Men [outside the church] take up and profess these scattered truths, merely because they fall in with them." Not so Father Hecker: no flotsam and jetsam of doctrine for him, unless some fragment would reveal to him the name of the ship from which it had been torn, and the port from which she had sailed, and so lead him to the discovery of the ship herself, crew, cargo, port, and owner.
Yet he lingered long over the claim of Anglicanism to be the Catholic religion.

Of Mr.Haight and of his interviews with him we have already spoken.

Through him he came across a published letter of a Mr.Norris, Episcopal minister in Carlisle, Pa., which so pleased him for its Catholic tendency that he wrote to him, asking to be allowed to go to Carlisle and live there as the writer's pupil.

The answer, though a refusal of this request, was kind, and contained a cordial invitation to visit Mr.Norris after Easter.

On his way to Concord, in the following spring, Isaac made a long detour to the little town in southern Pennsylvania, interviewed Mr.Norris, and came away no wiser than before.
The following words of the diary, under date of March 30, 1844, refer to an Episcopal dignitary of higher grade: "Mr.Haight gave me a note of introduction to Dr.Seabury.I called to see him two evenings ago and had a very pleasant conversation with him.