Distinctions and Reflections on Reserve, Part 2: Newman and Isaac Williams on Reserve

This article, presented in two parts, traces the use of “Reserve” in the writings of John Keble, John Henry Newman, and Isaac Williams. The principle of reserve was explored in the nineteenth-century Tractarian movement and is the idea that sacred truths should remain hidden until the person is prepared to receive them. Robin C. Selby published a book in 1975 on this topic, entitled, The Principle of Reserve in the Writings of John Henry, Cardinal Newman (Oxford University Press). 

Part I, Keble on Reserve, was previously published here.
 

PART II: NEWMAN AND ISAAC WILLIAMS ON RESERVE

In the field of education, it is usual to impart teaching according to the student’s ability to learn. The same is true of religious education. For example, Christ taught in parables adapted to the capacity of his audience. Again, St. Paul spoke of giving milk to children who were not ready for solid food.74 The early church fathers, such as Clement and Origen, stood in a religious and philosophical tradition that stressed God’s transcendence, his hiddenness and total otherness, and his infinite distance from our finite selves. Just as God reveals himself by degrees, so religious teachers should lead catechumens towards the truth, step by step, withholding—reserving—deeper religious truths from those who are not ready for them.

Until Isaac Williams published his tracts, the only member of the Oxford Movement who wrote on reserve was Newman in The Arians of the Fourth Century. This work does not seem to have evoked much public, printed opposition, although Rogers wished that Newman could make the economy a little more palatable in any new edition:

[S]o many people seem to me to find it hard of digestion.75

The Tractarians were attacked for many things, but until the publication of Tract 80, reserve does not appear to have been among them.

Thus, the reserve controversy began with the publication of Williams’s Tract 80 in 1838. This 83-page tract was an extraordinary document; it recommended discretion, yet a more indiscreet publication cannot be imagined. More than anything else, it brought the movement into disrepute and gave its members the appearance of being liars and equivocators. The results it achieved are best summarized by Mozley in his Reminiscences:

The confidence and strength of the movement, now about at high tide, could not be more illustrated than in some remarkable numbers of the ‘Tracts for the Times,’ on reserve in communicating religious knowledge. There never was a more extraordinary combination of privacy and publicity, shyness and audacity, and, it may be added, wisdom and rashness, than in these treatises.76

...

It was the awful indefinite reserve and the dark ambuscade that made ten thousand pulpits tremble to the very foot of the steps.77

Mozley’s comments are confirmed by Church, who tells us that the tract was “like the explosion of a mine.” The tract meant for many that the writers avowed the principle of keeping back part of the counsel of God. It disclosed the real spirit of the party, “its love of secret and crooked methods, its indifference to knowledge, its disingenuous professions, its deliberate concealments, its holding doctrines and its pursuit of aims which it dared not avow, its disciplina arcani [i.e. the practice of withholding the most sacred truths], its conspiracies, its Jesuitical spirit.” He goes on to say that this kind of abuse was flung plentifully at the Tractarians, and that the tract “could well have been spared at the moment, and it certainly offered itself to an unfortunate use. The suspiciousness which so innocently it helped to awaken and confirm was never again allayed.”78

It is hard to believe that the leaders of the Oxford Movement had no idea that Tract 80 would be received in such a hostile manner. In a letter to Newman, Keble hoped that “even the third volume of the Remains … accompanied also by Isaac Williams’s new Tract [No. 86], will tend in some measure to compose and quiet people.”79 Pusey, speaking of Williams’s last tract, told Newman that he venerated Williams more, whatever of his he read. He thought that Williams seemed to have a special office for those days, “imparting to them his own soberness and humility, where oneself would be exciting them.” Wherever he came across him, Williams was at the root, while he was on the surface.80

Even Newman evidently approved of the tract, for he asked Bowden if he had seen “Williams’s most valuable Tract 80.”81

Williams states his thesis in the first paragraph:

The object of the present inquiry is to ascertain, whether there is not in God’s dealings with mankind, a very remarkable holding back of sacred and important truths, as if the knowledge of them were injurious to persons unworthy of them.82

Since he bases his argument largely on scripture, he has to say what scripture is, and to this end he quotes a remark of Bishop Butler’s,

where he observes the vast difference between Holy Scripture, and any human composition in this respect, that in the latter our object is by words to convey most fitly our meaning to others; we cannot say this of God’s written word. It may have other objects quite of another kind, which its very obscurity serves, better than its distinct meaning would do.83

Then after giving several examples of this obscurity, where Christ’s remarks were misunderstood, or not intended to be understood until later, Williams concludes that this shows the necessity for moral fitness:

But what is much to be observed with regard to those expressions of our Lord is, that the not understanding of them was considered as a matter of reproof, as implying something morally deficient, not intellectually.84

Speaking of parables, Williams shows that, without confining them to one interpretation, they might be viewed as veils, and asks:

Might it not be that the most spiritual and heavenly precepts were thus left to the rude and rough world, so that the veil of the figure might still be over them, though disclosing its import to any attentive and thoughtful person.85

Equally, he asks if it is “not very observable that the miracles recorded were to the very utmost of the faith of the person seeking relief, but as it were unable to go beyond?”86

Through these examples, and his line of argument, Williams shows that Christ’s manifestations of himself were accompanied “with very great and singular danger.”87 Therefore, he withheld himself, to avoid the guilt that would incur to those who heard and disobeyed.

Having demonstrated that Christ manifests himself only to those who are morally fit, Williams shows that the apostles employed the same methods in their preaching. In primitive times, reserve tests men, to see whether they understand sayings or ordinances as they ought to. In later times, a healthy church will perceive God’s presence in the sacraments, while it will be hidden from an unhealthy church, in which his presence will be concealed “under a low and carnal notion.”88

In the second part of the tract, Williams argues that those who are fit advance to a hidden wisdom:

[I]t may be seen that the whole system of morals is one of progressive light.89

But, those who are unfit and who approach sacred truths unworthily are punished with blindness. He who achieves the right temper of mind will see things the most sacred, such as the cross and baptism, figured and shadowed out by an infinity of types, since “there seems reason to believe that the Almighty has hid this vastness of analogy and type in His word and His works.”90 An affectionate and devoted mind will perceive this, while a skeptical mind will miss it. Williams then goes on to a more controversial subject. The great doctrines are left in scripture “in a way to give rise to all those disputations among ... the multitude who are without,”91 those who do not labor to obtain knowledge of them by obedience. In further sections we find that religious men “are all marked by an inclination, as far as it is possible, of retiring, and shrinking from public view,”92 which leads him to express Keble’s opinion “that reserve, or retiring delicacy, which exists naturally in a good man.”93 Moreover, religious men conceal religious actions, while “the whole subject contains something analogous in each particular to the circumstances of our Lord’s life.”94

Williams devotes his third section to a variety of points. He shows that the ancient church recognized the principle and remarks that the present state of affairs was totally opposed to it. Next, he starts upon other controversial topics, namely, the erection of churches, cheap publications, and national schools. Almost all of his opponents seized on this section; when Williams wrote that “if churches are to be brought home to all, then are all persons to be brought into churches, and this by human means. Thus immediately connected with that view alluded to is that of eloquence and pleasing delivery.”95 He was taken to mean that churches should not be built, nor sermons preached, when really all he meant was that we must not think that “we may do by human means, and such as partake of this world, that which is the work of God alone.”96 Nor should Bibles be distributed indiscriminately, and, since religious knowledge is a “treasure of so transcendent a nature, that it must be handled with sacred care,” it should not be communicated in national schools, but by the system of the church, parental and pastoral teaching.97

Williams follows this with another controversial section, on the “prevailing notion of bringing forward the Atonement explicitly and prominently on all occasions.”98 Rather, the whole system should be drawn out, instead of just one part. He concludes by repeating his commendation of reserve in speaking of sacred things and the thesis with which he began.

We may well wonder what Williams thought he was achieving by setting forth the principle of reserve so very openly and explicitly. True, if his principle was allowed, then dissent—and part of the Church of England—would have to admit that their practice was wrong. But he does not seem to have considered that people rebel against being caught in an “either ... or,” and moreover, that he was teaching people to be reserved on a theory, rather than because it was second nature for them to be reserved.

The controversy following the publication of Tract 80 touches upon many of its defects and identifies some of the principles at the heart of Tractarian teaching. The British Critic started the ball rolling, in its “Notices of Books,” when it said, “we wish to draw particular attention to the deep thoughts contained in No. 80, on the right mode of preaching the Gospel.”99

One of the first to enter the arena was the Rev. C. S. Bird, whose The Oxford Tract System, Considered with Reference to the Principle of Reserve in Preaching was published in 1838. In combating Williams, he does not rely on scripture so much as sheer common sense, and he makes a good impression on the reader. Thus, Bird asks hotly if we are to be carried back to the days of heathenism, “or of Christianity with an infusion of heathenism, when the higher truths were reserved as a reward for the obedience of the initiated who had passed through certain preliminary stages?”100 Bird has no respect for the church fathers, lamenting that “they had not a bolder and a nobler faith.”101 On the main point, the preaching of the atonement, he feels that “the spirit-stirring truths of the Gospel are never so much needed as when a sinner has to be awakened to a sense of his sins,” and continues:

Without the hope that he will be welcomed, polluted as he is, he cannot be expected to turn to God. Without the distinct knowledge of the Atonement, I see not how he can have that hope.102

One feels that he had honestly and sincerely considered the alternative method of preaching and maturely rejected it. Indeed, on the question of the erection of churches and the distribution of Bibles, the reader may support Bird against Williams when Bird writes:

“We must not expect” (who can be so foolish as to do so?) “that the work which occasioned our Saviour and His disciples so much pains can be done by such means.” (No! but it may be promoted).103

Bird gives precisely the right amount away to Williams, and for the rest, he intimates that Williams is enunciating a truism:

No one will deny that there are truths which are for men, and not for babes ... and again, no one will deny that when men have heard and scorned the truth, it may be withheld from them.104

Finally, Bird refers to the success of the Moravian missions, which succeeded without employing Williams’s methods.

In 1839, the Bishop of Exeter, the redoubtable Henry Phillpotts, who was not unfavorable to Tractarianism, noticed Williams’s tract in his charge, and pronounced against it in weighty terms:

Lastly, I lament, and more than lament, the tendency at least, if not the direct import, of some of their [i.e. Tractarian] views “On Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge,” especially, their venturing to recommend to us to keep back, from any who are baptized, the explicit and full declaration of the doctrine of the Atonement. I know not how such reserve can be made consistent ... with the general duty of the Christian Minister, to be able, at all times, to say with St. Paul, that he “has not shunned to declare all the counsel of God.”105

Others also came to the attack. Baden Powell wrote a tract called Tradition Unveiled: Or, an Exposition of the Pretensions and Tendency of Authoritative Teaching in the Church. He agreed that the economy was sanctioned by St. Paul and praised Newman for his description of the economy in the Arians of the Fourth Century. That is as much as he concedes, for he states firmly, “that the Apostles really concealed, disguised, or in any way compromised the whole and simple truth ... is directly contradicted by their own words.”106 The interpretation he gives, is that the way in which they adapted themselves to those whom they addressed was construed as reserve by the successors of the apostles. Indeed, Baden Powell had no high opinion of the early church, believing as he did that it employed the Disciplina Arcani in order to prove that the tenets of its opponents were unanswerably heretical, whereby “the Catholic faith was found to possess a more and more precise and metaphysical form.”107 He went so far as to say that “the practice of pious frauds was extensively and even avowedly pursued.”108

But the chief event of 1839, as far as the reserve controversy is concerned, was a tract by Henry Le Mesurier, a master at Bedford School, called A Recent Tract upon Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge Compared with Scripture. It ran to no less than 139 pages and was evidently the work of a man who brooded angrily over Williams’s tract until he felt he had to relieve himself by writing one as well. The temperate tone adopted by Bird and Powell finds no place in his pages, each of which breathes hostility to the Tractarians in general, and Williams in particular. It is long and rambling and lacks controversial bite, but in trampling heavily over Williams, he manages to score some good points. Thus, he agrees that Christ practiced reserve, but he accounts for it in a different way by arguing that he could not be more explicit without being seized by the authorities. But when the fear of this had passed, “the rule of preaching was no more Reserve. The command was given, ‘Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’”109 He then plunges into pages of examples, showing that the apostles taught explicitly. He concludes:

In short it is abundantly clear, that there cannot be a more mistaken view of St. Paul’s preaching, than that he either practised concealment or reserve in general, or especially in respect to the doctrine of the Atonement.110

After some hits at Williams’s remarks on church building and the distribution of Bibles, he asks:

[H]ow then is the knowledge of God to be spread abroad, if Christians shall form themselves into a close society, in obedience to this ‘principle of concealment.’111

For some pages, his argument becomes obscure, and it is by no means clear what he is arguing, or what he is opposing. Indeed, at one point he seems to be in complete agreement with Williams, particularly when he denies that there is any obscurity in the Bible. Instead, he argues that

the obscurity is in ourselves; no concealment in the Apostle, but rather a manifestation of the truth beyond the proportions of an ordinary Christian’s understanding, yet of great attraction and power, as was intended, to draw the desires of his mind to the earnest attainment of faculties and affections equal to the apprehension of such superior objects.112

However, at last he achieves intelligibility by attacking the Tractarian idea of the priesthood and charging Williams with writing his tract in order to “concentrate the means of grace in the ministrations of the episcopally ordained priesthood.”113 Amid the welter of words, it is pleasant to find a node whereby the differences between the two sides can be tested. The Tractarians held a high idea of the priesthood; they were the guardians of the sacraments, and so were quite capable of leading and caring for their flocks, as the principle of reserve demanded. But for Le Mesurier, and others like him, the priesthood possessed no particular qualifications that give it the right to distribute or reserve religious knowledge, so he understood the Tractarians to be claiming privileges that were not rightfully theirs. The contrast between the two sides is shown with remarkable clarity in the following quotations, the first from Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons (vol. 2), and the second from Le Mesurier’s tract:

But again, has not the Gospel Sacraments? and have not Sacraments, as pledges and means of grace, a priestly nature? If so, the question of the existence of a Christian Priesthood is narrowed at once to the simple question whether it is or is not probable that so precious an ordinance as a channel of grace would be committed by Providence to the custody of certain guardians. The tendency of opinions at this day is to believe that nothing more is necessary for acceptance than faith in God’s promise of mercy; whereas it is certain from Scripture, that the gift of reconciliation is not conveyed to individuals except through appointed ordinances. Christ has interposed something between Himself and the soul; and if it is not inconsistent with the liberty of the Gospel that a Sacrament should interfere, there is no antecedent inconsistency in a keeper of the Sacrament attending upon it.114

But Le Mesurier totally denies this:

Whereas the Tracts systematically connect the communication of grace to the outward mean, which is the sacrament, the Apostles systematically connect it with the inward mean, which is faith. ... The one brings Christ immediately present, to the comfort of the believer, the other brings the priest in between.115

Thus, the principle of reserve in the Tractarian system is intimately linked with the status of the priesthood, and the question of whether the Bible is obscure or not. Just as the principle connected various characteristic ideas in Newman’s writings, it connects the points at the heart of Tractarian teaching.

By 1839 a considerable onslaught had been made on Williams’s tract. It may be conjectured that, for the sake of the whole Tractarian movement, it became necessary to answer these attacks. On 23 August 1838, we find Keble writing to Newman about it:

I believe Wilson [i.e. his curate] is at last writing on the D. Arcani: but he croaks about it himself.116

The “at last” and the “croaking” may suggest that there was a good deal of impatience for an article to counter the growing hostility. But it was only in the April 1839 number of the British Critic that it was eventually published. Comments made in a letter to Pusey about this article suggest that Newman was aware that Williams’s tract was giving the whole Tractarian movement a bad reputation:

The article on Reserve was by Keble’s Wilson, who is anything but a flippant writer—it was carefully looked over by Keble and much altered by myself. No article I have had to do with has been taken such pains with ... I shall always wish for any one to point out things they object to in the B.C. if they will name definite passages. I am not aware that Evangelicals as a party, or Churchmen especially Clergymen have been attacked or ridiculed in it, since I have had the management. Principles have sometimes been spoken against—but their going to so temperate an article as Wilson’s is to me a proof they have very little to say.117

After such an introduction, it is no surprise to find the British Critic article strong, where Williams’s tract was weak. Much of it looks like Newman’s work, and it is well worth considering at some length.

It begins by pointing out that reserve is practiced every day in the education of children, and that there is no question of trying to re-introduce something that fell into disuse centuries ago. The reader heaves a sigh of relief to find the subject put on a sound footing at last. Then, having established that the principle of reserve is more of a truism than a subject for dispute, the author compliments Williams on his argument from scripture, and he then proceeds to criticize it all the more freely:

Indeed, in our opinion, the writer has not done himself, or his views, by any means justice. He passes often abruptly from one point to another; he does not give himself time or space to put things, so as to remove wrong impressions, or lead his reader on to perceive the connection between the different parts of his Treatise. There is, therefore, a certain obscurity, and throughout ... an air of being rather the heads of what might be worked up, than as if all the matter in the writer’s mind was before one.118

The author of the article identifies deficient parts of the tract, and proceeds to remedy the defects:

It would, perhaps, have been more satisfactory, and have been tracing the system wider and deeper, before entering upon the New Testament in particular—to have shown how Scripture, throughout, upon the very face of it, does in the difficulties which it presents to every thoughtful reader practise a species of reserve.119

The author gives a general description of scripture, with many examples of difficulties. The style and method of argument is characteristically Newman’s, and one is tempted to attribute this passage to him:

There is, if one may venture so to describe it, a bold, abrupt unguardedness in Scripture language, which becomes the more remarkable, in that instances meet one in every page, and in places, where, humanly speaking, one might have beforehand expected the most accurate and guarded statements ... If now from such general heads as History and Prophecy may suggest, we pass to doctrinal statements, and practical rules, there will be still found the same opening to serious error and misinterpretation on matters of gravest importance, from the unguarded way in which the doctrines and precepts are expressed, when, humanly speaking, it would seem quite plain that this might have been greatly, if not entirely, avoided.120

The writer then suggests that this sort of preliminary discussion could advantageously have been used to introduce the tract and might have removed the prejudice against the idea of God’s holding back important truths. Moreover,

it would have fixed the attention more on weighing, whether what our author suggests does seem sufficiently to account for the established fact of a reserve, which would, perhaps, have been clearer and more convincing, than to divide attention, as he does, by proving the fact and accounting for it at the same time.121

The article then shows that reserve was practiced even when miracles were performed, which is followed by a crisp and masterly summary of the argument:

The point suggested for consideration is this, whether the form, in which that large portion of the New Testament taken up by the Epistles is divinely cast, considered simply as a way of instruction, does not exemplify a sort of reserve—in that things are taken for granted, hinted at, alluded to, partially and abruptly stated—subjects suddenly changed, and as suddenly resumed—matters doctrinal and practical mixed up—things for local reasons drawn out into a prominence and importance which otherwise (humanly speaking) would not have been given to them—much seeming to depend, as to present practical application of things said, on an accurate knowledge of the condition in the body of Christians addressed; whether these and other such points ... do not practically clothe them with a reserve?122

Next, the author provides all the safeguards that should accompany the principle of reserve, which Williams had neglected to provide:

There is a section ... in which we could have wished that a word or two of caution had been added.123

He fears lest people might practice “an almost embarrassing retiredness of manner,”124 or form a church within a church. He points to the dangers of systematizing reserve, as Williams had done, since “there may be a formalism on the side of reserve, as on that of friendly communication.”125 He warns that

the practice of reserve also, particularly where assumed, even with the best intention, is not without its tendency to harm the character, and to induce an inattention to the wishes and opinions of others, and a feeling that none are in a position to counsel or advise.126

Next follows a most interesting philosophical speculation, which bears out what was suggested in an earlier chapter, that reserve is particularly suitable to our fallen state:

It may be that communication, free, guileless, and without hypocrisy, towards ourselves or others, on the most sacred things, or on matters of deepest moment for our own moral condition, is impossible in our imperfect state—denied us at once as a punishment and a mercy.127

The author of the article passes from actual arguments to the consideration of a variety of points. First, he deals with passages of scripture, which seem to oppose the principle of reserve. He observes that “this is perhaps the most meagre part of the whole Tract,”128 and that, as in the question of justification, texts that are for and against must be combined. He then passes to the historical view of reserve as practiced by the primitive church. Next, he deals with the objection made to Williams’s tract, that no one would begin to be religious unless the atonement was preached explicitly, in order to rouse them. The answer to the objection is simple:

By training them to act the doctrine (if it may be so said) in themselves, to know subjectively what it was to be disciples of a crucified Master, He made them meet to receive the gracious mystery of the Atonement, and to glory in the cross of Christ.129

Before concluding, Wilson glances at the practical question of how to reserve knowledge when infant baptism gives a claim to full knowledge and when the distribution of bibles had been so widespread. He answers that it is the responsibility of spiritual guardians to both impart and withhold knowledge. Where Williams had merely expressed a pious wish, Wilson shows that so long as the spiritual guardian exercises his responsibility, then progressive teaching is still possible.

Thus, this article is a welcome breath of fresh air on the sultry scene of the reserve controversy. It is well-balanced and compensates for the over-emphasis of Williams’s tract.

The debate simmered gently through 1840. The Archdeacon of Ely, J. H. Browne, who in 1838 had published Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tracts, now published his Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, Especially as it is Developed in the 80th and 83rd Tracts. He had evidently recently read the writings of St. Cyril, whom he quotes frequently and copiously. If the Tractarians appealed to the fathers, then their appeal fell on deaf ears as far as Browne was concerned, since he was of the opinion that, citing Cyril:

[Y]ou cannot fail instantaneously to detect the rudiments of the invocation of the saints—of purgatory,—and of the sacrifice of the mass for the quick and the dead.130

He argued that the minister was not responsible enough to decide whether the terms of peace should be imparted or withheld. For him, divine mercy was free, and it was a rash presumption to abridge or circumscribe it. More importantly, it was inexpedient to “conceal from the sinner’s knowledge those incentives which are best adapted to rouse him from his lethargy.”131 Browne employs a telling argument, which he develops with splendid scorn for Tract 80, when he agreed that

it pleased God to exhibit some measure of reserve in his communications ... He saw fit to impart the light of revelation in a gradual and progressive manner, and to veil some of its sublimest truths in types and shadows ... It seemed good, also, to the Son of God ... to practise, to a certain extent, a similar reserve.132

Then, he triumphantly concludes that

because such a procedure was adopted by infallible wisdom, before the complete development of the gracious plan of man’s salvation; it is to form a precedent for the guidance of fallible man, after that plan has been fully unfolded.133

Browne fears that the system of reserve tends to “repress and extinguish the emotions of love,” and to replace it by a “spirit of legal bondage and servile fear,”134 and finishes by quoting the account by a Moravian of the success consequent upon “preaching fully and unreservedly the great doctrine of the atonement.”135

To keep the controversy active, Pusey added a few lines to the fourth edition of his Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, claiming that “the doctrine of ‘reserve in communicating religious knowledge’ ... had given rise to little controversy when the Letter was first written.”136 This was taken up in the anonymously published, A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God Richard, Lord Bishop of Oxford, Containing Strictures upon Certain Parts of Dr Pusey’s Letter to his Lordship. The author was in fact C. P. Golightly. He widened the debate when he took issue with Newman’s account of the function of the Disciplina Arcani in the early church. Concluding that it began and ended in the second century, he exclaims that “it is hard to see how the Christian minister is to make any use of it for the instruction of baptized persons now.”137 Golightly describes the economy employed by Clement and Chrysostom and rejoices that such methods are impossible in the Church of England, since the formularies were published. He doubts whether “a single Clergyman could be found in all England, who makes the doctrine of the Atonement the exclusive subject of his preaching.”138

Golightly’s most telling points are made against Williams. He finds it remarkable that in a long work, Williams had not managed to produce a single testimony from the Anglican divines in favor of his view. He refers sarcastically to the list printed by Williams at the end of the tract, which “more or less, (!)”139 uphold the doctrine, and quotes from two of the works cited. Apparently, Herbert prayed that he might bring “forward the doctrine of the Atonement explicitly, prominently, and upon all occasions,”140 while Horsley exhorted his readers to “open the whole of your message without reservations.”141 As a whole, the tract does not convince. One enjoys the points he scores, without being swayed on the main arguments.

Nevertheless, he must have stung Williams, for a prominent feature of Tract 87, published in 1840, is seventeen pages of quotations from the Anglican divines in notes at the end. And in other respects, this second tract is a great improvement on the first. At the beginning he founds the principle on his own experience in a parish, then gives a very large number of extracts from the fathers, which had apparently been mislaid when he was working on the first tract. Next, he devotes many pages to elaborating his views on the proper preaching of the atonement. But he pays the penalty for submerging the subject in words, for the eventual result is a diseconomy of scale. One is simply unable to give proper weight to each argument. It is evident that Williams is feeling a growing desperation, which evinces itself in such weary sentences as:

We have shown, from obvious moral inference, that to ameliorate the heart and practice is the only way to arrive at those riches which are hid in Christ. Surely a little reflection will show how thoroughly Holy Scripture supports this opinion throughout.142

Williams has arrived at a stage when no amount of “obvious moral inference” can convince; he is reduced to pleading and cajolery to induce the reader to attach some meaning to the words.

This new tract provoked a large number of replies. First, to demonstrate that some really thought that the Tractarians were dissimulating Jesuits, comes an anonymous pamphlet called Puseyism Unmasked: Sketches for the Times. It contains this remarkable sentence:

No means are left unemployed to disseminate these mischievous doctrines; just so much on each occasion being developed, as the audience or the readers are supposed prepared to receive, this wily principle of “Reserve” governing every other, with a constancy and perseverance worthy of Ignatius Loyola and his followers.143

The Bishop of the Protestant Church in Ohio declared, with splendid dogmatism:

No—the gospel plan of promoting sanctification is just the opposite of holding in obscurity any feature of the doctrine of justification. It is simply to preach that doctrine most fully, in all its principles and connexions.144

But more important than this, in this year the bishops began to condemn Williams in their charges. C. T. Longley, the Bishop of Ripon, who became Archbishop first of York and later of Canterbury, wrote:

Earnestly indeed do I pray, my Rev. Brethren, that you will not listen to those who would bid you be cautious and sparing in doing that which our obligations as Christian Ministers, bind us to do in all the various branches of our ministerial office.145

C. R. Sumner, the Bishop of Winchester, denied that reserve was the conclusion to be drawn from Christ’s teachings:

We, I trust, have not so learned Christ. We remember how, in the very earliest days of his ministry, he did not hesitate to bring forward some of the highest doctrines.146

Equally, he asserted that

the whole history of the church, in every age, tends to prove the utter inefficiency of a ministry which is not faithful in honouring the Saviour by a full exhibition of his grace and love.147

It appears that Williams was beginning to feel sensitive, for we find him writing to his friend Thomas Keble:

I did not tell you I had written to your Bishop for I did not think you would fancy it, but I thought it better to inform him of his great mistakes, and I have had a kind letter from him in answer. But he does not seem to have read what he speaks of.148

This bishop was the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who admitted in his charge that he had not read the tracts, “owing to a cause well known to all my Clergy, the calamitous obscuration of my visual organ between four and five years ago.”149 But this did not deter him:

First, then, I cannot help regretting that any members of our Church should have recommended reserve in declaring to the people any part of the doctrines of Scripture … The duty of “searching the Scriptures” is not confined to the minister; it attaches itself to every Christian who can read them. There is no more dangerous doctrine than that of leaving to the decision of fallible man what parts of God’s word are to be published, and what are to be kept back.150

This drew from Williams an eleven-page pamphlet, A Few Remarks on the Charge of the Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. It is all the more telling for its brevity, and contrasts in parallel columns, sentences from the charge and his own tracts. He proves that he did not recommend, as the bishop had implied, that scripture should be withheld, and shows that since his argument was based on the examples and precepts of scripture, it could not be advocating a new method of teaching.

But in 1841 the contest for the Poetry Professorship was drawing on, and this placed Williams and his tracts in even greater prominence. Pusey, in his ill-advised circular supporting Williams, which was generally felt to have lost him the professorship, touched upon the tracts, although Newman advised him to omit all reference to them.151 He said that “the uniform tendency of his writings and influence has been to calm men’s minds amid our unhappy divisions.”152

This invited the opposition to examine the tracts, and they were not slow to take up the offer. William S. Bricknell brought out his A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., in which he quoted Pusey and then somewhat scornfully gave the other side:

No publication which has emanated from the party to which Mr. Williams belongs, has tended more to disturb the minds of men than the Tracts upon “Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge.”153

Moreover, they had drawn forth some of the most earnest and pointed admonitions from those in authority. Soon Williams’s tracts became the great issue, as can be seen from this letter, which he wrote to Thomas Keble:

Wadham have taken it up in a body on religious grounds. One of that Coll. the Bp of L [rest gone in seal] Chapter wrote to say he has written to vote against the Author of No 80 - and that it was to be followed up by the University by strong measures to drive us out on which grounds he promises his vote to me.154

On 11 December 1841, Lord Ashley wrote to R. Palmer that there was no power on earth that would induce him to “assist in elevating the writer of that paper [Tract 80] to the station of a public teacher.” 155 He could see very little difference between a man who promulgates false doctrines and him who suppresses the true. Much the same was being said in the periodicals. In the British Magazine, under “Church Matters,” we find:

Doubtless there is a very strong feeling abroad as to Tract 80. Those who have never read it, revolt from its title; and of those who have, many who pass under the name by which Oxford divines are popularly distinguished, would not vote the writer into a position of influence and importance.156

This prolonged attack was clearly damaging Williams’s chances of the professorship, and some sort of defense had to be made. The “official” defense was written by H. A. Woodgate. Newman was watching the situation, and on 13 January 13 1842 wrote to Pusey:

Woodgate has come up and publishes a pamphlet tomorrow in favor of William’s Tracts.157

And a week later he reported to Pusey:

Woodgate’s pamphlet is doing service.158

The pamphlet was called A Brief Analysis of the Tracts on Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge, and described the controversy caused by the tracts, quoted from Lord Ashley’s charge, accused Williams’s opponents of not having read the tracts, and after some more energetic skirmishing of this sort, settled down to its real business of explaining the tracts. It did this by shifting their emphasis and claiming that they were written wholly against the dissenters. As we have seen, Williams was aware that the principle excluded dissent but wrote his tracts more to draw out the principle, and to inculcate reverence, than as an attack on dissent. Thus Woodgate, by an ingenious selection of the materials, which presented themselves to him, was able to make a passable defense of Williams. He stated that:

The principle developed and established in these Tracts is directed against a religious system which is adopted by the majority of Dissenters, and also certain within the Church ... The chief characteristics of this system ... [is] to take one doctrine, and a part only of this, as a centre around which to form a human system, and to give an undue (relative) prominence to this one, to the exclusion of others with which it is always either preceded or accompanied in Holy Scripture.159

He recommends reserve in speaking of sacred things and then sets himself the task of explaining why Williams had been so furiously attacked. He showed that Williams’s tract had been misapprehended:

One would imagine, from what has been alleged against these tracts, that their author was for denying religious instruction to the multitude, purposely keeping them in ignorance, and shunning to declare to them the “whole counsel of God.” And here I may mention it as a curious circumstance, that these last words have been the form which all those who have taken upon themselves to condemn these tracts, have selected for the purpose of expressing their accusation and their censure.160

He passes on to declaring the general principle, that God manifests himself in proportion to our fitness to receive him, and concludes by noting the deficiencies of Williams’s tracts:

There are some things in it with which I do not agree, some, the meaning of which I do not clearly apprehend, and some which, while I agree with their general sentiment, I could wish had been differently expressed. I could also have wished ... [that] it had entered somewhat more fully into the practical application of it to parochial ministrations.161

It is a very competent piece of controversial writing, and was reinforced by an anonymous publication, called A Letter to Certain Lay-members of the Church of England, Who have Memorialized His Grace the Primate on the Subject of the Tracts for the Times by no Tract- Writer. He shows that, since the principles of the Tractarians are indisputably those of the Church of England, to attack the tracts is to attack the church herself. He demonstrates this by reference to Williams:

Here then, to go no further, is one of the leaders of what you would call the Oxford School, and one of the very most unpopular of all the Tract-writers, whom no condemnation could shake in his position, but one which must involve in its consequences a protest against such writers as Bishop Andrews, Ken, Wilson, and Taylor.162

This is undoubtedly the tract which, for qualities of style and argument, is the best produced by the Reserve Controversy, and it received a grateful acknowledgement from the British Critic. In the “Notices of Books” for April 1842, we find:

A “Letter to certain Lay-members of the Church of England, who have memoralizedis Grace the Primate, on the subject of the ‘Tracts for the Times,’ and the Controversy arising out of them; by no Tract-writer,” (Rivingtons), though very brief, is a most able and lucid piece of argument. It is one of the many happy instances in which some particular course of hostile agitation just elicits a distinct and incontrovertible expression of the true state of the case, and then, as having done its work, dies.163

Mozley, too, came to Williams’s aid with an article in the British Critic. In his Reminiscences, he gave a low opinion of it, saying that

from the opening sentence it betrays an apologetic tone, dealing with the allowable and proper practice of reserve on ordinary occasions ... [It] was written in the thick of the contest for the Poetry Professorship.164

Nevertheless, he underestimated his achievement, for he brought some badly needed common sense to the controversy. Thus, he began by pointing out that people suspected the word, and that in many cases they were perfectly justified, yet

all modesty, humility, reverence and deep affectionateness, in a word, all goodness will appear reserved to the coarser styles of character, to people who blurt out everything the moment they see it, or think it, or feel it, and always emptying themselves have never anything left in reserve.165

Next he suggested that if clergymen started with the atonement, they would accustom their congregation to hearing awful truths with complete indifference, because of the frequency with which they were preached.

Mozley then made a distinction which is of some importance; it is between evangelical and pastoral preaching, and seems to tie up some loose ends in the controversy:

We are not so much speaking of those clergymen whose extensive parishes render their work in their own opinion rather evangelical than pastoral, and who consider that they can only declare once for all the message of salvation to those who do not come to hear; but of those whose only difficulty is the discovery of middle terms of communication, so to speak, with the mass of their parishioners, and the utter impracticability and impropriety of a continual conversation on the main doctrines of religion.166

This distinction answers those who object that a start must be made somewhere, and with those who must be roused, that start is the atonement. Mozley, despite his disclaimers, is the first to attempt some sort of synthesis between the two sides; he had the benefit of all that had gone before. He continued with the usual arguments, that reserve is a law of providence, but added that reserve is not for us to practice, but so that we may be schooled by it. Then follows an interesting argument, which has the look of being inspired by some conversation with Newman, where he argues that truths must be adapted to our capacity, and that some common mean of communication must be found:

The most simple and abstract terms in which it can be communicated, are perhaps the nearest the truth, and for that reason are not readily intelligible, or not expressive to us. In order to recommend and impress them, also, truth is communicated to us in a more complex and more human form. Yet the more Divine Truth is humanized ... the more it may be said to be reserved.167

Mozley concludes this most workmanlike article by showing that holy things are despised when brought into the open.

Thus, an effective, though belated defense was being organized, particularly since the Bishop of St. David’s, Connop Thirlwall, joined in as well. In his charge, he said that since Williams had disclaimed the meaning imputed to him, his denial should be accepted. But, since several of those who had attacked Williams were of unimpeachable character, Williams must have been obscure. On the other hand, readers had taken up the tract under an unfavorable prepossession and so misinterpreted it. The Bishop even descended to sophistry in his efforts to clear Williams:

The title itself would certainly seem to indicate an object very different from suppression: as reserve in communicating appears to imply some kind of communication.168

However, he recovers his grasp of the subject by considering the tract rather a protest against reserve, than a recommendation of it, and concludes:

That the treatise is deficient in practical directions for the application of its principles, has been admitted by its defenders. But it may still be profitable, if it tends to warn us against the danger of partial views and exhibitions of the truth, and to lead us more carefully to prserve [sic] both the fulness and the proportion of faith.169

This charge must have been welcome to Williams, since two more bishops charged against his tracts in 1842. John Bird Sumner, whose “Apostolical Preaching” recommended discretion, could not allow Williams’ handling of the subject, and accused him of attempting to “deprive the sinner at once of his motive to repent, and his comfort in repenting.”170

Charles James Blomfield, the Bishop of London, distinguished between reserve as the “reverent abstaining from a too familiar mode of treating the sacred and sublime mysteries of our religion”171 and as a Disciplina Arcani. He readily admitted the former and promptly rejected the latter. J. T. O’Brien, the Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin also condemned Williams, but his charge was not published until 1843. He imagined that Williams disparaged preaching and spoke of “the mass of sophistry and misrepresentation and confusion,”172 but nevertheless managed to score some hits. He accused Williams of behaving as though “we can determine all the reasons which actuated the blessed Lord in this part of His conduct,”173 and pointed out that Christ often performed miracles before crowds, and so could not have been afraid to show his power. He concluded by saying:

We can be very sure that it did not influence His conduct in any way which would make it safe or warrantable in us to follow His example.174

The attack soon slackened after the contest for the professorship was over. In two volumes of 1450 pages, called The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, William Goode barely mentioned reserve, apart from repeating the idea that the Tractarians practiced a reserve, which they gradually threw off as the number of their adherents increased.175 The Rev. David Croly allotted a mere two pages to reserve, concluding:

It is rather strange to characterize as divine, this system of imposition and mendacity.176

After this, all was quiet until 1845 when Hugh Stowell, the canon of Chester, published his Tractarianism Tested by Holy Scripture and the Church of England in a Series of Sermons in which he devoted 55 pages to the Tracts on Reserve. He identified Williams’s system with Roman teaching:

In their system as in that of Rome it is clear that the reservation of the free grace of God through his Son is essential to the maintenance of that moral thraldom on the part of the people, and that sacerdotal power on the part of the clergy, which are too plainly the drift of the whole scheme.177

With this, the Reserve Controversy came to an end. While it lasted, it touched upon many of the ideas which were essential to Tractarianism, and produced much energetic and vivid writing, as well as much that was confused and poorly argued. It provoked high feeling, besmirched the good name of Tractarianism, and contributed largely to Williams’s defeat in that important trial of strength, the contest for the Poetry Professorship. The Reserve Controversy dragged out into the open a principle, the very essence of which is that it must work unseen. Fortunately, the controversy was quickly forgotten, while the principle lived on in practice.

74 1 Cor. 3:1–2.

75 Anne Mozley ed., Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman During his Life in the English Church: With a Brief Autobiography (Longmans, Green, 1891), 29 August 1836, 2:209.

76 Thomas Mozley, Reminiscences Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement (Longmans, Green, 1882), 1:430.

77 Mozley, Reminiscences, 1:435.

78 R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years, 1833–1845 (Macmillan, 1891), 230–31.

79 John Keble to Newman (07 November 1838), LD, 6:340.

80 Newman to John Keble (19 July 1839), LD, 7:111.

81 Newman to J W Bowden (19 March 1838), LD, 6:216.

82 Isaac Williams, Tract 80, Part I, Section 1.

83 Williams, Tract 80, Part I Section 3.

84 Williams, Tract 80, Part I Section 3.

85 Williams, Tract 80, Part I Section 4.

86 Williams, Tract 80, Part I Section 5.

87 Williams, Tract 80, Part I Section 5.

88 Williams, Tract 80, Part I Section 12.

89 Williams, Tract 80, Part II Section 5.

90 Williams, Tract 80, Part II Section 6.

91 Williams, Tract 80, Part II Section 6.

92 Williams, Tract 80, Part II Section 7.

93 Williams, Tract 80, Part II Section 7.

94 Williams, Tract 80, Part II Section 8.

95 Williams, Tract 80, Part III Section 4.

96 Williams, Tract 80, Part III Section 4.

97 Williams, Tract 80, Part III Section 4.

98 Williams, Tract 80, Part III, Section 5.

99 British Critic (July 1838): 24:232.

100 C. S. Bird, The Oxford Tract System Considered with Reference to the Principle of Reserve in Preaching (J. Hatchard and Son, 1838), 9. C. S. Bird was Vicar of Gainsborough and MA of Trinity College, Cambridge.

101 Bird, The Oxford Tract System, 16.

102 Bird, The Oxford Tract System, 11–12.

103 Bird, The Oxford Tract System, 19–20.

104 Bird, The Oxford Tract System, 13.

105 Henry Phillpotts, Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Exeter (John Murray, 1839), Pusey Pamphlets No. 3112, 83.

106 Baden Powell, Tradition Unveiled: Or, an Exposition of the Pretensions and Tendency of Authoritative Teaching in the Church. (J. W. Parker, 1839), Pusey Pamphlets No 3086a, 55.

107 Powell, Tradition Unveiled, 56.

108 Powell, Tradition Unveiled, 57.

109 Henry Le Mesurier, A Recent Tract upon Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge Compared with Scripture (J. H. Parker, 1839), Pusey Pamphlets No. 5388, 12.

110 Le Mesurier, A Recent Tract upon Reserve, 21–22.

111 Le Mesurier, A Recent Tract upon Reserve, 25.

112 Le Mesurier, A Recent Tract upon Reserve, 45.

113 Le Mesurier, A Recent Tract upon Reserve, 47.

114 Newman, PS, first preached 14 December 1834, 2:309–310.

115 Le Mesurier, A Recent Tract upon Reserve, 57.

116 Unpublished MS at Keble College.

117 Newman to Edward Bouverie Pusey (3 April 1840), LD, 7:287.

118 British Critic 25 (April 1839): 259.

119 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 260.

120 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 261, 265.

121 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 268.

122 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 278.

123 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 282.

124 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 283.

125 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 283.

126 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 284.

127 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 284.

128 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 286.

129 British Critic, 25 (April 1839): 292.

130 J. H. Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, Especially as it is Developed in the 80th and 83rd Tracts (J. Hatchard & Son, 1840), 8.

131 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 18.

132 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 25.

133 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 25–26.

134 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 28–29.

135 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 154.

136 E. B. Pusey, Preface to the Fourth Edition of the “Letter to the Right Rev. Father in God, Richard, Lord Bishop of Oxford, on the Tendency to Romanism Imputed to Doctrines Held of Old, as now, in the English Church” (J. H. Parker, 1840), li–lii.

137 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 83.

138 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System,91.

139 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 99.

140 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 101.

141 Browne, Strictures on Some Parts of the Oxford Tract System, 102.

142 Isaac Williams, Tract 87, Part V, Section 6.

143 Puseyism Unmasked: Sketches for the Times (James Nisbet, 1841), 2.

144 Charles P. McIlvaine, Oxford Divinity Compared with that of the Romish and Anglican Churches: With a Special View to the Illustration of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith (Joseph Whetham & Son, 1841), 540.

145 Charles Longley, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Ripon, at his Triennial Visitation, in July & August, 1841 (J. G. F. & J. Rivington, 1841), Pusey Pamphlets No. 3115, 23–24.

146 Charles Sumner, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Winchester at his Fourth Visitation in September, 1841 (J. Hatchard and Son, 1841), Pusey Pamphlets No. 3118, 31.

147 Sumner, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Winchester, 33–34.

148 Unpublished MS. at Pusey House, Chest B, drawer 5, undated.

149 James-Henry Monk, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, at his Visitation in August and September, 1841 (J. G. F. & J. Rivington, 1841), Pusey Pamphlets No. 3116, 31.

150 Monk, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, 32–33.

151 Henry Parry Liddon, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893), 2:262.

152 Liddon, Life of Pusey, Pusey Pamphlets No 70435, 2:263.

153 William S. Bricknell, A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D. D. (J. Vincent, 1841), Pusey Pamphlets No. 5524, 6. Bricknell was the incumbent of Grove, Berkshire, and later Vicar of Eynsham. He was the author of The Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology, 1845.

154 Unpublished MS. at Pusey House, Chest B, drawer 5, undated.

155 Liddon, Life of Pusey, 2:265.

156 British Magazine 21 (1 February 1842): 205.

157 Newman to Edward Bouverie Pusey (13 January 1842), LD, 8:423.

158 Newman, LD, 8:431.

159 Henry A. Woodgate, A Brief Analysis of the Tracts on Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge (J. H. Parker, 1842), Pusey Pamphlets No. 2791, 9.

160 Woodgate, A Brief Analysis, 15.

161 Woodgate, A Brief Analysis, 41.

162 A Letter to Certain Lay-members of the Church of England, Who have Memorialized His Grace the Primate on the Subject of the Tracts for the Times by no Tract- Writer (Rivington, 1842), Pusey Pamphlets No. 5594, 12.

163 British Critic 31 (April 1842): 554.

164 Thomas Mozley, Reminiscences Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement (Houghton, Mifflin, 1882), 2:247.

165 British Critic 31 (April 1842): 212.

166 British Critic 31 (April 1842): 219.

167 British Critic 31 (April 1842): 225.

168 Connop Thirlwall, A Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of St. David’s, by Connop, Lord Bishop of St. David’s, Delivered at his Primary Visitation, October 1842 (Rivingtons, 1842), Pusey Pamphlets No. 72531, 59.

169 Thirlwall, A Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of St. David’s, 59–60.

170 John Bird Sumner, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Chester, at the Visitation in June and September 1841 (J. Hatchard and Son, 1842), Pusey Pamphlets No. 3113, 23.

171 Charles James, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London at the Visitation in October 1842 (B. Fellowes, 1842), Pusey Pamphlets No 72530, 28–29.

172 James Thomas O’Brien, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the United Dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, at the Primary Visitation in September 1842 (Seeley, Burnside & Seeley, 1843), Pusey Pamphlets No. 72529, 46.

173 O’Brien, A Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the United Dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, 54.

174 O’Brien, A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the United Dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, 62.

175 William Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice (Hatchard, 1853), 1:vi.

176 David Croly, An Index to the Tracts for the Times (J. Vincent, 1842), 66.

177 Hugh Stowell, Tractarianism Tested by Holy Scripture and the Church of England in a Series of Sermons (J. Hatchard & Son, 1845), 1:309.