Background

Edward Bouverie Pusey was born in the village of Pusey in Berkshire. His father was born Philip Bouverie, a younger son of Jacob des Bouverie, 1st Viscount Folkestone; he adopted the name of Pusey on succeeding to the manorial estates there. Philip Pusey was his brother; his sister Charlotte married Richard Lynch Cotton.

Education

For preparatory education, Pusey attended the school of the Rev. Richard Roberts in Mitcham. He then attended Eton College, where he was taught by Thomas Carter, father of Thomas Thellusson Carter. For university admission he was tutored for a period by Edward Maltby.

Pusey became during 1819 a commoner of Oxford's college Christ Church, where Thomas Vowler Short was his tutor. He graduated during 1822 with a first.

Career

Late in 1828 he became regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford and was appointed canon of Christ Church. He also published a critical history of German theology. Late in 1833 Pusey gravitated toward the Oxford Movement. He wrote tracts on the advantages of fasting (1834) and on baptism (1836) in the series Tracts for the Times. From the standpoint of public prestige, his adhesion to the Oxford Movement, Newman said, supplied it with "a position and a name. " The movement was sometimes known as "Puseyism" throughout the later 18306. In 1836 Pusey began his influential editorship of the Library of Fathers, beginning with the works of St. Augustine. Ultimately 48 volumes in this series were published, and Pusey contributed several studies of patristic works. When Newman withdrew from the Oxford Movement, Pusey became its leader. In 1843 Pusey, who had defended Newman's Tract No. 90, was charged with preaching heresy in a sermon on the Eucharist, "The Holy Eucharist, a Comfort to the Penitent. " In secret proceedings of questionable fairness he was privately suspended from preaching at Oxford for two years. In 1845 he assisted in the establishment of the first Anglican sisterhood, and throughout the rest of his life he assisted in establishing Anglican orders. In 1846 Pusey claimed in his sermon "The Entire Absolution of the Penitent" that the Church of England possessed the right of priestly absolution, thus inaugurating the Anglican practice of private confession. In his remaining years at Oxford, Pusey fought for Tractarian objectives but without major successes. He opposed the increasing secularization of the university, in which intellectual life was being segregated from a moral and spiritual base. He also worked for Christian unity, but he was defeated partly by the new assertions of Roman authority under the papacy of Pius IX. His sermon "The Rule of Faith" (1851) did, however, check English conversions to Roman Catholicism. Pusey's private life exemplified the personal holiness that marked the Tractarians' purpose. His wife died of consumption in 1839, and his only son became a chronic invalid and a cripple. Only one child survived him. For Pusey these tragedies, and the public hostility he encountered, were spurs to greater penitence, humility, and submission. He practiced simplicity, self-denial, and works of charity. Pusey's Eirenicon (3 parts, 1865 - 1870) was an attempt to find common ground for reuniting Roman Catholicism and the Church of England. Its publication caused much controversy, being answered by Newman. Pusey died at Ascot Priory, Berkshire, on Sept. 16, 1882. Further Reading The basic biography of Pusey is Henry P. Liddon, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, D. D. . (4 vols. , 1893 - 1897). A brief panegyric by Charles C. Grafton, Pusey and the Church Revival (1902), is useful as an explication of Anglo-Catholic theology. Newman's comments on Pusey are in his famous autobiography, Apologia pro vita sua (1864). Of the large literature on the Oxford Movement generally, an early and deeply sympathetic account by a disciple is Richard W. Church, The Oxford Movement (1897). Among the later histories are a broad and fair treatment by Yngue T. Brilioth, The Anglican Revival (1933), and Geoffrey C. Faber, Oxford Apostles (1933), a lively work full of psychological insight but not unfriendly. A useful anthology of primary readings is Owen Chadwick, ed. , The Mind of the Oxford Movement (1960). Pusey rediscovered, London: SPCK, 1983. (c) Gale Research, 1999

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Achievements

• He was one of the main promoters of Oxfordianism. The Church of England remembers Pusey annually with a feast day on the anniversary of his death; the Episcopal Church translates his memorial on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) to September 18.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Real Presence The Doctrine of the English Church

    (Pusey deftly shows that by all the lights the Anglican Ch...)

  • The Confessions of St. Augustine: Unabridged

    (Augustine is one of the greatest thinkers that the world ...)

  • The Confessions

    (Confessions (Latin: Confessiones) is the name of an autob...)

  • Spiritual Letters

    (The collected letters containing spiritual direction by t...)

  • On the Filioque: In Regard to the Eastern Church

    (Pusey's history of the term vis-a-vis the Eastern Church ...)

  • Selections from the Writings of Edward Bouverie Pusey (Classic Reprint)

    (No book can be written in behalf of the Bible like the Bi...)

  • Spiritual Letters of Edward Bouverie Pusey (Classic Reprint)

    (Preface to the fourth volume of Dr. Pusey sL ife theE dit...)

  • The Confessions of St. Augustine
  • The Confessions of Saint Augustine

Views

Quotations: "Practice in life whatever you pray for and God will give it to you more abundantly. "

"God does not take away trials or carry us over them, but strengthens us through them. "

"Whoso neglects a thing which he suspects he ought to do, because it seems to him too small a thing, is deceiving himself; it is not too little, but too great for him, that he doeth it not. "

"Take steadily some one sin, which seems to stand out before thee, to root it out, by God's grace, and every fibre of it. Purpose strongly, by the grace and strength of God, wholly to sacrifice this sin or sinful inclination to the love of God, to spare it not, until thou leave of it none remaining, neither root nor branch. "

"Learn to commend thy daily acts to God, so shall the dry every-day duties of common life be steps to heaven, and lift they heart hither. "

Connections

Pusey married during 1828 Maria Catherine Barker, daughter of Raymond Barker of Fairford Park; they had a son and three daughters.

Father:

Philip Bouverie

Spouse:

Maria Barker

Son:

Philip Edward