[Disponible en español]

My life has been spent in a succession of insulated efforts, bearing indeed upon one great end — the growth of catholic truth and piety among us. — Pusey

Edward Pusey was matriculated at Oxford, a member of Christ Church (later Ruskin's college). He received a B.A. and an M.A. While at Oxford, he befriended Keble and Newman. He was influenced by Dr. Charles Lloyd to fear the contemporary German theology and its danger to the English Church.

Contemporaries on Pusey

His great learning, his immense diligence, his scholarlike mind, his simple devotion to the cause of religion, overcame me; and great of course was my joy, when in the last days of 1833 he showed a disposition to make common cause with us [the Tractarians] . . . Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression, a host in himself; he was able to give a name, a form, and a personality, to what was without him a sort of mob. — Newman, from Apologia pro vita sua

He is certainly, to my feelings, more impressive than anyone 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, 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. — Sara Coleridge, from her Memoirs

Related Materials


Created 1998

Last modified 18 June 2018