Tracts for the Times: Volume One, 1833-1834: Tracts 1-46 and Records of the Church 1-18

“What if, by the good providence of God, the line which began with the Apostles Peter and Paul should have continued even to this very day?” —John William Bowden, Tract 29When figures like John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and John Keble looked out at the early nineteenth-century Church of England, they did not see many signs of hope. They feared that Prayer Book revision would leave lines from the Creeds and Psalms on the cutting-room floor. Meanwhile, Parliament seemed more and more content to settle religious matters as if the Church were just another department of state. And an extreme evangelicalism questioned the importance of that ancient treasure, the sacramental system of the Church. So, in 1833, the group that would soon be known as the Tractarians decided to issue a trumpet call, summoning clergy, scholars, and laypeople to defend the ancient deposit of the faith. In the first year alone, forty-six tracts and eighteen excerpts of patristic sources went viral.This volume collects together that first year of the Tracts for the Times , allowing readers to encounter anew the wisdom and the passion of the Oxford Movement. In page after page, bishops are depicted—not as government functionaries—but as direct descendants of the apostles themselves. Patristic sources are lauded as steady guides for thought and devotion. And all are invited into the rich pattern of the Church’s life, its feasts and fasts, its frequent celebration of Holy Communion, and its daily cycle of prayer, which saturates time with Scripture. Indeed, the Tractarians aimed at nothing less than a second Reformation. Only time would prove the difficulty of such an effort.About the EditorsJohn Henry Newman (1801-1890) served as the original editor of the Tracts for the Times . Before his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, he was regarded as the leader of the Oxford Movement. In 2019, Newman was canonized as a saint in the Roman Church by Pope Francis.Christopher Poore is the editor of Seminary Street Press. Formerly a Regenstein Fellow at the University of Chicago Divinity School, he is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Virginia Theological Seminary.About the Library of Anglican TheologyPublished by Seminary Street Press, the Library of Anglican Theology seeks to provide newly typeset editions of important works from the Anglican tradition for a wide array of contemporary readers—Christian laypeople, historians of the Church, seminary students, bishops, priests, deacons, catechists, and theologians. The Library will provide a rich foundation on which to build as Anglicans continue to theologically engage with the pressing questions of our time.