there was, as they maintained, another authority in religious matters; if their system was not supported in all its points by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian antiquity. Thus Mr. Newman and his friends found that the times which they disliked had professed to rely on Scripture alone; the times which they loved had invested the church with equal authority. It was natural then to connect the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, with this notion of the sole supremacy of Scripture; and it was no less natural to associate the blessings of their imagined golden age with its avowed reverence for the church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed the language of men whom they abhorred; if they exalted the church and Christian antiquity, they sympathized with a period which they were resolved to love. Their theological writings from the very beginning have too plainly shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies and their antipathies.

Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or apprehension of the evils of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to the system of times past, they were overtaken by the poli

tical storm of 1831, and the two following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed many who had viewed the gathering of the clouds with hope and pleasure; no wonder, then, if it produced a stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere calamity, an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the country was now for the first time for many years in the hands of men who admired the spirit of the age nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred it. Thus all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind; they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to recognise the signs of a national apostasy.

But from this point they have themselves written their own history.-Mr. Perceval's letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 30, 1841, is really a document of the

highest value. It acquaints us, from the very best authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its opponents.

Mr. Perceval informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven, with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal statements which Mr. Perceval gives of them; and in what he calls the "matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said, "whereas, there

seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the service of our church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i. e. without the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the church on the alterations proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was particularly deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on insufficient authority," without reference to any suspected character of the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the beginning, became in a very short time the only one.

The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the "something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century," or, at least, the most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared to be the maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession. Now let us hear, for it is most important, the grounds on which this doctrine is to

be enforced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it. I quote again from Mr. Perceval's letter.

"Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the partaking of the body and blood of our sacrificed Redeemer;

"2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for that purpose is the holy sacrament of his supper;

"3. That the security by him no less expressly authorized, for the continuance and due application of that sacrament, is the apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them the presbyters of the church;

"4. That under the present circumstances of the church in England, there is peculiar danger of these matters being slighted and practically disavowed, and of numbers of Christians being left or tempted to precarious and unauthorized ways of communion, which must terminate often in vital apostasy;

"We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserving our canonical obedience, as follows:

"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of inculcating, on all committed to our charge, a due sense of the inestimable privilege of com