ever one and the same. The principles and proceedings of the Church
now, were those of the Church then; the principles and proceedings of
heretics then, were those of Protestants now. I found it so,--almost
fearfully; there was an awful similitude, more awful, because so
silent and unimpassioned, between the dead records of the past and
the feverish chronicle of the present. The shadow of the fifth
century was on the sixteenth. It was like a spirit rising from the
troubled waters of the old world, with the shape and lineaments of
the new. The Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and
stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless; and heretics were
shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever courting civil
power, and never agreeing together, except by its aid; and the civil
power was ever aiming at comprehensions, trying to put the invisible
out of view, and substituting expediency for faith. What was the use
of continuing the controversy, or defending my position, if, after
all, I was forging arguments for Arius or Eutyches, and turning
devil's advocate against the much-enduring Athanasius and the
majestic Leo? Be my soul with the Saints! and shall I lift up my hand
against them? Sooner may my right hand forget her cunning, and wither
outright, as his who once stretched it out against a prophet of God!
anathema to a whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Latimers, and Jewels!
perish the names of Bramhall, Ussher, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and
Barrow from the face of the earth, ere I should do aught but fall at
their feet in love and in worship, whose image was continually before
my eyes, and whose musical words were ever in my ears and on my
tongue!"

Hardly had I brought my course of reading to a close, when the
_Dublin Review_ of that same August was put into my hands, by friends
who were more favourable to the cause of Rome than I was myself.
There was an Article in it on the "Anglican Claim" by Bishop Wiseman.
This was about the middle of September. It was on the Donatists, with
an application to Anglicanism. I read it, and did not see much in it.
The Donatist controversy was known to me for some years, as I have
instanced above. The case was not parallel to that of the Anglican
Church. St. Augustine in Africa wrote against the Donatists in
Africa. They were a furious party who made a schism within the
African Church, and not beyond its limits. It was a case of altar
against altar, of two occupants of th