Untitled - Electric Scotland

i84 i] HEAT OF THE CONTROVERSY 85
Popery feeling of the country on his side. But in Oxford, where
his life then lay, Protestantism was at a discount with all but
the old fogies. Those who represented liberalism in theology,
the remnants of the Whately school, Hampden, Baden-Powell,
Cox, and others, were now nowhere. All that was most ardent
and generous among the younger fellows and among the under
graduates went enthusiastically with the romantic devotion and
the utter unworldliness of the Tractarian leaders. They had shown
a new thing in Oxford and in : England had turned their backs
on promotion and preferment, and given their lives to what
worldlings called a ^
hopeless enterprise."
To stand up against them was to court unpopularity,
misrepresentation, and attack, on the part of the very
public for whose good opinion Tait cared most. And the
attack came unsparingly. The controversy soon waxed
vehement, and on either side indignant pamphlets followed
one another in rapid succession. Among those who
thus defended the controverted Tract were Dr. Pusey,
W. G. Ward, Frederick Oakeley, and William Palmer
2
of Magdalen. Among the pamphleteers on the other
side were Professor Sewell and William Palmer of Wor
cester (both of whom had been friends of the Tract
writers), C. P. Golightly,
and Robert Lowe.
Tait, after the issue of the original Protest, seems to
have taken no public part in the controversy, and although
his private correspondence on the subject was considerable,
1
Principal Shairp continues : "I remember another occasion on which he
showed, though in a smaller matter, the same kind of courage. He was
preaching in St. Mary s, before the University, and, having occasion to allude
to the older Evangelicals, Newton, Cecil, Wilberforce, etc., he spoke of them
as those men whom, after all, I will not hesitate to call the most truly
religious section of our own Church. That it cost him an effort to make
this demonstration was shown by the sudden raising of his voice and flushing
of his countenance." The sermon to which Principal Shairp alludes was
afterwards published in The Dangers and Safeguards of Modern Theology.
The words quoted above are on p. 45.
1 Mr. Keble s Pamphlet, published by Dr. Pusey in 1866, was only
privately printed in 1 84 1 .