justified, not only in believing ill, but in
speaking ill. I did believe what I said on what I thought to be good
reasons; but had I also a just cause for saying out what I believed? I
thought I had, and it was this, viz. that to say out what I believed was
simply necessary in the controversy for self-defence. It was impossible
to let it alone: the Anglican position could not be satisfactorily
maintained, without assailing the Roman. In this, as in most cases of
conflict, one party was right or the other, not both; and the best
defence was to attack. Is not this almost a truism in the Roman
controversy? Is it not what every one says, who speaks on the subject at
all? Does any serious man abuse the Church of Rome, for the sake of
abusing her, or because that abuse justifies his own religious position?
What is the meaning of the very word "Protestantism," but that there is
a call to speak out? This then is what I said: "I know I spoke strongly
against the Church of Rome; but it was no mere abuse, for I had a
serious reason for doing so."

But, not only did I think such language necessary for my Church's
religious position, but I recollected that all the great Anglican
divines had thought so before me. They had thought so, and they had
acted accordingly. And therefore I observe in the passage in question,
with much propriety, that I had not used strong language simply out of
my own head, but that in doing so I was following the track, or rather
reproducing the teaching, of those who had preceded me.

I was pleading guilty to using violent language, but I was pleading also
that there were extenuating circumstances in the case. We all know the
story of the convict, who on the scaffold bit off his mother's ear. By
doing so he did not deny the fact of his own crime, for which he was to
hang; but he said that his mother's indulgence when he was a boy, had a
good deal to do with it. In like manner I had made a charge, and I had
made it _ex animo_; but I accused others of having, by their own
example, led me into believing it and publishing it.

I was in a humour, certainly, to bite off their ears. I will freely
confess, indeed I said it some pages back, that I was angry with the
Anglican divines. I thought they had taken me in; I had read the Fathers
with their eyes; I had sometimes trusted their quotations or their
reasonings; and from reliance on them, I had used words or made
statements, which by right I ought rigidly to h