belief has
no closer connexion with the personal virtue of the prophet, than has
that of Jews and Christians with the virtue of Balaam or Jonah. I will
proceed to imagine, that while a missionary was teaching, talking, and
distributing tracts to recommend, his own views of religion, a Moolah
were to go round and inform everybody that this Christian believed
Mohammed to be an unchaste man, and had used the very argument to such
and such a person. I feel assured that we should all pronounce this
proceeding to be a very cunning act of spiteful, bigotry.

My own case, as towards certain Unitarian friends of mine, is quite
similar to this. They preach to me the absolute moral perfection of a
certain man (or rather, of a certain portrait) as a sufficient basis
for my faith. Hereby they challenge me, and as it were force me, to
inquire into its perfection. I have tried to confine the argument
within a narrow circle. It is addressed by me specifically to them
and not to others. I would _not_ address it to Trinitarians; partly,
because they are not in a mental state to get anything from it
but pain, partly because much of it becomes intrinsically bad _as
argument_ when addressed to them. Many acts and words which would be
_right_ from an incarnate God, or from an angel, are (in my opinion)
highly _unbecoming_ from a man; consequently I must largely remould
the argument before I could myself approve of it, if so addressed.
The principle of the argument is such as Mr. Rogers justifies, when
he says that Mr. Martineau _quite takes away all solid reasons for
believing in Christ's absolute perfection._ ("Defence," p. 220.) I
opened my chapter (chapter VII.) above with a distinct avowal of my
wish to confine the perusal of it to a very limited circle. Mr. Rogers
(acting, it seems, on the old principle, that whatever one's enemy
deprecates, is a good) instantly pounces on the chapter, avows that
"if infidelity _could_ be ruined, such imprudencies[17] would go
far to ruin it," p. 22; and because he believes that it will be
"unspeakably[18] painful" to the orthodox for whom I do _not_ intend
it, he prints the greater part of it in an Appendix, and expresses his
regret that he cannot publish "every syllable of it," p. 22. Such is
his tender regard for the feeling of his co-religionists.

My defender in the "Prospective Review" wound up as follows (x. p.
227):--

"And now we have concluded our painful task, which nothing but a
feeling