CHAPTER XV.

 

THE TRACT ON BAPTISM--CONTINUANCE AND EDITORSHIP

OF THE 'TRACTS FOR THE TIMES' IN DOUBT.

 

1835.

 

PUSEY'S tract on Baptism was unquestionably the work in virtue of which he took his place among the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Its appearance marked an epoch, both in the history of his own religious mind and in the progress of the cause to which it contributed.

It has indeed been a matter of curious speculation how a man who began life as a scholar, and who throughout his career, both by mental temperament and the discipline of a long occupation, was eminently a scholar, should have entered upon a subject which, although demanding the interpretation of sacred language, belongs, in part, if not largely, to religious philosophy. As a rule the philological and the philosophical or theological temper exclude each other. Philology has a place of the highest honour in the service of religion as an interpreter of the sacred records; but they who have most excelled in explaining the language which enshrines Divine Truth have rarely attained the highest excellence as interpreters of the Truth which that language enshrines. The contrast between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria in the ancient Church represents a. constant fact of the human mind.

Pusey was led to make the reality and value of sacramental grace a main interest of his life by his vivid sense of the peculiar dangers to which, fifty years ago, religion was exposed. He explains his motive in the preface which appeared with the first edition of his tract on Baptism.

'Rationalism'--he uses the term in a very general sense--had changed, not its animus against Christianity, but its method of working. The open attacks of the Deists had been defeated. The conquered enemy now appeared as the ally and supporter of the faith which he would fain undermine. Rationalism

'supports our evidences; reconciles our difficulties; smooths down the --hard Sayingsä of the Word of God; and steals away our treasure. The Blessed Sacraments are a peculiar obstacle to its inroads, for their effects come directly from God, and their mode of operation is as little cognisable to reason as their Author: they flow to us from an unseen world. What we see has as little power to heal or strengthen our souls as the clay and the spittle to give sight to the blind man or the waters of Jordan to cleanse the leper: those who use them in faith have life and strength; yet it is not their faith alone which gives this life, any more than faith would have cleansed Naaman, but for Him Who gave the Jordan power to make his --flesh as a little child.ä The Blessed Sacraments then are a daily testimony to our faith: we are strengthened, we hold onwards: how we obtain our strength we can give to reason no account: suffice that we know whence it cometh. This then has become a main point of attack.

Thus it was that the governing motive of Pusey's active life, zeal for the defence of Revealed Religion, which had inspired him as a young man in his correspondence with Z., and as a student in Germany when studying the philological and literary sources of scepticism, was that which led him to lay such stress upon sacramental grace. The Bible was an ancient literature; and men were enabled at once to speak respectfully of it and to disbelieve it, by dwelling on its antiquity or on its relations to the men and thoughts of other times. But the Sacraments are with us now; each time that they are administered they challenge a verdict as to their precise worth and power; and thus it is that unbelief; which could mask its real attitude towards an inspired but ancient literature, is obliged to display itself when dealing with them. They. force its hand; they test faith directly and importunately, as did our Lord when as Man, visibly present among men. He yet claimed to be, and to be acknowledged as, One with the Father.

Newman, as editor of the 'Tracts for the Times,' points out the importance of the tract on Baptism from this point of view.

'There are those,' he says, --'whose word will eat as doth a cankerä; and it is to be feared that we have been over-near certain celebrated Protestant teachers, Puritan or Latitudinarian, and have suffered in consequence. Hence we have almost embraced the doctrine that God conveys grace only through the instrumentality of the mental energies, that is, through faith, prayer, active spiritual contemplation, or (what is commonly called) communion with God, in contradiction to the primitive view according to which the Church and her Sacra–ments are the ordained and direct visible means of conveying to the soul what is in itself supernatural and unseen.'

This general deficiency in the religion of the day is, Newman observes, met by the tract on Baptism; which

'is to be regarded not as an enquiry into one single or isolated doctrine, but as a delineation and serious examination of a modern system of theology of extensive popularity and great speciousness, in its elementary and characteristic principles'.

From an entirely opposite point of view, the Rev. F. D. Maurice said of Pusey's tracts on Baptism that

'their publication and importance in relation to the Movement justified the statement made by Dr. Newman in his --Apologia,ä that Dr. Pusey's joining him and his friends had given to what had been beforehand a mere gathering together of sympathizers weight and authority.'

To this it must be added that the immediate motive for throwing the tract into its actual shape was a personal one.

'A pupil of mine,' Pusey said forty-five years late; 'was on the verge of leaving the Church for Dissent, and on the ground that the Church taught Baptismal Regeneration in the Prayer-book. So I set myself to show what the teaching of Scripture about Holy Baptism was. My tract was called --Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism.ä By Views I did not mean doctrines, but only such aspects as Baptism would present to any one who looks at Holy Scripture.'

The keynote of the subject then is struck in the title, 'Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism'. The object of the writer is to show that the teaching of Scripture on the point is plain enough; that 'difficulties raised against Baptismal Regeneration seem to lie entirely in... collateral questions, not in the defect of Scripture evidence for its truth.' Accordingly Pusey begins by insisting at length that the evidence for the doctrine must be considered without reference to its supposed influence, or the supposed religious character of those who held it at a given time. Understanding regeneration to mean 'the act by which God takes us out of our relation to Adam and makes us actual members of His Son,' Pusey goes on to show that whereas regeneration is connected in Scripture with baptism, there is nothing in Scripture to sever it from baptism. For the proof of this statement we must refer our readers to the tract itself; which even after fifty inter–vening years of controversy on this sacred subject is still well worth reading. That which must strike an unprejudiced reader is Pusey's anxiety to arrive at the inmost meaning of Scripture; his anxious attention to its passing hints and its indirect teaching. But the doctrine is directly grounded by him first on the explicit words of our Lord, and then of St. Paul, combined with the words in which the Sacrament was instituted, and St. Peter's assertion that it is a present means of salvation. Then follows a review of passages in which Holy Scripture speaks of gifts of God, while modern writers often see only duties of man, or to which modern writers appeal when appropriating to them–selves the privileges of baptism, without thinking of the means by which they are conveyed. Not the least striking parts of the tract are the discussions of the incidental mention of baptism in Holy Scripture, and the indications of its importance as inferred from the language of Scripture about it when conferred on individuals, and the baptism of our Lord Himself; as sanctifying water. The types are discussed last: they illustrate to a believer the place assigned to the doctrine by Holy Scripture; they do not by themselves prove it.

It may be well to add a vivid passage, characteristic of Pusey in its cumulative intensity, and intended to press closely upon the consciences of earnest but mistaken opponents of the Revealed Doctrine how sharply the language of Scripture contrasts with popular rejections of the doctrine of baptismal grace:--

'The plain letter of Scripture says, --We are saved by baptism,ä and men say, --We are not saved by baptismä : our Lord says, --A man must be born of water and the Spiritä; man, that he need not, cannot be born of water: Scripture, that --we are saved by the washing of regenerationä; man, that we are not, but by regeneration which is as a washing: Scripture, that --we are baptized for the re–mission of sinsä; man, that we are not, but to attest that remission:

Scripture, that --whosoever bath been baptized into Christ hath put on Christä; man, that he bath not: Scripture, that they have been buried with Him by baptism into death; man, that they have not: Scripture, that --Christ cleansed the Church by the washing of water by the wordä; man, that He did not, for bare elements could have no such virtue: Scripture, that we were baptized into one body; men, that we were not, but that we were in that body before. Surely they have entered into a most perilous path, which, unless they are checked in pursuing it, must end in the rejection of all Scripture truth which does not square with their own previous opinions. It did once so end; and it is a wholesome, but awful warning, for those who will be warned, that it was out of the school of Calvin, from familiar intercourse with him, and the so-called --Reformedä Church,--that it was out of and through the Reformed Doctrine,--that Socinianism took its rise.'

This last sentence points to a conviction which was one of the motive powers of the revival, namely, that principles of interpretation, like arguments, must be ap–plied consistently. This necessity was forced on Pusey's mind by contact with the thought and literature of Germany; on Newman's by a logical habit of thinking which was a leading characteristic of his rare originality. It had been possible for some divines of an earlier age to write of the Person and work of Christ almost in the language of St. Athanasius and St. Cyril, while they dis–cussed the Sacraments in the tone of Calvin and Zwingli. But this inconsistency was becoming less and less prac–ticable when the operation of theological principles, whether conservative or destructive, was more clearly ap–prehended, both from internal analysis and in the light of history. It was clear to Pusey that if the solvents which were applied by Zwingli to those great texts of Scripture which teach sacramental grace were also ap–plied to those other texts which teach the Divinity and Atonement of our Lord, the result would be Socinianism; while, if the Baptismal and Eucharistic language of the New Testament was understood in the literal and reverent sense in which serious Christians read the texts that il–lustrate our Lord's Godhead and His Sacrifice for the sins of the world, the Zwinglian and even the Calvinistic theories of the Sacraments would be no longer possible. The popular Protestantism was really, if unconsciously, on an inclined plane; and if attachment to such positive truth as it still held did not lead it to ascend to a point where all would be safe because consistent, it would, at no distant time, be forced downwards by the irreligious criticism of the day into an abyss where any faith would be impossible.

In Pusey's mind, therefore, the battle for sacramental grace was a battle for continued belief in the revelation of God in Christ. Pusey will not allow that baptismal re–generation or any other Christian truth is to be judged of by its supposed influence upon men's hearts and characters. To do this, he says, 'would imply that we know much more of our own nature and, what is necessary or conducive to its restoration than we do.' If a good life always meant a true creed, many mutually contradictory errors would be true. If a bad life always meant a false creed, there would be no such - thing as holding the truth in unrighteousness. But fifty years ago it was common for people to speak of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration as 'deadening' and 'soul destroying.' Such language, if sincere, was, Pusey contends, the fruit of a very narrow experience. If, in days of religious apathy, people had lulled their consciences to sleep with the notion that having by baptism been made children of God they had nothing further to do, it did not follow that this notion was itself a true inference from the doctrine, or that it would be entertained in days of greater religious earnest–ness and intelligence. Of course, if baptism was only an outward form, unaccompanied by any certain gift of grace, to rest in it was indeed a fatal delusion: but then this was not the Scriptural account of baptism. If baptism was the instrument by which the grace of regeneration was con–veyed to the soul, this grace was conferred upon conditions: it might be forfeited by disloyalty to known truth and duty. The sense of possessing a priceless gift, which made obedience to the Divine Will possible and welcome, while the gift itself might be easily parted with, so far from being 'deadening' would prove to most men a very powerful moral stimulus.

In a rugged but fine passage Pusey states his sense of the greatness of the doctrine of' baptismal regeneration when held positively:--

'Baptismal regeneration, as connected with the Incarnation of our Blessed Lord, gives a depth to our Christian existence, an actualness to our union with Christ, a reality to our sonship to God, an interest in the presence of our Lord's glorified Body at God's right hand, a joyousness amid the subduing of the flesh, an overwhelmingness to the dignity conferred on human nature, a solemnity to the communion of saints who are the fullness of Him Who filleth all in all, a sub–stantiality to the indwelling of Christ, that to those who retain this truth the school which abandoned it must needs appear to have sold its birthright. But it is one thing to hold baptismal regeneration, and another to hold merely that there is no regeneration subsequent to baptism. A mere negative view must always be a cold one.'

The tract on Baptism at once, as has been said, placed Pusey before the world as a leader of the Oxford Movement, and, while it commanded wide sympathy and acqui–escence, it also occasioned some characteristic expressions of hostile opinion. The Rev. F. D. Maurice had written in favour of maintaining the existing system of subscription at Oxford, and this had led to the idea that he was in some degree of sympathy with the Oxford High Churchmen. It is probable that he himself thought so, so long as the issues were vaguely defined; but the tract on Baptism was too much for a mind which throughout its career was before all things eclectic and self-reliant. We are told that Mr. Maurice

'often spoke of his having taken Dr. Pusey's tract with him on a walk'--to attend one of the meetings of the 'Clapham Sect,'--'and how, as he went along, it became more and more clear to him that the tract represented everything that he did not think and did not believe, till at last he sat down on a gate, in what were then the open fields of Clapham, and made up his mind that it represented the parting-point between him and the Oxford School. He always spoke of it with a kind of shudder, as it were of an escape from a charmed dungeon.'

It appears that Mr. Maurice's objections to the tract were various if not incompatible. The tract, he said, 'under–mined' the doctrine of Luther which Bishop Bull had 'resisted,' that simple belief in Christ is the deliverance from evil and the root of good. It 'scattered' Maurice's 'dream' that regeneration was something independent of 'the individual faith of men.' It taught that baptismal regeneration meant a change of nature, produced by union with the new humanity of the Son of God, while Mr. Maurice believed that it meant no more than bringing into light a relation to God which had always existed. If the teaching of the tract were true, said Mr. Maurice, 'he himself might as well leave off preaching, for he could have no message to declare to men from God.'

An estimable clergyman of a small church in the north of England, and of very puritanical opinions, wrote to Pusey:--

'On Wednesday last I learned from the Record that you had given great publicity in Oxford to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and on the evening of Thursday I warned my congregation from the pulpit that from one of the most learned Universities in Europe is emanating one of the most dangerous heresies that can disturb the Christian Church.'

Pusey suggested to his correspondent that he was 'pre–cipitate'; suggested some passages of the Bible for his consideration, and offered to send him the tract itself. The clergyman simply replied that the doctrine of bap–tismal regeneration was 'a fundamental and fatal error,' and added

'Were all the great and good men upon earth to advocate the doctrine, I would say with fearlessness, --My honoured and revered brethren, you know that if any man have not the spirit of Christ, baptized or not baptized, he is none of His.'

It need not be said that Pusey would have said so too; and that the statement had no bearings on the controversy, since a baptized person might have fallen from the state of salvation in which baptism had placed him, and be 'none of Christ's.' The perusal of the tract did not, it may well be imagined, produce any effect on the convic–tions of this self-confident clergyman. He was a little staggered at discovering what was Luther's belief on the subject: but then 'he called no man master upon earth.' The tract indeed satisfied him that Pusey was 'an honest and upright man,' but at the same time he reminded Pusey of

'the --I never knew youä which Christ will pronounce on all who are resolved on being deceived.'

A more useful criticism was that of Pusey's old an–tagonist, the Rev. H. J. Rose, who thanked him warmly for his 'learned and valuable tract.' But Pusey, he thought, ought to have answered the serious and pressing question, 'What is that grievous sin after baptism which involves falling from grace?' And too much was said about the effects of post-baptismal sin in the case of those who had been baptized as infants. Parents do not teach their children so generally as Pusey supposed that they are put in trust with a Divine gift; and infant baptism does not presuppose a moral choice which is repudiated by post-baptismal sin.

'If an adult comes in sincerity to baptism from heathenism or not, he comes with a sense of the burden of sin, the blessing of deliverance, the misery of slavery to it. If he, after these feelings, relapses, then his case is surely very different from that of the infant, who, at all events, never can have had these subsidiary guards and aids.'

Pusey's statement of the effects of post-baptismal sin in his tract on Baptism has often been exaggerated; he has even been accused of Novatianism. The truth is that, as faith in the grace of baptism had declined, so a sense of the grievousness of post-baptismal sin had been correspondingly lost. A forgotten truth can rarely be recovered without risks of one-sidedness or exaggeration. It must be isolated if justice is to be done to its importance; and such isolation, without great care may easily be taken for more than a method of study which has no real counterpart in the realm of objective fact. Even Rose understood Pusey to teach 'no remission of sin after baptism'; and re–minded him of St. John's words, 'If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous,' of the Absolution in the Daily Service, and of the collect for Ash-Wednesday. Such an objection, which implied the incompleteness of his tract, Pusey had in his own mind already anticipated. 'From the moment of my completing the tract on Baptism,'--he said in later years--'I felt that I should have written on Christian repentance, on confession and absolution.'

In 1839 there appeared a second edition of the tract on Baptism, or rather of the first of the three tracts originally devoted to that. subject. In this second edition the doc–trinal statement on the subject of baptism is unchanged; but the discussion is much more methodical, and the Scriptural evidence is collected and expanded with greatly increased force. The character of a popular tract designed to make an immediate impression is exchanged for that of a section of a theological treatise.

'My object,' he writes to Newman in September, 1839, 'in my second edition of Part I. of my tract has been to bring together all the teaching of Holy Scripture in which it speaks directly of baptism, to point out how this was understood by the ancient Church, and to show how much higher notions of the Sacrament Scripture, honestly understood, would give than people are wont to entertain. It has grown, as you have seen perhaps, from 49 pages to 400, which may be a sufficient apology for the delay of Part II.'

Part II. was delayed indefinitely. Not long after the appearance of the first edition of the tract Harrison pressed Pusey to discuss adult baptism. But Pusey had not found that it raised difficulties as infant baptism did. He had not been reading up the subject. By-and-by he would like to do something, as it would enable him 'more dis–tinctly to take up the ground of the Fathers, and bring out the relation of infant and adult baptism.' But, he added:--

'When will --by-and-byä come? I feel that my by-and-by ought not to stand in any other's way; and my own wishes lead me, as you know, to Absolution and the Lord's Supper.'

Two years later, when the second edition of Part I. was preparing, he wrote to Keble:--

'Part II. will be suspended till I can read about Absolution.'

And to Harrison:--

'The remainder must wait awhile until I can read more on Absolu–tion, and the absolving influence of the Holy Eucharist. On Absolution I have not yet met with anything which goes exactly to the point I want, namely, What are its precise, effects if received rightly? how far does it restore one who has fallen into grievous sin? in what state does it place him relatively to the Day of Judgement?'

Thus it was that the two later tracts of the original edition were never expanded or republished. The pressure of other questions obliged Pusey, reluctantly enough, to abandon a design which he long cherished. As it is, his account of the rationalistic initiative of Zwingli, and of Calvin's relation to it, is not fully superseded by any later treatment of the subject; and his discussion of modern objections to the doctrine of baptismal grace might have been enlarged into a work that would have made a great deal of later criticism impossible.

'But I was allowed to do,' Pusey said, 'that which after all was of the first importance; I mean, to show that our regeneration in baptism is taught in Holy Scripture, as understood by those who lived nearer to the time of our Lord and the Apostles, and were, for other reasons too, more likely to understand it rightly, than we.'

It has already been noticed that with this tract it had been proposed to complete the series of 'Tracts for the Times.' But not only had the proportions of the work to which Pusey's paper extended given ample material for the continuation of the series beyond the time con–templated; it had also given opportunity for a reconsidera–tion of what was required by the exigencies of the time, as well as opened up new ideas as to what the series might become.

In answer to the words already quoted from Newman's letter of August 9th, and after having seen the first portion of Pusey's tract, Froude writes:--

                                                                                                            'September 4, I835.

'The Tracts in their new form (if it is gone on with as Keble hopes) may become a sort of Apostolical review.'

Newman had by this time abandoned his notion of dis–continuing the Tracts, and saw in the light of Pusey's tract the possibility of a more important series issuing under slightly modified conditions. He writes to Froude on September 10th:--

'We mean the Tracts should formally take up the Popish question·.Keble is delighted with Pusey's tract on Baptism.'

Again, a month later to his friend J. W. Bowden:--

                                                                                             'Dartington, October 10, 1835.

'I am quite decided that I cannot be editor of the Tracts if they come out once a month, nor would I recommend any one else to be. It is the way to make them mere trash. One is pressed for time, and writes for the occasion stopgaps. I am conscious there are some stopgaps in the Tracts already.... We shall be losing credit and influence if we so go on. As I was strongly for short tracts on beginning, so am I for longer now. We must have much more treatises than sketches. I say all this from experience. As to how often, whether quarterly or on certain seasons, I have no view at present; but I foretell ruin to the cause if the Tracts go on by monthly driblets.'

In October and November, it was still doubtful who should edit the altered series. It had been suggested that Keble might do so; but Keble writes to Newman on November 15th:--

'As to my undertaking the Tracts for the next year, really must consider it a little more seriously than I have done before I engage to do so.... If you want an immediate answer it must be in the negative: if not, we will consider it all over and over when I come up to lecture.'

He concludes his letter:--

'By-the-by, why should not Pusey be editor of the Tracts? If you give up, surely on every account he is the fittest person. As far as I can judge, I very much approve of their being anti-Romanist.'

In January it was necessary to come to a decision. The following extracts show what further considerations finally induced Newman to continue the publication:--

REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO E. B. P.

                                                                                                     Tuesday, [January 12, 1836].

I am almost persuaded to continue the Tracts. Rivington writes me word this morning that the first volume is steadily selling and the second expected, and that he wants some more reprints. Again, I hear the Record, in summing up the events of the last year, laments the growth of High Church principles among those of whom they had hoped better things. Also the Times and Standard have undertaken to battle for and against the High Church. The Standard of this morning as follows (which it would not do except under the influence of fear).

'We love not the men who dub themselves High Church: they have been the scandal and the weakness of the Church from the day of their parent Laud downward. They are half Papists, men who much prefer a Church without a religion--men who, in the true spirit of the Jewish priests, would condemn our Lord and His Apostles for turning the world upside down, and who practically renounce every principle consecrated by the blood of the Protestant Reformers. Generally they may be distinguished as half prig, half dandy, perfumed and powdered, and a little corpulent, one-third Protestant, one-third Papist, one-third Socinian--in profession altogether liberal, in pursuits wholly worldly.'

E. B. P. TO REV. J. H. NEWMAN.

                                                                                 Holton, Friday evening, [Jan. 15, 1836.]

My first thought about the Tracts was, 'Well, if they are brought to an end' (by outward means out of our control) 'N. will have time for more solid productions.' (This I wrote to you.) My second, regret that they must be given up, and a sort of feeling that their being protracted by means of my Baptism Tract beyond what we intended or wished, so as just to fill up the remainder of this yea; was intended to give us a breathing-time, and yet enable us to carry them on. They were lengthened out against our will, so that we could not break them off when we would.

Then again, seeing that it would be a relief to you to suspend them for a while, I thought perhaps that they might have done their work, and they might be resumed less offensively under another name, e.g. [that of] our [Theological] Society; i.e. that we might gently let down the persons who have ignorantly declared against them. But I fear these persons have too far committed themselves and are too engrained with moderation,' and being older than ourselves, and some vain, and accustomed to rule, they are less likely to give way, and our Society may very probably and (in proportion as it has any influence) will, I suppose, be more obnoxious than the Tracts.

Again, it is an object to follow up the blow.

What think you then of continuing the Tracts, not binding yourself to monthly productions (which is worrying), nor again to quarterly (which might require too long ones), but producing them on the 1st of several months: if ready, well; if not, to wait for the next?

You might take the advantage (I mean) of Rivington's monthly circulation when you had anything ready, and when not, not 'fash yourself' about it.

Something to stem the tide of American dissenting divinity would be very useful. You need not bind yourself to produce a volume in 1836, or that the volume should be of a certain thickness.

I mean in my Preface to enter a protest against Mr. S [tanley]'s quotation and characterizing of the 'Tracts'; so I should like to see the pamphlet, but this will do when we meet.

 I think the Tracts are very valuable as a rallying-point: it keeps people in check to know that such opinions are held: they have a half-consciousness that they are true, or likely to be so; and they cannot follow their own inclinations to sink down the stream peacefully, as they would if there were no such bars. The leap is so much the broader and in proportion the more dangerous, and there may be from time to time some who will pause and examine whither we are all going.

REV. J. H. NEWMAN TO REV. J. KEBLE.

                                                                                                     Oriel, January 16th, 1836.

...    I think I am going on with them. On Monday I go to town and shall decide. The Standard is calling us 'third part Papist and third Socinian,' and Mr. Stanley [afterwards Bishop of Norwich] calls us an active and important party. Rivington has sent down for reprints for some of the first volume, which he says is steadily selling, and the Edinburgh is preparing an attack. Now since many of these notices are made under the impression that we are crypto-papists, here is an additional reason for Tracts on the Popish question.'

These extracts show what an important part Pusey played at this critical juncture; that this was fully realized by Newman is clear from the following passage from the 'Apologia':--

'It was through him that the character of the Tracts was changed.

·In 1835 he published his elaborate treatise on Baptism, which was followed by other Tracts from different authors, if not of equal learning, yet of equal power and appositeness .'

And Dean Church estimates with his usual accuracy the need for such a change and Pusey's influence in pro–ducing it:--

'To Dr. Pusey's mind, accustomed to large and exhaustive theo–logical reading, they [the earlier Tracts] wanted fullness, completeness, the importance given by careful arrangement and abundant knowledge. It was not for nothing that he had passed an apprenticeship among the divines of Germany, and had been the friend and correspondent of Tholuck, Schleiermacher, Ewald, and Sack. He knew the meaning of real learning. In controversy it was his sledge-hammer and battle-mace, and he had the strong and sinewy hand to use it with effect. He observed that when attention had been roused to the ancient doctrines of the Church by the startling and peremptory language of the earlier Tracts, fairness and justice demanded that these doctrines should be fully and carefully explained and defended against mis–representation and -mistake. Forgetfulness and ignorance had thrown these doctrines so completely into the shade that, identified as they were with the best English divinity, they now wore the air of amazing novelties; and it was only due to honest inquirers to satisfy them with solid and adequate proof .'

 

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