Conscious as I was that my opinions in religious matters were not gained, as the world said, from Roman sources, but were, on the contrary, the birth of my own mind and of the circumstances in which I had been placed, I had a scorn of the imputations which were heaped upon me.  It was true that I held a large, bold system of religion, very unlike the Protestantism of the day, but it was the concentration and adjustment of the statements of great Anglican authorities, and I had as much right to do so as the Evangelical party had, and more right than the Liberal, to hold their own respective doctrines.  As I spoke on occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, on behalf of the writer, that he might hold in the Anglican Church a comprecation of the Saints with Bramhall; and the Mass, all but Transubstantiation, with Andrewes; or with Hooker that Transubstantiation itself is not a point for Churches to part communion upon; or with Hammond that a General Council, truly such, never did, never shall err in a matter of faith; or with Bull that man lost inward grace by the Fall; or with Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin; or with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no otherwise given than in the Catholic Church.  “Two can play at that game” was often in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, and Reformers, in the sense that if they had a right to speak loud I had both the liberty and the means of giving them tit for tat.  I thought that the Anglican Church had been tyrannised over by a Party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the Lyra:  “They shall know the difference now.”  I only asked to be allowed to show them the difference.

I have said already (he goes on) that though the object of the movement was to withstand the Liberalism of the day, I found and felt that this could not be done by negatives.  It was necessary for me to have a positive Church theory erected on a definite basis.  This took me to the great Anglican divines; and then, of course, I found at once that it was impossible to form any such theory without cutting across the teaching of the Church of Rome.  Thus came in the Roman controversy.  When I first turned myself to it I had neither doubt on the subject, nor suspicion that doubt would ever come on me.  It was in this state of mind that I began to read up Bellarmine on the one hand, and numberless Anglican writers on the other.[86]

And he quotes from the article the language which he used, to show the necessity of providing some clear and strong basis for religious thought in view of the impending conflict of principles, religious and anti-religious, “Catholic and Rationalist,” which to far-seeing men, even at that comparatively early time, seemed inevitable:—­