But if Faith is a spiritual and personal thing, if Belief given at random to mere high pretensions is an immorality, if Truth is not to be quite trampled down, nor Conscience to be wholly palsied in us,—­then what, I ask, was I to do, when I saw that the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew is an erroneous copy of that in the Old Testament? and that the writer has not only copied wrong, but also counted wrong, so, as to mistake eighteen for fourteen?  Can any man, who glories in the name of Christian, lay his hand on his heart, and say, it was my duty to blind my eyes to the fact, and think of it no further?  Many, alas, I know, would have whispered this to me; but if any one were to proclaim it, the universal conscience of mankind would call him impudent.

If however this first step was right, was a second step wrong?  When I further discerned that the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke were at variance, utterly irreconcilable,—­and both moreover nugatory, because they are genealogies of Joseph, who is denied to be the father of Jesus,—­on what ground of righteousness, which I could approve to God and my conscience, could I shut my eyes to this second fact?

When forced, against all my prepossessions, to admit that the two first chapters of Matthew and the two first chapters of Luke are mutually destructive,[1] would it have been faithfulness to the God of Truth, or a self-willed love of my own prejudices, if I had said, “I will not inquire further, for fear it should unsettle my faith?” The reader’s conscience will witness to me, that, on the contrary, I was bound to say, what I did say:  “I must inquire further in order that I may plant the foundations of my faith more deeply on the rock of Truth."’

Having discovered, that not all that is within the canon of the Scripture is infallibly correct, and that the human understanding is competent to arraign and convict at least some kinds of error therein contained;—­where was I to stop? and if I am guilty, where did my guilt begin?  The further I inquired, the more errors crowded upon me, in History, in Chronology, in Geography, in Physiology, in Geology.[2] Did it then at last become a duty to close my eyes to the painful light? and if I had done so, ought I to have flattered myself that I was one of those, who being of the truth, come to the lights that their deeds may be reproved?

Moreover, when I had clearly perceived, that since all evidence for Christianity must involve moral considerations, to undervalue the moral faculties of mankind is to make Christian evidence an impossibility and to propagate universal scepticism;—­was I then so to distrust the common conscience, as to believe that the Spirit of God pronounced Jael blessed, for perfidiously murdering her husband’s trusting friend?  Does any Protestant reader feel disgust and horror, at the sophistical defences set up for the massacre of St. Bartholomew and other atrocities of the wicked Church of Rome?  Let him stop his mouth, and hide his face, if he dares to justify the foul crime of Jael.