, which for the time had profoundly troubled me.
They had gone: I had not less confidence in the power and the prospects
of the Apostolical movement than before; not less confidence than before
in the grievousness of what I called the "dominant errors" of Rome: but
how was I any more to have absolute confidence in myself? how was I to
have confidence in my present confidence? how was I to be sure that I
should always think as I thought now? I felt that by this event a kind
Providence had saved me from an impossible position in the future.

* * * * *

First, if I remember right, they wished me to withdraw the Tract. This I
refused to do: I would not do so for the sake of those who were
unsettled or in danger of unsettlement. I would not do so for my own
sake; for how could I acquiesce in a mere Protestant interpretation of
the Articles? how could I range myself among the professors of a
theology, of which it put my teeth on edge even to hear the sound?

Next they said, "Keep silence; do not defend the Tract;" I answered,
"Yes, if you will not condemn it,--if you will allow it to continue on
sale." They pressed on me whenever I gave way; they fell back when they
saw me obstinate. Their line of action was to get out of me as much as
they could; but upon the point of their tolerating the Tract I _was_
obstinate. So they let me continue it on sale; and they said they would
not condemn it. But they said that this was on condition that I did not
defend it, that I stopped the series, and that I myself published my own
condemnation in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford. I impute nothing
whatever to him, he was ever most kind to me. Also, they said they could
not answer for what some individual Bishops might perhaps say about the
Tract in their own charges. I agreed to their conditions. My one point
was to save the Tract.

Not a line in writing was given me, as a pledge of the observance of the
main article on their side of the engagement. Parts of letters from them
were read to me, without being put into my hands. It was an
"understanding." A clever man had warned me against "understandings"
some thirteen years before: I have hated them ever since.

In the last words of my letter to the Bishop of Oxford I thus resigned
my place in the Movement:--

"I have nothing to be sorry for," I say to him, "except having made your
Lordship anxious, and others whom I am bound to revere. I have nothing
to be