I will say here frankly, that this sort of charge is a matter which
I cannot properly meet, because I cannot duly realize it. I have never
had any suspicion of my own honesty; and, when men say that I was
dishonest, I cannot grasp the accusation as a distinct conception, such
as it is possible to encounter. If a man said to me, "On such a day and
before such persons you said a thing was white, when it was black," I
understand what is meant well enough, and I can set myself to prove an
_alibi_ or to explain the mistake; or if a man said to me, "You tried to
gain me over to your party, intending to take me with you to Rome, but
you did not succeed," I can give him the lie, and lay down an assertion
of my own as firm and as exact as his, that not from the time that I was
first unsettled, did I ever attempt to gain any one over to myself or to
my Romanizing opinions, and that it is only his own coxcombical fancy
which has bred such a thought in him: but my imagination is at a loss in
presence of those vague charges, which have commonly been brought
against me, charges, which are made up of impressions, and
understandings, and inferences, and hearsay, and surmises. Accordingly,
I shall not make the attempt, for, in doing so, I should be dealing
blows in the air; what I shall attempt is to state what I know of myself
and what I recollect, and leave to others its application.

While I had confidence in the _Via Media_, and thought that nothing
could overset it, I did not mind laying down large principles, which I
saw would go further than was commonly perceived. I considered that to
make the _Via Media_ concrete and substantive, it must be much more than
it was in outline; that the Anglican Church must have a ceremonial, a
ritual, and a fulness of doctrine and devotion, which it had not at
present, if it were to compete with the Roman Church with any prospect
of success. Such additions would not remove it from its proper basis,
but would merely strengthen and beautify it: such, for instance, would
be confraternities, particular devotions, reverence for the Blessed
Virgin, prayers for the dead, beautiful churches, munificent offerings
to them and in them, monastic houses, and many other observances and
institutions, which I used to say belonged to us as much as to Rome,
though Rome had appropriated them and boasted of them, by reason of our
having let them slip from us. The principle, on which all this turned,
is brought out in