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The fact is that, in the course of the first three centuries of its existence, the Church rapidly underwent a process of evolution of the most remarkable character, the final stage of which is far more different from the first than Anglicanism is from Quakerism.
It was an appeal to the facts of history and human nature against the logical exigencies of a theory. Men must transcend the conditions of our experience if they want the certainty which the theory of Infallibility speaks of. There were especially two weak points in this view of Anglicanism. Mr.
In its formal creed Anglicanism was not at a great distance from Rome: far otherwise, when viewed in its insular spirit, the traditions of its establishment, its historical characteristics, its controversial rancour, and its private judgment.
The men who doubted about the English Church saw in Rome a strong, logical, consistent theory of religion, not of yesterday nor to-day not only comprehensive and profound, but actually in full work, and fruitful in great results; and this, in contrast to the alleged and undeniable anomalies and shortcomings of Protestantism and Anglicanism.
In him was eminently illustrated the characteristic strength and weakness of English religion, which naturally comes out in that form of it which is called Anglicanism; that poor Anglicanism, the butt and laughing-stock of all the clever and high-flying converts to Rome, of all the clever and high-flying Liberals, and of all those poor copyists of the first, far from clever, though very high-flying, who now give themselves out as exclusive heirs of the great name of Catholic; sneered at on all sides as narrow, meagre, shattered, barren; which certainly does not always go to the bottom of questions, and is too much given to "hunting-up" passages for catenas of precedents and authorities; but which yet has a strange, obstinate, tenacious moral force in it; which, without being successful in formulating theories or in solving fallacies, can pierce through pretences and shams; and which in England seems the only shape in which intense religious faith can unfold itself and connect itself with morality and duty, without seeming to wear a peculiar dress of its own, and putting a barrier of self-chosen watchwords and singularities between itself and the rest of the nation.
Its religion, without being proscribed, was not acknowledged, for Anglicanism was the established church of Ireland, though it numbered but few adherents. The navigation acts were so interpreted as to exclude Ireland from all their advantages and to cut her off from any direct trade with the colonies.
It was not easy to find a clear issue for the dispute, and still less by a logical process to decide it in favour of Anglicanism. This difficulty, however, had no tendency whatever to harass or perplex me: it was a matter which bore not on convictions, but on proofs.
I join heartily in desiring some termination to my present doubts; but whether in the direction you would think right, or by a return to Anglicanism, is the question. I am astonished to find how resolute Keble is in maintaining his present position. Others, also, of more earnestness and better knowledge than myself, are recoiling and this troubles me, for I cannot but look around for authority.
It was broken some years later, when he gave up the via media which he had so long been advocating, accepted the logical consequences of his own teaching, and reproached others for not discovering that Anglicanism was but a pale and deformed counterfeit of the primitive Christianity represented, in its purity, by the Church of Rome.
"The last words that I spoke as an Anglican to Anglicans," so he describes this statement of his position and its reasons; so it seems to him, as he looks back. And yet in the intimate and frank disclosures which he makes, he has shown us much that indicates both that his Anglicanism lasted much longer and that his Roman sympathies began to stir much earlier.
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