ame distinction. And so with the
interpretation of the "Sacrifices of Masses" in the same article. It was
the fashion in 1841 to see in this the condemnation of all doctrine of a
sacrifice in the Eucharist; and when Mr. Newman confined the phrase to
the gross abuses connected with the Mass, this was treated as an affront
to common sense and honesty. Since then we have become better acquainted
with the language of the ancient liturgies--, and no instructed
theologian could now venture to treat Mr. Newman's distinction as idle.
There was in fact nothing new in his distinctions on these two points.
They had already been made in two of the preceding Tracts, the reprint
of Archbishop Ussher on Prayers for the Dead, and the Catena on the
Eucharistie Sacrifice; and in both cases the distinctions were supported
by a great mass of Anglican authority.[93]

But the Tract had sufficient novelty about it to account for most of
the excitement which it caused. Its dryness and negative curtness were
provoking. It was not a positive argument, it was not an appeal to
authorities; it was a paring down of language, alleged in certain
portions of the Articles to be somewhat loose, to its barest meaning;
and to those to whom that language had always seemed to speak with
fulness and decision, it seemed like sapping and undermining a cherished
bulwark. Then it seemed to ask for more liberty than the writer in his
position at that time needed; and the object of such an indefinite
claim, in order to remove, if possible, misunderstandings between two
long-alienated branches of the Western Church, was one to excite in many
minds profound horror and dismay. That it maintained without flinching
and as strongly as ever the position and the claim of the English Church
was nothing to the purpose; the admission, both that Rome, though
wrong, might not be as wrong as we thought her, and that the language of
the Articles, though unquestionably condemnatory of much, was not
condemnatory of as much as people thought, and might possibly be even
harmonised with Roman authoritative language, was looked upon as
incompatible with loyalty to the English Church.

The question which the Tract had opened, what the Articles meant and to
what men were bound by accepting them, was a most legitimate one for
discussion; and it was most natural also that any one should hesitate to
answer it as the Tract answered it. But it was distinctly a question for
discussion. It was