His correspondence was enormous, from Prime Ministers downwards.

At his house met people of the most varied opinions; it was a veritable heretical _salon_.
Colenso of Natal, Edward Maitland, E.Vansittart Neale, Charles Bray, Sarah Hennell, and hundreds more, clerics and laymen, scholars and thinkers, all coming to this one house, to which the _entree_ was gained only by love of Truth and desire to spread Freedom among men.
For Thomas Scott my first Freethought essay was written a few months after, "On the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth," by the wife of a benefited clergyman.

My name was not mine to use, so it was agreed that any essays from my pen should be anonymous.
And now came the return to Sibsey, and with it the need for definite steps as to the Church.

For now I no longer doubted, I had rejected, and the time for silence was past.

I was willing to attend the Church services, taking no part in any not directed to God Himself, but I could no longer attend the Holy Communion, for in that service, full of recognition of Jesus as Deity and of His atoning sacrifice, I could no longer take part without hypocrisy.