To make matters worse, this class of people had been led to
believe that their peculiar notions were the essential doctrines of the
Gospel, and that those who did not believe them could not be Christians.
When therefore they found that I looked upon their theories as erroneous
and unscriptural, they pronounced me at once an erratic and dangerous
man. I imagined, at first, that I could bring these people to see things
in a different light. I had such faith in the power of plain Scripture
passages, and in the force of common sense, and was so ignorant of the
power of prejudice, and of peculiarities of mental constitution, that I
conversed and reasoned with them with the greatest freedom and the
utmost confidence. But I found at length that my expectations were vain.
I was conversing once with a colleague who belonged to this class, on
man's natural proneness to evil. He was one of the best and most
enlightened of that school of theologians, and he regarded me at the
time with very kindly feelings. And we were agreed as to the _fact_ of
man's natural tendency to evil, but he had been led to rest his belief
in the doctrine on somewhat different grounds from those on which my
belief rested. And this was enough. He quoted the passage from Isaiah,
"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint: from the crown of
the head, to the sole of the foot, there is no soundness, but wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores.
Pages:
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144