e we as a body to yourselves in modes of
thinking, as even to have been taunted with the nicknames which belong
to you; and, on the other hand, if there are professed infidels,
scoffers, sceptics, unprincipled men, rebels, they are found among our
opponents. And yet you take part with them against us.... You consent to
act hand in hand [with these and others] for our overthrow. Alas! all
this it is that impresses us irresistibly with the notion that you are a
political, not a religious party; that in order to gain an end on which
you set your hearts,--an open stage for yourselves in England,--you ally
yourselves with those who hold nothing against those who hold something.
This is what distresses my own mind so greatly, to speak of myself,
that, with limitations which need not now be mentioned, I cannot meet
familiarly any leading persons of the Roman Communion, and least of all
when they come on a religious errand. Break off, I would say, with Mr.
O'Connell in Ireland and the liberal party in England, or come not to us
with overtures for mutual prayer and religious sympathy."

And here came in another feeling, of a personal nature, which had little
to do with the argument against Rome, except that, in my prejudice, I
viewed what happened to myself in the light of my own ideas of the
traditionary conduct of her advocates and instruments. I was very stern
in the case of any interference in our Oxford matters on the part of
charitable Catholics, and of any attempt to do me good personally. There
was nothing, indeed, at the time more likely to throw me back. "Why do
you meddle? why cannot you let me alone? You can do me no good; you know
nothing on earth about me; you may actually do me harm; I am in better
hands than yours. I know my own sincerity of purpose; and I am
determined upon taking my time." Since I have been a Catholic, people
have sometimes accused me of backwardness in making converts; and
Protestants have argued from it that I have no great eagerness to do so.
It would be against my nature to act otherwise than I do; but besides,
it would be to forget the lessons which I gained in the experience of my
own history in the past.

This is the account which I have to give of some savage and ungrateful
words in the British Critic of 1840 against the controversialists of
Rome: "By their fruits ye shall know them.... We see it attempting to
gain converts among us by unreal representations of its doctrines,
plausible