m a great
deal more. Moreover, in me such provocation was unbecoming, both because
he was the Head of my College, and because, in the first years that I
knew him, he had been in many ways of great service to my mind.

He was the first who taught me to weigh my words, and to be cautious in
my statements. He led me to that mode of limiting and clearing my sense
in discussion and in controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate
ideas, and of obviating mistakes by anticipation, which to my surprise
has been since considered, even in quarters friendly to me, to savour of
the polemics of Rome. He is a man of most exact mind himself, and he
used to snub me severely, on reading, as he was kind enough to do, the
first Sermons that I wrote, and other compositions which I was engaged
upon.

Then as to doctrine, he was the means of great additions to my belief.
As I have noticed elsewhere, he gave me the "Treatise on Apostolical
Preaching," by Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from which I
was led to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the doctrine
of Baptismal Regeneration. In many other ways too he was of use to me,
on subjects semi-religious and semi-scholastic.

It was Dr. Hawkins too who taught me to anticipate that, before many
years were over, there would be an attack made upon the books and the
canon of Scripture, I was brought to the same belief by the conversation
of Mr. Blanco White, who also led me to have freer views on the subject
of inspiration than were usual in the Church of England at the time.

There is one other principle, which I gained from Dr. Hawkins, more
directly bearing upon Catholicism, than any that I have mentioned; and
that is the doctrine of Tradition. When I was an Under-graduate, I heard
him preach in the University Pulpit his celebrated sermon on the
subject, and recollect how long it appeared to me, though he was at that
time a very striking preacher; but, when I read it and studied it as his
gift, it made a most serious impression upon me. He does not go one
step, I think, beyond the high Anglican doctrine, nay he does not reach
it; but he does his work thoroughly, and his view was in him original,
and his subject was a novel one at the time. He lays down a proposition,
self-evident as soon as stated, to those who have at all examined the
structure of Scripture, viz. that the sacred text was never intended to
teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that, if we wou