each
the obnoxious sentence till some one is found to testify that he heard
it.

At the same time I cannot conceive why the mention of Sacramental
Confession, or of Clerical Celibacy, had I made it, was inconsistent
with the position of an Anglican Clergyman. For Sacramental Confession
and Absolution actually form a portion of the Anglican Visitation of the
Sick; and though the 32nd Article says that "Bishops, priests, and
deacons, are not _commanded_ by God's law either to vow the state of
single life or to abstain from marriage," and "therefore it is _lawful_
for them to marry," this proposition I did not dream of denying, nor is
it inconsistent with St. Paul's doctrine, which I held, that it is
"_good_ to abide even as he," i.e. in celibacy.

But I have more to say on this point. This writer says, "I know that men
used to suspect Dr. Newman,--I have been inclined to do so myself,--of
_writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter_,
but for the sake of one simple passing hint,--one phrase, one epithet."
Now observe; can there be a plainer testimony borne to the practical
character of my Sermons at St. Mary's than this gratuitous insinuation?
Many a preacher of Tractarian doctrine has been accused of not letting
his parishioners alone, and of teasing them with his private theological
notions. The same report was spread about me twenty years ago as this
writer spreads now, and the world believed that my Sermons at St. Mary's
were full of red-hot Tractarianism. Then strangers came to hear me
preach, and were astonished at their own disappointment. I recollect the
wife of a great prelate from a distance coming to hear me, and then
expressing her surprise to find that I preached nothing but a plain
humdrum Sermon. I recollect how, when on the Sunday before Commemoration
one year, a number of strangers came to hear me, and I preached in my
usual way, residents in Oxford, of high position, were loud in their
satisfaction that on a great occasion, I had made a simple failure, for
after all there was nothing in the Sermon to hear. Well, but they were
not going to let me off, for all my common-sense view of duty.
Accordingly they got up the charitable theory which this Writer revives.
They said that there was a double purpose in those plain addresses of
mine, and that my Sermons were never so artful as when they seemed
common-place; that there were sentences which redeemed their apparent
simplicity and