Untitled - Electric Scotland

78 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. iv.
told us, many of his followers were supporting him at this
time, in spite of their own misgivings, simply because,
ignorant of what was really passing in his mind, they
trusted him implicitly. 1
It was in these circumstances that the crisis came.
Tait was sitting quietly in his rooms in Balliol on
Saturday morning, February 27, 1841, when Ward burst
excitedly in.
reading ! and
It was *
"
Here," he cried,
"
is something worth
he threw down a pamphlet on the table.
Tract XC.
Dr. Newman has himself given us in his Apologia the
history of that famous Essay. It had been urged both
by friends and foes that so long
as the Tractarians con
tinued to accept the Thirty-nine Articles, there was, to say
the least, a strong bulwark against any Romeward move
ment. Drawn up to maintain the Church of England s
protest against Rome, the Articles had held their own for
three centuries, and they held it still.
"From the time," says Dr. Newman,
"
that I had entered
upon the duties of public Tutor at my College, when my
doctrinal views were very different from what they were in
1841, I had meditated a comment upon the Articles. Then,
when the movement was in its swing, friends had said to me,
What will you make of the Articles? But I did not share
the apprehension which their question implied. Whether, as
time went on, I should have been forced, by the necessities
of the original theory of the movement, to put on paper the
speculations which I had about them,
I am not able to con
jecture. The actual cause of my doing so in the beginning of
1841 was the restlessness, actual and prospective, of those who
1 "
Relying as I and most other Churchmen did on the honour and integrity
of Newman and his associates, and aware that they were in many points
maintaining the truth against its impugners, we did not openly oppose the
progress of Newman s opinions, though we could not concur with many of
his positions, or those of his immediate disciples, Ward, Oakeley, Robert
Wilberforce, and others." Narrative of Events connected with the Tracts for
the Times , p. 57.