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"It is absurd to call these doctrines forgotten truths": against Tractarian historiography

In his 1843 Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Bangor, Bishop Christopher Bethell - following the controversy surrounding the publication of Tract XC - refuted both the Low Church claim that the early Tracts propagated Roman errors and the suggestion, by the Tractarians, that such teachings "had been forgotten and lost" within Anglicanism until rediscovered by the Tracts.  (This characteristic Tractarian view has exerted a baleful influence on Anglican self-understanding.)  Against both, Bethell asserted the significance and vibrancy of the pre-Tractarian High Church tradition

The statements of these questions contained in the earlier publications of the writers of the Tracts, and the arguments employed in support of them, are the same as those used from the time of the Reformation by the eminent persons who have been looked up to as the most learned and orthodox of our Anglican Divines. Many persons who have taken part in these controversies have treated the opinions of the Tract writers on these questions as novelties or popish errors. On the other hand, some of their encomiasts have spoken of them as truths which had been forgotten and lost to the Church till they were rescued from oblivion by the writers of the Tracts. It may be allowed that they were kept much in the background, and that many members of our Church seemed disposed to surrender them altogether; but they never ceased to be held and avowed by a large body of both the Clergy and Laity of the Church of England. In illustration of this fact, we need only refer to the writings of Archdeacon Daubeny, and Mr. Jones of Nayland, whose works on the Church were widely circulated, and received with great approbation. The little tract of the last-named writer, called "A Catechism of the Church," contains in a small compass most of the arguments used by the writers of the Tracts when handling these questions. 

But if it is absurd to call these doctrines forgotten truths, it is not less so to call them novelties or popish errors. However widely we may differ from the Church of Rome in matters of detail connected with these questions, she agrees with us in the main principles which we advocate, because they are co-existent with the Church itself, — that the Church is a spiritual and visible body, founded by Christ for the maintenance and propagation of the truth, and the salvation of mankind; that in subordination to Christ it has been placed under rulers of its own, deriving their commission and authority in succession from the Apostles; that it has power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith (a power which our own Church professes to exercise under certain limitations); and that sacraments are not merely signs, but efficacious signs of grace; signs, that is, which in a subordinate and instrumental manner effect that which they symbolize. But these opinions (if opinions they may be called) are not Popish, but Christian, coeval with the Church, and either implied in its very existence, or grounded on authority of Scripture.

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