Church of England - Later Developments
The result of the Commonwealth and of the Puritan domination was to strengthen the hold of the English Church on the nation, and at the time of the Restoration a vast majority of the people were attached to it. A very little more statesmanship on the part of the restored Cavaliers might have almost wiped out Puritan traditions. At the time of the Restoration the High Church party were the dominant factors in the Church, but the Romnn tendencies of Charles II, the Roman Catholic position of James II, the fear of papal influence, and the Non-Jurors schism on the accession of William weakened its influence.
Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low Church party. That party contained two very different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On almost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had, while James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great Protestant coalition against Popery and tyranny. The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of their profession : but their weight was much more than proportioned to their numbers : for they mustered strong in the capital: they had great influence there ; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher among them than among their order generally.
Some of the ablest members of the High Church party left the Church at the time of the NonJurors' secession. High Churchmen were under suspicion as being opposed to the reigning dynasty, and in the first half of the l8th century the prevailing influence was the latitudinarian movement associated largely with the name of Tillotson. The Whig ascendency, the suppression of convocations and the influence of the deistic literature reduced the spiritual life of the country to the lowest ebb. The movement for religious awakening grew up in the Church of England, but a secularized Church was unable to contain the vigorous spiritual life of Wesleyanism.
High Church influences began to assert themselves again. The religious movement was assisted bv a romantic reaction against the commonplace 18th century traditions and by the revival of an idealistic philosophy, and it came to a head in the well-known Oxford Movement, which is usually supposed to date from the year 1833. Its chief founders were the Rev. John, Keble, the Rev. John Henry Newman (afterwards Cardinal Newman), and the Rev. Richard Hurrell Froude. Roman Catholic doctrines were taught from the commencement, but in a very guarded and careful manner, so as not to excite too much alarm.
The Oxford Movement, popularly known as Ritualism, in its double aspect of High Church principles and of ritualism, profoundly changed the religious life of the whole Anglo-Saxon world. Soon the disciples of the Oxford Movement were generally known as "Tractarians." It was followed rapidly by a Broad Church reaction. Within less than three years from the birth of the Movement the Edinburgh Review charged the Tractarians of the Oxford Movement with teaching Popish doctrines. The accusation, which was supported by the Standard, created a great deal of excitement and indignation throughout the country.
Among the more obvious results of this movement were increased reverence and beauty in church services, increased parochial activity, especially among the poor ; the revival of frequent Eucharists and (to some extent) of auricular confession. The later stages of the movement produced a party of Ritualists. They differed from the early Tractarians. Their ritual was largely in imitation of the Latin rite, whereas their predecessors copied a Laudian model; their ideals were mediaeval rather than patristic. The early Tractarians sought to revive the teaching and spirit of the first four centuries, the ritualists to reproduce the picturesque externals of the 14th.
There were men in the Oxford Movement, as in all other movements, who went beyond the rank and file of the party. They were really pioneers, whose ambition was to hasten the pace at which the Church of England seemed to be travelling Romeward. Newman was making rapid strides towards Rome. He had ceased to love the Church of England many years before he left her communion. In 1830 Newman withdrew from the Bible Society, and his severance from the Evangelical or Low Church party was complete. On October 9, 1845, Newman was received into the Church of Rome. For the Roman Catholic Church this was "the greatest triumph . . . in England during 300 years." In 1879 Newman was created cardinal deacon of the Holy Roman Church of the title of St. George in Velabro.
One of the most interesting and peculiar phenomena of ecclesiastical history may be observed in the later fortunes of the Oxford Anglo-Catholic movement. That it should display a continuous vitality and growth for half a ceqtury after the defection of Newman, its great originator and leader, and that too with him still alive and filling a most conspicuous place in the ranks of a rival communion, is certainly curious enough. One would have thought that when the legitimate terminus ad quem of the movement was fully shown by the secession of Newman and some hundreds of his followers to Rome, the remainder of its adherents would have been checked and silenced, and its influence soon dissipated. On the contrary, almost immediately after what seemed its overthrow, it consolidated itself into more aggressive shape than ever. The ritualistic revival that followed was apparently a surprise, and, instead of being discouraged by warnings of its peril on the Romeward side, the Anglo-Catholic party had only taken new confidence from the danger-signals they were able to keep burning, to invade the very precincts of the Romish arcana, and had gone on robbing Rome's archives of everything material save the Holy Father.
Parallel with the Oxford Movement was the development of what is variously described as the Liberal Theology or Latitudinarianism. The Broad Church platform is based on the fundamental truth of the Fatherhood of God. Broad Churchmen desire to vindicate the rational character of Christianity, to develop its philosophic side, to bring formal statements of the faith into accord with modern knowledge and modern thought. They find themselves much in sympathy with the early theology of Alexandria and more or less opposed to the type of mind represented by Augustine. The opportunities for a liberal position created on the one side by the relations of the Church with the universities and on the other side by the freedom of opinion secured by secular courts created a strong Broad Church movement. The aim of the Broad churchman has always been to keep himself in touch witli modern science and modern criticism.
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