in irresponsible
hands, begun by men whose words were strong and vehement and of unusual
sound, and who, while they called on the clergy to rally round their
fathers the Bishops, did not shrink from wishing for the Bishops the
fortunes of the early days: "we could not wish them a more blessed
termination of their course than the spoiling of their goods and
martyrdom."[76] It may reasonably be supposed that such good wishes were
not to the taste of all of them. As the movement developed, besides that
it would seem to them extravagant and violent, they would be perplexed
by its doctrine. It took strong ground for the Church; but it did so in
the teeth of religious opinions and prejudices, which were popular and
intolerant. For a moment the Bishops were in a difficulty; on the one
hand, no one for generations had so exalted the office of a Bishop as
the Tractarians; no one had claimed for it so high and sacred an origin;
no one had urged with such practical earnestness the duty of Churchmen
to recognise and maintain the unique authority of the Episcopate against
its despisers or oppressors. On the other hand, this was just the time
when the Evangelical party, after long disfavour, was beginning to gain
recognition, for the sake of its past earnestness and good works, with
men in power, and with ecclesiastical authorities of a different and
hitherto hostile school; and in the Tractarian movement the Evangelical
party saw from the first its natural enemy. The Bishops could not have
anything to do with the Tractarians without deeply offending the
Evangelicals. The result was that, for the present, the Bishops held
aloof. They let the movement run on by itself. Sharp sarcasms,
worldly-wise predictions, kind messages of approval, kind cautions,
passed from mouth to mouth, or in private correspondence from high
quarters, which showed that the movement was watched. But for some time
the authorities spoke neither good nor bad of it publicly. In his Charge
at the close of 1836, Bishop Phillpotts spoke in clear and unfaltering
language--language remarkable for its bold decision--of the necessity of
setting forth the true idea of the Church and the sacraments; but he was
silent about the call of the same kind which had come from Oxford. It
would have been well if the other Bishops later on, in their charges,
had followed his example. The Bishop of Oxford, in his Charge of 1838,
referred to the movement in balanced terms of praise and