Mr. Knight very soon became aware first that his income was
insufficient to his needs, and secondly, especially now when his
health was much improved, that after a busy and hard-working life,
time at Monk's Acre hung heavily upon his hands. The latter trouble to
some extent he palliated by beginning the great work that he had
planned ever since he became a deacon, for which his undoubted
scholarship gave him certain qualifications. Its provisional title
was, "Babylon Unveiled" (he would have liked to substitute "The
Scarlet Woman" for Babylon) and its apparent object an elaborate
attack upon the Roman Church, which in fact was but a cover for the
real onslaught. With the Romans, although perhaps he did not know it
himself, he had certain sympathies, for instance, in the matter of
celibacy. Nor did he entirely disapprove of the monastic orders. Then
he found nothing shocking in the tenets and methods of the Jesuits
working for what they conceived to be a good end. The real targets of
his animosity were his high-church brethren of the Church of England,
wretches who, whilst retaining all the privileges of the Anglican
Establishment, such as marriage, did not hesitate to adopt almost
every error of Rome and to make use of her secret power over the souls
of men by the practice of Confession and otherwise.

As this monumental treatise began in the times of the Early Fathers
and was planned to fill ten volumes of at least a hundred thousand
words apiece, no one will be surprised to learn that it never reached
the stage of publication, or indeed, to be accurate, that it came to
final stop somewhere about the time of Athanasius.

Realizing that the work was likely to equal that of Gibbon both in
length and the years necessary to its completion; also that from it