E. B. Pusey

English religious leader

• Born: August 22, 1800
• Birthplace: Pusey, Berkshire, England
• Died: September 16, 1882
• Place of death: Ascot Priory, Berkshire, England

Pusey was a leader of the Oxford Movement to revive Anglo-Catholic doctrines and practices in the life of the Church of England, a defender of the Bible against attacks from higher criticism, and a distinguished scholar in Semitic languages.

Early Life

Edward Bouverie Pusey (PEW-zih) was born into an English family with French Huguenot roots. His father, Philip Bouverie, assumed the name Pusey when he succeeded to the Pusey manor in 1789. Edward’s paternal grandfather was the first Viscount Folkestone. Pusey received his early education at a school in Mitchum, Surrey, operated by Anglican clergyman Richard Roberts. From there he went to Eton in 1812, where he studied under the tutorial guidance of Edward Maltby, who later became bishop of Durham. In 1819, he enrolled at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he earned high distinction in classical studies. In 1824, Pusey obtained a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, evidently in recognition of his outstanding scholarship. His Latin-language essay on the colonial expansion of ancient Greece and Rome won for him a university award that enhanced his reputation for erudition.

Pusey received a bachelor’s degree in 1822 and a master’s degree in 1825, and he spent the periods of June to September, 1825, and June, 1826, to July, 1827, in Germany at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, and Bonn. While in that country he studied under some of Europe’s most illustrious theologians, all but one of whom espoused the higher critical approach to the Bible and a rationalist interpretation of historic Christian doctrine. Pusey’s exposure to this teaching came as a result of contacts with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann August Wilhelm Neander, Johann Gottfried Eichorn, and other noteworthy academicians.

Although Pusey established a cordial relationship with some of his German professors, and though he proved to be a brilliant student in their classes, he rejected higher criticism and became an outspoken defender of traditional Christian doctrines. The teaching of Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, a professor at Berlin, seems to have encouraged Pusey to maintain his belief in the historical accuracy and divine authority of the Scriptures. Hengstenberg, once a rationalist himself, had begun moving toward pietism when Pusey met him, and both eventually became famous champions of orthodoxy, Hengstenberg in Lutheranism, his pupil in Anglicanism.

While in Germany Pusey mastered the Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic languages, which equipped him well for work as an exegetical commentator on various books of the Old Testament.

Soon after returning to England, Pusey was married and was ordained a member of the clergy; he published An Historical Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character Lately Predominant in the Theology of Germany in 1828. In this book the author sounded an alarm to fellow Anglicans to guard their church against German teachings that, he feared, might infect England and impair the religious health of its national church. Perhaps because of his awkward style, some readers misunderstood the book and contended mistakenly that Pusey was actually a rationalist himself. Pusey was never satisfied with this book, and later in life he took steps to prevent anyone from reprinting it.

Life’s Work

The year 1828 was a turning point in Pusey’s career, when the duke of Wellington nominated him Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, a position he retained until he died. By 1828, he had established his reputation through his studies in Germany and by his learned publications. As Regius Professor he continued the work of his celebrated predecessor, Alexander Nicoll, in collecting and editing Arabic manuscripts, and he taught Hebrew language classes with the devotion of a theologian dedicated to the exposition of the Old Testament. Pusey’s students were numerous, and many were preparing for the ministry. He had a particular concern to convey to them his own confidence in the inspiration and reliability of the Bible.

In addition to his expert teaching, Pusey wrote extensively and published two profound commentaries on selected Old Testament books. Daniel the Prophet appeared in 1864, and The Minor Prophets with a Commentary Explanatory and Practical was published between 1860 and 1877. Both of these works reflect the author’s staunch conservatism in doctrine and his aggressive defense of the Scriptures against higher criticism.

Pusey defended the authenticity of Daniel against scholars who assigned the authorship of the book to the Maccabean era. He contended that it is the work of the sixth century b.c.e. prophet whose name it bears, and he related that he had selected this Old Testament book as a battleground on which he wanted to fight those who contended for the later date. In the course of stating his case, Pusey argued that the critical method of Bible study arose from the disbelief of its exponents. He wrote that he hoped to “shake the confidence of the young in their would-be misleaders.… Disbelief ha[s] been the parent, not the offspring of their criticism.” In The Minor Prophets, he interpreted the bizarre experience of Jonah in the belly of a fish as literal history, and he accepted at face value Christ’s claim that the entombment of Jonah in the sea monster prophesied his own burial and bodily resurrection.

The Hebrew Psalter was one of Pusey’s favorite portions of the Bible. He studied the Psalms devotedly and entered numerous marginal notes, many of which are cross-references to other texts in the Bible. He intended to revise the King James Version, and for that purpose he used one special copy of the Scriptures in which he inserted corrections and emendations to the text. He completed the revisions in Job and Psalms and did extensive work on the Minor Prophets and the Pentateuch. Pusey did not, however, complete this project or publish what he had finished. In his will he expressed doubts about his textual revisions and directed that his work not be published. He began his effort to revise the King James Version in 1827, but after 1833 he directed his energies to other projects, principally to the Oxford Movement.

The Oxford Movement arose in response to the spread of skepticism that had originated in the eighteenth century and that had prompted considerable interest, especially among Liberal politicians, to reduce the wealth and privileges of the Church of England. Its adherents opposed liberalism—by which they meant materialism, rationalism, indifference to religious doctrines, and state control of the Anglican Church. Oxford Movement leaders decried Evangelicalism, Methodism, and those vigorous Protestants who vociferously denounced the Papacy.

The movement began formally in 1833, when John Keble, a renowned religious poet associated with Oriel College, preached a sermon subsequently published as National Apostasy, Considered in a Sermon Preached in St. Mary’s (1833). Keble called fellow Anglicans to rise to the defense of their church and its rights that the Liberal government threatened to violate by reducing the number of bishops and exerting increasing control over ecclesiastical affairs. Soon able preachers and scholars from Oxford University began publishing Tracts for the Times , pamphlets designed to effect wide dissemination of their concerns. John Henry Newman became the most famous of these Tractarians, and Pusey adhered to the movement late in 1834 or early in 1835, probably at the urging of his friend Newman.

Pusey feared that the political victory that the Liberals had secured in 1832 would not only threaten the structure of the Anglican Church but also encourage the spread of indifference toward Christianity in general. His first written contribution to the Oxford Movement was a treatise on baptism, which appeared in three portions as tracts sixty-seven, sixty-eight, and sixty-nine. After the issuing of these compositions, the tracts became essays of great substance rather than simple pamphlets. Newman rejoiced at Pusey’s contributions and hailed his adherence to the movement as greatly enhancing its credibility.

As a Tractarian, Pusey wrote extensively on theological themes. In Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism (1836), he argued that this sacrament unites one with Christ through regeneration, an interpretation widely held by High Church Anglicans but rejected by most members of the Evangelical wing of the Church of England. Although there was much criticism of his position, Pusey’s teaching on baptism eventually gained broad acceptance within his church.

Ever since the Church of England had broken with the Papacy in the sixteenth century, its scholars had been divided in their understanding of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Pusey set forth an Anglo-Catholic view of this matter in a sermon preached at Oxford in May, 1843. He affirmed the Real Presence of Christ and portrayed the Eucharist as a means of comfort to penitents.

Although he seems to have remained within the borders of Anglican doctrine, Dr. G. Fausett, professor of divinity, charged that the sermon contained heresy. The vice chancellor of the university then initiated proceedings against Pusey. A committee of six theologians examined the case, and Fausett was one of the six. The university statute governing such matters did not guarantee the accused a hearing, and Pusey did not receive one. The committee concluded that he had violated the doctrines of the Anglican Church, and the vice chancellor suspended him from preaching at the university for two years. Pusey received no formal notice about the identity of his accuser but learned it at second hand. University officials did not reveal exactly what were the offensive portions of the sermon, and even William Ewart Gladstone and Justice John Taylor Coleridge could not obtain an explanation on his behalf.

Pusey tried to show that his understanding of the Eucharist concurred with that of early church fathers, but his opponents dismissed that as advocacy of transubstantiation, which he really did not espouse. Pusey believed the presence of Christ in the sacrament to be a mystery beyond explanation.

Because High Church Anglicans in general and Oxford Movement leaders in particular believed that the Bible should be interpreted with reference to the fathers, ancient creeds, and liturgical traditions, Pusey initiated work on Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church Anterior to the Division of East and West (1838-1885), a project that extended eventually to forty-eight volumes. Keble and Newman were joint editors. Although Pusey had full confidence in the truth of Scripture, he maintained that the Church must preserve ancient doctrines against modern private interpretations that, he believed, were the besetting sins of the Evangelicals both within and without the Church of England. He appreciated the Evangelicals’ reverence for the Bible, but he disliked their rejection of Catholic sacramental teachings. Pusey, for example, accused them of rationalism in their denial of baptismal regeneration.

Because the Oxford Movement stressed the Catholicity of Anglican beliefs so vigorously, its leaders were often accused of being Roman Catholics at heart, as attacks on Pusey’s view of the Eucharist attest. Suspicions about Romanist leanings were not entirely unfounded, for in 1845 John Henry Newman left the Oxford Movement to join the papal church. Pusey, however, despite his friend’s efforts to woo him, remained a convinced Anglican.

Pusey disliked the great veneration for the Virgin Mary in Catholicism, and he regarded it as a major barrier to reunion between the Roman and Anglican churches. He tried to dissuade people from following Newman’s example, claiming that the Church of England preserved the true doctrine of the sacraments and apostolic succession of bishops and genuine Catholic teachings. He published The Doctrine of the Real Presence (1855) and The Real Presence (1857) to support his contention.

Despite his defense of the Anglican Church against the claims of Rome, Pusey recognized that the two churches had much in common, and he wished that they could be reunited. He expressed this desire in An Eirenicon (1865-1876). There he cited Roman Catholic teachings about purgatory and indulgences, together with the position of the Virgin Mary, as chief obstacles to reunion. After Vatican Council I promulgated the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870, Pusey lost all hope for official reconciliation with Rome.

Although the Evangelicals often accused Pusey of Romanism, he maintained a remarkably generous attitude toward them. Whereas Newman and other spokespeople for the Oxford Movement strongly disdained the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, Pusey was restrained in his criticisms of their teachings. When the Evangelicals proposed erecting a martyrs’ memorial in Oxford to honor the reformers, he supported the effort, even though his colleagues in the movement regarded it as a device to embarrass them. Pusey’s rather kindly disposition toward the Protestants is especially noteworthy when one realizes that he founded an order of Anglican nuns and composed the first manual to guide Anglican clergymen when hearing confessions.

The leaders of the Oxford Movement did not extol learning for its own sake but were scholar-zealots committed to a cause. They defended a definite body of doctrine that, they believed, constituted the heart of Christianity, as the career of Pusey illustrates. Pusey was the most erudite advocate of this view. He seems never to have doubted what he believed, and he had little patience with Christians who lacked religious fervor. He did, however, sympathize with people who, because of intellectual problems, did not believe. He had great concern for the spiritual well-being of the wealthy, whom he often reminded of their obligation to aid the poor, and his order of nuns became famous for its ministry to the poverty-stricken residents of urban areas.

Significance

E. B. Pusey strove valiantly to combat secularism in an increasingly materialist society. Among Oxford Movement leaders he was probably the most independent thinker. In contrast to Newman, who wanted the Anglican Church to elect its own bishops, Pusey appealed to the Crown to prevent unworthy men from becoming prelates. At first, he did not have episcopal approval for his plan to establish a religious order of nuns, but that did not deter him. Unlike others in the Oxford Movement who, because of subscription to apostolic succession, stressed obedience to bishops, he sometimes acted on his own without much regard for episcopal authority.

Although Pusey’s resistance to higher criticism and his doctrinal conservatism did not prevail in the Church of England, his view of the sacraments, his order of nuns, and his espousal of Catholic traditions have remained potent influences in the worldwide Anglican communion.

Bibliography

Brilioth, Yngve. The Anglican Revival: Studies in the Oxford Movement. London: Longmans, Green, 1925. Reprint. 1975. This is still one of the most reliable surveys of the movement, one that no student of religion in the Victorian era can afford to ignore.

Brose, Olive. Church and Parliament. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959. This basically political account helps one to place the Oxford Movement within the context of English Liberal reformist thinking and legislation.

Chadwick, Owen. The Mind of the Oxford Movement. London: A. and C. Black, 1960.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Victorian Church. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. Chadwick’s two works are masterpieces of thorough scholarship and readable prose. They are invaluable for this subject.

Church, Richard William. The Oxford Movement, Twelve Years, 1833-1845. New York: Macmillan, 1891. Reprint. Edited by Geoffrey Best. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. This reprint brings to modern readers the insights of one who participated in the movement and wrote the first account of its founding and early history. Although the author wrote as an enthusiast, he was duly critical of his colleagues.

Elder, Gregory P. Chronic Vigour: Darwin, Anglicans, Catholics, and the Development of a Doctrine of Providential Evolution. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996. Examines the Anglican clergymen who knew and endorsed Darwin’s theory of evolution, and altered their theology in response to it. The first chapter of the book discusses Pusey’s connection to Darwin.

Fairweather, Eugene. The Oxford Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. A profound analysis by a skilled church historian.

Liddon, H. P. Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey. Edited by John O. Johnston and Robert J. Wilson. 4 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1893-1897. Despite its age and the author’s great devotion to Pusey, this remains the standard biography.

Newman, John Henry. Apologia Pro Vita Sua. London: Longman, Green, 1864. Rev. ed. Edited by Daniel M. O’Connell. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1930. An indispensable primary source for the careers of both Newman and Pusey.

Pusey, Edward Bouverie. Daniel the Prophet. London: John Henry and James Parker, 1864. Reprint. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1885.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Occasional Sermons Selected from Published Sermons of E. B. Pusey. London: Walter Smith, 1884. Specimens of Pusey’s pulpit work that show that he was a rather awkward preacher but one who proclaimed his message with great fervor.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Minor Prophets with Commentary Explanatory and Practical. 6 vols. Oxford, England: Parker, 1860-1877. Reprint. 2 vols. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1885. This effort offers the best evidence of the amazing erudition of Pusey and shows his method as an apologist for traditional beliefs, theological and biblical.