I therefore give fair warning to all, not to read any farther, or else to blame themselves if I inflict on them "unspeakable pain," by differing from their judgment of a historical or unhistorical character.

As for those who confound my tenderness with hypocrisy and conscious weakness, if they trust themselves to read to the end, I think they will abandon that fancy.
But how am I brought into this topic?
It is because, after my mind had reached the stage narrated in the last chapter, I fell in with a new doctrine among the Unitarians,--that the evidence of Christianity is essentially popular and spiritual, consisting in _the Life of Christ_, who is a perfect man and the absolute moral image of God,--therefore fitly called "God manifest in the flesh," and, as such, Moral Head of the human race.

Since this view was held in conjunction with those at which I had arrived myself concerning miracles, prophecy, the untrustworthiness of Scripture as to details, and the essential unreasonableness of imposing dogmatic propositions as a creed, I had to consider why I could not adopt such a modification, or (as it appeared to me) reconstruction, of Christianity; and I gave reasons in the first edition of this book, which, avoiding direct treatment of the character of Jesus, seemed to me adequate on the opposite side.
My argument was reviewed by a friend, who presently published the review with his name, replying to my remarks on this scheme.

I thus find myself in public and avowed controversy with one who is endowed with talents, accomplishments, and genius, to which I have no pretensions.

The challenge has certainly come from myself.