though it was latent, and had never led me to distrust my own convictions, that my mind had not found its ultimate rest, and that in some sense or other I was on journey. During the same passage across the Mediterranean in which I wrote, "Lead Kindly Light," I also wrote the verses which are found in the "Lyra" under the head of "Providences,"1 beginning: “When I look back." This was in 1833; and, since I have begun this narrative, I have found a memorandum under the date of Sept. 7, 1829, in which I speak of myself as "now in my rooms in Oriel College slowly advancing, &c., and led on by God's hand blindly, not knowing whither he is taking me." But, whatever this presentiment be worth, it was no protection against the dismay and disgust, which I felt, in consequence of the dreadful misgiving, of which I have been relating the history. The one question was, What was I to do? I had to make up my mind for myself, and others could not help me. I determined to be guided, not by my imagination, but by my reason. And this I said over and over again in the years which followed, both in conversation and in private letters. Had it not been for this severe resolve, I should have been a Catholic sooner than I was. Moreover, I felt on consideration a positive doubt, on the other hand, whether the suggestion did not come from below. Then I said to myself, Time alone can solve that question. It was my business to go on as usual, to obey those convictions to which I had so long surrendered myself, which still had possession of me, and on which my new thoughts had no direct bearing. That new conception of things should only so far influence me, as it had a logical claim to do so. If it came from above, it would come again ;-so I trusted, -and with more definite outlines and greater cogency and

1 [They will be found at p. 178 of "Verses on Various Occasions," under the title of "Semita Justorum."]

E

consistency of proof. I thought of Samuel, before he

"knew the word of the

Lord;" and therefore I went and lay down to sleep again. ("Apologia," pp. 114–120.)

XIII.

THREE FURTHER BLOWS.

IN the summer of 1841, I found myself at Littlemore, without any harrass or anxiety on my mind. I had determined to put aside all controversy, and I set myself down to my translation of St. Athanasius; but, between July and November, I received three blows which broke

me.

I. I had got but a little way in my work, when my trouble returned on me. The ghost had come a second time. In the Arian history I found the very same phenomenon, in a far bolder shape, which I had found in the Monophysite. I had not observed it in 1832. Wonderful that this should come upon me! I had not sought it out. I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far from the controversies of the day, on what is called a "metaphysical " subject; but I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then. The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called "the extreme party." As I am not writing a work of controversy, I need not enlarge upon the argument; I have said something on the subject in a volume from which I have already quoted.

2. I was in the misery of this new unsettlement when a

second blow came upon me. The Bishops, one after another, began to charge against me. It was a formal, determinate movement. This was the real understanding; that on which I had acted on the first appearance of Tract Ninety, had come to nought. I think the words which had then been used to me were, that "perhaps two or three of them might think it necessary to say something in their charges;" but by this time they had tided over the difficulty of the Tract, and there was no one to enforce the understanding. They went on in this way, directing charges at me, for three whole years. I recognized it as a condemnation; it was the only one that was in their power. . .

3. As if this were not enough, there came the affair of the Jerusalem Bishopric. . . At the very time that the Anglican Bishops were directing their censures upon me for avowing an approach to the Catholic Church not closer than I believed the Anglican formularies would allow, they were, on the other hand, fraternizing, by their act or by their sufferance, with Protestant bodies, and allowing them to put themselves under an Anglican Bishop, without any renunciation of their errors, or regard to their due reception of Baptism and Confirmation; while there was great reason to suppose that the said Bishop was intended to make converts from the orthodox Greeks and the schismatical Oriental bodies, by means of the influence of England. This was the third blow, which finally shattered my faith in the Anglican Church. That Church was not only forbidding any sympathy or concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it actually was courting an intercommunion with Protestant Prussia and the heresy of the Orientals. The Anglican Church might have the Apostolical succession, as had the Monophysites, but such acts as were in progress led me to the gravest

suspicion, not that it would soon cease to be a Church, but that, since the 16th century, it had never been a Church all along. . .

Looking back two years afterwards, on the abovementioned and other acts, on the part of Anglican Ecclesiastical authorities, I observed: "Many a man might have held an abstract theory about the Catholic Church, to which it was difficult to adjust the Anglican,-might have admitted a suspicion, or even painful doubts, about the latter, yet never have been impelled onwards, had our rulers preserved the quiescence of former years; but it is the corroboration of a present, living, and energetic heterodoxy which realizes and makes them practical; it has been the recent speeches and acts of authorities, who had so long been tolerant of Protestant error, which have given to enquiry and to theory its force and its edge."

As to the project of a Jerusalem Bishopric, I never heard of any good or harm it has ever done, except what it has done for me, which many think a great misfortune, and I one of the greatest of mercies. It brought me on to the beginning of the end. ("Apologia,” pp. 139–146.)

XIV.

FROM 1841 TO 1845.

FROM the end of 1841, I was on my death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church, though at the time I became aware of it only by degrees. . . My dear friend, Dr. Russell, the present President of Maynooth, had perhaps more to do with my conversion than any one else. He called upon me in passing through Oxford in

the summer of 1841, and I think I took him over some of the buildings of the University. He called again another summer, on his way from Dublin to London. I do not recollect that he said a word on the subject of religion on either occasion. He sent me at different times several letters; he was always gentle, mild, unobtrusive, uncontroversial. He let me alone. He also gave me one or two books. Veron's Rule of Faith and some Treatises of the Wallenburghs, was one; a volume of St. Alphonso Liguori's Sermons, was another.

Now it must be observed that the writings of St. Alphonso, as I knew them by the extracts commonly made from them, prejudiced me as much against the Roman Church as anything else, on account of what was called their "Mariolatry;" but there was nothing of the kind in this book. I wrote to ask Dr. Russell whether anything had been left out in the translation; he answered that there certainly were omissions in one Sermon about the Blessed Virgin. This omission, in the case of a book intended for Catholics, at least showed that such passages as are found in the works of Italian Authors were not acceptable to every part of the Catholic world. Such devotional manifestations in honour of Our Lady had been my great crux as regards Catholicism; I say frankly, I do not fully enter into them now; I trust I do not love her the less, because I cannot enter into them. They may be fully explained and defended, but sentiment and taste do not run with logic; they are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England. But, over and above England, my own case was special: from a boy I had been led to consider that my Maker and I, His creature, were the two beings, luminously such, in rerum naturâ. I will not here speculate, however, about my own feelings. Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church