Chapter III: A Neophyte


"And the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and he
loved him as his own soul."

These words often came into the mind of the priest, Thomas Garret,
during the three days which Anthony Dalaber spent at his house,
hard by the rushing river, in the city of London.

There were ten years in age between them. Dalaber was a youth who
had seen little of life beyond what he had learned in Oxford,
whereas Garret had already passed through strange and perilous
experiences. The one had so far lived amongst books, and with
youthful companions of his own standing; the other had been a
pioneer in one of the most dangerous movements of the day, and had
seen what such courses might well lead him to. Storm and stress had
been the portion of the one, a pleasant life of study and pleasure
that of the other. It was only during the past six months that
association with Clarke and some others of his way of thinking had
aroused in Dalaber's mind a sense of restless discontent with
existing ordinances, and a longing after purer, clearer light,
together with a distaste and ofttimes a disgust at what he saw of
corruption and simony amongst those who should have been the salt
of the earth.

Had it not been for the talks he had heard of late, in Dr.
Langton's house, he might have passed through his divinity studies
at Oxford as his brother had done before him, content to drift with
the stream, ignorant of the undercurrents which were already