rgence became clear only gradually, and the hope
that after all it was only temporary and would ultimately disappear was
long kept up by the tenacity with which Mr. Newman, in spite of
misgivings and disturbing thoughts, still recognised the gifts and
claims of the English Church. And on the other hand, the bulk of the
party, and its other Oxford leaders, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, Mr. Isaac
Williams, Mr. Marriott, were quite unaffected by the disquieting
apprehensions which were beginning to beset Mr. Newman. With a humbling
consciousness of the practical shortcomings of the English Church, with
a ready disposition to be honest and just towards Rome, and even to
minimise our differences with it, they had not admitted for a moment any
doubt of the reality of the English Church. The class of arguments which
specially laid hold of Mr. Newman's mind did not tell upon them--the
peculiar aspect of early precedents, about which, moreover, a good deal
of criticism was possible; or the large and sweeping conception of a
vast, ever-growing, imperial Church, great enough to make flaws and
imperfections of no account, which appealed so strongly to his
statesmanlike imagination. Their content with the Church in which they
had been brought up, in which they had been taught religion, and in
which they had taken service, their deep and affectionate loyalty and
piety to it, in spite of all its faults, remained unimpaired; and
unimpaired, also, was their sense of vast masses of practical evil in
the Roman Church, evils from which they shrank both as Englishmen and as
Christians, and which seemed as incurable as they were undeniable.
Beyond the hope which they vaguely cherished that some day or other, by
some great act of Divine mercy, these evils might disappear, and the
whole Church become once more united, there was nothing to draw them
towards Rome; submission was out of the question, and they could only
see in its attitude in England the hostility of a jealous and
unscrupulous disturber of their Master's work. The movement still went
on, with its original purpose, and on its original lines, in spite of
the presence in it, and even the co-operation, of men who might one day
have other views, and serious and fatal differences with their old
friends.

The change of religion when it comes on a man gradually,--when it is not
welcomed from the first, but, on the contrary, long resisted, must
always be a mysterious and perplexing process, hard