But the argument recoiled upon me. Have I not been 25 years a reader of the Bible? have I not full 18 years been a student of Theology? have I not employed 7 of the best years of my life, with ample leisure, in this very investigation;--without any intelligible earthly bribe to carry me to my present conclusion, against all my interests, all my prejudices and all my education? There are many far more learned men than I,--many men of greater power of mind; but there are also a hundred times as many who are my inferiors; and if I have been seven years labouring in vain to solve this vast literary problem, it is an extreme absurdity to imagine that the solving of it is imposed by God on the whole human race. Let me renounce my little learning; let me be as the poor and simple: what then follows? Why, then, _still the same thing follows_, that difficult literary problems concerning distant history cannot afford any essential part of my religion. It is with hundreds or thousands a favourite idea, that "they have an inward witness of the truth of (_the historical and outward facts of_) Christianity." Perhaps the statement would bring its own refutation to them, if they would express it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime discoveries and ably stating some of his most remarkable doctrines, to add, that Sir Isaac was a great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been foretold by Merlin:--it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the Newtonian theory as "the moral evidence" of the truth of the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the excellence of the precepts and spirituality of the general doctrine of the New Testament, as the "moral evidence" of its miracles and of its fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But for the ambiguity of the word _doctrine_, probably such confusion of thought would have been impossible. "Doctrines" are either spiritual truths, or are statements of external history. Of the former we may have an inward witness;--that is their proper evidence;--but the latter must depend upon adequate testimony and various kinds of criticism. How quickly might I have come to my conclusion,--how much weary thought and useless labour might I have spared,--if at an earlier time this simple truth had been pressed upon me, that since the religious faculties of the poor and half-educated cannot investigate Historical and Literary questions, _therefore_ these questions cannot constitute an essential part of Religion.--But perhaps I could not have gained this result by any abstract act of thought, from want of freedom to think: and there are advantages also in expanding slowly under great pressure, if one _can_ expand, and is not crushed by it.