But Parson John did not perceive this, for Welby listened to that gentleman's eulogies on the Ideal school without troubling himself to contradict them.

He had grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the polished cruelty of sarcasm.
He came off with flying colours through an examination into his Church orthodoxy instituted by the Parson and Sir Peter.

Amid a cloud of ecclesiastical erudition, his own opinions vanished in those of the Fathers.

In truth, he was a Realist, in religion as in everything else.
He regarded Christianity as a type of existent civilization, which ought to be reverenced, as one might recognize the other types of that civilization; such as the liberty of the press, the representative system, white neckcloths and black coats of an evening, etc.

He belonged, therefore, to what he himself called the school of Eclectical Christiology; and accommodated the reasonings of Deism to the doctrines of the Church, if not as a creed, at least as an institution.