y and generally known as
badges of the Roman Church, as distinguished from the faith of the
Reformation. Next, how could I have come by them? Evidently, I had
certain friends and advisers who did not appear; there was some
underground communication between Stonyhurst or Oscott and my rooms
at Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I was advocating certain doctrines, not
by accident, but on an understanding with ecclesiastics of the old
religion. Then men went further, and said that I had actually been
received into that religion, and withal had leave given me to profess
myself a Protestant still. Others went even further, and gave it out
to the world, as a matter of fact, of which they themselves had the
proof in their hands, that I was actually a Jesuit. And when the
opinions which I advocated spread, and younger men went further than
I, the feeling against me waxed stronger and took a wider range.

And now indignation arose at the knavery of a conspiracy such as
this:--and it became of course all the greater, in consequence of its
being the received belief of the public at large, that craft and
intrigue, such as they fancied they beheld with their own eyes, were
the very instruments to which the Catholic Church has in these last
centuries been indebted for her maintenance and extension.

There was another circumstance still, which increased the irritation
and aversion felt by the large classes, of whom I have been speaking,
as regards the preachers of doctrines, so new to them and so
unpalatable; and that was, that they developed them in so measured a
way. If they were inspired by Roman theologians (and this was taken
for granted), why did they not speak out at once? Why did they keep
the world in such suspense and anxiety as to what was coming next,
and what was to be the upshot of the whole? Why this reticence, and
half-speaking, and apparent indecision? It was plain that the plan of
operations had been carefully mapped out from the first, and that
these men were cautiously advancing towards its accomplishment, as
far as was safe at the moment; that their aim and their hope was to
carry off a large body with them of the young and the ignorant; that
they meant gradually to leaven the minds of the rising generation,
and to open the gate of that city, of which they were the sworn
defenders, to the enemy who lay in ambush outside of it. And when in
spite of the many protestations of the party to the contrary, there
was at length an a