Ere long the young minister discovered that he could not believe what he was bound to teach. That from manhood’s threshold he was more than slightly disposed to religious scepticism is shown by the curious disputation he held on paper, during his last year at Hoxton, with a fellow-student, the question of the strictly private and confidential controversy being the existence of the Deity. Could he have proved to his satisfaction the existence of the Almighty, Godwin conceived he would be troubled by no doubt of the truth of Christianity, nor by any disposition to quarrel with the refinements of Calvinistic doctrine. Under these circumstances Godwin took the negative side in the secret controversy, hoping that his arguments would be demolished and his faith settled by his fellow-collegian. The result of the conflict does not appear. Possibly the paper war satisfied the doubter that he could conscientiously enter the ministry. If so, it only suppressed for a period the doubts that determined Godwin a few years later to seek another means of livelihood. At Beaconsfield (1783) he was converted to Socinianism by Priestley’s _Institutes_. Five years later he had passed through Socinianism into Deism. On becoming a Unitarian he took the ordinary course of a young man who, too poor to live in idleness, and too honest to live by daily falsehood, possesses studious tastes and literary aptitude. Coming to London he sought employment of the publishers, and contrived to live hardly, painfully, temperately, as a book-maker and publisher’s hack, whilst he persisted in the labours of a student. Producing in his twenty-eighth year a _Life of Lord Chatham_, for which he got nothing, and the _Defence of the Rockingham Party_, for which Stockdale paid him five guineas, he went on reading strenuously and writing as he best could,--throwing off articles for the _English Review_ at two guineas a-sheet, turning out forgotten novels for which he was paid from five to twenty guineas, translating for Murray the French MS. _Memoirs of Simon Lord Lovat_; doing whatever work came to hand, till he was appointed at sixty guineas per annum to write the historical part of Robinson’s _New Annual Register_, and to contribute articles to the _Political Herald_,--two engagements that, coming to him in his thirtieth year, gave him at the same time a sense of success and a sense of financial security.