e Church of Rome.
But besides this, it was a duty, because the prescription of such a
protest was a living principle of my own Church, as expressed not simply
in a _catena_, but by a _consensus_ of her divines, and by the voice of
her people. Moreover, such a protest was necessary as an integral
portion of her controversial basis; for I adopted the argument of
Bernard Gilpin, that Protestants "were _not able_ to give any _firm and
solid_ reason of the separation besides this, to wit, that the Pope is
Antichrist." But while I thus thought such a protest to be based upon
truth, and to be a religious duty, and a rule of Anglicanism, and a
necessity of the case, I did not at all like the work. Hurrell Froude
attacked me for doing it; and, besides, I felt that my language had a
vulgar and rhetorical look about it. I believed, and really measured, my
words, when I used them; but I knew that I had a temptation, on the
other hand, to say against Rome as much as ever I could, in order to
protect myself against the charge of Popery.

And now I come to the very point, for which I have introduced the
subject of my feelings about Rome. I felt such confidence in the
substantial justice of the charges which I advanced against her, that I
considered them to be a safeguard and an assurance that no harm could
ever arise from the freest exposition of what I used to call Anglican
principles. All the world was astounded at what Froude and I were
saying: men said that it was sheer Popery. I answered, "True, we seem to
be making straight for it; but go on awhile, and you will come to a deep
chasm across the path, which makes real approximation impossible." And I
urged in addition, that many Anglican divines had been accused of
Popery, yet had died in their Anglicanism;--now, the ecclesiastical
principles which I professed, they had professed also; and the judgment
against Rome which they had formed, I had formed also. Whatever
deficiencies then had to be supplied in the existing Anglican system,
and however boldly I might point them out, any how that system would not
in the process be brought nearer to the special creed of Rome, and might
be mended in spite of her. In that very agreement of the two forms of
faith, close as it might seem, would really be found, on examination,
the elements and principles of an essential discordance.

It was with this absolute persuasion on my mind that I fancied that
there could be no rashness in giving to th