the early Fathers, and sought to discover some way out of his
difficulties in the complicated labyrinth of ecclesiastical
history. After months spent in the study of the Monophysite
heresy, the alarming conclusion began to force itself upon him
that the Church of England was perhaps in schism. Eventually he
read an article by a Roman Catholic on St. Augustine and the
Donatists, which seemed to put the matter beyond doubt. St.
Augustine, in the fifth century, had pointed out that the
Donatists were heretics because the Bishop of Rome had said so.
The argument was crushing; it rang in Newman's ears for days and
nights; and, though he continued to linger on in agony for six
years more, he never could discover any reply to it. All he could
hope to do was to persuade himself and anyone else who liked to
listen to him that the holding of Anglican orders was not
inconsistent with a belief in the whole cycle of Roman doctrine
as laid down at the Council of Trent. In this way he supposed
that he could at once avoid the deadly sin of heresy and
conscientiously remain a clergyman in the Church of England; and
with this end in view, he composed Tract No. 90.

The object of the Tract was to prove that there was nothing in
the Thirty-nine Articles incompatible with the creed of the Roman
Church. Newman pointed out, for instance, that it was generally
supposed that the Articles condemned the doctrine of Purgatory;
but they did not; they merely condemned the Romish doctrine of
Purgatory-- and Romish, clearly, was not the same thing as Roman.
Hence it followed that believers in the Roman doctrine of
Purgatory might subscribe the Articles with a good conscience.
Similarly, the Articles condemned 'the sacrifices of masses', but
they did not condemn 'the sacrifice of the Mass'. Thus, the Mass