“_I should like to see you much_,” he writes, “but I feel that Sunday would be a heavy day for you here (as I don’t frequent popish mass houses or the like), so that if you could run down here on Monday evening....” And again: “When I think of the (at best) half teaching you have, but that I confide in our gracious covenant head, I should tremble for you when I am gone. I have no doubt at all that Maurice is a most amiable man, but I believe that to this hour he has never come clear out of Unitarianism, and therefore does not see distinctly, nor, of course, teach scripturally, any one of those fundamental Christian truths (all connected together) original sin, Christ’s vicarious work atoning for sin and fulfiling the law, justification by faith, and salvation by grace. Read, darling, ...” The following “passage of arms” with a Norfolk cousin, a man some years older than herself, is interesting in this connection: “Hastings, March 12/60. MY DEAR SOPHY, I left Brighton on Friday with something of a heavy heart. I saw I had grieved you where I had really no intention of doing so: that was painful to me and I must regret it. I express to you my strong regrets. But oh! tenthousandfold deeper was the sad conviction _forced upon me_, that the advance you have made,—shall I vex you if I say honestly and openly,—_Romewards_, since I last saw you was very great. I believe you are as yet unconscious of your own tendency. I told you so at Lyng. But in honesty I must tell you, my dear Sophy, I tremble for you. It is such _awfully slippery_ ground. It is such a _pleasant_ accommodation of religion to our fallen nature. It so feeds our _impulsiveness_ and fortifies our _natural religionism_. Will you forgive me if, with a cousin’s, I hope more than that, anxious love I _beseech_ you to ‘consider your ways,’ and _bring your soul before God in this matter_. Pray don’t _starve your soul on gilded husks_ while bread lies at your feet in your Father’s house. I know more than one amiable creature who began _as you have done_, and has landed in Rome.... Dear Sophy, don’t trust your _head_, much less your heart, much less any fallen man or imperfect church under the sun. Trust Jesus, Jesus only, Jesus _wholly_, Jesus _exclusively_. I trust this note will not make you wrath against me.... Be sure of one thing, I banter no more, where feeling is evidently so deep. Henceforth I will try and pray fervently for your poor soul’s conversion to God.” “March 14th./60. MY DEAR ...