God is in man; and man's moral instincts, intellectual mould, and
spiritual senses are infinitely wiser than we conceive them to be. They
are infallible in what they say of God, and are the best criteria of
truth. How much the world has been given up to the worship of the Bible!
"The Bibles will be left here to burn in the general conflagration with
the other temporary representations of the Word of God, which is the
eternal Reason, the foundation of our being." This Reason is the "elder
Scripture of God,--the soul, the inspired child of the heavenly and
eternal Father." The answer is given to the question, Why does orthodoxy
believe in the efficacy of Christ's blood to save the souls of men? "It
is because man distrusts his reason, and invents the infallible church,
and then the infallible Scriptures, to supply his necessity of
anchorage. He cannot think the God of the universe can be willing to
save such a miserable sinner, and he invents a God of the church, who
will. He does not believe anything men can do will entitle them to
heaven, or that human lives can make them acceptable in the sight of
God.
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