On the other hand, both the Transfiguration itself, and the fiery destruction of Heaven and Earth prophesied in the third chapter of this epistle, are open to objections so serious, as mythical imaginations, that the name of Peter will hardly guarantee them to those with whom the general evidence for the miracles in the gospels has thoroughly broken down. On the whole, one thing only was clear concerning Peter's faith;--that he, like Paul, was satisfied with a kind of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus which fell exceedingly short of the demands of modern logic: and that it is absurd in us to believe, barely _because_ they believed. [Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4.] [Footnote 2: John xx. 29.] [Footnote 3: John xiv, 11. In x. 37, 38, the same idea seems to be intended. So xv. 24.] [Footnote 4: A reviewer erroneously treats this as inculcating a denial of the possibility of inward revelation. It merely says, that _some answer_ in needed to these questions; and _none in given_. We can make out (in my opinion) that dreams and inward impressions were the form of suggestion trusted to; but we do not learn what precautions were used against foolish credulity.] [Footnote 5: If miracles were vouchsafed on the scale of a _new sense_, it is of course conceivable that they would reveal new masses of fact, tending to modify our moral judgments of particular actions: but nothing of this can be made out in Judaism or Christianity.] [Footnote 6: A friendly reviewer derides this passage as a very feeble objection to the doctrine of the Absolute Moral perfections of Jesus. It in here rather feebly _stated_, because at that period I had not fully worked out the thought. He seems to have forgotten that I am narrating.] [Footnote 7: An ingenious gentleman, well versed in history, has put forth a volume called "The Restoration of Faith," in which he teaches that _I have no right to a conscience or to a God_, until I adopt his historical conclusions. I leave his co-religionists to confute his portentous heresy; but in fact it is already done more than enough in a splendid article of the "Westminster Review," July, 1852.] [Footnote 8: I seem to have been understood now to say that a knowledge of the Bible was not a pre-requisite of the Protestant Reformation. What I say is, that at this period I learned the study of the Classics to have caused and determined that it should then take place; moreover, I say that a free study of _other books than sacred ones_ is essential, and always was, to conquer superstition.]