264 EARLY REMINISCENCES in Parliament, but on his father's bankruptcy this became impossible, and, as Purcell admits, he was driven against his wrill to take up the Church as a profession. If he could not push himself to the fore in politics, he might do so in religion. He had, however, no definite convictions ; such as he had he had derived from Puritanism. As he himself wrote : " I had a drawing to Christian piety ; but a revulsion from the Anglican Church." Notwithstanding this revulsion he took Orders in that Church, simply because it was the only door open for his ambition to make himself a name. After that Manning became rector of Lavington; he worked hard and conscientiously among the people, and with considerable effect. He had no definite religious convictions, but he gradually became influenced by the Tracts for the Times. Previously, what religious ideas he had imbibed had been from Miss Bevan of a Quaker family, and from his rector, when he was a curate, the Rev. John Sargent, whose daughter Emily he married. Mr. Sargent was a disciple of Simeon, and a strong Evangelical. Manning's wife Emily had imbibed the errors and prejudices of the party. It was only after her death, and that of her father, that Manning emancipated himself from a school that he was shrewd enough to perceive was on its wane, and to attach himself to the Tractarian party that, at the time, seemed to promise conquest over the minds and souls of men. He had not been reared in Church principles, he had acquired none at Oxford, he had none when he entered Holy Orders. But he was ambitious, and he hoped to force his way into prominence, position, and power, on the crest of the orthodox wave. Only when he found that there was for him no higher preferment than an Archdeaconry did he resolve to look elsewhere for that success after which he longed and struggled, and which he was determined to obtain. The Tractarian party promised great things, the tide set in strongly in that direction, and Manning quickly abandoned the Evangelical faction and threw in the force of his intellect on the side of Orthodoxy. In his Rule of Faith, he broke away from his Evangelical association. But, after the publication of Tract XC. there was a revulsion of feeling, and Manning swung round abruptly to the Low Church side. The leaders of the Oxford movement keenly felt his desertion of them.
