chose, under the
conviction that their main scope could not be damaged by such a process.
It was the same with me afterwards, as regards other publications. For
two years I furnished a certain number of sheets for the British Critic
from myself and my friends, while a gentleman was editor, a man of
splendid talent, who, however, was scarcely an acquaintance of mine, and
had no sympathy with the Tracts. When I was Editor myself, from 1838 to
1841, in my very first number I suffered to appear a critique
unfavorable to my work on Justification, which had been published a few
months before, from a feeling of propriety, because I had put the book
into the hands of the writer who so handled it. Afterwards I suffered an
article against the Jesuits to appear in it, of which I did not like the
tone. When I had to provide a curate for my new church at Littlemore, I
engaged a friend, by no fault of his, who, before he had entered into
his charge, preached a sermon, either in depreciation of baptismal
regeneration, or of Dr. Pusey's view of it. I showed a similar easiness
as to the Editors who helped me in the separate volumes of Fleury's
Church History; they were able, learned, and excellent men, but their
after-history has shown, how little my choice of them was influenced by
any notion I could have had of any intimate agreement of opinion between
them and myself. I shall have to make the same remark in its place
concerning the Lives of the English Saints, which subsequently appeared.
All this may seem inconsistent with what I have said of my fierceness. I
am not bound to account for it; but there have been men before me,
fierce in act, yet tolerant and moderate in their reasonings; at least,
so I read history. However, such was the case, and such its effect upon
the Tracts. These at first starting were short, hasty, and some of them
ineffective; and at the end of the year, when collected into a volume,
they had a slovenly appearance.

It was under these circumstances, that Dr. Pusey joined us. I had known
him well since 1827-8, and had felt for him an enthusiastic admiration,
I used to call him [Greek: ho megas]. His great learning, his immense
diligence, his scholarlike mind, his simple devotion to the cause of
religion, overcame me; and great of course was my joy, when in the last
days of 1833 he showed a disposition to make common cause with us. His
Tract on Fasting appeared as one of the series with the date of December
21.