integrity of the Prayer Book. Two things are significant: the Church of England knows Apostolical Succession as a valuable fact, but not as a doctrine; and in the present day it is the supporters of Reformation principles who desire to maintain the integrity of the Prayer Book. The leaders of the extreme wing of the Oxford movement have written a book (The Lord's Day and the Holy Eucharist) with the express object of altering the Prayer Book to bring it into line with the medieval and Romish Use of Sarum.

Newman, who was not present at Hadleigh, wrote the first Tract. It was on the topic, "I fear we have neglected the real ground on which our authority is built-OUR APOSTOLICAL DESCENT." But that is not by any means the ground of the Prayer Book. The Church of England's view of the first requisite of the Visible Church is PURITY OF PREACHING. This Newman neglects altogether. All historical Episcopal Churches (many would say Presbyterian also) may be credited with Apostolical Descent. Then why did we break off from the Roman? Because in it the pure Word of God was not preached. The strangely unscriptural tone of the address may be gathered

from the following:

matter.

66

They have been deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness, produceable results, acceptableness to your flocks, that these and suchlike are the tests of your Divine Commission. Enlighten them in this Exalt our Holy Fathers the Bishops, as the Representatives of the Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches; and magnify your office as being ordained by them to take part in their Ministry." By their fruits shall ye know them," said Christ. "Call no man your father on the earth," was His command. The Church of England teaches that her officers receive their commission from Christ through the ministry of the existing generation of officers, as they through that of the preceding. Newman had an unfortunate and incurable tendency to take some side-issue, to distort it, and then to exaggerate it into the first place, sometimes into sole and exclusive importance. The same tendency runs through many of the Tracts. Many of the distinctive subjects which they take up are warped with the purpose of undoing the principles of the Reformation. The series ended with the celebrated No. 90, which asserted that there was nothing in the Thirty-nine Articles which, if properly explained,

could not be signed in a Roman sense. The protest of Archibald Tait, Tutor of Balliol (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), and three other tutors of colleges at Oxford brought the publication to an abrupt close.

The Tracts for the Times," says Dean Church very justly, were not the most powerful instruments in drawing sympathy to the movement. Without Mr. Newman's four o'clock sermons at St. Mary's, the movement might never have gone on, certainly would never have gone on, certainly would never have been what it was. While men were reading and talking about the Tracts they were hearing the sermons, and in the sermons they heard the living meaning and reason and bearing of the Tracts, their ethical affinities, their moral standard. The sermons created a moral atmosphere in which men judged the questions in debate." But at this distance of time it is quite possible to detach the sermons altogether from the Tracts. You can extract from the sermons all that is distinctive of the Tracts as apart from the principles of the Reformation, and their sublime beauty in moral and religious truth remains intact. That beauty consists in the grasp of the truths of Christianity, apart

from a narrow and more lately developed

ecclesiasticism-in a concentrated enthusiasm for a lofty moral standard which is quite independent of views of Church Government, or of the nature of Christ's presence in Holy Communion, or of belief in a priestly mediatorial sacrifice, or of the various items of medieval teaching. In all the passages in the sermons where such allusions occur, put the simpler teaching of Scripture and the Reformers in their place, and the sermons would suffer no loss in their dignity and impressiveness. Above all, their beauty consists in an almost matchless purity and strength of English style, which alone. would make Newman a classic. Their defect is the same as in his other writings-a tendency to go off on some side-issue or minor consideration, and treat it as if it was the main line of thought and predominant argument. is often very irritating, and to those who are not on the watch highly misleading. Το Newman it was quite unconscious, and indeed the natural habit of his mind. Strong eccentricity was hereditary in his family, and in him it took the form of this

It

want of logical

judgment in combination with extreme argumentative acuteness and an overpowering

imagination. It should be noticed that knowledge of the Bible and skill in marshalling its facts and precepts are a prominent characteristic of these wonderful sermons. It is by the sermons that Newman obtained the almost unparalleled influence which for some years he wielded, and it is by them that he will live.

In 1835 Dr. Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, formerly known as a rather liberal theologian, joined the movement, and "became, as it were, its official chief in the eyes of the world.” In 1836 the appointment of Dr. Hampden by Lord John Russell to the Regius Professorship of Divinity roused a passionate storm of indignation, and did much to rally the friends of the movement and consolidate its forces. Hampden was a rather clumsy writer of a mildly liberal tendency, who delivered a set of Bampton Lectures to Ishow that the Schoolmen had exercised considerable influence in the settlement of the terminology of doctrinal statement. He afterwards made a quiet, conscientious, loyal, and unobjectionable bishop. Newman took a lead in this opposition, isolated passages of Hampden's writings, and certainly made the worst of them. To define his position he published a series