d and taught? how could I deny or assert
this point or that, without injustice to the new view, in which the
whole evidence for those old opinions presented itself to my mind?

However, I had to do what I could, and what was best, under the
circumstances; I found a general talk on the subject of the article
in the _Dublin Review_; and, if it had affected me, it was not
wonderful, that it affected others also. As to myself, I felt no kind
of certainty that the argument in it was conclusive. Taking it at the
worst, granting that the Anglican Church had not the note of
Catholicity; yet there were many notes of the Church. Some belonged
to one age or place, some to another. Bellarmine had reckoned
Temporal Prosperity among the notes of the Church; but the Roman
Church had not any great popularity, wealth, glory, power, or
prospects, in the nineteenth century. It was not at all certain yet,
even that we had not the note of Catholicity; but, if not we had
others. My first business then, was to examine this question
carefully, and see, if a great deal could not be said after all for
the Anglican Church, in spite of its acknowledged shortcomings. This
I did in an Article "on the Catholicity of the English Church," which
appeared in the _British Critic_ of January, 1840. As to my personal
distress on the point, I think it had gone by February 21st in that
year, for I wrote then to Mr. Bowden about the important Article in
the Dublin, thus: "It made a great impression here [Oxford]; and, I
say what of course I would only say to such as yourself, it made me
for a while very uncomfortable in my own mind. The great speciousness
of his argument is one of the things which have made me despond so
much," that is, as to its effect upon others.

But, secondly, the great stumbling-block lay in the 39 Articles.
It was urged that here was a positive Note _against_
Anglicanism:--Anglicanism claimed to hold that the Church of England
was nothing else than a continuation in this country (as the Church
of Rome might be in France or Spain) of that one Church of which in
old times Athanasius and Augustine were members. But, if so, the
doctrine must be the same; the doctrine of the Old Church must live
and speak in Anglican formularies, in the 39 Articles. Did it? Yes,
it did; that is what I maintained; it did in substance, in a true
sense. Man had done his worst to disfigure, to mutilate, the old
Catholic Truth, but there it was, in spite of the