No citadel ever presented a more hopeless curtain
to the besieger, than did the mind of this zealot to the efforts of
conviction; for on the side of his opponents, he contrived that every
avenue should be closed by a wall blank as indomitable obstinacy could
oppose. He appeared to think that all the minor conditions of argument and
reason had been disposed of by his ancestors, and that it only remain ed
for him to strengthen the many defences of his subject, and, now and then,
to scatter by a fierce sortie the doctrinal skirmishers who might
occasionally approach his parish. There was a remarkable singleness of
mind in this religionist, which, while it in some measure rendered even
his bigotry respectable, greatly aided in clearing the knotty subject,
with which he dealt, of much embarrassing matter. In his eyes, the strait
and narrow path would hold but few besides his own flock. He admitted some
fortuitous exceptions, in one or two of the nearest parishes, with whose
clergymen he was in the habit of exchanging pulpits; and perhaps, here and
there, in a saint of the other hemisphere, or of the more distant towns of
the Colonies, the brightness of whose faith was something aided, in his
eyes, by distance, as this opake globe of ours is thought to appear a ball
of light to those who inhabit its satellite.
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