authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts
for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us
whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they
hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far
more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and
views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
opponents.

Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which
abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of
the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of
that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical
succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven,
with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the
parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked
of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal
statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the
"matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said,
"Whereas there seems great danger at present of attempts at unauthorized
and inconsiderate innovation as in other matters so especially in the
service of our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt that
may be made to alter the Liturgy on insufficient authority: i.e. without
the exercise of the free and deliberate judgment of the Church on the
alterations proposed." It would seem, therefore, that what was
particularly deprecated was "the alteration of the Liturgy on
insufficient authority," without reference to any suspected character of
the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as all probability of any
alteration in the Liturgy vanished very soon after the publication of
the tracts began, the other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the
apostolical succession, as it had been the principal one from the