" As I have shown, it was the
troubled state of my mind,--the tempest of unhappy feeling, and the
whirlwind of excitement in which I had lived so long,--that had most to
do in carrying me away from Christ; and now my mind was allowed to be at
rest. The whirlwind of excitement had spent its fury. The tempest in my
soul had subsided, so that the principal hindrance to my return was
gone. There were other causes that had contributed to the destruction of
my faith in Christ and Christianity, but this was the first and chief
one, and the one which gave the principal part of their force to the
rest. As I have shown, I had been taught things about the Scriptures
that were not correct. I had found a number of the arguments used by
divines in support of the divinity of the Scriptures to be unsound. I
had detected pious frauds in the writings of some of the advocates of
the Bible and Christianity. I had met with untenable views on the
inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures. I had, besides, adopted
a defective method of reasoning on religious matters, which exerted an
injurious influence on my mind. All these things, and many others which
I cannot at present mention, had proved occasions of doubt and unbelief.
But the probability is, that none of these things would have destroyed
my faith in Christ, if I had been in a proper state of mind.
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