He had some difficulty in obeying his Bishop with regard to "the Roman plan," as he calls it. It was the first test of his obedience. He thought it was because the Bishop was weak enough to yield to the wishes of his family that he was sent. These wishes appeared to him to proceed from principles to which the Church's policy should not suit itself. There would be a noise made in the papers about his conversion, and his friends would have to answer {204} questions about him in inquisitive circles. His father did not wish him to go to Brington, and he himself was most anxious to use the influence he possessed over his dependants in order to their conversion. To avoid these inconveniences and clashing of motives they desired he might be absent from England for some time. Some of his friends also thought going to Rome would make him Protestant again; for, he says in a letter written a few days after his arrival in Rome, "You see now that coming to Rome does not open my eyes and make me wish myself a Protestant again. You may tell all Protestants that I am under no charm, and if anything occurs to make me see that ours is an apostate Church, I shall not, I trust, perversely suffer my fate to be bound up with hers, and consent to die in her plagues." The public parade of Catholic ceremonial had not formerly produced the best of effects upon him, and perhaps it was expected the old feelings would be revived by seeing the same things once more. The very reasons his friends had for detaining him might urge the Bishop to hasten his departure. His anxiety to go and preach Catholicity in Brington was not quite according to prudence, for though he might know the principal dogmas of faith and believe them firmly, he still needed that Catholic instinct and mode of thought which can nowhere be imbibed so quickly or so surely as in Rome. There are many traits of Protestant _viewiness_ to be seen in his letters at this period, but, "Quo semel imbuta est recens servabit odorem, Testa din." It would not have been so easy to bring these properly into subjection whilst he had the thousand-and-one forms of Protestant errors seething around him, and would be forced by his zeal to seek out ways of making Catholic truth approach them. Where everything was Catholic to the very core, in might and majesty, was the best school for tutoring him into Catholic feelings and ideas. It was well also to let him see the force of prejudice, by making him experience in himself how differently things seem according {205} to the state of one's mind. If he was shocked at Rome as a Protestant, it was well to let him know that it was because he was unable to understand as a Protestant what gave him so much joy and edification, when he could see with Catholic eyes.