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Learning Against Religion, Learning as Religion: Mark Pattison and the ‘Victorian Crisis of Faith’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Duncan Nimmo
Duncan Nimmo*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

In the drama of English church history in the nineteenth century, the reverend Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1861 to 1884, has hitherto been accorded a minor and somewhat transient role. He has appeared in two guises: first, as an Oxford Tractarian who, compelled by Newman’s secession in 1845 to choose between the Church of England and of Rome, opted for the former, but found his faith so unsettled by the process that he eventually lost it altogether; and secondly, as one of the contributors to that landmark—and landmine—of Anglican theology, Essays and Reviews. The argument of this paper is that his role was in fact both more constant and more considerable: an exploration of conflict between learning and religion, reason and faith; a conflict which in one way or another spanned his life, and in which reason did not merely criticise and challenge religion, but also aspired to replace it. In these two forms the conflict of learning and belief was, it need hardly be said, a key element in the so-called ‘Victorian crisis of faith’; insofar as Pattison’s career embodied it, he becomes a representative figure of the experience of his time, and so takes his stand, if not at the centre, then certainly in the foreground of the ecclesiastical stage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 17: Religion and Humanism , 1981 , pp. 311 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1981

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References

1 See for instance Reardon, [B.M.G.], [From Coleridge to Gore] (London 1971)Google Scholar; Chadwick, [O.], [The Victorian Church] 2 vols (London 1966-70)Google Scholar; Storr, [V.F.], [The Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century] (London 1913)Google Scholar.

2 Reflections in Symondson, A.J. (ed), The Victorian Crisis of Faith (London 1970)Google Scholar; Crowther, M. A., The Church Embattled: religious Controversy in nineteenth century England (Newton Abbot 1970)Google Scholar; Willey, [Basil], [More Nineteenth Century Studies: a Croup of Honest Doubters] (New York 1956)Google Scholar; Richter, M., The Politics of Conscience : T. H. Green and his Age (London 1964)Google Scholar; Chadwick vol 2 caps 1-3.

3 Oxford Bodleian MS Pattison 7* pp 39-41. Part of the passage is quoted in Nimmo, D. ‘Towards and away from Newman’s theory of doctrinal development : pointers from Mark Pattison in 1838 and 1846’, JTS 29 (1978) pp 160–2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Pattison, [M.], Memoirs (London 1885) p 172 Google Scholar.

5 Ibid pp 8, 22.

6 Noted for instance by Newsome, D. H., The Parting of Friends (London 1966) pp ix, 14–15 Google Scholar.

7 Culler, A. D., The Imperial Intellect (New Haven 1955) p xii Google Scholar.

8 Holmes, J. D., ‘Newman, Froude and Pattison: some aspects of their relations’, JHR 4 (1966-7) 28–38 Google Scholar.

9 See Best, G.F. A., ‘Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain’, in Robson, R. (ed), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London 1967) pp 115-42Google Scholar.

10 Reprinted in [Nettleship, H. (ed),] Essays [by the late Mark Pattison] 2 vols (Oxford 1889) pp 42–118 Google Scholar, at p 86.

11 Pattison, Memoirs, pp 237-8.

12 Respectively Pattison, M., Isaac Casaubon 1559-1614 (London 1875) pp 519-20Google Scholar; Essays vol 2 p 223.

13 Surveys of the movement in the works cited in n 1.

14 Francis, [M.], [‘The origin of Essays and Reviews! an interpretation of Mark Pattison in the 1850s’], HJ 17 no 4 (1974) pp 797–811 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Not least by his biographer, Faber, [G.], [Jowett] (London 1957), esp caps 9–12 Google Scholar.

16 See Ward, W. R., Victorian Oxford (London 1965), esp caps 7 Google Scholar, 9,10,11; Ward, [W.R.], ‘Oxford and [the origins of] Liberal Catholicism [in the Church of England]’, SCH 1 (1964) pp 233-52Google Scholar.

17 Bill, E.G. W., University Reform in nineteenth century Oxford: a study of H. H. Vaughan (Oxford 1973), pp 118–124 Google Scholar.

18 For Jowett’s progress see Faber caps 9, 10; the details on Pattison will be found in the Pattison MSS in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, as follows: Fichte—MS 7* pp 115, 130 522, 524; Hegel—ibid p 113, MS 137 pp 103,104,139; Schleiermacher—Ibid p 146, MS 7* pp 167, 247, 628; Strauss—ibid pp 160, 586-8, MS 137 p 52; Niebuhr—MS 7* pp 346-8; Bunsen—MS 137 pp 134,137,142. For the general effect of Niebuhr on English thinkers, especially Thomas Arnold, see Storr pp 187,190; for William’s use of Bunsen see Willey 142-5.

19 Francis pp 80293.

20 Reprinted in Essays vol 2 pp 210-62. Storr refers to this article in a footnote—p 437 n 3.

21 Essays vol 2 pp 211-14.

22 Ibid pp 225-37.

23 Ibid p 225.

24 See Chadwick, O., The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge 1975), cap 8, esp pp 191–4 Google Scholar, 224.

25 Reprinted in Essays vol 2 pp 42-118.

26 This is most evident from the different interpretations of the essay offered by leading commentators : Reardon pp 329-31; Chadwick vol 2 p 76; Faber p 244; Storr pp 437-9. See also Cockshut, A.O.J., Anglican Attitudes (London 1959) pp 77–8 Google Scholar; Ellis, I., ‘Essays and Reviews reconsidered’, Theology 74 (1971) pp 396–404 Google Scholar.

27 Francis, esp pp 800, 810.

28 Essays vol 2 pp 43-4.

29 Pattison, Memoirs, pp 313-4.

30 Francis pp 810-11.

31 Faber pp 325-6.

32 The article in Essays vol 2 pp 263-308; the sermons in Pattison, [M.], Sermons (London 1885) pp 137–214 Google Scholar.

33 Essays vol 2 p 277.

34 Essays vol 2 p 282; Pattison, Sermons, pp 170-1.

35 Ibid pp 178-80, 204-6.

36 Ibid p 166-7.

37 Ibid p 144.

38 See Pattison, Memoirs, p 317.

39 Chadwick vol 2 pp 97-111; Ward, ‘Oxford and Liberal Catholicism’.

40 Green, V.H.H., Oxford Common Room: a Study of Lincoln College and Mark Pattisoir (London 1957) pp 224–5, 318Google Scholar.

41 Quoted ibid p 319.

42 Pattison, Memoirs, p 210.

43 Oxford Bodleian MS Pattison 129 fol 120?.

44 Oxford Bodleian MS Pattison 130 fol 57r.

45 Quoted by Sparrow, J., Mark Pattison and the Idea of a University (Cambridge 1967) p 131 Google Scholar.

46 Ibid passim.