During his stay in London, he preached a series of controversial discourses in the Sardinian chapel during the Advent of 1835, and another in St. Mary's, Moorfields, in Lent, 1836. The latter were published under the title of _Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church_. They exhibit in a remarkable degree the qualities, so rare in polemical literature, of kindness, moderation, and charity for all men. The _odium theologicum_, indeed, has less place at Rome than anywhere else in the Christian world. It was at the very centre and chief school of the science of divinity that he learned to fight against error without temper, and expose falsehood without hard language. "I will certainly bear willing testimony," he says, "to the absence of all harsh words and uncharitable insinuations against others in public lectures or private teaching, or even {123} in conversation at Rome. One grows up there in a kinder spirit, and learns to speak of errors in a gentler tone than elsewhere, though in the very centre of highest orthodox feeling." Dr. Wiseman went back to the English college, leaving among his countrymen at home an enviable reputation for honesty, learning, and good sense. A few years more passed in frequent contact with the Holy Father, and under the continuous influence of the sacred associations with which eighteen centuries have peopled the Christian capital, and Nicholas Wiseman was then ready to go forth to his work. The recollection of numberless favors and kind words from the supreme pontiff went with him, and strengthened him, and colored his thoughts. He has told of the cordial and paternal treatment with which he was honored by Gregory XVI. in particular. "An embrace would supply the place of ceremonious forms on entrance. At one time a long, familiar conversation, seated side by side; at another a visit to the penetralia of the pontifical apartment (a small suite of entresols, communicating by an internal staircase) occupied the time. ..... What it has been my happiness to hear from him in such visits, it would be betraying a sacred trust to reveal; but many and many words there spoken rise to the mind in times of trouble, like stars, not only bright in themselves, but all the brighter in their reflection from the brightness of their mirror. They have been words of mastery and spell over after events, promises, and prognostics which have not failed, assurances and supports that have never come to naught." [Footnote 39]