It was an attempt to settle the chronology of the age of Sesostris, and shows how soon the austere side of history had attracted his attention.

"In my childish balance," he says, "I presumed to weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and of Newton; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation." Of course his essay had the usual value of such juvenile productions; that is, none at all, except as an indication of early bias to serious study of history.

On his return to Oxford, the age of Sesostris was wisely relinquished.

He indeed soon commenced a line of study which was destined to have a lasting influence on the remainder of his course through life.
He had an inborn taste for theology and the controversies which have arisen concerning religious dogma.

"From my childhood," he says, "I had been fond of religious disputation: my poor aunt has often been puzzled by the mysteries which she strove to believe." How he carried the taste into mature life, his great chapters on the heresies and controversies of the Early Church are there to show.