Toward our own bishop we were strictly obedient. His violent antipathy to Rome and strong Anglican party spirit, joined with a timid, politic course of action toward the Low Church, ultra-Protestant party, prevented our giving him full and unreserved confidence. {59} Mr. Baker had seldom the occasion of conversing much with him. I was, however, constantly in his family, and very much in his society. I confided in him as a man of integrity, a sincere and generous friend, and a just and kind superior. But, from the first, there was a barrier which I had not expected to full and unreserved confidence, and a feeling that there was a secret and fundamental difference in our apprehension of the ideas which are contained in the forms of Catholic language. I have since discovered what this difference was, and I see now that he really believed in an invisible, ideal Catholic Church only, and in no other outward, visible unity, except that which is completed in a single bishop and congregation. This explains a remark made at that time by my father, who is thoroughly acquainted with the Protestant theology, on one of the bishop's essays; that, except his doctrine of three orders in the ministry, he was a pure Congregationalist. Mr. Newman, also, held the same view, until quite a late period in his Anglican life, as appears from his "Apologia." In Bishop Whittingham's own eyes, he was himself the equivalent of the whole Catholic episcopate. Consequently, what he and his colleagues and predecessors in the Anglican Church had decreed had full Catholic authority, and was just as final and authoritative as if the whole world had taken part in it. Hence the assertion of a despotic, exclusive authority of the Anglican Church, concentrated in his person, over everyone who acknowledged his jurisdiction. He would not permit us to attend any Catholic services, or read any Catholic books, as an ordinary thing. I read the tract of Natalis Alexander on the Eucharist, and the Life of St. Francis of Sales, in his library, before he made his prohibition. Afterward, he gave me himself a volume of Tirinus's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures; and these were the only Catholic books I read while I was in his family. I was very anxious to read Möhler's "Symbolism," but I did not; nor did I read Ward's "Ideal of a Christian Church;" because he desired me not to do so. {60} I even gave up using approved Anglican books of devotion in church, because he expressed his disapprobation of using any other book but the "Common Prayer." Mr. Baker was equally obedient with myself at that time; although afterward, when he was governed more by common-sense and a just sentiment of his own rights, he read whatever he thought proper. It was Anglican books which brought us onward toward the Catholic Church, and the attempt to live up to and carry out Anglo-Catholic principles. Those who are familiar with the Anglo-Catholic movement will