LAST Sunday was the centenary of the birth of a great
ecclesiastic, whom the Church of England cannot too greatly honour.
Most of us knew Dr Richard William Church as Dean of St Paul's from
1871 to 1890, in which capacity he won our reverence for the great
part he bore in transforming the Cathedral and making it the centre
of life and activity not only for London but, in a way, for the
whole of the English Communion. But the debt we owe him was
earliest incurred seventy-one years ago, when, in 1844, the
youthful Fellow of Oriel confronted the Doctors and Masters of
Oxford with the formula never more memorably employed in their
assembly - Nobis Procuratoribus non placet - and so the
plague ceased. The friend and disciple of Newman, he nevertheless
stood firm when the shock of such a master's departure would have
tempted a weaker man away, and, like Pusey, Church remained a
steadying influence.
From the obscurity of a country parish, with which he would have
been more than content to the end of his life, he made that
influence widely felt. As one of the founders of the
Guardian and a constant contributor to its columns, he
helped to extend the Catholic Revival on broader lines than those
of the Tractarian Movement, though on the same principles. In the
ecclesiastical controversies of his day, involving as they did a
fierce conflict with lawyers and politicians bent on subjugating
the Church to the State, his sane judgment, combined with his
inflexible adherence to principle, commanded the assent of
innumerable followers. To this activity in Church affairs he joined
the fine culture of a man of letters. . .
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