From whatever angle the Oxford Movement is examined, it is impossible to disregard the spirit of alarm which informed its opening phase. Reforms long overdue were beginning to take effect; further reforms of a more searching character were to follow. Outworn institutions and rusty machinery could not remain untouched when the national spirit was demanding radical developments in political and social institutions. Excluding a small body of the clergy, Englishmen of all ranks within and without the Established Church regarded that body and its ministers as an institution dependent for its existence upon the Body Politic. For them the Church of England was little more than a State Department; and in common with the rest this too must submit to the reforms which it urgently required.

Since the days of Elizabeth the National Church had been immediately sensitive to every political development: each successive crisis had struck it violently and left deep scars. With the termination of the Stuart period and the rejection of ‘Divine Right,’ the great days of Caroline High Churchmanship had come to an end. The High Church party as an effective power died within the Church, whilst the Non-Juring Sect languished into insignificance from lack of an object. The volumes of Caroline divinity remained untouched on the library shelves: theological interests, rules of Christian Perfection and Sacramental Doctrine had become unfashionable.