to his own law; and asserts an eternal rule of right and wrong
common to man and to God, which God will surely never break.

Answer: 'If that doctrine be true, which I will never believe, then
the Bible mocks and deceives poor miserable sinful man, instead of
teaching him. If God's love does not mean real actual love,--God's
anger, actual anger,--God's forgiveness, real forgiveness,--God's
justice, real justice,--God's truth, real truth,--God's
faithfulness, real faithfulness, what do they mean? Nothing which I
can understand, nothing which I can trust in. How can I trust in a
God whom I cannot understand or know? How can I trust in a love or
a justice which is not what _I_ call love or justice, or anything
like them?

'The saints of old said, _I_ KNOW in whom I have believed. And how
can I believe in him, if there is nothing in him which I can know;
nothing which is like man--nothing, to speak plainly, like Christ,
who was perfect man as well as perfect God? If that be so, if man
can know nothing really of God, he is indeed most miserable of all
the beasts of the field, for I will warrant that he can know nothing
really of anything else. And what is left for him, but to remain
for this life, and the life to come, in the outer darkness of
ignorance and confusion, misrule and misery, wherein is most
literally--as one may see in the history of every heathen nation
upon earth--wailing and gnashing of teeth.

'If God's goodness be not like man's goodness, there is no rule of
morality left, no eternal standard of right and wrong. How can I
tell what I ought to do; or what God expects of me; or when I am
right and when I am wrong, if you take from me the good, plain, old