l more certain than that I have hands
and feet, would last into the next life, and that I was elected to
eternal glory. This belief faded away at the age of twenty-one; but it
had had some influence on my opinions, in isolating me from the objects
which surrounded me, in confirming my mistrust of the reality of
material phenomena, and in making me rest in the thought of two, and two
only, absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my
Creator. At the age of fifteen also I was deeply impressed by the works
of Thomas Scott, by Law's "Serious Call," by Joseph Milner's "Church
History," and by Newton, "On the Prophecies." Newton's book stained my
imagination, till 1843, with the doctrine that the Pope was Antichrist.
At this same time, the autumn of 1816, I realised that it would be the
will of God that I should lead a single life, and this anticipation
strengthened my feeling of separation from the visible world.

In 1822, at Oxford, I came under new influences. Dr. Hawkins, then vicar
of St. Mary's, a man of most exact mind, led me to the doctrine of
tradition, and taught me to anticipate that before many years there
would be an attack made upon the books and the canon of Scripture. He
gave me Summer's "Treatise on Apostolic Preaching," by which I was led
to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration. I now read Butler's "Analogy," from which I
learned two principles which underlie much of my teaching: first, that
the idea of an analogy between the separate works of God leads to the
conclusion that the less important system is sacramentally connected
with the more momentous system; and secondly, Butler's doctrine that
probability is the guide of life led me to the question of the logical
cogency of faith.

I owe much to Dr. Whately, who taught me the existence of the Church as
a substantive corporation, and fixed in me those anti-Erastian views of
Church polity which characterized the Tractarian movement. That
movement, unknown to ourselves, was taking form. Its true author, John
Keble, had left Oxford for a country parish, but his "Christian Year"
had waked a new music in the hearts of thousands. His creative mind
repeated, in a new form, Butler's two principles: that material
phenomena are the types and instruments of real things unseen; and that,
in religious certitude, faith and love give to probability a force which
it has not in itself.

Hurrell Froude, one o