the action off Algiers in 1816, and who was taken below
for an operation. The surgeon and the chaplain persuaded him to have
a leg off; it was done and the tourniquet applied to the wound. Then,
they broke it to him that he must have the other off too. The poor
fellow said, "You should have told me that, gentlemen," and
deliberately unscrewed the instrument and bled to death. Would not
that be the case with many friends of my own? How could I ever hope
to make them believe in a second theology, when I had cheated them in
the first? with what face could I publish a new edition of a dogmatic
creed, and ask them to receive it as gospel? Would it not be plain to
them that no certainty was to be found anywhere? Well, in my defence
I could but make a lame apology; however, it was the true one, viz.
that I had not read the Fathers critically enough; that in such nice
points, as those which determine the angle of divergence between the
two Churches, I had made considerable miscalculations; and how came
this about? Why the fact was, unpleasant as it was to avow, that I
had leaned too much upon the assertions of Ussher, Jeremy Taylor, or
Barrow, and had been deceived by them. Valeat quantum--it was all
that _could_ be said. This then was a chief reason of that wording of
the retractation, which has given so much offence, and the following
letter will illustrate it:--

"April 3, 1844. I wish to remark on W.'s chief distress, that my
changing my opinion seemed to unsettle one's confidence in truth and
falsehood as external things, and led one to be suspicious of the new
opinion as one became distrustful of the old. Now in what I shall
say, I am not going to speak in favour of my second thoughts in
comparison of my first, but against such scepticism and unsettlement
about truth and falsehood generally, the idea of which is very
painful.

"The case with me, then, was this, and not surely an unnatural
one:--as a matter of feeling and of duty I threw myself into the
system which I found myself in. I saw that the English Church had a
theological idea or theory as such, and I took it up. I read Laud on
Tradition, and thought it (as I still think it) very masterly. The
Anglican Theory was very distinctive. I admired it and took it on
faith. It did not (I think) occur to me to doubt it; I saw that it
was able, and supported by learning, and I felt it was a duty to
maintain it. Further, on looking into Antiquity and reading the
Fathers,