All these were facts; and I learned them all from Christian authors of the highest repute for learning and piety. And so long as things went on smoothly, they had not, so far as I can remember, any injurious effect on my mind. But when, after having been harassed for years by the intolerance of my brethren, I was expelled from the ministry and the church, and finally placed in a hostile position with regard to the great body of Christians and Christian ministers, I began to see, that those facts were incompatible with the views and theories of the divine inspiration and absolute perfection of the Bible held by my opponents. I came very slowly to see this, and after I saw it I was slow to speak on the subject in my publications; but the time to see and to speak arrived at length. One of my New Connection opponents, by repeated charges of infidelity, and by statements about the Scriptures which I knew he could not maintain, got me into controversy on the subject. Then I uttered all that was in my mind. I showed that many of the things which he had said about the Bible were not true,--that they were inconsistent with plain unquestionable facts,--with facts acknowledged by all the divines on earth of any consequence, and known even to himself and his brethren. While engaged in this controversy I made discoveries of other facts inconsistent with the views of my persecutors, and pressed them upon my opponent without mercy. And the violent and resentful feeling excited by his unfairness, dishonesty and malignity in defending the Bible, led me probably to be less concerned for its claims than I otherwise should have been. Suffice it to say, I came out of the debate with my savage opponent, not a disbeliever in the Bible or Christianity, but with views farther removed from those which he contended for, and with feelings much less hostile to heterodox extremes perhaps than those with which I entered it. Among the views I was led to entertain and promulgate with regard to the Bible about this time, were the following. 1. We have no proof that the different portions of the Bible were absolutely perfect as they came from the hands of the writers. The probability is on the other side. For if an absolutely perfect book had been necessary for man, it would have been as necessary to _keep_ it perfect, as to _make_ it perfect. And as God has not seen fit to _keep_ it perfect, we have no reason to suppose that He made it so. 2. But in truth, to write an absolutely perfect book in an imperfect language, is impossible. And all human languages are imperfect. The Hebrew language, in which the greater part of the Bible was written, is very imperfect. And it seems to have been much more imperfect in those times when the Bible was written, than it is now. And the Greek language, in which the remainder of the Bible was written, was imperfect. And the Greek used in the New Testament is not the best Greek;--it is not the Greek of the Classics.