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In this period I first discerned the extreme difficulty that there must essentially be, in applying to the Christian Evidences a principle, which, many years before, I had abstractedly received as sound, though it had been a dead letter with me in practice.  The Bible (it seemed) contained two sorts of truth.  Concerning one sort, man is bound to judge:  the other sort is necessarily beyond his ken, and is received only by information from without.  The first part of the statement cannot be denied.  It would be monstrous to say that we know nothing of geography, history, or morals, except by learning them from the Bible.  Geography, history, and other worldly sciences, lie beyond question.  As to morals, I had been exceedingly inconsistent and wavering in my theory and in its application; but it now glared upon me, that if man had no independent power of judging, it would have been venial to think Barabbas more virtuous than Jesus.  The hearers of Christ or Paul could not draw their knowledge of right and wrong from the New Testament.  They had (or needed to have) an inherent power of discerning that his conduct was holy and his doctrine good.  To talk about the infirmity or depravity of the human conscience is here quite irrelevant.  The conscience of Christ’s hearers may have been dim or twisted, but it was their best guide and only guide, as to the question, whether to regard him as a holy prophet:  so likewise, as to ourselves, it is evident that we have no guide at all whether to accept or reject the Bible, if we distrust that inward power of judging, (whether called common sense, conscience, or the Spirit of God,)—­which is independent of our belief in the Bible.  To disparage the internally vouchsafed power of discerning truth without the Bible or other authoritative system, is, to endeavour to set up a universal moral scepticism.  He who may not criticize cannot approve.—­Well!  Let it be admitted that we discern moral truth by a something within us, and that then, admiring the truth so glorious in the Scriptures, we are further led to receive them as the word of God, and therefore to believe them absolutely in respect to the matters which are beyond our ken.

But two difficulties could no longer be dissembled:  1.  How are we to draw the line of separation?  For instance, would the doctrines of Reprobation and of lasting Fiery Torture with no benefit to the sufferers, belong to the moral part, which we freely criticize; or to the extra-moral part, as to which we passively believe? 2.  What is to be done, if in the parts which indisputably lie open to criticism we meet with apparent error?—­The second question soon became a practical one with me:  but for the reader’s convenience I defer it until my Fourth Period, to which it more naturally belongs:  for in this Third Period I was principally exercised with controversies that do not vitally touch the authority of the Scripture.  Of these the most important were matters contested between Unitarians and Calvinists.