as a suitable preparation
for Holy Orders; and I did read it. But I not only thought it
inflated, and without moral depth, but what was far worse, I
encountered in it an elaborate defence of falsehood in the cause of
the Church, and generally of deceit in any good cause.[4] I rose
from the treatise in disgust, and for the first time sympathized with
Gibbon; and augured that if he had spoken with moral indignation,
instead of pompous sarcasm, against the frauds of the ancient
"Fathers," his blows would have fallen far more heavily on
Christianity itself.

I also, with much effort and no profit, read the Apostolic Fathers.
Of these, Clement alone seemed to me respectable, and even he to write
only what I could myself have written, with Paul and Peter to serve
as a model. But for Barnabas and Hermas I felt a contempt so profound,
that I could hardly believe them genuine. On the whole, this reading
greatly exalted my sense of the unapproachable greatness[5] of the New
Testament. The moral chasm between it and the very earliest Christian
writers seemed to me so vast, as only to be accounted for by the
doctrine in which all spiritual men (as I thought) unhesitatingly
agreed,--that the New Testament was dictated by the immediate action
of the Holy Spirit. The infatuation of those, who, after this, rested
on _the Councils_, was to me unintelligible. Thus the Bible in its
simplicity became only the more all-ruling to my judgment, because
I could find no Articles, no Church Decrees, and no apostolic
individual, whose rule over my understanding or conscience I could
bear. Such may be conveniently regarded as the first period of my
Creed.

[Footnote 1: It was not until many years later that I became aware,
that unbiased ecclesiastical historians, as Neander and others, while
approving of the practice of Infant Baptism, freely concede that it is
not apostolic. Let this fact be my defence against critics, who snarl
at me for having dared, at that age, to come to _any_ conclusion on
such a subject. But, in fact, the subscriptions compel young men to
it.]

[Footnote 2: I remember reading about that time a sentence in one of
his Epistles, in which this same Cyprian, the earliest mouthpiece of
"proud prelacy," claims for the _populace_ supreme right of deposing
an unworthy bishop. I quote the words from memory, and do not know
the reference. "Pleba summam habet potentatem episcopos seu dignos
eligendi seu indignos detrudendi."]