17. Church Emancipation and Church Reform; in a Series of Letters. By ECCLESIASTES. London; Hatchard. 1847. 18. Convocation: What is it? A Letter to the Bishop of Exeter, in Reply to his Lordship's Perversions of the Hampden Case. By a CHURCHMAN. London: Longmans. 1847. 19. A Letter to the Very Rev. the Dean of Chichester, on the agitation excited by the Appointment of Dr. Hampden to the See of Hereford. By JULIUS C. HARE, M.A., Archdeacon of Lewes. London: J. W. Parker. 1847. It has been our lot, under the character in which we are now speaking, in many instances, to vindicate or to explain certain subjects connected with the University of Oxford. What a surge and rush of subjects presents itself in this connexion: the Six Doctors-the Vice-chancellorship-the last Oxford ElectionNo.90-the Ward business - the Macmullen case-the new Theological Statute-the defeated Test, -all these, topics of the day, began, and, in the main, seemed to end in Oxford. The older question of the admission of Dissenters took, in some respects, a wider range; but still Oxford has seemed to the world a sort of volcano of its own. It has smoked or flashed on its own account: igneous elements were connected with it, which perhaps were underlying the whole empire; but the actual Campi Phlegræi were of no great extent. Oxford is in eruption: lava has been heard of in Broad-street. This was all: it is only Oxford again. It is its way: it will begin and end in Oxford. The world's ame damnée-the plague-spot on the fair body of progress-the impracticable rock stretching out just where the liberal plough was going so nicely and fairly, all these Oxford is, as a matter of course, to the politician of such days as our own: but the consolation was that it was only Oxford-a nest of bigots, it was true, but nothing more: a disagreeable and impracticable fact, but still only a fact-a single fact a strong fact in itself, perhaps, but standing very isolated: a Gibraltar, it must be admitted, just insolently wrested from a large and showy kingdom; an obstinate mile of rough mountain bristling with ugly defences: but this was all. Its feuds were intestine and domestic. It attracted few sympathies except from Oxford men. It did not tell entirely even upon the Church: its complaints or triumphs awakened but broken echoes, except from the vanquished or victors of its own somewhat contracted battle-field. Its factions and seditions told as little on society at large as those of Coreyra upon Rome or Carthage. And yet it has been a curious phenomenon the way in which such a place as Oxford, separate and solitary, does occasionally affect the world's history. The last really great event in the history of this country is more than closely connected with Oxford. If King James had not been unhappily advised to attack the liberties of the Church in the case of Magdalene College, the Revolution had probably not been; at any rate it had not taken its actual course. So that when Oxford matters, as a fact, do amount to something of more general importance than an academical struggle, it behoves all classes to watch a process which is not of every-day occurrence, or of light interest. When Oxford does shake the country, it does it thoroughly. It is not for nothing that it is, as now, in everybody's thoughts. At this moment the whole Church of Christ is feeling the vast importance of some tedious sermons preached to an unwilling audience fifteen years ago in the University pulpit. Now, even to repeat the various proceedings of the last few years at Oxford makes quite a catalogue. They have already been chronicled in the pages of the 'Christian Remembrancer' (vol. ix. p. 519). Suffice it to say, that from the question of the admission of Dissenters in 1834, down to the attempted condemnation of No. 90 in 1845, a common element may be observed in them all. It is a remarkable fact, that all these academical struggles, differences, trials of strength, new statutes, new tests, new boards, decrees, condemnations, and the rest, seem to centre and cluster round one individual. Dr. Hampden is the common measure of Oxford strife: since Dr. Burton's death he is the logical presence of University rebuke and disunion-ens unum in multis, the point around which every element of contest and controversy has successively ranged itself. The discussion on the admission of Dissenters received its chief acrimony from Dr. Hampden, whose pamphlet on the subject, Observations on Religious Dissent,' perhaps his most offensive publication, first necessitated system and order in the desultory and tumultuary strategics of the movement in Oxford. The same year, 1834-it is a remarkable coincidence-witnessed the completion of the first volume of the 'Tracts for the Times,' and this pamphlet on Dissent. From that day to this, for fourteen years, we have been witnessing only combinations of the same strain, nothing more than variations on a single theme: the one cardinal fact pervades every phase of the contest. Rationalism on the one side as a principle, and Dr. Hampden as its exponent. Dogmatism as a principle, and the whole movement party, as a body, including its various degrees and modifications, on the other. This is as it should be; but, waiving for the present the moral importance and significance of the fact, we would have it and its importance clearly brought out and seen. If history could be always thus simplified-if the one pervading, persisting, obstinate element in all great struggles were marked at each stage of contest, and at every evolution of controversial tactics, if its reference to the original conception were pointed out, such would be the truest and most comprehensive historical philosophy. In 1836 Dr. Hampden was censured by the Convocation. For some years nothing of great academical importance occurred. Dr. Godfrey Faussett, in 1838, was stirred up to deliver a sermon against Froude's Remains; but the interval between 1836 and 1841 was decidedly favourable to Catholic principles. From No. 1 to No. 90 the Tracts, with kindred writings, had won their steady way. Of course there was to be expected, and there was, a solid parallel growth of opposition, which, however, did not acquire sufficient body to make itself felt, till 1841, when its first achievement was to procure the Hebdomadal Board to express an opinion-miscalled, in some quarters, a judgment on the Tract No. 90. Miscalled a judgment, we say, for the Hebdomadal Board possesses no legal function to express an academical judgment on any theological subject. But to connect this expression of opinion with Dr. Hampden-All boards and committees must have a leading mind; it is of the essence of these bodies to be swayed by individual power;the active mind of the Hebdomadal Board, it is well known, was Dr. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel, a pledged partizan of Dr. Hampden. The old judicium against Dr. Hampden, scarcely wrested from the reluctant consent of the heads, and resisted to the very last by Dr. Hawkins, now, and for the first time, had a chance of a reprisal. The tide had begun to turn against the Tracts; they had affronted too many cherished elements of selfindulgence and laxity to maintain, what they never sought, popularity; and, as soon as they were felt to be unpopular, an opportunity of retaliation presented itself. Drs. Faussett, Hawkins, and Hampden, had now a common cause, and they made the most of it. The author of Tract No. 90 had been forward, it was thought, in censuring Dr. Hampden; it was now his own turn to be censured; and, in this way, it is easy to discover the connexion of the so-called censure of Mr. Newman with the Hampden case. It was only the common-may we add vulgar?-motive of turning the tables. Dr. Hampden had all along thought proper to make a personal matter of itdocuments are in existence which will prove that the Regius Professor, by pointed allusions to the 'sacred profession' of one whom he chose to consider his enemy, was only withheld by such a consideration from adopting what, among laymen, would be deemed personal threats. The Hebdomadal Board was doubtless sufficiently hostile to the principles and theology of No. 90 itself; still its author was also considered in the light of a personal foe; and the champion and sponsor of Dr. Hampden, Dr. Hawkins, was the leader of the opposition among the heads of houses to him. To pass on to the proceedings of 1842. The month of May witnessed the promulgation and enactment of the new Theological Statute, constituting a theological board of examiners, with the Royal Reader in Divinity for its head. It was at first surmised, afterwards confessed, and has ever since been boasted, that the true motive for passing this complex statute was, indirectly, to rescind the University censure of 1836 on Dr. Hampden. The new board, and the new professors, pastoral and exegetical, candidates and licentiates, students and examinations, lectures and canonries, were only the cloud of mist through which to smuggle back Dr. Hampden to his honours. The Hebdomadal Board performed a piece of cumbrous diligence, which did not so much aim at the improvement of the theological faculty, as rather sought on the sly to whitewash the concrete Dr. Hampden, under colour of legislating about an abstract Regius Professor of Divinity. That it would have been the right and consistent course to have rejected the whole scheme at once and totally, because indirectly it recognised Dr. Hampden, is more easy to observe now, and to regret, than it was to incur the odium and obloquy of such a course before the measure of the next month, June, revealed the latent object of the Theological Statute. The veil was, however, soon dropped; and the attempt of June 7 was the direct 'revival of the Hampden question,' by a proposal to repeal the No-confidence Statute of 1836. The fate of this measure is well known; but we are not writing the history of the last academical decade of years, we are only pointing out the constant presence and recurrence of the insatiable Ate of Oxford, in the person of Dr. Hampden : ἦ μέγαν οἴκοις τοῖσδε The year 1843 was only distinguished by the private piece of injustice and cruelty executed by Dr. Wynter and the Six Doctors on Dr. Pusey: a piece of oppression from which the statute passed against Dr. Hampden, fortunately relieved him from a direct share. The fulness and vigour, however, of the Hampden influence in 1844, more than made up for its scanty, or perhaps concealed, exercise in the preceding year. The Oxford annals of 1844 were made up of the tedious Macmullen case, ranging, indeed, in all its details over two previous years, for its commencement synchronized with the attempt to revoke the Hampden censure in 1842. The whole University was now thrown into strife and heart-burning, through Dr. Hampden's attempt to convert an unstatutable practice adopted by his predecessor with reference to the B.D. degree, into a private test to be wielded according to the theological sympathies of the uncontrolled Regius Professor of Divinity. That this attempt did not succeed, was not the fault of the Hebdomadal Board; for it was the convocation of May, 1844, which, by a majority of 341 to 21, rejected the celebrated measure, which was only putting Dr. Hampden's test into the shape of a working statute. In 1845, the same tactics were tried in connexion with the memorable Ward case. Adroitly availing themselves of the discredit which this person's publications had entailed upon the whole Catholic movement, the Hebdomadal Board, and Dr. Hampden, once more tried their favourite piece of tyranny at concocting a test, in the form of a declaration respecting the sense of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. This test, it is well known, and it has been stated already in these pages ('Christian Remembrancer,' vol. ix. p. 535), was carried through the Hebdomadal Board by the instrumentality of Dr. Hawkins with the concurrence of Dr. Hampden, aided by a letter from Archbishop Whately. That it never survived its rickety birth so as to be submitted to convocation-or that its substitute, the measure against No. 90, was vetoed by the Proctors-only proves the weakness of the cause itself, viz. to tie up subscription to the Articles, not the animus of the party who wished to enforce it. The very same person who in 1834 described the Articles as the remnant of a Scholastic Philosophy 'the last fragment of a debasing and bigoted dogmatism-the very same person, the liberal, the champion for free exposition, now came forward as the maintainer of the very opposite view. And why? Only for the sake of grasping a convenient weapon to wield upon inconvenient opponents. This was the last great occasion in which a great Faction Fight occurred at Oxford. Here then, in every one of these perplexing cases, through the struggles and the anxieties of these ten weary years-one perpetual presence haunts the academic scene. Analyze every feud, and Dr. Hampden is the residuum. Is there an especial piece of illegal spite, such as the twice-attempted Test? it is to lodge authority in hands which will be far from loath to use it, those of Dr. Hampden. Is there one protracted attempt of power to crush an individual? Dr. Hampden is staunch in pursuit of his foe. Is there a favourable moment when the popular howl is up? Dr. Hampden is quick in seizing the right moment to catch his ancient enemy at a helpless disadvantage. Dr. Hampden retains a vivid recollection of what he is pleased |