Born near Oxford, 1800: died Sept. 16, 1882. An English theologian. His name was originally Edward Bouverie: the family, of Huguenot origin, became lords of the manor of Pusey, near Oxford, and from it took that name. In 1818 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1824 became a fellow of Oriel. He was associated with John Henry Newman and John Keble. In 1828 he was regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford and canon of Christ Church. In 1835 he took part in the tractarian movement, and later was suspended for three years (1843–46) from the function of preaching for publishing “The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent.” The movement thus started took the name “Puseyism.” The practice of confession among the extreme ritualists of the Church of England dates from his two sermons on “the entire absolution of the penitent” (1846). Among his works are “Parochial Sermons,” “Doctrines of the Real Presence,” and “The Minor Prophets.” He was one of the editors of the “Library of Translations from the Fathers” and the “Anglo-Catholic Library.”

Personal

  I have had several conversations with Pusey on religion since I last mentioned him. How can I doubt his seriousness? His very eagerness to talk of the Scriptures seems to prove it. May I lead him forward, at the same time gaining good from him! He has told me the plan of his Essay for the Chancellor’s prize, and I clearly see that it is much better than mine. I cannot think I shall get it; to this day I have thought I should…. That Pusey is Thine, O Lord, how can I doubt? His deep views of the Pastoral Office, his high ideas of the spiritual rest of the Sabbath, his devotional spirit, his love of the Scriptures, his firmness and zeal, all testify to the operation of the Holy Ghost; yet I fear he is prejudiced against Thy children. Let me never be eager to convert him to a party or to a form of opinion. Lead us both on in the way of Thy commandments. What am I that I should be so blest in my near associates!

  I wish, my dearest mother, you could see how perfectly calm I am about my affairs. I commit them to God and feel that they do not belong to me or affect me. In many respects, it is a very good thing that I am the person it falls upon. Some things are as adverse as possible, as that the Provost of Oriel and the Warden of Wadham are among the assistants of the Vice-Chancellor; yet Jelf does not think it hopeless since he has consented to be one. I trust in my friends’ prayers and that God will defend His truth; for that only have I spoken. All my friends say that good must come out of it somehow. So I am quite at rest. It seems as if something very momentous was going on, but that I had nothing to do but to wait for it, and pray and abide, as I trust under the shadow of His wings, and be at rest.

  You have heard, of course, of Pusey’s suspension for two years, by the papers. It excites enormous indignation. All persons who are not quite with the Heads of Houses clique are disgusted. It was really a sermon which people heard and went away, thinking it fine and eloquent of course, and giving high views of the Eucharist; but as for any doctrine, the idea never entered into any one’s head, till the fact came out. The Heads will find themselves in the wrong, their mode of conducting the whole business has been so desperately unfair, not to say actually arrogant and tyrannical.

  I must tell you that on arriving here I went, as in duty bound, to pay my respects to Dr. Pusey. He had been ill for a considerable period, suffering constantly from low fever. I found him lying on the sofa and apparently unable to rise, encompassed on all sides by folios. No other man have I ever seen so like a saint. The expression of holiness, humility, and charity about him makes a face, in itself ugly, a most beautiful object to contemplate. You look at him and see at once that he is a person whom it is actually impossible to offend personally, and who in the paroxysms of disease would give thanks for his sufferings, simply believing that they were sent as fatherly chastisements and would leave a benediction behind. I perceived very soon that his entire unselfishness has preserved him from all affliction as regards himself in consequence of this iniquitous and ignominious sentence with which he has been branded. There is, in fact, no drop of bitterness in his whole composition, nothing that can turn sour.

  Nothing has occurred in our own time, so pregnant with great consequences, as the late conspiracy in Oxford…. Men look at each other as if some wicked thing had been perpetrated, on which they could not venture to speak. In all, there is a deep feeling that it is not to end here, and a sense of love and reverence for the injured person strongly entertained…. There is also a very general impression, that the sermon itself is no more than a handle for a preconcerted measure; which is confirmed by the fact that they have resolutely refused to mention any one objectional proposition in the sermon, or in what way it is discordant with the Church of England. All I have met with consider the sermon very innocent and unexceptionable.

  Notwithstanding an occasional difference of opinion on matters of importance, our friendship has lasted more than a quarter of a century. I feel therefore that I am not taking too great a liberty when, by dedicating this sermon to you, I avail myself of the opportunity to record my respect for the profound learning, the unimpeachable orthodoxy, and the Christian temper with which, in the midst of a faithless and Pharisaical generation, you have maintained the cause of true religion, and preached the pure unadulterated word of God.

  We have had Pusey and Manning preaching here lately, the former three times. Pusey’s middle sermon, preached in the evening, was the perfection of his style. But it is wrong to talk of style in respect of a preacher whose very merit consists in his aiming at no style at all. He is certainly, to my feelings, more impressive than any one else in the pulpit, though he has not one of the graces of oratory. His discourse is generally a rhapsody, describing with infinite repetition and accumulativeness, the wickedness of sin, the worthlessness of earth, and the blessedness of heaven. He is as still as a statue all the time he is uttering it, looks as white as a sheet, and is as monotonous in delivery as possible. While listening to him, you do not seem to see and hear a preacher, but to have visible before you a most earnest and devout spirit, striving to carry out in this world a high religious theory.

  Every seat, every transept, every aisle thronged to bursting; spectators or hearers wandering about the clerestories, Pusey carried up into the pulpit by a by-passage. So much for the benefits of suspension. To me, I confess, the mere sight of a vast crowd hanging on the lips of a good man is so pathetic that I would go a good way to hear it. The sermon—alas! I shuddered as I heard the text (John xx. 21) and foresaw the subject—Absolution. However, it evidently only came because it was part of his own course; the more offensive topics of which it was capable were not dwelt upon, and merely the old commonplaces and quotations reproduced in Pusey’s usual confusion of style. And so, on the whole, it was like most of his sermons, a divine soul clothed in a very earthly body. The beginning very pathetic and dignified—“It will be in the memory of some that three years since,” &c.—and the end, on the needs of the manufacturing towns, very earnest and solemn. I do sincerely say, “God bless him, and keep him amongst us.”

  The doctor is a short man, thin, and somewhat attenuated, has a careworn look, a dim eye, a long and solemn countenance; and when I saw him, 1845, appeared dirty, unshaven, and slovenly in his attire. He approaches nearer to the beau ideal of a bookworm than any man I ever met with. There is a great mildness and humility of deportment about him, bordering upon nervousness and timidity; but beneath this outward shell there is evidently a kernel of ambition, and a love of notoriety. He looked like a man who was conscious he was the object of the public gaze. His conversation is sensible and erudite, but not fluent or animated. As Hebrew Professor, he expounds his views to his students with clearness and order, but without much force or originality of thought…. Dr. Pusey’s intellectual character does not comport with those ideas which we commonly associate with men who are the founders of a mere sect, or the leaders of a party. There is little boldness or enthusiasm in him. He does not throw himself with ardour either into favourite or antagonistic theories. His intellectual genius is cold, phlegmatic, and calculating. It is the growth of long and assiduous cultivation, rather than of native vigour and strength. His mind wants the invariable and characteristic symbol of greatness.

  I do not believe him to be open to conviction on any point in the remotest degree connected with dogma on which he has once made up his mind…. Dr. Pusey’s remarks have a little lowered my estimate of his Hebrew scholarship, which was high, and has not raised my estimate of his judgment, which was low.

  Dr. Pusey, as we all know, could be as intolerant as Athanasius, but, apart from what you call his theological prepossessions, he always retained through life a genuine respect for real scholarship, even for the much derided “original research.” He often showed the warmest sympathy for true and earnest students in every field of Oriental philology. He took a deep interest in the discoveries of cuneiform scholars, and fully appreciated their bearing on Hebrew scholarship. He cared to know what the “Veda” and the “Avesta” had to teach us, and he was not afraid of new sciences, such as Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology. Even when he had no time to study new subjects himself, he was always anxious to hear the latest news.

  Dr. Pusey’s life had two marks especially set in it by Divine Providence: it was a life of controversy and a life of suffering. He often deplored the necessity which obliged him to spend so much of his time and thought in religious controversy. It was, he firmly believed, “the Lord’s controversy,” in which he was thus engaged; and he accepted a task from which much in his character would have held him back, as a duty laid on him by Providential Wisdom…. Certainly he did all that could be done to sweeten controversy by the charities and courtesies that were natural to his chastened temper…. And his life was largely a life of suffering. Assuredly it did not lack the Print of the Nails. He had his full share of home sorrows, which the affectionateness of his character sharpened to the utmost…. Troubles there were of another order which wounded him even more deeply. The separation which for some years followed the secession of Dr. Newman, the desertion of friends who remained, and from whose sympathy he might well have hoped for much, the coldness or active hostility of persons in high authority, the failure of younger men to answer to his reasonable expectations or to be true to themselves, above all the lacerations of the Church, to whose wellbeing and growth he was devoted heart and soul—these things cut him to the quick…. And this intimacy with suffering was probably one chief secret of his moral power, because it endowed him so richly, and it had endowed St. Paul, with the gift of sympathy.

  Dr. Pusey, who used every now and then to take Newman’s duties at St. Mary’s, was to me a much less interesting person. A learned man, no doubt, but dull and tedious as a preacher. Certainly, in spite of the name Puseyism having been given to the Oxford attempt at a new Catholic departure, he was not the Columbus of that voyage of discovery, undertaken to find a safer haven for the Church of England. I may, however, be more or less unjust to him, as I owe him a sort of grudge. His discourses were not only less attractive than those of Dr. Newman, but always much longer, and the result of this was that the learned Canon of Christ Church generally made me late for dinner at my college, a calamity never inflicted on his All Souls hearers by the terser and swifter fellow of Oriel whom he was replacing.

  Dr. Pusey was a person with whom it was not wise to meddle, unless his assailants could make out a case without a flaw. He was without question the most venerated person in Oxford. Without an equal, in Oxford at least, in the depth and range of his learning, he stood out yet more impressively among his fellows in the lofty moral elevation and simplicity of his life, the blamelessness of his youth, and the profound devotion of his manhood, to which the family sorrows of his later years, and the habits which grew out of them, added a kind of pathetic and solemn interest. Stern and severe in his teaching at one time,—at least as he was understood,—beyond even the severity of Puritanism, he was yet overflowing with affection, tender and sympathetic to all who came near him, and, in the midst of continual controversy, he endeavoured with deep conscientiousness, to avoid the bitterness of controversy. He was the last man to attack; much more the last man to be unfair to. The men who ruled in Oxford contrived, in attacking him, to make almost every mistake which it was possible to make.

  Yes, here was a good, good, real man! And from a Patriotic point of view, what are we not to think of the patience, the firmness, the absolute confidence in his fellow-countrymen with which he waited, bestrode that fiery Pegasus, rode the great race, and won, while Newman lay sprawling on the Via Sacra? This is the unmistakable Englishman, this dogged Pusey; dogged, but did you see the tenderness! God forgive me! When I think of my blindness!

  His alms-deeds were beyond measure generous, many of them unknown till now. He built St. Saviour’s Church, Leeds, in the name of a penitent, nor allowed even Dr. Hook, then Vicar of Leeds, to know whose was the hand that gave. We lay down the book [Life of Pusey] feeling sure that here was a man to whom great grace was given, and we may thank God, in Hooker’s words, that “God does not tie to sacraments the grace that He gives through sacraments;” but in so far as Dr. Liddon holds up to us Pusey’s life as that of a Catholic priest, perhaps the example is rather “what not to be, than what to be.” It is a history of one who strove to prop up a falling building, and was wounded by many of the stones as they fell, who tried to put a new face on that which was mouldering within, who was deservedly honoured indeed in his day, but must pass and be forgotten, as are those who have given names to many other sects, foundering and to founder, while the bark of Peter rides the waves.

  I was greatly impressed as an undergraduate by Dr. Pusey’s preaching, as afterwards by his published writings, by his saintly life, and his loyal love, faithful unto death, for the Church, in which he received from those in authority so much opposition and distrust. His manner was in itself a sermon, and he went up to preach with a manifest humility, which no hypocrite could assume, and no actor could copy.

  If we were to try to describe the character of Dr. Pusey in a single sentence, we could do no better than to borrow St. Paul’s expression—“Wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil.”… He was wise—not with the wisdom of the world nor of the serpent—not with the wisdom which has to do with passing things—but unto that which is good; and it may be added, unto that alone. For he was simple as a child concerning evil. He could help good men, but he could never discover bad ones. Again and again he was deceived. Again and again in dealing with what seemed evil to himself, though it did not seem so to others, he signally failed in putting himself at his opponent’s point of view. His greatness was the greatness of the kingdom of heaven, in patterning his life by the life of Christ.

  He was a power in the Church of England greater than Archbishop or Bishop, for almost half a century; and for sixteen years before his death was the sole leader of his party. To the cause which that party represented he devoted, with unswerving self-sacrifice, many great gifts,—birth, high station in the University, unwearied industry, solid learning. His zeal was apostolic, his life saintly; he was a voluminous writer, a powerful preacher, not, like John Wesley, to the common people, but to learned hearers and sensitive religious minds among the clergy and educated laity. It was among these that he gathered followers; through these his influence reached the world. And upon him, as upon Wesley, the influence of his followers reacted.

  In the pulpit to strangers his appearance was not particularly striking, nor his voice musical. His language was sometimes obscure and his sentences long and involved. But no one ever failed to be impressed by his wonderful earnestness, by the spiritual power that made itself evident, by the reverential awe towards God and gentle patient affectionateness towards man that characterized these beautiful sermons. It was felt that he was indeed a “Man of God,” a prophet faithful in rebuke, uncompromising in the delivery of his message, a teacher of “all the counsel of God,” the Catholic faith in its fulness. And yet there was no lack of tender human sympathy, charitable recognition of the weaknesses of men and women, and compassionate anxiety to apply every spiritual remedy to their needs.

  To love God, to work for God—these words sum up the story of Dr. Pusey’s life. Loving as he did, how could it be but a joy, shining brighter than even duty, to work for Him whom, not having seen, he loved? His eighty-second birthday found him still at that labour in the vineyard, begun in the early morning of life—labour never slackened during the few years of a great earthly love and happiness—taken up with severer self-devotion two days after all that was mortal of her who had been his love was laid in the grave. He had continued his ministrations to the Sisters at Ascot during the few days before his birthday, besides, as usual, reading for his Hebrew Lectures…. If it would be difficult to take a day’s journey in England without seeing some even outward token of the revival in which Dr. Pusey had so large a share, his life was, notwithstanding, one of more than common trial and of wearing anxieties. Yet his own words, while still young, “One may gradually cease to know what disappointment is,” came true; and, whether amid visible success, or unfulfilled hopes, he stood firm as a rock, never quailing, never changing, never ceasing to be the apostle of peace and love, while earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints. And they who love him most think now of the Mercy and Love that led him all his life long, through the light affliction which is but for a moment—granting him the request of his lips, drowning him with the blessings of goodness, and the abundance of things which since the beginning of the world it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive—which eye hath not seen nor ear heard—

  He was not only the grave ascetic. My children know another side of him. Hearing that my daughter had expressed a wish to “come out,” at the ball given in 1881 by our House to Prince Leopold at Commemoration, he at once sent for tickets, which were a guinea each, and gave to me. He sat up to see her dressed and start, and when we came down to breakfast next morning, his first question was whether she had had nice partners, and enjoyed herself. When my girls were growing up, he wished me to ask young men to the house, and he ordered the garden beds to be cleared away, and a tennis lawn made in the lower garden. Tennis was new at that time, and my dear father used to leave his books, and stand watching the game from his study window. He said that “it was very good exercise for the young people.”

General

  To fly in the teeth of English Puseyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is questionable: yet at bottom why not? Dost thou not as entirely reject this new Distraction of a Puseyism as man can reject a thing,—and couldst utterly abjure it and even abhor it,—were the shadow of a cobweb ever likely to become momentous, the cobweb itself being beheaded, with axe and block on Tower Hill, two centuries ago? I think it were as well to tell Puseyism that it has something of good, but also much of bad and even worst.

  Dr. Pusey is the representative of that class of Englishmen, who, looking with reprehension and alarm upon the changes in the ecclesiastical and political system of our country which have slowly but constantly gained ground during the lapse of the last fifteen years, have ranged themselves under the freshly emblazoned banners and newly illuminated altars of the Church, have unsheathed the sword of Faith and new interpretation, earnest to restore the ancient constitution in Church and State; to stem the advancing tide of modern opinion and endeavour; to retain the strong-hold of the Divine Right of Kings and the Spiritual Supremacy of the Priesthood, and from this detached ground to say to the rising waves, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther,” and to the troubled waters, “Peace, be still.”

  Your judgment of the general character of Dr. Pusey’s book appears to me very just, and at least very mild. Between ourselves, I find it very difficult to resist the impression that such resolute and passionate one-sidedness in a man of such extensive learning must be a reaction against inward misgivings kept under, as suggestions of the Evil one, by a violent effort of the will. His notice of Schleiermacher, however, is creditable to him, and leads one to hope that he would not now recall anything he had said of S. in former times.

  We wish we could speak as favourably of the general tone and temper of Dr. Pusey’s volume as we can of its learning and completeness. But unhappily, its greatest defect is the bitterness of its language,—the indiscriminate censure with which all are assailed who have ventured to entertain any doubts as to the time when the Book of Daniel was written. The charge of wilful blindness, so repeatedly brought against those whose misfortunes it is to be Dr. Pusey’s opponents, is rather apt to enlist sympathy on their side than to convince us that their assailant is right. Instinctively we feel that such charges betray a weakness somewhere…. It is impossible to read such a work without the profoundest admiration for the depth and varied extent of the author’s learning; but it is impossible not also to lament that the glory of this learning has been so grievously tarnished. We do not blame Dr. Pusey for ranging it all on the side of what he believes to be the truth; we do full justice to the sincerity of his convictions; we honour his piety; we even admit the force of his arguments so far as to think that he has shown, and shown far more convincingly than any one who has yet made the attempt, that the Book of Daniel is not a late production of the Maccabæan age, but belongs rightfully to the age to which it was for centuries commonly assigned. But we can express nothing but disapprobation both of the temper in which the book is written, and of the entire perversion of all critical principles by which, in our judgment, it is marked.

  A man after all to rank with religious leaders of a high mark in all ages.

  The publications of Dr. Pusey are very numerous, but not one of them bids fair to take a permanent place in our literature.

  Dr. Pusey has been convicted so often of so many omissions, inaccuracies and mistakes in his multitudinous controversial writings, that all confidence in his fairness or capability of seeing both sides of a much disputed question is for ever lost.

  The motif of Dr. Pusey’s book [“Historical Inquiry”] was not indeed a vindication of German Theology in its rationalistic developments. It was, however, a defence of it from the indiscriminate assaults contained in “Discourses preached before the University of Cambridge, by Hugh James Rose,” and published by him, in 1825, under the title of “The State of Protestantism in Germany.”… In contrast to Rose’s book, Pusey’s is an eminently fair, reasonable, and candid enquiry, liberal in the best sense of the word, as recognizing what is good no less than what is bad in German theology, and especially as setting the worst phases of German rationalism in the light of the causes which have operated in producing them. The author was no more in love with rationalism than Mr. Rose, but he understood, as the former did not do, all the phenomena which went under that name, what varying shades of truth and falsehood they presented, and by what intelligible links they were connected with one another. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in Dr. Pusey’s work than the breadth and power of historical analysis it displays, its extreme fairness; and even to this day, when so many accounts have been given of the historical development of German theology from different points of view, it still deserves perusal.

  The Tract [No. 18] is dated St. Thomas’ Day, 1833, and does not appear to have been in circulation before the beginning of January. It is longer than any of its predecessors; partly because the writer could not easily express himself otherwise than at length, but partly also because it covers more ground, and more nearly exchanges the character of a fugitive composition for that of a theological treatise…. It is impossible to read this tract without being profoundly impressed with the reality of the writer—of his religious convictions and life as the mainspring and warrant of his teaching. Indeed, this tract differs from its predecessors in the degree of emphasis which it lays on personal and experimental considerations…. Pusey’s tract on Baptism was unquestionably the work in virtue of which he took his place among the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Its appearance marked an epoch, both in the history of his own religious mind and in the progress of the cause to which it contributed.

  After all, the real key to the unpersuasiveness of Dr. Pusey’s literary efforts on the subject of reunion is to be found not so much in his mistakes as in his method. As for mistakes, every writer who dares anything for the good of others makes some; and we do not envy the cold, critical nature which will wrap itself up in reserve rather than risk a blunder; we cannot feel enthusiasm for the heart that will not let its thoughts spring to other hearts and clasp them to itself in the truth, for fear its reason should have to frown on a misquotation or an unguarded expression. But it was Dr. Pusey’s method that was at fault; it was wrong in theology and uninspiring in fact. Pectus facit theologum; the heart is the fount of true theology. Cor cordi loquitur; heart takes hold of heart…. Pusey’s method was of the desk and midnight oil; he writes as one who has lost the ways of the docile, submissive child; the abandon, the élan simplicity had gone when in his later days he spoke of Rome. It was with him all analysis and weighing of difficulties on one side. But you might as well attempt to analyse the lightning-flash or the colour of the cloud as it dips into the setting sun, as analyse the fascination and the magic charm of that one city which we call eternal, and which spells one way strength and the other love. But to all this Pusey was impervious. And it was his duty to analyse and weigh objections; but it would have been his gain to have combined also, and to have seen the value of the positive witness to the truth he opposed.

  His confidence in his own position and in the via media was tranquil. His piety was deep and sincere. While he lacks the imagination and power of luminous exposition which belong to Newman, he was a miracle of industry, his acquisitions of learning were large, and his mind was straightforward in its operations.

  Pusey’s style was accused by some of bareness and by others of obscurity; but these accusations may be safely dismissed as due merely to the prevalent fancy for florid expression, and to the impatience of somewhat scholastically arranged argument which has also distinguished our times.

  Edward Bouverie Pusey was, as regards his contributions to formal theology, superior to Newman; but both as a man and as a writer he was indefinitely smaller…. Pusey’s writings are purely technical theology, not literature like those of Newman. Of their value diverse opinions will long be entertained. They are oracles to the High Church party; but it is well to consider what opponents think, especially such as have some grounds of sympathy. Pius IX. compared Pusey to “a bell, which always sounds to invite the faithful to Church, and itself always remains outside.” In a similar spirit another great Romish ecclesiastic, when questioned as to Pusey’s chance of salvation, is said to have playfully replied, “Oh, yes, he will be saved propter magnam implicationem.” These are just the criticisms of those who have attacked the Puseyite position from the point of view of free thought. They are also the criticisms implied in Newman’s action. It is at least remarkable that critics from both extreme parties, together with the ablest of all the men who have ever maintained the views in question, should concur in the same judgment.

  In his controversy with Dr. Farrar with regard to future punishment, we have the well-nigh solitary instance in this volume of a victory distinctly on his side. He succeeded in putting Dr. Farrar conspicuously in the wrong. Naturally enough, the closing years of his unselfish life brought him much beautiful appreciation, and his death many honourable testimonies from men who differed from him by the heaven’s width. In so far as we are able to separate his personality from his opinions, it presents much that is engaging, and that must have endeared him immeasurably to his intimate friends. Intellectually not even Newman could surpass him in his subordination of rationality to tradition as the test of truth.

  We fear these Letters are destined to do harm. The bulk of them is not anti-Roman, not controversial at all. Indeed with some three quarters of their contents a Catholic would entirely concur. They are not comparable with a Saint’s Letters, with the Letters of St. Francis Xavier, for instance, or those of St. Francis of Sales; but they breathe a piety earnest and venerable. Just on that account will the publication do harm. The goodness of the book will make what is evil in it tell. For there is objective evil in these pages, subtle perversion of Catholic truth, and ingenious deterrents from Catholic unity. Sad to think of the name and fame of a good man fathering upon the world a deleterious mixture of Gallicanism and Protestantism.