‘Still, some will say, more selection might have been used, and many statements at least omitted, which, however well considered by himself, coming now, suddenly, as they do, on the reader, appear unnecessarily startling and paradoxical. But, really, there was little option of that kind, if justice were to be done either to him or to the reader. His opinions had a wonderful degree of consistency and mutual bearing; they depended on each other as one whole: who was to take the responsibility of separating them? Who durst attempt it, considering especially his hatred of concealment and artifice? Again: it was due to the reader to show him fairly how far the opinions recommended would carry him. There is no wish to disguise their tendencies, nor to withdraw them from such examination as will prove them erroneous, if they are so. Any homage which it is desired to render to his memory would indeed be sadly tarnished, were he to be spoken or written of in any spirit but that of an unshrinking openness like his own. Such also is the tone of the Catholic Fathers, and (if it may be urged without irreverence), of the Sacred Writers themselves. Nothing, as far as we can find, is kept back by them, merely because it would prove startling: openness, not disguise, is their manner. This should not be forgotten in a compilation professing simply to recommend their principles. Nothing, therefore, is here kept back, but what it was judged would be fairly and naturally misunderstood: the insertion of which, therefore, would have been, virtually, so much untruth. ‘Lastly, it may perhaps be thought of the Correspondence in particular, that it is eked out with unimportant details, according to the usual mistake of partial friends. The compilers, however, can most truly affirm that they have had the risk of such an error continually before their eyes, and have not, to the best of their judgement, inserted anything, which did not tell, indirectly perhaps but really, towards filling up that outline of his mind and character, which seemed requisite to complete the idea of him as a witness to Catholic views. It can hardly be necessary for them to add, what the name of Editor implies, that while they, of course, concur in his sentiments as a whole, they are not to be understood as rendering themselves responsible for every shade of opinion or expression. ‘It remains only to commend these fragments, if it may be done without presumption, to the same good Providence which seemed to bless the example and instructions of the writer while yet with us, to the benefit of many who knew him: that “being dead,” he may “yet speak,” as he constantly desired to do, a word in season for the Church of God: may still have the privilege of awakening some of her members to truer and more awful thoughts than they now have, of their own high endowments and deep responsibility.’