the ministers whom he
consulted thought of urging him to identify himself with any variety
of it until he showed signs of becoming a Catholic.

To this rule Brownson may appear as a partial exception, but until
the summer of 1844 he was so in appearance only. It is true that
Isaac Hecker had learned from him the claims of most of the great
forms of Protestantism, and got his personal testimony as to the
emptiness of them all. Brownson was a competent witness, for he had
been an accepted disciple of every school, from sterile
Presbyterianism to rank Transcendentalism. Although of a certain
testiness of temper, he bore malice to no man and to no body of men.
His testimony was in the presence of patent facts, and his
condemnation of all forms of orthodox Protestantism in the end was
unreserved. But, up to the date given above he still made a possible
exception in favor of Anglicanism. In the middle of April, 1843, he
wrote Isaac a letter, motioning him toward this sect, at the same
time affirming that he could not quite accept it for himself. Such
counsel was no better than motioning him away from it, and was but a
symbol of Brownson's own devious progress, swaying now to one side
and again to the other, but always going forward to Rome. But young
Hecker would learn for himself. Of an abnormally inquiring mind by
nature, he never accepted a witness other than himself about any
matter if he could help it.

In the early part of 1844 the question of religious affiliation began
to press for settlement with increasing urgency, casting him at times
into an agony of mind. It was not merely that he was impelled by
conscience towards the fulness of truth, but that truth in its
simplest elements seemed sometimes to be lacking to him. He was heard
to say in after years that, had he not found Catholicity true, he
would have been thrown back into a scepticism so painful as to
suggest suicide as a relief. Yet those who have trodden any of the
paths which lead from inherited heresy to true doctrine, will
appreciate the force of the influences, both personal and social,
which induced him to reconsider, and make for himself the grand
rounds of Protestant orthodoxy before turning his back upon it for
ever.

We find him, therefore, going diligently to all who claimed to be
watchmen on the walls of Sion, to seek from each one personally that
countersign which would tally with the divine word nature and grace
were uttering in his own sou