“I intend to stay there as long as it seems pleasant to me, and then go on to New York and there unite myself with the Church.

“I sigh, and feel that this step is the most important of my life.  My highest convictions, my deepest wants, lead me to it; and should I not obey them?  There is no room to harbor a doubt about it.  My friends will look upon it with astonishment, and probably use the common epithets, delusion, fanaticism, and blindness.  But so I wish to appear to minds like theirs; otherwise this would be unsatisfactory to me.  Men call that superstition which they have not the feeling to appreciate, and that fanaticism which they have not the spiritual perception to perceive.  The Protestant world admires, extols, and flatters him who will write and speak high-sounding and heroic words; who will assert that he will follow truth wherever it leads, at all sacrifices and hazards; but no sooner does he do so than it slanders and persecutes him for being what he professed to be.  Verily it has separated faith from works.

“This is a heavy task; it is a great undertaking, a serious, sacred, sincere, and solemn step; it is the most vital and eternal act, and as such do I feel it in all its importance, weight, and power.  O God!  Thou who hast led me by Thy heavenly messengers, by Thy divine grace, to make this new, unforeseen, and religious act of duty, support me in the day of trial.  Support me, O Lord, in my confessions; give me strength and purity to speak freely the whole truth without any equivocation or attempt at justification.  O Lord, help Thy servant when he is feeble and would fall.

“One thing that gives me much peace and joy is that all worldly inducements, all temptations toward self-gratification whatever, are in favor of the Anglican Church and in opposition to the Catholic Church.  And on this account my conscience feels free from any unworthy motive in joining it.  The Roman Catholic Church is the most despised, the poorest, and, according to the world, the least respectable of any; this on account of the class of foreigners of which it is chiefly composed in this country.  In this respect it presents to me no difficulty of any sort, nor demands the least sacrifice.  But the new relations in which it will place me, and the new duties which will be required of me, are strange to me, and hence I shall feel all their weight at once.”

His premonitions were speedily fulfilled, though probably not in the extreme form which he anticipated.  The spirit of courtesy which prevailed throughout his family doubtless prevented any but the mildest criticism on his action.  But even that had hitherto been spared him.  There had been anxiety and much questioning about his final course, but that it would end in this way does not seem to have been seriously apprehended.  On the same day on which he made the entry just quoted he wrote the following letter to them: