Note of Catholicity; yet there were
many Notes of the Church. Some belonged to one age or place, some to
another. Bellarmine had reckoned Temporal Prosperity among the Notes of
the Church; but the Roman Church had not any great popularity, wealth,
glory, power, or prospects, in the nineteenth century. It was not at all
certain as yet, even that we had not the Note of Catholicity; but, if
not this, we had others. My first business then, was to examine this
question carefully, and see, whether a great deal could not be said
after all for the Anglican Church, in spite of its acknowledged
short-comings. This I did in an Article "on the Catholicity of the
English Church," which appeared in the British Critic of January, 1840.
As to my personal distress on the point, I think it had gone by February
21st in that year, for I wrote then to Mr. Bowden about the important
Article in the Dublin, thus: "It made a great impression here [Oxford];
and, I say what of course I would only say to such as yourself, it made
me for a while very uncomfortable in my own mind. The great speciousness
of his argument is one of the things which have made me despond so
much," that is, as anticipating its effect upon others.

But, secondly, the great stumbling-block lay in the 39 Articles. It was
urged that here was a positive Note _against_ Anglicanism:--Anglicanism
claimed to hold, that the Church of England was nothing else than a
continuation in this country, (as the Church of Rome might be in France
or Spain,) of that one Church of which in old times Athanasius and
Augustine were members. But, if so, the doctrine must be the same; the
doctrine of the Old Church must live and speak in Anglican formularies,
in the 39 Articles. Did it? Yes, it did; that is what I maintained; it
did in substance, in a true sense. Man had done his worst to disfigure,
to mutilate, the old Catholic Truth; but there it was, in spite of them,
in the Articles still. It was there,--but this must be shown. It was a
matter of life and death to us to show it. And I believed that it could
be shown; I considered that those grounds of justification, which I gave
above, when I was speaking of Tract 90, were sufficient for the purpose;
and therefore

I set about showing it at once. This was in March, 1840, when I went up
to Littlemore. And, as it was a matter of life and death with us, all
risks must be run to show it. When the attempt was actually made, I had
got reconciled to