Then I rejoiced to feel how right and sound had been our principle, that no creed can possibly be used as the touchstone of spirituality: for man morally excels man, as far as creeds are concerned, not by assenting to true propositions, but by loving them because they are discerned to be true, and by possessing a faculty of discernment sharpened by the love of truth.

Such are God's true apostles, differing enormously in attainment and elevation, but all born to ascend.

For these to quarrel between themselves because they do not agree in opinions, is monstrous.

_Sentiment_, surely, not _opinion_, is the bond of the Spirit; and as the love of God, so the love of truth is a high and sacred sentiment, in comparison to which our creeds are mean.
Well, I had been misjudged; I had been absurdly measured by other men's creed: but might I not have similarly misjudged others, since I had from early youth been under similar influences?
How many of my seniors at Oxford I had virtually despised because they were not evangelical! Had I had opportunity of testing their spirituality?
or had I the faculty of so doing?
Had I not really condemned them as unspiritual, barely because of their creed?
On trying to reproduce the past to my imagination, I could not condemn myself quite as sweepingly as I wished; but my heart smote me on account of one.

I had a brother, with whose name all England was resounding for praise or blame: from his sympathies, through pure hatred of Popery, I had long since turned away.