be much more mischief in the
delicate unrealities of a fashionable preacher, or in many a smooth
sentimental treatise on the religious affections.

[112] _The Ideal, etc._, pp. 587, 305.

[113] Ibid. p. 305.

[114] _Ideal,_ p 286.

[115] _British Critic_ October 1841, p. 340.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH

No. 90, with the explanations of it given by Mr. Newman and the other
leaders of the movement, might have raised an important and not very
easy question, but one in no way different from the general character of
the matters in debate in the theological controversy of the time. But
No. 90, with the comments on it of Mr. Ward, was quite another matter,
and finally broke up the party of the movement. It was one thing to show
how much there is in common between England and Rome, and quite another
to argue that there is no difference. Mr. Ward's refusal to allow a
reasonable and a Catholic interpretation to the doctrine of the Articles
on Justification, though such an understanding of it had not only been
maintained by Bishop Bull and the later orthodox divines, but was
impressed on all the popular books of devotion, such as the _Whole Duty
of Man_ and Bishop Wilson's _Sacra Privata_; and along with this, the
extreme claim to hold compatible with the Articles the "whole cycle of
Roman doctrine," introduced entirely new conditions into the whole
question. _Non hoec in foedera_ was the natural reflection of numbers of
those who most sympathised with the Tractarian school. The English
Church might have many shortcomings and want many improvements; but
after all she had something to say for herself in her quarrel with Rome;
and the witness of experience for fifteen hundred years must be not
merely qualified and corrected, but absolutely wiped out, if the
allegation were to be accepted that Rome was blameless in all that
quarrel, and had no part in bringing about the confusions of
Christendom. And this contention was more and more enforced in Mr.
Ward's articles in the _British Critic_--enforced, more effectively than
by direct statement, by continual and passing assumption and
implication. They were papers of considerable power and acuteness, and
of great earnestness in their constant appeal to the moral criteria of
truth; though Mr. Ward was not then at his best as a writer, and they
were in composition heavy, diffuse, monotonous, and wearisome. But the
attitude of deep depreciation, steady