lowing paragraph fully explains his views:- For my own part I think it would not be right to conceal, indeed I am anxious openly to express my almost firm and undoubting conviction, that were we, as a church, to pursue such a line of conduct as has 'here been sketched, in proportion as we did so, we should be taught from above to discern and appreciate the plain marks of divine wisdom and authority in the Roman church--to repent, in sorrow and bitterness of heart, our great sin in deserting her ' communion, and to sue humbly at her feet for pardon and res'toration.'-(P. 473.) Yet, in the same paragraph, he tells us with a simplicity truly admirable-- If it be granted that the aim'ing at such objects, as I have ventured to put forward as desirable, implies of itself no set purpose of Romanizing our church, I must beg leave to doubt whether any single one of her members entertains any such purpose.' We quite agree with him; if he can get any one to concede so modest a postulate, he may well expect a cordial admission of the inference.

Mr Ward elsewhere contends for his liberty of private judgment in the following terms :- Let Mr Williams, if he so please, still publish his opinion that human support and human comfort were needful to St Mary after our Lord's as6 cension. Let Dr Hook continue to call Roman Catholics 'Mariolaters; but let others have equal liberty, and with no greater remonstrance, to honour St Mary as the highest and 'purest of creatures, to regard the Roman church with affection ' and reverence, and to hold a Pope's dogmatic decree as at least 6 exempt from our criticism and comment. It is impossible for our opinions to pain them, more than theirs pain us.' That

'a sustained and vigorous attack on the principles of the Re'formation is the only course by which this object can be obtained, is my deep and certain conviction. I mean an humble and religious carrying out of those great principles which the Refor'mation denied obedience and faith.'-(P. 100-588.)

His work is full of pious sentiments on the duties of obedience and faith—and both, in his case, are of an unparalleled characHis faith is such, that he can swear assent to Articles in a 'non-natural sense;' and his obedience is such, that he will yield allegiance neither to that church to which he has actually

ter.

but a very little consideration will show that no one is at all committed by this Article to so painfully presumptuous a sentiment.' He then gives his interpretation, and adds If this appears the solemn annunciation of a mere truism, I quite admit that it is so.'-P. 100.

sworn it, nor to that which, by his own admission, has the greatest claim to it. He resembles the wife, who said she was willing enough to obey her husband, only she would not be ruled. Disclaiming the right of private judgment,' his opinions, viewed in conjunction with his position, proclaim a mind filled to overflowwith crotchets and inconsistencies.

The two principal men of the movement are in a condition almost equally anomalous. Dr Pusey, having, in the course of his developments,' affirmed, in his celebrated sermon on the 'Eucharist, doctrine which the University authorities condemned as heterodox, has been ordered to expiate his offence by a two years' silence. It is true he affirmed, with engaging innocence, that he was not at all aware of having advanced aught at variance with the formularies of the Church of England. But his opinions, so far as we can discover them, as well as his particular line of defence, we shall more particularly consider hereafter.

Mr Newman having retracted almost all his objections to the Church of Rome, from which, however, he is still a separatist, and having not retracted any of the severe things he has uttered against the Church of England, in which he still remains-having also, in his zeal for the dark ages, undertaken the defence of an indefinite number of primitive and medieval miracles, and affixed his Editorial imprimatur on a series of publications advocating the religious system of the middle ages, and, amongst other things, the supremacy of the Apostolic see, (which, nevertheless, he will not obey,) may be considered to be by this time a Church of himself; and if he proceeds in this felicitous accumulation of paradoxes and anomalies, will probably have to employ at last language something like that of the dying Hegel. Alas!' said the philosophic mystic, I shall leave behind me but one man in all Germany who understands my doctrines, and he does not understand them!'

Mr Palmer is anxious to show that, within the last two or three years, a new school has been formed at Oxford. Alas! for

* Within the last two or three years, however, a new school has made its appearance. The Church has unhappily had reason to feel the existence of a spirit of dissatisfaction with her principles, of enmity to her reformers, of recklessness for her interests. We have seen, in the same quarter, a spirit of almost servility and adulation to Rome, an enthusiastic and exaggerated praise of its merits, an appeal to all deep feelings and sympathies in its favour, a tendency to look to Rome as the model and the standard of all that is beautiful and correct in art, all that

the rapid changes of the one unchangeable Catholicism-the original school is but little more than ten years old!To us it appears clearly enough that the new school' is but a consistent and natural development' (to use once more the favourite term of these gentlemen) of the old.' Mr Palmer seems to be unconscious that the more recent extravagances are the legitimate, the inevitable fruit of those high church principles of that reverence for antiquity and tradition, which he still continues to extol. Yet his own misgivings, soon after his more źealous or more persevering coadjutors entered upon their career, and the emphatic predictions of both Protestants and Romanists as to the result, ought to have made him suspect that his new school' is but an expansion of the old.' That he and others had no intention of promoting such a result, he loudly affirms, and we care not to deny it; that the principles advocated involved that result that they were the acorn, the other the oak-is all that we maintain; and this connexion, long since asserted by almost every body, experience has abundantly confirmed.

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To the argument, however, on which we are about to insist, it little matters whether Mr Palmer's assertion of a new school' be correct or not-whether there be one Oxford school or two, or twenty-whether recent extravagances are but 'developments' of the original system, or new formations upon it-whether there he one pretended system with hopelessly discordant expounders thereof, or diverse systems,, each pretending to be the only one possessing catholic authenticity. We say we accept either of these alternatives; and, in either case, proceed to ask 'what becomes of that fair vision of the one indivisible Catholic system-professed by the one visible church of all ages, which was to be so easily deduced by the aid of antiquity and tra'dition which was to require no exercise of private judgmentor rather which superseded and forbade it, and which we might ' have expected that the Oxford school itself would have deliver'ed with some degree of unanimity?' Their positions were sufficiently hazardous and self-contradictory even before their present

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In con

is sublime in poetry, all that is elevated in devotion. versation, remarks have been sometimes heard indicating a disposition to acknowledge the supremacy of the see of Rome, to give way to all its claims, however extreme. And in the same spirit those who are in any way opposed to the highest pitch of Roman usurpations, are sometimes looked on as little better than heretics.'-Palmer's Narrative, p. 44.

differences. Of that one visible church,' as constituted by themselves, consisting of Romanists, Greeks, and Anglicans, they could not persuade one hundredth part to admit that they, the very authors of the figment, belonged to the Catholic church at alland now it appears they cannot agree about the one system of truth amongst themselves! Singular illustration of the infallible guidance of tradition, and of the danger of admitting the exercise of private judgment! 'Our judge of controversies,' as Chillingworth truly said of the dispute respecting Papal infallibility, ‘has 'become itself our greatest controversy."

Despite the attacks on the Oxford system from without, and the formidable symptoms of disorganizatiom from within, we have seen it recently maintained, in an elaborate Paper,* attributed to Mr Gladstone, and which bears strong internal marks of his pen -having all the cloud-like formation, and unsubstantial mistiness of his style that the cause of Catholic principles' is still auspiciously advancing. This is an assertion which, in the absence of any definition or catalogue of these principles, it is very easy to make and very difficult to disprove for we are too familiar with the way in which these vague terms are employed by such writers, not to know that they may mean any thing—and still more frequently, nothing. With regard to the diversities of opinion in the party itself, the extreme views recently manifested, this writer admits and laments them: those who hold them form, he tells us, the 'extrême droite' of the Oxford school-but they do not interfere with the progress of catholicism.' • When we 'speak,' says he, of the country and of the church at large, it is 'evident the body, as a body, moves forward from year to year, "we might almost say from day to day, in the line of catholicism." For any definite meaning which such misty language conveysand the article is throughout composed in it-we verily believe that, if it had been stated that the nation was moving forward from day to day in the line of a transcendental curve, it would have conveyed just as intelligible a notion to sober-minded readers.

The fallacy consists in manoeuvring, so to speak, with the word Catholicism' as if it indicated some fixed, well-defined point to which all things are tending, and then allowing each reader tacitly to substitute his own notion of it for a universal one. The fallacy proclaims itself the moment we ask-' What are Catholic principles ? ' We then find they are just those of the present ex

*Foreign and Colonial Review. No. IV. October 1843.

positor, whoever he may be. Each in turn exercises the calumniated right of private judgment, while all, in the same breath, repudiate it.*

No sooner do we force an answer to this awkward query, 'What is Catholicism?' than the silent unanimity, which had been maintained in using certain terms without a definite meaning, vanishes in a Babel-like confusion. You will find it in its

integrity, stereotyped in the Tridentine decrees,' exclaim the millions of Rome. You will find no such thing,' coolly reply the millions of the Greek church. If you want to find Catholicism in its purity, you must consult one of our patriarchs.' • Either 'church will indeed answer the purpose,' blandly admits the more advanced disciple of the Oxford school; but as each is apt to in'clude in catholicism somewhat more than is catholic, you can find it in its purity only in the Oxford Tracts—with the addition, "if so be," of certain developments, "so to speak," which the writers "have," as it were," reserved. You will find it there,' rejoins a more timid disciple of the same school, if you will deduct certain 'doctrines which they have not reserved.' Grieved and hum'bled I am,' says Mr Gladstone, that our beloved friends have gone somewhat beyond that precise point at which, undoubtedly, ' absolute and unchangeable catholicism is found.'-Each employs the term 'Catholicism' as Mr Thwackum the term 'religion.' 'When "I mention religion,' says that worthy, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church ' of England.' Thus, while each abjures his private judgment in fixing this fugitive catholicism,' we find in fact we have nothing else. It is Rome-it is Greece-it is Anglicanism-it is a species of Anglicanism-it is a subordinate species of Anglicanism-it is a theory of Mr Newman-of Mr Palmer-of Mr Gladstonebut still, be assured, it is all Catholicism!

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Nor is this all. Many hundreds of those authorized guides of the Anglican church, whom the Tractarians themselves admit to be authorized,' exclaim-All these parties are in delusion

*So ludicrously do these writers play with this abused term, Catholic,' that we observe some of them do not scruple to speak of the church as more or less Catholic at one period than another, (Newman's Essay, p. 35;) forgetting that Catholicism can have no degrees, and that the church must, on their principles, be either Catholic or not. It would be just as logical to speak of triangles which are eminently triangular, or of a universality which is more or less than universal!