"Religious persuasion" is a phrase bandied about by men who have no very accurate notion of the sense in which they employ the words. One cannot be persuaded of a truth: he may believe that to be true which is not so; but then he judges it to be true,--he is not persuaded; one cannot even be persuaded of a fact; the judgment and the senses are not to be persuaded. In religion, a man either believes, or doubts, or rejects: if he believe, his belief, on account of the supernatural authority to which he submits himself, is called faith. But, if in religion there be sects and parties, he may be persuaded by circumstances to choose one party rather than another; but this is a persuasion that respects the accessaries to religion, not the religion itself. If he adopt or profess the religion, without believing it, he is a hypocrite. I have laid down these principles by which to try my own conduct during my stay in Magdalen College. If I were conscious of any insincerity in my adherence to the church of England, during this period, I would now declare it; I hold myself bound to tell the truth, and not intentionally to lead the reader into any misapprehension. I had certainly committed a great fault in not prosecuting the inquiry begun by the reading of the Rheims Translation of the New Testament: it was the fault of my boyhood,--a fault of which, on human grounds even, I have but too much cause to repent. By not bringing this inquiry, at that time, to the point to which I afterwards brought it, I lost twelve years of my life, dating from seventeen years old,--a time which might have been employed in diverting my education to other purposes, in adopting and following another profession, and in forming other connexions and friendships, than those which I have, of course, forfeited by my conversion. But, during these twelve years, excepting the last year only, passed in doubt and research, I firmly believed that "the church of Rome had erred, not only in matters of discipline, but also in matters of faith." Transubstantiation was the great stumbling-block; and a church which had erred in so grave a matter was not a teacher to be implicitly confided in. I thought catholics were, not intentionally, but in fact, guilty of idolatry; and I thought the sin pardonable in them on account of the intention. Having once set myself at liberty to reject the authority of the church in communion with the bishop of Rome, I followed, among the various interpretations of which Scripture is capable, that given by the church of England, judging it to be most reasonable. Not sufficiently instructed in the distinction between matters of faith and questions of discipline, I believed the differences and points in dispute between these two portions of the catholic church, to be more numerous than they really are.