   |
|
Handout #233 |
|
Newman's Tract 90 |
|
This was the Tract which caused such public
outcry against the Tractarians for apparently reversing the plain Protestant
meaning of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of faith. The reference to
subscriptions of assent to these Articles from Catholic-minded Anglicans who
were unhappy about them...
That there are real difficulties to a Catholic Christian in the Ecclesiastical position of our Church at this day, no one can deny; but the statements of the Articles are not in this number. and it may be right at the present moment to insist upon this. If in any question it is supposed that persons who profess to be disciples of the early Church will silently concur with those of very opposite sentiments in furthering a relaxation of subscriptions which, it is imagined, are galling to both parties, though for different reasons, and that they will do this against the wish of the great body of the Church, the writer of the following pages would raise one voice, at least, in protest against any such anticipation ... [Conclusion:] the Articles are evidently framed on the principle of leaving open large questions on which the controversy hinges. They state broad extreme truths, and are silent upon their adjustment. Lastly, their framers constructed them in such a way as best to comprehend those who did not go so far in Protestantism as themselves. Anglo-Catholics then are but the successors and representatives of those moderate reformers; and their case has been directly anticipated in the wording of the Articles. It follows that they are not as unfit to be entered by a faithful servant of Christ perverting, they are using them, for an express purpose for which among others their authors framed them ...Texts taken from H. Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, OUP 2 1963,316-7,318,321. |
