They represent the first sin as having effects which are never attributed to it in the Bible. They give an unwarrantable meaning to the word death contained in the first threatening. They attribute to man's first sin inconveniences of the seasons, and of the different climates of the globe, as well as a thousand things on the earth's surface, and in the dispositions and habits of the lower animals, which are not attributed _to_ that cause by the sacred writers. They spend a vast amount of time and words in trying to prove that the reason why Abel's sacrifice was more excellent than that of Cain, and was accepted by God, was that Abel offered animals, and had an eye to the sacrifice of Christ, while Cain offered only the fruits of the ground, that did not typify or symbolize that sacrifice; a notion for which there is no authority in Scripture. The story in Genesis seems to intimate that the sacrifice of Cain was rejected because he was a bad-living man, and that the sacrifice of Abel was accepted because he was a good-living man. Hence the words of God in His address to Cain, 'Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.' And hence too the statement of John, that Cain slew his brother because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous. And the faith attributed to Abel, as well as to Enoch, Moses and others, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is not faith in the sacrifice of Christ, but simply a belief in God; a belief that 'He _is_, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, or lovingly serve Him.' There were many definitions and descriptions of saving faith common in religious books for which I could find no authority in Scripture. I also met with a multitude of cold hard things about the Trinity and the Atonement in works on Theology which I never was unhappy enough to find in the Bible. All seemed pleasant and natural and of heavenly tendency there. I read books which seemed to require me to believe in three Gods; but I met with nothing of the kind in Scripture. I heard prayers and forms of benediction worded in a way altogether different from the prayers and benedictions found in the Bible. The Scriptures allowed me to think of God, in the first place, as one, as I myself was one. They did not tell me He was three in the same way as I was three; but they left the doctrine of the Trinity in such a state or shape that I found no more difficulty in receiving it, than I found in receiving the fact of a Trinity in myself. I left accordingly the hard repulsive representations of the theologians to their fate, and accepted and contented myself with the living, rational and practical representations of Scripture in their stead.