d about my
general state of mind from the autumn of 1839 to the summer of 1841;
and, having done so, I go on to narrate how my new misgivings affected
my conduct, and my relations towards the Anglican Church.

When I got back to Oxford in October, 1839, after the visits which I had
been paying, it so happened, there had been, in my absence, occurrences
of an awkward character, compromising me both with my Bishop and also
with the authorities of the University; and this drew my attention at
once to the state of the Movement party there, and made me very anxious
for the future. In the spring of the year, as has been seen in the
Article analyzed above, I had spoken of the excesses which were to be
found among persons commonly included in it:--at that time I thought
little of such an evil, but the new views, which had come on me during
the Long Vacation, on the one hand made me comprehend it, and on the
other took away my power of effectually meeting it. A firm and powerful
control was necessary to keep men straight; I never had a strong wrist,
but at the very time, when it was most needed, the reins had broken in
my hands. With an anxious presentiment on my mind of the upshot of the
whole inquiry, which it was almost impossible for me to conceal from men
who saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation, who came
perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me, and having a categorical
_yes_ or _no_ to their questions,--how could I expect to say any thing
about my actual, positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or
consoling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts of their
own? Nay, how could I, with satisfaction to myself, analyze my own mind,
and say what I held and what I did not hold? or how could I say with
what limitations, shades of difference, or degrees of belief, I still
held that body of Anglican opinions which I had openly professed and
taught? how could I deny or assert this point or that, without injustice
to the new light, in which the whole evidence for those old opinions
presented itself to my mind?

However, I had to do what I could, and what was best, under the
circumstances; I found a general talk on the subject of the Article in
the Dublin Review; and, if it had affected me, it was not wonderful,
that it affected others also. As to myself, I felt no kind of certainty
that the argument in it was conclusive. Taking it at the worst, granting
that the Anglican Church had not the