It was not often in the sixteenth or seventeenth century that a completely emancipated and critical attitude on religious, not philosophical, questions was expressed with such entire frankness and seriousness. From this position, Walton would have us believe, Donne advanced through the study of Bellarmine and other controversialists to a convinced acceptance of Anglican doctrine. The evidence points to a rather different conclusion on Donne's part. He came to think that all the Churches were 'virtual beams of one sun', 'connatural pieces of one circle', a position from which the next step was to the conclusion that for an Englishman the Anglican Church was the right choice (Cujus regio, ejus religio); but Donne had not reached this conclusion when he wrote the _Satyre_, and doubtless did not till he had satisfied himself that the Church of England offered a reasonable _via media_. But changes of creed made on purely intellectual grounds, and prompted by practical motives, are not unattended with danger to a man's moral and spiritual life. Donne had doubtless outwardly conformed before he entered Egerton's service in 1598, but long afterwards, when he is already in Orders, he utters a cry which betrays how real the dilemma still was: Show me, deare Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear; and the first result of his 'conversion' was apparently to deepen the sceptical vein in his mind. Scepticism and melancholy, bitter and sardonic, are certainly the dominant notes in the sombre fragment of satire _The Progresse of the Soule_, which he composed in 1601, when he was Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary, four months before his marriage and six months after the death of the Earl of Essex. There can be little doubt, as I have ventured to suggest elsewhere, that it was the latter event which provoked this strange and sombre explosion of spleen, a satire of the same order as the _Tale of a Tub_ or the _Vision of Judgment_. The account of the poem which Jonson gave to Drummond does not seem to be quite accurate, though it was probably derived from Donne himself. It was, one suspects from several circumstances, a little Donne's way in later years to disguise the footprints of his earlier indiscretions. According to this tradition the final _habitat_ of the soul which 'inanimated' the apple Whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe, was to be John Calvin. The tradition is interesting as marking how far Donne was in 1601 from his later orthodox Protestantism, for Calvin is never mentioned but with respect in the _Sermons_. A few months later he wrote to Egerton disclaiming warmly all 'love of a corrupt religion'. But, though sceptical in tone, the poem is written from a Catholic standpoint; its theme is the progress of the soul of heresy. And, as the seventh stanza clearly indicates, the great heretic in whom the line closed was to be not Calvin but Queen Elizabeth: