-and for his part he wanted the good old ways."

"They say so, do they?" said the Doctor, kindling up from an
abstraction into which he seemed to be gradually subsiding. "Well, let
them. I had rather publish _new_ divinity than any other, and the more
of it the better,--_if it be but true_. I should think it hardly worth
while to write, if I had nothing _new_ to say."

"Well," said Deacon Twitchel,--his meek face flushing with awe of his
minister,--"Doctor, there's all sorts of things said about you. Now the
other day I was at the mill with a load of corn, and while I was
a-waitin', Amariah Wadsworth came along with his'n; and so while we
were waitin', he says to me, 'Why, they say your minister is gettin' to
be an Armenian'; and he went on a-tellin' how old Ma'am Badger told him
that you interpreted some parts of Paul's Epistles clear on the
Armenian side. You know Ma'am Badger's a master-hand at doctrines, and
she's 'most an uncommon Calvinist."

"That does not frighten me at all," said the sturdy Doctor. "Supposing
I do interpret some texts like the Arminians. Can't Arminians have
anything right about them? Who wouldn't rather go with the Arminians
when they are _right_, than with the Calvinists when they are wrong?"

"That's it,--you've hit it, Doctor," said Simeon Brown. "That's what I
always say. I say, 'Don't he _prove_ it? and how are you going to
answer him?' That gravels 'em."

"Well," said Deacon Twitchel, "Brother Seth, you know Brother Seth,--he
says you deny depravity. He's all for imputation of Adam's sin, you
know; and I have long talks with Seth about it every time he comes to
see me; and he says, that, if we did not sin in Adam, it's givin' up
the whole ground altogether; and then he insists you're clean wrong
about the unregenerate doings."

"Not at all,--not in the least," said the Doctor, promptly.

"I wish Seth could talk with you sometime, Doctor. Along in the spring,
he was down helpin' me to lay stone fence,--it was when we was fencin'
off the south pastur' lot,--and we talked pretty nigh all day; and it
re'lly did seem to me that the longer we talked, the sotter Seth grew.
He's a master-hand at readin'; and when he heard that your remarks on
Dr. Mayhew had come out, Seth tackled up o' purpose and come up to
Newport to get them, and spent all his time, last winter, studyin' on
it and makin' his remarks; and I tell you, Sir, he's a tight fellow to
argue with. Why, that day, what with layin