ical criticism. Though national education was in its infancy, a new
desire for knowledge, and even a free-thinking spirit, was permeating
the middle classes, and had gained a hold among the more intelligent of
the artisans. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,
established by Brougham, circulated a mass of instructive and
stimulating literature at a cheap rate; popular magazines and
cyclopaedias were multiplying yearly; and the British Association, which
held its first meeting at Oxford in 1832, brought the results of natural
science within the reach of thousands and tens of thousands incapable of
scientific research. The _Bridgwater Treatises_, which belong to the
reign of William IV., are evidence of a widespread anxiety to reconcile
the claims and conclusions of science with those of the received
theology. Thoughtful and religious laymen in the higher ranks of society
were earnestly seeking a reason for the faith that was in them, and
pondering over fundamental problems like the personality of God, the
divinity of Christ, the reality of supernatural agency, and the awful
mystery of the future life. Yet the tractarians passed lightly over all
these problems, to exercise themselves and others with disputations on
points which to most laymen of their time appeared comparatively
trivial.

[Pageheading: _THE CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH._]

To them Church authority was supreme, and every catholic dogma a
self-evident truth. What engrossed their reason and consciences was the
discussion of questions affecting Church authority, for example, whether
the Anglican Church possessed the true note of catholicity or was in a
state of schism, whether its position in Christendom was not on a par
with that of the monophysite heretics, whether its articles could be
brought into conformity with the Roman catholic doctrines expressly
condemned by them, or whether its alliance with Lutheranism in the
appointment of a bishop for Jerusalem did not amount to ecclesiastical
suicide. Their message, unlike that of the early Christian or methodist
preachers, was for the priestly order, and not for the masses of the
people; their appeals were addressed _ad clerum_ not _ad populum_; still
less were they suited to influence scientific intellects. But their
propaganda was carried on by men of intense earnestness and holy lives,
few in number but strong in well-organised combination, and they carried
with them for a time many to whom any