and visible sign of Baptism, or the Lord's Supper, with the inward and spiritual grace, through the medium of "faith, prayer, active spiritual contemplations, or (what is called) communion with God," but only through the selfsame channel by which "primitive usage" supposed grace to flow to an infant or insensible person, when operated upon with the holy Eucharist. Nay, they sneer at and ridicule "what is called " communion with God (poor Bishop Horsley's "mysterious intercourse of the soul with its Creator"), as being something so "called," but without warrant; whereas true communion with God is through the intervention of "the Church:" by which intervention there is this communion when the priest puts a consecrated wafer upon the lips of an infant or insensible person. The Church of England teaches, after Holy Scripture, that we are "justified by faith;" Professor Pusey teaches that the Sacraments are the appointed instruments of justification. The learned Professor ought to lecture at Maynooth, or the Vatican, and not in the chair of Oxford, when he puts forth this Popish doctrine. It is afflicting beyond expression to see our Protestant Church-and in times like theseagitated by the revival of these figments of the darkest ages of Papal superstition. Well may Popery flourish! well may Dissent triumph! well may Unitarianism sneer! well may all Protestantism mourn, to see the spot where Cranmer and Latimer shed their blood for the pure Gospel of Christ, overrun (yet not overrun, for, blessed be God, the infection is not —at least so we trust-widely spread) with some of the most vain and baneful absurdities of Popery. We ask Professor Pusey how, as a conscientious man, he retains any office in a Church which requires him to subscribe to all the Thirty-nine Articles, and to acknowledge as Scriptural the doctrines set forth in the Homilies? Will any one of the writers, or approvers of the Oxford Tracts, venture to say that he does really believe all the doctrines of the Articles and Homilies of our Church? He may construe some of the Offices of the Church after his own manner; but what does he do with the Articles and Homilies? We have often asked this question in private, but could never get an answer. Will any approver of the Oxford Tracts answer it in print?

The demand here made had been met; and the following number of the Magazine had contained the following notice on the subject.

of

In reply to the communication of the Rev. College, requesting to know whether we will insert a letter in which he says he is prepared "both as regards Dr. Pusey and the Oxford Tracts" to furnish an answer to our inquiry, how the writers reconcile some of the statements in them respecting the Sacraments, with some of those in the Articles and Homilies; we can only say, that we are surprised that he should think it necessary to ask the question; for what honesty or love of truth would there be in our putting a query, and refusing to insert a responsible and properly written reply?

The following letter was the consequence of this permission.

Letter to the Editor of the

PART I.

College, Jan. 11, 1837.

Sir,-Through that courtesy, which is on the whole characteristic of your Magazine, in dealing with opponents, I am permitted to answer in its pages the challenge, made in a late number, to Dr. Pusey and the writers of the Tracts for the Times, on certain points of their theology. The tone of that challenge, I must own, or rather the general conduct of your Magazine towards the Tracts, since their first appearance, has been an exception to its usual mildness and urbanity. However, I seize, as an ample amends, this opportunity of a reply, which, if satisfactory, will, as appearing in its pages, be rather a retractation on your part than an explanation on

mine.

One would think that the Tracts had introduced some new articles of faith into English theology, such surprise have they excited in some quarters; yet, much as they have been censured, no attempt, that I know of, has been made to prove against them-I will not say, article of faith, but even any

theological opinion, which is not consonant to that religious system which has been received among us since the date of the Ecclesiastical Polity. Indeed, nothing is more striking than the contrast exhibited in the controversy between the great definiteness and precision of the feelings, and the vagueness of the outcry, raised against these Tracts. From the excitement on the subject for the last three years, one would think nothing was more obvious and tangible than the offence they contained; yet nothing, not only to refute, but even to describe their errors definitely, has yet been attempted. Extracts have been made; abuse has been lavished; invidious associations excited; irony and sarcasm have lent their aid; their writers have been called Papists, and Non-jurors, and Lauds, and Sacheverells, and that not least of all by your own Magazine: yet I much doubt whether, as far as you have thrown light on the subject, its readers have, up to this hour, any more definite idea of the matter than they have of Sacheverell himself, or of the Non-jurors, or of any other vague name which is circulated in the world, meaning the less the oftener it is used. If they were examined, perhaps they would not get beyond this round of titles and epithets: or, at the utmost, we should but hear that the Tracts were corruptions of the Gospel, human inventions, systems of fallible men, and so forth. These are the fine words which you give them to feed upon, for bread.

Even now, Mr. Editor, when you make your formal challenge concerning Dr. Pusey, you do not distinctly and pointedly say, as a man who was accusing, not declaiming, what you want answered. You ask, "will any of the writers or approvers of the Oxford Tracts venture to say that he [Dr. Pusey]' does really believe all the doctrines of the Articles and Homilies of our church?" How unsuitable is this! Why do you not tell us which doctrine of the Articles you have in your mind, and then prove your point, instead of leaving us to guess it? One used to think it was the business of the accuser to bring proof, and not to throw upon the accused the onus of proving a negative. What am I, as an approver of the Tracts, to go through the round of doctrines in Articles and Homilies, measuring Dr. Pusey first by one, 1 The Editor meant by "he," not Dr. Pusey, but "any of the writers," &c.

then by the other, while the sits still, as judge rather than accuser? What are we not even to have the charge told us, let alone the proof? No; we are to find out both the dream and the interpretation.

So much for the formal challenge which your Magazine puts forth; and I can find nothing, either in the remarks which precede it, or in its acceptance of my offer, precisely coming to the point, and informing me what the charge against Dr. Pusey is. It is connected with the Sacraments: you wish him and his friends, according to your subsequent notice, "to reconcile some of the statements in them [the Tracts] respecting the Sacraments, with some of those in the Articles and Homilies!" In your remarks which precede the challenge, you do mention two opinions which you suppose him to hold, which I shall presently notice; but you are still silent as to the Article or Homily transgressed. This is not an English mode of proceeding; and I dwell on it, as one of the significant tokens in the controversy, what is the real state of the case and its probable issue? Here are two parties: one clamours loudly and profusely against the other, and does no more; that other is absorbed in its subject, appeals to Scripture, to the Fathers, to custom, to reason, in its defence, but answers not. Put the case before any sharp-sighted witness of human affairs, and he will give a good guess which is in the right. If, indeed, there is one thing more than another that brings home to me that the Tracts are mainly on the side of Truth-more than their reasonings, their matter, and their testimonies; more than proof from Scripture, or appeal to antiquity, or sanction from our own divines; more than the beauty and grandeur, the thrilling and transporting influence, the fulness and sufficiency of the doctrines they desire to maintain-it is this: the evidence which their writers bear about them, that they are the reviled party, not the revilers. I challenge the production of any thing in the Tracts of an unkind, satirical, or abusive character; any thing personal. One Tract only concerns individuals at all, No. 73; and that treats of them in a way which no one, I think, will find to be any exception to this remark. The writers no where attack your Magazine, or other similar publication, though they evidently as little approve of its theology, as your Magazine that

of the Tracts. They have been content to go onward; to preach what is positive; to trust in what they did well, not in what others did ill; to leave truth to fight its own battle, in a case where they had no office or commission to assist it coercively. They have spoken against principles, ages, or historical characters, but not against persons living. They have taken no eye for eye, or tooth for tooth. They have left their defence to time, or rather committed it to God. Once only have they accepted of defence, even from a friend', a partner he indeed also, but not in those Tracts which he defended. This, then, is the part they have chosen; what your Magazine's choice has been, is plain even from the article which leads me to write this letter. We are there told of Oxford writers, "relying on the authority of the darkest ages of Popery;" of their advocating "the bathos in theology, an absurdity not worthy to be gravely replied to," of their "absurdity," "irrational fanaticism," "intellectual drivelling, of their writing like "the most ignorant Popish fanatic," of their "sneering and ridiculing," of their reviving the " figments of the darkest ages of Papal superstition," "some of the most vain and baneful absurdities of Popery ;" and all this with an avowal you do not wish to discuss the matter. Brave words surely! Well and good, take your fill of these, Mr. Editor, since you choose them for your portion. It does but make our spirits rise cheerily and hopefully thus to be encountered. Never were such words on one side, but deeds were on the other. We know our place, and our fortunes; to give a witness and to be condemned, to be ill-used and to succeed. Such is the law which God has annexed to the promulgation of the truth; its preachers suffer, but its cause prevails. Be it so. Joyfully will we all consent to this compact; and the more you attack us personally, the more, for the very omen's sake, will we exult in it.

With these feelings, then, I have accepted your challenge, not for the sake of Dr. Pusey, much as I love and revere him; not for the sake of the writers of the Tracts; but for the sake of the secret ones of Christ, lest they be impeded in their progress towards Catholic truth by personal charges against those who are upholding it against the pressure of the age.

1 Dr. Pusey's Earnest Remonstrance.