hat my mind has been idle, or that I have given up
thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no changes to
record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in
perfect peace and contentment. I never have had one doubt. I was
not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any difference of
thought or of temper from what I had before. I was not conscious of
firmer faith in the fundamental truths of revelation, or of more
self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into
port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to
this day without interruption.

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles,
which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed
already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a
profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I
have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from
denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by
Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties;
and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those
difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of
religion; I am as sensitive as any one; but I have never been able to
see a connection between apprehending those difficulties, however
keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and doubting the
doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do
not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and
doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in
the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the
doctrines, or to their compatibility with each other. A man may be
annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the
answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of
an answer, or that a particular answer is the true one. Of all points
of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed
with most difficulty, and borne in upon our minds with most power.

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to
believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had
no difficulty in believing it as soon as I believed that the Catholic
Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this
doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult,
impossible to imagine, I grant--but how is i