But the adoption of Swedenborgian terminology was a virtual recantation, and Carlile lost caste by it as did Lawrence. Lawrence gained no practice, and Carlile no influence. Indeed, I never knew any of these virtual recantations to be believed, or even respected by the world, who forced them on. A real recantation I never knew beyond this, that Atheists have acceded to Pantheism, or perhaps, relapsed into Unitarianism. But they have always remained Rationalists. None that 1 have known and watched—not even the weakest, have fallen into Evangelism. Carlile, by his new course, exposed himself to be distrusted by his less observing but warm friends, and he conciliated no foe among the Christians. Carlile, however, was no hypocrite, nor did he take this new course for venal ends. He was as in all things else conscientious. Still his course was one of choice, not of necessity. He was free as ever to expound science, as science, or to expound it in the language of religion. He adopted the mystic course. This was his error of judgment, not an alteration of conviction. If I may explain the paradox of his conduct in a paradox of terms, this is the expression of it:—From being a Material Atheist, he became a Christian Atheist. His definition of a Christian at this stage, was ‘a man purged from error.’(1) That this course was no more than a mode of inculcation of his favourite Atheism is evident, intrinsically, and also from the fact that he was so much a realist, as to still avow his detestation of fiction; and so coherently did he keep to this text, that he never ceased to make war on poetry, theatres, and romance, from the commencement of his career down to the last number of the _Christian Warrior_. But the condemnation I pass upon the philosophy of his latter days shall not be exparte. I subjoin that passage in which he has most powerfully stated his own case.