But now God had taught me more largeness by bitter sorrow working the peaceable fruit of righteousness; at last then I might admire my brother. I therefore wrote to him a letter of contrition. Some change, either in his mind or in his view of my position, had taken place; and I was happy to find him once more able, not only to feel fraternally, as he had always done, but to act also fraternally. Nevertheless, to this day it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish bondage. For the _peculiarities_ of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition, will never be destroyed, while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion. These are the outworks of the Romish citadel: until they are razed to the ground, the citadel will defy attack. If we are to blind our eyes, in order to accept an article of King Edward VI., or an argument of St. Paul's, why not blind them so far as to accept the Council of Trent? If we are to pronounce that a man "without doubt shall perish everlastingly," unless he believes the self-contradictions of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should we shrink from a similar anathema on those who reject the self-contradictions of Transsubstantiation? If one man is cast out of God's favour for eliciting error while earnestly searching after truth, and another remains in favour by passively receiving the word of a Church, of a Priest, or of an Apostle, then to search for truth is dangerous; apathy is safer; then the soul does not come directly into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and unconvincedly submit to, some external authority. This is the germ of Romanism: its legitimate development makes us Pagans outright. * * * * *