But for that reason, and because he was in the way of becoming a minister, was it not his duty to measure his strength with the Adversary?
Alas! he could conceive of no words, no thoughts, no arguments adequate to that strife.

Had he been a Papist he might have turned with hope, even with pious confidence, to the Holy Stoup, the Bell and Book and Candle, to the Relics, and hundred Exorcisms of his Church.

But the colder and more abstract faith of Calvin, while it admitted the possibility of such possessions, supplied no weapons of a material kind.
He groaned in his impotence, stifled by the unwholesome atmosphere of his thoughts.

He dared not even ponder too long on what she was who stood beside him; nor peer too closely through the murky veil that hid her being.

To do so might be to risk his soul, to become a partner in her guilt.