In unswerving fidelity to conviction they were on a par, but in native clearness of vision and instinctive aversion from error they were far less closely matched.

Brownson in early life had tried, accepted, and preached various forms of aberration from true doctrine.

One might say of him, that, having found himself outside the highway at his start, he gathered accretions from hedge and ditch as he struggled toward the true road, and went through an after process of sloughing them one by one.

Perhaps that process ended in making him over-timid.

It was otherwise with Isaac Hecker.