'The works that I do in my
Father's name, they bear witness of me.' 'If ye believe not me, believe
my works.' 'If I had not come among them, and done the works that none
other man did, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for
their sin.'
We have enumerated some of the paradoxes which infidelity is required
to believe; and the old-fashioned, open, intelligible infidelity of the
last century accepted them, and rejected Christianity accordingly. That
was a self-consistent, simple, Ingenuous thing, compared with those
monstrous forms of credulous reason, incredulous faith, metaphysical
mysticism, even Christian Pantheism--so many varieties of which have
sprung out of the incubation of German rationalism and German philosophy
upon the New Testament. The advocates of these systems, after
adopting the most formidable of the above paradoxes of infidelity, and
(notwithstanding the frequent boast of originality) depending mainly
on the same objections, and defending them by the very same critical
arguments*, delude themselves with the idea that they have but purified
and embalmed Christianity; not aware that they have first made a mummy
of it. They are so greedy of paradox, that they, in fact, aspire to be
Christians and infidels at the same time.
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