At the centre of Charles Lucas’ Gothic novel The Castle of St Donats; or, The History of Jack Smith (1798), there are two enigmas: the identity of the eponymous hero and the mysterious spectre of the castle well. In typical Gothic fashion, the two mysteries are, of course, related. Jack Smith is none other than the son of a French Duke, the legitimate owner of the Castle of St Donats, who has been living at the bottom of the castle well for twenty years, pretending to be a ghost (as you do). The last thing you expect in the middle of this climactic scene is a long theological disquisition, but that is exactly what we get with the Duke declaring:

The clergyman Freeman, standing by, vigorously agrees with the sentiment and ‘not a little inflamed with the rapture of the subject’, cries ‘this is the pure spirit of Christianity’ before conscientiously adding:

Shall he, in other words, institute the boundaries of God's Church or his work in the world. It is a striking discourse, situated, as it is, at the denouement of the tale's multiple mysteries. A discussion of the virtues of theological tolerance and theo-political toleration interrupts the revelation, tinted with a fear of arbitrary and fanatical definitions of ‘true Christianity’, mindful of usurping the place of the ineffable mysteries of Divinity through an overreliance on human reason, and placed within a context of Divine providence and omniscience. The centrality of these discussions to the apotheosis of the novel suggests their broader centrality to the work.