the wrong track, they wished to be right. It was not till Saravia and Bancroft claimed a jus divinum for Episcopacy that the Church of England again began to assert her identity with the ancient Church.

The Reformation was the grand historical obstacle in the way of the Oxford movement. It was 'a limb badly set and must be broken again in order to be righted.' Some had spoken in praise of Ridley, but he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer, and that was enough for his condemnation. Bishop Jewel was what in our day would be called 'an irreverent Dissenter.' He abused the Mass and laughed at apostolic succession both as a principle and as a fact. He did not allow the Lord's Supper to be a means of grace different from other divine ordinances. Instruction and conviction binding the consciences of men were the only keys to the kingdom of heaven. He ridiculed the consecration of the elements in the Eucharist, and he taught that Christ's body and blood were only received by way of remembrance. To disconnect us from the erring Reformers was the object of the preface which Laud caused to be prefixed to the Articles of Religion.

Froude vowed that never again would he call 'the Holy Eucharist' the Lord's Supper, nor 'God's priests' ministers of the Word, nor the 'altar' a table, and never would he abuse the Roman Catholic Church except for its excommunicating him as an Anglican heretic.

The High Church party, it was added, cut the ground from their feet by acknowledging Tillotson, but Convocation died a noble death in its conflict with that terrible heresiarch, Bishop Hoadly. This was the work of the Lower House, that is the High Churchmen who fought with the Socinianising bishops. There were writers who had tried to defend the Reformers, denying that they were Zwinglians and Erastians. It was much to be wished that this could have been proved, but the evidence to the contrary is too strong. They were Protestants of the very worst kind. The Church of England is clear of them. It is in no way bound to the opinions of any man or of any school. Froude anticipated Newman's principle of a 'Catholic' interpretation of the Articles. They were to

ancient Church. This was Laud's object in requiring that they should only be taken in the 'literal and grammatical sense without reference to the views of those who framed them.

Froude disparaged preaching, that he might exalt the Sacraments. The clergy had power to make the Eucharistic bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. This power was given them at their ordination by the successors of the Apostles. Episcopacy is not merely an apostolic institution. It is an essential of the Church. Charles and Laud, the martyred prince and prelate did not die for a point of discipline. To them Episcopacy was no more a mere form than was the death of Christ. The Church of England is Catholic without Popery and without Protestantism. It is opposed to Rationalism of every kind, whether that of the Methodists represented by Adam Clarke who maintained that his conversion was evidence of the truth of Scripture, being the work of the same Spirit of God, or whether that represented by the Zwinglian or Socinian Bishop Hoadly, who found no more grace in the Sacraments than what results from the natural tendency of a religious ordinance.

Among Newman's disciples the leader in the Roman direction was William George Ward who wrote the Ideal of the Christian Church.'' The ideal might have been elaborated out of the author's own consciousness, if there had been no Roman Catholic Church to present a picture to be copied. The ideal Church is to settle all problems about science and difficulties arising from Biblical criticism, and it is to convert Protestant and infidel philosophers. The discourse left scope for passing a judgment on historical events. The English Reformation was not like the foreign Reformation which perverted moral feeling, and taught the hateful heresy of justification by faith. The foreign however is preferred to the English, because Luther's indignation was single-minded and honest, while the English was mainly political. These words follow 'I know of no single movement in the Church except Arianism in the fourth century, which seems to me so wholly destitute of all claims to our sympathy and regard as the English Reformation.' The English Church was the schism of the sixteenth century.' It is arrogant, self

contented, and self-complacent, frustrating the efforts of all her faithful children to raise her from degradation. It does not allow honour to St Mary, nor does it regard the Roman Church with reverence and affection. It does not agree with the Church of the first four centuries. It is not independent of the State, and no bishop nor even all the bishops can add a single prayer to the Liturgy.

In a multitude of other respects the English Church is unlike the primitive. It does not confirm nor administer the Eucharist immediately after Baptism. It uses no unction either in Baptism or Confirmation. It has no exorcism and it does not carry the Host to the sick and the dying. It has no prayers for the dead, no public penance, no fasting communion, no minor orders before priesthood, and no celibacy of the clergy. It holds English Catholics to be in schism, so that a priest saying Mass at Calais is a Catholic, but crossing to Dover he becomes a Schismatic. The contrasts which Ward makes between the Church of England and his 'ideal' Church are yet very plentiful. It is enough to say that they embrace every point on which the Church of England differs from the Church of Rome. The remedy is a sustained and vigorous attack on the principles of the Reformation, a carrying out of the principles which the Reformation denied-obedience and faith. It is added 'Never within these three centuries has there been so lively a counter movement, at least in England, as there is now.'

The theological part of the 'Ideal' was founded on the Agnostic philosophy of John Stuart Mill that the intellect can attain to no assurance of religious truth. It cannot even prove the existence of God. Reason is not sufficient to refute either the Socinians or the Latitudinarians. Religion founded merely on emotion leads to enthusiasm. What is left then is conscience, what Kant called the categorical imperative.' There is something to be obeyed. Our attitude must be that of the learner. We must follow those whose obedience has been more complete than our own, and these are found in the Roman Catholic Church. This is faith. The Ideal' was a firebrand rudely thrown by a friendly hand

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and the conflagration was great. William Ewart Gladstone reviewed the Ideal,' showing it but little mercy. On the subject of the English Reformation, Ward was reminded of an Athenian law, by which in certain cases, the accuser failing in his proof lost his head. Though ignorant of history, the deficiency might have been supplied by his learned leisure at Oxford. The Ideal' was remarkable for 'the triviality of its investigation combined with the savageness of its censures.' If by the Reformers 'more political than religious,' Ward meant those of King Henry's time, then the censure fell on the heads of Warham, Gardiner, and Tunstal more than on Cranmer. It certainly could not be applied to the Reformers of Queen Elizabeth's time.

Ward might be called the most pronounced Tractarian leader in the Romeward direction. He came up to Oxford a disciple of Bentham and Mill, passed over to the school of Arnold, was converted by Newman, and showed Newman that the goal to which he was unconsciously tending was the Church of Rome. Ward knew nothing of history, and openly declared that he had no interest in it, but looking at the Articles in the light of unprejudiced reason, he could see that they were Protestant, and that while Newman might think of their bearing a Catholic sense, such a sense was 'non-natural.' When he signed them as deacon, it was with scruples on the Arnoldian side, and when as priest, with scruples on the Newmanian side. He now embraced all Romanist doctrines, and told the Tractarians that their object would never be attained till they undid the work of the Reformation. That was 'a miserable event' effected by men without principle, of no decided religious views, and guided merely by selfish and political interests. For the last three hundred years the Church of England had had no external notes of being a Church.

A famous Article on Bishop Jewel in the British Critic, shows the advanced position of the Romeward party in their estimation of the English Reformation. It is on the lines suggested in Froude's Remains and cannot be accused of either ambiguity or indefiniteness as to its meaning and pur

1 Quarterly Review, December 1844.

2 Vol. XXX, by Frederick Oakley who afterwards became a

pose. The Reformation was a 'penalty, a fearful judgment on the Church for having suffered the seeds of fatal disease to sink so deep into her constitution. The remedy was desperate. Visible unity with Rome may not be the essence of a Church, but to be without it is to forego a privilege, not to assert a right. Rome is an elder sister in the faith, she is our Mother, to whom, by the grace of God, we owe it that we are what we are.

After this exordium not much is to be expected for Bishop Jewel. He was the champion of Protestantism, the unmitigated enemy of the Church which had the fatal disease.' He turned everything to controversy and 'his work was like nouns defective in all cases except the accusative.'

The reign of Edward VI was the downward course of the English Reformation. It was providentially checked by the accession of Mary. We do not owe much to the English Reformers. The more we read their writings, the less we admire them. When Catholic principles are better understood, their hold on the minds of many Christians will be loosened. Their works, in fact, are only literary curiosities. They are not contributions to theological literature.

At the hands of this writer the Reformers fare worse than their works. Those of them who suffered what we call martyrdom were not martyrs. They died for their heresies and not for the truth. Bishop Jewel was found guilty of calling all the ecclesiastical vestments, even including the surplice, Papal rubbish.' Some writers make a strong line of demarcation between the Reformation in England and that on the Continent. They wish to clear our Reformers from any suspicion of agreement with those of Germany or Switzerland. But this distinction cannot be made good. It was not due to our Reformers but to the providence of God that 'England presents a more faithful image of Catholicism' than is to be found in the Protestant communions of other lands. Our Liturgy is Catholic, and though our Articles have an uncatholic spirit, their language does not directly contradict the Catholic doctrine. It is true that for a long time the Church of England was little influenced by the efforts of