He hated people
who did not know where to stop. Ernest was always so outre and
strange; there was never any knowing what he would do next, except
that it would be something unusual and silly. If he was to get the bit
between his teeth after he had got ordained and bought his living,
he would play more pranks than ever he, Theobald, had done. The
fact, doubtless, of his being ordained and having bought a living
would go a long way to steady him, and if he married, his wife must
see to the rest; this was his only chance and, to do justice to his
sagacity, Theobald in his heart did not think very highly of it.
When Ernest came down to Battersby in June, he imprudently tried
to open up a more unreserved communication with his father than was
his wont. The first of Ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by
Mr. Hawke's sermon was in the direction of ultra-Evangelicalism.
Theobald himself had been much more Low than High Church. This was the
normal development of the country clergyman during the first years
of his clerical life, between, we will say, the years 1825 and 1850;
but he was not prepared for the almost contempt with which Ernest
now regarded the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and priestly
absolution (Hoity-toity, indeed, what business had he with such
questions?) nor for his desire to find some means of reconciling
Methodism and the Church.
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