dropt something disrespectful against bishops or a bishop,--something
which, if it had been said about a clergyman, would have passed
unnoticed: but my brother checked and reproved me,--as I thought, very
uninstructively--for "wanting reverence towards Bishops." I knew
not then, and I know not now, why Bishops, _as such_, should be more
reverenced than common clergymen; or Clergymen, _as such_, more than
common men. In the World I expected pomp and vain show and formality
and counterfeits: but of the Church, as Christ's own kingdom, I
demanded reality and could not digest legal fictions. I saw round
me what sort of young men were preparing to be clergymen: I knew the
attractions of family "livings" and fellowships, and of a respectable
position and undefinable hopes of preferment. I farther knew, that
when youths had become clergymen through a great variety of mixed
motives, bishops were selected out of these clergy on avowedly
political grounds; it therefore amazed me how a man of good sense
should be able to set up a duty of religious veneration towards
bishops. I was willing to honour a Lord Bishop as a peer of
Parliament; but his office was to me no guarantee of spiritual
eminence.--To find my brother thus stop my mouth, was a puzzle; and
impeded all free speech towards him. In fact, I very soon left off the
attempt at intimate religious intercourse with him, or asking counsel
as of one who could sympathize. We talked, indeed, a great deal on the
surface of religious matters; and on some questions I was overpowered
and received a temporary bias from his superior knowledge; but as
time went on, and my own intellect ripened, I distinctly felt that his
arguments were too fine-drawn and subtle, often elaborately missing
the moral points and the main points, to rest on some ecclesiastical
fiction; and his conclusions were to me so marvellous and painful,
that I constantly thought I had mistaken him. In short, he was my
senior by a very few years: nor was there any elder resident at
Oxford, accessible to me, who united all the qualities which I wanted
in an adviser. Nothing was left for me but to cast myself on Him who
is named the Father of Lights, and resolve to follow the light which
He might give, however opposed to my own prejudices, and however I
might be condemned by men. This solemn engagement I made in early
youth, and neither the frowns nor the grief of my brethren can make me
ashamed of it in my manhood.

Amo