To me this seems a wonderful charge; why, even had I been
quite sure that Rome was the true Church, the Anglican Bishops would
have had no just subject of complaint against me, provided I took no
Anglican oath, no clerical duty, no ecclesiastical administration. Do
they force all men who go to their Churches to believe in the 39
Articles, or to join in the Athanasian Creed? However, I was to have
other measure dealt to me; great authorities ruled it so; and a great
controversialist, Mr. Stanley Faber, thought it a shame that I did not
leave the Church of England as much as ten years sooner than I did. He
said this in print between the years 1847 and 1849. His nephew, an
Anglican clergyman, kindly wished to undeceive him on this point. So, in
the latter year, after some correspondence, I wrote the following
letter, which will be of service to this narrative, from its
chronological notes:--

"Dec. 6, 1849. Your uncle says, 'If he (Mr. N.) will declare, _sans
phrase_, as the French say, that I have laboured under an entire
mistake, and that he was not a concealed Romanist during the ten years
in question,' (I suppose, the last ten years of my membership with the
Anglican Church,) 'or during any part of the time, my controversial
antipathy will be at an end, and I will readily express to him that I am
truly sorry that I have made such a mistake.'

"So candid an avowal is what I should have expected from a mind like
your uncle's. I am extremely glad he has brought it to this issue.

"By a 'concealed Romanist' I understand him to mean one, who, professing
to belong to the Church of England, in his heart and will intends to
benefit the Church of Rome, at the expense of the Church of England. He
cannot mean by the expression merely a person who in fact is benefiting
the Church of Rome, while he is intending to benefit the Church of
England, for that is no discredit to him morally, and he (your uncle)
evidently means to impute blame.

"In the sense in which I have explained the words, I can simply and
honestly say that I was not a concealed Romanist during the whole, or
any part of, the years in question.

"For the first four years of the ten, (up to Michaelmas, 1839,) I
honestly wished to benefit the Church of England, at the expense of the
Church of Rome:

"For the second four years I wished to benefit the Church of England
without prejudice to the Church of Rome:

"At the beginning of the ninth year (Michaelmas, 1843)