OXFORD MOVEMENT. The name common ly applied, from its place of origin, to the re vival of the doctrines and practices of an earlier age which took place in the Church of England in the early years of the Victorian era. Though local in its inception, it achieved unexpected re sults and became world-wide in its influence. The movement proper, or the stage of it which is more strictly known as Tractarian, covered a period of twelve years. tt began with Keble's famous sermon on national apostasy preached in Saint Mary's, Oxford, in July. 1833, and closed with Newman's defection in 1845. But under other leaders the work went on. Its field of operations was widened. It moved along new lines and gathered fresh strength. until it vivified and transformed the English Church.
It was distinctly a revival, but of a different type from those which had preceded it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That of the seventeenth century was anti-Calvinistic and based on the moral responsibility of man. That of the eighteenth was anti-latitudinarian and based on devotion to a personal Redeemer. The Oxford Movement was anti-individualistic and based on the incarnate life of Jesus Christ. The revival of spiritual life under the Weslcys and Whitefield was intensely subjective and therefore one-sided and imperfect. Its complement was furnished by the Oxford Movement with its deep religious fervor, but distinctly objective teaching. To attempt to gauge the movement simply by its restoration of obsolete external observances is to miss its meaning. It had a double trend, histor ical and doctrinal.
Historically it was part of a larger movement. The beginning of the nineteenth century marked an epoch in religious thought. The Deism of the preceding century, with its mechanical uni verse and absentee God, had induced an all pervading deadness in spiritual things. Religion was little better than a cold morality. A reac tion was inevitable. The search was for au thority; the transcendental school found it in an 'inner light.' in reason or conscience or 'an imag
inative faith:' the ecclesiastical school appealed to the authority of the Church and localized the divine in persons and places and acts. Tran scendentalism saw God in man and nature, ecclesi asticism saw Him in sacraments and ordinances. In England at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Church had became so thoroughly Erastian that few looked beyond the State with its civil courts for any centre of ecclesiastical authority. The most definite form of ecclesiasti cism, though one little known to the great ma jority of Englishmen, was the Latin communion with its persistent assertion of Papal claims; and over against this stood the Transcendental school with its equally persistent demand for the recog nition of the individual reason. But with the birth of the Oxford Movement in England came the appeal to the authority of the historic Cath olic Church, of which, it was contended, the na tional Church of the country was an integral part. According to Dean Church, it was not until Newman determined to force upon the public mind, in a way that could not be evaded. the great article of the creed, "T believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church." that the move ment really began. Underneath the restoration of certain external requirements lay this appeal to the authority of the primitive and undivided Church. The effort was to make the national Church of England more truly Catholic, not.by the introduction of new• features in her economy, hut by the restoration of those elements of Catholicism which were already inherent. though latent, in her constitution. The movement sprang from the Catholic teaching of the Caroline divines. Its fathers were Andrewes and Laud and Cosin. it made episcopacy essential not merely to the bane eRse, hat to the esse of the Church. The Apostolic Succession became a prominent plank in the platform of the Catholic school.