bad faith and immorality manifested in the teaching of which No. 90 was
the outcome. Dr. Faussett, as was to be expected, threw himself into the
fray with his accustomed zest and violence, and caused some amusement at
Oxford, first by exposing himself to the merciless wit of a reviewer in
the _British Critic_, and then by the fright into which he was thrown by
a rumour that his reelection to his professorship would be endangered by
Tractarian votes.[96] But the storm, at Oxford at least, seemed to die
out. The difficulty which at one moment threatened of a strike among
some of the college Tutors passed; and things went back to their
ordinary course. But an epoch and a new point of departure had come into
the movement. Things after No. 90 were never the same as to language and
hopes and prospects as they had been before; it was the date from which
a new set of conditions in men's thoughts and attitude had to be
reckoned. Each side felt that a certain liberty had been claimed and
had been peremptorily denied. And this was more than confirmed by the
public language of the greater part of the Bishops. The charges against
the Tractarian party of Romanising, and of flagrant dishonesty, long
urged by irresponsible opponents, were now formally adopted by the
University authorities, and specially directed against the foremost man
of the party. From that time the fate of the party at Oxford was
determined. It must break up. Sooner or later, there must be a secession
more or less discrediting and disabling those who remained. And so the
break-up came, and yet, so well grounded and so congenial to the English
Church were the leading principles of the movement, that not even that
disastrous and apparently hopeless wreck prevented them from again
asserting their claim and becoming once more active and powerful. The
_Via Media_, whether or not logically consistent, was a thing of genuine
English growth, and was at least a working theory.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] _Apologia_, p. 180.

[85] _Essays Critical and Historical_, 1871.

[86] _Apologia_, pp. 181, 182. Comp. _Letter to Jelf_, p. 18.

[87] _British Critic_, April 1839, pp. 419-426. Condensed in the
_Apologia_, pp. 192-194.

[88] _Letter to the Bishop of Oxford_ (29th March 1841), pp. 33-40.
Comp. _Letter to Jelf_, pp. 7, 8.

[89] _Apologia_, pp. 212, 221.

[90] _Letter to Jelf_ [especially p. 19].

[91] _Walton's Life_, i. 59 (Oxford: 1845).

[92] No. 90, p. 24.

[93] The