"Nonsense," answered Charles; "you shouldn't say such things, even in jest."
"I don't jest; I am in earnest: you are plainly on the road."
"Well, if I am, you have put me on it," said Reding, wishing to get away from the subject as quick as he could; "for you are ever talking against shams, and laughing at King Charles and Laud, Bateman, White, rood-lofts, and piscinas."
"Now you are a Puseyite," said Sheffield in surprise.
"You give me the name of a very good man, whom I hardly know by sight," said Reding; "but I mean, that nobody knows what to believe, no one has a definite faith, but the Catholics and the Puseyites; no one says, 'This is true, that is false; this comes from the Apostles, that does not.'"
"Then would you believe a Turk," asked Sheffield, "who came to you with his 'One Allah, and Mahomet his Prophet'?"
"I did not say a creed was everything," answered Reding, "or that a religion could not be false which had a creed; but a religion can't be true which has none."
"Well, somehow that doesn't strike me," said Sheffield.
"Now there was Vincent at the end of term, after you had gone down," continued Charles; "you know I stayed up for Littlego; and he was very civil, very civil indeed. I had a talk with him about Oxford parties, and he pleased me very much at the time; but afterwards, the more I thought of what he said, the less was I satisfied; that is, I had got nothing definite from him. He did not say, 'This is true, that is false;' but 'Be true, be true, be good, be good, don't go too far, keep in the mean, have your eyes about you, eschew parties, follow our divines, all of them;'—all which was but putting salt on the bird's tail. I want some practical direction, not abstract truths."
"Vincent is a humbug," said Sheffield.