as to have split into two portions; some continuing to adhere to the original principles of such men as Cecil, Scott, and others; while a large number were drawn away from these, and assumed the very anomalous character of "High Church evangelicals." Thus, then, the majority of the clergy being prepared for the reception of tractarian principles, and the evangelical clergy being divided, it is no wonder that these notions should have spread themselves so widely through the land; this being the effect not of any wonderful expansiveness in themselves, but rather of the susceptibility of those amongst whom they were scattered; as an infectious disorder is always more or less general in its prevalence, according as the population amongst which it falls is predisposed for receiving it.

There have been, moreover, one or two incidental occurrences in the University of Oxford which have given an unexpected advantage to the system. The first of these was the case of Dr. Hampden, the present Regius Professor of Divinity. This gentleman had given great offence to the University at large, because he was supposed to be favourable to the admission of dissenters to the University; and it was charitably urged against him, that being the head of a small establishment, St. Mary's Hall, he would be willing to do that which the more wealthy colleges would not-receive them into his institution, and thus benefit himself in a pecuniary point of view, to the damage of the whole body of the University, whose principles and faith were to be endangered, and probably swamped, by a handful of dissenting students. Hence there was a strong prejudice against Dr. Hampden generally, and it only wanted something more tangible than a rumoured suspicion to vent itself. Nor was it long before this was found. Dr. Hampden was of the same college as Mr. Newman, for it is a remarkable fact, that the same collegiate establishment, namely, Oriel College, has had the honour of fostering the heads of the antagonist parties that now contend for victory. On the one side are Dr. Pusey, Messrs. Keble, Newman, Froude, &c.; on the other, Archbishop Whateley, Bishop Coplestone, Drs. Hampden and Arnold, Professor Baden Powell, &c.: all of whom have been or are connected with Oriel. Thus known to each other as college associates, Dr. Hampden and Mr. Newman were each equally well acquainted with the other's views and divinity, and must each have been satisfied that the two systems which they advocated could not stand together, but that the success of the one must prove the ruin of the other, as light and darkness cannot subsist in unison. Dr. Hampden, as Bampton Lecturer, had struck a terrible blow at the school divinity of which Mr. Newman was

enamoured, and the latter felt that it was essential to take off the edge of this weapon, which threatened to smite his own system with destruction. These lectures, as well as others on Moral Philosophy, to the chair of which science, be it remembered, Dr. Hampden was elected after to the delivery of the alarming Bampton Lectures, were ransacked for passages and expressions which might be so detached as to be distorted from their proper meaning, and made to serve the purpose of charging Dr. Hampden with heretical opinions. There wanted but a fitting occasion to commence the attack. An underling of the party attempted one in 1835, but it failed. In 1836, however, the Regius Professorship became vacant, and Dr. Hampden was named by Lord Melbourne to the chair. Any one supposed to be a Whig would have been unacceptable to Oxford men generally, but Dr. Hampden, from his presumed partiality to dissenters, was peculiarly so. An outcry was raised, and Mr. Newman drew the general dissatisfaction to a head by his "Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements," which effectually obscured them by the cloud of doubt and error that by imputation he raised against them. A Socinian is deservedly the object of horror and alarm to all true scriptural believers; and though Dr. Hampden was not at once dubbed one, yet the charge was sufficiently insinuated to become a popular cry, and all parties joined in inflicting condign punishment upon one to whom a bad name had been thus currently affixed. Thus were to be found in the committee opposed to Dr. Hampden,-Mr. Newman, the fulllength Tractarian; Mr. Sewell, the half-length; Mr. Vaughan Thomas, the High Church representative; and Mr. Hill, of the Evangelical party. Thus the Tractarians presented themselves to the world as the defenders of orthodoxy, and obtained popular favour at the expense of an honourable individual, sacrificed for the time to their unworthy designs.

The next favourable circumstance that befel the Tractarians was the untoward sermon of Dr. Faussett, the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, entitled, "The Revival of Popery." The charge implied in this title they were able at once to reply to by the figment, so often adopted by them in all the spirit of Jesuitism, that because they have written against certain things in popery, therefore they have neither leaning nor predilection that way; difficult as they allow it at the same time to be, to keep some of the party from "straggling in the direction of Rome.' But Dr. Faussett committed in his sermon a blunder, which is always one of the greatest advantages that can be afforded to an adroit antagonist, who knows how to avail himself of it. He had said that "the term altar, as synonymous with the Lord's table, does not appear to

have been adopted till about the end of the second century, and then merely in a figurative sense, and out of a spirit of accommodation, &c." Mr. Newman, whose reply to Dr. Faussett followed the publication of the sermon in an incredibly short time, was enabled to show no less than four such usages of the term Baapoy in the seven epistles of Ignatius, and to vaunt it over the Professor with the jocose expression, "Do my eyes play me false in reading Ignatius, or in reading your 'Revival of Popery." An error such as this was appreciable by the most vulgar mind, otherwise incapacitated for understanding the great points controverted; and its detection, by one of the leaders of the Tractarians, gave an éclat to himself and the system, which was industriously improved and exaggerated.

The last circumstance worthy of notice in the history of the tract-system, as exhibiting its progress and success, was the favour bestowed upon it by the bishop of the diocese in 1838, in his charge delivered to the clergy at his visitation, in which, as Dr. Pusey himself, in his letter subsequently addressed to his lordship on the Tract system, was pleased to say, the bishop "bestowed a refreshing and paternal praise" upon them, the Tract-writers, for their "desire to restore the discipline of the Church," and their "attempts to secure a stricter attention to the rubrical directions in the Book of Common Prayer," &c.; and even went so far as to say that "the authors of the Tracts had not laid upon him the painful necessity of interfering, nor had he any fear that they would ever do so." Thus encouraged in their course by episcopal favour and approval, they have continued to pursue it until the present time, when, at length, in succession, the bishops of the Church are pronouncing their judgment with respect to the threatened overthrow of Protestantism, and exhibiting various degrees of alarm and disquietude.

Having premised thus much respecting the origin, early progress, and extent of the system, which has attained to so unhappy an eminence in the kingdom, we may now proceed to speak of the principles, which it has endeavoured to develope, to illustrate, and to confirm. These were put forth from time to time with so much caution, and with such steady gradations, that if we did not see how each one naturally succeeds the other, as in vegetation, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, we might be induced to suppose that some master-mind had conceived the whole plan, and had gradually developed it, as he found men ready to bear it. This, however, would be to impute a higher degree of talent to the leaders in the work, than they have given reason to believe to exist; for they seem from time to time to have been

startled at their own deductions and conclusions, and to have receded from positions which they had taken up, as uncertain whether they were tenable, or themselves safe in maintaining them. The most eminent exhibition of this kind has been the promised suppression of Tract 90, or rather the feigned withdrawal of it, followed by its republication to the extent of a third edition, and its continued sale to this very day.

Bearing in mind the politico-religious and dissent-abhorring origin of the system, we are perfectly satisfied with the confession of Mr. Perceval, that Apostolical Succession and the integrity of the Prayer Book were the primary objects of the movement. These are the barriers that separate the sectaries from communion with the Church of England, and they are also the ground of denouncing against them the ban, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Accordingly, great breadth and prominence was given to the first of these, Apostolical Succession, from which was anticipated the terrifying the dissenters back to the Church, and the inducing the evangelical clergy to renounce all intercourse with them. The latter alone has been effected, and that to an extent which is deplorable; inasmuch as the results of the past fifty years, in reviving a spirit of unity amongst all christians, has thus been sacrificed to the dividing tendency of uniformity. Tracts 1, 4, 7, 10, 17, 24, 33, 52, 54, 57, 60, 74, and others containing the assertion that dissenters holding a different form of churchgovernment, err in a "fundamental doctrine;" all of them relate to the doctrine of Apostolical Succession. Nor is this a mere barren speculation; for Mr. Froude, in his original sketch of the conspiracy, given by Mr. Perceval in his letter on the "Oxford Movement," defines it to be "the participation of the body and blood of Christ, as essential to the maintenance of Christian life and hope in each individual; that it must be conveyed to individual Christians only by the hands of the successors of the Apostles and their delegates; and that their successors are those who are descended in a direct line from them by the imposition of hands." Thus in Tract 4 we find the assertion that our Church is "the only Church in this realm which has a right to be quite sure that she has the Lord's body to give to his people;" in Tract 35, we find the baptism of persons not commissioned repudiated, and all comfort in the Lord's Supper denied to them that partake of it without the administration of the clergy; while the ministers of all other forms of christianity, and those who do not receive apostolical succession by the episcopal imposition of hands, are denounced as treading in the footsteps of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram," and of course as being deserving of that wrath of God which fell upon them and their company.

In thus putting forward Apostolical Succession in the first place, and making it an essential of a Church and of the plan of salvation, the Tract-writers obtained an influence which they did not at first calculate upon. Their primary object was to raise a fence around the Church, by which they should so bound its fold as to exclude all from communion with Christ, who were not within the prescribed limits. Thus the dissenters were theoretically excommunicated from the body of Christ, and utterly unchurched. But in exalting Apostolical Succession, they had exalted also the reputed successors of the Apostles, that is, the bishops, and so exaggerated their authority, as to conceal from sight their true position, as the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mystery of godliness.

With respect to the Prayer Book, they were extremely earnest at first in their pretence of preserving its integrity; until at last they began to show a lurking desire to revive the Mass-book in its stead. Originally, Tract 3 was devoted to the preservation of the Liturgy, "not one jot or tittle of which was to be altered." And again, at the end of Tract 4, the question was raised, "Where is the competent authority for making alterations?" At the end of Tract 10, also, any change of the Sunday Lessons was objected to; and in Tract 13, the selection of them was defended more at large. In Tract 22, a fictitious character is introduced, yclept Richard Nelson, who for a poor man such as he is represented to be, digging a ditch in his garden, is wonderfully apt in his defence of the Prayer Book, the Athanasian Creed, &c. And in the same course did they continue for some time, still more blinding the authorities of the Church with the fancy that they were "zealously affected" in maintaining the integrity of the Prayer Book. And yet all the while they were but endeavouring to ward off all attempts at improvement in the public services of the Church, in order to prepare the way for alterations in an opposite direction. Mr. Newman, in his letter to Dr. Faussett, says, "Our Reformers," in not adopting the canon of the mass, which he calls a "sacred and most precious monument of the Apostles," "mutilated the tradition of 1500 years;" and our present condition is a judgment on us for what they did." Their conduct herein excites a feeling of "indignation and impatient sorrow."-(pp. 46, 47.) Again, in Tract 86, we find much more to the same purpose: thus "the substitution of the term 'Table,' 'Holy Table,' for that of Altar,' which is in Edward's first book, is a strong instance of this our judicial humiliation." (p. 26.) "The oblation is made in silence. Is not this silence expressive? May it not be considered eloquently significative, more than any