advocates of the views in question, for
which every one seems to give them credit, there should be among their
followers much that is enthusiastic, extravagant, or excessive. All
these aberrations will be and are imputed to the doctrines from which
they proceed; nor unnaturally, but hardly fairly, for aberrations there
must be, whatever the doctrine is, while the human heart is sensitive,
capricious, and wayward.... There will ever be a number of persons
professing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly and
strangely, do odd and fierce things, display themselves unnecessarily,
and disgust other people; there will ever be those who are too young to
be wise, too generous to be cautious, too warm to be sober, or too
intellectual to be humble; of whom human sagacity cannot determine,
only the event, and perhaps not even that, whether they feel what
they say, or how far; whether they are to be encouraged or
discountenanced."--_British Critic_, April 1839, "State of Religious
Parties," p. 405.

[80] Cardinal Newman, _Grammar of Assent_.

[81] The argument from history is sketched fairly, but only sketched in
_The Prophetic Office_, Lect. xiv.

[82] In the Roman controversy it is sometimes hard to be just without
appearing to mean more than is said; for the obligation of justice
sometimes forces one who wishes to be a fair judge to be apparently an
apologist or advocate. Yet the supreme duty in religious controversy is
justice. But for the very reason that these controversialists wished to
be just to Rome, they were bound to be just against her. They meant to
be so; but events passed quickly, and leisure never came for a work
which involved a serious appeal to history.

[83] _Vide_ a striking review in the _British Critic_, April 1839,
partly correcting and guarding the view given in the Tract.

CHAPTER XIV

NO. 90

The formation of a strong Romanising section in the Tractarian party was
obviously damaging to the party and dangerous to the Church. It was _pro
tanto_ a verification of the fundamental charge against the party, a
charge which on paper they had met successfully, but which acquired
double force when this paper defence was traversed by facts. And a great
blow was impending over the Church, if the zeal and ability which the
movement had called forth and animated were to be sucked away from the
Church, and not only lost to it, but educated into a special instrument
against it. But the dive