Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/189

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The Oxford Movement
173

in this place." It was by these and similar efforts that the influence of the Tractarians was felt all over England.

Now we must turn to another important event in the history of this Movement. In the year 1841 Newman published what was known as Tract 90. Its title was "Remarks on certain passages in the Thirty-nine Articles." The object of this was to show that the Thirty-nine Articles were not, as people commonly thought they were, Protestant in their tone. You nowhere find the word "Protestant " mentioned in them nor in any other part of the Prayer Book. Newman's endeavour was to show that they upheld Catholic teaching as distinct from Roman Catholicism, and that a Protestant interpretation had bean imported into them. Newman says of his object afterwards, [1]"The main thesis of my essay was this: the Articles do not oppose Catholic teaching, they but partially oppose Roman dogma; they for the most part oppose the dominant errors of Rome. And the problem was to draw the line as to what they allowed, and what they condemned. Such being the object which I had in view, what were my prospects of widening and defining their meaning? The prospect was encouraging, there was no doubt at all of the elasticity of the Articles. To take a preliminary instance: the fourteenth was pronounced by one party to be Lutheran, by another Calvinistic, though the two interpretations were contradictory to each other; why then should not other Articles be drawn with a vagueness of an equally intense character." In this Tract Newman said, [2]"Our Articles neither contradict anything Catholic, nor are meant to condemn anything in early

  1. Quoted by Hore, p.290.
  2. Quoted by Hore, p.290.