Autograph Letter Signed ('E B Pusey') from Pusey to the Rev. William Hale Hale of Charterhouse, discussing the controversy over the new Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Renn Dickson Hampden.

Author: 
Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Christ Church, Oxford, and a leader of the Oxford Movement [Rev. William Hale Hale (1795-1870); Renn Dickson Hampden (1793-1868)]
Publication details: 
Postmarked 29 April 1836.
£140.00
SKU: 11339

1p., 4to. 18 lines of text. Fair, on aged paper, with a few closed tears. Addressed on the reverse, with three postmarks and Pusey's seal in black wax broken in two, to 'Rev. Wm. H. Hale | Charter-house'. Writing in a tight, difficult hand, Pusey begins with a reference to an 'intended present' from Hale (from the context clearly a copy of Hale's edition of Jeremy Taylor's 'Doctrine and Practice of Repentence'). Pusey praises 'the earnest, energetic truth-speaking language of Bp. Taylor', which he considers 'a voice as from another world'. Referring to the continuing controversy over the views of the new Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr Renn Hampden, Pusey begins the second paragraph by announcing that 'We shall, I doubt not, be at peace immediately after May 5. [on which date it was determined in Convocation that the Regius Professor should be deprived of certain offices]; the <?> among us are very few, & they, for the most part, on the <?> only, not on the principles of the book, altho' the misery is, that they will be accounted among the maintainers of those principles, whatever protests they may make to the contrary; & yet, I suppose, that there are not 4 persons in the university, who are such. I believe not above 2, who wd. go the same lengths, & they I believe, do not understand him'. In the last part of the letter Pusey refers to 'all with whom I think & act in this place', before stating: 'I trust that, amid all its misery, this unhappy business will have ye effect of opening men's eyes, that they may see, whither they themselves are going before it is too late.'