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INTRODUCTION. xvii
himself was kept back by reason of pecuniary difficulties. Expensive alterations in the rectory, improvements in the glebe lands, together with his charitable donations, had plunged him deeply in debt. But a friend, who, however, was not in religious sympathy with him, hearing of his perplexity, generously paid the sum that he owed, and opened the way for him. On Sunday, Nov. 16, 1845, he officiated for the last time at Elton. At the evening service, after telling his people that the doctrines which he had taught them were true, but not those of the Church of England, and that therefore he could not remain in that Communion, he hastily descended the pulpit stairs, threw off his surplice, and, without stopping to pick it up, fled to his rectory, leaving the congregation in blank astonishment.
Some of his parishioners begged him to stay, assuring him that he might preach any doctrine he pleased; but he was inexorable. The following day he left Elton, and, with a few disciples who had determined to join the Roman Catholic Church with him, was admitted at Northampton. He declared that he felt himself from that time, like the apostles at Pentecost, permeated by the sensible presence of the Holy Ghost. His essentially feminine soul, always craving assurance, had found a safe harborage in authority.
Soon after, he went to Birmingham, where Mon-
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