Hildebrand
and Loyola are alive. Is it sensible, sober, judicious, to be so very
angry with those writers of the day, who point to the fact, that our
divines of the seventeenth century have occupied a ground which is
the true and intelligible mean between extremes? Is it wise to
quarrel with this ground, because it is not exactly what we should
choose, had we the power of choice? Is it true moderation, instead of
trying to fortify a middle doctrine, to fling stones at those who do?
... Would you rather have your sons and daughters members of the
Church of England or of the Church of Rome?"

And thus I left the matter. But, while I was thus speaking of the
future of the Movement, I was in truth winding up my accounts with
it, little dreaming that it was so to be;--while I was still, in some
way or other, feeling about for an available _Via Media_, I was soon
to receive a shock which was to cast out of my imagination all middle
courses and compromises for ever. As I have said, this article
appeared in the April number of the _British Critic_; in the July
number, I cannot tell why, there is no article of mine; before the
number for October, the event had happened to which I have alluded.

But before I proceed to describe what happened to me in the summer of
1839, I must detain the reader for a while, in order to describe the
_issue_ of the controversy between Rome and the Anglican Church, as I
viewed it. This will involve some dry discussion; but it is as
necessary for my narrative, as plans of buildings and homesteads are
often found to be in the proceedings of our law courts.

I have said already that, though the object of the Movement was to
withstand the liberalism of the day, I found and felt this could not
be done by mere negatives. It was necessary for us to have a positive
Church theory erected on a definite basis. This took me to the great
Anglican divines; and then of course I found at once that it was
impossible to form any such theory, without cutting across the
teaching of the Church of Rome. Thus came in the Roman controversy.

When I first turned myself to it, I had neither doubt on the subject,
nor suspicion that doubt would ever come upon me. It was in this
state of mind that I began to read up Bellarmine on the one hand, and
numberless Anglican writers on the other. But I soon found, as others
had found before me, that it was a tangled and manifold controversy,
difficult to master, more difficult t