Puseyism

“ The real cause of the evil you complain of, which to a certain extent I admit, was, I take it, the religious movement of the last century, beginning with Wesleyanism, and culminating at last in Puseyism. ”

“ We identify ourselves with no one of the bodies whom he regards it as his special mission to attack: we give our adhesion neither to Romanism, Puseyism, nor to that anomalous combination of opinions which he introduces to us under the name of infidelity. It is simply as spectators that we criticise Dr. Cumming's mode of warfare, and we concern ourselves less with what he holds to be Christian truth than with his manner of enforcing that truth, less with the doctrines he teaches than with the moral spirit and tendencies of his teaching. ”

“ Pusey was in his early years a liberal in politics. He advocated Peel's re-election for the university in 1829, after his adoption of Roman catholic emancipation, and spoke of the Test Acts as ‘disgraceful laws.’ But the overwhelming triumph of political liberalism in 1832 seemed to him to threaten the church of England with change or mutilation, and, like others of her firmest adherents, he grew alarmed. ”

“ Pusey dwells upon? He is, it seems to us, and he is not. No doubt the Roman Catholic system is in practice a wide one, and he has a right, which we are glad to see that he is disposed to exercise, to maintain the claims of moderation and soberness, and to decline to submit his judgment to the fashionable theories of the hour. A stand made for independence and good sense against the pressure of an exacting and overbearing dogmatism is a good thing for everybody, though made in a camp with which we have nothing to do. ”

“ All the errors and blunders which make the Puseyites a stumbling-block to so many,—the rock on which they split is no other than what Rome split upon, self-righteousness, out of want of understanding justification by faith, and hovering about the unholy and blasphemous idea of atoning for our sins, because they feel not, understand not, indeed, believe not, the Atonement, and therefore enjoy not the glorious privileges of the children of God,—the blessed duty of the sacrifice of thanksgiving through Him who atoned for them. ”

“ Pusey had indoctrinated me with his stern hatred of all heresy, and I was content to rest with him on that faith, "which must be old because it is eternal, and must be unchangeable because it is true." I would not even read the works of my mothers favourite Stanley, because he was "unsound," and because Pusey had condemned his "variegated use of words which destroys all definiteness of meaning"—a clever and pointed description, be it said in passing, of the Dean's exquisite phrases, capable of so many readings. ”

“ Pusey and his friends of a deadly hatred of our religion. . . . . What, my lord, would the Holy See think of the works of these Puseyites? . . ."
Another priest, himself a convert, wrote:
"As we approach toward Catholicity our love and respect increases, and our violence dies away; but the bulk of these men become more rabid as they become like Rome, a plain proof of their designs. ... I do not believe that they are any nearer the portals of the Catholic Church than the most prejudiced Methodist and Evangelical preacher. ”

“ I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I rather believe I shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites. Nothing so remarkable in England as the progress of these foolish people. [177] I have no conception what they mean, if it be not to revive every absurd ceremony, and every antiquated folly, which the common sense of mankind has set to sleep. You will find at your return a fanatical Church of England, but pray do not let it prevent your return. We can always gather together, in Green Street, a chosen few who have never bowed the knee to Rimmon. ”

“ But if he be estimated apart from his position as the head of a great party, it must be considered that he was more a theological antiquary than a theologian. Pusey in fact was left behind by his followers even in his lifetime. His revival of the doctrine of the Real Presence, coinciding as it did with the revival of a taste for medieval art, naturally led to a revival of the pre-Reformation ceremonial of worship. With this revival of ceremonial Pusey had little sympathy: he at first protested against it (in a university sermon in 1859) ”

“ We are only pointing out that the elaborate chapter of accusation against the Catholic Church which Dr. Pusey has drawn up could not fail to be received with great indignation on the part of Catholics, and that the overtures which accompany it cannot be fairly dealt with until it has been thoroughly sifted by criticism as well as by controversy. How can we explain a "system" which we deny to exist? Of course, no Catholic will acknowledge Dr. Pusey's representation as anything but a monstrous caricature. ”

“ Pusey finds necessary to his position as a Protestant; and if there be any exception to this general movement, he only marks the motion of the stream by standing still himself. This is because our three questions remain unanswered, while those who attempt to find such an answer as shall be acceptable to a rational mind, are denounced and persecuted. Yet these so-called liberals have a right to demand to be heard, and to be allowed to make out what they can by fair argument ”

“ Rose had endeavoured to trace German rationalism almost exclusively to the absence of that control which is provided in the church of England by formularies of faith and devotion and by its episcopal form of government. The natural conclusion from Rose's argument was that the English church, possessing as it did such safeguards, need not fear the rationalism into which the German protestant bodies had lapsed from want of them. Pusey was convinced that there was every reason for such a fear. ”

“ It has sometimes happened that some of the greatest men in our art have been betrayed into errors by this confined mode of reasoning. Poussin, who, upon the whole, may be produced as an instance of attention to the most enlarged and extensive ideas of nature, from not having settled principles on this point, has in one instance at least, I think, deserted truth for prejudice. ”

“ Pusey and his school, he was gradually welcomed as ally and political leader by men like Dale and Allon, the independents, and Spurgeon, the baptist, on the broad ground that it was possible for all good men to hold, amid their differences about church government, the more vital sympathies and charities of their common profession. ”

“ Before all these witnesses M. Puys made a declaration, which was neither more nor less than this: “That what he had written was not directed against the fathers of the Society of Jesus; that he had spoken in general of those who alienated the faithful from their parishes, without meaning by that to attack the Society; and that so far from having such an intention, the Society 302was the object of his esteem and affection.” By virtue of these words alone, without either retractation or absolution, M. Puys recovered, all at once, from his apostasy, his scandals, and his excommunication ”

“ A secret instinct told Pushkin that he must answer in all sincerity.
"Because the feeling of 'humanity' is stronger than that of 'love of freedom.' It protects alike the serf when persecuted by the Czar, and the Czar when persecuted by the serf!" ”

“ I would the gods had made thee rhythmical, that thou mightest comprehend the thousandth part of my labors in the evasion of cacophon. Phil. has a general dislike to the Puseyites, though he is too learned to be ignorant, (as are often the Low-Church, or Evangelical, party in England,) that, in many of their supposed innovations, the Puseyites were really only restoring what the torpor of the eighteenth century had suffered to go into disuse. ”

“ In short, at that period, there was no fresh device in love invented, that had not its origin in the good convent of Poissy. You may be sure there is a good deal of untruth and hyperbolical emphasis, in these proverbs, jests, jokes, and idle tales. The nuns of the said Poissy were good young ladies, who now this way, now that, cheated God to the profit of the devil, as many others did, which was but natural, because our nature is weak ”

“ Pusey's charges remain after all unanswered, and there is no getting over them while they remain. They are of that broad, palpable kind against which the refinements of argumentative apology play in vain. They can only be met by those who feel their force, on some principle equally broad. ”

“ One should look twice before setting aside an article of common faith.’ Only a perfectly honest soul has such scruples. At heart my father was a Gassendiste.* He keyed his own particular sentiment with the public sentiment, believing, like the countryside, in the existence of Putois, but not admitting his direct responsibility for the theft of the melons and the betrayal of the cook. Finally, he professed faith in the existence of a Putois, to be a good citizen ”

“ They were published in the course of the year under the title ‘The State of the Protestant Religion in Germany,’ Cambridge, 8vo, and elicited adverse criticism both in England and Germany [see Pusey, Edward Bouverie] . To his German critics Rose replied in an ‘Appendix to the State of the Protestant Religion in Germany,’ 1828, 8vo; and to Pusey in ‘A Letter to the Lord Bishop of London,’ 1829, 8vo, and also in an enlarged edition of his book published the same year. ”

“ This man, who had fought down opposition, and made himself terrible to his foes—this man, who cared little what he said himself, and laughed his great laugh when he heard what was said of him—was it possible that the bare idea of finding himself received on an equality at Poissy, which after all he had so largely benefited, made him tremble like any young girl presented to royalty? ”

“ Our feelings alienated from the mother, come too late even for the child, who by his languor already betrays the mortal symptoms of the poison he imbibed at the parent corpse. It is curious to observe the permutation of ideas which takes place, as imitation is removed from the sources of nature: Poussin, not content with adopting the group of Raphael, once more repeats the loathsome attitude in the same scene ”

“ Perhaps the happiest, and not an inconsiderable, portion of Poussin’s life, was that which intervened between his return to Rome and his death. Experience of the cabals and disquietudes of Paris had no doubt taught him to value the classical serenity of his adopted home. Although in possession of great and undisputed fame, and sufficiently affluent, he continued to labour in his art with unrelaxing diligence, if that may be called labour which constituted his highest gratification. ”

“ Yet, like most people who lay themselves out to justify the ways of God to man, Pausanias was readier to detect the hand of the deity in the miseries and misfortunes of his fellow-creatures than in their joys and blessings. The confidence with which he lays his finger on the precise misdeed which drew down on a malefactor the wrath of a justly offended god implies an astonishing familiarity with the counsels of the Almighty. ”

“ Paul employs, in trying to follow with his analysis of such profound power and originality some of the most delicate, intricate, obscure, and contradictory workings and states of the human spirit, are detached and employed by Puritanism, not in the connected and fluid way in which St Paul employs them, and for which alone words are really meant, but in an isolated, fixed, mechanical way, as if they were talismans ”

“ The rhetoric of the new school, not wholly emancipated from romanticism, was naturally somewhat conven tional. But Pushkin became interested in journalism ; and polemics, social reforms, and many other new problems arising, helped to make romanticism a thing of the past. The young schools of philosophy found much food for thought and controversy. The question of the emancipation of the serfs, raised in the court of Alexander I., weighed heavily upon the national conscience. A suffering people cannot be fed upon rhetoric. ”

“ On the whole, one is inclined to suspect the defence of coarseness as insincere. Certainly, in our day, it will not hold. If any one wishes to hear coarse language in ‘good society’ he can hear it, I am told, in Paris: but one questions whether Parisian society be now ‘under the sway of a more energetic principle of virtue’ than our own. The sum total of the matter seems to be, that England has found out that on this point again the old Puritans were right. ”

“ The 16th century was not ripe for real intellectual freedom; and Protestantism, having based its revolt on the right of private judgment, soon produced a number of conflicting theological systems, vying with each other in rigidity Decadence of universities.and narrowness, which, as Paulsen says, “nearly stifled the intellectual life of the German people.” Further, the idea of national autonomy, which exercised so great an effect on the politics of the time, included the universal adherence of the citizens to the religion of the state. ”

“ Puchta, who has perhaps expressed the thought in the most manifold ways, says in his digest of Roman law, section 22, “as the subjects of such a will thought of potentially men are called persons, ... personality is therefore the subjective possibility of the legalized will, of a legal power.” ”

“ Poussin succeeded better in classic than in sacred subjects. The latter are comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent contrasts of colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the true prophetic inspiration of the characters. But in his pagan allegories and fables he was quite at home. The native gravity and native levity of the Frenchman were combined with Italian scenery and an antique gusto, and gave even to his colouring an air of learned indifference. He wants, in one respect, grace, form, expression; but he has everywhere sense and meaning, perfect costume and propriety. ”