ffered against them. It
is felt,--I am far from denying, justly felt,--that I am a foreign
material, and cannot assimilate with the Church of England.

"Even my own Bishop has said that my mode of interpreting the Articles
makes them mean _any thing or nothing_. When I heard this delivered, I
did not believe my ears. I denied to others that it was said.... Out
came the charge, and the words could not be mistaken. This astonished me
the more, because I published that Letter to him, (how unwillingly you
know,) on the understanding that _I_ was to deliver his judgment on No.
90 _instead_ of him. A year elapses, and a second and heavier judgment
came forth. I did not bargain for this,--nor did he, but the tide was
too strong for him.

"I fear that I must confess, that, in proportion as I think the English
Church is showing herself intrinsically and radically alien from
Catholic principles, so do I feel the difficulties of defending her
claims to be a branch of the Catholic Church. It seems a dream to call a
communion Catholic, when one can neither appeal to any clear statement
of Catholic doctrine in its formularies, nor interpret ambiguous
formularies by the received and living Catholic sense, whether past or
present. Men of Catholic views are too truly but a party in our Church.
I cannot deny that many other independent circumstances, which it is not
worth while entering into, have led me to the same conclusion.

"I do not say all this to every body, as you may suppose; but I do not
like to make a secret of it to you."

2. "Oct. 25, 1843. You have engaged in a dangerous correspondence; I am
deeply sorry for the pain I shall give you.

"I must tell you then frankly, (but I combat arguments which to me,
alas, are shadows,) that it is not from disappointment, irritation, or
impatience, that I have, whether rightly or wrongly, resigned St.
Mary's; but because I think the Church of Rome the Catholic Church, and
ours not part of the Catholic Church, because not in communion with
Rome; and because I feel that I could not honestly be a teacher in it
any longer.

"This thought came to me last summer four years.... I mentioned it to
two friends in the autumn.... It arose in the first instance from the
Monophysite and Donatist controversies, the former of which I was
engaged with in the course of theological study to which I had given
myself. This was at a time when no Bishop, I believe, had declared
against us[15], and when