While engaged in this controversy I made discoveries of other facts
inconsistent with the views of my persecutors, and pressed them upon my
opponent without mercy. And the violent and resentful feeling excited by
his unfairness, dishonesty and malignity in defending the Bible, led me
probably to be less concerned for its claims than I otherwise should
have been. Suffice it to say, I came out of the debate with my savage
opponent, not a disbeliever in the Bible or Christianity, but with views
farther removed from those which he contended for, and with feelings
much less hostile to heterodox extremes perhaps than those with which I
entered it.
Among the views I was led to entertain and promulgate with regard to the
Bible about this time, were the following.
1. We have no proof that the different portions of the Bible were
absolutely perfect as they came from the hands of the writers. The
probability is on the other side. For if an absolutely perfect book had
been necessary for man, it would have been as necessary to _keep_ it
perfect, as to _make_ it perfect. And as God has not seen fit to _keep_
it perfect, we have no reason to suppose that He made it so.
2. But in truth, to write an absolutely perfect book in an imperfect
language, is impossible.
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