tinctly the points, in which Rome has departed
from Primitive Christianity, viz. "the practical idolatry, the virtual
worship of the Virgin and Saints, which are the offence of the Latin
Church, and the degradation of moral truth and duty, which follows from
these." And again: "We cannot join a Church, did we wish it ever so
much, which does not acknowledge our orders, refuses us the Cup, demands
our acquiescence in image-worship, and excommunicates us, if we do not
receive it and all other decisions of the Tridentine Council."

His opponent answers these objections by referring to the doctrine of
"developments of gospel truth." Besides, "The Anglican system itself is
not found complete in those early centuries; so that the [Anglican]
principle [of Antiquity] is self-destructive." "When a man takes up this
_Via Media_, he is a mere _doctrinaire_;" he is like those, "who, in
some matter of business, start up to suggest their own little crotchet,
and are ever measuring mountains with a pocket ruler, or improving the
planetary courses." "The _Via Media_ has slept in libraries; it is a
substitute of infancy for manhood."

It is plain, then, that at the end of 1835 or beginning of 1836, I had
the whole state of the question before me, on which, to my mind, the
decision between the Churches depended. It is observable that the
question of the position of the Pope, whether as the centre of unity, or
as the source of jurisdiction, did not come into my thoughts at all; nor
did it, I think I may say, to the end. I doubt whether I ever distinctly
held any of his powers to be _de jure divino_, while I was in the
Anglican Church;--not that I saw any difficulty in the doctrine; not
that in connexion with the history of St. Leo, of which I shall speak by
and by, the idea of his infallibility did not cross my mind, for it
did,--but after all, in my view the controversy did not turn upon it; it
turned upon the Faith and the Church. This was my issue of the
controversy from the beginning to the end. There was a contrariety of
claims between the Roman and Anglican religions, and the history of my
conversion is simply the process of working it out to a solution. In
1838 I illustrated it by the contrast presented to us between the
Madonna and Child, and a Calvary. The peculiarity of the Anglican
theology was this,--that it "supposed the Truth to be entirely objective
and detached, not" (as in the theology of Rome) "lying hid in the bosom
of