ess, in recommending it to others.
I had in the foregoing autumn been somewhat sore at the bishop's
charge, but I have a letter which shows that all annoyance had passed
from my mind. In January, if I recollect aright, in order to meet the
popular clamour against myself and others, and to satisfy the bishop,
I had collected into one all the strong things which they, and
especially I, had said against the Church of Rome, in order to their
insertion among the advertisements appended to our publications.
Conscious as I was that my opinions in religion were not gained, as
the world said, from Roman sources, but were, on the contrary, the
birth of my own mind and of the circumstances in which I had been
placed, I had a scorn of the imputations which were heaped upon me.
It was true that I held a large bold system of religion, very unlike
the Protestantism of the day, but it was the concentration and
adjustment of the statements of great Anglican authorities, and I had
as much right to do so as the Evangelical party had, and more right
than the Liberal, to hold their own respective doctrines. As I spoke
on occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, in behalf of who would, that he
might hold in the Anglican Church a comprecation with the saints with
Bramhall, and the Mass all but transubstantiation with Andrewes,
or with Hooker that transubstantiation itself is not a point for
Churches to part communion upon, or with Hammond that a general
council, truly such, never did, never shall err in a matter of faith,
or with Bull that man lost inward grace by the fall, or with
Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin, or
with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no otherwise
given than in the Catholic Church. "Two can play at that," was often
in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the
Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a
right to speak loud, I had both the liberty and the means of giving
them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church had been
tyrannised over by a party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the
promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the
difference now." I only asked to be allowed to show them the
difference.

What will best describe my state of mind at the early part of 1839,
is an article in the _British Critic_ for that April. I have looked
over it now, for the first time since it was published; and have been
struck b