Mr.
Newman to hold, and which he was going to confute. He had no idea of
any relation of subordination or dependence in the above sophisms, as
I have just proved them to be, whether arranged as 3, 2, 1, or 1,
2, 3, or 2, 3, 1, or in any other order in which the possible
permutations of three things, taken 3 and 3 together, can exhibit
them; _ex nihilo, nil fit_; and three nonentities can yield just as
little. Jangle as many changes as you will on these three cracked
bells, no logical harmony can ever issue out of them."

Thus, because he does not see the validity of my argument, he is to
pretend that I have offered none: he is not to allow his readers to
judge for themselves as to the validity, but they have to take his
word that I am a very "queer" sort of logician, ready "for any feats
of logical legerdemain."

I have now to ask, what is garbling, if the above is not? He admits
the facts, but justifies them as having been convenient from his point
of view; and then finds my charity to be "very grotesque," when I do
not know how, without hypocrisy, to avoid calling a spade a spade.

I shall here reprint the pith of my argument, somewhat shortened:--

"No heaven-sent Bible can guarantee the veracity of God to a man who
doubts that veracity. Unless we have independent means of knowing that
God is truthful and good, his word (if we be over so certain that it
is really his word) has no authority to us: _hence_ no book revelation
can, without sapping its own pedestal, deny the validity of our _a
priori_ conviction that God has the virtues of goodness and veracity,
and requires like virtues in us. _And in fact_, all Christian apostles
and missionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always confuted
Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines,
and have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as competent to
decide in the controversy. Christianity itself has _thus_ practically
confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external
revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to
man. What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of
our moral and spiritual senses. External teaching may be a training of
those senses, but affords no foundation for certitude."

This passage deserved the enmity of my critic. He quoted bits of
it, very sparingly, never setting before his readers my continuous
thought, but giving his own free versions and deductions. Hi