ophetical
Office (1836-7) I express thus: "Now that our discussions draw to a
close, the thought, with which we entered on the subject, is apt to
recur, when the excitement of the inquiry has subsided, and weariness
has succeeded, that what has been said is but a dream, the wanton
exercise, rather than the practical conclusions of the intellect." And I
conclude the paragraph by anticipating a line of thought into which I
was, in the event, almost obliged to take refuge: "After all," I say,
"the Church is ever invisible in its day, and faith only apprehends it."
What was this, but to give up the Notes of a visible Church altogether,
whether the Catholic Note or the Apostolic?

* * * * *

The Long Vacation of 1839 began early. There had been a great many
visitors to Oxford from Easter to Commemoration; and Dr. Pusey's party
had attracted attention, more, I think, than in any former year. I had
put away from me the controversy with Rome for more than two years. In
my Parochial Sermons the subject had at no time been introduced: there
had been nothing for two years, either in my Tracts or in the British
Critic, of a polemical character. I was returning, for the Vacation, to
the course of reading which I had many years before chosen as especially
my own. I have no reason to suppose that the thoughts of Rome came
across my mind at all. About the middle of June I began to study and
master the history of the Monophysites. I was absorbed in the doctrinal
question. This was from about June 13th to August 30th. It was during
this course of reading that for the first time a doubt came upon me of
the tenableness of Anglicanism. I recollect on the 30th of July
mentioning to a friend, whom I had accidentally met, how remarkable the
history was; but by the end of August I was seriously alarmed.

I have described in a former work, how the history affected me. My
stronghold was Antiquity; now here, in the middle of the fifth century,
I found, as it seemed to me, Christendom of the sixteenth and the
nineteenth centuries reflected. I saw my face in that mirror, and I was
a Monophysite. The Church of the _Via Media_ was in the position of the
Oriental communion, Rome was, where she now is; and the Protestants were
the Eutychians. Of all passages of history, since history has been, who
would have thought of going to the sayings and doings of old Eutyches,
that _delirus senex_, as (I think) Petavius calls him,