By the end of 1835, the band of friends, whom great fears and great hopes for the Church had united, and others who sympathised with them both within and outside the University, had grown into what those who disliked them naturally called a party.  The Hampden controversy, though but an episode in the history of the movement, was an important one, and undoubtedly gave a great impulse to it.  Dr. Hampden’s attitude and language seemed to be its justification—­a palpable instance of what the Church had to expect.  And in this controversy, though the feeling against Dr. Hampden’s views was so widely shared, and though the majority which voted against him was a very mixed one, and contained some who hoped that the next time they were called to vote it might be against the Tractarians, yet the leaders of the movement had undertaken the responsibility, conspicuously and almost alone, of pointing out definitely and argumentatively the objections to Dr. Hampden’s teaching.  The number of Mr. Newman’s friends might be, as Mr. Palmer says, insignificant, but it was they who had taken the trouble to understand and give expression to the true reasons for alarm.[59] Even in this hasty and imperfect way, the discussion revealed to many how much deeper and more various the treatment of the subject was in the hands of Mr. Newman and Dr. Pusey compared with the ordinary criticisms on Dr. Hampden.  He had learned in too subtle a school to be much touched by the popular exceptions to his theories, however loudly expressed.  The mischief was much deeper.  It was that he had, unconsciously, no doubt, undermined the foundation of definite Christian belief, and had resolved it into a philosophy, so-called scholastic, which was now exploded.  It was the sense of the perilous issues to which this diluted form of Blanco White’s speculations, so recklessly patronised by Whately, was leading theological teaching in the University, which opened the eyes of many to the meaning of the movement, and brought some fresh friends to its side.

There was no attempt to form a party, or to proselytise; there was no organisation, no distinct and recognised party marks.  “I would not have it called a party,” writes Dr. Newman in the Apologia.  But a party it could not help being:  quietly and spontaneously it had grown to be what community of ideas, aims, and sympathies, naturally, and without blame, leads men to become.  And it had acquired a number of recognised nicknames, to friends and enemies the sign of growing concentration.  For the questions started in the Tracts and outside them became of increasing interest to the more intelligent men who had finished their University course and were preparing to enter into life, the Bachelors and younger Masters of Arts.  One by one they passed from various states of mind—­alienation, suspicion, fear, indifference, blank ignorance—­into a consciousness that something beyond the mere commonplace of religious novelty and eccentricity, of which there