139 



SECTION VI. 



CORRESPONDENCE FROM 1836 TO 1846. 



To his Mother. 1 



MY DEAR MOTHER, I hare read your letter carefully ; and the 1836. 

 paper?, and as much of the book as was necessary to show that 

 it contained no argument, and was in fact addressed to those who 

 already believe all it contains. If I can make you see clearly 

 that our modes of arriving at what we believe to be true are so 

 totally different that an attempt to discuss the subject together 

 would be an impossibility, it is all I expect. If your knowledge 

 of the New Testament had been of your own getting, unwarped 

 by the devices of a Church of which it has always been the 

 avowed doctrine to use every means which the age will allow to 

 force men to agree to its own interpretations, I could go much 

 farther, and could show you that taking every book of the New 

 Testament to be an authority to that extent only in which it was 

 recognised as an authority in the first three centuries, and taking 

 the words in their most probable meaning, there is no ground of 

 fear for any honest man who uses the best means in his power to 

 come at truth. 



But between us there is in this matter no common ground oil 

 which to argue. Nothing is more easy than to be positive and 

 certain, or to affirm the perdition of all who cannot see any par- 

 ticular system of doctrines to be true : but before you declare 

 that you must be right and I must be wrong, consider the 

 following points, and ask yourself what part of the whole New 

 Testament has more right to a literal interpretation than this : 

 1 In the measure which you measure with, you shall be measured.' 

 I take the most literal translation, and not what your misleaders 

 are pleased to call their ' authorised version.' 



1. You have a number of books bound up ioto one, which 



you call the New Testament. You never meddled with the 



* 



1 See p. 86, ante. 



