ints 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withdrawn from public view even by the more learned and orthodox few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 of leaning on an arm of flesh instead of her own
divinely-provided discipline, a temptation increased by political
events and arrangements which need not here be more than