“Having found that _pride of reason is an aggression upon other men’s reason_, arising from an over-estimate of the worth of the aggressor’s own, we may now proceed in our inquiry, who are justly chargeable with pride of _reason_? Is it those who, having examined the Scriptures, propose their own collective sense of those books to the acceptance of others, but blame them not for rejecting it? or those who positively assert, that their own sense of the Scriptures is the only one which an honest man, not under diabolical delusion, can find there? The answer is so plain, that a child, who could understand the terms of the question, might give it. And yet experience has taught me that there is no chance of unravelling the confused ideas which prevent many a well-meaning Christian from perceiving that the charge of the pride of reason falls upon the Orthodox. Their own _sense_ of the Scripture (such is the dizzy whirl which their excited feelings produce) must be the _word of God_, because THEY cannot find another. _My sense_ of the Scripture must, (for instance,) on the contrary, be a damnable error, because it is the work of my _reason_, which opposes the word of God, _i.e._, THEIR sense of the Scriptures: hence the conclusion that I am guilty of _pride of reason_. ‘Renounce that _pride_, (they say,) and you will see in the Scriptures what we propose to you:’ which is to say, _surrender your reason to ours, and you will agree with us_. * * * “It is remarkable that Christians are accused of _Pride of reason_ in proportion as their view of Christianity contains fewer _doctrines of inference_ than that of the accusers. Compare the creed of the Trinitarian with that of the Unitarian. The former may be true, and the latter erroneous, though I adhere to the latter; but unquestionably the _Trinitarian Creed_ is nearly made up of _inferences_, it is almost entirely a work of _reason_, though, in my eyes, sadly misapplied. Why, then, is the _Unitarian_ accused of _pride of reason_, when he only employs it to show that the Trinitarian has not any _sound reason_ to draw those inferences? which of the two is guilty of encroaching upon another man’s _rights of reason_? Is it not he who claims for his inferences—the work of his own _reason_—an authority above human _reason_?