ave examined myself. I
had thought myself safe, while I had their warrant for what I said. I
had exercised more faith than criticism in the matter. This did not
imply any broad misstatements on my part, arising from reliance on their
authority, but it implied carelessness in matters of detail. And this of
course was a fault.

But there was a far deeper reason for my saying what I said in this
matter, on which I have not hitherto touched; and it was this:--The most
oppressive thought, in the whole process of my change of opinion, was
the clear anticipation, verified by the event, that it would issue in
the triumph of Liberalism. Against the Anti-dogmatic principle I had
thrown my whole mind; yet now I was doing more than any one else could
do, to promote it. I was one of those who had kept it at bay in Oxford
for so many years; and thus my very retirement was its triumph. The men
who had driven me from Oxford were distinctly the Liberals; it was they
who had opened the attack upon Tract 90, and it was they who would gain
a second benefit, if I went on to abandon the Anglican Church. But this
was not all. As I have already said, there are but two alternatives, the
way to Rome, and the way to Atheism: Anglicanism is the halfway house on
the one side, and Liberalism is the halfway house on the other. How many
men were there, as I knew full well, who would not follow me now in my
advance from Anglicanism to Rome, but would at once leave Anglicanism
and me for the Liberal camp. It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to
wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level. I had done so in good
measure, in the case both of young men and of laymen, the Anglican _Via
Media_ being the representative of dogma. The dogmatic and the Anglican
principle were one, as I had taught them; but I was breaking the _Via
Media_ to pieces, and would not dogmatic faith altogether be broken up,
in the minds of a great number, by the demolition of the _Via Media_?
Oh! how unhappy this made me! I heard once from an eye-witness the
account of a poor sailor whose legs were shattered by a ball, in the
action off Algiers in 1816, and who was taken below for an operation.
The surgeon and the chaplain persuaded him to have a leg off; it was
done and the tourniquet applied to the wound. Then, they broke it to him
that he must have the other off too. The poor fellow said, "You should
have told me that, gentlemen," and deliberately unscrewed the instrument
and bled