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as being of God, we shall not shrink from the ever invidious task of exposing from time to time the spread of error and the devices of Satan, whether within or without the Church; and, while we strive, "as far as in us lies," to live peaceably with all men,' we shall not hesitate to denounce, in terms as strong as are compatible with a genuine Christian charity, that spirit of formalism and Romish error and superstition which we have too painful reason to believe has crept into the Church, and which will, if it be there fostered, like the serpent at the domestic hearth, eventually bring desolation and woe.

If we have been thought by any occasionally to have expressed ourselves too strongly, or even harshly, against those who are introducing a spirit so dangerous within the walls of our Zion, let them reflect on the imminence and fatal character of the danger, if it be real, as we think we have ample means of showing. We bid them look well at her tottering bulwarks and her shelving banks, and bear with us, if in our zeal, we have sharpened our weapons too finely in their defence. In boldly denouncing what we believe to be error, it is and ever will be our endeavour, as it is our desire, to confine ourselves strictly within the bounds of temperate language and of Christian charity.

In conclusion, we have to thank those (and they have been neither few nor uninfluential) who have so kindly lent their aid to our infant undertaking; and to trust that they will continue to afford us that valuable assistance without which we must inevitably fail; while we, for our part, pledge ourselves to fight manfully and earnestly, and, we humbly trust, in a Christian spirit, the battle of sound Anglican Christianity against the dangerous doctrines and doubtful assurances put forth by either extreme of opinion, for the good of our fellows, and the honour of our God.

THE

CHRISTIAN'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE

AND

UNIVERSAL REVIEW.

I. THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.

SECRET HISTORY OF TRACTARIANISM.*

PART I.

RELIGION and learning revived simultaneously. Both contributed to that ecclesiastical reformation which protested against the corruptions of the papacy. Unwilling to part with these corruptions, because of the profit connected with them, Rome in her turn was compelled, for their maintenance, to protest also. There was, however, no abuse that it was politic for her to protest against in the Church of the Reformation; and she was by the attempt, therefore, necessarily placed in a false position, and seduced into a negative attitude. This she could not take without sacrificing, in the same proportion, her catholicity; nor was it long ere she perceived that she had suffered serious loss, and endeavoured at RE-ACTION. The neglect of learning had tended to her degradation. She reasonably thought that a renewed attention to it would promote her re-establishment. She proceeded to create a learned class devoted to her interests. The efforts of the Jesuits towards this purpose were of a most extraordinary character, and their progress was remarkable for rapidity and extent. In the year 1551 they had not yet any fixed position in Germany; in 1556 they had extended over Bavaria and the Tyrol, Franconia and Swabia, a great part of Rhineland and Austria, and penetrated into Hungary, Bohemia, and Moravia. In five years more their services were recognised by papal nuncios, as of great importance to the holy see. Their labours were, above all, devoted to the universities; they were ambitious of rivalling the fame of those of the Protestants. Accordingly, they

* A Narrative of Events connected with the Publication of the "Tracts for the Times," with Reflections on existing Tendencies to Romanism, and also the present Duty and Prospects of Members of the Church. By the Rev. William Palmer, M.A., of Worcester College, Oxford. Parker, Oxford; Burns, London.

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zealously prosecuted the study of ancient languages, and many Jesuit. teachers emulated the merit of the restorers of classical learning. Neither did they neglect science; but their principal attention was paid to theological discipline and scholastic education.

In these facts we can easily enough recognise the IDEA designed for the basis of RE-ACTION. With more or less of success, at sundry times and in divers places, by various means and by different persons of contrary persuasions, the same policy has been continuously promoted. Nor have the more subtle forms of promoting it been disregarded. The minds of individual Protestants have been unconsciously influenced by conversation and familiar intercourse. The topic of the inherent catholicity of the church has, on such occasions, been insidiously dwelt upon; and the Protestantism (in a negative sense) of the Reformed churches quietly assumed. The patient listener has thus been taught to regret the separation of the Anglican Church from the Roman, and to sigh for their re-union. Romanist believers have thus been created in the bosom of Protestant communities, and bearing Protestant denominations. Superior minds, such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, also, have rightly and reasonably desired an increase of catholicity, and lamented the want or deficiency of it in all churches, and particularly in the Church of Rome. They felt commiseration for the abuse of a power so extensive and important, and wished that it had been, and might be, properly directed. Their desire was mistaken as confirmatory of the pro-Romanist tendency, though in itself of an opposite character; and in this manner the subject became confused, and the question perplexed. Nor must it be forgotten that learning, unequivocally profound and acute, and logical argument of approved subtlety and rigour, have been brought to bear on the side of the Marian heresy, and have produced conviction where not sufficiently antagonised, either by a similar amount of acquirement or dialectic skill. At length, both among the clergy and laity in the universities and Church of England, there were, and are, unfortunately, to be found professors, and teachers, and students, holding principles opposed to those of the Reformation, while subsisting on Protestant revenues, or participating in Protestant privileges. And, finally, a confessed-nay, proudly acknowledged, Conspiracy was organised and carried out by means of a series of publications, professedly designed for the enforcement of theological and ecclesiastical discipline, in order to lead to the desired re-action, the basis of which was laid at so early a stage in the history of the Reformation. The purpose of the "Tracts for the Times," even when not openly declared, was always sufficiently transparent, and, with some occasional evasions, attributable to their Jesuitical spirit, generally avowed. To "unprotestantise the Church of England," and to induce her to "recede more and more from the principles, if any, of the Reformation," were the uniform tendencies of the series.

The means thus adopted are so similar to those described by Ranké, as employed in the sixteenth century, that we must be allowed to pre

sent our readers with his account of the First Jesuit Schools in Germany, established for effecting a Counter-Reformation :—

"The Jesuits lectured with the greatest industry, even during the holidays: they renewed the practice of disputation; without which, as they said, all instruction was a dead letter. Their disputations, which were held in public, were conducted with dignity and decorum, were full of matter, and the most brilliant that had ever been witnessed. In Ingoldstadt they soon persuaded themselves that they had made such good speed, that the university would compete with any other in Germany, at least in the faculty of theology. Ingoldstadt acquired, though in an opposite direction, an influence parallel to that possessed by Wittenberg and Geneva.

"The Jesuits displayed no less assiduity in the conduct of their Latin schools. It was one of the leading maxims of Lainez, that the lower grammatical classes should be supplied with good teachers, since first impressions exercise the greatest influence over the whole future life of the individual. He sought with just discernment for men who, having once adopted that more limited department of education, were content to devote themselves to it for their whole lives; for time alone could enable the teacher to learn so difficult a business, or to acquire the becoming authority. In this the Jesuits succeeded to admiration. It was found that young persons learned more under them in half a year than with others in two years; even Protestants called back their children from distant schools, and put them under the care of the Jesuits."

Similar to the means thus described are the tactics of the Tractarians; with the exception, perhaps, of promoting general education, to which they are expressly adverse. What their predecessors did by oral disputation, they are compelled to attempt by periodical essays; but this is a change imposed on them by the nature of the times in which they live. They have written instead of spoken; but they have spoken where they could; they have directed their battery on the seats of learning, and particularly aimed at the minds of clerical students. The doctrines taught by our modern Anglican Jesuits were peculiarly flattering to some of the more ambitious, who were thereby instructed that they were the members of a miraculous corporation, and placed above the laity at an immeasurable distance. No wonder that a numerous tribe of fanatics was thus readily made, and that the peace of those sober-minded, learned, and pious clergymen, who have hitherto represented the true via media in the Church of England, has been unnecessarily disturbed and troubled, particularly in the country, by the indiscreet zeal of the young and inexperienced, fresh from college, and ardent for retrograde innovation. The temerity and impatience, and in some cases the intemperance, of these injudicious young men, do less credit to the teaching of their masters than might have been expected. We recognise an inferiority here, when compared with their Jesuit exemplars in the sixteenth century, which, perhaps, has been providentially appointed, that the new heresy may be the sooner suppressed. We need only refer to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, to understand in what, in the long run, these attempts at Counter-Reformation, if not checked in time, will-and must-end. History, if it be an old almanack, is also a prophetic one. Men, whose minds resembled those of our Tractarians, saw in that enormity only "a good work;" and Charles IX. of France was flattered into believing, that thereby he had earned the title of "Most Christian King." Pope Gregory XIII.,

moreover, celebrated the event by a solemn procession to the Church of San Luigi; and the Venetians, though having no special interest in the matter, expressed, in their official despatches to their ambassador, their satisfaction at "this grace of God;" namely, the massacre in cold blood of fifty thousand persons. But, as a recent historian indignantly demands, "can it be that such bloody atrocities should ever be permanently successful? Are these not repugnant to the profounder mysteries of human life and action; to the undefined, inviolable principles that inwardly actuate the unchanging order of nature? The minds of men may be dazzled; but the moral laws of their nature they cannot shake; they are swayed by them with a necessity as cogent as that which rules the stars of heaven."

The re-action sought to be produced by the Oxford Tractarians could not be consummated without a revolution; nor that revolution pass over without extensive bloodshed. So qualified, likewise, are even the most revolting actions by our motives, that such blood would be shed, not only without remorse, but with satisfaction. The unavoidable horror would be endured for the sake of conscience. The fanatic, who

directs the death of a martyr, never seems to suspect that he is committing murder; albeit of no less a crime is he arraignable before the judgement-seat of God. What, then, must we think of the man who could forfeit his pledge to the church of which he is a minister, and protest against the necessity he was under of celebrating the great Protestant deliverance on the 5th of November, invidiously declaring from a Protestant pulpit, in justification of his conduct, "that the office of a bishop of Christ's flock is higher than that of a temporal sovereign; that the sufferings of hell are so dreadful that any present agonies are blessings if they prevent them; that men will be damned for wrong faith as well as for unholy lives:" thus perverting the most sacred truths to schismatic ends, and a quasi defence of attempted wholesale assassination?

It may be true that, in some respects, the office of a bishop is superior to that of a king, or, at least, co-ordinate with it; it is true that the sufferings of hell are more dreadful than those of earth; that wrong faith, if practical, will damn: but it is NOT TRUE that, therefore, a bishop may defy the powers that be, after having taken the oath of allegiance; that he, or Guido Fawkes, or the Holy Inquisition, may commit massacre, assassination, and murder, on the bodies of men in order to save their souls; and that theoretic error subjects one man to be denounced by another as a son of perdition. These falsehoods, however, being asserted, will lead, if not rebutted, to persecution; and we pronounce deliberately, that the man who can assert them, has in him the spirit both of a Jesuit and a Grand Inquisitor, and would, if he could, and saw what to him seemed valid reason, revive all the severities of the Holy Office. This, then, if we steadily look the danger in the face, is the possible extreme which we are to prevent, the tendency which we should stop at the commencement. The spirit of persecution involves in itself the act; it only awaits time and opportunity; and the longer

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