But the Papacy appealed to him imaginatively, not theologically, as it did to his great rival. I recollect being told by a member of the symposium that Gladstone once discussed deep into the night at Hawarden what form of Christianity would eventually survive and prevail. Three chosen friends agreed with him that it would be Romanism, the establisher and not the establishment, the supernational and not the national, theocratic and not (as Disraeli makes one of his characters describe the Church of England) “parliamentary Christianity.” Not so Disraeli. Its political influences, its “clamour for toleration,” its “labour for supremacy,”[106] its warping limitations, its prying priestcraft, its humble haughtiness, its casuistic candour, its centralising forces fatal to Northern liberty, the ban placed on free discussion and free intercourse, its proclamation of the uniformity rather than of the unity of human nature, and above all its admixture of paganism, were the drawbacks that repelled him. “The tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful,” he observes, adverting to that “mistake and misfortune” of Newman’s desertion. “Resting on the Church of Jerusalem, modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter. Instead of that, the seceders sought refuge in mediæval superstitions which are generally the embodiments of pagan ceremonies and creeds.”[107] The spell of Romanism is an incident in _Contarini Fleming_. The spell, but also the perils of Romanism, its bewitchment of judgment and of conscience, its repugnance to free politics and independent wills, its arrogance of inspiration, its monopolies, its burdens of enjoined etiquette, form the theme of _Lothair_. He cannot bind himself to the danger, yet how adorable is its source! How firm the rock on which it is founded, when it is not of offence! How certain the conclusions, if only the premises can be conceded!