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Now the growth and progress of this party have been chiefly owing to the confusion of men's minds, heretofore, as to their true character. Dr. Newman's Tract claimed to be a defence of the Articles against a charge of inconsistency with Catholic doctrine. Hundreds, in view of the position he then occupied, believed that he meant by this term what the Reformers did, when they imposed the Articles and commanded the Clergy to interpret them by the Catholic Fathers. The Ambiguities of the writer puzzled even Mr. Palmer, of Worcester, who says, in his "Narrative," "I should conceive that in contending for a Catholic, he did not mean to suggest a Roman Catholic, interpretation of the Articles, though certainly some of the expositions in Tract 90 had a tendency of that kind." We now know by the Apologia that the author designed that it should work Romeward, though his theory was to delay individuals and work the whole Church over. 2 "I desired," he says, "a union with Rome under conditions, Church with Church"-the precise position of Dr. Pusey in his scheme of a Concordat. Was it duplicity, then, or was it ignorance that led the author of No. 90 to his sad misuse of terms? He now pleads ignorance of the notorious usages of the Communion which he has joined, 3 and we may charitably trust it was ignorance, then; but at any rate he was a blind guide and all who have followed him have fallen into the ditch. In those days we had no idea that any sane man could become a Papist. In 1836, Mr. Le-Bas, comparing the nineteenth century with the seventeenth, said: "In these times a reconciliation between the Romish and the Reformed Communions would be thought scarcely less chimerical than a coalition between the religion of the Cross and that of the Crescent." Hence some good men were reluctant to credit their own eyes, and they believed, as did Mr. Palmer, against all appearances, that at the worst, the Tract was simply an injudicious and perilous attempt to keep Romanizers from leaving us. . . Personal partiality might be excused for taking a too favourable view of the work; but the author's speedy apostasy should have opened their eyes. His work on "Development," and his late Apologia, prove, in fact, that whether he was a self-deceiver, or a deceiver outright,

4

1 Narrative, New York Ed., 1843, p. 73. Apol, p. 188.

See his Letter to Dr. Pusey. London, 1866. 4 Life o Laud, p. 872.

his Tract was the offspring of an essentially Romanized state of mind. He had made Rome a foregone conclusion: whatever was true, or primitive, or Catholic, was Romish in his morbid imagination. . . . Such is the ground of his impudent assertion1 that Hooker, Taylor and Bull, even in their arguments against Rome direct men's sympathies toward Rome. Who ever found it out but he, with his strange faculty of turning food into poison?

Happily, the instinctive consent of English minds, in condemnation of the Tract, was so general, that the writer soon threw off the mask, and abandoned a Church which he could not deceive. In his Apologia, we have the whole history of his shameless attempt, and of the chagrin occasioned by his defeat. The virtuous indignation of the vast majority of the Church was overwhelming.2 "If there ever was a case,” he says, "in which an individual teacher has been put aside and virtually put away by a community, mine is one." All honour to old English honesty and common sense for so sound a verdict God forbid it should ever be reversed till the prodigal "comes to himself."

But No. 90 is indeed a very curious production. It is a tissue of cruel hints and cunning reservations, like Iago's in the play. Sometimes it seems to me as if its author were attempting a grave joke, like Whately in his "Historic Doubts." Again, it reminds me of Swift's "Humble Attempt to prove the Antiquity of the English language." Just reflect upon it ; an attempt to reconcile our Article on the Sufficiency of Holy Scripture, not only with the Decrees of Trent, in general, but over and above with the sweeping requirements of the Creed of Pope Pius the Fourth. Here is the language of the latter :

"All and singular the things which were defined in the Sacrosanct Council of Trent concerning Original Sin and concerning Justification, I embrace and receive and all other things delivered, defined and declared (by said Council,) I do, without wavering, receive and profess. This is the true Catholic Faith, with

...

out which no one can be saved." And here is the language of the Sixth Article:

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may he proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

1 Apologia, p, 176.

2 Apologia, p. 250.

Now he that can reconcile these two articles has a faculty somewhat resembling the digestive powers of an ostrich. It used to be thought absurd in the Presbyterians to enforce their Westminster Confession, with all its subtleties, as conditions of communion; but a creed which embraces, all and singular, the chaos of scholasticism contained in the Trent decrees, and all its minute prescriptions on indifferent subjects,-open questions, at worst, for fourteen centuries, and which commands these to be received on pain of damnation; such a Creed, it seems, is quite consistent with our Sixth Article, nay with the whole Thirty-Nine; and No. 90 is to be made, hereafter, our Standard Exposition. And Dr. Pusey would have us believe that this is "the Catholic interpretation" which our old doctors contended for. Has he never read Hammond's opinion of Trent ? 2 Has he never read Bishop Cosin's "History of Popish Transubstantiation," and what he says of the unhappy Pope, who made it de fide by means among the most impious of an awfully sinful life? 3 Has he never read the same great bishop's "History of the Canon ? Of course he has, and it is plain he does not agree with these authors: but, how then he can pretend that Dr. Newman's book, or his own, has any agreement with such authorities is the puzzle of all sober men. One word of Hammond's upsets the whole theory of No. 90 and of the Eirenicon also; that in which he speaks thus of miscalled Councils: 4

"Having given the Romanist this account, I shall not add what hath been so fully done by others, the many eminent nullities of some of them, especially of that of Trent, which is most magisterially imposed on us.”

Yet Tract 90, which was another magisterial attempt to impose these "nullities," insinuates that it sustains the cause of Bull and Andrewes and Hcoker. Dr. Newman's own "Apology" proves that he knew better. He confesses in 1845, writing as an open Papist, as follows : 5

"I have felt, all along, that Bishop Bull's theology was the only theology on which the English Church could stand. I have felt that opposition to the Church of Rome was part of that theology; and that he who could not protest against the Church of Rome was no true div ne in the English Church. I have never said, nor attempted to say, that any one in office, in the English Church,

1 See the Christian Remembrancer, before quoted.

2 Minor Works, p. 370, and elsewhere.

3 See Cosin's Works, vol. iv. p. 222.

Hammond, Parænesis, p. 369.

Apol p. 195.

whether Bishop or incumbent, could be otherwise than in hostility to the Church of Rome."

Now this is honest, and it is all the defence I ask for my own position; but it is almost the only thing in Dr. Newman's writings which his Anglican admirers overlook; and it is certainly unfortunate that he failed to make this clear in No. 90 and his other writings of that period.

It seems to me that the rise of this Trentine Party must be dated from the favourable and exculpatory view which his friend Dr. Pusey was pleased to take of Dr. Newman's apostasy. So long ago as 1351, this fatal error was justly noted by an able writer, in an American periodical. He justly remarked that "neither the Letters of Dr. Pusey, on the occasion, nor the Lyra Innocentium, which feebly sounded from the hands of Mr. Keble, betokened any cordial conviction of guilt in such a transition. The chief claim of the English Church seemed to be that they were born in her; that she was still their mother, a poetic preference which went as far as this

"No voice from heaven hath clearly said

Let us depart-then fear to roam."

That was the critical moment, when an honest repudiation of Dr. Newman's conduct and example would have saved England the shame that has followed from its Mannings and its Papal aggressions, and would have built up a most healthful Nicene School of Catholic laymen and divines, to reconcile Dissent, and to render such a history as that of Dr. Colenso impossible. But Dr. Pusey chose to make light of his friend's apostasy, his rebaptization, his duplicate orders, and his railing accusations against the Church he had betrayed. Such language as Dr. Pusey then used had a paralyzing effect on consciences: young men began to think it no serious matter to overleap the chasm between the Primitive Church of England and the Trentine Confederacy of Rome; and by a known law 2 of familiarity with things unlawful, the moral perceptions of multitudes became so obtuse, that what disgusted everybody in 1840, is claimed in 1866, with unabashed effrontery, as the normal interpretation of the Articles, and that which must soon be accepted by our Theological Colleges. One thing however is gained; many of those who were deceived in past days are no longer capable of being imposed upon in these. And whereas some excused No. 90, then, because they were over-persuaded that it meant 1 Ch. Review, vol. iv., p. 42. Barrow, Serm ›n xlviii. 4.

Catholicity, those who uphold it now, do so generally with no concealment that they know it to be Romanism.

Does Dr. Pusey know it to be such? I have too much respect for his piety to accuse him of a position so inconsistent with his character. As that "good man "St. Barnabas was "carried away with the dissimulation" of the Judaizers, so have I felt that the good Canon of Christ Church has been seduced, by his friendship for Dr. Newman, into a delusive enthusiasm that destroys the balance of his mind. But his admirers are less tender of his reputation. They assure us his eyes are open, and yet they decide that he maintains the same doctrine with the most rabid of those who adopted No. 90 only as an excuse for their apostasy. Of this class one of the worst was Mr. Ward. Dr. Pusey himself enters a protest against being classed with so disreputable a writer,1 whose argument for No. 90 he characterizes as an "extreme Roman"

one.

But the admiring reviewer of Dr. Pusey does not admit any considerable difference between the two, in point of fact. He thus states the position of each; 2

1 "What Mr. Ward meant was that he was willing to adopt the decrees of Trent:

2. What Dr. Pusey means is that he has no objection to them either, because both the Council of Trent and the Thirty-Nine Articles are not really, but only seem to be at issue."

So then there is no difference at all in their positions, practically, Dr. Pusey's warmest friends being the judges. If Mr. Ward's is an "extreme Roman sense" so is Dr. Pusey's: and the only extreme feature of Mr. Ward is his "impertinently obnoxious" way of putting the

case.

Mr. Keble's position has been a peculiar one: as Dean Milman said, "there is something about him unlike any other man." I had resolved not to admit his beloved name in this discussion, and if I do so, it is only because others have made it necessary. Nobody has ever heard me speak of him, except in terms of admiration and respect. His gentle, loving spirit has ever risen before me as something nearer to St. John's than anything I have ever met with in life. Still, St. John himself was a son of thunder," and I must own I have often wished that a little of the Boanerges had been visible in that lovely character. I have

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1 Eirenicon. p. 38.

2 Christian Remembrancer, January, 1866, p. 179.

never permitted the fascination of his character to control those convictions of truth which I have gained from minds superior even to his, and from their clear expositions of the old Fathers and of the Holy Scriptures. I think Jeremy Taylor, though he too had fanlts, a better guide than Keble, as he was certainly a superior genius: and where the latter has diverged from the old paths under the powerful influence of his partiality for his friends, I have preferred not to follow him. I have ever regretted that unfortunate stanza in the "Christian Year," in which he urges us to "speak gently" of Rome's apostasy-although he calls it justly her fall. Still, it was a poetic sentiment and not bad in itself, had it not been so liable to abuse. And how sadly it has been abused for now these twenty years and more! Since those days of the "British Critic" which appalled us with good reason, what a mawkish tenderness there has been toward everything Romish. What a departure from the spirit of our old divines, and from the vigorous language of that honest hostility to Rome, which Dr. Newman recognizes in Bishop Bull, and which he owns to be the necessary quality of every true-hearted minister of the Anglican Church. Of course we are hostile to a system so contrary to Truth, and evidence, and history and moral purity and Catholicity and Holy Scripture commands us to deal not gently with inveterate error, and with words that eat like a canker. No admirer of the great Anglican divines need be ashamed to speak out on the subject of Romanism. My plain words are not meant to be gentle, but theirs are the trumpets of Sinai followed by the thunderbolts of the Apocalypse. And then this "speaking gently" must all be on one side. The Trentine party did not speak gently of the venerable Jewel, nor have they even scrupled to abuse the Reformers, and all who follow their steadfastness. Such a violent and vulgarly abusive press as has been characteristic of the faction ever since the "British Critic" fell into their hands, has been rarely tolerated among English Christians. Dr. Newman himself has used language the most discreditable and that continually; language which is said to have made Mr. Keble writhe with pain and in his gentle way break forth in expressions of astonishment. 1 Yet he is the man for whom the faction reserves its honied words, while speaking in terms of anything but gentleness of the whole

1 50 says a late Co: respondent of the Guardian.

Bench of Bishops; of a prelacy which includes the hoary-headed Exeter, the brilliant Oxford, and one of the most worthy of all the English primates. For Dr. Newman the enthusiastic reviewer has nothing but superlatives of praise. Be patient we must; but it is certainly beyond all reasonable expectation that we should be content to see such a man made our model of "delicacy and refinement," as well as the great expounder of our Articles. And as for "speaking gently" of Rome, however amiable was the sentiment, in the poetry of the Christian Year, when it first appeared, in a generation by-gone, I cannot think it has led to any good results, especially in the case of the author of No. 90.

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When I read his "Lectures on Certain Difficulties" which he impertinently ascribed to Anglicans,1 I said "here is language so gross, as well as unjust, that its precise equivalent, levelled at the Romish Church, in England by a fanatic of Exeter Hall, would hardly be relished even there."

Such an elaborate caricature of things the most sacred; such minute and persistent outrage to the most religious feelings of an Anglican ; such bitter innuendo and such insulting sympathy have seldom, elsewhere, been connected with a style so scholarly, with such an assumption of innocence and even of patience and sanctity. To think how vulnerable is his own system, had any one the conscience to repay him in his own way!

To return to Mr. Keble's position, it is my conviction that, like Mr. Palmer, of Worcester College, he gave his friend's Tract, by a too partial construction, the credit of meaning Catholicity and not Romanism. I could express my own views of the Articles, in general terms, precisely as he does; only, I cannot read No. 90 with his tender eyes. But, the one grand distinction of Mr. Keble, in all this sad history, has been his undoubted love of the Church of England. To his dying day he deeply felt the violence of Dr. Newman, and spoke sharply of perverts from the Church's fold. I quote as follows: 3

"It was on the afternoon of Sunday, the 19th of June, 1864, I found him seated on the lawn absorbed in the

Appendix (of Dr. Newman's Apologia), which had just

1 Published in 1850.

2 He was a member of the Anglo-Continental Society, from 1855 to his death.

* Correspondent of the Guardian, April 18, 1866.

reached him. . . . I never saw him moved so before, or after. He seemed almost stupefied by the blow, which was as unexpected as he felt it to be severe. I remember full well his exclamations of disappointment and sorrow; much as though his dear and trusted friend had spoken slightingly of his mother. After sitting for a long time silent and abstracted at table, he said, when we wero alone, 'You see I can't get over it, at all.' When walking together in the park, he would say, 'I can't think how he could say that.' And again, 'What could make him so disdainful,' and such like."

In 1851, referring to the Roman Church, 1 he says, "Which now, alas ! seems more than ever determined to deal with us as a scornful and unsparing enemy;" and these are strong words from him.

The interpretation of the Articles on which I insist, then, is simply that natural, grammatical and historical one which the Reformers themselves authorized. Whatever private and personal views they had, I agree, is of little moment; we must look to their Synodical decisions, and find in them the expositio contemporanea et fortissima. Now, they gave us their Expository decree, in what Cosin 2 calls their "Golden Rule," and published it with the Articles in 1571. It reads as follows:

"Let nothing ever be taught as to be religiously held and believed, save only what is agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, and what, from that very doctrine, has been gathered by the Fathers and ancient Bishops."

No words could be more fatal than these to any such interpretation as Dr. Newman contends for. Volume on volume of our old doctors may be cited which prove that the Trentine decrees are both a crime and a blunder; and if that were not enough, we could prove it even out of the better class of Gallicans, from the admissions of Bossuet, Fleury, Launoy, and Du Pin. The fathers and ancient bishops knew nothing of such a creed, and Dr. Newman's doctrine of "Development" virtually admits the fact. Yet, the whole artifice of No. 90 is the groundless assumption that Romanism is Primitive and Catholic, and that, therefore, anybody may claim the above "Golden Rule" in defence of his right to subscribe our articles in his own private view of what is "Catholic," that is in a Romish sense.

Abuse has had its effect in leading us to undervalue the old Marian martyrs, and one is thought less of for quoting them. God forbid I should the less love and venerate those

1 Pastoral Letter.

2 History of the Canon, p. 236.

worthies may my soul be with them in the last Day! They are commonly thought to be less Catholic than the Caroline divines, and so they were. But why? Not because they were disciples of Calvin, but because, like Calvin, they had been bred in no better school than that of Romish Scholasticism. Hence they could not immediately free themselves from ideas which became Calvinism at Geneva, but which tormented the Gallican Church for a generation after it had lost its hold in England, and which still survive as Jansenism. Yet it is just for what Rome had taught them that they are despised by the writer of Tract No. 90, and by the shallow party he has created. I will not omit, then, a quotation from Cranmer, which has always endeared him to me, in spite of his infirmities, and which has in it more of the spirit of Catholicity than is to be found in anything Dr. Newman ever wrote. It is in his "Appeal to a General Council,”- -as follows:

"I protest that it was never in my mind to write, speak or understand anything contrary to the most Holy Word of God, or else against the Holy Catholic Church of Christ, but purely and simply to imitate and teach those things only which I have learned of the Sacred Scripture and of the Catholic Church of Christ from the beginning, and also according to the exposition of the most holy and learned Fathers and martyrs of the Church. And if anything, peradventure, hath chanced otherwise than I thought I may err, but heretic I cannot be, forasmuch as I am ready, in all things to follow the judgment of the most Sacred Word of God, and of the Holy Catholic Church." 1

Now, the Catholic interpretation of the Articles as understood by Bull and Hammond, was just this, and no words could be more exclusive than these of the Trentine novelties which all our great divines have pronounced contrary to the Catholic Fathers and ancient bishops. Cosin, who was all his life at war with the Puritans, and whose Catholic character will not be gainsayed, uses language about the Council of Trent much stronger than mine, and says in his last will:

"I do profess with holy asseveration and from my very heart, that I am now, and have ever been, from my youth, altogether free and averse from the corruptions and impertinent new-fangled or papistical (so commonly called) superstitions and doctrines, and new super-additions to the ancient and primitive religion and Faith of the most commended, so orthodox, and Catholic Church long since introduced, contrary to the Holy Scripture and the rules and customs of the ancient Fathers."

This is my position; and everybody who is acquainted with the Anglican doctors, knows

1 Cranmer's Remains, Cambridge, p. 227.

that such is the current, nay, the torrent of their testimony.

I know very well that seeming concessions can be culled here and there from their writings, as from Archbishop Wake's Letters,-but, in this latter instance, all was based on the proviso that the Gallicans were to assert their "Liberties" and abjure the Papacy; and some such proviso is always expressed or understood in other cases. For my part, should the Gallicans abjure the Pope, and hold to Bossuet's Exposition, not as Articles of Faith, nor as terms of Communion, but as we hold our Articles, then, I say myself, that our Faith being the same Catholic Creeds we could not be justified in refusing Communion with them; nay, it would be our duty, in order to lead them to a sounder practical Theology, to We could still accept their advances to us. speak the truth in love. But, all this is very different from going over to them and the Pope, and accepting the Trent decrees as our rule of Faith.

The late Dr. Wiseman threw out a bait which Dr. Pusey seems to have caught, when he said that "such an interpretation may be given of the Thirty-nine Articles as will strip them of all contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod." Dr. Newman's Tract shews how such an interpretation may be manufactured, no doubt; but let no man say that it is the Catholic interpretation, or that it can, in any way, be harmonized with the views of our great Catholic divines. On the contrary, who does not see that the very effort to harmonize them with the Trentine decrees, erects those decrees into a standard, and admits the authority of a Council which they abhorred ?

Besides, allowing the possibility of so harmonizing the Articles and making them all one with the decrees of Trent, nothing is gained in the way of Unity with Rome till those decrees are received as de fide; and that operation would erect our Articles, as harmonized, into Articles of Faith also.

And then observe the Occidentalism of the project. Is Rome the whole Church? When we go back to her are we any nearer to Catholic Unity? Everyone of those Trent decrees is a schism in itself, reduplicating the sin of Nicolas I., who interpolated the Nicene Creed, and erecting new barriers against Communion with the East. The Greeks ignorantly object to our Articles as they are, overlooking the facts that we make them no Creed, and that

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