ieved that he had more of the
Spirit of God than I: but over my secret convictions I had no power.
I was shut up to obey and believe God rather than man, and from the
nature of the case, the profoundest respect for my brother's judgment
could not in itself alter mine. As to the whole _Church_ being against
me, I did not know what that meant: I was willing to accept the Nicene
Creed, and this I thought ought to be a sufficient defensive argument
against the Church. His answer was decisive;--he was exceedingly
surprized at my recurring to mere ecclesiastical creeds, as though
they could have the slightest weight; and he must insist on my
acknowledging, that, in the two texts quoted, the word Father meant
the Trinity, if I desired to be in any way recognized as holding the
truth.

The Father meant the Trinity!! For the first time I perceived, that so
vehement a champion of the sufficiency of the Scripture, so staunch
an opposer of Creeds and Churches, was wedded to an extra-Scriptural
creed of his own, by which he tested the spiritual state of his
brethren. I was in despair, and like a man thunderstruck. I had
nothing more to say. Two more letters from the same hand I saw, the
latter of which was, to threaten some new acquaintances who were kind
to me, (persons wholly unknown to him,) that if they did not desist
from sheltering me and break off intercourse, they should, as far as
his influence went, themselves everywhere be cut off from Christian
communion and recognition. This will suffice to indicate the sort of
social persecution, through which, after a succession of struggles, I
found myself separated from persons whom I had trustingly admired,
and on whom I had most counted for union: with whom I fondly believed
myself bound up for eternity; of whom some were my previously intimate
friends, while for others, even on slight acquaintance, I would have
performed menial offices and thought myself honoured; whom I still
looked upon as the blessed and excellent of the earth, and the special
favourites of heaven; whose company (though oftentimes they were
considerably my inferiors either in rank or in knowledge and
cultivation) I would have chosen in preference to that of nobles; whom
I loved solely because I thought them to love God, and of whom I asked
nothing, but that they would admit me as the meanest and most frail of
disciples. My heart was ready to break: I wished for a woman's soul,
that I might weep in floods. Oh,