founded otherwise than on truly Christian charity towards the errors or mistakes of any; but there is a wide chasm between charity and indifference, and a wider still between indifference and the being zealously affected towards the pure faith of Christ, as taught by Himself, His Apostles, and the primitive Christians. Let, then, the clergy of the Church at least prove, in the midst of so much lukewarmness, that they see the necessity of maintaining inviolate one visible Catholic Church. As they admit the ordination and the authority of the Roman Episcopacy, they must also admit that the union proposed, provided that error shall be abandoned, may be made. Whatever may be the errors of the Church of Rome has the foundation of true faith, and the advantages of a discipline modelled after Apostolical practice. A conference, therefore, with her by the Church of England, now that the heat of the Reformation has in a great degree subsided, might, under all-mighty blessing given to fervent prayer, be the happy means of leading to the renunciation of error, and of bringing about a Christian union, which might restrain the alarming progress of that unscriptural variety of opinion which prevails, to the great injury of our common religion."* . . the Church of Rome These sentiments were beginning to take firm hold of the mind of the nation, to the gradual displacement of the effete prejudices and hackneyed objections of Dr. Burgess. From the metropolis they at length found their way into the House of Commons, and to the House of Commons they were wafted back again from the other side of the water. "The union of the Churches," wrote the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Lord Ripon, in 1824, "which you have had the singular merit of suggesting to the Commons of the United Kingdom, would together and at once effect a total change in the minds of men." The subject of debate in the House had been the Irish Church. "It would bring all classes to co-operate zealously in promoting the prosperity of Ireland, and in securing her allegiance for ever to the British throne. In Ireland, I am confident that, notwithstanding the ferment which now prevails, a proposition, such as you have made, if adopted by Government, would be heartily embraced. . . . I myself would most cheerfully, and without fee, pension, emolument, or hope, resign the office which I hold, if by doing so I could in any way contribute to the union of my brethren and the happiness of my country."+ Catholic emancipation eventually appeared the simpler course the question still remains-has it left nothing more to be desired? The late Archbishop Murray thought at the time Reflections, &c., pp. 92, 94. + Union Review, for January, 1863, p. 16. that the proposal for the union of the Churches was not one that ought to be too hastily set aside. "Were the Church of England people true to the principles laid down in their Prayer Book, the doctrinal differences, which appear considerable, but are not, would soon be removed. On our side, as the instruments of the Most High for preaching peace to men of goodwill, we should leave nothing undone, short of sacrificing truth, towards uniting divided Christendom."* It had been observed by Bishop Burgess, in his reply to Wix, that "it was a common bait laid out by many learned Catholics, that the differences were so small between the Church of England and that of Rome that they were easy to be reconciled." How well I remember listening, as a boy, to a clever course of lectures by the late Bishop Baines, proving or affecting to prove from Protestant authorities exclusively, every doctrine taught or allowed in the Church of Rome; and the irresistible inference left on my juvenile mind was, why, then, cannot Protestants and Catholics go to church together? The chapel, I remember, was at the time filled with both sorts. Subsequently, I have lived in parishes where Catholics, having no chapel of their own within distance, were authorised, as they said, by their priests to attend the parish churchthough not of course to communicate there-provided there was never anything preached in it against the doctrines of their own. Abroad, similarly, from the establishment of peace in 1815 downwards, I have been told it had never been unusual for members of the Church of England to resort for service to the Continental churches, especially where there was no chapel for them of their own to attend. It certainly is not unusual now. Things were still taking this conciliatory turn when the Emancipation Act of 1829 passed, and when but four years subsequently, as though the two movements had some invisible connection, the Oxford Tracts commenced. If there was any one principle on which they rested more than another, it was that of the Apostolical Succession. And Dr. Lingard may be said to have facilitated its maintenance by them to some extent, by showing the worthlessness of the Nag's Head fable. Soon after they had ended, Bishop Sharples, in reply to the question why he bore the title of Vicar Apostolic of a district, rather than that of Bishop of a See, is reported to have said, "In order that there may be no bar in the way of union. If the Church of England were united to the Church of Rome, we could be withdrawn, and your bishops acknowledged; but * Union Review, for January, 1863, p. 19. + Letter to Lord Kenyon, in 1819, p. 1. (It is a quotation from Clarendon.) if we were bishops of sees, there would be a great difficulty. He bore testimony to the revolution of feeling which they had effected even amongst Roman Catholics. For their more general scope can the Oxford Tracts be better described than as aspiring-loyally aspiring in their own way-to supply the one thing needful, in the judgment of Archbishop Murray, for the removal of doctrinal differences between the two communions, by making "Church of England people true to the principles laid down in their Prayer Book." With Rome for a time they meddled not; or if they spoke, they adopted the sentiments and style of The Christian Year: "Speak gently of our sister's fall, Who knows but gentle love At last Rome had to be looked still more full in the face, and the result was Tract 90. I read Tract 90 now very differently from what I did then. I was only just out of my teens when it came out. I reverenced and admired its author, and saw him persecuted. It has been of age now for some time, and I longer. I now read it by the clear light of history; and as it is, and for years has been, and as I am persuaded posterity will always read it, detached from its author. It came out rather abruptly, and was a few steps in advance of its age, and was followed by results which for the moment were held to be its interpretation. I maintain strongly that they were, of the two, its contradiction. Tract 90 was, in a few words, neither more nor less than the logical corollary to that movement which had been going on in the country for fifty years or more in favour of peace with Rome, and of which the Emancipation Bill of 1829 was the political expression in the strongest terms. The repeal of the Test Acts a year before was part and parcel of the same movement, as tending to congregate Christians of all denominations together upon a common platform, and by establishing their interdependence, smooth down their differences. But it is with the making peace with Rome exclusively that we are now concerned; and on this point I maintain we had been making progress onward, consistent, uninterrupted progress from the Act of 1791 to the Act of 1829, and from the Act of 1829 to Tract 90. Not by any means that there had not been a good deal of opposition -unprincipled as well as conscientious, honest as well as • Union Review, March, 1863, p. 177, from no second-hand source, that reply having been made to the writer of the letter there. For November 5," quoted in Tract 71, the historical prelude to Tract 90. prejudiced, in Church as well as in State-on both sides. It could scarce be otherwise after so many centuries of estrangement and antagonism. Still the tide rolled on; barrier after barrier silently disappeared in the political world; and as a natural consequence, the question of religion, which had hitherto been only touched upon incidentally, came to be the all engrossing one, and brought forth, but not otherwise than in due course, Tract 90. Situated as England and Rome are, Church and State can never be treated apart for long in either; nor can there be any solid peace between them on one element, as I have said before, while there is war on the other. Tract 90, therefore, was but the continuation or carrying out of those views which had been already expressed, as forcibly as words could convey them, by Bishop Barrington and Mr. Wix on the part of the Church of England, and by Bishop Doyle and Archbishop Murray on the part of the Church of Rome. Neither was it the first attempt of the kind that had been made, as most people know now, but few, if any, knew then. The first attempt to harmonise the Articles of the Church of England with the Decrees of Trent was made by one who had left the Church of England for that of Rome in the reign of James I.* I ascribe its failure mainly to the non-acceptance of the oath of allegiance proposed by James, only to be rejected by Rome. The two courts were embittered against each other by quarrelling on this unhappy point, and therefore what one patronised the other condemned. There can be no doubt that the book of Sancta Clara was acceptable to Charles, his court, and a number of his divines: but how could Rome, consistently with the ground which it had taken on the Oath of Allegiance, look upon it with favour, though composed by one who had given up all for communion with the Holy See? Had the Oath of Allegiance been accepted by Rome in the seventeenth century, there probably would have been no need for any one to have tried the experiment of Sancta Clara over again in the nineteenth. 66 As it was, that experiment was now made by one, as yet, on the opposite side from Sancta Clara, and some years after the co-religionists of Sancta Clara, better informed, had yielded the oath, and made peace politically with their countrymen. And now, remarquez bien," as the French would say, when the storm came this time, it was not from them. On the contrary, amidst all the explosions of amazement and thunderbolts of indignation which it evoked, there was one mind, at least, on the opposite side, that appreciated its true import at the time, * Reprinted a few months since, with interesting Memoir by the Rev. F. G. Lee. London, J. T. Hayes. The as well as reciprocated it, and augured from it the speedy completion of that peace, ecclesiastically as well as politically, which had as yet been only realised in the latter sense. celebrated letter of his late Eminence Cardinal Wiseman, on Catholic Unity, to Lord Shrewsbury, has been often cited in this REVIEW, and elsewhere, of late years, but it has rarely, if ever, been named in connection with Tract 90, which, in fact, caused its publication. "I give," he says, "my reasons for . . . imagining that I see an approximation not merely towards individual Catholic. practices or doctrines, but towards Catholic union. It seems to me impossible to read the works of the Oxford Divines, and especially to follow them chronologically, without discovering a daily approach towards our holy Church, both in doctrine and in affectionate feeling."-(p. 13.) Even Mr. Ward then said of the Church of England "Thus when she has been, by a natural attraction, and, as it were, spontaneously, restored to active communion with the rest of Christendom, once more, if God permit, the united Catholic Church will go forth in a spirit of steady aggression against the world."-(p. 19.) 66 Again," resumes his Eminence, "your Lordship has probably been informed of the prayers for unity which have appeared at Oxford, to be recited on Thursday morning. That the feelings which have been expressed in favour of a return to unity by the Anglican Church are every day widely spreading and deeply sinking, no one who has the means of judging, I think can doubt."-(p. 21.) "A still more promising circumstance, I think your Lordship with me will consider the plan which the eventful Tract 90 has pursued, and in which even Dr. Pusey has agreed. I allude to the method of bringing their doctrines into accordance with ours by explanation. Now for such a method as this, the is in part prepared by the demonstration that such interpretation may be given of the most difficult Articles, as will strip them of all contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod." (p. 38,). . Of his own side he had said previously, (p. 31)" We must explain to the utmost." "That the return of this country, through its established Church, to the Catholic unity, would put an end to religious dissent and interior feud, I make no doubt."-(p. 40.) way He concludes : Here, therefore, we have the Author of Tract 90 met half way by one of the then heads of English Catholicism, just as Bishop Barrington and Mr. Wix had been met by Bishop year. London, 1841. The date of Tract 90 was January 25th of the same F |