pondence_ and _fully aware_, etc.] "which
are contained in your statement, and which have led to your speaking
of me in terms which I hope never to deserve. 1. Since Mr. B. S. has
been in your Lordship's diocese, I have seen him in common rooms or
private parties in Oxford two or three times, when I never (as far as
I can recollect) had any conversation with him. During the same time
I have, to the best of my memory, written to him three letters. One
was lately, in acknowledgment of his informing me of his change of
religion. Another was last summer, when I asked him (to no purpose)
to come and stay with me in this place. The earliest of the three
letters was written just a year since, as far as I recollect, and it
certainly was on the subject of his joining the Church of Rome. I
wrote this letter at the earnest wish of a friend of his. I cannot
be sure that, on his replying, I did not send him a brief note in
explanation of points in my letter which he had misapprehended. I
cannot recollect any other correspondence between us.

"2. As to my knowledge of his opinions and feelings, as far as I
remember, the only point of perplexity which I knew, the only point
which to this hour I know, as pressing upon him, was that of the
Pope's supremacy. He professed to be searching Antiquity whether the
see of Rome had formally that relation to the whole Church which
Roman Catholics now assign to it. My letter was directed to the
point, that it was his duty not to perplex himself with arguments on
[such] a question ... and to put it altogether aside.... It is hard
that I am put upon my memory, without knowing the details of the
statement made against me, considering the various correspondence in
which I am from time to time unavoidably engaged.... Be assured, my
Lord, that there are very definite limits, beyond which persons like
me would never urge another to retain preferment in the English
Church, nor would retain it themselves; and that the censure which
has been directed against them by so many of its Rulers has a very
grave bearing upon those limits." The Bishop replied in a civil
letter, and sent my own letter to his original informant, who wrote
to me the letter of a gentleman. It seems that an anxious lady had
said something or other which had been misinterpreted, against her
real meaning, into the calumny which was circulated, and so the
report vanished into thin air. I closed the correspondence with the
following letter