Great events were now happening at home and abroad.  There had been a revolution in France, and the reform agitation was going on around me as I wrote.  The vital question was, how were we to keep the Church from being liberalised?  I saw that reformation principles were powerless to rescue her.  I ever kept before me that there was something greater than the Establishd Church, and that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, of which she was but the local presence and the organ.  She was nothing, unless she was this.  I was now disengaged from college duties; my health had suffered from work; and in December, 1832, I joined Hurrell Froude and his father, who were going to the south of Europe.  I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean.  I saw nothing but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I knew nothing.  England was in my thoughts solely, and the success of the liberal cause fretted me.  The thought came upon me that deliverance is wrought not by the many but by the few, not by bodies but by persons.

I began to think that I had a mission.  I reached England on July 9, and on July 14 Mr. Keble preached in the university pulpit on “National Apostasy.”  This day was the start of the religious movement of 1833.

II.—­WITH THE TRACTARIANS

A movement had begun in opposition to the danger of liberalism which was threatening the religion of the nation.  Mr. Keble, Hurrell Froude, Mr. William Palmer, Mr. Arthur Purceval, Mr. Hugh Rose, and other zealous, and able men had united their counsels.  I had the exultation of health restored, a joyous energy which I never had before or since.  And I had a supreme confidence in our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church.  Owing to this supreme confidence, my behaviour had a mixture in it both of fierceness, and of sport, and on this account it gave offence to many.

The three propositions about which I was so confident were as follow:  First was the principle of dogma; my battle was with liberalism—­and by liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle and its developments.  I have changed in many things, but not in this; religion, as a mere sentiment, has been to me from childhood a dream and a mockery.  Secondly, I was confident that there was a visible Church, with sacraments and rites which are the channels of invisible grace.  Here, again, I have not changed.  But, thirdly, I held a view of the Church of Rome which I have utterly renounced since.

The attack of liberalism upon the university and upon the old orthodoxy of England began in 1834.  Thus, in a pamphlet by Dr. Hampden it was maintained that religion is distinct from theological opinion, that it is but a common prejudice to identify theological propositions with the simple religion of Christ; and so on.  The tracts were widely read and discussed, but the counter-attack against liberalism was not a