Was it not rather an escape from humiliation, saving only the mode of death?
So severe was this difficulty, that at length I unawares dropt from Semi-Arianism into pure Arianism, by _so_ distinguishing the Son from the Father, as to admit the idea that the Son of God had actually been non-existent in the interval between death and resurrection: nevertheless, I more and more felt, that _to be able to define my own notions on such questions had exceedingly little to do with my spiritual state_.

For me it was important and essential to know that God hated sin, and that God had forgiven my sin: but to know one particular manifestation of his hatred of sin, or the machinery by which He had enabled himself to forgive, was of very secondary importance.

When He proclaims to me in his word, that He is forgiving to all the penitent, it is not for me to reply, that "I cannot believe that, until I hear how He manages to reconcile such conduct with his other attributes." Yet, I remembered, this was Bishop Beveridge's sufficient refutation of Mohammedism, which teaches no atonement.
* * * * * At the same time great progress had been made in my mind towards the overthrow of the correlative dogma of the Fall of man and his total corruption.

Probably for years I had been unawares anti-Calvinistic on this topic.

Even at Oxford, I had held that human depravity is a _fact_, which it is absurd to argue against; a fact, attested by Thucydides, Polybius, Horace, and Tacitus, almost as strongly as by St.Paul.Yet in admitting man's total corruption, I interpreted this of _spiritual_, not of _moral_, perversion: for that there were kindly and amiable qualities even in the unregenerate, was quite as clear a fact as any other.