Almost contemporaneously with these events, the Test and Corporation Acts, the Catholic disabilities, and other so-styled bulwarks of the Church were, one by one, swept away, and the Reform Bill, which opened wide the doors of Parliament to a considerable influx of Nonconformists, becoming year by year more numerous and influential in the Lower House, was now being carried. These events filled with terror the hearts of many of the clergy, and they naturally began loudly to express their alarm. What if the law on which they had hitherto relied should turn against them? What if the Church which they had so often boasted to be by law established should be by law disestablished? Thoughts such as these caused many of them to cast about for a firmer and more logical basis on which the Church might rest, in case the Nonconformists should continue to increase in numbers and power; and this they found in a recurrence, with some modifications, to those doctrines which had been held and taught by the Nonjurors, and which found considerable countenance in the Prayer-book of the English Church. The opportuneness and the naturalness of these views is shown by their almost simultaneous appearance in various quarters. Curiously enough, the first person by whom they were distinctly propounded was the celebrated Edward Irving.

As early as the year 1825, this extraordinary man had adopted the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, the very keystone of the Anglican system, and in a volume of lectures on baptism had pushed that doctrine to its logical consequences. He had also set himself, under

the inspiration and teaching of the poet-philosopher, S. T. Coleridge, to resist the advances of that religious liberalism whose inroads both of them regarded with consternation, and which each in his way was prepared to withstand. Together with these he proclaimed openly the doctrines which, as we have seen, had been generally accepted in the Church during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., and which had been still more distinctly adopted by the Nonjurors. It was not a movement taking place in the Church, but it was one that showed whither men's thoughts were tending. There were other movements going on almost simultaneously with this, and all of them tending in the same direction. For instance, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, as has been already intimated, had surrounded himself with a body of the most eminent divines in the kingdom-Hugh James Rose, reputed to be the greatest theologian of his day; Dr. Molesworth, eminent for his controversial ability; Mr. Lonsdale, afterwards bishop of Lichfield, and then enjoying a great reputation as preacher at Lincoln's Inn; Dr. Mill, recently returned from India after having ably presided over a college founded at Calcutta. All these were working together on the old lines of the pre-Jacobite Church, and urging their views, by preaching and by writing, in the pages of the British Magazine and the Penny Sunday Reader-the first edited by Hugh James Rose and a numerous band of coadjutors, chiefly clerical the latter almost entirely written by Dr. Molesworth, in that vigorous, earnest, and emphatic style which

distinguished his writings. These were all working together quietly, in constant communication with one another, and with a unity of thought and purpose which made their working very effectual. One result of their labours was an address drawn up by Dr. Molesworth, and presented to the archbishop, praying for the revival of Convocation; which, after a silence of considerably more than half a century, was allowed to hold a debate on the address to the king. It was not much, but it was something gained for the cause; a first step, indicating an attitude of resistance taken up by the Church.

But the deepest, most earnest, and most efficient movement which was taking place at this time was that which was being carried forward at Oxford. It was connected with that carried on by the little knot of able men that the Archbishop of Canterbury had gathered round him through the intervention of Mr. Hugh Rose, who, though a Cambridge man, had formed many acquaintances in the sister university, through his search for writers to assist him in carrying on the British Magazine. There the progress of religious liberalism was more pronounced, and the danger which it threatened to the Church more strongly exaggerated. There was an acute feeling that if she was to stand at all, she must be placed on a basis more logical and more satisfactory than the shallow and selfish Erastianism which then prevailed almost universally. The attempting revivers of the old Nonjuring principles published a series of tracts, in which their opinions were very plainly and recklessly

asserted, and which presently raised against them a storm of bitter opposition.

The writers of these tracts were J. H. Newman; Keble, Professor of Poetry; Hurrell Froude; William Palmer, of Dublin and University College. These writers were afterwards joined by Dr. Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew and canon of Christchurch, whose age, position, and connections caused him to be forthwith placed at the head of the movement with which his name was henceforth inseparably connected. They were also denominated Tractarians, and by facetious adversaries, Newmaniacs. In our day they are called Ritualists; but this name did not come into vogue until long after Dr. Newman had left the Church of England and joined the Roman Church. Their doctrines, by no means new in themselves, were new to the generation to which they were propounded with a boldness that bordered on recklessness, and they created such consternation among Churchmen generally, that many of those who had at first gone heartily with them dropped off in alarm, as fresh and fresh developments of doctrine brought the leaders of the movement visibly nearer and nearer to the Roman Church and to Roman doctrine. And this feeling was further intensified when one after another of them went over to the Romish Church, and at length the real leader of the whole movement joined the Roman ranks, and published, in his celebrated essay on development, the grounds of his resolution to leave the Anglican communion and join the Church of Rome.

The aim with which these writers started, and which many of them continued to maintain, even after Dr. Newman had announced to the world that he found his position in the English Church no longer tenable, was the revival of dogmatic and religious teaching, and, contemporaneously with this, a disposition to look less unfavourably on the doctrines and practices of the Roman communion, culminating at last in an attempt to show that a man holding Romish doctrine might, nevertheless, with a good conscience, sign the Thirty-nine Articles, which were evidently levelled against that doctrine. This attempt was fortified by quotations from the Homilies, of which the thirty-fifth Article says that "they contain a godly and holy doctrine, and necessary for these times, as doth the former Book of Homilies." There can be no doubt that these Homilies contain teaching that is in accordance with the Romish system, while it is equally indisputable that the Articles are framed with a degree of vagueness which was intended to leave many of the questions to which they relate open and undecided. At length the celebrated tract, No. 90, caused the Bishop of Oxford to interpose, and to forbid the continuance of these works. But let Dr. Newman speak for himself in this matter. He thus concludes this celebrated tract: "They (the Articles) are evidently framed on the principle of leaving open large questions on which the controversy hinges. They state broadly extreme truths, and are silent about their adjustment. For instance, they say that all necessary faith must be proved from Scripture; but they do not say who is to