[77] An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England: printed in the Resuscitatio, p. 138 (ed. 1671).
[78] See Mr. Newman's article, "The State of Religious Parties," in the British Critic, April 1839, reprinted in his Essays Historical and Critical, 1871, Vol. 1., essay vi.
[79] "It would not be at all surprising, though, in spite of the earnestness of the principal advocates of the views in question, for which every one seems to give them credit, there should be among their followers much that is enthusiastic, extravagant, or excessive. All these aberrations will be and are imputed to the doctrines from which they proceed; nor unnaturally, but hardly fairly, for aberrations there must be, whatever the doctrine is, while the human heart is sensitive, capricious, and wayward…. There will ever be a number of persons professing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly and strangely, do odd and fierce things, display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other people; there will ever be those who are too young to be wise, too generous to be cautious, too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be humble; of whom human sagacity cannot determine, only the event, and perhaps not even that, whether they feel what they say, or how far; whether they are to be encouraged or discountenanced."—British Critic, April 1839, "State of Religious Parties," p. 405.
[80] Cardinal Newman, Grammar of Assent.
[81] The argument from history is sketched fairly, but only sketched in The Prophetic Office, Lect. xiv.
[82] In the Roman controversy it is sometimes hard to be just without appearing to mean more than is said; for the obligation of justice sometimes forces one who wishes to be a fair judge to be apparently an apologist or advocate. Yet the supreme duty in religious controversy is justice. But for the very reason that these controversialists wished to be just to Rome, they were bound to be just against her. They meant to be so; but events passed quickly, and leisure never came for a work which involved a serious appeal to history.
[83] Vide a striking review in the British Critic, April 1839, partly correcting and guarding the view given in the Tract.
CHAPTER XIV
NO. 90
The formation of a strong Romanising section in the Tractarian party was obviously damaging to the party and dangerous to the Church. It was pro tanto a verification of the fundamental charge against the party, a charge which on paper they had met successfully, but which acquired double force when this paper defence was traversed by facts. And a great blow was impending over the Church, if the zeal and ability which the movement had called forth and animated were to be sucked away from the Church, and not only lost to it, but educated into a special instrument against it. But the divergence became clear only gradually, and the hope that after all it was only temporary and would ultimately disappear was long kept up by the tenacity with which Mr. Newman, in spite of misgivings and disturbing thoughts, still recognised the gifts and claims of the English Church. And on the other hand, the bulk of the party, and its other Oxford leaders, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, Mr. Isaac Williams, Mr. Marriott, were quite unaffected by the disquieting apprehensions which were beginning to beset Mr. Newman. With a humbling consciousness of the practical shortcomings of the English Church, with a ready disposition to be honest and just towards Rome, and even to minimise our differences with it, they had not admitted for a moment any doubt of the reality of the English Church. The class of arguments which specially laid hold of Mr. Newman's mind did not tell upon them—the peculiar aspect of early precedents, about which, moreover, a good deal of criticism was possible; or the large and sweeping conception of a vast, ever-growing, imperial Church, great enough to make flaws and imperfections of no account, which appealed so strongly to his statesmanlike imagination. Their content with the Church in which they had been brought up, in which they had been taught religion, and in which they had taken service, their deep and affectionate loyalty and piety to it, in spite of all its faults, remained unimpaired; and unimpaired, also, was their sense of vast masses of practical evil in the Roman Church, evils from which they shrank both as Englishmen and as Christians, and which seemed as incurable as they were undeniable. Beyond the hope which they vaguely cherished that some day or other, by some great act of Divine mercy, these evils might disappear, and the whole Church become once more united, there was nothing to draw them towards Rome; submission was out of the question, and they could only see in its attitude in England the hostility of a jealous and unscrupulous disturber of their Master's work. The movement still went on, with its original purpose, and on its original lines, in spite of the presence in it, and even the co-operation, of men who might one day have other views, and serious and fatal differences with their old friends.