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The Mind of Victorian Orthodoxy: Anglican Responses to ‘Essays and Reviews,’ 1860–1864

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Josef L. Altholz
Josef L. Altholz
Affiliation:
Mr. Altholz is professor of history in the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Extract

The composite volume entitled Essays and Reviews, published in 1860, became the center of one of the major religious controversies of Victorian England—a crisis of faith contemporary with that provoked by Darwin's Origin of Species but more central to the religious mind. Essays and Reviews was at once the culmination and the final act of the Broad Church movement. The volume itself was modest in its pretensions and varied in the character and quality of its seven essays. The first, by Frederick Temple, was a warmed-over sermon urging the free study of the Bible. Rowland Williams wrote a provocative essay on Bunsen, denying the predictive character of Old Testament prophecies. Baden Powell flatly denied the possibility of miracles. H. B. Wilson gave the widest possible latitude to subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and questioned the eternity of damnation. C. W. Goodwin (the only layman among the Essayists) wrote a critique of the attempted “harmonies” between Genesis and geology. Mark Pattison wrote a learned and cold historical study of the evidential theologians of the eighteenth century (perhaps the only essay of lasting value). The volume was capped by Benjamin Jowett's tremendous though wayward essay “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in which he urged that the Bible be read “like any other book” and made an impassioned plea for freedom of scholarship. Little of all this was original, though it was new to most Englishmen. It was not the cutting edge of biblical scholarship; rather, it was the last gasp of an outmoded Coleridgianism, contributing little except a demand that somebody—somebody else—engage in serious biblical criticism. But this work touched off a controversy which lasted four years and mobilized the resources of both church and state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 186 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1982

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References

1. The Origin of Species was published 24 11 1859;Google ScholarEssays and Reviews in February 1860. The debates overlapped, and the reproach of Darwinism was often hurled against the Essayists, but incidentally and in a manner which indicated that biblical criticism and not evolution was the main concern.

2. Jowett, Benjamin, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” Essays and Reviews (London, 1860), pp. 338, 377.Google Scholar

3. Willey, Basil, “Septem contra Christum,” in More Nineteenth-Century Studies: A Group of Honest Doubters (London, 1956).Google Scholar See also Crowther, M. A., Church Embattled; Religious Controversy in Mid-Victorian England (Newton Abbot, 1970),Google Scholar and Cockshut, A.O. J., Anglican Attitudes: A Study of Victorian Religious Controversies (London, 1959).Google Scholar

4. Nearly one hundred responses are listed under Essays and Reviews in the British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books, and another thirty under the several Essayists. A further dozen or so were added at the Bodleian Library and Pusey House, Oxford.

5. Rev.Woodgate, Henry Arthur, “Essays and Reviews” Considered in relation to the current principles and fallacies of the day (London, 1861), p. 17,Google Scholar provides an example of the High Church view. “The upholders of ultra-Protestantism and the self-styled evangelical bishops and clergy … must be content to bear no inconsiderable portion of the responsibility.” See also idem, Catholicity and Reason (London, 1861), p. 10.

An example of the Low Church view comes from Rev. Burnside, William Smith, The Lex Evangelica (Dublin, 1861), p. 17,Google Scholar blaming the union of “Tractarianism and Rationalism (that two-headed hydra which of late years has crept forth from Oxford).” The author of The Right Way, and a way which seemeth right, Protestant Reformation Society Tract 15 (London, 1861), p. 17,Google Scholar noted that “The Essayist Dr. Williams is the child of the Tractarian Dr. Newman.” Even Bishop John Jackson of Lincoln in his 1861 Charge (London, 1861), p. 42,Google Scholar blamed the High Church, which “tended to substitute authority for evidence. …”

6. Rev. Cumming, John, Popular Lectures on “The Essays and Reviews” (London, 1861), p. 120.Google Scholar

7. Rorison, G., “The Creative Week,” in Replies to “Essays and Reviews” (Oxford, 1862), p. 324.Google ScholarReplies, sponsored by Bishop Wilberforce, was the second most prestigious collection of responses; Rorison was a Scottish Episcopal priest. For a treatment of Genesis 1 as “parable,” see Huxtable, Edgar, “The Sacred Record of Creation Vindicated and Explained,” in Faith and Peace (London, 1867), p. 74,Google Scholar a High Church collection of tracts organized by Archdeacon Denison, originally published in 1861.

8. A Graduate of Oxford, Subscription to Articles: Is it Truth, or a Mockery? Considered in Reference to Essays and Reviews (London, 1861), p. 13,Google Scholar cited in Livingston, James J., The Ethics of Belief: An Essay on the Victorian Religious Conscience (Missoula, Mont., 1974), p. 4.Google Scholar

9. Attributed in Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, 2 vols. (New York, 1897), 1: 294.Google Scholar The military metaphor was used by orthodox controversialists, for example, “An Officer in the Army who should pursue a similar line of action, would be dismissed the Service,—or worse.” Burgon, John William, Inspiration and Interpretation (Oxford, 1861), p. lxx.Google Scholar See also Cumming, , Popular Lectures, p. 2.Google Scholar

10. For the significance of joint responsibility, see Altholz, Josef L., “Periodical Origins and Implications of Essays and Reviews,” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 10 (09 1977): 140–154.Google Scholar

11. Maurice, F. D., The Mote and the Beam, Tracts for Priests and People, vol. 1, no. 2 (Cambridge, 1861), p. 61.Google Scholar

12. “You must either receive the Bible as the infallible Word of God, or you sink at once into infidelity.” Rev. Wilson, Daniel, The Inspired Scriptures, not man's “verifying faculty,” the final ground of appeal in matters of faith (London, 1861), p. 19.Google Scholar

13. “In short, whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit.” “I, who hold that the Bible contains the religion of Christians, but who dare not say that whatever is contained in the Bible is the Christian religion. …” Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840; rev. ed., London, 1890), pp. 295, 315.Google ScholarWilliams, Rowland, “Bunsen's Biblical Researches,” Essays and Reviews, p. 83.Google Scholar

14. Wilson, Henry Bristow, “Séances Historiques de Genève. The National Church,” Essays and Reviews, pp. 176, 177.Google Scholar

15. Burgon, , Inspiration and Interpretation, pp. 76, 94.Google Scholar

16. Browne, Harold, “Inspiration,” Aids to Faith (New York, 1862), p. 349.Google ScholarAids to Faith was the most important and quasi-official of the composite replies. Samuel Wilberforce was similarly cautious. “Holy scripture has never laid down any theory of inspiration; the Church has never propounded one; and we think sufficient reasons for this reticence.” “Essays and Reviews,” Quarterly Review 109 (01 1861): 304.Google Scholar Nonetheless, many lesser figures provided or assumed definitions of inspiration, whether “verbal” or merely “plenary.”

17. Stephen, James Fitzjames, Defence of the Rev. Rowland Williams, D.D. in the Arches Court of Canterbury (London, 1862).Google Scholar A similar point was made about the same time by Bishop Colenso, which added to the controversy.

18. McCaul, Alexander, Testimonies to the Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, as taught by the Church of England, in reply to the statements of Mr. James Fitzjames Stephen (London, 1862).Google ScholarMcCaul, had anticipated the issue earlier in Rationalism and Deistic Infidelity (London, 1861), pp. 20–21,Google Scholar originally published in the Record, 7 January 1861.

19. “We, the undersigned Presbyters and Deacons in Holy Orders of the Church of England and Ireland, hold it to be our bounden duty to the Church and to the souls of men, to declare our firm belief that the Church of England and Ireland, in common with the whole Catholic Church, maintains without reserve or qualification the plenary Inspiration and Authority of the whole Canonical Scriptures as the Word of God, and further teaches, in the words of our Blessed Lord, that the ‘punishment’ of the ‘cursed,’ as the ‘life’ of the ‘righteous’ lasts for ever.”

20. Cited in McDonald, H. D., Theories of Revelation: An Historical Study, 1860–1960 (London, 1963), p. 178.Google Scholar

21. Joseph Butler (1692–1752), bishop of Bristol (1738) and Durham (1750), was the author of The Analogy of Religion (1736). “I can scarcely deem that man a Christian, who can remain insensible to the obligations under which the author of the Analogy has laid the world.” Rev. Russell, Arthur T., A Letter to the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Oxford, upon the Defence of the “Essays and Reviews” in the April Number of the “Edinburgh Review,” 1861 (London, 1862), pp. 117–118.Google Scholar William Paley (1743–1805), was archdeacon of Carlisle (1782), the author of Evidences of Christianity (1794) and Natural Theology (1802), and “the man whose memory Cambridge reveres” (An M.A. of Cambridge,A Reply to the “Essays and Reviews” [Cambridge, 1861], p. 28).Google Scholar Archbishop Whately of Dublin regarded Essays and Reviews as designed as an answer to his recent edition of Paley. Whately, Richard, Danger from Within (London, 1861), p. 18.Google Scholar

22. Mansel, Henry L., The Limits of Religious Thought examined (Boston, 1859),Google Scholar Lecture 8, p. 214.

23. The centrality of the “evidences” explains why Pattison's historical essay, which was not intrinsically controversial, was denounced with the others.

24. “Either the predictive character of Old Testament prophecy must be maintained or Christianity (as a Divine system) must be abandoned.” “Another Gospel” Examined (London, 1861), p. 22.Google Scholar

25. Gooch, Charles, Remarks on the Grounds of Faith, suggested by Mr. Pattison's Essay on the Tendencies of Religious Thought (Cambridge, 1862), p. 9.Google Scholar

26. Paley's Evidences remained a required textbook at Cambridge until 1920. See LeMahieu, D. L., The Mind of William Paley (Lincoln, Neb., 1976), p. 153.Google Scholar Paley was cited more often by Cantabrigians, Butler by Oxonians.

27. Griffin, John Nash, Seven Answers to the Seven Essays and Reviews (London, 1862), p. 229.Google Scholar

28. Forster, Charles, Spinoza Redivivus (London, 1861), p. 10;Google ScholarGoulburn, E. M., “The Education of the World,” in Replies to “Essays and Reviews,” p. 30.Google Scholar

29. “If, upon the acknowledged principles which guide human life in other matters, this evidence leaves no other alternative open besides the Divine origin of the revelation, then the human mind must submit to an authority the credentials of which have been thus recognized.” Rev. Edward, Garbett, The Bible and its Critics … the Boyle Lectures for MDCCCLXI (London, 1861), p. 369.Google Scholar

30. Griffin, , Seven Answers, p. 233.Google Scholar

31. “Reason leads us to the door of the Sanctuary. But let it not cross the threshold.” Wordsworth, Christopher, The Interpretation of the Bible (London, 1861), p. 40.Google Scholar

32. Reason “is competent to deal with the question whether a religion is from God, but when once that question is settled in the affirmative, it is not competent to sit in judgment upon the doctrine which it teaches.” Cumming, John and Blakeney, R. P., Scripture Miracles Vindicated, Protestant Reformation Society Tract 6 (London, 1861), p. 26.Google Scholar “The intellect is qualified indeed to examine the grounds upon which a revelation purports to proceed from God but, the fact once being recognized, the intellect has only to accept the ‘dicta’ of that revelation with as blind a submission as childhood's own.” Rev. Gurney, Archer, The Faith against Free-Thinkers (London, 1864), p. 23.Google Scholar

33. Mansel, , The Limits of Religious Thought, Lecture 6, p. 168.Google Scholar Mansel's epistemology, based on Sir William Hamilton, was accepted by few other orthodox spokesmen, but the passages selected for quotation are representative of their thought, if somewhat pithier.

34. Tait, William, Inspiration and Justification (London, 1861), p. 12,Google Scholar regarded the Bible as “communications from the eternal throne.” Christianity is “an historical religion—a religion made up of matters of fact, and propounded on the evidence of matters of fact.” William Fitzgerald (Bishop of Cork), “On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity,” Aids to Faith, pp. 77–78.

35. “Real Faith Entire,” quoted in Liddon, Henry Parry, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 4 vols. (London, 1898),Google Scholar vol.4, ed. J. O. Johnston, R. J. Wilson, and W. C. E. Newbolt, p. 7. Pusey is representative of orthodoxy in referring faith to the will rather than the intellect.

36. Pusey to Lord Shaftesbury, 28 February 1864, ibid., p. 51, with reference to the judgment in favor of the Essayists.

37. Thus Liddon could say as late as 1889, “The trustworthiness of the Old Testament is, in fact, inseparable from the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Quoted in Greenslade, S. L., ed., The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, (Cambridge, 1963), p. 267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar “The question of the genuineness and authenticity of Daniel cannot … be separated from that respecting the fallibility or infallibility of the Saviour.” McCaul, “Prophecy,” Aids to Faith; p. 142. See also Rev. Bullock, Charles, “Essays and Reviews:” The False Position of the Authors (London, 1861), p. 10.Google Scholar

38. The Guardian (1863), quoted in Reardon, Bernard, From Coleridge to Gore (London, 1971), p. 343, n. 1.Google Scholar “The admission of one doubt undermines all certainty.” Law, Archdeacon Henry, Charge (Weston-super-Mare, [1862]), p. 13.Google Scholar

39. Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols. (London, 1970), 2: 75.Google Scholar “There is no middle course between the absolute acceptance, and the absolute rejection, of revelation.” Garbett, p. 390, see also p. 396. “Our only alternative lies between faith and scepticism.” Rev. Robins, Sanderson, A Defence of the Faith (London, 1862), p. 215.Google Scholar “There is no standing-place between faith of the Church and infidelity.” Moberly, George, Sermons on the Beatitudes (Oxford, 1860), p. lvii.Google Scholar