he at the same time imputed to the
Catholic Priesthood. His words were these:--

"Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman
clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the
whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which heaven
has given to the Saints wherewith to withstand the brute male
force of the wicked world which marries and is given in
marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it
is at least historically so."

These assertions, going far beyond the popular prejudice entertained
against me, had no foundation whatever in fact. I never had said, I
never had dreamed of saying, that truth for its own sake need not, and
on the whole ought not to be, a virtue with the Roman Clergy; or that
cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints wherewith to
withstand the wicked world. To what work of mine then could the writer
be referring? In a correspondence which ensued upon the subject between
him and myself, he rested his charge against me on a Sermon of mine,
preached, before I was a Catholic, in the pulpit of my Church at Oxford;
and he gave me to understand, that, after having done as much as this,
he was not bound, over and above such a general reference to my Sermon,
to specify the passages of it, in which the doctrine, which he imputed
to me, was contained. On my part I considered this not enough; and I
demanded of him to bring out his proof of his accusation in form and in
detail, or to confess he was unable to do so. But he persevered in his
refusal to cite any distinct passages from any writing of mine; and,
though he consented to withdraw his charge, he would not do so on the
issue of its truth or falsehood, but simply on the ground that I assured
him that I had had no intention of incurring it. This did not satisfy my
sense of justice. Formally to charge me with committing a fault is one
thing; to allow that I did not intend to commit it, is another; it is no
satisfaction to me, if a man accuses me of _this_ offence, for him to
profess that he does not accuse me _of that_; but he thought
differently. Not being able then to gain redress in the quarter, where I
had a right to ask it, I appealed to the public. I published the
correspondence in the shape of a Pamphlet, with some remarks of my own
at the end, on the course which that correspondence had taken.

This Pamphlet, which appeared in the first weeks of Feb