speaking
humanly) partly by the suggestions of Protestant friends, partly by
the teaching of books, and partly by the action of my own mind: and
thus I shall account for that phenomenon which to so many seems so
wonderful, that I should have left "my kindred and my father's house"
for a Church from which once I turned away with dread;--so wonderful
to them! as if forsooth a religion which has flourished through so
many ages, among so many nations, amid such varieties of social life,
in such contrary classes and conditions of men, and after so many
revolutions, political and civil, could not subdue the reason and
overcome the heart, without the aid of fraud and the sophistries of
the schools.

What I had proposed to myself in the course of half an hour, I
determined on at the end of ten days. However, I have many
difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am I to say all that has to
be said in a reasonable compass? And then as to the materials of my
narrative; I have no autobiographical notes to consult, no written
explanations of particular treatises or of tracts which at the
time gave offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions
or conversations, and few contemporary memoranda, I fear, of the
feelings or motives under which from time to time I acted. I have an
abundance of letters from friends with some copies or drafts of my
answers to them, but they are for the most part unsorted, and, till
this process has taken place, they are even too numerous and various
to be available at a moment for my purpose. Then, as to the volumes
which I have published, they would in many ways serve me, were I well
up in them; but though I took great pains in their composition, I
have thought little about them, when they were at length out of my
hands, and, for the most part, the last time I read them has been
when I revised their proof sheets.

Under these circumstances my sketch will of course be incomplete. I
now for the first time contemplate my course as a whole; it is a
first essay, but it will contain, I trust, no serious or substantial
mistake, and so far will answer the purpose for which I write it. I
purpose to set nothing down in it as certain, for which I have not a
clear memory, or some written memorial, or the corroboration of some
friend. There are witnesses enough up and down the country to verify,
or correct, or complete it; and letters moreover of my own in
abundance, unless they have been destroyed.

Moreo