a share in St.
Ignatius or St. Cyprian, that it can take the rank, contest the
teaching, and stop the path of the Church of St. Peter, that it can call
itself "the Bride of the Lamb," this is the view of it which simply
disappeared from my mind on my conversion, and which it would be almost
a miracle to reproduce. "I went by, and lo! it was gone; I sought it,
but its place could no where be found," and nothing can bring it back to
me. And, as to its possession of an episcopal succession from the time
of the Apostles, well, it may have it, and, if the Holy See ever so
decide, I will believe it, as being the decision of a higher judgment
than my own; but, for myself, I must have St. Philip's gift, who saw the
sacerdotal character on the forehead of a gaily-attired youngster,
before I can by my own wit acquiesce in it, for antiquarian arguments
are altogether unequal to the urgency of visible facts. Why is it that I
must pain dear friends by saying so, and kindle a sort of resentment
against me in the kindest of hearts? but I must, though to do it be not
only a grief to me, but most impolitic at the moment. Any how, this is
my mind; and, if to have it, if to have betrayed it, before now,
involuntarily by my words or my deeds, if on a fitting occasion, as now,
to have avowed it, if all this be a proof of the justice of the charge
brought against me by my accuser of having "turned round upon my
Mother-Church with contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no
other sense, do I plead guilty to it without a word in extenuation.

In no other sense surely; the Church of England has been the instrument
of Providence in conferring great benefits on me;--had I been born in
Dissent, perhaps I should never have been baptized; had I been born an
English Presbyterian, perhaps I should never have known our Lord's
divinity; had I not come to Oxford, perhaps I never should have heard of
the visible Church, or of Tradition, or other Catholic doctrines. And as
I have received so much good from the Anglican Establishment itself, can
I have the heart or rather the want of charity, considering that it does
for so many others, what it has done for me, to wish to see it
overthrown? I have no such wish while it is what it is, and while we are
so small a body. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of the many
congregations to which it ministers, I will do nothing against it. While
Catholics are so weak in England, it is doing our work; and, thou