Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


I found that Pere Silas (himself, I must repeat, not a bad man, though
the advocate of a bad cause) had darkly stigmatized Protestants in
general, and myself by inference, with strange names, had ascribed to
us strange "isms;" Monsieur Emanuel revealed all this in his frank
fashion, which knew not secretiveness, looking at me as he spoke with
a kind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should be truth in
the charges. Pere Silas, it seems, had closely watched me, had
ascertained that I went by turns, and indiscriminately, to the three
Protestant Chapels of Villette--the French, German, and English--_id
est_, the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Such liberality
argued in the father's eyes profound indifference--who tolerates all,
he reasoned, can be attached to none. Now, it happened that I had
often secretly wondered at the minute and unimportant character of the
differences between these three sects--at the unity and identity of
their vital doctrines: I saw nothing to hinder them from being one day
fused into one grand Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I
thought that in each there were faults of form, incumbrances, and
trivialities. Just what I thought, that did I tell M. Emanuel, and
explained to him that my own last appeal, the guide to which I looked,
and the teacher which I owned, must always be the Bible itself, rather
than any sect, of whatever name or nation.

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