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Tract 90; On Certain Passages in the 39 Articles. 1841
Tract 90 On Certain Passages in the 39 Articles 1841 Author:John Henry Newman General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1866 Original Publisher: J.H. and J. Parker Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ... more »can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PREFACE. A Quarter of a century has all but elapsed since Newman, in Tract 90, proposed explanations of certain of the Articles, some of whicli bear upon things taught in the Roman Church, some, not. Various circumstances concurred to prevent his work being then appreciated as it deserved. We had all been educated in a traditional system which had practically imported into the Articles a good many principles which were not contained in them nor suggested by them, yet which were habitually identified with them. The writers of " The Tracts for the Times," as they became more acquainted with Antiquity and the Fathers, gradually and independently of one another laid these aside. Thus, when we learned the value of genuine tradition, we examined the Articles, and found that Article VI., so far from maintaining " private judgment," or that " Scripture is its own interpreter," rather implied the contrary, and that Article XX., by asserting that "the Church hath authority in controversies of faith," emphatically denied unlimited private judgment. As we knew more of the authority which the (Ecumenical Councils had ever had in the Church, we came to observe that the XXIst Article, in declaring that " General Councils may err, and sometimes have erred," implied at least that some Councils had never erred, such as those which had established the faith which the Church received. In like way, we saw that since mencould not be justified by a dead faith, when Article XI. said that we were "justified by faith only," it must mean, "justified by a living faith, i. e. a faith working...« less