Littlemore,
October 6, 1845
1 It is now above eleven years since the writer of the following pages, in one of the early numbers of the Tracts for the Times, expressed himself thus:—
“Considering the high gifts, and the strong claims of the Church of Rome and its dependencies on our admiration, reverence, love, and gratitude, how could we withstand it, as we do; how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness, and rushing into communion with it, but for the words of Truth itself, which bid us prefer it to the whole world? ‘He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.’ How could we learn to be severe, and execute judgment, but for the warning of Moses against even a divinely-gifted teacher who should preach new gods, and the anathema of St. Paul even against Angels and Apostles who should bring in a new doctrine?” 2
He little thought, when he so wrote, that the time would ever come, when he should feel the obstacle, which he spoke of as lying in the way of communion with the Church of Rome, to be destitute of solid foundation.
Having in former Publications directed attention to the supposed difficulties, he considers himself bound to avow his present belief that they were imaginary.
What he conceived them to be will be seen by referring to his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church 3, published in the beginning of 1837. In these Lectures there are various statements which he could wish unsaid; but there is one statement in them, about which he has never seen any reason at all for changing his opinion. It is this:—
“In England the Church cooperates with the State in exacting subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles as a test, and that not only of the Clergy, but also of the governing body in our Universities, a test against Romanism.” 4
Such a statement is quite consistent with a wish, on which he has before now acted, to correct popular misapprehensions both of the Roman Catholic doctrines, and of the meaning of the Thirty-nine Articles.
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Several years since 5 a Retractation of his appeared in the public prints which he is desirous of formally acknowledging here, and of preserving. It is as follows:—
It is true that I have at various times, in writing against the Roman system, used, not merely arguments, about which I am not here speaking, but what reads like declamation.
1. For instance, in 1833, in the Lyra Apostolica, I called it a “lost Church.”
2. Also, in 1833, I spoke of “the Papal Apostasy” in a work upon the Arians.
3. In the same year, in No. 15 of the series called the “Tracts for the Times,” in which Tract the words are often mine, though I cannot claim it as a whole, I say,—
“True, Rome is heretical now—nay, grant she has thereby forfeited her orders; yet, at least, she was not heretical in the primitive ages. If she has apostatized, it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Then, indeed, it is to be feared the whole Roman Communion bound itself, by a perpetual bond and covenant, to the cause of Antichrist.”
Of this and other Tracts a friend 6, with whom I was on very familiar terms, observed, in a letter some time afterwards, though not of this particular part of it—“It is very encouraging about the Tracts—but I wish I could prevail on you when the second edition comes out, to cancel or materially alter several. The other day accidentally put in my way the Tract on the Apostolical Succession in the English Church; and it really does seem so very unfair, that I wonder you could, even in the extremity of οικονομια and φενακισμος, have consented to be a party to it.”
On the passage above quoted, I observe myself, in a pamphlet published in 1838 7,—
“I confess I wish this passage were not cast in so declamatory a form; but the substance of it expresses just what I mean.”
4. Also, in 1833, I said,—
“Their communion is infected with heresy; we are bound to flee it as a pestilence. They have established a lie in the place of God’s truth, and, by their claim of immutability in doctrine, cannot undo the sin they have committed.”—Tract 20.