This was to me unimaginable from his point of view.

Could he really think Jesus to be a mere man, and yet believe him to be sinless?
On what did that belief rest?
Two texts were quoted in proof, 1 Pet.ii.21, and Heb.iv.15.Of these, the former did not necessarily mean anything more than that Jesus was unjustly put to death; and the latter belonged to an Epistle, which my new friend had already rejected as unapostolic and not of first-rate authority, when speaking of the Atonement.

Indeed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not from the hand of Paul, had very long seemed to me an obvious certainty,--as long as I had had any delicate feeling of Greek style.
That a human child, born with the nature of other children, and having to learn wisdom and win virtue through the same process, should grow up sinless, appeared to me an event so paradoxical, as to need the most amply decisive proof.

Yet what kind of proof was possible?
Neither Apollos, (if he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrew,) nor yet Peter, had any power of _attesting_ the sinlessness of Jesus, as a fact known to themselves personally: they could only learn it by some preternatural communication, to which, nevertheless, the passages before us implied no pretension whatever.

To me it appeared an axiom,[3] that if Jesus was in physical origin a mere man, he was, like myself, a sinful man, and therefore certainly not my Judge, certainly not an omniscient reader of all hearts; nor on any account to be bowed down to as Lord.