Nor do I confess to romance in my desire of something _more_ than historical and daily human nature in the character of Jesus; for all Christendom, between the dates A.D.

100 to A.D.1850, with the exception of small eccentric coteries, has held Jesus to be essentially superhuman.

Paul and John so taught concerning him.

To believe their doctrine (I agree with my friend) is, in some sense, a weakness of understanding; but it is a weakness to which minds of every class have been for ages liable.
* * * * * Such had been the progress of my mind, towards the end of what I will call my Third Period.

In it the authority of the Scriptures as to some details (which at length became highly important) had begun to be questioned; of which I shall proceed to speak: but hitherto this was quite secondary to the momentous revolution which lay Calvinism prostrate in my mind, which opened my heart to Unitarians, and, I may say, to unbelievers; which enlarged all my sympathies, and soon set me to practise free moral thought, at least as a necessity, if not as a duty.