d a sermon to that
effect. But in 1827 I accepted eagerly the stanza in the Christian Year,
which many people thought too charitable, "Speak _gently_ of thy
sister's fall." From the time that I knew Froude I got less and less
bitter on the subject. I spoke (successively, but I cannot tell in what
order or at what dates) of the Roman Church as being bound up with "the
_cause_ of Antichrist," as being _one_ of the "_many_ antichrists"
foretold by St. John, as being influenced by "the _spirit_ of
Antichrist," and as having something "very Anti-christian" or
"unchristian" about her. From my boyhood and in 1824 I considered, after
Protestant authorities, that St. Gregory I. about A.D. 600 was the first
Pope that was Antichrist, though, in spite of this, he was also a great
and holy man; but in 1832-3 I thought the Church of Rome was bound up
with the cause of Antichrist by the Council of Trent. When it was that
in my deliberate judgment I gave up the notion altogether in any shape,
that some special reproach was attached to her name, I cannot tell; but
I had a shrinking from renouncing it, even when my reason so ordered me,
from a sort of conscience or prejudice, I think up to 1843. Moreover, at
least during the Tract Movement, I thought the essence of her offence to
consist in the honours which she paid to the Blessed Virgin and the
Saints; and the more I grew in devotion, both to the Saints and to our
Lady, the more impatient was I at the Roman practices, as if those
glorified creations of God must be gravely shocked, if pain could be
theirs, at the undue veneration of which they were the objects.

On the other hand, Hurrell Froude in his familiar conversations was
always tending to rub the idea out of my mind. In a passage of one of
his letters from abroad, alluding, I suppose, to what I used to say in
opposition to him, he observes; "I think people are injudicious who talk
against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints, and honouring the
Virgin and images, &c. These things may perhaps be idolatrous; I cannot
make up my mind about it; but to my mind it is the Carnival that is real
practical idolatry, as it is written, 'the people sat down to eat and
drink, and rose up to play.'" The Carnival, I observe in passing, is, in
fact, one of those very excesses, to which, for at least three
centuries, religious Catholics have ever opposed themselves, as we see
in the life of St. Philip, to say nothing of the present day; but t