come
to the resolution, if the Bishop publicly intimates that I must
suppress the Tract, or speaks strongly in his charge against it, to
suppress it indeed, but to resign my living also. I could not in
conscience act otherwise. You may show this in any quarter you
please."

All my then hopes, all my satisfaction at the apparent fulfilment of
those hopes, were at an end in 1843. It is not wonderful then, that
in May of that year I addressed a letter on the subject of St. Mary's
to the same friend, whom I had consulted about retiring from it in
1840. But I did more now; I told him my great unsettlement of mind on
the question of the Churches. I will insert portions of two of my
letters:--

"May 4, 1843.... At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own
convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church
of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through
God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the
overflowings of His dispensation. I am very far more sure that
England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive
Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid
realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.

"You will now understand what gives edge to the Bishops' Charges,
without any undue sensitiveness on my part. They distress me in two
ways:--first, as being in some sense protests and witnesses to my
conscience against my own unfaithfulness to the English Church, and
next, as being samples of her teaching, and tokens how very far she
is from even aspiring to Catholicity.

"Of course my being unfaithful to a trust is my great subject of
dread--as it has long been, as you know."

When he wrote to make natural objections to my purpose, such as the
apprehension that the removal of clerical obligations might have the
indirect effect of propelling me towards Rome, I answered:--

"May 18, 1843.... My office or charge at St. Mary's is not a mere
_state_, but a continual _energy_. People assume and assert certain
things of me in consequence. With what sort of sincerity can I obey
the Bishop? how am I to act in the frequent cases, in which one way
or another the Church of Rome comes into consideration? I have to the
utmost of my power tried to keep persons from Rome, and with some
success; but even a year and a half since, my arguments, though more
efficacious with the persons I aimed at than any others could be,
were of a nature to infuse great