Page 484

Page 484

THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

movement never recovered. From about 1860, therefore, it turned into the channels of ritualism.

IV. Ritualism: See separate article, RITUALISM. V. The Ecclesiastical Services of the Oxford Move ment: So long as the Oxford School preserved its prime object in its original purity, the war upon a liberalism which sought to encroach upon the rights of the church to control its own affairs, it was a power in the national church; but Newman's subtle dialectic proved fatal to further :. Prac- development, the Puseyites gained a fu tical In- tile triumph in the vain battle against fluence. a state power of splendid heritage, and the ritualists diverted their strength in their special aim. Though stirring the English Church profoundly, yet in theological science, dog matic, historical, and exegetical, it proved lament ably fruitless. It, however, paved the way for patristics in Pussy's Library of the Fathers (ut sup.) followed by Library of A?zglo-Catholic Theology (89 vols., Oxford, 1841 sqq.), consisting of the writings of fifty-six great Anglicans of the school of Laud. Both works being " tendency " productions, they can not be regarded as scientific contributions. Unquestioned results, however, stand to the credit of the Anglo-Catholics in the field of practical the ology. They succeeded where the first Oxford movement of Wesley and Whitefield had failed, viz., in converting the torpid church into a vital national power. Methodism the church expelled; Anglican ism it could not shake off. To the Oxford move ment is due largely the awakening in the Established Church of profound devotion to the Catholic Church of the Fathers, which was abundantly fruitful in modern labors of love. Its crowning merit is the revived church spirit in the Establishment. By fifty years of labor in the cure of souls, its represent atives created a new epoch. Not only have they won many of the higher circles that had become estranged from the Church, but by their unselfish work among the poor, the sick, and the outcast, the lower levels of society, too, were induced to love the Church. They built hospitals, asylums, schools, and missions; to them are due nine new English dioceses; and the number of foreign sees under the archbishop of Canterbury rose from 23 in 1877 to 170 in 1900. In London and throughout Eng land model parishes arose in which this new energy flourished, and developed a multiple variety of philanthropic organization and effort, flowing even beyond parish boundaries. All these agencies are the result of an organization which, rivaling in refine ment that of the Roman Catholic Church, scarcely has its like in anything else in 'all practical England. The center of this organization, which embraces Great Britain and the colonies, is the priestly Society of the Holy Cross, founded in 1853, but known publicly only since 1873. Its work, which is carried on secretly, is to supervise home and foreign missions, questions of ritual, the distribution of tracts and books of devotion, the confessional, public assemblies, and gilds and societies. The Cowley Fathers (Society of St. John the Evangel 19t; 98e PROTESTANT EPISCOPALIANS, 11., § 7), who

work among the imperiled and Protestants, and Are bound by the triple vow, seem to be allied to

the former. In 1862 was founded the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, with its thousands of members, including bishops, priests, and laity, leagued for the ritual adornment of the services arid the churches, fasting, prayers for the dead, the exaltation of the Eucharist, and daily confession and mass. The Association for Promoting the Unity of Christendom, whose membership is not published, seeks the reunion of the Anglican, Roman, and Greek communions; and there are, besides, the Order of Corporate Reunion, which reordains the clergy of the State Church and holds the Roman pope to be the first bishop and visible head of the Church, the Gild of All Souls, the Alcuin Club, and the Church Extension Association. The English Church Union has The Church Union Gazette, The Church Times, and The Church Review, as organs for the public defense and promotion of the Anglo-Catholic cause. To these agencies must be added the network of gilds, orders, brotherhoods, and sisterhoods, among them the English Benedictines, the founder of whom, Father Ignatius (see LnrE, JOSEPH LEYCEaTER) founded a monastery in Wales for the training of missioners; and the English Order of St. Augustine, preparing candidates for ordination in strict seclusion and discipline. The sisterhoods, of which the first- was established by Pussy, devote themselves to' the care of the sick and now control nearly all the great hospitals of London, aided by the money and the services of thousands of women of the upper and middle classes.

Absorbed in ecclesiastical antiquity, where of necessity it planted its main standard of apostolic succession, and proceeding no further than the revival and adaptation of the body 2. Doctrine; of dogmas of the sixteenth and seven-

The teenth centuries, the Oxford movement Church. added no new thoughts and revealed no new facts or laws. Purely historical, it owed a great deal of its impetus to the contemporary rise of scientific historical method and, by its doting upon the past, contributed no little to the revival of romanticism. Without a creed or doctrinal writings of its own, except those of the Anglican Church, and having for its objects of contention far-reaching fundamentals affecting the right of ecclesiastical autonomy and outlying ritualistic adjustments rather than specific dogmas, it is difficult properly to present its teaching. To the private Tractarian literature, predominantly ascetic, belong, J. Purchas' Directorium Angliranum (London, 1858; 4th enlareed ed., by F. G. Lee, 1879); T. T. Carter's Treasury of Devotion (London, 1869); William Gresley's Ordinance of Confession (London, 1851); The People's Hymnal (1867) by R. F. Littledale; besides a formidable array of breviaries, manuals, and ordinances, to be treated with precaution against their subjective, unwholesome modes of thought. A picture of the Tractarian teaching in outline therefore narrows itself to the deviations from the Thirty-nine Articles, and a consensus of the promulgationa of the Oxford .school; namely, on the sources of religious knowledge, the means of grace, the Church, the apostolic succession, the real presence, and the derivative ideas from these