my happiness to be. May his name be ever blessed!

And now in concluding my remarks on the second point on which my
confidence rested, I observe that here again I have no retractation
to announce as to its main outline. While I am now as clear in my
acceptance of the principle of dogma, as I was in 1833 and 1816,
so again I am now as firm in my belief of a visible church, of
the authority of bishops, of the grace of the sacraments, of the
religious worth of works of penance, as I was in 1833. I have added
Articles to my creed; but the old ones, which I then held with a
divine faith, remain.

3. But now, as to the third point on which I stood in 1833, and which
I have utterly renounced and trampled upon since--my then view of the
Church of Rome;--I will speak about it as exactly as I can. When I
was young, as I have said already, and after I was grown up, I
thought the Pope to be Antichrist. At Christmas 1824-5 I preached a
sermon to that effect. In 1827 I accepted eagerly the stanza in the
Christian Year, which many people thought too charitable, "Speak
_gently_ of thy sister's fall." From the time that I knew Froude I
got less and less bitter on the subject. I spoke (successively, but I
cannot tell in what order or at what dates) of the Roman Church as
being bound up with "the _cause_ of Antichrist," as being _one_ of
the "_many_ antichrists" foretold by St. John, as being influenced by
"the _spirit_ of Antichrist," and as having something "very
Antichristian" or "unchristian" about her. From my boyhood and in
1824 I considered, after Protestant authorities, that St. Gregory I.
about A.D. 600 was the first Pope that was Antichrist, and again that
he was also a great and holy man; in 1832-3 I thought the Church of
Rome was bound up with the cause of Antichrist by the Council of
Trent. When it was that in my deliberate judgment I gave up the
notion altogether in any shape, that some special reproach was
attached to her name, I cannot tell; but I had a shrinking from
renouncing it, even when my reason so ordered me, from a sort of
conscience or prejudice, I think up to 1843. Moreover, at least
during the Tract Movement, I thought the essence of her offence to
consist in the honours which she paid to the Blessed Virgin and the
saints; and the more I grew in devotion, both to the saints and to
Our Lady, the more impatient was I at the Roman practices, as if
those glorified creations of God must be gravely shocked, if pai