‘Now, it must be admitted that these Letters leave the question as to the probability of his conversion very much in that evenly-balanced state in which, as I have just said, the wishes of friends or partisans come in to determine it on either side. His Letters contain, on the one hand, many passages from which, if they stood alone, it might be concluded that he was, at certain times, almost ripe for conversion. They also contain others apparently of an opposite tenour. In the former class must be reckoned those indications of antipathy, continually deriving fresh fuel from new researches, to the English Reformation and Reformers.[330] Mr. Froude’s theological sentiments had long passed the mark of the Laudian era, and settled at the point of the Nonjurors.[331] He thinks one might take for an example Francis de Sales, whom, by the way, he classes with “Jansenist Saints.”[332] Again, he was most deeply sensitive to the shortcomings and anomalies of his communion: he calls it an “incubus” on the country, and ascribes to it the blighting properties of the “upas-tree.” It is evident that he was in advance both of Mr. Keble and Mr. Newman: he twits the former, in friendly expostulation, with the Protestantism of his phraseology in parts of _The Christian Year_, and laments the backwardness of the latter on some questions of the day. On the other hand, and in the same direction of thought, he expresses admiration of Cardinal Pole; he scruples about speaking against the Catholic system, even its “seemingly indifferent practices”;[333] he can understand, on the principle of reverence, the Communion under one species,[334] perhaps the greatest of all practical difficulties to many Anglican minds. Moreover, when at Rome, he evidently opened the subject of reconciliation to a distinguished prelate whom he met there.[335] _Per contra_, we have painful sayings against supposed practical abuses in the Church. “He really thought,” as he tells us, that “certain practices which he witnessed abroad are idolatrous”; he charges priests with irreverence, ecclesiastical authorities with laxity, etc.[336] Yet even these opinions he partially qualifies, and is disposed to attribute to defective information.[337] He shrinks from speaking against Rome _as a Church_.[338]