But the “Memorial” made little difference to the progress of the movement.  It was an indication of hostility in reserve, but this was all; it formed an ornament to the city, but failed as a religious and effective protest.  Up to the spring of 1839, Anglicanism, placed on an intellectual basin by Mr. Newman, developed practically in different ways by Dr. Pusey and Dr. Hook, sanctioned in theory by divines who represented the old divinity of the English Church, like Bishop Phillpotts and Mr. H.J.  Rose, could speak with confident and hopeful voice.  It might well seem that it was on its way to win over the coming generations of the English clergy.  It had on its side all that gives interest and power to a cause,—­thought, force of character, unselfish earnestness; it had unity of idea and agreement in purpose, and was cemented by the bonds of warm affection and common sympathies.  It had the promise of a nobler religion, as energetic and as spiritual as Puritanism and Wesleyanism, while it drew its inspiration, its canons of doctrine, its moral standards, from purer and more venerable sources;—­from communion, not with individual teachers and partial traditions, but with the consenting teaching and authoritative documents of the continuous Catholic Church.

Anglicanism was agreed, up to this time—­the summer of 1839—­as to its general principles.  Charges of an inclination to Roman views had been promptly and stoutly met; nor was there really anything but the ignorance or ill-feeling of the accusers to throw doubt on the sincerity of these disavowals.  The deepest and strongest mind in the movement was satisfied; and his steadiness of conviction could be appealed to if his followers talked wildly and rashly.  He had kept one unwavering path; he had not shrunk from facing with fearless honesty the real living array of reasons which the most serious Roman advocates could put forward.  With a frankness new in controversy, he had not been afraid to state them with a force which few of his opponents could have put forth.  With an eye ever open to that supreme Judge of all our controversies, who listens to them on His throne on high, he had with conscientious fairness admitted what he saw to be good and just on the side of his adversaries, conceded what in the confused wrangle of conflicting claims he judged ought to be conceded.  But after all admissions and all concessions, the comparative strength of his own case appeared all the more undeniable.  He had stripped it of its weaknesses, its incumbrances, its falsehoods; and it did not seem the weaker for being presented in its real aspect and on its real grounds.  People felt that he had gone to the bottom of the question as no one had yet dared to do.  He was yet staunch in his convictions; and they could feel secure.