the prospect of it, and had no apprehensions as to the
experiment; but in 1840, while my purpose was honest, and my grounds of
reason satisfactory, I did nevertheless recognize that I was engaged in
an _experimentum crucis_. I have no doubt that then I acknowledged to
myself that it would be a trial of the Anglican Church, which it had
never undergone before,--not that the Catholic sense of the Articles had
not been held or at least suffered by their framers and promulgators,
not that it was not implied in the teaching of Andrewes or Beveridge,
but that it had never been publicly recognized, while the interpretation
of the day was Protestant and exclusive. I observe also, that, though my
Tract was an experiment, it was, as I said at the time, "no _feeler_";
the event showed this; for, when my principle was not granted, I did not
draw back, but gave up. I would not hold office in a Church which would
not allow my sense of the Articles. My tone was, "This is necessary for
us, and have it we must and will, and, if it tends to bring men to look
less bitterly on the Church of Rome, so much the better."

This then was the second work to which I set myself; though when I got
to Littlemore, other things interfered to prevent my accomplishing it at
the moment. I had in mind to remove all such obstacles as lay in the way
of holding the Apostolic and Catholic character of the Anglican
teaching; to assert the right of all who chose, to say in the face of
day, "Our Church teaches the Primitive Ancient faith." I did not conceal
this: in Tract 90, it is put forward as the first principle of all, "It
is a duty which we owe both to the Catholic Church, and to our own, to
take our reformed confessions in the most Catholic sense they will
admit: we have no duties towards their framers." And still more
pointedly in my Letter, explanatory of the Tract, addressed to Dr. Jelf,
I say: "The only peculiarity of the view I advocate, if I must so call
it, is this--that whereas it is usual at this day to make the
_particular belief of their writers_ their true interpretation, I would
make the _belief of the Catholic Church such_. That is, as it is often
said that infants are regenerated in Baptism, not on the faith of their
parents, but of the Church, so in like manner I would say that the
Articles are received, not in the sense of their framers, but (as far as
the wording will admit or any ambiguity requires it) in the one Catholic
sense."

A thi