Untitled - Electric Scotland

1841] CHARGES OF BISHOPS 99
Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter, whose vigorous and uncom
promising High Churchmanship had led many to identify
him with the Tractarian school. He spoke before long,
and as usual with no uncertain sound
"
" The tone of the Tract," he said, as respects our own Church
is offensive and indecent : as regards the Reformation and our
Reformers absurd, as well as incongruous and unjust. Its
principles of interpreting
our Articles I cannot but deem most
unsound : the reasoning with which it supports its principles
sophistical : the averments on which it founds its reasoning, at
variance with recorded facts. ... It is idle to argue against
statements which were not designed -for argument, but for scoffing.
... It is far the most daring attempt ever yet made by a
minister of the Church of England to neutralise the distinctive
doctrines of our Church and to make us symbolise with Rome." l
Considering what has so often been said in later years
about the mere ignorance, or haste, or partisan bias of the
Four Tutors and their friends, 2 it is not out of place to
call attention to such words as these, and to the source
from which they came. Most of the Bishops spoke in
similar, if less trenchant, terms. Bishop Blomfield, in some
respects the foremost Bishop on the Bench, had some
difficulty, as his Biography shows, in deciding clearly as to
his best line of conduct ; and a curious triangular corre
spondence took place between Tait, Oakeley, and the
Bishop, with reference to a supposed remark of the
Bishop s to Oakeley in favour of the Tractarians, which
Tait had repeated upon Oakeley s authority. The
only bearing of the letters upon the present biography
is their evidence to the firm friendship subsisting between
Tait and Oakeley during the controversies wherein, upon
different sides, both were involved.
1
These controversies do not seem to have interfered
Charge, pp. 31, 32.
1
e.g. by Dr. Pusey in his pamphlet on Tract xc., published in 1865.