nd, lastly, when
men first had said of me, "You will see, _he_ will go, he is
only biding his time, he is waiting the word of command from
Rome," and, when after all, after my arguments and denunciations
of former years, at length I did leave the Anglican Church for
the Roman, then they said to each other, "It is just as we said:
we knew it would be so."

This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty years ago,
who took no more than an external and common sense view of what
was going on. And partly the tradition, partly the effect of
that feeling, remains to the present time. Certainly I consider
that, in my own case, it is the great obstacle in the way of my
being favourably heard, as at present, when I have to make my
defence. Not only am I now a member of a most un-English
communion, whose great aim is considered to be the extinction of
Protestantism and the Protestant Church, and whose means of
attack are popularly supposed to be unscrupulous cunning and
deceit, but how came I originally to have any relations with the
Church of Rome at all? did I, or my opinions, drop from the sky?
how came I, in Oxford, _in gremio Universitatis_, to present
myself to the eyes of men in that full blown investiture of
Popery? How could I dare, how could I have the conscience, with
warnings, with prophecies, with accusations against me, to
persevere in a path which steadily advanced towards, which ended
in, the religion of Rome? And how am I now to be trusted, when
long ago I was trusted, and was found wanting?

It is this which is the strength of the case of my Accuser
against me;--not the articles of impeachment which he has framed
from my writings, and which I shall easily crumble into dust,
but the bias of the court. It is the state of the atmosphere; it
is the vibration all around, which will echo his bold assertion
of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against me, which
takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing it is
only ingenious, and that when my statements are unanswerable,
there is always something put out of sight or hidden in my
sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men
are apt to jump, that when much is imputed, much must be true,
and that it is more likely that one should be to blame, than
that many should be mistaken i