ed to be lawful. The following considerations have
much reconciled my feelings to your conclusion.

"1. I do not think that we have yet made fair trial how much the English
Church will bear. I know it is a hazardous experiment,--like proving
cannon. Yet we must not take it for granted that the metal will burst in
the operation. It has borne at various times, not to say at this time, a
great infusion of Catholic truth without damage. As to the result, viz.
whether this process will not approximate the whole English Church, as a
body, to Rome, that is nothing to us. For what we know, it may be the
providential means of uniting the whole Church in one, without fresh
schismatizing or use of private judgment."

Here I observe, that, what was contemplated was the bursting of the
_Catholicity_ of the Anglican Church, that is, my _subjective idea_ of
that Church. Its bursting would not hurt her with the world, but would
be a discovery that she was purely and essentially Protestant, and would
be really the "hoisting of the engineer with his own petar." And this
was the result. I continue:--

"2. Say, that I move sympathies for Rome: in the same sense does Hooker,
Taylor, Bull, &c. Their _arguments_ may be against Rome, but the
sympathies they raise must be towards Rome, _so far_ as Rome maintains
truths which our Church does not teach or enforce. Thus it is a question
of _degree_ between our divines and me. I may, if so be, go further; I
may raise sympathies _more_; but I am but urging minds in the same
direction as they do. I am doing just the very thing which all our
doctors have ever been doing. In short, would not Hooker, if Vicar of
St. Mary's, be in my difficulty?"--Here it may be objected, that Hooker
could preach against Rome and I could not; but I doubt whether he could
have preached effectively against Transubstantiation better than I,
though neither he nor I held that doctrine.

"3. Rationalism is the great evil of the day. May not I consider my post
at St. Mary's as a place of protest against it? I am more certain that
the Protestant [spirit], which I oppose, leads to infidelity, than that
which I recommend, leads to Rome. Who knows what the state of the
University may be, as regards Divinity Professors in a few years hence?
Any how, a great battle may be coming on, of which Milman's book is a
sort of earnest. The whole of _our_ day may be a battle with this
spirit. May we not leave to another age _its own_ evil,-