to the Bishop of
Oxford in the spring of 1841; but 2. I could not give up my duties
towards the many and various minds who had more or less been brought
into it by me; 3. I expected or intended gradually to fall back into
Lay Communion; 4. I never contemplated leaving the Church of England;
5. I could not hold office in her, if I were not allowed to hold the
Catholic sense of the Articles; 6. I could not go to Rome, while she
suffered honours to be paid to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints
which I thought incompatible with the Supreme, Incommunicable Glory
of the One Infinite and Eternal; 7. I desired a union with Rome under
conditions, Church with Church; 8. I called Littlemore my Torres
Vedras, and thought that some day we might advance again within the
Anglican Church, as we had been forced to retire; 9. I kept back all
persons who were disposed to go to Rome with all my might.

And I kept them back for three or four reasons; 1, because what I
could not in conscience do myself, I could not suffer them to do; 2,
because I thought that in various cases they were acting under
excitement; 3, while I held St. Mary's, because I had duties to my
Bishop and to the Anglican Church; and 4, in some cases, because I
had received from their Anglican parents or superiors direct charge
of them.

This was my view of my duty from the end of 1841, to my resignation
of St. Mary's in the autumn of 1843. And now I shall relate my view,
during that time, of the state of the controversy between the
Churches.

As soon as I saw the hitch in the Anglican argument, during my course
of reading in the summer of 1839, I began to look about, as I have
said, for some ground which might supply a controversial basis for
my need. The difficulty in question had affected my view both of
Antiquity and Catholicity; for, while the history of St. Leo showed
me that the deliberate and eventual consent of the great body of the
Church ratified a doctrinal decision, it also showed that the rule of
Antiquity was not infringed, though a doctrine had not been publicly
recognised as a portion of the dogmatic foundation of the Church,
till centuries after the time of the apostles. Thus, whereas the
Creeds tell us that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic,
I could not prove that the Anglican communion was an integral part of
the One Church, on the ground of its being Apostolic or Catholic,
without reasoning in favour of what are commonly called the Ro