[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4.]
[Footnote 2: John xx. 29.]
[Footnote 3: John xiv, 11. In x. 37, 38, the same idea seems to be intended. So xv. 24.]
[Footnote 4: A reviewer erroneously treats this as inculcating a denial of the possibility of inward revelation. It merely says, that some answer in needed to these questions; and none in given. We can make out (in my opinion) that dreams and inward impressions were the form of suggestion trusted to; but we do not learn what precautions were used against foolish credulity.]
[Footnote 5: If miracles were vouchsafed on the scale of a new sense, it is of course conceivable that they would reveal new masses of fact, tending to modify our moral judgments of particular actions: but nothing of this can be made out in Judaism or Christianity.]
[Footnote 6: A friendly reviewer derides this passage as a very feeble objection to the doctrine of the Absolute Moral perfections of Jesus. It in here rather feebly stated, because at that period I had not fully worked out the thought. He seems to have forgotten that I am narrating.]
[Footnote 7: An ingenious gentleman, well versed in history, has put forth a volume called "The Restoration of Faith," in which he teaches that I have no right to a conscience or to a God, until I adopt his historical conclusions. I leave his co-religionists to confute his portentous heresy; but in fact it is already done more than enough in a splendid article of the "Westminster Review," July, 1852.]
[Footnote 8: I seem to have been understood now to say that a knowledge of the Bible was not a pre-requisite of the Protestant Reformation. What I say is, that at this period I learned the study of the Classics to have caused and determined that it should then take place; moreover, I say that a free study of other books than sacred ones is essential, and always was, to conquer superstition.]
[Footnote 9: I am asked why Italy witnessed no improvement of spiritual doctrine. The reply is, that she did. The Evangelical movement there was quelled only by the Imperial arms and the Inquisition. I am also asked why Pagan Literature did not save the ancient church from superstition. I have always understood that the vast majority of Christian teachers during the decline were unacquainted with Pagan literature, and that the Church at an early period forbade it.]
[Footnote 10: My friend James Martineau, who insists that "a self-sustaining power" in a religion is a thing intrinsically inconceivable, need not have censured me for coming to the conclusion that it does not exist in Christianity. In fact, I entirely agree with him; but at the time of which I here write, I had only taken the first step in his direction; and I barely drew a negative conclusion, to which he perfectly assents. To my dear friend's capacious and kindling mind, all the thought here expounded are prosaic and common; being to him quite obvious, so far as they are true. He is right in looking down upon them; and, I trust, by his aid, I have added to my wisdom since the time of which I write. Yet they were to me discoveries once, and he must not be displeased at my making much of them in this connexion.]