In February, 1843, I had made a formal retraction of all the hard things which I had said against the Church of Rome, and in September I had resigned the living of St. Mary’s, Littlemore included.  I began my “Essay on the Development of Doctrine” in the beginning of 1845, and was hard at it till October.  Before I got to the end, I resolved to be received into the Catholic Church.  Father Dominic came to Littlemore on October 8, and did for me this charitable service.  I left Oxford for good on February 23, 1846.

IV.—­THE FAITH OF A CATHOLIC

From the time that I became a Catholic of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate.  I do not mean that I have given up thinking on theological subjects, but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever.  I have been in perfect peace; I never have had one doubt.

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles which are not found in the Anglican creed.  I am far from denying that every article of the Christian creed is beset with difficulties, and it is simple fact that I cannot answer those difficulties.  But ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.  Of all points of faith, the being of a God is encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.

Starting, then, with the being of a God, which is as certain to me as my own existence, I look out of myself into the world of men, and there I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress.  The world seems simply to give the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being is so full; I look into this living, busy world, and see no reflection of its Creator.  To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the defeat of good, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the dreary, hopeless irreligion—­all this is a vision to dizzy and appal, and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution.  What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact?  I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence.

And now, supposing it were the blessed will of the Creator to interfere in this anarchical condition of things, what would be the methods which might be necessarily or naturally involved in His purpose of mercy?  What must be the face-to-face antagonist, by which to withstand and baffle the fierce energy and passion and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries?  There is nothing to surprise the mind, if He should think fit to introduce a power into the world, invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious matters.  Such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and prompt means of withstanding the difficulty; and when I find that this is the very claim of the Catholic Church, not only do I feel no difficulty in admitting the idea, but there is a fitness in it which recommends it to my mind.