to death. Would not that be the case with many friends of my
own? How could I ever hope to make them believe in a second theology,
when I had cheated them in the first? With what face could I publish a
new edition of a dogmatic creed, and ask them to receive it as gospel?
Would it not be plain to them that no certainty was to be found any
where? Well, in my defence I could but make a lame apology; however, it
was the true one, viz. that I had not read the Fathers cautiously
enough; that in such nice points, as those which determine the angle of
divergence between the two Churches, I had made considerable
miscalculations. But how came this about? why, the fact was, unpleasant
as it was to avow, that I had leaned too much upon the assertions of
Ussher, Jeremy Taylor, or Barrow, and had been deceived by them. Valeat
quantum,--it was all that _could_ be said. This then was a chief reason
of that wording of the Retractation, which has given so much offence,
because the bitterness, with which it was written, was not
understood;--and the following letter will illustrate it:--

"April 3, 1844. I wish to remark on William's chief distress, that my
changing my opinion seemed to unsettle one's confidence in truth and
falsehood as external things, and led one to be suspicious of the new
opinion as one became distrustful of the old. Now in what I shall say, I
am not going to speak in favour of my second thoughts in comparison of
my first, but against such scepticism and unsettlement about truth and
falsehood generally, the idea of which is very painful.

"The case with me, then, was this, and not surely an unnatural one:--as
a matter of feeling and of duty I threw myself into the system which I
found myself in. I saw that the English Church had a theological idea or
theory as such, and I took it up. I read Laud on Tradition, and thought
it (as I still think it) very masterly. The Anglican Theory was very
distinctive. I admired it and took it on faith. It did not (I think)
occur to me to doubt it; I saw that it was able, and supported by
learning, and I felt it was a duty to maintain it. Further, on looking
into Antiquity and reading the Fathers, I saw such portions of it as I
examined, fully confirmed (e.g. the supremacy of Scripture). There was
only one question about which I had a doubt, viz. whether it would
_work_, for it has never been more than a paper system....

"So far from my change of opinion having any fair tendency to