Church of England really was; not Protestant, no; but Catholic in the
deepest and highest sense."

"So you are one of these new Tractarians? You do not seem to have adopted
yet the ascetic mode of life, which I hear they praise up so highly,"

"My dear Alton, if you have read, as you have, your Bible, you will
recollect a text which tells you not to appear to men to fast. What I do
or do not do in the way of self-denial, unless I were actually profligate,
which I give you my sacred honour I am not, must be a matter between Heaven
and myself."

There was no denying that truth; but the longer my cousin talked the less I
trusted in him--I had almost said, the less I believed him. Ever since the
tone of his voice had changed so suddenly, I liked him less than when he
was honestly blurting out his coarse and selfish ambition. I do not think
he was a hypocrite. I think he believed what he said, as strongly as he
could believe anything. He proved afterwards that he did so, as far as
man can judge man, by severe and diligent parish work: but I cannot help
doubting at times, if that man ever knew what believing meant. God forgive
him! In that, he is no worse than hundreds more who have never felt the
burning and shining flame of intense conviction, of some truth rooted in
the inmost recesses of the soul, by which a man must live, for which he
would not fear to die.

And therefore I listened to him dully and carelessly; I did not care to
bring objections, which arose thick and fast, to everything he said. He
tried to assure me--and did so with a great deal of cleverness--that this
Tractarian movement was not really an aristocratic, but a democratic one;
that the Catholic Church had been in all ages the Church of the poor; that