I never really had dared to criticize it; I did not even exact from it self-consistency.

If two passages appeared to be opposed, and I could not evade the difficulty by the doctrine of Development and Progress, I inferred that there was _some_ mode of conciliation unknown to me; and that perhaps the depth of truth in divine things could ill be stated in our imperfect language.

But from the man who dared to interpose _a human comment_ on the Scripture, I most rigidly demanded a clear, single, self-consistent sense.

If he did not know what he meant, why did he not hold his peace?
If he did know, why did he so speak as to puzzle us?
It was for this uniform refusal to allow of self-contradiction, that it was more than once sadly predicted of me at Oxford that I should become "a Socinian;" yet I did not apply this logical measure to any compositions but those which were avowedly "uninspired" and human.
As to moral criticism, my mind was practically prostrate before the Bible.

By the end of this period I had persuaded myself that morality so changes with the commands of God, that we can scarcely attach any idea of _immutability_ to it.