It was through Julius Hare principally that the new doctrine was propagated. Hare was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and he soon formed a powerful school of adherents to the new doctrine, of which the most conspicuous members were John Sterling, F. D. Maurice, and Trench. Each, as usually happens, evolved some personal notions, but the general principles on sin and the atonement remain unchanged. Hare takes a new view of sacrifice; says that Christ did not execute his important mission so much by his death as by his entire life—his example. Sin is a matter rather of regret than of responsibility. Miracles have been wrongly considered a necessary support of Christianity; they are rather a decoration of its structure, which stands by its moral worth. Scripture contains many verbal inaccuracies. Faith is not an active force, and, per se, a source of merit; it is rather a passive endowment. Such was the teaching which resounded in the halls of Trinity early in the century.
Maurice, also, is latitudinarian with regard to Scripture. He regards its ethical contents principally, and is prepared to yield on questions of form. Sin is nothing more than a certain condition of our life. It is not guilt or responsibility, not a consequence of actual disobedience of God's law or an effect of his displeasure. Christ was not a mediatorial substitute for humanity, but its natural representative with the Father. From his peculiar view of physical death, it followed that there could be no resurrection or general judgment in the orthodox sense. Maurice occupied the chair of Divinity at King's College, London, and for some time after the publication of his "Essays" no notice was taken of his heterodoxy. At length the principal, Dr. Jelf, was induced to read them, and he at once, in 1853, took steps for the removal of Maurice. He, however, still continued in the Anglican ministry, and was for some time chaplain to Lincoln's Inn, and after a few years was appointed by the Queen's authority to the district church of Vere Street, Marylebone. Finally, in 1866, he was appointed to a chair of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.
In the same connection must be mentioned Kingsley, who disseminated the new liberalism in a series of brilliant novels. Having had Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor, for tutor, he was early attracted to the new movement. The atonement he, like his predecessors, denied to be a reconciliation of sinful humanity with an angry deity. Christianity was not a remedial dispensation, but only an outward exhibition of the union of humanity with God that had always existed. Christ did not come to effect this union, but to declare its existence, and to edify and console us by his life and sympathetic death. He emphasizes the "multitudinism" of their principles. The Church is not the Jewish nation or any particular sect, but the entire world, from a certain point of view, as Rigg formulates his opinion: "The Church is the world lifting itself up into the sunshine. The world is the Church falling back into shadow and darkness." Hence, too, Judaic literature has not the monopoly of the Holy Spirit. Its influence is traced in all worthy literature, poetry, romance, science, etc.; indeed, some critics declare his doctrine of the Spirit to have been Pantheistic. Kingsley remained a respected member of the Anglican ministry. He was rector of Eversley for twenty years.
In the meantime, another school of rationalizing theologians was in active operation at Oxford, and here a reaction was provoked. At Oriel there was a liberal school, headed by Whateley, Hampden, and Thomas Arnold. The latter, the famous head-master of Rugby, was one of the most strenuous defenders of Broad Church principles, and held advanced views on the inspiration of Scripture. Cambridge, at that period, was the main centre of the Low Church party. The Broad Church agreed with the Low in being anti-formal and anti-sacramentarian. Both laid the greater stress on the quality of personal conduct and inner righteousness, and detested Romanism and the Romanizing High Church as word-splitters, and as attributing a sort of magical value to external objects and ceremonies. Now, the spirit of Laud had always haunted Oxford, and it at length evoked a powerful school, headed by Froude, Pusey, Keble, and Newman. The new High Church became deeply zealous for the ritual which the Low Church neglected, and the dogmas which the Broad Church were neglecting. They began the famous Tractarian movement.
In 1833 Newman published the first "Tract for the Times," and sounded the note of war. During the next seven years ninety tracts appeared from Oriel, principally from the pens of Pusey and Newman, making a stubborn and spirited fight for the sacramental system (against the Low Churchmen), and for the support of authority and the apostolical succession (against the liberals). The sequel is well known. The Tractarians themselves fell foul of "authority." More than 150 prominent members of the movement went over to Rome. The remainder, rallying round Keble and Pusey, formed the Ritualistic movement, which has found sufficient occupation since in withstanding the allurements of Rome on the one hand, and conflicts with Low Churchmen and their own authorities on the other. The Broad Church continued its growth in peace for the next twenty years. In the year 1860 the following census of the Broad Church clergymen is drawn up—by its opponents. It does not include Ireland, nor some thousands of unimportant parishes in England:—
| { Normal type | … | 3,100 | |
| Broad Church | { Exaggerated type (extreme Rationalists) | … | 300 |
| { Stagnant type | … | 700 |
In 1850, out of the twenty-eight bishops and archbishops thirteen belonged to the High Church, ten to the Broad Church, and five to the Low Church. In 1860 the Broad Church was still more strongly represented on the bench.
In 1850 occurred the famous Gorham controversy, which encouraged the liberty of the liberal thinkers and much discomfited their adversaries. Its final solution is fraught with significance. The Rev. G. C. Gorham had been presented by the Lord Chancellor to the living of Brampford Speke in Devon. The Bishop of Exeter refused to institute him, on the ground that he was unsound in doctrine. He denied that regeneration is in all cases wrought by baptism. The case was brought before the Court of the Arches, the highest ecclesiastical tribunal in England, in 1849, and the Dean decided in favour of the bishop. In the following year the case was carried on to the Privy Council, of which the Queen is a member, and from which there is no appeal. The decision of the Court of the Arches was reversed, and Gorham obtained his institution. On the doctrinal point the Council said that there had always been disputes among the Reformers and among the Anglican divines; and it went on to say that the Court of the Arches had no jurisdiction to settle matters of faith, or to determine what ought, in any particular, to be the doctrine of the Church. "The duty extends only to the consideration of that which is by law established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the true and legal construction of her Articles and formularies." The two archbishops acquiesced in the decision; the Bishop of London refused to do so. At the bewildering and] undignified spectacle, the High Church party again fell into a panic, and numbers, including the two Wilberforces and Manning, seceded to Rome. The liberals continued a steady development.
The Broad Church had now arrived at a second and more acute stage of development, especially with regard to Scripture. The first Broad Church had made antagonism to endless