union between England and Rome, laying special stress on the question of purgatory, of the deutero-canonical books, and of the exact meaning of the ‘Roman supremacy.’ He specially emphasised the principles of the Gallican church as held by Bossuet, hoping to get a hearing on the strength of his authority. He asked for some clear terms of reunion which would save those who accepted them from complicity in the many and unjustifiable practices and opinions which were not authoritatively allowed, and yet not forbidden, in the Roman communion. This work he sent to many of the Roman catholic bishops who had gone to Rome to attend the Vatican council, and of whose sympathy he was assured; but most of the copies came back undelivered, and Anglicanism, as Pusey held it, was unable to get a hearing. The complete triumph of ultramontanism at the council annihilated all his hopes. A copy of his third ‘Eirenicon’ was found in his library after his death, in which he had expressed his despair of reunion by altering its title to ‘Healthful Reunion as considered possible before the Vatican Council.’ At the same time he endeavoured to discuss terms of reunion with the Wesleyans at home, and with the Eastern church through the Eastern Church Association. Both these efforts also failed; but the failure of the latter at the reunion conferences between members of the Eastern and Anglican churches, which were held at Bonn in 1874 and 1875, called forth from Pusey in 1876 a valuable treatise on the chief difficulty between the two churches—the double procession of the Holy Ghost. This book was in the form of a letter to Dr. Liddon, and entitled ‘On the Clause “and the Son” in regard to the Eastern Church and the Bonn Conference.’ At the end of the book he speaks of it in renewed hopefulness as his ‘last contribution to a future which I shall not see.’
Through all this time he was engaged in constant controversy at home. The attempt to remove the Athanasian Creed from its position in the services of the English church occupied a large share of his correspondence between 1870 and 1873. At last Pusey gave notice in writing to Dr. Tait, the archbishop of Canterbury, that, if the creed were either mutilated by alteration or removed from its place in the public services, he should feel bound to retire from his position as a teacher in the church of England. His continued resistance to the attack on the creed was one of the main causes of its retention in the public services, though an explanatory rubric was adopted by convocation in 1873. The same controversy reappeared in another form at the close of his life, when his views on everlasting punishment were attacked by Archdeacon (later Dean) Farrar in a series of sermons preached in Westminster Abbey in November and December 1877, and published the following year under the title ‘Eternal Hope.’ The attack gave him the opportunity of writing a book which has perhaps had as much influence as anything that he wrote: ‘What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment?’ (Oxford, 1880). There he insisted on the obvious meaning of the scriptural and patristic statements of the everlasting character of the punishment of those who finally reject God. In 1878 he prepared two university sermons. The first sermon was on the supposed contradiction between the facts of scientific discovery and the facts of revelation, under the title of ‘Un-science, not Science, adverse to Faith;’ and the second insisted on the reality of the predictive element of the Old Testament, and especially on Messianic prophecy. The latter was printed with the strangely worded title ‘Prophecy of Jesus the Certain Prediction of the (to Man) Impossible.’ These were the last university sermons that he wrote. His increasing weakness prevented him from delivering them himself. He died on 16 Sept. 1882 at Ascot Priory in Berkshire, and was buried in the cathedral at Oxford. The last work on which he was engaged was the preparation for his next term's lectures.
In his family life he had very great sorrows. He married in a rather romantic manner, on 12 June 1828, Maria Catherine, daughter of Raymond Barker of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire. She died of consumption on 26 May 1839, to the lifelong sorrow of her husband. Of his four children, only one, his youngest daughter, survived him. His eldest daughter died of rapid consumption at the age of fourteen. His only son, Philip Edward (1830–1880), graduated B.A. 1854 and M.A. 1857 of Christ Church. In spite of physical infirmities, he was an indefatigable student, and a very great help to his father. He died suddenly on 15 Jan. 1880.
Pusey published several volumes of sermons. His university sermons were in many cases printed soon after delivery, and were collected into three large volumes (1872). They all show signs not only of his wide reading and deep earnestness, but also of the extreme care which he bestowed on their preparation. They were nearly all in some special manner addressed to the needs of the time. The statement of sacramental truth; the controversy with evangelicals on justification; the many questions raised by the
