Historical Notes on the 71.actarian Movement. By the Rev. Fred.
Oakeley. (Longman and Co.)—These four essays are reprinted from The Dublin Review, and are a pleasant sketch of a movement in the Church which as a matter of history has a permanent interest. The writer of .course regards it "in the light of a marvellous attestation to the divine authority of Catholic truth." It is, however, a little odd that he does not sea that the present movement towards what be calls "heretical insubor- dination" is as essentially the outcome of the Tractarian movement as the conversions to Rome of which he boasts. Whatever Tractarianism did for Romanism as against Anglicanism, it has done and will do far more, we believe, to strengthen the principle of the authority of private judgment in matters of faith. The battle is in reality between liberty and despotism in religion, between freedom of thought and clerical infalli- bility. The extravagances of the former are but waves, which cannot alter the constant level of the ocean. The certainty of the latter is but the stagnant immobility of a Dead Sen.
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