For my own part, my belief in the perfection of the Deity will not permit me to believe that a book so manifestly obscure, disorderly, and contradictory can be His work

The bishop who has answered me has been obliged to acknowledge the fact, that the Books that compose the NT, were voted by yeas and nays to be the word of God, as you now vote a law, by the Popish councils of Nicea and Laodocia, about 1,450 years ago.

When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.