with that impression,--after hearing me: not one who met me face to
face had a word to reply to the plain Scriptures which I quoted.
Yet when I was gone away, one after another was turned against me by
somebody else whom I had not yet met or did not know: for in every
theological conclave which deliberates on joint action, the most
bigoted scorns always to prevail.

I will trust my pen to only one specimen of details. The Irish
clergyman was not able to meet me. He wrote a very desultory letter
of grave alarm and inquiry, stating that he had heard that I was
endeavouring to sound the divine nature by the miserable plummet of
human philosophy,--with much beside that I felt to be mere commonplace
which every body might address to every body who differed from him.
I however replied in the frankest, most cordial and trusting tone,
assuring him that I was infinitely far from imagining that I could
"by searching understand God;" on the contrary, concerning his higher
mysteries, I felt I knew absolutely nothing but what he revealed to
me in his word; but in studying this word, I found John and Paul to
declare the Father, and not the Trinity, to be the One God. Referring
him to John xvii, 3, 1 Corinth. viii, 5, 6, I fondly believed that one
so "subject to the word" and so resolutely renouncing man's authority
_in order that_ he might serve God, would immediately see as I saw.
But I assured him, in all the depth of affection, that I felt how much
fuller insight he had than I into all divine truth; and not he only,
but others to whom I alluded; and that if I was in error, I only
desired to be taught more truly; and either with him, or at his feet,
to learn of God. He replied, to my amazement and distress, in a letter
of much tenderness, but which was to the effect,--that if I allowed
the Spirit of God to be with him rather than with me, it was wonderful
that I set my single judgment against the mind of the Spirit and of
the whole Church of God; and that as for admitting into Christian
communion one who held my doctrine, it had this absurdity, that while
I was in such a state of belief, it was my duty to anathematize _them_
as idolaters.--Severe as was the shock given me by this letter, I
wrote again most lovingly, humbly, and imploringly: for I still adored
him, and could have given him my right hand or my right eye,--anything
but my conscience. I showed him that if it was a matter of action,
I would submit; for I unfeignedly bel