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OXYRTNCHUS


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OXYRYNCHUS


Church, threatened of late by many defections to the Church of Rome". The "Times" expressed amaze- ment; Archbishop Howley and thirteen other bishops remonstrated; but Dr. Pusey was "the leader and oracle of Hampden's opponents." At Oxford the Heads of Houses were mostly in favour of the nominee, though lying under censure since 1836. An attempt was made to object at Bow Church when the election was to be confirmed; but the Archbishop had no free- dom, and by conge d'elire and exercise of the Royal Supremacy a notoriously unsound teacher became Bishop of Hereford. It was the case of Hoadley in a modern form.

Almost at the same date (2 Nov., 1847) the Rev. G. C. Gorham, "an aged Calvinist", was presented to the living of Brampton Speke in Devonshire. "Henry of Exeter", the bishop, holding High Anglican views, examined him at length on the subject of bap- tismal regeneration, and finding that he did not be- lieve in it, refused to induct Mr. Gorham. The case went to the Court of Arches — a spiritual court — where Sir H. Jenner Fust decided against the appellant, 2 Aug., 1849. Mr. Gorham carried a further appeal to the judicial committee, the lay royal tribunal, which reversed the decision of the spiritual court below. Dr. Philpotts, the Bishop of Exeter, refused to insti- tute; and the dean of arches was compelled to do so instead. The bishop tried every other court in vain; for a while he broke off communion, so far as he dared, with Canterbury. As Liberalism had won at Hereford, so Calvinism won at Brampton Speke.

These decisions of the Crown in Council affected matters of doctrine most intimately. Newman's lec- tures on "Anglican Difficulties" were drawn forth by the Gorham judgment. But Pusey, Keble, Gladstone, and Anglo-Catholics at large were dumbfounded. Manning, Archdeacon of Chichester, had neither written tracts nor joined in Newman's proceedings. He did not scruple to take part with the general public though in measured terms, against "Tract 90". He had gone so far as to preach an out-and-out Protest- ant sermon in St. Mary's on Guy Fawkes' day, 1843. In 1845 he "attacked the Romanizing party so fiercely as to call forth a remonstrance from Pusey". And then came a change. He read Newman's "Develop- ment", had a serious illness, travelled in Italy, spent a season in Rome, and lost his Anglican defences. The Gorham judgment was a demonstration that lawyers could override spiritual authority, and that the Eng- lish Church neither held nor condemned baptismal regeneration. This gave him the finishing stroke. In the summer of 1850, a solemn declaration, calling on the Church to repudiate the erroneous doctrine thus implied, was signed by Manning, Pusey, Keble, and other leading High Anglicans; but with no result, save only that a secession followed on the part of those who could not imagine Christ's Church as tolerating her- esy. On 6 April, 1851, Manning and J. R. Hope Scott came over. Allies, a scholar of repute, had sub- mitted in 1849, distinctly on the question now agitated of the royal headship. Maskell, Dodsworth, Badeley, the two Wilberforces, did in like manner. Pusey cried out for freedom from the State; Keble took a non-juring position, "if the Church of England were to fail, it should be found in my parish". Gladstone would not sign the declaration; and he lived to write against the Vatican decrees.

Surveying the movement aa a whole, we perceive that it was part of the general Christian uprising which the French Revolution called forth. It had many fea- tures in common with German Romanticism; and, like the policy of a Free Church eloquently advocated by Lamennais, it made war on the old servitude to the State and looked for support to the people. Against free-thought, speculative and anarchic, it pleaded for Christianity as a sacred fact, a revelation from on high, and a present supernatural power. Its especial task


was to restore the idea of the Church, and the dignity of the sacraments, above all, of the Holy Eucharist. In the Laudian tradition, though fearfully weakened, it sought a fulcrum and a precedent for these happier changes.

Joseph de Maistre, in the year 1816, had called at- tention to the English Church, designating it as a mid- dle term between Catholic unity and Protestant dis- sent; with an augury of its future as perhaps one day serving towards the reunion of Christendom. Alex- ander Knox foretold a like destiny, but the Establish- ment must be purged by suffering. Bishop Horsley, too, had anticipated such a time in remarkable words. But the most striking prophecy was uttered by an aged clergyman, Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough, who predicted that, whereas "the Holy Catholic Church" had long been a dropped article of the Creed, it would by and by seem to swallow up the rest, and there would be an outcry of "Popery" from one end of the country to another (Newman's "Correspondence", II, 484). When the tracts began, Phillips de Lisle saw in them an assurance that England would return to the Holy See. And J. A. Froude sums it all up in these words, " New- man has been the voice of the intellectual reaction of Europe", he says, "which was alarmed by an era of revolutions, and is looking for safety in the for- saken beliefs of ages which it had been tempted to


Later witnesses. Cardinal Vaughan or W. E. Glad- stone, affirm that the Church of England is trans- formed. Catholic beliefs, devotions, rites, and institu- tions flourish within it. But its law of public worship is too narrow for its religious life, and the machinery for discipline has broken down (Royal Commission on Discipline, concluding words). The condemnation of Anglican Orders by Pope Leo XIII in the Bull "Apostolica! Cura;", 13 Sept., 1896, shuts out the hope entertained by some of what was termed "corporate reunion", even if it had ever been possible, which Newman did not believe. But he never doubted that the movement of 1833 was a work of Providence; or that its leaders, long after his own departure from them, were "leavening the various English denomina- tions and parties (far beyond their ovra range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their ulti- mate absorption into the CathoUc Church".

Lives of Newman, Manning, Faber, Pusey. Ward, Wiseman, include contemporary' letters. Besides works under these names see: Church, Hist, of the 0. M. (1891); Overton, The Anglican Revival (1897) ; Palmer, Narrative of Events (1843-18S3) ; M. Pat- TI80N, Memoirs (1885) ; T. W. Allies, A Lifr's Decision; Blatch- FORD. Letters; Burgon, Lives <if h' , '■ > ' ,.:,:j M, „; .\. J. Froude in SAort Studies, Vols. Ill and IV. /; /, M.isjn,- H. Froude,

Remains (1837); Gladstone, / /. i:ous Subjects, ed,

Lathburt (1910); Guinet, //n,,../ A ,. il907); Hampden's

Life, by his daughter; A. Knox, Remain.^ ( l.s;j7) ; Stephens, Life of Hook; Life of Keble, by J. T. Coleridge, also by Lock; J, B. MozLEY. Letters, ed. A. Mozley; Oakeley, Notes on the T. M.; J. R. HopE-ScoTT, Reminiscences (includes correspondence) ; Stanley, Life of Arnold; Idem, Essays on Church and State; Pro- THERO, Life of Stanley: Whateley, Tracts; Life of Whateley, by his daughter; Blanco White, Autobiography (1845); Life of Bishop WilherfoTce, by bis son; Isaac Williams, Autobiography: also. Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, 1883, summary of report by Holland; Corn-mission on Eccles. Discipline, Evidence and Rc' port.

William Barry.

Oxyrynchus, titular archdiocese of Heptanomos in Egypt. It was the capital of the district of its name, the nineteenth of Upper Egypt, whose god was Sit, incarnated in a sacred fish of the Nile, the Mormy- rus. Thence comes its Greek name, for in Egyptian it is called Pemdje. It has been mentioned by Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, etc. Its inhabitants early embraced Christianity, and at the end of the fourth century ("Vitae Patrum" of Rufinus of Aquileia) it possessed neither pagan nor heretic. It had then twelve churches, and its monastic huts exceeded in number its ordinary dwellings. Surrounding the city were many convents to which reference is made in Palladius, the " Apophthegmata Patrum", Johannes