It may seem strange to those who have never studied or sympathized in the Oxford movement, that men who adopted certain fundamental Catholic principles did not at once embrace the faith and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church, but remained a long time in the Episcopal communion, or even deliberately chose it, after having passed their early life in some other Protestant sect. This seems strange to those who have always been Catholics, and equally strange to the majority of Protestants. So much so, that we have been suspected, and by many fully believed to have been all along concealed Roman Catholics, working in the Episcopal Church for the purpose of "Romanizing" it. { 39} A few days before I was received into the Catholic Church, a near and venerable relative of mine said to me: "I am very glad you have become a Catholic, for I can respect a sincere Roman Catholic, but I cannot respect a Puseyite; you will now sail under your true colors. When will H. B. (a cousin of mine, who is an Episcopalian clergyman) do the same thing?"
The truth of the matter is, that we all had imbibed such an intense prejudice from our early education against the Roman Church, that we were appalled at the thought of joining her communion. When certain Catholic truths began to dawn upon our minds, it was indistinctly. To those who were bred in the Anglican Church, it was the natural and obvious course to remain there as long as their consciences would permit. To others, it was natural to look for a resting-place in that communion of which our own particular sects were only offshoots, with which educated people of English descent are so familiar through the history and literature of our native language, whose services many of us had frequently attended from childhood, and where many of us likewise had relatives and friends. It is a small matter to go from one Protestant sect to another, in itself considered, and it is no wonder that any orthodox Protestant should prefer the Episcopal Church to any of the religious bodies which have seceded from it. Besides this, there was a _via media_ offered to us by a great body of divines in the Episcopal Church, between Rome on the one hand and Protestantism on the other, which appeared to be exactly the thing we wanted. I acknowledge that I was too easily allured by this specious pretence, and failed to examine with due care the claims of the Church in communion with the See of Rome to be the true and only Church of Christ. I do not think Mr. Baker, notwithstanding that his prejudices were far less than mine, ever gave the subject serious and careful consideration, until long after he had become an Episcopalian minister. { 40} We knew too little, however, of the subject, to feel any conscientious obligations in that direction. I can truly say that I never for one moment deliberated on the question of becoming a Catholic, even when I had the fear of death before my eyes, until after I left Baltimore in the autumn of 1845. I never heard from Mr. Baker, up to that time, a word which betrayed the existence in his mind of any practical doubt about his duty in this respect. The growth of Catholic principles in our minds was gradual. By degrees, the mists of misrepresentation, prejudice, and ignorance which obscured the Catholic Church and her doctrines were dissipated and vanished. Our feelings of veneration and love for the great Church of Christendom increased. Still, as long as we were not convinced that actual communion with the Church of Rome and submission to her supremacy was necessary, _jure divino_, to the catholicity of any local Church, we remained firm in our allegiance to the ecclesiastical authority of our bishop. This is only an instance of what was going on in the case of many both in England and the United States. And it appears from this statement, that whereas all the disciples of the Oxford movement began on essentially the same ground, and that, one which implied strong and decisive opposition to Rome, one portion of them progressed continually, and another remained stationary or retrograded, thus producing separation and division in the ranks. What I wish to show now is, that those who progressed were logically compelled to do so by the principles of the movement itself, and that those who remained stationary, although they held a position which was necessary to the maintenance of Anglicanism, were illogical and inconsequent.