who admired the spirit of the age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred it.  Thus all things seemed combined against them:  the spirit of the period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind; they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without attempting to moderate its fury.  Already they were inclined to recognise the signs of a national apostasy.

But from this point they have themselves written their own history.—­Mr. Percival’s letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 80, 1841, is really a document of the highest value.  It acquaints us, from the very best authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times, and with the objects of their writers.  It tells us whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they hoped to allay the troubled waters.  Ecclesiastical history would be far more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its opponents.

Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from “the Socinian leaven, with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked of.”  But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the “matured account” of the principles of the writers, it is only said, “Whereas there seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the service of our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority:  i.e. without the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the alterations proposed.”  It would seem, therefore, that what was particularly deprecated was “the alteration of the Liturgy on insufficient authority,” without reference to any suspected character of the alteration in itself.  But at any rate, as all probability of any alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the beginning, became in a very short time the only one.

The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, the “something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century,” or, at least, the most effectual means of attaining to it, is declared to be the maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession.  Now let us hear, for it is most important, the grounds on which this doctrine is to be enforced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it.  I quote again from Mr. Percival’s letter.