and Only God. and as such cannot be ranked with the infidels and heretics. Your appellation of "heathen" does not apply to us at all.
Insistency on a blind acceptance of dogmatic teaching outside Duty to God and Neighbour is one of the weakest points in Church Christianity. The full use of Reason should be not only allowed, but encouraged, if a faith is to carry weight—there is no surer way of casting doubts than secrecy and forbidding inquiry. A man uses his eyes and brain to avoid falling into pits or over precipices, and no one finds fault with him for so doing, but directly he ventures to make use of his intelligence to detect fallacies and misleading dogmas there is a howl of indignation from all quarters. Depend upon it, there must be something shaky when you find that all inquiry is forbidden: when you must, like a naughty child, believe when you are told that you are "a child of wrath," and that you were "born in sin," and also accept without a murmur all that sacerdotalism has piled up during the last two thousand years and more. I must be allowed to ask any questions I may think necessary, other wise I am distinctly committing as in of omission
