on
which I felt I could not make a mistake; for what is a higher guide for
us in speculation and in practice, than that conscience of right and
wrong, of truth and falsehood, those sentiments of what is decorous,
consistent, and noble, which our Creator has made a part of our original
nature? Therefore I felt I could not be wrong in attacking what I
fancied was a fact,--the unscrupulousness, the deceit, and the
intriguing spirit of the agents and representatives of Rome.

This reference to Holiness as the true test of a Church was steadily
kept in view in what I wrote in connexion with Tract 90. I say in its
Introduction, "The writer can never be party to forcing the opinions or
projects of one school upon another; religious changes should be the act
of the whole body. No good can come of a change which is not a
development of feelings springing up freely and calmly within the bosom
of the whole body itself; every change in religion" must be "attended by
deep repentance; changes" must be "nurtured in mutual love; we cannot
agree without a supernatural influence;" we must come "together to God
to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves." In my Letter to the
Bishop I said, "I have set myself against suggestions for considering
the differences between ourselves and the foreign Churches with a view
to their adjustment." (I meant in the way of negotiation, conference,
agitation, or the like.) "Our business is with ourselves,--to make
ourselves more holy, more self-denying, more primitive, more worthy of
our high calling. To be anxious for a composition of differences is to
begin at the end. Political reconciliations are but outward and hollow,
and fallacious. And till Roman Catholics renounce political efforts, and
manifest in their public measures the light of holiness and truth,
perpetual war is our only prospect."

According to this theory, a religious body is part of the One Catholic
and Apostolic Church, if it has the succession and the creed of the
Apostles, with the note of holiness of life; and there is much in such a
view to approve itself to the direct common sense and practical habits
of an Englishman. However, with the events consequent upon Tract 90, I
sunk my theory to a lower level. For what could be said in apology, when
the Bishops and the people of my Church, not only did not suffer, but
actually rejected primitive Catholic doctrine, and tried to eject from
their communion all who held it? after the Bis