Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/184

168 formed a good starting-point for their work. The public were given the opinions of these men in what were called the "Tracts for the Times" These productions at first consisted only of four pages each, but they ultimately reached the size of treatises. One of them, written by Pusey in 1837, had 42 pages, and another Tract reached to 424 pages.

In his "Apologia," Newman tells us what he thought of this new movement in its infancy. "I had a supreme confidence" he says, "in our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early Teachers of the Church, and which was registered and attested in the Anglican formularies and by the Anglican Divines."

The Tractarians, in the first place, thus desired to give to the people the doctrines of the Church in opposition to the movement known as liberalism in the Church. They maintained that there was a visible Church with sacraments and rites which were, as Newman expressed it, "channels of invisible Grace."

Their efforts had not attracted much notice before Keble preached at S. Mary's, Oxford, a sermon entitled, "The National Apostasy." It was this sermon which brought the Tractarians formally before the public, and it was from this event that Newman considers their Movement to have really begun. In 1833 there was formed "An Association of friends of the Church." A draft of its objects and aims was drawn up and submitted to the public. Its object was, in the first place, "To maintain pure and inviolate the doctrine, the discipline, and the services of the Church; that is, to