One charge against him at that time shows curiously what
was then expected of a man perfectly sound in the older Anglican
theology. He had ventured to defend holy writ with the argument
that there were fishes actually existing which could have swallowed
the prophet Jonah. The argument proved unfortunate. He was attacked
on the scriptural ground that the fish which swallowed Jonah was
created for that express purpose. He, like others, fell back under
the charm of the old system: his ideas gave force to the reaction:
in the quiet of his study, which, especially after the death of his
son, became a hermitage, he relapsed into patristic and medieval
conceptions of Christianity, enforcing them from the pulpit and in
his published works. He now virtually accepted the famous dictum of
Hugo of St. Victor--that one is first to find what is to be
believed, and then to search the Scriptures for proofs of it. His
devotion to the main features of the older interpretation was seen
at its strongest in his utterances regarding the book of Daniel.
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