rming movement, at least in England. But
Anglican self-reliance was unshaken, and Anglican hope waxed stronger as
the years went on, and the impression made by Anglican teaching became
wider and deeper. Outside attacks, outside persecution, could now do
little harm; the time was past for that. What might have happened had
things gone on as they began, it is idle to inquire. But at the moment
when all seemed to promise fair, the one fatal influence, the presence
of internal uncertainty and doubt, showed itself. The body of men who
had so for acted together began to show a double aspect. While one
portion of it continued on the old lines, holding the old ground,
defending the old principles, and attempting to apply them for the
improvement of the practical system of the English Church, another
portion had asked the question, and were pursuing the anxious inquiry,
whether the English Church was a true Church at all, a true portion of
the one uninterrupted Catholic Church of the Redeemer. And the question
had forced itself with importunate persistence on the leading mind of
the movement. From this time the fate of Tractarianism, as a party, was
decided.

In this overthrow of confidence, two sets of influences may be traced.

1. One, which came from above, from the highest leading authority in the
movement, was the unsettlement of Mr. Newman's mind. He has told the
story, the story as he believed of his enfranchisement and deliverance;
and he has told the story, though the story of a deliverance, with so
keen a feeling of its pathetic and tragic character,--as it is indeed
the most tragic story of a conversion to peace and hope on record,--that
it will never cease to be read where the English language is spoken. Up
to the summer of 1839, his view of the English position had satisfied
him--satisfied him, that is, as a tenable one in the anomalies of
existing Christendom. All seemed clear and hopeful, and the one thing to
be thought of was to raise the English Church to the height of its own
standard. But in the autumn of that year (1839), as he has told us, a
change took place. In the summer of 1839, he had set himself to study
the history of the Monophysite controversy. "I have no reason," he
writes, "to suppose that the thought of Rome came across my mind at
all.... It was during this course of reading that for the first time a
doubt came across me of the tenableness of Anglicanism. I had seen the
shadow of a hand on the w