There seems to have been no time in his life, after his arrival at manhood, when Patrick Henry was not regarded by his private acquaintances as a positively religious person. Moreover, while he was most tolerant of all forms of religion, and was on peculiarly friendly terms with their ministers, to whose preaching he often listened, it is inaccurate to say, as Wirt has done, that, though he was a Christian, he was so "after a form of his own;" that "he was never attached to any particular religious society, and never ... communed with any church."[448] On the contrary, from a grandson who spent many years in his household comes the tradition that "his parents were members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which his uncle, Patrick Henry, was a minister;" that "he was baptized and made a member of it in early life;" and that "he lived and died an exemplary member of it."[449] Furthermore, in 1830, the Rev. Charles Dresser, rector of Antrim Parish, Halifax County, Virginia, wrote that the widow of Patrick Henry told him that her husband used to receive "the communion as often as an opportunity was offered, and on such occasions always fasted until after he had communicated, and spent the day in the greatest retirement. This he did both while governor and afterward."[450] In a letter to one of his daughters, written in 1796, he makes this touching confession:-- "Amongst other strange things said of me, I hear it is said by the deists that I am one of the number; and, indeed, that some good people think I am no Christian. This thought gives me much more pain than the appellation of Tory; because I think religion of infinitely higher importance than politics; and I find much cause to reproach myself that I have lived so long, and have given no decided and public proofs of my being a Christian. But, indeed, my dear child, this is a character which I prize far above all this world has, or can boast."[451] While he thus spoke, humbly and sorrowfully, of his religious position as a thing so little known to the public that it could be entirely misunderstood by a portion of them, it is plain that no one who had seen him in the privacy of his life at home could have had any misunderstanding upon that subject. For years before his retirement from the law, it had been his custom, we are told, to spend "one hour every day ... in private devotion. His hour of prayer was the close of the day, including sunset; ... and during that sacred hour, none of his family intruded upon his privacy."[452]