fficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological
creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me
look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and in the same
degree to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in
the Real Presence.

There is one remaining source of my opinions to be mentioned, and
that far from the least important. In proportion as I moved out of
the shadow of liberalism which had hung over my course, my early
devotion towards the fathers returned; and in the long vacation of
1828 I set about to read them chronologically, beginning with St.
Ignatius and St. Justin. About 1830 a proposal was made to me by Mr.
Hugh Rose, who with Mr. Lyall (afterwards Dean of Canterbury) was
providing writers for a theological library, to furnish them with a
history of the principal councils. I accepted it, and at once set to
work on the Council of Nicaea. It was launching myself on an ocean
with currents innumerable; and I was drifted back first to the
ante-Nicene history, and then to the Church of Alexandria. The work
at last appeared under the title of "The Arians of the Fourth
Century;" and of its 422 pages, the first 117 consisted of
introductory matter, and the Council of Nicaea did not appear till the
254th, and then occupied at most twenty pages.

I do not know when I first learnt to consider that antiquity was the
true exponent of the doctrines of Christianity and the basis of the
Church of England; but I take it for granted that Bishop Bull, whose
works at this time I read, was my chief introduction to this
principle. The course of reading which I pursued in the composition
of my work was directly adapted to develop it in my mind. What
principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene period was the great
Church of Alexandria, the historical centre of teaching in those
times. Of Rome for some centuries comparatively little is known. The
battle of Arianism was first fought in Alexandria; Athanasius, the
champion of the truth, was Bishop of Alexandria; and in his writings
he refers to the great religious names of an earlier date, to Origen,
Dionysius, and others who were the glory of its see, or of its
school. The broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away;
the philosophy, not the theological doctrine; and I have drawn out
some features of it in my volume, with the zeal and freshness, b