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‘Patient application is literally everything. Without it you may have a number of half-formed ideas floating in your mind; but you will never gain deep, connected, large, and consistent views of any subject. Impatient haste is the bane of deep intellectual work. If you are investigating any important doctrine, do not be ready to leave it. Come to it again and again; seeking light from every quarter; and perusing with attention the best books, until you have entered, as far as you are capable, into its profoundest merits. And, if compelled by any circumstance to leave the subject before you have reached this point, hold it in reserve for another and more satisfactory examination. In short, let your motto be, and as far as practicable, let your habit be, to leave nothing till you have thoroughly mastered it.’ Professor Miller’s Letters, pp. 256-258