our Church. You go further than your principles require. You
are leagued with our enemies. 'The voice is Jacob's voice, but the
hands are the hands of Esau.' This is what especially distresses us;
this is what we cannot understand, how Christians, like yourselves,
with the clear view you have that a warfare is ever waging in the
world between good and evil, should, in the present state of England,
ally yourselves with the side of evil against the side of good.... Of
parties now in the country, you cannot but allow, that next to
yourselves we are nearest to revealed truth. We maintain great and
holy principles; we profess Catholic doctrines.... So near are we as
a body to yourselves in modes of thinking, as even to have been
taunted with the nicknames which belong to you; and, on the other
hand, if there are professed infidels, scoffers, sceptics,
unprincipled men, rebels, they are found among our opponents. And yet
you take part with them against us.... You consent to act hand in
hand [with these and others] for our overthrow. Alas! all this it is
that impresses us irresistibly with the notion that you are a
political, not a religious party; that, in order to gain an end on
which you set your hearts,--an open stage for yourselves in
England--you ally yourselves with those who hold nothing against
those who hold something. This is what distresses my own mind so
greatly, to speak of myself, that, with limitations which need not
now be mentioned, I cannot meet familiarly any leading persons of the
Roman Communion, and least of all when they come on a religious
errand. Break off, I would say, with Mr. O'Connell in Ireland and the
liberal party in England, or come not to us with overtures for mutual
prayer and religious sympathy."

And here came in another feeling, of a personal nature, which had
little to do with the argument against Rome, except that, in my
prejudice, I connected it with my own ideas of the usual conduct of
her advocates and instruments. I was very stern upon any interference
in our Oxford matters on the part of charitable Catholics, and on any
attempt to do me good personally. There was nothing, indeed, at the
time more likely to throw me back. "Why do you meddle? why cannot you
let me alone? You can do me no good; you know nothing on earth about
me; you may actually do me harm; I am in better hands than yours. I
know my own sincerity of purpose; and I am determined upon taking my
time." Since I have be