To imagine this was to
suppose myself a man supernaturally favoured, an angel upon earth. I
knew there must be thousands in this very point more true-hearted than
I: nay, such still might some be, whose names I went over with myself:
but I had no heart for more experiments. When such a man as he,
the only mortal to whom I had looked up as to an apostle, had
unhesitatingly, unrelentingly, and without one mark that his
conscience was not on his side, flung away all his own precepts,
his own theories, his own magnificent rebukes of Formalism and human
Authority, and had made _himself_ the slave and _me_ the victim of
those old and ever-living tyrants,--whom henceforth could I trust? The
resolution then rose in me, to love all good men from a distance, but
never again to count on permanent friendship with any one who was not
himself cast out as a heretic.

Nor, in fact, did the storm of distress which these events inflicted
on me, subside until I willingly received the task of withstanding it,
as God's trial whether I was faithful. As soon as I gained strength
to say, "O my Lord, I will bear not this only, _but more also_,[3] for
thy sake, for conscience, and for truth,"--my sorrows vanished, until
the next blow and the next inevitable pang. At last my heart had died
within me; the bitterness of death was past; I was satisfied to be
hated by the saints, and to reckon that those who had not yet turned
against me would not bear me much longer.--Then I conceived the
belief, that if we may not make a heaven on earth for ourselves out of
the love of saints, it is in order that we may find a truer heaven in
God's love.

The question about this time much vexed me, what to do about receiving
the Holy Supper of the Lord, the great emblem of brotherhood,
communion, and church connexion. At one time I argued with myself,
that it became an unmeaning form, when not partaken of in mutual
love; that I could never again have free intercourse of heart with any
one;--why then use the rite of communion, where there is no communion?
But, on the other hand, I thought it a mode of confessing Christ, and
that permanently to disuse it, was an unfaithfulness. In the Church of
England I could have been easy as far as the communion formulary was
concerned; but to the entire system I had contracted an incurable
repugnance, as worldly, hypocritical, and an evil counterfeit. I
desired, therefore, to creep into some obscure congregation, and there
wai