He tells me he was not aware that the holding that there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its Founder, was a question pertaining to God.  Nor indeed was I aware of it.

I regard questions concerning a book and a human being to be purely secular, and desire to discuss them, not indeed with ridicule but with freedom.  When I discuss them, he treats my act as intolerably offensive, as though the subject were sacred; yet he now pretends that I think such topics “pertain to God,” and he was not aware of it until I told him so!  Thus he turns away the eyes of his readers from my true charge of profanity, and fixes them upon a fictitious charge so as to win a temporary victory.  At the same time, since Christians believe the morality of the Old Testament to have great defects, and that there was much imperfection in the character of its eminent saints, prophets, and sages; I cannot understand how my holding the very same opinion concerning the New Testament should be a peculiarly appropriate ground of banter and merriment; nor make me more justly offensive to Christians, than the Pauline doctrine is to Jews.

In more than one place of this “Defence” he misrepresents what I have written on Immortality, in words similar to those here used, though here he does not[15] expressly add my name.  In p. 59, he says, that “according to Mr. Newman’s theology, it is most probable (in italics) that the successive generations of men, with perfect indifference to their relative moral conditions, their crimes or wrongs, are all knocked on the head together; and that future adjustment and retribution is a dream.” (So p. 72.) In a note to the next page, he informs his readers that if I say that I have left the question of immortality doubtful, it does not affect the argument; for I have admitted “the probability” of there being no future life.

This topic was specially discussed by me in a short chapter of my treatise on the “Soul,” to which alone it is possible for my critic to refer.  In that chapter assuredly I do not say what he pretends; what I do say is, (after rejecting, as unsatisfactory to me, the popular arguments from metaphysics, and from the supposed need of a future state to redress the inequalities of this life;) p. 232:  “But do I then deny a future life, or seek to undermine a belief of it? Most assuredly not; but I would put the belief (whether it is to be weaker or firmer) on a spiritual basis, and on none other.”