whole matter, no doubt, was Providential--what other explanation
could there be?

The first step, it was clear, was to purge the Church of her
shames and her errors. The Reformers must be exposed; the yoke of
the secular power must be thrown off; dogma must be reinstated in
its old pre-eminence; and Christians must be reminded of what
they had apparently forgotten--the presence of the supernatural
in daily life. 'It would be a gain to this country,' Keble
observed, 'were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more
gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows
itself to be.' 'The only good I know of Cranmer,' said Hurrell
Froude, 'was that he burned well.' Newman preached, and soon the
new views began to spread. Among the earliest of the converts was
Dr Pusey, a man of wealth and learning, a professor, a canon of
Christ Church, who had, it was rumoured, been to Germany. Then
the Tracts for the Times were started under Newman's editorship,
and the Movement was launched upon the world.

The Tracts were written 'with the hope of rousing members of our
Church to comprehend her alarming position ... as a man might
give notice of a fire or inundation, to startle all who heard
him'. They may be said to have succeeded in their objective, for
the sensation which they caused among clergymen throughout the
country was extreme. They dealt with a great variety of
questions, but the underlying intention of all of them was to
attack the accepted doctrines and practices of the Church of
England. Dr. Pusey wrote learnedly on Baptismal Regeneration; he
also wrote on Fasting. His treatment of the latter subject met
with considerable disapproval, which surprised the Doctor. 'I was