n that the church of Rome is the catholic
church, and ours not a branch of the catholic church because not in
communion with Rome; that he had resigned St. Mary's because he
felt he could not with a safe conscience longer teach in her; that
by the article in the _British Critic_ on the catholicity of the
English church he had quieted his mind for two years; that in his
letter to the Bishop of Oxford, written most reluctantly, he, as
the best course under the circumstances, committed himself again;
that his alarms revived with that wretched affair of the Jerusalem
bishopric, and had increased ever since; that Manning's
interference had only made him the more realise his views; that
Manning might make what use he pleased of his letters; he was
relieved of a heavy heart; yet he trusted that God would beep him
from hasty steps and resolves with a doubting conscience! How are
the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!

With the characteristic spirit with which, in politics and in every
other field, he always insisted on espying patches of blue sky where
others saw unbroken cloud, he was amazed that Newman did not, in spite
of all the pranks of the Oxford heads, perceive the English church to be
growing in her members more catholic from year to year, and how much
more plain and undeniable was the sway of catholic principles within its
bounds, since the time when he entertained no shadow of doubt about it.
But while repeating his opinion that in many of the Tracts the language
about the Roman church had often been far too censorious, Mr. Gladstone
does not, nor did he ever, shrink from designating conversion to that
church by the unflinching names of lapse and fall.[187] As he was soon
to put it, 'The temptation towards the church of Rome of which some are
conscious, has never been before my mind in any other sense than as
other plain and flagrant sins have been before it.'[188]

Two days later he wrote to Manning again:--

_Oct. 30, 1843._-- ... I have still to say that my impressions,
though without more opportunity of testing them I cannot regard
them as final, are still and strongly to the effect that upon the
promulgation of those two letters to the world. Newman stands in
the general view a _disgraced man_--and all men, all principles,
with which he has had to do, disgraced in proportion to the
proximity of