Unless we have independent means of knowing that God is truthful and good, his word (if we be over so certain that it is really his word) has no authority to us: _hence_ no book revelation can, without sapping its own pedestal, deny the validity of our _a priori_ conviction that God has the virtues of goodness and veracity, and requires like virtues in us.

_And in fact_, all Christian apostles and missionaries, like the Hebrew prophets, have always confuted Paganism by direct attacks on its immoral and unspiritual doctrines, and have appealed to the consciences of heathens, as competent to decide in the controversy.

Christianity itself has _thus_ practically confessed what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man.

What God reveals to us, he reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses.

External teaching may be a training of those senses, but affords no foundation for certitude." This passage deserved the enmity of my critic.