I read them, and remained, as hundreds more have
done, just where I was before.
"Was Paley," I asked, "a really good and pious man?"
The really good and pious man hemmed and hawed.
"Because, if he was not, I can't trust a page of his special pleading, let
it look as clever as the whole Old Bailey in one."
Besides, I never denied the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, or his
apostles. I doubted the myths and doctrines, which I believed to have been
gradually built up round the true story. The fact was, he was, like most of
his class, "attacking extinct Satans," fighting manfully against Voltaire,
Volney, and Tom Paine; while I was fighting for Strauss, Hennell, and
Emerson. And, at last, he gave me up for some weeks as a hopeless infidel,
without ever having touched the points on which I disbelieved. He had never
read Strauss--hardly even heard of him; and, till clergymen make up their
minds to do that, and to answer Strauss also, they will, as he did, leave
the heretic artisan just where they found him.
The bad effect which all this had on my mind may easily be conceived.
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