He, excellent man! was meditating fresh pastoral exertions on the morrow; he would set on foot his lending library; in which he had introduced some books that would be a pretty sharp blow to the Dissenters--one especially, purporting to be written by a working man who, out of pure zeal for the welfare of his class, took the trouble to warn them in this way against those hypocritical thieves, the Dissenting preachers.

The Rev.Amos Barton profoundly believed in the existence of that working man, and had thoughts of writing to him.

Dissent, he considered, would have its head bruised in Shepperton, for did he not attack it in two ways?
He preached Low-Church doctrine--as evangelical as anything to be heard in the Independent Chapel; and he made a High-Church assertion of ecclesiastical powers and functions.

Clearly, the Dissenters would feel that 'the parson' was too many for them.

Nothing like a man who combines shrewdness with energy.