ou may show this in any quarter you please."

All my then hopes, all my satisfaction at the apparent fulfilment of
those hopes was at an end in 1843. It is not wonderful then, that in May
of that year, when two out of the three years were gone, I wrote on the
subject of my retiring from St. Mary's to the same friend, whom I had
consulted upon it in 1840. But I did more now; I told him my great
unsettlement of mind on the question of the Churches. I will insert
portions of two of my letters:--

"May 4, 1843.... At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own
convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of
the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's
mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His
dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than
that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments,
arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of
Faith.

"You will now understand what gives edge to the Bishops' Charges,
without any undue sensitiveness on my part. They distress me in two
ways:--first, as being in some sense protests and witnesses to my
conscience against my own unfaithfulness to the English Church, and
next, as being samples of her teaching, and tokens how very far she is
from even aspiring to Catholicity.

"Of course my being unfaithful to a trust is my great subject of
dread,--as it has long been, as you know."

When he wrote to make natural objections to my purpose, such as the
apprehension that the removal of clerical obligations might have the
indirect effect of propelling me towards Rome, I answered:--

"May 18, 1843.... My office or charge at St. Mary's is not a mere
_state_, but a continual _energy_. People assume and assert certain
things of me in consequence. With what sort of sincerity can I obey the
Bishop? how am I to act in the frequent cases, in which one way or
another the Church of Rome comes into consideration? I have to the
utmost of my power tried to keep persons from Rome, and with some
success; but even a year and a half since, my arguments, though more
efficacious with the persons I aimed at than any others could be, were
of a nature to infuse great suspicion of me into the minds of
lookers-on.

"By retaining St. Mary's, I am an offence and a stumbling-block. Persons
are keen-sighted enough to make out what I think on certain points, and
then