of a passage in Froude's Remains,
in which he seems to accuse me of speaking against the Athanasian
Creed. I had contrasted the two aspects of the Trinitarian doctrine,
which are respectively presented by the Athanasian Creed and the
Nicene. My criticisms were to the effect that some of the verses of
the former Creed were unnecessarily scientific. This is a specimen of
a certain disdain for antiquity which had been growing on me now for
several years. It showed itself in some flippant language against the
Fathers in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, about whom I knew little
at the time, except what I had learnt as a boy from Joseph Milner. In
writing on the Scripture Miracles in 1825-6, I had read Middleton on
the Miracles of the early Church, and had imbibed a portion of his
spirit.

The truth is, I was beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to
moral; I was drifting in the direction of liberalism. I was rudely
awakened from my dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows--illness
and bereavement.

In the beginning of 1829, came the formal break between Dr. Whately
and me; Mr. Peel's attempted re-election was the occasion of it.
I think in 1828 or 1827 I had voted in the minority, when the
petition to Parliament against the Catholic claims was brought into
Convocation. I did so mainly on the views suggested to me by the
theory of the Letters of an Episcopalian. Also I disliked the
bigoted "two bottle orthodox," as they were invidiously called.
I took part against Mr. Peel, on a simple academical, not at all
an ecclesiastical or a political ground; and this I professed at
the time. I considered that Mr. Peel had taken the University by
surprise, that he had no right to call upon us to turn round on a
sudden, and to expose ourselves to the imputation of time-serving,
and that a great University ought not to be bullied even by a great
Duke of Wellington. Also by this time I was under the influence of
Keble and Froude; who, in addition to the reasons I have given,
disliked the Duke's change of policy as dictated by liberalism.

Whately was considerably annoyed at me, and he took a humourous
revenge, of which he had given me due notice beforehand. As head of a
house, he had duties of hospitality to men of all parties; he asked a
set of the least intellectual men in Oxford to dinner, and men most
fond of port; he made me one of the party; placed me between Provost
this and Principal that, and then asked me if I was pr