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Letter
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Eirenicon. This is a republication (with leave of the author) of the celebrated Tract 90, preceded by an historical preface from Dr Pusey's own pen, and followed by a letter of Mr. Keble on
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Catholic Subscription to the Articles, which was widely circulated, though not published, in 1861. Of the tract itself we need not, of course, speak. Dr. Pusey's preface, however, is open to one or two obvious remarks. It is remarkable for the manner in which he identifies himself with the Mr. Newman of the day, though it appears that the proof of the tract in question was submitted to Mr. Keble, and its publication urged by him, while Dr. Pusey himself was only made aware of its existence by the clamor with which it was received. Then, again, the remarkable difference of view between Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman as to the
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Catholic interpretation of the Articles forces itself again upon our notice. From the tract itself all through, and its explanations by its author at the time and since, it is perfectly clear that nothing more was meant by it than to claim such latitude of interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles as would admit the
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Catholic sense on equal terms, as it were, with the anti-Catholic; and the same view is urged by Mr. Keble in his letter. The writer of the tract supposes that the Anglican formularies were drawn {220} up with designed ambiguity, in order to catch Catholic subscriptions. He compares the tactics adopted by the framers of the Articles to those which were followed by M. Thiers:
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A French minister, desirous of war, nevertheless, as a matter of policy, draws up his state papers in such moderate language that his successor, who is for peace, can act up to them without compromising his own principles. . . . The Protestant confession was drawn up with the purpose of including Catholics; and Catholics now will not be excluded. What was an economy in the reformers is a protection to us (Tract 90, conclusion). This is a plain common-sense view of the matter, and is abundantly supported by history. But it obviously leaves a stain on the Anglican establishment, which will appear of vital or of trifling importance according to the different views under which that community is regarded. If it is looked upon as a political and national organization, it was no doubt a stroke of prudence so to frame the formularies as to include both sides. If it is considered as a church of Christ, it can hardly be anything but discreditable that it should thus compromise divine truth. But Dr. Pusey's view of the
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Catholic interpretation, as expressed both in his present preface and in the
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Eirenicon, claims for it the exclusive title of the natural and legitimate sense. It may seem almost incredible that any one should maintain this; but so it is. Dr. Pusey thus speaks of the
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Protestant interpretations:
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We had all been educated in a traditional system, which had practically imported into the Articles a good many principles _which were not contained in them nor suggested by them;_ yet which were habitually identified with them. . . . . We proposed no system to ourselves, but laid aside piece by piece the system of ultra-Protestant interpretation, which had incrusted round the Articles. This doubtless appeared in our writings from time to time; but the expositions to which we were accustomed, and which were to our minds the genuine expositions of the Articles, had never before been brought into one focus, as they were in Tract 90. . . . Newman explained that it was written solely against this system of interpretation, which brought meanings into the Articles, not out of them, and also why he wrote it at all (Pref., v.-vii.) Yet the words of Mr. Newman's explanation, which are quoted immediately after this last passage, distinctly contradict the interpretation of the tract put forward by Dr. Pusey. Mr. Newman says that the Anglican Church, as well as the Roman, in his opinion, has a
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He then gives an instance which shows that the principle is admitted. Again, he says:
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The tract is grounded on the belief that the Articles _need_ not be so closed as the received methods of teaching closes them, and _ought_ not to be for the sake of many persons
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Eirenicon as to the interpretation of the Articles, may be considered as a kind of challenge thrown out on the part of Dr. Pusey and his followers to the authorities of the establishment and the parties within it that are most opposed to
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Catholic opinions. It may be considered fairly enough that if this
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--as far as those well-used words apply to it--is allowed to pass unnoticed, the position of the
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Anglo-Catholic clergy in the establishment will be made as secure as silent toleration on the part of authorities can make it. [Footnote 40] Be it so by all means; but let it be understood that the claim now made is quite different from that made by Mr. Newman in 1841; and that if it enjoys immunity from censure, on account of the far greater latitude now allowed in the establishment to extreme opinions of every color except one, it has still to free itself from the charge of being one of the most grotesque contortions of language that has ever been seriously advocated as permissible by reasonable men. One of the Articles, for instance--to take the case adduced by Canon Oakeley--says that
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On the other hand, let us place the Tridentine Canon:
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If any one saith that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood--the species only of the bread and wine remaining--which conversion the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema. (Sess. xiii.) Not only does Dr. Pusey assert that there is a sense in which the two statements are compatible, but he maintains that such an interpretation is the one single obvious grammatical and legitimate interpretation of the words of the Anglican Article. We can only imagine one process of reasoning by which this conclusion can be maintained; and we have little doubt that if Dr. Pusey's argument were drawn out it would come to this. The Articles must mean
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Catholic