of all which Newman had said was taught in the schools. The same was applicable to the Catechism of Trent. It is a popular exposition and employs the usual language in which Church doctrines are spoken of in the Church, but so far from differing from the Tridentine decrees, it was drawn up and published by the Council. Image worship may be a popular belief and may be practised, but the Church of Rome has, at many times and in many ways, declared against it. Nowhere is it found in authoritative teaching.

Another Roman Catholic under the name simply of an 'English Catholic' wrote to Newman to the same effect. He complained of the misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine, maintaining that the Reformers had no idea of Catholic as distinct from Romish. If any Articles were to condemn the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, they would be understood to condemn the doctrine of transmigration, and not merely a form of it known as Pythagorean. So when the English Articles condemn the doctrines of Purgatory, etc., they do not exempt some other doctrines concerning these things which are not Romish. There may be Roman Catholics who believe differently from what the Church of Rome teaches, just as there may be professing Church of England men who maintain doctrines apparently inconsistent with the Articles they have subscribed, but both of them are condemned by the churches to which they belong. The writer assures Newman that his honest countrymen are not to be conjured back into the circle of orthodoxy by any feat of ecclesiastical legerdemain.

Facit indignatio versum. Indignation characterised the first outburst of opposition to Tractarianism. The liberal party had scarcely patience to argue the question. Whately described the movement as the New-mania. Julius Hare spoke of Newman's production as rich in ingenious combinations and 'in feats of peculiar logical dexterity.' 'No Chinese juggler' he wrote, 'no Indian tumbler can surpass him.

He will whirl round a wheel and then balance himself on his little finger.' Newman quite misunderstood the principles on which the Church of England appealed to the Fathers and the primitive Church. That appeal was strictly

Newman made it positive and directive, as repressive of private judgment and enjoining the teaching of all which the early church taught.

Thomas Arnold, another liberal theologian, was the most unadulterated enemy of the Tractarians, and he was the man whom they most hated. He speaks of those who make the Church to depend on an apostolical succession as 'extraordinary persons.' They really suppose that Episcopacy as it exists at the present time is the same as Episcopacy in the primitive Church. To believe as Newman and Keble said, that no one is safe who does not belong to an Episcopal Church is not to follow God's seal unless countersigned by one of our own forging. All sects have had among them the marks of Christ's Church in the graces of the Spirit and the confession of His name. In all times and in all countries, there has been a succession of men enjoying the blessings and showing forth the fruits of Christ's spirit. The Tractarian idea of the Church and the sacraments is idolatry. It makes the Church and not Christ the mediator between God and man. The whole system is in complete opposition to the Christianity of the New Testament, as very a truncus ficulnus as even the most degraded heathen ever worshipped. Arnold went on to say that he could as soon worship Jupiter as believe in the Holy Catholic Church as some understand it. The whole spirit and tone of the party were offensive to his intellectual and his moral sense. What Pusey denounced as Rationalism, Arnold extolled as that knowledge, judgment and understanding which are commended in the Scriptures. Newman, Pusey and their followers hated the nineteenth century. They hated progress, and wishing to find something quite opposite, they turned to what is called Christian antiquity. But alas for their representation of Christian antiquity. It was a mere caricature. Had they understood the good as well as the evil of the nineteenth century, they would have turned not to the Church of Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine but to that of St Paul and St John.3 This is an age when men must reason. They can no longer, as

2 Ibid 381.

1 Stanley's Life, p. 300.

Newman and Pusey demand, submit to authority and believe whatever is told them.

Arnold contrasts the Oxford movement with that led by Simeon at Cambridge. In the latter, men were taught to turn from sin to righteousness. The subject of preaching was Christ crucified; but the Oxford men preach the Church, that is the clergy, that is they preach themselves. Their system had been tried and had failed. The evil of the eighteenth century was a reaction caused by its failure. The Church is not to be identified with the clergy. It is the people, and faith is something more than mere submission.

Of the many answers to the Tractarian writers the work of William Goode may be taken as the most complete.1 The words of Irenæus describing heretics of his time, are used as a motto, Heretics when refuted from the Scriptures, turn against the Scriptures themselves, because of the discrepancies and because truth cannot be found from them by those who are ignorant of tradition, for that is not handed down by writings but by the living voice.' The first diverging line between the Tractarians and our Reformers is in the use of the word Catholic. The latter identified it with Protestant, so that Protestantism was Catholicism, or in the words of Bishop Jewel 'the ancient religion restored.' The Tractarians make 'the ancient religion more like the Roman Catholic than the Protestant, relying on what they call 'Catholic consent' or the general agreement on essential doctrines in the early Church. Goode produces a host of passages from the Fathers to prove that no such Catholic consent ever existed. It is agreed among all parties of Christians that the Scriptures are

! The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, or a Defence of the Catholic Doctrine that Holy Scripture has been, since the times of the Apostles, the Sole Divine Rule of Faith and Practice to the Church against the dangerous errors of the Authors of the Tracts for the Times and the Romanists, as particularly that the Rule of Faith is made up of Scripture and Tradition together,' in which also the Doctrines of the Apostolical Succession, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, etc., are fully discussed. By William Goode, in three volumes; first edition 1842, second edition 1853.

2 The book was reviewed by Ward in the British Critic' and heartily abused as worthless, not even likely to pay the expenses of publication. Ward soon after passed over to the Church of

divine, and therefore a rule of faith. It is also agreed that what the Apostles taught was first spoken and afterwards written. The inquiry then is if we have any record or witness of the oral teaching such as could authorise us to receive it as a divine revelation, either as a supplement to their writings or an interpretation of them. This record or witness is called Tradition, sometimes Apostolic Tradition. Some in the Church of Rome have maintained an oral as well as a written tradition, but the Tractarians look only to the written, that which is found in the Fathers, so their tradition is what may be called 'patristical,' or the 'patristical report of oral apostolical tradition.' It is here to be remembered that the Fathers often speak of tradition when they simply mean what is handed down in the Scriptures. They call that which is in the Evangelists 'Evangelical Tradition,' and that in the apostolic epistles 'Apostolical Tradition.' It is also to be remembered that any tradition found in the Fathers is never by them claimed to be derived from the oral teaching of the Apostles. It is admitted that the agreement of many of the Fathers on any one point is a strong argument in its favour, but they are only fallible, while the force of the tradition argument is in the previous assumption of the infallibility of the primitive church.

The Canonical Scriptures are the only writings which can be called Apostolical Tradition. This claim was set up for the Apostles' Creed as having been written by the Apostles. Newman even believed that St Paul referred to it when he spoke of the 'form or outline of sound words.' This was easily refuted. The patristical tradition was also found untenable, not only on the ground that the Fathers were not infallible, but because the writings of the Primitive Fathers which remain are not a sufficient representation of the whole Church, and because they do not agree even in fundamental points. As to the Trinity, for example, we have more or less every heresy on the Trinity in some of their writings. Arian, Nestorian, Eutychian, could all appeal, and not in vain, to the Fathers who were before them. There is no Catholic consent in the first three centuries of Christianity as to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. It is not to be expected that such a consent

small and partial consent which is attainable and is called Catholic consent is embarrassed with uncertainties and difficulties. In many cases the expressions used are uncertain, of doubtful meaning, and open to different, even opposite interpretations. The language is often loose, inaccurate and rhetorical. The writers who preceded the fourth century had not before them the controversies which came later, and so we do not find in them any more verbally definite sentences than we find in the Scriptures.

The value of the consent which may be found in the writings that remain to us is much reduced by the fact of rival appeals to tradition grounded upon testimonies, many of which we do not now possess. The Nestorians persistently maintained that their doctrines were handed down from the earliest times. The followers of Artemon who denied Christ's divinity claimed all the ancients and the Apostles themselves as in favour of their views. Eutyches at the Council of Constantinople appealed to the 'blessed Cyril, the holy Fathers and the holy Athanasius, against the two natures.' The monks who agreed with him at the Fourth Council of Ephesus said, 'We are all of the same mind both with those who met at Nicæa and the holy Fathers who were assembled here at the third General Council. As to some things. concerning which we seem to have Catholic consent, the Tractarians are quite indifferent. It seems certain that in the Primitive Church the people stood at prayer on Sunday. The testimony of Justin Martyr is that 'the custom commenced from apostolic times as the blessed Irenæus, Martyr and Bishop of Lyons, saith.' We have also the words of Tertullian: 'We account it a crime to kneel at prayer on Sunday,' and the First Council of Nicæa, referring to those who kneel on Sunday, decreed that 'they should offer their prayers to God standing.'

It was a doctrine of the Tractarians that but for tradition we could not know the Scriptures to be the Word of God. This is denied, and the usual arguments for the genuineness, authority and inspiration of the Scriptures are brought forward, especially the testimony of the Spirit of God in the Scriptures to the human heart. That Holy Scripture is our