The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-06 00:00:00

THE SUN,?:: LONDON, TUESDAY EVEININW" IVIARCHf 6,186 g.

commenced, though not one that could, strictly speak-

Lng, be accurately defined as any longer tractarian. The

Tracts had for some time ceased altogether by reason
_ _

of their repudiation collectively and still more by reason
of the express condemnation (authoritatively)—upon the

dictum of the abdomidal Board—of Tract Ninety. Another
and a perfectly congenial movement, we say, was there-
upon in 1845, so to speak evolved or superinduced out
of the old and now historical movement, which was con-

ducted so assiduously, as we have seen, during a period of
two-and-twenty years by the Tractarians. Appearing
companionably with the " Notes " of the Rev. F. Oakeley,
there has been recently issued moreover from the press
with the readily-granted consent of Dr. Newman himself
a reprint from the stereotyped Fourth Edition of
Tract Ninety; on Certain Passages of the Thirty-nine Ar-
ticks. By the Rev. J. H. Newman, B D., 1841. (Parker.)
A reprint preceded by a Historical Preface of peculiar
interest, panned during last Advent (1865) by the Rev. E.
B. Pusey, D.D.; and followed up by a letter addressed to
Mr. Justice Coleridge in 1811 by the Rev. John Keble,
—ono who is honoured and, by very many, beloved
also as the author of " The Christian Year,"— a com-
munication widely circulated at the time (privately)
but never before published. Aided by the combined
light thus afforded, in ono direction by the vivid
retrospect of Mr. Oakeley, and in another by the
lucubrations (illustrative of the bearing of Tract X 0)
penred in 1841 by Mr. Keble, and in 1865 by Dr. Pusey
himself—the reader of to-day can now appreciate more
accurately than might otherwise have been practicable,
the force, influence, and tendency of that even yet
bolder religious, argument of now-a-days, the original
source of which may be traced back to the movement set
on foot so many years ago by the Tractarian Controver-
sialists. Stepping into the lists, as it were, and
there accepting the gauge which had been flung
down to him in all knightly courtesy by his archi-
episcopal , challenger, the Regius Professor of He-
brew at Oxford forthwith frankly responded to Dr.
Manning's summons, as we have seen by the publication of
his " Eirenicon"—to which formal declaration of his
opinions, of more than his opinions—of his dearest hopes
and fondest aspirations—he has received already in his
turn many and some among them very notable, replies.
The Leading Topics of Dr. Pusey's Recent Work,. By the
Very Rev. Frederick Oakeley, M.A. (Longman) —assumes,
in a manner by right the foremost place among the answers
thus vouchsafed to Dr. Pusey, not only rapidly, but in very
truth con amore, for it is especially noticeable that there is
no sign in any way discernible upon either side of anger or
even irritation in the development of these recent discus-
sions. It assumes this foremost place, moreover not
only by right of priority, but also and in a particular
manner by reason of its being in some sense the vicari-
ous answer given to Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon" by the
Challenger himself. It was, in point of fact, according to
the very announcement upon the titlepage, that "Eirenicon"
itself " Reviewed in a Letter addressed (by permission) to

the Most Rev. H. E. Manning, D.D.," by Canon Oakeley.
It is true that at the bottom of the very first page of this .
pamphlet in reply to " The Eirenicon," the author took
great care to premise that the dignitary of his Church
to whom it was addressed, had in it no other responsi-
bility than such as might be implied by the fact of its
having thus appeared with his knowledge and approbation.
Still, the responsibility was thus implied by the very inti-
mation of its appearing under those circumstances. And
hence (so far) the reply of Mr. Oakeley was virtually the
anticipatory response of the Archbishop himself, was at
any rate the indication beforehand of what since then
have been Dr. Manning's own avowed opinions and senti-
ments in regard to the drift and tendency of "The Eireni-
con." The Register's Review ofDr. Pusey's Work: Reprinted
in Bvo. pp. 36 (George Cheek) —ls, in many respects, worthy
of remembrance and of preservation among the brochures
issued from the press, now by one, now by another, of the
more noteworthy disputants. And it is worthy of
this consideration not merely by reason of its intrinsic
value as a candid resume of the arguments advanced
by Dr. Pusey in his doubtless well-meant but wholly
and utterly impracticable project for the negotiation of
a compromise. For, after all, it really does amount to that
—to the suggestion of a compromise where a compro-
mise is clearly altogether out of the question! But
it is of yet further importance and value in the furtherance
and development of this remarkable Religious Contro-
versy, because of its having elicited—this able review
of the Eirenicon in the Register—two very important let-
ters from Dr Pusey himself, in further illustration of the
eagerness of his hopes in regard to the Reunion of the
Churches : and together with those two letters, others also
from Dr. Newman and Canon Oakeley. A correspondence
that altogether imparts to this pamphlet-reprint of the criti-
cism a very appreciable value and importance. Two other
answers, however, have yet more recently been accorded to
" The Eirenicon" which have not failed to eclipse in
interest and attraction all other criticisms or commen-
taries, especially such as were purely anonymous.
A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on his Recent
Eirenicon. By John Henry Newman, D.D. Bvo., pp. 159.
(Longman).—May be described as a direct response, as the
other (afterwards to be particularised) may be defined as
an indirect response to "T ho Eirenicon," or reply simply by
implication. From Dr. Newman's answer to Dr. Pusey we
have already quoted the remark that the latter's " Eireni-
con" was, after all, but little better than:an olive branch
flung from a catapult. According to an expression put forth
in the current number of Macmillan—a magazine which
still, by the way, very shabbily persists (in spite of the
Apologia)in paradoxically taunting Dr. Newman with a sort
of honest unveracity—the Rejoinder to "The Eirenicon" is
as a shaft from a silver bow ! In style it is as perfect as
anything that Dr. Newman has ever written. Its main
purpose might be described as a vindication, not simply of
its author, but of the whole mass of his co-religionists
from the charges known, in their fearful aggregate, as the
imputation of Mariolatry. Those charges, numbering them
all up, one by one, in language painfully clear and distinct
—and so numbering them up manifestly with a very shud-
der of abhorrence —Dr. Newman sweeps aside as accusa-
tions that are to him simply incomprehensible and revolt-
ing. " Sentiments such as these," he says, " I never knew
of till I read your book, nor, as I think, do the vast ma-
jority of English Catholics know them." Nay, more—
" They seem to me," he exclaims, " They seem to me like a
bad dream!" So repugnant does he declare them to bo to
his very soul and conscience. The Reunion of Christendom:
a Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, &c. By Archbishop Man-
ning, Bvo. pp. 113. (Longman)—ls the indirect, or implied, .
response to Dr. Pusey's " Eirenicon" already referred to as
having emanated from the successor of Cardinal Wiseman as
head of the Roman Catholio Hierarchy in England—from
that very dignitary, in point of fact, to whose courteous, even
it might be said, courtly challenge to Dr. Pusey the production
by the latter of his "Eirenicon" is directly attributable.
' This same Pastoral of Archbishop Manning's, by the
way, is in truth quite manifestly the mere application or
enforcement of the views set forth by the same eminent
hand—only it should be added with more elaboration,
and it might even be said with more deliberation, in
that work of his immediately preceding it The
' Temporal Mission of the Holy
Ghost, or Reason and
Revelation. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westmin-
ster (Longman)
-A Treatise that, regarded simply in the
light of a theological exposition, assumes to itself a
weight and an importance that even here in England are
ungrudgingly recognised and admitted. It is but another
evidence, though probably among them all by far the most
remarkable, of the industry, of the enthusiasm even, with
which Archbishop Manning manifestly has undertaken to
acquit himself of the responsibilities devolving upon him
in his capacity as Cardinal Wiseman's successor, as the
hierarchical head, that is, of the Roman Catholic body here
in England. Not very long prior to the demise of his
predecessor, he had discussed in a wholely uncompro-
mising spirit no doubt, but with singular precision and
distinctness in the enunciation of his views, one of the
most delicate and complicated problems of our da),
a problem still requiring a definitive solution either
one way or other in the very heart of Christendom.
The Temporal Power of the Pope, by H. E. Manning, D.D.
(Burns)—Was the title of the recent disquisition, in which
that same most delicate and complicated problem was
calmly, and by reason of its very calmness, almost, it might
be said, irritatingly taken into consideration. However alien
to English hearts were the sentiments, or rather the con-
victions, therein expressed, it was impossible not to re-
spect convictions so outspokenly and uncompromisingly
avouched. We who, as a lettered community, had
come long since to know by heart, as it were, that magni-
ficent eulogium of Lord Macaulay's--.all things considered
perhaps the noblest passage ever penned by that great mas-
ter of English rhetoric —the one beginning "There is
not and there never has been," and ending with the world-
famous allusion to the New Zealander, taking his stand
upon a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the
ruins of St. Paul's—can surely
comprehend quite readily
the entertaining of views such as those articu-
lated by Dr. Manning in his bold and almost defiant
treatise, a treatise that if for no other reason assumes its
place, by right of its lucidity, side by side with the well-
known and far subtler treatise " Du Pape," penned many
years previously by the hand of the Count Joseph De Maistre.
The See of Peter. By T. W. Allies, M.A. (Burns) A
work of which a third Edition has but just now been pub-
lished, undertook upon a very different, though upon an
entirely congenial system, to insist upon the recognition
of the claims of the Roman Primacy, as the Rock of
Foundation, as the Centre of Unity, and as the Source
of Jurisdiction. Even here, in this reissue of Mr.
Allies' work, in relation to the Roman Pontificate, we
have that writer's views also upon the " Eirenicon,"
views set forth in a letter to Dr. Pusey, ostensibly in the
form of a Preface to the Third Edition of this same book
on the "See of Peter" penned by the author of the still more
comprehensive work relating to the kindred theme of "The
Formation of Christendom."

Reverting, however, to the Pastoral in which Arch-
bishop Manning has descanted at length, not upon
the Formation, but upon " The Reunion, of Christen-
dom,",we would here observe, in conclusion, that if any-
thing could possibly tend to dissipate this strangely
cherished daydream of Dr. Pusey's (enunciated in the
" Eirenicon") and of so many others besides Dr. Pusey
and his own immediate followers—the daydream that
is to say of a compromise being effected between
two churches, one of which admits of no possibility