He received me kindly, but took the manuscript I offered him with what I again thought great coldness. He read two or three pages, without as before drawing his pencil upon me, and then paused. 'You have enjoined me a task,' said he, 'Mr. Trevor, which I do not know how to execute to my own satisfaction. You are not aware of the truth, and if I tell it you I shall offend.'--'Nay, Sir; I beg you will not spare me. Speak!'--'You have not explicitly defined to yourself your own motives: you think you are come in search of improvement; in reality, you are come in search of praise.'--'Not unless praise be my due.'--'Which you are convinced it is.'--'You see deeply into the human heart, Mr. Turl.'--'If I do not, I am ill qualified to criticise literary compositions.'--'And you think my divinity no better than my politics?'--'You do not state the question as I could wish. Divinity I must acknowledge is not a favourite subject with me.'--'I have heard as much.'--'I am too sincere a friend to morality to encourage dissention, quarrels, and enmity, concerning things which whoever may pretend to believe no one can prove that he understands. As a composition, from the little I have read, I believe your sermon to be very superior to your letter; but from the exposition of your subject, I perceive it treats on points of faith, asserts church authority, and stigmatises dissent with reprobation. You tell me you are recommended to a bishop: with him it will do you service! to me it is unintelligible.' His inclination to heresy, or, which is the same thing, his difference with me in opinion, piqued me on this occasion even more than the unsparing sincerity of his remarks. I answered, I was sorry he did not agree with me, on subjects which I was convinced were so momentous; and owned it was for that reason that, while he remained at the university, I had avoided his society. He replied, he doubted if it were right to avoid the vicious: and the precaution which he himself thought necessary, on all such occasions, was to inquire whether, in accusing another of vice, he were not himself guilty of error. He considered his own opinions as eternally open to revision; and if any man were to tell him that two and two did not make four, he should have no objection to re-examine the facts, with his opponent, on which his own previous conviction had been founded. We ought to be ardent in the defence of truth; but we ought likewise to be patient and benevolent. I made some attempts to convince him of the impiety of his scepticism; while he remained cool, but unshaken; and I left him with mingled emotions of pity, for his adherence to doctrines so damnable; and of admiration, at the amenity and philanthropy with which they were delivered.