germ of the False Prophet,) apocalyptically noted also, in the same and another picture' of that primary age of apostacy, has been to doctrines of reserve on the atonement,2 and doctrines concerning justification,3 through which Christ was and is virtually superseded in his character of our atonement: as also to doctrines concerning the mediution of living priests, and of departed saints,5 through which He is equally superseded in his character of the mediator for sinful men.-3. It refuses to receive as the one rule of faith and practice the written word and commandments of God; a firm adherence to which is one constant mark of the true prophets, and witnesses for Christ, in the Apocalyptic prophecy: 6 making them

1 Viz. the incense vision of Apoc. viii. 2.

2 So in the famous Tracts 80 and 87. The doctrine is one which has been condemned by the Bishops generally. See especially the Bishop of London's most just and strong reprobation of it, at pp. 27-29 of his late Charge.

3 See Mr. Newman's Treatise on Justification, and the first of the Sermons for the Times entitled Nehushtan.-Compare my Vol. i. p. 264.

The following is a quotation on the point referred to, from Tract No. 10. p. 4. "This is faith, to look at things not as seen, but as unseen to be as sure that the bishop is Christ's appointed representative as if we actually saw him work miracles as St. Peter and St. Paul did." And then; "The ministeringpriest is by the same faith to be looked on by the congregation as the bishop's representative: "-irrespective of course of doctrine.-Let me again refer the reader to the weighty and important observations of the Bishop of London in his late Charge, pp. 9-12, on the dangerous and unscriptural character of Levitical views of the Christian ministry.

5 The following is Mr. Newman's remark in the famous Tract No. 90, on our Anglican Article against the Invocation of Saints; that "not every doctrine on this matter is a 'fond' thing, but the Romish doctrine. Accordingly the primitive doctrine is not condemned in it. Now there was a primitive doctrine on these points." He adds elsewhere (Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, p. 18) that "the Ora pro nobis, (or Prayer to the Virgin Mary,) was not necessarily included in the invocation of saints which the Article condemns."-It is also said in Tract 71, p. 27: "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." See other quotations in the "Case as it is," p. 29.-Compare with this and the Note preceding my Vol. i. pp. 306-315, 381.

The Bishop of London (Charge, p. 57,) speaks of it as a subject of deep concern that any of the English clergy should recommend or justify, under any qualification, prayers or addresses to saints; a practice, he says, "which ended in idolatry;" and at p. 49, he reprobates the practice adopted by a few of the clergy [of this Oxford School] of decorating the communion-table with flowers on saints' days, as worse than frivolous, and approaching very nearly to the honours paid by the Church of Rome to deified sinners."

So of the children of Chrst's true Church, Apoc. xii. 17, "them that keep the commandments of Gd, and preserve the testimony of Jesus Christ ;" and of

void, as did both the Pharisees of old, and the apostatizing teachers (or germinating False Prophet) of the fourth and fifth centuries,' by the addition of another rule of faith and conduct; viz. that of its own traditions and the commandments of men.2-4. It supports in no equivocal manner the Papal pretensions and authority, just as the full-grown Apocalyptic False Prophet did those of the Beast, from soon after the rise of the Beast's empire in the West: 3-inculcating the reverence due to the Pope of Rome, admitting his universal primacy, deploring the schism from him made at the Reformation, longing for reconciliation with him, even

the Church's faithful martyrs, vi. 9, "those that were slain for the word of God;" &c, and xx. 4, "them that had been beheaded for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus ;"—where that "the word and commandments of God" mean only the written word and written commandments, appear sufficiently from Christ's saying that the Pharisees had made God's words and commandments void by their traditions. Matt xv. 6. 1 See my Vol. i. p. 264.

2 "Scripture is not the only ground of the faith." Catholic tradition is a divine informant in religious matters." "We agree with the Romanist in appealing to antiquity as our great teacher." "These two [the Bible and Catholic Tradition] together make up a joint rule of faith." "When the sense of Scripture, as interpreted by reason, is contrary to the sense given of it by Catholic antiquity, we ought to side with the latter." "Such tradition is infallible." Such are some of the quotations given on this head by Mr. Goode in his Case as it is, p. 9; taken from Newman's Lectures on Romanism, pp. 369, 329, 355, 47, 327, 160, and Keble's Sermons, 146;—with many others to the same effect. Add the famous rule, Quod semper, quod ubique, &c.

The equal authority of catholic Tradition and the written Scripture, was the first point determined on at Trent: and in this, says Ranke, i. 204, half the business was justly regarded to be settled.

3 See on the earlier history of the apostate priesthood of professing Christendom, Vol. iii. p. 164, &c; and on its causing the world, after the Beast's rise, to worship it in Western Europe, ib. 182.

4 Among the Catholic verities impressed on the surface of Scripture are the following ;-baptismal regeneration, the sacred presence in the Eucharist, the oneness of the visible Church, the primacy of St. Peter." "The supremacy of the Pope is an event in Providence. We find ourselves as a Church under the King now, and we obey him. We were under the Pope formerly, and we obeyed him. Of course the union of the whole Church under one visible Government is abstractedly the most perfect state." So the British Critic for July 1841, and Tract No. 90, quoted by Mr. Goode, ibid. p. 33: who adds from the British Critic another quotation, to the effect of their "having no sympathy with the Gallican party, so far as it is at issue with the ultra-montane ;—regarding national theories as involving a subtle Erastianism, and betokening an inadequate estimate of the fulness and freeness of Gospel privileges:" i. e. as derived from the Pope.

"That deplorable schism." Brit. Crit. for July 1841, p. 2. So Mr. Newman in his Preface to the Hymni Ecclesiæ, 2nd vol., speaking of the Reformation and Reformers, says, "Cæco quodam reformationis (quam vocant) astu in ecclesia passim fervente."-Again, in his last volume of Sermons: "We cannot hope for the recovery of Dissenting bodies whilst we are ourselves alienated from the great body of Christendom. We cannot hope for unity of faith, if we of our

though it might have to be effected in the garb of penitence,' speaking of his See as the Saviour's Holy Home,2 lauding its ritual and its missal, in contrast with the formularies and rites of the English Church, as the very spirit of devotion,3 and warding off from it and him, with the earnest and blind partiality of filial devotedness, all application to them of those too applicable prophecies of the Beast Antichrist, and his Harlot Church on the seven hills.-5. It lays claim, just like the False Prophet, to the power of working miracles on the souls of men : in such manner indeed as actually to furnish a comment, not only on the text now before us, but on a previous Apocalyptic statement also about the False Prophet's working miracles; in that case "before," or under authority from, the Papal Beast his principal.7—

5

own private wills make a faith for ourselves, in this our small corner of the earth. We cannot have the success among the heathen of St. Boniface or St. Augustine, unless like them we go forth with the apostolical benediction," i. e. the Pope's blessing.

1 So Palmer's Aids to Reflection: "I should like to see the Patriarch of Constantinople and our Archbishop of Canterbury go barefoot to Rome, and fall upon the Pope's neck, and kiss him, and never let him go till they had persuaded him to be reasonable." Quoted by Goode, p. 33.

2 So in the poetry of the Tractators. And the prose rivals the poetry. "Rome is your mother," says Dr. Pusey, "through whom you were born to Christ." "We trust that active and visible union with the See of Rome is not of the essence of a Church at the same time we are deeply conscious that in lacking it, far from asserting a right, we forego a great privilege. Rome has imperish.. able claims on our gratitude; and, were it so ordered, on our deference.-We are estranged from him in presence, not in heart." Contrast the Bishop of London's statements respecting the Romish Church in his Charge, pp. 19, 59: "that idolatrous Church, in a state of schism, if not apostacy; defiled with superstition and idolatry; and which has framed a system that deserves to be described as having embodied the very mystery of iniquity."

3 "The Church of Rome alone has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings which may especially be called Catholic." Newman's Letter to Jelf; quoted by Goode, 38. Again; Our Reformers in not adopting the Canon of the Mass, which is a sacred and most precious monument of the apostles, mutilated the tradition of 1500 years." "I can see no claim which the Prayer Book has on a layman's deference, as the teaching of the Church, which the Breviary and the Missal have not in a far greater degree." Froude ap. Goode, 35, 36.-See the Bishop of London's observations on this point; Charge, p. 50.

4 See my Analysis of the Tract on Antichrist, in a Paper on the Futurist System of Apocalyptic interpretation given in my Appendix.

5 "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." Tract 85, p. 95 quoted by Goode, p. 23.

6 These are the spirits of dæmons working miracles."

7 Apoc. xiii. 14. See my Vol. iii. p. 179.-It is really curiously confirmatory

6. It avows its allegiance to Ecumenic General Councils, (not exclusively of that of Trent,)' even as to that which speaks the voice of God's Spirit, and possesses the Spirit's infallibility,-wresting the words of the Article of our Church, which was drawn up expressly against it, in order to force on them a sense not necessarily unaccordant with this doctrine; just as the False Prophet was the prime and firm adherent to the Image of the Beast :3—nay, and both excusing, and expressing desire for the re-enactment of, those penalties of excommunication and death, with a view to the enforcement of the Church's decrees, which the False Prophet, described

of the explanation there given of the prophetic verse: given, I need not say, without any thought of the passage in the Tract above quoted. Add the Promethean creative view of fire from heaven to that in the comment referred to; and it will give a complete notion of the Tractator's priestly miracles.

1 At least, not now.

Originally Mr. N. made this Council to mark the time

of the Popes becoming Antichrist. See p. 54, Note 7 infrà.

2 The 21st Article of our Church says; Forasmuch as they (General Councils) be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and word of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, in things pertaining to God." Against this Mr. Newman says; "The words only mean that General Councils may err as such; may err, unless in any case it is promised, as a matter of express supernatural privilege, they may not err. And such a promise does exist, where General Councils are not only gathered together according to the commandment and will of princes, but in the name of Christ, according to our Lord's promise." When they are a thing of heaven, their deliberations are overruled, and their decrees authoritative; and, as he adds also, infallible. "In such cases they are Catholic Councils. Thus Catholic, or Ecumenical Councils, are General Councils, and something more."-Tract No. 90, p. 21.

3 See my Part iv, Chap. vii; Vol. iii. p. 190, &c.

4 So Mr. Faber (not the Rev. G. S. Faber, but one who less worthily bears the name) in his Sights and Thoughts' advocates "the most dire weapon of the Church, excommunication; whereby she cuts off the offender from the fountains of life in this world, and makes him over from her own judgment to that of heaven in the world to come. Surely it is the duty of Christian States to deprive such an excommunicate person of every social right and privilege; to lay on him such pains and penalties as may seem good to the wisdom of the law; or even, if they so judge, to sweep him from the earth; in other words, to put him to death." In a similar spirit Gregory VII, Innocent III, and Beckett are extolled as the lights of the Church in the middle ages, and ranked in the same class with Elijah and St. John the Baptist :-Innocent (not to speak of the others) being the bloody ruthless persecutor and murderer of the excommunicate Waldenses.-Bickersteth, ib. p. 27. See my Vol. ii. p. 19, &c; also the Bishop of London's indignant notice of this point in his late Charge, p. 57.-Mr. Marks in his animated Pamphlet or Protest lately published, says, not without reason, p. 21, that the Star-Chamber, with its old deeds of cruelty, is what the Tractarians would fain call again into existence, had they the power: and he refers to Milford Malvoisin, declaring that the reign of Queen Mary was a great and positive

He has since joined the Romish Church. 3rd Edition.

in Apoc. xiii, inspired the Beast's Image to enact against all recusants or disobedient, in enforcement of its dogmas.'—7. It professes its bitter enmity against the anti-Papal witnessing of Protestantism, and the Reformation of the 16th century;2-that act which, in a manner too clear to be mistaken, the Apocalyptic vision notes as done with Christ's direction and blessing, to the horror of the Beast's adherents, specially of his False Prophet: avows "the unprotestantizing of the national Church to be its object, and one worthy of all hazards, as a matter of life and death: unchurches the foreign Protestant Churches: and, as to the new song of the Reformation, -the holy and glorious doctrine of justification by faith alone,-shews that it not only does not understand, but above all things abhors and rejects it; counting it (awful to say) as a Nehushtan,—an idol of the evangelic doctrinists, worthy only of being broken to pieces."

In all these points the character and theological doctrine of the new Oxford School agrees, we see, as at present developed, very completely with that of the False Prophet of the Apocalypse. In truth the remarkable history of its ten short years of progress to its present doctrinal position,' is on main points very much a recapitulation in brief of that of the False Prophet of the

advantage to the Church of England, p. 8. Has not even Archdeacon Robert Wilberforce referred to her as not the bloody but the blessed Queen Mary? Apoc. xiii. 14, 15. See Vol. iii. pp. 192, 200.

2 See quotations on the point in Mr. Goode, p. 37. For example Mr. Froude; "I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more." And the British Critic for July 1841; "Protestantism in its essence, and in all its bearings, is characteristically the religion of corrupt human nature:" and again; Protestant tone of doctrine and thought is essentially Antichrist.”

3 Apoc. xi. 11. See Vol. ii. p. 404.

"The

4 So the British Critic for July 1841, p. 44, quoted by Goode, p. 38. 5 "And no man could understand that new song but the 144,000 that were redeemed from the earth." Apoc. xiv. 3.

6 I have already referred to the first of the Tractarian Sermons for the Times, bearing that title. In the same spirit the British Critic of April 1842, p. 446, (quoted by Goode, p. 24) writes: "To speak as if this latter scheme of doctrine (viz. of Lutheran doctrine of justification) were in itself otherwise than radically and fundamentally monstrous, immoral, heretical, and antichristian, shows but an inadequate grasp of its antagonist truth." Mr. Goode adds, in proof how the Tractators identify the Lutheran doctrine and that of our Reformers on this point, that the author of Tract No. 86 says, It was "the object" of the latter to Lutheranize our Church, to introduce justification without works," &c. 7 i. e. from 1833 to 1843. Compare Mr. Perceval's account of the beginning