Untitled - Electric Scotland

1841] THE ROMEWARD MOVEMENT 77
To Tait s stout re-
who was a champion of the new opinions.
assertion of the old Protestant fundamentals, momentum was
added by his high personal character and the respect in which
he was universally held."
Be this as it may, it is certain that Tait very early
perceived what was the issue to which his friend s opinions
must necessarily lead, and that his profound distrust of
the teaching which he had seen Oakeley and Ward imbibe
was based on no accidental prejudice, but on a deliberate
conviction, the truth of which became apparent before
many years had passed.
"
"
Mr. Ward," his biographer tells us, openly avowed his
adherence to Newman s party in the latter part of 1838. There
was, about this time, a considerable accession to the ranks of the
party of able men with directly Roman sympathies. . . . Mr.
Ward s party commenced its action with a new and startling
. . . was directly looked on by them as in
programme. Rome
the Reformation was a deadly
many respects the practical model ;
sin ; restoration to the Papal communion the ideal even if
unattainable aim." l
Dr. Newman has himself narrated how, in this very
year (1840), he began to see, much more clearly than his
followers yet saw, whereunto his teaching must necessarily
lead :
"
People tell me that I am, whether by sermons or otherwise,
exerting at St. Mary s a beneficial influence on our prospective
clergy ; but what if I take to myself the credit of seeing further
than they, and of having in the course of the last year dis
covered that what they approve so much is very likely to end
in Romanism?
So he wrote to a friend in 1840. But the letter was a
private one, and this, his view about his own teaching, was
not made public until long afterwards. On the contrary,
as Mr. Palmer, himself a contributor to the Tracts, has
Williaii( George Ward and the Oxford Movement , p. 136.
2
Apologia, p. 237.