e, though
delayed, decision was to follow him. With others, the old and fair
_proejudicium_ against the claims of Rome, which had always asserted
itself even against the stringent logic of Mr. Ward and the deep and
subtle ideas of Mr. Newman, became, when closed with, and tested face to
face in the light of fact and history, the settled conviction of life.
Some extracts from contemporary papers, real records of the private
perplexities and troubles actually felt at the time, may illustrate what
was passing in the minds of some whom knowledge and love of Mr. Newman
failed to make his followers in his ultimate step. The first extract
belongs to some years before, but it is part of the same train of
thinking.[124]

As to myself, I am getting into a very unsettled state as to aims and
prospects. I mean that as things are going on, a man does not know
where he is going to; one cannot imagine what state of things to look
forward to; in what way, and under what circumstances, one's coming
life--if it does come--is to be spent; what is to become of one. I
cannot at all imagine myself a convert; but how am I likely, in the
probable state of things, to be able to serve as an English clergyman?
Shall I ever get Priest's orders? Shall I be able to continue always
serving? What is one's line to be; what ought to be one's aims; or can
one have any?

The storm is not yet come: how it may come, and how soon it may blow
over, and what it may leave behind, is doubtful; but some sort of
crisis, I think, must come before things settle. With the Bishops
against us, and Puritanism aggressive, we may see strange things
before the end.

When the "storm" had at length come, though, before its final violence,
the same writer continues:

The present hopeless check and weight to our party--what has for the
time absolutely crushed us--is the total loss of confidence arising
from the strong tendency, no longer to be dissembled or explained
away, among many of us to Rome. I see no chance of our recovery, or
getting our heads above water from this, at least in England, for
years to come. And it is a check which will one day be far greater
than it is now. Under the circumstances--having not the most distant
thought of leaving the English Church myself, and yet having no means
of escaping the very natural suspicion of Romanising without giving up
my best friends and the most saint-like men in Englan