The Tractarian movement was just commencing in 1833.  My brother was taking a position, in which he was bound to show that he could sacrifice private love to ecclesiastical dogma; and upon learning that I had spoken at some small meetings of religious people, (which he interpreted, I believe, to be an assuming of the Priest’s office,) he separated himself entirely from my private friendship and acquaintance.  To the public this may have some interest, as indicating the disturbing excitement which animated that cause:  but my reason for naming the fact here is solely to exhibit the practical positions into which I myself was thrown.  In my brother’s conduct there was not a shade of unkindness, and I have not a thought of complaining of it.  My distress was naturally great, until I had fully ascertained from him that I had given no personal offence.  But the mischief of it went deeper.  It practically cut me off from other members of my family, who were living in his house, and whose state of feeling towards me, through separation and my own agitations of mind, I for some time totally mistook.

I had, however, myself slighted relationship in comparison with Christian brotherhood;—­sectarian brotherhood, some may call it;—­I perhaps had none but myself to blame:  but in the far more painful occurrences which were to succeed one another for many months together, I was blameless.  Each successive friend who asked explanations of my alleged heresy, was satisfied,—­or at least left me with that impression,—­after hearing me:  not one who met me face to face had a word to reply to the plain Scriptures which I quoted.  Yet when I was gone away, one after another was turned against me by somebody else whom I had not yet met or did not know:  for in every theological conclave which deliberates on joint action, the most bigoted scorns always to prevail.

I will trust my pen to only one specimen of details.  The Irish clergyman was not able to meet me.  He wrote a very desultory letter of grave alarm and inquiry, stating that he had heard that I was endeavouring to sound the divine nature by the miserable plummet of human philosophy,—­with much beside that I felt to be mere commonplace which every body might address to every body who differed from him.  I however replied in the frankest, most cordial and trusting tone, assuring him that I was infinitely far from imagining that I could “by searching understand God;” on the contrary, concerning his higher mysteries, I felt I knew absolutely nothing but what he revealed to me in his word; but in studying this word, I found John and Paul to declare the Father, and not the Trinity, to be the One God.  Referring him to John xvii, 3, 1 Corinth. viii, 5, 6, I fondly believed that one so “subject to the word” and so resolutely renouncing man’s authority in order that he might serve God, would immediately see as I saw.  But I assured him, in all the depth of affection, that I felt how much fuller insight