The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 by R.W. Church
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page 23 of 344 (06%)
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passionate and sustained earnestness after a high moral rule, seriously
realised in conduct, is the dominant character of these sermons. They showed the strong reaction against slackness of fibre in the religious life; against the poverty, softness; restlessness, worldliness, the blunted and impaired sense of truth, which reigned with little check in the recognised fashions of professing Christianity; the want of depth both of thought and feeling; the strange blindness to the real sternness, nay the austerity, of the New Testament. Out of this ground the movement grew. Even more than a theological reform, it was a protest against the loose unreality of ordinary religious morality. In the first stage of the movement, moral earnestness and enthusiasm gave its impulse to theological interest and zeal. FOOTNOTES: [2] The suppression of the Irish bishoprics. Palmer, _Narrative_ (1883), pp. 44, 101. Maurice, _Life_, i. 180. [3] "The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save" (Arnold to Tyler, June 1832. _Life,_ i. 326). "Nothing, as it seems to me, can save the Church but an union with the Dissenters; now they are leagued with the antichristian party, and no merely internal reforms will satisfy them" (Arnold to Whately, January 1833, i. 348). He afterwards thought this exaggerated (_Life,_ i. 336). "The Church has been for one hundred years without any government, and in such a stormy season it will not go on much longer without a rudder" (Whately to Bp. Copleston, July 1832. _Life_, i, 167). "If such an arrangement of the Executive Government is completed, it will be a difficult, but great and glorious feat for your Lordship's ministry to preserve the establishment from utter overthrow" (Whately to Lord Grey, May 1832. _Life_, i. 156). It is remarkable that |
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