It is
undeniable, then, if the popular feeling is to be our guide, that, high
and mighty as the principle of private judgment is in religious
inquiries, as we most fully grant it is, still it bears some similarity
to Saul's armor which David rejected, or to edged tools which have a bad
trick of chopping at our fingers, when we are but simply and innocently
meaning them to make a dash forward at truth.
Any tolerably serious man will feel this in his own case more vividly
than in that of any one else. Who can know ever so little of himself
without suspecting all kinds of imperfect and wrong motives in
everything he attempts? And then there is the bias of education and of
habit; and, added to the difficulties thence resulting, those which
arise from weakness of the reasoning faculty; ignorance or imperfect
knowledge of the original languages of Scripture, and again, of history
and antiquity. These things being considered, we lay it down as a truth,
about which, we think, few ought to doubt, that Divine aid alone can
carry any one safely and successfully through an inquiry after
religious truth.
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