The Oxford Movement

Tracts for the Times

THE APPEAL TO THE ANCIENT AND UNDIVIDED CHURCH

Let us understand what is meant by saying that Antiquity is of authority in religious questions…. Whatever doctrine the primitive ages unanimously attest, whether by consent of the Fathers, or by Councils, or by the events of history, or by controversies, or in whatever way, whatever may fairly and reasonably be considered to be the universal belief of those ages, is to be received as coming from the Apostles….

Catholicity, Antiquity, and consent of the Fathers, is the proper evidence of the fidelity or apostolicity of a professed Tradition. Infant baptism, for instance, must have been appointed by the Apostles, or we should not find it received so early, so generally, with such a silence concerning its introduction. The Christian faith is dogmatic, because it has been so accounted in every Church up to this day. The washing of the feet, enjoined in the 13th chapter of St John, is not a necessary rite or a Sacrament, because it has never been so observed: did Christ or His Apostles intend otherwise, it would follow (what is surely impossible), that a new and erroneous view of our Lord’s words arose even in the Apostles’ lifetime, and was from the first everywhere substituted for the true. Again; fabrics for public worship are allowable and fitting under the Gospel, though our Lord contrasts worshipping at Jerusalem or Gerizim with worshipping in spirit and in truth, because they ever have been so esteemed. The Sabbatical rest is changed from the Sabbath to the Lord’s day, because it has never been otherwise since Christianity was a religion.

It follows that Councils or individuals are of authority, when we have reason to suppose that they are trustworthy informants concerning Apostolical Tradition…. On the other hand, the most highly gifted and religious persons are liable to error, and are not to be implicitly trusted where they profess to be recording, not a fact, but their own opinion. Christians know no Master on earth; they defer, indeed, to the judgment, obey the advice, and follow the example, of good men in ten thousand ways, but they do not make their opinions part of what is emphatically called the Faith. Christ alone is the Author and Finisher of Faith in all its senses; His servants do but witness it, and their statements are then only valuable when they are testimonies, not deductions or conjectures.

THE APPEAL TO ANTIQUITY ONLY IN ESSENTIALS

Some persons are apt to think, when Antiquity is talked about, that it implies an actual return to the exact forms of opinion and modes of feeling which are known to have prevailed in those earlier times; and they forthwith begin to talk about the nineteenth century, and the impossibility of our retrograding, and the folly and disadvantage of too narrow a standard, and the fallacy of thinking that whatever is ancient is, as such, an object of imitation. Simeon on his pillar, Antony in the mountain, Councils in full debate, and popular elections, incense and oil, insufflations and stoles with crosses on them, complete their notion of Ancient Religion, when they hear it recommended. Nothing has been said by those whose writings have been so severely animadverted on lately, to show that they are antiquarian fanatics, urging the ancient doctrine and discipline upon the present age in any other except essential points, and not allowing fully that many things are unessential, even if abstractedly desirable. As to these points, let the age acknowledge and submit itself to them in proportion as it can enter into them with heart and reality; in proportion as the reception of them would be, in its case, the natural development of Church principles.

This should be understood; if persons, in this day, do not feel sufficiently for such things spontaneously, we are not going to force such things upon them as a piece of imitation. No good could come of merely imitating the Fathers for imitation’s sake; rather, such servility is likely to prevent the age from developing Church principles so freely as it might otherwise do.

We cannot, if we would, move ourselves back into the times of the Fathers: we must, in spite of ourselves, be churchmen of our own era, not of any other, were it only for this reason, that we are born in the nineteenth century, not the fourth.

WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIALS?

Let it be clearly understood what is meant by the word “fundamentals” or “essentials”. I do not mean by it what is “necessary to be believed for salvation by this particular person or that.” No one but God can decide what compass of faith is required of given individuals. The necessary Creed varies, for what we know, with each individual to whom the Gospel is addressed; one is bound to know and believe more, or more accurately, another less. Even the minutest and most precise details of truth may have a claim upon the faith of a theologian;, whereas the peasant or artisan may be accepted on a vague and rudimental faith-which is like seeing a prospect at a distance-such as a child has, who accepts the revealed doctrine in the letter, contemplating and embracing its meaning, not in its fun force, but as far as his capacity goes.

Our purpose is to determine merely this: what doctrines the Church Catholic will teach indefectibly, what doctrines she must insist as a condition of communion, what doctrines she must rescue from the scrutiny of Private judgment; in a word, what doctrines are the foundation of the Church.

If the Church Catholic is to be indefectible in faith, we have but to enquire what that common faith is which she now holds everywhere as the original deposit, and we shall have ascertained what we seek. If we adopt this course, we shall find what is commonly called essential to be that in which all branches of the Church agree.

By John Henry Newman