If he had authorised the publication of a work in which the Gospel of Saint John or the Epistle to the Romans had been represented as spurious, the indignation of the High Church party could hardly have been greater.

The question was not literary, but religious.

Doubt was impiety.

In truth the Icon was to many fervent Royalists a supplementary revelation.

One of them indeed had gone so far as to propose that lessons taken out of the inestimable little volume should be read in the churches.