Here, again, is an oriental subtlety; a man who believes in everything equally and generally may be said to believe in nothing. It is not a simple European view which makes honest Doubt worth a dozen of the Creeds. And it is in direct opposition to the noted writer who holds that the man of simple faith is worth ninety-nine of those who hold only to the egotistic interests of their own individuality. This dark saying means (if it mean anything), that the so-called moral faculties of man, fancy and ideality, must lord it over the perceptive and reflective powers,—a simple absurdity! It produced a Turricremata, alias Torquemada, who, shedding floods of honest tears, caused his victims to be burnt alive; and an Anchieta, the Thaumaturgist of Brazil, who beheaded a converted heretic lest the latter by lapse from grace lose his immortal soul. But this vein of speculation, which bigots brand as “Doubt, Denial, and Destruction;” this earnest religious scepticism; this curious inquiry, “Has the universal tradition any base of fact?”; this craving after the secrets and mysteries of the future, the unseen, the unknown, is common to all races and to every age. Even amongst the Romans, whose model man in Augustus’ day was Horace, the philosophic, the epicurean, we find Propertius asking:— An ficta in miseras descendit fabula gentes Et timor haud ultra quam rogus esse potest? To return: the Pilgrim’s doctrines upon the subject of conscience and repentance will startle those who do not follow his train of thought:— Never repent because thy will with will of Fate be not at one: Think, an thou please, before thou dost, but never rue the deed when done.