Nothing is more characteristic in the "Eikon" than its indirectness.

The writer is full of qualifications, limitations, allowances; he fences and guards himself, and seems always on the point of taking back what he has said, but never does; and veers and tacks, tacks and veers, until he has worked himself into port.

The like peculiarity is very observable in Gauden, especially in his once-popular "Companion to the Altar." There is also a strong internal argument against Charles's authorship in the preponderance of the theological element.

That this should occupy an important place in the writings of a martyr for the Church of England was certainly to be expected, but the theology of the "Eikon" has an unmistakably professional flavour.

Let any man read it with an unbiassed mind, and then say whether he has been listening to a king or to a chaplain.