words, of our condition, that the higher part of the service, which looks more like the privilege of sons, is performed in humiliation and silence?" (p. 27.) "We are in a position of servitude, and our Prayer Book corresponds to that state." The whole Tract is to the same purpose, and cannot be better characterized than it has been by Mr. Keble, in his letter to Mr. Justice Coleridge, entitled "The case of Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles considered." He writes of the Tract- "The drift of it is to show that the deviations made in our Prayer Book, from the more perfect and primitive forms, may be accounted for, on the supposition of a special Providence overruling them, to suit our decayed moral tone and condition." Which, if it mean anything, means no less than this, that the Providence of God has specially interfered and prevailed to give us an inferior form of prayers, suitable to the low state of christianity amongst us. And yet these are the men, whom certain of the bishops uphold and applaud as inculcating respect and reverence for the Prayer Book, which they study to depreciate! We think we have said enough to expose the system of treachery pursued by them, both with respect to Apostolical Succession, and the integrity of the Prayer Book; the first having been turned to advantage by them to delude, for a while, and silence the bishops; the second being but a stepping-stone to the revival, in all their idolatrous antiquity, of the ancient masses and litanies to the virgin, saints, &c.

The next point in the charge against them, which we shall proceed to establish, will be their mutilation, adulteration, and in effect complete submersion of the great and essential LEADING TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY, SO mercifully designed of God for the consolation, hope, and eternal blessedness of mankind. They had already made the apostolical commission essential to the efficacy of the sacraments; as we have seen in the declaration, that a person not commissioned from the bishop, may baptize externally; "but there is no promise from Christ that such a man shall admit souls to the kingdom of heaven ;" and he may break bread and pour out wine, "but it can afford no comfort to any to receive it at his hands," (Tract 35, p. 3,) and therefore the next step was to shut up all grace in the ordinances of the Church, and so effectually exclude those who were not of its communion from a heavenly hope or inheritance. In the Preface to the first volume of the Tracts, therefore, we read, "The sacraments, not preaching, are the sources of divine grace." (p. iv.) In Tract 22, p. 7—“ In the christian covenant, standing ordinances are made the channels of its peculiar blessings. The first use of ordinances is that of witnessing for the truth, as above mentioned. Now, their sacramental

character is perfectly distinct from this, and is doubtless a great favour put on them. Had we been left to conjecture, we might have supposed that in the more perfect or spiritual system, the gifts of grace would rather have been attached to certain high moral performances; whereas they are DEPOSITED IN MERE POSITIVE ORDINANCES, as if to warn us against dropping the ceremonial of christianity." And again in Tract 41, p. 2, we read, "Almighty God has said, his Son's merits shall wash away all sin, and that they shall be conveyed to believers through the two sacraments." But it was impossible that such opinions as these could stand in the light of Scripture. They had overstepped the safe boundary of Scripture already, and its great lights therefore no longer affected them. They had, like Saul," rejected the word of the Lord," and they in their turn were also rejected, having relinquished themselves unconditionally to their system, which now held them fast bound as its slaves. Mr. Newman set himself to work to mystify the doctrine of Justification by his Lectures,―a work to which an eminent and exemplary prelate of the Church was understood to allude at a public meeting, when he said "he had just arisen from the perusal of it, without being able to say what the author understood or intended to be the means of man's justification." In fact, as the sacraments had been made the only sources of grace, so it was Mr. Newman's endeavour to confound together Sanctification and Justification, in order that the same sacraments might in effect be the only sources of justification. Accordingly we read, “Christ is our righteousness, by dwelling in us by the Spirit. He justifies us by entering into us; he continues to justify us by remaining in us." p. 167. Again, "Justification consists in the habitation in us of God the Father and the Word Incarnate, through the Holy Ghost." "To be justified is to receive the Divine presence within and be made a temple of the Holy Ghost." Dr. Pusey seconds Mr. Newman well, when, in propounding his own gloss, he asserts that "the Anglican doctrine conceives justification to be not imputation merely, but the act of God imparting his Divine presence to the soul after baptism, and so making us temples of the Holy Ghost." (Letter to Bishop of Oxford, pp. 70, 71.) To the same effect are their views with respect to sin after baptism. With them, all who have been baptized have also been regenerated, since the sacrament necessarily conveys the grace. There can be no such thing, therefore, in their system, as perfecting the outward baptism by subsequent repentance and growth in grace. Outward baptism is necessarily inward; because a man must be born both of water and of the Spirit; therefore, according to them, when born of water, he is also, always, and as a necessary effect, born of the Spirit.

us,

Accordingly, in Tract 68, p. 54, we read, "We have no account in Scripture of any second remission, obliteration, extinction of all sin, such as is bestowed upon us by the one baptism for the remission of sins.'" And therefore, at p. 63, we are taught that if after baptism we again sin, there remaineth no more such complete ablution in this life. We must bear the scars of the sins which we have contracted; we must be judged according to our deeds." Here then is the grand doctrine of justification by faith alone, in and through the merits of our blessed Redeemer, utterly sunk and lost, under the false efficacy attributed to the sacraments, which are but outward signs typifying to the recipients the inward work which the Saviour alone can do for man. And how did the Tract-writers weave such a tissue of error as this? They stretched, as their warp, the threads of apostolical succession and sacramental efficacy; and then, as their woof, and to give an appearance of richness to the texture, they fabricated the notion of justification being the indwelling of grace by sacramental insertion. How easily and how far do men run into error, when they quit the simplicity of Scripture and Gospel truth! They unduly exalt the ministry into a priesthood, by the fancy of apostolical succession; they deny all grace to the sacraments, but at the hands of episcopally-commissioned clergy; they shut up all grace in the sacraments so only administered; and then they exclude from their system all means of justification but those which they impute to and include within the sacraments.

There is but one step more to take, and they have not hesitated at this also. It may be that men will pry into the Scriptures themselves, and discover the falseness of their system; or some one of their votaries may find out his error, and endeavour to mitigate the evils of it by proclaiming the truth. To prevent, as much as possible, such a dangerous course as this, there wanted but the doctrine of Reserve to hang up again the veil of the sanctuary, which was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, at the crucifixion of our Lord; and to hide from the view of all men those gracious truths revealed by him, and for which Mark has testified that "the common people heard him gladly." It was the occupation of one of the poets of the party practically to satisfy the lament of Mr. Keble over the age of

"Light but not love,"

by endeavouring, in this our time, so to obscure the light that even the love should not be discernible if it might arise. Mr. Williams, the author of the Cathedral, perpetrated the Eightieth Tract, in

which Reserve in communicating religious knowledge was inculcated as a clear and unquestionable duty!

One other head, that of ROMISH ERRORS, must be alluded to. Transubstantiation in effect, if not in words, was announced by Mr. Newman so early as his reply to Dr. Faussett's Sermon. The Communion Service of the Church of England asserts that "if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive the holy sacrament, then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood." Thus the Church holds a spiritual eating by penitence and faith, but Mr. Newman interprets it, as holding, though not a local, yet a real presence, so that we, after some ineffable manner, partake of it;" and thence concludes, "Whereas then the objection stands, Christ is not really here, because He is not locally here, the Church answers, He is really here, but not locally." (p. 50.) This opinion, thus boldly attributed to the Church, is Mr. Newman's own view of the subject, in which he endeavours to implicate the Church. Nothing whatever is said by the Church of a local, real, or any other presence, but simply of a spiritual feeding;-the plain and obvious meaning of which is, that each faithful recipient does in his heart, by faith, partake of, that is, participate in, the benefits of Christ's body and blood offered for him. Mr. Newman deduces from this spiritual feeding the necessity of a real presence of some kind to be fed upon. This is, in fact, the grossness of transubstantiation, and the only difference between Mr. Newman and Bellarmine, the great Romish authority, on the subject, is, as to the manner of the presence-Bellarmine contending for a local one, Mr. Newman coquetting as to a strict agreement with him in terms, yet contending for the very same thing. At last he endeavours, though evidently under the influence of reserve, thus to elaborate his views respecting "the mystery attending our Lord and Saviour; He has a body and that spiritual; He is both in place, and yet, as being a Spirit, His mode of approach, the mode in which He makes himself present here or there, may be, for what we know, as different from the mode in which material bodies approach and come, as a spiritual presence is more perfect. . . . The body and blood of Christ may be really, literally present in the holy eucharist, yet not having become present by local passage, may still literally and really be at God's right hand... Christ's body and blood are locally at God's right hand, yet really present here-present here, but not here in place-because they are spirit." (pp. 55, 56.)

We will appeal to the sense of plain Englishmen to reject the nonsense, "present here, but not here in place," and will only observe

must be a mind of extraordinary subtlety and discernment that can point out any real difference between this view and that of transubstantiation, when in fact there is none but a mere play of words, and that consequently we have here the Romish error in all its extravagance and mischief. And this, be it remembered, so far back as 1838. No wonder then that we find, in the very same year, Tract 85 asking, "If Balaam's ass instructed Balaam, what is there fairly to startle us in the Church's doctrine, that the water of baptism cleanses from sin, that eating the consecrated bread is eating his body?" (p. 90.) And again, "If baptism be the cleansing and quickening of the dead soul, to say nothing of the Lord's supper, they (Christ's ministers) do work miracles." (p. 95.) Also in Mr. Williams's Tract, 86, we have the following: "Such a providential insertion respecting the eucharist (in the catechism, at the last review) may be contrasted with the no less happy omission of an half-ambiguous expression against the real and essential 'presence of Christ's natural body and blood, at the communion, which found its way into Edward's second book." (p. 59.) So much for transubstantiation. We must pass on to other topics.

Of Invocation of Saints, Tract 71, p. 13, thinks "the practice should be considered, not the theory," implying that though the practice be abused, the theory may be right. And again, at p. 17, "The Tridentine decree declares that it is good and useful suppliantly to invoke the saints, and that the images of Christ and the blessed Virgin, and the other saints, should receive due honour and veneration; words which themselves go to the very verge of what could be received by the cautious Christian, though possibly admitting of an honest interpretation." Tract 79 treats expressly of Purgatory, and after setting out the article in Pope Pius's creed, and the Tridentine decree respecting it, coolly remarks, "Such is the Roman doctrine, and, taken in the mere letter, there is little in it against which men will be able to sustain formal objections." (p. 5.) It is further argued herein, that "if for sins committed after baptism we have not received a simple and unconditional absolution, surely penitents, from this time up to the day of judgment, may be considered in that double state of which the Romanists speak, their persons accepted, but certain sins uncancelled." After this, we shall not be surprised at the following assertion:"So far then we cannot be said materially to oppose the Romanists." (pp. 6, 7.) In a passage from Tract 71, we have already shewn their method of treating images, &c. With respect to General Councils, the liability of which to err our Articles affirm, Dr. Pusey, in 1839, (Letter to Bishop of Oxford,) says, "We believe that