ure as
too arbitrary, but what rightful place ridicule has here, I do not
see. Nevertheless, it had wholly escaped my notice that the satirist
had ridiculed it, as I now infer that he did.

He tells me he _was not aware_ that the holding that _there are great
defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in
the character of its Founder, was a question pertaining to God_. Nor
indeed was _I_ aware of it.

I regard questions concerning a book and a human being to be purely
secular, and desire to discuss them, not indeed with ridicule but
with freedom. When _I_ discuss them, he treats my act as intolerably
offensive, as though the subject were sacred; yet he now pretends that
_I_ think such topics "pertain to God," and he was not aware of it
until I told him so! Thus he turns away the eyes of his readers from
my true charge of profanity, and fixes them upon a fictitious charge
so as to win a temporary victory. At the same time, since Christians
believe the morality of the _Old_ Testament to have great defects,
and that there was much imperfection in the character of its eminent
saints, prophets, and sages; I cannot understand how my holding
the very same opinion concerning the _New_ Testament should be a
peculiarly appropriate ground of banter and merriment; nor make me
more justly offensive to Christians, than the Pauline doctrine is to
Jews.

In more than one place of this "Defence" he misrepresents what I have
written on Immortality, in words similar to those here used, though
here he does _not_[15] expressly add my name. In p. 59, he says,
that "according to Mr. Newman's theology, it is most _probable_
(in italics) that the successive generations of men, with perfect
indifference to their relative moral conditions, their crimes
or wrongs, are all knocked on the head together; and that future
adjustment and retribution is a dream." (So p. 72.) In a note to the
next page, he informs his readers that if I say that I have left the
question of immortality _doubtful_, it does not affect the argument;
for I have admitted "the probability" of there being no future life.

This topic was specially discussed by me in a short chapter of my
treatise on the "Soul," to which alone it is possible for my critic to
refer. In that chapter assuredly I do _not_ say what he pretends; what
I _do_ say is, (after rejecting, as unsatisfactory to me, the popular
arguments from metaphysics, and from the supposed need of