This evades the horrible idea of eternal and triumphant Sin, and of infinite retaliation for finite offences.
But still, I found my new creed uneasy, now that I had established a practice (if not a right) of considering the moral propriety of punishment.

I could not so pare away the vehement words of the Scripture, as really to enable me to say that I thought transgressors _deserved_ the fiery infliction.

This had been easy, while I measured their guilt by God's greatness; but when that idea was renounced, how was I to think that a good-humoured voluptuary deserved to be raised from the dead in order to be tormented in fire for 100 years?
and what shorter time could be called secular?
Or if he was to be destroyed instantaneously, and "secular" meant only "in a future age," was he worth the effort of a divine miracle to bring him to life and again annihilate him?
I was not willing to refuse belief to the Scripture on such grounds; yet I felt disquietude, that my moral sentiment and the Scripture were no longer in full harmony.
* * * * * In this period I first discerned the extreme difficulty that there must essentially be, in applying to the Christian Evidences a principle, which, many years before, I had abstractedly received as sound, though it had been a dead letter with me in practice.

The Bible (it seemed) contained two sorts of truth.

Concerning one sort, man is bound to judge: the other sort is necessarily beyond his ken, and is received only by information from without.