"As for claims, these are my opinions. If Lord Liverpool takes
simply the claims of the scholar, Copleston's are fully equal to
mine. So, too, in general knowledge the world would give it in
favor of him. If Lord Liverpool looks to professional merits, mine
are to Copleston's as _the Andes to a molehill_. There is no
comparison between us; Copleston is no theologue; I am. If, again,
Lord Liverpool looks to weight and influence in the University, I
will give Copleston a month's start and beat him easily in any
question that comes before us. As to popularity in the appointment,
mine will be popular through the whole profession; Copleston's the
contrary.... I thought, as I tell you, honestly, I should be able
to make myself a bishop in due time.... I will conclude by telling
you my own real wishes about myself. My anxious desire is to make
myself a great divine, and to be accounted the best in England. My
second wish is to become the founder of a school of theology at
Oxford. Now, no bishopric will enable me to do this but the See of
Oxford. I have now told you my most secret thoughts. What I desire
is, after a few years, to be sure of a retirement, with good
provision in some easy bishopric, or Van Mildert deanery. I want
neither London nor Canterbury: they will never suit me. But I want
money, because I am poor and have children; and I desire character,
because I cannot live without it."
"Isn't that simply delicious?" said Father Letheby, laying down the
review, and challenging my admiration.
"Poor fellow," I could not help saying; "the last little bit of pathos
about his children gilds the wretched picture. Who was he?"
"No less a person than Dr. Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity in
Oxford, and _the_ originator of the Tractarian Movement. But can you
conceive a Catholic priest writing such a letter?"
"No," I replied slowly, "I cannot. But I can conceive a Catholic priest
thinking it. I am not so much unlike the rest of mankind; and I remember
when I came out on the mission, and had time to look around me, like a
chicken just out of its shell, two things gave me a shock of intense
surprise. First, I could not conceive how the Catholic Church had got on
for eighteen hundred years without my cooperation and ability; and,
secondly, I could not understand what fatuity possessed the Bishop to
appoint as his vicar-general a feeble old man of seventy, who preached
with hesitation, and, it was whispered, believed the world was flat, and
that people were only joking when they spoke of it as a globe; and pass
over such a paragon of perfection, an epitome of all the talents, like
myself. It took me many years to recover from that surprise; and, alas!
a little trace of it lingers yet. Believe me, my dear young friend, a
good many of us are as alien in spirit to the _Imitation_ as Dr. Lloyd,
but we must not say it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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