speaking of the Atonement. Indeed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews
is not from the hand of Paul, had very long seemed to me an obvious
certainty,--as long as I had had any delicate feeling of Greek style.

That a human child, born with the nature of other children, and having
to learn wisdom and win virtue through the same process, should grow
up sinless, appeared to me an event so paradoxical, as to need the
most amply decisive proof. Yet what kind of proof was possible?
Neither Apollos, (if he was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrew,)
nor yet Peter, had any power of _attesting_ the sinlessness of Jesus,
as a fact known to themselves personally: they could only learn it by
some preternatural communication, to which, nevertheless, the passages
before us implied no pretension whatever. To me it appeared an
axiom,[3] that if Jesus was in physical origin a mere man, he was,
like myself, a sinful man, and therefore certainly not my Judge,
certainly not an omniscient reader of all hearts; nor on any account
to be bowed down to as Lord. To exercise hope, faith, trust in
him, seemed then an impiety. I did not mean to impute impiety to
Unitarians; still I distinctly believed that English Unitarianism
could never afford me a half hour's resting-place.

Nevertheless, from contact with this excellent person I learned how
much tenderness of spirit a Unitarian may have; and it pleasantly
enlarged my charity, although I continued to feel much repugnance
for his doctrine, and was anxious and constrained in the presence of
Unitarians. From the same collision with him, I gained a fresh insight
into a part of my own mind. I had always regarded the Gospels (at
least the three first) to be to the Epistles nearly as Law to Gospel;
that is, the three gospels dealt chiefly in _precept_, the epistles
in _motives_ which act on the affections. This did not appear to me