I felt convinced, that if I would but have contradicted myself two or three times, and then have added, "That is the mystery of it," I could have passed as orthodox with many.

I had been charged with a proud and vain determination to pry into divine mysteries, barely because I would not confess to propositions the meaning of which was to me doubtful,--or say and unsay in consecutive breaths.

It was too clear, that a doctrine which muddles the understanding perverts also the power of moral discernment.

If I had committed some flagrant sin, they would have given me a fair and honourable trial; but where they could not give me a public hearing, nor yet leave me unimpeached, without danger of (what they called) my infecting the Church, there was nothing left but to hunt me out unscrupulously.
Unscrupulously! did not this one word characterize _all_ religious persecution?
and then my mind wandered back over the whole melancholy tale of what is called Christian history.

When Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI.