But I encountered an unlooked-for difficulty. As I have
said, my intention was, on landing in England, to begin a periodical,
and to keep apart from persons of extravagant views. I was not a
Christian, nor did I, at the time, suppose I should ever become one; but
I was an earnest moralist, and I had become more moderate in my ideas
both on religious and political subjects. And I was, to some extent,
prepared to receive fresh light. I had got an impression,--I had had it
for some time before I left America,--that my mind was not in a
thoroughly healthy state,--that it was not exactly itself,--that it was
so much biassed in favor of irreligion, that it was incapable of doing
justice to arguments for a God and Providence, for a spiritual world and
a future life. I partly believed, and now I know, that facts and
arguments in favor of the great fundamental doctrines of religion, did
not affect and influence me so much as they ought,--that my doubts and
disbeliefs were stronger than facts or the nature of things warranted. I
suspected, what now I regard as past doubt, that erroneous principles,
and a defective method of reasoning, and long practice in searching out
flaws in arguments, and detecting and exposing errors and pious frauds,
had disposed me too strongly to distrust and disbelief,--that I was in
fact a slave to bad habits of thought and reasoning, as really as the
inveterate drunkard is the slave to his irrational appetite for strong
drink.
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