“The three great obstacles which stood in the way of Catholicism’s crumpling up the mental defences of English Protestantism, were: the King James Bible, the Prayer Book, and the Thirty-nine Articles” (Wilkinson, B. G., 1930, p. 154 Kindle edition).
Benjamin Wilkinson wrote a remarkable and revealing book (Our Authorized Version Vindicated) in 1930 in defence of the King James Bible. Essential to his argument was that the Catholic Church and its Jesuit foot soldiers had never given up their efforts to bring the Church of England back under their control. He revealed that the plot involved Jesuits, Catholic prelates, and traitorous English scholars and clergy to bring the English Church back into the Catholic fold and control. The treacherous leader of the traitors was the brilliant scholar, John Henry Newman who, through his erudite and convincing tracts or essays, praised and promoted Catholicism and vilified Protestantism; and they were circulated throughout Oxford University – hence, the name Tractarian or Oxford Movement.
Wilkinson writes: “Newman wrote in 1841 to a Roman Catholic, ‘Only through the English Church can you act upon the English nation. I wish, of course, our Church [C of E] should be consolidated, with and through your [Catholic] communion, for its sake, and your sake, and for the sake of unity’. He and his associates believed that Protestantism was Antichrist. Faber, one of the associates of Newman in the Oxford Movement, himself a brilliant scholar, said, ‘Protestantism is perishing: what is good in it is by God’s mercy being gathered into the garners of Rome….My whole life, God willing, shall be one crusade against the detestable and diabolical heresy of Protestantism’” (Wilkinson p. 151).
And: “Before the English people could go the way of the Continent and be brought to question their great English Bible, the course of their thinking must be changed. Much had to be done to discredit, in their eyes, the Reformation……Despite all the persecutions they (the Jesuits) have met with, they have not abandoned England, where there are a greater number of Jesuits than in Italy; there are Jesuits in all classes of society; in Parliament; among the English clergy; among the Protestant laity, even in the higher stations” (Wilkinson quoting a converted priest who had served the Catholic Church as a Professor of Theology, Official Theological Censor of the Inquisition – p. 145).
Wilkinson identifies the key point which paved the way to the success of Tractarianism in changing the English Church from Protestant to Catholic. “…if we were to single out any one outstanding event in the history of this Romanizing Movement prior to the Revision of the Bible in 1870, we would point to Tract 90 as that event….With Tract 90, Newman levelled his blow at the Thirty-nine Articles. With a surpassing skill which the Church of England never satisfactorily met, he, point by point, contended that Roman Catholicism could be taught in the Church of England under the Thirty-nine Articles – p. 154.
The betrayal of the English Church was highly successful in bringing the clergy to the feet of the Pope where they could kiss his cloven foot in subjection to him. Wilkinson says: “…the Tractarians had become dominant at Oxford. Hort is thankful that the High Church movement is gaining ground in both universities – Oxford and Cambridge…. Oxford still retains her Romanizing tendencies, and many bishops of the Church of England have wholly surrendered to the Catholic positions which gained ground” – p. 156.
Newman had blind-sided the Anglican clergy with Tract 90 and its reinterpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, the Statement of Faith of the Church of England, by showing that the Articles can be interpreted to suit Catholic theology. Another blow to the heart of the Church was the introduction of liberal theology, otherwise known as Higher Criticism or Modernism. This theological system was more scholarly than the evangelical and Catholic theology of the time, supporting it with the latest in archaeological discoveries of earlier manuscripts than the Textus Receptus, and of ruined ancient cities and culture.
“….had it not been for Jesuitism, Modernism might never have been a force in the Protestant Church. As the historian Froude says: ‘But for the Oxford Movement, skepticism [unbelief] might have continued a harmless speculation of a few philosophers. The attitude of Roman Catholics to the King James Version has ever been one of bitter hostility” (Wilkinson p. 168).
“Furthermore, in his Dublin Review (June 1883), Newman says that the Authorized Version ‘is notoriously unfair where doctrinal questions are at stake’, and speaks of its dishonest renderings’. This shows the Catholic attitude of mind toward the King James Version. Cardinal Newman was invited to sit with the English New Testament Revision Committee. He refused. Nevertheless, with his reputation for biblical knowledge, with the profound admiration Dr Hort never failed to express for him, and with his Napoleonic leadership in breaking down Protestantism, the fact that he was invited is indicative of the influence which the Oxford Movement had on revision” – p. 169.
“Doctors Westcott and Hort, who come prominently before us later as leaders in connection with Bible revision, lent their influence on the side of the Ritualists [Tractarians] – Wilkinson p. 167.
“We have already spoken of the influence of the movement on certain Revisers, when we brought forth Doctors Hort and Westcott, as in sympathy with, and assisting the movement of ritualism. One need only to scan the list of the men who sat on the English New Testament Revision Committee, review certain acts in their history and read their writings, to know all too well that the majority were actually of the Oxford Movement), or in sympathy with the same. Dr Thirwall, who has been pointed out as the leader in introducing German textual criticism into England, and who has been described by two authors as a man of princely intellect, came out strongly in defence of the Tractarians when they were assailed” – p. 170.
Westcott and Hort had a long list of unorthodox-to-heretical tendencies, e.g. devotion to Mary, ritualism, priestcraft, love of the Catholic mass and transubstantiation, evolution, socialism, spiritism (Westcott formed the Ghostly Guild so that he and his cronies could communicate with spirits), among other doctrines and practices, all of which are documented in their own words in letters to their sons (mainly).
It was Westcott and Hort who produced a new NT text (WH) to replace the Textus Receptus (TR), the Greek text of the dominant Byzantine family of Greek texts. It was Westcott and Hort who organised the Convocation for a revision of the KJV, but who, reportedly, ambushed the members by presenting their critical text of the Alexandrian family of texts, in order to supplant the TR and the KJV. And a revision, a necessary revision, was achieved; a revision so radical that it became another version altogether.
The scope of the Jesuit-inspired Oxford Movement’s take-over of the Church of England was monumental in its cunning, planning, and betrayal by its own clergy, of the standards of the Church or England.
Reference
Wilkinson, B. G. “Our Authorized Bible Vindicated” 1930, Kindle edition, Teach Services, Inc.; 2nd edition (2 December 2014).