Hence, when thoroughly imbued with this persuasion, I looked with mournful pity on a great mind wasting its energies on any distant aim of this earth.

For a statesman to talk about providing for future generations, sounded to me as a melancholy avowal of unbelief.

To devote good talents to write history or investigate nature, was simple waste: for at the Lord's coming, history and science would no longer be learned by these feeble appliances of ours.
Thus an inevitable deduction from the doctrine of the apostles, was, that "we must work for speedy results only." Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.

I _then_ accepted the doctrine, in profound obedience to the absolutely infallible system of precepts.

I _now_ see that the falsity and mischief of the doctrine is one of the very many disproofs of the assumed, but unverified infallibility.