Pusey's Sermons at St. Saviour's, Leeds

JZj. B. Pusey as a Preacher." It would not be surprising to find such a phrase as the title of a nineteenth-century work. Authors in both Britain and America used it in books and articles about numerous ministers, literary figures, the Apostle Paul, and even Jesus himself.1 Edward Bouverie Pusey, in fact, was the subject of one such piece: a review of Sermons for the Church's Seasons from Advent to Trinity, published in the Spectator on 11 August 1883.Such a scope would, however, be too broad for a scholarly study in the twenty-first century. Pusey's canon is simply too vast (numerous volumes of "university" and "parochial" sermons2) and the list of possible topics (historical, theological, rhetorical, linguistic) far too long. In this essay, therefore, I will focus on just one work, a collection entitled A Course of Sermons on Solemn Subjects Chiefly Bearing on Repentance and Amendment of Life. These sermons were preached over a period of just a few days in October of 1845, but they provide a helpful snapshot of a career that stretched for over fifty years.3AN OVERVIEW OF THE SERMONSThe story of these sermons began in the spring of 1839. In response to suggestions that he was not fully loyal to the Church of England, Pusey told Walter Hook, the Vicar of Leeds, that he would be interested in helping build a church "which would 'commemorate the blessings which we owe to the Reformation'."4 Hook accepted die offer, seeing it as an opportunity for "the disciples of the Oxford Movement to put their teachings into practice"; as he put it in a letter to Pusey dated 3 April, "so much is talked here about the Oxford sayings and writings, that I should like also to let my people see what are Oxford doings."5Pusey's interest in the project was deepened by the loss of his wife Maria a few weeks later, on 26 May. Pusey saw her deatii "as a punishment for his own sins,"6 and he resolved to build the church not just as an expression of the principles of the Oxford Movement, but also as a testament to his own contrition and repentance. He decided to bear the full cost of the construction and planned a week of dedicatory services, which he described in a letter to John Keble:it was proposed to have a course of sermons on very solemn subjects, two on each day, during the Octave of the Consecration. ... It was wished that they should be earnest sermons, appealing ... in a more solemn way than usual to people's consciences and affections, mingling love with sternness I hope that it might be a great blessing in many ways.7Pusey himself wrote ten of these sermons, and five fellow clergymen - Keble, William Dodsworth, Charles Marriott, W. U. Richards, and Isaac Williams - contributed a total of nine more. Only Richards and Dodsworth, however, actually participated in the consecration,9 so Pusey preached seventeen of the nineteen sermons himself.10Pusey's goals for the week are evident from the beginning of the published collection, which appeared later in 1845. The "sternness" he mentioned in his letter to Keble can be inferred from the title page, which identifies the volume as A Course of Sermons on Solemn Subjects Chiefly Bearing on Repentance and Amendment of Life. The "love" he wanted to convey as well is mentioned in the Preface, where Pusey writes that he was careful to blend "the more comforting subjects . . . with those which must, of necessity, be distressing."11Pusey strikes this balance in the opening sermon, "Loving Penitence," which he preached on the evening of the church's consecration. His subject is Mary Magdalene, whom he sees as exemplifying bofh the extremes of human error and the depths of God's redeeming grace. She was, Pusey notes, guilty of "deep abiding sin," but Christ "remade her" through his "constraining grace," transforming her into "the model of all penitents," a woman who expressed genuine repentance and began to serve the Lord immediately after her conversion. …