There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise of a light footstep is distracting.  In such a condition were the authors of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the disorder was still upon them.  Beset by their horror of the nineteenth century, they sought for something most opposite to it, and therefore they turned to what they called Christian antiquity.  Had they judged of their own times fairly, had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth century as well as its evil, they would have looked for their remedy not to the second or third or fourth centuries, but the first; they would have tried to restore, not the Church of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, but the Church of St. Paul and of St. John.  Now, this it is most certain that they have not done.  Their appeal has been not to Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the dominant party in the ancient Church.  They have endeavoured to set those opinions and practices, under the name of apostolical tradition, on a level with the authority of the Scriptures.  But their unfortunate excitement has made them fail of doing even what they intended to do.  It may be true that all their doctrines may be found in the writings of those whom they call the Fathers; but the effect of their teaching is different because its proportions are altered.  Along with their doctrines, there are other points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the earlier Christians, which give to the whole a different complexion.  The Tracts for the Times do not appear to me to represent faithfully the language of Christian antiquity; they are rather its caricature.

Still more is this the case, when we compare the language of Mr. Newman and his friends with that of the great divines of the Church of England.  Granting that many of these believed firmly in apostolical succession; that one or two may have held general councils to be infallible; that some, provoked by the extravagances of the puritans, have spoken over-strongly about the authority of tradition; yet the whole works even of those who agree with.  Mr. Newman in these points, give a view of Christianity different from that of the Tracts, because these points, which in the Tracts stand forward without relief, are in our old divines tempered by the admixture of other doctrines, which, without contradicting them, do in fact alter their effect.  This applies most strongly, perhaps, to Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also of Bull and Pearson.  Pearson’s exposition of the article in the Creed relating to the Holy Catholic Church is very different from the language of Mr. Newman:  it is such as, with perhaps one single exception, might be subscribed by a man who did not believe in apostolical succession[2].  Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an independent authority, co-ordinate with Scripture, that he declares, contrary, I suppose, to all probability, that the Apostles’ Creed itself was but a deduction from our present Scriptures of the New Testament[3].  Undoubtedly the divines of the seventeenth century are more in agreement with the Tracts than the Reformers are; but it is by no means true that this agreement is universal.  There is but one set of writers whose minds are exactly represented by Mr. Newman and his friends, and these are the nonjurors.