If God had intended us to receive the authoritative _dicta_ of Jesus, he would have furnished us with an unblemished record of those dicta.

To allow that we have not this, and that we must disentangle for ourselves (by a most difficult and uncertain process) the "true" sayings of Jesus, is surely self-refuting.

_Fourthly_, if I _must_ sit in judgment on the claims of Jesus to be the true Messiah and Son of God, how can I concentrate all my free thought into that one act, and thenceforth abandon free thought?
This appears a moral suicide, whether Messiah or the Pope is the object whom we _first_ criticize, in order to instal him over us, and _then_, for ever after, refuse to criticize.

In short, _we cannot build up a system of Oracles on a basis of Free Criticism_.

If we are to submit our judgment to the dictation of some other,--whether a church or an individual,--we must be first subjected to that other by some event from without, as by birth; and not by a process of that very judgment which is henceforth to be sacrificed.