lf to
see in it any thing else, than what I had so long fearfully suspected,
from as far back as 1836,--a mere national institution. As if my eyes
were suddenly opened, so I saw it--spontaneously, apart from any
definite act of reason or any argument; and so I have seen it ever
since. I suppose, the main cause of this lay in the contrast which was
presented to me by the Catholic Church. Then I recognized at once a
reality which was quite a new thing with me. Then I was sensible that I
was not making for myself a Church by an effort of thought; I needed not
to make an act of faith in her; I had not painfully to force myself into
a position, but my mind fell back upon itself in relaxation and in
peace, and I gazed at her almost passively as a great objective fact. I
looked at her;--at her rites, her ceremonial, and her precepts; and I
said, "This _is_ a religion;" and then, when I looked back upon the poor
Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so hard, and upon all that
appertained to it, and thought of our various attempts to dress it up
doctrinally and esthetically, it seemed to me to be the veriest of
nonentities.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! How can I make a record of what
passed within me, without seeming to be satirical? But I speak plain,
serious words. As people call me credulous for acknowledging Catholic
claims, so they call me satirical for disowning Anglican pretensions; to
them it _is_ credulity, to them it _is_ satire; but it is not so in me.
What they think exaggeration, I think truth. I am not speaking of the
Anglican Church with any disdain, though to them I seem contemptuous. To
them of course it is "Aut Caesar aut nullus," but not to me. It may be a
great creation, though it be not divine, and this is how I judge of it.
Men, who abjure the divine right of kings, would be very indignant, if
on that account they were considered disloyal. And so I recognize in the
Anglican Church a time-honoured institution, of noble historical
memories, a monument of ancient wisdom, a momentous arm of political
strength, a great national organ, a source of vast popular advantage,
and, to a certain point, a witness and teacher of religious truth. I do
not think that, if what I have written about it since I have been a
Catholic, be equitably considered as a whole, I shall be found to have
taken any other view than this; but that it is something sacred, that it
is an oracle of revealed doctrine, that it can claim