hops' charges? after the
Jerusalem "abomination[8]?" Well, this could be said; still we were not
nothing: we could not be as if we never had been a Church; we were
"Samaria." This then was that lower level on which I placed myself, and
all who felt with me, at the end of 1841.

[8] Matt. xxiv. 15.

To bring out this view was the purpose of Four Sermons preached at St.
Mary's in December of that year. Hitherto I had not introduced the
exciting topics of the day into the Pulpit[9]; on this occasion I did. I
did so, for the moment was urgent; there was great unsettlement of mind
among us, in consequence of those same events which had unsettled me.
One special anxiety, very obvious, which was coming on me now, was, that
what was "one man's meat was another man's poison." I had said even of
Tract 90, "It was addressed to one set of persons, and has been used and
commented on by another;" still more was it true now, that whatever I
wrote for the service of those whom I knew to be in trouble of mind,
would become on the one hand matter of suspicion and slander in the
mouths of my opponents, and of distress and surprise to those on the
other hand, who had no difficulties of faith at all. Accordingly, when I
published these Four Sermons at the end of 1843, I introduced them with
a recommendation that none should read them who did not need them. But
in truth the virtual condemnation of Tract 90, after that the whole
difficulty seemed to have been weathered, was an enormous disappointment
and trial. My Protest also against the Jerusalem Bishopric was an
unavoidable cause of excitement in the case of many; but it calmed them
too, for the very fact of a Protest was a relief to their impatience.
And so, in like manner, as regards the Four Sermons, of which I speak,
though they acknowledged freely the great scandal which was involved in
the recent episcopal doings, yet at the same time they might be said to
bestow upon the multiplied disorders and shortcomings of the Anglican
Church a sort of place in the Revealed Dispensation, and an intellectual
position in the controversy, and the dignity of a great principle, for
unsettled minds to take and use,--a principle which might teach them to
recognize their own consistency, and to be reconciled to themselves, and
which might absorb and dry up a multitude of their grudgings,
discontents, misgivings, and questionings, and lead the way to humble,
thankful, and tranquil thoughts;--and this w