That Easter was memorable to me for another cause. It saw waked and
smothered my first doubt. That some people did doubt the historical
accuracy of the Bible I knew, for one or two of the Harrow masters were
friends of Colenso, the heretic Bishop of Natal, but fresh from my
Patristic studies, I looked on heretics with blind horror, possibly the
stronger from its very vagueness, and its ignorance of what it feared. My
mother objected to my reading controversial books which dealt with the
points at issue between Christianity and Freethought, and I did not care
for her favorite Stanley, who might have widened my views, regarding him
(on the word of Pusey) as "unsound in the faith once delivered to the
saints". I had read Pusey's book on "Daniel the prophet", and, knowing
nothing of the criticisms he attacked, I felt triumphant at his
convincing demonstrations of their error, and felt sure that none but the
wilfully blind could fail to see how weak were the arguments of the
heretic writers. That stately preface of his was one of my favorite
pieces of reading, and his dignified defence against all novelties of
"that which must be old because it is eternal, and must be unchangeable
because it is true", at once charmed and satisfied me. The delightful
vagueness of Stanley, which just suited my mother's broad views, because
it _was_ vague and beautiful, was denounced by Pusey--not unwarrantably--
as that "variegated use of words which destroys all definiteness of
meaning". When she would bid me not be uncharitable to those with whom I
differed in matters of religion, I would answer in his words, that
"charity to error is treason to truth", and that to speak out the truth
unwaveringly as it was revealed, was alone "loyalty to God and charity to
the souls of men".

Judge, then, of my terror at my own results when I found myself betrayed
into writing down some contradictions from the Bible. With that poetic
dreaming which is one of the charms of Catholicism, whether English or