For the peculiarities of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror.  But this system of falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition, will never be destroyed, while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion.  These are the outworks of the Romish citadel:  until they are razed to the ground, the citadel will defy attack.  If we are to blind our eyes, in order to accept an article of King Edward VI., or an argument of St. Paul’s, why not blind them so far as to accept the Council of Trent?  If we are to pronounce that a man “without doubt shall perish everlastingly,” unless he believes the self-contradictions of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should we shrink from a similar anathema on those who reject the self-contradictions of Transsubstantiation?  If one man is cast out of God’s favour for eliciting error while earnestly searching after truth, and another remains in favour by passively receiving the word of a Church, of a Priest, or of an Apostle, then to search for truth is dangerous; apathy is safer; then the soul does not come directly into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and unconvincedly submit to, some external authority.  This is the germ of Romanism:  its legitimate development makes us Pagans outright.

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But in what position was I now, towards the apostles?  Could I admit their inspiration, when I no longer thought them infallible?  Undoubtedly.  What could be clearer on every hypothesis, than that they were inspired on and after the day of Pentecost, and yet remained ignorant and liable to mistake about the relation of the Gentiles to the Jews?  The moderns have introduced into the idea of inspiration that of infallibility, to which either omniscience or dictation is essential.  That there was no dictation, (said I,) is proved by the variety of style in the Scriptural writers; that they were not omniscient, is manifest.  In truth, if human minds had not been left to them, how could they have argued persuasively? was not the superior success of their preaching to that of Christ, perhaps due to their sharing in the prejudices of their contemporaries?  An orator is most persuasive, when he is lifted above his hearers on those points only on which he is to reform their notions.  The apostles were not omniscient:  granted:  but it cannot hence be inferred that they did not know the message given them by God.  Their knowledge however perfect, must yet in a human mind have coexisted with ignorance; and nothing (argued I) but a perpetual miracle could prevent ignorance from now and then exhibiting itself in some error.  But hence to infer that they are not inspired, and are not messengers from God, is quite gratuitous.  Who indeed imagines that John or Paul understood astronomy so well as Sir William Herschel?  Those who believe that the apostles might err in human science, need not the less revere their moral and spiritual wisdom.