hment, I reverently submitted my
understanding; though as to the last, new inquiries had just at this
crisis been opening on me. Reprobation, indeed, I always repudiated
with great vigour, of which I shall presently speak. That was the full
amount of my original thought; and in it I preserved entire reverence
for the sacred writers.

As to miracles, scarcely anything staggered me. I received the
strangest and the meanest prodigies of Scripture, with the same
unhesitating faith, as if I had never understood a proposition of
physical philosophy, nor a chapter of Hume and Gibbon.

[Footnote 1: Very unintelligent criticism of my words induces me to
add, that "the _credentials_ of Revelation," as distinguished from
"the _contents_ of Revelation," are here intended. Whether such a
distinction can be preserved is quite another question. The view
here exhibited is essentially that of Paley, and was in my day the
prevalent one at Oxford. I do not think that the present Archbishop
of Canterbury will disown it, any more than Lloyd, and Burton, and
Hampden,--bishops and Regius Professors of Divinity.]

[Footnote 2: Borrowed from Acts viii. 37.]

[Footnote 3: Virgil (AEneid vi.) gives the Stoical side of the same
thought: Tu ne cede malis, _sed contra audentior ito_.]

CHAPTER III.

CALVINISM ABANDONED.

After the excitement was past, I learned many things from the events
which have been named.

First, I had found that the class of Christians with whom I had been
joined had exploded the old Creeds in favour of another of their
own, which was never given me upon authority, and yet was constantly
slipping out, in the words, _Jesus is Jehovah_. It appeared to me
certain that this would have been denounced as the Sabellian heresy
by Athanasias and his contemporaries. I did not wish to run down
Sabellians, much less to excommunicate them, if they would give me
equality; but I felt it intensely unjust when my adherence to the
Nicene Creed was my real offence, that I should be treated as setting
up some novel wickedness against all Christendom, and slandered
by vague imputations which reached far and far beyond my power of
answering or explaining. Mysterious aspersions were made even against
my moral[1] character, and were alleged to me as additional reasons
for refusing communion with me; and when I demanded a tribunal, and
that my accuser would meet me face to face, all inquiry was refused,
on the plea that it was