Editing Hugh M'Neile (section)

== Roman Catholicism and the Anglo-Catholics ==
In the simplest terms, the doctrines and the rituals peculiar to the [[Anglo-Catholics]] were considered, by Evangelicals such as M‘Neile,<ref>This view was also held by Queen Victoria; at whose urging the [[Public Worship Regulation Act 1874|Public Worship Regulation Act (1874)]] was passed. (See below)</ref> to be a blatant violations of the promise that all of the Anglican clergy routinely made: viz., to adhere to the forms of service as specified in the ''[[Book of Common Prayer]]'' – in particular, to what it demanded and what it disallowed – and to adhere to the "[[Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion]]".

For M‘Neile, [[Catholic Church|Roman Catholicism]] endangered "Britain’s providential mission to defend and propagate reformed Christianity": this "providential mission" was a mission of "nationalism" – a concept "contain[ing] an inherent conviction of objective national superiority" – rather than one of "patriotism" (Wolffe, 1991, pp.&nbsp;308–309).<ref>M‘Neile was one of the first to use the term "nationalism". He did so when he delivered a speech, "Nationalism in Religion", to the England Protestant Association at the Exeter Hall in London on 8 May 1839.</ref>

The [[Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829]], enacted principally to avert the threat of religious civil war in Ireland, abolished many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics that had operated in the United Kingdom for more than a century. This distressed many Anglicans such as M‘Neile, who were already fighting against the influence of Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England.
::"As the [[Tractarian movement]] in the Church of England developed, M‘Neile became one of its most zealous opponents and the most conspicuous leader of the evangelical party. In 1840, he published ''Lectures on the Church of England'' and in 1846 (the year after [[John Henry Newman#Conversion to Catholicism|John Henry Newman's secession to Rome]]), ''The Church and the Churches'', in which he maintained with much dialectical skill the evangelical doctrine of the "invisible Church" in opposition to the teaching of [[John Henry Newman|Newman]] and [[Edward Bouverie Pusey|Pusey]]" (McNeile, 1911, p. 265).<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=McNeile, Hugh|volume=17|pages=265–266}}</ref>

In April 1845, when speaking in the [[British House of Commons|House of Commons]] on the [[Maynooth Grant|Maynooth Endowment Bill]], [[Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|Thomas Macaulay]] characterized M‘Neile as "the most powerful representative of uncompromising Protestant opinion in the country" (McNeile, 1911, p.&nbsp;265).<ref name="EB1911"/>