place).... bore their listeners by a Tibetan repetition of creeds that
have ceased to be credible.... Mutually contradictory propositions....
Prayers and litanies composed in Byzantine and mediaeval times....
the want of actuality, the curious silliness which has, ever since the
destruction of Jerusalem, hung about the exposition of Christianity....
But if the Bishops continue to fuss about the trappings of religion....
the maintenance of codes compiled by people who lived sixteen hundred
or two thousand five hundred years ago.... the increasingly educated
and practical-minded working classes will not come to church, weekday or
Sunday."

The bishop held the paper in his hand, and with a mind that he felt to
be terribly open, asked himself how true that sharp indictment might be,
and, granting its general truth, what was the duty of the church, that
is to say of the bishops, for as Cyprian says, ecelesia est in episcopo.
We say the creeds; how far may we unsay them?

So far he had taken no open action against Chasters. Suppose now he
were to side with Chasters and let the whole diocese, the church of
Princhester, drift as far as it chose under his inaction towards an
extreme modernism, risking a conflict with, and if necessary fighting,
the archbishop.... It was but for a moment that his mind swung to this
possibility and then recoiled. The Laymen, that band of bigots, would
fight. He could not contemplate litigation and wrangling about the
teaching of the church. Besides, what were the "trappings of religion"
and what the essentials? What after all was "the pure gospel of Christ"
of which this writer wrote so glibly? He put the paper down and took a
New Testament from his desk and opened it haphazard. He felt a curious
wish that he could read it for the first time. It was over-familiar.
Everything latterly in his theology and beliefs had become