ambitious and scheming men, who,
having lost hold of the truth, require to be scathingly denounced
and their iniquity exposed; whilst those who thus held her in
abhorrence heard the voice of the Spirit in their hearts saying,
"Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partaker of her
plagues."

The mystical unity of the Catholic Church was a thing understood by
few in those days. The one party held themselves the true church,
and anathematized their baptized and Christian brethren as heretics
and outcasts; whilst, as a natural outcome of such a state of
affairs, these outcasts themselves were disposed to repudiate the
very name of Catholic. And to this very day, in spite of the light
which has come to men, and the better understanding with regard to
Christian unity, Romanists arrogate that title exclusively to
themselves, whilst others in Protestant sections of the church
accord them the name willingly, and repudiate it for themselves,
with no sense of the anomaly of such repudiation.

But in these days there had been no open split between camp and
camp in the Church Catholic, though daily it was growing more and
more patent to men that if the abuses and corruptions within the
fold were not rectified, some drastic attack from without must of
necessity take place.

Garret was a man of action and a man of fire. He had pored over
treatises, penned fiery diatribes, leagued himself with the
oppressed, watched the movement of revolt from superstition and
idolatry with the keenest interest. He was in danger, like so many
pioneers and so many reformers, of being carried away by his own
vehemence. He saw the idolatry of the Mass, but he was losing sight
of the worship which underlay that weight of ceremonial and
observance. Like the people who witnessed the office, the mass of
symbolism and the confusion of it blinded his eyes to the truth and
beauty of the underlying reality. He was a devout believer in all
primitive truth; he had been, and in a sense still was, a devout
priest; but he was becoming an Ishmaelite amongst those of his own
calling.

He alarmed them by his lack of discretion, by his fierce attacks.
He did not stop to persuade. He launched his thunderbolts very much
after the same fashion as Luther himself; and the timid and
wavering drew back from him in alarm and dismay, fearful whither he
would carry them next.

And having, in a sense, made London too hot to hold him, he had
left at the entreaty of the