on the subjects they discussed, and they did not spare it.  The cry of Romanism was inevitable, and was soon raised, though there was absolutely nothing in them but had the indisputable sanction of the Prayer Book, and of the most authoritative Anglican divines.  There was no Romanism in them, nor anything that showed a tendency to it.  But custom, and the prevalence of other systems and ways, and the interest of later speculations, and the slackening of professional reading and scholarship in the Church, had made their readers forget some of the most obvious facts in Church history, and the most certain Church principles; and men were at sea as to what they knew or believed on the points on which the Tracts challenged them.  The scare was not creditable; it was like the Italian scare about cholera with its quarantines and fumigations; but it was natural.  The theological knowledge and learning were wanting which would have been familiar with the broad line of difference between what is Catholic and what is specially Roman.  There were many whose teaching was impugned, for it was really Calvinist or Zwinglian, and not Anglican.  There were hopeful and ambitious theological Liberals, who recognised in that appeal to Anglicanism the most effective counter-stroke to their own schemes and theories.  There were many whom the movement forced to think, who did not want such addition to their responsibilities.  It cannot be thought surprising that the new Tracts were received with surprise, dismay, ridicule, and indignation.  But they also at once called forth a response of eager sympathy from numbers to whom they brought unhoped-for relief and light in a day of gloom, of rebuke and blasphemy.  Mr. Keble, in the preface to his famous assize sermon, had hazarded the belief that there were “hundreds, nay, thousands of Christians, and that there soon will be tens of thousands, unaffectedly anxious to be rightly guided” in regard to subjects that concern the Church.  The belief was soon justified.

When the first forty-six Tracts were collected into a volume towards the end of 1834, the following “advertisement” explaining their nature and objects was prefixed to it.  It is a contemporary and authoritative account of what was the mind of the leaders of the movement; and it has a significance beyond the occasion which prompted it.

The following-Tracts were published with the object of contributing-something towards the practical revival of doctrines, which, although held by the great divines of our Church, at present have become obsolete with the majority of her members, and are withdrawn from public view even by the more learned and orthodox few who still adhere to them.  The Apostolic succession, the Holy Catholic Church, were principles of action in the minds of our predecessors of the seventeenth century; but, in proportion as the maintenance of the Church has been secured by law, her ministers have been under the temptation