candid, with which, as far as intention went, he conducted his argument.  His first appearance as a writer was in the controversy, as has been said before, on the subject of No. 90.  That tract had made the well-worn distinction between what was Catholic and what was distinctively Roman, and had urged—­what had been urged over and over again by English divines—­that the Articles, in their condemnation of what was Roman, were drawn in such a way as to leave untouched what was unquestionably Catholic.  They were drawn indeed by Protestants, but by men who also earnestly professed to hold with the old Catholic doctors and disavowed any purpose to depart from their teaching, and who further had to meet the views and gain the assent of men who were much less Protestant than themselves—­men who were willing to break with the Pope and condemn the abuses associated with his name, but by no means willing to break with the old theology.  The Articles were the natural result of a compromise between two strong parties—­the Catholics agreeing that the abuses should be condemned, so that the Catholic doctrine was not touched; the Protestants insisting that, so that the Catholic doctrine was not touched, the abuses of it should be denounced with great severity:  that there should be no question about the condemnation of the abuses, and of the system which had maintained them.  The Articles were undoubtedly anti-Roman; that was obvious from the historical position of the English Church, which in a very real sense was anti-Roman; but were they so anti-Roman as to exclude doctrines which English divines had over and over again maintained as Catholic and distinguished from Romanism, but which the popular opinion, at this time or that, identified therewith?[108] With flagrant ignorance—­ignorance of the history of thought and teaching in the English Church, ignorance far more inexcusable of the state of parties and their several notorious difficulties in relation to the various formularies of the Church, it was maintained on the other side that the “Articles construed by themselves” left no doubt that they were not only anti-Roman but anti-Catholic, and that nothing but the grossest dishonesty and immorality could allow any doubt on the subject.

Neither estimate was logical enough to satisfy Mr. Ward.  The charge of insincerity, he retorted with great effect on those who made it:  if words meant anything, the Ordination Service, the Visitation Service, and the Baptismal Service were far greater difficulties to Evangelicals, and to Latitudinarians like Whately and Hampden, than the words of any Article could be to Catholics; and there was besides the tone of the whole Prayer Book, intelligible, congenial, on Catholic assumptions, and on no other.  But as to the Articles themselves, he was indisposed to accept the defence made for them.  He criticised indeed with acuteness and severity the attempt to make the loose language of many of them intolerant of primitive doctrine; but he frankly accepted the