A layman might reply simply, _On the truth_, and Shorthouse, as we shall see, had such an answer to make, though couched in more circuitous language. But not so the Tract: I fear we have neglected the real ground on which our authority is built--OUR APOSTOLICAL DESCENT. That was the Tractarian, or Oxford, Movement, which united the claims of the imagination with the claims of priestcraft, and by a logical development led the way to Rome. In the Church at large, the new leaven worked its way slowly and confusedly, but in the end it created a tripartite division, which threatened for a while to bring the whole establishment down in ruins. The first of these, the High Church, is indeed essentially a continuation, and to a certain extent a vulgarisation, of the Oxford Movement. What had been a kind of epicurean vision of holy things, reserved for a few chosen souls, was now made the vehicle of a wide propaganda. The beautiful rites of the ancient worship were a powerful seduction to wean the rich from worldly living and no less a tangible compensation for the poor and outcast. At a later date, under the stress of persecution, the leaders of the party formulated the so-called Six Points on which they made a final stand: (1) The eastward position; (2) the eucharistic vestments; (3) altar candles; (4) water mingled with the wine in the chalice; (5) unleavened bread; (6) incense--without these there was no worship; barely, if at all, salvation. The Low Church was, in large part, a state of pure hostility to these followers of the Scarlet Woman; it was loudly Protestant, confining the virtue of religion to an acceptance of the dogmas of the Reformation, distrusting the symbolical appeal to the imagination, and finding the truth too often in what was merely opposition to Rome. Contrary to both, and despised by both, was the Broad Church, which held the sacraments so lightly that, with the Dean of Westminster, it joined in communion with Unitarians, and which treated dogma so cavalierly that, with Maurice, it thought a subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles the quickest way to liberty of belief. Yet I cannot see that this boasted freedom did much more than introduce a kind of license in the interpretation of words; it transferred the field of battle from forms to formulæ.