Contra Tractarians and Latitudinarians, "our Church"

From his 1843 Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bangor, Bishop Christopher Bethell - following the publication of Tract XC - responds to the "the state of excitement to which the writings and opinions usually called Tractarian, have given occasion", and in doing so asserts principles of the High Church tradition:

In the first place they appear to have thrown (the phrase is, I believe, their own) themselves into a system, or, I should rather say, have been following the phantom of a system, which they call Catholic, and hold up to admiration as something infinitely superior to the imperfect and lifeless Catholicism of our own Church. For I cannot discover that they have any clear or definite notion of the system which they admire, or have drawn any precise line between Catholic truths and traditions, and Uncatholic errors and corruptions of doctrine and discipline. We must not, however, suffer ourselves to be led astray by the cloudy grandeur of this or any system. We, at least, who have neither leisure nor opportunities for following it out in detail, and tracing it upward to its sources, shall content ourselves with regarding that branch of the Church Catholic and Apostolic to which our services are devoted, as the representative of Catholic truth and the Catholic system; as holding those doctrines and possessing that form of government which the whole Church of Christ, dispersed throughout the world, held and possessed in her best and purest ages. And we shall not allow ourselves to admire or long after any tenets or practices which our Church has rejected as superstitious, or laid aside as unnecessary, under the imposing name of parts of the great Catholic system ...

But while you feel no sympathy with the erroneous views and opinions which have emanated from this school of Theology, you will be equally on your guard against the latitudinarian practices and opinions which they have opposed with earnestness and success. You will not rank among the errors of Tractarianism a strong attachment to the polity and orders of your own Church, as a faithful representative of the Church Catholic and Apostolic; a veneration for her liturgy, and attention to her forms, and ceremonies, and directions; a just sense of the dignity and efficacy of the Sacraments; and a conviction that preaching is not the only means of grace, nor hearing sermons the main part of religion.

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