A subsequent editor (the Rev. George Gilfillan) asserts that Crashaw "entered, but in what year is uncertain, on holy orders, and became an ardent and powerful preacher." Undoubtedly he did contemplate such a step, but there is no conclusive evidence that it was taken. The increasing sway of Puritanism in the English Church would naturally repel and unsettle him; moreover, about this time many causes were uniting to lead him to a more Catholic outlook. One of his associates at Peterhouse was the gentle Dr. Shelford, whose Five Pious and Learned Discourses bore a prefatory poem by Crashaw. Both of these souls protested against the unloveliness of Puritan worship and the bitterness of Puritan feeling; they were even so radical as to question whether considering the Pope as Anti-Christ were an essential point of Faith. "Whate'er it be," said our young poet,
Whate'er it be,
I'm sure it is no point of Charitie!
Crashaw had, moreover, acquired the habit of riding over with some frequency to Little Gidding, there to commune with Nicholas Ferrar and his ascetic companions. This "Protestant Nunnery" was a rock of offence to the Puritans, but Richard, and others of the more devout Cambridge men, found in it a very haven of inspiration. Ferrar's household made no pretence at being a religious order; it was merely a pious family-community of about thirty members; but the pervading atmosphere was decidedly (although not avowedly) Catholic. "If others knew what comfort God had ministered to them since their sequestration," Ferrar used to say, "they might take the like course."
Meanwhile the mystic lines of St. Teresa were burning their way into Crashaw's very soul. It
