that we cannot deny occasional dislocation. If at this period a German
divinity professor had been lecturing at Oxford, or German books had
been accessible to me, it might have saved me long peregrinations of
body and mind.

About this time I had also begun to think that the old writers called
_Fathers_ deserved but a small fraction of the reverence which is
awarded to them. I had been strongly urged to read Chrysostom's work
on the Priesthood, by one who regarded it as a suitable preparation
for Holy Orders; and I did read it. But I not only thought it
inflated, and without moral depth, but what was far worse, I
encountered in it an elaborate defence of falsehood in the cause of
the Church, and generally of deceit in any good cause.[4] I rose
from the treatise in disgust, and for the first time sympathized with
Gibbon; and augured that if he had spoken with moral indignation,
instead of pompous sarcasm, against the frauds of the ancient
"Fathers," his blows would have fallen far more heavily on
Christianity itself.

I also, with much effort and no profit, read the Apostolic Fathers.
Of these, Clement alone seemed to me respectable, and even he to write
only what I could myself have written, with Paul and Peter to serve
as a model. But for Barnabas and Hermas I felt a contempt so profound,
that I could hardly believe them genuine. On the whole, this reading
greatly exalted my sense of the unapproachable greatness[5] of the New
Testament. The moral chasm between it and the very earliest Christian
writers seemed to me so vast, as only to be accounted for by the
doctrine in which all spiritual men (as I thought) unhesitatingly
agreed,--that the New Testament was dictated by the immediate action
of the Holy Spirit. The infatuation of those, who, after this, rested