rowth had been will appear from
a conversation which took place between the two friends, and which shall
be related in the following chapter.

CHAPTER VII.

Carlton had opened the small church he was serving for Saints'-day
services during the Long Vacation; and not being in the way to have any
congregation, and the church at Horsley being closed except on Sundays,
he had asked his two pupils to help him in this matter, by walking over
with him on St. Matthew's day, which, as the season was fine, and the
walk far from a dull one, they were very glad to do. When church was
over Carlton had to attend a sick call which lay still farther from
Horsley, and the two young men walked back together.

"I did not know that Carlton was so much of a party man," said
Sheffield; "did not his reading the Athanasian Creed strike you?"

"That's no mark of party, surely," answered Charles.

"To read it on days like these, I think, _is_ a mark of party; it's
going out of the way."

Charles did not see how obeying in so plain a matter the clear direction
of the Prayer Book could be a party act.

"Direction!" said Sheffield, "as if the question were not, is that
direction now binding? the sense, the understanding of the Church of
this day determines its obligation."

"The _prima facie_ view of the matter," said Charles, "is, that they who
do but follow what the Prayer Book enjoins are of all people farthest
from being a party."

"Not at all," said Sheffield; "rigid adherence to old customs surely may
be the badge of a party. Now consider; ten years ago, before the study
of Church-history was revived, neither Arianism nor Athanasianism were
thought of at all, or, if thought of, they were considered as questions
of words, at least as held by most minds--one as good as the other."

"I should say so, too, in one sense," said Charles, "that is, I should
hope that numbers of persons, for instance, the unlearned, who were in
Arian communities spoke Arian language, and yet did not mean it. I think
I have heard that some ancient missionary of the Goths or Huns was an
Arian."

"Well, I will speak more precisely," said Sheffield: "an Oxford man,
some ten years since, was going to publish a history of the Nicene
Council, and the bookseller proposed to him to prefix an engraving of
St. Athanasius, which he had found in some old volume. He was strongly
dissuaded from doing so by a brother clergyman, not from any feeling of
his own, b