B

THE

OXFORD TRACT SYSTEM

CONSIDERED

WITH REFERENCE TO THE PRINCIPLE OF

RESERVE IN PREACHING.

IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND ABROAD.

BY
THE REV. C. S. BIRD, M. A.
LATE FELLOW OP TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

LONDON :
J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY;
J. G. AND F. RlVlNGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
1&38.

^,,

IiONDON ;
IBVTjON A>TJ> PALMER, PRINTERS, $ \ VOY STUEF.T, STRAND.

ADVERTISEMENT.

In giving this Letter to the public, the Author has added
a Postscript and Appendix, in the hope that it may thus
better answer the purpose intended.
He begs it may be remembered, that, from the circum
stances under which the Letter was written, it is not so
much a formal refutation, as an exposure, of the tendency
of what the author, without meaning any offence, calls
the Oxford Tract System.,
For a fuller exposure of the errors of the System, and
an exhibition of counteracting truths, the Author would
refer (amongst others chiefly anonymous) to Archdeacon
Browne's Strictures, Professor Faussett's Sermon before
the University of Oxford, Dr. Shuttle worth's Not Tradi
tion but Scripture, Capes on Church Authority, Bissland
on the Preaching of the Cross, and Townsend's Charge,
which last contains an eloquent, but short, denunciation of
the error exposed in this Letter, and that not only by an
appeal to Scripture, but also in a light in which it is not
viewed here — namely, that our Church holds out no sanc
tion whatever in her Liturgy, Services, and Homilies, to
the principle of " Reserve in communicating religious
knowledge."

LETTER TO A FRIEND ABROAD.

My dear Friend,
Cut off from books, and almost, you say, from society
you have yet heard of the Oxford Tracts!  1 am not
surprised at it. What wonder, if in so bold, and to a
certain extent successful, an attempt to stop the current of
religious opinions in this country, there should be some
loud and angry chafing of the waters against the unwonted
barrier ? What wonder if the t should reach you
abroad ? In due time, I trust, the tumult will cease ! — the
waters are rising, and, under God, will at length bear
down the obstacle. But till this is effected, the noise they
make is a matter of course — they cannot rise without it ;
disagreeable it may be, but it is nothing strange ! nay, it
may be hailed as a sign of good, it shows " quanta paret
pelagus," and is a happy omen of the restoration of peace
and quietness, to be enjoyed, not by submission but
victory. Omens, it is true, admit of a double interpreta
tion : the Oxford Tract writers see, in the opposition and
alarm they have excited, a token of the goodness of their
cause, and a presage pf its success ; as if error never excited
opposition; or as if they could not possibly be in error;
or as if the religious state of the country was so bad that
T!

truth alone would be unwelcome.* Time, the great inter
preter, will undeceive them. You, however, who are at a
distance, and see not what is going on, and where the fault
lies, are perplexed by what you hear. You catch what
accounts you can, but you know not how far to trust them.
They seem mere assertions. You ask me to add my testi
mony, and (what alone could give it value) to confirm it
by proofs. You say, " What is this system concerning
which I hear such extraordinary statements ? Can you
give me a clear insight into its nature and tendency ? I am
told it is new and dangerous. I am told, at the same
time, that it emanates from Oxford, from men excellent in
talent and piety. What am I to think ? If the account of
its origin be correct, can the description of its character be
true ?"
It grieves me, I assure you, to make the reply I must
to your question. But since I feel called upon to speak,
I am bound to say I believe the description to be true. I
believe that the system, in the actual course at least which
it has taken, cannot be characterised otherwise than as new
and dangerous. It matters not whether it might not have
taken some other course ; it matters not whether its au
thors might not have wandered amidst the gloom of anti
quity with safety, and even with benefit, if they had done
so in a different spirit : I only speak of what the actual
result has been. As it is, our dearest principles are in
danger, our most established convictions are attempted to
be shaken. Talents and piety, alas ! are no protection
against error. Church history leaves us in no doubt upon
* Mr. Newman, in his Letter to Dr. faussett, (in consequence of the
Divinity Professor's Sermon against the Tracts,) tells us plainly that we are
at " low-water" mark ; so that any change must be for the better.

this point. Never was there an error of any magnitude
introduced successfully into the church of Christ without
them. The nature of the case, indeed, leads us to expect
what history proves. For men would shrink from error,
unless disguised, and that skilfully. It may be disguised
or not from the instruments of its introduction, but dis
guised it must be from those who admit it. " Surely in
vain the net is spread in sight of any bird." The part of
your information, therefore, which concerns the character
of the Authors, must not prevent you from believing, on
proper evidence, that which concerns the character of the
System. To be sure, it is hard to say what is new. Novelty
is a relative term, meaning merely that something differ
ent previously prevailed. Otherwise we should never be
able to call the strangest opinion new. The human
mind has run the whole round of absurdities. Cicero
expressed this truth, even in his time. How much
clearer has it become from the intervention of eighteen
hundred years ! If we have such a space to range over, we
shall have no difficulty in finding precedents for any view
we may please to take of religion. Even if we confine our
search to the times since the Reformation, we may antici
pate, that here and there amongst the writings of our own
divines, we shall detect some countenance for almost any
opinion. When I say, therefore, that the Tract System is
new, I have reference to what you and I used to take to be
the prevailing views in the Church of England — those, I
am happy to think, of our Reformers, as seen in the Homi
lies.* I will give you passages from the Tracts, and the
* The author, since he wrote this, finds he has the authority of the Bishop
of Chester to support him, who, in his Charge, just published, speaks of the
Oxford Tract writers as men who, " sitting in the Reformers' seat, are tra
ducing the Reformation." See Appendix A.
B 2

Publications that revolve round them, to prove to you how
new and startling the system is, in this sense. If I mistake
not, you will be deeply grieved, as well as astonished,
when you see the proofs. If you are not grieved, it will
show that I know not my friend's heart. But I will not
doubt that I know it ; I will not doubt, therefore, that you
will, when you have seen the extracts, unite with me in
considering the system not only new, but also, as you have
been informed by mutual friends, dangerous.
Some persons will tell us, you can never fairly exhibit
the nature of a system by Extracts. I do not agree with
them. I grant that extracts do not always effect this, but
it does not follow that they might not. In what other way
do we prove our opinions from the Bible ? In reviews, is
it impossible to give a fair and distinct view of the nature
and tendency of a work, whether this be actually done
in a particular case or not? In courts of justice, in cases
of libel, is it not sufficient for the counsel to produce pas
sages from the libellous publication? How do the Oxford
Tract writers themselves endeavour to give us the opinions
of the Fathers, but by extracts ? There may have been
flagrant abuses of the facility which is afforded by extract
ing from works, to pervert their meaning, but no one can
contend, on reflection, that there is not a use, as well as an
abuse, in this matter. What we need, in making extracts,
is honesty and kindness : not to curtail, when what we
leave out would explain what we retain — not to quote what
is ambiguous, and then put an unfriendly interpretation on
it. If extracts are long enough, or at least clear enough,
I know not what objection can be made to their being
received in evidence of the author's sentiments. It should
always be remembered for what purpose extracts are made ;
it is not that the reader may understand the work, but that

he may see whether it is a work which it is worth while to
study. As a friend of mine observed, when rebuked for
speaking against a book of which he confessed he had not
read the whole — " If I find the first slice of my mutton
tainted, am I bound to eat the whole joint, before I pro
nounce upon its merits ?" *
Happily, so far as ascertaining the views of the Tract
writers is concerned, though not so with regard to the
labour entailed, there is no deficiency of materials from
which to collect a fair exhibition of the system. Were I
to give you a full list of the works they have produced
within the short space of five years, I should surprise you:
you would see what a task it would be to make yourself
complete master of their system, even in its present,
probably immature, state. They commenced their labour,
I believe, in 1833, with Newman on " The Arians of the
Fourth Century," and going on with a yearly birth of a
thick volume of the " Tracts for the Times," the fourth of
which belongs to the present year, and of which an indefi
nite series may be expected, they sent forth at intervals nu
merous large octavo volumes, (some of them heavy in more
respects than one, in spite of the acknowledged talent of
the writers,) accompanied by a light array of separate
Tracts, Sermons, Letters, and Poetry, and ably supported
by reviews and articles in the British Critic and the British
Magazine, both which influential periodicals are under
their control, and the former of which is said to have Mr.
Newman as its editor. I need not specify the publications
which form the list, as I shall not have occasion to use
many of them. The writers as a body have adopted, ac
cording to Dr. Pusey, the motto, " In quietness and in con
fidence shall be your strength." With regard to confidence,
* See Appendix B.

6
they have justified their adopting it; but as to quietness, it
is not being very quiet to pour forth such a rapid suc
cession of controversial publications in the compass of so
few years.
There is one work belonging to the list, which I will
send you, that you may see it with your own eyes. No
extracts would give you an adequate impression of it. It
is worth all the rest put together for your purpose, inas
much as it exhibits the tendency of the system, which is all
you need to see, not by dry precepts, or abstract reasoning,
or wearisome quotations from folios, but by a living and
breathing example. I mean the two volumes of "Froude's
Remains,"" which will accompany this letter. The work
may be regarded as authoritative, for it was published by
Mr. Newman and his Oxford friends (when I use the word
Oxford, do not think that I ever mean to implicate the
University) with the avowed object of its being, as the
preface expresses it, " a witness to their views." As such,
therefore, it may be used with their consent. Sorry should
I be to think that any of them should be a second Froude,
in temper and spirit, whatever admiration they may have
for his zeal and honesty. I do not think it — but Mr.
Froude should be a beacon. How they came to publish
his Remains, when it rested with them, I know not ; I can
only regard it as a mere Providence. But I need not
anticipate your judgment.
I mentioned Mr. Newman's work on the Arians as being
at the head of the list in point of time. It may stand very
high in point of importance, though it has not attracted
much notice. I well remember the exceeding astonishment
with which I first read the following passage.
" No one sanction,"" says Mr. Newman, (p. 51,) "can
be adduced from Scripture, whether of precept or example,

in behalf of stimulating the affections, e. g. of gratitude
or remorse, by means of the Atonement, in order to the
conversion of the hearers ; on the contrary, it is its uni
form method to connect the Gospel with Natural Religion,
and to mark out obedience to the moral law, as the
ordinary means of attaining to a Christian faith ; the
higher truths, as well as the Eucharist, which is the
visible emblem of them, being reserved as the reward and
confirmation of habitual piety." When I first saw this
passage, I could scarcely trust the evidence of my sight.
The hardihood of the assertion as to the matter of fact,
that "no one sanction can be adduced," &c. seemed almost
incredible. Could I have read Scripture so ill hitherto ?
I had thought that Jesus Christ was the sole foundation
on which to build the Christian superstructure. I had
imagined that Faith led to practice, not practice to Faith.
Was I to unlearn this ? Was I to put Natural Religion in
the place of Christ as the foundation ? Did not our Lord
say, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me ?'»
What could this mean ? Not that it would be the beauty
and moral fitness in His teaching, and its correspondence
with natural religion, that would draw men ; for this had
failed to do so, at the time He spoke ; but His " being lifted
up," which was then future — His being crucified for
them — His atoning for their transgressions with His inno
cent blood. "We love Him," says St. John, "because
he first loved us;" that is, our affection is kindled not
by a cold admiration of His moral excellence, but by our
hearing, and believing what we hear, of the way in
which He proved his love to us. Will it be contended
that without such affection, outward obedience, obedience
to the moral law, is of any value in the sight of God, so
far as the individual is concerned ? What strange Ian-

guage is it, that "the higher truths are the rewards of
habitual piety ?" Are they not the basis of it ? Can
there be piety — except in the heathen sense of "religio,"
mere circumstantial worship, totally independent of what
we call piety — without the peculiar doctrines of Chris
tianity ? I know that it is told us, " He that will do
the will of God, shall know of the doctrine whether it
be of God." But this very text implies, that it is no
new doctrine spoken of, i. e. something yet uncommuni-
cated, for it calls it " the doctrine," and it speaks only of
a new degree of perception of it, a deep and heartfelt con
viction that "it is of God." It refers to that internal
evidence which the poor have as well as the learned, and
which is the best and most valuable of all evidence, that
"the doctrine," already heard and assented to by the
mind, is of divine origin, by its exact adaptation to our
wants, and its effects upon us. In this knowledge, God
be praised ! there is a growth ; they who hear of redemp
tion, and the love of Christ, from the lips of a preacher,
and suffer the truth to sink into their hearts, and desire
nothing so much as to " do the will of God," and " follow
the Lamb whithersoever he goeth," doubtless such persons
will have a degree of knowledge, an assurance respecting
the source and power of the truth, which the preacher him
self may not have. The same thing is implied in our
Lord's declaration, " He that hath, to him shall be given :"
it is not said that he shall have something of a different
kind, but the degree shall be greater ; if he improve what
he has, he shall have in richer measure. And when our
Lord says, " Take heed how ye he?r !" he does not say,
what ye hear, but how ye hear — how ye receive the
great and precious truths which arc freely preached
to you. What have texts which lay down the duty of

hearers to do with the question affected by Mr. New
man's passage, the duty of teachers ? Is not this a heavy
blow struck at the preaching which by the mercy of God
now prevails in the Establishment, and which has withheld
so many from lifting up their hands against it, because a
blessing was in it ? What will become of the Church —
what will become of the people — if mere moral preaching
is to prevail once more ? May not the religious state
of a country always be judged of by the character of
the popular preaching, to which it stands in the double
relation of effect and cause? Shall we justify the cry
which has so often been raised against us, and when be
lieved, so successfully, that we do not preach the Gospel
in the National Church ? What would our bitterest
enemies wish more ? What would the friends of the
Church more weep over ? * Shall we be carried back to
the days of heathenism, or of Christianity with an infusion
of heathenism, when the higher truths were reserved as a
reward for the obedience of the initiated who had passed
through certain preliminary stages ? Must Bishop Hors-
ley rise from the grave to rebuke our falling away, and
to repeat his solemn charges to preach the Gospel, with all
its distinguishing tenets, and not natural religion and
heathen ethics? But there is no end to interrogations. I
will only ask, what did St. Paul mean, when he told the
Corinthians, whose church, be it remembered, he himself
had founded, that at his very first entrance amongst them
he did not come " with excellency of speech, or of wisdom,"
such as Plato and the other Grecian or Roman philoso
phers would have broi ght with them, addressing themselves
to the conscience of moral and reflecting people, gratifying
the reason of the intellectual, and laying their foundation
* See Appendix C.

10
in men's natural perception of what is good and lovely;
" but I determined," he says, " not to know anything
among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." What
could he mean, but that he was determined to preach the
Atonement, the first thing as well as the last, and nothing
but the Atonement, nothing that was not so connected
with it, and exclusively founded upon it, in contradis
tinction to what rested on natural religion, that it might
be considered part of it? It cannot be supposed that
he was determined to tell the Greeks in Corinth the
fact of our Lord's crucifixion, and not mention the
reason and object of it — to reveal the shame, but not the
glory — to hold up Jesus as a crucified Jew, without
letting them know that He was the Son of God, and
Saviour of the world. No; St. Paul had been taught
" what was in man," better than the heathen philosophers ;
he was resolved, therefore, to strike deep at once ; not
just to disturb the surface, but to reach the very elements
of our nature ; to smite the heart, not merely to please
the ear ; to unseal the fountain, where lie the feelings
which the rudest child of man possesses in common with
the most cultivated ; and to realise, by God's Spirit helping
him, in Corinth, what his Master Himself had appealed
to in Judea as the crowning proof of His divine mission,
" The poor have the Gospel preached to them."
I have dwelt long on this first quotation ; I must be»
you to let me dwell on it a little longer. Its importance
seems to grow upon me, the more I consider it.
Perhaps you think I have made too much of it. You
are still, it may be, a little incredulous, as most good
people are, when a serious charge is brought against
respectable persons; especially such a charge as a delibe
rate attempt to overturn the preaching of the Cross. You

11
rebel, I dare say, against my introduction of the hea
then and heathenism into the observations I have made,
and you look upon it as done in the way of declamation. I
assure you it is no such thing.
You are aware of the existence amongst the heathen of
the Eleusinian and other mysteries. If we take Bishop
Warburton's view of them, they concealed within them
selves the doctrine of the unity of God, of a divine
Providence, and of a future state of rewards and punish
ments, which they communicated only to the Muorcu.
They were perhaps glanced at by St. Paul, when he
speaks of those amongst the heathen who " held the truth
in unrighteousness," that is, possessed it, but held it back —
Kareixov rr\v a\r)detav.* Their principle, then, according to
the Bishop's view, was precisely that which Mr. Newman
imagines he sees in the Gospel ; to demand obedience first,
and then supply motives ; to give little when most was
needed ; but if any could begin and go on a while indepen
dently of their help, then to distinguish them with an
insight into the higher truths, by way of rewarding and
confirming them in their religious course. The conse
quence was, the multitude never were initiated ; they
wanted such an insight into the higher truths in the be
ginning, to take the very first steps. So it is under
the Gospel ; the spirit-stirring truths of the Gospel are
never so much needed as when a sinner has to be
awakened to a sense of his sins, and to be encouraged
to make the first motion towards God. How can he be
brought to do this, (the Spirit acting upon us according to
our nature and constitution,) unless he sees that there is a
way in which God can be reconciled to him ? Without
the hope that he will be welcomed, polluted as he is, he
* See Macknight.

12
cannot be expected to turn to God. Without the distinct
knowledge of the Atonement, I see not how he can have
that hope. He will, therefore, under all ordinary cir
cumstances, like the common people amongst the Greeks,
for ever be shut out from the mysteries of Christianity, if
we are to wait till he is ivorthy to have them communicated
to him. You know the distinction which was made by
the heathen, not only in their mysteries but in their philo
sophy,* between Exoteric and Esoteric doctrines ; one set
for those who were without, and another for those
within. It was always my delight to think, and I have
often expressed it to others, that there was no such dis
tinction in Christianity ; I thought that there all was
open. " Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and
eat !" Is not this the glory of our religion, that the mercy-
doors are flung wide open, and all are invited to enter —
that the souls of all are equally loved and equally valued —
that " Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,"
not merely the decent and moral, but " the chief of
sinners ?" The difficulty in the case of those who are
grown old in the service of sin lies, not in the disposition
of Christ towards them— for one immortal soul in His
sight is as precious as another, and as to unworthiness it
is only a matter of degree — but in persuading them that
God loves them, that He still cares for them, that they
have yet a Friend and a Saviour. Even the doctrine of
the Atonement may fail to reach their hearts ; but without
this doctrine, what prospect, humanly speaking, can there
be? Now the distinction between exoteric and esoteric
doctrines had crept into the church of Christ in the early
* This was particularly the case in Alexandria, where Pl.tonism
abounded, and Judaeo-Plalonism in the school of Philo.

13
centuries. This was the reason why I spoke of Chris
tianity with an infusion of heathenism. Such an infu
sion actually existed in the church, and poisoned it. And
j7et Mr. Newman looks back upon the state he describes,
without one expression of regret ; nay, as we may infer
from his fond and reverential manner of describing it, and
still more, as I shall show, from the evidence of the Tracts,
" holds the poisoned chalice to our lips." Much of his
work on the Arians is occupied with an account of the
Disciplina Arcani, the system of secrecy. He gives us
a very interesting and learned account of the state of
things, and the practice of the church, in the earlier cen
turies. He quotes (p. 53) Cyril of Jerusalem, saying,
" Tell nothing to one who is without. For we impart to
thee a secret, and a promise of the world to come. Keep
safe the secret for him who gives the reward. Listen not
to one who asks, ' What harm is there in my knowing
also V " Even inquiry was to be checked. One would have
thought a Christian would have rejoiced to hear a
heathen say, " May I know ?" But not so ; he must
rather repress such curiosity. And it does not appear
that this had reference to any deep and difficult questions,
such as the mode of union of the divine and human nature,
the doctrines of election, predestination, free will, &c, but
simply to " the promise of the world to come." No one
will deny that there are truths which are for men, and
not for babes — that there are depths in revelation in which
an elephant must swim, as well as shallows where a
lamb may wade ; and again, no one will deny that when
men have heard and scorned the truth, it may be withheld
from them, as it was by our Lord from the cavilling Jews.
(Dean Turtoti has written a. very interesting work on the
Eucharist, in opposition to the Romanist Lecturer in

14
London, Dr. Wiseman, in which he ably discusses our
Lord's practice in this respect.*) But all this has nothing
to do with what Cyril speaks of. Clement of Alexandria
also is quoted by Mr. Newman (p. 54) as saying, that his
Stromata, or Miscellanies, " mingle truth with philosophy,
or rather involve and conceal it, as the shell hides the real
fruit of the nut." " My design being to hide my subject,
none but the intelligent, and the sharp-sighted, and the
sincere inquirer, will be able to enter into it." What a
terrible confession ! What an unhappy state of things !
By what cruel necessity were these good Fathers driven
thus to hide what must have been so dear to themselves ?
If they felt the value of the knowledge of the excellency
of Christ, they must have desired to communicate it to
others. What was it that hindered them ? Nothing:
but an imaginary necessity. They feared that the truth,
if produced at once to light, would either scare the hea
then, or be despised. Adopting the policy of the Mys
teries, (as well as borrowing the names Mvorai, Mvaraywyoi,
&c, see Bingham,) they thought they must either cheat
men, or allure them, into the profession of Christianity —
not alarming the timid by letting them see anything
peculiar — drawing on the inquisitive, by showing a
little, and then a little more, of the truth, as a skilful
vender does his wares to a greedy purchaser. In short,
they exhibited a specimen of that "wisdom of man,"
which has always inflicted such deep wounds on the
cause of God. Mr. Newman gives us striking and
skilful details of the various arts they used — Allegorism,
a most dangerous instrument, as was shown when
Origen (whom Mr. Newman greatly admires, and calls
* See Appendix D.

15
the victim of calumny,*) applied it to Scripture history,
in the same way in which it was applied by the Platonists
to heathen fables, and " spiritualised,"1 as Mr. Newman
says, " the account of Abraham's denying his wife, the
polygamy of the patriarchs, and Noah's drunkenness ;"
for which Mr. Newman justly blames him — the Economy,
or dispensation theory ,+ which suits the amount of instruc
tion to what the times will bear, a mode of proceeding
which should be left in the hands of God, and which man
should never presume to employ — and Eclecticism, or sifting
false religions for the purpose of finding what they have in
common with the true, a fascinating but perilous investiga
tion, leaving great scope to the imagination, and tempting
to the creation of correspondences where they do not exist,
by lowering the true religion, or unduly exalting the false.
I would not press hard upon the Fathers of whom Mr.
Newman speaks; I reverence them for their personal
* Mr. Newman's words are, (p. 107,) " Origen — that man of strong heart,
(xaXKevrepos,) who has paid for the^ unbridled freedom of his speculations on
other subjects of theology by the multitude of grievous and unfair charges which
burden his name with posterity." But he goes further, and seems to
think Origen quasi inspired, (p. 70,) where he says, " It is surely no ex
travagance to assert that there are minds so gifted and disciplined as to
approach the position occupied by the inspired writers. So far, then, as the
Alexandrian fathers partook of such a singular gift of grace, (and Origen
surely bears on him the tokens of some exalted moral dignity,") Sfc. But one
is at a loss to know exactly what are the ideas entertained by the Ox
ford Tract writers on the subject of Inspiration. Mr. Froude says, " We
cannot be certain that the inspiration which dictated the Sacred Writings
differed at all in kind, or very materially in degree, from that which suggested
such a work as Bishop Butler's Analogy." Of the Apostles he says, "As far
as I can see, it is perfectly gratuitous to believe, that beyond the matters
which they were commissioned to reveal, their writings are more infallible
than the compositions of other very wise men."
f See Appendix E.

16
piety, and the sacrifices they made in embracing the truth,
and I rejoice to see in much that they wrote what a unity
of spirit there is in all true believers in all generations ;
but, as dispensers of spiritual knowledge in their day and
generation, we must deeply lament that they had not a
bolder and a nobler faith. Why did they not trust God's
word, which is " mighty to the pulling down of strong
holds ?" Why did they doubt that He can accomplish what
He has proposed, by the means which He has appointed?
Why step in to help Him, in violation of that beautiful
principle, eloquently set forth in Professor Pusey's fifth of
November sermon, (though strangely applied by him to the
revolution in 1688,) " that in quietness and in confidence
shall be our strength ?" Why did they not draw the glit
tering sword which God had given them, " the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God ?" It makes one's heart
bleed to think what infinite and irreparable mischief was
done by the incorporation of philosophy with Christianity —
what multitudes passed into eternity without the knowledge
of Christ, because they were not thought worthy to receive
it — what a loss of comfort and joy the Fathers themselves
sustained, and how foolishly they robbed themselves of the
unspeakable satisfaction the great Apostle must have felt,
when he said, " I take you to record this day, that I am
pure from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to
declare to you all the counsel of God."
And now that I have shown you from Mr. Newman's
own work the state of things in those days, I am sure you
will admit, that to go back to such a sort of heathenised
Christianity would be mere madness. And yet this is what
we are recommended to do. The Fathers, grievously as
they erred in adopting the heathenish principle of conceal
ment, had some excuse from the prejudices of their birth 

17
but what excuse shall we have ? They did not live to see
the fatal effects of their erroneous system, when it was fully
developed in Popery — when the plan of accommodation
had gone to the lengths described, for instance, in Mid-
dleton's celebrated letter from Rome,* and the light of
divine truth, from being pent up so long, had almost en
tirely gone out. But shall we give up the advantage
which Time has bestowed on us, be deaf to the warnings of
History, and try whether the same causes will always
produce the same effects, or not ? I mentioned to you that
Mr. Newman used no expression of disapprobation or
regret in his general description of the System of Secrecy
unhappily adopted by the Fathers. The Oxford Tracts
leave us in no doubt what his real sentiments were. Things
were not ripe in 1833 for the avowal made in 1838. Read
the following extracts from the 4th vol. of the Tracts,
No. 80, which is addressed Ad Clerum, and entitled, " On
reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge.'' The very
title reveals the object. The writer says, (p. 70,) "All
acceptance of divine truth" (! ) ''and all religious worship,
must be the spontaneous act of the individual," (does he
mean to exclude the working of the Spirit ?) " and the
more inconvenience or self-denial such an act is accompa
nied with, the more does it partake of the nature of such
spontaneous action." "It will always be true of human
nature, that it cannot approach God without a sacrifice."
Very true, if that sacrifice be Christ ! if it appropriate His
merits! — but what shall we think of the writer's sentiment ?
what has nature to bring of its own, in its approach to God ?
Having laid down these principles, so full of apparent error,
the writer applies them to what he is incidentally discussing,
the building of churches, and the spread of the Bible ;
* See Appendix F. C

;i8
two points of the highest importance. He allows that to
build churches is a good work — but to what end ? to pro
mote piety in others ? no ! but to prove the piety of the
builder. " The sacrifices they require, (he says, p. 68,) are
greatly beneficial to the individual, merely as religious
sacrifices.'" " It is indeed one of the most natural expres
sions of a heart rightly disposed, as offerings made to God,
arising in Him, and resting in Him as their end; and
therefore there can be no means of promoting the cause of
religion higher and better than such," (meaning the religion
of the individual, as appears more clearly from what
follows,) " merely, I repeat, as oblations to God, and
having reference to Him alone." " But when the utili
tarian view of the subject is taken," (that is, when we build
churches in the hope that the ignorant and ungodly may be
induced to enter them, and, under God, be eternally bene
fited,) " are we not thinking that we may do by human
means, and such as partake of this world, that which is
the work of God alone, as if the mammon of the world could
promote the cause of God." (Can it not ? are we not told,
" make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unright
eousness" ?) " For if the erection of churches which, from
commodiousnessand easiness of access, are to invite," (where
previously, for instance, the poor had many miles to go,)
" and from their little cost partake more of a low contriving
expediency than of a generous love of God, is to do the work
of religion," (who imagines that the erection is to do the
work ? who could think that God is to be excluded ?)
" then is it more easy to win souls than Scripture will
warrant us in supposing. On the contrary, if the maxim
be true, that ' men venerate that which resisteth them, and
that which courteth their favour they despise,' then have
we to fear lest rather than doing good we be breaking that

19
holy law which hath commanded that we give not that
which is holy to the dogs, the church's best gifts be trod
under foot, and her enemies turn and rend her. For if
churches are to be brought home to all, then are all persons
to be brought into churches, and this by human means :''
(and why not ? provided it be in dependence on the Divine
blessing.) " Thus immediately connected with that view
alluded to is that of eloquence and pleasing delivery, a
powerful worldly engine" (why worldly only ?) "unlike that
weak instrument which St. Paul calls ' the foolishness of
preaching :' " (surely St. Paul was alluding to the matter,
not the style or manner, of his preaching ; neither was he
speaking of what his preaching really was, but what it
seemed to be to the Greeks, for he presently used the
expression," the foolishness of God;" — and as to eloquence,
which the writer decries, it may be a great gift of God,
and may be modestly and thankfully used to His glory, as it
was by Apollos:*) " and liturgies made suitable to the taste
of the generality," (this is a stroke at our Liturgy, as
Froude's Remains will prove to you,f) "and canonical
hours relinquished for those which are more popular,
and sacred things brought out of their chaste reserve, and
put forth to attract." (Is it a crime to win souls to
Christ ? can the most sacred things be more honoured by
any other use ?) So much for the application of his prin
ciples to the building of Churches. Next, he applies them
(p. 70) to the spread of the Bible. " Much of what is
here said may be applied to an indiscriminate distribution
of Bibles and religious publications. We must not expect"
(who can be so foolish as to do so ?) " that the work
which occasioned our Saviour and His disciples so much
pains can be done by such means." (No ! but it may be
• See Appendix G. t See Appendix H.
C 2

20
promoted.) " We have rather to look with awe on these
new dealings of Providence with mankind." This is a
very remarkable sentence. We are rather, it seems, to
feel alarm, than joy and thankfulness, when we see what
peculiar blessings God has bestowed on our times ; to
what use printing is put ; and what a general awaken
ing there is to the duty, long neglected by Protestants, and
the neglect of which was a powerful argument against
them in the hands of Romanists, of propagating the Gos
pel at home and abroad.* This is a very perverse and
ungrateful way of thinking. Doubtless, responsibility
attends privileges, but can we not repose a cheerful confi
dence in God, that He will go with the blessings He
bestows, and touch the hearts of those to whom He is
so gracious ? Can we not warn persons to whom we
give the Bible, or any religious publication, that the mere
gift carries no charm with it ? Shall Infidelity be left in
free and undisturbed possession of the land, to range
over it at will, and scatter the poison of error, without
equal efforts on our part to spread the antidote ? " It
might perhaps be thought," he continues, "that if it isa
state of the heart alone which can receive the truth, to
bring it forward before persons unprepared to acknowledge
it, does not signify ,• such persons cannot receive it, and
therefore the effort is nugatory and unavailing." ( I
must stop here a moment to ask, what preparation the
author alludes to. I fear he means a preparation by hu
man teaching and catechising. If so, that is not neces
sarily a preparation of heart; without which, I grant,
we shall communicate religious truth to no purpose. The
preparation of the heart belongs to God alone. It is what
we cannot outwardly see ; but it is at least as likely to be
* See Appendix I.

2J
wrought by His Spirit in the recipient of the full truth,
as of the truth in inferior measure, and with crippled
power.) "But this does not follow. That such persons
cannot receive it, is the appointment of God, but our
attempting to act contrary to His mode of acting may be
productive of evil. It may arise from a want of real seri
ousness on the subject of religion, and it may be that
for this reason we are not acting under the teaching of
God, and that, in consequence, these effects are prevailing.
Are we rightly estimating the consequences of a bare know
ledge of the Gospel ? As a proof that religious knowledge
has been otherwise considered, may be mentioned one of
the short practical rules attributed to St. Basil. The
question is asked, 'whether it be advantageous to learn
many things out of Scripture ?' The answer implies,
that though it is necessary for those who instruct, yet that
all should be cautious that, according to the apostle's in
junction, they 'think soberly,' earnestly learn their own
duty and do it, only caring for and bent on attaining that
blessing, ' Well done, good servant, thou hast been faith
ful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many ! '
The next question and answer is the following.
" Q. How ought they to receive the gift, who have been
deemed worthy to learn the four Gospels ? — A. Since our
Lord hath declared, that ' to whom men have committed
much, of him they will ask the more,"' they ought to be
more exceedingly afraid, and give earnest heed, as the
apostle hath taught us, saying, ' As workers together with
him, we beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God
in vain.' And this will be the case, if we be persuaded
by the Lord, when he saith, ' If ye know these things, happy
are ye if ye do them.'
" Here he evidently seems to think that the knowledge

22
of the Gospels was a matter for the most serious apprehen
sion, not to be lightly coveted, but received with fear. And
these occur among religious rules most sensible and prac
tical." Now, my dear friend, what do you think of these
extracts, taken all together ? In what light do they put
our ministry ? Not as aggressive — not as going forth to
seek after Christ's sheep scattered in the world — not as
anxious to bring religion home to those who know not its
value, as well as to feed those who already belong to the
flock ; but wholly devoted to the latter office, to the utter
neglect of the work of evangelists; — retiring and dignified; —
seeking regard from distance (" major e longinquo reveren-
tia") ; — dispensing our treasures, like jealous guardians, to
none but those who already prize them, in the way of
reward to the obedient and unpresuming ; — fearful lest the
people should press too fast upon us, as if there was
more danger of eagerness amongst men than of apathy,
and as if we were alarmed lest we should be looked upon
too nearly. Does not this approximate to the idea of the
Jewish ministry, with its Urim and Thummim, and the
different courts of the Temple, one for the Gentiles, and
another for the Israelites, and a third for the Priests, and
the Holy Place still closed, with its veil unrent ?* Or
rather — what it was my purpose to show — is it not as near
an approach to the restoration of the system of the Fathers
in the early centuries, with its Disciplina Arcani, and its
exoteric and esoteric doctrines, its plan of concealment
and reward, as the times will bear? To show this
* "St. Basil," says the writer, (p. 61,) " speaks of the traditions which,
says he, our Father has preserved in inobstrusive silence, and alludes to the
secrecy and sacredness of the Holy Place in the Mosaic law, as representing
the same spirit of reserve."

23
more clearly, I must make some more extracts from
the same tract.
The writer wishes to prove that we ought to hold back
from public view a clear exhibition of the doctrine of our
Lord's Atonement and Divinity. " The prevailing notion,"
he says, (p. 74,) " of bringing forward the Atonement ex
plicitly and prominently on all occasions, is evidently
quite opposed to what we consider the teaching of Scrip
ture, nor do we find any sanction for it in the Gospels."
In part-proof of what he says, (though what he adduces
would be no proof, were the fact as he states it ; for what
was to be proclaimed from the housetop after the Resurrec
tion, as evidenced by it, might only be spoken in the ear
before the event,) he refers to an observation (p. 22)
made, he thinks, by Origen, and says, (p. 67,) "It has
been observed, that our Lord never said that He was the
Christ." As he applies this to his argument, I am war
ranted in considering that he means to adopt it in the
same unqualified manner in which he states it ; other
wise there is an ambiguity in Origen's statement (p. 22)
which I need not trouble you with. As a matter of fact,
then, did Jesus never say that He was the Christ ? Did
He not as good as say it, when He praised Peter for saying
it, and told him he could never have learnt it, had it
not been revealed to him by His Father in heaven ? Did
He not take it for granted, (an incidental proof which is
better than a direct one,) that all His disciples were aware
of it, when He spoke of the blessedness of the man " who
shall give you a cup of water to drink in My name,
because ye belong to Christ?" Did He not de
clare to the Samaritan woman, when she spoke of
the coming of " the Messias which is called Christ,"
"I that speak unto thee am He?" But perhaps the

24
writer means that our Lord never made a public de
claration, and perhaps he distinguishes bet ween His
being the Christ, and His being the Son of God. When
the Jews, then, asked Him " If Thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly," did He not answer, " / told you, and ye be
lieved not ?" And if it be replied, that in saying " I told
you," He speaks figuratively, alluding to the evidence of
His works, which He mentions immediately afterwards ; not
to insist on such a mode of interpretation being perfectly
unjustifiable, unless when there is no choice,* we have
only to read on a little further in St. John, and we
come to the plain and unambiguous declaration, "I and
My Father are one !" The Jews understood this rightly,
for we are told, " Then took they up stones to stone Him,"
informing Him at the same time why they did so, " be
cause that thou, being a man, makest thyself equal with
God." A word of denial or disclaimer from Him would
have set all right ; would not only have arrested their
fury, but would have guarded the incommunicable glory
of God, and would have removed a needless obstacle to
the success of His public ministry ; but no such word
escaped His lips. Silence under such circumstances speaks
volumes. To be silent, on any supposition but one, would
have amounted to the blasphemy with which He was
charged. But He did not merely abstain from all denial,
when a distinct one, and nothing less, was demanded of
Him, if He had not been the Son of God (and the Jews
could perceive this as well as we) ; He confirmed their im
pression, by upbraiding them with inconsistency and un
belief; inconsistency, in allowing inferior claims in the
prophets of old, and rejecting His; unbelief, in shutting
their eyes to His works, as well as their ears to His words —
" See Appendix K.

25
" If I do not the works of my Father, believe Me not ;
but if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works."*
So complete did this make their impression, that it is
added, " Therefore they sought again to take Him." If
any mistake had been made, He had another opportunity
to correct it. Instead of which, He no longer condescends
even to upbraid them ; an indirect mode of instruction,
which wasall their previous disposition deserved, but which
they had now forfeited ; but silently, and by an effort of His
divine power, withdrew. I beg your pardon for dwell
ing so long on this proof that our Lord did assert that
He was the Christ, and that publicly. Having once en
tered on it, I wished to do justice to it. Now what
says the Tract writer with regard to the great doctrine
of our Lord's Divinity, which I have shown that our Lord
did assert, and which, had He not asserted it during His
lifetime, He has made to blaze forth in the writings of
His apostles ? j " In all things," he says, (p. 76,) it
would appear that this doctrine so far from being what
* The works, by themselves, would have shown, as Nicodemus confessed,
" that God was with Him," but not that He was God, which the Jews
charged Him with asserting. This the works showed, only in connexion
with His verbal testimony, by proving that His testimony, whatever it
was, was to be received.
Yet the writer of the Tract says, (p. 68,) •' As our Saviour pointed to.
His works, instead of declaring Himself ; after the same manner," b\c, — intimat
ing that He made no verbal declaration. What, then, was it that led the
Jews to infer more than Nicodemus did 1
t See particularly the whole Gospel of St. John, St. John's Epistles,
St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews , and insulated passages, such as that
in Phil. ii. 6, where there is not merely an assertion of our Lord's Divinity
in the words, but what is of still greater value, in the reasoning.
There is a valuable little Work in which this subject is treated, by Dr.
Miller of Dublin, entitled " Observations on the Doctrines of Christian
ity in reference to Arianism."

26
is supposed, is in fact the very ' secret of the Lord,'
which Solomon says ' is with the righteous.'" As if to
prepare us for this, and cast a shade of doubt over the
certainty of the doctrine, he previously (p. 67) puts it
on a level, in respect of scriptural authority, with the
ordinance of Episcopacy. " The question," he says, " never
need be, whether an ordinance, such as that of Episcopacy,
can be proved to be of divine command, for it has been
observed that our Lord never said that He was the Christ.
But He was not on that account the less so, nor was it
the less necessary that He should be received as such.
All the external evidence required would be, whether
there are indications of a divine preference given to it ;
for if this can be proved, it is sufficient for a dutiful spirit.
In such considerations, all that can be said is, 'he that
can receive it, let him receive it'" I can conceive the
writer of this passage (and personally I honour him for
it,][whoever he may be) carrying his theory so far as to
wish for a less amount of evidence for the doctrine, that
he might give greater proof of his dutifulness. But such
a feeling partakes more of mysticism * than sobriety ; it is
unsuited to the mass of men, nor do the Scriptures cater
to it, in vital doctrines at least. No ! the " dutiful spirit"
he speaks of is not put to the same test in the case of our
Lord's Divinity that it is in the case of Episcopacy ; that
great doctrine is not left to rest on " indications of divine
preference." What a concession would this be to the
Socinians ! How would it stagger an unhappy doubter,
to be told, that the ordinance of Episcopacy was as clearly
to be found in Scripture as the doctrine of the Divinity of
Christ ! that all he had to look for was " a divine prefer
ence !" and that, in weighing the evidence, so nearly were
* See Appendix L.

27
the scales balanced, that the preponderance would depend
entirely on his own spirit ! all that can be said being,
" He that can receive it, let him receive it "!* Is it the
writer's object to exalt the ordinance of Episcopacy, and
make it appear more certain, by putting it on a par with
a doctrine which is denied by no true Christians ? I doubt
not it is — but I leave you to judge, whether, in pursuing
this object, he does not weaken and remove from its foun
dation the evidence for the Divinity of our Lord. I have
remarked the same fatal tendency in observations made
in the " British Critic," on several occasions, when the
object has been to exalt the value of tradition, and mag
nify our obligations to the Council of Nice; as if we
could not have discerned more than " a divine preference"
for the doctrine of the Trinity in the Scriptures ; and are
indebted to the Nicene Fathers, not merely for corrobora
tion, but for whatever certainty we possess on the subject.
Let me now show you what practical application the
Tract writer makes of his disparaging remarks. First he
introduces Origen (p. 32) as informing us, that " our
Lord's divinity was the last truth the perfect man &ame
to know," in his times. (Those were the days of the Dis-
ciplina Arcani.) He then recommends a similar reserve
to us in the present day. " To require," he says, (p. 78,)
" as is sometimes done, from both grown persons and chil
dren an explicit declaration of a belief in the Atonement,
and the full assurance of its power, appears untenable.
* I take it for granted that by Episcopacy being of Divine command the
writer means, ordained as the exclusive form of Church Government. As
such, Hooker did not see it in Scripture. As the form which the Apostles
adopted in their time, no doubt it is plainly seen in Scripture. But this,
though it entitles it to a reverential regard, and makes us most happy in hav
ing' it, is a very different thing from what the writer means.

28
For if, in the case of Abraham, and many others of the
most approved faith in Christ, there was no such explicit
knowledge, it may be the case now. If a poor woman,
ignorant and superstitious as might be supposed, was
received of our Lord by so instant a blessing for touch
ing the border of his clothes, may it not have been the case,
that in times which are now considered dark and lost to
Gospel truth," (does the writer doubt that there were such
times ?) " there might have been many such ? That there
might have been many a helpless person who knelt to a
crucifix in a village churchyard, who might have done it
under a more true sense of that faith which is unto life,
than those who are able to express the most enlightened
knowledge, and therefore, though such as would be now
considered in a state of darkness had more fully arrived
at those treasures of wisdom which are hid in Christ."
Thank God ! this may have been the case, but what
then ? What is a consolation in thinking of those who were
in inevitable darkness, is no reason for excluding others
from the light, or underrating its value. With all my
respect for the writer, and it is considerable, for there are
excellent parts in the Tract, I cannot help looking on the
passage just quoted as very childish.* But a child may
shiver a precious vase ; and weak as the reasoning is, it
may do infinite mischief, if it shake the great principle of
teaching the doctrine of the Atonement, and requiring the
knowledge of it from the people. Shall we hide our can
dle under a bushel ? Are our flocks more likely to be
holy, if we leave them in ignorance? Because the heart
is essential in religion, is the head to be neglected ? When
I stand by the bedside of a poor person who is sick or
dying, what is the question I most anxiously put ? Is
* See Appendix M.

29
it not, ' Where are your hopes fixed ? What are the
grounds of them ?' And if I find that there is no distinct
knowledge of Christ as " the propitiation for our sins,"
how does my heart sink within me ! and if the poor suf
ferer has attended my ministry, how does my conscience
upbraid me !
I have run the risk of wearying you by so many extracts,
(accompanied as they are by comments which I could not
help making,) rather than leave you in any doubt as to
the fact, what are the sentiments of Mr. Newman and his
friends. Can you possibly mistake them ? As a matter
of fact, is not a great attempt made to produce a total
change in the character of our Public Preaching? Is not
this a concern of the highest importance to the Country?
I have been solicitous, not so much to refute the argu
ments (which therefore I have perhaps not fully given*)
as to set before you the views, of the Tract writers. If
you can distinctly see them, I trust I know what will be
your judgment concerning them.
And here I might conclude my letter. I have endea
voured to prove what I set out with, that you had not
been misinformed when you were told that the Tract
system was new and dangerous. I have proved this on
the narrowest ground, with reference to a single tendency
only. You seemed to me to doubt it — you seemed inclined
to cry, as many do here, " O ! it is only a little re-action,
I dare say. Antiquity was unduly neglected before, now
it is probably unduly exalted. There will be no harm
done. There is a perpetual oscillation in these matters.
When the pendulum has gone as far in one direction as
it did before in the other, it will come down again." It is
very easy to talk thus, and to the indolent it is very
* See Appendix N.

30
agreeable. But wise men, who see what interests are at
stake, will not rest in a fancied analogy, about action
and re-action being equal, which is not necessarily a
law of mind, because it is a law of matter. Charles the
First went to the House of Commons to seize five members :
this was a violation of the principle of a limited monarchy;
the people in return destroyed the Monarchy. Was this
nothing but the natural reaction ? Probably many at first
thought the danger small, and stood by, till it was too
late to save the Crown. I mention this as an instance. I
wish good people would never allow themselves to talk idly,
but would examine facts, as wise men do. I trust I have
shown you that suoh an examination applied to the Oxford
Tract system is enough to alarm us in the highest degree.
A new generation of preachers educated in such a school
would do incalculable mischief before the return of the
pendulum. I might have examined the tendency of the
system in many other points equally important with that
of our Public Ministry.* I might have shown its bearing
on the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture, on the
right of Private Judgment, the grace of the Sacraments,
Justification by Faith, the power of the Priesthood, and in
each case I might have proved it new and dangerous. But
I have done enough if I have convinced you of this, in
one point only ; one complete proof is as good as fifty. " Ex
ungue Leonem." If you wish for evidence on more points,
I would commend you to some other correspondent, and
let him be more learned and able than I am, as well as more
willing to undertake the painful task.
Before I conclude, however, I am bound to tell you,
that the writer of the tract, " On Reserve in communicating
Religious Knowledge," endeavours to defend himself against
* See Appendix 0.

31
the objections to his system that arise from the texts, " I
determined not to know anything among you save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified ;" " We preach Christ crucified ;"
&c. How does he do this ? By giving a new and strange
interpretation to those passages. He acknowledges that St.
Paul's preaching was that of " Christ crucified," but this
preaching was by the life of self-mortification he lived, and
recommended to others. He held up the Cross to view,
but it was as the emblem of Self-crucifixion; he embodied
the doctrine of the Atonement in his whole walk and con
versation, and thus preached " Christ crucified." But
might it not rather be called ' Paul crucified ?' if the great
peculiarity in Christ's sufferings, in which we have no
participation (" He trod the winepress alone,") namely,
that he was " a sin offering," is to be lost sight of? Lest,
however, you should think that I misrepresent, or mistake
the writer, let me give you his own words. " The ci-oss
of Christ," he says, (p. 75,) " which St. Paul preached, was
that by which ' the world was crucified to him and he to
the world,' bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord
Jesus. And precisely the same was the teaching of our
blessed Lord also. His own humiliation, and the neces
sity of our humiliation together with Him, was the
doctrine signified by the Cross, which He put forth and
inculcated on the multitude, in distinction from that
of His own divinity, and our salvation through the
same, which He rather kept secret." And again, speak
ing of the expression " preaching Christ crucified," he
says, (p. 74,) " When St. Paul thus speaks, it is not
the atonement and divinity of our Lord which he brings
forward, though it is implied in this saying" " The whole
of St. Paul's life and actions after his conversion, and the
whole of his teaching, as appears from his Epistles, may be

32
said to have been nothing else but a setting forth of Christ
crucified as the one great principle which absorbed all his
heart and actuated all his conduct. It was the wood cast
into the waters, which entirely changed them into its own
nature, and impregnated them with itself. This is inti
mated by expressions of this kind, which are of continual
occurrence, such as, ' God forbid that I should glory, save
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' ' I was determined
not to know anything' Sj-c. ' But we preach Christ cruci
fied.'' Now these words, of course, imply * the Atonement,'
as a life-giving principle contained in them ; but it is a
great mistake to suppose they contain nothing more, or that
by preaching the Atonement we are preaching what St. Paul
meant by ' Christ crucified.' It may be seen by an atten
tion to the context in all the passages where these expres
sions occur, that it is a very different view, and, in fact,
the opposite to the modem notion, which St. Paul
always (!) intends by it. It is the necessity of our being
crucified to the world, it is our humiliation together with
Him, mortification of the flesh, being made conformable to
His sufferings and his death. It was a doctrine which
was 'foolishness to the wise,' and ' an offence to the Jew,'
on account of the abasement of the natural man which it
implied." Now can we really believe that this was the
Gospel of which St. Paul speaks, when he says, " Woe is
me, if I preach not the Gospel ?" Can we believe that he
means our mortification, when he speaks of " Christ cru
cified ?" Well does our church bid us hear what St. Paul
saith ! — " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all men
to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners;" that is, He came not merely to bean example,
though that was a great end of His coming, but, what was
a still greater one, to be a sacrifice I The very passage

33
which the writer quotes in his last sentence, is decisive
against his own view. He tells us that self-mortification
is the doctrine " which was foolishness to the wise, and an
offence to the Jew." Let us look at the original passage
which he here misquotes. " The Jews," says the apostle,
" require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block,
and to the Greeks foolishness." Here there is a manifest
difference in the aspect under which the doctrine preached
by St. Paul was viewed by the Jew and the Greek ;
whereas the writer says, they viewed it under one aspect.
The Jews " required a sign," as they did in St. John vi.
•30, et alibi — what it was, we do not exactly know, pro
bably something which tradition led them to connect with
the Messiah ; but the doctrine of self-mortification would
not have been liable to this objection ; it needed no sign, it
was already preached, though hypocritically, by the Pha
risees, the religious leaders amongst themselves.* The
Greeks " sought after wisdom," — but this doctrine would
have provoked no sneer, as if it were foolishness. The
Dialogues of Plato contain many beautiful passages on
self-mortification. The Phaedo speaks of a truly wise man
dying whilst he is alive, and has a fanciful but striking
theory about ghosts being the disembodied spirits trying to
rise from the earth, but with so many particles adhering to
them, from which they had not been purified in the body
by abstinence from worldly pleasures and pursuits, that
they could not ascend, but were perpetually weighed down
* It was the peculiar tenet of the Essenes, long before the coming of
Christ • and was carried to a still greater extreme by the Therapeutic, a
Jewish sect particularly numerous at Alexandria. The Alexandrian Fathers
were no doubt injured by the spirit of rivalry with the Therapeutae. See
Philo's account of the latter.

34
again to the tombs. No ; neither Jews nor Greeks would
have objected to the doctrine of self-denial, had it not
rested on the foundation of another and a higher doctrine,
namely, that no self-denial, no works of ours, however
necessary or indispensable in their proper place, can justify
us in the sight of God ; that we must come to Christ
Crucified for justification, and for the free gift of His Spirit
to enable us to deny ourselves, and do good works to His
glory ; that we must look to the Cross, that spectacle of
shame to proud and unenlightened nature, for peace and
reconciliation with God. This was the preaching of the
Cross, which both Jew and Gentile shrank from ; the Jew,
because it said nothing of peculiar privileges and ceremo-
monial righteousness — the Gentile, because it was equally
silent as to natural religion and moral excellence. It pre
sented man as called upon to listen to the fact that he is
" poor and miserable and blind and naked," and Christ
counselling him to " buy of Him gold tried in the fire,
white raiment to cover his nakedness, and eye-salve that
he may see !"
It would grieve me much if I thought you could mistake
what I have been saying. I would rather commit this
letter to the flames — I would rather my right hand were
cut off, than that I should do injury, by anything I write,
to the great truth, which professing Christians are too apt
to forget, the absolute need of self-denial and self-crucifixion.
Assuredly there is a cross in the way of every Christian —
he need not go out of his way to seek it ; and assuredly it
must be borne. Nay, it should be borne gladly. " The
world must be crucified to us, and we to the world," and
a better must be in our thoughts and hearts. But the
question at issue is, by what kind of preaching we shall
best promote this. How shall we aim at producing, under

35
God, so vast a change ? Will the feeble motives of reve
rence for antiquity and church authority effect it ? or shall
we have recourse at once to the doctrines which constitute
the Gospel, particularly that which alone displays in any
adequate degree God's hatred of sin, and His love towards
the sinner, the doctrine of the Atonement ? The question
is, not whether good works are to be preached, but in what
light they are to be held forth, whether in that of sacrifices,
without which we cannot approach God at all, or in that
of the necessary and inevitable results and fruits of a living
faith. The one is, I am persuaded, a Jewish or heathen
notion ; in fact, the religion of human nature: the other is
a Christian verity, the gift of revelation. The one with
draws a man from Christ, and fixes his attention and his
esteem upon himself — the other brings him nearer and
keeps him closer to the Saviour every day, in humble
thankfulness that he is not merely saved by Him from the
punishment, but from the power of sin; not merely cleansed
in the fountain of His blood from past pollution, but also
by His Spirit from polluting propensities. Whatever Mr.
Newman may say, gratitude, kindled in the heart by the
Holy Spirit at the very first conversion of a man, is the
great principle of Christian holiness. " Because we thus
judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead, and
that He died for all, that they which live should henceforth
live, not unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them
and rose again." Remorse, too, despite of the same autho
rity — remorse for wounding so good a God and Saviour,
is a principle to be inspired by a preacher in every stage
of the christian life, whether to bring men to Him at the
first, or to recal them when, having known Him, they have
wandered away. To appeal to men's consciences, without
telling them of Christ's love in leaving heaven and hanging
d2

36
on the cross, would be of little avail. Conscience performs
a most, valuable office, when it convicts of sin ; but it can
do no more — it tells not what sin is ; the Gospel only can
do that : the agonies of the Son of God alone proclaim
what " the sinfulness of sin is," and how God regards it.
Conscience, if I may so speak, gives a verdict as to the
fact, but the Gospel alone determines the law; the Gospel
alone shows at the same time the way of deliverance
" Believe only on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt
be saved." " This is the victory that overcometh the world,
even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but
he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God f
After the extracts I have before given you, the following
will perhaps not surprise you. And yet the boldness and
openness with which the writer condemns the Revolution
in 1688, in face of our Church's own thanks which she
renders to God for the expulsion of James the Second in
the service for the fifth of November, is almost more than
we might expect — as is also the unintentional exemplifica
tion of the art of bathos at the close of the passage. " A
low tone of morals (he says, p. 77) has pervaded her
teaching, since the great loss of christian principle which
our church sustained at the rebellion of 1688, when she
threw, as it were, out of her pale the doctrine of Christ
crucified (together with Kenn and Kettlewell- )"* I have
given you this passage, that you may see, that not only
new views, but new names and forms of expression, are re
commended to us by the Oxford Tract School. What
used to be called the glorious Revolution is now to be
" the Rebellion of 1688." What was formerly the Resto
ration of Charles the Second, in like manner, is to be styled
* See Appendix P.

37
" the Blessed Reformation." — See a late number of the
British Magazine.*
One word more, and I will really conclude ! It is a
favourite illustration in the mouth of the Tract writers and
their admirers, and it is one which is really very plausible,
" Let us go to the Fathers of the early centuries for
doctrines — the nearer to the fountain, the purer the stream."
(See Dodsworth on Romanism and Dissent — et alibi.) Illus
trations are proverbially dangerous. A river, for instance,
does not attain to the dignity of the name the moment it
leaves its source; with whatever force it gushes out, it
becomes a river by means of the accessions it receives as it
flows along. Now, in the case of our holy religion, if doc
trines be the waters that constitute the river or stream, what
accessions, I wish to know, what independentcontributions,
did they receive ? By what rivulets were they fed ? Does
not this show the danger of comparing Christianity to a
stream, when doctrines are concerned ? But let us indulge
the admirers of the illustration I mentioned. In the case
of streams in general, it is true, then, the further we go
back, the purer we find them ; but not so, in case a par
ticular stream, the moment it quits its origin, has to pass
through fetid bogs and marshes, or a soil impregnated
with sulphur or such like defiling matter; still less in case
it mixes its waters with those of some mighty and turbid
streams already in existence. Now this is the case with
Christianity. No sooner did the waters of life burst forth
from their sacred fount, than they mingled with those of
two mighty and polluted streams — I mean Judaism and
Heathenism. And though from the force of their divine
impetus they held on their separate course in the midst, yet
* See Appendix Q.

38
it was not without partaking of the pollution. Far from
it. No reader of church history can deny the fact, so
probable beforehand, that there was an immediate loss in
purity of doctrine. Nay, we may say, that such loss of
purity was inevitable, not only from the nature of the case,
but from the Divine predictions. Did not St. Paul tell
the elders (ordained ministers) who met him by appoint
ment at Miletus — " Of your ownselves shall men arise,
speaking perverse things, and draw away disciples after
them ?" Why, then, should we go to the Fathers in
quest of doctrines, which are clear enough in the Scrip
tures? They lay under peculiar disadvantages, — they
had to contend with peculiar and overwhelming errors ;
and it is only a wonder, and must be ascribed to the
special grace of God, that they preserved any truth at
all. No, if we must talk of Christianity as a stream, let
us, since God has given us the power, go, as the Reformers
did, all the way back, to the very fountain-head ; let us
drink the waters pure and clear, where, God be praised !
they are welling forth richly and unfailingly for all that
thirst. But let us not stop to drink at any point short of
this. Let us use the stream in its polluted state only for
the purpose of guiding our steps to the source. In other
words, let us go to the Fathers for evidence as to the
canon of Scripture and the forms of church government,
but never let us go to them as authority in points of
doctrine.* Adieu, my dear Friend ! May God preserve us and our
beloved Church from all error ! Ever yours, &c.
Burghfield, Nov. 3, 1838. * See Appendix R.

39
P.S. Bishop J. Sumner, in his *' Apostolical Preaching,"
a book to which I would refer all who wish to be guided
by the apostles rather than by their successors, quotes Dr.
Chalmers' most valuable testimony to the effects of the
preaching which the Tract writers would put down. I
know they say, we ought not to judge by effects. Mr.
Keble, in his sermon on Tradition, says, we may even find
our faith very painfully tried by seeing evil effects from
the views he recommends, but that we must support our
selves by a consciousness that we are obeying God. If we
were certain that we are obeying God, then no doubt we
must disregard effects — but when the effects form part of
the evidence by which we are to know this, how can we
neglect them ? I suspect we should have heard little of
this argument, if the appeal to effects had been favourable
to Mr. Keble and his friends. Men will and ought to
judge by them — " By their fruits," said our Lord, " ye shall
know" false teachers. " Do men gather grapes of thorns,
or figs of thistles ?" Our Church says that faith will be
known by works, " as evidently as a tree by its fruits." I
put it seriously to the Oxford Tract writers, whether it is
not pregnant with danger if religion be represented as a
sort of occult science, not to be known by what men see ;
a matter not to be judged of by reason and the senses : as
in chemistry, for instance, we say, ' You are not to suppose
there is heat, because you see boiling.' Is it not rather like
the science of Medicine, putting the soul for the body ? and
are not men justified, when they see one physician failing
and another succeeding with his patients, in saying, ' We
know not the mysterious power of medicines in themselves,
but we see which of these physicians uses those which are
good ?'

40
" I cannot but record (says Dr. Chalmers) the effect of an
actual though undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted
for upwards of twelve years among you. During the
whole of that period, in which I made no attempt against
the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inat
tentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, viz.
by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing accept
ance on the other, of the Gospel salvation ; while Christ,
through whose blood the sinner, who by nature stands afar
off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver whom he has
offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in such
a way as stripped him of all the importance of his character
and his offices ; even at this time I certainly did press the
reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among
my people ; but I never once heard of any such reforma
tion having been effected among them. I am not sensible
that all the vehemence with which I urged the virtues and
proprieties of social life, had the weight of a feather on the
moral habits of my parishioners. And it was not till I got
impressed by the utter alienation of the heart in all its de
sires and affections from God ; it was not till reconciliation
to Him became the distinct and the prominent object of my
ministerial exertions ; it was not till I took the scriptural
way of laying the method of reconciliation before them ; it
was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood
of Christ was urged upon their acceptance, and the Holy
Spirit given through the channel of Christ's mediatorship
to all who ask him, was set before them as the unceasing
object of their meditation and their prayers ; it was not,
in one word, till the contemplations of my people were
turned to these great and essential elements in the business
of a soul providing for its interests with God, and the con
cerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any of those

41
subordinate reformations which I aforetime made the
earnest and the zealous, but I am afraid, at the same time,
the ultimate object of my earlier ministrations. But now,
a sense of your heavenly Master's eye has brought another
influence to bear upon you. You have at least taught me,
that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching
morality in all its branches." — Address to his Parishioners
at Kilmany.

APPENDIX.

Appendix A, page 3.
Mr. Keble, in the introduction to his edition of Hooker, laments
the Low Church views of Cranmer, and his associates in the Re
formation. Even Hooker, it seems, though born in later times,
had not struggled out into the light. It was reserved for Laud,
and afterwards for Kenn and others, to come to the full percep
tion of church principles. The Reformers could not be brought
to unchurch the reformed foreign churches. An unepiscopal
church to them was not necessarily " Samaria."
Mr. Froude, who was one of the Tract writers whilst alive, and
whose Remains were published by his Oxford friends, as they
themselves state, " on account of the truth and importance of the
views to the developement of which the whole is meant to be sub
servient," says to a correspondent, " Why do you praise Ridley ?
Do you know sufficient good about him to counterbalance the fact,
that he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer?"
— Vol. i. p. 391.
Again, he says : " You will be shocked at my avowal, that I
am becoming every day a less and less loyal son of the Reforma
tion." — p. 336.
Again, he tells a friend : " As to the Reformers, I think worse
and worse of them. Jewel was what you would in these days call

44
an irreverent Dissenter." Let any one read the Life of Jewel,
by Mr. Le Bas, (whose church views no one will call low,) and
then ask himself, Is it thus that Jewel should be spoken of? Is
this our gratitude to the great champion of the English Church ?
who appealed to the Fathers, in whom he was deeply learned, as
well as to the Scriptures, and whose Apology for the Church
of England, and the Defence of the Apology, were bound up
in a single folio, and attached by a chain to a small reading-desk,
in almost every church in England, by order of Archbishop
Parker and his successors. Yet of the book thus highly honoured
and valued by our forefathers, Mr. Froude says: " His Defence
of the Apology disgusted me more than any book I have read."
The Articles of our Church were the work of our Reformers —
the Creeds belonged to an earlier age. Accordingly, we find
Mr. Froude disinclined to the one, but well pleased with the
other. " 1 could be content" he says, " to waive the Articles,
keeping the Creeds and so forth."
These are the opinions of one who took part in writing the
" Tracts for The Times!" Let those who can understand the
signs of the times, and judge from what external quarter our
Church is most threatened, say whether anything could be more
unseasonable than to sap at this moment the veneration and gra
titude due to the Reformers.

Appendix B, page 5.

I may say a word more for extracts. When fairly made, so
that no context can modify their meaning, justice is not always
done them. We will suppose an extract to contain a strikingly
erroneous sentiment, (such, for instance, as one that might
easily be found in Gibbon.) We are shocked at its naked defor
mity. When «ve read the book from which it is taken, our

45
impression perhaps is different. There may be much truth
and beauty in the rest of the work, so that we might possibly
have passed over the guilty passage, in the midst of so much
innocent matter by which it was surrounded and overlaid. We
are angry at the person who made the extract, as if he had
imposed on us ; whereas we ought to feel obliged to him for
rescuing us from imposition. We ought to thank the un
sleeping vigilance which singles out an offender from amongst
his good-looking companions, orders them out of court, and
makes him stand up to receive judgment alone for his own
act and deed.

Appendix C, page 9.

1 know Mr. Newman and his friends will say, that we must
disregard the opposition of men, and care nothing for popula
rity. I grant that this noble confidence should be ours, when
we are sure we are right. God will always protect the
right. But I feel persuaded that if we preach not the Gospel
fully and freely, the success of dissent, and the unpopularity
of the Church consequent on our neglect, will be the instrumen
tality by which God will destroy the Church in this country.
What protection have we from the fate of the Syrian churches ?
" Where" — says Mr. Wilberforce, in a beautiful passage of his
Prize Essay on the Parochial System — "where are the churches
of Asia, and of Greece, once so illustrious ? Where is the glory
of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians ?
Where is the church of the city of Tyre, whither the ships of all
the earth flocked with their burdens, and where the blessed apos
tle found brethren to refresh his heart seven days on his
martyr voyage ? Where is the church of Alexandria, the seat
of the great Athanasius ? Where is Hippo, and Carthage, and

46
Nicaea, once the centre of Christendom, whence shone a light
that has reached even to us ? Their candlesticks are removed —
' their lamp is put out in obscure darkness.' "

Appendix D. page 14.

Dean Turton, in the work I have referred to, is engaged
in opposing Dr. Wiseman, as to the conclusion to be drawn
from our Lord's mode of teaching and acting, with regard
to the nature of His doctrines. This is a very different
thing from discussing His mode of teaching, with a view to
what our mode should be in the present day. In looking
at his ministry in this light, there is great caution required,
such as is evinced by Bishop C. Sumner in his " Ministerial
Character of Christ.'' It must be remembered that we are not in
the midst of a hostile population, but an ignorant one. We
must take into account the judgment God was bringing on the
Jews for all their sins, to be summed up in the sin of crucifying
Christ. Our Lord's reserve and comparative silence, after
the Jews refused his first offers, was mercy to all mankind.
We must remember that we, as Gentiles, were not called
during our Lord's ^lifetime. We hear Him not addressing
Gentiles, till He did it through the Apostles. Moreover,
the leading truths of Christianity, which flow from the
crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, could not be fully
preached till those events had taken place. It is the office of
the Holy Ghost to "take of the things of Christ and shew them
unto us ;" but Christ could be little known till He was known as
crucified and risen again. Hence He told his disciples, " I
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now. Howbeit, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide
you into all truth." Bishop C. Sumner says, "Since the duty

47
of communicating to mankind the glad tidings of salvation, in
the fulness of its mysteries, devolved, in a great measure, on the
Apostles, it is to them, or rather to Christ, who was with them
always, and who spake by them, that we must look for the
authorised mode of delivering those great truths, which it was
the business of their lives to promulgate."

Appendix E, page 15.

See Daille's Right Use of the Fathers, (a work to which
Bishop Jeremy Taylor refers those who are not afraid of " in
vading the reputation of the Fathers,") b. i. c. 6, in which
chapter the learned author proves the truth of his Reason 6th
for the insufficiency of the Fathers as judges of controversy, viz.
because " the Fathers oftentimes conceal their own private opi
nions, and speak those things which themselves believed not,
whether it be when they report the opinion of others without
naming the persons," (or intimating that it is the opinion of
others, which is what Daille means, and proves,) " as they fre
quently do in their Commentaries ; or in disputing with an ad
versary, where they make use of whatsoever they can ; or else
whether they have done so in compliance to their auditory, as may
be observed in their Homilies." The whole chapter is well worth
reading, as showing, particularly, how the Fathers used the
Economy or Dispensation principle. For the sake of such of
my readers as have not the book, I will put down a few things.
" St. Jerome, in his Commentary upon the Epistle to the Gala
tians, expoundeth that passage where there is mention made of
St. Paul's reproving St. Peter, by way of dispensation ; telling
us that St. Paul did not reprehend him as if he counted him in
deed blameworthy, but only for the better bringing in of the
Gentiles, by this seeming reprehension of his ; who did but act
this part with St. Peter, ' to the end' (saith he) ' that the hypo-

48
crisy or false show of observing the law, which offended those
among the Gentiles who believed, might be corrected by the
hypocrisy or false show of reprehension ; and that by this means
both the one and the other people might be saved ; whilst the
one who stood up for circumcision followed St. Peter ; and those
others who refused circumcision applaud and are taken with St.
Paul's liberty.' St. Augustine, utterly disliking this exposition
of St. Jerome, wrote unto him in his ordinary grave and meek
way, modestly declaring the reasons why he could not assent
unto it, which epistles of his are yet extant. The other answers
him a thousand strange things ; but particularly he there pro
tested^ that he will not warrant for sound whatever shall be
found in that book of his. And to show that he doth not do this
without good reason, he setteth down a certain passage out of
his Preface to it, which is very well worth our consideration.
For after he hath named the writings of Origen, Didymus, Apol-
linaris, Theodorus, Heraclas, Eusebius Emissenus, Alexander the
Heretic, and others, he adds — ' That I may therefore plainly tell
the truth, I confess that 1 have read all these authors ; and col
lecting together as much as I could in my memory, T presently
called for a scribe, to whom I dictated either my own conceptions,
or those of other men, without remembering either the order, or
the words sometimes, or the sense.' Do but think now with
yourself, whether or no this be not an excellent rare way of com
menting upon the Scriptures, and very well worthy both to be
esteemed and imitated by us ! He then turneth his speech to St.
Augustine, saying, ' If, therefore, thou lightedst upon anything
in my exposition which was worthy of reprehension, it would
have stood better with thy learning to have seen whether or no
what I have written be found in them ; and if not, then to have
condemned it, as my own private opinion.' And he elsewhere
gives the same answer to Rufhnus, who upbraideth him for some
absurd passages in his Commentaries upon the Prophet Daniel.
Now, according to this reckoning, if we would know whether or
no what we meet with in his Commentaries be his own proper

49
sense, we must first turn over the books of all these ancient
Greeks ; that is to say, we must do that which is now impossible
to be done, seeing that the writings of the greatest part of them
are utterly lost; and must not attribute anything to him, as his
proper opinion, how clearly and expressly soever it be delivered,
unless we are first able to make it appear that it is not to be
found in any of those authors out of whose writings he patched
up his Commentaries." ... So much for our dependence on the
Fathers in their Commentaries.
" But hath it not concerned them to be more careful in their
Homilies or Sermons, and to deliver nothing there, save only
what hath been their own proper opinion and belief? May we
not, at least in this particular, rest assured that they have spoken
nothing but from their very soul ? Certainly, in all reason, they
should not have uttered from that sacred place from whence they
taught their people, save what they conceived to have been most
true. And yet, besides what we have formerly noted, namely,
that they did not always speak out the whole truth, but concealed
something of it, as not so fit for the ears either of Pagans or of
the weaker sort of Christians, Cardinal Perron, that great and
curious inquirer into all the customs of the ancients, hath in
formed us, that they have gone further yet. For, in expounding
the Scriptures to the people, where the Catechumens were pre
sent, if by any chance they fell upon a passage where the Sacra
ments were spoken of, that they might not discover these myste
ries, they would then make bold to wrest the text a little, and
instead of giving them the true and real interpretation of the
place which they themselves knew to be such, they would only
present their auditory with an allegorical and symbolical, and (as
this Cardinal saith) an accidental and collateral one, only to give
them some kind of small satisfaction ; forasmuch as if in such
cases they should have been utterly silent, it would questionless
have much amazed their auditors, and in some sort also have
scandalised and given them offence. To satisfy therefore their
expectation, and yet to keep these mysteries still concealed from

50
them, they waived the business handsomely, laying before them
that which they accounted, not the best and truest, but the fittest
for their purpose and design. Thus do we sometimes please
little children with an apple, or some little toy, to take them off
the desire they have to something of greater value. Those,
therefore, who take all that the Fathers deliver in the like places,
for good and solid expositions, and such as they themselves really
believed, do very much deceive themselves ; and believing they
have a solid body in their arms, embrace only an empty shadow."
Daille proceeds to prove his charge against the Fathers by in
stances from Augustine and others, which it would be tedious to
give here. He shows what use the Romanists (as Cardinal
Perron) make of the fact that the Fathers used the Dispensation
principle. If we bring a passage from a Father favouring our
views, (such as that from Clemens Alexandrinus, " The flesh and
blood of Christ is, Faith and the Promise,") the answer is retidy,
' He spoke there in such a way that only the sharp-sighted and
sincere inquirer could see his meaning.' How would the Tract
writers deal with this answer of the Romanists ?
Lastly, Daille treats of the Disputations of the Fathers with
the adversaries of their faith, Pagans, Jews, and Heretics.
" Their opinion," he says, " was, that in this kind of writing it
was lawful to say anything that might advance their cause, though
otherwise but light and trivial, or perhaps also contrary to what
themselves believed ; and so, on the other side, to conceal and
reject whatsoever might prejudice their cause, though otherwise
true and allowable. Now, that this observation may not seem
strange and incredible, as coming out of my mouth, let us hear
what they themselves say in this particular. Let us hear St.
Jerome. ' We have learned,' (saith he, writing to Pammacliius,)
' that there are divers sorts of discourse ; and among the rest,
that it is one thing to write yv/xvao-TiKox;, by way of disputation,
and another thing to write loyixar icwc, by way of instruction.
In the former of these, the disputes are free and rambling ; where
in answering an adversary, and proposing one while one thing

51
and another while another, a man argueth as he pleaseth ; speak
ing one thing, and doing another ; shewing bread (as it is in the
proverb) and holding a stone in his hand. Whereas, in the
second kind, an open forehead and ingenuousness is required.
It is one thing to make inquiries, and another to define ; in the
one we must fight, in the other we must teach. Thou seest me
in a combat, and in peril of my life ; and dost thou come with thy
grave instructions, like some reverend schoolmaster ? ' Do not
wound by stealth, and from whence one least expects it. Let
thy sword strike directly ; it is a shame for thee to wound thy
enemy by guile, and not by strength :' " — (I have translated this
a little differently from Daille ; — I think he mistook the meaning
of the original — which he seldom does.) " As if it were not a
piece of the greatest mastery in fighting to threaten one part and
hit another. I beseech you, read Demosthenes, read Tully :
and lest, perhaps, you should refuse orators, whose profession it
is to propose things rather probable than true, read Plato,
Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and others, who, springing
all from Socrates' fountain, as so many rivulets ran several
ways : what can you find in them that is clear and open ? what
word in them but hath its design ? and what design, but of victory
only ? Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, have written
largely against Celsus and Porphyry : do but observe what man
ner of arguments, and how slippery problems, they have made
use of for the subverting of those works which have been
wrought by the spirit of the devil : and how that being forced to
speak, they alleged against the Gentiles, not that which they
believed, but that which was most necessary to be said. I shall
not here speak of the Latin writers, &j Tertullian, Cyprian,
Minucius, Victorinus, Lactantius, and Hilary, lest I shall seem
rather to accuse others than defend myself.' Thus St. Jerome.
Now, you see that he testifieth clearly, that they were wont, in
their disputations, sometimes to say one thing and believe another,
to shew us bread and keep a stone in their hand, to threaten one
part and hit another, and that they were sometimes constrained
e2

52
to fit their words, not to their own proper thoughts, but to the
present necessity. And the very same thing is confessed also
by Athanasius, speaking of Dionysius Alexandrinus.'' (The
Arians cited Dionysius as favourable to them ; Athanasius re
plied, that the suspicious passage was spoken icar' oiKovofiiav, by
dispensation.) " The like account doth St. Basil give of a cer
tain passage in Gregorius Neocaesariensis, that ' he spoke not in
this place dogmatically, but only by way of oeconomy or dis
pensation.' Let any rational man now judge, whether or no
this course must not necessarily embroil and enwrap in a world
of almost inextricable difficulties the writings of the Fathers.
For how is it possible that we should be able to judge when
they speak as they thought, and when not? Whether they
mean really what they say, or whether they make but a flourish
only ? Whether the bread they shew us be to deceive us, or to
feed us ? Whether the problems they propose be solid, or
slippery ones ? Whether their positions be dogmatical, or
oeconomical ? Certainly, if our court judgments were framed
after this manner, we should never hope to have an end in any
suit of law."
After reading such passages, who does not lift up his heart
and bless God, that his faith does not rest on the Fathers ? — that
it " stands not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God ?"
— that it is built, not on the shifting and treacherous sands of
human authority, but on the rock of inspiration? Who does not
rejoice that he was born in these days, and in this country ? And
who does not resolve never to bow down his mind and heart in
slavish submission to fallible men like himself? They may de
ceive him, even when they mean well — but God's word, if read
with prayer,will never deceive him. It may be in some things ob
scure — doubtless there is a moral probation of the mind in this
respect;— but it cannot be so obscure as the Fathers: no one
will venture to say of it what the Fathers say of themselves,
that its object ever is "to disguise and hide the truth." Well does
Mr. Le Bas say, iu his Life of Wiclif — " Apparent and external

53
unity is much too dearly purchased by a general sacrifice of
private judgment; schism itself is a less evil than an uniformity
of error and corruption ; and no multiplication of divisions can
be so pernicious as the universal prostration of intellect and
conscience before the authority of an uninspired tribunal."
It is vain to allege, we go to the Fathers for the Canon of
Scripture. True, but it does not follow that we must go for the
interpretation. It does not follow that because they preserved
the letter inviolate, they took no liberty with the spirit. We go
to the Jews of old for the Canon of the Old Testament, but we
do not ask them to interpret it. They were faithful guardians of
a treasure which they knew not how to use. A man may be re
ceived in a court of justice, as evidence of the genuineness of a
will, who may not be admitted, except in a very limited manner,
to speak to its contents. The Fathers are witnesses to the
genuineness of the Testament of our blessed Lord ; but we must
utterly deny their claim to be the authorised interpreters. No
man can shift the responsibility of the interpretation, to the best
of the power which God has given him, from himself.
Nothing can be more striking than the change we are sensible
of, when we pass the boundary which separates the inspired
writers from their successors. If any one will read the Epistle
of Barnabas or the Visions of Hermas, which Archbishop
Wake considers genuine, he will be amazed at the transition.
But a little consideration of what the Scriptures disclose con
cerning the Apostles themselves, would prepare him for some
thing like this. The Fathers were situated towards the Apostles
as the Apostles were towards Christ. The Apostles enjoyed the
unspeakable privilege of His constant society and conversation,
and, it might be said, they must have known His mind. Their
sincerity and honesty of heart cannot be doubted. In following
Christ, they gave up at least as much as any of the Fathers did
in following them. As a matter of fact, then, did these men, so
favourably circumstanced and so well disposed, fully understand
the mind of their Master ? Would they, after His death, have

54
transmitted to us the truths of Christianity, as joint-heirs with
themselves, if it had been left to them ; without the gift of the
Spirit, which the Day of Pentecost miraculously bestowed ? Nay,
after the Day of Pentecost, did they still understand the nature
and extent of their commission ? Plain as the words of it were —
" Go ye forth into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every
creature!" — .what would have become of us Gentiles, if the in
terpretation had been ieft to the Apostles, without the inter
vention of St. Peter's Vision ? That Vision was evidently re
ceived both by Peter and the other Apostles, not with joy, as a
signal for which they were waiting, but with wonder, as a com
mand which they little expected. " Of a truth I perceive that
God is no respecter of persons ! " was the language of Peter ; —
" Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto
life ! " was that of his brethren at Jerusalem, who " contended
with him," till they heard his account. We see, then, how
strong prejudices are, in the best of men, and how they prevent
them from understanding the plainest words and the simplest
truths. Were the Fathers under no prejudices, when they were
converted from Judaism or Heathenism ? Were they more likely
to understand the Apostles than the Apostles were to understand
Christ? Unless, then, it can be shown that there was some
Divine interference to keep them from error, as there was in the
case of the Apostles, how can we depend upon them, implicitly,
even in important points? What could be more important than
the admission of the Gentiles into the Church of Christ ?

Appendix F. page 17.

Take a specimen, connected with the worship of saints. " In
some of their principal churches," says Middleton, " you have
before you, in one view, a great number of altars, and all of them

55
smoking at once with streams of incense. How natural is it to
imagine oneself transported into the temple of some heathen
deity, " ' Ubi templum illi, centumque Sabseo
Thure caleut Arae.'" Virg. M. I.
And again, speaking of the Pantheon or Rotundo, he says, —
" The inscription over the portico informs us, that, ' having
been impiously dedicated of old by Agrippa to Jove and all the
gods, it was piously re-consecrated by Pope Boniface the Fourth
to the blessed Virgin and all the saints.' With this single
alteration, it serves as exactly for all the purposes of the Popish
as it did for the Pagan worship, for which it was built. For as
in the old temple every one might find the God of his country,
and address himself to the Deity whose religion he was most
devoted to, so it is the same thing now ; every one chooses the
patron whom he likes best, and we may see here different
services, going on at the same time, at different altars, with
distinct congregations around them, just as the inclinations of the
people lead them, to the worship of this or that particular Saint."
Does not this suggest the probable origin of the worship of
Saints— an error, however, which strikes its roots deep in human
nature ? Might it not first creep into the church from the ac
commodation principle ; from the desire to supply the place of
the demigods and heroes, of which Christianity deprived the
people ? Even the doctrine of Trausubstantiation may have
found entrance in this way. If the heathen asked, ' Have you
no sacrifice, no altar ?' it was replied, ' Yes ! we have both— an
altar and a sacrifice !' What was innocent language at first,.
and meant to be figurative, was soon taken for reality, and made
the foundation of a false doctrine, especially when that doctrine
served other purposes.

56

Appendix G, page 19.
What eloquent language is that of St. Paul himself, (Eph. vi.)
" Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God," &c.
The whole passage is full of the most beautiful imagery ; but
particularly the words, " above all, taking the shield of Faith,
wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the
wicked." Here we might have thought it sufficient to have had
the image of the wicked one as an archer discharging his
darts, and the Christian warrior repelling them ; but the Apostle
heightens the image by making the darts fiery, and quenching
them in the shield, which they enter, but cannot pass through.
How much do preachers err when they think they shall be better
understood by excluding imagination from sermons ! What
can be more difficult to an undisciplined mind than the severe
simplicity of unimaginative prose ?

Appendix H, page 19.

Tract, No. 3, says, " The absolution is not strong enough — it
is a mere declaration, not an announcement, of pardon to those
who have confessed." Other like notices of defects in the Liturgy
may be found in the Tract writers, (such as when Mr. Froude
calls the Communion Service " a judgment on the church;") but
this general feeling seems to be summed up in the following pas
sage from Tract No. 34 : " As a whole, the Catholic Ritual was
a precious possession, and if we who have escaped from Popery
have lost not only the possession, but the sense of its value, it is a
serious question, whether we are not like men who recover from
some grievous illness, with the loss or injury of their sight or
hearing."

57
One is tempted to ask, what sense the writer had of the
" escape" he speaks of. Mr. Froude, after telling a correspon
dent, " / shall never call the Holy Eucharist the Lord's Supper,"
adds, " nor shall I ever abuse the Roman Catholics as a church
for anything except excommunicating us."
" Why," says Mr. Froude, " is the opinion of the English
clergy, since the enactment of the Prayer Book, entitled to be
called the preaching of the church more than that of the clergy of
the sixteen previous centuries ? or again, than the clergy of France/
Italy, Spain, Russia, fyc. ? I can see no other claim which the
Prayer Book has on a layman's deference as the teaching of the
church, which the breviary and the missal have not in a far
greater degree." — (Remains, vol. i. p. 402.)
Was it not in Mr. Newman's choice to publish these pas
sages or not? Had he not the selection of his friend's Re
mains ? Might he not at least have added a note of disapproba
tion, if he felt any ?

Appendix I, page 20.

The writer says, (p. 62,) " When, after being engaged in such
contemplations, we lift up our eyes upon the present state of the
world, an extraordinary aspect of things meets our view. The
knowledo-e of God hastening to cover the earth, as the waters
cover the sea !" " The art of printing bringing home this
knowledge to all!" " The means which Providence has formerly
allowed to hide it not only from the Heathen and the Jew, but
also from the Christian (by a mysterious economy which has
been long permitted in the Church of Rome) now removed !"
" Churches and altars thrown open to all, from the loss of church
discipline ; and what is worthy of notice, Christianity acknow
ledged as true by persons of the worst principle !" " This general

58
tendency of things," he says, raises "serious thoughts in every
reflecting mind ' waiting to see what God will do,'" — " and an
anxious desire for some anchor of the soul, in this new trial
which seems coming upon the world." It is not " hope," it
appears, that is the writer's " anchor." We are to retire and
hide ourselves, when every consideration calls upon us to come
forth and endeavour to give a good turn to the course of things.
The writer says much in one part of his Tract on the modest and
retiring nature of truly religious men. He should be the first
then to feel how painful it may be to many to stand forward as
they do ; and instead of blaming he should admire them. Theirs
is the truest self-mortification.

Appendix JL,page 24.

Mr. Keble uses it unnecessarily, and therefore unjustifiably,
in his Visitation Sermon on Tradition, where he refers to St.
Paul's mention of preachers of the Gospel at Rome, who
preached in a spirit of jealousy and strife, and interprets the
preaching to be no preaching, properly so called, but merely an
indirect and unintended effect of the opposition of some enemies
of Christianity, who by noisy zeal against St. Paul drew atten
tion to the subject, and made the Gospel better known. An exami
nation of Phil. i. 14 — 18 will show how improbable, how gratui
tous, and therefore how improper, such an interpretation is. Mr.
Keble's words are — " Even those who in speaking of Pauls
sufferings meant nothing but envy and strife, did in a manner
preach Christ, i. e. make His Gospel known, and draw popular
attention to His name." St. Paul's words are — " Many of the
brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much
more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach
Christ even of envy or strife," &c. Evidently his using the
expression " speak the word," led him to the other, " preach, "
as equivalent to it.

59

Appendix L, page 26.
Perhaps mysticism is not exactly the right word here ; enthu
siasm might be better. But that the Oxford Tract writers have
much that is mystical in this system, is plain from Mr. Newman's
letter to the editor of the Christian Observer, republished in the
last volume of the Tracts. He says, defending Dr. Pusey, " You
cannot mention the grace, in kind or degree, which you ascribe to
the Christian, which Dr. Pusey will not ascribe to Abraham ;
except, perhaps, the intimate knowledge of the details of christian
doctrine. But he considers that Christians have a something
beyond this, even a portion of that heaven brought down to earth,
which will be for ever in heaven the portion of Abraham and all
saints in its fulness. Tt is not, then, that Dr. Pusey defrauds
Abraham, but your Magazine defrauds Christians. That special
gift of grace, called ' the glory of God,' is as unknown to the so
called religious world as to the ' natural man.' The Catholic
religion teaches, that when grace takes up its abode in us, we
have so superabounding and awful a grace tabernacled in us, that
no other words describe it more nearly than to call it an angel's
nature." It is manifest that this is rather glorification than
sanctification. I must confess it seems to me more a beautiful
vision than a sober reality. It may be derived from the Fathers,
or from imagination : I am sure, so far as it is something which
the Old Testament Saints did not share, it is not to be found in
Scripture. It gives us, however, a glimpse of the nature of the
Tract System, which is of great value, and may open quite a
new view of its tendency. And yet what is there new under
the sun ? Did not William Law, the author of the " Serious
Call," become a Mystic before he died ? Asceticism, perhaps
inevitably, tends to Mysticism.

60

Appendix M, page 28.
I should be sorry to wound the feelings of the writer by
using this expression. A passage which can be spoken of as
childish, from such a writer, can only be a " lapsus," a sort
of " quando dormitat Homerus."
Shall I venture to show a " dormitat " in Mr. Newman's rea
soning, in his Letter to Dr. Faussett ? It requires some courage
to attack a logician whom Archbishop Whately has praised ;
aU' 6[ia)Q eiptjaerat.
Mr. Newman is defending Mr. Froude's expression concerning
the body of Christ, that it is so really and actually present in the
Lord's Supper, that it may be in our hands. Mr. Froude does
not say that it is, but he reproves a friend for denying it. Mr.
Newman agrees in this view, and tries to distinguish between a
body being really and locally present — it may be " really" present,
he says, in one place, and " locally" in another. He illustrates this
by our popular language concerning the Sun, which we say is pre
sent with us, and which yet we know to be about a hundred mil
lions of miles off. If this language be metaphorical, or if it
be entirely wrong, it will not serve Mr. Newman's purpose —
it will rather serve his opponent's. It is evident he thinks there
is some truth in it. Now what do we mean when we speak
of the sun's being present with us ? We mean that we are
made sensible in a certain way of his being elsewhere. In
this sense, we are willing to apply the language in illustration
of what takes place in the Lord's Supper. But we do not, or
we ought not to mean, that in any way the body itself is present
with us. It is but a collection of rays that are present, which,
if light be material, ceased to form part of the sun the moment
they left him ; or, if it be an action of luminous matter upon a
subtle medium, producing a wave, which strikes our retina, as
sound does our ear, never formed part of him at all. So far

61
from their being the sun himself in any proper sense, the sun may
be gone out of existence at the very time we talk of his being
present with us. It may please the Creator to extinguish him at
any moment : should this be the case, it would be eight minutes
before any one on the surface of the earth could be aware of the
fact — the last rays that left him, the instant before his dissolu
tion, would consume that time in travelling to us, and till they
arrived, all the previous rays for the space of eight minutes would
give us a false announcement, as if the sun still existed, when,
in fact, he had been blotted out. What, then, becomes of Mr.
Newman's reasoning ? A body cannot be really in one place,
and locally in none. Mr. Newman protests beforehand against
the truth of his distinction between real and local presence of
body being made to rest on the success of his illustration ; but
surely he must feel that his cause is more hopeless, from its
failure, than if he had never tried. It is, in fact, altogether
hopeless ; and the distinction he makes is calculated to confound
all our ideas of what body is, and so to open the door for any of
the errors of old on the subject of Christ's humanity. It is not
merely outstepping Reason, or leading her forward by the
hand where she could not otherwise have gone, as in the case of
the doctrine of the Trinity ; it is overthrowing, and trampling
upon her.

Appendix N, page 29.
For instance, I have taken no notice of one argument — and a
very extraordinary one it is — that the present state of things
which the writer of Tract No. 80 laments, namely, the open
preaching of the Atonement, the free distribution of the Bible,
&c, will in the end lead to Socinianism. " All these unhallowed
approaches," he says, (p. 78,) " to our blessed Saviour, which
these principles indicate, will, from what has been said, in
some manner lead to a disbelief in His divinity, the knowledge
of which, it has been observed, was that which He kept from
the unworthy. Not that we are to expect a declaration of

62
Socinianism as the immediate consequence ; but there are twt.
ways in which the effect may be perceived ; first, when the
system developes itself in any course of time adequate for pro
ducing its legitimate results ; and secondly, it may be seen in a
subtle shape, in the tendency it produces in individuals to apply
familiar and irreverent expressions to our blessed Lord. For
such is, in fact, a disguised shape of Socinianism." It is hard
to deal with an assertion, which, injurious as it is, is, after all, a
mere conjecture. The tendency to Socinianism, he says, will
take time to develope itself. What length of time, he does not
say. But if we can show, that during the last fifty years there
has been rather a contrary tendency, then no length of time will
suffice. Now it is notorious that fifty years ago, many sub
scribed the Articles in a different spirit from that in which they
are subscribed in our days. Has not Paley's notion been ex
ploded, that the Articles are only articles of peace ? Are they
not now universally looked upon as articles of faith, and sub
scribed as such ? It is vain to say, that the writer speaks of a
state not yet developed. True, but we should see an approxima
tion towards the state he speaks of, whereas we see a retrocession.
This decides which way the tendency lies. A hearty assent and
consent to our Church Articles will, under God, save us from the
fate of the church of Geneva. Before she slid into the Socinianism
from which, there is reason to hope, she is recovering, she put
away subscription to Articles and Creeds. Is there any wish
amongst us to do so ? Is there anything which those, at least,
who most freely preach the great doctrines of the Gospel desire
so much, as that the letter and spirit of the Articles and Homilies
mav be restored to that dominion which they held in the days of
the Reformation, but which was almost entirely lost after the
restoration of Charles II., when whole sermons were preached
without once mentioning the name of Christ? The writer justly
denounces irreverent mention of that holy name, (as is done more
fully in the third volume of the Tracts, where Jacob Abbott is
found fault with, not without reason.) But where is this irre-

63
verence seen in our present preaching ? If there was, in par
ticular cases, a blameable familiarity fifty years ago, has it not
been on the decline ever since ? I confidently assert, that it
hardly exists now. This, again, shows in which direction the
tendency of a full and free declaration of the great truths of the
Gospel lies.
The Church of Rome differs from ours in practising that
" reserve " which it is the object of the Tract to recommend
If their practice, then, is the opposite of ours, it is natural to
expect that their state should be the reverse of ours. Are
they, then, free from a practical tendency to Socinianism ?
The writer is aware that this appeal may be made, and skilfully
anticipates it. He silently assumes that Socinianism is unknown
to Romanists. He says, (p. 80,) " The great Catholic doctrine
of the Trinity being so strongly established among them by en
tering into all their devotional forms and creeds, that it could
not be shaken, human depravity has sought out an opening for
itself under another shape.'' What shape is that ? " The
otherwise unaccountable, the extraordinary , yet powerfully pre
vailing tendency to substitute the Virgin as the object of reli
gious worship." I am happy to hear this writer speak so plainly
on the subject of the worship of the Virgin. But that it is so
" unaccountable " as he says, may be doubted, when we hear a
Protestant expressing himself as Mr. Newman does, in his Sermon,
" On the Reverence due to the blessed Virgin Mary ;'' " What
must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near
relative to the Son of God ? . . . This contemplation runs to a
higher subject, did we dare to follow it; for what, think you,
was the sanctity and grace of that human nature, of which God
formed His sinless Son ; knowing, as we do, that what is born
of the flesh is flesh, and that none can bring a clean thing out
of an unclean." Without charging Mr. Newman with the least
tendency to worship the Virgin, might not such incautious lan
guage lead a weak disciple to a most dangerous reverence for
her ? Not, however, to dwell on the origin of this error in the

64
Church of Rome, is this the only outburst of human depravity' ire
that church ? Can the writer forget that the world has seen an
exhibition of infidelity in that church on the most tremendous
scale ? What was the state of France at the time of the great
Revolution ? Christianity, being kept out of sight, had been
identified with Popery, and both were cast off together ! What
is the testimony of Mr. Blanco White as to the state of Spain
about the same time ? In his " Internal Evidence against Ca
tholicism," he tells us, that wheu he became an infidel, he found
" a great portion of the Spanish clergy," his brother priests, dis
guised infidels. " Wherever," he says, " the religion of Rome
reigns absolute, there is but one step between it and infidelity."
When Mr. White came to England, he was astonished to find
that Protestants were not all Deists and Socinians. It was the
Church of England that rescued him from the infidelity into
which the Church of Rome had plunged him. So much for a
comparison between the two churches as to their practical tenden
cies at this very moment.

Appendix O, page 30.

Lest I should be wearisome, I omitted in my Letter all mention
of the application of the views of the Tract writers to the labours
of missionaries. Mr. Newman, in his " Arians," expressly says,
that the principle of what he calls " the Divinity of Traditionary
Religion," (p. 88,) may be usefully employed by missionaries,
(p. 92). It is clear, indeed, from what has been seen of Tract
No. 80, that the system of " reserve'' would admit of an " a
fortiori " application to " the communication of religious know
ledge " to the heathen. This is a very important and practical
bearing of the Tract system, well worthy of the consideration of
the public. It is no intention of mine to enter into a discussion ;

65
such as that which the Abbe Dubois provoked many years ago.
Facts are the great court of appeal in matters of this kind which
Scripture has not settled, and where reasoning is only conjecture
— and facts have pretty well decided the question. The book of
Mr. Williams, called " Missionary Enterprises," one of the most
delightful works ever published, and, if true, which there is
no reason to doubt, one of the most astonishing since the
Acts of the Apostles, blows all mere theories to atoms. The
Moravian missions, (the admiration even of men of the world,
and philosophers,) especially that of Greenland, had long ago
performed the same office. I am aware how little regard the
Tract writers have for our brethren of the Scotch Church,
which the Lyra Apostolica denominates " Samaria ;" never
theless 1 will venture to quote on this subject the language of that
good Samaritan, whose whole life is one act of benevolence to his
fellow-creatures, Dr. Chalmers. The doctor is reviewing, in 1815,
the account of the Moravian mission to the Esquimaux, and says,
" We know of no question more interesting than that which pro
poses the consideration of the best method of addressing Chris
tianity to the minds of men totally unfurnished with any prepara
tory conceptions on the subject. On other subjects of inquiry,
the rashness of the theorising spirit is exploded, and all spe
culation is made to vanish before the evidence of experiment.
To the evidence on this question the Moravians are making daily
additions ; and the whole history of their proceedings bears tes
timony to the fact, that the Gospel is never preached in power
but when it is preached in simplicity ; that the refinements of
men do but enfeeble the impression of it ; and that the word
of truth, as it came pure from the mouth of Christ and of
His Apostles, may be addressed to savages at the very lowest
degree in the scale of civilisation."

66

Appendix P, page 37.
What can " the loss of christian principle," and the " throw
ing out of the doctrine of Christ crucified," which the writer
speaks of, be, but the relinquishment of the system of fasting,
and mortification, and penance ? That there is a hankering after
the restoration of this system, which in the history of the church
has been seen to lead to the death of all spirituality of mind, is
plain from Froude's Remains. " It has lately come into my
head," he says, " that the present state of things in England
makes an opening for reviving the monastic system. I think of
putting the view forward under the title of ' Project for Reviving
Religion in Great Towns' " " I must go about the country to
look for the stray sheep of the true fold ; there are many
about, I am sure ; only that odious Protestantism sticks in
people's gizzard." The British Magazine also (April 1836)
says, " / conceive you necessarily must have dissent or monachism
in a christian country ; so make your choice."
With regard to the duty of fasting, see a well-written essay
in that admirable book, Woodward's Essays.
Altogether, let people see what is demanded of them if they
embrace the Tract system. Nothing less than their christian
liberty ! Their reason, their private judgment, their conscience,
must all be laid at the feet of a blind reverence for the prac
tices and opinions of antiquity.

Appendix Q, page 37.

Napoleon, it is related, said that men were governed by
names. There is great truth in the observation, of which the
Tract writers are well aware. Names, they know, are com-

67
pendious arguments ; and therefore they wish to alter those
which are disagreeable to them. But would they think them
disagreeable, if they did not feel that they militated against their
views ? Is not this an involuntary confession that their views
are not those which Englishmen have been accustomed to
take ? Let us adhere to old names and old feelings !
Dr. Hook, in a recent sermon, states that the late lamented
Mr. Wilberforce modified some of his church views towards
the close of his life. On this point we require information,
and not assertion. I can state that 1 was present at
a discussion on the merits of the Revolution of 1688, at
Mr. Wilberforce 's, a few years before his death, when,
though warmly assailed, he could not be persuaded to modify
his opinion that it was truly glorious ! — glorious because
bloodless (contrast the French Revolution) — glorious because
no mean, selfish motives, with this world only in view, were
the mainspring of it, (witness the conduct of Archbishop San-
croft;) and glorious, because from it have flowed blessings,
civil and religious, which no other nation ever enjoyed, and
which nothing could induce Mr. Wilberforce to believe (with Dr.
Pusey) would have been showered down by Divine Providence
on a guilty and inglorious " Rebellion."

Appendix R, page 38.
It gives me pain to disparage the Fathers. But who are to
blame — they who perform an unpleasing duty, or they who drive
them to it ? Who are they that do the greatest injury to the
Fathers — they who would willingly let them rest in peace, and
honour their memory — or they who produce such specimens of
their works as are calculated to bring them into disrepute?"
" Are these the grapes of Eshcol ?" people will say. Are these

68
(lie fruits of an investigation into that ancient land, for which we
are invited to desert our own ? There is a passage in Mr.
Evans' " Biography of the Early Church," so beautiful, and so
much to the purpose, as showing the caution with which any one
should venture upon that difficult and perilous investigation, that
I cannot forbear quoting it. " The reader," he says, " may
enter on this new field with much of the feelings of Adam when
he quitted paradise and entered upon the wide earth ; and if the
ground benotcursed, yet it is, comparatively speaking, unblessed.
Far from plucking from the tree of life in all security, and gather
ing his fruit in leisurely gladness, he has now to eat his bread in
the sweat of his brow, painfully to select wholesome from amid
noxious, and to pass over much ground for but little store.
Legitimate types are to be adopted from a heap of fanci
ful allegory, good reasons from a tissue of loose arguments,
and credible facts from much careless assertion. His in
dustry, his judgment, his charity, are kept in perpetual ex
ercise. But it is the very contrast that makes the exploration
of this region so instructive ; and the apprehension of this
contrast must be obtained before he ventures on the enterprise,
and be maintained throughout his research. Few and unim
portant would have been the lessons which Adam derived from
the niggardly soil, had he not cherished fresh in memory the
blissful abundance of paradise. But, thus furnished, he met with
an instructive monitor at every step, and in every act. So must
it be with him who enters upon the field of the writings and
lives of the Fathers. He must be first of all well imbued with
the knowledge and spirit of Scripture, so that he may come to
them with a good knowledge of his own heart, with an enlarged
acquaintance with human nature, with ajudgment and feeling well
schooled to discern human from Divine, with his views of moral
excellence most lofty, and at the same time with a meek and
charitable spirit of consideration for the most frail of his fellow
servants." LONDON:
HRINTKD By IEOTSON AND PALMER, SAVOY STREET.