They who begin in enthusiasm, passing in its heat and giddiness from one sect to another, and cooling at every transition, generally settle in formalism where they find some substantial worldly motives for becoming fixed; but where the worldly motives are wanting, it depends upon temperament and accident whether they run headlong into infidelity, or take refuge from it in the Roman Catholic church. The papal clergy in England have always known how to fish in troubled waters; and when the waters are still, there are few among them who have not been well instructed in the art of catching gudgeons. Our clergy have never been in the same sense, fishers of men. In an epigram written under the portrait of Gibbon, as unquotable at length, as it is unjust in part of the lines which may be quoted, the face is said to be —the likeness of one Who through every religion in Europe has run And ended at last in believing in none. It was a base epigram which traduced the historian's political character for no other reason than that he was not a Whig; and it reproached him for that part of his conduct which was truly honourable,—the sincerity with which, when ill-instructed, he became a Roman Catholic, and the propriety with which, after full and patient investigation, he gave up the tenets of the Romish church as untenable. That he proceeded farther, and yielded that which can be maintained against the Gates of Hell, is to be lamented deeply for his own sake, and for those in whom he has sown the seeds of infidelity. But the process from change to change is a common one, and the cases are few wherein there is so much to extenuate the culpability of the individual. It was not in the self-sufficiency of empty ignorance that Gibbon and Bayle went astray; generally the danger is in proportion to the want of knowledge; there are more shipwrecks among the shallows than in the deep sea. During the great Rebellion, when the wild beasts had trampled down the fences, broken into the vineyard and laid it waste, it is curious to observe the course taken by men who felt for various causes, according to their different characters, the necessity of attaching themselves to some religious communion. Cottington, being in Spain, found it convenient to be reconciled to the Romish church; the dominant religion being to him, as a politician, the best. Weak and plodding men like Father Cressey took the same turn in dull sincerity: Davenant because he could not bear the misery of a state of doubt, and was glad to rest his head upon the pillow of authority; Goring from remorse; Digby (a little later) from ambition, and Lambert, because he was sick of the freaks and follies of the sectaries.