lity that I could say anything henceforth to good effect,
when I had been posted up by the marshal on the buttery hatch of
every College of my University, after the manner of discommoned
pastry-cooks, and when in every part of the country and every
class of society, through every organ and occasion of opinion,
in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at
dinner-tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway carriages, I was denounced
as a traitor who had laid his train and was detected in the very act
of firing it against the time-honoured Establishment. There were
indeed men, besides my own friends, men of name and position, who
gallantly took my part, as Dr. Hook, Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Perceval: it
must have been a grievous trial for themselves; yet what after all
could they do for me? Confidence in me was lost;--but I had already
lost full confidence in myself. Thoughts had passed over me a year
and a half before which for the time had profoundly troubled me. They
had gone: I had not less confidence in the power and the prospects of
the apostolical movement than before; not less confidence than before
in the grievousness of what I called the "dominant errors" of Rome:
but how was I any more to have absolute confidence in myself? how was
I to have confidence in my present confidence? how was I to be sure
that I should always think as I thought now? I felt that by this
event a kind Providence had saved me from an impossible position in
the future.

First, if I remember right, they wished me to withdraw the Tract.
This I refused to do: I would not do so for the sake of those who
were unsettled or in danger of unsettlement. I would not do so
for my own sake; for how could I acquiesce in a mere Protestant
interpretation of the Articles? how could I range myself among the
professors of a theology, of which it put my teeth on edge, even to
hear the sound?

Next they said, "Keep silence; do not defend the Tract;" I answered,
"Yes, if you will not condemn it--if you will allow it to continue on
sale." They pressed on me whenever I gave way; they fell back when
they saw me obstinate. Their line of action was to get out of me as
much as they could; but upon the point of their tolerating the Tract
I _was_ obstinate. So they let me continue it on sale; and they said
they would not condemn it. But they said that this was on condition
that I did not defend it, that I stopped the series, and that I
myself published my own cond