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.

Or when I was thus forced to admit, that the Old Testament praised
immorality, as well as enunciated error; and found nevertheless in
the writers of the New Testament no indication that they were aware
of either; but that, on the contrary, "the Scripture" (as the book was
vaguely called) is habitually identified with the infallible "word
of God;"--was it wrong in me to suspect that the writers of the New
Testament were themselves open to mistake?

When I farther found, that Luke not only claims no infallibility and
no inspiration, but distinctly assigns human sources as his means of
knowledge;--when the same Luke had already been discovered to be
in irreconcilable variance with Matthew