CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY DISCOVERED TO BE NO PART OF RELIGION.
After renouncing any "Canon of Scripture" or Sacred Letter at the end of my fourth period, I had been forced to abandon all "Second-hand Faith" by the end of my fifth.

If asked _why_ I believed this or that, I could no longer say, "_Because_ Peter, or Paul, or John believed, and I may thoroughly trust that they cannot mistake." The question now pressed hard, whether this was equivalent to renouncing Christianity.
Undoubtedly, my positive belief in its miracles had evaporated; but I had not arrived at a positive _dis_belief.

I still felt the actual benefits and comparative excellencies of this religion too remarkable a phenomenon to be scored for defect of proof.

In Morals likewise it happens, that the ablest practical expounders of truth may make strange blunders as to the foundations and ground of belief: why was this impossible as to the apostles?
Meanwhile, it did begin to appear to myself remarkable, that I continued to love and have pleasure in so much that I certainly disbelieved.

I perused a chapter of Paul or of Luke, or some verses of a hymn, and although they appeared to me to abound with error, I found satisfaction and profit in them.