some influence on my opinions, in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me.. and making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator; -for while I considered myself predestined to salvation my mind did not dwell upon others, as fancying them simply passed over, not predestined to eternal death. I only thought of the mercy to myself.

The detestable doctrine last mentioned is simply denied and abjured, unless my memory strangely deceives me, by the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul-Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford . . What, I suppose, will strike any reader of Scott's history and writings is his bold unworldliness and vigorous independence of mind. He followed truth wherever it led him, beginning with Unitarianism, and ending in a zealous faith in the Holy Trinity. It was he who first planted deep in my mind that fundamental truth of religion.

Besides his unworldliness, what I also admired in Scott was his resolute opposition to Antinomianism, and the minutely practical character of his writings. They show him to be a true Englishman, and I deeply felt his influence; and for years I used almost as proverbs what I considered to be the scope and issue of his doctrine, "Holiness rather than peace," and "Growth the only true evidence of life."

Of the Calvinistic tenets, the only one which took root in my mind was the fact of heaven and hell, divine favour and divine wrath, of the justified and the unjustified. The notion that the regenerate and the justified were one and the same, and that the regenerate, as such, had the gift of perseverance, remained with me not many years, as I have said already.

The main Catholic doctrine of the warfare between the city of God and the powers of darkness was also deeply impressed upon my mind by a work of a character very opposite to Calvinism, Law's "Serious Call."

From this time I have held with a full assent and belief the doctrine of eternal punishment, as delivered by our Lord himself, in as true a sense as I hold that of eternal happiness, though I have tried in various ways to make that truth less terrible to the intellect.

Now I come to two other works which produced a deep impression on me in the same autumn of 1816, when I was fifteen years old, each contrary to each, and planting in me the seeds of an intellectual inconsistency which disabled me for a long course of years. I read Joseph Milner's Church History, and was nothing short of enamoured with the long extracts from St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and the other Fathers which I found there. I read them as being the religion of the Primitive Christians, but simultaneously with Milner I read Newton on the Prophecies, and, in consequence, became most firmly convinced that the Pope was the Anti-Christ predicted by Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John. My imagination was stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the year 1843; it had been obliterated from my reason and judgment at an earlier date. . .

In 1822 I came under very different influences from those to which I had hitherto been subjected. At that time, Mr. Whately, as he was then, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, for the few months he remained in Oxford, which he was leaving for good, showed great kindness to me. He renewed it in 1825, when he became Principal of Alban Hall, making me his Vice-Principal and Tutor. Of Dr. Whately I will speak presently; for from 1822 to 1825 I saw most of the present Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, at that time

Vicar of St. Mary's; and, when I took orders in 1824, and had a curacy in Oxford, then, during the long vacations, I was especially thrown into his company. . . He was the first who taught me to weigh my words, and to be cautious in my statements. He led me to that mode of limiting and clearing my sense in discussion and in controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate ideas, and of obviating mistakes by anticipation, which to my surprise has been since considered, even in quarters friendly to me, to savour of the polemics of Rome. He is a man of most exact mind himself, and he used to snub me severely on reading, as he was kind enough to do, the first Sermons that I wrote, and other compositions which I was engaged upon. Then as to doctrine, he was the means of great additions to my belief. As I have noticed elsewhere, he gave me the "Treatise on Apostolical Preaching," by Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from which I was led to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. In many other ways, too, he was of use to me on subjects semi-religious and semi-scholastic. . . One principle which I gained from him more directly bearing upon Catholicism, than any I have mentioned, is the doctrine of Tradition.

It was about the year 1823, I suppose, that I read Bishop Butler's "Analogy," the study of which has been to so many, as it was to me, an era in their religious opinions. Its inculcation of a visible Church, the oracle of truth and a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and of the historical character of Revelation, are characteristics of this great work which strike the reader at once; for myself, if I may attempt to determine what I most gained from it, it lay in two points, which are the underlying principles of a great portion of my teaching. First, the very idea of an analogy between the separate

works of God leads to the conclusion that the system which is of less importance is economically or sacramentally connected with the more momentous system, and of this conclusion the theory, to which I was inclined as a boy, viz. the unreality of material phenomena, is an ultimate resolution. At this time I did not make the distinction between matter itself and its phenomena, which is so necessary and so obvious in discussing the subject. Secondly, Butler's doctrine that Probability is the guide of life, led me, at least, under the teaching to which a few years later I was introduced, to the question of the logical cogency of faith, on which I have written so much. Thus to Butler I trace those two principles of my teaching which have led to a charge against me both of fancifulness and of scepticism.

And now as to Dr. Whately. I owe him a great deal. . . He, emphatically, opened my mind, and taught me to think and to use my reason. After being first noticed by him in 1822 I became very intimate with him in 1825, when I was his Vice-Principal at Alban Hall. I gave up that office in 1826, when I became Tutor of my College, and his hold upon me gradually relaxed. He had done his work towards me, or nearly so, when he had taught me to see with my own eyes and to walk with my own feet. His mind was too different from mine for us to remain long on one line. When I was diverging from him in opinion (which he did not like), I thought of dedicating my first book to him, in words to the effect that he had not only taught me to think, but to think for myself. What he did for me in point of religious opinion, was, first, to teach me the existence of the Church, as a substantive body or corporation; next, to fix in me those anti-Erastian views of church polity, which were one of the most prominent features of the Tractarian movement.

I am not aware of any other religious opinion which I owe to Dr. Whately. In his special theological tenets I had no sympathy. In the year 1827 he told me he considered I was Arianizing. The case was this: though at that time I had not read Bishop Bull's "Defensio," nor the Fathers, I was just then very strong for that ante-Nicene view of the Trinitarian doctrine, which some writers, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have accused of wearing a sort of Arian exterior. This is the meaning of a passage in Froude's Remains, in which he seems to accuse me of speaking against the Athanasian Creed. I had contrasted the two aspects of the Trinitarian doctrine, which are respectively presented by the Athanasian Creed and the Nicene. My criticisms were to the effect that some of the verses of the former Creed were unnecessarily scientific. This is a specimen of a certain disdain for Antiquity which had been growing on me now for several years. . . The truth is, I was. beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to moral. I was drifting in the direction of the Liberalism' of the day. I was rudely awakened from my dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows-illness and bereavement. ("Apologia," PP. 4-14.)

1 1 [Dr. Newman, in a note on this passage, explains that by Liberalism he means false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and, therefore, is out of place. Among such matters,” he continues, “are first principles of whatever kind; and of these the most sacred and momentous are especially to be reckoned, the truths of Revelation." He observes that this explanation is "the more necessary, because such great Catholics and distinguished writers as Count Montalembert and Father Lacordaire use the word in a favourable sense, and claim to be Liberals themselves," and adds, "I do not believe that it is possible for me to differ in any important matter from two men whom I so highly admire.