unsettle
persons as to truth and falsehood viewed as objective realities, it
should be considered whether such change is not _necessary_, if truth be
a real objective thing, and be made to confront a person who has been
brought up in a system _short of_ truth. Surely the _continuance_ of a
person, who wishes to go right, in a wrong system, and not his _giving
it up_, would be that which militated against the objectiveness of
Truth, leading, as it would, to the suspicion, that one thing and
another were equally pleasing to our Maker, where men were sincere.

"Nor surely is it a thing I need be sorry for, that I defended the
system in which I found myself, and thus have had to unsay my words. For
is it not one's duty, instead of beginning with criticism, to throw
oneself generously into that form of religion which is providentially
put before one? Is it right, or is it wrong, to begin with private
judgment? May we not, on the other hand, look for a blessing _through_
obedience even to an erroneous system, and a guidance even by means of
it out of it? Were those who were strict and conscientious in their
Judaism, or those who were lukewarm and sceptical, more likely to be led
into Christianity, when Christ came? Yet in proportion to their previous
zeal, would be their appearance of inconsistency. Certainly, I have
always contended that obedience even to an erring conscience was the way
to gain light, and that it mattered not where a man began, so that he
began on what came to hand, and in faith; and that any thing might
become a divine method of Truth; that to the pure all things are pure,
and have a self-correcting virtue and a power of germinating. And though
I have no right at all to assume that this mercy is granted to me, yet
the fact, that a person in my situation _may_ have it granted to him,
seems to me to remove the perplexity which my change of opinion may
occasion.

"It may be said,--I have said it to myself,--'Why, however, did you
_publish_? had you waited quietly, you would have changed your opinion
without any of the misery, which now is involved in the change, of
disappointing and distressing people.' I answer, that things are so
bound up together, as to form a whole, and one cannot tell what is or is
not a condition of what. I do not see how possibly I could have
published the Tracts, or other works professing to defend our Church,
without accompanying them with a strong protest or argument against
Rome.