"I am happy in being thus able to afford an explanation as satisfactory to you, as the kind feelings which you have ever entertained towards me could desire;—yet, on honest reflection, I cannot conceal from myself, that it was generally a relief to me, to see so little of your Grace, when you were at Oxford: and it is a greater relief now to have an opportunity of saying so to yourself. I have ever wished to observe the rule, never to make a public charge against another behind his back, and, though in the course of conversation and the urgency of accidental occurrences it is sometimes difficult to keep to it, yet I trust I have not broken it, especially in your own case: i.e. though my most intimate friends know how deeply I deplore the line of ecclesiastical policy adopted under your archiepiscopal sanction, and though in society I may have clearly shown that I have an opinion one way rather than the other, yet I have never in my intention, never (as I believe) at all, spoken of your Grace in a serious way before strangers;—indeed mixing very little in general society, and not overapt to open myself in it, I have had little temptation to do so. Least of all should I so forget myself as to take undergraduates into my confidence in such a matter.
"I wish I could convey to your Grace the mixed and very painful feelings, which the late history of the Irish Church has raised in me:—the union of her members with men of heterodox views, and the extinction (without ecclesiastical sanction) of half her Candlesticks, the witnesses and guarantees of the Truth and trustees of the Covenant. I willingly own that both in my secret judgment and my mode of speaking concerning you to my friends, I have had great alternations and changes of feeling,—defending, then blaming your policy, next praising your own self and protesting against your measures, according as the affectionate remembrances which I had of you rose against my utter aversion of the secular and unbelieving policy in which I considered the Irish Church to be implicated. I trust I shall never be forgetful of the kindness you uniformly showed me during your residence in Oxford: and anxiously hope that no duty to Christ and His Church may ever interfere with the expression of my sense of it. However, on the present opportunity, I am conscious to myself, that I am acting according to the dictates both of duty and gratitude, if I beg your leave to state my persuasion, that the perilous measures in which your Grace has acquiesced are but the legitimate offspring of those principles, difficult to describe in few words, with which your reputation is especially associated; principles which bear upon the very fundamentals of all argument and investigation, and affect almost every doctrine and every maxim by which our faith or our conduct is to be guided. I can feel no reluctance to confess, that, when I first was noticed by your Grace, gratitude to you and admiration of your powers wrought upon me; and, had not something from within resisted, I should certainly have adopted views on religious and social duty, which seem to my present judgment to be based in the pride of reason and to tend towards infidelity, and which in your own case nothing but your Grace's high religious temper and the unclouded faith of early piety has been able to withstand.
"I am quite confident, that, however you may regard this judgment, you will give me credit, not only for honesty, but for a deeper feeling in thus laying it before you.
"May I be suffered to add, that your name is ever mentioned in my prayers, and to subscribe myself
"Your Grace's very sincere friend and servant,
"J. H. NEWMAN."
3.
"Dublin, November 3, 1834.
"My dear Newman,
"I cannot forbear writing again to express the great satisfaction I feel in the course I adopted; which has, eventually, enabled me to contradict a report which was more prevalent and more confidently upheld than I could have thought possible: and which, while it was perhaps likely to hurt my character with some persons, was injurious to yours in the eyes of the best men. For what idea must any one have had of religion—or at least of your religion—who was led to think there was any truth in the imputation to you of such uncharitable arrogance!