urgent to meet it clearly and decisively.  “We could not move a step in comfort till this was done."[70] “The controversy with the Romanists,” writes Mr. Newman in No. 71 of the Tracts, about the end of 1835, “has overtaken us ‘like a summer’s cloud.’  We find ourselves in various parts of the country preparing for it, yet, when we look back, we cannot trace the steps by which we arrived at our present position.  We do not recollect what our feelings were this time last year on the subject; what was the state of our apprehensions and anticipations.  All we know is, that here we are, from long security ignorant why we are not Roman Catholics, and they on the other side are said to be spreading and strengthening on all sides of us, vaunting of their success, real or apparent, and taunting us with our inability to argue with them.”

The attitude taken by Mr. Newman at this time, as regards the Roman Church, both in the Tracts and in his book on Romanism and Popular Protestantism, published in the early months of 1836, was a new one.  He had started, as he tells us, with the common belief that the Pope was Antichrist, and that the case was so clear against the whole system, doctrinal and practical, of the Church of Rome, that it scarcely needed further examination.  His feeling against Rome had been increased by the fierce struggle about Emancipation, and by the political conduct of the Roman Catholic party afterwards; and his growing dissatisfaction with the ordinary Protestantism had no visible effect in softening this feeling.  Hurrell Froude’s daring questions had made his friends feel that there might be more to be known about the subject than they yet knew; yet what the fellow-travellers saw of things abroad in their visit to the South in 1832 did not impress them favourably.  “They are wretched Tridentines everywhere,” was Froude’s comment.  But attention had been drawn to the subject, and its deep interest and importance and difficulty recognised.  Men began to read with new eyes.  Froude’s keen and deep sense of shortcomings at home disposed him to claim equity and candour in judging of the alleged faults and corruptions of the Church abroad.  It did more, it disposed him—­naturally enough, but still unfairly, and certainly without adequate knowledge—­to treat Roman shortcomings with an indulgence which he refused to English.  Mr. Newman, knowing more, and more comprehensive in his view of things, and therefore more cautious and guarded than Froude, was much less ready to allow a favourable interpretation of the obvious allegations against Rome.  But thought and reading, and the authority of our own leading divines, had brought him to the conviction that whatever was to be said against the modern Roman Church—­and the charges against it were very heavy—­it was still, amid serious corruption and error, a teacher to the nations of the Christian creed and hope; it had not forfeited, any more than the English Church, its title to be