"I had heard of the power of religion to change the heart, and I ridiculed the wild chimera. My contempt for this notion was confirmed by the conduct of Mr. Tyrrel in his new character. I found it had produced little change in him, except furnishing him with a new subject of discussion. I saw that he had only laid down one set of opinions and taken up another, with no addition whatever to his virtues, and with the addition to his vices of spiritual pride and self-confidence; for with hypocrisy I have no right to charge any man. I observed that Tyrrel and one or two of his new friends rather courted attack than avoided it. They considered discretion as the infirmity of a worldly mind, and every attempt at kindness or conciliation as an abandonment of faith. They eagerly ascribed to their piety the dislike which was often excited by their peculiarities. I found them apt to dignify the disapprobation which their singularity occasioned with the name of persecution. I have seen them take comfort in the belief that it was their religion which was disliked, when perhaps it was chiefly their oddities. "At Tyrrel's I became acquainted with your friends Mr. and Mrs. Ranby. I leave you to judge whether their characters, that of the lady especially, was calculated to do away my prejudices. I had learned from my favorite Roman poet a precept in composition, of never making a God appear, except on occasions worthy of a God. I have since had reason to think this rule as justly theological as it is classical. So thought not the Ranbys. "It will, indeed, readily be allowed by every reflecting mind, as God is to be viewed in all his works, so his 'never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and on earth.' But surely there is something very offensive in the indecent familiarity with which the name of God and Providence is brought in on every trivial occasion, as was the constant practice of Mr. and Mrs. Ranby. I was not even then so illogical a reasoner as to allow a general and deny a particular Providence. If the one were true, I inferred that the other could not be false. But I felt that the religion of these people was of a slight texture and a bad taste. I was disgusted with littleness in some instances, and with inconsistency in others. Still their absurdity gave me no right to suspect their sincerity.