unless they have first reached an advanced stage of corruption and decomposition. In religion, and also in politics, the whole eighteenth century was a period of this kind. But that is a happy day for renovated humanity, when first a sincere man, indignant at the more and more complete severance of profession from practice, stands up as a fulfiller, in his own person, and a vindicator to the world, of the solemn duty of doing the whole of that which he daily professes that he ought to do. By carrying out this principle, and even because he carries it out to its last and absurdest consequences, he challenges and compels inquiry into the grounds of the belief itself, and the degree in which it is or is not still adapted to be the rule of conduct for humanity in its altered state; and by the very vigour with which he asserts the false parts of his own creed, he, by a reaction as certain as it is salutary, calls forth into corresponding activity and energy those opposite truths, in the minds of other people, which are the suitable means of expelling the false opinions without prejudice to the just views with which they are always, but not inseparably, interwoven: thus giving to the world over again that without which its whole scheme would be an abortion and a failure—notions of duty made to be executed, not to be locked up as too good for use, or worn for outside show.

I must not, sir, encroach further on your space; but if you should deem this letter worthy of insertion, I may perhaps return to the subject, and lay before you in a more particular manner the grounds on which I contend that Puseyism is one of the most important and interesting phenomena which has appeared above the horizon of English speculation for many years past.

Historicus

[1 ]“Miso-Jesuit,” “Anti-Puseyism—Letter II,” Morning Chronicle, 30 Dec., 1841, p. 3.

[2 ]See, e.g., the leading article of 3 Dec., p. 2.

[3 ]I.e., the Thirty-nine Articles.

[4 ]Martin Luther (1483-1546), German father of Protestantism, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1520 by a Bull of Pope Leo X that Luther publicly burned.

[5 ]Charles James Blomfield had tutored the sons of aristocrats before becoming Bishop of Chester in 1824, and had shown political and social skills before his elevation as Bishop of London in 1828. Henry Phillpotts (1778-1869) was notorious for his reversal of long-standing anti-Catholic and Tory opinions in supporting Peel on the Catholic Relief Bill of 1829, after which he became Bishop of Exeter.

[6 ]Mill presumably has in mind the historical analysis in The Church of the Fathers (London: Rivington, 1840), and such other of Newman’s works as The Arians of the Fourth Century (ibid., 1833), Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church (ibid., 1837), and Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, No. 90 of Tracts for the Times (ibid., 1841).

[7 ]“Philo-Puseyite,” “On the Oxford Professorship of Poetry—Letter II,” Morning Chronicle, 24 Dec., p. 3.

[8 ]See the “General Rubric” in the Book of Common Prayer.