231. Yes: "I beseech you as strangers" (1 Pet. ii. 11). No: "You are not strangers" (Eph. ii. 14).
232. Yes: "Christ died for his enemies" (Rev. x). No: "For his friends" (John xv. 13).
233. Yes: "I write unto you, fathers" (1 John ii. 13). No: "Call no man father" (Matt, xxiii. 9).
234. Yes: "I am with you alway" (Matt, xxviii. 20). No: "It is expedient for you that I go away" ( John xvi. 7).
Total, 277, including double contradictions.
We will not attempt to argue that these conflicting statements prove that no such events as here referred to ever transpired, and that the whole thing is a fabrication. We only argue that it proves the writers were not inspired by infinite wisdom, or they would have told the exact truth in all cases, so that there could have been no mistakes. It also proves that we never can know the real facts, or arrive at an accurate knowledge or the exact truth, with respect to any 01' those doctrines, duties, or events the contradictions appertain to; and, as these contradictions refer to almost every doctrine, precept, and event of any importance, it thus sinks all Bible teaching into a labyrinth of uncertainty. Hence not one single statement in it can be set down as absolutely true without corroborative evidence.
Note.—The reader will observe, from the contradictions in the foregoing list with respect to all the duties of life, as well as all the crimes of society,—such as war, intemperance, slavery, theft, robbery, murder, falsehood, swearing, lying, &c.,—that it is absolutely impossible to learn our moral and religious duties from the Bible.