Tract 90

Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, better known as Tract 90, was a theological pamphlet written by the English theologian and churchman John Henry Newman and published 25 January 1841.

[1] It is the most famous and the most controversial of the Tracts for the Times produced by the first generation of the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement.

In Tract 90, Newman engaged in a detailed examination of the 39 Articles, suggesting that the negations of the 39 Articles (a key doctrinal standard for the Church of England) were not directed against the authorized creed of Catholics, but only against popular errors and exaggerations.

The purpose of Tract 90, in common with so many others in the series, was to establish the contention that the fundamental ecclesiological identity of the Church of England was Catholic rather than Protestant.

He wrote, “I would not hold office in a Church which would not allow my sense of the Articles" and "There were no converts to Rome, till after the condemnation of Tract 90.