the Catechism and other formulas, instead of trying to find out
whether I had any actual faith in that about which I was to be called
to profess faith: I was not then aware that his sole duty was to try
my _knowledge_. But I already felt keenly the chasm that separated
the High from the Low Church; and that it was impossible for me
to sympathize with those who imagined that Forms could command the
Spirit.

Yet so entirely was I enslaved to one Form,--that of observing the
Sunday, or, as I had learned falsely to call it, the Sabbath,--that I
fell into painful and injurious conflict with a superior kinsman, by
refusing to obey his orders on the Sunday. He attempted to deal with
me by mere authority, not by instruction; and to yield my conscience
to authority would have been to yield up all spiritual life. I erred,
but I was faithful to God.

When I was rather more than seventeen, I subscribed the 39 Articles at
Oxford in order to be admitted to the University. Subscription was "no
bondage," but pleasure; for I well knew and loved the Articles, and
looked on them as a great bulwark of the truth; a bulwark, however,
not by being imposed, but by the spiritual and classical beauty which
to me shone in them. But it was certain to me before I went to
Oxford, and manifest in my first acquaintance with it, that very few
academicians could be said to believe them. Of the young men, not one
in five seemed to have any religious convictions at all: the elder
residents seldom or never showed sympathy with the doctrines that
pervade that formula. I felt from my first day there, that the system
of compulsory subscription was hollow, false, and wholly evil.

Oxford is a pleasant place for making friends,--friends of all sorts